General Musings
A Proposal Regarding High Tech Immigrants to the US
The topic of H-1B visa’s has always been a hot one. In the current economic climate there are plenty of American tech workers looking for work and therefore this special visa program is under increasing scrutiny. I have many friends and associates and family members who have either lost jobs or found themselves in positions they would not prefer due to the current economic meltdown and my bias is to side with them on this. We need to rethink the nation’s objectives regarding the H-1B program (you can read more on the H-1B visa program, including criticisms, at wikipedia). Read the rest of this entry »
Open Source Databases
All indications are the next significant growth segment for open source software will be in databases. This follows the trend of open source operating systems (Open Solaris and Linux).
Additionally, MySQL can result in better reliability and more uptime, which should also be factored into your TCO calculations.
So, those are cost reasons to move to MySQL. Other, perhaps more important reasons include:
- It is easy to learn and easy to administrate
- It helps prevent vendor lock-in and companies that will try to place you over the barrel
- Security is built in and in my opinion there will continue to be fewer vulnerabilities in MySQL because of its open source model
- There are very large numbers of developers supporting MySQL, so it is easy to find highly qualified developers and administrators.
Android: Disruptive? Not enough info to say
Google and T-Mobile just announced the arrival of the G1 device today. This is the first cell phone to use Google's new open "Android" operating system. Android will almost certainly change the mobile computing fabric. It is the first open and free mobile platform and since it is backed by Google it is not going to be a flash-in-the-pan. But, now the question is, how disruptive will it be? There are over 3.3 Billion active cell phone subscribers in the globe. How many of those will eventually be on Android?
I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on that. For now, check out some of Android's features below. Looks pretty cool.
We still don't know when these will be in the local phone stores. But then again, we don't know when the Blackberry Bold will be here either. Anyway, I plan on evaluating an Android phone as soon as possible to see if it is for me.
More later.
Android: Disruptive? Not enough info to say
Google and T-Mobile just announced the arrival of the G1 device today. This is the first cell phone to use Google's new open "Android" operating system. Android will almost certainly change the mobile computing fabric. It is the first open and free mobile platform and since it is backed by Google it is not going to be a flash-in-the-pan. But, now the question is, how disruptive will it be? There are over 3.3 Billion active cell phone subscribers in the globe. How many of those will eventually be on Android?
I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on that. For now, check out some of Android's features below. Looks pretty cool.
We still don't know when these will be in the local phone stores. But then again, we don't know when the Blackberry Bold will be here either. Anyway, I plan on evaluating an Android phone as soon as possible to see if it is for me.
More later.
Collaborate and Deliver With More Cowbell
Participants in this week's Enterprise 2.0 conference, hosted by the ODNI's ICES group and the CIA's WIRe team, were treated to a shared experience that is hard to capture in a blog post. So I won't try. But I will say this, we all had some great collaboration and coordination lessons and context, and we were able to participate in creating that ourselves because the conference organizers established a great ambiance and gave us access to wiki's, blogs, twitters and WiFI that knitted that all together. I really appreciated being there.
One lesson I'd like to note now was underscored by Fred Hassani. Fred found a great way to make us all think about the variety of collaboration tools at our disposal. In a musical analogy he underscored how hard it can be to make music with instruments that don't traditionally play well together. But in a sign that the spirit of the community is strong, we all saw how a cowbell can make really really great music if you put your heart into it. And we the community of professionals can make use of any tools we are provided to collaborate, even if they are not our favorites. We will always make due and will always overcome. One way we will overcome is through mashups. Just like in music you can mashup piano's and cowbells, in IT you can mashup imagery data and SIGINT data and analytical data etc.
Which brings us to a great video that underscores this point– not from thte WIReICES conference, but from a group of spirited collaborators from SNL who many of us in the community look up to.
So please check this out and as you do please think of the IT tools in your enterprise. I guess the point made for CTOs is that we need an enterprise that allows mashups of all tools and all data. You never know when the maestro will call for more cowbell.
CIA IT Leaders Are World Class IT Leaders (continued)
CIO magazine continues its reporting on the IT enterprise at CIA and the CIA's CIO (Al Tarasiuk). I have little more to add: My comments from before still stand: Al is a world class leader and this follow on report just underscores that. I imagine Al is similar to other great CIOs from industry (folks like HP CIO Randy Mott, for example) and my old boss Mike Pflueger of DIA. These leaders must wrestle with far more than technology (they can hand of the easy technology stuff to CTOs, right?). In story after story of the great CIOs I note that they spend a great deal of time on culture, policy, process and human factors.
For continuity I wanted to provide the link to the rest of the story. It is here: http://www.cio.com/article/print/441688
Bob
A Google Knol on Disruptive Technology
Google just opened up their Knol capability to all Internet users. The Google concept for a Knol is that it is an authoritative article about a specific topic. It is a unit of knowledge. People can write what they want, but the idea is that they should put their name on it so there is some way to measure credibility. Others can contribute to the knol in measured ways. For example, a setting can be selected so that anyone can edit the entry, or anyone can suggest entries, or no one can suggest changes.
From the Google Blog entry:
The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people’s heads:
millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit
from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute
their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.The
key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author
(or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s
their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be
multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.
Sounds cool, so I thought I’d give it a try. The first and most important step was trying to think of a subject to write about. I decided to take the easy way out and self-plagerize myself. I copied my list of disruptive technology and created a knol based on it.
I found the knol page was very easy to configure. Within about a minute I had my account active and copied in a bio so anyone interested could read about who I assert I am. I copied in my info on disruptive IT and hit publish and my knol was up. You can check it out here: Disruptive IT knol.
So far, I have to admit, I am not impressed. How could this be of more value than the list I already maintain?
But I’ll keep an open mind for a little while. My goal is to keep that list up to date with new information that will be of actionalble use to the enterprise Chief Technology Officer (CTO). If the knol concept enables a wider swath of people to read and contribute to that list, then it may be a useful concept. If, however, it generates no new information for me or my readers, then it will probably be easier for me just to maintain the list on my blog. Stay tuned and I’ll post more info on this topic after I see results.
Inspiration Innovation and Motivation for the CTO
Looking for a little inspiration and motivation to drive your innovation? Take a
short break from the daily grind and watch the top ten TED talks of all time:
http://www.ted.com/talks/top10
From the TED site:
With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global health
expert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideas behind
TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea can reach — and
move — a global audience through the power of quality web video.
My favorite, for some reason, is the incredible undersea videos of David Gallo (see Underwater Astonishments). I’ve already written a bit about another favorite, the Photosynth demos of Blaise Aguera y Arcas (see “Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo“).
As for TED, it stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. TED holds an annual conference where the world’s greatest thinkers come together to exchange thoughts. These talks are made available to the public. So you don’t have to be invited to the conference to benefit from the knowledge exchanged there.
After watching the top ten talks, you may want to consider signing up on the TED site. Membership is free (but joining the site doesn’t mean you can attend the conference! read more about that on their site).
CTOvision Blog 