Saturday, June 20, 2009

Whose Fault? Yours. « The Effective CIO

Whose Fault? Yours. « The Effective CIO: "When people fail to get their jobs done as quickly and efficiently as possible, it’s our fault. Period. It doesn’t matter why they failed; we still own the problem. That’s a hard concept for some people in IT to grasp and accept."

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Motorcycle Safety Statistics: Crash, Fatal Bike Accidents

Motorcycle Safety Statistics: Crash, Fatal Bike Accidents: "Motorcycle Accident Causes and Factors

In 2006 about 4,935 people were killed riding motorcycles of different kinds (see above). A major Motorcycle accident study analyzed information from thousands of accidents, drew conclusions about the causes and looked for ways people can avoid accidents. The 'Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasures,' was a study conducted by the University of Southern California, with funds from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, researcher Harry Hurt investigated nearly every aspect of 900 motorcycle accidents in the Los Angeles area. Additionally, Hurt and his staff analyzed 3,600 motorcycle traffic accident reports in the same geographic area. Below are some of the findings."

SharePoint Reviews

SharePoint Reviews

Idera – Tools for SQL Server, SharePoint and PowerShell

Idera – Tools for SQL Server, SharePoint and PowerShell

Monday, June 01, 2009

Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.: "Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps.

As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.)

We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens' new idea into a project, which we codenamed 'Walkabout.' We started with a set of tough questions:

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?


After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we're very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we're giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.