News, analysis and context on enterprise technology for the CTO
Editor's note: The tips Bryan Halfpap provides below really work. I stood up a working Hadoop Cluster in under 20 minutes, from cold iron to production ready, using just his guidance and a Rackspace account. bg I've been working with Apache Hadoop in my lab, spending much of that with CDH3 (the Cloudera Distribution including Apache Hadoop). As part of my examination of the best way to move from test/evaluation/prototyping to production systems I've … [Read more...]
Amazon didn't invent cloud computing, but they deserve lots of credit for transforming the business model for providing cloud services through elastic computing (for some history see Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet from Businessweek Nov 2006). They have pushed the economics of cloud computing to be so efficient they are able to offer a 12 months worth of initial compute for free. This is a great opportunity to learn their interface and to test how their computing … [Read more...]
On a whim, I recently picked up a Roku XD player from Woot.com. The Roku allows you to tap into a lot of the video going around on the "interwebs" and watch it on your HDTV of choice. The Roku is one of the devices that so-called "cord-cutters" use to keep themselves entertained. After a few weeks with it (coupled with subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant Video) I've got a few thoughts on it. Streaming Video and the Roku - Is it all it's … [Read more...]
Yesterday, I read a great article over at GigaOM about how the Kindle Fire has become "The Next Big Haven for Developers." (Check it out here). Apparently, Amazon's Appstore (with 1-click purchasing) as well as the number of Kindle Fire devices sold (said to be over 5M), have made the Kindle Fire the targeted device of choice for Android development. I think this is great news, long has the 7" form factor been ignored, and Android been the "ugly sister" … [Read more...]
Here at CTOVision, we analyze disruptive technologies and follow trends happening in the government, enterprise, and consumer technology space. Yesterday I was reading reading about Google's new offering of a music service through the Android Market. I found it interesting that Google would do this, since they are so far behind in the game relative to Apple's iTunes and Amazon's music services. Then I started thinking about what this meant for … [Read more...]
The Kindle Fire (shipping yesterday, with over 1M pre-orders) has been indicted as a device that will further fracture the Android Ecosystem. It has an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) soul, but is completely skinned over in all Amazon garb. The dual-core, 7" tablet has quite a few capabilities that stand out, but it is clear that the intent is to boost user buy-in into the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon now offers streaming video, book rentals, music … [Read more...]
This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP. The recent Amazon cloud outage at its Northern Virginia data center will raise concerns among CIO’s looking to the “public cloud” to improve IT service delivery and reduce day-to-day operating costs. Industry claims of superior “up-time” performance, reliability and massive redundancy must now be revisited and re-evaluated. In these early days immediately following the outage, the … [Read more...]
Last week Amazon announced a new cloud-based, consumer-oriented service offering called Amazon Cloud Drive. According to the company, the Cloud Drive is “your hard drive in the cloud.” It will allow users to store “music, videos, photos and documents online and access them from anywhere.” Cloud Drive let people store up to five gigabytes of music, photos, videos and documents. The basic storage is free; additional space can be purchased for … [Read more...]
We are almost at Christmas, and a lot of people don't know what to buy their loved ones this season. Do not worry, we here at CTOvision have provided you with a list of items that will be certain to bring joy to your loved ones this holiday season. 1) New non-3D LCD/LED TV. New HDTVs have gotten extremely inexpensive. 32" LCD TVs are down to about $300 dollars, super thin backlit LED TVs are about $600 for a 32". Because I don't believe in 3DTV … [Read more...]