Flashing Light Bulb

2009-11-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

played with the Google Chrome OS aka Chromium for 30 minutes. All the smart people working at Google and the only thing they could come up with was the 21st century version of AOL Hell.

2008-06-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.windowsvistaweblog.com/2008/05/31/is-microsoft-making-the-same-mistakes-with-windows-7/

i really don't get this huge touch computer MS showed off. The current cycle is mobility. I hardly even use my desktop anymore since my laptop can play the games i used to play on my desktop. Everything i need is on my laptop and can go anywhere i go.

1980 to 2000 or so was the PC centric cycle. Maybe around 2020 we will go back to it again, but the cycle now is mobility and being able to take everything you want anywhere you go.

Rule #1 - Never delete, anything

2008-05-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3748051

Good thing hardware is cheap. You never delete anything, ever. You archive it or hide it from the people you support, but you never delete anything. Even if you have it in writing that deleting something is OK. Someday someone will decide they need this data and it will be up to you to find it again.

Are data centers the factories of the 21st century?

2008-05-27T10:17:00.000-07:00

Read an interesting post today on Slashdot about how a web hosting company is telling it's customers to use GMail.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/27/137229

Here it is:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=564949&cid=23556243

If this is right then IT is going to go through the same cycle as what happened in the Industrial Revolution and in retailing when big box stores came to rule. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo will rule at least 80% of the web hosting market with a cheap similar service that most small businesses need. The rest will be done by in-house IT shops.

This reminds when I did a favor for a friend and helped him set up a server and some PC's at another friend's business. This was a small medical office with one or two doctors and a receptionist. To run it they bought a few PC's, firewall/router applicance, a server and a bunch of software licenses for Windows 2003, Symantec AV and I forgot what else. Total cost was probably around $20,000. Consulting was cheap as stated, but imagine if they had to hire someone at a regular rate and pay maintenance or support or whatever for the periodic problems?

You can install "free" linux but you will still need to pay a lot of money to consultants to code and customize everything for you. Microsoft is very good at this. 50% of their software is scripts and other automation to save time for you in doing your job instead of testing twenty different LDAP schemas for your organization's domain logon.

Now imagine if they went with Google and their cloud. Buy a few PC's and the basic services like the online scheduling and office productivity software are free. No need for Windows Server.

Someone will code some apps small businesses can use to work in the Google or some other cloud for a fraction of the costs I added up. They may not be good enough for a Fortune 500 company, but good enough for most small businesses.

Wal-Mart didn't drive Prada and Versace out of business. Just the small guys with me too products that were too expensive.