confused of calcutta

a blog about information

confused of calcutta header image 4

Entries from March 2007

Of markets and conversations and horses’ mouths

March 31st, 2007 · 1 Comment · Identity

Kathy Sierra met Christopher Locke for the first time a day ago. If you want to know what they spoke about, watch CNN on Monday between 6am and 9am (I am assuming EST, if anyone knows better please comment). Link.

[Read more →]

Tags:

Reviewing identity

March 30th, 2007 · 5 Comments · Identity

When I speak to people about identity, many of the responses go very quickly into detail about federated models and use of microformats and OpenID and and and. This is great, because we clearly have a community talking about standards and fashioning them via usage — trying them out — rather than abusage — pontificating [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Identifying the source of the problem

March 29th, 2007 · 5 Comments · Four pillars

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been trying to stress the importance of dealing prudently with the Three Is of Information: Identity, Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet.  Recent events have only served to highlight why.
Most of you are aware of the tragic time that Kathy Sierra has had, her response, the polarised debate [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

In praise of slow

March 28th, 2007 · No Comments · Four pillars

I guess some of you may have read Carl Honore’s book on the subject; one way or the other, I thought you might enjoy the following links:
If we had no Web, how else would we even begin to consider spending hours watching a cheese mature?
And how else could we enjoy this, a video of someone [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Musing about the City Of Palaces

March 25th, 2007 · 6 Comments · Four pillars

I was born nearly 50 years ago in a building on Lower Circular Road in Calcutta, not far from Sealdah station. I have very limited memories of living there, so limited that I question whether they are real. But I’ve visited that building many times, my family technically owned it till 1980.
It seemed huge. Because [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Musing about rankings

March 24th, 2007 · 8 Comments · Four pillars

I’ve been on the road for the first time since going bionic, and for some reason I listened to my cardiologist’s advice. Which meant conserving my energy, going to bed earlier than I would have otherwise, resting as much as possible in general.
All this also meant that I didn’t get to blog. In fact, ever [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

More musings about the opensourcing of process

March 13th, 2007 · 11 Comments · Four pillars

It’s been a long time since I started out on the Four Pillars journey, sometime in the middle of 2003 I guess. At the time, I suggested that enterprise applications would converge to become one of four “pillars”: Publishing, Search, Fulfilment and Conversation.
Most people got the Search pillar, where all I was stressing was that [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Musing about the opensourcing of processes

March 11th, 2007 · 10 Comments · Four pillars

Following a recommendation from a trusted source (friend and twice-colleague Gary Casey) I went and read Visibility Is Your Friend, a post on CIO.com by Michael Hugos. Excellent post, I thoroughly recommend it, and I will be adding Michael Hugos to my regular reading stack. It also made me revisit something that’s been bothering me [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Do enterprises treat lock-ins differently from consumers?

March 7th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Four pillars

David Gumbrell brings up an interesting point while commenting on a recent post. I had asked the question why people saw iTunes as DRM but not Word. And David said:
I have a suspicion that it’s because people buy iTunes with their own money and MS Office with their employer’s.
This is not about Microsoft per [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:

Lock-ins need lockpickers

March 6th, 2007 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

Dominic raised the issue of legacy documents while commenting on my previous post, on the disaggregation of the desktop.
Ric followed up with some comments relating to weaning enterprises off Microsoft Office.
This is something that has been bothering me for some years now, and the deja vu sensations weren’t enjoyable. And it got me thinking. Somewhere [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: