Stories

I am really blown away by some of the opportunities for cloud computing growth and adoption within the federal goverment right now. With all the recovery money out there, there is a lot of of projects that just need a little cloud perspective. I am seeing multiple database, server infrastructure, networking and application projects at the federal and state levels that just need some cloud savvy providers to come in and snatch up. Hopefully a lot of this recovery money "we" are ...

I am spending some time looking through individual state recovery web sites off the Federal Government Recovery web site at: http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/state-recovery-page. I am interested in where this money is going and how its being used. Its funny, every state talks about accountability and transparency (even uses those words). Someone ought to tell them that ...

Was just watching on the Rachel Maddow show about how a fiber optic cable was cut in San Jose and San Carlos. Then I searched and found an article in the New York Times. Good example of how we need more security and redundancy in our networks. This is right after it ws reported that hackers from Russia and China infiltrated our Electric and other utility grids. Lots of work we need t...

I was reading an article today in an old Time magazine about the energy industry, and then simultaneously I saw an ad from BP that showed the diversity of their approach and it included "efficiencies" as an option. This is what the Time magazine article was touting as the #1 energy solution for us. Efficiency. Definitely makes sense. Its a great idea, but how do you get people to change? We are so locked into our current coal and oil society and our usage habits. You have to educate ...

I came across a cool tool that allows you to visual data in Google Spreadsheets, using the Secure Data Connector. It is a reporting tool that will connect to any Google Spreadsheet and create very advanced visualizations of the data contained in there. Here is an overview of this tool: http://news.p...

I was just reading a post while some files upload on Intacct which is an Accounting Ecosystem that groups together various accounting focused services together under one umbrella. It is interesting to see this type of aggregation at the SaaS layer of the cloud. I think this is something you will see more at the Software as a Service (SaasS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) , and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) levels of the cloud. The more you get quality service providers and...

As we are all jumping on the Cloud Computing bandwagon we are considering the security implications of our decision to move our entire companies operations into the cloud. Where exactly is my data center stored? Where are the cloud data centers? What happens when the big cloud providers like IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Sun start gobbling up all the smaller providers. All the nations data will become increasing more consolidated and easily targeted for attack. I just fi...

Was just reading the post on Wired about the Australian broadband initiatiave. Makes me wish our government would really get on the ball with this issue. Fiber to the door of every americans home should be a high priority. Its an issue that is long over due. Of course you can reach every home, but high quality broadband should be available everywhere. It should be low cost to help ensure Americans stay o...

I was just reading a great post on O'reilly Radar called The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory, and it got my brain flowing in a direction I have already been thinking about. I am really obsessed with Cloud Computing right now and the power it puts in my hand as the VP of Technology @ WebEvents Global. I am able to scale and grow our infrastructure as needed, and in the event in...

Another thing to add to my wish list. It would be nice to have a keyword tag cloud for all my Google applications. The one provided for trends in Google is nice. I would like to see a trends section in Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar and any other Google Application. I think tag cloud and other similiar analytics and trends are helpful in stearing my work.

I just did some investigation into some verisoning issues with a system we are developing. Something I do regularly. As I was waiting for the SVN repository to update I was reading some Cloud Computing articles. It made me think how I would really like some sort of version control for all my cloud activities. I would like it to remember every instance I launch, setting, data manipulation, sync, transfer. Basically anything i do regarding my cloud architecture I would like it t...

Users are quickly moving into the drivers seat when it comes to determining how a web application should look, feel and function. Take the recent Facebook revolt where users banded together and made it clear that they do not like the new Facebook layout. I don't think this was a single case where you have such a passionate base of users that they made their voice heard. I think this is the beginning of a trend. I feel that application and cloud developers need to start...

I just setup My Documents folder on my computer to automatically backup to Amazon S3 every night. I have kind of been half way doing this as I can, but with a recent laptop failure it became much more of an issue. I had bought a new el cheapo laptop from Best Buy...and 3 months later the harddrive failed. They were able to recover my data, but there were things that could have been lost forever. So I am not automatically backing up this data using my secure backup monitor I ha...

Been reading several high quality posts about a new social service that allows you to check the availability of your username across many social networks. This is a great way to protect your "brand" in the social media space. Sounds like a great application. Too bad I can't see it.....get a big phat service unavailable when trying to view it. Obviously they didn't develop their application with a serious IT plan and not built on the cloud. If they had deployed on an Am...

Hey Google! Can you guys please cross reference my Google Alert for blog searches with my Google Reader. I do not need to get alerts for items I already have in my Google Reader. Just a thought! Thanks so much for adding this new Google Alert and Google Reader feature.

So I have signed up for the Cloud Slam 09 Virtual Technology Conference. Looks like some greate speakers and sessions on the topic of Cloud Computing. I am interesting in the topic as well as how well a virtual conference will go. How many users, involvement level, etc. What I want to note in this blog post is that the conference is a week long, which is fine. But on each session I want to be able to click on link and have it automatically added to my Google Calendar with a re...

With this current administration we have a great opportunity to really address the availability of broadband across the United States. We are lagging behind the rest of the world in broadband availability. This is such a yesterday issue...we need to get on with it and move on. I understand our growth has been stunted by the previous administration. However its no excuse. Let's make broadband a priority and get it available at a low cost through America and move on to o...

People are always looking for proof that you can find work or business through social media marketing. Just like with traditional search engine marketing people are looking for the instant gratification. A click through conversion, etc. It takes a lot more work than that, it is a constant build and constant presence. I build relationships and connections each day hoping one of them will lead to my next big opportunity. And it has....but never in real direct ways. Today...

I have been doing a lot of development lately using the EXTJS framework. I have been setting it up to consume JSON from Web Services I have been setting up. At first it was cumbersome to even get some basic administrative tools setup and working. The more I setup the fast it gets though. I am creating various basic controls that are pre-configured to just ping a CFC and get their data. It works pretty smooth. And I must say I am really enjoying not screwing around with...

Cloud computing is unleashing some serious power at our finger tips. If carefully planned you can scale ad deploy just about any technology scenario you wish. It takes time to put together the configuration and test out to make sure it scales properly. Once done you can tackle many tasks that used to take days or weeks. Such as: Mass Document Creation Mass Emailing Bulk Image and File Manipulation Data...

Facebook is in the process of launching a new way for people to become fans of Facebook Pages using SMS text messaging. Now events, conferences and tradeshows will be able to get more Facebook fans by asking fans to text fan [your Facebook ID here] to FBOOK (32665). This is going to be a big deal for event marketers who've been looking for ways to accelerate their pages' growth. You can have people in a keynote, attending a session or visiting a booth become fans via t...

I work real hard to read and learn more each day about emerging trends and technologies. There is a lot of information in my head about all this. However putting it down for others to use and understand is extremely difficult for me. It is a constant challenge. Then I come across post by Dion Hinchliffe's blog postings. He constantly amazes me in his ability to articulate this stuff. Through words and his wonderful, distinct visuals. I came across 3 postings of his today that ...

I have been working real hard for the last couple of months to design a solid base for my companies architecture. I was seeing a new theme to my architecture planning, and as a typical geek I have to give this some name and / or achronym. So I came up with Ubiquitous Oriented Architecture (UOA). I want one platform for delivering our data using web services to any platform possible. I want to deliver event management and marketing tools through whatever channel the user wants ...

The integration of 3rd party services in our event management platform is a key part of our development strategy. I evaluate new tools I find as well as constantly evaluate existing tools for new ways of using them as part of an event. I was checking out slideshare more becuase I see it used all over the place. I noticed they have an event & conferences section to market your event. You ...

I just spent the last hour talking with a gentleman in Brazil about cloud computing. He is the IT director of a company owned by a friend of my boss. He was facing the same questions everyone is facing about what is the cloud? and should my small business consider moving into the cloud? First we covered the basics about what is the cloud? Differences between applications and infrastructure that runs in the cloud. He has a pretty standard small business infrastructure...