Tag Archives: cloud computing

The EverCoupon: The last coupon you’ll ever need

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Today on Facebook, I saw one of my friends mention…

“I want to be an extreme coupon-er…”

My first thought: I don’t want to be behind you in line. My second thought: How do I solve this problem?

The Proposed Solution

The solution I’ve come up with is a smartphone app that lets you photograph coupons. It scans the photos, and credits them to your online account as available discounts, and automatically removes them when they expire.  Of course, you’d also be able to share the coupons with your friends as well. You then take your phone with you to the store, and pull up the app. It displays a scanable barcode for the clerk. When scanned, the store’s system contacts the cloud-based coupon-holding server, deducts the coupon values from your total, and they are then removed from your account.

No more waiting behind that one person who brought 30 coupons to the store. No more keeping up with which coupons are still valid/newly expired. Just a smooth shopping experience for everyone in line.

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Living in the Cloud: Code Editing

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As I mentioned in my previous post of the Living in the Cloud series, the majority of the stuff I do on the computer at work, and on the internet these days, involves creating/editing PHP codes or work and personal projects. Continuing the effort to turn the CR-48 into a useful and productive tool for people in my line of work, I have found a workable solution for those wishing to edit codes, and keep them sync’d onto their computers via DropBox.

Over the course of the last couple weeks with the Chrome OS netbook, my file synchronization setup has come to this:

  • Intranet web server runs Windows Live Mesh 2011 – syncs website files & database to Skydrive
  • Work PC runs Windows Live Mesh 2011 and pulls files from Skydrive. It saves them in a DropBox subfolder, and sends them up to the DropBox server.

A couple things about why my configuration is the way it is:

  • I use Windows Live Mesh 2011 for two reasons: the remote desktop feature and the fact that it doesn’t care where the folder you want to sync is, you can sync it right there.
  • I only recently started using DropBox for the potential of its API functionality. However, not many people are using the API, and it’s only available in certain programming languages.
  • I do use WAMP on my intranet server, so I am capable of moving the website’s files out of the www drive and into a DropBox subfolder and creating an alias in the Apache config for the new location. I haven’t done it yet, because I hadn’t found a web-based code editor that works with DropBox to provide a compelling reason to make that change – until now.

On to the good stuff.

For my web-based editing, I have decided to use a relatively new app from DropBox‘s own app site called: TextDrop. (Update, the app is no longer listed in the DropBox app site. The Link now goes directly to the app’s site.)

TextDrop - First Run

At first glance, this is a very basic text-editor. I do all my web coding in Notepad++, so using a notepad-type app is not an issue for me. If this is not the case for you, you may be better off using Kodingen.com or Bespin from Mozilla.

Also, right now, if you create a new page with the app, it is unable to save that back to DropBox. I don’t know what the status of this issue is, but at this time, it is only a minor annoyance as I’m not creating files usually, I’m editing existing ones.

TextDrop - Open files

The opening page has a Log In link, which gets you set up with DropBox to authenticate the app and give it permission to access/edit your files. Once you’ve granted TextDrop permission, you’re all set. Choose the Open button and you’ll be presented with the top-level directory of your DropBox cloud storage. Open up any text-based file, and you’ll be able to edit it right there, and save it back.

Since I only just found out about this app recently, I’m by no means an expert on it. However, Monday when I return to work, I will give all the pieces of my Living in the Cloud configuration a shot to see how productive I can be with only an internet browser.

Another web-based app that I’ll be keeping an eye on (which is being actively developed as of a couple days prior to this posting) is SourceKit. Right now it doesn’t get past the login screen – apparently the developer is working on getting it approved as a Production Application from the DropBox folks (API Key requirements, etc., if you’re familiar with how all that stuff works). It will have a tree-structure file list, and include the Bespin code editor along side it – essentially a light-weight Kodingen setup, using the DropBox storage instead of an FTP backend. The author has released some updates and looks like everything is ready to go. I’ll be working on a blog post after I’ve spent some time with it on my web development projects. It might even become my de facto code editor.

There will be more Living in the Cloud posts to come as well, with some Google Chrome OS features, functionality examples, and hardware demonstrations, some of which will also have videos. But for now, this is a promising step in the right direction to make this a viably productive utility.

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Concept: DropBox API Integration, Webhost Sync

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I enjoy trying to find solutions to things that are difficult to accomplish, whether that is researching existing technologies to try and mash them together, or developing new ones to solve a problem. It’s rare that I have to create completely new things, so more often than not, all the pieces to solve the problem currently exist. This is one such occasion.

Here’s my dilemma:

  • I’m creating a web-based application for my company’s intranet. We’ll call the application “Jada”.
  • Jada is hosted on a computer that has a one-way connection to the internet: out. No one can get in from the internet.
  • I sync my files to the cloud with Windows Live Mesh 2011 on Jada, and that gives me a real-time backup, as well as a copy on my computers at home.
  • Windows Live Mesh 2011 does not have the ability to edit files in the browser. DropBox does not have the ability to edit files in the browser. But DropBox has an API.

My requirement:

  • I have a Cr-48 Chrome OS netbook, and must edit my codes inside a browser. When I save the file, it must automatically end up back on the Jada server, without installing software (since I can’t, on this laptop).

The file-editor of choice for my codes is to host them on Kodingen and use their Bespin integration (as the actual Bespin site doesn’t have an import/upload feature yet). I have uploaded a copy of the files via FTP, however, that is a single instance of those files…thus any changes I make there must then be downloaded onto the Jada server via an FTP client, or pushed. Either way, that would happen at intervals, and not instantly, and definitely not from the Chrome OS laptop.

The concept of webhost sync would be similar to this:

  • A user would set up their DropBox folder so that the files they want would be scraped up by the software, and sent to the DropBox website.
  • A user would then authenticate to Dropbox on the editor (Kodingen in this example), and then map a folder created on the Kodingen FTP server to say “this folder is where I want the Selective Sync of that DropBox store to be located” or a new folder option would be offered to say “make this a folder in my dropbox account, and sync it.”
  • Every X minutes of inactivity to the files (no files have been edited or modified), or the user being logged out/session expiration, the Kodingen would poll DropBox’s file metadata to see if any files have changed. If so, pull them over to Kodingen’s store.
  • While inside the editor, a Save action on the file being edited would activate a hook to sync that file and any other files that have been changed.
  • There would also need to be a manual sync button for posterity in environments where multiple people would be working in other locations. Such changes could exist in the span of X minutes between CRON jobs to sync the server, and one would want to make sure they have the latest version of the files before they get started.

This is a general overview of how I would envision something like this working – and would definitely be a huge step in the right direction for programmers who wish to keep all their files in the cloud, but don’t have direct access to the computers they are developing for…especially if the Cr-48 is going to be as limited as it is when it comes to file editing.

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In the Cloud, First Things First

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Source: flickr/oskay

I didn’t start using a computer full-time until 2001 when I landed in the college dorms back at East Texas Baptist University. I immediately set out to create something memorable for the university in the form of student communication: an instant messenger based on school emails. That never took off, as I barely understood how to set up my email account in Outlook Express. Instead, I focused more on a social network (before that term existed), and running a web server from my PC in my dorm room.

Fast-forward 4 years.

The social network I started in college migrated to a global website. I also now owned a PocketPC, a laptop, and had a corporate desk job. During my off time (and sometimes my “on time”) I would work on the code for the web pages. The biggest problem I had was making sure the files I changed in one place were propagated to all other places.

It was just my luck: I became a beta tester for Microsoft Office. My favorite office program for that suite: Groove. Microsoft Groove was the very, very early fore-runner of what is now known as Windows Live Mesh. It was a desktop client that sync’d your files to the Groove Server. From there, conflicts were resolved, you could chat with other people in the work-group, and everything stayed in sync.

Fast-forward another 4 years, and you’d find me keeping my bookmarks sync’d with Del.icio.us, my web pages with Windows Live Mesh, my email in Thunderbird, my finances with Microsoft Money, and my IM contact lists with Digsby.

The one thing all those have in common: they all require a piece of software to keep them sync’d to the cloud. Over the last 2 years, I’ve been migrating as much as I can to the cloud, and exploring the available software replacement options as I find them.

So in making this transition to Living in the Cloud, first things first: cut the cord. Figure out what you do on a daily basis, and how you’d go about doing it if your only software was the Google Chrome OS.

Luckily for you, you can also experience the Chrome OS experience, even if you didn’t get one of the Google Laptops:

Imagine starting up your computer, logging in with your Google Account, and the first and only thing that opens is your internet browser: Google Chrome. Now, try to work. Attempt to go about your daily routine without access to any Windows network shares, Microsoft Office programs, an abhorrent collection of randomly placed desktop icons, or really anything you would normally launch from a taskbar/start menu/icon on your computer. Everything you do must be done in the browser.

Once the stress of not being able to minimize the browser has subsided, then start thinking about where the data is stored that you want – and where you can put it online to get it. So, first things first: start finding online resources to store all the things you think you have to have software to use.

I’ll start documenting my changes once I’ve picked them. I have a few resources I’m currently testing, but I may have to create my own solutions to actually achieve what I want in the end.

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Introducing: Living in the Cloud (The Series)

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Source: admintell.napco.com

Monday, I got an unexpected surprise on my doorstep: a Google Cr-48 Chrome OS Netbook (youtube video). From the video, you can see that it’s nothing more than a Chrome Browser with a keyboard and Wifi/3G internet access.

After spending a day getting it set up and testing the battery life with some moderate usage throughout the day, I’m going to start writing some blog posts related to what it takes to cut the cords and transition the daily routine of a programmer into the cloud.

Generally, netbooks aren’t for people who use a computer for things as computer-intensive as programing or graphic design, and are really optimized for journalists, bloggers, and people who like to waste time on social networking sites. In this blog series, I’m going to describe the software needed (or created in some cases) to turn a netbook into a productive tool for people who generally need software on a daily basis.

I’ll also describe what it’s like to use Google’s Chrome OS: the good, the bad and the ugly. There will be more videos about the device, the hardware itself (which is sure to change), and the software apps needed to make the transition.

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