All things different...

Full size folding Mountain Bike. Dahon Cadenza p18.

2011-06-12T04:10:00.001-07:00

ipad 2 and sena keyboard case. Really makes a difference to typing. I'm still not great at tapping glass.

2011-04-12T11:27:00.001-07:00

@BinaryJam you have to remember that I've got childlike wrists, so it makes #Lunatik look massive.

2011-02-25T04:51:00.001-08:00

#lunatic arrived today.. Oh yeah...

2011-02-24T12:50:00.001-08:00

Part of the management summary of a document I've just finished about iPad in the Enterprise

2011-01-25T10:14:00.001-08:00

Consumer devices are here to stay. Apple’s iPhone changed all that. Apple would argue that its iPhone wasn’t just a consumer device and was aimed at business too, but it was marketed as a smartphone with great Internet, media and gaming capabilities.

Apple’s iPad only served to make matters worse for corporate IT. This device, firmly cemented as a media slate, was also large enough to provide the kind of capability to do actual work on. Emails were readable; could be replied to and even composed in a sensible fashion without having the tiny screen of a BlackBerry or iPhone. Corporate Executives rejoiced and many of them became enamoured.

It is predicted that consumer devices will continue to disrupt traditional corporate IT infrastructure and business processes. The most significant impact will be focused on Information Security and network connectivity. Increasingly the ‘Internet is the network’ and consumer devices err on the side of using the Internet natively and without the necessary checks and balances that are needed by corporates. On a very positive side, though, consumer devices and their inherent ease of use and design aesthetic could help corporate IT reconnect with its business counterparts. It will be important for corporate IT to understand why the business wants to use these consumer focused devices – from the perspective of the business. An additional effect will be that enterprise software vendors and hardware manufacturers will continue down a road of applying consumer device design principles to their offerings aimed at corporates.

There are challenges ahead for corporate IT. Some of the management and security issues associated with consumer devices are being addressed by Mobile Device Management vendors. But the breadth of scope of such solutions is limited and few are looking towards the ‘non-mobile device’ areas that are covered by Apple TV, Skype TV’s etc. which are likely to occupy the next batch of consumer products that will creep into corporates. Time for a rethink of corporate IT’s approach.

A quite serious fruit salad is being concocted. #fb

2011-01-15T11:50:00.001-08:00

The Windows Phone 7 Fable

2011-01-13T12:22:00.001-08:00

Steve Ballmer announced Coin Golf for Windows Phone 7 at CES 2011. This game will apparently let you earn Fable 3 gold on your Windows Phone and let you transfer it into the main game on your Xbox 360. Great. Gold is the least of my problems on Fable 3. I have mountains of the stuff.

But Fable 3 gold is not what this thought is about. It did, however, make me think a bit about Fable 3 and it's gameplay experience. Since the first Fable, Lionhead Studios have had a very simple but incredibly effective way of movement, battling and interacting with in game characters. It's so good that I thought "Why doesn't Microsoft use more of these methods in other places - other games and even the UI of software?" I noticed in Ballmer's CES keynote that the Kinect UI for Xbox has inherited aspects of this Fable UI. Namely "gesture and hold".

When interacting with elements in the Fable game the "A" button symbol appears on screen to denote that you can interact with an item or person. You press A to perform the interaction. But it's not just a single button press, you have to hold the button down until a timer circles the on screen "A" icon. What a lovely, simple way to interact with something. You don't accidently interact because a single press is not enough, you need to hold the button for a moment.

Various blog posts and annoucements about Windows Phone 7 have lauded the 'tap and hold' feature of the UI. But in the one place I think it's drastically needed - it doesn't exist. This place is one of the things that is absolutely paramount to a phone - especially a mobile phone and especially one with a predominantly touch screen experience.... answering an incoming call.

I lost incoming calls because of the silly way you have to answer a call on Windows Phone 7. When the phone rings you have to slide the lock screen up and then press a button. It sounds simple, but believe me it's awkward and sometimes difficult to achieve with one hand in time to answer some calls. The swipe up and then tap button action is just not 'modern', not simple enough and doesn't make use of UI that Microsoft has within it's portfolio. Microsoft Game Studios own Lionhead right? Well why not use the "A" button interaction from Fable to provide the method of answering or rejecting incoming calls. Just have an 'answer button' on the screen (rather than the lock screen to swipe up) and use the tap and hold method to answer the call. Simples.

Microsoft will release a big WP7 update in January - this is what I think needs to be in it

2010-12-01T16:20:00.001-08:00

I've been using Windows Phone 7 for just over two months now and I thought it time to share some thoughts. To date I've handled the Samsung Taylor (the pre-release device that will never see production), the Samsung Omnia 7, the HTC Trophy 7 and the LG Optimus 7. Despite the LG having the largest storage capacity (it's a 16GB device compared to 8GB in all the others) the Samsung Omnia 7 is my favourite. Why? Well it's the small details. The Sammy is the only WP7 device I've used to date that allows you to wake the phone by pressing the 'Windows key' on the front of the device. Both the LG and the HTC need to be woken by pressing the power buttons on the top of the respective devices. It is a small thing, but it's how the ubiquitous iPhone works. The Omnia 7 has a great AMOLED screen, crisp and responsive. All in all it feels like a quality device with a metal finish. All of the phones are responsive and capacitive screens are just what the doctor ordered.
The Windows Phone 7 OS is slick. Microsoft have done a pretty good job of distilling the key things that many of us do down and presenting them on the home screen tiles. So you get an at a glance screen that means you can look at the number of unread messages, unread emails, missed calls etc. But crucially what your next appointment is and not just the notification that it's going to happen within the period that a reminder has been set. Windows Mobile 6.5 always had a pretty good home screen - a dashboard on your day. Windows Phone 7 has taken certain aspects of that and has kept them on the home screen. The four tiles at the top of the home screen - I'm told - will always be the same on all devices. So the phone tile, the People tile, the messages tile and the email tile with always be the four at the top. You can still move them if you wish, but coupled with the calendar tile (a double width tile) they comprise what most people will need for business and personal needs. Simply put the people tile is your contacts list, your phone numbers, your Facebook friends, your Windows Live contacts and any other contacts you might have from other services all in one place. Having Facebook integration without necessarily having to have a Facebook app is a nice feature to have.

Of the apps that come out of the box on Windows Phone 7 I'd have to single out the email app. Filtering your mailbox is as simple as swiping left and right. Default filters are unread and important emails (as defined in Outlook if you're using MS Exchange for email). This does make it pretty quick to skin through unread mails and emails marked as priority. The calendar app is not so good. It has a good standard view, but the month view is almost unusable - the text is just too small. It serves only as letting you know you've got 'some kind of meeting' on a particular day - not much more than that. My only beef with the email app is that the names of people who have sent you email, if particularly long, get cropped by the UI and you can't actually see the whole name until you open the email.

Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 is very responsive. Pages load quickly and pretty much all sites I've visited render correctly. The thing that bugs me about IE on WP7 comes when you enter landscape mode. The URL box disappears and you can only get it back by tilting the phone back to portrait. I don't get it. Most of the browsing I've done on device since the invention of accelerometer driven screen orientation has been in landscape. This is the case on iPhone and iPad. So why is Windows Phone 7 different? I don't know. But, for me, it's the single biggest feature missing.

None of the other apps really stand out. The Xbox Live integration is neat. I need to get some cross-over game titles with their Xbox brethren to really get much out of that though. Having another device that I can earn Gamerscore on is cool, but I want a Fallout New Vegas mini-game that contributes gambling cash to my character in my Xbox 360 game. I was looking forward to the Fable III game that would reward you for cash in the full Fable III game, but it never materialised. Pants. So far I've only played Monopoly on WP7. It's actually not that bad (it's by EA so I'll never afford them a positive review because I despise the company with a passion for the abomination that is the FIFA series) and I suppose I'd need to compare it to the iPhone version. BUt I'm not buying more than one copy of Monopoly.

The camera app is ok too. It has a nice feature whereby when you've taken a photo it slides to the left of the screen and the current shot appears in on the screen viewfinder. This creates the illusion of having a 'live' photograph waiting to be captured along side the pictures you've taken. It doesn't add anything to the experience for creating better photographs but it's a neat way of presenting your film roll.

So what is there not to like? Unfortunately, as of the current version of Windows Phone 7, quite a bit. And it's critical stuff as far as I'm concerned. The phone's use of it's data connection is simply not as slick as other devices I've used. By this I mean the amount of 'dead time' you get while an application talks to the network, gets it's data and then presents it back to you. Much the same way that Windows has had issues with waking up from a period of not being used and then struggling to connect to data without an enormous pause, Windows Phone 7 suffers from the dreaded 'thinking' bug that plagues many Microsoft products. The classic example of this is Facebook. When using the Facebook app (the full app not the native integration) should you leave the device while the app is running and it goes into a sleep state it'll take a good while to wake the app back up. Upon hitting the Windows key (or the power button on the HTC and LG) you're presented with a 'white screen of nothingness' for a good few seconds while the device yawns, stretches then thinks "ahh.. I need to get some data and refresh don't I?" This isn't something that's limited to the Facebook app. Many of the apps I've downloaded suffer from this. The Xbox app suffers from this. But the email app doesn't seem to suffer from this. Infact the email app is super responsive. So why can't they all work like that?

Which brings me on to what I'd want to see in January's update. Here goes:

1. All devices need the ability to be woken from sleep state by pressing the central Windows key.
2. Something needs to be done about performance of applications when the device is woken up.
3. Internet Explorer needs the URL box to be accessible when in landscape mode.
4. Cut and paste. Yes I miss it in emails
5. Being able to edit the text in a forwarded email.
6. The onscreen keyboard, when in landscape, should fill the available width on the screen.
7. 'Cropped' text, namely long sender's name in the email app, needs to be viewable by scrolling the name left and right.
8. Better Bluetooth support. I've tried to use a Bluetooth keyboard once with the phone but it failed.
9. errr... other things. I'm not impressed with the Zune app.

As far as apps go I'm waiting for Skype, WhatsApp Messenger, a proper Microsoft Windows Live Messenger app, a decent series of news apps like BBC and Sky News, and some better games. :-)

Not much to ask for is it?

With two Samsung Windows Phone's (Taylor left, Omnia 7 right) iPad is relegated to being a tray. #WP7

2010-10-30T03:36:00.001-07:00

Bellevue Square Microsoft Store, open for the holidays. It's three doors down from the Apple Store.

2010-10-18T10:34:00.001-07:00

See the full gallery on posterous

Just a test of the Posterous iPhone app. Nothing to see here, mive along.

2010-10-13T06:44:00.001-07:00

Windows phone box and an iPod Nano.

Day 3 with Windows Phone 7. Haven't done much personalisation yet, but I continue to find things I like.

2010-09-22T02:06:00.001-07:00

More 4 iPad art... It is art isn't it?

2010-07-06T14:07:00.001-07:00

Yes, I had four iPad's in my possession. Had to do this...

2010-07-06T13:24:00.001-07:00

Enjoying my other delivery of the day http://j.mp/bfWGar Hamburger mp3 player!

2010-06-24T08:51:00.001-07:00

iPhone 4 camera testing with and without the LED flash

2010-06-24T07:41:00.001-07:00

iPhone 4 camera testing without flash

2010-06-24T07:38:00.001-07:00

iPhone4 camera testing in the darkest room in my flat. Without: and with flash

2010-06-24T07:32:00.003-07:00

iPhone4 camera testing in the darkest room in my flat. Without: and with flash

2010-06-24T07:32:00.001-07:00

@smigg @swtor @swtorstrategies Oh I should so be in the beta, I bought the t-shirt!

2010-06-24T06:54:00.001-07:00

08:04 this morning and DHL bloke delivers my iPhone 4. Whahey! Smallest box yet. #iPhone #fb

2010-06-24T00:11:00.001-07:00

iPhone 4 video calls, ha! Mr Jobs I was doing video calls with this pair of NEC 808Y's back in 2003. Beauties. #fb

2010-06-07T21:50:00.001-07:00

via tweetie

Microsoft BPOS - offering up some thoughts after one year of research

2010-05-20T14:32:00.001-07:00

It was about a year ago when I first really started to talk to Microsoft about BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). Now there's an awful lot I know, but cannot write down here because of NDA. But here's what I do know and can say. Please note, however, that this is also my own personal opinion. Now this summary of my thoughts is not about the technicalities. Microsoft publish a lot of information about what BPOS is technically and how it works. No, this is about dealing with Microsoft and some of he nuances I've come across when considering BPOS. Let me be clear, my company does not use BPOS but having done research, talked to other customers of Microsoft and trialled the BPOS offering I've learned quite a bit. I'm hoping this summary will come across as balanced and pragmatic. I'm certainly neither pro-BPOS, nor against it. Let's say I'm a bit undecided.

What is BPOS?

BPOS comprises primarily of four key Microsoft productivity products: Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server and Live Meeting. All in all these give you: email and calendaring, document sharing and basic websites, instant messaging, presence and desktop voice and video as well as Web conferencing. So on the surface it's a fairly broad package.

BPOS comes in two flavours (and price ranges) namely Standard and Dedicated. Now this part is really important because it's the major difference between Microsoft's approach and other Cloud services providers like Google. Google want to have one giant datacenter offering where everyone pretty much gets the same thing, the same level of functionality. For the vast majority of SME's this is probably going to be exactly what they need. Cheap, reliable, works anywhere, basic features to get the job done (and have up to about 5,000 employees). Most Enterprise customers are generally coming from an environment where all of their productivity stuff is hosted on premise in their own server rooms. It's likely to have been customised to hell and have lots of bolt-ons, plug-ins and a whole variety of management stuff. That's where the Dedicated offering comes in. The main difference is that Dedicated is aimed at those larger companies. Companies will more than 5,000 IT users. Microsoft will actually procure servers and put your company's name on them in their data centres. There'll be no sharing of servers for the 'big guys' whether you want to or not. I've enquired many times as to why I've got to have Dedicated just because there are more than 5,000 people in the company I work for. Microsoft always tell me "well, that's the way it is".

Thoughts on pricing structure

I suppose the important part comes with regard to how much this all costs. Well, although Microsoft buy servers for you and dedicates them to your company the Dedicated pricing scales quite well. And at the top end (15,000+ IT users) it ends up being cheaper than the Standard offering anyway. So large organisations start to benefit from lower per / user, per / month pricing and also get the widest range of features. You have to have the Dedicated offering if you want 'multi-party voice and video' in Office Communicator, for example (more on that though later). There are also restrictions related to SharePoint on the Standard platform. You're restricted to the 'out-of-the-box' features and Microsoft is unlikely to want to host your whole SharePoint-based Intranet, for example. That's where Dedicated comes in. You can do more, because they're your servers. That's why some people I've spoken to don't call the Dedicated offering 'Cloud computing' at all, it's simply hosting. You see, Cloud computing in many definitions, especially that one advocated by Nicolas Carr, is not just hosting servers in someone's large data centre it's also about Utility Computing - you only pay for what you use. And Microsoft, is far far far away from this idea.

Licensing for BPOS requires, as with all Microsoft licensing, a Masters degree in licensing. If choosing between Standard and Dedicated is not enough then you also choose whether to 'step-up' or to take the offering as a complete service. The difference here is that many companies will have existing licenses. Copies of Exchange, Office etc. that they've all ready paid for. So if you've all ready paid for something you shouldn't have to pay for it again. That's where the 'step-up' pricing comes in. All you're paying for is the cost of the service for Microsoft to host your servers. If you don't own licenses you can go for the complete service offering. This is clearly more expensive than the step-up but means that you don't have to worry about CAL's (client access licenses) for all of the products. It is possible to license each of the products included in BPOS individually. If you go for two or more though the pricing works out that you can take all four products for the price for about three.

Unfortunately BPOS still uses the Client Access License (CAL) model for how it is licensed. Microsoft still fail to acknowledge concurrent user models or at least a model based upon actual metered usage of the applications. Perhaps this will come in time, but at the moment you tell Microsoft how many users licenses you want and that's what you pay for. This doesn't provide any greater flexibility than Microsoft's model of selling CAL's for it's client applications or Windows when it comes to growth or shrinkage of a company's employee-base. Arguably, no change then from the experience that many companies have with Microsoft licensing.

One aspect of BPOS licensing that did interest me is the 'Deskless worker' offering. This effectively provides the option for a service devoid of client software. So you get Outlook Web Access, SharePoint, Communicator Web Access etc. without the full fat Office suite. I think this is useful for business areas who have typically not needed the full Office client but need email, document sharing etc. like Call Centres, Field staff, etc. It's quite a bit cheaper than the normal Standard and Dedicated offerings. I'm sure this offering will be even more compelling when SharePoint 2010 adds the Office Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote etc.

Getting there

So, in terms of 'doing' BPOS what have I discovered? It is always possible to take a trial. Be aware though that you can only trial the Standard service. Microsoft will not set up a Dedicated environment jut for the purposes of testing it. This means that I have no experience of migrating mailboxes in Exchange, migrating SharePoint sites, buddy lists in MOC or anything else like that. What I got was a completely barren environment totally separate from my 'normal' work software infrastructure. As Microsoft Office Communicator can only be configured to point at one OCS environment I decided not to change that. I didn't see the point in connecting to a OCS server that I only had 5 buddies on, whereas the internal one had dozens. Oh, and free-busy information doesn't seem to filter through to MOC. Point being, if you're going to trial BPOS then don't expect much. Plan exactly what you want to get out of it and don't expect to be able to do much beyond checking if it works. If you're a 'normal' user like I am without administrative privileges to your local PC, forget about it. Get your IT department to lab it. So, suffice to say, the only way to find out if BPOS will really work for you - and cater for all of your IT infrastructure's idiosyncrasies is to actually do it for real. Scary stuff huh? Actually, that's not strictly true because I'm sure Microsoft would pull out all the stops if they knew they were going to get a potential multi-million dollar contract signed.

The future version of BPOS (which will come later this year) will allow a better experience for trial users. Gone will be the 'sign-on' client - a piece of software that Standard user need to use in order to achieve a kind of single sign-on to the services - to be replaced by proper ADFS 2.0 / Geneva funky SAML tokens goodness. Fundamentally it's like an NT trust between your organisation and Microsoft (or other service provider). Some bits of what are exclusively in the Dedicated service will creep down into the Standard etc. And still later (don't ask me when though) the Wave 14 products will appear via BPOS. So that means Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010 and then later still Office Communicator 2010. The discreet product called Live Meeting is being absorbed wholly into Office Communications Server 2010. One less client to worry about. Yay. Which brings me to an awfully important point.

Cost of ownership

The cost of upgrading server infrastructure from one version to the next (of Windows Server, of SharePoint for example) is included in the service charge. For a lot of IT departments that spend ages migrating at some considerable cost this alone could be a giant reason to take the service. Microsoft will do this pretty much automatically for the Standard environment. For Dedicated subscribers, you can delay should you wish to upgrade. Remember this is only for the server products that Microsoft host. You'll still need to upgrade client software (such as Office) yourself. This means that the service charge can act as Software Assurance. Microsoft clearly don't have the same rapid feature deployment model (or capability) that Google do with Google Apps and still prefer and maintain the 'big bang' approach. Knowing that the cost to take on new versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communicator is included in the service charge is something quite compelling though. I'm not sure what 'on boarding' capabilities come included in the service charge though. Swapping the back end versions is sometimes relatively straightforward compared to the cost of retraining for a new product for end-users. There's still a bit of ambiguity about this one - do Microsoft test and keep all your data intact when performing the upgrade? - for example.

Caveat Emptor

Taking the BPOS service directly from Microsoft has some interesting twists related to the functionality available to you if you're situated in Europe, for example. I learned that the audio and video capabilities of Office Communicator were unavailable to companies with employees in Germany. Microsoft are not a licensed telecommunications carrier under German regulation, therefore cannot provide such services. There are potential ways around this - namely take the BPOS service from a Microsoft partner who is a licensed carrier e.g. T-Systems in Germany, BT in the UK. It's certainly something to be aware of. The standard Microsoft whitepapers about the BPOS service do not highlight this though as they're primarily still focused on the US market. From my own experience Microsoft are now realising that there's a marketplace beyond the US. You'd think this would be burning their ears after the battering the EU keeps giving them.

I've also got some queries about the actual support that a customer would receive from Microsoft. What if you screw up your SharePoint site? (happens all the time) Will MS just restore the last database backup or will they walk a user through getting the site back (if that's actually possible in SharePoint). I don't know. It is, for me, what makes the difference between a service and simply hosting the boxes running the software.

Summing up

BPOS is in it's infancy. But it's growing up quickly. I think it's been through three of four versions in the 14 months or so that I've been keeping tabs on it. That's included new features, new product models and licensing options, launches in new countries, availability of more data centres (if, for legal reasons, you need your data in your local jurisdiction) and will continue with future changes that will come as the '2010' versions of the products make their way into the service. Full beta / TAP testing of that starts soon supposedly. Looking further forward it's evident to me (from the time I spend talking with Microsoft product managers) that the Wave 15 Office products (at a guess coming in 2013/14) are being designed very much with BPOS / Cloud in mind.

Don't underestimate Microsoft's business acumen though. By that I mean the professional nature and knowledge of their sales teams. They handle themselves in corporate environments much better than some of their competitors in this space do. I think of my experiences with Google in the enterprise to date and comical (and scary) moments come to mind like a Google sales manager telling me that 'compliance is boring' when it came to enterprise email and only being able to pay for a Google apps pilot with a credit card. Yes, times are a changing, but Microsoft take compliance increasingly seriously and I think see it as a path to competitive advantage in the ever paranoid enterprise applications space. Microsoft are keen to win business here, I'm sure there are some really good deals that can be done.

Palm sales forecast lower than anticipated. I think the reason is this:

2010-02-26T05:52:00.001-08:00

Palm's CEO announces the reason why he thinks Palm aren't selling enough phones. Well here's my reason. The Palm Pre is not a compelling purchase. I liked the look of it at launch and was considering getting one (dare I say it, replacing my iPhone). But several reviews and a lacklustre launch across Europe convinced me otherwise. This review from Gizmodo convinced me that the build quality was not what I was looking for. I don't mind sliders (and the thought of a good physical keyboard was attractive) and I'd liked the HTC built Palm Treo Pro's keyboard. But cutting cheese with the sharp 'chin' of the Pre was not the kind of Swiss-Army knife functionality I was looking for in a smartphone.

I am one of those people who will be prepared to buy an off-contract, SIM free, unlocked phone (or pay as you go). This was always the way I'd planned to do with a Pre. But Palm, in their wisdom, decided to copy Apple and make getting hold of a Pre unlocked a really difficult job. Even by the time when O2 launched the Pre in the UK (my current carrier) I'd lost interest (and it's not a level playing field on their website between iPhone and Palm Pre). Then Palm announced the Pre Plus. But, again, the reviews were not compelling enough - especially when you're an iPhone 3G user. So I eventually spent my pennies on a 3GS, rather than wait it out for a Pre Plus to materialise.

A whole lot of iPhone purchases have been made by reference. I got the iPod Touch when it launched and had one before the European launch having bought one in the US. The iPod Touch OS was compelling enough for me to know I'd want an iPhone. And I showed it to friends. No-one was unimpressed. OK, so perhaps @the_ape wasn't. So if no one has got a Pre to show and demo in the wild then the viral factor will never kick in. Can I just state that I have NEVER seen a Palm Pre in the flesh, so to speak.

webOS 1.4 launches today. Does anyone care?

Vodafone Web Session Pricing - Germany

2009-10-27T06:47:00.001-07:00

19.95 Euros got me a CallYa SIM card which the guy in the store activated. I whacked this SIM into my HTC Hero when I got home and after entering the PIN it merrily started to configure itself. To my surprise the Hero restarted, recognising it had got a new SIM and changed the language to German. "Whahey" I thought. My personalisation of the Sense UI were gone and it'd reverted to stock. A quick delve through the Settings menu restored the language to English.

I got a SMS about 2 or 3 minutes after installing the SIM (in German of course) telling me something about APN's. The SIM had setup the APN automatically but it wasn't connecting to the Web. So I decided to check the settings, The APN was set to web.vodafone.de which seemed right to me. Actually I had to change this to event.vodafone.de (something I discovered here: http://www.vodafone.de/privat/tarife/datentarife-websessions.html). Having done this the Hero connected to the Interwebz.

Now CallYa works on the basis of 'pay as you go' and the pricing is quite reasonable, especially when the data cap is 1 GB within a given ime period:

Vodafone Websessions 15 Minutes 2 Hours 7 Days 24 Hours

25.06. until 31.10.2009 0,49 1,95 9,95 4,95

Not bad at all. The CallYa SIM has 5.00 Euro credit on it.

I completed the trial version of Pixel Man on the Xbox. Awesome message:

2009-09-25T11:03:00.001-07:00

Interesting stuff I found today - twanalyst.com , topsy.com , twitscoop.com (and it's hideous realtime tag cloud).

2009-09-01T06:43:00.001-07:00

Twanalayst.com - what a tremendous little site. Having studied what is thought at twanalyst.com/gazcoop I resisted the temptation to follow the people it suggested on twitter. Maybe I'll give it a go, what the hell. They're only librarians afterall! It did tell me that moviedan signed up for twitter a full three weeks before I did. You pioneering soul you. Twanalyst also tells me I'm a Guru from my tweets. Hmmm.. it had to go wrong somewhere.

Topsy.com - I could get lost in this twitter search engine.

Twitscoop.com - An animating tag cloud of what the current trending tweets are in real time is fascinating to watch. Although most of the topics are complete twaddle.

Asus Eee Videophone - for skype calls

2009-04-27T11:33:00.001-07:00

New toy. My Asus Eee videophone arrived today. Wifi connected, 7 inch colour screen, setup an absolute doddle. Audio quality is great, video is very acceptable. All in all very impressed.

Sugar on a Mac

2009-04-26T09:27:00.001-07:00

Well you can't get much simpler than the Sugar OS. It runs on the XO laptop I've got but now through 'Sugar on a Stick' it'll run on a PC or even a Mac. Wont' run from USB by itself and needs a CD booter but it's scarily quick. :-)

Well I've put Ubuntu 9.04. But I struggle with the 'slick' comment in this post from CNet http://bit.ly/Gviyl

2009-04-25T08:18:00.001-07:00

Since when does 'slick' get applied Ubuntu? The first thing I did after installing it was download Skype. Firefox downloaded Skype (after I had to choose from about 30 different Linux distros) and then I tried the 'Open containing folder' option to find the download Ubuntu asked me which application it should use to show me the containing folder. I didn't even want to run the file! I just want to see where it is. Mac OS and Windows don't ask me this. So how is this as slick as Mac OS or Windows. Rubbish. Good job I triple booted it with Win XP and 7. I think Ubuntu is going to last all of another day at most. If this is the best Linux has got to offer (it sooooo wants me to open a command prompt and start typing "Sudo -bollocks -rubbish" and stuff like that) then I think I'll give it a miss. Not that it was ever going to dislodge me from using Mac OS or Windows.

@LLiu @MikeG514 @georgedearing http://bit.ly/A2tKw : My take on this. "Habits"

2009-03-13T11:35:00.001-07:00

Mike is very much right when it comes to the expectations vs. current capabiities of SharePoint 2007 as a E 2.0 tool (presumably there's some sort of definition for E 2.0 now). I spoke to Jeffrey Mann of Gartner today about E 2.0 and most of the conversation centred around on-premise / off-premise, corporately controlled / public available, legacy / new, build / buy kind of scenarios. Organisations will have spent a reasonable amount of on SharePoint 2007 installation, probably more if they upgraded from 2003. Sweating this asset is something that a lot of organisations are going to do, especially in the current climate. For those organisations that follow Microsoft's information Worker path and have Exchange with AD and .NET developers it's not a bad platform - single sign-on, basic identity, integration with Office count for a lot. Users like the flexibility, but it lacks in most of the areas it actually tried to proclaim itself in. It's not a good Portal, it's not a good application platform (lists aren't even relational for a start) it's not even a good document collaboration tool and laughable as a document management system if you compare it with what EMC have at the moment. However, it's probably good enough. It's breadth is its strength and its weakeness. Jack of all trades, far from being master of any of them let alone one.

The likes of Telligent and Bluekiwi have tried hard to supplement SharePoint (not that you need SharePoint for get value from either vendor) in ares where it is lacking. Indeed, my company used Telligent for press releases and it did a fairly good job until requirements matured and changed. I've seen demos of Bluekiwi and Telligent and other tools and I've been privvy to what Microsoft are planning in Office "14" being on the Advisory Council for that product. The tools are great, but they still take a lot of getting used to and, in particular, to become habitual to the average user. Microsoft are in a powerful position because of the SharePoint deployments they have and what will come in Office "14" and how it will link in to other tools that Microsoft have - they have a good chance of making E 2.0 habitual. Link it in with Outlook, link it in with Office Communicator, have a client for Windows Mobile (and a client for iPhone dare I say), make it browser agnostic, host it in the Cloud, yadda yadda. Breadth will give the tools the chance of weaving themselves into the natural working day. I saw @LLiu mention once that he'd been on twitter so much in one day he needed time to get back to some real work. Well for most people 'real work' is what they do - it's certainly not twitter. In Gartner terms E 2.0 is probably somewhere between the 'trough of disillusionment' and at the beginning of the 'plateau of productivity' - I'd put SharePoint slightly ahead on the hype cycle.

SharePoint deserves a beating, because of a lot of us have to either sell this stuff, run this stuff, evangelise this stuff or 'cope' with this stuff. E 2.0 is something that as a corporate IT strategist I have to take notice of, but I also have to take notice of compliance, document management, file shares, email, etc etc. It's confusing enough what medium to use to communicate and collaborate for most people without throwing something else at them. Microsoft's attempts to tack E 2.0 concepts onto SharePoint actually makes my life easier as it provides a smoother path to introduce it to the masses and for it to become 'habitual'. Massive paradigm shift is not normally possible until you have a huge change programme in an organisation - and I don't know many that are doing that with E 2.0. It's growing small and organically, it's appearing in the places we know and are familiar with, it's out there on the Web and creeps into our companies. Where Telligent are going with Harvest is probably the most exciting part. Because once you can make this stuff habitual being able to measure it, report on it and then change as a result is very exciting.

A ramble. I didn't spend long writing this so it's certainly not been written with hours of thought behind it, let's say it's straight from the hip. :-)

Even more ancient email from Biz Stone

2009-03-12T10:34:00.001-07:00

Scratch that. Found a more ancient email from @Biz Stone dated Febraury 7th 2007. Love this bit at the bottom

We made Business 2.0 magazine's list of "What's Next" at #4! We're
nestled snugly between wind power and implantable medical devices.
Reporter Michael Myser wrote that we're "catching fire."
He's right, it's getting hot in here!

Too right!

Hello Twitter-ers,

Is it February already? That means Twitter's been launched
publicly for over six full months now. Things are moving fast
these days. Even faster since we moved Twitter onto a seriously
impressive new server setup. Now our pages will be perky and our
little operation can continue to grow. Come on back if you get a
chance, http://twitter.com.

Vote for Twitter

Twitter has been selected as a finalist for the SXSW Web Awards.
The judges think we "revolutionize the power of publishing."
We hope we win! There's also a People's Choice category and we're
allowed to ask folks to vote for us. If you have a couple minutes
you can help us take home the prize!

Vote here: https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/

Speaking of SXSW, the conference organizers were kind enough to
work with us to do something they've never done before. They're
letting Twitter take over the hallways. Everyone knows that the
hallways at conferences are always brimming with action and this
year Twitter is going to reflect some of that action back out with
a couple big plasma monitors showing Twitter updates. We'll send
out more details on how this is going to work later but it should
be fun.

Twitter: Getting Easier

Making Twitter more obvious and easy to use is part of our ongoing
master plan. To that end, we made a few changes recently.
Specifically, your Twitter username is now more prominent. You can
still put your real name in your one line bio but it's your
username folks will see everywhere.

Displaying unique usernames means it will now be easier to tell
the difference between two people who happen to have the same real
name. So, instead of getting updates from multiple people named
"Adam" you will get updates from Adam, Adam12, and Adam_Ant. This
change also makes it simpler to direct message another person.

Example of a direct message:
d biz where are you right now?

When you text the letter "d" together with a friend's username,
that tells Twitter that you want the message to go specifically to
that friend and not to your other friends.

Twitter Updates and Upcoming Changes

Whois Command - We've added a WHOIS command to Twitter. Now, when
you text WHOIS BIZ to 40404 you will get the info I've filled out
in my settings. Try it out with anyone's username.

Fill out your one line bio: http://twitter.com/account/settings

Standardized Update Length (coming soon!) - Twitter updates will
soon be standardized to a maximum of 140 characters. Previously,
the maximum length varied and this caused some confusion. Soon,
everyone will have the same amount of characters to work with.
However, if you do run over, we'll catch the rest on the web.

Direct Message Emails - We added a new notification setting that
sends an email to you when one of your friends sends you a direct
message. This is good if you have Twitter deactivated on your
phone or IM but still want direct messages.

Friend Notification Toggle - If you don't want to get an email
every time someone makes you a friend on Twitter, you can turn
those off here: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Welcome, Jason Goldman!

We're really excited to welcome our friend Jason Goldman to
Obvious and Twitter. Jason was formerly product manager for
Google's Blogger and he joins Obvious as Director of Product
Strategy. We're looking forward to working with Jason again.
Of course, Jason is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/goldman

His Name Is Earl

Our friend Mike Pennie writes and produces a sit-com called
"My Name Is Earl" for NBC that is all new this Thursday February 8
at 8pm (PST). Mike is going to update Twitter during the show for
viewers in the Pacific Time Zone. If you like the show, it might
be fun to follow Mike for an extra laugh.
Follow mike on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikepennie

What's Next? Twitter in The News

We made Business 2.0 magazine's list of "What's Next" at #4! We're
nestled snugly between wind power and implantable medical devices.
Reporter Michael Myser wrote that we're "catching fire."
He's right, it's getting hot in here!

Alrighty, that's it for now.

Happy Twittering!
Biz Stone and the Twitter Team
http://twitter.com/biz

Ancient email from Biz Stone when Twitter was young.

2009-03-12T10:28:00.001-07:00

Found this lurking in my email box. An email from @Biz from Obvious when twitter was still fairly young. Dated February 21 2007. Seems all my first posts from my phone (before Twitter had all it's mobile clients) are gone now, not sure why. However, they were very much 'Hello World' style posts. :-)

Hello Twitter-ers!

As you may already know, Obvious is the parent company of Twitter
and it's never a dull day around here. Today our little building
is abuzz with activity surrounding an announcement that Odeo
(another Obvious product) is ready for a new home. We're
entertaining offers from potential buyers because Odeo deserves
the same love and attention we've been heaping on Twitter these
days. Have you been by lately? http://twitter.com

More about Odeo: http://tinyurl.com/2yoy84

Defamer Brings The Oscars to Twitter

Popular Hollywood gossip blog Defamer.com is going to the Oscars
this Sunday and they're bringing Twitter! Sorta. Follow Defamer on
Twitter and you'll get live from-the-scene updates. Who won what?
What's happening in the seats? What are the stars doing? Get the
updates on your phone while you watch on TV to make things more
interesting or if you can't watch, just get the updates.

Text FOLLOW DEFAMER to 40404
or, Visit http://twitter.com/defamer
Oscars: http://oscar.com

If you haven't set up your phone to work with Twitter yet, now is
a good time! You can do that here: http://twitter.com/devices. The
Oscars are broadcast live February 25 at 5pt/8et on ABC. Speaking
of coveted awards, you can still vote for Twitter and help us win
the SXSW People's Choice awards. We will be so psyched if we win.
Vote Twitter! https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/

SXSW Update

There's going to be lots of folks from three industries
represented at the SXSW Conference in Austin next month. We've
heard from people in the Interactive, Music, and Film industries
who are excited to get on Twitter during the week-long event.
We'll have big screens set up in the hallways and we're setting up
a special, easy way for folks to get their updates on the screens.
Once we set that up, we'll tell you more. Even if you can't make
it to SXSW, you'll still be able to catch all the buzz.

Office Full of Great Folks

Obvious employs less than ten people but the building is filling up
fast since we've opened our doors to some other really cool
companies working on interesting projects. Two of the projects are
still top secret, there's a couple Y Combinator startups sharing
space with us, and the other folks are 30boxes.com, Boso.com, and
the illustrious Niall Kennedy. (Hi Niall!) When the secret
projects launch, we'll tell you about them--they're cool!

http://30boxes.com
http://boso.com
http://www.niallkennedy.com/
http://ycombinator.com/

Okay, back to work. Lots to do this week!

Happy Twitter-ing,
Biz Stone and the Twitter Team
http://twitter.com/biz

Bought latest futurama feature release, and I can get L20 of amazon vouchers from Gritish Bas.

2009-02-24T09:48:00.001-08:00

As if....

OMG Star Fleet DVD boxes set is beyond words. I'm nearly crying with happiness.

2009-02-19T12:24:00.001-08:00

Photos are taken of my TV so apologies for the poor quality. The 'episodes' menu plays the whole Star Fleet theme song on continous loop. 40 repeats and I found the will to press play on Episode 1. True Star Fleet fans will know every word unprompted despite being about 20 years since I last watched it. Thank you Fabulous films for doing this. Everyone must buy it now. Barry Hercules, despite not being a Space Pilot demands it!

#Karneval victims. They hang their victims 'cut off bits' like trophies. I didn't escape in time.

2009-02-19T05:27:00.001-08:00

Titles that changed gaming history? - nah. Titles that Gary wasted his life away on.

2009-02-16T12:32:00.001-08:00

MSN published this list of ten titles that impacted the gaming world. Fair enough. Haven't even played half of them.

So here's my list of "Games that Gary wasted his life away on". I must have racked up at least 100 hours on each (much more on some).

1. Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - Commodore 64.

OMG. I loved this game. So much so that my brother used to hide the disk (yes, disk after he used Freeze Frame to save the original to disk and then hid the original forever) so that I couldn't play it. Two player co-op was amazing, bouncing the ball on the top of your head as you ran down the pitch was incredible, and blasting the ball into the top corner of the net was simply divine. Never had as much fun on a game.

2. X-Wing / TIE Fighter - PC.

"You're all clear kid." I played this an immense amount. So much so that I didn't need to look at the keyboard to balance shields or direct energy to the blasters. Becoming a General was one of my greatest achievements. The main thing was that I was ridiculously good at this. Note I only ever played X-Wing and then TIE Fighter - never X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.

3. Sensible World of Soccer - PC.

I nearly flunked University because of this game. I think I must have played it more than any other. Countless seasons, ridiculous number of goals. My best was a 24-0 victory England vs. Cameroon, I think. Only 3 minutes a half. I graduated in 1998. Nearly didn't thanks to this game.

4. Star Wars Galaxies - PC

Oh dear. What potential this game had. And for a time it was special. I wasn't as infuriated as some by the changes in gameplay that ruined it for most. For me it was the introduction of the Jedi playable characters that saw my lost interest. SWG has just added Hoth as a playable world. For a fraction of a second I was tempted to have a quick peek. Roll on 'The Old Republic.'

5. Fable - Xbox

I preferred this much more to Fable II, personally. Perhaps it was the originality. But I kinda lost interest in Fable II after a bit whereas this one kept my interest. I played it through three times completely. Interestingly even though I did it three times, every time I was evil. Oh well. Mwuuhahhahahaha!!

6. Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion - Xbox 360

Every quest, every expansion, everything. Finished at level 47 I think. Could kill pretty much everything without having to heal myself. This game was (and is) staggering. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Fallout 3 recaptures some of the brilliance, but the post-apocalyptic setting is not as compelling as that of Oblivion.

7. FIFA '09 - Xbox 360

My relationship with FIFA '09 is love and hate. The game, mainly because of it's physics engine and frustrating football cliches, has caused the destruction of 5 Xbox 360 controllers. In fact I had to buy FIFA '08 again because I despondently threw my controller into the sofa only to see it bounce bak and hit my Xbox 360. The disk inside was scratched and became unreadable. It's a tremendous game marred by some technical bugs and some bizarreness in Manager Mode (if you're particularly successful you find yourself playing a cup tie and a league game on the same day!). That said I keep coming back for more even though it boils my blood at times.

8. TBA. Actually that's about it. Some others came close, Dark Forces, Half Life 2 (and add-ons) but for sheer time sinks these games have kept me coming back again and again. No doubt there will be others. I though that Warhammer Online would be the next one, but I lost interest in that fairly early on. Maybe Star Wars: The Old Republic will be next, but we've got a wee wait for that title. But you can bet that if a Star Wars football game came out that has big monsters in it it's likely to be on my list.

User interface metaphors dated or not? (part two) Bumptop, Surface, iPhone

2009-02-16T07:47:00.001-08:00

"If our cars were as difficult to drive as our computers are to operate, they would never leave our garage" is the opening gambit by Michael Dertouzos in his book "The Unfinished Revolution". That's fairly true. And a driver of a car can pretty much move from one car to the next and drive that one as well - even when the steering wheel and pedals are on the 'wrong' side of the car.

It obviously took a long time for the steering wheel to become a standard in cars and there have been many attempts to change it (James May of Top Gear blogs about the 'wheel thing'. The steering wheel, because of its link with directing a car and the appropriate level of tactile feedback it provides is exactly the right thing for interfacing with a car. And remember, a car pretty much does one thing as it's a vehicle it moves from one place to the next and you might have to change direction a bit to avoid objects en-route (alternatively you just want to drift around corners at Mach 3).

So Mr Dertouzous' statement will drive most of my further ramblings on these topics. In my first post on this topic I mentioned that using a floppy disk icon for 'Save' could be perceived as being a bit dated. Yet a folder (when was the last time you saw one of those!?) representing 'Open' might not be. The thing is with comparing operating a computer with driving a car is that a computer can do a whole many more differing tasks than a car can. Indeed you can plug a mock up steering wheel into a computer and pretend to drive it.

So what attempts have there been to make operating a computer easier, faster better, or dare I say more natural.

Let's start with Bumptop. A demo of Bumptop was done at TED a few years back. Bumptop takes the desktop metaphor to the next level by fundamentally introducing the notion of three-dimensions and most importantly physics. I signed up for the beta what seems like a billion years ago but nothing has been forthcoming. Bumptop and the similar Real Desktop (which runs as a replacement desktop for Windows) still rely on the mouse / icon interaction method.

The Surface computer from Microsoft and Apple's iPhone remove the mouse as the method of interaction and use something much more natural, namely your hands and fingers. Again, physics engines are applied to add momentum and interactivity. Having been a user of the iPhone from the day of its launch in the UK I was mightily impressed by what Apple have achieved in terms of slickness and responsiveness. To date I've not had chance to have a go with a Surface computer, or the solution from Perceptive Pixel but the speed at which it responds does look very impressive. A demo of a news reader application for the Surface computer recently showed another example of where this type of user interaction adds novelty to the experience.

The combination of multi-touch, big screens and voice recognition has the potential to be awesome. In the Perceptive Pixel demonstration there's a mind-mapping example showing how a map of thoughts can be navigated. If the system could do speech to text I think it would be a fantastic tool for workshops.

So I'm one of the generation of people who grew up and adjusted to Windows and Mac as the primary way we interact with computers. Guaranteed my initial experiences of computers was very different having gone through experiences with Acorn Atom, Vic 20, Commodore 64, Amiga, Acorn Achimedes, IBM PS2 and Opus III to name a few.

But how will today's generation 'learn' computers? I'll move onto that in my next post on his topic.

How Google kills projects (from NYT) is not too disimilar to my approach.

2009-02-16T05:26:00.001-08:00

"All of the shuttered projects failed several of Google’s key tests for continued incubation: They were not especially popular with customers; they had difficulty attracting Google employees to develop them; they didn’t solve a big enough problem; or they failed to achieve internal performance targets known as “objectives and key results."

It's interesting that in this New York Times article on How Google decides to pull the plug they don't cite "and management just don't get it" - unless, ofcourse that's the big about the big problem. But then again it's all about how to articulate the problem in such a way that management "get it".

But with all the management buy-in in the World if customers (or internal users in my case) don't buy-it, get-it, want-it, or know how to use-it then it's a no go thing anyway. So I think Google have got it right, as long as there's balance between popularity, attraction, the problem and performance targets then you're on to a winner - [yes, I'm making reference to the prophesy of the "One who would bring balance to management decisions"].

User interface metaphors dated or not? (part one)

2009-02-14T06:56:00.001-08:00

So I was thinking about user experience. Yes, it's a Saturday, it's Valentine's Day and I'm thinking about user experience in applications. A lot of us who have grown up with Windows and Mac (and perhaps the UI imitations in Linux) are all familiar with procedures like New, Open and Save when it comes to working with documents. Various applications have toyed with the idea that naming a document should come at the beginning or the end of the initial process. Some applications ask you to give your document name when you start a new one whereas most (I'm thinking primarily Microsoft Office here) ask you to give the document a name when you save it.

Saving. Is it me or is the idea of having a floppy disk icon for 'Save' starting to look a bit dated. Bizarrely more dated than the open folder icon for 'Open'. Others think so too - MrDoob for instance. I would imagine my niece and nephew (currently 13 and 11 respectively) have never seen a 3 1/2 floppy disk, let alone a 5 1/4 or 8 inch one.

Apple have one away with icons for New, Open and Save in recent version of their iWorks suite. The first screen grab shows the full toolbar icon set from Pages. New, Open and Save are available from the menu bar, but only in text.

In future posts I'm going to have a look at other apps that have adopted the 'no icon' approach to certain basic tasks.

Securing collaboration.

2009-02-13T07:20:00.001-08:00

Michael Sampson is going all out to talk to companies about what the threat surface is for collaboration platforms. His research will prove to be interesting.

I'm most concerned about the combination of on-premise with off-premise tools when blended with SaaS offerings (try saying that after six Wodka's).

So take this example: Let's say you use a collaboration tool like MS SharePoint. You've got an on-premise installation that you use for more senstive documents , say M&A. The off-premise tool (perhaps hosted by Microsoft themselves) is for collaboration with external third parties - could be suppliers / contractors or customers. You rig all of this up in a secure way. Registration for the external site requires two factor authentication, you might even use SAML to federate your directory with another company. Some of your internal document content is in multiple languages and you've had submissions in French and Chinese. Now you've got someone in Hungary who can understand French and they can handle a translation - but there's no-one who can understand Chinese. So the innocently use the publically available Google Translate service to do a quick translation of the document - cutting and pasting it into the web tool. The translation is done and the response comes back via their browser. When they read the English translation the document makes reference to 500 employees being laid off by the Chinese company in Hungary. Such information vould be damaging to thr company's brand and is particularly sensitive.

Where exactly has that information gone in its traverse of the Web to get translated? Over the Internet not encrypted for a start and then possibly still residing on Google's server somewhere [Google say on the website they have developed their own transation software http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html#google] helping Google to make better translations. Hmmm.... maybe you're not too happy about that.

</Rant>

For me, the biggest security consideration is related to these public SaaS offerings that innocently get used by employees. They're so used to using them at home for their own purposes that there's an assumption they're ok to use for work. Google need to take better steps (and they are doign to be fair) to secure these services and let us know more about what they're doing with this data we pass to them. Afterall it can't get any worse than a conversation I had with Google's UK Sales Manager about 3 years ago when I asked him about compliance and using Google Enterprise Apps. "Compliance?" he responded. "Compliance is boring".

XO laptop as ruggedised Kindle?

2009-02-11T13:02:00.001-08:00

So Wired magazine think the XO makes a good, sturdy ebook reader. Http://bit.ly/13Z9d Well, I've got an XO and a Sony Reader (not a Kindle tho as Amazon still haven't brought them to Europe yet). I'm going to do some tests of PDF's on both to see.Rugged? Yes. Slimline? No. Look like a fool using one? Probably.

RT @Lliu @Mona: Yep I've got pretty much the same experience in Chrome. Where's 'optimistic'?

2009-02-10T06:40:00.001-08:00

Jasper bought. Hunt is on for me to discover if it's any better.

2009-02-09T07:55:00.001-08:00

So after hunting through Saturn on the Koeningallee in Duesseldorf I found the last Jasper Xbox 360, in all it's 12.1 amp glory.First thing I noticed when I fired it up (after using the Internet connection sharing from my Windows 7 powered Acer Aspire One) was that it wanted to pull down the NXE from Xbox Live. I'd deliberately not connected a HDD at this point so I was given two options. The remaining space on my 256MB memory card or 214MB on the Xbox itself. Yippee.So I'll run it for a while and see how Fallout 2 gets on (apart from Oblivion it's the game that crashes most on me).And yes, the photo does show 2 xbox's and a PS3. Total of 5 Xbox 360's I've bought now. Shocking.

Bookcase now looking a bit more healthy.

2009-02-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

More of a test using the multi-photo email for the iPhone than anything.

Quick tweak to see why it didn't post to twitter..

Random thoughts about using netbooks in the Enterprise.

2009-02-06T08:47:00.001-08:00

OK. So in preparation for a talk I'm having with a certain large software company based in the Puget Sound area I thought I'd jot down my thoughts.

The topic is primarily around netbooks and what our interest in them is.

Well here goes:

They're attractive to business - they're cheap to buy.
They're attractive to people - most folks who see a netbook go, wow isn't that cute. It could almost fit in my pocket.
They have lower power consumption.
Portability.
You can still rig them up with a full-size monitor and keyboard / mouse.
They're designed for comms on the go (practically all of them have built in webcams).

And what's not so good.

The screen res doesn't lend itself to most enterprise apps. Try running SAP GUI on a netbook.
Apps like Office 2007 take up a ridiculous amount of space with the ribbon.
Because of the low spec of the netbooks there are questions about performance, especially when doing lots of things like encryption / decryption. How well does a netbook run when doing a video conference over an encrypted link on a netbook with an encrypted HDD / SSD.

I'm not so worried about wear and tear and robustness of the actual hardware. I saw a Lenovo S10e this week and it seemed sturdy enough. My worry would be that the low powered nature of the machine would mean it would have to 'go in for servicing' more often for tunes ups or even complete rebuilds. This might increase the overall TCO.

Would a netbook actually be used more than a laptop (even a sub-notebook) though? I still see a lot of situations where laptops are left on desks or in drawers. They're still too big for some people to want to carry them.

@Lliu It's going to take more than a single tweet to answer the 'Drupal is to..' question. So here goes on posterous.

2009-02-05T01:16:00.001-08:00

I would say Linux is to Windows as Drupal is to "an enterprise community platform - that is flexible, approachable and adoptable and has good support and viable roadmap". Unfortunately I'm not sure that this platform exists - it's certainly not SharePoint as the current version does not have any real community features or gets anywhere near the 7 principles of Drupal. I must admit my ignorance of Telligent. Despite E.ON being a customer (an older version powers our press release site for the UK) I've not seen where the community features have really enhanced, other than the obvious sites that are mentioned on Telligent's website. Typically large corporates do prefer a 'buy vs. build' approach and Drupal doesn't really have that necessary comfort blanket that you get from Linux just yet (at least from enterprise vendors who have put their support behind Linux) that you normally get from purchased products.

Posterous from an email

2009-02-03T04:12:00.001-08:00

Having set posterous up now I can email it and it will update twitter, a test blog post I've setup on Blogger. Quite interesting, clearly then I wouldn't need client on my phone other than my email client (can also SMS like twitter has always done). Further tests need to be done. Like - where does the text file go that I attached? What about the scary picture? Would the picture automatically go to Flickr if I'd set that up too? It's supposed to according to the posterous website.

This is the text file I was talking about

So let me get this straight. Posterous is a bit like twitter but lets you post to multiple places (like Flickr, your blog, etc.) and if you happen to write more than 140 chars it will automatically create a link using http://is.gd to the rest of the post

2009-02-03T03:59:00.001-08:00

I must say it's interesting at best. I'm not sure how the combination of 'Title' and 'Body' is going to workout. They tend to make sense with a blog or an email but when using twitter you've got 140 characters - that's it. No split of one from the other. So it's a bit of an experiment for me to see how this comes out. Needless to say I'll post again once I've fathomed out how it works (and if it's any good).

So let me get this straight. Posterous is a bit like twitter but lets you post to multiple places (like Flickr, your blog, etc.) and if you happen to write more than 140 chars it will automatically create a link using http://is.gd to the rest of the post

2009-02-03T03:58:00.001-08:00