Month: February 2007

IBM SA delivers bumper year

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

Yes I know this is mostly old news but it only hit the press here in South Africa yesterday.  It is good to see IBM South Africa doing so well. 

IBM SA had a record year, delivering a 20% rise in revenue for its 2006 financial year, says Mark Harris, IBM SA country GM.
Speaking at the annual IBM gala dinner for channel partners, Harris noted the year saw growth of 33% from the company’s Server and Technology Group, 30% from Business Consulting, 33% from its Software Group and 59% from its Services Group.

 
This contributes a bit to the $91.4billion revenue that IBM made during 2006.

Technorati Tags: , ,

What is all this twittering that people are doing …

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

I see more and more people twittering (is there a word like that, if not then I have just created it). Must I or must I not join the community of twitters (another new word?). Do I want the world to know what I do every freaking minute of my day? So if any of my readers have some advice and reasons why I should join the twittering community then let me know. Better still, if you think I should not join then also say so.

Collaboration: New from IBM

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

A lot has been written and said about Notes 8, Lotus Connections and Quickr since announcement at Lotusphere 2007.  I like particularly what Bill Buchan wrote and I quote:

Notes – my long term partner – well. She’s been tucked, trimmed, lipo’d, exfoliated. A complete makeover. But she’s still the rather interesting person behind this new facade. Some new tricks, of course. But the old ones still work. The in-laws – IBM – well, they cant get enough of her. The twin sisters – Quickr, and Connections. No talk of the ugly cousin -Workplace -anymore.

and then Bill gets a stab into MS also — love it

Let me tell you – Quickr just makes Sharepoint look like an ugly sister. Ouch.

I have run the latest beta build of Notes 8 and must say I like what I see. Much more slicker and responsive and that for a beta build.  Cannot wait to get my hands on Connections and Quickr.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Community Building

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Over the last couple of days you will notice 2 new things in the side bar and both is around community building.  The first, MyBlogLog, is to show who is visiting my blog and take an interest in my ramblings.  Obviously to see yourself listed there, you need to register at MyBlogLog.

The second is what is called a AutoRoll … it gives an indication of what visitors to my blog read on the Internet.  Again to be part of this, you need to register at AutoRoll.  This service is still in beta but I have already found some interesting commonalities between what I read and what my visitors read.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Wisdom from NASA on Project Management

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

While reading John Tolva’s blog I came accross some NASA wisdom around projects and I quote:

“If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
— Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module* that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.

Now at IBM we strive to be innovative for the customers we serve … does this mean that we as Project Managers should not be bound by fixed project cost and fixed project schedules?

Being innovative means that some leeway must be provided for.  To be innovative also means that there is no history and/or experience on which costs and schedules can be based.  However what goes hand in hand with this is to make sure you have good Risk Management processes in place since being innovative also means that one must take more risks.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Budget day in South Africa

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Yesterday was budget day here in South Africa.  First surplus budget (this probably mean that the income will be more than what the goverment plan to spend). 

From first glance it seems to be a very balanced budget.  Lot of money going to education which is a good thing and even more needs to be done. Our future in this country depend of good education and we (meaning us and the government) need to do everything to make sure each and every kid in this country gets the best education possible.  What I realy would like to see done is that educational expences become tax deductable.

Glad to see that tax on pension funds is abolished.  We as ordinary citizens will get a bit of tax relieve.  Companies will get some and then obviously some money for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Now lets hope that the money that Trevor gave out get to where they suppose to go and not into the pockets of some corrupt government official.

Some links:

Technorati Tags: , ,

IBM vs Microsoft on Open Standards

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

I wanted to comment on the spat that is going on between IBM and Microsoft and Open Standards.  Actually it is not really a spat since all IBM is saying, support a ratified open standard like ODF rather than getting another quasi standard like openXML from Microsoft.  Now Microsoft is blaming IBM for taking sides.  Glyn Moody summed it up well in his post titled “Microsoft’s Fruedian Slips”.  I quote

What Microsoft glides over, of course, is that the choice is within the standard. There are now a number of programs supporting ODF, with more coming through. That’s choice. I doubt whether there will ever be a non-Microsoft program that supports fully its own XML format: there will be no choice, just lock-in under a different name.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Now powered by WordPress 2.1

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

This blog is now powered by WordPress 2.1.  The only real issue that I had was that my Links and Blogroll in the sidebar did not work properly.  For some reason the developers of WordPress has decided to combine the Links categories with the Posts categories which meant that the index numbering for the Links categories got changed so not to clash with the Posts categories.  I had some hardcoded (will teach me not to hardcode things) category indexes in my sidebar so had to change my templates.

If there is any issue you encounter when visiting my blog, (btw thanks for visiting), please leave a comment here.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Found a new host

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

A while back I blogged about searching for a new web host.  I eventually decided on one after reading good comments about PolurNet.  I settled for their smallest and cheapest reseller option.  It has all the options I need and seems that their support is very good.  Already had a support question for them and they responded and resolved my query very quickly.

One of the first things I am doing on it is testing WordPress 2.1 on a domain I setup there.  This is a pre-amble in upgrading this version (which currently is 2.0.7) to WordPress 2.1

Technorati Tags: , , ,