Entries tagged with “cloud computing” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Palm's webOS Represents Major Shift for Syncing and Data
Peter Brantley
January 12, 2009
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In an article covering the Palm Pre mobile device, Ars Technica makes a very important point about how devices utilize network connectivity, and what the assumptions are underlying their models of data storage and access:
Users just make changes to their data (contacts, calendar, mail, etc.), and Palm's webOS handles committing those changes to whatever canonical data source it is accessing in the cloud. And herein lies the most important difference between the webOS and Apple's iPhone OS: the iPhone was originally designed under the assumption that the canonical source of a user's data (contacts, calendar, music, tasks, etc.) is a Mac. Palm's webOS, in contrast, presumes that cloud-based services are the canonical source for your data (with the possible exception of media, which we don't know about yet) ...
Palm's webOS does not presume any sort of tether at all. The company has totally ditched the idea that you will use this phone in conjunction with a specific "main PC" that contains the canonical, authoritative repository of your data. Instead, webOS draws seamlessly on a variety of data services--not data repositories, but cloud-based services that actively feed the device both data and critical context.
This is a deep, fundamental break with both the iPhone and previous, repository-based smartphone usage models, and it's important enough that other smartphones are bound to follow.
Getting Some Perspective on Cloud Computing
Mac Slocum
October 2, 2008
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Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU operating system and founder of the Free Software foundation, is no fan of cloud computing. From The Guardian:
"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," Stallman said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program."
Stallman's comments have inspired a host of counter arguments, including some nice publishing-centric analysis from Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions:
This obsession with self-sufficiency and self-reliance, veers in the direction of paranoia. You don't necessarily lose control if you outsource a service, especially if there is competition between various service providers. I am sure that there are dangers with a model of cloud computing in which only one company provides a platform for published books (that company would at the moment look like being Google) but there is really no reason why only one company should host and serve print in the cloud.
Stallman took a provocative route to an important caveat: a wholesale transfer to the cloud could bring unwanted repercussions, such as lock in or -- if things go horribly awry -- lock out. But, to Hodgkin's point, publishers who carefully consider their needs may find significant value in cloud toolsets. Dismissing the cloud outright is just as egregious as blindly committing.
Publishing Lessons from Web 2.0 Expo
Liza Daly
September 26, 2008
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Last week I was in New York for the city's first Web 2.0 Expo. I was a member of the program committee and one of our goals was to make it a uniquely New York event. This meant a real focus on measurable outcomes and integrating Web 2.0 principles into established business, in contrast with the more startup-friendly atmosphere of the San Francisco event. The fact that the conference ran during the week of the Wall Street meltdown only reinforced the need for pragmatism in tough economic times.
Naturally I was interested in applying what I learned to the publishing world. If you couldn't make it to the event, here were my big take-aways:
Web 2.0 is social software
Consultant Dion Hinchcliffe's tutorial on the Web 2.0 landscape summed it up best: Web 2.0 means software that gets better the more people use it. This is radically different from traditional software development, which gets better only when programmers add new features. (In the case of Microsoft Word, it generally gets worse.)
The best example in the publishing space is LibraryThing, which has a more accurate book catalog than Amazon.com, but also content found nowhere else. My favorites are the Legacy Libraries, which collect works associated with famous dead people. The Legacy Library project illustrates a related principle of Web 2.0: encourage unintended uses. LibraryThing was designed for individuals to catalog and rate their own books, but this user-driven initiative has added tremendous unexpected value.
Thinking outside the box
That is, outside of a single computer (geeks like to call them "boxes"). More Web applications are either being built on top of other services, or make use of so-called cloud computing. Amazon, Google and other providers now offer a wealth of ready-made software and infinite computing power to allow companies to leapfrog over problems of cost and scaling.
Only a few years ago when I was approached by a publisher to start a project, we would begin at the beginning: purchasing a computer, selecting a service provider, writing some HTML, crunching some data. With services like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, there's no longer any need to buy hardware: instantly an application can be deployed on one computer, or a thousand, at very low cost. This makes experimentation much more feasible: if no users come to a new product, no expensive hardware investment has been wasted. If it's successful, a few keystrokes can add 10X the computing power.
Cloud computing has also created tremendous benefit for offline processing tasks, as shown by The New York Times when converting their digitized archive for use on the Web.
It's not just about people, it's about data
Finally, Toby Segaran's talk on "The Ecosystem of Corporate and Social Data" reminded me how much value publishers have. Toby explored clever ways of finding usually-expensive data for free (for example, rather than paying for Yellow Page listings of restaurants, he scraped the New York City health department Web site, which includes ratings of every food-service facility).
Diving deeper, he emphasized how much value can be added to digital services if they are already full of content. Wikipedia came preloaded with a public domain encyclopedia, as it's much easier to correct or update old content than to enter it wholesale. The more of your content that users can find and interact with (for example, by providing an extensive full-content backlist), the more engaged they'll be.
Speaker presentations for the conference are available here: Web 2.0 NYC presentations.
The Kindle, the Cloud and Mixed Signals
Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008
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Adam Hodgkin notes a discrepancy between Amazon's cloud-computing efforts and the Kindle. From Exact Editions:
If Amazon decides to switch tack on the Kindle and treat it simply as a blank slate on which users can rent rather than outright buy titles, they will have the infrastructure in place to make this change. Amazon is a true believer in the 'cloud' for next generation computing, but it apparently thinks that digital books are different: droplets on the ground rather than nodes in the cloud network.
Cloud Computing's Potential Impact on Publishing
Mac Slocum
July 22, 2008
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If you use Google Docs or access email via a Web browser, you're already versed in cloud computing. Access to Web-based material is taking the place of downloads.
Cloud computing focused in the early going on software as a service (SaaS) applications, but Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others are now tapping the cloud for content delivery (some of these companies focus on streaming entertainment, while others focus on content creation/management).
An interesting conversation about the cloud's impact on content publishers popped up recently on Peter Brantley's Reading 2.0 list. Peter, by way of an an article link, noted that Amazon is moving some of its video distribution business into the cloud. From Last100:
Not only is Amazon utilizing streaming in order to deliver "instant" playback but it also means that content doesn't have to be permanently stored on a user's hard drive. As a result, Amazon is able to offer another potential benefit to customers: a virtual video library of previously purchased content, stored in the 'cloud' (on the company's own servers) ready to be streamed as many times and to as many compatible devices as the user has access to. While this will initially consist of PCs running Mac OSX or Windows, along with select TVs from Sony, in the future this could extend to many different devices, either through specific partnerships like the one currently forged with Sony, or by utilizing browser-based standards or any other technology or protocol Amazon chooses to support.
Expanding on Peter's post, Mike Shatzkin said the centralization of cloud-based content raises issues around digital rights management (DRM) and other access limits:
The cloud changes everything in terms of piracy and copyright. We are living in a transitional period where computer storage is decentralized. When that period is over, and the time is now not far off, everything is accessed from the cloud and it will be a relatively easy matter for rules about content access to be enforced by the content originator or distributor.
As others on the Reading 2.0 list pointed out, cloud computing brings up additional questions around copyright and ownership. Toss in concerns about system reliability, open vs. closed clouds, and the potential for lock-in (or lock out) and you can see this rabbit hole growing deeper.
Cloud adoption may also represent an important moment in book publishing's digital transition. Publishers have enjoyed the past luxury of learning digital lessons from the media, music and film industries, but the wait and see approach may not work this time. If consumers come to expect access to their content -- all their content -- anywhere/anytime, publishers will need to meet that expectation ... or risk watching an unaffiliated company or industry step in.
Adobe Eyes Interactivity in Ebooks
Peter Brantley
May 2, 2008
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Adobe just launched the Open Screen Project, an initiative designed to easily move content and applications across devices:
This initiative provides one more motivation for adopting Flash for rich media and interactivity to take eBooks beyond static paper-like experiences and make digital content more compelling to consumers ... More and more, digital publications -- whether downloaded or consumed online -- are going to incorporate interactivity and rich media in order to deliver more value to their readers. Digital textbooks are going to integrate eLearning experiences, such as simulations and assessments. Trade books are going to incorporate value-added elements, a la DVDs, such as video interviews with authors and socially-networked play-along whodunits.
As TechCrunch notes, Google, Apple and Microsoft all have their own interests and initiatives in this burgeoning mesh/cloud/interactive space.
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