January 2008 – Page 3

Time for an IT Business Detox?

Citrix offered VNUnet some guidelines to creating a healthy business – a business detox which forms part of the new years resolutions for the business. I’ve added my own comments on there: Ensure that the approach to IT is understood and consistentThis is the hardest one to tackle to be honest. It requires having a … Continue reading “Time for an IT Business Detox?”

Citrix offered VNUnet some guidelines to creating a healthy business – a business detox which forms part of the new years resolutions for the business. I’ve added my own comments on there:

Ensure that the approach to IT is understood and consistent
This is the hardest one to tackle to be honest. It requires having a very “can do” attitude around your clients. They have to feel that their latest wacky idea is going to be given due consideration, e.g.

A developer asks for permission to install both routing software and a second IP stack on a raft of machines for their work. The standard answer from IT according to the book is “No”. Developer calls his manager, his manager calls your manager and you get browbeaten into doing it anyway. But the other option is to tell them why (because the network is the most important part of the infrastructure) and then spend a few minutes creating a separate LAN for these routing, dual-stack machines so the developers can continue with their work. With modern devices it only takes a few minutes so why not do it?
Stop carting around more devices than are needed

Buy a job lot of a convergence device (Blackberry, iPhone, other smartphone) and give all staff the same model. Don’t pick a shitty model to save bucks, you’ll just piss people off. Apart from the fact that they can swap devices if someone needs one and it’s dead but everyone will have a charger for the damn thing. And keep a couple of spares. This is accompanied by the concept that you should provide the right devices for people to carry. Don’t give a 24×7 support person a Blackberry when he really needs a laptop with VPN and IP softphone. Don’t expect a support person to maintain a Windows PC at home so you can have him install shitty VPN software onto it to allow him to VNC into some generic machine. Just give him a damn laptop with your standard build and all the tools he needs to do his job.
Reduce the threat of data leaks

Why are people keeping data on these devices anyway? If it’s on a device it needs to be encrypted (one of the biggest criticisms of the iPhone but this should be a function of the apps. Use Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets to manage data and then there’s no data on the machine anyway! Give them a fast and light webmail client that works well.
Reduce ‘work miles’ and business travel

Considering my home broadband is quicker than the offsite link at most companies in Belfast, I feel I should stay at home to work. It doesn’t really matter where I am physically as long as your the VPN concentrators aren’t overloaded and your datacentre pipes are nice and fat. I’ll gladly save you the cost of a desk, canteen, maintenance, toilets, air conditioning, heating and on the ground security if I can avoid an hours commute twice a day. Of course, if you gave me a laptop rather than a sodding Blackberry I’d actually be able to work anywhere.
Align IT goals with business goals
I have never been a fan of IT leading the way. The function of IT is to allow people to work, to take some of the burden of the day away. It’s actually nice to have the time to see to the enhancement requests rather than just firefighting.

Are you standardising the build on every PC to make your job easier or improve the experience for the customer? Does it help you to not permit people to have useful tools like Desktop Search? You think people get a kick out of the piss poor search facilities of Outlook? Why wouldn’t you let someone VNC to their own desktop easily? If you have IP hardware phones on the desks, why not give everyone the softphone software so if they have to stay home to mind a sick kid they can still likely attend meetings? Does it really pain you that the accountants want to play computer golf at lunchtime? Why is that? One real pissant of a Wintel admin removed the Run command from the Start menu, prevented anyone from changing the system time (but didn’t install a NTP daemon to keep the time correct), stopped everyone from changing their desktop picture or moving or altering their start bar, and didn’t bother configuring the sound cards. He was, without a doubt, the worst IT guy I had ever encountered.

-ation

I was thinking about Inspiration and Perspiration yesterday and added a couple more. Inspiration is a beautiful thing. You have an idea, you pluck it out of the air and you put it in your pocket. Through the sharing of your body heat, it starts to germinate, sending out a shoot which will reach out … Continue reading “-ation”

I was thinking about Inspiration and Perspiration yesterday and added a couple more.

Inspiration is a beautiful thing. You have an idea, you pluck it out of the air and you put it in your pocket. Through the sharing of your body heat, it starts to germinate, sending out a shoot which will reach out and actually change the way you think.

Perspiration is when you realise that it’s going to take a lot of effort to fully realise this idea. You will lose sleep, you will lose money, you will lose friends. You might keep your hair. But you enjoy the work because it’s in the creation of something special, something that is yours.

Exasperation is when you spend a lot of time fixing the edge cases in your idea. Whether it’s hardware, software, services or whatever – there will always be circumstances when you’re forced to spend 80% of your time working on 20% of the problem.

Desperation is when you realise your competitor is six weeks ahead of you. Or handled an all too frequent error condition a lot better. Or a customer is so pleased with your work, that his system uptime is so good, that he decides he doesn’t need you any more.

More iPhone stupidity

The hacks are outdoing themselves again. The US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) issued a warning that a bogus upgrade is wending its way around the Internet. â€œiPhone firmware 1.1.3 prepâ€ claims to be a necessary precursor for 1.1.3 firmware. The bottom line is that the Trojan can overwrite some utilities but that it isnâ€™t … Continue reading “More iPhone stupidity”

The hacks are outdoing themselves again.

The US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) issued a warning that a bogus upgrade is wending its way around the Internet. â€œiPhone firmware 1.1.3 prepâ€ claims to be a necessary precursor for 1.1.3 firmware. The bottom line is that the Trojan can overwrite some utilities but that it isnâ€™t too dangerous.

Anyone who works in IT and thinks this is a real threat needs to hand their badge in to security and their resignation letter to HR. The reason being: too stupid for employment.

Now, I suppose I’d better back that up.

This “trojan” requires you do unlock your iPhone, then download a hacked 1.1.3 version of the firmware from a dodgy web site. Then you install said dodgy firmware. And it does some bad voodoo.

This is akin to:

Download a disk image of an operating system from some dodgy site. Say a Linux live CD from “thedodgysite.com”.
Boot and install it on your PC, ignoring the warnings that reformatting your disk will remove your data
Complain bitterly that your data is gone
Complain some more that your Windows apps won’t run
Complain until you are blue in the face that the apps contained in the install all bring you to porn sites

Don’t these people understand? It’s not like you caught a trojan because you were stupid enough to run an unpatched version of Outlook from the last millennium. You installed a dodgy OS from a dodgy web site on your pristine iPhone. You did this. On your own. Using your fingers and hands and grey matter. You should get a refund on the grey matter.

There are only two actions that Apple could take with this sort of stupidity:

Keep the OS in ROM only. That’d break software updates, but stop the cool hackers out there responsible for jailbreaks from doing their magic
Perform a recall on all iPhones owned by the chronically stupid

I vote for the latter. Some people are simply too stupid to own technology. To this end I think that we should promote the use of Etch-A-Sketch and Speak’n’Spell devices for people who get bitten by this one.

Lazysphere occurs in the big leagues too

I didn’t think I’d ever use the words “lazysphere” and “gigaom” in the same sentence but thanks to a lazy journo at webworkderdaily who recycles the “Why corporate IT doesn’t want the iPhone” complaint, I am forced to. I’ve refuted these points before. Shame on you, Gigaom! A blatant cut and paste job with virtually … Continue reading “Lazysphere occurs in the big leagues too”

I’ve refuted these points before. Shame on you, Gigaom!

A blatant cut and paste job with virtually no content contributed by the writer. And one that has been refuted may times not just by me but by a lot of people. The single biggest reason to maintain the iPhone in a corporate environment in my opinion is that it gives you a great reason to get rid of RIM. I’ve spent time this week and again last month troubleshooting problems with RIM’s software “not deleting messages properly” which causes a mailbox to get corrupted.

The fix, as passed on from Vodafone: Stop using our supplied Blackberry devices.

Fantastic.

Now tell me why corporate IT should pay for RIM services on top of their Blackberry devices for a service that doesn’t work properly when you can go with a standard IMAP server and any phone with hald a degree of smarts (never mind an iPhone?)

Do you REALLY need PUSH email that much? Can you stand to be without email for 15 minutes? If it’s that urgent why hasn’t your IT department installed an SMS Gateway so you can get instantaneous messaging? If it’s that important why are you relying on methods of delivery that are not guaranteed? You didn’t know that neither email nor SMS offer a “class of service” guarantee? Yes, I’m quite sure. Plus there are interoperable standards for this. Why on earth do we need to use proprietary methods? It’s 2008 for chrissakes. Next you’ll be recommending installing an Exchange server.

The real question you should be asking:

Considering how much I have paid for Exchange Servers, Blackberry devices and RIM’s messaging services, howcome Apple could produce a phone and in 6 months grab 19% of the smartphone market with a device that RIM, Palm and Microsoft are now scrabbling to mimic? What have you been doing with all of my money???

You’re an impostor!!!!

Today we had a conversation about barriers to success, especially those which we place in front of ourselves; irrational fears, impostor syndrome. I personally suffer from the latter. An article at Inc.com explains more about Impostor Syndrome: The public assumes CEOs will be knowledgeable about every aspect of their businesses, and business is getting more … Continue reading “You’re an impostor!!!!”

The public assumes CEOs will be knowledgeable about every aspect of their businesses, and business is getting more complex. In this respect, those with scant education are especially vulnerable. “It’s like the skills I have are just commonsense skills, like being able to relate to people,” says Stockwell. “They don’t feel as valid as knowledge-based skills.” Myhill-Jones, for his part, is the founder of a software company who knows very little about technology. “To this day I can’t do the work we do,” he says. “I can make a comment on the user interface or something. But I don’t understand the underlying technology.”

I guess this goes along with the idea that a manager of a business should always hire people smarter than him. It depends on the work to a degree, but in a business where productivity on a creative or intellectual level is important, why wouldn’t you hire the smartest and brightest people you can afford.

Impostor Syndrome isn’t crippling in itself – it manifests in people who have already attained a degree of success – but it brings on other symptoms which can be debilitating in other areas.

In extreme cases, desperate efforts to shore up foundations perceived as weak can bring down the whole structure, says Kets de Vries. He recalls treating one entrepreneur who felt himself wholly inadequate to run a company, as though nothing he did was ever good enough. “So he kept pushing and pushing,” says Kets de Vries. “His company was falling apart, his wife had left him, his children didn’t like him anymore. He had physical symptoms.”

That would suck! I think my kids like me 🙂

Will Shipley on the MacBook Air

He likes it The criticism all basically goes like this: “It’s not like a MacBook Pro!” Quite. Related posts: Powerbook Woes! AppleCare? You Betcha. MWSF2008: The Good, the Bad and the Fugly Subnotes MacBook Air.

He likes it

The criticism all basically goes like this: “It’s not like a MacBook Pro!”

Quite.

MWSF2008: The Good, the Bad and the Fugly

Every year we wait for the new and sparkly stuff from Apple and we often get it. The move to Intel. The iPhone. the 17″ and 12″ Powerbooks wayback when. This year is no different. We have a new subnotebook, software updates and a glimpse into Apple’s plans for everyone. MacBook Air Some correspondants on … Continue reading “MWSF2008: The Good, the Bad and the Fugly”

MacBook Air

Some correspondants on Damien’s blog don’t think it’s up to much (and this is before touching the device). One commenter wrote “Certainly itâ€™s some kind of breakthrough, but then shit-flavoured ice cream would be, too.” I think that’s more than a bit harsh but then it explains why Apple always dips straight after MacWorld even if the product announcements have been insanely great. A lot of people were expecting Apple to go after the eee PC market and produce a subnote that was cheap. People, seriously. Subnotebooks are not cheap. If you don’t mind running a machine with a 7″ screen, that is light but bulky, only has a 2 hour battery and has barely enough storage for the OS plus any media files, then by all means run, don’t walk, and buy a eee PC. It’s ugly (and yes, I have one here).

The MacBook Air is aimed at people who would buy the Sony TZ series of subnotebooks. No-one would ever accuse Sony of being a cheap brand so I wonder why people expect Apple to suddenly, after years of being a premium brand, flood the market with Â£200 laptops. The Air would have to be beautiful, it would have to show something new and exciting and it would have to beat the best, not beat the cheapest. It’s thinner than the TZ and cheaper than the TZ.

My beefs with the MacBook air are simple. It’s only got one USB port. Though I seldom have more than one thing plugged into my MacBook Pro, there are times I have two. I might be charging my iPhone while playing Battlefield. And no, wireless mice are not good for the First Person Shooters. This happens infrequently enough that I’m not concerned about it. I’m also not worried about the lack of an ethernet port because, frankly, it’s been months since I plugged my laptop into ethernet and that was when I was at a client site. I usually carry a Airport Express with me if I’m unsure of wireless at the next location. I’m also not that concerned with the lack of RAM upgrades and the inability to remove the battery. 2 GB of RAM is a goodly amount for the target market for this device. I am curious that they didn’t bring out some sort of dock, I guess you plug in your USB hub, your power and your video out and just work on. It’s a sleek machine, underpowered for what I want (mostly in the graphics card department) but tempting. I don’t consider the multi-touch trackpad to be a big deal – if it’s not a touch laptop screen I don’t see the point. That said – touchscreens tend not to be thin if they are of any size.

In all, the MacBook Air is not for me. I’m not THAT much of a road warrior (heck, my laptop is 17″ and seldom leaves the house). It would serve a lot of people I know, probably more than they realise especially when they consider exactly how often do they plug anything into their laptop!

Lack of ethernet? Yes. I really wanted to drop over a grand on a laptop and then run wires all over my house, chaining me to certain parts of the room.

Scores 8/10 in my opinion. I’d have liked a 11″ machine.

iPhone update 1.1.3 (also for iPod touch)

We knew this was coming and it’s just like it said on the tin. Maps will now find your location pretty effectively using cell tower triangulation. You can move icons about. You can add bookmarks to the home screen for the bazillions of web apps out there. Texting to multiple persons doesn’t inspire me in the implementation but that’s a UI thing. Song lyrics? If I had any. iTunes rentals? If they were available in the UK I might care but I have Sky and more movies than I can watch anyway. And for iPod touch owners, $20 for the update isn’t a big deal. Sure, it’d be nice if you didn’t have to buy it but then 5 apps for $20 means apps are being targetted at around $4 each. Is Apple laying down expectations for pricing for iPhone apps bought through iTunes later this quarter?

A solid enough upgrade I guess – I don’t get lost very often though. 6/10

Apple TV update

This makes the Apple TV into an interactive device rather than just something to view media with. It becomes a realistic option for people who have broadband and don’t want to pay for cable or satellite TV or on-demand services. Of course, you can’t buy movies on iTunes in the UK and neither can we rent them via Apple TV. So if you’re in the UK, this is a useless update and another example of how if you’re in the UK, Apple doesn’t really care. Just keep buying their stuff. This is pretty much a 1/10

Time Capsule

The Airport Extreme with built-in hard drive is the only thing that really impressed her-indoors. Everyone should be backing up and with having to plug in disks, it can be a pain having to do so. This removes that pain. This I would place as the most impressive release in the show.

What does this tell me? Apple wants people to have more than one Mac. That seems obvious but Time Capsule is designed to back up multiple Macs. The MacBook Air is not designed as a standalone machine but rather as a portable machine which provides you with a companion to your powerful desktop at home. Leopard options like “Back to my Mac” show that being able to access one Mac from another Mac is an important part of their strategy. They’ve convinced a lot of people to buy one Mac so far and when you’ve managed that, getting them to buy another Mac is a no-brainer.

Time Capsule gets a rather spiffy 10/10 from me. Would have been 11 if it had AirTunes too.

Next?

We’re now counting down to the release of the iPhone SDK.

16/100 Empower Your Best Customers

In most cases, every customer is already empowered. They can choose whether or not to do business with you. In some cases, as in the case of a monopoly holding, a company may not have a choice about whether to do business with you. For example, any business operating in the late 90s would have had to think long and hard without giving some money to Microsoft as their monopoly hold on the market was such that there were few realistic options. These days almost the opposite is true – giving money to Microsoft, especially considering their hash of a release of Windows Vista – is considered a sign of poor judgement. Yes, there are some businesses who will always depend on them, but for a greenfield site it’s not so clear. The writing was on the wall in 2002 when the Alpha Geeks started to move to Mac OS X, now that transition is almost complete. If you’re not running Mac OS X or Linux then you deserve a funny look. (Why do I lump Linux in there? Consider the Nokia N-series of Internet Tablets, the Chumby, the ASUS eee PC).

If you have customers you can then empower them further by giving them choices. Allow them to tailor your offering to their needs. Give them visibility of the options.

This is something we are developing currently for Mac-Sys. Customers will be able to look at their current status for every piece of work. They will be able to add hours, remove features, request additional support, change the terms of the contract and also view trends in their support needs so they can better estimate their IT budget for the coming year. Mac-Sys had previously tried to do this using open source software but nothing managed to fulfill the specific needs of their business. As a result, they brought in software developers to provide what they could not.

This sort of empowerment begs the question about why so many company web sites are so opaque. Okay – the Infurious web site is nothing to write home about because it’s currently being developed but we maintain a degree of transparency through the blog and through our dealings with contract clients.

That said, don’t just provide choices and think you are empowering the customer. Too much choice can be a much worse thing than too little – consider the problems Microsoft has experienced with the various SKUs and price points of Vista. In comparison, the XP Home and XP Pro SKUs were just about right. Separating these into six different products just meant they confused and segregated their market.

Pay attention to the desires of the people paying you more money. They’re valuing your services higher than others and don’t be afraid to go the extra yard for them. One client of ours told me last year that they deal with several very large companies as suppliers. Their own company is huge as well and the paperwork to get something simple done is often prohibitive. Therefore their client manager asks them to do it and charge it to them, with a premium, in their normal bill. The big client is happy. The smaller supplier has a little extra work to do but gets rewarded for it and at the same time builds a better relationship with the bigger company.

About the worst thing you can say to a good client is: No, we don’t do that.

Tom Raftery on the Nokia N810

Tom Raftery rips Nokia a new one with his review of the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Last summer there was a huge amount of interest in the Nokia tablets after the 770 was available for a knockdown price. I was about to go on holiday for a week and couldn’t wait for the 770 to arrive and so I bought an N800 model (which I reviewed earlier). I’ve not yet upgraded to Internet Tablet OS 2008 but that’s because I’ve been using my iPhone pretty much 90% of the time (and the other 10% has been with this laptop).

First off the maps for the GPS are terrible. … and the GPS application doesnâ€™t plot routes either.

Next is the low memory of the device. I only had around 3 applications running at the time so I was surprised that this consumed all the RAM on the device.

The UI is really clunky. I mean really clunky! In this regard I have been spoilt by my iPod Touch experience.

It is slow opening/running applications and the browsing experience is painful compared to Safari on the iPod.

The display doesnâ€™t change orientation if you turn the device through 90 degrees.

It is a brick – big and heavy. Am I likely to carry this and my N95 with me when I am traveling? I donâ€™t think so!

I have most of the same functionality with the combination of the iPod Touch and the N95 as I do with the N810 and the N95 for a fraction the pocket real estate!

Ouch!

Admittedly I didn’t find the N800 to be as much hassle as Tom describes and there are some times I wish it had had the hardware keyboard of the N810 model (Nokia needs to talk to Apple about onscreen soft keyboards). But it did save my geekness while I was in Skegness.

I guess we’ll have to wait until February to see if the iTouch and iPhone really start to challenge the Nokia internet tablets in terms of available software. We’ve already heard that SAP is building their native application for iPhone and there’s the recent news that Sling Media were also building for the iPhone/iTouch too.

The Nokia wouldn’t be enough for me to ditch a laptop and frankly neither is the iPhone or iPod touch. The issues with the iPhone/touch are 90% in software. I need more and better apps. But it’s getting close that these small devices could change our lives.

The other issues with these devices is also their strength. There’s something nice, something essential about using a proper keyboard. Finding a keyboard for the N800 was difficult enough that I eventually gave up after buying one and finding it wouldn’t work. If someone made an external keyboard for the iPhone, even a wired model, I think they’d be onto a winner.

I can’t wait to see what Nokia and Apple are going to bring out next.

10 principles of good design

Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design: Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us to understand a product. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consequent to the last detail. Good design is concerned with the … Continue reading “10 principles of good design”

Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.

When you look pictures hosted on Gizmodo you can see that Jonathan Ive is heavily influenced by Rams’ designs.

We now have to see what other household products Apple will reinvent.

I’d have to add that

Good design affords usability
Good design reduces confusion
Good design sees no need to conceal
Good design reinforces clarity of purpose
Good design has no need to shout
Good design shapes focus naturally

I’m no design guru but I think there’s room for improvement.