May 2006 Archives

Wow! Douglas Bowman joins Google as Visual Design Lead. That's quite a news, and a fantastic addition to Google in a field where they can truly use his talent (which I've had the pleasure to experience first-hand). Congratulations Doug, I'm sure you'll do wonders!

At last (10 months after MT 3.2), Six Apart is about to release a new beta version of MT. See What's new in Movable Type 3.3.

It's hard to escape the latest ad campaign from Microsoft, even in France. I've been trying to understand what's behind their "people-ready" motto. Here we are:

People are asking for business intelligence tools, content management, and richer collaboration, Witts said. A people-ready business platform needs to deliver these services, he said. "For a people-ready business, there's a universal set of requirements that a business needs to deliver across the enterprise," Witts said.

Microsoft is eyeing the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform to provide these capabilities.

"Our move here is to say, let's democratize SharePoint," and integrate workflow, content management, business intelligence, and business process automation, Witts said.

He also discussed role-based versions of the Office suite, referring to this effort as Office 14. Versions would be implemented for roles such as research and development professionals, sales persons, and human resources. "We would call this role-based productivity. It’s a very powerful concept," Witts said.

Witts also said business practices inside the enterprise are taking precedence over business processes. The traditional narrow role of a business process, such as a purchase order, is limiting; collaboration needs to be recognized, according to Witts.

Why do my ribs hurt? Oh yeah, too much laughing!

No, seriously, at least without clearer explanations, I really can't imagine that folks are asking for that, that SharePoint is anywhere close to being "people-ready" (I know only two sorts of people: those who hate it and those who don't use it), that CIOs will applause at the idea of having to support multiple role-based versions of MS Office ("Yes we know you can't open the memo, the CEO has forgotten to save it for the Word-mob-edition again"), and that a "collaborative" purchase order has any chance to fly (even less appeal to the CFO). Creepy. The news that one will be able to blog directly from Word 2007 is far more interesting IMO.

I like Paul Graham's essays, a lot. But I must admit I feel like Jeremy Keith.

Among the many things that our friends from the U.S.A. don't get, are cultural differences. The slogan of the European Union is "United in diversity". I guess that sentence just doesn't make sense for most of them. I know a lot of folks in North America, and the ones who can grasp that concept have extensively travelled outside their continent (when they're not children of immigrants). It's a matter of priorities I guess. When on top of your list are money and oil, your perspective is surely different than when it's peace and quality of life (outside the office, that is). Also the fact that we have entire countries, with their own language, that have barely more inhabitants than Paris must be some kind of mystery for a huge number of people. Funnily enough, it's always from people who can only speak one language: English. And they're still surprised each time they discover it's not even the first language out there.

But can you trust people who think that food is an unfortunate necessity of life --and eating a waste of time-- when it's a pleasure? I really discovered that in New York, where too many folks there seem only fascinated by the "experience" of huge fancy places with obsequious waiters carrying pepper grinders longer than a full baguette, and a lot of other tricks designed to make sure they're not paying attention to the food served there.

Oh well, let's take this with a bit of salt. The French may not go anywhere but my intuition tells me that French isn't going anywhere either ;-). Funny, really.

Say hello to the Capgemini CTO Blog, a collective blog by its Chief Technology Officers, and the company's first "official" external blog.

I got a little hand in this. Please be nice ;-).

Tim Bray thinks iCal sucks hugely. I feel the pain, except for me it's with Apple Mail which, for an unknown reason and on just one of my 3 macs, keeps reporting false unread counts and crashing, doubling some crashes with corrupting its preferences (in which case it completely forgets about my 9 email accounts). I noticed that when it does that, I'm presented with an alert that reads something like "Reopen"/"Report to Apple"/"Cancel", but it doesn't warn you that if you click Reopen, it'll simply wipe out your preferences. This sucks, indeed.