Cloudy At Last - Episode #67 of CloudFocus Weekly

Machine transcript generated in 2026 from the episode audio (Whisper speech-to-text with automatic speaker separation). Speaker labels are automatic and may be wrong in places. Timestamps shown every few minutes.

00:19 Jason Atwood: I'm your host Jason Atwood, and I'm joining me.

Justin Edelstein: Co-host for now. Crock-Frog as a Service It's fast, they call it that. Yeah, we have a great, little agenda. Today,

Jason Atwood: We're going to talk about, we have a new blog post, which we always talk about. This time, about Android. First of all, Android and your options. Atlassian, makers of a couple different products, finally goes Cloud. And we'll talk about that. Probably get into a discussion about another topic, which we've already planned out so we aint even talking about it And then finally a little bit of news from Amazon and Amazon Kindle which I threw on to the agenda. I see that.

Justin Edelstein: Which I was all excited about and then I wasn't so excited about. Oh, you're going to have to tell me about this one because I haven't read up on it. So we will discuss that.

Jason Atwood: But let's kick it off with first things first, which is the newest blog post on blog.arkusinc.com.

Justin Edelstein: Oh, sorry Roger wrote a blog about Salesforce on Android options and opinions and the We know the Salesforce mobile apps on the iPhone, but we don't know them on the Android. So Roger was... excited that Salesforce.com for Android was released in beta last week and got the opportunity to download it, play with it, and wrote up his opinions and some options for if you're an Android user how do you access Salesforce? Right.

Jason Atwood: So comparing Salesforce for Android and then Seesemix CRM which was released at Dreamforce. Right.

Justin Edelstein: So there are different options don't get too deep into it because there's a blog post about it and we've never used them and we never used to. But he goes into, you know, the pros and cons of both. He, we told him, you gotta go play with these things a little bit. And he did. He played with both of them. And he came up with with the opinions around both of them. You can find them both in the marketplace by searching for their names. Obviously, if you search for Salesforce, I'm sure you'll find both of them. He had some criticisms of both things Things that we saw early in the iOS platform, particularly in the mobile light, like the inability to edit things, the inability to get to custom objects.

03:43 Jason Atwood: So, I would sort of sales sort of mobile strategy now. We've talked about Salesforce Touch. We know it's coming sometime in the future.

Justin Edelstein: I don't know. It almost makes no sense to me But we know stuff we don't a we don't know anything about this, but my bad. Yes is that Salesforce paid For the development of that seismic CRM app on Android to prove out their streaming API to prove out Some of the other API calls that are being used to make that application work so that they could show it, like hey look this is R............. back end you can build any sort of connector front end to it and I I have to imagine that this was one of those proof of concept type of things that...

Jason Atwood: They needed to show it on stage of Dreamforce It's a You know, their sort of social desktop, you know, which I've used a couple times. I've looked at them. I've seen it on the i5.

Justin Edelstein: I've used it a number of times. I don't go to it. It's not my go-to. Yeah, it's not my go-to either. I just use the Twitter app. I mean, it's nice to have all your conversations in one place. Your Facebook, your chatter, your Twitter. but in all reality they are different things and I don't need them in the same place. Like, so, you know. But again a Well, they might be, but they did it with funding from Salesforce so it didn't cost them a dime outside of people. I'm telling you, that had to have been the.

Jason Atwood: It's also getting Seismic front and center in front of, R.I.P. You know, one of the tech conferences in the world.

Justin Edelstein: That's why I did it. Yeah, so there you go. They weren't paid. They were funded to do the project and then they got to show it on stage at Dreamforce However many hundreds of thousands of

07:03 Jason Atwood: People that were watching online slash their PR the whole thing Two base ones are known for are their wiki product and their server ticketing product.

Justin Edelstein: They're known for Jira, which is the tickets, bug tracking for developers, and Confluence, which is the wiki platform. They have a ton of other stuff. Grasshopper I think is one of them, they have identity management, the whole slew of products. Really known for various different products. and they are known for their wiki. For years they've had a hosted option. As a matter of fact, the two companies that I previously worked at both had instances of two out of the last three companies that had one was and the other We all know that we're not necessarily cloud hosted. It's on your dedicated server with your dedicated version of that server running. You're responsible for upgrading it. like at the last company we needed to increase our usage of hardware. Once you got there, I'm sure you blew up the wiki.

Justin Edelstein: Once I got there, I blew that wiki out. It's a great product. I love Confluence. I really enjoyed using the wiki as a co-lal. And it had some nice things where, you know, it's a wiki. It has a homepage.

Jason Atwood: Well, tell for those who... Because Wiki isn't really... I would say wikis are kind of going down the down the history tubes at this point. They're not as known as they were

Justin Edelstein: Why don't you explain what a wiki is? I still think they're phenomenal. They are sort of organically grown web sites or pages connected to a web centralized portal that allow end users to edit them really really simply WYSIWYG editors for web pages.

Jason Atwood: So known best for Wikipedia. Exactly.

Justin Edelstein: Collaborative encyclopedia. Right. It has comment threads, it has really the main thing is any One with the ability to edit a Microsoft Word document, can edit a web page, hit save, and add new pages. You add a new page, it links back to the old page, things of that nature. And it organically grows and it's nice for knowledge. So, at previous two companies, we used the wiki to capture... knowledge, take notes. Not Salesforce knowledge. No, no, no, not Salesforce knowledge. It's just institutional knowledge, like a knowledge base. But it had the ability to put context around it because it's a web page. So you can write things and then have links to other things, like a web page. It's not just a knowledge article that doesn't have a whole lot of contextual value to it.

10:04 Justin Edelstein: And really known best for what makes a wiki different than...

Jason Atwood: Say a web page is that. A web page you basically had to have either tools or you used to have to have tools or you had to know the language the language Frank Lloyd Web pages which was HTML.

Justin Edelstein: Wiki had its own little language on top which is... I really got really But it allowed right anybody to just spin off these pages and link them to other pagesages and all of a sudden all of, the sudden you intran.net that has all this knowledge and stuff in it that's self maintained by the team or teams so that are using them. Anyway, we come full circle here because Atlassian has announced an on-demand model. They have taken Confluence, they've taken Jira and put them up into the cloud. And I think they've done it with a couple of their other products too. Greenhopper, which is an agile project management software and bonfire, which I'm not really sure what it is.

Jason Atwood: I'm sort. I sit around and mix more. Maybe.

Justin Edelstein: Their. Their pricing is $10 for your first 10 users. I don.t know what it is after that. If you subscribe for an annual subscription, you're getting your first two months free, which is pretty neat. And you get 24x7 support with this. And I've actually found that Atlassian supports really good. Yeah. In working with them in the past. They're actually really good. So, you know, I thought this was interesting. This is a product that we've come across a number of times. They have integrations into other products that are cloud based. like sales for, Hitting Save and commit It also displays on the wiki page Zen desk is a ticketing system and versions so you can always, every time you hit save, click the new version of that page, you can always go back to the previous version, things like that.

Jason Atwood: And then there's the security. I would say wikis have kind of unless you're living down the path like you did probably have the one company here's all the examples and then making it like the you know Benioff says well I know the way to make those things I will say if it's on the wiki then it doesn't exist. So, when you, when you're talking about anything, it's like...

13:47 Justin Edelstein: That's where it is and you just a make a a,-, was, and and and a move things around.

Jason Atwood: You can put two waves side by side. You can put three waves up on top of each other. You can put a the waves on one side and the wave you're working in. And that just becomes very natural and shows you which ones have been updated and all sorts of stuff. Then the real time. The real time is really everything because that's what makes it interesting. I'm doing something and if someone needs a question, I can see them typing. It's in conversation where it is. Maybe that's not even where the conversation belongs, but it can start there and we can just go, what is that? Someone in the Google Wave today, I've got it and I've got it.

Justin Edelstein: Persistent chat. It was like a big group chat that went over time. Right, so this is still a little different. Yeah, so Google messed up here because they have a few people. It's a now They stopped a year ago. It's still one of that's right. And it's still awesome. that's still cannot be approved. And they were going down the wrong path. They were like, you can do plugins. Right. And you could do bots that can scrape it and add things. No, it doesn't need any of that. Trust us. We're using we're the users who are actually using Google Wave. I think there's eight of us left on the plane and we're four of four or five. It it works how it works and it works really well. You didn't need all this plug-in stuff You didn't need all this.

17:25 Justin Edelstein: It's a developer tool. No, it's not I think their big one was, it a new generation of email That's where I think they went. Yeah, they need to do that. They said it's the new generation of notes Yeah, and we would have gone collaborative note Collaboration kills It kills Evernote. Yeah, it's way better than Evernote.

Jason Atwood: We've booked it. So we here's the things we, we've booked that to replace we've looked at obviously wikis we looked at sites we've looked at chatter and chatter now right lots of problems with that Again real time's a big one. We've looked at ever note. We've looked at wave in a box, which is a box Which is a which is an open source thing Really buggy. I mean, I love what they're doing, but it's got is it buggy buggy. I mean it just crashes constantly We looked at Evernote, didn't we?

Justin Edelstein: We looked at Evernote.

Jason Atwood: So we looked at all these things, and then we know that they've done. It's a given some of a real time, we know that real time is that important to us. And they have pulled real time into Google Docs. So I went and I said, here, follow me. I said, follow me from the way into the docs. And I showed you, again, because we've done real time collaboration on Google Docs. Showed you how real, real-time and they have a lot of the stuff that you That you need they have they have again real-time presence they have people who are viewing you can watch you have they have conversations and commenting Right they have the chat they have that they have the chat Which is kind of you know the chat that stays on the side of the dock and have the commenting that kind of can be commented in line but it's not actually

Justin Edelstein: Kind of like the commenting because it doesn't get in the way of the content. The commenting is nice because it stays off to the side but if you have a lot of comments it starts to like smoosh and it doesn't... that was like a Jersey short term. I was about to say like that didn't... it's not what Snooki did that weekend? No, it like it doesn't... It's weird, it puts a little of highlight in the in the middle of the content, like the highlighter. You click that and it shows you the comment that's actually there. You can see it on the bottom, you can see the full conversation, there's the whole thing in the pop up. You can mark them resolved, which is kind a nice, because then they go away. It has email notifications notifications like the Wave had a biz.

Justin Edelstein: Hopefully. I would just love if they just took wave and plopped it into Google Docs with the formatting that Docs has and the ease of use that the wave has right and I Just wish they were just so I think that if Gooli went away tomorrow

Jason Atwood: Tomorrow and we moved over to Google Docs Google Wave replacement is where your real-time collaborative and again real-time in a you know You can actually see a lot of people typing not nay You know quick send because that's not as real time and the last thing was just a little piece and a little piece of News that popped up today Actually one other piece of news that popped I'm not gonna mention because I didn't have time to get into it, but was up It falls on a story that we talked about with the Kindle Fire. So the Kindle Fire is coming out I think in now, whatever, 10 days or so. I actually canceled my order for the Kindle Fire. You did. Yes. You said you were going to. I was thinking about it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

20:47 Jason Atwood: You said you were going to cancel it. Yeah. So I did.

Justin Edelstein: Although now... iPhone 4S, you want that.

Jason Atwood: Yeah, but now... I don't know. They might get it back. Are they going to rope you back in? Just when they thought you were out? Just when they thought I was out. Because now they're doing rental books. or a library for Kindle and slash Prime members. So Prime,

Justin Edelstein: Amazon Prime is for people. You're a Prime member, right? So Amazon Prime you pay,

Jason Atwood: You pay like 70 bucks a year and then you get like two day free shipping on anything you buy.

Justin Edelstein: That's theUTF only advantage or you're gonna give me another advantage? Oh yeah, they have all the content, there's tons and tons, tons of stuff., okay. Like all that content that I was gonna get free on the Kindle Fire and all that stuff.

Jason Atwood: But now they're saying, now you can rent up to one book a month or get a one book month free on your Kindle. And I was all like, yeah,

Justin Edelstein: Kindle, I'm in for my book a month, that would be great. Because that's basically what... Can you get that in your Kindle app on your iPad? No. Kindle device. Oh, that's kind of lame though. That's kind of lame though. I didn't... like it. So that's why I got all excited because I was like, oh,

Jason Atwood: I'm a prime, I pay prime, I pay you. Give me stuff. And I have Kindle on my, and in fact I have multiple books including, what could have been one of our picks of the week, which, but I haven't read it yet, which is the Steve Jobs book.

Justin Edelstein: That can't be a pick by the way. Why? You can't pick a book as an app. Why? You can't. I just told you you can't. Book of a week. No. A book of the week club. No. I just did it. You can talk about it in part of the ad- Well, let's talk about when I read it. But anyway, it's on my Kindle with a lot of books to read, but I love

Jason Atwood: It I like this walk out the door problem is I end up playing like, you know What was I playing away on a finny blade on the way in? But anyway, so so what's the deal?

Justin Edelstein: So not getting your so now I'm like, oh

Jason Atwood: Because because the other thing is I gotta find about other people in my in my Amazon Prime group Did I say my Amazon Prime is you can have an Amazon Prime and then you add people in, so I can have, so like my wife is on Amazon Prime with me, I think some other family member, you can have up to five people. So you might not own this. You might be, I don't know. I don't know, maybe you are. Anyway, you get, I just wanna know if the Kindle app thing works for them, because then the wife is on it, and then she actually reads so many books, that it might even be worth it just for me to buy her a Kindle. Thanks for watching!

Justin Edelstein: So she could read a book a month that is 120 bucks. You're sort of paying for the Kindle right there. And the Kindles are $79. Yeah. Plus, well, plus Prime. But you want the Fire, which is $200. Right. Not just a Kindle. You watch it.

Jason Atwood: So maybe we are just getting the Fire. Although we are in the holiday season and we have a rule in our family that between basically November and the end of December, between now and Kwanzaa, that you cannot buy things for yourself. Oh really? Well, because it becomes like, you know, December 15th I show up with the newest thing and I'm like, look I just bought myself the newest thing and my wife's like, really? Oh, really? I was gonna get it. Or had got it because sometimes she got it. That's a good rule. Good rule. It didn't stop me from buying the brand new colored cover for my time. Why'd you do that? Because I wanted the new color. It looks exactly the same as the old color.

24:08 Justin Edelstein: Shade darker. Yep, and I- so they came out with a different shade of iPad 2 smart cover. Yep. And you bought it because it's literally a different color. Yeah. Have you ever I bought a pair of pants because they're different colors. I thought you were a man.

Jason Atwood: No! I didn't like the... I think I looked too light. I didn't like how it looked like. I wanted the dark one. So what'd you do with the old one? I was sitting in my house with a backup.

Justin Edelstein: Okay, all righty, so it has like a little coaster maybe maybe it was also getting a little dirty place Matt is getting a little beat up. Maybe your daughter could just throw it around the apartment Your dog could just use it as a little be pad a weep ad yeah It's a 30 we've had three to thirty nine dollar magnet. It's capital W lowercase I capital P a deal for we pad Oh, nice. It's a little expensive, not really. I think it's very expensive. It's $59.95. That's a lot of money. These are the people who make Text Expander.

Jason Atwood: It's going to make my pick seem cheap. It is.

Justin Edelstein: Now, I have a real use for this product, because what this allows you to do is edit. it. PDFs. So you can open up a PDF in PDF pen and do all sorts of stuff to the PDF. You can change text. You can do find and replaces on text. You can add page numbers. You can add logos, pictures, images, move stuff around. It's quite the tool for those of us who have to do a lot of documentation and you can sign documents with it, right? Making correct... like spelling errors. non-fillable as a PDF. You can fill it out. I so much and... and then a tap signatures and saying things pretty neat so like you can do if it actually throws that signature into PDF.

27:30 Jason Atwood: And then it saves it so you can then put it on the list. All right. So mine's going to be quick. This is one of those ones that I have in my list. This is something that I use every day for the last whatever. Believe it or not, there's actually cannot run So, Perilose is virtualization software. Basically, you, you can run multiple versions of different OS-es on on you, And what's really nice about it is again, you can run Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 98, you can run multiple, so you can have different like instances.

Justin Edelstein: My pearl is that folder. Just open up internet explorer from right there. That's actually.

Jason Atwood: In the back to it. I know there's two of them, there's another one called VNC, not VNC, VMware. I know they battle back the forth. I landed on this one because it came in some bundle deal.

Justin Edelstein: The bundle deal is $39 for 10 pieces of software. This is $0.79 so it was. And for those of users out there who are saying I have boot Camp for free- I went to that first, even though. I had a bootcamp for free. I have Windows 7 7, I installed Windows.. If you've already done camp instants like I did like I did before getting parallels you can just point parallels to that boot camp inst instants and it will use that as your instants of windows which is really nice. Is it the exact same? the exact same.

Jason Atwood: If you go into parallels and save a document, go back into boot camp. It's there. I wish they could do it the other way. Oh, all the way. you Just Edelstein on the Twitter. Don't confuse people. Go to Facebook. Do all sorts of neat. Do that. a there and, ante I,, the