For EA's who sell

I have found this to be an awesome book, very easy to get into and lends itself to jumping around the text to get what you want from it. Aimed at professionals who need to sell I think this is eminently useful to techies, even if all their customers happen to be within their organisation.

I recommend it. (I have the kindle version by the way).

my kindle arrived today

The device arrived in a customarily over sized box. Somewhat minimalist in contents, a nicely printed quick start guide (also available on the kindle), a power cord that doubles as a really quite long usb cable and the device itself. All have the feel of quality. Got four of my books on so far, off to do other things now though.

Famous Pete Wood Security: Personal mobile devices

Famous Pete Wood Security: Personal mobile devices: "I was recently invited to a roundtable event to discuss the results of some research sponsored by Sourcefire. Part of the survey results con..."

Some great statistics here. Many folks have used personal mail and mobile devices for work purposes - is it just a matter of time before these things cause a data leak?

Royal Mail has my Kindle!

A little absurdly excited that my next generation kindle is on it's way, or so Amazon informed me in the last ten minutes. As previously posted I'm already using the free software versions on my android phone and PC but it'll be nice to be able to upload my DRM free content to the kindle and get it synced across.

Question now is - tomorrow or Tuesday  for arrival?

Will the developer community follow Oracle?

The Android lawsuit between Oracle and Google is being well covered elsewhere, so I won't repeat that here. What I am interested in however is the effect on the Java developer community. Will Oracle lead Java to a new high and new interest as it prepares to defend the language, or will it be seen as a money grabbing, pillaging entity? There are already talks of Android moving away from Java altogether - is that even possible at this stage?

Java is still being taught in universities and schools around the world but has lost mind-share to the increasingly popular .Net framework from Microsoft. In addition new languages such as Ruby and existing languages such as Python are all proving very popular for web development.

New languages are springing up and I'm personally happy to see Nvidia's CUDA taught at universities - a language aimed at using the massively parallel nature of GPU's for calculations (always liked massively parallel problems for stretching programmers).

It seems to me we'll see a heterogeny of languages in the future and hopefully multi-skilled programmers appearing out of university. What will this mean for large scale enterprise solutions? It seems to me that Java will still be there but actually it feels as if it is moving into a legacy language state, the cobol of the next decade. Java needs some love - will Oracle provide a nurturing environment or will one of the many new languages rising up serve as the futures alternative to the .Net framework?

Soft skills required for EA?

Whilst this book isn't directly relevant to enterprise architecture the soft skills covered here are certainly of interest - whether its studies in what works for persuasion, for self motivation or even what makes people happy. A nice read and good diversion from technical books.

Linchpin eBook: Seth Godin: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Presently reading this on Kindle for Android and finding it very good. As a person who is new to being an analyst - it does kind of read like a guide to being an analyst.

Linchpin eBook: Seth Godin: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Nice view of Google's innovations and purchases that have been shown the door

Infographic by WordStream Internet Marketing Software

Ready for ARM-based server chips? Smooth-Stone hopes so | ZDNet

This trend to lower power chips is interesting, take a look at seamicro too. As for "Intel Killer" I don't think this is it although I do think alternatives to Intel's generic chips are a good thing and more are on the horizon.

Ready for ARM-based server chips? Smooth-Stone hopes so | ZDNet

Why switch ebook reader?

I must admit I loved my old Sony PRS 505 ebook reader. I like the the e-Ink display and being able to carry around a multitude of books without carrying around the actual books. That said Kindle now has some key features that are of interest to me, and actually the most interesting one is perhaps the simplest thing - being able to pick up a book where i left off from any device.

Sometimes I don't want to carry even an e-book reader with me and so my phone is good for those times I have 10 or 15 minutes to read something. The synchronising page over whispersync then is a key feature for me and has prompted me to sell my sony and get one of the new generation kindles, linked below with a gratuitous advert.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6" Display, Graphite, 3G Works Globally - Latest Generation (Amazon.com)

The Real Life Social Network v2

A most interesting set of slides from Paul Adams, makes me most interested to see what the new Google social network will look like.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Cool advert for 3D TVs

It's getting to be an obsession now but still. I do like this ad. I'd love to see my young son's reaction to 3D TV - particularly some of his favourite shows like Mickey Mouse Club House that are already rendered in 3D by a computer...

in reference to: Video: Watch an advert for Samsung's 3D LCD television | Media | guardian.co.uk (view on Google Sidewiki)

TOGAF 9 overview as a Prezi presentation

Prezi offers an ingenious way for navigating information and large documents. I quickly knocked this together going over the details of the first 5 parts of TOGAF 9 based on my previous overview document.

TOGAF v9 Overview on Prezi

Follow up on 3D TV

As a quick follow up on my '3D TV is just around the corner' post I note that Samsung have a very impressive line up of 3D TV solutions with one big TV at on $3300

Now all that's needed is the content to catch up. To be honest I think games will still lead the way and it'll wait for consoles to support the technology before adoption increases significantly.

in reference to: Craig Beattie, Information Systems Architect: Affordable 3D video games are already here, TV not far behind? (view on Google Sidewiki)

Note to self on April Fools posts - The Facebook Cap

They need to be done earlier in the day. Still I like my idea in this one - how much does a patent cost these days...

in reference to: Celent Blog » Facebook Cap tweets your thoughts (view on Google Sidewiki)

Affordable 3D video games are already here, TV not far behind?

With the rise of 3D cinematic experiences I thought 3D television wasn't too far away but would be very expensive.
I often look at what the computer games industry is doing as they tend to be the leading edge in terms of interactive technology so I was interested when I got an email through citing a 3D Vision ready screen. I have a GeForce 3D graphics card in my machine and it appears that for around £350 I can buy a 120 Hz screen and a pair of Glasses that turn any 3D game or rendered content into a true 3D experience. I'm surprised at how affordable this is, don't get me wrong £130 or so each for some glasses for a family is very expensive but for a young single well off male that wants to watch sports in 3D? It feels to me like 3D television is actually just round the corner and expensive but affordable right now.

in reference to: Scan.co.uk: VX2268wm - 22" Viewsonic VX2268WM, 3D 120Hz, Wide, Black/Silver, LCD, VGA/DVi, 20000:1, 300cdm2, 1680x1050, 2ms (view on Google Sidewiki)

Got my bit about social search and Google on the company blog

quite pleased to see it got some buzz and retweets around the twittersphere even though the details were a few weeks old.

best start on my next blog post on green IT that I promised. thoughts from readers welcome

in reference to: Celent Blog » Social Search Engine Optimisation? Google’s Buzz is part of a bigger strategy (view on Google Sidewiki)

Slightly positive view of Buzz

I chose to take a positive view of Buzz in this blog on my company website. The vast majority of coverage is focusing on the privacy concerns raised and in my opinion the press is blowing this out of proportion.

Still - it will be interesting to see how the law suits go.

in reference to: Celent Blog » Can Google Buzz teach insurers a few lessons about social networking? (view on Google Sidewiki)

What does Google know about your social circle?

Would be interesting to see how the privacy settings changes in facebook and other third party sites affect this content.

in reference to: http://www.google.com/s2/search/social#socialcircle (view on Google Sidewiki)

When will Google finally hit the sales big time?

Seems Google are still addressing some issues in their sales chain so they haven't quite cracked retail with their Nexus one phone but it does feel like they're making leaps and bounds and learning along the way.

Obviously their core market has been business customers from large corporates to small businesses selling services and hardware such as the google search appliance (that's right, despite so many reports Google have sold hardware before) but it is only in recent times that Google have started making major plays in terms of products for the mass market. The Chrome browser although free demonstrated a move towards supporting customers, providing an infrastructure for software updates and a support infrastructure aimed at the public. The Android platform went further introducing an app store and yielding income for Google (Google Checkout is used in the store). The Nexus one then builds on these two developments and is an interesting foray into consumer hardware. What will Google learn from the experience?

I think the very interesting question is will Google get it very very right with their Chrome OS Netbooks?

I think the tablet / slate PC's will be the fashionable talk of the town come mid 2010 but I really think Google will have the infrastructure and learnings to hit the cheap, low end netbook market with unprecedented force in late 2010 / early 2011.