Clipboard for the Web

Skiing in Bansko, Bulgaria

The announcement by Ray Ozzie of some work that they have been doing on the creation of a Clipboard concept for the web has got a lot of people talking today.

Sometimes someone says something simple, profound and obvious. We all understand the clipboard concept, we all understand that we can’t do this on the web but have got so used to that fact that we have missed the point that it could be possible.

The first screen-cast was enough for me. I was left thinking two things, firstly I was thinking “that’s brilliant”, secondly I was thinking “why can’t I do that today”.

The best ideas are often the obvious ones. The funny thing is that I do something similar to this to create this blog, but I do it manually without the help of the technology. When I post a picture into this blog I go to a page in flickr which has all of the code (html) I need to paste the picture into BlogJet and hence upload it to Typepad. This demo is doing something incredibly similar to that, but with a lot more style. All we need now are a set of developers to make it work and for that to happen they need to be told that we expect it to happen.

Other links:

Dave Winer, eWeek, Technorati, CNET News.com, Scoble, any many, many more.

 

Application Migration – More Technology

Skiing in Bansko, Bulgaria

Anyone who has done any form of desktop refresh or upgrade will know that the biggest issue is getting the applications from one side of the refresh in working order to the other side. Despite the amount of press coverage that a new operating system gets, most people use an operating system to run applications. The volume of applications used by businesses has always amazed me.

There are many techniques that assist with this challenge. The main one I have seen employed has been application re-packaging. On the basis that most applications get deployed more than once they are re-packaged so that the same application package with the corporate configuration can be deployed quickly to anyone who needs the application. The problem with this – it’s expensive and time consuming, but more significantly it gives every user the ‘corporate’ configuration of the application. Most users then proceed to spend even more time tuning the application to their working process. This reduction in productivity is a major impact to anyone receiving a refreshed or upgraded device.

The other approach that some organisations follow is to make the end-user responsible for the applications that they use, some even make them responsible for the configuration of the client device and when to refresh it. The application re-packaging approach doesn’t work in these environments the approach needs to be client based.

Yesterday Microsoft announced the purchase of Apptimum (beta news) focussed on moving applications, settings and data between devices.

The killer application in this arena will be the one that blends both solutions, allowing enterprises to build easily deployed packages and also to enable users to move their state with them. There isn’t enough information available to position the Apptimum technology but I would expect it to come into the Microsoft toolset along side the next version of the User State Migration Tool.

We still have a long, long way to go before we make the business of upgrades a pleasurable experience for people.

(Sorry, I’m all out of Jimmy and Grandad pictures at the moment so please enjoy the snow in Bulgaria as a substitute for now)

Steve Wakes Up

Steve’s blog has become active again – nice to see you back.

Steve and I were commenting the other day on search engine ranking. Steve is number 3 for “Steve Richards” on Google today – as usual I am number 1 for “Graham Chastney” and for “Chastney”. Having an unusual name has its advantages .

Microsoft Origami or Apple Newton

Is it me or does anyone else think that all of the picture floating around of the supposed Origami Project look a little too much like a colour Apple Newton??

OK, yes, I know I’m stretching it a bit, but we are talking about technology from completely different eras here.

Cisco and Microsoft to work together on VOIP Initiatives (oh and IBM too)

When Cisco and Microsoft work together it’s a big thing for corporates many of which who rely on both companies in their infrastructures.

Today’s announcement is the integration of Microsoft’s Live Communications Server and Cisco’s Unified Communications System (Cisco, Microsoft, Beta News).

Anyone would think there was a conference on about such things , especially as Cisco also demonstrated integration with Sametime (Cisco).

(If you think I should have put them the other way around, i.e. IBM before Microsoft, then sorry but I came across the Microsoft story first so tough ).

USA Mobile Changes

There was a time when the USA simply didn’t understand the texting phenomenon – why would anyone want to spend their life sending little text messages to other individuals. Well I think it’s about time those of us in Europe changed that perception of our cousins over the pond.

Russell Beatie highlights a report in the Economist: Getting the message. When it comes to sending texts the USA is now ahead of France, Italy and Germany and only marginally behind the UK. It’s a subscription page so I’ll have to trust that he has correctly reflected the statistics.

Russell goes on to suggest that texting is just part of a ‘much bigger trend’.

Nails – a trifle

Half way down the mountain

On Monday I moaned about my nails being bitten away as the stress of being back at work increased. At the end of the same week I am left thinking that my nails are such a trivial matter that I am ashamed I even gave it consideration.

Life has a habit of giving us all a slap across the face from time to time. It’s has been such a week for me. The Pastor at our church and his wife, close friends, have had significantly more to worry about than nails.

I’ll not use names to maintain privacy so excuse me if this sound cumbersome.

The wife was diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago, serious, life threatening cancer. This diagnosis came at the same time as she was pregnant with their fourth child. Miraculously the doctors managed to coordinate everything such that she received treatment and the child wasn’t harmed. The doctors assessment at the time was that if it came back they wouldn’t be able to cure it, if it didn’t come back for 5 years it wasn’t likely to come back. As you’ve probably guessed by now, 4 years in, it’s back.

It all makes comments and commentary on lines of code drawing shapes on screens sound shallow and irrelevant – hence no writing this week. I have never had to deal with that kind of news and can only imagine how I would react if something as serious happened to Sue.

Productive Meetings – Restating Common Sense

Sometimes it’s worth pointing people to common sense – in order to reinforce the common sense.

I rant rather a lot about meetings, I get invited to so many poor ones. As a way of being constructive I am linking to “9 tips for running more productive meetings” – now there’s common sense.

If any of these are a surprise to you perhaps you should consider phoning each of your colleagues and apologise to them for all of the poor meetings you have run in the past .

Time is our most precious asset. Don’t go wasting your’s or other people’s, it’s the worst kind of theft. You can’t give it back.

Kernel memory exhaustion hotfix available – for Exchange 2003 SP2

When is a ‘fix’ not a ‘fix’? When it’s actually reducing the issue rather than actually ‘fixing’ it. It’s a little unfair but true .

If you run a large Exchange environment then you should be having a good look at the Kernel memory on your servers, especially if the users are members of lots of security groups. There are a whole load of posts from the Exchange team about this issue here, here and here.

A hotfix is now available with details here, linking to a KB article here. This ‘reduces’ the issue by about 30% – so not really a ‘fix’ but that was expected because the real constraint is the 32–bit architecture on which Exchange and Windows runs (for now) .

Skiing Holiday

Skiing in Bansko, Bulgaria

We have just got back from a very nice skiing holiday with some wonderful friends. We went to Bansko in Bulgaria – a very interesting place.

The pictures are here – I may get around to annotating them properly at some point but until now you’ll have to make do with the generic names.

Stu talks Notes and Outlook

Stu talks about Notes and Outlook – his observations are similar to mine.

He goes further on Notes/Domino as an application platform. I’m still unsure as to whether (for most customers) Notes/Domino as an application platform is a good or a bad thing. Many customers that I talk to regard it as a problem rather than a solution, but many of these customers are the ones unhappy with Notes/Domino anyway so perhaps my view is skewed. It certainly works as an application platform, but would anyone choose it as the preferred application platform if they were starting in a ‘green filed’ environment today? I don’t think I would.

Skiing and Nails

IMG_3238

I’m struggle to type today. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first, and main reason is that the old brain is a bit addled from being in a different time zone for the last week and from the physical exercise expended during a week a skiing. The second reason is that I actually have finger nails. Finger nails are a sign of a really good holiday. Biting my nails is, for me, a visible sign of stress. When I’m a little stressed I bite my nails, when I’m really stressed I make them sore.

I have now been back at work for only a few hours and one of the nails is already gone and another is on the way – ah well. Is my job making me ill, or is this just a habit built up over years – who knows?  Do I ask these questions every time I get back from holiday – yes!