Cloud+Computing

=Computing in the Cloud=


 * Cloud computing** is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them. - Wikipedia, June 10th, 2009

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Cloud Computing Explained
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Some key points about Cloud Computing:

 * Cloud services are remotely accessed
 * Not focused on the hardware, more on web based processes
 * Very scalable, very easy to grow or shrink demands - excellent for keeping overhead low
 * Companies spend less on buying hardware, and subsequently use less office space and direct power consumption

Who is using what in the cloud?
According to the latest statistics from Nielsen and Time Magazine, these 5 "web giants" are dominating web traffic as far back as April 2008.


 * || **April 2008 Visitors (Millions)** || **April 2009 Visitors (millions)** || **Change** ||
 * **Google** || 120.79 || 131.60 || 9% ||
 * **Facebook.com** || 22.48 || 71.29 || 217% ||
 * **Amazon.com** || 47.26 || 50.37 || 7% ||
 * **Myspace.com** || 58.75 || 54.60 || -7% ||
 * **Twitter** || 1.22 || 17.10 || 1298% ||

News from Google
Since Google is one of the largest providers of cloud services, they often provide updates on these services on their blog. Therefore, I felt it would be appropriate to include the Google Blog RSS feed on the page.

rss url="http://feedproxy.google.com/blogspot/MKuf" link="true" number="10" date="true"

Examples of Cloud Services
Twitter is a great example of a service that operates in the cloud and takes advantage of crowdsourcing. This widget from Google is a perfect example of the use of the cloud because it not only utilizes data from Twitter's cloud services, but also allows me to embed a script to display this data from Google's Cloud services.

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And another embedded gadget which allows you to search through Youtube's (owned and included in Google) massive user generated database, which, incidentally is hosted in the cloud.

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Google App Engine
Google's app engine is the cloud platform that it's popular Google Apps services run on. It's powered by a new language, Python Django, which we will not get into discussion about since you, the end user, will need no knowledge of how google apps works to use the service.

Here is Google's definiton, I bolded some important parts that I feel will help you understand it a little better:

"Google App Engine **lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure**. App Engine applications are **easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow**. With App Engine, there are **no servers to maintain**: You just **upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users**. You can serve your app from your own domain name (such as http://www.example.com/) using Google Apps. Or, you can serve your app using a free name on the appspot.com domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization. Google App Engine supports apps written in several programming languages. With App Engine's Java runtime environment, you can build your app using standard Java technologies, including the JVM, Java servlets, and the Java programming language—or any other language using a JVM-based interpreter or compiler, such as JavaScript or Ruby. App Engine also features a dedicated Python runtime environment, which includes a fast Python interpreter and the Python standard library. The Java and Python runtime environments are built to ensure that your application runs quickly, securely, and without interference from other apps on the system. App Engine costs nothing to get started. All applications can use up to **500 MB of storage and enough CPU and bandwidth** to support an **efficient app serving around 5 million page views a month, absolutely free**. When you enable billing for your application, your free limits are raised, and you only pay for resources you use above the free levels."
 * With App Engine, you only pay for what you use**. There are no set-up costs and no recurring fees. The **resources your application uses, such as storage and bandwidth, are measured by the gigabyte, and billed at competitive rates**. You control the maximum amounts of resources your app can consume, so it always stays within your budget.

Google Apps Engine on Youtube
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