Idea Alchemy

So as a new update here are some great tools from Microsoft that have come out recently, and a couple of other great bits of information...

 

The press has covered this pretty well but live search has died and Microsoft have released their all new search engine Bing (www.Bing.com) and today they announced that virtual earth will also be changed and released as Bingmaps (http://www.microsoft.com/maps/bingannounce/) completing this phase of the rebranding. BUT this is more than a re-branding, Bing provides a wealth of new capabilities, paying you when you shop online, helping you determine the probability of a flight going up or down and recommending actions and a BUNCH more...think of it not as a search engine, but rather a decision support engine, advising you as to the best time to buy, from where et cetera.

 

I have recently mentioned Live Mesh (www.Mesh.com) and it continues to get better and better with each release. For anyone considering a netbook it is an absolute must, providing remote access to any machine on your mesh...so run outlook on a machine at home and get the rich client experience through the remote desktop instead of struggling with OWA....it is really great and sync your files across multiple machines.

 

Other tools..and gadgets...the HiDef Zune is on it's way (I am also still betting on a zune phone some time soon) and of course Windows 7!

 

Exciting times!!

Microsoft have announced a cool new product that will be in Beta shortly...Vine (http://Vine.net). Vine looks to answer the question of consolidating and amanging all of the different social networking tools that you have to contribute too and monitor such as FaceBook, Twitter, Digg, Live Spaces, Google Blogs, etc

 

Essentially the tool unifies your view of these services, managing to bring all of the content to you (including the IM functionality of FaceBook for example), as well as status updates, tweets etc, and allows you to contribute back to those forums from a single place, including the necessary SMS messaging functionality.

 

About time, this mutliple logon and contribution thing is consuming my life!!

This invention from MIT brings the information available to you online and makes it available to you all the time with clever use of projection, OCR and webservices...I need one  now...!

 

 

That's right (and thanks to Ben Peters for the heads up....) Microsoft are now giving away another product...namely SharePoint Designer.

 

Announcement Below:

 

From the SharePoint Team blog...

 

SharePoint Designer available as a free download

 

We are excited to share with you some news about SharePoint Designer 2007. Starting now (April 2, 2009), SharePoint

 

Designer 2007 will be available as a free download! We want more of you customizing SharePoint and feel that this a good way to put the tool in the hands of more people. You can find a lot more information in our site including:

 

a) Letter to our Customers

http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=HA103607611033&Origin=HH103607651033&CTT=5

 

b) Frequently Asked Questions

http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=HA103607621033&Origin=HH103607651033&CTT=5

 

c) Free Download

http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT103616701033&Origin=HH103607651033&CTT=5

 

I have long been a vocal advocate of fair and balanced journalism, particularly in a field as riddled with religious fervour as Technology! I think only politics and religion are as (if not more) cluttered with voices screaming from bully pulpits. So you can imagine my utter dismay when I received the email below and then saw the article it referenced...

 

EMAIL TEXT_______

 

           Computerworld Wrap-Up

               March 19, 2009

___________________________________________________________

  

In this issue:

 

 

  1. Researcher hacks just-launched IE8

  http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/4599112/368188/176887/0/

 

  2. Google makes a play for NCAA March Madness fans

  http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/4599112/368188/176888/0/

 

  3. Harvard professor apologizes to judge for faulty motion in RIAA music piracy case

  http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/4599112/368188/176889/0/

 

AND SO ON....

 

What furstrates me is the email title was about the hacking of IE8....as is the headlin article....but when you click on it the article is actually significantly broader....

 

Cracks Microsoft's new browser hours before release; also hacks Safari, Firefox

 

The researcher in question, a German gentleman, cracked the browser at a hacking competition...and hacked FireFox and Safari too...but guess who got bashed in the email and highlighted in the article. The headline should surely have read "All major browsers shown to be vulnerable and at major hacking competition". This would have been a balanced report! Instead the reporter....Gregg Keizer decided it was a chance to take a pop at Microsoft. At least he mentions that the instance of IE8 was running on beta Windows 7 software....could they not have tried it on fully secured Vista so that the advantages of the improved security profile of the supporting OS are being truly tested!

 

SHAME ON YOU!!!

I am interested in the question of Bio-Ethics as a field. It seems to focus on the ethics of the person versus the ethics of the macro global construct.

Allow me to explain. The focus seems to be on why the individual, from a wealthy, generally 1^st world country, should donate a significant proportion of their personal wealth (let us for a moment ignore how they got it), to providing the basic essentials, food, water, medicine, education et cetera, to those globally that are denied those basics. Definitely a noble sentiment…but let’s examine it a little more closely.

Firstly let’s examine the political climate. Regardless of the fact that, as an example, much of Africa is riddled with tin pot dictators and tribal conflicts, is it really our responsibility to tilt the balance of nature on another continent to support a significant over-population of human  beings when the natural environment is unable, and local governmental organizations are unwilling, to provide that minimal assistance?

I am not denying the terrible nature of the suffering the human beings born into those environments are destined to suffer, my question is….should we pay and fight to support the people within these nations, and the large families they attempt to raise. Should we not strive to stabilize the region politically and stabilize (or reduce) the population growth instead? At that point the area and government could evolve to support the population, develop the infrastructure they need and educate the population. It is only the fringe influence of technologies from the developed world that has lead to the uncontrolled population growth in third world countries and an expectation that the people there have the unalienable right to survive and have kids. Only two things….nature (for some called luck) and the government of the country in which you live, bestow that permission (it is NOT a right). This is evidenced by the China example…China realized that as their population began growing beyond the levels that they as a government (yes communist…a regime I vehemently oppose), could provide for they needed to take action. The end result would have been a period of political unrest that neither the body politic (despicable as they are), nor the general population could possibly have dealt with or averted without massive human suffering. The result, they imposed a one baby rule. The world has been up in arms about it but regardless of your legal arguments and histrionics…this was a wise decision for the world. Even with that rule the growth in China on the industrial front has put them front and center on pollution and their people are still horribly impoverished outside of the major cities…which is by the way most of the country.

There are a number of reasons for me posing this question. One is the proliferation in third world countries of very large families which will, undoubtedly, undo and good we can achieve through energy efficiency and the most optimistic achievements of renewable energy within the most aggressive (and optimistic) timescales laid out. (The number of kids you see per couple decreases with education fyi…up to a point, then you get so rich you keep spawning). These remains true within the United States…who the heck needs 8 kids and who with any care for the planet would have more than two.  Just because you can, or just because your parents did…doesn’t mean you have too or should!

The second reason for this question stems from the recent shift from individual view to community focus within the US. I want the US to be a collection of tight communities…it does “take a village”. I want the US to be built on that foundation. BUT…I need to understand how we are going to take that “welfare of the individual…rights for all” focus…and deal with the global fiscal and environmental challenges we face that cannot be considered and judged when viewed in the light of the suffering of a single individual or group. We have challenges that will result in someone giving up something…and someone getting hurt….how do we make those judgment’s when the  world seems intent on making everyone happy. We need to reclassify and weight ethics….the macro-ethics and micro-ethics…and stop the press mixing the two for sensationalist effect.

Technology is the new religion, and as always, religion leads to war.

 

Why is it that everyone has felt the need to pick a side in the Mac versus PC marketing construct? It is really simple to divide life in a binary fashion.

 

Too easy, and ultimately a flawed vision of life.

 

A PC is great option, a MAC has it's own uses....same with an iPod and a Zune, same with an XBox and Playstation...or Wii, there are lots of options and none of them are absolute.

 

Can anyone explain to me why people become so utterly obsessed with picking and defending a position within this continuum? Only religion (and in the US maybe politics) inspires such obsessed and utterly irrational, argumentative and fundamentalist devotion....and is so definitively divisive. Wake up everyone....THEY ARE ALL JUST ANOTHER COMPUTER...just transistors in silicone, wrapped in various flavors of plastic and glass...not a statement about your individuality, which if you really were individual would mean you would never ever go near a Mac or a PC or an iPod...maybe a Zune (not popular enough yet).

 

We need to shake off what marketeers have decided are the tribes into which we must pick allegiances...pick what makes sense for you, your price range, your functional needs, your technical level of expertise and if you still decide you need to define yourself by the shiny plastic your transistors are wrapped in...go for it, but don't snarl disparagingly at those who chose differently.