Search: Depth, breadth and trust- June 22, 2005 This Yahoo Search vs. Google and Technorati: Link Counts and Analysis (by Jeremy Zawodny) prompted some thoughts about how search engines are going beyond a nice to have to a critical part of business and personal lives. With that comes a host of issues and makes that deciding on which search engine to use based on the number of pages it indexes and how fast it re-indexes them a secondary metric.The most important metrics are going to become who can I trust most and who is less prone to...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/search-depth-breadth-and-trust.html Tools and Artisans- June 21, 2005 This from Doug Tidwell: "They're afraid that if they open up their business processes, their customers will realize just how little value they add" via Mark Baker.My feeling is that many organizations confuse have cool toolssoftware with having people that know how to use the output effectively. The goal of business processes is to deliver information to decision makers. The difference between a great artisan and the rest of us is not the tools they use it is in their native and acquired...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/tools-and-artisans.html Interesting technique for predicating trends- June 20, 2005 This from Tim O'Reilly via Tim Bray ongoing - The Java + Open Source Sweet Spot. When books were the primary vehicle for knowledge transfer I used to measure successadoption by shelf inches at Stacy's (Great Technical bookstore in San Francisco). Tim O'Reilly now has a more scientific approach - and please increase the graph size, I need a magnifying glass to read the data. However I am not sure this now tells the full story. I have noticed a substantial drop in my book buying habit, much to...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/interesting-technique-for-predicating.html Podtech- June 16, 2005 I did a podcast last week with John Furrier of PodTech - fun way of having a live discussion Podtech.net InfoTalk : A Podcasting Radio Show - "Fresh voices of Silicon Valley, Technology, and Media" He is looking for other CTOs for his series - so drop him a line.http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/podtech.html Loosely coupled the simpler the better- June 14, 2005 Matthew Adams makes a great clear case for not prescribing the end point technology. I would further interpret this as by keeping the definition of the end point to the minimum. Not prescribing the end point keeps the service loosely coupled, which is the objective yeshttp://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/loosely-coupled-simpler-better.html Peer to peer or client server- June 13, 2005 Reading a little on Ruby over the weekend I was struck by how artificial we have made that boundary between client and servers (Note: I have very limited knowledge of Ruby so excuse an inaccuracies). Ruby has a built in http server as part of the language. This seemed very sensible - most other language environments make http serversinterfaces a different part of the system.This blurring of the lines between client and server seems to be the right direction. In this I would include AJAX both...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/peer-to-peer-or-client-server.html The power of the web- June 6, 2005 The simple power of the web was brought home to me this week by my six year old. He had figured out Google Image search with a friend and proceeded to announce that Google was his new favorite toy. We spent all weekend helping him spell words to type into Google - he even helped his younger sister find Barbie pictures. It is so easy a six year old can use it - I wish all technology was that easy!The amount of raw power in the hands of a six year old is something to consider. How will their...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/power-of-web.html Economics for inside and outside- June 2, 2005 The drivers for using services and whether they should be inside the enterprise or outside the enterprise are partially rooted in the economics of fixed and variable costs. The fixed costs we all have are for our workstation, this cost has reduced dramatically from when it was a significant portion of an employees annual salary to the point where it is less than some monthly health insurance payments. Every employee now needs a workstation, an operating system, office software, and a...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/economics-for-inside-and-outside.html Desktop software and services- June 1, 2005 In Dictatorship of the Minorities Ulrich Drepper argues the point about the distractions caused b y porting to minority platforms. In some ways this mirrors my argument in Open Source - Software or services. However after thinking about the issue for a while I see there being two primary classes of software, software that runs on my desktop and services that run else where. The else where is becoming the major change agent as I do not (and should not) be concerned where the services are run...http://www.mcdowall.com/2005/06/desktop-software-and-services.html |