yuvi kochar on tech

On Sandhill.com

2012-02-06T11:02:00.002-05:00

A short Q&A on our experience deploying Enterprise Collaboration Technology was posted today.

Recent Evolutions of the Internet

2012-02-01T22:38:00.004-05:00

At the CTO Roundtable this morning, Steve Crocker, long-term CTO Roundtable member and Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICANN (the not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with global participants that coordinates the governance of the Internet) led the discussion with two of his colleagues: Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer for the Internet Society, and Jamie Hedlund, ICANN's Vice President of Government Affairs - Americas.

Jamie provided an overview of the new how ICANN is rolling out gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains). This will allow the creation of a whole new set of domains like .bank, etc. The idea is to try and make the internet more open and create a pathway for further innovation. It reamins to be seen if this options will start expanding internet URLs away from .com, that now has over 100 Million names. The thinking is that communities built around these new top-level domains will develop enhanced features that better serve the goals of the community members. Also, ICANN, for the first time, is moving away the closed-door selection process that they followed to date to a more open and democratic process.

Leslie then talked about why she believes that 2012 will be the year of IPv6. As we have now allocated most of the 4Bn IPv4 addresses, the long-term way forward is IPv6. IPv4 addresses are bing sold at approximately $11 per address. She believes that this will drive adoption. Also, several large content providers are permanently moving to IPv6 as the default. Let us see if 2012 turns out to be the year of IPv6.

pic: sunset over first snow in 2012

2011-12-04T16:01:00.005-05:00

Center for CIO Leadership Success Case
I have been a member of the Center for nearly 5 years now. The interview gave me a chance to reflect on my career and the experiences that prepared me for my current role. We discussed my thoughts on how IT needs to continue to evolve as an integral part of business.

Check out the blog post for an overview or read the full article (PDF).

2011-11-06T09:44:00.007-05:00

BYOD

There is an irreversible trend in the workplace of employees owning the computing devices used for work. Given the accelerating rate of new and improved devices hitting the market, enterprises are finding it harder and harder to provide the latest and greatest tools to employees. Teleworkers frequently prefer to work on their home machines than maintain two machines at home.

I agree with the Information Week position that we need to move from protecting the network and the end-points to protecting Enterprise data. While networks and devices are assets that must be well managed and controlled, the true asset is information (data) and insights. So, enterprise IT must primarily focus on securing data. I believe that, for a long time in the future, we will be required to manage hybrid environments where some devices are owned by the enterprise while others are personal devices that employees will like to use for work as well. So, the only way to secure our assets is to secure and manage data.

I continue to look forward to a future innovation where security is embedded with the data and not is just a wrapper around it. That will make our job of securing enterprise data much easier.

2011-07-14T15:51:00.004-05:00

Business drives technology today
My interview in the CIO Insights column of the Silicon India Magazine.

2011-06-28T16:32:00.004-05:00

Leveraging Social Media
My blog post on the "center for CIO leadership" blog.

2011-06-03T07:19:00.004-05:00

My Notes from @D9 - Eric Schmidt
I always enjoy listening to Eric - my third time in the past 3 years. As usual, he was insightful and very crisp with his thoughts. At D, he talked about the simultaneous rise of 4 large technology platforms (Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon) creating significant technology opportunities. Walt and Kara teased others (Microsoft, Twitter, etc.) throughout the conference for not being on Eric's list. This is a very different environment than the days when a single large platform (first from IBM and then Microsoft) dominated the market. Each of the four platforms are orthogonal and offer different capabilities and features.

He also talked about the world moving from the days of information concentrated with a few people to ubiquitous access to vast amounts of information at a global scale. Just a couple of decades ago, the average person had practically no access to information. I personally believe that information is empowering the weak and the oppressed across the globe.

He also demonstrated Google Payments - NFC (Near Field Communication) based payment system for the Android platform.

In Eric's view, the next big opportunity is in products that will integrate mobile, local and social capabilities.

I found it interesting how frequently he talked about the need to allow customers to manage their privacy. He is very concerned about the openness of the internet being affected by regulations.

pic: spring in our backyard

2011-04-16T09:48:00.008-05:00

Games @ Work
Over the past six months, I have been thinking about the potential use of gaming within the enterprise. The explosive growth of Zynga and other social gaming companies demonstrates how engaging the combination is. In addition, we humans respond extremely well to rewards: loyalty programs, bonuses, etc. Reward programs are also widely used to incent certain customer and employee behavior.

Recently, I came across a new term for this trend - Gamification. I like the Wikipedia definition: The use of game play mechanics for non-game applications.

Game theory is beginning to be widely used to influence customer engagement, behavior and even employee productivity. This BusinessWeek article has examples of use of game theory at a broad range of companies: SAP, Hilton, Siemens, UPS, Nissan, Target, etc.

Earlier this week, Gartner, jumped on the bandwagon with a bold statement: "over half of innovation will be gamified by 2015". Here is a ZDnet story covering Gartners' report in detail. Gartner is advising that "Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organization".

I am pleased that we at the CTO Roundable of Washington DC sensed the trend early and are putting together our next Summit on "What CTOs should learn from Gaming" in early fall.

Image: Pacman by Preeti

2011-04-14T19:45:00.008-05:00

Social tools in the workplace
I presented at the marcusevans CIO Summit on Tuesday, April 12 in Dallas. After briefly covering how knowledge workers are craving social features in consumer technologies within the workplace, I talked about the Why?, What? and How? of our Enterprise 2.0 initiative:

Why? In my view the enormous increase in pace of product cycles is primarily driving the need for Fast and Efficient solutions to support Knowledge Work. IT has traditionally focused on Process Automation and Transaction Processing. ERP systems and other enterprise technologies are very ill-suited for knowledge work. Given that fact that companies must innovate faster, Enterprise 2.0 tools that help knowledge workers be more productive are in great demand and are being deployed at a very fast pace. Our main requirements for a solution are: need to create an online workplace for our dispersed workforce, an efficient communication platform and an easy to use interface. Cost is also a big driver for us.
What? In my mind, each company has specific needs that must be analyzed before a system is deployed. Standing-up a SharePoint instance and letting customers design applications of their choice is not sufficient to turbo-charge collaboration and innovation. We hired the Dachis Group for a short project to help analyze our requirements and prioritize our needs from within the best-practice features for such a platform. They also helped us ramp-up our teams' knowledge in the domain.
How? Our guiding principles for designing a solution are:
- Optimal User / Enterprise balance
- High-quality user experience
- It is a program, not a technology
- Low cost to operate
- Low customization
- One platform, many communities, many teams
- Easy access management (auto provisioning, SSO)
- Measure ... Iterate ... Measure ... Iterate

We are building the solution on a leading-edge Open Source platform.

We then discussed how companies are making these platforms successful. Unfortunately, I did not get much input from the CIOs in the room. We have yet to deploy our platform, so, I did not have any real experiences to share. I did discuss some information I have gathered from analysts. Will try and write another post on the topic after 6 months.

Pic: Spring was recently in our back yard!

2011-03-26T09:26:00.005-05:00

CTO Roundtable: Big Data
Interesting discussion led by Michael Brown, CTO at comScore at our CTO Roundtable breakfast meeting.

Michael and his team manage and analyze one of the largest datasets processed by a local company. It is fascinating how thinking has to evolve when the volumes reaches billions of rows of data per day. Some of the key takeaways for me were:

Leverage sort before processing
Shard the dataset to create smaller more manageable files
Parallel processing improves turnaround and allows for scalability
Open source tools have reached a level of maturity to be relevant solutions to consider
Most of the processing is now accomplished on smaller commodity machines
Machine memory is more of a limiting resource than hard disk
Solid-state disks can be selectively used to improve performance for IO intensive processes
Security is best managed by selectively separating and focusing on securing sensitive data
SQL is still king as it is very easily grasped by non-technical folks. Therefore, it is easier to find and develop talent with SQL skills.

Micheal has clearly lived through the evolution of technology for managing Big Data over the past 10 years. I enjoyed the event a lot.

2011-03-18T12:53:00.003-05:00

Exploring the power of 4G
I moderated a panel at this event organized by the Northern Virginia Tech Council (NVTC). The panel was nicely balanced between the Telcos and users. After an initial discussion about what is 4G, the discussion focused on what applications does the audience see enabled by 4G. Most of the discussion was focused on new applications for mobile, not essentially requiring 4G.

Here is a short list of some of the ideas that came up:

Mobile Payments
Viewing mobile invoices on handsets
Real-time translation of conversation from one language to another
Better usage statistics captured by the network
Faster delivery of analytics and visualization of data for better decision making
etc.

Video Conferencing Demo: The session ended by Dr Andy Barbash, Head of Neurology at Holy Cross Hospital setting up a live video conference with 5 of his colleagues from across the country. The quality was choppy at times but one can see the mobile bandwidth is rising to a level where mobile video-conferencing will soon be a reality.

We also discussed the need for standards for application and data portability on smart phones.

Overall, it was a very interesting discussion.

2011-02-07T16:06:00.004-05:00

Smart phones for Gaming
Sony Ericsson’s ran a Super Bowl ad for the Playstation phone - Xperia Play.

Steve Ballmer Microsoft talked about extending the XBOX experience to the Windows Mobile 7 phones at CES.

I believe that we will be seeing more mobile devices that, besides performing the core functions (phone, e-mail, photo / video, etc.) extremely well, will be tuned to a specific use-case: gamers, bloggers, sales persons, accountants, senior citizens, etc. It is very hard to find the right set of mobile applications that best service a function. Further, these applications are not integrated to work seamlessly. I expect a whole slew of devices built (or pre-configured) to enhance the productivity or the experience of a particular user group.

2011-01-31T09:49:00.005-05:00

My Interview and upcoming presentation
I was recently interviewed in preparation for the Marcus Evans CIO summit in Dallas. I will be speaking there on: Getting a Grip on the Social Tools for the workplace - Enterprise 2.0.

2011-01-11T15:59:00.008-05:00

Cloud Forecast 2015 @ CIO Insight
I was interviewed by Tony Kontzer of CIO Insight for this article. We had a broad discussion about the state of cloud services and how services need to evolve in the areas of management, monitoring, portability and security.

2011-01-08T11:29:00.004-05:00

CES 2011
I enjoyed the show much more than last year. My top-5 list:

Video over the top is gaining momentum. It is integrated with TVs, DVD players, game controllers, and on stand-alone devices (roku, apple TV, boxee, logitech revue, etc.).
Smart TVs The world has finally moved beyond TVs with web-browser access. TV manufacturers are embracing the app store model with apps for Netflix, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo TV, Comcast Xfinity, Interactive white board, etc. Samsung made the biggest splash and seems to be leading in Smart TVs. They are offering access to content on Samsung TVs, PCs, Tablets and Smartphones. It seems to be a closed solution like the one from apple. They did bring a lot of partners on the stage (Time Warner, Comcast, Hulu, etc.).
Microsoft Xbox 360 and Kinect are now central to Microsoft strategy and product suite. Gesture and voice control on these devices works very well. Microsoft sold 8M Kinect units in 60 days. Windows 7 phone is also being hitched to the Xbox. I believe that Kinect presents as huge step forward in human / technology interface. Microsoft is the only one with a commercial product using the human body as a controller. This is one area where they have a significant lead in the market place.
4G LTE from Verizon presents a huge opportunity for new products leveraging real mobile broadband access. Tablet experience with video and animation may finally be good on a cellular connection. Google, Verizon and Motorola are partnering to challenge Apple. Consumer excitement about 4G LTE was demonstrated by a huge crowd at the Verizon booth. The quality of video conferencing on 4G was also quite impressive.
Android continues to enjoy fast evolution and broad adoption

Other interesting technologies and News:

Several products with glasses free 3D HD phones and TVs (Toshiba, Samsung, LG, Intel, etc) were on display. The technology is still not ready for prime time but it is very promising and might be what is required for 3D HD to take off.
Microsoft unveiled a new version of the Surface computer. It was 4 inches thick and looked cool. They claim that the camera has now been embedded in the display. I will like to learn more about how the technology they are using.
Android tablets were every where but not very impressive. There was an interesting Motorola announcement of an tablet based on Android v3 (honeycomb). There were several inexpensive tablets from Korea and China.
The blackberry PlayBook tablet was actually quite good. However, I am not sure if they can attract the developer community to build on the platform. iOS and Andriod have their full attention.
No tablet from Microsoft
Google chrome OS seemed lame
I did not see any new e-book readers. The functionality seem to be migrating to the tablets. Google demonstrated a nice eBook app on Android 3.
Saw some very impressive tiny LED projectors. I believe that projectors will some day converge with smartphones and tablets presenting an easy way to show and share media with others on small devices
Smartphones as payment devices might finally arrive in the US in 2011 ... haven't we heard that before!
Large scale 3D displays from Sony and Samsung were very cool. I was amazed by the quality of 3D on large wall displays
Nokia and Sony are in trouble. HTC also seems to be losing out to Samsung and Motorola
Many smart appliances were on display: LG, Samsung, Haier. I am not sure if consumers will really use web-connected ovens?
No major Chinese manufacturer on the scene yet (Haier?)

Overall, the trip was worthwhile and fun!

Pic: Samsung TVs merge with a Seurat painting ... very attractive!

2010-11-29T12:47:00.005-05:00

TM Forum Management World Americas - Cloud Summit
I delivered a Summit Keynote at this conference on Nov 9, 2010: Lessons from an Early Cloud Adopter – How the Washington Post Company has Developed its Cloud Strategy

My talk is very well covered in David Carr's blog posting on Forbes.com.

Pic: Fall sunset scene I captured as I walked our dog.

2010-09-21T20:13:00.004-05:00

Eric Schmidt
Attended a keynote address by Eric at the CIO Summit hosted by Sierra Ventures. A few thoughts that stayed with me:

Google TV - Google has developed an OS for televisions. If successful, we will finally have Internet Browsing capability on televisions
Andriod continues to grow fast. The free licensing policy has attracted a lot of device manufacturers. I believe that this poses a real threat to Apple. For now, iOS is a significantly better user experience.
Voice translation Eric talked about a demo where an English speaking person conversed in (near) real-time with a German speaking person to buy shoes. The is in in its infancy but, give it a few years, and we might actually be able to speak with anyone in any language.
Instant Search speeds-up an already blazingly fast Google search. Up next "read our mind"!
4G on mobile devices will open opportunities for a whole new set of businesses and functionality. Verizon is planning a major splash soon and AT&T will follow suit. Get ready to buy new devices and spend more. I am so happy about my iPad / MiFi decision.
Enterprise revenue continues to be a tiny part of revenues at Google. A few years ago, Eric was surprised that Enterprise customers would even consider GMail.

Very interesting!

2010-09-21T19:56:00.003-05:00

Interviewed on Internet Evolution Radio
Half-hour interview by Nicole Ferrao on IERadio.
Talked about a wide range of topics:

Media in the digital age
Supporting collaboration within the enterprise
SAAS and software technology in general
etc.

2010-08-05T12:48:00.006-05:00

Personalization vs. Privacy
It seems that the internet has collected enough information on all of us to successfully read our minds without typing a Google search! I was just reading about another interesting technology (Solariat) that reviews questions in social networking conversations and identifies conversations elsewhere on the web that might have an answer - Look, no search!

Everyone I know tries hard to maintain their privacy: What should be my facebook settings?, etc. Organizations worry about how not to cross the line with their customers. The fact that each one of us has a different "line" for each question makes the decision very hard and complex. Any generic decisions applied across a large number of consumers are bound to not satisfy anyone.

One answer would be to give a user an easy enough way to control their "lines". However, marketers (read $$) seem to have more sway over the privacy decisions at internet sites than the non-paying consumers. Did you read who won when Microsoft was evaluating default privacy settings in IE (wsj article)? Why am I not surprised?

The pic has nothing to do with the post ... a couple of interesting wines we tried recently ... sharing a bit of personal info :-)

2010-07-20T09:48:00.004-05:00

My Podcast
I was recently interviewed by Peter High of Metis Strategy. We covered several topics that are front and center for me. I enjoyed my conversation with Peter a lot. Here is a link to the podcast. We discussed:

Cloud Computing
Collaboration (Enterprise 2.0) in a decentralized organization
Leveraging the digital media environment
Skills IT professionals need for the future
The future of mobile technologies’ impact on media

I checked out a few other interesting podcasts on the Metis website.

2010-07-19T15:01:00.005-05:00

Bubbly
Voice Twitter is becoming big in India and in other countries!

They a monthly fee for users to follow their favorite celebrity.

Here is an article on Mobile Beat.

2010-07-09T11:47:00.005-05:00

The Power of Data Analytics
Interesting article on how TaKaDu is leveraging data analytics and data correlation of existing data from water utilities to help identify water leaks.

Link to an article on GreenBeat describing what the company does.

2010-06-08T10:05:00.004-05:00

Enterprise 2.0 Conference
The conference agenda is really interesting. I will be on a panel on June 14th - here is the link. It is IBM-centric but I expect a broader discussion on leveraging on-demand collaboration solutions within the Enterprise.

2010-05-03T15:08:00.004-05:00

Recorded Future
Interesting article on allthingsd regarding a cool search technology that lays out future events on a Time-line. Cool idea.

Have setup a few alerts. Let us see how it works.

Just realized that I have not posted for over a month and a half ... need to try and post more frequently!

2010-03-19T09:42:00.003-05:00

Match-making at the Call Center
Infoword reports that IBM and Assurant Solutions will match Call Center reps with callers using real time analytics. Very clever, especially, if it is well executed!

2010-02-26T12:02:00.002-05:00

SAAS is now mainstream
I was first introduced to SAAS (then ASP) when I joined Brassring (now Kenexa) in 2000. We were convinced that it was how Enterprise Software will be delivered in the future. Salesforce.com was leading the way. However, most ASPs grew much slower than anybody anticipated. Profitability was elusive and hard to attain.

I believe and Infoworld just validated that SAAS finally arrived in 2009. There is robust growth and one can find multiple feature rich products in most every functional area. My team integrated many new SAAS products with our PeopleSoft ERP last year. A small business starting does not need a single piece of on-premise application software.

2010-02-17T15:30:00.002-05:00

Cool version of Wired Mag on the iPad
I think that the iPad will be big for magazines:
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/2010/02/adobe_wired.html

I really like the interactive Ads. I think they move the user engagement and experience forward.

2010-02-16T11:14:00.005-05:00

Cloud Computing

Here is how I defined Cloud Computing in a survey I was filling earlier today:

IT Applications or Infrastructure delivered as a utility from a shared environment. The key attribute of Cloud Computing is that it provides and option to easily and rapidly (not essentially in real-time) provision and de-provision resources based on demand. Cloud Computing completely abstracts IT Infrastructure and application management from a user.

Comments?

(My wife took this picture of the street in the front of our house during the mega-storm last week)

2010-01-19T16:26:00.003-05:00

CIO focus in 2010 - Light-weight Services
I agree with the results of the Gartner study reviewed in this Infoworld article. Small, very focused projects are getting prioritized. Our 2010 roadmap is filled with smaller projects.

According to the Gartner survey, the top 10 technology priorities for 2010 are (our top 5 are in bold):

virtualization
cloud computing
"Web 2.0" collaborative technologies
networking and VoIP
analytics and business intelligence
mobile
data and document storage and management
services and service-oriented architecture
security technologies
IT management

They do not explicitly mention it, but we have seen an uptick in the adoption of SAAS products that can be deployed quickly. We are more focused on SAAS over SOA.

2010-01-08T21:18:00.008-05:00

CES 2010
I really enjoyed my trip to CES after 2 years.

What I loved:

3D Plasma TVs from Panasonic; 6.9 mm thin LED TV from LG (I did not manage to check-out Sony's 3D TVs)
3D movies (clip from How to train a Dragon from Dreamworks)
real-time 3D movie editing on Intel platforms
Project Natal (coverage on cnet) at Microsoft (human body as game controller)
Nokia's approach to impacting the lives of the poorest while building a very successful global company (Project Progress with lonely planet has some excellent stories and videos)

What I Liked:

Netbook from Nokia
Netbook from Sony
Blackberry Presenter
Flo TV from Qualcomm
New Intel processors
Ford's approach towards building automobile technology

So What?

Microsoft Windows 7 and Zune HD
Intel Appup
CE companies have suddenly turned green
PCs and TVs will seamlessly inter-connect and that is useful

Big Disappointments:

No Apple, Google, Dell, HP, etc.
Lack of tablet PCs
eReaders
Lack of Mobile Software Companies at CES
Power outage before the first keynote

Cool Geek Toys

Parrot AR.Drone controlled by an iPhone
Cool Robots from Japan (mainly toys)

I also tweeted from the conference.

2009-12-10T12:05:00.005-05:00

Senator Mark Warner @ TiE-DC
Attended the Annual Gala of TiE-DC (re-named from The Indus Entrepreneur to The International Entrepreneur). Senator Mark Warner delivered the Keynote. His message to entrepreneurs, focus on: Energy, Education and Equity (over debt).

Here are a few pics and coverage of the event on Bisnow.

2009-12-08T15:53:00.004-05:00

Vivek & Aneesh
Fed CIO and CTO talked about the open government directive during a web-cast this morning:

The web drives Transparency. Transparency in a Democracy is very empowering!

2009-12-05T09:31:00.011-05:00

Chris Hughes
Co-founder of Facebook and developer of mybarakobama.com

I attended a interesting talk by Chris hosted by the TechCouncil of MD earlier this week. Two major successes at such a young age! V Impressive! I wanted to hear what he had to say.

Chris started by noting that Information is a record of an idea. The significant change is that Information now distributed very quickly via networked screens. The web allows everyone becomes an author and as a result, people are overwhelmed by information - and it isn't getting better anytime soon.

A few metrics from Facebook:

350 mil users
50 pct users come back on any given day
average user has 130 friends
70 mil users access the site using mobile devices

His thoughts about Facebook that I found interesting:

You come Facebook as yourself, use your real name and meet people you know. This is unlike any other site.
It is a collection of a closed networks
Trust and privacy are paramount: Facebook is planning to release a feature to allow users to create lists of friends and then expose certain content to a specific list - I eagerly look forward to this!
Facebook respects the power of the crowd
Ensuring that the platform is useful to the users is the only way to remain relevant and keep the users engaged. This was the key focus when Chris developed mybarakobama.com.
The turning point was when they opened up Facebook as a platform to allow anyone to develop applications on (repeated by Apple on iPhone and by Twitter)
Facebook lets 350 million people create Information: digital imprints of all out actions, ideas, etc.
All functionality is developed in a interative manner: start simple, see what works, iterate

How is the web changing society?

transparency
choice
ability to create

Here are a few links to media coverage for the event: photos from the event on Flickr, an article on The Washington Business Journal, Tech/Fed Bisnow’s article, Bisonow's article and comments on Network Solutions.

2009-11-27T09:44:00.005-05:00

Cutting out Google ... may not be as bad for WSJ as it sounds
If you are associated with the media industry, you are watching this news very closely.

I have spoken with many people on what they thought about the Rupert's potential deal with Microsoft. Everyone either believes it is terrible idea or that, with their backs to the wall, the news media industry needs to do something drastic or be ready to be subjected to constant blood-letting over the next several years.

Here is why I feel that this may not be all bad for WSJ: If you are NOT a WSJ subscriber and search for and find a link to a WSJ article on Google, Bing or any other distributor of news, you are allowed to read that one article but not navigate to any other WSJ content. WSJ gives non-subscribers access to that one article for two reasons:

To get a chance to try and convert you to a subscriber. I am very sure that the conversion rate is dismal.
Monetize the click by displaying ads. The CPM rates on these ads must be terrible as the WSJ does not know you and your interests. The search engine provides the search term used by you to get to the story. However, click-through rates for ads determined by search terms must be very poor.

This is why the deal makes sense.

If you are wondering how it applies to the other News Corp properties, here is a Guardian article on how James Harding, editor at The Times, feels about putting their content behind a subscription.

2009-11-25T14:53:00.003-05:00

Marketing in the Social World ... Listen before you speak
Read this article on the WSJ. Marketers are now scouring the web to determine what potential customers are talking about and aligning the message to what the customer is interested in. Fascinating!

The traditional - ask a focus group a bunch of questions and figure out what works is just too slow and, quite frequently, misses the mark.

If properly analyzed the volumes of data generated on the web can provide some very eye-opening insights. More and more, "I believe ..." is turning to "I know because ...".

2009-11-17T15:48:00.003-05:00

Let users pick their Enterprise Technology?
A recent article in the journal has generated a lot of discussion around how to bridge the enterprise vs consumer IT gap. As usual, it is not as simple as the author makes it sound. The level of flexibility that an employee enjoys should strike the right balance between user productivity, security and cost to acquire and support. Each worker, team and business have different needs and each organization needs to make the right decision for each user. Adopt new technology at the pace that makes sense for your business.

It is important to evaluate a user's needs, determine the most appropriate solution and deliver it quickly. Be flexible and keep an open mind!

2009-11-17T13:38:00.003-05:00

7 Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
Interesting slide-show on CIO Insight.

2009-11-12T13:31:00.002-05:00

Pricing the Cloud
Tony has captured a lot of my thoughts on how cloud computing needs to be priced and consumed in this article. Read the main CIO Insight article on Cloud's Sky High Hype here.

2009-11-09T10:25:00.002-05:00

Me on Cloud Computing
I am third in this short video that Tony Kontzer shot for CIO Insight at the 451 Group ICE Summit on Cloud in Context.

The coolest part was that the video is shot using Cisco Flip - Video Camera for the internet age!

2009-10-26T16:21:00.005-05:00

Prime-time TV moves to the web!
Just read this article on TelephonyOnline. The new news here is that people watch streaming video on the web between 7 - 10 PM. That is very significant for TV. I believe that the access to broadband and improvements in quality and availability of content has finally tipped users to viewing video the web. Some interesting data the article quotes from the Sandvine report, the key source for this article:

Real-time entertainment traffic – including video and audio streaming and Flash media mainly – accounted for 26.6 percent of total traffic, up from 12.6 percent the previous year. That percentage grew to 32.8 percent during peak evening hours. WOW!

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer traffic fell from a 32% share of all aggregate traffic in Sandvine’s 2008 survey, to 20 percent in 2009.

Another industry being re-invented by the internet!

2009-10-12T20:49:00.010-05:00

Units of Measurement for Storage in the Cloud
I strongly believe that a key ingredient in our effort to achieve true utility computing is the adoption of simple and standard units of measurement. In general, all commodities are bought and sold in easy to measure units - kilograms (or pounds), liters (or gallons) of milk, barrels of oil, etc. A unit of any commodity is easily understood and measured. We must develop simple units for all cloud computing services. I will try and propose units of measurement for the various cloud services.

A good place to start is Storage as, I believe, it is one of the simplest to measure. Most of the pricing for cloud storage is in the GB of storage used by data at rest and a few other metrics. For example, one of the most popular service, Amazon S3, is measured and sold in GB of storage, amount data transfer and number of requests. At the face of it, these seem reasonable. However, it is very hard to budget for storage if you have to estimate the number of requests you will make. The number of requests is determined by the application you develop, and applications change with time. The units for S3 storage are not application agnostic and thus their service is not that of a real commodity. We do not expect the price of flour to change based on the fact that it is used to make muffins instead of bread!

I believe that better and simpler measures would be:
- Size of storage used at rest (GB)
- Amount of data transferred - read and write - (GB)

The definition of the service should specify: Security, Availability and Minimum Transfer Rate (GB/s) that the vendor will guarantee. The S3 SLA includes nothing on Transfer Rate or Security.

Further, the industry must develop a standard interface for storage. This will allow customers to easily move applications from one provider to another.

I will love to get your feedback on what I am proposing. Please take a moment to leave a comment.

2009-10-03T09:20:00.000-05:00

Interesting Stats ...

2009-10-02T13:32:00.004-05:00

How do Innovators Think?
Interesting blog-post on HBR. Key takeaway:

You might summarize all of the skills we've noted in one word: "inquisitiveness." I spent 20 years studying great global leaders, and that was the big common denominator. It's the same kind of inquisitiveness you see in small children.

In addition, makes life interesting!

2009-09-27T18:19:00.004-05:00

Standards for Clouds - Unit of Compute Power
Cloud or utility computing has been frequently compared with electricity. Nick Carr, in his very popular book Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, painted a very compelling picture of large utility-like computing centers built to host applications and data and compared it with power utilities. The comparison resonated with the readers and his book became a big hit. A significant reason for the creation and the success of power utilities was standardization.

There is a strong consensus on the fact that to deliver to true value of cloud computing, we need standards. However, most people assume that standards imply portability. While that is clearly an ideal state, looking at how clouds are evolving using multiple virtualization technologies, I find the task of achieving true portability daunting and potentially impossible.

I propose that one of the first goals should be creation of a standard unit of computing power - something comparable to KWHr in electricity. This, in conjunction with bandwidth (MBPS) as applied to data transfer rates between the consumer, cloud compute units and storage will provide a simple way to compare, acquire, consume and bill cloud infrastructure. It will also immediately simplify software product licensing.

My initial thought is that this will be a TPC like benchmark that each cloud provider will have to specify and meter.

2009-09-26T11:12:00.008-05:00

Collaborate, Innovate ... Succeed
7th Annual Washington Area CTO Roundtable Summit
The event (on Sept 24th) was a huge success. Doug Solomon (IDEO, Apple, Plam) and Vint Cerf (Google, Father of Internet, MCI, etc.) were exceptional. Collaboration is a hot topic and the two of them led a very thought provoking and interactive discussion.

Doug shared how IDEO launched a very successful internal collaboration platform. Key takeaways: Keep it simple, make it useful, eliminate friction and reward participation. It is obvious why IDEO is one of the leading design firms in the world.

Vint started with a brief talk on what one must think about in the context of enabling collaboration. He did not use any slides. He is a very engaging and insightful speaker.

Vint and Doug then led a discussion directed by questions from the audience.

We got very positive feedback during networking. This is the third event we held since I took over as President of this invitation-only group. I believe that it was clearly one of our best!

2009-09-04T08:42:00.004-05:00

Turning Information into actionable knowledge
Just read this WSJ article about Palantir Technologies, they help analyze and triangulate data from multiple sources to find fraudulent financial transactions and terrorists! I believe that well designed analytics can completely transform a business. They key, obviously, is to get the business owners take the driver's seat - only the right metrics make a difference.

2009-08-24T10:44:00.006-05:00

Nokia Booklet 3G
Clearly Nokia is trying to leapfrog Apple by launching a Netbook before the iTablet arrives. Here are the features that attracted my attention:

3G HSPA (and wifi)
A-GPS (Assisted-GPS)
HD ready with HDMI out (connect to your TV)
12 hour battery life

Will love to get my hands on this device at the intersection of PC and Smartphones with a very high quality Video experience.

Update: Waiting for more info post on Gigaom.

2009-08-24T08:54:00.002-05:00

Hi-speed Robot
The dexterity of this robot is incredible. It is just amazing what it can do.

Check out more on the web-site of Ishikawa Komuro Lab in Japan.

2009-08-21T08:46:00.006-05:00

iTablet: Waiting for 4G?
There is a lot of buzz in the market that Apple is getting ready to launch a Tablet device. It makes sense for Apple to address the market between the iPhone and the Macs. However, what will make the apple product different? Exceptional UI and Cool Design are a given. I believe that smart use of high-speed 4G wireless bandwidth will send us to the stores to by a 3rd apple device.

To me it makes sense that they will deliver a product with Verizon - the first of the Big 2 to launch LTE (rumors abound) in Q1 / Q2 2010.

An iTablet on 4G will destroy Kindle's chance to grab a piece of the mobile-media market. A multi-media experience is essential for news media. An iTablet can finally start converging on-line and TV news by delivering an interactive rich-media experience on a portable device with a large enough form-factor.

2009-08-10T08:19:00.001-05:00

Deposit check using an iPhone by sending in a picture
Article on Gizmodo. V Cool! Like the author, I would use this as soon as my bank has this option.

2009-06-21T15:52:00.003-05:00

IAAS: Creating a Private Cloud
I am seriously considering creating an on-demand private Storage and Compute service as a part of our Shared IT Services. The idea is to wrap a vendor's service raw service in an Extended Management Framework incorporating security, monitoring, governance etc. and offer it to our internal customers. Obviously, I would prefer the vendor to provide the entire Management Framework as well. However, I am not convinced if the service offerings are sufficiently mature and robust.

I am hoping to work on developing an RFI over the summer and early fall. Any inputs on the topic will be appreciated. Please provide it as a comment on this post.

2009-06-16T09:51:00.004-05:00

Jeff Besos on Innovation
I have read a couple of articles about Steve Levy's interviewing Jeff Besos at the Wired Conference: Om Malik, Tim O'Reilly. Jeff is very insightful and crisp in his thoughts. A few things that are easily forgotten:

Celebrate small innovations
Innovate backwards from customer requirements and forwards from internal strengths
Over-communicate with employees during tough times
Worry about errors of omission over errors of commission
Carefully decide when you need to be stubborn and when you need to be flexible

2009-06-05T14:51:00.004-05:00

Google Wave
I went through the whole 1hr 20min video. Very cool! I think this is a game changing collaboration tool!

2009-06-02T14:42:00.003-05:00

Twitter for Customer Service
Came across a blog post on WSJ about how Comcast is using Twitter for Customer Service. Then read a couple more articles on BusinessWeek and Techrunch. Very Cool.
I think that Twitter is a perfect place to provide customer service, especially for ISPs. If your customer has an Internet service problem, they can always message you via Twitter.

I will encourage my team to setup a Twitter account for our Intranet Support.

2009-05-30T15:23:00.004-05:00

Portable Virtual Machines
Having recently moved all our servers to a Virtualized environment, I have started fleshing out the next steps in our drive towards a "true" Private Cloud environment. I am convinced that all our servers should be portable from one Virtual infrastructure to another running the same Hypervisor.

The idea is that moving an application from one provider to another should not be a major application re-configuration effort. All management and monitoring services should be external to the application servers. This will allow the app to migrate to a better cheaper environment much more easily than today and will significantly increase innovation and competition. Infrastructure below the application tier should be open and commodity with cost and services being where providers compete.

2009-05-30T15:15:00.003-05:00

GovCloud
Interesting article on Vivek Kundra's plan to lead the government agencies towards a shared cloud. My team has developed a strategy to migrate our shared IT systems to a private cloud. We took the first significant step last week by moving all our system to a shared virtual environment running (primarily) Linux.

2009-05-29T11:24:00.003-05:00

Googlenomics
Paula forwarded me this fascinating Wired article on how Google used auctions to permanently change how advertising is sold. The most interesting part is how the algorithm evolved.

I am a bit surprised that I have been blogging a fair amount about search.

2009-05-28T08:26:00.002-05:00

PAAS: Salesforce opens up to Google App Engine
Saw this interesting news on Salesforce allowing applications built on the Google App Engine to access Force.com applications and data. This is a good way for Salesforce to support the more open Java development platform supported by Google. I believe that people are very concerned about moving to a properietary development platform. We have been burned in the past by proprietary tools like Notes.

2009-05-24T09:31:00.007-05:00

Google / Twitter
I had blogged about my thought that Google should buy Twitter to provide more real-time search. Seem that a deal is with Twitter is not imminent. Read this post on GigaOM on what might Google do about losing the battle to provide search for the "now web".

Here is what I think Google might do: Twitter has a great pulse on current happenings but details of real newsworthy information is still being posted on the blogs. Google should build a real-time indexing for sources that have the most current information and tag it to allow users to follow the most relevant information. Google can then allow users to comment on the stream on information Google produces. Let us see if Google managed to address this evolving opportunity.

How about calling it Google Pulse?

2009-05-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

@TiECON: Hans Morris, Visa Inc
Hans talked about few interesting products and services Visa is working on:

Near Field Communications (NFC) - payments on cell phones
Visa is working with Nokia to leverage this technology for payments using mobile phones

Account alerts, offers, etc for various events - charges, etc. The main goal being to reduce fraud and to enhance the relationship with the customer.

Card to card money transfer, Prepaids
These features are gaining significant interest, especially in the emerging markets. There is only 3% card penetration in countries like India. Visa expects most of the growth over the next several years to come from these markets.

Visa business network on facebook
Trying to build a community of small business customers to learn from each other on Facebook.

2009-05-20T12:06:00.004-05:00

Another Search (Computational Knowledge) Engine
There is a fair amount of buzz about Wolfram|Alpha (obviously branded by a geek). Everyone is trying to figure out if is a Google killer.

On the surface, I am not sure what I will use this for. I typed "weather in DC" and it came up with a pretty good answer. Here is an interesting article on CNET about some additional tries and results.

Let us see if I will begin using it for some queries.

2009-05-03T12:19:00.004-05:00

Don't count out the Cable company
Just read a couple of articles on GigaOm. Seems that cable companies have managed to fend off the telcos deploying fiber-optic networks at great cost:

What will Verizon and AT&T do next? Broadband + TV + Mobile?

I am very pleased to have competition for my ISP and TV business. I am also happy that we have a flourishing cable business: CableOne!

2009-05-01T15:40:00.003-05:00

If I was not a geek ...
I would be a marketing guy. Here is a cool list of new thoughts in marketing that Jason Stewart put together on demandblog after the Inbound Marketing Summit. A couple of items that resonated with me:

When you are building a community, focus on small groups and then expand outward
If you "suck" then people tell everyone. If you don't they will tell two people. You need to be there and be aware of people who say you "suck."

I must admit, I prefer being a geek!

2009-04-22T13:57:00.004-05:00

On CIO Talk Radio: Does your IT vendor pass the Tough Times Test
First time I was on an Internet Radio talk show - this one hosted by Sanjog Aul. Was on with Michael Hugo. Had an interesting discussion on working with IT vendors, especially in tough economic climate.

You can listen to the audio from this page.

2009-04-01T16:29:00.005-05:00

Kosmix
Very interesting "Explore" engine. Is this the next generation of search? A few initial searches seemed to return pretty food results. Will try to compare with Google.

Here is a blog posting on InfoWeek.

Will love to hear what others might think - leave a comment below.

2009-03-26T13:45:00.002-05:00

Nomophobia
I heard of this new disease (short for "no mobile phobia") that is widespread and now has been give a new name in the UK. It is all over the media in the UK (one article). Here is the wiki page.

:-)

2009-03-19T13:22:00.004-05:00

Mine from Time
Very interesting new product from Time Warner - Mine, a personalized magazine combining content from 8 Time Warner and American Express Publishing magazines (read an article on fastcompany). The magazine is available in print and digital formats. You get to pick 5 magazines of our choice and in addition to you location and age, answer 4 questions:

What do you crave more? Sushi / Pizza
Do you like to sing in the car? Yes / No
Which would you like to learn? Juggling / Celebrity Impersonation
Who would you like to have dinner with most? Leonardo da Vinchi / Socrates

I don't get the questions but will wait to see if they correctly reflect my preferences. Also, I think this is where printed media (especially Magazines) should be headed.

2009-03-14T14:08:00.004-05:00

Future of News Media
A long but excellent article by steve johnson on the future of news media. I especially like the diagram of the news creation / distribution supply chain.

... another article by clay shirky ... and a third one There is only Us on newsless.org, where I fond this very interesting paragraph:

If a central element of the undoing of the traditional press is unbundling — the diminishing power of jointly packaging advertising and news, the atomization of formerly coherent monopoly news products into info-snippets on blogs and aggregators — a central element of journalism’s renewal will be connection — our ability and responsibility to all play shifting, complementary roles in a potentially vast system of journalism.

The transformation will be painful but the long-term future is bright!

2009-03-08T16:01:00.004-05:00

Social and Real-time Search
Interesting article on John Battelle's Searchblog describing how Social Networking sites are creeping up on Google as a key source of traffic. I guess Search Engine Marketing will be followed by Social Marketing.

Also, I feel that Search Engines are bound to become more real-time (a good article on the topic). Searching Twitter already gives you a better information on current events. This morning Yahoo mail was down and I searched "Yahoo Mail" on Google - no information on a current issue! I searched on Twitter and found that it was down and the first tweet on the topic was about 1 hour old. So, the issue was not just with my mailbox and I decided to wait.

In my mind, Google should acquire Twitter!

2009-03-04T17:00:00.003-05:00

Open Facebook
Very interesting article on O'Reilly Radar encouraging social networks, especially Facebook, to be more open. The internet has made us all understand the value of wide-open collaboration spaces.

2009-03-01T18:34:00.003-05:00

TweetGrid: New tool to follow Twitter
Here is my grid on the tool. Reminds me of netvibes (my public pages).

2009-03-01T17:14:00.002-05:00

LittleSis.com
Interesting site in the WhoRunsGov.com space. Captured this from a Tim O'Reilly tweet.

2009-02-25T15:21:00.004-05:00

Google App Engine Prices
Saw this article on Infoworld about pricing beyond the basic free account for App Engine users:

10 cents per CPU core hour
10 - 12 cents per GB of data transferred in our out of an application
15 cents per GB / month of storage (including files and structured data)
2,000 e-mails a day free + 10,000 e-mails per day for $1

WOW!

2009-02-23T21:49:00.002-05:00

Artists Twitter
Just came across this article on Mashable with 10 tips on how artists can use Twitter. I am still trying to understand how best to use twitter. I know there is a use for it without generating a ton of useless posts.

2009-02-22T14:29:00.008-05:00

Enterprise 2.0
We are planning to re-launch our Intranet with a lot more collaboration features. We currently only offer a Wiki platform for collaboration across the enterprise.

Tim O'Reilly defined web 2.0 in his famous article in 2005. The success of Web 2.0 features on the consumer side has encouraged widespread implementation of the features within the enterprise, however, with mixed results. These efforts have most popularly been termed Enterprise 2.0. Here is how it is defined on Wikipedia.

In my mind, Enterprise 2.0 goes against the grain of our current IT organizations. So, the rollout of such technologies needs a change in the IT mindset. We recognize how difficult it is to implement change within an organization. Now, the question is, are we capable of embracing change?

I plan to spend the next couple of months developing a strategy and a roadmap for the implementation and rollout of these features on our Intranet. Any suggestions will be welcome. Please post your comments on this page.

2009-02-20T15:54:00.007-05:00

Twitter drives Traffic and real Revenue!
Interesting article on the O'Reilly Radar. Marketing has become so cool over the past several years. New channels continue to proliferate. I used to be in awe of Sales folks (I know, I know - no love lost between techies and sales guys). Now, I tip my turban to the Marketing types - how do you get your message through over all the noise a customer is subjected to. Maybe, using Twitter!

2009-02-19T15:45:00.003-05:00

Desktop Virtualization + Netbooks
I have been tracking the evolution of desktop virtualization for over a year new. I notice that leading-edge customers are moving pilot projects to the next stage. We will look to pilot something in the next 12 months. The companies that seem to be getting a lot of attention are:

Citrix
VMWare
Quest and
Symantec

I am not confident that virtualization will really save money. However, looking at the effort we spend recovering from hardware failures on our desktops, this might make sense. Further, I need to look at what role Netbooks might play in this equation.

2009-02-13T06:03:00.003-05:00

Customer or User?
At a networking dinner yesterday, my friend Doug Neal pointed out:

Q. Who, besides IT, calls customers users?
A. Drug dealers!

Funny but true. Obviously, we do not wish to be in that company!

2009-02-12T18:01:00.002-05:00

Potomac Tech Wire - Internet Outlook 2009
Interesting event. I thought the panel was great. This is just what stayed with me after the event.

What is Hot?

mobile (ESPN mobile was highlighted as an example)
location-aware services on mobile
shift of focus from consumer technology to business or enterprise technology
all media will be social (Facebook, Google connect)
video
privacy is dead
advertising message will become the focus
micro-payments (iTunes, Virtual goods)

Over-hyped!

social networking in the short term (under-hyped in the long term)
virtual worlds
green (a label that everyone is running after)

Other Notes

video cpms seem to be pretty high
internet is destroying peace making mechanism and opinion leaders are being crowded out
advertising will become an application allowing for message customization
data as a business will become a reality (I will be able to cut a deal for sharing my data) ... I do not buy this!

2009-02-11T13:53:00.002-05:00

John Seely Brown interview on CIO.com
I fully agree with John (he ran Xerox PARC). The downturn presents an opportunity to innovate. My key takeaway is the following question and answer:

What do you mean by "edge" innovation? Edges are where the action is. There's the generational edge, where kids come up with all kinds of new ideas. They have very different work practices. How can your company leverage those practices rather than just assume they should accept your work practices? Then, at the industry level, you have edge players, often the start-ups. What are they doing that you haven't thought of? Which ones are growing shockingly fast? So, there are generational edges, the company edge, the industry edge, the market edge. And we have geographic edges, like India, and also intellectual or discipline edges. Many breakthroughs today come between disciplines, where multiple disciplines work together.
These edges are all sources of uncertainty. They are risky because they don't have road maps, and yet that's where most of the action is. You can get early detectors of new ideas by paying attention to the edges.

I am starting to pay more attention to what is going on the Edge. My current focus is on Cloud Computing and Open Source, but, I need to broaden that.

2009-02-09T13:26:00.004-05:00

SAAS LMS
I am currently looking for a "light" Learning Management Solution to deliver 4 courses once in 2 years. Obviously, I am taking an approach very similar to the one we used to support WhoRunsGov.com (link to my post). Obviously, implementation and ongoing cost is a big factor.

Besides several proprietary vendors, I have come across a couple of Open Source LMS solutions (Moodle and Sakai) that may fit the bill. I am looking for SAAS vendors who support these platforms.

Suggestions? Ideas? - Comment on this blog posting.

2009-02-07T15:35:00.004-05:00

Twitter
Yes, I have succumbed and started Twittering. Have added a widget with my Twitter feed on the sidebar. One of the main reasons I blog is to keep notes on interesting technology I come across that I can go back and search. However, I loose that ability with Twitter. I am not sure how much I will use it.

2009-02-04T11:01:00.004-05:00

Charging for Online News Content
Everyone in the print publishing world is thinking about how to get consumers to pay for really good content. Interesting article on paidcontent.org: NYT’s Keller: We’re Looking For Ways To Charge For Online Content Again.

I really like the idea of "Cable Channels for Content" proposed Carolyn Kay. Tim O'Reilly supports that concept and points to the Safari model for books. You buy a monthly subscription and get access to 100s of books. He claims that this accounts for 20% of O'Reilly books revenue (second after Amazon).

The question is how will the currently free content be taken to a paid model. It was easier for books as books were never given away free on the internet. However, it is very hard to charge for something that the customer has received for (practically) free for over 100 years. Maybe, the magazines need to start on this model?

2009-02-02T21:57:00.004-05:00

LinkedIn - finally of some value
Over the past years, I have continued to build my network on LinkedIn. I rarely visit the site and, on the back of my mind, wonder if it is just a waste of time. However, last week, I urgently needed to connect with someone. I searched on LinkedIn and found that we had a common connection. I requested for an intro and made a new connection. Finally, I see why it is worth maintaining a network on the site.

2009-01-31T13:48:00.003-05:00

Me on InformationWeek
Just noticed some traffic from InformationWeek to my blog. Found out that they have done a CIO Profile on me.

2009-01-28T11:30:00.004-05:00

Whorunsgov.com covered on Amazon Web Services Blog
Here is a link to the post.

Amazon is now targeting Enterprise Infrastructure and I expect them to release new products and services to address our needs in that area.

2009-01-27T14:28:00.004-05:00

Internet in Numbers (2008)
There are some v interesting numbers in this Pingdom article. A few highlights:

210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008 (70% SPAM)
1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008)
133 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by Technorati)
12.7 billion – The number of online videos watched by American Internet users in a month (November 2008)

I am not sure about the validity of the numbers but they sure give a sense of the order-of-magnitude.

2009-01-23T19:04:00.011-05:00

Amazon EC2 runs Whorunsgov.com
Amazon has built an amazing product that allows new technology products to innovate and scale with minimal capital investment. We have come a long way from when only big money could buy the infrastructure required to launch a new technology product.

On July 25, 2008 I was asked to architect and solution the technology infrastructure for a new Wiki we were planning to develop and launch coinciding the Inauguration of the new president. The site, WhoRunsGov.com, provides detailed profiles of the folks who matter in Washington DC. I term it as a Wiki 2.0 site because it allows for submission of content and updates by users to be vetted and edited before it is posted on to the site.

Cost: The fact that it was an R&D project, we needed to keep the initial investment as low as possible. To meet that goal, I was convinced that we should build the site with open source technology and host it on the cloud. Having closely following the evolution of Amazon Web Services since 2007, it was the obvious choice for hosting the site. Jeff Barr of AWS kept me up to date on all the cool stuff they were doing. Thanks Jeff!

Time to Market: Our dev and prod sites were up and running in days. Incredible!

Scalability: We initially built the site on a medium server and then upgraded to a large server before launch. The flexibility of scaling the infrastructure up or down at will is of incredible value when one just does not know what the traffic will look like.

For now, I am convinced that I could not have made a better decision! I will write another post about our experience after a few months have passed.

2009-01-22T21:20:00.001-05:00

Google and Wikipedia
Nick Carr speculates that, though Wikipedia is probably not the best source of all information, Google frequently puts Wikipedia on the top of its search results. Check out his rough research here.

One potential answer is that, in the early days of the web, Wikipedia was one of the most reliable sources of information. This was the cause of the high volume of Wikipedia traffic as users selected their pages over others in Google search results. I believe that the Google algorithm has evolved beyond Page Rank to include user click information resulting in further improvement in Wikipedia position in search results. It is a real challenge for others (even with better content) to get above Wikipedia. Let is see how Whorunsgov.com or the new Encyclopedia Britannica fare on Google in the future.

If Wikipedia were a "for-profit" company, it would be big and powerful and become a threat to Google itself.

2009-01-22T20:27:00.004-05:00

Wiki 2.0
With the launch of whorunsgov.com, we have launched the next generation of wikis - one that has user generated content that is vetted by a group of professionals before it is published. We are not alone in believing (Encyclopedia Britannica does too) that this is a better way of delivering high-quality trusted content that leverages the collective knowledge of a broad base of users but filters out false information (wikipedia mistakenly declared senators kennedy and byrd dead).

Despite terrible overuse, Wiki 2.0 best describes this evolution.

2009-01-22T09:28:00.006-05:00

whorunsgov.com
We just launched this site. The site is hosted on the Amazon Web Services and runs on Dekiwiki from Mindtouch, an open source Wiki. I have really enjoyed putting together the architecture for this site. It is amazing what one can do on a shoestring budget.

Here is the press release for the site!

2009-01-21T11:04:00.003-05:00

Private Clouds
For enterprise needs, I support building of a private cloud. Any type of vendor lock-in for this infrastructure will significantly impact future flexibility. This does not mean that the hosting of the cloud should not be outsourced. In fact, I prefer outsourcing the hosting and management of this infrastructure as there is real value in having access to resources with deep experience in managing private clouds. Interesting article in InfoWorld on the topic. Companies that provide technology to build a private cloud are: Elastra, 3Tera, Cassatt, and ParaScale.

My current preference is to virtualize all our apps and to build a Virtual Server farm as a cloud-computing platform. Once the organization reaches some scale (50+ servers), a robust product to manage the cloud will bring value.

2009-01-08T14:23:00.003-05:00

Enterprise Search - Still looking for a solution
Interesting article on ITPro that explains why High-quality Enterprise Search is still not a reality. I agree with the reasons cited in the article and continue looking for a Search solution that we can deploy on our network.

2009-01-05T15:26:00.003-05:00

eBooks
A good roundup of current and upcoming technologies in this NY times article. I think reading books on an iPhone is a stretch.

2009-01-05T09:27:00.002-05:00

Interesting Oracle ISV Map
This is the first time I have seen a large vendor provide very easy access to all their partners. Here is the link to Oracle's ISV Solution Map.

2009-01-01T15:20:00.002-05:00

Corcoran College of Art - Design Print Portfolio 2009

Oil and Water, March 18 - April 5, 2009
@ Gallery Plan b
Preeti will be participating in this.

2009-01-01T15:05:00.001-05:00

preeti gujral on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Preeti-Gujral/61613224984

2008-12-21T21:09:00.005-05:00

Smart Phone Hell for Developers
If you are a small company planning to develop applications for smart phones, you are trying to decide which platforms to support and in what order:

iPhone: Cool but the AppStore is crowded and you better have a way to get your application on to the first page of your category.
Windows Mobile: They claim to have the largest installed-base for smart phones. However, delivering apps on the platform is not easy. I do not know any Windows Mobile phone user who has downloaded more than a couple of apps.
Google Android: It has a lot of buzz in the marketplace. Many of the mobile phone manufacturers (except Apple and Nokia) seem to be planning to launch devices with this OS. Should you bet your company on the success of this platform? Google has not demonstrated a lot of success beyond search.
Blackberry: They continue to thrive and control the thumbs of a the large enterprise customers with deepest pockets. The new devices are really cool!
Symbian (owned by Nokia): Outside of the US, Nokia has the largest market share of mobile devices and if you have any hope of gaining a global customer base, you just cannot afford to ignore Symbian.

I recently spoke with the founders of a small mobile-app company and they are having a hard time deciding where to put their $$$. Any suggestions? As usual, when the OS platforms fragment, someone comes up with an idea of a portable development environment using Java - read this article on MobileMentalism: Erricson to the rescue!

On top of all that - customers are gravitating towards "free" apps and there is no mobile Google AdWords in sight. Also, customers hate Mobile ads and ad revenues for any mobile site are expected to be extremely low for a very long time.

2008-12-03T16:08:00.002-05:00

Conflux
I just read about this really cool festival held in NY in Sept. I do miss living in NY!

2008-12-02T17:38:00.003-05:00

Coghead - Visual Development tool
Came across this Infoworld Article about this Web Application Development Tool in the cloud. Here is the link to the review.