It’s after 11pm in my San Francisco hotel room, where I arrived after a successful meeting in New York City, a transcontinental flight and late dinner. But I can’t go to sleep without sharing a wonderful video pointed out to me by Twitter acquaintance Mame Hampton (@momthebom).
Thanks to all the wonderful soldiers and veterans who have done so much and are continuing to serve so well to keep us free!
And thank you, Mame, for sharing this wonderful message with us.
Can you believe it? The original iPod was unveiled eight years ago today! Little did we realize what a dynamic industry upheaval was launched that day.
Our oldest grandson also turned eight years old a few days ago. He should always be able to remember when the iPod was launched. When he is an old guy like me, he’ll be able to authoritatively tell his grandkids, “I grew up with the iPod!”
By the way, the photo is a stark reminder that age has affected Steve Jobs much differently than the music distribution revolution he helped lead.
During the second and third weeks of November, I will have the distinct pleasure of accompanying Michelle Dennedy, Chief Governance Officer of Cloud Computing for Sun Microsystems, in a series of three CIO Roundtables in New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC, and two CIO breakfast seminars in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.
Sponsored by Sun and moderated by CIO Magazine executives, these events will address the topic, “Identity Management - Pathway To Enterprise Agility”, providing excellent forums to discuss such pertinent questions as:
How does strategic Identity Management contribute to business growth and not merely fulfill technology “need to do” requirements?
What Identity Management steps should you take to enhance business effectiveness?
How can good security governance is be good business?
Is your Identity Management system tuned for emerging marketplace requirements?
How does Identity Management address cloud computing?
How is Identity Management is enabling enterprises to capitalize – and not merely cope with – these realities?
To read more information about specific locations, including registration information, you can download .pdf fliers for each event:
This morning, I listened to an excellent webinar entitled “Pinning Down Cloud Computing,” hosted by Yankee Group Research. Yankee Group Vice President Camille Mender and Senior Analyst Agatha Poon explored the popular topic of cloud computing, focusing much on the business details enterprises must pay attention to if they are to successfully harness the promises of cloud computing – important things like uptime/availability, maintenance, penalties for non-performance, limitations of liability and privacy / data protection, to name a few.
I liked the following diagram used to discuss the different levels or tiers of a cloud “stack” architecture. The “Security and Compliance” bar to the left is a good way to illustrate the importance of information security and related compliance activities at each tier of the stack. Of course, Identity Management is a critical underpinning of that security and compliance functionality.
It was pointed out that the top three barriers to cloud computing uptake are:
Security (39%)
Reliability (35%)
IT governance (33%)
The cloud computing market is still maturing. So far, only a small percentage of enterprises are shifting a large part of their IT budgets to the cloud. Recognizing the essential role Identity Management plays in security and governance is critical to accelerating that movement.
Congratulations to the Sun team for today’s release of Sun Java Communications Suite 7. Did you know that there are over 150 million seats of the Sun Java Communications suite in production? Telcos and other service providers all over the world use this suite for high scalability and performance in a service provider environment.
I particularly like the “Convergence” web client that provides a state-of-the-art AJAX Web 2.0 client experience for users. It’s great to see the innovation rising out of this great group of Sun people.
I opened my copy of the Arizona Republic today to read an interesting Associated Press Article entitled “Internet turns 40; barriers imperil its growth.” I was a junior in high school way back in the day when, on September 2, 1969, “about 20 people gathered in Kleinrock's lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to watch as two bulky computers passed meaningless test data through a 15-foot gray cable.” I was oblivious to it then, and little did I realize how my entire career would be affected so profoundly by that pioneering work.
Despite the challenges that face the Internet now, a few of which are pointed out in the article, it has been enjoyable to pause a few minutes to reflect on the advances in technology over that span of time and try to anticipate what the next 40 years may bring.
In the photo above, “Internet pioneer Len Kleinrock poses next to an Interface Message Processor, a device used to develop the Internet 40 years ago at UCLA.” Gotta love all those switches on the front panel!
A related article published in the Globe and Mail includes a summary time line of key milestones in the development of the Internet.
This past weekend, I adopted Windows Live Writer as a blog editor to post to my personal and professional blogs. Now, I can use the same user interface to post to Roller (Discovering Identity), Blogger (Dixon Digest) and WordPress (I Love Freedom). I really like the way it works with photos and how it handles WordPress Tags. I sense that I have barely scratched the surface of its potential. Time will tell.
"Qualcomm Inc. CEO Paul Jacobs recently told Bloomberg News the makers of a new small computer known as 'smartbooks' will use his company's Snapdragon chip for the new device that's expected to start selling in the next quarter."
"All this online social networking was supposed to make us closer. And in some ways it has. ... But there's a danger here, too. If we're not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships."
"The Wicab BrainPort is a device that takes information gathered by a small digital camera in a pair of glasses and sends it to a 'lollipop' electrode array that sits on your tongue. The device was designed to help people who are blind or who have extremely low vision."
Cool animated model shows the progressive growth of the international space statione from its first module in 1998 through 2008, plus anticipated additions in the future
"The asset of the future will be your social graph. Have you started investing in it? You should be. Like most assets, the returns are much higher when you get in early."
We must raise our voices in an articulate and resolute war of words to stop the downward spiral of our precious free society into the slavery of government entitlements.
12:24 AM MST
This past weekend, I adopted Windows Live Writer as a blog editor to post to my personal and professional blogs. Now, I can use the same user interface to post to Roller (
