Posted by: John Savageau in cloud computing on
Mar 29, 2009
This morning IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco announced agreement among a coalition of cloud computing companies called the "Open Cloud Manifesto/OCM." The intent of the OCM is to standardize the interfaces used by cloud computing companies, allowing users to seamlessly transfer their applications and data files between cloud providers.
For the user this is a nice idea.
For cloud companies, particularly smaller, innovative companies, the OCM will probably serve to lock in the protocols and processes mandated by the larger companies, effectively serving to suppress certain levels of innovation and concept development. While we want to make cloud computing as easy as possible for companies to consider, there is also the argument that perhaps we are still very early in the development of clouds. It may be too soon for us to start limiting innovation, and try to lock the development industry into a rigid line of standards.
Summary: Internet "sleuths" pick up a scathing analysis of Sir Stanford's multi-billion dollar funds, which allegedly leads to the mainstream press getting hold of it and then, presto!, the SEC launches a criminal investigation and arrests Stanford. Expect more of the same.
Most of us know about the phenomenon---the thus far successful phenomenon---of "crowd-sourcing." For example, it is used by large corporations to solve R&D problems. The "wisdom of the crows" has also given us Wikis, especially Wikipedia.
Now, a new form of crowd-sourcing arises. Obviously, it is not on a scale of any of the examples above, but it may yet have its financial and social benefits. Bloggers as sleuths---at least ones that get the word out enough that someone other than other bloggers notice.
There are several really good organizations around southern California supporting startups and entrepreneurs, including the Tech Coast Angels and Tech Coast Venture Network. One of the more endearing activities is the grand old tradition of "Fast Pitch Competition." The Fast Pitch Competition brings a large group of enthusiastic, energetic, and hopeful young entrepreneurs into the lion's den of venture capital and investment banking critics.
Here's how it works.
The Fast Pitch. 30 seconds to accomplish the following:
Posted by: James C. Roberts III in mobile on
Mar 26, 2009
Simulcast of TV shows to your mobile device? It's about to happen, by the end of this year, in fact. Call it a step forward for convergence. There are a few caveats, however.
Later this year, more than 60 US television stations will broadcast their programming to mobile devices. Those TV stations cover markets in more than twenty cities. Thus far, the cities announced include New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, DC and Philadelphia. As far as we can tell, the programming will not be stale re-runs (Hey, I liked Star Trek the first 3,000 times but now . . .) but will be the actual programming found on your living room TV.
The launch is the work of the members of the Open Mobile Video Coalition (www.omvc.org). Those members include commercial and public broadcast stations. OMVC also provides useful information for broadcasters trying to navigate true convergence.
Reluctant to use social networking sites? Don’t really like to use the browser on your smartphone? You are not alone. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported the results of a survey,, which got picked up by mainstream media (and blogs, etc.) for some of the findings. You can download the Adults and Social Network Websites report here .
What really got everyone’s attention was that there is a group labeled the "Ambivalent Networkers," those who aren’t really keen on all this networking. And what was really interesting to many was that these are males in their late 20’s. The AP picked up this story and reached a few conclusions that were not the only ones in the report. Quoting from that article (and reported at TechnNewsWorld ), the Pew director, Lee Rainie said that technology "feels like an obligation."
Uh-huh.
Spent Wednesday in Santa Clara with Sun Microsystems attending a seminar on cloud computing and modular data centers.
One of the highlights was having an opportunity to walk through and kick the tires on their container supporting the Internet Archives (http://www.archive.org/index.php ). This site basically tries to index media from as far back as the Internet goes in an attempt to preserve the history of the Internet. My personal favorite feature of the internet archive is the "Wayback Machine," which has a collection of web pages harvested from search engines and other sources. If you have a favorite website and want to know what it looked like, or what it had for headlines in 2002, you can pull up many of those images. I've noticed it clips some pictures and graphics, but all the text is there for you to remember.
Quite a few old guys (like me!) from the early days of the Internet showed up to hear Lew Tucker, CTO Cloud Computing for Sun Microsystems, talk about Sun's vision of cloud computing. Great presentation, great ideas, but one discussion really hit home. The effect today and into the future on startup companies looking for venture capital.
Convergence is now occurring in the collapse of the print newspaper industry with newspapers, if they survive at all, migrate to the Web (e.g., Seattle Post-Intelligencer).
Well, along comes Global Post, started by print-era journalists but with no such baggage. Visit www.globalpost.com and bookmark it for regular visits to see how it develops. (Full disclosure: One of my colleagues in our consulting firm, The Global Capital Strategic Group, advises them but independent of that group.)
GlobalPost is hiring "stringers" (or freelance journalists) around the world ffor a modest stipend, who then post on key issues in other markets. Their coverage is pretty good--part news, part commentary.
While researching some electricity and power issues for a data center project, I stumbled over a couple of statistics that may keep me up tonight.
The first deals with efficiency of servers within large organizations. This is from a Forbes article "Servers: Why Thrifty Isn't Nifty." (11 Aug 2008).
"A rule of thumb for organizations with 5000 servers is that 30 percent of them are technologically obsolete - that's 1500 servers that could be unplugged with little or no effect.
Reports are out that reality is, well, really weird--in a way that raises interesting questions about quantum theory. Why is this important to the CTC community? Well, it's the process--the data collection process--that is interesting. (Hint: Use the concept for data mining and data analysis.) And, anyway, it is kinda cool. Even if some people say "Well, duh." Sometimes, science has to catch up with common sense.
Depending on how you phrase it, quantum theory tells us that you cannot know everything about the world; that you can know the position or the speed but not both of certain subatomic particles, for example; and that observation mucks things up. So, someone thought up a way about finding out if reality exists if it is not observed--sort of answering the question as to whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one hears it.
And what did they do? They didn't observe the reality they created. At least not directly.
Posted by: James C. Roberts III in Untagged on
Mar 18, 2009
OK, so you can file this one under "Screed" or more precisely "Screed about Site Designs" and especially blogsites.
I write not only because I am frustrated (and want others with the same frustration to start using their market influence) but perhaps some enetrepreneur can do something about this problem.
I just spent, on and off, much of the late afternoon trying to login to a noted Silicon Valley news site where I have contributed, etc., etc. Three hours later and they still could not get me my forum username. I had the same experience here but Robin and Mel, who run this blog, have enough workarounds to make everyone happy.
BLOG 
