If you are into Virtual Machines, Application Deployment in the Data Center, Data Center Management, Storage Networks, or simply into IT, you may have heard of Cisco's announcement on the Unified Computing System. I just wanted to share some market research data from Goldman in Confluence. CNET did a great job at putting it all together and stating conclusions on the data: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17751
A few weeks ago, news of the first team to summit Everest in 2009 showed up in the media. A team of sherpas that were cleaning the route for other expeditions. IMG sherpa Mingma Tenzing was first on top of Everest for 2009 at 12:25pm. Panuru (IMG), Kami Rita (AAI), Dorje and Nima Tsering (Himex) were a few minutes behind him. They left the Col at 2:15am.
This week, a completely different story: one Sherpa disapeard in an Avalanche on Base Camp. The avalanche was massive, caught on camera, and very impressive pictures were taken.
For the original post: See the First Ascent Blog.
This week, using Twitter, I discovered about a service called Dropbox. The company offers a service to synchronize and share files between users and multiple computers. The analogy is a virtual USB thumb drive.
You simply download a thin client that lives on the system tray, it creates a special folder in your hard drive called Dropbox, and everything that you put in that folder is syncrhonized accross all the computers where you installed the client. Also, if you want to share files, you can dedicate another folder within the dropbox folder, to share with specific friends. Oh, and it also has a web interface where you can access your files, in case you are in a public computer that doesn't have the client.
The service gives you 2GB of free space, or you can pay $99/year for 50GB. Files are uploaded into a server in the Internet, and that's how you achieve backup and synchronization.
The initial target market for the service is individuals with multiple computers that want to easily share files. I use it for synchronizing some file between my home PC and work MacBook. Also, it seems to cover some of the SMB market too, where small offices share common files. However, there are no group account, each individual would have to pay for the service to gain access to the 50GB.
The product positioning can probably be improved, and I am sure it will come as the product matures: group accounts offering a discount for the service are a must for the SMB market; ISP and Service Provider alliances are probably another option; I don't see a fit for advertisement other than in the main portal.
For a good article about Drop Box on Techcrunch:
Dropbox: Now Effortlessly Syncing Files For 1 Million Members
This is funny. Someone left a comment in my blog post about the Twitter Followers experiment from last year.
At first, I thought this was some kind of phising site, but still decided to go and check out the site - http://www.twittertrafficmachine.com
That's when I started laughing. On the front page, there is an "Informertial" about this wonderful system to get Twitter followers. It's very funny; with 30 days money back guaranteed and everything. This is nothing else but a pyramid scheme. The only thing missing is Billy Mays.
