Tag: internet

Let Microsoft run Exchange for you

microsoft exchange Live Mesh and other consumer facing initiatives tend to garner the majority of the headlines related to Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives, but it’s the simple, more boring things like hosted Exchange services that will probably have a bigger direct impact on the bottom line. I’ve run my own servers for a long time now, and while it isn’t incredibly difficult it is time consuming. I’d definitely welcome a switch to having Microsoft run them for me. They seem think it’s going to happen very quickly:

In an interview ahead of the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, Chris Capossela, who manages Microsoft’s Office products, said the company will see more and more companies abandon their own in-house computer systems and shift to “cloud computing,” a less expensive alternative.

“In five years, 50 percent of our Exchange mailboxes will be Exchange Online,” said Capossela, who expects a portion of Exchange Online customers to come from customers switching from International Business Machines’ (IBM.N) Lotus Domino system.

When you run your own Exchange server, there’s a lot of things you need to worry about. You need to ensure it is patched with the latest updates, that the junk mail filters are configured correctly, that data is being backed up properly, etc. It would be much better if Microsoft just did all of that for me.

I know there are already companies that do this sort of thing, but there’s something about having Microsoft behind the service that appeals to me. They should be the experts on their own software, after all. And I’m sure they’ll eventually offer a suite of these services that’ll just be a no-brainer for small businesses.

Why buy, install, and support an increasingly expensive Small Business Server, when you can just pay Microsoft a monthly fee to do it all for you? That’s where cloud computing will have the biggest impact on businesses.

Read: Yahoo! News

En Route to San Antonio

I’m traveling to San Antonio today for the 2008 Questionmark Users Conference, taking place through Wednesday at the Westin Riverwalk. I didn’t find out I would be attending until late this week, so the flight options were pretty limited. I was scheduled to leave Edmonton this morning at 6 AM.

I left my house a little later than I wanted to, meaning I didn’t get to the airport until just before 5 AM. That would normally have been okay (though cutting it close), except that the self-service check-in machines were all down. So I got in the incredibly long line and started to wait. I gave up on that after about ten minutes, jumped into the first class/business line, and pleaded my case.

The service agent was really helpful, and she helped rebook me on a later flight. Frankly I was fairly surprised at how busy the airport was so early on a Sunday morning. Anyway, I’m in Denver now, on a long layover. I should arrive into San Antonio tonight at around 6:30 CDT.

The great thing about the Denver International Airport is that they have free, ad-supported wireless Internet – something I wish we had in Edmonton. I’ve been using it for a while now, and it seems pretty quick. Uploads are really fast actually, faster than my connection at home, at least to Flickr! I uploaded a bunch of pictures from Megan’s birthday celebration last night. Happy Birthday Megan 🙂

More later!

Edmonton Next Gen WiFi Focus Group

edmonton next gen Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make it to this event (I’m going to San Antonio on Sunday) but I thought I’d mention it in case someone else wants to go and can fill me in later! Edmonton’s Next Gen organization is hosting a focus group on WiFi, to discuss the next steps in their initiatives for public wireless access in our city:

Now, Next Gen and the City’s IT branch are preparing a new report to City Council, which will give an update on the success of the pilot projects over the past year, and recommend next steps to take towards Next Gen’s vision. If you would like to take part in deciding what those next steps will be, please contact Megan Pilby at megan.pilby@edmonton.ca to RSVP for our upcoming session.

The deadline to RSVP is tomorrow at noon. The event takes place on Sunday, April 13th, from 1pm to 4pm. Location details will be given once you RSVP.

For background information, you can read the NextGen report on WiFi (PDF). To learn more about Edmonton’s Next Gen, check out the website.

Don't worry about undersea cable cuts

inet Remember all the undersea cables that were cut last month? I still haven’t come across a definitive reason for the disruptions, though a February 19th article at The Inquirer claims it was sabotage. I’m not sure about that, but the one thing that is clear is that everyone has moved on. For instance, Google announced a few weeks ago that it was joining a consortium building a new $300 million undersea fiber optic cable linking the US and Japan:

The new cable system – named Unity – will address broadband demand by providing much needed capacity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States.  Unity is expected to initially increase Trans-Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.

Om Malik has a good roundup of reasons for why Google got involved.

Just a few days ago, AT&T announced big investments in data centers here in Canada as well as undersea cables in Asia and Australia:

“Recent cable cuts in Europe and Asia show we need to further improve resiliency and re-routing capability,” he says.

AT&T has the largest private fleet of cable-laying ships in the world, and operates its global network on 71 undersea cables laid over 450,000 miles…

If you do a quick search you’ll find a bunch of other announcements for cable systems, such as this new one in Africa, and this upgraded one that links Singapore and France.

Maybe new cables are being laid faster than they are being cut after all 🙂

Also – check out this post at the Royal Pingdom blog:

Over 260 ISPs, including major network providers like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, all cross-connect in a single data center in an office building in downtown LA.

This has been going on for 20 years. So much for not having a single point of failure.

A few cut cables seems kind of irrelevant compared to that.

Starbucks to offer free Wi-Fi at most U.S. locations

starbucks It’s announcements like this one that make me wish I lived south of the border. Beginning this spring, Starbucks and AT&T will offer free and paid wireless access at “many” locations around the United States:

Starbucks said Monday it will give customers that use its Starbucks purchase card two hours of free wireless access per day. After that, it will cost $3.99 for a two-hour session. Monthly memberships will cost $19.99 and include access to any of AT&T’s 70,000 hot spots worldwide.

How freaking sweet is that?! Two free hours if you use a Starbucks card. Starbucks Gossip confirmed with PR that they mean the gift card kind, not the Duetto, which is even better! And if you work at Starbucks, you get unlimited free access:

As an added benefit for the more than 100,000 Starbucks partners in the U.S., all Starbucks partners will receive free AT&T Wi-Fi accounts allowing them to use the network in Starbucks company-operated locations offering Wi-Fi access.

Today’s news ends a six-year deal that Starbucks had with AT&T rival T-Mobile. There’s more on the story at Techmeme.

Please Starbucks, bring this to Canada! I would absolutely love to drop in to Starbucks, turn on my iPod touch, and check out the headlines (or Twitter/Facebook mobile heh).

Please? Pretty please?

Read: The Associated Press

Fifth undersea cable cut

inet cable With each passing day, another undersea cable serving the Middle East is severed. At least that’s the way things are going right now! Slashdot reported earlier today on the fifth incident, originally suggesting that it resulted in all of Iran going offline. They later backtracked as it became clear that Iran was still on the grid.

Not surprisingly, there is a Wikipedia entry up with information on the 2008 submarine cable disruption. It includes a timeline with details about which cables were damaged. In case you’re wondering, there’s a list of international submarine communications cables at Wikipedia too.

The cable known as SEA-ME-WE 4 has been affected the most, which is significant as it provides the primary connection between Europe, the Middle East, and South East Asia. Combined with the FLAG cable cut, the BBC has pointed out that only the older SEA-ME-WE 3 is currently connecting Europe and the Middle East, with capacity reduced by about 75%. This cable has experienced a couple disruptions of its own in the past. The first was in July of 2005, which mainly affected Pakistan. The second was back in December of 2006, the result of an earthquake known as Hengchun which occurred off the coast of Taiwan. Perhaps there are more that I haven’t found yet. Heck, portions of the cable have even been stolen and sold!

In my post yesterday, I expressed hope that the recent incidents would result in some action to prevent the situation from getting worse. The more I read about undersea cables however, the clearer it becomes that these events are certainly nothing new. It seems as though cable disruptions aren’t as uncommon as one might think.

Certainly the fact that five cables have been cut in less than two weeks should raise some eyebrows, however.

Here are some additional resources:

Undersea cables carry 95% of the world's telephone and Internet traffic

internet cable On Friday I posted about the three undersea cables that were cut, disrupting Internet access in South Asia and the Middle East. Since then, another cable has been cut, and the story is finally starting to get some coverage. The BBC posted about the issue today, and included a really interesting diagram that explains the parts of an undersea cable.

The most interesting article however, comes from the International Herald Tribune:

Most telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows what damaged the cables or whether the incidents were related.

According to the Egyptian government, no ships were in the vicinity of the cables when they were cut. Seems suspicious to me that four cables have been severed in such a short period of time, but who knows. It seems that this bit of Internet infrastructure isn’t as sturdy as one might think.

“This has been an eye-opener for us, and everyone in the telecom industry worldwide,” said Colonel R.S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Let’s hope the recent incidents result in some action, before the situation gets any worse. Traffic has been re-routed over the last week, but how well would that work if many more cables were cut, say during an attack?

Maybe you’re not convinced that ensuring the safety of undersea cables is important. Consider this:

Undersea cables carry about 95 percent of the world’s telephone and Internet traffic, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, an 86-member group that works with fishing, mining and drilling companies to curb damage to submarine cables.

Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!

Read: International Herald Tribune

If I were a terrorist…

…I’d launch an attack on undersea cables around the world.

On Wednesday, two such cables near Egypt were cut resulting in a major disruption of Internet access in south Asia and the Middle East. Today, another cable was cut near Dubai. In both cases the cause remains unknown, but ship anchors seem likely.

Why bother with bombing train stations when you can disrupt global communications, apparently by dropping a few anchors? Maybe it’s sick that I thought about terrorism when reading the news, but seriously, it seems to me that this could be a real threat. And I haven’t heard anything about preparing for it.

The image above gives you a good overview, but this very detailed, up-to-date map of the globe’s undersea cabling is better (and much bigger).

I'll say it until I'm blue in the face

Post ImageThere is no privacy on the web.

Early this morning, Robert Scoble’s Facebook account was disabled because he violated their terms of service by scraping data from the site. That caused a flood of a posts from people saying that either Scoble was wrong or that Facebook got what it deserved. Most people siding with Scoble said that as he owns his data, not Facebook, he was in the right. He should be able to do with it whatever he wishes. Except that he doesn’t own all the data. Would his friends be happy to find out that he was taking their data elsewhere without their knowledge?

Not that it matters. It should be a non-issue. If everyone realized the truth – there is no privacy on the web – no one would be up-in-arms about the whole situation.

Sure there is something to be said about Facebook only sharing data when it makes good business sense for them to do so. Some might say that’s evil, others might say that’s business. Either way, it all boils down to privacy. Facebook gives you the impression that your data is secure, but it really isn’t.

There is no privacy on the web.

Scott Karp rightly points out that data is power. He suggests a war will be fought over control of data. I wonder though, if such a war can ever have a victor? Does Scoble own the data in his account? Does Facebook? What about his friends, don’t they own some of it? What about advertisers, surely they own some of it? Other companies? I think it’s a pointless battle. There’s far too much entanglement.

Forget trying to control the data. Let it flow freely. Forget trying to keep things secret. If there’s something that must be kept private, don’t post it on the web.

There is no privacy on the web.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re safe. With each passing day we give up a little bit more privacy than the last. The bottom line is that we almost always choose convenience over privacy, whether we know it or not. There’s a reason that concepts like identity theft didn’t really exist a hundred years ago. We share more information about ourselves now than individuals did back then, and we think nothing of it. Of course, accessing and distributing that information is easier than ever too, thanks in large part to the Internet.

Everything you think you know about privacy in the physical world is meaningless in the virtual world. The rules of the game are completely different.

There is no privacy on the web.

Read: Techmeme

Make elections greener – Internet voting!

Today is election day here in Edmonton. Today is also Blog Action Day. Better together? Let’s find out! It should be pretty clear that election day means we’re voting for our city mayor, councillors, and school board trustees, but what is Blog Action Day all about? From the website:

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

This is my entry for Blog Action Day, and as you may have guessed by now, I am going to talk about the election in relation to the environment. I just heard on the news that the turnout for this election is expected to be an abysmal 20%. Are people really not interested, or is it just too difficult to vote? Maybe a bit of both, but the process can certainly be made simpler. Not to mention more environmentally friendly or green.

There are two major problems with the way we vote now:

  1. So much paper is wasted. There are forms to organize the volunteers. There are forms to register you. The ballot you fill out. The second ballot you fill out because you screwed up on the first one. The documents with results. You get the idea. Voting today is really not an environmentally friendly thing to do. And don’t forget the campaigns either – thousands and thousands of flyers, posters, signs, etc.
  2. It’s too difficult. I worked from 9 to 5 today, and it took me until 6 PM to get back to the area of the city I live in to vote. So I didn’t have much time at all considering the polls close at 8 PM. Not only that, but once you get to the voting station you have to deal with three dinosaurs before you even get a ballot. Seriously, why do three individuals have to look at my drivers license in order to let me vote? Isn’t one person good enough? I’m not kidding about the dinosaurs part either. I was easily the youngest person in the room by about 35 years. It’s great that they are helping out, but they move slowly, have to squint at the fine print on the drivers license, and worst of all they look at me like they’ve never seen someone under 40 going to vote (and of course they must comment on that too). Just let me get in and get out!

It doesn’t have to be this way! We could make elections more environmentally friendly and efficient by getting rid of the archaic system we use now and adopting Internet voting. There are of course examples of successes with Internet voting and concern over potential problems that may arise. I won’t get into any of that here, but you can read the very complete Wikipedia entry if you’re interested. I simply look at it this way:

  • Is the Internet good enough for Revenue Canada and the banks? Yes.
  • Would voting over the Internet have a positive impact on the environment? Yes.
  • Would voting over the Internet be faster and easier for voters than the current process? Yes.

Good enough for me. I think it’s time we moved one of our society’s most important institutions into the 21st century. I think it’s time we started voting over the Internet!