Cloud works on the Past

EyeOS Cloud Operating System

While cloud operating systems seems like an idea of the future, google was not the first to bring into reality. Eyeos was the first operating system and they have been working on the cloud for well over three years. The operating system is very simple to install [requires only php5 and apache] and you can use all basic applications like notepad, office docs, games, explorer and a few others. Eyeos is open source software and is free to use. Other notable projects include icloud and GOS.

Google Chrome OS Project

When google launched its own cloud based operating system, more light was shed on the idea of cloud operating system and now there is more competition. Software giants Big blue is all set into the game and is said to be working on cloud based operating system project. IBM has also shown expertise in cloud based applications with LotusLive Cloud based suite and also spiced it up with inotes, which has raised some interesting insights too.

IBM teams up with EyeOS

IBM Teams up with EyeOs

Last week, IBM joined hands with EyeOs and announced plans of incorporating eyeOs in all Z machines. System Z machines are primarily used by large enterprises and this stands as a big market for the cloud based operating system. This eventually places EyeOs in a successful state and promises a lot of potential market and also revenue though IBM.

Will you use an operating system out of a browser? Does it offer full power? How can cloud applications become better?

Trivia: All 25 of the 25 leading banks in the world use IBM Mainframes for some kind of processing.

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Not for sale!!

Twitter has been growing at a phenomenal rate in the past year and has more traffic than Facebook and even myspace. While, there are still no visible channels of twitter monetization, twitter does seem like a massive potential playground for investors. With the traffic and users increasing, not to count on the mobile interface and the APis, twitter is worth almost close to Facbook’s offer of $500 million.

However, there could be reasons behind twitter turning down the offer. Facebook’s offer of $500 million was partly in cash and over-rated stock. There is a very fair chance that twitter could have estimated the bloated prices of Facebook stock as too high. However Apple will not much problems offering cash ($700 M) to twitter. Multiple sources including tech crunch hint that the interest from Apple could be true.

Apple’s twitter page swept me like a wave and I was more convinced that we could see Steve Jobs, announcing the acquisition of twitter by Apple. Apple could use the iphone trump card to profit out of Twitter, but I am not sure if they can win the money back.

Twitter offers RSS feeds, APIs and client access from a external desktop program or mobile device, and everything is for free. It is so much against the Apple way, which is “Pay and we will provide you the best”. If the acquisition happens, you could see some massive changes to the twitter monetization channels.

Twitter has been lured with lots of offers from various people, and they do not have a proper business plan yet. Somebody has to pay for those sweating servers. It was a big surprise, when twitter turned down the offer from facebook, but Biz Stone clearly put the ideas flat, when he talked to Computer World about twitter being on sale.

An Apple employee, a Twitter fan

Picture Credit : An Apple Employee at work, Source: Apple

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Mozilla Bespin

Mozilla is counting high on the developers themselves to build the editor to match their needs and still make the editor as powerful as possible. In the new releases, mozilla was found to talk of taking bespin to the levels of vi and emacs in terms of power. It goes without saying that accessbility from any platform or device will be a requirement for this tool.

Bespin is in very early prototype and is currently at 0.1, but is attracting a lot of crowd, primarily developers. The demo features a basic editor, with all mandatory features including syntax highlighting. Its been just a week since the project was unveiled and already 50 bugs have been reported by developers around the globe. In a more optimistic view, several of these bugs were accompanied with patches and is taken the hopes of mozilla to the next level. There are also talks of integration with Eclipse, the most relied platform of developers. 

Bespin relies on HTML 5 technology, which means that it will work only on the latest browsers, safari 4 and Mozilla 3 (It was surprising to see safari 3 being left out. Internet explorer users may expect Bespin to work after release of IE14 ).

Mozilla Bespin Cloud Computing

Still in traces of its prototype (you can try bespin demo here), Bespin already has features of cloud computing, which will allow you to share the file you are editing with other users on the internet. Mozilla has also integrated the ubiquity styled command line features into the web editor, which deserves loads of appreciation.

While a tool for cloud computing looks a good idea today, a web editor might be lack a lot in responsiveness, interactions with operating system and other applications, and also might not be able to take advantage of keyboard shortcuts to the fullest extent. Mozilla sure must have plans for settling it out. I wish mozilla brought out a desktop editor, instead of this web editor. I am sure, it would be more powerful and accepted by a wider audience. Is a web editor as powerful as a desktop editor?

Related posts:

1. Microsoft To Launch New Syncing Service – Skybox Cloud
2. IBM teams up with EyeOS to fight Google Chrome OS
3. Google Quick Search Box – Reinventing The Wheel??

Kabooza Logo

Most people have already realized the importance of backing up onto a external hard drive, but what happens if you are in Paris and need your data? You might loose all your data, when there is a bad crash. That is when Kabooza steps in. It is an online backup service with unlimited backup space for a tiny price, only 14c a day.

Backing up on an off-site server has many bonuses, one being that you can access all your files on the go, where-ever you may be. As written on the Kabooza.com, the four main reasons for signing up are:

• It gives unlimited backup space
• Automatic backup of your files
• Access your files anywhere
• You can share certain files with your friends

Kabooza - Online Backup Service

When you upload all those treasured photos from your computer to the secure Kabooza servers, Kabooza have a built in high-tech private online album viewer for you to use. You can have a sneak peak of it here. You can share certain pictures with only your family or make them fully public to everyone.

Another great feature that this service offers is that if you don’t get 100% satisfaction, there is a 100 day money-back period. This means if it isn’t what you imagined or you change your mind about it, you can get your money back within the first 100 days of usage.

It has unlimited storage within their servers but only allows you to upload 25GB worth of data per month which is a bit of a bummer.

Kabooza have a free download able program that you use to upload your data onto their servers. This program also allows you to set a time for it to automatically backup what you have on your computer. It is a small 485KB download. Once you start up the program, you type in your user name and password and then select either ‘back up files‘ or you can choose which files to backup.

Advantages:

• Very cheap (only 14c a day)
• Unlimited Backup space
• Brilliant online picture viewer
• Can share and/or make public your photos
• 100% money back if not satisfied after 100 days.

Disadvantages:

• You can only upload 25GB of files in one month.

If you want this brilliant service, head over to Kabooza.com and sign up now (for only 14c)!

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2. Hashcube Online Mobile Games
3. Google Storage

Location based social networking

During 2008, a lot of things fell in place for moving social networks to the next level. First of all, mobile Internet continued to evolve with higher data rates and lower prices on data transmission. Secondly, social network services became much more mainstream with Facebook becoming a juggernaut and services like Twitter gaining a lot of notice. And thirdly new mobile devices like the iPhone, the new Blackberrys and several models from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, LG and others added features such as large screens, improved text input and GPS to bring new powerful devices ideally suited for social networking while mobile. Brightkite have capitalized on all these trends and is set to deliver a quite compelling service.

Brightkite - Social Networking based on location

Brightkite focuses on the concept of checking in to places. You check in to a location, and then you can post text messages or pictures which will become associated with that particular location. As a user, you can view your friend’s activities in your stream, or you can view activities related to a particular location. A very nice view is also the map view that shows your friends locations on a map.

Brightkite on iphone

You can access Brightkite from the web and from mobile devices. It has a very good wap page accessible from all cell phones with a wap browser and you can use SMS both to get notifications and to do checkins and post messages. You can also send emails with pictures and posts and commands the same way as with SMS. But where Brightkite really shines is with the iPhone application. Here the benefit of mobility, GPS and mobile data becomes obvious. Using the GPS to determine your position gives a new dimension to the service and the possibility to send pictures and posts right at the present location gives a whole new experience to social networking. Of course this also opens up entirely new possibilities to interact with your friends and (if you have chosen to share your location with everyone) to meet new people.

Most people are active on several social networks and Brightkite provides possibilities to link your account to other services such as Twitter, Facebook, Fire eagle and Flickr. More services are added  continuously.

A very valid question pops up in conjunction with location base services. “What about security, I don’t want everyone to know where I am.” Brightkite solves this in a very elegant way, you specify your security settings for three different types: Trusted friends, Friends and everyone else. For each category you can specify if you want to show your position exactly, in which city or hidden and you specify this for both check-ins and posts. This gives you a very flexible way to specify how much information you want to share.

Brightkite is part of a new wave of social networking services on the Internet that takes social networking to a new level. The combination of micro blogging, photo posting and location based check ins provide a very compelling package that can be highly addictive.

Related posts:

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2. Microsoft To Launch New Syncing Service – Skybox Cloud

Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router

In this fast moving technological world, it has become a tough way to lead a life without getting connected to the internet, to see the outside world. This internet world has now become more advanced that even if you have one connection into your home from a broadband service provider, you can get connected to the internet through more than one PC or laptop. This in turn is made possible with an effective use of a router, be it wireless or wired network connections. Though there are many competitive products that play in the market, Linksys has launched recently its Wireless router, “Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router“.

The Look and Feel:
The appearance is really eye catching. It comes in black with a smooth finish that makes an end user use this product. The design of this product is something attention-gathering. The size of this router measures to 8″ * 6.3″ * 1.4”. This stylish router is light in weight measuring less than 290 grams and hence easy to carry.

Technical Specifications:
This all in one router has got the ability to connect workstations with & without wires. This has got a 4-port integrated switch with a frequency band of 2.4 GHz. Some of the latest data link protocol that can be used are Ethernet,  IEEE 802.11b,  IEEE 802.11g,  Fast Ethernet and few Network/Transport protocols like DNS,  DHCP,  L2TP,  PPTP,  IPSe,  TCP/IP, PPPoE, UDP/IP are supported by this router. There is also a RIP, Static IP routing features available in this product. HTTP and HTTPS are the remote management protocols that are supported.

This router is powered by two Antenna, both of which are internally integrated. An external power adapter comes along with this package that can be plugged for an external source to drive the router. Seeing the environment consideration, this wireless router can withstand a temperature of about 40 degree Celsius, and at the minimum, a frozen temperature of 0 degrees Celsius.

Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router

Pros:

• A very quick setup, no big installation is required. A wizard would quickly run through the installation steps and you are there ready to use, in minutes after the product has reached your place.
• The antenna provided proves for an excellent reception to your workstations.
• Many routers in the market find tough situations getting connected on an iMac, but Linksys beats all its competitors in working so efficiently. This Router is also compatible with linux and mac, unlike most routers, which work only on windows XP/Vista. If you are a Macintosh user, you do not even need a device driver or an install CD, You are connected the moment you turn your airport on.
• You can also connect your XBOX 360 or your playstation using this router.
• The antennas are internal, and hence the size of this router is very small and handy.
• The internal antennas are powerful enough to establish connectivity at a good distance and even at a basement.

Cons:

• Its very shocking to hear that many a times this Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless router, loses its IP connectivity if your workstation is kept ON for a longer time thereby, fails for a solid connection. You may have problems leaving the router permanently on.
• The length of the power cord that is supplied with this WRT54G2 is just half in size as compared to WRT54GS model.
• Working a powerful processor, the router gets heated up at room temperature and has to be turned off once in a while (about 30 minutes, every 24 hours). It is not possible to leave the router on permanently. If you use torrents a lot, you might want to attach a fan to the router.
• If you have a modest internet connection, this router may clog if you connect more than 4 devices at the same time.

Price Deals:
Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router is listed at a price of close to 75 USD, but at AMAZON, you get this product for just 45 USD thereby saving about 36% of your cost.

Buy Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router – $45

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Windows Mobile Cloud Computing

Microsoft is all geared up to launch its new syncing service in upcoming technology conferences in the near future and will challenge apple’s “mobile me” with its own “Skybox cloud”.

The mobile and smart phone market is witnessing a rapid growth and Microsoft will stay hard on the game by introducing Skybox, capitalizing on the cloud computing technologies. Skybox will enable users on the windows mobile platform to sync their emails, contacts, calendar and other data with the server. While mobileme has exposed its services to PC users too, most of the functions are fully functional only on a mac. It is quite unexpected of Microsoft to deliver Skybox in all platforms, and is almost assumed that these would work only on windows based mobiles, though Microsoft might be working on extending this to the other platforms to leverage on the other smart phone users.

Steve Ballmer is listed as one of the expected keynote speakers in this year’s Mobile world Congress and this might be an ideal platform to introduce Skybox as well as Skyline to the world. Skyline is another service, which will let small and medium businesses to manage their own Exchange servers. Meanwhile Google is also rumored to be working vigorously on cloud computing, in order to take google apps to the next level and hence both apple and Microsoft will find tough competition in Google.

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Donate today

A couple of years ago, I was listening to one of the internet’s most influential people at Wikicamp, Chennai. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia is quite different from the other internet entrepreneurs in a variety of aspects. Wales had a big altruistic attitude of making all Information available on the internet to every user and started the wikimedia foundation. Wikipedia has a very small workforce of 23 people and is a non-profit organization. Wikipedia is ranked 8th most visited website on the internet, you should be able to imagine the workload of the servers. It takes huge effort and $6 million dollars to keep wikipedia accessible to every user on the internet.

While google answers and yahoo answers have been monetized, though in a different fashion, the information available is not as exhaustive and accurate as that of Wikipedia. Millions of users across the world use the Wikipedia and hundreds of them participate in creating and maintaining the content. Maintaining a huge network, adding the content and fighting the spam bots is not an easy task. Jimmy wales took a bold step in writing an appeal letter to the wikipedia users, asking support from users themselves. It is very good to see that hundreds of volunteers have contributed and the statistics shows a few uprights around Christmas.

Wikimedia has collected over 31868 USD in this week, with a few contributors making huge donations in the likes of 3000 USD, 2000 USD. Santa seems to show some love towards Wikipedia, Thanks to all the people who have made a donation, every cent counts. Wikipedia has been assisted you numerous times, it is time the community gives something back to wikipedia.

Ways in which you can help Wikipedia

• Make a direct donation to wikipedia (Every dollar counts)
• Hint a friend, who uses wikipedia a lot
• Blog about Jimmy Wales’ appeal letter
• Contribute in terms of effort by wiki gardening – add, edit, clean, correct, update information in wiki

Other Good reads :

How is Digg doing?

Possible monetization channels of twitter (with mock images)

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digg is reporting losses

Bloggers deem digg as not only a news resource or a social web 2.0 pioneer, but also as a great traffic resource. If a blog article hits the digg home page, ten thousand visits is something you get easily. Digg is among the top 100 sites on the internet and is obvious from the 30 million visitors per month. This traffic slapped digg with a $4 million loss in 2008, with a quarter to be taken into account. Is digg burying itself down?

Digg heavily relied on the Microsoft search deal, which hinted over $100 million in 3 years. The deal was signed in 2007 and the first year brought in less than $10 million an year. Digg outsources most of the work and the 75 in house employees seemed to be left with little work. But Kevin Rose is looking ahead to double fold the employees, despite the recession. Techcrunch reported digg to have a huge funding of $28 million in September 2008. Where is all the money disappearing? Digg reported a loss of over $2.8 million dollars in 2007 and the trend seems to continue in 2008.

Businessweek reported this digg’s financials (a loss of $4million in 3 quarters so far) and that digg would just get fine by firing most of its staff. With Kevin Rose, piling more money from venture capitalists ($28 million), and the extra employees (a good percentage of them are developers), Digg seems to have an idea in its mind. Is Digg working on new advertising models or will Digg come up with a advertising platform similar to Adsense? Adding to this rumor are the deals between Google and Digg not resulting in a handshake and Google walking away from the deal twice!!

While digg takes a hibernation, other networks like mixx are witnessing sudden boost in their traffic. Will digg be buried? What plans does Kevin has in his mind? Share your thoughts.

mixx traffic growing up

Image source : techcrunch

Other social bookmarking networks and article submission sites, which you should keep an eye on

• BumpZee
• Reddit
• Yahoo Buzz
• Pownce
• iLike
• Furl
• Slashdot
• Yelp
• Sphinn

Other good reads : How will twitter be monetized? ( with mock images)

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2. Santa Loves Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia
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Twitter monetization

Will you pay to use twitter?

A couple of years ago, blogging was fancy. Come twitter, and the life style of millions of people have changed. Micro blogging or tweets is the way people communicate and the twitter community is proliferating multi fold every month. It is quite obvious that twitter will be monetized soon. What can be expected in the prototype operations? Will twitters have to pay?

Venture capitalists have invested $15.1 million till date in twitter, and it is their right to win every cent back at least two fold to see a good profit. Besides a brilliant medium of communication, twitter was actually a plan to create a channel of monetization. What are the possible channels for twitter monetization?

Channel 1 : Old fashioned way – Adsense and other PPC

To convert traffic to money, google adsense works magic. Twitter has already seen a billion tweets on its public timeline, and millions of users. Displaying adsense will milk money out of the traffic, but twitter would be labeled “uncreative“. While it is ok to display google adsense ads on google search, it was “uncreative” to display adsense ads (text ads) on youtube. Will people stick the label on twitter if adsense units are placed in the sidebar?

Twitter Japan is already monetized with ppc ads. Twitter should have been testing its ad services in one domain before making it global. So the adsense option is at the reach of the hands.

Gmail has also been using adsense inside the web interface, and advertisements ( PPC ) is the way facebook, orkut, and so many other networks are monetized. With numerous twitter clients already on the shore, the number of users using the web interface is becoming lesser. Introduction of adsense may drive more users out of the web interface. While adsense is a definite way of making money, twitter is nowhere near average in innovation. Or is the expectation too high? Will twitter simply milk money by introducing ads on the sidebar.

Ads in twitter

Channel 2 : Tweets as Ads

Text ads for text content and Video ads (pay per view) for video magazines. So tweet style ads for twitter? An occasional 140 character text ad may be tweeted on your behalf. While it may sound very much acceptable to tweet, say one paid tweet per day, imagine viewing one ad per user you are following. You might end up seeing hundreds of sponsored tweets everyday. More easily, this could start annoying people and could lead to other twitter style websites setting their foot strong. More thought to tweet style ads may raise to one sponsored tweet per 30 tweets, instead of a per day basis. An additional feature could be added using channel 3.

People have already started using twitter as a medium and publishing affiliate links in twitter. If somebody should make money out of twitter, it should be twitter, and not anybody else.

Tweets as ads

Channel 3 : Limit twitter followers, following, tweets per day. Twitter pro

Only those who use pay. Twitter might want to limit the number of followers and also number of following to a base limit. The cap can be 200 for the number of users you can follow and 2000 for the number of followers. On a alternative fashion, twitter may also limit the number of tweets you can publish per day. The limit could be raised if the users pay an annual fee of $25 or $50, depending on usage. ( Make use of twitter tools for follow management ). This clearly leaves the occasional tweeters without any worry and the people who cause the servers to sweat will pay.

Also, the tweet ads should be gone, if the user upgraded themselves to twitterpro.

Channel 4 : Twitter API access

The number of twitter clients has clearly surprised me, with a heavy percentage of users moving off the twitter web interface for some client or the other. The reason for the movement is quite obvious – operating system integration, search and other numerous features, basically the power users. In a attempt to keep twitter free of cost for basic users, twitter can monetize the power users by charging external client access. The web interface would be free, but taking twitter off the web and using it in a twitter client like thwirl or Twitteriffic would require a API KEY. The API KEY could be purchased on a monthly / yearly basis. [This is analogous to the yahoo mail monetization where POP access is available only for paid users. I know yahoo mail sucks, but this might work well for twitter]. This would leave mobile users stranded, and iphone users feel cheated. Twitter would like to go google style, where pop is free, but ads will be displayed in the web interface.

The API access would also require so many changes in the code. The twitter REST API now authenticates users by a username and a password. If twitter API were monetized, it would require the API authentication to be rewritten to include the API KEY.

Its going to happen soon, twitter will soon be monetized. Which channel do you think will be used in twitter? Will multiple channels be employed? Let us know your thoughts.

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