IT-Director.com has a good piece on the challenges of leveraging both grid computing and service oriented architectures. Anyone who’s worked in the Wall St. tech space for any length of time knows how rare it is that an enterprise will properly adopt a major new computing paradigm the first go around, so what are the odds that it can be done for two major paradigms at once? I would say they are pretty slim, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying.

Yet the article raises a question that I frequently ponder, what are all these technical paradigms really going to be used for?

But, the question still remains, for what are grid and SOA technologies being used? grid’s history is primarily a high performance computing (HPC) one, and major uses are bleeding into finance, automotive/aerospace design and other heavy number-crunching environments. SOA is being used to support more flexible business processes in many areas.

I think that grids and SOA will be a lot like other over-hyped technical panaceas of days gone by, such as Java. Java is still here and strong as ever, but how many of us are using it for applets inside a web browser vs. back-end processes and serving up web pages? It will be interesting to see what Wall St. does with these technologies in the next several years, but something tells me in the end it will look different than what was originally imagined by the analysts whose job it is to forecast technical trends.

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A very helpful tip from The Consumerist for IT guys on the move. If you fly Southwest, give this a try.

Southwest Airlines has passengers board in three groups, A, B and C, with A’s going first. Here’s an at-home hack we spotted for if your boarding pass says B or C.

1) View your boarding pass in Firefox.
2) Click “File” then “Save Page As”. Choose the “Save as Type” as Web Page, Complete.
3) Save the graphic at right.
4) Open the saved page with any HTML editor. Change the boardingB.gif or boardingC.gif to your saved file.
5) Print out your modified boarding pass and bring it to the airport.
This of course only works if you’ve purchased your ticket online.

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An early riser came into his swank new offices in a large New York trading firm. One member of his team - a young man with questionable hygiene to begin with - was already signed into the messaging system so said early riser decided to take a walk. As he approached the cubicle, he heard a strange clicking noise. He poked his nose over and was beset by a sight - and aroma - unspeakable: his teammate had his foot on the keyboard and was clipping his toenails, his sock in a ball next to his mouse, and the strange funk of magic foot wafting up. The horror.

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From WristWatchReview.com - A Movado sport watch? With a wavy face and big arrow hour hand? Perhaps someone is seeing their market share drop?

I don’t like Movado much - so much depends on that single big dot that you almost lose the watch - but this sports model, apparently a quartz piece, has some chops. It comes on a rubber or steel band and costs about $1,000.

Best of all, NFL MVP Tom Brady is flogging the thing and saying stuff like:

“Movado is all about style and precision and that fits exactly what I try to bring both on and off the field, so I hope it’s a long term association,” the New England Patriot said. “A professional athlete’s life is highly scheduled. I practically need military discipline to keep pace, so time is definitely something I’m interested in.”

Deep.

Product Page [Movado]
Movado Has a New MVP [FashionWeekDaily.com]

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CNet’s News.com has some reporting on promises from Steve Balmer to push Microsoft to release updates and revisions to Windows on a more regular schedule.

Does anyone see the irony in this? Balmer’s promises were an attempt to please Wall Street analysts. And what business sector is slowest to upgrade its desktop OS installations? Wall Street of course.

Excuse me, I just got a new email I have to read, gotta go spend some quality time with MS Outlook 2000.

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If your office road warriors need to keep in touch, consider SightSpeed. I just gave it a try last week and it worked extremely well, even over a wireless connection hooked up to a cable modem. The audio was very crisp and the video - while a bit laggy at points due to the connection - was better than I’ve seen in a while. It’s a free download and works on both PCs and Macs. A Linux version is also in the works.

The service also includes VoIP to POTS service, similar to SkypeOUT. Rates are about 2-5 cents per minute.

Product Page [Sightspeed]

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A quick one-off toy for you all: here’s the Depeche Mode MP3 player complete with 1.3″ screen and up to 2GB of memory. Pricing starts at $202.99 for 256MB and $309 for 2GB.

Best of all, it comes with a hot new single from DM, “Suffer Well.” Should be in stores here soon and is available at Trekstor’s online store.

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This doesn’t mean that Lenovo is going to be sticking only AMD in their enterprise gear, but it seems that the Chinese giant will be offering both flavors to business customers.

he PC maker in the second week of August will become the first top-tier manufacturer to offer an AMD processor-based desktop to large businesses in the United States, sources familiar with the company’s plans said.

The Lenovo A60 will use AMD’s Sempron and Athlon 64 X2 processors in mini-towers and desktop configurations.

Lenovo Thinks AMD for Business Desktops [eWeek]

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I think we’ll be spending a lot of time blogging on the crossroads of Wall St. and technology, but every once in a while there will be a gem like this one that explores important challanges that can be applicable to almost any business sector. This particular piece takes a very thorough look at how risk management as an organizational expertise is changing. I can’t think of a business service that has a more challenging time evaluating risk than IT on Wall St. We face a constantly changing landscape and we usually work for firms that are experiencing explosive growth, which means that nothing that we build today will really be untouchable 3-5 years down the road from now.

…companies cope with
risk by acting conservatively. Caution,
discretion and prudence are sensible
ways to view a complex world.
But it is remarkably easy, particularly
for large and successful organisations
with a lot to protect, to
become overly conservative. Conservatism
at some point simply has to
yield to growth strategies; the key is
to know when to move.

As a result we need to have a great grasp of managing risk in our analysis of the businesses we service and where they’re going to be in the future. This is a must read.

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Laplink just released a new migration tool, PCMover, designed to be a fool-proof way to migrate files and settings from one Windows machine to another. There are two versions - personal and business - and a single copy costs $39.95 while a 10-pack license costs $280.

Best of all? It’s fire and forget, so you can set it up on Mr. Trader’s desk and tell him to go to lunch.

Simply install PCmover on both computers and go! PCmover will determine what files and settings need to be moved. You don’t even have to tell PCmover which applications to move or know the location of your programs or files

Product Page [Laplink]

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