rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
August 30, 2010 at 3:56 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I use Google Voice for incoming / outgoing calls all day. Certainly I’ve had a few problems in the past, but it has worked flawlessly for me in the last several weeks – certainly since the GMail / Google Voice integration.
Mike Arrington says Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now:
About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.
He goes on to say that sources tell him there won’t be a quick fix to the problem. Like I said, I’m not having any of these problems, but Google has sold me on the value of such a service – I would even pay for it!
So if this becomes a problem, I’ll probably jump over to Ribbit. They actually are a telephone company.
Tags: Google, GV, Ribbit
October 9, 2009 at 9:59 am · Filed under Web 2.0
I control my online identity as much as I can. I don’t like using email addresses / identities that are controlled by a vendor. Like phone # portability, this allows me to switch vendors when I want without (much) disruption. That is the main reason I host my blog and email on my own domain. I used to maintain my own servers to do that (literally in-house). Then I moved them to a hosting company. Then I moved email to Google Apps for Domains (GAFD).
GAFD is pretty cool. It allows you to put many services (i.e., mail, calendar, docs, sites, chat) behind your own domain. Other Google services don’t exactly fit this model, and so they aren’t supported. For example while App Engine does allow you to use your own domain, you probably don’t need to host your App Engine development portal from within your domain. Not too big a deal.
But for the services that use your contact list (e.g., Voice, Wave, and Reader), I really don’t want to use my GMail address and certainly not the contacts list I have there.
I am at a loss to understand why Google doesn’t have a corporate policy that products must support GAFD. Isn’t GAFD an important part of Google’s business model? Obviously not as important as trying to sell us things we don’t want, but certainly strategic against Microsoft.
What gives?
Tags: GAFD, GMail, Google
April 13, 2009 at 9:14 am · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
I use speech recognition a great deal – and I recently switched to Windows Speech Recognition on Vista. And I’ve been using Chrome exclusively for Google Apps, because I think it offers superior performance for JavaScript apps.
Unfortunately, Chrome doesn’t support WSR. According to Rob Chambers this would be easy for Google to do, and I suspect it is just an oversight on their part (both in terms of making their software more accessible as well as following Windows best practices).
Google: when are you going to put the effort into this? The Chrome 2.0 Beta doesn’t do it either.
Rob Chambers: how easy is this really? You also said that Firefox does support WSR – maybe it does, but not in Google Docs.
So now, I’m using IE8. Google Docs with WSR works great there.
Tags: Chrome, Firefox, Google, IE, IE8, Microsoft, WSR
December 11, 2008 at 8:48 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Now Chrome is out of beta. Cool.
Question: what on earth are Google’s standards for the word beta anyway?
Possible answers:
- Non-existent
- Non-existent with a dash of whimsy
- Variable based on $$$$$
- (Fairly) fixed based on the users requirement to understand relative product completeness / bugginess
Before Chrome left beta I would have said #1 or #2.
Now it seems that Google can’t get Chrome adoption from OEMs while it is a beta. Shazam, we’re out of beta. So I guess its #3.
I sure wish it were #4. The term beta is actually pretty useful. Google has never taken it seriously, and this is just further evidence.
I’m generally a fan of the Google products and I use many of them, but Google, can you grow up a little here? Show some respect for the term beta — you’ll be respecting your users too.
Tags: beta, Chrome, Google, sdlc
September 4, 2008 at 9:58 am · Filed under Grid Computing, Web 2.0
Google releases a new browser. The world declares “browser war” with some apprehension and relish. Web developers are cringing because browser compatibility is a major source of effort, cost, and frustration for software developers.
Q. Why would Google do this to us? Just to take away Microsoft browser share?
A. No.
Q. Are they doing this to extend the “Google OS” to the desktop in a way they control?
A. Probably, but that isn’t even their first concern.
Q. So, what is going on?
A. Well, I’m glad you asked.
Google is working to make their JavaScript-view of the Web as powerful as possible. This makes sense given their enormous investments in JavaScript and in their own application suite.
Contrary to the approaches of Microsoft and Adobe with their Rich Internet Applications (RIA) frameworks, Google has focused on JavaScript. Where Microsoft and Adobe are building a better user experience inside of a container, Google is creating a better user experience through dynamic HTML and AJAX techniques.
Their developer model includes building out tooling to make it easier to author AJAX applications. This includes the efforts made in the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to enable modern IDE tooling for AJAX development. This allows developers to build maintainable object-oriented applications (in Java) that get converted and optimized to JavaScript. Plus it promises cross-browser compatibility.
On the client side, they have Google Gears to enable local storage, improved caching support, and offline mode.
Q. So what have they been missing? A browser?
A. Not exactly. They’ve been missing a JavaScript client runtime engine.
Google has made great advances in AJAX application development and tooling, but they have had to rely on others to provide reliability, responsiveness, performance, etc.
And that is what Chrome is about: taking control of the runtime engine for Google applications. This makes the Google applications way more compelling. More specifically, Chrome is about delivering that engine. As Google says, they would love it if other browsers adopt the engine too. I buy that.
Of course, by that time Chrome will be differentiated from its JavaScript engine. By then Chrome will be about the Google OS.
Tags: Adobe, Chrome, Flash, Google, JavaScript, Microsoft, Silverlight
July 28, 2008 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
I posted Cloud Services Continuum a couple of weeks back. In that post I articulated a simplified view of cloud services and how they fit together. This was simple by design — others had found this view useful, so I wrote it down. I intentionally ignored some kinds of services, greatly simplifying the Infrastructure piece. In this post I delve deeper into infrastructure services. I’ll move on to platform next.
BTW: Stack is a more fitting word than continuum for various reasons, so I’m using that instead. And a shout out to Matias Wolsky — check out his SaaS Taxonomy Map.
Infrastructure as a Service
In my earlier post, I defined IaaS to include provisioning of hardware or virtual machines on which one generally has control over the OS; therefore allowing the execution of arbitrary software. This definition isn’t really enough, because there are many other kinds of infrastructure. Take a look at the services that are out there:
- connectivity / messaging services. Examples: Microsoft BizTalk Labs and Connectivity Services, Gnip.
- identity services. Countless OpenID identity providers, again the BizTalk Labs Identity Services.
- data storage. Examples: Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB, Microsoft SQL Server Data Services.
One might argue that together these services create a “platform” — and they get close — but since none of these host general user-written code, they don’t quite get there.
Then, of course, there is flexible machine provisioning like Amazon EC2. These are definitely infrastructure — where the platform is the OS, Web servers, and other software.
Calling this all IaaS is fine — it is all infrastructure — but, maybe we should further divide these:
- Virtual Hardware Infrastructure
- Storage Infrastructure
- (Other) Infrastructure Services
Granted, these names need some work, but I think the categories are useful. And I won’t make them into acronyms because I think we have enough of those.
Tags: Amazon, AWS, cloud, Gnip, Google, IaaS, Microsoft, PaaS, SaaS, Salesforce, SSDS
July 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm · Filed under Grid Computing, Web 2.0
I have found myself talking about cloud services a lot recently. We have been talking about them here — there is an obvious synergy between what we do at Digipede and cloud services. And I’ve been talking about them externally too: at the recent CloudCamp, on the Gillmor Gang, and in all sorts of other interesting contexts.
Note that I refer to cloud services, not to the cloud. I am not interested in defining cloud as a term, because I don’t think it very useful. For those of us in the distributed computing space, cloud is the latest buzzword to compete with the word grid in terms of utter ambiguity. I think the ship has already sailed on this one and I’m not going to try to call it back.
So, everyone is talking about cloud services and much of the conversation centers on understanding them and how they are changing the landscape. Of course, cloud services are not one thing. I find it helpful to think about them as parts of a continuum. This seems useful regardless of the technical level of the people with whom I’m speaking.
The diagram to the right shows this continuum from infrastructure to platform to software. Brief definitions of these parts are:
- Infrastructure includes provisioning of hardware or virtual computers on which one generally has control over the OS; therefore allowing the execution of arbitrary software.
- Platform indicates a higher-level environment for which developers write custom applications. Generally the developer is accepting some restrictions on the type of software they can write in exchange for built-in application scalability.
- Software (as a Service) indicates special-purpose software made available through the Internet.
I have indicated several companies that play at different parts of this stack. This list is not comprehensive nor does it attempt to represent motion across the stack.
One scenario in which I find myself talking about the continuum is when people equate Amazon EC2 with Google App Engine. EC2 is a flexible / scalable virtual hosting platform with provisioning APIs. It allows you to dynamically scale the number of instances of your OS (i.e., Linux). What you do with those instances is up to you. Google App Engine operates at a much higher level in the stack. It is a new software platform with specific APIs. It requires developers to build for this specific platform. yes, they are both in the cloud, but they are very different services.
Another scenario in which the continuum is useful is in thinking about what vendors and new entrants might be up to. The continuum makes one thing even more clear: many vendors that operate higher in the stack are relying on their own internal lower-level infrastructure or platform. This begs some questions: which vendors will expose lower-level interfaces? And of course, which vendors will move up the stack?
- SalesForce is already moving down with their PaaS offering.
- Any chance Google will expose its infrastructure stack? I doubt it, but I do expect them to move down a little.
- Some of the readers of this blog probably know better than I where Amazon and Microsoft are planning to go.
Yet another way it is useful is in comparing vendors inside of a particular category. Maybe I’ll write more on that later.
Is the continuum obvious? Using the definition of obvious from patent law, yes, but I think it a useful paradigm.
Tags: Amazon, cloud, Google, IaaS, Microsoft, PaaS, SaaS, Salesforce
May 28, 2008 at 9:28 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
Quick notes from Google I/O today.
Best things I saw were (in order):
- Android. Very disruptive. It will force the iPhone to be more open. It will further commoditize the hardware (driving down prices). It places Symbian, RIM, and WM into filling niche roles. Of course the other mobile OSes aren’t sitting still, but they are already playing catch up. This will put them further behind.
- GWT. JavaScript apps written in Java with familiar tools. Cool. Interesting how Microsoft and Adobe are solving the JavaScript-dev-maint problem with rich containers (Silverlight and Air / Flash) while Google is solving it with a Java to JavaScript compiler. The former are working outside
- OpenSocial. The fundamentals of this API and Friend Connect are to allow social applications to interact across silos. To me this means user control. This will ultimately force silos (like Facebook) to open up. I like it.
Participated in the ongoing argument between Robert Scoble and Steve Gillmor regarding FriendFeed.
Met a man dressed in a pirate costume. Or Ben Franklin costume. Pano Kroko. Fascinating guy. Checkout www.churmo.com.
Ran into an old friend, Julian Wixson. Hadn’t seen him for at least ten years.
Went on a trek with Robert, Steve, Pano, Julian, Vincent Nguyen of Slashgear, Mark Lucovsky and a student to see Gary Vaynerchuk talk about his new book. I learned two things:
- It is about a 15 minute walk from Moscone West to Union Square.
- Don’t drink the same varietal twice.
Got back to the Google party just in time to see Flight of the Conchords. Those guys are very funny.
Tags: Android, FriendFeed, Gillmor, Google, GoogleI/O, GWT, IO2008, OpenSocial, Scoble, Twitter
May 22, 2008 at 6:40 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
The other day, I wrote How many OpenIDs do I need? The premise was that the Identity Community needs to help educate users on the choices surrounding the use of OpenIDs. Having bought into the hype of OpenID I have since:
- Read various critiques and articles supporting OpenID.
- Added OpenID comments to this blog.
- Got an i-name, =rwa, to act as my public OpenID.
- Began tracking OpenID on Twitter.
- Participated in discussions about OpenID in financial services.
- Tried to Demand OpenID, only to find my OpenID verification failed : (
All together, I’ve come to a few conclusions.
Users assume OpenID has a trust layer
Track OpenID on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean. Here is one example:
- (leighhouse): Bill: OpenID also insures you’re not a machine / spam, creates acess #iCitizen
- me: @Leighhouse: openid does not prove you are not a robot. Anyone can create a Provider that accepts arbitrary IDs.
- (leighhouse): @rwandering Can if authenticated? Can eventually? Or Can’t period.
- me: @leighhouse: it depends on the Provider. Services need to evaluate trust of Providers (which is already too hard).
- (leighhouse): @rwandering Can if authenticated? Can eventually? Or Can’t period.
- me: @leighhouse: you are asking the wrong question. OpenID is only authentication piece, trust of IPs is a bigger question outside of tech OpenID standards.
OpenID is intended to provide identity, but without trust. Search around the Internet and you will find an OpenID Identity Provider (OP) that takes this to the extreme: it accepts arbitrary URLs with no authentication at all. It reports “trusted” to anyone who asks. Granted, this OP exists to demonstrate a point, a kind of “white hat” OpenID hack, but it leads into my next point.
Relying Parties don’t have any reasonable way of determining trust levels for Providers
Some OpenIDs can be trusted (e.g., Google, Yahoo, myopenid, etc.), others cannot. I want to be clear that I’m only talking about trusting Google (or some other Big-Co) as an OP. That means that they manage user authentication in a reasonably secure way. I am not talking about trust outside of that relationship, or even if it makes sense to trust Google as the center of your identity.
So some can’t be trusted. In addition to the example OP above, what about the numerous self-hosted OPs that are springing up?
How is a Relying Party to distinguish between all these different OPs?
It appears the OpenID authors intended to delegate this issue to a 3rd party (e.g., VeriSign or perhaps a community-based foundation).
Fair enough, but how are services to deal with this issue today? I don’t think they have a reasonable way to do it, except to maintain their own list of trusted OPs. But that is a brittle system to say the least.
And more
On top of this, there are many technical issues that are being raised about OpenID. These range from security issues to privacy issues and much more. A good round up can be found here: The problem(s) with OpenID. Some of these issues are at the heart of why users shouldn’t want one ID on the Internet.
OpenID isn’t ready for prime time
OpenID shows a lot of promise and has real value in some current use cases. Google Friend Connect stands out, as do any applications that are built on top of services published by OpenID providers (e.g., if you want to build a service that interacts with WordPress.com, OpenID might make sense).
The OpenID hype is getting way ahead of what the technology can deliver. People are rushing out to get OpenIDs and people are demanding that their services become Relying Parties, but the technology is just not ready for general adoption.
The leaders in the identity community (the Identity Commons?) need to slow this down and get these issues sorted out, otherwise I think OpenID will end up a big failure.
It just isn’t ready for prime time.
Tags: Google, i-names, OpenID, Verisign, Yahoo
May 18, 2008 at 10:35 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Playing with the Google Friend Connect demos last night, I found that my i-name doesn’t work as an OpenID. No big deal, after all it is a preview release.
Today I went to add a comment on a blogger.com blog and tried my i-name there. Nope.
What’s up, Google? Why aren’t you supporting i-names? Oversight, planned for release, bug, or politics? I really hope it isn’t the latter.
Tags: Blogger, Google, i-name, OpenID
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