Regular readers will know that I have had a love/hate affair with the BlackBerry for some time.

This was predominantly due to the crap interface and lack of features that existed on the early models. Having now used this whizzy Curve thing for several months, I must admit that they have improved a lot - it would appear they looked at what users used them for?

Calendar works now - except I can't find how to change my attendance at an appointment and let the organiser know why - GPS is very handy for me and the maps are surprisingly good. I've even used the camera to take some pictures, where the quality wasn't of importance. There is a whole raft of other icons on there, which are frankly a total waste of time, but you can ignore them.

I have installed Opera Mini as recommended by one of my readers (many thanks) and it is neat - even allows me to check in for flights and browse web-sites I couldn't navigate before.

Then, to round it all off, Lufthansa actually sent me my boarding card last week as a gif file on the BlackBerry. Being a cynical old fool, I didn't believe it would work, but hey presto I waved the BlackBerry with the picture on it at the luggage check-in lady and she swiped it with no problems - now that's a good use of technology in my opinion.

 

 

  

_____
tags: BlackBerry |  User interface

I've just read a book - title above - which is not the history of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason wrote the best one of those), but is all about sending men to the moon.

When you read reviews for it on various websites, you will find a bunch of picky people, who have taken joy in finding inaccuracies in the book, and franlkly the author (a Professor of Modern History), should have checked his facts better. However, for me they have all missed the point, which is what did the world get for the $35 billion it cost to send people up there? I've nothing against unmanned space exploration, it's the manned part that doesn't add up for me. I heard this question asked of a NAS spokesman at a conference a few years ago, and he couldn't give a satisfactory answer either.

Now, I don't want to get into arguments here over whether it was a necessary part of the Cold War, raised American prestige/morale or whatever. The point I am making is that when you are asked to run a project, e.g. in IT, then shouldn't the first questions be why? and what's it worth? And, if you can't answer those, then the project IMHO should not go ahead.

By the way Teflon was developed in 1938, Velcro was also not a by-product, the first weather satellite was launched on April 1st, 1960, the first navigation satellite was launched twelve days later, and twelve people (including my relation) have walked on the moon, according to the book and Wikipedia.

Now, if you could just remind me what the Large Haldron Collider is going to do for me?


_____
tags: Apollo |  Moon |  Portfolio Management |  Project Management |  Space

I was in Zuerich last week presenting at an event run by one of our partners, and I met a dead interesting chap there. His name is Ueli Steck, and his particular area of expertise is extreme mountain climbing - in other words, one of those people, who rushes up mountains by themselves with no ropes.

Unfortunately I couldn't understand everything he was saying at the time as my Swiss German is not too hot, but to cut a long story short he holds the world record for solo climbing the North face of the Eiger. This normally takes a day or two, but he did it in, wait for it, 2 hours 47mins 33 seconds!!!!

Now, two things struck me when I heard that:

• The team record is 6 hours and 50 minutes, so the next time your boss wants to send you on one of those hideous team-building exercises, simply point him at this!  
• If you can climb the North face of the Eiger in less than 3 hours (and it only took him an hour to get down) why does it take so long to choose a President?
  

Many years ago, storage was expensive and so were computers, so clever programmers developed techiniques to squeeze as much as possible out of the limited resources they had at their disposal. Then stuff got cheaper and IMHO the art of programmimg changed from efficiency to ease-of-use.

Unfortunately, we seem to be treating the English language the same way! My least favourite word at present is probably "incentivise" - ugly in the extreme.

Here are a few I have come across recently and my simple alternatives:

• Operationalise - Do
• Verbalise - Say
• Transition (as a verb - yuck) - Move
• Compartmentalise - Sort
• Leverage - Use
• Incentivise - Kick

Virtualisation is all about the most efficient use of the resuorces available - so let's get our brains and mouths working the same way!!



_____
tags: virtualisation |  virtualization

Hooray - the novel is published at last.

Have gone the self-publishing route for the moment - when I have time, I will go back and try the agents again, but they all want hard-copy and dond't take elctronic input - tedious!

Now I have to start playing with all the advertising buttons and widgets they give me to see if I can get them on to facebook and other places!! The joys of social computing.


_____
tags: Geocaching

I could sit here and write a piece about how wonderful the mainframe is, as it is still the most reliable, most available, most secure, most cost-effective platform on the planet, but no doubt someone would pick a fight!

So I was extremely happy to read the results of the latest BMC mainframe survey, which has just come out, and much to my joy It actually proves my point, so no fight necessary!

So, what were the results?

• The mainframe is growing, will continue to grow and is attracting new workloads - hooray!
  
• The wall between mainframe and distributed is beginning to disappear - two thirds of the customers said that having shared tools and applications spanning across both platforms is very important - hooray!
  
• In fact, 29% of companies now have mainframe and distributed organised together - looking at things from a customer point of view, rather than a silo point of view - hooray!
• Labour costs are much lower on the mainframe - exactly!

So what are the concerns/issues going forwards? The usual suspects appear - productivity, costs, staff - but the ones that are coming up are those of energy, common processes across the different platforms and compliance. In fact, the areas cited as being most important for common processes are change management and service desk.

So, I must admit that I am gloating a tad, as I gave a presentation at Userworld on this very subject - when a silo dies, who will hear it? - and it would appear I wasn't alone in the forest - hooray! Now, please excuse me as I try to get my head through the door.


_____
tags: Compliance |  ITIL |  ITIL Process |  Mainframe |  Security |  availability |  reliability |  silo management

Trying to get the book published is an interesting little challenge. Unfortunately, you can't approach the publishers directly, you have to go  through an agent. The vast majority of the agents don't respond to electronic communications - you have to print off a copy of your book  in a certain format. Understandable but time-consuming and tedious.

So I have been looking at self-publishing. I have printed off a couple of copies of the book using www.lulu.com - very neat and very easy. Got them back this week and it is amazing what you spot when something is printed, that you simply don't notice on the PC. Remember the talk years ago about "the paperless office" - load of rubbish. I personally can't read anything over a few paragraphs on a screen, which is why I keep my blog entries short.

Why do some websites litter their pages with links and text. Remember KISS? "Keep it Short and Simple", "Keep it Sweet and Simple", or my favourite "Keep it Simple, Stupid".

I'll let you know when the book is ready - I have proof read it (again!), corrected the layout mistakes and changed the page size / margins etc. Let's hope I've got it right this time!


_____
tags: KISS

Not only do I get to bore you rigid with my blogging, I also assault your ears with my podcasts! Just recorded a new one, which deals with the way I see the skill requirements changing in IT. Talking to customers from IT and the business, I see the IT landscape shifting, with more emphasis on process and automation, a need for better business understanding at all levels etc. and that is what I talk about in the podcast and my new white paper.

Let me know if you agree. Thanks.

_____
tags: Business Value of IT |  Business and IT alignment |  Skills

Bear with me, I know not all of you follow golf, but this is quite simple! There are four major championships each year in golf, and being strange, they reminded me of the four major operating systems out there - z/OS, UNIX, WINDOWS and LINUX. See if you can work out which is which. I have listed them in the order they are played during the year.

• The Masters - prettiest of the lot and always played on the same gorgeous golf course, which sets its own rules. In fact, you could say that it does not play well with others. Established in 1934. Seems to be open but is very tricky on the greens. Won by Trevor Immelman.
• US Open - the set-up can be very tough. This year was more realistic after complaints. Established in 1895. Won by Tiger Woods hopping on one leg.
• The Open - yes, that is the correct name, it is not called the British Open (that's played by the women next month). Lots of people have started calling it the wrong name, but that is basically ignorance.  Established in 1860, so the oldest, the original, the most prestigious, and they even allow younger people free entry (as spectators) nowadays. Only played on links (seaside) courses. Won by Padraig Harrington at the weekend.
• US PGA - established in 1916 by the PGA of America. Won by Tiger Woods last year. Only one where leading amateurs are not invited to compete - you have to be part of the (professional golfers) community.

There is talk about a possible fifth major - the Players Championship, which is played nowadays at TPC Sawgrass, with the famous 17th hole island green. This one was established in 1974 and is run by the PGA Tour.  Won by Sergio Garcia this year. VMWare?

I had a quick trip down to South Africa last week for a Virtualisation conference and some customer visits. Always enjoy going down there, as the locals speak English. What I mean by that is that they, like the Australians and the Kiwis, have a healthy respect for the Anglo-Saxon origins of our language, rather than the pretentious, boring, politically correct patois, which is prevalent in some other countries!

Stayed in a hotel in Cape Town, which had an attractive looking tea tray in the bedroom, which was good news as they wanted me to get up at the crack of sparrow for the first customer meeting.



Now can you spot the obvious problem? The business service they are endeavouring to provide is that of making a cup of tea, and they have provided the tea, the milk, the tea pot, the cup, the kettle, the biscuits - but they have unfortunately forgotten the cable for the kettle!

So, no tea in the morning then - bother. I went down to check out and told them the cable was missing, so that the next guest would at least have a working solution. They asked me how long till I was being picked up - 15 minutes I said. Hey Presto, 5 minutes later a waiter appeared with a pot of tea for me. Now that was customer service.




_____
tags: Customer care |  End-to-end monitoring