Here are some cloud computing articles that have caught my attention over the last week:

The Dark Side of the Cloud Pt 1 -

“Everyone’s gone to the cloud, it seems, but prospective customers of all those vendors should ask a few sober questions before they rush to join in the latest technology trend. Like its predecessors, cloud computing may seem brilliantly simple at the outset, but things can quickly turn to pea soup.”

Defogging Cloud Computing –  “Cloud computing suffers from too few customers and too many marketing dollars”

Cloud Wars:  A New Hope – “A battle is brewing in the cloud, but that may be a good thing: It’s one of the few areas of the tech economy that isn’t stagnant. ”

Cloud Computing: Understanding Information as a Service – “Introducing the notion of an alternative to AWS: Cloudcenters”

Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department, is twittering as one method of sharing the US’s policies, values and cultures.  On her recent trip to Iceland, Romania, Moldova, Croatia, and Armenia, she twittered some of her professional diplomatic interactions along with some personal adventures (Blue Lagoon in Iceland). 

This new diplomatic outreach hasn’t been without controversy.  It was first noted in the Washington Post and then discussed online in an article called How Not to Win Hearts and Minds.  Today, Dec 24, Colleen Graffey wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post outlining the benefits and purposes of her twittering. 

“One clear lesson that emerged from the Cold War was that winning hearts and minds required communicating in a way that “connected” with people on their terms, whether through film or jazz or jeans. To keep our public diplomacy relevant today, we have to reach out and connect with people on their terms, whether we use blogs or texts — or tweets. “

Thanks to the State Department for using new methods and ideas for listening and participating in the world’s conversations.

In a previous post, I talked about Gist releasing new features.  As a beta user, one of the key features that I was eagerly awaiting was the MS Outlook support.  Even though I regularly use GMail, most of my corporate email and contacts are in Outlook. 

Lo and behold, last night in my inbox is an email from T. A. McCann announcing a holiday upgrade for GIST to include: 

• MS Outlook support with GIST Desktop
• Relationship Widget
• Twitter integration
• Dow Jones company information
• Enhanced search
• And a whole lot more

Hats off to the Gist team for these enhancements.  If you are interested in giving Gist a try, leave a comment and we will assist you in getting an account.

The Project on National Security Reform has released its recommendations in a detailed report.  

The Project on National Security Reform has relayed its recommendations to the President, President-elect, and Congress. Pending approval of reforms, the Project is ready to support government leadership in implementing the recommendations through preparation of draft presidential directives, changes to Senate and House rules, and a new National Security Act to replace many provisions of the 1947 legislation.

Of particular interest to me was the section on impediments to information sharing.  Among those listed were:  

- Poor interoperability on the classified side

- Overclassification

- The proliferation of the “sensitive but unclassified” designation

- Confusing technical connections with collaboration

- Information systems are missing common data abstraction, protocols, and compatible business logic

- Inability of systems to understand business limitations and context of data

These aren’t surprising.  If you look at the 2008 Annual CIO Challenges Survey, challenges 2 through 4 are related:

• Balancing information sharing and security/privacy requirements
• Obtaining adequate funding for IT programs and projects
• Simplifying business processes to maximize the benefit of technology

Adequate funding with policy enforcements should help address these challenges.

You can find some on-line analysis/critique/discussion here.  Other discussion can be found on twitter.  Thanks to John Bordeaux for his work on the PNSR and for Chris Dorobek for his heads up on the CIO report.

As a follow-on to the previous Twitter post, ComputerWorld has published a great article on Twitter for Business.  The article mentions five ways to tap the power of Twitter:

• Decide on a purpose
• Follow the right people
• Be interesting
• Engage the conversation
• Use the right tools

  Each of the five ways mentioned have great ideas embedded within making this article well worth the read.

Gist recently released significant new features to its invite-only beta group.  In addition, T.A. McCann talks about the Defrag conference.

Dr. William Duggan, Columbia Business School, gave the keynote address at Defrag 08 on strategic intuition. Strategic intuition is that flash of insight which enables the “Aha” moment or a series of connected dots enabling you to move forward.  Covering the majority of his 2007 book, “Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement,” Duggan used examples from history (Napoleon, Steve Jobs, and Google), to discuss the four key pieces that enable strategic intuition to occur (examples from history, presence of mind, flash of insight itself and resolution).  

A new movie shows strategic intuition at work.

Flash of Genius,  is based on the true story of engineering professor and part time inventor Robert Kearns, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper only to have Ford, and then Chrysler steal his design and refuse to credit him for inventing it.  

The title comes from an old U.S. patent law which said that in order to be granted a patent, the inventor had to be able to show that “the inventive act had to come into the mind in a ‘flash of genius’ and not as a result of tinkering.” For Bob Kearns, his flash of genius for the intermittent windshield wiper came on his wedding night when he hit himself in the eye with a champagne cork, and got to thinking about how the eye blinks only when it needs moisture, and then later, while driving in the rain, wondered what if there was a windsheild wiper that could behave like the human eye.

Was this strategic intuition?  I think so.  As T.S. Eliot said, “ Immature poets imitate; mature poetssteal. ”  In a scene from the movie, we see this played out.  During a trial, a Ford Motor engineer explains it. Bob Kearns didn’t really invent the intermittent windshield wiper because he didn’t create anything you couldn’t buy at your local electronics store.  All he did, the engineer explains, was arrange those basic over-the-counter pieces in a particular order.

Aware of Duggan’s work on strategic intuition, I am looking forward to checking out Flash of Genius.

At Defrag08, I had the opportunity to eat dinner with a group of people, one of which was T.A. McCann, the CEO of Gist.  Gist is designed to control information overload. By looking primarily at your email (attachments, links, sent mail) in addition to blog posts and news, a user is able to at a glance determine what is important and who is important.  Business-critical information on both a key person or a company is at your fingertips.

This video shows how easy it is to use Gist. 

Gist is still in limited beta but are taking requests for access.  You will be asked to fill out a survey to help the Gist team prioritize who gets access. I’ve filled out my survey and is now anxiously awaiting an email giving me access.

  At the Defrag08 conference, one of the vendors that caught my eye was LiquidPlanner.   Debuting this year and receiving good reviews, LiquidPlanner provides on-line project management software. Their key discriminator is that the tool allows teams to manage change and uncertainty.  As a user of Microsoft Project, one of the problems that often occurred is the schedule is carefully crafted, published and then rarely looked at or updated again.  

Most project managers haven’t mastered project estimation. Therefore, there isn’t the ability to set a range of dates that a task may be completed in.  LiquidPlanner’s ability to provide ranged vs. single-point estimate plus its ability to provide probabilistic scheduling help to ensure the project is estimated more accurately and will be updated on a regular basis. 

Other team functions built in are wiki’s, document sharing, social project networking, and task tracking make this a great team tool for distributed groups.  Personalized dashboards provide a quick way to visualize your tasks/tools.  

Pricing is free for the first 3 team members.  After that it is $35/month or $300/yr.