mip's scan

Humbled by Nature

I've sat a few times at my PC wondering if I should write anything here about this terrible disaster that has occured, with such an unimaginable lose of life.  At the present time of writing, they are saying that 116,000 people have lost their lives due to the Tsunami that occured.  The event has nothing to do with technology and really doesn't belong here in mip's scan, but it dawned on me that nature often does remind us that no matter how advanced we become as a society, no matter how much technology we have at our disposal, unforseen acts of nature can easily overcome us.  It is a humbling feeling.

Additionally, out of this terrible occurance, another of natures amazing aspects reveals itself.  I read an interesting observation in Wired magazine

Sri Lankan wildlife officials have said the giant waves that killed over 24,000 people along the Indian Ocean island's coast seemingly missed wild beasts, with no dead animals found.

"No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit," said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department. "I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening."

It would seem that our fellow earthly inhabitants have achieved something that our technology has not.  My thoughts and prayers go out to all who have suffered in this sad time.

The Search is On...

Happy holidays everyone! Between out-of-town client work and visiting family & friends for the holidays I've been away from my reading/writing pile.  I've got a few things to write about and thought I'd start with Search.  Why search?  Because upon my return I needed to track down some items across my PC's.  I'd been typing in little notes to myself on my Blackberry of things I needed to track down and so I used both Google and MSN search to accomplish my task.  In 5 of the seven searches the MSN search engine served me better - the killer feature being the level of granularity I could break down the search results for Files. Where Google just lets me breakdown the results between Emails, Files and Web History, MSN Search let me be very specific (ie. budget was one of my search requests, then I specified that I only wanted spreadsheets and bang, there was the one I wanted, second on my list).  On two of my searches however the Google search engine did a better job for the simply reason that the items I was search for were actually indexed and for some reason the MSN Search tool doesn't have the item indexed. 

Now if you're as interested in seeing where this all is going as I am (the search industry that is), then you'll probably enjoy this detailed analysis on Google and Microsoft.  I particularly liked how they illustrate (see the chart at right) the size of the prize so to speak. You can see that if a search company (or tool) stays out on the web, no matter how big the web is, it is still small potatoes compared to the amount of info and data lurking elsewhere.

Get Cooking

For those of your who are considering or evaluating moving to Linux
within your organization, you may find this interesting: Linux Client Migration Cookbook.

So what is that?  You're asking.  It's a Redbook put out by IBM that you can download for free.  It's an interesting read and I thought you might find it useful.  What this Redbook is intended to...

...to provide a technical planning reference for IT organizations large or small that are now considering a migration to Linux-based personal computers...

The table of contents is as follows:

Part 1 Choosing Linux
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The case for migration
Part 2 Planning the pilot migration
Chapter 3. Organizational and human factors planning
Chapter 4. Technical planning
Part 3 Performing the pilot migration
Chapter 5. Migration best practices
Chapter 6. Client migration scenario
Chapter 7. Integration how-tos
Part 4 Appendixes
Appendix A. Using enterprise management tools
Appendix B. Application porting
Appendix C. Desktop automation and scripting
Appendix D. Client personalization

More Desktop Search

How many desktop search tools can one computer have!
Ask Jeeves released its version of the desktop search and I've had a chance to use it for the better part of the day today.  My verdict is that out of all the ones available, the MSN Search tool is the leader because of its depth of search (number of file types, ways to categorize/sort results) and the way it lets you view search results without actually launching the browser based tool.

For those of you who want to see the offering from Ask Jeeves, you can get there by clicking here.

Calling iTunes

It was just a few weeks ago that I was speculating that Apple might release a hybrid smartphone / iPod and having just returned from some out of town client work I was not surprised to find an announcement.

Apple Computer and Motorola could soon show us the mobile phone they are developing to play music purchased from Apple's iTunes online music store.    

"We've said we have something coming on this in the first half of 2005 and we're definitely on schedule for that. Hopefully you'll be able to see more about it soon," says Eddy Cue, vice president in charge of applications at Apple

Now let's not all get too excited yet.  I don't think this will be the iPhone concept from my previous article.  Instead, this sounds more like some type of iPod accessory - something that will not directly compete with the iPod.  This would make sense as it would allow Apple to test the concept without build a device that takes sales away from the existing iPod units.  I still stand on record though, should this venture with Motoroal prove successful, it could bring us that much closer to the iPhone.

For the entire article, click here.

Thoughts On Microsoft Desktop Search

Well I must say that I am impressed.  The Microsoft Dekstop Search tool even in its beta form is rather slick.  Let me walk through my experience with this newest entry into the Desktop Search market.  I installed the tool after a brief 4MB download.  It required that I download and be running IE which is a shame since I use Firefox on all my machines.  The Google Desktop search utilizes whatever browser you've set as your default.  But not to worry, I simply launched IE and carried out the install. 

The installation process restarts IE and when it restarted I notice an interesting thing.  The Google toolbar had been turned off automatically and the MSN toolbar was now turned on.  So much for playing nice - the gloves have come off ladies and gentlemen. 

Microsoft Desktop Search

I will post a review in the next 24 hours, but wanted to put this out there as its big news (although not unexpected).  Microsoft has released in beta their desktop search and it seems like it's packed with a lot of interesting features and tools.You can find it here.

OpenOffice - Not Just About the Cost

It seems that often the case being made for open source software over Microsoft and other proprietary applications is the cost savings.  Cost savings however should/could be viewed as merely a short-term gain.  I read an excellent post/article around the longer term benefit to be realized with specifically using OpenOffice: data longevity.

Data longevity: this is an important point, which is often overlooked because it's really only an issue in the (distant?) future. Microsoft has made it clear that it wants proprietary document formats, and inconsistent ones at that. This may work as long as Microsoft is around and developing software that supports files created by outdated products. Personally, I'm more comfortable with my OpenOffice.org documents in XML format because I know that in the worst case scenario, I can unzip the document structure and easily extract text from the XML components. This is technical, but what it comes down to is: my data is easily accessible in the future. It is also easy for third party developers to write tools for OpenOffice documents.

There are several other great points that are made in the post.  I would recommend checking it out to help you make your decision/business case into using Open Office over Microsoft Office.  Now you can talk about the short term (cost) and long term (freedom) benefits in your cost-benefit analysis.

Video Games and Surgery

I'd written in July a post title Cancer Fighting Video Game that was about how a video game was used to educate children about cancer.  I'd had a number of parents who'd emailed me after that as they'd found the info useful and their children had found the game to be both entertaining and informative.

So I thought I'd post this evening about another video game story and children awaiting surgery.   I read the article on CNN and it provided some pretty interesting (although not surprising I guess) info on a limited study that was done.

Letting children play video games on a Game Boy in the operating room before undergoing surgery can help relax them better than tranquilizers or holding Mommy's hand, researchers say.

Google Suggest

I really like all the innovative things that Google is doing with search.  The latest that I've been using today as I research info for a client project is the Google Suggest feature.  What this does is quite simply:  as you type a query into the search box, the tool guesses what you're typing and offers you a series of  suggestions as a drop down box. The suggestions listed also have a small number next to them that illustrates the number of potential hits that query would yield.  I like this because it helps you think of potential search queries in real time.  Also, the fact that it lists the number of results that would be displayed is useful too in deciding on whether to finish the query or not.

Try it for yourself by clicking here.