DrSalonen

Microsoft isn't the only one developing a hardware-accelerated browser

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:40:17 -0800

Microsoft, with IE 9, isn't the only browser provider planning to harness hardware acceleration. Mozilla is planning to do the same with Firefox. Firefox developers have posted a prototype demonstrating the ability to take advantage of Direct2D and DirectWrite. Google is interested in the possibilities of hardware-accelerating Chrome, as well, as News.com's Stephen Shankland notes.

Can (and will) Microsoft keep Silverlight compatible across platforms?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:47:25 -0800

Microsoft is adding more and more WPF features to Silverlight (and vice versa). But there is a downside to this strategy: By adding technologies like COM support to Silverlight, Microsoft is doing damage to its story that Silverlight is a cross-platform browser plug-in that supports Windows, Mac -- and, thanks to the Mono folks at Novell , Linux -- equally.

Office Starter 2010: The fine print on Microsoft's Works replacement

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:33:23 -0800

More information is coming in from various testers regarding the Office Starter 2010 build that Microsoft released to a group of selected testers late last week -- including details on macro and file type support. Do any of these make Office Starter a non-starter, in your book?

Office Starter 2010 private beta, with 'Office to GO,' goes to testers

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:21:02 -0800

Microsoft released a bunch of public betas of various Office 2010 products this week. But it also released another one under non-disclosure to a select group of testers: Office Starter 2010. Microsoft made the code for Office Starter 2010 available to select testers via its Connect Web site late this week.

Will Microsoft's Silverlight dampen the appeal of Google's Chrome OS?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:40:03 -0800

I'm not one of those ready to write Windows an RIP certificate now that Google has finally taken (some of) the wraps off its Chrome OS. In fact, after reading through industry watchers' questions and Google's answers about it, I'm thinking that Chrome OS may not look quite so appealing by the time it rolls out in late 2010. Here's why.

Microsoft still working on an Adobe Lightroom competitor, but with a social twist

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:28:07 -0800

It's been almost two years since I first got tips about Microsoft "SmartFlow," a product which allegedly was going to be a competitor with Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom post-production software for professional photographers. I had thought that incubation project may have been quietly eliminated somewhere along the way. But it's still alive and is in a new group with a new twist.

Pivot: Microsoft's experiment to 'view the Web as a web'

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:10:44 -0800

Microsoft's Live Labs -- its Research and MSN mash-up -- fielded a new test project on November 18 known as "Pivot." Pivot (not to be confused with Microsoft's recently renamed PowerPivot) is meant to combine search, browsing and recommendations to create a more unified Web experience, according to a description on the Live Labs Web site.

Microsoft shares a few tidbits on IE9 and (lots) more on Silverlight 4

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:20:09 -0800

Microsoft shared some information about what's coming in Internet Explorer 9 and Silverlight 4 during its November 18 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) keynotes.

Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 public betas now available for download

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:11:09 -0800

Microsoft released on November 18 the public beta of Office 2010. It can be downloaded by anyone for free, as of 1 pm ET today, as can new public betas of SharePoint Server 2010 and Office Web Apps.

So where's Microsoft's Live Mesh?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:38:25 -0800

One noticeable no-show at this week's Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is Live Mesh. Live Mesh, Microsoft's synchronization service that is the pet project of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, was one of the main attractions at previous Microsoft developers' conferences. I asked Ozzie for an update on it this week at the Microsoft PDC. Here's what he said.

Microsoft's 'Oslo' Becomes SQL Server Modeling

Petri I. Salonen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:59:00 -0800

Microsoft's 'Oslo' Becomes SQL Server Modeling

Posted using ShareThis

CBS News Mobile Reader story - News Corp. Sites May Disappear from Google

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:49:00 -0800

I think that this decision from a media company is not going to be a good one as new generations will just turn to other sources for the information. This is the same battle as music producers are fighting and the fight looks like a lost battle. As an author of books, i understand the issue, but what can one do as everything is required to be free...

CBS News Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"News Corp. Sites May Disappear from Google"

Rubert Murdoch Accuses Google, Microsoft and Others of "Stealing" his Company's Content

Sci-Tech

Reading this on your BlackBerry? Try the CBS News Mobile Reader now by clicking http://CBSNews.mwap.at.

Comparing Freedom on Maemo and Android: one person's view of these two from a blog

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:49:00 -0800

I have been tracking the mobility OS war's for a while and it looks like that Android is getting huge exposure from handset makers, excluding Nokia who has decided to continue with Symbian and the Linux-based Maemo. Today (November 10th, 2009) I read that Samsung is also going to release their own mobile OS. I think it is the consumer that is going to loose here.. as developers can't focus on many platforms and the competition of applications will be spread too thin... This is my personal opinion and I think we should be looking beyound the OS as of now and really provide value to the consumers.. When have the mobile OS platforms brought anything really new... besides touch screen....?

cool900: Comparing Freedom on Maemo and Android

Microsoft, Amazon Poised for Cloud Battle -- keep the innovation going

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:22:00 -0800

The battle of the cloud is going to get very heated... Amazon just released its strategy to include MySQL to its cloud.. and I am sure there is going to be a price war as well going forward. All this, we hope, will benefit the developers and end user organizations. Keep the innovation going!

Microsoft, Amazon Poised for Cloud Battle -- Redmondmag.com

How to Plan Your Cloud Computing Mix - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:20:00 -0800

The market is full of cloud computing and pressure for organizations to consider it. From an ISV perspective, financial models have to be considered as cloud computing will change the overall financial model of an organization and I would also emphasize that end user organization should look at the viability of the software vendor. I expect hybrid models to exist for quite a while.

How to Plan Your Cloud Computing Mix - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

IASA Webinar on Domain-Specific Modeling: 76 cases of MDD that works

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:17:43 -0800

Why do many MDD approaches fail or only produce marginal improvements, when others consistently improve productivity by a factor of 5-10?

As modeling is a central part of any architecture work, International Association of Software Architects (IASA) has recently identified the need for industry level education in modeling - especially for modeling work where models are put at the center of IT initiatives.

My colleague Steven Kelly is giving the webinar via IASA modeling knowledge community 17th November (15:00-16:30 GMT). He will answer the essential questions on why many modeling efforts fail and how to succeed. The answer is backed by analyzes of 76 cases of Domain-Specific Modeling, spanning 15 years and 4 continents, to find the set of worst practices that reduced productivity and endangered project success. This experience allows him to show the best and worst practices with practical examples, letting you make an informed decision on how to move your modeling to the next level…. making models work.

See details and register at webinar registration page.

The Book That Contains All Books

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:44:00 -0700

Kindle rocks, what else can I say. It now also rocks internationally.

"The Book That Contains All Books"

The globally available Kindle could mark as big a shift for reading as the printing press and the codex.

Mea Clouda: SaaS Vendors Can Win Over Customers with Honesty - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:55:00 -0700

I like this article that explains that all SaaS vendors have an opportunity to build trust with their clients by being open and transparent when an outage happens. No IT system is failsafe, and I would even argue that some onpremise solutions do not provide 99.5 or higher uptime. I have not seen one yet.

Mea Clouda: SaaS Vendors Can Win Over Customers with Honesty - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

Nigel Pendse Sharply Criticises Traditional BI Providers at the 2009 Palo Open: do you agree with him?

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:57:00 -0700

Nigel Pendse gave a keynote and gave his opinion about traditional BI vendors. I happened to collaborate with Nigel in the past, he knows his stuff and focuses on the BI field.

Nigel Pendse Sharply Criticises Traditional BI Providers at the 2009 Palo Open

Adobe Eyes the Cloud with ColdFusion 9 - vendors coming out with software tools

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:47:00 -0700

Expect to see lot's of software development tools to be coming out to the cloud platform environment. Here is one annoucement.

Adobe Eyes the Cloud with ColdFusion 9

Is Cloud Computing Secure? Prove It

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:45:00 -0700

This article is a good discussion of issues around cloud computing security and what private clouds can do for an organization. Compliance and other regulatory issues is something that organizations have to think about as well. Read on....

Is Cloud Computing Secure? Prove It

A BlackBerry Storm Is Brewing (And A Bold Stroke May Also Be Imminent)

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:37:00 -0700

The competition on the mobile market is heating up. RIM is coming out with second release of both BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Bold. There is still not much information what they have added.. but I am sure this will come out out soon.

A BlackBerry Storm Is Brewing (And A Bold Stroke May Also Be Imminent) | In This Issue | Mobile Enterprise Magazine

Five reasons corporations are failing at social media

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:32:00 -0700

This is an interesting article to check out... why organizations could fail with social media.

Five reasons corporations are failing at social media

B&N Plans e-Book Reader

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:47:00 -0700

Yet another eBook reader, now from Barnes&Noble. I hope there will be some type of standardization among the players so we don't end with multiple devices like I do with Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader from the past.

"B&N Plans e-Book Reader"

Barnes & Noble plans to unveil its own brand of electronic-book reader. The company already sells e-books.

WSJ.com: What's News Technology

Program for the 9th OOPSLA Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling available

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 02:52:38 -0700

Can’t believe this: The workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling takes place at OOPSLA already the ninth time. Perhaps next year we should target something special for the anniversary ;-)

The papers and program for the workshop are now available. What is particularly special this year is the relatively large number of experience related papers and description of various DSLs - this year many addressing the web.

Hope to see you at the workshop.

Amazon Cuts Kindle Price

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:41:00 -0700

Now Amazon Kindle will have an international version with wireless access. This seems not to apply to Kindle DX

"Amazon Cuts Kindle Price"

Amazon.com trimmed $40 off the price of its Kindle e-reader and introduced a version of the device with international wireless service.

What's News Technology

'Masters of Light' Share Nobel in Physics

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:37:00 -0700

Windows 7 is going to be success for Microsoft, no question about it. I am convinced that organizations and consumers will start upgrading from XP that is 8 years old operating system.

"'Masters of Light' Share Nobel in Physics"

Three scientists were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for breakthroughs that led to fiber-optic cables and digital cameras.

WSJ.com: What's News Technology

IBM Faces Justice Antitrust Inquiry

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:29:00 -0700

Here we go again... if it isn't Microsoft, Google or Intel it is IBM that is seen to have monopolistic behavior. It is not the first time that their mainframe business is thought to have monopolistic character.

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"IBM Faces Justice Antitrust Inquiry"

The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into alleged monopolistic behavior in the mainframe computer market, according to an industry group backed by IBM rivals.

What's News Technology

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Dell to Build Phone for AT&T

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:25:00 -0700

Now Dell is coming out with a phone using Google Android operating system. I am not sure whether this makes any sense... time will tell.... but if the large vendors such as Nokia has issues.... why would Dell be able to make money on this....?

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"Dell to Build Phone for AT&T"

Dell expects to launch a smart phone, powered by Google's software, on AT&T's network as early as early 2010. The device would be Dell's first cellphone.

What's News Technology

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Microsoft, Google Intensify Mobile Push

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:54:00 -0700

Windows Mobile 6.5 was released yesterday with a bunch of additional announcements such as 30+ new Windows mobile devices before the end of the year. The competition between Apple, Microsoft and Google gets even more heated.

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"Microsoft, Google Intensify Mobile Push"

Microsoft and Google intensified their efforts to supply the software that powers the next generation of mobile phones.

WSJ.com: What's News Technology

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Cameras With New Views

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:50:00 -0700

Now we are talking, a digital camera with a projector. This is the way to go!

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"Cameras With New Views"

The Samsung DualView and Nikon Coolpix have new crowd-pleasing features, including a built-in projector and dual LCD screens, writes Katherine Boehret.

Mossberg/The Mossberg Solution

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AT&T to Allow Internet Phone Apps

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:48:00 -0700

US operators are trying to do everything to protect their sinking fixed line business and this is a welcome act by AT&T to allow IP apps to work on iPhones.

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"AT&T to Allow Internet Phone Apps"

AT&T reversed course and said that it will allow Internet phone software applications on the iPhone to run on its 3G network.

WSJ.com: What's News Technology

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Solving the most common problems faced in modeling efforts

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:32:36 -0700

Last week I participated at MDD seminar in Helsinki and the day concluded with a panel titled %201CMDA vs DSM: either or both%201D. I have to say that the panelists, David Frankel from SAP, Juha Mykk%E4nen from University of Kuopio and Matti Rossi from Helsinki Business School and I, failed to deliver a debate meeting the promise of the panel title. Nobody was able to explain why we need model-to-model transformations a%2019la OMG MDA and how the chain of model-to-model transformations (CIM->PIM->PSM->code) where you edit the intermediate models works in practice. In my opinion it creates more problems than solves them. Actually, I wonder what problem it solves. Any experiences?

I found the panel still highly interesting thanks to Juha Mykk%E4nen as he presented few slides related to a survey they have conducted on the use of modeling in SOA-related process modeling work. What was striking to realize is that domain-specific modeling languages aim to solve at least the three most common problems they identified in process modeling efforts (see Juha%2019s slide below).

Since the majority has difficulties on knowing and restricting the domain as well as knowing how to use modeling languages it is particularly important that someone already experienced within the domain defines a language that guides and helps in modeling work. When looking the top 3 challenges, how DSLs will help then?

Domain-Specific Languages always define the scope for the particular need and thus help to focus on modeling only the needed parts (of processes). This scoping is impossible to achieve with general purpose languages such as BPMN, UML etc as they don%2019t clearly state when to stop modeling, what aspects of the processes should be described and how detailed different kind of processes should be described.
Modeling becomes easier when the language operates with familiar concepts that have already known semantics. For example %2018Spot transaction%2019 in trading is so much more descriptive than using BPMN %2018Intermediate%2019 element with value set for 'Trigger%2019 property and setting Timer for %20182 banking days%2019. As a plus, models with DSM became smaller and easier to read, remember, update and validate than models created with general purpose languages.
Since domain-specific language is built based on the domain and by an experienced person(s) there is no lack of understanding of the domain anymore. Actually, creating a DSL will lead to improved understanding and that is often worth even if you don%2019t ever use the language!

The results of the survey are not yet available in more detail since the survey was just finalized but I believe Solea project will publish them in some media. I expect that most of the respondents mentioning domain scoping and domain understanding as major problems have not applied DSL approach but rather used BPMN, UML etc general purpose languages. Let%2019s see when the results became public%2026

Skype Founders File New Suit in eBay Saga

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:59:00 -0700

The saga and disputes over Skype continue very heated and it is going to be interesting to see if the whole deal will fall apart. Let's see what happens...

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"Skype Founders File New Suit in eBay Saga"

Two companies owned by the founders of Skype have filed another lawsuit that could complicate eBay's $2 billion deal to sell the Internet phone company.

What's News Technology

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Dirty vendor tricks | Applications - InfoWorld article of software business

Petri I. Salonen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:42:00 -0700

Having been in the software industry for 20+ years, this article kind of made me laugh.. Is the software industry so desparate, and if it is.. are you one of these vendors...?

Dirty vendor tricks | Applications - InfoWorld

US ISV Developer Evangelism Team : Best Practices for Your Software Available for Free

Petri I. Salonen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:29:00 -0700

The ISV Developer Community provides free resources for Best Practices

US ISV Developer Evangelism Team : Best Practices for Your Software Available for Free

Palm Unveils Pixi Smart Phone

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:09:00 -0700

Palm Pixi is the new smartphone from Palm. I can't see them having a chance in these markets... I just can't...

WSJ.com Mobile Reader user Petri.Salonen@tellusinternational.com wanted you to see this:

"Palm Unveils Pixi Smart Phone"

Palm unveiled a thinner, smaller smart phone model called the Pixi, part of its effort to turn itself around.

US: Business News

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Tools for researching topics and keeping track on things: Microsoft OneNote and MindJet MindManager for Web - ISV Community - Network for people in the software industry

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:57:00 -0700

As a researcher, I am constantly struggling on how to manage all of the information that is available to me. I rely heavily on Mindjet's MindManager and Microsoft OneNote connected to Microsoft SharePoint. Check out, and let me know if you agree on this.

Tools for researching topics and keeping track on things: Microsoft OneNote and MindJet MindManager for Web - ISV Community - Network for people in the software industry

Experiences @ Practical Product Lines

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:29:10 -0700

Product line development is a typical place to apply DSM. What I see perhaps the most companies doing in product line space is creating languages that express the variability and then generate product variants. My schedule did not permit participation at SPLC conference this week, but luckily there will be another, a practice oriented conference dedicated on product lines, called Practical Product Lines (PPL). The word ‘Practical’ in the name of the conference is worth emphasizing since almost all the speakers have industry background. I hope there will be space for both conferences: for the research oriented and for the practice oriented views on product lines.

At PPL, Jan Bosch from Intuit, Dieter Rombach from Fraunhofer IESE, Dirk-Jan Swagerman from FEI and Markus Völter from itemis will all give invited keynotes. I’m looking with a particular interest the talk from Jan Bosch since he has created domain-specific languages already in the 90’s when working in academia.

I’ll also have an opportunity to contribute. Together with Erik Carlson from ABB we will present industry experiences when applying domain-specific modeling languages and code generators. Among the various domains in which DSM is used (see some language examples here) our session will focus on two product lines within embedded space: train control and consumer devices. We aim to show examples (e.g. train control language) as well as discuss the measured benefits, such as quality and productivity.

Check the program: I hope to see you in Amsterdam.

State of the Economy - August

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:06:20 -0700

It’s been a while since I wrote down my thoughts on the economy. In my last State of the Economy I wrote that I believed in a double dip. I am not so sure anymore. The reality is that home values are not on the rise yet, unemployment is still high, the number of foreclosures and credit card defaults are up, and worst of all consumer sentiment has not improved linearly with the stock market.

We have seen some good results from companies that are now reporting the effects of their first half cost cutting, but I don’t that many can claim that their sales are up. Most analysts believe in a weak rebound, which clear since it will take a long time to fix home equity values and unemployment giving consumers again the comfort to spend. So if sales will only grow marginally and companies can only cut so much, I believe that companies cannot keep meeting investor expectations and we will see a secondary dip. It wont be as bad as the first… more of a reality check than a dip.

Read: http://www.cnbc.com/id/32505016

Then again I do not make my living off making stock predictions and analysis corporate financial reports. It could be that the stock markets have anticipated what is to come and the slow rebound is already built in to the numbers. Even if they aren’t we will all be ok is we all believe that they are.

Now I wrote in the spring about the Asia market bubble and how those economies are so dependent on the west for growth that it is logical that they will only rebound in a second wave. Just today I read that the Chine’s economy will grow 8.5% in the third quarter, which is dismal in comparison the the last few wild years, but still good growth.

But read this: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/chinas-recovery-is-it-for-real.aspx.

The Chine’s economy is a bit like a Ponzy scheme (bad example, but you get the idea). It requires an ever increasing momentum to sustain the growth. If the western rebound remains weak the momentum wont be there and the economic growth cycle cannot sustain itself.

I still believe that the traditional economic power houses will rebound first (G8). The US rebound has lost focus with the HealthCare debate. Health care is fundamentally an economic issue and must be resolved on the long term, but was 2009 really the year to do it?

I have to admit I am not as well versed on the debate as I should be, but let’s not let the fact stop me from commenting… it doesn’t seem to bother others either. I believe there needs to be a public option, but creating another entitlement that we cannot afford is not fiscally responsible. The public option should cover basic healthcare and leave premium options optional. The public option might not be (read: will not be) on par with the current average policy, but it would be a lot better than nothing at all. I think the public option should be subsidized by a corporate healthcare tax. Assuming that current policies would become cheaper due to the base package being heavily discounted for all policies, companies should be able to pay the delta back as a health care tax without a hit on their operating costs. Through a public option’s shear purchasing power we should be able to source a basic universal package from the private sector in the sense of free market economy (which I personally believe has the potential to be more efficient than a state run system), which subsidized by a corporate health care tax equal to the savings delta should be able to subsidize health care to most of the currently uninsured 8.9% that require subsidies. The health insurance industry would have to get with the program. The pharmaceutical industry already seems to be with the program. Subsidized doesn’t mean free. Also the currently uninsured would have to contribute, but at least there would be a subsidized option that is attainable for all.

The base package should be mandated federally to every policy. The few percent that cannot afford even a subsidized offering need to be funded with an increase in the federal tax percentage (which should be balanced by cutting from somewhere else). Let’s call it a social responsibility tax. Providing basic preventive care to all should reduce overall cost of healthcare to the tax payer and not increase it.

Technorati Tags: economy,healthcare,obamacare,stock market,recession,rebound,china

Future of Mobile Value Added Services

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:10:35 -0700

I have been recently researching what value added services exist in the mobile space and I have to say that I am not very impressed… I am almost disappointed. I am not talking about music, backgrounds, games or such. I am talking about services.

I looked into Mobile TV and seems that the options are to stream or you need a receiver. Streaming with current bandwidths doesn’t sound like a cool idea. I tried to see if there were any Java applets that could decode a received signal, but all seem to require a chip or SD card, which in my opinion is killing the opportunity. What percentage of even higher end cell phones have inbuilt TV receivers today? Couldn’t the phones inbuilt GSM (or CDMA) receiver be used to receive the transmission and then have an Java applet decode it off the SIM card utilizing the phones CPU. This would be device agnostic and what a market opportunity!

SMS just seems so boring when we could be using SIM Browser based services. They are still the same SMS based, but menu driven so you do not need to remember phone numbers or what the exact message needed to be for the server end to understand your request. How many of you even know half of the SMS based services your operator provides today?

I though about looking into cell tower triangulation and if there was a Java applet that could fit on a Java Card (device agnostic). You would think that such a positioning solution would be cool for those who do not have a GPS enabled phone, but no… hey! please correct me if you know of such an applet.

Well, at the end of the day there is only so much you can stuff on a SIM card. Why not just have G&D and/or Gemalto chip a GPS and digital TV receiver on the SIM card? Now how cool would that be?

I’ve found a number of cool applications, but the problem is that they are always client based and only work on a limited number of handsets… “there is app for that”, but only if you use a certain device. What about MAaaS (Mobile Applications as a Service)? Why are micro web browsers still so sad? Why can’t the top 1000 web sites automatically query your screen size and optimize content so you do not have scroll across the page to see the right side of it? There are more WAP enabled phones than there are Smart Phones that run rich client applications.

Software vendors… you need a sales channel. You can either give the device manufacturers or the operators a slice of the pie. I’d go with the operators and not have to deal with multiple device support issues.

I believe that the cell phone, as we know it today, will disappear. Have you seen Samsung’s wrist watch that is also a cell phone? Why couldn’t we just have a voice enabled phone built into a headset? A bit into the future, why not just implant the phone? Why not inject a biological ‘thing’ into your wrist that glows the time through your skin… biological clock? We are already building DNA Computing is here today… how long will it take to create a biological cell phone implant?

http://www.officelabs.com/projects/futurevisionmontage/Pages/default.aspx

Check out Microsoft’s future vision montage. Look at their vision of tablet PC’s (handhelds… smart phones). Now that is the future of smart phones… I just personally envision the phone being split off from the ‘smart’. Laptops themselves will become ultra-slim netbooks… yeah, sorry I believe in cloud computing and SaaS.

Technorati Tags: SaaS,netbooks,smart phones,handhelds,java card,sim,sim browser,wib,s@t,gsm,cdma,sd card,dvb-h,mobile tv,java applet,vas,mobile value added services,gemalto,G&D

Microsoft Partner Network

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:03:45 -0700

Microsoft announced last week the upgrade partner portal now called the Partner Network. The new portal will have more social elements enabling partners to interact with each other. This is a great step forward for Microsoft, but does not match IBM’s addition of Lotus Live into it’s partner program. Facilitating partner activity is all well and good, but what then? ‘Partner networks’ need collaboration tools to allow partners to engage on opportunities. IBM, Google and Microsoft have the ‘live’ offerings to enable this.

Now that vendors are starting to see the value of P2P interaction within their ecosystems, and seeing the ecosystem more as a network rather than a hub and spoke model, the under lying partner management framework also needs to evolve. How PAMs (Partner Account Managers) are assigned to partners based on partner size and geography are irrelevant… hub and spoke thinking. We should rather focus on a new breed of Partner Portfolio Managers (PPMs). The role of a PPM is to manage a group of synergistic partners and actively fostering P2P activity. This would also support the notion on vertical solution maps.

Partner management should not be regional. The fact that it is, derives from revenue recognition and how people are commissioned. I see small partners with cutting edge technology, top 3 local references in their home territory and no support on a global level. A huge amount of innovation and competitive differentiation is being left to the road side, because we cannot figure out a global model for revenue recognition. The gap between local account management and being a globally managed partner is huge. This favors partners that are from large domestic markets and have the ability to achieve critical mass locally with Microsoft’s support.

If we do bring collaboration tools from the Live portfolio into the Partner Network, should we also consider optimizing the solution for ISVs, integrators, hosting partners, etc.? The problem with Live offerings, regardless of the vendor, is that they are too generic. They are not optimized to support a best practice work flow different groups, such as software vendors, large account resellers, resellers, integrators, hosting companies, etc. Also let’s consider the opportunity to link systems and share information across P2P boundaries. A unified platform would support also business planning, forecasting, etc. After all the alpha vendor, as a PPM, is always one node in micro community or group of synergistic partners.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Partner Network,Live,P2P,PAM,PPM,Lotus Live,IBM

Intel is working with Google on Chrome OS

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:26:59 -0700

Google's announcement of Chrome OS got a fair bit of attention. Now Intel is committing to work with Google in optimizing their Atom chip for Chrome OS. ASUS, HP, ACER and Lenovo have already made a commitment towards Chrome OS.

Now Chrome OS has the potential to be a great OS for Netbooks, which fall in neatly with the concept of cloud computing, where the netbook is basically a terminal for accessing SaaS offering within the cloud. Now Google already has a cloud play and they are continuing to build.

This will be definitely an interesting play to watch.

Technorati Tags: Intel,Google,Chrome OS,SaaS,cloud computing,netbooks,Atom

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Intel is working with Google on Chrome OS | The Industry Standard

Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo among Google Chrome OS partners

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:42:21 -0700

Is Google Chrome the ultimate cloud OS... light and super charged for the web?

As the cloud competition intensifies we will see alliances and offerings emerge. Most clouds are on the IaaS level today and portfolios of SaaS offering are still weak. With Chrome OS on light laptops Google is definitely upping its game.

Technorati Tags: Acer,Asus,HP,Lenovo,Google Chrome,OSS,IaaS,SaaS,cloud

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Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo among Google Chrome OS partners

German Recession May Have Ended in Second Quarter

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:28:02 -0700

This is a 'may have', but it is still good news for the Euro region. What happened? The US economy was supposed to be first in first out.

We are seeing the number of newly unemployed being cut as most companies have made extensive layoffs in the first half. If we see a turn the second half should not see massive layoffs. We are waiting for Q2 results from a number indicative companies... some have already posted better than expected results. There is talk of a second stimulus (which in my opinion is not needed and would be a waste). We should see some effects of the Recovery Act stimulus funds in the 2HFY09.

The Q2 results are pivotal for the stock market. Will we see a second dip as I fear? If the results are good and outlook projections positive, then we should be past a double dip, but this also requires consumers to spend as well in the fall.

The problem is still massive unemployment and the spiraling loss of home equity. These are making people save rather than spend and without the consumer purchasing engine in high gear we will not grow. As schools start in August we should see a spike in retail spending. Additionally we are starting to move into the fall Christmas sales season.

Timing... we must also consider the impact of returning troops from Iraq and what that will do to unemployment.

Technorati Tags: economy,stimulus,recovery act,euro

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German Recession May Have Ended in Second Quarter - Germany * Europe * News * Story - CNBC.com

More Government Money Won't Stimulate Stocks, Experts Say

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:51:00 -0700

I have to say that I agree with the experts. I also agreed that the first stimulus round was needed, but we will have not used it fully and are still waiting for the effect from the first round. A second round would not change the situation at all and would be total waste. The market will just have to figure it out on its own. We will see a second drop in August. Unemployment will continue to rise for a few more months. It will take years to get back to a normal level.

The only thing that a responsible administration can do is invest into infrasructure for future growth.

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Second Stimulus: More Government Money Won't Stimulate Stocks, Experts Say - Markets * US * News * S

What is the Social Cloud?

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:55:51 -0700

Google’s Kevin Marks talks about the Social Cloud. This is not to be confused with Cloud Computing. The World Wide Web (WWW) in essence is a cloud and this is what Kevin refers to. In the www-cloud we use standards like TCP-IP and HTML. He talks about new standards for making social data in the WWW-cloud standard. When we standardize social data it becomes interchangeable between social media platforms and also enables us to build a mind maps of our social profiles. It enables us to visualize our social networks, the tools we use and the content we generate. This opens up a new opportunities for social analytics.

The social cloud will require incorporation of an electronic social identity… universal sign on. I’ve written on this topic in the past. How do you allow separate systems to share your social profile and access your network data? The example Kevin uses is why can’t a user just transfer their network from a Facebook into a Myspace. A lot of apps exist, but they always require you to key in your account user name and password for the site you are transferring from and your account credentials are unique for each system.

It will be interesting to see what Google comes up with to solve this issue.

Technorati Tags: social cloud,social networking,social analytics,Kevin Marks,Google,WWW,Facebook,MySpace

Timeline for Introduction on Mainstream Social Sites

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:19:29 -0700

Source: Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, by Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

Visionaries see U.S. high speed rail

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:29:14 -0700

Yeah!!! This is what I am talking about!

Now where is a similar plan for national e-government portal that will cover all federal, state and local services reducing complexity and increasing efficiencies?

Where is that energy bill that will kick start all those nuclear power plants, solar/wind farms and geothermal plants that will power all the electric cars that will come to market in the next few years?

Where is the comprehensive national strategy on wireless networks making this nation a leader in high-speed communications? In the 2008 Global Broadband Household Penetration Rankings USA ranks 20th. Broadband and mobile broadband are the backbone to an information society.

Technorati Tags: high speed rail,alternative energy,nuclear power,broadband,e-government

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Visionaries see U.S. high speed rail; critics see subsidies - Jul. 2, 2009

Stocks slammed by jobs report

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:15:14 -0700

CNN money writes about DOW loosing over 200 points due to worse than expected jobs report. The President comments that the figures are... "sobering".

I've written on this issue a number of times. The number one enemy of a recovery is UNEMPLOYMENT. Now you can argue that unemployment is the results of a number of other factors and those need to be fixed before unemployment can be reduced. The reality is that it is not about the lack of lending... no one is buying. People are not buying, because they are saving... because they are either unemployed or waiting to be unemployed.

Health care reform is important, but why are we not looking at the funds that have been allocated for the Recovery Act. I recently looked at a visualization of stimulus spending from the New York Times (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-STIMULUS0903.html). There are so many line items across so many states that I am just wondering what portion of those funds are being used, what their employment effect is and how much waste there is? How much of the infrastructure spending will leave something behind that will make us more competitive in the years to come? We will have the most modern network of emergency shelters in the world, which will require maintenance and but will not generate a single dime after they have been built. Where are high speed rail lines, the next generation high-speed wireless networks, the new nuclear power stations, the national e-government platforms, etc. These are all initiatives that will make the nation more efficient and more competitive for years to come. They will also generate jobs today and put money back in the pockets of consumers? Where are the bold initiatives that will shape the nation for generations?

Technorati Tags: CNN,economy,DOW,NYT,unemployment

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CNNMoney.com Market Report - Jul. 2, 2009

What is Cloud Computing?

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:15:12 -0700

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.

The concept generally incorporates combinations of the following:

–infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

–platform as a service (PaaS)

–software as a service (SaaS)

Other recent (ca. 2007–2009) technologies that rely on the Internet to satisfy the computing needs of users. Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

(Source: Wikipedia)

In summary: The major difference between traditional solutions and cloud solutions is that solutions developed for the cloud support multiple tenants within a virtual architecture. Traditional solutions only support multiple accounts or user within a single tenant.

Macro versus Micro

An example of a Macro Cloud is Microsoft’s Azure. As an analogy, it is a wide open field with a single set of construction guide lines. We can add as many houses from the same mold in the field as we like and charge the tenants a monthly fee. They can furnish their home to their liking, but not alter the layout of their home.

In the future Macro Clouds could support a large ecosystem of Micro Clouds. Continuing the same analogy, the field could be carved up into zones with family homes, town homes and condos. Now the tenant can choose from a list of available floor plans to fit their needs.

Virtualization enables multiple solutions to inhabit a single server. If these solutions support multiple tenants, we can build Micro Clouds that are uniquely tailored to a specific group. In terms of the analogy, we can now tailor our home layout exactly to our needs without having to wait for the zoning to happen.

Creating a Micro Cloud for just one tenant doesn’t make sense, but when we have a small group with synergistic needs, then we can achieve significant benefits. Micro Clouds enable us to customize applications for small groups of tenants that have common highly unique needs… vertical needs. When the tenants in a Micro Cloud interact and share data Partner-To-Partner (P2P) we can multiply the returns of the cloud.

Technorati Tags: Cloud computing,micro cloud,macro cloud,IaaS,PaaS,SaaS,tenant,Azure

20 Promising Open Source PHP Content Management Systems(CMS)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:54:07 -0700

This is a great article about open source CMS's.

I have friends using Drupal with great success. I have used DotNetNuke a lot and it has been great. I also used Mambo and Joomla, but they are full of security holes... like Swiss cheese.

Enjoy...

Technorati Tags: Drupal,DNN,Joomla,Mambo,OpenSource,CMS,PHP

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20 Promising Open Source PHP Content Management Systems(CMS)

Social Media Monitoring Solutions

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:54:25 -0700

I recently looked through the available social media monitoring tools.

Here is a list:

Trackur
Filtrbox
Scoutlabs
Visible Technologies
Collective Intellect
Spiral 16
Radian 6
Techrigy
TMS Symphony

These split into RSS feed and screen scrape based. In general I found most of the solutions wanting in terms of their scope of search. There is no substitute for having a professional analyst help you out. None of the solutions had true multi-language support, which makes geographic filters a bit difficult. Most either have or are coming out with sentiment algorithms, but again those are only 75% accurate and only work with the English language.

Radian 6 had a nice way to track persons of interest. Collective Intellect had nice demographic data. Spiral 16 was the furthest ahead in visualizing influencers and social networks.

Pricing ranged from free to a seat fee and an additional search fee on top of that. Paid services start from $250 per month and range to $100 per seat plus $500 per search topic.

If you are serious and willing to pay I have to say I was the most impressed with Radian 6.

Another great blog on the topic is by Lisa Whelan: http://socializemobilize.com/2009/05/21/avoid-selective-hearing-with-20-top-social-media-monitoring-tools/

Technorati Tags: Trackur,Filtrbox,Scoutlabs,Visible Technologies,Collective Intellect,Spiral 16,Radian 6,Techrigy,TMS Symphony

Experiences on language design: review of ~100 cases

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:38:27 -0700

As more and more domain-specific languages are defined we inevitable start learning-by-doing how to define good languages. Possibilities to extract good principles for language design is naturally reduced when having defined just one DSL, have just few users, or even more so if defining internal DSLs typically for own personal use only. The best would be, of course, to analyze a large portion of domain-specific languages as it allows seeing the bigger picture and therefore better extracting principles for language design. Moreover, the languages should address different domains and being developed and used by many persons.

This is exactly what my colleagues at MetaCase, Risto Pohjonen and Steven Kelly have done. In my opinion they did an excellent job by first collecting tens of cases (76 to be precise) which target different domains and generate different kind of code from domain-specific models. After the analysis they interestingly decided to focus on worst practices since in many cases it is easier to learn what to avoid. Among the worst practices identified my picks for top three are using the code/library as source for language constructs, failing to consider language's real-life usage during language construction and not updating the language anymore after successful adoption.

The article is published in July/August issue of IEEE Software and it is available/can be purchased from IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (DOI: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MS.2009.109).

State of the Economy - June

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:53:17 -0700

It is time again to summarize the sentiment and the stream of economic news. The Fed yesterday kept rates down. The risk of inflation has been widely commented on and Dr. Doom has stated his worries about super inflation in a few years time. This may be the case, but for now massive unemployment is keeping inflation in check.

Unemployment is still rising and the White House has been the weakest on this front. Where is the money from the American Recovery act? This week I read an article about the revival of plans to build a high speed train system to tie together urbanized America. This is the smartest thing I’ve read in a long time. Massive infrastructure projects that will generate jobs and invigorate local economies with longevity. If you could jump on a bullet train in San Francisco and be in LA in under three hours, would you even consider taking a plane?

Healthcare is a major issue, especially on the long term, but I would urge the President to take strong and definitive action on unemployment and the loss of home equity for majority of America. The idea of a $15k tax rebate for any home buyer is a good start. The rebate should start a buying frenzy if banks were out to lend. This would deplete to pool of low cost foreclosed homes in stable metro areas and start driving up prices. There should also be a rebate on some home improvements… kitchen, bathrooms, heating systems, etc. These all add back to home values reducing the gap between mortgages and true values. Generating jobs… clear national infrastructure projects: high speed trains through urbanized America, new nuclear power plants to provide power for a generation of electric cars, revival of public transportation in major metro areas that are under served (e.g. Atlanta).

I have come to believe that regardless of the green shoots we will have a double dip in this recession. We will see a major hit after the summer, but I still believe in 2009 recovery time line. Unless unemployment becomes the number one focus the growth curve will be very poor.

Heads of top U.S. companies snub blogs, Facebook

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:50:52 -0700

A study by UberCEO.com found that not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog. Only three CEOs have a personal page in mainstream social media sites. This is a huge opportunity for public relations agencies to help executives beef up their communications strategies.

I am personally not a big fan of Twitter, even though it would lend itself nicely to known CEOs. The rapid fire nature of micro blogging is not great when you have legal liabilities and your words can have immediate effect on stock prices. Blogging however offers a means of providing transparency for mainstreet USA into the thinking behind actions of major corporations. Executives should use this avenue to provide information. Some times you have to make unpopular decisions and not everyone might agree, but atleast people will undestand your motives and the net effect will always be positive.

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Heads of top U.S. companies snub blogs, Facebook: study - News Wires - CNBC.com

List of Social Networking Sites

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:58:14 -0700

A: Advogato—free community dedicated to open-source software development
B: Blogger—popular blogging website (owned by Google)
C: Classmates.com—helps members keep in touch with classmates from school, college and military service
D: del.icio.us—a website dedicated to managing bookmarks through storing, sharing and discovering
E: Ecademy—online networking for business, offline networking events and global networking groups
F: Facebook—site once limited to connecting only college students has expanded to include the general public
G: GuildCafe—community for computer and video game players (funded by IDG Ventures)
H: Hi5—personal global social networking site that focuses on membership of young people
I: IMVU—instant-messenging software using customized 3-D avatars
J: Jobster—social networking intersects with job searching
K: Kwout—a way to quote a part of a webpage as an image with an image map
L: LinkedIn—site dedicated to strengthening your business contacts and professional network
M: MySpace—originally focused on musicians, this general social networking site has mass appeal
N: Nexopia—formerly known as Facebox, this Belgian site is popular among young Europeans
O: Orkut—known for its easy-to-create discussion forums, this is one of the most popular sites in Brazil (owned by Google)
P: Plaxo—online platform that allows auto updates of business address book information
Q: Quotiki—a social quotes site that lets you quickly find and enjoy quotes
R: Ryze—site designed to connect entrepreneurs and other business professionals
S: Second Life—a 3-D virtual world where users can use voice and text chat to socialize, connect and create
T: Twitter—micro-blogging service focused on connecting friends, family and coworkers
U: Utterz—allows users to update their blog via short-message service (SMS) and multimedia message service (MMS)
V: Vox—blog platform built with extensive permission settings
W: Windows Live Spaces—(also known as MSN Spaces) this is Microsoft's social networking platform
X: Xing—(formerly known as Open/BC—Open Business Club) displays how each member is connected together, creating an "it's a small world" network for professionals
Y: Yahoo 360—Yahoo's social networking platform
Z: Ziggs—allows users to professionally market themselves online

Insurance exchange, subsidies could cost $1 trillion

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:53:13 -0700

As both parties pitch plans on how to remodel the healthcare industry the price tag keeps getting higher.

The pharmaceutical industry is making profits... well yes, it is a 'for profit' type of business. The question is, if they are making too much? Should they give some back and lower the cost of medication? With every tenth pill a counterfeit the pharmaceutical companies need to recoup their huge R&D investments some how. This places the burden on the 9/10 pills that are not fake. Fix drug counterfeit and the cost of medicine can come down.

Is the health insurance industry making too much... again they are for profit. If you don't want companies to make profit, then nationalize the sector. Build a self sustaining system of national healthcare by running it the same way that private companies do... Freddie Mack and Fannie May of health insurance. Pass on all margin to the consumer and at the same time mandate universal healthcare. If the cost of health insurance is cut down, then employers can afford to insure more workers. The private sector can make their money by building premium packages on top of the base national package. Now the private sector can always compete with government base package if they are mor efficient... typically the private sector is.

And what about hospitals.The base care package should have a mandated base fee structure. The government is buying services from private companies in massive volumes... they should get a volume discount and a fixed fee frame agreement. Hospitals that can provide the base care package more efficiently can keep the margin. With an electronic patient records system we can monitor for anomalies like in the credit card industry and do quality checks. If a hospital doesn't meet base guidelines they will loose their license.

And what about doctors? Are they being paid too much? The hours they work and the investment they have made into their education has earned them the right to a big pay check. At the end of the day would you o to $100k doctor versus a $300k doctor if you had the choice?

In summary...

Most countries with universal healthcare have a national network of hospitals. However, is this the only way to achieve the same goal? Can't we have universal healthcare by having the goverment pool all their citizens basic health care needs into a massive group policy and going to the private sector to bid on the best deal? Now that is negotiating power! I beleive that for those who want more there needs to be options. There needs to be the option to 'super size' a meal, as they say, but I can imagine that life really sucks if you don't have a meal at all.

The big question is well who will pay for this? With national debt mounting I dont think that answer is the government. After all if the government pays, then it needs to be borrowed and/or taxed. Neither of these options sound good. If the government can negoatiate the fees down for basic healthcare, which shooting off the hip is probably 80% of the pie, we can dramatically cut the cost of health insurance that will enable more people to be insured under the current framework without increasing the overall cost.

And finally the cost of premium packages will soar. Well, not necessarily. We are now focusing on the 20% that isn't covered by basic health care. The equation becomes different. Also with legistlation we can enable individuals to join groups and give groups the power to negotiate better rates.

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Insurance exchange, subsidies could cost $1 trillion - Jun. 15, 2009

When Cloud Computing and Social Software Merge

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:51:25 -0700

I recently read an article about IBM offering portal for clients with Domino Connections and social functionality. The P2P gains have been tremendous. This is exactly the finding that IDC has had while studying the IAMCP ecosystem. Partners that engage in P2P activity are 20% more prosperous. I have been speaking on this topic since mid 2008.

A lot of people are writing about social media usage in a B2B context. The community sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are great for one-on-one networking. Groups can be effective in establishing thought leadership around specific themes. Twitter can be great again for thought leadership when used by established influencers and to promote brands that are already strong. All of these strategies are hub and spoke model geared at building and strengthening one-to-one connections between an alpha brand or influencer and a community, but the future is not hub and spoke… it is a mesh. What I would question is the level of P2P interaction that these strategies promote.

If we look at B2B communities like PartnerPedia and PartnerPoint we see two things. With PartnerPedia the hook is in offering a digitized work flow for partnering and post partnering collaboration. With PartnerPoint there is a huge effort on part of the administrator to offer services and facilitate P2P activity. I believe that both are on the right track. The problem with PartnerPedia is that it is a closed proprietary community. A PartnerPedia can never compete with a Google on cloud computing, a Facebook on social software and Microsoft/IBM on collaboration tools. The role of an ecosystem like PartnerPedia is exactly what PartnerPoint is offering… services and facilitation. The problem with PartnerPoint is that is stuck in the discussion forum age and doesn’t offer an infrastructure to partner and execute in a mesh configuration. Ecosystems should use market leading cloud platforms for a wider range of collaboration capabilities and for higher degree of interoperability and connectivity to internal systems.

Just offering the infrastructure for collaboration is not enough. You need the social software to provide that social glue and ability for people form social bonds. Social bonds reduce barriers to communication, which increases P2P activity and productivity. Imagine that as with PartnerPedia and LinkedIn we create professional profiles for ourselves and our companies. Now imagine that the platform had the intelligence to match needs and interests an automatically broker optimal introductions. Imagine that when we navigate discussion forums and we mouse-over a person, with who’s trail of thought we agree, we see a tag cloud, which is a summary of their profile and all the user generated content that they have produced. We can automate and induce/encourage social interaction with technology, but we also need ‘social analysts’ to serve as a ‘licensee of trust’ and a social broker.

We are also talking about Service Orientated Architectures (SOA). How do we build mashups of information… customized dashboards. How do we inject provide access to our back end systems in a secure fashion, essentially integrating our business with the ecosystem cloud. How do we build whole supply chains within the cloud fused with social glue? Securing these next generation ecosystems calls for a next generation claims based authentication and access management architecture.

One interesting question is what role can and will Open Source Software (OSS) play in this? Also how mobile will the networks be? Will these ecosystems be open to all or exclusive to companies that partner with a brand like UPS or belong to a frequent flyer program like Delta’s Sky Miles? Will we see brands build strategic alliances by integration their ecosystems?

Technorati Tags: SOA,UGC,IBM,Microsoft,Google,Amazon,cloud computing,social software,LinkedIn,Facebook,MySpace,Twitter,B2B,P2P,PartnerPedia,PartnerPoint,OSS

A crisis should not be wasted

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:17:53 -0700

Now that we are seeing signs that our financial crisis has stabilized and the dust is starting to settle, many articles are saying “a crisis should not be wasted”. This means that the captains of ships should climb the mast and adjust their course instead of blindly working on mending the holes in the hull.

For well financed large companies this is simple; strategic acquisitions, process streamlining and intelligence based decision making. For poorly financed companies this is also simple: chapter 11 or large cost cuts. This crisis is an opportunity for the highly liquid small to midsize company. As larger competitors are busy doing their thing, the field is open for bold choices and ambitious goals. This is the time for soul searching to find what is the main competence of the company, and to lay the ground work for above average growth when the upswing occurs.

Important action items include: (but are not restricted to)

- Finnish R&D for the next product. Now that the game is slightly on hold companies should be able to see the next step in their industry and match that need.

- Lock in and develop a pilot/reference for the product. Even though customers are stretched for cash they should be willing to develop themselves with a new product / system by paying the supplier with collaboration and feedback.

- Get the best people out there. The market is flooded with highly educated and experienced people who are willing to take a demanding position in light of future benefits and prestige. This can be seen as a spike in entrepreneurial action.

- Invest in bulking up the beginning of your sales pipeline. When the market eventually recovers the runner that has their sneakers on will be the one in pole position.

By investing in these activities you will hopefully have a proven hot product with talented people selling it to a vast pool of potential customers. This ideology is based on the fact that growth comes from expansion of activities and venturing into new markets, whereas streamlining, cost cutting and yield management increase margins.

In Recovery Race, US Looks to Outstrip Europe

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:50:43 -0700

Today's stories paint an interesting picture. 10 major banks are allowed to pay back their TARP money to the federal government, which should off-set atleast some of the dept that has been accumulated. The White House promisses to expediate starting new projects that should put 600k people to work. This is money that has been allocated already in the beginning of the year, but not used yet. The effects are yet to be seen.

It is very clear that USA will come out of this recession faster than Europe. As my brother wrote in one of his blogs, Europe will end up paying same, but de to indicision and half measures their rebound will be in late 2010. With a weak (and weakening) dollar now is a perfect time for European technology companies to expand into the US market and get on the next growth wave that will start in the second half of the year.

Some articles state that the banks are still underfunded and that the unemployment rate has exceeded worst case estimates. Well true... the administration did fumble on getting the massive injction into the economy in a timely fashion to counter the loss of jobs. It's being done now, but why not months ago. The reasonsare probably on the agency and state level and mostly due to the fact that the plan has been poory written.

The GOP is proposing an alternative energy bill with a call for a 100 new nuclear reactors. I've studied nuclear engineering in college and I a all for this plan. It would be the equivalent to the Apollo program. A massive project with a clear mission and a huge employment effect. It would drasticly change US energy policy for the future and pave a way for a new auto industry based on electric cars. We need to explore green resource, like wind, solar and geo thermal. The fact of it is that wind power just cannot compete with nuclear. Solar should be used in a building by building level. Some states should mandate that all water is heated by solar power.

My greatest concern about usin money to jump start the economy is that is used on small projects that have no long lasting impact and no clear return for generations to come. Keeping police and teacher jobs is great. Fixing an intersection will improve traffic, commerce, etc. These are all great things that will have a definate ROI, but they are not things that we can easily point to in ten years time and say "well that is what we got". The government will be trillions in dept... we will have to layoff the teachers we kept and the intersection will need new paving.

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In Recovery Race, US Looks to Outstrip Europe - General * US * News * Story - CNBC.com

Merging the best of both worlds

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:55:03 -0700

My first answer to the question ”what will you miss most about the U.S.?” was “coleslaw”. Two weeks have passed since I left The U.S. and it is just dawning to me what I will miss. I will miss the U.S. mentality which is a rare combination of energy, entrepreneurship, patriotism and belief in a better future. Even though things are not perfect in the U.S., neither are they in Europe. In Europe we are plagued with structure, procedure and risk averseness. Provocatively said: The European spirit will prevent the next google from popping out of a garage in an Oslo suburb. With our mentality we eliminate the possibility of jumping of a ledge and landing in a gold mine.

This difference can be clearly seen in the bailout procedures taken by both parties. Obama’s idea was that the worst decision is the decision that was not made. This led to the enormous bailouts which will arguably be used inefficiently and in many in the wrong places but it will do the job. In Europe we are all debating individual bailouts that will be fine tuned to get the best bang for the €. The time that is lost and the downwards momentum that will be gathered during this indecision will probably amount to the costs of the U.S.’s imperfect bailout. Both will do the same job but with an extremely different mentality.

If we only could kindle a hungry, bold, entrepreneurial spirit and combine it with our European diligent, systematic and high tech culture, I believe that Europe would be unrivalled economically. Luckily I can see hints of this spirit in my generation, those who are currently graduating. They want to see what they can amount to, it seems like they have something to prove. The Finnish government has done an excellent job facilitating this by making Finland one of the easiest and cheapest places to create a start-up. I think that all we need is some true success stories to fuel this fire and change dormant dreams into pursued goals.

Want to learn how to implement a modeling language from the scratch - and after 3 hours have it done?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:11:02 -0700

Learning by doing is perhaps one of the most effective ways to discover and master new practical skills. This year at Code Generation 2009 we are running a hands-on session in which participants implement from the scratch a domain-specific modeling language. Our plan is to do language creation iteratively: Develop several versions of the DSL and after using the language we are better equipped to improve the language further. When we finalize, we will see how the DSL became better (powerful, simpler to use, easier to learn).

The session shows repeatable steps to invent and implement your own modeling language. Participants will use MetaEdit+ (no previous experience required) helping in the process of trying out the ideas and iteratively defining the DSL. MetaEdit+ also provides tooling for the language users with features you expect from modern environments. You can register for the session at Code Generation website.

My second book project on its way

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:54:00 -0700

I am currently in Finland and will be meeting with my publisher to discuss about my upcoming book that will be my second book from the same publisher. I have been thinking/contemplating and pondering about the content and it is pretty much in my head now and I have to get it on paper as well... I am very excited about this new project and the content will be very timely for many of us!

Juha-Pekka Tolvanen zu domÃ¤nenspezifischer Modellierung - podcast on DSM

Tue, 19 May 2009 03:23:29 -0700

Leipzig IT Radar interviewed me earlier this year on Domain-Specific Modeling. While IT Radar focuses on management topics we discussed mostly the organizational side: who defines domain-specific languages, how the introduction should be started, what changes in the development process, where DSLs make most sense and what are the experiences from the industry.

Although I’ve lived in Germany and learned the basics of German language (to eat/drink/sleep/shop etc.) the podcast is in English. Perhaps some day I can manage computer topics as well...

9th workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling will be organized at OOPSLA 2009

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:31:12 -0700

I received last weekend the confirmation that the workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling will be organized as a part of OOPSLA conference between 25 and 29th October. The location is a bit special this year since the event will be held at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Orlando. I%2019m expecting to see many domain-specific languages applied in the entertainment domain :-)

This was actually a poor joke as languages fitting to the task help focusing on creative parts and leave routine to the computers, aka editors and generators. A nice example of this is how Risto Pohjonen from MetaCase, has created a DSM solution to help designing menu structures and communicating authoring plans for DVDs. The results have been acceptable - at least I consider two DVDs charting #1 (A,B )and a gold disc as good results.

CfP for the 9th DSM workshop is available at the workshop website.

Hindrance of Technology's Evolution - Product updates

Thu, 14 May 2009 02:52:48 -0700

As I earlier said that I will bring more structure to this blog by concentrating on a few subjects at a time. The first one will be "New Technology Market Penetration".

One phrase that I picked up on a discovery channel commercial has truly stuck with me, "as technology evolves at an ever increasing rate, the future of technology is now". The issue in relation to this is the problem of capitalizing this development. To take TV's as an example: We are just experiencing the adoption of full HD and blue-ray, but we already have the next technology of multilayered screens available. Many would argue that the issue is price but actually the problem is the lack of demand.

How can we kick new technology adoption rates into high gear? The problem is that development happens at a continuous steady rate (in the short term) whereas adoption is a series of logarithmic patterns. The optimal situation is that these lines overlap. This is essentially impossible, we cannot adopt at the rate of creation because of the cost and the dispersion of standards. We also cant force R&D to take a binary pattern. Therefore we are stuck with the current suboptimal pattern, where the only two variables are the amount of logarithmic adoption phases and the actual speed of adoption.

In essence my idea is that companies should try to bridge the gap between the latest technology and the current market by offering it through updates to create market pull for the actual new products.

I believe that companies have all the intentions to push new products into the market to replace the old ones and that this rate cannot be significantly increased. However I do believe that the market is ready to expand the idea of product updates from software to other products. Back to our TV example, companies should send proper 3D glasses (not the type that you get of the Super Bowl Miller Light pack) to their customers as a part of the initial product purchase, just like in software. By doing this companies would manipulate the market to demand 3D technology creating a demand for the next product.

Another example could be your car. The engine is controlled by a pc so why don't the companies update the ignition patterns, fuel-to-air ratios every 20 thousand miles to ensure the best performance possible when taking into account the new characteristics of the engine with ware and tare also possibly including any changes that recent R&D efforts should suggest beneficial. Why hasn't Verison or Sonera built a free wireless network into a downtown area and later switched it to require payment? The rate of adoption would be far superior to that of gradual adoption and I believe that the returns would also be much greater.

Future of this blog

Thu, 14 May 2009 02:04:03 -0700

This blog will in the future have more of a structured form. I will aim to have 2-3 current topics that I will concentrate on. These subjects will most probably still be related to technology, business strategy and finance. There might be a slight lag in starting these 3 subjects because of a change in continent for me.

A years summary - MBA employment - Civil rights

Thu, 14 May 2009 01:42:55 -0700

As some might possibly recall, around a year ago I started an accelerated MBA program. Now I am 3 days to graduation. It has been an interesting year, teaching me a lot about my chosen subject and also myself. I met an extraordinary bunch of people and every now and then got bored out of my mind thanks to the limited town of South Bend. To spend time in a place where the makers of the Harry Potter movies came to design its castle's dining hall and where so many historically significant people / events took place is something that I will always remember.

Now to the more academic subjects: As many of us have read in the papers, the current graduates are entering the worst job market in history. But there seems to be some light in the tunnel, currently 60% of my class has offers. The fact that only 40% have accepted does say something about the quality of these offers. The glimmer in this is that many companies seem to be willing to talk after a long time of silence. My class mates are all talking to recruiters and once again lining up interviews.

The civil rights portion of this entry is related to the protests around President Obama's speech at our graduation. My question is that at what point should one loose the right to protest, when this act is depriving others of their rights?

Amazon Debuts Bigger Kindle

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:10:00 -0700

New larger Kindle to the market soon. I have the first Kindle (1) and Kindle 2 and might be buying this one as well.

"Amazon Debuts Bigger Kindle"

Amazon unveiled a $489 Kindle electronic-book reader that has a larger screen geared toward textbooks and newspapers.

The agony of an author and the joy of having a clear picture in one's head

Petri I. Salonen — Sat, 02 May 2009 04:52:00 -0700

I am sitting in Helsinki, Finland and writing on my second book (first one was released in December 2007) and I have been contemplating on this book for quite a while and during the long first of May weekend here in Helsinki, everything became so clear to me. I know exactly the why's, to whom, and the rest and now I am just getting everything written.... The agony of a writer and the joy of getting things cleared in one's mind are mysterious....

New developments in CDS

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:33:07 -0700

To continue on my previous subject of credit default swaps, there are plans in the market to try stabilize this part of the market. Some of the leading US financial institutions are trying to standardize CDS to eliminate some of the problems that we are currently reading about today in the papers as companies are going bankrupt.

Two of the key changes that are to take place are:
1.The introduction of US and European clearing houses for CDS to reduce counterparty risk
2. The introduction of standardized CDS contracts to prevent ambiguity and legal disputes

The goal of the new initiative is to bring transparency from which the pricing of these securities will become easier and comparable. According to Sivan Mahadevan, a derivatives strategist at Morgan Stanley:
"A clearinghouse, and changes to the contracts to standardize them, will probably boost activity. ... Trading will be much easier, ... We'll see new players come to the market because they’ll like the idea of this being a better and more traded product. We also feel like over time we'll see the creation of different types of products."

Essentially this will boost confidence in investors by eliminating some of the threats that are currently killing us and possibly stimulate financial innovation to better benefit from these derivatives.

The Entwined Banking Sector

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:56:29 -0700

It’s scary to look at the banks constantly being injected with cash. Many feel that this is a never ending cycle and wish that we could just take the punch, let a few more banks disappear and carry on with a cleaner slate.

The problem is that it is impossible to crash one of the last few banks without seriously handicapping the others. The reasons are credit default swaps, which I touched upon in my previous blogging. These tools have effective meshed that banking sector. This instrument is essentially an insurance against an investment. Because the large banks are insuring each others’ investments in a mesh like fashion when one bank fails it causes a ripple effect shattering the calm of the entire pond.

This is one of the key reasons why toxic assets are being removed from the books to eliminate this threat. It’s just sad that we have to bailout the idiots who ran some of the largest financial institutions into the ground, all because the market forgot how to evaluate counter party and investment risk.

US Dollar - Credit Default Swaps - Market Saturation

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:48:05 -0700

It’s been a long time since my last blogging. The MBA has been taking up a lot of time, but now that I'm on my final stretch I'm finally starting to find time for this again. I've been thinking about a topic to write about for a week now and this morning one dropped into my lap.

During this credit crisis and global recession the strengthening of the US Dollar has continued to amaze me. I've known the reason for it, which is that because the bond and commercial paper market have effectively shut down investors have been putting their money into the historically reliable US treasury bonds to lock in risk. Everything until here is clear, except that are US bonds as reliable as history suggests?

The spark that I got today for this blog was the fact that currently McDonalds is getting cheaper credit default swaps than the US treasury. This means that the market sees McDonalds to be less likely to default on their loan than the United States. WOW!!! Well the world always needs burgers....

US debt to GDP is hovering around 70%, but the truly interesting figure is the fact that the future federal obligations amount to 65 trillion (try to ignore the provocative nature of the link) which is larger than the global GDP. This comparison is not really fair because we are comparing apples to oranges. If you discount the next 10 years of US GDP to this date it amounts to roughly 100 trillion (depending on the interest rates, growth rates and so forth). The point here is that even though the numbers are large, when put into proportion they seem manageable.

So the question of all questions is that do we believe that the US will at some point obtain a budget surplus with which to pay off this loan? If it doesn't it will continue to, slowly but surely, pile up debt until the market gets saturated in regards to US treasury bonds. This is when the music stops playing...

I believe that after this recession blows away and bond markets start to revive, we will see the depreciation of the Dollar to a new low. The strength of the Dollar is based on it being a world currency. This essentially means that it is strong as long as people keep the ball moving. There are serious threats to this such as the possibility of oil producing countries switching to other currencies to value their oil and by the Chinese effort to create an "Asian euro". If these things happen the Dollar will lose much of its global informal insurance policy.

Are we insisting on keeping the music going when we see that more and more chairs are being pulled out?

Book review of books within social media domain, January 04, 2009:

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:11:00 -0800

I maintain three blogs, and this blog has not got much attention as I have been focusing on getting the content right in all three blogs. They are

Global Software Business, which focuses on topics around software business including software business models and such.

Dr. Petri I. Salonen's Publications and Book Reviews is going to be more of books that I review and buy on regular basis. Most of my reviews and tips will be in video format.

Onnistu suuressa maailmassa blog is in Finnish and was created for my business book that I published in Finland with Talentum publisher. This will also include video snippets of book reviews.

The review below is a collection of a few interesting books in social media. They are as follows:

Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek

Marketing for Rainmakers - 52 Rules of Engagement to Attract and Retain Customers for Life by Phil Fragasso

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Advertising 2.0 - Social Meida Marketing in a Web 2.0 World by Tracy L. Tuten

Always on - Advertising, Marketing, and Media in an Era of Consumer Control by Christopher Vollmer with Geoffrey Precourt

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Grown up digital - how net generation is changing your world by Don Tapscott

I am using a beautiful service (software-as-a-service) called libratything.com that enables me to tag my books and collect them and review just having an internet browser. My profile can be reviewed by anybody.

Status of new book project for the Finnish marketplace

Petri I. Salonen — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:42:00 -0700

This is my second book to the Finnish marketplace. My first book, Onnistu suuressa maailmassa was published in December 2007 and I hope that this second book will be written by Christmas 2008 and maybe published first quarter of 2009.

Bookreview of online communities and such

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:20:00 -0700

I have been deep down in investigating online communities and how to make money with them. I think the book from David Silver Smart Start-ups is well written and includes examples of different types of online communities and how people could make some money. Another one is from Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore Communities Dominate Brands. I also bought two books about influence marketing: Influencer Marketing from Duncan Brown and Nick Hayes and The Psychology Influence of Persuasion from Robert B. Cialdini. Finally, Clay Shirky has written a book Here Comes Everybody that explains the power of organizing without organizations. I have included a few comments in Youtube.com video as well.

Experiences of Harvard Business School by a student: Ahead of the Curve by Philip Delves Broughton

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:16:00 -0700

I have always been fascinated about university campuses, whether it is my own school (Helsinki School of Economics) or University of Paris, Sorbonne. These campuses has a magic into it and I find my own internal piece among the mostly beautiful buildings that they have. A British journalist Philip Delves Broughton has documented his experiences in Harvard Business School during his 2 year tenure. His experiences not only of the school, but also the teaching and other students has been narrated in the very interesting book "Ahead of the Curve" that is now available either as a Kindle book or as a hard copy. I own both versions. As I have been doing some book reviews in Finnish in my Finnish blog, I decided to share some of these video clips also in English. Stay tuned for more.

Future evolution of the personalized product

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:29:51 -0700

Products can and are personalized to great extent in this day and age. You can build your own laptop at Dell, design your own car at BMW, design a custom fit shoe at Left Foot Company, have your own text on a M&M, drugs created specifically with your DNA in mind, the list goes on. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is a trend which everyone is following; there is clear money to be earned by matching consumer preferences. The real question is what will be the next step? How can a shoe be more personalized when you already picked the materials, the model, the sole, the color, the laces and it has been made based on a mould of your foot? Or is this the final stop; have we reached the point where a product is already everything a consumer may desire?

The answer is no, not by a long shot in my view. At the current stage a customer doesn't truly design anything he/she just picks his/her product out of a boggling amount of choices, BMW produces around 160 different typed of series-5. Another current trend in product development that has been around at least since Michael Jordan is the consumer designed product. Athletes designing equipment (UnderArmor), target groups designing cars (Renault using mothers). this is no longer a engineer thinking of what a customer segment needs, it is the segment telling the engineer what they want.

When will we as individual consumers design our products from scratch? This might seem like a stretch but who thought in 1908 when the Model T was introduced that in a hundred years you could get your car in candy apple orange with silver sprinkles embedded into the paint work... This is something we take for granted today. The technology may not be here yet but it will be here in the near future. Nokia has already created a phone (Nokia Morph) able to change shape thanks to nano technology. How about if you could actually design your own toaster, by starting from a blank piece of paper or by using software to "breed" existing toaster models to create something totally new. The only limit being the consumers’ imagination and the fact that it must in essence be a toaster. All this for the price of a basic toaster or maybe even less because companies would no longer need to design products, just produce them. Why not, is this really more farfetched than the popular belief that bio fuel will save the planet even though it actually produces more emissions than gasoline when taking to account production and so forth...

Professor Randy Pausch has died in pancreatic cancer

Petri I. Salonen — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:09:00 -0700

When I woke up this morning, I read from Wall Street Journal that Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University has passed away 04.00 AM am local time in his own house. Professor Randy Pausch made a decision to document as much as he could of his final months so he could leave a legacy to his very young children. His famous speech "The Last Lecture" has been one of the most viewed Youtube videos, his book has been listed as bestseller for weeks and his home pages have been visited by millions and millions of viewers.

What Randy Pausch brought to us was the lesson of living each and every day to our fullest. Let's remember this when we go with our business on a daily basis. We tend to stress about the small things when there are people around the world that suffer and have huge issues on their hands. I try, even if it is hard, to remember this when stress or other issues creep up in my life. I was reminded about this personally in 2003 and therefore I know what I am talking about. The world famous cyclist Lance Armstrong that almost died in testicular cancer is educating people around the world about how to battle cancer and how to live your life.

I have created a new blog for global software business

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:16:00 -0700

Blogging is like writing a book. You are trying to figure out what your audience will be and this blog http://www.telluspublications.com/ was intially built to review books and other interesting things in my own core competence areas. However, my background is heavy in software development and my passion is to work with ISV's around the world. Of this reason, I decided to create a new blog purely to track what is going on in the world of software. This blog http://www.globalsoftwarebusiness.com/ tackles issues and questions of different things such as earnings models in software, and other international issues that entreprenours have to face on a daily basis. This blog will stay more like a review of books and other literature related stuff. My Finnish blog http://www.onnistusuuressamaailmassa.com/ is built from ground up in Finnish and I will keep maintaining that as well. These are the three blogs that I will continue maintaining and the forth one is a blog that I maintain with experiences of my travel.

Microsoft's Hosted Services: A Turning Point for Partners?

Petri I. Salonen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:02:00 -0700

Microsoft at WPC today unveiled its hosted service offerings and pricing -- something that has been deferred, to partner unease, for about two years.Redmondmag.com reports about the accouncements from Microsoft Worldwide Conference in Houston this week. In his keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was clear: the market is changing and Microsoft partners needs to change with the market. It is very clear to me that classic Microsoft partners have to do drastic changes in their business models as otherwise they will not be able to compete in the new SaaS world.

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The Future State of the CRM Market

Petri I. Salonen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:52:00 -0700

Tough economic times for North American enterprises will create uncertain, challenging environments for corporate CRM systems, according to an AMR Research report. Here's what you need to know about the CRM market and the vendors who will be left standing in 2012. The market is very interesting at the moment with lots of companies moving into software-as-service environments. This market will continue to grow and niche players will be able to compete in selected verticals. It is about the value that the vendor can provide to the end user organization.

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Microsoft Acquires MobiComp: got to love the competition

Petri I. Salonen — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:16:00 -0700

The new deal expands Microsoft's mobile platform to include backup services focused on social networks.Microsoft continued to expand its mobile portfolio June 26 with its acquisition of MobiComp, an open-source cloud computing company that specializes in storage, backup and restoration of mobile data. Microsoft declined to reveal the financial terms of the deal. What makes this acquistion interesting is the fact that the company is based on Braga, Portugal and according to eWeek.com, the company is bought due to the strong skills in research. Whatever the cause, the competition in mobility is heating up with Nokia taking over Symbian and others also trying to figure out how to be part of the competition. I love this type of market evolvement.

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Randy Pausch and his battle of pancreatic cancer

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:12:00 -0700

I read about Randy Pausch, Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who has been struck with terminal pancreatic cancer. Professor Pausch is a very well known and liked lecturer that you can see from the included video clips from Youtube.com
I immediately googled the lecture from youtube.com and ordered his book as physical copy and I also ordered a Kindle version so I could start reading it immediately. Professor Pausch decided to make his story remembered, not because he wanted us to feel sorry for him, but to make us remember that each and every day is a gift to us and we should make sure we take advantage of that.

I was reminded of our short stay on this planet by a friend and colleague of mine recently. A former colleague from the past has recently passed away in another form of cancer and it is hard to accept that a person that I have spent numerous hours with different clients and internal meetings is no longer with us. Each and every day that we live, we need to make sure that we celebrate our living and live our lives to the fullest.

Another person that survived cancer and decided to spend time to educate the public about cancer is Lance Armstrong who had a sever form of testicular cancer with poor prognosis of survival. He survived and has spend a tremendous amount of time educating people around this topic. He has a foundation to help to raise the awareness of cancer and this work is tremendously valuable. Each and everybody of us have friends and family around us that will sooner or later face cancer and the more we are aware of it, the sooner we can help these people to cope with the battle of cancer. The Lance Armstrong Foundation LiveStrong blog has discussions and entries about people from all walks of life and I have to say that this type of work is tremendously valuable and I appreciate the people doing this type of work.

I flew to witness Lance Armstrong to get his 7th Tour de France win in France (we spent a few days in Paris). Lance has been interviewed many times in different medias, one of the latest ones was in CNBC by CNBC's maria Bartiromo (I like her reporting style). Wall Street Journal made a story of Professor Pausch final lecture as can be seen below:

The full lecture can be see below:

These will show to the listeners that fight for cancer has to continue and we all need to be reminded of. Let's live our each day to its fullest!

Ten Blogs You Should Be Reading DAILY

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:10:00 -0700

The countless amount of blogs in the cyberspace makes our lives difficult but PCMag.com has listed the top then that everybody should track on a regular basis. We live in a world with too many blogs and news channels and we try to find ways to list them in a way that we can track the most important newsfeeds of choice. I used del.icio.us as of source to make sure I remember sites, but I am sure there are many others that people use. Regardless, we have our own choices and the list of 10 blogging sites from PCMag.com is just one view of one editor.

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Market leaders:Your position might not be there forever

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:37:00 -0700

I would not like to be in WMWare's shoes now. Microsoft has now released its virtualization software Hyper-V that Microsoft released before its planned schedule. Based on an article from Redmond Developer News, the beta had more than 1.5 million downloads. What makes this a killer is that it is priced retail for $28 and this is something that WMWare is going to struggle with as their comparable solution is between $7000 to$14.000 based on an article from Tietoviikko.com. WMware has been the gorilla in this market and now Microsoft is going to take a stab at this market by going with pricing that is a fraction of what WMWare is asking. This is yet another case where assumed marketleaders can face competition beyond their dreams. Mary-Jo Foley (author of Microsoft 2.0 book from Wiley).

Salesforce strengthens ties to Google: competition of the cloud is getting heated

Petri I. Salonen — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:00:00 -0700

June 25, 2008 — Building on their recent linkup, Salesforce.com and Google are aiming a new toolkit for Google Data APIs at developers. Salesforce released last month the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs,which helps to build software programs that could run on Salesforce’s platform-as-a-service offering. The competition is getting heated and the rules of sofware development with it. I truly believe that there is a huge shift in mental attitude towards how software is built and how clients/end user customers sees it. The new generation (10 year olds) are the ones that will not even question whether things are done in the "cloud" or old tranditional way. Vendors have to be looking at this new generation.

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Salesforce.com Aims to Grow Into a Utility Computing Power: is it going to be like electricity?

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:08:00 -0700

Salesforce.com will stake its future growth for the next decade on delivering a computing platform as a service. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff wants to change the landscape by moving from software as a service to "platform as a service" and this means that Salesforce.com wants to contentrate on delivering data center and application development services, including server capacity, storage, management services and the labor that goes with it to businesses of every size. What I have heard is that Salesforce.com is not very friendly to its partners and wants to do all of it themselves. This is to the contrary to Microsoft that is trying to fill in the pipeline for its business partners. Regardless, the competition is going to heat up and during my doctoral defence in 2004, I said that software will change to utility computing like electricity is today. Maybe this trend is finally here?

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Microsoft's 'Oslo' to implement modeling alternatives: Is this a good fit for domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages?

Petri I. Salonen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:07:00 -0700

June 4, 2008 — ORLANDO — If you can’t beat them, absorb them. That seems to be Microsoft’s theory as it prepares its big entrance into the modeling arena by talking up extensibility here at the Tech·Ed Developers conference.According to Steven Martin (director of product management in Microsoft's connected systems division), "Oslo" modeling language will be a low-level language, one to designed to work withi domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages as well as BPEL and Unified Modeling Language (UML). Furthermore, Oslo will be have an XML base and Microsoft will provide a roadmap for its support of other modeling languges later this year. According to Martin, "Oslo technology will feature a repository that is meant to capture all necessary information related to an application, such as its business logic, deployment, and identity and governance policies". Furthermore, another Oslo component, known as Architecture Explorer, is a graphical environment for model design. Based on the article, Microsoft will reveal more at this fall's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles.I have been working with different companies, their prouduct development strategies for quite a while and it surprises me how far we still are of having an unified environment for developers. Based on the article, Oslo is according to Microsoft standards based on horizontal approarch, not vertical like domain-specific approach assumes. DSM is geared to take care of domain-specific things, which helps developers to grasp the issues and architecture of what they are trying to solve. It is going to be interesting to see where Oslo takes the development community.

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Tech job moving abroad? Offshore yourself with it!

Petri I. Salonen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:48:00 -0700

If your job is moving overseas, maybe you should move with it. Many American IT workers have looked with increasing worry as programming and datacenter jobs shifted to India, China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, with companies seeking cheap labor and Internet connectivity making offshoring a plausible business option. I like the approach that this article proposes. First of all, there is a lot of skills in the US that countries would benefit from and there is no return from the fact that work is global today. In my book that came out before Christmas 2007 in Finland, I urge Finns to view the world from a new global perspective using a new framework of mind. The ones that understand this, will be the winners of next decade.

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Interesting debate from Salesforce.com Marc Benioff and SAP Hasso Plattner

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:57:00 -0700

I run into an interesting debate from YouTube where Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and SAP Hasso Plattner debate about enterprise software.

Strong statement from Nokia: Open source developers should play by our rules

Petri I. Salonen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:43:00 -0700

"We want to educate open source developers. There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks, and subsidized business models," Jaaski told attendees of the Handsets World conference in Berlin. In other words, the open source community needs to learn how to keep things closed.I have been blogging multiple times about the ins and outs of open source movement.

A few days ago, the Finnish IT weekly journal Tietoviikko puhlished a story where the director responsible for Nokias software Ari Jaaksi defends Nokia's approach to open source development. Tietoviikko got the article from InfoWorld's Neil McAllister who asks how come Nokia can dictate concludes in his blog how Nokia can dictate open source movement. This type of discussion is natural as nobody really understands the true foundation of open source and how companies can protect their IP both in the short and long run.

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Microsoft Buys Navic to Add TV Ads to Web Campaigns

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:16:00 -0700

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the third-largest seller of Internet ad space in the U.S., will add television spots to its advertising system by acquiring Navic Networks, stepping up competition with market leader Google Inc. This move takes Microsoft to a new area and Microsoft will get clients such as Wal-Mart Stores, Nissan Motor Co and Allstate as its clients in the television commercials domain. It is fascinating to see how the competition changes the landscape of our daily lives. It is good for everybody.

Haven't bought a Macbook Air yet? Try the HP ENVY!

Petri I. Salonen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:08:00 -0700

For all you Macbook Air holdouts, HP has just announced its ultra-thin HP Envy which is actually thinner and more powerful than the Macbook Air. At just .70 inches thick, the Envy still packs a 1.8/1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo along with an 80 GB hard drive or a 64 GB SSD. Here's the cool part, the power brick doubles as a wifi router.

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BI steps into the cloud: are we getting closer to reality? How about ETL, OLAP cube building and Data Warehouse

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:43:00 -0700

Business intelligence functionality has made its way into cloud computing as Panorama Software on Thursday unwrapped PowerApps. The SaaS model is becoming a strong contestant in the business intelligence space and Panorama is the first one to really push it. This will create huge competition between the main players. It is going to be interesting to see how BI can play in highly intensive data integration initiatives and data loads. I believe that reporting/dashboarding can be done in SaaS world, but how do one create effectiveness in extraction, transformation, load (ETL) processes and data warehouse/cube building.

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Redemption Time for the UMPC: is it worth now

Petri I. Salonen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:17:00 -0700

Due to early flops, the Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) started out with a bad rap. Recent models are going a long way to remedy that. I have been looking to buy an ultraportable laptop for almost a year, but the models from Samsung and Sony has not been what I expect them to be. Soon, the right type of device is here. Based on the article frmo PCMag.com and also my reviews from other models, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and Fujitsu LifeBook U810 seem to be taking first place. Also, last week, I saw the first time the upcoming Dell model that is pretty sweet.

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FIghting Irish & entrepreneurship

Fri, 23 May 2008 22:09:51 -0700

An eight month ordeal has come to an end as yeasterday I arrived in the United States. The reason: Notre Dame's one year MBA program. The experience is described in my other blog (http://heikkifightsirish.blogspot.com), the blog is in finnish but maybe it will switch to english at some point.

I took a survey here in Notre Dame to determine my assets for different roles in business. I was described to be an entrepreneurial spirit. This was based on a variety of questions from how much do i wish others to influence my work to how I function in a team. This has raised a question on what an entrepreneurial spirit really is, for in my view everyone should have one in this day and age.

"An entrepreneur is a person of very high aptitude who pioneers change, posessing characteristics found in only a very small fraction of the population. On the extreme of definitions, anyone who wants to work for himself or herself is considered to be an entrepreneur."

I would describe it as: A person who wishes to define his or her course of actions and be accountable for them.

Nokia "Mobile Network" & product S-curve

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:14:36 -0800

Today I attended a strategy lecture, held by a senior strategy manager at Nokia, at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT). Excellent lecture, Thank you Sebastian Nyström! I found three main points in the lecture: 1. That it is not about value creation, it is about value capture, 2. Innovation, 3. How to jump from one S-curve to another eliminating the discontinuity between them. Blow I will touch on these three subject.

1. Value capture

This is currently a huge topic in Finland, and it has been written about by many authors, Petri I. Salonen has multiple examples related to this in his new book "Onnistu Suuressa Maailmassa" and Risto Luostarinen has in addition to writing about it held lectures on the subject at HUT. Finns create extraordinary value, we are just learning to capture it! I believe that value capture should drive value creation, why innovate if you don't have a customer in mind whom to sell it to. So it boils down to knowing your customer, Nokia had a thousand million (yes a billion, I asked there was no typo) data collection points, only companies such as Wal-Mart and Google can say the same. With this knowledge you can direct your value creation towards the customers’ needs enabling value capture. I heard about a group of students that created a Fuzzy-control system for a cellulose plant, beautiful technology, state of the art, but they failed to understand that by creating a system that does everything the plants previous system does is worthless to the prospect. They forgot their customers needs!

2. Innovation

I started thinking of innovations for Nokia after the lecture, why build networks and devices? (If someone at Nokia is reading this, this one is a freebee, the next one will cost you) Why not integrate the network into phones? Calls, data, messages and IP-packages would route though a network of devices between users, only a sparse network of support stations, "hubs", would be needed for long range data-transfer. This would be beautiful in countries with a limited infrastructure. You would create a "mobile network" that only supported the Nokia brand, of course interaction would be supported to enhance usability. All this being a new technology you could patent it, in effect capture a industry. Why Nokia is the only company in my mind that is capable of this: Nokia-Siemens networks and the vast R&D resources available to Nokia. It would only cost 50-150M€ to conjure up the technology.

Today I attended a strategy lecture, held by a senior strategy manager at Nokia, at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT). Excellent lecture, Thank you Sebastian Nyström! I found three main points in the lecture: 1. That it is not about value creation, it is about value capture, 2. Innovation, 3. How to jump from one S-curve to another eliminationg the discontinuity between them. Blow I will touch on these three subject.

3. Switching from S-curve to another

This subject really struck something in me, if every product's/ operation's profits fit to a bell-shaped curve, from where you want to get out before the downfall. Let’s forget large and small companies, large companies have multiple bells and S's, small companies are struggling to get up the curve. But successful medium (we will only consider potentially successful companies, for as the Finnish saying goes: "why bother with the little ones, for they don't bother with us") sized companies, they are in the vertical part of the curve, how do they come up with the next S and how do they do it in a manner that there is no discontinuity? Companies that don't asses this issue will become nothing but a blip in the market.

The fact is that fast growing medium size companies have the resources of small companies in respect to innovating the next S. This is also a point where the company is going through a organizational restructuring to cope with the enormous growth. How to again create something novel when the environment is so unstable? For this I haven't come up with an answer, all I could think of is a think tank consisting of middle managers, rotated every 6 weeks, that get together once a week to "innovate". The truth is that this group will probably not come up with anything, but it brought up an interesting idea. The company is growing, finding itself so to speak, programs like this are perfect to create the innovative atmosphere of Google, IBM and Nokia idealized by so many, but obtained by but a few.

Even this blog was written on a portable device: Nokia 9300. Total mobility is already here...

An extension to my previous blog (modern web)

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:58:07 -0800

I listed three common attributes that are the essence of a widely succesful web site. After writing the blog the issue stayed in my mind, and I couldn't help but think that I offered nothing in my previous text. The blog was hollow and inconclusive, and with this blog I wish to give the previous some substance. I listed three common factors in sites that have already succeeded, but I don't believe that by achieving these three guarantee success. All three common denominator are applicable for specific cases, not truly engulfing the essence of what excelled these sites to success.

I started to think in the broader sence of what creates success in an internet site as well as in other products. With a little guidance from a lecture I realised that most successful product to this date have one common attribute; they all supply a means to inrease efficiency. Intel's processors are successful for they have a larger capacity than others, ABB's frequency converters are successful for they providing the means to get a higher output of an electric motor, SAP provides the means for efficiently manage recourses and activity and Nike's athletic gear are successful because they enable their users to practice in all environments and seosons with efficiency.

This idea can be applied to WEB 2.0 solutions. For instance ww.facebook.com provides the means to be in contact with friends and aqqaintances 24/7. In a way this has boosted our efficinecy in socializing. I am present and virtually accessible 24/7 on the web freeing time and reacources for other activities such as sleep. Personal blogging can be seen in the same sence, the content provider wishes to interact with an audience about a subject, recieving comments and stimulation for his/her ideas. Again improving our efficiency in evolving our toughts. I could not think of one single product that could not been viewed from this perspective, some might require ingeniouity and imagination but the bases are there.

Bearing in mind that the current hype on the web is personification and communities. I cannot say what would be the next concept to couquer the world, if I could I wouldn't be writing about it. One could start innovating the next big thing by addressing the issue: What is lagging behind in our lives? I could imagine that one area that will take a leap forward could be the generalization of online health monitoring and excercise communities. Polar watches have tested the idea of making watches aware of each other and thus giving for instance joggers the possibility to meet new people online and arrange for example jogging groups from people with the same physical aptitude. Another area without a solution is personal environmental impact management. People are more and more concerned by environmental issues and a slotion could compare their actions to a groups actions for instance in the form of the carbon footprint their actions leave behind. There could be a business idea in this for the community would be an exellent commercial forum for low emission products. I don't know what additional value this solution would bring, but then again if I would I wouldn't be writing about it.

We could say that these products creep in and we don't understand their impact beforehand, but one thing is for sure; WEB 2.0 will create a whole new group of Chad Hurleys.

Modern Web

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:32:07 -0800

I listed three common attributes that are the essence of a widely successful web site. After writing the blog the issue stayed in my mind, and I couldn't help but think that I offered nothing in my previous text. The blog was hollow and inconclusive, and with this blog I wish to give the previous some substance. I listed three common factors in sites that have already succeeded, but I don't believe that by achieving these three guarantee success. All three common denominator are applicable for specific cases, not truly engulfing the essence of what excelled these sites to success.

I started to think in the broader scene of what creates success in an internet site as well as in other products. With a little guidance from a lecture I realized that most successful product to this date have one common attribute; they all supply a means to increase efficiency. Intel's processors are successful for they have a larger capacity than others, ABB's frequency converters are successful for they providing the means to get a higher output of an electric motor, SAP provides the means for efficiently manage recourses and activity and Nike's athletic gear are successful because they enable their users to practice in all environments and seasons with efficiency.

This idea can be applied to WEB 2.0 solutions. For instance ww.facebook.com provides the means to be in contact with friends and acquaintances 24/7. In a way this has boosted our efficiency in socializing. I am present and virtually accessible 24/7 on the web freeing time and recourses for other activities such as sleep. Personal blogging can be seen in the same sense, the content provider wishes to interact with an audience about a subject, receiving comments and stimulation for his/her ideas. Again improving our efficiency in evolving our thoughts. I could not think of one single product that could not been viewed from this perspective, some might require ingenuity and imagination but the bases are there.

Bearing in mind that the current hype on the web is personification and communities. I cannot say what would be the next concept to conquer the world, if I could I wouldn't be writing about it. One could start innovating the next big thing by addressing the issue: What is lagging behind in our lives? I could imagine that one area that will take a leap forward could be the generalization of online health monitoring and exercise communities. Polar watches have tested the idea of making watches aware of each other and thus giving for instance joggers the possibility to meet new people online and arrange for example jogging groups from people with the same physical aptitude. Another area without a solution is personal environmental impact management. People are more and more concerned by environmental issues and a solution could compare their actions to a groups actions for instance in the form of the carbon footprint their actions leave behind. There could be a business idea in this for the community would be an excellent commercial forum for low emission products. I don't know what additional value this solution would bring, but then again if I would I wouldn't be writing about it.

We could say that these products creep in and we don't understand their impact beforehand, but one thing is for sure; WEB 2.0 will create a whole new group of Chad Hurley’s.

Time management

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:19:20 -0700

Recently my studies started for the second last autumn ever. There fore the old issue of time management has raised its head once again. How to cope with the work load? Currently I am completing my masters degree in system engineering, handling two jobs, dating, not to mention trying to have a social life and staying in shape. I truly believe that I will have more time on my hands after I graduate...
So what is the solution, how to handle it all and still remain sane? I believe there are four factors that must be optimized: Personality, experience, philosophy and technology.

1. Personality in the sense that some people are just not meant for it, clear and simple.
2. Experience: A person accumulates experience on how to handle stress and multi task. People who have been there before know how to handle it. I once asked a friend of mine who was at the limit of breakdown how and why does he do it? The answer was: "I just want to know how far can I go before I reach the limit. After that, I will know my limits and hopefully next time exceed it with the experience I have gained."

3. My philosophy for getting more time on the clock is to do what ever you are doing with full heart. If you are working you don't think about next Friday night. If you are at the gym, you don't stress about your next assignment. If you're on your couch chill'n, you don't get up to read your email. That simple, optimize the processes in your life.

4. Finally as a tech student i came to think about ways modern technology can help us manage our schedule and maybe get a few extra hours. The first things that came to mind are, digital tv-recorders, electronic timetables , emails in mobile phone, watch lectures on the internet and online shopping. The list goes on. After a while i came to the conclusion that all those are irrelevant. Nothing new, VCR's and paper calendars were here before me. The modern world is full of platforms for unique solutions to help our lives. Be it a RSS feed that eliminates the need to rifle through the news or professional domain to manage group work, the issue is what you make of it.

As an example me and my friends were presented a problem how to find time for group work, when everybody's timetable is different and how to give everybody access to the work at hand. So we put up a server where all the material of the group work was stored. The server had a timetable for all the work and each group member always marked the jobs at hand to the calendar. It had a chat board where the problems could be discussed. This way everybody had the needed data, everybody knew what to do next, knew what the others were doing but still keeping the group in close contact with each other.

What are you supposed to get out of this example? Today we are not anymore bound by the the limits of the market. Open source, modular programming and the wide array of electronic components offered are just waiting for us to make them click. Time management being and age old problem can be viewed in a totally new perspective bringing up new innovative solutions.

I'd like to end this one with a catchy phrase: "With technology advancing by a ever accelerating rate, the golden age of technology is not a thing of the past, it is now." -The Discovery Channel

Plan execution Vs. Winging it

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:09:14 -0700

I've recently come across the phrase "plan your execution, and execute your plan", which has led me to wonder how far can you go by executing a plan. In the other cup lies the teachings of my captain, from my mandatory military service: "An excellent plan is vital in executing an attack, but can be thrown away after the first shot, for then you are winging it!". Mind you that the former idea does require you to plan your execution, but prefers on the spot judgement to execution of a possibly outdated plan. The first view if from diving the second from the mechanized infantry. Both have their virtues and both can be applied to everyday life.

So which is it? Do real life situations change so rapidly, that a specific plan will possibly only lead you away from that gut feeling? Will a plan only affect your vigilance and give you a false sense of warmth when you should be analysing the situation?

Winging it is not for the type of person who will buckle under pressure, but that person should'nt be in dynamic environment. I myself tend to think a well planed is half done, with the exepition of changes in circumstance. Every plan is based on a prethough scenario, if all goes well that scenario will come to pass. If it doesn't, trash the plan, trust yourself and make on site decisions with your objective clear in mind and remember the worst decision in the one never made!

The premier!

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:25:56 -0700

First blogging, so lets start with me.

I'm a 22 year old student at the Helsinki University of Technology. My major is System Engineering, which in short is dynamic simulation an process optimization. My minor is International Business and Corporate Strategy. On the side, I work for Wärtsilä Biopower Service as a sales support engineer. I've had a few projects, a quality management system and a automated service cost calculation tool. I'm always up for a challenge and enjoy every bit of it.

I've lived half of my life abroad and plan to continue on that path. I like to think of myself of a determined, easygoing, "No point of stressing about something you can not affect" and "always go for the gold!". Maybe not mother Teresa but hey who wants a puppy anyway. My other interests are ice hocky, ultimate Frisbee, jogging, squash, weight lifting, reading, interior design etc. The usual. This was just a quick glance at who i am more is to follow.