Tech Savvy Satire

Filed under: blogging, economy, mobile

So it’s come to my attention that just about everyone on Twitter and Friend Feed has one thing to talk about anymore. That being the all powerful iPhone 3G edition. Personally, I have no desire to own one as they are just so expensive and it seems it all amounts to eye candy. The killer app for iPhone is…wait, I really don’t want a killer app on my phone thank you, I want to be able to call people and text, and possibly check my email. That is all I ask of a phone. However, in most of today’s tech savvy generation, that just makes me “stuck in the nineties” and obliterates any geek in me.

I am of the opinion that there are very interesting things happening other than the iPhone; things that are getting overlooked. For example, Verizon was in talks to buy out Alltel for $27 billion. That to me is horrifying, seeing as how Alltel services us down here in Hickville, Nowhere USA, where as when I came here on vacation my Verizon phone did not work at all. Verizon seems to be about supplying cities with service but neglects the country bumpkins in little towns all over the US. And with poor tact on the Customer Service end of things, I’m worried as to what is going to happen with my phone service. Will I have to make the switch back to Verizon, or will I have to go with the other mobile carrier in the area: AT&T?

Another interesting thing to me was the analysis of the latest cover of the New Yorker Magazine. Chris Farley, wrote on his blog possibly the best political/satirical wrap up of the cover and of the upcoming election. In part it says:

Rumors are circulated about Obama being a (gasp) Muslim. His middle name is Hussein, he must be related to Saddam Hussein. I think the humor is self explanatory. The New Yorker is mocking, and rightly so, the sheer stupidity of those who believe these rumors, as well as those who spread them maliciously.

I just about fell out of my chair when I read a twitter later on regarding this particular cover:

“The new yorker” is full of [expletive deleted] …. : /”

It just goes to show that some people regardless of their age can write and analyze politics on a level much higher than some of their peers. I have no desire to voice my opinions on politics, but it proves the point that the New Yorker may have done something unwise in releasing this particular cover. Too many will feel that it’s jabbing at Sen. Obama, completely missing the point of the whole article.

Lastly, Microsoft stocks fell last night 6%. Sales rose for them during the last fiscal year, but because many people are slow to adopt Vista (no wonder, I despise it) and Wall Street’s estimates were higher than Microsoft’s actual year end profit, stocks dropped. Sadly I failed to see whether or not their stock dropped on the day they discontinued XP, but in my opinion it seems likely that it would. XP was by far better than Vista, and should I ever need a new computer, I will just go for a Mac, seeing as how it seems like Vista is trying to be a knock-off edition. Perhaps it’s just the Unix lover in me, or maybe I’ve been using Linux far too long, but something about Microsoft going under in the not so distant future makes me smile.

Personal Cloud and Adobe Air.

Filed under: blogging, cloud, sphere

The New York Times recently published an article about Adobe Air and the blurring of traditional web and desktop application development:

Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web

and there is a nice FAQ from Adobe on the differences and advantages of the Air approach:

Adobe Air FAQ

I feel that we have a fairly deep perspective on the differences and advantages of desktop applications vs. web applications. SupraSphere, being first and foremost and new kind of web browser, is obviously a desktop application since it doesn’t necessarily make sense to think of a web browser as an AJAX application. ;)

However, we do have a web-only AJAX version of some of the features of SupraSphere, particularly some of the search and collaboration features. Desktop applications have a few distinct disadvantages, around management of updates, stability, and often privacy, where many people have gotten burned by desktop applications infested with spyware and adware. Furthermore, web applications are quite often much easier to use since all you can really do is click. The richness of certain interfaces, whether in Flash or on the desktop, often make it harder to use the applications because people often have a hard time learning new interfaces. Browser applications are often popular because it provides a “paradigm sandbox” where you can click and go back, often can’t “right-click”, and can’t bury too many options too deep in menu structures. Most people can figure out Flash navigation on a website, but as soon as you start developing applications in Flash, people are going to start to get lost.

As far as Adobe Air, it seems that the major innovation is that Adobe Air allows an application written with web technologies (javascript particularly) that uses a RIA Flash runtime, but that can operate on local desktop data, which also implies offline access. This is definitely interesting, but we have taken a different approach to unifying the web and the pc.

Our goal is to create a “personal cloud” (see the reference to “kevincloud” in the NY Times article). Ideally, this would involve multiple servers (or virtual servers) configured as peered instances, where all data is replicated across instances hopefully across data centers. This would provide automated backup and redundancy so that a person’s entire data environment is not dependent on any given provider, and we might look into a default configuration being an encrypted disk (with only one service on one port running to provide suprasphere services), so that if a virtual machine instance was “lost”, it wouldn’t be as huge of a privacy concern.

Then, all devices (including personal computers) would provide a view of the data stored in this “cluster” of personal servers. In addition, these systems will not be single-user. They are inherently network aware and multi-user, making it possible to collaborate inside with other individuals or groups, but where the underlying architecture will be distributed.

Essentially, rather than trying to move web applications back to the PC hard drive in order just to provide richer interfaces and private data access, we are trying to provide the equivalent to the PC hard drive that “lives in the cloud”. This should provide all of the attributes that people associate with cloud computing, such as data reliability and high availability, API’s for services integration and re-purposing, and multiple views of data from different interface mashups. In fact, it should accelerate these trends by providing a starting point for web services that are private to the individual and highly personal.

Posts From Start to Finish.

Filed under: blogging, bookmarks, commenting, messaging, sphere

It’s ironic in a way to be using SS to write about it. However, it kind of serves as a practical application of SS’s uses.

Like any typical article that gets written, there is a planning stage. So, usually that begins with a startup of SupraSphere. I have a sphere set up called “Supra Blog Team” which is where I usually post ideas for the next couple of posts. David will usually refine the ideas via terse. After I have a set topic to write about, I *usually* will write a message outline, which I’ve not really gotten into yet with the posts here, but that’s going to be the next one. Commenting on it, it will receive some tweaks, and then I will start the writing process.

From right within SS, I’ll hit <crtl-t> which just like Firefox, opens a new tab, and I log into the blog and start writing. I should mention here that Wordpress is fully functional while in SS as well. Extra tabs also mean it’s easy to search for more information so I can flesh out ideas.

After I get a rough draft, I save the preliminary version, and preview it in another tab. Using the bookmark feature, I then post the bookmark in the Blog Team sphere. David will read it from there, and then using the comment feature to tweak it some more, editing it for grammar and the like. Then, finally, I’ll get the green light to click on “Publish” and another post goes live.