Eclipse is one of the best desktop based IDE for developing applications. It is used for devloping Java, C++, Python, PHP, Ruby on Rails and various other web technology based applications. IBM has always taken Eclipse platform to a high level by making Eclipse based Lotus Notes Client and Designer platform and other IBM Rational Tools. And so is many third party companies for making their own development tools.

Cloud computing and Platform as a service is emerging a lot these days. To make PaaS powerful like desktop application development we need a perfect web based development platform to develop web application on cloud.

IBM and Eclipse foundation is coming up with a new project called Orion, a web based application development platform which will run on your browser. It would be powered by almost all features of desktop based Eclipse IDE. A prototype of this IDE is available at http://www.eclipse.org/orion/

Project is still in its initial development stage, you can register and try some hands on this IDE.

According to a press release from Apple, on May 31st Apple is going to unveil its cloud computing platform called iCloud at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) which will be held on 6th June (Monday, next week).

After Oracle and Microsoft announcing their cloud computing services it was very much expected that apple will be soon reveling its strategy on the emerging cloud platform. Thought the site do not contain much information about this platform.

Internet and cloud computing community is eager to know what Apple can offer with iCloud and does it compete to Microsoft’s cloud service Windows Azure.

Also according to the same note at WWDC Apple would also reveals it’s new Lion Mac OS X and more improved iOS 5. WWDC Apple will also allow iPhone developers to test their existing application on iOS 5.

TechGearz will keep you posted on the release of the latest Apple techs in coming days. Keep Reading.

It is very difficult to find an article for beginner to Google App Engine. So TechGearz is planning for a series of post on Google App Engine, stating this post. Target audience for this article are people who are interested in knowing about Google App Engine, Cloud Computing and especially for web developers who have great ideas and want to host their application online with some minimum budget or with no cost to start with.

What is cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing has many definition on internet. In a very simple term, Cloud computing is an on-demand business method, where you are allowed to use high end services whenever you required and pay only for the unit of time you have used that  service. Cloud computing is divided into three parts basically, IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS – Platform as a Service and SaaS – Software as a Service.

Company those provide IaaS – Amazon Web Service,  RackSpace, Microsoft (Windows Azure), IBM.
Company those provide PaaS – Google( Google App Engine), Microsoft (Windows Azure Platform), force.com, Colayer, Wolfpaas, OrangeScape, IBM.
Company those provide SaaS – Goolge (Google Apps-Gmail, Google Docs, etc), IBM (Lotus Live Suite), SalesForce etc.

CaaS – communication as a service is a new term in the market. This is a cloud computing service which offer different communication software like IBM sametime and Lotus Communication as a service hosted on a third party infrastructure.

Why to go for Cloud Computing?
Advantage of using Cloud computing by any business is that they can concentrate on their core business and be free about the IT infrastructure required to run their business. Users will be getting all upgraded versions of software’s/services without extra pay and they would be paying only for the time frame they are using that particular service. You can learn more about cloud computing here.

What is Google App Engine?
Google App Engine is a PaaS provided by Google, where you can host your application on Google’s infrastructure. Google App Engine is customized for fast performance and application can be developed on two popular platforms majorly, Java and Python. You can also build application using Rudy which can use JVM engine for running the application and HTML, XML and JavaScript based applications.

You also have access to Java and Python based API to access the Google’s user authentication framework and user data. i.e. Anyone can develop an application which can use googles authentication for signing and diffent plugins which will help in storing and integrating you data with other Google Service like google docs and gmail etc.

Do I need to pay for using this service?
Most of you must not be aware that anyone with Gmail account can host an application on Google app engine. It is absolutely free to get started i.e. any one can use 500 MB of disk space and 5 million page views per month on Google app engine absolutely free. You can also configure you own domain or you can use Google’s “appspot“ sub-domain for free.

If you application is going above the 500 MB space and CPU utilization you will be charged for per /GB according to Google’s App engine rate. If you enable the billing scheme for this service, your free usage limit will be raised and you only pay for the resource you use above the free level.

It is very simple to getting started with Google App Engine. In coming post we would see how to use python and Java APIs to develop application and configuring Google App Engine.

As Google Says, “Many of us these days depend on the World Wide Web to bring the world’s information to our fingertips, and put us in touch with people and events across the globe instantaneously. These powerful online experiences are possible thanks to an open web that can be accessed by anyone through a web browser, on any Internet-connected device in the world.”

It is very important for a new web-users to know basic concept of internet and Web 2.0, this would help them in understanding and trusting the web.

Google has taken this opportunity and designed an HTML 5 based interactive book called 20 Things I Learned About Browser and Web, this explains 20 most important thing you should know about Browser and Web.

Topics Included in this Book.

1) What is internet?

2) Cloud Computing

3) Web Apps.

4) HTML, JavaScript, CSS

5) HTML 5

6) 3D in Browser.

7) A Brouwser Madrigal
PLUG-INS

9) Browser Extensions

10) Synchronize the Browser

11) Browser Cookies

12) Browsers and Privacy

13) Malware, Phishing ,AND Security Risks

14) How modern browsers help protect you from Malware and Phishing.

15) Using Web Addresses to stay safe

16) IP Addresses and DNS

17) Validating Identities Online

18) Evolving to a faster Web

19) Open Source and Browser

20) Things Later or a day on cloud

This interactive book is written very simple and keeping in mind that the readers are non technical people. All the 20 points discussed in this interactive book are divided into 20 lessons of the book and explained in details.

You could also notice that most of the topics are related to Google in some or the other ways. Google with this Interactive Book want people to understand internet, Cloud Computing, Cloud Apps (with Google Apps) and Safe Browsing (using Chrome ). You can also say it is a way of promoting Google with the help of Open Web and people know about the advantage of Open Web.

With this interactive book Google has also provided a good example of how to replace Flash with HTML 5. [Apple would be Happy ]

Enjoy reading this book, hope this was a helpful update and do share with your Friends and Family

Click here to check out this interactive book.

[blippr]Lotus Sametime is one of the oldest and most popular, secure corporate chat client. Till date Same time was available only as a desktop based chat client like Yahoo Messenger, with Lotus Sametime 8.5 now its also available on web. Sametime is popularly know for it easy integration with Lotus Notes mail client and many cool features like storing chat history, start chatting from people in your email thread (which you also have in gmail now)  and group chat features for years now. There are many more cool features which we dont have in today’s public chat clients like yahoo messenger and gtalk.

Lotus Sametime 8.5 also comes as a part of  IBM’s Cloud based SaaS offering called LotusLive. LotusLive includes cool tools like iNotes, Sametime and may more.

Check out sametime features. Check out this video… [/blippr]
[blippr]

We have observed that in past few months every other [blippr]technology[/blippr] blog having a post on [blippr]cloud computing[/blippr] and cloud OS. Cloud Os is also called future of OS by many blogs designed for accessing [blippr]internet[/blippr] and web application primarily and compatible with any [blippr]netbook[/blippr].

It was [blippr]Google[/blippr] who first came in public about its cloud based OS, [blippr]Chrome[/blippr] OS which is much awaited Cloud OS, yet to be released (god knows when). Its not just [blippr]google[/blippr] coming up with this futuristic idea on cloud OS there are many other companies in Q and already in market.

Some months back on techgearz we saw an article on gOS and cloud OS built on [blippr]Ubuntu[/blippr] 9. Jolicloud is another such cloud OS release 2 weeks back again built on [blippr]Ubuntu[/blippr].

Idea of Jolicloud started in summer 2008 when Tariq Krim started thinking about the possibility to build an “organic” laptop, a combination of the greenest technologies and a fair trade production. This device would run an Internet operating system and replace existing costly software with their web alternatives.

He meet few manufacturers, designers and industry friends regarding the same, later he decided to drop the hardware to focus only on building the Internet OS. He was later joined by Romain Huet and Tristan Groléat, two young developers who shared his vision. They spent a few days drafting the blueprint of what an Internet OS should be. They decided to buy a few netbooks, refresh their knowledge of Linux and rented some office space in the Montorgueil area of Paris.

Jolicloud is a lightweight [blippr]Ubuntu[/blippr] based cloud OS designed with netbooks and internet it mind, according to @jolisupport (Joulicloud’s online support team on twitter) joulicloud support almost 98% of netbooks available in market and it has the latest Linux kernel. Its not just limited to netbooks, you can install it on PC too with minimum configuration of Pentium processor with 300 Mhz and 32 MB Ram – 256 MB recommended.

( Normally, netbooks comes with AMR based / Atom processors and 1 GB Ram ).

At a Quick glance, desktop of this OS reminds me of a simple portal website with all necessary links to your favorite web sites and applications, just a click and get started. Unlike other [blippr]Linux[/blippr] based OS its not too bulky and loaded with many desktop apps, its just a 602MB ISO file (click here to download), ported with basic applications like [blippr]Firefox[/blippr], Ping IM etc and other Linux basic apps for administration purpose.

It also has a Internet tab where you can find many internet based applications like facebook prism, shortcut to Firefox, bittorent client and any internet based software which you installed (check the above image, i have installed Linux based chrome & Twitter Prism and it started appearing in Internet tab on desktop). Unlike many Linux versions, Jolicloud doesn’t contain a Open Office pre-installed, but can download it from “My Jolicloud – App Directory”. It contains quick reference to internet based office apps like [blippr]Google Docs[/blippr] and [blippr]Zoho[/blippr] document editor.

My Jolicloud is a web app to access joliclouds online community, you need to create an profile / account for accessing this space., this can be done once you install the OS. You can synchronize your My Jolicloud profile contents with your Facebook profile.

My Jolicloud also contains list of users who are using jolicloud, you can follow them and check their statuses like you do in twitter. This status basically contains which software they have installed recently, what update did they do to their profile and so on. I saw around a 300 registered users when I logged in, this may increase soon as many users start using it.

Another interesting part in My Jolicloud was something called App Directory, you will find many application like Open Office, Google Chrome, Skype etc and Firefox Prism of many web apps which includes, [blippr]Gmail[/blippr], [blippr]YouTube[/blippr], Zoho office, [blippr]Twitter[/blippr], [blippr]Facebook[/blippr] to name a few.

( Firefox Prism allows you to have a quick reference to any web apps on your desktop, which you frequently access. )

[blippr]Google’s Chorme OS[/blippr] claims to have a 7 second boot-up time, well jolicloud took me around 30-35 secs to boot completely and around 10 secs to shutdown. ( It might be b’coz i am using it on VMware Player and not a netbook, with a shared CPU was already running [blippr]window vista[/blippr])

Well apart from the above features, you can find easy to access system administrative tools, etc. It would be out of scope of this article to explain every details of this OS, so soon you can expect a video post on joulicloud.

You can join discussion on cloud with us @ Facebook and Twitter

Check out some screens shots from joulicloud  below  OR Click Here

[blippr]Platform as a service (PaaS) is one of most emerging topic in internet these days. PaaS is one of the important element in cloud computing.  This article is Introduction to PaaS – from a series of article on PaaS – Platform as a service on techgearz.

What is PaaS?

According to wiki: “Platform as a Service” or “PaaS” is a computing platform used to deliver “Software as a Service” or SaaS. In a layman’s term, its a platform available as a service to develop web applications without actually worrying about the hardware infrastructure and software layer required for developing and deploying application.

PaaS is purely web based solution, you don’t have to download or install any software for developing your web applications / services. Most of PaaS based services come with the capability of developing workflow & web services bases applications, you can test and host the application in few steps. Developer can login to PaaS and start developing his application on internet and he need not store any thing on his PC /Mac.

This platform allows multiple people to collaboratively work on an application, irrespective of their geographical locations.

Why to use PaaS ?

Traditionally when an organization is planning or building an enterprise application,  they need to plan for hardware infrastructure, operating system, selecting software platforms like Java, .Net or PHP to develop those applications and so on. And if the application is complex they need to have a huge infrastructure with 24×7 electricity supply, high cooling systems and heavy bandwidth which is attached with a huge cost.

PaaS solves all of these problems for you, it provides you with infrastructure required to run your complex applications on internet and you will pay only for the services you are using. It has easy to develop interface, plugins and widgets which help you to develop the application faster. With PaaS, you can concentrate more on the innovations so that you can come up with your applications and stop worrying about the infrastructure you required to deploy the same.

[Coming sessions we will get in dept of PaaS and the solutions in PaaS ...]

About cloudPaaS – A PaaS Knowledge base.

cloudPaaS is a Free, Open Knowledge base on PaaS. An Open-Organization formed with the intention of spreading the knowledge about PaaS and the benefits of using PaaS in your organization.

Join cloudPaaS on Facebook and Twitter , keep your self updated about on PaaS.[/blippr]

If we look into the so called Google Chrome OS and Cloud OS from gOS, they are all  browser based or you can say a OS designed to access internet and date present in internet.

If we talk about data, your data like documents, presentation will go into Google docs or similar applications / YouTube, iMeem and other alike application for videos / audio and gmail, Facebook, IMs and other social networking sites to communicate with your friends. Or you can say your data will be floating in the internet and you need to go to each application for access them. In a way, we will loose the ease of  accessing data at one place i.e our desktop and we have to login to all these above mentioned applications.

Question coming to mind is, can we still collaborate all data at one place like we do on our windows / Mac desktop ??

Here we have one answer to that “Question?” that called web based OS … It not exactly an OS but, web based mimic of OS that we have today.

One of such web OS is eyeOS (there are many others also), eyeOS is a php based Web OS/ application (we will be referring it as OS here). Its completely Open Source solution and any one can download it under GNU-GPL license.

It can store all kind of data at one place and access from something called your online / web desktop, its also powered with some cool application again a mimic to original desktop versions.

Application>>

• eyeOs comes with web based office application which replaces your desktop version of MS office. It not as matured as them but useful for editing excel and document file.
• It also has a good file management capability
• Also have an inbuilt media player.
• You also have a in built IM chat and mail client, you can configure it your requirement.
• Also it has desktop management tools, you can change desktop themes like you do for your  window desktop.
• Last but not the least, Its an open source product ,  you could also develop application  using simple html, javascript ajax and php.
• [check out screen shots below to see few of them.]

What Good / Bad about it.

Good part of this OS its completely online you can save data and access it from anywhere whenever you want. Its open source, so you could download it and modify it to your requirement.

Bad part is you need to be online to access it.

But how do i access it ?

It is purely Cloud Computing example. Currently this eyeOS is hosted on eyeOS linux based server. You can access Demo version of eyeOS by registering for the same with eyeOS.com. Demo version comes with 1-gb of free disk space and those cool applications.

I am not sure how much it will cost if you want to expand the space. eyeOS also comes with an enterprive cloud based paid serive.

Or else you can download this OS under the GNU-GPL license and use it on your PHP server,

Note For  PHP developer, You don’t have to install MySQL or any other kind of database for this OS / application, it work on pure folder structure of system you are using to port this application. [ Download eyeOS ]

<< Screen Shots Eye OS >>

Web based desktop of eyeOS

Playing Linkin Park music on eyeOS flash based web -media player

Interface to upload files from desktop to web based eyeOS desktop

online document editor - online replacement to original office apps

Control Panel to manage users and themes.

File management interface, similar to linux file management interface.

Already 6000 developers are testing and developing apps on Google Wave using Google Wave sandbox. Google Wave Sandbox Ids where distributed at launch of Google Wave to few requested developers.

If you where not the lucky one, this time you might get a chance to have a hand on Google Wave. Google will grant access to first 100,000 user request received, this time it would be developers as well as normal users. They can test beta version of Google Wave.

According to a letter from Google, which i found on internet, Google is now more focusing on the stability and speed of Google Wave and not on new features. Though lots of developers from the open source community is contributing in developing apps for wave.

I am very much sure Company’s like Colayer who are working on virtual contextualized products will be exited from this news and waiting for healthy competition.

Colayer is a Pune – Swiz based company who is using wave like concept for a decade now and about to release their new product soon, Read more about Colayer product here.

Waiting for tomorrow, Techgearz will update you on all the happenings with Google Wave

Related Articles :

• Exclusive look on GoogleWave interface
• Colayer – Using Google Wave like concept for a decade
• Google Wave – New Way of Communication

Cloud OS, infact it is said to be the first browser based operating system to be launched from a company called gOS. It designed spealy for netbook PC and will be avaible in marcket by 2010 along with Gigabytes netbook.

This video shows how simple and fast this operating system is. It powered with some cool Google Apps like the other gOS versons. (Read this article for that).

its a browser based OS and the browser lookes like the Google’s Chrome browser and first Question in my mind is Google’s “Chrome OS” and gOS’s “Cloud OS” one and the same.

lol no idea … will have to wait and watch.

Video shows that the OS boot very fast also log off with the same speed. This is something a user will always look for but, its not a normal OS with lods of features, its designed only for internet users.

Cloud OS is already running a beta which you can get on demand from gOS website http://thinkgos.com. You will have to mail them on beta@thinkgos.com along with you netbook model number, if you have one.

Read this space for more interesting articles on this topic