Year: 2007

Segway declared a moped

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Segway

Today it was an article in a big newspaper called Dagens Nyheter (DN) about a disabled person who wanted to use a SegWay personal transporter to increase his mobility. Unfortunately the The Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket) has declared the Segway to be moped. However, they also decided that it had not all the equipment needed to be used as one so it is not allowed on public roads. And if you are using one in a closed area you are required to use a moped helmet since it is almost a moped. So this disabled person needs a special permit to be able to legally use his beloved Segway. Apparently a lot of paper work with doctor’s statement and all.

This is so typically Sweden. The Segway is ok to use in the US and a lot of European countries but not here of course. I had the pleasure of using it several times and my experience is that it is far different from a moped. And you usually ride differently and more carefully than a moped. Show me a moepd that can maneuver that precise and to be able to stop almost as once. No, that is just stupid. I had actually been thinking of getting one if I eventually get accepted at the National Defense College here in Stockholm. It would be so cool and so “me” to ride one to work for that year. Well, I guess not…I have to go to Disney World to ride one again I guess. Swedes will certainly miss a whole lot of fun with those futuristic machines…

Microsoft and its methods to push their own formats as a standard

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I can’t help saying “see for yourself how they really are” when I am reading about the latest scandal in the Swedish Standardization Organisation (SIS) regarding standards for document formats. Open Document (ODF) used by the open source package Open Office/Star Office/NeoOffice has already been selected as a standards by ISO. However, as usual Microsoft has no intention of supporting this and is instead pushing its own XML-based format called OOXML. This standard is up for a vote in the ISO in a few days and Sweden’s SIS had recently a vote to decide how Sweden will vote. Microsoft used promises of marketing assistance to urge their partners to become members of SIS and thus being able to vote. As a result the majority shifted and OOXML was accepted as a standard. Computer Sweden have written about it here. Fortunately the SIS have now declared the vote not guilty based on formal reasons which Dagens Nyheter writes about here. Why is it so hard for Microsoft to participate in international standardization efforts instead of insisting of doing it alone all the time? Don’t they realize that all giants sooner or later will lose its grips on the market just like IBM did 20 years ago….

IBM has now become a good example how to embrace standards and still make money. An even better example is Sun Microsystems that is showing great profits after lots of open source initatives. Even Apple, a company that lots of people used to think of as a very proprietary company nowadays not only implements every standard it finds but base their whole operating system on open source code in the form of FreeBSD/Darwin.

It is not about techonology…actually it is.

Posted on by alexandra

I recently read a post written by Andrew McAfee who is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. It made me think of my own retoric a bit. I guess everybody agrees that IT is here to support the business and not vice versa. However, in real life situation I often find myself in somewhat of a missionary role. We all want to be able to work smarter, solve our problems quicker and all of that. The question is how that is possible without knowing the possibilities of existing and emerging technologies. All historic references also point out that when a new technology arrives we have a tendency to just integrate it into what we do know as merely and add-on. It takes years before someone figures out how to do business different not just a little bit better.

Therefore in my evangelism I often find myself saying: “Well, it is not about technology, really, it is about business/processes” or something else which sound like “soft” issues. The idea is to make it easier for those non-technical people that they need to be engaged in this and not just expect us to install yet another black box which do magic stuff they do not understand. Well, professor McAfee made me think I was wrong. Maybe I should say: “it is about the technology, also”.

The idea is that if the leaders do not understand or do not even care how the systems we are buying for the company or organization how will they be able to develop their organization, their methods and make things run more efficient. When more and more of the things you need to monitor and control resides within ERP-, ECM- or CRM-systems they need to know how they work on some level. Especially when facing a need for change which can be facilitated by taking a new approach on the IT-infrastructure. Platforms from different vendors ARE different and not caring about that can prove very costly in the long run. Platforms also do change and it is vital to track that in order to know if to stay in the boat or jump onto  the next one. Technical understandning of these complex systems is vital and the way they are architected can possibly influence they way thousands of people work.
So, it is not all about technology but it certainly does matter what is happening in the black box.

Gua’uld langauge…

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It isn’t as advanced as JRR Tolkien’s languages or Klingon for that matter but it is interesting the Stargate fans has compiled a lot of information about the Gua’uld language spoken by the Gua’uld and the Jaffa.

I guess one of the reasons why I like Stargate SG-1 is that it is a lot about the danger that arises when a large number of people left their destiny in the hands of false gods who use advanced technology to perform “miracles”. It begins with the enslavement of ancient Egypt by the Gua’uld and later with the preechers of the Ori who kills everybody who do not believe. Of course the rest of the component in the show about the possibility of contact with life on other planets and how to react to different ways of living the life. Of course all of that is present here on earth but the added mixture of different life forms, advanced technology and huge distances makes it even more exciting.

Bad weather in Munich

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It was nice to be out on the road again. I had never been to München before and on Tuesday night we had some time to explore the city somewhat. The weather was terrible – cold and raining. Not what I had expected because the last time I was in Germany this time of the year it was terribly hot instead. However, I have now officially been inside a traditional beer hall. It wasn’t as scary as I had first thought, I guess it was nicer and friendlier than I had expected.

Workwise we visited the iAbg complex outside München where we had a workshop within the MNE 5 project. What strikes me is the importance of understanding the Service Oriented Approach (SOA) even in our line of business. However, defining what a service actually is and what services that should be described in the technical architecture is not easy.

Going to Germany

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Today I will be going to Germany on a business trip. Someone that asked me what I was doing today asked what I was doing there and I said it was a business trip and he looked a bit sad and said something like “oh that is a bummer”. I don’t agree. I like that my job allows me to travel a lot and usually the workshops and conferences I go to are very interesting. So combining interesting work with new experiences of different countries does not seem to be such a bad deal for me. The only drawback is that my cab leaves for the airport at 0545 in the morning which is very early for someone who has to wake up more or less three hours before closing the door on my way out.

iPhone

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The product that so many Mac-users have been waiting for has now been launched and what a launch it was. I especially like the story about Steve Wozniak waiting in line with a specially designed t-shirt stating “the line starts here”. However, it is again very interesting to listen to people and media trying do their best of making the iPhone an irrelevant “hype thing”. There seem to be an almost Microsoft-like incentive to crack down on anything Apple is doing today with some simple arguments around “what’s new, actually, it is not exactly the first phone around”. To me that is just missing the point or perhaps a blindness of abvious flaws of current products in the market. I own a Sony Ericsson P990i and it is a phone that have all the features when reading the specifications. Fine, but it is a terrible user experience. There seem to have been little or no usability testing and the updates they send out does not seem to fix anything. To me that counts and that is what Apple seem to have a good job fixing. Just as it is a bit more fun and easy to use a Mac, I believe it is more fun and easy to use an iPhone. Apple IS good at creating a spin and a hype but unlike Microsoft the actual products they sell are great and not full of bugs. The reason for that is that Steve Jobs strive for perfection and that kind of corporate culture do count in the long run.

As a sidenote, if you want to have a look at Alfresco on the iPhone have a look here

Hooked on Stargate SG-1

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I remember watching the Stargate movie at the cinemas in the 90-ies and the story really struck a nerve in me. It was a twist of science fiction that got me. It somehow seemed a little bit more realistic in some way and still had all the ingredients of exploring the unknown. The thing I remember the most was not liking the ending and that I desperately wanted to see more. Therefore it is both strange and unfortunate (as Teal´c put it) that I did not really discovered the TV show until this year.
Stargate SG-1 is a wonderful show about exploration of new worlds with a lot of fun and interesting characters. Since I work in the Swedish Air Force and is somewhat a techno nerd I can of course identify with Captain Samantha Carter (I know she is promoted along the way :-). Reading about the show and how fun all the people in the production crew seem to have is probably the reason why it turned out so good. There seemed to be a special kind of feeling among everyone involved and I heard they took really good care of the fans when they were invited to the set. I am really sad that MGM has decided to not make an 11th season. However, I really look forward to the two feature lengths movies coming up soon. I hope (and beg) that MGM will reconsider and at least make one season more of the show!

Previously I have not considered going to any of these Sci-Fi conventions but I would actually like to go to a Stargate convention once to meet some of the crew and talk to other fans about the whole story. There are so many things to explore further. Everything from how the script writers actually thought to facts and plots that need some clarifications. It would also be interesting to know more how the actors relate to their characters and the story of the show.

The Apple TV isn’t so bad after all…

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I recently decided to buy an Apple TV to use together with my LCD projector. I had gotten tired of using my laptop as the playback device since I always had to move cables around. Thought it would be good to have everything permanently setup for once. Earlier I had some doubts about the Apple TV since it is a bit crippled compared to other solutions out there including using an old Xbox with the hacked media center application. But buying something from Microsoft to my home seemed a little bit too much for a Mac-person like me. The main drawback of the Apple TV is of course the limited set of codecs it supports. However, that turned out to not be a big factor when I discovered VisualHub which is a great media transcoding application. It eats a lot of useful formats and has presets for converting to the Apple TV or an iPod and even adds the content to the iTunes library. So when everything is converted it is automagically synched to the harddrive of my Apple TV and is ready to watch.

The image quality is great even on my big screen. I use component cables now and the 720p PAL resolution and for HD-encoded clips it looks just great. The interface is very good looking and it show it comes from Apple which I really like. The recent updates also adds content from YouTube and it also works just fine. Even there the image quality surprised me. Not as good as the HD-clips I have of course but not that much worse than standard resolution TV sometimes.

Nice flight back home – in business class

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Flying in SAS Business Class

On Sunday we left a warm and sunny Orlando to go back to Stockholm via Chicago. At the Orlando International Airport we just had to spend a few more dollars on NASA stuff in their new airport shop. I bought a pink and grey NASA t-shirt 😉

When we checked in at the counter at O’Hare international airport they just swapped our boarding cards for new ones and told us we had been given a complementary upgrade to Business class. I was so happy about this – not so much about the better food and so but for the comfort of being able to lay down more or less completely. Even if I can sit for a few hours on a soft chair now, spending 8+ hours in an aircraft chair is still uncomfortable. So the trip back home turned out to be a wonderful experience. SAS have installed a new chair called the Business Sleeper in their aircraft and they are just wonderful. I did some work on my computer (power for the computer is in the chair) adn then put my chair into sleeping mode and actually managed to get a few hours of sleep. The food was just great by the way. For starters we had grilled marinated prawns with mango salsa and for the main course I selected lamb loin with Dijon mustard crest with Red Bliss potatoes, sautéed mixed mushrooms and mustard sauce. We arrived a little early to a rainy and cold Arlanda where a friend of mine met me with my car.