iMAP the iPhone

I may be a bit slow, but I catch up eventually.

Given that I am reading my emails on the iPhone I did not want to read them again in Outlook. Turns out that instead of using POP you can use IMAP, which keeps all the mail readers up to date with any change may in any other reader. So using webmail, outlook, and iPhone is now a breeze.

Thoroughly recommend it.

- @drian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol

Rittman Mead and Majendi Join Forces

I am pleased to announce today that Majendi is Joining forces with Rittman Mead.

All my technical bogging will now be on the Rittman Mead blog, but watch out for some personal stuff on here.


We finalised the deal over lunch in Zurich, a very civilised part of the world.

From Drop Box

- @drian

I was interviewed yesterday by Chad, on Business intelligence, in particular the state of the market, jobs, and skills.


It got me thinking about some of the reading I been been doing recently to keep up to date. And thought I should write things down before I forget them!



I always like to keep up-to-date with market developments, in particular technology advancements.

On that front I saw a presentation recently by a CIO which quoted change and how we need to be prepared for it in IT. Now we always hear that, but he put it in the context of three Laws, Moore's Law, Metcalfs Law and Gilders Law, which actually bought it home really well.

To remind you, Moores (Co-founder at Intel) predicted in 1965 that processing power will double at least every two years.

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n^2).
The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.
Two telephones can make only one connection, five can make 10 connections, and twelve can make 66 connections.


Gilders Law states that the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months. In my street they are installing 50MB cable soon, so in a year that should be 150MB!!


So, computing power will blow our minds in ten years, networks are really useful when more things get connected, and speed of information flows will be even more awesome and useful for gaming.
BUT, none of the above has directly demonstrated why Oracle and SAP became powerful, or why Oracle is preferred over SQL Server for large databases, or why Column databases are better at certain reports than rowwise databases.
Or why we don't program in BASIC anymore (although it would probably be called ADVANCED now!).

So technology improvements enable us to work from home, with access to fast databases, but why am I using TOAD on Oracle, with OBIEE on top?
More importantly, what do I need to use next year, the year after, and so on. When do I give up learning and go into management!

The Cloud Compute model is already removing the need for hardware in the office, and software on your laptop (except for a browser!). The skills for databases and reporting have been commoditised, offshored and devalued. IS this pattern true for thought leadership?

Maybe I should invent a Law of my own.

How about, The second you master a technology it is obsolete.








There is actually a whole list of 'laws'

http://www.jimpinto.com/writings/techlaws.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/01mar/slides/burp-1/sld004.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_Law

Me down to a tee

http://peterthomas.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/pigeonholing-a-tragedy/

The day after April Fools

I hope you all got fooled yesterday. I fell for one, hook line and sinker!

Anyway, to continue with happy thoughts for a day or two longer...



A man flying in a hot air balloon suddenly realizes he’s lost. He reduces height and spots a woman down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts to get directions, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The woman below says: "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"I do" replies the woman. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but It's of no use to anyone."

The woman below replies, "You must work in management."

"I do" replies the balloonist, "But how'd you know?"

"Well", says the woman, "you don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault."

New iPhone

I finally took delivery of my iPhone today. Although it 16Gb, which is more than enough for my music collection, I know it will be out of date by tomorrow. So can someone tell me what the iPhone replacement will be please!

Of course on it I will be able to run my OBIEE dashboards. Next week I'll show you how to connect to the Majendi sample/development site with iPhone, PC or simple imagination!

On the subject of new features, whilst reading about the iPhone dashboard features, and the database development it reminded me to test out the integration of the Oracle DB fone with OBIEE.
Developed intially so that the Oracle development teams around the globe (particularly between US and India) could communicate cheaply, this little known Db feature is basically like Skype or MSN, but built into the Database. Larry insisted on the development when it became obvious that offshoring his operations had increased costs and damaged the communication process.
The system uses a Db to Db network and is usually done behind your company firewall. see the Oracle documentation for details on how to enable it (from version 10g).
As yet there are no in-built features in OBIEE you can use, so you have to rely on javascript (make sure HardenXSS is false) to embed/run a thin client.
You will need a microphone (there is no video as yet, but should be in 11g). In my net post I'll show the screen shots and code on how to do this.


- @drian


April 1.