742 + Interview Questions in Reviews and recommendations in Other Page 11 InterviewSolution

501.	Solve : Clouds?
Answer» What is the best free cloud storage available?Do you want... A. Speed B. Size C. Price D. Security. (Strong and Private) You can have any three, but not all four. So which three do you want? Free? This list is good: Free Online File- Storage Another way is to just rent cheap server space and learn how to use FTP tools and do nit yourself. The cheap space is fast in the wee hours of the morning. Dropbox, Live Drive etc etcGoogle. Photos Videos Documents (Office) Notebook Calendar Blogs etc... Now this. https://drive.google.com Unlike many of the promising upstarpt online storage services that host your stuff one day then send out shutdown notices the next. I do believe Google is here to stay. "The Cloud" is possibly one of the stupidest buzzwords to ever be applied to a 40 year old tech. Quote from: BC_Programmer on May 21, 2012, 03:47:10 PM "The Cloud" is possibly one of the stupidest buzzwords to ever be applied to a 40 year old tech. It doesn't exist...except temporarily...just like real Clouds.Actually it's the hottest "technology" in corporate America right now. Most companies have a toe in the water, but the rest are making aggressive strides toward huge implementations. I'm in the middle of investigating the viability a major cloud initiative for a few dozen VERY large companies right now. Keep in mind that while remote computing and storage are indeed decades old, the big driver right now is the speed, bandwidth and availability of Ethernet that wasn't there before. We recently noticed a lot of companies installing Ethernet lines. When we asked why, they said it was in preparation for new cloud implementations. IAAS, SAAS, PAAS, et al are all unbelievably hot at the moment and only getting hotter. It's a new buzzword label for what is an old and often used technique. The swooning over is a lot like the swooning by Sun for it's JavaSun network computers and the Apple Pippin, both of which were dismal failures. (mostly due to them being slow and far more expensive, as well as being separate hardware to begin with) In some ways, It's basically going back to what we used to have, in the 60's and 70's, with one minicomputer and multiple dumb terminals. In this case, the "dumb terminals" are our desktop computers and laptops. It is an interesting idea, but relies on the idea of offloading the task of storage to a set of other computers maintained by the cloud. For the price of being able to use the cloud over a few months one could easily get External hard drives for many times the size which can be used for backup, and a lot faster too. As a backup storage location "the cloud" (and really any online storage) is too slow to even consider as a frequent target to store backup data. Backing up to a tape drive would be faster. Free On-line storage services are even slower, though the companies typically have a good infrastructure. Nonetheless, even a high-speed 50Mbit connection would be slower than a backup to a local drive. The best use case for online storage is not for backups, but when you need to share files or need to access something from other locations. But there are already a number of services devoted to doing this for various kinds of information, too- photobucket for images, youtube for videos, communities like github for program source code, etc. There are things like Skydrive and now Google Drive, DropBox, etc available with varying degrees of shell integration too. I don't, however, understand how this would fit into a corporate setting. Regardless of any improved viability the term "Cloud" is idiotic and is nothing more than a marketing buzzword that has been pasted on technologies that have been used and leveraged for over 30 years. It just sounds whimsical now, which attracts the attention of the type of managers who combine the qualities of not knowing anything about technology and yet being able to form very strong opinions about it; very much the case of Java in the mid to late 90's, where managers who didn't know the first thing about programming "knew" that their next product just had to be in Java. And what happened then is happening now with the Cloud. Back then, demand for Java expertise skyrocketed as companies jumped on the java bandwagon. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that Java was not a cure-all panacea for software re-use, but not before hundreds of other companies made a killing selling Java productivity products. Some examples being "HotCoffee", Lotus Javabeans, and other idiotically named products following the theme of coffee-related words. We see the same thing now, as companies misunderstand the technology and try to apply it to everything, the demand for cloud services has risen, and other companies have taken up that challenge by offering those services. The problems are analogous, of course, to what happened with Java it was not the cure-all panacea for software development and code re-use anymore than on-line storage is the cure-all panacea for distributed storage. Java eventually settled down, and it still has use, but it's seeing less and less usage in the thing it was first targeted at on the desktop machine, which was "WEB interactivity"; so far, that has been replaced by CSS and newer things like HTML5, while Java became far more common for usage in desktop applications and games, particularly as the technology behind it matured. My point is that right now it's in the initial hype stage and companies would be wise to not get swept up, as many did, in the zealotry. By the time the Java dust settled, hundreds of companies had gone out of business and hundreds more had sprung up and disappeared in the same time frame; one has to wonder if "the cloud" may suffer a similar fate. At the very least I hope we revert to dropping the buzzword and just calling it "Online storage". I'm of course not saying it's useless, of course, just that it's overhyped and that often plays into peoples assessment of a tech, colouring them in a positive manner. Java, for example, was extremely popular, despite it lacking multiple inheritance, proper properties, attributes, delegates, lambda's, anonymous inner classes (originally), operator overloading, and a myriad of other constructs; this was because of clever marketing that made it seem "bigger" then it really was. You're focusing on storage. Many companies, however, are focusing on SAAS and PAAS. The cost PER user of Microsoft 365 is significantly less than the corporate licenses for Office. And the ability to have added cycles as needed without having to purchase additional computers is extremely attractive to many businesses - especially those with large cyclical variances (think H&R Block, retail companies, etc). Having said that, cloud storage is indeed appealing to many large companies. Having added resources for disaster recovery, archiving, etc. makes a great deal of sense - and access speed is not an issue. Anyway, that's what we're seeing and clearly it's a direction in which every COMPANY in the Fortune 1000 and well beyond are headed.I don't even see how a cloud storage could properly supplement a established backup solution. It has other usages- such as with PaaS, if the company's storage requirements change over the year for whatever reason, on-line storage could be used for part of year to supplement their own on-site hardware. For backups, Of course, hard drives can fail locally, off-site backup tapes can be unreadable, etc. but restoring and saving backups is hours faster than uploading hundreds of gigabytes of information, regardless of the speed of the internet connection (Tape drives generally transfer at close to 340Megabits a second sustained). Online storage moves the task of keeping your data safe from the IT administrators on your company's payroll to IT administrators of another who don't have a inherent stake in the safety of the data beyond it being their job to do so. Most companies should already have a backup strategy involving on-site and off-site full and incremental tape backups that have been tested, so- at least in my opinion- adding Cloud storage to this isn't very useful in general, but it can depend on the company's specific needs. But that's the problem, very rarely do people in the position to make such decisions in a company objectively consider the technology on it's own merits. Quote and access speed is not an issue. I never said anything about access speed... I was talking about transfer rates, A 20GB storage tape with a transfer rate of 340megabits per second in some of the latest incarnations is going to be faster than transferring 20GB over even the fastest internet connection, unless both machines are in a Gigabit LAN. If it takes overnight, as it often does, to make a backup of a system, it's going to take a lot longer to either backup/archive to or from a on-line storage location. And problems during the transfer either way could cause various problems. Another thing I feel, particularly with SaaS and cloud storage, is that it could present an issue for companies is that it increases the surface of attack. Software companies are semi-constantly having their source code leaked from their own internal networks from enterprising hackers. Backups stored on a cloud service will have that data as well. Naturally, there will be passwords, authentication, maybe encryption involved, but the fact is that so too did many of the companies that had their Intellectual Property leaked or stolen, so this increases the surface area; Hackers could get access to the private data either by doing what they have always been able to do and find some on-site wireless access point that some employee installed temporarily and forgot to remove; take advantage of a modem forgotten in some backroom somewhere that was installed to help Joe In accounting get access to his client's documents using a VPS- now they can apply the same things to the cloud service and get a lot of company data if they succeed. Basically, putting that sort of data- regardless of how many authentications and encryptions and hashes are placed as barriers- is a fundamental issue because a target you can see is a lot easier to hack into than one that is only maintained on the internal network of the firewall. This also opens up such companies to man in the middle attacks that can place themselves between the company and the on-line service and reconstruct the data. So cloud storage services, particularly those utilized by businesses, had better have good security certificates. Usually a company keeps it's confidential data- such as the source code to any software they sell, business documents, marketing planning, etc on an internal network that is not internet exposed. Introducing On-line storage in this computing means that the data will in fact be internet facing by design. There is a good reason that Company intranets are isolated as much as POSSIBLE from the internet at large. Quote Anyway, that's what we're seeing and clearly it's a direction in which every company in the Fortune 1000 and well beyond are headed. The problem is assuming that the direction that every company is going is inherently a good idea or is going to end well. How many other fads and hypes in computing have come and gone? FORTH was supposed to usher in a new era of computing in the 80's. Did it? No. What happened to the companies that embraced it? They struggled and/or failed. Java was similarly poised to usher in some new world of computing in the 90's. It didn't. XML was supposed to completely change how programs communicate with one another. It didn't. And what happened to many of the companies that based their entire existence on it's success? they either died or went into other markets. FORTH still exists, but it has found usages that aren't as gradiose as the original claims. Java still exists, but it has found quite a bit of usage that is nowhere near as grandiose as the original claims, too. XML found usage in the original concept of AJAX, and has managed to establish itself- though not quite as much as it was predicted- as a sort of data format. But even Forth, Java, and XML are exceptions; for each of these, there are four that failed in similar time frames. (ADA was similarly poised to be the thing that everybody needed to understand around 25 years ago). These are programming languages, but the fact is that the same trend is easily seen elsewhere. Each one has advantages that are hyped, but they all have disadvantages that contributed to the reality. Nobody can predict the future no matter how many economics degrees they have and when you have people stating things like "the cloud is the future" you almost get the sense that they hope if they repeat it enough times it's bound to come true. I'm not saying it won't be prevalent, but I'm saying that to assume it will- and bank a lot on it- is foolhardy at best. Technologies need to develop and mature before being universally adopted, especially in domains where it wasn't a use-case as a experimental tech. At this point there are so many cloud-based services it would be difficult to tease apart those offering services on the cloud that are actually designed with the cloud in mind and those that offer a cloud-based service that has all the disadvantages of the cloud without exploiting any of the advantages. This is not unlike the situation with Java, where companies scrambled to come out with something- anything, written in Java, which was usually rushed and far more unusable than anything else they offered. I'm not disagreeing, of course, that there are advantages. But it will take a few years for the companies offering this service to mature, and for those just doing it to make their service trendy (example: BMC's SaaS "Remedy" software) to fail and move on to other things. This is due to some of them simply misunderstanding the tech and expecting it to be a silver bullet of some sort. Most companies want to follow these things, because they assume "hey, everybody else is doing it so it must be a good idea". When hype overtakes a person's ability to appraise a technology objectively, then it's going to start to be used for the wrong things. The reason for this comes right down to the fact that many such companies have people in positions of power who, despite knowing absolutely nothing about technology, are able to form strong opinions about it. Let's say there is a company in 1996. I use 1996 because in hindsight many of the predictions promised are patently absurd-. Now, SuperCo. is starting on the latest version of their award winning Word Processing software, which is currently written in C. One of the higher ups- who assumes that all technologies have equal capability, decrees the new version shall be rewritten in Java. Why does he think this? What he was thinking is probably something like this- "Java is a standard, I know it must be, since I read about it in the press all the time, and since it's a standard, I can't get in trouble for choosing it, and it also means that there are lots of people with experience in Java, so if somebody working for me quits, as programmers working for me mysteriously do, I can replace them easily". It's not unreasonable, but it is based on an assertion that the technologies being weighed- in this particular case- are equivalent. They are not. IT technologies differ in capability and have various trade offs. (SaaS is universally cheaper, but you can't really know if the company responsible did it competently or if they are basically just providing you a Remote connection to the program being run normally on some server somewhere in kiosk mode). If they were all equivalent, he'd be right on target. Just use whatever everybody else is using. But they aren't equivalent. The actual needs have to be weighed against the technologies capabilities. In the case of SaaS, if you are going to do it, do it properly. Don't just wrap your client application in some thin silverlight wrapper. Companies wanting to buy Software as a Service need to weigh the pros and cons heavily. Sure, SaaS is cheaper, but things like Office 365 still offer disadvantages; for example, One example being that it is tightly integrated, meaning one can only get the full advantages of the software if they rely on windows or windows-based products. Outlook(client) works with Lync Mail Servers without issues, but there are several disadvantages if using the 365 version of the software. Whether these affect a company depends on the company. A company that uses Windows-based servers will probably be fine, but many companies use sendmail-based mail exchange SMTP servers or things like LYNC server which won't work as smoothly with Outlook in Office 365. The integration of course is a advantage in many cases too, but it depends on each individual companies scenario. Painting the Cloud as a solution to something- anything- without knowing the details of the scenario would be irresponsible, but that is what many tech pundits are doing with Cloud-based solutions. For PaaS, you stated yourself essentially that there are only specific use cases for it; those with differing processing requirements throughout the year. Obviously, if a company doesn't fit that use case, they will get all the disadvantages of PaaS- such as Customer captivity and a lower confidence in data security- but without any of the advantages to their business model.From BC_Programmer Quote Painting the Cloud as a solution to something- anything- without knowing the details of the scenario would be irresponsible, but that is what many tech pundits are doing with Cloud-based solutions. Yes.Fog woulda been a better name...Quote from: patio on May 22, 2012, 05:32:14 PM Fog woulda been a better name... Smog haze had to get in there

501.

Solve : Clouds?

Answer»

What is the best free cloud storage available?Do you want...
A. Speed
B. Size
C. Price
D. Security. (Strong and Private)

You can have any three, but not all four.
So which three do you want?

Free? This list is good: Free Online File- Storage

Another way is to just rent cheap server space and learn how to use FTP tools and do nit yourself. The cheap space is fast in the wee hours of the morning.

Dropbox, Live Drive etc etcGoogle.

Photos
Videos
Documents (Office)
Notebook
Calendar
Blogs
etc...

Now this. https://drive.google.com

Unlike many of the promising upstarpt online storage services that host your stuff one day then send out shutdown notices the next. I do believe Google is here to stay. "The Cloud" is possibly one of the stupidest buzzwords to ever be applied to a 40 year old tech.
Quote from: BC_Programmer on May 21, 2012, 03:47:10 PM

"The Cloud" is possibly one of the stupidest buzzwords to ever be applied to a 40 year old tech.

It doesn't exist...except temporarily...just like real Clouds.Actually it's the hottest "technology" in corporate America right now. Most companies have a toe in the water, but the rest are making aggressive strides toward huge implementations. I'm in the middle of investigating the viability a major cloud initiative for a few dozen VERY large companies right now. Keep in mind that while remote computing and storage are indeed decades old, the big driver right now is the speed, bandwidth and availability of Ethernet that wasn't there before. We recently noticed a lot of companies installing Ethernet lines. When we asked why, they said it was in preparation for new cloud implementations.

IAAS, SAAS, PAAS, et al are all unbelievably hot at the moment and only getting hotter. It's a new buzzword label for what is an old and often used technique. The swooning over is a lot like the swooning by Sun for it's JavaSun network computers and the Apple Pippin, both of which were dismal failures. (mostly due to them being slow and far more expensive, as well as being separate hardware to begin with) In some ways, It's basically going back to what we used to have, in the 60's and 70's, with one minicomputer and multiple dumb terminals. In this case, the "dumb terminals" are our desktop computers and laptops. It is an interesting idea, but relies on the idea of offloading the task of storage to a set of other computers maintained by the cloud. For the price of being able to use the cloud over a few months one could easily get External hard drives for many times the size which can be used for backup, and a lot faster too. As a backup storage location "the cloud" (and really any online storage) is too slow to even consider as a frequent target to store backup data. Backing up to a tape drive would be faster. Free On-line storage services are even slower, though the companies typically have a good infrastructure. Nonetheless, even a high-speed 50Mbit connection would be slower than a backup to a local drive.

The best use case for online storage is not for backups, but when you need to share files or need to access something from other locations. But there are already a number of services devoted to doing this for various kinds of information, too- photobucket for images, youtube for videos, communities like github for program source code, etc. There are things like Skydrive and now Google Drive, DropBox, etc available with varying degrees of shell integration too. I don't, however, understand how this would fit into a corporate setting.

Regardless of any improved viability the term "Cloud" is idiotic and is nothing more than a marketing buzzword that has been pasted on technologies that have been used and leveraged for over 30 years. It just sounds whimsical now, which attracts the attention of the type of managers who combine the qualities of not knowing anything about technology and yet being able to form very strong opinions about it; very much the case of Java in the mid to late 90's, where managers who didn't know the first thing about programming "knew" that their next product just had to be in Java. And what happened then is happening now with the Cloud. Back then, demand for Java expertise skyrocketed as companies jumped on the java bandwagon. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that Java was not a cure-all panacea for software re-use, but not before hundreds of other companies made a killing selling Java productivity products. Some examples being "HotCoffee", Lotus Javabeans, and other idiotically named products following the theme of coffee-related words. We see the same thing now, as companies misunderstand the technology and try to apply it to everything, the demand for cloud services has risen, and other companies have taken up that challenge by offering those services.

The problems are analogous, of course, to what happened with Java it was not the cure-all panacea for software development and code re-use anymore than on-line storage is the cure-all panacea for distributed storage. Java eventually settled down, and it still has use, but it's seeing less and less usage in the thing it was first targeted at on the desktop machine, which was "WEB interactivity"; so far, that has been replaced by CSS and newer things like HTML5, while Java became far more common for usage in desktop applications and games, particularly as the technology behind it matured.

My point is that right now it's in the initial hype stage and companies would be wise to not get swept up, as many did, in the zealotry. By the time the Java dust settled, hundreds of companies had gone out of business and hundreds more had sprung up and disappeared in the same time frame; one has to wonder if "the cloud" may suffer a similar fate. At the very least I hope we revert to dropping the buzzword and just calling it "Online storage".

I'm of course not saying it's useless, of course, just that it's overhyped and that often plays into peoples assessment of a tech, colouring them in a positive manner. Java, for example, was extremely popular, despite it lacking multiple inheritance, proper properties, attributes, delegates, lambda's, anonymous inner classes (originally), operator overloading, and a myriad of other constructs; this was because of clever marketing that made it seem "bigger" then it really was. You're focusing on storage. Many companies, however, are focusing on SAAS and PAAS.

The cost PER user of Microsoft 365 is significantly less than the corporate licenses for Office. And the ability to have added cycles as needed without having to purchase additional computers is extremely attractive to many businesses - especially those with large cyclical variances (think H&R Block, retail companies, etc).

Having said that, cloud storage is indeed appealing to many large companies. Having added resources for disaster recovery, archiving, etc. makes a great deal of sense - and access speed is not an issue.

Anyway, that's what we're seeing and clearly it's a direction in which every COMPANY in the Fortune 1000 and well beyond are headed.I don't even see how a cloud storage could properly supplement a established backup solution. It has other usages- such as with PaaS, if the company's storage requirements change over the year for whatever reason, on-line storage could be used for part of year to supplement their own on-site hardware. For backups, Of course, hard drives can fail locally, off-site backup tapes can be unreadable, etc. but restoring and saving backups is hours faster than uploading hundreds of gigabytes of information, regardless of the speed of the internet connection (Tape drives generally transfer at close to 340Megabits a second sustained).

Online storage moves the task of keeping your data safe from the IT administrators on your company's payroll to IT administrators of another who don't have a inherent stake in the safety of the data beyond it being their job to do so. Most companies should already have a backup strategy involving on-site and off-site full and incremental tape backups that have been tested, so- at least in my opinion- adding Cloud storage to this isn't very useful in general, but it can depend on the company's specific needs. But that's the problem, very rarely do people in the position to make such decisions in a company objectively consider the technology on it's own merits.

Quote

and access speed is not an issue.

I never said anything about access speed... I was talking about transfer rates, A 20GB storage tape with a transfer rate of 340megabits per second in some of the latest incarnations is going to be faster than transferring 20GB over even the fastest internet connection, unless both machines are in a Gigabit LAN. If it takes overnight, as it often does, to make a backup of a system, it's going to take a lot longer to either backup/archive to or from a on-line storage location. And problems during the transfer either way could cause various problems.

Another thing I feel, particularly with SaaS and cloud storage, is that it could present an issue for companies is that it increases the surface of attack. Software companies are semi-constantly having their source code leaked from their own internal networks from enterprising hackers. Backups stored on a cloud service will have that data as well. Naturally, there will be passwords, authentication, maybe encryption involved, but the fact is that so too did many of the companies that had their Intellectual Property leaked or stolen, so this increases the surface area; Hackers could get access to the private data either by doing what they have always been able to do and find some on-site wireless access point that some employee installed temporarily and forgot to remove; take advantage of a modem forgotten in some backroom somewhere that was installed to help Joe In accounting get access to his client's documents using a VPS- now they can apply the same things to the cloud service and get a lot of company data if they succeed.

Basically, putting that sort of data- regardless of how many authentications and encryptions and hashes are placed as barriers- is a fundamental issue because a target you can see is a lot easier to hack into than one that is only maintained on the internal network of the firewall. This also opens up such companies to man in the middle attacks that can place themselves between the company and the on-line service and reconstruct the data. So cloud storage services, particularly those utilized by businesses, had better have good security certificates. Usually a company keeps it's confidential data- such as the source code to any software they sell, business documents, marketing planning, etc on an internal network that is not internet exposed. Introducing On-line storage in this computing means that the data will in fact be internet facing by design. There is a good reason that Company intranets are isolated as much as POSSIBLE from the internet at large.

Quote

Anyway, that's what we're seeing and clearly it's a direction in which every company in the Fortune 1000 and well beyond are headed.

The problem is assuming that the direction that every company is going is inherently a good idea or is going to end well. How many other fads and hypes in computing have come and gone? FORTH was supposed to usher in a new era of computing in the 80's. Did it? No. What happened to the companies that embraced it? They struggled and/or failed. Java was similarly poised to usher in some new world of computing in the 90's. It didn't. XML was supposed to completely change how programs communicate with one another. It didn't. And what happened to many of the companies that based their entire existence on it's success? they either died or went into other markets. FORTH still exists, but it has found usages that aren't as gradiose as the original claims. Java still exists, but it has found quite a bit of usage that is nowhere near as grandiose as the original claims, too. XML found usage in the original concept of AJAX, and has managed to establish itself- though not quite as much as it was predicted- as a sort of data format. But even Forth, Java, and XML are exceptions; for each of these, there are four that failed in similar time frames. (ADA was similarly poised to be the thing that everybody needed to understand around 25 years ago). These are programming languages, but the fact is that the same trend is easily seen elsewhere. Each one has advantages that are hyped, but they all have disadvantages that contributed to the reality. Nobody can predict the future no matter how many economics degrees they have and when you have people stating things like "the cloud is the future" you almost get the sense that they hope if they repeat it enough times it's bound to come true. I'm not saying it won't be prevalent, but I'm saying that to assume it will- and bank a lot on it- is foolhardy at best. Technologies need to develop and mature before being universally adopted, especially in domains where it wasn't a use-case as a experimental tech.

At this point there are so many cloud-based services it would be difficult to tease apart those offering services on the cloud that are actually designed with the cloud in mind and those that offer a cloud-based service that has all the disadvantages of the cloud without exploiting any of the advantages. This is not unlike the situation with Java, where companies scrambled to come out with something- anything, written in Java, which was usually rushed and far more unusable than anything else they offered.

I'm not disagreeing, of course, that there are advantages. But it will take a few years for the companies offering this service to mature, and for those just doing it to make their service trendy (example: BMC's SaaS "Remedy" software) to fail and move on to other things. This is due to some of them simply misunderstanding the tech and expecting it to be a silver bullet of some sort.

Most companies want to follow these things, because they assume "hey, everybody else is doing it so it must be a good idea". When hype overtakes a person's ability to appraise a technology objectively, then it's going to start to be used for the wrong things.

The reason for this comes right down to the fact that many such companies have people in positions of power who, despite knowing absolutely nothing about technology, are able to form strong opinions about it. Let's say there is a company in 1996. I use 1996 because in hindsight many of the predictions promised are patently absurd-. Now, SuperCo. is starting on the latest version of their award winning Word Processing software, which is currently written in C. One of the higher ups- who assumes that all technologies have equal capability, decrees the new version shall be rewritten in Java. Why does he think this? What he was thinking is probably something like this- "Java is a standard, I know it must be, since I read about it in the press all the time, and since it's a standard, I can't get in trouble for choosing it, and it also means that there are lots of people with experience in Java, so if somebody working for me quits, as programmers working for me mysteriously do, I can replace them easily".

It's not unreasonable, but it is based on an assertion that the technologies being weighed- in this particular case- are equivalent. They are not. IT technologies differ in capability and have various trade offs. (SaaS is universally cheaper, but you can't really know if the company responsible did it competently or if they are basically just providing you a Remote connection to the program being run normally on some server somewhere in kiosk mode). If they were all equivalent, he'd be right on target. Just use whatever everybody else is using. But they aren't equivalent.

The actual needs have to be weighed against the technologies capabilities. In the case of SaaS, if you are going to do it, do it properly. Don't just wrap your client application in some thin silverlight wrapper. Companies wanting to buy Software as a Service need to weigh the pros and cons heavily. Sure, SaaS is cheaper, but things like Office 365 still offer disadvantages; for example, One example being that it is tightly integrated, meaning one can only get the full advantages of the software if they rely on windows or windows-based products. Outlook(client) works with Lync Mail Servers without issues, but there are several disadvantages if using the 365 version of the software. Whether these affect a company depends on the company. A company that uses Windows-based servers will probably be fine, but many companies use sendmail-based mail exchange SMTP servers or things like LYNC server which won't work as smoothly with Outlook in Office 365. The integration of course is a advantage in many cases too, but it depends on each individual companies scenario. Painting the Cloud as a solution to something- anything- without knowing the details of the scenario would be irresponsible, but that is what many tech pundits are doing with Cloud-based solutions.

For PaaS, you stated yourself essentially that there are only specific use cases for it; those with differing processing requirements throughout the year. Obviously, if a company doesn't fit that use case, they will get all the disadvantages of PaaS- such as Customer captivity and a lower confidence in data security- but without any of the advantages to their business model.From BC_Programmer
Quote

Painting the Cloud as a solution to something- anything- without knowing the details of the scenario would be irresponsible, but that is what many tech pundits are doing with Cloud-based solutions.

Yes.Fog woulda been a better name...Quote from: patio on May 22, 2012, 05:32:14 PM

Fog woulda been a better name...

Smog haze had to get in there

503.	Solve : GetJar Gold Apps - Android Apps for free?
Answer» I FOUND some pretty good free paid APPS here. All LEGAL and no HIDDEN costs, nags or spyware/adware that I have found so far. Getjar Gold Apps Catalogue Getjar Mobile App Store Getjar App Store

504.	Solve : create your own personalized linux os (based on suse)?
Answer» or RATHER a CUSTOMIZED SUSE os http://susestudio.com

510.	Solve : HP Pavilion All-in-One AMD Athlon II Dual Core 1.6GHz 4GB 320GB?
Answer» My mother needs a computer without the "bells and whistles". All she wants to do is be able to PLAY games and look things up on the internet. I have a chance to purchase a REFURBISHED HP Pavilion all-in-one Athlon II 4GB desktop computer and was wondering if it would be a good BUY for her.Athlon II 1.66 GHz? The weakest Athlon II runs at 2.81 GHz, if i recall correctly... If I were you i'd get the athlon II 240 2.81 GHz and 2 GB RAM. And the hard drive is too LARGE. Those specs are FINE and, if looked after, will last her for quite a few years.

513.	Solve : Asus K43SV vs N45SF?
Answer» planning to buy a LAPTOP that i PLAN to use for programming. for android apps.and for graphic designing.with video editing and the two laptop are my choice. i know mac is very well known for graphic works.but i more of a windows user.and my budget is only $750 . please help me decide which laptop should i CHOOSE between the two. . if you have suggestions that is within my budget of $750. you can also POST it here.thanks in advance You already know what you want the laptop for and you also have a budget. The decision is yours.

515.	Solve : Advice on choosing a laptop?
Answer» Hi, I am looking for a laptop that is essentially a desktop replacement - I won't be taking it places with me. I want to use it for surfing the web, e-mailing, viewing videos and movies. It needs to have an input mic either built in or a port to take one and be able to burn CDs/DVDs. I am hoping to stay under £400 if that's possible.While i am NOT familiar with computer offerings in the "pound' monetary region as a general rule you cannot go WRONG with taking the time to do extensive research on-line to compare prices and functions (that meet your needs). There are a variety of options available. 1.you can find and order via the web. 2.you can scout out offers at bricks and mortar retail outlets. 3.you can look for refurbished computers at manufacturer websites or other vendors that sell refurbished (often the warranties offered can be equal to new). 4. Depending or your risk tolerance (which with due diligence can be greatly minimized) you can look at on line site like E-Bay or local classified adds for used computers. I will just link you to a couple of U.S. vendors that have both stores and on-line facilities that will give you a PRICE comparison (have no idea as to the relevance re offerings in your own country) http://www.tigerdirect.com/ http://frys.com/ truenorthJust wanna share something about Intel powered laptops that are market in my country... for i3 PROCESSORS: students for i5 processors: corporate/business/office for i7 processors: gamingYou could get something from the Acer TimelineX series. They cost about $700 USD and they're a great value for the money. I was talking about it to someone who likes MacBooks (we've discussed this Acer vs. a Mac before) and the only thing a Mac can give you that the TimelineX doesn't have is a "Magical" touchpad and BACKLIT keyboard. (Even though two-finger scrolling does work on the TimelineX. http://www.amazon.com/Acer-TimelineX-AS4830T-6642-14-Inch-Aluminum/dp/B0051OL9LO/ref=pd_cp_pc_1For future reference, this old computer tech will only recommend two brands of laptops, to my customers. Because I know I'll have to set them up and maintain them, into the future. Brand #1 is and has been for many years.........Toshiba. Brand #2 is Acer. There is one other brand for those with lots of money. Check out www.sagernotebook.com or even BETTER: http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=products Happy Holidays Mates!

517.	Solve : simple info tool?
Answer» hi, all. i would just like to recommend Belarc Advisor as an info tool. i have used it for many years and still find it very usefull. when i say " simple " info tool what i mean is that it is very easy to INSTALL and use and gives lots of info on hardware AND software installed on your computer. it is great WHETHER you know nothing or everything about your computer. take a look> http://www.belarc.com/free_download.htmlI've been using and recommending Belarc Advisor for many years. While there are newer and more sophisticated apps that provide detailed information about your system, I still like Belarc.Belarc Advisor has a feature where you can publish a REPORT about your hardware on the web. This is all fine and good, but this reveal more information than you may want as well. For INSTANCE on a normal Windows XP installation, it will show your Windows XP CD Key. This may not seem like a big deal. However, if you post the report to the web and it gets indexed, you have now distributed your VALID Windows XP key to the world. (In fact to anyone who types a very simple phrase into Google. About 477,000 results the last time I looked.) In many cases, a user with a pirated copy of Windows XP may use this key to validate their version of XP and cause you trouble in the future when you need to validate your own copy.

518.	Solve : Google Plus?
Answer» I agree, Google plus needs to enhance their PRIVACY settings. I don't really trust Google, which I suppose is a problem since I'm still using GMail and Google Search; and if I had a smart phone I'd probably USE Android! If there's anything you won't catch me and most people switching to, however, it's G+. I KNOW a few Facebook whores who use Facebook way too much and will probably jump at the opportunity to set up another parallel account on G+ to waste more time making friends with complete strangers but that's probably the only real switching they'll get in any magnitude. Google had a tendency to provide software that either didn't exist before, or filled a niche by being free or better in some way. I don't see this with G+, not really sure what they were thinking, it's more of a 'nice IDEA' than a business plan and will likely prove quite an EMBARRASSING mistake for the board.

519.	Solve : typingweb.com, a free online typing tutor?
Answer» I'm a volunteer instructor (2 hours/wk) for an Internet & E-mail class CONDUCTED by a local organization for senior citizens. Many of them have little or no keyboard skills and that, of course, slows the MOMENTUM of the class sessions. So, I decided to search for an online typing TUTORIAL and found www.typingweb.com. I tried it to see how it worked and found it quite helpful. After registering on the site, the free typing tutor can be used. It guides the beginner through the correct use of all fingers in typing all characters on the keyboard. It contains many levels of practice to help the user gradually progress to higher skill levels. After practicing an exercise, it SHOWS a report of the equivalent words/minute speed, percentage error rate, and identifies particular letters or characters where the error rate was higher so that the user can focus on areas where improvement is most needed. The free account does display ads on the site. Users who would prefer an ads-free tutorial and some enhanced features can PAY a one-time fee of $9.99. If you, or someone you know, needs or wants to improve their typing/keyboard skills, I recommend www.typingweb.com.I've used TypingMaster Pro. Install and can be use offline. http://www.typingmaster.com/general/gettmpro.aspat least it's not this one http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ how dare she call me a hippo..Check this website, it may help. Good review about typingweb http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/typingweb-com-free-online-typing-tutor

521.	Solve : Porable Aplication Web Site?
Answer» Just FOUND a site named http://www.pendriveapps.com/ It has Windows applications that can travel on a USB STICK. Including e-mail silents and servers and catchers. Site has well over two dozen categories. Even info on how to make you own portable aps. Nota bene. In this case 'portable' does not mean cross-platform, like java or other byte-code machines that run on different OS. Rather 'portable' means the APPLICATION can run on any recent Windows machine and it will run without need to do an install. The is great for road warriors. Take a look and be amazed by what they have. I PREFER Portable Apps... Been around a bit longer...

524.	Solve : Safego Facebook/Twitter profile defender?
Answer» safego.bitdefender.com A handy tool that scans your Facebook or Twitter ACCOUNT to find any MALICIOUS content/apps that MAY be on there. Tried it on my account and found no malicious stuff but good to know. Safe product with good options for PRIVACY ETC. As seen on BBC.Click

526.	Solve : Security & Privacy Complete?
Answer» Anyone using it? I'm gonna give it a SHOT... HTTP://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93893 Not using it but will ALSO check it out. LOOKS like a USEFUL utility.yes, indeed...thanks, again, Broni...

530.	Solve : WinBubble - another Vista tweaker?
Answer» [dedicated to patio....hehehehe] HERE * Easily change the OEM/Manufacturer information * Add useful options to the right click context menu * Show My Computer, Network, My Documents, Username Folder etc.. on the desktop * Edit the screensavers hidden options. Edit the WEI score. Edit all of your Vista Icons * Access hidden Vista tools * Lock down the SYSTEM by disabling various parts (usb, task manager, control panel, new folder OPTION, hide drives etc..) * Optimize Vista using various speed tweaks * Edit IE information such as the Title/Start Page/Clear History and Cookies etc. * Easily edit the right click context menu I give up.... I'm STILL not done with my SP1 notes i promised to post. Preliminary though on that NOTE: Hung on first re-boot after running fine for 12 + hours and lost all connectivity. Haven't doubled back to it yet. (it's on my list of things to do )From other boards.... For most people, it worked OK. For those, less fortunate: lost connection, lost sound, screwed up Nvidia drivers, Windows MAIL giving BSOD...

531.	Solve : iTunes Sync?
Answer» HERE Sync iTunes to ALMOST any portable music player. So your iPod went to that great ELECTRONICS graveyard in the sky, and you decided to replace it with, say, a Creative Zen. The problem is, your music library is all neat and tidy inside iTunes, complete with painstakingly crafted playlists. Do you really have to switch to another music manager and recreate your playlists from scratch? Not if you put iTunes Sync to work. True to its name, this Windows utility can sync any iTunes playlist to a wide variety of portable players, including some cell PHONES. One caveat: iTunes Sync currently works only with players that are assigned a DRIVE letter when plugged in. That includes models like the BlackBerry Pearl, Creative Zen Stone, and Motorola RAZR V3 (click here for a complete list of tested players). If your player shows up as an MTP device, you're out of luck--at least until the program's next release (which will include MTP support, according to the developer).

533.	Solve : ConfigInspector?
Answer» HERE Key FEATURES of ConfigInspector: * Displays list of WORKING applications; * Displays list of working processes; * Monitors the memory STATUS; * Monitors the CPU and network utilization;. * Displays the full list of CPU capabilities; * Displays IMPORTANT Windows OS parameters; * Displays Windows Network parameters;. * Displays HDD status and information;. * Displays videocard information; * Displayes soundcard information; ConfigInspector works under Windows 2000/XP/2003 only. Where's my driver BACKUP proggie for my Win2K beast ? ?

527.	Solve : The Fifth Element - free office suite?
Answer» HERE The FIFTH Element is ONE of several suites from Ssuite (The double S is correct.) It aggresively tried to outdo Office with more features, simpler interface, and, of course, by being free When it comes to giants in the land of software, none is as big and powerful as the titans of Microsoft. Of programs foolhardy enough to challenge Microsoft, few have returned to tell the tale. (Heard lately from Netscape or OS2?) Most of those that have tried to compete with Office, the hulking battleship of Microsoft's fleet, have come from other big companies such as Sun with the cash to try to one-up Microsoft just for bragging rights. And then there's Ssuite (cq) Office's The Fifth Element. (Yes, "Ssuite" is spelled correctly, and, no, ?we're not talking about a Bruce Willis movie.)The Fifth Element, which has come from South Africa to take on the Colossus of Redmond, is a collection of office applications with a wider range than those in MS Office. Any decent suite can do word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and e-mail. The Fifth Element includes a browser, tools for managing LANS, holding CHATS and making calls using VoIP. It provides a drawing module, photo and album editors, sound recorders, and MP3 and video players. There's a search engine, a sort engine, envelope printer, encryption, and a chess game, for more than 30 programs overall. And if it's not exactly the right combination for you, Ssuite Office has several other office software packages of various complexities, all free. For all it's breadth, The Fifth Element is shallow--and that's meant in the nicest sense. Most operations require you to go no more than a couple of clicks into a menu. The most common tasks are neatly displayed at the top levels of the screens, making for quick learning and use. The are a welcome RELIEF from the madly swirling, morphing menus in Microsoft Office 2007. One reason for the simplicity, over and beyond making the Fifth Element a snap to use, is that most of the programs appear to be frankenware, pieced together from publicly available code. That makes them a kludge, but they're very nice kludges. i thought this was about the movie .

528.	Solve : iPod Folder?
Answer» HERE Backup or migrate your iPod's music with this freebie. Here's a scary thought: SUPPOSE your hard drive dies and takes your music collection with it. Or maybe you're just migrating to a NEW PC and need an easy way to copy over your MP3s. Either way, iPod Folder can come to the rescue. Available for Windows and Mac, this simple utility copies music from any iPod to any desktop folder. You can even store the program right on your player so it's available at a moment's notice. Just connect your iPod (making sure it's enabled for use as an EXTERNAL drive; check the setting in iTunes if you?re not sure) and run the program. Click the iPod icon and choose the appropriate drive letter for your player. Next, click the folder and choose the desired destination for your music. Finally, enable any options you might want, like INCLUDE iPod Folder Structure and MP3 Files Only (the latter HELPFUL if you don?t want to copy DRM-protected AAC files). Click the arrow to begin the copy process.Nice find Broni, this is a common question that a lot of people want and it's a free solution. Direct Link: http://www.longfingers.com/ipodfolder/

532.	Solve : Check Flash?
Answer» HERE Check Flash (aka ChkFlsh) is a small, stand alone, portable utility designed to check the health of flash drives. The most useful PART of Check Flash is that it can RUN a read and write test on the DRIVE. During the read and write test it fills the flash drive up with a temporary file to make sure the flash drive is the size that it says it is. This is an issue as many fake flash drives like the cheap ones available on eBay are hacked to report to Windows that they are 8GB or so, but are really only 64mb. Check Flash also has a “drive map” section which will show you any bad sectors on your flash drive. Check Flash can also run a READABILITY test on the drive and save/load an image of the files on the drive for backup purposes. Awesome ANOTHER great find.

534.	Solve : CursorFX?
Answer» HERE A program that lets you use and create incredibly cool looking Windows mouse cursors. looks cool, im GOING to give it a shot. sheesh its a 14mb program. EDIT it requires a PROCESS to run in order to use the new cursor. the memory use for the process is DETERMINED by the complexity of the cursor you are using (ie. if it has ALOT of cool animations it will use more memory). i ended the process to see if it really needed it to run, ENDING the process made my cursor disappear. fortunately enough, i was able to navigate back to the program and re-enable my cursor.Hmm sounded nice until I read Homers comments. Seems kind of bloated.its not too bad, right now with my cursor, im using 6mb of RAM.Quote sheesh its a 14mb program. Office 98 was 14MG ! !

535.	Solve : Audio Splitter Utility?
Answer» HERE Audio FILE splitting program is secure and non destructive software which can split a single audio sequence into numerous individual parts without decoding the audio file. Audio slicing utility supports MP3, mp2, wma and wav audio file formats. You can break your audio files very easily and securely into a set figure of files or files of set duration by using the Mp3 audio splitter tool. Mp2 audio splitter software has ability to extract the best part of an audio file by just picking the start and stop time positions from the file. To take a part out of an audio sequence the WMA extracting software does not have to decode the audio sequence. WAV audio file dividing application effectively detects particular amount of silence presented in any sound track and splits the sound track at these silence existing points. You can select the best and your desired parts from your audio file and cut them up effortlessly using the Mp3 audio splitting services. Audio files can be precisely split according to the specific requirements by using Mp2 audio splitter tool. By using audio splitter software you can split your single audio track into several smaller TRACKS or split your favorite portion from the audio file. You can split your 20 mb audio file into four 5 mb audio files. By using WMA audio splitter tool you can convert your audio file into several individual SEGMENTS. WAV audio file separation function also helps in BREAKING up the radio and satellite recordings into manageable pieces. Features * Mp3 splitter software supports mp3, mp2, wav and wmv audio file formats. * Mp2 audio file slicing services splits audio files without decoding them. * WAV audio file extracting utility can easily take best part out of an audio file. * Audio file splitter application can be used to break audio files into a set number of audio files. * Audio separation tool can effectively detect and remove existing silence from an audio track.

536.	Solve : Pretty cool 3D web browsing?
Answer» http://www.spacetime.com/

538.	Solve : RealWorld Cursor Editor?
Answer» HERE Create static or ANIMATED cursors for Windows XP; make cursors from images. Don't like the cursors that ship with Windows? Then create some of your own. It's a lot easier to do than you might think, with this free program. It will let you create and then use static cursors or animated cursors. You can edit your existing cursors, or create new ones from scratch. Especially USEFUL is that you can also take any image, import it into the program, and the program then creates a cursor from it. The program includes all the tools you'll need, and has several useful tutorials to help you get started. It even has links to an online cursor library where you can download free icons or complete icon SETS that you can use as is, or ELSE edit. Looks promising. I think I'll give this a shot before your other cursor app you POSTED earlier.Let us know.

539.	Solve : E.M. Free PowerPoint Video Converter?
Answer» HERE E.M. Free PowerPoint Video Converter is a free an all-in-one PowerPoint to video converter. It can convert PowerPoint presentations to AVI, MPG, WMV, BMP images and MP3 audio. Main Functions: * Two OUTPUT mode(Auto/Interactive), Two compression mode(two compressions/a compression), Two run mode(slide/build), you can high-quality, simple, rapid convert PowerPoint file. * Support the output video formats: AVI, MPEG, WMV. * Extract and Convert PowerPoint file audio to MP3 audio. * Convert PowerPoint presentations to BMP MAGE sequences. Key Features: * Support PowerPoint 2000 / 2002 / 2003 / 2007. * It could provide the best capability to convert PowerPoint files to other video formats. * Batch conversion. * Support attach other audio track (MP3/WMA/WAV). * Customizable video crop and pad for exported video. * Customizable trim. * Easy to use. * Integrates a powerful media player - Total Video Player. SUPPORTS converting PowerPoint to the following file formats: Video Formats: * Free convert PowerPoint (ppt) to WMV (.wmv) * Free convert PowerPoint (ppt) to Ms Mpeg4 AVI (.avi) * Free convert PowerPoint (ppt) to MPEG1 (.mpg) Audio Formats: * Free convert PowerPoint (ppt) to MPEG audio(.mp3) IMAGE Formats: * Free convert PowerPoint (ppt) to BMP (.bmp)

540.	Solve : Inkscape 0.46?
Answer» HERE Inkscape is an open source SVG editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc. Supported SVG features INCLUDE basic shapes, PATHS, text, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, node editing, svg-to-png export, grouping, and more. Its main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully XML, SVG, and CSS2 compliant SVG DRAWING tool. What's New in version 0.46: * Paintbucket tool * Tweak tool * 3D Box tool * Live path effects * Color management * New SVG filters and UI * Native PDF and AI import * XAML import/export * Open Clip Art Library integration (import/export) * STOCK patterns * Bitmap editing extension effects * Full on-canvas gradient editing * Engraver's Toolbox in the Calligraphic tool * Touch selection * Dockable dialogs * Command-line access to verbs * Snapping made usable * "3D" / axonometric grid * Angled guidelines * Conversion of objects to guidelines * Significant speed and interactivity improvements * Hundreds of smaller features and bugfixes

541.	Solve : Image Analyzer?
Answer» HERE Advanced image editing, ENHANCEMENT and analysis software. Some of the FEATURES: * Reads/writes BMP, ICO, CUR, WMF, EMF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, MNG, GIF, PCX and JPEG2000 images. * Reads PNM, PGM, PPM, HIPS and Matlab files. * Scanner and printer support. * Built-in conventional and adaptive filters. * User specifided filters in spatial and frequency domain. * Retinex filter for reducing shadows and increasing local contrast * Distance, Fourier and discrete cosine transformation. * Color model conversion: RGB, CMY, HSI, YCbCr and YIQ. * Morpheological operations. * Resize, rotate, crop and warping. * Math expression module for CREATING and TRANSFORMING images. * Easy red-eye removal. * Noise reduction. * Automatic brightness, contrast, GAMMA and saturation adjustment. * Test of methods for automatic image processing. * Plugins available - see the programs website. * Download includes a simple 3D modelling plugin.

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543.	Solve : AvancePaint?
Answer» HERE A complete paint program designed with an intuitive user interface that MAKES AvancePaint easy to learn and use. It’s powerful enough to suit the advanced user and yet simple enough to please the beginner. Open unlimited number photo´s or pictures and unleash your artistic talents as you will discover the advanced and powerful but easy to use graphical options! A complete set of 20 photo-realistic filters and more then 40 textures are included. Features: * Easy to use yet powerful * All functions of MS-Paint * Zoom * Powerful color settings * Size * Masks * Draw arrows in one click * Open JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, WMF, EMF, DIB, ICO files * Open as many photo´s as your memory allows! * Cut/copy/paste between photo´s * Darken, lighten, sharpen, soften, blur, replace colors, blend, transparent gif etc... * WYSWYG fonts * Multiple undo´s * Borders * Print preview * User definable rounded square CORNERS * Rotate * Many symbols included * Uses only 2Mb diskspace What's New in version 2.2.1: * Bug fix: Image Resize gave sometimes Run-time Error 5 * Image Resize: prevent non-numeric values to be entered * New: transparent font-typing (T SYMBOL when choosing Text-option from the left toolbar) * Text: added box line around text INPUT fields to clearly show the boundaries * Hovering mouse over the Textbox will change the cursor to show user it's an input-field * Word 'Action:' in Text toolbar options replaced with 'Apply:' * Warn user when closing Avancepaint if picture has changed (using Close of the titlebar controlbox [X])

545.	Solve : LangOver?
Answer» HERE This application will help you easily convert your text between several languages. Have you ever tried to type in one language but the result was in another? Annoying, RIGHT? That's because the keyboard layout was in a wrong language. With LangOver you'll be able to convert your text quickly between languages. Use F10 (For mix-up between languages) - Just click F10 - and your text will be fixed! LangOver supports any language. It can convert from ANY LANGUAGE to ENGLISH, and from ENGLISH to ANY LANGUAGE. In addition, you can use SHIFT+F10 when you need to convert upper / lowercase text, such as ABC<>abc. Use F6 (For reversing a text) - In addition LangOver can reverse your text: ABC<>CBA. Requirements: · .NET Framework 2.0 Thats so kool n useful.No Vista... My initial link doesn't WORK well for me, so here is another one: http://www.langover.com/ I'm gonna TRY it on Vista right now. I hope, I can change hoy key, because I use F10 for SOMETHING else.It works in Vista, but it doesn't do anything more, then regular language toolbar, so I uninstalled it.Turns out its not so Kool n useful..

546.	Solve : Advanced WindowsCare - Personal?
Answer» http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html?Str=download I've been using Advanced WindowsCare-Personal, which is free, for QUITE a while now, and I REALLY like it, but I don't have the background some of you do. Has ANYONE ELSE used it, or have any experience with it? Thanks, BrianGood PROGRAM. I've been using it, too.I've tried it, too and like it except for one thing-it deletes your restore points.Never happened to me....

547.	Solve : Firefox add-on - CustomizeGoogle?
Answer» https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743 CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox EXTENSION that ENHANCE Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and REMOVING unwanted information (like ads and spam). All features are optional and EASILY configured. View a short introduction movie at http://www.customizegoogle.com Hey thanks for this info and link. I watched the video and it looks like a great add on. Since I use Google everyday, this will really help me. Off to download it....

548.	Solve : Firefox Addon-Aging Tabs (Better than colorful Tabs IMO)?
Answer» https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3542 One of the coolest Addons Ive SEEN in a long time! Makes unused tabs fade with AGE and highlights the SELECTED tab. EDIT: I know I dont post much here but this had to be DONE I like itI've tried it before, didn't get it to WORK, disabled it, moved on. Yea, I have to upgrade my firefox first, and I can't seem to. It's wierd. Looks cool though.... Mr google what seems to be the problem?Quote from: !~:.Pink Floyd.:~! on July 31, 2008, 10:38:33 AM Mr google what seems to be the problem? I figured it out in the end. My problem is posted under Inernet browsers section of this forum. But I didn't like it, so I disabled it and moved on like dudeoxide...Dont worry Pink Floyd, I have over 70 add-ons disabled.It looks pretty cool....I'm going to try it.