Compress a PowerPoint 2007 Document

I got a call today from a friend of mine. She was on the road, preparing for a presentation, and the file was too large to upload into Google Docs; Google Docs, it turns out, has a limitation of a 10mb file for conversion. She needed to perform the conversion to complete the presentation to her audience.

More often than not, PowerPoint bloat occurs because of image sizes in the presentation. There’s an easy way to approach this.

In PowerPoint 2007:

Career Fair Presentation

Adding a presentation to the Website for tomorrow’s Career Fair held at Jason Lee in Vancouver, WA.

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dfx26bt7_1404crgvvvhm

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10 Risks of Cloud Computing

@thescottydont asks on Facebook:

“True. However, seems like this video is missing some down sides. I ask you, Guru Mickler – are there down sides to Cloud Computing?”

Well, what a great question! And I think that it’s only fair to honestly talk about the downsides to Cloud Computing as a small business strategy.

1. Application Maturity.

Today, many of the applications that you’d find hosted online as a cloud option use browser-based interfaces. Because of that, they’re relatively simplistic as compared to applications installed on your local hard drive or server. In many cases, they’re “no frills” or offer reduced capabilities or functions. This is changing very rapidly, though, as there’s a rush to create dynamic and powerful applications that can be distributed within the browser. Just in looking at the maturity and growth of Google’s Sites and Docs, or Zoho, in the last two years is pretty astounding. Cloud applications are quickly becoming more feature-rich, centralized (thereby reducing total costs of ownership), and available on any platform that runs a browser.

2. Application Ease of Use.

There are constraints on web programming that prevent a “fluidity” of movement within the user interface. It’s nothing for many users to have multiple applications up and once, then copy and embed objects with ease, or use many different interfaces and toolbars to manage the software. The web model forces programmers to be a little more terse having to save records at certain periods, or, step a user back into three data entry screens for what used to take just one screen to perform. Users “feel” this when they’re using web-based applications, that there are multiple steps that they’re forced to walk through to get something done. This can be problematic and time consuming, and a detractor against adoption.

3. Internet Availability.

If the Internet is down, then your application and the data is unavailable. To some firms, this may be more than an annoyance but something that shuts down critical functions. Sometimes when I travel, I go to places and – gasp – no Internet: I’m effectively shut down! Their connectivity may be spotty or unreliable in the first place, which would make them reconsider the Cloud strategy. Indeed, the cloud strategy does depend on a “always on” Internet, and in many areas of the company, that reliability simply isn’t available. The consideration here is probably thinking about how often the Internet goes down in comparison to a server which is much lower in terms of frequency. And, what the potential likelihood of no Internet access looks like.

4. Latency.

Broadband pricing is dropping dramatically but the risk is still there: yes, you could have a slow Internet connection. We’re measuring cable bandwidth for consumers and businesses now between 50-100mbps, and large companies – of course – can afford fiber and optical carrier solutions that push bandwidth into the gigabit range. Others, though, may still rely on T1’s or xDSL. These slower connectivity solutions diminish the reliability and usefulness of the cloud, especially when the “mature” cloud application expects to use a lot of bandwidth to provide more ease of use.

5. Data Location.

Many people get jittery if their data isn’t right next to them. Like, in the other room, or, near their feet on a microcomputer’s hard disk. The presence and location of data is important to some; it shouldn’t be ignored or discounted. Companies that want to have exclusive control over their data and intellectual property would choose in-house servers and likely avoid the cloud.

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6. Data Integration.

Data is somewhat stuck in the cloud. Now, there are programming interfaces that developers can use to integrate one source of data to another, and those standards are well-defined these days and power a lot of Internet integration, but the lay-user just doesn’t understand how to use these API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) and they don’t know the consequences of their use. If your Twitter feed is your property, how can you capture your “property” and push the feed into another “property” online? How can you integrate that? Well, this isn’t easy to do right now. Facebook has an interesting model of applications that end-users can install to create integrated pockets of data… that could be a model we’ll see adopted by the cloud.

7. Security Risk.

Some would suggest that your data is at risk if it’s not in your general proximity. If you can’t touch it, it’s insecure. I would dispute that. Having data closer to us on microcomputers hasn’t “increased” security or reduced the number of identity thefts, or, compromised PC’s, or botnets. It is precisely because microcomputers aren’t professionally managed that they’re more at-risk than cloud-based systems which are professionally managed by an army of engineers. We live with data hosted by others all of the time (the IRS, banking institutions, corporations, universities…) and we come to trust their expertise in securing it. That trust will come hard for some; for others, they may flat-out reject the idea that somebody can manage security better that they can, and, at a lower cost.

8. Privacy Risk.

Yes, Google can see your data when it’s on their cloud. Now, they “tokenize” and “stem” the data, meaning that they convert your data into abstract ideas and symbols, then aggregate it, so they’re not really “reading” your files or email. They’re just counting up the number of symbols that they see, or, abstracting relating one idea to another. Of course, a lot of people don’t understand that, but services like Google aren’t prying-in on your data; they are, though, abstracting it. Some folks may not even like that. Now, online privacy is a sensitive subject that consumers have become very aware of, and cloud-based services are working overtime to create useful models for securing privacy. This is still in development, and will likely be so for many years, especially as federal law catches up to defining universally “what is private”.

9. Interoperability Risk.

Because data is stored away from your own PC and servers, integrating that data – either in the cloud, or with other clouds, or with microcomputer applications – becomes a big challenge. Mail merge, for example: easily done in Office. You point Word to a data source, run a wizard, and you have envelopes and labels. Not so fast nor easy in the cloud. Nor is just copying objects like graphs from one application to another. Again, the solutions are getting better, and Zoho – for example – provides a lot of interactivity between its modules, but you have to kind of be a programmer to understand how to use them! So, that can be a detractor.

10. Learning Curve.

Users – conceptually – understand their local computer, their desktop, and their hard disk. They understand a jump drive. They understand Word and how its tools work. However, if you throw a general-use person into a new, browser-based interface, that is comparably slower to a local application, where data is stored somewhere that they don’t comprehend (not like on a C: drive) and they don’t know how to find it again, well, they get buggy. This causes a steep learning curve. Again, cloud applications are getting more sophisticated all the time, but the learning curve shouldn’t be ignored: none of this happens seamlessly out of the box.

Conclusion

When considering the cloud, small business needs to adequately weigh pros and cons. They need to see where they could gain cloud advantages but keep the cloud as transparent as possible to the end user (like Google Apps integration with Microsoft Outlook). They need to see where more advanced users on their staff could be the pioneers and train others how to use this stuff, and get people excited about using it. The small business should recognize the economies of scale in cloud computing and the rewards that come from immediate capability, lower expenses, and shifted management obligations, while at the same time they need to appropriately weigh security and privacy concerns. Really, it’s all about strategy: some pieces of the cloud may work where others might not, and, the landscape is constantly evolving, so the small business should be ready for it, planning on change, and planning to take advantage of new features as they come available.

I hope that answered your question.

R

What is Cloud Computing?

Good YouTube video on what Cloud Computing is…

How Students Can Use Cloud Computing

So I spend a lot of time talking about how small business can leverage cloud computing. Today, let’s talk about how students can leverage cloud computing.

The goal here would be to set up a facility to allow students to centralize their mail, files, calendar, voice mail, instant messaging, research, publishing, and collaboration through Google, and thereby accessible on nearly any device anywhere with Internet connectivity.

Email, Calendars, Contacts

Using Google Apps Standard, the student can easily set up their own domain; if they don’t have one, they can setup a domain through Godaddy.com very inexpensively. Google Apps Standard is free for up to 50 users and allows for basic features that would be useful to the student.  They then would have access to an email account used exclusively for their studies. Further, they could manage Contacts through apps as well as an exclusive Calendar for their courses that they could then share with family and friends. Google Docs is free and doesn’t require upgrades or compatibility packs. And it works where you want to: on cell phones, on laptops, Mac’s, PC’s, or anywhere.

Tasks and Notes

I think one of the least-publicized features of Google is Google Notebook. But Google Notebook is pretty cool. It allows you to create a mobile location for your notes, especially for students. Here, you can create a mobile repository for notebooks on different subjects that you create, and then you can share this information with other people – like fellow students who’re your contacts? Plus you can tag and label each of the entries for fast sorting. Whats more, you can export the notes to a regular document type for handling offline. Centralized notebooks on Google is a great way to get organized and manage your note-taking for great study habit!

Document Management and Sharing

Instead of using jump drives and wondering where in the Hell you put your last biology paper, now you’ve an opportunity to store it online through Google Docs. You can edit all of your documents online or download them for offline use. You can share your docs to specific people or to the whole world. Presentations, papers, spreadsheets – all of them are available through Google Docs. Centralized, they’re available off of your Google Apps account.

Collaboration

Google Docs also lets you work on a single file with multiple people at the same time! Imagine: working on a presentation with your cohort through a shared space provided by Google Docs! No lost time or work: you can get on the network and get your work done. You can even invite your professor in to have a look at the work ahead of time – to be able to provide an advance review prior to submission.

Instant Messaging, Phone, Voice Mail

Tired of juggling personal calls with calls about school? Set up a Google Voice account with auto-answer turned on. It’s like creating a private voice mail system that dumps calls into a repository on the web. You can listen to the voicemail from anywhere and respond to it; plus, you’re notified by email, and, the message is crudely dictated in text so you can get the gist of it. Using Google Talk would give you the ability to chat with your friends and find out when that next assignment is due, or, get a crash-team together to work on that big assignment before it’s due the next day!  You can also use Google Voice to make calls, but here’s where you might want Skype – make free calls anywhere in the US via the Internet for a flat rate of $30/year. Talk about economy of scale: save yourself cell dollars and do as much dialing as you can. And yep: there’s an app for Skype on the iPhone, too.

Search, Research

You probably already know of Google Scholar and Google Books. These are free resources to help you search scholarly journals and look at textbooks for free online. What a great way to skip the library and get some work done in your PJ’s back at the dorm. Plus, using Google Sites – a piece of Google Apps – you could create a wiki to help you and your pals centralize your research and work on the big project in your own space like Wikipedia. It’d be a fantastic way to centralize your work and collaborate with your team to get the assignment done.

Social Media, Blogging, Video

Integrate your Twitter and Facebook into Google Buzz to allow you to track your microblogging having to do with school. Think of being able to talk to somebody over Twitter but then search for it later online? Think of centralizing your status messages so they go everywhere with one post? Plus, you can set up interesting social media content with Google Blogger and YouTube that would help enhance your experiences at school or help you stay in touch with family members. You could introduce ideas, pictures, video of problems that you’re working on, and stay in touch with friends and family, all the while soliciting their opinions and feedback and comments. You can also integrate all of this stuff into other platforms like Foursquare and Facebook to really enhance the experience!

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think there’s a strategy here for economies of scale and reusing digital content. Create something just once and re-use it multiple times.  The files, folders, videos, notebooks, blog entries, electronic books and publications, and wikis that you create can eventually be used throughout all of your academic career. Imagine: your own digital repository of net experiences from your time at school? You could re-use that, too, in your professional career, for self-publishing your next book on lulu.com, or in demonstrating what you’ve learned to future employers. And reusable content allows you to cut down on your labor and recycle the research you’ve already performed for other classes.

Finally, think of a cloud strategy as a great way to address disaster recovery. You can always find your information online, even if your laptop is stolen, or, your jump drive disappears.

This isn’t working harder – it’s working smarter – and as a student, that’s what you constantly want to be doing, right?

R

Presentation: Information Assurance

A new presentation was added to our website today. This presentation looks at Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Authentication, and Non-Repudiation as policy-level goals for information system security within the Federal Government, referred to as Information Assurance. It also explores the role of the NIST and NSA in developing, deploying, and auditing FIPS standards.

Information Assurance | Mar 2010

The Virtual Startup

So two weeks ago, I was invited to help a small startup with five employees with their technology needs.  My job would be to conduct a site review and provide options for networking, phone, security, and data processing systems.

Typically, the remedy for this kind of job would be clear: spec out the network cabling and the labor required for installation; spec the phone system, voice mail features, and handset style; spec the LAN requirement and a Microsoft Small Business Server; setup DNS (a presence on the web), email, and web; and spec the physical vulnerabilities of the site. All told, I’d be preparing an estimate that’d likely begin around $7k.

However, this time, I offered to approach things differently. I told my client that I could bid the traditional installation, or – if they were game – to try something a little… different.

First, we’d need high speed Internet offered by cable. Comcast provided a 35mbps circuit with four voice/fax lines for a really great rate. That was really hard to beat and offered a great data circuit to build off of.

Next, ditch the wires. We invested in an 802.11n wireless access point and wireless-n adapters. 300mbps wireless on the LAN. Nice.

After that, ditch the phone. This is a company that’d be using a VOIP phone solution across the Internet anyway, so our solution would be that vendor’s soft phone software on their PC’s anyhow. Plus, voicemail’s included in that package and risk for managing phones is shifted to that vendor.

Then, let’s say, “no server”. These guys will use apps in the cloud. I offered Google Apps but they already had a solution for mail from another partner, so I helped them set that up on their local workstations.

And when they asked about CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – so that they could all get on the same page and manage their new accounts – I helped them set up a free Zoho CRM instance. Scaleable, Zoho CRM allows these guys to track their leads, manage contacts and issues, and do marketing campaign management. It’s free for three users, and tacking on an additional seven users would only cost $15/mo.

Eventually, they’re going to ask me about an invoicing and collections system outside of their VOIP solution. We’ve already talked about QuickBooks Online to fill that purpose: running QuickBooks in the clouds.

And the security situation? Much more relaxed, thanks, since sensitive company data wouldn’t be stored physically in-house on a big expensive server.

So what we ended up with is a fully-functional company in just a few hours. Instead of $7k, we’re looking at less than $1k. A company whose capabilities and economies of scale rivals big competitors yet with hardly any overhead or upfront investment. Monthly subscription fees allow access to immediate capability yet with a fraction of an investment in technical assistance to get started.

This ain’t your grandfather’s business. What you’re looking at here, folks, is a new way to do business. A business with little or no startup costs, no long-term maintenance contracts for phone systems or microcomputer support, the ability to work from anywhere at any time, a strategy to shift IT risks to vendors, a plan to contain expenses associated with their growth through subscription licensing, a self-service approach to IT administration, and,  immediate capability on day one.

What you’re looking at here is a tremendous opportunity for your small business and your startup to lower costs and increase capabilities. But most of all, what you’re looking at here is your competitor.

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