What is cloud computing? Cloud computing is the next stage in evolution of the Internet. The cloud in cloud computing provides the means through which everything — from computing power to computing infrastructure, applications, business processes to personal collaboration — can be delivered to you as a service wherever and whenever you need.
Cloud computing is offered in different forms:
✓ Public clouds
✓ Private clouds
✓ Hybrid clouds, which combine both public and private
In general the cloud — similar to its namesake of the cumulus type — is fluid and can easily expand and contract. This elasticity means that users can request additional resources on demand and just as easily deprovision (or release) those resources when they’re no longer needed. This elasticity is one of the main reasons individual, business, and IT users are moving to the cloud.
In the traditional data center it has always been possible to add and release resources. However, this process couldn’t be done in an automated or selfservice manner.
This evolution to cloud computing — already underway — can completely change the way companies use technology to service customers, partners, and suppliers. Some businesses already have IT resources almost entirely in the cloud. They feel that the cloud model provides a more efficient, costeffective IT service delivery.
This doesn’t mean that all applications, services, and processes will necessarily be moved to the cloud. Many businesses are much more cautious and are taking a hard look at their most strategic business processes and intellectual property to determine which computing assets need to remain under internal company control and which computing assets could be moved to the cloud.
Source of Information : cloud computing for dummies 2010 retail ebook distribution
If you happen to have an HP ePrint-compatible printer already on your network, you can skip ahead to Print From an AirPrint-Capable App. Otherwise, you must perform a preliminary step to make printing from your iPad possible: install a third-party sharing tool.
Fundamentally, all these utilities do approximately the same thing: they make local and network printers visible, and available, to AirPrint over your Wi-Fi network. However, they go about it in somewhat different ways, and some of them offer useful additional features too.
Mac OS X AirPrint Utilities:
• AirPrint Activator: This no-frills utility lets you make any printer that your Mac can see available to AirPrint. Unfortunately, it also requires you to remove, re-add, and share each printer manually— a tedious process, especially if you have several printers. AirPrint Activator requires both Mac OS X 10.6.5 Snow Leopard or later and iTunes 10.1 or later. (http://netputing.com/airprintactivator/donationware)
• FingerPrint: After installing FingerPrint, any printers that are already shared on your network become available to AirPrint—no additional configuration required. In addition to printing, it also lets you send any document from your iPad to your Dropbox, to a specified folder on your Mac, or, for graphics, directly to iPhoto— wirelessly, without having to connect via iTunes. (http://www.collobos.com/, $7.99)
• Printopia: Printopia lets AirPrint work with any printer connected to your Mac, whether or not it’s already shared. Like FingerPrint, it can also send documents directly to your Dropbox or to a folder on your Mac. And, although it lacks a direct-to-iPhoto feature, it adds another useful capability—“printing” to a PDF or PNG file on your Mac. And, it even works with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For all these reasons it’s my current favorite of these utilities. (http://ecamm.com/mac/printopia/, $9.95)
Windows AirPrint Utilities:
• AirPrint Installer: This utility requires iTunes 10.1 or later and works with printers that you’ve shared from your Windows PC. (http://jaxov.com/2010/11/download-airprint-installer-forwindows-7-xp-vista/, free)
• AirPrint Activator for Windows: The description is in German, but the software is available in English, German, and French. (http://www.iblueray.de/viewforum.php?f=21, free)
Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011
Most newer HP printers with Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi connections support a collection of features known as ePrint. For iPad users, the two most significant capabilities of ePrint are these:
• AirPrint support for wireless printing direct from your iPad when it’s on the same local network as your HP printer
• Support for printing from anywhere in the world, by sending a
document (as an attachment) to your printer’s email address In addition to the latest printer models that feature ePrint support out of the box, an increasing number of older printers can acquire ePrint capabilities by way of a free firmware upgrade. HP maintains a PDF file listing all AirPrint-compatible models (including those requiring firmware upgrades) at http://www.hp.com/sbso/printing/mac/apple-airprint.pdf (you may have to copy and paste this link into your browser’s URL field in order to load it properly). HP also has an FAQ page about using their printers with AirPrint: http://www.hp.com/sbso/printing/mac/hp-airprint.html.
Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011
When Apple first announced that a new capability called AirPrint would be included in iOS 4.2, it sounded like a simple, thorough solution to most iPad printing problems. With AirPrint, an iOS developer could easily add a Print command to an app, letting users print wirelessly to either an HP printer that supports ePrint technology (see the sidebar About HP ePrint, ahead) or to any printer shared by a Mac, AirPort base station, or Time Capsule on a local network. iPad users wouldn’t need to install drivers or do any configuration, but merely select the printer they wanted to use.
When AirPrint finally appeared, however, it didn’t come close to its promise. AirPrint required changes not only to iOS but also to Mac OS X, with a minimum system requirement of Mac OS X 10.6.5 Snow Leopard. That’s fair enough, but for reasons Apple never revealed, the company pulled support for AirPrint from Mac OS X 10.6.5 at the last minute. As a result, AirPrint officially supports only a handful of HP printers that include ePrint capabilities. I’m sure that’ll help sales of new HP printers, but it doesn’t make life any easier for everyone who already has a perfectly functional printer and just wants to print from an iPad (or other iOS device).
Fortunately, developers found easy workarounds to the problem (read Enable AirPrint Support for Shared Printers, next), and almost immediately began shipping software that restored the promised-butmissing support for shared printers to AirPrint. So you can, in fact, print from your iPad to almost any printer you can print to from a Mac or PC, as long as you’ve installed a small, inexpensive application on one of your computers first.
However, even though this arrangement solves a lot of printing problems, it still has a few gaps:
• Developers must explicitly add AirPrint support to their apps. Many have done so, but many others have not, and if you want to print from those apps, you need to use a different approach.
• AirPrint works over a local network, but provides no way to print to a remote printer. (HP printers with ePrint do offer this capability, but not via AirPrint; see the sidebar About HP ePrint, ahead.)
• Although most printers can work with AirPrint, not all do.
• Even with supported printers, AirPrint doesn’t give you access to all your printer’s features.
• Mac OS X has a “print-to-PDF” feature whereby you can create a PDF file rather than sending it to a printer, but AirPrint doesn’t offer this capability.
So, if your iPad printing needs go beyond what AirPrint can handle, even with one of the third-party applications that extend support to shared printers, you may need to use more elaborate means to achieve your desired results, as I discuss later in this chapter, in Use a Third-Party Printing App and Print On a Computer.
HP maintains a PDF document with a list of all iOS apps that claim AirPrint support: http://www.hp.com/sbso/printing/mac/listairprint-compatible-apps.pdf. (If this link won’t load properly, try copying it and pasting it into your Web browser’s URL field.)
Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011
In addition to writing your own text, you may want to review and provide feedback on PDF documents other people have created. On the iPad, several apps offer comparable features. A few examples:
• iAnnotate PDF: This iPad app is a full-featured PDF reader with annotation capabilities. (Aji, $9.99)
• GoodReader for iPad: Mentioned numerous other times in this book, this all-purpose tool for transferring and displaying documents also lets you add notes and drawings to PDFs. (Good.iWare, $2.99)
• smartNote: This note-taking app, discussed in Take Notes, lets you use any PDF file as the “paper,” on which you can add free-form drawings, shapes, notes, and other annotations. (Christopher Thibault and Brendan Lee, $2.99)
• TakeNotes: Like smartNote, this iPad app lets you import a PDF (or JPEG or PNG graphic) and use it as the background for drawing and note-taking, and then save the resulting document as a PDF. (Kishore Tipirneni, $3.99)
Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011
Sometimes, not even the snazziest iPad app does what you need, and you may find yourself wishing for the resources of a conventional computer—complete with multiple windows, Flash support (shudder!), and system-wide storage. If you don’t have a laptop with you but you do have a high-speed Internet connection, you can use a VNC client such as iTeleport for iPad (iTeleport, $19.99) or iSSH (Zinger-Soft, $9.99) to connect to your own computer at home or the office (using Mac OS X’s screen sharing capability or any VNC client). Another option is LogMeIn Ignition (LogMeIn, $29.99), which accomplishes much the same thing but uses proprietary desktop software that makes it easier to connect when the host computer is behind a NAT router or has a dynamic IP address. Then your iPad becomes a virtual display and controller for the other computer, and (with some limitations), you can use any of the host computer’s capabilities. (Refer to Take Control of iPad Networking & Security for help with iTeleport and LogMeIn Ignition.)
But what if you don’t have a computer you can connect to in this manner—or if that computer is turned off, asleep, behind a firewall, or otherwise inaccessible? A unique app called AlwaysOnPC may be the solution (Xform Computing, $24.99). Like the other apps mentioned here, it uses VNC to create a connection to another computer that you can then control remotely. The difference is that the “computer” on the other end is entirely virtual—it’s your own private Linux desktop, complete with preinstalled software such as a word processor and Web browser— running on the company’s servers. In this environment, you can create and save files, run nearly any Linux application, and yes, view Flash content (albeit without sound).
However, be aware that all of these solutions require a significant amount of Internet bandwidth. If your connection is spotty (or if Wi-Fi or 3G is unavailable), you’ll experience poor performance at best, and a complete lack of function at worst.
Source of Information : TidBITS-Take Control of Working with Your iPad 2011
