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G.ho.st’s Web-Based Operating System To Shut Down March 15
Mar 4th
Ghost Inc.
, also known as G.ho.st, is shutting down its personal cloud-based services in two weeks, according to an email the company just sent out to users. Ghost cites “changes in the marketplace” as the reason behind the shutdown, but says that the startup will continue to license or sell its technology to larger companies.
The service launched its beta last summer after years of development, allowing users to store their files in the cloud. Files were accessed through a web-based desktop environment, which also included integrated tools like Zoho for editing documents. Users could also access their files through a mounted virtual drive in Windows or from their mobile phones.
Ghost was previously hosted at G.ho.st, which stood for “Global hosted operating system”. The company later moved to the current domain, Ghost.cc, which has the broader tagline, “Cloud Computing”.
Here’s the email the company just sent out to users:
Dear Ghost User,
We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in the marketplace mean that it is no longer economical for us to host the Ghost service and we will be closing down the service on or around March 15. We will instead be focusing on licensing or selling our technology to larger companies.
We advise you to migrate ALL important folders, files and emails to another secure place before March 15. You might like to consider Google Docs or Microsoft SkyDrive for files and services such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail for email. Some instructions for migrating data are included below.We are really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you and are very grateful for the fantastic support we had from our community.
Note that the message says “on or around” March 15 — hopefully they mean “no earlier than”, but I’d back up my data as soon as possible.
It’s also unclear if Ghost’s unreleased services are being shutdown as well (both “Ghost Enterprise” and “Ghost Business” are marked as Coming soon on the site). I’ve reached out to the company for more details.
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Top 5 OSes to Leverage Cloud Computing
Feb 18th
Nice writeup found at: AppStorm
Due to cloud computing, anyone can perform routine computer tasks anywhere, at any time, without installing applications. All users need a computer with operating system installed, connection to the internet and a compatible web browser; available at just about any coffee shop, library or other public places.
This technology has given birth to a new line of small and cheap computers, called netbooks, which have become extremely popular. They are small in size and have longer battery life due to less computing power, making them ideal cloud computing clients. Similarly, mobile phones are gaining computational power and fast becoming another cloud computing client. In short, netbooks and mobile phones—which will pass the total number of personal computers in near future—are the biggest beneficiary of cloud computing.
Consequently, this emerging and attracting market is taking a hit on tech giants, which are now teaming up to compete. We’ve rounded up the top five operating systems utilizing the available cloud computing infrastructure in the best possible manner.
1. Glide OS
Glide OSGlide OS is a free set of productivity and collaboration applications which can help in organizing your digital life with ease. It provides a safe and secure 30GBs of storage, thus protecting your needs for private online storage. You can create up to six accounts for different users. Common applications like office suite, photo editor, email client, and media player are available.
It is compatible across multiple devices and operating systems; also providing plug-ins for popular web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer to make your experience more convenient. You can sign up for Glide Premium which will upgrade your storage to 250 GBs for $50.00 a year.
2. icloud
icloudicloud is a nice suite of desktop applications and personal storage to make daily computer use more productive and synchronized. It has an intuitive and attractive user interface and offers 50 GBs of free online disk space; which can be accessed easily from Windows Explorer using WebDAV.
The applications suite contains essential applications for productivity (write, calendar, and to-do), media (iPlay, movie, photo, and radio), and internet (IM, browser, mail, and news reader). icloud also incorporates IDE, XML Editor, and documentation tools for applications development. It is supported on prominent operating system and mobile phones.
3. Jolicloud
JolicloudJolicloud is an operating system designed primarily for netbooks. As it is an operating system itself, installed on a target device. It has a nice directory full of applications which can be installed with one click although many free web applications can be used alongside.
The installation process is very simple and jolicloud can also be used in a dual operating system mode. You don’t need to worry about finding recent drivers for Wifi, sound, 3G or other devices. It is actually a variant of Ubuntu Linux optimized for netbooks. It is very suitable for the current needs of online social communities.
Although Jolicloud isn’t located in the cloud, it leverages the cloud in many ways to create a more powerful operating system.
4. eyeos
eyeoseyeos is an open source solution to leverage the cloud. The team provides specific solution tailored for the environment in which eyeos is used. For personal use, they have setup a public server for eyeos. Like other web based platforms, it can be used on different operating systems and platforms.
eyeos is equipped with the necessary applications the average user will need. The user can synchronize documents, spread sheets, media and other type of files. For entertainment, there are also some games available such as chess and tetravex. There is also an active community which has developed many of the applications for the eyeos platform.
5. Ghost
GhostGhost aims to provide a cloud solution for basic computing and storage. Ghost provides 1GB online disk space, for personal use. The user has complete control over their privacy and files can be shared with friends or kept in total secrecy. Instead of developing their own solution for office suite, they ask you to take advantage of established and popular Zoho’s online office tools.
The online cloud storage can be integrated into Windows Explorer, which will turn it into a virtual hard drive on your system; in result, files between the computer and cloud can be shared effortlessly with drag and drop ease.
Source: AppStorm
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Amazon S3 with CloudBerry Explorer freeware – Cloud Tools
Feb 2nd
Cloud Tool Of The Day
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IntroductionCloudBerry Explorer is a freeware Windows Client for Amazon S3 and CloudFront services. CloudBerry Explorer makes managing files in Amazon S3 storage EASY. By providing an FTP client like user interface to Amazon S3 accounts, files, and buckets, CloudBerry lets you manage your files on cloud just as you would on your own local computer. And best of all it is absolutely free! |
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is a web service that allows reliable and secure storage of your data in the multiple data centers with unlimited capacity and scalability. It allows you to easily scale up your data storage to meet growing needs of your business. What’s more you pay only for what you actually use and you don’t have to provision servers to match anticipate growth far in advance of this growth start hitting you. You don’t have to invest in the hardware infrastructure and you don’t have to pay for ongoing operations of those servers. You just pay low fee for data stored on Amazon servers.
However Amazon S3 is primarily designed for software engineers who would integrate the S3 with their web platform using so called S3 API which is based on REST and SOAP. This makes it difficult for less sophisticated users to employ Amazon S3 who would otherwise benefit from the scalable web storage as well. But at the same time it opens an opportunity to 3rd party vendors such CloudBerry lab and many others to unleash the power of Amazon S3 for consumers.
With CloudBerry Explorer you can
- Allow end users to accomplish simple tasks without special technical knowledge
- Automate time-consuming tasks to improve productivity
- With CloudBerry Explorer, Amazon S3 becomes an extension to your local storage. You are no longer limited to the classic data storage on your local drive(s). With CloudBerry Explorer, you can move files to Amazon S3 just as easily as managing them on your local drive(s).
- CloudBerry Explorer allows you to move large files such as photos, videos, and music to Amazon S3 and free up your local storage.
- The files on your Amazon S3 can be shared with anyone who has access to the internet. For security purposes, the S3 accounts can be password protected and access can be restricted
Now let’s look at some of the CloudBerry Explorer functional capabilities
Browse S3 Buckets
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to browse contents of your S3 bucket and create new buckets and folders and rename files. It works just like Windows Explorer or any other file system browser.
Copy Files in background
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to copy files in the background, you can turn to other tasks while copy process is running. You can also pause/ resume copy process and review copy queue for errors. You can also hide CloudBerry Explorer to system tray to free up some space on your task bar while copy process is running. It will tell you when the process is over.
Register Multiple S3 Accounts
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to register as many Amazon S3 accounts as you like
Setup access control lists (ACL)
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to setup access control lists (ACL) with ACL editor, you can grant access rights to other Amazon S3 users or to any internet users. ACL editor reminds you the one that you use to manage file permissions on Windows.
Besides, you can propagate bucket ACL to all files in that bucket- something that Amazon S3 doesn’t provide out of the box.
Efficiently copy files between S3 accounts
CloudBerry explorer provides for fast and efficient way to copy objects between two Amazon S3 accounts, it leverages Amazon S3 capabilities to run this process on Amazon servers without the need to download files to your local computer.
Generate Web URL
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to generate URL for single or multiple objects. You can also generate time limited URLs that will expire at a predefined time. You can also specify CNAMEs to make your URLs look nicer and use http://chilp.it/ URL shortening service and BiTorrent URLs.
Custom HTTP headers
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to setup custom http headers such as Cache-Control and Expires that allow you to cut your Amazon S3 transfer costs. For more information how to cut costs check out here.
Configure CloudFront Distribution
CloudFront is another Amazon service that works in conjunction with S3 and allows for efficient content distribution. The content is published to data centers in multiple geographical zones and the user download content from the server that requires fewer network hops. All this happens transparently to the end user and the publisher pay a small per usage base fee.
CloudBerry Explorer allows you to configure Amazon CloudFront service in a matter of minutes. Just select a bucket and click a button on the toolbar.
PowerShell Command Line Interface
Finally, CloudBerry Explorer ships with a set of PowerShell cmdlets which you can use to script bulk or frequent operations. Most of the features available thru the user interface are also available though a PowerShell command line interface. You can combine CloudBerry Explorer commands with regular PowerShell commands. PowerShell is designed to operate with other objects, so you’re not limited to command syntax. You can write complex scripts with loops and conditions and schedule routing tasks such as data backup or cleanup.
Conclusion
One final note is that CloudBerry Lab tries to stay on top of what works best for Amazon S3 users and delivers new version almost every month. It has been 6(!) commercial releases since CloudBerry Explorer was first released in November, 2008.
Overall CloudBerry Explorer is a solid Amazon S3 client that can help developers, web designers and other users who want to exploit Amazon S3 and CloudFront services. If you work with Amazon S3 on Windows or considering using Amazon S3 it is a good reason to start now and download CloudBerry Explorer from CloudBerry Lab website at http://cloudberrylab.com/
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Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer (S3Fox) 0.4.9 – Cloud Tools
Jan 29th
S3Fox Organizer helps you organize/manage/store your files on Amazon S3. It is easy to install and use as it is integrated into the browser.
The S3Fox Organizer(S3Fox), offers the ability to upload or download files to and from Amazon S3. The interface, which opens in a Firefox browser tab, looks much like that of FTP clients with a dual-pane layout. It displays files on your PC on the left, files on Amazon S3 on the right, and status or information in a panel on the bottom.
Main Features:
- A Front-end tool for Amazon S3 with a nifty GUI Interface.
- Upload/Download multiple files using a user friendly interface.
- Manage S3 Cloud Front Distributions
- Modifying Access Control Policies
- Synchronize Folders with local system and S3
- Drag-n-Drop Files
- Ability to create/edit and use multiple S3 accounts.
- Create time limited urls
- Works on Windows, Linux and Mac (whereever firefox works)
Right-click on the files/bucket to get the distribution list.
Right-click on a bucket/file and choose “Edit ACL” to set permissions.
Click on the “Synchronize Folders” on the top to add local and remote directories information.
Right-click on a file and click “Get Pre-signed Urls”.
You can view the current tasks in separate panel and all the activity in the Log View.
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Top 11 Cloud Computing Vendor Players to Watch
Mar 21st
CIO — Cloud computing looks to be a “classic disruptive technology,” says Forrester Research in an interesting new report published yesterday. For enterprise IT shops, cloud computing still poses some real risks, including an almost complete lack of service-level agreements and customer references, plus some genuine security and compliance concerns, according to Forrester. But even so, IT shops are tapping into cloud services for targeted projects: “There’s a high likelihood that developers inside your company are experimenting with it right now,” writes senior analyst James Staten in the report,”Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise?“
That analysis meshes with what we recently reported hearing from CIOs in “Cloud Computing: Tales From the Front.” The cloud isn’t new per se; enterprise IT has had access to the Internet and software-as-a-service for years. But now, some vendors are giving enterprises the chance to run not only hosted apps but also custom-developed apps in the cloud—with great flexibility to scale computing power on short notice, and to pay only for what computing power is used. Enterprise IT sees the promise and is experimenting, cautiously.
Which cloud computing vendors should be on your radar screen now? In its report, Forrester cites 11:
- Akamai
- Amazon
- Areti Internet
- Enki
- Fortress ITX
- Joyent
- Layered Technologies
- Rackspace
- Salesforce.com
- Terremark
- XCalibre
