Join the ExecTweets IT conversation
Know an IT pro on Twitter that can add to the discussion? Let us know - even if it's yourself! - using the form below:
613 members so far 
Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.
There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working.
But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.
Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the board room until you finally get them answered.
What do Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Maya Angelou, Francis Bacon, and Anna Quindlen have in common? Not all that much, actually…except that they’re all really smart people who translated their smarts into great success in their chosen professions. And we’ve quoted all of them in the last six weeks via our @exectweets feed on Twitter. Their thoughts on success, leadership, innovation, and other topics that matter in business and life are pithy, memorable, and–as our Twitter followers have proved–extremely retweetable.
Once again, we’re rounding up these tweets in a post so you can enjoy all of them in one place. If you’re in the mood to read even more, check out this post, this post, and this one. And if you’ve got more quotes to share, we’d love to hear them.
In a recent post, I highlighted the importance of good prioritization as the foundation for a good product, service or project. Once the priorities have been established, the next step is to focus on the “common cases” (i.e. the high priorities) and optimize around that. Setting priorities is an essential first step, before making the plunge to execution.
However, there is a hidden challenge here: the temptation to take lesser priorities and actively ignore them. In the computer world, uncommon cases are often delegated to “exceptions,” which are assumed to be rare and therefore designed to be relatively slow but handled correctly. For example, an error caused by a cosmic ray does not need to be fixed at full speed, since the probability of a cosmic ray hitting the system is low.
With so many offerings in the market today, it’s hard for businesspeople to decide which computer to buy or whether it’s time to upgrade their computers. The truth is that even the worst computer sold nowadays is powerful enough for running basic applications such as browsing, e-mail and an office suite. Therefore, why should a business user spend money to replace or improve old computers?
It only makes sense to spend money on more powerful computers if they will really increase productivity. For example, in the typical office environment it makes no sense to buy computers with discrete video cards–motherboards with integrated video will do the trick for less money.
Hewlett-Packard is launching a social network for IT professionals, complete with its own manifesto that begin with this statement:
“We the IT professionals do hereby state that we are misunderstood.”
That’s some way to start a manifesto. The manifesto goes on to state that “We have lived with the stereotype of being introverted, pessimistic loners for too long.” The manifesto also reminds us that people in IT also wear jeans.
HP calls the social network 48Upper, named for a building on the HP campus in Cupertino, California.
The connotation seems to be that a building has some iconic resonance for IT professionals. But it’s also about giving some meaning to the life of the IT professional.
People often refer to HTML5 as if it were an accepted standard already. However, this is not the case yet: The W3C consortium has so far submitted only the draft spec for this next-generation Web technology, although some popular browsers already support HTML5 elements or are about to start supporting them.
Most discussions of HTML5 currently deal with the “video” tag, which enables video playback in browsers. According to the spec designers, the browser should be able to decode video on its own, no plug-in required–which is why it s extremely important to select a standard codec for that purpose.
Designing a new product or service is a fun, challenging, and often rewarding task. A blank canvas is an artist’s delight, but finishing a half completed painting is an entirely different story altogether. When building on an existing product or service, there is often feedback from users and a roadmap that has been laid out. One of the challenges of a blank landscape is that it is not clear which direction to follow. The trick is establishing the right priorities and focusing on executing towards them.
Merriam-Webster defines “hacker” as both “a person who is inexperienced or unskilled” and “an expert at solving problems with a computer” — which seems completely contradictory until you delve more deeply into what it really means to be a hacker. I’m a hacker at heart, and my programming chops weren’t learned from a textbook or in a class, but rather, from a lifetime of trial and error. From the time when I was a kid, I’ve always been really good at breaking things (both in the physical and the virtual world). Breaking things is great, because then you have to put them back together. And yes, while sometimes you do end up with piles of junk, a few times you do end up with something truly great.
Last month at the Google I|O conference, Google announced its TV platform. Google TV modules will be built directly into TV sets and offered separately as small stand-alone devices.
The Google TV hardware is based on Intel’s Atom CE4100 System on a Chip, using the same microarchitecture as Intel Atom processors used in netbooks. The Atom CE4100 media processor, codenamed “Sodaville,” was first announced almost a year ago at the IDF Fall 2009 conference in San Francisco. It’s a pretty powerful multimedia computer housed inside a tiny chip that consumes about 7 to 9 watts of power.
In a previous post, I wrote about the custom operating system ROMs available for my Windows Mobile smartphone and talked a bit about my appreciation of the of the community involved with the creation and support of these custom ROMs. While mostly great on their own, these custom ROMs don’t always include the latest versions of some mobile applications I’ve found very useful. With these applications I’ve been able to actually get some real work done via my smartphone, and have on occasion, even left my laptop at home and have instead relied solely on my phone on the road.
Hidden Expense…
Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.
There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working.
But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.
The wrong work
Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the [...]
What do Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, Maya Angelou, Francis Bacon, and Anna Quindlen have in common? Not all that much, actually…except that they’re all really smart people who translated their smarts into great success in their chosen professions. And we’ve quoted all of them in the last six weeks via our @exectweets feed on Twitter. [...]
In a recent post, I highlighted the importance of good prioritization as the foundation for a good product, service or project. Once the priorities have been established, the next step is to focus on the “common cases” (i.e. the high priorities) and optimize around that. Setting priorities is an essential first step, before making the plunge [...]
With so many offerings in the market today, it’s hard for businesspeople to decide which computer to buy or whether it’s time to upgrade their computers. The truth is that even the worst computer sold nowadays is powerful enough for running basic applications such as browsing, e-mail and an office suite. Therefore, why should a [...]
Hewlett-Packard is launching a social network for IT professionals, complete with its own manifesto that begin with this statement:
“We the IT professionals do hereby state that we are misunderstood.”
That’s some way to start a manifesto. The manifesto goes on to state that “We have lived with the stereotype of being introverted, pessimistic loners for too [...]
People often refer to HTML5 as if it were an accepted standard already. However, this is not the case yet: The W3C consortium has so far submitted only the draft spec for this next-generation Web technology, although some popular browsers already support HTML5 elements or are about to start supporting them.
Most discussions of HTML5 currently [...]
Designing a new product or service is a fun, challenging, and often rewarding task. A blank canvas is an artist’s delight, but finishing a half completed painting is an entirely different story altogether. When building on an existing product or service, there is often feedback from users and a roadmap that has been laid out. [...]
Merriam-Webster defines “hacker” as both “a person who is inexperienced or unskilled” and “an expert at solving problems with a computer” — which seems completely contradictory until you delve more deeply into what it really means to be a hacker. I’m a hacker at heart, and my programming chops weren’t learned from a textbook [...]
Last month at the Google I|O conference, Google announced its TV platform. Google TV modules will be built directly into TV sets and offered separately as small stand-alone devices.
The Google TV hardware is based on Intel’s Atom CE4100 System on a Chip, using the same microarchitecture as Intel Atom processors used in netbooks. The Atom [...]
In a previous post, I wrote about the custom operating system ROMs available for my Windows Mobile smartphone and talked a bit about my appreciation of the of the community involved with the creation and support of these custom ROMs. While mostly great on their own, these custom ROMs don’t always include the latest versions [...]
exectweets - What's the single most important piece of software at your company?
