Technology First Blog

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Tuesday, 23 February 2010 11:04

How Does Google's Search Algorithm Learn From You?

Written by Phil Herzing
Wired Magazine has an interesting piece on how Google's fabled search algorithm works.  If you want to get noticed, here's some meaty information you'll need.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010 09:43

The Emotion of Technology Change

Written by Paul Moorman

I began my career in Information Technology back at Wright State University in 1974.  I didn't know anything about computers when I started, but a friend that was at WSU at the time showed me some programs and I was attracted by the logic, their math-like quality and the promise of avoiding a bunch of annoying liberal arts classes.  But little in my college experiences prepared me for how much emotions play in the technology field, either good or bad.  I've collected a few of those experiences in this article to share with you.  And if you're ever needing an ice-breaker when in the land of techies, just ask then about their most hair-raising experience.  You're sure to hear an earful and get the conversation going.

 

I'll start with the worst feeling I've ever had.  I was new with a company back in 1980 and was working hard at getting something or another to work.  I was sitting at the master console of the company mainframe and realized I needed to stop any new work from starting in the system.  My brain instantly stormed two possibilities.  I could "purge the initiators" or I could "hold the queue".  Unfortunately my fingers interpreted an unfortunate combination of the two and decided to "purge the queue".  Before I thought twice my fingers had entered the requisite command and the system began to get rid of everything waiting to be run or the output of everything already complete.  When my brain figured this out a few microseconds too late, it was beyond stopping.  My stomach fell like a lead weight and my hands wanted to reach inside the console and take it back.  It was all I could to avoid vomiting on the computer room floor.  Fortunately I worked with some experienced, and nice, folks who had "been there and done that" and cut me a break.  I just wanted to hide.

 

On the other side of the emotional teeter-totter, one of most positively exhilarating experiences was back in the early days of the Internet.  Like most of us I  rode the modem speed curve as fast as I could.  Loved 2400 bps (bits per second), died and went to heaven when 9600 bps became reality and dreamed of the day that the promised 56,000 bps would actually work on my home PC.  The intellect could only imagine what a really high-speed connection would be like.  My time came during a trip to the IBM Raleigh North Carolina briefing center, where I stayed at the Washington Duke hotel.  I had heard they had a T-1 (1.544 megabits per second) to the Internet and couldn't wait to plug in and take off.  Yes, it was fast.  Yes, it was awesome.  But the surprising emotion was a sudden realization of the potential of the Internet.  Anything, anywhere, and in an instant.  It was as if, in my mind, the Berlin Wall had fallen that day.  I sat in my hotel room, my world changed, forever.

 

Some of the best emotions are deep-rooted in our past.  In 2009, one-quarter of Americans do not have a landline for telephone service and that number is increasing very day.  But I grew up with only a landline.  To date myself, when I was growing up my family had a six-digit phone number.  Crestview-3-8-3-2, which translated to 2-7-3-8-3-2 (the "C' and "r" in Crestview translating to "2-7").  And we had heavy rotary phones that rang like church bells and all the kids (five of us) would run to answer it when it rang.  And you actually had to walk over to where the phone was to use it.  Imagine that.  With that as a background we speed ahead to last year, 2009, when my wife and I, after moving from a "real landline" to a cable-provided "fake landline" the year before, decided to "cut the cord", eliminate the cordless phone and go with our cell phones and Skype.  In our heads, not a big deal.  In the emotions of our heart, a totally different deal.  A solemn call to Time-Warner.  The removal of the phones from each level of the house.  The feeling of being cut-off from the world.  Took awhile to feel whole again.  And we do miss the loud ringing on occasion.

 

Finally, I bought my first app-phone late last year, a Motorola Droid.  I've had an iPod Touch for a couple years, like the apps, but always feeling Wi-Fi needy.  I've had a love-fest with the Motorola RAZR since they first came out and have owned three.  But the Droid, again very unexpectedly, came with a stronger emotional response.  I was connected.  Always.  I could look it up.  Anywhere.  I took my stuff with me.  Anything at all.  Two email accounts, two calendars, music, videos, Twitter, Facebook, chats and messages.  Maps, alarm clock and directions, oh my!  Excited, sure, it was a dream come true.  But the unexpected emotion that swelled up was that of being overwhelmed.  Too much.  Too often.  Out of control.  Maybe some "dial tone therapy" would help.

Tuesday, 02 February 2010 18:17

The Outcome-Value Statement

Written by Paul Moorman

This article describes a concise and effective method to communicate a project, a requirement or even an organization's purpose to multiple audiences, each listening for their part of the message.  It does this by linking the work being done to the value being delivered through its expected outcome or outcomes.

 

The work being done can be the list of various projects or the major components of projects.  It can a list of requirements for a new service or a new set of rules being considered.  This is the place to begin creating the Outcome-Value statement.  Simply write them down in a list with the most significant items first.  While the list could be very lengthy, it's best to summarize enough to keep its size to ten or less.

 

The next step is to write down the Values you expect to gain. These fall into three categories: cost, service and risk.   It's not time yet to link the value to the work being done.  Just list the values for the entire effort.  It's okay to make these somewhat fuzzy for the purpose of this effort.  It's not intended to replace a business case analysis.  So a statement of "reduce maintenance costs" or "improve service reliability" is sufficient.

 

The third step is usually the most difficult, although it comes faster as you become familiar with the process.  This involves stating or predicting one or more of the resulting Outcomes.  An Outcome is simply how are things different.  How does a business process change?  How might the people using a new service view the difference?  Perhaps a current service is being eliminated as part of this project.  The Outcomes will typically show you where your change management issues exist or where communication to affected parties will be required.  Most importantly an Outcome is not a cost, service or risk statement.  Saving a million dollars is a Value, not an Outcome.  "Reducing product recalls" is an Outcome, not a Value.  Outcomes may not be all that exciting, for example, changing a supplier that results in a million dollar savings.  It's an exciting Value, but not an exciting Outcome from your point of view.

 

The final step is to assign each Value to one or more Outcomes and link each work item to one or more Outcomes.  The result should clearly show what is being done, how your world will change and why it's a good thing.

 

Let's use implementing an email retention policy as an example.  Prior to this project people could freely keep or delete anything in their email mailbox, but new regulations and service disruptions are requiring a change.  Let's start by writing down a fictitious, but realistic, set of proposed rules.

- Emails older than 90 days will be automatically deleted
- Each user's mailbox is capped at 250 megabytes of storage
- Email backups tapes will be erased after 30 days
- Users can only move emails requiring longer-term storage to the content management service
- Automatic deletions and erasures will be halted as required by legal proceedings
Step two is listing the Values expected.
  • Reduce disk and tape storage costs (cost)
  • Improved email system performance (service)
  • Fewer "smoking gun" emails being kept (risk)
  • Compliance with court orders (service)
  • Retaining business records and knowledge (service)
 
Now the hardest part, the Outcomes.  Even in this made-up example it took about ten minutes to clearly state what is different.  Looking at it from the email user's viewpoint helps see the Outcomes.
  1. Email Becomes a Transitory Tool
  2. New Processes for Retaining Emails for Legal and Business Requirements
 
Putting this all together and linking the new set of rules to the Outcomes, the final Outcome-Value statement is produced.  Each Value is listed as a bulleted item after its associated Outcome and after each new rule the Outcome it supports is listed in parenthesis.
 
Email Retention Outcome-Value Statement

1. Email Becomes a Transitory Tool
  • Reduce disk and tape storage costs
  • Improved email system performance
  • Fewer "smoking gun" emails being kept

2. New Processes for Retaining Emails for Legal and Business Requirements

  • Compliance with court orders
  • Retaining business records and knowledge
 
- Emails older than 90 days will be automatically deleted (1)
- Each user's mailbox is capped at 250 megabytes of storage (1)
- Email backups tapes will be erased after 30 days (1)
- Users can only move emails requiring longer-term storage to the content management service (2)
- Automatic deletions and erasures will be halted as required by legal proceedings (2)
Monday, 01 February 2010 17:28

The Non-Standard Desktop

Written by Andy Hickey

Paul Moorman and I often talk about different software we use and web sites that we visit.  I liked his blog posts about what he uses but I did not think that anyone would care what I used.  I am in a unique position of being close to the IT industry, without the need to answer to regulations or an IT department, and without sensitive data on my computer.  That gives me the unique freedom to try new software.  Additionally, I have a great computer that lets me clog my registry with these new programs.  Credit for most of these finds goes to Lifehacker.com.  Here is what I use.

Basics:
My machine runs XP with Office 2007.  I have OpenOffice on my system, in case someone sends me an OpenOffice document, but I prefer Office 2007.  Adobe Reader’s sluggishness and security problems make it a poor choice for a PDF reader, so I use Foxit Reader with no hesitation or problems.  For an internet browser, I use Firefox but may switch to Chrome.  I use 7-Zip for .zip files and do my searching in Windows Search 4.0, because it integrates into Windows better than the Google Search does.

Windows Explorer is replaced on my machine with xplorer2.  There are many alternatives to Windows Explorer and once you have experienced file management with tabs and saved sessions, you will wonder how you worked without them.

I have two plug-ins for Outlook:  MX Logic for spam control, which has a one-button solution that completely deletes the offending message and sends a message back to MX reporting the email as spam, and the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar, which routinely scours my email for contact information and has a Grab button that puts a person’s email contact information into an Outlook Contact file.  It is a very intuitive system.  I also have Google Calendar Sync, which synchronizes my Google Calendar with Outlook twice daily.  It has not caused any problems.

Media Players:
I use my laptop for other people’s presentations at Technology First events and therefore have multiple media players and codecs to cover every scenario (ha!). For videos, VLC, QuickTime and Windows Media Player are installed.  I like VLC the most out of that list.   My extra codecs are Codec Pack – All In and K-Lite Codec Pack.

For music players, I primarily use Songbird, but also have iTunes and WinAmp.  I like that Songbird has extensions and is open source.  Songbird has some bugs and lacks the features of iTunes and WinAmp, but overall it works well.

Pictures:
I really like Paint.Net and recommend it frequently.  Still, I use Gimp more often to edit pictures because it is more feature-rich, especially in dealing with text.  Gimp has become much more user friendly in recent iterations.  I like InkScape as a graphics editor but have trouble getting it to import PDFs cleanly, which is a killer feature.

Communications:
I like multi-protocol IM clients.  I have used Trillian in the past but currently use Digsby.  It does all of the major IM protocols as well as all of the social media and web mail sites.  I wish everyone used IM.  I sometimes use Digsby to tweet but prefer to use TweetDeck for most Twitter activity.  I also use and really like Skype.

Windows Helpers:
I use three little scripts to augment Windows XP.  TaskSwitchXP gives XP a preview of the screen when switching between windows using Alt-Tab.  To help organize taskbar items, I use Taskbar Shuffle to move things around.  Finally, Windows7 shortcut gives XP the cool Windows 7 functionality of moving windows to half the screen.  It is great to use on modern monitors.

To help with Windows Wi-Fi network tool, I use an additional program.  I have been using Network Stumbler but that program does not recognize –N and appears to no longer being developed.  I am currently trying alternatives including inSSIDer.

Quirky Stuff:
I use EyeDefender to prevent eyestrain.  Google Earth is also installed because it really is one of the coolest applications ever developed.  I have Shakespeare Reader on this computer because it is great to have an application that has all of Shakespeare’s plays.  I never use this application.  I do use FreeMind to mind map projects.

System Maintenance:
With all of the programs that I use and try, it’s important to have a couple of things to help keep my system in order.  Most essential is CCleaner, which handles un-installs well enough and cleans up the registry and systems.  The best uninstall program is Revo Uninstaller; it is very thorough and does a great job with hard to uninstall programs.  I replaced the usage of Window’s Defragger with MyDefrag, a seemingly more comprehensive solution.

Finally, I keep my programs up to date with Filehippo’s and Secunia’s update programs.  Filehippo’s is easier to use but Secunia’s is more comprehensive.

Please let me know where I am wrong in the comments.

 

Saturday, 09 January 2010 13:00

My Web Site List

Written by Paul Moorman

You might think from my earlier blogs that I don't spend all that much time on the Internet.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I write this blog on Google Docs, so I can work on it wherever and whenever.  I have a Google Chrome browser up at all times with seven Google services always open.  I have Firefox up at all times to handle RSS feeds and Google searches.  I regularly seek information from the three sources of all knowledge (Google, Wikipedia and YouTube).  Take my browsers away and I stumble upon this Earth.


We all have our favorite web sites and I'll share mine with you.  Most you're probably familiar with, but even one new winner is worth perusing the list.  Here goes....


  • Kayak.com - I use this for all my travel planning.  It is by far the best web site I've found for quickly finding good airfares.  It works like this:  (1) pick your cities and pick your date, (2) all the data for all the flights is sent to your browser, and (3) by using check boxes, sliders and buttons you can narrow or widen your search criteria and never go back to the web site for another long search.
  • SportingNewsToday.com - Part of my morning ritual.  Make coffee, let the dog out and then read "my morning paper". SportingNewsToday has the best layout.  Quick and easy to find just the parts you like or skim the day's issue. More like reading "the sports page" than drilling up and down the typical hierarchical web site.
  • Gutenberg.org and Librivox.org - Books in the public domain are available at Gutenberg.org.  Audiobooks in the public domain are at Librivox.org.  I particularly like Audiobooks for car commutes and have gone through most of the Sherlock Holmes and Wizard of Oz books (there are over a dozen of each).  Volunteers record the Audiobooks, but I think you'll be amazed at how well most of them do.
  • Pandora.com - There are a number of good music sites and Pandora is my favorite, although Grooveshark, Finetune and Last.fm are among the other fine choices.  You build "stations" in Pandora based on an artist or song, and it uses that to play songs by the artist and songs similar to that style.  You can rate individual songs "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" to further tune the station to your liking. Even cooler running on my Droid phone in the car. "Radio" with no commercials. Sweet.
  • Cio.com - My personal choice for balanced and professional reporting of technology news and topics.  Digg, Slashdot and Lifehacker are good too, but a little too much chaff, opinion and irrelevance.
  • GeekBrief.tv - Cali Lewis delivers up-to-date technology news via a 3-5 minute video several times a week.  Particularly fond of Apple computers and Japanese robots, Cali delivers a lot of information in a very short time with shots of humor.  Nice not to read for a few minutes every morning, but it's still part of "my morning paper".
  • Shoeknots.com - I just had to mention this web site although it contains a single page.  One day, many years ago, I was ranting about my new pair of dress shoes.  The dang shoe strings would not stay tied.  Now this was a problem I've had all my life, but this pair of strings was really bad.  I went on the Internet to find someone who sold "slipless" shoestrings.  I would pay anything.  I found Shoeknots.com, which taught me how to properly tie shoelaces.  I had been tying "granny knots" all my life.  Now I tie "square knots". This web site taught me to seek out the knowledge of others.  A defining moment as I truly entered the age of search.
  • Bloom County and Dilbert - At www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty and www.dilbert.com.  Gotta have my morning dose of humor.  Bloom County is still hilarious the second time around.
Friday, 08 January 2010 10:46

Need some Tech Advice

Written by Andy Hickey

Can you please provide any solutions to this in the comments?  The company is not in the Dayton region.

I’m wondering if you could steer me to someone who would be willing to chat about our IT needs.  I just don’t seem to be up to speed on what is available anymore.  There has been soooo much proliferation!

Basically we are VERY small with not a very big budget.  I will be joining one other therapist/coach whose business is growing by leaps and bounds and is more than he can keep up with.  

He has asked me to help automate the administrative functions (scheduling, tasks, client contact information and business data).  We don’t want to hire someone to do all that administrative stuff and we don’t want to spend all our time doing it either.  We’d like a system to support us and make it as easy as possible.  

I started down the path of OUTLOOK but we are frustrated with our inability to share contacts and to put contact information seamlessly into the calendar.  Our accountant suggested we get QUICKBOOKSPRO – which we did -- but it does not seem to cooperate very well with OUTLOOK.    It seems like we are entering the same data over and over again.   We each have two computers and smart phones – we would like to get accurate data from any of them at any time.

Wednesday, 06 January 2010 16:11

CIO Wisdom: Taking Care of Business

Written by Andy Hickey

Contributed by Kevin Kampman

At the Dayton Technology First CIO Forecast on December 9th, there were a number of key insights set forth about what firms should expect in 2010. The Forecast was facilitated by Burton Group Executive Strategist Jack Santos; participants included Rob Whittington of WorkflowOne, Jim Bradley of Motoman, John Huelsman of Midmark, and Jon Russell of Kettering Health Network. While these executives’ companies are all based in the Dayton Ohio area, their perspectives correspond to those of other organizations that Burton Group interacts with:

  • Notably, initiatives such as “Cloud Computing” and “Business Alignment” weren’t mentioned by the panel. Next year’s focus is conservative: Delivering practical, tactical, measurable capabilities is on everyone’s agenda.
  • Generally, IT hiring will be cautious yet optimistic, in lockstep with the economy. Use of contingent and contract employment will often precede hiring in order to keep staff levels in line with business velocity. An exception will be in healthcare; Jon Russell indicated hiring will be aggressive to deploy capabilities like electronic patient record systems. Qualified NCR talent that doesn’t relocate to Georgia, for example, may be leveraged for these efforts.
  • Globalization is a continuing theme for these companies, especially those in the manufacturing and services sectors. Outsourcing and off-shoring will continue to grow where appropriate; local firms all participate in the global economy.
  • Each firm will focus on optimizing existing processes and resources, consolidating capabilities, and standardizing infrastructure. In Motoman’s situation, Jim Bradley indicated that this may involve the adoption of his parent company’s ERP solution. Rob Whittington pointed out that over time, IT has developed lots of good ideas; the challenge now is to pull these together into a few solid solutions. For example, enhancing business activities such as sales and customer service using collaboration technologies was identified, as well as improving decision support and business intelligence by analyzing existing data.
  • Paying attention to overall governance so that business and IT priorities and activities are jointly recognized and satisfied was acknowledged by the panel. John Huelsman pointed out the value of governance processes, but recognized that these are evolving.


To conclude the discussion, the panelists provided the audience with actionable advice for the coming year:

  • Success depends on effective analysis and project management, in particular business analysis capabilities.
  • Demonstrating business partnership and value are critical: IT must be seen as an “indispensible business partner.”
  • To do this, it is important to learn and understand what the business is about, to recognize the “power of teams”, and pay constant attention to working together.
Wednesday, 30 December 2009 11:41

IT in Competition

Written by Paul Moorman

Internal IT departments faced almost no competition in the mainframe era and most of the client/server era.   This inevitably led to problems as competition was introduced and at least some backlash from their previously captive audience.  This is not unique to IT people, but just look around to other examples such as the 1983 breakup of the AT&T monopoly or the introduction of significant foreign competition in the steel and automobile industries.  Initial efforts attempted to put the world back to the "good old days", then moved on to casting as much fear, uncertainty and doubt on the newcomers and finally reducing prices to hold back the flood waters.  None address the fundamental lack of skills and perspective required to survive.


Internal IT faces an expanding competitive threat from an increasing number of sources.  These include:


  • Outsourcing - In other words, buying IT from another company.  The economics of this are the most puzzling to grasp.  Can I really buy the same thing I've been doing myself for less, and the outsourcer still can make a 15%-20% profit?  Some of this can be accomplished by larger scale, but outsourcers live with competition every day and it simply makes them better at knowing their business, their costs and your contract.
  • Off-shoring - The economics are simple.  We make a lot of money in the U.S. compared to most of the world, there are talented people out there and being 12,000 miles away just doesn't interfere all that much, and in certain circumstances, has a speed-to-market advantage.
  • Software-as-a-Service - I want it and I want it now.  Sign on the line or input your credit card and you are off to the races.  No worries about upgrades, fighting for capital or waiting in the IT queue-of-death.  Compelling marketing messages targeted at the business user with the checkbook and the need to solve their business problem.  Match made in heaven.
  • Cloud Computing - A new source of competition that's currently in the fear, uncertainty and doubt phase.  But the economic case for non-production servers (about 60% of the total), short-term needs and spiking workloads are very clear and compelling.  But perhaps the scariest part is that all these virtual servers will pretty much all look the same and can take advantage of continuous hardware price reductions.  That Amazon small instance at 8.5 cents per hour today is likely to cost about 1 cent per hour in 5 years. Simple Moore's Law.


Can your IT department survive, and even thrive, in this competitive landscape?  Yes, but not without a significant improvement in your business skills.  All else being the same, you have several advantages, including:

 

  • You can see your budget and all the line item detail
  • You don't have a profit-margin to obtain and retain
  • You should have better insight into your companies' priorities
  • You are in a position to take more risk than an outsider
  • Your company knows you and you're readily available

 

To leverage your advantages you need to get involved, learn more about your business, stop protecting marginal jobs and embrace the changing technology options.  Develop a trust relationship with business decision-makers and deliver on your promises.  Be an advocate of your companies' change efforts and get involved.  In the end it's all about business.

Saturday, 12 December 2009 12:30

Password Standards

Written by Paul Moorman

Does anyone know if there is an official standard (e.g. FIPS, ANSI, W3C. etc.) for what an application or directory service must provide in the way of password standards (e.g. length, composition, revocation, duration, etc.)?  I'm looking for something that I can use in RFPs to vendors to get them all on the same page.

Currently the implementations within Active Directory, SAP and other systems and applications use a mismatched set of criteria.  For example AD can except a special character as the first character of a password, but SAP can't.  Given the number of systems and wanting to use a common Password Reset tool (which has its own quirky implementation) leads to adopting a Least Common Demoninator approach.

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 11:22

Any Questions?

Written by David Bowman

On December 9th, Technology First will hold the CIO Forecast Luncheon at Sinclair Community College.  Discussion will be moderated by Jack Santos, an executive strategist for the Burton Group and panelists will include Rob Whittington from WorkflowOne, Jim Bradley from Motoman,  John Huelsman from Midmark and Jon Russell from Kettering Health Network.

This should be a great event, offering you an opportunity to learn from some of the most successful IT professionals in the region.  Additionally you can enjoy a great lunch while networking with other area professionals.  And, of course, everyone's favorite host, Andy Hickey, will be there making sure all goes well - that in and of itself is worth the price of admission.

Whether you come or not, you can still participate in the event.  How?  Well, that is simple.  Use the comments section to pose your question to the panelists.  I can't guarantee that all of them will get used, but it will offer some direction to both the moderator and the panelists as to what is important to you - the Dayton area IT community.

I am curious as to how they believe technology can create jobs for our region.  Specifically, how this might result in a net gain in jobs as opposed to eliminating three old positions to create one new, more technical one.

Another question I have is how the panelists view the future of their organizations.  Will they move toward more distributed models, relying heavily on outsourced partners or will they move toward hiring full time employees and primarily developing & managing IT solutions internally.

I would also like to know their opinions on the role of technology relative to other organizational functions.  Should the organization be driven by the technologists or the technologists by the organization.  Where is the happy medium between the two?

There are so many other questions I would like to ask this panel, but I probably will only get the chance to ask one of them - if that.  In the time between now and the 9th, I am going to continue to build my list, in hopes of finding a great question for the panel.

How about you?  What do you want to get their opinions on?  What to do with Google Wave?  Open Source? Windows 7? iPhone v Blackberry v Droid? Cloud computing? Data Analytics and KPI's?

Please list your questions below.

I hope to see you on the 9th, where we can then get some answers.

 

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