Mystic Creatures

Nothing could be better than going to the American Museum of Natural History with your granddaughter. There are always special exhibits — today we saw Mythic Creatures, Frogs, and Dinosaurs Alive!. Frogs was really interesting. I was not aware that there are more than 5,000 different kinds of them. The museum had a large collection of live frogs ranging from 1/4 inch to six inches and in every imaginable color and skin type. The poison dart frog is said to have enough poison to kill 20,000 mice or ten humans. South Americans use the poison to put on tips of arrows to kill game. Mystic Creatures was about sea serpents and dragons (we saw many of them in China recently) and assorted other "mystic creatures". The IMAX production about dinosaurs was a stunning forty-five minutes of classic super-hgih quality large format video with crystal clear audio content. The raptors seemed as though they would run right over the audience. Paleontologists are discovering more dinosaur fossils than ever.

Supernova – 2007

There are a lot of good conferences — Supernova is one of the best. This week was the third time I have made the trip to San Francisco to attend. There were roughly 350 technologists, investors, business leaders and media who came together to network, share ideas, and explore the business impacts of many key innovations. The highlight, like all conferences, was catching up with former colleagues and making new friends.

Supernova 2007 is an event that challenges your assumptions, makes you think a lot and allows you to hear some of the world’s experts debate the future of the connected world. The broad topics discussed at Supernova focus on the decentralization of computing, communications and the Internet, digital media, and business models. (See the full agenda and list of speakers). There are so many exciting things happening in these areas — distributed e-commerce, mobile applications, the power of the "long tail" in commerce and media, massively multi-player virtual worlds, business blogging, the video Internet, and voice over IP applications, just to name a few. It is beyond the scope of this posting to try to effectively summarize all that I learned during the week. It was a really terrific conference. If you are interested in the topics discussed and some of my notes and observations then please read more.

Spam Arrest — part 3

I started using spamarrest eleven months ago and all of my email goes through and mail that is not spam goes from there to my inbox. As of today spamarrest processed 50,129 inbound emails for me and 10,711 of them made it to my inbox. Spam represented 78.63% of the mail addressed to me. In other words only one in five emails were legitimate. Hormel Foods Corporation loves Spam. They say their SPAM Luncheon Meat is "the one in good taste". For the rest of us spam is something quite different and anything but in good taste.

There have been quite a few stories about spam here on patrickWeb. Early in the debate — years ago — I took the position that the elimination of spam could be handled by technology and that laws would not work. Even though the spammers have gotten more creative and we are currently seeing a rise in spam, I continue to believe technology is the best answer.

Around August 1 last year I started using spamarrest. All email addressed to john@patrickweb.com gets automatically picked up from my patrickWeb mail server by spamarrest and the spamarrest server then determines whether or not the mail gets forwarded to my patrickWeb inbox. For everyone in my contact list (1,400+ people), their email comes through to my inbox with only a second or so delay. However, if an email arrives for me from someone not in my contact list, an automatic reply is sent to them that says something like "Your email to John is pending delivery. Please click here to validate that you are a real person". When you click, you are presented with a web page where a word appears in a graphic image. Something simple like "cat" or "water". After you type in the word that appears you become validated as a real person — not a robot sending millions of spam emails — and you are added to the "ok" list just like everyone in my address book. Likewise, anyone that I send an email to for the first time is automatically added to the ok list. For anyone in the ok list their emails are never challenged — and I answer all my email.

I had resisted challenge/response approaches in the past, but unfortunately today’s environment forced me to make a change. I am really pleased with the results. No more spam or junk folders with daily trash emptying duties. The 79% of uncertain mail goes into an "unverified" folder. I check this folder on occasion if there is an email I am expecting. Spamarrest is very easy to manage. You can add entire domains to your ok list. For example, any email from someone at ibm.com comes through unchallenged. I have added a dozen or so other domains to the ok list. Occasionally a spammer or recruiter will respond and verify their email address but I then click to add them to the "not ok" list. The bottom line is that I spend significantly less time managing email than I did before and I can spend more time communicating with colleagues, family and friends old and new.

The week before switching to spamarrest, I received an email from a person I don’t know who had read something of interest in my blog and wanted to give me some feedback. This is really valuable to me. I asked her what she thought of the challenge/response approach I was moving to. She said "I think that’s a very good idea. People who are worth talking to, either personal or professional, will understand". From my perspective, I am really enjoying a 100% spam free world and yet still able to meet new people and learn from them.

Stem Viruses

One of the scary things out there is the potential spread of infectious diseases such as avian influenza (bird flu), dengue fever, and other dangerous viruses. The challenge has always been to try to gain an understanding of how they spread — what they will do next. Will the virus mutate? Will it jump across continents? Where are the greatest vulnerabilities? Can the path be predicted in time to get vaccine to the next area? There is now new hope to get our arms around these questions and more. IBM is donating some very sophisticated software to help scientists and public health officials build digital models of infectious diseases to help understand and plan more efficient responses to potential health crises. The software is known as Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM for short) and is one of the key technologies being used in the Global Pandemic Initiative, a collaborative effort of IBM and over twenty major worldwide public health institutions, including the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

The Spatiotemporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM) tool is designed to help scientists and public health officials create and use spatial and temporal models of emerging infectious diseases. The models can not only aid in understanding diseases, but potentially even prevent them. The software, which was designed so that it will work on any type of computer, creates a graphical representation of the spread of a disease based on a variety of parameters such as population, geographic and macro-economic data, roadmaps, airport locations, travel patterns and bird migratory routes around the world. STEM also facilitates collaboration between governments, scientific researchers and other players in the public health community who can share the customized epidemiological models that STEM creates.

Policymakers responsible for creating strategies to contain diseases and prevent epidemics need an accurate understanding of disease dynamics and the likely outcomes of preventive actions. In an increasingly connected world with extremely efficient global transportation links, the patterns of infection can be quite complex. STEM allows the building of models involving multiple populations (species) and interactions between diseases. It would be speculative to say for sure but STEM is potentially a breakthrough that will large numbers of lives in the years ahead.

For any techies out there that want to download STEM, you can find it here. If you would rather just see a CNBC movie clip about it, take a look here.

Other patrickWeb stories about healthcare

Business Leadership Forum 2007 – Part 2

The entire forum had a very global feel to it — not just the venue but the participants. Americans were a small minority. The speakers and panelists for the rest of the day focused on the innovation theme of the forum and drilled down to the next level.

To cap off the day, my friend and just e-tired colleague Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger who is now Chairman Emeritus at the IBM Academy of Technology and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, gave a talk about the future of technology. To get our attention, Irving started by pointing out that the world now produces more transistors than grains of rice. He did not mention this but I know that IBM’s new Power6 chip will have approximately 750 million transistors — that’s per chip! Irving went on to point out that there are fifteen petabytes (15 with 15 zeroes)) of data is being generated every day and that by 2010 supercomputers will execute one quadrillion calculations per second. Sounds like a lot but it will be needed to analyze the information being generated and to do it in "real time". Irving believes that modeling is the future — including simulations of what is in your mind.

Better computational capabilities will mean 100 times faster interpretation of an MRI which in turn means that a surgeon will be able to see exactly what is going on inside of you while you are in surgery. A challenging area in the future will be biological viruses — they will be a great threat and it will be a chess match to see if the white hats or black hats win. I am betting on the white hats. Technology will be able to predict the way viruses mutate and beat them to the pass. High speed computing will also make it possible to perform simultaneous and real-time translation — not by human translators in a sound-proof booth, but by computers. You speak in Chinese and I hear you in my headset in English. Irving was quite enthusiastic about the role of virtual worlds in business, government and society. The games will lead to a three dimensional Internet with visual virtual interactive services. This is not just for kids. One of IBM’s goals is to simulate the environmental behavior of the worlds river basins. The key to all these exciting breakthroughs is speed of execution and effective collaboration among government, academia and business. IBM is taking a leadership role with meetings such as this one.

The Russian Ethnographic Museum Reception and Gala Dinner was really special. I would be embarrassed to share the menu. Everyone loved the opera singer after dinner. Next morning and it was back to The Royal Philharmonic Hall where Henry Chow, Chairman, Greater China Group of IBM kicked things off and introduced Zhang Jianguo, Vice Chairman, Executive Director and President of the China Construction Bank. Everything in China is large scale and CCB is no exception. They have 5 million business customers and 270 million retail customers using 14,000 branches. The bank made more than $6 billion in profit last year.

Irving finished the morning with a panel which discussed how to drive an innovation agenda. It is really hard to summarize the perspective gained from listening to such smart people. I have tried to capture some thoughts about innovation in various postings here in patrickWeb. I would say the bottom line is that innovation is a really must do unless we want to live in an environment that is undifferentiated and commoditized. Sam made the point that if organizations focus only on taking out costs, they will be doomed with very low profits — if not extinction.

Everyone agrees that Innovation starts at the top and Sam practices what he preaches — not just by innovating in technologies (IBM turning out more patents year after year than any company in the world), but by innovating in strategies and business models. For example, it was Sam who led the charge to transform IBM from a hardware company to a hardware, software and services company. Especially the latter, when he acquired Price Waterhouse Consulting and smoothly integrated it into the IBM portfolio of services. He also led the sale of the PC business. Some people viewed it as simply a "sale" but in reality it was a highly innovative change to the IBM business model — selling off a low margin business but retaining the services aspect of it and at the same time gaining a stronger foothold in the Chinese market opportunity. Now he is extending the company reach and effectiveness at the same time by thinking and acting globally. Looks like he is on the right track to me.

Geocaching in St. Petersburg
Business Leadership Forum – Part 1
Business Leadership Forum – Part 2
Business Leadership Forum – speakers
Business Leadership Forum – Photo gallery

Business Leadership Forum 2007 – Part 1

The 2007 Business Leadership Forum, the five such event hosted by IBM, took place in St. Petersburg, Russia and included two days of discussion about innovation and the challenges facing businesses and government in the 21st century. IBM Chairman, President and CEO Sam Palmisano welcomed the 450 invited guests representing more than 75 countries to the forum at The Royal Philharmonic Hall. Simultaneous translation of the speakers was provided in ten different languages.

Sam opened the meeting with the theme of "Innovation That Matters". He described a view of a new computing model based on a global infrastructure which is open, flexible, integrated, collaborative, and autonomic. He did not make any product or services pitch but it is clear that the new infrastructure described happens to directly map to SOA (software group), Blades and Virtualization (systems group), and Business Transformation Services (services group) — the three major parts of IBM’s business. Sam also described the trend toward convergence of software and services — this plays directly to two great strengths of IBM. The not too subtle point was also made that the infrastructure of the future is much more like Google than Microsoft.

One of the basic premises of the forum — nicely set up by Sam — was that very large numbers of people are entering the "middle class" around the world and this is going to drive large demand for consumer products and services and upstream demand for suppliers of all kinds. For example, Russia expects to have 70% of the population using the Internet by 2010, right around the corner. Most everyone is aware of what is similarly happening in China, India, and Eastern Europe. These huge new opportunities demand a premium on innovation. Sam continuously drove the point that globalization is driving an expanding horizon for innovation and it seems to me that IBM’s strategy is to collaborate with the customers, academia, and governments around the world. to will result in breakthroughs in the company’s products, services, and management culture. For IBM customers it should mean a big boost in assistance for their business models and business processes.

Sam described how globalization has evolved — international companies, to multinational companies to globally integrated companies. IBM is practicing what it preaches and is shaping its strategy, management and operations in a truly global way. Becoming a globally integrated enterprise means that it is locating operations and functions anywhere in the world based on the right cost, the right skills, and the right business environment. The company now has more than 10,000 employees in China and more than 50,000 in India.

An interesting perspective was then offered by a global leader — Fujio Cho, Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation. Toyota is truly a value-based giant — the world’s largest automaker by sales revenue as of the first sales quarter of 2007 — that has been widely recognized for contributions to society in America. Mr. Cho described many innovative ideas including building a car that is accident free and cleans the air in the environment as you drive it. In the production area he described "jidoka", an unprecedented idea, which basically means that any employee can stop the entire production process if they see something wrong.

The next part of the forum focused on business model innovation and was chaired by Ginni Rometty, Senior Vice President for Global Business Services at IBM. She was followed by Carlota Perez, Professor of Technology and Development at the University of Tallinn, Estonia who talked about the five great surges in the last 240 years: the industrial revolution (age of steam, coal, iron and railways), the age of steel and heavy engineering (electrical, chemical, civil, naval), the age of the automobile with oil petrochemicals and mass production and now the age of information technology and telecommunications. Next will be the age of biotech, bio electronics, nanotech and custom materials. Carlota asserted that each surge takes 40-60 yeas to spread across the world.

Geocaching in St. Petersburg
Business Leadership Forum – Part 1
Business Leadership Forum – Part 2
Business Leadership Forum – speakers
Business Leadership Forum – Photo gallery

St. Petersburg’s Most Beautiful

The flight from Frankfurt, Germany arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia right on time and there was an hour to spare before the opening reception of the Business Leadership Forum at The State Hermitage Museum. I couldn’t resist a walk to "St. Petersburg’s Most Beautiful", a virtual geocache. A virtual cache is a cache that exists in the form of the location itself. There is no Tupperware container with a treasure to retrieve or log book to sign. In order to record a virtual find at geocaching.com, you must go to the cache coordinates and typically answer a question to validate that you were actually there. In this case the question was how many "onions" can be seen on the Church of the Saviour of Spilled Blood. It was a good walk to get to the cache location and when I turned the final corner the onion domes and sheer beauty made my mouth drop open. See pictures in the gallery.

The Church was just the first of many incredible sights that I would see before the day was over. This was my third visit to Russia and second time to visit St. Petersburg (see travel section of blog for more on this). One could go there every year for many years and not see a fraction of what the great city has to offer. Tsar Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703 as a "window to Europe" and it served as the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years. With 11 time zones and 140 ethnic groups, Russia is a really big and interesting place. Much more history about St. Petersburg can be found here.

Got back to the Astoria Hotel in a nick of time to get ready for the reception in the courtyard of The State Hermitage Museum along with four hundred colleagues from business, government, and academia. It was really great to see many old friends and to make many new acquaintances. We were greeted by Sam Palmisano and Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the museum. Dinner was followed by a private "White Nights Tour" of arguably the most impressive museum in the world. It certainly rivaled the reception and dinner at the Vatican at last year’s BLF. From late May to early July the nights are bright in St. Petersburg — it doesn’t get dark. It was a strange phenomenon to leave the tour at midnight and walk outside and find it still light. St. Petersburg’s is at 59 degrees latitude, about the same as Oslo, Norway (see Norway 2007).

The State Hermitage Museum is another of those things that you have to see to believe. There are more than three million pieces of art including original works by Leonardo: Madonna with a Flower (The Benois Madonna, 1478) and Madonna Litta (1490-1491). We breezed through a number of the 500 rooms of the museum where there were over twenty works by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, one of the greatest artists in the history of the world. We saw works by Cezanne, van Gogh, and Picasso, just to name a few. Words can not do justice to what we saw but the Hermitage web site does a really good job of sharing the beauty and expanse.

After a short sleep it was time to get to business at the Business Leadership Forum. A post about the next two days will follow shortly.

Geocaching in St. Petersburg
Business Leadership Forum – Part 1
Business Leadership Forum – Part 2
Business Leadership Forum – speakers
Business Leadership Forum – Photo gallery

IBM Happenings: May 2007

The month of May at IBM was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. One of the biggies is that IBM has allocated $1 billion for green technology.
Called “Project Big Green,” IBM’s initiative targets corporate data centers
where energy constraints and costs can limit their ability to grow. Here are all the announcements made by the company during the month. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.

Norway in a Nutshell

Trondheim was a short flight from Oslo which we had reached by flying overnight from Newark, New Jersey. Unfortunately, our bags did not arrive until six hours later. In spite of rainy cool weather, we found Trondheim to be a delightful place to visit. I would highly recommend the The Palmehaven restaurant at the Britannia Hotel. Some attractions in were not open for the summer as of yet but if there is one thing to see in Trondheim it is the Ringve which houses Norway’s National museum of music and musical instruments with collections from the whole world. The young tour guide not only gave clear explanations of each interior room from the 1880s in the Great House but she also sang or played an instrument in each room. There was a Mozart room, a Beethoven room, a Chopin room, and of course a Grieg room.

I had heard about Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, for years. It was once named one of Europe’s 14 “secret capitals”. In 2005 we took a flight there from Copenhagen but the weather was so bad that after circling the fjords for an hour we ended up landing a few hundred miles away in Oslo. We almost did not make it this time either. The Boeing 737 from Trondheim was hit by a lightning bolt! It was an electrifying expedience. It would be at least three hours before an engineer could make it from Oslo to inspect the plane and so we were re-routed an another flight to Oslo and then a final flight over to Bergen, at last. It was worth the wait. (See photo gallery).

They say that 900 year-old Bergen has its feet in the sea, its head in the skies and its heart in the right place. We were fortunate to leave the rain in Trondheim and find sunny warm weather in Bergen. The mountain top at Fløien is roughly 1,000 feet above the city. We hiked the three miles or so to get there. The view was excellent and so was the beer! We rode the funicular back down. Mediterranean food at Mezzo capped off the day.

Rather than fly to Oslo, our next destination, we decided to take advantage of Norway in a nutshell. The train/bus/ferry combo takes you through some of Norway’s most beautiful fjord scenery.
The Bergen Railway took us to Voss where we then took a bus down the steep (1,000 feet elevation to sea level) amid spectacular hairpin bends of Stalheimskleiva — 13 of them. If I had seen them in advance I would say that a bus could not navigate them and I certainly would not want to try them with a motorcycle. As the bus pulled out of Voss for Gudvangen, I noticed an Esso station — gas was $7.63 per gallon. Along the country roads we saw brightly colored farm houses, with sheep grazing in the fields on both sides of the river with the snow covered mountains above.

The bus brought us to Gudvangen where we boarded a ferry for a two-hour cruise along the Aurlandsfjord and into the Naeroyfjord, the narrowest fjord in Europe, to Flåm. Next it was back on a train –The Flåm Railway. The climb up the 2,841 feet in elevation to Myrdal was spectacular as we saw constantly changing mountain scenery and giant cascading waterfalls. The train ride was only an hour but the trip was one of those things that you have to experience to believe. The Flåm Railway is the steepest normal-gauge train in Northern Europe. It was completed in 1940 after 20 years of construction. The purpose was to connect the Bergen-Oslo line to the giant Aurlandsfjorden. It is truly an engineering marvel.

The train from Myrdal to Oslo took 7 1/2 hours and the 11 PM dinner was late even by European standards. The next day was all business — at Opera Software ASA. The company is doing some very exciting things in mobile and on the desktop. If you haven’t yet tried "speed dial", I highly recommend downloading the new Opera 9.2. When you double-click next to tab, you get a speed-dial page with your top favorite web pages.

The last day we spent some time at the Nobel Peace Center and had lunch at Aker Brygge. If you like seafood and get to Oslo, don’t miss the Solsiden Restaurant. I can say for sure it is the best seafood restaurant I have ever been to. After a comfortable ride on the Flytoget, it was an uneventful flight back home the next morning. Monday will be a business trip back over the Atlantic — this time to Russia. More on that soon.

Other patrickWeb travel-related stories
Travel Photo Gallery