With the emergence of the iPad, there are many trends changing and many ideas developing around an old but finally well-developed phenomenon: the tablet computer.

Although I am somehow late giving my opinion on the subject, I think it is worth the try.

One of the areas cloud computing can be very useful and extremely capable is on the thin clients. Despite the fact that definition of a thin client nowadays is quite different than few years ago (take iPad and compare it to any of the “revolutionary” J2ME enabled devices) they are still far less capable than conventional computers, i.e. laptops and desktops.

iPad (as a good example and so far the best in the segment) is fairly powerful by itself and offers decent performance in doing resource-intensive tasks like 3D game rendering. But there are times that its processing power and storage capacity is not sufficient for certain tasks. You might say, well turn to a more powerful computer then. The price of such move could be sacrificing the super cool and useful features like ultra-portability and modern human user interface of the iPad.

Think of a university class in which all students bring along their iPads (or a similar tablet computer). Such device is more than enough for day to day tasks like note taking, voice recording, web surfing, and email. But when a resource-intensive task is needed, e.g accessing a huge archive of files and resources that needs a powerful processor for search and a big disk to store the data, the students can easily connect to the (private or public) cloud of the university and let the powerful servers do the job for them. The result is then transmitted back to the device without using extra battery or other resources. In the case of iPhone OS platform with SDK 4 it is even possible to do it in the background while doing other stuff.

You might ask how such an obvious case for the benefit of cloud computing is related to Flash on iPad?

Flash is a resource-hungry technology by nature and any device planning to support it, will sacrifice a considerable amount of battery life for the sake of more compatibility. And everybody knows how important batteries are for portable devices.

Noting that Flash-based applications do not necessarily have a better representation of data (being a front-end technology) and most of the features provided by Flash are easily doable with a mix of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, why employ a technology that will waste the precious battery life? A device like iPad is thin enough to rely on the cloud and stay cost-effective as well, while is powerful enough to perform the majority of daily tasks without external help.

Elasticity is essential for the cloud software, in which the software can use as much expensive resources as needed, for a limited period of time and then release them when the resource-hungry jobs are done. Why not keeping the less powerful devices as they are and instead putting the extra and occasional tasks on the datacenters shoulders?

Now in the middle of Apple-Adobe war, and apart from the usual corporate stuff, the question is that how this could affect cloud-based apps.

It is not hard to guess that there is no immediate and direct impact, but in longer run manufacturers will need to make more powerful and obviously more expensive devices to cope with technologies like Flash. This means less people and companies will afford to use such devices, which will eventually make an impact of the total number of thin cloud users.

Either Adobe will have to redesign its beloved platform, or it will have to be abandoned for a better technology. I believe Adobe can pull this off if it feels the pressure, because now it’s not just a small number of Mac users complaining about lousy Flash performance. We are talking about 10s of millions of mobile device users. Let alone the manufacturers.

On the other hand, we have to wait and see how well will Android do with its Flashy promises. If they could find a way to do it cheap, then Apple should think of a better solution than banning Flash.

Sometimes we become so obsessed and dependant to technologies like Flash that we can’t even imagine a world without them. It is true that it is a major part of the business model of a software giant, but so was the MS-DOS. Nobody believed back in 1995 that they could live without MS-DOS and now the younger generation doesn’t even know what it is.

If you are developing for Google AppEngine on Mac, and you have updated python to 2.6.x or higher, you might face this non-sense error over and over:

ImportError: No module named _multiprocessing

The main reason behind this error is that AppEngine (as of this writing) can’t get along with python versions higher than 2.5.x.

Fortunately it is quite easy to fix this issue, especially if you are using GoogleAppEngineLauncher:

This tutorial is tested on Mac OS Leopard 10.5.8 with GoogleAppEngineLauncher 1.2.4 installed.

1. Run GoogleAppEngineLauncher.
2. In the menu-bar click GoogleAppEngineLauncher > Preferences to open the Preferences dialog box.
3. Change the Python Path to the older version: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/
bin/python2.5 and then close the dialog box.


Changing the Python path in AppEngineLauncher

4. If you have the application added, pass to the next step, otherwise add the application by clicking File > New Application or File > Add Existing Application.


Adding a new application to AppEngine Launcher

5. Run the application. If it is already running restart it by clicking Stop and then click Run.
6. Test the application in the local host (e.g. http://localhost:8080/).

Now the application is running using Python 2.5 and you won’t see that error again. The advantage of this solution is that you won’t need to downgrade to python 2.5 or alter any system-wide path values. It just affect the AppEngine development environment.

You can use the same method on windows and Linux, it should work with no additional tweaking.

Most people use versioning systems like Subversion, Mercurial, and git to maintain their code while working on software and web projects. There are also hosted solutions like github and bitbucket providing developers with more features than a traditional version control environment.

But sometimes you just want to keep your code in a safe place and make sure you have reliable backup of the different versions, and that’s it! For smaller (or personal) projects especially, using versioning systems is an overkill. But what could be the solution?

If I want to summarize it quickly, the ideal solution will be a one that:

• Is hosted in the cloud (online)
• Is easy to setup
• Works without you doing any administration work
• Is cheap and preferably free
• Keeps you productive
• Keeps coding synchronized on multiple workstations
• Allows you to maintaing other related material, like PDF documentations, next to your code.

I think I found how to answer all these questions with one answer, let’s see how.

Storage as a service

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage service that keeps your files safe and in sync between multiple computers. It is basically created for backup and file synchronization, but I use it for coding and maintaining other contents like my web projects, and the book/article drafts including the drafts of this very article.

You will get 2GB of online free space which is pretty enough for many purposes, but it is always possible to upgrade to bigger plans.

Getting started

First create a Dropbox account and install the application (Windows, Mac, Linux) on all the computers you are working with. It is good to take a tour before , to check out the features.

Dropbox creates a local folder on your computer that is synced to your online folder. A mirror in the cloud, literally.

The solution I am proposing would work the best if all your computers run the same operating system, because you should set an identical path for the local folder on all computers. For example if you have a Mac and a PC, the folder structure difference will cause 2 different Dropbox folders (e.g. /Users/user/Dropbox and C:\MyDocuments\Dropbox\).

In my case, I set it to /Users/ali/Dropbox/ on both my home Macbook Pro as well as on my office Mac Pro. When I work at home (on my MacBook Pro) I store my ongoing work and it syncs with the remote folder. When I’m at work it sync back with my workstation and I can continue the work with no interruption.

The reason behind having similar folder structures is that when you are programming, you often use absolute file and folder references in the development environment. So having all computers using the same folder structure will guarantee you won’t face any silly issues in the code testing procees.

Using Dropbox

Now that you installed Dropbox and setup the folders, move a working folder or file, e.g a web project or a document you are working on, to the Dropbox folder. It will automatically start to synchronize the contents of the local folder with the remote folder (in the cloud). As you update the files, Dropbox will synchronize it with the remote folder and the good news is that it keeps a copy of every single version of the files as backup.

For the free plan the versions older than 30 days will be deleted, but in the paid version they will stay forever! so you will have all the earlier versions of your files.

On the other hand, when you open the other computers (that are configured), the local folder of Dropbox will be automatically synced with the remote folder, updating all files that have been updated in other computers. Then you can continue working on your project from the line you have left on the other computer, without carrying USB sticks around.

That was easy.

Happy yet?

Dropbox offers an intuitive web access interface to all versions of your files, so you can restore or download any older version. You can also setup a shared folder between you and other Dropbox users (say, your colleague) to exchange data in a productive way.

I am happily using Dropbox for syncing my files and it didn’t let me down even once. It also helps me keep the older versions in case I messed the current version. Every save you perform on your files is stored in Dropbox, so it is as if you have a live history of your work bit by bit.

Many times you need to collect information from users (e.g. employees) through online forms.

As I just did for my HR department as a favor, you too can do it very quick (but not dirty) in Zoho Creator.

I assume that you have a basic understanding of Zoho Creator and databases in general. If not you can have a look at the Wiki site, or more generously check out the respective chapter in my book Foundation Zoho: Work and Create Online, out September 2009.

Creator allows you to quickly setup a database by designing the data forms, and then embed the forms in any web page. It means that you skip many steps (compared to when you do such task in a traditional way of coding everything yourself) and let Creator to take of it. You might realize the skipped steps in this tutorial, and well, if you didn’t, don’t bother.

Now, let’s create a database application that holds the data of a survey you run on your website.

Getting started

First you need to create the application itself. Then we continue with adding the necessary forms.

1. Open Creator (http://creator.zoho.com) and log in with your Zoho credentials. Create an account if you don’t have one yet.
2. If it is your first time it will automatically open the application wizard (figure 1) where you create the application. Enter webForms in the Application Name and survey in the Form Name.

   

   figure 1. Creating the application.

3. In the form designer (figure 2) you can create a full-fledged data entry form with standard elements, coding, and validation. This tutorial will just use the design features, so start with dragging a Radio button from the field-box (left) and dropping it on the form just like in figure 3.
   
   figure 2. The form designer.

   
   figure 3. Dragging a radio button.
   

4. Fill in the values in the Adding Radio dialog box as you see in the figure 4. Then click done when you are finished. These elements will determine the design and basic behavior of the radio button.
   figure 4. Setting the values for the radio button.

5. Check the result of the previous steps on the form. You can see a radio button set with 3 options to select and a label in the form of a question. The first element of your form is built and we are going to perform similar tasks for the rest of the elements.
6. Now add a Checkbox to the form: drag it from the field-box and drop it on the form below the radio button.
7. Fill in the values for the check-box as in figure 5. Then click done.
   
   figure 5. Setting the values for the check-box.
8. Drag and drop a Multiline and fill in the values as you see in the figure 6.
   
   figure 6. Setting the values for the multi-line.
   
9. For the last field, drag and drop an Email and set it just like figure 7.
   
   figure 7. Setting the values for the email.
   
10. Check the final form and compare it to figure 8. They should look almost identical.
    
    figure 8. Reviewing the final design.
    

Well,  you have just created your very first form. It’s now time to run it and test how it works. Then you will embed it in your website for the prime time.

Getting the embed code

To refresh your memory let me mention that to place the form in your website in order to gather information from the visitors, you need to embed the survey form in a web page of your website. Although you won’t write a single line of code, it is always beneficiary to be a bit familiar with HTML, maybe to that extent that you know every web page is made of HTML code. So all you will do is to get a piece of HTML code (snippet) and paste it in the right position in the source code of the target web page.

Before that, you need to run the Creator application, webForms. Until now, you were in design mode, creating the pieces of the application (well, just a form so far). Running an application on the other hand, is like executing a standard application where you can interact with different parts of it, enter and retrieve data.

1. In design mode (you are already there) find the big yellow button, Access this application and click it. The application will open in the run mode and all design elements will be replaced with a good looking environment waiting for you to enter data.
2. On top of the form, next to its title, click the More Actions menu and select Embed in your Website (figure 9).
   
   figure 9. Starting the embed process.
3. Click Click Here in the next dialog box (figure 10) to have access to the form without needing Zoho credentials (while entering data) and then copy the code snippet (to the clipboard).
   
   figure 10. Reviewing the final design.

Embedding the form

You have generated a embed code that loads the form designed in Creator anywhere in the body of the web page you paste it. Such web page could be a post or a page in your blog, or in any website that you have the rights to add HTML content to.

Here I am just going to demonstrate how to embed our Creator form in a WordPress page. Other blogs (Blogger, MovableType, etc.) or CMSs (Joomla, Drupal, etc.) will follow a similar approach with some difference in the details. The point is to paste the code snippet in a HTML body.

1. Login to your website (WordPress, in here) admin area.
2. Add a new page (Pages > Add New) and enter a title as well as some body text.
3. Turn the editor to HTML view where you can see the underlying code.
4. Paste the code snippet in the HTML body in a suitable position. The outcome should look like figure 11.
   
   figure 11. Creating a page with the form embedded.
5. Click Publish to save and publish the form.

Testing the form

To test the form you just need to open the container page. The page looks like other pages in your website with a form embedded in it. The Zoho logo appears at the bottom (in the free edition of Creator), but it is no big deal.

Try to enter some values in the form and click Submit when you are done.

If you skip a value that is mandatory (identified with a red asterisk) or enter wrong information (e.g. enter a number in email box) the form will show an error message asking you (the visitor) to enter data correctly (figure 12). It actually validates the values against the rules you have set while designing the form (figures 4, 5, 6, 7).

figure 12. Testing the form.

Web developers will be amazed by the features Creator provides out of the box. Easy interface design and validation plus many other features that are beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Now your visitors are able to participate in the survey and give their feedback using a form that you created in less than an hour.

But where will all that data go?

Extracting the data

Collecting data is not even half of the job. Behind the scene you need to extract the entered data to analyze it for whatever reason that is important form you.

The good news is that while you were busy designing your form, Creator made a View for that particular form by which you can extract the entered data. Views are like customizable portals to data. Although views are way more powerful than just showing you the data, but we just stick to one feature (viewing raw data) for you to see where the incoming data goes to.

In Creator, in the run mode, open the survey View from the sidebar (figure 13).

figure 13. Extracting data.

You can navigate through data, search, filter, and even export it to different formats. You may even embed this form in another web page, but I leave this to your imagination since you gained enough knowledge to do it yourself.

Congratulations, you have managed to create a simple, but powerful survey application with few clicks and no coding at all.

What next?

Creator is a powerful database application creation platform, that  many call it the online Access. But I believe it is even more useful because it is cloud-based and allows you to create multi-user internet-based applications that can be used by SMBs and SMEs.

The webForms application, can have more forms for guest-book, feedback, inquiry, etc. In fact you can create a full-fledged data oriented website using a blogging platform and a database application hosted on Zoho Creator.

Don’t forget to checkout the Creator help to unleash its power and use it to solve real life problems.

This article was originally posted on CloudAve.

Security remains as one of the biggest challenges in adopting and spreading cloud computing. But there is an even bigger concern that could threaten the existence of clouds in a bigger picture.

Read the story to find out what this threat is and what could be done about it.

Recently I have jumped on Python wagon to play with Google AppEngine a bit. Python is a very fun (and powerful) language and I feel so bad I never touched it before.

There are many editors for Mac OS to make coding in Python even more fun, TextMate and Coda to name a few, but it is not much productive. You need to code in the editor with no code completion for AppEngine SDK, then you need to start the local web sever in the terminal to test your code.

Aptana Studio in the other hand, provides you with a great user interface and many other features, all inherited from the mighty Eclipse. By installing PyDev plugin in the other hand,  you can make Aptana, Python friendly.

However, there are still 2 missing links in the chain of perfection to make Aptana the IDE of choice for developing for AppEngine: Code completion for Google libraries and built-in debugging facilities.

In this tutorial you are going see how to make Aptana Studio your one and only AppEngine development tool in Mac OS X.

Note: I assume that you have a basic idea of Python and Google AppEngine. You should be also comfortable using Mac and installing applications.

Getting Started

First you need to install AppEngine SDK on your Mac. Note that when you visit the download page of AppEngine there is a DMG package for Mac. First, you need to download and install it the way you do in standard Mac applications.

This package will make your Mac ready for AppEngine development, but it will not help you with customizing Aptana. You need to have a copy of all libraries used in SDK on your computer.

For this purpose you need to download the ZIP file listed in the same page (for Linux/Other platforms) and unzip it in a folder in your Mac (e.g. Documents).

Now download and install Aptana and install PyDev, a plugin for Python development in Aptana:

1. Open Aptana and in My Aptana page (opens when you run the application), switch to Plugins tab.
2. Find the entry for Aptana PyDev and click Get it.
3. Go through the installation wizard and restart Aptana at the end, as instructed.

Now you need to configure the environment for AppEngine. Let’s create a new project first.

1. Open Aptana and create a new project using File > New > Project.
2. In the project wizard select Pydev > Pydev Project and click Next to continue.
3. Type in a name for the project and choose 2.5 for Grammer version. This is because AppEngine is  currently supporting Python 2.5.2.
4. If the Interpreter is empty click the link below to configure an interpreter. Use Autodetect for Aptana to list the available Python installation and proceed.
5. Click Finish to create and open the empty project.

It is now time for the configuration.

1. With the project open, open Project > Properties and navigate to PyDev – PYTHNPATH.
2. Click Add source folder for External Source Folders and browse for the folders you see in figure 1. You can add more libraries if you needed.
3. Click OK to proceed.

Figure 1

If populating libraries were successful you can see the code completion works just fine.

Figure 2

Configuring the debugger

Finally you need to configure the debugger, so you can run your projects from within Aptana.

1. Click Run > Run to open the Run configuration window.
2. Select Python Run on the sidebar and click New launch configuration (the first button above the sidebar).
3. Enter a name for the configuration (e.g. AppEngine) and Browse for the project name.
4. Enter the full path for dev_appserver.py as you see in figure 3.

   
   Figure 3

5. Switch to Arguments tab and enter ${project_loc}/src in the arguments box. You can add more arguments for dev_appserver.py.

   
   Figure 4

   Note: If you don’t use the default src folder (that PyDev creates for new projects), you need to omit it in the argument, so it becomes ${project_loc}

6. Click Apply and then Run the application. You should see the application server run log in the Console window.

Figure 5

Congratulations. You can now enjoy the power of Aptana while developing for Google AppEngine.

P.S. Special thanks to Joscha Feth because I benefited greatly from his article.

This is an article posted on CloudAve.

As you might know the Open Cloud Manifesto debuted on March 30st.

It outlines the pillars of Cloud Computing as well giving a brief on what the possible threats and weaknesses could challenge the early and future adopters.

The manifesto declares 4 major goals of an Open Cloud:

• Choice; to give total freedom to the cloud clients in choosing between different cloud providers with no barriers
• Flexibility; to maximize the interoperability between Clouds and organizations on different Clouds.
• Speed and Agility; to employ open interfaces to allow organizations to build solutions that easily and quickly integrate

Read the full story

Middle East is usually behind when it comes to the bleeding edge technology. Clearly because we don’t build bleeding edge technology unless we are US or EU residents!

One of the greatest aspects of Cloud Computing is SaaS (Software as a Service). With the current credit crunch creeping all over the world, this might be biggest chance for SaaS to take a big leap and make itself ahead of the game.

However is it like that everywhere? Or is it just in US and Canada?

The point is that Middle East market is so overwhelmed by Microsoft supplied software that there seem to be no room to breath for alternatives. Windows is a reigning champ on both client and server systems, Exchange is there with no competitor, and Office is a no-brainer choice. In higher market levels you see Oracle and SAP ruling.

You might say, duh, this is pretty much the case everywhere, the situation here is more intense. The local market is so addicted to such products that I think it will take another 2 to 3 years for it to wake and see the world is a better place with SaaS.

However there are some constraints too. In a perfect world, SaaS applications would work just fine replacing the sluggish, pricey, and hard to maintain  applications.

But here is the thing: What if we can’t rely on the local Internet connection? UAE (where I currently live) has the best Internet facilities and biggest user share in the region, but we experience total blackouts one or twice a year due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

Well, I don’t need to say that what will happen to my cloud-based business if my US-hosted SaaS application goes down for a day.

In the other hand, there a lot of political and economic tensions between this part of the world and the rest of it! The security risk does matter and if a Middle Eastern firm totally relies on an overseas SaaS platform, what could be the guarantee for this not be used as a potential pressure factor?

Perhaps local and private SaaS platforms could be the best solution, but Private Clouds have their own merits and demerits.

Whatever the ups and downs of moving to the Cloud could be, the companies in the region, especially government and enterprises should have a close look at what is currently happening up in the Cloud.

One of nice features in zoho Business is organization groups that allow you to really collaborate and share documents, tasks, and links between the team members.

However creating such group although looking simple is a bit tricky.

Many users (including myself) reported that one they want to creat organization groups, it would give them a vague error message. This is because in creating the group you don’t specify a moderator!

I found this totally by accident (I’m not sure if this is included in the documentation) that every organization group needs a moderator along with the members to be specified.