Stories

I read every day about the need for cloud computing interroperability between providers. Just about all of it is talk. Providers claim they pay attention to this point, however the only major move beyond just straight API's is the Google Secure Data Connector release the other day. I really think interroperability between providers is going to have to be defined, and built by the masses. The developers who rely upon the...

Tags help give me a visual summary of a lot of my work. I deal with a lot of content and it is hard to see the high level view. Tag clouds give us a great perspective of everything from our Blogs to Google Reader and beyond. I don't make enough time to tag all my blog postings. Most of my blog entries are purely shooting from the hip as I have the thought. Otherwise they don't make it in my blog. As I am sure some of you can tell, because when you read...I could use some edito...

Another great post from Dion Hinchliffe @ ZD Net.....Determining the ROI of Entrpise 2.0 Each of Dion's articles leave me processing the links and information for days. Every IT director should be following his blog. Excellent advice as you are trying to figure out how to navigate the migration to Enterprise 2.0 and into the clouds.

I have come across several articles on Google's new Secure Data Connector. Definitely a huge step in legitimizing the usage of Google Docs within a corporate environment. With the Google Secure Data connector you can access data within Google Gadgets, Google App Engine and Google Spreadsheets. It gives you user access control to applications. I was working on an overview of the opportunities Google provides for cloud computing interconnectivity as well (coming in next po...

So I have used Google as a platform for a while. I did several large scale social media marketing campaigns completely using Google as a platform. They just have the best software services, platform services, and infrastructure services. I have been finding the best route to provide a easy, but effective solution for some my mom and brother's technology platform. Google is the logical choice because with a domain I immediately get email, calendaring, document sharing, ...

I have blogged about my usage of EXT JS Framework. I am adopting it for usage at my company right now and plotting the next stages in our event management software products. It has taken me some considerable work to learn how EXT JS works and how to adopt it for the best usage throughout our software. Some simple things just become real hard for me to do. However the separation of the presentation layer is awesome. I truly feel like I have things separated now. I have ...

For some reason I stumble across Dion's articles all at once. They always pop up every couple weeks. Here is the latest one I stumbled across: The emerging case for open business methods I am a big advocate of companies opening up as much as possible. I think business trasnparency and openness can radically change your business in very positive ways. Dion provides some very organized information on evolving your b...

I have been reading up on data center operations lately and what goes into building a data center that a cloud / virtualization methodology could be deployed to provide various public or private cloud computing. I come across many great studies on building Green Data Centers, I was reading this one today: Cloud Computing: Truly Green Data Centers It was a good article talking about Green d...

For some reason today I got a nervous feeling that I have too many Amazon EC2 instances up and running....I was up to 20 instances mid week to support our event in May. I shut them down 24 hours later, but for some reason I got worried that I had left some up and running. I have done this before....left an instance running a day or two longer than I should have. In this economy we can't be spending any more than we have to. And my EC2 budget has been running high, playing with our new...

Hitting on a common problem I have, and just need to talk it out a little bit on here so I can continue finding the right approach. My brother Richard has an accounting firm in Hawaii, and my mom and her partner have an alternative health business I guess you'd call it. They both do well. However they struggle with their web site and Internet presence. I have offered up to help before, but because I am busy or something else happens I don't deliver. This was back more when I h...

Ohhh the acronyms ....gotta love them. So just as I was finishing up my blog post Interroperability at the Software as a Service (SaaS) layer....I clicked open my Google Reader an started reading. I was re-thinking this issue as I was pondering the problems of delivering a full small business solution of tools to my mom's and brother's businesses. Then I came across this post: Read more →

I encounter this problem all the time, but I am doing a fresh round of thinking trying to help my mom and brother with their Internet Operations for their small businesses. When my brother and I were talking about his web site needs, I said... What do you want your web site to do? He said company info, blog, calendar, and kept going from there. To me that is more tha...

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...