No idea what that is, and still using Bell's land-line network? Then better stop reading here, as you're member of the species becoming extinct pretty soon.

While some people still believe antique enterprise software, such as ERP systems, are still the center of the universe, others are decades ahead and deeply look into newly emerging market opportunities. Most tech whiz kids agree that data mining social networks will offer such opportunity; ad targeting is another nobrainer, as is the replacement of historic PCs by ubiquitous mobile devices. And still, there are even more opportunities beyond the narrow horizon. How about tapping into the world of instant messaging, for example?

Microsoft research just published a study (Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network) on characteristics and patterns derived from just looking one month into the anonymized data of some of the conversations that happened during June 2006 in it's Live Messenger service. One of the findings: The confirmation of the Six Degrees of Separation - 6.6 to be precise. In other words, any new information

Another interesting facet: IM is growing like no other communication means. The number of Live Messenger users nearly have doubled from the original sample size of 240 million people two years ago, and this is all about global communications. Just have a look at this graph, showing you the opportunity where to reach out:

But flip the coin: Some things never change, as one of the study's conclusions also shows. "We found strong influences of homophily in activities, where people with similar characteristics tend to communicate more, with the exception of gender, where we found that cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with users of the same reported gender." Interesting :-)

Just in case you'd be looking for some practical application examples: Chat with Blogbot Muse, develop your own bots for doing some useful stuff. Or simply wait until the next killer application has been capitalized by somebody else.

"My SINCERE apologies for doing a Reply-All.   Trust me, it was unintentional that I sent a 9MB file to hundreds of users.  In my rush to respond to the requestor, I fat-fingered.  Sorry." Howard, who sent a very un-cool market analysis to several thousand technical users.

Stojan hat mir diese wichtige Meldung der Frankfurter Rundschau vom 1. August weitergeleitet:

Wenn's ein Hoax ist, dann ist er gut gemacht :-)

Found two Vista jewels in my backlog:

• Mike Swanson's natural wallpapers
• Hamad Darwish's wallpapers that didn't make it into the product

A friend of mine called it insane, but the only insane component of my job are phone conferences from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., on normal workdays. One of my colleagues, always wining about his extensive travel, called it marathon travel. My point of view s slightly different: I'm gifted for being paid to travel around the globe (well, replace 'travel' with 'moved', which sometimes is a more appropriate term), live in luxurious hotels (hey, some people attribute 'luxury' already to one star), eat in the best restaurants of the world (ok, there ARE some exceptions), and continuously meeting extremely interesting people (well - let's say 'most of the time'). So here's a trip report that originally was headlined "Frequent Flyer's Diary", but if you continue to read you'll notice why I changed the title. Here's the agenda:

Sunday, 12:15 a.m. PT - Early departure to SeaTac due to I-405 closure. Departing at SeatAc on time, 2:45 p.m.

Monday, 9:45 a.m. MESZ - Landing exactly on time after 10 hrs flight time. Bad news: An APRON parking position. Translation for normal travelers: Add additional 30 min transit time while enjoying the bus journey through scenic Rhein-Main Airport.Picking-up a brand new Volvo Convertible at AVIS FRA T1A - an annoying 20 min walk from the bus drop-off point at T1B. Weather doesn't encourage topless driving. Passing HD, and wondering about the smoke on the horizon - an explosion, in Walldorf's industrial area, lots of firefighters, burning factories. Fire requires some diversions for getting to the PAP.

Monday, 11:00 a.m. MESZ - Review and planning meetings. Interrupted by a 40 min lunch. Ending 5:30 p.m. Check-in at Heidelberg Marriott, and immediate transfer (40 min drive) to business dinner at Filou in Heppenheim; Nice location, food was ok. Returning to the hotel at 10 p.m. and waiting for my next meeting partner, who arrives 10:30 p.m. Strategy briefing until 1 a.m. Operational issue: The drinks don't appear on the hotel invoice, but the 17 € parking fee are expensive enough for a single night.

Tuesday, 6:00 a.m. MESZ - Breakfast meeting with Chris, follow by a slow ride to Frankfurt during morning rush hour, and dropping Chris 7:30 a.m. at the Frankfurt Maritim. Returning rental car at Rhein-Main Airport, checking in for next flight, and heading towards the Lounge in T1B. Working on e-mail backlog until 11:20 a.m. and 'traveling' to the gate: Departure is delayed more than 30 min due to technical problems.

Wednesday, 12:30 a.m. - Delayed arrival at Bangalore's new International Airport after 9 hours flight time. Immigration procedure takes ..... an unbelievable 2 minutes! Note: My last entry in Delhi took more than an hour. It turns out that this is not the only improvement since my last visit about a year ago. The (english-speaking!) driver sent by the ITC Windsor is already awaiting me, taking my luggage to the car. Waiting for the taxi, which is stuck in a congestion on the parking lot, takes some 20 min; still pleasant weather - medium monsoon.  Surprise: The tax has seatbelts, a feature never seen in Indian taxis before. The highway - no joking - to downtown Bengaluru is brand new, the ride takes only 45 min; if they would complete the last few miles within the city limits you could even do it in 20 min, I guess. Check-in at the miniature copy of Blenheim Palace works perfectly, as always in India, and I end-up in my bed at 1:30 a.m. Seems to be the standard bed time on this short trip.

Thursday, 9 a.m. - It would never work if you'd plan it: Searching for the breakfast restaurant, I'm running into my friend Walter who's later going to join me on the next leg to Changi. The breakfast at the ITC Windsor, included in the room rate, is a surprise - absolutely great. I'm sure they would have served me a steak, if I had wanted one. Heading to the office, with meetings starting 10:30 a.m. Although the driver had the correct address, he dropped me at the wrong building - minor mistake. Two minutes walking shouldn't be a major problem, if there were no security. Maybe they would have allowed me to take the short cut under normal circumstances, but this time there was .... a fire. The building is to be evacuated, Microsoft continues to work (although I'm not exactly sure which building was really affected).

Thursday, 12:30 p.m. - Infosys City. This enclave in Bangalore, hosting 20,000 people, is like a transplant of the Microsoft Campus into Camp Pendleton; interesting security procedures: The lady starts counting my dozen 'pen drives' (=USB sticks), but doesn't care about the SD cards, or my SmartPhones. Anyways, on a side note: If I'd need to decide where today's power center of the IT industry is located, I'd not vote for Silicon Valley.

Intensive re-cap after the executive briefing, and, because my watch is still on PT and my SmartPhone battery deceased, I'm nearly missing my check-out time at the hotel. Nearly 2 hour ride from the customer facility to the office, then to the hotel - all in downtown Bangalore. Checking-out, working on eMail-backlog in the bar, meeting colleagues on a similar review trip, heading to the airport, resting a few minutes in the lounge, and departing on time at 11:50 p.m. Walter, btw, was upgraded to First Class for this short 4 1/2 hop.

Wednesday, 6:10 a.m. - On-time arrival in Singapore. The first meeting, supposed to take place at Changi Airport, is unexpectedly postponed and relocated to the Intercontinental. Power breakfast there from 7 a.m. to 8: 30 a.m. The breakfast and service were excellent, nearly as good as the ITC Windsor's. Meetings in our office on Marina Boulevard until 3 p.m. Oh, btw: the most important two meetings were about fire-fighting. Killed both, without any collateral damage. The receptionists in our Singapore office were extremely nice, very helpful, and utmost polite. But, unfortunately, completely clueless when I asked for a taxi to the airport; In'shallah, instead of training the lady on how to call a cab using a phone (instead using SMS for transmitting GPS coordinates), I preferred to head downwards, and tried to get a taxi on the street - which worked easier than expected. One may ask why this taxi-stuff should be such a hassle: My problem was that I didn't have any local currency, and therefore relied on the acceptance of my corporate credit card. And that's definitely a challenge, outside of the USA. Cool: Boarding on time for the next leg to LAX, absolutely no hassle with security or border controls. The A340 is a little tiny, next to the A380 aside. 16 hours to go.

Thursday, 5:35 p.m. - While approaching LAX I'm musing if there may be an earlier connect flight, or if I'd really have to accept a 3 hour layover. Tough luck - we're more then 30 min late at the gate. Interesting side note: The 'small" A340 is too large for docking alone, and needs to be pulled by a tractor instead. Immigration is relatively easy, and one of the officers explains the background: It's about forecasting. All stalls were occupied, estimated waiting time should be less then 10 minutes for all pax. The flight yesterday had 106 pax, and the day before they counted 39. While that's nice for me: Does that tell you anything about the global economy? Sure does update me on the latest status. And, because of missing flight 763 by 20 min, I've got enough time to draw my conclusions.

Thursday, 10:55 p.m. - Arriving at SeaTac a few minutes early. No cab, no contact. Complete chaos in front of the terminal, and no response from the service company supposed to pick me up. 3 calls later, waiting 15 Minutes on the board walk: Chris, in case you still haven't listened to my voice mail yet, just let me repeat that this was the second time, and that I'm breaking-up our relationship - your company is history. AVIS got me a car in 5 minutes, and despite the closed I-405 (remember the beginning of this post?), I'm arriving back home just before 1 a.m.

Friday, 8 a.m. - A team of professional hit men (more precisely: persons) knock me off my socks. Dental surgery starts on time, and an hour later I'm not sure if I'll make it to my car. But tough guys don't know no pain. Conference calls commence at 10 a.m., and the final review meeting starts, after a 30 min lunch break, on 2 p.m. and ends at 7:30. Final business dinner at the Claim Jumper in Redmond: sorry guys, but even my marathon trip doesn't wipe out poor service, far below average steaks, and a 280% uplift on my house wine - that's the next relationship break-up.

Friday, 10:30 p.m. - Back home, and ready for the week-end rattle. Somehow.

That was an awesome week. I wonder what's going to happen next week.

Recently I received feedback on reviving a starving community from one of the higher ranks:

"Based on what I have seen happening, the community could be successful in establishing its identity if there is some regular communication flowing from the top, for ex. a monthly summary."

Somehow I felt there is something missing, or even wrong with this statement, and it took me some time for figuring out what it could be. I think I've got it now: It's the top-down approach for establishing an identity, which I believe won't work.

Gary Hamel once (The Future of Management) raised an interesting question:

"When in your life have you felt the most joyful and the most energized by work?... I bet it involved a group of people who were bound by their devotion to a common cause, who were undeterred by a lack of resources and undaunted by a lack of expertise, and who cared more about what they could accomplish together than how credit would be apportioned.  In short, you were part of a community."

Completely agree: It's the common cause which forms the identity of the community, not the directed information flow, not the structured meeting place, not the existence of specific roles. Looking around, I see too much hierarchy, too many policies, and too little community. And, digging further, I found this little jewel that precisely explains why I didn't feel well about this statement. The piece positions bureaucracy versus community:

• Hierarchies are good at aggregating effort.  Communities are good at mobilizing effort.
• In a community, the interaction and exchange is voluntary - you give your skills, experience, bandwidth in return for the chance to make a difference, or exercise your talents. In a hierarchy, you get paid for doing what is assigned to you.  It's a contractual exchange.  
• In a bureaucracy, you are a factor in production.  In a community you are a partner in cause. 
• Communities depend on norms, values, and gentle prodding of one's peers. Bureaucracies rely on multiple layers of management and a web of policies.
• In a bureaucracy individual contributions are circumscribed.  Financial people work on finance.  Marketing people market.  In a community, capability and disposition are more important than credentials and job descriptions.
• In a bureaucracy rewards are financial.  In communities, the rewards are emotional.

Sound like a good explanation to me.

92° F yesterday, 90° F today. Do you think that's too hot for doing something useful? Come on, you're kidding. Humans can stand even higher temperatures, without major damage.

Although my e-toys seem to have a different opinion. Under normal circumstances my Toshiba Portégé M400 only overheats in the docking station when the lid is closed, so I leave it open most of the time. Didn't help much during the last two days: At yesterdays high temperatures the Intel graphics board simply gave up early afternoon, crashing the display, while spinning the fan at max speed, and unable to recover even after an hour-long cooling period. Similar today: Around noon the whole thing produced some output for enthusiast group of crash dump readers. Must have been pretty funny for the attendees of my Live Meeting presentation. Fortunately this time the attendees were colleagues, not customers, as two weeks ago.

Today at lunch my T-Mobile Dash, lying on the table, seemed to suffer from sudden death syndrome too. First I thought it would have died lacking of power. But no, the battery was still at 75%, and after some minutes in a cool dark room it was able to reboot.

I'm glad not to really rely on these gadgets, and I wonder how other people, who may even need computers for work instead of just having fun with game machines, deal with similar issues.

Knowing now where the up threshold are, I'm going to run some test about the opposite side. I guess, by sitting in a fridge, with a laptop and cell phone on ice, I'll finally find out if the light is really switched-off when you close the door.  And, in case these two pieces of crap would still work after that, I'll check how a water cooling application in the shower would work. Stay tuned.

Cloud computing will save the world. Somehow.

At least I finally found out why I couldn't use e-mail publishing for this blog during the past months: 'Somebody' had changed the e-mail address. And either I hadn't been notified about the change, or not noticed it in my daily spam flood. Anyway, here's the daily quote, back online again.

"Pain is weakness, leaving the body" (Seen on a t-shirt in Seattle)

and

"I'm paying you for telling me how to get it done, not for explaining to me why it can't be done." (An unnamed producer's response to Jon Landau, and his sound engineer, when Jon tried to explain why his first film wouldn't make it in time for the Cannes film festival)

Done, after some blood, a lot of sweat, and nearly tears (of desperation).

And here's the evidence: Chinese assembly instructions (in the original status upon delivery), for a bed built in Malaysia, assembled by a German non-engineer, located in the USA - and likely sourced from Mexico.

Ready for the first visitors not scared to test my excellent craftsman's skills ;-)