Archivo de la categoría: Google

Collaboration, Document Management, DropBox, File Sharing, Google, Google Drive, Java, Microsoft, My Docs Online Desktop App, QuickBooks, SkyDrive, Web Folders, WebDav

Three App Strategies for Document Collaboration, When To Use Each

When you have a document or file which needs editing or updating by more than one person, in more than one place, controlling the process to avoid the dreaded “intervening update” problem can be a challenge.

In the early days of personal computers the answer was often the “sneakernet”. Create document or file, write to a diskette, put on your Chuck Taylors and walk it to your collaborator, then get it back the same way. Later, LAN technology allowed the file to be placed on a local server and opened across the LAN for editing, with a lock on the file at the server while editing is being performed. When needing to get beyond the local LAN email attachments could be used, or FTP if you had a pre-Web internet connection. Management of “check-in/check-out” and  resolving update conflicts was done by humans, not software.

Sounds like the stone age now, but it beat printing a document and editing with a red pen.

The advent of the Web and its browsers, along with widespread, always-on internet connectivity brought new opportunities for using that connectivity and various software design strategies to support collaboration.

There are three essential design strategies for addressing the problem: pure web app (think Google Drive, née Google Docs),  file syncing (think Dropbox), and local editing with central locking (think MS Office+Web Folders/WebDAV). Each has its pros and cons, and which approach will work for a given task depends on factors like file type, file size, editing feature set, and client platforms supported.

The Pure Web App Approach

A real web app runs in a browser using javascript and (more and more often) HTML5. This approach in theory can support any device that has a modern browser, including tablets and smartphones, as well as Macs, Windows PCs and Chromebooks. Perhaps the premier example of this approach is the applications available in Google Drive. Simple documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings can be created, edited and shared easily. Collaboration is as close to instantaneous as networking technology allows. Documents are always in synch. The first time you co-edit a word processing document with a colleague on the other side of the world, and you see  edits in real time, you should pause for a moment and marvel at how amazing this technology is.

That’s the good. The bad includes:

  • Google buy-in (or buying into some other platform).
  • Limited document/file type support. Although you can now upload and download any type of file to Google Drive, you have to convert to a Google format to edit online. You won’t be editing Quickbooks files, for example.

This is using Google as an example. There are other services using the web app approach. SkyDrive from Microsoft for example, or Quickbooks Online from Intuit. The bottom line is all these online apps have limitations, never mind cost (Quickbooks Online costs between $12.95 to over $70 per month).

The File Synchronization Approach

File synchronization apps like Dropbox work by running applications on all your devices, with a special folder that communicates with their servers to propagate new and updated files to other devices. This works well when the only person involved is you, and you have multiple devices (work desktop, laptop, home PC, and sometimes mobile devices). Another plus is the ability to synchronize a wide variety of file types. Each device that will be used to edit or update a file or document will need the appropriate application installed on the device, and all copies or versions of the aforementioned application must be able to handle the internal format of the particular file. For instance, Quickbooks file formats for Windows and Macs are incompatible.

The typical problem for apps using the file synch approach is lack of “file locking” to keep two people from updating a file at the same time. Some file sync apps attempt to resolve intervening updates but usually with little success.

The Local Editing With Central Locking Approach

Server-based file locking apps keep the file on a central server, and use specialized server plus client applications to do the following each time a file needs to be edited or updated:

  • “Lock” the file on the server to tell other copies of the special client application that the file is “checked out” for update by someone else.
  • Download the file to a client application on a PC, Mac, or other supported platform (usually as a “temp” file).
  • Open the correct application for editing.

After editing the process is reversed:

  • File is saved locally in the temporary location.
  • File is uploaded back to the central server, where it replaces the old copy.
  • The “Lock” is removed so other users can take their turn at editing.

It is also a good idea for this approach to offer a “View Only” or “Read Only” copy of a locked file for others to look at (but not edit).

An early example of this approach is WebDAV (DAV stands for “Distributed Authoring and Versioning”). Microsoft refers to its WebDAV support in Windows as “Web Folders”, and supports locks and editing in Office applications such as Word and Excel. The problem with WebDAV and Web Folders is that virtually no other applications other than Office have implemented support for WebDAV locks.

A more general application that can support almost any file type while also supporting central file locking is available from My Docs Online via their java-based Desktop App. The Desktop App uses a “Lock & Open” to lock the file on the central server, downloads the file to a temporary location on the PC or Mac, and then launches the right application based on the file extension. When the editing session is complete the file is saved and closed locally, and then the user does a “Save & Unlock” in the Desktop App to send the updated file back to the server and release the lock.

The ability to support virtually any file type is a strong benefit of this design.

Potential issues with the approach include “network latency”. The bigger the file the longer it takes to download and open the locked copy, or sent it back to the server. The use of Java brings support for multiple operating systems, including all versions of Windows or Mac OS X, but does require Java be installed and kept up to date on the machine.

Choosing an App Whose Design Strategy Meets Your Needs

Which approach will work best for you? It depends on particular needs, and you may need more than one solution depending on particular file types or business processes involved.

If you and all your collaborators already have Google accounts, and if the goal is collaboration on a reasonably basic document or spreadsheet, it’s hard to beat Google Drive. If you mostly use Office, then SkyDrive might be a good fit, and so on. Consider a two-step approach, where, as an example, you use Google Drive to do the early drafts of a document when collaboration needs are heaviest, and then export to a more powerful desktop application for final production.

If your collaboration needs don’t require editing by multiple people, but mostly involve pushing updated versions of files and documents for viewing and reviewing, then a file synchronization app like Dropbox could work well.

If you are using specific file types like Quickbooks, CAD, as well as Excel, Word, or OpenOffice formats, and you need to let multiple people in multiple locations edit without fear of wiping out the edits of a colleague, consider an application like the My Docs Online Desktop App.

Amazon AWS, Facebook, Google, Hardware, Magnetic storage, Open Compute Project, Opinion, Research, Seagate Technology, Storage, Tape library

Will Disks Using Shingled Magnetic Recording Kill Tape for Cold Storage?

We previously reported on the rumored Seagate/eVault “cold storage” tech initiative seeking to use disks to supplant tape libraries.

Now come this analysis from The Register.

We know Facebook’s Open Compute Project has a cold storage vault configuration using shingled magnetic recording drives. Both Google (mail backup and more) and Amazon (Glacier) have tape vaults in their storage estate. Shingled drives could change that equation because, probably, the cost/GB of a 6TB shingled drive is a lot less that that of a 4TB drive and, over, say, 500,000 drives, that saving turns into a big sum of dollars.

What are shingled drives, you ask? This video from Seagate explains:

Amazon, Amazon AWS, Azure, Cloud Storage, File hosting service, Google, Microsoft, Nirvanix, Storage, Venture Funding

Nirvanix Shutdown: Collateral Damage in Big Players’ Price War?

The sudden shutdown of Nirvanix, an early but recently faltering participant in the “pure-play” Online Storage space dominated by the likes of AWS S3, Microsoft Azure and Google, is in large part a result of downward pressure on prices as the big players continually lower theirs. Amazon, for instance, launched S3 in 2006 and charged $0.15 per gigabyte-month. After many step-wise price cuts S3 is down to $0.095 per gigabyte-month.

Pure online storage is fast becoming the sole province of vendors who either enjoy economies of scale, or who treat their offerings as a loss-leader to get other business (or a combination of both).

Smaller players may have to add value in other ways to survive. Nirvanix was not profitable, and when their latest round of funding came up short it was the last nail in their coffin.

Control Panels, Google, MariaDB, Parallels Plesk Panel

Welcome Move from Google to MariaDB

This past week The Register reported that Google is migrating a thousand plus instances of MySQL to MariaDB. At Parallels we made the decision about six months ago to release the newest version of our popular Parallels Plesk Panel with support for MariaDB. Parallels Plesk Panel, used for web hosting and management, is now running on over 270,000 servers world-wide and the MariaDB support in Parallels Plesk Panel 11.5 has helped drive growth and adoption over the past few months. We are a strong supporter of the MariaDB Foundation and applaud Google’s move which, along with RedHat’s announcement earlier this year, further validates MariaDB market momentum. It is a healthy reaction to Oracle’s control of MySQL and the moves they have made to limit community involvement.

 

Amazon AWS, Box, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, DropBox, GDrive, Google, Guest Post, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook.com, SearchYourCloud, SharePoint, Storage

Google, Amazon Outages a Real Threat For Those Who Rely On Cloud Storage

Guest Post by Simon Bain, CEO of SearchYourCloud.

It was only for a few minutes, however Google was down. This follows hot on the heels of the other major cloud provider Amazon being down for a couple of hours earlier in August. This even relatively short outage could be a real problem for organizations that rely on these services to store their enterprise information. I am not a great lover of multi-device synchronization, I mean all those versions kicking around your systems! However if done well, it could be one of the technologies that help save ‘Cloud Stores’ from the idiosyncrasies of the Internet and a connected life.

We seem to be currently in the silly season of outages, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google all stating that their problems were cause by a switch being replaced or an update going wrong.

These outages may seem small for the supplier. But they are massive for the customer, who is unable to access sales data or invoices for a few hours.

This however, should not stop people using these services. But it should make them shop around, and look at what is really on offer. A service that does not have synchronization may well sound great. But if you do not have a local copy of your document on the device that you are actually working on, and your connection goes down, for whatever reason, then your work will stop.

SearchYourCloud Inc. has recently launched SearchYourCloud, a new application that enables people to securely find and access information stored in Dropbox, Box, GDrive, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint or Outlook.com with a single search. Using either a Windows PC or any IOS device, SearchYourCloud will also be available for other clouds later in the year.

SearchYourCloud enables users to not only find what they are searching for, but also protects their data and privacy in the cloud.

Simon Bain

Simon Bain is Chief Architect and CEO of SearchYourCloud, and also serves on the Board of the Sun Microsystems User Group.

Apps Status Dashboard, Google, Outage Alert

Google Apps Status Sorta Takes Responsibility for Today’s Outage

From the Apps Status Dashboard:

7/10/13 10:40 AM

The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

The affected users were located in West Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska & Georgia

Same message repeated for basically all services.

It’s a little vague and incomplete. Was it Comcast (other services were also down and they ALL came back at once here in Florida)? Or was it actually Google?

American Civil Liberties Union, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, Government, Guest Post, Legal, National Security Agency, NSA, Patriot Act, The Vast Machine, Verizon, White House

The Future of Tech Companies, the NSA, and Your Information

Guest Post by Lewis Jacobs

Verizon and the NSA

Last week, the technology world was turned upside down when the Guardian broke the news that the National Security Agency had directed telecommunications company Verizon to release customer call records and metadata on an “ongoing daily basis.”

Though the metadata doesn’t include the audio content of calls, it does include the phone numbers on both ends of calls, the devices and location of both parties involved, and the time and duration of calls.

The order was leaked by Edward Snowden, an analyst for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at the NSA. The order targets both international and domestic calls, and it does not contain parameters for who can see the data or whether or not the data will be destroyed after NSA use.

Though the White House and the NSA say that the data will only be used for counter-terrorism efforts and other national security measures, the order nonetheless gives the federal government access to data from all of Verizon’s more than 100 million customers.

Since the story broke, there has been significant debate over whether the NSA is working within the regulations of the First and Fourth Amendments or whether it is violating citizens’ rights to free speech and privacy. The White House has defended the order as a necessary measure for national security. But critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and several U.S. lawmakers, disagree.

What it means for the future

The controversy raises the question of whether or not other technology and telecommunications companies will be required to follow suit—or whether they already have. Amy Davidson at the New Yorker speculates that the leaked Verizon order is “simply one of a type—the one that fell off the truck.” Adam Banner at the Huffington Post wonders, “How many other ‘top secret’ court orders are currently in action with countless other information providers?”

The NSA is said to have been monitoring and collecting customer data from some of the world’s largest technology companies with the help of surveillance program PRISM. But many companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and AOL, have denied providing the government direct access to their users’ information. Google, one of the companies to deny any knowledge of PRISM, wrote an open letter to the Attorney General and the FBI requesting to make public any federal requests for data.

In any case, it’s unlikely that the NSA demanded customer information only from Verizon, meaning that the federal government could be (and probably is) accessing information about citizens through their phone providers, their email services, and their search engines. Faced with federal orders, there’s not much that technology companies can do in opposition.

The future of NSA technology surveillance will depend, of course, on its legality, which is yet to be determined. It’s unclear whether or not the NSA’s actions fall under the provisions of the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act, the Constitution, and federal government’s system of checks and balances.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently announced their plan to sue the White House Administration for violating the privacy rights of Americans. On the other side, whistleblower Edward Snowden is currently under investigation for the disclosure of classified information, an offense that could result in life in prison.

This article was submitted by Lewis Jacobs, an avid blogger and tech enthusiast. He enjoys fixing computers and writing about internet trends. Currently he is writing about an internet in my area campaign for local internet providers.

Sources:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/the-nsa-verizon-scandal.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-banner/the-nsa-and-verizon

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/technology/security/google-government-data/

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/07/technology/security/nsa-data-prism/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-scandal/