Introducing the Google Chrome OS

So today, Google has announced a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's their attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year Google will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. Google is designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. Google is completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and Google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies.

This is the age of Web as the Platform. As Eric Schmidt said in his Google I/O keynote it is just the beginning for the new computing model enabled by cloud computing, the open web and mobile devices. Viva la Web 3.0!

Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow

"I guess that Web Hooks are now officially the Next Big Thing." - Tim Bray

What are Web Hooks and why are they the "lightning bolts of cloud computing"? Web APIs and mashups have been popular in the world of Web 2.0. In fact at the time of my last post on the Top 10 APIs for Web Mashups in 2007 there were ~500 APIs listed on ProgrammableWeb. Today the number of APIs listed are more than 1.300 and mashups has passed the milestone of 4.000!

Web hooks are user-defined callbacks over HTTP. They’re intended to, in a sense, “jailbreak” our web applications to become more extensible, customizable, and ultimately more useful. Conceptually, web applications only have a request-based “input” mechanism: web APIs. They lack an event-based output mechanism, and this is the role of web hooks. People talk about Unix pipes for the web, but they forget: pipes are based on standard input and standard output. Feeds are not a sufficient form of output for this, which is partly why Yahoo Pipes was not the game changer some people expected. Instead, we need adoption of a simple, real-time, event-driven mechanism, and web hooks seem to be the answer. Web hooks are bringing a new level of event-based programming to the web.



Jeff Lindsay ( http://www.progrium.com ) at Google talking about Web Hooks. Slides here.

His talk introduces the concept of web hooks: simple HTTP callbacks with huge implications. This model allows web services to be customized by the user and tightly integrated with each other unlike anything before. Chock-full of demos and real world examples, this talk also shares an under-appreciated vision of the web that most of the experts have missed: a vision of user-generated functionality and the *real* programmable web.

Who is using web hooks today?

A rapidly expanding list of some of the companies or projects which provide Web hooks in their applications.

• DevjaVu
• BitBucket
• GitHub
• Shopify
• SurveyGizmo
• Versionshelf
• PayPal (Instant Payment Notification)
• Jott (Links)
• PBwiki
• Google Code
• PubSubHubbub

The concept of webhooks is another innovation milestone on our way to the world of Web 3.0.

Eric Schmidt @ Google I/O 2009: It's Time

In his Google I/O keynote Eric Schmidt said that it is just the beginning for the new computing model enabled by cloud computing, the open web and mobile devices. As the CEO of Google he has defined Web 3.0 in 2007. Now it is time for make it happen!



"It is the beginning of the real win of cloud computing, of the real win of applications, of the real win of the Internet which is changing the computing paradigm ... so it just works. And it works no matter what device you're using, no matter what operating system you're using... That is the promise of our new web computing model."

Google I/O is a developer gathering focused on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google and open web technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead you through two days full of in-depth breakout sessions on the latest technologies, and informal Q&A at Fireside Chats. The sessions include topics about AJAX and Data APIs, Clients, Google Web ToolKit (GWT), App Engine, Enterprise, Mobile and Social applications.

Interesting Google I/O sessions:

• Building Applications in the Clouds
• Building Scalable Geo Applications
• Adding Interactive 3D Content to your Site
• Mastering the Android Media Framework
• Google and the Social Web
• Building Advanced 3D Geographical Applications for the Web with the GoogleEarth API

There is great innovation happening at Google! Check out the Google Code Channel on YouTube for more insight.

2008 Year in Review

2008 was the year of social networking and mobile internet innovations.

Let's highlight the most interesting news and trends of last year.

Cloud computing hype has reached all time high:

• The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
• Google App Engine + OpenSocial = Web 3.0?
• IT in 2018
• Wua.la Launches Online P2P Storage Cloud
• Bandwidth usage of the Amazon Cloud has surpassed all of Amazon.com’s website traffic
  

Mobile Internet and gadgets has become a platform:

• iPhone Apps Lead Mobile Internet Innovations
• iPhone Roadmap Possibilities
• Rapid Mobile Broadband Usage Growth

High-Definition Video has started to conquer the Web:

• Hybrid P2P-CDN Streaming Enables HD Video Delivery
• Video Traffic Bandwidth to Reach Exabyte by 2015
• HD Flash Video on the Web

3D and Virtual Worlds have grown:

• Sun's Open Source 3D Virtual World
• Virtual Worlds are Rendered in the Cloud

Kevin Kelly on the Future of the Web

Kevin Kelly recently delivered a pure inspirational talk at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

"I gave a talk yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit. It's a short talk, only 10 minutes long, so I decided to skip Web 3 - Web 9 and just speak about the upcoming Web 10.0 and what I think will happen in the next 6,500 days."



Some notes:

• Evolution: Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web 6,527 days ago. In that period we saw: linking of computers (the net), then linking pages (the web), sharing links, the next phase will be linking data
• Sharing data feels intimate, we are entering an era in which we will share data. Every object we make (even physical) will have data in it, and it will all be part of this web -> the database of Things
• In the next 6,500 days of the web: it will not be the web only better, it will be something entirely different
• There will be one machine, everything will be part of it. The web will be its OS. If information is not on the web it will not count. Everything is always on.

Kevin Kelly had a similar talk earlier on TED: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web. Is this the way to Web 3.0?

Wuala Launches P2P Online Storage Cloud

Wuala has launched a hybrid P2P social online file sharing service.

Wuala provides secure online storage and backup for all kinds of files (including photos and large videos). Accessible from anywhere at any time and easy sharing with friends, family, and co-workers. 1 GB is free of charge and additional capacity is available either by trading in your local storage of buying more from Wuala at a reasonable starting price of $25 for 10GB.

The Wuala client supports Windows, Mac and Linux. I look forward to downloading a client for the Apple iPhone on the iTunes App Store. Is this the way to the TeraPod?

On the technical side the Wuala has an interesting P2P architecture. Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage.

Dominik Grolimund, the founder of the Swiss startup Caleido, discusses interesting details in this Google Tech Talk video.

Liveplace - Photo-Realistic Virtual World Rendered by OTOY Cloud

Mobile phones and devices can already access virtual worlds such as Second Life on 3G networks. Vollee delivers Second Life to more than 70 handhelds by rendering it on the server side. Their Second Life iPhone client is in beta.

LivePlace plans to take cloud rendering of 3D virtual worlds to a new level. TechCrunch has posted a very impressive video of LivePlace's City Space which is a Photo-Realistic 3D virtual world. The beautiful ray tracing is done on the server side or "in the cloud" and delivered to the clients via OTOY. OTOY is a 800k web plug-in that enables cinematic quality 3D rendering in a browser with compressed content streaming.

The City Space demo shows beautiful and highly realistic rendering of different environments. It looks and feels more real and immersive than Earthmine, Everyscape or Google Maps Street View.

The demo video shows real time rendering using an ATI RX 1900 GPU and live streaming to a Treo 700 at 240 kpbs. The final product is said to be even more impressive! The first comment on the demo: "this is the pinnacle of what has been dreamed of since computer modeling and rendering was begun."

TechCrunch has more details on OTOY and LightStage here including interesting interviews with Jules Urbach, the founder and CEO of OTOY.

Exaflood - Internet Video Traffic - Zettabyte by 2015

From YouTube, IPTV, and HD video, to “cloud computing” and ubiquitous mobile cameras–to 3D games, virtual worlds – the new wave is swelling into an exaflood of Internet traffic. An exabyte is 10 to the 18th. The Discovery Institute estimates that by 2015, U.S. IP traffic could reach an annual total of one zettabyte (1024 bytes), or one million million billion bytes.

Video and rich media is expected to dominate IP traffic. TDP's IP Traffic Projection in the U.S. by 2015 shows:

• video calling and "virtual windows" could generate 400 exabytes
• Internet video, gaming, and virtual worlds could produce 200 exabytes
• movie downloads and P2P file sharing could be 100 exabytes
• non-Internet “IPTV” could reach 100 exabytes, and possibly much more
• business IP traffic will generate some 100 exabytes
• cloud computing and remote backup could total 50 exabytes
• other applications (phone, Web, e-mail, photos, music) could be 50 exabytes

Will this huge data traffic increase drown the Internet? No, it won't - argues Nate Anderson of ars technica.

IT in 2018: From Turing’s Machine to the Computing Cloud

How will the IT landscape look like in 2018? This is the question asked by Nicholas Carr, the author of "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google". He takes readers of this free Internet.com eBook on a trip one decade into the future to see how IT as we know it will change and what those changes mean for IT professionals, hardware and software vendors, and corporations of all sizes.

This interesting journey starts at 1936 in Cambridge where Alan Turing has invented the idea of the universal computing machine.

"With enough memory and enough speed, Turing’s work implies, a single computer could be programmed, with software code, to do all the work that is today done by all the other physical computers in the world.

And that is why the modern corporate data center, with all its complex and expensive stacks of machinery, is on the path to obsolescence."

Carr clearly explains the current hot virtualization and consolidation trend:

"Turing’s discovery that “software can always be substituted for hardware” lies at the heart of “virtualization,” which is the technology underpinning the great consolidation wave now reshaping big-company IT. As the cost of computing power and storage capacity has continued its decades-long freefall, it’s become possible to turn more and more hardware into software code – to use a single powerful computer to run many virtual machines.

All the pieces of hardware stuffed into corporate data centers – not just servers but storage drives, load balancers, firewalls, switches, and even the cables connecting the gear – exist, after all, to carry out instructions. Virtualization simply turns the hardwired instructions into code and gets rid of the physical machinery. That not only saves a lot of cash, it makes the radical automation of formerly manual IT processes possible. Once IT infrastructure turns into software, it can be programmed, easily and from afar. Code, as always, replaces labor. "

Check out his eBook to take the journey to the conclusion:

"Just as the last century’s electric utilities spurred the development of thousands of new consumer appliances and services, so the new computing utilities will shake up many markets and open myriad opportunities for innovation. Harnessing the power of the computing grid may be the great enterprise of the twenty-first century."

Google App Engine + Opensocial = Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 has been defined earlier by Eric Schmidt as applications living in the cloud that are pieced together. It is a fundamentally different application model that we have ever seen in computing before. Google App Engine is a big step towards this cloud computing vision. It lets developers run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. How does App Engine fits into the Web 3.0 world? Let us review the definition by the CEO of Google:



Take Google App Engine and OpenSocial and a couple of other APIs to get to Web 2.5. It is the beginning of The Big Switch - the coming age of information utility. They let developers focus on innovation rather than the undifferentiated heavy lifting of IT operations, such as setting up and maintaining scalable servers, databases, storage, and networks.

Google is not the first big company to offer utility computing or platform as a service (PaaS). Amazon leads the space with its successful Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). There are very interesting analysis and comparison of Google App Engine and Amazon AWS on the SmoothSpan Blog.

App Engine costs nothing to get started and there are dozens of examples to check out in the Applications Gallery.

App Engine applications are easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. The open source Scalr aims to offer similar Auto-scalability on the Amazon AWS platform.

Welcome to the cloud computing age! Let clouds do the dirty work of operations and let developers innovate.