The acquisition means Google and Microsoft will both be offering online components for Microsoft Office
With its acquisition of DocVerse, announced Friday, Google is offering an online component to Microsoft Word before Microsoft does so itself.
DocVerse, a company founded by two former Microsoft employees, lets Microsoft Office users share and edit their documents online. The software is an Office plug-in that tracks and synchs changes that people make to a document so that multiple people can work on a file without having to send the file back and forth and try to keep track of changes.
The functionality sounds similar to that which will be included in Office 2010, the newest version of the software expected to become widely available on May 12. Office 2010 will let users store, edit and share documents online.
In a blog post, Google said it still believes that the Web is the best place to create and share information, via its Google Docs offering. "But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So ... we're also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office," Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager at Google, wrote in the blog post. "With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of Web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications."
Google plans to link Google Docs with the DocVerse offering, according to DocVerse's founders. "Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps," wrote DocVerse's Shan Sinha, founder and CEO, and Alex DeNeui, founder and CTO, in a blog post.
The move could step up the competition between Google and Microsoft for users. People who have existing versions of Office could decide to use DocVerse rather than upgrade to Office 2010 in order to get the online sharing capabilities.
It is not clear when a new product from DocVerse that integrates Google Apps will become available.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-buys-docverse-860
Chicago Web Designing Firms
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present
Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem.
Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.
FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.
Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.
Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.
FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.
Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.
Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Friday, February 12, 2010
Google to Add Social Features to Gmail
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google is trying once again to capture some of the momentum surrounding social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter by adding new features to Gmail, its popular e-mail service.
Later this week, Google will introduce add-ons to Gmail that let users post and view messages about their day-to-day activities, according to a person at Google briefed on its plans. This simple tweak to Gmail will allow Google to mimic the status updates that have driven much of the success of Facebook and Twitter, as people return to the services again and again to check out what their friends and co-workers are doing.
To date, Google has allowed users to post only a brief message about their status through its Chat system, which is linked to Gmail. The new features would allow a more vibrant back-and-forth among Gmail users.
It is not clear whether Google will link the new Gmail features to rival social-networking services.
The Gmail move signals that Google remains serious about becoming a social media force at a time when some of Silicon Valley’s younger start-ups have stolen some of its thunder.
“It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a technology consulting company.
Google has a full-blown social networking service called Orkut that has proved especially popular in Brazil. It also has a Web browser add-on called Sidewiki that lets people jot down and share information about a Web site, and a Profile service where people can post information about themselves.
These efforts have done little to put Google on center stage when it comes to social networking. Google, in fact, finds itself in a similar position to Microsoft, as a company struggling to figure out how to move into new areas by stretching its traditional strongholds and brand.
Microsoft, a rival to Google in several areas, has invested in Facebook. “You can see the factions starting to line up,” Mr. Owyang said.
Analysts remain skeptical as to whether a new twist on Gmail will do much to elevate Google’s position in the social networking realm. That said, the market remains relatively new, and there is room for companies to challenge the likes of Facebook, they said.
Google is also expected to create strong ties between Gmail and its YouTube video site and Picasa photo gallery service.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09social.html?ref=technology
Web Designers Chicago
Later this week, Google will introduce add-ons to Gmail that let users post and view messages about their day-to-day activities, according to a person at Google briefed on its plans. This simple tweak to Gmail will allow Google to mimic the status updates that have driven much of the success of Facebook and Twitter, as people return to the services again and again to check out what their friends and co-workers are doing.
To date, Google has allowed users to post only a brief message about their status through its Chat system, which is linked to Gmail. The new features would allow a more vibrant back-and-forth among Gmail users.
It is not clear whether Google will link the new Gmail features to rival social-networking services.
The Gmail move signals that Google remains serious about becoming a social media force at a time when some of Silicon Valley’s younger start-ups have stolen some of its thunder.
“It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at Altimeter Group, a technology consulting company.
Google has a full-blown social networking service called Orkut that has proved especially popular in Brazil. It also has a Web browser add-on called Sidewiki that lets people jot down and share information about a Web site, and a Profile service where people can post information about themselves.
These efforts have done little to put Google on center stage when it comes to social networking. Google, in fact, finds itself in a similar position to Microsoft, as a company struggling to figure out how to move into new areas by stretching its traditional strongholds and brand.
Microsoft, a rival to Google in several areas, has invested in Facebook. “You can see the factions starting to line up,” Mr. Owyang said.
Analysts remain skeptical as to whether a new twist on Gmail will do much to elevate Google’s position in the social networking realm. That said, the market remains relatively new, and there is room for companies to challenge the likes of Facebook, they said.
Google is also expected to create strong ties between Gmail and its YouTube video site and Picasa photo gallery service.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09social.html?ref=technology
Web Designers Chicago
Monday, February 1, 2010
Google Nexus One Users Report T-Mobile Service Outage
T-Mobile customers who use the Google Nexus One smartphones are reporting widespread data outages on their devices.
The outages are being reported at multiple online sites, including Twitter, where T-Mobile staff are directing affected customers to the carrier's message boards.
Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid: Breaking down the basics
According to ZDNet writer Matthew Miller, T-Mobile is sending users messages on their devices telling them that they need to sign up for data plans, despite the fact that they are already T-Mobile data subscribers. Miller says that he personally has "the unlimited Android web plan" and that it "worked just fine until this morning." A Gizmodo reader reported encountering the same problem when he tried to use his Nexus One to surf the web this morning.
Neither HTC nor Google has publicly commented on the reported outage or have given any indication of how they plan to fix it.
The data outage for the Nexus One comes just months after T-Mobile Sidekick users were plagued with a massive outage that initially was thought to have wiped out significant portions of their personal data.
The Google Nexus One first came to T-Mobile earlier this year as the first official phone released by Google. Designed by handset manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is due to be released on the Verizon network sometime over the next few weeks.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13678/google-nexus-one-users-report-t-mobile-service-outage
Professional Web Design Chicago
The outages are being reported at multiple online sites, including Twitter, where T-Mobile staff are directing affected customers to the carrier's message boards.
Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid: Breaking down the basics
According to ZDNet writer Matthew Miller, T-Mobile is sending users messages on their devices telling them that they need to sign up for data plans, despite the fact that they are already T-Mobile data subscribers. Miller says that he personally has "the unlimited Android web plan" and that it "worked just fine until this morning." A Gizmodo reader reported encountering the same problem when he tried to use his Nexus One to surf the web this morning.
Neither HTC nor Google has publicly commented on the reported outage or have given any indication of how they plan to fix it.
The data outage for the Nexus One comes just months after T-Mobile Sidekick users were plagued with a massive outage that initially was thought to have wiped out significant portions of their personal data.
The Google Nexus One first came to T-Mobile earlier this year as the first official phone released by Google. Designed by handset manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is due to be released on the Verizon network sometime over the next few weeks.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13678/google-nexus-one-users-report-t-mobile-service-outage
Professional Web Design Chicago
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
For Google, The Meaning Of Open Is When It’s Convenient For Them
Yesterday, Google published a long manifesto on the “meaning of open” in the form of an email to all employees republished as a blog post. In it, senior VP of product management Jonathan Rosenberg, makes an eloquent argument for why open systems always win and urges Google’s employees to always strive to be open when designing products. An open Internet spurs innovation and brings more consumers on board, which ultimately means more searches and increased use of Web applications.
The gist of his argument is that a bigger, better Internet is good for Google. He writes that Google employees should resist the impulse to create closed products and systems, and even makes a swipe at Apple for doing so (bold added for emphasis):
. . . open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. . . . a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.
It all sounds great and Google certainly is a champion of open systems with Android and Chrome and countless other projects. Google is making a very public effort to claim the mantle of openness. But the battle for this mantle has been going on for a long time. Two years ago, I wrote a post titled “Who Is The Opennest Of Them All?”. What I noted then bears repeating:
But don’t be fooled. Companies are very selective about the areas where they choose to be open, and they very rarely open up their core source of profits voluntarily. . . . So the next time a company touts how open it is, ask yourself how that will help it make more money. Don’t confuse openness with altruism.
Google is only open when it is convenient for them. Google will never open up the source code to its search algorithms or its advertising system, or share the core data which gives it a competitive advantage in those areas because that is where it makes all of its money. Again, I pointed this out in that post two years ago:
Just because industry pressures and increased interconnectedness are forcing companies to embrace open technologies, don’t confuse openness with profitability. Open standards tend to be good for spurring the adoption of new technologies, but not so good for generating profits directly. That is why companies choose to be open along axes where they don’t compete. Google, for instance, is a big proponent of open standards in social networking, mobile networks, Web applications, and practically everywhere —except the one place it makes money. Its advertising system is a black box. You also never hear any talk coming out of Google about opening up the search algorithms that drive all of those advertising revenues. In contrast, Google has no problem championing open standards in industries that it is hoping to disrupt (by commoditizing existing business models with open standards, and making money with advertising instead).
Rosenberg realizes there is an incongruity between what he is saying and what Google is doing. He takes a stab at rationalizing this huge exception to Google’s embrace of everything open:
While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users.
Maybe, but it is more likely it would hurt Google. The company has good reasons for keeping those things closed tight. Opening up those black boxes would make it easier to spam search and game AdWords and give competitors valuable data to make their own search engines and advertising systems better. If it opened all of that stuff up, it would have to work harder to keep its customers.
And really nobody should begrudge them the right to keep products they’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and money building to themselves. But don’t give us this song and dance about how everything should be open and how Google is the opennest company in the world. Google has nothing to lose if operating systems, mobile phones, browsers, books, news, and every other industry becomes open and free, as long it can make money from search and advertising. That is exactly why Google is so disruptive. It can offer products for free that other industries charge for, as long as those products result in more searches or other advertising opportunities.
There is nothing wrong with this strategy. The fact that Google is pushing openness in so many industries is generally a good thing for startups and consumers alike. But Google should just be honest and say that they think everything should be open—except for search and advertising.
Source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/google-open-when-convenient/
Chicago Website Designers
The gist of his argument is that a bigger, better Internet is good for Google. He writes that Google employees should resist the impulse to create closed products and systems, and even makes a swipe at Apple for doing so (bold added for emphasis):
. . . open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. . . . a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.
It all sounds great and Google certainly is a champion of open systems with Android and Chrome and countless other projects. Google is making a very public effort to claim the mantle of openness. But the battle for this mantle has been going on for a long time. Two years ago, I wrote a post titled “Who Is The Opennest Of Them All?”. What I noted then bears repeating:
But don’t be fooled. Companies are very selective about the areas where they choose to be open, and they very rarely open up their core source of profits voluntarily. . . . So the next time a company touts how open it is, ask yourself how that will help it make more money. Don’t confuse openness with altruism.
Google is only open when it is convenient for them. Google will never open up the source code to its search algorithms or its advertising system, or share the core data which gives it a competitive advantage in those areas because that is where it makes all of its money. Again, I pointed this out in that post two years ago:
Just because industry pressures and increased interconnectedness are forcing companies to embrace open technologies, don’t confuse openness with profitability. Open standards tend to be good for spurring the adoption of new technologies, but not so good for generating profits directly. That is why companies choose to be open along axes where they don’t compete. Google, for instance, is a big proponent of open standards in social networking, mobile networks, Web applications, and practically everywhere —except the one place it makes money. Its advertising system is a black box. You also never hear any talk coming out of Google about opening up the search algorithms that drive all of those advertising revenues. In contrast, Google has no problem championing open standards in industries that it is hoping to disrupt (by commoditizing existing business models with open standards, and making money with advertising instead).
Rosenberg realizes there is an incongruity between what he is saying and what Google is doing. He takes a stab at rationalizing this huge exception to Google’s embrace of everything open:
While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users.
Maybe, but it is more likely it would hurt Google. The company has good reasons for keeping those things closed tight. Opening up those black boxes would make it easier to spam search and game AdWords and give competitors valuable data to make their own search engines and advertising systems better. If it opened all of that stuff up, it would have to work harder to keep its customers.
And really nobody should begrudge them the right to keep products they’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and money building to themselves. But don’t give us this song and dance about how everything should be open and how Google is the opennest company in the world. Google has nothing to lose if operating systems, mobile phones, browsers, books, news, and every other industry becomes open and free, as long it can make money from search and advertising. That is exactly why Google is so disruptive. It can offer products for free that other industries charge for, as long as those products result in more searches or other advertising opportunities.
There is nothing wrong with this strategy. The fact that Google is pushing openness in so many industries is generally a good thing for startups and consumers alike. But Google should just be honest and say that they think everything should be open—except for search and advertising.
Source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/google-open-when-convenient/
Chicago Website Designers
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
High tech: What is the Cloud in Web 2.0?
The “cloud” has become the buzzword of the year and just like phrases such as Web 2.0, extreme programming and agile development, most people in the business world are looking for a clear definition of what, exactly, the cloud is.
Similar to a rain cloud, the Internet cloud has no specific point or boundary - it’s just “out there.” Many use the word cloud as a synonym for the Internet as in, “We don’t store your data on our local servers, but rather, we store you files in the cloud.” But it’s more than that.
There are a couple ways to think of the cloud.
First, in the cloud, your servers and data have no specific location. Ten years ago, someone could point to one server and say that’s where a particular e-mail was stored. Today, with services like Gmail, the subject line of an e-mail might be stored on one server, the body of the e-mail on another server, and the e-mail’s attachments stored on yet another server all while each server’s data is redundantly copied to multiple locations.
Second, using cloud-based computer services removes many of the technical requirements for knowing the details of the underlying infrastructure. For example, a corporation can use Google Apps to set up free e-mail, for up to 50 employees, with more than seven gigabytes of storage per account.
With this service, which is a white-labeled version of Gmail, a company can be up and running with a new corporate e-mail system within an hour. Ten or 15 years ago, this task would have required purchasing and maintaining a dedicated e-mail server or, at the very least, calling a hosting company and having an engineer set up the hardware. Whereas, today, you can simply click through some forms on the web, without human intervention, to configure a cloud service.
There are many cloud-based services and Amazon leads the pack with more than a dozen different web services collectively branded as Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s cloud storage (called Simple Storage Service or S3) and their cloud computing service (called Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2) are their two oldest and most popular services.
Amazon thinks of these services as “pay by the drink” meaning that there are no setup fees or contracts. A customer can literally be billed as little as a nickel or a dime each month. When using S3, Amazon charges 10 to 20 cents for each gigabyte of storage and bandwidth. EC2’s costs start at 12 cents per hour to run a Windows Server with admin access or as little as 8.5 cents per hour to run a Linux system with root access.
Many companies use cloud systems as their primary configuration while others use it as a backup. Companies, such as SDNN, run their entire website, 24/7, using cloud computing servers while others turn on cloud computing servers as a testing environment, for a few days, and then turn them off when they’re done and only incur a $5 or $10 bill.
No company is too big or too small to realize the benefits of using cloud-based services. One of the biggest strengths of cloud services is that they can be accessed via an API, which allows other computer systems to interface directly without human intervention. This means that cloud web services can be configured and monitored by automated systems and additional servers can be brought on line or turned off as needed.
With cloud computing services, users no longer need to worry about procuring, configuring and maintaining the underlying hardware. Rather, they can focus on the higher level services that are most important to their business.
source:
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-12-08/blog/giving-em-the-business/high-tech-what-is-the-cloud-in-web-20
Chicago Website Designers
Similar to a rain cloud, the Internet cloud has no specific point or boundary - it’s just “out there.” Many use the word cloud as a synonym for the Internet as in, “We don’t store your data on our local servers, but rather, we store you files in the cloud.” But it’s more than that.
There are a couple ways to think of the cloud.
First, in the cloud, your servers and data have no specific location. Ten years ago, someone could point to one server and say that’s where a particular e-mail was stored. Today, with services like Gmail, the subject line of an e-mail might be stored on one server, the body of the e-mail on another server, and the e-mail’s attachments stored on yet another server all while each server’s data is redundantly copied to multiple locations.
Second, using cloud-based computer services removes many of the technical requirements for knowing the details of the underlying infrastructure. For example, a corporation can use Google Apps to set up free e-mail, for up to 50 employees, with more than seven gigabytes of storage per account.
With this service, which is a white-labeled version of Gmail, a company can be up and running with a new corporate e-mail system within an hour. Ten or 15 years ago, this task would have required purchasing and maintaining a dedicated e-mail server or, at the very least, calling a hosting company and having an engineer set up the hardware. Whereas, today, you can simply click through some forms on the web, without human intervention, to configure a cloud service.
There are many cloud-based services and Amazon leads the pack with more than a dozen different web services collectively branded as Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s cloud storage (called Simple Storage Service or S3) and their cloud computing service (called Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2) are their two oldest and most popular services.
Amazon thinks of these services as “pay by the drink” meaning that there are no setup fees or contracts. A customer can literally be billed as little as a nickel or a dime each month. When using S3, Amazon charges 10 to 20 cents for each gigabyte of storage and bandwidth. EC2’s costs start at 12 cents per hour to run a Windows Server with admin access or as little as 8.5 cents per hour to run a Linux system with root access.
Many companies use cloud systems as their primary configuration while others use it as a backup. Companies, such as SDNN, run their entire website, 24/7, using cloud computing servers while others turn on cloud computing servers as a testing environment, for a few days, and then turn them off when they’re done and only incur a $5 or $10 bill.
No company is too big or too small to realize the benefits of using cloud-based services. One of the biggest strengths of cloud services is that they can be accessed via an API, which allows other computer systems to interface directly without human intervention. This means that cloud web services can be configured and monitored by automated systems and additional servers can be brought on line or turned off as needed.
With cloud computing services, users no longer need to worry about procuring, configuring and maintaining the underlying hardware. Rather, they can focus on the higher level services that are most important to their business.
source:
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-12-08/blog/giving-em-the-business/high-tech-what-is-the-cloud-in-web-20
Chicago Website Designers
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Google Sues Over Alleged Work-at-home Scams
Google is taking legal action to stop companies from allegedly using the search giant's name to trick people into paying for supposed work-at-home kits advertised online and in e-mails.
The company filed a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City against Pacific WebWorks and other, unnamed defendants alleging trademark infringement and dilution, unfair competition, federal cyberpiracy, and violation of consumer sales practices. The lawsuit can be amended to add the names of additional defendants as they are uncovered.
"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand," the suit says. "The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."
A call to Pacific WebWorks seeking comment on allegations of fraud was not returned on Monday.
People are targeted either via online ads, pop-up ads, or promotional e-mails that promise information on how to make money by working at home. The ads typically display the Google brand prominently and include a link to a site with what looks like legitimate news articles, blog postings, or social-networking posts and sites featuring testimonials from people claiming to have made thousands of dollars per month from the program.
Consumers are asked to pay an "instant access" fee for access to a members-only portal or a "shipping and handling fee" for a DVD that supposedly explains how to make money through the program, according to the lawsuit. Many victims who pay the fees, typically a few dollars, either do not get DVDs, they receive DVDs that contain viruses or they get access to an unrelated free site, such as Google's online help center, the suit says.
The defendants are part of a network that reuses Web sites and shares tools to perpetuate the scams with little effort, the lawsuit alleges. For instance, the same templates are used to generate fake testimonials, blogs, and news stories, often ones that are customized to the location of consumers, the lawsuit alleges.
There are numerous affiliates but Pacific WebWorks is believed to be one of the main operators behind many of the schemes, said Jason Morrison, a search quality engineer at Google.
"These scams play upon some powerful methods of persuasion. Not just by using Google's logo, but we often see 'as seen on CNN, Fox News and ABC,'" he said in an interview. "I don't know if people understand how easy it is to copy an image file on a Web page. They also try to use social proof by creating a fake blog, with a photo of the blogger from his wedding, the new car he bought, and explaining how he lost his job. They go to great lengths to string people along."
Google works to remove the fraudulent ads from its search results and ad network and to keep new fraud sites from popping up in the index, but new ones are created all the time, according to Morrison.
He suggested that people do some Web research before answering any ads and look to see if consumers have complained online about the company, as well as be skeptical of any offers that sound like they are too good to be true. Victims should contact their bank or credit card company and report fraudulent-looking results found in Google searches here and fraudulent-looking ads here.
More information from Google about the scams is in this Google blog post.
This isn't the first action taken against alleged work-at-home scams. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission obtained an injunction and asset freeze in Nevada against a group of sites operating a scam using the "Google Money Tree" name this summer. Some fraudulent sites were removed, but thousands remain, Google said.
Last month, a class action suit was filed in state court in Illinois against Pacific WebWorks by Barbara Ford, who is described as "elderly, retired and on a fixed income."
Ford claims she clicked on an ad on her AOL home page with a fake news article describing how one woman made $5,000 a month with the program. She alleges she paid $1.97 for a "Google Business Kit" and that her credit card was also charged $79.90. She called the company to request a refund and never received one, according to the lawsuit.
There also are a number of complaints listed about Pacific WebWorks on the Rip Off Report Web site.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10410831-245.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Web Site Design
The company filed a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Salt Lake City against Pacific WebWorks and other, unnamed defendants alleging trademark infringement and dilution, unfair competition, federal cyberpiracy, and violation of consumer sales practices. The lawsuit can be amended to add the names of additional defendants as they are uncovered.
"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand," the suit says. "The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."
A call to Pacific WebWorks seeking comment on allegations of fraud was not returned on Monday.
People are targeted either via online ads, pop-up ads, or promotional e-mails that promise information on how to make money by working at home. The ads typically display the Google brand prominently and include a link to a site with what looks like legitimate news articles, blog postings, or social-networking posts and sites featuring testimonials from people claiming to have made thousands of dollars per month from the program.
Consumers are asked to pay an "instant access" fee for access to a members-only portal or a "shipping and handling fee" for a DVD that supposedly explains how to make money through the program, according to the lawsuit. Many victims who pay the fees, typically a few dollars, either do not get DVDs, they receive DVDs that contain viruses or they get access to an unrelated free site, such as Google's online help center, the suit says.
The defendants are part of a network that reuses Web sites and shares tools to perpetuate the scams with little effort, the lawsuit alleges. For instance, the same templates are used to generate fake testimonials, blogs, and news stories, often ones that are customized to the location of consumers, the lawsuit alleges.
There are numerous affiliates but Pacific WebWorks is believed to be one of the main operators behind many of the schemes, said Jason Morrison, a search quality engineer at Google.
"These scams play upon some powerful methods of persuasion. Not just by using Google's logo, but we often see 'as seen on CNN, Fox News and ABC,'" he said in an interview. "I don't know if people understand how easy it is to copy an image file on a Web page. They also try to use social proof by creating a fake blog, with a photo of the blogger from his wedding, the new car he bought, and explaining how he lost his job. They go to great lengths to string people along."
Google works to remove the fraudulent ads from its search results and ad network and to keep new fraud sites from popping up in the index, but new ones are created all the time, according to Morrison.
He suggested that people do some Web research before answering any ads and look to see if consumers have complained online about the company, as well as be skeptical of any offers that sound like they are too good to be true. Victims should contact their bank or credit card company and report fraudulent-looking results found in Google searches here and fraudulent-looking ads here.
More information from Google about the scams is in this Google blog post.
This isn't the first action taken against alleged work-at-home scams. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission obtained an injunction and asset freeze in Nevada against a group of sites operating a scam using the "Google Money Tree" name this summer. Some fraudulent sites were removed, but thousands remain, Google said.
Last month, a class action suit was filed in state court in Illinois against Pacific WebWorks by Barbara Ford, who is described as "elderly, retired and on a fixed income."
Ford claims she clicked on an ad on her AOL home page with a fake news article describing how one woman made $5,000 a month with the program. She alleges she paid $1.97 for a "Google Business Kit" and that her credit card was also charged $79.90. She called the company to request a refund and never received one, according to the lawsuit.
There also are a number of complaints listed about Pacific WebWorks on the Rip Off Report Web site.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10410831-245.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Web Site Design
Monday, December 7, 2009
Citysearch Gets Real-Time Fever, Lets Biz Owners Log In, Update Twitter Remotely
The rush to incorporate real-time status updates has even hit IAC’s Citysearch. Starting today, business owners will be able to create and manage their Twitter accounts directly from a Citysearch page. A restaurant, bar or health clubs’ most recent three tweets will show up alongside their ratings, reviews and other info; Citysearch is also pulling in replies and other tweets that include the business’ Twitter handle.
Citysearch is only the latest company to work on back-end integration with Twitter: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently brokered data-sharing deals with the service for search, and LinkedIn also added Twitter support. For Citysearch, adding remote Twitter access is part of an ongoing effort to become the most comprehensive online resource for local businesses—particularly in the face of more competition from Yelp, and now, even Google.
“This is another way for us to help businesses manage—or even just create—their social identities, because it gives them one place to respond to reviews, update Facebook and post to Twitter,” said Kara Nortman, Citysearch’s SVP, publishing.
While there’s no financial gain for Citysearch (or Twitter) from the integration right now, Nortman hinted that the company had its eyes on a potential “premium” social media offering in the future: “Down the road, we think about rolling out enhanced features—business owners could pull content out of tweets for example, and highlight it on their page,” she said. “But we’re focused on keeping everything free right now.”
I asked Nortman about potential ad clutter—since Citysearch runs ads on its local business listings, and business owners can create sponsored tweets from third-party services like 12seconds—but she said the company had no plans to “interfere or restrict” the users’ access to Twitter. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that including tweets on business pages would have SEO benefits, particularly with the big search engines making it a point to index tweets.
Source:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-citysearch-gets-real-time-fever-lets-biz-owners-log-in-update-twitter-r/
Web Design Firms Chicago
Citysearch is only the latest company to work on back-end integration with Twitter: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently brokered data-sharing deals with the service for search, and LinkedIn also added Twitter support. For Citysearch, adding remote Twitter access is part of an ongoing effort to become the most comprehensive online resource for local businesses—particularly in the face of more competition from Yelp, and now, even Google.
“This is another way for us to help businesses manage—or even just create—their social identities, because it gives them one place to respond to reviews, update Facebook and post to Twitter,” said Kara Nortman, Citysearch’s SVP, publishing.
While there’s no financial gain for Citysearch (or Twitter) from the integration right now, Nortman hinted that the company had its eyes on a potential “premium” social media offering in the future: “Down the road, we think about rolling out enhanced features—business owners could pull content out of tweets for example, and highlight it on their page,” she said. “But we’re focused on keeping everything free right now.”
I asked Nortman about potential ad clutter—since Citysearch runs ads on its local business listings, and business owners can create sponsored tweets from third-party services like 12seconds—but she said the company had no plans to “interfere or restrict” the users’ access to Twitter. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that including tweets on business pages would have SEO benefits, particularly with the big search engines making it a point to index tweets.
Source:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-citysearch-gets-real-time-fever-lets-biz-owners-log-in-update-twitter-r/
Web Design Firms Chicago
Citysearch Gets Real-Time Fever, Lets Biz Owners Log In, Update Twitter Remotely
The rush to incorporate real-time status updates has even hit IAC’s Citysearch. Starting today, business owners will be able to create and manage their Twitter accounts directly from a Citysearch page. A restaurant, bar or health clubs’ most recent three tweets will show up alongside their ratings, reviews and other info; Citysearch is also pulling in replies and other tweets that include the business’ Twitter handle.
Citysearch is only the latest company to work on back-end integration with Twitter: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently brokered data-sharing deals with the service for search, and LinkedIn also added Twitter support. For Citysearch, adding remote Twitter access is part of an ongoing effort to become the most comprehensive online resource for local businesses—particularly in the face of more competition from Yelp, and now, even Google.
“This is another way for us to help businesses manage—or even just create—their social identities, because it gives them one place to respond to reviews, update Facebook and post to Twitter,” said Kara Nortman, Citysearch’s SVP, publishing.
While there’s no financial gain for Citysearch (or Twitter) from the integration right now, Nortman hinted that the company had its eyes on a potential “premium” social media offering in the future: “Down the road, we think about rolling out enhanced features—business owners could pull content out of tweets for example, and highlight it on their page,” she said. “But we’re focused on keeping everything free right now.”
I asked Nortman about potential ad clutter—since Citysearch runs ads on its local business listings, and business owners can create sponsored tweets from third-party services like 12seconds—but she said the company had no plans to “interfere or restrict” the users’ access to Twitter. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that including tweets on business pages would have SEO benefits, particularly with the big search engines making it a point to index tweets.
Source:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-citysearch-gets-real-time-fever-lets-biz-owners-log-in-update-twitter-r/
Web Design Firms Chicago
Citysearch is only the latest company to work on back-end integration with Twitter: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently brokered data-sharing deals with the service for search, and LinkedIn also added Twitter support. For Citysearch, adding remote Twitter access is part of an ongoing effort to become the most comprehensive online resource for local businesses—particularly in the face of more competition from Yelp, and now, even Google.
“This is another way for us to help businesses manage—or even just create—their social identities, because it gives them one place to respond to reviews, update Facebook and post to Twitter,” said Kara Nortman, Citysearch’s SVP, publishing.
While there’s no financial gain for Citysearch (or Twitter) from the integration right now, Nortman hinted that the company had its eyes on a potential “premium” social media offering in the future: “Down the road, we think about rolling out enhanced features—business owners could pull content out of tweets for example, and highlight it on their page,” she said. “But we’re focused on keeping everything free right now.”
I asked Nortman about potential ad clutter—since Citysearch runs ads on its local business listings, and business owners can create sponsored tweets from third-party services like 12seconds—but she said the company had no plans to “interfere or restrict” the users’ access to Twitter. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that including tweets on business pages would have SEO benefits, particularly with the big search engines making it a point to index tweets.
Source:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-citysearch-gets-real-time-fever-lets-biz-owners-log-in-update-twitter-r/
Web Design Firms Chicago
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Facebook’s Killer Feature: The Mutual Friends List
2009 has been a busy year for Facebook. The Social Networking Service just reached a whopping 350 million users. It redesigned its site, then redesigned those redesigns (say that three times fast). And as Mark Zuckerberg, the site’s founder and chief executive, announced Tuesday, the company is getting ready to release a new set of privacy policies in the coming weeks.
Facebook has also been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism this year for an array of privacy issues and a perceived desire to look and act more like Twitter. Some of these concerns are valid, and some are just the growing pains of a five-year-old company in a market that continues to change and adapt at breakneck speeds.
All of that aside for a moment, I believe that Facebook has one important, underutilized feature that no other site can replicate or compete with: the “mutual friends” list.
When you go to an individual’s Facebook Page, the list sits in a little box on the left of the page, visually displaying who you know in common. For me, this often-overlooked feature has become an integral part of my Facebook experience. Sure, I still go to the site to update my status and peruse my news feeds, but I use Mutual Friends more than anything else.
This feature enables me to supplement the real world with additional digital information. When I go to a meeting or party, I take a minute to look up who’s attending and quickly explore friends we might share. It’s the perfect digital icebreaker. Increasingly, when I go to a conference and meet someone new, I’ll sneak into the hallway and look them up, too. Or, if they seem unencumbered by potential privacy concerns, we pull out our phones, and using Facebook’s mobile application, look each other up.
Last year, for example, I met Wired columnist Steven Levy at a conference in Boston. After a few minutes chatting about mundane tech stories, we quickly pulled out our laptops, zipped along to Facebook.com and sat for an hour discussing who we knew in common.
Of course, the “mutual friends” list has its drawbacks. Maybe I don’t want you to know we are both friends with the same political activist. Then there are the random acquaintances you’ve collected over the years — they’re not really friends, even though they send you messages that say “Hi, we have 10 friends in common so we must be friends!”
Still, for me, the Mutual Friends list has become an integral part of my digital life.
And five years after the site’s launch, this feature is something only Facebook really offers. It would be close to impossible for Twitter to do, since its service is built on a find-and-follow mentality. I follow people I’m not friends with, and in turn, people I’ve never met follow me.
What about Google’s Gmail? Its address book, although a prodigious resource, stores every e-mail address you’ve ever encountered, including those random Craigslist purchasers and every spammer who made it over the drawbridge and through its filter.
LinkedIn, the business social connection site, is Facebook’s closest competitor in the mutual-friends arena, but it generally connects people based on work affiliations, whereas Facebook tends to include personal friends, family and professional connections.
As the Facebook community continues to grow by over 600,000 people a day, there is a lot of potential for Facebook to move beyond who we know in common to what we know in common. As I update my status with movies I’ve seen, books I’m reading or news articles I like, these features could help make all kinds of conversation — not just introductory ones — a lot more engaging.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/facebooks-killer-feature-the-mutual-friends-list/
Professional Website Design Services
Facebook has also been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism this year for an array of privacy issues and a perceived desire to look and act more like Twitter. Some of these concerns are valid, and some are just the growing pains of a five-year-old company in a market that continues to change and adapt at breakneck speeds.
All of that aside for a moment, I believe that Facebook has one important, underutilized feature that no other site can replicate or compete with: the “mutual friends” list.
When you go to an individual’s Facebook Page, the list sits in a little box on the left of the page, visually displaying who you know in common. For me, this often-overlooked feature has become an integral part of my Facebook experience. Sure, I still go to the site to update my status and peruse my news feeds, but I use Mutual Friends more than anything else.
This feature enables me to supplement the real world with additional digital information. When I go to a meeting or party, I take a minute to look up who’s attending and quickly explore friends we might share. It’s the perfect digital icebreaker. Increasingly, when I go to a conference and meet someone new, I’ll sneak into the hallway and look them up, too. Or, if they seem unencumbered by potential privacy concerns, we pull out our phones, and using Facebook’s mobile application, look each other up.
Last year, for example, I met Wired columnist Steven Levy at a conference in Boston. After a few minutes chatting about mundane tech stories, we quickly pulled out our laptops, zipped along to Facebook.com and sat for an hour discussing who we knew in common.
Of course, the “mutual friends” list has its drawbacks. Maybe I don’t want you to know we are both friends with the same political activist. Then there are the random acquaintances you’ve collected over the years — they’re not really friends, even though they send you messages that say “Hi, we have 10 friends in common so we must be friends!”
Still, for me, the Mutual Friends list has become an integral part of my digital life.
And five years after the site’s launch, this feature is something only Facebook really offers. It would be close to impossible for Twitter to do, since its service is built on a find-and-follow mentality. I follow people I’m not friends with, and in turn, people I’ve never met follow me.
What about Google’s Gmail? Its address book, although a prodigious resource, stores every e-mail address you’ve ever encountered, including those random Craigslist purchasers and every spammer who made it over the drawbridge and through its filter.
LinkedIn, the business social connection site, is Facebook’s closest competitor in the mutual-friends arena, but it generally connects people based on work affiliations, whereas Facebook tends to include personal friends, family and professional connections.
As the Facebook community continues to grow by over 600,000 people a day, there is a lot of potential for Facebook to move beyond who we know in common to what we know in common. As I update my status with movies I’ve seen, books I’m reading or news articles I like, these features could help make all kinds of conversation — not just introductory ones — a lot more engaging.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/facebooks-killer-feature-the-mutual-friends-list/
Professional Website Design Services
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Computing Over The Cloud: Datacraft
Cloud computing can be defined as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet Technologies.
Is India Ready For Cloud Computing?
The cloud-computing model is changing the way the IT industry looks at user and vendor relationships. As service providers, vendors must partner with service providers to deliver their technologies indirectly to users.
User organisations will watch portfolios of owned technologies decline as service portfolios grow. The key activity will be to determine which cloud services will be viable, and when. Although it is unlikely that users will completely abandon on-premises models, or buy complex mission-critical processes as services through the cloud in the next few years, there will be a movement to consume services in a more cost-effective way.
The key characteristics of cloud computing include, delivery of capabilities "as a service," delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, using Internet, web — technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and designing for delivery to external customers.
Any idea who invented cloud computing?
The final characteristic warrants some additional examination. Cloud computing services are designed based on an assumption that the service provider will deliver capabilities to the third parties who act as consumers.
A core characteristic of cloud computing is the division of concerns between the cloud service provider and the cloud service consumer. The consumers of a service need only care about what a service does for them, not how it is implemented. However, to be successful, the provider must implement the service in such a way that it can deal with a global-class delivery environment and serve a wide range of consumers with a common service model.
In the early stages of cloud computing, consumers may need to examine implementation models to ensure that they are dealing with a strategically viable provider. Cloud computing services can be divided into five categories used as a foundation to build solutions plus a sixth category that deals with control and security.
System Infrastructure: Virtualized system software (such as server personalities, compute, storage and networking) on which the consumer can run any sort of application. Web-Based provisioning — via a browser form, programmatic calls or automated response to an application load — is used to provide dynamic access to these resources. Minimal Web standards exist at the system infrastructure layer and provisioning models are generally vendor-specific.
Application Infrastructure: A set of services that parallels the traditional middleware and development technologies. Services must be built to exploit Web-centric architectures and global-class design principles. A new category called "application platform as a service" is emerging, with vendors providing global-class, Web-Centric Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments.
Applications: Applications that are designed for global class delivery and delivered as a service using web-centric architectures to a browse are considered cloud application services. This generally requires creation of a multi-tenant architecture in which a single application instance supports many organizations (each of which may have multiple users) but provides a unique view for each organization.
Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com). Cloud application services should be built using Web architectures and may expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension.
Information: Content access and search services or Information services delivered as feeds via RSS/ATOM or other web models.
Business Process: Any business process (including payroll, printing and e-commerce) delivered as a service via the Internet with provided via web-centric interfaces and WOA access mechanisms.
Management and Security: Services to manage the access, consumption, delivery, and service levels associated with cloud services. While these have some similarity to the operations management tools used inside an enterprise the demands of global class cloud based applications will require additional capabilities.
Cloud computing is heavily influenced by the Internet and web and the vendors that have sprung from this phenomena. Users evaluating cloud computing should focus first on the consumer/provider relationship and the nature of the services being provided. Evaluation of enabling technologies and their impact on the cloud services and/or their applicability to in-house infrastructure and application models is a related, but separate exercise.
A more sophisticated approach to running applications in the cloud would be for the consumer to build a solution on a global class application that is elastic, scalable and delivered as a service using internet and Web Technologies. It may also uniquely exploit cloud-centric distributed and parallel processing capabilities. The resulting application would be considered a cloud application service.
Full exploitation of the cloud would use cloud based services to support the entire process of building, storing, running and managing the application. This approach is being championed by a new crop of RAD and database vendors that provide turnkey environments — aka application platform as a service (APaaS) — that build on the scalability of cloud-based infrastructures.
What services will be consumed via cloud/web platforms?
The most prevalent cloud-based application service is SaaS, where an application is delivered from the Internet/Web via a browser to an end user. Where these applications are built using Web architectures and expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension, they are also part of the Web/cloud platform.
Web-based techniques and technologies (for example, REST, XML, RSS/Atom and Python), and vendor-driven (for example, Google GData) or community-driven (for example, Accord) standards, define a rich interoperability model. Extended data models and APIs driven by individual vendors emerge "at the edge" and collapse into common, open multivendor standards over time.
Multi-user applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many users but provide a unique environment and experience for each user, including, where appropriate or desired, the ability to define the level of separation of data between users (for example, Google Apps).
Multitenant applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many organizations (each of which has multiple users) but provide a unique environment for each organization. Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com).
Who will deliver cloud/Web platform services, and how should companies build/use them to support their business strategies?
One of the primary reasons why we believe there will be significant uptake of the cloud-based model is that cloud service providers can deliver significant economies of scale. Most organizations don't scale past tens of thousands of users, while cloud providers will ultimately provide services for millions of users.
Cloud providers are also working toward lights-out data center operations with extremely low-cost operations and reliance on copious amounts of inexpensive direct-attached storage (DAS). Enterprises, by contrast, will continue to run high-touch operational models with expensive storage area networks (SANs), which will consequently be allocated parsimoniously.
We expect the cloud providers to use replication services to make multiple copies of the data, and, thereby, avoid more-expensive redundant array of independent disks storage and tape backups, both of which enterprises will continue to use. Finally, we expect cloud providers to emphasize browser-based e-mail services that contribute to lower operational costs, in contrast to enterprises, which will continue to rely on fat clients running proprietary client-to-server protocols.
We expect cloud providers, such as Microsoft and Google, to create an offline browser client that will, for example, cache the past 30 days of e-mail.
The vagueness of cloud computing can be narrowed down to two basic "approaches." The first is an application of technologies, including virtualization and automation that focuses more on the "computing" than on the "cloud" aspect, with emphasis being placed on the technologies that enable the creation and delivery of service-based capabilities. The second is the "cloud" as an Internet/Web/Saas-originated idea, with credit often given to Google's Eric Schmidt for the term. The focus is more on "cloud" than "computing," with the emphasis being placed on access to services from outside of the enterprise (that is, ''from the cloud").
Source:
http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Storage/Feature/Computing-over-the-cloud-Datacraft/11209128439/0/
Professional Website Design Services
Is India Ready For Cloud Computing?
The cloud-computing model is changing the way the IT industry looks at user and vendor relationships. As service providers, vendors must partner with service providers to deliver their technologies indirectly to users.
User organisations will watch portfolios of owned technologies decline as service portfolios grow. The key activity will be to determine which cloud services will be viable, and when. Although it is unlikely that users will completely abandon on-premises models, or buy complex mission-critical processes as services through the cloud in the next few years, there will be a movement to consume services in a more cost-effective way.
The key characteristics of cloud computing include, delivery of capabilities "as a service," delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, using Internet, web — technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and designing for delivery to external customers.
Any idea who invented cloud computing?
The final characteristic warrants some additional examination. Cloud computing services are designed based on an assumption that the service provider will deliver capabilities to the third parties who act as consumers.
A core characteristic of cloud computing is the division of concerns between the cloud service provider and the cloud service consumer. The consumers of a service need only care about what a service does for them, not how it is implemented. However, to be successful, the provider must implement the service in such a way that it can deal with a global-class delivery environment and serve a wide range of consumers with a common service model.
In the early stages of cloud computing, consumers may need to examine implementation models to ensure that they are dealing with a strategically viable provider. Cloud computing services can be divided into five categories used as a foundation to build solutions plus a sixth category that deals with control and security.
System Infrastructure: Virtualized system software (such as server personalities, compute, storage and networking) on which the consumer can run any sort of application. Web-Based provisioning — via a browser form, programmatic calls or automated response to an application load — is used to provide dynamic access to these resources. Minimal Web standards exist at the system infrastructure layer and provisioning models are generally vendor-specific.
Application Infrastructure: A set of services that parallels the traditional middleware and development technologies. Services must be built to exploit Web-centric architectures and global-class design principles. A new category called "application platform as a service" is emerging, with vendors providing global-class, Web-Centric Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments.
Applications: Applications that are designed for global class delivery and delivered as a service using web-centric architectures to a browse are considered cloud application services. This generally requires creation of a multi-tenant architecture in which a single application instance supports many organizations (each of which may have multiple users) but provides a unique view for each organization.
Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com). Cloud application services should be built using Web architectures and may expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension.
Information: Content access and search services or Information services delivered as feeds via RSS/ATOM or other web models.
Business Process: Any business process (including payroll, printing and e-commerce) delivered as a service via the Internet with provided via web-centric interfaces and WOA access mechanisms.
Management and Security: Services to manage the access, consumption, delivery, and service levels associated with cloud services. While these have some similarity to the operations management tools used inside an enterprise the demands of global class cloud based applications will require additional capabilities.
Cloud computing is heavily influenced by the Internet and web and the vendors that have sprung from this phenomena. Users evaluating cloud computing should focus first on the consumer/provider relationship and the nature of the services being provided. Evaluation of enabling technologies and their impact on the cloud services and/or their applicability to in-house infrastructure and application models is a related, but separate exercise.
A more sophisticated approach to running applications in the cloud would be for the consumer to build a solution on a global class application that is elastic, scalable and delivered as a service using internet and Web Technologies. It may also uniquely exploit cloud-centric distributed and parallel processing capabilities. The resulting application would be considered a cloud application service.
Full exploitation of the cloud would use cloud based services to support the entire process of building, storing, running and managing the application. This approach is being championed by a new crop of RAD and database vendors that provide turnkey environments — aka application platform as a service (APaaS) — that build on the scalability of cloud-based infrastructures.
What services will be consumed via cloud/web platforms?
The most prevalent cloud-based application service is SaaS, where an application is delivered from the Internet/Web via a browser to an end user. Where these applications are built using Web architectures and expose components or interfaces for mashable access, control or extension, they are also part of the Web/cloud platform.
Web-based techniques and technologies (for example, REST, XML, RSS/Atom and Python), and vendor-driven (for example, Google GData) or community-driven (for example, Accord) standards, define a rich interoperability model. Extended data models and APIs driven by individual vendors emerge "at the edge" and collapse into common, open multivendor standards over time.
Multi-user applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many users but provide a unique environment and experience for each user, including, where appropriate or desired, the ability to define the level of separation of data between users (for example, Google Apps).
Multitenant applications delivered as a cloud service use a single application instance to support many organizations (each of which has multiple users) but provide a unique environment for each organization. Customizations and extensions, as well as data, are isolated between tenants/organizations by default, but may be selectively shared (for example, salesfore.com).
Who will deliver cloud/Web platform services, and how should companies build/use them to support their business strategies?
One of the primary reasons why we believe there will be significant uptake of the cloud-based model is that cloud service providers can deliver significant economies of scale. Most organizations don't scale past tens of thousands of users, while cloud providers will ultimately provide services for millions of users.
Cloud providers are also working toward lights-out data center operations with extremely low-cost operations and reliance on copious amounts of inexpensive direct-attached storage (DAS). Enterprises, by contrast, will continue to run high-touch operational models with expensive storage area networks (SANs), which will consequently be allocated parsimoniously.
We expect the cloud providers to use replication services to make multiple copies of the data, and, thereby, avoid more-expensive redundant array of independent disks storage and tape backups, both of which enterprises will continue to use. Finally, we expect cloud providers to emphasize browser-based e-mail services that contribute to lower operational costs, in contrast to enterprises, which will continue to rely on fat clients running proprietary client-to-server protocols.
We expect cloud providers, such as Microsoft and Google, to create an offline browser client that will, for example, cache the past 30 days of e-mail.
The vagueness of cloud computing can be narrowed down to two basic "approaches." The first is an application of technologies, including virtualization and automation that focuses more on the "computing" than on the "cloud" aspect, with emphasis being placed on the technologies that enable the creation and delivery of service-based capabilities. The second is the "cloud" as an Internet/Web/Saas-originated idea, with credit often given to Google's Eric Schmidt for the term. The focus is more on "cloud" than "computing," with the emphasis being placed on access to services from outside of the enterprise (that is, ''from the cloud").
Source:
http://www.ciol.com/Technology/Storage/Feature/Computing-over-the-cloud-Datacraft/11209128439/0/
Professional Website Design Services
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Google Lays The Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome
Google is getting ready to offer widespread support for extensions in Chrome, launching a program which will allow third-party developers to add features to its browser.The company released more details about its new Chrome Extension Gallery Tuesday. Developers can now upload their extensions to the Chrome Extensions Gallery, in effect publishing their extensions even before the browser officially supports them. Support for Chrome extensions is available in the current developer release, but they will probably arrive in the browser for all users before the end of the year.
At the moment, there isn’t much to see in the Chrome gallery — it’s just a form for developers to upload their extensions. However, Google is clearly hoping Chrome will one day support an extension ecosystem similar to the one Mozilla enjoys with its highly successful add-ons community for Firefox. The site will offer the ability to search and browse for extensions, and Google is encouraging developers to upload videos and screenshots explaining what each extension does.
The company has also posted guidelines outlawing things like copyright infringement, hate speech and any extension to “enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media” — which means we probably won’t see extensions for ripping videos from YouTube.
To that point, Chrome extensions will be reviewed before they become publicly available. The Chrome Blog says that, for most extensions, “the review process is fully automated.” However, if your extension plans to use low-level components or access file:// URIs, Google will require a manual review and may ask developers for additional information before such extensions end up in the gallery.
Source:
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Google_Lays_the_Groundwork_for_Extensions_in_Chrome
Custom Web Design Chicago
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Murdoch to Hide News Corp Content From Google Within Months
A couple of days ago, in an interview with Sky News Australia, Rupert Murdoch explicitly said he plans to make News Corp’s content invisible to search engines.Now, News Corp’s chief digital officer Jonathan Miller, has revealed a timeframe in which this is supposed to happen. Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum, Miller said it will happen within “months and quarters – not weeks.”
He then repeats Murdoch’s mantra, claiming Google’s (Google) search traffic is next to useless. “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it,” he said.
It may seem like quite a crazy idea, but News Corp plans to bring other media companies along for the ride. “We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul,” Miller said.
In a way, it’s a big experiment, and since Murdoch (thinks he) can afford it, the rest of the world can simply stay on the sidelines and watch what happens. My guess is that News Corp’s properties will simply get less traffic, and in turn sell fewer ads and earn less money, creating losses that money from subscriptions won’t cover.
I just cannot imagine a world in which all of the big creators of news create a paywall around their content and then everyone decides that this content is so great they should pay for it instead of finding it elsewhere for free. The landscape of the news industry and the way news is disseminated has changed so much that sticking to the old business model and completely shutting off new possibilities won’t work. I might be wrong, though; I guess we’ll know soon enough.
Source:
http://mashable.com/2009/11/13/murdoch-news-corp-google/
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Motorola's Droid May Be a Boon for IPhone Owners
In a nod to my colleague Tom Wailgum, who wrote What Star Wars Teaches Us About Career Management, I'm waving a hand in front of mobile users and saying, "This is the Droid you're looking for"—and IPhone owners should be wishing for the same thing.
I'm talking, of course, about the Motorola Droid introduced by Verizon on Wednesday. The very cool smartphone hits Verizon Wireless stores' shelves on Nov. 6 and will cost $200 after a $100 rebate, along with a nationwide calling plan and a $30 data plan.
Let's be clear: The Droid is the first big contender to cross swords with the almighty iPhone. And it's got powerful allies like Google and Verizon, as well as Motorola on the comeback trail. The Droid boasts a beautiful high-res screen, multi-tasking apps, free turn-by-turn GPS navigational system, and both a touch keypad and hardware keypad.
In comparison, the iPhone's screen isn't as sharp. The iPhone also doesn't support multi-tasking apps (at least, not widely). While Tom-Tom offers an iPhone app for turn-by-turn GPS, the app costs a whopping $100. And, of course, the iPhone has only a touch keypad.
The Droid, though, may be a boon for iPhone owners thanks to the benefits that spring from increased competition. Mobile app developers, for instance, will no longer be able to corner the smartphone market with a single iPhone app. They will need to develop on multiple platforms and compete with a whole new crop of smart developers.
Increased competition will also put the screws to Apple. In the past, Apple could dictate to the market what works and what doesn't work, what is possible and impossible. Now the market gets to dictate. "If Droid has background processing and still gives good battery life, this could put some pressure on Apple to rethink background processing," says Gartner analyst Van Baker.
But competition only goes so far—that is, Apple doesn't respond to competitive pressures very often. It's unlikely, for instance, that Apple will abandon its imperialistic ways concerning the App Store and Adobe Flash. (The iPhone does not support Flash, whereas Droid does.)
It's also unlikely that iPhone owners will flock to the Droid and Verizon's 3G network, thus taking some pressure off of AT&T's network. "Maybe a few iPhone 1.0 users whose contracts have expired" will move to the Droid, Baker says, "but not too many."
It's more likely that Droid owners will tap the Internet as much as iPhone users do, which is to say a lot. And Verizon could end up having network and customer service fallouts similar to those of AT&T.
Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/181113/motorolas_droid_may_be_a_boon_for_iphone_owners.html
Chicago Website Designers
I'm talking, of course, about the Motorola Droid introduced by Verizon on Wednesday. The very cool smartphone hits Verizon Wireless stores' shelves on Nov. 6 and will cost $200 after a $100 rebate, along with a nationwide calling plan and a $30 data plan.
Let's be clear: The Droid is the first big contender to cross swords with the almighty iPhone. And it's got powerful allies like Google and Verizon, as well as Motorola on the comeback trail. The Droid boasts a beautiful high-res screen, multi-tasking apps, free turn-by-turn GPS navigational system, and both a touch keypad and hardware keypad.
In comparison, the iPhone's screen isn't as sharp. The iPhone also doesn't support multi-tasking apps (at least, not widely). While Tom-Tom offers an iPhone app for turn-by-turn GPS, the app costs a whopping $100. And, of course, the iPhone has only a touch keypad.
The Droid, though, may be a boon for iPhone owners thanks to the benefits that spring from increased competition. Mobile app developers, for instance, will no longer be able to corner the smartphone market with a single iPhone app. They will need to develop on multiple platforms and compete with a whole new crop of smart developers.
Increased competition will also put the screws to Apple. In the past, Apple could dictate to the market what works and what doesn't work, what is possible and impossible. Now the market gets to dictate. "If Droid has background processing and still gives good battery life, this could put some pressure on Apple to rethink background processing," says Gartner analyst Van Baker.
But competition only goes so far—that is, Apple doesn't respond to competitive pressures very often. It's unlikely, for instance, that Apple will abandon its imperialistic ways concerning the App Store and Adobe Flash. (The iPhone does not support Flash, whereas Droid does.)
It's also unlikely that iPhone owners will flock to the Droid and Verizon's 3G network, thus taking some pressure off of AT&T's network. "Maybe a few iPhone 1.0 users whose contracts have expired" will move to the Droid, Baker says, "but not too many."
It's more likely that Droid owners will tap the Internet as much as iPhone users do, which is to say a lot. And Verizon could end up having network and customer service fallouts similar to those of AT&T.
Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/181113/motorolas_droid_may_be_a_boon_for_iphone_owners.html
Chicago Website Designers
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Oracle's Sun Deal: Oracle May Need to Loosen Its Grip
When Oracle announced its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in April, the software behemoth was acting on a grand vision. The deal was part of Oracle's aim to become a soup-to-nuts supplier of everything companies need to run their computer systems, from chips and operating systems to databases and business programs. The grand plan may need some revision.
In order to alleviate pressure from European Union regulators worried about Oracle's (ORCL) growing power, Oracle may be forced to give up some control of a key aspect of the deal: the open-source MySQL database software owned by Sun.
The EU on Nov. 9 formally objected to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. A Sun regulatory filing said the EU believes Oracle’s ownership of MySQL would have “potential negative effects on competition” in the $19 billion-a-year database market. SUnN (JAVA) makes computer systems and software including the Java programming language and MySQL database, a kind of electronic filing system.
"Taking a Tough Stance"
MySQL, available free of charge, runs the Web sites of some of the Internet's biggest brands. Among them: Twitter, Facebook, Google (GOOG), and Yahoo (YHOO). "They're taking a tough stance because 10 years down the road this could be a pretty big competitor to Oracle," says a securities analyst who asked not to be named because he was expressing personal views on the deal.
After saying in September that it's looking into aspects of the deal, Europe's more formal objection to Oracle's acquisition of Sun sets the stage for negotiations on how to make the deal pass muster. Regulators may ask Oracle to release a new version of MySQL that it doesn't control to preserve competition. Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion in 2008.
Oracle declined to comment for this article, but issued a statement Nov. 9 that said the EU’s objection "reveals of profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open-source dynamics…Because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone," Oracle said.
MySQL is distributed under an open-source licensing agreement, which lets users freely modify its code, companies including Google, Amazon.com (AMZN), and a software development project called Drizzle that's staffed partly with Sun employees, have already modified the database or incorporated it into commercial products without buying an officially supported version from Sun. For example, Amazon.com on Oct. 27 announced that customers can rent the MySQL database from Amazon over the Internet, paying by how much data they store and transfer. Google maintains its own version of MySQL, too.
The EU Is Positioning Itself
The presence of these versions in the wild suggests that forcing Oracle to spin out yet another version of the software may be redundant. "The remedy's already there," says one industry executive familiar with the EU's thinking, who says a regulated new version of the software would have little impact on the way companies license and use MySQL, which is prized for its speed and adaptability to running large Web sites. "The vast majority of the installed base isn't controlled by the vendor…I'm at a loss why any other remedies would be needed," this person says. "There's something illogical in the whole thing."
Whatever the proposed concessions, even Oracle's competitors believe the Sun deal will get done. "They're doing what the EU always does—making provocative statements," says an executive at an Oracle competitor. Analysts say the EU wants to position itself as an advocate for technologies that are more open rather than proprietary—closely guarded by license owners.
Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc2009118_559520.htm
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Monday, November 9, 2009
Google's Desire to Scan Old Books has Critics Casting it as Goliath
Google's ambitious plan to scan millions of old, out-of-print books, many of them forgotten in musty university libraries, has turned into one of the biggest controversies in the young company's history.
A broad array of opponents, ranging from Google competitors Microsoft and Amazon to libraries and copyright scholars, has joined forces to oppose Google's proposal to create a comprehensive online repository of the books and split the revenue from access to that catalog with authors and publishers.
Facing a November deadline to revamp the proposal, which Google struck with the book-publishing industry after a class-action lawsuit, the company with the unofficial motto "Don't Be Evil" is fighting the perception among some that the plan is an unseemly power play to seize the lucrative dominance of digital books.
Company co-founder Sergey Brin has said repeatedly in recent weeks that Google is primarily acting with the public good in mind to preserve the world's cultural heritage in old books.
"I've been surprised at the level of controversy there," Brin said at a recent Internet conference in San Francisco. "Because digitalizing the world's books to make them available, there's been nobody else who's attempted it at our scale."
Federal regulators didn't see it that way, with the U.S. Department of Justice asking a federal judge this fall to reject the proposed class-action settlement. Department officials say Google's plans would potentially violate federal antitrust laws.
The issue has clearly become more prominent because of Google's vast ambitions -- its dominant search index to more than a trillion of web pages, and its march into digital maps, mobile phones, online video and other sectors of the Internet.
The controversy has shown Google is not that different from other profit-driven corporations, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia.
"It really took something this big and grand to show that Google does have problems, and does have vulnerabilities, and can be exploitative," Vaidhyanathan said. "I'm as surprised as anybody that this turned out to be the moment in which Google's true nature came to light."
Source:
http://www.physorg.com/news176738669.html
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Sunday, October 4, 2009
Twitter Seeks to Build Value, Not Revenue
Despite its rapid growth, Twitter has yet to make any money. Or even earn any revenue.
And Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive of the microblogging service, is totally fine with that.
Mr. Williams founded several companies before Twitter, including the Blogger service that he eventually sold to Google. One lesson he has taken from them all: “Create something that you want to see in the world,” not what some M.B.A. brandishing a business plan suggests.
“I am motivated by the world telling me I am going to fail,” Mr. Williams told hundreds of journalists gathered in San Francisco for the Online News Association’s annual conference. (You can follow all the tweets about the conference with this tool .)
Even after snagging $100 million in new funding from investors, Mr. Williams seems to feel no pressure to come up with a revenue model for his popular service.
He said the company is instead focusing on building value, such as through the new Twitter Lists, which will allow anyone to create a custom list of Twitter accounts that can be shared publicly or privately. For example, you could compile your 10 favorite Twitterers on the topic of chocolate into an All About Chocolate List that anyone could browse.
It’s a potentially powerful tool that could empower a new class of Twitter curators that will guide others to the best content on Twitter, and Mr. Williams encouraged journalists — already in the business of curating and editing content — to jump into the fray.
While lists are one step towards taming the chaos of Twitter, a robust search tool is even more important.
In an interview after his keynote presentation, he acknowledged that the current Twitter search engine is too basic and the company has a “significant search team” working on improving it.
The next goal, he said, is to eliminate the duplicates and other “noise” that come up in most search queries.
Mr. Williams said the company is also releasing a tool for developers Friday that will allow geographic locations to be embedded in tweets.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/twitter-seeks-to-build-value-not-revenue/?ref=technology
Chicago Website Designers
And Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive of the microblogging service, is totally fine with that.
Mr. Williams founded several companies before Twitter, including the Blogger service that he eventually sold to Google. One lesson he has taken from them all: “Create something that you want to see in the world,” not what some M.B.A. brandishing a business plan suggests.
“I am motivated by the world telling me I am going to fail,” Mr. Williams told hundreds of journalists gathered in San Francisco for the Online News Association’s annual conference. (You can follow all the tweets about the conference with this tool .)
Even after snagging $100 million in new funding from investors, Mr. Williams seems to feel no pressure to come up with a revenue model for his popular service.
He said the company is instead focusing on building value, such as through the new Twitter Lists, which will allow anyone to create a custom list of Twitter accounts that can be shared publicly or privately. For example, you could compile your 10 favorite Twitterers on the topic of chocolate into an All About Chocolate List that anyone could browse.
It’s a potentially powerful tool that could empower a new class of Twitter curators that will guide others to the best content on Twitter, and Mr. Williams encouraged journalists — already in the business of curating and editing content — to jump into the fray.
While lists are one step towards taming the chaos of Twitter, a robust search tool is even more important.
In an interview after his keynote presentation, he acknowledged that the current Twitter search engine is too basic and the company has a “significant search team” working on improving it.
The next goal, he said, is to eliminate the duplicates and other “noise” that come up in most search queries.
Mr. Williams said the company is also releasing a tool for developers Friday that will allow geographic locations to be embedded in tweets.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/twitter-seeks-to-build-value-not-revenue/?ref=technology
Chicago Website Designers
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