Excel as a Database- December 31, 2007 TDWI (particularly Wayne Eckerson) has always had a hangup about using Excel for BI, typically calling BI done in Excel "spreadmarts". While I don't fully agree that using Excel is as bad as people say it is, there are definitely some problems if it's not used in the proper context. So this link is for Wayne: how Excel becomes a database.http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/excel-as-database.html My 2008 Coolhunting Prediction: Goatees Are Out- December 20, 2007 I'm an uncool person. I'm used to that fact. However, I have an affinity for cool people and cool things. That means that I'm often a leading indicator. The hard part is knowing what for, since I'm uncool. I once thought about doing work as a coolhunter but I don't have an affinity for the work, other than self-absorption. However, I've turned this to better use in the tech industry where I've been right the past few years much more often than I've been wrong (for a funny take on wrong, check...http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-2008-coolhunting-prediction-goatees.html TripAdvisor Travel Site Updated- December 19, 2007 Out of all the hotel sites, I've found TripAdvisor to be the most helpful when looking for hotels in places I haven't been. They seem to have more hotel reviews than other travel sites. I often use review sites when I'm unsure of the neighborhood, general location, etc. Reviews here have saved me from staying at some dirty, nasty places (I looked in on a few that I passed on recently).They've been adding features over time and done some site updating. One feature I played with was the "where...http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/tripadvisor-travel-site-updated.html How Do Get Better Speaker Ratings- December 13, 2007 I'm at conferences a lot, and I listen to a fair number of webcasts and podcasts. My one piece of advice to presenters is get to the point. Today I listened to 25 minutes of a 1 hour talk on what should be an interesting topic. The first 9 minutes got me through the introduction and landed me at the "agenda" slide. Several minutes on agenda got to the actual topic intro, and a few minutes of this finally got to the presentation material I wanted to hear. 25 minutes of that and it was Q&A...http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-do-get-better-speaker-ratings.html Must Be Something in the Water: "open season" on Industry Analysts- December 13, 2007 I've noticed a significant uptick in Gartner criticism over the past 6 months. From little offhanded remarks at conferences (like mine when looking at a couple of their quadrants related to integration), to Colin's statements about their relevance, to this, the strongest reference I've seen in print:"No show ripping on Novell and Red Hat would be complete without a helping of cynicism directed at Sun Microsystems, Facebook and the masters of the felch spoon over at Gartner."...which is part of..http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/must-be-something-in-water-open-season.html Open Source Channel at B-Eye, Funny Kindle Review- December 7, 2007 The open source BI channel is up and running at the B-Eye Network. I'll be collecting resources, papers, sites as well as blogging about open source over there, so there won't be many OSS posts in these parts any more. Other BI-related or emerging tech content is landing over at Intelligent Enterprise now. Plus there's this whole new emerging tech site I've been working on that hasn't launched yet. I've been slowly distributing myself across the Interweb. I hope one day to dissolve into the...http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/open-source-channel-at-b-eye-funny.html Considering a Mac- December 5, 2007 I need to get a new laptop. The horrors of Vista are scaring me into considering a Mac. I don't use one now even though I spent several years as a Mac developer because all the enterprise software I look at runs under Windows. Turns out I don't need to travel with most of that, so I can be unchained. This video turned up as I was poking around looking for a devil's advocate.http://clickstream.blogspot.com/2007/12/considering-mac.html |