Ideas and reviews for websites, film, business, products, and designMicroblog your ideas and be discovered

It’s worth noting that the cloud certainly has borders. It’s the one reality that proves the cloud computing movement may seem at times abstract and vague but in the end it is the international politics of our world that creates some of the deepest issues for its place in the world markets. According to InformationWeek , The 451 Group presented a webcast that showed cloud computing adoption trails in Europe and Asia. About 57% op spending is in the United States with 31% in Europe and 12% in Asia. The numbers get even more polarized when you only look at the adoption for infrastructure as a service. A full 93% of spending is in the United States with 6% in Europe and 1% in the United States. Sponsor The low numbers almost makes it seem like some artificial effect is in play. And in some ways it really is. A lack of European data centers services by the large providers affects adoption. Rackspace, Terremark and Savvis are the primary companies looking to develop a presence in Europe. But they need to build data centers before they can have any real presence there. According to the 451 Group, 99 percent of European businesses are either small or mid-sized organizations. And they have plenty of choices from telecommunications providers. But here is an interesting twist. InformationWeek: One obstacle to both sides is the U.S. Patriot Act, which gives the U.S. government a right to demand data if it defines conditions as being an emergency or necessary to homeland security, and a measure that contradicts that power when the data is of European origin, the European Union’s Data Protection Directive. In 2006, the European Court of Justice ruled that an agreement negotiated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was too broadly construed and violated the EU’s directive. The agreement was about sharing data on European airline passengers headed for the U.S. The data sought by the U.S. was too broadly construed and violated the EU’s directive, the court said. “Both measures could prevent establishing a cloud without borders,” said 451’s William Fellows. Cloud advocates say services established via an Internet data center should be accessible by people around the world, and they are in the case of Google search or Facebook apps. But when it comes to sensitive data, national borders still prevail because of conflicting laws.” The issue is apparent now with Google’s issues with the Chinese government. It’s not the technology that is making cloud computing an issue. It’s international politics. Discuss

The British novelist Ian McEwan said, “The naming of what is there is what is important.” But there is a thing, or an idea, a system or network, that we live with every day, that we live in , that we, in point of fact, are , which has no name. When apprehending and recognizing something new, we humans name it. Some say we name things in order to control them and there might be some truth to that. But who would not elect to control an earthquake than be controlled by one? Our information gathering network has changed out of recognition, but its taxonomy has lagged behind. We need to name this new network, and we would like the readership of ReadWriteWeb to help us. Sponsor In the Big Room, our editorial chat room, we were speaking about the earthquake that struck Baja this afternoon. Before the media, even the new media, got it, we had read it on Twitter . ReadWriteWeb has written before on the ability of this new tool, and others like it, to gather and disseminate information. In the course of this discussion, we came to a surprising realization. Twitter was no more the issue than the so-called mainstream media was. We were beyond all of that now. Our network was not restricted to three news channels, or the cable news networks, or a handful of social media websites or thousands of Facebook accounts, or even all of those things taken as a whole. Our access to information, our ability to exchange it, was no longer bound by anything at all, with the possible exception of time. The reason for this sea-change is that we ourselves have in part become the system formerly we only used . We have become the fulcrum of our own network. Prometheus is well and truly unbound. This network, the one that connects us to virtually every part of the world, to every person on the globe, branches like a Mandelbrot set . It consists of computing devices from desktop computers to laptops to tablets to phones; it consists of every program written to run those devices, every website and service that helps us to process and move the truths we witness or create; it consists of cell towers and server farms; it consists of social media tools and word processing programs; but above all it consists of, it is powered by, human beings, both singularly and in aggregate, minds and mind. Our network is alive. But it needs a name, and we don’t have one. Jokingly, one of us called it The Culture . It isn’t. It isn’t even a culture. Just a network. But a vast one, a possibly game-changing one and, above all, a nameless one, one which we should control rather than allow to control us. Help us assert control over an exciting, but daunting reality. What should this global network, this lace of machine and human, location, data and feeling, thought and thing, observer and observed, speaker and listener, be called? Discuss

Iconoculture: In a DIY twist on augmented reality tech, StickyBits gives consumers the power to transform their surrounding environment into their own multimedia markup playground. Think of it as virtual graffiti for the digital age. StickyBits uses vinyl barcode stickers and a mobile scanning app to tag social media content on top of real-world objects. StickyBits compatible smartphones simply scan the barcode to get the digital skinny on all of its appended content (or add their own). Digital footprints leave real-world marks with StickyBits [Iconoculture]

What are the security issues with the iPad and how is it suited as a device for developing enterprise scale applications? Those are the questions we posed to Ken Westin, the founder and CEO of ActiveTrak . Westin is a a security expert. His company develops a software and a service to track the location of a device if lost or stolen. In June, the company is introducing an enterprise version of its technology that will also go by the name ActiveTrak. Sponsor The iPad will become a device that we will undoubtedly see in the enterprise. It fits into the same space as a smartphone or social computing technology, applicable to personal and work life. Neville Hobson on the NextWeb cites a survey by Sybase about the interest in smart phones for the workplace and its correlation to the iPad. But Westin says the iPad does have its own set of limitations that makes it an issue for development of enterprise security grade applications: The iPhone and iPad software has built-in PPTP, IPSec, Cisco VPN software . But more companies are moving to SSL VPN, which is not supported by the iPad. In time, though, a client should be developed for the product. The device may be able to access the domain, however it is different from being a domain member as an administrator cannot manage it, enforce group policies or push patches or apps to it. Westin is supported by other security experts who cite Apple’s lack of interest in security issues: “The general consensus is that Apple continues to do only the absolute minimum to address enterprise security and supportability requirements,” noted Andrew Storms, Director of Security Operations for nCircle. `We haven’t seen any new enterprise iPhone security features from Apple since the summer of 2009 when they introduced their new hardware level encryption, which was almost immediately subverted. This is not the kind of behavior security professionals want to see in vendors.’ Recent events seem to illustrate that point. Security researches were able to compromise a fully-updated iPhone 3GS at the recent CanSecWest Pwn2Own competition. Storms warned me “If the iPad has the same OS as the iPhone then enterprises are going to be even more concerned about the data on this device.’ ” Westin said it is the background processing in particular that makes the iPad less appealing for ActiveTrak. For instance, its application runs in the background on an Android device. An iPad, and for that matter an iPhone, does not provide that capability. His company does provide a free application for the iPhone. It’s free but it can only be activated if someone turns it on. To maneuver around the issue, Westin said they disguise the app button as a Safari icon, which activates the application. That’s when the tracking starts by triangulation techniques using WiFi and GPS. Westin is a fan of Apple. He uses a MacBook Pro. He says developer tools are better on the iPhone and it has a great community. But, Apple wants it all. It controls the hardware, the software and the content. That’s a concern for the enterprise that wants to adopt the iPad. Such control over content is a problem as it gives Apple the power to wipe an application off a device without permission. That may seem unlikely in an enterprise setting but the possibility does lead to hesitation. Further, Apple may make great high end products for consumers but it does not have the equivalent of a Blackberry server that can control the device and its content. Instead, the individual must have a MobileMe account. This can become a coordination nightmare for IT if the enterprise has 5,000 people who need an iPad. Westin said ActiveTrak will wait until the iPad platfrom opens up more before developing. Discuss