Blog

Posted on

Patch Monday: Amazon’s Vogels: cloud, start-ups, treadmills

The cloud has levelled the playing field for business, says Amazon’s chief technology officer Dr Werner Vogels. Ten years ago, a start-up needed $5 million. Now, Vogels says, it’s “just $50,000 and a coffee shop around the corner”.

Vogels was in Sydney last week for a promotional event for the cloud-based Amazon Web Services (AWS). In a wide-ranging interview for this week’s Patch Monday podcast he discussed the cloud from both a business and a technical perspective, and responded to reports that Amazon may soon open an Australian datacentre and that the Sony PlayStation Network hack was launched from AWS servers.

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.

There is a slight audio problem for the first few minutes of the interview, but it’s worth persisting.

(The conference room tables were rubbing against each other as Vogels moved his hands, elbows on table. It wasn’t very noticeable in the room, but the sound was transmitted mechanically up into the recorder via the tripod it was sitting on. I did notice after a few minutes and fixed things, so you won’t have to endure it for long.)

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.

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 58

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Most of it seemed to be about Google+.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • While attending the AWS Cloud Tour 2011 on Thursday, I received ample food and drink at Amazon’s expense.
  • On Friday I met with analyst Arun Chandrasekaran from Frost & Sullivan. He paid for the coffee and juice.
  • On Friday I had another extremely long lunch with those unnamed people about that unnamed media project, but this time I managed to find my way back to where I was meant to be spending the night.

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: Kent Street, Sydney, photographed on Friday 15 July 2011.]

[Update 7pm: I didn’t think that last article for CSO would be posted today, but it was, so I’ve added it to the “Articles” list.]

Posted on

Google+ gives me grief, generally

It seems to have been my annointed role this week to press back against the rush to join Google+, the new social networking service (SNS) from Google.

It all began when I posted the Patch Monday podcast on, erm, Monday. “Can Google+ kill Facebook? Twitter?” I asked. But as I discussed the potential success of Google+ and its strengths and weaknesses compared with Facebook, I couldn’t help but think…

I don’t want to do this.

Join Google+, that is.

I’d first written about Google+ for Crikey a week and a bit earlier. It was a cranky piece. I speculated that Google would have to come up with something pretty persuasive to get people to migrate from Facebook.

That of course soon triggered one of the usual, predictable comments.

sorry im not on facebook, i dont need to be, i dont have a mobile phone, i really dont need one, i dont have a GPS, i have a brain and know how to get around, hell, i dont even have a watch, i do have a job , im thankfull of that and i do manufacture and retail a product that everyone wants.

… said William Magnusson, who also seems to live without capital letters, apostrophes or the ability to decide when it’s time to end his sentence and start a new one.

I’d expected that. But what I hadn’t expected was much of the reaction to my follow-up Crikey piece, There’s no way I’m handing over data to Google+, and to a lesser extent my ABC The Drum piece, Why rush? Let others find the Google+ privacy landmines.

Continue reading “Google+ gives me grief, generally”

Posted on

Could “Stilgherrian Live” return?

Amongst all the strange things that happened yesterday, one has stuck strangely in my mind even after sleeping and waking up strangely. A question. Could Stilgherrian Live return?

It’s almost two years since the last episode of my curious little live video webcast when, curiously enough given this week’s curious news about News, James Murdoch was voted “Cnut of the Week”. No, that’s not a typo, that’s what the segment was called.

Yesterday, within an hour of the moment of Full Moon, several different people suggested or even called for the program’s return — including two completely unrelated people who recently discovered the program archives, one who used to watch it every week back in 2008 and 2009, and one who thought… um, suggested… um, no… I can’t say any more. Bloody television.

So what do you think? Should the program remain a thing of its time, with the shows that were made sitting in the archive? Should Stilgherrian Live return? If it did return, which components should be continued? And when should it be produced?

My own thoughts are quite jumbled on this which is why I am asking you, Dear Reader…

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 57

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week I said something’s gotta give. This week it gave.

Stress and exhaustion and a much lower productivity level than the previous two weeks has led to this post being two days late.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 95, “Malware? It’s just business!” Malware, these days, is so good that it simply has to be produced by professional development teams. As Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of AVG, explains, malware is distributed automatically, and runs on millions of target computers without causing any visible signs that something bad is happening.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday 4 July I had an extremely long lunch with people who are continuing their interest in having me work with them on a forthcoming media project. I still can’t say much, except I will drop in one word: Television.

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: The Wilds of Lilyfield, the view eastwards towards the Sydney CBD from the corner of Lilyfield and Balmain Roads.]