Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

A lot of buzz on the wire today about Apple deciding to move from the Intel chip sets in its Macbook and desktop computers, and replace with an ARM chipset.  Most news sources, like this one, are quoting the story from SemiAccurate, which is breaking the news. Apple already uses ARM chips in the iPad, [...]

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A very dear friend of mine, Vaughan Merlyn, recently suggested that I re-read Eric Raymond‘s book, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”  It’s been a while since I’ve picked this up and frankly I’d forgotten much of it. The very first time I read “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” I was working for a company in [...]

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Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will be releasing a CDMA version of the iPhone, opening the door for service by Verizon Wireless. Many in the industry view Verizon Wireless as having the best network of the leading carriers, but AT&T’s lock on the iPhone has been a real ace in the hole.¬† If [...]

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Morgan Stanley plans to power their new data center in Scotland with a new generation of turbine generators called the Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine (THAWT).  The $400M data center will require 150MW of power.  It will be powered initially from the utility grid but later transitioned to power generated by the underwater turbines of [...]

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I’ve waited for the dust to settle to log a post about Google’s Chrome, and to do so now almost seems trite since there’s already been so much content in the dialogue about browser wars, IE killers and such.¬† I do feel compelled to make a few cursory points about Chrome, just for the record.¬† [...]

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In earlier posts and conversations, I’ve mentioned my interest in container data centers and the opportunities they bring for certain types of implementations and use cases.¬† As a big fan of agility in IT in order to meet the dynamic demands of the Business, containers can be a valuable weapon in the arsenal. In my [...]

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An article appearing today on Reuters describes how researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department have been experimenting with brain activity related to thinking of words.¬† The process involves capturing MRI images of a person’s brain as they are shown and asked to think about specific words.¬† The image captured on the MRI of the [...]

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We’ve become fairly comfortable with the structure of our IT organizations, but new trends in technology product development are increasingly challenging these traditional models. In the traditional (i.e., over the past 10 years or so) IT organization we have roughly aligned the organizational chart with a logical stack corresponding to our data processing footprint. We [...]

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I’ve noticed a few articles in the news about contact lenses that put directly into your field of view things like Heads Up Display functionality, computer screen output, and can potentially deliver things like zoom and night vision capabilities.¬† A few links to articles are shown below: ¬†http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205916535 http://www.gizmag.com/electronic-contact-lens-promises-bionic-capabilities-for-everyone/8689/ http://gizmodo.com/346164/electronic-contact-lenses-give-future-you-crazy-eyesight-heads+up-display There is truly some opportunity [...]

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