Staying on Task with RRWolfgang

Chat Back

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:15:56 +0000

A few days ago, Google added AIM support for Gmail. Arguably, that’s not the most shocking news ever, but it may change the way people chat online.
With all the different chat services offered (AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, etc.), many people have been using Pidgin to be able to speak with all their friends using just one client. This has its ups and downs, of course, because every time somebody new wants to chat with you, another window jumps up like popcorn popping. It’s a lot of clutter and kind of annoying.
This new Gmail feature has possibilities. If they kept me logged in all the time, and never disconnected me, then the messages that pop up when I’m away could just be placed in a queue for my next visit. It’d be nice if the different conversations were tabbed like the different pages on iGoogle so as not to clutter up your screen. We’ll see where they go with this.

A New Way to Think

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:33:46 +0000

It’s commonly held that the European Renaissance began sometime near 1300 A.D. and that it came to a close at about 1600(1). The Renaissance served to pull Europe out of the Middle Ages which were characterized by widespread ignorance and heavy handed authority figures. During this time period, also referred to as the “Dark Ages” (2), creative thinking, exploration, and innovation were put on hold to keep the political, societal, and religious leaders safely beyond the reach of the commoners. For students of more recent history, it should be apparent that this sort of dictatorial style of governance did not disappear from the earth with the arrival of the fourteenth century. Two names to consider are Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
In the face of significant opposition, how did the Renaissance overtake the minds of the European people? It began with a few financially successful Italian cities, such as Florence, Milan, and Venice (3). The economic climate of these cities was such that they were protected in large part from being pushed around or otherwise threatened by either politicians or priests. So a culture rich with productive commerce, more or less free from the societal shackles of restraint, is housing a lot successful, forward thinking businessmen. What is it that successful, forward thinking businessmen do? They try to be more successful and forward thinking.
Toward that end, merchants saw fit to spend their money on art, education, and philosophy. This created an environment that cultivated creativity and learning. This time period saw advances in painting technique, banking and commerce, music, and technology. Arguably the most significant technology to be born out of Europe during this time was the Gutenberg Printing Press, which not only changed the face of Europe, it changed the world.

In Search of Excellence and Good to Great (part 2)

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:40:00 +0000

Peters and Waterman submitted their own interpretation of excellent leadership as embodying the same brand of selflessness that Collins had outlined. “It [leadership] is listening carefully much of the time, frequently speaking with encouragement, and reinforcing words with believable action” (Peters 82). On this topic of leadership, it’s interesting to note the nearly two decades that separate the publishing of In Search of Excellence and that of Good to Great. Both books discourage the routine application of sheer authority onto the workforce, but instead advocate the more charismatic approach of allowing your employees to identify with your goals.
Both In Search of Excellence and Good to Great seem to compliment each other in their views on leadership in business, but how exactly might that apply to me? Well, my present field of interest as it relates to Information and Communication is teaching. Teaching, much like managing, requires patience and determination. Also, the teachers primary ambitions should be for his or her students, just like a Level 5 leader’s ambition should be “first and foremost for the institution, not themselves” (Collins 22). If a teacher is too preoccupied with reaching his or her own goals and is monetarily driven, the chances of cultivating half-baked students are pretty good.
In Search of Excellence provides another applicable principle for teachers. When leaders overuse their raw authority, the employees, in addition to resenting the leader, will often not feel compelled to go beyond the minimum of what’s required. It is the same way with teachers. When teachers simply exude their authority over students to accomplish their goals, the students have little to no concept of why the goal is important in the first place.
To summarize, the elements and technology behind good business managing changes, and certainly has done so over the last twenty years. The principles behind good managing remain the same, however, and that is why the two books In Search of Excellence and Good to Great compliment each other so well.

In Search of Excellence and Good to Great (part 1)

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:36:30 +0000

Thomas J. Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, spent the latter part of the ‘70s and the early part of the ‘80s in management consulting. Consulting, by definition, means being “employed or involved in giving professional advice to the public or to those practicing the profession” (1). The professional advice delivered by Peters and his fellow author Robert Waterman Jr. is as valuable to management today as it was twenty years ago.
As its title suggests, In Search of Excellence is fueled by the underlying theme of delivering high quality in business. It doesn’t take too much imagination to gauge how this principle might still be applicable in business today. Quality, which is always defined by the customer, may be delivering a better product to market, but it could also be providing exceptional service, as in the case of the Caterpillar Tractor Company (Peters 171). In Search of Excellence noted how Caterpillar’s success was attributable to their relentless pursuit of improving their products, and providing superb service to their customers. Does this ethic work in today’s business world? It would seem so, inasmuch as Caterpillar is still profitable enough to have been a contender to purchase Allison Transmission from the seemingly-not-so-quality-oriented General Motors.
Another book on successful business operation is Jim Collins’ Good to Great. Good to Great was published some nineteen years after In Search of Excellence and their focuses differ a bit. Collins’ book focuses not only on creating financially successful business, but creating employment positions that are fulfilling as well (Collins 100). Though Collins’ work does not have exactly the same focus of the service-oriented In Search of Excellence, the two pieces did not contradict, in my opinion, but instead offered keen insight to a more well-rounded business perspective.
In Collins’ opinion, to achieve a more well-rounded business environment with “good to great” results means having a “Level 5 leader” at the helm (Collins 21). These Level 5 leaders exude the iron determination that one might typically think of when pondering high level executives, but they also keep their ego out of the equation. As Collins puts it, “It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious- but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves” (Collins 22). This description brings us back to the notion that an employee must find his or her work fulfilling. It is almost impossible for individuals, executive or not, to lay aside their own personal interests for the benefit of some impersonal entity that they don’t believe in. In light of this, it would seem that the pursuit of professional fulfillment has some practical application after all.

Storage Virtualization (part 2)

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:30:23 +0000

Already, we can see a few of the elements that have been mentioned earlier. The haphazard dispersion of files has created an especially complex storage environment, all the while allowing the company to make the most out of their available disc space. The mapping table connects the seemingly haphazard physical locations with their more intuitive, easier to understand logical locations, and the user is able to more fully grasp what files they have stored.
The user makes a request for a file that is saved on LUN-1 (Logical Unit 1) and the mapping table connects that file to a logical block on disc array 2 (LBA-2). The file is then retrieved from LBA-2 and delivered to the user as though it came from LUN-1 4. This, in a nutshell, is how storage virtualization is supposed to work. A complex, yet efficient storage environment is simplified by a virtualization client so that the user doesn’t have to mess with piecing all of the pertinent files back together.
So where can you get a storage virtualization software client? A few companies that vend such agents are Altiris, IBM, and the EMC Corporation. EMC, a highly regarded name in the digital storage business since 1979, has a product called Invista, which is a virtualization agent that promises to “reduce planned downtime and other disruptions” and “increase the flexibility of your storage infrastructure” 5. As a company that delivers $11.6 billion worth of revenue in a year, the EMC Corporation has clearly got something on making a profit in the digital storage business.
IBM, another heavy hitter in the world of digital storage, has a virtualization agent called POWER™ Virtualization that promises to allow organizations a way to take full advantage of space on their IBM System p servers. Some of other advantages that POWER provides are reducing network complexity (of course), faster implementation timeline with a reduced risk of business disruption (sound familiar?) and the ability to redirect IT resources toward business-critical applications 6.
Both IBM and EMC’s product descriptions highlight the positive aspects of storage virtualization, and describe only what advantages it will provide for your company. So what are some of the disadvantages of storage virtualization? No man-made technology is ever perfect, so what is it about storage virtualization that is less than ideal?
Because the implementation of data virtualization is fairly new (hence the expression “emerging technology”), no standard way of doing things has yet arisen. This lack of standards complicated the possibility of interpretability between two organizations that may be employing different flavors of virtualization 7 For instance, IBM’s POWER™ is designed to work with IBM System p servers. If one company wanted to merge records with another organization that already had an infrastructure set up that is composed of different devices, the virtualization agent would prove to be more of a hindrance than a help.
Another instance in which virtualization would prove to be a bit of a nuisance is the potential complication of data replication. When storage virtualization is implemented, only the virtualization agent knows where the data is physically stored. To effect a large-scale back up, the pertinent files have historically needed to be on physically contiguous discs for a traditional backup 8. To implement a backup with a virtualized system, while possible, requires extra work that involves some predetermined procedure of regathering all of the necessary files and copying them. With storage virtualization, large-scale backup is more time consuming, but with a well-designed procedure, it can prove to be of minimal consequence.
Even though the whole point of storage virtualization is to prevent managers from having to mess with the physical storage environment, it does occasionally need to be dealt with. As you might expect, with the limited attention that goes into the physical environment with virtualization in place, it can get pretty confusing. Like a cardboard box that people have been throwing a bunch of stuff into, the physical environment can take quite a bit of time to organize. The only redeeming factor where physical management is concerned is that it doesn’t have to be done often. It mostly just comes up when a company is looking to switch storage solutions or giving other organizations or entities access to their records.
Lastly, when a company decides to implement storage virtualization, they run the risk of adding another layer of data that they need to keep safe and backed up. Metadata is the proverbial “glue” that connects the logical data location with the physical data location, thereby make the virtualized system work 9. In the event of some disaster wiping out your mapping tables, it is vitally important to a company too have backup tables that they can use to get their system back up and running again. If that metadata gets lost, the company then faces the harrowing task of trying to reconstruct it by sorting through the complicated physical environment. This risk is an easy one to avoid, but it is important enough to consider before deciding to switch to a storage virtualization network.
Running at approximately $900 per server virtualized, storage virtualization is a relatively inexpensive way to simplify the way your company retrieves data. With new companies rapidly coming forward and providing their own virtualization clients to the market, prices for virtualized solutions are expected to continue to fall 10. With emphatic potential for system improvement, and manageable and avoidable risks, the ledger leans more heavily towards storage virtualization being an advantageous solution. As the technology matures, and standards are agreed upon, one should not be surprised to see storage virtualization become more and more commonly implemented among businesses who routinely store and access large amounts of data.

Storage Virtualization (part 1)

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 22:25:07 +0000

With more and more information being demanded of companies in nearly every sector of business, the ability to store and retrieve data is of paramount importance. For Business Continuity, digital storage represents a means of recovering from unforeseen setbacks. With such copious amounts of data being stored routinely, a method of easy retrieval is in significant demand. An emerging technology that delivers solutions for this very issue is Storage Virtualization.
Storage virtualization is a new way to store data while simplifying its presentation 1. It involves the use of a virtualization software client providing a “layer of abstraction” between the data’s physical address and its logical address. In other words, the user’s view of the data layout is not necessarily reflective of the literal allocation on the storage devices. The software client informs the user on a particular file’s location as though it were grouped together with related files, while in reality, they may be located on completely separate disc arrays 2!
You may wonder, what good is it to be able to view files as though they were logically grouped together? As it turns out, storage virtualization can save you money on disc space and man hours. The idea behind storage virtualization is to shield users and administrators from the complexity of the storage environment. After all, if there seems to be practically no rhyme nor reason to the random splattering of files across the storage servers, why should the users be troubled by it?
The more complex the data allocation, the more your management costs will be. That’s why storage virtualization is so advantageous. It allows the system managers to
understand what data they have without troubling them with the underlying complexities of the layout. With that in place, you don’t have to pay managers extra to unravel those complex systems.
Another way that storage virtualization saves money is by allowing a company to more efficiently use their data capacity. By not having to worry about keeping related files grouped together on a particular disc array, a manager can completely utilize a single storage unit with heterogeneous (composed of different types of) data. It isn’t important to make sure that all related files are group together physically 3. If there is room on a storage device, you can shove your next batch of data on there and think no more about it!
So now that we have an idea of why this technology might be useful, how does it work? When a file is saved and committed to storage, it is recorded physically on a storage medium of some kind. When storage virtualization is being implemented, mapping location information is created and stored along with it. That information, called metadata, is saved in a mapping table which attaches a logical address to the physical address in the storage device.
What this indicates is that there are two ways to define a files location with storage virtualization. There is, of course, a physical location and there is a logical location as well. The physical location refers to the literal device upon which the information is stored. The logical location is some illustrative representation that strategically groups files in some understandable and likely order. The mapping table is the part of the virtualization client that matches up the physical with the logical, and delivers an understandable and likely allocation schema to the user.
A generic example of storage virtualization in action might go a little something like this: a company that has implemented virtualization has a group of related files mapped together so that they appear grouped as a logical unit (LUN) on their storage array. In reality, these files aren’t really grouped together, in fact, they might be dispersed haphazardly across the storage devices in logical block addresses (LBA’s) wherever the virtualization client could fit them.

The Search

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:43:41 +0000

It doesn’t take too much imagination to ascertain the subject behind The Search by John Battelle. Search engines have profoundly affected the way people locate information on the Internet, and The Search goes into significant detail to drive that point home. For a person of a more technical background, some of the elements discussed in The Search may seem a bit novice-oriented. Items such as the origins of Google, the indexing of the web, and the ever-invasive Google-bots may be little more than tired school material for some, but from a business perspective, The Search serves to demystify the science behind page-rank, querying, and whatever happened to Alta Vista?
These days, it is difficult to ignore the value of search engines, with the price of one share of Google presently being in excess of $600. Battelle underlines the importance of the search engine in the first chapter where he references a Silicon Valley engineer characterizing search as the “…attempt to make sense of all the information that is now possible to get” (Battelle 4).
Battelle is able to emphasize the significance of search engines quite easily thanks to his de facto example of Google, which serves as the subject matter for the majority of The Search. It is difficult to ignore a company that can go from “next to nothing to more than $4 billion” in less than five years (Battelle 4).
In a time in which getting your information to the public is of paramount importance, understanding the logic behind meta-tags and search criteria is more significant than ever. The Search is a solid tool for people who have a weak grasp how search engines affect their business. In addition to that, it’s also a pretty entertaining read, which is nice.

Generating Buy-In

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:35:05 +0000

For such a deceptively small book, Mark S. Walton’s Generating Buy-In had plenty of useful content. The main thrust of the book was to explain to the reader how to sell an idea, a message, and their very selves. The point is that, as a leader, you have to be able to deliver a vision that those around you will able to identify with and support. If you can get people to buy into what you stand for, then there’s no telling what you can accomplish.
Walton begins the book by placing the reader in a very familiar environment: sitting at home, relaxing, just watching a little television. He goes on to explain how this unspectacular activity is made possible by the “Masters of Television” trying to decide in what fashion that they wish to generate buy-in (Walton 4). In this instance, Walton is referring to commercials and the science of advertisement that goes on behind the scenes, trying to divine what would make the watchers of a particular program “buy-in” to needing a new car, or a sweater, or a different kind of insurance. Using this device, Walton is able to convey to the reader just how pervasive the notion of generating buy-in really is.
Walton does well to provide clear and easy to read examples to illustrate the different circumstances in which people may find themselves faced with generating buy-in. As evidenced in the first chapter, Walton presents examples of normal people dealing with everyday situations. However, as a former CNN reporter, Walton has had the opportunity to witness, firsthand, the strategies and methods of a number of executives and business leaders and the book benefits from it.

China Inc.

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:06:49 +0000

Ted C. Fisherman’s China Inc. is an illustrative narration on the up and coming economic nova that is China. Fisherman makes the point that, in addition to the powerful force of low-cost labor for which China is traditionally known, the country also possesses over a billion potential consumers to keep their economy performing well.
The way the China conducts itself in the international arena has undergone a dramatic change in recent years. Fisherman makes the point that the Chinese government warned its people against the outside influences of capitalism and consumerism as late as the 80’s. Fisherman goes on to make the connection that the very “pollution” that the government would have staved off is now the life blood of the Chinese economy (Fisherman 88).
Though China is opening up and expanding, Fisherman made it fairly clear that there are still areas in which China has yet to open up completely and play by the rules by which the rest of the world pretends to abide. The fact that Fisherman chose to title the ninth chapter “Pirate Nation” should serve as some sort of clue of this. This chapter discusses China’s rather large bootlegging market. The lucrative nature of this market is evidenced by the aggressive fashion in which it is protected, but it has negative economic effects as well. Fisherman provides the example of Tsinghua entrepreneurs searching out other markets in which “their talents can be rewarded and protected rather than stolen” (Fisherman 242).
To conclude, China Inc. was a solid source of information for those who trying to make themselves better informed about global business and those who are concerned for America’s place in the 21st century markets. Fisherman’s book, though far from being a page-turner, is not short on pertinent information.

A Rebirth

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:13:38 +0000

People reference culture and society as both the cause and the result of the way people behave. Psychologists ponder the paradox of "nature vs. nurture" to try to gauge just how profound the effect of society really is. The European Renaissance is an interesting study because, among other things, it is an example of a very radical and aggressive reconfiguring of culture. In its very name, meaning "rebirth" (Wikipedia), signifies its extreme significance. Why was this dramatic rethinking of art and science so effective in overtaking Europe? To oversimplify almost to a fault, it may be suggested that there is something about good ideas that is contagious. No doubt the underlying optimism of the previous statement misses the mark of its vaunted brother realism, but in a way, it is reflective of the way the business world seems to work. Buyers and users won't flock towards products and services that are sub-par or unintuitive. Meanwhile, history is fraught with evidence to suggest that bad ideas can be contagious as well. It is the hope of humanity then, that the ideas that ultimately stand the test of time are those that edify and not destroy, create, and not devolve. You know what ideas I mean: "good" ideas, of course.

iPhonics

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:12:25 +0000

I am what you would call a Ryan Wolfgang and all things considered, I am impressed by the indomitable, open-source minded, industrious hackers of Apple's iPhone. If memory serves, a friend of mine was commenting not too long ago how simple it was for him to download an interface-mod "hack" from apptapp.com for his iPhone. The steps were pretty easy and whatnot: you download the darn thing onto your iPhone, plug it on in, turn off iTunes, and install. Pretty easy, right? You might be tempted to think so, but for this accommodating mass of anonymous techies that we'll refer to as "open-sourcers," it was not nearly easy enough. For the next generation of iPhone hacks, all you have to do is go to the website, say, jailbreakme.com, and with one simple click of a button, you're hacking away happily. Think about that notion, though, "next generation of iPhone hacks." The iPhone has been out a few paltry months, and already the second wave of modifications is poised and ready to accommodate the unfulfilled whims of the users. For my own part, I really like these open-sourcers. It seems that all they want in return is to get their names out there. In that sense, they are very much like the mildly nerdish freshmen that would do most anything just to be your friend. Of course, if I was honest with myself, I think I'd say that that's much the way I am even today.

Web 2 Point Something

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:02:21 +0000

It would seem that any article you read about Web 2.0 has a subsection entitled "Criticisms" or "Legitimacy" or something equally inspiring. These sections typically include some reference to the lack of a standard definition for "Web 2.0" but honestly, who would care about that sort of thing? Well, for some reasons, web programmers care about that sort of thing. If history's any indication, programmers have to respond to the wishes of their clients (as do all professionals) and frankly, the introduction of the phrase "Web 2.0" invites unclear specifications to be introduced into a business transaction. When a potential home-owner is pitching his ideal domicile to an architect, he's not likely to leave it at, "Well, I just want a house that's really twenty-first century." That's only slightly more helpful than saying that you want a house with plumbing already installed. For programmers, the more specific the better. If you want your website to have an RSS feed, to be table-free, or to accept user input, that needs to be outlined and made clear in the site specifications. Web 2.0 is a marketing term. Marketers, being the mortal enemies of programmers, only partially understand the programmer's love of standards. Since the voice of a product is its marketing department, the expression Web 2.0 does not look to be in any immediate danger of expiration... Sigh. The system works!