Steve's Seaside Life

Steve's Seaside Life Blog

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Citrix Previews Future Technologies

As usual Brian Madden has all of the latest information on Citrix, this time it’s the main features in Metraframe Presentation Server 4.  Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me.

Citrix’s future technologies include:

  • Smart Access

  • ActiveSync via ICA

  • TWAIN imaging device ICA redirection (scanners, cameras, etc.)

  • Performance management technology licensed from Aurema and RTO

  • Audio enhancements in preparation for VoIP

  • EMF-based Printing

  • Windows 64-bit support

  • Application Isolation Environments

  • Virtual IP addresses

  • GoToWebinar

  • ICA Session Recording, Archiving, and Surveilling

  • Hardware Appliances

For a more detailed list of each feature check bout Brian’s web site

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A story about thinking

This charming story is based on the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ by Edward de Bono. The story shows the individual use of the hats and their effects as types of thinking. Perhaps this is just the beginning and readers will add further chapters to this story or write similar stories embodying other thinking tools and frameworks. It is my wish that we can gather a large number of stories that are suitable as ‘bed time stories’ which people can then download from the site and read to their children. Any volunteers to create some illustrations? Please send your contributions to me at edwdebono@msn.com.

Peter de Bono

The Magic Hats
By Lorna Santín


A long time ago, in a beautiful village with small straw houses, something happened which I’ll tell you about.

About a hundred people lived in that place . There was a bread maker, a locksmith, several miners, a teacher and many more men with different jobs. Each of them lived with his family – his wife, his children … There were younger, middle aged and older children.

Some of these children liked playing near a waterfall just outside the village. Of course their parents didn’t like the idea at …

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Six Thinking Hats

I have just started to think through some of the processes, I take for granted.  One of these is “researching and descision making”.  One of the first approaches I cam across was the “Six Thinking Hats”; approach it stunned me that a process I am so familliar with could be so dramatically improved through applying more structure.  What particularly appealed was how the approach works within teams to avoid conflict.  Here’s a summary of the approach:

  • White Hat:
    With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

    This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

  • Red Hat:
    ‘Wearing’ the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

  • Black Hat:
    Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not …

All Posts / Chronic Illness / Living Well

AOSD and work

One of the responses to my post on the Stills Message Board was about AOSD and Work, and the difficulty some people have with communicating with their employers about the disease, and in fact with some health industry workers.  I thought this was interesting because it’s similar to my experience so I thought I would write a bit about it.

First off you need to be able to explain why Still’s affects your ability to work.  At first I just tried to describe the pain, but in my case the pain is really not that extreme and others do manage to work with that level of pain.  I am a pretty motivated guy normally so that got me thinking a bit more about why I struggle to work when I am in a flare and why even when things have stabilized I don’t have the stamina I used to have.  This is what I came up with:

  1. Although I suffer from Joint, Muscle and Tendon pain these in themselves I can put up with and generally work through provided my arms and hands are not too bad, (as I spend a lot of time typing)

  2. The main things that affect …

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AOSD Update

Well it’s that time again.  A quick look back at the last month and how I have coped and what I have learned about AOSD.  Here is a summary chart showing cumulative symptoms:

 

 

 

  1. At my last visit to my specialist I was on 20mg of Prednisone, I was doing pretty well but my bone density scan showed I was below normal.

  2. We agreed that I would reduce to 10mg and then taper off to zero and transition to Methotrexate.

  3. Just after this visit I came across some articles that suggested that sustained medium intensity exercise produced natural Cortisol and I began to get excited about the prospect of substituting exercise for Prednisone.  This didn’t work and I blogged about that in much more detail here

  4. As I reduced the Prednisone I introduced a NSAID Celebrex

  5. Anyway I slowly came off Prednisone, I seemed to be doing reasonably OK and I initially put the gradual increase in pain down to Prednisone withdrawal.

  6. Then all of a sudden I was hit with really bad waves of fatigue, very poor concentration, plenty of tendon and joint pain, headaches etc.  I was feeling really rough. 

  7. At first …

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InfoPath gives insights into the future

I have always looked upon InfoPath as a example of a product that needs to be part of the infrastructure of the Longhorn platform.  At its simplest it’s a product to render forms defined in XML, allow them to be completed offline, validated, and then submitted them to web services. 

 

If you think of WinFS as effectively an XML store, which manages sometimes connected interactions with server side data sources (especially web services) then InfoPath type capabilities are a natural part of the WinFS shell.  So I was interested to see this MSDN paper on Submitting forms in InfoPath 2003 because of the potential implications on how Microsoft is thinking about WinFS and Synchronisation and sometimes connected operation.  These new adaptors allow:

 

  1. Submitting to a Web Service

  2. Submitting to a SharePoint Site

  3. Submitting through E-Mail

  4. Submitting to a Database

 

These new capabilities are interesting but the ability to complete the form off-line and then, when connected, send it to the server is still way to clunky (but likely to be a key area the Longhorn team will need to make slick).  

 

I was also disappointed that they did not include submitting via email …

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Help me understand how Microsoft might respond to Linux!

I have been asking myself the following question:

 

If Linux begins to capture significant desktop market share what options are open to Microsoft? 

 

In this article I have listed my initial ideas, and it would be great to get some feedback on the technical feasibility (some of them maybe plain crazy) and political acceptability of the options within Microsoft.  It might also be interesting to get feedback on how the Open Source and business communities might respond.

 

Here is my headline list, with each option described in more detail later:

 

  • “bet the company” on strategies to retain the consumer market

  • Make Windows a better host for Linux applications

  • Make Windows a better server for Linux Desktops

  • Make Linux a better host for Windows Applications

  • Make .NET the most attractive Linux Development Platform

  • Make Windows a better client to Linux Servers

  • Make Windows appeal to Open Source developers

  • Win the TCO and Security debate

  • Reduce the cost of Windows and Office

 

Retain the consumer market

 

  1. I have already blogged on this here

Make Windows a better host for Linux applications

 

  1. Purchase an existing X Server product to integrate into Windows Services For Unix…

All Posts / Insights / Personal Posts / Research Interests / Strategy / The Future of Work

My research interests

A colleague of mine recently asked me what my IT research interests are.  It got me thinking; I am interested in lots of things, but only a few that I am prepared to put serious time and effort into.  Here they are: Personal Knowledge Management Team communication, collaboration and co-ordination,...

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Collaborative editing

Michael; who writes the Shared Spaces blog has recently written about the challenges of collaborative editing of documents/presentations.  The problems not too difficult to solve within an business (Net Meeting etc) but solving the problem between businesses (through two sets of firewalls) in a secure fashion is another problem altogether.  Its even more difficult if like me you want to do it on an ad-hoc basis, during a telephone or IM conversation, rather than using a multi-user conferencing system like Lotus Same-time, Oracle Collaboration Server or MS Live Meeting.

These are the options that Michael came up with, as these all cost loads of money, require a client installation and lots of coordination between collaborators they don’t fulfil my ad-hoc need, any other areas would be welcome:

  • Groove Virtual Office Professional 3.0. Staff put the document to be shared into a Groove Document Review shared space. Internal and external participants are invited. Using the “Co-Edit” function of Groove, one person in turn can have edit rights of the document, and once they save their changes, everyone in the co-edit session gets to see the changes immediately. It’s not true real-time co-editing, but it’s extremely close … and it definitely …

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How do you blog?

This is a great series of articles on different blogging styles, it includes hints and tips on when to use each one and how to use it to best effect.  Well worth a read even if you don’t blog, as some of the insights are useful for any type of...