Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-04-11
April 11, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Working on my calendar for the next couple of weeks. #
- Being CEO/CTO/CFO/Visionary for Contributr is pretty taxing, I’ve got to get this under control. ha! #
- @dsilverman Not a fan of Utterz? #
- Headed to bed early tonight, g’night Twitterville. #
- Good Morning Twitterville, not too terribly busy today but we’ll see what crops up #
- @acafourek It’s that nice out? wow. #
- Ran a few errands this morning, now reading about Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: http://tinyurl.com/5rz9mf #
- @rdempsey I’m on my way to vote for Ruby support in G. App Engine right now. Thanks for the link. #
- @shawnz Yikes that’s not good at all, we need you in tip-top shape for first-rate Tweets. #
- @misslacey123 I think I might grab a copy and add it to my reading list. #
- I’ve been asked by RJI to get lots of pictures with news execs as I present Contributr to the masses #
- While I’m showing off at RTNDA/NAB next week, Contributr will also be presented at NAA/ASNE #
- Got quite a bit done today, ran lots of errands as I always have to do right before a trip #
Pie In The Sky - Comparing Current Offerings
February 21, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Comparing Current Offerings
Amazon:
- Very Inexpensive (+1)
- Very powerful (+1)
- Recently had its first major downtime event (-1)
- Very flexible in terms of OS, applications, etc (+1)
- S3 storage service provides a good platform for archive storage (+1)
- Bring your own Machine Image is a good thing, use what you’re familiar with (+1)
- You cannot upload and download files using FTP/SFTP as with standard web hosts (-1)
- You’re probably going to need an outside management firm unless you’ve got a very smart admin on staff already. (-1)
Score: B, the biggest loss here is the usability factor, it’s not usable for your everyday web hosting needs. If there were a control-panel and management provided by Amazon this would be an A.
Mosso’s Hosting Cloud:
- Higher starting price point (-1)
- Very fair overage fees (+1)
- Multiple smallish downtime incidents have been reported (-1)
- Being a startup, they’ve got heart (+1)
- Usability is high with their easy to use control panel (+1)
- They haven’t been able to truly solve RoR scaleability (null)
- Reseller friendly, if you have an account you can sublease your resources to friends and clients very easily, including billing (+1)
Score: A-, Mosso has gotten closer than anyone else to being what I would consider a true cloud computing provider. The get bonus point for being usable and for being around more than a year or two. I hope they can implement a plan with a lower starting price point, and someone has to figure out RoR, hopefully it’ll be these guys.
MediaTemple:
- Low starting price point (+1)
- High overage fees (-1)
- Recent significant downtime, both scheduled and unscheduled (-1)
- “Container” technology and usage is effective, and usually efficient (+1)
- Beta (cs) Cluster Server is in the works that promises to ‘fix’ many of the problems with the current (gs) Grid Server (+1).
Score: B, MediaTemple is attacking the lower end of the clustered server hosting arena and are doing a good job of it too. Much of their early success is attributed to being featured on the popular TechCrunch site right after launch. MediaTemple is where my own sites are currently hosted and I’m very happy with them.
Others:
There are other cloud and utility computing providers out there, see Monday’s post for more information but I do not have direct contact or experience with them like I do the above providers. I encourage you to take a look at the others in the field, which are mostly on the enterprise (higher) level than any of my current projects.
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Pie In The Sky is a weeklong blog series by Jonathan Coffman - Convergence Journalism Specialist and New-Media Evangelist examining the state of the web hosting business and the potential for cloud computing. Visit Jonathan’s blog all week for expert commentary, insight, and vision.
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Pie In The Sky - Where Mosso Has it Right and Wrong
February 20, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Where Mosso’s The Hosting Cloud Wins and Looses
Mosso’s The Hosting Cloud promises to offer all of the stability, uptime, and processing power of competing grid/cluster products without the management headache.
This is in distinct contrast to Amazon’s cloud computing services, they provide the machines and that’s about it. It’s up to the user to provide the OS, applications, support, and management of the servers.
Mosso has it right, and if cloud and utility computing is going to catch on, it needs to appeal to the masses. Appealing to the masses at this point on the Internet largely means usability. If it’s not highly usable to the target demographic you might as well wait to launch.
From what I’ve seen of the Mosso Hosting Cloud control panel, they’ve taken great care to make sure it’s easily used and implemented by anyone who’s used shared web hosting previously.
Some of the key problems of utility computing remain however and it’s a testament not just to how far we are from truly ubiquitous cloud computing. Web platforms weren’t designed from the ground-up to be highly scaleable. Which is unfortunate, but changing.
One of the biggest problems I see in the near-term is Ruby and Rails, while it will scale gracefully (look at Twitter for instance), it took a lot of work and dedicated resources to make it do so.
Mosso has decided to continue using LightSpeed as the service to handle RoR on their cloud, which being a commercial product is largely proprietary and not the end all of solutions.
The only other area that I would have liked to have seen additional improvement is the higher cost of entry into Mosso’s system. At $99 it stands toward top of list in terms of shared hosting, granted this is much better than any shared host you’ll find anywhere, but the fact still stands that at $99 you’ve got a whole new set of competitors than at MediaTemple’s $20 entry point.
For $99 in the hosting industry you can get a pretty powerful VPS, a very low-end dedicated server, or multiple shared hosting accounts. Of course the argument Mosso has is that for that $99 you’re in theory getting multiple (potentially dozens+) VPS style systems for your dollar.
Scaling up from that $99 is where Mosso is at an even greater advantage, their ‘overage’ charges are on the lower end of the line than other grid/cluster hosting platforms.
So while Mosso’s Hosting Cloud is a big step in the right direction, there are numerous additional problems that need to be solved before my dream of utility/cloud computing really comes true.
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Pie In The Sky is a weeklong blog series by Jonathan Coffman - Convergence Journalism Specialist and New-Media Evangelist examining the state of the web hosting business and the potential for cloud computing. Visit Jonathan’s blog all week for expert commentary, insight, and vision.
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The Contributr Project
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Contributr is a user generated content solution for information and media companies. It is a collection of modules developed with seed development money by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and Adobe Inc. Contributr was chosen as one of the 3 finalists in the RJI/Adobe competition and is quite successful in its own right.
The ContributrSolutions platform is a tool to manage and syndicate user generated content. It’s built on a highly flexible and durable server and fits into existing workflows. Built in Ruby on Rails, and running on a completely open-source server stack
For the user, they can submit (contribute) information from the web, from their mobile phone, and from their desktop using Adobe AIR technology, on the iPhone, on the web, integrated into your site, and it also syndicates content wherever your media company is comfortable with sending it.
More information can be found on the main Contributr sites linked below:
Technology Skills
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Because different types of content demand different usage of technology, I strive to stay abreast of the latest ways to create and distribute content in multiple media formats. From creative and collaborative, to vision and video, Software and technology tools shouldn’t dictate the way content spreads I’ve broken down the tools that I use into categories according to how much I’ve used them.
I’m very comfortable with and have trained others in the professional use of the following tools:
- Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe Bridge
- Adobe Photoshop Extended
- Adobe Dreamweaver
- Adobe Flash Professional
- Adobe InDesign
- Apple iLife Suite
- Apple iWork Suite
- Apple Final Cut Studio
- Avid iNews
- Avid Active Content Manager
- Avid Newscutter
- Fox Interactive Media CMS - FOX licensed content management system used by FOX affiliates
I’m very comfortable in using the following tools and know how and where to get assistance when needed:
Open-source software that I have used and developed using:
Web Technologies that I have developed with:
- PHP
- Ruby/Rails
- Django
- XHTML
- HTML
- CSS
- MySQL
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OtherProfiles
