In an address at the Digital Landscapes conference at the University College Dublin, Google Europe boss John Herlihy laid out Google’s vision of the future, and it is smartphones. According to Herlihly, “in three years time, desktops will be irrelevant.” He points to Japan, where he says that “most research is done today on smartphones, not PCs.”

Desktops on the road to oblivion? Well, not quite. In parsing Herlihy’s comments, it might be fair to say that he expects technology users will become differentiated, with the vast bulk of them using mobile devices. You don’t need a desktop to run Google searches, post a Tweet, update Facebook, send or receive email, listen to music, or check a calendar. Thinking about what most people do with computers--it’s actually quite limited--a desktop is over-kill. If given the alternative, it makes sense that a lot of consumers would jump to the less powerful, but more convenient mobile devices.

And Google wants to be there when the leap is made. Going forward, says Herlihy, Google will view its activity through a mobile lens, with an emphasis on cloud-based computing solutions. “At the end of the day it's the customer who owns the cash,” said Herlihy, “That’s why we construct our organization to deliver value. The underlying framework is to make it easier for people to do business, solve problems and move on.”

Image Credit: Dan Zen/Flickr

In a recent interview, Google’s VP of product management, Bradley Horowitz, made it clear that 2010 would see Google making a big push with Google Voice, as well as cloud computing ventures. Google Voice was just rolled out this year, but already has 1.4 million users in the invite only beta. The recent acquisition of Gizmo5 may give a hint as to the direction Google plans to go, and it may put them on a collision course with Skype.

Gizmo5 allows users to make VoIP calls over a data connection much like Skype. It seems clear that Google plans to beef up Google Voice with the technology from Gizmo5. “Gizmo5 gives us talent and talent technology. They have specific tech and skills in further integrating telephony with devices and desktop and Web-based computing,” said Horowitz. Skype already provides VoIP to 500 million users, but if any company can scale up to that level, it’s Google.

Google is already laying the groundwork for its cloud computing endeavors as well. They need users to feel secure storing data in Google’s cloud, and the creation of the Data Liberation Front goes a long way in gaining that trust. Similarly, the Google Dashboard increases data transparency at Google. According to Horowitz, Google is also aware people won’t use cloud services if that aren’t fast. So look forward to “blazing fast” cloud platforms with highly portable data in 2010… we can only hope.

A rising number of data flubs has caused some to question whether the benefits of cloud computing truly outweigh the risks, but is that really a fair assessment? The eggheads at Kroll Ontrack don't think so, who point out that the recent spike in data losses with corporate enterprises is simply the result of human error.

"While advanced storage options such as virtualization and cloud computing offer corporations storage optimization, human processes are still at the root of these solutions, instructing the technology as to how to perform," said Phil Bridge, managing director at Kroll Ontrack UK. "The complextity of these systems often requires a steep learning curve. With reported IT spending at a low, human error is increasingly common."

According to Kroll Ontrack, some of the biggest mistakes attributed to the human element include pulling the wrong drive while trying to pull a failed disk in a RAID array, accidentally deleting a business-critical database and restoring it with a corrupt or incomplete backup, attempting to force failed drives back online when rebuilding a bad array, accidentally deleting files, volumes, virtual machines, or a SAN LUN with no backup in place, and reformatting the wrong SAN LUN during a server migration.

Los Angeles City Council approved a deal which will roll out Gmail and Google Apps to about 30,000 employees throughout the city.

"The City of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation, made a world-class decision today to support a state-of-the-art e-mail system," said Tony Cardenas an L.A. City Councilman. Most of the concerns regarding the switch surrounded privacy, stability, and cost.

Google and the city of Los Angeles cut a deal that if there was a “significant data breach” in which employee information was stolen or viewed Google would pay damage compensation. There should be obvious cost savings in moving away from onsite infrastructure as well as stability improvements moving the services into the cloud.

Have you, or your company made the switch? What are your thoughts on the Google Apps system?

Maybe the recent Sidekick debacle has you nervous over the concept of cloud computing, or perhaps you just want a local backup of all your Google Docs. No matter what the reason might be, Google has now made it easy to export all your documents, spreadsheets, and other Google Docs to your hard drive in one fell swoop.

According to Google, the hardest part of the process is selecting all your files. To do so, go to the 'All items' section, scroll to the bottom of the documents list, click the checkbox button, and then choose "select all visible."

And that's it for the "difficult part." All that's left to do at that point is right-click, choose 'export,' and decide what download format you want for each kind of file (PowerPoint for presentation files, for example). Google does the rest, compressing your files and tossing them into an archive. If you have a ton of documents and don't feel like waiting, you can have the archive emailed when it's finished.

Note that the above will not include hidden documents. To include those, go back to the 'All items' section and scroll to Hidden.

Image Credit: Google

With a lot of help from the University of Michigan, Hewlett Packard on Wednesday unveiled its beta BookPrep project, which seeks to make more than half a million rare books available through a print-on-demand system.

Using imaging and printing technology from HP Labs, HP is able to automatically scan rare books and then clean up, brighten, and align the text. As of this writing, there are exactly 472,509 books available for purchase, most of which were published before 1923.

"HP BookPrep technology allows publishers to extend the life cycle of their books, removes the cost and waste burdens of maintaining inventory, and uses a full spectrum of technologies to deliver convenient access to consumers," said Andrew Bolwell, HP's director of New Business Initiatives.

In addition to rare books, HP said it is also extending its BookPrep project to publishers and content owners who want to offer their full catalogs of titles online, The Inquirer reports.

BookPrep Link

Computing has taken an odd Joni Mitchell twist of late. Nvidia is the latest to announce it’s entry into cloud computing with Cloud 3D, a platform which Nvidia says will make it easier for developers to create and show powerful 3-D graphics technology. According to Nvidia Cloud 3D, which operates on the RealityServer platform, is “a powerful combination of GPUs and software that streams interactive, photorealistic 3D applications to any web connected PC, laptop, netbook and smart phone.”

RealityServer is powered by the Telsa RS GPU-based server, a massively parallel computing system boasting of 240 CUDA processors per core. Rendering will be performed with iRay, a technology developed by Nvidia’s Mental Images subsidiary, which provides physically correct ray-tracing in this computing environment. Nvidia’s goal is to provide real-time rendering solutions over the web.

"This is one giant leap closer to the goal of real-time photorealistic visual computing for the masses," said Dan Vivoli, Nvidia senior vice president. Nvidia sees Cloud 3D serving the high demand needs of car designers and those of online shoppers, who will be able to interactively design home interiors, including rearranging the furniture.

Image Credit: Nvidia

T-Mobile Sidekick owners last week were reminded about the risks of relying too heavily on cloud computing when a massive failure at Microsoft's Danger subsidiary left the handheld owners without access to the Web or their address book for several days.

If that weren't bad enough, after some of the data had been recovered, Microsoft on Saturday told customers that any other missing data may be permanently lost. While it's not uncommon for outages to occur, the potential for permanently lost data casts a dark cloud over, er, cloud computing.

For Microsoft, the timing couldn't be any worse. Next month, the software giant will launch Windows Azure, an operating system in the cloud. Microsoft is quick to point out that the Azure service is built with redundancy in mind and is able to withstand failures in single or multiple nodes, but will that be enough to convince users to put their confidence in the cloud?

Image Credit: letstalk.com

Starting on October 5th IBM will begin selling a Web-based version of its popular Lotus Notes software suite, a move that puts it in direct competition with Google. The service which is currently being called “LotusLive iNotes” will include the traditional email, calendar, and contact management applications, but interestingly enough will not have any type of substitute for Google Docs.

IBM is apparently counting on the notion that most companies simply don’t want all of the applications that come with Google Apps, and would choose just the core communication applications if they had the choice. Just in case that alone isn’t enough to win over companies looking at cloud based options, they are also undercutting Google’s price per user by $14 a year, bringing the annual cost of a license down to a mere $36.

Google may have a two-year head start on IBM with over 1.75 million registered businesses, but researchers from Gartner claim this is only the tip of the iceberg. Apparently if current trends continue, almost 20 percent of companies will use some form of hosted email by 2012. It will be interesting to see if IBM’s sterling reputation with enterprises will be enough to beat out Google. Currently they don’t have any plans to offer free consumer level versions of the product, but that could certainly change over time.  

Head on over to IBM's website to access the free 30 day trial. 

Google says that it was high load on the internet giant’s Contacts server that caused the outages of last week. Users of Google Apps could not access their Google Contacts on September 24, from 10 AM to 11:30 AM EDT.  Gmail contacts were also unavailable from 10 AM to 1 PM EDT. This also affected Google Voice, as it relies on Google Contacts.

According to the Google Apps team, the solution was to temporarily stop all requests to the Google Contacts servers. A banner was shown in Gmail that informed users of alternate ways of accessing their contacts, but this likely did not lessen withdrawal symptoms for those affected.

On September 25, Google explained that the increased server load was caused by a rare convergence of events. First, an error in a network data center caused additional load on the Contacts server. Also, it just so happened that the server was experiencing higher than average usage that day. Finally, an update to the Gmail platform unintentionally increased load on the Contacts server even more. If they keep this up, their uptime might fall below 99%... the horror.