OK — I have a severe case of techno lust

Apple – MacBook Air

MacBook Air is nearly as thin as your index finge

Apple announced their new compact laptop that everyone anticipated. However it’s a lot smaller and more fully featured than I expected.

Please can I have one? Who do I have to murder?

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SaaS to conquer the world?

An presentation from Bob Worrall, CIO at Sun, on the the future of the IT dept predicts that significant in house application development and hosting is finished as we all integrate Software as a Service (Saas) offerings from various 3rd party vendors.

However, whilst we are seeing traction in this area, I have yet to see any significant architectural solution to handling the security and integrity of corporate and private data. Until that happens I can see that any significant adoption of SaaS across large enterprises will be a train wreck.

Wait for the first scandals as organisations and individuals lost control of their data.

Stephen Fry shows social networking as the same ‘ol, warmed over

Stephen Fry » Blog Archive » Social networking through the ages

For what is this much-trumpeted social networking but an escape back into that world of the closed online service of 15 or 20 years ago?

This was exteremly well timed. I have been thinking over the last 24 hours about shutting down my LinkedIn account. As I can be easily found using Google why do I need to maintain a separate profile?

However how can I keep my address book up to date?

Could I live with a compact laptop in Australia?

The introduction of smaller, cheaper, laptops such as the Eee PC and the Everx CloudBook make me wonder if I can adopt a more compact mobile lifestyle. I currently use a 15″ MacBook Pro, which is light for it’s power, but by the time you add in power supplies, security cables, VGA adaptor etc etc results in my having to carry around a backpack weighing far too much.

Could a 1kg machine with an extended battery life change all that?

The only way to answer that is to look at my requirements:

1. Access to work documents etc. when the computer is detached from the Cloud: Machines like the CloudBook are designed with he idea that the user will be attached to the Internet and do all their work through a web browser using services such as Google Docs. However there is no ubiquitous wireless access in Australia and I also fly a lot so I’ll need access to local office applications and files. However OpenOffice now does an excellent job of handling MS Office format documents so that would be fine when using a machine such a the CloudBook with has a higher capacity hard disk drive. The 4 to 8Gb limit on the Eee PC flash disks could be a problem (but see comment about USB drive below).
2. I use my computer for many hours a day — so I’m keen to have an ergonomic screen and keyboard. The small form factor of these machines works against me. I’d be keen to see if I can attach full sized screen and keyboard. Another option course is to have a full size machine for most and keep work on a large USB thumb drive for use when in the coffee shop with the compact, this also fixes the problem of having a small flash drive with limited capacity.
3. I need to run large programs such as Subversion, MySQL, Tomcat etc. That could be a problem… However it could be fixed by having a ‘proper’ laptop for such activities and making sure that I manage my work to take a smaller machine when I’m doing office work and communication. The problem would be fixed of course if we had pervasive wireless so that I can use a private server to hold my larger tools and development work.
4. A demonstration machine that will allow me to show presentations and run our Enterprise product. I don’t a smaller machine is going to have the legs to run that.

So can I justify what will probably be nearly A$1,000 for an office machine to take to the coffee shop? Probably not

So this is what The Long Tail buzz phrase means

The Long Tail – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

…describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of otherwise hard-to-find items at small volumes than of popular items at large volumes

I’m probabtly really behnd the times here compared to all you network savvy marketeers, but I was really enlightened by this Wikipedia article explaining one of the big web buzz phrases of the last few years. Whilst I had kinda guessed what it meant it was nice to have my understanding refined and thinking prodded in a new direction.

It’s just a pity that a lot of these e-tailers have not yet discovered the business opportunities outside the US (we have no NetFlix in Austrailia, many e-bay vendors will not ship out of US, etc etc). I have enjoyed using Amazon for books I could not get locally though.

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You can overdo the ‘Business Focused’ messaging

Solaris Ready Software Center – Featured Solaris Ready Software Partners by Solution Area: Software Development

Rogue Wave® HydraAgent, part of the Rogue Wave® Hydra Suite, is uniquely designed to address your performance challenges in order to facilitate business growth, decreased time to market, and improved customer experience.

For undersandable reasons todays product vendors are very concerned to present a business justification for what they sell rather than flogging “toys for the boys”.

However I think this example takes it too far — I couldn’t actually work out what this vendor was offering. Very tempting to click ‘next’ on the browser? I’m guessing that marketing droid did Commerce rather than IT…

(This was the total extend of vendor’s information on the Sun web page)

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Duh! Network security 101…

BBC NEWS | Business | Boeing 787 hit by security fears

Boeing has been ordered to ensure passengers on its new 787 Dreamliner jet cannot hack into the flight system and take control of the plane.

I wonder which idiot at Boeing didn’t ensure there was an air gap between the passenger and avionic networks on the new 787? My customers on the ground have been using such a simple approach for many, many years.

If I was being unprofessional and bitchy I might even suggest it must have have a been a Microsoft security consultant.

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Apply the 80/20 rule to online living

Alec the Geek

Goodbye to most of Web 2.0

My New Year resolution to cut out Web 2.0 cruft from my life is now happening. The motivation is two fold

1. To try and reclaim back the many hours that micro-blogging and social networks consume
2. Reduce the attack surface for identity thieves.

So far I have removed accounts on Orkut, Jaiku, Plaxo and Vox. I’m waiting to hear back from Dopplr on how to remove my account and I’ve removed as many applications from my Facebook(fb) profile as possible. Depending on Kate’s experience I’ll try and drop myspace as well.

I did de-activate my fb account as my first action, however within 24 hours I had to start using it again as it contained essential contact information and it’s just too hard to keep my local address book updated…

So I’m hoping that 80% of my needs will be meet by 20% of my previous site memberships

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Stumbled at the 1st hurdle of 2008

Alec the Geek

I have decided to start 2008 by cutting out the serious waste of time that is facebook. My first life hack of 2008, I hope there are many more

Well this morning I needed to get hold of someone and realised the only contact details I had were on facebook, so I re-activated my account — AND then I got sucked into playing Star Trek trivia for 30 mins. Sigh….

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Geeks are so cool we have pop videos

This guy is of course not that nerdy. Everyone knows that Kirk was the better starship captain!

Goodbye to most of Web 2.0

Re-evaluating Your Online Commitments | 43 Folders

Re-evaluating Your Online Commitments

After giving Facebook the flick yesterday, I have just stopped using last.fm, Wakoopa and Jaiku. Next I shall start trying to get fewer emails by unsubscribing as much as possible.

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2nd Lifehack for 2008

Now dropping Emacs in favour of TextWrangler in the belief that it’s simpler and easier to use for my limited needs.

So export SVN_EDITOR=/usr/bin/edit if using subversion as well, after installing the TextWrangler command line tools

Lifehack 101: Get rid of facebook

I have decided to start 2008 by cutting out the serious waste of time that is facebook. My first life hack of 2008, I hope there are many more