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Cloud Computing, Part III
As discussed in my previous articles, cloud computing is a system in which software programs and storage space can be accessed via the Internet. It can be used for hosting, thus eliminating the need for personal hosting services which can bog down. If you put your web design on a cloud server, you have instant access to computing power. As your needs grow, you can ramp up; as it ebbs, you release the servers back to the cloud.
There are several advantages to cloud computing:
• Scalability – easy to grow or shrink with demand
• Instantly available
• Save money – pay only for what you use
• No hardware to deal withHow it works:
Cloud computing involves surrendering control, which some people find liberating while it makes others very nervous. For instance, users of a site like Salesforce.com don’t know or care how the site is executed, how it deals with failures, where it is located, or any of the other little details one has to deal with when running business operations. So what DO they want? They want their service to work when they need it.
The potential uses of cloud computing are infinite. If you utilize the correct middleware, you can hand off all of your programming needs to a cloud computing system. Literally, everything from basic word processing software to customized computer programs designed for a specific company can work on a cloud computing system.
Cloud computing is a metered service similar to a public utility like cable, cell phone networks, electricity, water, and natural gas. It allows a computing system to attain and release computing resources on demand. Cloud computing also allows the deployment of software applications into an environment running the necessary technology stack for development, staging, or production of a software application. It manages this while minimizing the necessary interaction with the underlying layers of the technology stack.
There are three distinct sub-areas of cloud computing. They are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, which are discussed here.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):
With IaaS clouds, it becomes simple and affordable to distribute resources such as servers, connections, storage, and any other tools necessary to build an application environment from scratch. In other words, rather than purchasing servers, software, data center space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. IaaS clouds are the core infrastructure of PaaS and SaaS clouds.
Platform as a Service (PaaS):
PaaS clouds are designed to deliver a cost-effective cloud-based workspace environment (hardware architecture or software framework). They allow a company to deploy applications without the costs and complexities of buying and managing the essential hardware and software.
Software as a Service (SaaS):
Software as a Service has been around for a while and even precedes the term “Cloud Computing”. It is basically a cost effective way for businesses to acquire rights to use software as needed without having to buy licenses for all users and applications. With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.
Recently Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware announced that they are teaming up to sell hardware and software for cloud computing. The three companies are creating something they call the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition “to accelerate customers’ ability to increase business agility through greater IT infrastructure flexibility, and lower IT, energy and real-estate costs through pervasive data center virtualization and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.” With advocates like these, it looks like cloud computing is here to stay.
Juno Web Design
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Cloud Computing – Concerns and Issues
As I discussed in my last article on cloud computing, it is being called the Next Big Thing in web design, and it is steadily gaining ground in the business world. There is a lot of enthusiasm for this new frontier, but naturally there are many concerns among the “experts”.
The main concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. The thought of handing your important data over to something called a “cloud” can be daunting. Nervous corporate executives might hesitate to take advantage of a cloud computing system because they feel like they’re surrendering control of their company’s information. Data inside the ‘cloud’ is outside a company’s firewall and that brings with it an intrinsic threat of risk, because services that companies outsource evade the physical, logical and personnel controls that I.T. shops wield over data maintained in-house. Other fears include:
• Risk of data breaching
• Appeal to cyber crooks
• Lack of specific standards for security and data privacy
• Questions about jurisdiction. European concern about U.S. privacy laws led to creation of the U.S. Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, which are intended to provide European companies with a degree of insulation from U.S. laws
• Data location. Cloud users probably do not know exactly where their data is hosted—not even the specific country• Best practice issues:
o Exception monitoring systems
o Vigilance, or lack thereof, over updates and ensuring that staff does not receive unauthorized access privileges
o Third-party companies who may be able to access data
o Password creation and protection
o Availability guarantees and penalties
o Accommodation of personal security policies by the cloud computing companyOther issues with cloud computing are more philosophical. Who owns the data: the company who places their data with the cloud computing service or the cloud computing service itself? Can a cloud computing company ever legally deny a client access to their own data? Companies, law firms, and universities are currently debating these issues and others.
There is also growing concern about how cloud computing could impact the business of computer maintenance and repair. If companies make the leap to centralized computer systems, they will have less need for internal I.T. support. By removing infrastructure ownership from I.T., suddenly I.T. no longer has control over key business resources, which makes it feasible for someone concerned with a cost/benefit approach, like a CFO, to start limiting I.T.’s control. It is doubtful that this will have much of an impact on the cloud computing industry; the same concerns were no doubt raised when inventions like the cotton gin, assembly lines, and, well, computers first appeared.
Juno Web Design
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Cloud Computing – Usage and Advantages
Cloud Computing has been called the Next Big Thing in web design, but just what is cloud computing? Very simply, it is a system whereby software programs and storage space can be accessed via the Internet. This allows companies to outsource the ownership and management of certain areas of its IT functionality (storage, mail room, fleet services, etc.) to a “black box” within the cloud. They probably don’t know what software or hardware is being used or what operating system it is running on, nor do they need to. This article discusses the usage and advantages of cloud computing.
Cloud computing evolved from the knowledge and experience of managed services, Internet services, application service providers, etc. Its technology is the result of a paradigm shift and is improving business computing because: (1) it is modular, compartmentalizing software applications and associated hardware and infrastructure; (2) it is uniform, utilizing the same resources that customers share. A business using cloud computing can avoid large outlays of capital expense as well as perpetual maintenance costs, thereby aligning cash flow with total system cost.
Data centers are known to be very inefficient, and clustering and virtualizing their servers has met with only limited success. Over time, there will be a logical segue to scalable computing based on/in the cloud. The future of computing is going to consist of the combination of service orientation, service management, and cloud computing. Some of the reasons for this are:
• Hardware costs would decrease because cloud computing systems would reduce the need for advanced, expensive hardware on the client side. It would no longer be necessary or desirable to buy the fastest computer with the most memory or largest hard drive. Rather, all a customer would need to buy is an inexpensive computer terminal, a monitor, input components such as a keyboard and mouse, and only enough processing power to run the middleware necessary to connect to the cloud system.
• Clients could access their applications and data from anywhere at any time using a computer linked to the Internet. Data would be stored offsite rather than take up space on a hard drive on a user’s computer or a corporation’s internal network.
• Since cloud computing is a “pay as you go” system, companies would not have to buy software or software licenses for each employee. Instead, the company would pay a metered fee based on usage, much the way open source software (as opposed to proprietary software) works. For the most part, cloud computing infrastructures are built from open source components because the cloud providers are hesitant to make large investments without knowing the payoff.
• Cloud computing customers would no longer have to worry about physical space in which to store servers and other storage hardware. They can store data on a third-party’s system, thus removing the need for physical space on the front end.
• Since cloud computing offers tried and true hardware, operating systems, and applications, customers could save money on IT support (for obvious reasons, this is not a concept that IT support personnel in general buy into).
• If the cloud computing system’s back end is a grid computing system, customers could take advantage of the entire network’s processing power. For instance, scientists and researchers who work with extremely complicated calculations could send the calculations to the cloud for processing. The cloud system would utilize the processing power of all available computers on the back end and significantly speed up the calculations.
• Cloud computing provides a way to outsource non-critical applications to organizations better suited to run them, allowing IT to focus on critical applications.
• Cloud providers are more efficient at IT operations, using fewer man-hours for standard tasks (again, not a popular concept with IT support personnel).
• By buying hardware in large volume, cloud providers get better pricing.
So, these are the arguments FOR the cloud computing revolution/evolution. My next article will look at the perceived disadvantages of it and why not everyone is buying in to it.
Juno Web Design
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BuddyPress Camp!
Hey, all you WordPress/BuddyPress lovers: There is a camp just for you next month in New York, and word on the street says the camp t-shirts are nothing short of awesome. Not a Wordpress–ario? Never heard of BuddyPress? Then this article will answer some of your burning question–about BuddyPress, specifically.
Wordpress (WP) is an open source application that web developers use to publish blogs and basic content management. BuddyPress (BP) is an open source package built on top of WordPress that converts WP into a social network (think Facebook). Both are written in PHP scripting language.
BuddyPress does not enjoy the status, widespread use, or intricacies that Facebook and MySpace do; rather, it operates on a much smaller scale, and only in combination with WP. It inherits and extends upon the basic functions of the WordPress engine including plug-ins, themes, and widgets. Upon installation, BP is immediately ready to roll as a basic social network.
When BuddyPress is first installed, a “Basic” group is created with “First Name”, “Last Name” and a profile picture upload function. These fields are the “key” to each member’s profile, so they cannot be removed or modified. However, the site administrator can add fields to this Basic group by using the extended profile component and can specify each field’s type, e.g. text boxes, date selectors, radio buttons, etc.
Here are the features contained in the BuddyPress packaged plug-in:
• Extended Profiles – Web designers can add numerous custom fields to create extended blogger profiles
• Friends – Users can search for, add, and interact with other users. Each member has a visible list of his or her friends on the site. Friend lists are searchable and members can click on each friend for more information.
• Private Message System – Users can exchange private mail with other users
• Activity Stream – Users can keep up with their friends’ activities as long as they are connected. Activity streams combine all of a user’s activity across a BuddyPress installation. Friends’ activities are also recorded and reported. Any type of data can be tracked using the activity stream component, such as wire posts, blogs posts, new friendships, and blog comments.
• The Wire –Members can post messages to other members’ profiles or leave messages for other group members.
• Groups – BuddyPress groups are an assembly of members, wires posts, and forum topics, usually encompassing a similar interest. Any member can create a group in BuddyPress and thus become the group administrator. The administrator can enable certain features such as a group forum (bbPress) and Wire.
• Forums – With the Forums component, groups can create and administer their own bbPress forum. Group members can post and reply to topics all from within the group’s page. Forums can be attached to any content within an installation, which means that third party plug-ins and new components can utilize the Forum component in the future.
• Blog Tracking – This component combines all blogs, blog posts, and comments for each member so that other members can easily find blogs that a member owns or belongs to as well as recent posts and comments.
Because all BuddyPress plug-ins are stand-alone, developers can use them in two ways, either as a whole package or piecemeal in order to customize their existing blog network. If you are a plug-in developer or theme designer and can’t make it to the camp, or if you just want more detailed information, check out the BuddyPress website (www.buddypress.org) and jump on the bandwagon.
Juno Web Design
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Google Android 2.0 Debuts
Today Google rolled out its new operating system called “Android” (aka “Éclair”) to the web design community, and first reviews are very enthusiastic.
Some of the upgrades included in Android 2.0 are:
• an overhauled browser with a better user interface and HTML5 support
• the ability to search all saved SMS and MMS messages and automatically delete the oldest messages in a conversation when a defined limit is reached
• support for multiple email accounts
• more comprehensive camera controls that support built-in flash, digital zoom, and scene mode
• improved keyboard layout makes it easier to hit the correct characters and increases typing speed
• “smarter” dictionary “learns” from and expands with word usage
• Bluetooth 2.1 support
• an upgraded version of Google Maps with layer supportAnd there’s more. Android’s voice control has its own dedicated dashboard and is embedded throughout the whole system. There is a new setup for contacts that imports them from any source and a function called Quick Contact that allows users to contact each other instantly by tapping an icon associated with a specific person. Testers say the virtual keyboard is easier to use, and a new browser URL bar allows users to tap the address bar directly to navigate and conduct instant searches.
If you are currently a developer, you can use the Software Development Kit Manager to add Android 2.0 support to your SDK and update your SDK Tools to Revision 3 (this is required for the new build). If you are a new developer, you can download the Android SDK from the download site.
Non-programmer types will have to wait a little while to get their hands on 2.0. Droid Smartphones featuring Android 2.0 are supposed to be launched by Verizon on October 30 or November 6, depending on the source. This Motorola phone is generating rave reviews and raising hopes that programmers can write hot applications for a winning mobile platform that is basically the anti-Apple iPhone. Ads during the U.S. NFL games on Sunday taunted the iPhone for what it lacks, including a keyboard, 5-megapixel camera, and the ability to run simultaneous applications, widgets and even take pictures in the dark. It even criticized the iPhone for not being open to allowing developers to customize applications for it, ending the ad by noting, “Everything iDon’t, Droid Does.”
Of course, no product is perfect out of the box, so all you Android developers get in there and start finding the bugs and fixing them.
Web Design | Google Logo
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Facebook Redesign: the Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent
Facebook rolled out their latest web design on October 23 and already a group called “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL” has rallied. But then, no one expected the change to be welcomed by 100 percent of FB users even though FB claims that they based their decision to make it on user feedback. And, hey, there are just some people who hate change of any kind.
Facebook has introduced the ability to toggle between News Feed (self-explanatory) and Live Feed, which is the same real-time feed from your friends to which you’ve become accustomed. Facebook uses a new algorithm that bases the News Feed sources and stories they display on your past history on the site and how much attention the stories have received from your friends. Kind of like Amazon’s “if you like that you might also like this” and “people who bought that also bought this” functions. It is basically putting certain features back the way they were before the March redesign, such as:
• friend acceptances
• relationships
• event RSVPs
• group membershipsHere is Facebook’s explanation of the major changes:
News Feed
When you log into Facebook, you’ll see the most interesting things that happened in the last day in the “News Feed” view. News Feed picks stories that we think you’ll enjoy based on a variety of factors including how many friends have liked and commented on it and how likely you are to interact with that story.
Live Feed
Once you’ve caught up on what you missed, you can click through to “Live Feed” to see what’s happening right now. As long as you remain logged into Facebook, you’ll continue to see posts and activity from your friends in real-time. You can edit what appears in this view by clicking “Edit Options” at the bottom of the home page.
Birthdays and events have taken on more importance, appearing larger in the right column of the home page. And on each member’s birthday, a pop-up version of Facebook’s “gifts” application appears on that user’s profile so that friends can buy “virtual” gifts to send.
One change that users really can’t complain about is that the site’s home page loads faster. And advertisers will appreciate that on their “fan” pages there will be data about what a user’s friends have done, which will increase their exposure and word-of-mouth advertising.
In this redesign, Facebook eliminates the publisher box, replacing it with an “Update Status” button in the upper right corner. This frees up more space in the center column for friends’ wall posts, photos, updates, etc.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook users acclimate to these innovations down the road, but it’s really hard to find any REAL fault with the changes they’ve made. Facebook giveth and they taketh away. Then, if there is enough uproar, they giveth back.
Web Design | Facebook
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DotNetNuke CMS
DotNetNuke has chosen Europe’s winners of the OpenForce Community Choice Awards just in time for the OpenForce Europe Conference that was held October 19-20. The awards honor the best web design created using the DotNetNuke platform. Interdigital won the award this year for best Overall Site and Best Informational site. Structure Sonores (www.structuresonore.eu) won for the Most Creative/Original Site, and Le Bazar de Wally (www.lebazardewally.com) for the Best eCommerce Site. Both websites are quite impressive.
The conference is a two-day, multiple track professional developers’ conference held in conjunction with the Software Developer Network Conference and includes speeches and demonstrations by expert software developers from the DotNetNuke community all over Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as representatives from DotNetNuke Corporation. Users attend the conference in order to expand their knowledge base, network and share best practices, tips, and information. In addition to DotNetNuke, attendees also have free access to all other conference sessions on technologies such as C#, ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Delphi.
If you’re not familiar with DotNetNuke, it is a leading web content management system and application development platform for Microsoft .NET. With it, savvy users can tap into their existing Microsoft software and training to create robust, interactive web applications and websites. It is Open Source, which means that there are a lot of developers out there trying to break it and fix the bugs before each new release. To that end, DotNetNuke 5.2.0 Beta is now available for download on the Beta Testing page on DotNetNuke.com.
DotNetNuke simplifies web asset management for administrators, developers, content editors, and designers. They offer a Professional Edition for businesses and organizations that use DotNetNuke as a base component of their business-critical online communications strategies. They also have a free Community Edition that is more suitable for website administrators needing a web content management system (CMS) or application development framework but who do not require the robustness of the Professional Edition. Several well-known websites that were built with DotNetNuke include Euricom, Yokosuka Navy Base, the Australian Football League, and Indian Motorcycles.
DotNetNuke claims that even people with no programming experience can download and install the Community Edition and be up and running and creating their own websites in no time. This edition allows users to create membership rolls, send bulk emails, and define secure sections for registered site users only. Users can even customize the site’s appearance, create banner advertising, and submit the site to search engines.
DotNetNuke’s user community is more than 700,000 strong, which is a testament to both its popularity and its capacity for self-regulation and integrity. It might be worth checking out if you are a novice or a seasoned developer.
Juno Web Design
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2009 PHP Barcelona Conference
Hey, all you PHP Developers: it’s not too late to get your tickets to the 2009 PHP Barcelona Conference—it will be happening October 30-31 in, of course, Barcelona. It is a two-day event with three simultaneous sessions all day each day. The conference motto is “Interesting sessions for smart people, with a touch of practicality”. This is the third year for the event, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever, PLUS it is being held in one of the more beautiful cities in Europe.
Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish developer, created PHP in 1995 in part to track how many people were visiting his website(s). He considered it to be the “fastest and simplest tool” for creating dynamic web pages for your web design. It has evolved into a widely used scripting language that is well suited for web development.
Last year’s conference included subjects like detecting and debugging PHP scripts with XDebug, an overview of SQLite3, PHP integration with Oracle Database, increasing volume and speed on your PHP website, creating SOAP clients and servers in PHP, etc. This year’s conference features a jam-packed schedule with experts lecturing on the history of PHP, working with web service for web designdevelopers, advanced models and data structures, and web application development using Oracle, to name just a few. There will also be a workshop on using Agile Extreme Programming to develop a sample web project and a tutorial on writing efficient Oracle PHP applications.
If this sounds like something you might be interested in, check out the Conference website at http://phpconference.es
Juno Web Design
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Worms in the New Apple OS
Wow, Apple patrons are NOT happy with the OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard, and who can blame them? Problem #1: apparently it has a bug that causes it to EAT YOUR DATA. Not all the time, just if you log in as a guest after upgrading from Apple’s previous OS (Leopard-10.5). And not ALL of your data, just whatever is stored in your home directory, like documents, music, etc. And to make matters worse, it seems to be totally random and hard to reproduce, which make it practically impossible to debug. Oh, and another thing: the previous version (Leopard 10.5.1) exhibited the same problem. So that means that Apple was aware of this problem before they trotted out Snow Leopard and not only did they NOT fix it in Leopard, they let a whole new release go out with the same bug. There is a rumor that the bug is corrected in release 10.6.2, but that remains to be seen.
Problem #2: Apple bundled Snow Leopard with an older version of Adobe Flash, which overlays new versions (plus all of the patches) users may have installed. And apparently this older version of Flash is vulnerable to hackers targeting its soft spots, something Adobe addressed with the patches—the ones that Snow Leopard obliterates. This is not great news for those in the creative web design industry like us
Problem #3 with Apple in general is a continuation of an old issue: Apple’s delay in correcting security bugs well after its competitors have addressed them. Their advertising campaigns tout their unrivaled security at same time their developers are warning that they have serious concerns about the vulnerability of the system. In technical terms, a function known as ASLR, or address space layout randomization, loads system components in a different memory location each time the operating system is started. Microsoft implemented it with Windows Vista, but the corresponding security in Snow Leopard suffers from a crucial deficiency: it does not randomize core parts of the operating system, such as the heap, stack, and dynamic linker.
What this means is that attackers who spot buffer overflows and similar bugs in OS X components find it much easier to enable the vulnerability to execute code that can compromise the machine. Security researchers have complained about Apple’s feeble attempt at implementing ASLR since Leopard. Many were hoping it would be more robust in Snow Leopard.
These issues serve as a handy reminder as to why I am not a Jobsian cultist, aka a Mac user. Not that Windows is anywhere NEAR perfect, but at least none of their operating systems has eaten my data or leaves my system wide-open to attack.
web design | apple logo
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Wordpress Web Design and Fresh Content
If you have a business but have not yet dipped your toes in the blogging pool, it is definitely something worth considering. Incorporating a blog into your web design can be very beneficial to your business because you will consistently be providing fresh content for prospective customers to find in web searches. Blogging allows your customers to get to know you as a person and gives you the chance to express your passion for what it is that you are selling. It can give you a real competitive edge if you can show readers that you are an expert in your field. Blogging is a good way to incorporate personal customer service into your website by talking about issues and questions about your product or field. Your customers can leave tips, comments, links to compatible sites, etc. on your blog, which may then draw others in.
If you are new to blogging (writing OR reading them), you may be wondering how the technology works. Web designers have access to a lot of different tools to help them build blogging platforms, one of which is WordPress Web Design. If you hire a web developer to build or maintain a website for you, chances are good that he or she will use Wordpress. CNN and the New York Times use WordPress, so it has been tried and tested by the best.
WordPress has generated a lot of buzz because it is considered very easy to learn and use. Once a website is created, the web designer can edit, add, subtract, and modify content quite easily. There are quite a few Wordpress plug-ins that your web designer can use to extend your website’s functionality and versatility, such as Trackback and Pingback. Trackback lets you notify a blogger that you have commented on his blog even if you don’t have a link to his article. Pingback notifies a blogger that someone has linked to his blog. Pingback and Trackback makes blogs interconnected and lets you know that people are reading and linking to your blog.
If you are so inclined, WordPress allows you to edit and add pages and posts yourself whenever you like using the administrative back end. How much or little you do this depends on how involved you want to be in controlling the content of your website and if you have the time and inclination to learn WordPress basics.
WordPress is an Open Source project, which means that there are people all over the world working on it to make it better. That can’t be a bad thing, because we all know that 2 (thousand? million?) heads are better than one.
Juno Web Design
