Just Rants

Rant 1. Twitter and Iranian election – if we did not have tweets about the election, would we have gotten better or worse news coverage.  One thing I know is that cable news ‘reporters’ would have had to work harder.   http://iran.twazzup.com/

Rant 2. I don’t mind being a PC (Microsoft’s new marketing campaign), as long as you won’t change my license agreement during the life of ‘my PC’ and explain why Windows 7 costs more than Vista? Developing software should focus on lowering the cost like hardware manufacturers have been able to?

Rant 3. There is no longer a separation between personal and work life for knowledge workers.  I myself have talked about disconnecting, but I am a  knowledge worker and I do not have enough control over my thoughts to disconnect my mind from resolving problems.  So if there is no separation of our thoughts, than the systems we use for personal and work life are equally difficult to separate.  As such, IT groups must recognize this fact and development methods to deal with the merging of personal and work in how people use their systems.  I have a Macbook and a Blackberry that I use equally for personal and work related email, surfing, on-line reading, listening to both iTunes music and technology podcasts.  I bought the Macbook and the Blackberry on my own dime.  Companies supplying work computers for work only are sending conflicting messages.  You have a company phone and are allowed to use it for personal calls, even though you the company may charge back those calls.  The same for company cars, credit cards and so on.  But not company computers.  IT and business consider how long this policy can stand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker

Rant 4. I go to the Fast Company website and their top technology story is on Playstation 3.  Really, just really.  Arrrgh.  Http://www.fastcompany.com/topics/technology

Rant 5. Gartner, then Forrester states that IT spending will be down, but coming up by the end of 2009.  Realize this that it will be a long time before we ever see IT spending like the 90’s.  IT is not special.  IT wanted to be integrated into the business with full business alignment.  Well, thanks to the recession you either got IT pushed back to the mail room and asked just to keep the lights on stuff going or IT was pulled into the business and told to deliver bottom line impacting solutions and integrate itself into strategic and tactical operations at all levels.  No more dabbling with new business services or letting the Dell’s, Amazon’s and Wal-Mart’s of the world be the only examples.  If your business truly believes in IT you have to have an ROI for most of everything, outside of some (yes, just some) compliance activities.  So, step up or sit down and stop whining about business not understanding IT.

They don’t want to understand the history of SOA or the psychology of crowd sourcing.  They want results.

Rant 6.  Hospitals found that the top ROI for going paperless was the reduction of bacteria caused by the paper files being shuttled from floor to floor.  Therefore, reducing the costs of sanitizing maintenance and issues around staph infections.  Most ROI for paperless is not the cost of the paper (though the space to file it often is), the printing or the speed improvement of instant sharing.  The ROI’s tend to be the impact the paper process has on other business processes.  Realize that by pushing paperless you will uncover those hidden processes that are causing profit loss.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126173721.htm
End of rants.