The Wii Didn’t Start The Fire

December 17, 2010 Leave a comment

Thanks to Hunter for this clever video from last month. Fun:

The Wii didn’t start the fire.

Filed under Fun and Games

Cloud Computing: BPOS Fun Facts

December 6, 2010 Leave a comment

I rummaged around the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) site on behalf of a customer over the weekend. The customer currently has an (aging) Exchange Server on-premises, and we’re all keen to eliminate the silicon (and the associated pains) therein.

Just what do you get from BPOS, you might ask? Besides getting out of managing your Exchange and SharePoint servers, it is suited for organizations that:

  • View messaging and collaboration as mission-critical.
  • Require security, reliability and access flexibility.
  • Want to avoid managing commodity IT functions in favor of focusing on strategic IT initiatives.

BPOS is sold on a per-user, monthly charge basis; $10 / user / month for the suite (present-day pricing; see current pricing on the home page). Exchange Online is $5 / user / month by itself, other ala carte pricing can be found on the BPOS Home Page.

Looking to do your own BPOS implementation? Microsoft has been most helpful in providing reams of documents to confirm you can use the service successfully.

The simple answer? If your organization is, or can host these servers on-premises, you can enjoy (celebrate) the advantages of hardware-free management and reliable uptime.

We’re sold; will capture and share our migration experience.

Filed under Cloud

Do you have a home page?

November 28, 2010 Leave a comment

Funny I would ask .. you’re safe: I’m not stalking you @home. Winking smile 

The question still stands .. do you have a home page URL, or better still, at what point does a URL become unimportant?

Note that in the early 00s, URLs started showing up on TV advertising and on billboards .. the coming thing; the way to recognize if a company was with ‘it’. Nowadays, we know that companies own their web URLs as a part of their overall identity.

Answering the ‘unimportant’ question: it’s now. URLs are unimportant. These days, it’s all about browser-enabled search. The best part: we’re doing it without even realizing it.

My evidence? I know people (a lot of people .. many in the ‘John Q. Public’ realm) who do not have a home page set on their browser. This is interesting because any company that introduces you to a toolbar (or other related nonsense) tries to set your home page and search engine to their choice, instead of yours. Security note: Always be wary when clicking ‘next’ .. watch for any little checkboxes with logos or names you do not recognize.

Back to John (and Jane) Q. They’re pretty happy with no home page .. many pursue a ‘clean’ browser environment: one where the home page is set to ‘about:blank”, or they may simple erase whatever home page that opens when they open their browser. Either way, they still do a lot of work on the Web .. but unlike those with iPhones and thick clients, they are “app”-less, yet still getting done what needs to be done.

Here’s how: with modern browsers, the cursor is set to light up in the address bar by default. You can type anything you like there, not necessarily preceded by ‘http’, or ‘www’. Do you want to book a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles on Expedia? In the address bar, type ‘expedia’ (and not http://www.expedia.com). Better still: type “flights from seattle to los angeles” and press enter. If you do this, you’ll be presented with options. If the Expedia search engine optimizers have done their job, one of the links you can select is theirs.

Given this, why remember a URL at all? I’m sure you’ve heard that whitehouse.com is not the place where the President lives, nor will you find what you seek if you navigate to wikipedia.com (update: wikipedia.com now redirects properly to wikipedia.org; the linkbait site has been closed). Why not simply type the company name and look at the results? All the major search engines post ‘best bet’ (and sometimes, paid) results based on perceived intent:

  • Want Wal-Mart? Type “walmart”. Would you normally remember the hyphen? Returns http://www.walmart.com.
  • Want KMart? Type “kmart”. Was there, or wasn’t there a hyphen? Returns http://www.kmart.com.
  • Want Alaska Airlines? Type “alaska airlines”. Returns http://www.alaskaair.com. No hyphen and the delight of ‘air’ appended to Alaska.
    You get the drift .. type the company name into the address bar, and you’re golden. Many companies now sponsor their URLs on the search engines to ensure that entries that are ‘close enough’ will find them. Ditto for common words associated with their products.
    More aggressive companies will also attempt to sponsor the names of their competitors or competitors’ products in an effort to redirect search results to their own benefit. More on that in a future post, but suffice to say: it’s a naughty, competitive, webby world.
    All this said: do you have a home page? Do you need one?

Filed under Leap Frogs

Test Driving Office Web Apps: First Blush

November 26, 2010 Leave a comment

Had some spare time over the Thanksgiving holiday and thought I’d take the online versions of Microsoft Office applications for a little test drive.

As I’ve been spending a lot of time in PowerPoint lately, I started here first. Most notable:

  • Lack of transitions
  • Lack of animations

Not fatal, in themselves. However, most everything else I typically use is intact. I was able to create the short deck below in under ten minutes. Especially nice is support for SmartArt, those handy little art-lets to which you can add text in outline format (you’ll see flow slides in the presentation below):

Not bad for ten minutes’ work; an additional minute to figure out how to share it across the web, and voila, instant availability.

Excel is no slouch, either. Shortcuts like cell ranges (type ‘January’ in the first cell, then grab-and-drag the lower right to create the rest of the years’ labels), drag-and-copy and drag-and select work well. Formulas are a bit tricky at first (I expected to find them on the ‘Insert’ menu), but press the ‘=’ sign and let cell context-sensitivity do the rest .. I was able to total up rows and columns with ease. Control-key formatting (B, U and I) works with single cells and selected ranges. Graphing was a nice surprise; I built out a quick calendar and column range and it updated in near-real time as I changed data. Very nice.

The best of the three (IMHO) is Word. Tables, spell-check, style-based headings and a bunch of other goodies are supported, along with bullets, numbered paragraphs, text alignment and quotations. I created the following document in less than five minutes with the help of my friends at Lorem Ipsum:

http://cid-ecddcf497d93928b.office.live.com/embedicon.aspx/TestDocument.docx

(update: no document preview because no ’embed’ option for the link).

Absent was support for table of contents, though .. will discuss that (and a few other bits) later.

What about saving? With the Word WebApp, you have a save icon that stores the document in your SkyDrive. The PowerPoint and Excel WebApps have a “Where’s the save button” button that returns a response of “saved automatically” (also to SkyDrive). This does impede performance a bit, as there’s a fair bit of round-trip traffic going between your PC and the server. The “Save As” button will save a local copy, and the “Open in xyzzy” works nicely with local copies of the software (xyzzy, if installed).

All in all, a very nice set of features to create, store and access documents from virtually anywhere. Unlike Office Live, you can work with Microsoft Office documents directly from http://office.live.com even on the Google Chrome browser.

Oh: did the above paragraph confuse you? You’re not alone:

  • http://office.live.com gives you access to the online version of Microsoft Office applications and saves these documents to SkyDrive.
  • http://officelive.com is free web hosting and document storage .. however, you can also edit documents with the same online versions of Microsoft Office applications (as above) .. and they’re still stored in SkyDrive.

.. someone should call the branding police Winking smile This may be why Microsoft is rebranding the whole online document thing under the umbrella of Office 365: now called Office Professional Plus, these WebApps join Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator).

In my next pass at this, I’ll upload some locally-created documents with advanced features and see how the online versions deal with them.

Filed under Cloud

Some Bits on Infrastructure

November 21, 2010 Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I got to thinking about infrastructure, or more specifically, enabling technologies that might benefit an infrastructure, as in always available in the context of a workload.

As always, I’m looking from the business perspective. Here are a few analogies:

  • When you build tracks, you can run trains.
  • When you build airports, you can land planes.

Both of the above are physical infrastructures. They enable business opportunities; income derived from the transport of people or goods.

Infrastructure matters.

Infrastructure isn’t just physical. Some more analogies:

  • An income tax referendum was put before the voters in Washington State this past year. Proponents said the tax would affect only the wealthy; roughly the top 2% income bracket.
  • Your city installs camera-equipped speed detectors in a school zone, complete with automatic citation delivery via US Post. They enforce the 20 mph speed limit during posted school hours (7am-9am and 3pm-5pm).

These cases represent infrastructure as well. In the former, the apparatus to levy taxes. In the latter, increase safety with the threat of corrective action. Here’s the rub:

  • With the taxation infrastructure in place, the government could apply the tax to the top 3%, 10% or everyone, for that matter.
  • Once the cameras, radar and mailing infrastructure is in place, the government can change the speed at which a driver gets nabbed during non-school hours. The regular speed limit is 30 mph; setting the infrastructure to 32 mph would raise funds for the city.

Despite the downsides above, once an infrastructure is built, it can (and frankly, should) be leveraged.

When building integration or cloud architectures, I examine current infrastructure as containing opportunities and add other services (including ephemeral services) I can reuse throughout the application portfolio. If something we need doesn’t exist, I look at deploying it as a service the rest of the system can consume.

How about this: a time service, whose primary job is to keep all  the system clocks in synch. Knowing that it exists allows me to leverage this service to collect multi-machine activities as transactions in a single log file for auditing.

While time is important, so is location (enables mapping and directions), associated entities (enables B2C and B2B), shared storage (enables collaboration) and so on.

The key point: consider all the services available to you when evaluating an architecture extension or application extension project.

Filed under Architecture

“Visit milehightextclub.com ..”

November 19, 2010 Leave a comment

“.. and be nice to your flight attendants”

This immortal wisdom is courtesy of former Jet Blue flight attendant, Steven Slater.  Good advice, but the rest of the story was too odd (and a bit fun) for me to pass up.

Steven is a spokesperson for Toktumi (“talk to me”, get it?), a virtual PBX provider for business. These guys provide lots of phone numbers to give your small business a big business feel. Toktumi is sponsoring a contest for the most outrageous in-flight occurrence sent via text message to 222-222-2222. The winner gets a pre-holiday shopping trip to New York City.

Who decides? Steven is also a judge, but in a slightly outrageous video he tells us the world will participate by way of Twitter, FaceBook and other social networks. Contest details? Get ‘em at http://milehightextclub.com/.

Thanks to CRN for “Toktumi Hires Infamous Jet Blue Flight Attendant To Promote "Mile High Text Club" Contest”.

Filed under Fun and Games

This is still a bit surreal for me ..

November 4, 2010 Leave a comment

.. every time I stick one of these on my polo.

IMAG0136-1

Filed under Fun and Games

Are you a ‘fake’ mayor?

November 2, 2010 1 Comment

I’m not! I hope you aren’t. I’m watching you .. let’s move on.

Are you a Foursquare fan?

I am, and if you’re my friend on Facebook, please don’t take offense to my frequent location postings (you can block them in FB, you know).

For those new to all this stuff, Foursquare is sort of a location-based Twitter .. folks check in to locations, have the option to Tweet or update their FB status and advise anyone who cares where they are. They can even ‘shout’ about what they’re doing (shouting only occurs after the first cup of coffee -or- the first drink, of course). The system tabulates the results and keeps track of where everyone is, and was. Oh: it even assigns mayors to those who visit locations often .. that is, more than anyone else in the past two months.

:: whew ::

To give you an idea of how important this is, FrankArr and I are in an epic battle over the hizzoner-ness of Kirkland Parkplace (you’ll find my east side 24 Hour Fitness and the Kirkland Parkplace Starbucks in the vicinity, so I’m in the neighborhood a lot .. he just has the gall to live close by).

Do you see the drama?

Okay. There’s no drama. It’s just a fun location-based-services thing to do with a mobile device and folks who consider themselves among  my friends (happy to have you, by the way).

Yes: I find it fun.

Ahem: Let me proclaim: I am not a fake mayor. I interact, transact and impact folk in the various venues in which I check in. Do they remember me? Probably .. I’m the guy buying a triple-tall, vanilla soy latte, telling the raucous story or using the restroom. Twice.

So .. what do you get for being mayor? It’s cereal, baby: nut-tin honey (‘nothing honey’ for the late-80s TV-deficient).

That said .. it seems that there is value in certain markets (into none of which I’ve been able to worm my way). Check out ReadWriteWeb for “Foursquare Lays Down the Law on Fake Mayors” .. there are hot spots that give preferential treatment to those of us who keep their staff entertained.

For the rest of us, it’s an LBS-thing to do. I do it with my spiffy Android phone client (I carry the HTC Aria from AT&T). As it’s GPS-enabled, it tends to keeps all of us honest when checking in.

Protect your mayorships .. I will see you soon. Smile

Filed under Fun and Games

Google Buzz: Sued, “Lost”, Responds

November 2, 2010 Leave a comment

Actually (silly me): I wasn’t even aware of the suit. Until I received the email. Imagine my surprise!

That said, Google was kind enough to send a message to my GMail account (this is the one I use for Google Latitude .. but nothing else) to say .. something. My phone Buzzed (pun intended). I looked, and I’m wondering why.

So: my thanks to TechCrunch, for clearing it all up for me. They posted: “Google Emails All U.S. Gmail Users About The Buzz Settlement – And To Say They’re Not Getting A Dime” (initial caps theirs; you know what a crazy grammarian I can be).

This is like getting a ‘free’ car rental in Seattle .. in June or July .. then finding out free rentals are disallowed.

It’s a gift you cannot get any other way .. but you also cannot use it. Nice.

Filed under Fun and Games

Cloud Computing: IT as a Service

November 1, 2010 1 Comment

At PDC last week, I heard Microsoft utter the umbrella term: “IT as a Service” to describe their Cloud Computing direction. In short, ITaaS encompasses the three commonly-known ‘as a Service’ offerings:

  • IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Virtual, but logically-physical hardware. Servers in the sky that you can connect to remotely as though they were actual hardware. You expend a lot of effort into managing servers (imaging, patching, load-balancing, etc.), but have high flexibility as they support most types of existing applications you can deploy without rewriting or porting code. Amazon has capability in this space, as does VMWare.
  • PaaS (Platform as a Service): A virtual platform, where applications are deployed as services. You have next to no server management, and automagic scalability is built-in, but an existing application code must be ported to the new environment. Google AppEngine fits here, as does the application platform side of the Windows Azure Platform.
  • SaaS (Software as a Service): An application built atop a base application. Some allow only configuration (tailoring organization- and and user-specific information), while others have higher levels of UI customization opportunities; think adding applications to Facebook or customizing your iGoogle or MSN home pages. On the business size, Force.com is the big player in this place with their CRM application.

Looking at the features now available in the Windows Azure Platform update, Microsoft looks to have the broadest offering in Cloud Computing; while light on packaged SaaS platforms, they’re heavy in the application development space.

But, there’s more (there always is): The Microsoft offering has also taken familiar server-based applications into the cloud. Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office LiveMeeting and made them available as subscription services, wrapping them under the umbrella brand: the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

Not to confuse the market with Darwinian brand evolution, Microsoft also announced Office 365, adding Office Professional Plus (web versions of Word, Excel, etc.) and Lync Online (unified communications) to the mix.

Like the rest of the cloud, the business model is pay-as-you-go and your IT Department don’t need to muck about with hardware for near-commodity application functionality.

Google is in the fray as well; Google Docs and GMail are Cloud alternatives for productivity applications and are mostly free for smaller organizations, although I found their documentation a bit daunting the last time I explored moving my domain there.

While there are several TCO analyses out there; grab one (or ping me and I’ll assist). Suffice to say: for energy (not) expended managing servers, cloud computing should be on the radar of all organizations.

Filed under Architecture, Cloud

← Older posts

Newer posts →