IBM/Lotus Enterprise Microblogging Debuts: What about Microsoft?

Is IBM onto something here, ahead of Microsoft? Indeed, Lotus-based organizations should see benefit from the secure enterprise microblogging as described below. Seems organizations based on Exchange would similarly benefit, if the upcoming Exchange 2010 release would include these "publish/subscribe dialogues" within the enterprise, similar to Twitter (but no indication of that from the Exchange 2010 Beta so far). Exchange's unified messaging since Exchange 2007 may be useful and have significant benefits, but IMHO not as simple and easy to use as a Twitter-like service could/should be, if integrated intelligently into the enterprise architecture. Here's further information courtesy of IBM Enterprise Microblogging Debuts - Technology For Change:

"Lotus Connections now boasts a Twitter-like service that lets employees establish and maintain publish/subscribe dialogues within their organizations.

At its Center for Social Software symposium being held this week in Cambridge, Mass., IBM announced the release of a microblogging and file-sharing facility bolstering the Lotus Connections suite of enterprise social networking tools. The Twitter-like service enables employees to establish and maintain publish/subscribe dialogues within their organizations.
Additional features added to Lotus Connections include support for iPhone and Nokia S60 mobile devices, including microbrowser access to Profiles, Activities and the Lotus Connections blogging tool..."

MS Exchange2007/WinServer2008 compatibility issues

Seems that waiting for Exchange Server 2010 - rather than upgrading now to Exchange Server 2007 - may make sense for many organizations currently running Exchange Server 2003 [or earlier]. Although this seems somewhat inconvenient, I expect many organizations can deal with this successfully in several ways, given sufficient planning. This sort of constraint reminds me of the situation approximately 4 years ago, when some Microsoft shops wanted to wait until MS SQL Server 2005 became available for purchase, rather than immediately purchasing a SQL Server 2000 license. In fact, the Software Assurance up-front purchase (to purchase SQL Server 2000 with SA that would include upgrade to SQL Server 2005) might have seemed logical at the time for many organizations.... But of course, evaluating the full TCO of a subsequent upgrade to SQL Server 2005 would have involved more than the initial hard cost of purchasing Software Assurance. So perhaps the best decision (then and now) as to whether to invest in Software Assurance depends on the particular upgrade and change management capabilities for the specific organization.

The recent Exchange2007/WinServer2008 issue was explained in the recent Microsoft Exchange Team blog posting explaining that Exchange Server 2007 won't run on upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2. Further insights available from SearchITChannel.com: Dilemma: Exchange Server 2007 won't run on next Windows Server:

"...Customers upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2, due later this year, will have to upgrade to Exchange Server 2010, which is also due this year. This news, disclosed in the fourth bullet point in a July 17 Microsoft Exchange Team Blog post, means Microsoft partners have to sell Exchange Server 2007 without the promise of support on future OSes and without Windows Server 2008 R2 interoperability with Exchange Server 2007... said Planet Technologies lead infrastructure engineer Mike Crowley: "If people stick with Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 because 'it works,' I wouldn't expect them to want to upgrade the underlying OS just because a new one is available."

Is There a Sub-Subnotebook in Your Future?, NYTimes, 12/1992 :)

Dell's tiny-footprint Netbooks seem to be selling nicely... This, despite concerns as to whether a full set of traditional corporate standard software (including anti-virus, anti-malware etc.) can run and be managed efficiently on a relatively modestly powered machine. Some say the Netbook's success to date, is partially due to the current economic situation ( see for example, CNet's "Faltering economy boosting Netbooks" ). Hopefully for Dell, the success of the Netbook will continue regardless of the economy.

In case there was any doubt however, this is definitely not the first attempt at making a popular "Sub-Subnotebook"... One example was written up nicely by Peter H. Lewis of the New York Times in December of 1992:

Is There a Sub-Subnotebook in Your Future?:

"... Taking advantage of recent advances in miniaturization, computer makers are creating portable computation and communications devices that can easily be carried in one hand or tucked into a coat pocket. But at some point the usefulness of small systems comes into question: Most information is still entered by typing, and no one has yet managed to miniaturize executive fingers.

That hasn't stopped some companies... from creating personal computers that are about the size of a calculator..."

Why BlackBerry users will love the Storm (and iPhone users won't) - DVICE

A common-sense and informative summary of what to expect (and not to expect) from RIM's new Storm blackberry device [available in US, but still a ways off in Canada].

DVICE: Why BlackBerry users will love the Storm (and iPhone users won't)

"We've had a couple of days to play with the BlackBerry Storm, Research in Motion's answer to the iPhone. It's the first all-touchscreen, no-keyboard BlackBerry. And let's be clear: It's no iPhone. Its web browser is slow, and you can't pinch to zoom (as with the T-Mobile G1, the Storm doesn't have multi-touch). It doesn't work with Macs (though it does have an application that lets it talk to iTunes for non-DRM songs on PCs). And though it may have some great games to download when its app store opens sometime in the future, it doesn't strike us as the kind of device that you'll use to drink an iBeer.

But that doesn't mean this phone won't be a huge success. The now-cliched term "crackberry" got coined for a reason, and we've found the BlackBerry Storm to be just as addictive as RIM intended. <...> within months, this phone will be in the pocket of every lawyer in the country.

It's All About Typing

iPhones are hard to type on. They just are. That's why the first Android phone has a slide-out, Sidekick-style keypad. Instead imitating a Sidekick or having a haptic feedback (that's when a touchscreen vibrates back at you when you press it), RIM has done one better: The BlackBerry Storm's entire touch screen is a button. It feels just like the mouse button on any laptop

If you're used to a BlackBerry already, the typing experience on the Storm is the closeSt you'll get to having a keypad with real buttons on a touchscreen phone.

Why would BlackBerry addicts want to give up buttons for a touchscreen typing system that is almost, but not quite as good? The trade-off is for the big, beautiful screen that you get when you're not using the keypad. It's far better for reading emails, using GPS or playing BrickBreaker than any BlackBerry that's come before

If you've used a BlackBerry before, you'll get the Storm's menus, symbols and buttons immediately.

Instead of comparing the Storm to the iPhone and whining grumpilly about the Storm's lack of multi-touch, consumers will compare it to other BlackBerries. And when they do, they may find that they like what they see: A big, fun to use touchscreen, a 3.2MP camera that takes video and has a bright flash, a respectable Web browser and a typing system that really works."

ars technica: Bold new BlackBerry 9000 to take on expected 3G iPhone

Bold new BlackBerry 9000 to take on expected 3G iPhone

Some interesting thoughts re: upcoming major next-gen BB device:

"...the Bold is still a very attractive option for those in business who are married to things like the BlackBerry's handling of corporate e-mail and the non-touchscreen keyboard that many BlackBerry enthusiasts still love. On the flip side, Apple said at its SDK Roadmap event in February that the iPhone 2.0 software will introduce 'real' Exchange support, push e-mail, and other enterprise features that it currently lacks, possibly bringing it up to speed with the BlackBerry in that regard.

Unfortunately for RIM, the Bold is not yet commercially available. The company says that it will be widely available this summer, and told CNet that it expects the price to be somewhere around $300-400. If it were available today, RIM might be able to capture more sales than it will after the next-gen iPhone is released. By then (whenever that may be), the two may be roughly on par in terms of features once again."

Review: Firefox 3 Beta 1 - session saving vs. losing extensions (InformationWeek)

[Note: Please also see addendum below]

some of the tradeoffs to be aware of, as one plans to get on the Firefox3 upgrade treadmill (specifically, ff3 beta1). The session-saving can be done via (numerous?) extensions even w FF2, however of course it will be nice not to need an extension to do that within ff3:

Review: Firefox 3 Beta 1 -- Packed With New Features And Rock Solid -- Firefox -- InformationWeek: "...If you close the browser while multiple tabs are open, Firefox asks you whether you want to save the tabs, which will re-open next time you open the browser; or just close the browser, in which case next time you start the browser, you'll start with a fresh session.

On the down side, none of my extensions work in Firefox 3. That's not surprising; the first beta of a new version of Firefox usually breaks extensions, and developers revise them to be compatible in the coming months..."

=============================
Addendum:
As per http://www.webuser.co.uk/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/351302/an/0/page/5
"... Firefox can be made to open using the last session by going to, 'Tools > Options > Main' and setting the 'When Firefox starts' option to: 'Show my windows and tabs from last time'.

I have to say that I can't get this to work in my current Profile, even with all extensions disabled. It does work when using a new Profile though. I'm not sure why that is at present. Anyway, you could try that setting. Using extensions is another option. Here are a couple that can do it:

Tab Mix Plus - Session Manager

--------------------
mart's site ...could be worse...."

Who owns your "IT projects"? [Hint: That is a Misnomer] - The Content Economy

Nice grain of salt to keep in mind when planning the next perceived "IT-only" project, e.g. anything related to the unavoidable Upgrade Treadmill that appears not to be a Business Project:

The Content Economy: Who owns your "IT projects"?: "...there are no IT projects, only business projects involving more or less IT. Every IT initiative should be owned and driven by the business. Some might object to this way of seeing things. I would expect IT people that want to keep their influence and power and business people not interested in IT to belong to this category. Upgrading the mail server software to the latest version since the current version will no longer be supported by the vendor might be used as examples of a 'pure' IT project that should be owned by the IT department. But it should not. It would only be a pure IT project if the mail server was not used in the business at all, which then would question its existence and cause it to be terminated. The main point is that someone in the business should always have the ownership of initiatives involving IT, even those needs and initiatives that have been identified and requested by the IT department (such as upgrading a mail server software due to that the current version will no longer be supported by the vendor)...."

Microsoft Reaches ERP Milestone

Microsoft Reaches ERP Milestone: "Microsoft has reached the halfway point in its three-year march to converge four enterprise resource planning suites into a common technology platform.
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But it's still an open question whether the campaign will deliver a fully converged suite that will hold its own in the midmarket that SAP and Oracle also covet, and whether customers still care...

Project Green, the early code name for the suite's convergence, was originally a two-step plan to rewrite Microsoft's four ERP suites—GP, NAV, SL and AX—into a single code base.

But at their Convergence user conference in March, Microsoft officials confirmed that the company will likely not move to a single code base but, rather, converge the suites through a common underlying technology stack, including SQL Server, Visual Studio .Net, BizTalk Server and Workflow Foundation..."

SAP Roadmap: SAP Pushes SOA, On Demand

SAP Pushes SOA, On Demand: "... where SAP may be leading the pack in establishing NetWeaver, its services-based platform and ERP (enterprise resource planning) application suite, it's lacking in the fundamental resources needed to carry the SOA mission forward: a skilled work force to help convert users from older R/3-based systems to the newer SAP ERP 6.0 suite and a user community ready to fully embrace the concepts of SOA, industry observers said.
[SOA] is not the magic bullet to solve all problems,' said Harry Bruce, section IT manager at Procter & Gamble, in Cincinnati. "