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This page will contain information about new developments in technology particularly in the way it deals with communication. We will also include a Frequently Asked Questions area so if you have any questions you would like me to address send me an e-mail and I will answer it here.

October 07, 2008

When I first started investigating the applications, storage and other web based services my main objective was to find sights that would allow me to seamlessly work on projects at home or on the computer I use at MSU. Then I found out that the Coast Guard System would not allow me to use most of these sites for various reasons. Now I find out that Admiral Allen is encouraging us to take advantage of at least some of these sites as well as the social media sites. Some of his ideas are listed in the quote from his All Hands E-mail shown below:
"Today I am excited to announce the next step in our efforts to participate in the increasingly relevant and collaborative social media environment. The intent is to expand the Coast Guard's ability to reach a wide audience, and communicate in various ways that may appeal to different individuals. As one of my Facebook friends told me, "Communication is the beginning of understanding," and we hope to enhance understanding of the Coast Guard through maximum transparency."

In another article on the Coast Guard Site Amy McCullough tells us:
"By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Sep 29, 2008 7:48:44 EDT

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen has eclectic tastes in music, plays Scrabble online, doesn't really watch mainstream television - although he is a fan of "House" and "The Big Bang Theory" - and, above all, is proud of his fellow service members, according to his Facebook profile.
The highest-ranking member in the Coast Guard has been experimenting with various new media tools such as the photo-sharing site Flickr, video hub YouTube and popular social networking site Facebook for the last several months as he prepared for a "revolution" in Coast Guard information management.
Allen released a servicewide message Monday that strongly encourages senior leaders to use new media technology such as "blogs, wikis, social networks and podcasts" to improve communication with Coast Guardsmen and potential recruits."

August 30, 2008

More on Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is fast becoming a viable new paradigm in the delivery of computing services. This is evidenced by the significant announcement made by Elastra, a new company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that has just released a series of new products to serve this immerging market.

These products consist of two new markup languages including an extensible Elastic Compute Markup language which describes the components of an application as well as related software and hardware requirements for a given project. The other language called the Elastic Compute Deployment Language describes how the applications are to be deployed in the IT infrastructure. These languages are designed to be used with the Company’s new Cloud Server which includes a set of design tools, a repository and deployment monitoring and accounting system.

For the accounting program the company developed a system they call “elastic compute units” which allows the system to establish a flexible pricing scheme which bills the user only for the amount of resources they consumed. This helps the Cloud Vendors to provide the major advantage they have been claiming right along. Now it seems that Vendors of Cloud Computing Services are taking advantage of these innovations as the Company has reported sales to 40 customers

What in the world is Cloud Computing? If you don't know, I didn't know until last month. It is a new term that has been coined by the trade press to cover all the myriad services being offered as a result of the fact that Web 2 allows for a great deal of viewer interaction with Websites that was not available in the early days of the Internet. This has made it possible for vendors to make productivity software available , provide backup and general file storage, data base access and all of this available on any computer anywhere resulting in a virtual network that could conceivably include everyone with net access.

Flicker & YouTube only provide storage While most of the others also provide Productivity Apps. and other On-line Infrastructure related IT services.

Of interest to us as members of the Auxiliary is the ability to collaborate with other members on projects and to generally improve our ability to communicate more efficiently.

Another feature that could be extremely interesting to our membership is the need for additional storage space. Several of these sites allow you to store all kinds of files on their servers. This service provides you with a virtual drive or even several different drives to store your files at a location that is off site and readily available from any machine anywhere.

Even with today’s cheap, gigantic hard drives we can never have enough storage and the fact that its off site provides numerous advantages. One word of caution; be sure to read the fine print on each service. The rules may discourage you, I was going to put my Ireland pictures up on Flickr until I found out they world only allow 100 megs a month. Since I had about 700 megs of pictures if would have taken me 7 months to upload the entire batch. I also wanted to try to store some pictures on one of these sites and then link to then from our Website without increasing the storage volume of our site until I found out that was not allowed by the site I was planning to use.

While Cloud Computing originally targeted Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) by supplying Virtual Infrastructures for IT Departments and are now being looked at as a viable alternative for large multi-national firms as well. The fact that several of these vendors have made some or all of their services available to individuals on a no charge basis can be of real benefit to organizations like ours. While the Flotilla could not afford to set up a network to tie us all together with common storage and applications, we should be able to take advantage of the offerings by creating a mash-up of the available services to provide us with a virtual network.

My task over the next few months will be to use these services and decide which if any seem to meet our needs. This table will be expanded as I review and test these and other offerings.