The Future of Mobile Media
Posted by Maarten Visser in Mobile Tools on 16 December 2009
Mobile Media, Cloud Computing and the Return of the Global Village
Posted by Maarten Visser in Presence and Instant Messeging on 22 February 2009
Ik heb vandaag de focus van deze blog aangepast naar “Mobile Media, Cloud Computing and the Return of the Global Village”
Op mijn blog GridThinking zal ik voornamelijk in het Engels schrijven over de ontwikkelingen en toepassingen van Grid en Cloud Computing en het Semantische Web. Op deze blog wil ik me voornamelijk gaan richten op Web Operating Systems, zoals het Microsoft Azure Service Platfom en SaaS applicatieplatformen zoals Microsoft Online, Live Workspace en SalesForce.com.
Hiernaast blijft mijn fascinatie bestaan voor ‘Mobile Media” en zal ik hier blijven rapporteren van mijn experimenten op dit vlak. De afgelopen 6 maanden heeft dit aandachtsgebied een grote vlucht genomen. Denk hierbij aan het eenvoudig publiceren van Microblogs (twitter), foto’s en filmpjes van je mobiel naar het internet. Verder begint ‘mobile social networking’ sterk in opkomst te komen , waarbij het principe van ‘Location aware software’ ervoor zorgt dat aanwezigheid (IM/Presence) wordt aangevuld met je (GPS/GSM) locatie.
Ik ben momenteel aan het experimenteren met een applicatie op mijn Nokia N81, waarbij ik via de applicatie Belysio eenvoudig status updates kan intypen, welke worden aangevuld met een positiebepaling via het GSM netwerk. Deze statusupdates en globale positie (GSM positionering heeft een afwijking tussen de 400 en 800 meter) worden vervolgens doorgegeven naar onder andere Twitter, Windows Live, Gmail, FriendFeed, Facebook, Hyves, Plaxo, LinkedIn en mijn website.
De reacties hierop zijn interessant. Mensen met weinig ervaring rond IM/Presence en (Micro) Blogging hebben vaak nog moeite met zien van de mogelijkheden van deze manier van communicatie. Zoals bekent heeft ‘ieder voordeel ook zijn nadeel’, mijn focus ligt op het vinden van de grootste (productiviteits) voordelen. Mijn doel is om de komende tijd verder te experimenteren en op deze blog hier af en toe verslag van uit te brengen..
Internet Application Platforms
Posted by Maarten Visser in Cloud Application Platforms on 27 October 2008
The Reason.. My Passion for "Cloud Based Application Platforms’ and because Microsoft anounced Windows AZURE today….
Today my first post on this blog will be in Dutch.
Dit platform is opgezet vanuit de Microsoft filosofie van “Software and Services”.
Enerzijds zet Microsoft in (zoals het al ruim 30 jaar doet) op PC/Server platformen die binnen die draaien op hardware zoals we dat nu gewend zijn (Windows op de desktop en servers in je eigen datacenter). Deze nieuw geïntroduceerde set van tools en services brengen een nieuwe mogelijkheid: Services en Applicaties via het internet… (het enige dat je nodig hebt is een web browser)
De verwachting is dat de komende jaren steeds zeer IT Services geleverd kunnen gaan worden via het internet. Vanaf april gaat Microsoft bijvoorbeeld “SharePoint Online”, “Exchange Online” en “CRM Online” aanbieden in Nederland. Dit zijn ‘hosted services’ vanuit Microsoft..
Met AZURE zet microsoft een hosted platform neer voor Applicatie ontwikkelaars, onder andere opgebouwd SQL Services, BizTalk Services en het nu nieuwe ‘.Net Services”. Het gebruik van het platform kan middels modellering (OSLO) methoden worden geconfigureerd en het gehele platform heeft maar 1 doel: extreem schaalbaar en stabiel zijn…
We zullen de komende jaren een hele hoop ontwikkelingen gaan zijn op basis van dit platform.
Ik zal hier binnenkort (nadat ik de komende dagen meer sessies van PDC 2008 heb bekeken) dieper ingaan op deze coole technologie..
Dit is de (niet marketing georienteerde uitleg van AZURE):
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Manuvir-Das-Introducing-Windows-Azure/
PDC 2008 Pressroom
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/pdc
Meer informatie is vanaf vandaag hier te vinden:
http://www.microsoft.com/azure
http://www.techmeme.com/081027/p55#a081027p55 (news op blogs)
Meer info rond PDC 2008
http://www.microsoftpdc.com (inclusief Live Steams vanuit LA)
http://technorati.com/search/pdc08 (blogs, photo’s en meer)
MSN SPACE UPDATES
Posted by Maarten Visser in MSN Spaces on 29 January 2006
Some great update on MSN Space since yesterday (thanks to bink.nu for the summary)
- No more /members
- New contact search
- Photo Comments
- Option to allow comments on Blogs and Photos
- Learn panel
- Choose where the publish date of your blog entries will appear (footer or header)
- Customize who can view your Space by contact
- 3 email publishing addresses rather than just 1
- Communication preferences so you can control who can send you invitations and requests for access to your space and your profile
- Categorized themes
- New Xbox Live GameCard and Recent Games modules
- Revamped profile with Live Contacts
- Rich text comments
Updates:
More new features:
- MSN Spaces Mobile w/ search offical at http://mobile.spaces.msn.com/
- Advertising option
- Book list with Amazon.com
- You can upload 500 photos per month now with out limits
- Better URLS… add /blog or /photos to the address to get to that part of their space
More information at Mike’s Space , The Space Craft , and http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2006/0126-msnspaceintegration.htm
One Billion Internet Users!
Posted by Maarten Visser in Visions on 20 December 2005
Yesterday Jakob Nielsen (a known internet usability expert) wrote that in 2005 the milestone of 1 billion internet users has been passed. On his blog he writes:
The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs.
According to Morgan Stanley estimates, 36% of Internet users are now in Asia and 24% are in Europe. Only 23% of users are in North America, where it all started in 1969 when two computers — one in Los Angeles, the other in Palo Alto — were networked together.
It took 36 years for the Internet to get its first billion users. The second billion will probably be added by 2015; most of these new users will be in Asia. The third billion will be harder, and might not be reached until 2040.
Ok, he guesses that the 2 billion border will be crossed in 2015. Well when I look at the fast adoption of the internet in Asia, i guess 2012 could be possible. And if the plans for the 100 dollar PC’s wil be realised, then I predict that 2,5 billion can be online in 2020.
The other 3,5 billion will be hard to reach under current conditions. For this we need a lot more investments in the poor countries. And these countries need food and a basic economy, before the will start thinking about global communications.
But, the internet can be of great value to developing countries. Recently I joined an organisation called Health Connections International. This organisation has the goal to build a portal to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and expertise between non-English speaking health professionals and English speaking HIV/AIDS, TB and demand and harm reduction specialists across the globe.
Initiatives like this will help the people in countries to fight the problems in there region and will result in more global exchange of knowledge. The success of sharing knowledge is in the numbers. A knowledge base used by two people is not really valuable. A knowledge base accessible to 2,5 billion users is extremely powerful. On my other blog I’m writing about technologies to build these solutions (internet application that can support a billion users). For this we need a some very good de centralized internet software components and good scaling standards…
I truly believe that in the near future (in the next 10 years) the 2 billion users will have a better live because of the services that can be provided over the internet…
Blogging
Posted by Maarten Visser in Hobby on 20 December 2005
For some reason I can easily forget about blogging. It’s doesn’t play a role in my standard week. When I stop working and come home I relax for an half hour and I eat something. Most of the time I watch the 8 O’clock news and then I leave to my ‘working room’. When I’m behind my computer I always have a list of things that had to be done yesterday. So I do these for an hour. Now its 21:30 and I will check some RSS feeds and do some reading. This can take a long time, depending on the things that are published on the net. Some months ago I easily spend 2 hours a day reading feeds, now I try to stop after 30 minutes.. 
So, it’s 22:00.. now it could:
A) Spend some time with my girlfriend
B) Relax and watch a movie
C) Do some more work
D) Go to bed early, to get some sleep that I really need
E) Call a friend / Family
F) Work on one of my hobby projects
G) Play a game of Battlefield 2
H) Sit back and think about the future
I) ….
J) Do some Internet browsing
K) Read my E-mail
L) Make some hot chocolate and have a good conversation with the mirror
M) Do some muscle training
N) Pick one of the 20 books I still want to read
O) Go outside and have a walk
P) Go out and have a drink with a frend
Q) Organize a party
R) Read some whitepapers that I printed
S) Start a nice topic on a online Forum
T) Clean up my hard drives and make some backups
U) Do some chatting on MSN
V) Work on my Company’s Knowledgebase and Portal
W) Start up a Virtual PC and do some beta testing
X) Start up OneNote and write down some new business ideas
Y) Visit the neighbours
Z) Prepare some work for tomorrow
Hmm, I wrote this list in 2 minutes and I can think of a lot of other thing that I could do…
This is probably why it don’t Blog every day…
When I would take more breaks during the day and blog ten…there is a change. But for me it’s pretty hard to take a break. I start something, and I dig myself in, until it’s finished…
So. Can you expect me to do more blogging?
I don’t know, the future will tell…
Google Video Blog
Posted by Maarten Visser in Google on 1 November 2005
