You know this, but your Mom doesn't

What's great about Twitter..
I've been using Twitter for a few months now and I like it. To me, twitter is like a crowd of people all talking around me. The crowd is always exactly the right mix of information and humor because I invited all of them. I hear snippets of conversations from all around me and I pick out the most relevant ones I wish to hear more about. It's also a great way to keep up with the most recent news about a new subject like cloud computing. The personal marketing opportunities are still great as twitter is still on a growing curve.

Twediquette:
Everyone I follow has been invited to my party. There is a certain etiquette that I expect of people who are in or can be invited to my party. Here's a quick list:

1. Don't tweet hello. I know who you are. I know you are out there. Tell me something useful.
2. Tell me something useful. You just got back from lunch is not useful to me. You just got back from lunch and would like to recommend your favorite dish is useful.
3. Don't tweet too often. Filling up my screen with messages forces me to sift for the good stuff. Less is more.
4. No Bodily functions. Nothing more to say about that.
   

Twitter improvements:
There are a few things I don't like about twitter. Please cache my address book and alert me when my contacts join twitter. I do this every couple of weeks to see who on my contact list has joined in, but LinkedIn does it for me automatically. Oh, and how about an auto-refresh option. Sometimes I leave Twitter open on a tab and realize, "What for?" I have to refresh the page anyway, might as well kill it and go back later.

Twitter cloud application:
If you've ever seen the 2D image of the sculpture above, then you know the fail whale. The fail whale appears when too many tweets overcome the twitter environment and the servers have difficulty keeping up with requests. I haven't seen it too often, but when it does appear hitting the refresh key usually provides immediate results. It did cause me to read the status bar and pay attention to where the hold-up was taking place. I was surprised to see AWS was the last request. So, twitter is using the power of elastic cloud computing to run this social network. Little or no capital investment in hardware necessary to run this popular service. Here's the kicker though, you don't care. All these terms (cloud, elastic, utility computing, etc..) are marketing terms that businesses use to speak to other businesses about IT. The end user (in or out of a business setting) just doesn't care how the service is delivered, they just want it to work. Speaking to most users about the cloud is like explaining how the electrical grid works. It's a utility and most people only care that when they hit the switch, the light comes on and who to call if it doesn't. Does the power you are using right now to read this come from hydro, coal, or nuclear? Can you even find out?

Does Corporation = FAIL in SaaS?

Can enterprise software companies do SaaS?

An interesting perspective from the venture capital viewpoint. Venture capitalists are predisposed to disliking enterprise corporations because they don't have values like these that draw venture capitalist to startups. So, I take what the experienced investor quoted in this article has to say with a grain of salt. The goal of the venture capitalist is to help a startup grow to a point where an enterprise company will purchase it's assets and cash in. Enterprise software companies do possess capital as pointed out in this article as the one advantage enterprise companies have over startups. Therefore, venture capitalists are counting on enterprise organizations to become SaaS companies so they can cash in on all those SaaS startups. While cash is king, innovation will continue to be dominate at the sub-enterprise.

So, the answer to the title question is No. Enterprise software companies will compete on the SaaS stage at first by strategically purchasing startups and smaller players. After establishing a corner of the market, they will use their investments as a cornerstone to a larger piece of the market. Again, the capital power of the enterrpise organization will give them the long term advantage.

around the world in a Mini (x3)

This is the Pitney Bowes Business Insight Mini. Well, it was the MapInfo Mini prior to MapInfo being purchased by Pitney Bowes in 2007. Its a 1978 mini cooper and it is currently on its third trip around the world. The vehicle is outfitted with a satellite phone, three GPSs, a laptop with two screens, and killer sound system. The trailer in the back houses a spare engine, a bike, and two tents. At the top you can see a satellite antenna and a small bank of solar cells that produce over 20 amps of power for all the equipment inside. Standing next to the mini is its driver Duncan Mortimer. The ten-month journey started in the UK and will take Mortimer through the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Russia, Poland and back to the UK through Europe. You can follow Duncan here:

www.mapinfo.com/minimap.

and here:

http://envention.mapinfo.com/envention/ecx/track/Duncan.zul

A near hit, not a near miss

To the bike riding gentleman who nearly became a hood ornament on the front of my wagon today,

1. Please wear a helmet. You never know when you could be knocked off your bike especially if you are not where drivers would expect to find you.
2. Please don't ride on the sidewalk. This is reserved for pedestrians, not vehicles.
3. Please don't ride facing traffic. When crossing at a crosswalk you will not be expected to be traveling the wrong direction.
   

As a bike safety advocate, I would have felt awful if I injured a fellow rider. Be seen!

How I stopped a 3 ton truck with one bare hand

Bike riding in the United States is seen as a recreational activity. While it is very fun and a great form of exercise, bicycles are transportation vehicles. As vehicles, they are subject to all rules and regulations when operated on streets. Most drivers understand this and treat cyclists as slow moving vehicles when they come across them on roadways. For example, I was riding my bike recently in the city of Albany and came to a busy intersection where I needed to take a left. Safely, I moved from the right most part of the right hand lane to the middle of left hand lane and signaled my left hand turn. As there was traffic moving in the opposite direction, I was forced to stop and wait. Behind me I heard the air brakes of a large truck squeal and hiss. Glancing back, I saw only the grill (which was at least a foot taller than I stood) of this tall truck. I could barely hear the other traffic over its diesel roar. It felt pretty powerful to make a hand gesture that was able to freeze a vehicle that outweighed me by at least 30 times. I used a standard protocol for signaling a turn recognized by all road worthy drivers. My small hand became equal to any size vehicle on the road for a brief moment. This is the power of standards.

Supported by the European Union, the Reservoir Project seeks to create a uniform SLA for utility infrastructure. It will be very interesting to watch how the Reservoir Project will intersect with the Open Cloud Manifesto. While the Reservoir Project will focus on Infrastructure and the Open Cloud Manifesto will focus on service, these two depend upon one another and will have to cooperate in order for both to achieve their objectives. These are two of the major overall standards that are emerging. Individual layer standards are becoming defacto as their mass adaptation pushes others aside. Until a governing body (like IEEE or W3) takes control of the approval of these standards, standards will be decided by the marketplace.

Why do IT people love standards? When a governing body decides on standards, the outlook for such standards reaches into the future. Many proprietary protocols are not future proof and will never play nicely with protocols from other vendors. The marketplace sometimes picks those protocols because they come from an established vendor or they are first to market. Standard protocols are the only ones guaranteed to be agnostic and long-lasting. Standards give portability and options. The best thing about cloud computing is how quick and easy you can jump from your existing on premises solution to a cloud based one. The worst part (for service providers) is how quick and easy it is to jump from that vendor to another.