via TechCrunch:

“…Cloudkick, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that offers a free server management system to businesses, is rolling out its freemium model and additional features. Cloudkick provides detailed graphs on the health of your servers, and tools to categorize and keep information about what each server is doing. Cloudkick’s dashboard allows you to easily add or remove servers from Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EC2, Linode, GoGrid, Slicehost, RimuHosting, and VPS.NET and then monitor an unlimited amount of instances. You can see all the servers in one place, and color-code and label each server…”

If you’ve ever had headaches tuning your server then this service seems to be the killer cloud app/service for you!

What about pricing? Here’s the low-down from the CloudKick blog:

“… Pricing

With the release of our new premium features, we’ve launch new pricing plans for our business users. Under these plans, you’ll get access to our advanced new monitoring tools that allow you to track metrics such as disk, load, CPU and memory. Plans range from $99 to $599…”

We now know that cloud computing is serious business when startups like CloudKick build their business and revenue models on cloud management systems

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

A few hours ago, Franklin Naval conducted the first hands-on workshop on how to use the disaster coordination tool using Google Maps at the De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB). The participants were students from the VERTSOL (Vertical Solutions for Retail Markets) of the IS (Information Systems) program of DLS-CSB. Here are some pictures:

Here’s also a video

Here’s some of the comments of the students who participated in the workshop:

“… this typhoon Ondoy disaster coordination tool is really a useful tool to look for missing people or to bring them when they are found. by using technology of Google map it help the information that people need to help others …” – Albert Bernas

“… Even though I was an IT student I have never thought of a way on how to help the victims of the typhoon tragedy that has happened in the Philippines. But now with just the help of the google map I can know find a way to not only put my IT skill in the business industry but also I could serve and help my fellow Filipinos …” – Marlo La O’

“… The coordination tool is simple and very helpful when an unexpected disaster may happen again in our country …” – Nelson Guinmapang

“… I think using Google maps in plotting the missing persons is really helpful since we are all capable of using the internet It’ll make the job easy since Google maps can show the real time situation …” – Anna Otsuka

“… In my mind, I am really am amaze on how he was able to make that tool, getting, information and incorporating it… and with the supply zone, where the fortunate people can give some relief goods, for the needy people …” – Andrew Gonzaga

“… The google map to find the Typhoon Ondoy Missing Persons is really helpful because most of the people now have internet access and it is faster update and inform people who are still missing and who are already found …” – Kia Semera Briones

“… GPS could really be handy in the situation like the typhoon ondoy, to search for missing people, example is when the people are trapped someplace where they cannot be found. if we have this GPS device, we can easily find them … “ – Rocky Ho

“… This system is good enough to be able to gain information about the people that needs help especially when it is an emergency case. I hope that this system will still improve that it can be implemented even in a small scale like in the barangays of our country …” – Nel Mateo

“… At first, I didn’t know and really doesn’t have any idea that plotting people at the google map. Not knowing that it is not allowed their, i was a bit surprised with the discussion. It was good to know that the missing persons due to typhoon Ondoy can still be tracked with the map …” – Dk Abrenica

” … The Situation Map is a very good Disaster Preparedness tool and can also help with quick Disaster Coordination plans …” – Migoy Cueto

” … Very simple yet very ingenious if you ask me. . . people whenever calamity strikes should be aware that there is this kind of technology existing in the philippines. . . we need to get our phones ready …” – Wen Genuino

” … The Typhoon Ondoy Disaster Coordination Tool was simple and very helpful. Details are organized …” – Paul Theo Collantes

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

Therese Lim of the Southeast Asia Team just posted this. Thanks Google!

1. “… We’re very saddened by the losses the Filipino people have sustained during this calamity. To help you stay up to date on the disaster and contribute to the relief efforts, we’ve put up a Help for Typhoon Ondoy Victims in the Philippines page that contains the latest news from local media outlets, lists of verified donation sites and emergency hotlines, and a volunteer-maintained map of persons needing rescue.Filipinos have been posting videos of the flooding and its aftermath on YouTube. You can also visualize the overflows along main rivers and bays in Google Earth with this kmz file.

   If you’re familiar with Google Maps and would like to get involved in the effort to map missing persons, relief centers and road conditions, you can email the volunteer team at typhoonondoy@googlegroups.com. We will continue to update the page with the latest information and imagery, and keep your eye on the Lat Long blog for updates about disaster …”

Hopefully, these kind of tools can be used to the most granular of LGU (local government unit) level in the Philippines – at the baranggay level. With these kind of tools, some of the things that can be mitigated should not happen again – maybe something like integration with Frontline SMS?

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

Our CEO Franklin Naval has been doing a yeoman’s job of updating the maps that are featured on the“Help for Typhoon Victims in the Philippines” landing page hosted by Google. The Philippines is now bracing for the onslaught of a category 5 typhoon named “Pepeng” (international code name: Parma) just right after “Ondoy” (international name: Ketsana) it devastated not only the Philippines but Vietnam, Cambodia and even Laos.  I don’t think Franklin can go on forever updating the maps so I’ll go through a walkthrough to show everyone HOW EASY this is and if we distribute the load to 20-40 people who know how to blog, this will be over in 10 MINUTES TOPS!

NOTE: Click on the photos for high-resolution

The first step is to have access to the spreadsheet (make sure you have an invite to EDIT via a GMail address – twitter me @pageman or @franknaval to get an invite). You’ll see the spreadsheet like this:

The cells with red circles are the relevant information needed – the last two cells on the right under On Map? and Who? indicates if the missing persons have been mapped already (NOT YET) and who mapped it (BLANK FOR NOW)

To find the Missing Persons Map, you can just Google “Ondoy” and you should be able to see the Google landing page for Ondoy – you should see several layers – what is of interest to you would be the Missing Persons Layer

Once you click on “Missing Persons” it should bring you the Typhoon Ondoy Missing persons page

You’ll have to scroll down and locate the “Disaster Coordination Tool (Typhoon Ondoy)” link

You will now be on the update page – try to put in the location details and the click the “Find” button until you can approximate the location where you want the marker to be (you might need to do some trial-and-error but you’ll get used to this after a few entries.

For this example, we’re trying to place the marker for “Sta Barbara, San Mateo, Rizal” which Google Maps actually finds – once you’re satisfied where the marker (yes! the red coloured teardrop-shaped thingie) is – go ahead and fill out the details on the left side (you can get the info from the spreadsheet!)

Once you’ve put in all the relevant information, click on “Report” – the page will now prompt you to double-check your entries

Double-check your entries and if you’re happy that everything is in order, click on “Ok” and it will be sent. You should see the next page that says:

“Successfully saved your report.
Please report as much information for the authorities.
Thank you!”

Go back to the spreadsheet and then under the column “On Map?” mark it “Yes” and on “Who”, put your name in. If there’s not enough info to locate the marker you can just mark it with “Needs More Info” and then sign your name

You should then be able to see your mapped “Missing Person” on the “Missing Persons” layer in the Google Landing Page after you Save the spreadsheet and close it

You can zoom in to check your entry

The whole system was put up to cover a whole swath of disaster area comprising of several cities. This can be built on a baranggay level so that there’s enough granularity to account for every citizen. The great thing is that this can be hosted on the cloud and can complement existing disaster management systems like http://sahana.kahelos.org and HISG’s International Disaster Response Network. Some of my IS students in Benilde were able to update these maps in a few minutes with minimum instructions – it should be something straightforward and simple enough for everyone else.

The Disaster Coordination Tool is the brainchild of Dan Delima from Google Tokyo.  Looking at what they have now, Dan says:

“I was hoping that the volunteers could skip the coordination spreadsheet and just keep putting info on facebook/twitter. I mean,  I was hoping all the volunteers just used the tool directly to report everything they see in facebook/twitter in the spreadsheet so that people won’t duplicate input”

Some future improvements in the tool that will be incorporated in a few days will be the ability for the mappers to vote which entries are relevant (this will solve the “information aging”/data relevance issue) and also the ability to search for duplicate entries.

If you want to put up your Disaster Response and Management Systems in the cloud or even be trained about it – give us a buzz on @quadraforte

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

A discussion about Heroku: Best Money Ever Spent in HN quickly became a Heroku vs. GAE discussion. Jonathan Siegel writes in his article:

“We’ve been using Heroku for several of our own self-launched products. From iPhone backend applications to our MMOCG (where C = casual). Now that we are used to the Heroku toolset and infrastructure, it costs us about 15 minutes to deploy a Heroku app including a domain name purchase and redirecting the DNS. It’s really that easy–and that’s why we’ve gone from 1 test project to over 30 active projects on their platform.

We’ve also been using Heroku for staging servers. Especially client staging servers. We generally maintain a QA and Staging server for our projects. We don’t like to cobble deployments together–so if we are creating a staged deployment infrastructure, we generally invest several days, to several weeks in creating a robust, monitored, backed up and secured deployment configuration. This is great for our large projects, but complete overkill for our smaller project work.”

Hey, I’m a Heroku fan myself – I’ve asked my students in VERTSOL to deploy E-Commerce apps like Spree over Heroku before. The comments in the HN posting are interesting though:

“You can build a full Rack app w/ DataMapper, one that is portable (i.e. no lock in) and scalable, w/o having to pay anything, prior to some serious traffic.(Caveat: Tool chain for Ruby on Google App Engine is a little raw at the moment, but it’s coming along)It’s worth pointing out that Google App Engine + JRuby & Rack Apps is considerably cheaper than Heroku. – knowtheory“

knowtheory had more things about to say about this:

“Both EC2 and Heroku cost you money as soon as you start to use them. So, sure i will agree, it’s easier to get up and running on Heroku if you’re a vanilla Ruby dev. AppEngine’s scaling is a lot more sensible economically imo. And this absolutely not to knock Heroku, they are doing some really cool stuff. But for speculative projects, AppEngine is nice, and free for a lot of uses.Yeah, and with AppEngine, you can build an app, deploy it, and continue to hack on it, and improve it without having to pay any money, Heroku gives you 5 megs of space free, yeah?  AppEngine’s currently limit is a gig of storage space, 46.3 CPU hrs, 10gigabytes of incoming, and 10gigabytes of outgoing traffic PER DAY. – knowtheory“

Other developers like mrkurt chimed in:

The app I have running on Heroku uses a number of prebuilt gems, including things like twitter-auth that sort of assume you’re using migrations and ActiveRecord with it. I may move it over to AppEngine at some point, but the absolute fastest way for me to get an app up and running was with Heroku. To be fair, Google AppEngine gives you that same ability. The difference is, you have to build your app for AppEngine rather than building a plane jane vanilla rack/rails/sinatra/whatever app with postgres. – mrkurt“

Heroku should be the winner, FOR NOW – once GAE figures out how to make instant deployment on its platform as easy as it is now to deploy in Heroku – it should be able to overtake Heroku (not that they are really competing with each other).

Posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo

Joel Steiner took some pretty awesome notes during the last GAE meetup. He has some concerns though about the future of GAE on the following fronts:

• Vendor lockin - “If you code to GAE, how can you break your app out of their system and run it on a competitors system if for some reason GAE’s terms, price or other features just aren’t cutting it for you.”
• Importing Ginormous amounts of data – “Since you pay per transaction, and for data transferred and stored, the thought of trying to import my 10 million record events database was a bit scary.”
• Refactoring your data – “So lets say you’ve gotten your 15 millions records happily into the Google datastore, but suddenly business requirements change and you need to significantly refactor the way your data is structured. Now, this is a hard situation in any database system, but the thought of only having external API access to do this amount of work is daunting.”

Everyone’s talking about the “cloud” and what would a “killer app” look like.

Is SOASTA the killer app that cloud-watchers are waiting for?

Reuven Coven asserts as much in his blog post:

“Back to what I find interesting about this new scheme; traditionally performance testing has been a kind of “best guess” scenario. Although there are many testing frameworks available most of which create a hypothetical experience using a set of static machines typically limited to one or two geographic locations. With the emergence of a global supply of regional cloud providers SOASTA is tapping into almost limitless capacity to test your application environment in a proactive fashion. Until the emergence of cloud based infrastructures testing beyond a few hundred thousand users was impossible, now you can slap together a few regionalized clouds and realistically see how 3 million or more users around the globe will actually experience your application and infrastructure. This is specially important in emerging markets such as China and India where even a low usage site can routinely get millions of users.”

What is SOASTA? According to their blog post:

“For the past several months we (SOASTA) have been performing global load and performance tests by leveraging multiple cloud platforms (cross-cloud testing) to generate and simulate Web traffic originating from around the world. Up until last November we had been limited to using Amazon’s New Jersey locations. Now we have access to and can generate traffic (load) from 15 locations around the globe. For the several customers that have experienced it, the results have been amazing. While simulating global traffic is not all together new, using cloud computing makes it, for the first time, fast, scalable, and affordable. Tomorrow we will announce the availability of The First Cloud-Based Global Test Platform. This New Test Platform is NOW available to all corporations around the world for Global Load testing on there web applications.   Prices starts at $1,000/Test Hour.”

SOASTA is an idea whose time as come because for the first time in history, by leveraging cross-cloud testing, load and performance testing can now be simulated – it might even make the concept of an SLA obsolete – maybe thing would be cross-cloud l&p testing certifications?

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo