Phil Windley's Technometria

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September 20, 2004

Utah CTO Breakfast: Utah Exchange Point

September's CTO breakfast will be this Friday at the usual place and time (more information). Pete Kruckenberg of UEN has requested that we spend some time talking about how we can get a regional exchange point started in Utah including the technical hurdles, business benefit, and political realities. Pete's been working on this for a while. Maybe the timing's right now--especially with UTOPIA getting off the ground. I think that's a fascinating topic; come and add your thoughts and voice to the discussion.

11:52 AM | Recommend This | Print This

What the WWW Has Wrought: Mass Customization of M&Ms

In what I consider a perfect example of how the WWW opens up new business opportunities, for established as well as new companies, M&Ms can now be purchased in custom color mixes and with custom messages written on them. If you were a Mars Candy product manager in 1993 and had this idea, it would have been impossible to imagine how you could reach your customers with the offer and get their information effectively. Now, that's the easy part. The Web has allowed companies like M&Ms to build relationships with customers where before they simply pushed product through a distribution channel.

10:15 AM | Recommend This | Print This

First Snow

Y Mountain with a light dusting of snow.

The mountains had snow on them down to about 5500 feetthis morning. That's only about 1000 feet above the valley floor. The picture on the right is Y Mountain that I took this morning. You can just see a light dusting of snow in this picure. The heavier stuff is behind clouds. Y Mountain, just east of BYU, is actually something of a foothill, Provo Peak (11,068 ft) sits right behind it, but is obscured from view in this picture.

09:16 AM | Recommend This | Print This

More on eVoting

Jay Lepreau (CS, Univ. of Utah) and I had an editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday on the dangers of eVoting. Some how the online version is missing the paragraph breaks which makes it somewhat hard to read. Jay's posted a text version with breaks included. The conclusion:

We applaud the state's goal of improving our voting systems. However, the result must really be an improvement. Voting equipment, costs, standards, laws, judicial rulings, and public opinion are all changing fast. Delaying the acquisition by just a single year would definitely reduce the state's Ê risks and likely its costs. Most important, the state must convince its citizens that any new voting system is at least as secure and trustworthy as the financial systems we use daily. Any other course is simply reckless.

From Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion
Referenced Mon Sep 20 2004 06:55:16 GMT-0600

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