Laurent Bridenne's web log about multimedia strategy, design, usability, technologies and much more... Multimedia

Read an interesting article today in the San Jose Mercury News... how organizations use computer simulations, games and vlogs for training potential and/or
current employees. I have been looking at delivering content from our multimedia center to mobile devices, but I didn't see the ROI value in doing so. Training however, could be a good candidate. We need to train our sales force and partners to be armed with the info they need, that their customers need in order to make an informed decision on how to spend their money.

"Developers never seem satisfied with what they can do, and always seek to challenge themselves. Whether that means experimenting with technology, or simply adding nuances that were never possible..." - Quote from IGN's web site.

Indeed, the new animations look really cool. Take a look:

This [quote] can be applied to Sun's developer community, especially now that Java and Solaris are open sourced. And with tool like java studio, JavaServer Faces-based web applications are bound for the next great "killer app".

Please bridge the Digital Divide to my local ER, because they are in dire need of an overhaul. They have computers everywhere, the flat screen look really cool, but as I (and my wife) found out... very inefficient for both doctors/nurses and patients. Sun does this... but not for my ER. Please Sun... Pimp my ER!!

As you may have read my previous post, this week has been... how should I say... eventfull.

A couple of night ago, I had to drive my wife to the ER. Same problem as a few months ago. She was in a lot of pain.
Since we were there a few months ago, I expected for the service to be faster since they knew what they needed to do to relieve the pain. Instead? 5 hours in the ER, redoing everything again, asking her birthdate 6 times (after they put a wristband on her arm WITH her birthdate), asking the symptoms 6 times, taking notes on either a computer or notepad 6 times, asking for her primary care physician 6 times. How many people did she have to deal with? 6 of them at one point or another.

From the receptionist, the first nurse, the second nurse (first one left her shift to go home), third nurse (since the second one was on a break), doctor and the ecography specialist. How silly is that??

The worst was when the doctor asked my wife/I what drugs the nurses injected her with. Did that mean that no one's keeping track of this stuff?? Excuse my rant... there's probably a perfectly fine reason to the madness. During all of that, my wife was still in pain. What WAS displaying on their fancy big screens? Why aren't they using databases to keep track of any of this?

I wished my wife's ID card could do what my Sun Java Card does. I can plug in my java card and get my session/settings, the last thing I accessed, etc.

If they had something like that, they would have her DOB, allergies, current treatment, details of last visit and get us in and out within the hour. Imagine the ability to treat much more people using the same amount of real-estate/people, bringing the cost of healthcare DOWN for everyone. Wouldn't that be nice?

So please Sun... Pimp my ER!

What does a tow-truck driver from Russia has to do with Sun? Amazingly enough... some useful insight about our company and our products.

It happens to the best of us... our car breaks down. Thankfully, I was able to make it to work (barely). Called AAA (now I'm glad I paid for that service) and they towed me back home. Some 50 miles away. I wasn't looking forward to the big drive... but then again, it was the opportunity to learn about someone else. Everyone has a story, even if they don't think they have one (which is, in essence, one by itself).

And so, we started chatting. The usual, what I do, where I came from, etc, etc. Then came my turn to ask the question.

It turns out Roman came from Russia and previously worked for Sun. He was installing Solaris on our systems, doing some debugging and optimization. That took me by surprise. But then again, it's the silicon valley.

Roman quit Sun; wanting more money. And so he went from job to job, and then... the .dot bust. No work for 7-9 months. He was laid off, his wife, his father and mother in-law... very tragic stuff. And so, he became a tow truck driver, making 1/3 of what he was making, but liking his job. All I know is that, as long as you like your job, you've got a great job!

Oh... did I say he also has an IT network consulting business on the side??

Then my curiosity came over... what was he thinking about Sun now? Is he up to date on what we've done lately? especially since he's still involved in the industry. Am I going to be soo obvious that I'm in Marketing?? Well... no reason to be shy... I've been interacting all day at an All Hands already... I was warmed up ;-)

So I told him to be honest, and that I wouldn't take it bad. And so, I fired away the questions...

The results? We're good. He would recommend Sun products. He really likes the new x86 servers... likes the fact that he could run Windows, but would rather run Solaris himself. Solaris made improvements; but still not a very good GUI, ease of use compared to windows. He mostly gets calls from Dell users running windows. He works for small companies, sometimes friends. Everybody knows Windows. It's easy, but it "craps out every so often", which is great for him. A nice source of
revenue.

So not too bad.

While I was at it, I asked about cars. Why? because mine was sitting in the flatbed behind us, not knowing its fate. I was also looking at getting a Prius, for the eco-friendly and awesome gas mileage. Since I work some 50 miles away... Collegues and friends have one and they love it. Great word of mouth to go and buy one...or at least, that's what I thought.

Turns out he gets at least 3 calls a day for problems with Prius cars.
Some don't start. Some need a jump start. Some have hydraulic failure. wow. Was he kidding? nope. Right after he said that, he gets a call on his radio that a guy in a Prius is on the side of highway 237.

That made me think about the Tipping Point book I read earlier this year... the power of the word of mouth. Who would you rather listen to? Customers, a maven? (in this case towing cars). Would I buy a Prius?? Probably not, unless I want to see him again (who knows, he was fun)

What about Sun? At least our word is getting around. Solaris may not be as easy to use, but we've got the performance and security features that squash the competition. And there comes a barrier to entry for driving Solaris adoption... make it easy(er) to use.

What after Second Life? Home.

Last week, Sony unveiled their version of Second Life, available for the Playstation 3. It's free. It's a community. It's a communication tool. But most of all, it's a commerce. Micro transaction galore for a thriving gaming industry. Just like the ring tones/games purchases for cell phones, "Home" will become a marketplace. Hopefully, generating
millions/billions in revenue... and recoup their loss on every systems they are selling.

I hope Sony doesn't make yet another poor decision on execution. For their sake (and their shareholder's sake), they'd better run on our coolthreads servers to save space/power (meaning: cut down their expenses), run Solaris (to avoid security attacks) and maybe give us a Sun Island where we can have a virtual global headquarters. I'd like to have a window office please ;-)

Sun (China) IS working on a Flash 9 plug-in for our user base (Solaris), this is great news as we'll finally be able to work with the full breadth of functions previously unavailable (alpha channels for example).

This was the final frontier since Flash 9 was released on every major platform, but Solaris.

Ok, so now I want to port all adobe apps for Solaris (dreamweaver, photoshop, etc.)... I know, it's never good enough ;)

Ok. I had this Toshiba laptop that was pre-installed with JDS and the latest "petri dish" OS. Unfortunately, a week after I got the laptop, the hard drive died. When they resent the laptop, it didn't have JDS on it... and I'm not that technical and the whitepapers scared me, so I was pretty much forced to keep my system "as is". Here's what I found online that would have helped me. A lot more visual step by step process.

Was this helpful?

[_] nope
[_] kinda
[_] where has it been all my life?

Ever wondered how to do this? How about a little "tech tip" for you all!

This is what I was talking about "useful" media and actually seeing the application in action. No smoke and mirrors, no marketing fluff, just simple honest truth. What do you all think about this type of multimedia?

[_] useless
[_] ok
[_] BRILLIANT!!

What is strategic media planning anyway? Here's the low-down...

We do not have advertizing budgets like Microsoft, IBM, DELL or HP. Every penni we spend much bring a penni or more back to Sun. So we have to be smart when we want to create costly Videos and Interactive Flash Tours. Here's the three step process on creating strategic media plans:

1 - Know Your Audience (or know someone who knows)

Marketing -vs- Field. What Marketing wants to tell, versus what the Field wants to hear. The Field are the ones sitting down with current/potential clients. Multimedia Programs are meant to support/enhance marketing programs, not replace them. Whitepapers are still being read, but emergence of multimedia lets users listen and interact about a particular product/solution even before they "try it" (Free Solaris Download and Free Trial Servers).

Viewing the application you're "sort of" interested is HUGE compared to reading a whitepaper or seeing a video of an exec saying "how cool" the application is. People want the truth and cut through the PR, Marketing pitch... they want to hear the unfiltered honest info, like Andy B on YouTube unboxing his systems. That is great stuff and didn't cost anything to produce. No penni spent, and many dollars back... that's what I like!

Now, who knows the audience best? The ones who interact with them every day. The Field is a great source of information. Listen to them because they listen to the customers.

2 - Know Your Audience (and what their pain points are)

Example: Is migration a pain-point or is Solaris 10 a pain-point? Most companies focus too much on hard selling their products/services versus "solution oriented" marketing.

It's not so much that people don't want to buy Solaris... it's the pre-conceved nightmare of revamping their entire datacenter, losing up-time and money, while spending money to migrate to Solaris. Sure, once they run our Solutions (hardware, software, services), they don't have to worry about their datacenter anymore (and go on vacation, finally!!), but it's like going to the dentist. You know you will be better off if you go every 6 months to avoid any major problems... but you're trying to delay it as much as you can because it's no fun to clean up your teeth (datacenter). But what they don't know is that we offer novacaine in the form of bootcamps, applications that ease the migration process. After they truly know what it would take (versus pre-conceved assumptions), it's easy to get them to migrate.

THAT is so much effort and time, when a simple "How To" multimedia guide would step them through the entire process, and all they have to say to the field is "Sign me Up!". We're here to make a positive impact, solve problems, reduce costs and complexity, bridge the Digital Divide... you name it. We've been great at the "big stories", but not as great when we get to the point products. Example: "Unleashing 10GB Everywhere. Buy the Sun Multithreaded Networking Card." Sorry, what? why would I care? Then how about this: "Save and generate money... at 10GB/s".

We should drive the "HELP ME, HELP YOU" approach, versus the preaching, bullhorn on top of a building for something we created (when everyone is doing the same thing - we just discard it as noise).

3 - Know You Audience (and how they would connect to your content)

Does your audience have blackberries? are they sitting behind a huge company/government firewall that doesn't let anything through? Do they have portable media devices they can take to for their jogs or plane rides? This all impacts how the media should be created and if it should be pushed or pulled.

PUSH, like posting a video on Sun.com and enticing viewers to come in to view it.
PULL, like having the audience do a single-click search/register to get automated notification when new information is available about something they're interested in.

I want the info to come to me. I don't want to hunt it down for days, from multiple competitors... they should come to me, because these companies are competing for doing business with me.

I'll get off my soap box now and do something about it.

25 years...

but I've only been here for 7 of them, ever since the dotcom bubble burst. It's been challenging, it's been stressfull and it's been sad to see some collegues go. But we've been turning the corner with inexpensive servers, green servers, open sourced Java, broke 150+ world records with our operating system, Solaris 10 (and we're giving this for free??), improving our earnings, and gained market share 4 quarters in a row...

Yeah... that was just the last 12 months or so... what a ride!

Multimedia-wise over the past 12 months, we moved to dynamic presentation layers that can be embedded for our launches, features pages and Multimedia Center. Oh, and we moved to Flash externally while providing work-arounds for our intranet which supports RealMedia (I call it redirects-galore-extravaganza). The Sun Publishing folks launched their Media Shell, which wraps embedded media, provides navigation and makes it nice and Brand friendly for improving the user experience. I guess it was the year of the emdedded media.

Actually, we also experimented with Interactive Tours for Solaris 10 and Project Blackbox...

I've got a lot slated for the next 12 months from a multimedia perspective. We're brewing some really cool stuff for everyone (especially Developers, Partners, Web 2.0 and Enterprise - not in any order). Meaning, much better content (tips and tricks that you can use to save $$/time) that will be even more visually compelling and that will have you glued to Sun.com... or tradeshow floors... or at the EBC... or on iTunes... or on YouTube... hmm... ok... we're everywhere ;-)

24 has got to be the best thing on TV.

Maybe it's my hectic work day makes me feel right at home with this show. non-stop twists and turns, shocking surprises, hunting down information or hunting people that have the information, and finally getting the job done... yes, even if you have to stay up for 24 hours straight (as long as I have coffee)

One thing I noticed. Most of the agents at CTU are using Mac laptops. The bad guys are using PCs. Anyone else noticed that??

Also, CTU headquarters has a bunch of DELL servers. Have you noticed that at every other episode, someone has to manually reboot something in their server room? That's a reboot of something every two hours!! Can't they use Sun instead?? oh.. wait... maybe they need that time to unravel a major plot twist... it would be kind of boring to not reboot anything. Maybe they'd be able to catch the bad guys in 12 hours. d'oh!

We've been looking at Open Source solutions for live video webcasting over past month for Jonathan and his staff. Sounds like it would be great to endorse and pioneer enterprise-grade open source webcasts that runs on all platforms (Solaris, Linux, Mac, Windows, etc.). I'm not talking about passing proprietary data through Java, but a true-er platform. The winners? none.

We're currently using RealMedia for all live streaming. Quality is good for the bit rate required and plays on all platforms. It's scalable and sturdy but could be better with it's rebuffering and latency issues... The RealPlayer is also pretty cluncky/big to download and is not installed as a default on various systems. Most of the technical questions we get from live webcasts are users that do not have realplayer installed.

But Flash is bundled with browsers... either that or it takes a couple of seconds to download/install (versus RealPlayer)... that's why I'll be happy to test it going forward when the live quality is up to par or exeeds RealMedia. Just need Adobe to create a flash player 9 for Solaris.... and the server needs to run on Solaris too.

Vividas is the closest thing we could find in the open source world. Everything else has limited or zero support that may or may not run on Solaris (server-side) in a critical enterprise deployment. But maybe there's something else out there that's being the best kept secret in the industry... If you know of any, please let me know.

I have been invited to participate in late June on a dicussion panel at the Web Video Summit. That's pretty cool... but kind of scary because I'm not really a great speaker (like Jonathan), so I'll do my best at communicating the proverbial BIG PICTURE of multimedia (which includes video).


I've also been part of the Bay Area Streaming Media Users Group (BASMUG - much shorter and easier to remember) where most of us in this industry get together and share of thoughts, plans and success stories to help each other out. This is a great resource. Met with folks from Intel, Oracle, Apple, National Semi Conductor, Applied Materials and many others. All at various stages of implementations of a multimedia program.


It's fun to see groups starting their programs... with just a camcorder and free apps (been there, done that back at Netscape), while some others are WAYYYYY out there ahead of us (the up-to-the-minute metrics reporting at Oracle is just superb!!)
The emphasis is too strong on "video". The term "video" is sometimes used by folks who describe anything and everything visual... which isn't always video. I'm not a popular one when I say "video isn't everything". Don't forget about the power of audio and animations. It all depends on the content, the audience.

With browsers that have multiple tabs or instances opened, with instant messaging and email, video viewers are bound to take their eyes off the video of an exec talking and just LISTEN.

Do you have any idea on the price difference between having a live video webcast (studio, satellite, streaming) versus a live audiocast? It's HUGE.

If you're streaming video, it needs to be visually compelling from a visual design AND content standpoint. Oh... and another point: video requires high bit rates the bigger you want to display it. It's not uncommon to see 500kbps video streams out there. Every pixel is decoded real-time in video-land. The alternative? Flash.

Unlike it's video counterpart, flash can embed video AND animations, graphics that provides a bigger "immersive" and Branded environment at high-quality and lower bit rates.

Check out the blackbox thing we just did: http://frsun.downloads.edgesuite.net/sun/07C00868/


We've got rave reviews from both Jonathan and Anil... but what's best is that we've got great user hits on this. This crushes metrics of any video we've ever produced. It also solves another problem for companies with firewalls, proxies... this uses http port 80 versus streaming protocols and ports that are typically blocked. I'm personally thinking of moving of the videos we have (flash streaming video) into progressive downloads... and let media go through... the only downer is the download time for playing back long presos like keynotes (45mn)

I was enjoying my rainy weekend when I got an email that someone left a couple of comments on Jonathan's blog about not being able to view videos...

So replied to his comment. No bite. Used the email he left. wrong email. So, I'm doing this little training instead for everyone else who may want to know... It's actually REALLY EASY to get help for http://sunfeedroom.sun.com/ , simply click on the HELP button. I've personally never liked online help, so I can understand the relunctancy in clicking on it and being endlessly directed to info, which, in the end, doesn't help you a bit. This is not that type of HELP. It actually works and I made sure of that. Check it out in these screenshots:


In there are the latest FAQs, system requirements and a feedback form (my favorite) that sniffs your viewing environment and sends an email to the right folks in charge of maintaining a working external multimedia infrastructure.



Maybe I should make it auto-detect users that can't play video to launch the help automatically... might be able to cut the middle-man. If one user has a problem, ten other do but don't say anything.

For Vikas...

Then came the MacBook Pro... oh yeah baby...

Apple did a GREAT job from a usability standpoint. Just wished they didn't require folks to pay for .mac. I really like the fact that I was able to jump into it so easily and that it feels like a "consumer" UNIX
workstation... with much more fun stuff too. I really want an Apple|Sun alliance... it would kick so much -you know what-

The mac is a very "web 2.0" device that easily connects everyone in the participation age. From quickly producing YouTube videos, sharing pictures, getting your own web site, blogs, etc.

For web 2.0 success, the tools and applications need to be easy to use. If your 5 year-old kid and your grandma can use it to participate online... then you've got the next web 2.0 tool. Just make sure you're ready to play with the "big boys" by running a backend that is scalable with some major computing power... using open source


So... what does multimedia have anything to do with it? Anything we produce multimedia-wise needs to really grab people and become a "device" that allows them to see how easy our complete solution could solve many of their problems (sys admins, CTOs)... maybe even open the door to participation onto our developer network, forums, etc.

Alright, so like everyone else here, web 2.0 is the big thing. Everybody talks about it but no one can pin point it. It's a "thing". Not a customer base, not a particular online participation/sharing mechanism... I think it's all about USABILITY.


If blogs were too hard to write/publish, it wouldn't have been a big thing. If YouTube was too complex to view/search and upload videos, it wouldn't have been a big thing either. SecondLife? A bit too hard right now, so it's not taking off. I still prefer the SIMS video game myself.


A lot has happened for me over the past few months. Yeah, I've been hard at work, but I've been immersed into HOW to make things easier from a multimedia perspective. HOW to communicate and engage multimedia viewers versus preaching or giving a typical marketing pitch... I see enough of that everywhere.


Every single thing makes me think about usability. The ability to easily capture someone's attention and suck them into an environment where they participate and share online.



So first came my Bday... The PS3. I had my doubts... I still have a little bit since no real good games are out. I've tried them at all Blockbuster. Maybe it's because I don't have an HDTV but the gameplay/graphics aren't blowing me away yet. What DID grab me it everything else that the PS3 brings. The internet browser, the ability to play games with players from other continents, downloading games from an online store and viewing my pics on the big screen. Did I say Java was in there? ;-)






So anyway, it took me awhile to figure all the features, but when I did, I was really impressed. Then I was thinking... why didn't Sony play a short video tutorial on all the PS3 features versus reading an online whitepaper??



Also, I've notice some lag time playing Madden '07 with other folks... kinda cluncky... maybe they should start thinking about using an entire Sun solution (hardware, software, storage, services) to get this up to speed... if not.... I don't give the PS3 two years to live...

it's been a long time since my last update...

busy working on really cool stuff with multimedia. Take a look at the Blackbox Interactive Tour

The biggest thing here at Sun is that we had to rev down to Flash 7.12 since there is no Solaris support for the Adobe Flash Player. No capability to enable alpha channel, so we had to cheat with the video element. Such a disappointment.

Another cool thing, anyone can add our videos to their blogs. Check out the "Embed" feature on the videos in Sun's Multimedia Center. Pretty cool stuff.

More changes coming... too busy to update this blog because we're so hard at work...

As a work-from-home employee (Open Work), I can work at odd hours to get things done with global partners and co-workers. Accessline can find me anywhere, edgemail makes me connected to my inbox from anything/anywhere, but something is still missing... the human touch.

I sometimes feel out of touch with collegues that work in close proximity to each other. Out of sight, out of mind. For con call meetings, people are more engaged with whoever's in the room than the audio polycom unit sitting on a table like a dead octopus. SunLabs is going to make it easier for me...Porta Person!!

I could get work done in a tiny room 24/7 with a phone and a computer, but it can get lonely. Thank goodness for my puppy. When I pop over the hill once a week, I do "face-time". I meet and engage folks I've been working with "virtually" and use whatever ounce I have of social skills... which isn't much.

Still, it's nice to break the monotony of phone and email...
eventhough I don't get much work done when I'm on campus than if I stayed at home...

You can't have it all

"The world of entertainment and news gathering is rapidly changing as the network blurs the line between audience and entertainer, viewer and newscaster, fan and producer. With Internet technology -- music and movies, broadcast news and blogs, entertainers and audiences -- can all converge and mix online."

That definitely relates to my everyday job... setting up virtual communities, adding videos to YouTube, podcasts on iTunes and taking in comments/feedback from the comunity to improve ourselves.

The Network is the computer... and computers have changed. Anyone can do their own podcasts, edit their own videos in a flash. Online worlds like Second Life, communities like Craigslist... online forums, instant messaging... the internet, the network has changed. Much more personalized, much more interactive and much more instantaneous...

I get my news from the web. Not my TV. I get the scoop for my football team from their web site (podcasts, videos, press releases), and get the inside information on "Lost" from online forums. I look at funny videos on YouTube... some not that funny unfortunately.

We're all contributors to the network in some way, shape or form.

It's not the first time the government makes a mistake with taxpayers money... Well, they'll know soon enough...

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061122/sun_contract.html

... all I'm saying is they should get a few blackboxes and tie them into the Sun Grid...

http://sun.feedroom.com/?fr_story=FEEDROOM163422

... enough about my yapping... let's go back to work ;)

Black Friday came and went... every year, web sites are faster and more available. No more servers getting overloaded with web requests.

I was looking at HDTVs. I don't need one. I want one ;) Being in the multimedia industry, coming from a TV/Film industry, I get drawn to that.

But there's a whole lot of hassles in the way... first is DirecTV... got to upgrade my receivers, antennas which means I have to run cable from the ceiling to the roof, walking across planks with a flash light and that itchy insulation stuff... a big pain... then comes the higher monthly costs...

All of that before buying a TV... Prices went down a lot. I almost got one but then I remembered that the TV won't fit in the entertainment center...

Funny thing is that I did exactly the same thing last year. When will I learn??

Then I thought what our customers have to deal when wanting to make a purchase from Sun. They're not buying a software or hardware, but an entire solution. They don't have to go to three different vendors (TV, satellite provider, furniture store) but one, and Sun thinks of all the different implications for migrations or updates.

I wish circuit city or best buy would do the same... maybe next year

Imagine the best OS... non-proprietary, cheap, highly secured, reliable, fast, self-healing, works across all hardware types (multiple manufacturers and devices) and most of all, easy to use. Wouldn't that be great?

This OS would be the backbone of every IT organization... from libraries to defense departments, running on cell phones, gaming devices, medical devices to high-end storage and application servers.

Now... What comes to your mind? Mac OS? Vista? Probably, since it's most of what we use in our everyday life. Solaris? Probably not. We hear that it's expensive and proprietary.

Solaris is SOOO expensive that it's available for free. No kidding.
Solaris is SOOO proprietary that it's open-sourced and has a developer community.

Yeah, but it only runs on our very expensive servers right? NO.

Get a free server, get a free OS and experience it with your own eyes. THEN, you can have a full picture of what Solaris brings to the table. Don't listen to the hype. Don't even listen to me... just try it and make your own mind.

All I ask is that you share your comments/feedback about it on why it is not the OS you'd want to run your online banking and governments on.

From bridging the Digital Divide in third-world contries, creating developer communities (Open Solaris, Java Open Source), delivering eco-friendly, ultra-efficient servers that take less space, less power (and a PG&E rebate), Sun Grid, Blackbox, Solaris 10 with awesome features like ZFS and D-trace... you name it. It's been a year, and it's all a blur... a good blur.

This evening, I took a look back. I don't get to do that too often since I'm always rushing to launch another product, announcement or something big that needs to happen yesterday.

I have seen a big change in what we do. We're smarter in how we spend money. We build cool new ways of doing business and save companies money. We innovate, but we also enable others to innovate.

We're not solely building high-end servers for the dot-com era anymore... don't know why the press still harps on it. I see that EVERY SINGLE press release. They don't see what we've done over the past year. That's upsetting... but it drives me to create compelling multimedia programs and change this perception.

Alright everyone...

Tune-in HERE at 9:15am PT for a BIG Sun announcement.

We're taking another step into the "participation age". Been working all weekend on posting multimedia for this announcement, but didn't see any mention of it on Reuters for some reason...

tell your developer friends!!!

Hey, why not? The niners are looking to have their new stadium built right across from the Sun buildings next to Great America where I used to work (before working flex via OpenWork).
After all, the Oakland A's are looking to have a high-tech Cisco Stadium in Fremont. So why shouldn't we have a "Sun Pavilion", powered by Sun? (aside from $$ for naming rights of course) ;-)

A couple of years back, I was recording a demo for a cool new tool... "Project Looking Glass". This stuff was awesome. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it on my laptop.

I really thought Sun was back on the map with such a killer app, all developed on Java. This was light years away from the typical desktop UI. I really thought this was going to get included in the next revision of the Java Desktop System. There was a real buzz about it.

Later on, I attended a webcast for the next Apple OS which resembled Looking Glass. And then I saw Longhorn (vista). Then I started to wonder what ever happened to this project. So... what happened to it? Seems like somebody took it to the next level in creating a "Minority Report"-like app. Check it out here. I still want to see it/use it on whichever platform I'd like. It's that cool.

Sun may not have cashed-in on this golden opportunity, but at least, we shared our code and knowledge to sparck innovation.

Everybody in the world seems to use Microsoft Office (Excell, Word, etc.) and so was I, back at Netscape. I truly didn't know what the hoopla was all about with StarOffice, so I tried it. As with any new software, it took me awhile to figure out where some features were located. At the end of the day, I was thinking to myself... What's the big deal?

Well, one day I found out. I was writting a document while having many programs open (Mozilla, Photoshop, etc.). I spent a good 2 hours working on this and I was almost done. When all of the sudden... BAM!... "the application encountered an error" and, to my mistakes (running windows and not saving my document) my hours of hard worked went down the drain. Or so I thought...

I was used to that... It happened to me a lot [more often] with Word or any Windows software. So after I calmed down, I re-opened StarOffice to start all over again while everything was fresh in my mind. As I opened the app, it asked me if I wanted to recover the document. And within a few seconds, what I thought was lost forever in Windows' after-life, was right here in front of me. The next thing I did was click SAVE ;-) ** my current version of Office never did that**

I WAS SHOCKED! How cool is that?!

So from there on, I was sold. Been using it ever since. I can create documents in StarOffice and save them as Microsoft Office docs for our vendors. I can open up Microsoft Office docs from our vendors, work on them and save them, all in StarOffice. There's also a one-click publish to acrobat PDF which is another great feature.

But the greatest thing is when I did a StarOffice demo and they told me the price difference between StarOffice and Microsoft Office... I was floored. We're the best kept secret. If you've ever lost hours of work in Microsoft Office, you've GOT to download and try StarOffice...

By now, you've probably seen Jonathan's blog about corporate communications. Either that, or the article about Sun's internal YouTube contest on CNET. Needless to say, the power of internet, coupled with a strong need for companies to communicate up-to-the-minute information is driving rapid change in the industry.

Companies [like Sun] would rather spend money on R&D than advertizing [and rightly so]. This opened the door for blogging, online videos and other cheap, yet effective, community/sharing communication tools.

We are surrounded by what I call "forced marketing": From telemarketers calling you at home, spamming your inbox, invading your radio station or TV... it's everywhere and we're tuning it out. We reach a point where if we see marketing fluff, we tune it out. We need the info from the source, untainted, no spin. Discussing instead of broadcasting.

I think we're on the right track...

November 17th is coming... I'm probably not going to get my hands on a PS3... I was reading up on the latest and greatest and found out that Java will be included in the PS3. How cool is that?!? I wonder if I'd get a discount ;-)

Java IS everywhere.

And hey! Isn't that the guy from "Lost"??

Now, the next cool thing is the Playstation Network. To tell you the truth, I haven't even plugged-in my PS2 online... too many cords to deal with. But the potential for interacting with gamers all over the world in movie-realitic 3D environments is awesome. I can't wait. It would definitely beat the Second Life. See below... and yes, we're also involved in that as well.

All in all, the PS3 is supposed to be a super-computer for the entertainment center. I want it to be my Tivo, digital music library, gaming, blue-ray player... but most of all, I want to see a big Sun logo when using the features... because we should get the awareness that without Sun (Java), devices like the PS3 would not be that cool.