poseidongroove

Retired Blog

2006-02-11T21:44:00.000Z

This blog has been retired. I now use Poseidongroove @ Wordpress I’m leaving it here for historical reasons.

Is the Burble About to Bust at Google?

2006-02-04T21:00:00.000Z

It's been a funny old week for Google, not only have they posted earnings 20cents down on Wall Street forecast, they've also had the publicity problems with the move to China.

Besides the headline, I'm a bit worried about the company extending itself beyond its core knitting. Google essentially is an advertising agency, first and a search engine second. All this stuff about Google being a software company is not strictly true. I've played with quite a few Google toys and I have to say, I'm under whelmed. They seem to be rushing things to market now. Apart from Gmail and Google Earth, not much else is useful. I decided to move my Weblog to Wordpress a few weeks ago. I completed the move over this weekend. There a number of things I’d wanted to do with the site that was essentially proving difficult to do with Blogspot I don't use Google Desktop Search anymore. It's not as good as Copernic Desktop Search

It seems to me Google need a word of advice, forget about Wall Street, they don’t understand you, they never will. Stick to your core knitting lest another search engine comes along and blow you away. Microsoft and Yahoo are waiting in the wings to do just that. A bit more quality on the software front will be useful Google. I don’t think we enjoy being Beta Testers.

What was that thing announced at CES, Google Pack. Give me a break!

Given the change of Weblog host, please update your feed links to Poseidongroove; if you’re using Feedburner then you shouldn’t need to worry.

Absolutism-The New World Order

2006-01-29T13:18:00.000Z

It’s easy to think that Bloggers are navel gazers on an ego trip. I think some bloggers do try to discuss issues mainstream media and economic thinking rarely reflects. John Hagel's post on Zero-Sum Thinking comes to mind. The two points that stick in my mind the most are, squeezing suppliers and the marginalization of innovation.

It’s almost like certain things have become absolutes, like it’s a given to outsource anything to low cost economies. How about digital rights management spy-ware, the music and film industry are forcing DRM on unsuspecting users when they buy content from the web. I wonder how many people realise that they’d have to buy their entire digital content again if you keep changing your disk drives or computer. The ironic thing about mainstream media and economic thinking is that the very thing the religious absolutes are being accused of by relativists is exactly what is happening in mainstream media and economic thinking.

For all my love of digital media, nothing will ever persuade me to buy digital media from the web until a new paradigm is established for distribution of digital content.

Think about the poor ISPs, who have to foot the bill for our digital consumption. I firmly believe the only fairplay in town is one which protects and reward the artist and the content providers using an implicit payment model that rewards ISPs and is managed by ISPs. They can include content download royalties in our broadband subscription. Effectively, this allows the ISP to meter what you’re downloading and pay the rights owner just like mobile phone companies cross-charge for network connections. It shouldn’t really matter if you’re downloading content from iTunes or Bittorent. This is the only way to eliminate piracy. I really believe Bittorent is the most viable medium for content delivery and rights management. It allows the industry to accurately collect royalties and reward artistes accordingly.

On the second point about marginalization of innovation, this applies to the music industry as much as software. Arctic Monkeys would never have become the fastest selling debut band album in the UK if it weren’t for the fact that they allowed users on myspace to build grass-root and cult following by giving their music away for free download. If the quality of the content or software is excellent. The community will surely cast the right vote. It prevents all those crazy clones been forced on us by the music industry from seeing the light of day. In the world of IT. This will prevent “Magic Quadrant Syndrome” from rigging RFI questionnaires that customers put out to suppliers.

Think about it, when you outsource IT development and other supposedly non-core business activities to India or China, even though it seems like a good idea on the balance sheet, I strongly believe over a period of time, competitive advantage is lost or become non existent given the ability to innovate is not there. If you and your competitors are doing exactly the same thing, using the same call centres, development sweat shops name it. Where is your innovation coming from when the very thing that will deliver that advantage is outside your control? I know this assertion does not apply in every single case.

In summary, I think the current world order is more about absolutes than we’re prepared to admit. The problem this creates is that it’s difficult to challenge the status quo except something revolutionary occurs. Here’s to you Arctic Monkeys!!!

Next Generation e-WorkPlace

2006-01-26T17:01:00.000Z

I’ve been reflecting on how much work Place applications such as portals, intranets and ERPs need to evolve in the Web 2.0 era. I’ve discussed this with a few folks already and we’re all agreed that Enterprise Applications are fundamentally broken. We’re applying the same design and implementation approaches whilst Vendors jostle to make sure their strategy and application portfolio align with silly analyst magic quadrants. Think for a moment, all those PowerPoint’s vendors show you about their platform architecture. They’re essentially a bunch of acquired technologies the collective APIs is just an assembly of chaos. Several folks such as Danah Boyd and Ross Mayfield have discussed related issues on their Blogs.

Basically, The Integration of Process with Technology is one we’ve battled with for several years using more and more technology name it ERP, CRM, Portals we’ve done it. I don’t think we’ve made a good stab of it as an Industry. We have a saying in my company that business efficiency and group productivity are currently being inhibited in most organisations because group communication and coordination is extremely inefficient. Might sound like baloney at first. However, just think how many times you’ve tried to locate important documents or perhaps the multiple versions of these that currently exist in your company? How can you work effectively if the simple things aren’t at your finger tip? And we really think this is the information age? It’s more the misinformation age!

We’re overwhelmed by technology and software, email is like turning on the hose pipe and sticking it in your mouth, presence aware technology means constant interruption, desktop search tools are proliferating, filing content in X Drives, Document Management or Content Management is a Joke. Then some smart guys called Blackberry think we need more of it and then you really are drinking from the Atlantic. How about sleeping with the fishes?

A good summary of the issues we confront is well summarised by John Seely Brown and John Hagel they assert that “while 95% of IT investment goes to support business processes (to drive down costs), most employee time isn’t spent on process – but exceptions to process”. We can therefore conclude that Value creation should focus on the people in the process!

What does this actually mean? If you reflect for a moment about all the Web 2.0 Social Software stuff why is user adoption on these applications so huge? Why for example are most employees spending time on websites beyond their corporate firewall rather than spending time on internal applications? Hmm, all that wasted money on the portals, SAP and Siebel.

In my opinion applications we build and deploy for users behind the firewall are rarely successful because they lack social capital. Most folks are very informal in their use of technology. Why is it that informal mediums such as Blogs, WIKIs, Flikr, iTunes and MySpace are doing so well? Lack of social capital means usability deficit. Pile all that flash streaming media into your portal and syndicating content from Yahoo doesn’t make it useable. It needs to evoke a sense of commune for it to be adopted and useful. Technology should be an enabler for building social capital. Control is now in your face and flexibility of use is a secondary issue. The Security group in most organisations effectively veto or design end user applications.

The new class of workplace applications need the following

Social Capital – allow for a sense of shared purpose and a sense of belonging,

Trust Building – Users must trust information in the workplace behind their corporate firewall, every opinion should be valued, If you don’t trust the information, usage of the application is difficult to sustain.

Shared Resources – Exchange of ideas and intellectual properties across the organisation is only possible if this is encouraged organically.

Relationship Nurturing - Cost of developing relationships is extremely high because of the hierarchical nature of organisations. If someone is difficult to approach to validate some information they’ve posted or shared what is the point of using the information.

The new class of workplace applications that need to replace our portal metaphors needs to be built on a combination of Web 2.0, bittorent and SOA. They’re not as mutually exclusive as you might think. When RSS/RDF came out years ago, it didn’t have any real context of use apart from news feed aggregation. Think how far we’ve come with the semantic web. Who cares about XML when using Odeo or iTunes?

New workplace applications need to remove the limits of scale of organisational memory. Imagine when you go to work and need to work on a document. You don’t know where it’s stored in the organisation but you’d like to use the document anyhow. If I use Live Plasma as my analogy, so you search for some content and navigate to the item of interest using an interactive map metaphor which shows you a cluster of related content. I call this the “See Also Metaphor” or content targeting as is the case with highly personalised websites like Amazon.

In summary, SOA, Web 2.0, Bittorent, Portals, Personalisation and Collaboration need to be used to create a new class of applications types that will make the workplace user experience richer, highly personalised and interactive. Bittorent is perhaps the most underestimated technologies of the lot. Imagine saving a document and not caring where it’s stored. Essentially, Filing, Classification and Archiving of content shouldn’t be in your face. I believe Bittorent will replace or subsumed in existing database technologies in the future. I expect Enterprise Services Buses to graft on Bittorent Technologies to provide content filing and routing services.

SOA currently lacks a human interface and a business context. A business context exists for SOA if SOA approaches are used to provide development and runtime mechanisms for Web 2.0 services. Work Process applications such as ERPs and CRMs will need to evolve quickly or keep pace with social network applications. It’s easy for Portal, CRM and ERP vendors to implement SOA interfaces; it’s another thing altogether to acquire social capital. I’ve knocked up a picture to summarize these ideas In Flickr

Poseidongroove Eclectic Mix Still On The Site

2006-01-11T21:37:00.000Z

I'm republishing this because a few folks thought I'd taken it down from the site. I was duly inspired when I knocked this up. I kept going for a bit. I started with an old favourite. M- Feel Your Spirit Calling then build up to a crescendo 135bpm dance floor regulars before the pace drops. There are a few dodgy mixes. I’ll clean up on next release.

If you've got loads of space and a long commute like me enjoy the podcast. Favourite track Guitarra G by G Club Presented by Banda Sonara. There is something about Balearic Strings that will always be out of this world. Enjoy. The file is hosted on a site with an uplink of 768Kbps. Please be patient this file is approx 179MB. The vulture is a very patient bird. I’m looking for a fast bandwidth podcast hosting solution anyone with a bright idea.

I’ll keep the next mix to CD play time this is a one off bonus session for your player.
You can stream the Podcast Here. Download the file using Poseidon Groove Podcast Vol II. Enjoy. (The playlist can be downloaded from Here in PDF )

Convergence Devices and the eWorkPlace

2006-01-11T20:59:00.000Z

Happy New Year. Hope you all have a wonderful year. Sorry it’s been quite a while since my last post a few reasons. One of my twins was ill a few times in December. Work deadlines and inevitable burnout before and after the holiday.
I know a lot of stuff has been said about Web 2.0 or how the semantic web might change the world. I tend to think in synergistic terms for example how relevant is a piece of technology when it’s applied to a context or used in a business scenario.

So I’ve had the Sony PSP for the last few months and I’ve got to say it’s the best present I’ve ever got and it’s my favourite gadget of all time. Besides games many people instantly think of the PSP as a Movie Player. I tend to demand a lot more from any device I own. Think run of the mill features such as PDA and Music Player. I’ve owned a Toshiba e805 for quite a few years and got bored with it. It did a fairly decent job as a Music Player as well as long as you have PocketMusic I refused to buy the iPod because what it offered me was limited.

Anyhow, the PSP can do a lot more than the above; consider this, if you’re a business person always on business trips, on a train, waiting to catch a plane. After, you’ve finished getting drunk on email from your Blackberry. It’s nice to unwind with something. If you don’t fancy reading a book, Try getting the PSP to kill the boredom of that cross-Atlantic flight.

As a gadget lover, my preferences are for devices that can test and relax my brain at the same time. So I can watch and listen to my favourite Podcasts/Videocasts. Of course most of this has a heavy science and technology slant. (Sorry, I’ve not had a chance to add the names of the cover page yet).

More importantly, Streaming Podcasts over WIFI @ home or work has effectively replaced most of the time I spend with the Radio. I now listen to BBC Radio 4’s excellent In Our Time and For Immediate Release (Business IT Stories Review)
Time shifting is King. I can now decide when I want to listen to or watch exactly what caters for my interest and not some mind numbing Reality Programme on TV.

The best part is there are some excellent games you can play on the PSP. If you want to exercise your brain try Go Sudoku, PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient, My favourite games are Metal Gear Acid a card based strategy game that tests your skills in Stealth Warfare. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Wipeout Pure is a Hovercraft Racing League and finally Lumines an excellent puzzle game with great audio and video effects to boot.

I use Sony Media Manager to synch feeds, movies and videos to the memory stick in my PSP. The one thing I hated was I had to pay for it. I don’t think Sony really understand the whole digital world thing yet. It seems like the content division and the hardware divisions don’t see eye to eye. Compared to iTunes which I downloaded for free. I use iTunes for browsing new feeds; I also use Odeo and a few other Podcatchers. One thing I really hate about iTunes is that you can’t export feeds you’ve subscribed to as XML (OPML). I always have to manually add them again into my PSP Media Manager.

My entire music library at home is also published as RSS Feeds found some excellent hacks here. Meaning, I can listen to my entire music collection anywhere in the world as long as I’ve got WIFI without carrying them around. Fab. I really, don’t think Sony understand what they’ve got. If only it was Apple that released the PSP. It’ll be in most folks pocket now. (I guess Jobs has got something similar up his sleeves now).

This post isn’t really meant to be a PSP review. My main argument is that organisations need to harness the power of convergence devices to make software that radically deliver useable services for consumers, employees and the company. For example, iTunes is a great application for delivering Podcasts and Videocasts. The ecosystem of any organisation should be dynamic living and breathing. At the moment, most portals/intranets are fact sheets graveyards. Won’t it be great if you can harvest knowledge relevant to your business available as Podcasts and publish it in your eWorkPlace?

I’ve learnt a lot more on the web in the last couple of years than I would have imagined just listening to Podcasts. eLearning suddenly sounds like a great and interesting thing to do now. I guess it is just listening to good feeds like Science Friday.

Web 2.0 and SOA also have a long way to go before they can be useable to mainstream consumers. Imagine if you can subscribe to an RSS Feed in iTunes or your PSP which essentially is a service that periodically updates the firmware of your in-car computer. The Satellite Navigation even! Rather than ship them on CD/DVD when you buy the car.

The possibilities of the technologies and gadgets we have access to now are endless. Web 2.0 is still misunderstood as just about Social Software. Service Oriented Architecture is perceived as IT Components Reuse. Combined this could really be the age of software as content and service.

Finally, if you really want to explore the possibilities of the digital revolution around you, the PSP is a great gadget to start with. An indication of the possibilities of convergent devices can be read in this article describing how the PSP was used to remotely control a car

Hopefully, I should be able to get back to regular posting.

Poseidongroove Eclectic Mix Volume III

2005-11-13T11:43:00.000Z

Here is the latest podcast mix. This is one I mixed last night still not happy with the original mix I was planning to upload. Hopefully, this should be ready for December. The music selection is taken from three or more genre. Enjoy. Download the mix from Here anyone familiar with old school house music will remember Adonis- No Way Back. The file is 111Mb. You can also stream it using this link. The play list is available as a PDF

Licking Apples' Bum

2005-11-10T23:49:00.000Z

Been very busy lately, will be sharing the fruits of my busy schedule in the next couple of weeks like what the hell is web 2.0? Apologies to folks looking out for the promised podcast mix. I’ve not had a chance to tidy up my latest set. Before that, let me get my defence in first, I love iTunes. It’s an application that is not saddled with what I call “usability deficit”. Like the ones you’re all familiar with behind your corporate firewalls. In other words, it has formal and informal uses for work and pleasure. Alright, let’s start bashing Apple and Steve Jobs bedfellows. Journos and bloggers alike.

Why is everyone especially journo’s going gaga over the Video iPod. It really sucks. I’ve sat next to a couple of folks on the train commute to work recently. I couldn’t help thinking what the point was. I couldn’t help but laugh at the number of times they tried to adjust the viewing angle just to see Britney or Beyoncé do the jiggy! yeah right.

Don’t get me started on paying to watch some silly music videos on a puny screen. I’d pay not to watch those Music Videos on TV in the first place (maybe not just thought about the jiggy).

I think the Video iPod is a reaction by Apple to the threat of the PSP. It proves that Sony has got it right with the PSP. (Not completely, Sony are selling their own iTunes for $30.00. When will they get it?).

Don’t trust all those journos banging on about the Video iPod, they’re biased Apple lovers. They will happily advise you to buy anything from Steve Jobs even if it’s rubbish.

Compare the PSP or other Personal Media Players to the Video iPod, PSP can play Games, DVD quality Videos, Music, has got WIFI, Home Brew Applications come on folks wise up. The Video iPod is late to the ultimate gadget party. This confirms that the reign of the iPod is about to come to an end. 2001-2005 RIP.

Apple has got an excellent package with iTunes and the Music iPod but the Video iPod is taking Apple away from its core competencies. If only journos and bloggers weren’t so biased maybe they’ll be more objective in reporting that the Video iPod is not the best thing since sliced bread. The battery life is barely enough to watch a film.

In summary, if you’re looking for a proper Personal Media Player, don’t buy the Video iPod. I don’t care about Microsoft based PMPs, but I can’t help thinking if MSOFT merges with AOL/Time Warner, Content developers Such as Archos and Creative will collude with the likes of Sony and Disney. This means Apple will be denied any real content for the iTunes Video store? That’ll be squeaky bum time for Apple and the Video iPod because these content owners especially Sony are bidding their time before they move in and squash Jobs and his Video iPod. Let’s wait and see,

It's All So Quiet

2005-10-27T23:30:00.000+01:00

Been quiet for a few days, a few deadlines to meet. I hope to post the next podcast over the weekend. To be honest, I’ve finished it just tidying up. I’ve found a few podsafe tracks on the web. This means, I can sleep well at night. I hope to share links to my favourite unsigned bands as well. In the meantime, hope you’re not drinking from a fire hose.

Are You Spraying and Drinking From a Fire Hose ?

2005-10-19T20:38:00.000+01:00

If you’re a Blackberry Junkie you might not like this post. Anyhow, I still can’t see the point of you drinking and spraying from a fire hose. That instant email fix which you’ve just received and the sneaky email you’ve just sent under the table in a meeting, are you sure you’ve had time to reflect before typing your rushed messages and then hitting the send button?

Email is perhaps the most pervasive application in IT today, yet it’s the most abused and potentially the most powerful medium of communication. I still discover emails from five years ago on our collaboration platform which I consider to be gold nugget.

The biggest problem with push email is that after a while it becomes meaningless. If your pocket is buzzing every two minutes, when it’s only someone sending an email to the whole organisation looking for their food in a fridge what is the point. It’s worse when this individual’s office is on a different continent from yours!! You should only read email you consider to be important at the time in the context of your work. Be honest, you don’t need to read every single email you receive.

Here’s how to manage email intelligently in your organisation.

Create Rules for most common email subjects. They should automatically be filed away and forwarded to a shared contextual space where someone else in your company might find it useful one day. Remember, one day is the crucial point here. It might never be that same day. If you’ve configured good weekly notifications, you should get a weekly summary on Monday.

If it’s that important to the sender, they will call you. Never assume when you’ve sent an email you’ve resolved an issue or a task is completed.

Your inbox should never be the exclusive location for storing company emails. Most gold nugget information we use to make crucial decisions are often best expressed in the context of the topic or problem. For example a forum about design patterns rather than a chaotic inbox.

Companies really underestimate the power of email. You can enhance your organisational intelligence easily by encouraging folks to share the content of their inbox. More folks are likely to contribute to forums if they can do so without changing their regular working habits. Non intrusive collaboration is extremely powerful.

Ideas, relationships and decision interactions are best expressed in emails. Don’t abuse it by spraying email without thinking. This is the power of three dimensional relationships. It’s a means to becoming an intelligent organisation.

The nasty habit of cc’ing the whole world to cover your back is not often a good idea. You know they’ve not read it and have no plans to.

Best Nugget, search for topics or companies you relate with using Google Alert and configure the alerts to go to a shared discussion forum in your company collaboration space. Not your personal inbox. Before going of to a customer, you can inspect this space to get a sense of what is happening to them. That way, you show you care and might uncover a new opportunity.

Finally, get a proper mobile phone and put it on call-divert to voicemail. Allow yourself to reflect before reacting to an issue. Easier said than done.

The Emperor's New Clothes

2005-10-16T21:51:00.000+01:00

The industry I work is the most infantile line of business ever. We’ve come round full circle. In the not too distant past shall we say when Orcs mixed happily with hobbits? The sandal brigade thought Application Servers were the best thing since sliced bread until they became commodities or plumbing that we don’t care about anymore.

Actually, I’m glad about this, I don’t want to feel smug about this, in a thread on theserverside.com Opinion: J2EE= Just 2 Existing Enterprises OR J2EE 2 End Early At the time, I said “It’s about the application services running on top of the Application Server stupid, not the Application Server Itself!!! Ok, I admit I expected ATG to do better than it’s turned out. I was also an ATG Dynamo Bigot. Now everyone is banging on about Enterprise Service Bus. (A.K.A. Service Oriented Architecture Platform). This is a good thing only I fear we might make the same mistake again.

The big vendors have milked application servers for all their worth and have now moved up the food chain to flog ESBs. Application Servers did serve applications but they rarely delivered any real value to businesses. Vendors have finally realised that companies really want platforms that not only fit into their enterprise ecology but are the very heart and soul of that enterprise. What is the point of your ERP if all it stores is two dimensional data about purchase orders, HR records and customers details. The same applies to CRMs. What about all that informal stuff like emails, long standing relationships in people’s heads etc that can never be captured in such platforms.

Businesses may be able exert control over their destiny using an ESB given it has the potential to provide a broad range of application services that aren’t restricted to traditional business applications such as ERPs, CRMs etc.

It provides a basis for governance. For example, collecting compliance data about business transactions for Sarbanes Oxley and Basel II. ESBs and SOA have the potential to be the Shangri-La of software. Right now, it’s too distant from users. Formal applications such as ERPs and chaotic applications like blogs, Wiki, iTunes, RSS Readers, Podcast etc most end users use need to happily co-exist for Enterprise Service Buses to really be considered useful. In the meantime, don’t hold your breath, ESBs will also become commodities.

Who Rules The Roost?

2005-10-09T21:33:00.000+01:00

One of the things most new parents overlook is ensuring they start to set ground rules for their kids as soon as they start to understand what is going on around them. We had our twins at 25 weeks. At the time, it was such a shock to the system that I was in a haze for several months even after we’d had four months to prepare for them to come home. (They were in intensive care for four months).

Fortunately, the organised and sanitised environment of intensive care introduced us to baby care 101. We’d lost both our mums so it was always going to be hard work when the kids came home.

Eventually, we developed a routine for feeding them e.g. I was responsible for the care of a specific child as long as I was at home. Doesn’t matter if I was tired I had to bottle feed at night.

After all the challenges of the early years especially with Alex who has cerebral palsy. We got through the terrible twos now they are 3+ we faced a number of challenges which I know a few friends have faced. The main one being getting kids into bed early.

Most parents never like to admit this, developing and sticking to a bed time routine for kids is extremely difficult. We were there. Eventually, almost a year ago we decided it was time to act. First, we forced the kids to move to their own room. With premature babies, most parents are terrified to let their babies sleep in separate rooms because they sometimes forget to breath, with terrible consequences. Our twins did this several times in intensive care they call it apnoea. The nurses then have to bag them as they call it to revive them. Of course, we were terrified.

In any case, we were at our tethers end, they’d refuse to sleep and cry their eyes out until we were all in bed at the same time usually around 10:30PM. Of course, this is not very good for growing babies. In the end, we moved them to their nursery and broke the pattern in several ways. The first few days were horrific. They cried till 4:00AM for three days. Looking back now, I’m really glad we kicked them out.

Strictly enforced lights out policy at 7:30PM,

Before this we usually have story time poems and lullabies,

If they cry their eyes out ignore them except you have reasons to believe it is genuine (I’m been honest this was the difficult part),

We had to give up several things, radio; TV programmes are out at bed time It doesn’t matter if we desperately want to watch. Story time comes first,

No phone calls or mobile phone calls at this time of the day for either of us.

Since, we started this regime, I’m happy to report that they love story time we love it as well it’s the most important thing we do everyday. I look forward to it even when I’m working out of town. By 7:00PM they are already itching to go to bed. If anyone had told me this would be the case, over a year ago I’d have laughed at them. Of course, the reward is we have more time to ourselves in the evening than ever before. I can go to the pub for a drink in the evening if I wanted to or read to my hearts content. For anyone looking forward to being a parent or going through this phase, all I can say is develop a routine and stick to it rigidly. Never give in to tantrums it’s a time for stiff upper lips.

If you don’t want to snap at your kids after a hard days work. Give them TLC at bed time and you’ll have peace. I’m going to share some of our experience looking after Alexander who has got Cerebral Palsy in future posts.

Respect is Earned Not Bought

2005-10-06T21:07:00.000+01:00

Chelski Football Club’s been complaining in the English Premier League that no one respects them. Of course, we admire and acknowledge what the players have done so far this season (Not forgetting a few of them play for England). However, I bet you everyone in the country apart from Chelski supporters dislike the way Abramovich has got away with skewing competition in the EPL with ill-gotten wealth from Russia. I’m looking forward to the day he gets bored or he accounts for the money people like him have stolen from the Russian people.

Respect is earned not bought!!

Don't Buy Music From Napster and iTunes

2005-10-05T23:09:00.001+01:00

Don’t be conned into buying any music online just yet by online music stores. Why should you pay Napster or iTunes almost a quid to download a file with Digital Rights Management? The music industry and their cohorts have been mugging you. The quality of the stuff you’re paying for is worse than the quality of the CD Album you could have bought. I will continue to buy CDs and rip them at home in 320kbps bitrate without DRM as long as Napster and iTunes continue to sell 128kbps DRM’ed music.

Has anyone ever asked you how many times you can play your music CD and where you choose to listen to it? Why should you be treated like a thief by the online music stores? If you’ve got an MP3 player, shop around before parting with your cash. Besides, if you loose your iPod or the computer you’re ripping those AAC files to you’re stuffed.

If you want to buy non DRM’ed music try the following sites. All of MP3 excellent value for money no DRM. Files @320 kbps. I recommend Bic Runga - Beautiful Collision. If you like Alanis Morrisette Jagged Little Pill you’ll like this album.

Checkout Audio Jelly alright most of the stuff on this site is electronica and dance but it’s worth a try if you don’t like mainstream stuff.

If you really want to enjoy all your music collection. You really ought to get Sonos Music Streaming System. My entire CD collection is now tucked away in the loft. The streamer is connected to a DVD surround sound system. You will also need a WIFI capable NAS like Buffalo Linkstation to store all your MP3 files. I always rip every album I buy straightaway to the shared music folder. This means we are able to stream all our music files from any room in the house. For more info, check out wirefreehomes for product details and how to setup something similar.

The Intelligent Organisation

2005-10-04T10:32:00.000+01:00

I read an article from the Financial Times a few days ago which, follows on from my previous post about “Three Dimensional Relationships”. You can find it here Simon London: Metaphors that constrain our Thinking. In summary the article recognises the unruly nature of how value is created in business today and how we find nuggets of information using various mediums like blog, web etc. The article also uses metaphors to describe how Microsoft can be likened to a cathedral builder and open source Linux being a bazaar.

I believe the commercial software industry is entering a new age where Open Source software development model will ultimately alter the way commercial software is developed and delivered to customers today. Ultimately, the intelligent organisation that knows how to harness the chaotic model of open source software development to its competitive advantage will succeed in this new world. A plug-in mentality like Eclipse will allows development engineers, customer support, pre-sales and consultants alike to actively contribute to improving a product. You only do this by making the source code available to all staff. Yes, there are inherent worries about losing intellectual property when an employee moves on. Time to market will probably be less. Another benefit is that there everyone adopts development practices in line with the architectural patterns used to implement the platform.

The intelligent organisation is one that doesn’t operate on a “need to know” basis. An example of a barrier to innovation is that most companies have a silo mentality in structuring product development teams. An intelligent organisation is one where sharing knowledge is an implicit behaviour. It thrives on a bazaar mentality as well as cathedral checks and balances. Software companies should encourage more bazaar mentality. Wiki, Forums and Blogs encourage peer review of ideas that will benefit everyone. Formal means of sharing restricts creativity and learning on organisations. Ralph Stacey has done a lot of work on Chaos Theory outlines this well. In his book on Complexity and Creativity in Organisations

Again, if you don’t use available technology appropriately to build organisational intelligence it’s pointless.

The PoseidonGroove Eclectic Mix-Still Available

2005-10-03T13:15:00.000+01:00

I'm republishing this becuase I was duly inspired when I knocked this up. Besides one or two folks thought I've taken it off the site. I kept going for a bit. I started with an old favourite. M- Feel Your Spirit Calling then build up to a crescendo 135bpm dance floor regulars before the pace drops. There are a few dodgy mixes. I’ll clean up on next release.

If you've got loads of space and a long commute like me enjoy the podcast. Favourite track Guitarra G by G Club Presented by Banda Sonara. There is something about Balearic Strings that will always be out of this world. Enjoy. The file is hosted on a site with an uplink of 768Kbps. Please be patient this file is approx 179MB. The vulture is a very patient bird. I’m looking for a fast bandwidth podcast hosting solution anyone with a bright idea.

I’ll keep the next mix to CD play time this is a one off bonus session for your player.
You can stream the Podcast Here. Download the file using Poseidon Groove Podcast Vol II. Enjoy. (The playlist can be downloaded from Here in PDF )

The Power of Three Dimensional Relationships

2005-09-19T14:12:00.000+01:00

For several years, we've been led to believe that knowledge management and collaboration is all about technology. Most papers you read or most vendor literature you come across focus on the features of their KM/Collaboration platform. For the purpose of this discourse it is important to define what I understand as Collaboration and Knowledge Management.

Knowledge Management is the area of everyday work that provides the means for organisations to accumulate the collective intelligence and memory of that organisation. Typically, organisations will choose to implement a platform to enable this. Typical attributes of a KM Implementation will include a Document Library, Project Workspaces, Discussion Forums, Communities of Practice more on these later.

Collaboration on the other hand can be defined as people within an organisation or spanning more than one organisation coming together to share ideas, work on a process or business activity on a common platform. Collaboration can take place implicitly or explicitly . Collaboration can also occur asynchronously (e.g. email into forum,WIKI, Podcast, PSPCast and document contribution). It also occurs synchronously (e.g. White boarding, Chat, Web Meetings, Instant Messaging). All the technologies used are considered incidental and not fundamental. Attributes of Collaboration are also similar to KM except there is a heavy slant towards work processes. Activities that people come to work to do everyday.

The Industry and Vendors alike have tended to focus on characterising Synchronous collaboration as the most important element of this body of knowledge. This is a fundamental flaw as we focus too much on technology completely excluding the human behaviour that usually leads to a successful implementation.

KM and Collaboration are typically used to describe the same thing. I think we ought to clarify this. Knowledge Management is the end result of an organisation or group of people deciding to share their collective ideas, group memory interactions with customers and suppliers/partners using collaboration as the means to this end. You can only claim you are managing knowledge if the organisation can point to perceivable values of collaborating on its activities. Knowledge Management is like breathing oxygen. You shouldn't have to think about it. I download a Podcast from iTunes or Mozilla with little effort.

When organisations pursue the fools gold of Knowledge Management they almost always fail. Collaboration results in explicit Knowledge Sharing or Implicit Knowledge Sharing depends on the intrinsic culture of each organisation. In marketing organisations, Implicit KS are more likely to be successful. In Finance/Research Explicit KS might be more successful. (Although I'm not convinced about this assertion myself).

I think we are seeing a massive change going on around us right now that'll make everyone realise that we've been collaborating without knowing it all along. Here is the evidence, Semantic Web (RSS),Wiki,Blogging,Podcasting, Eclipse and Mozilla Plug Ins. All of these are great in their own way but we are witnessing chaos theory at work. I'm a great believer in Implicit KS. I call it "Three Dimensional Relationships" because the third part of the relationship can experience the intimacy of the initial two way relationship without being there. e.g. knowing that a customer always chooses to place an order on the last day of the Quarter from the email thread in the forum for that customer account or using basing our future product choices on feedback in a forum we subscribe to. I've been looking at a very interesting tool that seems to have the right mix of tool along this line.

Pebbles

It's open source and a sign of things to come.

What do you think ?

I hate the iPod and Everything Apple

2005-06-06T17:12:00.000+01:00

I know I'm going against the flow. But, am I the only one that hates the iPod? It's not only for girls the output on the speakers is punny. Not even a noise cancelling headphone could save the dire quality of the music output. I don't care about AAC, don't care about any Apple Mac nice couscous touchy feely UI. Even the PocketPC is better. Of course if you use Pocket Music rather than Windows Media Player and a noise cancelling headphone.

Give me a real gizmo that is a box of tricks that is a joy to behold and makes grown men on the train pant like dogs in awe. Not some pansy designer podgear worshipped by ignorant journos. Essentially, the closest thing to my ideal gadget is the PSP. Again, Sony and Apple are essentially the same type of companies ingrained in developing silly new things like UMD and Memory Stick. If only it ships with an SD Drive. It'll have been perfect. Nevertheless, it's got all the goodies I need, WIFI, (Poxy WEP), LCD quality screen and USB 2.0. with a list of hacks to boot on the Net. PSP HacksYou can't go wrong with the killer device of the decade. Now, can someone please persuade Sony to drop memory stick for SD Cards. iPod lovers eat your heart out. Are you an Apple Lover or Hater, It's days are numbered huge margins on white candy floss boxes will be over soon Will the Real Gizmo Please Stand Up. On the home front. The best gadget ever has got to be Sonos. Sonos Listening to Music @Home will never be the same again.

Is Reality TV The End of Society As We Know It?

2005-06-02T23:08:00.000+01:00

It's been a few years since the phenomenon of Reality TV has been with us, I for one have never been a big fan of reality TV where shallow, publicity seeking individuals have taken over our screens showing how debased we are as a society in general. We're now no different from the Romans baying for blood at the Coliseum.

It all started with big brother we've moved on to several variations of the same genre only it get's worse each time. What is amazing is that there is no shortage of people out there that want to take part or spend their valuable time enjoying this voyeuristic claptrap. The new reality is that a lot of people can see their tedious lives been reflected in these sad participants. In the UK, that whole grouping is called the Chav's. (Designer wearing no sense of individual identity). No TV channel epitomises this more than ITV in the UK.

It appears as if the programme makers at ITV have taken on the personality of drug pushers feeding a disgusting social addiction. Am I the only one that thinks it's a conspiracy by a privileged few to keep the lower classes debased and devoid of a capacity to reason ?There are notable exceptions in this genre, The Apprentice or any such like where the world of business/politics is made easier for the common man to understand is a good thing. Even though others might argue that trying to make break something complex down is dumbing down.

The primary reason we find ourselves in this situation is because in the years following the Second World War, Western Society moved through a phase of self confidence, swinging 60, free-love baby boom, hope and independence to a culture that has individuals abdicating their social responsibility. After the Second World War, European society introduced various welfare reforms to get the war torn economies and people back on their feet. The end result of this social re-engineering is not so much making the have not self reliant. It's made them even more dependent on the state as well as taking away the dignity of that individual. More importantly, there is no longer dignity in labour.

I've observed with a great degree of interest the recent referendum on the EU constitution in France and Holland, what these has shown in particular is that Europe, is neither at ease with itself nor sure what its identity is in the 21st Century. The facts are the cost of social engineering in Europe is stupid and cannot be sustained in the face of competitive onslaught from China, India and Eastern Europe against a backdrop of an ageing population across the continent. Sooner rather than later all those factories in Western Europe will migrate to the Far East. One can envisage, the Far East, will go through the same process eventually. As individuals become well off in India and China, the manufacturing base and front office outsourcing will eventually shift to Africa within the next 50 years by which time Africa might have solved some of its problem which let's be honest, is all about corrupt government and world trade subsidies.

With France and the Dutch voting No maybe finally, EU leaders will realise that what they really should concentrate on is Economic Liberation of Europe. A move away from all the silly EU directives on how many hours’ people should work or whatever takes their fancy will be welcome. They need to do this soon given, the EU as a whole is has an ageing population, China and India will soon leave the continent behind.
More importantly, working practices will move low skilled labour away from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. Get a life, don't get reality TV. So back to reality TV, I'm of the view that the real reason people enjoy reality TV is because; we've completely lost faith in society. Social Engineering, Political Correctness, Kid Glove Politics has lead to a collapse in our feeling of belonging to a community. We now seek our sense of belonging in sports, nationalism, celebrity and reality TV. Who is responsible for this? The blame if you wish can be apportioned evenly between us as individuals and the state (Politicians)

We are responsible because, we expect government to do everything for us, it’s okay not to go to work or creatively better ones self because the state will foot the bill, and Politicians are also responsible because it's now not acceptable to tell the truth. It's okay to be fuzzy and fluffy (Centre Right Politics).Where do we go from here? I've got some action plans which we can argue over- Reduce the scale of the welfare state to only provide for mentally ill and the severely disabled,-Introduce Tuition Fees, it makes students value Education.

I appreciated paying for my education because I value it,- Free Health Care is acceptable where it can be afforded as long as it applies to a health need rather than a want e.g. plastic surgery, Scrap the EU as is, It should be all about economic cooperation rather than a beaurecratic politburo,- Tax Breaks for Companies that innovatively create new jobs and encourage workers after a few years to setup up their own businesses,- Scrap all forms of tax credits to individuals. Waste of money, come up with a single flat tax rate instead,-

Western society needs to move away from a manufacturing base to knowledge oriented skills, e.g. R&D,

Scrap Subsidies to EU and American Farmers, Farmers across the world deserve a fair deal,

Compulsory Voting based on proportional representation not the Mickey mouse system like we have in the UK,

Reconstitute the UN from a talking shop to a biting shop to stop crazed Dictators like Mugabe and Saddam from ever coming to Power,

Make it difficult to hide stolen government loot from third world economies in Western Banks.

Welcome to Posiedon Groove

2005-02-26T18:33:00.000Z

Hi Folks,

Been on the sideline bloggwise for years, and always felt need to dive in and share my thoughts. Of course, you can waffle on everyday if you want to. I guess blogging is about your sharing your daily dairies and view. Okay so what happened today. Quite often our daily thoughts are filled with the stress of everyday life, usuals, bills, screaming kids, stress at work. It's not often you wake up over the weekend and get good news come through your letter box.

Alright, got three great letters in one day one from the tax man with a late penalty notice of £1.60, great !!! could have been worse, second from Mercedes offering me free car service for three years, (I wonder if it has anything to do with the M Class being voted worst 4x4 of it's class). Rubbish in my opinion, I'm on the second one and I've had no trouble with the car whatsover after 5 years.

The last letter was from my broadband provider increasing my bandwidth after 5 years of being a loyal customer. Oh and I'm getting a free DVD player.

I jumped out of bed to make sure the world was still in out there. It's not often you get good news in the mail especially as bills come tumbling in everyday.

I should have been downing a lovely glass of claret with steak this afternoon unfortunately, my football team Arsenal conspired to ruin my day by playing like a bunch of tincans. I guess I can always look forward to next season and write this one off since Abramovich has already bought this season.

Ok, that's my say for today, My bloggs will focus on the following, books, technology, music, sports, business travel and lifestlyles. Need to gather thoughts for next post. If you had a good day for a change, why don't you share it with someone, might make them hope they'll have a great one tomorrow.

Ciao

Michael