Cloud Computing

Feb 01 2010

Where Would You Like That Data Sir? Laptop, Netbook, iPad, iPhone, Public Library

Category: iPad-iWay!, tech opinion, tech reviews, tools — jmacofearth @ 11:11 am

ZDNet has a funny post this morning kind of poopooing the iPad and all things clouds. While for the most part I am in agreement that netbooks are a bad product (just a cheap and SLLLOOOWWW laptop with a mediocre screen.) And jumping on, or OFF as the case maybe, the eBook (Kindle, Nook, Sony, Ronco) band wagon is hard to imagine when you can have a two-way relationship with your "screen" on an iPhone, as on an iPad.

So as far as three screens of distribution, let's see if we can nail this one clearly so all of those following along can understand.

SCREEN ONE: your desktop.
SCREEN TWO: your phone (mobile device, okay, but I'm talkin phones here)
SCREEN THREE: any access point to the web

So Steve Jobs did a nice job outlining the market place for mobile devices. Jobs started off showing how Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world. (Okay, he's including iP*o*ds, but hey… it's mobile.) Then he asked about a category between the phone and the laptop. Is there room for yet another device?

FAIL #1: Netbook.
FAIL #2: Kindle.

Here's what ZDNet had to say about the "screens."

"I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but Apple released a new product last week. The i-something-or-other. The meager media coverage, despite it’s generally low-key nature, did give me pause, though. While the iPad (yes, my tongue is now dislodged from my cheek) doesn’t hold a lot of interest for me outside of its potential to change the e-book landscape, it brought me back to an idea I’d first discussed with fellow ZDNet blogger: 'The Screen.'" — Dumping my laptop for…a server? from ZDNet

What goes for mediocre coverage I don't know, but I'm still seeing the iPad/iSlate or just plain Apple as a trending topic everywhere in technology. And that's where our problem is. The iPad is not a technology product. Us techno-geeks are frustrated by the speed of our iPhone 3Gs phones, and angered by the processor lag on our Core 2 Duo laptops. And all of us saw the Sports Illustrated demo prior to Steve Jobs trying to do a "wow" demo last week. But guess what, the techno-geeks were underwhelmed. (Check this, I think they were underwhelmed, "officially" by the iPhone release too.)

But here's the difference. The phone and the slate are not tech products! Listen to that again: The phone and the slate computer are NOT tech products. In fact, it's often the TECH that gets in the way of a good experience with these products.

So what are they?

The iPhone is a fantastically successful consumer product. AT&T's network sags under the new volume of traffic trying to keep the 8 million iPhones online and connected. The gaming industry is trying to play catchup with their devices. Ever seen the "so so" Nintendo DSi? And what's the problem with the PSP?

So gaming and consumer connectivity and entertainment are the consumer products of the 2010's. And let me clue you in on something… The fastest selling phone, is soon to become the fastest selling "new computer category." And the Kindle, the Nook, and poor Sony's "WalkBook," well, if you have one, I hope you enjoy it. The iPad is using an OPEN BOOK technology to deliver content to the screen. We will be able to build our own iPad-enhanced books. And GIVE them to you.

So it's hard to imagine at this moment, for many people how the iPad is going to matter. But doubt not the iPad as you may have doubted the iPhone in the past. Here's why: It's a HUGE IPHONE.

And what the iPhone does great the iPad is going to do GREATer. And possibly GREATest. But there's probably a smaller iPhone on the way. And maybe a bigger iPad next year before the holidays. And here's how that works.

When the iPhone came out soooo many people said, it would not matter. Mostly it was the competitors and "wow, we're in trouble" manufacturers putting up the ho-hum smoke screen of misinformation. Well, what happened?

So along comes the iPad. And the MEME is the silly name. (UH, WHAT?) The name? They could call this thing the iPhone-H1N1 and people are going to line up to catch it. I know I am trying to find out where to pause my money so I am on the first delivery list. Maybe I need to call in that favor to Guy Kawasaki and see what he can do.

Final bit: People with iPhones can't say enough about how AWESOME they are. My son is 9, his iPod Touch is his most coveted device. And one by one his friends are saving their money to get them. And the little black slate that couldn't is becoming a SMASH HIT. We don't know what the iPad will become, because we cannot think big enough. We didn't think the iPhone was going to change GOOGLE, but it did. In fact, the iPhone changed everything.

I think you will believe in the iPad by the end of the summer. When you see the games that are running and selling massively on the iPhone, running on a device over twice as big, you're jaw is going to drop. When you see the web come to life in your hand with swipes, pinches, double clicks, and the whole thing is smaller than a Kindle or Netbook… Case closed.

@jmacofearth
permalink:

Tags: 8 million iPhones sold, a gaming device, a huge iPhone, a mobile platform, an entertainment product, apple ipad, cloud computing, computing in the clouds, consumer, GAMES, GAMES GAMES GAMES, google, iPad is not a tech product, ipad-enhanced, ipad-iway, iphone, iPhone HUGE, iPhone-H1N1, islate, kindle, kindles suck, most coveted device, my son's iPod, netbooks suck, Nintendo DSi, nook, not a technology product, poopooing the ipad, ronco products, screen one: desktop, screen three: all access, screen two: phone, smash hit, sony, tech product, walkbook, WANT ONE

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Jan 06 2010

MSFT and HP Announce "Me-Too Tablet" Computer at CES 2010 Today

Category: iPad-iWay!, just for fun, social media, tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 7:43 am

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Dec. 5, CES 2010, Las Vegas
Referring to it as a Slate PC, the NYTimes today posted the following information in BITS.
"On Wednesday, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, will unveil a novel take on a slate-type computer during his evening keynote at the Consumer Electronics trade show in Las Vegas, according to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans. The slate will be made by Hewlett-Packard and possibly available by mid-year, these people said.
International Consumer Electronics Show

"This product better be good because Apple is expected to unveil its take on the slate/tablet form-factor later this month. If history holds, Apple will issue a product that surprises people in a few ways and that stands out from the crowd.

"So, the last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too type device"

Apple's iSlate that has wowed the crowds so far this week with it's surprise appearance on the CES 2010 tradeshow floor is being haled as the second coming of Moses and the stone tablets. But Steve Ballmer and HP have something even less imaginative up their sleeves for tomorrow's CES announcements. The "as yet unnamed device" will sport Windows CE or 7 or Mob or perhaps even XP. "We haven't really nailed all the specifications down yet," said a Microsoft spokesperson on the condition of anonymity. "We're waiting to see what Apple puts out next week so we can have a few months to copy it."

So have we begun the year of mobile or the year of the slate? Did the NYTImes just set slate-computing as the next buzz topic. That Apple has already garnered the top possible slate name, with iSlate, it might be another catagory defining moment for Mr. Jobs and his leprechauns. As much as we refer to MP3 players as iPods, now will we even call the HP/MS love child a "slate?"

An Apple spokes person was heard speaking to enthusiasts at this weeks massive tradeshow, "We've totally got this 'i' thing sewn up. i-Pod, i-Phone and now i-Slate. Nobody can even catch us in the i-naming department."

Someone said, "My advice to HP/MS go for iTablet. Don't let apple steal all the 'i's. And be sure and add a '3' and a 'g' to the name."

Jobs tweeted late on Tuesday evening, "This is the 'i' decade. Perhaps the 'i' century. And I came up with it." And again a few minutes later, Jobs tweeted, "Why are their prototypes so lame? It's like they are blinded by the limitations of their imagination. We will pawn the industry again."

Michael Dell made no comment and did not tweet all night. On industry insider predicted Microsoft would also unveil their newest OS, iWindows, or Cloudy-Windows, as the system is entirely cloud-based.

Also at CES, Lenovo not to be out-Appled showed off their tablet/hybrid, the snappily named, IdeaPad U1 Hybrid. Amazing that Lenovo would promo the unit with solitare card game running on the machine. You know the game the bored assistant plays when she's got nothing to do.

"Once Lenovo is in the game," said one shock and awed conference goer. "Well, all bets are off for the other PC manufacturers. The Chinese can do stuff cheaper, faster, better."

Michael Dell broke his CES silence to say, "This has nothing to do with shareholder value. We stand by our tablet and Windows XP and Microsoft too."

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/me-too-device

More imaginative reports from CES 2010:

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Aug 13 2009

When My Little Cloud Died: The Internet IT Fable of the CloudMaster

Category: about me, code is poetry, just for fun, lifestreaming, tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 9:18 am

I was well on my way to the best day in my life.

Traffic was up. Pages per visitor was a dotted line of fact.

And in the middle of a self-promoting tweet, I must've overheated my cloud.

Cause that dip you see, is not from natural causes. It was death by IT.

In the middle of the working day,

My hype out ran my Google Analytics and the gods of DDoS came to play, on me.

Was it too many widgets, one plug-in gone south?

A leak in my computing cycle managment?

What the CloudMaster said, while scratching his head, was…

"We're working on it."

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/cloudmaster

Note about fables from wikipedia: A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.

Tags: big cloud, cloud computing, cloud humor, cloud master, cloudmaster, computing cycle management, DDoS, death by IT, fun with clouds, google analytics, hey you get off of my cloud, in the clouds, internet IT fable, IT fable, little cloud, my cloud is down, my head in the clouds, my life in the clouds, tweeting about the clouds, up in the clouds, we're working on it

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Aug 10 2009

Accountability and Action in the BIG GOALS of 2009

Category: about me, social media, teaming & leadership, trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 8:44 am

Summer is hotter than ever. In Texas we have had more days over 100 degrees than under. How do you stay motivated to get out there and do it when it's so DANG HOT?

In that spirit I also want to be brief in this mid-quarter, heat of the moment, update. Here is my BIG GOAL update for August.

1. Simplify my mental tag cloud: My focus has been very solid. My concerns are when I spend a day focused on writing content and building graphics that don't lead to income. At the moment the consulting work is harder to come by. My pipeline is not full.
Action: ROI (return on interactive work), I need to focus on what helps pay the bills not what floats my boat.

2 and 3. Control, filter and capture & Share my personal growth and journey: Uber.la has benefited from my acceleration on these goals. And I feel my work has been rewarded with over 4k per month visitors to my various blogging efforts and my nearly 7k Twitter followers. They aren't coming for nuthin. The more value you provide the more people will continue to listen.

4. Velocity and Agility: My focus is as good as I can remember. I have been using Hyper-focusing to GTD. Staying on a task through the burn/boredom level and getting it done.

5. Stress and Overwhelm Release: While there are still too many variables up in the air with income and finding the next team to join, I have not been allowing the process to get me down. I have not been needing as much coffee in the afternoon. I have not be gravitating towards naps, for the most part, and am enjoying still having energy and focus to burn into the deep 3's and 4's of the afternoon. (My usual slump time is 3ish.)

6. Spiritual simplification: my spiritual life is rich and full. Perhaps my improvement here could come from stepping away from the computer-as-creative-partner and getting back into the guitar, actually playing guitar. Get back into walks in the woods, or get the mountain bike tuned up. The heat is stifling at the moment, but swimming is always an option. And I have made trips to the stores to get the goggles and snorkel and fins that will help me do more types of swimming. So I could easily add this in. But as far as spiritual, well… my daily meditation has been fairly random. Perhaps I do the old 30-days-without-fail, in order to build a habit.

7. Open My Processes: I have been invited to 4 new community efforts. 1. I am now the social media chair on the board of directors of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association. 2. I have been invited to teach several tracks to a professional entrepreneur class in the coming months. 3. I was invited by Whurley to be the Get Real Officer on his crowd-sourcing plans for the city of Austin web site development, called OpenAustin.org; 4. I was asked to be a guest editor of inSocialmedia.com. I'd say from these gifts and the continued traffic and comment success on my blog that I am doing a good job of putting myself out there.

8. Spirit: Here's how I described it in my previous post, "I'm going to call this GOAL to the carpet and LABEL it as BIG. When I am creating music I am pretty sure that I am executing at my highest level."

So two weeks ago I took my family to California and played a live show at the Orange County Fair. That's pretty ACTIVE!

I could be doing more. I have two projects in the works that I am not making too much progress on. But my AC is busted in my music studio (whine) and I have not found the right repair shop to come fix it. Even though it's a GE, the GE service guy says they don't work on those kind of units. It's called a High Wall Split System. I have a different guy coming out next week.

9. Health and Fitness: a new break out category to serve up my procrastination and successes with getting on with the workout and losing a few pounds in the process. What I can say is I have upped my tennis play to 3 times a week. And I have no problem playing for 2.5 hours in the early evening heat so my actual fitness is fine. It's the weight that's less than fine.

Several things I have done more recently: I stopped eating any added sugar for a month. (No noticeable change, but I really liked how easy it was to say no to sugary deserts.) And I had an amazing breakthrough (two actually) with the back pain. First the big one: I was having some crippling, late night wake-up pains on my right upper and mid-back. My trapezius muscle on the right side was in constant pain. Here's what I learned last week after returning from California and having no back pain.

Once I returned to the pool with my family my pain returned with a vengeance. Hello! I was being really hurt by the twenty or so one-armed throws of my son into the deep end of the pool. "Like a 60-pound shot put," a friend said yesterday.

Overall aches and pains due to tennis. The days following on of these 2+ hour matches I am often struggling with stiffness and pains and require a small ibuprofen regimen over the next 24 hours. What I learned from a massage therapist who works on a lot of professional tennis players at Andy Roddick's academy is this. All tennis players deal with ongoing pain. Twenty-year old tennis players have personal trainers (hey maybe that would help me…) physical therapists and massage therapists to get them through their workouts and practice sessions. And what this woman told me was they all have pain management issues.

So my icing, heating, using ibuprofen, getting massage is similar to what the tennis players do when it is their full-time job. And last night I played another Men's league tennis match and smoked my opponent 6-3, 6-0. A nice, very nice, finish to the week. Not that winning is everything. But a trouncing is pretty fun. [Oops. Back to balance work for me.]

UberGoal: Do better. I'm awake. Happy. Working on stuff I love with people I care about. My family is happy and I am happy. It could be better, but it's pretty good right now.

Next Right Action: Persistence and accountability in all goals. Tangible results and tracking of exercise program.

That's the best I can do.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/big-goals-AUG

Related Information:

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Jul 08 2009

What's the Deal with Google Chrome OS, Google Chrome, GWave, Gmail, Google Apps

Category: social media — jmacofearth @ 4:27 pm

Is the OS heading into the Clouds?

Here's a picture of what's coming:

You're new computer is going to come with some software system to get the processor, battery, ram and hard drive to all talk to one another and power up together to become your "computer".
You are going to launch a "browser" or "os" depending on who you are listening to.
Within that App/Browser/System you will access all of your documents, your email system and the applications you need to use to deal with the various document types.
Most file types (.DOC, .XLS, .TXT, .PPT) will be handled without any brand named applications. You won't need WORD if the .DOC files is readable and editable in your "browser."
Your task-based systems (EMAIL, TWITTER, CONFERENCE CALLS, MEETING MGMT) will all be handled by the "browser."

What is left?

High-end apps like Photoshop or iMovie will sill require some direct access to your system, outside the browser. And high-end editing and financial functions will be handled within the Branded apps of WORD, EXCEL and CUSTOM LABELED APPS like Quickbooks or Great Plains.

But for the masses, and this is who we are really talking about when we talk about the "consumer," will not care what OS they have, nor will it make any difference for 90% of what they are doing: which is browsing the web, watching YouTube, doing Facebook and sending emails and IM/Tweets. Seriously, for that, you could use a 2-3 year-old pc running anything plus a modern browser.

So as Google lines up it's ducks (Browser, OS, eMail, Apps and Social Media management system {WAVE}) the folks in Redmond are trying to cook up an OS that anybody believes in (WIN7), a search engine that can even come to the same party as Google (Bing) and new versions of their vaunted Office applications that will be living closer and closer to the cloud.

It's going to be an amazing year to watch. Let's just hope the economy picks back up so these great innovations have the financial fuel to move forward with gusto.

I'm happy on my Mac OS (no Chrome browser available yet) and FireFox. And I have to use Office Suite to communicate with my peers. And I love Adobe's CS4. But I can tell you, I will not buy a Windows-enabled PC at anytime if the near future, unless you count Virtualized versions that run on a Mac.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/google-clouds

Some cloud-related posts:

Tags: adobe cs4, bing, browser wars, cloud computing, Excel, google apps, google chrome, google chrome os, google cloud, google clouds, google search, microsoft, office, office apps, office suite, powerpoint, Quickbooks, the app, the browser, the view, twave, twitter, WAVE, win7, windows xp, windows-enabled, word