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Standards help us towards common goals!
You may have seen announcements such as this one in Forbes focused on Google and IBM collaborating in the personal health record space. You'll note mention of standards in the article. It was standards work in places like Continua that got IBM and Google comfortable that we could work together in a way that let us pursue common goals together in ways that invited others to join in comfortable that there's a "level playing field".
This EHR/PHR space represents tremendous opportunity around the world, and I'm personally excited to see us taking steps towards open standards based ways of providing support for the gathering and use of health information!
Categories
: [ Google | IBM ]
Feb 05 2009, 10:40:12 AM EST
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IBM announces new open standards policies
IBM announced a set of policies regarding our participation in organizations today. It's generated a lot of discussion, just check google news IBM announcement to see what people are saying.
Unfortunately most of the reporting focuses on an assertion early in the release that IBM will withdraw from organizations that we don't feel satisfy our criteria for openness and transparency. That's unfortunate because it means reporters and their audiences don't get beyond that initial statement to look at the real substance of the release.
You might want to scan the groklaw comments for an alternative view.
I think the reality is that we'll continue working with organizations focusing on standards development more or less as we have been. We'll encourage adoption of appropriate IPR rules. We'll encourage more open and transparent governance. And in cases where we simply can't live with the positions taken by a group we may, after a lot of pain, withdraw.
If there's a difference between today and yesterday it's that now we've made our policies public and begun to build consensus within the open community towards broad adoption of our ideas. I'm personally pleased to see IBM continuing to show leadership, and demonstrating that we value open source and open standards enough to work to make improvements.
Sep 23 2008, 06:56:15 PM EDT
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Standards in 2009 - a mixed bag
The open ecosystem, like all important things, is not an easy proposition. To wade in, and stay involved, you've got to "want it bad". There are a wide range of people involved with a wide range of perspectives and objectives. As a result there's a lot of debate, no small measure of frustration, and from this persons personal perspective a mixed bag in terms of results.
I think I have a fairly centrist point of view. I think standards work is, in large part, balancing the needs and wants of many parties ... in short it's politics and diplomacy. Oh there's engineering work to be done, and that's important, but it's the bigger picture issues that are giving us trouble these days.
Take the current state of the OOXML saga for example. I'll refer you to Rob Weir's post rather than try to recreate the details. The summary is that harm, possibly irreparable harm, may be done to the standards community in the next few weeks. Many parts of the world currently do not recognize the work of consortia (where most of the ICT standards work is done). They pay attention only to their governments and to the hand full of de-jure organizations out there. Those same nations are now watching to see how concerns expressed over the processes followed in the last OOXML vote are dealt with, and as Rob points out there's cause to be concerned they're not going to like what they see and are going to take action. This could result in a new balkanization of the globe as different geographic areas create/select specifications to meet their needs that are not adopted globally.
Those participating in the open ecosystem believe that ultimately this work will make things better for everyone. As one of that community I think it'd be a tragedy if we let the actions of a small number of self interested parties sabotage such an important movement.
Bob Sutor has probably said it more eloquently than I have, so it's worth a trip to his blog to take a look!
Categories
: [ OpenStandards ]
Jul 22 2008, 04:45:20 PM EDT
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WS-I delivers another step forward for interoperability
WS-I announced three new profiles recognized by ISO (ref). This means another step forward in providing interoperability through Web Services. Congratulations to the team!
Profile development in WS-I has been a tough slog from the beginning. In my view meaningful things take time and effort, so it's been worth the effort to get profiles published that have the weight of the vendors commitment behind them. There's more to be done yet to complete the Web Services profiling picture, and there's lots more room to apply the things we've learned via our WS-I efforts to improve interoperability all the way up the software and standards stacks!
Categories
: [ ISO | Interoperability | WS-I | WebServices ]
Jul 16 2008, 10:21:48 PM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill - so how's it going?
Well it's been a number of weeks now since I made the move from Windows to OSX and I'm happy to report that I'm still happy I did. I'd say at this point that I use my Mac 80% or more of the time. The remaining time is spent on odd things. Here are a few examples:
- I have a couple of games I play on Windows that I haven't bothered to try to play on OSX
- My MacBook doesn't have enough drive space to accommodate my digital image library, so I'm using a desktop running Windows for that at present (fortunately the Canon software runs on Windows and OSX)
- I still run into office documents that need to be edited using office (though the most recent drop of NeoOffice is much better for letting me view many of them)
- I haven't yet tried to move my notes archives over from my Lenovo machine to my mac, pure sloth on my part
- When I need to search my notes mail, including those archives, I resort to Google desktop enterprise which is currently only available on windows.
Not much of a list really, so I'm not back on windows much. I do find that I also occasionally like to use all three systems at once for differing things, and that multi-tasking (it's really just getting extra screen space) accounts for some of the 20% too.
I would like to Apple add Notes mail files to the list of resources it can search, and I'd like to see Google Desktop Enterprise (with Lotus Notes mail file searching) available on OSX as an alternative. I'd also like to see the stand alone version of GoogleTalk on OSX (rather than the browser based version), I find connecting with people via IM is as much a pain on my Mac as it was on my PC (hmm ... could there be a standards issue here).
My family is due a new machine this year, looks like it'll be a 24 inch iMac, the kids love the mac experiences they've had, and I love the improved reliability and lowered maintenance and security management issues.
Categories
: [ Apple | IBM | Mac ]
Jun 27 2008, 02:58:42 PM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill - The move to Mac
Those who deal with IBM know that we're notes users. Given that I suppose it's obvious to those reading my "Taking the Red Pill" postings that I'm running Notes on Mac, and finding it quite usable. As time goes on we're seeing a steady increase in signature blocks like this:
Categories
: [ Apple | IBM | Mac ]
May 15 2008, 12:07:23 AM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill - Python Development
Well Eclipse is installed, that was relatively simple. In addition I've installed PyDEV so I can do Python development within Eclipse. Robert Marchetti's video helped me find the python executable, the one place where I stumbled during that process. Life continues to be good in IBM.Mac land!
Categories
: [ Apple | Eclipse | Mac | PyDEV | Python ]
May 14 2008, 11:58:15 PM EDT
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Are all standards org's created equal?
Arnaud's blog post today struck me as interesting. Arnaud compares some characteristics of W3C with some of ECMA as a vehicle for pointing out that all "standards org's" are not equal. Those who have been involved in standards creation and those who have tried to use standards will be well aware of this fact, and to varying degrees they'll be acquainted with the consequences.
For standards producers and consumers alike difference means complexity induced headaches. As a member of IBM's standards team I deal regularly (though not as regularly as Arnaud) with the headache's associated with joining new .org's. Because it's our business we have extremely good processes in place, and extremely knowledgeable and talented people helping us through them, still it's not easy looking at a .org to understand its charter, it's bylaws, it's IPR policies, and all the other things we need to crawl through before we can make an informed decision. For many who want to contribute to standards development, or to use the byproducts of the standards process, the overhead associated with doing "due diligence" is simply not something they can manage every time they find something of interest. The result is that many turn away from participating in standards development, or turn away from using standards. Worse yet some ignore the risk, proceed, and place themselves at risk.
The other reality is that the fact that there's so much diversity among "standards organizations" (I use quotes because in my view some groups that refer to themselves in this way do shouldn't) telegraphs the fact that when we look at any set of defining characteristics you'd care to name we find some .org's are "better" (from an openness perspective) and some that are "worse". In essence we find that some .org's are more open than others, due to the degree of transparency they permit or require, or because of the decision making processes they employ, or because of the rules surrounding contribution and access to their work products, or a host of other defining characteristics.
Some differences between some .org's is inevitable, in some cases desirable (different .org's have different focus and scope for example and that may require different treatment of work). Other differences simply suggest the opportunity for improvement, establishing a minimum "bar" for .org's, raising that bar, and in so doing incrementally reducing some of the differences between .org and making participation in the open ecosystem a little simpler for all.
Categories
: [ OpenEcosystems | OpenStandards ]
Apr 28 2008, 09:54:55 PM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill
It's been about a month now since I began my move to Mac. At this point there are relatively few things that cause me to shift in my seat so I can use one of my windows boxes. Top of the list is working with the Office documents others create. I've tried OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Symphony, and even Apple's iWork, none of them are able to deal well with .ppt files (lending further support to the assertion that OOXML is a single vendor "standard" (heck recent assertions that even Office doesn't implement OOXML would suggest that it's a standard that nobody has yet implemented ... so I suppose my assertion is mild)). Beyond that I go back occasionally to deal with some legacy Windows use that's mainly laziness on my part, and a couple of migration hiccups I haven't yet puzzled my way through (that boil down to me using pre-release software on Mac and expecting perfection).
Each morning as I log on I find myself thinking something along the lines of "If I knew then what I know now I'd have gone to Mac years ago". That may be a little off of course, it may be that prior releases didn't offer the user experience Leopard does. Suffice it to say I'm incredibly happy with life on Mac. I'm not alone either, my euphoric praises for the Mac experience are echoed by a growing cadre of 4th column IBM.Mac folk, all of whom have become ardent Mac boosters.
One of these days I'm going to hold my breath and install eclipse ... I'll let you know how that goes.
Categories
: [ Apple | Mac ]
Apr 28 2008, 07:28:45 PM EDT
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WS-I gets a face lift!
Take a look at the WS-I web site and you'll see that it's looking very spiffy. The board approved a refresh this week, and I hear there's also been progress towards finalizing the next set of profiles, including RSP (formerly RAMP, dealing with Reliable, Secure, Asynchrony). It's great to see the impact WS-I has had and continues to have moving the industry towards interoperability. This is one of the things that's made SOA such a valuable step ahead!
Categories
: [ WS-I | openstandards | profiles ]
Apr 10 2008, 10:59:04 PM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill
At this point, approximately two weeks in, I'm spending most of my day on my mac.
From a business perspective:
There are a few things that cause me to pivot left to my XP box still. The most frequent issue is dealing with Microsoft Office documents. Although I can open them and follow along reasonably well via OpenOffice I find it's not feasible to create or edit them there (imagine that, Microsoft Office creating proprietary lockin ... quelle surprise!). I also still need to work on getting my notes archives moved over, together with my notes address book.
From a personal perspective:
I'm pretty much set. I haven't begun trying to play WOW on my mac yet, I have WOW installed (the mac image is on the same DVD's as the Windows version), WUU installed, and my key addons in place, but I haven't customized my UI or gotten the hang of the new machine yet due to 2.4's arrival. I'll get to that soon though! I've moved my music over (iTunes is much better on the mac) and I've moved my photographs (I'm still getting the hang of iPhoto but I now have the latest mac version of Adobe Photoshop Elements installed ... hot off the internet presses).
Hint: I'd recommend to those contemplating the move that you turn on drive encryption before you move bulk data such as this, when you turn the option on it needs a large amount of space to get started.
I opted for the fast 200 gig drive when I configured my machine, I'm already missing the extra 50 gig I could have had.
Hint: Time Machine seems to require a fresh external drive, so if you want to use it to manage backups of your drive be prepared.
So far I'd say I'm a relatively satisfied customer. I didn't expect nirvana, as an experienced user I knew that'd be unreasonable, but my expectations were high and they've been met.
Categories
: [ Apple | Mac | Openness ]
Apr 01 2008, 06:08:00 PM EDT
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Smart SOA and Open Standards
IBM's hosting a 72 hour SmartSOA Jam beginning at 10am on April 7. Those of us who focus on the role open standards play in SOA should join in and contribute!
Categories
: [ Community | OpenStandards | SOA ]
Apr 01 2008, 11:22:44 AM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill
All the years I've used a Thinkpad now I've consistently turned off touchpad support and used the trackpoint. I have tried the touchpad, I've just never seen the point in it. Just a few days on a mac has completely turned me around, THIS is what a touchpad is intended to be like and THIS is great. That seems to be emblematic of the mac experience ... it's like finally seeing what using a computer is supposed to be like.
Oh I am experiencing hiccups as I transition. It took me a while for instance to figure out that in order to pop up an action menu on an item such as an application in my notes replication page like I used to do in Windows by right clicking I need to .. now what is it again ... oh ... control/click. Then there's function/delete and delete. Higher up the food chain there is, of course, finding applications that do what I need to do. I've now got Cisco's VPN software installed, works fine, and Open Office for documents while I wait for Lotus Symphony on Mac, and Notes with integrated Sametime support .. so I'm almost all there.
This morning I'm laughing over another one. I'm a picture person. On Windows I use Hypersnap to capture screen segments so I can drop things into presentations and email. I talked Greg Kochaniak and he told me he doesn't do mac development so there's no Hypersnap on mac. When I started looking for an alternative product it didn't take long for me to google to Sue Chastian's post on the topic. Seems Mac has a grab utility that basically does what I need. In time I may find that I need some more sophisticated function, but for now I'm all set.
I'm sitting at my desk now with my windows laptop angled to my left, my mac with 2 screens facing me in the middle, and my windows desktop (which currently is my wow raiding machine) to my right. I'm working on the mac now, and watching to see how the frequency with which I use the three changes over time. I'll let you know.
Categories
: [ Mac ]
Mar 21 2008, 09:51:35 AM EDT
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Taking the Red Pill - Day 8
Hello from my new Mac. Canada Post delivered it on schedule. Getting started was painless. I'm sure there will be many bumps in the road, in fact I've already hit on, specifically no version of Lotus Symphony available for Mac. This'll be an interesting journey!
Categories
: [ Apple | Mac ]
Mar 13 2008, 02:05:06 AM EDT
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