Tolland To Holland

I made it across the big pond to Amsterdam. Not a bad trip really. Here are a few things I noticed along the way.

I never was at the international terminal at Philadelphia airport, but of course I was there this time. It was very strange. You walk around the rest of the airport and the C and B concourses look the same. Then you turn down the A terminal and it is a whole different airport. First of all it was dark. In fact I could sum it up by saying it was a dark concrete tunnel, with florescent lighting and bus station style black seats. Very strange. There were also these kiosk machines there that foreigners leaving the U.S. had to line up to use. At the machine, they had to give their left and right fingerprints and smile for a nice digital photo. Uncle Sam is watching you people. I wonder why they do it on the way out though?

Here's another thing. Flying business class is sweet. Big reclining seats. Food and drinks. Even your own personal television. There were a few movies on. I watched most of The Da Vinci Code, but it was a dumb movie and I turned it off towards the end so I could get some sleep.

I got here around 9a.m Amsterdam time. Not much happens in this town on a Sunday morning, but now it is hopping. I spent the day walking around the center of town here and doing some souvenier shopping. Although, it was a little strange seeing the head shops, "coffee" shops, and sex shops at first, the novelty wears off fast and becomes pretty boring. Now my legs are tired so I'm glad to be in this internet cafe sitting down for a change.

Send me the link

I saw a presentation this week by Gartner's Nick Gall in which he talks about the core to emergent architecture being identifiers, format and protocol. It kind of made sense, but today the light bulb finally went off in my head when I overheard someone say "Send me the link". I've heard that and said that hundreds of times before, but now I see what Nick was talking about in regards to identifiers.

The reason why data is so locked up in our IT systems today is you can't just "send me the link". You have to say something like: "Log into Big System a and select the Accounts menu then type in the account number and press OK. The "send me the link" version would be more like: http://big.system.a/accounts?id=123456.

Why not have every piece of information available via a URI? Why not RSS for data feeds of business data, like a Google News Search feed, instead it could be an all new accounts feed like http://big.system.a/accounts?status=new&output=rss.

Do It Yourself Stonehenge

This guy rocks! Literally. He shows what a good engineer can do if he puts his mind to it. Thanks to the Signal vs. Noise blog for this link.

Identity 2.0

I just saw a fabulous presentation on Identity 2.0 done by the CEO of SXIP. Not only is the content of the presentation important as we move into more and more web 2.0 type architctures, but the presentation style is so good it showed up on the Best Presentations Ever list at squidoo.

Give me my data!

This 2 part webcast/podcast from Ron Jacob's ARCast show is a very interesting look at the new Business Data Catalog feature of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. This is such a great concept, let IT catalog all the data sources available, secure them, describe them, control them, etc. Then turn 'em loose and let the business community incorporate that data into their SharePoint sites along with any other content they like.

This is the kind of enabling technology that will let IT start to build information platforms instead of custom applications and finally get out of the way of the business.

Links to the show
Business Data Catalog on ARCast (Part 1)
Business Data Catalog on ARCast (Part 2)

Line Rider Simulation

If only there were business process simulators and application prototyping tools that were this easy and fun to use... link

Perception is Reality

Maybe it is because I've spent so much time at work concentrating on system integration, and server-side design patterns, but it seems to me that the majority of "enterprise" developers (including me), don't know diddly squat about compelling user interactions.

So recently I've been taking in the wisdom of people who specialize in this sort of thing. I got started with the folks at 37 Signals. They have a blog called Signal vs. Noise that elaborates on all things design. Good Stuff.

Being an Enterprise Architect, I am a big fan of design patterns. That is why I was really intersted in seeing Yahoo's Design Patterns . They do a nice job of not only describing the pattern but showing it in action with animations.

Let's face it. Perception is reality. You can have a really great set of functionality, but if the site is hard to use and confusing to your users, it stinks. Conversely, mediocre functionality with a compelling user experience will be perceived as a great site.

My First Post

I keep having conversations like: "So what are you reading about lately", or "I just saw this cool website/article/book/tv show/etc. ....".

So in the spirit of having a place to keep track of all this, and in the interest of expirimenting with the blogosphere, I have created this blog.

Look out world, here I come.