Firstly, there isn’t a universally agreed upon definition, as many people use the term to talk about a variety of different services and systems. But at its core, cloud computing is computing technology that resides on centralized, off-site servers. These servers do the heavy lifting; they run the applications, store the data, and so on. Client computers utilize this technology over the Internet. If this sounds a lot like a mainframe, you’re absolutely right. Funny how all things seem to come full circle, isn’t it?

Another term you may have heard lately, which has a lot to do with cloud computing, is SaaS – Software as a Service. Essentially, these are hosted applications; software you use on a website. Like Salesforce.com, BaseCamp, Google Apps, and so on. These are not new concepts at all. They’ve been around for several years now. But the buzz is due to the business world’s recent eagerness to take advantage of the, well, advantages that cloud computing and SaaS can offer. Namely, cost and time savings. You pay for use rather than per installation, ensuring that you only pay for what you actually consume. And access to applications can, in theory, be instantaneous. No need to purchase, install, update and register your software.

Instead of setting up, installing costly software, and supporting a large number of client PCs, cloud computing allows you to have simple, “thin client” PCs for your users. The real horsepower is kept on the servers (i.e. in the cloud). Software is installed, upgraded, and supported in one place. Users simply use the software and applications as they need. All the client PC needs to do, at its core, is transfer and receive data over a network or the Internet, and display it to the end user.

Google and Amazon have been working with a cloud computing model since their inception. Cloud computing is basically what websites have been for the past 20 years. A simple request is made by the user to the cloud (i.e. a website), where a centralized server (i.e. the web server) processes the request, doing any required database lookups and calculations, and serving back the results in a small, simplified format. The user only needs a web browser, while the server houses the software for the database, programming language, and so on.

Questions that are raised surrounding cloud computing typically revolve around the reliability of the ‘cloud’, specifically the security and integrity of the stored data, hacker and virus protection, support for the applications and the hardware, privacy, encryption, and so on. That said, cloud computing and SaaS are on their way to mainstream acceptance, so be sure to throw out these buzzwords whenever possible. Makes you sound smart, you know.

Social media is not the same as a website, brochure, TV commercial or pay-per-click ad. Instead of simply broadcasting your message, the key is to offer value. This is after all a conversation, and conversations are not one way. The conversation won’t last long if all you do is talk about yourself. Be an expert or industry leader. Offer tips and advice, solve problems, make introductions. This is the value of any conversation, and this will lead to building a network of trusted relationships, which is the goal of social media marketing.

Here’s a simple roadmap for getting involved in social media marketing:

• Define your goals
• Choose your channels and secure your identity(ies)
• Understand the conversation landscape
• Create your communication plan
• Choose your champions
• Start

When defining your goals, think about the process you’d like your “listeners” or “followers” to go through. Will you direct them through your website or blog, or will you encourage them to contact you directly? Or perhaps your purpose is more branding or reputation related. Either way, you must start by defining what the finish line looks like.

Choosing the channels you use will depend on where your customers, competitors and influencers are. For example, LinkedIn is a place for business professionals averaging about 40 years of age. Facebook and MySpace have younger audiences who are principally engaged in leisure activities. You need to choose the appropriate channels based on what you’re offering.

As an aside, something of particular importance nowadays is carving out your online identity across the various social media channels. Whether your plan on using them in the near future or not, securing your brand or identity is important. Just like the domain gold rush of the late 90s, each social media channel has its own fixed set of identities (e.g. Bob’s Fish House, Microsoft, etc.). If you’re particularly concerned with someone “squatting” on your identity, it would be advisable to create accounts in all the popular channels. Using a paid service like knowem.com can automate this process.

Understanding the conversation landscape means understanding what’s currently being said. See how others are offering value and building trusted networks, and take notes.

Your communication plan should focus on the types of topics to discuss, what to avoid, the tone of conversation, etc. This should be designed to present your company’s brand appropriately, and keep you focused in on your goals. Defining the frequency of your involvement is also very important. You don’t necessarily need to post a tweet every 20 minutes. You may decide that a monthly blog post is sufficient for your goals.

Choosing champions is a critical step that most companies overlook, and is one of the most common reasons why they fail. Champions are the communicators. They do the tweeting and facebooking and blogging. They need to clearly understand the communication plan, and be diligent with their conversations.

And finally, the key takeaway: Start. Don’t get paralyzed by over analysis. Take that first step, and get involved. Your customers are already out there, and they’re already talking about you. Your competitors are already out there, and they’re talking to your customers.

In short, PostEgram transforms your Facebook news and photos into full-color newsletters. You login to Facebook, run PostEgram, pick the “friends” and types of updates you want to include in your newsletter, and set it up to go off to Nana. The rest happens automatically.

You can send Nana monthly, bi-monthly, or even weekly newsletters. The total size of the newsletter is fixed, so you’ll have to be careful about which ‘friends’ and what types of updates you choose to send. And don’t worry about the obvious question; you can filter out specific updates.

Happy Facebooking, Nana.

The first major challenge we face when working with artists like photographers, is that they tend to be very involved in the design process. They have very strong opinions (naturally), but are very cognoscente of the effort that goes into a good design. Challenging, but rewarding.

The second major challenge, and the real purpose of this post, is the features and functionality that they require. Photographers will typically need the following:

• A content management system, so they can control all the content in the site.
• Multiple photo galleries - done in a slick, contemporary fashion - to showcase their previous work.
• A secured client area, where they can allow their clients to preview, order and pay for their photos (very common with event photographers, like wedding photographers).

To custom build something like this, even if we leverage an existing system like Drupal, will start in the $15-20,000 range. But photographers of Calgary, do no fret! A solution exists that can shave thousands off the cost your dream website: PhotoBiz.

PhotoBiz (www.photobiz.com) offers not only all the common features (like those outlined above), but some really slick ordering and proofing tools. Rather than turn this post into a long, drawn out love letter to PhotoBiz, I will let you, the eager photographer, check it out for yourself.

There are (of course) a couple of notable catches.

• PhotoBiz is a hosted service. That means that they handle all the hosting, including your email and domain name, and you pay on-going fees. The on-going fees are based on the total number of photos you have within your website. But hey, even if you’re paying $500 to $1,000 per year, it would take a long time to catch up to a $20,000 custom website.
• Design is limited to their templates. I’m sure they have some customization options, but you’ll definitely be working “within the box”.
• Apis can’t help you build your site. If you choose PhotoBiz, you’re basically on your own. But that’s kind of the point of this service, isn’t it?

Further to that last point, however, once you’ve built your new site with PhotoBiz, Apis can help you drive it to the top of the search engines.

So for all of you photographers, rookies and seasoned veterans alike, PhotoBiz is something to look into.

Leave it to the cynical anarchists on the Internet to reinvent this service.

Say hello to Shady URL: www.shadyurl.com
Warning: This service is not for everyone.

It will recreate a URL you enter as an alternate URL. It won’t shorten it, however; it will recreate it with a variety of  “shady” phrases and keywords. The sample they use on their home page says it best:

Example:
http://spongebob.nick.com/backstage/characters/spongebob/
becomes
http://5z8.info/malicious-cookie_d5d2_hateminorities

As you can see, it added in the phrases ’malicious cookie’ and ‘hate minorities’. Our quick tests of about a dozen attempts revealed fairly hateful and somewhat inappropriate phrases about 75% of the time. The others ranged from quite funny to sexually explicit.

So while this first crack at making fun of URL shortening services is quite juvenile and mean spirited, it does serve to poke fun at the plethora of virtually useless tools that abound on the Internet today.

I will, however, continue to look forward to a URL recreation tool that is actually funny.

This tool looks like it will be a real time-saver for designers, particularly those in print and photography. It won’t do 100% of the ‘clean up’ work automatically, but it will probably get you 90-95% of the way there, 90-95% of the time. And when you’re talking about a 3 hour clean up job on a single photo, that’s a big time savings. Nice work, Adobe.

1. Help web professionals in Calgary find work, be it contract, freelance or employee.
2. Help web companies in Calgary find local web talent.

If you are in the web industry in Calgary, we encourage you to join the group and get involved.

About 5,000 apps were removed in February. These included overtly sexual apps, as well as apps made with app-generating services that simply reproduce website content. Apple has always boasted about its quantity of apps, having grown from 800 at launch time in mid-2008 to approximately 150,000 today. Compared with other services, Apple is the front runner by a very wide margin when it comes to the quantity of apps. Android has just over 19,000 and BlackBerry has about 4,700. But the question of quality vs quantity obviously comes into play.

Apple’s new quality standards, while still ambiguous, are viewed by many app developers as a positive. Increasing the required quality will help to trim the fat from the bloated App Store, and force future apps to offer more value. But others may view this as the beginning of a wave of censorship. Today it’s sexy content, but what about tomorrow?

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/app-store-quality

The atmosphere of Seven Restolounge was awesome as always. Room was filled with over 50 people, mostly entrepreneurs. After a short intro by Rene and Larry, Patrick started with “a story of my life within 60 seconds”. These are the key points covered through the presentation:

• Whether you are in California or Alberta, pitching is difficult.
• Take all the opportunities you can to practice your pitch. The first time you need to pitch, you will need to be well rehearsed.
• Heart, brain, wallet; pitch by winning in this specific sequence. Most of the time people do the opposite: wallet, a bit of brain, rarely heart.
• Starting up a business is hard. Be prepared to limit your personal expenses within the first two years. Convince you spouse that your idea is worth limiting your personal expenses.
• While starting up, feel free to consult on the side. That’s what Patrick and many others did.
• Have mentors, they are important. Patrick’s mentor, Dr. Bob Schulz – Haskayne School of Business, was at the event. The importance of having a mentor was reinforced by Larry Jacques.
• Starting a business is like creating a religion and converting people around you.
• The first person you have to convert is your partner, co-founder. If you can convert him / her, there’s a better chance your idea takes off.

Last night’s event was definitely one of the most successful ones. Great keynote, great networking opportunity and stylish atmosphere of downtown’s Seven Restolounge.

It’s likely that I missed a few things about the event, so whoever attended, feel free to add in the comments to this post.

Paul Poutanen and Stephen King of Mob4Hire have enjoyed tremendous success from creating a business that harnesses the power of the crowd and their mobile devices. Jon Lam of Ph03nix New Media spoke of his plans of raising $2 Million for the iPho3nix fund to develop 133 iPhone Apps. Tapium’s Richerd Chan, who makes iPhone Games and cool applications and Michelle Sklar, host of BNetTV, moderated this insightful look on the industry.

Here are some event highlights from my perspective about the mobile industry:

• Mobile web is experiencing huge growth. Smart phones are in the mainstream.
• Problems with mobile distribution remain. Companies like mob4hire use the power of crowds to test mobile technologies before they get introduced to market.
• Most of the talk at the panel was from a developer’s standpoint. That is, things discussed were: how to build? is the market ready? how to monetize? how to fix operational problems.
• The industry is still relatively new. As a result a lot of problems are coming not from developers but from a lack of infrastructure of mobile networks and carriers and lack of technology standards.
• According to Paul Poutanen of Mob4Hire there close to 100,000 mobile applications on the market right now. paul predicts that within 5 years there will be 5 million mobile applications. Application personalization will play a huge role in the growth of mobile application market. We will all have a personalized application that fits our mobile needs.
• One of the questions from the audience was: how do you promote your Mobile Application? A collective answer from the panel was along these lines: 1) you have to promote where the consumer is (i.e. at app store properties), 2) external marketing vehicles are of great importance too.
• As pointed out by Jonathan Lam of Ph03nix New Media, mobile developers should not be afraid of a market of 100,000 applications. Most of them are developed by amateurs, not by professional / for-profit developers. So, there’s definitely an opportunity rather than threat.

Stay tuned as Sarah Blue of TechVibes reviews the event in greater details.