Fans of Peter Gabriel may recognise the title of this post. I’ve been listening to the four albums of his that I own (all originally on CD). He really is a talented chap. The track mentioned is from the album So which was my introduction to the man.

Looking at iTunes I have well over 5,000 songs in my collection. Some of them are missing currently due to a hard drive crash, but most are there. iTunes tells me they total about 32 gigabytes. Hey, I could just about fit that on an iPhone. Certainly, I could fit them on an iPod Touch and an iPod Classic would just be swimming with free space.

Where am I going with this?

The cloud. Well, no, I’m not actually. But I’d like to talk about the cloud. Apple have just announced iCloud which, amongst other things, allows you to download (or even re-download) any tracks you purchase from the iTunes Music Store – on any and all of your devices (up to 10). For the princely sum of about USD$25 per year I could also link up those Peter Gabriel tracks – ripped from my own CDs – with those on iTunes and get the same capability. Interesting.

But not for me. I used to own a variety of iPod models. A 4th gen with 40 GB was my first. Then a 5th gen with 60, then 80 GB (the first died and was replaced with a larger one). The 80 GB iPod was capable of storing my entire music collection (at the time) plus numerous audio podcasts and some video and still have over 10 GB free. My iPod Touch and now my iPhone were both 16 GB capacity models. I knew I wasn’t going to fit all my music in the highest 32 GB capacity available at the time, so I saved myself some money and went with the 16.

Im rambling a little. My point is this. I had a hard time dealing with the fact that I could no longer carry all my music with me when I first switched to my iPod Touch. I got over it. Now, if I want my entire music collection in my pocket then I’ll invest in a 64 GB iPod Touch.

And that’s the point. It’s a single investment. Buy it, sync al my music to it and I’m done. No ongoing payments for iTunes Match or for bandwidth. Add in a dock for my stereo system (oh, that it were good enough to warrant listening to music) and I have all my music anywhere and anyhow I want.

I’ve spent the last 7 years syncing music to my Apple devices by using a PC or Mac and a cable. Soon I won’t need the cable. I’m really not seeing the value in iCloud for music – at least for me.

If all you can afford is a 16 GB iPhone and you’ve somehow amassed a gigantic music collection – and especially if you bought it all on iTunes – then I can see some value.

Amazon and Google have their own offerings already in the market too. They differ on various points but the concept of a “music locker in the cloud” is common. And I predict that one or more of them will be very successful. Why? Because of youth culture. Eager to lap up the next big thing in tech, they do what they’re told. How else do you explain things like Facebook?

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on July 22nd, 2010.

There’s something about this otherwise insightful article in Computerworld that I have to take issue with.

Here’s the hypothesis:

Any business worth its salt knows and understands its core competencies — what it does better for its customers (users) than anyone else. What is IT’s core competency? What does IT do that users cannot buy better and/or cheaper elsewhere? Network support? Probably not. Datacentre management? Sorry. Help desk? Afraid not. Deskside support? You’re kidding, right? In most every case, some outside organisation can do what IT does better and possibly cheaper. Which raises the awkward question: Why do we need IT?

I beg to differ. I’ve worked in two very large multinational IT companies whose helpdesk functions have been migrated offshore. The end result in both cases was disaster and I think I know why.

Let’s pay particular attention to the fact that, being part of the large IT company, I and my colleagues are very well equipped to discuss IT issues that we encounter with our equipment. Therefore, the level of pain, anguish and frustration that we endure must indicate that mere mortals – our customers’ employees – haven’t a chance at getting the help they need in anything like an efficient or helpful manner.

Why? Because nobody knows what we, or they, do. It’s a very simple problem that, as far as I can tell, will cause any outsourcing of functions to fall below the levels of efficiency previously enjoyed with inhouse functions. It doesn’t matter where you outsource to, either. I’ve heard people say that India or Malaysia are horrible to deal with, but really it has nothing to do with the core problem. In the first company where the helpdesk was outsourced, it was sent to Australia! Same disaster.

When you find a company that really knows what it does, down to an almost minute detail, and it’s all written down concisely. And kept up to date. Then you have a good candidate for outsourcing. I’ve not heard of any such place. I’ve certainly never worked anywhere that comes close to this.

Until then you are basically trying to solve the problem of artificial intelligence – dealing with an entity which does not understand the task it is set and must learn merely by observation. If it chooses to.

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on July 21st, 2010.

One of the most insightful things I ever read about the “Y2K” problem was along the lines of…

“Y2K”. Isn’t abbreviating it like that the kind of thinking that caused this problem in the first place?

Today I came across a similar statement in this Computerworld article on IPv6.

The IPv4 pool uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices. IPv6 uses 128-bit address and supports a virtually unlimited number of devices.

I guess I don’t know why a 32-bit address range was chosen, but I’d be tempted to believe their thinking was “this should be enough…”

If you’re not interested in Apple’s recent announcements and demos, you can stop reading now.

In the WWDC keynote, Apple introduced some new features which ‘borrow’ (to be generous) from the 3rd party developer community. Some of these features are being debated as to whether they will kill off the 3rd party applications they seek to mimic.

On one side of the debate, we have those who say “Well, now Apple has introduced it nobody needs a 3rd party app.” and on the other side we have, unsurprisngly, developers and a few others who say “Ah, but Apple’s implementation is very basic and 3rd party apps offer so much more.”

The three that I have seen most about are Reminders (versus “to do” apps), text macros (versus Text Expander) and integrated Twitter (versus numerous apps).

While there is no argument that “to do” apps like Appigo’s ToDo (which I own) and Omni Group’s OmniFocus have a lot of power and flexibility that Apple’s Reminders app does not, that comes at the expense of complexity. And if we’re honest, cold, hard cash.

One of the most powerful features of the Reminders app is that it comes with the phone. Just ask Microsoft how powerful that notion is. It’s next most powerful feature is that it is good enough to serve a purpose. That’s why I think a lot of people will be content with using it. Why shell out your hard-earned readies when what you already have will do a decent job? Why spend hours or days comparing the myriad of 3rd party applications – none of which can be trialled – before you lay down your cash in the hopes it is going to be worth it.

On the topic of text macros, one of the developers tweeted that they would not be the death knell of TextExpander because TextExpander “can do way more”. Well, yes and no. It’s true that TextExpander does more than just expand text. It has all manner of smart automations and efficiencies – none of which can be used in the core Apple-provided apps. That’s an enormous disadvantage.

Once again, “good enough” will come into play for a lot of people, too. I own TextExpander for Mac. I use it to expand text. Nothing else. For that alone it was worth the (discounted at the time) purchase price. I don’t really want or need more. So why would I once again lay out cash for something that will not help me type my emails – where I do an awful lot of typing on my iPhone?

Integrated Twitter is a little more odd. It seems, from the pictures I have seen, that although the integration exists to tweet photos, locations, web links and the like directly from Apple’s apps, the official Twitter app must be installed for this to work. Technically, that’s a 3rd party app right there. But of course everyone who uses Twitter on their iOS device has their favourite client and the iOS integration does nothing for reading tweets.

So, in summary, I think Reminders and text macros will put a significant dent in the relevant 3rd party app categories but Twitter clients – Twitter’s own recent behaviour aside – will be as popular as ever.

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on July 16th, 2010.

This Computerworld article proclaims in its headline:

Third-party software bugs skyrocket in 2010.

Uh huh. Interesting.

It then moves on to the strap line:

Jump in vulnerabilities largely in non-Microsoft apps: researcher.

Ah, right. I see where this is going…

The increasing number of flaws uncovered in non-Microsoft software puts users at risk because few third-party vendors offer automated update services, requiring people to seek out updates, then manually download and install patches.

Mmm hmmm. Well, here’s another use for the ‘Rest of World’ category I created. Edit for republication: The mentioned category was a feature of the One Man’s Tech blog but is not used here.

For the record, more often than not third party software for Mac OS X has auto-updating built in. Yeah, I know Windows rules the world and all, but it’s no more right to ignore the minorities than it is in a society. If your story is only about one sector of society, even if it is the biggest one, make that clear at the beginning.

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on July 4th, 2010.

I’m not going to write much here, as I’ve written about it before. But I just came across yet another article which thinks that GMail’s “conversations” feature was unique and clever. Aaaaaaaarrrrgh! Follow the first link for the real story. Then spread the word! Why do so few people know or care about this?

Well, obviously not, but certainly for a very long time there has been a propensity for computer geeks (such as myself) to grab sound samples – mostly from TV and movies – and use them humorously, if not constructively, in place of boring old ‘pings’ and ‘bongs’.

I first played with sound sampling on ny brother’s BBC Micro – which required additional hardware – and to some extent the novelty has never worn off. Of course today’s computers take this type of thing in their stride, so there isn’t the same sense of accomplishment any more.

I already had many song snippets on my iPhone for use as ring tones, but today I was setting up some recurring alarms for weekends to remind me to drink water. I tend not to feel thirsty until it is too late and I have a dehydration headache. When choosing a sound to accompany the alerts, I was looking for something unique (so I’d recognise it immediately) and, ideally, appropriate.

Immediately, one Father Jack Hackett came to mind. I was looking in some online scripts for the obvious line (word!) to grab when I hit upon an even better one. I’ve provided an m4r file which can be used as a ringtone on iPhones and an mp3 file for other users. This is ripped straight from series 2, episode 2 from my DVD set so the quality is very good. (Could be construed as NSFW.)

As an interesting adjunct to this story – how long ago do you think computers first produced music? Answers on the back of a mental note before you check out the answer. I’m picking that collecting “WAV files” started pretty soon after that.

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on June 25th, 2010.

TV3′s Campbell Live programme aired an item on Wednesday in which a reporter and camera operator tried to fool automated airline check in kiosks for domestic airlines in New Zealand. In short, they had a pretty good success rate!

The reporter, Rebecca, was able to check in as her camera operator, Cameron, and he was then also able to check in under his own name. Both had boarding passes in his name. This was achieved in fully automatic fashion on Air New Zealand and Jetstar. For Pacific Blue, they had to go to a desk and have someone print Cameron’s boarding pass as the kiosk did realise it had already printed. However, even then no questions were asked. I suppose an attractive young lady can get by the gate attendants with the name Cameron (and she did), however posing as cabinet minister Tim Grosser could have pushed the envelope rather, had she tried to board!

In the case of Pacific Blue, Rebecca boarded first – no questions asked – but when Cameron boarded later he was asked for identification and questioned. Not that this achieved much as both flew successfully.

But perhaps the most incredible accomplishment was Rebecca’s ability to check in an extra bag for a passenger who had already passed through security. Making a point, she did this to none other than Transport Minister, the Hon. Stephen Joyce!

So why am I posting about this here? Well, I’m calling out the airlines for being lazy or cheap!

As a 20+ year veteran of the corporate IT industry I can imagine just how this happened. One of the weakest areas of many large businesses is knowing what they want. In IT terms it’s about requirements gathering. In all probability, unless the kiosk vendors really are a fly-by-night operation, the airlines simply did not make clear, specific requirements available to cover all the obvious (to them) scenarios. Missing requirement number 1 – printing multiple copies of a single boarding pass for unauthenticated travellers is a bad thing.

And there’s another thing. Last time I flew domestically, which would have been a couple of years ago, I remember checking in with a kiosk that required my credit card as an authentication token. Clearly that requirement no longer exists. Why?

I’m tempted to blame the kiosk/software vendors, and certainly they are at least guilty of not knowing their client’s business very well, but I have seen clients gloss over the important stuff so many times that it is statistically more likely the airlines really are to blame. It’s a shocker.

Originally published on One Man’s Tech blog on June 19th, 2010.

Once again, on TWiT 252, Leo Laporte and friends go out of their way to miss the point.

When discussing FaceTime, the new video calling feature on Apple’s new iPhone 4, they basically say it is useless because it only works over wi-fi. Apple really couldn’t win on this one. Brian Brushwood said he had been waiting for every new iPhone model to sport video calling and now that it does, it’s not good enough. As I see it, Apple had two choices. Either don’t release – in which case they are condemned for still not having it – or release it in current state – and cop flak for it not being fully functional yet. And that’s the thing. Jobs said it only worked over wi-fi at this time. There was a clear statement that it was expected to be available over 3G in 2011.

Then Leo questions the openness of the technology. Unless Apple is pulling some sort of very complex and conniving stunt, it’s open. It’s a collection of open standards which were all displayed on the stage presentation. What on earth is there to question here? Why the hell else would they make such an announcement if not to allow others to hook in to the ecosystem?

And finally, there was the question on why it didn’t come ‘out of the box’ with iChat connection. No-one I have listened to or read has cottoned on to the very obvious fly in that ointment. FaceTime connections start with a phone call. Gimme the number for your Mac, will you? The whole point is this is not Skype. It’s video calling. Using a phone and phone numbers – something all customers will understand. Start talking about software and user names and the like and you’ll lose a significant amount of your customer base.

Once again, rational thinking takes a back seat to “but it’s not what I want.”

I came across an interesting article on Stuff today, entitled “Paying young tech minds not to go to college.”

The headline is well written and certainly grabbed my attention. If you dig into the story you’ll see that the payment is basically venture capital. It’s an interesting scheme and I really hope it succeeds.

But it got me to thinking again on something I have long believed in. Although I have attended a university – even gained credits towards a degree – I didn’t even last a whole year. It turns out I’m not cut out for this ‘higher learning’ stuff. So while some friends were ploughing through their university studies for three or four years I was earning a crust. In effect, I was paid not to go to university.

Certainly there are some vocations, such as medical and legal ones, that simply require a rigorous, multi-year course of official, sanctioned study and examination to become a practising member. But if you look at the super-wide field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) you can find both tertiary-qualified and non-tertiary-qualified practitioners.

What’s the difference? Nothing! At least, nothing consistent. I’ve met folks with degrees who’ve been in the business for 10 to 20 years who were, frankly, useless. I’ve also met some amazingly talented people who do not have degrees. My view is that you either have an aptitude and a passion for the ICT field or you don’t.

While I don’t have any widely recognised qualifications beyond my secondary-schooling I can confidently tell you I know more about successfully prosecuting ICT work in a real business environment than probably half of the people I deal with on a daily basis. I’m not saying I know a lot, though. I also know people who have a far better understanding than I do. But I’ve been in the business now for nearly 24 years and in that time I have learnt a hell of a lot. I’ve also made a hell of a lot of mistakes and seen other people make many too. And it is the mistake-making that defines the person – not their education.

A friend and colleague likes to bring up this quote from Albert Einstein rather often in our discussions.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

I see the embodiment of this insanity just about every day. Some people do not seem to be able to cope with what is really a fairly deterministic field. Everyone makes mistakes but how they deal with it sorts the wheat from the chaff.

When it boils down, I believe there are three traits that identify a quality ICT professional: 

1. Has an open mind.
2. Recognises and learns from their mistakes
3. Thinks of others, but backs themself

I admit I was many years in the business before I gained all of these traits. Even more years before I realised the importance of them. But I firmly believe these are the traits that make me as successful as I am – and I am a far more critical judge of my success than those around me.

As a counterpoint to the above list, here are some of the telltale signs of those who don’t fit the mould: 

• Withholds information as a means of wielding power
• Defends a position without trying to sway the other party’s viewpoint
• Cannot explain their position
• Attempts to cover up a mistake to the detriment of others

I’m sure there are many more, but I can think of specific examples of all of these traits from people who are university educated. I guess I can’t say, not having completed a degree, but I don’t believe any of the points in either of these lists is a prime consideration for the course of study.

Linked lists, on the other hand – now you’re talking! (The only real thing I believe I learnt in university CompSci that I didn’t already know at the time.)