Here’s today’s mis-directed sales pitch. It was good for a laugh, if nothing else. From: Jefrey Heath Subject: Regarding your garbage removal Hi Alan, May I get on your schedule for 5-minute telephone call to discuss reducing your restaurant portfolio’s Waste Removal spend by 30%-50% without even changing haulers? I’m with Refuse Specialists, the industry’s […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Some PTS families light Shabbat candles every Friday night. That is authentic Reform Judaism. Some families rarely or never light Shabbat candles. That, too, is authentic Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism is both a living religion and a […]
It looks like the tech industry is hiring more women. Maybe. Maybe not. The statistics are hard to interpret. Also, it’s unclear if the newly hired women are performing technical or other jobs. I’m looking at a blog from the New York Times, “An Uptick in the Hiring of Women for Tech Jobs,” which correctly […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Did you know that more than one-third of all U.S. Jews identify with the Reform Movement — and that Reform is, by far, the largest Jewish denomination? Did you know that 55% of U.S. Jews raised within […]
My 2013/5774 Rosh Hashanah speech at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. A synagogue, like Peninsula Temple Sholom, is many things. Around the High Holy Days, we are a beit t’filah, a house of prayer, worship and spirituality. We are a beit knesset, a gathering place for friends, neighbors and the community. And of course, we are a […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live, and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you. —Deuteronomy 16:20 Those famous words are from Parshat Shof’tim, which this year was read in mid-August. […]
Microsoft’s woes are too big to ignore. Problem area number one: The high-profile Surface tablet/notebook device is flopping. While the 64-bit Intel-based Surface Pro hasn’t sold well, the 32-bit ARM-based Surface RT tanked. Big time. Microsoft just slashed its price — maybe that will help. Too little too late? To quote from Nathan Ingraham’s recent […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. The flickering television screen caught our eye as we sat sipping cold drinks at a Burger King in Parker, Arizona. Miles deep in the Sonoran Desert, between Twentynine Palms and Scottsdale, we were tired and thirsty […]
Apple is sporting an nasty black eye, and the shiner isn’t only because iPad sales are slipping – with a 14% year-on-year decline reported. This time, it’s because QoS on the company’s cloud servers is ugly, ugly, ugly. As of my writing (on Thursday, July 25), Apple’s developer portal has been offline for days. As […]
“You should double your top line revenue by making your products more awesome, not by doubling the size of your sales department.” That was one of the insights shared during a technology roundtable held last July 16 in San Francisco. Called “The Developer is King,” the discussion was moderated by Dan Dodge of Google Ventures, […]
Dr. Douglas Engelbart, who passed away on July 2, was best known as the inventor of the computer mouse. While Dr. Engelbart was the brains behind many revolutionary ideas, his demonstration of a word processor using a mouse in 1968 paved the way for the graphical user interfaces in Xerox’s Alto (1973), Apple’s Lisa (1979) […]
Quality Assurance. Testing. No matter what you call it – and of course, there are subtle distinctions between testing and QA – the discipline is essential for successfully creating professional-grade software. Sure, a one-person shop or a small consultancy might get away without having formal test teams or serious QA policies. Most of us can’t […]
If you were at Microsoft Build this week in San Francisco, you hung out with six thousand of your closest friends. At least, your closest friends who are enterprise .NET developers, or who are building apps for some version of Windows 8. Those aren’t necessarily the same people. The Microsoft world is more bifurcated than […]
Web sites developed for desktop browsers look, quite frankly, terrible on a mobile device. The look and feel is often wrong, very wrong. Text is the wrong size. Gratuitous clip art on the home page chews up bandwidth. Features like animations won’t behave as expected. Don’t get me started on menus — or on the […]
Data can be abused. The rights of individuals can be violated. Bits of disparate information can be tracked without a customer’s knowledge, and used to piece together identities or other profile information that a customer did not intend to divulge. Thanks to Big Data and other analytics, patterns can be tracked that would dismay customers […]
Perhaps I’m an old fogey, but I can’t help but smile when I see press releases like this: “IBM Unveils New Software to Enable Mainframe Applications on Cloud, Mobile Devices.” Everything old will become new again, as the late Australian musician Peter Allen famously sang in his song of that name. Mainframes were all the […]
According to IDG Research, 80% of business leaders say that Big Data should enable more informed business decisions – and 37% say that the insights provided by Big Data should prove critical to those decisions. A February 2013 survey on Big Data was designed and executed jointly by IDG Research and Kapow Software, which sells an […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Roses are sure to brighten up everyone’s day. The best place to see roses is the International Rose Tea Garden in Portland, Ore. Coming in a close second is the patch on the Rivera Drive side […]
The software development world keeps on changing. Just when we think we get a handle on something as simple as application lifecycle management, or cloud computing, or mobile apps, we get new models, new innovations, new technologies. Forget plugging pair programming or continuous delivery or automated testing before checking code into the repository. The industry […]
The classic database engines – like the big relational behemoths from IBM, Microsoft and Oracle – store the data on disk. So do many of the open-source databases, like MySQL and PostgreSQL, as well as the vast array of emerging NoSQL databases. While such database engines keep all the rows and columns on the relatively […]
Like many of you, I travel with a vast array of personal electronic devices – so much that my briefcase bulges with screens, batteries, cables and charging bricks. Some devices are turned off when I’m on an airplane – and some aren’t, often because I forget. Take this week, for example. I am working out […]
Not long ago, if the corporate brass wanted the change major functionality in a big piece of software, the IT delivery time might be six to 12 months, maybe longer. Once upon a time, that was acceptable. Not today. Thanks to agile, many software changes can be delivered in, say, six to 12 weeks. That’s […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. If you were in the Sanctuary on Friday evening, March 15, you know that it was a perfect Erev Shabbat service. You felt the ruach, you were infused with the Shabbat spirit, and you went home […]
Tickets for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference went on sale on Thursday, April 25. They sold out in two minutes. Who says that the iPhone has lost its allure? Not developers. Sure, Apple’s stock price is down, but at least Apple Maps on iOS doesn’t show the bridge over Hoover Dam dropping into Black Canyon any […]
As I write this on Friday, Apr. 19, it’s been a rough week. A tragic week. Boston is on lockdown, as the hunt for the suspected Boston Marathon bombers continues. Explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas. Killings in Syria. Suicide bombings in Iraq. And much more besides. The Boston incident struck me hard. Not […]
Last week, we held the debut Big Data TechCon in Cambridge, Mass. It was a huge success – more attendees than we expected, which is great. (With a debut event, you never really know.) We had lots of sessions, many of which were like trying to drink from a fire hose. That’s a good thing. […]
I know many female IT professionals. In some parts of the tech field, there are lots of women. In others — including software development — females are fairly rare. Is this a problem? If so, why? Those are legitimate questions. Do companies have compelling reasons to recruit more female developers? Do universities have compelling reasons […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. I am delighted to report that the Board of Trustees has voted to offer Rabbi Dan Feder another contract to remain at Peninsula Temple Sholom. The vote was unanimous (20-0), which is a strong message of […]
Git, the open-source version control system, is becoming popular with enterprise developers. Or so it appears not only from anecdotal evidence I hear from developers all the time, but also from a new marketing study from CollabNet. The study, called “The State of Git in the Enterprise,” was conducted by InformationWeek, but was paid for […]
Packing lists – check. Supplies ordered – check. Show bags on schedule – check. Speakers all confirmed – check. Missing laptop power cord located – check. Airline tickets verified – check. Candy purchased for reservation desk – check. Our team is getting excited for the debut Big Data TechCon. It’s coming up very shortly: April […]