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Portable Apps vs. Cloud Computing

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dpihl
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Portable Apps vs. Cloud Computing

I am a friend to everything your portable apps are trying to accomplish.

But am bewildered by the apparent distinction between portable applications and cloud computing. Both seek to accomplish the same thing, although through different approaches.

What I don't understand, is why nobody seems to be interested in leveraging the power of each approach, and creating something even better?

For instance, Open Office and Google Docs both participate in OASYS. Together, they are trying to create an open, XML-based file format that transcends the many compatibility issues that plagued the proprietary office software packages of old.

Making Open Office portable was a stroke of genius. But wouldn't it be even better if there were a way to schedule timed backups from Open Office to Google Docs?

If I loose my USB drive on my way home tonight, the documents I was working on today will still be on the servers at Google. If Google stops offering DOCs as a free service next week, my documents will still be on my flash drive.

That's what I would call true portability! It's also a wonderful example of cloud computing, however. It's the best of both worlds.

Another example:

When I installed Firefox portable, it assumed many of the features of my host computer-- even though I did not ask it to. All of my add-ons are now part of firefox portable whenever I launch it on my home computer.

I must be doing something wrong here!

Even if I do figure out how to solve that problem, just imagine how nice it would be if Xmarks (formerly foxmarks) could work properly with firefox portable. It would not matter which computer I was working from, I would still have all of my bookmarks right there at my fingertips.

Instead of bogging down my home computer with a zillion add-ons in firefox (like the Japanese-English dictionary needed for pera-pera kun), I could keep different versions of Firefox for different types of web surfing. Or for different members of my family. Am I making sense here?

Question:

There are many online computer backup services available. In theory, I ought to be able to upload my portable apps to any of these online servers, and execute my portable apps from there. No need to carry around a flash drive with me at all.

If this is possible, then the distinction between portable apps and cloud computing becomes strictly academic!

Final Plea:

https://portableapps.com/ is far and away the best site I've found for locating information about sturdy, reliable, portable software applications. You folks have set the standard, and yet seem to be helping a lot of developers follow in your footsteps.

When somebody comes up with a really good portable application, especially one that covers an area not already covered by the Portable Apps Suite, I wish you folks would point your users in the appropriate direction.

I am presently very interested in trying the following portable apps in my own workflow:

Portable Scribus
http://www.quate.net/newsnet/read/31

FastStone Image Viewer & Photo Resizer (used and loved older versions, but now they are portable!!!)
http://www.faststone.org/

TreePad Asia (Kanji Support!!!)
http://www.treepad.com/treepadfreeware/

Kurlo
http://www.kurlo.com/

Inkscape Portable (apparently in the works)
http://www.inkscape.org/

Opera@USB
http://www.opera-usb.com/

NM Collector JE Lite
http://nmcollector.net/JE/

Country Codes
http://izoxzone.com/product/app/cc/index.htm

Any additions, deletions, or suggestions for this list would be appreciated.

m2
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Last seen: 13 years 1 month ago
Joined: 2006-12-12 12:00
There are appealing benefits

There are appealing benefits of cloud computing, but there are problems too:
-Privacy. Myself, I don't want Google to read all that I write. It's like installing spyware yourself.
-Security. Do you trust that a cloud site won't loose your files? You shouldn't. They can loose them, corrupt them or disappear overnight (well, the last thing probably doesn't apply to Google). Sure, backup helps. But I wouldn't make cloud my main storage for any files.
-Performance. All cloud apps are dog slow and will always be significantly slower than local ones. For me it breaks whole deal.

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov

dpihl
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Last seen: 14 years 9 months ago
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I see only upsides to blending portable and cloud applications.

Thank you for articulating the downsides to cloud computing.

I implied in my original post that both cloud computing and portable computing each have pros and cons. You've done an excellent job of delimiting what some of the cons of cloud computing are.

My original point, of course, still stands. We should be thinking of ways to leverage the relative strengths of one approach to mitigate some of the weaknesses of the other approach.

You're right to point out that speed can be a major issue for cloud computing. Depending on your connection speed, the number of add-ons and widgets your web browser uses, bandwidth of your ISP's servers, etc. Cloud computing can indeed be dog slow.

Speed is one strength of portable apps. But I've been to many libraries where you can't access your flash drive on their computers. With portable apps, if you don't have access to a USB port, or don't have the right permissions, you're sometimes dead in the water.

You mention loss of data as a downside to cloud computing. Relying on any one file storage method is fraught with potential hazards.

Portable apps do not provide a foolproof way to ensure your files are stored safely. Cloud Computing is also not a foolproof way to ensure your files are stored safely. Storing your files on a local hard drive is the least foolproof method of all. No matter which method you choose, you face significant exposure for one kind of loss or another.

No approach comes close to being a "foolproof" way to store your files. But collectively, these different approaches could be used to create something that resembles a "sane" storage and retrieval strategy.

Look, I've had an email account with Yahoo and Hotmail since the mid-1990's. All of my important email messages are still there, and I can use the built-in search engine to find them. Their servers are backed up to more than one physical location on a regular basis. Even the survivors of natural disasters often find they still have access to old email files on Yahoo and Hotmail.

Cloud computing is a wonderful concept. Yet I've lost thousands of email messages from other services like Hotmail, when these services have gone off line. All three times the companies went off line with little warning, and with no offers for users to save (via FTP) or to purchase a backup of old email files from their servers.

By contrast I've owned dozens of computers in the past decade, and held several jobs where I had unlimited access to the local hard drive of at least one computer. Retrieving my old emails from any of these local hard drives ranges from challenging to impossible.

Most email messages stored on a local hard drive seem to be unreadable by anything but the locally installed copy of the same exact revision of the exact same software package that was used when the file was originally received and stored. Outlook Express is the worst offender, but there are probably others. Add to this the difficulty of transferring files from Ataris to Amigas, Macintosh computers to Windows machines, etc. Your old machines don't have USB drives. Your new ones don't have floppy drives. The list is seemingly endless.

If local storage is problematic, portability only compounds the problem by making it easy to loose or break the flash drive.

No file storage system is foolproof.

I am adamant that it SHOULD be POSSIBLE to use a multi-faceted approach to solve this problem. Not that it should be a REQUIREMENT, but that it should be at least POSSIBLE, and should probably be EASY.

I want to see a user preference where my portable office docs are always stored directly to my flash drive as I type. I want the portable office app to run efficiently and fast.

I want these same docs to be available to me from a web site like Google Docs whenever I need to access them that way. Not just accessible as an encrypted backup file from an online backup storage site, but accessible in an easily editable form.

Dog slow or not, I want the OPTION to access the editable file from anywhere I can log onto the internet any time I want.

I can already save my portable office files in a format that Google Docs theoretically understands. If I remember to take the time and log onto Google Docs before leaving a computer, I can upload the latest version of my doc each day. That way I could potentially have the editable doc in more than one location at once.

In order to ensure that I'm editing only the latest version of the file, I would need to make sure that I always delete the old version of a file.

Since I CAN do all of these things, it is possible for a guy like me to store my portable office files in a REALLY SANE manner.

The files on my flash drive are now redundant. That's a good thing, right?

The files on my Google DOcs account are now also redundant. They are also being stored in a separate physical location from my flash drive. That's also a good thing, right?

Google's presumed off site backup of the files on their servers create yet another level of redundancy to the backup strategy. Cool, right?

If my flash drive is lost, stolen, or broken, I can seamlessly log onto Google Docs and meet tomorrow's deadline for whatever project I might be working on. No disruptions, nothing to download or install. Just keep on working.

If Google Docs suffers from an outage, I can seamlessly begin working from my local copy on the flash drive without any disruptions. When Google goes back online, I can resume the practice of creating dual, redundant active copies of my document.

If I want somebody to collaborate with me on an element of a document, I can link them to the Googe Docs copy of the document. I can grant them whatever permissions they might need, and we can now collaborate on the document. Can't do that with the portable version alone.

I can "publish" the online document and it is instantly made into a web page of sorts. Can't do that with the portable apps version alone.

From where I sit, I see only upsides to the idea of melding the portable office suite with Google Docs.

I personally don't mind the fact that Google analytics probably scans my documents for statistical analysis of various key words so they can see what sorts of things are on people's minds and forecast trends etc. But of course, I'm also not the sort of guy who hides under the couch every time a car drives past my house.

So like I said, this backup strategy ought to be a user preference, and not the one and only choice for storage of my files.

I suppose I should point out the obvious problem associated with a dual online/ off line collaborative document creation environment. How do you deal with multiple revisions of the same version of a document?

Ancestral Quest uses an innovative solution to this problem. They have created a genealogy databasing system where the online version of your database must be "checked out" from the server whenever you plan to edit it locally. If it's checked out by one family member, it is not available for others to edit. They can view a copy of it, and work on their local machines, but they cannot effect changes to the main document until it's been "checked in" again.

This strategy would be worth looking at if Portable Office is ever going to be revised for "Google Docs auto-backup".

>>- DGP ->

m2
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You certainly have too much

You certainly have too much time...

You're right to point out that speed can be a major issue for cloud computing. Depending on your connection speed, the number of add-ons and widgets your web browser uses, bandwidth of your ISP's servers, etc. Cloud computing can indeed be dog slow.

The main issue is not quality of internet connection but speed of light. It's too slow and therefore cloud will never be fast enough. For WYSIWYG purposes (at least that's the purpose claimed by Google), G Docs connect with the cloud at every keystroke. Cloud vendors make their clouds denser, but even on my university's backbone connection, cloud apps are slow.
You consider PA performance a feature. For me it's a standard that cloud doesn't hold.

With portable apps, if you don't have access to a USB port, or don't have the right permissions, you're sometimes dead in the water.

Certainly YMMV, but from my experience firewalls blocking vast majority of web pages are as common blocked USB ports / no permissions to run own stuff.

No approach comes close to being a "foolproof" way to store your files. But collectively, these different approaches could be used to create something that resembles a "sane" storage and retrieval strategy.

You're very right, nothing is foolproof. I'd add that sadly, it's not easy to protect data. Hands up who uses computers for 10+ years and never lost anything because of own mistake. However, it's certainly possible to have a good data management policy, but I wouldn't consider G, Amazon, MS and similar companies (doesn't necessarily apply to all cloud vendors) a part of it. Why? They don't use ECC memory of their servers. That's roughly 10e-15 bit error rate. Nothing really bad, that's what great majority of people use. But locally you can improve it, while on the cloud you can't. In this regard, cloud will never be high end. Well, you can use parchive and similar stuff, but you loose all comfort of use...and to do so you have to parse files locally anyway.

Google's presumed off site backup of the files on their servers create yet another level of redundancy to the backup strategy. Cool, right?

Source?

I can "publish" the online document and it is instantly made into a web page of sorts. Can't do that with the portable apps version alone.

Well I've never been in a situation when I'd want to do it, but anyway it sounds like a feature.

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov

solanus
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Nah

I can see being forced to use Cloud apps in an emergency, but they really can't compare to running the local Portable Apps on the USB.

As for backing up to cloud servers, you are better off getting cheap hosting from a reputable company and backing up via FTP. You have more control over the files.

Cobian Backup (Black Moon version) is open source, and supports automated FTP backup.
I'd like to see that made portable.

I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.

dpihl
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Last seen: 14 years 9 months ago
Joined: 2009-05-07 22:51
Huh????

How do you have "more control" in this scenario???

You have as much control over the servers over at Google Docs as you have with any other online storage company. Unless you plan to park armed guards in front of your own personal servers which are mirrored in more than one physical location, you won't have "more control" over the physical devices that store your files.

I'm not sure how you plan to find "cheap hosting" that's cheaper than free.
And I'm not sure how you plan to find a more reputable company than Google.

But you all seem to be missing the point entirely.

By "cloud computing", I don't mean Google in particular, and I don't mean portable office in particular. I was offering those as for instances. I was offering those examples so you could see the point more easily.

Backing up to ANY reputable online storage provider is EXACTLY THE SORT OF THING I AM SUGGESTING IN THE FIRST PLACE!

By backing up to ANY online server, you are solving one of the biggest problems inherent in using flash drive technologies. If you loose your flash drive, you haven't really lost anything other than your investment in the drive itself.

I don't care WHICH online server you use for your backup. If you are using a web-based backup system, that's what I mean by CLOUD COMPUTING-- at least that's what I understand the term to mean.

Please don't let my fondness for Google cloud your thinking about this matter.

The point is that Portable apps ought to be integrated with cloud computing services. If we get to choose which cloud computing services we use and when we use them, then so much the better.

>>- DGP ->

alanbcohen
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All too often, I find myself

All too often, I find myself in a place without internet connectivity. Cloud computing has major limitations in that environment. There are tools such as WebDAV servers and backup utilities that can use them when needed, so the concept is already in place, although they require more effort from the enduser.
Still, an interesting idea.

dpihl
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Last seen: 14 years 9 months ago
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Yes

Yes, you are exactly right. I can already use the cloud computing concept to enhance SOME of what I do with the portable apps that I utilize. But as you correctly point out, this requires more effort from the end user.

That last point is precisely the reason I bothered signing up so I could post on this forum. Anything that requires effort from the end user ought to be examined thoroughly and often. Any repetitive and meaningless chores that COULD be eliminated ought to at least be evaluated from time to time. Often you find that new technologies exist that were not available the last time you revisited the same trouble spots.

In an effort to make sure I was understanding your post, I thought I'd do a quick search for information about WebDAV servers. Found some interesting quotes that relate to this conversation.
_________________________________________________________________________________
WebDAV, or Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, is an extension to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. The World Wide Web, as conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, was always intended to be a readable and writable medium; however, as the web grew it became a largely read-only medium. WebDAV has emerged as a way to restore that functionality, although it is no longer concerned with the versioning aspect - just the distributed authoring part.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/WebDAV
___________________________________________________________________________________

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is an extension to HTTP allowing users to remotely manage and edit files on WWW servers. These files could be shared by these users and/or they can work upon them collaboratively.

The main feature is that you can create, change and move documents on a remote server which is generally a web server or a so called "web share". You can mainly use it for authoring (as the name suggests) the documents on the web share but also for sharing large files that can be accessed from anywhere making it an online storage unit so to speak.
http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=WebDAV
___________________________________________________________________________________

The WebDAV protocol allows "Intercreativity," making the Web a readable and writable medium, in line with Tim Berners-Lee's original vision.[1] It allows users to create, change and move documents on a remote server (typically a web server or "web share"). This is useful for authoring the documents that a web server serves, but it can also be used for storing files on the web, so that the files can be accessed from anywhere. The most important features of the WebDAV protocol are: locking ("overwrite prevention"); properties (creation, removal, and querying of information about author, modified date, etc.); name space management (ability to copy and move Web pages within a server's namespace); and collections (creation, removal, and listing of resources). Many modern operating systems provide built-in support for WebDAV. With a fast network and the right client, it is almost as easy to use files on a WebDAV server as those stored in local directories.

...Most of the work was put into developing the WebDAV specifications and recommendations in the late 1990s and since that time many other approaches to solving the same and similar problems have developed. WebDAV is an approach to what would now be called 'content management'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Web-based distributed authoring and versioning or WebDAV is the protocol that is creating the "read-write" web. It is facilitating collaboration in many ways across the internet, replacing proprietary protocols (FrontPage, e.g.) or superseding less functional open protocols ((FTP, SFTP). The primary drivers for the adoption of WebDAV include:

* WebDAV resources can be set up like local drives allowing you to work with remote files as if they were on your machine.
* It allows for "locking" of files so multiple users can work with a file at the same time, but only one at a time can make changes.
* It is more efficient than FTP or SFTP.. You can pipeline multiple transfers through a single TCP connection.
* It is an extension of HTTP and uses the same ports - 80 or 443, avoiding potential firewall issues.
* Support for WebDAV is available across multiple platforms creating a cross-platform solution.

http://www.howtoforge.com/webdav_with_ssl_and_two_factor_authentication
___________________________________________________________________________________
The document at this last URL (howtoforge) goes on to deal almost exclusively with the privacy issues raised by several of the people who have posted on this forum. An excellent read.

Also, since several of the articles mention Tim Berners-Lee and his original vision for the web, I thought you might find this article interesting.

http://www.w3.org/1998/02/Potential.html

In light of the motivations behind the WebDAV protocol, it makes sense that Mr. Berners-Lee and his pals at the W3C would go to the trouble of creating Amaya.
http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-amaya-970220.html
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html
https://portableapps.com/node/3756

>>- DGP ->

dpihl
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For Instance

Right now, I am monopolizing a computer at a hotel in California.

The computer consists of a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse.
No place to plug in my USB stick anywhere.
Ignore the man behind the curtain!

I can get onto the internet, but cannot insert any form of ejectable media.

>>- DGP ->

m2
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Joined: 2006-12-12 12:00
So don't visit this place

So don't visit this place anymore. Don't forget to tell the management about it.

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov

steve_gutry
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That is a good example

That is a good example of why cloud computing is for airheads.
As mentioned above, you loose control of your information when it is on the net.
Also keep in mind that in troubled economic times there is always an increase on companies going belly up - too bad if it is the one that hosts your data.

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