Panda Releases First Cloud Antivirus -- Absolutely Free

Panda has just released the final version of Panda Cloud Antivirus, the first antivirus software to be based on cloud technology. The virus scanning and updates are all done in the clouds and, therefore, provide the latest and most up-to-date virus protection instantly. Best of all, this offering from Panda is 100% free!

In an exchange with Downloadsquad , the Panda CEO had some interesting things to say about this latest entry into the anti-virus market. One statement in particular stood out:

"Panda Cloud Antivirus is a new protection model," said Santana. For starters, it's the "first antivirus without an update button."

The lack of an update button is where the cloud technology comes into play. The Cloud Antivirus connects to Panda's servers to be scanned; therefore virus definition updates are not needed as the security center is updated in real time.

What does this mean to the user?

• No need for manually updating your virus definitions
• Constantly having access to the latest updated virus, spyware and malware protection
• Extremely low memory footprint (It will not slow down your computer)

I am now running Panda Cloud Antivirus on my computer. If you are interested, visit the company website to download the program. As a head's up: you will need to register with an email address to have the complete Cloud Antivirus experience.

Top Technology Trends Today

I just returned from one of my favorite cities, Chicago, where I attended the American Library Association's annual conference. Of the ten workshops I attended, my personal favorite was the Top Technology Trends panel put on by the Library & Information Technology Association (LITA).

The panel consisted of Library Technology experts: Eric Lease Morgan, Joan Frye Williams, Clifford Lynch, John Blyberg, Geert van den Boogaard and Roy Tennant. Their comments and predictions were presented to a packed ballroom, humming with the clicks of blogger's keyboards and tweeter's mobile phones. At the time of the event, the discussion was streaming live. The entire presentation can now be viewed on Ustream.

Mobile and Accessible

The panel confirmed many of the technological advances we have already written about here at The Tech Desk. Much of their discussion was devoted to the rise in mobile technology and the practical application of mobile devices in libraries. When asked to address the access gap, Williams stated: "More people have mobile phones than have ever had computers." Lynch added that "mobile devices are rented by the month. In some ways that makes them more accessible."

Panelists also spoke on the rise of cloud computing. While the concept of cloud computing is an exciting trend, some heeded caution. Said Lynch, "Bandwidth is a problem and it's getting bigger. The rise of the cloud is pure rhetoric if the bandwidth can’t support it."

Lynch also spoke on the disappearance of data: "How much are we willing to put into the cloud, and how much are we willing to trust it? ... Some things are just vanishing suddenly, but we aren’t dealing with the consequences. Corporate records, corporate history, public records."

Blyberg addressed end-user technology tools creating rapid trending. However when asked if Google, Twitter, and Facebook are encouraging group-think and making us dumber, he was quick to argue the contrary: The internet is a tool that has made us smarter than ever before.

The Flow, The Cloud, The Rain

In the end, it was Tennant's metaphor for technology trends as the Water Cycle that resonated the most with me. Tennant's comments were broken into three segments, The Flow, The Cloud and The Rain.

"The Flow" is information flowing on the internet as streams of data. A prime example of this is Twitter's constant stream of user comments. The downside to this flow is that after a significant period of time, the data is impossible to find: too far buried beneath new information.

"The Cloud" refers back to previously mentioned trends in cloud computing and their effects on servers and data storage.

"The Rain" symbolizes our state of economic recession, which seems to be affecting all libraries, large and small. Tennant's advice was, "Think carefully about how to cut wisely." He warns that in order for libraries to come out of the recession "on top" and continue to serve our communities in the best way possible, we need to be cautious and innovative with the ways in which we save money.

Amazon Offers Grants for Cloud Computing

Amazon, the online retailing website, is offering educators, researchers, and students the chance to apply for free access to its hosted cloud computing services. Cloud computing stores data away from your computer. This allows you to work with massive amounts of data that would jam a regular desktop computer.

Grant applications are available through Amazon’s Web site. Amazon says its cloud services are already being used at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. For example, Oxford scientists at the Malaria Atlas Project — an effort to map the geography of the disease in order to drive prevention strategies — use Amazon’s services to store, share, and analyze data.

[via The Chronicle of Higher Education]

14 Universities Receive Grants to Study Cloud Computing

The National Science Foundation announced that it will grant $5 million to 14 universities to work on developing new ways to share and organize data in the clouds.

The grants focus on leveraging the opportunities presented by “cloud computing” — using Web-based services to execute computationally strenuous tasks more easily and cheaply. Experts have been abuzz for some time about how the development of cloud computing stands to benefit higher education, particularly with regard to research and analysis.

Among the schools receiving grants are: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Yale University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Maryland at College Park.

[via The Chronicle of Higher Education]

Will Federal Data Be in the Clouds?

Some of the largest technology companies -- including Amazon and Microsoft -- want federal government agencies to house data on the companies' servers, "in the clouds," instead of on government servers, according to Kim Hart writing for the Washington Post. The companies argue that such outsourcing of data storage is a way to cut costs and boost efficiency.

The housing of much personal government data on corporate servers makes me nervous. I think that the new Administration in Washington should consider a technological makeover of municipal, state, and federal government. That would be a spending bill that, I believe, would have merit.

And Google Laughs

Google always seems ready to respond to anything Microsoft can throw at it -- instantly. The two giants will be duking it out for the foreseeable future. My money is on Google given that "Philosophically... Microsoft remains firmly tethered to the PC, while Google wants to move as fast as possible to Web-based applications." As we've covered here previously, cloud computing is real and to a large degree here now.

The Empire Strikes Back

Microsoft responds again to the Google threat.

Easy Training Videos with Camstudio

As I mentioned a few days ago, one of the cool tools I learned about at this year's Michigan Library Association conference was camstudio.org -- an open source ware that is, as, its website says: "able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)."

I downloaded camstudio one day last week at work and started playing with it. It is a great tool! I have already made two staff training videos -- one of which we are actually using -- and I just made my first training video for the public on how you can log into your Library accounts on our website to check your holds, renew your material, etc.

Camstudio is quick to download, and simple to learn. Though I am no Fellini, nor Antonioni, nor even Roman Polanski, I was quickly able to make pretty good 2 or 3 minute videos.

Here's the one I made for the public. Click on the picture of our web site and turn up your volume. Take a look and let me know what you think.

The only drawback is that the video files are huge. However, I used another site I learned about at the conference to store the 50+ mg videos in the clouds: drop.io.

Web 2.0 Never Tasted So Good

For many years, we've saved our favorite websites by adding them to our "favorites" or "bookmarks" in the web browser of our choice (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Safari, etc.). The major shortfall of this method is that our favorite websites are tied to one person, one computer, one browser.

What happens when you want to look up one of your bookmarked sites from another computer? Or when you want to share them with your friends? What happens when you have so many bookmarked websites that you can't remember where you saved them in the first place?

You sign up for a free del.icio.us account.

The social bookmarking site del.icio.us offers a better way to save your favorite websites for sharing and future use. Del.icio.us users save their favorite websites, organize them in a more efficient fashion, and share them easily with others. Now, doesn't that sound simply delicious?

To use del.icio.us, you need to first create a free account. Second, download software to add del.icio.us buttons to your web browser. Finally, you can import your old bookmarks into your new del.icio.us account.

These steps are quick and easy -- the website walks new users through the process step-by-step. From then on, every time you visit a website you enjoy, you can add that site to your del.icio.us bookmarks with the click of a button. Then, you can access these favorites from any computer, any place, using any browser.

Another fabulous feature of del.icio.us is that you can tag your bookmarks with keywords. This makes for better organization of your bookmarks so you can find them in a snap.

You can also put the social in social bookmarking, by sharing easily your favorites with others. For instance, to see what the librarians at Troy are enjoying, visit http://delicious.com/TPLbookmarks . You can also see which websites are most popularly saved by other del.icio.us users here: http://delicious.com/popular/ .

Happy browsing!

The Rise of Cloud Computing: The Majority of Computer Users Now Store Data On-line

According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 69% of Americans who are on-line use “cloud computing,” even though most of them don’t know what the term means.

Cloud computing is an emerging technology in which data – documents, email messages, photographs, etc. – and applications – word processing and spreadsheets, for instance – are stored in cyberspace and not on an individual’s computer.

So if you use a web-based email, like Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail, or an on-line photo service like Flickr, or a video-posting site like Youtube, you are using cloud computing.

Web-based email is the most common form of cloud computing. Fifty-six percent of computer users access such services. Nearly 40% of computer users store personal photos or videos on-line. And nearly 30% use on-line application software, like Google Documents.

Why is cloud computing so popular? According to Pew: “Convenience and flexibility.”

Cloud computing allows you to access your data from any on-line computer, not just your own. You don’t need to have a lot of storage space for all of your large files. It is easier to share and collaborate on projects when the data is on-line. And you don’t have to carry around floppy disks, CDs, or USB flash drives, when moving between computers.

The downside is, as the Pew study points out, computer users are concerned that their data might be accessed by the companies that store the information, for marketing or other purposes.

Nevertheless, that concern has not stopped more and more Americans from enjoying the ease and mobility of cloud computing. And as information becomes even more on-demand and mobile, cloud computing is likely to grow.

To view the entire Pew report, go to Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services.