But as we use the Internet for “free,” we have to remember that if we’re not paying for something, we’re not the customer. We are in fact the product being sold — or, more specifically, our data is.
So here’s a tricky question: Who owns all that data?
While nothing ground breaking is in this article, it’s probably one of the better summaries of the complex space around that question.
At a press briefing here at its headquarters, Google announced a new version of its Apps suite designed specifically for government customers. This tier will be sold alongside the existing version of Google Apps and priced the same as the company’s premiere license–$50 per user, per year.
Google Apps for Government features all the same applications that can be found in other versions but comes with a higher level of security, which Google says meets the requirements set forth by the Federal Information Security Management Act. This includes segregated data centers, which Google says goes beyond FISMA regulations, and will keep government e-mail and calendar event data within U.S. borders.
This is probably the biggest tech story of the day. A lot of FUD around cloud will be dismissed if we see large government sign off on it.
On some feed I came across: How to get rejected from the App Store, and as I read through it I became more and more glad that I’ve got an Android phone. Some of the top things that I do with my phone are explicitly prohibited by Apple. Streaming internet radio, directly syncing podcasts to the phone, having widgets on your desktop, improving on the phone built ins (in this case calendar display), all of these things are prevented on the iPhone.
Yes, the iPhone has a more consistent UI. It’s easy to be consistent if you limit your functionality, and require that everyone that owns your device runs your client software on a desktop in your house as well. Android phones don’t ever assume that. An Android phone is more than a smart phone, it’s a cloud access point. If you have to use a cable to put data (contacts, music, whatever) on your device that has always on wireless networking… you have failed.
I’m glad that Apple opened up this market for more vendors to play in, but I’m seriously glad that Google is relentlessly pushing it forward. The post PC era is really about whether or not you need a PC to use your other devices. As far as I’m concerned, the answer should be no.
I’m quite impressed by how agressively the Cannonical team is getting when it comes to cloud computing. They’re integrating eucalyptus into Ubuntu 9.10, which is open source software that lets you build your own “Amazon-like” cloud. Eucalyptus even implements the same APIs so that all those hundreds of EC2 applications work with it.
But the Cannonical folks haven’t stopped there. They recently launched Ubuntuone, which is a storage cloud. Anyone running Ubuntu 9.04 can sign up for an invite (I did last month, and just got mine yesterday). This provides you with 2 GB of cloud storage for free, or 10 GB for a nominal fee. The mechanics behind Ubuntuone is an applet that’s running which synchronizes $HOME/Ubuntu One directory on changes. It’s not rocket science, but it is seemlessly integrated.
At 2 GB of free space, this isn’t for keeping media in sync. It will do a fair job with text documents, and I’ve started to put my ebooks and pdfs into it for easy reading wherever I am. I’m also considering redoing my dot files sharing in this manner, though that will mean symlinking into the Ubuntuone directory, as it doesn’t seem like you can share beyond it.
Another interesting feature is a “share with others” on those documents. That opens this up to be a ghetto version of google docs, at least amongst Ubuntu users. Again, while this is not rocket science, usability is a huge feature here, and the fact that it is so seemless starts to bring a lot of value to having a whole office on Ubuntu.
This is where I think Cannonical is making a really brilliant play. Previously Linux on the Desktop was always about being interoperable with other people’s stuff, as it was the edge case, and the value in running all Linux on the desktop was low. With really useful, Linux only, services like Ubuntu One, there is now an incentive to get everyone there. The Mac folks have been playing this game for years with all their zeroconf tools that work on a local network, and it definitely helped shore up offices of Mac users.
Kudos to Mark and the Ubuntu folks for thinking past just desktop clones and really starting to push cloud as a concept into Ubuntu across the board. It makes me excited to be both a Linux and Ubuntu user, and I can’t wait to see what they add to my platform of choice next.