Seeking Business Intelligence

Posted on February 6, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I had breakfast this morning with Gartner’s Lisa Gross and we were able to talk about her continuing work in support of my old haunts – the agencies of the Intelligence Community. She’s first-rate at understanding the IT needs of large-scale government enterprises, and has always been known as a trusted adviser for CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives across many federal agencies.

I was recounting to her that when I first started at Microsoft (oh these many weeks), I was ecstatic at finding on our corporate intranet seemingly total unfettered access to Gartner research reports and white papers (along with similar access to Forrester research and reports).  The mother lode! 

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The Three-Way Race, in Politics and Search

Posted on February 4, 2008 by lewisshepherd

On the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries I’ve noticed a small but curious synchronicity, a sideways rhyming, between the Microsoft – Google – Yahoo elephant dance, and the back-and-forth among the top remaining candidates on the Republican and Democratic sides in the presidential primaries.

In graduate school I once wrote an 85-page study of “The Strategic Triangle: U.S., Soviet, and PRC Realignment during the 1970s.” Ah, the good old days of Henry Kissinger and grand-game geopolitics. But let’s stick to the more prosaic cage match dominating our politics right now.  Last week, John Edwards finally dropped out (or “suspended” his campaign, preserving some shred of pre-convention viability I suppose), and in doing so he refused to endorse either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Both campaigns said great things about Edwards *after* he left the race, of course, the better to woo his supporters.  But before he dropped out, while he was still showing up in debates, both Clinton and Obama (and their surrogates) showed quite a bit of peevish annoyance that the third-place fellow wasn’t giving up and tossing them his endorsement.

Similarly, Mike Huckabee is hanging on by a thread on the Republican side, to the great solace of John McCain and the fuming of Mitt Romney, the latter believing that Huckabee’s conservative supporters would line up with him in a binary choice between Romney and McCain. (Would that count as a Baptist-to-Mormon conversion?) Romney spent the weekend bashing Huckabee even more than his putative rival, McCain.  Triangulation and frustration boil over into a combustible mix, obviously.

The same combination appears to be brewing in the Googleplex, while investors and analysts dump on the once shiny GOOG, which tanked yet again today, dropping below $500. 

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Driving during the Super Bowl? Use a Mashup First

Posted on February 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: According to a report, “Taking Back the Airwaves” in the Buffalo News last month, “Listeners’ relationship with radio has changed in the last 25 years. Radio used to be the main source of music, … but now, like other industries, radio is fighting to reinvent itself in a digital age.”

Analysis: Let’s say you were an Air Force mission planner, and wanted to plan a particular flight over enemy territory.  Time-honored practices (and traditionally clunky but powerful software built custom for the purpose) allow you to overlay the enemy’s known radar-emitting sites, using circles or shapes to indicate the covered and non-covered areas, and to do the same with anti-aircraft missile ranges, allowing the precise planning of a safe flight route.

Now let’s look at a nifty adaptation, showing that there are much more fun and practical everyday uses of such an approach – and now new technologies make it much easier and faster to accomplish! Continue reading →

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Punk Rock & Moore’s Law

Posted on February 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: Intel’s CEO says “We have new processors that have 250 million more transistors, and yet are 25 percent smaller than today’s version and don’t require more electricity to run.” (Interview published 2/1/2008 )

Analysis: Moore’s Law: immortal, or destined to be broken?  Punk Rock: dead, or in revival?  And why were Johnny Rotten and one of the legendary Traitorous Eight in the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on the same night back in 1989?

Once-and-future Sex Pistol John Lydon (Rotten) was there after playing a gig up the road, and I happened upon him in the bar, where he proceeded to buy round after round of Heinekens for me, him, and his roadies. He latched onto me because he wanted to talk about American politics, and to his delight I reminded him of some caustic things (surprise) he had had to say over the years about politicians like Reagan and Carter. That just got him started, and we wound up laughing pretty drunkenly into the night in the Fairmont’s swanky lobby bar.

But earlier that evening, I had shown up at the hotel with friends to attend the Silicon Valley Business Hall of Fame dinner, where Bob Noyce, co-founder of Intel, was being honored along with others….

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Wall Street Journal – Peering into the Future, Dimly

Posted on January 28, 2008 by lewisshepherd

The Wall Street Journal ran a collection of think-pieces today on “Thinking About Tomorrow: How will technology change the way we shop, learn and entertain ourselves? How will it change the way we get news, protect our privacy, connect with friends? We look ahead 10 years, and imagine a whole different world.”

My take on the story, though, was “ho-hum.” Looking ahead 10 years should get the mind a little further than easily predictable stuff such as this: “Mobile devices will get smaller and more powerful, and will connect to the Internet through high-speed links. The result: People will be able to do anything on a hand-held that they can now do on a desktop computer. In fact, they’ll be able to do even more, as mobile gadgets increasingly come equipped with global-positioning-system gear that can track your every move. As you drive around, for instance, you might get reviews of nearby restaurants automatically delivered to a screen in your car — maybe even projected onto the windshield.”

Aside from the safety aspect of that type of projection, this scenario surely is only a year or so away – not 10.

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