Thursday, June 22, 2006

Amazing ... Novell opens the door for new leadership! Wow ... I'm wondering if there might be a glint of sunlight out there for Novell.  Once again ... and long over due ... there has been a change of guard in the executive ranks of Novell.  Jack Messman is finally out the door, along with the CFO. I have to admit that I'm only willing to call Jack an executive ... not a leader.  From all of my experiences, and watching the direction that Novell has taken, I would have a difficult time calling him a respected leader.  Instead, most of the employees that I have talked to felt that he created an oppressive, dictatorial workplace that suppressed the potential of the company. All I am hearing today are the IMs of joy coming from all directions ... employees and investors. Good for the board of Novell.  No matter what, the culture and the overall energy level in the Novell offices just jumped several notches up. [tags: novell linux messman provo utah cambridge] 4:45:26 PM      Where to get Cat5e Cables ... Home Depot? Last month I was working on rewiring my data center rack to install a slew of new machines. It was on a Sunday afternoon, and I had to run and pick up some CAT5e patch cables ... but where was i going to get them on a Sunday? I had a few other things to pick up from Home Depot, and so I went back to their electrical section and looked around ... sure enough they sell 3', 7', 15', 25', and 50' pre-made patch cables. Even multiple colors! I didn't even want to look at the price. I was shocked ... but in the good way! When I looked at the prices they were just under $1/foot! I couldn't believe it. A 3' patch cable for ~$2.98 ... the 25' was $24.95. I bought enough for my rack, and some extras! Yesterday I walked into CompUSA to buy a video card ... something that I don't think Home Depot would have. While there I figured I would check to see what CompUSA charges for CAT5e patch cables. This time I was SHOCKED ... in a bad way! CompUSA was charging $14.95 for a 7 foot cable in the store! We have reached an interesting tipping point in computer technology when I can run down to the local hardware store (Ok ... the local Home Depot!) and pick up a CAT5e patch cable ... at a good price. Technology is continuing to weave itself into our lives ... becoming a more and more natural extension of our lives ... leading towards the inevitable substrate transition ... [tags: homedepot compusa cat5 cat5e cables technology commodity inevitable] 3:22:08 PM      Adobe ... the dark horse I'm back working on several very cool Internet/Web projects now.  It's fun to get back deep into the Internet, and catch up on what is going on with the bleeding edge.  There are several areas that I'm now really digging in ... video on the net, and the whole SEO, web marketing, web advertising, and affiliate marketing. One thing that has now become evident to me, is that the acquistion of Macromedia by Adobe was brilliant.  Adobe/Macromedia is now making huge inroads in web properties, and seems to be linked to a lot of the best things going in Web 2.0. First lets look at YouTube ... all based on the Adobe/Macromedia Flash player.  So distribution of video on the Internet quickly becomes ubiquitous and platform independent!  Google Video?  Same thing ... Adobe/Macromedia Flash player.  There are now a half dozen video related sites ... all using the Adobe/Macromedia Flash player. Besides the fact that the player is everwhere, and it's on all the top operating system platforms, by using the Macromedia player, the videos can quickly be embedded anywhere in any web property.  This is one of the core value propositions that we are leveraging in one of my new start-ups. So then we get to Flex.  Amazing stuff.  Again, Adobe/Macromedia now has a platform for creating advanced applications, providing rich UI, and the player is everywhere!  And the one key feature is that they can escape much of the "sand box" surrounding current AJAX applications!  Writing applications in MXML is now easier ... they have adopted the Eclipse development environment ... and their plug-in can escape issues like cross-domain access.  In one of my other start-ups, we're looking at embracing the Flex technology for all of it's benefits.  We immediately get a ubiquitous, cross-platform solution that produces user content that can be embedded in any of the top web properties on the planet.  Nice. Oh yeah ... and Adobe also got Cold Fusion in the acquisition. I started to think about new metrics for measuring the success of companies in the Internet.  One possible metric is user viewable pixels ... or even a percentage of user viewable pixels.  For example if you went to CNN.com and looked at the page.  Out of all of the viewable pixels, who's technology "owns" what percentage of those pixels?  In the case of CNN, there are all sorts of Adobe/Macromedia ads running, and even if they are 10% of the viewable pixels ... that is a lot of web real estate.  Some sites are more.  Again ... think of Google Video ... there Adobe/Macromedia has a huge percentage of viewable pixels.  If you add in the number of Cold Fusion sites on the net?  Adobe has a lot of the "web-top" now in their pocket. I think that people so quickly forget about the battles for the desktop, and the complaints about Microsoft "controlling" the desktop.  What is amazing to me is the penetration that Adobe now has with the Acrobat reader, and Flash player ... and the tools for the creation of powerful content. [tags: adobe macromedia pdf acrobat flash flex youtube googlevideo coldfusion] 1:00:39 PM

© Copyright 2006 Scott C. Lemon. Last update: 7/18/2006; 10:19:29 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.