As usual, relatively early (but not too early) in the lifecycle of a technology, there is a plethora of terms that is created to describe each individual vendor's category. This ratatouille of terms needs to be sorted out so that we can better understand what is what. Groupings are formed, complex ontologies are sketched and simpler ontologies are created.
This is where we are with Cloud Computing. On The Wisdom of Clouds, two such ontologies are drawn. The UCSB is simpler, the more complex from Hoff possibly more useful.
Here they are:
I wonder if the former misses two boxes that have been interesting to me:
The importance of each of these concepts is that adoption to cloud computing will be dependent on the ease-of-management, security, governance, and integratability of the cloud services.
Many years ago, we (at Sun) were thinking about the logical extension of the concept "The Network is the Computer" and surmising that if resources and applications and data could exist and be "processed" in the network (and not locally), then effectively we would be able to order exactly the right amount of computer we needed. Sometimes we called it Utility Computing. Other times, Grid (to refer to the large complex problems that required clustering of many large servers, something Sun sells well), but now, seven to ten years later, the concept has been redefined as Cloud Computing.
So what is cloud computing? Why are so many vendors talking about it. ZDnet's Cath Everett does a nice job of defining it. She says,
"...cloud computing is a form of outsourcing by which vendors supply computing services to lots of customers over the internet. These services can range from applications, such as customer relationship management, to infrastructure, such as storage and the provision of development platforms.
The services are provided by massively scalable datacenters running hundreds of thousands of CPUs as a single compute engine, using virtualization technology. That approach means workloads are distributed across multiple machines — which can also be located in multiple datacenters — and capacity can be allocated or scaled back according to a customer's needs.
Moreover, because applications are multi-tenant in nature — multiple instances of the same package that can be executed on the same machine — system resources can be shared among a large pool of users, which reduces costs."
She goes on to say that SaaS is a subset of Cloud. Grid is a subset of Cloud. Utility computing is a subset of Cloud.
Another visually simple video (which oversimplifies) is here.
Sometimes, the easiest way to define a service is by showing the most real and telling example in use today. Amazon's EC2 cloud service for all intents and purposes is the standard. Simply, it allows any entity to buy any amount of computing resource and run just enough of its core applications, remotely, and in exchange it pays a fee to Amazon. There are no servers or IT equipment whatsoever locally and the resources/applications are ordered in a flexible manner, somewhat like the vision we really had in the nineties at Sun.
The following entry is courtesy of Dan Glickman who comments on our recent trip to La Fortuna and Monteverde, Costa Rica.
The highlight of our trip to Costa Rica was Arenal volcano. I guess I expected to see a dormant volcano in the distance. Instead, it was really active, larger than I expected, and frankly the approach to the volcano as seen from a pleasureful boat across a serene lake was probably the best moment. Plus we didn't just see a mountain; it was a real volcano with glowing lava flows, rumbling hydro-magmatic eruptions, and truck-sized boulders.
Beyond the volcano, we really had a great time hiking to a pretty waterfall, exploring the cloud forest, seeing wildlife, and risking life and limb on a zip-line and on a short flight on a Cessna. There was a lot of adventure but there was also creature comforts like great food, particularly from a place called Chimera in Monteverde. We saw a toucan, a howler monkey, a 2-toes sloth, an unnervingly large tarantula, a great big bird called a guan, a crocodile, and strangler trees. The downsides were not seeing the setting of Jurassic Park, Isla del Cocos, which I really now want to visit and that Zia was sometimes too tense. All in all, it was a reminder of the power of evolution and that we are just specks in the continuum of life on this planet.
The joys of travel can be split into thirds. A third is in the anticipation. A third is in the actual voyage and a third is in the recollection.
Blogging.
The value of a blog can be split into thirds. A third is in the actual blog. A third is in the response or comments on the blog. And the final third, is in the interaction, how the original writer responds or someone new builds upon the conversation.
Words.
The magic of words is threefold. The choice of the right word to say something specific. The stringing together of words to tell a story. And the multiple meanings and interpretations as words are amorphous labels and are relative.
The vast majority of posts have found their way up on From A to Z, a blog about Alex, or Twitter, or fastforwardblog, my old work blog. Since it's time to move on, I figured I'd capture more of my thoughts on my Established 1995 blog simply called An Unusual Day, where you are right now.
It's hard to believe this site was created 13 years ago. Since then many posts have gone up (almost none have come down) and it's had 3 facelifts and now is a full-fledged blog as opposed to just my html ramblings.
When it started, An Unusual Day was an experiment to help me learn more about coding and to just put up a web directory page about myself. This was early-1995, prior to Stanford GSB. At business school, it became more of an author's blog where I put up some of my stories, book reviews, novel, capsule film reviews, travel musings. It had a virtual interface of a room with various clickable elements. I spent far too much time drawing that room and making each rug, picture, chair clickable. It was obtuse and random but it had a look and feel of its own. Plus, the name was evocative and gave the user a sense of the serendipity of the collection of content on the site. You didn't know what to expect when you went there.
My friend Dan Glickman credits me for my capsule film reviews. He claims I was one of the first people on the web writing short film reviews for easy consumption and gave me credit for my signature feature, an equation which describes a movie. Say for example the latest Ricky Gervais movie Ghost Town = Signs * The Office (BBC version). I also had a film scoring database which recorded my ratings on hundreds of movies which I made accessible. There was also such junk as a fantasy hockey spreadsheet, an incomplete map of all the cities I had visited, and links to websites that had been defunct for over a decade. Mercifully, one of my hard drives crashed and much of that content is lost forever. Still, I think I was able to recover some of the better stuff here.
In 2002, my writing took a more prominent place on the site and An Unusual Day became really just a travelogue. Many of my stories were published on the web and in print and it served as a landing page for many readers to read more of my stuff.
In 2003, the site became a promotional site for my book, Losing Oneself in Remote Asia. My publisher helped me decide that it should be prominently displayed as the only reason people should come to An Unusual Day and that we should solely try to encourage clickthroughs to Amazon. It worked for a while, until the book went out of print (notice I didn't technically say sold out) and then the site was neglected for about a year as book sales ceased and it was yet another post-release book site.
Blogger came along and I decided to scrap the previous content and created a simple weblog with my daily (or really weekly) posts on where I had been and what I had seen and eaten. I ended up spending much more time on food (and far less time on me) and while I liked the read, it didn't inspire me to write more.
Alex came along in 2007 and boy oh boy, did I enjoy creating From A to Z. It's a private site for friends only but it gave me an outlet to simply update family and friends about Alex.
In the meantime, my blogging for work increased and my personal blogging became Twitterfied and An Unusual Day proper, again fell by the wayside.
But now, it's back. Perhaps with more of an angle on the serendipity of what you might find, should you meander around the real and digital world. I will talk about information access, about revolutions in the way we think, interact, and work. It will have 2.0 stuff in it but I hope to keep it more philosophical and less technology-oriented.
I say that with my first hyperlink, an interesting take on information by a professor in Kansas.
Sitting in my favourite coffeehouse in New York, we were eating breakfast while reading. The sun wa still low and was pouring in at our seat, enticing us to return outdoors. This being Father's Day, it was fitting to read a piece about Y-chromosomes and paternity in The Atlantic.
Lately, I've been intrigued by the DNA testing services that provide detailed reports of lineage, including whether you were descended from Genghis Khan. Being from Asia and after reading teh statistics estimated 15-30 million men are his descendants, I did some research into which service to explore. The most reliable in Oxford, England was about $325 (this prior to teh pound sterling breaching the $2 mark); but Steve the Atlantic's Steve Olson points out that volunteer DNA testers are being sought by the folks at the Personal Genome Project at Harvard.
Since we are expecting a baby boy in about ten days, I thought it would be timely to know more about our past as our son is (so far/or as far as we know) the only descendant of my paternal grandfather with his Y-chromosome.
By the way, the delicious bagel was from Balthazar and the coffee, deserving of this accolade:
Day 21 - Singapore (in New York) - The brilliant government of Singapore held a Singapore Day for Singaporeans living abroad. It was held in Central Park and featured some of the best food from the actual hawker stand vendors who were flown in courtesy of Singapore Airlines. The event was brilliant with 26 degree celsius sun, great music, and of course, the awesome food.
Char Kway Teowis the seafood noodle dish shown to the right and Nasi Lemak, below it, is my father's personal favourite. Nasi Lemak is “Rich Rice” cooked in coconut milk with the classic toppings of deep fried fish, sunny side up eggs, cucumbers, fried crispy anchovies or ikan bilis and a lemony sweet chilli sambal. Fried chicken wings and spicy grilled fish paste or otah is also added.
Can't say enough of how well the government of Singapore has done to make Singaporeans abroad feel connected, via their craving for their unique street food.
Day 20 – Brooklyn. We’re on something of a Brooklyn run right now, having been or planning to go there for five of six weekends. A study in the diversity of what Brooklyn has to offer can perhaps be inferred from our reasons to visit:
A “dinner event” hosted by a bookclub mate of mine that is half cozy restaurant where you know the owner and half dinner party.
A baby boy’s first birthday party in Cobble Hill
An invitation to hang out with friends from Massachusetts who were visiting his parents’ home off Ditmas
A single woman’s big birthday bash replete with Williamsburgites who have turned casual slack hipster into a studied art form
Moving extraneous stuff from our cramped Manhattan closets into its own special space in a storage unit in DUMBO
Day 19 - (dreaming of) Dublin. Prior to our babymoon, I spent a critical hour browsing the Web and the Barnes & Noble Union Square buying books. While I expected that I might buy one or maybe two, I surprised even myself by selecting four off the shelves. There was no way I would take them all; I left the thickest hardcover behind and it still remains unopened. On the beach I breezed through the first, A Changed Man by Francine Prose, a well-plotted, witty satire set in New York with a great premise and crisp, intelligent writing. The second, The Summer Guest was a small gem of a book, the type I usually don’t buy. But the author Justin Cronin surprised me with the story’s quiet elegance. But the charmer of the lot was the third book which I just finished, weeks after the trip. An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray is set in Dublin circa 1999 amidst the city’s economic transformation. I’ll save the book review editorial for another time and instead focus on the city itself. The last time I visited Dublin was during was around 1997 so it just preceded the emergence of the Celtic Tiger as the darling of the EU. The city was certainly on the upswing as was witnessed by the redevelopment taking place in the wealthier South Dublin and in the central core but it didn’t quite have the earmarks of the makeover that caught the imagination of Murray. So where is it now? By all counts, the property prices have shot up, retail prices are higher than most of the eurozone, and the general standard of living has virtually overnight flipflopped from being a country where emigration has made way for immigration. The famine is over; long live the IDA, tax breaks, Eurobenefits, and offshoring. Come to Ireland, or at least offshore your non-critical business processes. Heck,shift your IT, manufacturing, development to Dublin: you won’t regret it. And the message to the 50%+ of Americans who claim some Irish heritage: if you’re looking for a fresh start in a familiar place, come home.
This is marketing of the highest order. We’re talking Apple levels here. And Ireland has backed it up by following through on the expectations and actually becoming a vibrant city. It’s writing tradition is undisputed and with authors like Paul Murray (born in 1975) emerging, the arts scene should complement nicely the economic miracle making Dublin one of the most desirable places to live.
Day 18 - Todos Santos, Mexico. This town, whose name you may not know, actually has a place that you have heard of,the pictured hotel, memorialized forever by a song which serves as an anthem for the elusive near-past. Booming with a property craze fuelled by nirvana-seekers, Todos Santos is now clearly on the map and may one day lose the very quality that made this backwater so special, so permeating, a place “you can never leave.” But for the time we were around, it did a decent job of showing its appeal. We sampled the mix of galleries, some of which where atrociously bad, some of which were passable. The food, served in an unpretentious bodega was done with panache even though the place was semi-packed with gringo tourists. The hotel itself was kitsch and capitalistic and managed to still retain its rock star status. Finally, the place slowed down and emptied out after the last day tour bus left and we found ourselves alone or at least just surrounded by the city’s real inhabitants, which was really quite nice. If I really wanted to unwind and buy a villa in the town’s environs, I’m sure we would find it idyllic. Nonetheless, TS has all the charm of going to an Eagles reunion concert: you’ll have a great time but you know that you’re seeing something repackaged, dated, and yet classic.
Day 17 - San Diego. I found a little place that serves fish tacos in town that redefines what you normally think Mexican food should be. Pacific style fish tacos are crispy and tart and have very little spice. They are Baja's great delicacy, transported up North to be enjoyed by Californians of all types. I won't blog about the place because I don't want anyone to visit and to ruin it but the adventure of discovering a place like this is half the fun.
Day 16 - Philadelphia. I was speaking on a panel, talking about user-generated content at a Wharton Technology Conference. The night before the session, I had a free hour in Philadelphia around dinner time and decided to go to the very spot where I proposed to my wife. The Striped Bass is a posh fish restaurant on 15th and Walnut in the heart of the swankiest part of Center City, not too far from where we lived when she was at Wharton. The big evening four years ago involved an early seating, Opera tickets to Carmen later that night, a vase of orchids, a story, a Chinese character (double happiness), and a ring. It was obviously a magical evening and to reminisce without my wife seemed hollow. But the signature black bass was, as usual, to die for.
Day 15 - Cannes. The fish soup called "bouillabaiise" is one of my favourite foods. The region where it was invented is the Cote d'Azur in the South of France. It has, hands down, the best bouillabaisse on the planet. After having truied pale imitations in places like Minneapolis (at the Sofitel), Singapore, and even my hometown of Montreal, nothing can compare to Gaston et Gastounette, the little Cannes favourite not far from the Palais des Congres. Treated by ex-colleagues, the meal was so satisfying and yet so large that the waiter was aghast that I had made such a small dent in my soup bowl. Quel horreur! He was right; I should have done better; but oh, the silky feeling of that saffron-laced broth as it was savoured by my palate on that first sip will stay with me until the next time I'm in Cannes.
