Ran across this, http://daypasswireless.com/, lets you rent an aircard plus service. Don’t know if it’s too late for those of you travelling to the PASS Summit, but an interesting idea. Rates are not bad.
I try not to post too many links without some thoughtful commentary, but I ran across this and thought it was worth mentioning. TinEye takes an image you upload and then looks for it on the web in all it’s variations. They’ve got some interesting matches shown, all based on the image and not meta data.
I bet most of you have at least one customer loyalty card in your wallet or on your keyring, one that gives you points or discounts or whatever for using it. I have one for CVS because they discount milk a lot, and I think one for Borders, but I’ve thrown most of the rest out for two reasons. One is that I’m not inclined to carry many of the things around with me, and the other is that being a data guy I’m not thrilled with giving vendors more data points about me.
On the first part of that my local newspaper had an article recently that mentioned some alternatives (which I have not tried); JustOneClubCard.com, CardStar.com, and KeyRingThing.com. I guess that’s an obvious fix to consolidate all those bar codes in one place and if you’re going to use them, why not? I guess it’s giving up a little more privacy because they know that I use CVS & Borders (and hey, so do you!), but aside from assessing which programs work well I don’t see much downside. I suppose they might even suggest others that I would find useful based on what I use right now.
So the other part is privacy. I use a credit card for about 98% of my purchases, so it’s not like there isn’t tracking data out there for me if someone is authorized (or gains) access to it. Credit card companies have been decent if not great on privacy and security, and I make the trade because I like the convenience of the credit cards and the consumer protection that comes with it. Why not let Vendor X give me discounts for buying stuff I’d probably buy anyway? I’m not sure I can make a great argument for that position as what is the worst that can happen? One might be that they sell or lose the data to someone that might use it for evil, more likely they get me to buy more by selecting advertising/discounting (not all bad I guess), or they could even start charging more for things that they know I buy all the time.
I guess I also wonder why the credit card companies don’t handle it there, let consumers opt-in to provide the same point of sale info to vendors via the credit card companies. That would be one size fits all, and they could probably even charge the vendors a fee for accessing the data.
Many people seem to ignore privacy issues because doing otherwise is inconvenient, and because they think ‘what bad thing could happen because of it’ and assess it as little. I take the general stance of wanting to share as little as possible when it comes to personal data, but where do you draw the line? Only the loyalty cards that use use weekly or more? That give you free air miles?
Steve Jones sent me a link to a presentation Joel Spolsky did at Google about Stack Overflow (SO) and it’s worth watching. It’s not a community – well, not a traditional one anyway – the goal is to provide answers to questions and beyond that, to make sure answers get updated as the world changes. If you’ve looked at things like Yahoo Answers they aren’t very good, what I’ve seen on SO so far looks very good. Like any eco system they’ve spent some time figuring out what drives good behavior and how to thwart bad behavior, and doing pretty good at it as far as I can tell. It’s a lot like a wiki to me, less formal and more active.
I mention SSC at the same time for a couple reasons. One is he references the site in his presentation – one as an example of ‘community’, then again as a site that requires a login to see the answers. So while SSC isn’t ‘mine’ exactly any more, I know enough about it to find it interesting to think about the options that might lead to a good result. Way back in the beginning we required registration for a few reasons:
I give you all that as background to come back to the point – is SO a better model than SSC? Or perhaps stated better, is a better forum model? People visit the SSC forums in droves to ask and answer questions, would they be better served by the SO model? I can see the beauty in searching for something and bam, there’s a single highly rated answer (followed by lesser rated ones), where on SSC you have to follow the thread to see it evolve. I think there’s value in following the thread. Some of it incidental learning, maybe a little bit is earning the answer! But I’m not sure it’s the best way.
I look at it from a couple perspectives. One, does it threaten SSC, SQLTeam, and other technical web sites? What happens if all the pros move there to answer questions? Does a new set of pros take over, or does everyone move to the new platform for questions/answers? If they do, is SSC still a community? If they don’t move…why not?
Take a look. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on community, forums, and all the rest.
Back in January I posted about purchasing a Dell Mini 9, wanting to see what how it worked and a certain amount of cool factor to it. In the months since the popularity of netbooks has definitely increased (you think my blog caused that?) and I could be wrong, but I think that price rather than form factor is the driving force. Having had the Mini 9 for a few months, I don’t use it as much as I had hoped, for a couple reasons; one is that the keyboard is just too small for me, maybe even a inch or two wider would make a lot of difference, and the other is that I’m still anchored to my main laptop – all my tools are there, I’m used to it.
But…
All is not lost. It’s a great machine for kids. Though it’s now missing 3 key caps, it still works fine and it’s child sized. At $300, it’s almost child priced too. I won’t be happy if it gets broken in half, but it’s not going to be a huge event either. It’s been so popular that we may buy a second one so that they each have one.
If you’re considering a netbook, I think you have to think hard about how you work. If you’re using web based mail, document creation, etc, then I think it would work very well. Or if you commit to loading it up and treating it a like a “real” laptop. The hard part is if you want both – when you travel can you live without all the stuff on your main machine? Think through how you’ll keep docs & data in sync.
Ultimately I wonder if it won’t be the straw the drove down the MS licensing costs for the OS. Just not much room in a $300 machine for an expensive license, and the same for MS Office.
Ran across this a while back and just getting to it, Seatguru is a site that lets you figure out where you want to sit to meet your needs. Aside from a preference for first class seating that I can't afford to indulge, I prefer an aisle seat. If I'm checking a bag I don't care much after that, if all I have is a carry on I try to get near the front so I can deplane faster. If there is an option on sides that have two seats or three, I prefer the two seat side. I've learned from hard experience not to sit in the very last row - usually the seats don't recline much. Not that I usually get much choice, most flights are based on time first and then price, so mostly you hope for the best on the seat. Still, checking here might save you some unexpected grief on the next trip.
I stopped by Compusa on the way home to pick up a package of blank DVD's and did the 10 minute tour while I was there, always interesting to see what is new or featured and how prices are doing. Two monitors caught my eye, both by I-Inc. One was a 25" for $229, the other was a 28" - yes, 28" - for $299. I've been needing a monitor for a couple months but just hadn't got around to buying one yet, wanting to use my current 19" for a machine that will be moving off my desk at home. But...I try not to impulse buy, so got the DVD's and went home.
Thought about it some more, it was something I was looking for, but which one to buy? In general bigger monitors have been better, going from a 15" to a 17" CRT was a nice improvement, and that trend has continued into LCD's. I currently use a 22" and a 20" monitor at work, and have long found value in having 2 monitors because the way I use Windows is to either maximize or minimize a window, I rarely have multiple windows visible side by side - due to not enough space.
Not critical to have dual monitors at home for me. One reason is that I rarely work at home on my home pc, if "real" work has to be done it's via the laptop while at the dining room table or on the couch, and another is that I've generally had machines running via a KVM and never invested in a better quality KVM that would support dual monitors.
Rambling today am I?
Anyway, $80 difference in price. Not huge, but still, $80. Would a 28" be too big? Would it allow me to actually open multiple windows on screen at same time in a usable way? Same questions for the 25". Isn't there some upper end of monitors being too big when it's on the same desk you're working at?
Went back over Sun afternoon and bought the 25" I-Inc. Has VGA and HDMI, integrated speakers, 2 ms response time, no USB ports. Base screws on to the monitor mount with four allen screws and wrench, both included. Works good enough so far, nice and crisp at the full 1920x1080 max resolution on Win 7 RC, but running below that on my main machine because the video card doesn't support the higher resolution, so haven't really tried it with multiple apps/windows yet.
Sorely tempted to buy the 28" one for work just to see, but will see how this works out first.
It's interesting to watch sizes climb and prices drop, free market at work and some good R&D on costs too. Same as been true in cameras. Now that you can get a 28" monitor for $299 or a 12mp camera for about the same, I imagine the money is in getting people to upgrade. But once you've got that 28" monitor or 12mp camera, why/when will you upgrade again? Anyone see future trends here?
Last year I wrote about signing up for Clear, a registered traveler program. I've flown enough to make it useful flying out of Orlando, but my most frequent destination has been Seattle and so far there is no Clear portal there - so only helps on one half of the flight, but in practice the line in Seattle has never been more than 5-10 minutes. I just hit my one year anniversary and as I considered renewal it just didn't feel like it was worth the $175 to keep it for another year. That's a value judgement, just didn't seem like it delivered enough value for $175. At $99 I'm wavering, at $49 it would be an easy yes. I'm sure I'll have cause to regret not renewing here and there, but for now I'll stand in the line with everyone else.
I think they could make the service a lot more compelling if the Clear card really gave you a break on security. If having it meant not having to take off my shoes and take the laptop out of the bag it would go a long way with me, just the reduction in the hassle factor. It would also be a lot more interesting if they supported more airports.
I happen to notice this in a class recently that I had the rare student - one that could take notes that seemed to have value to them the next day. If you watch people take notes, I think they fall into one of these categories:
I'm mildly judgmental about note taking, mainly because the trend we've seen is that the more they have their head down writing, the less they actually listen, and not unexpectedly, the less they listen the less they learn. We all learn differently, so I don't force people into taking or not taking notes, I just try to engage them with eye contact and conversation because I've always believed the biggest win in an attending a class is participating in a discussion, not just just watching slides and doing labs.
My own style you ask? For standard hour presentations I'm basically a No-Noter, if something really interesting pops up I'll jot a note on my for later, but I try to just relax and listen along at whatever pace they set. For classes I switch over to The Questioner. I've tried highlighting and it just doesn't help me. Definitely I don't want to try to write it all down, I find that a serious distraction, and tiring too.
Some of it is about how you learn, but my challenge to you today is to look over your last set of notes from a meeting, class, whatever - were they useful then? Are they useful now? Where they meant to be only be useful then (ok with me), or do you see them as long term documentation just for you? An interesting test is to imagine that after taking a class you return to the office and are asked to spend 15 minutes at a meeting talking about what you learned. Would you pull that from notes, or just from memory?
I don't have all the answers, heck, maybe not even the right questions, but now that I've thought about it beyond just the filter of how it affects me as a trainer I'm interested in finding out a little more, and that should be interesting.
Further off topic than usual, but I ran across this as I browsed Springwise after a friend suggested it might be blog worthy. It's a little early for me to decide on the value of it, it's kind of a share the latest idea/entrepreneurial type site, and I'll watch their feed for a while to see if it's a good resource. But...back to the story. I click around a little, wind up on the main page, the top item at the time was for bedpost, which identifies itself as having zero social networking features because it's a site about tracking your sex life. If you follow the link (nothing objectionable) the sample screen has inputs for the time started, how long it lasted, who it was with, and then some tags.
I have to say I had to pause to laugh and roll my eyes. Always room for another niche in the world, but really - how many people are going to use this? Is it so you can back to the significant other and prove you're not getting busy often enough? Bragging rights with the boys (no scorecard that I can see)? A really targeted diary/blog? I have to think the most value from this service would be running a ticker on a big monitor to watch the new entries come in, and of course maybe some aggregate data mining about trends. Just think of the tags you'd find! Tie this to Twitter and the world will be stranger still.
On the business side I admire the approach; find a high interest niche and try to find a niche within that. I don't know if it will work, but it's a simple idea and not hard to build.
I try to go to a spring training game once or twice a year and it serves as a useful check point - if I'm too busy to go my priorities and task management need adjusting. This year my friend Chris & I managed to adjust our schedules so that we could spend at afternoon watching the Atlanta Braves play the Mets at Champion Stadium here in Orlando (Disney) yesterday. Terrific day for it, probably mid 80's and a few clouds, enough sun to merit some sun block. Nice seats in the upper deck on the first base side. It's not that I'm a huge baseball fan, but there is definitely something zen as well as American about sitting in the sun for a few hours, watching the game, and definitely not thinking about the challenges of work and life. Down economy or not, the game was well attended, probably 90% of the seats were full or better.
Some pictures from the game:
So even though I was there to relax (and did), the one thought that came to me was to wonder why in business don't have spring training. Obviously there are some differences and one of the big ones is that in business we are continually executing, but I think that's the problem that spring training fixes. We rarely have time to reassess our players, to identify weaknesses and strengths that change from year to year as people leave and join the team (or just grow more experienced), and to integrate new leaders into the culture of our particular businesses. I've made a couple deliberate attempts in my career to reinvent myself, and this seems like an interesting extension of that. Not a completely baked idea at this point, but imagine what you might do if you could just find a few days to stop, reassess, and refocus. Call it spring training, corporate makeover, or whatever, I don't think it happens enough.
Now on to some humor. One of the between inning games they played today was to pick someone from the crowd to listen to 15 seconds of a song and then guess the song. Luckily they didn't pick me, I didn't know the song or singer, closest guess I had was Steve Winwood. Not right, it was Peter Gabriel singing Shock the Monkey (lyrics here) and because I do like to think on things, I was then wondering....did they mean shock the monkey with electricity, or do something that would monkey cover his eyes? Naturally it was neither, according to Wikipedia it's a metaphor for feelings of jealousy. Which is a shame, because it's definitely entertaining to try to figure out what behavior would shock (dismay) a monkey!
A while back I mentioned that Radio Shack had an interesting promotion on a netbook and debated at what price I'd find such a device buyable, and I also recently mentioned seeing the Alphasmart Neo. My friend Diego dropped me a note that a cheaper alternative to the Neo is the Dana that he has seen as low as $30 on eBay. Haven't tried it, but $30...interesting.
Following the post about the netbook, my friend Chris mentioned that he had seen then on the Dell site for under $300 refurbished. Got me thinking, why not try one? Not sure it's the best use of money, but it had me interested and why not pursue it? So I'm the proud owner of a white Dell Mini 9, comes loaded with XP Home on a 16G solid state drive. It's lightweight (of course), keyboard is usable but takes some getting used to due to the reduced keyboard size (and doesn't have dedicated F-keys, have to use FN-key to get F-key behavior). It's got wifi, and connected right up at home, no problem. I haven't really tested battery life, but seems to be good easily for a couple hours, probably more with wifi off. No DVD, so you have to load other software from network or USB, but I'm not expecting to load much stuff on here.
Couple things I've thought about since having it. One is that it's perfect for small children. It's fairly inexpensive, it runs a modern OS, fits their size, only one cable needed - to recharge. The machine has a webcam, and for really small children they can use the Dell software to use the facial tracking to add glasses, hats, backgrounds, a nice way to learn to point and click. Another is that its's perfect for a "couch" computer. How often do you see something on TV and want to look it up? Perfect for that. I'm also thinking it might just stay in my truck, so when I go for coffee or whatever I can type a few notes and if there's free wifi, do most anything else I need.
We'll see how much I use it long term, but it's not stupid. Lots of people don't need any more computer than this.
I'm a technology guy, but one lesson I've learned is that not all solutions can be solved by throwing technology at it. For example, try classifying a first name as male or female. Quite a few are pretty clear, but there are enough that aren't to make it something that you just can't hit 100% accuracy. Sometimes you need the proverbial fuzzy search, sometimes you need a person to look at it, sometimes you can use technology to make it easier to do that, sometimes you just don't need much technology.
Fuzzy writing? My point is that you have to find solutions with enough accuracy, not perfect accuracy, and with an appropriate cost. It's what I phrase as good, better, and best. Sometimes you need best, a lot more often you just need good!
Now part two of this post is that we all hear a lot about service oriented architecture, web services, services in the cloud, etc. They seem cool, but we don't seem to see a lot of them getting used in the corporate world beyond trivial examples like retrieving the weather for a given zip code. I'll grant that mashups around Google Maps and similar have gotten some traction. Maybe I just don't read the right blogs!
So for a real world example that combines those two points, take a look at this case study that uses the Amazon Mechanical Turk. My friend Jon Winer was one of the key players in the implementation, and it was interesting to hear over many months his evolving understanding of how to use it, and then how to use it effectively within his company (he didn't share any secrets). It's a digitally implemented analog solution if that makes sense, that uses a web service as a key part of their business to answer questions like "is this image a printer?". Side note, my friend and blogger Kendal Van Dyke works at the same company.
Steve Jones tells me that the biggest advantage that the Kindle offers is the ability to browse and buy a book now. That seemingly small change moved it from a cool gadget to a useful gadget (and well, still cool I guess!) for him. I still think it's over priced, but I see the point and if they drop to $99, maybe I'll try one.
I saw a note about this on CNET originally, but this ad for an Acer Notebook for $99 reminded me of his remarks about the Kindle - its $99 with a 2 year ATT air card agreement of at least $60/month. So this is part Kindle - what good is a really portable computer without Internet access, and part cell phone selling - reduce the price on the phone to get the recurring monthly revenue (which may well continue past 2 years). Think of it as buying an aircard that comes with a monitor and keyboard!
I've already got an aircard contract, don't really want another one at $60/month, and it's not worth the $499 cost you pay without the contract. Dell has a cheaper one that I think runs Ubuntu for $299 (last sale I saw). Even at $299...worth it?
I always travel with a laptop, and it gets old - weight plus having to secure it all the time. I can see this size device being nice for travel, taking to the coffee shop to write, even good enough for canned presentations, but not enough power (maybe?) to get enough performance for live SQL demos on XP home.
With all the options we have for viewing query plans I still prefer the graphical view. Combined with tooltips and the occasional journey to the properties dialog it solves the problems I work on. The only downside is that the plan view tends to be verbose and the zoom options just don't work well. Resize to much smaller than the default and you can barely read them, leaving the 'fly over' mode (using the "+" button in the bottom right corner) to navigate the plan looking for whatever is to be found. It's not unworkable, but it does get in the way of a holistic view of what happens when. In other words, we have to divert a portion of our attention from understanding the problem to just using the tools.
Given todays prices there is a simple alternative, just upgrade your primary monitor to 24". No, that won't handle every plan, but it make most of them a lot easier to work with. At probably $400 it's not cheap, but doable. I've seen 22" wide screens recently for under $200.
I do tuning with two monitors, writing/examing queries on the left, Profiler on the right. Alt-Tabbing around is another distraction when I'm problem solving. Using Profiler let's me see easily the exact cost as well as the history of what I've tried/changed so far. I mention that because while using monitors of two different sizes is better than using two monitors, it's also a little visually distracting. The best case is having monitors that are exactly the same.
So there you go fellow DBA's, a starting point for the budget request for next year. Justifying tools is never easy compared to 'solutions', but monitors is an easier sell than some. Struggling to get the monitors approved? Suggest that perhaps your boss, or the CFO/CEO give dual 24" monitors a try to see if there any benefit. Shortly after that monitor sales will go up, everyone in sales will have two monitors, and if you're really lucky, you'll get them too!
