I’ve been away for a few days at Lotusphere, a large customer conference. For the interested, you can read my "almost done" review over on Communicat.us

For everyone else, I’ll tell about the closing guest speaker – Professor Brian Cox who’s bio reads …

I’m a Royal Society University Research Fellow based in the Particle Physics group at the University of Manchester, where I hold a chair in Particle Physics. I work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Geneva.

(ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Starting in late 2009/2010, the ATLAS detector will search for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy.)

It’s hard to describe the combination of energy, wonder, and shear intellect (not to mention memory recall for endless technical and anecdotal detail). Perhaps the best way to get a small taste for his presentation is to check out his 2008 TED Talk or his short 2009 TED U Talk.

At Lotusphere a small band of talent created a live blogging service and took to the ether[net] with “live blogging”. Well, the concept has a new contender – Gizmodo!

Live Blogging from Apple WWDC 2007

Gizmodo’s liveblog updates automatically. Source: Gizmodo Live from Apple WWDC 2007 – Steve Jobs Keynote (Note: live blogging of the keynote finished at 14:40 EDT 11-JUN-2007)

Gizomodo’s solution is not exactly “live” blogging. It would be better described as “auto-refresh browser updates”. Where as true “live” blogging would have some of the feel of a chat window with rich HTML content and updates as soon as an author presses their “enter” key. GizModoLive is a web page that refreshes very 30 or 60 seconds with any new content since the last refresh. On the upside, GizmodoLive is more like a real blog. It supports comments (which also appear on the refresh cycle) and it only requires a browser (no applet download).

Yet another example of pushing the boundaries of the Internet and collaboration. I for one and happy to see these things take shape. I was not at Lotusphere nor at WWDC but I had a chance to see a little of what took place and didn’t have to wait for the “new cycle” !

I decided to build a Linux server for the purposes of running VM images of various servers. My hope is that with Linux as the host operating system, I can keep the base footprint to a minimum. Right now, most of my VM images are Windows based but for all of my server software that will run on Linux, I plan to use Linux VM images. Continue reading ‘Building my Linux server – part 1’ »

I followed the news at Lotuphere and then followed the blogs. All of this “following” lead me to the IBM site for the official posting / announcement …

IBM Lotus Quickr will provide ready-to-use team places where team members — inside or outside the firewall — can share information and collaborate on projects online.
Lotus Quickr comes with Quickr connectors that integrate into your familiar desktop applications so you can “work the way you want to work.”

Continue reading ‘IBM team collaboration software – Lotus Quickr’ »

I’m not at Lotusphere2007 this year but a bunch of people (over 7000) are. Among those at the conference are a bunch of bloggers. A small group pulled off an amazing feat – they created a live blog solution. I’m watching them blog from the opening general session which started 30 minutes ago. For the un-teckie, it’s really quite an achievement. The software available to us today and the Internet really does allow a lot of useful information to flow around the world.

However, I know first hand that high speed Internet and “connectivity” is still a bit of a privilege. It is definitely not ubiquitous. Most would think I’m talking about remote regions of Africa or China, I am talking about rural America – places you might drive through on your vacation or when going to your parents house. Even dial-up performance is weak in much of our nation.

With all of that said, I am lucky to have good Internet connectivity which brings me back to LotusphereLive. Here is a screen shot of what is going on at this very moment !