Technology

Thought of the day

Stale cache is responsible for at least 40% of all heart attacks. At least for people working in the IT industry.

Who’s next in the long list of Oracle acquisitions?

ERP Software Advice has an interesting summary of Oracle’s mergers and acquisitions for the last few years. Here is an excellent graphical representation:

But not only that. They are trying to figure out who is the next in line. If you have an opinion on this matter – vote in their poll. If you don’t – check the article anyway – it’s pretty cool.

As for me, I am not that well familiar with Oracle’s business, but judging by a few comments here and there, one company that they won’t buy anytime soon is EMC. If I remember correctly, because there is some personal affair going on. Or maybe that’s just all rumors and my misunderstanding of it all.

On technology revolution

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, on technology revolution:

“There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,” Schmidt said, “but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing…People aren’t ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen to them.”

I’ve spent a lot of time with non-technical people lately. People from different industries – shipping, real estates, and even music recording. Most of these people are just getting into the whole technology thing. Sure, they use Google to search the web. But that’s not what I am talking about. They are just getting started with using technology for their business. And most of them are so far behind, that paper seems to them like the only working solution.

Talking to these people, there is a whole variety of subjects that have to be explained to them. Even aside from technology. Things like data consistency, workload scalability, process automation, backups, security, and more. Consider for example a website. Most of these people see a website with 5-10 pages to be an huge amount of work. It’s almost like they need to hire a separate person to handle that. For most of them, the fact that I have a personal blog with more than 4,000 articles in it, is mind-blowing.

When they are introduced to online tools for handling emails, documents, accounting, or project management, most of them need to pause for a couple of weeks, to process the information overload. When they hear that blog posts and social media are more effective ways to communicate than press releases, they feel shaken, lost, and scared. When they realize that most of the things they’ve learned in college are not too practical anymore, they get really stressed.

And these are people who are already familiar with Google search. I know that there are layers and layers of people behind them, who have no knowledge of computers at all. And those people will get online soon. And they will need to change the way they think and the way they work. And I have to agree with Eric Schmidt here, that most of those people are not ready yet.

But I think it will happen anyway.

Jim Carrey Official Website

Once in a while, I get this feeling that I have been involved with web development for more than ten years now. And then I see a masterpiece that humbles me, and brings me back to the ground. With supersonic speeds. And it even hurts sometimes to the point that I don’t want to touch a computer ever again. The official website of Jim Carrey had just that effect on me.

It is conceptually perfect and has outstanding execution. I don’t even know where to begin…

Firstly, it matches my perception of Jim Carrey’s image and character. I consider him to be a sad cloud of some sort. He is a genius in comedy, and has also a very strong dramatic side to him. This combination, I think, makes him into a very popular person who has nobody to talk to. Not necessarily so, but you get the idea. The website supports this perception of mine. It is comical, yet sad, and very very original.

Secondly, the combination of visual art and music is stunning. There is so much to look at. Unlike most other sites where you spend a fraction of a second to analyze the page in front of you and navigate to the point that you needed. Here you can stay on each page for minutes, looking at each and every little tiny detail. Awesome!

Thirdly, it is quite interesting technically. I am a strong supporter of the concept that good technology should be almost unnoticeable. It should do what it is supposed to do without attracting too much attention to itself. And this website has a few good examples. See, for example, how Twitter is implemented. Visualized as a bird on a tree, with Jim’s face, that speaks out word by word his latest tweets. How awesome is that? I bet you’ve seen a billion Twitter integrations to all sorts of websites till now, but you haven’t seen one like this. Or maybe you have. I haven’t. And Twitter integration is not the only example – there is the animation between different sections of the site, photo album, trailers of Jim Carrey’s movies, and more. Bits and pieces are spread across the whole thing, leaving you know choice but to explore.

I think if we had much less of marketing and public relations online, the web would look more like this. At the stage we are now, it seems only students and independent individuals can afford to have such websites (and I am not talking about money). The rest are expecting the website to be “professional” and so on and so forth. Which results in all those pieces of crap we have around. I’m just saying that sites don’t get much more professional than this one.

Bravo to Jim Carrey for “approving” it, and for all those people who participated in creating it. A masterpiece, an online piece of art. Nothing less.

How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR

I’ve seen this website some time ago and then was looking for it and couldn’t find it. Now that I came across it again, I shall post it here for everyone to know.

HowToUseTwitterForMarketingAndPR.com

Enjoy, share, and make sure you forward it to your marketing and PR departments, so that nobody is missing out. Really.