Today, thanks to the amazing advances of the Apple OS over the years and other Apple software offerings, I don’t have a single need to run a Windows app on my Mac. However, I realize many people do — they have a work reason, perhaps, to run Outlook, one of the Windows versions of Microsoft Office, or Internet Explorer, or other apps that just don’t (for some crazy reason) yet have a Mac version. I’ve been running the same Mac version of MS Office now for more than a decade; it works fine. (So, I can’t say I run a completely Microsoft-free environment; just a Windows-free one.) I also realize there’s another big universe of Mac users out there who want to run Windows on their machines: gamers. We’re not talking a work reason here (I don’t think!), but this is a big market. There are many more games available for the Windows platform than for Mac — though that is changing somewhat, since so many game apps are continually being introduced for the Mac iOS — that is, for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. (And the new “GameCenter” in Mac iOS 4.1, due next week, moves Apple even further into the games market.)

But why I am writing about running Windows on a Mac when I don’t have a need myself, and I’m certainly not a gamer? Well, before I tell you about “CrossOver Mac,” here’s why: I had a personal experience recently helping my daughter.  She’s also a longtime Mac user, but she needed to run a single Windows app for her business, which was required by a government agency she had to deal with. So, I told her, sure, I’d help her figure out how she could do that. I of course knew about two programs designed to do that, called “Parallels” and “VMware Fusion,” either of which we could buy (for about $80, I think).  And I told her I could help her get one of those installed on her Macbook. But we really didn’t like the idea of spending even that much money to run one little Windows app, maybe once a month — plus a friend, Steve Borsch, told me Windows doesn’t really run all that snappy with those programs, anyway.

But I was starting to think about buying one of those programs when another local friend, Gary Doan, said, “Wait, what about Boot Camp? That won’t cost you anything.” Apple started bundling that program with OS 10.5 and now 10.6, and you just need the original install disk to fire that up. Yes, plus a bonafide version of Windows, with an install disk — and we would have had to buy that. Cheapest I could find: an OEM version of 32-bit Windows 7 for $110 at our local Micro Center (closest thing we have to Fry’s here in MN). You can’t even buy Windows XP anymore, I learned, so that was not a cheaper option. That, combined with an onerous 14-page manual that Apple said you must print out and have by your side as you go through the detailed Boot Camp installation and configuration process, was making me start to think, screw this. Then I learned my daughter’s Macbook only has a half a gig of RAM, and would need at least 1G to run OS 10.6, which I wanted to upgrade her to, and preferably 2G. That would have cost me at least another $60, even if I installed the memory myself, which I really didn’t want to do. I thought, wait a minute, we’re getting close to $200 here — for something we really don’t want to do! Plus untold hours of my time screwing around to get it running.

Long story short: I found a brand-new HP Mini netbook on sale for $269 at OfficeMax (thanks to a friend’s tip), and I had a $30 off coupon! I told her I’d gladly pay for half of that. I figured I was coming out way ahead, considering I wouldn’t have to invest any time at all if we went with this option.  Plus, she wanted a second computer anyway, just for email and web use on another floor of her house, and the HP Mini came with built-in wifi capability, so it was a pretty cheap option for that. Now, we’re both happy.

Which brings me to the subject of my post: there’s a much simpler way to run Windows on an Intel Mac — and it might just work for you.  I wish I’d have known about it a week or two earlier, and I could have saved even more time (and money).  It’s a product called CrossOver Mac, from the playfully named CodeWeavers, based in St. Paul, MN.

CrossOver Mac integrates seamlessly with Mac OSX. There’s no need to boot a separate Windows partition, or move files back and forth between two separate environments. It lets you work natively in Mac OSX — you run your Windows apps directly in OSX and save all your work files there as well. And here’s a key point: running just one operating system means faster performance as well. (Yes, that means better than Parallels and VMware Fusion.) Running on OSX also means that even if you’re running virus-prone applications like Outlook and Internet Explorer, you’re completely protected. But here’s the best thing of all, you need no Windows OS license! That’s right: you don’t need spend that additional money; you just pay for the very reasonably priced CrossOver program.

It comes in two versions: Standard at $39.95 and Pro at $69.95, and both are of course downloadable. And, yes, there’s a free trial. The system requirements to run CrossOver are really pretty simple.  And check out the list of supported Windows apps near the bottom of the product page — all the major ones you would expect.  But what if you want to use a Windows app that isn’t listed in their database? Does that mean that it won’t run under CrossOver? Here’s what CodeWeavers says: “Not necessarily. Many applications work perfectly under CrossOver without any modification whatsoever. However, we may simply not be aware of them. So, just because an application isn’t in our database doesn’t mean that your application won’t run. You might consider downloading the trial version of CrossOver to see if your application works. And if it does, please consider submitting it so that it makes it into the database.”

For more resources and links on CrossOver Mac, check out this nice video, and the company’s online  Support Forums are quite active.  You can also follow CodeWeavers on Facebook or on Twitter.

I learned at a recent business seminar at my local Apple Store that CrossOver Mac is available in pretty much every one of Apple’s stores. You may have to ask a staff member for it, since they may store it in the back room, but it’s there, according to James Ramey, the company’s head of sales, who gave a talk at the seminar. The title on his business card:  “Minister of Greed”… hah!  You have to admire a company with some seriously good products, but also a sense of humor — and not afraid to put it out there. Check out this news release they put out a few weeks ago:

CodeWeavers CEO Names Himself “Employee of the Month” for 175th Consecutive Month
Software Developer CodeWeavers Leader Calls Feat “Jack Welchian” as He Awards Himself Honorary Plaque

The only Codeweavers press release funnier than this one was from July of 2009:

Codeweavers to Overtake Microsoft by 2018
Current Sales Trend Indicates Gadfly Open Source Developers Will Be Nation’s Largest Provider of Windows Technology; Microsoft Imperiled CodeWeavers Offers to Buy Microsoft Campus “On Credit”

The company manages this unique approach to publicity under the guidance of Minneapolis PR firm Haberman & Associates, one of the best (and most unsung) here in the Twin Cities. As a marketing advisor to tech firms, I take my hat off to them.

And I thank CodeWeavers for helping massive numbers of people (me included) to avoid buying Windows.

One more thing: I forgot to mention CrossOver Mac is based on the Wine Project. Thank your local Linux geek for that!  Also note that CodeWeavers has two other very popular products: “CrossOver Games” and “CrossOver Linux.”

(Note:  This post appeared first at Tech~Surf~Blog.)

MN Company Lets You Run Windows Apps on a Mac – the Easy Way is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

His most recent work comes from his own Zachstronaut, which he describes as a “web rocket-lab” site to showcase his love for the internet and gaming as well as his experiments. The result of that work is his internet game Infiltration.

Infiltration was built in response to blog Boing Boing‘s call for games to be developed that were inspired by “chip music“. (You can vote for Infiltration through today, 7/15). Most likely very familiar to gamer cycles but not far beyond, chip music is inspired by early video game soundtracks. Think Asteroids, Pac Man and a host of Nintendo games. Grab a Casio keyboard and hang on…

Johnson, a fan of this unique musical genre, has spent more than his fair share of time listening to chip music and envisioning the game activity that it might accompany. A User Experience developer at Worrell, he says, “Video games contributed to shaping my entire career in computers.” It was clearly a natural for him to develop a chip music inspired game.

Indie game developer game designs tend to be very simplistic, with an almost nostalgic look and feel. “Part of the design is a nod to the old school music but it’s probably more about the amount of time and money indie game developers have to spend on the games.” He goes on to note, “It took nine people a year to write Pac Man, I wrote this in about 30 hours.”

Johnson also saw an opportunity to advance his passion for open programming. “I wanted to make a game that didn’t need a plugin.” Hence the use of Javascript, allowing the ability to play the game directly from your browser. “Javascript and browser based games offer a very low barrier of entry.” notes Johnson.

The use of coding language like Javascript and HTML5 is on the rise as many see the use of Flash diminishing. “I don’t hate Flash, but it’s obvious it is going the way of the Dodo.” according to Johnson referencing the ownership and closed nature of the language. “I always bet on the openess of  web.” When developing the game and entering the Boing Boing contest (Did I mention you could vote for his game through 7/16.) Zach thought that the use of Javascript would allow him to be more unique and give him an upper hand. But “The use of Javascript was more prevalent than I thought…which is good.” Nearly half the games submitted use it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhvupyRdR5I

The design of the game and the participation in the contest serves Johnson in number of ways. First and foremost, it’s a hobby. It also clearly promotes his programming skills and many projects while allowing him to share his passion for open web design. In addition, while he could have spent much more time on the game he appreciates the short-term goal. “The competition set a deadline. Otherwise I can spend a lot of time on it. I need to make a game I need to get done.”

Where does he see this indie game developer movement going? “There are plenty of applications from entertainment to art to even civil engagement. Imagine someone demonstrating the need for better routing of traffic through a game.” He also notes a very basic result. “If I can make little tidbits of joy for someone, that’s great.”

The Joy of Infiltration Champions Open Game Development is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

ReliaCloud, our own local (but national) cloud computing infrastructure company, has launched a full fledged channel program centered on their enterprise-class infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing offering.

According to Reliacloud, the five year growth outlook for IT cloud services revenue from 2009 to 2013 remains strong, with an annual growth rate of 26% – over six times the rate of traditional IT offerings (IDC, September 2009).

If you’re paying attention to cloud computing at all, then you can’t help but see that enterprise and small business IT spending is moving more and more to the cloud due to its easier set up, scalability, flexibility, built-in maintenance and support, and reduced costs for hardware and software maintenance.

ReliaCloud is focusing on making the reseller process as easy as possible, by providing a suite of tools that supports their resale process. ReliaCloud has developed a series of programs that maximize the use of their Cloud Storage and Cloud Servers for each of their customer profiles and, according to Brian Stevenson, Vice President of Sales for ReliaCloud, “We expect IT consulting firms and managed service providers to be the driving force of cloud adoption.”

I couldn’t agree more. Isn’t aligning incentives of others to leverage what you offer the basis of building an ecosystem? Great partnering is what made Microsoft so dominant for so many years and it’s obvious that ReliaCloud understands that making it easy for providers to build a business atop, around and with them will gain significant momentum for what they’re offering, and if the growth in cloud computing continues like IDC states (and which I believe is true) then striving to build and deliver — through as many channels as possible — an infrastructure layer upon which people can build toward that growing future, the more likely it is ReliaCloud will become a significant player in the space.

During a session at the recent Cloudcamp George Reese, CTO of cloud computing firm enStratus, laid out the layers of the cloud: SaaS; PaaS and IaaS. Think of SaaS as the layer where Salesforce.com plays (i.e., application layer); PaaS as the layer where companies expose their application programming interfaces to functionality others can use (e.g., AppEngine from Google and Force.com from SalesForce); and IaaS as the layer of hardware and administrative, policy-based services, internet connectivity and stuff that allows the other two to run (IaaS is sometimes known as Hardware as a Service or HaaS).

Nothing is more important than the IaaS layer since without speed, rock solid storage and a robust platform, the other two layers can’t function. With this new partner program at ReliaCloud, they’ll have a good shot at differentiating themselves from other providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Rackspace due to their focus on customer service which they’re carrying over from Visi and the learning they’ve gained from their direct client interactions at ReliaCloud.

ReliaCloud Releases Partner Program is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

MinneSpark is an initiative from the team that brings you MinneDemo and MinneBar

What could you do with $1,000 for your best idea? Could you turn it into a scalable business? Let’s find out!

MinneSpark will award 1 to n grants of $1,000 to Minnesota-based teams who demonstrate to their trustees the ability to take that money and turn it into something real. This is about doing more with less, and building a profitable business from day one.

Winners will get some help along the way in the form of mentoring from the trustees and services from sponsors.

Applications are due by April 30, 2010. Winner(s) will be announced at MinneBar on May 22, 2010. Find the FAQ, application and more here.

MinneSpark Has $1,000 (Potentially) For You is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In the article, Anderson chronicles the age of “open source, custom-fabricated, DIY product design.” He profiles a fascinating startup called Local Motors of Wareham, Mass., and another one called TechShop of Menlo Park, Calif. (which I first heard of when I met the founder at a DEMO Alumni Reception in Palo Alto in August 2007).

“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit.”

Yep, a lot of this is driven by 3D printers, which you’ll remember, if you’ve been reading Minnov8 lately, is a product category well represented in Minnesota by Stratasys — which has come a long way from its startup days here in the 1980s.  See this post by Steve Borsch from January 21, about the company’s partnership with HP that caused its stock to rocket 44% in one day.  But the WIRED article talks about sub-$1000 printers, a part of the market in which Stratsys does not have an offering. As Steve mentioned in his post the other day, a main player in the low-priced sector of the 3D printer market is the open-source company MakerBot.  But, according to this PC World article, 3D Printing Coming to the Desktop, the HP-Stratasys models, though small enough to sit on a desktop, are priced just shy of $15,000.  Sure, the talk about this HP partnership is the promise of prices dropping with volume.  But one has to wonder…

Is a once-promising, emerging Minnesota technology pioneer looking at the possibility of having its lunch eaten by an open-source disruptor like MakerBot?

That question may take years to play out.  We can only hope that Stratasys management, surely feeling its oats now after the HP deal, is up to the task.  Meantime, the promise of “custom-fabricated DIY design” brings much hope to Minnesota’s still healthy small manufacturing sector, which has remained relatively stable despite the recent recession.  For more about this important part of our state’s economy, check out the site of an organization called Enterprise Minnesota, and the latest issue of its magazine.

Another connection to the DIY product design and manufacturing movement here in Minnesota is a locally connected TV show called MAKEzine.  This is a national series from MAKE magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television. According to the web site, “It celebrates ‘Makers’ – the inventors, artists, geeks, and just plain everyday folks who mix new and old technology to create new-fangled marvels.” The series is sponsored by Minnesota’s own Geek Squad, a business unit of Twin Cities-based Best Buy.

I asked a local startup founder, one I knew had experience with both software and hardware development, for his reaction to this WIRED cover story.  Matt Bauer is the founder of PedalBrain (www.pedalbrain.com): “I own one of Stratasys’s desktop printers. I evaluated MakerBot’s offering and there isn’t any comparison,” he said. “The uPrint from Stratasys completely destroys the MakerBot in every category except price. For that additional cost, though, I don’t have to worry about the uPrint working. It can run nearly 24/7 without anyone taking care of it. The same can’t be said for the MakerBot.”  So, how does he see the battle for this product category playing out? “I’m sure this gap will close, and I see Stratasys getting the win. It’s much easier coming down in cost than going up in technology.”

‘The New Industrial Revolution’ and Minnesota is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

If you are a person who will somehow be interacting in the process of creating a website, but won’t actually be doing the coding or development of it, and are a copywriter, graphic designer, illustrator, art director, creative director, or project manager, then you’ll find the $149 fee for this full day session incredibly beneficial.

I interviewed Ivan so you can hear him describe the day and also so you can gain some insight in to the strategic reasons why you must pay attention to what’s happening on the web, and how this session would enable you to learn in ways you might not expect.

• Date: September 17, 2009
• Time: 9:00am
• To learn more and to register: http://ten7i.com/seminar

Web Design Workshop/Seminar for Creatives is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Doug is the Product Unit GM of the Expression group (who recently put in place a Microsoft engineering office in St. Paul), is today launching Silverlight and Expression 3 at a press event in San Francisco. It’s a big day for his main product, Expression Blend 3, which finally gets to the point where is it very competitive with Flash & Flex. Not only that, but Microsoft is including a major innovation with it called SketchFlow (here is a good overview of it) which is getting tons of buzz and changing the way folks think about conceptual design (prototyping).

One other note: SketchFlow, and another big-deal feature (fully enabled Photoshop file format support, apparently done better than even Adobe’s Flash CS4 does it) have both come out of the team based right here in St. Paul lead by Bob Pappas and Rick Keeney.

Microsoft Launches Expression 3 & Sketchflow is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Google describes the Sandbox: “The Developer Sandbox is a new addition to Google I/O. Comprised of “pods” – demo station areas grouped by product theme – the Sandbox featured a wide range of developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at Google I/O. Representing large and small companies, individual developers, and a diverse group of apps, these developers were on hand at the Sandbox to demo their apps, answer questions, exchange ideas, and meet attendees in person. We interviewed many of the Sandbox developers on the ground at Google I/O to pick their brains on their applications, challenges, and best practices.”

View and listen to Ben and Curtis’ descriptions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7MlEJC9ZbA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyIh9ncmiN0

Best Buy at Google I/O is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Best Buy clearly recognizes that these digital natives are voracious users and purchasers of the technology they sell, but they also seem to truly understand that there is an entire ecosystem of these digital natives who have become web developers. These folks are adept and using new faster and more efficient tools (e.g., Ruby on Rails), a “web stack” (i.e., Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP or LAMP) — along with leveraging the accelerating number of exposed application programming interfaces (API’s) available digital data that’s exposed — and are building and delivering a dizzying array of new web applications, mashups and remixes.

Curiously, the latter term “remix” is usually used in the context of someone taking an original song and mixing in other elements to create a new one, but in my opinion Best Buy has extended that term to include what they’re offering, an open API called “Best Buy Remix.” This API opens up Best Buy’s product catalog, featuring full product information including pricing, availability, specifications, descriptions and images for nearly a million current and historical products and thinking of using all of this to create a ‘remix’ vs. a ‘mashup’ seems to me to be positioning it as being used for an elegant and lyrical web application vs. what many people think of when the term mashup is used: connecting a database to a Google Map and delivering something of interesting but inherently low value. 

Yesterday, April 24th, Best Buy announced their Remix Challenge:

Think you can build a better Best Buy? We do, and we’re launching the Remix Challenge to prove it!

TopCoder and Best Buy are proud to announce this exciting new series of contests. Over the coming months, we’ll be building applications in a variety of categories, using the Remix open API for BestBuy.com’s product catalog to help find solutions to specific challenges.

Each challenge will begin with an Idea Generation contest, where you will be presented with a problem or issue pertaining to customer experience in a particular category. How would you help a customer through the many decisions they need to make when purchasing a flat panel television? How would you better present the wide array of accessories that are so important when buying a laptop PC or mp3 player? How would you improve the shopping experience for Best Buy’s wide selection of movie & video game titles, or build awareness about Best Buy Rewards Points , or sell more ink & toner for printers?

We’ll be looking for your ideas for the perfect small application to address these challenges in the form of a web app for BestBuy.com, or a widget, a Facebook or mobile app, or whatever else you can come up with.

These guys smartly chose TopCoder to run this challenge since they are, “…the world’s largest competitive software development community with 191,587 developers representing over 200 countries” and have a critical mass of the global developer community. TopCoder will also run this Remix Challenge well and be viewed as a trusted, independent third party making it something developers will undoubtedly flock to and participate in.

This is brilliant on so many levels and really taps in to the best parts of innovating with the collective wisdom of an ecosystem. From creating an incentive to get great ideas for improving their business, to finding amazing and top talent who might work with Best Buy going forward, to creating and developing ways of using all of this data in innovative and creative ways which, most likely, the internal Best Buy folks could never have thought up by themselves.

Best Buy Challenges You to Remix is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I’m personally aware of over 40 projects here in flyover country that are not only leveraging — but are wholly reliant on — MySQL. To make matters worse (and admittedly selfish on my part) our company uses MySQL across all our web properties. To see that megalith Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems today for $7.4 billion sent chills down my spine and left me with a nasty taste of cottonmouth.

Sure, there are a few of those Oracle fanboys out there that will say this deal means Java will get more technical attention than it’s been paid for years. Still, I liken this acquisition to a story I saw in a documentary called Flow: For the Love of Water. A segment in this movie shows corporate giant Nestle setting up a bottling plant in Michigan and stealing away millions of gallons of water from a stream running through that community, putting it in bottles, and then selling it back to local residents.

It no secret that I’m a capitalist, and that I believe that money is the root of all that is productive. My problem with what Nestle did is that they took what was already free and a universal right – clean and fresh water – and sold that under the auspices of having actually produced something. I too fear this will be the case with Oracle and MySQL.

MySQL has over 10 million installations around the world and it is the productive man’s database management system. MySQL occurs naturally and freely in nature. People take it and turn it into something meaningful. It was provided under GPL and its current form represents the untold contributions and real-world use cases of thousands and thousands of people. Now are we to expect Oracle to come, bottle it up, and sell it back to us?

This transaction only happened today, so I don’t want to be too quick to jump to conclusions. That said, you would sure think that a guy as smart as Larry Ellison would have made a community statement to appease me. I mean gosh, this guy has all the water he could ever dream of and now I find him standing over MY WATER holding a big-ass straw in his hand.

What do you think?

Oracle Drinks Up Sun: MySQL Questions Remain… is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

George Reese, a local software developer and tech company founder, knows a lot about the topic — so much so that he was recently commissioned to write a book on cloud computing by O’Reilly Media, based in Northern California, one of the most prominent names in computer publishing.  Reese is the founder of two Minneapolis-based companies: a new one called enStratus Networks LLC, a maker of high-end cloud infrastructure management tools, and an established business called Valtira LLC, the maker of an online “marketing platform” of the same name. Over the past 15 years, George has authored several technology books — with such names as MySQL Pocket Reference, Database Programming with JDBC and Java, and Java Database Best Practices. But his upcoming title, Web Architecture and Programming in the Cloud: Transactional Systems for EC2 and Beyond, may become his most popular yet.

A longtime designer of enterprise tools for software developers, as well as software solutions for the marketing domain, Reese has more recently been heavily involved in the development of systems to support the deployment of transactional web applications in the cloud. Interestingly, his background includes a BA in Philosophy from Bates College and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Some Definitions
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Reese about his new book, and get an early look at the first chapter, which he says is aimed more at decision-makers than the rest of the book (which is primarily intended for developers). He also said this first chapter “has some claims some people might not like or agree with, especially if they’re competing with the cloud.”

According to Reese, cloud computing “is the evolution of a variety of technologies that have come together to alter an organization’s approach to building out an IT infrastructure.” He goes on to compare it to the development of the Web, more than a decade ago: “There is nothing fundamentally new in any of the technologies that make up cloud computing. Most of the technologies that made up the Web existed for decades before Netscape came along and simply made it all accessible; similarly, most of the technologies that make up cloud computing have been around for ages. It just took Amazon to make them all accessible to the masses.”

Yes, that same Amazon you know as an online retailer has also become a huge player in cloud computing with their “EC2″ infrastructure, which is changing the very way software businesses build their products and bring them to market — and saving them a ton of money at the same time.

Reese states in his first chapter: “The purpose of this book is to empower developers of transactional web applications to leverage cloud infrastructure in the deployment of their applications.”

An excerpt from the chapter that also helps define cloud computing:

The cloud is where you go to use technology when you need it, for as long as you need it, and not a minute more. You do not install anything on your desktop and you do not pay for the technology when you are not using it. The cloud can be both software and infrastructure. It can be an application you access through the web or a server that you provision exactly when you need it. Whether a service is software or hardware, here’s a simple test to check if that service is a cloud service:

If you can walk into any library or Internet cafe and sit down at any computer without preference for operating system or browser and access a service, that service is cloud based.

Reese speaks of “cloud services” (the type available via vendors such as Amazon), and points out that these include both software services and infrastructure services. “In terms of maturity, software in the cloud is much more evolved than hardware in the cloud” (meaning infrastructure), he says. “Software as a Service (SaaS) is a term that refers to software in the cloud. Though not all SaaS systems are cloud systems, most of them are.” He also provides a definition here that is helpful to those trying to understand this new paradigm: “SaaS is a web-based software deployment model that makes the software available entirely through a web browser. As a user of SaaS software, you don’t care where the software is hosted, or what kind of operating system it uses, whether it is PHP, Java, or .NET. And, above all else, you don’t have to install a single piece of software anywhere.”

Reese says SaaS systems have four defining characteristics: (1) availability via a web browser, (2) on-demand availability, (3) payment terms based on usage, and (4) minimal IT demands.

The Hardware Side of the Equation
“In general,” says Reese, “hardware in the cloud is conceptually harder for people to accept than software in the cloud. Hardware is something you can touch. You own it, you don’t license it. If you server catches on fire, that disaster matters to you. It’s hard for many people to imagine giving up the ability to touch and own their own hardware.”

Another excerpt from the book:

With hardware in the cloud, you request a new “server” when you need it. It is ready within 10 minutes. When you are done with it, you release it and it disappears back into the cloud. You have no idea what physical server your cloud-based server is running, and you probably don’t even know where it is physically located geographically.

Reese points out the advantages of a cloud infrastructure. “Think about all of the things you have to worry about when you own and operate your own servers: (1) What if I am running out of capacity? (2) What happens when there is a problem? (3) What happens when there is a disaster? (4) I don’t need that server anymore — what do I do with it?  (5) What about real estate and electricity, for infrastructure that goes unused?”  His summation: “None of these issues is a concern with a proper cloud infrastructure.”

The Value of Cloud Computing
In his book’s first chapter, Reese says the impact of the cloud is significant. “For some organizations — in particular, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, and SaaS vendors — it makes it possible for an organization never again to purchase a server or own any software licenses.” In other words, he adds, all these worries disappear:

• Am I current on all my software licenses?
• When do I schedule my next software upgrade?
• What do I do when a piece of hardware fails at 3am?
• What do I do with my old hardware?
• How do I manage the depreciation of my IT assets?
• When can I afford to add capacity to my infrastructure?

It All Comes Down to Economics
“Perhaps the biggest benefit of cloud computing over building out your own IT infrastructure has nothing to do with technology — it’s financial,” Reese says. “The ‘pay for what you use’ model of cloud computing is significantly more financially advantageous to a company than the ‘pay for everything up front’ model of internal IT.”

It’s here where Reese reduces everything to the bottom line: “The right managed services option and cloud computing are always financially more attractive than managing your own IT. Across all financial metrics — capital requirements, total cost of ownership, complexity of costs — internal IT is always the odd man out.”

The new book is scheduled for publication in April 2009.

Upcoming Book on Hottest I.T. Trend: ‘Cloud Computing’ is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Next MinneDemo is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A Tier III data center has 99.982% uptime, backup power, and other infrastructure that ensure mission-critical serving continues with only minor downtime (To learn more about data center tiers, view this article or this PDF from Minnesota telecom company, ADC).

As the awareness and creation of composite applications (i.e., mashups), Software as a Service (SaaS), web applications, mobile smartphone delivery and other internet-connected accelerates here in Minnesota and anywhere else an internet connection is found, it’s a business imperative to have access to world-class infrastructure as well as the service and support necessary to meet our hosting needs.

Beyond that imperative lies something that few understand, let alone have created strategies to meet and exceed expectations: performance and user experience.

When more and more of us either use or deliver applications that have connections to multiple served applications (e.g., your website also serves a forum, wiki, blog, and applications), performance is always critical. But in a Web 2.0 day when data resides in multiple locations; web applications have functionality delivered by multiple providers in different geographies; and people’s expectations are for immediate access to the cloud with snappy performance; a provider that understands the entire chain from you to the cloud and back is a choice to consider relying on.

Fortunately we have a key provider right here in Minnesota that “gets it” and they’re growing and expanding to meet demand, performance expectations and the increasing online emphasis by Minnesotans.

I took a tour of Visi’s new Eden Prairie facility and sat down with company chief technical officer, Jason Baker, as we discussed a wide range of topics: from their company and its origins; to Minnesota tech startups and their unique needs; the growing trend of companies embracing computing in the cloud; and competing with national data center providers who enjoy scale and thus cost efficiencies.

Their new data center is in an industrial park in the heart of Eden Prairie’s densest business location with easy access off of Hwy 212. The outside of the building is warehouse chic (i.e., boring and fugly) but their offices are very nice and functional.

As we toured the facility, we headed back to the huge, cavernous and empty warehouse — still being built-out as capital markets fluctuate wildly slowing things down a bit — I was impressed with our discussions about their Tier II data centers meeting current needs but that this new Tier III one was about future growth and demand satisfaction. No positioning, spin or explanations, but I sensed a tiny bit of frustration that they may need to move ahead with cash flow funding (vs. relying on the capital market) since moving ahead with this new data center was that important to Minnesota and to Visi’s growth.

Jason and I met in a conference room and talked about a wide range of topics, but one thing I wanted to gain insight in to was their vision, values, business philosophy and willingness to step into an internet-centric leadership role here in Minnesota.

One topic of interest to Minnesota businesses and startups that demonstrates all of the above are these:

• If you’re a business that has outsourced your data center to a provider like Visi, it’s not just speedy connections from your business to your hosted servers that matters…it’s also what happens from your servers out to the cloud so your composite applications, access to SaaS providers (e.g., Salesforce.com) and their business is not just serving…it’s internet connectivity placing them in a unique position
• As we toured, Jason pointed out rows of application developers. One of their value-adds is dashboard-like control applications for their customers, and they’re constantly improving upon and creating new software management systems in order to provide their customers with systems management ability and analytics 
• Controlled growth is key so they can maintain their current ability to provide superior customer support and service. 

That last one is at the heart of what I came to understand as one, key Visi value: that adding servers, internet connectivity customers, and putting numbers on the board isn’t job #1…it’s growing as long as their support, service and reputation stays as strong as it is currently.

Of course, I asked the competition question at this point. How do they compete with national data center companies and defend against the threats posed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Google App Engine?

As we delved into this more, it became clear that they are continuing to accelerate their ability to offer cutting edge products and services, but customer service and support is a key competitive advantage. Though I didn’t mention it, there are several anecdotes I could’ve told about developers I know that have run into issues with AWS, for instance, and invested days in driving toward a resolution due to the difficulty in connecting with a human (and the same human so one doesn’t have to re-tell the same prelude story again-n-again).

Everything Jason said about their operations reinforced the reasons why a startup or Minnesota business would choose Visi over a national provider. I still think their challenges are formidable, but they’re more than aware of them and their strategy and scenario planning taking all of it into account.

One comment summed up the philosophy and values as Jason said this, “We all live in Minnesota and are raising our kids here. This is home and we’re continuing to strive to be the best and a world-class company.“

One indicator of their willingness to be the thought leader in Minnesota around internet-centric direction is their Vision 2008: Technology Innovations that Drive Business event. Check it out and if you’re in the market for internet connectivity, co-location, outsourced data services or a place to host that new web startup you’ve created, Visi is worth serious consideration.

Visi: A Minnesota Provider Growing to Meet Demand is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

After vacations and business travel this summer, we carve out time on a Saturday morning for another Minnov8 Gang podcast with Episode 3.

In it we talk about several Minnesota startups and companies (including our own, with some admittedly self-serving comments!):

- PartnerUp Being Acquired by Deluxe Check

- Former HighJump CTO, Steve Kickert’s new company Riverock and his first product launch OnePlace

- Watching for new companies in stealth mode like BeWiki

- DoApp, Cullect, ComicTwit, Localtone Radio

- Social Media Breakfast, Twin Cities group

- Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the Pioneer Press (personal blog; TwinCities.com) is writing a book being released shortly, “twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your business” (book jacket here)

- Minnesota Ultra-High_Speed Broadband Task Force (Minnov8 posts about this initiative here and here).

Thanks for listening!

Minnov8 Gang Podcast – Episode 3 is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

CommunityEngine is a complete, white-label social network app wrapped up as a Ruby on Rails plugin making it easy to integrate forums, blogs, and user profiles into an existing web application or a stand-alone application. Like many weblog engines, the look and feel of each CommunityEngine can be completely customized.

“I envision somebody doing a theme that makes [CommunityEngine] act more like a social network, a theme that makes it act more like a blog, a theme that makes it act more like a group blog, or a newspaper. So you can pick and choose.” – Bruno Bornsztein

One of the first community contributions to the CommunityEngine code was l18n internationalization support, promptly encouraging a number of non-US-based CommunityEngine-based sites.

“The biggest benefit [to open-sourcing CommunityEngine] is making the code-base stronger…I can now launch a Curbly site in Spanish. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.” – Bruno Bornsztein

For more about CommunityEngine listen to my podcast conversation with Bruno.

CommunityEngine: Open Source Social Network Application is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

What is “Alt.Net”. From their site:

At it’s purest, the driving force behind the ALT.NET developer community may be described simply as “The pursuit of happiness.” While Microsoft has provided developers with a powerful framework and a bunch of very good tools and packages to build upon, it often feels like too much effort was put into a “one-size-fits-all” design philosophy that can make it complex, tedious, or just plain impossible to do things that don’t follow Microsoft’s prescribed approach.

With other development platforms and languages offering so much choice (Java and it’s many quality open source offerings) and elegance (Ruby on Rails with its “beautiful” code and “convention over configuration” philosophy), .NET developers longed to craft cleaner, more elegant solutions without having to leave a framework that has so much to offer.

ALT.NET is about following your own beliefs about application design, and using the .NET platform to support your ideas, rather than retro-fitting your ideas to the platform.

Jamie had his eye caught by the logo, reminiscent of the old Grain Belt sign that used to caste its shadow over Hennepin Avenue. The moment I hit Jamie’s blog and then Alt.Net’s site, it caught mine too.

As a kid, we used to go down and pick up my grandparents from the Great Northern Railroad depot (my Grandpa worked for the railroad for 44 years and had lifetime free travel on it) and that sign was the first thing I recognized and, of course, Grain Belt was my first beer at 15, so fun logo for your site guys!

Minneapolis Alt.Net User Group Formed is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

From a great tech blogroll to a calendar of events and, especially, an aggregation of posts from those blogs, it’s a site you should frequent if you’re interested in technology in Minnesota and the people here with propellers on their beanies building great software and leveraging web and internet innovation trends.

Much to my delight today, I discovered a new forum by Jamie Thinglestad (former CTO of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network) called MinneLightroom. If you’re not an Adobe Lightroom fan like I am then this is of little interest to you, but there are a couple of things of note:

1) Adobe Lightroom is developed right here in Minnesota at the Adobe engineering office in Arden Hills

2) Jamie is using the WordPress ‘bbpress‘ forum software — one I’m interested in but find far too limiting currently — but he was able to get this forum up-n-running quickly for a narrow audience of Minnesota Lightroom fans. Granted, he’s pretty adept at WordPress (as evidenced by his session on optimizing it at the recent MinneBar), but deploying this forum has created a focal point in MN for interested Lightroom users and is there if you’re interested in joining.

I encourage you to head over to CentralStandardTech right now and just poke around. If you’re interested in Minnesota tech happenings and the people involved in it here, it’ll be your hub.

CentralStandardTech & MinneLR is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Launched as PagePow, DoApp was founded in 2007 by former early Google employee Joe Sriver. The company positions itself as “a new kind of internet applications company.” They aspire to the rather lofty sounding mission of enabling “a glorious new world of distributed content and commerce.” Okay, so flashing lights and whoopee cushions don’t exactly sound “glorious”. However, in our interview Sriver assures me that there is more afoot at DoApp than finding your keys in the dark, telling the future, or goofing on your friends. The current applications for the iPhone are about establishing the firm and “gaining experience in the process.”

He goes on to say, “The iPhone applications are just one aspect of DoApp, making up part of a growing portfolio of work.” More serious applications in the commerce, utility (including MyTo-dos), and entertainment segments are planned.” We have a staff of eight and we are working furiously to keep pace with the ideas we are generating.” Those ideas include mobile and web based applications. In fact PagePow was originally launched as a widget builder. There is still a presence in that market with plenty of interest, much of it on an international level, but “the attention around iPhone applications has really replaced the buzz on widgets.” according to Sriver. Clearly, though it may be hard to believe, not everyone has an iPhone and there are still plenty of opportunities to supply applications for other platforms. This reality does not appear to be lost on DoApp.

As for iPhone applications, “Nobody really knows the criteria by which Apple decides which applications to release to the App Store, so we can’t really provide a timeline for what’s next there.” says Sriver. As the company expands beyond its current staff it will be less reliant on Apple because it will be delivering applications for other platforms. For now though, being ranked #1 in a category on the hottest application distributor site is not a bad way to bring recognition to a growing firm. Perhaps its own Magic 8 Ball app would say that it “appears likely” that this Minneapolis based firm will parlay that attention into serious application success.

(In the interest of full disclosure it should be norted that Minnov8 contributor Graeme Thickins is also the DoApp Marketing VP.)

Minnesota Keeps Feeding the iPhone Habit is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

San Francisco firm Adaptive Path, a leading experience strategy and design company, is holding a user experience (UX), intermediate-to-advanced workshop in Minneapolis at The Depot on June 16-19th.

minnov8.com readers get 15% off the registration price by using code UXIM when registering (on top of the Early Bird price before May 31st).

Adaptive Path UX Workshop in Minneapolis is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

If one had any doubt about the intensity of our state’s information technology and Internet community, one only had to be anywhere inside the U’s Coffman Union on Saturday for the third annual Minnebar “unconference” (part of an international phenomenon called Barcamp). To say the joint was a-jumpin’ simply does not suffice. And numbers alone don’t tell the story (though attendance was an event record at 430). Rather, it was the intensity of energy through the entire day that could only impress one about this somewhat quiet, and definitely underrated, sector of Minnesota’s economy.

I was there for at least 12 hours of the event — yes, it went on that long, and no one was complaining — and I can surely say that even the most skeptical of attendees who sacrificed part of their spring weekend were impressed with what they experienced, and left beaming with an elevated sense of pride in the industry they’re a part of. One needs only to scan the voluminous talk that went on in real-time — thanks to the magic of Twitter, and all archived here — to see that something big was happening in the Gopher state on this rainy fishing-opener Saturday. (In fact, Minnebar was ranked during the day as one of the top-five conversations going on in the entire, global “Twitterverse.”)

Speaking of Gopher, that’s when the Internet industry really started here — back in the early ’90s with the invention of the browser by that name. It flourished for a few years, but, alas, was disrupted by a little thing called Netscape (first called Mosaic), and soon was relegated to just a note in history. But our state’s involvement in Internet development began thriving in the ’90s and has continued in many ways ever since.

The industry has some notable local companies, who collectively employ thousands, such as Digital River, Internet Broadcasting, and Dow Jones’ local operations (which began life as BigCharts and was soon acquired by MarketWatch), not to speak of Minnesota being home to top-50 ecommerce destinations like BestBuy.com, Target.com, and ShopNBC. But the core of Minnesota’s Internet industry are the developers, designers, engineers and other technologists, marketers, and entrepreneurs who gathered on Saturday at Minnebar, and the many hundreds of smaller entities many of them work for, not to speak of the countless new startups and products they’re building, or just beginning to plot in their minds.

What did the attendees do all day, throughout the many meeting rooms of the wonderful new Coffman Union? Well, the event was organized by two volunteer developers named Ben Edwards and Luke Francl (and anyone they could get to help them), and it featured no less than 40 sessions, all proposed and led by attendees themselves, on a wide variety of technical, design, business, and marketing topics, as we identified in this blog last week here. Several sponsors, who picked up the tab for everything, included the U of M’s Software Engineering Center (the venue sponsor), Split Rock Partners, SwarmCast, FindLaw, SierraBravo, and ipHouse. Probably the biggest highlight of the day was the noon panel on The State of Technology in Minnesota (see our previous post for the audio link). But it became apparent as the day progressed that it was really the networking — the interchange between the attendees — that was surpassing even knowledge-sharing as most valuable benefit for most of the attendees.

Some Key Takeaways

As someone who attends many of these local gatherings, and reports on several national Internet industry events as well each year, I can truly say I was impressed with the impact this event had — on so many levels. As I thought about it over the weekend, I realized I left with not only a much-renewed excitement for Minnesota’s Internet technology and software community, but many great takeaways. Here are some of them:

• Networking is something our community needs more of, getting out from behind the keyboard and meeting people, mixing it up. One panelist talked about the need for more “dense networks” as something Minnesota’s tech community can learn from Silicon Valley. (And I say that means local, national, and social networking — everything.)

• We may focus too much here in Minnesota on our own state/region. We must remember we’re really in a global market, and must constantly strive to be world class — not just to emulate other, better known tech regions in the U.S. We need to benchmark against the best, wherever they may be, and that can be anywhere, to build great companies here in our state.

• There’s a real pride here in Minnesota. Techies love it here, and don’t want to leave! Many who did previously have returned. This is a strength that we can very definitely build on.

• We need to do more to connect the outstanding technology students on the East Bank with the great business students at the Carlson School on the West Bank.

Minnesota’s Internet Tech Crowd Flexes Its Muscle is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.