Tech News

Given that Fairfax reporters are on strike, I figure here's my chance to fill the gap by recycling old news and presenting it as something that has just happened. Shame the KM front is a bit dull - other than the exciting news that the actKM08 conference just put out it's program and call for award submissions.



So here's some interesting technology tidbits I've picked up:



Windows 7 is moving ever closer to its eventual release, and you can track its progress on the new Windows 7 blog.


Windows 7 is the follow-up to everyone's favourite slow-moving target Vista, and is hoped to be the equivalent of 2000/XP, against Vista being the equivalent of the almost universally derided Windows ME. I have to say, I am actually quite fond of Windows ME - and not just because the ME OS-tan is so cute. I still have - and use - ME, and if offered the choice between ME and Vista, I'd choose the former, although I think Vista does cop more flak than it deserves (it still deserves quite a lot though). Still, there are some interesting KM asides in it that I will get to soon.



Apple is almost to be launching a new-look iPod nano (plus a revised Touch) and dropping the price of some of its non-iPhone range


Every so often I toy with the idea of picking up an iPod or an iPhone. Aside from the "cool and new" factor (which is significant), I keep going back to not needing one. I get around not having said funky device with other funky devices - a Nokia n95 and a Sony PSP. Convergence means a lot of the functions of these devices overlap, but the iPhone can't give me anything that I can't get from either, except maybe iTunes - and I'm not losing any sleep over not further supporting that DRM juggernaut. Still, the number of times my phone has died because I've used the mp3 player at the gym means I might still consider it. I'll see if the new range rocks as much as Apple claim over the next 24 hours, and Speaking of the old PSP...

New PSP is due in October

The new PSP is due in October, for what its worth - that's a hell of an under-rated piece of hardware, IMHO. I'm watching movies on it all the time (well, all the time I'm not playing games on it). I've got a MicroSD to MS Pro adapter plugged into it, which gives me an additional 4Gb of memory for about A$20 whenever I need it. 4GB is very handy - that's about 5 albums, an entire series of Doctor Who, and 2 or 3 movies on hand whenever I need them. Whenever I feel deprived about not having an Apple Something, a quick dip into Syphon Filter, Final Fantasy or God of War usually brings me around. Shame about the battery life.

Google now acknowledge humans have feet

One of the biggest bugbears I've had with using Google Maps is the - not entirely illogical - assumption that you go everywhere by car. Its a real disadvantage when you look at getting directions off the thing when you want to go by foot, and has been the one clear advantage that whereis.com.au has (aside from the fact that I think whereis is marginally more accurate). For this reason alone, I've been reluctant to use Google Maps as a primary resource for map directions.

Well, Google look to finally have gotten around to this, with the addition of getting walking directions. This is especially handy in cities where you get a lot of one way streets that make no difference if you're on foot. This - combined with the ability to customise and personalise multiple maps and locations, probably gives GM the edge now. It’s just creepy that they know where I live!

Knowledge - Now measurable thanks to Google

Sorry, just have to say something about this

Apparently everyone that has been having trouble with measuring the impact of knowledge sharing practices in the workplace has been looking in the wrong place. Google have announced that they have come up with a measure: the “Knol".

A knol, according to Google, is “a unit of knowledge”. Coincidentally, “knol” is also the name of new blog-like service offered by Google starting today, having just come out of a private beta. A knol differs from a blog (theoretically) in that it seeks to add authority to a blog, by pinning the blog to a single topic, and having knols “rated” by readers

It all sounds a lot like wiki-how, among other things, and I’ll be interested to see how it takes off. I’d try it myself, if I thought I was the authoritative source for anything. Maybe I should invent a topic to be an authority on – it worked for Edward de Bono. No? Oh what the hell - I'll create one on Knowledge Management.

Anyway, now you know how to measure your knowledge programs. When it comes up to performance review time, you can proudly state the “knol” output of your program. If you’re challenged by your manager, just tell them “that’s how Google measure it”. Who can argue with that

Blogging by email isn't as easy as it sounds

Here I am, happily assuming a bunch of recent posts had gone up onto my blog, and when I went in to check today - nada. Looks like I haven't done anything in nearly 2 months. This isn't true - I've only done almost nothing in the past 2 months.

Anyway, I'm going through and putting the stuff up, and back-dating everything to when I wrote the post, because I have no problem with editing my personal history. I've become quite adept at navigating the tricky, somewhat contrdictory path of marrying the differences between retrospective coherence and retrospective cohesion when it comes to my own history. It only has to make sense to me. The Gods help anyone who has to take me through a complex narrative exercise - I have enough trouble being consistent with what I though happened 5 minutes ago.

Look ma, I can shill!

"We interrupt this blog with a brief message from our friends at...

Just a short entry today, in the form of a kinda testimonial. Astute viewers of this blog (who aren't using a feed reader) may notice I've put on an ad for da-da-DA: Dell. Its a link to a "game" that seeks to advertise their XPS range of premium computers (they cost more - a LOT more). The reason its there is 2-fold. One, it increases my chances of wining a new computer; and two, I actually like the XPS computers - I created this blog using one, and every post I've made has been from it.

Like any laptop, it has its setbacks. Little things that fail to be mentioned by helpful sales staff. For example, I've learned to be a bit more careful about graphics cards. When I bought this computer, it had a top of the line, high-powered graphics card. What they don't mention is that this is a custom job, and that you don't get regular updates like everyone else (I haven't received an official update in the entire time I've had this computer, which is coming up on 2 years). This isn't particularly useful for what's billed as a "gaming powerhouse".

Still for the dedicated and resourceful, there are ways around this, and I have otherwise been very happy with both the computer, and the service. XPS get their own support line, to kick you up a step from the plebs. When I've had problems, I've had good help, and free replacement parts - thus far I've had the Bluetooth module replaced, and a couple of months ago, I got a new motherboard during a service.

All in all, I've been fairly happy with my Dell, which would seem to a pretty rare occurrence, especially given some of their recent seemingly crack-induced schemes. Enough so that I'm looking at buying (and/or winning) another XPS. This time I'm going for something smaller, and in a nice sporty PRODUCT(RED).

Anyway, should you be interested, feel free to click on the link and play the "game", which is so-so.

Incidentally, while I'm on the shilling train, check out the Converse sneakers PRODUCT(RED) site, where you can design your own PRODUCT(RED) shoes! I can't guarantee that they are Fair Trade (which is really pretty ironic), but for some reason, I think the whole thing is inordinately cool.

...We now resume our previously scheduled blogging."

So many choices, so little choice...

Having failed to secure my $30 million this week, I am left once again having to choose between competing pieces of tech, rather than buy everything - and Myanmar will have to make do with a smaller donation than I would like (the UNHCR is my charity of choice, say what you will about the level of corruption inherent in the UN - many do).

So, my choices at the moment revolve around a laptop - something small and light, that I can use to fret away the 2-3 hours I spend on the bus every 5 out of 7 days. (On a side-note, watch out if you've been using the FBT exemption on laptops to bring down the price.) This led me to look at 2 of the headlining options at the moment: the MacBook Air and the EeePC. Both make a lot of compromises, but achieve great results, depending on what you want to use them for.

One thing about both of these options is that neither has a CD/DVD/BD drive, which kind of rules them out, since one thing I want to have the option of doing is watching movies. I could, of course, rip a DVD, but that would be illegal (there are legal download options, but Australian Internet infrastructure being what it is, I don't really regard that as a workable option). And it being illegal annoys me. A lot. Because when I buy a movie, I want to be able to enjoy it in a way that's the most convenient to me, because I bought it, not rented, leased or subscribed to it.

In Australia, not having access to fair use provisions provided to consumers in other countries in the market for these products, the utility of the Air and the EeePC is far less. Its a great example of the way in which our copyright laws are irrelevant to they way people actually live (my favourite is the provision that says you can record something off TV, but can only watch it once, then have to erase it - must be fun enforcing that one). Roll on, Creative Commons and YouTube.

SharePoint cures cancer, ends world hunger - still fails to help solve business problems

Well, its been a while. The focus of my work lately has been on content management/ web design stuff, and so my KM learnings have been lean for the past few months. Still, the show goes on.

Anyway, I attended the NSW KM Roundtable yesterday, which was quite interesting. There was a presentation on SharePoint implementation, which wasn't bad, but was predicated on being given the choice of a range of solutions, and picking SP as the one you want. Nothing wrong with that, and more power to people that have the ability and the freedom to do that. What I probably wanted to hear, though, was success stories from people on to whom SP is foisted because their IT area purchased, and then told other areas that they had to use a SP solution for whatever their business need is.

My concern with SP has always been that it is very powerful tool, which can do just about anything that would be required by end users in your standard IT infrastructure, which is great. The problem with that is, for almost all functions, SP ranges from crap to average. EDMS - crap. Blogging - average. Content publishing - average to OK. Content management - average to crap. Wikis - crap. So of course, Sp has the power to convince people that these initiatives are too hard or deliver too little value, not realising that this is the fault of the system, not the idea. This is all aside from the fact that it locks you into a Microsoft solution for everything else, despite what it says on the box (and too be fair to MS, I don't think that's wrong - its not up to the vendor to throw away a competitive advantage to make life easier for you - you have to make them do it).

The driver here, I guess, is one of my favourite and enjoyable irritations - the command and control IT function. This is the practice of an IT area getting enough power to force a solution down everyone else's throat, then use that to leverage even more power by tyrannically controlling what can and can't be used. The IT departments that operate this way better wake up and smell the 21st century (the same way that 'Libraries' have to wake up and smell the 20th Century, and realise that just slapping up a few databases on a website to supplement loaning out books is the fast train to being closed - I'm looking at you Australian corporate libraries!).

If I have a Blackberry, Skype, mobile broadband, and remote access to my work files (and none of these things is particularly expensive - I could do the whole lot for less than $60 a month as well as use them for personal stuff), then I can basically bypass whatever IT solution they roll-out and use whatever the hell I want to do my work, that makes me the most productive.

Ultimately, and going back to the presentation at KMRt, I say if you go out and select SP because its the best match for supporting your business function, well done. I think you've already done better than most by deciding to look for a piece of tech based on a business function. If, however, you go out and buy SP because it makes it easiest to support your IT infrastructure, and expect the business functions to just adapt to it, well then, I hope you get a thrill out of being despised. And don't try to flog it as a solution to a problem just because you've been told it can (say for example, that SharePoint can be you "KM Solution"). I can use my butter-knife as a screwdriver, but that's only because I don't have access to a screwdriver, and I don't need to do a good job, and don't mind having to re-do the work in a few months time. Is that what you really want to do for your KM program (or corporate governance, or records management). SharePoint is good at what its designed to do, but it wasn't designed to do all that much.

A little rambling (what can I say - I'm out of practice), but there you go. I'll blog a little later on the second presentation, and the implications it had for understanding who really shot JFK.

My New Phone

After much deliberation, I finally decided on which phone I was going to upgrade to last weekend, and went down to my local 3 Store to get it. This had become an increasing important issue, as my old phone (the now repugnant Motorola V3x), which had been becoming increasingly eccentric over the last 8 months or so, had moved into the final stages of doderage, to the point of being near unusable - I couldn't add any new contacts, or even login to Facebook mobile!

I decided for reasons of practicality and price to go with with the Nokia 6110, over my heart's desire - the N95 (I'd also looked at the Sony W880i, but ruled it out for being too fun and not practical enough). Both have GPS - which I have no real need for, due to my continued refusal to bother getting my drivers licence, HSDPA, and a slew of connectivity options. I managed to convince myself that I could live without the Wi-Fi capabilities of the N95, however reluctantly.

How pleased was I then to discover that there is a shortage of 6110s at the moment, and it would be a few weeks until they arrived? Given the urgency of my need, I was "forced" to buy the N95. I must say, after 3 years away from the Nokia, I am very please to return. Web browsing, Skype, double-slide for mp3 and widescreen viewing - all in all a good package. Enough so, that I almost immediately updated my data package from 10Mb - which even with my crappy Motorola I had trouble keeping within - to 100Mb, and soon probably to 1Gb.

So more to follow about my unholy relationship with my new mobile device.

Stephen Fry - technoshaman?

I just became aware of Stephen Fry's new blog. His first post is an essay (for real) on the development of smartphone technologies. Given the lack of true wit in the world nowadays (an in particular, in the digital realms, and even more particularly, the techno areas), this is a particularly refreshing read. Enough so that I read most of it aloud to myself, mimicking Stephen.

It really is a very good read, highly recommended for the technophiles. Of course, I may be slightly biased, in that I feel that:

a) Stephen Fry is one of the sole remaining exponents of actual humour, in the sense of it being funny to the brain, rather than the arse,
b) He gives a small nod of approval to my newly acquired phone (which isn't a smartphone, but is rather clever and fun, but more on this later).

Vista-fied!

I've spent the odd spare moment over the last week trying to get my work PC (which runs Windows 2000) to look more Windows "Vista-y". This was because with all the screenshots and image capturing I've needed to do, I want the captures to look modern enough that someone won't throw away the important stuff in 6-12 months because it looks old (note tenuous connection to KM). I figured that if the casual glance and low-res screenshot looked close enough, I'd've achieved my goal.

Feeling I'd reached a brick wall towards the end, I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers asking anyone for advice on how to make Windows 2000 look more Vista-y. The response was ... negative, its fair to say. I did get some suggestions on where to get Vista wallpapers and icons, which is about all I was hoping for, but of course the comment from most was that their completely different and it can't be done. I think perhaps I didn't say strongly enough that I knoew I couldn't make my machine look exactly like I was running Vista, but just wanted to look like I might be, if no one looked too hard.

So, accepting that the degree to which my desktop could be Vista-fied, I set to work altering the colour scheme, changing the icons, and doing all the other things I could get away with without an Administrator log-on - which my IT area is reluctant to give me, as always. I started with the icons, and decided against the default Vista set, instead opting for some icons that sported a kind of glassy, 3d look, with an icon set called NotePage, which fit the bill perfectly.

Next, the desktop colours. Colours are tricky, since Vista has the funky glass effects to match the title bars and everything to the background image. The solution was to create a colours and gradients similar to the desktop wallpaper. I set the wallpaper to be "New Aurora" (which I downloaded from here), as it essentially worked of a 2-colour gradient already, and then created some custom colour to roughly match the colours at the left-right extremes of the screen. The 3d object colour (which affects the bottom taskbar and the different application borders) I made a similar greeny-grey to that from a screen capture of a Vista desktop using New Aurora.

The end result looks like this, and I've got to say, I'm pretty happy with it overall.

Forget Strategy, RFID is the Way to Go

I admit to being a bit confused. I was recently directed to the Bain Management Tools survey, which looks at around 25 management tools, and asks organisations to rate them on both the importance of the tool, and their satisfaction with it.

KM comes out middling, I guess. It ranks 8th in terms of importance, but 22nd in terms of satisfaction. This is obviously of concern, and needs to be addressed. Maybe once KM can be defined, it might stand a better chance of meeting expectations.

In this survey list, though, was a little bit of bizarreness. Amongst other leadership tools like corporate strategy, CRM, Six Sigma, TQM, and all the other usual suspects was this little guy:

RFID

Now, as in love as I am with gadgetry and technology, I cannot come up with any way that RFID can be justified as a management tool in the same class as these others. Am I missing something here? Or have I just being going to the wrong sort of management meetings?