Superpowers battle, in computing.

Posted on November 21, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: According to a WIRED report earlier this week, “A new crop of supercomputers is breaking down the petaflop speed barrier, pushing high-performance computing into a new realm that could change science more profoundly than at any time since Galileo.”

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MS Office Wired, OpenOffice Tired, Google Docs Expired?

Posted on November 15, 2008 by lewisshepherd

google-newsFact: “Google Docs Struggles to Gain Foothold.” “Google Docs Use: Just a Blip.” “Study: Office Fights Off Google Docs Threat.” “OpenOffice Five Times More Popular than Google Docs.”  These are news articles covering the release of a new ClickStream study of typical use of “productivity software” like the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel), Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, OpenOffice, etc. The study “among adult U.S. internet users showed that use of free productivity applications such as Google Docs and OpenOffice remains low, while Microsoft Office is in use by over 50% of adult U.S. internet users and shows no signs of declining popularity.”

Analysis: Well, yesterday I gave Google some nice words because of our joint work with DoD on improving military health IT. So I’m itching to tweak the Big G now, and we have some numbers to examine.  And I wasn’t cherry-picking the titles above either, they were the “most relevant” results on a Google News query this morning for <“Google Docs” OpenOffice Microsoft>.

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Libyan Strongman Ditches Government, Keeps Female Bodyguards

Posted on November 15, 2008 by lewisshepherd

qaddafi-lion-of-the-desertWell, Muammar Qaddafi’s back in the news.  I know you were wondering what was up with him. After all, according to his Wikipedia bio the dashing desert prince is now the world’s longest-serving head of government (thanks, Fidel!).

The U.S. electorate may have just taken a turn to the left, with even George W. Bush sanctioning a massively larger role for government through the Wall Street bailout. But I was tipped today by an astute observer (she’s @krbstr on Twitter) that Qaddafi has announced a breathtakingly libertarian plan “to distribute the proceeds of oil wealth directly to the people and abolish government ministries,” according to a Financial Times story (“Qaddafi Debate Signals Change“). More below on the controversial proposal, but first a personal note.

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Google and Microsoft sign up for military duty

Posted on November 14, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: A September 2008 article in the Michigan Business Review holds that “An estimated 70 million people do have access to basic personal health records through their health insurers, with millions more scheduled to receive the service this year, according to health care benefit company Aetna.”  But that doesn’t mean they’re using a PHR.  Aetna also did a study just last year (2007) with the Financial Planning Association, according to the same article and found that “64 percent of respondents said they didn’t know what a personal health record was and of those who did, only 11 percent said they were currently using one.”

Analysis: In the battle to expand access to and use of PHRs, there’s great news on the way for a significant portion of the country: our millions of men and women in the military.

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John Brennan’s Approach as the New CIA Director

Posted on November 13, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Barring unforeseen Washington politicking at the last minute, John Brennan is being announced later today as President-elect Obama’s choice to replace Mike Hayden as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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My other computer is a Cray

Posted on November 6, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: The annual ACM Gordon Bell Prize is about to be awarded at “SuperComputing 08” (or SC08) which takes place November 15-21 at the Austin Convention Center in Texas. The convention is “the” international conference for high-performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis. The Association for Computing Machinery makes the Bell award “to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing,” in honor of Microsoft’s legendary Gordon Bell, one of the pioneers of supercomputing.

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Comparing Apple and Microsoft as Platforms for Developers

Posted on November 6, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I missed October’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles this year because of a couple of other conferences and meetings in other cities. But of course I was happy to see the coverage in the technology press and blogs, so much of it positive about our announcement on Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform.

Then I read Joe Wilcox over on his “Apple Watch” blog at eWeek, on “What Apple Needs to Know about Azure, Windows 7.” It’s striking in its conclusions, particularly coming from a longtime Apple watcher:

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Hot Election Results Here, and Here, and Here

Posted on November 4, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Political junkies are drumming their fingers mid-day this Tuesday.  They’ve likely already voted, but have no access to exit-poll results until early evening.  Mashup maps of results from sites like Twitter, essentially self-selected and self-reported exit polls like this one at SetFive, or this one mapping general Twitter election buzz, are fun but wildly inaccurate as election tracks.

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Bill Gates will pay you to save the world

Posted on October 22, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: You have ten days to apply for a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation, for your innovative idea in global health research.  It’s a surprisingly simple application process, but you’d better get cracking!

Analysis: Last night the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the 104 individual winners of their Round 1 funding in the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which “funds research on scientific problems that, if solved, could lead to advances against multiple diseases.”

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Currently in Cairo

Posted on October 22, 2008 by lewisshepherd
Cairo Tower, or Gezira Tower, on the Nile

Cairo Tower, or Gezira Tower, on the Nile

I’m currently in Cairo and am trying to carve out time to finish some tech-focused blog posts, in the middle of spending time with the great technologists here and also just wandering around Cairo.

On the former point, I’m spending time with the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center, in Smart Village just on the western outskirts of town. CMIC is working on some interesting stuff, much of it web-based, including some leading-edge automated translation solutions beyond the neat stuff we’ve already deployed in Windows Live.

On the latter point, i.e. wandering, this is only my second visit, of what I hope and expect will be many in coming years, so I’m still a wide-eyed tourist.  Here are a couple of photographs on Flickr which I took yesterday and last night, from my hotel and walking up and down the Nile through central Cairo, on main avenues and back streets.

On my first visit here in May, I took a bunch of the usual touristy pictures (see them here), including the Pyramids, Sphinx, Museum, etc. Won’t get to do that stuff this trip.

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