Posted by John Patrick on Jul 23, 2003 in
Travels The IBM Forum
2003 presented a number of excellent speakers on Wednesday morning. I was
not able to hear them because I was meeting with IBM customers, including the
Ministry of Defense, to discuss Internet
technology directions. After lunch it was my turn to give a talk. The audience
was large and there was a lot of interest. I talked about The Future Of The
Internet with emphasis on WiFi,
web
services, and blogging
and did my best to relate these key areas to e-business
on demand. Tomorrow will be another day of meeting with IBM customers. (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 23, 2003 in
Travels The IBM Forum
2003 started at 9 AM this morning with an opening talk by Janet Ang, managing
director of IBM Singapore. Next was an
address by Frank
Lavin, the U.S. Ambassador to Singapore. He gave a somewhat positive view
of the U.S. economy and a bullish outlook for the impact of the Singapore
Free Trade Agreement. The keynote talk was given by Dr. Soumitra Dutta,
Dean of Education at INSEAD. As the conference
continued throughout the day, I was honored to meet with various IBM customers,
including the Infocom
Development Authority and Pacific Internet,
to discuss the direction of Internet technology. (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 22, 2003 in
Travels 
The
Swissotel was kind
enough to move me to a room with high speed Internet access. That enabled me
to upload pictures from the day into the Singpore
section of the photo gallery. Since I arrived at the hotel before 8 AM and
my first meeting was not until 5 PM I had a choice of taking a nap or taking
a walk. I took the latter. This is my third time to viisit Singapore but there
are many things I had not had time to visit in the past. Funan
The IT Mall is Singapore’s largest shopping area dedicated to IT. The six
story building houses 178 retail outlets. I visited many of them — like a child
in a candy store. I picked up a few essentials that were on my list including
a Smart Media PCMCIA
adapter and a USB hub. Speaking of USB, I have never seen so many USB
accessories before. The most unique was the USB
fan. I could not resist. As I type this story, the new USB fan is keeping
me cool. (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 20, 2003 in
Travels As we disembarked the airplane and walked up a ramp to the main terminal, there was a thermal imaging system. I could not see where the sensor was but the video
display showed all of our faces in a light green. I am sure if any of us had
a fever, that our faces would have been red and something would have been beeping.
Each passenger on the flight was given a helpful brochure about SARS
and also a thermometer with instructions. I feel confident in dealing with the
SARS issue. If any country knows how to instill discipline and handle things
efficiently, it is Singapore. (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 20, 2003 in
Travels II have been fortunate to have made quite a few
trips to Southeast Asisa. In every case, until now, the route of flight had
been from east to west — New York to Tokyo and then south southwest from Japan
to the South China Sea. This trip was west to east. After departing from Frankfurt,
Germany we headed South of Prague, north of Vienna, north of Istanbul across
the Black Sea toward the Caspian Sea with Baghdad to the south. From there north
of Tehran and then south of Delhi and acorss the Bay of Bengal to pass over
the Andaman Sea toward Phuket, Thailand which is on the west side of the South
China Sea. The final leg was near Penang west of the Strait of Malacca and then
south over Malaysia. Singapore is south of Kuala Lumpur and north of Jakarta,
Indonesia. (read
more)
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 20, 2003 in
Travels,
WiFi This is going to be a
very long flight but, if you have to spend a lot of time on an airplane,
Singapore Airlines is the one to be with. The Boeing 747 departed late from JFK but
strong tailwinds got us into Frankfurt, Germany ahead of schedule. For security
reasons, everyone had to depart the plane. We will be re-boarding the same plane
in an hour for the final, and longest, leg of the trip. The Lufthansa
lounge was full of people and a number of them were using their laptops. A very
strong WiFi signal was present, and upon starting a browser, the following
message appeared. “Try out the new innovative technology and enjoy the comfort
of a mobile high-speed office. The catch: during the trial period this service
is free of cost.” The service was being provided by Vodaphone. It remains to be
seen where WiFi pricing will settle. There are interoperabililty issues too, but
one thing is certain. WiFi is extending the reach of the Internet to more
people in more places more often.
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 19, 2003 in
Public Policy,
Travels In a few hours I will be on the way to Singapore.
It has been a busy day getting packed and organized for the trip. As of
11:10 a.m. this morning, I had already received 83 spam emails. Fortunately,
every single one of them was automatically placed in my "junk mail"
folder and I did not have to look at them. I see no possibility that the pending
legislation can solve the enormous spam problem, but I am quite optimistic that
technology can solve it. SpamNet from Cloudmmark
works incredibly well. Not only did it catch the 83 spam emails, but it
did not move any email that it should not have. I’m really pleased with
how this is working. That is in contrast to how well I think the
National Do Not Call registry will work. The problem is the exceptions.
If you register your number on the National
Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls? No. The exception
section of the registry says, "Placing your number on the National
Do Not Call Registry will stop most, but not all, telemarketing calls. Some
businesses are exempt from the national registry and still can call you even
if you place your number on. Exempt businesses include the following:
Long-distance phone companies
Airlines
Banks
and credit unions
The business
of insurance, to the extent that it is regulated by state law.
Political
organizations
Charities
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 18, 2003 in
Blogging,
patrickWeb The conversion to Movable Type is complete now and I would like to thank those who have sent me feedback. In particular I would like to thank those who have caught some things that broke in the process. I am finding Movable Type very powerful and it offers me new featues for the blogging. Some of the naming conventions and file structure are different and that is where a few difficulties came in. Thanks to David Leip for pointing out that my RSS feed was lost. For those who use the RSS feed directly, the new feed is at http://patrickweb.com/weblog/index.xml,
but I have also restored the original RSS feed at http://patrickweb.com/weblog/index.xml
The two feeds are identical and both will be maintained. For those who prefer
to get an email when a new story is posted, you can just subscribe.
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 18, 2003 in
Favorites Conferences
July 17, 2003
On
Saturday I will be heading to Singapore to participate
in the IBM Forum 2003. IBM
has invited strategic business decision makers and operational decision makers
such as the CIO and IT managers. I’ll be giving a talk there next week. Being on-line is critical but being in-person
at conferences is important too. In 1992
I went to the Agenda conference
for the first time and have not missed it since then. Conferences are a way
to keep in touch with industry colleagues and key industry trends. There are
many good conferences but the ones that I have attended regularly for more than
ten years include Agenda,
Demo, and PC
Forum. There have been many others that have provided great value including
Vortex
and Telecosm.
Sometimes I speak at these conferences; sometimes I just listen. One of the
newer conferences is Pop!Tech.
Every autumn, in the seaside village of Camden,
Maine, more than thirty of the world’s most intriguing visionaries, innovators,
leaders, scientists, intellectuals and artists come together to present their
views about the future.
Read more…
Posted by John Patrick on Jul 17, 2003 in
IBM IBM Earnings – 2Q/2003
July 17, 2003
I don’t normally post IBM
news reports, but the current
earnings report got me thinking about the information technology industry
more broadly so I decided to share my simple observation. In my travels to conferences
around the world I have heard people say that spending for information technology
is not growing, or is flat, or is down, or even non-existent. I have even heard
it said that "there are absolutely no IT projects happening"! IBM
is in the information technology business — that is where nearly all of it’s
revenue comes from — services, software, and hardware. If customers don’t spend,
there is no revenue. IBM’s revenue for the the second quarter of the year was
$21.6 billion. No matter how you slice it, dice it, adjust for currency, reorganizations,
acquisitions or deacquisitions, it comes out to more than $200 million per day.
Per day!
