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Slightly OT But Interesting: Google’s Chrome OS
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Nice article about this in PC Week: “Underwhelmed by Chrome OS? That’s Kinda The Point.”
One big difference from dumb terminals is that they’re portable. They’re also not dumb – they have processing power and local storage, and custom-designed workflows that combine offline and online. For example, Google Gears caches offline versions of Mail, Calender, and Contacts, and syncs them when online.Apple does something similar with MobileMe. Microsoft Live Office allows collaboration even among machines that don’t have Office installed, but if you DO have it installed, allows you to work more quickly with a local copy, then sync to the shared version in the 2GB of free storage that comes with each project.
Not to say that there’s no “terminal” aspect to a local client. But it’s the difference between a single node on a local network, and an (approaching) infinite number of nodes, clients AND networks, AND locations.
As the article in PC Week notes, “For Chrome OS, ‘unimpressive’ is practically a compliment.”
tw
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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Another great article, Mister Wilson. Thanks for the link.
Here is one of the great points made in the article…
“Google has designed Chrome OS as a platform for people who use computers primarily online, and the company is betting that many folks will happily trade their desktop apps for alternatives in the cloud. Naturally, this won’t appeal to all users. I’d even say it won’t appeal to most users, at least initially.
But multiple lines of evidence suggest that cloud services are the computing model for the future–a fact that even desktop-dominant Microsoft has embraced, as it prepares to roll out its Office Live services as a companion to its longstanding desktop suite (a companion that many savvy users will undoubtedly use in lieu of the desktop suite). What lines of evidence am I talking about? Enterprise adoption, device-agnostic work habits, and nearly constant wireless connectivity.
Cloud computing is now a standard business practice worldwide. For a start, two million companies (ranging from small mom-and-pop operations to large enterprises like Genentech and Motorola–use Google Apps for e-mail, document editing, collaboration, scheduling, and intranet hosting. CRM tools like Salesforce.com are rapidly replacing desktop and client-server application suites for sales teams of all sizes. Hosting providers like Rackspace are attracting major companies such as Sears, Volvo, and KFC with the promise of cheap, rock-solid server management and storage in the cloud. Perusing the list of companies that rely on just these few examples pokes a gaping hole in the ill-considered argument that cloud computing is either too flaky or too unsecured for serious business.”
Even with a little business like Creative COW, the cloud model is already being felt. We have had our people begin to standardize their workflows across the cloud and in doing so, save themselves a lot of work.
With every crash and license issue, The Cloud just begins to look prettier and prettier.
One day, we will all work for Google. But not yet.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
I don’t doubt anything you guys say in this thread, but I think the reality of cloud computing will end up somewhere between the hype and the current state of using a locally based OS and software.
I can give you a real-world example from right here in my community. Just this year the local school system provided every high-school student in the county with netbooks. The students access most everything online and they save their work to the so called “cloud.”
Sounds fantastic, since the goal is to provide a level playing field for all income levels of students and provide them with immeidate access to tools they’ll certainly use as they move forward.
One big problem. Students would create their papers, save them, then go to access them later and…POOF…they were no longer there. Okay…the school system says…we’ll get them off the backups. Oops…they’re not there either. Seems in setting up the system, the IT company they used had to set up some sort of “purge” of files every so often because they underestimated the amount of storage they’d need. So thousands of students lost their schoolwork, in some cases half a semester’s worth because of this error.
Another example. The school system decided to put their grading system onto the cloud. Because of a similar glitch, several school systems lost their entire first half of the school year’s grades. Again, an error purged them as well. The schools had to have the teachers estimate students grades from memory because they kept nothing on paper, nothing locally to fall back on. This affected thousands of students. Parents were none too happy.
Another example. The first two weeks the netbooks were issued, students figured out how to setup instant messaging, so they were all texting each other during class instead of taking notes. Teachers didn’t know cause all the kids were diligently typing. They thought they were taking notes. When they found out, they blocked the services the kids were using. Guess what…kids being kids, they figured out ANOTHER way to text. This went on for a month before the IT folks had to configure or install something in the system (at substantial cost to the school system for the work) to block the ability to instant message.
Lastly…cloud computing will have a difficult time catching on with the masses until the whole idea can be simply explained to them. We use cloud based video hosting for a couple of clients and just explaining it to them (they’re pretty forward thinking) was a difficult process and we found LOTS of resistance to using it, despite the fact they were already hosting their videos remotely with another host. Once they understood the concept, they were on board, but it was a struggle. They were also resistant to the fact they had to go into their sites and make some changes to URL links and such to make use of the cloud.
Again…you guys are WAY smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, but I’m a bit of a cynic when I hear some of the claims of new technology and methods. Does it have tremendous potential and value? Certainly. Will it be widely adopted by people and businesses? Maybe…maybe not. Companies would have to see a real-world dollar savings placed on it. Consumers would have to first understand it, and second believe there are real benefits either through convenience or time and money saved.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
chris,
While I appreciate your skepticism and conservative approach to the “cloud”, I think your resistance is futile. Your Board of ED IT guys will eventually get it right. Like many things hi tech, there will come a point where we can’t believe we ever lived without it.
Shall I make a list? The entire industrial revolution is about the evolution of technology and how it has constantly replace the preceding “state of the art”. After the caveman tasted “flame broiled wolly mammoth” how could he ever go back to raw meat? Leap forward thousands of years, and the argument still stands… once you’ve enjoyed the benefits of the “cloud”, how can you ever live without it?
We’re in the “early adopter” phase of “the cloud” now. You ain’t seen ‘nothing yet.
Has anyone tried out “Google wave” yet? The level of “real time” interaction and collaboration will quickly wipe out anyone’s fears about the cloud. The upside is just too good to ignore. Sure there are specific situations where it may not be appropriate, but mundane, day to day ops as we now know them WILL be moving to the cloud. I can see that groundswell happening. Better you prepare for it, understand it and embrace it than resist it.
Mark
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[Chris Blair] “The school system decided to put their grading system onto the cloud.”
Not all clouds are created equal! The ultimate responsibility for the safety of the data was an IT whiz in the local district (not being sarcastic), and the drives they could afford.
My recommendation: let go and let Google.
Although, it turns out that Google falls offline now and again, especially Gmail — not that I’ve ever heard stories of anything being lost.
But have you EVER seen Amazon offline, for even a second? One of the services I didn’t mention is Amazon’s, called Jungle Disk. It is oriented toward automatic sync and backup, and is quite cheap – 15 cents per gig per month, with the first 5 gigs free. If you go in through Rackhost, there’s not even a charge for bandwyidth. Amazon’s direct price includes small charges for uploads, downloads and requests, but still well within the reach of most individuals and any small businesses.
The more I think about it, the more I think of “the cloud” referring to the scale of the infrastructure as much as it does its networked nature. If one guy you know is managing it, it’s not a cloud. It’s a network, subject to human frailty in ways that Google, Amazon and Microsoft are not.
For school records, I’m liking the look of Msft Office, where not only the spreadsheet, but the actual Excel document lives online, with all changes tracked, comments added, etc. Maybe it’s a database, but the idea is the same – don’t manage the network yourself.
[Chris Blair] “Consumers would have to first understand it, and second believe there are real benefits either through convenience or time and money saved”
I think that customers are way, WAY ahead of business on this one…not that business isn’t catching up fast. Blackberries have been more important than laptops for years, and getting more so. When you hear “netbook” for consumers, though, think iPhone and other smart phones (of which iPhone still has only around 10% market share….for now…) – the range of things people do there is amazing. They all offer sync with desktops – and my experience was that, after I loaded music from desktop on to my phone, ALL the rest of the sync was from the juicy stuff I gathered on my phone, pushing it to the desktop where I could deal with it later…and often dealt with it on my phone anyway.
The trick is to explain as little as possible. “There’s an app for that” isn’t just slick – it’s actually more helpful than trying to explain whether the “phone” is a mac or a pc – it’s a phone and it has apps.
No review and approval system is self-explanatory. I think the idea of “intuitive” computing is delusional, a craven, cynical lie. I promise that nobody would have figured out the multi-touch pad without a couple of explanations, and a couple of wobbly tries — and I guarantee that nobody you know was asking for a laptop touch pad that let them use three fingers to click. I don’t even remember what happens when I click with three fingers – but I sure as heck remember that there are now little movies in the Mac System Preference panel for the touchpad to explain ONCE AGAIN how to use it. But once you get the hang of it, it’s mondo slick.
We are all paying the price for early adoption now…but we always do, don’t we? 🙂
tw
I
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And then there was the Ford Edsel.
The point I’m making, as a futurist, is that not every change is an advance.
Regards,
Ty
Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Watch Ty play guitar -
Chris:
If situations caused by incompetents were to rule the outcome of what was acceptable in the market, then we’d be nowhere today.
I could name you a TON of piss-poor choices made, situations botched, opportunities squandered, and hardware fried based on idiocy — and if those choices were the ones pointed to that ruled the day and determined the adoption and outcome of technology’s forward march — we’d all be hosed today.
Thankfully, idiots lose their jobs, they lose their customers, school districts learn that sometimes the lowest bidder is NOT the guy to use after all, and technology marches forward.
Nearly ALL of the experts laughed at Google when it came out — though they heaped huge praise on Netscape when it went public — and they were wrong in both cases.
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
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[Mark Raudonis] “After the caveman tasted “flame broiled wolly mammoth” how could he ever go back to raw meat?”
Mark,
Bessie says to mention that she STILL encourages everyone here to enjoy more flame broiled wooly mammoth — “Yum!” she says. “And much better than beef.”
Ron
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Mark Raudonis: While I appreciate your skepticism and conservative approach to the “cloud”, I think your resistance is futile.
I don’t think I said that I was resisting it. I noted that we have customers that have resisted. We’ve pushed for it when it’s an appropriate solution.
Tim Wilson: they all offer sync with desktops – and my experience was that, after I loaded music from desktop on to my phone, ALL the rest of the sync was from the juicy stuff I gathered on my phone, pushing it to the desktop where I could deal with it later…and often dealt with it on my phone anyway.
I have an iPhone. Fabulous product. Great interface. I’ve had it for 2 months and still haven’t setup my email on it. Why? Because I actually like not having to be tied to instant communication with clients expecting me to respond to them within a few minutes of their every query. I’ll eventually set it up and make use of it. But I prefer to check and answer email once in the morning, once after lunch and if my schedule permits, I’ll check and respond again before leaving for the day. I’ll even occasionally check it one more time before going to bed at night.
I remember a post from Ron Lindeboom talking about how he works his email in a similar way. I have colleagues and clients that literally email me 15-25 times a day during a project. Why? Because they can! Because their iPhone or Blackberry immediately gets the email and they can immediately read it and immediately respond. When in reality it would make a lot more sense to read and gather information from multiple emails from multiple parties before responding.
I don’t have any music or TV shows or movies on my iphone. I do have videos, but they’re all samples of our company’s work. I’m not into listening to music or watching videos on a 480×320 screen with ear buds stuck in my ear. The things I love are the ability to load word documents, pdf files etc…because now I can take less stuff on a shoot or to a meeting…and of course it’s internet capabilities.
But I digress. When you consider that many people in corporate environments big and small still have incredibly slow internet performance, I just don’t see how true cloud computing can make big inroads until those corporate internet infrastructures are updated. We’re an 8 person company. We have T1 for our internet… the fastest we can get into our building (at a cost we can afford) regardless of the provider. Yet it’s still painfully slow compared to my home cable internet connection. I couldn’t imagine having to work on 100MB photoshop comps or render hundreds of videos for the web if I had to do it across the internet.
I certainly see the theoretical benefits…less hardware, fewer (if any) hard drives, only pay for the services you use like a utility company model, shared infrastructure costs among many users…information spread onto many servers to speed performance and accessibility… But at least where I live and in the business we’re in, the infrastructure isn’t in place for clouds to support our computing needs. If that changes, then certainly we’d take a hard look at it.
Just look at this thread. There are only 3 or 4 people involved in the discussion. Why? My guess is that other people either don’t know what the heck we’re talking about, or don’t currently see it as a viable option. It probably will be? But I think it will take a while for widespread adoption.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Chris Blair] “Just look at this thread. There are only 3 or 4 people involved in the discussion. Why? My guess is that other people either don’t know what the heck we’re talking about, or don’t currently see it as a viable option.”
Not necessarily. This is a very interesting thread, and I’m sure there are a lot of people “involved” just by reading, who don’t feel they have anything to contribute – it’s new territory, after all. It would be very cool if the COW provided readership figures for posts, as many other forums do.
My only contribution: I’m glad to see the cloud trend, because cloud computing and the popularity of video should foster the market for faster Internet connections and improved video compression.
My one-year experiment with Mobile Me was a flop, btw. I’m through being a beta tester, but I look forward to a cloud that works ALL the time. I hope the pioneers have a good time with it — let me know when it’s ready.
Bob C
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