Cloud Computing - Definition

The National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) has come up with detailed definition for "Cloud Computing"

Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

Those five key characteristics are:

* On-demand self-service.
* Ubiquitous network access.
* Location-independent resource pooling.
* Rapid elasticity.
* Pay per use.

And the three delivery models?

* Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS).
* Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS).
* Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Cloud software takes full advantage of the cloud paradigm by being service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability

And finally, the deployment models:

* Private cloud.
* Community cloud.
* Public cloud.
* Hybrid cloud.

Each deployment model instance has one of two types: internal or external. Internal clouds reside within an organizations network security perimeter and external clouds reside outside the same perimeter.

Details on all of these characteristics and models are available here. Keep in mind that this document is only a draft, which means that if you have any thoughts, suggestions, complaints, or whatever, you can participate in the dialog. Just send email to cloud@nist.com.

Courtesy: Dr.Dobb's CodeTalk

Stimulus Watch

Wanna know ,how the stimulus will be spending. Check out this site "http://www.stimuluswatch.org/" will provide you the details, to which projects the money is spending.

Energy Consumption by more populated countires

Just came across this chart from a site. Since the oil companies CEO's are not any more U.S President and Vice president, I really hope, Obama administration takes some drastic measures to reduce the Non-renewable energy consumption by United States. United States is only 5% of world population, but it's using 23% of world energy resources With rising energy consumption from BRIC countries especially China (Monster demand for energy), it's really high time, some siginificant break through should happen in Renewable energy business. I really hope, we should fix this problem, before the coming generation blame us. Recently I listened to Vinod Khosla lecture, he said there is huge rise in the Scientfic research towards Renewable energy and hopefully they come up with the good and affordable solution to the consumers. and I also little worry, if we comeup with a great solution, then everybody will be cranking more energy than ever. It's upto the individual to use energy wisely.

John Holdren(New white science advisor) on Global Climatic Disruption at UC - Berkley

Here is the new White House science advisor John Holdren's excellent talk on climate disruption

Very eye opening and has latest data about the climate disruption.

Windows 7 Beta - A threat to Linux in consumer desktop market ??

I have installed windows 7 beta (Build 7000) on my Dell Vostro 1400 laptop. There were some minor issue with the task bar flashing occasionally, besides that it's pretty neat, simple, rich user interface and more secure OS ever released by Microsoft. The installation is very abstract. For a advanced user, it would be frustrating to hide all the information. Wireless drivers are fantastic and the user interface is pleasing to eyes. After installing Windows 7, I installed Ubuntu 8.10. After very long time, it's nice to have dual OS on my laptop. I really hope, all the linux distros especially Ubuntu should grow with the release of Windows 7. Hopefully Windows 7 should not be death of all Linux distros in the consumer market.

Dropbox - Ultimate Synchronization solution among multiple computers

I accidentally stumble on "Dropbox" when I was looking for "Tech Crunchies 2008 award nomination" and I immediately tried this product, because I have been looking for a Sync-up solution like this to sync-up multiple computers with different operating system(Supports Windows, Linux, Mac OS X). I have a 2 laptop which runs Ubuntu and Windows XP and I have a desktop which also runs Windows XP and I can easily move around the file just by dropping my file at "Open box" folder and the magic starts then....it's available in all three computers instantaneously. It works seamlessly(I really mean it...) and they also have a web interface and also Public folder option where you can share the file with anyone. For more information Check out the video tutorial on their site .

On buying this product, there are two options, the basic option is free and they provide 2 GB space and to get 50GB space, it costs $99 / year.


This product is running on Amazon Storage services...Cloud computing is way to go...

TIOBE Programming community Index

After a long time, I checked the TIOBE programming Index to know which programming languages are dominating in the software market. Still surprisingly the Complicated Java programming language ranks #1. The other surprise is, though there are a lot of talk on "Ruby" and "Python" everywhere these days, surprisingly they are going down in the ranking. The other surprise is, I don't see ASP.net in top 20 category, but I have seen many websites using ASP.net now lately.