Why ask ‘what makes up the cloud’?

I’ve read a few posts over the last few days which try to answer the question ‘what is the cloud’.  Not conceptually ‘what is it’, but physically what is if made off, what servers, data centres etc.

To my mind the point of the cloud is that as a customer you don’t need to know how many servers it uses, over how many data centres, supported by how many people.  All you really need to be sure of is what services you will receive, or the overall service effect that you have agreed with your provider.

By using cloud services, especially in business, you’re abstracting yourself from all the details of running the service.  Sure it’s interesting from a geek perspective but ultimately you’re acknowledging that those guys can do it better and maybe cheaper than you.  That’s a good thing, you get get on with new stuff and taking the credit! :)

Sunburn, Jetseal and Carnauba Wax

Over the past year or so my car’s been looking a little worse-for-wear.  What with moving house and the long commute I’ve not really had a chance to wash it as much as I used to.

Having read though a tonne of car cleaning threads on Seloc I thought I’d tool up with some new stuff from http://cleanyourcar.co.uk and put my new toys to good use. 

So I spent Saturday afternoon giving the car a good clean inside and out.  I ended up doing the full wash, clay, polish, seal and wax routine and am really chuffed with the results.  If not the sunburn I got in the process! :)

The pics don’t really do it justice!

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Going for a drive…

After having a fantastic drive to work this morning, I thought I would dig out an old route for a ‘run’ I’ve done with the Lotus guys in the past.  It’s based around the country roads in Surrey and Sussex and starts fairly close to my office finishing not too far from home.  With the sun still shining I’ll probably take the long way home later – it’ll take an hour extra but it’s worth it :)

Now I’ve found the file I thought I’d post it up here.  The original authors are (I think) lost in time so I can’t credit them, but it’s a great drive.

 

Pointless bad press…

A few months ago MS announced that it was going to cut off the DRM servers that support the old MSN Music service, effectively limiting what people could do with the music they had paid for. 

It turns out that they’ve now changed their mind and decided to keep the servers going until 2011… so all the bad press was for nothing.  I seem to remember saying at the time that it was crazy!

As Joe Wilcox says over on Microsoft Watch, it would have been easy for MS to turn this in to a PR win.  Why not give the people who were effected credit on Zune Marketplace?  MS do know how to do customer service when they need to but it just doesn’t seem as pervasive as it should be.  It’s a shame.