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.

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.

Links for 02-15-2010

• John Nack on Adobe: Adobe is "sabotaging" HTML5?? - The response seems fair as far as it goes although it's also true that as someone notes in the comments: "Adobe has made it *extremely* easy for people to believe this kind of thing, and it's almost entirely self-inflicted. When you look at the Flash team's response to criticism, the tone is really clear: "Flash is doing just great, and if you don't like it, you're some kind of Steve Jobs Flavor-Aid swilling nutbar. You can't have the internet without flash, and if you think otherwise, you're a fanatic.""
• Test Your Geography Knowledge
• Metropolis: The Restored Sci-Fi Masterpiece, Streaming Live Now (For the First Time!) - Techland - TIME.com - Apparently a restored (with much thought lost footage) version of Metropolis debuted at the Berlin Film Festival.
• Coding Horror: International Backup Awareness Day - "Don't rely on your host or anyone else to back up your important data. Do it yourself. If you aren't personally responsible for your own backups, they are effectively not happening."
• FRONTLINE: digital nation: watch the full program | PBS - “I teach the most brilliant students in the world,” says MIT professor and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle, who describes the challenges of teaching students who are surfing the Internet and texting during class. “But they have done themselves a disservice by drinking the Kool-Aid and believing that a multitasking learning environment will serve their best purposes. There are just some things that are not amenable to being thought about in conjunction with 15 other things.”
• Things that Make me go Hmm - A chart showing just how small Xbox (and for that matter online services) are in the context of Microsoft as a whole.
• Galleries / Photography / High Speed | Fubiz™ - Colorful high speed photos.
• Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel - Digital Cameras - Gizmodo
• dtoy_vs_byokal - A virtual kaleidoscope.

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."

Links for 02-10-2010

• The Red Line Tour of Innovation in Boston - Innovation Economy - Boston.com
• Studio Lighting Tutorials » StudioLighting.net
• Light Right - A Crash Course In Lighting Video, John Jackman
• DIY Light Kit | Backyard FX
• Once More unto the Breach: IT Customer Buying Patterns and Vendor Competition - "Novell's opportunities aren't around offering cheaper support, but have to be looking forward to the next ground they can grab in customers's minds."
• Top 10 Super Bowl tech ads

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.

Links for 02-05-2010

• Albert Exergian's modernist TV posters | Television & radio | The Guardian - Great examples of really distilling down a concept.
• WCBS NEWSRADIO 880 - Heinz Revamps Ketchup Packets - This is actually pretty cool in a way that makes you ask why this wasn't done years ago.
• Amazon vs. Apple: What Should E-Book Prices Be? - The Atlantic Business Channel - The price elasticity is the big question here. The other side of the argument is that because people have limited time, they'll only buy so many books no matter how cheap they are.
• Dollhouse - Big Dumb Object - Agreed. When I first looked, it didn't hook me. (In general, I'm less amazed by Whedon's stuff than many seem to be.) But the second season got quite good. I also agree that the way TV works in the US, many good series continue on for way too many beats.

Links for 02-02-2010

• Is BYOPC Really Key to Attracting Millennials? | Andi Mann – Übergeek - "This then has significant implications for CIOs and others looking at BYOPC. Despite the validity (or otherwise) of any other claims in favour of BYOPC, no organization should be looking to BYOPC to attract and retain staff from the echo boom generation. They would be better off looking at a dozen or more other important factors than spending the significant time, effort, and money on implementing a BYOPC program."
• Panopticlick - Your browser fingerprint may be unique.
• Why People Don't Check Voicemail Anymore - well, that, and Go... on Twitpic - Yep, about right.
• New Echo Nest APIs demoed at the Stockholm Music Hackday « Music Machinery
• ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Creator Speaks - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com - "It’s not quite as impressive as scoring, say, the last known interview with J. D. Salinger, but The Cleveland Plain Dealer has landed what is believed to be the first interview in nearly 20 years with Bill Watterson, the reclusive creator of the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes.” "
• Apple's iPad vs. Amazon's Kindle: It's not zero sum | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com - "Frankly, I just want a series of paperthin screens that can tether to one computing device and break off depending on the use case I needed at that very minute. We’re building an arsenal of gadgets largely over the size of a screen." Interesting thought although plug-and-play modularity of this sort is very hard to get right. And, so long as we use the iTunes sync model, I'm not sure there's a big win in that modularity. (The big problem with multiple computers is their "care and feeding.")