Author Archives: admin

Visualization

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Hans Rosling displays some amazing visualization software tools in a talk he gave in February at the TED conference, on the topic of rich vs. poor countries. It’s really worth watching, for at least three reasons: first, the topic is important and we are operating with faulty assumptions about poor countries; second, it’s a virtuoso performance that is exhilarating in its own right; and third, it’s one of (if not *the*) best examples of visualizing data to prove a point that I’ve ever seen. Seriously. Hans is rockin’ it in a plaid shirt and Countryman mike. Some of the software, by the way, is available at Gapminder.

Thanks to Jon Bultmeyer for turning me onto CX Now, a simple but powerful data visualization tool from Business Objects. It’s free. You import your Excel (sorry, Open Office Calque*) model and then manipulate it with all sorts of handsome graphical elements, dials and graphs and slider bars. Then you can export it in a variety of formats, including Flash. So, for example, here’s fifteen minutes’ worth of goofing around with the tool.

Lazyweb, wouldn’t it be great if we could integrate this sort of thing (an open source alternative?) into an “analyst’s workbench” SLED, targeted at the sophisticated but under-served enterprise business analyst, who is still sorely lacking tools? Maybe it could be a virtual machine that runs inside of a Windows desktop, taking advantage of our new Relationship. That would then make it “virtualized visualization,” which might qualify it for tax exempt status as a religious movement. But, seriously, Rick Sherlund has argued that the path to desktop Linux adoption is via individual adoption, and that is going to come from people having needs that are better met with open source tools. One community of users is these empowered but under-served Excel jocks that manage the spreadsheets that run companies. Can we make them mid-level heroes? And one way to get at them might be via virtualization, so that they can keep their Windows desktop and have the swiss army knife to solve problems. (Maybe a Knoppix-like Live CD? USB key pre-loaded?)

* This is a really terrific pun.

Ten things I want from my mobile phone

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Ian Hay, who works for Orange in the UK, has an interesting post entitled “Ten Things I Want from You,” about customers’ mobile telephony needs.  Here’s mine:

  1. Make voice work better, much better; everything else is secondary.
  2. Improve coverage; I don’t want to know where my phone works but my wife’s doesn’t, or vice-versa.  I want them to work everywhere.
  3. Give me a great address book, one that is easy to use and easy to sync with other devices and data stores.
  4. As others have requested, make battery charging simpler and more consistent: can we please finally standardize chargers? 
  5. VoiceML?
  6. Sell unlocked phones.  Please.  I’ll even pay a bit more for the ‘privilege.’
  7. Design and sell great simple phones. I’m not old, I’m not stupid, I’m not poor.  But I don’t want a radio/camera/nose hair trimmer/flashlight in my telephone.  I’m not even sure why I need a color screen, honestly.  I want a phone that has great battery life, good sound, easy to use keys, a functional address book, and is sturdy enough to stand up to being chewed by my toddlers.  Something like Motorola’s new Motofone seems to fit the bill quite nicely.
  8. Give me browser-based control over my telephone’s configuration.  I’ll do the set up in the convenience of my own office with a big screen, not pecking away at tiny keys and absurdly complex one-off menu trees.
  9. Likewise, let me manipulate data (primarily address book information) online and then send it to my phone.  I still don’t know how to put photos on my current (camera-less) phone, for example.
  10. Fix Bluetooth; it’s too hard to set up, it’s too idiosyncratic in its implementation, and it doesn’t work as well as the wires it tried to replace.  But, really, I’d be happy with the first couple of requests; I don’t need Bluetooth, but I sure do need an address book that approaches the functionality of a late-1990s Nokia.  (Which, now that I think of it, had an infrared port for exchanging addresses.  So If I had eleven choices, my eleventh would be an IR port.)

On (some of) the press coverage of the MS alliance

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(1) Free Software Foundation Attorney Says Microsoft-Novell Deal Won’t Last

Eben Moglen (who, I just found out, clerked for Thurgood Marshall) says that the patent parts of the deal ‘will be “dead” before April.’ That’s because Moglen is chairing the GPL v3 revision process and will try to make sure that they cover the patent provisions in the alliance.

(2) Ballmer: “Linux infringes on Microsoft’s intellectual property”

To quote from the Computerworld article:

In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell Inc. earlier this month because Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wanted to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”

(3) Bill Hilf Interview

Very good video interview with Bill Hilf, who runs Microsoft’s interoperability initiatives (his title is “general manager for competitive strategy.”) This was filmed before the alliance deal, but it gives good insight into Microsoft’s public positioning vis a vis open source: namely, that they need to interoperate.

Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux Annoucement

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So Oracle is going to support Red Hat, not Ubuntu as the gossip had been.  It doesn’t seem like they’re going to offer a packaged solution, at least not yet, one that includes the operating system with the database, so you still have to get the distribution from Red Hat (without the support) and install it as usual.  Except now patches and support come from Oracle.  Matt Asay points to a good analysis by Dave Dargo, formerly of Oracle, now at Ingres.

Dargo writes, “My contention has been that this is more of an emotional reaction to the market capitalization of Red Hat than a sound business decision that delivers any added value to the industry or to the end customers.”  And later he adds, “If Oracle is tremendously successful in taking Red Hat’s business then, ultimately, Red Hat won’t be around. Oracle will then either need to acquire Red Hat or staff up to include the same resources that Red Hat has in building, distributing and supporting their product. Is this their plan, to get Red Hat’s valuation low enough to acquire them?”

Essentially Dargo is arguing that Oracle is solving the wrong problem and won’t do a good job of it either.  If you’re paying $200,000/yr. for your Oracle license, saving five hundred bucks on the support for the operating system isn’t going to matter to you.  And Oracle doesn’t do a good job of support now, and Red Hat does.