Now personally I use the cloud for several services, and I feel that such services may be very useful and probably secure enough for me as an individual. The problem is that there are several reasons for not thrusting your corporate or business data to an external service provider. The most obvious ones are based on regulation, in Norway government entities probably will not be able to put their data on servers located outside of Norway, or worse, outside of Europe. There might be risks regarding this even for private companies, foreign governments might insist on access to data stored on servers located within their countries, either for security or legal reasons. Another issue might be the security of the information itself, other companies might be able to break into the service and gain access to your corporate information. Several security officers at different companies are also very protective of their information and data, and would never accept that anything like this should be available externally. All reasons may be resolved as the solutions and regulations evolve, but as an IT-consultant doing business right now, I would like to have the following framework available when dealing with cloud based services.

1. Intra-social: I need to be able to implement a copy of a cloud based social service or product internally in an organisation. Using all the normal protections and security that the different corporations demand I follow. Examples might be protected sub-groups, protecting content, firewalls, single-sign-on and so on.
2. Extra-social: I need to be able have a “demilitarized” version of this product available for partners and other external participants that make it possible for them to collaborate securely and share information trough the same services that the companies are using internally. These users should probably only be able to access a subset of the information available internally. I would like to be able to enforce encryption of the communication and use strong log-in features. Of course it should be possible to protect content and have access-groups here as well.
3. Inter-social: Now the big differentiator is the connection to open services on top of this. By using semantic technologies and other modern integration techniques I would like to intelligently be able to integrate these internal and external parts of my social software with the corresponding public service. Sharing information and collaborating on open issues should still be possible, and this would make it possible for the users to use the same tool for collaboration both internally, externally and on the open internet.

Do you have any comments? Please tell me your feelings on this below.

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

A view trough the fence while others are driving trough

A bent world view using a fisheye lens

Waiting for the ferry in Oslo

You better stop before going trough here

Update 2011-01-22: My friend has gotten is own blog now. Please give him a visit at hwfoto.net 

Posted from Drøbak, Akershus, Norway.

I happen to live near the cost, and while enjoying a sunny -1 degrees Celsius, I walked down to a beach called “Elleskjær” near me.

The usual suspects greeted me when I got down to the beach. They were alert though and flew away when I tried to get a bit closer.

I tracked them, but as most of you know, seagulls are capable of escaping in 3 ways; walking, swimming and flying. I was prepared to engage in only one of those activities.

A seasoned tracker could probably tell the sex or something like that from this print. All I can tell is that it most probably was a bird that can swim. And most likely a seagull.

This is a northern view in two ways I guess. It is the view towards the north, and as you probably have guessed; this was photographed in Norway.

During the summer most boats you see are slick, big, fast motor powered boats. During the winter the "real" men are out using other means of propulsion.

The sun got down to my height after a while, and the snow almost went totally white.

It is always nice when the sun shines trough the trees.

 

Posted from Drøbak, Akershus, Norway.

Our new family member was so friendly as to volunteer as a photo model. It turned out to be more like action photography than a model shoot though, but kittens are not that interested in sitting still. Especially not when there is a flash going off. She just had to smell and taste that strange device.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Friday one week ago we got another little member to our family. Say hello to a modest little girl, that probably will happen to visit this site in between my other pictures. I promise not to only show you sunsets and kittens, but I guess there will be some pictures like that as well.

A new houseguest

As usual I mainly add photos to this blog, so below you will find some of my attempts at nature photography.

Life in colours

Redbeard

Tasting the world

Climbing the glass window

Not that big, but big enough

Not a tiger

Textured colours

Slick texture

Textured in brown

This pink/lilac lady was selling goods at a farmers market in Oslo.

Her lilac clothes lit up her white stall. I took two other pictures of her as well, but they where not as sharp as this one. Her bright colours were interesting enough to include her in this blog though.

There were a lot of interesting people visiting or displaying their wares. This man sold meat, but when I saw him I thought he would be selling fish.

He made me think of a sailor and not a farmer, but looks can lie.

Street performers are always an interesting motive. This golden statue had just taken a brake, and was counting his earnings. I liked the way the ashes of his cigarette was getting very long, and how his golden costume was getting very old. The zipper on his jacket was broken and he used safety pins to keep it closed.

He was making his living as a live statue. But even a statue needs a pause sometimes.

His scruffy looks made for a very interesting picture. He had obviously been doing a lot of different things in his life, and his face had been marked by this. His fingers was dirty and his hair graying.

The golden statue looked very scruffy without his mask on.

A few days earlier I had walked around with a little Canon G12 and two of the pictures from that day are below. This street performer was overdoing it by a fair amount. His way of playing made him look like this.

He is a not so typical street performer. He was REALLY into himself playing. So much so that it made me take this picture.

Norway is multicutural

Some of these images have been published earlier on my Google+ and Picasa streams.

 

Posted from Drøbak, Akershus, Norway.

First of all… this is difficult, not maybe technically speaking, but psychologically. Either you do it in hiding with a long zoom lens, or you ask people to take their photo.

If you do it candidly, you feel somewhat rotten. But to get up and talk with strangers is kind of scary. The two images below are one of each type.

This image is of a man in a wheelchair, his hair was getting a bit gray. His mood was somewhat somber, and he was looking moodily at the sea-gulls eating and screeching, like they tend to do, by the river below us. He sat still for a long time, and I slid up  my camera and grabbed this shot.

Man in a wheelchair by the river.

A little bit later I laid my eyes on this man. He was kind of small, and maybe a bit haggard looking. His eyes were a mix of smiling and serious so I asked him when his eyes met mine if I could take his picture. He looked a bit confused at me, and said “Naaah, I don’t look very pretty on pictures”. I told him that he had a unique look, and that he could agree to. So I took this picture. And showed it to him, he smiled and said that it looked kind of OK, and then he told me a short version of his story. The basics of his story was that he was an ex drug addict, and he had not been doing any drugs for 7 years now. He felt that it was possible to get out of it, but it was hard. He had gotten help though and escaped, not unharmed but alive. His final advice? “Don’t do drugs”.

Clean for 7 years, but still marked.

When I came home I found to my chagrin that my picture was not 100% sharp, but his short story was though. I decided to include this picture here anyway. I regret not being ready with another lens and taking my time capturing this man, but his look is worth to be displayed anyway.

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.