• Ultralinguq – recommended by Evernote
  World-class dictionary, translation, and grammar software
  (tags: evernote grammar dictionary translation)
• Custom Twitter Backgrounds at Twitter Image
  (tags: twitter)
• Flocking around Twitter
  (tags: Twitter Digital Identity)
• TweepSearch – from @dacort
  Search Twitter profiles by user name or keyword
  "Enter a username (@dacort) to search that person's followers, or just a keyword to search all bios currently indexed."
• Ian Yip: What does an IBM acquisition of Sun mean for Identity Management?
  "what's going to happen to the software stack? There are overlaps EVERYWHERE! There are too many products to talk about in detail but IBM cannot simply throw Sun's stack away because of the backlash they're going to get from customers and the community at large."
  (tags: Identity sunmicrosystems IdentityManagement IBM)
• Final Chapter for Sun Micro Could Be Written by IBM – WSJ.com
  "If the deal does go through, IBM is likely to pay $10 to $11 a share for Sun, according to people familiar with the matter. That would put the purchase price around $8 billion — or about $6.5 billion including the $1.4 billion in cash on Sun's balance sheet."
  (tags: sunmicrosystems IBM)
• Behavioral analytics could extend #identity management security — Government Computer News
  "The traditional tools of identity management — user names, passwords, ID cards and biometric information — can fall short of ensuring that people are who they say they are. Behavioral analytics and, more recently, trusted reference networks are now widely used in the financial industry as a third tool for managing information access."
  (tags: Identity IdentityManagement)
• AFEI – International Collaborative Identity Management Forum: from @dchesebrough
  "The International Collaborative Identity Management Forum is a community with focused activity around authentication, trusted mechanisms and identity proofing and vetting. It is working towards a solution to the problem of efficient identity authorization amongst participants in extended enterprises."
  (tags: Identity IdentityManagement AFEI I-CIDM)
• IBM-Sun Merger Called Anticompetitive
  "A tech industry group largely made up of IBM rivals says a merger between Big Blue and Sun Microsystems would be harmful to competition in the IT industry and lead to higher prices for software and hardware."
  (tags: sunmicrosystems IBM)
• Web powerhouse Sun Micro poised at brink of IBM's maw
  "Its name was once synonymous with the Internet. It championed networking at a time most people thought e-mail was revolutionary. It used to be mentioned in the same breath as Microsoft and Intel. Now, Sun Microsystem's biggest coup may well be selling itself to one of the industry's oldest names at a sky-high premium, spelling perhaps the end of an era for a loss-making firm that shed virtually its entire stock value in under a decade."
  (tags: sunmicrosystems IBM)
• Sony, Google Challenge Amazon – WSJ.com
  "In a strike against Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader, Sony and Google plan to launch a partnership Thursday that will give users of the Sony Reader device access to more than half-a-million public domain books from Google's ambitious book digitization project. The books will be offered to Sony Reader users free via the online Sony eBook store. The companies wouldn't reveal financial terms of the deal."
  (tags: google amazon sony kindle)
• IBM Signals Strategy Shift With Talks to Buy Sun – WSJ.com
  "International Business Machines Corp.'s talks to spend up to $8 billion on embattled Sun Microsystems Inc. is a departure from the strategy IBM Chief Executive Samuel Palmisano has long followed."
  (tags: sunmicrosystems IBM)
• The 'IBM buys Sun' story | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com
  "Since sometime last summer a company called Southeastern Asset Management has been both accumulating Sun shares and hawking them to various big players. They got nowhere with HP, nowhere with Microsoft, nowhere with the Koreans, and nowhere with IBM – but recent political change has changed that: bringing IBM back to the table with no anti-trust concerns between them and a kill Sun agenda."
  (tags: sunmicrosystems IBM)
• Axialis Software – IconWorkshop
  "With Axialis IconWorkshop™ you can create, modify, convert and manage all kinds of icons for Windows®, Macintosh®, Unix and application toolbars."
  (tags: icon Axialis)
• Web 2.0 Icons – Free stock icons.
  "23 freeware “iPhone-like” icons of Web 2 Social Bookmarks and Networks for use in blogs, websites, desktops, software"
  (tags: web2.0 icon)
• Clarence Wang''s Internet Marketing Insights
  "In April 2008 I started my adventure into this Internet Marketing arena in order to follow my dreams of becoming an Internet entrepreneur. This blog is my record of that journey. You can be part of this as well."
  (tags: blog marketing coolblog)

This evening I stumbled across Twittersheep, that creates an interactive cloud of keywords from the Twitter profiles of people who follow me on Twitter. It makes for some interesting exploration of the company I keep – my "flock" in Twittersheep-speak.

It made me think of the Old Testament verse from Isaiah 53:6; "All we like sheep have gone astray …"

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Digital Identity

If you follow me on Twitter (@mgd), a few times a day you will receive a tweet from me of the form "Dixon Delicious: Why IBM Wants Sun – BusinessWeek http://ow.ly/154F".  I do this to share web sites I visit that may have relevance to others.  Such links, which I first post to Delicious, are automatically posted to Twitter by an RSS-to-Twitter service named HootSuite.

A few days ago, a person who follows me on Twitter suggested that "sending your delicious links to twitter in a batch is sort of poor form, if you don’t mind me saying so."  After a polite exchange of direct messages, he also offered, "worked out what bothers me about dixon delicious. it comes through in a single burst…. usually three in a row."

To help illustrate how these messages are generated, I created the little diagram below to show how my updates automatically wind up on Twitter.

1. I use the Delicious Booksmarks Firefox plugin to save links to websites I may want to return to or that I think may be interest to friends and colleagues. 
2. I use the ScribeFire Firefox to create posts to the Discovering Identity blog.  
3. ScribeFire uploads my posts to blogs.sun.com
4. … and posts a link on Delicious using tags I have specified.
5. Each day at 1:00 am, Delicious automatically creates a post to my blog containing all the links I have uploaded to Delicous in the previous day. This is a composite of all the links I have directly posted to Delicious, plus any links posted to Delicious by ScribeFire.
6. HootSuite monitors the RSS feeds from my Delicious account
7. … and the Discovering Identity Blog
8. … and periodically posts new entries to Twitter

It appears that the HootSuite RSS-to-Twitter mechanism is quite "bursty."  It doesn’t necessarily post the Delicious links immmediately when I post them, but may post a batch of links at once.

So, what do you think?  Is this too automated? Is it in poor taste to provide this method to put content onto Twitter?

I’d appreciate your feedback.

Thanks! 

Technorati Tags: Blog, Twitter, Delicious, Scribefire, Firefox, HootSuite

• In the Clouds at Community One
  (tags: Sun Microsystems Cloud Computing)
• Meet Baby Olivia
  (tags: Family Grandchildren)
• The Green Ghost Horse
  (tags: St. Patrick's Day)
• Why IBM Wants Sun – BusinessWeek
  "There are plenty of reasons for IBM (IBM) to want to buy Sun Microsystems (JAVA). While computer hardware has steadily become a less important part of IBM's business, Sun is much more than a hardware company. It has been one of the most important Silicon Valley innovation factories of the past two decades—much of it in software. Combining IBM, the innovation leader of the East, with Sun, an innovation leader out West, would yield a formidable player."
  (tags: Sun IBM)
• IBM-Sun deal would mean big things for telecom – FierceTelecom
  "Carriers increasingly are getting interested in offering their own cloud computing services, and that's another area in which an IBM-Sun combination could become very influential"
  (tags: sunmicrosystems Telecommunications IBM)
• Voyij: Travel Deal Aggregator – referred by @rikardkjellberg
  "Voyij searches hundreds of sites to aggregate 'deal' content – something that is just not being done in travel. Voyij deals are defined as last minute specials, distressed or undersold inventory (the last few seats on the plane or last few rooms in the hotel that will go empty if not sold), advertised specials and published fares and rates."
  (tags: Travel)
• Amazon Faces Suit Over Kindle Device – WSJ.com
  "Cable programmer Discovery Communications Inc. filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Amazon.com Inc., claiming Discovery owns a patent to technology used in Amazon's Kindle electronic-book reader."
  (tags: amazon kindle)
• Only a Rumor? "IBM in Talks to Buy Sun" – WSJ.com
  "International Business Machines Corp. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc., people familiar with the matter said, a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in software and in finance and telecommunications markets."
  (tags: Sun sunmicrosystems Business IBM)
• BlackBerry Phones Arrive in Mongolia
  "Mongolian mobile network operator, Mobicom has announced the launch of the BlackBerry range of smartphones in the country"
  (tags: mobile Blackberry smartphone Mongolia)
• Is T-Mobile's G1 Near a Major Android Update?
  "A highly anticipated upgrade to the Android mobile operating system for the T-Mobile G1, otherwise known as the "Cupcake update," is slated for April, according to buzz in the blogosphere."
  (tags: mobile android)

At today’s CommunityOne conference held today in New York City, Sun announced the Sun Open Cloud Platform, a cloud computing infrastructure, powered by Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and Open Storage.

"Sun’s approach to cloud computing blends our expertise in developing open source software and communities with unique design innovation. Sun’s Open Cloud platform is the first step in delivering on our vision of a world that has many clouds that are both open and interoperable," said Dave Douglas, Senior Vice President, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems. "Our cloud architecture empowers developers with the expanded interoperability and freedom of choice they need to easily take advantage of the agility, efficiency and cost benefits of cloud computing."

We Sun employees have been invited to try our the Storage as as Service offering.  I’ll check it out soon and report on this blog.

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Cloud Computing

Please let me introduce Olivia, the newest member of the Mark and Claudia Dixon clan. She is our eighth wonderful grandchild, but is clearly number one in the eyes of her proud sister Chloe.

Technorati Tags: Family, Grandchildren

A neighbor down the street from our house went all out for St. Patrick’s day!  Yesterday evening, my granddaughter and I walked down to see the (previously white) horse almost glowing in the twilight.

It brings new meaning to the phrase "Going Green!"

Technorati Tags: St. Patrick’s Day

• Apple adds a host of new features to iPhone 3.0 OS – FierceWireless
  "Greengart said that enthusiast's of the Palm Pre should not feel too worried by the software update. 'Palm in particular should be pleased that some of the core innovations of its upcoming webOS–multitasking and unobtrusive notifications–remain unmatched by Apple,' he said."
  (tags: iphone apple palm pre)
• Alcatel-Lucent Directory Server
  Alcatel-Lucent today announced the 8661 Directory Server, developed by UnboundID Corporation.
  (tags: Directory UnboundID ALU)
• Smartphone Maker HTC to Launch New Google Phones – WSJ.com
  "Taiwanese smartphone producer HTC Corp. said it plans to launch more than three versions of the Google phone in 2009"
  (tags: mobile android smartphone HTC)
• Dan Rayburn: Sun CEO's Claim That JavaFX Is the Fastest Growing RIA Platform is Untrue
  "Last week, Sun's (JAVA) CEO Jonathan Schwartz declared on his blog that Sun's JavaFX is 'the fastest growing RIA platform on the market', based on Sun announcing that it had shipped its 100 millionth JavaFX runtime."
  (tags: java RIA JavaFX)

• Phoenix-area median home prices increasing slowly – Phoenix Business Journal:
  "The median price for a new home sold in the Phoenix metro area is increasing, according to data released Monday by RL Brown Reports, a Phoenix research firm."
  (tags: arizona realestate Phoenix)
• Blackberry eBook Reader
  Mobipocket eBook Reader for Blackberry
  (tags: mobile Blackberry ebook)
• Gliffy Online Diagram Software
  online diagramming software
  (tags: design graphics visio diagrams)
• CrackBerry – #1 Store for BlackBerry Accessories
  "Welcome to ShopCrackBerry, the #1 Store for BlackBerry Accessories and the favorite shopping destination for Crackberry users."
  (tags: mobile Blackberry)
• Facebook for BlackBerry
  "Hooked on Facebook®? Now you can take Facebook with you on your BlackBerry® smartphone wherever you go and stay logged in as long as you want."
  (tags: mobile Social facebook Blackberry)
• Roundup: BlackBerry Twitter Clients | CrackBerry.com
  pros and cons to Blacberry Twitter applications
  (tags: twitter Blackberry)
• TwitterBerry – Orangatame Software
  TwitterBerry is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter.
  (tags: Blackberry)

• More evidence of importance of mobile marketplaces: Microsoft Aims to Lure Developers to Its Mobile Market – WSJ.com
  "Microsoft Corp. Wednesday launched a program designed to encourage developers to sell mobile applications via Windows Marketplace, its mobile-phone based bazaar."
  (tags: mobile mobility microsoft marketplace)
• I'd love this today: Breakthrough battery can charge up in seconds
  "Scientists in the United States have invented a battery that can charge in seconds, promising a revolution in power storage … The advance allows lithium-ion batteries, the standard variety used in consumer electronics and cells for electric or hybrid vehicles, both to charge and discharge stored energy more quickly than at present."
  (tags: battery)
• How will this compete with Skype? Google Voice : Coming soon
  "Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more."
  (tags: google phone telco voip)
• No surprise here: Google Voice May Threaten Other Phone Services – NYTimes.com
  "Google stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small, like eBay, which owns Skype, telephone companies and a string of technology start-up firms."
  (tags: mobile google phone skype)
• Google Dives Into Phone Call, Voicemail Services
  "Google this week said it's preparing to launch new services for mobile users, offering free U.S. calls, unified text messages and voicemail across numbers and integrated speech-to-text and search functionality."
  (tags: mobile mobility google)
• Should I wait for Pre, or commit to iPhone now? Palm, Sprint Give Pre Plan Details
  "Palm and Sprint (NYSE: S) unveiled a few new details about the Pre smartphone and webOS during a Webcast on Thursday."
  (tags: palm sprint pre)
• Should I wait to buy an iPhone? Apple Readies iPhone Software Update
  "Apple is scheduled to preview an update to the iPhone operating system Tuesday … will be a preview of version 3.0 of the iPhone's operating system."
  (tags: iphone apple)