Friday, February 27, 2009

Finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Great book, amazingly well written compared to the average novel these days. Long, but satisfying.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Pursuit of kid friendly gmail

Little T developed a fascination with spreadsheets recently, and wanted to make lists of everything. I remember "back in the day" * when someone gave me an old banking computer that had nothing on it except some sort of basic spreadsheet program. I catalogued everything I owned. Which wasn't much. I guess he comes by it honestly.

I use Google Docs for much of my document and spreadsheet work, so I figured I'd create a Google account for him. I gave him a name and Gmail address that have no personal information in it, and set him up. He's so happy.

First I set it so that I get a copy of all inbound e-mails. This can be done in the 'Forwarding' settings area.

One thing I wanted to do was replace his existing kids Pikluk account with the gmail account. Pikluk is great but I love the Gmail interface and I find the service too restrictive for a g33k family like ours. One of the Pikluk features was a whitelist - if an address was not in a specific list that I maintained he was unable to send to it or receive from it. I found this great article from Kang about creating whitelists in gmail.  Then, I created a filter that archives/removes any e-mail that isn't in my list of approved addresses.

Not foolproof, and he can change it if he gets daring, but so far so good.

He's been on it, he likes the interface although it's a bit cluttered for him, and he's been creating spreadsheets and playing with the Google Contact tool by adding all his friends and family members.

Anyone have any other Gmail tips for kids? Any extensions that would simplify the interface nicely?


* "back in the day" - it was a Wednesday, in case you didn't know




Friday, February 20, 2009

Not sure where to stay in Vegas, never been. Considering Treasure Island, middle of strip, sub $100 per night. Any thoughts?
Just pulled up carpet in most of the upstairs, wife did much of the work while I was downtown. Just cleaning now. New flooring tomorrow!
Woke up and heard sirens and copters. walked to bus - there must be 10+ firetrucks on 100th, cops everywhere.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

What is Cloud Computing?

So, what is Cloud Computing?

First, what is "the cloud"? The term "cloud" is often used to describe the Internet. It is a complex structure that wraps so much of what we do with computers, yet it remains separate to some extent from our desktops.



From Wikipedia, Cloud Computing is defined as:

... Internet-based use of computer technology, whereby dynamically scalable virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

So cloud computing is where users can run applications (or perform other computing) from servers on the Internet. They don't need to worry about the infrastructure or operation of these servers, but the application is usually "virtual" and "scalable".

What do we mean by "virtual" and "scalable"? Scalable refers to the fact that the service provider can add many more instances of the application or many more servers as needed without any overhead to you - you can expect decent performance all the time no matter the load or traffic. The term "dynamically" implies that this can happen behind the scenes, automatically and without any downtime.

With most cloud computing providers, you only pay for what you use. If you have a small web application that no one uses, you only pay for a small amount of storage and small amount of bandwidth. If this application becomes popular, the cloud model can handle the increase load easily, and you only pay for the increased usage when it is incurred.

Virtual refers to the fact that you aren't always running something exactly the way it seems. If I set up an Amazon EC2 account and run a Windows server in the cloud, I'm not REALLY running my own little Windows machine within Amazon. I'm simply running to a "virtual" windows instance within what I can only imagine to be a massive complex arrangement of servers.

Think about running your e-mail client over the Internet (like hotmail or gmail) - you have no idea what is running in the background.

What is different between cloud computing and any regular Internet hosting or service?

This is a tough one. The lines are blurry and this is a reason that people are quite critical of the concept of cloud computing. The major difference is the focus as defined above:
  • Users do not concern themselves with the inner workings of the application, and
  • The application is built to be "dynamically scalable", often using virtualization

So what kind of applications are good candidates for cloud computing?

My opinion here is that the ideal application that could take full advantage of cloud computing would include:
  • Applications that have peaks of traffic or use, since the cloud model allows it to scale to handle peaks in traffic or load seamlessly.
  • Applications that are created to take advantage of the scalability. For example, if I'm using an application that allows me to manage files, the application better be sure that as it is scaling those files are always available.
  • Security should be taken into consideration - are there special security issues if you are hosting an application in this environment?
  • Cloud computing is a great way to potentially save money by minimizing overhead - however, approach this carefully as the savings are not always as great as you might think especially while this concept is still maturing.

That said, I think most applications would work in the cloud, and as much as it is a buzzword I am excited about this technology.


Some references:

I like this article on Sys-con where a few major Internet consultants talk about what 2009 will hold for Cloud Computing: The Future of Cloud Computing

I follow Dexin on Twitter because she posts fantastic Cloud-related links

HowStuffWorks has a good article as well - How Cloud Computing Works


Symantec GoEverywhere is pretty cool

OK, so those who know me know I sign up for everything online. If it's Google-related, I'm usually trying to be the first in line like a greedy kid in an ice cream shop.

I recently was approved for a beta account with Symantec GoEverywhere. It's another one of those "webtop" applications where your entire desktop lives in the cloud. GoEverywhere includes integration with the major webmail vendors via shortcuts, and a bunch of Zoho shortcuts as well. Security appears to be well thought-out - there are "safe" and "open" areas available for file storage. A shortcut to Meebo is included for full IM functionality.



I thought I'd give my first impressions.

Things I like:
  • It's fast, as fast I could've ever expected
  • It's secure; at least, it gives the impression of security in Symantec style. I like the use of secret questions and confidence images
  • Tagging is a major part of it so searching files should be powerful
  • It's very clean and intuitive

Things I don't:
  • It's kinda boring looking
  • I'm not a Zoho fan (yet?) so the Zoho integration doesn't mean much to me
  • I don't really know how necessary the webtop concept is
  • I could (and I kind of do) use the services they have shortcuts to, so it's not quite as valuable to me

I created an application shortcut in Google Chrome, so that it opens in a chrome-less window, it's great. It feels like a proper thin-client - it would be great for use on a cheap netbook laptop like an Eee.

So it all seems a bit pointless, but very cool. It makes me want to check out PsychDesktop/LucidDesktop, which is a Webtop PHP/Ajax application that you can install on your own webserver.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Upgraded to latest TitanReloaded ROM for my phone, working great. Add Google Latitude and new Google Sync... awesome.
Interesting seeing Symantec getting into the 'webtop' / cloud hosted desktop market with GoEverywhere http://ping.fm/C4nFn
New windows going in right now, thanks to Centra. Great company, enthusiastic to get your business and nice installers! Windows look great!
Received my [free] gmail stickers today. Pretty cool - thanks #google! http://ping.fm/dM9Ci

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Wife and Little D getting ready for baby N's shower. Pink and lots of flowers. Congrats Mike & Carmyn!

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Free online game creators

So many people like those little Flash games, I have to admit I'm not a big fan. However, with Little T growing up, he's at the age where creating his own games would be a pretty big thing.

Compiled this list of free online game creators. They all look very cool in their own way:
http://www.popfly.com (Silverlight)

The cool thing about these sites is that they all try to give game creators a way to share their games and even start a revenue stream.

I'd love to explore creating educational games, maybe embedding them within e-learning courseware?

Does anyone have any opinions or other alternatives?

Someone sent this timelapse video of baby playing over 4 hours. Awesome & funny. Baby T is like this. http://ping.fm/bK93o

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Chance to upgrade cell plan... wondering if $55/mo for unlimited web/txt, callerID, VM, 6pm evenings and 200 daytime minutes is good enough?
Epoch countdown - coolepochcountdown.com, the next y2k? Feb 13th, the epoch time will be 1234567890.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Today is #ColdFusion on Twitter day (#CFotd), see @andyj. Spread the word, join twitter and the CF twitter groups - http://ping.fm/abPiz