tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-250096622009-08-26T09:54:44.349+01:00Information industry technologies, particularly web and integration - macro and micro. Slight Microsoft twist.rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-51899272862618778042009-05-01T13:41:00.005+01:002009-05-01T14:27:07.637+01:00

Mark Goldenson writes interestingly about the reasons his startup failed (via Tom Raggett's blog). The most interesting part for me is the advice he was given that a content business was incredibly difficult to start - "do it for love and expect to lose money". Undeniably true - content generation can be expensive if done well.A new content business must thereforebe scalable - only produce enough

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-63585023194104626012008-07-15T14:14:00.001+01:002008-07-15T14:14:32.718+01:00

Experimenting with mobile alerting, I have come to the not-very-starting conclusion that you can't shoe-horn a litre into a pint-pot. If you want to do this well, you really have to have a custom mobile-only format, even this means editorial have to write custom copy.

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1159537091332377992006-09-29T14:27:00.000+01:002006-09-29T14:47:39.970+01:00

Steve Yegge writes entertainingly about how idea generation, the software development culture and project management works at Google. Google is a great company for idea generation, and I've no doubt that the culture described by Steve is a large part of that. But if your business depends on Google's launches to any extent, this can cause you trouble. We succumbed to an invitation to participate

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1159202075931190932006-09-25T17:34:00.000+01:002006-09-25T17:36:33.193+01:00

I'd not seen this one before...Cheer up, it IS Friday Schrodinger gets pulled over by a traffic cop. The cop is suspicious, and asks Schrodinger to open the trunk of his car. He does so, and the astonished policement says "Do you know there is a dead cat in here?" Schrodinger replies: "He is now."

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1158916319249558262006-09-22T10:11:00.000+01:002006-09-22T10:22:23.873+01:00

When you want to print a place card, you usually want to print on card, and fold over, but have the text the same way up from the viewer's perspective - unless you like puzzles over dinner of course. This tip is clever thinking:Upside-Down Printing: "# Create a document using landscape orientation.# Put a two-cell table in the document.# In the left cell, place the text you want to be

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1158326698094194822006-09-15T14:21:00.000+01:002006-09-15T14:24:58.110+01:00

We were discussing in a group dominated by my editorial colleagues why it is that the idea of being able to comment on blogs is so attractive, given that the quality of many of the comments on blogs and community sites generally, particuarly famous ones, is often risible. One colleague, an expert on North America, came up with this gem:"A good blog is like a lamp-post. It may have dog pee at the

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1157967607124055542006-09-11T10:32:00.000+01:002006-09-11T10:42:35.653+01:00

An interesting corollary of some of the effects David Maister notes on queuing (thanks to T for the link) - which are brilliantly insightful - is that it is possible to make money out of queuing in situations where people find it annoying. High-volume download sites, such as video games and online video, now make a living out of providing a free service with an inbuilt queuing system. You are

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1157108650765131182006-09-01T11:59:00.000+01:002006-09-01T12:07:47.996+01:00

I've not seen this joke before quoted by Tom WelshAll together now, "What's the definition of a legacy system?" "One that works!"But I think it's more this way: "One whose bugs are known, one everyone understands, and one it is expensive to change or fix."Ring any bells?

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1157101773604943412006-09-01T09:52:00.000+01:002006-09-01T12:05:52.770+01:00

OK, a lot of people are going to comment on this, Joel's take on the language wars.Now, I've used all of the technologies involved in a business context. The fact that we use .NET as our primary technology now is because we evolved from an ASP/vbscript/ActiveX DLLs site using MSMQ as a primary publishing tool, and it's simply been easier to go this route rather than sit down and rewrite

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1157100503605617342006-09-01T09:42:00.000+01:002006-09-01T09:48:53.926+01:00

On the day that our new build a library service went into public beta, Guy Kawasaki happened to writeThis starts a process that builds a custom PDF—pretty cool. However, in this case, the process gets in the way of disseminating information, but there are good uses for this capability. For example, when you want only one part of a long manual.Our new library service allows our users to assemble

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1155646060519773502006-08-15T13:45:00.000+01:002006-08-15T13:47:40.520+01:00

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.When I think how many Powerpoint presentations I've sat through with text crawling all over the slides, crammed into every corner (I may even have written a few)... they should pass this into law.

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1155645249473435152006-08-15T13:20:00.000+01:002006-09-06T17:45:18.673+01:00

T. writes about Jigsaw (think of it as a shared Plaxo for sales-folk)It seems a pretty good idea to me; keep users honest by the points system and you might get a win-win.I'm sure they'll make a lot of money. In his interview with Guy Kawasaki, CEO Jim Fowler says they'll remove info ifthe information is proven to have been added in violation of the lawThe information is proven to have been added

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1154700795422029432006-08-04T15:11:00.000+01:002006-08-04T15:13:52.040+01:00

Tom writes on Dell pricing.Bang on the money. A Dell sales guy told me years ago “we have a lot of margin on anything labelled a business product”, and ever since I’ve tried to get at least 33% off. I think they’ve got wise to that though, and now hiked the margin of their advertised prices even higher! http://www.PricesWrungFromDell.com anyone? Don’t get me started on their quoted UK delivery

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1152316881764303392006-07-08T00:57:00.000+01:002006-07-08T01:01:21.766+01:00

Looks like the firm's "Futures" group is finally coming to fruition. We're beginning to talk around some really interesting product ideas. Can't say more here for obvious reasons! Finally, finally, maybe some wheels are beginning to turn. Could lead to some interesting IT too!

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1152315831013882212006-07-07T22:47:00.000+01:002006-07-08T00:57:04.546+01:00

I went with a few people, including my brother and his partner who was celebrating a new job, to see the excellent Nixon in China last night at the English National Opera, I was fascinated by the historical context, which really I knew little about. I had no idea how important the visit was.Now, unlike perhaps most listeners, I have a boss who was an aide to Kissinger in the Nixon White House,

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1152308490229716702006-07-07T22:33:00.000+01:002006-09-01T12:10:53.303+01:00

Of course it has to be while my colleague is away that one of our server power supplies fails. Normally I would not have to deal with this. Even though they're redundant PSUs, it's still a hassle. But good old Dell had a replacement round to my house within 2.5 hours, a pleasant stroll into work. 24x7 cover is worth it sometimes :-> now I can enjoy the weekend. I told the Dell phone engineer that

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1151696475651623972006-06-30T20:28:00.000+01:002006-07-03T17:37:22.180+01:00

We've just launched a beta of our new RSS service. Like most premium subscription content providers I can think of, we offer headlines and summaries only. (In fact compared to some we are generous by giving more than headlines, and making it available as public feeds, although with restricted rights) No sooner do we do this than someone tells me a client is cancelling because we don't provide

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1151598449446779942006-06-29T17:01:00.000+01:002006-11-16T23:18:22.810Z

Gah. Bit of head-beating today, as it takes me a while to figure out that under SQL Server 2005, at least the Express version, you should not include Initial Catalog in the Connection String for a user who cannot read the Master database. Even if it is a database to which the relevant credentials are OK, the connection will fail with an error "Cannot open database... requested by the login. The

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1148464235040962382006-05-24T10:37:00.000+01:002006-05-24T10:51:20.720+01:00

Minor dispute with a supplier over the correct implementation of SPF.For those who don't know, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a system of validating which machines are allowed to send mail on behalf of which domains. For more, see the website on http://www.openspf.orgOne of our suppliers uses IP addresses in a records in their SPF implementation, which I think breaks the spec. Here's my

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1146321892671647872006-04-29T14:22:00.000+01:002006-06-29T17:29:16.353+01:00

I was surprised when I couldn't find through Google a good recipe for finding "unquoted" material (i.e. material which is outside quotes) with regular expressions (RegExps). If that's all you want, skip through to Solution below.BackgroundAs a long-term user of Lucene, and in particular the series of Lucene .NET ports which went from Lucene.NET to dotLucene and now back again, we've done a lot of

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1144271639717902172006-04-05T21:42:00.000+01:002006-04-05T22:46:59.146+01:00

OK, my wife thinks these aren't funny. I suspect she's right. But at least they're my own.What happens when the King of France tries to invade Norman England?Resistance is feudal.The US president sends his top negotiator over to the WTO talks because of an outcry by European fruit growers over protectionism in the Californian dried fruit market. Republican votes are precious in California. When

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1144269755484004162006-04-05T21:26:00.000+01:002006-04-05T21:42:35.493+01:00

Off on holiday tomorrow, so keeping it short but sweet on the floor.Completed a site deployment on Sunday with minimal downtime which enables a new form of portal service for some new styles of client who are integrating some of our service.Closer to agreeing spec on new product.Implementing feed technologies for our product is looking good. Some great ideas here, but marketing the implementation

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1144157287321971532006-04-04T14:24:00.000+01:002006-04-04T14:28:07.330+01:00

OK, how about a language where you declare different protection levels on your classes by declaring them LowerClass, MiddleClass, or UpperClass?See this CodeProject article

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1143758938149862472006-03-30T23:42:00.000+01:002006-03-31T00:09:59.266+01:00

Some possible blog entries for the next few weeks.headings and thoughts on web services history and future. Mashup and AJAX are ugly. Can the simplicity of the web survive "rich" applications?programmatic PDF manipulation - is XSL:FO enough?RSS: actual deployment fairly easy, but which version to select?RDF and ontological web stuff. (We should at least go to RDF.)XML modelling: the old

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25009662.post-1143758112608249612006-03-30T23:07:00.000+01:002006-03-30T23:37:47.270+01:00

Met folks from MobileATM and Acclimatise today. Somewhat serendipitous connections between all, and mcommerce and climate change wouldn't normally seem obvious bedfellows. But on reflection they are points of comparison. Both are real pace-of-change totems in our society where we don't know if the tipping point has been reached, and won't know till some time after we reach it.MobileATM, a joint

rmcubedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04329948912238805836noreply@blogger.com0