do it in house if you can

It seems that organizations are slowly learning (well in the Darwinian way of the dumb die out mostly) of the need to keep business critical elements to themselves.

Why? well because no one will take your business as seriously as you do for one.

Case in point: I once worked for a large organization who developed all their IT requirements in house. We worked with Oracle products and using Oracle Forms and other Unix tools (like SCCS for revision controls tied into a forms based software quality control system) and we made almost everything our organization needed ourselves. Not only did they work but as I later traveled the world in different organizations I came to realize were ahead of the pack.

But then the bean counters started to make interesting decisions about "outsourcing" and suddenly what we estimated could be done with a modest expansion of people, was turned over to a contractor and an off-shore provider doing much of the work. The long term people who worked for the organization began leaving and there started a rapid cycle of employing "training vultures" who joined, got trained and left. The sense of team which had existed vanished and worse noone really knew what things were or what their history was.

The cost estimated by the contractor who "won the bid" was several times what our old team had estimated, and funnier still (years later) I heard the project went over budget by some many millions of dollars.

So when I read this mornings paper that a similar organization has made another "cost saving" outsourcing decision I felt that it was sad to see we're still wasting our resources.

Deakin affected by IT scandal

Andrew Trounson | January 21, 2009

Article from: The Australian

THE $1.5 billion fraud scandal at Indian technology giant Satyam Computer Services has paralysed a $75 million project with Victoria's Deakin University to create an information technology development and learning facility in Geelong.

The scandal also puts in doubt lucrative training contracts that were expected to flow to the university.

I'd really like to know when the managers will stop "saving money" for the organizations and realize that its no simple equation to value having your own reactive and responsive IT staff. The answer is that you must invest in your staff and organization and build core competencies in house if you are going to run your own business. If you let other people run your business ... well you get what they want.

I've worked for a multinational software company in Tokyo with a development section in India and even though we were one organization (unlike above when it was an external contracting developer) we still had problems and issues in unifying the development desires of Tokyo with the development realities in Bangalore.

Further IT industry in Australia is suffering due to the "allure" of off shore money saving in developing countries. I think that its great that places like India are taking leaps and bounds in software development, taking their own futures into their own hands. But isn't this this is exactly what we should be doing?

If its worth doing right ... do it yourself, if its business critical, then don't let it out of your sight.

new lightweight cameras

Well I must say that I'm getting excited about the developments in digital cameras. I've been anticipating what the Panasonic G1 micro 4/3rds format can do for my world and after reading the latest post from DPReview about it I'm very keen.

I've made this composite overlay (scaling the cameras to be same dimensions) which I reckon represents the size difference.

I have been pleased with images taken with my 10D, but after using compact cameras for so long I'm tired of heavy lumps. For example (as mentioned in my previous post) the 10D together with my Tokina 12-24 makes 1.3Kg slung off my shoulder, while the Lumix weighs around half at 630g.

With a big sensor and incorporating the improvements that have happened in sensors since the 10D its not surprising that it makes images that outdo the 10D.

Just in case you don't know what I mean about the sizes of sensors, most digital SLR cameras have a sensor which is called APS sized (because there was a film called APS) and when chips were expensive to make the camera makers tried to save money by making is another "format" called Four Thirds (of 4/3'rds). {Note: its perhaps worth mentioning that APS film less died because it was smaller than 35mm and had no significant other advantages}

As you can see from this figure while the 4/3'rds sensor is smaller than the more common APS its still rather larger than the more common sizes presently used to gather the light for your 10MegaPixels. In fact its more than 4 times the light gathering area of the sensor in cameras like the Canon G10.

Signal processing helps the camera makers get the most out of their small sensors, but if you've got a bigger better signal to start with you can make better and cleaner images with your RAW files.

Here's an example. Using RAW processing and some software I can make much more from the files my camera captures and open up new worlds of photography for me (and anyone else who owns one). On this file I was initially disappointed by the conversion (in camera JPG and from RAW in photoshop) as below:





I've recently been finding that I can take my basic RAW file and with little effort in Photoshop and Photomatix get it to look like this:



now that's more like what I saw at the Taj on the early morning we were there.


Roll on future!

SMC skype phone: my brief review

Skype is so handy ... but sometimes I'd like a PC free version ... and so I found this phone by SMC. I didn't find many reviews worth a dam on the net (here's about the only one), so I thought I'd put this up.

The short version answer:

well its ok, it does what it says but try to get it cheaply on Ebay if you can cos its not perfect. If you get it for under $100 then I'd call that fair. Belkin seem to make another but aside from it being black and this being white I can't see the difference.

Overview

The phone is a stand alone (doesn't need a PC) handset which connects to the internet by 802.11 wireless networks. If you have (say) an ADSL connection at home and you're using a wireless access point to allow your computers to get out onto the net then this phone will be able to use that and get out ... voilla you have a cordless phone (without a base station) that allows you to use most of the functionality of Skype.

I'm someone who lives out of my own country a lot and so for some time I've been making use of Skype to stay in touch with people back in my home country (Australia) while abroad. Actually I've even come to use it to make quite some international calls to places no matter where I am, so I think its fair to say its opened up global type communications for me in general.

I've always used skype out of my laptop and have relied on bluetooth headsets for when I would like to be able to move away from my desk (and when I don't want to carry my laptop along with me). Chords just have a way of getting tangled and eventually yanked out of the socket or (worse) dragging the laptop tumbling off the desk.

Being a long time Skype user I have considered a few options of having a dedicated physical "telephone" sort of thinggy for Skype but so far most of those have been expensive and often required a dedicated PC to connect to ... which sort of means my PC has to be on all the time.

As a laptop user I also have a wireless LAN around the home (and at some of my friends and family's homes) so when I found there was a few stand-alone WiFi Skype phones I thought I'd like to try one. I hoped that it would save me needing to port my laptop along to keep in touch or have it on and in the way when visiting.

If you're a Skype user (and a reasonably confident) computer I'm sure you'll have no problems and hardly need to look at the manual, in fact it all operates in a way which seems natural and consistent to both Skype and normal mobile phone interfaces.

The phone connects to wireless networks easily enough, and has a neat (although perhaps a little primitive) management system for managing the variety of networks you may encounter. The major protocols are supported and it all seems to work happily with DHCP connections. I did have one odd situation where the WLAN address was other than the typical 192.168.x.x and there after the phone would not connect back to any other WLAN

Next, size. As you can see it fits neatly in hand, being not much bigger than some mobile phones, its quite light too.

Generally I like it and it does what it should, but (isn't there always a but?) there are some issues which I thought I'd try to make clear to potential buyers (and perhaps the companies could take notice too but I'm not holding my breath on their being any kind of iterative cycle of development and feedback happening).

As you can see from the picture, the buttons are quite small and located quite close together. I don't have big hands or fingers and I find this is something I have to take care of, someone with bigger fingers and hand may have difficulty and need to pay attention to what they are pressing.

This isn't really a problem in practice as the Skype phone does not support texting (or the Skype chatting). So you won't be typing much in to it.

This is also a significant point for people who use skype for its chat facility (people like me) because while you appear online, if someone chats to you they get an obscure message saying that you are using an older version of Skype which does not support chat.

odd

The manual documents the phone well enough, but if you are experienced in using electronic or computer devices then you will find that just picking it up and doing "what comes naturally" will work. Navigation of the Skype menus is easy with the joystick and the buttons. I've found (though its not in the manual) that you can just start typing the names (using the keypad to key in names using normal SMS style input methods, and then the contacts list starts to shrink just like using skype on the PC. Once you've got the name selected you can call by just (intuitively) pressing the call buttong (with the green phone icon).

The phone charges with the typical mini USB cable (like on many digital cameras and compact hard drives) and so can be charged from your PC or with the charger which it came with. I really like this move to using mini USB as a charging standard, my MIO Navigator uses it, as do a few other things I have around the house. It also means I can use the Mio navigator's in car charger to charge the phone on the way to the in-laws place and use an camera USB cable to charge it while there too. Nice

Audio quality

My bench mark for audio quality is the basic simple headset which plugs directly into the headphone / microphone socket on my laptop. The SCM phone is nearly as good as that, and my testing seems to indicate that people say that the audio quality their end is ok but lacking in 'fidelity'.

From my perspective (the caller) the sound quality is acceptable (though not as good as my headset) and certainly loud enough. Interestingly it seems to never be as smooth as on my PC so perhaps the CPU on the phone is not as fast as it needs to be to cope .. dunno.

There is a headset connection available too, it uses the single 2.5mm cordless phone headset plug type. I've tried it with a Paltronics that I bought on "that auctions site" but frankly the sound quality sucked.

Quirks and Issues

As I mentioned above sometimes the phone has had difficulty in re-attaching to other networks and has required a battery out reset.

Definitely I think it is unwise to have the phone 'logged in' to Skype and have your PC logged into Skype. It will operate and both the PC and the phone get the call but the PC will respond to the signal faster and it can take a few seconds for the phone to start ringing. When you answer one (you can't answer both right?) I get a missed call on the other one. So you need to remember to quit the application on the PC before turning on the phone, and turn off the phone when using the PC ... I think there isn't much option for this other than to have multiple accounts which then becomes a hassle.

Overall I find the phone nice and worth while.

Google linked with global warming

Hi

I heard about this today and my first thought was "what a complete load of twaddle".

So I googled it and got this link to a CBS article. Reading it, the "professor" apparently likes to simplify his models as he suggests that

a typical search on a desktop computer generates about 7 grams of carbon dioxide, which is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil

Clearly he forgets many things, like how much water is in the kettle (did you fill it only to use 250ml), is this an electric kettle or a gas one? There will be an enormous difference as the electric one (which itself releases no carbon) will actually result in the power station releasing many times more than the gas one.

But aside from that the next thing which comes to mind is "Right, why only google? Do you think Alta vista will generate less?" After all, hes put the blame on Google and they are not the only search engine.

I mean seriously if we wish to consider our global energy consumption how about we mind the pounds and let the pennies remain insignificant. Despite the well-intended-ness of the saying "mind your pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" the problem is that they don't.

• I live in an apartment with an elevator, perfectly healthy people use it to go up one floor rather than walk, how much green house gas is that?
• every bit of junk advertising you get costs energy in making and delivering it..
• What about that printed copy of your news paper?
• Heck, do you run water while you're cleaning your teeth? (think of the energy needed in pumping and treating that water)

My advice is to stop worrying about the trivial and be more concerned with stuff you can fix, walk or bicycle to work; reduce unrequired car trips and while your at it unrequired poor driving (which uses more fuel) and wasting resources (which all need energy and thus generate green house gases).

sheesh ... where do all these folks come from, an alternative dimension?

Google has actually addressed this question, and the answer they have is here.