Cloudy IT

I was just catching up on my RSS feeds and ended up reading an old article about cloud computer by Dion Hinchcliffe over on ZDNet.   It’s quite a good article, but one bit caught my eye:

Like so many aspects of Web 2.0, the industry is moving a lot faster than most businesses are currently able to keep up with.

Being a customer looking at cloud services, that was news to me – I’d argue that the opposite is true, at least for some enterprises.

Whilst there are some maturing cloud services out there, many of the big players that Enterprises will traditionally deal with just aren’t quite there yet.  Whilst they’ll talk a good game, when you dig into the details and try and actually buy this stuff you soon find out that the grass isn’t quite as green as you’ve been lead to believe. 

It soon becomes clear that whilst many of the big players aspire to providing cloudy ‘service effect’ style solutions very few are able to deliver them at the moment.  And those that do have solutions are often both limited in scope and more expensive than doing it yourself.

I’ve found that billing models aren’t developed, when you look for the simplistic £-per-user, £-per-GB, £-per-CPU/hour models you’ll find them strangely absent. 

What’s worse is that one of cloud computing’s big selling points – reduced capital investment and cost of entry –  is also quite often AWOL.  Many of big players are still reluctant to take on the cost and risk of owning the hardware layer, preferring the more traditional hosting and support style agreements.

Unless you’re specifically looking at apps that you can move to solutions like EC2 or App Engine, there are very few options available right now for delivering applications and services from the cloud.

So in my experience the appetite of enterprises for cloud services currently exceeds the markets ability to deliver them.   Or at least deliver them against the promises it’s already made.

Online tip jars

Seth Godin made a good point on his blog today about online ads being the new tip jar.

What he’s saying is that if you’re reading some content you like, why not click an ad on the site to say thanks (clicking on the ad will result in the site getting a little bit of cash).

It’s something I’ve tried to do for ages, not usually on the larger commercial sites, but on peoples blogs or on smaller sites where the author is more likely to benefit.  The way I see it, if some content entertains or helps me then I’d like like the author to get something for their troubles, it just seems like a decent thing to do.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/08/ads-are-the-new.html

Photosynth out of beta

Well there goes the rest of my day… :)  Photosynth is now out of private beta at photosynth.net.  You can now sign up for a photosynth account to create your own synths and there are a host of new ones to browse.

There are a few things to keep in mind at the moment, all synths are public and you can only use Windows PC’s but I’m looking forward to trying it out.  There might be a synth of my office up there soon…!

Driving in Italy

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Sorrento in Italy (a great part of the world you should go!).  To get around whilst we there there I hired a car at the airport.  Now I’d never driven in Italy before and didn’t think too much of it.  I should probably have taken more notice of the warning in the Lonely Planet book I’d bought that said of driving in Naples (where I flew to)  ‘There can be no greater test of courage…’.

It was obvious from the first few minutes on the road that the rules there are different, so without having a copy of the Italian Highway Code to hand I started to work out these strange new rules based on what I saw. 

1. The most obvious… they drive on the right (ready as ‘wrong’) side of the road.  Not much of a problem really as long as you remember!

2. Speed limits.  Although there is very little actual speeding, it seems there is an overwhelming sense of urgency that compels you to overtake anything and everything in front of you at all times.

3. Overtaking.  Overtaking is allowed anywhere – on straights, on the entry of a corner or on the exit of a corner.  This can also be used in conjunction with rule 4 below.

4. Any speed is acceptable on blind corners as long as you use your horn as you turn in.  It seems the horns on Italian cars are sufficiently powerful that they sweep away hidden obstacles as you approach.

5. Road markings and signs.  Where as in some countries road signs and markings are used to control and manage road vehicles, in Italy they are for decorative use only and do not have to be obeyed.  For example on motorways although lane markings are present it’s accepted that you just fit as many cars as will fit onto the road.

6. Road positioning.  As a result of rules 2, 3, 4 and 5, the racing line should be used at all times.  It is not necessary to obey rule 1 when following this rule.

7.  Parking.  Anywhere will do.  Really.

Hopefully these observations will help any new travellers to Italy that stumble across this blog.

In truth it’s not that bad.  Whilst it does come as a bit of a shock, even for a South London boy like me, you soon get used to it.  For me I just came to the realisation that you just have drive like you would on a Trackday – not a well organised trackday mind, but maybe a test day or something like that.  All you need to do is keep an eye on what’s in front of you and let whatever is behind take care of itself.

There are some amazing roads around the Amalfi coast, and I’d love to take my car down there someday for a bit of exploring.  Maybe just not during the busy summer months.

 

Disclaimer:  Whilst these are genuine observations and based on things I saw and experienced, DON’T ACTUALLY FOLLOW THESE RULES!

Securing Mac OSX

I’ve not had a chance to read through this in detail yet, but I was just sent a white paper from Corsaire about the security built into OSX (10.4 and 10.5) and some hardening guidelines.  At first glance it looks like a good doc and might be worth a read.

Securing Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

Their site also has some other white papers that are quite good.