Bringing Closure

Leading From The Middle: Implementation Consulting

2008-09-05T22:08:00.003-04:00

Implementation consulting is often about arbitration. It's about being in the middle. It's about lobbying. It's about communication. And, ironically, it's about leadership.

Implementation consultants are not usually in top leadership positions within their companies. But by virtue of representing the supplier to the customer and representing the customer to the supplier, ICs are often in the thick of things when it comes to determining what works and what doesn't work, both from the customer perspective and the supplier perspective.

That's especially the case if the supplier is a SaaS (software as a service) vendor. In a SaaS environment, implementation consultants don't need to be as concerned about the hardware and software infrastructure or publishing of applications to the desktop as those outside the SaaS universe. Their concern is more about guiding customers in the proper use of the system, discovering gaps in business processes, relaying opportunities for service improvements back to the supplier, and keeping the deployment on time and in budget.

Use Cases and Use Scenarios

Successful implementation of SaaS solutions to customers depends on many things, one of which is having an arsenal of use cases available to describe the precise steps in accomplishing a task, whether those steps are part of the core functionality of the system or workarounds designed to accommodate gaps in the feature set.

I have mixed feelings about use cases. On the one hand, they're useful abstractions of what to do in specific situations. They detail precisely the how of getting specific tasks accomplished in a specific environment. But they aren't so good at the why. The reason why one might follow these precise series of steps is usually not documented in a typical use case.

This is where use scenarios come to the rescue. Here is where an implementation consultant can lead by example. Instead of abstractions, the use scenario employs a narrative giving the entire context from the customer perspective. There can be several scenarios for a particular use case depending on the actor involved, their motivations, time constraints, knowledge of the system, and other constraints. Clearly, use scenarios are more like screen plays, while use cases are more like "some assembly required" instructions for "do it yourself" retail products.

When the implementation consultant documents use scenarios, he/she is taking the lead in making the use case more useful to the customer as well as explaining to the supplier the full customer experience of the software. Leading by example in this situation is obviously very useful to both interest groups.

Scenario Exercises

Something else related to scenarios has landed on my radar screen recently. Business schools are starting to add another tool to the standard case studies used to teach business analysis. In an environment where foresight and agility are as critical success factors as the ability to analyze a market or campaign, scenario exercises may be just the ticket required to help SaaS suppliers further develop leadership potential in their employee ranks.

One example is the Compass Exercise mentioned by Paul Bracken in his excellent article, "Futurizing Business Education". Taking staff members through the north, south, east, and west compass points as symbolic representations of your superiors, your staff, your colleagues, and those with whom you work outside your company is just the start of the exercise. Then you intentionally encourage those present in this brainstorming type session to break out of standard North-South, East-West thinking patterns. For example, adding features to a SaaS offering is sometimes best accomplished by talking to your customers directly, encouraging them to talk about specific issues with other colleagues in your organization, then using that context to make your pitch to upper management for those features that you want in the next release. This is just one more example of "leading from the middle".

"Seeing the elephant" is another brainstorming scenario exercise in which the point is breaking down silos between departments. The idea is to assign people to break-out groups that examine a scenario from the perspective of a particular set of actors - investors, analysts, managers, executives, etc. Then when they reconvene with the larger group they make their pitch for that particular perspective. The object is to encourage participants to move outside their narrow departmental focus, to acknowledge other perspectives, and then to attempt to align those perspectives in achieving a corporate objective.

I have the good fortune to work in an organization that encourages leading from the middle. But even in the best of situations, it's smart to remind everyone about scenarios, to encourage agility and foresight, to tackle ideas and perspectives outside ordinary day-to-day duties. The great thing, as Paul Bracken argues, is that these skills can be taught.

A New Microsoft Approach to User Groups

2008-06-20T23:18:00.003-04:00

The Waterloo Wellington IT Professionals is getting geared up for the end-of-season community launch this coming Monday evening, hosted at Conestoga College. We'll be highlighting new features in seminal products like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and specific technologies like Hyper-V. We needed the larger venue provided by the college and an extra hour's time (starting at 6:00 pm, instead of 7:00 pm and continuing to 9:00 pm) to accommodate those registered for this event.

We might want to save a few moments in our announcements to give our user group community of IT professionals a "heads-up" on Microsoft will be supporting user groups in the future. Working cooperatively with Culminis, Microsoft will be establishing a volunteer-based organization similar in structure to INETA with regional advisory boards. In the first year of operation, board members will be appointed, but within that first year, expect to see board members elected by their regional user group communities.

The structural change and alignment of models with INETA is significant in itself. It means that Microsoft will be stepping up directly in the provision of services such as

event support
development of the user group community
delivery of content
recognition and reporting to/from user groups
support for newsletter publication

While the newly structured Culminis and continuing INETA will benefit from this reorganization, other user groups like PASS and those just forming that don't fit the mold of IT Pros or developers will now have potential support from Microsoft directly for their endeavours.

Personally, I think this is a win-win-win scenario for Microsoft, Culminis, and the user group community in general. Volunteer-based boards are adaptive and driven directly by the issues which surface from interaction with members of user groups. They tend to have their fingers on the pulse of the community and are responsive to their needs. They move quickly, usually democratically, and provide immediate opportunities for professional development and leadership.

I look forward to this new development and supportive structure.

Jerry Stiller Offered Me A Job

2008-06-15T09:10:00.004-04:00

Not really. It was all a dream...actually a kind of comedic nightmare, the kind that occurs after the nightly 4:30 am trip to the washroom.

I was asked to come to provide some IT help for a former employer after regular hours with my current employer. Being the helpful kind of IT guy that I am, I dutifully went into the building that resembled no building I have ever worked in before. Again, unlike any place I know of today, there was no security - no sign-in, no name tags, no being escorted to the data centre, no "least privilege" permission settings on a "need-to-know-only" basis. Nothing except, "Hi, Don. How are you? How's the new job going? Man, do we ever need your help with this antiquated system."

So, I head over to a stand-up terminal that is comprised of nothing other than a miniscule monochrome green screen - about 4" x 4" - and a glorified calculator entry pad that keeps slipping down a tilted desk, losing about 60% of the keystrokes I make.

People keep walking by, interrupting me continually with good natured "Hello, how are you", "How are your sons?", and "I bet you miss us, eh?". Eventually, after at least 30 minutes of farting around with the useless keypad, I've fixed the anomaly and am heading out. One person stops and asks if I used the command menu or the new shell to fix the legacy operating system (which will mean nothing to you unless you have used something like DOS in a prior life and old command-line screens). "No, that station's OS didn't have access." Clearly, I'm feeling frustrated and so glad that I don't have to handle issues like this anymore.

But as I get prepared to leave, Jerry Stiller calls me over to a sliding window. He is the company's accountant and acting HR manager and he wants to offer me a job.

Now, if you've ever watched Seinfeld or The King of Queen's, you'll know precisely the kind of character he presented in my dream. Slightly obnoxious, a bit of a mean streak, loud, inattentive, driven by his own demons, not really involved in anyone else's world. Comic, yet the stuff of nightmare encounters as well.

He hands me a one-page summary of the offer, scribbled out on a hand-written document summarizing the salary and "benefits". The salary is modest, but one of the benefits is a full tank of gas for my car each week. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was now driving a hybrid.

We argue about the terms of employment while other employees walk back and forth around us, absolutely no privacy, all the while Stiller becoming more and more agitated that I am actually not too impressed with the offer. Finally, he decides he's had enough of not being appreciated for his magnanimous offer, takes back the job offer, and hands me a certificate of appreciation for my past service at the company. The only problem is that the certificate is torn about half way down the page.

"Sorry, there was a problem with the printer and I didn't have time to fix it or print another copy." Half-hearted, inconsiderate, totally without meaningful intent...again, true to the character he often portrays in TV sitcoms.

I laugh, taking the certificate with me waiting to tell my wife about my job offer. That's when I wake up for the next trip to the washroom.

Information Overload - Our Evolutionary Legacy

2008-05-10T16:10:00.002-04:00

I helped a colleague with a minor programming issue this week. She wanted to zero-pad a list of hundreds of numbers, so I offered to do so with some Visual Basic for Applications code. During lunch break, I figured out a simple one-line VBA function that could be called in a range in Excel 2003 to do the dirty work that would have taken a long time to do manually. I was clearly pleased with the result.

She noticed the kick I got out of the task. As I thought later about the incident, it occurred to me that this was an example of a perennial motivation that led me to and keeps me in the IT field. Information technology is about dull or repetitive tasks that can be automated once one figures out the appropriate tool or procedures to solve the problem. True, defining the nature and scope of the problem is a critical first step, an exercise which can be incredibly frustrating. But once the problem definition is complete and brainstorming solutions begins, it is usually only a matter of time before one can look down in pride upon a newly minted tool or routine which successfully automates something which was either incredibly tedious or time-consuming before the exercise.

While not everyone gets enjoyment from information technology puzzles and solutions - that part may owe something to temperament and personal competencies - it appears that we are all wired in evolutionary biological terms to be curious, to seek out new information about our environment, and to get simple enjoyment out of solving a puzzle. Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist doing research at the University of Southern California in 2006, discovered that comprehension of a solution to a puzzle triggered a cascade of brain chemicals that have heroin-like properties, hence the "buzz" associated with "getting" it.

When we think about this in terms of evolutionary history, it becomes clear that the desire for a "fix" we get from the quest for information is only superceded by other, more elemental needs such as hunger, fear or sex. Writing this blog entry in the comfort and safety of my family room's recliner on my notebook computer after consuming a sandwich and munching on some cheese, pickles and crackers, while listening to the sounds of children playing in a neighbour's backyard and occasionally glimpsing the blossoms of fruit trees in my own backyard, it's fairly obvious that most of my more elemental needs have already been met. And while it is true that work can sometimes dredge up elemental needs like avoidance of discomfort, social status, and other stressors, most of the time, the knowledge worker like me gets his or her on-the-job enjoyment from successes in the quest for information.

So what's the problem?

There are really two problems which are so closely associated with one another as to be two sides of the same coin. One is the problem of information overload and the burnout accompanying continual exposure to overload. The other is the necessity of separating noise and meaning in the content we actually consume. But the stress of the latter occurs mainly because of overload. Both noise and overload are growing exponentially, especially for information technology professionals, so if we don't get a handle on the problem, burnout is not only likely, it's inevitable.

The evolutionary adaptations which have worked for us in the past no longer work. In the past, when information needs were less frequent and when the dangers of overload were minimal, being curious about the solution to a problem meant that we found an survival advantage, first over other species, then over other groups and individuals. In simpler times, the colloquial saying "knowledge is power" rang true. When confronted with an information problem, we sought further information to combat our knowledge deficit.

There was always the danger of misinformation or noise in the environment (especially if other people were involved and trying to mislead or misdirect us to their own advantage), but nothing nearly as frequent or voluminous as what we confront today with our notebook computers, the Internet, RSS feeds to our news readers, email, text messaging, cell phones, iPods, cable television and the constant bombardment of advertising in virtually all forms of media.

You see, in evolutionary terms, the inference engine which is the human brain, recognizes patterns and draws inferences quickly, very quickly. But when we are bombarded by too much "noise", when we actively seek out more information that just might be relevant to the problem at hand, and when we can no longer separate meaning from noise and multiple sources - well, it's like drowning. The stress becomes overwhelming.

What we need is a new evolutionary adaptation to deal with "noise", overload, and massive amounts of information. More won't work. Less information, saying "enough is enough", garnering time for reflection and developing patience may now be more important to our success than the techniques upon which we have relied in the past.

What this means in practical terms is learning to say "No". It's learning to relax, taking breaks, spending time on being quiet and alone, refusing to be seduced by each new and "potentially" useful source of information.

It will probably mean taking some risks with focus, developing criteria for separating distractions from useful and trusted information sources, spending more time on developing resources and then ignoring the rest, and relying more frequently on a few "gurus". Instead of opting for plugging in and turning on to email, text messaging, portable entertainment devices and even newspapers and news magazines, we may have to learn to turn them off, to find hobbies, to get appropriate rest, downtime, to eat good food and do our exercises without always watching TV or listening to podcasts.

These new strategies may seem old school to some, but the research is becoming fairly clear that our inbred desire for more information can become counter-productive. And despite what so many of the advertisers tell us these days, "less isn't more; more is more" is just plain wrong. It might have been true once, but it isn't true anymore.

Heroes Happen {everywhere}

2008-04-06T08:16:00.003-04:00

Two significant events happened this week which impacted me directly in my chosen field of information technology. One was the CIPS and ICTC Heroes Happen Here Community Connection Event co-sponsored with Microsoft at Conestoga College on Wednesday evening (2-Apr-2008). The other was receiving news that I had been awarded Microsoft's MVP designation in the category of Windows Server Customer Experience for 2008 (my MVP profile is located here).

Events like this have certain prerequisites, one of which is vendor representation and sponsorship. It couldn't really be otherwise. In fact, without Microsoft's involvement, events like this would be far more difficult to organize and to attract attendees. One obvious reason is the swag. You can depend on getting information, sample software, pens, booklets, thumb drives and other assorted goodies at virtually every event. You may not end up using them, but the bag of "stuff" still is an attractor. And some lucky people are always rewarded with door prizes (assuming the event is not too large to make door prizes unmanageable).

But the other key to events having vendor sponsorship may not be as readily noticed but is even more significant - networking with other IT professionals. In the Waterloo Region, for example, information technology professionals number in the thousands. But because we tend to be spread out over thousands of organizations as well, there is a need to see and hear what others are doing and thinking with the same hardware, software, services and architecture. These networking opportunities can either confirm your current practice, or, as is so often the case, open your eyes to other ways of doing things. And, of course, the original attractor in this case is the tools and technology offered by the sponsoring vendor. That's the initial draw, followed by the opportunity to network.

This event had the moniker (promoted throughout similar events in North America and elsewhere) of Heroes Happen {Here}. With IT attracting fewer students out of high school into computer science, systems engineering, and programming in universities and colleges across North America (a legacy, probably, of the Dot Com bust), recognizing and celebrating the contributions of IT professionals becomes even more important. It's true that computer technology is pervasive and that virtually all professions now depend on IT as a commodity (which might also help explain why students are less inclined to view IT as a career choice; after all, everyone has to be knowledgeable to some extent about IT just to get the job done). But the IT men and women in the trenches still deserve recognition.

With IT seen as a commodity by many, recognition outside your place of employment might be critical to your self-esteem. If you're involved in a company where IT is seen as a strategic asset, as a means of establishing a competitive speed-to-market advantage, then your contribution may already be appreciated and recognized internally. But the general public is probably still mystified by what you do and why it is important. Thus, recognition and awards do matter.

And so it was with real pride that I received the Microsoft MVP designation this week. At the same time, events like the one I attended this week and the experience of everyday life in a superb IT organization make me continually aware of just how many heroes there are out there, labouring away and achieving remarkable things, most of the time without the full recognition they deserve. And so I raise my glass both to those, like Microsoft, advancing the profile of IT professionals and to the unsung heroes in the trenches making life and work better {everywhere}.

A Proud Moment - MVP: Windows Server Customer Experience

2008-04-01T22:21:00.002-04:00

I received notice today that I have been awarded a Microsoft MVP in the category of Windows Server Customer Experience. Never having been an MVP before, I'm not exactly sure what to expect, but right now it's just great to have the recognition that some of what I have done to build the IT Pro community in the region of Waterloo has been appreciated. I am especially grateful for the nomination and support of my good friend, colleague, and co-founder of the Waterloo-Wellington IT Professional user group in 2005, Ruth Morton, IT Pro Advisor at Microsoft Canada. If she didn't work for Microsoft, then she would be my first choice as an MVP nominee.

It's funny actually. Now that I've been officially notified, the first thought that comes to mind is "OK, so how can I continue to earn this." The most obvious answer to that question is to continue serving the IT pro community regionally. WWITPRO continues to have excellent leadership with Peter Piluk now serving as President, along with a group of directors who have all served our community for over two years together in our official capacity as executive members.

But there are other opportunities available now as well. Microsoft Canada always needs the participation and advice of IT professionals involved in their respective regional communities, and our local charitable organizations are thrilled to have us working with them. Groups like the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, for instance, will be working with us directly in providing services to those organizations and individuals both contributing to and receiving services from the food bank.

I'll continue with my writing, speaking and professional activities, of course, but I am also looking forward to developing new areas of technical expertise, one of which is to continue learning about and using PowerShell. Building knowledge of SQL Server and C# will also be useful to my employer and to my colleagues within the WWITPRO community. So, I look forward to the next year as a Microsoft MVP - an excellent challenge, honour, and opportunity. This will be a very good year.

VBA and VSTO

2008-03-15T13:17:00.003-04:00

In my capacity as a custom application developer, I've used Visual Basic for Applications ever since 1997. That was the year that Microsoft released the developer edition which introduced VBA into all the Office applications except Outlook which retained VBScript. Prior to that, I had done my coding in Microsoft Access in a macro language called Access Basic, a subset of Visual Basic 2.0's core syntax.

By 2004, I was doing more systems integration and IT management work and found myself doing far less coding in VBA than previously. But now, four years later, I find myself occasionally thrust back into the world of VBA, especially its incarnation in the Office 2003 product line.

Despite the interim in which I did little VBA development, I find the world of VBA comfortable and as productive an environment now as I did then. Once you understand the "basics" of VBA (not too tough, I have to admit), it's really only the object models in the various Office applications that you need to master to become productive in that environment. In other words, moving from Access 2003 to Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Visio 2003, Word 2003, and Excel 2003 isn't really that big a deal.

But things have changed in technology and in the resources available to Office developers since 2003, even though many corporations are still quite comfortable sticking with Office 2003 for general productivity applications.

Some of the gurus I used to read have moved on, writing less about VBA and more about Visual Studio, .NET, and Visual Studio for Office Tools (VSTO). They've moved on for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that their audience is now developing Office applications not just for departments and small vertical markets but for enterprises and global markets.

When an Office developer moves from a departmental application to an enterprise application, one of the first things they usually face is a request to integrate their Office applications with back-end systems such as SQL Server, SAP, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and other assorted server products. When another Office developer moves from small, localized vertical markets to global markets, sometimes the driving force for change is that the market now relies upon web services; in other words, the front-end Office applications are now required to interface with back-end data repositories which deliver massive quantities of data by means of web services, either through the Internet directly or simply through corporate intranets. In both cases - whether its the move from departmental to enterprise applications development, or the move from local verticals to global verticals - the Office application developer is faced with a toolset that no longer measures up to more sophisticated demands.

Enter Visual Studio and Visual Studio Tools for Office (and possibly Visual Studio Tools for Applications).

But herein lies the rub. Yes, sophisticated users are making demands which require new skills sets and integration with more complex back-end services. But almost as many times, requests for Office applications do not involve anything more complex than automating the good old productivity applications that work as well today as they did in 2003. So where does the forward thinking Office application developer spend time? Learning VSTO and .NET programming languages? Or leveraging existing skills and 3rd-party tools which still may meet up to 80% of the market demand?

I know, the quandary isn't new. Whenever new technologies surface, application developers have to decide if and possibly when to migrate.

But now that I function primarily as an implementation consultant, time available for learning new technology is even more limited than ever, meaning that I can't afford to make mistakes about which technology learning paths to follow. So it is with some interest that I came across this interview with Bill Gates at the Office Developers Conference on 12-Feb-2008.

Gates indicated Microsoft's commitment to Office, to Access (including moving features in the next release to SharePoint Server) as well as Visual Studio. He claims to want to do some of his own coding in the area of health applications, but obviously most of his input with Microsoft development teams these days is in the realm of directing architecture initiatives. In other words, there isn't much in the interview which helps a poor implementation consultant like me figure out where to invest his time.

In another video in the spring of 2007 at Software 2007 in Santa Clara, Steve Ballmer talked about integrating Office with back-end services, jokingly suggesting that, as a salesman, PowerPoint was the only mission-critical tool. What's compelling about this video, though, is that it demonstrates convincingly how back-end servers like SharePoint Server 2007 and Communications Server 2007 can be packaged in Office 2007 Office Business Applications (OBA) in a way that obviously improves overall team collaboration and productivity. In that context, it's clear that OBA developers need to use the new tools.

But, again, those in such situations may still be in a substantial minority. So I'm not convinced just yet.

Going even further back in time, Microsoft has stated that VBA will be around for quite some time. It remains in Office 2007 products and will continue to be available in all future 32-bit Office releases. That last part is critical. VBA will not be supported by Microsoft in the 64-bit world except as 32-bit executables. That might not be a big deal for Office applications insofar as allowing VBA-enabled macros and code to survive. What this means for people like me is that I can't base my decision about technology on the forthcoming demise of VBA - that ain't gonna happen for some time yet.

If there is to be some compelling reason for abandoning VBA for Office applications in the short term, it will have to be because of customer demand for features which I can't provide in VBA and/or because of compelling development environments. I still need to be convinced.

Finally, even with the significant strides in VSTO support for Office applications in Office 2007, there is still one huge gap - Access. Maybe it's because VSTO tends to work mainly with back-end data sources or maybe it's because Access developers can still create very robust departmental applications with VBA - whatever the reason, we'll have to wait for yet another release before VSTO will include support for Access.

I guess what this means for me personally, and for many other Office developers, is that we can take our time polishing VBA skills for maybe as long as a couple more years or more, while starting to learn some .NET, Visual Studio and VSTO/VSTA technology as time permits and as markets dictate.

We Will Change

2008-03-08T00:01:00.002-05:00

"We are not as divided as our politics would suggest." - Barack Obama

RIM's Jim Balsillie announced recently a collaboration with Dipdive's Will.i.am to offer social networking and multimedia on the Blackberry.

Well, that's cool, to be sure. As an IT professional deeply involved in delivering "Software as a Service" (SaaS), I'm naturally an advocate of web services as one way to make our professional life better, more effective, more efficient. But I'm also a consumer who uses Facebook and Flickr, a boomer with both a Blackberry and Windows Mobile device on my belt, a regular blogger, a video iPod owner and weekly customer of iTunes, Amazon and other sites which enhance the quality of my personal education and entertainment.

I live in the Region of Waterloo, the home of the Perimeter Institute and the Institute for Quantum Computing. I am also a cancer survivor, having received my treatment at the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre's Balsillie Family Building. Obviously, I have benefited personally and seen my community benefit from the largesse of the pioneers of RIM...and I am truly grateful.

So when I hear about a venture like this, there are many reasons for me to pay attention, not the least of which is excitement about the actual content. I can't say that I've been to Dipdive before today. But when I paid my visit to see who Balsillie intended to collaborate with, I have to say that I was impressed with the YesICanSong.com's multimedia presentation. And I found myself inspired and identifying with someone whose music never really did anything for me. In fact, I couldn't even have told you that I knew much of anything about the Black Eyed Peas. But when I read Will.i.am's comments about Barack Obama's New Hampshire primary speech and reflected back on the inspiration of Martin Luther King, I realized just how much power and possibility there is in the multimedia site.

And I realized something...

Experience is important. But even more important is our vision of the future. We grasp, we hope, we dream, we change. Any technology, anyone, anything which contributes to making our dreams of a better world a reality deserves more of our energy and attention than the fears, the frustrations arising from our personal experiences.

After all, we will change.

Covarity signs with HSBC

2008-02-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

Today was a banner day for Covarity. A press release yesterday and a news article in the KW Record today announced the signing of a major deal with HSBC Bank Canada for the implementation of Covarity's software for managing margin-based commercial loans. There is more to celebrate on the horizon, but that will have to wait for another day.

Blogging and Getting Things Done

2008-02-12T07:06:00.001-05:00

I don't know where I heard it; it was probably on one of those silly radio talk show segments on The Hawk (103.9) out of Woodstock. They were chatting about Facebook, making inane, obvious remarks. But one stood out for me. Somebody said that most people on Facebook need to get a job, the implication being that those with jobs simply didn't have the time or energy to quiz their friends about child movie stars, poke them or send them idiotic videos from YouTube.

For whatever reason, it stuck. Maybe it was because I was actually a case in point. I've been using Facebook far less since taking on a new job. No time, no energy, no interest in quizzes, pokes, dumb videos, faux gifts, flowers, and "guess where I was last night" entries and summons. Not that I think Facebook is without merit. It's just less useful when you're fully engaged in - shall I say it? - the real world.

More recently, I've spent a little more non-work-related computer time on LinkedIn, a more business-oriented networking site. I imagine that many who use this network do so for job hunting. I'm not one of them, but it is useful to have just business connections and to explore the network for potentially useful introductions. It's useful even to re-connect with business acquaintances that you haven't seen for a few years. In general, it's wise not to let lines in your network die out.

But the truth is that whatever spare time I have these days is being managed more carefully and selectively. I'm using my HTC 6800, for example, to read books in Microsoft Reader format, the most important of which is David Allen's Getting Things Done. In fact, being able to read a few pages while riding the elevator, taking a bio break, waiting in the car while doing errands with family members, waiting in long lines, even at half time while watching a Toronto Raptors basketball game...these are opportunities now to do something useful, something stealing time to play on Facebook doesn't accomplish.

In fact, if you've read David Allen's book, you'll recognize the importance of context. His recommendation is that your next action lists should be context-sensitive. In other words, when you have a few moments to do items on your lists, you shouldn't have to fumble about finding things that are appropriate given your physical context - with a phone, in the car, taking a flight, commuting on a train, at home, at work, with a colleague or family member or friend in a one-on-one meeting. When in those very specific contexts, your next action list should provide you only the to dos which match the context.

This little gem is becoming a keystone for my own management system. But it does mean that a context such as "@computer" means I'm looking at next action items that do not include "do stupid things on Facebook"! Instead, I find myself looking at a list on things that are truly important, things that will help me take the next step towards achieving a goal.

Now, if I'm at home and taking a look at my "@home" list of to do items, it's also highly unlikely that I'll be dealing with Facebook. But I may have highlighted an @home next action that includes something like "contact my sister about selling her home". In her case, the best way I can contact her and respect her time away from work is through Facebook messaging. That is useful.

Unfortunately, I haven't done much blogging recently on either this technical blog or my personal blog. But doing so is, arguably, a worthy use of spare time. So as thoughts about topics strike me during the day, I may just find myself adding an @home next action item of "blog about Getting Things Done" or "blog about Facebook nonsense" or even "blog about reading books with your HTC 6800". Who knows, I may even stoop to an @home entry of "blog about blogging" :)

Certainty is Overrated

2008-01-17T22:23:00.001-05:00

"Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance." - Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005, p.x.

"Could you make a pattern out of any of this? Stitch together the seeming randomness into something that had meaning? Is that what life was about, he wondered: trying to make that pattern, to have things make sense?" - Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay, 2007, p. 319.

As someone who has been involved with software implementation for many years, I am ashamed to admit that I am still surprised when projects don't proceed as planned. After all, a lot of very smart people are involved in software design, business analysis, project management and the actual implementation. But inevitably, stuff happens.

Sure, we put together risk management plans, we set milestones and work breakdown structures, we work on communication strategies, and we capture experiential knowledge. We do, in short, everything humanly possible to eliminate uncertainty and randomness. In hindsight, we almost magically recognize patterns that we should have anticipated or even recognized when they were happening...but we didn't.

In the quote from Ysabel, it is a fifteen-year-old wondering about the nature of life. We might inwardly smile and think the kid has a lot to learn. In the quote from Taleb's book, we recognize the wisdom of someone with plenty of experience.

So why the surprise? Why the shock when things don't work out as planned?

The simple answer is that the fifteen-year-old is always with us, no matter how old we get chronologically. No matter how much wisdom we accumulate, no matter how experienced we might become in the ways of the world, no matter how systematic we are in our methodological skepticism, randomness and uncertainty hardly ever become our companion.

I see this in myself all the time. I look for the patterns. I try to predict. I map out the typical and common pathways.

Yes, I am more aware than ever before about what I don't know, about what can't be known, and about the utility of uncertainty. But still...what the world wants is certainty. Even if it is overrated.

Donate unused computer time to charity

2008-01-06T09:41:00.001-05:00

The World Community Grid is a simple way for individuals to make a difference by donating unused time on their personal or business computers to charity, specifically to scientific research into health, environment, malaria, and AIDS research.

Why bother?

Think of this as a no-effort, no-cost way to provide the most advanced technology yet known to reduce scientific research that would otherwise take many years to complete to just a few months.

Only 5-10% of the available resources of standard notebook and desktop computers are used on a daily basis. Whenever someone leaves their computer for a few moments, attends a meeting, or otherwise leaves their computer turned on but not active with work is, in effect, a waste of valuable resources. The idea behind grid computing is not only to use some of that wasted time and resources but to coordinate those resources in tasks that go far beyond what the most advanced super computers can perform, simply by harnessing many simpler computers together.

How does it work?

Technically, all one has to do is register online with the World Community Grid, download and install a small "agent" software program on your computer, and then, well, nothing else. Whenever your computer is idle, the agent will request information on a specific project from the server, perform calculations, and then send data back to the server.

Is it safe?

The short answer to this question is Yes. The most recent agents use SSL for encrypted communications between the client and server.

How do I know what I've contributed?

If you are like me, you will want to see what your donation is actually doing. This is accomplished by opening up the front-end of the agent software on your system and then viewing the results. On my personal computer's Windows Vista operating system, the agent software is called BOINC for Windows (The World Community Grid doesn't write this software - grid computing can be used for many purposes; I've just chosen to highlight charitable research. BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). The BOINC client tells me the project and the tasks/applications underway, lists messages between client and server, provides overall statistics, and shows a graphic of overall disk usage.

The Point System

In the BOINC client - because it is a generic piece of grid computing software - you won't see the World Community Grid's point system. It is the point system that tells you what contributions you have made both as an individual and as a member of a specific team. Being a member of a team, such as Cancer Fighters, gives you that added emotional boost of seeing how a group of people can make a difference.

But to get your individual and team statistics, you'll have to use the task tab's link to My Grid which will then take you to the web site where you can see how many points you've generated, your ranking among everyone participating worldwide, and providing a link to your team's web site. There is also a link to your team statistics - my current team is the American Cancer Society's Cancer Fighters (although I will likely change this in the near future).

Will my computer's performance be affected?

The BOINC client allows the individual to create preferences for how their computer resources will be allocated, including, for example, whether or not to allow grid computing when on battery power for notebooks. There are specifications for when to start computing after the computer has been idle, day of week overrides, multiprocessor settings, switching between specific project applications, network connectivity options, even disk and memory usage constraints. The defaults generally do not affect performance. If you are concerned, though, you can always use the agent software to suspend or abort any task at any time.

Who are the current partners in Canada?

Apart from the host technology company, IBM, there are currently only 10 Canadian partner organizations. This is something I want to change...quickly. Here is a list of the Canadian partner organizations:

AIDS Committee of Toronto

Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal

York University

United OneHeart Foundation

UserFriendly.Org

Junior Achievement of Canada

aids.drugs.online.com

York Technology Association

Canadian Information Processing Society

Information Technology Association of Canada

Congratulations to these partner organizations - but we can do even better in Canada, can't we? Currently, Europe has, by far, the largest number of individual members donating resources.

Ironically, one of the most recent World Community Grid projects - Help Conquer Cancer - is headed by Igor Jurisica of the Ontario Cancer Institute (Princess Margaret Hospital and the University Health Network)). So joining the grid as either an individual member or as a partner will immediately benefit Canadian cancer research.

Partner obligations are simple:

post World Community Grid information and logo on your website

encourage individuals within your organization to join as members

create a team and install World Community Grid on a minimum of 10 computers

electronically accept the Trademark License Agreement

Are there any presentations available?

The following link provides a 2-minute video into how the technology works (it was produced in November 2004 and doesn't mention some of the newer projects).

Or, if you prefer a slide presentation about becoming a partner organization, you can see how it works here (last updated 17-Sep-2007).

If you like podcasts, listen to this overview of grid computing.

Here is an IBM PDF overview.

Finally, an interview with Dr. David Foran, a scientist with the Help Defeat Cancer project.

Unused computer processing may well constitute the single largest untapped resource available to humanity today. Let's leverage that resource wisely and charitably.

The Last Bastion of Analog - an idea re-"Kindle"d

2008-01-04T23:20:00.001-05:00

My wife and I are talking about downsizing - smaller accommodations, fewer "things", less clutter, minimal household responsibilities. But as soon as we get talking, I know the conversation is going to turn quickly to my library. You see, I love books and I own a lot of them. They are stacked everywhere in our house, in every room, on almost every table, on shelves, on and under pieces of furniture, beside the bed and recliners - you name a location and you'll find a book within reach. Yes, even the ubiquitous bathroom reader on top of the toilet tank in each of three bathrooms.

The book and the magazine are, if you think about it, perfectly designed devices. Unless the book is too heavy or awkward to hold for some other reason, the reader quickly finds himself immersed in the experience, not even noticing the device, something which can't be said about a lot of other devices I use daily. Whether it's a notebook computer, an iPod, a Smart Phone, a Blackberry, or a camera, it would be an exaggeration to say that the experience is immersive.

So when I made a commitment recently to my wife to reconsider my habit of buying and storing books everywhere in order to participate in our joint downsizing initiative, I had to wonder almost immediately whether I had made an unforgivable blunder. I began to reconsider my old Toshiba PDA which I had successfully used to read PDF and Microsoft Reader books until the unit died. Unfortunately, my newer Blackberry and do-almost-everything Windows Mobile 6 HTC 6800 device, and even my notebook computers, are not that great for reading immersively. And if I am truly honest, even my older Toshiba PDA didn't really qualify as a totally immersive experience either.

I've considered opting in to Safari for my addiction to IT and programming reading material, and, at a mere $40 per month, it seems to be a cost-effective alternative to buying $80 computer books at Chapters. But, I would need a notebook computer with me any time I wanted to steal a few moments to do some reading. Forget the bathroom, although there have been moments when I've been immersed in an episode of 24 when I've taken along my notebook instead of fetching the nearest bathroom reader book. Too much information...I know!

But this evening I've discovered a device which somehow bypassed this techophile and avid book reader until I opened an email from PCWorld.ca with reference to an online article entitled "The 25 Most Innovative Products of 2007" and read about Amazon's Kindle. Even though the EVDO-based wireless network is not yet available in Canada, and even though the available units were all bought up within a little over 5 hours when first released by Amazon, I'll be avidly waiting for Amazon to authorize shipments to Canada. After all, this could be the best way to have my cake and eat it too. Books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, even my MS Word-based business documents, plus an online store when the network is available in Canada - just about the most effective way to downsize a library without jeopardizing the experience of reading.

This might just be the way to breach the final bastion of the analog device!

My-iButton

2008-01-03T23:30:00.001-05:00

I love geeky electronic items. So today when I read about something called My-iButton on CBC.ca's Money Talks by columnist Jim Bray, I was intrigued. As Bray writes, My-iButton is a lapel tag that is programmable and offers a small video screen and speakers embedded in the "name tag". It's a rechargeable advertisement (about 8 hours worth before you need to recharge) that you could wear in a variety of scenarios.

My-iButton.com shows a number of typical scenarios where it might be useful: a waitress advertising the speciality of the day; a father showing off a photo of his children; cheerleaders promoting their sports team; well, you get the "picture".

Jim Bray obviously has mixed feelings about the device. Writing for the Post Chronicle on 17-Dec-2007, he wonders aloud whether it's just "Advertising OD". Quoting My-iButton's CEO Richard Quintana, Bray admits that the technology's impetus came from throw-away political campaign buttons, a kind of ephemeral collectible. Quintana wants to make these kinds of buttons recyclable and reusable. And, to be fair, on that level the device makes a lot of sense. If you attend trade shows as a promoter, if you are involved in a political campaign, if you have to wear a lanyard at conferences regularly, why not invest in something that you can adapt and reuse?

But Bray rightly wonders aloud whether the device will simply become another way to inflict poor taste and questionable causes on other people. Maybe. But T-shirts with slogans, buttons, bracelets, bumper stickers, and ads superimposed on hockey boards, football fields, and other sporting events isn't going away any time soon.

One example of a company promoting the advertising possibilities is XSCAPE. You can download and view their PowerPoint presentation here.

Another interesting alternative is a custom device mentioned in an article by Bob and Joy Schwabach, namely using a video iPod. Of course, the video iPod is a lot more expensive than an $80 My-iButton.

Personally, I can see this being useful for anyone doing trade shows or manning booths at conferences. WWITPRO, for instance, is often represented at user-group booths at Microsoft TechNet events. If we wore a device like this, and if they had not yet become a common device, it would be sure to attract attention and interest. But that's part of the problem. If you get in on the action quickly, you can capitalize on the fascination factor. But give it a few years when everyone is sporting personal advertising and the novelty will quickly fade.

2008 - Watching for the black swans

2007-12-31T22:00:00.001-05:00

It's New Year's Eve and I've just picked up one of the most popular and best reviewed non-fiction books of 2007 - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Spending a few moments reflecting on my own personal experience, it's clear that the author has twigged on to something very significant. Whether it's the rise of the World Wide Web (or to be more specific, HTML-based web pages) or Google, YouTube, Facebook or any other number of technology phenomena, nothing beforehand would have allowed an accurate prediction of their respective successes.

So, for 2008, as I finish this book and Taleb's earlier book (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets), I resolve to imagine the unpredictable, to anticipate the unexpected, and to be prepared for surprising opportunities. Yes, I will work on planning and risk management and improving my skills and knowledge about existing technology. But I will also look for anything but the sure thing, assured that the future is located somewhere in those black holes rather in the artificial light of the office cubicle.

I don't have any predictions for 2008, no prognostications - except to say that when I look back a year from now, I don't think it will be about the release of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, or even Visual Studio 2008. Something else will almost certainly have captured the imagination of IT professionals and developers. Well, maybe, maybe not. But insofar as IT professionals are tuned to the future of information technology, it won't be the obvious stuff that makes the year outstanding. It will be something that is now barely even on the radar.

I can hardly wait.

Newbie, Oldie, Freebie

2007-12-20T20:39:00.001-05:00

My new job is taking almost all my time these days. That's a good thing, I guess. But it's a little awkward for me having to ask so many questions about the environment, tools, procedures, policies, even names and job titles of people around me. That's to be expected, but I've operated for so many years from a position of expertise, knowledge, and the authority that brings that this kind of shift is a little bit unsettling. But that will change.

One of the things that I've noticed in the IT world is the respect for "older" IT professionals, something we were told wouldn't happen. We were told to expect that younger workers would displace everyone with "experience", but that simply hasn't happened. Sure, there are some areas towards which younger people tend to gravitate, but even then I've noticed an admiration and general respect for people still in the IT field with years of experience and the flexibility that implies.

There is absolutely nothing - not certification, not university or college training - nothing which trumps experience in depth and width.

But with a new job and new responsibilities, it's to be expected that I might back off blogging a bit. Still, when I got an offer from an excellent courseware company for a free course on blogging, I thought I'd take advantage. Simple-ology is the brainchild of Mark Joyner. I've looked at some of his material, but found that with a job search and then a new job, there simply wasn't enough spare time to do justice to his otherwise compelling courseware. But free! That's too much to ignore.

So you may just see me blogging about his free course.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Working with other IT professionals

2007-12-07T06:56:00.001-05:00

This week I started a new job as Implementation Consultant with Covarity, a company marketing a loans monitoring software service to financial institutions. On a personal level, it's a very exciting career change, part of which is the daily exposure to and working with other information technology professionals and developers.

Even though I've worked with teams for almost as long as I've been in the IT sector, I've not had the "luxury" of having immediate access to other IT pros and developers. True, I've been part of WWITPRO, the Waterloo Wellington Information Technology Professionals user group. But now, instead of just executive meetings and monthly public meetings to get my IT pro "fix", I can just lean over in my chair and reach several other IT professionals.

This is, thus far, an incredibly liberating experience. Because I'm part of a logical and functional team, I can now apply a laser-like focus while enjoying exposure to those with another set of responsibilities, all the while speaking the same language and having the same corporate objectives. And those other professionals, like me, come from different sectors where they have applied their considerable IT expertise. This means that casual conversations while grabbing a coffee or moving about the office often entail insights about the application of IT in areas I haven't touched before. And, I hope, the experience is mutual.

Sometimes it's just the little things that give me a jolt of excitement, such as learning a new software trick, tip, or technique in a sixty-second conversation over the baffle boards. "So, how do you do this?" - a kind of incidental, collegial learning environment. Now that I have it, I love it!

Having the aptitude and discipline to find it and fix it on your own is important. But having the resources of others who might have found it and fixed it already is oh so luxurious!

Beating the odds by mind mapping IT projects

2007-11-28T10:26:00.001-05:00

Monday night (26-Nov-2007), I delivered a presentation to IT professionals at the Waterloo Wellington Information Technology Professionals IT Forum event held at triOS College in downtown Kitchener. My presentation was a look at how to use mind mapping techniques to manage IT projects.

I've presented other talks to our group about mind mapping before, but this presentation focused on project management, especially on using MindJet's MindManager Pro v7.0 and the add-on Project Management JetPack to conduct project management without the headaches associated with a complete deployment and rollout of Microsoft Project and/or Project Server to the enterprise.

For many companies, Microsoft Project is overkill. More importantly, the time and energy required to deploy and train staff in the proper use of a full-blown Enterprise Project Management solution can sabotage project management initiatives before they're started. That's because everyone needs to understand how to use MS Project before team collaboration with the tool will be successful. For many, that's simply too big a hurdle to contemplate.

With mind mapping (especially MindManager Pro), only team leaders need to have familiarity with the tool - the viewer will be sufficient for everyone else on the project team. Even then, if you determine that you do need the resource and scheduling management tools in MS Project, you can readily include MS Project in the entire solution matrix, but only for project managers. In other words, deployment of both MindManager Pro and MS Project can be limited to project managers with everyone else using standard viewers and Microsoft Office productivity tools like MS Word and MS Excel.

But in addition to the deployment and training savings, using mind mapping techniques reaps rewards in productivity and team collaboration that I've not seen matched in any other software category. Download my presentation in PDF format for a full description of how this works.

If you decide to do that, you'll see an example of a new PowerPoint methodology I'm trying out called Beyond Bullet Points or BBP, something which I think will improve my presentation quality dramatically. The developer of BBP, Cliff Atkinson, also has his own blog and web site devoted to the methodology.

Reviewing the HTC 6800

2007-11-28T08:47:00.001-05:00

While attending the Security Education Conference in Toronto (SECTOR) last week, a colleague from Microsoft Canada, Ruth Morton, and I took some time out to do a video review of our cell phone/Pocket PC of choice these days, the HTC 6800 from Bell Mobility. Thanks to another Microsoft Canada IT Pro Advisor, Damir Bersinic, for getting those devices into our hands in the first place!

Ruth and I have never done a vlog before, so the experience was experimental, but ultimately successful, especially in having post-production work done by a Microsoft Canada intern, Majid Mirza.

Video: HTC 6800 Review

If you're anything like me, you may not like watching yourself in video. I certainly feel that way when I see this review. But, I think the message gets across anyway.

A lot of my IT pro colleagues use Blackberry devices, and I can certainly understand the appeal. But I've resisted, instead choosing Windows Mobile devices which give me the operating system that is closest to what I use with my notebook computer and whose Office Mobile applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) work almost exactly the same way on my mobile device as on my notebook computer.

The HTC 6800 doesn't disappoint in this regard, being one of the first Windows Mobile 6 devices available in Canada. By now, there are probably several more choices available, but the point is that for me the choice of operating system has always had priority over the hardware features. Having the newest Windows Mobile operating system also means that I have to upgrade my mobile productivity applications, but that's almost always a good thing anyway. My particular favorite add-on application is Pocket Informant 2007 which takes advantage of a desktop add-on I use regularly for Microsoft Outlook called Franklin Covey PlanPlus for Outlook v.5. In concert, these two add-on's provide extended features beyond what Outlook and Mobile Outlook provide, the most important of which are simplified project management and task prioritization. The management screens on both the desktop and Pocket PC platforms for both software packages are also superior to the default screens in Outlook.

With my new HTC 6800, I've got what amounts to a computer on my belt clip. All my projects, tasks, contacts (over 2500 now), email, Mobile Office files and productivity applications are now available to me wherever I might be. And having the QWERTY slide keyboard just makes it that much easier to take notes and update all those productivity applications. But the device also has more flash memory, a Wi-Fi/Cellular switch, a decent camera and camcorder and an incredibly rugged and reliable casing, along with a snug stylus holder, a great belt clip accessory and several other hardware accessories to round out the user experience.

Take a look at the vlog and let me know what you think about my and your device!

SecTor 2007 - Blue Christmas?

2007-11-21T13:15:00.001-05:00

I know a little about computer security, not a lot, but enough to be aware of where individuals and businesses are vulnerable. I've dealt with attacks and breaches, formed a response team, and been responsible for policies and procedures to mitigate risk. But when I go to a security education conference like this (http://www.sector.ca/), I realize that there is so much more to know and understand.

One session I attended this morning was all about Bluetooth vulnerabilities. The presenter was Dino Covotsos from TelSpace who traveled all the way from South Africa to be in attendance (if you want to see the PowerPoint presentation, you can view it here). One of the slides Dino used included video of hackers using Bluetooth technology to inject audio into the phone of an unsuspecting mark buying a coffee in a Starbucks Coffee shop so that when he asked for a coffee, there was an additional audio message asking the waitress for her phone number. Even more interesting was the use of Bluetooth technology to actually transfer funds from an account for the Chief Technology Officer of a bank. Yikes!

Most of us think that Bluetooth is simply a cool way to go wireless with our cell phones, or possibly to use a headset with our MP3 player, or to use a game controller for the Sony PlayStation. And to some degree that's right.

But hackers are able to do so much more including hijacking Bluetooth-enabled cell phones to make calls to 1-900 numbers, garnering hundreds of dollars an hour in a London public space. They are able to track the physical movements of individuals over a period of days in the Netherlands, thereby enabling profiling that is quite dangerous. They are able to capture bank account numbers, social insurance numbers, and entire phone books, SMS text messages, and an incredible amount of other personal information that most of us would be ashamed to find stolen so readily. And they are able to follow cars up to two miles away and listen in on all the conversations going on in that car.

Part of the problem is simply lack of education. But part is also owing to manufacturers using default PIN numbers like 0000 or 1234. Another part of the problem is that Bluetooth scanning devices can be built for about $750, something within the reach of almost everybody. Part of the problem is also the almost overwhelming desire for convenience. CBC.ca, for example, has a five-part series on cell phone technology this week, part of which deals with using cell phones instead of debit or credit cards.

All the parts of this jig-saw puzzle of Bluetooth technology mean that it will be an uphill battle working towards more security in the use of Bluetooth-enabled devices. In the meantime, I may simply turn off Bluetooth unless I have an immediate short-term need. And it may mean that I forego buying Bluetooth-enabled devices for family members this Christmas.

SecTor 2007 - Inside and Dangerous

2007-11-20T13:27:00.001-05:00

What is the greatest information system security threat facing companies today? According to a poll of information security managers, 87% of respondents say disgruntled employees are the worst threat they face. Ninety-two percent of actual attacks were motivated by revenge. Sixty-two percent of those attacks were planned in advance. Here's the kicker, though - 80% of those perpetrating attacks were under suspicion already within their organizations.

So why don't we hear about insider threats when talking about computer security.

Part of the answer to that question has to do with embarrassment. I mean should we expect to hear from Seagate directly that some of their hard drives were compromised and responsible for personal information being transferred to hackers in China? If you answered no, then you might be surprised to hear that Seagate did, in fact, 'fess up recently. Still, it's reasonable to assume that most privately held companies will not necessarily broadcast when insiders (or, in Seagate's case a subcontractor) are responsible for introducing vulnerabilities into their products or systems.

My own experience, limited as it is, would only partially confirm these lessons about insider threats. My viewpoint is simply that insider attacks happen far more frequently than most managers believe possible. Most are not particularly sophisticated. Most can be predicted at least to some extent. And most will never be reported publicly.

All of this from the first breakout session at SecTor at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, a session with Kevin Coleman of technolytics.

CBC.ca series on Going Mobile

2007-11-17T20:29:00.001-05:00

This should be very interesting. Beginning Monday, 19-Nov-2007, CBC.ca will be delivering a 5-day series on its technology pages about the impact and future of the humble cell phone. Here's what will be covered:

Day 1: Competition and confusion in the cell phone market place
Day 2: Wireless competition in Canada and using cell phones instead of debit/credit cards
Day 3: RIM, Google, and iPhone, the future, and social networking
Day 4: Wireless technology in the 3rd world and in the human body
Day 5: Landlines and cell phones, cyborgs, and spirituality

One of the messages to IT professionals - especially IT managers - is to watch out for Gen-Y innovations, one of which is the pervasive appeal and infiltration of mobile devices into the IT infrastructure. This series will claim "we ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Microsoft Virtualization Newsletter

2007-11-16T08:16:00.001-05:00

I recently published a two-part series on the IT Manager Connection blog about virtualization. The series dealt with the rationale and resources available for IT managers considering this technology. In the resources entry, I mentioned Microsoft's virtualization newsletter (If you wish to subscribe to this newsletter, you will need a Windows Live ID, a freely available credential providing easy access to MSN Messenger, MSN Hotmail, etc). This newsletter is slated to review technology news headlines and the benefits of virtualization, including customer success stories.

The November issue arrived in my Inbox yesterday afternoon. After reading this issue, I have to say that my enthusiasm for virtualization continues to grow on an almost daily basis.

In this issue, for example, we read about Microsoft's rationale for integrating its version of hypervisor virtualization into the core operating system for Windows Server 2008; we also get brief glimpses into both Windows Server 2008's Hyper-V technology and the current Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 products; we get an overview of Surgient's Virtual Labs software delivery process, of Digiturk's implementation of Virtual Machine Manager, and of Voca's implementation of SoftGrid application virtualization to multiple sites; finally, there is a section on Microsoft's virtualization resources, including a beta of Microsoft Application Virtualization (4.5) publicly available from Microsoft Connect, and a link to Tony Iams' webcast "Virtualization: Making the Move" (This webcast requires registration with InfoWorld Webcasts. The original webcast was broadcast on 24-Oct-2007).

Tony Iams, a VP and Senior Analyst with Ideas International, Inc., has a Camtasia Studio screencast presentation about their company's Virtualization Analysis Suite which any mid-sized to enterprise IT shop considering virtualization should review.

If you're thinking at all about virtualization, I highly recommend signing up for this free newsletter and using it as your jump-off point and monthly reminder to keep your finger on the pulse of the virtualization industry.

Previewing Microsoft's Unified Communications

2007-10-27T11:44:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I had the privilege of providing feedback on a "dry run" for the technical track for the forthcoming Unified Communications Launch 2007 tour for Microsoft Canada.

To say I am impressed with Microsoft and the technology as an IT pro and an IT manager would be an understatement. I have to add that both those perspectives - IT pro and IT manager - are distinct and provide very useful ways of providing context to the technical presentations. More about that in a moment.

So why am I impressed? Some of it is about the mechanics and dedication of the people involved. Having now been part of two separate "dry run" experiences, it is readily apparent to me just how committed Microsoft Canada is to these launch tours. Presenters are grilled not once, but twice, in preparation for the tour, the first time to deal with content and overall objectives of each session, the second dealing more with fine-tuning, vocabulary choice, emphasis and tone.

The critical comments of "dry run" audience members are direct, sometimes brutally so. But the overall tenor is constructive and always delivered within a collateral objective of team building and empowerment. From my Toastmasters background, I find this very refreshing and another indication of why the corporate culture of Microsoft Canada is so highly regarded (among the top 10 for 2006 in the Canadian Corporate Culture Study).

Because these tours are so highly technical in nature, it is also critical that bugs be found and eliminated, and that both presenter and supporting audio-visual staff members feel comfortable with the technical components of the presentation.

But I am also impressed with the target audience analysis done by IT pro advisors and product managers. They know who will be attending these events and are constantly rehearsing how target groups will react to aspects of the presentations and demos.

Still, what impresses me most - beyond the way Microsoft Canada handles these event preparations - is the suite of technologies exposed by the moniker Unified Communications. As Damir Bersinic mentioned in a recent Canadian IT professionals blog post, incorporating these technologies into the overall IT environment means that IT pros will have to stretch once again. Telco pros know a lot that we don't, but we will have to learn much of what they know and do daily in order to make unified communications a reality in our environments. For the upcoming tour, this means that IT pros like me will have to listen very carefully to some of the telecommunications technical vocabulary, take copious notes, and be prepared to research those areas with which we are uncomfortable. But we've done it before and we can do it again.

But IT pros will feel very comfortable once the software demonstrations begin. Once presenters show Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Live Meeting 2007 and the older Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 - not to mention the show stopping Microsoft RoundTable - IT pros will feel right at home. Telephony will seem like just another software service.

As an IT pro, I look at these enabling technologies and realize that although the infrastructural details are intimidating, our end users will get used to the experience of unified communications very quickly. Like so much else of what we do, if we do it right, our "customers" won't even notice. End users will simply get used to identity and presence indicators in their Office software applications; they'll get used to starting instant message threads, conference calls, video conferencing and sharing of key collaborative documents with a click of the mouse and maybe a drag-and-drop operation. In a few days, it will be standard fare with productivity improving substantially. Sure, there are a lot of technical details we will have to master, but end-user training won't require much additional work for us.

As an IT manager, I look at these technologies and see business benefits staring right back at me. It won't take much to deliver these benefits and return-on-investment messages to business managers. Unified communications is, as Bill Gates said in an interview at the San Francisco launch, "taking your phone calls and making them far simpler and far more effective." That's the message. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Whether you're an IT pro or an IT manager, make sure you get to one of these events.

Photosynth - a breath-taking glimpse into the future of photo viewing

2007-10-07T09:04:00.001-04:00

Thank you to Ruth Morton for a blog entry mentioning one of the most spectacular software developments occurring at Microsoft these days. If you go to Microsoft Live Labs to their Photosynth web site, be prepared to be amazed! In fact, take a few minutes right now and watch what Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Facebook, said was "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year." -available here).

Imagine all the world's photos synchronized and organized within a 3D interface that can cater to both those who prefer a slide-show automated demonstration and to those who prefer the self-directed, virtual game-world ambience. OK, so if imagining all the world's photos is a bit too grand, simply imagine your own photo collection tagged by similarities and organized according to the Photosynth model. Now you can launch your photo collection into a 3D space and navigate, zooming, re-organizing, panning, detailing, re-arranging the photos according to likeness, etc. In effect, you've completely renovated your 2D photo collections into a 3D virtual world with emergent characteristics greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Emergent characteristics of a Photosynth collection are something you have to experience directly to fully appreciate. Imagine, for instance, that you were able to assemble all the photographs of yourself for your entire lifetime. Then imagine tagging those photographs by subject, time, place, perhaps even mood. Then the photographs are processed within Photosynth into a single panorama whereby you can rearrange instantly the way you view the collection with all the attendant capabilities of zooming, panning, and moving around objects.

For a few seconds, you view your life chronologically; then you see a friend in one of the photos and you wonder, "what about my other friends at that time of my life?". So, as long as you've tagged images of friends as "friends", you can instantly rearrange the collection according to the similarity of the photographs to "friends". Or, perhaps you want to view family connections, or locations and events.

The possibilities are truly staggering. But again, you've got to experience this to appreciate the possibilities. If you have sufficient graphical capabilities on your computer, you can download and install the Photosynth trial and then view the online collections which include NASA, buildings of Great Britain, a South Korean palace under reconstruction, the Gary Faigin art studio, the Piazza San Marco in Venice, the Grassi Lakes in the Canadian Rockies, or the Piazza San Pietro in Rome. Truly spectacular!

An Evening of Essentials

2007-09-25T12:57:00.001-04:00

Last night we held the first meeting of the fall for the Waterloo Wellington IT Professionals user group (photos on Flickr). A crowd of about 40-50 attended the event hosted by our local TriOS college in downtown Kitchener, Ontario. Our speaker was Rodney Buike, an IT Pro Advisor with Microsoft Canada. His topic for the evening was Microsoft's System Center Essentials, a system administrator's toolkit in a single package for managing small- to medium-sized IT operations.

Rodney's an experienced presenter and the topic was a timely one, so when you add on a few door prizes, some pop and pizza, and comfortable chairs, you've got the formula for a very good IT evening.

As Rodney pointed out, whether you manage a network of 25 personal computers or one of 2,000 personal computers, the issues of management are pretty much the same. You need a handle on the hardware and software assets, the status of hard drives and services on the servers, the situation with service packs and updates, and notifications and alerts to help you deal with all these issue proactively.

Most of us in small IT shops depend upon a number of point solutions to get the job done. In my own case, asset management is accomplished with the help of an Excel spreadsheet. There is no automatic discovery of assets or of changes in assets, just a spreadsheet with information that may or may not be up to date.

Again, service packs and operating system updates are handled, in my case, by Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), although I still have to manage most of the desktops by hand if users aren't compliant in leaving their notebooks and desktop computers on at night. I also have to do a lot of weekend server upgrades since weekend shift work varies week to week, thereby making a scheduled automatic server upgrade impossible.

Monitoring of essential services is outsourced and seems to work reasonably well, but I would still like all these essential services in a single tool instead of the assembly of point solutions. Rodney's presentation on System Center Essentials gave me a sense of what's possible.

Hail Mary - Parallelism

2007-08-26T09:43:00.001-04:00

iTunes is so cool! Now, in addition to music, podcasts, movies, even PDFs, you can check out university courses and programs, some of which deal with information technology. This morning, I took in the first in a series of lectures from Stanford University entitled, "Computer Architecture is Back: The Berkeley View of Parallel Computing". This specific lecture was given by Dave Patterson in January of this year and is part of what Stanford calls their Computer Systems Colloquium, a series of 14 lectures in "movie" format, available free on iTunes. If you have the 60GB "video" iPod, like me, then you can download these lectures and view them while traveling on the train or plane (uh, forget the car, please, if you're doing the driving!). To get more information, simply head over to SoiT, Stanford on iTunes U at itunes.stanford.edu.

So, what about the lecture and what is the message for computing and information technology in a manufacturing environment?

Patterson's high-level message in this lecture is that everything is changing in computer architecture, that the conventional wisdom of doubling processing speed every 18 months is over, that both hardware and software design need to invest in parallelism, and that a multiplicity of perspectives in the computer industry is required to find solutions for the new predicaments we face. The message for IT in a manufacturing environment (at least a non-computer-related manufacturing environment) is that it looks like the near future will offer far less performance improvement than we might otherwise have hoped for assuming the conventional wisdom.

The metaphor Patterson used is the "Hail Mary", itself a metaphor in football for a desperate play in which the quarterback throws a long pass hoping that somehow somebody on his team will catch it and rescue the team in the end zone. In the computer industry, the same appears to be true. Everyone is betting the farm on parallel computing to solve problems like the power wall we read about daily in the computer press. The "hail Mary" part is that the industry itself doesn't seem to know who or how the pass will be caught. And if the industry doesn't know, how the hell are IT managers supposed to figure this out?

As the computer industry moves uniformly in this new direction, IT guys like me are trying to figure out the implications for designing our systems. Although Patterson tries to make it easier by talking about the "13 dwarfs" - the areas in which multiple disciplines see the future evolving - and the computing world "interest groups" (things like high-performance computing, machine learning, games, embedded systems, and databases) where the 13 dwarfs are mapped, guys like me may feel somewhat overwhelmed.

But I think viewing this material a second and possibly third time brings on the aha experience.

One take home is that programming will have to change dramatically in the next few years. No longer will performance improvements be relegated to hardware. Programmers and developers will have to figure out how to program for parallel processing (Patterson calls this the end of "La-Z-Boy Programming"). Programmers will also have to invest heavily in the psychology of programming, in other words understanding how people interface with computers and making adjustments to make those interfaces more appropriate.

Another take home is that IT managers will have to understand their environment and make changes necessary to find incremental improvements. We can't depend any longer on new servers providing us with huge performance dividends. For example, in a database-driven environment such as ERP systems, IT managers will have to push software vendors in the direction of optimizing database structures, algorithms, reporting tools, querying tools, and integration.

Yet another take home is that knowledge of virtualization will be critical for IT managers, especially as we realize that we need to deconstruct our bloated operating systems, adding only the functions and services necessary to meet a computing objective which is, in turn, linked to a business goal.

Dave Patterson says, "No one is building faster processors." So, given the end of Moore's Law for single-core processing and given the industry's "hail Mary" approach to parallelism, why should IT managers feel optimistic? I mean, after all, are we now relegated to incremental improvements and lobbying with database and ERP vendors?

Patterson admits that the future could be one of failure. But it might also be one in which 1000 cores could be manufactured on a single, economical chip. It might be one in which experts from multiple disciplines work together to design human-centric solutions. It might be one in which the open source programming movement transforms software development by fostering development of minimalist services and functions based on minimalist operating systems and made available to IT managers in a secure virtual package. In other words, there is reason for optimism.

View the lecture for more detail, and check out the innovative Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP).

Death and Digital Assets

2007-08-15T21:28:00.001-04:00

When my brother died in 2002, he left behind some interesting digital assets. They were mainly in the form of artwork he created in his spare time, but also included a personal web site and samples of graphics work he had done for a variety of companies. At the time, his employer's web site design was primarily the result of his creative work.

I now wonder where those assets are. It would be interesting, purely for nostalgic reasons as we get closer to the 5th anniversary of his untimely death, to look again at what he created. But I strongly suspect they have evaporated much like the web site we created as a memorial for him did when the company hosting the site went out of business (it was called wewillmissyou.com; thankfully, I kept backups of the finished memorial web site).

With my recent catastrophic loss of data, as well as my recent medical history, not to mention the approaching anniversary of my brother's death, I've been thinking about digital assets and what happens to them after death. Then today, as I unwrapped my copy of Smart Computing magazine, my eyes were drawn to an article entitled, "Death & Digital Data: What Happens To What You Leave Behind?". The gist of the article is that it's not always clear who owns personal data in an online world. Even the most obvious situations may require litigation to secure assets of a loved one who has died. The case of Lance Corporal Justin Ellworth is an example of an online email company - Yahoo - trying to prohibit the family from retrieving the young man's personal email.

In corporate settings, it's not only the death of an employee that can raise these issues. A simply resignation or layoff can be the occasion for a review of ownership issues, not to mention consideration of what is the humane thing to do. This is especially the case with knowledge workers with corporate notebook computers which act as a repository for both personal and company data. Smart phones, Blackberries, and Pocket PCs are also part of the picture. Even if a company is progressive, for example, and strongly affirms that employees should have the right to retrieve personal data from company assets, if the employee has died, who is responsible for reviewing and separating corporate from personal data, for storing the personal digital assets and getting them into the hands of heirs?

Part of the obvious solution is to backup data, but that can be difficult with online email, web sites, and blog hosts. In my own case, for example, I'm still trying to find and execute reasonable backup utilities to preserve online digital assets like my blog sites and my photo sites (HTTrack WebSite Copier looks promising; Adobe Acrobat Professional also includes a utility for web site downloads).

And then there's online email. What about your hotmail, gmail, Yahoo egroup correspondence, etc.? Not that we'll all be famous after we die, of course, but even the correspondence of the not-so-famous can be extremely useful to historians and cultural analysts, not to mention the families who wish to preserve as much as possible of a deceased loved one's correspondence.

This digital age of ours means not only that we have more assets that will survive us, but that we have to take greater care to preserve those assets for our loved ones.

Gadget Guy, Gadget Guy

2007-08-10T17:23:00.001-04:00

So, I have a bit of a reputation as a geek at work. That's not entirely a bad thing, I guess, for an IT Manager. Some of my colleagues poke good-natured fun at me (for the most part) wondering whether there is any more room on my belt for the next gadget to occupy. How will I ever get the flat screen monitor to hang from my belt?

But if there is a refrain that IT managers need to listen to regularly these days it's this - being a geek is OK, but you need to be much more than that. You also need to understand the business and to provide strong leadership. And not just any 'ole leadership will do; it has to spring from a clear understanding of business objectives and a coherent alignment of IT with those objectives.

That's sometimes hard for geeks to grasp. Yes, there will always be a role for a computer technology chief cook and bottle washer, but that's not really what IT management is all about these days. No matter how large or small the company we serve, no matter whether our business context is survival, maintenance, or market breakthrough, no matter how many servers, printers, scanners, pocket PCs, and firewalls we manage, no matter how large the staff - IT managers need to embrace the business and understand the value propositions of their business.

Yes, there are only so many hours in the day. And while it is obvious that you can never have enough knowledge of specific technologies that could benefit your company, it is more important that the technology you do manage be put in service of the goals and vision of the business itself. In other words, technology should always serve business, never the other way around.

If you are like me, the lone-wolf IT person in your organization, then the refrain may be something you know by heart. The real question becomes, "how do I do this?" It's different in every company, of course, and if I had the answer, then it's very likely I wouldn't be blogging about it. All I know for sure is that we need to talk about this, not only with other non-IT colleagues in our organizations, but with our peers and friends in our professional organizations.

For example, in our IT Pro users groups and information processing societies, it probably makes sense to balance the occasions when we show off our technical competence with times of vulnerability when we plead for help in understanding the larger business picture. Sure, iSCSI and SANs and turbo-charged WiFi will get the engines firing on all cylinders in a room full of geeks. But perhaps when we gather together, we need at least 50% of our time talking about how to manage business process re-engineering. What tools and techniques and skill sets do we need to become the business leaders that are needed in IT today? The gadgets can wait...

Vista Upgrade - Still at it

2007-07-18T12:05:00.001-04:00

Not as smooth as it should have been!

May I complain for a moment? I'm an IT manager, an IT professional. I've been a developer, an early adopter, a geek since 1983. Granted, not all that time has involved a lot of attention to operating system upgrades and deployment. But I'm no slouch either.

So, why the heck did upgrading from Windows XP Pro to Vista Ultimate cause me so many headaches?

Two reasons are stupid mistakes.

When upgrading and using the Windows Files and Setting Transfer wizard, always use the version of the operating system to which you are upgrading (I used the Windows XP Pro version instead).

When doing data backups, especially for a planned upgrade, always use at least two devices (I used one and then dropped the external hard drive; it is now at a hard drive data recovery shop being evaluated).

Yes, even a genius like me can still make stupid mistakes. Just ask my euchre partner.

I should have considered the migration from one operating system to another to be a special case. Members of our Microsoft certifications study group, for instance, mentioned how most of their experiences with FAST have been from one computer to another using the same operating system. But when migrating from one operating system to another, the general rule should be to initiative the transfer using the tools from the newer operating system. My mistake was thinking that I could use the FAST tool from XP. But, again in retrospect, I should probably have used the User State Migration Tool from Windows Vista, instead of the Files and Settings Transfer wizard, even though the MCDST textbook for supporting Windows XP desktops suggests otherwise (70-271, pp.2-21, 2-22 - although the context is always Windows XP Professional only in the instructions).

I thought I had enough backups. About 3 weeks earlier, I can copied My Documents and an archive folder to one external hard drive. Then, as I prepared for a weekend's work of upgrading, I used another external drive with their backup software to take three kinds of backup - a simple file copy, a synchronized folders version, and a typical backup to disk. But as I prepared to go a study group, the external hard drive fell out of my backpack onto the steel stairs behind me. Guess what? Neither I nor two different computer consultants were able to access the drive. Now files that I have used for the past 10 years or more are sitting on a single device at a Toronto-based hard drive data recovery specialist where they are evaluating how much money and time will be involved in retrieving those files.

So you could argue that I'm the author of my own misfortune. You could, but you won't, right?

Still, with the backups that I did have, I ran into problems that required further research, quite a bit of tweaking of both the server on our domain and my notebook's operating system. The biggest problem is roaming profiles with Windows Vista.

Vista has changed - one might even say simplified - the file structure of user profiles. But in doing so, if you use roaming profiles in your domain, you will very likely encounter the dreaded "Your user profile was not loaded correctly. You have been logged on with a temporary profile." error message. When you do a search, you'll inevitably get a lot of misleading suggestions about folder permissions problems on your server or membership problems in the Guests group either on your local machine or the domain. Those discussions won't help you.

Instead, go directly to the Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide MS Word document for Windows Vista, download it, and read through the 39-page set of instructions (pick it up here). It took me almost an entire afternoon to implement a portion of the recommendations, but at least I now have my roaming profile working again.

It shouldn't be this hard. I am curious what might have happened had I used the Windows Vista User State Migration tool. Would I still have had the roaming profile problem? Probably, but at least I wouldn't be chewing my nails wondering whether I'll ever have my files back. They would have been transferred to some kind of profile on my upgraded Vista machine. What was a 2-day job has become a 2-week job.

Time for another coffee...wait...wait...

The estimate for the data recovery has just arrived...

Instead of coffee, I think I need a scotch...or two!!!!

Technological Regression

2007-07-11T18:08:00.001-04:00

An IT manager's life is circumscribed by technology. Most days, he or she takes up a position in the spectrum of technology far closer to the technophiles than the technophobes. Mind you, there are times when the language expressed in the confines of my office definitely turns the air blue.

Yesterday, for example, after having painstakingly created backups for all my work and personal data from my notebook computer for the refresh of my system and upgrade to Windows Vista, I dropped my external hard drive. Today it's not working. My only other backup is incomplete and dates to 20 days earlier. Aaaargh!

Sometimes, the pen and a pad of paper looks very appealing.

But that would be regressive, wouldn't it? And regression is bad, bad, bad...isn't it? Still, I find myself thinking about technological regression and how and why it occurs, because occur it does.

I've just finished reading a massive and highly entertaining novel by Stephen Baxter called Evolution: A Novel. And because I never read one book at a time, I am 3/4's of the way through Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. Neither book is about information technology in the early part of the 21st century. Instead the scope is about global history for the past 13,000 years for the latter, and the entire history of life on earth for the former. In both cases, technological regression not only happens, but is virtually inevitable.

It seems that human populations in isolation (Tasmania since about 10,000 years ago until 1642) not only often fail to develop new technology at all, but often lose what little technology they had. In fact, population densities of several hundred are almost guaranteed to sink back into a pre-technological backwater. Even several thousand is no guarantee that a social unit will grow beyond hunting and gathering. Environmental factors play a huge role in whether or not societies advance technologically.

Both my novel and non-fiction reading recently have been characterized by themes of technology, evolution, social development, counterfactual history (a kind of what-if analysis), and broad, imaginative rethinking of our place in the universe. And I am humbled. But not just from reading.

My personal life for the past 20 months has been outlined in the shadow of medical technology - a diagnosis of colorectal cancer, followed by MRI's, CT scans, radiation treatment, surgery, post-surgical complications and hospitalization, chemotherapy, and regular follow-ups with oncologists. During that personal struggle, it has been easy to slip into a "why-me?" perspective and a narrowing of concern to the here-and-now. But when I break out of the stupor and think about the the long-term perspective and my place in it, I quickly recognize that the technology I use, the technology that is used for preserving my health, and the technology meant to improve our lives generally is a precarious thing at best. There are no guarantees. And here I'm not thinking simply about disaster recovery or contingency planning. I'm thinking about environmental or man-made catastrophes which undercut the very foundations of our science- and technology-driven society.

Any serious loss of electrical power, for example, and there goes information technology out the window. Sure battery backup will help for a few days, but then your computers, smart phones, and Pocket PCs will be useless. That same loss of power would mean that much of medical technology would be useless, that transportation and production of pharmaceuticals and many food products would cease within a matter of weeks. In fact much of what we take for granted as integral parts of civilization would disappear within as little as one orbit around the sun.

Of course, we can't live our lives in constant fear of societal and technological collapse, but even spending a few hours thinking about the possibilities can be a humbling counterpoint to the hubris we display with all our gadgets and always-on innovations. And occasionally, such reflection might even mean that we choose to forego "best of breed" and "best practices" objectives which are often the result of technological momentum only. Sometimes, with sober second thought, low tech and no tech is the way to go.

News Brief - Access 2007 Developer Extensions Now Available

2007-06-26T07:13:00.001-04:00

If you've been waiting (and waiting) for Microsoft to provide a way to package and deploy solutions you've developed for Microsoft Access 2007, then the wait is now officially over. According to Eric Rucker, one of the bloggers/developers at Microsoft working on future versions of the perennial developer favorite, the developer extensions and runtime version are available as of 25-Jun-2007.

If you don't need to read about it directly, then here are the links for the downloads:

Access Developer Extensions

Access Runtime

Another resource worth considering is MSMVPS.COM: The Ultimate Destination for Blogs by Current and Former Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals. Tony Toews was the first off the mark to comment on the release (although the problem he reported with one link not working seems already to have been resolved).

A few other bloggers noting this event:

Blake Handler: The Road To Know Where

Clint Covington: Software Design, Microsoft Office Access

Alex Dybenko: Alex & Access

"AccessJunkie" of the MDBMakers.com (A Microsoft Access Developers Help Group)

So, it's time for me to gear up and determine once and for all whether I'll continue to develop in Access 2007. I've been having some doubts...until I downloaded and installed Office 2007, saw the new interface, and picked up my copy of Access 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference. At a wrist-bending 1152 pages, this hefty tome with 4 major Access authors contributing sparked my interest once again. Clearly, the new product offers more than I anticipated, despite some of the fall off among Access MVPs over the past few years.

Expect to see a few more entries on this blog about Access 2007 in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Access, "Office 2007", "Access Developer Extensions"

EnergizeIT Recap

2007-06-17T12:03:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's EnergizeIT event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is over, and now the reflection and review begins. It's unusual for IT professionals to commit a Saturday to a vendor-sponsored event like this, but evidently 3,000 other programmers, IT managers, and fellow geeks thought registering for this particular Microsoft event was worthwhile. From our own regional IT professional user group (Waterloo Wellington IT Professional User Group - WWITPRO), there were at least 7 people, although in such a large crowd, there were probably more we didn't see.

Successes

Overall, the event was a spectacular success. The facilities at the MTCC are world-class. The keynote presentations and break-out sessions were all very well organized. In fact, the PowerPoint slide decks are already available online and will soon be followed by streaming video of the keynote presentations (As an aside, the SharePoint site where Microsoft is coordinating all the materials and information about the event is an example of how appropriate technology enriches and extends the experience of a single-day event like this. Thanks to the Toronto SharePoint User Group.)

Innovations

In another first, bloggers could do their reviews of the event in real-time, courtesy of free Wi-Fi connections. Photographers could post photographs immediately to Flickr and tag them with EnergizeIT and see the results on the large screens in breaks between sessions. Very hi-tech, very cool, very appropriate. Kudos to Microsoft and their partners for enabling this kind of connectivity and communications during the event. (Note: some of my photos of the Toronto skyline as viewed from the Holiday Inn on King Street as well as a couple other EnergizeIT photos are here - including one of some of us WWITPRO members with Phil Sorgen, President of Microsoft Canada.)

There were a couple other innovations at the event that merit special comment and congratulations. T-Shirts for geeks (and tiny T-shirts for future geeks) were sold with all the money going directly to a charity. There were attempts to deal with environmental challenges through reducing power consumption (see http://www.bullfrogpower.ca/) and an admittedly symbolic innovation of having evaluations of the event done via online forms. I was also impressed with the wide-screen monitors placed outside each breakout session for those arriving late or who were unsure which session to attend. Great idea!

Cautions

I would recommend more tangible environmental initiatives in the future, including far less vendor paper and brochures in our goody bags. I know that's what sponsors want, but how much of that material gets read before it's tossed in the garbage? I'd far rather a perpetual location like the Sharepoint site with vendor ads than having to carry that stuff around all day.

Hands-on sessions can be a mixed bag. Personally, unless the user has a familiarity already with the broad concepts and layout of the software being demonstrated, there isn't much to be gained from doing a set of exercises. The context is everything. Without that, it's mindless, numbing, and futile.

Thank you's

Thanks to all the TechNet, User Experience, and Developer advisor and product managers for doing this, with special thanks to the support staff who make it all run so smoothly. Thank you to Microsoft Canada for hosting an event like this. You rock, Microsoft! Special thanks to Ruth Morton, the newest IT Pro Advisor for all her help to the WWITPRO executive.

Breakfast with Phil Sorgen, President of Microsoft Canada
Originally uploaded by rtfax

Technorati Tags: EnergizeIT, WWITPRO

EnergizeIT Underway

2007-06-16T21:12:00.001-04:00

EnergizeIT is underway with a flourish and a flurry of T-shirt tossing, high-profile keynote speakers, a great facility, and a breakfast with Phil Sorgen, President of Microsoft Canada. These events are improving each year, with more IT pros attending (over 3,000 this year) than ever.

We have Wi-Fi for onsite blogging, hands-on labs, various streams, vendor exhibits and an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation. As they say, 'get your geek on.'

Technorati Tags: EnergizeIT

Being an IT Influencer

2007-06-15T23:40:00.001-04:00

Technorati Tags: EnergizeIT, Psycho-Geometrics, "Windows Home Server", "IT influencer", "IT advocate", "TechNet Connected Summit"

Today, I had the incredible opportunity to be involved in an event hosted by Microsoft Canada called the TechNet Connected Summit. It was an invitation-only event in which selected IT professionals from across Canada met with Microsoft Canada IT Pro Advisors, product managers, and technology enthusiasts for a day of non-technical learning, discussion, workshops, and fun.

We learned about initiatives like the Community Connection Framework, Psycho-Geometrics, Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Home Server, technical presentation do's and don'ts, how to win at X-Box 360's Forza, and what product managers actually do for a living. We connected with other user-group executives and IT professionals representing a broad range of interests, levels of expertise, regions, and technology specialties. And all of this in preparation for Saturday's EnergizeIT event.

I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the moniker IT influencer. After all, it seems like just yesterday that I became an IT manager, although it is true that I've been in the computer technology field ever since IBM first released a personal computer in the early 1980s.

One of the alternative names used to describe who we are and what we do today was IT advocate. That makes me slightly more comfortable. It is, in fact, what I tend to do at Microsoft events, at user-group meetings, in my blog and other online activities, and, of course, in my daily work with users and managers at Pano Cap Canada. I seem always to be advocating technology solutions to users, to advocate on behalf of small business to associations and technology vendors, and to advocate use of advanced technology in general in enhancing work and play.

Good things are on the horizon because of events like that hosted by Microsoft today and the relationships being established between IT professionals across Canada. I have a renewed sense of optimism and excitement which will, I'm sure, only be heightened tomorrow when hundreds more of us gather to get our geek on.

Scoble and Andreessen on Facebook

2007-06-14T16:50:00.001-04:00

Blogging got me into this world of social networking and Web 2.0. And it was Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book, Naked Conversations, that convinced me blogging was a worthwhile endeavor. So, it shouldn't be surprising that those two and other bloggers are influencing me now as I entertain another phenomenon. Facebook has convinced me that we are on the vanguard of something really big, something far larger than blogging.

Facebook is poised, I think, to revolutionize how we use the Internet. One of the reasons I understood this intuitively was by the simplest of measures - how often in a week was I prepared to navigate to Facebook and possibly even update my profile, add an application, visit friends, post messages, or simply browse photo albums and events? Facebook proved its value within a couple days' use. I have been, almost without exception, returning to Facebook every day since I registered.

Then, I happened upon a video of the F8 launch keynote presentation from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder. Watching that video, I began to realize how quickly Facebook had expanded its audience base to included old guys like me. Within a couple more days, I was reading about Facebook in the local newspaper. Within two weeks, 50 friends had accepted my invitation to join my friends list or had found me and extended the invitation to me. Just today, I began advertising events for our regional IT professional user group meetings on Facebook and extending invitations to IT friends within driving distance.

Other people seem to share my sense of excitement and anticipation. Robert Scoble, for example, pointed yesterday to one of the hottest Facebook applications, iLike, which is reportedly signing up 300,000 people per day. Marc Andreessen, the day before, posted an extensive analysis of the first three weeks since Facebook opened up its platform and APIs to developers.

They both reinforced the lesson that there is a huge difference between an application and a platform, something which ties in with Jared Diamond's insight that the history of technology is often about inventions applied in ways that were never anticipated by their initial inventors.

But the are definitely some gotchas. Andreessen has noticed a few key problems with the applications being developed. One is that success can kill 'ya - unless you have a server farm ready to scale immediately, releasing your killer app for Facebook could mean suicide. He notes some other things too, but take a look at his analysis for details (not to mention his great set of links on everything to do with Facebook).

Play - The Business Imperative

2007-06-10T15:50:00.001-04:00

Facebook right now is more about playing around than anything else. Still, as I continue to read one of the most fascinating and mind-bending books (Guns, Germs, and Steel), I am reminded that the history of technology is replete with examples of inventions looking for an application. Gasoline, airplanes, the internal combustion engine, sticky-notes, the steam engine, the phonograph - they're all inventions whose utility was only discovered well after their initial "invention" and mostly by people other than the inventor himself.

Facebook itself appears to be an innovation whose value and application surpassed that of its founders, much like the World Wide Web itself. But what about business and Facebook? Is social networking of value to business? What parts of the technology can be adapted for use in business?

As of today, I have only discovered 2 other people from Pano Cap Canada on Facebook. That's hardly enough to determine whether Facebook has business utility. But if I were to shift the question slightly and ask about professional utility, the question would seem almost vacuous. Certainly, there is professional utility to a social networking tool that allows individuals and groups to organize and share information quickly and efficiently. The social grid architecture of Facebook means that any shared venture can benefit.

Yes, there are many other collaborative tools out there specifically designed for teams and projects, but the open-ended nature of Facebook and the low cost of participation make it unique, I think. That architecture and openness must mean that there is business utility.

This next week I will be attending a Microsoft event called Energize IT. The sessions will deal with Microsoft technology, but one of the things I'm looking forward to is talking to all the Microsoft and professional contacts I've established through Facebook to address this question about using Facebook for business.

This weekend with Microsoft will be partially about play. I think the big guys are getting the message. Play is critical to developing useful applications. It's critical to building relationships. It's critical to lateral thinking and the application of technology to novel areas, to discovering utility for tools made for other purposes.

Play on!

The Facebook Phenomenon

2007-06-05T16:47:00.000-04:00

Over 24 million active users on Facebook. More than 100,000 new users joining each day. Growth of 3% per week. Doubling every 6 weeks.

Who are these people? Ages 25 and up are the largest demographic group joining. Ten percent of the population of Canada has already joined. I guess this means Facebook is no longer just a college phenomenon. Soon over 75% will be people out of college.

Over 50% of users return every day. Nobody else in the online community world comes even close. I only started last week, and can attest personally that the experience, although admittedly somewhat impoverished graphically, is incredibly addictive. Facebook has recently passed over eBay and is setting its sights on Google for the most user traffic daily.

The way it intends to do so is with applications, photos being the most obvious. Photo viewing on Facebook has more users than any other photo sharing site on the Internet.

Events are another. As we all know, people share information and interests and tend to go to events based on their friends' recommendations. If I have a relationship with someone, I will be far more likely to attend an event if that person plans on doing so, than if I merely discover that event in the newspaper or on television or some other media.

Applications are key. But what makes the Facebook phenomenon phenomenal is the ease with which connections between friends and friends of friends occurs. Instead of sending an email to a friend or acquaintance about what I'm reading or an event I plan to attend or a copy of a photo of my family, I merely add that information to my Facebook site and immediately all my friends can see.

Even the Status application is something like the stand-alone Twitter social networking tool ... only better. Instead of updating an application, I merely update my status on Facebook and friends around the world know what I'm doing or how I'm feeling. Phenomenal!

It is the recent opening up of the Facebook platform that assures its continued success. That openness is key, as my friend Shel Israel has blogged about recently. Microsoft knows all about how important the developer community is to the success of the whole range of its products, not to mention the mind space devoted to its platforms. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Microsoft is partnering with Facebook.

Count in Amazon as well. One the recent applications I've just added to my Facebook site is Books, a place where I can review and recommend books. With this little gem, I can find all the other people in my network who have read the same book, start up a discussion group, or simply chat about the book's contents.

Facebook is changing how I use the Internet. It is certainly changing how I communicate with and relate to my friends and acquaintances.

ITIL for grown ups?

2007-06-04T14:02:00.001-04:00

Today's the big day, I guess. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library v3.0 is released today. SearchCIO sent a story to me today explaining how v3 is ITIL for grown ups, possibly because the emphasis of this "best practices" guide for IT services is targeting CIOs.

V2, first released seven years ago, has been replaced by V3, a move from just tactical improvements to strategic improvements. If the hype has legs, then the shift is towards understanding how IT adds value to business objectives and not just organizing the activities IT managers do and manage each day.

Companies like HP are investing heavily in v3, hoping that middle level companies will invest not only in the published guidelines but in consulting services to implement those high-level recommendations.

I'm still left curious as to how ITIL factors into the development and growth of small IT operations such as the one I manage for Pano Cap Canada. Whether it's v2 or v3, how exactly do one- or two-person operations learn from ITIL and improve their operations and strategic alignment with business?

The Mystery of 'Milan' - Microsoft Surface

2007-06-02T09:30:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite vacation hot spots is Las Vegas. By the end of the year, I expect to find "surface computing" devices floating about in the casinos using Microsoft's 'Milan', essentially a hardware/software combo running Vista and getting input directly by touch from one or several users at a time. Obviously, gaming in the Wynn or the Bellagio or Caesar's Palace with a few friends or drinking buddies gathered around a surface computing table will have a definite cache.

By the way, the screen for Milan is not a touch-screen, typically understood and used today. Instead, the surface is hard, large and "interactive" both in the sense that you can manipulate objects and put Wi-Fi objects like cameras on the surface and immediately download the photographs without doing anything else.

Commercial applications offer tremendous possibilities. T-Mobile applications have already been written that would let a sales associate and a potential customer place phones on the surface and immediately get detailed information on each, adding service configurations, ring tones, etc by moving objects around on the 30" diagonal surface.

Educational potential is amazing. Imagine devices like this in a cancer center where patients are waiting for radiation or chemotherapy and would like to interact with a counselor, a dietician, a nurse, or an oncologist explaining not only treatment plans, but options, diagrams and animations of the process to the patient (check out the University of Calgary's CAVEman virtual human for an example). Or imagine students designing a school newsletter interactively with their photos, articles, banners, etc. all available for joint manipulation. The possibilities of social interaction and training are truly staggering.

Milan isn't mysterious to the imagination. We've "seen" it before in movies like Minority Report. It isn't mysterious that it took a company like Microsoft to pull the ingredients together (things like 5 infrared cameras set below the display top to detect objects like cameras, Zunes, etc; and a custom DLP - digital light processing - engine, not to mention an operating system like Vista that is up to the graphical and input/output demands). What's mysterious to me is why the possibilities of this kind of computing experience isn't seen for what it is; namely, a revolution as significant as the move from text-based to graphics-based computing.

Update
Talk about synchrony! My colleague and friend, Ruth, an IT Pro Advisor, wrote this morning about Microsoft's surface computing at her personal blog. Check it out. Her embedded Popular Mechanics video gives a great illustration of the ease of use and multi-point input technology behind "Milan".

Dell Watching

2007-05-12T08:48:00.000-04:00

We use a lot of Dell products at Pano Cap. We've standardized on PowerEdge rack servers in the data centre and Latitude and Inspiron notebooks for those needing mobility.

Over the years, I've been pleased with the durability, reliability, and performance of our computer systems. The servers, especially, have performed well and needed little in the way of replacement drives or power supplies.

The notebook and desktop computers (again, most of which are Dell products) have not been as stellar performers as our servers, but they still provide good value and have been relatively maintenance free. It's true that we have sometimes been irritated and frustrated with the purchasing process, but now that we entrust most of our hardware purchases to a single supplier, the aggravation of dealing directly with different arms of Dell financial services has disappeared. So too have maintenance issues by simply assigning all of that to our supplier.

But things have not gone well for Dell in the recent past. Their customer service reputation has taken a beating, especially among bloggers quite willing to point out the deficiencies of technical support. Market share has been slipping, with both HP and Acer making inroads. Hewlett Packard has the largest share of the market, Dell second, with Acer and Lenovo in a virtual tie for third place. In the United States, Apple has grown faster than any other PC maker.

So it may not be too surprising to see Dell making changes. As of 31-Jan-2007, Michael Dell resumed the CEO role; on 24-April-2007, Dell began offering solid state drives in the Latitude D420 and D620 notebooks; on 27-April-2007, a leaked memo from CEO Michael Dell suggested that the long-time direct selling mantra of Dell might be augmented by channel sales ("The Direct Model has been a revolution, but is not a religion"); and finally, on 1-May-2007, Dell announced that Canonical had been chosen as its partner to provide some desktops and notebooks pre-loaded with Ubuntu ("Linux for Human Beings").

Whether these moves will have any direct impact on us directly or not remains to be seen, although one suggestion of offering customers an option of either Vista or Windows XP would be welcome (a recent purchase of a notebook was only available in Vista); an even better option would be a dual-boot option with both Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista.

Unify Tour 2007: Building, Deploying and Maintaining the Application

2007-04-24T12:01:00.000-04:00

Ruth Morton is a friend, not just a colleague in IT. She asked that I provide her with some constructive feedback on her presentation to the Toronto-and-area IT professionals and developers attending the Unify Tour 2007. But being a friend doesn't mean that I won't be as objective as possible.

Having said that, I have to say that what I'm seeing in the Windows Live Meeting webcast for this second session of the day is impressive. For the first time since I've been attending these sessions from Microsoft, not only is there interaction between IT pros and dev types in the presentation itself, but the additional implied friction and humour adds the ring of truth as well as comic relief in what otherwise is often a "talking heads" experience. Ruth's colleague, Christian Beauclair, is especially good at juicing it up in the interaction segments between the developers and IT professionals.

Microsoft's new System Center Operations Manager 2007 appears to be a powerful new tool in the arsenal available to IT professionals for monitoring application performance. Of course, PerfMon still provides some value.

Ruth is quickly developing facility with presentations like this. I'm glad to see Microsoft branching out slightly by adding the female voice to the IT Pro community. And I will certainly recommend presentations like this continue to use interaction, implied role friction, and humour. Good show!

Unify Tour 2007: Better than being there

2007-04-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

I'm currently watching Session 1: Designing Architecture from the last stop of Microsoft Canada's Unify Tour 2007. The tour is all about how professional developers and IT professionals can collaborate together on the entire product lifecycle from design to deployment to monitoring and management.

Although I couldn't be at the in-person event today, I am watching it using Windows Live Meeting. While I don't get to mingle with IT Pro Advisors and colleagues in the industry, the streaming webcast is in some significant ways better than being there. I'm not talking simply about avoiding 3-4 hours of commuting to Toronto from Kitchener and back again, or even about the luxury of having my notebook computer for notetaking, maximizing and minimizing screen shots, or even blogging while sessions are being delivered. No, I'm talking about really important things, like washroom breaks, fresh home-made coffee, and leaving my cell phone on full volume.

Yeah, it's also useful to have access to the Internet, chat features with other remote session viewers and Microsoft IT Pro Advisors. But can that really compare with watching the sessions in a recliner?

Having spent many years in development and coding, this 10,000-foot overview of some of the new tools for design were quite impressive. The new Visual Studio Team System includes some features which really impress, including the new DB Pro role, auto-generation of sample data in the developer's SQL Server Express prototype database, specific service pack and other IT-related settings for design components, and source control for database schemas.

Kudos to the MSDN and TechNet presenters, Christian Beauclair and Damir Bersenic.

Virginia Tech and Wireless Access

2007-04-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

A recent news article from eWeek.com indicates the there were wireless access problems at Virginia Tech on Monday. As you might expect, there were massive increases in the number of wireless voice calls and text messaging during the crisis, especially between 9:00 am and 2:00 pm. Verizon acknowledged some calls were blocked, but most text messages went through. Cingular claims no calls were blocked. Sprint Nextel also claimed no service interruptions despite the increased volume.

I hope most corporations never experience a crisis like that of Virginia Tech on Monday. But it is a virtual truism to suggest that wireless access is quickly becoming indispensable to modern business processes. From WiFi phones to hand-held computers and scanners, from Pocket PCs to notebook computers carried to various meetings, the advantages of information at your fingertips and communications technology available anytime hardly need justification anymore.

The Virginia Tech crisis only highlights a growing realization among IT professionals. Most IT managers are beginning to reflect on how inexpensive devices might be used in corporations to improve everything from disaster responsiveness to on-the-spot job training to line-of-business information retrieval. Given the eagerness of telecommunications companies to sell smart phones in quantities to companies, you can readily imagine a situation where everyone in a company from the President to janitorial staff would be issued a joint cellular/WiFi phone. The WiFi costs would be covered by the company, while most cellular usage would be the responsibility of the user (if used at all).

When an employee comes to work, they use the device to send and receive instant messages or text messages, to read and write corporate email, to gain instant access to operating procedures and policies, training manuals and even for information access to ERP applications as required. Devices would be subject to policies preventing misuse, of course, but some kind of automated monitoring service which aggregates usage statistics would help managers determine who is doing what when and then take appropriate disciplinary measures if necessary.

I don't think this is too far fetched. After all, many families are already there with every member having his/her own cellular phone and/or computer. High tech companies are already using either blackberries or smart phones with almost 100% distribution among employees. Soon enough, the manufacturing and other industrial sectors will see the same advantages. After all, not everyone in a manufacturing company can have access to a computer. But if we could reduce costs to, say, $200 per user per annum, wouldn't the advantages be obvious?

Predicting IT Trends - Microsoft Databases

2007-04-04T20:11:00.000-04:00

My family and I like to visit large bookstores together. We tend to drift apart shortly after arriving only to come together again for coffee and treats in Starbucks. I tend to head over to the science and technology section and the computer-related bookshelves, my wife to the novels, my eldest son to the gamers area, and my youngest son to the culture studies section.

One thing I like to do while perusing the computer books is to predict trends in information technology. What programming languages are getting a lot of coverage? What certifications are taking off? What popular trends are emerging in web services? What databases get the most press?

This week, I had fully intended to attend a regional Microsoft event entitled The Exciting Adventures of the Microsoft Application Platform Developer not just because it was intended for both developers and IT managers, but because I was curious about what trends were emerging in Microsoft products for data-driven applications and web sites. Unfortunately, I felt too ill to attend the event. But it still got me thinking and wondering about the future.

Why is it, for instance, that I see so little on the bookshelves about a product like SQL Server Express? I bought Rick Dobson's Beginning SQL Server 2005 Express: Database Applications with Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer Express, From Novice to Professional some time ago, believing that I should become conversant with a product that seemed ready to infiltrate small to medium-sized businesses who had outgrown Microsoft Access. But I haven't seen it on the shelves recently, nor any of the many SQL Server Express books available online. Based on the books lining the shelves in Chapters, I'd have to say there isn't much of a future in store for SQL Server Express.

But maybe it's just a matter of timing. Maybe it's a matter of my being interested primarily in small and medium-sized businesses. Maybe Microsoft needs to do a little more marketing. Or...just maybe Microsoft Access still can fulfill most of the requirements for departmental databases, for small- and medium-sized databases without worries about the .NET CLR, XML data types, etc. Certainly the Chapters bookshelves look more promising for Access than SQL Server Express.

Geeks Do April Fool's Day

2007-04-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

You always have to be on guard come April Fools' Day, especially if you're into technology, technology news, and blogging.

So what's up recently that may or may not be a joke on us geeks?

Windows Vista for your Pets (OK, that's a dead give-a-way)

"xxxx is a fellow IT Pro Technology Advisor from xxxx, he is very well connected to some influential people at Corp. in Redmond..."
Nathan Mercer
Michael J. Murphy
Damien Caro
Daniel van Soest
Rodney Buike
and so on in a ring around the blogosphere

TechCrunch Has Acquired FuckedCompany.com
Mathew Ingram's spotting the prank

The first two may be exactly the same joke. In fact, it was the Vista for your pets that kind of gave it away, especially since the format of the IT Pro Advisor blogs was almost word for word.
The problem is that, because geeks love April Fools' Day and because geeks generally don't do the joke very well, you're never quite sure. One example is Robert Scoble's joke for 2006 in which he announced he was leaving Microsoft for Google. It was kind of lame, but typical of the geek approach to April Fools'. The title was credible, given his praise of Google over the years. And in retrospect, it wasn't many months later when Scoble did leave Microsoft, not for Google but for Podtech. Hence the uncertainty.

Anil Dash did a little bashing of geek April Fools' Day jokes last year. One example was

"We have a big announcement today!" No you don't. It's Saturday.

Which got to to thinking about why a guest blog submission of mine wasn't being published until early next week on the IT Managers Connection Community Blog when it could easily have been published this weekend. Could it be that the entire Microsoft IT Pro Advisor network is complicit in an April Fools' Day hoax and want to keep the community blogs clear until the hoax is fully perpetrated? I don't know. Maybe I'm just way too suspicious.

But if the theme interests you, Gizmo has a list of the top ten geek pranks of all time, some of which I may consider using on my colleagues at work. Wikipedia has an even better list of jokes by media type as well as a list of genuine events mistaken as April Fools' Day hoaxes (that might be one for me if I'm wrong about the IT Pro Advisors announcement rumor).

So, whether you're a perpetrator or a jokee, have a fine April Fools' Day 2007!

IT Managers and Bridging the Gap

2007-03-25T14:03:00.000-04:00

If you want to be stimulated intellectually and if you prefer science and technology to a postmodernist, literary rant, then you need go now further than The Edge, a web site dedicated to The Third Culture, consisting of scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world.

IT managers are generally a practical bunch. Sure, we love delving into the frontiers of information technology, reading about the new and the wonderful, planning for a future which is always just around the corner, sometimes even wondering when we can download our consciousness into a cybernetic mechanism so that we can live forever. But, when we wake up from that good night's dreaming, we tend to check things like whether the backup worked last night, how many - if any - viruses were detected across the network, whose printer malfunctioned during the night shift, and so on.

IT manager nightmares, on the other hand, turn on that common phrase, "You just don't know what you just don't know." The meaning is fairly obvious - we manage technology daily, and to do so effectively means that we constantly have to learn. We consistently have to push down the barriers between what we know and what we don't know. We expect that just around the corner there is a small piece of critical information that will pull the entire puzzle into a coherent whole. We might not know what we don't know, but you can be damned sure that we're looking everywhere we can both to find the individual puzzle pieces and to find a way to fit them all together.

Which is why I recommend information technology aficionados read The Edge. The Third Culture promoted there is something with which most of us can immediately identify. We build bridges just like the digerati of The Edge, and in almost identical ways. But instead of building bridges between scientists working in the field of string theory or evolutionary biology and the reasonably well-educated general public, we build bridges between computer scientists and software engineers, on the one hand, and the users of our corporate information systems.

At least that's the way IT should work.

Recently, The Edge published news about one IT professional's initiative to bridge the gap. Danny Hillis has announced a new company called Metaweb and a free database called Freebase.com. The "massive, collaboratively-edited database of cross-linked data" will be an "open shared database of the world's knowledge". Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, the data will be available to programmers worldwide to build services to provision the data. Imagine Google, Wikipedia, Blogs, Tags, Trusted Links - all rolled together with data that is understood and readable by computers but presented to users in a format that pleases.

That's the goal. But if you're like me when searching for that single piece of the puzzle, and not sure about what you don't know that you don't know, what is it about this bridging exercise that will make the difference? The short answer is that we don't know yet, but Hillis is banking on some combination of "emergent structure and intelligent design" in which Metaweb architects intelligently design the grammar of specifying relationships among data and the crowd creates the content in Freebase.

Hillis has been able to secure over $15 million in investment funding. The Edge digerati think it credible enough to warrant coverage. Now we wait and see.

Windows Server 2003 SP2 - Default Web Page in Internet Explorer 6.0

2007-03-21T21:37:00.000-04:00

A number of users on our corporate network have brought to my attention that their default home page has switched from whatever they had set to MSN.com. This all occurred after I upgraded the operating system for several servers to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

This may be old news to many IT managers, but I was still surprised to confirm the "problem". We run terminal services and thin-client devices for most of our users; in fact, even those with notebooks and desktops access the network resources through Remote Desktop Connection. As you may know, terminal services provisions Internet Explorer browser services according to individual profiles. Thus my surprise that all users had their default home page reset to MSN.

I wonder how many network administrators write logon scripts or hack the registry to set the default web page (e.g. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main] "Start Page"=http://www.panocap.com/)?

I can understand how the initial installation of an operating system will set the default home page of the browser to a Microsoft site like MSN. That's really a no-brainer. But it's not nearly so obvious to me why an update to an operating system should switch user's default home page back again. That seems to me to be a blunt marketing instrument.

Daylight Savings Time - Aftershocks?

2007-03-17T15:22:00.000-04:00

Let's say you're a seismologist and you develop a technique to prevent earthquakes. You take your responsibility seriously, so you invest as much time, effort, energy and money as you can muster into perfecting the technique. You go ahead and implement the technology along a fault line close to a major metropolitan area. Your technology works perfectly. You predict and prevent a major catastophe. But nobody notices.

Well, if you're an IT manager and you did your preventive maintenance well before last Sunday's daylight savings time extension, the worst thing to have happened was that your PBX-based telephone clock was off by an hour when you came into the office on Monday. I'll bet that got noticed! But nobody noticed that you prevented information system problems significant enough to have warranted a Gartner risk assessment warning.

My experience of the aftershocks of DST was exactly the same as Y2K. Nothing significant happened...at least not to the systems with which I was associated. There were, to be sure, significant problems unreported in many small- and medium-sized businesses. In fact, I know firsthand of at least one company whose demise was related to non-compliant Y2K systems. And I have heard stories of other organizations whose preparedness for the DST extensions weren't as comprehensive as they should have been. Some of the stories are truly funny.

But...at least if you encountered some disruptions owing to the DST extensions, then IT gets recognized. If you were perfectly prepared, nobody notices, no thanks are offered, no congratulations are given. It's as if you did absolutely nothing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that IT pros become less professional. But maybe it's time we start "educating" users more thoroughly. You can be sure that marketing professionals wouldn't stand idly by without getting clear acknowledgement for their work. Maybe it's time we take a page from their notebooks!

Identity Theft, Portable Drives and IT Responsibility

2007-03-11T20:20:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking recently about how much responsibility IT Managers should assume. True, it seems that every day there is another "issue" which arises for SMBs (small to medium businesses) in which information technology has a role. Disparate systems converge. Silos of information need to be managed. Whether it's real-time monitoring of machines in the factory, implementation of VoIP telephony, deployment of biometric time-and-attendance systems, coordination of video and audio resources, or automation of physical security systems, the IT manager constantly has his or her domain of responsibilities increasing. Not bad if all you care about is expanding an empire. But a little intimidating if all you get is an ever-expanding job description with no pay raise.

My take on this is simple. It comes with the territory. Expansion of the domain of IT responsibilities is inevitable. The only feasible approach is be proactive and realize that management tools will emerge to fill the vacuum. But the expansion of responsibilities is also part of the challenge of being an IT manager and one of its truly fascinating opportunities. Each day presents a chance to know a little more about a technology which was previously slightly mysterious and which will now be managed.

Here's a case in point. I'm hoping readers will jump in with other examples and differences of opinion.

We've all witnessed an explosion of portable drive technology in the last few years. We've also seen, almost daily, news stories about identity theft and the exposure of private information. One recent example in Canada was the theft of customer information from Winners and HomeSense (through computer information systems belonging to their parent company TJX Cos in the United States). Another example was the loss of a computer with about half a million Talvest Mutual Funds client accounts from CIBC. In the United States, the Veterans Administration was breached with a loss of up to 1.85 million records.

Whether the losses occurred through computer theft, hacking systems, or plain, old user stupidity, they all involve questions of the extent of IT manager responsibility. If you are constantly looking over your shoulder worried about losing your job, then it is highly likely that you will want to limit your responsibilities and divest yourself of whatever you can. If, however, you are fortunate enough to feel relatively secure in your job and are motivated primarily by the challenge of solving problems, then you will be thinking about how to mitigate risks and exposure. Those differences in attitude are, in my view, huge. Anything you can do to get into the mindset of solving problems with technology rather than limiting personal exposure is guaranteed to improve your job satisfaction.

One small thing IT managers in SMBs can do in 2007 to mitigate identity theft specifically and data theft generally is to implement fingerprint biometrics or multi-factor authentication wherever possible. Start small with portable drives. Ensuring that these units are standardized in your company and that they are reasonably secure will reduce your exposure.

I come from a large family with several siblings working in the IT sector. We've recently discussed in our family e-group all the differing smart/thumb drives and portable drives we are using. It quickly became apparent to me that if we can have this much diversity in a family, how much more can we expect among users in our companies?

Standardizing on a fingerprint biometric flash memory drive (I've seen a few Microsoft IT Pro advisors with these units) is the first step. iQBio has a variety of units that are worth considering. The 2GB ClipBio "flip clip" is both weatherproof and fingerprint biometric enabled. Up to ten fingerprints can be enrolled per device. By ensuring only specific devices for portable storage are allowed in the company, you can mitigate risk of theft slightly.

Migrating to Windows Vista and implementing Group Policies to block unwanted devices while selectively enabling others would also mitigate risk. But the added benefit here is that you can actually boost performance on those Vista systems with ReadyBoost technology. The idea is that USB flash drives can be used to give the memory on your system a boost thereby enabling memory-intensive GUI features.

I'm sure readers will have other opportunities in mind for mitigating data theft exposure. But my overall point remains. Embrace the challenge, protect your company's information assets, and make management slightly easier through standardization and group policy implementation.

Mind Mapping Daylight Savings Time

2007-02-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

Monday evening, I had the opportunity to talk to a group of fellow IT professionals at the Waterloo-Wellington IT Professional User Group about using mind mapping software for IT management tasks. Ruth Morton, IT Pro Advisor with Microsoft Canada, wrote about the presentation on the IT Managers Connection blog.

During the presentation, we did a brainstorming session to illustrate the utility of mind mapping software to quickly capture ideas in a group setting and to then organize those ideas into a form ready for further research and investigation. The group chose the perfect subject for IT pros - the implementation of the new daylight savings time seasonal extension on operating systems and application software platforms.

I took a blog entry from another Microsoft IT Pro Advisor, Rick Claus, who was in turn forwarding information from another Microsoft Canada Technical Account Manager, Pierre Roman, with the latter's gathered wisdom about DST, and mapped it. The result is shown in the accompanying map. Unfortunately, much of the functionality of the map is entirely hidden here, such as the hyperlinks to the relevant Microsoft knowledgebase articles or the text notes which automatically popup when you hover your mouse over the topic.

Blog entries like this can only tease the reader into investigating mind mapping further. They can't come close to illustrating the amazing richness of the feature set. To do that adequately, the user would have to download the map as well as a free viewer (Mindjet's viewer can be downloaded here). I hope to have this particular mind map available online soon to share with other IT professionals (until then, if you would like a copy, email me privately and I'll forward a zipped copy of the file).

In my view, there is absolutely no other software category that comes close to mind mapping for presenting information in a "big picture" context. The reader of a mind map automatically gets a sense of the relationships of ideas and concepts.

But it is in generating ideas, collaborating with others, editing and rearranging, and linking concepts and ideas that mind mapping truly shines.

Daylight savings time is meant to save energy on the macro level. Mind mapping does that on a micro level; but it does so much more. Finally, it appears that the world of software is catching on. Do a simply Google search on "mind mapping software" and it will quickly become apparent that the category is exploding in interest and products available. MindManager Pro 6 (from MindJet), iMindMap, NovaMind, Visual Mind, MindMapper, MindGenius, BrainMine - these are only some of the products now available. If you want a blog dedicated just to mind mapping software, you can do no better than Chuck Frey's The Mind Mapping Software Weblog.

Save your time. Save your energy. Try mind mapping.

Hands In My Pocket

2007-02-28T17:33:00.000-05:00

Jim Guthrie wrote a very catchy ditty for Capital One's marketing campaign for Canadian TV. You can listen to an extended version on YouTube that has nothing whatsoever to do with the marketing campaign. TrendHunter online magazine also has a decent article about the genesis and rationale for the ad campaign. Whatever the merits of the campaign or the music, the jingle embeds itself like a virus in your subconscious.

But what got me thinking about the jingle this week - apart from watching too much TV of course - was receipt in the mail of the prize I won from Podtech for a blog writing contest on why I needed more computer storage. The prize was a Seagate 8 GB pocket drive.

What a slick, well-designed, and useful device! 8 GB in my pocket!

Once I told a few friends at work about the prize, it was a no-brainer that I'd have to make sure there weren't any hands creeping into my pockets to steal this little baby. Perhaps I should have kept it a secret. It looks good and it works even better.

In my part-time custom application development business, I often have to transfer large files back and forth, files too large for email and sometimes too large even for FTP site transfers. Now with the Seagate pocket drive, those files can be safely copied in a matter of moments. True, I have to visit my customer to do this, but that is something I need to do anyway in order to discuss enhancements and upgrades. Where physical copying of files is a likelihood or necessity, the pocket drive is the best solution I've seen yet. No power cords, no clunky external drives requiring special software to install on the client computers, just a USB hide-away connector.

File transfer and backup is really only the start to this device's usefulness. What really sold me was the ability to install applications on the pocket drive while connected to a thin-client notebook (the Neoware m100). I did a minimal install of Microsoft Office 2003 and was very pleased to see that the performance was very good. The Neoware m100 is designed for mobile thin-client computing, which means that unless there is a wired or wireless network readily available, the device cannot be used for always-ready applications. But with the pocket drive, the mobile thin-client can be used in a similar fashion to an everyday notebook computer, without the attendant problems of malware protection, data theft, etc. True, you have to protect the pocket drive, but the device comes with software which does exactly that.

I suppose in another few years I'll look back and think "how quaint" just as I do now nostalgically recalling my very first 5MB removable hard drive I had for the original IBM PC in 1985. Ah, good time...good times! But for now, it's cool, very cool!

Thin-Client Computing on the Move

2007-02-22T19:11:00.000-05:00

Neoware is making it possible to have the security and ease-of-use of thin-client computing on a mobile platform. The recently released m100 looks like any other notebook computer except for a couple things. There is no hard drive and no CD-ROM - just a keyboard and screen, a Windows XPe operating system, and some management utilities. If a road warrior loses the m100 or if it's stolen, the only true loss is the price of the unit. There is no exposure of sensitive data. True, without Ethernet wired or wireless connectivity, the unit isn't useable for word processing, spreadsheets, databases, or anything else that might be possible with a standard notebook computer or tablet PC. But more needs to be said, I think.

I couldn't get over how simple it was to get the unit configured for use - 10 minutes from opening the carton containing the unit, it was ready for use on our corporate network, both wired and wirelessly. After taking the unit home in the evening, it took only a few minutes to configure the WEP key, connect the Windows Media Player to an online jazz station and connect through Remote Desktop to our corporate network.

Security is unparalleled. IT management couldn't be simpler. No viruses to worry about, no worms, no rootkits - no malware period! No moving parts to malfunction. It couldn't be quieter (except when Windows Media Player is running, of course). A VPN client can be installed if necessary, but everything else is ready to go right out of the box. No training required since almost everyone using units like this will already be acquainted with Windows XP.

But should you need to take some notes when no connectivity or VPN access is available, there is still Notepad. If you want to take along some music, photographs, or videos with you while on the road, there is still USB connectivity. If you want to read PDF files (or books, for that matter), Adobe Reader is already installed and ready to go. In my test, for instance, I connected a 1GB memory stick that contained an entire set of IT manager-related documents from Tech Republic in PDF format. No problem! In additionn, while that smart stick was still connected in one of the five, count 'em, five USB ports, I connected my 8GB Seagate pocket drive and accessed JPG and HTML files. I could just as easily have watched a movie or two.

There are audio in and out jacks, a modem port, 6 hours of battery life, a port for an external monitor, 2 stereo speakers, and one PCMCIA type II slot. The modem port is old school, to be sure; it would have been much cooler if bluetooth or infrared ports were available to use along with a Smart Phone or phone-enabled Pocket PC for those rare occasions when you need connectivity but no Ethernet networks are available. But overall, if you don't need always-ready, always-available applications and data, this sweet little unit provides almost all you need while on the road.

In the office, especially offices with wireless connectivity available, it gets even better. You can easily take the unit with you to conference rooms or meeting rooms or a colleague's office, take notes, use all the server-provisioned applications available, work online or anything else that you would do while tethered to the desk in your office.

But most importantly, if you want to make your IT staff happy - and who wouldn't? - consider mobile thin-client computing...please! (This entry, including saving a copy of the photo above, was all done on the m100)

Spam that kills

2007-02-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

If you get spam, you've probably received some, perhaps many, of these spam messages before. They purport that you are eligible for an inheritance transfer. Most of the time, the message indicates that your name was part of a search linking you somehow to the person who died. Again, most of the time, there is no apparent rationale for the linkage apart from the claim of the spam artist sending the email. So, you simply hit the delete key and move on, no matter how many millions of dollars are supposedly available in the "dormant" account of the deceased person.

But what if you received a message about an inheritance transfer that said your brother or sister had passed away and that you are named in the will? Would it be as easy to hit the delete key, especially if you live in another part of the world and haven't seen or spoken to your relative in a few months or years? What if the person named didn't have a will - and you happen to know this as well - and that you were discovered in a last name search? What if your name is uncommon and the person named as the deceased does have the same first name as a close relative? What if the email doesn't make extravagant claims about $30,000,000 million in American funds? What if it doesn't even mention the amount available, but instead simply suggests that a certain percentage will go towards legal costs in securing the inheritance for you?

You've probably already figured out that this sounds a lot like the Nigerian 419 spam. But this one comes from England or some other part of the world.

The variations on this spam/scam are endless. Unfortunately, it's becoming more sophisticated all the time. The particular example I'm giving came to me from a colleague at work who life was put into temporary turmoil because he did, indeed, have a brother whom he hadn't seen for a while and who might possibly have died.

It was probably only a coincidence. His brother is alive and well. It was probably only a case of a generic Nigerian 419 spam email message that just happened to have more plausibility that other variants. But in his case, we're talking about spam that kills your brother and then asks if you want part of the inheritance. It can't get much worse than that.

SWAG meister

2007-02-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

One of the nicknames I have at work is "the Don Meister". All it means, of course, is Don, the Master. One can hope it's used affectionately to denote the one with the the keys to information technology heaven and hell, a kind of St. Peter ordinaire, not at the pearly gates, but at the gateway to that awesome computer screen phenomenon of "hey, that was easy!"

But being associated with the computer industry now for over 20 years, I've come to appreciate being a meister of SWAG - sometimes known as "Stuff We All Get". SWAG is promotional items that you get from companies or organizations by virtue of participating in a seminar, a course, a conference, or some other kind of event. Over the years, I've done fairly well. Not all SWAG is received by everyone, of course. Very often, it's the result of a draw.

What have I won? A notebook computer, a keyboard, a few backpacks or tote bags, toques, T-shirts, sweatshirts, paper weights, squeeze balls, pens, pencils, notepads, USB memory sticks, external storage devices, even blankets. Spread out over 20 years, it hardly seems noticeable, but when you take stock and itemize the collection, you realize just how much has actually come your way by participating in promotional and training events. In the last month, for instance, I have won prizes from Podtech (sponsored by Seagate) and another from Microsoft Canada. Nothing worth gloating about, but certainly bright spots on cold winter days when the sun might not be shining.

Some SWAG I've received has come to me by virtue of being an employee. Pano Cap has given me T-shirts and lunch bags, for example.

Sometimes SWAG is controversial. Some companies require that all employees ensure gifts they receive from suppliers and partners are under a certain monetary value (I'm assuming that doesn't include prizes won in a draw). Some bloggers (people like Robert Scoble, for instance) get so much SWAG that they make a point of publicly declaring everything that comes their way, whether they accept it or not.

But most of the time for most of us, SWAG is not too controversial. It's just a pleasant, occasional aspect of being part of a professional community, a member of an association, or an employee of a company.

Codes of Ethics - What History Has To Offer

2007-01-21T13:19:00.000-05:00

I have the good fortune of working in a company that has a code of ethics (or conduct). It is also a multicultural, multiethnic company. It is a company which prides itself on its environmental awareness and its commitment to business and personal integrity - in other words, a company of which I can be proud.

Corporate codes of ethics, as well as many statements of principles in government organizations, bills of rights and freedoms - they all generally state their belief in equality and their opposition to discrimination. But we all know that nation states, companies, and individuals in even the most inclusive and tolerant societies harbor racist and bigoted attitudes. It's not just that a few people disagree with the bills of rights, but keep that opinion to themselves. The far more insidious problem is that the vast majority consciously agree with the statement of principles and yet unconsciously display racial behavior and stereotypical opinions.

Jared Diamond believes that education is the solution, especially a large historical overview of human civilization. Education, in this case, means being very clear about the nature of the problem and offering a logical and satisfying answer.

Here's part of the problem. We all know that Eurasians conquered the known world in the last 500 years. Does that mean that Africans, aboriginals, and native North Americans were somehow inferior? I mean, why didn't they beat back the invading European colonialists or cause epidemics to decimate the conquerors rather than the other way around?

Technology is one answer. Those who won had better tools. But if we go back, say to 11,000 B.C., every human society had roughly the same technology and sophistication. Why, over the course of 13,000 years did the Europeans advance so quickly? Historians generally don't have anything to say about this because they are afraid of being labeled racist. But the problem with the silence is that most people assume the answer must have something to do with biology or average IQ level.

This is tough stuff! Diamond believes that the reason racism continues is simply because nobody is proposing a better answer to the often unspoken question. But in his view, advances in our knowledge of molecular biology, plant and animal genetics and biogeography, archeology, and linguistics supply a far more satisfying answer, one that offers the prospect of providing the context for our honorable national and company codes of ethics.

Diamond won a Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for his book Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies in 1998 which outlines what I find to be a very satisfying answer. It is not a definitive answer, mind you (I am finding recently that a theme of good enough or asymptotic reasoning has emerged in my research and writing), but an indicative answer and one that may prove to be more compelling that the lower IQ, less-gifted assumptions many people hold.

Here's the short answer: it's an accident; it's all about luck. There is no inherent superiority among the world's races. Instead, the reason why Eurasians were so successful so quickly is because they had an abundance of domesticated crops and animals and because the east-west orientation of the land mass made the transfer of animals, crops, and technology easy. Bill Gates offers a summary review of Diamond's book which is easily consumed in a few minutes of reading.

My point here is simply to suggest that codes of ethics are important, but more important still is a broad understanding of the history of technology which illustrates how luck and accident account for those distressing inequalities which our codes of ethics seek to mitigate. And, as Bill Gates says, in our age of information technology, luck and accident are not nearly as important as intelligence, skill, and leadership.

Making IT 'Good Enough'

2007-01-17T18:25:00.000-05:00

I've been guilty of this before, and I'll undoubtedly be guilty in the future - going for the gold standard, striving for excellence, discovering and emulating best practices. But maybe in IT, doing so isn't always appropriate. Maybe it can be a misguided approach.

Here's just one example. In the past few years, IT gurus have developed process frameworks and control frameworks in order to provide all companies - big, medium, and small - with best practices for IT management. All conscientious IT managers and CIOs want to be part of the select group of businesses who are doing IT right. It's a matter of professional pride and the automatic assumption that best practices will improve not only IT management but business performance too. From CoBIT to ITIL, from security mantras like "defense in depth" to regulatory compliance like SOX, IT managers are bombarded with calls for better management. Often, we assume that means best practices. But that assumption may be part of the problem.

Best practices are, by definition, ideals. But when money is tight (and when isn't it?), doing more with less may mean going for bronze rather than gold. Sometimes, it makes more sense to aim for a 7 rather than a 10. Sometimes, taking steps to go to the next level just isn't cost-effective. Sometimes, aligning IT with business objectives means intentionally going for the good-enough solution rather than the perfect solution.

CoBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) provide so many markers for IT performance that IT management can become disoriented and lose sight of "key" performance indicators. These frameworks can still be useful, but leveraging them may mean incorporating home-grown measures and concentrating on fewer key performance indicators.

The IT Controls Benchmark Survey, for instance, provided some surprising results. The smoking gun for top performers could be found in 2 measures, measures that the best-of-the-best were almost all doing and that almost all the also-ran were not doing:
Monitoring systems for unauthorized changes, and
Defining consequences for intentional unauthorized changes.
What this means is simply that, while ITIL and CoBIT give a lot of good measures to consider, the biggest bang for the buck comes from concentrating on doing a few things well.

The survey also showed that in manufacturing, the top performers were about twice as productive as the low performers. But in IT, the difference was five to eight times. It is a case of the 80/20 rule again. Eighty percent of the benefit on process and control frameworks come from twenty percent of the measures.

With survey results like this, achieving excellence in IT may be more about being "good enough" than in following "best practices", or at least about doing a few key things really well, and the rest just good enough.

The Invasion Continues

2007-01-11T20:40:00.001-05:00

The Economist had a very interesting article in its Work-Life Balance Computing article of 19-Dec-2006 entitled "Consumer technologies are invading corporate computing."

The gist of the column, like so many articles over the past few months about the impact of consumer computing on IT, is that corporate computing departments can't hope to keep up with the advances in consumer electronics, web-services, and other consumer-focused technical advances. This time the case-study involved a forward-looking IT Manager for Arkansas State University who moved student email from the university servers to Google.

65,000 students are having their email accounts transferred at the rate of 300 per hour to Gmail while retaining the university's domain of asu.edu. They get web-based email at no additional cost to the university, along with instant messaging, and shared calendars. Not a bad deal!

But what really sets this IT Manager apart is his rationale for the move. He knows that the pace of consumer-driven technical change isn't something that corporate environments can match easily. But companies like Google can introduce web-based services like Google Apps for Your Domain (which, by the way, is still in beta), and then add new services like word processing and spreadsheets, or wikis and blogs without requiring the legions of technical support staff that rolling out new services like that in a corporate environment would require.

What about security and backup? Again, corporate IT departments need not worry. One of Google's data centres burnt to the ground - but nobody noticed! Because the other data centres picked up the slack and continued to provide the service required. Massive redundancy and massive storage capacity means that Google can offer these web-based services without compromising security and backup.

You can bet I will be watching developments like this very carefully over the next few months!

iForgot Who iAm

2007-01-10T20:22:00.000-05:00

It's been fun to read the various news articles and blog entries about the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week as well as Macworld in San Francisco. You might wonder why Apple would decide to host its conference at the same time as CES, but then all you have to do is ask yourself what the biggest consumer electronics announcement of the week was - that's right, the iPhone and iTV. In addition, Apple dropped the word "Computer" from their corporate name this week.

Clearly, Steve Jobs and Apple are moving the standard markers for the company and are seemingly successful in doing so. If the pundits are right about what the future will bring for IT managers - consumer electronics, applications, and sensibilities into the corporate environment - then, Apple may simply be on the vanguard of that movement. Still, the phrase "stick to the knitting" comes to mind, meaning businesses should normally stay with the brands and business for which they have become known. In Apple's case, that would be personal computers for the "creative" and "artsy" end of the market.

Whatever opinion you might have about Apple and its future, consumer electronics is obviously changing our vocabulary. There was a recent comical example of that on the television hit drama House in which the character played by John Larroquette wakes from a coma and is reading about something he has never seen before, something called an "iPod" (which he pronounced with a short i).

Even if you've never been in a coma, even if you've merely been asleep for a few hours, chances are something new in consumer electronics has happened overnight that your teenagers can tell you about. My sons, for instance, stay up much later than do I each evening. In the morning, when I drive them to school or university, they usually have something new to tell me about from listening to a podcast or watching a technology show on digital television. It's a rare morning now, when I can surprise them or I don't hear a new word entering our vocabulary drawn from that massive realm of consumer electronics.

Stay Tuned

2007-01-07T15:07:00.000-05:00

2007 will see me assuming some additional responsibilities at Pano Cap. I will be assuming roles as editor for a resurrected internal newsletter as well as web master for our corporate web site. I look forward to both. Although our Pano Post Newsletter is for internal consumption only, it will be a welcome improvement in communications. I'll also enjoying stretching my skill set into print publication software as well as refreshing my editorial experience, something I haven't done with any frequency since my graduate school days.

The Pano Cap Canada web site, partially because it is directed to both an internal and external readsership, will be more of a challenge. We have been somewhat negligent in keeping our corporate web site current and dynamic. That will now change.

I have developed and taught courses at Conestoga College in creating and maintaining database-driven web sites, but it is has been quite a while since I've had hands-on web-master duties to perform regularly. Again, I anticipate not only helping with content creation but in learning about the most current tools and techniques available for web site design and maintenance. One piece of software I will probably try out during the next month is Adobe's Dreamweaver 8. Right now, it's a toss up whether to go with this standard in web design or whether to try Microsoft's most recent professional entry into this market - Microsoft Expression Web.

Suggestions are always welcomed.

Hugs & Kisses, Hurts & Curses

2006-11-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

Norman Nie of Stanford University says, "You can't get a hug or a kiss over the Internet." (Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, p. 9).

Daniel Goleman, the author of the 1995 best-seller Emotional Intelligence, has authored a new book which I hope every IT Manager makes time to read, Social intelligence. The point of the book is that we are all "wired to connect", no matter how much technology is part of our everyday experience. In fact, in the beginning of the book, it is clear that Goleman believes recent technological developments are insulating most of us from that essential human connectivity for which we are biologically wired. From the car, to the cell phone, to the iPod, Goleman argues we are encasing ourselves in technology which isolates us from one another, leading to what he calls social autism.

Stephen Covey made a similar point in his book First Things First (1996) when he said, "You can be efficient with things, but you need to be effective with people, particularly on jugular issues." I've remembered that point over the years, but it bears repetition. With Goleman's new book, not only is the point repeated, it is reinforced with research from the the new discipline of social neuroscience. Our emotions and moods are all about human connectivity and the jugular issues of communication.

In the opening chapters, for instance, he talks metaphorically about the high road and the low road of communication. The high road is all about the frontal lobe of the brain, the location where reflection and rationality intercede, hopefully stopping us from saying something stupid. The low road, on the other hand, is all about the amygdala, almond-shaped groups of neurons buried deep within the temporal lobes of the brain where we sense one another's mood and emotions before we have had time to reflect or rationalize. The salient point is that the low road works far, far faster than the high road.

We experience this whenever we watch a movie or are engaged in a conversation with someone and intuit something going on. Whenever there is a hint of a smile on someone's face and we respond with our own smile or, even in a more subtle fashion, with a minor shift in mood which mirrors that of our conversationalist. All of this happens in an instant and before we are aware of what is going on consciously. This means, of course, that there is far too much information in one-on-one conversation to rely on e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, or other forms of communication which technophiles, like IT managers, use and promote everyday.

We may not hug or kiss one another in such conversations, but the point is still valid. The wiring we use for our technology cannot, and perhaps never will be, as effective in communicating with one another as the face-first conversation.

Spam, Botnets, Pump-and-Dump, and Armageddon

2006-11-19T17:38:00.000-05:00

Spam has become such a common part of life with e-mail these days that even bringing up the topic in casual conversation has become boring. Boring, that is, unless the conversationalist brings something novel and interesting to the dialogue. If that's true for casual conversations, then it's absolutely true for blogs and other forms of monologue.

Maybe considering volume and percentages helps. I estimate that I receive about 120 spam e-mail messages daily on my personal e-mail account. Because my corporate account is pre-laundered by an external service before e-mail arrives in my Inbox, it's a little more difficult to discuss absolute numbers and percentages (we use Postini's Enterprise Email Protection Service). About 52% of our corporate e-mail is either blocked or quarantined for further review.

My experiences reflect the overall historical situation. In 1978, an e-mail spam was sent to 600 addresses. By 1994, the first large-scale e-mail spam was sent to 6000 bulletin boards and eventually reached millions of people. By June 2005, the volume of spam had reached 30 billion per day. By June of 2006, that number had risen to 55 billion spam e-mail messages per day. About 80-85% of all e-mail messages globally are now "abusive" e-mail (see e-mail spam on Wikipedia).

OK, so maybe even talking about absolute numbers and percentages aren't all that interesting. What I do find interesting, though, is that digging a little deeper into the phenomenon of spam demonstrates alarming changes that go well beyond simple numbers. I'm thinking here of botnets, so-called pump-and-dump, international e-mail crime gangs, and the advent of Armageddon.

Here's a recent example. In the past few weeks, there has been a surge of spam for penny stocks and penis enlargement pills. Evidently, the surge has been tracked back to a gang of Russian hackers who have cobbled together a botnet of 70,000 peer-to-peer computers is as many as 160 countries worldwide which uses the SpamThru Trojan to do the dirty work. Botnets are "broadband-enabled PCs, hijacked during virus and worm attacks and seeded with software that connects back to a server to receive communications from a remote attacker" (Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?, 16-Oct-2006, eWeek). Computers controlled through botnet technology are generally called zombies. They provide the mechanism whereby spam is generated and delivered, bringing back billions of dollars in revenues to the gangsters.

How prevalent and dangerous is the threat? Since January 2005, Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool has removed at least one Trojan or bot from 3.5 million individual computers. When those computers were compromised by the hidden code, they exemplified the first of the 10 Immutable Laws of Security: Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore.

How does the bot herder get you to run his program on your computer? Through either a vulnerability on your computer or through a weak password. As Jesper Johannson says, "The only thing that stands between attackers and the end of the world is a password." (see Assessing Network Security, p. 11).

It may be a little early to tell whether the good guys can fight back and delay the advent of Armageddon. But it is clearly the case that the sophistication of the bad guys is alarming. The SpamThru trojan, for example, is not only being used in a very effective spam campaign, it is also evidence of malware that is as complex and feature-rich as many commercial software programs. This trojan, for example, has its very own anti-virus scanner embedded within its code - a pirated version of the Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate. The AV scanner is used by the trojan to eliminate rival malware files that would get in the way of maximizing the volume of spam e-mail sent from the zombie computer. That is very clever and very disturbing.

The SpamThru trojan also uses templates downloaded to the zombie but which uses challenge-and-response authentication methods to prevent other malware software from stealing the templates it uses from the template server. Not only is that clever and disturbing, it might even be worthy of a conversation around the water cooler on Monday.

Multifactor Authentication - It's Coming Sooner Than We Think

2006-11-17T20:39:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe, but it's been 2 years since the Bush administration in the United States issued the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. The point of the directive was to enhance security through the reduction of identity fraud. One of the ways the HSPD-12 has affected information technology is by accelerating the adoption of smart cards. In fact, ActivIdentity predicts that between 50 and 100 million smart cards will be in circulation in the United Stated in as little as 10 years.

One of my colleagues just returned from training into FPA-SAFE, a program designed to help the food industry with its audit needs. He confirmed that identity security was an important part of the training materials and concerns. He even shared some humorous stories about the lack of appropriate standards for authentication in the food industry.

This occurred at the end of a meeting in which we discussed our own internal security procedures and standards. I had introduced staff to multifactor authentication, something I had been reading about in Jesper Johannsson and Steve Riley's book Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter To Data. The idea behind multifactor authentication is that we can enhance identity security in computer systems by utilizing 2 of 3 classes of authentication factors: something the user is, something the user has, or something the user knows. The first usually involves biometrics, the second something like a security token or smart card, and the third something like a password, pass phrase, or PIN. By using 2 of the 3 factors, we can dramatically improve the security of our systems while making life easier for our users.

Normally, I would have thought that multifactor authentication was simply too advanced and too rich for smaller companies like ours. But international standards organization and compliance regulations are spurring growth of the technology, reducing price points and increasing the likelihood that small- and medium-sized businesses will see the business benefits of the technology.

IQMS User Group Meeting - Security

2006-11-11T11:38:00.000-05:00

The final breakout session of the conference for me was security. The session was presented by Gustavo and Tina Jolicoeur of IQMS.

Without completing redesigning the module, there isn't a lot that can be done to add features. Nonetheless, users were quick to point out areas that needed improvement or than could be enhanced to ease management of users and security roles in Security Inspector.

IQMS has already enabled administrators to kill sessions. They have also added password policies and the ability to lock user accounts out of any IQMS module.

There was some more discussion on an issue which Randy Flamm had already indicated IQMS would not budge on, namely a single logon to the system using the authentication available to system administrators already in Windows Server 2003 through Active Directory and group policies. It is aggravating to our users to have to logon twice, once to the system, then on to EnterpriseIQ. Since we have implemented standard password and other security-related policies, there is nothing that IQMS can add that provides useful password protection that we haven't already implemented. If network administrators are following recommended standard policies, then this will be true universally. Unfortunately, many administrators continue to provide generic accounts to the operating system even though doing so compromises security. Not only that, but there are better ways to provide a mandatory profile and desktop to users than through generic accounts.

One feature that I advocated for, however, was the ability in Security Inspector to find-and-replace roles for individual users. The idea is that whenever we create custom roles to replace the IQMS canned roles, I don't want to have to find each individual user who has that role allocated to their IQMS user account and replace it with the custom-designed role. It would be far easier to find the existing accounts and replace them automatically.

There were a couple of new and old features of security that will help us. One is the ability to automatically log off users from their IQMS accounts whenever they have exceeded a session limit. That already exists, but I was unaware of the feature. A second pre-existing feature of which I was unfamiliar was that of resetting user passwords when they forget their password. Although we cannot do this through the IQMS-provided interface, I can do so through Oracle's Enterprise Manager Console.

The session was a useful way for me to come to the conclusion of this year's user group meeting. It was a very useful conference for all three of the Pano Cap Canada delegates.

IQMS User Group Meeting - Preventative Maintenance

2006-11-11T11:14:00.000-05:00

The final day of sessions started with a breakfast meeting in the ballroom with CorVu demonstrating their line of business intelligence products. That was followed by various breakout sessions until lunch, when the conference ended.

The first breakout session for me was Preventative Maintenance with Bob Gee and Danielle Fresca of IQMS. I had already met with Bob the day before in the afternoon at the IQMS Help Desk to review issues related to preventative maintenance, but the session was useful to review what other users were doing with the module and issues they had about required enhancements.

The biggest enhancement noted by the presenters during the sessions was the addition (finally!) of user-defined classes. In all previous versions, the classes of preventative maintenance were hard-coded. Now we'll be able to add our own, thereby facilitating sorting and grouping of tasks and work orders.

On behalf of Pano Cap, my colleague and I reiterated our desire to be able to add miscellaneous costs at the activity level to preventative maintenance work orders. But the greatest amount of user discussion focused on the issue of automatically generating preventative maintenance work orders by the last bill of material tool configuration. Randy Flamm had just joined the discussion. He guaranteed that IQMS would do something along these lines in the next major release.

IQMS User Group Meeting - CRM

2006-11-10T08:39:00.000-05:00

Pano Cap has had some success implementing the Customer Relationship Management module from IQMS already. But it was good to sit on this next breakout session and offer some suggestions for improvement. Our sales staff use the module to handle most customer-related issues - calls, tasks, support issues, and meetings. We have designed our own sample request forms and processes, but with recent improvements to the product, I foresee us abandoning those custom applications for the quoting module in CRM. In addition, with the requested changes to CRM, our IT department should be even more successful in adapting the software for its own needs as a help desk module.

IT uses CRM to document support-related issues. We also use the Project Manager module to document IT-related initiatives and strategic plans for a given period. With a few changes to CRM, we should in the future be able to link support activities directly to the project initiatives.

Other users were anxious to get IQMS to improve the Outlook-related features of the CRM module, including ActiveSync'ing with Pocket PCs and Smart Phones. With the 9/15 release we should also get web access through Apache server to the CRM module so that traveling sales people can access their to do lists and other CRM-related notes while using their smart phones or PDAs. In addition, when a call is received by a sales person or someone in IT, and that call is related to a problem with service, the new release promises to allow us to immediately drag-and-drop that call into the support issues queue.

CRM cannot, and may never, offer all the features of a product like Microsoft's Outlook, but the integration with the ERP system makes it a very compelling option, especially if the company can secure unlimited licenses. I don't know if Pano Cap is ready to make the investment in unlimited licenses, but it would be nice ;>)

IQMS User Group Meeting - WMS/RF

2006-11-10T08:24:00.000-05:00

The next breakout session I attended was in the ballroom and had a large number of attendees, all eagerly anticipating news on the Warehouse Management System (WMS, RF for Radio Frequency). Diane Ramaglia was the presenter, but it is safe to say that Randy Flamm, the president and founder of IQMS, took the lead in fielding the Q&A session that followed Diane's PowerPoint presentation.

Diane flew through her slide deck, leaving little time to take notes, but suffice to say that the WMS product is designed to provide better accuracy in inventory, to provide a real-time view of that inventory, to reduce costs in managing inventory, to reduce returned product, and to support less time spent on physical inventory counts.

The anticipated next release of WMS will have new features in both the web-based version for PDAs and the text-based version for bar code scanners such we have at Pano Cap. In addition, Randy fielded a lot of suggestions and questions about enhancements.

From the Pano perspective, we were able to get most of our questions about best practices and implementation scenarios answered. The IQMS staff seemed a little nervous about our initiative in getting WMS/RF users together during the lunch session, possibly because they wanted to ensure that any useful suggestions about product enhancements were documented by IQMS staff and implemented in subsequent releases of their software. Even so, we met with other WMS/RF users during the lunch break and got a few more pointers about implementation lessons learned.

IQMS User Group Meeting - Crystal Reports

2006-11-10T08:08:00.000-05:00

The morning sessions on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 started with a Microsoft presentation on FRx report writer. Although we use this report writer for financial statements and other financial reports at Pano Cap, the session didn't give us anything new to digest.

The next session was given by Tina Jolicoeur and Danielle Fresca of IQMS and was far more useful. This part year has been a tough one for both IQMS and users of IQMS software products insofar as printing of Crystal Reports is concerned. Incompatibilities with .NET printing, illegal 2-table links, and miscellaneous display problems all surfaced in September 2005 and took until December for IQMS support technicians to put to bed. Most of the problems were with Crystal 8.5 and 9.0, but were left with IQMS technicians to resolve.

Crystal XI had its own set of issues. .NET printing required a reinstallation of each client workstation. There were new parameter settings for LAN administrators to use both at the global and workstation levels in EnterpriseIQ. Crystal report designers were faced with a default setting which turned on smart linking, a ridiculous feature which broke all the carefully designed table links in existing reports. And many other things.

All were addressed in this session by the IQMS presenters.

Moving on to new features related to Crystal reports in the highly anticipated 9/15 release were things like cascading dynamic parameters, a new reports catalog accessible from the main menu and a reports execution log to track which reports have been run by individual users.

We at Pano will have to start planning our move to Crystal XI, since neither 8.5 nor 9.0 are supported any longer by Business Objects. Melissa Johnson of IQMS is designing all new reports using Crystal XI and the future of printing in the IQMS environment (if not everywhere in the enterprise) will involve .NET printing, so it's time to move on, even if that means retiring printers.

IQMS User Group Meeting - Developments

2006-11-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

Wow! I don't know how else to express how impressed I was with Wednesday morning's session with the President of IQMS, Randy Flamm! Randy took almost 2 hours to demonstrate IQMS's continuing passion for product development. In fact, Randy admitted that he is, at least in part, an analyst who works directly with the chief programmers in orchestrating how products are designed and created.

There are simply too many new and exciting product developments to share them all here in this blog post, so I'm going to highlight just a few.

The development of a wireless real-time manufacturing solution stands out for me as something that will reap immediate rewards for both IQMS and its customers. Pano Cap Canada has resisted marketing and sales types from IQMS wanting us to implement real-time before now. And I'm glad we resisted. Next year we will probably take the plunge, but now, instead of wiring our factory floor, machine by machine, we can go a far simpler route of adding small devices to each machine, some antennae, and possibly some light bars at each machine indicating the status of the current process running on that machine. There will be no access points and 2-way communication utilizing something called mesh networking. Way cool!

Another great improvement is the addition of report catalogs and report execution logs. These are a database administrator's dream tools. We will now have an easily-navigated tool to talk to users about each and every report in the sytstem as well as PDF files documenting everything about the report's design, intention, and location. Not only that, but we can use the same tool to document our custom reports. The report execution log allows administrators to see who uses which reports, how long the reports take to run, and where possible bottlenecks are in the operation of reports.

Finally, drag-and-drop email from whatever email client a user happens to be using promises to make life easier.

Randy indicated that over 2400 modifications, enhancements, and new features have been added to IQMS modules since the last user group meeting in April of 2005. That is truly impressive work. Keep it up IQMS!

IQMS User Group Meeting - Introductions

2006-11-09T09:05:00.000-05:00

The Wednesday morning sessions started out extremely well, the first session being the obligatory introductions. Liz Alfen, Danielle Fresca, Glenn Nowak, and Diane Ramaglia all had a chance to address the 187 attendees at this year's conference at the Las Vegas Hilton.

There were some noteworthy mentions, one of which will truly help our training efforts at Pano Cap Canada; namely, the introduction in early 2007 of self-help audio/visual training materials. These will be available from the IQMS web site (or the FTP site) and can be located on the customer's network to help in training users. We got to see one of these - a navigational training guide which provided some excellent suggestions for using pick lists and propagating search scopes.

A new marketing campaign was illustrated by Danielle Fresca. Unfortunately, the print media focus on advertising doesn't seem to have been noticed by the attendees yet.

Personally, I think IQMS needs to be far more concerned with the Internet and with Web 2.0 social networking for marketing its products. Where are the corporate IQMS blogs? Where are users of IQMS products blogging about their experiences? Try out Technorati or Google Blog Search, enter IQMS, and you will find very little. This absence of a presence in the new web needs to be addressed - fast!

Sales always has good news to share. Glenn Nowak indicated that growth has been good with 100% growth in warehouse management systems, and 20% growth in CRM sales. In addition, with the introduction of a wireless real-time manufacturing solution, sales in that arena are expected to do very well. IQMS has also been nurturing vendor partnerships, notably with Dell, CorVu, and eSP (eBusiness Solution Pros, Inc.).

One comment which stood out for me in this session was the decision to go with a "single source, single database solution vs best of breed." This has been largely responsible for IQMS success in the marketplace, that plus the attention the company pays to its customers and to hiring the right people.

If the introductions are any indication, the conference will be a smash hit!

Getting There - Flight to IQMS User Group Meeting

2006-11-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

It was a very early morning, especially by Vegas time - out of bed at 1:00 am. In fact everything was early. The shuttle from Kitchener to the Toronto airport was 20 minutes early. We arrived and got boarding passes and were through customs with 90 minutes before the flight left. And the flight itself arrived in sunny Las Vegas a good 25 minutes early. The flight was without incident, check in was easy, getting settled in our respective rooms for the next few days went without a hitch, and now we're about ready to go over to the Hilton where the IQMS user group meeting will be held from Wednesday to Friday.

My colleague invited IQMS users to respond to a user group email indicating an interest in meeting with the three of us from Pano Cap Canada at Thursday's lunch right after the session on the Warehouse Management System. We got a great response - 20 people plan to get together to review implementation basics and guidelines, hardware woes and commendations, training, and so on. At the next user group meeting in 18 months, we will have to see about scheduling a user-hosted meeting after the lunch on the last day of the conference.

I'm excited about this conference for a variety of reasons. It will be our second visit to the user group meeting representing our company. That means we are more experienced and will know more about both the structure and content of the presentations, the staff from IQMS involved, the users themselves, and how to make a case for the enhancements we want. In addition, we are familiar with the strip in Vegas and the hotels/casinos where we're staying. We have a good sense of where to get decent food and are no longer intimidated by the Vegas "culture". Everything here is extremely expensive, however. We'll have to watch our expense accounts!

Since we arrived so early, there was a good part of the day still available to us. We went to the Las Vegas Hilton to check out the site of the conference and to eat at the famous Benihana Japanese Restaurant, only to find that it wouldn't open till later in the day. So, to pass time, we decided to do some walking.

There's one thing about Vegas that all walkers need to know. Although everything looks close both on the map and visually, it ain't so! We decided to visit Circus Circus, one of the hotels/casinos we hadn't seen last year. The place was a disappointment, but walking there, down the strip a little further, and then back again to the Hilton took a long time.

We got back to Benihana's early, but had a great time over the open grill with another group of 5 people and the entertaining Japanese chef. Great food, good company, but thoroughly exhausted by the end of the meal. We checked back into our rooms at the Stratosphere and I called it a night. After all, tomorrow is the conference.

Hot Swap, How Sweet

2006-11-06T16:42:00.000-05:00

Inevitable, isn't it? The day before leaving on a 6-day business trip, one of the hard drives on one of our production servers degrades to the point of failure. In addition, just last week I was boasting to our company President how our servers never break down or need service.

But as we dug a little deeper, we discovered our server was still under warranty, that the vendor would courier a replacement hard drive by tomorrow, that our network consultant would be able to be on-site to install the drive, and that the drive was hot swappable. Now that is truly sweet. The defective drive gets removed and replaced without interrupting production at all. Nobody even knows that we were on thin ice!

It wasn't that long ago that the technology supporting this kind of feature was prohibitively expensive. Today it is virtually commonplace in most servers. So the potential IT nightmare becomes, in reality, a lullaby and sweet dreams.

Tim Berners-Lee and the "dangers" of blogging

2006-11-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

I regularly read Mark Evans' blog through an RSS feed. Yesterday, as I was reading one of his entries, I was intrigued to see two full sentences near the end of a paragraph crossed out. Evidently, Mark had read a Guardian article in which Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was quoted as decrying the danger to democracy and truth caused by the world of blogging.

According to the Guardian, Berners-Lee is most concerned with "the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information." Those who read blogs take what they read on trust, too much trust.

Immediately following the two crossed out sentences, Mark has a mea culpa section in which he apologizes for taking the Guardian article at face value. Berners-Lee's orginal blog post had a far more positive spin on the world of blogging than what the Guardian and the BBC reports.

Berners-Lee actually finds blogs very useful, primarily because of their "gently evolving network of pointers of interest." In fact, the blogosphere might even provide a model for a trust infrastructure, something of possible interest to his proposed Web Science Research Initiative.

I searched Technorati to see if Mark's mistake had been repeated. In fact, many of the blog entries on the subject repeated the same mistake. But what I found most ironic was that it wasn't the BBC or the Guardian or any other print media that corrected the problem. It was other bloggers (here's just one example from a former journalist turned blogger), including Mark Evans.

What do I think? Yes, blogging has the potential of propagating misinformation quickly. Yes, bloggers often fail miserably in providing appropriate links to support their claims. But, the point still remains that the speed with which misinformation spreads is equally matched by the speed with which it is corrected. Unlike print media, where corrections are almost impossible to find and usually far too late to have any impact, blogging's internal corrective mechanism is similar to the Wikipedia model.

It is important to remember that mistakes will be made. What is critical is how those mistakes are corrected and the speed with which the correction occurs.

IT Expenditures To Grow

2006-11-01T19:44:00.000-05:00

Accenture has recently released an annual survey of IT expenditures in the United States. Over 300 general business and IT managers were asked about expected expenditures for 2007. Sixty percent anticipated increases averaging 5.5% per annum, 13% anticipated decreases. Most executives also thought that IT expenditures were less than they should be.

Growth initiatives seem to be behind the optimistic estimates. Emphasis on maintenance activities obviously means that expenditures should not grow much, if at all. Of those growth scenarios, most had to do with integration efforts related to company acquisition, regulatory compliance issues, and security requirements.

For small/medium-sized businesses not anticipating acquisitions or major growth initiatives, Accenture's survey of big business doesn't mean too much. In fact, although I have no specific studies to support this, I do not anticipate major increases in spending in Canadian SMBs in 2007. Instead, I expect to see more Canadian IT managers concerning themselves with business alignment issues, consolidation through technologies like virtualization, and a continuing effort to secure their IT assets.

eSP and IQMS Partnership

2006-11-01T12:23:00.000-05:00

eBusiness Solution Pros (eSP) and IQMS have just today announced a new partnership allowing IQMS to offer Stay-Linked software with their ERP wireless solutions. At Pano Cap, we are currently training staff in the use of bar code hand-held scanners, Stay-Linked, and IQMS's Warehouse Management System.

From an IT perspective, the Stay-Linked software provides a thin-client solution for wireless session persistence, the software running not on the device, but on a host. What this means in practice is that even when someone notices a temporary disruption in device-to-host access, the user will be returned to the same screen and session moments later without any IT help-desk involvement.

In addition, Stay-Linked offers the functionality of transferring control of the host-based screen session to another device should the user's device become disabled.

All of this is good news, something we should hear more about in our sessions at the upcoming IQMS UGM (user-group meeting) next week in Las Vegas.

Maclean's Sucks?

2006-10-29T09:27:00.000-05:00

"After 15 years and a trillion dollars of investment, just about everything we've been told about the Internet and what the information age would mean has come up short."
--- Steve Maich, "Pornography, gambling, lies, theft and terrorism: The Internet sucks", Maclean's Life article, 30-Oct-2006

If you're looking for balanced journalism in Canada's major news magazine, Maclean's, you won't find it in this piece of tripe. Sure, there are many reasons why the Internet currently can be a dangerous place. But to reduce all the benefits of world-wide connectivity to "The Internet sucks" is to be guilty of the same hyperbole that Maich so detests about those who promote the potential of the World Wide Web.

The Maclean's article is fundamentally flawed. But the problem is not so much the Maich is simply wrong. The problem is that his editorial isn't presented as such. Instead it appears as if it's the result of journalistic research. But anyone with a passing knowledge of recent history could have written this piece with a blindfold.

Comparisons with the dot.com fiasco, the recent Google purchase of YouTube, Napster's troubles, the almost-inevitable references to pornography and gambling, plus repetition of the most outrageous comments of nay-sayers of the past 10 to 15 years...well, you all could write this story without much more effort than say, preparing a blog entry ;>)

One example of journalistic imbalance is what Maich has to say about Wikipedia. His example is a minute-by-minute account of the encyclopedia entry about the death of Enron's CEO, Ken Lay on July 5th. The problems with Wikipedia's come-one-come-all approach to authoring on-line entries could have been summarized quite simply. If you were to read the edits to that entry between 10:00 am and 10:30 am on July 5th, you would have seen some mistakes propagated by the authors.

Still, one wonders what Maich thinks about the obvious comparisons between traditional encyclopedias and Wikipedia. To get recent information of substance is impossible with printed encyclopedias. If you're willing to wait for the next annual supplement, you just might find something there about Ken Lay in late 2007. But there would be no hyperlinking of information, no reference to key terms, no checks and balances implicit with the Wikipedia authorship model - one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to appreciate the incredible benefits available to the entire world through Wikipedia. Maich instead latches on to a single miniscule problem without so much as a tip of the hat to the almost miraculous utility of the on-line encyclopedia phenomenon. Instead, he categorically calls the article "lies".

On a very personal level, Maich's complaints about the abundance of poor health information on the Internet is laughably narrow-sighted and narrow-minded. Over the past year, I have battled rectal cancer, enduring radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, and a month-long hospital stay owing to post-operative complications. During that year, the Internet has provided my surest source of communications, research, and personal therapy, no small part due to the abundance of useful medical information.

The core message of the Maclean's article is really about the danger posed to elitist publishers by bloggers who provide news and opinion for free or what Maich calls the "echo chamber". Journalists are running scared and Maich proves it. Bloggers are the most symbolic problem with the Internet.

"For everything the Web has simplified, accelerated, and proliferated, there is at least as much that it has destroyed..." - that's all you really need to read from the Maclean's article. I hope Maich gets a chance to read the blogs and Internet articles his diatribe has unleashed.

Maybe Not So Virtual

2006-10-28T08:32:00.000-04:00

OK. So this idea of virtual business combining with real business may be a bleeding edge phenomenon.

In 24 hours, the real cash spent on Second Life totaled $494,196!!! Those real dollars were spent on virtual goods and services that have no value whatsoever outside the virtual environment of Second Life!

Nissan has just purchased an online island for $1,250. The New York Times has recently created a permanent news bureau on Second Life. Anshe Chung makes over a 6-figure income buying and selling virtual land in that same virtual world. Toyota sells a virtual Scion. Reebok sells virtual shoes for your too-cool-to-be-shoeless avatar.

In fact, there are now over one million "residents" on Second Life who would argue feverishly with you about the reality of their virtual life.

So if this phenomenon is not bleeding edge and involves real cash incentives, not to mention that it may solve corporate training issues, where do we begin? Well...perhaps someone like Pano Cap's techie blogger should consider providing virtual caps for those virtual Ketchup bottles and peanut butter jars in those virtual kitchens and restaurants. I wonder how many Linden dollars I could make selling tamper evident closures to a virtual Tylenol?

Virtual Business

2006-10-27T22:03:00.000-04:00

A while back I wrote about digital natives, a phrase used to describe generation Y consumers flooding into today's business environment. They will inevitably disrupt the way IT is managed and administered by bringing demands for VoIP, blogs, podcasting, and video-on-demand into the corporate environment. But what I find most fascinating about such prophecies is the prediction that digital natives will promote the blurring of real and virtual, not just in their hours of relaxation in the evenings and on weekends, but right in the middle of the workplace. Design and marketing firms, fashion and media companies - they're all sitting up and taking notice. Even training organizations and software vendors looking for an edge are paying attention to virtual worlds such as Second Life as ways to foster more collaborative learning methods.

Imagine yourself as one of those 20-something keeners fresh out of university and facing the new challenge of the world of business. Instead of receiving training about the company's ERP system through Adobe Acrobat files or a Microsoft PowerPoint slide deck, you create an avatar and then enter a virtual world which looks remarkably like the factory floor of the manufacturing company you have just joined. You're invited to interact with a factory manager who shows you how product is manufactured in the facility. That manager then introduces you to the operations manager who takes you on a tour of the inventory management system. And so on...(for an example, see this blog entry by Robert Scoble about John Hartman).

When you're ready, you test your knowledge by engaging in a quest or possibly by designing a simulation to improve a business process.

Maybe, just maybe, a generation Y entrepreneur creates a virtual equivalent of your business, buying raw material, hiring other avatars, planning Christmas parties for staff with virtual entertainers, manufacturing products and then selling them for Linden dollars (300 of which are now the equivalent of a US dollar).

Far fetched? Maybe. But Sun Microsystems recently hosted a virtual press conference on Second Life. Sun's chief researcher and chief gaming office both appeared in avatar form at the virtual Sun Pavilion in Second Life to open the pavilion, a facility with an outdoor theatre, meeting spaces, and kiosks playing videos of Sun technology. Sun is banking on the assumption that blogs are just the tip of the iceberg for new ways to interact with potential clients. Virtual worlds like Second Life may well eclipse all the other recent developoments in the Web 2.0 universe.

IQMS User Group Meeting - Preview & Schedule

2006-10-25T10:08:00.000-04:00

This year's IQMS User Group Meeting is being held at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel from November 8th to 10th. Attendees from Pano Cap Canada will provide blog entry reviews for sessions attended. The schedule of sessions is as follows (links will be provided to the appropriate entry later):

Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Opening comments, introductions
New development, new products
General Session: Back office / Manufacturing (including RFQ/Quoting)
Breakout: Project Manager/Tooling
Breakout: HR Suite - Payroll
General Session: Back office / Manufacturing (including Planning & Scheduling)
Breakout: Fab Track & Fab Data
Breakout: HR Suite - Time & Attendance
Welcome reception

Thursday, November 9, 2006
FRx
Breakout: RealTime
Breakout: IQ Alert
Breakout: Crystal Reports
Breakout: Warehouse Management (WMS/RF)
Breakout: EDI / e-server
Breakout: Fixed Assets
General Session: Back office / Manufacturing (including RT labels and serialized inventory control)
Breakout: Quality Management System
Breakout: CRM
General Session: Back office / Manufacturing (including Production Reporting & PRA)
Breakout: PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and DHR (Device History Record)
Breakout: e-plant / Division / Warehouse / ICT

Friday, November 10, 2006
General Session: Front office / Accounting (including Costing, PIT)
Breakout: Extrusion
Breakout: Preventative Maintenance
General Session: Front office / Accounting (including GL Variances, Multi-currency)
Breakout: Security
Breakout: Forecast

Regime of Competence

2006-10-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

One of the most fascinating books I have read recently would appear to have very little to do with managing information technology. The national bestseller Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by iconoclast Steven Johnson is a guaranteed can't-put-it-down read.

Johnson presents the concept of the Sleeper Curve, the idea that popular entertainment media like television, video games, and the Internet have promoted a mass cognitive upgrade - in other words, people consuming those media are getting smarter.

Popular TV shows, video games, as well as the availability of information and social networking on the Internet, are becoming increasingly complex and stimulating. But more important than the thesis of the book and his compelling arguments to support that thesis is Johnson's deconstruction of the oft-repeated and actually-silly-when-analyzed claim that mass media is dulling our brains and creating violent criminals of our youth.

In addition to the thesis and deconstruction efforts of the book is the concept of regime of competence, something directly related to IT management and corporate training principles. Here, Johnson alludes to work by the cognitive scientist Andy diSessa who argues that a combination of frustration and pleasure is essential to training, something obvious to anyone who plays computer games. The core principle here is one that both schools and corporate training programs often fail to recognize; namely, that memorization and recitation of facts rarely achieves educational goals. Instead, video games, where the gamer is presented with a context where the achievement of goals (or missions) is clearly difficult, but just within the realm of possibility, is the key to lasting cognitive improvement and achievement. Learning is achieved by carefully balancing pleasure and frustration.

The challenge for IT management is this: our computing environment is becoming increasingly complex. In order to train corporate users about information technology (such as the use of bar code scanners to manipulate inventory) we should be investigating techniques to improve our users' regime of competence rather than rote learning. Ideally, we would be able to create and use video games to train employees. But since this may not be economically feasible, we should at least incorporate a lot of hands-on discovery and game-like training experiences. Powerpoint presentations alone won't work. We need to ramp up our training programs so that, at a bare minimum, we challenge and urge competition and/or cooperation in a game-like environment. Then, true and lasting learning will occur naturally. And, if Johnson is correct, our staff will also become smarter in the process.

Digital Natives

2006-10-11T08:54:00.000-04:00

The annual Gartner Symposium and IT Expo (8-13 October 2006, Orlando, FL) predicts that the most significant wave in IT over the next few years will be consumer technology surfacing in the workplace because of "digital natives", employees raised with technologies they expect to find in the corporate sector as well.

These digital natives may prove to be a royal pain to IT managers. Why? They will come into the workplace with experience in blogging, podcasting, VoIP, video-on-demand, and having their own consumer products with faster processors, more bandwidth and greater storage capacity. How IT managers respond to these digital natives may determine how successful the IT manager is in the workplace.

When we have a workforce expecting to conduct interactions at any time or place, and can do so from their own homes, .... well, you can predict the impact on corporate culture. Still, IT managers and executives will need to concentrate on delivering business value throughout this period of growing expectations from the digital natives. And delivering business value will most likely be a matter of predicting and managing growth over many years rather than concentrating exclusively on cutting IT costs on an year-by-year basis.

Enterprise-Class Mobile Devices

2006-10-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, IDC released yet another push on their IT Report abstract Attack of the BlackBerry Clones (the full document is 23 pages in length and costs, get this, $3500!), in which it suggested that despite RIM's tremendous success, the next few years will witness a new group of competitors challenge their market supremacy. Look out for Microsoft, Nokia, and Motorola (by using Google Blog Search, it became apparent that IDC generates buzz every month or so for it's expensive research reports - see another entry with almost precisely the same buzz from 28-Sep-2006).

IT World Canada also alluded to the IDC study but put the RIM success in financial terms. By the beginning of September, RIM's BlackBerry account holders had reached 6.2 million. With 72% of RIM's revenue coming from handhelds, any challenge is sure to merit scrutiny. Still, RIM expects a user base of 7 million by December 2nd of this year.

By the year 2010, handheld users should have risen to approximately 63 million. IDC predicts that Microsoft Windows-powered devices alone will have grabbed 32.3 % of market share by that time.

What once separated the BlackBerry from other devices, push e-mail technology, is now a standard feature available on any Windows Mobile 2005 device. But these devices offer far more computing power than the BlackBerry, offering a convergence of enterprise-class features that make them a compelling alternative.

Microsoft's Shield: Strider HoneyMonkey

2006-09-12T16:00:00.000-04:00

I remember the first day I came back to Pano Cap Canada after surgery. My hope was that I could start back working part-time and then gradually increase my hours on-site or working remotely until I was back to full-time hours.

In the 18 months since we installed a new Windows Server 2003 network, we had encountered not a single virus or worm attack on our network. But that day I returned, I found our network consultant working on our servers to find and remove a worm. It was the first exploit that had cracked our system, despite a multi-layer defense and reasonably up-to-date patches on our server operating systems. Since then, we have had one other worm attack, likely a recurrence of the same worm.

Unfortunately, we were unable to isolate the source of the attack, but my suspicions were centred around malicious web sites visited by unsuspecting staff, perhaps even someone logged in as an administrator (I know, web surfing shouldn't be done under administrator privileges).

Recently eWeek magazine featured an article about initiatives Microsoft is taking to help LAN administrators like myself in protecting their companies against such threats. Microsoft Research's Cybersecurity and Systems Management group has a number of projects underway that may help. One such initiative is Strider HoneyMonkey (what a great moniker!).

The project is aimed at detecting and analyzing Web sites that host malicious code. The Strider HoneyMonkey Exploit Detection System detects attacks that use Web servers to exploit unpatched browser vulnerabilities and then install malware on PCs. Users typically have no idea that an exploit has occurred on their system.

The details of how the project detects malicious code is available online at Microsoft Research. There is no product associated withthe initiative, but Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement (ISE) Team has already used data generated from HoneyMonkey for enforcement purposes to help identify persons distributing spyware.

I'll review other Microsoft security initiatives in subsequent blog entries including the following:

Search Defender
GhostBuster
URL Tracer
BrowserShield

Cap This!

2006-09-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

A report has just surfaced originating in Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium in which stadium vendors are being instructed to remove the caps from water bottles sold to fans. Why? Because somebody might get the idea to hurl a full bottle of water from upper decks and hurt someone below.

There is a hilarious editorial about the nonsense in today's Edmonton Sun. But perhaps cap manufacturers need to be careful. Isn't it just a matter of time before we will be forced to put warnings on plastic caps? "Warning! Bottles with intact caps can become dangerous projectiles. Please remove cap before throwing the container."

Google Apps for Your Domain

2006-08-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

Microsoft and Google are on a collision course. Who benefits? All of us users benefit, that's who!

Just a few moments ago, Google announced a package of web-based productivity applications (called Google Apps for Your Domain) that appears to target Microsoft Office, although it's difficult right now to see how the apples and oranges really compare.

Right now, the productivity applications are for small business; enterprises will not find much here that they can use yet. The only existing edition is called the Standard Edition and consists of GMail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Page Creator. Writely and Google Spreadsheets - the word processing and spreadsheet Google apps - are not included at this time (nor is there any mention of something to compare with PowerPoint).

What's in this for IT? Hosted applications promise to reduce time IT staff spend supporting users with configuration and installation issues. IT won't have to maintain email, messaging, web sites, calendars, etc.

Blog Editors: Choose One

2006-08-14T10:55:00.000-04:00

Finally, there's some excitement for PC users in selecting a blog editor.

If you've been reading my personal or corporate blogs, then you may have noticed a reference to Qumana at the bottom of many posts. Despite its shortcomings, I still use this editor for the majority of my posts. Prior to using Qumana, I tended to use Blogger for Word. Neither editor allowed me to upload images reliably to the host for my blogs, Blogger.com.

But in the past week, there have been two new tools worth considering.

The first is courtesy of a browser called Flock, which I have recently made my default Internet browser. This browser is based on the popular Firefox, but has some features which make it an attractive alternative to both Firefox and Internet Explorer. One of those features in the built-in blog editor which can be accessed as easily as pressing Ctrl-B on the keyboard or selecting Tools | Blog.

The second is a recent entry from Microsoft called Microsoft Live Writer. It is more fully featured that the Flock entry, although Blogger's API doesn't download the template to the editor as I hoped it would. This is a Blogger issue, not a Live Writer issue.

Two features that will win some fans for Microsoft's entry are the add a map feature and the ability to add your own plugins.

My recommendation? Get started blogging by downloading Microsoft Live Writer.

CRM: A Flawed Model?

2006-08-14T08:15:00.000-04:00

CIO claims that up to 70% of customer relationship management projects (CRM) fail.

So, why is it that I receive regular calls from vendors trying to get Pano Cap to consider investing in another CRM package? Those calls are fairly simple to field since we already have a CRM module which is well integrated with our ERP (enterprise resource planning) software from IQMS - Enterprise IQ.

One of the major reasons why companies fail with CRM projects is because they don't implement it correctly. As some of us have experienced in consulting other companies in the region, very often software projects do little more than automate broken or incomplete manual procedures .Obviously, if a company has not carefully reviewed its policies and procedures in regards to the customer experience, automating the process only means that the company can make the same mistakes faster than ever before.

The same business problems that drive companies to adopt a CRM project are the problems that must be resolved before a CRM project is conceived. Sure, CRM software has technology features that excite the imagination. But instead of letting technology features drive the process, companies need to concentrate on the business problems they face in the marketplace. Once the problems are identified, a corporate strategy must be formulated and implemented in the existing manual processes before considering automation.

Let me say it again, "CRM is not about technology. It is about business processes that promote positive customer relationships."

Ouch! IT Managers don't often have to confess that information technology is not about the technology; it's about business objectives and appropriate strategy.

Currently, CRM is a flawed model. CRM technology solutions are about building repositories of information about transactions with customers. But ask any of your sales persons and he/she will tell you that creating positive customer experiences isn't about how much information you have recorded about the customer and your interactions with that customer. Positive customer experiences are all about building trust, being dependable, keeping promises, admitting mistakes and immediately fixing them, and honest and regular communication. Personally, I don't know any software that can deliver those features.

EnergizeIT: Windows Vista

2006-06-24T10:10:00.000-04:00

I've experienced streaming media presentations from Microsoft before, but today's EnergizeIT event confirms the dedication of Microsoft to the IT Pro community. There are at least 100 of us doing the same. I doubt many of these are recovering cancer patients like me, but they each have their own reasons why a trip to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on a Saturday morning is out of the question

As I write, I am watching Barry Goff, a product manager from Microsoft at Redmond, and chief experience officer, Bruce Cowper, a member of the Canadian IT TechNet team, demonstrating how to become productive with Windows Vista. Specifically, they are showing Windows Meeting Space, a new collaboration tool for Vista that allows separate ad hoc networking independent of existing networks.

Not only do I greatly appreciate the real-time opportunity to be there without being there, I can go back in subsequent days to view archives of the presentation. In other words, these events provide me with free training available anywhere, anytime for any reason. Cool! Very cool!

Powered By Qumana

Bill Gates Makes a Transition

2006-06-16T05:00:00.000-04:00

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer announced yesterday that Gates will be scaling back his responsibilities at Microsoft (he will remain Chairman indefinitely) over a 2-year period to assume a full-time role with the Gates Foundation and a part-time role with Microsoft. Ray Ozzie has already assumed the role of chief software architect at Microsoft and will work cooperatively with Bill Gates concerning technical product decisions during the transition period.

Channel 9 has a full interview with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates from yesterday. You can also access the news from Robert Scoble's blog. The latter is especially interesting in reading comments from Robert's readers.

There is also a news conference available for those who still prefer traditional media.

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I'll Be Back

2006-03-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

In information technology, it seems that the projects pile on faster than one could ever hope to complete. That's the nature of the beast and, truthfully, one of the reasons I love my job so much. There is always something to learn, something to do, someone to help, some technology to implement.

This week, it was important to me and to my colleagues that I complete two projects. One was finding a solution to a long-term frustration with our VPN (virtual private network) tunnel with one of our major customers. After trying two different vendor products which combine a VPN device and a firewall, we finally settled on a SonicWall device. Our system integrator prepared the device (a TZ 170) before installation so that it only took 30 minutes for us to install, test, and get the tunnel working. Since then the VPN has worked flawlessly.

In addition, as we approach the end of our fiscal year, we need a project-based way of analyzing our expenditures. After consultation with our ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor, IQMS, I was able to complete a report design which does a good job of showing project tasks, vendors and line items for "raw materials" expenditures of our projects.

One of the simplest weekly objectives was to get our online staff training modules working. As with so much else in IT, it is often the simple things that turn out to be the most recalcitrant. Nothing seemed to work the way we wanted it to work. Finally, by noon Friday, we found a way to get the self-teaching modules working sufficiently well to warrant rolling it out to other staff.

All this was a self-imposed requirement before I go on medical leave. As of today, I am off work (and will not be blogging for a while) to undergo surgery and then chemotherapy. My surgical oncologist anticipates that I will be off work for 5-10 weeks! I'm hoping he is underestimating my recuperative powers. Even after I am back, though, the chemotherapy will continue for up to 6 months.

But I will be back! Look for me.

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Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview - Reviewed

2006-03-22T07:44:00.000-05:00

It was released Monday, March 20th. The Windows Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 preview is now available.

It requires Windows XP Professional SP2. The download executable will install the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool and will then do a one-time set up (after rebooting your computer) which involves deciding whether or not to turn on the automatic Phishing Filter, choosing your region and language, and deciding whether or not to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program .

First Impressions

The overwhelming reaction was one of frustration. Despite cool, new features like tabs, zoom, and an uncluttered browser surface with accessible but unobtrusive toolbar and iconbar, it is impossible to spend any quality time with the beta preview at this time.

It is too sluggish even for testing purposes.
It consumes the entire screen and doesn't appear to be resizeable.
It freezes, cannot be minimized, and consumes too many resources.

I will definitely wait for the production version and, even then, may decide to read reviews before re-installing.

Conclusion: Not ready for release, even as a preview!

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VPNs, VoIP, Wireless - exciting times

2006-03-18T11:10:00.000-05:00

Honeymoon in progress
It's the end of my first week of what I affectionately call my "honeymoon", the two weeks before my surgery that my oncologists predicted would be a time when I felt good. They were right. All the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy have dissipated and I feel absolutely fantastic. It's a good thing too because these final two weeks before I go on medical leave are extremely busy and exciting for IT and Pano Cap.

Wireless Upgrades
We have a number of IT projects underway that are progressing at a good pace. As of Friday, we have installed the wireless access points and antennas required for our wireless warehouse project. Before I left for the weekend, I was able to detect the wireless access points from my notebook computer. Next week, we'll complete our data network upgrades, installation of new routers and switches.

Exchange synchronizing
We don't have a lot of wireless computing devices in place yet, but there are a few notebook computers and Windows mobile devices. Once the wireless is ready, we'll be able to add a utility service to the Exchange server so that our wireless computing devices can synchronize their Outlook data anywhere in the facility. It might not sound like a big deal, but it means management of projects and their associated task lists, email, meeting arrangements, etc - all this can be coordinated and updated from anywhere those with mobile devices happen to be in the building.

VoIP
In April, when I'm down and out, the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) project will be underway. I should be able to return to VoIP phones on desktops and testing almost complete. I'm not thrilled about telephony now being another IT management responsibility, but it will rationalize our resources and make phones just another managed service. All features of our phone system will then be available from an browser interface, making adding, removing, moving phones, redirecting calls and other assorted telephony tasks much simpler.

VPNs
We've had a virtual private network tunnel set up for quite a while now with one of our major customers. Unfortunately, the connections keep getting dropped. This next week, we'll be spending considerable energy and time ensuring those dropped connections are diagnosed and fixed...crossing my fingers.

All in all, another good week with lots of good things to look forward to in IT!

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TechNet Build'06 Tour - Session 4, Distributed Systems

2006-03-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

Make that footer read as follows:
Session 4: Distributed Systems.

The Microsoft product associated with this session is Windows Server 2003 R2.

Before we go any further into the benefits and features for distributed systems that are built in to this release of the server operating system, we've got a major IT manager hurdle - cost. This is incredibly important, not only as a stumbling block for IT Managers, but as an problematic issue for dealing with C-level executives.

How does Microsoft justify charging for R2 for existing Windows Server 2003 customers? Actually, it is only those customers who have neither Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreements. I can see the benefits even to small businesses with Software Assurance, but nonetheless, it's not intuitive to IT Managers that they will have to pay in order to get an update release of an operating system for which they have already paid!

One of the most obvious benefits of R2 for SMBs is print management. Not a lot was demonstrated, but what was look useful. Anything to enhance print management is welcomed by me.

Another benefit with Longhorn in 2007 will be enhanced leverage of SharePoint services.

Another set of problems plagued Rick Claus's demos for this session while showing distributed file systems and enhancements to replication between sites. His troubles were fun to watch...lots of laughter from Bruce Cowper and the hundreds...yes, Rick, hundreds... of IT pros in the audience, not to mention the potentially thousands of times the video feed will be viewed online!

Technorati Tags : Microsoft, "distributed, systems", "Software, Assurance", "Enterprise, Agreements", "Windows, Server, 2003, R2"

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TechNet Build'06 Tour - Session 3, Monitoring

2006-03-09T14:23:00.000-05:00

The session started with a sneak peak of Origami - UMPCs.

The primary tool to monitor the health of networks in Microsoft Operations Manager (with 3rd party service packs). If an IT Manager has multiple locations to manage, or even mobile workers, then MOM 2005 SP1 may be the tool of choice to do so.

At Pano Cap, we already use a 3rd-party proactive monitoring service with agents deployed on our various servers. This monitoring service typically sends me email alerts tied to triggers for various categories such as disk space, operating system patches and updates, antivirus updates, event logs on servers, firewall logs, security logs, backup status, printers offline, office worker playing Solitaire (just kidding), etc.

As Bruce Cowper said, "The biggest challenge in monitoring is determining what needs to be monitored and what is just noise."

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TechNet Build'06 Tour - Live Video Feed SUCCESS!

2006-03-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

We've moved from beta testing of live video feeds for this Microsoft event to invitations to other IT types who can't be in Toronto, all in about 5 hours. See Damir Bersinic's blog from about 25 minutes ago for details about connecting to the live feed.

Not only does it work, it works extremely well. "Being there" has never been so easy! Thanks, Microsoft!

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TechNet Build'06 Tour - Session 2, Managing Change

2006-03-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

Assuming the IT Manager (for Microsoft Server systems) has done a good job of baselining the infrastructure using tools like System Management Server, Baseline Security Analyzer and the Security Configuration Wizard, the next step in the MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) is change control.

Personally, this is one of the areas that a one-person IT team most fears, especially when users either do not appreciate or will not follow procedures. Deploying software for users needs to be controlled and managed, something users with 20 years of personal computing experience find frustrating and symptomatic of an anal-retentive personality on the part of the IT Manager. Well, that might be true, but not because software deployment is unnecessary.

Deployment of Internet Explorer is a perfect example of how security and ease-of-use sometimes conflict both from the user and management perspectives. Increasingly, we rely on a browser interface for internal and external applications that are critical to our daily functions, even in small/medium businesses like ours.

I like what I see of SMS, but at this point, I'm not sure it is a cost-effective deployment management solution for deploying software and platforms like Internet Explorer 7.0. But...there is so much there! Business Desktop Deployment looks very interesting. I'll need a baseline reference desktop computer for testing purposes. But this would all be possible by taking our existing test server, adding virtual server and then creating virtual servers and PCs. All I would need is more memory!

One of the things that made this session memorable was witnessing Rick Claus having demo glitches. Yes! Rick is human...given his demo perfection at most other events, it's good to know!

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is a free tool from Microsoft which helps SMBs deploy patches and updates throughout the network, a tool which Windows IT Pro Magazine readers ranked as the #1 patch management update product. This replacement tool for the previous Software Update Services (SUS) now includes support for Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Exchange Server and the operating systems.

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TechNet Build'06 Tour - Session 1, SWMI

2006-03-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

It's underway. I'm listening to an excellent quality audio feed and watching a fairly grainy video feed (we'll check out the resolution quality at lunch). I've got the PowerPoint slides for the 1st presentation, following along with Rick Claus and Bruce Cowper. I have MSN interaction with Damir Bersinic and Barnaby Jeans. I have my coffee, my blog, my OneNote...I'm all set.

Now, on to SWMI - secure, well-managed infrastructure

Technorati Tags : Microsoft, TechNet, Build, '06

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Ultra Mobile PCs & Origami

2006-03-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

I know, you probably haven't had time to catch the buzz about Origami, but if you did you'd also have heard of UMPCs - Ultra Mobile Personal Computers.

Origami is the name Microsoft's Mobile Hardware and Application Development Team's Otto Berkes gave to a suite of software utilities designed for mobile professionals using devices loaded with Windows Vista and or Windows XP. The utilities depend on a touchscreen interface. TouchPack is a launcher application designed for touchscreens and DialKeys is a thumb-based text input "wheel" on either side of the screen. There are additional utilities, but you get the picture (from Engadget)

UMPCs use the touchscreen operating system. How do you use UMPCs? Check out the video on the new UMPCommunity site.

At Pano Cap, UMPCs would be perfect for sales staff. Imagine other mobile professionals like police, medical personnel, etc. too.

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Build '06 Tour - The Video Feed Is On

2006-03-08T20:16:00.000-05:00

I have to commend Barnaby Jeans of Microsoft. At last month's WWITPRO session, he stopped me to say that the TechNet team had responded to my and other IT Pro's requests for video feeds for TechNet events and would try to get things ready for Toronto's version of the BUILD '06 event on March 9th, 2006 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

I just received his email this afternoon with the URLs for the video feed and an IM address for MSN Messenger to provide live feedback on the quality of the feed.

This is a prime example of why Microsoft's currency keeps rising. It's an indication of why so many of us IT Pro's trust and respect the big boys.

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AIMing at Toronto Bloggers

2006-03-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

Last night, I attended a meet-and-greet at Shoeless Joe's restaurant at 401 King Street West in Toronto. The first person I met was Jeremy Wright, the author of Blog Marketing whose book I purchased on the weekend and just began reading on Sunday (see Sunday's post). I'll have to review his book at Amazon, since the only person to have done so thus far gave it 1 of 5 stars.

These events are tough for me. I have a very hard time focusing on conversations in noisy bars with music, video, people bumping into one another, dozens of conversations all occurring at the same time. But it was worthwhile despite my discomfort.

In addition to meeting Jeremy, I was able to spend a few minutes with Shel Israel, a co-author of Naked Conversations, who graciously signed my copy of the book. Good to have met you, Shel. I hope there will be many more opportunities in the future!

Others with whom I spent some time chatting about blogging, tools, experiences, methodologies, etc. included:

Rob Duxter of Network Integrators of Canada
Peter Dawson - Thought Flickr's blog (fascinating guy!)
Lucia Mancuso of The Blog Studio, a design guru
Mike Bowler of Gargoyle Software, software development facilitator

The event was sponsored by AIMS (The Association of Internet Marketing & Sales). Shel Israel is a speaker at an event AIM is sponsoring today called Social Marketing: Tapping into The Power of Connected Customers.

If it wasn't for the fact that I've already got a Toronto day-long event planned for Thursday (BUILD '06 Tour for Microsoft TechNet), I'd love to have been there. At the Thursday event we'll be covering Internet Explorer 7.0, Virtual Server 2005 R2, Systems Management Server, Microsoft Operations Manager, Server 2003 R2, and a Microsoft initiative called Dynamic Systems Initiative.

Technorati Tags : "Shel, Israel", "Jeremy, Wright", AIMS, "Build, '06, Tour"