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Wanna get your head in the Clouds?
(3 votes)
Yep it's true, Presto on the Cloud is here! I admit, at first glance, it might appear that all we're doing is trying to ‘Keep up with the Joneses’. But look a little further and you'll find much, much more. It's a great opportunity for all mashers to truly kickstart their mashup efforts. Let me tell you what I mean.
Here's how my boss put it, "We took Presto and we've fused it together with 3 very important things: the cloud, a community, and tons of content. In other words, we put Presto in a hosted environment (Amazon's EC2), then connected it to the Mashup Developer Community (with thousands of mashers worldwide), and finally we seeded the Presto Cloud with over 250 enterprise data sources and services (to jump start your mashing)".
The day of the ‘lone coder’ is over, at least in the world of mashups. Presto, combined with the virtual nature of the cloud and an entire community focused on building out shared solutions, gives us the chance to truly change the face of enterprise development.
Dan Hudson was one of our cloud beta testers. (He also created the ‘Haiti Crisis Communication Dashboard’.) Leveraging Presto Cloud, Dan has been able to quickly demonstrate how multiple data sources can be mashed together to create an actionable view of information. His dashboard was just the start of what we can build together. By Dan sharing all of his Haiti mashups with the entire Mashup Developer Community, we’re all able to become part of his mission. Visit the Mashup Wall, to view and interact with his work.
So, how do you start mashing in the cloud? All of our community members have been given a Presto Cloud account. Simply visit the Presto Cloud login page, enter your MDC username and password and start mashing in seconds. And remember don't forget to share your mashups with fellow community members because who knows, you might share the same mashup thoughts.
For more details on the Presto Cloud, read our FAQ or watch the 5 minute Welcome Video. Get your head in the cloud!
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I could not connect to http://cloud.jackbe.com/
Is it up at the moment?
Yes its up, I tried the url in 3 browsers and it works for me. (Chrome, FF 3.5, IE 8) Can you try it again and let us know the error message that displays?
First off, great way to go. This is a space that not a lot of people are in (providing mashup services in the cloud) and you guys are positioned perfectly to do it. I can't wait to see what becomes of it.
I like the community aspect that you added. Making mashing a social experience is bound to add much value to it. Building the coolest mashup and letting everyone else take a gander at it, or do something useful with it is just what gets users motivated.
I can also see the community gaining a new user base. Loading and managing Presto is not trivial. Putting it on the cloud lowers the barrier to entry and making it social gives it "shiny-ness". I bet you can attract an entirely new group of mashers to your product. This makes it as easy as it could possibly be.
This also gives your community a place to show off their skills, so this will be good for the community as a whole. You can run competitions where you specify a certain set of mashables and then tell people to do something interesting with them. Whoever gets the highest rating wins (and you guys are always generous with your gifts, so I have no doubt that will be a motivator, too).
I didn't see this idea explored, and perhaps you have yet to head down this path, but this could be a great way to enable your community to support itself. Imagine: I'm creating a mashup, I get stuck. So, I upload my mashables (making them private) to the cloud, then up load my mashup and mashlet. I ask for help, then point to my mashup in the cloud and ask people to take a look. Nice little way of doing things. Lots of problems there to iron out (like, can I make a mashable private but a mashup public, and even then, can I limit my output on that mashable to a trivial amount so as not to divulge sensitive info), but it's well worth a shot.
One area where you can really, really push this is in the government transparency crowd. Mashing data.gov is the hip new thing, and so is transparency. You guys should set yourselves up to be the place where people go to mash and visualize data.gov info. It would be for the common good and would get you a whole lot of visibility. Touch base with Clay Johnson (@cjoh) and attract his attention, that'll go a long way to satisfying that goal.
Quick note, sharing a mashup and a mashlet seems pretty easy, sharing a mashable seems rather involved (as in, kind of hidden from normal view). Not having seen the process in action, I can't say, but it would seem you'd want it to be just as easy to share mashables as the other two.
All in all, I think this is a great idea, and I'm really stoked that you guys are doing it! Good job, and I can't wait to see what happens with it.
Mike
Hey guys,
this is very cool and can't wait to try it out.
Cheers, Innes