Posts tagged Preview
Google Ups Pricing as App Engine Leaves Preview: Bait and Switch?
Sep 1st
When have customers ever been happy about a price increase? Right. So it should come as little shock that there’s a bit of grumbling about Google App Engine (GAE) prices going up as it leaves preview. It’s not just the pricing increase, though, Google is also changing the way it calculates the bill.
To mollify customers a bit, Google is extending a one-time credit of $50 through October 31st. Given the feedback so far that may not be enough.
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Google’s new pricing model does away with billing by CPU time, and now charges by on-demand frontend instances. Google (fairly) says that it’s made the change because CPU time is just one aspect of resources used by App Engine. “When App Engine runs your code, it creates an instance with a maximum amount of CPU and memory that can be used for running a set of your code. Even if the CPU is not currently working due to waiting for responses, the instance is still resident and considered “in use”.
While it’s undoubtedly true that there’s more than CPU to consider, the change in pricing seems to be leaving GAE users with sticker shock. Comparing pricing from one PaaS or cloud service provider to another’s has never been easy. But comparing Google’s old and new pricing is no easy matter either. Bandwidth prices have remained the same, but the switch from CPU time to instances makes it difficult to do the conversion. One response over on Hacker News indicates that the expected bill will go from $9 a month to $270 a month.
This has raised charges that Google is bait and switching its users. Google App Engine has been in preview for more than three years. It launched in April of 2008, and was one of the first Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) plays. It launched in closed beta to about 10,000 developers getting early access to free (but limited) resources. Since then it introduced pricing that seems to have been found reasonable by quite a few developers and organizations.
Google has had three years to figure out its pricing, so this seems like a pretty drastic change. And GAE customers may be in a worse position when it comes to moving – its APIs and software stack are unique, so just picking up and moving to another service is not an easy option. One user makes the point that while Google may not raise the price often, it might be safer to go with providers with more standardized software stacks. “That way I can take advantage of future competition of providers.”
In fairness, Google has also added a few perks as the service is leaving preview. For instance, the company is now adding Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to the Paid and Premium levels of GAE, and operational support to Premium accounts. Only Google knows for sure whether the pricing model is necessary to make GAE a sustainable service on their end.
But the switch has the potential to hit current GAE users in the pocketbook, perhaps hard. Is Google gouging its GAE customers, or just making necessary adjustments? Let us know what you think, and if you’re being affected by the change.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
iOS5 SDK for Branded Short Links from Bit.ly Available Now for Preview
Aug 24th
Bit.ly, the URL shortener and analytics service from New York incubator Betaworks, has developed a software developers kit that leverages the forthcoming deep Twitter integration in iOS5 to enable app developers to automatically share links on Twitter using branded URLs. ReadWriteWeb, for example, shares short links on Twitter automatically using rww.to – using the new Bit.ly SDK our iPhone app will automatically do the same with the new Twitter iOS features.
The SDK is only available to developers who have signed an NDA with Apple, but it’s available to check out on request. It’s enough to make a person wonder what other kinds of APIs and SDKs will be built on top of the new Twitter features in iOS5. Twitter is a great platform, but there’s no reason to believe that multiple layers of platforms will be placed on top of iOS, Twitter, location data, URL shorteners and more.
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View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Couchbase Releases Developer Preview for CouchDB/Membase Combination
Jul 30th
When Membase and CouchOne merged earlier this year to form Couchbase, the newly formed company promised to release a merged version of the NoSQL database servers the company sponsors: Apache CouchDB and Membase.
Today Couchbase made good on that promise with the release of the first developer preview for Couchbase Server 2.0, which combines the elasticity of Membase with CouchDB’s distributed indexing, bidirectional replication and JavaScript-based map-reduce querying.
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The first version of Couchbase Server, released earlier this year, didn’t incorporate features from Membase – instead it rolled up various CouchDB components into a single install. Version 2.0 what we’ve been waiting for since the merger.
Couchbase Server 2.0 also incorporates Memcached, which provides in-memory caching of data for increased speed of both reads and writes. Couchbase Server 2.0 is able to sync with other CouchDB-based servers, including Mobile Couchbase, which runs on Android and iOS.
The combined features include:
- JavaScript-based map-reduce
- Geospatial indexing
- JSON data structures
- Memory caching
- Zero downtime topology changes
- Data distribution across clusters
For more on CouchDB, see our interviews with J. Chris Anderson and Max Ogden.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
The Preview Post: Search Engine Land’s SMX East 2011 Comes To NYC & Why You Should Go
Jul 26th
Search Engine Land’s SMX East search engine marketing conference is headed back to New York City from Sept. 13-15. We’ve got a great agenda. This is my semi-traditional preview for our readers of what we’ve got planned. You should go! Here’s why. Why Everyone Should Come!…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google’s Black Navigation Bar a Preview of Google+ Project
Jun 29th
Apparently in light of Google’s announcement of their social Google+ project, Google is rolling out a new user interface (UI) for its standard search product. The UI appears to be modeled after the new Google Profile design.
The black navigation…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
SEO and Social Media Success Online Seminar Offers Complimentary Preview Webinar – PR Web (press release)
Jun 23rd
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SEO and Social Media Success Online Seminar Offers Complimentary Preview Webinar
PR Web (press release) The SEO & Social Media Success Online Seminar will host a unique training event on July 19-28 to teach best practices and strategies for monetizing search engine optimization (SEO) and Social Media efforts. World-class SEO and Social Media experts will … Mumbai digital marketing company PR Jankari launches packages for SEO, Leads … Mumbai Based Social Media Company PR Jankari to Focus on Social Media Marketing |
View full post on SEO – Google News
2WAY Summit Preview: Teens + Mobile = Trouble?
Jun 10th
Moral panic. Time and time again, changes occur that make some people feel as though the very fabric of society is at risk. Those changes can be cultural; they can be technological. Often, they involve activities associated with and undertaken by youth.
It’s no surprise then that of mobile phones and children have repeatedly elicited moral panic. According to a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds own cellphones. Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up 2010 survey found that 20% of children from kindergarten through second grade said they owned cellphones, and 29% of those from third through fifth grade said they did. These children don’t just own feature phones either; an increasing number say they own smartphones and have access not just to mobile voice, but texting and data plans as well.
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Want to find out more about teen sexting and its impact on tech companies? Then join danah boyd, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, at next week’s ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit for a conversation about the practice of teen sexting, why entrepreneurs should care, what the social and legal implications of this practice are, and how technology companies should respond.
It’s this ubiquitous access to technology by children that’s cause for concern among some sectors. For others, it’s the ubiquitous text-messaging. It’s the content of the texts (namely sexual content). It’s the places where they text (while driving, while at school).
There have been numerous stories in the news lately about teens in trouble due to their mobile behaviors. At ReadWriteWeb’s 2WAY Summit, social researcher danah boyd will discuss teen sexting and its impact on technology companies.
Although sexting makes headlines, it isn’t the only place in which we’ve seen great upheaval and concern surrounding teens’ mobile habits. Here are some of the other stories we’ve covered here at ReadWriteWeb in the last year that demonstrate how mobile phones are changing teens’ communication patterns – with each other, at home, and at school.
Cellphones in the Classroom: Distraction or Tool?
Although cellphones are teens’ primarily communication devices, most schools continue to ban them from the classroom, arguing that they are a distraction and that students’ data plans and 3G access allow them to bypass schools’ web filtering mechanisms.
The ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit NYC
Experience the Future of the Web…2WAYS
June 13-14, Columbia University, NYC
Experience the Future of the Web…2WAYS
June 13-14, Columbia University, NYC
Tickets from $495 – Sign up Now
Day 1 Schedule
- When Disruptions Collide: Political Uprisings and Social Media
- Fred Wilson Keynote
- Teen Sexting and its Impact on Tech Companies
- Q&A With Jason Calacanis
- Creative Exploitation of Social Media from The Swine Flu to The Onion
- Chris Dixon and His Extraordinary Machines
- Flipboard & The Future of Media Consumption
- Life is a Game: Foursquare and the Future of Location
- How W3C’s Open Web Platform is Transforming Industries
Don’t miss more sessions and speed geeking on Day 2!
But students are speaking out about this. In a recent survey, they listed their inability to use their cellphones at school as one of the major technology barriers they face. High schoolers said they wanted to use cellphones to check their grades, conduct research, take notes in class, collaborate and communicate with friends, use a calendar, send an email, learn about school activities, and create and share videos.
Despite students’ interest in using cellphones at school and even parents’ willingness to pay for the devices and the data plans, over 65% of principals surveyed said they’d refuse to let students do so.
Cellphones as the Point of Control
The argument for getting a cellphone – whether it was an argument from a teen or a parent – used to involve safety. But teens are now clear that the primary reason they want one is to stay in touch with their friends.
For parents, however, a children’s cellphone is still very much a point of control. Parents put limits on the number of minutes and number of texts. They admit to regularly looking through the contents of their children’s phones, and they say that they take away access to cellphones as punishment.
But cellphones offer another point of control and surveillance as well. In April, ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez wrote about the potential to have parental controls baked in to handsets. Parents would be able to track phones’ location, turn off access to texting when the phone (or more specifically, a car a teen is driving) is in motion, preview photos that are sent from the phone, and monitor Web searches and application downloads.
Will these sorts of technologies that give parents better control help assuage fears about teens’ mobile phone usage? Will they help convince schools to let students bring their phones into the classrooms?
After all, the pervasiveness of these devices means that we’ve reached the point where the vast majority of teens are carrying a small computing device in their pockets or backpacks? Is that technology cause for celebration or panic?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
2WAY Summit Preview: Who’s Leading the Future of Location?
Jun 10th
According to comScore, 16.7 million people used location check-in services in March 2011. More than 12.6 million of those people did so through their smartphones. The rise of the smartphone and location services are inextricably linked as platforms like FourSquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places and Google Latitude become mainstays in people’s digital arsenals.
Yet, in 2009, the location market did not exist. Foursquare and Gowalla were just getting off the ground and the notion that your phone was tracking your every movement was not of great concern to the public. How did we get from zero to 16.7 million in a matter of years?
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Want to find out more about what’s next for location-based services? Then join Foursquare’s Head of Product Alex Rainert and ABC News Radio’s Dan Patterson at next week’s ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit for a conversation about the company’s present and future place in the location game.
Make It A Game, People Will Come
FourSquare launched right before South by SouthWest Interactive in 2009 and took the conference by storm. It was the first mobile-based check-in game that gave users any real incentive to tell people where they were in real life through the Internet. Badges and leaderboards had digital denizens bopping around Austin telling everybody what they were doing, and where.
At its launch, we noted that Foursquare provided users with incentive, saying, “Foursquare…adds a competitive element to the interaction, as it rewards you for checking in.
Foursquare’s primary competitor was Gowalla, which also had a March 2009 launch at SXSW. Checking in indeed became the thing to do.
If you were a giant geek.
The potential of location-based applications was readily apparent. It could be a cool game for users, a marketing tool for advertisers and local merchants, and a way to gain valuable data on the whereabouts of smartphone users. Two years later, we now see that tracking data is a big deal.
Checking In to the Feature Wars
The ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit NYC
Experience the Future of the Web…2WAYS
June 13-14, Columbia University, NYC
Experience the Future of the Web…2WAYS
June 13-14, Columbia University, NYC
Tickets from $495 – Sign up Now
Day 1 Schedule
- When Disruptions Collide: Political Uprisings and Social Media
- Fred Wilson Keynote
- Teen Sexting and its Impact on Tech Companies
- Q&A With Jason Calacanis
- Creative Exploitation of Social Media from The Swine Flu to The Onion
- Chris Dixon and His Extraordinary Machines
- Flipboard & The Future of Media Consumption
- Life is a Game: Foursquare and the Future of Location
Fast forward about a year or so. Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR and, a little later, Facebook Places are all in a race for mind and market share.
Foursquare and Gowalla, having started at the same time, were the first to go head-to-head in adding features and attracting users. Partners were signed and incentives were launched, such as Foursquare with restaurant reviewer Zagat and Examiner.com and SCVNGR with a multitude of partners including the Boston Red Sox and Boston Globe.
Gowalla added comments and photo capability to location in March 2010, almost exactly a year after launch. Any location service that thinks of going anywhere these days has to have a full array of social capabilities – pictures, recommendations, comments and the like.
Foursquare has become the undisputed leader in the check-in game. Gowalla has tried to innovate new features to stay in the game but not much has really been heard from the service since last December when it unveiled a redesign that got mixed reviews.
Facebook Places & The Mainstream
Facebook launched its long-awaited Facebook Places in August 2010. It has seen moderate use but has not reached the type of critical mass that Facebook hoped it would when it launched. Instead, Facebook Places is just a competitor in the battle. What Facebook Places did do, however, was make the location check-in a near household term.
The day after Facebook Places was announced, Foursquare said it was registering more people than ever. The tech community stated that the war for LBSN (location-based social networks) was on.
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