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Using Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to Speed Up Content Load on the Web

Waiting for content to be loadedYou may have heard somewhere on the net:
You may notice that this website is loaded very fast. It is since it uses CDN to deliver static contents

This article will elaborate a bit about Content Delivery Networks or CDN. You will find information about what constitutes a CDN and how it can speed up content retrieval.

Content Delivery Networks (CDN) is sometimes also referred to as Content Distribution Networks. It can be defined as dedicated collections of servers located on the internet which attempt to offload work from origin servers by delivering content on their behalf. In order to get better understanding of this definition, you will be provided a picture which represents an example of CDN.
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Expanding to Java-related Topics

Various topics covered in Amikelive Technology BlogSince its inception, frequent readers or random visitors of this blog may come into conclusion that this blog talks a lot about PHP-related topics. This is somewhat true since at the time the blog was firstly launched, I had dealt with mostly applications built under W/LAMP environment. Even though I also fiddled with applications developed without any PHP codes, the scarcity of hands-on experiences under such circumstances avoided me sharing experimental results, hacks, software components, or even simply a technical note.

As the time progressed and I got involved again in academia, Java started to take some portion of my development time-table. Several years ago, I used Java to build some simple stand-alone desktop applications. As for web application, the PHP advocates were successful to send me to the PHP island. It is the simplicity of PHP and my first impression to the slowness of a Java-based web application which prevented me from delving more into the Java world. Fortunately, there were situations which forced me to use Java in my work and some other scientific experiments. These initially-undesirable situations then turned into a phase of Java re-learning for me. But at the time, I already had had better systemic understanding and ability to look at the bigger picture. The phase of relearning gave me better insight and understanding about application design and to bigger extent, the system design.

I feel very ecstatic about expanding the topics of this blog to also include some Java posts. It can be a subject of lesser interests for you. However, I believe that being open to changes will bring other positive impact. As a technology blog which has been around and settled for more than three years, it is time for this blog to move forward. It is the time to broaden the user base without abandoning old users. Now get yourself ready for more good stuff to read. So, please stay tune!

Whitepaper – An Introduction to Private Cloud

As the word “cloud computing” becomes more ubiquitous these days, several questions can be raised ranging from basic question like the definitions of a cloud and cloud computing to more tempting questions like architecture of cloud infrastructure and implementation of cloud computing to solve complex, data-intensive compute problems.

Concerns raised over the cloud computing are mainly related on how secure and reliable the cloud is to support enterprise-level requirements. The notion of offloading data and process to third party infrastructure or software providers in cloud computing may not be a sound idea in the enterprise realm. This article will briefly summarize private cloud, a type of cloud environment which is designed to be run with stringent requirements that may fit the enterprise-level SLAs.

Download the full article here: An Introduction to Private Cloud (6328 downloads )

A Perspective of Failure

As the time is ticking and counting down to the new year, I’d like to review what I have done so far on this blog; my plan, my expectation compared with the realization and final result. Earlier in this year, I set a target, which I was pretty sure achievable. I aimed to increase the rank of the blog gradually by executing some methods I believed will end as success. However, the statistics of this blog for this year shows something that is perfectly contrary to my initial plan.

Statistics of tech.amikelive.com in 2009

It can be seen in the statistical graph that the traffic trend for this blog is negative. Traffic constantly decreased as the months progressed. In a bigger picture, it is clearly a sign of failure, a situation that is most unexpected by me. However, since it is there for a reason, learning and analyzing the cause and trying to improve the situation becomes interesting to me.

I have learned some lessons regarding to this failure. First, time is always a constraint. Even though I read a lot about new technologies, fiddled a lot with codes, explored a lot of new stuff, created some software, and did other things which should have turned into blog posts, in reality I couldn’t do so. This exacerbated the scarcity of good quality posts. The main cause of why I couldn’t sit on my couch writing interesting stories about my experiences is because I lacked the quality time to do so. Second, inspiration to write does not come instantly. Currently I have a list of post to write. But surprisingly, even though I created the list several months ago, it hasn’t been transformed into posts. Now, I perfectly understand the meaning of “writings deserve due appreciation”. Writing quality posts is apparently not easy. Third, managing too many things will sacrifice one or two things in the list. This is related with the first two lessons. Despite being successful in my other aspects of life, I failed to do it here. Finally, perfection sometimes brings trouble to advance to the next step. In the execution my plan, I often accentuate in perfection by ensuring the riddance of any sort of flaw which often hindered me from accomplishing the whole piece.

Slightly off topic, this year the economy was bouncing up again after the deceleration during the downturn. Good treatment and policy has progressively healed the wounded economy. I believe, I can also find the formula for treatment and apply it in order to go back on the track and level up this blog next year.

I welcome 2010 with optimism.

Green Purchasing Meets Green IT

I was attending a conference about green purchasing in fourth week of October taking place in Suwon, South Korea and pondering about what the substance of the conference would bring impact to the IT field. The conference theme was about green purchasing, a term coined to refer to purchasing of sustainable products. Despite the seemingly simplistic definition, the idea of the green purchasing actually has been attracting wider audience as these days concern about life sustainability on planet earth has been growing more rapidly.

Al Gore's speech in 3rd Conference of Green PurchasingThe conference was organized by International Green Purchasing Network (IGPN), an organization which promotes green purchasing across the globe. It was sponsored mainly by the Korean government and some UN committees. Former US president Al Gore who was awarded as Nobel peace prize laureate in 2007 was invited to deliver the keynote speech. He spoke about the importance of living green to sustain the environment and do our work in ensuring that future generation would still be able to live on earth conveniently. He mentioned that climate change is a real issue and should be addressed through fast-paced global collaborations. The temperature rise issue, melting arctic ice issue, and some other environmental severance issues are wake-up calls to governments, companies, and also to individual consumers to take care more the behavior in living. Therefore, purchasing goods through green purchasing method is one of the methods an individual, company, or organization can contribute.
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