Frozen Grand Central

A friend sent this video to me today. Thought it was worthy of the rant. Enjoy!!

SaaS

OK - I haven't posted in a bit. Sorry about that. I ran across a cool site last week that I wanted to share with all (all 2 of them) my readers. A little background first. Since I work in the IT industry it is part of my job to keep up on different technologies. Part of that includes watching for different paradigm shifts when they happen and seeing if it makes sense for us to move in the direction of the shifts. One of those shifts has been the concept of 'Software as a Service'. From a business perspective I love this idea. My favorite part of this shift is that it lets the folks who are really good at server maintenance do what they do best, and it let's the customers (us) focus on our business as opposed to spending time maintaining servers etc (I know of a certain blogger who might be wishing his Apple server was a SaaS...). Anyway, another part of this rant is the fact that it really is starting to annoy me that I have to run all my own backups for my (and more importantly - my wife's) stuff. When there is all this space on the internet, why can't there be a little bit of space that is easily accesable for us to use. Enter ideas like Google docs and (one that I thnk has the potential to be way better) Zoho. I ran across Zoho last week and thought to myself, man, we are getting close. (I think that Google docs is a little bit sterile and clunky). Not only would we have a place to store all the data we create, but the on-line apps to create and edit them too. there is an on-line word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, database app, etc. I love this idea since I use three or four different computers (Lenovo/Vista, Dell/XP, IBM/XP, Macbook Pro/Leopard) and this solves the 'where is my data' issue that I seem to have. I like the thought of 'anywhere - anyhow'. As I was checking out the stuff on Zoho, I was thinking to myself, all they really need is some sort of email program, like 'gmail'. To my suprise, they are coming out with one Q2. Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.

Along those same lines, here is an article about SaaS. More from an enterprise level, but the thoughts are still the same. As we move forward we are becoming increasingly mobile and we don't want to have to have our laptop or files with us, but rather be able to get to them 'anywhere - anyhow'.

Enjoy!

The Great Up-North

Occasionally I travel to Quebec for business. I had another opportunity to go up there this week and I thought I would share a picture to give a little taste as to the amount of snow they have up there right now. I did not take this, one of my collegues snapped it as a warning to what we were going to enjoy once we arrived. They don't use plows up there, they use blowers, big blowers. The snow banks were so high, a lot of the street signs were covered up. I actually thought it was awesome, but I love snow. Anyway, if I hear anyone complaining about the weather in Kalamazoo, I will let them know that we have it pretty good. It could be worse, way worse.

Enjoy!!

Microsoft bidding on Yahoo

Looks like Microsoft wants a bigger piece of the internet pie and is shoring up for it's war against Google. At a price of $44 billion. Check out the article here. Interesting...

The kinder, gentler Clinton

This year I decided to be more invloved in the political process than I have been in the past. What this really amounts to is reading up on it more and comparing what I read to try and distinguish the truth from the 'slightly' true. So, I ran across this acticle today about the Clinton camp and it kind of reminded me why I tend to shy away from politics. A few phrases from the article made me chuckle.

• '(they) bemoaned the degree to which former President Bill Clinton’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama last week had inflicted lasting damage on his wife’s presidential candidacy.'
• 'a sense among many Democrats that Mr. Clinton had injected himself clumsily into the race, will try to shift the former president back into the sunnier, supportive-spouse role'

Anyway - I like the 'sunnier, supportive-spouse' too. How dare he be so mean. Hard to imagine how her presidency would go. Is Bill being allowed out, or does he have to stay in? Sit Bill, sit. Good boy......

Fisker Karma Concept Car

Found this today on the 'tube. Again, it is cool to see that some companies are investing in alternative energy cars that have style and performance. Who knows? Someday they may even be affordable.

Mozilla Turns 10 Today

If you are a user of Firefox, you should check this out. I ran across this article today and thought it was interesting. They estimate that 25% of the browser market belongs to Firefox. Make sure you check out the 'Mozilla Chart', gives an cool view of their history. Anyone remember Netscape.....

Enjoy!