By Staff Writer –

The future of gaming will be done on the Internet. You could argue this is a stupid move. The Internet has destroyed the music industry, the magazine industry, the porn industry, and countless others.

Why on earth would gaming, one of the most profitable industries, want to go online too? Meet OnLive, a company that will use cloud computing to bring you games. That way you don’t need a game console like Xbox 360 to play. And you don’t even need a very powerful computer.

At least OnLive is starting out right. They will not offer their services for free like the media business has. For a monthly fee of $14.95, people can play games on the Internet. The catch? Renting and buying games will cost extra.

Is OnLive really the future of gaming? Probably.

Yahoo reports:

In an industry first, a new gaming service will start allowing people to “stream” popular high-end games such as “Assassin’s Creed II” over the Internet in June, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online.

The gaming industry’s move to the cloud isn’t all that surprising. After all, FarmVille owes its sudden success to the cloud. The game developers concentrated on coding the addicting game and didn’t have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure.

So if the gaming industry figures out how to monetize the Internet, big-time gamers won’t be the only ones tuning in. It’s likely every other industry leader will follow its lead.

Image: flickr/ Kris Barz

Gaming shares same fate as the TV and music industry is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

Cloud computing. Get familiar with those words. You probably already use a cloud computing service. If you use Gmail, you know what it is. And programs like Salesforce.com operate on a cloud.

In general,  cloud computing is any program or service that is run on an Internet connection. The servers and software are taken care of externally, so small business owners don’t have to worry about storage issues in their headquarters.

There are choices. Some businesses pay a company like Verizon — so they are basically buying power from a utility. Or companies can purchase computing power on a cloud service to cut down on some costs. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Two years ago, HotSchedules Inc., of Austin, Texas, a privately held provider of online work-force-management software for restaurants, moved to sales-force software provided over the Internet by NetSuite Inc. President Ray Pawlikowski estimated that it would reduce costs by roughly 20% over the next five years after factoring in software, hardware, personnel and training expenses. The result was steady costs despite the company tripling its business, according to Mr. Pawlikowski. “For a small business where every penny counts, you have to look at this seriously,” he says.

But cloud computing isn’t for everyone. Some companies prefer to keep their information behind their own internal firewall.

Still, storage systems are the most expensive IT problem and when starting a business, one must consider all their options.

Cloud computing is becoming the preferred choice. However, the technology used for storage is like a dinosaur. Kevin Brown, the CEO of Coraid wants his start-up to change that. Brown wants to do for storage, what Dell did for servers.

Still confused? Watch the black and white video below:

Coraid is even storing our DNA. Our appetite for data will only grow.

Should You Use Cloud Computing For Your Start-up? is a post from: TechStartups.com

I hate paper.

OK, not really. I enjoy writing and sketching in my notebook but even that’s not totally analog: I use a LiveScribe Pulse smartpen so I always have a digital copy.

Everything else, I drop into my trusty HP all-in-one printer/scanner/julienne fries maker, scan the documents I need to keep, then store them on my hard drive or in Evernote.

So, you can imagine my glee when the Doxie scanner made its presence known at this year’s CES (That is, after I got over the fact that it has little pink hearts all over it…)

Doxie scans your documents and images and uploads to your favorite cloud storage location including Google Docs, Evernote, Scribd, Backpack, Acrobat.com and Flickr. Doxie also offers their own PDF hosting service, which works with email, chat and Twitter.

Just as nice is that it works with my Mac (and with your Windows machine, too.). All you need is a bus-powered USB port and a mouse to push the “scan” button. (Which also has a little pink heart on it. What’s up with that?)

As much as I love the concept, I already have two scanners in my office. Adding a third for $129 may not sit well with my Money Manager.

But don’t let my personal red tape stop you – you can get yours in February.

[Doxie]

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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Doxie Uploads Scanned Documents and Photos Right To The Cloud is a post from: TechStartups.com

The interwebs have been getting all caught up in the Google Chrome OS hype but Jolicloud is delivering right now.

The Jolicloud OS, designed specifically for netbooks, is now available to anyone who wants to load it up and give a try. The company is calling it a “pre-beta” release but I’ve been using it since it was in early alpha and have found it to be very stable. (Video after the jump, thanks to our friends at netbooknews.com)

If you’ve been following the Chrome OS coverage then you know that it’s designed to connect and run all the applications in a browser – no local native applications here.

Some people might question Google’s cloud-based approach as being too limited. If you’re one of them, you should take a look at Jolicloud. You can still spend most of your time in the cloud while using Jolicloud – that’s my typical mode of operation – but you don’t have to.

Jolicloud does not rely solely on web-based applications. Based on Ubuntu Linux, Jolicloud provides a combination of sandboxed web-based apps (using Mozilla Prism) and a variety of apps that can be installed and run locally including apps like OpenOffice, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office.

It also provides local storage and playback for all types of digital media including music, photos and video making it much more versatile than a pure cloud-based netbook OS.

How will Jolicloud fare against Chrome OS?

Chrome is definitely something to follow but I think that many will find it limiting. Even so, you can bet that OEM’s will begin to offer Chrome OS on netbooks as soon as it’s stable which will make it tough going for little Jolicloud, no matter how solid or versatile it may be.

Disclosure of Material Connection: http://dsclzr.us/0

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• Jolicloud Netbook OS Is a Bit Like Chrome OS with Awesome Desktop Applications [Screenshot Tour] (lifehacker.com)
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• Google Chrome Cloud OS for Netbooks and Beyond – Google Chrome OS (siliconangle.net)
• Ubuntu in truffle shuffle with Chrome OS (theregister.co.uk)

Jolicloud Pushes Ahead with Public Release, Against Google Chrome OS is a post from: TechStartups.com

As cloud computing has grown in popularity its pundits have remained virtually unchallenged. That was until the T-mobile Sidekick debacle last week. Where Microsoft and one of its properties dropped the ball and all Sidekick user data. They responded by apologizing and promising to restore the user data (still not underway), but silver lining is fading fast.

Putting data any other place than locally on the device that is using it creates a new point of failure. And if your data only exists in the cloud, it is the single point of failure. In the Microsoft situation this seems to be a QA problem. I find it hard to believe that any developer would have that much blind faith in a system and be able to sell execs on it.

The cloud has its place for ancillary storage of non-essential data such as avatars, that if there is a failure or catastrophic data loss, the promised master service will still work. Not quite the case with Twitter and storing user avatars on Amazon S3 since they’re down more often than S3. But, nonetheless, if S3 did go down it would be another point of failure that diminishes the ability to deliver the expected user experience.

The newest of the clouds to come rolling over the hills are focused on real-time RSS and the <cloud> element. The big boys right now are Dave Winer with rssCloud and Google with PubSubHubBub (PuSH). Both are enhanced ping services for RSS publishers to store their feed data and then have it pushed out in real-time on the publisher’s behalf to web services. Essentially, removing the publisher from the delivery of their content and leaving it up to the cloud to syndicate it. Not wise.

There is a need for these services since the plumbing for publishing applications such as WordPress and Blogger don’t have native solutions that allow the publisher to be in control of syndication … yet.

Cloud computing and the cloud element at this time are simply points of failure in an already complex system for storing and moving data about. Developers will get better at handling data replication and backups but for now it isn’t a place that you should have any mission critical data residing unless you have a team of brilliant tech people behind you to clean up the mess.

And on a note of fairness to Dave Winer, from what I am reading in his posts like, “Where is the Apache of rssCloud?“, and questions on Twitter in regards to DNS like systems, I believe he is trying to build a better cloud that is a distributed system that wouldn’t be a single point of failure.

I hope that I am right.

Photo credit:

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

The “Cloud” Is Simply A Point Of Failure You Can’t Control is a post from: TechStartups.com

I’m not a big gamer. I love video games. Love board games. Pretty much love games period. I just don’t spend much time (as much as I’d like) playing them. I’m specifically not a big PC gamer, I prefer to leave my gaming activities on my various gaming consoles.

OnLive, a new tech startup, is looking at changing the entire gaming industry by delivering gaming to households everywhere, from the "cloud". Cloud computing is a hot topic these days and OnLive is taking the features and benefits available in cloud computing to the gaming market.

Their goal is that hardcore gamers, and newbies alike will be able to play graphically rich and interactive games without needing a heavy-duty gaming rig or perhaps even a console. All an end-user may need is a broadband Internet connection and OnLive will stream all the visual eye-candy that today’s latest games can muster straight to your PC or even your TV. OnLive will leave the heavy processing to super-powerful servers back in the datacenters.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

OnLive will also start-off ahead of the game in an area that many gaming companies and console developers get stuck: used games. Since the OnLive gaming experience is all delivered to the user as needed, there are no discs to purchase, re-sell, trade or give to friends and relatives. Every gamer will have to pay their own full-price way to get in on the action.

If you watch their video it really delivers the impact and service delivery they’re going for in the industry. OnLive really could be delivering "The Future of Video Games".

OnLive Delivers Online Gaming in the Clouds is a post from: TechStartups.com

Video has become as commonplace on the Internet as what images used to be. I remember in the 90’s when the idea of watching a streaming video from the web on my computer seemed amazing. I always remember how long it took to download those huge files on slower connections.

Video use on the web will only continue to expand still. Getting that video on the web can be a bit of a challenge if you don’t have the right help. Ankoder delivers video encoding functionality as needed without the user having to worry about much else in the process.

Ankoder encodes the video through the "cloud" which is provided by Amazon’s S3 service and CloudFront. They provide various customization options, Flash videos, and hosting of videos without the user having to worry at all about hardware costs, scalability or all the technical needs of what’s going to happen with the video once it gets in the "cloud".

Once your videos are uploaded, you can post and share them to your website, phone, MP3 players and other mobile devices as you wish.

Ankoder is taking the headache out of what can become a migraine of hassle if you have to worry about all of these items yourself.

Ankoder – Delivers Video Encoding on Demand in the Cloud is a post from: TechStartups.com

In what is obviously a direct shot at Google Docs availability, Microsoft has releases their own version of their Office Web applications functionality. The release is by invitation only as a technical preview of the service.

This is one of the next steps in Microsoft’s goal to release all of their applications as an option for software as a service (SaaS). Part of the ongoing effort of increasing the idea of cloud computing, the reality of running your entire business in the cloud is gaining traction with the increase in available wireless network options for end-users.

I believe that this is a viable extension of business and personal computing, but I’m still leary of the idea that everything will be accessible in the cloud. I just think for many businesses, throwing all of their business intelligence into the cloud may not be a pill that gets swallowed very easily.

Microsoft’s Office Web Apps release is providing "light" versions of their popular Office applications that are available through a browser. With the applications being available on the web, the extension to phone isn’t a very big of a jump. I’ve already got Office application functionality on my phone with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

The idea of my "desktop" only relating to my main computer (my laptop at this point) is no longer a true representation of my workspace. I also interact with my phone and perhaps other computers I may need to use that aren’t my main machine. The ability to quickly open an Office application I’ve written on any device, from any device, is becoming reality.

Image: Office 2010 Web Applications

Microsoft Releases Technical Preview of New Office Web Apps is a post from: TechStartups.com