tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19972540883124720302012-01-28T12:06:00.609-08:00Short Contemplations on Contemporary CulturePlone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.comBlogger781100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-90739501695272901912011-10-15T17:11:00.001-07:002011-10-15T17:34:49.353-07:00

The world wide web is the best thing that ever happened to college students. Why? Because there are so many free, online resources for learning. How could students not benefit? The biggest and perhaps most obvious advantage is the rise in power and effectiveness of search engines. Every term paper should now sport a “powered by Google” logo on the title page. Most schools now don't even let you

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-78342098279824038272010-11-04T21:22:00.000-07:002010-11-04T21:34:07.419-07:00

With all this talk of cloud services these days, I thought that I would focus on a cloud related subject that you don't hear much about. Consumer cloud. The Internet is all a buzz about cloud computing where companies outsource their IT needs to third party vendors whom they pay on a per usage basis. If the app isn't used much, then the bill is low.What you don't hear much is how cloud computing

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-70281624477037962732010-10-03T20:04:00.000-07:002010-10-03T23:10:29.457-07:00

Originally pioneered by Tony Buzan, a Mind Map is a type of diagram that is a radial organization of an outline. Mind Mapping is taught in prestigious schools such as MIT.I like mind mapping. I have always believed that diagrams are the instrument of thought and the mind map is a great diagram for composers of all types or simply for those wishing to organize their ideas.Here is my short list of

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-54841487363857533132010-09-04T17:25:00.000-07:002010-09-04T17:43:34.451-07:00

Last week, Google announced that they were integrating their VoIP technology with their email service.Some interpret this as big brother closing the noose around smaller offerings such as Skype. Indeed, maybe that is why Skype is willing to be acquired by Cisco. Let the big boys battle it out.I have been using Google Voice for a while and I do like the ability to see voice messages that people

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-49148813185105775462010-05-30T08:50:00.000-07:002010-05-30T10:45:20.773-07:00

I think that it goes without saying that there is a tremendous impact that social media is playing right now on the Internet. Checking out the identity and entertainment lines on my favorite metro style web trends map shows how sites like Twitter, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, Freindster, Plaxo, Orkut, and Friendfeed take up a considerable amount of the online traffic. Social media features are permeating

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-11646921254660162412010-02-12T17:45:00.000-08:002010-02-12T17:59:53.420-08:00

Two of my interests are virtual worlds and enterprise collaboration. I attended an event recently that touched on both of these interests. Two University professors talked about their recently released book on collaborative learning in virtual worlds.In the early days of education, the predominant model was a master/apprentice one which didn't scale as the population grew and as democracy became

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-64435762512882511432010-01-17T10:15:00.000-08:002010-01-17T12:20:07.454-08:00

My company has a few collaboration products (Code-Roller and Cogenuity) so I often write about ECM because it is an exciting industry to be in these days.Enterprise Collaboration is exciting in terms of growth but it is also exciting because its thought leaders have something interesting to say. Folks like Thomas Malone, Andrew McAfee, and Dion Hinchcliffe are doing a lot to advance modern

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-70775968580826755962009-12-27T14:24:00.000-08:002009-12-28T09:01:37.008-08:00

I just watched Avatar last night and it is now clear to me that 3D is the new talkies.What are talkies, you ask? Whenever a disruptive innovation hits the movie industry and gains traction, it tends to take over the entire industry. This was the case back in the 20's when synchronized sound was added to film. This new type of movie was called a talkie since actor dialog was the new and most

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-29865332754445320272009-12-01T08:32:00.000-08:002009-12-01T09:47:32.487-08:00

I just read this NY Times article on Open Source as a Model for Business is Elusive which claims that successful open source companies have more societal and strategic value than financial and cites the effect that MySql is having on the EU's evaluation of Oracle's acquisition of Sun as an example. They worry that if Oracle acquires Sun, then they will kill MySql which is a low cost alternative

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-43174147371278534252009-08-30T09:58:00.000-07:002009-08-30T11:16:47.502-07:00

Earlier this year, I wrote about a WSJ article that covered the revenue model known as freemium which is a combination of free and premium. The idea is that you release a free version of your offering in order to capture a larger market share and depend on some segment of your market upgrading to a paid version.I just read a NY Times article that used their coverage of a start-up that makes a

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-12564297871678391942009-08-24T14:37:00.000-07:002009-08-25T13:13:06.374-07:00

In late May of this year, Google announced a new technology initiative of theirs called Google Wave. What is this technology about and why should anyone care?Early reports painted the picture of Google Wave being a hybrid between instant messaging and email with an emphasis on conversant collaboration. Because of that observation, people just thought it was an email killer and Internet attention

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-68891061492820063352009-07-26T13:25:00.000-07:002009-07-26T14:24:50.254-07:00

If you have any understanding of computer technology and you haven't been in a coma for the past twelve years, then you already know that there has been a very significant trend in software application development from windows based applications to web applications.The drivers for this trend aren't very hard to comprehend. A traditional windows application incurs a lot more development costs in

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-43329772497596156102009-05-22T15:33:00.000-07:002009-05-22T16:27:30.254-07:00

Twenty years ago, Oxford University graduate Tim Berners-Lee wrote a memo to his boss while he was working at CERN. This memo was an information management proposal for a distributed hypertext system that we now know of as the World Wide Web. Note the major feature that he describes which was not video blogging nor banner ads nor even online chat. The major feature in this proposal was hypertext

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-35401682702077651872009-05-10T09:10:00.000-07:002009-05-10T12:12:36.886-07:00

I occasionally cover stories on enterprise focused virtual worlds technology because I believe that it shows some promise and could, therefore, become a relevant trend. Last week, I attended an event in Second Life hosted by Nokia on this topic.This event had a question oriented talk show format in which representatives from IBM, Linden Labs, Nokia, and Remedy Communications promoted their

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-35494924631519877462009-05-03T16:09:00.000-07:002009-05-03T16:45:05.162-07:00

Just ran across this NY Times article on an emerging trend in social networks where Facebook and Twitter are openly and actively encouraging third parties to consume their services and re-purpose their content. The article then covers several startups who are feeding off of this social knowledge ecosystem.With regards to this ecosystem, what I have seen in the wild are three patterns. A lot of

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-92066164131920293572009-04-27T10:39:00.000-07:002009-04-27T10:51:04.917-07:00

I just ran across this great talk at last year's Web 2.0 conference by Tara Hunt on a knowledge management blog that I frequently visit.She talks about how the leveraging of the feeling of reciprocity and social capital and the nurturing of a gift economy in the design of your product or web site's user experience is the most efficacious way to promote your message. She calls it The Whuffie

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-69827301529631119512009-04-20T08:32:00.000-07:002009-08-23T16:55:53.447-07:00

Sun Microsystems has been on the ropes since the first decade of this millennium when some of the largest Internet properties (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon) switched from Sun's Solaris to GNU Linux. That, and the two most recent stock market crashes, have really beaten this server hardware vendor and inventor of the Java programming language and platform down from a share price of $233 to $3.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-39827171082598876012009-04-08T11:11:00.000-07:002009-06-27T19:07:58.191-07:00

I just got back from a two day conference that IBM hosted on Second Life called Beyond Blogging which is a conference billed as by IBMers primarily for IBMers but also open to the public. I believe that this conference was organized by IBM's Seeking Business Value from Investment in Virtual Worlds on the 3D Internet group.The first day of the conference was more about how cool Second Life is for

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-16371224487485486662009-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:002009-03-30T10:13:29.691-07:00

It seems to me that global warming has become as much a hot button topic as Cuba, abortion, evolution or the Holocaust. That is to say, there are people on both sides with apparently deep convictions who make claims that strongly contradict each other. I counted myself on the side of believing that global warming was real and an apparent and compelling danger, that is to say until I read this

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-26833734121926365652009-03-18T10:36:00.000-07:002009-04-06T06:56:07.724-07:00

Whoa! My world was rocked today when I picked up the NY Times and read about yet another decline in the stock market. Even more upsetting is that Sun Microsystems is in talks with IBM to be acquired.This acquisition shouldn't really be all that upsetting. It does make perfect sense for IBM, which has always prided itself on its servers, to want to acquire the other technology company who also

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-43227514470958115802009-03-02T18:18:00.001-08:002009-03-02T20:03:26.594-08:00

If you've spent any time in I.T., then you have most probably heard of Forrester Research, Inc. They are a $391M tech and market research think tank. They are kind of like an upscale Gartner Group. Like the Gartner Group, they release these extremely high priced executive documents. Today, they released a document (hey, it's only $2G so be sure to pick up an extra copy) called Vendor Landscape:

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-90080647948468753632009-02-09T10:35:00.000-08:002009-02-09T11:30:32.174-08:00

These are changing times. When you see the same theme gaining predominance in many different areas, then pay attention because you are at a turning point in history.I believe that we are entering into such a time. I call it the celebration of the collective.This is most obvious in the political arena. Almost completely gone is the Republican mandated rhetoric of trickle down where big government

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-64603373807543237052009-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:002009-02-02T10:47:48.274-08:00

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article today on The Economics of Giving It Away. The article describes how, in the past, web startups would use an advertising based revenue model and give away their product/service increasing the size of their audience until they were acquired by a bricks and mortar company willing to pay out the cash for mind-share at a premium. The global

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-13293320959875948712009-01-15T22:34:00.000-08:002009-01-15T23:01:55.189-08:00

I've blogged about the current global recession's affect on innovation before. I have blogged many times about the waxing and waning of virtual worlds technology called Second Life. Now, I get to blog about both subjects simultaneously.I recently attended a presentation in Second Life by Gene Leganza of Forrester Research, Inc called Six Trends for Enterprise Architecture Professionals in 2009.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-7235850559847410302009-01-08T11:20:00.001-08:002009-01-08T11:46:49.687-08:00

From the time I first heard it, the acronym PR has always had two different meanings to me. PR could stand for Public Relations or it could stand for Press Release. In what the Cluetrain Manifesto called The Long Silence (a.k.a. the days of the Mad Men), these two meanings weren't all that indistinguishable. In today's Wikinomics world, ruled by the prosumer generation, these two meanings are as

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-3082689245371854052008-12-04T11:46:00.000-08:002008-12-04T12:13:54.020-08:00

I was fortunate enough to attend the 11th Annual Lynford Lecture at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU where GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham gave an inspirational and thought provoking talk called Career Risks and Breaking Bubbles.The net of his talk is this. The true value of most markets (stock, real estate, you name it) is pretty flat. Every now and then, the market experiences a bubble where

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-24186681000320370532008-11-20T07:56:00.000-08:002009-02-15T08:18:25.977-08:00

I have blogged earlier about the coming of massive, multi-player, virtual on-line worlds before. Permit me to recap here.Think of it as a 3D version of the web where you can see and interact with other viewers on any page/room.Think of it as a cartoonish version of telepresence on a budget.It's a natural fit for an artificial economy or other operant conditioning systems for rewarding desirable

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-23879782919333866152008-11-09T12:37:00.000-08:002008-11-09T13:17:41.058-08:00

I read in the previous Sunday edition of the NY Times an opinion piece called It's No Time To Forget About Innovation.Author Janet Rae-Dupree uses material from the following two books to further her advice not to completely stifle innovation during these economic hard times; Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin and Strategic Entrepreneurism by Jon Fisher.According to Janet, Judy posits that

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-83675788100132817212008-10-24T10:39:00.000-07:002008-10-24T11:19:19.051-07:00

The stock market continues its downward spiral as fears grow that the U.S. recession is taking on a more global scope. Companies of all sizes hold on to their cash, batten down the hatches, and prepare to ride the storm out as they curtail new growth opportunities and slash costs.That's too bad, really, as this is the best time for opportunity. Ask anyone in finance when is the best time to buy

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-77090872060410246422008-10-07T09:04:00.000-07:002008-10-07T09:44:50.863-07:00

Technology is to software architects what stock is to traders. You are constantly on the lookout for changes in the marketplace to take advantage of an under valued but rising offering. What's that old cliché? Buy on rumor and sell on news.You would had to have been in a coma for the past decade to have missed AJAX which is an approach to writing web applications that mitigates the disorienting

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-30415019482026377342008-09-29T07:35:00.000-07:002008-09-29T07:53:39.984-07:00

I got to see a very interesting film this past weekend at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. Entitled FLOW: For the Love of Water, this documentary is all about the abuses of drinkable water and the resulting impact on humanity.The film documents how industrialization has increased the amount of pollution in our drinking water. There is a growing trend to privatize the cleaning, storage, and

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-11440921263335230102008-09-26T11:57:00.000-07:002008-09-26T12:09:06.966-07:00

I am an advocate of developer documentation. I understand why smaller, less mature ISVs and IT shops would take the quick and dirty shortcut of forgoing developer documentation. No one wants to do it. It costs money keeping that documentation up to date. Programmers should get paid to write code. Blah, blah, blah.Larger, more mature, shops should know better. They should realize that the total

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-13525030872436588022008-09-08T19:24:00.000-07:002008-09-08T20:10:39.979-07:00

I ran across this puff piece in the Sunday, September 7 edition of the NY Times promoting Facebook and Twitter. It really helped me improve my understanding of the micro-blogging, social networking revolution. Like many people born before the age of the personal computer, I was having a hard time understanding why the new prosumer generation have no problem uploading every single intimate detail

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-16574270386495763112008-08-22T15:25:00.000-07:002008-08-22T15:30:51.906-07:00

I learned something new today. I really thought that the iPhone was a smashing success from both a business and a design perspective. I ran across this blog entry that demonstrates how poor the design of the iPhone really is. Yes, it's sleek. Yes, it's beautiful. But it turns out that the design of the service is pitiful, especially if you travel a lot between countries.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-72178210149166699232008-08-13T09:57:00.000-07:002008-08-13T17:47:28.388-07:00

I recently attended Start - A Conference for Entrepreneurs held at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The conference was sold out and no wonder. Luminaries from Twitter and WordPress were there. Founders from 43 Folders, 500 Hats, and Wesabe had some great advice for young, budding entrepreneurs. You can read more about my take on the speakers here. It's the attendees that I want to point

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-20384488546195375072008-07-15T08:46:00.000-07:002008-07-15T09:13:57.496-07:00

Some recent announcements show movement on the part of Linden Labs to open up their protocols for Second Life such that others can host servers to participate in a federated, 3D version of the world wide web. This is not Linden Labs first journey into open source when they released an open source version of their HUD. What's different this time is that they are taking steps toward releasing

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-53179558224083045702008-06-29T12:13:00.000-07:002008-06-29T13:40:37.909-07:00

While drinking my morning cappuccino, I ran across this opinion piece on page 4 of the business section in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Basically, the author is asking Microsoft to rewrite their operating system completely from scratch instead of continuing to enhance it as they have done for decades. He uses Apple as an example of this. They did a complete rewrite of their operating

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-800410962045491942008-06-18T08:30:00.000-07:002008-06-18T09:26:06.681-07:00

I ran across an article in last Sunday's New York Times about everyones favorite cold war era stalwart visionary inventor, engineer, author, and architect Richard Buckminster Fuller.I remember being quite impressed with this man's writings. While I was in college, I read his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and Critical Path books. He introduced the concepts of synergetics and tensegrity to

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-14489266846240859352008-06-02T19:30:00.000-07:002008-06-02T20:15:51.015-07:00

I keep my eyes open for examples of technology convergence such as the convergence between the movie and the video gaming industries. That's why this announcement caught my attention.The details are a bit sketchy at the time of this writing and the announced deadline is way out but it looks like the Sci Fi Channel is going to simultaneously co-produce both a TV show and an MMORPG.How is this is

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-68684480240190141022008-05-29T05:48:00.000-07:002008-05-29T06:02:14.492-07:00

It is expected that predominant social networking web site Facebook will soon announce the re-release of its platform as open source. Competitive pressure is credited as the reason behind this move as competing web sites are already positioning to get behind another open source platform for exchanging social information. This is driven by a larger trend in which content providers leverage

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-36185005245580025642008-05-24T07:18:00.000-07:002008-05-24T07:54:00.873-07:00

In a recent news article, Microsoft has announced plans to provide native support for the Open Office file formats in its own office productivity suite.Open Office is an open source office productivity suite whose development is mostly under the guidance of Sun Microsystems.Microsoft has made a lot of money off of their own office productivity suite. Over the years, this profit has been used to

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-4003827564203299242008-05-09T22:38:00.000-07:002008-05-15T14:30:08.296-07:00

I just recently ran across this blog entry by Dennis Haarsager who has become CEO of NPR. He has been promoting the quest for the Long Tail in broadcast media for years. I have no access to the political internals of public broadcasting so let me simply hope that this move is indicative of a healthy change in the industry.Broadcast media and retail music has always acted in fear of the Web 2.0

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-84344448779325224872008-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:002008-04-30T11:58:19.832-07:00

I ran across a blog post today about how most software developers don't read. This is noteworthy because the technology for writing software innovates at a very high rate. How can today's coders keep up if they don't read about new technology? The article conflicts itself about whether or not developers learn about new technology online instead of through books. The major reason given as to why

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-4880424101479707682008-04-26T17:48:00.000-07:002008-04-26T18:11:15.632-07:00

I ran across an opinion piece on CNet calling for the dropping of the term Web 2.0 in favor of something else. The "2.0" thing is really a clever way of saying "the next generation" or "a new way of doing something" and implies innovation. The piece is actually about how small companies re-invent and innovate in the first wave of a new thing while the big companies secretly sit back and learn

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-1023802167212391482008-04-16T15:59:00.000-07:002008-04-28T19:03:55.739-07:00

No, this isn't a blog about the borg. Recently, I ran across an article or two on how products such as delver and twine use social networking APIs and semantic web standards to make search results more intelligent. The idea here is that you pick friends based on what you have in common with them. In which case, it stands to reason that what they think as relevant is a reasonable determinant for

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-1676165063053169712008-04-06T08:09:00.000-07:002008-04-06T08:30:58.281-07:00

As a blogger, I feel compelled to blog about this NY Times front page article on the health perils of blogging. Apparently, some high profile bloggers have recently suffered heart attacks. Without benefit of any kind of scientific or statistical research, the piece attempts to paint a world where bloggers and smokers share the same fate.I blog as a hobby and not for pay so I am not exactly an

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-12630293986218403632008-03-24T16:29:00.000-07:002008-03-24T16:54:01.536-07:00

I normally don't comment on the rants of Robert Cringely because I find his rhetoric to be too "over the top" manipulative for my tastes.However, a recent piece of his, entitled War of the Worlds: The Human Side of Moore's Law motivated me to blog about it here.Not that I actually agree with his main premise which is that the Internet is going to replace primary education. It's not going to

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-34914041429438129112008-03-22T13:58:00.000-07:002008-06-22T06:23:05.777-07:00

I recently ran across an article on the Ten Most Disruptive Technology Combinations which included the combination of cell phones and wireless internet access as the number one combination. The article mentions how this convergence blurs the lines between work and play and that is forcing telecom monopolies to open up their networks.Within the past year, I upgraded my cell phone which included an

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-63113596143264061412008-03-14T12:43:00.000-07:002008-03-15T13:54:57.353-07:00

About a month ago, I blogged on how the semantic web was having a hard time getting any traction. I mentioned then that the Reuters News Agency was starting to endorse it. Now it appears that Yahoo is also starting to embrace the semantic web through the announcement that they will begin to parse certain microformats with their search engine. Perhaps it is premature to count the semantic web as

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-21976489220369238272008-03-07T10:27:00.000-08:002008-03-07T10:41:51.245-08:00

A friend of mine recently emailed me this announcement with the comment "use this with idea and get rich." Although the announcement of an iPhone SDK is new, this is not a new trend. Companies such as Facebook, Google, and Yahoo have all signed up to a degree to the following model.Technology company reinvents itself as a technology platform company.Productizes its application tier with a public

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-50296071210511908372008-02-29T09:31:00.000-08:002008-02-29T09:47:35.204-08:00

I recently ran across this blog entry on the art of project design. As a longtime director of software development, I believe it to have some very sound advice.This blogger discourages the use of MS-Project. I am not a big fan of MS-Project either. The biggest reason why I avoid MS-Project is the differentiation of planned versus actual and the fact that an event that is completely out of the

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-75057901178523852722008-02-16T12:39:00.000-08:002008-02-18T14:39:59.498-08:00

Earlier, I had blogged about SPARQL. The feedback I got was along the lines of asking why I was bothering about that since RDF never really took off. Well, it is true that adoption of RDF is pretty weak. I guess that means the semantic web is not really ready for the main stream yet.Too bad, really, because the problem that RDF was invented to solve is both interesting and compelling. It is the

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-50021868855627269952008-02-08T14:27:00.000-08:002008-02-08T14:57:31.455-08:00

Occasionally, I write here to advocate the use of OSS. I ran across a blog entry recently that recommends open source alternatives to popular proprietary tools. I made some open source recommendations for developers but never spelled out the proprietary tools that these were intended to replace. I thought that I would do that here.OSS Alternatives To Proprietary ToolsProprietaryOpen SourceVSS,

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-660765183930600652008-01-24T12:41:00.000-08:002008-01-24T12:51:39.035-08:00

I just ran across this blog post on Agile Software Development called Don't Know What I Want But I Know How to Get It. One of Agile's main tenets is that software development should be iterative and incremental. The author of this article does a great job of educating just precisely what those two words mean.This is a great introduction to Agile methodology. The author does a good job at bridging

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-47745188619096054642008-01-22T18:27:00.000-08:002008-01-22T19:36:36.204-08:00

Jon Coffelt is an artist who originally came from the Southeast but now lives and works in Manhattan. I have seen his impressive flat-work (particularly his Cosmos and his Circuit series) featured in galleries in Atlanta, Birmingham, and Miami. His latest show is hanging in a gallery no where in this world. Rather, he is now showing in a gallery called Ten Cubed which is located only in Second

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-57952876600848462412008-01-19T21:13:00.000-08:002008-01-19T21:25:47.796-08:00

It looks like the W3C has promoted SPARQL to that of a standard. The SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language is another "SQL on steroids" that allows you to query RDF documents.This news is the latest in what seems to be a growing trend to extend or enhance SQL to work against non-relational databases. There is a long history of success in embedding or calling SQL from business software

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-42372753105081247932008-01-16T08:47:00.000-08:002009-02-10T08:14:10.172-08:00

In an earlier blog about Open Source Software, I had posited that MySql was perhaps a more relevant open source relational database than PostGreSql by sheer virtue of the fact that Oracle keeps trying to kill it by acquiring the vendors who provide MySql's transactionally aware back ends.A recent announcement on the MySql site names SUN Microsystems as successfully acquiring the MySql AB

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-8969814932009103052008-01-12T22:40:00.000-08:002008-01-12T23:00:40.789-08:00

A recent defense department article lamented the decline in quality of computer science graduates. They laid the blame on today's institutions of higher education. The big troll in the article that has generated the most buzz is the claim that students who first learn Java are somehow mentally hamstrung to those who first learn C++. This was based on some private communication with Bjarne

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-75114267611075457772008-01-01T12:30:00.000-08:002008-01-01T13:10:56.072-08:00

What better subject for the first blog of 2008 than to revisit the value of the new years resolution? This ritual is a common one that spans many cultures and geographies but how important is it really? Many of us have made these little promises only to break them before the month is out. Is there any value to the new years resolution or is it a waste of time?The new years resolution asks us to

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-69351637091971288892007-11-29T14:45:00.000-08:002007-11-29T15:26:26.601-08:00

It has been a month since I wrote on my favorite open source projects. Some of you have been very kind to point out some cool projects that I missed. I feel like now would be a good time of introduce these worthy projects.In the original article, I talked about Java and some very nice libraries that extend its functionality and power. One project that I missed was google collections which extends

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-69396961462221066312007-10-28T09:19:00.000-07:002007-10-28T09:40:48.379-07:00

The Open Source Software movement has been gaining so much momentum within the Information Technology community recently that it is almost impossible to ignore. Technology players like IBM and Google have contributed to open source. Even Microsoft, whose CEO displays open hostility towards OSS, have contributed. Now media companies such as Yahoo and the New York Times have contributed to OSS.CTOs

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-11469223162727038562007-10-16T08:01:00.000-07:002007-10-16T10:17:13.614-07:00

I saw an interesting video the other day. The story line for Children of Men is a fairly straight up sample from the genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction and that alone makes it worthy to watch if you are into that sort of thing. That is not why I am writing about it here, however. What makes this movie interesting enough to comment on in a blog about contemporary culture is its innovative

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-46986806763812472682007-10-05T14:10:00.000-07:002007-10-08T06:55:41.187-07:00

Interactive Fiction is a literary genre where the reader must participate actively. It is a cross between a book and a game. Everything is in second person and you have to write it with minimal expectations about what has happened before or after any point in the story. This is not easy. I have blogged on this subject twice before.I was so intrigued by this genre that I tried my hand at it by

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-19671868237489319062007-10-02T22:11:00.000-07:002007-10-03T22:14:38.114-07:00

I just came back from attending the ninth movie festival in Birmingham, AL called Sidewalk. What a blast! I have already reviewed the festival last year. The best stuff I saw this year came from the documentary genre. I caught three this year; Join Us, Lost and Found in Mexico, and The Paper.Join Us documents the life of this family as it gets involved with a charismatic cult leader. It starts

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-5551766900289663252007-08-28T10:49:00.000-07:002007-08-28T11:10:02.027-07:00

Dvorak recently blogged about a particularly nasty outage where various systems went offline due to a problem with MSFT's WGA.Dvorak's argument seems to be something along the lines of how can you trust someone else's servers which is ridiculous because everyone who has a phone or a connection to the Internet trusts someone else's servers.I've been around this block a few times and everything old

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-53576887403063389312007-08-10T11:53:00.000-07:002007-08-14T14:38:57.139-07:00

About a year ago, I was talking with the founders of an under-the-radar startup whose name and identifying details need not be mentioned here. At that time the technical founder was quite jazzed on a web application platform and development language called Ruby on Rails. I checked back in with them recently to discover that they had changed their tune and were now looking for both Ruby and Java

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-69837040700336140072007-08-06T21:16:00.001-07:002007-08-06T21:57:00.990-07:00

I recently read a blog post called A Guide to Hiring Programmers: The High Cost of Low Quality in which Frank Wiles makes the case, when staffing a software development project, to hire good coders even if it means sacrificing everything else. Serendipitously enough, I also read a book called The Business of Software by Erik Sink in which the choice, at least for small ISVs, is to hire developers

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-81314852522168868512007-07-30T17:01:00.000-07:002007-07-30T18:26:57.972-07:00

I subscribe to the American Go E-Journal which sends me email periodically about this ancient, venerated strategic board game. In one of their recent emails was an article called SAVING GO: A Modest Proposal to Programmers (Stop!) where Paul Celmer pleads with software developers to stop trying to create a professional Go playing program. His main arguments are that such a program would "devalue

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-39425110918903139562007-07-24T11:45:00.000-07:002007-07-24T12:27:26.780-07:00

On the drive into work, I was listening to NPR. One of the stories featured was on a technique of oil refining called gas flaring and how it disrupts life in Nigeria. The story started with instructions on using the Google Earth web site to see the gas flairs.This is a modern, information superhighway example of product placement in the news. Google's geographic imaging search web site is

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-57236646951472736882007-07-19T14:58:00.000-07:002007-07-19T15:35:33.033-07:00

I recently ran across an article on how to write better headlines. Yea, I thought, I'll improve my blog by writing better blog titles. So, I read the article.Basically, the gist of that article is this. Make a big, explicit promise in your headline to attract more readers. There are variations on this theme like phrasing the headline like a how to get something desirable or avoid something

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-62969973371272065262007-07-12T16:05:00.001-07:002007-07-12T16:46:47.241-07:00

There have been some recent blogs where the GoF Design Patterns book has come under some criticism lately. As a senior manager and developer of business applications, I feel the need to weigh in on this subject.But first, let me discuss some history to set the proper context. Writing software for complex systems is very hard and error prone, always has been, always will be. Twenty years ago, a

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-56699801440784081152007-07-11T14:16:00.000-07:002007-07-11T14:56:57.501-07:00

In a recent exchange at an online forum, I was criticized about this blog because I would comment on other blog entries and hyperlink to the relevant entry. The other person felt that "Improving incrementally on someone else's idea garners you less attention and respect than breaking new ground."I'm sure that is very important if your goal is to garner more respect and attention than anyone else.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-49805556856338880042007-07-09T12:00:00.000-07:002007-07-09T12:42:33.618-07:00

Two of my favorite interests are media and technology. This blog post discusses two very funny convergences of these two topics that I ran across recently.The technology being parodied is the MMORPG or Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The media that is doing the parody are The Simpson's and an entry on YouTube.If you do not already know about The Simpson's and you are reading this

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-42133290414020217492007-07-08T12:03:00.000-07:002007-07-08T12:45:27.238-07:00

I have recently run across an interesting and innovative trend in gaming, the live Linux games DVD. This is especially interesting to me because I am only a very casual gamer. I just want to spend thirty minutes gaming as a release after a hard day. I'll play one game for a while, get bored, then drop it for another. I don't want to spend a lot of time, energy, and money building up a game

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-73629601600626553042007-07-07T12:26:00.000-07:002007-07-09T10:05:46.165-07:00

Apparently, today is Robert Heinlein's birthday. What self respecting male American geek could claim not to have read some of this man's books in his youth? I believe that the first book of his that I read at a pretty early age was Podkayne of Mars. His most famous book, of course, was Stranger in a Strange Land. Who could have known that the utterly wild premise of this book, that a science

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-51699414244481907972007-07-06T11:01:00.000-07:002007-07-09T10:06:26.154-07:00

At the beginning of summer, my air conditioning broke down. I called a local air conditioning service company to send a technician out to repair the unit. It is a central HVAC unit for the entire house. He recommended replacing it even before laying eyes on it. After some argumentation, he got to work. He cleaned and recharged the unit which got it working again. His hourly rate is $90.A week

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-45908647799366975852007-07-05T11:12:00.000-07:002007-07-09T10:06:53.585-07:00

In a recent announcement, Dell has warned businesses against upgrading to the latest Operating System written by Microsoft. Called Vista, this O.S. has suffered years of delay and many cutbacks in promised features and functionality. Dell is recognizing and admitting that the Vista O.S. requires an amount of computer hardware resources that seem to be disproportionate to its abilities, especially

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-24444539462343797962007-07-04T15:51:00.000-07:002007-07-09T10:07:17.869-07:00

The very process of growing up is also one of grieving for everyone looses something in the process of going from child to adult, innocence if nothing else. I just saw a film called the Bridge to Terabithia that will provide that inner child a great chance to express or relive that grief.This is a great movie and I heartily recommend it to anyone and everyone. It is an old movie, if you count

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0