Mobile Virtualization

Another nail in the PC coffin, says Kevin C. Tofel at Gigaom.

He’s talking about mobile virtualization—accessing a PC remotely from another device, like a tablet or smartphone, for those situations that require a full Windows machine. This is impacting PC sales as many users are finding they can do a lot of what they want on the other devices with less reliance on the PC.

Between this new cloud streaming of computer applications and improved remote access apps, there’s less incentive to buy a new computer. Instead, you can either get more mileage out of an old computer or “rent” one that’s available in the cloud. And either of these can now be accessed by a tablet or smartphone that’s far cheaper than a new computer.

PC sales are down, while tablets and smartphones are gaining traction with both businesses and consumers. And smartphone sales have already surpassed PC sales.

Mobile internet use growing rapidly

According to a recent IDC Press Release, by 2015 there will more users accessing the internet with mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—than with desktop or laptop computers. I think what’s really happening now is that the ‘computer’ as we know it is being marginalized because it’s not the device that matters—what matters is what people want to do, and the ability to do it wherever they happen to be.

“Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the Internet,” said Karsten Weide, research vice president, Media and Entertainment. “Soon, more users will access the Web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it’s going to make the Internet a very different place.”

I don’t know if the internet is really going to be a ‘very different place’ but I see a few related trends with the move towards greater mobility.

• Optimized web content. More websites and web applications will be designed specifically for viewing on smaller devices. This should force designers and developers to optimize systems for mobile use and faster network performance.
• Location-based services. GPS and other tracking technologies will likely grow due to the mobile nature of internet access. (Last night my daughter ran out of gas on the freeway, and as I was driving over to find her I thought it would be really useful if I could pinpoint her location on my iPhone’s maps app so I could find the best point to get on the freeway. I’m sure there’s a way to do this now but I haven’t looked into it—probably Apple’s Find My Friends app will do it.)
• Secure the data, not the device. Security is a huge concern in the enterprise and a lot of time and money is spent ensuring that mobile devices meet security standards for accessing sensitive data. One result of this is that fewer devices are approved for use—iPhones and Blackberries, for example, can be remotely erased if lost or stolen because that technology is built into the device management. Data encryption is one strategy that could mitigate the hardware concerns and reduce administration overhead.
• More public wi-fi. Many restaurants and other public places are bringing up free wifi networks to attract the digerati. The network, like its users, will be ubiquitous.
• Improved battery technology. Faster processors, expanding functionality and frequent network access on these devices requires increasing amounts of power to keep it all running throughout the day. The battery technology has already come a long way and I expect a lot more innovation here to give users more time away from the charger.
• Cloud-based services. This is one area that is really beginning to mature now, and should grow enormously both for consumers and businesses as users want access to their data regardless of the device being used or its location. This is what Apple is doing with the iCloud service, for example: the data on your iPhone (email, documents, photos, contacts) is synced (optionally, user decides) to offsite storage, and then syncs back out to your other devices (iPad, laptop, desktop). Dropbox and other similar services are doing this now with cloud-based file storage.
• Fewer corporate data centers. The maturity and reliability of cloud providers will eliminate the need for many companies to have their own data centers. They do it today mostly because of security and control concerns, not because they want to manage hundreds of servers.

Dropbox API for mobile & web apps

Today Dropbox announced an API for mobile and web apps.

From a security standpoint this sounds great:

You’ll never have to enter your Dropbox account info into a third-party app on version 1. Instead, you’ll approve access using the official Dropbox app on mobile or via the web at dropbox.com.

And this.

Version 1 adds support for apps that can only read or write to a single folder in your Dropbox.

Authentication is not sent to third party apps, and you can selectively limit access to a single folder which prevents exposing all of your Dropbox data. Hellofax is one example of this kind of integration—they offer the option of receiving faxes as PDFs that can be routed to a Dropbox folder.

More detailed info for developers at dropbox.com/developers.

AeroFS: file sync without servers

AeroFS is a file syncing application, similar to Dropbox, but instead of syncing your files with their servers it runs within your own network and syncs data among your devices internally. It’s a distributed P2P (peer-to-peer) filesystem that doesn’t require a ‘middleman’ server. They offer an optional encrypted sync to their servers (cloud) if you want offsite backup as well. See their Features page for more info.

The idea is a really good one: if you already have file storage capacity in your home or business you can use it to set up automatic syncing and sharing of directories and files without going through a third party service. Many companies have security policies that don’t allow file sharing through services like Dropbox, so something like AeroFS could meet that need really well.

As of this writing they are in beta so you can sign up for an invitation and be notified when it’s ready.

From XKCD:

Vimeo Pro

Vimeo recently introduced Vimeo Pro—video hosting and delivery customized for your business. They offer custom websites (portfolios) that you can brand to showcase your videos. I use Vimeo for hosting and offsite storage of videos and I’ve been really impressed with their service, the devoted user community, the Video School tutorials and a talented base of creatives posting their work on there. If you’re looking for interesting and entertaining video work or ideas on how to improve your own videos, spend some time browsing on vimeo.com.

Vimeo Pro is different from Vimeo Plus—the Plus account is for individuals and Pro is targeted to businesses. With Vimeo Pro you get 50 GB of storage and 250,000 plays (you can buy more if you need it) for $199 per year.

A blurb from the Vimeo Pro FAQ:

Included in Vimeo PRO:
- Commercial hosting option (new!)
- High Definition video (up to 1080p!)
- Advanced Analytics
- Unlimited customizable video Portfolio sites
- Unlimited HD embedding
- Fast, Priority uploading
- Super-customizable and brandable video player (new!)
- HTML5 support with the Vimeo Universal Player
- Full mobile, tablet and connected TV compatibility
- Unlisted video review pages (new!)
- Third Party video player support (new!)
- Optional original file storage
- much, much more

And don’t miss their latest Video School lesson: Tripod Tricks!

Dropbox updates Terms of Service

Dropbox announced on their blog today an update to their Terms of Service (TOS) in response to some unhappy customer feedback. Previously the TOS wording gave the impression that Dropbox was claiming ownership rights over customer data. This didn’t go over well, so they have revised the language to be more clear about their intentions.

I’m glad because I really like Dropbox. There are other cloud storage and sync services out there but Dropbox has really executed well with ease of use and reliable sync across multiple devices.

We’ve never been interested in rights broader than what we need to run Dropbox. We want to get this language right so that you’re comfortable using Dropbox with no reservations: what’s yours is yours.

If you’re interested in getting a Dropbox account use this link to join and we’ll both get extra storage as a referral bonus. You can sign up for a free 2 GB account and then upgrade to a paid account, or just stay at the free level.

WWDC 2011

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) kicks off next Monday, June 6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, beginning with Steve Jobs’ keynote (aka The Stevenote) at 10 AM.

Below is a photo from AppleInsider showing some of the banners going up. It looks like the three themes of the conference will be:

• Mac OS X Lion (10.7)
• iOS 5
• iCloud

I’m really interested to see what Apple is going to do with the iCloud service. I hope it’s better than MobileMe, which never seemed to me to be a very serious effort on Apple’s part. Cloud syncing and backup services like Dropbox and a few others have shown what a good service can look like in that space. I think it’s pretty clear by now that a music syncing/streaming service is going to be introduced as a big part of the iCloud offering. I’m sure that calendar and contact syncing will remain, and some have speculated that parts of the iCloud service may be offered at no cost to users who upgrade to OS X Lion.

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon just announced their Cloud Drive service. It’s not an automated file syncing service like Dropbox—it’s (currently) a manual, browser-based upload to a file share on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). Dropbox is built on the S3 infrastructure, though, so I wonder what Amazon will do in terms of building their own application or API for syncing. Amazon knows storage and Dropbox knows syncing, so maybe there’s an acquisition in the future here.

Pricing looks very good for what they’re offering. You get 5 GB free to start with if you have an existing Amazon account.

Blogging service reliability

Pingdom.com published results from their reliability tests across the major blog hosting services (Google’s Blogger, WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr and Typepad). They tested between October 15 and December 15.

Bear in mind that this represents the hosting service offered by these providers. If you’re hosting your own installation of WordPress through another web hosting company, for example, then this would not apply.

Results

1. Blogger
2. WordPress.com
3. Typepad
4. Posterous
5. Tumblr

Evernote hits 5 million users

Evernote—the cloud-based service for capturing/organizing/finding/storing a variety of data—just reached the 5 million user mark. Yesterday they had 22,130 new users join. I’ve been using Evernote for a little over a year, and it’s a terrific app that I use most every day. Works great on the web, my Mac (desktop app) and iPhone and iPad (mobile apps). Also available for Windows, Android and Blackberry.

The chart below shows how quickly they’re scaling per-million-users.