Blueprint, Process Mapping | Lombardi Software: "The simplest way to document your processes.
It’s 2008. Why are we creating workflow diagrams the same way we did in 1988? Most tools haven’t changed in over 20 years – still drawing lines and boxes, without a way to simplify a diagram, or reuse a common process! Blueprint is the next evolution of process documentation and workflow diagramming tools. Inline editing, collapsible sub-processes, and linked common processes all make diagramming simple, reusable, and time saving. Start using the only tool designed for today’s process documentation and diagramming challenges – plus it's free to get started!"
Watch the video
[Interesting application built with Google Web Toolkit mentioned at Google IO -- sc]
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Blueprint, Process Mapping | Lombardi Software
TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!
TweetWheel - Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!: "Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other!"
[Interesting application built with Google App Engine mentioned at Google IO -- sc]
LaterLoop: Read Webpages Later on Your Phone or Anywhere
LaterLoop: Read Webpages Later on Your Phone or Anywhere:
Interesting application built with Google App Engine mentioned at Google IO -- sc
"You may not have tried it but reading webpages on your phone can work surprisingly well.
Whether you’re on the couch at home, taking the morning commute or waiting at the airport, you can catch up on your reading list whenever you have a minute or more.
LaterLoop is a free service that’s optimized for iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias and similar smartphones. LaterLoop also has a clean web interface for your regular browser."
Google Code University - Google Code
Google Code University - Google Code: "This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.
The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:
* AJAX Programming
* Distributed Systems
* Web Security
* Languages
In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases."
What is BlogThis! ?
What is BlogThis! ?: "What is BlogThis! ?
BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. Or rather, a click. Clicking BlogThis! creates a mini-interface to Blogger prepopulated with a link to the web page you are visiting, as well as any text you have highlighted on that page. Add additional text if you wish and then publish or post from within BlogThis!"
Dive Into Python
Dive Into Python: "Dive Into Python is a Python book for experienced programmers. You can buy a printed copy, read it online, or download it in a variety of formats. It is also available in multiple languages."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Google Hosts Popular JavaScript Libraries
Google Hosts Popular JavaScript Libraries: "If you've ever wanted to use a JavaScript library like script.aculo.us, Prototype, jQuery or Dojo, but you couldn't upload its files to a site or you found it difficult to manage all the different versions, Google hosts them for you.
'The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the Google AJAX API Loader's google.load() method, your application has high speed, globally available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries. (...) The AJAX Libraries API takes the pain out of developing mashups in JavaScript while using a collection of libraries. We take the pain out of hosting the libraries, correctly setting cache headers, staying up to date with the most recent bug fixes'."
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Official Google Website Optimizer Blog
Official Google Website Optimizer Blog
"Now let's look at how we do website redesigns today. We typically invite local agencies to razzle and dazzle us with their portfolios. We choose things that look nice and make us feel good about spending tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a redesign. We get enchanted by talk of Web 2.0, widgets, gadgets, video, surveys and interactive movies. If we're using a really good agency, they'll ask for or already know our current web-analytics metrics so there's a baseline against which to measure. And after months of brainstorming and discussions, we see initial concept mocks, and the new site is unveiled—perhaps a press release is issued.
The irony is, that launch day should really be the first day of a test, to see if the new site really does perform better than the old one. Sure, you think it looks better and your gut tells you it must perform better (especially since you've become emotionally invested in it). But the reality is you don't know. Even if you compare baseline web stats, you won't know if improvements are seasonal (almost any redesign in the fall outperforms a summer predecessor) or due to another external factor (like a new ad campaign)."
On the bleeding edge of videoconferencing at John Quiggin
On the bleeding edge of videoconferencing at John Quiggin
Yesterday, I appeared on video a National Symposium to be held by the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in Adelaide (details here and program (PDF) here).
Unlike previous videoconferences I’ve done for smaller seminars (audience up to 30 who can fit into a dedicated venue) presenting to a big event like this posed lots of difficulties, though most were satisfactorily resolved at the end. After initially giving assurances that they could handle a videoconference, the venue advised that they didn’t have an ISDN line, or any adequate alternative, and that installing a line would cost thousands of dollars. We looked at various computer-based options, but eventually decided that we would be unlikely to get sufficient reliability and video quality that way, so I stepped back from the frontier and made a DVD of my presentation which I mailed to Adelaide. Even that fairly low-tech approach created some problems, as playback of computer-burned DVDs turns out not to be 100 per cent reliable. There was a scramble to find a setup that would play the DVD, but it all went well in the end.
The plan was to take questions by audioconference, and this was incorporated in a panel discussion where questions were addressed to several speakers. The organisation on this point was a bit ad hoc, and the sound quality was very poor. Fortunately, perhaps, the format only allowed for one or two questions per speaker.
A benefit of going this way is that it’s reasonably easy to make a podcast. Unfortunately, my slide design, which works fine on standard projection equipment, and seems to have gone OK in the DVD, is very hard to read in a small movie format. Even with this poky format, 30 minutes of video turns out to be too big to upload. I’ll have to split it into parts. I’ve attached the presentation for the moment, but even that is 8.3MB..
Overall, my experience here is an indication of some of the kinds of adjustments that need to be made if videopresence is going to replace air travel on a large scale. None of them are huge in themselves, but they reflect the marginal status of this option When the problems are overcome, the advantages, such as the permanent availability and reusability of the video and podcast will be substantial, but at the moment, it’s still on the bleeding edge.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
YouTomb Lists YouTube Removals
YouTomb Lists YouTube Removals: "YouTomb is a research project by the MIT “that tracks videos taken down from [Google-owned] YouTube for alleged copyright violation,” as the site explains. [Via Google Operating System.]"
What is Evernote? | Evernote Corporation
What is Evernote? | Evernote Corporation: "Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at anytime, from anywhere."
Monday, May 19, 2008
YouTube - MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
YouTube - MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
Simple astonishing new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.
Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)
http://www.blublu.org/
Saturday, May 17, 2008
2008 JavaOne Conference
2008 JavaOne Conference
"In a general session with James Gosling at JavaOne last week, Tor “NetBeans Guy” Norbye demoed the really nice JavaScript support that was just added to NetBeans (code completion, browser-compatibility warnings, syntax highlighting, refactoring, etc). He did so using YUI, and NetBeans did a very nice job with the code complete, etc. Really slick demo…"
skip over the first 8.5 minutes to get to the YUI/Netbeans demo
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Kyle Hayes: YUI Makes Animating the DOM Easy
Kyle Hayes: YUI Makes Animating the DOM Easy: "Despite being an Adobe fanboy, I never cared much for how the Spry framework handles things like animations. Seemed complex at the time for basic operations. At work, they have standardized on using the YUI framework. This has been great for me because I have always wanted to dive deeper into it and learn about its ins and outs. With that, I needed to do some basic fade animations for a User Interface I am working on."
YouTube - Campfire One: Google Friend Connect (pt. 3)
YouTube - Campfire One: Google Friend Connect (pt. 3): "Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. For more info, visit http://www.google.com/friendconnect"
note: video shows adding FriendConnect to Ingrid Michaelson's web site -- sc
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
YouTube - Le Nozze di Figaro by Harnoncourt Trailer
A very interesting production of a funny Mozart opera with Anna Nekreboko -- sc
YouTube - Le Nozze di Figaro by Harnoncourt Trailer: "Le Nozze di Figaro - Harnoncourt D'Arcangelo, Anna Netrebko"
IBM Press room - 2007-11-15 IBM Introduces Ready-to-Use Cloud Computing - United States
IBM Press room - 2007-11-15 IBM Introduces Ready-to-Use Cloud Computing - United States: "Armonk, N.Y. and Shanghai, China - 15 Nov 2007: In Shanghai today, IBM unveiled plans for “Blue Cloud,” a series of cloud computing offerings that will allow corporate data centers to operate more like the Internet by enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources, rather than on local machines or remote server farms."
IBM developerWorks : High Performance On Demand Solutions
IBM developerWorks : High Performance On Demand Solutions: "Welcome! This page provides resources to help you plan, design, and build real-world on demand solutions. The HiPODS team is a group of specialists within IBM's Software Strategy group, with seven locations around the world. Our skills represent a cross-section of IBM from the Software, Research, Global Services, and System and Technology divisions. We work to solve customer problems by innovating and collaborating with leading edge IBM customers.
The HiPODS team delivers first-of-a-kind, end-to-end integrated solutions that span IBM software and hardware brands to deliver a unified solution for our customers. HiPODS has worked with a wide range of businesses, such as eBay�, Google™, New York Stock Exchange, China Telecom, Sprint�, the Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology, and more.
Some of our current project areas include:
- Cloud Computing
Develop and deliver process-driven virtualized infrastructure solutions. Values to customers include:
- Reducing IT management complexity and skill requirements
- Sharing resources among multiple applications
- Accelerating application launches
- Supporting both existing and emerging, data-intensive workloads
Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Use Amazon SQS to Build Self-Healing Applications
Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Use Amazon SQS to Build Self-Healing Applications: "A short five minute video that describes how to use Amazon SQS to build self-healing applications by taking advantage of a unique feature of that service."
Once an application is in production, the real issues begin. This video shows you how to build a self-tending, self-healing application architecture. And as any operations person can attest, Murphy's Law dictates that it's almost always the middle of the night when things fail. By using a unique feature found in Amazon Simple Queue Service, your application can auto-restart failed components in a workflow and take up where it left off. And best of all, with some forethought this technique is easy to build into your architecture.
Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Update: Icahn To Decide Tomorrow On YHOO Proxy Fight
Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Update: Icahn To Decide Tomorrow On YHOO Proxy Fight: "Carl Icahn has acquired about a 50 million share stake in Yahoo (YHOO) and is leaning toward launching a proxy contest to unseat at least part of the company’s board, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing “one person familiar with the situation.”
A stake of 50 million shares would be less than 4% of the company’s shares. The story says Icahn will decide Wednesday whether to seek seats on the Yahoo board. The deadline for board nominations for Yahoo’s upcoming annual meeting is Thursday at the close of business. The story adds that Scott Galloway, founder of investment firm Firebrand Partners, also may get involved, “according to people close to the matter.”"
YouTube - Anna Netrebko - Puccini -Quando Me'n Vo
How about a little opera for a change of pace. My favorite opera singer. YouTube - Anna Netrebko - Puccini -Quando Me'n Vo: "Puccini rules!!"
YouTube - Amazon EC2 Tutorial
YouTube - Amazon EC2 Tutorial: "Amazon EC2: Launching a linux based web server on EC2 via the FireFox EC UI plugin and connecting via SSH."
Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files
Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files: "An interesting side-effect of YouTube's recent push for higher quality videos is that most videos can be downloaded as MP4 files directly from YouTube. Until now, you could only get FLV files from your browser's cache or using one of the many websites that let you download YouTube videos. In fact, to download the MP4 files, you need to use the same URL like for FLV files and append '&fmt=18':
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=ID&t=SIGNATURE&fmt=18
ID is the video's identification value, SIGNATURE is a value that prevents you from downloading the file just by knowing the ID. You could create this URL by looking at the source code of a YouTube page, but it's much easier to automatically generate it.
One way is to save the following link as a bookmarklet by dragging it to your Links bar (in Firefox, Safari) or right-clicking and adding it to your favorites (in Internet Explorer, Opera):"
YouTube - The Chevy Volt
YouTube - The Chevy Volt: "Hybrid cars use a combination of electric and gasoline engine power to get you where you're going. The Chevy Volt uses only electricity. The companion gasoline engine is to dynamically recharge the lithium-ion batteries as the vehicle is in use."
YouTube - Eric Schmidt at IBM Business Partners Leadership Conference
YouTube - Eric Schmidt at IBM Business Partners Leadership Conference
Here's a video of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's presentation at the event in which he spoke about cloud computing. "We're on the edge of a truly great breakthrough," said Schmidt. "It's the story of our lifetime." The video runs about 49 minutes.
Twitter: Worst Downtime for Social Networks - Data Center Knowledge
Twitter: Worst Downtime for Social Networks - Data Center Knowledge: "Pingdom has a report looking at the uptime performance of major social media sites. The worst performer, not surprisingly, was Twitter. The microblogging service, whose reliability problems have been a hot topic in the blogosphere, has been offline for more than 37 hours this year - twice as long as the outage total for the next-worst site. Twitter was the only service with uptime below 99 percent."
RechargeIT.org
RechargeIT.org: "RechargeIT is a Google.org initiative that aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology.
By demonstrating the technology using our own fleet and supporting others through grants and investments, together we will drive toward a plug-in revolution. See for yourself how our plug-in hybrids are performing in real world conditions."
YouTube - Plug-in Hybrids Power the Grid
YouTube - Plug-in Hybrids Power the Grid: "Peak Moment 107: Professor Andy Frank, Director of the UC Davis Hybrid Vehicle Research Center has a plan to power more than just our cars. In his vision, plug-in hybrid vehicles can be used as mobile batteries, contributing solar power to the grid, and helping to 'load balance' the demand. Roofs built over our parking lots contain solar panels that charge the cars' batteries in daytime. At home, the same batteries can help power a house, or feed energy back to the grid. The result: fewer power plants. [www.team-fate.net]"
Monday, May 12, 2008
Students show power of Google’s Android - Gadgets- msnbc.com
Students show power of Google’s Android - Gadgets- msnbc.com: "One project named GeoLife gives users a way to set to-do lists and get reminders on their phones. Walk by the market, and the device might buzz with a message that you're supposed to pick up milk. Another effort, named Flare, was designed to help small businesses like pizza shops cheaply track their drivers."
Spreading OpenSocial Across the Web
Spreading OpenSocial Across the Web: "Any web site can be a container for OpenSocial, any web site can add social features even if it's not a social network - that seems to be the idea behind Friend Connect, a new piece from Google's social puzzle. Friend Connect will allow the users of a site to add profiles, to import their friends from other social networks, to use social applications in the context of a site.
Paul Buchheit wrote last year that 'there's no such thing as a social network'. The social aspect of a site is just one of its many features. 'Real products need more functionality in order to somehow deliver value to their users. It is this other functionality that defines the real purpose of a product, not the social network, which exists only to enable or enhance the core purpose.'"
ping.fm
blogging using ping.fm via a gtalk client. you can get your own account by signing up with the beta code "pingsauce"
TBO.com - News From AP
TBO.com - News From AP: "Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes. Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.
'When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted,' said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. 'It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot.'"
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Slashdong: 3Feel Released in Korea
Slashdong: 3Feel Released in Korea
"3 Feel will make money in three ways: subscription fee, item selling and lovemaking fee which will be calculated from the caressing period."
Newt Gingrich gives some advice to Obama
Dear Senator Obama … | Print Article | Newsweek.com
President Carter never understood this. When his vague campaign of "trust me" and "a government as good as the American people" came to Washington, it ran into a Democratic Congress that didn't trust him and that wanted a government that was good for the Congress. Carter, like many outsiders who become president (including the current White House resident), greatly underestimated the institutional strengths of the Congress. Many state legislatures meet very rarely. Georgia was like that when Carter was governor, and the Texas legislature only meets every other year. This gave Governor Bush a considerable misunderstanding of the depth of institutional trouble he would face in Washington.
By contrast, Congress is a permanent institution with a 225-year history of challenging the president. Carter learned even before his Inauguration that Speaker Tip O'Neill was happy to stand up to a newly elected president. President George H. W. Bush painfully learned that his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge was a target for the Democrats rather than a problem for them. Hillary Clinton learned as First Lady that she could cut a healthcare deal with Republicans Bob Dole and John Chaffee, but she could not get several key Democrats to go along. Her plans foundered on the unwillingness of House Democrats to give up their core values for a presidential "win."
Saturday, May 10, 2008
IDT Labs - Free Software Tools � // Internet Duct Tape
IDT Labs - Free Software Tools � // Internet Duct Tape: "Internet Duct Tape is my personal blog. I enjoy programming as a hobby, and creating software to automate simple tasks. The software is organized by the websites they interact with. You can find the latest updates about my software projects on it’s own blog called IDT Labs."
Google Confirms Plans To Put Display Ads On Google.com - Silicon Alley Insider
Google Confirms Plans To Put Display Ads On Google.com - Silicon Alley Insider
The most pressing question for Google (GOOG) shareholders is what product will drive the company's next growth boom as the search product cycle ends. Most likely candidate? Not sexy mobile or video. Just boring old display ads.
Google has been serving display ads on other sites for years, and the DoubleClick acquisition will accelerate that effort. Third-party display ads will only make a small contribution to the bottom line, however (10-20 cents on the dollar). So the key question here has been whether Google would deign to put display ads on its own sites.
We've argued that a full load of display ads on Google.com could add $3-$4 billion in annual revenue. Many SAI readers considered this estimate too optimistic, and it might be, at least over the next couple of years. But $1-$2 billion seems easily achievable.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Amazon Web Services Blog: Taking Massive Distributed Computing to the Common Man - Hadoop on Amazon EC2/S3
Amazon Web Services Blog: Taking Massive Distributed Computing to the Common Man - Hadoop on Amazon EC2/S3: "Everyday, I hear new stories about running Hadoop on EC2. For example, The New York Times used 100 Amazon EC2 instances and a Hadoop application to process 4TB of raw image TIFF data (stored in S3) into 1.1 million finished PDFs in the space of 24 hours at a computation cost of just $240. It not only makes massive distributed processing easy but also makes it headache-free.
Whether it is Startup companies or University Classrooms in UCSB, BYU, Stanford or even enterprise companies, its just amazing to see every new story that is utilizing Hadoop on Amazon EC2/S3 in innovative ways.
That’s what I love about Amazon Web Services - a common man with just a credit card can afford to think about massive distributed computing and compete with the rest and emerge to the top."
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Defining cloud computing | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com
Defining cloud computing | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com: "Ask a dozen people what 'cloud computing' means and you'll get a dozen different answers, all pointing to the network. Rob Boothby of Joyent interviewed more than a dozen technology wonks, including Steve Gillmor, Matt Mullenweg, Tim O'Reilly, Kevin Marks, Rafe Needleman, Stowe Boyd, Brian Solis and myself, at the Web 2.0 Expo, to answer the question, 'What is Cloud Computing ?'
Check out the responses in this video:"
Has Microsoft really closed on the door on Microhoo? | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com
Has Microsoft really closed on the door on Microhoo? | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com: "Based on comments by Chairman Bill Gates and CTO Craig Mundie in the last few days, you might think Microsoft has not lost its lust for Yahoo. With no alternatives in sight, Yahoo may be rethinking its terms and conditions for becoming part of Microsoft. In this video, I outline the latest moves and nuances of the Microhoo affair."
Google Reader (1000 )
Google Reader (1000 ): "The #2 book on Amazon’s JavaScript shelf this morning is Douglas Crockford’s forthcoming Javascript: The Good Parts (currently available for preorder and due for release later this month). In this volume, Douglas articulates a philosophy of coding in JavaScript that builds up on and extends the content of his popular video series and articles. The premise, as Douglas puts it: 'Most programming languages contain good parts and bad parts. I discovered that I could be a better programmer by using only the good parts and avoiding the bad parts.'"
Bloomberg.com: Exclusive
Bloomberg.com: Exclusive: "Microsoft Corp.'s decision to drop its pursuit of Yahoo! Inc. increases the pressure on Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to make his money-losing Internet business succeed against Google Inc.
Ballmer's bid for Yahoo, the most-visited Web site, signaled that Microsoft was making little progress against Google in Internet search advertising, said Charles Di Bona, a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst. Ballmer withdrew his bid over the weekend after Yahoo refused a sweetened offer of almost $50 billion, leaving investors asking what his online strategy will be.
``They've got to come out sooner rather than later with a pretty well articulated vision,'' said New York-based Di Bona."
Sun xVM VirtualBox
Sun xVM VirtualBox: "Sun xVM VirtualBox software is the world's most popular open source virtualization platform because of its fast performance, ease of use, rich functionality, and modular design."
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2
OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2: "Sun and Amazon Web Services are opening a private beta program starting on May 5, 2008. Approved beta users get access to OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2.
In addition, Sun is now offering 24x7 technical support for its MySQL database running on EC2 and Linux."
Note: I blogged this as it provides a link to the Sun Microsystems site -- SC
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Joining Dots: Blog: Rethinking Office
Joining Dots: Blog: Rethinking Office: "ou may or may not have noticed, Google has been rolling out some online services that challenge one of Microsoft's key territories - Office. Google's online version is Google Docs. You can use it to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations using nothing more than a web browser with an Internet connection.
Currently, Microsoft doesn't appear to have an online version of Office available. If there is one, I haven't found it. But searching for variations on 'Office' gets all sorts of junk. Tip for Microsoft. When it comes to having a version of Office available online, consider using the following URLs - http://www.microsoft.com/docs and http://docs.microsoft.com/ ;-)
Here's the interesting part. I've been playing with spreadsheets for a couple of ideas and one feature required me to delve into Google Docs for the first time. Whilst Excel 2007 was best for one solution, Google Docs was best for the other. That, I didn't expect to happen."
TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video)
TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video): "Talks Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world"
UPDATE: I got this to embed by adding an to close it off -- MG.
JavaOne: Sun rolls out JavaFX
OutsidetheLineshe Lines - CNET News.com: "As part of Sun's effort to enable consumers to innovate, Green introduced JavaFX, a rich Internet application environment set to compete with Adobe Systems' AIR and Microsoft's Silverlight. He showed a JavaFX application with Flickr and Twitter feeds running in Facebook within the browser, and then he dragged it out of the browser--to the desktop. The same application also was shown running on a Java-enabled phone via JavaFX Mobile.
The IBM-Google connection | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com
The IBM-Google connection | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com: "LOS ANGELES--Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt gave a speech and chatted with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano onstage Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here. The two talked up their relationship, which primarily involves a joint research project. In October, Google and IBM announced a cloud computing initiative, based on Google's expertise in distributed, parallel computing and IBM's industrial enterprise management technologies, for public use by universities.
IBM is taking some of the learnings from the project and plans to operate a cloud that will allow partners to house their Web-based applications and sell them to customers, Palmisano said. 'It is the first time we have taken something from the consumer arena and applied it to the enterprise,' he said."
Zoho Blogs � IBM, Microsoft & Google Eras of Computing
Zoho Blogs � IBM, Microsoft & Google Eras of Computing: "By now it is conventional wisdom to say that there was an IBM Era of computing, then a Microsoft Era, and now we are in the Google Era. In this post, I will explain why Microsoft was not the “next IBM” and why Google is not the “next Microsoft” - there are significant qualitative differences among them, quite apart from their status as the dominant, era-defining players. Understanding that qualitative difference is crucial for third party vendors like Zoho to thrive. I was reminded of this because of the IBM/Google partnership unveiled today (via Dan Farber & see also Nick Carr). As an aside, I have coined a kind of Moore’s Law on these computing eras:"
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Is Office the new Netscape?
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Is Office the new Netscape?: "As Microsoft and Yahoo continue with their interminable modern-dress staging of Hamlet - it's longer than Branagh's version! - the transformation of the software business goes on. We have new players with new strategies, or at least interesting new takes on old strategies.
One of the cornerstones of Microsoft's competitive strategy over the years has been to redefine competitors' products as features of its own products. Whenever some upstart PC software company started to get traction with a new application - the Netscape browser is the most famous example - Microsoft would incorporate a version of the application into its Office suite or Windows operating system, eroding the market for the application as a standalone product and starving its rival of economic oxygen (ie, cash). It was an effective strategy as well as a controversial one.
Now, though, the tables may be turning. Google is trying to pull a Microsoft on Microsoft by redefining core personal-productivity applications - calendars. word processing, spreadsheets, etc. - as features embedded in other products. There's a twist, though. Rather than just incorporating the applications as features in its own products, Google is offering them up to other companies, particularly big IT vendors, to incorporate as features in their products."
Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader
Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader: "Google Reader's sharing feature was barely noticed when it was added, then it got more exposure when the shared items started to be broadcasted to Google Talk contacts and some sites aggregated shared posts. As Google Reader became more social, people discovered that it has some important limitations. 'Have you ever wanted to share something that you were reading, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of subscribing to a whole feed for a single interesting article? And what about sharing content from sites with no feeds?, ' asks Google Reader Blog.
Google Reader finally added an option to share any web page and to add notes for each shared item. Next to each post, there's a new action: share with note that can be used to explain why you found the post interesting or to add your comments. You can also go to the new Notes section to add a note or drag a bookmarklet to your browser's link bar so you can share any web pages, even if it doesn't have feeds.
Another improvement is that Google Reader shows small avatars next to each shared item and you can customize your public page by selecting a theme. But don't get to excited as the three themes that are available (ice cream, ninjas, sea) fail to impress and look terrible in Internet Explorer 7."
Monday, May 5, 2008
Post to Google Reader
Post to Google Reader: "You can now add your messages to Google Reader to be seen by your Google friends. To post a note, log-in to Reader and click Your stuff -> Notes to the left. This will open a box where you can type in a note with any thought, Friendfeed/ Twitter-style. To find out who exactly your friends are, check the Friends tab at the Settings page for an overview (or click the Manage Friends links).
Next to the notes box, there’s also a new bookmarklet to share items you find on the web. Just drag and drop the link to your bookmarks and you can activate it when you stumble upon something; you can also add a custom note to items, Google explains in a blog post.
Another new feature is that the layout of your Shared Items page can now be customized to *drumroll* display one of three graphics on top (titled ice cream, ninjas and sea)."
Amazon Now Serving OpenSolaris on EC2 - GigaOM
Amazon Now Serving OpenSolaris on EC2 - GigaOM: "During our on-stage chat at Startup Camp, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz hinted at some big news involving Amazon and its web services. Today, the company officially announced:
* Sun’s OpenSolaris OS will be available on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) customers for free. It is in beta for now.
* Sun will provide premium technical support for MySQL database running on Linux and Amazon EC2.
These developments are meant to address the needs and complaints of the developer community. OpenSolaris, which comes with tools such as ZFS and Dynamic Tracing (D-Trace), will be offered for free, in contrast to some Linux offerings that cost money. For instance, if you sign up for EC2 and pick RedHat, it costs $19. ZFS allows instant rollback and continual check-summing capabilities, something developers have found lacking in the EC2 platform. This OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2 beta is currently available by invitation only."
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Running Django on Google App Engine - Google App Engine - Google Code
Running Django on Google App Engine - Google App Engine - Google Code: "Google App Engine and Django both have the ability to use the WSGI standard to run applications. As a result, it is possible to use nearly the entire Django stack on Google App Engine, including middleware. As a developer, the only necessary adjustment is modifying your Django data models to make use of the Google App Engine Datastore API to interface with the fast, scalable Google App Engine datastore. Since both Django and Google App Engine have a similar concept of models, as a Django developer, you can quickly adjust your application to use our datastore."
Applications Gallery - Google App Engine - Google Code
Applications Gallery - Google App Engine - Google Code: "Featured Applications Gallery"
Google and Dojo, sitting in a tree
Google and Dojo, sitting in a tree: "A bunch of new tools have been added to the Dojo Ajax Toolkit that make it amazingly simple to search all of Googles services from your own site, and display the results however you want. Examples show how to integrate Google with the Dojo Grid, and with the Django templating language. And all with zero server side dependancies!"
Iron Man: Steve Jobs is even tougher than you think.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Iron Man | PBS: "Iron Man: Steve Jobs is even tougher than you think."
The major point here is that Adobe is in play, or at least Apple thinks so. The company has plenty of cash and stock to do the deal and plenty of incentive, too. Apple's goal in acquiring Adobe would be to control first Flash and second Adobe's emerging Air application platform. Adobe announced this week a broad industry initiative to extend Flash to mobile devices, but Apple wasn't a participant. Why bother if you intend to shortly own Flash outright?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
BREAKING: Microsoft Walking Away From Yahoo Deal, No Hostile - Silicon Alley Insider
BREAKING: Microsoft Walking Away From Yahoo Deal, No Hostile - Silicon Alley Insider: "Microsoft (MSFT) is withdrawing its bid for Yahoo (YHOO), people familiar with the matter say. Microsoft will not pursue a hostile proxy battle.
Microsoft raised its bid to $33. Yahoo's board wanted $37 (Jerry Yang and David Filo reportedly wanted $38.)
A letter from Steve Ballmer should be released momentarily."
IBM cooks up internal virtual world for confidentiality, security | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
IBM cooks up internal virtual world for confidentiality, security | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: "IBM has created its own internal virtual world called Metaverse for corporate meetings and collaboration. Why not use Second Life? “If you really want to make most of these (virtual world) meetings it has to be confidential,” said IBM CIO Mark Hennessey.
Those comments could indicate the beginning of a trend: Corporate specific virtual worlds designed to bridge geographies. The message: Confidentiality is everything whether your world is virtual or not."
Michael Ackerbacker, innovation manager of IQ collaboration development at IBM, said Metaverse has been in development for about a year. For 2007, IBM’s big goal was to prove the concept. Ackerbacker’s comments came in a series of presentations in New York.
“We did learn a lot in Second Life, but wanted to do a world here internally where we could talk about IBM types of things securely,” said Ackerbacker.
So what did Ackerbacker and IBM learn about corporate virtual worlds? Here are a few key takeaways:
Remember the users when building a virtual world. The goal is to enable collaboration not make things complicated. Ackerbacker said IBM is still noodling over how to bring the emotional connection into virtual space and get employees there easily. “Can we create a learning environment that doesn’t get in the way?” asked Ackerbacker.
Cater to your culture. The avatar options in Metaverse–built on the Torque gaming engine–were distinctly IBM. For instance, ties are an option. So is gray hair is an option. And no one is some hybrid animal thingy.
Don’t be exclusive. If you want collaboration you have to make virtual worlds simple. Ackerbacker said IBM stripped down its user interface “quite a bit.” “We only have a dozen controls,” said Ackerbacker. “Click on an icon and it’ll do something–fly, teleport and dress. We’re having an ongoing discussion on how to make it easier.”
Don’t be surprised if IBM takes these learnings an turns them into a service for verticals like retailing and hospitality.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Welcome to Project Caroline | Project Caroline
Welcome to Project Caroline | Project Caroline: "Project Caroline is a research program developing a horizontally scalable platform for the development and deployment of Internet services. The platform comprises a programmatically configurable pool of virtualized compute, storage, and networking resources. Project Caroline helps software providers develop services rapidly, update in-production services frequently, and automatically flex their use of platform resources to match changing runtime demands."
An advanced R&D project at Sun Microsystems, Project Caroline is a hosting platform for development and delivery of dynamically scalable Internet-based services. It is designed to serve an emerging market of small and medium sized software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. Anticipating needs driven by new SaaS business models and processes, Project Caroline helps SaaS providers develop services rapidly using high-level programming languages like the Java(tm) programming language, Ruby, Python, and Perl, to update in-production services frequently, and to automatically flex their use of platform resources to match changing runtime demands.
Key features of Project Caroline include:
- Project Caroline enables services to programmatically allocate, monitor, and control virtualized compute, storage, and networking resources. By providing programmatic interfaces for managing platform resources, Project Caroline enables developers to create services that can themselves update and flex platform resource usage, dynamically and without human intervention.
- Project Caroline resources are exposed through high level abstractions, including language level virtual machines, networks, and network accessible filesystems and databases. These abstractions can improve developer productivity by providing simplified interfaces to infrastructure resources. They also enable developers to create more robust, long-living services by insulating service code from changes to the underlying infrastructure.
- Project Caroline presents a horizontally scaled pool of distributed resources as a single system, providing developers with a unified platform for allocating and controlling these resources. In addition to simplifying developers' use of distributed resources, this unified system model also allows the platform to draw on a horizontally scaled resource pool to meet the allocation requests of multiple applications, running on behalf of multiple users.
Hurry, The Cloud Computing Platform Opportunity is Perishable! � SmoothSpan Blog
Hurry, The Cloud Computing Platform Opportunity is Perishable! � SmoothSpan Blog: "As I write this post, many are predicting that the big announcement from Google tonight will be that it’s opening up BigTable for the world to use. At least Kevin Burton and Mike Arrington think so. I hope so, because the world needs a lot more cloud computing choices. I wonder how many have figured out just how little time remains to introduce new cloud computing platforms?
Ray Ozzie has said, “[the cloud market] really isn’t being taken seriously right now by anybody except Amazon.” He’s right on the mark: it isn’t being taken seriously by anyone except Amazon. The distant runner up is Benioff’s Force.com. I say distant because there are a lot of problems with it, not the least of which is an economic model that makes it completely untenable for anyone but big corporate IT to use. Technically, it is a completely closed and proprietary environment that offers only minimal leverage. It’s true, they’re very seirous about it, so in that sense we should add them to the list, but the way they’re going about it makes it seem less than serious.
Here’s an important tip for various big industry players who’ve made noise about Cloud Computing at various points: it’s a perishable opportunity! You don’t have forever to contemplate how to get in and start winning.
"Can Apple Break Into The Enterprise Market? It's Trying (AAPL) - Silicon Alley Insider
Can Apple Break Into The Enterprise Market? It's Trying (AAPL) - Silicon Alley Insider: "Earlier this week we wondered why Apple was looking to rent a big block of Manhattan office space. Now we have an educated guess: Apple (AAPL) may be trying to increase its very small foothold in corporate America, by establishing a support team dedicated to business clients.
Apple already provides, grudgingly, a very limited amount of assistance to businesess that buy Macs. But we hear it is taking members from a team that provides similar services for the education market and converting them to a business-focused team. Apple officials have already begun acknowledging their interest in 'industry-vertical wins, like oil, gas, and government,' we noted in March.
Why would Apple, which has always been the choice of consumers and college kids, target the business market? Because business users want to use Macs -- and are already doing so.
Yankee Group surveyed 250 companies and found that 87% now have at least some Macs in their offices, up from 48% two years ago, reports BusinessWeek, in a new cover story. It's a comprehensive look at how Apple is making headway, almost unintentionally, in the coporate market -- and why it will still has a long way to go."
Yahoo and Google May Announce Search Deal Within a Week - Silicon Alley Insider
Yahoo and Google May Announce Search Deal Within a Week - Silicon Alley Insider: "As Microsoft announces (through the WSJ) an imminent decision on Yahoo, Yahoo announces (through the WSJ) that it may sign a Google search partnership within the week. (If these two companies finally do get together, the WSJ deserves a cut of those $300 million in M&A fees.)
The search deal has also been carefully designed to reduce anti-trust concerns."
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Great Presentation on REST
Overview: Check out this slide presentation to learn how REST (Representational State Transfer) compares to SOAP and the WSF (Web services framework). This presentation by Peter Lacey, Senior Analyst for Burton Group, explores these key topics and more:
http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=320716
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/html/itp/burton_RESTEasy.ppt
CohesiveFT's Elastic Server On-Demand - Easy Server Provisioning
http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/04/elasticserver
Complexity really is a growing problem for people. Every day we are hit with “more of everything” - more software choice, more versions, more systems and more business change. And soon - with more virtualization - more VMs. How many VMs will there be in your organization in 2010? How will they be manufactured and provisioned and will this be done in the same way as it is today? InfoQ spoke with Alexis Richardson, a founder of startup CohesiveFT, about their "Elastic Server On-Demand" product, which aims to simplify working with virtualized application stacks.
InfoQ: Please provide an overview of Elastic Server On-Demand for InfoQ readers.
CohesiveFT: Elastic Server addresses the problem of virtual machine management using self-service and automation. The Elastic Server On-Demand service delivers ready-to-run application stacks to order, for virtual server and cloud formats. It takes the complexity and uncertainty out of assembly and deployment lifecycles by replacing multiple manual steps and scripts, with a single automated process that is both quick and easy to use. We give you a place to create and share servers, or reproduce them from recommended patterns, with speed and quality.
InfoQ. How do I use Elastic Server?
CohesiveFT: Say you have an application, written for Ruby on Rails, and you want to run test builds on your laptop but move to a data centre in production - for instance on Amazon EC2. No problem. On the Elastic Server site you’ll see a collection of portals each catering to a different technology community or product pattern. Choose the Ruby on Rails portal and customize the components you want in your base stack - e.g. Rails 2.0.2, Mongrel 1.1.4, PostgreSQL libraries, and some RubyGems. Now press ‘build’. That’s it - in a few minutes you can be running your Rails server on EC2.
Choices can be saved as a template, so you can reuse the same configuration and run it on your own hardware in other formats, currently VMware, Parallels, or Xen. This is why we call servers “Elastic” - you have one server recipe, but keep the flexibility to reuse it across multiple business cases and technology platforms. Every aspect of this is managed in a consistent way in one place. Additionally, every server has a web console and API for organizing maintenance functions such as network settings, security, audit, and lifecycle.
twittervision
twittervision
its been around for a while but still pretty compelling. Twitters tweets mashed with Google Maps.
How journalists can master Twitter (blogger’s cut) � Online Journalism Blog
How journalists can master Twitter (blogger’s cut) � Online Journalism Blog
It’s almost impossible to sum up Twitter in one line. To some, it is a way of delivering content to mobiles as headline text alerts. To others, it’s a social networking tool for getting contacts and leads. Some use it as a research tool for developing stories; and still others as a project management tool to gather a number of contributors together - for example, drivers posting updates on traffic.
IT Conversations | O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference | Werner Vogels
IT Conversations | O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference | Werner Vogels: "One of the key difficulties in running and managing an internet business lies in building a technical infrastructure that can handle spikes in traffic but which remains cost-effective for normal operations. In other words, businesses often need to be able to scale up or down at a moment's notice."