This Blog Moved to http://roman.stanek.org

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Bear Stearns vs. Vuth Sem

(NEW YORK The Associated Press): On the verge of a collapse that could have shaken the very foundations of the U.S. financial system, investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. was bailed out Friday by a rival and the federal government.

Foundations of capitalism are shaking but my friend Vuth Sem is fortunately unaware of that. On the same day Bear Stearns signed a merger agreement with JP Morgan Chase in a stock swap worth $2 a share I received the following message from Kiva.org:

Dear Roman Stanek,

We are very pleased to notify you that the business you have loaned to, Motor Taxi service run by Vuth Sem, has repaid the full amount of this loan $300.00. The payment was collected and deposited by Sive Chheng Sreng.

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13041

Mac OS X Software List

A few years ago Stefan published list of his favorite Mac utilities. When I started to use the new MB Air last week I realized that my list is completely different:

Gmail
del.icio.us
Remember The Milk
Google Calendar
Plaxo
Google Reader
LinkedIn
Blogger
Facebook
Google Docs
Flickr
YouTube

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Firefox and Adium...

There was something in the air...

... and after a series of long flights (via Shanghai, Anchorage and San Francisco) it landed on my desk:

TripIt!

Every time I planned my travel I ended up with a pile of confirmation emails from different sources: airlines, hotels, car rental companies, internet travel agents and so on. It was usually very difficult to create an itinerary from this mess. Until today!

Everything changed when I joined TripIt earlier today. I simply forwarded the confirmations to plans@tripit.com and I ended up with a very detailed travel plan for my upcoming US visit. Few clicks and I was done. Now I have everything in one place. Integrated with my Google calendar. The best Web 2.0 app I ever used. By far...

ZD on BI

Zdenek "ZD" Svoboda joined the blogosphere a few days ago...

Near miss

I always wondered why English uses the expression "near miss" when "near hit" would be more logical. But after the last weekend when hurricane Emma brought down some large trees around our house I am glad the tree missed my car and it did not not hit it:

BI minus BS equals Good Data

Today starts a new chapter of my life. After a year of hard work my team and I are coming out of stealth mode and launching a new company: Good Data Corporation.

We've built a complete, on-demand business intelligence platform combining analytics, reporting, data warehousing and data integration. Our primary focus is collaborative analytics. We believe that sharing and teamwork will allow our users to move past isolated reports and arrive at the true meaning of "business intelligence."

How is it different? It's fast, it's flexible, and it's on-demand. We've packed a sophisticated bundle into a simple package. By focusing on the right features, we've eliminated feature bloat. And it's secure, too.

We've been working hard, and I would love to hear your thoughts. If you would like to learn more about Good Data please visit http://www.gooddata.com.

Cape Clear gone

Workday announced yesterday the acquisition of Cape Clear Software. I believe that this is an important deal for several reasons:

- any successful SaaS company will have to solve the problem of data/process integration. Existing applications inside the firewall need to be integrated with an external On Demand processes outside of the firewall. An acquisition of integration company can potentially solve this problem.

- Cape Clear was one of the last independent SOA companies. This is another proof that SOA is no longer an independent activity. It is part of enterprise software (IBM, HP), BPM software (Software AG) and now Saas (Workday).

- we used to compete against Cape Clear at Systinet and it was a great source of inspiration for us. Acquisition of Cape Clear closes one chapter of my career...

We've moved!

This is the new address of Prague office:

Jindrisska 24, Prague 1

Elaine the Hacker Story

I can't wait to find out what will happen to Ellain and her mother. You can follow the story here...

Facebook Elastic Compute Cloud

Some ideas are just way too obvious and Joyent's Free Accelerator (on-demand infrastructure for Facebook application hosting) is one of them...

IBM buying Cognos

This famous Data General advertisment (it actually never ran) is over 25 years old, but after a small update it can be used even today:

They Say IBM’s Entry Into On Demand BI Will Legitimize The Market. The Bastards Say, Welcome.

Good King Wenceslas

Today is a public holiday in the Czech Republic. Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia was killed by his brother Boleslaus on this day back in 936 (or possibly 929), yet it is still a good reason to enjoy a three day weekend. No wonder they call him Good King Wenceslas...

On the Road Again

After a long wait I managed to get through the Heathrow Flight Disconnect and I landed safely in the US yesterday.

I plan to meet with the potential customers, VCs, analysts, advisers, partners and even some friends in Boston, New York and San Francisco. Overall almost forty meetings in one week. This trip reminds me the crazy travel schedule of Systinet days when I had to fly Prague - Tokyo - San Francisco - Los Angeles - Boston - London - Prague in one week (ever since I was a kid I knew from Jules Verne's book that this way around the globe I gain one working day).

I did not have to travel as much at HP but things are different here at GDC. And so I am on the road again...

It’s official!

The Flight Connection Centre at the Heathrow airport has been renamed to Heathrow Flight Disconnect. I think it’s a better name for a central security checkpoint that doesn’t scale to the increased security measures and the growth of traffic at Heathrow...

Apple's answer to Ubuntu

This is how Nelson Mandela once explained the meaning of Ubuntu: "Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to improve?" And here is a recent answer from Apple:

The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux.

I don't think anybody needs Nelson Mandela to explain the meaning of this answer...

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner published this classic paper almost fifty years ago but I was not aware of it until today. In case you are even remotely interested in mathematics or physics I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did...

Notification of Potential Data Breach

Dear ... Employee,

We recently became aware of an incident involving information that may affect you. A laptop belonging to an ... director was lost during a business trip to Atlanta in late July. The laptop contained personal information on some employees, including you...The laptop was secured by a user name/password combination...

I received the letter above a few days ago from one of my former employers. It made me wonder what other sensitive data were on a laptop used by director of a large publicly traded company. And could this possibly happen if they used Software as a Service HR application?

SaaS will not make data on notebooks safer, but the chances are that this person would not need to download my personal information to his or her notebook. It is clear to me that incidents like this one prove that SaaS model is not inherently less secure...

You say "Apple", I hear "control"

Ever since I came out as a Mac user little over a year ago I've been very happy with this choice. Unfortunately "choice" is not really word from Apple's vocabulary. Everything related to products, music, software, public relations, technical support and so on is very tightly controlled by Apple.

I do understand that control give us the fully integrated experience we get from Mac or iPod but sometimes it's simply overdone. One of many examples could be the famous Macbook Random Shutdown problem. It took Apple way too long to even acknowledge the existence of the problem and it really upset the community of users. Sometimes the control becomes completely counterproductive: you can't simply report a problem with iTunes to Apple. You have to pick from "I bought the wrong version of a song", "I bought the same song twice" and other pre-fabricated options that blame you, the user, before you can even send message to Apple.

Larry Lessig called me once a post-communist capitalist but I don't think he was correct. I am simply looking for more balanced relationship with my computer/music player/software/media supplier. And I guess this is why I am using Ubuntu more and more. At the end of the day Ubuntu means: "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am"...

PS. Apparently the other possible meaning of Ubuntu is "I can’t configure Debian"...