Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Links for 02-23-2010

  • Can a Chameleon Change its Spots? » ocb - Citrix Community - "If the use case involves the customer buying, installing and running Linux to achieve virtualization, KVM will eventually do a fine job. If on the other hand, the user expects to deploy a virtualization platform that is entirely guest OS agnostic, using a complete virtual infrastructure platform then a type-1 hypervisor that is OS agnostic (xen.org Xen Cloud Platform, Citrix XenServer, OracleVM, VMware vSphere) is what they will go for. I have previously made the case that OS-bundled hypervisors have both inherent advantages and disadvantages in penetrating the market:" I don't necessarily disagree but ease of acquisition is a big factor here too as many technologies become 'good enough.'
  • Matrix: Impacts to Alumni Organizations In A World of Social Networks « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing - Interesting discussion of how Alumni Associations fit with social media. Good insight that (at least from the perspective of alumni), associations are largely middlemen.
  • It's the End of Cisco As We Know It (CSCO) - "I don't know how Cisco could ever repair the damage it's causing to its own heart and soul these days. That might sound like a heap of touchy-feely hippie talk to ardent Cisco investors, but I truly believe that Cisco is heading down a wrong track that will inflict serious damage on its lofty stock price. Furthermore, it's way too late to do anything about it."
  • The key to Apple's success? Focus | The Open Road - CNET News - "For start-ups and earlier-stage companies, focus is the key driver for growth, because it allows an organization to pull together in the same direction. Which direction it is is far less important than choosing a direction to attack."
  • Novell and Red Hat: Taking Linux to the Cloud | Open Source Journal - "It is interesting to see how Open source rivals Red Hat and Novell have transferred their Linux warfare to the cloud. As both companies seek to use their open source history to advantage on the web platform by spouting standard mantras about avoiding vendor lock-ins and low cost, they have also taken different approaches on other counts when taking their cloud services to market."
  • Observations on changes in the analyst ecosystem » SageCircle Blog
  • Olympus and Panasonic rumors - As some of you know, this is one of the most interasting areas of camera development to me right now.
  • Search is the Web's fun and wicked problem - O'Reilly Radar - "
    Search is the Web's most powerful and frustrating tool."
  • tecosystems » Maemo + Moblin = MeeGo: The Q&A - "Q: You’re arguing, then, that purpose built devices are the rule, rather than the exception here?
    A: Certainly seems that way. There appear to be two general user paradigms: general purpose, and device. " There are degrees within device certainly (e.g. app store model vs. fixed function) but the basic point, I think, holds.
  • SF Signal: SF Fanatic: Current Science Fiction On Television - Agree more than I disagree with this rundown (though I haven't watched everything listed).
  • Data center hardware wars: VARs take on vendors - "VARs and integrators take a different view on that "one-throat" mantra for data center hardware. Said one East Coast Cisco and HP VAR: "Absolutely, customers want one vendor, but we're the vendor! They're working with us to build a multi-vendor solution that suits their needs." " This is an area of real tention with the vendor drive towards more integrated systems.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Links for 02-18-2010

  • The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com | The Social - CNET News - I'm not quite sure what to think of this. On the one hand, I don't really see it as a problem today. On the other, though, we've probably only seen the tip of the implications associated with massive public mashing up of personal information.
  • Getting Geeked for ‘Glee’ - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com - "If you’re yearning for a television series where religious attention to picayune details isn’t mandatory (and which isn’t “Gossip Girl”), the folks at Fox have provided this preview of coming episodes of “Glee,” which returns to the network’s schedule in April." Much as I like the intricate serial dramas on TV, there is a very real limit to my bandwidth for that kind of show.
  • The Online Photographer: We Hear From Harlan - "
    Well, to my surprise, yesterday I got a delightful little note back, typed on a tiny square of paper (reproduced here more or less actual size), no doubt with the ancient manual Olympia typewriter Harlan is famous for continuing to be faithful to. Pronouncing himself "pleased and stunned," he says "YOU are the first—the VERY FIRST—mensch & Good Guy to ever send me a payment for the work YouTube, et al, have mis-appropriated." "
  • Clay Shirky: Doing work, or Doing Work? | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM
  • SFFaudio - Science fiction audiobooks.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Links for 02-15-2010

Friday, February 12, 2010

Links for 02-12-2010

  • Cool Tools: TeleKast - Open source teleprompter software. Sounds like it could be handy for vblogs.
  • Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Extreme Scale Computing - "Finally, it is important not to underestimate the impact of exascale breakthroughs to more capacity oriented machines, as well as to smaller machines that share the same technologies, architecture, software and applications. Many of the innovation that will enable us to develop exascale class supercomputers will yield relatively inexpensive petascale class systems as well as smaller ones. The wider the access to such families of systems, the richer the overall ecosystem including applications, users and technologies."
  • What's Right With Reality TV - TIME - "The Jersey Shore--ites have never known a world in which hooking up drunk in a house paid for by a Viacom network was not an option."

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Where does Analyst Blogging Belong?

Around the end of last week, Carter Lusher kicked off a mini-firestorm (among the rather small percentage of the Internet that cares about Industry Analysts) by reporting that Forrester Research was apparently implementing some new blogging policies.

I’ll let you read Josh Bernoff’s post for the details but basically:

  1. Posts pertaining to an analyst’s area of research are now to be posted on Forrester’s Web site
  2. Analysts can continue to maintain personal blogs on topics that are not related to their work at Forrester

Now, some of the reaction seems to have been an initial knee-jerk response to Carter’s initial posting that left open the possibility that Forrester was banning personal blogs period. This seemed unlikely to me but, until Forrester PR fleshed out the specifics of the policy changes, it’s what a lot of people assumed. And it’s very understandable why a lot of people (including myself) would have considered such to be way over the line.

I understand the negative reaction to the actual policy far less. I tend to try to stay out of these meta-blogging and meta-analyst topics but I’ve been having a fair bit of back-channel conversation on this, so I wanted to just summarize a few thoughts here.

As many of you reading this probably know, I work for a boutique industry analyst firm, Illuminata. And I blog.

I started blogging on my own site in 2003. Truth be told, I started in part to give a bit of a kick in the pants to an Illuminata blogging platform project that was taking longer to get going than I would have liked.

We soon got our official blog going and that’s where I post my short-form Illuminata research that happens to be published using a blog (Wordpress) technology platform. I continue to also post on my personal site; many of those postings still relate to technology but of a sort, such as consumer product reviews, that are not appropriate as Illuminata research.

And, make no mistake, when an analyst publishes a blog related to their coverage area, it is viewed as research. It may be shorter. It may be less formal. It may be published under tighter time constraints. But I assure you that if I make a factual error or state an opinion that doesn’t sit well with someone, no one at that vendor cares that it was published in a blog rather than a research note.

(Yes, there is some level of understanding that short, quick pieces may not go through as rigorous a review process and may not provide as complete a context for the opinions expressed as a longer piece, but my basic point stands.)

I write all this as preamble to the point that we never had any real discussion about the assumption that when we wrote about topics pertaining to Illuminata focus areas, we would publish those on Illuminata’s site rather than our own. For one thing, it seemed clear that we were producing this work as an employee and it belonged under the Illuminata brand—with our bylines.

The other thing though is that I don’t think I would necessarily have even wanted to combine it with my personal blog. Illuminata aggregated our enterprise IT writings in a way that provided a certain critical mass and awareness. In addition, although I know not everyone feels this way, I like the freedom to have some leeway with my own blog. That doesn’t mean I think I can say and write anything with impunity. But it does mean I can post some vacation pictures or make a political statement without worrying that doing so would be out of place in a 'professional blog. For me, maintaining at least some nominal separation between personal and professional has merit. (Although, to be sure, I don’t do so on twitter.)

And while different firms may have different policies, Illuminata’s approach seems pretty typical to me. Even where the blogs and analysts are most clearly individualistic, there’s usually a very clear connection to the firm name and brand.

I have come to see points on the other side of this argument as it’s raged over the past few days. For example, I can understand the reluctance of someone with a well-established personal/professional blog to abandon it upon joining a firm. And I can understand why an analyst would like to take their content with them if they leave. However, I don’t think it’s too cavalier to note that when people, especially high-profile people, join or leave organizations that often forces changes to what they can say, where they can say it, and how they present themselves in public.

It’s easy to see why people react instinctively to what they perceive as a stifling of individuality. And perhaps, as some commenters have suggested, these policies about blogging reflect deeper cultural or policy shift; I don’t know. But in the end, a policy that puts analyst research on the analyst site doesn’t sound unreasonable.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Links for 02-05-2010

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Links for 02-02-2010