It is remarkably easy to use…really.

It is remarkably easy to use...really.

Posted on 2007/01/12 by alexandra

Another one of my friends joined the good forces of the world – the community of Mac users. This time a really dear friend of mine and as always when I have talked my friends into getting a Mac I want them to enjoy their new investment. For some reason I still get a bit surprised to see that the Mac is actually as easy and pretty as I told them. My friend more or less became the prefect example of a good switcher when she immediately figured out how iPhoto worked and started doing creative stuff with all her images right away…she stayed up until 6 o’clock in the morning just because it was that fun. Amazing, isn’t it?! It is like the magic of Mac OS X brings out the urge to do stuff that for some reason (Windows!) seem a little bit to hard before.

BTW, soon Apple need to start some kind of kick-back program for all us how converts people in masses. I have soon passed generating 50 Macs 🙂

Steve Jobs Keynote

Posted on 2007/01/11 by alexandra

Well, of course I followed it though I wish Apple would broadcast live as it did a years ago. However, a few hundred thousand of us Apple-fans still gather at our computers to watch (or rather read) live text comments about the content of the keynote. That means that someone in Moscone Center is sitting with a MacBook and a mobile phone and updating a webpage with text and the occasional picture. Still it is very exciting!

No matter how some how you put it Steve Jobs know how capture the attention of the audience. The whole spin before the keynote finally explodes when he enters the stage. He does it gracefully rather than a jumping and screeming as Steve Ballmer from Microsoft does. The audience loves Steve and shows that by giving him an really warm and long applause. Not screaming becuase Ballmer screems. Steve´s greatness is most visible when he invites guests from other big companies on the stage. Usually I stop listening after a minute or two. No passion and only corporate bullshit. Steve talks to me but these other business executives talk to the shareholders – big difference in tone. This year the CEO of Cingular gave one of the worst (and longest) guest appearances at any MacWorld.

Speaking of MacWorld. This actually was a MacWorld ’07 Keynote but it did not actually contain much about Macs at all. This year Steve started by introducing Apple TV which is an iTunes extender to be connected to your plasma TV or projector. I need a device like that but I am not sure that it is the best one for me. For starters, movies and TV-shows can only be bought in the US for now so everything I would like watch most likely would need to be converted to the QuickTime with Sorenson or MPEG-4 with or without H.264. It can sync one computers and recieve streams from 5 more.

Next up was one of longest rumoured devices ever in the Apple world. The iPhone. A stunning piece of equipment that to me looked just right when it comes to software, user interface and industrial design. No keyboard – just an advanced input sensitive touchscreen. Brilliant and I suddenly just looked down to my Sony Ericsson P990i and smile a bit. The difference in handling is dramatic. My 990i has all the features but frankly they are way to hard to use.

A few hours later Apple now usually posts a link to a video-on-demand version of the keynote in QuickTime. It cane be seen here

The Apple rumour mill is gearing up again

Posted on 2006/12/29 by alexandra

MacWorld 07 is getting closer and the Mac world is getting more and more excited. All the rumour sites are bristling with news about possible product launches or modifications of existing products. Everybody is expecting the iTV of course and possibly some new iPod model. But then there is a Quad-core Mac Pro workstation, a ultrathin 12 inch MacBook Pro and of course the mobile phone….

Well, Steve Jobs is about to enter the stage again at 0900 on January the 9th and then we will know more. For those of you that have no idea of what this is all about have a look at a past event here:

WWDC 2006 Keynote

SOA, Web Services and EAI

Posted on 2006/12/07 by alexandra

Today I finished a very interesting course here in Stockholm. Even though things like Service Oriented Architectures (SAO) were not new to me I found it very interesting to have some lectures about the different technologies behind this. Otherwise there is a risk that it becomes not only more than a number of buzz-words. The first SOA part contained a good disussion about what a service is, how small or big it should be and how handle versioning of services. The second part focused more on the technologies behind Web Service and how standard web servers together with a few standardized protocols provide a mechanism for server-to-server communication. The last part covering Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) contained a lot of news for me. These EAI-products works like enterprise hubs for integration efforts and makes it possible to handle large-scale integration projects where just Web Services would render “integration spagetti”. A new flavour of these products are Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) which also looks very promising.

Information modeling and software integration

Posted on 2006/10/07 by alexandra

The past weeks have as interesting as they have been about hard work. Me and my closest collegue have become some kind of chief software architects for the upcoming experiment called Demo 06h that will take place later this autumn. It have involved a lot of work to coordinate all the different functions that are needed to support a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) Headquarters. The setting for this experiment is focused on something called Effects-Based Approach to Operations (EBAO). Basically it is a new process and method to plan, execute and assess multinational crisis operations. This concept is essentially a new process on the same level as NATO’s Operational Planning Process (OPP). Being involved in the design of what we call the Collaborative Information Environment (CIE) is the most interesting (and fun!) thing I have done in my career so far. I realize more and more that what I like most to work with is integrating modern information technology with organizational processes. I like to mention two different tools that we have worked with. The first one is Marratech which is a collaboration client supporting video, audio, presence, text chat, whyteboard and shared desktops. The other one is a very advanced content management platform called Documentum.

MacWorld – Intel Inside

Posted on 2006/01/11 by alexandra

Yesterday it was time for Stevenote again (Steve Jobs + Keynote = Stevenote). Apple´s famous CEO Steve Jobs entered the scene on Tuesday morning at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the traditional opening keynote of MacWorld SF. The rumormill had been spinning for weeks about this and the most sites expected the first Intel-based Macs to be launch ahead of scheduled. They were right.

iMacs and the new laptop called MacBook Pro was introduced, sporting brand new Intel Duo Core processors making the laptop at least four times faster than the PowerBook G4 I am writing this on. I want one of these…imagine doing video compression with them!

Other new included an FM-tuner for iPod, new versions of iLife and iWork. Oh…watching the video-on-demand stream in H.264 with my 92 inch screen was really nice 🙂