Tableau making name for itself: "Started as a gove… 08/31/2004
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Tableau making name for itself: “Started as a government research project on the Stanford campus seven years ago, the team behind Tableau worked down the hall from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In fact, the two companies share more than a common address, co-founder and CEO Christian Chabot said.
‘We are like the sister company of Google in some sense, and I want to say that lightly so it is not misinterpreted,’ Chabot said. ‘But Google was trying to make unstructured databases easy to use, and Tableau was founded to make structured databases easy to use.’
The difference is that Tableau’s software creates a graphical interface for ‘old-fashioned’ databases such as Oracle, SQL Server and Excel while Google’s technology is built for unstructured data on the Internet, he said.”
Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil | RSS and … 08/31/2004
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Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil | RSS and Blogspot: “Today, I’m happy to say that betwixt Ann Althouse and myself, we managed to come up with a fix. Or rather, we’ve tested the FeedBurner service, and it seems to be working. You’ll note that Prof. Althouse is now on my RSS list.”
Strategies for small fish in a big pond | CNET News 08/31/2004
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Strategies for small fish in a big pond | CNET News.com: “Editor’s note: Welcome to the age of business interdependence, say HBS professor Marco Iansiti and collaborator Roy Levien, authors of the new HBSP book, ‘The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability.’
Think of the business environment as a series of ecosystems, they urge, with ‘keystone’ companies such as Microsoft and Wal-Mart providing for the health of all who do business with them. What are the best strategies for companies living in these ecosystems? This excerpt focuses on strategies for niche players. “
Microsoft to show off Team tools | CNET News 08/27/2004
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Microsoft to show off Team tools | CNET News.com: “Microsoft next month plans to distribute an updated beta version of its Visual Studio 2005 development tool that includes the first fruits of the company’s ambitious initiative for team development.
The software giant has put together the early version, or community technology preview, of Visual Studio Team System and will provide it to developers at the VSLive conference in Orlando, Fla., in September, said Rick LaPlante, general manager of the product, in a blog posting earlier this week.
LaPlante said the server software for team development will run in conjunction with the first beta of Visual Studio, which was released earlier this summer. A final version of Visual Studio 2005 is set for completion in the first half of next year.”
Google to Bloggers: Get Your Ad Share 08/26/2004
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Google to Bloggers: Get Your Ad Share:
“Google Inc. is making it easier for Webloggers to earn extra cash, while expanding the reach of its search-based advertising.
Its Blogger service this week put out a call to bloggers to share in advertising revenues by joining Google’s AdSense program, which displays advertisements targeted to the keywords in a site’s content. Through AdSense, Google returns a portion of the pay-per-click fees back to the site publisher. “
Wired News | The War Room: "For decades, the enter… 08/21/2004
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Wired News | The War Room: “For decades, the entertainment industry and the military were advancing the science of simulation on widely divergent tracks. The Pentagon focused on developing high-end proprietary systems like the Close Combat Tactical Trainer – a networked tank simulator that costs about 241 million – while game developers loaded 2449 first-person shooters with enough pixelated firepower to convey the dynamics of skeletal trauma and the physics of explosions in ever-closer-to-real time.
Those tracks converged at a 1996 workshop hosted by Michael Zyda, now the head of the simulation lab at the Naval Postgraduate School. Former Disney Imagineer Danny Hillis and Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull brainstormed about ‘experiential’ computing and electronic storytelling with representatives from Darpa, Intel and Industrial Light & Magic as well as the future head of ICT– a Paramount TV exec named Richard Lindheim. The papers from that workshop persuaded the Army to launch the Institute for Creative Technologies in 1999.”
SilverLake/i3 merger: SilverLake Resources and IBM 08/17/2004
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SilverLake/i3 merger: “SilverLake Resources is an authorized IBM Business Partner and Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partner. The merger will further extend the new company%92s broad portfolio of enterprise-class integration and application solutions. It also will enhance its ability to deliver industry-specific ERP solutions and integration services and assist customers with mission critical support capabilities. Both companies have core competencies in IT products and services that bring together a wide range of expertise in configuration%2C implementation and installation.
Kathy Labozzetta%2C Executive Managing Partner%2C says%2C %93%85this merger will allow our customers to have a single source supplier for enterprise-class hardware%2C software and integration services from the industry%92s leading manufacturers%94.”
Clearing up the confusion over outsourcing | CNET News 08/14/2004
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Clearing up the confusion over outsourcing | Newsmakers | CNET News.com: “And that’s kind of similar to the way the Japanese economy kind of adopted the Deming principles?
Exactly. The Japanese adoption of Deming ultimately became a catalyst for an improvement of manufacturing processes worldwide. The same thing is going to play out around the Indians in IT processes. “
Economist.com | MONITOR: Gaurav Banga and Saurabh Aggarwbi: VeriChat 08/13/2004
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Economist.com | MONITOR: “Even more successful are Gaurav Banga and Saurabh Aggarwbi, based in Sunnyvale, California. They sell VeriChat, a nifty piece of software that allows people to send and receive instant messages on smartphones, or on PocketPC and Palm handheld computers. VeriChat is sold on a subscription basis, and brings in $20 per user per year, collected via PayPal. The company’s sales are expected to reach $1m this year.”
Economist.com | Spectrum policy 08/13/2004
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Economist.com Spectrum policy: “The sweet and low down : …[This] is promising because broadcasters inhabit the best kind of spectrum, the equivalent of beachfront property. The lower an electromagnetic wave’s frequency the better it is at penetrating rain, trees and walls, which is why television and FM radio tend to work in the basement, but why Wi-Fi signals have trouble with walls. According to the New America Foundation, the 1% of frequencies below 3GHz are worth more than the other 99% of spectrum between 3GHz and 300GHz.
Even a sliver of new unlicensed spectrum in the very low frequencies could therefore make an enormous difference. It could, for example, make possible a cheap alternative to cable and digital-subscriber line modems (for which roads have to be dug up and trees uprooted) in delivering high-speed internet access across –the last mile– to the consumer. “
g-metrics.com: Watch the googlecount* of your favorite site 08/13/2004
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g-metrics.com: “Watch the googlecount* of your favorite site or ‘keyword’:
- Is your blog getting more referers?
- How many pages are talking about your favorite subject?
- Are there more web pages about Linux or Windows? Oranges or Lemons?”
John Battelle’s Searchblog | The Web Time Axis 08/13/2004
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John Battelle’s Searchblog | The Web Time Axis: “If the web had a time axis, you could search constrained by webdate. You could ask questions like ’show me all results for my query from this time period…’ or ‘Tell me what was the most popular results for XYZ during the 3rd of May in 20XX.’ How about ’show me every reference to my great grandfather, born in 2050,’ asked by a great grandson in 2150? Impossible? Yeah, seems that way, but…so did a free gig of mail and the concept of the entire Internet in RAM. “
HughHewitt.com: The Boston Globe’s Anne Kornblut on John Kerry 08/13/2004
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HughHewitt.com: “The Boston Globe’s Anne Kornblut does a pretty good job of summarizing the pounding John Kerry took from the President and Vice President yesterday , but not even she can capture the impact such a focus takes on Kerry, especially after the week that he has had. Kerry’s recanting of his Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia narrative and the absurdity of his ‘magic hat’ tale already had him reeling when, with the backdrop of battles raging with radicals in Najaf, but with the real government of Iraq backing the U.S. offensive, the picture of a weak, indecisive, ’sensitive’ and truth-challenged commander-in-chief Kerry had obviously sent the already wobbly Kerry campaign into meltdown. New spokesmen appeared by the hour, and Drudge was adding his own brand of salt to Kerry’s wounds. Now Gallup has the president’s approval rating back above 50%, and the president holding the lead he established during Kerry’s big bounce period.
I expect a pro-Bush 527 to produce an ad shortly with ominous music, quoting John Kerry in 1979, 1986, and 1992 about his Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodian adventure, (Glenn’s post has the details from those three episodes), followed by more ominous music and quotes from his ‘magic hat’ interview in June of 2003, followed by a script read of his spokesman’s recanting the excellent adventure story, followed by a close: ‘John Kerry wasn’t telling the truth about Vietnam for 30 years”…
Read Hugh Hewitt each and every day.
"Ideas are like children… 08/13/2004
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“Ideas are like children; your own are always wonderful.”
-Anonymous
BBC begins open-source streaming challenge: Dirac 08/13/2004
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BBC begins open-source streaming challenge: “The BBC is quietly preparing a challenge to Microsoft and other companies jostling to reap revenues from video streams. It is developing code-decode (codec) software called Dirac in an open-source project aimed at providing a royalty-free way to distribute video .
The sums at stake are potentially huge because the software industry insists on payment per viewer, per hour of encoded content. This contrasts with TV technology, for which viewers and broadcasters alike make a one-off royalties payment when they buy their equipment.
Tim Borer, manager of the Dirac project at the BBC’s Kingswood Warren R&D lab, pointed out: ‘Coding standards for video were always free and open.”
Microsoft Research | A Slice of Time and Space 08/13/2004
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A Slice of Time and Space: “Cohen and his colleagues have invented a way to turn digital video into an animated cartoon. They’ve also developed techniques to combine animation with a still picture, which is what allowed Cohen’s daughter to ‘play’ in her painting.
Though others have turned a still image into a cartoon, turning a video into a cartoon is more challenging. ‘Some people say it’s easy,’ said Cohen. ‘They use the technique for still images and apply it frame-by-frame. The problem is, if you do this, the images jump all over the place. The background shakes around a lot, and each frame looks like a different drawing. We want to make the video look like a normal cartoon where the motion is smooth.’ “
The Industry Standard | JD Lasica | The visual Web 08/11/2004
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… a Better Way to Manage Remote, Distibuted Software Teams… 08/09/2004
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Take a Glance at a Better Way to Manage Remote, Distributed Software Teams:
“One such use is to collect metrics to form an administrative dashboard. This concept is not new; customer relations management (CRM) and sales management software have used the idea for years. In his book Software Project Management: A Unified Framework, (Addison-Wesley) Walker Royce suggested the use of a similar concept in software development for software managers. Today, you can see the concept evolving in interfaces such as SourceForge, where a glance at a project’s home page can provide an overview of the development status of a project, number of contributors, number of pending tasks, bugs, and so forth (see Figure 2). “
Next-generation search tools to refine results | CNET News 08/09/2004
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Next-generation search tools to refine results | CNET News.com:
“Other tools, such as Inxight and GeoFusion, produce graphical representations of data obtained through searches. GeoFusion, which makes software that can extrapolate from geographic data, was able to render a map of the movements of a tagged tuna.
By contrast, Inxight’s software creates a map of relationships between names and topics. A search on the White House and business showed that Haliburton is the corporation linked most often to the White House. In a similar fashion, IBM’s own WebFountain project is used to test how cohesive certain blogging communities are by how quickly and in unison they react to news events.”
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | the vloggers 08/08/2004
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“Mr Bouwman is the vanguard of the latest internet trend: video logging or vlogging. One step up from the now familiar internet blogger, vloggers upload personal video clips of everything from the US Democratic convention to what they had for their tea, via rants about tax rises and conspiracy theories. “
