Steve's Seaside Life

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Simply does it

Adam Bosworth has posted a nice talk on the importance of simplicity:

I gave a talk yesterday at the ICSOC04. It was essentially a reminder to a group of very smart people that their intelligence should be used to accomodate really simple user and programmer models, not to build really complex ones. Since I was preceded by Don Ferguson of IBM and followed the next day by Tim Berners-Lee, it seemed especially wise to stick to simple and basic ideas. Here is the talk

I could not agree more.  One of my observations is that simple protocols used to access well defined services lead to explosive innovation.  HTML/HTTP, POP, IMAP, RSS etc are all great examples.  Hopefully someone will figure out how to achieve the same innovation when things get just tht little bit more complex.  For XML/Web Services in general we are not there yet – too complex – and we are still waiting to see the widespread adoption of innovative clients and servers hopefully that’s where tools like the Infopath/Office XML/Longhorn Shell/WinFS, Indigo and Haystack  and OOo/XForms etc will come in.

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Many layers of virtualization!

I have mentioned before how much I like VMWare and how I have been using it not only to support my Labs requirements for years, but also as a secure client to my company network, ala VMWare ACE.  I have also been looking at other application Virtualiszation technologies and Server Based Computing approaches, so it was nice to see a couple of the ideas nicely presented in this article on using VMware ACE combinted with SoftGrid, here is an extract:

What is perhaps less well known is that VMware can also provide an important service for desktop hardware. This is partly because its desktop capability is still evolving. The VMware desktop capability, VMware ACE, is currently in beta release. It provides a standard virtual hardware configuration for the desktop, including the OS, web browser and all the applications – all of which are distributed from a central point. VMware ACE solves a major desktop support problem by enforcing standardization and thus making local software installation of any kind unnecessary. It is not the resource utilization that is the issue here, but manageability.

However, on its own VMware ACE does not solve all the support issues. This is where Softricity’s SoftGrid …

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Exploiting your infrastructure

I have been frustrated for years at just how little attention most businesses give to exploiting their IT infrastructure investments.  I recently came across the book, Seize the work day, which asks the question:

Have you ever wished for a solution to a near out-of-control work day? If you are like I once was, you have often longed for a way to get and stay ahead of your work load. You have felt frustrated by hours of meetings that leave you little time to complete tasks during the day—by having to work late, night after night, to catch up on those responsibilities. You have felt frustrated by losing track of, or losing time for, commitments you have made. Frustrated by an avalanche of e-mails you cannot get to, by important documents you cannot find.

Well I guess that applies to most of us, and the book is a great example of just how much thought and attention can be applied to improving productivity and just how great the payoff can be!

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Gone for good

If you are looking for a book to take your mind of something, or to make a long train journey seem to fly by.  This is the book for you.  Take care though, once you start reading you won’t want to stop so make sure you have 5-10 hours free during the week you start reading it! 

I loved it and it made a few difficult days for me really quite enjoyable.  There are plenty of twists and turns, you feel for the characters and the action never ends. 

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Jonathan does it again

Yet again Jonathan Scwartz continues his policy of openly and very clearly describing Sun’s strategy for all to see.  I have never seen the like of it before, although I can only commend him for it.   As always I strongly recommend that you read his blog regularly, but here are a few snipits from his latest post which I liked:

On his positioning of the role of Linux today:

But let’s be clear. Do I expect an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs to pick up the Java Desktop System? No. No way. He’s not our target demographic, not a route to make 120 million into 1.2 billion. A call center in Bangalore, a factory in Tennessee, a generation of kids that care more about ringtones than Win32 legacy? Dedicated internet terminals in shopping malls, touch screens in phone booths, the world’s academic environments? There’s a market calling.

Which I found interesting because many of these applications are best served by embedded or thin client approaches rather than a full Linux distro.

Why is music download on phones measured in the billions of dollars (vs. the paltry music download business on PCs, even with iTunes)? Because phones are authenticated (with a …

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OneNote and a new way to improve meetings

I recently had the opportunity to try out a new way to manage and a record a meeting using my Tablet and OneNote, here is how it went:

 

  1. First I created a main page for the meeting, where I recorded the location, attendees, objectives etc

  2. The I created sub pages with all of the material that I had been sent about the meeting, embedded as background images, (drag and drop word documents onto OneNote and it provides this as an option).  I was then able to quickly jump to these and mark them up if I needed to

  3. Then I created a sub page to keep my hand written notes

  4. Finally, I plugged in a $10 microphone on an 8’ lead, put it in the middle of the room, and recorded the whole meeting. As the recording proceeded, I made short handwritten notes when key points were made.  The key thing is that I did not try to take thorough notes, just jot down a memory clue that I could use later.

  5. Because I did not take extensive notes, I could remain focussed on the discussion, which is a major benefit

  6. On the way home (I travelled …

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The Little Money Book

This is a great book to read in the bath just before you go to sleep, very thought provoking but with each thought served up in bite sized chunks.

The book is essentially 50 or so extracts from other books, papers or speeches on the subject of money.  It really is a facinating, if disturbing, read. 

It covers the following topics:

Metal money – all about the origins of money

Money information – all about the virtualisation of money

Measuring money – probably the best chapter – all about the lack of a link between money and happiness and value

Dept money – all about the scary levels of debt in the world

Mad money – stories of the ‘great’ crashes and why/how they happened

DIY money – money alternatives

Spiritual money – other ways to think about money.

I ordered this book from the library, but ended up buying myself a copy it was that good.

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What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit

This is the first in a series of articles about Programme Management.  Many of the things I am going to say apply to project management and to management in general but Programme Management is my focus.  I need to start by setting the scene. 

My experience is enterprise IT infrastructure programmes, so that’s what I will be talking about.  By Programme I mean a collection of projects with many dependencies between them.  By IT Infrastructure I mean all the common IT services that a business needs, desktops, portables, file, print, directory services, communication, collaboration and coordination services, systems management etc, you get the idea.  On my biggest programme, we had approaching 90 different server types so I won’t list them all.

Anyway onto the first topic:

“What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit”.  

Why you may ask did I pick this topic first?

·        because almost no one does it

·        because it can make a huge difference for very little cost

·        because communication and collaboration and coordination are key to any programme and journals help with all three

·        because I happen …

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Microsoft’s new command shell

Microsoft have finally decided to take the Windows Command shell seriously, or at least Jeffrey Snover – the lead architect did.  They are creating a next generation sell that is built on top of .NET.  John Udell does a great job of describing it so please read his article, it will blow you away and don’t for get to watch the video as well.

MSH is quirky, complex, delightful, and utterly addictive. You can, for example, convert objects to and from XML so that programs that don’t natively speak .Net can have a crack at them. There’s SQL-like sorting and grouping. You write ad hoc extensions in a built-in scripting language that feels vaguely Perlish. For more permanent extensions, called cmdlets, you use .Net languages.

With MSH, Windows system administration manages to be both fun and productive. And the story will only improve as the .Net Framework continues to enfold Windows’ management APIs. Competitors take note: Windows is about to convert one of its great weaknesses into a strength. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]