Earlier last month web hosting provider SoftLayer announced the availability of cloud services on an hourly basis. The offering includes flat hourly rates for cloud instances, while cloud storage is accessible on a pay-as-you-go basis.

While most traditional cloud services (IBM, Savvis, AT&T, Terremark, etc) require multi-year commitments, the hosting industry has seemed to embrace commitments on a monthly basis. However, as cloud services have matured and the Web 2.0 audience has grown, the need for more flexible service offerings has become apparent. SoftLayer claims that demand from services over the Web has matched the demand and revenue generated from IT customers, and with the growing Web customer base comes a growing demand for flexibility. Web customers must be able to account for dwindling budgets and sudden surges in traffic, and often need the freedom to build out a service as the user base grows.

SoftLayer looks to cater to these specific needs with its most recent offering, but is only partaking in a rising tide of interest towards more flexible cloud service offerings. Amazon pioneered the idea of hourly billing earlier this year, and RackSpace currently offers a similar deal. Other players, like GoGrid, offer a “tolltag” model in which users are required to prepay a specified amount, and then hourly billings are deducted from the total on a monthly basis. Larger players like AT&T and Savvis advertise hourly service packages, but usually leave mention of monthly commitments and minimum billing floors to the fine print.

In short, as cloud services have matured, companies have begun seeking a competitive advantage in the flexibility of their service offerings. As the trend continues, it will become more and more possible for IT departments to scale at fixed cost.

A few weeks ago, Google announced a new plug-in that would sync Google’s enterprise versions of Gmail, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft’s Outlook. This was a big deal because it not only made it simple for users seamlessly integrate both email applications but it also represented Google’s push to become a serious player in the enterprise apps space where Outlook is still overwhelmingly popular. Unfortunately, Google’s plug-in had some major faults.

Most notably, the bug didn’t allow users find emails using Windows Desktop Search, essentially making the search feature useless. Today, Google announced that it fixed the problem. The Windows Desktop Search feature now works, so you have the option of searching within the native Outlook search or Windows Desktop Search to find information in Outlook.

Google says they’ve also added the ability to access Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in. Google has also launched a Google Apps resource site that is a centralized place for resources and info for businesses which are looking to switch from a Microsoft Exchange environment. The site includes information about Google Apps, FAQs, and customer feedback from those who have switched from Exchange to Google Apps.

Today I got a call from my sister about our other sister. When the phone rings from one family member to another, and it’s not birthday season, it’s always bad news. Our other sister, because that’s how we always called her, was dead. She was the adopted daughter of our father’s third marriage, and she was a very unhappy, angry person who the rest of us had a hard time liking, or even caring about.

At various times I’ve felt guilty about my attitude toward her, not wishing ill of someone who had such a hard time with life. But honestly, in the end she could be downright mean and nasty. Eventually I grew hardened and suspicious, resentful of her attempts to brush aside years of similar behavior with others of her siblings. I feel bad about her sad life, but that’s about all I can muster.

As this played out this afternoon, so did a quarrel between two friends on the network. The trigger, but not the root, of this was the demise of the Gillmor Gang some weeks ago. In the aftermath of that event, the realtime world of FriendFeed and to some extent Twitter seemed caught in an ugly spiral of what Mike Arrington calls mob behavior. I share Mike’s alarm at this wave of off-the-cuff vitriol, even as I continue to be at least partially blamed for the drama that swirled around our show.

I’ve tried to stay out of the controversy, other than to speak my mind during the attempt at talking through the incident in a restarted show. I even took my show’s archives down as a way of indicating how strongly I felt about the tone with which many people spoke about members of the cast and myself. I’ve enjoyed producing the show through its many incarnations and participants, and have felt for the weeks since then that something would have to change before we could return to our sessions. Today’s continued vitriol over Mike’s attempts to frame the seriousness of the issue don’t bode well.

I’m 60 years old and have always felt proud of what I’ve tried to do in my career as a journalist, filmmaker, producer, and whatever my role in the Gang could be called. I take my work seriously, and have always tried to take others’ seriously as well. Sometimes I am guilty of hyperbole and failed attempts at humor; I don’t suffer slights and insinuations with the best of grace, and stumble far more than those whose work I admire and attempt to match. I most often err on the side of silence, hoping to say nothing with as much or more impact as wading in.

We need to fix this problem, whether it’s called realtime or social media, or whatever. We need to recognize that words mean something, and those that are thrown casually or viciously carry the same force as weapons. As a community, we must begin to own that responsibility, to make it clear that disagreement can be expressed without name calling, that fighting for innovation and progress does not excuse ugliness and slander, that we live in a world where news travels fast and emotions faster. We need to own our words, and we need to help each other to understand when we go too far.

I can understand when people make mistakes, when their passion gets the better of them. But saying nothing while people heap scorn and ugliness on others needs to stop. We must learn to separate argument from personal attacks. No one is immune from this criticism. I have failed at this regularly, even as I pretty it up with humor and caustic silence. It’s easy to want an eye for an eye, but we have to start somewhere to break the cycle. If that means I need to say what I mean instead of waiting for others, so be it.

When I got off the call with my sister, I told her that even though I didn’t want to admit it, the bad news could have been a lot worse. I wished my other sister no ill will, but thank god it wasn’t any of the others. I have to live with that feeling about myself, that sometimes things go too far and there’s no turning back. If I’ve gone too far down that road with any of you, I apologize. Let’s try and work toward less of this ugliness, and failing that, figure out a way to share in a community of people who respect some sort of rules about discourse.

Distributed call-center outsourcing service LiveOps has launched Livework, new venture that uses crowdsourcing to manage and implement a workforce in the cloud. Livework lets businesses outsource process work to distributed teams of experts and agents, all in a dynamic, on-demand environment in the cloud.

Livework is basically a marketplace for outsourcing projects. Any client can advertise the need for virtual work on the platform and work providers can find projects or advertise their services on the site. Companies can operate virtual service storefront, and can bid for workers. Each worker’s profile includes information about their work history, reputation etc.

Launched a few months ago, Livework’s marketplace is powered by Liveops’ 20,000 U.S. home based telephone workers. Their service operates as a performance based auction, routing incoming calls to the best performing worker available. Livework uses the results-based routing to schedule works.

The top agents make three times more than the average agent. Liveops says the the marketplace is getting about 3,000 applications for work per week but only 50 agents are accepted per week. Businesses can have real-time visibility on work progress on the platform and have the ability to create reports at any time. Liveops takes a cut of the money a business pays to outsourcers.

It seems that Liveops is launching this service in an environment that is ripe for the offering. More and more companies are looking to the cloud as a platform for operations and Liveops is offering a place for workers to find work in an economy where unemployment rates are peaking. Competitors to Liveops include Skyclick and oDesk.

A few posts ago Dave Winer continues his criticism of Twitter’s 140 character limit. Never mind that Dave aggressively supported cloning Twitter’s APIs and character limit in the Bearhug days when Twitter needed the support. Never mind that things have changed now and apparently Twitter is too big for our own good.

Dave’s back and forth is part of a grand old tradition, where new facts obviate old ones and alliances switch to account for new alignments. In Twitter’s case, the early instability and the high stakes involved made for a great deal of passion and attendant posturing. We all took it personally (well, I did) when Twitter removed key features that favored serendipity and discovery. Until then, we felt the new space Twitter opened up was like the Old West, expanding outward without sense of limit or control.

It wasn’t that Track was the most useful part of the service. It was more that it represented the horizon, the frontier, the lack of boundaries. Taking it away hardened the service into its fundamental structure, the familiar limits of space and time, the tenuous constructs of “friend” and “follow” rather than the surprise of the unfamiliar appearing suddenly with fresh ideas and humor. Before Track went away, we never knew what would happen next; afterward, we knew enough to not anticipate.

In a similar way, 140 characters felt less like a limitation and more like an invitation to be surprised at how much you could squeeze into the frame. Like perspective in a painting, or echo in a recording, the creative use of limitations helped us overcome gravity and imagine more than we could “see.” Supporting the limits became a creative validation of the surprise that Twitter has always been. How many events and ideas must we share before we get over that surprise, that once again Twitter has exceeded expectations?

140 characters brought us url shorteners, the key to this new self-compressing and auto-expanding universe. Our software is now compensating for the microURL opacity, unpacking these links and harvesting the metadata they carry to aid indexing of the gestures they contain. Once again, the apparent limitations of the shorteners (gas station on every corner, lurking potential runaway code, mom and pop businesses closing down and orphaning links) are creating investment opportunities and entrepreneurial enclaves.

It’s a little like the present wrapped in a series of enclosed boxes, where the joke of what’s in the big box is replaced by the joke of how small something can get before it is even more valuable. Twitter continues to confound the experts, even those who are getting rich with and around it. That’s because the real value of Twitter is the one thing that will remain secret — its ability to delight. It’s not for Ev or Biz or even Fred or Marc to own. It doesn’t matter what it’s called either.

In a way, it’s been a blessing that Track has remained locked away in the Tower. It’s given us continued license to dream of what could be when it inevitably returns. We watch as FriendFeed explores the realtime conversations Track first alerted us to. We note Facebook’s timorous steps with the Everyone button, today’s realtime chat alliance with uStream, the media musings about a Facebook Search that would produce higher value targeted results. We even see iPhone 3.0 search reach back from the device to Google servers for results. It’s all Track on the way back.

Will we still have dreams when Track returns? Yes, just like we will have dreams when 140 characters doesn’t go away. Is 140 characters enough room to say we need more? Well, then, we’re good.

Yesterday the WSJ reported of the Iranian government using deep packet inspection technology to censor and monitor Internet activity throughout the country. Deep packet inspection (DPI) is essentially a method through which network operators can delve into individual IP packets to develop an understanding of the type of content flowing through their networks. In the case of Iran, the technology was purportedly used to block certain types of content from being accessed within the country. Similar, less invasive tactics have also been employed in China.

Though reports of this nature present DPI as an emerging technology facilitating the invasion of privacy, DPI has long been used in IT departments for a variety of purposes. Jay Botelho of WildPackets, a DPI technology provider with several enterprise clients, informed us of how the technology is utilized in the enterprise space.

Botelho explained that DPI is most commonly used for network troubleshooting. For instance, if a network hold up occurs, DPI technology allows one to reduce congestion by prioritizing traffic or reallocating portions to other branches of the network. DPI is also widely used to protect corporate networks from viruses and spyware by identifying and filtering out packets with malicious content. More recently, IT departments have turned to the technology to obtain a more comprehensive view of network performance. WildPackets, along with competitors NetScout and Network Instruments, for instance, all offer suites that monitor and provide quick summary-level reports of applications running across a network.

In sum, though deep packet inspection has recently been portrayed as an emerging technology utilized by government agencies, the technology has existed in the enterprise for several years. It is only now, with rich media flowing through the Web with incredible abundance and speed that governments are utilizing the technology to control the flow of content and slow the proliferation of ideas. As social media continues to abound, it is also conceivable that IT departments may further utilize DPI to squelch out social media before it renders them obsolete.

PerfectForms, a company that lets businesses build online forms, surveys and applications without any code, is launching a cloud-based software service to accompany its on-premise offering. PerfectForms lets anyone create custom web-based forms for a variety of tasks, from simple HR routines like vacation requests or new hires, to intricate product management projects.

Using a drag and drop editor, you can easily build forms within minutes. The forms can be integrated with LDAP, databases and other existing CRMs. The software and on-premise solution give users automatic reminders when action is required in forms and will create customized detailed reports on data, project tracking and workflow.

Tom Allanson, CEO of PerfectForms, says that the cloud-based offering may be appealing to enterprises because there’s no software or hardware to maintain, no upfront investment, and best of all, the cost is only $30 per month per license. The on-premise solutions costs $600 per license. That being said, businesses have to feel comfortable with putting confidential and sensitive information in the cloud, which could be an issue for many enterprises. Competitors in this space include Oracle’s PeopleSoft.