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July 18, 2003
CNN on Aggregators
Calling them the biggest change to the way we use the Web since Mosaic, CNN has an article on news aggregators. In the typical style of the popular technology press is full of gushing and contains lots of "ooohs" and even a few "aahs". Very interesting to see the mainstream press finally start to talk about aggregators. Reminds me of 1994 when they started talking about browsers. Interestingly enough, there's no link to an RSS feed from CNN, which last time I checked it out was a static document pointing to the main cnn.com site. I can't find it now. I guess they decided that a static RSS document is even worse than a static homepage.
10:31 PM | Recommend This | Print This
CS 462 Class Information
I'm starting to get some questions from people who are interested in taking CS462 in the Fall. CS462 is a class on large scale distributed systems that I teach at Brigham Young University. Here's information on when the course meets and the texts I've selected:
When: 5:00-6:15 pm MWWhere: W142 BNSN
The class will have three main sections: one on 2-tier architectures, one on n-tier architectures, and one on Web services. There is, unfortunately, no one text that can cover all of these, so there are three. All are required.
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MySQL and JSP Web Applications by James Turner will be used to study 2-tier architectures. In a perfect world, we'd use PHP instead of JSP for this part, but I want to keep the course about the architectures and not about learning a lot of languages.
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Enterprise JavaBeans (3rd Edition) by Richard Monson-Haefel will be used to study n-tier architectures. The largest project in the course will occur in this section of the course and involve installing and programming a EJB application server and linking it to a JSP-based presentaiton layer to create a significant web application.
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Java and SOAP by Robert Englander will be used to introduce Web services and the concept of "decentralized" as opposed to merely "distributed" architectures.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
02:24 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Wireless VoIP
An interesting article in Fortune asks whether Wi-FI will revolutionize the phone. In particular, it talks about wireless of hotspots and the real possibility of multi-more phones that will allow you to call over IP when you're inside a hot spot and avoid cell charges. Cisco already has a portable handset for use with Wi-Fi networks. I make calls right now over Wi-Fi since that's the only internet connectivity I have and Vonage is my phone provider. There's no great technology breakthrough required here---just a little integration.
09:41 AM | Recommend This | Print This
IT Reloaded: The Other Side of the Fence
According to economist W. Brian Arthur, Citibank professor at the Santa Fe Institute, "This country's one and only economic driver for the next several decades rests solely in the hands of CIOs." That's a bold statement and one that seems to fly right in the face of the IT Doesn't Matter Anymore mindset. In an interview with CIO magazine, Arthur's observation is that digital technologies go beyond automating, and create fundamental changes:
As different industries encounter digital technology, which includes telecommunications and satellites, the pattern seems to be that completely new activities spring to life. It's not about speed and productivity enhancements, better, faster, cheaper. There are actual new tasks being accomplished.
As an example, he uses the biological sciences, where digital technology isn't just automating old processes, but enabling completely new things like gene mapping or DNA fingerprinting. He points to the financial services industry and new products like financial derivatives are possible only through digital technology.
Arthur envisions CIOs in an active, rather than a passive role:
What CIOs need to do is, number one, realize what's going on. Then, they can't just react passively and say, "Yes, the people upstairs have demanded that we be in constant contact with Frankfurt or Boise, Idaho." They must imagine how all of this should happen in a reliable and intelligent way, and initiate it themselves.
This is a huge challenge for CIOs because not only does it require understanding trends and then applying those to the business, but it also requires selling everyone else on that vision. Believe me, most people won't see the vision over a short time frame. To paraphrase Proverbs: Where there is not vision the people and their CIO perish.
In the article, Arthur talks about digital technologies forming the "nervous system" of the enterprise. He's really talking about the real time enterprise where instrumentation and systems combine to give everyone the information they need to make the right decision in real time. Web services provide a means for accomplishing the integration that Arthur envisions piecemeal, without breaking the bank.