Category: Technology

News.com is reporting that VMWare is to start giving away GSX Server (not ESX, don’t get mixed up now).

It’s not actually been announced so this is actually speculation but it would be a big thing for many people. It smacks a little (not a lot) of a desperate measure to retain market share from the rest of the boys coming up, but it could just be that everyone who is serious about virtualisation is using ESX server anyway. Giving people GSX server would keep the virtual machines in VMWare format throughout the development cycle and make the final move to ESX that bit easier.

Has the demonisation of Google started? They have been in the news a lot over the last few days and mainly for the wrong reasons.

Scoble highlighted a new web site “Google: Evil or Not?” joking that Microsoft wanted it’s evil back the other day.

Today’s Guardian is running an article: Should we fear Google? which highlights resent press coverage:

Since I began writing this piece Google has been in the headlines several times: for governments’ complaints about the spy-friendly -potential of the all-too-detailed satellite maps in Google Earth; for a new feature called Music Search, which does what it says on the tin; for announcing a plan to take a 5% stake in AOL; for being vulnerable to “black hat” tactics from Search Engine Optimisers, who specialise in boosting Google results; for hugely expanding its nascent Google Video service; for a dispute with the US government over data; and for this week’s rollout of a restricted Google site to China. The media are obsessed with Google, not least because they are so worried by it. (The general consensus is that Google, having once been seen as a technology company, should instead be regarded as a media company. You may not think it matters, but money people like to see things through the prism of a “business model”.) Other recent stories have concerned the company launching Google Talk as a potentially disruptive way of making free phone calls over the internet, pressing on with its ambitions for Google Book Search (formerly Google Print) to “make the full text of all the world’s books searchable by anyone”, and launching Google Base to take over the world’s classified advertising market. In the meantime, the company has launched a Toolbar, including a Desktop Search tool that searches for information on users’ own PCs – something Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, has been trying and failing to do for a number of years.

It has an interesting conclusion too:

Google is cool. But Google also has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy. Not that it will necessarily do any of these things, but for the first time, considered soberly, these things are technologically possible. The company is rich and determined and is not going away any time soon. It knows what it is doing technologically; socially, though, it can’t possibly know, and I don’t think anyone else can either. The best historical analogy for where Google is today probably comes from the time when the railroads were being built. Everyone knew that trains and railways would change the world, but no one predicted the invention of suburbs. Google, and the increased flow of information on which it rides and from which it benefits, is the railway. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the first suburbs.

It has always fascinated me that organisations that become big and successful soon get to the point where they are regarded as evil. Google has grown big faster than anyone else before them and have met the evil tag earlier than anyone too. One of their problems is their tag line, all tag lines are a target. So when you say ‘Don’t be evil’ people, and the press in particular will take it apart piece by piece and you’d better be sure it hold true. That’s one of the reasons organisations like Nike choose a line like ‘Just do it’.

A few years ago we had a prime minister (John Major) who’s tag line was ‘back to basics’, by this he meant that we should return to all that was moral and good. The press used it as an opportunity to take apart his government through a series of scandals and revelations. Google, you have been warned, mind you Microsoft seems to be doing OK with it’s evil.

Google earth pictures have been updated with even more detail:

“Now for many areas around the world you can see a lot more detail than you could before,” said Google Earth team member Chikai Ohazama. “Take a look at people standing at the gates of Buckingham Palace in London, or jump over the pond and see the Statue of Liberty in New York.”

Via: BetaNews

A long, long time ago I used to support Netware environments. When we moved people over to Windows file servers one of the biggest complaints from people was that they could now see all sorts of directories that they didn’t have access to and it made their world all cluttered.

Back in those heady days we just told them to get a life. Well now the option is available (just) for Windows file servers. It’s called Windows Server 2003 Access-based Enumeration. Now isn’t that nice. Not sure why it should become available now, or whether anyone still cares, but I’m passing on the information anyway.

From my perspective it’s something that would make users lives look cleaner and hence make file navigation quicker. This should then make them more productive which has to be a good thing. And as file navigation is something people do lots of the potential productivity gain is high.

Got my first Skype SPAM today. I’m not going to give them the pleasure of reprinting it here but it was the usual “Mr Chastney we are looking for…” type, this time from Moldavia.

It there is a technology someone will find a way of abusing it; it’s been the same since we invented fire and since we worked out how to sharpen things.

This is a question I ponder sometimes. If we had chosen to buy Apple instead of IBM PC what would the world of IT look like today. For one thing we wouldn’t be dominated by Microsoft, would Microsoft still exist, etc.

I’m no great historian so this isn’t some great thesis, it’s just some simple pondering.

Apple has always been the deliverer of an an integrated solution – hardware and software. Get one, get them both. If Apple had dominated would this have continued? Would they have reached a monopoly in the same way as Microsoft is reported to have? Would they have fallen into the hands of the regulators earlier or later? Would the regulator have made them split the hardware and software sides of the business?

If all of the personal computers and their software came from one organisation what would have happened? We certainly wouldn’t have had Dell or Gateway; IBM, Toshiba, HP, Sony, would all be smaller.

Would Apple have chosen to leverage the dominance in the personal computer space to increase the scope of their monopoly into say the office productivity or media space?

Without the cash from Windows would Microsoft have been the ones shouting foul over the encroachment of Apple into it’s office productivity market? Would they have developed Exchange and would it be something completely different? SQL Server? SharePoint?

I like to ponder history because it tells me something about the future.

If Apple is dominant in the portable media player market will it try to use that dominance to build a dominance somewhere else. Well they already are, they are trying to build a dominance in music downloads. They aren’t building this dominance in an open accessible way they are locking people in. If you buy protected music from iTunes the only portable media player you can play it on is your iPod. Businesses aren’t really that different you see. If you use an iPod and you buy music from iTunes you’ve been locked in (well almost because you can get the tunes to another format but it isn’t easy and it will cost you money).

If the dominance continues and moves towards a monopoly will the regulators move in? Will they be told to open up their software to others (in the same way as Microsoft has)? Will they be forced to license the iPod specification to allow others into the market? Will they be forced to bundle other digital rights software from people like Microsoft and Sony? Will they see it coming and let others into the market once they have defined its shape and size? Will the global copyright structure fall apart before that happens, making all music free and removing the need for digital rights management?

It’s fun pondering – but remember, it doesn’t mean anything.

Or perhaps it does .

Continuing my theme of telling you where I’m not – I’m not at MacWorld.

It’s really interesting to see how the press goes into over-drive at these times though. The press must be one of the most environmentally friendly businesses in the world – they get to recycle the same material at least three times. We have rumours before the event, reports of the event and then comment on the results of the event .

One of the nice things about running StatCounter on this blog is that I get to see how people arrived. One of the ones that fascinates me is search strings. Some of them are truly comical.

Yesterday, for instance, someone found this site by typing “graham dull” into Google and yes apparently I’m the number 2 hit for that search . I get lots of visitors arriving by searching on “Microsoft system center capacity planner 2006” which is fine, that’s to be expected. I still get loads for happy bunny which I only mentioned once; now I think about it though I’ve mentioned it twice because I also posted about getting lots of hits for it; but now of course I’ve just made it worse . I also got one today for “stuart downes mercedes”. I know a Stuart Downes but I don’t think he drives a Mercedes and why would anyone be searching for his Mercedes.

(Oh dear I’m nearly out of Jimmy and Granddad pictures will have to take some more.)

 

Many gadgets are just a faster sleeker version of the the thing that has passed before it. But this year at CES it looks like the SkyScout has created a real buzz.

“The SkyScout is a revolutionary, one of a kind, patented handheld device that instantly identifies and/or locates any celestial object visible to the naked eye, providing educational and entertaining information, both in text and audio.

A fun learning tool for all ages, the SkyScout personal planetarium puts the knowledge of an expert astronomer in the palm of your hand.”

This fits the gadget title in so many way. It’s definitely something you look at and say “I need knew I wanted one of those, that’s great”. It also fits the “Brilliant, take existing technology, put it together in an innovative way and this is what you get”. It isn’t going to solve world hunger though – shame .

Living in one of the cloudiest parts of the world the number of times I would use such a thing are limited, but that doesn’t stop me wanting one.