Steve's Seaside Life

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Exchange Futures

Infoworld talks to David Thompson, a Microsoft corporate vice president who has been in charge of the Exchange Server group since early this year.   It maybe just me but I get the distinct impression that the Exchange Group is in a bit of a state.  They don’t seem to really know where storage is going because of the flux around Longhorn server, and they don’t seem to know where to take Public Folders and other Document management like capabilities because they are dropping the old store and because of ‘competition’ from SharePoint services.  Core email does not have much growth potential in it, so all that seems to be left to work on is Edge Servers!  Not a very exiting roadmap!!

Last year I thought that the ‘big thinking’ that must be going on in Microsoft was starting to pay off in terms of well architected products that did not overlap and were being rebuilt from the ground up.  Now I am not so sure,  I see the delays in the foundation layers, ie SQL Server and Longhorn Server, triggering panic in the Office tools and Collaboration space, who are probably starting to think more short term about customer …

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WS-Federation and other Web Services, an area where MS seem to be getting things right?

PC World talks a bit about Web Services for identity management.  The list of vendors demonstrating interoperability, (Netegrity, Oblix, RSA Security, OpenNetwork Technologies, and Ping Identity), as well as MS and IBM is pretty impressive. 

Web Services seems to be one of the few areas where MS seems to be getting its story straight, if my impression is correct:

 

1.     Very involved in the standards process

2.     Perhaps to the point of dominance of the standard process?

3.     Building great tools and middleware in VS and Indigo, so that their platform is the best way to implement the standards

4.     Building an innovative client environment for the caching and presentation of web services, WinFS and Avalon/WinFS Shell

5.     Integrating Office and Collaboration processes with line of business processes, Information Bridge and InfoPath

 

That’s not to say that there are no problems in these products.  But the story looks fairly coherent at least.  Have a look at this MS document if you want more details.

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Longhorn Search

Chris Sherman at SearchEngineWatch talks a bit about Longhorn search and links to a Channel 9 video clip where you get some glimpses of how search is going to be implemented in Longhorn.  What’s clear right now is that they are:   1.     Planning for a search experience that operates...

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RSS and its role in Information Management

The Problem

 

Internet users have largely given up trying to keep up to date with the vast amount of content being published on their ‘favourite’ web sites, let alone the slow moving sites that they need to track but are not motivated to visit ‘just in case’.  Portal vendors have tried to help by allowing users to aggregate bits of many web sites together, to minimise the number of web sites a person needs to access, particularly in a process context.

 

Proprietary approaches to Syndication, or the publish and subscribe model to information access has been tried several times on the internet, taking the form of for example Internet Explorer channels, and PointCast personalised news feeds.  Avantgo continues to find a niche publishing channels to PDA’s.

 

Email has become flooded with newsletters, status updates, just in case cc emails, and application specific notifications.

 

RSS to the rescue

 

Recently however with the advent of RSS, we now have an Open and Simple way for applications to publish, for users to locate and  subscribe and for subscribed content to be accessed, processed and ultimately scanned and consumed, discussed, archived and subsequently retrieved…

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My symptoms log.

I have posted the Excel spreadsheet that I use to log and chart my symptoms.  I have left some real data in it of the last flare that I had because it might be useful for people to compare their experience.  The spreadsheet might be useful for other people as...

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Tablet PC for Jennifer

This is a short article that I wrote for the occupational therapist who works with one of my daughters who has Raynauds and Scleroderma.

 

There are a variety of different types of technology assistance that would benefit Jennifer in an educational setting.  My perception is that a range of techniques will be required that reflect the unpredictable nature of her symptoms and the variety of different tasks that she needs to perform.  There is no magic bullet solution that meets all of her needs.

 

Writing

 

When Jennifer has to write for extended periods there are a number of issues that need to be considered:

 

1.       Her ability to dictate in a fluent fashion is limited at this age

2.       Her hands get cold

3.       Her hands get tired

4.       Sometimes the movement/dexterity of her hands is limited

 

What solution options are available in addition to traditional pen and paper?

 

1.       Voice recognition

2.       Hand writing recognition

3.       Simple gesture recognition

4.       Different types of keyboard

5.       text substitution

 

Each option is considered in brief below:

 

Voice recognition

 

Voice recognition is …

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Radio userland Kick Start

This book provides an introduction to using and programming Radio Userland.  I thought I would give it a read as it seems that radio userland is quite a powerful and flexible environment.  I have already played around with a few additional tools, particularly as I wanted a bit more power...

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What would I like?

In my previous blogs, I talked about my concerns over the neglect of employees productivity and my personal productivity challenges.  In this blog I talk about some of the simple things I would like.  Its interesting that lots of them sound quite easy to achieve, and some of them work right now if only the systems were configured that way.

  1. A single inbox, that works all of my email services and with the appropriate directories I need to access

  2. A single calendar, that aggregates and synchronises calendar information from different sources and allows me to interact with different resource reservation and freebusy services

  3. A single task list, that aggregates tasks from different sources and responds to the source with task progress and completion information

  4. A single contact database, that synchronises with the server side record if there was one

  5. A single presence/IM environment, that integrates with my contact database

  6. A single way to get subscriptions, RSS seems the likely candidate, whether its subscriptions to company announcements, or WSS lists, or search results, or changed web sites

  7. Then a place to make notes, link stuff together, annotate

  8. a way to record everything I have touched in any way, has written by me, …

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Who will Longhorn appeal to?

Right now it seems to me that Longhorn is being targeted at three communities:

  1. Home users, particularly those looking for a great multi-media experience

  2. Knowledge workers, especially those at the top end, who aggregate, integrate and assemble lots of information from many different sources

  3. Mobile workers, for whom thin client computing solutions don’t work and to whom the blend or personal and corporate features will appeal.

It’s got lots of other features that will appeal to the mass of task and structured task workers in corporate environments, but true thin client approaches will probably appeal more strongly for these users IT managers, particularly with the current wave of smart client rich UI toolkits that run on top of a JVM.

So how might this pan out in reality:

  1. Microsoft might get 20% market share from portable users

  2. A maximum of 20% market share from high end knowledge workers, who are not mobile

  3. Maybe 20% that it picks up just so they can use the same environment as the rest of the people in the office

So maybe that leaves 40% of users who will either switch to thin clients, unless Microsoft can convince businesses to stick with them because of the benefits …

All Posts / Living Well

My typical working day

  1. I get up at about 7:30 and have breakfast

  2. Then before 8:00 I start working,  normally I try and get some good quality work done for about 2 1/2 hours

  3. By 10:30 I am ready for a break, so at that point I print off some reading material or download it to my tablet

  4. I then go for a walk and usually end up at one of my nearby beachside cafes, where I settle down for lunch, and review whatever paperwork I have taken with me, and then wander home for about 12:00 – 12:30

  5. I then try and get another 2 1/2 hours work in until about 2:30

  6. Then I go for another walk, usually to my local health club and spend about 30 minutes swimming, probably spend 15-20 minutes reading and then head back home, usually arriving at about 4:00.

  7. I try to get another hours work done then and then have tea with my wife and four kids

  8. Depending on kids activities then I will generally get another hours work done sometime before bed.