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My Updates

I have jumped head first into CloudFoundry over the last few weeks. In doing so I’ve started working with AppFog, IronFoundry, VMware and other devops tools.  There are several avenues I’m taking to get more familiar with CloudFoundry based PaaS technology. Here’s a short review:

Writing

I started writing a series which is being published by New Relic around “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service“.  Part 1 is live NOW – so go give it a read!  :)

Working

Currently I’ve been working up some Enterprise Prototypes using the IronFoundry Technology. The idea is to provide a seamless deployment option for Enterprises that may have a very mixed environment of public and private computing options, virtual and non-virtualized environments, and any array of other capabilities. I’ve also been toying around with Windows 2008 Server Core, which I’ll have more about shortly.

Public Cloud AppFog

AppFog provides a public facing PaaS supporting PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, MongoDB and a lot of other packages. They’re currently in beta right now, which I was fortunate enough to snag access to, but I’m sure the covers will come off soon enough! The underlying technology is built on CloudFoundry, providing a robust, scalable, and capable infrastructure connection to provide PaaS on.

In addition to AppFog there is the CloudFoundry.com offering, which I’ve tested out a little bit, but mostly focused on AppFog and on building out…

Private Cloud Capabilities w/ Public Cloud Style Infrastructure

I’ve built out some images to test out how CloudFoundry and IronFoundry works. I did pull down the provided virtual machines but I’m also building out my own to understand it better. The Ruby + C# that I’ve seen from the VMware crew & Tier 3 team has been great so far (I always dig reading some solid code).

That’s it for this short review, more to come, and let me know what you think of my entry “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service” over on New Relic’s Blog.

I’m heading off on yet another coding adventure this coming weekend. I can never get enough hackathons, startup weekends, and such. The energy, creativity, and learning is unbeatable at these types of events. This adventure will be mashing up a plethora of APIs (SDKs) and other capabilities to build something cool against. What it may be, what it will be, I’ve no idea yet. But here’s a quick summary of the companies & entities involved.

First a quick review of Geoloqi and what CivicApps are, the key sponsors and organizers of the event.

Geoloqi - Development

Description: Geoloqi is a private, real-time mobile and web platform for securely sharing location data. We’re a company that believes in doing more with location, and creating useful services for people and businesses.

CivicApps
Description: The aim is social change. The path is regional collaboration. The focus is local.

Technology is changing our relationship with government. Not so long ago government made decisions with little public input. Those days are gone. Today, information technology has redefined the structure and authority of government. The problems our communities face are beyond the capacity of government to resolve alone. Cooperation, collaboration and openness are no longer questions of opportunity; they are essential means of conducting our community’s business effectively. Every citizen can be an active participant in reshaping their world. WE are the government.

The CivicApps.org site aims to encourage every citizen to be an active participant by putting the data in their hands. The CivicApps.org site was developed to source, profile, and accelerate innovative ideas using Web and mobile technologies. The aim is social change. The path is regional collaboration. The focus is local.
Beyond these two organizations there are a host of others that are putting forth support through either the hackathon or the CivicApps Efforts.

Here’s a list of the entities involved in the CivicApps Project, click on the respective image to learn more about each one. All of these, in some way, form, or manner have contributed data or otherwise to the CivicApps Data.

An elected regional government, Metro helps you make the region an extraordinary place to live, work and play. Metro serves more than 1.5 million residents in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties and the 25 cities in the Portland region. Some of the related data & maps they provide are covered here.

Our belief is that mass transit ridership can increase dramatically through improved customer service.

We’ll help by:

Empowering passengers with information about waiting time.
Providing Transit Authorities and operators with a robust, reliable, and cost-effective way to manage fleets and communicate directly with passengers.
Reducing the uncertainty associated with public transportation.

TriMet provides bus, light rail and commuter rail service in the Portland metro area. Our transportation options connect people with their community, while easing traffic congestion and reducing air pollution—making our region a better place to live. TriMet’s developer resources are available here.

…and others:

   
     

Stay tuned and I’ll have more on the hackathon and my project. Cheers!

A lot has been going on lately and I’m still working diligently to get caught up from all the meet ups, hackath0ns, off the cuff dev sessions, conferences, and more! Truly chaos, but a lot of fun chaos.

I’ve also been working with NW Cloud to organize things here in the great north west! From Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and more. If it has to do with cloud computing and events, we’re probably connected in some way. So be sure to check out the NW Cloud Blog and also follow the @NWCloud Twitter account.

In other user group news, SAWSUG (http://www.sawsug.com) or “Seattle AWS User Group” is also coming under the NW Cloud umbrella.  So to check out upcoming SAWSUG meetings we’ll be setting up event listings in most of the regular places (meetup, eventbrite, etc) but the main listing and updates will be on the NW Cloud Site.  For SAWSUG we do have a specific twitter account though at @SAWSUG – so go, sign up, get the RSS and be sure to follow our @NWCloud and @SAWSUG Twitter Accounts.

As for other unrelated events and such… 

Mobile App Hackathon (Redmond)

I’m not going to be making this personally, but if you’re into mobile app dev you should check it out.  This is put on by AT&T with guests like Apigee, so it should be a great time.

OSCON

I have an ad over to the right. I generally won’t post any ads, but this is for OSS and OSCON just isn’t really distractive from the core content I post here. It seemed like it would work out just fine to mix in with my regular array of things. If you’re going to OSCON, I’ll be there the whole week; coding, writing, and hanging out around town. So ping me via Twitter (@adronbh) and we’ll hook up for a round of beer, a coffee, or whatever we may.

Microsoft announced today that they’ll be supporting an effort to get Node.js working on Windows. Mary Foley picked it up quick, but also so did Node creator Ryan Dhal. This, being the explosion of support for Node.js, is excellent news. This further enables JavaScript for the whole stack, on any operating system stack. Getting a good solid, stable, and supported version on Windows will enable some serious performance on that platform. Up until the release of the support, Node.js is primarily limited to Windows via software called CYGWIN, which emulates (or runs on?) Windows and simulates a Unix/Linux Environment.

I’ll have more information regarding Node.js, Node Package Manager, and the whole suite of packages to get started with Node Development over the next couple of days. So stay tuned if you’re interested in getting started!

As I wrote about previously, I’ve got a presentation coming up tomorrow in Bellingham.

Check out the user group website:  http://bellinghamdotnet.org/

Check out the user group message/e-mail list here:  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BellinghamDotNet/

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