Cloud Buzz: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

I am going to try and provide simple analogies that will hopefully help you make sense of the terminologies associated with Cloud technologies and make them ‘stick’.
The Cloud my friends, is nothing but the Internet. Different vendors  set up the Infrastructure, Platform and Software and make them available to us from remote locations over the Internet so that we as consumers do not have to go through the process of installing all these on our own machines. All we need to do is

• Hook up to the Internet
• Start using the vendor specific services (for some of the services, one might need to register, log on etc etc.)
• Think Gmail !

Cloud Model

Generally speaking, the Cloud model is based upon 3 different layers/stacks

• Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) – Deals with hardware/basic infrastructure
• Platform As A Service (PaaS) – Facilitates tooling support required for development and deployment of ‘cloud’ based applications
• Software As A Service (SaaS) – A ready-to-consume’application’ available on-demand

My very own definition of the Cloud (not perfect.. but I tried !)

“The Cloud is composed of computing layers which are ‘inter dependent’ modules which support the notion of delivering software as an on-demand service (SaaS) which is propelled by rapid development+deployment services rendered by the PaaS layer which in turn feeds upon the IaaS layer to provide the basic infrastructure services such as virtualization, servers, network, storage, scalability etc”

Dissecting the Cloud

Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS)

Think of IaaS as Your Laptop/Desktop!
It has the following components

• Storage (hard disk)
• Networking capabilities (network card)
• Operating System (Windows, Linux, MacOSX… whatever)

A laptop provides basic ‘computing infrastructure’ to its consumer. IaaS setup operates on similar lines:

• Provides ‘resources’ as an on-demand service
• What kind of resources? Servers, storage, network and underlying operating system
• IaaS is meant for multiple users who leverage a single piece of hardware.
• Just like you can enhance the computing capacity of your laptop/desktop (by adding more RAM, additional physical storage etc) an IaaS setup can also be scaled to meet the demands of the consumers.
• Companies want to concentrate more on their core business and services rather than go through the hassles of setting up huge data centers and maintain them! IaaS to the rescue. . . . 

Examples

I have to mention Amazon EC2 !

Platform As A Service (PaaS)

What do you need in order to ‘develop’ applications using your laptop/desktop? e.g. Java EE web applications
You need a basic ‘platform’ to be able to perform your activities

• IDE (Eclipse, NetBeans etc)
• Java EE runtime i.e. a Java EE Application Server
• A Database for persistence (Oracle DB etc)

This is not an exhaustive list, but I hope you get the idea. Now the important analogy – PaaS itself is not very different from this
A PaaS vendor/provider

• Delivers ‘software creation/deployment platform’ over the web
• Provides a homogeneous environment and tools to support the entire software development cycle from development to testing, hosting as well as maintaining applications
• Abstracts the underlying complexities from the end user by exposing interactive web interfaces and even CLI tools
• Based on Multi-Tenant architecture wherein multiple users make use of the platform concurrently with each user having a unique working environment of his own

Examples

• Open Shift by RedHat is free and pretty awesome!
• Eclipse Orion – this Cloud IDE is worth a watch (not exactly PaaS)

Software As A Service (SaaS)

Well up until now, you got a super cool computing machine (your infrastructure), you are armed with the latest development tools (your platform). What do you do? Build and deliver awesome software ! What else?
So you have made that dream web app. Now you want to be rich? Of course…. What would you do in order to deliver your awesome web application from your laptop to consumers over the Internet?

• Sign up fora domain
• Configure your web/front end servers
• Publish you app!
• You need to be careful about up time and availability of you application though.
• Check on your machine, servers etc

SaaS makes this a breeze (for a consumer and a developer.

• Consuming on demand services over the Internet – as an end user
• No hassles of installing software on your systems, servers – get online.. that’s it!
• Forget about patching and upgrading your software – that is a major relief!
• Delivering software solutions over the Internet – from a developer perspective
• Builds on the services delivered by the IaaS layers and sometimes the PaaS layer (depending upon whether or not the software is actually developed on the cloud)
• SaaS vendors come up with Web APIs for other applications and systems to be able to integrate seamlessly — think REST APIs

Examples

Let me make this easy on myself…. Salesforce . . . One of the biggest players in the SaaS arena. Enough said!
Alright then. I hope you have a reasonable idea of what the Cloud is…. This by no means was supposed to be a whitepaper on Cloud Computing or something. Just enough for you to get an idea and start digging deeper!

HTML, CSS, PSD and More: 18 Free Design Resources from February/March 2014

We are back with another round of HTML, CSS and PSD templates as well as some UI interfaces. Frequent readers know that we collect the best new entries to the scene on a regular basis. So, keep yourself updated with the freshest templates available. Whether you take the following pieces as an inspiration or plainly use them for your next project is completely up to you. They will certainly prove useful in both ways.

One important information before you read on: All the following elements are freely usable, though some will require a registration to download.

Section #1: HTML/CSS Templates

Calm: Flat Grid Portfolio Template

Created by: W3layouts
Remarkable: Flat design, grid layout style.

Motion: Flat Responsive Personal Portfolio Template

Created by: W3layouts
Remarkable: Good color scheme, responsive design

Leo Images: Clean HTML Template for Photography Websites

Created by: W3layouts
Remarkable: Minimal design

Steam: Flat Responsive Music Web Template

Created by: W3layouts
Remarkable: Built with HTML5 and CSS3, fully responsive, multiple page templates

ZGenesis: Responsive HTML5 Theme

Created by: zerothemedotcom
Remarkable: Cross browser, responsive layout, multiple pages

ZValencia: Responsive Theme Created with HTML5

Created by: zerothemedotcom
Remarkable: Multiple page templates, Cross browser, 2 layout options

Section #2: PSD Templates

Multipurpose Flat Table: InDesign Flat Pricing Table

Created by: Erick Ragas
Remarkable: Flat design, print ready

Portfolio Theme: PSD Flat Grid Template

Created by: sm-artists
Remarkable: Flat design, multiple pages

Oceanarium: PSD Landing Page

Created by: Dalechuck Inna
Remarkable: One page template, flat iOS-like design

Dribbblr for iPad: Concept Template for an iPad App (PSD)

Created by: Alex Botic
Remarkable: One page template, carefully ordered layers

Dark Analytics Dashboard: Flat PSD Admin Panel for Analytics Apps

Created by: Davide Pacilio
Remarkable: One page template, carefully ordered layers

iOS Splash: Template to Create Splash Screens for iOS Devices

Created by: David Lillo
Remarkable: Easily usable file

Flat Multipurpose Template: PSD Landing Page with a Simple Style

Created by: Agile Infoways
Remarkable: Minimal design, one page template

Bar Graph Template: 2 Templates for Statistical Data Showcases

Created by: FreebiesGallery
Remarkable: 2 color themes, carefully ordered layers

Section #3: UI Interfaces

Flat UI Widgets: Simple Data Widgets for Social Apps

Created by: Mihnea Zamfir
Remarkable: Flat design, carefully ordered layers

Wireframe & UI Kit: Complete UI That Serves as a Wireframe

Created by: Chris Rowe Jr
Remarkable: Visual cues (more than boxes with labels)

Robotic UI: Music Interface Template in Flat Futuristic Style

Created by: Sonle
Remarkable: Several elements for desktop sites development

Aurora: iOS7 Alternate Concept (PSD)

Created by: Vasil Enev
Remarkable: Oval icons in iOS7 style

Case filed against Modi, Amit Shah over 'Har Har' slogan

Lucknow: A case has been filed in a Varanasi court against BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, party general secretary Amit Shah and city mayor Ram Gopal Mohale over a slogan hailing Modi.

The case was filed by a lawyer in the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) and alleges the "Har har Modi, ghar ghar Modi" slogan, which likens Modi to Lord Shiva, hurt his religious sentiments.

Petitioner Manoj Dubey said this slogan was coined to garner electoral gains during the Lok Sabha election in which the Gujarat chief minister is a contestant from Varanasi.

"I had petitioned the Election Commission also on the matter but no action was taken. I have now decided to take the matter to the court," Dubey told IANS Tuesday.

The court has sought a detailed report from the police over the issue.

The Bharatiya Janta Party had come under fire for using the slogan.

The party later distanced itself from the controversial slogan.

The party has now coined a new slogan -- "Dil dil Modi, ghar ghar Modi, kan kan Modi" (every heart, house and particle has Modi) for the local campaign of the party in Varanasi.

The next hearing of the case has been fixed for April 3.

Syria's Aleppo bears brunt of fight over fragmented Syria

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - Aleppo is central to President Bashar al-Assad's goal of rescuing a viable state from the ruins of Syria; hence the grim message from his forces to its residents, that one equals five.

"We told them every shell (they fire) equals five barrel bombs," said Amar, a local policeman in the city, who argued that any civilians hit by the highly destructive improvised weapons deserved it for tolerating "terrorists".

"They didn't believe us and they continued launching shells, so the army responded with a pounding of barrel bombs."

Almost two years after rebels grabbed half of Syria's biggest city, they are on the defensive, with government forces advancing on three sides.

If Assad can retake Aleppo, he would be back in control of Syria's three largest cities, a bulwark for the Mediterranean provinces of Latakia and Tartous which form the heartland of his minority Alawite sect.

With the rest of the country split between autonomous Kurdish areas in the northeast and a range of Sunni Islamist rebel groups in the east, Syria's fragmentation could become irreversible.

The battle for Aleppo ebbs and flows - the rebels regained some high ground at the weekend - but Assad's forces struck back on Monday, dropping barrel bombs from helicopters on several rebel-held districts in the east.

The military ramped up its offensive in December, pummeling civilian areas with scores of barrel bombs, made from oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel that cause massive and indiscriminate destruction.

In six weeks, they killed more than 700 people, mostly civilians, and forced tens of thousands more from their homes.

Khadija and her six children fled their home in the eastern district of Al-Sukkari when it was struck by a barrel bomb in late January.

They passed through the "death crossing" - a 100-metre stretch of sniper territory between Aleppo's eastern and western halves - hoping for a better life on the other side.

"When we reached the government side, the soldiers viciously beat us with a stick," she said.

Denied a residency permit to live in government-held territory, they sleep wherever they find shelter, moving every few days to evade security forces.

"COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT"

New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Monday that satellite images showed 340 sites hit in opposition-controlled Aleppo between early November and late February. The damage appeared "strongly consistent with the detonation of highly explosive unguided bombs."

Western powers have condemned the use of barrel bombs as a war crime, but they continue to fall nearly every day in Aleppo and other parts of Syria where more than 140,000 people have died in three years of war.

The bombardment has uprooted thousands of people, some of whom fled to neighbouring Turkey while others, like Khadija, moved to government-controlled areas of Aleppo, where they have been forced to camp on the street and in parks and schools.

Abeer, an Aleppo-based researcher with the Jesuit Refugee Service, said Assad's forces were even bombing government-held districts once controlled by rebels as part of what she called a government "policy of collective punishment".

"They continue to strike neighbourhoods with barrel bombs to punish their residents for embracing the opposition fighters when they entered," she told Reuters.

Some of those forced to flee live on the streets, often with only a flimsy tarpaulin for shelter. Others have sought cover in school buildings, packed into classrooms by the dozen even as pupils attend lessons, stirring social tension in a city once reknown for its religious and political diversity.

"Aleppo is enduring a dreadful type of social fragmentation because of the hatred between its residents, and the increased number of displaced people has deepened this fragmentation," Abeer said.

Abdel Jabar and his family escaped a barrel bomb attack in January, but have since lived as outcasts in a public garden on the other side of the city.

Security forces forbade them from living with relatives in a government-held district, he said. "The authorities impose residency restrictions on us as if we are strangers in our own country."

Iconion: Converts Icon Fonts To Icon Files

Icon fonts are quickly becoming a web design trend and there is a good reason for that. Instead of working with a load of files in different resolutions or large sprites to be controlled by CSS, we simply embed a special font. Creating icons with icon fonts gives designers the ability to manipulate the icons with CSS, and it can improve load times by up to 15%, and because they're vector in nature, they're infinitely scalable, while still being smaller in size than an image sprite.



But what if you need to use these icons in a desktop or mobile application? Or create a website favicon or multi-colored icon?
The only answer is old-fashioned image icons in png or ico format. Iconion allows you to convert any icon font into fantastic-looking png icons by adding color, shadow, background, gradient, stroke and many other fancy elements.


What you can do with Iconion?

With Iconion you can select icons from Font Awesome, Entypo, Linecons, Typeicons and any other symbol fonts you like. You can select any size, without having to worry about the size, 8px or 1024px, the images will be of the same crisp quality. Add style: Icon color, Icon shadow and Icon long shadow, Gradient, Stroke, Icon rotate, Background, Background color, Background gradient, Background shadow, Background border, Rotate. Or just apply one of awesome pre-made templates.
Your final result can be save as png, bmp, jpeg or ico files.


How to use Iconion

Iconion have an interface divided into 3 sections. The left part of the screen lets you select icons from the popular Typeicons, Linecons, Font Awesome and Entypo. But the developer promise to launch a future version that will allow users to work with any symbol font.



The right part which is the style section, allows you to select a style for your icons. There are a lot of fancy styles to choose from. Also, you can easily customize icon and background color, border, size, shadow, gradient and many other parameters. All the pre-made styles can be changed to your liking from an editor below the styles window.

Now, the middle part which is the "Preview & Save" section allows you to control the look of your icon by changing the "Icon" or "Background" properties in their respective tabs. After you are done with the editing, icons can be saved as images after a click on Save Icon button.


Licenses

Iconion offers two licenses. One entitles you to use Iconion for free for non-commercial purposes. And the other one requires you to have a commercial license if you are going to use Iconion in a profit-oriented project.