Apple and Google Interoperability - Not!

If you are a user of Google products such as Gmail, calendar, contacts, etc and a heavy user of Apple hardware,  iPad, MacBook, etc, you know that these two worlds just don't integrate very well.  Basic poor interoperability which is very frustrating.  Apple pushes their solutions that compete with Google just like they push the ones that compete with Microsoft, e.g. Keynote.

Google release earlier this year a Capability, called google sync, that does address some of these interoperability issues with Apple software and account management.  Is does allow your contacts to stay in sync as well as your mail on their mobile devices, however it limits you to only one calendar.  Really!

If you are like me I have access to a number of calendars and need to see them on my iPad when I'm mobile.  Here is a good description from Google on setting up google sync on an iPad:  Google Sync Instructions for IOS.  For me I have enabled this from both my email and my contacts but have disabled it for my Calendar.  To get around the limit for only one calendar using this method I have gone through the typical Gmail account setup on the iPad and have only selected the calendar app not the email app.

All of this works without any issues but come on.  Google should be all about addressing this issue with Sync and Apple should be more responsive to working with other platforms.  Why can't they just get along? Oh right it's all about revenue.  I think that is a shortsighted quarterly view and they should know that if they work better together they can dominate in their respective areas instead of battling it out with these little annoyances.

So now let's move on to Apple's iCloud.  I was pretty excited about jumping into the iCloud world until I read the fine print.  This is from a google forum on how to set it up:

Full Blog The *Crucial Step* In order for your iCloud and Gmail contacts to remain synchronized with one another is to ensure that they are only ever edited on your iOS Device which is synchronized with iCloud and Gmail contacts. When you edit a contact on the Device, you will be warned that you are “editing 2 linked contacts”. This is how you know that your changes are being pushed to both accounts. If you edit the contact via iCloud or via Gmail directly, such as through their Web Contacts, it will only change that particular account’s “card”, not both. You will see changes on either iCloud or Gmail on your Device, but these changes will not have been, nor will they be synchronized across accounts. 

Only changes made directly to the contact on the iPhone or iPad will synchronize across accounts. You must also ensure that when you are editing the contact that you are editing the ‘linked contacts”. You will know you are looking at the linked contact when the contact says “Unified Info” at the top center of the screen. This is arrived at also by ensuring you are within the “All Contacts” group.

Oh come on! Really! This can't be!

I guess I'm staying away from iCloud and using my current setup for now.

Knowledge Age is Making Current Job Losses Permanent

I was reading an article from the Economist entitled: Difference Engine: Luddite legacy. The basic premise is that the rapid technology advances occurring after the industrial age began is having an increasing impact on the job market.  They aren't talking about robots taking automotive workers jobs, as discussed in a BI review, but technologies leveraged by the knowledge worker of today's economy that makes manual operations performed by the industrial worker obsolete.  The below sums up this concept:

This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America's current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete. 

This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees. 

That makes a huge, disruptive difference. Not only is AI software much cheaper than mechanical automation to install and operate, there is a far greater incentive to adopt it—given the significantly higher cost of knowledge workers compared with their blue-collar brothers and sisters in the workshop, on the production line, at the check-out and in the field.

The key point which I agree with is that these job losses are permanent.  We have learned to live without these functions now and don't see a need to go back and incur greater labor costs when our systems are performing adequately.  The greatest opportunity for knowledge workers and their businesses exist with organizations that rely on the old "brick and mortar" industrial age approach in conducting their business. As they face ever increasing pressures to compete and become ever more effective in their efforts they will need to embrace knowledge age solutions.  The question is whether they wait to long to recognize that the industrial age is behind them.

Are Macs going mainstream Forrester?

I want to start out saying that I have fostered an equal platform / opportunity workplace for sometime now.   When you walk around today in our offices you see people with Macs and PCs; both laptops and workstations.  You will also see iPhones, Blackberry's, and Android mobile phones as well as iPads and Android tablets.  All of these connected via wired or wifi throughout all of the offices. This is accessible to employees using company issued devices or employees owned devices.


This is totally against my higher headquarters IT policy but I've felt this was one of the keys to our innovative culture. 


It was surprising to see that Forrester, via GIGAOM, just released a report stating the following:

"Forrester made some waves in the IT world Thursday morning when it released a report strongly urging large enterprise companies to let their employees use Macs at work, or as they phrased it “it’s time to repeal prohibition.”

I believe that mainstream corporate IT departments just had a stroke!  Their entire existence is standardization on basic platforms, e.g. Dell latitudes, running Windows 7, BTW just migrated from XP, and ensuring that nobody downloads any unapproved application.  Not to mention that a standard computer is the only one authorized to connect to the network.  It's great we have the freedom to lean into the 21st century in our office.


So with the release of this report by Forrester I wonder when I will see something in the works in the mainstream C suite embracing their recommendation.  I'll report back when I see that happening.  Don't hold your breath.

NetApp and Hadoop

I just came from a meeting over at NetApp.  I've been a fan of their products in the past and have deployed out numerous systems using them all over the world.  The key advantage in the past has always been their replication technology that ships with each system.

I ran across an article from GigaOM yesterday entitled "NetApp does network-attached Hadoop" http://goo.gl/HhjYe.  Notably in the article is a simple rational why NetApp is partnering with Coudera on this:

"The ultimate goal of the new NetApp product, Albanese said, is threefold: 1) to separate the compute and storage layers of Hadoop so each can scale independently; 2) to fit with next-generation data center models around efficiency and space savings; and 3) to improve reliability by being able to hot-swap failed drives and otherwise leverage NetApp’s storage expertise."

I would also add a forth reason, NetApp is tied to the Federal Government sales chain and the Feds are in Lobe with Hadoop at the moment.  This product will give the Feds a simplified way to purchase a Hadoop stack that is easy to understand.


We are pretty excited about this product so we will be taking a look at this when we get one and report back what we find.

Rapid Access, Data Governance, and Aggregation

Interesting concept from Read Write Web writer Chris Lamb on information liquidity:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/10/how-the-cloud-makes-financial.php
The section on Emerging Opportunities is spot on:
"One of the key drivers is flexible and rapid access through web services interfaces, and flexible commercial terms. One company, Xignite, has built its business around this new model.

Another key opportunity is in financial data management and data provenance. Regulators and counter-parties back in 2008 were unable to understand their financial positions because the definition of the data itself was ambiguous. Was this Lehman Special Investment Vehicle the same as that one? Nobody knew. Data management and data provenance can help sort this problem.

A third opportunity, aggregation tools, will also play a role in this new world. The ability to aggregate data from radically different domains (not just different trading venues), the ability to combine structured and unstructured data, the new dynamic portioning models will radically alter the landscape."


These same basic opportunities are found in many other sectors, not just financial. Some quick examples:

• In the Energy sector where I work with Oil and Gas companies on exploration, I see the need to aggregate data across many different sources, both structured and unstructured, to forecast the best locations for drilling opportunities.
• In the Personnel security sector I see the need to give rapid access to data, especially through mobile devices so that decisions can be made to avoid potential issues while traveling world wide
• In the Defense sector where I deal with different Services and missions the importance of data management and governance (provenance) is critical so that we are talking about the same data in the same way.

There are many other example across other sectors that I work but these opportunities are some of the fundamental building blocks need to be addressed.

Software Development Overruns

Michael Sampson writes "Software development projects have a long history of running over schedule and budget. Recent research by Evans Data estimates that 49% of such projects run over schedule; an IBM survey of CIOs puts the percentage at 62%. 


Research by IBM suggests that two of the root causes are poor communications among developers, especially when they're geographically distributed, and an unclear understanding of the business domain they're contributing toward." via the BrainYard.

Certainly these are key factors, but I would suggest the desire to get a project sold with a revenue stream coming in is also a key factor. Here the desire to give a client a feeling they are getting something at a price point they can live with that includes features they really need. 


This is a key reason these projects are late and overrun; unrealistic expectations on what it takes to get the project completed. This is done on the client side and the business development side, sometimes without involving the developer community at all in the decision space.

Source Via:  http://currents.michaelsampson.net/2011/10/sd.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+michaelsampson+(Michael+Sampson:+Currents)

IOS 5 Frustration

Upgraded my iPad to IOS 5. After upgrade non of my purchased apps would work. Immediately went to the web to see if someone was having the same issue. Web forums are open up with lots of people having a similar problem. UGH!

I read an article that one of Apples' key tennets is not to release a product until it is polished. They don't do public beta like some.

Not sure this is the case today. Antenna Gate to IOS 5 failure sums it up.

Now I have to find a way to fix my iPad before Monday when I need to use it for work. Great Sunday Beta testing Apple IOS 5.

Vizit releases new visual search and social collaboration features for SharePoint 2010 http://goo.gl/ZKAWm

I love how they open with a discussion of the new product:

"Let’s face it SharePoint is not the easiest product to use. We’ve all sat in meetings and heard the audible groan when someone says the document is in SharePoint. A typical user experience is clicking a link, seeing nothing recognizable, looking to the ribbon for help, followed by sending a message back asking for the document in email. This cycle is repeated by casual SharePoint users every day."

Maybe what we need is a new foundation to build upon; not an add on?

Anyway the description of the product seems interesting with better visualizations, elimination of clicking and waiting for documents, and web part deployments.  I'll check it out.

Taking Friday for a Spin

I recently received a private Alpha invite to try out Friday, an Android application made by Dexetra, http://goo.gl/42auo .  Dexetra is a private company located in Cochin, India and primarily focus on smartphone platforms such as Andriod, iPhone, Symbian and Blackberry. 

Friday http://goo.gl/2r0RR is a logger for your activity with your phone.  It basically logs places your go, the calls you make, the chats / SMS messages you make, pictures and locations you take, etc.  Overtime it becomes a journal of your activities and allows you to recall events such as what did I do in Denver.  To do this you have to give Friday access to everything on your phone which is a bit scary but required to provide you detailed analytics of your daily patterns.

Two things I find that are fairly interesting to me, although not very useful are:

• Hourly Profiles
• Daily Trivia facts

The hourly Profiles basically shows how many calls, sms, mails messages, places, and lists over a 24 hour period.  You can see when you get the highest call volume or receive the most emails daily.  It is interesting to see over a daily period when you have spikes in activities.  The question is how can I sue this information to have a  more balance profile.  

The daily trivia facts is just kind of fun.  Facts like that I have the highest emails on Monday and the lowest on Tuesday or that the majority of calls from X are never answered.  BTW I know I never answer those calls.  It’s just fun facts about your daily habits.

Since I just started with Friday my plan is to have it monitor my work life over the next month and then see if I find utility in using it.  So more to come.

QR Codes - Getting Started

I’ve been playing around with QR codes and readers lately.  You see QR codes popping up all over the place these days, especially within magazine advertisements and now on business cards.  Generally QR codes are used to provide more information about a specific product, service, event, or person.

I’ve looked at the following readers/scanners for my Android Nexus S phone:

QuickMark QR Code Reader: http://goo.gl/auE4A

i-nigma Barcode Scanner: http://goo.gl/8L1F3

MobiScan QR: http://goo.gl/lUUxE

I’ve settled on using QuickMark QR Code Reader as my go to app.  This isn’t a dig on the other apps, they all have really high and good reviews within the android market place, but I went this way primarily due to the cost (free), functionality of the app, an extension that is available for my Chrome browser, and the integration of business card QR codes with my android contacts.

It does require that you create an account and log into both the browser extension as well as the Android app but that is the bulk of the setup required.  The only drawback that I see is the manual sync that is required to sync from the handset to the browser; but that isn’t a big deal.

Try it out on the below:

Google Music - I'm Sold

I recently received my invite to the new Google Music Beta.  There has been a great deal of press surrounding the release of this service.  Especially of note was the inability of Google to receive agreements with major music labels prior to going live. This didn't seem like a big deal to me but I can see that it will be a big detractor in the future it they don't get it solved.  One other note, I haven't used Amazon's cloud service either, I'm pretty much an iTunes guy.

So iTunes became the biggest issue for me in considering Google Music Beta.  All of my current music is stored within iTunes.  Reading through the release notes Google said there would be no issues with importing my music into their cloud from iTunes.  So I decided to give it a try.

BLUF:  I'm a big fan of Google Music Beta.  Their seamless integration with Android and the cloud where my music is copied is a perfect combination.

After I receive the invitation to try our Google Music I downloaded their application from the log in page. It is called Music Manger (See below).

As you can see I selected the iTunes player, hit OK and 1950 songs were automatically copied to Google's Music cloud.  Actually it was that easy.  It did take over an hour for all the music to appear and be available to play.  Also all of my playlists were copied over intact with links automatically set up for playing.  Artwork was also associated correctly and I was offered free music to get started.  See below for a screen snapshot after the sync.

One question that I had with this process was whether or not I would run into any licensing issues with my music.  I've ran into this with Apple all the time, especially when I change computers.  Basically there were no issues with licensing with Google Music that I found.

So onto the most important question.  So how does this work with my Android phone?  Basically I already had Google Music on my Nexus S already.  As I opened up the application all the music I had loaded up to Google Music cloud was there and ready to play.  I was about as seamless as you can get.  No more fussing with iTunes and my android phone.  Music Manger now keeps my iTunes library in sync with my Google Music cloud and my Android.  I was basically sold from that point forward.

I've used Google Music Beta now for over two weeks and have traveled with it across the country.  Basically all the 1950 songs are not automatically downloaded to my Droid, they are playable over the internet.  As I play them they are then downloaded and available whether I'm connected into the internet or not.  This is only a problem when seating on a plan when you are disconnected.  Basically in that situation you can see and play the songs you've listened to before, but the songs that you havn't listened to are not available for playing.  That seems like the only drawback that I can find.

If Google can figure out how to solve the partnerships issues with the major record labels I can see using Google Music exclusively for management of my music as well as purchasing of tracks.  From what I've read this may not be a quick offering by Google.

Switching back to the iPad

So it has been a while since I left the iPad and switched over to the Samsung Galaxy tablet; see my post on 7 days with the Samsung Galaxy Tab.  I have to say that I really like the Galaxy Tab but the size feature provided by the iPad was the deciding factor.

It has been hard leaving the Galaxy Tab for two main reasons:
1) The integration with Google apps such as Gmail, Calendar, Reader, etc is far better on the Galaxy Tab
2) Typing on the Galaxy Tab is better with 2 finger blackberry style input.

That said I really missed the iPad.  Especially on travel.  Reading on the device was far better and I missed a few apps such as Pen Ultimate which had no comparable app on Android.

So at this point I using my MacBook Air and iPad when mobile, with exception of Android my Nexus S, and using my PC when at the office.

Now I have to decide on upgrading to the iPad 2 or a Honeycomb device such as the Xoom for my next purchase.

The Cool Kid Syndrome

In the early nineties I was a heavy Mac user working as an electrical engineer for the Dept. Of the Navy. Somewhere in the mid nineties I was convinced to switch over to the PC.   The primary motive was the cost delta and the lack of available SW for the Mac platform. I did not go willingly but over time it made sense and I became very comfortable in the PC ecosystem.

Fast forward to 2010 and it seems like every few months now people are talking to me about switching back to a Mac. The head of my IT group is a big Apple fan.  And of course I'm resisting the change back just as much as I did switching to the PC in the first place.  That said I was handed a new 13" MacBook Air before Christmas and begged to try it out - who turns that down.  

Bottom Line:  I really like the MacBook Air HW but my reservations still lie with the OS and applications.

The form factor, the instant boot up, the weight of the notebook, battery life, and the touch pad are great to use.  I have basically left my Sony VAIO at home now for over the last month.  I'm fully using the MacBook Air when I travel and work remotely.  But in the office and at home it's all PC.  The reason why is the OS and the SW apps.  As an example MS Office just isn't the same on the MAC and features of the OS are just different and confusing.  All of this causes me to fight the computer rather than be productive.  Forget about networking the device to a NAS - nothing natural in that process.

So I guess this is a training issue.  People tell me the Mac is so very intuitive and flows better than Windows/Office.  This isn't the case for me.  I find myself hunting around to do the simplest things.  And why is MS Office on the Mac different from the Windows version.  The menus are completely different and the features are all rearranged.  An an example of another change for the Office app is to add a new slide on a PC just type ; on the Mac it is .  This whole key instead of the key drives me nuts - not just with Office.  Lastly why is everything opposite on the Mac:  files download to the desktop on the right side; PPT full screen projection is on the left side - all opposite from the PC.  All of this make no sense and drives me crazy.  

I have a friend that works for a different firm that has gone through a complete changeover from PC to Mac.  We talk regularly about her experience in this change over.  She is a complete convert to Apple.  She said the funniest thing the other day when I was discussing my frustrations with networking and the Mac.  She said that yes she has given up capabilities from the switchover from PC to Mac but feels she is better for it.  I found that the oddest comment.  Why would a loss of productivity be better in any way?  In discussing this further I have determined that is the COOL effect that is drawing us to Apple.  Not reason.

I'm sure most people will disagree with this but when you're in a meeting and everyone has their Dell Latitudes deployed on the table and you whip out your cool Mac with the glowing apple on the back everyone takes note.  It makes you feel like a cool kid on the cutting edge of technology and productivity. Who doesn't like to talk about how great Apple is anyway.  We all have a lingering bias against windows going back to the late nineties and early 2000s.  Who can forget the Vista debacle.  Remember Windows ME.  Enough said.

So to close this out, I guess I'm a victim of the Cool Kid Syndrome.  I'm going to continue to use my MacBook Air and incorporate it into the work day and re-address this decision in 6 mo or so.  If I'm still struggling with the training aspect of it by then I'll probably give it up and move back to the PC or maybe install Win7 on the MacBook Air.  That just seems wrong is so many ways but I do like the HW form-factor.