Boeing has announced they are shutting down their Connexion service. I wonder if the recent restrictions on carry on luggage, let alone the complexity of modern travel, has impacted their business plan.
Putting paid to my vision of future Business Travel.
CMYK to Grey
Rorohiko have released a plugin for InDesign to convert colour images to greyscale at print time: Rorohiko Color2Gray. Looks like it implements this InDesign technique, but in a much easier way.
Anti-antidisestablishmentarianism
dowhile { day.Today() == SUNDAY; } closeloop;
Virtualization
VMWare and Xen seem to be talking to each other again. So Xen is “piggy in the middle”?
Good news for customers is that an standard way of instrumenting virtual environments has been decided; and the freedom of choice prevails.
Turning Japanese
In Japan, 100Mbps Fibre to the Home, for a mere US$36 per month, apart from 100Mb/s and VoIP. No wonder Australia’s Telstra is reticent to install fibre-to-the-home in Australia. It is not all well in Japan; the government seems to have regulated NTT’s ability to charge for bandwidth use. D’oh.
The Tubes are Tied
Blocked Tubes of the Internets
Microsoft has a sense of English Humour
David Brent Management Training videos – of the same ilk as the John Cleese post Fawlty Towers management and sales training films on the 1970s – shows Microsoft UK has a sense of humour.
And way more important, is an English sense of humour.
It is obviously internal only: talking about Microsoft Values – in a very indirect and humourous way. How this leaked I do not know, and I am sure that it breaks a bazillion copyright and internal rules.
I wonder if head office signed off on the content. Somehow, I think this one slipped through the cracks.
Technorati Tags:
microsoft, david.brent
Adobe Store, AU+NZ Open
The Adobe Online Store, Australia and New Zealand is now open with virutally all Adobe products available.
Photoshop on the Mac Pro
Macintouch readers have reported on the performance of the new Mac Pros, and specifically how Photoshop CS2 performs under Rosetta vs. old Power Mac G5s.
Technorati Tags:
photoshop, adobe, technology, apple, macpro
Laptops on a Plane
The world is a dangerous place, with a whole bunch of eejits. Sadly, the impact of no laptops on planes will have a serious impact on business travel. It shouldn’t, but it will.
Many senior executives use this “down time” to catch up on emails and sort out their presentations/spreadsheets/reports. For many, this time is the only time execs have to be offline. In the office, or at their destination the time is spent with staff, meetings and customers. Not hunched over a QWERTY keyboard.
I think the impact on technology may be different.
Imagine Business Class with a personal in-seat laptop, with web browser and live internet connection. As their the business traveller has their normal laptop securely locked up in baggage, hopefully on the same plane going to the same destination, this in-seat laptop is their only means of working.
Web access to email has been around for some time. Desktop applications on the web is emerging. Using such tools as forthcoming in Windows Live and Zoho may just find another niche. The challenge for these vendors and IT is to securely connect applications to sensitive data.
Now we just need some forward thinking carriers to implement both high-speed internet and the browser hardware.
Stuff to read:
CNet Ajax Spurs Web rebirth for desktop apps
Technorati Tags:
technology, laptop, plane
Joel Over-Simplifies Management
Joel on Software, one of the top ten blogs on the web follows the life and tribulations of CEO Joel Spolsky and his company, Fog Creek Software.
The movie/DVD, Project Aardvark, 12 Weeks with Geeks is an excellent view into a modern software company as you follow interns through the creation and release of Fog Creek Copilot.
In recent days, Joel has been over-simplifying management into what I classify as the push, pull and mingle methods:
Mingle: The Identity Management Method
What Joel hasn’t talked about is Leadership.
In truth, good managers are using a combination of all three of these all of the time. Managing and motivating employees is one of the most difficult skills to learn. Once mastered, you are leading.
One Mac Head, Two Minds
An excellent article from the New York Times: Weighing a Switch to a Mac. Interesting, as it goes through the two options: BootCamp or Parallels.
You don’t need to leave your Windows-mind behind when switching. Now that I am disconnected from the Adobe-mind, I rarely use Windows applications. But then again, I’ve not really done much in the last two weeks apart from fill this blog up with stuff!