cloud computing

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Talking the cloud on ABC Radio Darwin 105.7

13 June 2011 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

Apple wins again, it seems. They launch their iCloud service, and for the masses it’s the first time they’ve encountered cloud computing. So on Friday I ended up talking the cloud with Kate O’Toole on ABC Radio Darwin 105.7.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:55 — 5.8MB)

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, of course, but given that I provide my time for free and they don’t make the effort to make it available online, it’s only reasonable that I put it here and plug Kate O’Toole’s excellent program.

Weekly Wrap 50

22 May 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week was mostly about the AusCERT information security conference on the Gold Coast, although a few things relating to the previous week dribbled through.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 88, “Social business + cloud != revolution”, based on material recorded at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference the previous week.

Articles

What a lot of articles we have this week! I was covering AusCERT as part of the ZDNet Australia team, and the Technology Spectator article was actually written the week before. There’ll be more AusCERT articles next week.

AusCERT 2011: Firms ignore ID theft risk, for ZDNet Australia, which is based on some of Bennett Arron’s comments during the conference’s opening keynote.
AusCERT 2011: Son of Stuxnet within a year: expert, ZDNet Australia. The source code for Stuxnet is out there. Security analyst Eric Byres reckons that’ll show everyone how to make sophisticated malware, and the “Russian business network” will be first off the rank.
Privacy is a commodity, for Technology Spectator, in which I bite the hand that feeds me by criticising the comment they use.
AusCERT 2011: Black hats and whitegoods, for ZDNet Australia. We’re creating the Internet of Things by turning everything into a network device. But when was the last time you heard an appliance manufacturer talking about network security? CBS Interactive’s Brian Haverty came up with the OARSUM headline.
AusCERT 2011: Bank theft goes truly mobile, for ZDNet Australia.
AusCERT 2011: Silent victims thwart cybercops: Qld Police, for ZDNet Australia.
Qld cops denounce ‘ethical hacking’, for ZDNet Australia. This headline is a bit of a misdirection. Ethical hacking is generally when the target has given permission, such as when someone is hired to do penetration testing. The kind of hacking games at black hat conferences, which is what Detective Superintendent Brian Hay was talking about, probably don’t fit into this category.

Media Appearances

I was asked to do a bit of trickery before Bennett Arron’s keynote at AusCERT. It didn’t go quite as planned. When Munir Kotadia produced the Day 1 Highlights video, he made sure that no-one forgot.

Corporate Largesse

I travelled to the Gold Coast for the AusCERT Conference on information security. My air fares, accommodation and breakfast were covered by CBS Interactive, ZDNet Australia’s parent company, as is normal for freelancers so that doesn’t count as largesse. AusCERT provided free conference entry, as is normal for any media attending, and that included meals and drinks at the social events. In the goodie bag was: webroot Personal Security and Mobile Security for Android from, erm, webroot; notebooks from webroot and Juniper Networks; PostIt-style thingies from Symantec; pens from RSM Bird Cameron, Citrix, Netgear and M86 Security; a Rubik’s Cube from WatchGuard; 3D glasses from SecurityLab; a yoyo from McAfee; and, via a voucher, an AusCERT conference t-shirt. I’ll have more to say about this later. I was also given a t-shirt by Sophos and a stubbie holder from Splunk.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Sunrise over the Pacific, Surfer's Paradise, taken from my room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in 17 May. I didn't really bother trying to take a good photo, it's just a snapshot from my phone. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.]

Just a quick reminder that in a few hours I’ll be winging my way to San Francisco for NetSuite’s SuiteWorld event. If you’ll be there, do get in touch. If there’s something you reckon I should cover, do let me know.

09 May 2011 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Visiting San Francisco for SuiteWorld

22 March 2011 in Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

In May I’ll be visiting San Francisco for the third time in six months. This time it’s to attend NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference, on their tab.

Curiously enough, NetSuite’s CEO Zach Nelson has been warning against the false cloud.

It’s pretty clear that everything is going to the cloud. I think the real issue is that there are real clouds and fake clouds. The fake clouds are people who are taking existing technology and saying, ‘We can host it for you and that’s the cloud’.

That is not the cloud. If the application is not web-native it’s not going to give you any of the benefits of the cloud. You’re not going to get any of this cost reduction, customisation migration or anytime, anywhere access because you are still using this funky intermediary technology to access that hosted application.

Microsoft is famous for saying ‘all our applications are in the cloud’. No they’re not. They’re their existing applications hosted someplace. That failed back in 1999 — how’s it going to succeed in 2010?

That’s interesting because Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff was also telling us to “beware of the false cloud” at their Dreamforce conference, which I attended in December. You can here him say exactly that on the Patch Monday podcast.

And that’s interesting because Nelson and Benioff used to be colleagues at Oracle. Funny old world.

Anyway, I’ll tell your more about this particular trip as it aproaches.

Weekly Wrap 36

13 February 2011 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Once more it wasn’t a lot, because I was thoroughly exhausted after finally moving out of the Enmore house.

Articles

Hosing down the hype on wireless internet technology, for Crikey. The opponents of the National Broadband Network continue to imagine that “next generation” wireless technology that hasn’t even been deployed yet is a viable alternative to laying optical fibre today.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 75, “7 tips for a safer internet”. What it says on the tin, with a group of seven information security folks.

Corporate Largesse

On Thursday I was bought a beer by the guys from Ninefold, a new Australian cloud computing provider. Quite possibly mentioning one beer is drilling a bit too far down into the potentially corrupting events. What do you think?

Elsewhere

[Photo: On the platform at Wentworth Falls station, photographed yesterday during a misty drizzle. The temperate was around 20C tops, somewhat different from 41C+ temperatures only last week.]

Weekly Wrap 26

05 December 2010 in Internet, Politics, Privacy, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.

Articles

WikiLeaks slammed by Wikipedia co-founder, disrupted by hacker, for Crikey. A summary of the verbal and network-borne attacks on WikiLeaks — at least as they were when this article was written on 29 November. A lot has happened since.
Cloud could be ‘privacy enhancing’: Pilgrim, for ZDNet.com.au. “Pilgrim” in this case is Timothy Pilgrim, Australia’s Privacy Commissioner.
Note to The Australian: Twitter is not a newspaper, for Crikey. This article was triggered by several recent events, including the defamation allegation made by Oz editor Chris Mitchell against journalism academic Julie Posetti. One of the journalists mentioned by name, media writer Sally Jackson, believes the article is biased and calls it a “hatchet job”.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 67, “Cybercrime: the FBI’s worldview”. Edited highlights of a presentation to the eCrime Symposium by Will Blevins, the FBI’s assistant legal attaché to Australia for cybercrime issues.
A Series of Tubes episode 120. Richard Chirgwin and I have a long chat about the National Broadband Network. Was the business case document worth the wait? Is there a black hole in the NBN financials? What’s the product roadmap? And what about this Points of Interconnect issue?

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

The International Association of Privacy Professionals – Australian and New Zealand (iappANZ) fed me while I attended their conference.
Viewsonic provided food and drink at The Arthouse Hotel for the launch of their ViewPad 7 Android tablet.

Elsewhere

[Photo: Low-grade reindeer is low-grade, taken earlier today at the Broadway Shopping Centre, Sydney.]

Weekly Wrap 6

17 July 2010 in Internet, Politics, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

Crikey Clarifier: What is cloud computing? for Crikey. They needed a quick overview of the whole concept, given that it blipped up in the Australian Financial Review as the Next Big Thing.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 48 in which I chat about “Conroy’s filter masterstroke”. With an election due to be announced today, Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has I think succeeded in taking the toxic topic of ISP-level internet filtering off the table by announcing a comprehensive review of the Refused Classification category. I chat through the implications with Peter Black, who teaches internet law at the Queensland University of Technology.
The interview I recorded last week for A Series of Tubes will be scrapped, as events have moved on. There will be an episode next week, ‘cos we’ve booked a recording session for Tuesday morning.

[Photo: "Blurry at Museum station", Sydney, taken on 14 July 2010.]

Patch Monday: Backups for small business

19 April 2010 in Business, Internet by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Are your data backups up-to-date? Are you sure? Have you tested them lately? Could your business survive an equipment failure, flood, fire or theft?

In the Patch Monday podcast this week, I take a look at backup options for small and SOHO businesses. Is it time to move beyond sticking a tape drive in your Windows Small Business Server? After all, terabyte hard drives are under $200, and cloud storage options are available for just a few dollars a month.

We hear from Sally McIntosh of PR firm Condiment Communications with her lack-of-backup horror story, and my mate Garth Kidd who does storage and backup stuff for the big end of town. He reckons it’s worth bringing this enterprise computing attitude to small business backups.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

Patch Monday: Is cloud right for your business?

05 March 2010 in Internet, Language, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

[Oops. Not only was the Patch Monday podcast filed late, so it kinda became Patch Tuesday, I forgot to post it here. Well, that's fixed now.]

The key IT buzzwords for 2010 seem to be “cloud computing” and “virtualisation”, but is cloud really right for your business?

Will it provide a cheaper, more flexible option? Or can companies not afford to store data and run applications outside their business?

In a program recorded at the annual Kickstart Forum on IT trends, I spoke with Rosemary Stark, Microsoft Australia product manager for Windows Server and infrastructure solutions and Craig Deveson, CEO of Devnet, one of Google’s enterprise and web development partners.

Meanwhile, Michael Rich, managing director of Attaché Software, explains why he thinks IT vendors have got it wrong by attempting to sell products instead of providing business value.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

Patch Monday: Holiday IT to-do lists

08 December 2009 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

In episode 21 of Patch Monday, a few suggestions for what your IT people can do while it’s quiet over the summer holidays.

I speak with Harold Melnick, who’s Microsoft’s senior product marketing manager for Unified Communications; Del from open source consultancy Babel Com Australia; and independent IT consultant Kate Carruthers

And there is, as usual, quick run-through of the week’s news headlines, should you have missed them.

You can listen below. But it’s even better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. Feedback very, very welcome. And do let me know if there’s any topics I should cover, or guests we should interview.

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday. The podcast did go live yesterday afternoon. I just didn’t get around to blogging about it. Maybe I’ll automate that somehow. Any suggestions for the best way to do that in WordPress?

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