GMO Cloud

Versatile Smart Phones

Apple and Android are the top preferred smart phones in Japan. In a survey conducted in June 2012, Android was said to cover 53 percent of the market, Apple iOS had a significant 32 percent share while Microsoft got just 3.2 percent.

There had been a whopping 43% surge in Japan’s smart phone user numbers since the beginning of 2012, bringing the total to 24 million (23 percent of the overall mobile population). Aggressive sales campaigns from major retailers were largely responsible. The favorite among smart phone brands is Sharp with 22.5 percent, followed by Panasonic (13.6), Fujitsu (11.8), NEC (8.9) and Sony (7.9). Phones are primarily used for texting, mobile emails, games and novels – voice calls were very low priority.

No Voice Calls in Public Places

In Japan, train commuters are constantly reminded to switch their phone to silent mode. When their phone accidentally rings, they may answer it, but will oft immediately end the call.

Smart Phone Novels

Apart from calling and texting, users also read novels from their smart phones. Known as “keitai shosetsu” the stories are sent to users like a text message. The chapters usually have 70-100 words and are written by young authors who hide under pen names. The romantic fiction can be downloaded in installment form – often for a fee. For those who desire a more conventional format, Amazon Kindle applications allow for entire ebooks to be downloaded to smartphones.

Smartphone Games

Females in Japan spend up to several hours a day (especially when commuting) browsing the Internet on Smartphones. They also look up train schedules, buy tickets, check apartments for rent, make bank account cash transfers, trade stocks, check horoscopes… and more! Some girls even go to restrooms to update their Facebook status about a date, movie or concert. Artists use smart phones as storage for random ideas.

The Japanese are fond of playing games on their phones. Unlike typical arcade games, which give full cinematic experience, phone games are very simple, yet popular. Games are primarily free, but cost money once players wish to ascend the levels. Die-hard gamers may spend $600 dollars a month for games.

This form of entertainment is a big hit because players can have fun with utmost anonymity. They actually take on a new character and turn into a completely different person. Serious businessman can re-establish contact with their lost youth, act like kids, and meet new friends while playing.

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About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

Predicting Earthquakes in Japan with Big Data

A research paper estimates that the big data market in Japan could reach one trillion yen ($10 billion USD) by 2020, helping smart cities to minimize waste and improve efficiency.

A Critical Application

A typical example of processing huge volumes of data in real time is provided by Japan’s real-time earthquake warning system. This application’s capability has been greatly enhanced by cloud computing and big data. As this application improves, it will use more diverse data to improve the quality of its prediction.

How Governments are Getting Involved

With cloud computing booming, government began to explore whether efficiencies and benefits could be tapped. If there is one thing that governments have in plenty – except red tape – it is data. Mountains of it! Cloud computing has of course equipped data management with new capabilities. This is where big data comes into its own. Properly harnessed, the information hidden in big data will give citizens:

 
• Improved healthcare at lower overall cost, with predictive capabilities and cost effective archival of all kinds of medical records, including MRIs, CAT scans, X rays, every ECG and EEG report, every test result and so on. All of it available to any medical practitioner under controlled circumstances.

 

• Safer living even in the face of increased threats. Accurate long and short range weather forecasting – leading to greater efficiency in agriculture and other weather dependent vocations.

 

• Much greater vehicular densities with much lower accidents

 

• Far more insurance coverage with highly customized policies – tailored to individuals, much larger claims and much lower fraud rates.

 

Unlike private companies where the data-driven culture has firmly taken route and the implementation of decisions and directives is rapid, decision-making in government is far more pedestrian. Governments also worry about privacy and security issues.

Technologies Required

Managing Big Data requires companies to be able to handle Real Time Analysis and Streaming of data – with massive amounts of data simply flowing in, there has to be a very large I/O capability  and parallel processing that uses rules based algorithms to manage the data streams. Typically, this kind of data could be from sensors (think surveillance cameras), social media sites, video records, communication records. This has to be handled, tagged, classified and stored as it comes in. This massive, multiprocessor-based handling is in reality only possible with cloud based systems.

Map Reduce Frameworks – At this level of processing, a master server maps the data (distributes it) to many different servers, collects their processing results and ‘reduces’ it to a final summarized result. These servers are based on Hadoop and related technology, providing the capability to process data streams in parallel and move them to distributed servers. They rely on Hadoop Distributed File System to store the data in fault-tolerant fashion. Data can then be used to provide business analytics, log analysis, web search engine output figures and so on. Depending on the quantity of data coming in, the map server can call in additional servers or release surplus ones. This capability is native to cloud applications.

In Summary

Several components work together to create an effective application cluster. A well-planned information strategy leads to an information infrastructure where appropriate technology build systems to handle such applications. There have to be policies that control management, use and protection of data in a phased execution plan. Obviously, such a complex application cannot be delivered all at once, necessitating the iterative development that continuously refines the application and creates new opportunities. Only cloud can deliver this type of processing.

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

Cloud-Based Video Editing

It is rather baffling for any business enterprise to say they have no cloud-based strategy for business models. For professionals engaged in video editing, a cloud-based strategy is quite an asset. Moving physical video data onto different computers, editing, storage costs and transit time make traditional video editing processes burdensome. The story is different in cloud-based video editing software.

The benefits mainly include ease of access to source video files anywhere on the planet via internet. There is no need to install the necessary software tools on all computers worked on as cloud computing offers the Software as a Service option, utilizing software tools to perform necessary video editing. Even if multiple personnel are to access the video at various stages of editing, all necessary software tools can be uploaded into the cloud and made available to each person.

Potential glitches of professional video editing via cloud can be prevented by timely planning and reliable resources.

Upload speeds: There is a major need for the source video file to be uploaded into the cloud-based editing platform. Video files created by professional cameras and codecs often have huge sizes and hence a highly powerful internet connection with tremendous upload speed and bandwidth is required.

Unreliable internet connection: If your ISP provides you with oft-disrupted net connectivity, your business model could be severely affected.

Price of storage: Since video files need larger space on the cloud, storage prices need to be very flexible or else you may have to periodically reduce the scale of business to accommodate a limited number of video files.

If these issues are carefully considered, cloud computing IS a feasible model for video editing. It IS possible to edit raw footage shot in India at studios in the USA without difficulty. And professional editing staff can work on the video from anywhere.

Not only that, cloud computing can provide a collaboration platform for video editing professionals to review work and hence improve on productivity. For movie studios, cloud computing provides a way to screen movies at different locations to obtain input from various sources. This is critical in the creation of the final movie video.

Movie distribution via the cloud is also a phenomenal way to cut costs. The ability to stream videos on multiple channels and integrate these with mobile cameras, handy cams and professional cameras is also possible.

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About the Guest Author:

Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.

Energy-efficient Capability of Cloud Computing

In the corporate world, “energy efficiency” is becoming standard jargon, with business executives scrambling for ways to reduce or minimize energy consumption. So, here is the good news: cloud computing can help!

In the words of Urs Holzle, Google’s Senior Vice President for technical infrastructure, “Google’s servers refresh 20 billion pages a day, process over 100 billion search queries a month, provide email for 425 million Gmail users and process 72 hours of video uploaded per minute to YouTube. And yet we’re able to do all that work with relatively little energy, compared to other industries.”

He stated that data centers, including Google’s, utilize only 1.1-1.3 percent of global energy, compared to the transportation industry which gulped 25 percent. The ability to save energy is attributed to the practice of moving to the cloud by small and medium-sized businesses, including some Governmental agencies.

Holzle also cited a report by the Carbon Disclosure Project which authoritatively confirmed that cloud computing can help companies save on their energy expenses by $12.3 billion by 2020. About 85.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide will purportedly be saved during the same period. Nothing more can prove the energy-efficiency capability of cloud technology than the robust figures described above.

A typical example of a governmental agency that has gained immensely from using cloud computing is U.S. General Services Administration. The agency has cut the rate of servers’ energy consumption by a whopping 90 percent and drastically reduced its carbon emissions by 85 percent. In financial terms, the agency has saved $285,000 every year on energy costs.

Running in-house IT structure, as research shows, consumes a lot of energy. Sometimes companies will have to set up alternative energy sources in order to guarantee uninterrupted services or operations. Now, though, the headaches of alternative power generation can be turned over to cloud service providers, who will make sure their clients’ business operations are unaffected by power outages.

Apart from providing enviable protection to clients’ data and information, cloud computing also gives business managers the opportunity to diversify and innovate. They need not worry about in-house IT infrastructure and personnel anymore!

Business administrators stand to gain much from cloud computing, saving time and money on energy, personnel and data-protection. Greening up the earth will involve businesses switching IT systems to the cloud.

The dream of every business owner is to cut the costs of running his or her business while maximizing profitability. Cloud computing does not only guarantee more profits but also engenders greener business that benefits humans, governmental agencies and anybody with an interest in keeping the planet green.

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About the Guest Author:

Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

Japanese Dating Game

The Japanese dating process

The typical dating scenario in Japan begins with group dates. People get to know each other through friends, and get to know each other better among friends. This helps ease the pressure from being one-to-one and also shows a desire to solicit friends’ acceptance of a dating partner.

After a series of group dates, two people could decide to see each other on an individual basis, if they like each other well enough. This, however, is limited to dates in public places, and although there may be a holding of hands, hugging and kissing are not usually witnessed. At this point, two people are not yet considered dating, but merely getting to know each other more.

Online dating in Japan

Like the rest of the world, online dating has penetrated (no pun intended) the Japanese culture.

JapanCupid.com

JapanCupid.com is one of Japan’s largest online dating sites that aims to match up Japanese people and Westerners. With thousands of members joining every week, JapanCupid.com has a large database. Joining is easy and free, and members can create profiles, search the database and start making contact. The site has subscription packages that allow members to do more, like send emails and instant messages, and allow for paying member’s profiles to become more visible than non-paying members. The Platinum subscription even allows members to create a video profile and exchange video messages. It also provides for translation services so a profile can be reproduced in other languages. And like all other online dating sites, JapanCupid.com has online chat rooms open to subscribed members.

JapanDatingsite.Com

JapanDatingsite.com is hosted by one of the pioneers in online dating, WordFriends.tv. It does not just limit itself to the Japanese setting, defining itself as an “online community for international singles”. Regular membership is free and offers basic profile and database search services to initiate contact with other members. The premium membership allows members to send emails and instant messages, initiate video chats, join groups, and receive weekly match recommendations. A unique feature of the site is its Travel section where members share details of upcoming trips and arrange to meet up or provide assistance.

SoulmatesJapan.Com

SoulmatesJapan.com is an online dating site for those who are on the lookout for a more serious and meaningful relationship. They also have an optional feature for members to provide proof of identity. They do not show members’ personal information but tag members who have proven their identity. SoulmatesJapan.com is one of the only sites supporting a blog or e-zine that allows members to post articles on dating.

Match.com

Match.com is one of the leaders of the entire online dating industry. Now 13 years old, Match.com has millions of member all over the world, evolving through time to provide up-to-date services based on industry trends and technology. Match.com provides a complete selection of services that include daily matches, free-writing sections, an online magazine, mobile access and even professional writers to create members’ profiles. Match.com somewhat boldly guarantees that its member will find a match within six months, with failure to deliver compensated by an additional six months of free membership!

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.