Investment Update

I was reminded today that I haven't updated this blog with how my investments are doing.

I'm about 4.2% down in aggregate. This is due mainly to the performance of William Morrison since I invested. The intention was always to hold them for a while - the idea being that I'd gain when they finally started to turn around. However, I continue to be surprised by quite how little good news is coming from them of late.

Japan is still a ray of light - albeit a dim one (+1.3%).

The FTSE is going nowhere good (-3.5%).

I'm relatively inconcerned by the FTSE (and my exposure is small in relative terms in any case). However, Morrisons do cause me concern. I have a mental stop-loss on this investment but I'm hoping I won't have to use it.

Düsseldorf

I'm in Düsseldorf today to present at the IBM European WebSphere Technical Conference on "Applying Business Integration Patterns on WebSphere Process Server".

I'm not quite sure what to expect from the audience as this is an advanced topic and they will only have had a few presentations on the product prior to my speaking. I'll be working on the assumption that the audience is intelligent, interested but lacking knowledge.

Note to travellers: the Scandic Essen hotel, while pleasant enough, has neither wireless nor wired high-speed network access. It was a miracle I had brought my modem cable. It's a long time since I've needed it. Scandic.... get your act together!

Fascinating article on why countries in turmoil routinely appear to make bad choices

Contrary to what you might expect, it is common to observe situations where a bad idea has failed.... and the response of the affected parties (e.g. the voters in a country) is to vote for more of the same... only more so.

This article discusses it and describes why it may happen.

Is anecdotal evidence the best kind?

... probably not. But it can be instructive.

I've had a sense that the UK's economy is in worse state than the press and the headline figures would suggest for some time now and an exchange with an old school friend this afternoon provided extra weight to this. He describes how the market in the North West of England for his particular IT skills is utterly appalling right now... and is noticeably worse than six months ago.

I'm going to wait for Morrison's interim results on Thursday (I hold lots of their shares) before deciding what to do but I'm beginning to think having a 66% exposue to the UK equities market and 33% to Japan was the wrong way round.

Chance encounter suggests Wikipedia malaise is widespread

I went for a walk along the Thames during lunchtime today. On my way back to the office, I passed in front of the National Theatre. I spotted Lord (Jeffrey) Archer walking the other way. Despite having lived in London for almost two years now, I don't spot many "celebrities". So that livened up my day somewhat.

Given the current furore over the questionable quality of many Wikipedia entries, I thought I'd read his Wikipedia biography. Wow. They weren't kidding! Regardless of one's opinion of Lord Archer (and I would hardly describe myself as his biggest fan), I don't think anybody could describe that article as balanced or fair.

Two sample lines from the biography:

"It was during this period that he met his wife, Mary, a brilliant student who is believed by many to have had a hand in his most successful novels" (no references to back this up.... regardless of its truth, who are "the many"?)

"Archer never earned a university degree from the University of Oxford. He was there more for the fun that the studies." (really? What does that second sentence achieve? What's the basis? Also, notice the typo)

I've been pretty indiscriminate in my use of Wikipedia until now..... I wonder if the articles I've used for research purposes so far have been better written or whether my judgement has been more questionable than I originally thought...

How did we do? The Answer

I was wondering on Sunday what our third quarter results would look like. Here's the answer.

As someone who toils in the WebSphere business, it was nice to see our name in lights: we increased revenues by 14 percent compared with the same quarter last year.

The Wikipedia Backlash

I've been guilty of making excessive usage of Wikipedia in my postings. It seems that some have been less uncritical than me. (Look at "The Cult of the Amateur" section).

Andrew Orlowski has now waded in. His credibility has suffered of late in some quarters (eg here) but today's article is interesting nevertheless.

I find Wikipedia to be useful for the kinds of things I search on. However, I've never attempted to edit any pages on it. Perhaps I should try for myself and find out what the culture is really like.

How did we do?

It's that time of the quarter again.... we announce our 3Q results tomorrow.

All Kneel!

My all-time favourite movie super-villain is running for president!

Lottery Syndicates

My ever-observant colleague, Lee Hollingdale, pointed out - quite fairly - that my claimed disdain for the National Lottery is inconsistent with my membership of a syndicate.

My grasp of economics (or maybe psychology) is insufficient to clearly explain what's going on here but I'll do my best.... I participate in the team syndicate because I'd hate it if I left and they won. So I guess the potential cost I perceive of missing out on a big win when others I know have not is greater than the money it costs me to participate. I'm not sure how rational that is but Lee... I'm going to continue playing!

Back!

I've been on vacation in New York for the last week and am now back in the UK.

The weather (torrential rain, mostly) was somewhat disappointing but had an excellent time regardless.

I may even post some photos when the jet lag wears off.

Woo!

I just checked the website of National Savings and it turns out I won £50 in the October draw. I only invested in Premium Bonds five weeks ago so this represents an annualised return of 5.11% (or thereabouts). (Actually, that probably allows the astute reader to figure out how much I invested which violates one of my self-imposed rules for this blog but I'll let it pass.)

I'm a little upset that I allowed myself to ignore this intriguing financial vehicle for so long. The effective interest rate isn't hugely competitive but the combination of the reasonable expectation of an "OK" return with the potential of winning £1m is really quite sweet.

I always had a deep suspicion of those who played the National Lottery and my belated discovery of the merits of Premium Bonds has reinforced this.

I have pitched the benefits of premium bonds to two lottery-playing acquaintances thus: "If you spend a pound on the lottery, you may make a large return, but your stake is lost if you don't. The expected return if you play for the long term is £0.50 per £1 invested, or so. If you invest in premium bonds, you could win a million pounds each month or some other sum. And even if you don't, your stake stays in the game. Your expected return is greater than the original stake! (we ignore inflation in such arguments, of course :-) ). My argument may be slightly inaccurate but it has worked... they will both soon be "ex-customers" of the "tax on the stupid" (Deliberately ambiguous link chosen). Hurrah for Macmillan! (I never thought I'd ever say that)

Of course, the odds of winning a prize (any prize) are somewhat greater with the lottery but that doesn't bother me. I am now officially in love with premium bonds.

London Science Museum

I've been meaning to go to the Science Museum for some time so popped down this morning.

I had been attracted by an exhibit on how we are constructing ever more amibitious buildings. As it turned out, I didn't find it - but there was plenty of other interesting stuff.

Two particular things that caught my eye were the Mechanical Engineering pieces and one particular exhibit in the Wellcome Wing.

The Mechanical Engineering area was fascinating. Having just started reading "The Wealth of Nations" (it's heavy going... I've managed the first two chapters so far), the pieces provided a stark demonstration of division of labour in action.

The exhibit in the Wellcome Wing that interested me was one I have blogged about in the past but forgotten about until now: the WebSphere MQ stand. It was quite arresting to see colleagues (and my fourth line manager) immortalised in a museum!

What is it I do? (part 2)

In a posting yesterday, I started to explain what it is that I do.

I explained that my role is to help IBM WebSphere customers be successful and gave an example of a customer relationship management problem in the auto industry.

I hopefully gave a reasonable overview of the problem to be solved. What I didn't do, however, was tie that back to my core mission: making WebSphere customers successful.

To do that, we need to think about the problem in a little more depth. I used hand-waving phrases such as "good customers", "inviting them to evening drinks", "bought lots of optional extras".

These phrases turn out to be key.

Who are the good customers? How do we contact them? Which extras did they buy?

If all this information was in one nice big database, life would be easy.

The problem is that most companies don't work like that. They have a collection of computer systems, of various ages, littering their IT landscape. Consolidating their entire business onto one system simply isn't feasible. There may be one system that tracks payments made by customers on their purchasing plans. Another one will list the exact order that a customer made. There may be a relationship with a business partner to handle the face-to-face "wine and dine" sessions.

Successfully integrating these systems is difficult. Moreover, integrating them in a coherent, scalable and forward-looking manner (so we don't have to repeat the exercise on the next project) requires even more skill.

When I talk about integration, this is what I am talking about.

At a technical level, we have to worry about message formats, adapters, you name it. At an architectural level, Service Orientation really is key.

Now, there are several other strands (human interaction, business-level monitoring, business-level modelling, and more). However, I hope this has helped begin to give an insight into the kinds of issues we help customers deal with.

Google AdWords fun, plus a partial answer to a question

When I started this blog, I registered for Google AdWords. I wasn't expecting to make any money out of it but figured it would do no harm. That is, I felt comfortable allowing Google advertisements since I understood they would be targetted to match the content of my blog.

And so, to date, it has proved.

When I post about my investment antics or muse on economics, then adverts for stock brokers appear. When I comment on WebSphere then adverts for WebSphere training appear. It's really quite uncanny.

A particular advert caught my attention today: it mentioned Siebel. It took me a while to remember that I had commented briefly on Oracle's acquisition. As I say, it's most impressive. However, the act of thinking about Siebel (and my inability to figure out how Google seemingly knew so much about one of my recent engagements!) reminded me that I never answered the question of "what is it that I actually do?"

My job title is Senior IT Specialist. However, that simply means that I have reached a particular level in the IBM IT Specialist Profession (and have gained the right to become a chartered member of the British Computer Society and a Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers). It does not, you will note, explain what I do.

To explain that, we need to dig a little deeper.

I work for an organisation known as IBM Software Services for WebSphere.

It is our job to help WebSphere customers be successful. Now that could mean a lot of things - and it does.

Within this broad remit, I work in the Process Integration space. That means I worry about how to help customers model their business processes, how to monitor them and how to optimise them. That is: a typical engagement may involve sitting down with somebody in a client's line of business (i.e. not necessarily in the IT department) and figure out what, exactly, it is that they do. The idea is to understand how an organisation performs a particular behaviour. Once we have done this, we can model it, automate it where it makes sense and then seek to optimise it.

What would an example of this be?

I recently did some work for an auto manufacturer who, like most, builds long-term relationships with customers through finance deals. A customer will perhaps pay a deposit, a regular monthly payment and then perhaps a sum to own the car (or simply hand it back). A tricky question for auto companies is that some of these customers will turn out to be fantastic (they pay on time, in full, bought lots of optional extras) and some of them will be terrible (missed payments, abandoned vehicles, ...) and there will be some in the middle.

How do we encourage the good customers to stay loyal (e.g. by inviting them to evening drinks and other special events as their renewal date approaches) whilst avoiding continuing a relationship with the degenerates? Furthermore, how can we automate this and how do we deal with the "middling" customers who may have a special case. The solution lies in a mixture of business and technical considerations.

My role is to walk clients through the business questions right down into the deep technical implementation details. These details can include installing our software, architecting solutions, developing solutions and debugging them (my background is mathematics, computer science and I started my career in the IBM Hursley Lab so the deep techy is always trying to jump out of its box ;-) )

It is in this intersection of business savvy and technological expertise that I am able to add value and it makes for some fascinating engagements.

The New York Times agree with me (sort of)

I mused recently that if you can't explain something clearly, you probably don't really understand it. I was referring to the problem of describing features in a software product but it applies more widely.

The New York Times has an interesting article on the use of this principle to teach Economics.

(Article discovered via Marginal Revolution)

Holiday Reading

I had an extraordinarily busy day yesterday. It was my last day at work before going on vacation for two weeks and I needed to tie up lots of loose ends. I finished the day with no emails requiring action in my inbox... quite a result.

WebSphere Process Server is hot right now.... I'll be sorry to be away from the action. Customers really get it. Process Server is designed from the ground-up to support writing composite applications - making SOA a reality. The core concepts of the Service Component Architecture and the fact that it is built on top of a J2EE application server (WebSphere Application Server) mean that some classes of previously difficult problems become almost trivial and it's exciting to be able to show people how their problems can be solved elegantly and coherently.

I spent a lot of yesterday walking a colleague through some of the presentations we give on the internal advanced education class for consultants as he will be helping deliver it next week in the UK in my absence. It made me realise that some of our materials over-complicate things. There was one deck, in particular, that was over 40 pages long but only contained three real concepts. It is easy to take a simple concept and make it difficult.... I need to watch out for this when I return and fight it whenever I see it happening. This product does make a lot of problems simpler and our materials shouldn't hide this fact

So, with that behind me for two weeks, I can think about my vacation.

New York beckons on Thursday for a week. Thanks to my inability to collect points on a single programme, the reward flights consist of BA outbound and Virgin back. I had enough points for Virgin Premium Economy on the way back and, after a few recent trips, now have enough points to hop up another class to Upper Class on the way back. Slight problem: they haven't released any more seats yet. I'll be phoning every day next week until they do. It will give us something to look forward to at the end of the holiday.

I've been meaning to finally understand how Economics works for ages. This will be the vacation when it happens. I have just bought a copy of The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith. I am determined to complete it before I return to work. Let's see if I do....

It's only 79p!

I was called yesterday evening by somebody claiming to work for Barclaycard.

I am a not a great customer for credit card companies. I don't carry a balance from month to month and I don't spend very much on them anyway so they don't make much on the merchant fee.

The salesperson tried to interest me in payment protection. Apparently they have been having lots of success selling it recently. Perhaps it's because it's so cheap, he mused, in the carefully scripted manner of somebody reading from a carefully prepared script.

"How much does it cost?" I asked.

"Only 79p for every £100 on your balance".

"Is that per month or per year?"

"Per month."

Right..... so, for the privilege of having a small sum paid off in the event of my becoming unemployed, I will be charged the equivalent of an annual interest rate of 10% on every transaction I ever make on my credit card.

I don't know how many people they persuaded to buy this but that is a fantastic business to be in.

He sounded genuinely surprised and disappointed when I declined his generous offer.

Perhaps religious groups work to a different financial calendar?

Today is the first day of our fourth quarter. Our third quarter results will be out in a few weeks and I'm sure our sales teams will have been putting in some long hours during the last few weeks.

So, with today being the first day of the final quarter of the year, one would expect any organisation that reports in such a fashion to be quieter than normal.

My experiences today would suggest that some religious groupings don't follow such an approach.

I was summoned from the shower this morning by the loud buzz of my apartment's intercom. The caller was not a delivery driver but somebody trying to interest me in some religious literature ("It's a companion to the Bible but also has advice on day-to-day living.") I'm sure it was good stuff but I politely passed on the opportunity.

Returning from a trip into Central London, I exited Tower Hill tube station for the short walk to Tower Gateway DLR station. I passed a table which had lots of people sitting around it. There were some strange-looking machines (not dissimilar to old-style supermarkets' scales). A large sign advertised "Free Stress Tests". Hmmmm...... I was intrigued by the claim that they could objectively measure "stress" but the books littering the table with an author's name of "L. Ron Hubbard" was all I needed to see and I scuttled past.

Munich Airport

I have been in Munich this week teaching a class on WebSphere Process Server. I arrived at the airport today to fly home. I am travelling on a codeshare Lufthansa/Cirrus airlines flight to London City Airport and am carrying a paper ticket. Worse, I had a bag to check in (the plane is very, very small). I didn't have high hopes. I was resigned to having to queue with the rest of the econo-scum to check in. True to form, I arrived at the airport to find the economy line threading its way around the airport :-(

I was about to join it when I thought I'd better check I was in the right line. I'm glad I did. The assistant pointed out that I could use the machines to check in. Even though I had a paper ticket. And even though I had a bag to check in. Wow!

The machine read my ticket and even printed a baggage tag. There was a video demonstration of how to attach it to my bag. I was then told to put the bag on a conveyer and it was whisked into the bowels of the airport. That is so cool! Why can't they do this at Heathrow? (Or LCY for that matter)?

Trading update

It's time to report on the success (or otherwise) of my investments.

It is probably unwise to declare (or admit...) how much I've blown invested in my stock market experimentation. However, I can talk in percentages and proportions of the total amount staked without scaring anybody who knows me.

The figures below take into stamp duty, commission and other dealing costs but do not include any fixed annual fees

Investment	Date	Initial Price (pence)	Current Price	Return
FTSE 100 Tracker	12 August 2005	540.9	545.25	+0.8%
FTSE 100 Tracker	22 August 2005	540.12	545.25	+0.95%
MSCI Japan Fund	24 August 2005	613.5	667.50	+8.8%
Morrison (Wm)	16 September 2005	183.97	177.25	-3.7%
MSCI Japan Fund	19 September 2005	640.00	667.50	+4.3%

As we can see, most of my bets have paid off so far. However, I did not spread the risk evenly. To a first approximation, my exposure is in the proportion 1/9 FTSE, 3/9 Japan, 5/9 Morrison.

The net is that my position (before annual charges) is a +£0.02 profit. After charges, I am currently running at a -£24.98 loss.

However, my Morrison investment is a long-term bet. I already have too much exposure to the hi-tech industry (my job depends on it and I own stock in my employer). The only other business I begin to understand is retail. I believe that both Wal*Mart and Tesco are saddled with too much expectation: there is too much risk that they will provide a nasty surprise - good news is expected.

Amongst the other major retailers active in the UK, I had to decide between Sainsbury and Morrison. I gambled, perhaps unwisely, that there could not possibly be any more bad news coming from Morrison whereas signs of recovery at Sainsbury had already started to show and were probably already priced in. This belief in the intelligence of the City may prove to be unfounded (and there certainly was more Morrison news to break as my loss will testify) but time will tell if it was a good long-term punt.

The remarkable Japanese investment was prompted by observations in the Economist that businesses were reporting strong profits and that, even though the government at the time was having difficulty passing its reform package, both parties supported the concept of economic reform in principle. I gambled (successfully so far) that even if the government lost their postal privatisation bid, things would still turn out OK. The result of the recent election has shown this to be the case so far. When considering Japan as a non-UK target for diversification, I also considered Germany. I am currently very glad I steered clear of Frankfurt!

It's a good job I don't get travel sick

London City Airport has its merits but the tiny little runway isn't one of them. It means that only tiny little aeroplanes operate from it.

The plane to Munich this morning was one of those tiny ones with three seats across (i.e. in a seat-aisle-seat-seat configuration) and about ten rows from front to back. It was small enough for one air hostess to run the whole show. It was most amusing to watch her stop every so often as she was giving the German safety presentation so she could put down the microphone and pick up her prop (life jacket, oxygen mask, etc, etc).

However, the best part of the journey was just how easily these little planes can be thrown about by turbulence. For most of the journey the plane was shaking up, down, left right, sometimes all at once. It made for an entertaining trip but spoiled my attempts to read the paper.

Anyhow, I'm now in Munich and helping deliver education on WebSphere Process Server to a group of skilled IBM Software Consultants.

My pitch today was on our support for JMS. I think I did a reasonable job of getting the concepts across but it reminded me again how important it is to be able to tell a story with a presentation. The core of the deck was an advanced topic on solving a particular problem that is created when you try to interface a legacy messaging system with a web-services oriented environment. The solution is very easy with WebSphere Process Server. The difficulty is showing that there really is a problem to be solved. So - I had to spend a lot of the presentation making the case for why there was indeed a problem to be solved and - once the existence of the problem was accepted - why it wasn't something that could be done "out of the box". I think I may have overdone the set-up but hopefully the attendees will be able to explain why this is a genuine problem that any integration product must solve and, more importantly, be able to see through the complexity of the problem and articulate the simplicity with which which this new solution allows us to solve it.

You only have to be one page ahead of everyone else

It's an often-repeated joke in technical education that the instructor is usually only one page ahead of the audience. I've rarely found that to be the case when on internal education but I've often felt it was the case when I've been teaching. Perhaps it's the consultant's normal fear that everybody else knows just as much as you do.

I fly to Munich tomorrow morning to teach an advanced class on the new WebSphere Process Server product. I'm looking forward to this. There is a lot of great stuff in the product that will really help our clients. This is a chance for me to spread the word.

I'll be flying from London City Airport. This is my favourite of all London's airports. I must admit the main reason is because it's only a ten minute journey from my flat. However, it always has the shortest queues and is the least stressful to fly from. I just wish it would fly to more destinations. All they have to do is fill in the Royal Victoria Dock to make space for a second runway (preferably one that can take Jumbos). Map. Is that too much to ask? Is blighting the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents with pollution and unbearable noise 24/7 really too high a price to save me the pain of travelling to Heathrow?

In a world of mediocrity...

... tiny things like this wonderful video shine like a beacon.

It's not often that I see something and realise there was no way on earth I could ever have created it. Law, medicine, construction, newsreading... if I'd chosen to pursue most careers, I'm sure I'd have made a success of it. This little animation, however, reminded me that there are some things I'd never have been able to do. Excellent! The world isn't a bore, after all.

Sometimes it's more comforting to be misled

I have just returned from a business trip to Milan. Like every other Italian Hotel I have ever stayed in, there were no ironing facilities in the room. I learned long ago not to bother requesting them; I've yet to find an Italian Hotel that will send an Iron to my room. I don't know if this is a clever scam, an extraordinarily excessive (and wide-spread) intolerance of risk or because I've managed to offend the concierge in some way or another.

Consequently, I had to pay the hotel to press my shirts for me. I can't help thinking my company's shareholders would have preferred to keep that money for themselves, all things being equal. According to Yahoo, there are about 1.6 billion outstanding IBM shares. Which means I own approximately 0.00000625% of the company. I'm outraged! Under any theory of stock valuation, my net worth should have dropped by 0.000003125p. I'll never stay in that hotel again!

I digress. The purpose of this posting was actually to comment on the interesting taxi ordering system in use in Milan. It is very, very difficult to pre-book the city's cabs. Instead, one calls a taxi firm shortly before you need the cab and are given an estimated time of arrival and badge-number. That is: you'll be able to tell which cab is yours from a number on the door.

I was in Milan for a sales engagement. Normally in these situations, I get my hotel to book the cab the night before so I am sure to have one and can be sure of getting to my client's office in good time. The Milanese approach adds to my stress: I don't know how long I will have to wait for a cab when I book it so I either have to take a risk (based on previous observations of the time taken to arrive) or book absurdly early and risk losing some sleep. A dilemma indeed.

However, as inconvenient as this approach is, it does have some merits. In London, for example, it is possible to pre-book a black cab. This gives the comforting feeling of knowing you won't have to hail one the next morning. Unfortunately, it is a charade. From bitter experience, I have reached the conclusion that booking a black-cab gives only the sense of security. It seems that the request is only broadcast by the control room shortly before the cab is needed. So, in the event of bad traffic or unexpectedly high demand for cabs, there is a good chance your request will not be honoured.... so no different to the Milanese system except that it encourages you to relax rather than plan for the worst case.

The wisdom of crowds

There is an interesting piece on the Google Blog right now. They describe how the aggregated bets of hundreds of employees on future events turn out to be remarkably accurate.

The phenonemon they utilise is the one that means "Ask The Audience" inevitably gives a more accurate answer than the other "Millionaire" lifelines.

The Wisdom of Crowds is different to Herd Behaviour. My success of my nascent investment strategy is predicated on pretty much everybody else in the world being wrong so this is fortunate.

Meet the family

Part 2 in an occasional series. Today's colleague of distinction is Mr. Jon Mc Namara.

Jon - one of the top WebSphere MQ Workflow and Business Process Management consultants in Europe - moonlights as a top-flight comedian. His next gig is currently advertised outside Waitrose in Canary Wharf. Get your tickets for his Cabot Hall show early... it's sure to sell out.


Jon Mc Namara

Sun. Why?

I tend to take a dim view of Sun Microsystems. I just don't understand what they're for. Would the world be a worse place if they just shut up shop and went away? It's not clear to me that it would.

However, I do find Jonathan Schwartz's weblog entertaining and his enthusiasm goes a long way towards making them interesting. His recent broadside against Dell was most enjoyable.

Every so often, however, he goes one step further. Today's posting - a plea to his employees to quit leaking information to the press - was very brave. I don't think we'd have ever done that. Jonathan: I still don't understand what Sun is for but I take my hat off to you nevertheless.

Which would you choose?

I just came across a cool little thought experiment courtesy of this article outlining the Fed's current dilemma in setting interest rates.

The experiment referred to is Newcomb's Problem - it's been around for years, it would seem, but it's new to me. I think the author above does a good job of explaining it but here's a Wikipedia link to it too.

I think I'd probably take both boxes.

WebSphere Process Server is born!

I no longer have to disguise what all my trips to California have been about... WebSphere Process Server has been announced.

We actually announced a lot more than that today (see our press release for the full excitement).

Wolfgang does a good job of describing Process Server on developerWorks.

I'm one of the core software services team who have been working with this product prior to its release and am now good to go.... I'll be visiting lots of clients over the coming weeks and months... if you see me, say hello! And... if you can tell me what this was, I'll buy you a drink.

Oracle buys Siebel

Oracle buys Siebel

This is hardly a surprise but it's useful as evidence that the Applications business is clearly going through a massive consolidation. Peoplesoft, JD Edwards and Siebel are no longer independent entities, Microsoft is beginning to realise that their multiple overlapping offerings need to be rationalised and SAP are circling and surveying the spoils.

Note: I'm not authorised to speak for IBM and I don't pretend to. This is, after all, my personal blog. And speaking as such, this deal is pretty exciting for me. I work in Application Integration... I build Enterprise Service Buses and deploy Service Oriented Architectures for a living. The solutions I build and the products I work with are purpose-built to protect clients in these sorts of situations. "Your strategic CRM/ERP/xxx platform may have developed an unexpected inflection in its roadmap? No worries! We can deal with this without impacting any of your other systems."

Interestingly and concurrently, eBay bought Skype today for what Scoble thinks might be around $4bn. That's a decent proportion of the $5.85bn that Oracle paid for Siebel. I wonder who got more for their money? $4bn seems like a lot of money for an internet phone company... even one as hyped as Skype.

For those IBMers who read his blog, here's what I wrote on my internal-only site: click here

What on earth was that?

This is quite possibly the largest caterpillar I have ever seen in my life. It was so large I thought it was a fat slug



At least I *think* it was a caterpillar.

From the number of squirrels, foxes and weird freakish insects like this that I see, I'm convinced there's more wildlife in East London than the "countryside".

Sausages and doughnuts

The Guardian relaunch in a midsize "Berliner" format tomorrow. I still remember when they launched their last version in the eighties. I liked the last page of Saturday's edition.

Apple AirTunes

Wow.

I'm probably very late to this party but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it as much as everybody else.

Having ripped all my CDs and put the originals into storage (well, the loft), it means I need only my amplifier and iPod base station to access my entire music library in the living room. Wouldn't it be good, I thought, if I could choose tracks on iTunes on my laptop and get the sound to come out of the stereo. It would be so much easier than having to get out of my seat every time I wanted to change playlist. My mind leapt to thoughts of trailing wires, laptops that were suddenly somewhat less mobile and several broken ankles.

Mercifully, Apple have a solution: AirPort Express (and Extreme if you have more money than sense). It does lots of other cool stuff but the main thing one would buy it for is its iTunes integration. Put simply, you plug it in, install the software on your computer and five minutes later you can wirelessly beam music from your computer to your stereo. How cool is that?!

Would Inspector Sands please come to the operations room

Some excitement on my journey into work this morning. The Waterloo & City line train I was taking arrived at Waterloo and we spilled onto the platform and I headed for the exit.

I always try to position myself so I exit the train as close as possible to the platform exit I want. This meant I was one of the first people to bound up the steps to the main concourse..... except the gate at the top was shut.

So I turned round and tried to follow the rest of the crowd who had also seen this and were heading towards the other exit. Foiled! I hate being at the back of lines.

And then, in the distance, I could see half of the passengers turn around and start walking towards us - the other exit was presumably also closed. Excellent! They weren't going to get out before me after all!

I thought I'd better listen to the incessant passenger announcement in the station which was increasingly intruding into my enjoyment of the music on my iPod. There was some sort of emergency evacuation underway it seemed. Inspector Sands seemed to play a big role in all of this.... that means fire if I'm not mistaken. So locking us on the platform was probably a thoroughly sensible thing to do.In some alternate reality.

I followed a passenger back up the original staircase and saw that the gate wasn't locked. He opened it and we left through that exit.

I have no idea what the real issue was but I'm glad I travel the "wrong" way on the Waterloo & City for my commute and so have to share the train with very few people. If London Underground had decided to trap the W&C passengers at Waterloo during the afternoon rush hour there would have been mayhem.

In other exciting Underground-related news, they now have online "ETA Boards" for some of the lines. Hurrah!

Advanced Enterprise Service Bus

Hurrah! V6 of WebSphere Message Broker was announced today.

This version represents a major step forward in our message brokering technologies. The title of the article is significant: Broker v6 is all about building advanced ESBs.

I do wish we'd include some screenshots in our announcement literature though.

Beware experts!

Apparently three-quarters of Economists don't understand the concept of "Opportunity Cost". They only think they do.

This is scary, if not entirely unexpected.

It would be interesting to perform a similar experiment on IT professionals. Take the enterprise space. There are some key concepts you have to understand in this arena if you are to avoid being dangerous.

These are concepts that transcend fads or products. They include a fundamental understanding of transactions, two-phase commit, messaging, object-oriented programming, security, project-management principles and business context (and more).

There are moves afoot to improve the professionalism of the IT trade. They are, at present, experience based. Perhaps there should be some testing of core knowledge too.

Go, Steve!

I've long said that Microsoft is probably the only software vendor I would consider working for if I didn't work for IBM. Little anecdotes like this remind me why. I'm just glad I wasn't sitting near that desk.

The Michael Larsen Incident

Bruce Schneier's excellent blog pointed at this somewhat more frivolous than usual link today. I loved the description of Mr. Larsen's realisation that he had no exit strategy.

Bruce Schneier's blog is absolutely fascinating and should be considered a must-read for anybody working in IT on real projects. Indeed, given that he describes the importance (and difficulty) of computer security so clearly, he should be on every computer science course's reading list; failing to heed his advice should be a sackable offence.

Don't believe the majority; they're usually wrong

This link contains the "Zurich Axioms", a set of simple rules devised by a set of Swiss investors.

I particularly like 10: "ON CONSENSUS: Disregard the majority opinion. It is probably wrong."

That's not an investment-specific thought.... it should probably be pinned above every IT consultant's desk too.