Cloudkick

The digital counterpart of that old business chestnut that you can’t manage what you can’t measure may be, “You can’t manage what you can’t monitor.”  Nowhere is that more true than when you’re trying to take advantage of cloud services and are using multiple providers. They all have different dashboards, which makes monitoring their performance an onerous chore. Cloudkick, a Y Combinator-incubated startup, has developed a web application that provides a unified view of multiple service providers to help companies monitor performance. It enables users to monitor and manage cloud service providers that include Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EVC2, Linode, GoGrid Slicehost, RimuHosting and VPOS.NET. Cloudkick is available through subscription-based plans and a free developer plan.

Features:

• Load, CPU, bandwidth, and memory monitoring
• Alerts including SMS and Email
• Advance and innovative performance graphs
• Diagnostics performance
• Autosetup
• Multiple users per account
• Change-log tool

Alex Polvi, CEO and founder, introduced Cloudkick last year at the Under the Radar Conference

Desktop in Your Pocket: Citrix’s Nirvana Phone

By Sheila Shayon

Nirvana has arrived on your smart phone. Citrix Systems, Inc., a leading provider of virtualization, networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies, recently unveiled its nirvana phone. You can leave your laptop at home or at the office, and use your smartphone for full access to your main system - just plug in full-size peripherals and have access - not to pared-down mobilized apps, but the full nirvana.

A mobile worker simply docks his or her smart phone and enjoys the full functionality of a desktop PC. “The paradigm shift is adding video out functionality, and a large screen and keyboard. Previous attempts to make smaller PCs or handsets failed, as they were too big, too heavy and too expensive,” says Chris Fleck, VP of community and solutions development. Nirvana enables computing locally, with a small form factor and compatibility envelope.”

Citrix’s nirvana phone is a critical advance in the convergence of mobile devices and cloud computing. Its reference architecture comes from a partnership with OK Labs and several ecosystem partners including semiconductor suppliers, handset OEMs, enterprise IT suppliers and mobile network operators (MNOs).

OK Labs, the global leader in virtualization software for mobile devices, consumer electronics and embedded systems, is backed by the largest independent team of microkernel developers, and OKL4 is deployed on more than 500 million mobile phones worldwide.

The architecture leverages Mobile-to-Enterprise (M2E) virtualization, cloud computing and wireless connectivity (3G, WiFi, Bluetooth). It includes emerging functionality in mobile chipsets and handsets such as full video resolution and HD output.

According to Citrix, first adopters include:

• Power Users: people who work from several locations, using fewer devices
• Road Warriors: travel without your laptop and deliver presentations easily
• ER Heroes: quickly plug into a display anywhere in the hospital
• Selective Shoppers: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
• Roaming Consultants: select a cubicle, dock and work.

Although first adopters are primarily IT and mobile workers, the nirvana phone applies equally to consumers. “Instead of connecting through a company cloud, you can be at work and connect remotely to your PC at home. You can use it with your HDTV living room display; it works with digital picture frames. Most hotels have in-room flat panel displays, and guest business offices - all are compatible with the nirvana phone,” Fleck says. “Movies may be one of the first built-in capabilities for the consumer.”

According to Citrix research, 70 percent of people would prefer to leave their laptops at home when traveling. Nirvana phones, dubbed a “virtual desktop in your pocket,” use mobile virtualization to deliver the “full productivity experience” from any location with wireless coverage.

Citrix is in talks with all the major carriers, Fleck says. “We don’t take sides. We are device agnostic and connection enablers.” Asked about the name, Fleck says, “We looked at the current limitations of smartphones, and looked at what the ideal phone could be - taking it beyond what is, to nirvana - right in your pocket or your purse.”

Black Duck Software Top Picks Part 2

By Chris R. Vaccaro

Cracking Black Duck Software’s list of open source Rookies of the Year for 2009 are AbiCloud and Rainmeter.

While Black Duck dissected a list of 19,000 projects and chose the top 10 to announce in its annual report, Digital Media Buzz is breaking down its favorite four. Click here for the first story.

AbiCloud, which grabbed the No. 6 ranking on Black Duck’s list, is infrastructure software that focuses on the creation and integral management of public and private clouds based on heterogeneous environments, according to a release from the company.

“The project aims to offer users a tool with the capacity for scaling, management, automatic and immediate provision of servers, storage, networks and virtual network devices, as well as applications,” according to Black Duck.

Most companies have specific needs for system architecture. “Not being able to attend to these requirements on demand in an adequate manner makes users feel defrauded by a bad quality service and hence no longer use the product,” says an overview of the project on AbiCloud’s website.

The project allows companies to manage users, appliance libraries, virtual infrastructures, physical infrastructures and private networks, among other integral business structures.

Moving to a different angle of technology, Rainmeter made the top 10 list at No 8. This customizable PC resource meter displays data in different formats. It can measure, “CPU load, allocated memory, network traffic, performance data, uptime, free disk space, and more,” says Black Duck.

According to Rainmeter, the program makes it easy to keep an eye on your system resources, like memory and battery power, or your online data streams, including email, RSS feeds, and weather forecasts by way of desktop skins.

“Many skins are even functional: they can record your notes and to-do lists, launch your favorite applications, and send your tweets to Twitter — all in a clean, unobtrusive interface that you can rearrange and customize to your liking,” Rainmeter’s website says.

According to Peter Vescuso, Black Duck’s executive vice president of marketing, his company evaluated project popularity using a scoring system that awards points for the number of releases within a project, the number of developers involved, and the number of websites linked to the project.

“The Rookies of the Year projects represent some of the hottest areas in software — cloud, gaming, mobile, healthcare - and open source at its best, communities identifying problems and developing solutions in an open, collaborative process,” Vescuso says. “Some of the projects are niche and others are well-known, but all represent the broadening innovation and influence of open source software.”

Black Duck Software Top Picks Part 1

By Chris R. Vaccaro

Black Duck Software recently sifted through 19,000 open source projects and chose the “top 10 Rookies of the Year” for 2009.

“From a Twitter client for World of Warcraft to a natural language processing system for the clinical health care community, open source projects have the answer to an increasing range of development challenges,” says Black Duck Software in a statement.

According to Peter Vescuso, Black Duck’s executive vice president of marketing, his company evaluated project popularity using a scoring system that awards points for the number of releases within a project, the number of developers involved, and the number of websites linked to the project.

DMB chose four of the top 10 that pertain most to digital media technology professionals. Two are featured in this story. Click here for the second story.

Mobile Browser Definition File ranks third on Black Duck’s list. The project provides information for mobile phones and devices, “presenting server applications with a set of 67 capabilities or properties - from screen size to cookie support - to describe a mobile client device.”

According to information on MDBF’s website, at run time the definition file ASP.NET uses this .browser file, along with the information in the HTTP request header to determine what type of device/browser has made the request and what are the capabilities of that device. This information is exposed to the developer through the Request.Browser property and allows them to tailor the presentation of their Web page to suit the capabilities of the target device.

Black Duck’s fourth selection in the top 10 is Google’s Redis or Remote Dictionary Server, which is an advanced key-store database that supports quick access to a dataset. Simply put, it’s a way to store data, “and a concept that can scale to the cloud.”

“In order to be very fast but at the same time persistent, the whole dataset is taken in memory,” it says on the Redis webpage, “and from time to time saved on disc asynchronously (semi persistent mode) or alternatively every change is written into an append only (fully persistent mode). Redis is able to rebuild the append-only file in background when it gets too big.”

The other eight projects selected by Black Duck are: 1. Live Android, 2. Open Health Natural Language Processing, 5. Smasher, 6. AbiCloud, 7. Transdroid, 8. Rainmeter, 9. TweetCraft and 10. Native Client.

Mobile Open OS Wins With Developers

By Barbara Gengler

Aiming to drive greater, faster innovation in mobile services, Android will go through the fastest growth of any mobile operating system.

Global market intelligence firm, IDC, says starting from a very small base of just 690,000 units in 2008, total Android-powered shipments will reach 68.0 million units by 2013, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 150.4 percent.

In a market once ruled by pioneers BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile, newcomers touting open standards like Android, Mac OS and WebOS are garnering strong end user and handset vendor interests, according to IDC.

While most innovative new web applications are still built for PCs, Android plans to change all that, so the next hot application will be built for mobile devices, according to Google.

“We are pleased with the positive response from the developer community,” says Google spokeswoman Katie Watson. “We’ve had thousands of developers registered worldwide, and there are more than 20,000 free and priced applications available in the Android Market catalog.”

According to Watson, Android Market is a critical component to Android’s success as a platform, as it provides a central distribution channel for developers, across devices, geographies and operators.

She also says Google recognizes the importance of a marketplace that is attractive to users, developers and operators. “We believe that Android’s openness and innovation allows consumers to use better and cheaper mobile computing devices and services,” Watson says. “Android Market is a distribution system that allows developers — including Google — to distribute their applications to users on a level playing field.”

Android has been built specifically for the Web, which means Android has been built to take advantage of a Web-connected world, which opens up new possibilities for features and applications, according to Google.

For example, Google says developers can lean on the creations of other developers instead of relying only on what’s in the operating system. And Android brings “mashups” to the mobile world, where developers can put together building blocks of technology from many sources, resulting in more powerful applications for everyone.

With Android, everyone has access to all the code necessary to run a great mobile phone, or any other device, without restrictions. The source code to the Android platform is available at source.android.com and most of the code is licensed under Apache 2.0.

Verizon Wireless spokesperson Debra Lewis says the company launched the Verizon Developer Community (developer.verizon.com) last year to give developers for all platforms, including Android, a simple way to understand how these applications might reach Verizon Wireless customers. Verizon has more than 3,000 registered developers to date and more than 90 million customers.

“We’ve announced several phones with the Android operating system, the Droid by Motorola and the Droid Eris from HTC, and coming soon the Devour from Motorola,” Lewis says. “We’re excited about continuing to bring great devices with great service and applications to the marketplace.”

In early February, Verizon Wireless and Motorola took the wraps off a new Android-based phone, the Devour, which will be available in March. The Devour will be the first Verizon Wireless phone to feature Motoblur, Motorola’s Android-powered content delivery service.

The Devour, which includes Gmail, with posts, messages, photos from sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, syncs contracts from work and personal email services. It also sports a 3.1-inch capacitive screen with a HVGA resolution, pre-loaded applications such as Google Talk, YouTube and Google Search and will ship with an 8GB microSD card pre-installed.

Google and Verizon Wireless have delivered Android-based mobile applications and devices as part of a new agreement between the two companies. The two plan to co-develop several Android-based devices that will be pre-loaded with applications from both companies as well as third-party developers.

The two also plan to create, market and distribute products and services, with Verizon Wireless supplying nationwide distribution channels.

Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle points out Android really isn’t Linux, rather it is more of a hybrid between Linux and a proprietary Google product, much like the MacOS isn’t really UNIX but a hybrid between UNIX and Apple.

“The end result has been a vastly more consumer-friendly product than Linux alone has proven to be,” he says.

Enderle says Windows Mobile 7 is expected in market by year end and it is expected to be a major change from prior offerings blending Zune UI elements and embracing a much more robust application store environment.

“Still Microsoft has lost a lot of developers to Apple and Google and since these developers have limited resources it will be tough to get them back,” Enderle says. “Right now the big battle for developers is between Apple and Google and the latest surveys I have suggest Apple is winning.”

YahooTV: Paving the Way to an Open IPTV?

By Sheila Shayon

IPTV is spreading, slowly, across the globe. By year end 2009 the universe of homes that were receiving IPTV services was 26 million. By year end 2014 that number is expected to reach 70 million worldwide.

The greatest growth in IPTV is in countries with established high-speed Internet technologies including the Netherlands, South Korea, Hong Kong and France. As technology progresses, still developing countries like China will catch up quickly in subscription numbers.

Dashboard widgets first hit the market with Mac OS X Tiger. They are very small applets designed to convey quick bites of information or a quick change of setting. Some familiar forms of widgets include clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather. A.k.a. gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake, Web widgets most often use Adobe Flash.

Last year, Yahoo made the bold promise that Internet TV widgets would be the major phenomenon of the year. Launched as Connected TV in 2009, Internet-enabled widgets allow viewers with compatible TVs to access Twitter, Facebook and certain news feeds.

That prediction did not materialize, but Yahoo has now upped the ante and launched a new TV widget chip ready for installation in set-top boxes. Having entered into a deal with chip manufacturers MIPS and Sigma, Yahoo widgets can now be installed in a range of hardware. Yahoo widgets enable Internet-connected TVs access to online video with one or two clicks on the remote. The widgets show up as snippets in a “dock” at the bottom of the TV screen or via a widget directory in a panel at the left of the screen.

Yahoo’s latest partners include: Netflix, VUDU, Amazon VOD, Showtime, CBS, CinemaNow/Blockbuster and video catalogs from FrameChannel, Brightcove, Zinc and 1Cast. Previously available only on newly manufactured HDTVs, a new device that will carry Yahoo widgets was introduced at CES: the ViewSonic media server, VMP80. Yahoo’s Widget development kit is now publicly available.

It seems as if Internet-ready TV manufacturers are no longer controlling the Web-surfing experience — and Yahoo has opened the doors.

Sheila Shayon is president/founder of Third Eye Media, third-eyemedia.com, multimedia production with core competencies in broadband production, creative design and execution, and social media. Shayon has several decades of multimedia experience working for companies like Time Warner Cable and Home Box Office.

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