The National Institute of Standards and Technology cites the following as the benefits of Cloud Computing:

• eliminates upfront capital expenditures and dramatically reduces the administrative burden on IT resources,
• allows organizations to add and subtract capacity as their needs change and to pay only for what they use,
• provides reliable services, large storage and computing capacity, and 24/7 service,
• enables agency IT resources to focus on business-critical applications,
• means organizations are no longer faced with choosing between obsolete equipment and software and high upgrade costs; they are always using current technology.

Sure, no one can argue with any of these, however what we have come to see firsthand at Caspio again and again is that the simplicity and the low cost of building apps in the cloud fosters creativity and innovation the likes of which has never existed.

No longer big budgets or advanced technical skills are a requirement to bring new novel ideas to the market. No longer must business professionals get complete buy-in of corporate IT departments to introduce a new efficiency or a new automation to the enterprise. That's the true benefit of the Cloud Computing that can propel business and government forward.

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During the last days of 2009 I made an effort to teach my two oldest daughters who are 12 and 10, the value of goal setting. To make it exciting, I bought each of them their own particularly nice note book exclusively dedicated to writing their goals in.

Working with them to set goals for themselves turned out to be an easier task than I had prepared myself for. We worked together to set goals in each of the seven major areas of life: Health, Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional, and Spiritual. The kids had a lot of great ideas, albeit most of it was about all the places they wanted to visit, and once they got the hang of setting SMART goals, they were on their way to come up with their goals.

Of course the real work just began. They must develop the habit of breaking their big goals into smaller actionable tasks, measuring their results and refining their process. So far, 3 days into the New Year, things are going well. They have already started some of their new activities.

The truth is that how we spend our time determines what we get out of our life. There is an interesting interactive chart on New York Times’ website that shows how people tend to spend their time.

Source: New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html

The question for all of us is, where does our time go? We better have our own written goals and make sure a good amount of our times goes toward small actions that get us closer to them.

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If you are in the web business you may have considered this question before. It can have a significant impact on your business. Those who get ahead of the curve can gain handsomely from it. Look at Tim O'Reilly and his Web 2.0 ideas.

On one hand more and more non-pc devices are used to browse the web. Then you have a fast growth in video on the web and phenomena such as Twitter.

Love to hear what you think.

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Last week, Caspio launched its official Company Blog. Besides covering industry topics and company news, the new blog will provide tips and tricks on database application creation, feature showcases, and customer successes. Add it to your RSS and stay in the loop!

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Last week, the Obama administration presented its plans to utilize cloud computing to reduce federal IT costs and accelerate innovation. The shift to hosted information management will allow the federal government to free up some of the $75 billion it currently spends on IT, $19 billion of which is taxpayer dollars.

The U.S. Postal Service is already ahead of the curve, recently signing an enterprise-level agreement with Caspio. USPS manages 34,000 retail locations and delivers to every address in the nation – but unlike other agencies, it doesn’t rely on tax dollars to pay for operating expenses. Caspio Bridge will undoubtedly help USPS reduce costs and IT backlogs, while improving information processing time.

Caspio currently serves many government offices at all levels, and the maturity of the platform lends itself well to the strict security and service-level requirements in this sector. Caspio Bridge offers control for all intricate procedures involving secure data storage, organization and retrieval. The platform itself employs multiple layers of security including top-of-the-line firewalls, data encryption, and hosting at a leading SAS-70 certified datacenter. Learn more about our platform security and reliability.

It’s exciting to see a positive shift towards cloud computing at the federal level. Caspio has seen great success with our Fortune-500, SMB, media and education customers, and we look forward to empowering more government organizations as they move to the cloud. Caspio invites government agencies to request a demo today.

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Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, has partnered with Caspio. They own a total of 934 publications, including news giant USA Today, and 23 TV stations which reach 20 million households. According to Nielson, Gannett's total U.S. web audience is over 27.1 million unique visitors. Read the announcement.

We have been working individually with over 50 of Gannett's newspaper and TV sites since 2006, empowering them to roll out apps that increase traffic to their sites. It's exciting to see them use Caspio to find new and innovative ways to generate community interaction at a local level.

Michael Jesse at IndyStar.com, one of Gannett's largest newspaper websites, says: "You guys have the product we need right now, and you also have a great team of people behind it."

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Data syndication is publishing the same data on multiple websites. Data that is locked up in a spreadsheet or a database on your computer is not benefiting anyone but at best the local user. It becomes beneficial when it's published on a website for a bigger audience, but even greater value can be achieved when it's syndicated across many websites. Here is why and how:

1. Accessibility
By syndicating your data it becomes accessible to a large audience that goes far beyond the reach of your own website. Your data gains the potential to reach an audience not otherwise possible.

2. Widgetize
Widgetizing your data makes it possible for other websites owners to easily drop it on their own site. Rather than copying your database, they simply get a few lines of code that embeds an app that displays the data from your database. When the data is changed, it becomes instantly available on all syndications.

3. Monetize
Depending on the nature of your data, you might be able to monetize it. Typically a limited version of the data is syndicated across many websites with a link to the main site where people can pay and access the complete data.

4. Build brand
With or without monetization, you stand to benefit from branding the data with your name and logo. Every search result and every record can carry your name.

5. Generate traffic
Likewise, each record and search page can have a link back to your website. It's one of the best ways to generate traffic for your website at a very low cost.

6. Improve your data through crowdsourcing
Depending on the nature of your data, you have the option of allowing others, from any of the syndications to add comments or even update the data. It's the ultimate way adding value to your data at no cost.

There are many examples where Caspio Bridge is used for data syndication. US Census and FBI crime data are two examples of government data that is distributed through Caspio. RealtyTrac©, the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties syndicates its data to hundreds of our media customers through Caspio widgets. Our customers have also used the platform to distribute their own data including bank rate information, business directories and real estate listings.

Contact the friendly staff at Caspio to see how easily you can give your data maximum exposure.

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Over the years since we first started Caspio in 2000, we've grown accustomed to hearing disbelief from new users when they experience how easily they can create their own web apps without coding or software. And even as cloud computing gains momentum and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) becomes more mainstream, it's remarkable to still frequently hear so many common misunderstandings from new users and so-called "experts" alike. I'll try to tackle some of them here, primarily from Caspio's perspective.

Misconception #1: Only simple apps are possible without coding

Depends how you define simple. You can certainly create a massively scalable, multi-faceted, multi-user, highly-interactive app on Caspio and integrate it with several other online apps and internal systems and load it with millions of records. On the other hand, games and other intensely graphical apps are not as well-suited on Caspio's more structured database-centric app platform.

Misconception #2: Cloud apps are a temporary Band-Aid

The idea being that to build a "real" app for the long haul, you should go back to traditional coding. Not so! While it's true that application development platforms (including Caspio's) have their own unique strengths and approach to solving business problems, by no means are Caspio-powered apps a temporary stop-gap. We have countless customers who have built mission-critical enterprise applications since 2001, when our platform first launched, and continue to expand their usage today.

Misconception #3: Hosted applications pose security and reliability risks

Security and reliability are a big deal as they should be. But if you do proper due diligence in selecting your platform,  you could be assured that the security and reliability achieved through your cloud partner is typically above and beyond what's available in most companies. Caspio is known in the industry for its leadership in enterprise-grade security and reliability measures. Read about our specific measures and policies here.

Misconception #4: Long-term apps are most cost effective when built in-house

What many don't realize is that once you roll out an app, someone has to continuously host it, monitor its uptime, update its security, back up its data, apply upgrades, and deal with feature requests whenever necessary. When you leverage a hosted platform like Caspio's, you automatically benefit from all the built-in maintenance, upgrades, support and economy of scale … without even having to think about it. Once you put these expenses into your ROI analysis you see that unless you are willing to make sacrifices in post-development operational quality, running your app on your own is not more cost effective than working with a well chosen cloud partner.

Misconception #5: Non-developers can't build powerful apps

After many many years studying computer science at school, the mere thought that a web-based tool could make my skills redundant is disheartening to say the least. But cloud platforms are not meant to be a drag-and-drop replacement to ingenuity … they are accelerators and innovators.

Platform-as-a-service offerings are much like point-and-shoot cameras. They are increasingly smart in that they automatically find your subject, zoom in on them, adjust the shutter speed and so on, so all you have to do is to push the button. The result is a fairly nice photograph. Now is it as good as one taken by a professional photographer? Certainly not. But most pictures don't require professional photography skills to turn out delightfully beautiful. Furthermore, just by spending an hour learning your camera's user manual to get down the basic features of lighting, framing and movement, you can improve your picture quality dramatically.
In the world of application creation, Caspio is that point-and-shoot camera. The truth is that Caspio doesn't make anyone a programmer. However, it does provide an easy way to implement your ideas. The trick is in planning and architecting your app. For that, Caspio offers free project consultations, customer training and technical support. So when you combine an easy-to-use tool with an eager-to-help support team to back you up, you bet that you can build powerful apps without knowing how to write programs.

Point-and-click app building is here and it's only getting better. We have been focused on this for the past nine years and have seen thousands of fantastic app ideas get implemented without a single line of code. There used to be a time that only professional typesetters could create nice looking publications. Nowadays, my elementary school child uses Word to create great looking documents. Similarly, you now can create web forms and apps fast and without programming. If you haven't tried it yet, you should!

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The Herald & Review in Decatur, Ill., wanted to add an interactive component to the already successful print coupon campaign being used by the newspaper. The idea was to offer something extra to advertisers and to boost page views on the Herald-Review.com Web site. So it used Caspio's tools to create an online coupon page that delivered on both counts. Despite a scarcity of the sophisticated coding skills needed to create a database, the staff experienced easy going using Caspio Bridge. It let them do the job themselves to create an attractive and effective online application. All that work on their part is good news for you because the Herald-Review is willing to share the finished web app for free with other Caspio clients [Request the App]. That means no development time on your part, yet you can reap all the rewards by using an application that's already been real world tested - now that's a sure recipe for success. Or, if you prefer, you can easily create your own web app with Caspio's leading do-it-yourself database platform. Caspio makes it easy for anyone by furnishing the right tools to do the job and plenty of real time support for the times you need some quick assistance.

Source: http://herald-review.com/coupons/

QUICKBITS: Bridget Sibthorp-Moecker, Webmaster, The Herald-Review

"We have a printed coupon piece we do four times a year. We call it 'Top Ads.' We wanted something to go with it that was interactive and that included the 'e-mail to a friend' functionality. Caspio provided the right tools to get the job done quickly and economically.

"We had one main goal with the coupon page - and that was page views. We started right off with 3,000 page views a month. That's good for something we are just starting out. And as the awareness grows, so will the response.

"I really like using Caspio. And when I needed help in the beginning, I found that Caspio's online chat feature was a very quick way to get answers to my questions. And, I'll tell you; the people at Caspio are knowledgeable. We've been able to solve every problem we ran into using the chat function."

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Coghead customers must have been shocked when they learned yesterday that their platform-as-service provider is shutting down. Unfortunately this is how most venture capitals work. It's all about their exit strategy. Nothing else matters much. I learned it first hand at my first startup Autoweb.

Self-funded companies like Caspio are driven by different objectives and hold other values. We have been building Caspio one small step at a time for nine years with our own money and hard work. For us, the customer is first, then employees and finally the shareholders. This is how we weathered through the dot com crash years ago while others were forced to shut down.

Today we are stronger than ever before. Our product is mature, our platform is highly-scalable, and our business is flourishing. We are proud of our large base of customers that range from one-person operations to Forune-500 companies, government agencies, universities, non-profits, and over 75% of the largest American newspaper websites.

Upon learning about the shutdown of Coghead, we gathered our team and quickly put together a transition plan for Coghead customers. It's outlined here.

Caspio also has a fantastic reseller and affiliate program and I invite you to check them out on our website or by calling our partner desk at 650-691-0900 x703.

We are actively hiring! Look up our Bay Area positions on our site or on Craig's List. Competitor employees are welcome to apply.

Finally, a heart-to-heart word. If Coghead's investors have left you in the cold, make sure you don't fall into the hands of another venture-funded company. The days when VC-funding was a positive force are gone. Avoid all the risks of a VC startup and find yourself a vendor with both track record and reliability. We hope we can show you we deserve your trust. Call us up … we're ready to help.

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