Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability, Oh-my!

It might seem like a quest to have the best of everything but Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability isn’t that mythical. You don’t have to battle the the wicked witches, but that doesn’t say it is a simple path to take either.

So lets talk about an example that exists out there already:

Wikipedia – www.wikipedia.org

We all know what Wikipedia is but in case you missed it (perhaps your just starting to use a computer?), Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia that is based on an openly=editable model. It allows users to add articles/pages and also edit existing ones in a self organising way.

So lets take a look at some stats and see how large Wikipedia is, bear in mind this is only the English side of Wikipedia and doesn’t count for other languages.

I’ve also put together a more visual representation taken from the wiki stats page, Click to enlarge the view!

So there is no doubt that Wikipedia is large, and they have use an Open Source, Scalable solution across multiple servers, multiple countries, etc. All with less than 30 staff members dedicated staff members. Of course you don’t have to be as large as wikipedia to use the software and there are in fact many smaller sites that use the same software. You might not have the large economies of scale either, and that doesn’t matter because there are effective solutions out there.

Enter LAMP, a solution stack of open source software that is ready to take on your needs. LAMP is actually an acronym (not a light stand) that represents the key open source software packages.

Linux – An operating system
Apache – A HTTP web server
MySQL – Database software
PHP – A language in which you can code web pages

LAMP allows you set up and host your own site with ease, it is scalable and as for the cost effect side – it is Open Source. I’ve heard lots of rumours but I haven’t been able to find any ‘hard facts’, but major sites like Facebook and Flicr are based on LAMP, or at least were at some stage. I could say my site is based on a LAMP distro to also make a point (but it isn’t), however there is nothing stopping you from starting your own site and doing so.

The next biggest craze though is cloud-computing and business creating their sites of API’s, and renting CPU power from Google, while hosting data on Amazon S3, etc. The reason I avoided this is because it is very much on the hype cycle and I don’t feel comfortable not having that much control. This might be changing (and it looks so), but it is hard to recommend outsourcing a solution when you can get started yourself easily with LAMP!

Ronald Azuma in 1997 gave the following definitions on Augmented Reality:

combines real and virtual

is interactive in real time

is registered in 3D

With this in mind and wanting to use information available on the net, I was surprised at how many applications where available on the iPhone. The first one I used was called NearestWiki.

NearestWiki once open finds out where you are located, and then searches for all wikipedia articles that have been geo-tagged with a location in a 20 mile radius (roughly 32 kilometers). Once it has this locations loaded you can then navigate 360 degrees to find out what articles around you and how far they are.

NearestWiki being used outside a QUT lecture room.

As you can see from my example standing outside a lecture room at QUT. You can see that it has picked up an article about QUT itself, which is 190M away. Yes I was at QUT but it was fairly accurate in saying that the heart of QUT was a little bit away.

It also picked up the GABBA as we know it, but officially know as the Brisbane Cricket Ground. Having just drove past this I could say that I had driven further than 1.54 Km. If your wondering why there is a difference it is because it directly 1.54 Km away and doesn’t take into account how you would actually need to get there (and I’m okay with that).

As you scan around you can pick up on the Roma Street Parklands in the opposite directions, Parliament House which is next door to QUT and so on. So how can you use this to help you out?

Well provided you had phone reception, and could get a data connection on your phone. If you were close to a ‘tourist attraction’ or something that has a wikipedia article you could turn on this application and identify things yourself. You could locate nearby interesting things you may not have come across and if something caught your interest you can simple tap on article and it loads up the full wikipedia article for you to read.

You are now your own tourist guide? You are empowered with information instantly and easily. You are using information in ‘Real Time’ to interact with the ‘Real World’ and this is just the start.

This application only provided data on wikipedia articles so I thought I would see if I could find another application to find a place to eat or drink.

The first one I’ve tried and just briefly (no more than 5 minutes) demonstrates potential was called buUuk.

With a similar interface and concept as I said before, this locates places that have been added to the database (unsure if it is is buUuk’s or a shared one) and displays them in a similar fashion.

The buUuk application being used (spinning around) to locate the nearest palces to eat or drink.

One thing that looks nice is that not only do you get a list of places you see user ratings. Not only that you can rate the places yourself which really empowers you with data in real time.

With a click of a button you can see details of the place (even a button to make a phone call to them), user reviews you can read, prices, address and a whole lot more information.

So what are its downfalls?

• There are a lot of places that don’t turn up as they haven’t been added.
• User participation is fairly low from what I can tell.
• Heavily relies on the ‘Network Effect’
• With small participation reviews could be skewed or biased made by owners
• You need an device that has this enabled (are there any others besides the iPhone 3Gs)?
• Internet connectivity on your mobile device (often expense)

The nearest places to eat or drink that buUuk has found. A lot of places missing at the moment, but over time will this improve?

So lets have a look at what Enterprise 1.0 is and compare it with Enterprise 2.0:

Taken from http://www.e2conf.com/about/what-is-enterprise2.0.php

If you compare the two tables you will see the differences between the two. Business can also transition from a Enterprise 1.0 driven organisation to an Enterprise 2.0 driven organisation over time. There are strong benefits in that Enterprise 2.0 allows the knowledge of many accessible to many. Information is no longer constrained to help files, e-mails, books and traditional methods. Most importantly, Enterprise 2.0 is happening now (with or without you).

Professor Andrew McAfee, formally introduced the concept of Enterprise 2.0 in 2007. One of the easiest ways of describing the technology the enables Enterprise 2.0 (without showing or describing the technology itself) is by SLATES (or S.L.A.T.E.S.).

S – Search
L – Links
A – Authorship
T – Tags
E – Extensions
S – Signals

These concepts were quickly identified as an Enterprise 2.0 checklist. This concept has been developed further in recent times (FLATNESSES) but the 6 key concepts are still there. We can identify Enterprise 2.0 technologies using SLATES or more recently FLATNESSES, so lets move on to Enterprise 2.0 platforms.

Chances are that you are using these or have at least seen them. In fact I can guarantee it (your on my Blog – that you can search, view links, read articles I’ve written and allowed you to provide feedback, views tags I’ve used on content, seen extensions like my twitter updates and one of the ways I’ve signalled this is by using RSS feeds).

Wikis

Blogs

Mashups

Online Communities

Social Bookmarking

Social Networking

Differences between Enterprise 1.0 and Enterprise 2.0 – check
Ability to identify technology that uses Enterprise 2.0 – check
Available platforms which helps oraganisations use Enterprise 2.0 technology? – check

So, do we know what Enterprise 2.0 is?

It seems that a few people are interested in organisations and sites that are actively using it. I’ll try gather a few sites together and share some examples in the near future.

So this means, that you can now add your site to the list and check each others out (something I’ve been waiting to do) by clicking here! Not only is this a good way to see what we are all doing, but it is a ‘cheap’ way to get the search engine spiders/crawlers interested in our blogs.

For those of us who are starting out, the sooner they crawl the better.

For those students who are a little unsure what to do, click the link above to go to the wiki. Then click edit on the top of the page:

Click on edit, located on the top of the page.

Once you click edit you will see the wiki code, which transformed the page into what you say. Navigate to the bottom of the post and repeat what the other students have done like so.

Copy and paste from a student above, then replace! It is quicker then typing the whole lot.

After you have saved the page you should see your update straight away. Now click your link and confirm it has worked!

Yes, I know it was simple, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get play with screenshots, and get some images on my blog.