I Have a Google Appliance

One day my boss walks in and mentions wanting a way to organize all of our self-generated help documents.  She suggests a Google box (meaning that this was her idea all along).  Being a non-profit organization plus being an open source guy, the idea of an expensive appliance on the network rattles me a bit.  This is before we even bother to discuss the privacy implications.

I gave my standard response: “Ok, let me check and see if I can come up with a functional alternative.”

Only later did it occur to me that one doesn’t simply type “Google box” into Google for this type of thing.  What exactly IS it?

In addition to open source, I’d prefer it run linux.  So off I went to the standard linux places I visit when looking for something specific.   But again, what was I looking for?   One category that sounded promising was Knowledge Management.

When I say promising, I mean `Gee, I hope this is the right designator.’

After briefly perusing Knowledge Management, it became apparent that it would become unmanageable.  Although there were several promising packages, they required so much in the way of supporting applications that I couldn’t even get them running.   You know -PHP, SQL, etc.  If I have to learn a Knowledge Management app, I don’t want to have to learn three other apps to support it.

I checked for other categories as well as virtual appliances but came up with very little.  I gave up and heard no more about it.   Until last week.

One day I returned to my desk and found a coworker with a shiny new t-shirt that said Google on it.  He was most happy.  He also mentioned something about a one rack space, blue Google appliance.  Apparently the boss walked in, slapped it down on his desk, and said to make it work.

Yes, we have a Google Appliance.

It almost sounds dirty.  Of course most things that I say sound dirty.  I can make a trip to meet the pope sound dirty.

In addition to the spiffy t-shirt, it came with a small Getting Started booklet and a CD.  I have to give Google credit; their directions are almost idiot proof  (of course everybody knows that when you make something idiot proof, they just make a better idiot).  There are a few well-illustrated easy steps to get the box working.  You just configure the network interface, hook it to your network, then turn it loose (after specifying which areas to crawl).

The first interesting item I came across was the statement about waiting ten minutes after applying power before attempting to do anything with it.  In practice, it’s closer to twenty minutes.   Even Windows doesn’t boot up that slowly.

My esteemed coworker set to work on the attractively blue colored box.  The interface was set in no time then he went to do a bit of limited crawling.   No luck.

He tried something else.   No luck again.

I was afraid of this.  The directions were idiot proof but Google didn’t take one thing into consideration: it is so idiot proof that it’s not smart proof.   This means that if a smart person tries to follow the directions, there will be errors.  We are living proof.   After having gone from twenty some odd servers to almost a completely virtualized network, it can be said that we have some bright people in the department.  This is actually a deficit where Google appliances are concerned.

The boss, ever proud of her box, asked how things were coming.   “They’re not,” she was told.

“But the salesman said it would work right out of the box,” she cried.

[UH-oh...]

Meanwhile, we’re checking out the help docs and may have to (heaven forbid) call Support.  The boss jumped right in and sent some links to help docs (the same ones we checked).

No one has checked but the conservative estimate is that we have two hundred self-generated help documents at most to index.   And a multi-thousand dollar Google box with which to do it.

This is why I am not high up in the company’s structure.