Whiteboard Wednesday: Security in the Cloud

This Wednesday we bring you the hot topic of Cloud Security. You’re not seeing things, it does look a lot like your normal Enterprise Security setup. Why settle for less?

Whiteboard Wednesday: Horizontal Scaling (aka Load Balancing)

The always impromptu duo of Matt and Jake bring you another episode of Whiteboard Wednesday. Last week we talked about vertical scaling. This week: horizontal scaling!

Whiteboard Wed…Thursday: Scaling in the Enterprise Cloud

Whiteboard Wednesday – Cloud Storage

Ever wonder what makes storage in the cloud bulletproof? Jake and Matt hit the whiteboard for another brief, basic, totally unscripted overview!

Virtualization basics whiteboard session

Matt and Jake hit the whiteboard for a spontaneous unscripted Q&A session:

My favorite web 2.0/SaaS apps

I thought I would start off my blog by sharing some cool Web 2.0/SaaS sites that I have come across:

MindMeister – I am a big fan of mind mapping to put ideas out there (I have a whiteboard in my home office , and Mind Meister is the best online tool to do that.  It has a free membership with a few limitations, but the free membership is enough for what I need.

Gliffy – Along the same lines as Mind Meister, Gliffy takes my diagramming mania a bit further and allows me to do flow charts and even network diagrams. Has a free version.

Mint.com – If you can get past the fact that you are storing logins to all your bank accounts on their servers (deal-breaker for most..It took me along time to rationalize it), Mint.com is a crazy awesome tool for keeping track of your finances on a global level. It’s kinda cool to be able to log in and see your net worth when you are having a bad day.. I guess that could be depressing for some… forget I mentioned it. 😀

Dropbox – Tired of carrying around and losing USB keys? I was. A friend turned me on to dropbox, which takes a folder and syncs it to their cloud storage. The files exist locally on all the computers you have dropbox installed on, so editing online and offline is possible. The files are also accessible from their site, so if you are in a pinch and are on a computer without it installed, you can login and grab that powerpoint. 2GB free, and at time of post 50GB for $10/mo or $100/yr.

Basecamp – I like project management, but my job is not project management. What I HATE is having to work on project management more than the project itself. Basecamp plays into my simplistic nature with giving me enough project management to keep organized, but not add a big chunk of overhead. In Basecamp, you have milestones and todo lists. Milestones are project deadlines. Milestones may have one or more todo lists associated with them. Makes me giddy just thinking about how easy it is compared to MS Project. <shudder> Basecamp has no free plan, but there are some free alternatives out there if you are strapped for cash.

dimdim – Once in a while, I will need to collaborate online, and dimdim is free and simple. It’s lacking some features of the other online web meeting type apps, but it gets the job done.

So there it is. Have a cool web 2.0 app I should know about? Send me a link, and I will give it a try!