Russell Beattie’s Weblog

There's a general misconception as to what, exactly, the "cloud" really is. I think most people imagine it as just a large cluster of computers, hooked up together as a large database or map/reduce storage system sitting behind a load balancer so that it can respond to requests as scalably as possible. That's definitely part of it, but there's much more to the cloud than that.

The cloud can be intelligent.

Don't think of it as just a large disk drive in the sky where we store MP3s, address information and our email, and sync occasionally with our various computers. The cloud - or really each cloud as there's many of them out there - is made up of hundreds or thousands of individual computers, each with the ability to do intelligent tasks.

Right now these tasks are inward facing, simply doing activities like spidering the web and indexing the results (Google), or they serve as places to flexibly host external applications (Amazon EC2), or maybe do in fact do little more than serve as a central syncing storage space (Apple MobileMe). But those individual clouds could be the basis of so much more. I'm thinking of intelligent agents running on all those linked computers, doing tasks that we ask them to do, monitoring the internet for us, processing data and responding to our requests both on demand, and on schedule.

The problem is that so far we can only create full applications that are designed to be hosted on specific instances of the cloud, such as custom clusters, or hosted services like Googles App Engine or Amazon EC2. Because each cloud is siloed off from the others, there's no way to use those clouds as a single entity. You have to use various websites to access different functionality, and hope there's some sort of data interchange format that can help these services communicate.

However, I can see a future where a standard for secure scripting emerges, so that just like my music or files can be stored and retrieved on any server, my scripted tasks and applications could be stored and run on any server as well. This was impractical before there were clouds of computers running virtualized OSes on multi-core CPUs. Nowadays however, scripts are relatively easily sandboxed, and we're quickly learning (with examples from languages like Erlang) how to divide up those tasks to run efficiently on multiple processors as well.

Imagine instead of relying on random one-trick-pony "Web 2.0" sites which may disappear as soon as their funding runs out, you get to own and manage your cloud-based tasks and applications yourself. Less like installing WordPress on your own hosted server, and more like having your own Greasemonkey or cronjob-style scripts running on one or more computers in the cloud. We already have similar systems already - our email or IM, for example, is a process running on the server listening for messages for us from other servers, before then contacting our local client. Imagine instead of these services functioning as dedicated applications, they instead were autonomous and addressable agents running in the cloud on our behalf. It's quite cool to think about and is the basis, I'm sure, for many a science fiction novel or movie already.

This brings me to what spurred me to write about this now - the demo of Mozilla Ubiquity released yesterday. In it, they combine somewhat natural language with predefined scripts that run in the browser that help with various common desktop tasks. It's a great demo, which shows a trend to extend the command line/address bar/search box beyond just the simple request-response paradigm that the web has used up until now. But it has its limitations both in terms of platform, and data. If I leave my desk, I leave all that functionality behind (and my effort in learning how to use it). In order to be truly "ubiquitous", those scripts will have to run in cloud.

I can easily envision a standard - call it OpenScripting - where tasks, agents, bots, or even full-blown apps written in a certain way can be run in any of the clouds supporting that standard. The equivalent of JavaScript in a desktop browser with the DOM and browser APIs, but running in a server somewhere. The scripts would have to be portable and secure, so that for instance, an agent monitoring a website in another country could be moved to a computer at the edge closest to that site, reducing latency and improving performance without compromising the computer on which it runs.

Well, much of that is probably still fantasy and easily a quite a few years off, but to my main point about the cloud: It can be intelligent, and that intelligence is what's so exciting about cloud computing, making it in my opinion, not just a buzzword, but really the future of the web and computers.

-Russ

Since it was in the news as it got purchased by Amazon, I just joined Shelfari and added some books that were sitting on my bookshelf. I'm not sure how useful this will be, but feel free to friend me and we can swap book recommendations. Not that I read much nowadays, but I try to get a book in once every few months.

Some people collect books for some reason in personal libraries, and then lug them around from place to place forever, but I think that's insane. I'm a book "giver", usually trying to get rid of books as soon as I read them. A nice virtual bookshelf like this will do me perfectly, actually. (And a library card for my local library, of course, in case I want to check the books out again.)

:-)

-Russ

Just a quick update... The second Roomatic version I whipped up a couple weeks ago using Disqus as the back-end was a fantastic failure. It was interesting to try, but generally useless to me and everyone else, so I reverted back to the old version which polled Twitter Search for keywords and displayed them as a chat room.

Within a few hours I was immediately rewarded with the following email:

I use the instant twitter chat all the time, it's great. Can you embed this on a site?

Thx Cindy

Sent from Cindy's iPhone : )

That's very encouraging to get such immediate feedback, as all I did was tweet the rollback last night and I don't actually know Cindy. Also, I only made a minimal effort to make Roomatic iPhone friendly, so it's cool she sent it from her mobile. Creating a widget is a good idea, though embedding Roomatic is insanely simple, actually, just using an iframe like I did at the top of this post:

<iframe src ="http://roomatic.com/%23dnc08" width="500px" height="520px" style="border:none"></iframe>

The source URL just can end with any "room" (i.e. keyword, including hash tags) and it'll display within that iframe. I added a style to get rid of the 3D frame, and it looks good on Firefox right now, but if you don't see it correctly, leave a comment with your OS/Browser of choice.

I think I need to do some more work making Roomatic more useful as a live keyword tracker, as that's mostly what I use it for. I personally never log in and use it as a chatroom as I had originally intended, but for keeping track of stuff like the Olympics or Stevenotes, I think it actually works quite well. I'll have to mull over some enhancements to that core functionality and add them in.

-Russ

I remember years ago, William Gibson decided to stop blogging after a while because it was anathema to his day job of actually writing novels. Basically (and this is something I often say to myself), if you're blogging, you're not working. And for a writer, it's even more apropos, as the activity is *almost* exactly like your work - it feels like you're writing, you are moving the same muscles both mentally and physically, but at the end of the day you've been blogging, not producing a novel.

I'm starting to realize that using Twitter has a similar relationship to long-form blogging as well. Once you've reduced that blog-thought down to 140 characters and tweeted it, there's little urge to write any more about it on your blog.

For example, I could have Tweeted this whole post as:

"Tweeting totally takes away that blogging urge from me... Once I tweet about something, it's like it disappears from my mind completely."

That is a pretty good summary, though without context, and without any sort of explanation as to why I feel that way. You can follow up a tweet with others filling in details, of course, but it doesn't work particularly well I don't think. The question is whether for thoughts that don't need a much explanation, is that really good enough? Are all these extra words I'm writing now really just bloviating?

I can definitely tell you one thing I've noticed, and the reason I actually want to blog more - Tweets have no archival value of any sort. If you haven't noticed, I've stopped doing the daily Tweet summaries. Not only that, I deleted all of the old summary posts completely from the site, as I was completely sick of wading through them trying to find stuff I had written. When I first turned the script on, I thought maybe after a while I'd be able to go back and check the tweets and glean some interesting tidbits of something I was thinking briefly a few months ago, but both in whole and in part there was little value there, so I wacked them.

This brings me to my point. If tweeting has such dubious historical value, and takes away my urge to blog, is it something I want to continue to do? I don't know... It works well as a communication tool, that's for sure. But unlike a good IM conversation, I rarely expand on ideas much using Twitter. If I jumped into a chat, and wrote some opinion, usually I'd get a response, or a push-pull of opinions which might spur me to write a nice, long post clarifying my ideas about that topic. That post could spur comments or other blog posts, and at the end of the day if I'm lucky, there's been something of archival value created that myself or others can search for later and learn from. When I tweet though, the thought usually just seems to go out into a black hole, never to be seen again.

Anyways, I figured I'd write this all out rather than just tweeting it so as to not lose the urge. (Well, that, and I like bloviating, actually. So there.)

:-)

-Russ

Henny makes beat on iPhone 3G using Beatmaker!!! from Henny on Vimeo

Someone linked to my post last month about what I viewed as "missing" iPhone apps, and it dawned on me I should do quick a follow up, as there's actually been a ton of new apps introduced over the past month.

First, all the geeky types of apps I wanted are now available: both VNC and Windows Remote Desktop clients from MochaSoft, an IRC chat app ("Rooms"), a multi-chat app which includes Jabber ("Palringo"), and several SSH clients as well. The geek contingent, it seems, has come out in force which is nice.

That's not to say the iPhone is on par with smartphones with Symbian or Windows Mobile yet: There's still no VoIP like Skype, no high-end camera apps, and no video. Not sure when we'll see this stuff - though I can't imagine it'll be too long before Apple gets a clue about video at least.

At the bottom of my post, I also said, "I do have to say that there's apps for the iPhone that I *haven't* seen on any of the other smartphones out there even with years head start." Well, I have to say I found at least one of those as well - I mean, there's always cool new games on every platform, but the app I'm talking about is Intua BeatMaker. I included a video of it above, and I have to say that it's pretty incredible. The complexity of it is something that I really can't imagine being done on many other phones. It's quite surprising - check out the video to see what I mean.

It'd be interesting to see if Apple can keep this developer momentum going - the promise of riches, I'm sure, will help but at some point there's just going to be *too many* apps out there. Already there's sort of a wild daily up and down pattern for new apps. Tapulous, for example, touted how it had the number one free app shortly after the iPhone 2.0 launch, only to now be ranked down in the 30s and falling a few short weeks later. I'm curious to see if some clear leaders with longer-lasting rankings appear soon, or if things stay in flux for the foreseeable future.

-Russ

I've actually talked about this sort of thing for years now, and since I wrote a post last year about using Textmarks as my mobile business card I've gotten at least a couple dozen emails and pings about the idea. And I think at least once a month, I get notified that Textmarks has sent my details off to some random phone number somewhere, and I after I wait for a bit to see if someone contacts me and never receive anything, I just assume that someone had just searched for the idea, found my post and wanted to try it out.

Well it looks like someone finally got off their rear and just did it: Rmbrme just launched today and it seems to work just like you'd expect it to with links to LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. and address info sent in vCard format, etc. More details here.

I had just assumed that someone like LinkedIn would eventually get around to doing the service themselves - but I guess not. The owner of the site is talking about monetizing by working with tradeshows, etc. which is a pretty smart idea. But the backend is going to need to have a more full-featured database and be regular bizcard friendly in order for it to really take off IMHO.

If you think of the use case carefully, you'll see what I mean: You go to a tradeshow, or even some monthly meetup, and you start to use the service, you're going to have to deal with an influx of digital contacts as well as old-school cards as well. Assuming for a moment that it works seamlessly (more on that below), you have to be able to manage who got your info, and what to do with their details that you might have received back as confirmation, and also to be able to organize this stuff with the dead-tree style bizcards too. Being able to store, manage and access the contact info online is also key as not every contact gets to have a place in my phone or simcard's addressbook either.

Now, having used my mobile bizcard thing in the real world, I can promise you it rarely is an easy process, even among mobile geeks! Getting people to pull out their phone to send an SMS is trickier than you'd think - having someone enter a phone number *and* keyword *on demand* can be painful. There's always distractions along the way... missed messages they suddenly see for the first time, people who aren't familiar with their phone, Blackberries that won't let them enter a number easily, network outages from being deep inside cavernous convention halls or basements, network delays ("did it work?"), and more. It's not as clean-cut as it sounds, mark my words, I've tried it.

Anyways, I agree with the founder completely when he says that bizcards are as antiquated as checkbooks - this stuff is a no brainer and I hope those guys have luck with it.

-Russ

Ignore this post if you're getting tired of the "five years ago I wrote about blah blah blah" as this is another one of them. What can I say? The iPhone is just re-doing a ton of stuff that was happening when Symbian first hit the scene years ago and it reminds me of the olden days when I was young, smartphones were new, and the future was teeming with possibilities. Who knew that five years on we'd be seeing the same sorts of apps as back then?

Case in point is Palringo's new iPhone app, which just got updated with Push To Talk. I first wrote about FastChat's PTT app for Symbian phones in 2003 and I was pretty excited about it. Later on there came others, such as Buzzchat and Agile Messenger, but to tell you the truth, I still think the idea is pretty great. When I wrote about Palringo the other day I thought it was just a pretty good multiple-IM client for the iPhone, but at the end I added an update when I discovered that someone using a desktop client was sending voice messages, and they were being played automatically in the chat on my phone. That seemed to indicate that PTT was imminent, but even so it's great to see how quickly they updated the app (which was free, btw). It's such a cool experience actually you should try it out if you haven't.

I just used Palringo to sign on to my Jabber account and sent Jim (yeah, the same Jim from 5 years ago) an IM message using the push to talk. He got a link on his desktop which pointed him to this page where he could play it (excuse my froggy throat). It works just like it should over 3G with the sound being uploaded in just a couple seconds.

A few thoughts about this. I think this is a great way for mobile users to interact with PC users and with groups of other mobile users as well. In the first instance, it's great because mobile users can just talk into their phone, and not have to try to keep up with a PC-based person typing at 70wpm at their desk. The second instance is great because of the "broadcasting" nature of the voice stuff. If the sound is played automatically, like it is in the Palringo client, then multiple users can communicate with every other person in the chat pretty quickly and easily, regardless of their phone typing skills or number free hands. This would be *great* for use in on a bike or in a car.

Oh, that reminds me of an idea I had a long time ago about a CB-type system for commuters using mobile phones. The idea is that they could log into chat rooms filled with other drivers, all using Push To Talk phones, and have chats while driving to and from work. Palringo's desktop client apparently supports PTT as well, so even deskbound users could participate as well (say one of your friends stuck at work). Considering how much time people spend in cars, I'd say that's a killer app.

Anyways, I guess the nice thing about the resurgence of interest in smartphone apps since Apple launched their third party support last month means that ideas that were good the first time around, but for some reason never gained traction, will have a second chance to shine, and that's a good thing, no?

-Russ

On day 10 of the Olympics, I'm finally sitting down and enjoying some of it in an uninterrupted way. After seeing almost nothing of Track and Field on tonight's broadcast, I decided to try the Windows Media plugin again from TVTonic, it's not live but I thought I should have by now built up a few downloaded events to watch.

It's a truly horrible experience. The UI is sluggish and buggy - you can't believe it until you try it. Whoever wrote the software shouldn't just be fired, they should be maimed. Worse than that, they also have included insanely user-hostile commercials every few minutes into the playback, as well as permanent banner ads on the full screen video. The Lenovo ads shown are *horrible* and can't be skipped (obviously) or muted (because the GUI is so sluggish) and the other day the whole system locked while playing them back to back in a loop until I finally had to pull the fucking plug out of the wall to get it to stop. I'm not kidding.

I swear, NBC is trying to kill me by causing me to have a complete nervous breakdown trying to get this stuff to work.

Having calmed down now by tonight, however, I thought about what was happening a bit more rationally, and realized that the TVTonic task-tray app is really just a automatic media downloader, and that the video files have to be around somewhere on my PC to be played back outside the Media Center interface, and sure enough I was right. More than that, it turns out the TVTonic app is just a Podcast client - the RSS feeds with enclosures are cached so you can check them out. I'm surprised that the Linux folk or others haven't figured this out and published them online.

So if you happen to be using a Media Center on Vista, go here and search for .wmv files: c:\ProgramData\Wavexpress\TVTonic\Cache\Services\

In there you'll find all the videos in the sections you chose ready for playback in Windows Media Player. Full screen, and no need for a buggy, sluggish GUI OR incessant commercials. The video is clean and clear broadcast quality with commentary. Probably the same as if I had just set a TiVo up to record everything broadcast - but at least I figured it out by now and again, no commercials!

I just watched some Track and Field events: Some sprinting and hurdle heats, pole vaulting, the shot-put final (US got silver!) and the 10,000 women's final (US got bronze!). I also watched the men's and women's Archery finals which was actually really cool. I have a bunch of other stuff queued up such as tennis, soccer and diving as well as the opening ceremonies. It's all chopped up into commercial-friendly sections (1of3,2of3,etc.), but it's not a big deal.

The video quality is pretty great - which makes sense as it all comes from the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB) feed. All these morons have to do is digitize it, chop it up and serve it to users. There's no actual "value add" going on from a technical standpoint. NBC does add some commentators - I actually liked Denise Parkers' take on Archery - but the technical stuff was figured out years ago. How hard is it to use ffmpeg nowadays to convert a video, and serve it with an RSS feed to be downloaded daily? Not hard at all, I could script something like that in minutes. But then again, my solution wouldn't be able to force feed users obnoxious commercials every x minutes.

Anyways, if you have a Vista box with Media Center, now you have a reason to try the "NBC To Go" stuff out.

-Russ

Update: Ahh, it seemed too good to be true and it was. Like others, the TVTonic content isn't being downloaded automatically and when I go into the insanely bad Media Center interface to manually start the download, I get about 15kbps download speed... which for video will take about 9 weeks to finish. Ahh, it was good for a moment.