Robin's Hood

This is a fight I have every day where I am working now. There seems to be a pervasive feeling that Sharepoint is the solution. Somebody says 'Microsoft' and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Stewart Mader explains here why you shouldn't get stuck in the 90's.

The Atlassian Blog: "Control, control, control...Sharepoint’s got it, and it’s the opposite of the open, minimally structured philosophy that makes the wiki universally useful for anything. Sharepoint also has an extremely complex, workflow-centric interface. Software should learn how you work, not the other way around."

I am a user of Amazon EC2 in my business and as such I was very happy to see them introduce today features which increase the acceptance of their service to the Enterprise community. The less reason 'old school' data centre jerks have to criticise cloud computing, the sooner it will come become mainstream and dump them all out of their complacent jobs on to Unemployment Avenue.

Amazon Web Services adds 'resiliency' to EC2 compute service | Tech news blog - CNET News.com: "Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service now has an application programming interface (API) that lets developers choose where its application physically runs."

There is a great diagram in this CNet article on cloud computing which explains things well. Cloud is the next evolution of ASP, with SaaS branching off to the side. Nice explanation Martin LaMonica/Forrester Research.

Is cloud computing more than just smoke?via CNET News.com on 3/25/08 The hype cycle around cloud computing is picking up, just like utility computing did a few years ago. But new technologies, notably virtualization, are giving cloud computing more shape.

I have been saying for ages it is all about cooling. This excellent Economist article explains it all.

Data centres | Cool it! | Economist.com: "The data centres that power the internet demand a lot of power. Time, then, to make them more efficient"

"It is all about relationships."

How often do you hear that at work? Successful people concentrate on relationships not process or technology. This CNET article suggests that it is a logical step to build an operating system around relationships and not around the file system. I wonder how long we will have to wait for this to become a reality? Facebook is about as close as I have seen so far, but of course that is not an operating system... or is it?

Thinktanks hail era of the 'social operating system' - ZDNet UK: "A recent study has asserted that the next generation of operating systems will link users to each other on an unprecedented scale as developers incorporate social networking into their platforms."

I was intrigued when I first saw OpenID and I put it on my watchlist. Closed logins systems like Google and Yahoo promote loyalty to the brand and as such I thought it would be a cold day in hell before one of these two behemoths adopted OpenID. What do you know! Yahoo will support OpenID from the end of January. Kudos and respect to somebody at Yahoo for this brave move.

I wonder if Microsoft will ever adopt OpenID. They used to have passport didn't they, which was a similar thing.

For the record I have got a Yahoo account as I think my ISP (BT) uses them for email and other services. My heart belongs to Google though.

Well 2007 has been a great year for me.

• I broke my habit of using Windows after being addicted for fifteen years (thank you Vista).
• I managed some great open source projects which really opened my eyes to the possibilities.
• I am less and less convinced that paying money for software saves you money.
• I finally bought a green car (a 90mpg diesel Smart Fortwo).
• I won an award at work and got my picture taken with some important people.
• I discovered TWiT and Facebook.