Interesting article (presentation really) from eWeek:
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=25940&a=220074&po=1,00.asp
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Why I think the Kindle is a bad idea...
I know, I should be posting about last week's case study (and I will), but this has been bugging me today for some reason, and I thought I would vent.
If you haven't heard, Amazon just launched (yesterday) a new eBook reader called the Kindle. If you haven't heard about it, go to www.amazon.com and check it out (note the letter on the home page from Bezos himself).
As you can tell from the title of this post, I think it's a bad idea. To be honest, this is not about the Kindle specifically, but ebook reading devices in general (so the Sony eReader counts in this, too). Why do I feel this way? Simple. I do not need another device. I love books. I read a lot (when school isn't overwhelming). I'm kind of a mixed media type, so audiobooks don't always cut it - I'd rather be reading a book while listening to music, not just listening to a book. Plus, audiobooks are hard to transport, which is part of the reason I don't like these eBook readers.
The last thing I need is one more device to carry around. On any given day, I usually have about five devices that I carry around (not always on my person, but with me in the car, too). A GPS Navigation system, an mp3 player, a laptop for email, a cell phone, a video player. Now, if I want to read books electronically (which I actually don't mind), I need to carry one more device. No thank you (and I haven't even included the digital camera I have).
I've gotten to the point where I've gotten the five (six if you include the ebook reader) down to three or four. I have an old Compaq Ipaq that runs Windows Mobile that doubles as my GPS Navigation system, video player and ebook reader (although MS's reader format isn't as widely popular as it could have been). I still have a cell phone (and I can get some email on that), a laptop, the iPaq and an mp3 player (the iPaq's only real storage is through memory cards and I hate swapping them out every time I need to change media types, so I don't use it for playing mp3s).
Now on my laptop, I have music, movies, and would love to have more ebooks available. But I only want one device. A device that syncs to my laptop to let me load (in one shot) all the media I want at that time (whether books, movies, tv shows, music, whatever), works as a GPS Nav system, I can get to my email, and I can use it as my cell phone. The iPhone comes close, but there's no eBook reader (as far as I know, though it may support eBooks in PDF format), and no GPS Navigation system.
The new Kindle device doesn't have WiFi, but does allow you to check email over EVDO (a high-speed cell phone data network) and books cost $9.99 plus the data plan for the high-speed network.
The iPhone (8GB of storage) costs $399 (plus cell phone voice and data plans ). The Kindle (256MB of Storage) costs $399. If I were to pick one over the other, I'd say for the money, I'd take the iPhone. It wouldn't replace all of my devices (yet), but it comes closer than the Kindle ever will. And, one day, there may even be a 16GB model that will support GPS. Then I will be that much closer to carrying one device around wherever I go.
What the industry needs is convergence, not divergence. Less devices, more features. Please!! Is someone (other than Apple) listening??
If you haven't heard, Amazon just launched (yesterday) a new eBook reader called the Kindle. If you haven't heard about it, go to www.amazon.com and check it out (note the letter on the home page from Bezos himself).
As you can tell from the title of this post, I think it's a bad idea. To be honest, this is not about the Kindle specifically, but ebook reading devices in general (so the Sony eReader counts in this, too). Why do I feel this way? Simple. I do not need another device. I love books. I read a lot (when school isn't overwhelming). I'm kind of a mixed media type, so audiobooks don't always cut it - I'd rather be reading a book while listening to music, not just listening to a book. Plus, audiobooks are hard to transport, which is part of the reason I don't like these eBook readers.
The last thing I need is one more device to carry around. On any given day, I usually have about five devices that I carry around (not always on my person, but with me in the car, too). A GPS Navigation system, an mp3 player, a laptop for email, a cell phone, a video player. Now, if I want to read books electronically (which I actually don't mind), I need to carry one more device. No thank you (and I haven't even included the digital camera I have).
I've gotten to the point where I've gotten the five (six if you include the ebook reader) down to three or four. I have an old Compaq Ipaq that runs Windows Mobile that doubles as my GPS Navigation system, video player and ebook reader (although MS's reader format isn't as widely popular as it could have been). I still have a cell phone (and I can get some email on that), a laptop, the iPaq and an mp3 player (the iPaq's only real storage is through memory cards and I hate swapping them out every time I need to change media types, so I don't use it for playing mp3s).
Now on my laptop, I have music, movies, and would love to have more ebooks available. But I only want one device. A device that syncs to my laptop to let me load (in one shot) all the media I want at that time (whether books, movies, tv shows, music, whatever), works as a GPS Nav system, I can get to my email, and I can use it as my cell phone. The iPhone comes close, but there's no eBook reader (as far as I know, though it may support eBooks in PDF format), and no GPS Navigation system.
The new Kindle device doesn't have WiFi, but does allow you to check email over EVDO (a high-speed cell phone data network) and books cost $9.99 plus the data plan for the high-speed network.
The iPhone (8GB of storage) costs $399 (plus cell phone voice and data plans ). The Kindle (256MB of Storage) costs $399. If I were to pick one over the other, I'd say for the money, I'd take the iPhone. It wouldn't replace all of my devices (yet), but it comes closer than the Kindle ever will. And, one day, there may even be a 16GB model that will support GPS. Then I will be that much closer to carrying one device around wherever I go.
What the industry needs is convergence, not divergence. Less devices, more features. Please!! Is someone (other than Apple) listening??
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
'Virtual theft" leads to arrest
Interesting news story released by the BBC earlier today. Apparently, a 17 year old Dutch teenager was arrested for stealing virtual furniture from other users to use in his own room in an on-line virtual (game) world called Habbo Hotel. I love the quote that "It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money". I wonder if anything like this has happened in Second Life, yet, and, if so, when do we get to sign up to be Second Life CSI techs to virtually (or really) hunt down the perpetrators - and not just avatars checking out a CSI view of Second Life?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm
Other thoughts? Hit the comments. I wonder if anyone could post a really good "virtual crime" in Second Life that would have real world implications (i.e. actual arrests...)
Jim
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094764.stm
Other thoughts? Hit the comments. I wonder if anyone could post a really good "virtual crime" in Second Life that would have real world implications (i.e. actual arrests...)
Jim
Monday, November 5, 2007
My Life As A...
Since I really enjoyed last week's presentations, I thought I'd blog a bit about my life at work and what I do, currently. I work in Information Services at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. The group I work in is IS Process Management. We are a part of IS Processes and Projects. Now, the name IS Process Management can be a bit misleading since, technically, we don't really manage any processes (or own very many, even). What we do, however, is take existing processes in IS and make them better by operationalizing them, simplifying them and streamlining them. A good example of this is one of the few processes in IS that we actually own.
My group started out a few years ago, managing the IS portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley activities at Wyeth on a global basis (again, we don't own the activities, we just ensure, on management's behalf, that they take place and are effective). Because of our success in the SOX audits, we were asked to develop a mechanism to report on the status of IS-related internal audit findings. At that point, there were two reports being generated of the open audit findings - one report for each of the two internal audit groups that audits IS. These reports were generated every six months. They took an average of 2-3 weeks to put together and usually resulted in a combined 70-80 page report (we called it the "Thud" report for the sound it made when it hit someone's desk). Obviously, it never got read, or at least not very much. Compounding that report was the fact that one of the internal audit groups is also required to report directly to the company's Board of Directors the number of their audit findings that remained open for more than one year. Two years ago, before we got involved, there were 20 IS-related audit findings on this report. Management (IS Management) needed a way to get a better handle on what was going on in terms of resolving these audit findings, so we were asked to step in.
The first thing we did was eliminated the Thud report. It was a waste of effort. Then we took all the open audit reports that we were aware of (and there were a lot of them) and developed a process (initially using spreadsheets and a document management application - eRoom, then last year implementing a web-based database system to replace the spreadsheets). The process starts with an audit report, we enter the audit finding information into the system (finding, any recommendations from the auditors, and the initial responses from the group that was audited). We then make the information available to the audited group and ask them to update when the finding should be resolved and then to go in and set the finding to closed when it has been resolved. Since we are a pharma company, there are a lot of audits and commitments that are made to resolve them. As a result, there are currently a number of audit and commitment tracking systems in the company that have been implemented and are used to varying degrees. Our system, however, is the only truly global system that can tell you the status of all audit findings in IS (some systems out there only track the major or critical findings).
In addition to the audit finding tracking system, we also developed a finding status scorecard (we do not call it the audit status scorecard because of the resulting acronym). The scorecard shows the number of open audit reports and findings by IS division, how long they've been open and a summary of all the audit related information. This scorecard is generated (which by the way takes less than a day now) on a quarterly basis and is sent to the IS Leadership Team.
Because of the increase in visibility provided by the scorecard as well as the ease of use in keeping the audit information up to date in the web-based application, we have achieved a number of significant improvements: The amount of time needed to resolve (or close) all findings in an audit has decreased from approximately 20 months to about 8 months, on average. In 2007, for the first time ever, there were no IS-related audit findings reported by the internal audit group to the Company's Board of Directors (which caused us some problems since this had never happened before and people were very reluctant to believe it was possible). We currently only have 2 of what I would call very old audit reports (one from 2004 and one from 2005) that are still open (and are currently scheduled to be resolved by the end of this year) - this is down from about 15 or 16 from a year ago.
Because of these types of successes, my group (there are three of us - myself, my boss, and my co-worker) is now starting to get asked to work with other groups to see how they can streamline some of their processes that don't have the same kind of visibility. I recently worked with one application group in our department to improve their annual recertification of users (each group that uses the application must make sure that the people in their groups with accounts are the appropriate people that should still have access). Last year, 89 of the more than 300 groups failed to recertify which caused an audit finding due to a failure to meet a SOX requirement. So far this year, there are only 16 groups that have not yet recertified, with a month to go on the deadline for the SOX requirement.
So, that's kind of a glimpse into what I'm working on from day to day, although we do get called in to help out with special projects (such as the DST Time Change project this year, which we received Team of the Quarter for back in the first quarter when the DST dates changed). We're in a good position right now because we no longer have to "market" our services to IS - groups are starting to come to us to help them out...
Questions? Hit the comments...
My group started out a few years ago, managing the IS portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley activities at Wyeth on a global basis (again, we don't own the activities, we just ensure, on management's behalf, that they take place and are effective). Because of our success in the SOX audits, we were asked to develop a mechanism to report on the status of IS-related internal audit findings. At that point, there were two reports being generated of the open audit findings - one report for each of the two internal audit groups that audits IS. These reports were generated every six months. They took an average of 2-3 weeks to put together and usually resulted in a combined 70-80 page report (we called it the "Thud" report for the sound it made when it hit someone's desk). Obviously, it never got read, or at least not very much. Compounding that report was the fact that one of the internal audit groups is also required to report directly to the company's Board of Directors the number of their audit findings that remained open for more than one year. Two years ago, before we got involved, there were 20 IS-related audit findings on this report. Management (IS Management) needed a way to get a better handle on what was going on in terms of resolving these audit findings, so we were asked to step in.
The first thing we did was eliminated the Thud report. It was a waste of effort. Then we took all the open audit reports that we were aware of (and there were a lot of them) and developed a process (initially using spreadsheets and a document management application - eRoom, then last year implementing a web-based database system to replace the spreadsheets). The process starts with an audit report, we enter the audit finding information into the system (finding, any recommendations from the auditors, and the initial responses from the group that was audited). We then make the information available to the audited group and ask them to update when the finding should be resolved and then to go in and set the finding to closed when it has been resolved. Since we are a pharma company, there are a lot of audits and commitments that are made to resolve them. As a result, there are currently a number of audit and commitment tracking systems in the company that have been implemented and are used to varying degrees. Our system, however, is the only truly global system that can tell you the status of all audit findings in IS (some systems out there only track the major or critical findings).
In addition to the audit finding tracking system, we also developed a finding status scorecard (we do not call it the audit status scorecard because of the resulting acronym). The scorecard shows the number of open audit reports and findings by IS division, how long they've been open and a summary of all the audit related information. This scorecard is generated (which by the way takes less than a day now) on a quarterly basis and is sent to the IS Leadership Team.
Because of the increase in visibility provided by the scorecard as well as the ease of use in keeping the audit information up to date in the web-based application, we have achieved a number of significant improvements: The amount of time needed to resolve (or close) all findings in an audit has decreased from approximately 20 months to about 8 months, on average. In 2007, for the first time ever, there were no IS-related audit findings reported by the internal audit group to the Company's Board of Directors (which caused us some problems since this had never happened before and people were very reluctant to believe it was possible). We currently only have 2 of what I would call very old audit reports (one from 2004 and one from 2005) that are still open (and are currently scheduled to be resolved by the end of this year) - this is down from about 15 or 16 from a year ago.
Because of these types of successes, my group (there are three of us - myself, my boss, and my co-worker) is now starting to get asked to work with other groups to see how they can streamline some of their processes that don't have the same kind of visibility. I recently worked with one application group in our department to improve their annual recertification of users (each group that uses the application must make sure that the people in their groups with accounts are the appropriate people that should still have access). Last year, 89 of the more than 300 groups failed to recertify which caused an audit finding due to a failure to meet a SOX requirement. So far this year, there are only 16 groups that have not yet recertified, with a month to go on the deadline for the SOX requirement.
So, that's kind of a glimpse into what I'm working on from day to day, although we do get called in to help out with special projects (such as the DST Time Change project this year, which we received Team of the Quarter for back in the first quarter when the DST dates changed). We're in a good position right now because we no longer have to "market" our services to IS - groups are starting to come to us to help them out...
Questions? Hit the comments...
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