October, 2007

Overheard: Your first Web server

It was nearly 10 years ago (mid 1996) that I first put my own web server on the Internet. Back in college, I managed to convince one of the staff to give my personal computer a static IP address so that I could run a web server. Jeremy Zawodny, You Never Forget Your First Web Server

Overheard: Marketing and media opportunities in Second Life

“CMP has recently been listed as a “metaverse” developer—the first global multimedia company to so identify itself—and our metaverse team is actively pursuing client engagements. Overall, we’re convinced that 3D virtual reality will gradually become a vital tool in our business. We believe that immersive Web experiences can capture the interest and participation of professional audiences as never before, and that this will lead to new opportunities for marketers and the media companies that serve them.” Steve Weitzner, Why CMP is in Second Life

Overheard: Robot vendors just don’t know their audience

“I have seen several articles in the foreign media, including a notable one by The Economist, state that one of the driving factors behind Japan’s research and development in the robotics field was due to the fact that elderly Japanese people would rather be taken care of by a robot than a foreigner. This is hogwash, of course.” Ken Worsley, Japanese robots in the news again; elderly aren’t buying them

Overheard: Secure code is a mandate

“Colleges are not including secure coding in their core programming courses. We couldn’t talk them into it so we had to give them a clear demand.” Alan Paller, SANS Institute

Overheard: Data Security Lifecycle management

“The only reason dedicated certification and accreditation specialists exist is because the people who should be doing the job do not understand what the job is — we’re back to peddling voodoo again.” Michael Smith, Data Security Lifecycle–Surprise, It’s C&A All Over Again

Overheard - Larger capacity disks = green?

“Last week at SNW, one of the hottest topics was “Green”. Every vendor promoted their “Green” technology, which often was nothing more than the use of larger capacity disks or tapes to replace lower capacity disks.” Hu Yoshida, Sustainable Data Storage Services - Data Islandia

Hu Yoshida writes: While I agree that any thing that enables us to store more data capacity for less power consumption can be considered “Green” technology. However, this technology alone does not enable sustainable data storage.

Overheard: SOA explained

“This article presents a simple, technology-agnostic approach to designing and evolving SOAs. You will not see acronyms such as WSDL, SOAP, or REST, and I promise not to use technical terms like “orchestration,” “realization,” and “governance.”’ Dan North, A Low-Tech Approach to Understanding SOA

SOA stand for “service oriented architecture.” It sounds scary, but it’s not. It’s really just one computer program talking to another — and each of the programs is called a service. Dan North does a great job explaining it.

Overheard: uWink

”You’d think a man who was made a millionaire several times over by the Chuck E. Cheese pizza chain wouldn’t be judgmental.” Tor Thorsen, Atari founder: Modern games ‘unadulterated trash’

Tor writes: Nolan Bushnell, the founder and onetime head of said pizzeria/video game parlor franchise and the once-mighty publisher/console-maker Atari has issued a scathing statement about the current state of games….

Despite his blanket statement, Bushnell’s most recent venture has games at its very center. Some 31 years after he sold Atari to Warner Bros.–which went on to make billions on the 2600 home console–the serial entrepreneur has founded uWink, a restaurant where each dining table is equipped with touch screens offering a host of causal and “social” games.

Overheard: Cisco got me - Unified Communications viral video campaign

Someone at Cisco has some strange ideas when it comes to viral marketing.

Case in point: The meltdown. It’s a mini-docu-drama of a guy having a temper tantrum a hotel lobby. The video’s mission is to get you to click on an even stranger interactive psychiatrist and life coach who listens to your dreams and then tells you about how Cisco Unified Communications can solve your problems.

The strange part is not the approach — the strange part is that it seems to work. They have succeeded in getting lots of people like me to pass the darn thing around.

Reminds me of the buzz around the Rozerim Abe Lincoln ads when they first came out. Is it a groundhog or is it a beaver? What does the chessboard mean? Does Abe Lincoln symbolize depression or honesty? Does the deep sea diver have something to do with sex? Why is the beaver eating eggs?

Who cares, as long as you’re talking about us! And if you’re talking about us, Cisco Unified Communications will help!

Overheard: How do you measure engagement?

“Lately, of course, there has been some controversy around the efficacy of the Page View as the atom of Internet consumption—largely triggered by the penetration of AJAX technology, which enables content to refresh on screen without serving a new Page View.” Josh Chasin, The Now is Time

Josh writes: These two developments—the decline in the efficacy of the Page View and the increased demand for engagement—dovetail nicely in Internet metrics, because both argue for a reconsideration of time and space. Specifically, I contend that they argue for a shift in emphasis from Page Views to duration-based audience metrics.Maybe we need to think about online media consumption in two flavors: Time Spent, and Engaged Time Spent.

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