Friday, February 27, 2009

SAP Discovers Proof That They're Human


Really felt that despite what happened, Coghead's fall isn't entirely surprising given the number of startups faltering (even the biggies) amidst this dire economic situation. It is true that they've put their customers through pain as a result but it is not as though their service fell and dissolved into the cloud.

On the contrary, it is still a cloud! Just that there's new wind behind it - called SAP. And to just tell the customers that al they wanted is the intellectual property, not the customers, doesn't sound 'humane'. Not entirely blameless, I reckon.

Seems like they felt it, too and are now forming a team to help with SaaS integration concerns.

Spare dime? Maybe but kudos for the effort!

UnRelated:

Unsung cloud flyers. Figure out whose concept EC2 is - here.
IBM deal with Amazon: Is that an anointment?
Evernote is worth remembering. A few others on online notebooks such as Springpad.
Six Steps to Company-Wide Adoption. Practical tips we could all use to go company social.
Another one down. Rocky Mountain News Demise.
Failing grades in class. Must be the lectures' fault. Try the podcasts!
Award for most creative extension for Firefox? Must be Pencil.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Coghead: Business Model Exposes PaaS Risk & other tales

The need to be vigilant ...

If there is a way to get a message across, do it with money, more particularly, the loss of it.

Look at how events at Wall Street just shook things up to get people to figure out that there's something wrong with the system so we need to re-examine things.

In the world of tech hype, cloud computing, PaaS and SaaS, having the same scenario, albeit unfortunate especially for startups, illustrates points more clearly far better what hundreds of crowd analysts can in multiple blog posts. (OK, no stopping me from sharing my thoughts here - Lock in and/or Locked- out)

Will Platform as a Service and Software as a Service be better for it after Coghead? In the short-term, I think not as doubts will again cloud the talk-o-sphere when understanding of it isn't even clear for most, let alone, companies.

But then again, to pause and reflect, has always been a good idea to get a handle on things. Hopefully, people will be able to put the lessons to work in no time and be able to figure out how cloud computing solutions can work to their benefit.

Related:
SAP is cold-blooded. No customer service for non-customers!

Event:
Future of Web Apps (FOWA) is happening!
Watchmen. Sneaky, non-spoiler post from Wil 'f#cking awesome' Wheaton!

Others:
Google App Engine has a pricing plan. They are in need of money, still?
Surrender to P2P, says Norwegian Minister. (Silent snicker..)
You're missing a lot if you haven't tried the Adobe Air Apps Now, video recording for Tweetdeck, too!
Amazon Kindle 2 bought me to tears cause I haven't got one.
Wired goes to the Oscars. Ringmaster Wolverine passed his test, I think.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Ooops, Hoops: Best Stories of 2009 (for me, so far).

Just found probably the two best stories for the year and it's no coincidence that it involves basketball - which because I can't play then the news, I just follow. But this isn't about the usual fare about the superstars and team wins and losses. This is about the meaningful things which I believe all sports stories can teach us. Amen to these men and the sports journalists for devoting themselves to write about these!

Shane Battier: The No-Stats All-Star [Michael Lewis for NYTimes]. Team play, the value of metrics as well as intangibles.

Amid the Grieving, Rare Act of Sportsmanship.
A touching story.

Related:
What HR Analysts can Learn from Basketball [Tom Davenport, Harvard Business Publishing].

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Berkeley's Cloud Computing Meat, not Myth [& the 2 kids in the dorm room having a ball)

I thought it would be more appropriate to let the initial brew-haha simmer a bit before I dive right in and again educate myself. It has been weeks since I touched the 'cloud' and get some sanity back but boy, Berkeley just got it totally RAD right now.

I thought it was 'a great effort but still not encompassing' considering the amount of resources the great 'Internet' has made available. Kudos still to the team! I'm not sure they were thinking of the word 'seminal' when they were doing this but anyone posting on cloud computing at this point deep inside must honestly, feel they are.

Let's just hope the 'populace' get's it right and move on to practical usage. And yes, "Let's leverage cloud computing not for it's own sake but because it makes sense to whatever needs we have now and most especially in the days to come".

Excuse me while I chew on this bone for bit more and if cloud computing is in your plate, I suggest you do read about this a couple of times, too.

I'm skipping dessert for now...

Related:
Podcasting the Berkeley View with Paul Miller
Cloud Ave Digs In to the B-Rad View
Mixed reviews on the report (CNET)
O'Reilly Radar' Artur Bergman
Non-chalantly, Nick Carr's Cloud Gazing

PS: Throwing this one in for enlightenment.


Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Internet: An End to Solitude

Is it a good thing or bad? Privacy.

I'd sure want to have my own space or private time to be able to sort my life and priorities. I'd also want the freedom to be able to spend my time focused on things I'd definitely want to accomplish more than anything else. Yet, that is not to say that it would be at the risk of putting a ban on people I'd love exchanging ideas (and pleasantries) with at most times. After all, people are social and we depend on other people for our needs and vise-versa.

It's just that we want balance.

But it seems to be tipping. And we're not entirely without blame, I guess. [I'd surely want my medical files be made available over the internet in case I suffer a medical emergency and I'm far from my doctor friend - say over a 24 hour window!]

Maybe, the Internet just got us punk'd.

Or we're losing Control.

Related:
Link by Link, As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy Erodes [NYTimes]

Facebook and 'Your' Information
Internet Still faced with Problems

Government information sharing plan

Scoble: Big Deal, Not?

Friday, February 13, 2009

In Terra Firma: Off Cloud means Offline

The past few week and a half were some of the most busiest days I've had traveling out of home and into the city since I got back to work. Whereas before, I would be able to take my kid to school during the mornings, during the past days, she was on her own - meaning she missed a lot of school save for some thanks to granny and gramps taking over school bus duties. Me, I was out without breakfast and home midnight or even later! No wonder I always get the dreaded stare! Good thing lights were off always.


So here's the log and excuse.

E-services 2009
This spanned the last 3 weeks in terms of preparation and coordination. Yup, there's email and a lot of things that can be accomplished online among the people involved but face it, for corporate give-aways, you still need that tactile feel and that involves reconnaissance. It so happened that we needed printed shirts and boy, it was a real test in patience.

Add to it the fact that I was point person for ingress and egress for our booth at the event, which is really a test of energy and endurance. Good thing, we took home some citations. Check the G2iX Blog for updates from colleagues during the event and awarding ceremonies. (Pics to follow).

Creative Commons
Spent a day at the Common Crossroads conference and it was really interesting since there were a lot of delegates from participating APAC countries. Also glad to have met local tech personalities and musicians even.

All - Hands Meet
This is an annual event and a really excellent way to sync company goals and strategies. Along with Product Managers and Executives, this also meant spending hours tooling and re-tooling keynote presentations of this year's roadmap and discussing principles found in the book 'Good to Great'. Nosebleed!

What I learned from all this?
One. It just reinforced the fact that writing isn't really a walk in the park for me. Need to be calm and well rested to piece together all those thoughts and ideas and time spent alone. Unfortunately, both were absent so bye, posts!

Two. It's not exactly all work since we also get to spend time to meet together for some drinks after office hours. Problem is I live not within the vicinities of those fun 'singing' spots which means long travel hours to get home. Less sleep, too.

Third: Band-struck and how I want a guitar :) Till next.

Unrelated:
Gartner top business issues and technologies 2009

Ruby Kaigi 2009
Strategies for successfully deploying Open Source

Posted on by friarminor | 1 comment

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Value to Crap Ratio

If you feel choked with all the scary stories online, you have an option. Somewhere there's a button you can push and it all goes away but so does the few valuable things is worth your time while within the Web.

Now that economy is going bonkers, think it's fitting to replace the signal-to-noise metaphor with
value-to-crap? Then we start talking about business models and ROI ...

Google Kool-Aid just made me threw up... temporarily.

The Titanic Battle in the Cloud with Trend Micro's Eva Chen. Cloud security - not from human error.

Like a scary movie: IBM says companies expose users to threat without really trying to! Really?

There are books, there are e-book and yes, there are readers! Reading in the digital age. And for Book Gluttons - something described as social reading.

WebWorkerDaily turns new page. Welcome, Simon!

Top 5 Social Music Recommendation Sites ( and how do you define Hype Machine? Subtle)

Forbes' Barriers to Innovation . Somewhere, a VC ain't buying the idea.

Thanks to Lee and Sachi, education gets a boost online

Podcast: Cloud Computing and the Economic Climate from Nick Carr and Cloud Ave

Social Media and Marketing is same banana? Related: Forrester on companies being social