Meat Clouds and Serverhuggers

About a week ago, I posted my roster of The 2008 Cloud Computing All-Stars (I'll be updating this shortly with new players and possibly a poll). Botchagalupe followed it up this week with his inaugural 2008 Cloudies Awards. My favorite category is his Best New Cloudy Terms (of which his top two for 2008 are Meat Cloud and Serverhuggers). Watch for Appistry (Disclosure: They are a client) to make a run at next year's Cloudies based on what they are doing to help enterprises cloud-enable their applications.

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Picture This: I'm a photo contest winner

About a month ago I came across a post in my RSS reader about an annual photo contest the guys at A Good Beer Blog were running. I'm an amateur photographer and, on a whim, decided to submit a couple of shots I had lying around on my hard drive. And, lo and behold, one of them was chosen as a finalist. My prize: Lew Bryson's newly-published guide to New Jersey breweries!

If you like beer, check out the blog. If you like beer and photography, check out the other finalists.

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• Support Saranac

The 2008 Cloud Computing All-Stars

One of the most talked about technologies of 2008 was unquestionably cloud computing (okay, maybe not unquestionably...this is the tech industry, afterall). Cloud computing -- from consumer-level apps such as Facebook to big company entries such as Microsoft's Azure -- dominated a good part of the tech conversation over the past year.

And, like most hot technologies, a number of key players emerged. While my role in cloud computing flirts primarily around the periphery (i.e., I don't write code), I am close enough to the conversation to notice which players seem to sit at the epicenter of the discussion.

Among the creme of the crop are five who I believe make up The 2008 Cloud Computing All-Star Team:

1. Jeff Barr (Amazon's web services god)
2. Michael Sheehan (GoGrid evangelist extraordinaire)
3. Reuven Cohen (Enomaly founder and Cloud Camp instigator using open source to make the cloud elastic)
4. Sam Charrington (Appistry VP using cloud application platform to put a hurt on the legacy app server market)
   
5. Chris Gladwin (CEO of Cleversafe and the guy behind one of the hottest cloud storage technologies of '08)

Which cloud computing players would you recruit for your all-star team? Let me know in the comments.

[Disclosure: Appistry is a client.]

Taking the First Step: RSS Readers

ReadWriteWeb blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick quoted me in a post earlier this evening highlighting a number of social media tools those in the industry (read: early adopters, geeks) first introduce new users to:

PR pro Mike Maney says he starts with an RSS reader (specifically, NetNewsWire from Newsgator) because it's "amazing watching people immediately grok the power of the web coming to them."

If you aren't following Marshall and the gang at ReadWriteWeb, you're missing out on some of the best, most insightful reporting in technology today.

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Big Sister, Little Sister

Unlike her old man, my youngest daughter was blessed with a head of thick, long hair and naturally curly hair. This past Wednesday, she donated 24 inches of it to a great organization: Locks of Love.

Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that turns donated hair into high quality hair prosthetics. Their mission is to return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

Like her big sister, Allison, Taylor's excitement grew as her hair grew closer to reaching the required eight inches for donation. Unlike her sister, who has very fine hair, Taylor was able to donate three ponytails.

Both girls, I am proud to say, made the decision to help others on their own. More importantly, both realized the positive impact their charitable acts would have on the lives of others less fortunate.

Yes, a proud day to be a father, indeed.

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Turkey for Me and a Turkey for You

Update: If you're having trouble with the image link below, please try this one.

Thanksgiving is a big holiday for me. It's the one holiday where family -- immediate, extended and those you pick up along the way -- get together to, well, give thanks for what we have. For me, that traditionally means tons of people crowded around a too small table with kids relegated to a makeshift table in the living room, uncles crashed on the couch and Detroit football on the television. Tradition. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Until today. This year, we broke with tradition -- and for good reason. Friends set us up with passes to the 34th Street bleachers in front of Macy's for the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Rick and John, thank you once again!). I posted images here.

We got an early start, lucked out with the weather and enjoyed the floats, marching bands and balloons streaming by right in front of us. The girls even got to see Miley Cyrus and Miranda Cosgrove up close.

(For the record, I was able to keep some of the tradition alive by crashing on my sister-in-law's couch after the parade -- and after some great turkey -- while the Cowboy's played on the television.)

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Let the Flakes Fly

What better way to get ready for the flying white stuff than with a few shots of yours truly enjoying the deep and fluffy of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.