Finally, after a long time between drinks, IBM are conducting a significant technical event in Australia. Lemme sign up.. whoa! $3000!!! The notice for the collaboration summit doesn't have alot of meat. They don't even state the venue ? Where's the detailed session tracks ? If IBM are gonna bleed me for $3000 I would appreciate some more info considering it's only 3 months away.

I would still like to go, but only incentive stated, (5-get-1-free) doesn't really do it for me either, because it's still $15,000 for 6 people. I'm usually tight with the cash, but just to get a little perspective compare, Microsoft's Tech Ed this year is only $1749. Lotusphere this year was only $1895(USD) for the early bird and $2095(USD) for late arrivals. So for a regional event, I don't get it, what's going on ? Looks like I will be reading about this one in the blogs....

I think this is awesome in a boy-ish kinda way. But at the same time it's one big fat cliche on the american culture.

I love my gun.... It makes me feel safe...

I saw it here .

What sort of culture do you live in when a corporation comes up with these urban assault vehicles that can take out a small battalion in the morning, and look like it could still be able to pick up the kids after school and take'em down to 7-11 for a hotdog and a slushie ? BTW, where are the cup holders then ?

Hmm... I wonder how better the world would be, if people actually invested as much in fixing their decaying society as they do trying to kill perceived future enemies based on media-driven paranoia and bad intelligence reports, Come to think of it .... I think there is already a place like that... Canada ?

I have been watching the Quickr space for a little while now, and also looking at the related templates by SNAPP's. I have come to the conclusion that without a financial incentive, open source/freeware can be a very risky proposition. Take for example the work that the SNAPPS guys are doing.

I was quite impressed with the effort when it was launched. No small feat, and it did something that I found useful and provides Quickr with desperately needed functionality and a facelift as well. Then as time has marched on, and more than 20 point releases later, "release burnout" is starting to have an effect on the timeliness of releases of the freeware.

Now we're at Quickr 8.1 and there is no official announcement on the SNAPP's Template site about any plans or any schedule for release of 8.1 certified templates. Only compatibility with 8.0.0.2. I did manage to find these 3 entries here, here and here on the Lotus Quickr forum's.

Not to disparage the hard work that Viktor and Rob are doing, but if I was a CIO and wanting to see the value of the SNAPP's templates with Quickr, I would have to also be prepared to accept the risk that I may be stuck in a version of Quickr for an unspecified period before certification to the next version is announced. So where would that leave me if there is a critical patch needed to be installed on my Quickr server, and am already using Quickr and the templates. Do I install the patch and live with the side effects until SNAPP's get to it ? Or do I let my users suffer until it's all ready ? Not a great position to be in is it ? Because as you know, moving data around within Quickr is no easy task. So all you can do is test, test and do more testing before you release freeware as part of your solution to the business.

But IBM aren't really helping much here either. If there is an official endorsement by IBM to the SNAPP's guys about being design partners, SNAPP's should expect a commitment to a closer relationship from IBM, at least in the form of advance notice of a release schedule from IBM, and access to alpha code as some kind of heads up about upcoming releases. At least that will reduce the lead time to fixing the templates in a controlled manner, rather than being reactive as it hits the market without much notice. But then again, how much demand can you put on people who are working to give you free stuff anyway ?

I recently came across this site run by a group called ___. (I am not referring to their address as I don't approve of the concept). Basically they do a deep web search for people, namely "you", (and me), and just start building a profile about you, (and me). They only access information that is publicly available and then present it here as a profile about "you". As their web site says :

"..[web-site name] is not just about finding more results; we are using advanced language-analysis and ranking algorithms to bring you the most relevant bits of information about a person in a single, easy-to-read results page..."

Now, this search claims to be 500 times more effective than your google/Yahoo/MSN because there is deep data on the internet is not really looked at by the major search engines. Now although the information is publicly available, I still find it invasive that someone has gone to the trouble to produce a search engine that can really drill for information about me (and you) without any notice/warning/specific purpose. Even though I have never signed up, agreed to, or actively participated with them, they "kindly" produced a profile about me. They're just out there trawling for information about anything that resembles the identity of a human being. hmmm...

They do provide a facility to remove your profile, which I have done for myself already. Well, I don't mind that my public data footprint is scattered across the internet. I can't really see much value though in collating information about me into one place on the internet which is more precise than any other search engine. Their value proposition in justifying their site :

"..There are various reasons why you might need to search for people, you may need to find a lost relative, an old flame, a classmate or a business contact - but if you are using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to search for people, you have probably realized by now that it might work in some cases but in most cases it won't.

How come the best search engines fail so miserably when it comes to people search? The answer lies in a little known but very important part of the web called "the deep web"..."....."

Which I find largely irrelevant as I can generally work out how to look for people using google and the current flavour of reunion sites already out there, but if I was really keen on identity fraud then this is a great place to begin and start hacking sites...So on behalf of all those identity fraudsters in the thrid world and emerging countries looking to steal information, thanks a bunch, this will make our job just that bit easier....

Now, if I don't want to be a total party pooper about this, they should install some level of security by only allowing you to do searches if you are registered. This will at least provide some level of traceability by knowing who is searching for who, rather than letting any goose through the data without checks for potential malicious use.

(if you want to know which site this is, please leave comments or contact me directly and I will get back to you).

This is old news now.. I am just bad at keeping upto date. MS has updated their advisory (3 weeks ago!) about the file format block in Office 2003 SP3. They now provide some additional reg files to un-block the older file formats de-commissioned by Office 2003 SP3. But rather than release an SP3a or SP4 (?) or an optional update, they just provide links to files you have to download to restore access adn bury that info in the advisory. So SP3 will still block those file types listed but you need to get something to "fix" it.

This turn around comes about from the "revelation" that ..

"...it had underestimated how many users had been affected. It now says that, instead of the file formats themselves being insecure, it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure."

The appropriate response I think for this is "Like d'uh!"

I got that "MS update" icon in my sys-tray advising me of 4 "important" updates one of which was the Office 2003 SP3 update. I wonder how many people turned off that update (just like me) as a result of the news breaking back in early January. I suppose you could install SP3 then run the reg files to clean it up. But why should it still be this difficult, they could make it an optional MS-Update too can't they ? In fact that would be the easiest for users right ? Even when MS admit they're wrong, I still sense they are treating the client base with some antipathy.

Speaking of antipathy, this article back in November about the performance of Vista-SP1 in a pre-release benchmark test gives a great POV of the company's official perceptions of their release of Vista.

"Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver."

I will concede that releasing mass-consumer software of this size and complexity is difficult and a task I don't envy at all, but "...the world wasn't 100% ready" ? Or was Vista not 100% ready for the world ?

Hasn't MS caused a stir with the SP3 release of Office 2003 ? I think Gavin Bollard summed it up quite well by saying,

 "The official excuse is that these file formats are less secure but I think it has more to do with making sure that people upgrade. How long will it be before they declare Office 97 unsafe in order to force a move to Office 2007 and XML?"

If you look at the technote, and it's one of those technotes that says, this is our "enhancement" but here is the work around if you don't want it. I find believing that older formats are a security risk harder to believe than there are still WMD's in IRAQ. If this is true (that there is a securitry risk), then maybe they should also block access to users to starting up Exchange 2003 as well... Sarcasm aside, MS are only offerring a huge free pass to the ODF movement. First of all, wouldn't you mitigate the risk of file format "security risks" from the application perspective ? Secondly if it's such a damn problem, wouldn't you then NOT advise the user 3 methods on how to work around it ?

Well, the chit chat about long term file storage and whole ODF movement now gets a nice free kick for this one. Hopefully it will further demonstrate MS reluctance to reduce it's neurotic grip of the desktop. 

Star Office 8.0 is out now...

Back from the silly season that is Xmas and I am still finding it hard to "engage" in work. But Johnny Lee, who is a Phd graduate of the Human Computer research institute from Carnegie Mellon university I think has fun everyday and does some really serious stuff too. He has used some pretty clear thinking to come up with a few brilliant applications of the Wii. What impresses me is that it's a very clean solution and uses conventional technology to provide new and useful experiences with something that is already becoming common place. The youTube below is bound to change the realtime gaming experience and is also one of my favourites

There has been alot interest with the beacon awards but we've missed another accolade that I think eclipses the beacon awards... The "Quote of the year".

"Don't Tase me bro!" was voted this year's top quote. Although this event occurred in a world far, far away from here, it still had some popularity here especially as it was around the time of our neurotic security preparations for that non-event in Sydney, APEC.

Ed recently announced new Lotus Ads. The desktop videos are a good giggle. ... A few years ago we had the"eBusiness Solutions:Solution for a small planet" campaign ads which I think was the best series ever. This one below typified the hype in the tech boom of the late 90's.
 

This is one of my favourites