Doug Theis - Leave your comfort zone.

Business Development / Get Better — Comments Off
06
Jan 12

itbusiness.ca – Hands-free phones impair driving

New research shows using hands-free devices while on the road may not be safer than texting or talking in your vehicle after all.

Hands-free phones impair driving You may be aware of the dangers of driving and texting, using mobile apps, or talking with a handset. But did you know that just talking–even on a hands-free device, such as a Bluetooth headset–is too distracting for most drivers?

New research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that talking on a phone, whether you’re using a handset or a hands-free device, is just too distracting.

“There is a large body of evidence showing that talking on a phone, whether handheld or hands-free, impairs driving and increases your risk of having a crash,” says Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, according to the Associated Press.

More of the itbusiness.ca article from Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

IT Strategy — Comments Off
05
Jan 12

DarkReading.com: The 7 Coolest Hacks Of 2011

Some hacks are epic not merely for their significance in IT security, but for their sheer creativity and novelty. They’re those in-your-face hacks that both entertain and educate, and crack those things we take for granted in our everyday lives.

For the fifth year in a row, Dark Reading has compiled an end-of-the-year list of the coolest hacks executed by those imaginative, inquisitive, and resourceful hackers who dare to go the distance to try some of the most unique — and sometimes bizarre — hacks.

Some of this year’s coolest hacks are downright chilling in that they could mean life or death, like the ones that tampered with the dosage dispensed by popular insulin pumps, or that remotely shut down the power on industrial control systems that run power plants. Others were both charming and precocious, like the 10-year-old hacker who found a major flaw in her favorite mobile gaming app after getting bored and looking for a way to progress further with it.

More of the Darkreading.com post from Kelly Jackson Higgins

IT Strategy — Comments Off
04
Jan 12

Computerworld: IT managers are aloof, insular, says psychologist

Know anyone like this?

If they changed their ways, IT managers could have enormous impact on their organizations

Organizational psychologist Billie Blair IT managers and their staffs are different from the rest of us.

They view the world in terms of “us against them” and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe, says Billie Blair , who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and heads Change Strategist Inc., a Los Angeles-based management consulting firm.

Organizational psychologists have an understanding of management and psychology. They use that knowledge to help firms and organizations understand behaviors that can impinge on the ability to implement required changes, said Blair.

More of the ComputerWorld post from Patrick Thibodeau

IT Strategy — Comments Off
03
Jan 12

Cloud Computing Journal: Let the Cloudwashing Continue…

“Cloud computing is expected to mature and become a mainstream technology for businesses in Asia-Pacific by 2015,” according to a new forecast from Frost & Sullivan.

Meanwhile, Joe McKendrick writes in Forbes that “‘cloud’ will begin to fade as a differentiating term – because it will just be the way we do things.”

I believe that 2011 will be viewed in retrospect as Year Zero of cloud computing, with 2012 seen as Year One. Yet I also agree with the opinions above, primarily because they relate to my first theme of 2012.

In all, I’ve identified five themes for 2012, the overarching ideas that will frame discussions throughout the year.

I. Let the Cloudwashing Continue
It must be annoying as hell to be heads-down for a few years developing an exquisite multi-tenant, metered, scalable, flexible, distributed cloud service or platform, only to have all the legacy IT guys jump in and say they have seen the light and are now cloud vendors, too. Thus, the cloudwashing fingerpointing begins.

It is surely even more aggravating when said legacy vendors define the cloud however they please, then make the recursive argument that they can define cloud as they want because there’s no precise definition of cloud.

More of the Cloud Computing Journal article from Roger Strukhoff

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20
Dec 11

Scott Eblin – You Can’t Lead Through Text Messages

Last Thursday night, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion on leadership at a celebratory dinner for Eagle Scouts past and present. The panelists were all accomplished people and had a lot of interesting reflections and insights to share.

One comment from the dinner that I’ve kept thinking about came from retired Rear Admiral John Butler who’s now an executive with Lockheed Martin. The last question I asked the panel was, “What do you think has changed in the practice of leadership over the past 10 years? What changes do you predict in how leadership will be practiced in the next ten years?”

Looking back at the past ten years, Butler has noticed the emergence of what he calls a “kinder, gentler” approach to leadership. His recollection of the 1980’s and 90’s was that it wasn’t uncommon for leadership to be about how loud you could yell and how close you could get to somebody’s face while you were doing it. He’s noticed that the practice of leadership has become much more collaborative over the past ten years and believes that’s a good thing. (See Tom Friedman’s recent column in the New York Times for a similar point of view.)

More of the Next Level blog post from Scott Eblin

Featured / IT Strategy — Comments Off
16
Dec 11

eWeek: Forrester’s Five Futuristic Computing Form Factors

Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps puts aside the tablet talk to discuss five computing form factors she sees possibly gaining momentum in the future.

With Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad selling close to 40 million units since its April 2010 launch, ostensibly birthing the tablet form factor, you can forgive high-tech punditry for reveling in tablet talk and prognostication.

Fortunately, some analysts are given to skate to where the puck will be, not where it is, a common refrain in the torrid venture capital sector.

While tablet talk is hardly cooling, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps is looking ahead to some consumer electronics computing form factors she expects to rear their heads at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show next month. For context, these devices and gadgets are early nodes on the Internet of Things—the notion that all devices rely on Web connections to process and relay information.

First, Epps envisions wearable devices, or those worn on or near the body as fresh form factor candidates. She cited the Lark sleep tracker and BodyMedia wristband, which sync with Apple’s iOS devices for health and fitness scenarios. On the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android OS side of the camp is a wristwatch from WIMM Labs, which relays information on news, social networking, health and personal finance.

More of the eWeek article from Clint Boulton

Business Development / Get Better — Comments Off
15
Dec 11

Mind like water

One of the “Getting Things Done” principles is “Mind like water.” I believe David Allen got the idea from martial arts training. Mind like water is the idea of reacting just enough to an input. A large stone thrown into the water creates large ripples. A small stone creates small ripples. And after each, the water eventually returns to to a calm state.

The idea is to get things off your mind and into a system so you can achieve this mind like water state. One of my major goals at work is to automate more next year to spend less time spinning and more time winning. Systems will play a key role in achieving the calmness I seek.

Get Better — Comments Off
15
Dec 11

Goals for 2012, both fitness and professional

I’ve been thinking about the big things I want to get done in 2012.

Fitness is a key goal, both in mind and body. Next year I plan to build maintain an overall level of physical fitness throughout the year that allows me to race better and work better. Mentally, I plan to spend more minutes planning and reflecting and less minutes jumping from project to project.

Professionally, I am working towards a level of automation to reduce the minutes spent on the routine and increase the minutes spent on creativity and making products better.

These goals require detailed planning on the tactics to achieve them. They will also require discipline to follow through.

I’m writing the goals down, along with the weekly tactics I’ll need to achieve them.

What are your goals?

Play Hard — Comments Off
23
Nov 11

Notre Dame News: Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows

I’m staying right here.

We’ve all experienced it: The frustration of entering a room and forgetting what we were going to do. Or get. Or find. New research from University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.
“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.
“Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.”
The study was published recently in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Conducting three experiments in both real and virtual environments, Radvansky’s subjects – all college students – performed memory tasks while crossing a room and while exiting a doorway.

More of the Notre Dame News article from Susan Guibert

Business Development — Comments Off
18
Nov 11

Computerworld: iPhone 4S data speeds, Web browsing fastest on AT&T, test shows

A study measuring the performance of the iPhone 4S on the three major U.S. wireless carriers found AT&T to be superior in Web browsing and data downloads and uploads when compared to Apple’s latest smartphone on either the Verizon Wireless or Sprint network.

iPhone newcomer Sprint was found to be superior with its iPhone 4S for network voice quality on the uplink (when the user is speaking), but Sprint was also about five times slower in Web browsing and data downloads than AT&T, according to the study released Friday by Metrico Wireless, a mobile performance measurement company. Verizon finished in the middle on those data tests, but trailed the other two carriers in voice quality.

Metrico measured five performance factors shortly after the iPhone 4S was launched on all three carriers in October: whether calls could be connected and held; voice quality; data performance; Web browsing by page load speeds and video performance.

More of the Computerworld article from Matt Hamblen

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.