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The product was announced a year ago, was originally supposed to ship last summer, but was delayed.

Apple’s tool for media management, Final Cut Server, is now available, the company announced Tuesday.

Final Cut Server pricing starts at $999 for one server and 10 licenses, and $1,999 for one server and unlimited licenses.

The software application is meant for managing the production of large-scale video projects. Final Cut Server enables automatic cataloging, viewing, and annotating of video, and is available for both the
Mac and PC. It is integrated with Apple’s video-editing software, Final Cut Studio.

Navigating the cloud
Guest post by Tom Mornini, CTO, Engine Yard

If cloud computing encompasses all of these items, it seems to me that we’ve developed a new name for something we’re all quite familiar with: the Internet! Consider this: When, exactly did subscription Web sites become known as SaaS? I suspect that this term is rooted in enterprise marketing. After all, nobody would ever pay that much to use a Web site!

This is not to suggest that AWS is “better” than AppEngine or MobileMe, merely different. As Engine Yard is 100 percent committed to Ruby and Rails, we’re big believers in the Rails creator’s triple philosophies of: “Convention over Configuration,” “Flexibility is Overrated,” and “Constraints are Liberating.” It certainly does mean that AppEngine is dead to Engine Yard, since we simply cannot make use of it using the technologies we prefer.

The term cloud computing is now in common use. So common in fact, that it clearly encompasses many incompatible ideas. Let’s consider the differences among Amazon’s AWS, Google’s AppEngine, and Apple’s MobileMe.

Cloud computing means different things to different people. In this guest post, Tom Mornini, CTO, of Engine Yard looks at the differences amongst the applications that get lumped together as one amorphous cloudy mass.

Tom Mornini, CTO
Engine Yard.

Programs running on computers have been providing flexible and valuable services to the cloud for quite some time now. Since the beginning most end users have been unable to conceptualize how it works. Sun deserves credit here: “The network is the computer” was really ahead of its time.

It’s imperative that these technologies provide enough abstraction to allow an application to run not just on a single cloud, but be run and managed across the one true cloud: The Internet itself.

For the cloud to reach its full potential, I strongly suspect that new application development technologies will be required. With dynamic hardware availability, applications must be dynamic. Security, resiliency, and scalability must be inviolate. Most importantly, all of these ideals, currently recognized and strived for by developers, must be inexpensive to achieve and built into the very fabric of these technologies.

AWS provides “raw” compute resources via EC2 and higher level services such as S3, SQS, and SimpleDB. You configure the raw compute resources as you see fit, using the OS of your choice and write applications in any language using any framework. Those applications may or may not rely upon additional AWS services such as S3, SQS, and SimpleDB. Deployment is entirely up to you.

AppEngine, on the other hand, is far more opinionated. Just as Ford once sold
cars of any color, so long as they were black, AppEngine allows you to write programs any way you want, so long as it’s their Framwork, Python, and BigTable. While Google has already suggested that it would support other languages in the future, it seems clear that Google doesn’t intend to offer as many “colors” as AWS does.

So, perhaps cloud computing represents a new abstraction layer entirely. This time around even the developers don’t understand how their applications work. Of course, many might suggest that this has always been the case!

As applications grow more complex and become interconnected, simply managing applications becomes a highly complex task. Particularly so as consumers of these applications demand local application response times and 100 percent uptime. These consumers don’t care and don’t want to know about peak loads, hardware failures, etc. The providers of these applications are increasingly finding little benefit in managing the infrastructure themselves.

Apple’s MobileMe marketing also makes reference to the concept of cloud computing, but takes it in an entirely different direction than Amazon and Google. It doesn’t offer any software development or deployment at all.

From my perspective, EC2 is a hardware as a service (HaaS) offering while the rest of AWS is a platform as a service (PaaS) offering. AppEngine is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering that also provides deployment as a service (DaaS). MobileMe is a software as a service (SaaS).

We are expanding our beta testing, so you may be seeing the new site when you come to any of the CNET sites (News, Reviews, Downloads, CNET TV).

It’s a work in progress–if you land on the new pages, give us some feedback (fill out the brief feedback form linked at the top of the pages).

As I wrote in a post in June, we are updating our look and feel after nearly 13 years of variations on neon yellow and green.

(Credit:
Google)

Google Maps directions now are augmented with Street View imagery, where it's available.

Google has built its Street View into Google Maps’ ability to provide driving directions, the company said Tuesday.

Google Street View is available in 44 areas of the United States, and there are strong signs Google is bringing Street View to Europe. Street View is available through the Google Maps programming interface so that those using Google Maps can add Street View abilities to their Web sites.

With the feature, a small camera icon appears next to the intersections in the turn-by-turn directions. Clicking on the icon brings up a view of the intersection so people can see the area in question.

World Cup soccer
Another inauguration
Live performance
Natural disaster or emergency
Live-streamed “Lost” finale (We can dream!)

We’ve all heard it by now. Live streams of Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration broke records for the Web, with about 7.7 million streams flowing concurrently at its peak. Which, of course, makes us wonder: what will set a new record?

With broadband penetration, not to mention Web usage in general, still growing, it’s conceivable that some event of historic importance will surpass the inauguration in due time. Chances are, it’ll be some prescheduled event that people know to tune into, rather than a sudden occurrence–but you never know.

View results

We picked a few possibilities: World Cup football (soccer), for example, has been a big draw for Web traffic in the past, and with the 2010 tournament taking place in South Africa, the geographic distance from Europe and the U.S. may mean that some football fans are tuning in remotely rather than on location. Or, hypothetically, what if a major TV show chooses to broadcast its finale online? (Yeah, yeah, we know, the networks would never let it happen.)

News.com Poll What will break the Obama inauguration’s streaming-video record?
Akamai reports that Tuesday’s inauguration shattered records for simultaneous live-stream viewing. What event will be the next record-breaker?

Choose your prediction, or leave a comment with your own theory.

But a capital commitment the size of $640 million to a venture capital fund is significant as it can provide the capital required to scale up energy industry start-ups.

Vinod Khosla, head of Khosla Ventures.

Khosla Ventures has invested in a number of ethanol companies including Range Fuels and Mascoma, which both require money to build beyond their initial pilot plants.

Calpers has already created a $400 million clean-tech fund which launched last year.

Billions of dollars have gone into clean-tech start-ups. But many industry observers expect many of those to falter in the face of a “funding gap,” or “Valley of Death,” between technology development and commercial production.

Until now, Khosla Ventures has been funded by family money from billionaire Vinod Khosla.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) is expected to commit up to $640 million to clean tech-focused firm Khosla Ventures, according to a report at Private Equity Hub which cited two sources.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET News.com)

Ethanol companies, for example, need hundreds of millions of dollars to prove out their technologies at a commercial scale.

“It is no surprise that Alltel chose LTE as its 4G technology, since the carrier usually mirrors choices made by Verizon Wireless,” said Nadine Manjaro, senior analyst at ABI Research. “Alltel’s choice of LTE will help to ensure greater rural coverage for small and mid-sized cities in the United States and Canada since the carrier already has data roaming agreements in place. This will complement other mobile operators’ initial LTE build-outs in major urban areas.”

This division in the market has resulted in cell phone manufacturers developing different products for each technology, which has led to delays in some products on certain networks. It has also meant that CDMA subscribers haven’t been able to roam as much internationally. And it’s resulted in fewer roaming agreements between major carriers domestically, which has led to some holes in coverage, especially in rural areas.

Still, the fact that yet another wireless operator has committed to using Long Term Evolution or LTE, is a big deal. Since the cell phone operators deployed networks in the U.S., consumers have had to deal with two major cellular technologies: CDMA and GSM. Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and Alltel went the CDMA route. Meanwhile, AT&T and T-Mobile, along with a slew of regional carriers, deployed GSM.

So it’s significant that the two major CDMA players in the U.S.–Verizon Wireless and Alltel–plan to use the same technology that most GSM carriers throughout the world plan to use. With most major operators using the same technology, coverage should improve and so should the availability of cool new handsets. It should also make it easier for carriers to make their networks more open, allowing customers to take their phones or wireless-enabled devices from one network to another.

Alltel, the largest rural cell phone provider in the U.S., plans to use the same technology to build its 4G network that AT&T and Verizon Wireless have chosen, a move that should provide better coverage for next generation wireless users.

But don’t expect a major 4G upgrade from Alltel overnight. The company said during its quarterly conference call on Thursday that it would likely take three to five years to deploy the new network.

Alltel is the fifth largest carrier in U.S. with only 13 million subscribers, but the company covers some 34 states and has coverage in parts of Mexico and Canada. It also has roaming agreements in many markets throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Alltel’s announcement that it will deploy LTE in some ways further alienates the Sprint-Clearwire WiMax network. Sprint and Clearwire announced last week they were combining forces to create a nationwide WiMax network. Even though these companies claim that their network will be at least two years ahead of any LTE deployments, it’s clearer now more than ever that wireless operators are opting for that technology rather than WiMax. And that could mean a more aggressive and cost-effective ecosystem for LTE.

All these changes may be small, but like the change to Docs back in March, it’s a fascinating shift. Considering Google’s Chrome browser lets you run tools like Docs and Spreadsheets as standalone Web applications, the closer it gets to feeling like software people are used to, the more willing they’ll be to try it out. The big question is how far Google is willing to go with this new interface to make it better.

Something small, but really important is the inclusion of a full screen mode. Hitting Ctrl+Shift+F lets you cycle through two additional views, one that gets rid of the menu bar, and another that gets rid of both the menu bar and toolbar. If you’re working on a laptop with a small vertical resolution this gives you an additional seven rows(!).

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

All this isn’t just cosmetic ,though; Google says overall speed has been improved, too. One of the things that’s kept me away from using it all these years is that Excel absolutely kills it on larger spreadsheets. In a quick test on some older, large spreadsheets I really did notice a big difference, although it still has to stream in all your cells, whereas Excel is ready to go as soon as you open it.

Over the weekend, Google rolled out a brand-new look for its Spreadsheets tool by adding a simplified toolbar to the top of the page, much like the one Google Docs received back in late March. The change is twofold: one to better organize all the various bits and pieces that had turned the tool into something resembling an airplane cockpit, as well as ready it for additional features.

Google has also more deeply integrated its Calendaring tool and handling of URLs within its forms tool. You can now plan a meeting with people you’re collaborating on a spreadsheet with right from the share menu. This simply opens up a Google Calendar event with the participants, subject, and link to the spreadsheet automatically filled in for you. Likewise, any URL you drop in forms or the form confirmation messages will get converted into links automatically. Previously users would have to copy and paste it into their address bar.

Google Spreadsheets users now have a similar menu to the one in Google Docs, which compacts many of the options into menus for the sake of organization.