As the CloudConnect event finishes up today after a great four days of presentations and gathering of some of the top people in the Cloud Computing sector, infrastructure and service provider Opsource has two major announcements today, both around their cloud computing efforts. First, Opsource is announcing that their cloud offering is exiting its public beta phase and is now available to all to purchase their computing services by the hour.  Although this represents a nice milestone for the organization, the bigger news is around the second announcement around the Service Level Agreement's (SLA's) that OpsourceCloud customers will enjoy. These SLA's that Opsource is delivering set the bar mighty high for the standard cloud realted

Like many of you, I woke up yesterday to a bitter post on Jolie O’Dell’s personal blog entitled “Why SxSW Sucks,” which has acted as some sort of magnet for many of the non-attendees of SxSW to unload their sour grapes sentiments about being unable to attend the festival. I had initially planned to respond in print yesterday when I read the post originally (and I did address some of her points directly in the closing statements of the SiliconANGLE SxSW live broadcast with Michael Sean Wright), but the more I thought about it, I didn’t get less calm, only more irritated. I woke up this morning fairly well rested after a grueling week of interviews and running around and didn’t feel less irritated, but more so. Let me preface an

Amazingly, nobody has yet pointed out a severe usage limitation on Apple's iPad that surely will cause grief with the very first reviewers. I'll get right to the bottom line: Just like the iPod Touch, the iPhone and most or even all other smartphones, the iPad lacks multiple user profile logins, including any "Guest" login.  Also reports are that orders are dropping after a spike on Friday.  Think of the iPad as one big iPod Touch or iPhone. Once you've entered the password, you're in. And I mean in! You have complete access to all emails, instant messages, the address book and calendar. Contrast this with a laptop: On a PC, you may have, say, four different user logins (father, mother, son and daughter) and one generi

A friend of Art and I, Dr. Melissa Clothier, put a post up on her blog today talking about an interesting trend in society fueled in part by social media and our ever splintering layers of technology: Rent-a-friends: This Rent-A-Friend concept is intriguing. So rather than fussing with some person with a boring, involved life-story, call up Joe and go to the movie. You hang out, talk about the movie, have some temporary company and then, boom, done. No sordid break-up stories. No diatribes against back waxing and Representative Massa. No queries into your grandma’s health. No enduring pictures of the kids, or worse, vacation. From the original post at the Las Vegas Sun: We’re lonely. One in four people said they had no close friends

Heavy Rain is a pivotal game. On its face, because it appears to be exactly the type of game we’ve been asking for: an emotional, character and story driven piece. In many ways, this is the flagship that shows what games could be. It is a major undertaking for Sony, who backed French developer Quantic Dream during the 4 years of development, calling it their “most important release.” Heavy Rain is the studio’s third game. Both previous games, The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit, have been praised for their efforts in movie-like presentation and immersion, but were criticized for their lack of “game” aspects. According to the game’s Director, David Cage, the game is "a very dark film noir thriller with mature themes.” It te

Update: Cisco Announces upgrade but no set top box and no telepresence. Three out of five of this report announced by Cisco. Reactions were not that favorable. Update (March 8 2010): Cisco's Future Is Already Here -- Looks like Verizon, Juniper Networks, NEC, and Finistar are demonstrating trials on the eve of Cisco's big announcement reported by FierceTelcom, Information Week, and released by Verizon today. The announcement came as Cisco was preparing a major announcement for Tuesday, believed to be its entry in the 100G race. Google has already said it plans to test 100G networks in selected regions. You can take the 100G piece out of the Cisco equation and the notion that Verizon will be standing with Cisco at their podium.

As we prepare to venture over to Austin for SXSWi I'm prepping my Android HTC Hero with all the latest geo-location apps to help me stay on top of all of the activities. Last year seemed to be about what was coming and this year seems be all about 'where we're at right now.' Yes, Gowalla, Foursquare, britekite, plancast and A/R apps are going to have a big week and be all over the news. Yes, we've seen this coming for awhile but we're here and we should take heed now. The world is closing in around us, our meta-data and our social graphs are getting packed in close. I'm all for discovering hidden communities, great eating establishments and tiny music stores when I'm on the road but I'm getting pulled in too many directions. If we're to s

Many bloggers complain about not being able to come up with relevant topics to write about (my problem is I have too many ideas). IBM was one of the first companies to encourage blogging by its employees. However, only 3 percent of employees begin blogging, and 80 percent only post five or less posts. IBM's researchers have come up with a solution to encouraging more blogging and also creating content that readers want to read. They have created a system they call "Blog Muse." This is how it works: It solicits suggestions from a pool of prospective readers, proposes them to potential writers, alerts readers upon publication of the requested post, and encourages comment. Topic ideas can go viral and build audience intere

Once upon a time, when I was a student of economics and foreign policy, we had to learn about government five-year plans to accomplish this or that. "The central government is marshaling the productive forces to build X, Y or Z for the people" and so forth. Fill in the blanks depending on the day or year. In those days, the subject geography was the Soviet Union. Fast forward a few decades, and we now have adopted the government five-year planning syndrome right here at home in the United States. From the auto industry to the banking industry, student loans, energy policy -- you name it. The Federal Communications Commission is on the case with broadband. So what is the pretext for this new Soviet-style FCC plan to do something

I spotted a surprising article today over at Gizmodo.  It was surprising not for the fact that it deemed talked about piracy in general, but the attitude it treated piracy.  The story focused around Apple App Store piracy, which it found in general to be at about 10% or less for most apps, and deemed it not a big deal. Here’s the money quote: At first I found many developers' silence on the issue curious. But after talking to a few, and finding out the scale of the problem, it makes sense: An app developer has nothing to gain by taking their fight public — Apple is clearly aware of the issue, and it's not like you can somehow convince hardcore pirates to start paying for all the dozens of apps they steal, because they we