Gary Barnett's Blog

This morning IBM announced that it has acquired Cast Iron Systems, for an undisclosed sum. Cast Iron Systems a 75 person strong “cloud integration vendor”. I’m at IBM’s Impact 2010 conference, and have mulled this one over with James Governor and Neil Ward-Dutton already (James has already blogged on this here and Neil here. I don’t have much to add to either Neil or James, but – never the less…

• This is a really good move for IBM as it establishes IBM as the de facto leader in Cloud integration
• This gets IBM some really good mid-sized clients and a mid-sized client-friendly business model
• Cast Iron offers significant value to IBM’s customers by radically simplifying the process of integrating cloud-based apps like SalesForce.com, google docs and a host of others either with eachother or with “non-cloud” apps like SAP.
• The number of different API’s and, indeed, API approaches adopted by different SaaS and Cloud players makes it a real pain to integrate them – Cast Iron makes it possible to link SAP with SalesForce.com in seconds rather than days or weeks
• While this is an excellent addition to IBM’s integration portfolio, it has also added (yet) another way to specify how two applications interact which places the onus on IBM to help customers decide which approach/technology to use

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You’ll probably have seen one or more “Hitler Parody” videos on you tube, in which a short clip is taken from the German-language film “Downfall” and the subtitles replaced for comic effect.

This morning Glyn Moody retweeted this article, it seems that  maker of “Downfall” , Constantin Film Distribution has taken steps to oblige the likes of YouTube to take these parodies down on the grounds of copyright infringement.

First, I’ll have to admit that part of me is little uncomfortable about a film extract depicting a man directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people being used for comedy purposes. But I’ve had it pointed out to me that, culturally, it might actually be part of the healing process to depict this evil evil creature in a darkly comic light. Besides, there’s plenty more publically accessible content that is a whole lot more distasteful out there.

Next I’d add that I don’t think these clips do infringe, since in most cases they represent less than 2% of the original I would say that they represent fair use. But I am neither a Lawyer nor a Texan judge, so my views on IPR law aren’t overly special.

Whatever the law, and whatever the dubious tastefulness of these parodies, Constantin film is making a mistake in blocking these parodies. If Constantin were smarter, they’d have promoted them, hell if I were the company I’d have found a developer to build an app that made it easier to create the parodies and hosted it on my website.

This bad call on Constantin film’s part neatly presents the division between the people that “get” the notion (and power) of the creative commons and those that don’t.

Evidently Constantin film is a “don’t”.

This is a fascinating video of a 2 year old’s first expeirence with the iPad. See the blog entry by the little girl’s dad here

Todd Lapin acknowkedges that his little’un is already iPhone savvy – but still… I found this video awesome.

Edit save reload,
tab to the error console
Javascript sucks so

(Gary Barnett 4.00 AM 30/March/2010)

Today, Apple’s home page contains only one item, a tribute to Jerome B York. Mr York was, by all accounts, an extremely successful man whose career spanned CFO roles with Chrysler and IBM, the CEO’ship of Micro Warehous and an investment fund. In addition Mr York was a director of Apple.

This morning Apple’s homepage looks like this :-

Apple's home page on 18th March 2010

This is a powerful and touching tribute, and one that says something to me about Apple too.

I’d like to express my condolences to Mr Yorks family and friends.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Oh yes, my blog was hacked. So, an afternoon of trying to figure out what happened has culminated in a frech install and a restore – Thank goodness for backups eh!

This is a very quick post but I had do, given my earlier post on Android vs iPhone.Eric Raymond has posted this blog and if I disagreed a little with the earlier blog entry, this one has me really quite irritated.

Essentially :-

• It is silly to equate the PC market with the handset market
• Err… So “Unix” won did it? Now I thought Linux wasn’t Unix….
• So windows was successful because it provided a platform for other people to make money..and Apple has provided a way to help developers make money, and ensures consumers don’t install rubbish on their phones and that’s bad?
• WinMo isn’t comparable to Android – but Java is and that hardly created an exciting apps ecosystem
• Oh and Symbian is open sourced because its backers know it’s dead

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Glyn Moody tweeted about this blog post by Peter Wayner of  Infoworld. I’d encourage you to read the blog entry, it’s a typically well written and well positioned post. But, I do differ with Peter on a number of points and this is my typically less well written and less well thought out response.

Oh I should add that I am an iPhone fanboy, and proud to be so

So, here’s the short version:-

• iPhone vs Android isn’t coke vs pepsi, it’s coke vs virgin cola
• It’s disingenuous to say that the iPhone is for “Play” and the Android for “Work”
• Today the iPhone strikes a much better balance between the desires of consumers vs developers
• Consumers don’t care about “open” they care about “now”
• Multiple Android distros is BAD for Android, not good
• Flexibility and choice are attractive to developers but often a nightmare for consumers
• Multiple formats and screen sizes represent too much choice
• I’m not sold on “Open Google” in the way that many commentators are
• Its just not clear which will win, but right now iPhone is still well ahead

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The Guardian commented here on Jonathan Schwartz’s resignation tweet which came in the form of a Haiku..

“Financial crisis,
Stalled too many customers
CEO no more,”
he wrote.

The article encouraged readers to come up with their own haiku, and here’s mine…

Absent strategy,
customers will leave
time to get hair cut

Oracle’s recent strategy day presented a union filled with love and romance, but despite the apparent confidence, Oracle’s strategy misses some important points. Jonathan Steel and I spent some time mulling it all over and here’s our initial take.

This post may be read to the strains of the wonderful Ella Fiztgerald singing “There may be trouble ahead”.

Having slogged through the marathon that was the Oracle-Sun announcement day, we’re left with two immediate impressions:
1.They took a heck of a lot of time to say so little
2.Oracle’s back to the future pitch, while nothing like as badly thought out as some people say, just isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re in a hurry, here are the headlines:

• The back to the 60’s mantra is both more and less nuanced than you might think
• But the integrated stack pitch simply isn’t well enough thought out
• There are two killer reasons why the “single stack” pitch fails: Innovation, and Focus
• Ultimately Oracle’s hardware strategy is simply not convincing enough
• Oracle’s software strategy is much more coherent but Sun brings a mixed bag
• The absence of a services story is the elephant in the room

We’ll be thinking, talking and writing in much more detail about this – so if you’re interested in knowing more, drop me a line – gary@bathwick.com

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