Taiwan’s Cloud Computing Data Center, $31 mil USD investment

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

China Tech News has an article on two Taiwan institute’s jointly setting up a cloud computing company.

Cloud Computing Center Planned In Taiwan
February 1, 2010
Chunghwa Telecom, Trend Micro, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, and Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry will jointly set up a cloud computing center and will invest NTD1 billion to establish a cloud computing company.

According to reports in Taiwanese local media, because of its telecom business and technology advantages, Chunghwa Telecom will be in charge of the basic construction and operation of this new project. Trend Micro will be responsible for the expansion of international market via its subsidiaries worldwide. Industrial Technology Research Institute will be committed to the hardware development; and Institute for Information Industry will combine industry resources to develop cloud computing services and applications.

The Taiwanese see a trend many of us do in that companies could go direct to Taiwan to buy the complete cloud computing data center infrastructure and hardware.

Taiwan's related government departments reportedly plan to create a complete supply chain incorporating a cloud computing-based Internet data center, cloud computing devices and cloud computing services. The entire supply chain will be sold to overseas markets and is expected to gain sales and peripheral business opportunities of USD10 billion by 2014.

Why buy from HP, IBM, Dell when you can direct to the manufacturer?

The Taiwanese have also done a good job of focusing on market segments for cloud computing.

For the application planning of cloud computing, Taiwan will initially establish two major industries focused on the cloud computing medical industry and cloud computing education industry. In the long run, it will develop six cloud computing-based emerging industries, including green energy, tourism, health, agriculture, culture, and innovation.

If you look at their area of focus and overlap it with what I blogged about at Mizzou there is an overlap – health, education, energy, innovation, agriculture.

Food for the Future
New Media
One Health, One Medicine
Sustainable Energy
Understanding and managing disruptive and transformational technologies.

GreenM3 Browser Market Share vs. Industry

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Netmarketshare has a report on the market share of browsers.

Periodically I check what the browser share is for www.greenm3.com based on google analytics.

The number of IE and Firefox users are almost equal at 39% each.

Chrome and Safari usage is almost twice the % on greenm3 vs. the overall market.

Bottom line: www.greenm3.com tech savvy forward thinking audience are using Firefox, Chrome, and Safari more than the rest of the industry. My assumption is at least 95% of the readers know how to pick their own browser.

Is the above an indication of what could happen to IE’s overall market share if the total installed base knew how to switch browsers and was tech savvy like GreenM3 readers.

How will the browser usage shift as IE6 support is dropped?

Browser wars: Google and Government turn on Internet Explorer

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has come under further attack, as both Google and the Department of Health announced that they would be phasing out use of IE6.

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor
Published: 9:58AM GMT 01 Feb 2010

Comments 11 | Comment on this article

Microsoft has released a software update for Internet Explorer that will patch security flaws -- but should you switch to a different browser?

The ageing version of Microsoft’s browser is still used by some 300,000 health workers, but the Department of Health is now advising that hospitals and other users upgrade to at least version seven of the software as soon as possible. Security flaws are the main reason that has been cited, but poor performance is also a problem for users of IE6.

Google, which is currently marketing its own browser Chrome, has said that it will begin to phase out support for IE6 from March 1. From that point Google Docs, the online word processor, and Google Sites, the website building tool, will cease to offer the bulk of their functionality in IE6. Both currently invite users to upgrade to a more modern browser, as does Google’s YouTube video site. The company has said that it will phase out all support, including for Gmail, from IE6 by the end of the year.

What does a Cloud Computing Data Center look like? Comparison version 1

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

There are a flood of cloud computing content out there. As a thought experiment I start comparing conceptually what cloud computing is versus the existing data centers. Many take the approach of building data centers to be solid as a rock which interesting enough is an opposite of clouds. Rock is Earth. Clouds are water and air, and electricity (lightning).

Below is a first version of thinking about how there are differences between cloud computing data center vs. a Rock data center.

When you start thinking about Cloud Computing as the future, what kind of data center fits business needs?

I am having some conversations with data center designers on this concept. Cover up the right side, and only look at the left side. When I look at the left, who doesn’t want this? Except maybe those who may their money on the right side.

Cloud Data Center	Rock Data Center
Water + Air + Energy = Clouds with lightning	Earth = building built in a capital intensive redundant manner
Business Alignment to current conditions	Over-provisioned for the unknown future, but ironically many times limit businesses
Speed is an advantage for less resources and changing business (minutes)	You have no choice so you move at our pace (weeks/months)
Systems integrated to reduce costs for business services	Silos of self-optimization are used to prove efficiency
Pay as you go service use	Costs are not transparent or directly related to what you use
Virtualized servers, storage, and network abstract discussions to capabilities for business	Staff discusses specifications of servers, storage, and networking
Energy efficient and high utilization are standard discussions	Energy is viewed as a small cost paid for by someone else
Commodity hardware	Specialized hardware
Healthy, growing vendor ecosystem	Static ecosystem that is growing slowly, maybe even declining
Exponential growth currently, innovation	Declining as users migrate to Cloud, maintenance mode, cost reduction

Are multi-taskers the high tech version of Emperor New Clothes? PBS show digital_nation: life on the virtual frontier

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

PBS Frontline has a show “Digital Nation: Life in the Virtual Frontier”, showing Feb 2, 2010

Going through the synopsis I found this interesting discussing bright students and multitasking.

"I teach the most brilliant students in the world," says MIT professor and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle, who describes the challenges of teaching students who are surfing the Internet and texting during class. "But they have done themselves a disservice by drinking the Kool-Aid and believing that a multitasking learning environment will serve their best purposes. There are just some things that are not amenable to being thought about in conjunction with 15 other things."

A multitasker herself, Dretzin travels to California to the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab, where Stanford professor Clifford Nass has been studying the effectiveness of self-proclaimed multitaskers. After taking one of Nass' tests, Dretzin is shocked by her poor results. "It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. They get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized. Recent work we've done suggests they're worse at analytic reasoning," Nass tells Dretzin. "We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly."

Which brought up an interesting observation of multi-taskers. We all know people who are proud how of how many things they can do at the same time.

But, are they living in an illusion, like The Emperor’s New Clothes

An Emperor who cares for nothing but his wardrobe hires two weavers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position or stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects. A child in the crowd calls out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession.

Douglas Rushkoff makes the point of fooling ourselves.

So what does it mean if we multitaskers are actually fooling ourselves into believing we're competent when we're not? "If multitasking is hurting their ability to do these fundamental tasks," Nass explained matter-of-factly, "life becomes difficult. Some of studies show they are worse at analytic reasoning. We are mostly shocked. They think they are great at it." We're not just stupid and vulnerable online—we simultaneously think we're invincible. And that attitude, new brain research shows, has massive carryover into real life.

If you believe this, then the next step is to think what is a better way than being an obsessive multitasker. One place to look is Matthieu Ricard a famous Tibetan monk.

Matthieu writes on dealing with stress and anxiety, and interesting enough he quotes the same Stanford research.

Tip #2: One thing at a time
If you have many things to do, do them one at a time. You will work faster and better this way. Recent studies conducted at Stanford University revealed that multitasking actually reduce people’s ability to concentrate and even slows down the capacity to switch between several tasks. Multitaskers perform worse and non-multitaskers in all attention tasks that have been studied. In other words, multitasking takes us more time to achieve worse results.

The other two tips are:

Tip #1: Do away with your worries
If there’s a solution, then there’s no need to worry. If no solution exists, there is no point to worry.
…
Tip #3: A bit of meditation
If you are gripped by anxiety, pause for a moment and simply try to be aware of this anxiety. As you «examine» your anxiety with the eye of mindfulness, it will loose its potency. Why? Because the part of you mind that is aware of the anxiety is not itself anxious. It is simply aware. As mindfulness expands, the anxiety that upset you will gradually fade and make way for renewed inner peace.

Are you going to spend more time muiltasking or meditating?

Confession: I”ve been mediating since I was fourteen. So, I am biased on this subject. :-)

Religion of Apple, Steve Jobs says Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’

February 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Being an Apple user is a religious experience for some, believing surrounding yourself with iPhone, iPods, iTunes, Quicktime, MacBook, and Apple TV will make you a better person. Seriously, I’ve seen this many times. I worked at Apple from 1985 – 1992, and joined “at that time” evil Empire Microsoft 1992 – 2006. Now I am independent of these religious views, and watch as many technologies are debated on almost a religious level.

The Economist has a cover story on “The Book of Jobs”

Tablet computing

The book of Jobs

It has revolutionised one industry after another. Now Apple hopes to transform three at once

Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Jon Berkeley

APPLE is regularly voted the most innovative company in the world, but its inventiveness takes a particular form. Rather than developing entirely new product categories, it excels at taking existing, half-baked ideas and showing the rest of the world how to do them properly. Under its mercurial and visionary boss, Steve Jobs, it has already done this three times. In 1984 Apple launched the Macintosh. It was not the first graphical, mouse-driven computer, but it employed these concepts in a useful product. Then, in 2001, came the iPod. It was not the first digital-music player, but it was simple and elegant, and carried digital music into the mainstream. In 2007 Apple went on to launch the iPhone. It was not the first smart-phone, but Apple succeeded where other handset-makers had failed, making mobile internet access and software downloads a mass-market phenomenon.

The religious tone of the article continues as the author discussed the Power of Jobs.

As rivals rushed to copy Apple’s approach, the computer, music and telecoms industries were transformed. Now Mr Jobs hopes to pull off the same trick for a fourth time. On January 27th he unveiled his company’s latest product, the iPad—a thin, tablet-shaped device with a ten-inch touch-screen which will go on sale in late March for $499-829 (seearticle). Years in the making, it has been the subject of hysterical online speculation in recent months, verging at times on religious hysteria: sceptics in the blogosphere jokingly call it the Jesus Tablet.

The enthusiasm of the Apple faithful may be overdone, but Mr Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

Preacher Steve makes another claim that is caught in Wired Magazine – Google’s “Don’t be Evil” Mantra is Bullshit.

Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs (Update 2)

By John C Abell

January 30, 2010 |

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsdbKCy

…

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsnUlct

Then there is an Adobe statement about Flash which reminds of the Adobe Type Manager’s problem in the Mac OS.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsw6YKj

The Economist closes on death and resurrection.

If Mr Jobs manages to pull off another amazing trick with another brilliant device, then the benefits of the digital revolution to media companies with genuinely popular products may soon start to outweigh the costs. But some media companies are dying, and a new gadget will not resurrect them. Even the Jesus Tablet cannot perform miracles.

It looks like Steve Jobs is rallying his troops to fight a Holy War of Mobile – Google and Flash are his enemies.