A few years ago we would have shaken our heads, wished them good luck, and figured we would probably never see that game released. Today there is a far greater chance that these folks can bring the next MMO to market. What’s changed? The arrival of specialized Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings. In a nutshell, a PaaS allows an entrepreneur to focus on building their cloud application, avoiding upfront capital expenses through outsourced management of their IT infrastructure to a third party.

This is a level up from the cloud itself, which provides outsourced compute power in a more raw fashion. PaaS providers offer database as a service (MongoLab, MongoHQ) or runtime environment as a service (Heroku, Nodejitsu, AppFog), for example. A PaaS can also deliver even more advanced capabilities. StackMob, for example, puts in place a suite of PaaS offerings that radically streamline mobile application development, launch and hosting by providing in one integrated package an environment to code up, host, and run in the cloud mobile applications.

What’s more, a PaaS can even be taken to the point where it eliminates almost all technology skill requirements. GameSalad allows designers to quickly design and publish game applications that even include animation purely using visual design tools. Eliminating technological complexity serves to eliminate a critical barrier to innovation and new company foundation. We’ve all met someone who felt they had a great idea for a new application of some sort. “And I’m looking for a developer or a CTO,” is inevitably the next thing out of their mouth after they pitch the idea.

If that same great idea could be built far more easily and quickly with a far smaller tech team and nominal capital expenses, then, logically the cost of bringing that idea to market drops considerably. This is the value of the PaaS. And its not just a value to guys with no tech chops. Someone that is a very solid designer and front-end coder may be highly technical but may not be comfortable at all with designing and managing a NoSQL database.

Even highly skilled developers with both front-end and server-side chops usually turn to network engineers for help with load balancing, DNS and other infrastructure aspects that are critical to ensuring a cloud-based application runs fast and clean on any device anywhere in the world. Dennis TK, founder of Foursquare, is fond of explaining that as soon as he got funded, he hired an ex-Googler to completely recode his app to keep it from breaking. If Dennis had been building Foursquare in the present, he could have probably built a more reliable, faster app by leveraging a far more robust PaaS ecosystem to remove many of the software development and infrastructure management requirements that probably caused Foursquare to be so buggy and break all the time in its initial inception.

How many more kids like Dennis are out there with whizbang innovations that could be the next WoW, the next great service for medical records delivery, or the next amazing tool for crowdsourced scientific problem solving? We don’t know but we are a lot more likely to find out in a new era of PaaS-fueled cloud innovation.

Lisa Petrucci is the VP of Global Marketing at Joyent. She started out as a network engineer for Lotus and has held senior sales, marketing and business development roles in enterprise computing companies for the past two decades at companies including IBM and SixApart. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user ansik.

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Some of these world holidays are New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, April Fool’s, and Christmas. These are the more well known of the world holidays. Christmas for example is celebrated everywhere and classic Christmas songs are listen throughout the world. You will find other holidays too that are even now gaining recognition as being world holidays. For Muslims across the planet Ramazan and also the Haj Festival are world holidays. For the Chinese, there’s the Chinese New Year with fantasy parades, fireworks, and symbols of prosperity and good luck hanging from every place. And with so many Chinese individuals spread out across the world they’d consider this one of the world holidays. And also the same goes for the numerous Indians living around the planet as well. They’d definitely consider Diwali as being one of the world holidays.

How about Halloween? Certainly this fun filled, scary day with its assortment of costumed people would be a world holiday. You’d only be half right on that however, as Halloween still has to take off in numerous nations even though it has now spread across the ocean and has taken hold in England. In fact what youngster doesn’t like dressing up in fun outfits and collecting masses and masses of candy?

In addition to these holidays you will find such world holidays as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Valentines Day. Each one of these is now a component of numerous cultures and covers the globe creating them truly world holidays. Then you will find the spiritual world holidays like Easter or Christmas that are commemorated in quite a few places in spite of its spiritual overtones. A lot of individuals nowadays connect Easter with the Easter Rabbit and it is vibrant colored eggs and Christmas with Santa Claus. There is also the reality that families and buddies meet up to have fun as the children play games and hunt for chocolates and chocolate eggs or listen some Christmas songs for kids.

As you see world holidays are commemorated the around the world. Sometimes everyone in the world celebrates them, sometimes only some individuals in different parts of the globe celebrates them. Globe holidays can be found in all sizes and shapes and are liked by everyone, particularly the school kids who get a free day off!

Best answer:

Answer by Lorelai [(Official)]
Are you referring to microdermabrasion?

Here’s a Google search…

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microdermabrasion&btnG=Search

HOPE I HELPED, GOOD LUCK!

Give your answer to this question below!

Question by Zoe: Christmas electronic gadget gift ideas for a fifteen year old girl?
Are there any new – not too expensive – electronic gadgets out?
I don’t know what I want to get for Christmas haha,
I was thinking along the lines of webcam, new phone, pay half for laptop etc.
Are there any cool gadgets out there that you like?

Best answer:

Answer by FourFangedCow
If she doesn’t have an iPod, get her one. I love mine (I have a 16gb, 1st gen. touch; I hear the new ones are better T-T) and I don’t even listen to that much music.

Half paying for a laptop would be cool. I sure wish someone would do that for me.

For phones, depends on the carrier. The iPhone is functional and fun, and the Droid is new (and I know NOTHING about it, but it looks cool ).

Webcam is a little useless unless she wants one for something in particular. Not much you can really do with one unless you want to skype with her when she goes to college or she has a long distance friend.

A small, digital point-and-shoot camera would also be fun. I know quite a few girls who own and use them frequently.

That’s all I got. Good luck! And I hope whatever you get, she likes.

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by Philmore: What is the computer/gadget equivalent of a “gearhead”?
A “gearhead” is a person with an inborn talent for cars and mechanical technology like motors. A UK variant is “Petrol head” which is is more specific to cars and driving.

So, what do you call someone who has an uncanny knack for computers and generally IT stuff like gadgets and phones, despite having no formal education in them? You probably know somebody likes this, who will just pick up your phone or laptop having never seen it before, and within 5 minutes can tell you exactly whats wrong with it or 10 things you didn’t know it could do.

Best answer:

Answer by jcurrieii
The Computer World equivelent is generally called a Tech or a Geek…

Or, occasionally, a TechnoGeek. If they are into the software more than the hardware, they are either Programmers or Hackers, depending on which way they lean.

Good Luck!

Give your answer to this question below!