Arbitrary, Incidental, and Accidental Musings...

I apologize to my blackberry

If I thought the Pearl was hard to type on at Lotusphere, that's nothing compared to the curve. The keys are so small and everything is in a different place. I think I may keep the Pearl after all.

posted by JV @ 8:15 AM 0 Comments

Really?

posted by JV @ 9:10 AM 0 Comments

A-Rod Took Steroids

I suppose this really doesn't surprise me, but it sort of does. This
really does go a long way to show how many major leaguers were on steroids
back then (5%). I think it will eventually make it easier for people like
McGwire and Bonds to make it in.

However, the worst thing that it does is taint the home run record when
A-Rod does eventually get it. I thought the stain wouldn't stay with Bonds
for long. I was wrong.

posted by JV @ 12:43 PM 0 Comments

If you didn't watch Galactica this week, don't read this...

First, I thoroughly enjoyed last night's episode.  I was kind of shocked and a little disappointed that they seemed to wrap up the mutiny story line in two quick episodes, but there's only six left, so I'll give them a pass.  BTW, I didn't watch scenes from next week, so if I'm wrong, don't tell me.

The only thing I didn't get and that didn't sit well with me is how Adama just managed to get his men back and storm the CIC.  I mean, those guys were about to execute him.  Adama had already said, "if you do this, there will be no forgiveness."  The sergeant leading the firing squad had just told Adama that he wouldn't and couldn't follow his leadership anymore.

Then how/why the hell did the firing squad (I assume that was the firing squad) all of a sudden just say, "the hell with it, Adama's back in charge, let's follow him and re-take the ship."?  Because Adama said  he was re-taking the ship?  I don't know.  Not good enough for me.  Adama is one hell of an orator, but I doubt that was inspirational enough.

BTW, I hope that they court martial whoever fired on the president's raptor.

Oh, and how the hell did Colonial One fit into the hangar deck?  Is the ship that small?  Plus, the CGI from that scene looked terrible.  If they saved that much money on the CGI in that scene, they better have a Battle of Endor type scene planned for the final two episodes.

posted by JV @ 10:37 AM 0 Comments

Live Blogging the OCS R2 Launch

Why not?  I haven't live blogged in almost two weeks.

I like the stage.  Looks like some sort of def poetry slam.  Steve Ballmer introduces your host... but before I get to that, are Steve Ballmer and Jim Cramer long lost brothers separated at birth?  Anyway...

Your keynote presenter?  Stephen Elop.  And the crowd goes wild.  Man, Microsoft is really full of themselves sometimes, aren't they?

Starts off by talking about the key role that Unified Communications plays, especially in today's troubled economic times.  Okay, fair enough.  He then officially announces the general availability of R2.

Is this the future of conferences now?  This virtual area I'm in has abstracts, a virtual backpack, and downloadable materials.  It's pretty cool, but I think it might make it less likely that I'll travel in the future.

Why are they interviewing a guy dressed like Austin Powers?  That doesn't even make sense.

Finally, some demos of the R2 features...

They are displaying the tighter integration with Outlook and the Exchange UC server.  Pretty cool.  Except for the part where he messed up the demo.  Oh wait, maybe he messed up on purpose to show off joining a conference from Communicator.

Here's an interesting little way to join a meeting...  You can log into OWA and join a meeting from a computer without even having Communicator installed (think kiosk or someone else's PC).

Ahhh, desktop sharing is finally available.  One step forward, one step back, I suppose.  For the record, I am virtually clapping for all of these new features.

Oh good, we're going to look at a visionary case study.  I didn't even know that a case study could be visionary.  I think I need to start describing more of the things I do at work as "visionary".  I wrote some visionary meeting notes this week.  Okay, I'll stop now.  Moving on...

The point of the case study (and I certainly wouldn't call it "visionary") is that you can leverage .NET to use OCS with other custom web applications.  While this is certainly neat, presence awareness in applications has been around for quite some time.

"That is the magic of software."  See?  It's not only visionary, the software is magic!  Go Microsoft!

40,000 employees on OCS.  That's less than half of their employees, no?

I think Jesus Jones wrote the music for this keynote.  I wonder what they're doing these days?

Now they're interviewing the customers in a talk show like format.  I'm not used to seeing this.  I actually think it's rather effective.  I'm used to seeing customer testimonials pre-recorded on the big screen during a keynote.  This is different.  It humanizes the product, challenges, and the company's rollout itself.  It almost makes it a semi-birds of a feather session.

Over 30 partners have announced products that are compatible with R2 including Tanberg and Polycom.

Now it's live Q&A time.  Seems to be taking a CNN Town Hall meeting format.  Again, interesting.

Is MS playing catch up in UC?  No.  They have a vision (remember?  duh).  This is all according to plan.  They are leapfrogging the competition.  Something about a paradigm shift.  Seriously, if this turns into all marketing buzzwords and softball questions, I'm turning this off and just downloading the software.

Will tightening budgets slow down MS' innovation in the UC field?  No, because people want better solutions in lean times.  Again, softball question.  What's next?  "People are saying MS isn't awesome.  Is that true?"  Strike two.

Is the PBX dead?  MS believes it is a dead end.  Not a surprising answer there.  They're trying to become your PBX.

Uh oh.  Looks like this is wrapping up and they're playing commercials now.  I think we're just about done here today.  I'm off to kick the tires on the new technology.  It's long overdue.

posted by JV @ 1:30 PM 3 Comments