9.W45
Change comes in blue, just like in America

Filed under Life Outside Work

After failing to scoop a legible pictorial representation of the New Zealand election results from the well-known media sites, Numbers drew me a pretty chart of the new 122-seat parliament in just three minutes with flying colours:

Last night’s election was the first election in my adult life that made me stay up till late watching the events unfold on TV. That’s not only because I had a say in it and the party I voted for looked like it was going to win (and it did), but also because it came at a crucial timing for everyone who voted. While some people are upset and even saying they want to move out of the country because of the outcome, I welcome the change, not just in leadership but also across the political landscape at large.

To me, one thing that’s particularly fresh and positive about the outcome of the votes this time around is the absence of a king-maker. The combined share of all minority parties have shrunken considerably. The Greens, the only minority party above the 5% threshold in party votes, have eaten into the Labour votes at the cost of losing power. The Maori Party, which was in high hopes of holding the balance of power between the left and the right, has lost much of its say because National and Act can now form a centre-right government on their own. By the way, the numbers indicate that the Greens should now be considered a mainstream party with a promising future; in many electorates, their candidates came a convincing third. That said, it’s likely to be a zero-sum game between Labour and Green.

In my opinion, the greatest risk - or more like a flaw - in the MMP representation system is that, depending on the split of votes, a single minority party may be able to render a major coalition completely powerless and then decide which way the nation goes. The worst possible scenario materialised in 2005 when Winston Peters kindly bestowed power upon Helen Clark’s Labour after a 57-57 tie between the left and the right. Thankfully, many voters remembered that and wanted to prevent such an absurdity from happening again. As a result, Peters’ New Zealand First has been stripped of all of its 7 seats. None left. Zilch. There’s no place for anti-growth chauvinistic protectionism. Bye-bye.

I’m no political commentator, but I have my views on why National won. John Key’s National has basically re-positioned itself from the right to the centre and successfully squeezed Labour out of that space; that is evident in John Key’s intention to lead a broad, inclusive government and how he commended Helen Clark in his victory speech, which appeared genuine to me and contrasted sharply with Labour’s personal attack on John Key during the election campaign.

And I do hope that National engages in talks with the Maori Party towards a reasonable, constructive power-sharing arrangement. It would be in the nation’s best interest to enable the Maori Party to have a voice in centre stage politics. Failing to be broad and inclusive on this will see the Maori Party reluctantly align itself with the left-wing opposition just because of tradition. That tradition in my view is due for a change given that the leaders of the Maori Party emphasise that they are never about left or right.

On the ideological front, it was interesting to hear the leader of the Act Party, National’s far-right coalition partner, criticise John Key for “going left of Helen Clark” with some policies such as the belt-tightening in government spending. I also heard at least a couple of commentators on TV say that John Key’s National government will be Labour-in-disguise in many ways. Whether that will be the case, I don’t know, but I nevertheless have fresh hopes in a government that will focus on law and order, productivity, business growth, and education to prosper.

The ultimate mission for John Key, his cabinet, and his successors is to turn their country into a more attractive place to live and work in than what it is now. The global economic crisis is set to bring about an eagerly awaited reverse brain drain for New Zealand. At the risk of sounding like some pep talk cliché, I must say it is indeed up to the new leaders to turn the crisis into an opportunity and use it to the country’s advantage.

And please, find ways to lower the tax.

Jess  »  2008-11-09  »  Comment  |  Permalink

8.W45
Top 10 most irritating expressions in English

Filed under Life Outside Work

The Oxford University Corpus keeps track of “overused, tiresome phrases” in the English language. Wired reports the top 10 phrases of verbal fatigue as announced by the researchers at Oxford:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It’s a nightmare
8. Shouldn’t of
9. 24/7
10. It’s not rocket science

Expressions like “At the end of the day” and “Absolutely” come out of my mouth almost on an hourly basis if not more often. That said, these are not the sort of language I would use in written business communication or technical writing I do at work. Still, I come across many redundant, ambiguous, window-dressing phrases while reviewing the work of my own and others. Besides, it’s not easy to find less irritating replacements for expressions like “24/7,” verbal or written.

In fact, there is a 192-page publication from the Oxford University Press for those keen on an in-depth report on the abuses and misuses of the English language. For me, books like Grammar for Lawyers (LexisNexis) helped steer my way through the report writing missions in my postgraduate education. The overarching message presented in those publications is: Simple is beautiful. Delivering a message in consistently simple, concise, straight-forward, uncluttered expressions and vocabulary is not at all easy. Keeping the whole thing short is even harder and more time-consuming. “Absolutely not rocket science at the end of the day, but it can be a nightmare.”

Jess  »  2008-11-08  »  1 comment  |  Permalink

7.W45
Smile and maybe tomorrow…

Filed under Life Outside Work

There is this TV ad playing the song “Smile” in the background. I don’t quite recall what the ad was for as I was listening rather than watching (one of the election campaigns maybe? - in which case it will disappear very soon), but the music and the lyrics resonate vividly in my heart for reasons I am not able to articulate.

Smile

Smile though your heart is aching;
Smile even though it’s breaking.
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by.
If you smile through your fear and sorrow,
Smile and maybe tomorrow,
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you.

Light up your face with gladness,
Hide every trace of sadness.
Although a tear may be ever so near,
That’s the time you must keep on trying,
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile,
If you just smile.

That’s the time you must keep on trying,
Smile, what’s the use of crying?
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile.

Theme Music for Modern Times
(Music by Charlie Chaplin, 1936 / Lyrics by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, 1954)

Update: I caught the ad again and it’s actually for Multisaver from AMI Insurance. No idea why I thought it could have been an election campaign just by listening to it.

Jess  »  2008-11-07  »  1 comment  |  Permalink

6.W45
Choose change: Ditch commercialism in names

Filed under Life Outside Work

One thing I can’t stand when I’m watching TV, listening to the radio, or reading the paper, is unnecessarily long Internet domain names (Web addresses). I don’t understand why some countries such as the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand mandate the use of country-specific second-level domains that sit between the brand/organisation name and the country abbreviation. Some real-life examples:

• bbc.co.uk
• ninemsn.com.au
• flybuys.co.nz

Sure, the .co and the .com indicate that the name is of commercial nature, but who cares if it’s a business or a charity or a government agency? Apart from the fact that all those .co’s and .com’s stick out like a sore thumb, here are the reasons why over-regulated domain names are bad for the digital economy:

• Bureaucracy. An absolute majority of domain names are unique for that country anyway. As such, sub-categorisation is bureaucracy, over-regulation, and largely redundant.
• Cost of preventing misuse. A legitimate well-known business that is keen on protecting its registered trademarks will want to secure not only the .co (or .com), but also the .net, and .org versions of their name just to prevent others from registering those names for potential misuse. The cost of domain name registration and maintenance inevitably increases when there are multiple open-to-public second-level domains within a single country.
• Waste of time and energy. It takes almost half a second to clearly pronounce “dot-co” or “dot-com” when advertising a Web address. It also takes more space to print a longer name on screen or paper. It must equate to a significant number of listener-hours and reader-hours in the long run particularly when the target audience is large. The “dot-co” in a Web address really doesn’t mean anything and yet it’s there, every time - only in some countries.
• Broken brand. Many brands and organisation names contain the name of the country. Because of the .co or .com, however, the country abbreviation has to be repeated in a Web address. Without it, “tvnz.co.nz” and “airnz.co.nz” could have been simplified down to “tv.nz” and “air.nz”, respectively. In Australia, there is a well-known software developer community called “Builder AU” whose Web address is - you guessed it - “builder.com.au”. Get rid of the .com in the middle, and it becomes “builder.au”.
• Country name, ditched. Many businesses choose an international .com domain name (without a country abbreviation) simply because it’s simpler and shorter. Who wants “mybiz.com.au” when “mybiz.com” is available? A two-letter country abbreviation is sexy only when it gives a shorter alternative to the three-letter .com. Lazy consumers don’t like longer, harder-to-pronounce, harder-to-type Web addresses and email addresses.
• Counter-examples. There are many countries that have not bothered with second-level domains in favour of a de-regulated Internet name space at least for commercial use. Also, there are countries such as Japan and Korea that have successfully introduced shorter domain names in recent years. Introducing shorter names doesn’t mean breaking the status quo; instead, it’s about offering a choice to those who wish to take advantage of a simpler name and stronger brand power.

Policy, anyone?
Domain name registration and renewal fees amount to a lot of money. For countries other than the U.S., making their own country domain names more attractive to businesses and consumers means both added revenue and a stronger, more widely-used country brand. I would have loved to see such awareness and initiatives come from political parties, particularly the ones saying they want to protect the country’s wealth and competitiveness.

Jess  »  2008-11-06  »  Comment  |  Permalink

2.W44
Microsoft Glossary Update 2008-11A

Filed under Tech Notes

In the spirit of catching up with “technology”:

• Windows 7: The next shrink-wrapped version of the Windows operating system currently in early beta, available to tech communities with high expectations
• Windows Vista: The current shrink-wrapped version of the Windows operating system, no longer in active marketing
• Windows Azure: Another next version of the Windows operating system, which will be deployed up in the cloud, consisting of various “services” accessible with just a Web browser; “Azure” is the colour of the sky surrounding the cloud, and has at least six correct pronunciations: “ah-ju-er”, “ah-zoo-er”, “ah-jya”, “ei-ju-er”, “ei-zoo-er”, and “Asia”
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server: The current generation of SharePoint with the added bells and whistles that need to be paid for; commonly referred to as “MOSS”, which has basically killed the SharePoint brand name in the corporate space; whether that was in line with Microsoft’s branding strategy is unclear
• Windows SharePoint Services: The free version of SharePoint without the bells and whistles; not commonly regarded as a product of its own primarily because it is a part of the Windows Server operating system unlike MOSS, which is considered a part of the Microsoft Office suite
• Microsoft SharePoint Services: The upcoming edition of SharePoint for Azure

Jess  »  2008-11-02  »  Comment  |  Permalink

31.W44
The phantom of 2001

Filed under Life Outside Work

The turbulent economy obviously means different things to different people. To me, the plummeting stock indexes around the world and the dwindling liquidity of financial institutions matter very little. Falling interest rates on the other hand may present me with a remote opportunity. The Aussie Dollar and the Kiwi Dollar losing something like 40 percent in value over a period of just a few weeks is moderately painful. But it’s news like this that gives me the chill because it’s an ominous reminder of the year 2001.

In Australia, 23 percent of overall IT jobs and 29 percent of graduate recruitment evaporated in the past twelve months. Figures like these are certainly not isolated to Australia. I belong to the tragic generation of people who chose to study computer science at the height of the dot-com boom (1998) only to witness the bubble burst by the time of graduation. I got to experience first-hand a helplessly over-supplied market. First, it was the realisation that many of the technological promises and business models were simply ahead of their time if not fruitless money-gobbling scams; then came the collapse of huge IT suppliers and consumers; there were news of One.Tel, HIH, Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Ansett, among many others; next, it was the disappearance of IT sections and job ads in the papers; then, boom - 9/11.

It is truly sad that fresh graduates bear the brunt of a shrinking market. 2008 is looking very much like 2001 particularly in the IT world, and there is not much I can tell those graduates even though I have been through a remarkably similar climate. “I look to the mountains; where will my help come from?”

(Figure: JP Morgan via The National Business Review)

Jess  »  2008-10-31  »  Comment  |  Permalink

25.W43
In the beginning, the cloud was long and white

Filed under Tech Notes

It’s reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one talking clouds. Yesterday, The Economist published a special report on cloud computing. Also yesterday, Xero, the accounting business I cited as one of the prominent examples of cloud computing, received much media attention to become even more prominent.

As an overview, here are the titles and tag lines of the Economist report, which is a must-read in-depth series of insight for people interested in the upcoming changes in corporate IT and the economy at large:

1. Let it rise - Information technology is turning into a global “cloud” accessible from anywhere. What does that mean for the way people conduct business?
2. Where the cloud meets the ground - Data centres are quickly evolving into service factories
3. Creating the cumulus - Software will be transformed into a combination of services
4. On the periphery - The cloud’s communications with its clients will become ever more intelligent and interactive
5. Highs and lows - As IT gets cloudier, the economics of the business will change
6. The long nimbus - The cloud will make businesses more adaptable, interconnected and specialised—and often smaller
7. Computers without borders - The cloud may be the ultimate form of globalisation

Over the past twelve months (a timeframe observed by The Economist), cloud computing has risen from a mere IT buzzword to a branch of economics that ties in with just about every single emerging trend in business and technology, such as globalisation, green energy, virtualisation, big brother, and the gloomy picture for the global economy. Somebody ought to write a thesis on this. But The Economist has already summed it up elegantly in the first three sentences of their special report:

IN THE beginning computers were human. Then they took the shape of metal boxes, filling entire rooms before becoming ever smaller and more widespread. Now they are evaporating altogether and becoming accessible from anywhere.

I am particularly intrigued by the fact that cloud computing and virtualisation are fuelled by each other. As I witness in the workplace daily, virtualisation right now is THE hottest potato in the world of IT. If I had money and access to the U.S. stock market, I would invest in the leading vendors of virtualisation products and technologies such as VMware. All the cost savings, benefits, and promises of virtualisation, however, are not necessarily as good news to the working families as they are to the shareholders:

Hewlett-Packard (HP) used to have 85 data centres with 19,000 IT workers worldwide, but expects to cut this down to six facilities in America with just 8,000 employees by the end of this year, reducing its IT budget from 4% to 2% of revenue.

Other large organisations are following suit. Using VMware’s software, BT, a telecoms firm, has cut the number of servers in its 57 data centres across the world from 16,000 to 10,000 yet increased their workload. The US Marine Corps is reducing the number of its IT sites from 175 to about 100.

We’ve all heard of mobile workers, virtual teams, and telecommuting. But thanks to cloud computing and virtualisation, entire data centres each comprising thousands and tens of thousands of “servers”, too, will go mobile in the future, in the form of trucks and ships that move around the globe as they please - often driven by factors like energy costs (and perhaps legal jurisdictions):

Google, for its part, seems to be thinking of moving offshore. In August it applied for a patent for water-based data centres. “Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away,” says the patent application.

Thankfully, service providers have been thinking about the perils of cloud computing, namely, privacy and ownership concerns:

Stefan van Overtveldt, the man in charge of transforming BT’s IT infrastructure, thinks that to attract more customers, service providers will have to offer “virtual private clouds”, fenced off within a public cloud. BT plans to offer these as a service for firms that quickly need extra capacity.

..But it is not only personal information that could get out into the open. Privacy is a worry for companies too — and not just because criminals or spies might intercept their data. Once they are in the cloud, governments can also get their hands on them more easily. SWIFT, the organisation that manages international bank transfers, is planning to build a data centre in neutral Switzerland. That will allow it to keep data about European transfers on the old continent, where it cannot be subpoenaed by the American government. Web-based e-mail is not safe either. Thanks to the Stored Communications Act, American law enforcers can read people’s messages — and do not even have to tell the recipient.

At least on the surface, cloud computing means productivity that comes with affordability plus freedom and without administrative burden. Global cloud service providers like Google and Amazon have begun renting out portions of their cloud to businesses that need instant, cheap computing power. More importantly, skyward-looking vendors and service providers are not fearing the global economic slowdown because the proliferation of cloud computing can only be accelerated by it.

Jess  »  2008-10-25  »  Comment  |  Permalink

20.W43
Blowin’ In The Wind

Filed under Life Outside Work

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

- Bob Dylan, Blowin’ In The Wind

Jess  »  2008-10-20  »  1 comment  |  Permalink

19.W42
Goodbye, Rob

Filed under Undecided

Our brothers and sisters, we want you to know the truth about those who have died, so that you will not be sad, as are those who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will take back with Jesus those who have died believing in him.

What we are teaching you now is the Lord’s teaching: we who are alive on the day the Lord comes will not go ahead of those who have died. There will be the shout of command, the archangel’s voice, the sound of God’s trumpet, and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; then we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. So then, encourage one another with these words.

- Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians 4.13-18

In memory of Reverend Rob Lamerton, Rector of St. Philip’s O’Connor, who last greeted me in perfect spirit and will now rest in peace

Jess  »  2008-10-19  »  Comment  |  Permalink

14.W42
Zen for branding: Call a mountain a mountain, a river a river

Filed under Tech Notes

I believe that many of the people who work with Microsoft products and technologies had hoped that the next Windows operating system be truly next-generation, something substantially if not radically different than the bloated Vista. While that may indeed be the big picture being drawn by Microsoft, it won’t eventuate any time soon, not with the immediate successor to Vista anyway. Early indications are that the next Windows operating system, codenamed Windows 7, will essentially be Windows Vista Prettified. That must be disheartening for some, but the good news is that it will be delivered on schedule. Oookay, but there’s something else fresh about Windows 7: This time, Microsoft will do away with dates (”98″, “2008″) and aspirational monikers (”XP”, “Vista”), but instead call the final product “Windows 7″. Now that’s news because it’s unusual for Windows. Microsoft is saying the decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity.

I think calling Windows “Windows” is good marketing simply because it builds up on the strongest brand Microsoft has, not to mention avoiding the risk of creating another ill-positioned, time-limited brand like Vista. Spending money on brands that have to die doesn’t sound like the wisest move for companies the size of Microsoft. Microsoft has to kill the XP brand because it does not stand for the future while overly successful. Vista, which has failed to take over XP, has to die for the exact converse. So why bother calling Windows yet another name that is doomed one way or another? Good call.

Leave SharePoint alone
Windows is not the only example of Microsoft undermining the brand power of its own product family by getting overly inventive with names. Look at SharePoint: In order to distinguish between the free and paid versions of the same stack of technologies, Microsoft has invented two completely alienating names on top of the original product brand: WSS (”Windows SharePoint Services”) and MOSS (”Microsoft Office SharePoint Server”). Since the introduction of the MOSS acronym in particular, most IT people and non-IT people have been saying “moss” whenever they mean whichever version or part of the SharePoint products and technologies they’ve seen, used, or heard. The actual technical differences between the names may matter a great deal to administrators, developers, and licence managers, but all those end-users, executives, and recruitment consultants reciting “moss” instead of “SharePoint” without knowing what MOSS really is is a real blow to the umbrella SharePoint product brand.

Not that I’m concerned. I just think that inventing a stupid acronym as a substitute for a one-word proper noun is, well, stupid. Here’s a “refresher” presentation slide I once prepared but never got around to using in the SharePoint training sessions I conducted:

Question: What is moss?

A. ‘miss’ misspelt by a keystroke

B. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

C. A small flowerless green plant that lacks true roots, growing in low carpets or rounded cushions in damp habitats and reproducing by means of spores released from stalked capsules

The correct answer is C and it’s not even a trick question. For Microsoft, knowing what consumer brand name to push and consolidate on will undoubtedly save marketing dollars. Start calling Windows “Windows” and SharePoint “SharePoint”, and it might help enlighten all those numerous recruiters out there badly in need of experts in “Moss”, “Sharepoint” and “Share point”.

Jess  »  2008-10-14  »  Comment  |  Permalink