tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18257197363833775362024-02-06T21:29:51.727-08:00My Life In The CloudHow I abandoned hard drives, installed programs (and viruses) for a digital life entirely in the cloud.
From sunny San Diego, California.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-88268702382328362512011-04-07T10:28:00.000-07:002011-04-07T10:28:47.522-07:00A Gilded Cage Is Still A CageI'm a fan of integration. I admit it. I like it when things work seamlessly together.<br />
<br />
I've also been a fan of Google. But now I have to sound a gentle (for now) alarm bell.<br />
<br />
It started with Gmail. It was new, it was hip and techy. It was the must-have email address for a technophile. But Gmail was just a gateway drug.<br />
<br />
Right after Gmail I got into Google Docs. Unlimited storage?<sup>*</sup> Who could resist that? Then I wanted to integrate everything. I saved to my Google maps. I planned my life on my Google calendar. Photos went to Picasa, this blog's on Blogger.<br />
<br />
Life in the cloud? Sounds great! I edited photos on Picnik, created and hosted sites with Google Sites, aggregated my daily reading with Reader and managed all my communication with Google voice.<br />
<br />
I kept hoping Verizon would get a Google's Nexus S, and eagerly awaited the release of Google's Chrome OS netbook.<br />
<br />
Whoa. Wait.<br />
<br />
This is beginning to sound a lot like Apple, only worse.<br />
<br />
While the concept of the walled garden does allow for better integration and usually improves the user experience, I have to wonder about the wisdom of putting all my eggs into Google's basket.<br />
<br />
Once Google has all my information tied up in Google docs, Google Health Google Voice, Picasa, etc and I use Chrome with extensions and apps, then use a Chrome OS netbook, haven't I just put myself into the proverbial gilded cage?<br />
<br />
With Google's recent moves to control more of the Android source code, and new leadership. I hope Google remains true to its "Don't Be Evil" mantra.<br />
<br />
But I'm not going to count on it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<sup>*</sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Unlimited storage on Google docs is available ONLY if you convert your documents into Google Docs formats.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-62288461549282637272011-01-28T14:36:00.001-08:002011-01-28T14:36:57.601-08:00Online Storage: Where Does All My Stuff Go?<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.39308255398645997" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Online storage is one of the three vital components of cloud-based computing (the other two being ubiquitous or near-ubiquitous connectivity, and web-based applications). As part of my move to the cloud, I’ve looked into several online storage options.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First on my list are free online storage resources. Microsoft’s LiveOffice is an obvious choice for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It comes with 500 MB, which doesn’t sound like much to those of us who’ve grown used to massive local hard drives and network shares, but it’s enough storage for around one thousand typical word documents. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In addition to the 500 MB you get for OfficeLive, Windows Live also includes Skydrive, with a generous 25 GB of free storage for any type of file. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Docs provides 1 GB of free storage, with a twist. So long as you convert your files to Google’s format, they don’t count against your storage allotment. When you send those files via e-mail, you have the option to send them in Google docs, OpenOffice or Micrsoft Office formats, so there really isn’t a downside to converting them. Theoretically, Google gives you unlimited storage for office-type documents.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.box.net/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Box.Net</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is another option, and has a Chrome app available in the Chrome store. Free storage is limited to 2GB.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photos took a giant slice of my storage usage. They were of the bigger challenges I faced when giving up local storage for cloud life. I started with a little housekeeping- taking stock of all the photos I’d kept for so long just because I could. I decided only especially meaningful or extraordinary shots made the cut. Anything else was deleted. It was hard, but worth it. Not only was I able to find adequate online storage, searching through my photos is now much easier.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picasa was a natural for image hosting. Single sign-on to the Googleverse makes it easy to use. Storage, however is limted to 1GB. Yes, I could have created multiple accounts, but that would negate the single sign-on factor.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flickr is another service I use for photos. Flickr doesn’t have a set storage limit, but instead limits your bandwidth to 300 MB of uploads per month. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other places to store (and edit) images are </span><a href="http://www.photoshop.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photoshop.Com</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with 2 GB free storage, </span><a href="http://www.aviary.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aviary</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and for those shots of your breakfast- </span><a href="http://twitpic.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">twitpic</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<a href="https://one.ubuntu.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">UbuntuOne</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> provides 2GB of free storage and comes integrated with recent installations of the Ubuntu OS. Additional storage is availble at a rate of around $3.00 per month for each additional 20 GB.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The grand-daddy of free online storage has to be </span><a href="http://www.adrive.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adrive</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They provide a whopping 50 GB free online storage, with paid options for as much as 1TB of storage.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are other free online storage solutions, but I’ve excluded those like Wuala or DropBox, because they use a locally-installed client, and my aim is to stick to cloud-based applications. Also, there are a lot more options if you’re willing to pay for online storage, but I’ve listed more than 80GB of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">free</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> online storage. While that’s a fraction of what I’d get with a typical laptop hard drive these days, one of the real benefits of limiting my storage space is developing the discipline to prioritize and learn to live with what I truly need, instead of what I’ve been sold for so long.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you have other suggestions for online storage solutions, I’d love to hear from you!</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-22881599580730981082011-01-26T11:29:00.000-08:002011-01-26T11:29:14.568-08:00Basic Applications For Life In The Cloud<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.23749702982604504" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making a successful move to cloud-based computing ought to be transparent. I figure I’ll have done it right if nobody realizes I’m doing anything different. I’ll have to find a cloud-based alternative for all the software I’d been using. To top it off, I want them all to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">free. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E-mail</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E-mail was easiest. I’d long ago stopped using Outlook as an e-mail client in favor of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo accounts. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Office / Productivity Suite</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An office suite was next. I’ve used both Microsoft Live Office and Google Docs. Lately I’ve gone almost exclusively to Google Docs for two reasons:</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. I like the single sign-on. Signing into Google gives me access to my Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, my blogs, and more.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Storage. So long as I use Google docs format for my files, none of them count against my 1 Gb storage, so I theoretically have unlimited storage for documents, spreadsheets, etc, so long as I keep them in Google’s format.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I uploaded all my documents, spreadsheets and presentations into my Google Docs directory, making sure to select “Convert documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and drawings to the corresponding Google Docs formats” (more on finding places to store files online in a later post). When I need to share those documents with others, I can send them from my Google Docs folder and specify that they be sent in any one of the Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice, or as a pdf. They open up just as if they’d been authored in those formats so Google docs passes my test that nobody have a clue I’m using a web-based solution.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Notes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve tried a couple of online solutions for note-taking. Initially I installed </span><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mijlebbfndhelmdpmllgcfadlkankhok"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">QuickNote</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but was quickly disappointed to find it actually stores notes locally, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the cloud. Additionally, QuickNote can access my browsing history and data on all websites I visit. I wasn’t comfortable with that.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Springpad is what I’ve been using for quick notes. With both the app and the chrome extension installed, I can check my notes (stored on my Springpad.com account) with a simple click of an icon in Chrome right next to the tools icon.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo Editing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.picnik.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picnik</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the only online service directly connected to my Picasa album. If all you need to do is crop, resize or make minor adjustments to color or contrast, then Picnik is entirely adequate, but Picnik can’t do layers, select specific areas, apply gradients, or any of the other more advanced photo editing I’d been doing in Photoshop. </span><br />
<a href="http://www.aviary.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aviary</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on the other hand, does a lot more. The typical, non-graphic artist used to Photoshop will find Aviary just about as capable. Using it to edit photos in my Picasa album takes a few extra steps, but it’s doable. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you start the Aviary app (and it’s amazing when you realize everything is happening in a browser), it gives you the option to open an existing file or start from scratch. Selecting the open file option, you’ve got the choice of browsing to a file on your computer (something I’m choosing never to do for my experiment), or (wonder of wonders) supply a URL for the image you want to import and work on. So I found the URL for the image I wanted to work on in my Picasa album and Aviary opened it right up.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem for me came when I was done with my photo editing. While Aviary can import images from a URL, it can’t save those images to Picasa. The only option is to download your work to a local directory or save it as an Aviary creation. Because I’m working on an Ubuntu machine, I also had the option to save things to my UbuntuOne account, which, while technically cloud storage, still felt a bit like cheating.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other Online Apps</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.gliffy.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gliffy.Com</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Flow charts, network diagrams, Venn diagrams, floor plans, etc. (free to try for 30 days, afterwards the account downgrades to a more bare-bones free account limited to 5 diagrams or you can upgrade to a paid account for $5/month. If you like Google drawings, don’t bother with this one, but if you need starter templates, take a look at Gliffy.</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Check out Tim Conneally's article "<a href="http://goo.gl/ZYYaP">A look at Web app alternatives to the most popular software</a>" at http://</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><a class="info" href="http://goo.gl/ZYYaP" style="color: black; text-decoration: underline;" title="goo.gl/ZYYaP">goo.gl/ZYYaP</a> for even more useful web applications</span></i>.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><br />
</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-5376254629949683092011-01-24T08:35:00.001-08:002011-01-24T14:57:48.693-08:00Bozos In The Cloud<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5612407932057977" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wavy Gravy famously used to say, “We are all bozos on the bus, so we might as well enjoy the ride,” meaning none of us really knows what we’re doing. We do the best we can, try to look cool and hope nobody notices when we screw up.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let me start by letting you know I’m a total bozo when it comes to this cloud thing. I think we all are. It’s so new, nobody really knows how to do it all right. So I’m putting on my red rubber nose and diving into the cloud for everyone to see. Hope you enjoy the ride.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This all started eighteen months ago when my 72-year old mother embarked on an adventure driving across the country. To help her keep in touch and plan the next leg of her journey, I bought her a Dell Mini 10 with a 4 GB SSD drive, 512 Mb of RAM and Ubuntu for $198. At that price, it was disposable. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I showed her how to get online, set her up with accounts on Yahoo, Blogspot, YouTube and Photobucket, and told her not to save anything to the machine’s tiny hard drive, just in case it was lost or broken. She had no idea what a cloud pioneer she was.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dell Mini (and my mother) survived the adventure and she left the netbook with me, the evidence of her travels safely uploaded to her blog and other sites. I was so impressed with how much she’d been able to do with such a basic machine, I was sold on online services, and started to move to the cloud.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first, I thought of it as my emergency backup plan. I uploaded important documents to Windows Live Office and Google docs, just in case. Then realized how convenient it was to be able to get to my work anywhere I had an Internet connection, and started using my online versions exclusively. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were relapses. Photoshop does a lot more than </span><a href="http://www.picnik.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Picnik</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It took less brain power to do things the old way instead of figuring out how to do it online. I’d cheat by powering up my Windows desktop when I couldn’t figure out how to do something online.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A turning point came several hours into trying to recover data from my other half’s crashed laptop. I decided it was time to burn some bridges. I wiped my Windows machine, created a 4 GB partition, installed Ubuntu 10.10 and the Chrome browser, and uninstalled all the programs Ubuntu would allow. Now I’d have to sink or swim.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So far, my experience has had mixed results. I started out using just apps and extensions from Google, but found I needed more than that, so I’ve tried a few others that got good reviews, and I’ve abandoned a few that just didn’t work for me. In a future post, I’ll write about which apps and extensions I really like, and which ones I uninstalled after trying them. I promise to tell you about my great big flops along with my eureka moments. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride with me.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note: This post was originally published on Betanews at </span><a href="http://www.betanews.com/article/Bozos-in-the-cloud/1294066505"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.betanews.com/article/Bozos-in-the-cloud/1294066505</span></a></span></i></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-89012695928318014742011-01-02T16:18:00.000-08:002011-01-02T16:18:53.127-08:00Cloud Life Basics: Sending Attaching Google Docs to GmailOne of the things I'm learning about this whole transition to a life in the cloud is I need to reorder my thinking. I've become so used to how things are done when you have software installed on a local machine that I've come to think of that as the only way to do things.<br />
<br />
One result of that is that the simplest things to do in the cloud sometimes escape me. The other day, I wanted to send someone a document I'd created in Google docs. Naturally, I logged onto Gmail, clicked "attach file" just as I would if I were using Outlook, and to my annoyance, found that I could only browse to my local computer and my UbuntuOne directory.<br />
<br />
Well, what the...? Why doesn't Gmail allow me to see my Google docs?<br />
<br />
Well, as it turns out, there absolutely is a way to send Google docs via Gmail. You just have to think of it the other way around.<br />
<br />
From Google Docs, open the item you want to send, then click the down arrow beside the "Share" button and select "Email as Attachment." Choose your recipients, edit your subject line if need by and add a message. Click "Send" and Bob's your uncle!<br />
<br />
It's so simple, I was amazed I hadn't figured it out right away, but it's just another example of how I'm having to re-learn how to get things done if I'm going to live in the cloud.<br />
<br />
Hope this helps some of you!<br />
<br />
If you have any suggestions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-18061762408572315972010-12-31T13:04:00.000-08:002010-12-31T15:47:10.007-08:00A Google Docs Folder Surprise<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I love surprises. Or do I? Whatever, but I got one this morning when I opened my Google Docs and found something I hadn't noticed before.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">There's a folder called "Google Chrome" with a couple of sub-folders. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxaQApsQYt7aXdvTZn6kIx37_a_TvEtSliGW7pbb0KauNCE6ueYwsQnHNKOPhpwjcfKpIMwFpnrLchs2fGhp8Wr4gQrtGrlb4JTwtiNpirQHJxT7Z_xvwMbbojUrYs8agc_KeyQmMU3f8V/s1600/GoogleFolderSurprise.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxaQApsQYt7aXdvTZn6kIx37_a_TvEtSliGW7pbb0KauNCE6ueYwsQnHNKOPhpwjcfKpIMwFpnrLchs2fGhp8Wr4gQrtGrlb4JTwtiNpirQHJxT7Z_xvwMbbojUrYs8agc_KeyQmMU3f8V/s1600/GoogleFolderSurprise.png" /></span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
After a little fishing, I learned Chrome (sort of) has a sync feature built in, but rather than syncing with Google bookmarks, it syncs with that folder in Google docs. Maybe.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The sync feature isn't enabled by default. If you have a windows machine you can enable it by creating a shortcut to the Google Chrome executable and add the argument "--enable-sync". For a Windows 7 user the shortcut's properties would look like this:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe --enable-sync</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I use Ubuntu for the moment, so this doesn't work for me. I've tried to launch Chrome with sync enabled by using the terminal command </span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">google-chrome --enable-sync</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And I got this as a result:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[4553:4553:79733713890:ERROR:base/native_library_linux.cc(28)] dlopen failed when trying to open default_plugin: default_plugin: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[4452:4452:79733855096:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[4452:4452:79733871902:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[4452:4452:79733885745:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[4452:4452:79733918056:ERROR:chrome/browser/renderer_host/render_widget_host.cc(1073)] Not implemented reached in void RenderWidgetHost::OnMsgCreatePluginContainer(gfx::PluginWindowHandle)</span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So It looks like the sync plugin doesn't work in Ubuntu. I sure hope it does in Chrome OS. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It'd be great to have, but I'm working around it for now. Just another bump on the road to cloud city.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-14080928600724722992010-12-30T10:17:00.000-08:002010-12-30T10:17:49.014-08:00Make Room - Uncle Sam's Moving To The CloudOn December 9, 2010, <a href="http://goo.gl/N4ACL">Vivek Kundra</a>, the US Chief Information Officer (Did you even know we had one?) released a <a href="http://goo.gl/lL5qg">twenty-five point plan to overhaul the federal government's IT strategy</a>.<br />
<br />
One of the most striking points is a very aggressive move to the cloud. The plan calls for identifying three government services to be moved to the cloud. One of those is to be fully cloud-based within a year with the other two joining the first in eighteen months. The scale and ambition of that project boggles the mind.<br />
<br />
I'm pretty jazzed about this. In the long run, this ought to save us (U.S.) money. The GSA moved just its e-mail services to the cloud and realized a 50% savings ($15 Million over five years - just for e-mail). It will also allow for new resources to be added quickly, or reduce redundant resources when demand drops. They'll also short-cut the tedious procurement and certification procedures involved with provisioning physical data centers.<br />
<br />
There are still a lot of questions to be answered, naturally. Foremost in most people's minds will be security. Ensuring sensitive data is properly safeguarded and getting that assurance out to the average citizen will be paramount. I also wonder what such a large entity could do to the rest of us living in the cloud. <br />
<br />
Imagine, for instance, the IRS moves to the cloud. Tax time will see them expand their demand for resources dramatically for a short period, followed by a sharp drop after April 15. Could that suck all the oxygen out of the cloud-based infrastructure for other cloud-based enterprises? Will there be IaaS providers that will have the ability to have that much capacity available for one quarter a year?<br />
<br />
As a system admininstrator myself, I see the writing on the wall. The days of your friendly neighborhood data center, or the server room at corporate headquarters are coming to an end, and so are the jobs of a lot of corporate (and government) sysadmins. Its' time for us to adapt or perish. Exciting times.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-46602248418607570282010-12-29T10:10:00.000-08:002010-12-30T09:24:33.468-08:00Life In The Cloud - It's Easier Than I ExpectedI've been so happy with running Ubuntu 10.10 on my desktop (and not using any local storage, except to run the OS) that I decided to upgrade my Dell Mini netbook from Ubuntu 8.04 to Netbook 10.10.<br />
<br />
The installer file couldn't initialize my wireless NIC, so I had to go wired at first, but after installation completed I was able to activate a disabled driver and get on wirelessly.<br />
<br />
Chrome browser doesn't come packaged with the Ubuntu installation (they provided Firefox), so I downloaded Chrome and installed a few apps and extensions from the <a href="http://goo.gl/vb7wp">Chrome App Store</a>. For now, I'm sticking mainly with apps and extensions from Google itself, but I did also install <a href="http://goo.gl/63qWd">Box.Net</a> to get an additional 5 GB of online storage in addition to my Google Docs and Windows Life Office space.<br />
<br />
I also installed Quick Note, but it only stores notes locally, so I've stopped using that in favor of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://goo.gl/qPZQu">Springpad</a> which stores your notes online so they can be accessed anywhere from any machine, which is the point of all this, isn't it?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">After installing apps they show up on new tabs in Chrome as large icons (which can't be rearranged for now). I've read posts by some people deriding those icons are mere links. Yes, that's what they are, <i>and that's the point</i>. You're calling a web-based service or application. When a user clicks on a program icon or shortcut, that's a link, too. The only difference is the user of a locally installed application is clicking an icon that links to a locally installed resource.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://rookery9.aviary.com.s3.amazonaws.com/6111500/6111580_9b68_625x625.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="http://rookery9.aviary.com.s3.amazonaws.com/6111500/6111580_9b68_625x625.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Thanks for continuing to follow this blog. Please let me know what you think, or recommend your own tools for life in the cloud!</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-40722415913855463982010-12-28T14:40:00.001-08:002010-12-28T14:40:50.533-08:00One Less Windows MachineWhile I've been using an Ubuntu netbook for almost three years now, I still had a Windows workstation (with a nice, comfy, full-sized keyboard) that I'd revert to when I didn't feel like pecking at the keys. I'd also been telling everyone around me for quite a while that the cloud was the future. <br />
<br />
Finally, I decided it was time to put my convictions where it mattered, and installed ubuntu 10.10 on a tiny partition on my workstation. After initial configuration, I installed the Chrome browser and went about adding apps from the Chrome web store.<br />
<br />
I'm making the commitment to a life in the cloud. No more local storage. Ever. <br />
<br />
It's going to be an interesting transition, and I've already had to wrestle with some security misgivings (more on that in a future post), and I hope you'll check back with me as I dive into the cloud world.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-60548137781035591602010-12-27T09:59:00.000-08:002010-12-27T09:59:30.267-08:00Happy Maintenance Days!As I write this, I'm one of two people in the office. The other is a very bored helpdesk technician with no calls to take.<br />
<br />
I think this is prime-time for network admins. With (practically) nobody on the network, this is one of the few times in a year when you can do maintenance on production systems in the middle of the day. If an e-mail server is down for five minutes to do a reboot after a patch, who's to know? Scheduled SQL jobs generally run overnight, and with noone to query the database, it's all mine.<br />
<br />
Some habits die hard, though, and Christmas morning found me at the data center taking down a file server to replace parts that were in pre-failure. Nothing like a little pre-dawn preventive maintenance. <br />
<br />
Have a holly-jolly maintenance time, all!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-58383809877986575252010-12-23T13:29:00.001-08:002010-12-23T13:29:53.135-08:00Why Chrome OS Will Absolutely Crush Windows<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.13060272671282291" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Okay, I’ll admit that title is a bit of hyperbole, but no more so than a recent article from eWeek. In an article published December 20, 2010, Don Reisinger listed his 10 reasons “</span><a href="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Chrome-OS-Faces-Serious-Risk-of-Failure-10-Reasons-Why-363244/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Chrome OS Faces Serious Risk of Failure</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">1</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think he’s missed the point, and here’s why:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrome OSs capability is perfectly adequate for the majority of computer users.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Reisinger admits users of Chrome OS will be able to surf the web, use e-mail and create and edit documents. He correctly points out that users will have a hard time encoding HD video, but how many users do that routinely?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A sub-$300 laptop that allows users to surf the web, use e-mail and manage their documents is exactly what most home users need, whether they know it or not. Most computers are seriously over-powered and under-utilized. Your grandmother doesn’t need dual Xeon cores or 8 GB of RAM. She also doesn’t need the frustration of dealing with malware, viruses, and complicated setup. A laptop she can turn on to get near instant access to the web for not much money makes perfect sense for her.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrome OS for Education</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another group for whom Chrome OS is a great idea- students. Low-cost laptops would allow children to have laptops as tools in the classroom, take notes, do home work online, and when they get home, they’re reconnected to their work as soon as they get online. Even college students should find a Chrome OS laptop to be more than adequate.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrome in the Workplace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Businesses need to find savings to survive and prosper. Right-sizing and leaning are the buzzwords of the day. Chrome OS is a perfect fit for a lot of enterprise solutions.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cost of an average laptop, Windows 7 OS, and typical office suite will run around $1,260.00</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.6pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Again, assuming a sub-$300 pricepoint, Chrome OS provides all the basics at a savings just short of a thousand dollars per user, more, if those users would otherwise use Adobe Acrobat to create pdfs.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No Local Disk to Access: Good or Bad?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fantastic, I say. Putting storage into the cloud instead of on the local machine does several things for us:</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. It keeps the local machine safe. If malware can’t save their nasty little scriptlets to the local machine, they can’t persist. Viruses become a non-issue. Shut off a Chrome OS laptop and you’re back to pristine condition.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. It keeps data safe. Cloud storage skeptics worry about data continuity, but I don’t think the likes of Google (or Microsoft or Amazon for that matter) are going away any time soon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. It keeps data secure. A lost or stolen laptop running Chrome OS doesn’t have sensitive information on its drives. It’s merely a lost appliance, and can be replaced without worrying about data falling into the wrong hands.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An Indestructible OS</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Chrome OS ships burned into read-only chips much like firmware, you have an OS that can’t be altered by malicious means or user mistakes. As previously mentioned, worries about malware, viruses and the like go away entirely. This isn’t just a savings of psychological resources, it saves real money when you factor in the costs of anti-virus, anti-malware, data recovery and the man-hours spent to restore a compromised system.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The eWeek article I mentioned listed as one of its arguments “Beating Windows is a tall order”. That may be an assessment, but it’s not an argument. The same was said of Internet Explorer in arguments against Firefox or the Chrome browser.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t expect Chrome OS to completely supplant the locally installed OS model anytime soon, nor do I expect it to dominate the market, but the opportunity is there, and I think its growth will surprise many doubters. When that happens, remember- I told you so.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. </span><a href="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Chrome-OS-Faces-Serious-Risk-of-Failure-10-Reasons-Why-363244/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Chrome-OS-Faces-Serious-Risk-of-Failure-10-Reasons-Why-363244/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Dell Latitude 2610, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, Windows 7 Professional, Windows Office Home and Business 2010, TrendMicro Titanium Antivirus+</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-12536829749099509022010-10-19T14:22:00.000-07:002010-10-19T14:22:31.827-07:00Oh, How I Dislike Name Squatters!I've been trying to get two domain names that have had name-squatters for a number of <i>year</i>s now. I've even contacted one domain owner through his <i><a href="http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp">whois</a></i> entry. He never replied to any of my e-mails.<br />
<br />
Just. Plain. Annoying.<br />
<br />
But I'm going to try to remain sanguine about it all. It's like weather. You can't do anything about it, so you may as well not stress about it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-6938172569359803452010-01-25T11:25:00.000-08:002010-01-25T13:52:33.313-08:00When Installment Plans Go BadYes, we all have to go through a process when we spend the company's cash. <br />
<br />
And yes, indeed, there are rare occasions when an installment payment plan <em>might</em> make sense.<br />
<br />
Then there are occasions like this- I had to buy a new CMOS battery for one of our Dell PowerEdge 2650 servers. From the time I made my initial request, two weeks went by until I got approval to buy that battery. Using my own credit card. I'd have to submit a reimbursement form afterwards.<br />
<br />
Then there was the purchase itself. After navigating Dell's store to buy the right battery, I got to the final pages in the process and saw this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72OpC1gY0bXl7EemTQqEr6e3b4EqjtqJmZ7KeACMeUUAzGA-DTN-HDkEuafWGq0unhOYQEYGGKe8LYdnkVsqrwbpETMO7NTb7QGaQ-SPEutHxeZslFC6bHfo7J7vOCIM5GdRrckJXZTRo/s1600-h/Dellbattquote1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72OpC1gY0bXl7EemTQqEr6e3b4EqjtqJmZ7KeACMeUUAzGA-DTN-HDkEuafWGq0unhOYQEYGGKe8LYdnkVsqrwbpETMO7NTb7QGaQ-SPEutHxeZslFC6bHfo7J7vOCIM5GdRrckJXZTRo/s320/Dellbattquote1.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Seriously? Would anyone pay $48 dollars for a $1.99 part?<br />
</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-2422665957994291582009-12-02T13:53:00.000-08:002009-12-02T13:53:07.547-08:00Document EverythingI just spent more time than I should have troubleshooting a problem with a custom-coded application. <br />
<br />
The problem itself could have been resovled in a matter of minutes if the person who'd coded the application were at work today. Naturally, he wasn't.<br />
<br />
I could have figured it out fairly quickly had the developer commented his code. He didn't.<br />
<br />
Having someone in-house who can code custom apps is great. Until that person goes away. This is the second time recently I've been through this process. The last time I had to walk through thousands of lines of code to fix a client-facing web-enabled application. Talk about being under the gun! The developer who'd coded the app was long gone, and not one single bit of documentation was available.<br />
<br />
I sometimes think my quasi-obsessive documentation of everything I do is a waste of time. Until I really run into time wasted by the lack of documentation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1825719736383377536.post-30699422942447017032009-11-30T19:47:00.000-08:002009-11-30T19:47:38.540-08:00Would'st That Mine Adversary Had Written a BookI don't know why that little biblical nugget has rattled around in my head all these years. Supposedly Job wishes his enemy had written a book, so he might use it to gain insight into his enemy's thinking- a cautionary tale for anyone wanting to publish.<br />
<br />
With that in mind, why write a blog?<br />
<br />
Why expose your thoughts (or ramblings) to public review and criticism? Why put something irrevocably out in the public arena? <br />
<br />
I've wondered if it doesn't take a bit of hubris for a blogger to think that anyone might want to read his blog. And why would someone voluntarily expose one's self (metaphorically, at least) to the public, voluntarily giving up another bit of privacy?<br />
<br />
In my case, I suppose, I'm starting this blog as an excercise. It's a good thing to keep in the habit of writing. Too few today seem to value the ability to put thoughts to words. Beyond that, I also hope that by applying tihs bit of public obligation, I'll be just that bit more motivated to: <br />
<ol><li>Work towards actually <em>doing</em> things that might be blog-worthy.</li>
<li>Examine the supposition that we all have a private life that must be shielded from prying eyes.</li>
</ol>For the first part, I do try to behave in the most productive, ethical way I know, so there's no shame in this man's game. And while I (like you) can get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day routine, I think there's a lot we all do that could be shared. This blog will force me to be more aware of that.<br />
<br />
For the second part, I've long thought we've gone way beyond the days where anyone had any real privacy. Everything we do, online and offline is documented somewhere. And perhaps that's a good thing. Maybe we really need <em>less</em> privacy not more.<br />
<br />
There have been a number of studies that show that people behave more callously, more inconsiderately, crueller, even, when they think they're anonymous. A visit to any discussion board will show that pretty plainly.<br />
<br />
Maybe the fact that we're slowly losing our privacy is a good thing. Maybe we're returning to the little village where everyone behaved- sometimes because it was the right thing to do, but sometimes because everyone knew everyone else. You couldn't get away with anything without someone knowing about it.<br />
<br />
So here I go. Out into that village of billions. My first blog post for all to see.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02487277270157904504noreply@blogger.com0