Amazon’s outage in their cloud-based Relational Database Service, part of their Amazon Web Services, took a major hit this week. As coincidence would have it, I have been giving consideration of some some cloud-based services in my capacity as an IT manager, thinking it might just be getting safe enough to dip a toe in the water.

Amazon.com is well into the second day of trying to fix a cloud outage that has partially disabled or knocked out popular Web sites like Quora, Foursquare and Reddit.

The trouble started a little after 5 a.m. ET Thursday when the company’s Service Health Dashboard reported connectivity issues that were affecting its Relational Database Service, which is used to manage a relational database in the cloud, across multiple zones in the eastern U.S.

Because of server problems at Amazon’s data center, which handles the company’s EC2 Web hosting services, Web sites, including popular Web 2.0 sites, were left staggering or disabled.

As of noon ET Friday, these sites have been affected for about 30 hours.

via: Computer World

I have been impacted personally from this outage having an SVN code repository with Assembla.com that has been unavailble for two days now. I had no idea they were using Amazon’s ECS and never would have had this outage not happened. But now that it has, I’m sure many IT professionals are going to reconsider their current strategies as well as taking another long, hard look at any plans to rely on supposed fault-tolerant, bullet-proof, cloud-based services.

It was the timing of this outage and my consideration of a cloud storage option that prompted me to start writing this article, but not two paragraphs into it I made a self-discovery: what is the cloud? Without context, it can be pretty vague. “The Cloud”, at its basic form, is simply the public Internet; an amorphous entity represented graphically as  a puffy cloud for the aforementioned reasons.

Microsoft’s efforts to elevate public awareness of the term haven’t helped. In its cloud-focused Windows 7 campaign, Microsoft refers to the cloud like it’s a product they included in the operating system. In the “Airport” spot, a couple stranded at the airport use the Internet to access their movies at home.

Really? Remote access is the cloud? I find it misleading to attach ‘cloud’ to literally any action related to using the Internet, but that seems to be the prevailing marketing strategy at Microsoft.

From an IT infrastructure perspective, especially for smaller businesses, there has long been a conflict between keeping services on-premise or relying on the purported reliability of data centers. Where a larger organization has the resources to multi-site and hot-site their infrastructure, a small business typically does not and is forced to choose between the two or, as I tend to do, create a hybrid of both to hedge your bets.

For me, this outage is simple proof that no basket, regardless of who makes it or what promises they make me, is ever safe enough for all of my eggs.

WordPress released an update to its framework which includes bug fixes and increased security – something we can all appreciate, right?

Thanks to the ease of a WordPress update, WCDT clients were quickly brought to the current version.

• Some security hardening to media uploads
• Performance improvements
• Fixes for IIS6 support
• Fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO (/index.php/) permalinks
• Fixes for various query and taxonomy edge cases that caused some plugin compatibility issues

wordpress.org

When Windows and Apple computers first began to find their way into homes, Apple made some key mistakes opening the door for Microsoft to leverage inferior software on inferior hardware to then dominate the personal computing market. Yes, Apple may have priced themselves out of the market for many, but that wasn’t the nail in their market share coffin: poor marketing and business decisions were.

The product that changed Apple, changed Microsoft, and, arguably, changed the world: the iPod.

MP3 players weren’t new when Apple decided to take a run at the market in 2001, but the fusion of hardware, operating system and and later, the online music store was the level of innovation Apple has been known for since first attaching that weird ‘mouse’ device to their computers that IBM PCs scoffed at just before universally adopting them.

The iPod brought Apple back into the limelight as an innovator and Apple has been on top of that wave ever since.

In 2005, Microsoft decides to take a run at both the iPod and iTunes with their Zune hardware and online store.

In many respects, I would agree that the Zune was a far better product than the classic iPod (to compare like products). The wireless synch and built in FM tuner were great ideas, but Microsoft was very late to market, which gave them plenty of time to build a better product, but was never able to overcome the pure marketing presence of Apple’s iPod and iTunes by that time. Nevertheless, the giant persevered until their 2% market share became a glaring eyesore in their bottom line.

Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft has finally decided to put an official end to its Zune media player line. “A person familiar with the decision” has informed them that Microsoft will not be putting out any new hardware in the line, and will be henceforward focusing on integrating Zune functionality with the Windows Phone 7 platform.Not exactly unexpected; the Zune hardware hasn’t changed since mid-2009′s release of the Zune HD, although it has received several significant software upgrades. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but whether Microsoft would double down again or cut their losses was far from clear. Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane.

via R.I.P. Microsoft Zune, 2006-2011.Bloomberg

Hate to say I told you so.

Not having learned much from that lesson, Microsoft is now trying to take on the iPhone. Perhaps that’s not a fair comparison since Microsoft had a mobile phone operating system out long before  Apple got into the game, but it seems pretty obvious that Microsofts real competitor with the Windows 7 phone is the iPhone.

Once again, late to market, Microsoft decides to take on what has become a giant in the mobile phone segment. Microsoft takes a good step forward by not trying to be an iOS knockoff, but rather delivers a very attractive, intuitive interface more suited to the efficient delivery of information and content. Given their late entry into the market time, Microsoft certainly had time to improve on the iPhone as an offering and I assumed they would bring a competitive if not superior product to market as they arguably had with the Zune.

Not so much.

As I first wrote here, I was long a dedicated Windows Mobile user. Nothing out there gave me the functionality that a Windows Mobile phone gave me and I carried around some ridiculously large ‘phones’ to have that toolbox. I was initially very curious about the new Windows OS phone and then utterly appalled that Microsoft would ship this device devoid of the same functionality the world had ridiculed Apple for leaving out of the initial iPhone iOS. Bravo!

Galen Gruman at pcworld.com wrote an article entitled “Windows Phone 7: Microsoft’s Disaster”; he is clearly not a fan. Mr. Gruman recognizes the potential squandered by Microsoft as I do, but takes an even dimmer view of the functionality delivered.

You know how in monster movies, the lumbering creature always manages to outrun the frantically running victim? That seems to be Microsoft’s hope in competing with Apple: Despite a late start and slow development, it will crush the iPhone out of sheer size. Microsoft’s creature of choice is Windows Phone 7, available on devices from Samsung, LG, and HTC.

In a twist on the monster metaphor, the competition is not between beauty and beast. Windows Phone 7 has a very elegant user interface that is nearly as beautiful and intuitive as what Apple produces. The competition is really between capabilities, of which the iPhone has many and Windows Phone 7 has fewer.

Read the entire post here.

InfoWorld

Microsoft will still sell units since it does appeal to those who would rather slit their own throat than approve of, let alone buy, an Apple device, but with Android a clear contender in the smartphone category, having only one leg isn’t much help in running a competitive race.

If you read or write blogs, you’ve undoubtedly come across them; custom icons next to the posts or comments people have made on blogs. Once only specific to a particular website, custom avatars are now accessible across multiple CMS and blogging platforms due to services like Gravatar.

Gravatar is already included in many WordPress premium themes and can also be integrated manually through several WordPress ready plug-ins without writing any real code.

Sign up and set up is very simple and takes only a few minutes.

What are you waiting for?!

I haven’t ordered pizza online from Dominos in a long time – long enough for me to not know about their patent-pending order tracking application which launched in 2008. After completing my order I was presented the option to track the progress of my order. Being a technologist-web-geek, I couldn’t help but begin wondering about the technical and business aspects of such an application.

My order was processed quickly and progress noted without the need to refresh the browser page. I would argue against the use of Flash for such an application given the limitations on the iPhone and iPad, but otherwise, it seemed to work very well. My order was delivered within about ten minutes of the app informing me it was out for delivery. I did not, however, think to ask the delivery guy if his name really was William.

Transparency is dangerous.

Having been involved in the planning and development of numerous web applications for business, I am always cognizant of the risk when providing increased transparency in business operations. If this tracker is truly real-time, any delay or process failure will immediately be obvious and may adversely affect the brand retention I assume this application was targeting as a business case.

Burden staff or automate?

As soon as I began to mentally walk through such a project, I realized that the increased data input on kitchen staff would be quite a burden. This would require the employee to update ‘the system’ either before or after their role has been completed. This is not only a hardware issue, but has impact on performance, training and information security. Automation can resolve some of those issues with the offset of additional cost and complexity to the implementation, but probably can’t be dismissed due to the inherent problems with updating such a system through manual input.

Input or Average

It could be tempting to simply use work center metrics to establish average times and rather than rely on any data input at those work centers, provide order feedback based on average times for that part of the process.

Fantastic or Fake?

The complexity of rolling out such an initiative enterprise-wide and finding out what decisions were made prompted me to Google a bit (yes, it’s officially a verb now) and I found a rash of skepticism and accusation.

“Anonymous” commented on this blog post on the order tracker that based on the order experience, the application is a complete fraud:

The DPT is a fraud. I ordered a pizza one night and it proceeded briskly through the DPT. After about 15 minutes it was out for delivery; however, after about an hour of being out for delivery I decided to check on my pizza. When I found my phone I had three messages from Dominos stating that they were out of deep dish and could not fill my order. On top of that the guy acted like it was my fault because I was not answering my phone. Why do I need to be accessible by phone when they have DPT. If DPT were legit shouldn’t there be some message to say hey we can’t make your pizza instead of telling me Jeff is putting my pizza in the oven and its out for delivery with Jay? Anonymous @ http://heywelikethis.blogspot.com/

No, not a smoking gun, but for me the glaring failure is an inability for the application to alert the consumer to an issue with their order. No one thought of that? Really? There was also a blog post from a now reformed Diet Coke addict who used Dominos as a soda delivery mechanism and labelled the whole tracker as a fraud because it treated his order like a pizza.

I watched in horror as my order of 10 bottles of diet coke was prepared. Then a few minutes later put in a the oven. I wasn’t sure if I should have called them and told them I didn’t want my diet coke heated up or not. After the diet coke left the oven. It was place in a box. Then it was out for delivery.http://www.ppc.bz/get-money-get-paid/

I hear you, disgruntled carbonated beverage guzzler.

But more importantly, I think Dominos probably knew they were going to sell products that didn’t get baked, so, a little more sensitivity to product types in the application was probably called for. The post comments are easily the most entertaining bit to the whole post, but included among them was a comment by a college student with firsthand order tracker experience:

I used to work at Dominos last year. As a college student, it’s a good gig. I pizza tracker is somewhat legit. When it says it’s being prepped, it actually is. When we knock the item off the prep screen, it updates the computer to the over. The ovens are set for 6 minutes so after that it naturally says being boxed. When the driver clocks the run out on the computer, it updates the pizza tracker again to say that it’s being delivered.Ron @ http://www.ppc.bz/

And there we have it: Perhaps three points of actual data entry and two static values established by standards. I’m assuming the process uses the order entry time to begin prep, though that may not be totally accurate. Updating the order as  ‘Prep’ completed starts the ‘Bake’ phase, which is pure timing as is the ‘Quality Check’. Dispatch to the driver is the only other actual point of data input.

The good news:

The pizza was great!

Microsoft has announced plans for a new Web version of its Games for Windows Marketplace. Come November 15, Windows PC users will be able to use the online portal to buy digital copies of video games from their browser, with 100 titles available from the likes of Rockstar and 2K Games, among others. The new marketplace will require a Windows Live ID and users will be able to purchase games with their Microsoft Points or a credit card.

via Microsoft readies browser-based Windows store for PC games.ars technica

In the interest of full disclosure I will state that I’ve long been a die-hard Valve fan, having built my first home PC from scratch mainly to play the original Half Life, but the addiction certainly didn’t end there.

For years, the Mac community has been relatively ignored by the malware community thanks to Windows’ market share, but that era is starting to fade as a result of Apple’s new appeal in the computing market.

Sophos anti-virus app

Sophos

Now security company Sophos has released a Mac anti-virus/anti-malware product for download free of charge.

As I’ve long said, the only thing that made Macs more ‘secure’ is there were only a fraction of the users and even less hackers dedicating their time to finding exploits. That era is coming to a close.

As the popularity of Apple’s other products has brought huge surges of demand in computing products, the malware community can no longer ignore the potential of co-opting our Macs for their botnets.

Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft already upset the apple cart in the PC security market by releasing a free anti-virus application for home and small business (10 user limit for businesses) in the form of Microsoft Security Essentials, providing an excellent alternative to other free anti-virus software which is often very limited or has annoying restrictions.

Personally, I’ve never found any one single application that will catch everything – a sentiment most IT professionals will agree to, but having even one installed is better than none and for users who take proper security precautions and keep their systems up to date, one tool might be fine.

Links

• Sophos Free Mac anti-virus
• Comprehensive review at securemac.com

But, having said that, it’s not hype if Apple delivers and Apple is also well known for delivering killer apps with new hardware. If you tie their recent south carolina datacenter to the rumors of NFC being included in the iPhone 5, we may just know what that ‘killer app’ for the next gen iPhone is.

If the iPhone 5 does have NFC, applications like an eWallet are a no-brainer. But we’ve been told that Apple is also researching NFC for remote computing.For example, a NFC iPhone will allow users to carry a lot of their desktop data and settings with them — and load that data onto a compatible Mac.If users wave a NFC-equipped iPhone at a NFC Mac they need to be in close proximity to interact, the Mac will load all their applications, settings and data. It will be as though they are sitting at their own machine at home or work. When the user leaves, and the NFC-equipped iPhone is out of range, the host machine returns to its previous state.

via iPhone 5 Will Enable Ambitious Remote Computing Program – Source [Exclusive] | Cult of Mac.Cult of Mac

Our readers enjoy our browser market share stories, but sometimes complain in the comments that we don’t do enough to compare the actual browsers. We’ve therefore decided to do some performance tests for the top five browsers (stable and beta versions) on Windows. This is not meant to be an exhaustive performance rundown, as we have not tried every test in existence nor did we run them on every browser for Windows. Also, please keep in mind that we have yet to identify a test that measures all the factors that influence the performance of a browser.

via Windows browsers benchmarked: October 2010 edition.ars technica

Chrome obliterated Internet Explorer and handily embarrassed everyone else for the most part.

Develop offers an interesting teaser from its forthcoming interview with former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft Ed Fries, who notes that he was personally tasked with appeasing Apple CEO Steve Jobs after Microsoft acquired game developer Bungie Studios in 2000. Bungie had been a prominent game developer for the Mac platform, but Microsofts acquisition enabled it to scoop up Bungies Halo project and turn it into an Xbox exclusive.

“As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called,” Fries said.”He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because wed just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer.”

Fries goes on to note that Microsoft and Apple reached a deal that saw Microsoft help port a handful of PC games to the Mac platform. As part of the deal, Fries appeared on-stage with Jobs at Macworld New York in 2000 in order to reassure Mac users about the partnership between Microsoft/Bungie and Apple.

via Apple History: Jobs Raged Over Microsofts 2000 Acquisition of Halo Developer Bungie – Mac Rumors.Mac Rumors

I was a Halo junkie long before Xbox.

I sometimes feel like a member of some secret society when people talk about Halo without realizing that Halo, as it is known today, is nothing like Bungie’s original vision for the game. Yes, Halo would have been released for Windows, but it was also going to be released for Mac. Bungie and Blizzard were the only two major game studios I can think of who released for both platforms. Of even greater importance was the concept behind Halo. It wasn’t being crafted as some simple first person shooter, but as a second generation fusion of MMO and FPS. Just imagine an MMO Halo.

Here is the original introduction of Halo made at MacWorld in 1999.

I never believed that Halo’s succes was due to the Xbox platform, but rather the story and the Master Chief.
These elements would have been even more powerful in an MMO format.

Enter: The 800 lb Gorilla

Steve Jobs wasn’t the only one really angry and disappointed  when Bungie sold out to Microsoft.

The entire gaming landscape could be vastly different today had Apple bought Bungie – or if Microsoft simply had not. Mac gaming would have been hugely elevated a full decade ahead of the resurgence we’re now seeing in the Mac OS (all thanks to the iPod and iTunes) and the market Xbox sailed into would have had some choppy waters.

Have you heard of World of Warcraft? Of course you have. Odds are pretty good you might be one of the now twelve million account holders. World of Warcraft immediately dwarfed the subscriber base of every MMO before it. In fact, it now has more active accounts than most other MMOs combined. It changed the face of MMOs.

That could have been Halo.

I played Sony Online Entertainment’s ‘Planetside‘, a FPS MMO that was what Halo was meant to be and I often thought of that for the year+ I played that game before SOE ruined it as they have most games they publish – but that’s another story.

UPDATE: According to this report, Apple was aware that Bungie was looking to sell, but was only interested when it became obvious that Microsoft was interested in the acquisition.

Bungie looked like it was on top of the world in 1999, having just shown Halo to an impressed crowd at Macworld Expo. But the truth was a little different; the company was rapidly running out of money, and everyone understood that it didn’t have the funds to complete the project. This was around the time Microsoft started showing the first Xbox to developers, and Bungie was able to show Halo to Microsoft during a meeting in New York.

Microsoft was impressed, and it wanted the game as an exclusive for the Xbox. But Bungie wasn’t interested in just selling the game, according to Deniz, it wanted to sell the company. Microsoft’s Ed Fries went back to his bosses to ask for the budget to buy the developer.ars technica