NComputing's Breakthrough Virtual PC Technology Enables 180,000 Low-Cost Workstations on Classroom Desktops Nationwide

From Marketwire:

Sep 17, 2007 04:00 ET

Macedonia Becomes First Nation to Provide Computer Workstations for Every Student

NComputing's Breakthrough Virtual PC Technology Enables 180,000 Low-Cost Workstations on Classroom Desktops Nationwide

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - September 17, 2007) - NComputing, provider of the world's most affordable solutions for PC access, today announced that its multi-user virtual desktop software and low-cost virtual PC terminals will be used to equip every school child in the Republic of Macedonia with a rich individual computer experience. The most ambitious national undertaking ever to standardize all schools around a single technology platform, the "Computer for Every Child" project of the Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science will deploy 180,000 NComputing-enabled workstation seats, enough to provide virtually every elementary and secondary school student in the nation with his or her own classroom computing device.

NComputing's multi-user virtual desktop software and low-cost virtual PC terminals, along with supporting Linux-based PCs, were proven in Macedonia tests to deliver a rich PC experience at less than half the cost of any other proposed solution, including low-cost desktop and laptop PCs and other thin client options, according to Ivo Ivanovski, Macedonia's Minister for the Information Society. Huge additional advantages in reduced maintenance and replacement costs made the choice of NComputing even more compelling. With half the students attending school in the morning, and half attending in the afternoon, 180,000 workstations will provide a 1-to-1 computing experience -- one virtual PC at each student's desk -- for the country's entire public school student population.

"The Computer for Every Child initiative is the largest and most important education project undertaken in the 15-year history of the Republic of Macedonia," according to Ivanovsky. "Our goal is to build a knowledge-based economy in which our entire workforce is educated in using information and communication technology within the next five years. Yet, like most school systems around the world, Macedonia's education system has limited financial and infrastructural resources to address this challenge. By adopting NComputing's low-cost virtual PC technology, Macedonia is taking the lead in providing computer-based education for school children."

"We at NComputing believe that providing PC access to the next billion users -- those who cannot afford the cost of an individual PC -- is the single biggest challenge facing our industry today. Perhaps the most important segment of this under-served mass market is school children, including students in the United States and other developed countries, as well as those in developing nations," said Stephen Dukker, Chairman and CEO of NComputing. "We're gratified that NComputing's technology can be an important part of the solution in Macedonia and around the world."

NComputing's corporate mission is to provide affordable PC access to under-resourced markets around the world, including schools and users in developing and developed countries. The company's revolutionary technology allows a single PC to be shared by multiple simultaneous users -- each running their own applications. Setup is simple, and begins with software on the shared PC that creates multiple virtual user desktops. Standard monitors, keyboards and mice then plug into very low-cost, highly reliable virtual PCs (also known as access terminals). As a major leap forward in green computing, NComputing solutions draw between one and five watts of power for each added user, versus 115 for a typical PC. Neither IT staff nor end users require special training, and the system is compatible with Windows, Linux and standard PC applications. Pricing is as low as $70 per seat.

With NComputing's X300, up to seven users can simultaneously share a single PC. The cost and power savings are critical in school deployments, including in Macedonia, because budgets and electricity are often limited. Macedonia also chose NComputing's technology because maintenance and replacement costs are a fraction of what they are for traditional PC deployments. NComputing's solid-state virtual PC terminals have no moving parts and require little or no maintenance, so the principal maintenance costs follow only the shared PCs and monitors. In addition, in an upgrade cycle to newer PCs, only the PCs themselves, not the virtual PC terminals, need to be replaced.

Through a global network of resellers, NComputing also offers the L-series, which connects via Ethernet at any distance from a shared PC or server on either Local Area Networks or over the Internet. The number of L-series virtual PCs supported is limited only by the power of the shared PC. Hundreds can be supported on virtualized servers.

When completed, Macedonia's Computer for Every Child initiative will have deployed approximately 160,000 NComputing virtual PC terminals and 20,000 NComputing-enabled PCs (which each also support a student on the attached monitor) running the Ubuntu Linux-based operating system. The Haier Company, a diversified manufacturer and PC maker, and one of China's largest and most respected companies, won the contract for procurement and installation. The project will enable a range of innovative educational programs, including interactive web-based classes in which specialized experts teach lessons in such areas as mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics to multiple schools and classrooms around the country.

NComputing's multi-user system software and low-cost virtual PC terminals represent the next generation of thin computing, in which multi-user computing finally becomes affordable and accessible, and the user-experience equals that of a dedicated PC. The Macedonia project is at the same time, the largest known thin client and desktop Linux deployment ever undertaken.

"This project would not have been possible 5 years ago," said Ivanovski. "Today's least expensive desktop PCs are so powerful we use less than 10% of their capacity and NComputing's technology puts this wasted power to work."

In a brief 18 months after starting active shipments, NComputing has sold more than 500,000 seats, including more than 200,000 to U.S. schools, providing technology that addresses the needs of under-served markets worldwide, as well as those of small business and enterprise customers. The company's technology is being sold and deployed in more than 80 countries -- including thousands of schools, corporate and small business offices, and villages and cities in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America.

Until the next post,

Steve

26.25 gigaflops Server for less than 2,500 USD and fits into a suit case

From:Calvin College
3201 Burton Street, SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49546

Written by Allison Graff, web communications coordinator

Student, prof build budget supercomputer
August 30 , 2007

When Tim Brom, Class 07, (pictured right) set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England.

Brom, now a graduate student at the University of Kentucky continuing his studies in computer science, worked with Adams to build Microwulf, a machine that is among the smallest and least expensive supercomputers on the planet.

“It’s small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk,” said Brom.

This may prove useful next summer when Brom and others from his graduate program travel to England to do work that will require “a significant amount of computing power.” And as the price of commercial supercomputers is often prohibitive for many educational institutions, bringing a “personal” supercomputer like Microwulf could be a cost-effective solution for the group of graduate researchers.

“So far as we can tell, this is the first supercomputer to have this low price/performance ratio—the first to cost less than $100/Gflop,” said Adams.

This is a significant achievement considering that Microwulf is more than twice as fast as Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, and cost only a fraction of the $5 million spent to build Deep Blue.

Microwulf has been measured to process 26.25 gigaflops, or 26.25 billion double-precision floating point instructions, per second. It achieves this performance by relying on four dual-core motherboards connected by an 8-port Gigabyt Ethernet switch. The connected components form a three-tiered system that looks like a triple-decker sandwich.


Supercomputers like Microwulf are used to solve problems that take too much number-crunching for an ordinary desktop to handle, either because its processor is too slow, or because it doesn’t have enough memory, said Adams. Truly huge supercomputers (more than 100 times as fast as Microwulf) are used by organizations like the National Weather Service to process meteorological data and by the United States Missile Defense Agency to simulate nuclear tests.

Microwulf is considered a Beowulf cluster, a group of networked computers that run open source software and work in parallel to solve a single problem. Beowulf clusters are so named because their homemade, cost-effective nature liberates researchers from expensive commercial options for super-computing, much like Beowulf of the Old English poem liberated the Danes from the tyrannical rule of Grendel.

Do Brom and Adams see themselves as “liberators” by unveiling of a system like Microwulf?

“We’re taking the liberation a step further,” said Adams. “Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own.”

Just two years ago, building a personal supercomputer like Microwulf for the price of a high-performance desktop was out of the realm of possibility for Adams and Brom. But when they saw a portable Beowulf cluster called Little Fe at a conference in October 2005, they began to think about building their system.

“I was really enjoying my high-performance computing class and wanted to keep working in that area after the class ended. I was also thinking about graduate school at the time and a project like Microwulf looks good on a curriculum vitae,” said Brom.

So by the summer of 2006 when the price of hardware materials needed to build Microwulf had gone down, Adams asked his academic department to provide $2500 for the project. He also asked Brom, then beginning his last year at Calvin, to help him build the supercomputer. In January of 2007, they began to piece together their system and by March, they were running tests to see just what Microwulf could do. In the end, the project came in under budget with Microwulf donning a price-tag of just $2470. With current hardware prices, another system like Microwulf would cost half of what it cost Adams and Brom to build earlier this year.

Though supercomputers are typically evaluated on their price/performance ratio, Adams built Microwulf giving attention to its power/performance ratio as well. In other words, he wanted to pay attention to the system’s energy consumption.

“This is becoming increasingly important, as excess power consumption is inefficient and generates waste heat, which can in turn decrease reliability,” said Adams on his Web site.

Adams and Brom managed to build Microwulf so that it could plug into one standard 120V wall outlet. This feature only enhances the system’s portability, allowing it to be taken to classrooms and other research labs where large power supplies are unavailable.

Adams isn’t going to let Microwulf gather dust in the supercomputing lab in the Science Building. Instead he’s going to take it out on the road, mostly to middle school and high school classrooms to try and get teenagers hooked on computer science.

Microwulf’s inventors aren’t set on keeping their blueprints for the supercomputer a secret. In fact, they’ve just published a detailed description and evaluation of their project on Cluster Monkey so others can build their own portable and affordable supercomputers.

It remains to be seen whether Brom will be able to get his wire-filled personal supercomputer past airport security next summer.

Until the next post,

Steve

Why "Good Enough" Is Good Enough

From BusinessWeek September 3, 2007

NEWS & INSIGHTS/Commentary
By Stephen Baker

Why "Good Enough" Is Good Enough
Imperfect technology greases innovation--and the whole marketplace

Say you have a crucial conference call in an hour and your phone goes dead. What do you do? A generation ago, this wasn't much of an issue, at least in the U.S. Phones in the days of the Bell monopoly were engineered to be "mission critical." You picked up one of those heavy receivers back then, and the dial tone was as prompt and reliable as water from the tap. It worked.

Yet these days, even as we pack global multimedia in our pockets, phone service sometimes seems to march backward. Andy Beal was one of 220 million subscribers to Skype, the cut-rate Internet telephony service owned by eBay (EBAY ), who saw the service go dark on Aug. 16. A software glitch kept it down for the next two days. Founder of the Raleigh (N.C.) Internet marketing consultancy Marketing Pilgrim, Beal learned that Skype was out an hour before clients were to call him from Holland. He had to message them in a hurry, telling them to call his tenuous backup: the cell phone. "It was embarrassing," he says. But at least the cell phone worked--which isn't always the case.

Are communications getting worse? Not by a long shot. We're surrounded by miraculous machines and services, most of them calibrated to a level software engineers have long called "good enough." In the right circumstances, good enough is great for the entire economy. A marketplace that's not hung up on fail-safe standards is open to risk and innovation, and drives down prices. Ever since the dawn of the PC--the archetype for a good-enough machine--inventors have been freer than ever to piece together and launch their visions. Some are brilliant, some are half-baked, many are a blend of the two. A precious few are up and running 99.999% of the time--Bell's old standard. But they cost far less to build.

The rise of good-enough technology raises different questions for do-it-yourselfers and major corporations alike. It's no longer whether we can afford a technology, but more often whether we can afford the disruption if and when it fails. Is it critical? Do we have backup in place? Many of us face this question every time we venture from our office with a cell phone. We don't have "one machine that works all the time," says Dave Morgan, chairman of Tacoda Inc., a New York advertising company. "We have lots of alternatives that work most of the time."

The upside of this sloppy status quo is enormous. Consider Andy Beal. He pays Skype about $60 a year, plus a couple cents for foreign calls. This gives him global telephony wherever he wanders with his laptop. He calls the service "seamless." He recently switched most of his office work--including e-mail, contacts, and calendar--to free Web services. This, of course, entails risk. In late July, an electrical outage in San Francisco brought some of the biggest sites, from Craigslist to Second Life, crashing down for 12 hours.

Beal's data reside on Google (GOOG ). The search giant is in fact an example of a major corporation that, like so many small fry, bets its business on good-enough technology. Google's data centers, the heart of the company's operations, consist of hundreds of thousands of commodity computers wired into a vast global network. These computers are little more reliable than yours or mine. Many die and are replaced every week. It could be that one of them at this very minute is issuing its dying blinks--and taking down Andy Beal's contact data with it. But if Google is working as designed, it links customers to another copy of those files or Web pages stored elsewhere on the network. Every computer has a legion of backups. Success, in the good-enough economy, means racing ahead even as the machines supporting us sputter and break.

I am fortunate to have the the name Steve. So when i remind myself to K.I.S.S, it means Keep It Simple Steve. But how simple can you make something and still achieve the required objectives? After a little thought, boiled the question down to the word "Precision". How "Precise" does something have to be?

Sometime later, was sitting in a tavern, famous for its Red Door, talking with a fellow IT guy about computer stuff. We each read several weekly "rags" and would exchange thoughts on what had "Legs" and what was "Flash". Asked him for his thoughts on how precise all this tech needs to be to work.

He answers, "Aristotle."

He informs me that i am couple thousand years behind and that one of the original founders of the first "SAP" had been down this road. He is brief but explains, sometimes "less is more." Maybe the time is right for a cell phone that only makes calls. I have one. It resides in the console of me truck, turned off.

Or here is a digital solution that does everything I want (or need) and nothing else to clutter its beauty. I use about 2% of what is in any of the operating systems and applications on the machines in the lab. Ninety plus some percent of available resources is not needed, nor wanted, but you get it regardless. Sometimes people may be asking for the wrong thing when they exclaim, "Why can it not just work?', when they should ask, "Why can i not get just what i need?" Sometimes more is less.

Until the next post,

Steve

Really Big Clusters Made From Lots of Small Servers

Is the real interest in "Greener" data centers to lower energy costs (good for the environment and bottom line) or is it that more efficient ways of computing require less energy? Maybe some of both?

From InfoQ:

Greener datacenters through Millicomputer clusters?

Posted by Johan Strandler on Aug 28, 2007 10:07 AM

One big problem with current large scale enterprise computing and data centers is power consumption, and a lot of effort is made in the industry to reduce the power need in current server platforms. Adrian Cockcroft is defining a new type of enterprise computing platform where he addresses this problem by defining a new type of computer: The Millicomputer - a computer that requires less than 1 Watt. The idea is to build enterprise servers out of commodity components from the battery powered mobile space. He presents a way to build an enterprise server using about 100 such Millicomputers in a cluster on a single 1U rack. This server only consumes less than 160W which is much less than comparable 1U rack enterprise servers of today. Cockcroft calls this disruptive innovation and he makes a prediction for 2010 that there could be a market for about 100,000 Milliclusters at $10K each, where each Millicluster packages 100 Millicomputers into an Enterprise Server.

The Millicomputer and MilliCluster hardware is developed as "Open Hardware", which means that the hardware design won't be owned by a single vendor. The Millicomputer is using LInux as the operating system and the hardware is based on a Freescale i.MX31 System-on-a-chip component using microSDHC flash memory. While the Millicomputer doesn't require much power by itself, external ethernet connections do. In order to save power, Cockcroft introduces the concept of "Enterprise MilliCluster", which allows 14 Millicomputers to be load balanced behind one Twin 1GB Ethernet external interface ethernet port by connecting by connecting them through a USB switch using Linux USBNet transport. The form factor to such a MilliCluster makes it possible to put 8 clusters plus a power unit on a single 1U rack, which consumes less than 160W - probably much less.

By comparing a MilliCluster based 1U server with Suns x4100 Operon and T1000 Niagara servers Cockcroft says:

"For the same 1U package size and similar cost per package power is much less than a Niagara, less than half of an Opteron system. Total RAM capacity is similar, the raw CPU GHz is double, worst case GHz per Watt is six times better than Opteron, three times better than Niagara. Flash storage is 1000x faster for both random and sequential IOPS.

Applications suitable to run on Millicomputers include:

Applications that can be broken into small chunks, small scale or horizontally scalable web workloads, legacy applications that used to run on 5 year old machines, graphical video caves and storage I/O intensive applications are the best candidates to run on Millicomputers."

Although in very early development, Millicomputing appears to be quite a paradigm shift; could this be the enterprise hardware platform of the (greener) future?

Until the next post,

Steve

FCC Sets Spectrum Auction

From PC World:

The long-awaited auction of 700MHz 'beachfront property' is scheduled to begin in January.

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

Saturday, August 18, 2007 3:00 PM PDT

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will begin its long-awaited auction of 700MHz radio spectrum on Jan. 16, 2008, the agency said Friday.

The sale is expected to take in US$10 billion or more in bids for what has been called "beachfront property:" licenses for frequencies that can carry mobile data and voice services over long distances and through walls much better than current cellular spectrum. The frequencies are currently used by analog television stations, which are scheduled to turn their channels over in 2009 as they move to digital broadcasting.

Google Inc. and others asked for rules in the auction that would help new entrants get into the national wireless business, such as a requirement that the winner sell some of the spectrum wholesale to other service providers. The FCC finally watered-down rules for openness, including that one part of the band can be used by any device or application.

The agency is seeking public comments on the auction, designated Auction 73. They are due by Aug. 31.

Choice is good.

Until the next post.

Steve

Eric Schmidt talking about Web 2.0 vs 3.0

From Youtube dot com.

When Eric speaks a lot of people listen.




Until the next post,

Steve

Stephen Dukker, CEO NComputing, comments on OLPC

NComputing has for more than a year been one of the top three searches that bring users to this site. I personally operate their units at two sites with out a problem.

From: Stephen Dukker, NComputing CNET News.com

Published: 07 Aug 2007 17:59 BST

via news.zdnet.co.uk

The last few years have witnessed an increasing focus on creating inexpensive, affordable computers for users in the developing world.

At the forefront of this movement is Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and former director of the MIT Media Lab. His not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project has been developing a laptop (targeted at $100 (£50) but currently struggling to break $200) suitable for use by every child in the developing world. Recently, Intel joined the board of OLPC and will even contribute funding to the project.

Helping people in the developing world cross the digital divide is a fundamental act of decency and generosity — and even self-interest — as these new markets grow, consumers spend and productivity surges. The need for technology among the under-served is so urgent, hopeful thinking goes, that even a computer with no commercial viability — no distribution channels, maintenance, training, programming services and, in fact, virtually no IT ecosystem at all — can meet that market's need.

As laudable as this dream is, the ideal unfortunately runs counter to a fundamental fact of life: a computer cannot exist independent of basic economic realities.

A computer is, rather, a creature of connectivity and collaboration. And, given the economic realities in the developing world, $200 computers cannot generate the profit essential for the creation of a robust IT ecosystem, which is essential to ensure successful deployment, ongoing operation and maintenance.

The price of a base-level personal computer today is about $400. That hasn't changed much in the last 10 years, although the power this computer delivers has increased profoundly. As a result, however, the world computer user base has been stuck at a largely saturated 850 million users for years. Unfortunately another billion potential users — most in developing and under-served markets like education — cannot afford the requisite $400. If we can merely squeeze down the price tag, have we solved their problem?

Only if you believe that OLPC and Intel's $200 laptop, with their PDA-like, seven-inch screens and obsolete processors are the answer. But the developing world is not just "village kids", but rather motivated, ambitious people engaged in business, agriculture, commerce, healthcare, finance and education.

As laudable as this dream is, the ideal unfortunately runs counter to a fundamental fact of life: a computer cannot exist independent of basic economic realities

Stephen Dukker, NComputing

For PCs to be productive in this business and educational landscape, they require a host of supporting services, plus reasonable features and capabilities. A PC must communicate, which mandates connectivity. That, in turn, demands configuration, maintenance, professional services, technical support, hardware and software upgradeability. Without a healthy ecosystem, a PC is not worth even $200.

Here in the developed world, the PC hardware makers have put up with profitless computing for years as a result of operating in a saturated, upgrade-driven market. We know our industry is in sick condition and we have now driven down the cost of "real PCs" as far as they can go.

However, not everyone needs their own PC. What they do need is access to the functionality and benefits that the PC provides, delivered in an affordable and efficient way. That's where I believe multi-user computing fills the void.

This multi-user model is not new. During the 1960s, when computers were all mainframes and cost millions, multi-user computing, in the form of time-sharing (where we rented access by the hour using low-cost "dumb terminals"), was our first tool for expanding the market from the "Fortunate 500" to the rest of us. This model continued through the 1970s, with $100,000 and, ultimately, $10,000 minicomputers further expanding the market. In the 1980s came the PC and the world changed; ultimately, we all got our own computers.

Although the last 10 years have seen very little movement in the price of low-end PCs, technology advances have turned the 2007 entry-level PC into a very muscular piece of technology whose gigapower is more than 1,000 times that of a $400 box built in 1998. Only a fraction of today's PC users, such as computational scientists, extreme gamers, graphic artists and industrial designers use more than a few percent of what these mainframes on a desk can offer.

As a result, the vast majority of those CPU cycles are wasted, burning energy (150 to 200 watts per box) which is costly and scarce in these markets and becoming ever more costly to own. So why not harness and share this extra capacity and resurrect these proven techniques and technologies from the past to take today's "mainframe on a desk" and put its power to work?

Enterprise computer users have been benefiting from the PC version of multi-user computing since 1990, something our industry has dubbed "server-based computing". Blade computing and virtualisation are the latest twists on this same multi-user concept.

However, these enterprise software and hardware components are expensive. The software licences alone often add up to more than the cost of the full or stripped-down PCs being used as the access terminals. These terminals (thin clients) are themselves as expensive as low-end PCs. It has been, thus far, a technology for the rich and fortunate.

A number of new firms, including my own company, NComputing, have reincarnated the thin client with non-CPU-based access terminals. Access terminals are being built today at costs as low as $11 and sold for well under $100 per user. At the same time, they provide manufacturers, distributors, resellers and maintenance partners with full commercial margins. The expensive software and high-end servers have been replaced by low-cost or free software and desktop PCs. These multi-user environments tap the power of low-end PCs to support 10 or more concurrent users, with power consumption of under six watts per user.

All the evidence undercuts the widespread technology assumption about how best to liberate emerging regions of the globe from the energy-wasteful business model which is being foisted upon them today.

Stephen Dukker is chief executive of NComputing. He is also a founder and former chief executive of eMachines.

If your are really interested, perform a search on "NComputing Ndiyo Teradici". Leave me a comment and i will forward you the name of a computer manufacture that is also interested.

Until the next post,

Steve

Clearwire and Sprint partner to build out WiMax in US

Cleaning out the email box and came upon this article. T1 speed with wireless. Covers about 300 million users in the US. I like it.

From: Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service

Sunday, July 22, 2007 4:00 PM PDT

With wider national coverage than either company could have had on its own, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. say they can achieve on their joint WiMax network some of what Google Inc. and others want to see in the prized 700MHz band.

The companies announced Thursday they will link their respective WiMax wireless broadband networks to give subscribers a seamless roaming experience across territories that eventually will cover 300 million U.S. residents. The network will deliver between 2M bps (bits per second) and 4M bps downstream and about half that speed upstream, they said.

Sprint and Clearwire plan to use WiMax so that subscribers can choose among a wide range of devices built to the open standard on which the technology is based. In addition, they intend to let users access any application or service on the Internet, said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint.

The upcoming auction of 700MHz radio spectrum around the U.S. has sparked a fierce debate between traditional carriers and Google Inc., Frontline Wireless LLC and others over how that spectrum should be used. Current mobile operators generally sell a limited set of devices locked to their networks and favor their own applications among the offerings their customers can access on their phones. Google told the FCC on Friday it won't bid unless the government requires any-device, any-application networks. It also wants a rule forcing the winners to sell wholesale network access to other service providers. Sprint doesn't have plans for wholesale access.

Sprint, which announced its WiMax plans last year, said Thursday it owns spectrum licenses for the WiMax band that cover 185 million U.S. residents. Clearwire has spectrum in the same band to serve 115 million people. The combined network should be fairly comprehensive, covering urban, suburban and rural areas across the country, which today has a population just over 302 million, the Census Bureau estimates.

After "soft" launches in Chicago and Washington, D.C., at the end of this year and commercial availability starting next year, the companies together aim to reach 100 million people by the end of 2008. This is the same 2008 goal Sprint had given previously by itself, but it was an aggressive goal then and is now a conservative estimate, Gude said. The companies did not estimate when the full network would be completed.

Given the higher frequency Sprint and Clearwire plan to use, at 2.5GHz, their network is likely to need more base stations than a similar network using 700MHz, which travels over long distances and through walls more easily.

Video about Xohm

Clearwire already operates a wireless broadband service and has been planning to convert it to standard mobile WiMax, which is only now emerging as a commercial technology. The company is backed by heavy hitters including Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc.

Sprint, struggling against larger rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless Inc., could use Clearwire's helping hand. The deal may let Sprint realize its WiMax dream at less expense, said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua. There seems to be little overlap between the two carriers' licenses, so the partnership won't really hurt competition and is likely to win government approval, Chua said.

The first users will access the network with standalone modems, notebook add-on cards or PCs and smaller Ultra Mobile PCs with embedded modems, Sprint said. But it sees mobility as the key driver of the network and believes WiMax handsets will arrive by 2009, Gude said.

However, Chua thinks ever-faster cellular technologies have the edge for mobility. The Sprint-Clearwire network will compete mainly against DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable modem services, with the advantage that subscribers can set up a notebook away from home and enjoy the same service. It could significantly boost broadband competition, he said.

"It's making the world a little bit more interesting now," Chua said.

Until the next post,

Steve

Received in my in box this article from RED HERRING.

PC Killer?

Desktone snares $17M, vies to convert big companies to virtual desktops.
July 30, 2007

By Ken Schachter

Desktone, which aims to get companies to junk their PCs in favor of thin clients with virtualized desktops, has landed $17 million in a series A funding round announced Monday.

Highland Capital Partners and Softbank Capital led the round, which also included China-based Tangee International and strategic investor Citrix Systems.

Desktone, whose software is designed to tie together client devices, operating systems, storage, applications, servers and network technology, is likely to face stiff competition. Some corporate IT departments prefer to build the virtualized desktop on their own. Startups like 2-year-old Kidaro, a New York City-based company backed by Genesis Partners, Storm Ventures and Opus Capital Ventures, also compete for a share of the market.

Microsoft, whose Windows operating system dominates the corporate workplace, in 2006 acquired Softricity, whose chief executive was Harry Ruda, now the chief executive of Desktone.

Peter Bell, a partner at Highland Capital and a Desktone board member, said Desktone, based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, offers the IT managers of large corporations a respite from the complexities of managing thousands of networked PCs.

“Their software platform is removing some of the physical complexity where you might have thousands of desktops,” he said. Desktone will provide the IT organization a single management console.

Ron Fisher, also a board member at Desktone and managing partner at Softbank, the cost of maintaining a personal computer in a corporate environment can be several times the cost of acquisition.

“When you move people’s PCs, the cost of getting them set up is several hundred dollars,” he said.

Rather than charge companies one large fee for its software, Desktone is selling “software as a service,” charging companies a per-user fee per month or per year.

That model appeals to companies seeking to improve their return on assets, said Desktone Chief Operating Officer Paul Gaffney, who has served in senior positions at superstore chains Staples and Office Depot.

One-year-old Desktone already has some undisclosed corporate customers and intends to focus initially on financial services firms in the Boston-New York City corridor, Mr. Bell said.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Citrix Systems’ infrastructure is used in some virtualized desktops to deliver software applications.

Though some companies will want desktop users to have “thin clients,” allowing the IT department to serve and store all information, others will be content to coordinate software patches and updates through a “virtual desktop” on PCs, Mr. Fisher said.

Until the next post,

Steve

Microsoft names their SaaS "Cloud Infrastructure Services"

Information Week in this weeks issue, is reporting about Microsoft's epiphany regarding Software as a Service. This is not new. Microsoft for several years has offered through resellers like HP, SPLA (Service Providers License agreement). What may be new is Microsoft may have discovered, 1) Advertisement supported on line services, and 2) the strategic ability to "eat their own young." The second may even be more important that the first.

With Its Head In The 'Cloud,' Microsoft Talks Web Services

Company leaders outline progress, promise more resources, in software-plus-services push.

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
July 28, 2007 12:00 AM (From the July 30, 2007 issue)

Microsoft last week continued to sketch out its emerging software-as-a-service strategy. In speech after speech at the company's annual meeting with financial analysts, Microsoft executives discussed the company's high-priority shift from a heavy reliance on shrink-wrapped software.

"From my viewpoint, every one of our software offerings is either a socket for a new attached service or an upgrade or up-sell opportunity to extend a product's value proposition up to the Web and potentially through to mobile devices," said chief software architect Ray Ozzie.

Throwing talent, resources, money at the ad business Microsoft's online architecture starts with a "foundation services" layer that includes the data centers from which its Web services run. The number of servers in Microsoft's services infrastructure has more than doubled in the last year, according to Ozzie. A new data center will break ground this week in San Antonio.

At the next level are "cloud infrastructure services," which Ozzie described as a kind of "utility computing fabric" of virtualized services, application frameworks, management infrastructure, storage, and network services. Microsoft expects to offer those capabilities to developers and to enterprise customers over time, Ozzie said.

The other layers in Microsoft's services model include "Live platform services" (identity and presence services, for example) that have an online advertising infrastructure, and applications such as CRM.

Microsoft will give Web-based "click-to-run capabilities" to Windows applications, CEO Steve Ballmer said. Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, added that there's a place online for "traditional office productivity," though he didn't say whether that meant Web versions of Office apps or lesser collaborative document editing and sharing capabilities.

Microsoft will extend its software offerings with "connected productivity scenarios" that might include document sharing, note taking, meetings, and universal access on the Web and mobile devices, Ozzie said. For line-of-business employees, CRM, lightweight ERP, and "issue-tracking solutions" may be in store.

Microsoft has been investing heavily in its advertising platform, including the $6 billion it's spending to acquire aQuantive. Last week, it disclosed plans to buy AdECN, an ad exchange that Microsoft officials likened to a stock exchange where ads are auctioned off to advertising networks that are exchange members. Yahoo bought an ad exchange, Right Media, earlier this year.

'HELL-BENT' ON SUCCESS
"We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business," said Ballmer. "This is essential if our software-plus-services vision is going to come to fruition." And there was progress to report: Microsoft last week revealed deals to serve advertisements to visitors to social news site Digg and in-game advertising for five EA Sports video games.

As part of that effort to innovate and gain market position, Microsoft said it has formed an applied research group called the Internet Services Research Center to accelerate the development and deployment of Microsoft advertising technologies. The group will be headed by VP Harry Shum, formerly chief scientist for the company's search and advertising platform group under senior VP Satya Nadella.

Until the next post,

Steve

Let the Mash Ups begin.

Last month it was SalesForce.com and Google announcing a strategic alliance. This month it is Zoho and Facebook. But there is another type of Mash Up that has my interest today.

That is the mash up between hardware, software and services. Zonbu is offering a very small footprint Linux based PC for 99 USD. Included is a version of Linux with enough applications that meets the needs for many users.

Open Office and Mozilla are the two main applications included with a total of 20 available. There are games, media players and IM also on board. One of my now must have applications, Skype, is also included. For a complete list of included applications visit the Zonbu Application URL.

It has been known for years that thin clients consume less energy. In many countries the reduction in energy costs when combined with the cost to remove the heat that a standard PC will generate, offers paybacks times in months, not years. Now small, fanless, footprint PCs are achieving a similar lower energy use.

Zonbu offers ten reasons, listed on their website, for you to use Zonbu solution.

1) Green avenger

energy efficient design helps protect the planet.

2) Virtual virtuoso
Comes with every program most people ever need.

3) Incomparable Value

For $99 and $12.95 a month, run Zonbu anytime, all the time.

4) The fast life
Sets up in seconds, and everything's plug & play.

5) Self-assured
Automatically installs patches, upgrades and protects against viruses.

6) Happy exchanges
Easy hardware replacement — with all your data intact.

7) Easy going
Access your data from any PC — anywhere on the Internet.

8) Forget-me-not
From photos to tax numbers — automatically backs up all your data.

9) Penny-wise
Efficient hardware saves up to $10 per month on energy bills.

10) The small, silent type
Quiet operation and elegant, compact lines.

The question that now needs to be asked is “where is the value?” Yesterday I took one of my thin clients, an old NTA 6020 and dropped in 256 meg of memory, 4 Gig SanDisk and installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. I suppose you could contact Ewayco.com and order from them something very similar to what Zonbu has to offer. But both solutions would be missing what Zonbu is offering.

Are their more powerful packages available? I am writing this post using Microsoft Word hosted on a 64-bit machine running Vista Ultimate. Cables run everywhere. The machine to my immediate left has Microsoft Server 2008 with TS installed. Next to it is Server 2003. Add network storage, printers and few more boxes, but now I would be missing the point also. Zonbu is offering a turnkey solution that they think meets the needs of enough people that they can grow a business. The solution is really the triad of hardware, software, and online service, packaged with some green paper and pledge to “make it just work.”

Below is “The Concept” as presented in the sites FAQ.

"Zonbu was started to radically simplify and enhance your computing experience by offering an affordable, hassle-free, environmentally-friendly personal computer and software suite that take advantage of advances in open source software, self-healing architectures, and Web services. These combined advances enable one of the first dramatic changes in the personal computing model since the advent of personal computers.”

Comes with a three-year warranty. So what are the real costs in USD?

The PC is $99.00. Per month subscription 12.95 times 36 = $466.20. If you do not have a monitor, mouse or keyboard you will need to purchase them. Lets add $200.00. Could speed more or less.

The other major cost is broadband but that would be the same as if you had a PC. Subtract the three years of Antivirus you will not need if your current OS needs one. Subtract any repairs cost associated with your current solution. Add shipping costs for sending back a broken unit. Zonbu will cross ship a replacement unit.

Subtract energy savings. Depending on your location, the saving may offset the monthly subscription.

Subtract all software costs. All the software that you can use is included and maintained (updated) by Zonbu. This is the real test. You cannot add you own software. If you want something that is not on the menu, go to another restaurant. Here is that link back to the applications list. Remember, that you have a world class browser to access any online applications from other vendors like Google, Saleforce.com, Zoho, Facebook, et al. Maybe not that much of a problem after all, but just maybe not for everyone.

Zonbu does offer the option of purchasing the device for 249 USD if you choose not to participate in the two year service subscription. Service subscription begins at 12.95 USD for the basic service that includes 25 GB of server side storage. For an additional monthly subscription of 14.95 USD or 19.95 USD, server side storage can be increased to 50 or 100 GB.

My personal opinion is that this is a very viable option for more just a few. May need time and tender loving care to refine the total product into a sustainable package. I wish for them much success.

Now if they just had an inexpensive, small footprint laptop with Wifi…..!

Until the next post,

Steve

Pen and Paper: A new thin client, "Digital Pen Voting"

Got a call from a fellow IT guy, friend, and some time collaborator advising me he has something to give me. It is the manual for WEB 3.0 OS from 1992. WEB 3.0 sat atop MS DOS 3.X turning the connected devices into a Peer-to-Peer network, with E-mail. We installed a 20 node network for a NFP group in 1990 or 1991. New Samsung 386s with large 40 Meg hard drives. What could we put into those 8 Meg D: drives?

Of course everyone remembers what happened. Microsoft acquired the technology and it became Windows For Workgroups. One of the graphics that the developer (Josh) put into the WEB 3.0 OS still remains on the login screen of Server 2003. Probably does not do the exactly the same it did 17 years ago and the colors have changed, but the graphic is still there.

Chris has something else to show me. Paper. “Yes, it is a pad of paper.”

He insists I look more closely. “It has dots!” Ok, it has dots. “ I bought 10 pads for a dollar each at the close out store.” With all those dots, even thought you can barley see them, maybe 50 cents would have been a better price.

He then pulls out a pen. “You write on the paper.”

“But of course, that is what you normally do.”

“Exactly!” he proclaims.

“Let me show you. I want to send you an email. I write in this area your email address. Then I write in the subject line the subject. Now I can write anything on this piece of paper that I want to. Then check this box. And then this email is sent to you.”

Huh?

“THE PEN is a camera!”

Huh?

“THE PEN knows about the dots on the paper and records what you have written and stores that information in the 1 Meg of on board memory. Since it does not need to store what is printed on the form, it can store up to 40-50 written pages at a time. It then sends the stored data to a router, PC or a cell phone, and then that stored information is directed to the server-hosted application that processes the transmitted data as if you had entered it from a console. The paper form is the monitor and the pen is a combination keyboard and mouse.”

“Server Hosted Application?”

“Yes. Much of this is like your Server Based Computing.”

“The paper has a form printed over the top of the dot pattern and the digital pen can see the pattern of dots through the form but the pen or camera or what ever you want to call it, does not see what we humans can see and that is the printed form over the dots. The pen knows about the dots and where it is on the page. The pen has no need to know what we humans need to see. It is somewhat like your Server Based Computing when you separate the application execution from the presentation and then sends keystrokes, and mouse movements.”

“Is it not also like a data base form in that the form guides us on how to enter information but the database cares only about what information you entered and where it will store what you have entered?”

“I think you starting to grasp the idea.”

We are in sports bar that appears to have been a TV store that skipped the closeout sale before becoming a bar. No need for a theme just fill the wall space up with more and bigger screens. And servers that know how to sell…beer. She takes our order.

“Chris, these dots, are they like a Global Position Satellite system for paper?”

“If that would help your visualize what is going on then think of it in that way. But no. Although the barely visible dots appear to be uniform they are just the opposite. Each collection of dots is unique. The owners of this process have used a real estate metaphor to define where these dots are with respect to that one page and all the other unique pages in the world.”

“Like the county maps down at the courthouse that defines where the property is located, who owns the property, and the tax rate? How much does this stuff cost?”

“Hold the cost thought for later, And yes it much like the county recorders office, except larger.”

“How much larger?”

“Imagine starting out at the county court house and we started laying down a unique page of paper side by side and up and down. No two pages would be the same. We keep doing this until we ran out of discreet pages. How much of an area do think we could cover?”

“Ten square blocks?”

“Try again.”

“One hundred?”

“No.”

“How large?”

“About an area the size of Europe and Asia combined!”

“That’s big.”

The food arrives. I need some time to think about what Chris is trying to show me.

Here is an input device that transmits collected data from a unique form that is not replicated anywhere else in the world. “Chris do the pages in your pad have the same dot pattern for each page?”

“Yes, but remember that this form is the only form that can have this dot pattern.”

This process takes information that a human places on a printed form and transmits only that data that the application needs to start the downstream process. The fact that the page is unique means the pen can send collected data over a network knowing that on the backside an application will know about this page’s information and where and how it is to manage the data. Ok.

Then I start to think, does this process require special paper? Does it require a special printer? What about the ink, the toner, print on color paper? If the dots are black can I use black for my form or does it have to be a color other than black? Do I have to buy the paper from a proprietary source? I ask.

“Chris, does this process require a special printer or other supplies that must be purchased from the vendor?”

“No. If using a laser printer it recommended that you use a 600 or 1200 DPI color laser printer using white paper that has enough opacity for the pen not to misread dots that are printed on the back side of the paper.”

“Can you use a monochrome printer?”

“It is possible but not recommended for most applications. It is best to use carbon based black toner with high pigment content. This allows for high absorption in the IF band 800-950 nm. Use Cyan, Magenta and Yellow toner to create the text and graphics that we humans need to see. The pen sees the black dots and we see the human interface.”

“You now have an pen and paper process that can fill out forms and have that information processed directly into a back end application. Do you have an application in mind?”

“Replace many DRE and all the optical scan voting machines. I named it 'Digital Paper Voting'.”

I am taken back. I would have expected something like filing out insurance claim forms or renew form at the bureau of motor vehicles for my automobile license. He wants to replace many DRE and optical scan voting machines in the US.

“Chris, boards of elections all over the US have spent millions, or is it billions, of dollars updating to these high tech machines. Why would you think that they would change them out for a pen and paper system?”

“The DRE machines were supposed to be the better technology answer to punch cards and pull down lever machines. Then legislation added that there should be a paper audit trail. The original purpose of the DRE was to directly record electronically the vote. The results go directly in to a data cartridge and it is transported directly back to the board. No paper. Many of these boards are going to have to update the DRE equipment to conform to the new legislation requiring a paper audit trail.

Optical scan requires heavy card stock. It is sensitive to humidity and requires special handling. Digital Paper is very low cost compared to the OpScan paper. You can print ballots internally at your own office (read: Ballot on Demand). There is no need for an expensive precinct optical scanner.

More on the plus side of the equation for digital paper, the voter is provided with a natural and familiar interface--ink on a page! The paper ballot is retained for hand counting in re-counts and for other audits. Each voting station contains a pen and cradle; so votes are "recorded" in the 'booth'. You can use your old punch card booths--no need for expensive DREs (except the disabled voters).

Digital paper and pen can be used in early voting states, or in-house absentee voting. And it allows easy integration with vendors who already have ballot creation software/end of night tabulation systems and election night website output.”

I look at the WEB 3.0 Network Operating System manual dated April 1, 1992. “Could this be as significant as the WEB?”

“Maybe. The difference is that WEB was for network guys that wanted a simpler alternative to Novell. Digital paper is for everyone.”

For more information about digital pen and paper, visit www.votingindustry.com. Or you can view a Digital Pen Voting system demonstration on YouTube.






Until the next post,


Steve

Server Based Computing Reaches New High: Flight Level 370.

From Chris Preimesberger at Desktop Linux

May 29

Singapore Airlines is offering access to Sun's StarOffice 8 office productivity suite free of charge to passengers on its new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. StarOffice, Sun's proprietary version of OpenOffice.org, runs on the aircraft's Linux server and is accessed via a seat-back terminal at each passenger's seat, according to Sun.

Passengers run StarOffice from seat-back terminals that connect to a Linux-based server on the plane

Thanks to new USB ports embedded in the armrest of each chair (near the headphone jack), passengers now can use a USB key (aka thumb drive) or other portable drive to access their documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files from software running on the plane's Linux server.

StarOffice 8 supports both Open Document Format and Microsoft Office formats, and can export files to PDF format. Thus, passengers won't need to use their laptops if they are doing work on Word documents, spreadsheets, and presentation-type files -- all they need to do is carry the documents with them on a USB key or other USB storage device, such as an MP3 player.

"With heightened security, access to laptops during flights can sometimes be restricted," said Wong Heng Chew, managing director at Sun's Singapore division. "The availability of StarOffice ... offers Singapore Airlines' customers the opportunity to work on and access their information in an open, secure and freely available fashion independent of any vendor or file formats during their flights."

The first of the new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft was delivered last November and entered commercial services on the Singapore-Paris route in early December 2006, a Sun spokesperson said. Singapore Airlines currently deploys the 777-300ER aircraft to destinations such as Paris, Zurich, Seoul, San Francisco, Milan, Barcelona, and Hong Kong.

According to Sun, StarOffice software is a complete, feature-rich office productivity product that includes powerful word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database, graphics, drawing, photo editing and web publishing applications. Fully compatible with MS Office, it includes a built-in PDF export and supports XML, Flash, and HTML.

-- Chris Preimesberger

Do not need a laptop on the plane. Hotels are now offering thin clients in room. Several thin client vendors offer portable "laptop" like thin clients. A secure thumb drive is about all you need.

Until the next post,

Steve

BTW; the next post will be about a new class of thin clients. Pen and Paper! Thats right. Pen and paper can replace a thin or fat client console.