Here’s an interesting Article I came across today which goes through the basics of setting up Scalr. Scalr is is an open source, fully redundant, self-curing, and self-scaling hosting environment that uses Amazon EC2
This article discusses the implementation of Scalr. Scalr allows network administrators to create virtual server farms, using prebuilt components. Scalr uses four Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) for load balancing, databases, application server, and a generic base image. Administrators can preconfigure one machine and, when the load warrants, bring online additional machines with the same image, to handle the increased requests.
By using Scalr, you can create a server farm that uses prebuilt AMIs for load balancing, web servers, and databases. You also can customize a generic AMI, which you can use to host your actual application.
Scalr monitors the health of the entire server farm, ensuring that instances stay running and that load averages stay below a configurable threshold. If an instance crashes, another one of the proper type will be launched and added to the load balancer.
Here’s some good news for Amazon’s EC2 users:EC2 now supports Static IP addresses using Amazon’s Elastic IP Addresses feature. Each account can allocate up to 5 Elastic IP addresses to be used (you can contact Amazon to get more). These IP’s can be allocated to one instance which will replace the dynamic IP for that instance - you can move the IP to a new instance at any time.
Beware that an unused IP address costs $0.01 per hour of non-use, which means that while the IP address is assigned to a running instance, you don’t have to pay the charge, but if you shutdown the instance which the IP is assigned to, and don’t immediately assign it to another instance, you’ll end up paying for this charge.
The Elastic IP Addresses feature gives you more control of the IP addresses associated with your EC2 instances. Using this new feature, you use the AllocateAddress function to associate an IP address with your AWS account. Once allocated, the address remains attached to your account until released via the ReleaseAddress function.Separately, you can then point the address at any of your running EC2 instances using the AssociateAddress function.The association remains in place as long as the instance is running, or until you remove it with the DisassociateAddress function.Finally, the DescribeAddresses function will provide you with information about the IP addresses attached to your account and how they are mapped to your instances. Accounts can allocate up to 5 IP addresses top start; you can ask for more if you really need them.
Of the 87 countries that participated, 26 percent opposed Microsoft’s bid. Under the rules for approval, no more than 25 percent of the countries could oppose the bid. Microsoft also failed to win the vote of 66 percent of 41 countries on another panel of I.S.O. and I.E.C. members.
Countries opposing Microsoft’s OOXML format included India Good to see India’s getting it head straight by not aligning itself with the $$$.
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Here’s a new service from BritePic which allows you to add interactivity to the images on your site, and at the same time make some $$. BritePic allows you to place advertisements in your images, and allow users to zoom, email, create links to your images.
Here’s a sample image served by BritePic:
So instead of using the plain ol’ img tag to place your images in the page, use the BritePic way, good for you and your visitors
The BritePic code allows you to control the image size, image caption, keywords and the link to send the visitors to when they click on the image. You can choose whether you want ads displayed in the images. The ads appear in the image if AdBite has ads based on the keywords you supply for the image.
BritePic is a part of the Adbrite advertisement network.
Here’s a new service called binkx it which allows you to embed a video preview bar to your page. The cool part of this service is that it’s supposed to show previews of videos which are related to the content on your page. That’s like Google Adsense for videos.
Currently some videos they show may not exactly be related to your page’s content, but it’s interesting to see where things will go while they improve their contextual alogrithms.
Here’s how it looks:
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Here’s an interesting read on error handling.
“Very little software really gets error handling right. Even many critical, backend server systems tend to break under heavy loads. And the vast majority of end-user applications handle errors gracefully only for the most well understood, commonly encountered conditions (e.g. HTTP timeout), but very poorly for most other conditions (failed allocations, bad data, I/O errors, missing files, etc). ”
Here’s a cool new search engine powered by Ajax. They’ve got Ajax powered “suggest” features while you type, you can scroll through your results using the arrow keys on your keyboard, view result pages inline and lots more…. check out Snap.
“Snap is a very different way of searching, one we suspect will take a bit of getting used to. As you can imagine, we’ve done a ton of usability testing in developing Snap and here’s what we’ve learned: while Snap isn’t complicated, it is a different way of searching in which a little bit of orientation goes a long way to increasing satisfaction. So, we’ve tried to help introduce ourselves to you in a number of ways. “
Here’s an interesting web-based system, which allows you to access an online desktop from any location. You can upload files, create contacts, notes and files. If you install this in office, and get your collegues to use it, you can use EyeOS a messaging platform too.
So what exactly is EyeOS? Check out what the developers of the system have to say:
“Welcome to eyeOS, a web based operating system. With eyeOS you can access your data and your applications anywhere, anytime. A virtual office in your hands, no need to install anything in the computer. Everything lives in the browser, for you and your work colleagues. eyeOS is open source and free software. Try the demo and if you like it, install it in your server. Make your life easier with the virtual word processor, calendar, file manager, messenger, browser and other applications. And if you want more applications, just visit the eyeOS Application Database!”
I tested out the system and was pretty impressed with the functionlaity supported by the system. Although you may need a fast internet connection to access the system. There’s a lot of eye-candy which takes a short while to load up on my home PC. Given a chance I would use this system over a ssh or pc anywhere to access my files and systems from any location.
You can also download and install EyeOS “applications” into the existing system to extend it’s functionality. There are a few add on applications available for EyeOS over at eyeapps.org.
Screenshots :
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A CALIFORNIAN small web-design outfit has managed to get the patent for most of the media technology which power the world wide wibbly web. Balthaser Online says getting the patent means that it can license nearly any rich-media Internet application across a broad range of devices and networks.
Good to see India’s getting it head straight by not aligning itself with the $$$.
