The annual Apple worldwide developer conference opening keynote drew a crowd of 5,200. It would have been much larger if the auditorium had the capacity. The extraordinary video is a “must see” if you are interested in either the Apple products or the marketing that surrounds them. The two-hour video is an exemplary model for how to communicate. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them. Not a new idea, but executed by the Apple executive team with incredible precision, enthusiasm, and clarity. They also added an important element to the classic three-element communications model. Demo it to them. You get the feeling that the executive team knows exactly what they are talking about and are passionate about it.
Next month we get to see Lion and I for one can’t wait. It sounds like Apple is really listening to what customers want. For the iOS 5 update, we will have to wait until “the Fall”, but it also has a large number of exciting features. The big one is integration with iCloud. The immediate question many people have is what does iCloud mean for Dropbox? There are many unanswered questions. Google, Apple, and Amazon are at war to win our hearts, minds, and bits for their clouds. Some will say that iCloud is a makeover of MobileMe but I believe it is much more than that. iCloud will be continuously streaming billions of bits to all of our Apple devices — songs, photos, emails, web page and reading material bookmarks, calendar updates and reminders, contact information, tweets, and much more. While Google, Apple, and Amazon will strive to get our more and more of our loyalty, there are many parts of our digital lives that they don’t touch.
Every Saturday morning, I update my Quicken data on the MacBook at the kitchen counter. After I close Quicken, the file is immediately updated at dropbox.com. A bit later, I head into my office and access Quicken on the iMac. All the data is there, updated and ready to use. The same file is also on the iPhone and iPad and a handful of ThinkPads that are scattered around the house. Cloud computing does not mean putting everything in the cloud instead of on your computer — it means putting data in the cloud so that it can be replicated to all your devices. Your data is no longer where you PC is — your data is where you are. Some photo afficianados will prefer to use Picasa instead of iPhoto. Some will use Google Docs instead of Apple Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Some will use Amazon for their music. For me it will be Pandora. I plan to try iCloud as soon as possible and will surely use it for my purchased music, probably for photos, and probably not for documents. Definietely not for Quicken and various specialized files like my web site content, GPS data, etc.. All the boards I serve on distribute materials via pdf files. When I receive those by email I detach them to dropbox.com folders. I then synchronize Goodreader with dropbox on the iPad so that all the pdfs are local on the iPad for use at board meetings. I am enthusiastic about iCloud but I do not see it taking over my digital life, at least not yet.
Tags: amazon, apple, cloud computing, dropbox, google, icloud, imac, ipad, iPhone, lion, mac osx, twitter
Posted by John Patrick on May 30, 2011 in
Conferences,
Internet Technology,
Travels 
It was a second time to stay at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Words can not describe this incredible hotel. The occasion was to give a speech at an event that CCC Information Services held for a grouop of its customers. CCC is a private company that provides its customers with collision repair and insurance estimating software solutions, analytical tools and comprehensive data. Their focus is on integrated claims management to optimize efficiency throughout the claims management supply chain, facilitating communication among approximately 21,000 auto body collision repair facilities, 350 insurance companies and a range of other industry participants. In my talk about the Future of the Internet, I discussed the fast, always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy, and trusted characteristics of the Internet. As usual, I highlighted my optimistic view about cloud computing. CCC is a real believer and pioneer in this area. See a point of view from CCC’s Ron Nelson called Life in the Cloud.
In addition to the day being the kickoff for CCC’s conference, it was also the graduation day for 1,000 cadets at the Air Force Academy, and the 43rd anniversary for my wife and me. We took advantage of being in Colorado Springs by taking a ride on the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. The Manitou & Pike’s Peak Railway Company was founded and track construction began in 1889. The first cog railway was built in New Hampshire in 1869, but Switzerland is where most cog railways are located. The Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, however, is the highest rack railway in the world as well as the highest railway in North America and the Northern Hemisphere. The maximum grade the train can handle is 25% and it was great to experience it. The train runs all year round but on some occassions, including last week for us, there is too much snow to get to the top. We made it to 12,400 feet and the views were spectacular.
Tags: air force academy, Broadmoor, ccc, cloud, cloud computing, cog, cog railway, colorado, colorado springs, rack railway
Posted by John Patrick on Mar 11, 2011 in
Gadgets,
Internet Technology,
ipad,
iPhone,
Media,
Mobile,
Music,
People,
Personal Computing,
WiFi 
The iPad 2 announcement was mostly as expected. Ordering it at 7 AM this morning was also as expected — easy, fast, pleasant, enticing for extra goodies, followed by immediate and precise confirming communications from Apple. The order status shows: Ships: 5 – 7 business days and Delivers: Mar 22 – Mar 29. I ran into a friend at lunch who ordered around noon and his confirmation showed April 8, so that implies a large backlog already created. Not surprising. I have heard many people say that the iPad 2 will cause them to order because of the cameras for FaceTime. I agree with them — that is going to be a really great feature of the iPad 2. I can’t wait to see my grandchildren on it. Not a substitute for seeing them in person but a great experience in between visits. I read today that a manufacturer of private aircraft is including an iPad with each airplane that will include the POH (pilot operating handbook) and all documentation associated with the plane. This is just one of many thousands of ways that the tablet computer will integrate with our business and personal lives. Even if the price was the same, who would want to buy an airplane and get a PC included with all the documentation? Nobody. It would never be considered. There are many implications of tablets. One of them is that physical media is history — disks, tapes, diskettes, CDs, DVDs, USB memory sticks, external hard drives, etc. When you combine an iPad with Dropbox you have it all — a powerful computer connected to the Internet and a cloud computing repository that will sync all of your data between the iPad, the iPhone, your Mac, your PC, Windows, Linux, whatever. Although Bill Gates’ PC is moving toward history, he was right when he envisioned information at your fingertips!
Tags: apple, cloud computing, dropbox, facetime, gates, ipad, ipad 2, pc, tablet
Posted by John Patrick on Feb 27, 2011 in
Healthcare,
Internet Technology 
The World Community Grid has brought hundreds of thousands of people and millions of computers together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power from users’ PCs. Although the PC will be the minority participant in the networked world, there are millions of them out there and most of them are utilized a very small percentage of the time. Don’t throw any PC’s away — connect them to the World Community Grid, and let your spare computational capacity be deployed toward finding a cure for cancer and other diseases.
Grid computing has been around longer than cloud computing. It joins together many individual computers using the Internet, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from decades to months. It is very easy to get involved in this–its very similar to installing a screensaver. Just visit worldcommunitygrid.org and in a few minutes you will be helping the world. When your PC is idle, the unused computing capacity is used by the World Community Grid to work on difficult computational problems. Here is a list of the projects you can choose from when you donate the idle time of your PC.
Help Fight Childhood Cancer
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2
The Clean Energy Project – Phase 2
Computing for Clean Water
FightAIDS@Home
Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2
Help Conquer Cancer
Tags: cancer, cloud computing, grid computing, world community grid
The August issue of PC Magazine began the “magazine’s” 30th year and I have not missed an issue, although this is the first one I read on the iPad with Zinio. If someone had described the iPad to me back in 1981 it would have seemed like science fiction. Even the PC at that time seemed an amazing breakthrough. The first PC had a 5.25 inch diskette drive and no hard drive. Anybody have their archives on 5.25 inch diskettes?I hope not because it might be hard to find a drive to read them.
The First Word column by Lance Ulanoff over at PC Mag this month was called Storage Evolution in which Lance discusses how storage has evolved from one type of media to another. When a new size or type of storage is introduced it always seems that the new paradigm will last forever. In the grand scheme of things the evolution looks more like pings on a radar screen. They come and they go. Sony has just made a decision to end production of the 3.5 inch disks. When the CD became popular for backing up our files it seemed to be the ultimate. Then came the DVD and then double sided and double depth. External drives, zip drives, USB keys, tape cartridges, and perhaps holographic storage soon. Getting the latest and greatest to backup your data is the easy part. What about five years from now when you want to restore some data from your archived storage? Will you have a PC or Mac that has a device that can read the storage medium you had chosen five years prior? Maybe and maybe not.
Why not let someone else worry about all this? There is something about clouds that brings the term into our daily lives. We say “it is a cloudy day”, or “there is not a cloud in the sky”, or if we feel especially elated or happy we might say “I feel like I am on cloud nine“. More and more people are answering the question of where is there backed up data with “it’s in the cloud”. Some people worry about whether it will be safe and secure in the cloud but from my perspective it is important to compare the risk to that of keeping such data on your own computer. In fact I would say that the risk of your data getting compromised at a cloud backup service is less than the risk of your hard drive crashing or having your laptop stolen at Laguardia Airport, or at some point of being unable to read the data because the storage medium is incompatable with your computer.
Cloud services companies have a lot more at stake than we do when it comes to maintaining high integrity for their operations. They will keep your backup data backed up and they will use whatever the most cost-effective storage media is. As new kinds of media come along they will adopt it and migrate all your data to it. Their problem, not yours. The argument for using them is compelling from my point of view. There are many companies that offer backup services including Mozy, Carbonite, and SOS. See PC Magazine for a review. I have been using idrive.com for quite some time and have found it very reliable. The services can be setup to automaticaly make backups while you are sleeping. You can have the backups run daily, weekly, or even continuously so that whenever a file changes on your computer a backup is made in the cloud. The best part is that you don’t have to buy any devices and worry about how compatible they may be in the future.
Is cloud computing for businesses or for consumers? It is for people. Businesses do not buy from businesses. People in businesses buy from people in businesses. People work at businesses and people work at home. Some people are students and some are e-tired. Clouds are all about making people more productive and increasingly the clouds will be where we will keep all of our data that feel is important.
Other patrickWeb stories that refer to “clouds”
Tags: backup, backup service, cloud, cloud computing, cloud services, diskette, dvd, holographic, ipad, media, pc magazine, storage, storage medium, tape, usb
