mobile test

This is a quick test of the wordpress Blackberry application to see if it might draw me back to blogging.

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I’m now using blogger

I have been silent on this blog for many months because all my posting has been done internally. Recently I have been made Enterprise Technical Architect and now find more of my internal posts could equally be external with little or no change. I’ve moved to blogger because that gives me more configurability out the box.

I’d delete this blog if it wasn’t getting so many hits on how to integrate media wiki and active directory. This will be my last post here.

Finally tried Max

I bloggedthat Max might be a good RSS Reader when Vista comes along. I finally tried it out. It requires .Net 3, so I installed that, rebooted, installed Max and Max complained that my version of .Net 3 was too new! So I removed .Net 3, allowed Max to install .Net 3, rebooted and fired up Max – it didn’t work! Anyone had more success?

UPDATE: Just to clarify – this was done on XP SP2.

UPDATE: I tried again today (17 Oct) and Max is still falling over, so thought I’d look for a reason. I stumbled a post by Mark Woodman in which he points to a whole bunch of failing in Max. I can only assume that the people writing these things don’t use RSS – well not in anger – because they just don’t get it. Disappointed I am.

Virtual Vega, Synthesised photos

Two things caught my attention today that seem to offer an interesting contrast. First was Susanne Vega singing in the virtual world, Second Life (link New World Notes blog) and Microsofts Live Lab demo of PhotoSynth, which is just stunning. I’ve had only a few jaw dropping moments in IT, and imagining the potential of PhotoSynth as I watched the demo is one of them.

Follow up with CIO

I had my follow up meeting with my CIO (previous meeting) after she promised to continue reading the experimental internal blog site. I had challenged her, saying that if she didn't revisit it, it was because she didn't have a feed reader. Nearly two weeks since that first meeting and she hadn't gone back once! Actually, I was surprised – I had thought she might get back there once or twice – but it showed how this stuff doesn't work without a reader.

I installed the RSS Bandit on her machine and subscribed her to a couple of feeds, internal and external. She's copied me in on a couple of emails in which she has been singing the praises of the feed reader. I will be checking back with her in another week or so to see how she has gotten on, but early indications are that it's really working. Having the reader alert you to new content so completely revolutionises the way you interact with the web.

One lesson: this has to be experienced. If at all possible get the stakeholders to experience RSS, there's only so much an explanation can achieve.

Listening to my own message

I have been pushing the use blogs, wikis and RSS as a communication tool and have been experimenting with them myself. I have always had in mind that my target audience are other people within IT – in other words my colleagues. What I haven’t done is consider the use of these tools to communicate with our customers – in other words, the business we aim to enable through the IT services we provide.

We’ve talked, in our company, about co-developing solutions, but often these conversations are quite stilted, and most certainly are not open. Could we, should we, consider using social media to crack this nut right open? Mmmm, perhaps another guerrilla tactic.

New design

I changed my design, because I like the 2 column sidebar, and because this page renders the posts first on small screen.