• There is Hope
  (tags: Humor Hope)
• Google: Cloud Trumps Apps on Mobile Phones
  Instead, Google thinks it's found a win-win situation, because it sees cloud-based services like Gmail making the mobile world go 'round.
  (tags: mobile mobility google cloudcomputing)
• Phonebook 2.0 | ABI Research
  The traditional phonebook has become a relic of times past to many mobile users. The tome of thin pages with contact information and advertisements for local services doesn’t serve well the person on-the-go. As more and more phonebooks go unread, perhaps the way for Yellow Page providers to recover is to adjust to an evolving audience. Incorporating mobile-friendly short codes and 2D barcodes into new phonebooks could reintroduce local services to additional generations of users.
  (tags: yellowpages phonebook barcode)
• Smartphone sales pick up steam in U.S. – CNET News
  A new study released on Tuesday indicates that about 23 percent of all handset sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smartphones. This was up from 12 percent of all handset sales in the fourth quarter of 2007.
  (tags: mobile mobility telecom smartphone)
• Cisco Pushes E-mail Security into the Cloud
  In April, Cisco will launch Cisco IronPort E-mail Security services with the goal of giving businesses the opportunity to choose from three different approaches to e-mail security – managed, hosted or a combination of on-premise and cloud-based security.
  (tags: security cloudcomputing email)
• AT&T’s de la Vega discusses the three screens of the future
  Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive officer of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets described a future scenario where the mobile device—which can no longer be accurately described as a phone—acts as the central hub for the connected home.
  (tags: mobile mobility)
• Shindig – an Apache incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets
  Shindig is a new project in the Apache Software Foundation incubator and is an open source implementation of the OpenSocial specification and gadgets specification.
  (tags: opensocial OpenSource gadgets widgets)
• Zoho: Hosted Office Productivity Suite
  Zoho is an Office Productivity Suite from AdventNet Inc. Founded in 1996, AdventNet is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. AdventNet focuses on building affordable software for businesses.
  (tags: cloudcomputing SaaS)
• Palm waiting for Pre to end revenue slump | CNET News
  Palm may have wowed the public with the demonstration of the Pre, but unfortunately for the company, no one can buy it yet.
  (tags: palm sprint smartphone)
• Google CEO: Mobile search to eclipse PCs in next few years – FierceMobileContent
  Google CEO Eric Schmidt anticipates mobile search revenues will surpass search on the PC within the next several years, "not decades," citing the increasing sophistication and affordability of smartphones as the catalyst behind the paradigm shift.
  (tags: mobile mobility google search smartphone)
• Amazon to sell Kindle e-books via iPhone – FierceMobileContent
  Online retail giant Amazon.com will introduce a free Kindle e-book application for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, offering consumers full access to more than 240,000 premium digital titles.
  (tags: mobile iphone ebook amazon kindle)

• Evernote and Shoeboxed Make Receipts Universally Accessible
  How do you manage receipts and business cards? The super human among us file, categorize, and store their receipts and business cards for financial tracking, tax purposes, and networking needs.
  (tags: productivity evernote receipts shoeboxed)
• Doodle: Easy Scheduling and Polling
  Doodle makes it easy to find a date and time for a group event. Doodle is a free online coordination tool
  (tags: calendar poll schedule)

There has been a light-hearted little project on Twitter this morning challenging people to provide a “non-geek definition of Cloud Computing in 140 characters less.”  Launched by Chris Horak, SAP Platform Marketing Head in Germany, responses are compiled on Chris’ blog.

My first attempt was “Cloud computing provides application, database, platform, storage, and computing services in a virtualized utility to enable agile business.”

Chris thought that might be a bit too geeky, so I suggested, “Using computing services on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis, like I buy electricity from my power utility.”

So, what do you think?  Send your 140 words (or less) to Chris (@choirshark).  Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing, Twitter

Today, Sun and Hewlett Packard announced an agreement for HP to distribute and support Sun’s Solaris 10 operating system on HP ProLiant server and blade platforms.  Jonathan Schwartz called it “the single biggest and most important OEM/distribution agreement Sun’s ever signed for the open source Solaris operating system.”

I first became involved with Hewlett Packard in 1977, when I took a computer architecture class in college and did an in-depth analysis of the HP1000 computer architecture for a class project. When I graduated from BYU in 1978, HP offered me digital design position in the desktop computer division in Fort Collins, Colorado.  I turned them down, in favor of staying with little Eyring Research Institute, in Provo, Utah, where I had been working for a year. In 1979, I led a project for Eyring that installed the first network of HP1000 computers at 3M company, in a magnetic tape manufacturing facility in Hutchinson, Minnesota.  That all goes to show how ancient I am and what amazing progress has been made by HP and the rest of the computer industry since then.

Now, these many years later, it is a pleasure to be at Sun and see a new partnership being forged by these two key industry players.

Congratulations to Sun and HP for linking up on this milestone relationship!

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Solaris

I learned today that MySQL has been selected as the Database of the Year in the 2008 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. Congratulations to the entire MySQL team!

Technorati Tags: MySQL, LinuxQuestions.org

This post on boston.com provides a series of 45 photographs of people at work, doing many different jobs and locations around the world.  I found it inspiring to consider my brothers and sisters in the human family going about their work, wherever they might be, to provide for their families and loved ones.
Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: people, work

I stumbled across a wonderful bit of prose on the blogosphere today.  Jim Butler mused:

There’s a place where good acronyms go to die.  I call it the GAG (Good Acronym Graveyard).  It’s a dark foreboding place where over-hyped acronyms lie interred separated from their perfectly valid and useful living legacies.

Jim then went on to write an enjoyable piece about the burial of “AI” (Artificial Intelligence, not the movie) and the recent demise of “SOA”.  Commenting on AI’s passing, Jim wrote:

The principles and techniques of AI have been staggeringly successful, but the over-hyped term and its unreasonable expectations rest in peace in the GAG.

He then prefaced his remarks on the passing of SOA by quoting Anne Thomas Manes:

SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession.  SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”.

I particularly enjoyed Jim’s final thoughts:

Requiem

And so we gather together on this cold day in January of 2009 to lay to rest the body of SOA, but not its spirit. We do not mourn this passing as untimely or empty. Rather we rejoice in the opportunity to move past empty promises and impossible expectations.

Perhaps now that the GAG is sporting yet another tombstone, we can attend to the real business of enterprise transformation through service orientation. Perhaps we can even throw in a little AI for good measure… D’OH!!!

So, what is TLA? “Three Letter Acronym,” of course. Should we carve a tombstone for it, as well?

Technorati Tags: Acronym, AI, SOA, TLA

The issue of Information Week that landed on my table this morning contained an insightful article entitled, “About Your Federal CTO, Mr. President.”

On the his campaign site, Mr. Obama promised appoint a CTO,

“to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies, and services for the 21st century.” 

I applaud this position which recognizes that technology can be a positive force for good government if harnessed effectively.

The Information Week survey of 853 business technology professionals revealed that

“31% [of respondents] say improving the government’s use of technology is the single most important agenda item for the incoming CTO, well ahead of improving education in science and technology (19%) and encouraging industry-driven technology (16%).”

Speaking as one who favors focusing on the governments use of technology,

“Bob Otto, former CIO of the U.S. Postal Service … says part of the CTO’s job must be to standardize and simplify the layers of federal IT management and the wide variety of technologies used in the federal government. ‘E-government was supposed to make information from every agency available to the public in an easier way,’ Otto says. ‘Now the information from the agencies is on the Web, but citizens still don’t know where to go to find it.'”

However,

“many see a higher calling for Obama’s CTO. ‘Technology is a piece, and a means to that end, but the focus should be on innovation,’ says Sybase CEO [John] Chen. He envisions the CTO working to improve the economic environment for technology innovation; foster public-private tech research partnerships; improve education in math, science, and technology; and develop trade policies related to green technology standards.”

Whatever the focus, the scope of the federal government IT challenge is enormous:

“The federal government spends more than $70 billion on IT, an amount that doesn’t even include the armed forces or intelligence.”

With such a huge price tag, with the promises that advanced technology can improve services, increase efficiency and enhance competitiveness, much hangs in the balance.  I do hope that Mr. Obama apoints a visionary CTO who can provide visionary leadership and marshall active support from industry leaders such as the ones quoted in this article.  I believe this CTO, whomever he or she may be, should seek tostrike an effective balance between infrastructure improvement and competitive innovation.  I look forward to seeing what transpires.  

Technorati Tags: Politics, CTO, Obama, TechnologyPolicy

Last week, BBC News reported that Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems, has been asked to prepare a paper for the new administration on the subject of how open source software can benefit government.   Commenting on this subject, Scott said:

“It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software. Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money.”

It will be interesting to read Scott’s paper when it become available.  I would be delighted to find that our government would adopt practices that actually saved our precious tax money.

I also applaud Scott’s comments about a suggested new cabinet-level post of Chief Technology Officer.  He said that new CTO should:

“Have veto power, the right to eliminate any hardware, software or networking product that touches the federal network. He or she would have real power, real oversight and employ real consequences for folk that don’t realign with the architecture. It’s what every business does that the government doesn’t.”

If such a CTO were appointed to lead the implementation of President Obama’s “open” technology policy, we could call him or her the “Open CTO.”

We at Sun often talk about how leading companies use information technology as a strategic weapon to gain competitive advantage.  President Obama certainly demonstrated the effectiveness of web technology as a competive weapon in his campaign. 

I think we should consider information technology to be a weapon for the American people to improve government.  It can help slash through the impermeable curtains of back-room dealmaking and obfuscating “spin” wherein political insiders try to deceive the public as they push their own agendas.   For example, having access on the web to emerging details of the “stimulus package” enabled each of us to evaluate its worth on its actual merits, rather than having selected information sifted through levels of political commentary before it reached us.

Information technology can make government more accessible, transparent and responsive for us citizens whom the government is supposed to serve.  Open source and and “Open CTO” could be two effective arrows in our arsenal to return the power government to the hands of the people.

Technorati Tags: Opensouce, egovernment, government

Twitter friend @bzkicks led me to this really cool site that tracks Santa’s progress across the globe.

Why couldn’t this have been available when I was a kid?

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Norad, Santa