Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cloud

IT advice for non-profit

dougiedd — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:57:31 -0800

How likely is it that in the next 2-3 years cloud computing (using for example google chrome OS with web apps running off thin clients) will be the norm and how should a non-profit organization with high tech needs (healthcare) but limited tech resources begin to position itself for the changes this might entail?

Which publishing tool should I use for topic-based blogging?

diogenes — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:36:33 -0800

What tool should I use for publishing extended thoughts that I want to link to from Twitter? I'd like something topic-based, with tagging, that lives in the cloud? Does such a thing exist? I'm a technical writer, and I recently discovered a thriving community of my peers on Twitter (much to my surprise). Now that I've joined the dialog, I find that I often want to say more than I can fit in 140 characters. Obviously I need a blog. I've used various tools (Blogger, WordPress, etc.) for short-lived blogs in the past, so I'm not a complete newbie to the idea.

Basically, I'm wondering what newfangled technologies are out there. I'm not even sure if what I need is a blog. I just want a way to post and organize extended thoughts. I'm starting to use topic-based tools in my technical writing, and I love the idea of building standalone bits of information that can be tagged, sorted, and rearranged. Is there anything like that for "blogging."

Looking for a service like Yahoo briefcase circa 2000

desjardins — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:43:55 -0800

I want to upload a few files on one computer, and be able to download them from wherever. I don't need Amazon s3 or Jungle Disk or other big backup service. I want it to be free. I don't need or want to share the files with anyone, but it's not super-sensitive information either. Yahoo used to do this. I don't like Yahoo. Yes, you can upload files to Google docs, but it converts them and then you have to convert it back if you want to download. They must stay in their original format, no matter what it is.

Online tool for planning and visualizing project pipelines?

jruckman — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:26:23 -0800

Is there a web-based app that lets you plan project pipelines, and set up pipeline templates and associated tasks for common project types? I love the functionality of Daylite and Contactizer for Mac, but they don't live in the cloud, and their syncing is problematic or in the case of the latter, non-existent. For my small, sometimes remote team, this is a no-go.

But I love the pipeline visualizations and associated task templates they both offer. No other solutions, including Basecamp, Omnifocus, etc, offer this.

Here's an image of the pipeline view I'm talking about.

Suggestions for an online replica of this type of functionality? Any alternative suggestions?

Specific social networking?

Kattiara17 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:33:00 -0800

Best topic-specific networking/community/cloud sites? Recently I've discovered a few of the more topic specific networking/information sharing sites: Snooth for wine, Etsy for homemade crafts, Ravelry for knitting. I feel like there must be other great sites like these that I'm just not aware of, and would love to find them. I'm not looking for general social networking sites like Facebook/Myspace/Twitter/etc., but ones that actually have some sort of focus. Anyone have any to suggest? :)

Love the idea of Google Notebook, but not the lack of ownership.

barc0001 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:29:49 -0800

With Google Notebook no longer being actively developed, I am looking for something similar to run on one of my own servers. Anyone know of a similar app I can install to get a similar experience? I find myself using Google Notebook a lot, and want to be proactive in case I log in one fine day and see a message saying that Google Notebook's shutting down in X days and get all your crap off it or lose it.

I found a previous AskMe from over a year and a half ago where someone was looking for much the same thing, and wondered if there had been any newer developments that anyone might be able to point me at. I run many Linux boxes, so anything that runs in a *NIX environment is preferred.

No linear tag based navigation examples?

mjm1374 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:05:46 -0800

I need some examples of sites that use cloud tags for (main) navigation and/or have a sort of tear off or pinned navigation system to remember frequently used pages customized to the user. I have been posed with a design challenge to create a large site (200+ pages) with no true fixed navigation. Basically they want something like a search box to start your journey and use predictive type to get pages that match the "Tags" you are search and as you locate pages you can Pin them to you own personal nav tool so you do not need to remember your search terms afterward. The end result is a nonlinear navigation of the site with bookmarks to quickly get you back to the pages you deemed important.

wifi router can't make it through walls: what's the most effective way to extend the range of our wifi cloud?

krautland — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:44:00 -0800

our new belkin router doesn't have the power to make it all the way through the house. are range extenders good? which one should I choose? (more inside) I gave my parents (in germany) a wireless router for their mac/pc mix household. it's this belkin G (802.11g), their basic model. unfortunately the router has to sit in a room in the far corner of their house and thick german cement walls (no plywood here) are ensuring the signal doesn't make it all the way across the house into the attic or kitchen. the signal currently covers half the house, so getting through the walls is not completely impossible, they just do to the router what a pair of massive mittens would do to your dexterity.

I'd like to extend that range so that certain rooms they use as offices are covered by the signal. belkin seems to offer a universal range extender but the german amazon page for that product has a user opinion stating that said extender doesn't really work if it's more than a couple feet from the router itself. I wonder if the hivemind has an opinion on this...

I'm not married to using belkins to extend the range of the router but I am married to the router since exchanging it would be rather difficult for me right now.

what's the most effective way to extend the range of our wifi cloud?

Generating a Tag Cloud From Really Large Text Files

dbarefoot — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:13:59 -0800

I want to generate tag clouds for really large text files (the largest is 85 MB). No online service that I've found will support a file this big. Any suggestions? I grabbed the a copy of each of the websites of the four national, major Canadian political parties. I want to generate tag clouds for each party, showing the terms they use most often on their sites.

I had a sysadmin friend of mine (I'm so not a programmer) use some regular expression magic to merge each site into a single file. Thus, I have four very large text files. I considered things like Wordle or Many Eyes, but they have a much smaller maximum file size than I need. What should I do?

One alternative: get my friend or somebody to produce a list of words for each site and the number of times they appear. Then I create a small file with the right number of each of, say, the top 100 words, and use Wordle on that. Any better suggestions? Or, you know, help?

Giant Cloud Leaves Commuters Baffled

MasonDixon — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:34:00 -0800

You are not my meteorologist but . . . There are clouds and there are clouds, I'd never seen one like this before, what kind was it? Last night as my SO and I were going to dinner, we saw a vast wall of cloud to the east. It looked (almost disturbingly so) like a giant white wave or a concave cliff face of extreme height. It stretched from North to South and took up the entire horizontal horizon and was (I'm guessing) a few thousand feet high.

Place: Western MetroBoston between RT 2 and I-90 along I-95.
Time: 7:00 pm-ish.
Weather: Otherwise clear and mild (50s? Farenheit)
Wind: None of any significance.

(Sorry, still don't have a camera phone so no pics.)

Anyone know how to create a tag cloud with images?

Leech — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:55:05 -0800

I need to create a tag cloud like http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ but instead of show the tag names I need to show images. I need to create a tag cloud like http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ but instead of show the tag names I need to show images.

Each image changes it size based on the number of visits it have. But if possible the images centered in the screen sorted the most biggest/visited in the center.

Exists a library or something already ?

Not just another free photo question (well, OK, just another free photo question)

blueshammer — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:02:44 -0800

I'm looking for a very high-rez photo of a cloudy sky, something along these lines. I need to enlarge it to about 2'x1', and I understand that any raw digital image is likely to have to be manipulated to become that large, but if I can find a source with few or no compression artifacts, I can live with the rest. But I'm certain clip art sites, pay or free, aren't going to quite have it (and I'm big on free). Are there atmospheric sites, government or academic, that might have some really large sky photos?

a weird rainbow

dhruva — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 18:16:53 -0800

On a recent flight, I saw a weird circular 'rainbow' around the shadow of the plane (on a cloud). What's the physics behind this? Sometimes I could see the 'rainbow' even before I could see the shadow, it was like a halo. The clouds were mostly irregular and white, ie non-water bearing.