eBiz98 Bits and Pieces

Chromebooks for Business

jorper98 — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:47:33 +0000

For the past 30 years we have struggled (and some of us made a living) with managing, configuring and supporting PCs. For just as many years folks have been talking about ways to make this easier. After all maintaining PCs can be a very expensive endeavor for businesses and a time consuming task for homes and families.

For many years Google has been leading the way of the web-as-the-only platform you need for your computing needs. Google was a web-company, before the web was really cool. They had the vision and foresight to stick with it.

Other companies (Oracle, Citrix, Wyse, IBM to mention a few) have tried to embrace the ‘thin-computing model, but unfortunately has not taken roots in the mass-market.

On May 11th Google announced (availability on June 15) of Chromebooks for Businessand businesses should be excited!

The offering can be summarized as follows:

For a flat-fee of $28 ($20 for educational and government) per user per month, you get: Hardware, Software, Support and hardware refreshes.

Software *and* hardware as a Service!

What makes this possible?

Several converging technologies: Browser advances (Chrome), Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Better Processors; HTML5, and many more..

Bottom line: “You can do everything on the web”

I am excited about this latest chapter of computing. The disruption of the model that has been in place for 30 years is well overdue. The possibilities are endless!

The Future of Textbooks Finally here

jorper98 — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:52:10 +0000

Check out the demo of inkling.com at the D9 conference.

Impressive.

The old Cable/TV is history? (finally)

jorper98 — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:12:07 +0000

A recent piece of news captures (finally) the truth about the feeling everyone has about their cable serif. It is overpriced and there is never anything on when one finally has the time to sit down in front of the TV.

Cable Lost 500,000 subscribers in a single quarter

http://www.techspot.com/news/41013-cable-lost-500000-subscribers-in-q3-thanks-to-the-web.html

In a related piece, one of the Internet research firms, published a report that states that Netflix is the site that consumes the most Internet bandwidth.

We are home, have not cut the cable, but we have been talking about for a while, as most of our watching is done via Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and other sites.

I love the fact that we are not alone in this trend. The old system needs to be Gone!

(Written on WordPress for iPad)

Cracking Open the iPad

jorper98 — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:31:19 +0000

For those curious on what the inside of the iPad in all of its glory look like a good vide by TechRepublic here.

Also for more photos go here

Thanks TechRepublic!

AWS: Free inbound Data transfers until June2010

jorper98 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:57:11 +0000

From Amazon Web Services Email today:

Free Inbound Data Transfer (until June 30, 2010) Data Transfer into AWS will be free of charge from now through June 30, 2010, making it even easier for customers to get their data into AWS. This applies to data transfer into Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Simple Queue Service, and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. Other applicable charges for use of these services continue to apply.

Now that is a good deal. Once your data is there, you can then do incremental backups and at minimal cost moving forward.

iPhone vs Palm Pre

jorper98 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:38:24 +0000

No this will not be a full comparasion or anything like that, just a quick rambling in myblog regardind my observations between the two platforms, after using both for about a couple of months now.

Although I secretly wanted for the Pre to be the one to write about, I have to say that iPod as a platform is definitelly ahead of the game… I realize this is a bit unfair, as the iPhone platform has been much longer in the market place, but …

My questions for both platforms are:

What’s up with no Flash capabilities? Is it a licensing thing???
On the camera – Why not a digital zoom 2x or 3x ? Is it a hardware limitation?

I really like my Pre but I do have a couple of challenges with it:

Why in the world would Pre developers not have an on screen keyboard available?
I know there are a couple of ways to hack it, but come-on… Why not make it available standard.
Why not a Video recorder ?
The device is capable and as I understand it outstanding hardware, but it came with no software…
PLEASE open up the Pre AppStore soon! – The 40 or so applications you have right now are just killing the momentum… – It can be and we can have so much more –

Exploring Ning – eBiz98 has its own now.

ebiz98 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:43:06 +0000

I know, I will say it…

I am a bit late to this party but I decided to explore its capabilities and now eBiz98 has its own Ning community site…

Ning has gotten excellent reviews lately

Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks launched in October 2005. Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini…

What attracted me the most about this platform are a couple of items:

It is free – I always like these!
It has been created to allow customizable themes, templates, csss, and much more - Although there is a general format – what you can put in it is almost endless -
Looks like new applications (kind of like widgets or webelements) have been added.

You can join and see my progress at : http://ebiz98.ning.com

Microsoft Project Natal – couple of thoughts.

ebiz98 — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:48:23 +0000

Everyone knows by now that Microsoft’s Project Natal is the talk of the town since it was introduced at E3 early this week. In fact there is one headline I read that said something like : “How Microsoft stole E3″

Very cool technology, which is finally enabled by the power of faster more powerful processors
No need for specialized touch monitors! – The potential is incredible.

Two thoughts come to mind:
1) Please do not put this on planes! – Can you imagine?
2) *Please* put a feature that wakes the computer up instead of just going in front of it.
Something original like “Computer” and then it wakes up

An excellent video (trailer) of the vision popped up in YouTube follows:

Enjoy!

Google Wave Announcement

ebiz98 — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 04:12:57 +0000

Yesterday, during the keynote on day two of the Google I/O Conference , Google presented the vision their vision for collaboration and communication platform which they have called it – very appropriately – Google Wave. It has been a long time – since I have been so excited about how can we use technology to truly help the way we interact and communicate.

Google’s Wave product demonstration was impresive, and in our opinion, represents a significant leadership leap in the space of collaboration and communication technology.

A must see video of the presentation is at http://wave.google.com

If you have an extra 90 minutes, check out the Day One keynote of the Conference – It starts a bit slow but the demos are impressive!

Google is most certainly showing strong leadership in the market. Well Done!

Newsworthy…

ebiz98 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:52:31 +0000

Amazon.com does it again !

A quick follow-up to my December 29, 2007 posting , Sony/BMG has joined the bandwagon to offer their music catalog through the Amazon DRM-free service. This makes all of the major record label’s catalogs available there. – Now that is cool (and something that iTunes can not claim)