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12 New Rules of Working You Should Embrace Today

2008-08-21T12:04:35Z

Shared by Robert Scoble
Nice manifesto on the future of work.

The workplace, more and more, is changing, and with this change comes a whole new set of rules.

The traditional office work environment and tools are still around, but at a very rapid pace, they’re being supplanted by newer and better tools, newer and better ways of working. The old rules are being broken, and new ones are emerging.

You could call this the Workplace of the Future, as not all businesses have adopted these models, and it will be a few years before these new rules are the norm. But for many people (myself included), this is the Workplace of Today — there’s no need to wait for new technologies or tools, because they’re already here.

So you could wait a few years, resist the new trends, talk about how great things were back in your day … or you could embrace the new rules, and be a part of the change.

Transitioning from Electric Typewriters

I love my grandfather, a journalist of more than 50 years, but I always remember when the local newspaper (he’s the former managing editor) changed from typewriters to computer terminals and a mainframe. Instead of typing his columns with an electric typewriter, which he’d done for 25 years, my grandfather had to learn to type on a computer … and save it, and pull it up from a directory.

It proved to be a pretty difficult change for him, and while he can still crank out an amazing column with the best of them, the technology of newspapers passed him by.

It can pass you by too, if you let it. That’s why my philosophy has been to embrace change, be a part of it, help direct it, rather than just resist it. If a new technology or way of working is better, let’s go with it. That doesn’t mean we should just adopt things because they’re new and shiny and trendy — sometimes the old is actually better. But if the new ways are better, let’s embrace them.

Google, Wikipedia, Linux, and Freelancers and Bloggers … oh, my!

A number of companies and projects embody the spirit of the New Rules of Working, but my favorites are Google, Wikipedia and Linux. And the rise of freelancers and bloggers is another trend that shows these New Rules.

1. Google: While the company itself seems either cool or scary, depending on your point of view … but the tools that Google is making are not only perfect for the New Rules of Working, but in many ways they are driving these changes. The archive-and-search philosophy of Gmail, the easy collaboration of GDocs, the ease-of-use of Gcal and other online tools, the innovative uses of cloud computing. Google tools embody the new ways of working.

2. Wikipedia: In a few short years, this has become one of the most useful tools ever. It is more useful than regular encyclopedias by an order of magnitude. And it was created by opening things up to the public. Despite massive criticism for this open process, it has worked beautifully. Collaboration works.

3. Linux: Another tool that has been created through an open, collaborative process. While it still has a ways to go, for many it is already better than Windows, which was created using massive funds but a closed system.

4. Freelancers and bloggers: More and more, people are breaking out of the traditional workplaces in favor of more freedom and independence. This means they are working using mobile computing and technology, they are collaborating with others but not in the traditional heirarchical authoritarian structure, and they work where and when they want, as long as they produce good-quality work.

The New Rules of Working

With new tools, new models of collaboration, and new freedom and mobility in working styles, some New Rules of Working are emerging. Not all of these have asserted their dominance yet, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever totally supplant more traditional rules and ways of working. But they are emerging, and in my mind, they’re all positive and exciting developments.

1. Online apps and the cloud beat the desktop and hard drive. While the majority of workers use desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, that’s rapidly changing. Today, people like me use apps that are almost all online, such as Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Gcal, WordPress, Twitter, Zoho Office, High Rise, Backpack and many others.

The advantages of online apps: you can use them on any computer, and never have to worry about where you saved documents. With desktop apps, you have to save the document to a folder and either email it to yourself or put it on a USB drive if you plan to work from home or on the road. And if you use another computer, you have to make sure you have the necessary desktop app. Mobile workers such as myself want to be able to use their key apps from anywhere, anytime.

Of course, there are disadvantages and limitations to online apps, but the gap is narrowing more and more. Many people also worry about being disconnected from the Internet. Well, that’s becoming less and less of a problem — I can’t remember the last time my Internet was down, and it’s never been a problem in more than a year of using almost exclusively online apps.

Using the cloud instead of your hard drive has similar advantages — and one of the best being that you don’t have to back up your info on your hard drive. In the cloud, the data is already backed up. And again, it’s available everywhere — a very important factor in the emerging mobile workplace.

2. Collaborate on documents, don’t email them. I won’t name names, but recently I had to work with a group of people on a draft of a book. These people are intelligent people, but they are used to their old processes, and one of those is to use the Microsoft Word format for drafts, and to email revisions of the draft back and forth. In one case, they actually printed stuff out, marked up the printout, and FedExed it to me for further revisions.

But that’s outdated! With online apps such as Google Docs, real-time collaboration is so easy these days. You can be working on the same document at the same time, and changes are autosaved. You can see who made what changes, you can go back to previous versions of the draft, and you don’t have to worry about who has emailed the latest version. Best yet, if one of the collaborators is a Mac user (as I am), you don’t have to worry about whether he has a copy of Microsoft Office (which I don’t and never again will).

You can chat while collaborating. You can invite others to collaborate, and give them specific permissions.

There is no reason to email documents anymore when you collaborate, and for goodness sakes, there’s no reason to print and mail them to each other!

3. Collaboration is the new productivity. It used to be that we tried to work our butts off to produce, but mostly individually. Sure, there were meetings, and there were teams, but in the end we mostly did it individually. It’s still that way mostly.

But consider Wikipedia: if each of those articles were written by a single writer, and then went through the traditional editing and publishing process, it would’ve taken forever to publish that many articles. Not to mention the headaches and cost of coordinating such a vast project. But using collaborative technology (wikis), Wikipedia was able to do it at relatively low cost (mostly computers, not many people), and a massive project has been accomplished by collaboration. Groups of people collaborating in a smart way are way more productive than those people could be in the traditional way, individually.

I could name many more examples of open-source technology, from Firefox to Linux to OpenOffice to Gaim and so many more — these are excellent examples of software, done collaboratively. This model can be spread to almost any industry, and it’s vastly more productive.

That said, there will always be a need for individual work. Sometimes the best software is written by one genius, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But to get really massive things accomplished, use collaboration.

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” - Charles Darwin

4. People don’t have to be in an office. This is the one I wish most businesses would get, right now, right away. It’s so obvious once you get away from the traditional mindset. Traditionally, people worked in offices (and of course most still do). They go into the office, do their work, go to meeting, process paperwork, chat around the watercooler, clock out and go home.

These days, more and more, that’s not necessary. With mobile computing, the cloud, online apps and collaborative processes, work can be done from anywhere, and often is. More people are telecommuting. More people are working as freelancers or consultants. More businesses are allowing people to work from anywhere — not just telecommuting from home, but literally anywhere in the world. People are forming small businesses who have never met, who live on different continents. People have meetings through Skype or Basecamp group chat. They collaborate through wikis and Google apps.

If you are stuck in the traditional mindset, think hard about what things really need to be done in an office. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for working in an office, but often those barriers have other solutions you just haven’t explored yet.

The advantages of a decentralized workplace are many. Workers who have more freedom are happier, and often more passionate about their work. They enjoy collaborating with others who are smart and talented, and work is no longer drudgery. Flexible schedules work well for many people’s lifestyles. Mobile computing is actually good for many types of businesses where people need to be on the go. And what really matters isn’t that the worker is present, but that the work is being done.

5. Archive, don’t file. Traditionally, people filed paper documents in folders, labeled the folders, and organized them in cabinets. With more and more documents being stored in computers, this way of organizing carried over to the computer desktop, with folders and files all being organized (or disorganized, if you aren’t careful). This meant that either you spent a lot of time filing and organizing, or you lost things.

Today, many people still work that way, even if it doesn’t make the most sense. What makes more sense, with the power of computers and speed of today’s apps, is the method popularized by Gmail: archive and search. Instead of creating folders for everything, and then diligently filing, you could now just hit “archive” and then use Gmail’s very fast search engine to find what you need. Of course, you could still “tag” things which is almost like folders but more versatile, but even that is optional.

Why is this better? Think about how much time is saved, when you don’t have to file. It’s much easier, less headaches. You don’t have to remember to file and then lose things if you get disorganized. You can just search and find it.

This applies not only to emails, but to everything. Bookmarks are searchable in Delicious, my blog posts are searchable in WordPress, files are searchable on the desktop (on the Mac, Quicksilver and Spotlight both work very well; on the PC, Google Desktop also works well) or in an online server. Nothing needs to be filed — everything is searchable, and finding things is much faster through search than having to browse through files or directories.

Some people say they have trouble finding stuff sometimes through search. I haven’t had that problem yet, and it’s all I do these days. I think it just takes a bit of a shift in mindset.

6. Small teams are better than large teams. I know I said collaboration is the new productivity, but for many projects where a team is defined (as opposed to collaborative efforts like Wikipedia, where anyone can get involved), a small team works much better. It’s faster, nimbler, smarter, less bureaucratic, more creative.

Think of a large corporation like Microsoft, trying to start up a new enterprise. Microsoft has never been good at that, because of its size. It’s better at taking the innovation of other companies and leveraging existing dominant markets to make its new software or service successful. Or buying smaller companies who do something well and merging it with existing businesses. But when it tries to start something new on its own, the team doing so is well-funded, with the full force of the mega-corporation behind it … and yet has to go through so many bureaucratic steps, it’s like going through the old USSR government. The new product ends up having tons of features (most of which aren’t needed) and takes forever to launch.

New startups of just a handful of people — sometimes just 3-4 people — can create brilliant new products by keeping things small, lean and simple. They don’t included a bloated feature set, don’t have to worry about writing up technical specs and getting approval, don’t have to go through bureaucracy. They just write the code and make it work, as fast as possible, because otherwise they die. Small teams are lean and hungry, with more freedom and creativity.

7. Communication is a stream. This is something I still have trouble with. In the traditional model, paperwork comes into an inbox, and you process things sequentially until you’re done. Phone calls came in and you took them as they came, and took care of each one. Letters and faxes came in, and you dealt with them one at a time.

So when email became the norm, the same top-down, sequential processing applied. Getting Things Done uses this method — start from the top, and work to the bottom until you’re finished. Unfortunately, this is a bit overwhelming to many people these days, because there’s just too much coming in to handle this way.

So the new way of working sees communication as a stream. You go in and bathe in the stream, and then get out. It’s never-ending — think about when emails and IMs and Twitters and RSS feeds and forum posts and other types of things you read ever stopped coming in. It doesn’t happen. And because it’s never-ending, you can’t process from top to bottom, sequentially.

How do you work with the stream? You know it’s never-ending, and you don’t try to process it all. You take what you need, go in every now and then to see what’s going on, and don’t worry that you’re missing things. You’re always missing things — everybody is. No one can fully process this stream — it’s too overwhelming. Who can read all the blog posts out there? Who can respond to every email and Twitter and forum post? Who can read everything on Digg or Delicious or Stumbleupon? No one.

So you find what interests you, search for what you need, and pick and choose the things that matter most to you. Can you answer every email? No — so answer the important ones, and archive the rest. Can you know everything going on in your field or industry? No — so monitor what interests you, and when things really matter you’ll find out from your network of friends or blogs you read.

Don’t process everything — focus on what’s important to you.

8. Fewer tasks are better than many. With the overwhelming amount of information coming at us, there’s also an overwhelming amount of requests and things to do. While the old way of thinking said that we should Get Things Done, that’s just not possible anymore. And it’s not even desirable to do a huge task list — you’re just spinning your wheels.

Instead, focus on the few tasks that make the most difference — to your company, to your career, to your life. Simplify your task list.

9. Meeting (usually) suck. The traditional way of doing business includes company meetings throughout the day, taking an hour or more usually. This can eat up half of your day or more. Add to that individual meetings — at lunch, or having drinks, or just a one-on-one in the office — and you’re meeting more than you’re producing.

If you’ve sat through a lot of meetings, like I have, you know they’re almost always useless. Sure, sometimes they’re good, but most of the time they’re boring, full of chit-chat or useless information, and really can be accomplished through a simple email or phone call. They’re a waste of everyone’s time, and worse yet, most people know it. And nothing changes.

Instead, learn to accomplish the tasks of a meeting through an email, a quick phone call, a quick and focused IM, an online group chat if necessary. Collaborate through online tools, such as those mentioned above. Keep meetings to a bare minimum. Sure, you still need to socialize with people, and have actual conversations, but boring and useless meetings aren’t the best way to do that. If you control your company or division, do yourself and your company a favor by eliminating most of your meetings.

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

10. Open-source is better than closed. This is related to Rule 3, where collaboration is the key to productivity, but it goes a step beyond that: instead of being closed and protectionist, open things to the public. Be accountable, release copyright, allow people to share, and allow others to contribute.

The traditional way was to keep things a secret, and not let others be privy to your inside information. Only those on the inside were allowed to collaborate. If people tried to share without paying, you sued.

The open-source model works much better in many cases. It allows people to contribute, recognizing that not just a select few people have good ideas or talent. It allows people to share, recognizing that an idea grows in value as it becomes more widespread, and an artist grows in worth as he reaches a wider audience, and a program becomes more successful as it becomes more popular.

This model can be applied to many businesses, from publishing to online apps to information workers and more (even blogging!). It can even be applied to governments, if we open the spectrum of ideas a bit wider. Imagine a government where all information is available, making things more accountable. Imagine a government not just “of the people” in words, but action — the people are actually contributing to it and making it work. Imagine a government where everything is distributed, and democratic, and shared. It’s idealistic, but it’s something that can happen if we embrace the open-source model.

11. Rest is as important as work. In the traditional model, people worked long hours to accomplish as much as possible and get ahead in their careers. However, there is a high rate of burnout and job dissatisfaction and employee turnover in this model.

The new model recognizes that we’re people, not machines. That we have lives and interests outside work. That we need a good nap now and then (or even every day). That when we’re well rested, we work better, and we’re happier.

I’m not saying you have to rest just as much as you work, but that you should recognize that not only is nothing wrong with taking a nap, it’s actually a good thing. Work doesn’t have to be monotonous and done in 8-hour shifts — it can be fun, and done in productive bursts. See this article for more.

12. Focus, don’t crank. This is a corollary of Rule 8: instead of cranking through a lot of tasks and multi-tasking, learn to focus on important tasks and single-task.

In recent decades, multi-tasking has been seen as a productive thing — although the more traditional model, dating decades earlier, said that doing one task at a time was a good thing. Today, more and more people are realizing that when you constantly switch between tasks, you get very little done. You actually tend to procrastinate on the important stuff, and use multi-tasking as a way to postpone doing things. You can crank through tasks all day long, GTD style, and not get anything real done.

Instead, simplify, identify the essential, and learn to focus on one task at a time.

A Few Final Words

Not all of these “rules” are accepted by the majority of people today — in fact, most aren’t. But a growing number of people are working this way, and I think a majority of people will work this way in the near future.

Not all of these ways of working will work for you or your company. Some businesses and people are better suited for the traditional models, and that’s OK. Figure out what works for you, and what you do.

However, at least give these points some consideration. In some cases, they’ll be a better way of working, and can be good changes. I think this is exciting stuff, and I hope you’ll embrace these changes as I have.

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” - Harold Wilson

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Our new slideshow: pass the popcorn!

2008-08-21T12:01:57Z

Shared by Robert Scoble
Cool new feature from Flickr.

Do you remember sitting around in the dark after dinner at your grandparents’ place, watching old family movies and looking through photos?

We’ve launched a new and improved fullscreen slideshow on Flickr, designed and rebuilt from the ground up to help you sit back and watch the world go by.

A slideshow is available from just about every page where you see a group of photos on Flickr: photostream pages, sets, tag pages, group pools and search results. Just look for the slideshow icon.

One of the main improvements we’ve made is that you can watch videos as they appear in a slideshow. When we come to a video in a slideshow, we’ll play it before we move on to the next item.

You can also embed a slideshow on another website in bite-sized form. Just click the “Share” link from any slideshow, then copy and paste the embed code wherever you want.

Lastly, you can embiggen a slideshow! Click the full size icon on the bottom right of any slideshow to have it take over your screen. Rarrrrrrr!

So, dim the lights and give it a shot. As always, if you encounter bugs/issues or have feedback, head over to the Help Forum.

Apple tries to de-bug iPhone - USA Today

2008-08-20T12:04:10Z

Shared by MrMatt57
I just like the headline :)

ABC News

Apple tries to de-bug iPhone
USA Today - 5 hours ago
By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY Apple (AAPL) acknowledged Tuesday that a software update for the iPhone partly fixes the connection snags that have caused a global firestorm for the new iPhone 3G.
UPDATE 1-Apple updates iPhone software to fix glitches Reuters
A Fix For What Ails the iPhone. Maybe. Kind of. Hopefully. PC World
Ars Technica - ZDNet Blogs - The Associated Press - Gizmodo
all 326 news articles

Microsoft relaxes virtual machine rules - CNET News

2008-08-19T13:01:57Z

Microsoft relaxes virtual machine rules
CNET News - 57 minutes ago
Microsoft on Tuesday announced a change in its licensing policy to make it easier for businesses that want the ability to shift server software that is running in a virtual machine from one physical machine to another.
Microsoft formally lifts licensing restriction on virtual server ... NetworkWorld.com
Internet Research Group Publishes Research Study on Microsoft ... MarketWatch
CRN - CNNMoney.com
all 14 news articles

Global Software Testing Network uTest Opens to All

2008-08-19T16:01:43Z

Need your software tested for functionality, usability, and durability by a global supply chain of assessors? A company by the name of uTest, based in Ashland, Massachusetts, is today announcing the general availability of its network of service specialists for the software developer arena. The network is intended to offer a controlled, pseudo real-world trial of a particular application and present a quality feedback report, complete with bugs discovered and the like.

It calls its worldwide list of specialists the uTester Community, and so far it is has claimed companies such as Xobni, Move Networks, GoAnimate, Synthasite, RepairPal, and others as customers. Perhaps the most outstanding benefit of uTest’s international asset base is its on-demand character, allowing customers the convenience of accessing the powers that be out in the cloud when needed. For Internet companies managing a busy release/upgrade schedule, this can naturally be a major benefit for keeping the process expedient and maintaining a level of consistency in terms of the product they ultimately deliver to users.

Since its start, the network that uTest now manages has grown to become quite far-reaching, consisting of 8,300 people in over 130 countries. The company states rather proudly its recruitment of roughly 10% of the estimated global professional testing pool to its force. It makes note of the availability of a variety of skill sets among its ranks - novice to expert - to ensure that customers with budgets big and small can all exercise the services uTest provides.

Also, costly, long-term contracts aren’t required. Customers can either pay for annual subscriptions to tap the uTest Community, or on demand only when necessary. The company’s pay-for-performance and pay-per-bug mantra, which spans all available payment models, keeps costs directly in line with what uTest is able to pinpoint as vulnerable and needing attention, rather than simply issuing a blanket fee irrespective of the particular job. All in all, a boon to the developer world whose numbers of users increasingly necessitate superb quality assurance, yet who’s budgets may not leave ample room for big spending on a thorough pre-launch review.

uTest company profile provided by TradeVibes

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

uTest Next Steps: Facebook App Quality Assurance

Take it with you, the whole kit-and-caboodle

2008-08-18T21:51:00Z

Posted by Jeff Scudder, Google App Engine Team

One of my favorite things about the SDK is the fact that it works offline. When I'm without Internet access on a train, bus, or plane, I can still develop and test my application. I usually work with my browser open, one tab pointed squarely at localhost:8080 and another open to the App Engine documentation. Until recently, the documentation presented a bit of a challenge when I was without network connectivity. But now, we've released the App Engine documentation as a downloadable zip file.

On a related note, our documentation is now licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (except as otherwise noted). For full details on licensing see http://code.google.com/policies.html. As Dan Sanderson explains on the discussion group,

"These licenses permit you to re-distribute the documentation, and to 
distribute derivative works.  For example, you can translate the 
documentation into another language, and distribute the translation. 
You can also convert the documentation to a different format (such as 
PDF), and distribute the new format. "

We're also planning to bundle the documentation with future versions of the SDK.

Are We Walking a Fine Line with All This Openness?

2008-08-19T04:11:40Z

If there is one thing that can be said for the Web 2.0 movement and social media it is that its proponents are strong believers in openness and transparency. They are such strong believers that they have no problems leaving things like their cell phone numbers on their blogs, their addresses on their blog about pages or their complete traveling itinerary viewable by all on sites like Dopplr.

Back in September of 2007 I wrote a post on my own blog titled Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams. The idea was that there was no real need for any secret government data mining project since we all seemed to be so willing to give away our information for nothing.

This idea of online security has been going on for almost as long as two people could talk to each other over the Internet. With Web 2.0, social networking and social media there came the idea that security online was non-existent and the sooner we got used to that fact the better off we would be. I have never been a fully fledged proponent of this transparency idea to the degree that some seem to be. For me, I still believe that some modicum of personal information security is needed, despite having relaxed over the years from my original feelings on the matter.

For me, security and the protection of my personal data on the Web is extremely important and it is something I don’t believe that those involved with Web 2.0 or any social media service take seriously enough. Even today Chris Miller here on Mashable wrote about the idea of Social Network Identity theft and how users; unless you are someone like Robert Scoble, don’t have any rights should they find that someone has stolen their identity on some new social network.

Smaller social networking companies seem to be more open to step in the middle and assist in clearing up someone purporting themselves as you. However, who is to say there cannot be two people of the same name at a company? Who wins in that regard? First come first served? Why would any site wish to step in the middle, when deleting accounts or editing information holds them more liable in many people’s eyes. Larger companies, such as Google, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook seem to stay far away from the matter. You are hard pressed to find a statement or help item on the subject, much less who to contact when you are the victim.

However, as minor as this idea of social media identity theft might seem, it’s really on the tip of a potentially huge iceberg of danger that could face us as we open up more about ourselves on the Web. This was made abundantly clear in an excellent article today by Alexander van Elsas as he looked at both a popular Web service for travelers and a technology that is becoming commonplace in vehicles these days.

The first he talked about was Dopplr which is a social network that lets you enter in your travel plans primarily as private for friends and families. The person he used in his example was Robert Scoble and the fact that there are still a lot of details about his travel plans that are made available as you can see here. While this might seem slightly innocuous on the service Alexander quite rightly points out that this provides anyone in the mood for committing burglary the perfect time table and place to do the crime.

As far as the second idea, it requires nothing more than a nice expensive vehicle with built-in GPS being parked on the extended stay section of just about any airport. Something like this isn’t as far fetched as one might think as Alexander provides a true event where this happened

It turns out that car thieves in the Netherlands had found a very lucrative thieving method. They would go to the long parking area of our national airport and steal expensive cars with integrated car navigation systems. Then they would choose the “home” address on the navigation system and drive to the house of the unaware owners that were obviously on vacation. As a result, not only their expensive car was stolen, but their house was conveniently emptied too.

I have always maintained that no matter how good the intentions of people might be when they set about to change the world with all these cool social media services those services will get misused. While we might like to believe that all this openness and transparency might be a good thing for other people it is like being handed a shopping list. The problem is they are like us and they will more than willingly exploit any weakness available to their own end.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

EU Raises Microsoft Fine to a Total of $2 Billion
AOL Letting You Signup for the “Do Not Track” List
Microsoft & Yahoo Sign Pact Pushing Blog Censorship in China
Openness, Transparency and Web 2.0
Here’s An Idea: Location-Aware Disposable Apps For The iPhone
Bebo To Follow Facebook and Launch Developer Platform
Universal Music: MySpace and YouTube Owe Us Millions

Can We Please Define Cloud Computing?

2008-08-19T10:03:07Z

Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of articles pop up on my feeds and in my reading lists talking about the evils of cloud computing and several damnations of the term as being strictly something from the marketing department. For some reason surpassing understanding, the term has become the next “skunk drunk kool-aid” whipping boy, and many folks seem to want to inflate their credibility by attempting to deflate the cycle of hype before it even begins.

I’ll not focus on the annoying tendency of some other technology pundits to attempt to appear more intelligent than they really are by trying to predict the death or fakeness of [insert buzzword here]. I’m not saying that the pundits I cite in this article are those folks, but very often there are those who don’t understand what the term they rail against means, and the irony is they are using the technology they decry to distribute their message.

Aside from that, two articles have popped into my reader today that talk about this. One is by my esteemed collegue here at Mashable, Steven Hodson on his blog WinExtra, and the other is by Mike Elgan over at Datamation > IT Management. Steven’s post asked (and answered with the affirmative) whether “Cloud Computing is a New Flavor of Kool-Aid,” where Mike Elgan’s article asserted that “Cloud Computing is for the Birds.”

What did they say?
In Steven’s article, he quoted a comment that used a very ill-informed definition of cloud computing and then he ran with her assumption:

As Cyndy Aleo-Carreira pointed out in a comment on one of my posts about cloud computing

The only difference now is in the transparency of what’s happening. It’s been the rare company who’s actually owned their own servers; how much has historically been outsourced to companies like IBM and EDS? EDS was running the servers for a good chunk of Blue Cross/Blue Shield as far back as what? The 70s? 80s? And they had your medical information.

So not only are we dealing with an older technology that’s been given a new coat of paint; but we also are being asked to place too much of our trust and daily lives in the control of systems that are nothing more than black boxes. Black boxes that are in the control of corporations that tell you to just trust them – even as their systems go down.

Cyndy’s view of cloud computing is myopic in its sense of history, and grandiosely ignores the origin and definition of the term. The architecture she describes is more aptly called client/server architecture or mainframe architecture. Steven, by building on her incorrect assertion that this is cloud computing, leads him down a path that there is “nothing new under the sun.”

Similarly, Mike Elgan throws down a laundry list of ways he thinks that the term “cloud computing” has been misapplied:

“Cloud computing” has been used to mean grid computing, utility computing, software as a service, Internet-based applications, autonomic computing, peer-to-peer computing and remote processing. When most people use the term, they may have one of these ideas in mind, but the listener might be thinking about something else.

Here’s the thing, though: Mike Elgan isn’t completely wrong. Some of those types of computing technically fall into the definition of cloud computing, and someone who actually understands the origin of the word can see why that is and why the rest is a whole host of different of technology types.

Where he’s way off base is his conclusions:

“Cloud computing” is misleading. As a marketing buzzword, it’s used to suggest that something new and better is going on, when in fact there may be nothing new about it.

[...]

In other words, the “cloud” in “cloud computing” represents ignorance. And this ignorance is touted as one of the benefits of “cloud computing.” When companies hawk “cloud computing,” they’re selling the idea that ignorance is bliss. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. We’ll take care of everything.

Cloud computing simply increases the number of things that can go wrong. And go wrong they do. In the past few weeks, GoToMeeting, Amazon’s EC2 and S3, SiteMeter, Gmail, Netflix and MobileMe each experienced significant outages.

I don’t think it means what you think it means.
It surprises me that Mike, writing for an IT publication, doesn’t recognize the origin of the term. Cloud Computing comes from the cloud symbol on a network designers flowchart. I don’t have a long history with being familiar with network design, admittedly (I’ve only been designing and implementing networks since 1994), but the first time I saw the cloud symbol widely used was when it referred to (if I remember correctly) MCI’s old ATM cloud. When a packet of information was sent to the Internet and hit the ATM cloud, the routers analyzed traffic patterns and that packet was routed dynamically across the cloud based upon how it would get there the quickest.

This technology is fairly widespread now, and most Internet routing techniques operate on these principals, which is probably why the term dropped from use. The cloud isn’t just used for that particular example, though. In a network diagram, it can be used to represent any complex network that can route data reliably without it being necessary to detail all the possible paths inside that cloud the data can take.

Where this intersects with Web 2.0 is when the cloud started becoming a place where you could not only push data through but where you could offload computational cycles. The first really solid example of a type of cloud computing I ran into was the distributed.net project. Purists now call the concept grid computing, but I like to think that there are enough similarities between the two to lump them together.

In a nutshell, the project was a successful attempt to create a cloud-based (or in their terminology: distributed) computer. There was a contest at the time of the inception of the project to crack the RC5 encryption routine, and to do so, the project team created installable clients that would take tiny bits of the RC5 encrypted data and attempt to brute force hack it.

Let’s skip some of the history lesson, already.
Rather than walk through all the historical examples of offloading computing to the cloud, let’s look at the most widespread examples today. If you search through Mashable’s archives for the term “cloud computing,” you’ll find that nearly all of the pieces make reference to either distributed computing, or something akin to Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing Service.

In essence (and I’ve had to explain the service about three times this weekend to technical lay persons), Amazon’s cloud is about redundancy and scalability. Your server and computing environment exists in a virtual sense, and it isn’t tied to any one particular machine. If one or five or fifty machines fail in the server farm, theoretically the environment is redundant enough to handle the shift without interruption in service. If your server is suddenly Slashdotted, then you’ll be allotted more resources for the duration of the traffic spike.

It’s a completely different system from the mainframes of old, though, because there are parallel, scalable, intelligent and redundant systems in play with this model, and in most of cases in context to Cyndy’s original example, you’re talking about a single processor environment. Most importantly, Cyndy’s example is at best of a computer on the other side of a cloud. The processing is not taking place on the cloud.

But don’t these Web 2.0 thingies go down all the time?
Mike Elgan lists a number of services (GoToMeeting, Amazon’s EC2 and S3, SiteMeter, Gmail, Netflix and MobileMe) that have gone down lately, and says that this is evidence that you must be some sort of ignoramus to trust cloud computing over traditional server environments. The problem here is that several of the examples he cites are in no way connected to the concepts of cloud computing, and a couple others are only tertiarily related to the term.

GoToMeeting is an example of remote access run through a central authentication system. SiteMeter is third-party analytics package that failed due to a JavaScript error. Netflix is a mail order business that failed due to a database configuration error. Even if you dilute the meaning of cloud computing to encompass every computer with clouds in the sky above it (as he seems to have done), his argument still breaks down since he isn’t suggesting we all go back to the stone age and use an Abacus for everything.

The truth is that all systems eventually fail. There is no such thing as 100% up time, no matter what it is. Indeed it is important to reduce failure points within a systems’ architecture to increase up time, but it stands to reason that the better pathway towards accomplishing it isn’t to have a legion of distributed experts at every single organization running in-house servers of varying levels of efficiency and reliability. If you’re an average startup or small business, it is absolutely a wise move to trust experts with a reputation and business at stake when it comes to keeping your architecture online.

Put another way, ignorance of systems engineering and network architecture is not only bliss, it’s sound business. As elastic computing and hosted software solutions become commoditized, commonplace and increasingly efficient, what’s the purpose of hiring an in-house IT staff in the majority of small business situations? If the goal in business is to make money, why waste it on an automated solution you can buy at a fraction of the cost.

Simply because you can’t hold a cloud doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Cloud computing is admittedly a broad term. The swath cuts across a lot of specific technologies like server virtualization across multiple machines, certain software written for the web, and distributed computing. But within the broader definition of software types, there are clean delineations to be found.

Despite this, and as is often the case in tech marketing, a lot of folks will latch onto a term and use it before they clearly understand what it means. This will cause a knee-jerk reaction from pundits to call out the marketers on their ‘blatant lies’ and ‘brain-dead zealotry’ about the products and services they represent.

Soon enough, the echo chamber amplifies the sentiment because it isn’t cool not to hate on the new buzzword and then there is a PR problem to manage. The PR and marketing pundits take a look at the chaos and wonder where the wheels came off the bus, and in the ultimate in meta, they analyze the analysis trends. The PR professionals who read them send out more press releases attempting to clarify their message around the term, and the cycle begins anew.

Then the investors all look at the cycle of hype and anti-hype and suddenly decide that it’s time to pull resources out of “cloud computing,” investments. Meanwhile all the end-users roll their eyes at the hullabaloo and wonder who the heck put any of us in charge in the first place.

Meanwhile, all it could be avoided if someone took the time to, you know, look up the definition of the word.

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Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Mosso Updates Pricing Structure; A Better Model for Cloud Computing?
Nirvanix Offers 30 Day “Fee Holiday” to Lure Amazon S3 Customers
Offline Google Docs Access Deployed
Yahoo’s Supercomputing Initiative Running Hadoop
RightScale Pulls $4.5 Million From the Clouds [podcast]
Network.com - Sun Provides Grid Computing for $1/CPU-hour
CPUShare - Distributed Computing Marketplace

Apple averaging 95 iPhone 3G sales per store, per day - Apple Insider

2008-08-13T14:49:39Z

TopNews

Apple averaging 95 iPhone 3G sales per store, per day
Apple Insider - 9 hours ago
By Katie Marsal After spending 25 hours observing sales of iPhones at Apple's national retail chain, investment bank Piper Jaffray now estimates the company is on track to announce a more than fourfold increase in sales of the handset during its fiscal ...
Analyst: Apple will sell 4.47 million iPhones this quarter CNNMoney.com
Analyst: Apple will sell at least 4.47 million iPhones this quarter ZDNet
Barron's Blogs - PC World - Macsimum - Macworld
all 60 news articles

Password Resets Worse Than Reusing Old password

2008-08-14T00:26:00Z

narramissic writes "We all know well the perils of password reuse. But what about the information used to reset passwords? Many sites use a standard set of questions — your mother's maiden name, the name of your best friend, what city you grew up in, or what brand your first car was. And you probably have a standard set of responses, making them easy to remember but not very secure. 'The city you grew up in and your mother's maiden name can be derived from public records. Facebook might unwittingly tell the name of your best friend. And, until quite recently, Ford with its 25% market share had a pretty good chance of being the brand of your first car,' says security researcher Markus Jakobsson. But 'password reset does not have to be a weak link,' says Jakobsson. 'Psychologists know that people's preferences are stable — often more so than long term memory. And very few preferences are recorded in public databases.'"

AppStore Developer TapTapTap Publishes Sales Figures

2008-08-14T04:57:41Z

iPhone application development house taptaptap has published sales figures for the first month of sales for their two AppStore applications, bringing further insight into overall sales volume and figures for the online store. The two applications developed by the company are WhereTo, an application that provides a more general GPS interface to the iPhone with location-based services, and Tipulator, a simple tip calculator.

WhereTo retails for $2.99 in the store and 24,094 copies were sold in the first month - netting the company just over $50,000 in revenue after Apple took their cut (it currently ranks #69 on the top paid application list). Tipulator retails for 99 cents, and sold 3,168 copies which resulted in just over $2,200 of revenue (it is currently unranked). The table below outlines overall sales volumes and revenues for each application:

taptaptap AppStore sales and revenue numbers for US sales, month 1

	WhereTo	TipCalculator
URL	AppStore	AppStore
Price	$2.99	$0.99
Number Sold	24,094	3,168
Gross Sales	$72,041.06	$3,136.32
Net Sales (after AppStore cut)	$50,597.40	$2,217.60
Total Gross		$75,177.38
Total Net		$52,815

The resulting net profit and sales figures are good for a small company that has developed one application that is relatively sophisticated, and another that is very straight forward and simple but yet still brings in $2,000 a month. There is definitely great revenue potential for developers of iPhone applications, as users of the AppStore and the iPhone in general are more likely to pay for applications. Integrating with iTunes makes the process simple for the user, but for the developer poses a challenge as all applications must be submitted to Apple and must meet their approval.

We should also note that while both of these applications have done well, their download figures unsurprisingly pale in comparison to those of Facebook and Tap Tap Revenge, both of which have over 1 million users. The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content (though it remains to be seen what restrictions Apple will place on this kind of strategy).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Let Your Theme Song be Your Password

2008-08-12T09:19:00Z

An anonymous reader writes "The latest proposed solution to the fact humans suck at using passwords properly is to let people use digital objects, like mp3s, photos or videos instead. A file is hashed into a unique, secure string that acts as the real password. A paper on the idea was put forward in a recent Usenix conference on hot topics in security, and a Firefox extension that implements the idea is available too."

Turn Your iPhone or iPod Touch Into a Multi-Room Wireless Music Remote [Music]

2008-08-12T16:00:00Z

For a cool $1000, you can buy the Sonos Bundle 150 and wirelessly play music from a single remote control in two separate rooms in your house. On the other hand, for about $100 or less if you've already got the right equipment, you can get the same functionality from your iPhone or iPod touch. Let's take a closer look at how to use the iTunes Remote application for the iPhone 2.0 with inexpensive equipment you may already have to remote control music playback wirelessly in any room in your home.

The Sonos homepage describes its popular but expensive product thusly:

To start playing music, just grab the full-color wireless Controller and simply pick a room, pick a song and hit play. With the Controller in hand you'll have instant access to your entire music collection....

When you're done here, any iPhone or iPod touch will do exactly the same thing, in addition to all that email, calendar, internet, and mapping functionality that's made them so popular already—and for hundreds of dollars less. You can play music in any room individually, or in several rooms with the music playback synced between rooms.

The special sauce in this setup is a feature of Apple's AirPort Express wireless routers called AirTunes, which streams iTunes music wirelessly over your home network to any room in your house. AirTunes isn't new by any means, but with the advent of the new Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch running 2.0 software, its usefulness has increased dramatically; it's become a Sonos killer.

What You'll Need

I'm going to price out the cheapest (or nearly cheapest) version of this setup, including the price of the iPhone or iPod touch. If you already have any of the necessary equipment, the price drops significantly.

1. iPhone or iPod touch: $199 (8GB iPhone minus wireless costs) or $299 (8GB touch)
2. Linksys WRT54GL Wireless Router: $50 (not the only supported router; see below)
3. Headphone-to-RCA Cable: $2 (I'm estimating, but you can get these things cheap at your local RadioShack.)
4. Apple AirPort Express: $100

Grand Total: $351 (iPhone) or $451 (iPod touch)

Cutting Costs

I actually had all of these things on hand, so it didn't cost me a dime. If you've already got an iPhone or iPod touch, the price drops to a meager $151 for the router, headphone-to-RCA cord, and AirPort Express router.

The Linksys WRT54GL router is not required, but it's inexpensive and it's what I'm using. It's likely you've already got a basic wireless router on your home network, and as long as you can set it up as a Wireless Distribution System (WDS), you probably won't need to buy a new router. The Apple AirPort Extreme ($180) is the easiest to set up with an AirPort Express, naturally. In my setup below, I used the much cheaper, much cooler WRT54GL running the free, open-source Tomato router firmware (which I showed you how to install here). The previously mentioned DD-WRT firmware supports WDS as well. If your current router supports WDS, you can shave an extra $50 off the setup price.

Because it's made specifically to extend iTunes wirelessly, the $100 AirPort Express wireless router is the one must-have piece of equipment—no substitutions here. You'll need one for every additional set of speakers you want to add to your set wireless remote control setup. (Of course you can find them cheaper on Craigslist or eBay.)

The added bonus to all of this is that we're setting up the AirPort Express as a wireless network bridge. That means that not only will it give you the very cool music functionality—it'll also extend the range of your wireless network by boosting your signal in the room you've got it installed. It'll still show up as one Wi-Fi network to all of your wireless devices, so you don't have to do anything special to take advantage of it once you've set it up.

Gather Your Setup Information

Before you get started tweaking settings, let's write down a few important bits of information to make things easier on us down the road. You may find this information in varying places depending on your base router, but the information you need to gather is the same.

First, head to the Basic Network settings page (Tomato link) on your router and find the section Wireless section. Copy your Wireless MAC address, which should look something like XX:00:X0:0X:00:XX. Also write down your SSID and Channel, and take note of your B/G mode.

Next, plug your AirPort Express into a power outlet and connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable. (I'm setting up the AirPort Express on a Mac, but it should work similarly on a Windows PC.) Open the AirPort Utility, and after a few seconds it should scan and recognize your AirPort Express on your network. Once it does, click on the Express in the AirPort Utility sidebar and write down the AirPort ID (which is really just the MAC address).

Now that you've got all that, you're ready for the heavy lifting.

Set Up Your Base Router

This setup should work with any router that supports WDS—check your router's manual and/or administration interface to find out if it does. If you want to follow along exactly with me, I'm using the open-source Tomato firmware (if you don't have it installed on a supported device, here's how).

Return to the Basic Network settings page (Tomato link). The first thing you need to do is change your Wireless Mode to Access Point + WDS.

Next head down to the Security section and change your wireless security type to WEP if it's not what you're using already. Set a passphrase and generate your keys (or just let Tomato randomly choose a secure option for you). Copy down your first key—you'll need it later to set up the AirPort Express and to connect other devices to your wireless network (including your iPhone or iPod touch).

(NOTE: WEP security was an unfortunate concession; I normally recommend the more secure WPA2 Personal, but I had trouble getting the AirPort Express to connect correctly as a wireless bridge using WPA2 security. WEP 128, on the other hand, worked fine.)

Finally, move down to the WDS section and enter the MAC address of your AirPort Express (the AirPort ID we wrote down earlier). Make sure the drop-down is set to Link With. Once you've finished all these steps, hit Save at the bottom of the page. Your router will update your settings, and you're ready to set up the AirPort Express.

Set Up Your AirPort Express Router

Start up the AirPort Utility, again with the AirPort Express plugged into your main router with an Ethernet cord. Click the AirPort Express name in the sidebar. This time, click the Manual Setup button. We'll be making a lot of changes in the AirPort Express setup to get it working as a wireless bridge (and iTunes extender), so make sure you've got the information we gathered above on hand.

First, click the Base Station tab and give your AirPort Express a name (this is the name that will show up in iTunes and on your iPhone remote). I chose Living Room, because that's where my AirPort Express will be. Next, set a password for the AirPort Express. This password isn't actually important for our setup as far as I can tell, but it's unavoidable. Make it anything you want.

Now head to the Wireless tab and change the Wireless Mode drop-down to Participate in a WDS network. Set the network name to the SSID, the Radio Mode to the wireless B/G mode, and the channel to match the broadcast channel of your base router as you wrote them down above. Set your wireless security to WEP 128 bit, and enter the key you generated above.

Now click on the WDS tab, where you should select WDS remote in the WDS Mode drop-down and paste your base router's MAC address (the one we wrote down above) in the text box labeled WDS Main.

Next click on the Internet tab at the top of the AirPort Utility. You shouldn't have to do much here, but make sure that you're connecting using WDS (you shouldn't have a choice at this point), set Configure IPv4 to "Using DHCP," and set Connection Sharing to Off (Bridge Mode).

At this point, you've got just one more thing left to do. Go to the Music tab and tick the checkbox next to Enable AirTunes. If you want to, set a speaker password (I wouldn't unless you've got a good reason to).

Once you've done all that, click the Update button. The AirPort Utility will update your AirPort Express with all your new settings and your AirPort Express will restart. If everything went as planned, your AirPort Express is now set up as a wireless bridge for your base router, and you're ready to stream your music wirelessly to any room in your house. (Hint: Your router will glow amber until it's working, at which point it'll glow green. If it's flashing amber, that means there was a problem.)

Hook Up the AirPort Express to Your Stereo

Unplug your AirPort Express from the router and the power outlet and move it to wherever you plan on setting it up (mine's behind my TV). Plug it in, and plug the headphone-to-RCA converter into it and your stereo. If you have a fancier stereo than I do, the AirPort Express supports digital signals, so the right kind of S/PDIF cord would work as well.

Enable AirTunes in iTunes

The next to last thing you need to do is open up the iTunes preferences and tell your computer to look for remote speakers with iTunes. You'll find this checkbox in the Advanced tab of the iTunes preferences.

Once this is done, you've already got wireless streaming set up in iTunes. When it's working, you should see a drop-down in the bottom right corner of iTunes where you can choose which speaker set you want playing or choose multiple speakers.

Finally, it's time to set up our iPhone or iPod touch as remotes.

Install and Set Up Remote on Your iPhone or iPod touch

After all the sweat you've put in so far, this step is dead simple. We've already covered how to set up the Remote App on your iPhone, so I won't go into all the details here.

Once Remote is set up and running on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can play back and remotely control your entire iTunes library from anywhere in your house you've got an AirPort Express set up. To toggle your speakers, just hit Settings in the Remote app and toggle the speakers on or off.

How Does It Work?

After a short time, I can tell you nothing feels better on an afternoon of household chores than walking around your home to a unified soundtrack in every room. I've only got one AirPort Express with AirTunes set up on my network, but you could easily add more rooms and speakers at just $100 or so a pop. If I'm just going to be hanging out in the living room, I'll turn off the computer speakers and just play from there. Likewise, the music stays at my computer when that's where I am.

The iPhone Remote app also works with the Apple TV, but I haven't tried it with this setup. If you have—or you've done multi-room remote control with your iPhone or iPod touch and AirTunes—share your experience in the comments. If you're looking for a similarly cheap wireless solution, check out Gizmodo's review of the EOS Wireless iPod Dock and Speaker System.

Now if only the music followed me based on proximity to wireless nodes and transferred to my iPod headphones when I left my wireless network. A boy can dream, can't he?

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who wants nothing more than to be bathed uniformly in music no matter what room of his apartment he's in. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Translations on your iPhone

2008-08-11T16:52:00Z

Have you ever been traveling and suddenly realized that you didn't know how to ask the taxi driver to take you to your hotel? It's happened to us too, so the mobile team has put together an iPhone interface for Google Translate, our machine translation project. Read more about it on the Google Mobile blog.

Posted by Allen Hutchison and David Singleton, Software Engineers

Apple Sells 60 Million iPhone Apps, Jobs Confirms Kill Switch

2008-08-11T10:10:00Z

Steve Jobs tell the Wall Street Journal that there were 60 million downloads from the iPhone app store in the first month for a total of $30 million. Jobs also confirmed the remote kill switch. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."

Contemplating Microsoft Silverlight’s Post-Olympic Fortunes (Poll)

2008-08-09T19:24:24Z

The volume of video coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics provided by NBC this year is unprecedented. The delivery of visual fodder for athletics fans will, when all is said and done, run thousands of hours in aggregate. Already, a good amount of on-demand and live streaming options have been made available. And while some content has proliferated in non-officially-sanctioned places, too, according to The New York Times, NBC is already touting a page view count of 70 million for the big “08/08/08.” That’s up from a 20 million peak in 2004. NBC says that this year’s opener translates to 4.2 million unique users, or an increase of nearly 500% from four years prior.

Of course, NBC is not along in making a splash on the Web. Microsoft is as well. Earlier this year it announced having signed a deal to provide its Silverlight video utility as the exclusive mechanism for viewers to employ when watching events at NBCOlympics.com. So now that the games have commenced, we put a few questions to you: Did the NBC-Microsoft play convince you to download Silverlight 2.0, if you hadn’t already done so? What’s your experience? Does it match or exceed your experiences with the latest Flash iteration? Furthermore, will Microsoft’s Olympic arrangement propel its cross-platform plugin far into the mainstream in the sense of being a permanent challenger to Adobe?

What’s your take on Silverlight’s post-Olympic future?
( polls)

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Microsoft, NBC Join for Olympics Coverage Online
Microsoft Silverlight Media Player Being Promoted by MLB
Microsoft and Internap Partner to Distribute Silverlight to Radio Stations
Blogs are Going to the Olympics
Microsoft Launches Silverlight Streaming
Redmond To Bring Silverlight Off The Web…Eventually
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Why COBOL Could Come Back

2008-08-07T17:46:00Z

snydeq writes "Sure 'legacy systems archaeologist' ranks as one of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT, but COBOL skills might see a scant revival in the wake of California's high-profile pay-cut debacle. After all, as Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister points out, new code may in fact be more expensive than old code. According to an IDC survey, code complexity is on the rise. And it's not the applications that are growing more complex, but the technologies themselves. 'Multicore processing, SOA, and Web 2.0 all contribute to rising software development costs,' which include $5 million to $22 million spent on fixing defects per company per year. Do the math, and California's proposed $177 million nine-year modernization project cost will double, McAllister writes. Perhaps numbers like those won't deter modernization efforts, but the estimated 90,000 coders still versed in COBOL may find themselves in high demand teaching new dogs old tricks."