Over the last few years, cloud computing has rapidly grown from an untested technology paradigm to a reliable, scalable, and economical hosting solution for many businesses. The next step in the evolution of cloud computing is implementation of cloud architectures in enterprise data centers. Cloud Data Centers – Not Just for Service Providers Anymore The early adopters of cloud computing technologies were service providers: cloud hosting companies, Internet service providers (ISPs), and application service providers (ASPs).  These companies invested heavily in early-stage cloud technologies and earned their investment back through Read More

Apple stirred some controversy by announcing that they will require every application in the Mac App Store to run in an App Sandbox, much like iOS apps do on iPhone and the iPad. The App Sandbox would isolate the app from the entire operating system except for files and APIs which are explicitly allowed to the application. Apple calls these entitlements, and will provide only a limited number of them. Developers will have to request these entitlements to be granted to their app. This requirement was to come into effect Read More

One of the many famous Steve Jobs quotes involves something that is clearly a fundamental part of how Apple works, and by extension why their products have been so successful. Steve Jobs said this: “People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” I think there is great truth to this, but the idea is apparently quite controversial Read More

Why do I have a feeling that Ray Ozzie's vision of a "Post-PC" world is nothing new. I've read it expecting something different, and all I got was an inspirational speech about how "continuous services" and cloud computing instead of device-centered computing is the future. It's a bit baffling to see some people treat this as if it was some great new vision, when it's something that various techie "visionaries" have been talking about for over a year. It's also somewhat baffling to see people look at these visions in Read More

Robert Strohmeyer has recently proclaimed the death of the dream of Desktop Linux, after himself being an author of one of those infamous “This is The Year of Linux Desktop” articles in 2008. Frankly, I would not quite say that the dream is dead, since many people probably keep on dreaming about it. As far as the reality goes however, it probably is dead, and I would not argue otherwise. The trouble is, this does not really mean much as far as the overall success of Linux as an operating Read More

Steve Jobs died about three weeks ago, but the web is still very much buzzing about him. It’s hard to read tech news without running into literally dozens of stories about him, and in recent days much of it is fueled by the just released biography by Walter Isaacson. However, I would like to go back to something Richard Stallman said about him within days of his death, and which caused a fair bit of ruckus in the Linux and FOSS communities. The reason I feel compelled to comment, albeit Read More

After having trouble competing with Android and Apple smartphones Nokia today came out with the new Nokia Lumia phones in hopes of bringing back some of its former glory. Nokia calls these the first “real” Windows Phones, and they’re a product of a partnership it recently struck with Microsoft. The star of the Lumia line is Lumia 800 with an almost identical design to that of N9, a 3.7-inch screen, a single-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 512Mb of RAM, 16GB of storage (no SD card slot), and an 8 megapixel camera capable Read More

Google just released the Android 4.0 mobile operating system, and launched Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone to be powered by the new OS. Android 4.0 is a major revision bringing a large number of new features and changes giving it a slicker user interface, more functionality, and some improvements to existing functionality. It is the first Android version meant to support both tablets and smartphones, and has some similarities to the existing Android Honeycomb tablet-oriented OS. Unfortunately, I couldn’t play with it, despite being an Android user. My HTC Desire Read More

Anonymous has recently been conducting what they call an "Operation Payback", a series of DDOS, defacement and other attacks at web sites of anti-piracy organizations including some content industry organizations such as MPAA and RIAA. Three of such attacks have been conducted just in the last week including DDOS and defacement of MPAA's CopyProtected.com which promotes DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology on DVDs and Blu-ray, DDOS on UK's Intellectual Property Office web site, and the latest, a DDOS attack and defacement of Portuguese Movie Rental Outfit ACAPOR. In this latest Read More

As Mac and iPhone users play with their new iOS5 and iCloud, Linux users get to play with a brand new release of the most popular Linux OS. Ubuntu 11.10, also known as Oneiric Ocelot, has arrived. Unlike the last release, which featured a switch to an entirely new Unity user interface, this one is a fairly incremental upgrade. What most of us expected were further refinements to this new user interface, and Ubuntu more or less delivered on that, but let’s get into the nitty gritty. Here are the Read More