The open source project TurnKey Linux has launched a private beta of the TurnKey Hub , a service that makes it easy to launch and manage the project’s Ubuntu-based virtual appliances in the Amazon EC2 cloud. Sponsor There are currently about 40 software bundles in Turkey Linux’s virtual library, including Joomla , Wordpress , and Moodle . According to TurnKey Linux, these virtual appliances are optimized for easy deployment and maintenance. And as the name implies, launching an instance with one of the virtual appliances is very simple. Custom passwords and authentication, as well as automatic setup for EBS devices and Elastic IPs, are part of the setup process. According to their website, “Packaging a solution as a virtual appliance can be incredibly useful because it allows you to leverage guru integration skills to build ready to use systems (i.e., turn key solutions) that just work out of the box with little to no setup. Unlike with traditional software, you don’t have to worry about complex OS compatibility issues, library dependencies or undesirable interactions with other applications because a virtual appliance is a self contained unit that runs directly on top of hardware or inside a virtual machine.” Currently, the TurnKey Hub launches on an instance volume in the EC2 Cloud. But according to the developers, support for additional cloud platforms, as well as automatic backup and migration functionality, is in the works. TurnKey Linux is a project started by Alon Swartz and Lirax Siri. While there are other turnkey cloud offerings, including Dell’s , but TurnKey Linux is firmly grounded in the open source community and not only strives to make the move to the cloud easier, but contends that a well-integrated and thoroughly tested virtual appliance can help facilitate open source adoption. Discuss

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Most of the writing you find on the Web – including here on ReadWriteWeb – is relatively short. Long-form journalism often doesn’t fit into the 24-hour news cycle and most online readers don’t really have the time to sit down and dedicate half an hour to just one story on the Web in the middle of the week. Longform.org aims to highlight the best long-form journalism on the web and make it more convenient to read these stories. Thanks to its integration with Instapaper , Longform.org makes it easy to bookmark these long stories and read them on your mobile phone or iPad once you can dedicate enough time to them. Sponsor Longform.org is the brainchild of Max Linsky – a former Creative Loafing reporter and Slate contributor – and Aaron Lammer . The stories on the site cover a wide range of topics, ranging from Neal Pollack’s recent Wired story about the check-in wars , to this New Yorker story about elevators from 2008 and this in-depth look at a penal colony off the coast of Panama . The selection of stories on the site is obviously subjective, but if you come across a great story that hasn’t appeared on the site yet, you can also submit your own suggestions . Bonus: You can also find some great long-form pieces through @longreads on Twitter. You can find a more in-depth look behind the scenes of Longform.org in the Slate piece here , but if you are looking for some stimulating reading material just head over to the site and give it a try. You can read the stories without an Instapaper account, but the site’s tight integration with this service allows you to easily bookmark stories and read them on the Instapaper mobile apps later. Discuss

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Online bookmarking tools haven’t really changed much over the last few years. Most services still present you with a basic list of tagged links. Pearltrees , however, is taking a radically different approach. The Paris-based company organizes links as a collection of “pearls” that are connected by a mind map-like tree graph. Starting today , you can also embed these collections in your own blog posts. Sponsor Pearltrees Embeds The company, which launched a new beta version of its service last month, notes that these new embeds will give bloggers and journalists the ability to present their readers with a new way to explore a topic in depth. The Flash-based Pearltrees embed opens up new links in an overlay, so readers stay on your site while they are exploring your links. A tool like this can come in handy when you want to show the research that went into a longer article, for example, or whenever you want to give your readers more background and context than you could pack into a simple list of links in a blog post. Embedding your Pearltrees map is as easy as copying and pasting a short code snipped from the service’s embed dialog. Pearltrees also gives you the ability to share links with other users in real time and to subscribe to other users’ collections. This makes it easy to collaborate with others and it also allows you to mash up the research collections of other Pearltrees users. To get started, simply sign up for an account here . Pearltrees offers plugins for both Firefox and Chrome, as well as a basic bookmarklet that is compatible with all other browsers. For more details about Pearltrees, also have a look at our in-depth review of the service’s features. Discuss

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“Many modern web sites need fast access to an amount of information so large that it cannot be efficiently stored on a single computer,” Nick Kallen wrote on Twitter’s blog . A good way to deal with this problem is to “shard” that information; that is, store it across multiple computers instead of on just one.” As an alternative to sharding, Twitter has developed a framework that can be used in lieu of either custom-building data-store systems or using untested open-source alternatives and is sharing the code with the public. Sponsor From a number of data-store building experiences, Twitter has “extracted Gizzard, a Scala framework that makes it easy to create custom fault-tolerant, distributed databases.” As an example, Kallen provides ” Rowz .” “To get up-and-running with Gizzard quickly, clone Rows and start customizing!” The full code for Gizzard is also available. He describes Gizzard as a middleware networking service that handles partitioning through a forwarding table, supports migration and prosecutes “eventual consistency.” The implication of this may be that startups and smaller companies may better be able to deal with large amounts of data quickly, and thereby better serve the needs their users with fewer resources expended. Discuss

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NTT docomo , the telephone provider patronized by approximately half the population of Japan, today linked its mobile identity layer with a general web identity for users through OpenID, according to the OpenID Foundation . NTT docomo users will now be able to quickly and easily log-in to any OpenID supporting website online with the same account credentials they already use in the country’s flourishing mobile ecommerce and content ecosystem. Just when you thought the Identity game was over and Facebook or Twitter had won, now you can welcome 55 million more docomo customers onto the OpenID side of the contest. Sponsor Why OpenID is Important OpenID is an open source and open standards system of Identity that allows users to log-in to any OpenID supporting website with the account they’ve already created through a trusted identity provider. The system makes it easy for users to start using new sites with just a few clicks, easy for them to take their profile and friend data with them from site to site and easy for websites to offer personalized service immediately, based on the data an OpenID user brings in with them from their cross-service identity provider. Though ease of login has been the primary use to date, identity and payload as web-wide development platform is the long-term promise of OpenID. It’s an intriguing paradigm that has had mixed success to date, limited primarily by design and User Experience challenges. The entry of Japan’s largest telco into the OpenID ecosystem could help propel OpenID forward, but many other large companies have gotten as far as offering outbound OpenID and then ceased active engagement with the protocol. We’ve got our fingers crossed, though, for the success of a portable identity system that isn’t owned by one single provider like Facebook. Facebook’s Connect system of identity does offer a good perspective, though, on what’s possible in every way but independent ownership. Discuss

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