Thou shalt covet thy neighbour's tablet

One of my predictions for 2015 is that the Personal Computer (PC) will be phased out in lieue of the Commodity Computer (CC) and Tablet. It's the Personal aspect that is being minimized. The evolution comes on the edge of multiple fronts. One, miniaturization, it's always around us, and enables the construction of better portable devices. Two, the Cloud, enabling all of us to store that which makes our computing personal, in the Cloud rather than on a hard disk. And three, the time and frenzy factor. Who has the time or will have the time to personalize their computing environment to the extent that we did in the past.

With hard disks going away and being replaced by flash drives, the amount of personalization may be virtually nil. The desktop computer will become nothing more than a commodity, hence 'CC', and the tablet will be as swappable as a GPS device, which is experiencing a hefty number of thefts these days.

As computing migrates more and more to the Cloud, the computers that were once so valuable to our personal endeavours will become throw-aways. Tablets will not be the neat new "gotta have one" gadget, but a "where are my car keys and tablet" common necessity.

Consequently, the tablet will look even more attractive to thieves because of its universality. Aside from the nuances of Apple versus the rest of the world, the tablets will be up and running in someone else's hands within seconds. They won't even be locked like smart phones. Just like in the movies, tablets will be a portable window to the Internet and little more.

For you see, there will be little need to pour more and more power into the little devices as was done with smart-phones. The Internet has caught up and the Cloud is ready. Tablets and Smart-phones will be dumbed-down and become very very inexpensive, aside from the progress usually attributed to time and technology. The quantum leaps forward, in this regard, will actually appear to be backward. Look behind you to see what's coming.

Does this hurt?

Yeah! You're killin' me! One of an orthopedic surgeon's tests is to bend your leg into strange contortions and ask if it hurts. Duh... One of the many things done to me last year. I had been diagnosed with moderate osteoarthritis in my right hip in the fall of 2009. My general practitioner indicated exercise and pain killers. I started walking 6 klm every morning, whether hot and sunny, or bitterly cold. By April of 2010 the arthritis in my hip had become severe. After a year of walking, diligently to stay strong, my journeys were put on hold.

Osteoarthritis is another way of saying that the cartilage in my hip, that which separates the major load bearing bones, was wearing thin. Once severe it was bone on bone and quite painful. Meanwhile my wife and I had moved from the Greater Toronto Area to Niagara Falls, Ontario. With many boxes still looking to be emptied my surgery was scheduled for September 1st, 2010.

Hip surgery is somewhat invasive, to say the least, and after five days in the hospital I was released on my own recognizance... not quite, I had lots of help. Weeks of physio-therapy later and I was able to re-start my early morning 6 klm walks. However, that only lasted so long. I eventually had to stop because my left knee was giving me problems. Something was causing pain, so back to my trusted specialist to see what was wrong. Sure enough, this time it was a torn, or as he put it, shredded, meniscus. That's the curved cartilage that separates the major bones meeting in the knee.

My next surgery, not so invasive this time, will be this Thursday, October 27th, 2011. It would appear that an imbalance caused by a disruption on one side of my body, confused the other side of my body, or as some would say, "these problems come in pairs". I have full confidence in my surgeon, he's great and the hospital staff is quite wary of him because he is so meticulous. I have no worries, but the anesthetic injected into my spine is no joy.

My complaint is that these issues have shaken up our lives, both financially and emotionally. I left my job in 2009 because I could no longer manage stairs coupled with the stress of the particular job, and after the move, my job prospects in Niagara Falls, a depressed area, were dismal. I am still not working, mostly because I am, stubbornly, intent on finding something in information management. I feel if I drastically change my direction, I'll be a different person and never work in software again.

Where will computing go from here?

Have you ever considered, or are you even old enough to care, where computing has been and where it is headed? A loaded question? You betcha!

I come from a generation that grew up with the first computers. No, not PCs. They didn't exist yet. Some of the first computers, just being built when I was a kid, could fill your garage. Typically, in the early days, there was no way to communicate with it or load programs without using toggle switches or other devices like mag tape or punch card readers. All foreign concepts to the current generations.

Eventually something called dumb terminals came to be and these screen-keyboard combos started a rapport with the operating system of the main computer, some might say the 'mainframe'. Simple ASCII character string communications travelled over RS-232 cables to a switchbox near the mainframe. These evolved somewhat and served industry, especially the big banks, quite well.

Huge companies like IBM and CDC and Honeywell built monolithic mainframes and competed for banking and research dollars. Other vendors like Digital Equipment, Tandem, Hewlett Packard and more sprouted up with things called mini-computers.These were the results of advancements in miniaturization and the basic word size with processors and the assembly languages inherent in them. Still the dumb terminals remained.

Suddenly Personal Computers came onto the market aided by an operating system inventor by the name of Bill Gates who devised MS-DOS. About the same time the RS-232 cabling was replaced by Local Area Networks coined with the name Ethernet. Speeds increased and computers were sharing information among themselves, but something centralized was called for. The mainframes gave way, in certain instances, to smaller servers (of information). Even still the servers could also communicate with a mainframe if necessary.

OK, we'll jump ahead a bit, I'm bored too. It's the evolution of the PC that is critical in this discussion. 'Personal' means that local disk storage could help someone personalize their workstation. Give it a look and feel, a number of specialized programs, and even some secrets. Then we got the notebook. Now the individuals could be mobile, and bring their personalizations with them. A new problem arose. We use the desktop for some tasks but the portable/notebook for others. Sharing via the newly popular Internet seemed a likely solution.

Introduce the cel phone. First fairly dumb, it was a phone, after all. Later, it could be personalized, just like a PC. Today these personal smart devices, in so far as they can be carried on one's person, are very powerful, but not in the same way as the PC. The PC gained its power characteristic from having a massive harddrive. Why is this not happening with the smart-phones and tablets of today?

Enter The Cloud. What appears today to be the ultimate personal computing device e.g. smart-phone/tablet will soon be 'dumbed' down dramatically. It will become nothing more that a portal to The Cloud. Everyone will store their information there. The devices themselves will no longer be personal. They will be expendable and replaceable. Don't spend too much on the smartset device. It won't be the smartset thing you do.

The dumb-phones and tablets of the future will be nothing more that conduits to The Cloud! Think ahead.

Data on a Cloud

I recently had the opportunity to investigate the notion of developing a custom database application that could reside off company premises. Typically, there are three general classes involved with servers. First, what most company executives know, is to have your IT staff install a software package on your in-house server. The second is to rent space on a server in some server farm. Here you specify the operating system and the supporting layers of software, even before installing a database package. The third form is to find it already existing on some huge server farm that you may not be able to identfy... a.k.a. The Cloud.

Doing something as complex as defining a database still requires someone with Relational DataBase (RDB) know-how, a.k.a. me, but the savings and expertise required for the server and LAMP layering is reduced to $zero$. Lamp? That's Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl. A very common bundling of software to enable a web server and the software that sits in it such as SaaS (Software as a Service). Other acronyms exist such as PaaS, DaaS, DBaaS but we'll keeps things simple for today.

Anyway... the long and short of it is that computing in the cloud (Cloud Computing) is very economical, and its benefits in comparison to having one's own IT department have been validated many times over. I even have such a spreadsheet if anyone needs it. These packages typically charge a low fee by the month, often by user. Some have additional charges depending upon your need for additional features and disk space. Now, with these SaaS applications, I am not referring to the sharing of pictures or movies and the flashy commercials you see on TV. Though those, and Gmail and Live and Office 365 do constitute the cloud, they keep people from the real truth.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of SaaS applications worldwide and they do a myriad of weird and wonderful things. Virtually anything one could thing of. One references I use in searching for SaaS apps is www.GetApp.com.

Back to my database dilemma though. My search for a database engine in the cloud led me to a very capable product called Caspio Bridge. It's subscription cost was based on a per-application basis as opposed to the more pricey per-user model, so it suited our needs better. If this price model suits you as well, I have already weeded out the competition for you, so have yourself a good look. There are a host of videos that will give you the idea.

Let's Get Kids Writing

I recently learned how to make a Fan Page on Facebook. You may well ask, why I would need one. Well, it's not about me, it's in order to re-energize my web-site Short-Stories-Help-Children.com and Social Networking appears to be something I had left behind.

No more. Now, with a renewed vigor, I am pushing the web-site to regions of (web) space where it has never gone before. I am editing the backlog of story submissions. There were some 550 and I have dwindled that down to about 400. And I am making sure I offer some much needed help to the users, such as a custom search tool, so users can find their stories and parenting information and more.

The fan page is neat because you operate as a non-entity. Nothing personal really, and you can focus on events surrounding your web-site or business. Facebook cripples certain features, but they make sense, since the page is often not for a person.

I called it Let's Get Kids Writing because it supports the web-site, and the web-site is about the battle between young teens running amok versus helping them focus on something engaging (e.g. Writing). Anything engaging, really. It is about the unruly teen not getting caught up in so many distractions of the day. Be it cel phones, peer pressure, TV, parent bashing or what have you, it is tougher for tweens to tow the line now than ever before. It is a statement about the times we live in. The tweens/teens are not bad in and of themselves. They are inundated with bad stuff all around them, and could use our help.

Then consider the parents of said tweens/teens if, heaven forbid, they are also caught up in the cel phones, texting, and keeping up with the Jones'. All is not lost, however, because one just has to recognize that the problem exists and ask for help. This is what my web-site hopefully provides, so I built Let's Get Kids Writing for it.

What will some people do for 5 bucks

I found this awesome site called Fiverr.com. It offers the chance for anyone to state what they will do for 5 bucks, and the seller must do it within a chosen timeframe. Buyers, or potential ones, are able to browse countless wild-ass offerings and have a good laugh in the process. It is quite entertaining.

The offers do seem to fall into a few distinct categories that I have become familiar with. First, there are a ton of 'gigs' as they are called, that involve YouTube. These often involve getting some idea or product promoted. Next, there are a great many gigs involving what they call advertizing, but this could mean writing something on one's stomach and parading around town. Then many writing gigs or even proofing, also advice, and still much more.

The last, however, is SEO aka how to promote your web-site. SEO actually stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is the discipline of how to do everything one can with a web-site in order to win Google over. Winning Google over means advancing the web-sites PageRank, thereby moving the site's position closer to the top of page one on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

Buyer beware. Most people young enough to latch onto something like Fiverr may not be aware of the history surrounding the .COM days. In earlier times, when Google was building its strength. companies and individuals were starting up web-sites in a flurry and trying desparately to get them noticed. It was known at the time that Google responded well to having many other sites linking (backlinking) to yours, so they solicited firms to do this in the thousands. Not good. Google isn't Google for nothing. They soon put the brakes on that practice and initiated, unofficially, the 'sandbox'. That's where new website 'play' for a while, building links 'organically', until they grow into bonified, worthy web-sites.

Google is our gig daddy, and you won't get the keys to the car unless daddy says it's OK. So, to make a long story short, as you search for web-site gadgets such as Fiverr, which I love, don't get me wrong, be cautious. Google will not stand for 'budinskis'.