Looking for something fun to do

Let’s say you’re walking into the town square with some time to kill and no particular plans. You might ask “Who’s in the area?” Your cloud queries your connections to find people you know who are also in the square. Bob’s cloud announces he’s in the square at...

Thoughtful Stuff

Welcome to my blog on “thoughtful stuff”. I know it’s silly title, but I wanted to set the tone for the blog series on personal clouds and the possibilities they hold. The problems solved in this series aren’t in themselves earth shattering; they cover everyday...

Hackers are making a living off of your data

The Internet was built to exchange data between a few known academic networks. The protocols upon which it is built assumed trusted parties on both ends. Security is an add-on that has been built over time in reaction to flaws and weaknesses discovered in protocols...

Free services aren’t free

The free services everyone loves to enjoy cost money to produce. Like it or not, web advertising pays for those services; and the more effective those ads are in bringing in business, the more they are worth. That’s why the web-advertising model depends on...

Somebody’s watching you

Cloud technologies have made massive computing and data base resources available to just about anyone who wants them. With those technologies, big data projects are becoming more powerful and available. At the heart of the big data movement lays the $200 billion data...

Making your home smart the easy way

You buy a really cool device that automatically opens and closes your window curtains.   You bring it home and install it in your room. You plug it in and then tap it with your smart phone to establish the fact that you own it and it belongs in your smart home. The...