I use Firefox for my personal sites and web applications.
I use Chrome for my work sites and web applications.
I use IE 8 for watching movies, TV and Media.

I generally have work and personal in separate browsers so I can logged into both Google accounts at the same time.

Then I use IE for media just because if it freezes up and crashes it leaves my work and personal browsers alone.

Funny realization.

They have some great information to improve your CSS skils.  I found some greate CSS text boxes, CSS memo boxes, and CSS buttons.

There is a lot more.  Recommend checking it out.  Great quick CSS reference

I came across Plogger, a great open-source web photo gallery.

It is an excellent example of quality FREE / Open Source software that has a single purpose and lives up to it.

I just quickly downloaded and installed it at a subdomain.  I was able to login and manage it quickly, simlilar to Wordpress.

I would like to play with some cloud enhancements to it:

• Allow easy install on an Amazon EC2 instance as a SaaS tool.
• Image storage on Amazon S3
• Flickr Integration
• Picasa Integration
• Flash Image Upload

Just some thoughts as I am playing with it.  More to come as I learn more about it.

Problem is I can’t get it in any digestable format.  XML?  CSV?  Excel?  JSON?

Someday all city, state and federal governments will have to publish all of their data via API.

Luckily in Adobe PDF Reader I can just highlight the tabular data, right click and and export to spreadsheet.

It is an interesting look at what happened (or didn’t) in Copenhagen and more specifically at the Activism 2.0  techniques of TckTckTck’s Fresh Air Center.

I love the technology side of just about anything and social activism + technology = good shit.  A couple topics that come to mind are:

Cloud Computing – The usage of cloud computing to support activist networks.  These networks can be permanent or temporary and in both cases scale based upon short or long term demand.  A couple tools I can see coming into play based upon my event cloud computing experience:

Amazon EC2 – To boost processing and server capacity to support a wide range of services from data, web to mail and instant messaging.  Take advantage of various server sizes of server, load balancing, security groups, machine images and other areas of Amazon EC2.
Amazon Cloudfront – Use to deliver content such as HTML, PDF, Pics and Streaming Video Content.   This can be used to deliver content in the field or produced content to other news sources.
Amazon S3 – Use to store large amounts of data gathered during operations.

Mobile Networks – As we enter this “real-time” world of news and reporting our mobile networks are becoming more and more vital.  Current mobile networks are already taxed and often don’t hold up up at events or gatherings of any type.   For events and gatherings it makes sense to utilize existing DSL and T1 and extend using 802.16 or wireless Metropolitan Area Networking (MAN).    Then provide localized 802.11 wireless local area networks for people to connect with laptops, webbooks, and handhelds (IPhone and Android).

Just some random thoughts about how to use cloud computing and mobile technology to support activism events.  Will have to transfer much of the knowledge from conferences and events, and apply to support activism events.  I just added this area to my research and blogging topics around cloud computing.

Very cool.

backupify is pretty easy to setup.  It acts like most social aggregators like Friendfeed, however it then backs up your data rather than syndicating it or providing a single feed.

I authorized backupify to access the following accounts:

• Flickr
• Twitter
• Delicious
• Google Docs
• Worpress
• Facebook

It offered a few other service back ups.  However they were not services I was either using or concerned about.

Then I could choose either Weekly or Daily backup settings.   As well as email when backups run.

Pretty cool tool.  It has an archives, history and profile management tools as well.  I’ll post again in a few days and we’ll take a look at what data is available to us.

It is a pretty simple little tool.  I can see if becoming pretty valuable for companies that depend on cloud services.

Google Feed Server also provides the Feed Server Client Tool (FSCT), which lets developers perform create, receive, update, and delete (CRUD) operations on a Feed Server feed.

URL: http://code.google.com/p/google-feedserver/

Companies should be establishing, disseminating, and evaluating hash tags for their company.  Seems like at a basic level a company should establish and regularly use # hash tags for their company.  #KinLane

Then  they should then establish # hash tags for prominent areas of their companies like brands, products and services.  #KinLaneCloud  #KinLaneEvent

A company should create and maintain a master list of official # hash tags that can be used internally and officially recognized for public use as well.

Regular evaluation of # hash tags at Twitter, Facebook and other top social sites and event the web and blogosphere at large.

I am still working Google Voice into my overall platform.  It isn’t quite there.

Today I was thinking about some good uses for it beyond receiving calls.  I was mourning the deactivation of Google Notebook and thinking that Google Voice would make a good replacement for my note taking.  Make it more verbal.  I would like to see Google Voice to be integrated through my Google Office.  When editing a document I could leave audio notes.   When creating or editing a calendar event I could leave audio notes.  These notes would show up in my Google Voice account and I could organize or maybe they would automatically organize by Google Application?

I have a Google Voice widget on my web site so people could call me.  Seems like Google could release a simple widget I could use and call myself.  Then I could leave messages, notes, and general dictation.   These audio notes would then be transcribed and available as part of my overall communication stream.

Just some random thoughts of how I see Google Voice growing and evolving as part of my core platform.

Sure enough I’m number 5 for Enterprise 2.0.  I even beat out the Andrew McAfee’s Blog, and he is the godfather of Enterprise 2.0.

I don’t consider myself an expert in Enterprise 2.0, but I think many of the topics I research and discuss are extremely relevant to enterprise.  And since I do manage event technology for SAP and Google, that I am going to come up relevant.

Not sure how long it will last, but its very cool.

The Nomadesk dashboard is the intuitive interface for controlling the functions associated with all of your fileservers. The main dashboard menu allows you to synchronize all your fileservers at once, add and remove accounts, create new fileservers and set your options/preferences.

The fileserver menu gives you full control over each of your fileservers. With the click of a mouse you can synchronize, connect and disconnect, invite guests to join, and control access. The Nomadesk dashboard was design to be familiar and easy to use.

I will be test driving more and seeing if it is worthy to recommend to all my clients.

Planning, preparation and then ultimately presenting a session or keynote at a conference is hard enough.  With all the new social tools being used by conference attendees in real-time at sessions, a presenter can hardly ignore this, and should be integrating into their planning and operations.

Conference planners should provide tools to assist speakers and presenters to help them be as successful as possible, however as a presenter you can’t depend on this.  You should consider building into your operations a new assistant position.

I am predicting we will see a growth in need for “back channel” assistance for speakers and presenters.  This is someone who will help you manage the real-time social footprint of your presentation.  Assist you in managing:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Depending on your target audience, much of your audience may be actively on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and talking about presentation or session, either to share with their audience, take notes, ask questions, or providing feedback.

Speakers and presenters should not only monitor and interact with this, they should be owning, directing and engaging this “back channel” and use it to their benefit.

As I am continuing research in this area I will provide more information.

I can launch new server roles to meet business goals I have from scaling web servers all the way to launching temporary infrastructure to support large email blasts.  It definitely introduces some new problems such as security, privacy, backups, etc.  All the usual cloud computing concerns.

Many of the concerns are valid, but can be dealt with with properly planning and maintenance (which should be done in or out of cloud).   No matter how much evidence I have to backup my claims I still get the flack from naysayers who  just haven’t taken the time to really understand the cloud.

Just like many of the people who jump on the cloud because its trendy, the other side opposes the cloud for the exact same reasons.

My conviction was starting to wear thin during this 3 week saga with Trend Micro.  Everyone faulted the cloud.  Even my boss came to me and said tell Amazon if they can’t fix we are moving off the cloud.  TrendMicro, SAP IT in Germany, and many people on the message boards said just use a “real” infrastructure to send your emails.  Get off the cloud.

Amazons decision to give us v reverse DNS on our eIP addresses has restored my conviction and faith in my decision to use the cloud for my IT infrastructure.   I don’t think the cloud is for everyone.  I don’t just blindly evangelize the cloud for every situation.  However for me it works.  It meets my needs and helps us deliver the quality of service our clients are looking for.

Thanks Amazon.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

This was not the response I had expected.  I thought either Amazon would negotiate a deal with Trend Micro MAPS to de-list their IP blocks and allow email to be sent or Trend Micro MAPS would back down from the pressure of everyone harassing them.

I really didn’t think Amazon would start designating reverse DNS for their IP addresses.  Even though this is the response that makes the most sense.  I just thought they were too large to do this.

After some discussion and convincing of them that we were deserving of reverse DNS on 10 IP addresses I got it!   I got an email telling me it was done.  I did a reverse DNS lookup on all my reserved IP addresses and they reflected my core network domain.

I immediately approached Trend Micro MAPS and asked them one more time to de-list my IP addresses.  They immediately responded and said it was done.

I found my faith in the cloud coming back.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

We were black listed.  So I went to their removal page, entered my IP address and waited.  Later that day I get an email from them:

They put the responsibility on Amazon to get the IP address de-listed, since they owned it.   So after doing much research I found that this same problem had happened with SpamHaus.  Since so many spammers are also taking advantage of the cloud, top SPAM black lists were just blocking entire Amazon IP blocks.  Not taking into considering the hundreds or thousands of valid Amazon Web Services customers sending email legitimately.

I can understand that spammers are a problem and that black lists have value in the SPAM game.  However I viewed this as an attack on cloud computing.  Everyone I talked to about the situation from TrendMicro to SAP IT in Germany all said the same thing.  Why don’t you just use a real infrastructure that isn’t in the cloud.  They just dismissed the cloud as the problem.

Trend Micro decided to just list the entire Amazon blocks rather than listing individual offenders.

So I needed to just wait for Amazon to do something or Trend Micro MAPS.  So I just started lobbying both sides.  Heavily!

They both pointed the finger at the other side.  I escalated my ticket with Amazon Web Services and emailed Trend Micro MAPS on a daily basis asking them to not hold our business hostage any more.

Then I got a response on my Amazon Web Services support ticket one day about reverse DNS on our IP addresses.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

First off I reserve 11 IP addresses with Amazon Web Services.  I reserve these 11 IP addresses and never let them back into the general pool.

I setup DNS for my domain to reflect using 10 of the IP addresses as smtp1.mydomain.com through smtp10.mydomain.com and properly setup MX records accordingly.

Now reverse DNS on IP addresses is nice, but in my experience is not mission critical for sending email.  All last year we were fine, I sent probably 10-20 large email blasts using this setup, with no major problems with emails being received.

Before doing any emailing I check all my IP addresses against major blacklists to see if we’ve been listed.  We have been listed on blacklists before and easily was able to get removed with no problem.

Then in November we encountered Trend Micro MAPS.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

In the past we would send emails and then sit and watch servers for 24-72 hours, with constant server restarts and other problems.

I came up with a new base configuration that involved using a single blast server for queuing up and sending the personalized emails.  This blast server would alternate between several SMTP servers to balance the load and increase the volume at which we could send the emails out.

I ran some tests and to achieve the results I wanted it required an SMTP server per 50K emails.  I could guarantee emails would go out in about 4-6 hours with remaining trickling out over the next 24 hours.

So for a 500k email blast I would fire up an x-large blast instance and 10 large SMTP instances using Amazon EC2.  I had all the log files for the SMTP servers writing to a common EBS volume that I could maintain the records even after I shut down the instances.

I was getting closer to being ready for business.  I need to make sure the IP addresses and DNS infrastructure for the email blasts was 100% next.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

They just offered the computing and storage power I needed with Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.  Plus the opportunity of using more services like Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Cloudfront.

So I moved us over.  It took me 2 months to migrate from three extremely overloaded servers a platform that we could grow from.  Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 let me really balance out our load and really get a solid base up and running quickly.

Beyond our base need for web, databases, ftp, version control, and web services, we had high needs for volume email and more specifically SMTP services.

So I started evaluating how we sent mail and got to work at optimizing this process for scaling email for large blasts.

Email in the Amazon Cloud – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6

So to update my research:

• Google released their open source version of the Google Wave Federation Prototype Server.
• PyGoWave Server is still going strong too.

I don’t see any other offerings at this point.  The Google release is a Java application that conforms to XEP-0114, the Jabber Component Protocol.  Without Java resources this isn’t much of an option for me.

PyGoWave Server is my best option.  It is a Python implementation.  I am not an expert in Python but I have dabbled.  I would like to see a PHP Google Wave Server.

So I am diving into the Google Wave Architecture documentation some more to get a stronger grasp of the Google Wave Federation Architecture and Google Wave Data Model and Client-Server Protocol.