Journal of a new business start up

From Markwaldin's Blog : http://soulofanewbusiness.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/more-on-technology-infrastructureseveral-topics/


I think I am a technologist at heart.  On the other hand in today’s world technology and automation are what let you scale and manage your business.  Best to put it in early rather than let your business get out of control.  So here is my latest up date.

First of all Thinkfree was an extremely smart decision to use.  It blows away Yahoo Groups and all the others.  Now my partner and I can maintain a shared file system seamlessly and it fixes my project management problem.  Unfortunately I have to use Excel as the project manager but that is better than the alternatives (like Daptiv, LiquidPlanner, etc).  The reason is that Thinkfree let’s me keep mirror copies on my desktop and on the server and let’s me synchronize them seamlessly.  I can work online or offline.  And the best part is it is very fast.  Excel runs in real time without the speed bumps of SaaS based solutions.  It is beautiful.  YOU need to use it.

Second thing is I signed up for Amazon EC2 yesterday.  EC2 is Amazon’s cloud computing service.  I can get a virtual server that is highly scalable without installing my own hardware.  Right now Inside Edge is hosted on my dedicated server in a colo center along with my other business Flycatcher.  I want to separate the businesses financially; I don’t want one business bringing down the other; and I want to bring up SugarCRM for Inside Edge and I don’t want to put that on Flycatcher.

I spent 4 hours trying to get a server instance running on EC2.  The instructions are terrible.  It is all command line driven with no GUI interface.  And when things don’t work you are left high and dry.  The system has little real time feedback or messaging and  Amazon offers no email or live person support.  So when I got to the point of using SSH to connect to their servers and all I got back was connection refused, I was stuck.  Amazon forums were of little help.

Today I took a look at GoGrid.  These guys look like they are actually in the business of supporting commercial users of the service.  They have a GUI interface, static IP, load balancing and best of all 24/7 live support.  I can get started for about $99 per month and scale from there.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

THINKFREE DESIGNED ThinkFree Office 3 specifically to emulate Microsoft Office 2003 applications as exactly as possible, and the company managed to come close.

The look and feel of the three components, Write, Calc and Show, are about as close to their Microsoft counterparts as you can get. Every ruler, button and menu is nearly exactly in the place a Microsoft Office user would expect them to be.

 

With each of the ThinkFree applications, we were able to open a corresponding Microsoft file, make changes and save it without a problem, for the most part. The only area that ThinkFree fell short was with Calc, which was unable to keep certain Excel macros and data validation, but otherwise left everything intact. We were pleased to see that ThinkFree Office came with 1G of free online storage. When we added files to the ThinkFree Manager, they automatically synchronized with that online space. These files could also be accessed by logging in to the My Office Web interface from anywhere. They also could be published and shared among other users of My Office. There is a 10M limit to the file size you can upload, but only the most extravagant spreadsheet or presentation documents should approach that limit. Through the My Office interface we were also able to access a beta version of Workspace, which we found to be a versatile project management/online collaboration tool. We were also able to save ThinkFree Office files as Adobe Acrobat PDF documents as easily as any other file format. The ability to do this without external software is definitely an advantage. We found it unusual that, although ThinkFree programs could save in many different formats, they have absolutely no native file formats. Although this isn’t a particular advantage or disadvantage, we thought that it was worth mentioning. ThinkFree Office can be installed on Linux and Mac computers in addition to Windows ones.

The retail price of ThinkFree Office is one of its best features. A retail price of $50 is a good one, and the government price of $15 is a fantastic bargain.

for more informations : http://www.gcn.com/

ThinkFree PDF Viewer has been launched !

PDF file format documents acocunt for 10% of ThinkFree’s storage.  This figure was created in October 2008 

 In order to reduce inconvenience to view PDF file format documents, we decided to provide a PDF Viewer to users to allow viewing PDF file format documents without installing Acrobat Reader.

Thinkfree has built up the web office CDN using Akamai solutions !

“PLEASE BE PATIENT—THIS MAY TAKE SEVERAL MINUTES.”
How boring whenever you see the above message in web office !
We finally has built up the ThinkFree CDN(Contents Delivery Network) network infra using Akamai CDN Solutions.
Do not have a boring time in using web Office.

For more informations,,,Let me explain what CDN is

What is CDN ?

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a system of computers networked together across the Internet that cooperate transparently to deliver content most often for the purpose of improving performance, scalability, and cost efficiency, to end users.

CDN Benefit
The capacity sum of strategically placed servers can be higher than the network backbone capacity. This can result in an impressive increase in the number of concurrent users. For instance, when there is a 10 Gbit/s network backbone and 100 Gbit/s central server capacity, only 10 Gbit/s can be delivered. But when 10 servers are moved to 10 edge locations, total capacity can be 10*10 Gbit/s.

Strategically placed edge servers decrease the load on interconnects, public peers, private peers and backbones, freeing up capacity and lowering delivery costs. It uses the same principle as above. Instead of loading all traffic on a backbone or peer link, a CDN can offload these by redirecting traffic to edge servers.

Since edge servers are usually placed near end users, assets are delivered via fewer hops, resulting in lower latency and increased delivery speed. End users will likely experience less jitter, fewer network peaks and surges, and improved stream quality - especially in remote areas. The increased reliability allows a CDN operator to deliver HD quality content with high QoS, low costs and low network load.

Modern CDN’s can dynamically distribute assets to strategically placed redundant core, fallback and edge servers. Modern CDN’s can have automatic server availability sensing with instant user redirection. A CDN can offer 100% availability, even with large power, network or hardware outages.

Modern CDN technologies give more control of asset delivery and network load. They can optimize capacity per customer, provide views of realtime load and statistics, reveal which assets are popular, show active regions and report exact viewing details to the customers.

About Akamai

Akamai® is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. 
More than 1,700 organizations have formed trusted relationships with Akamai, improving their revenue and reducing costs by maximizing the performance
of their online businesses. Leveraging the Akamai EdgePlatform, these organizations gain business advantage today, and have the
foundation for the emerging Web solutions of tomorrow. Akamai is “The Trusted Choice for Online Business.”
For more information, visit www.akamai.com

World First Netbook User survey

Just last week, both Dell and HP leaked details on soon to be launched netbook models for the US market. This comes as electronics stores have trouble keeping Asian netbook models on the shelves.

With consumer confidence tumbling, users have become extremely sensitive to price points. Twenty-six percent will spend less for holiday gifts this year than just one year ago. Given this scenario, easy and affordable cloud computing applications may gain further market proliferation over the coming months.  Netbook computers make a perfect companion to cloud computing applications.

This in mind, ThinkFree pioneered “in-the-cloud-netbooking” with its recent launch of ThinkFree Office Netbook Edition. To better understand consumer buying trends, we specifically asked users(Over 4,000 Peoples) what they use their netbooks for and what is important to them in netbook applications. 

Following is what we learned and what we have to consider to make the offfice mobile productivity suites

Most people are using their netbooks for …

• Business
  • Contact management
  • Calendar/task management
  • Document review, minor edits, emergency editing, edit on the go
  • Basic spreadsheets and presentations
  • View and edit PDF documents
• Blogging
  • Blog posting
  • Basic image editing
• Entertainment
  • Web browsing
  • Music, iTunes
• Communications
  • Email
  • Instant messaging
  • VoIP, Skype

Netbook users demand the following from netbook applications …

• Speed
  • High speed performance
  • Quick start up
  • Fast file load and save
• Small
  • Light on resources
  • Low disk space and RAM requirements
• Simple
  • Easy to learn and use
  • No feature bloat
• Compatibility
  • e.g. MS Office 2007, 2003
• Optimization
  • Adaptation to smaller screen dimension
  • Modern, concise UI

ThinkFree Develops Office Productivity Solution For Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Platform

ThinkFree Mobile to Target Global Mobile Computing Market

San Jose, CA (October 28, 2008) – ThinkFree (www.thinkfree.com), a leader in next-generation office productivity solutions, has announced that it is developing a new office productivity software called ThinkFree Mobile that is optimized for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets. 

What is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon ?

Combine a 1GHz processor core, our sixth generation DSP and 3G connectivity with ultra-low power consumption to create new mobile devices with the performance to revolutionize the world of mobile computing. The Qualcomm Snapdragon platform empowers a new generation of Pocketable Computing Devices (PCDs) and Mobile Computing Devices (MCDs) that deliver real-time ubiquitous communication, high performance multimedia, location-aware content, full Internet browsing and productivity applications, all with the lowest levels of power consumption for all-day battery life.

Qualcomm is enabling new generations of devices that will take the mobile computing experience beyond anything that has been possible before:

All-in-One Pocketable Devices
The new generation of all-in-one Pocketable Computing Devices (PCDs) combines communication, entertainment and navigation, coupled with full Web browsing on a 4” display. Add a docking station to link to printers, external keyboards, monitors and other peripherals.

Mobile Computing Devices
Mobile Computing Devices (MCDs) offer a revolution in computing and communications in a thin and light form factor with a 7-12” display and full keyboard. MCDs are perfect for viewing movies and maps, or editing spreadsheets and documents while also having access to full Internet browsing and social networking. Dual-mode MCDs allow for notebook and tablet/reading mode to further improve the user experience.

BenefitsNew mobile computing devices based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform deliver:

• Day-long battery life
• Ubiquitous, real-time connectivity: WWAN, Wi-Fi® and/or Bluetooth®  technology
• Rich Internet experience with full Web browsing
• Access to real-time “personalized” location-aware content with built in GPS
• Streaming and playback of locally stored HD video content
• High performance 3D UIs, games, maps and more
• High-quality still pictures and video clips
• Access to social networks through instant messaging, video conferencing and chat
• Productivity with third-party applications

Qualcomm Anchorage with a new reference design prototype appeared at CES 2008 .