Midori Microsoft' new OS

Microsoft has a new game and its called 'Midori '. The new game looks just like an operating system, feels like an operating and IS an operating system. The only difference is that it will work unlike its much loved big brother -Windows in the sense that it is a 'network-centric' os. With Midori, MS is hopeful of opening the doors of cloud computing.To contain panic and dropping sales, Microsoft has been quick to point out that existing Windows applications will be able to survive on this 'network-centric' platform.

Applications on Midori will live as services and will thrive on an Asynchronous Promise architecture.But the most interesting thing for us small time developers will be that we will no longer have to rely on a dual core powered desktop to get things done. I could use a super computer in Carnegie Mellon without being oblivious to the fact. Now we are talking!!

Connecting Infomation Dumps

I work for a traditional management consulting firm which is just beginning to embrace Web2.0 and its principles of blogging and Wikis. Today was a momentous day in the sense that I was involved setting up the corporate Wiki space where we (or rather projects) could create pages and collaborate using the functionality offered by the Wiki. Some of the managers I discussed the Wiki with, were skeptical about using the Wiki to blog about projects, upload documents and collaborate. The reason for their lack of enthusiasm was the presence of other traditional collaboration tools that have been used by previous projects to maintain project documents and track progress and there was not one but several such tools. As a result, there were several silos of information that were isolated and to a certain extent unusable as not everyone knew about their existence.

Reality check time.Information will continue to exist on File Servers, Email folders, Intranets, Wikis, Content Management Systems and local file systems . A good part of this data will be duplicated, redundant and even in some cases, out-dated. How does one connect these different sources and make data usable and easily manageable. Google Enterprise piggybacking on a Google search appliance can make finding information inside an organization easier but a search solution is not the key. The key is manageability.

While moving information out of every source into a central repository and forcing the workforce to use the central source is out of the question, it brings to the fore front, the need for pluggable interfaces that can connect information across these silos based on content and more importantly update information across several sources when information in one source changed is the need of the hour.

Such a system while in essence would be a Content Management System (CMS) that would manage content held by other CMSs, File Servers and other similar sources, it would need to identify and group together 'similar' data. In such a scenario, Tagging could act as a glue between these disparate sources of data. Moving one step forward, a bookmarking software such as Scuttle could be used to tie in various sources and formats of 'similar' data.

Intelligent Lighting in Trains

On my way to work today, in the train, I couldn't help noticing the lights were on while the sun blazed in through the windows.Yeah..Yeah..Melbourne has underground stations..a grand total of 4 but do we need the lights on all the time? I think not. Making the lighting system intelligent is the key.

Power could be saved in such scenarios by fixing a light intensity meter in the engine compartment which would measure the strength of the light filtering into the train.
When the strength of the light would fall below a certain level, the intensity of the power lights increased in the passenger compartments.

Of course such a system will have to be calibrated to take into account temporary changes such as the sun going behind the clouds or another train blocking the sun while passing or we would have the lights coming on and off and passengers getting the Saturday Night Fever.