John Brookmyre's Blog

What did your day look like?

2010-05-19T08:43:42Z

I am a bit rusty after not posting for an embarrassingly long time – so dusting off my virtual note pad and finding a pen here goes…

Firstly as some of you know, I have now left South Africa and cannot miss this opportunity to publically thank some special people who were pillars for me professionally and personally. The client team to whom I owe so much – John Roberts, Edward Hagemeier, Jan Louw and Sibo Shingange – I have learnt an incredible amount from our time together and feel hugely privileged to have served you. I will never forget our immensely enjoyable rants / rambles, gentle teasing and witty jabs. I look forward to keeping in touch with you all. From “our side”, the EMC Consulting team of Richard Obree, Chas Simpson, Dumisani Zinondo, Phuzo Soko, Nicole Day and many others made our achievements and success possible. A special thanks to Oom John Jordaan who was a guiding light for me and last but certainly not least, a massive thank you to Paul Kikano whose ability, knowledge, patience, strength, skills, <lots more virtues> know no bounds – thanks PK!

Back to the post before I get too misty eyed… Do you ever have one of those frustrating days where you have nothing to show for your efforts? Well those days are over with a neat little program which sits in the background quietly picking up your mouse movements and clicks to produce some pretty neat looking visualisations.

This is my handy work – or rather 3 hours of my work. The tool is called IOGraph and can be downloaded from here. As the web site mentions, it is the brain child of Moscow designer Anatoly Zenkov who wanted “to brighten up the routine work”. But I like to think that it turns your day into an artistic snapshot of activity.

Watch this space – back on the blog trail!

John

Tourism and Technology - Virtual Tour of London and South Africa 2010

2009-11-02T03:56:00Z

Living away from home makes you miss friends, family… and, perhaps oddly, the place. VR Web Design offer a service which gives a Virtual Tour of London and other cities which is very innovative and cool.

Note: the spheres are areas of focus / interest which can be clicked on to shift the focus to another part of the city.

This was another Matthew Harris find (thanks for the gems big show). It is especially relevant as I recently was interviewed for an article in the South African media regarding the impact of the Internet and how information can help the leisure and hotel industry in the South Africa in the lead up to the World Cup 2010 and beyond. Below are some of the thoughts I had on this and I would be really interested to know your thoughts:

The opportunities offered to hotel and leisure organisations by the internet and Web 2.0.

The routes to market for the hotel and leisure industry have dramatically changed over the last decade as well as the behavioural patterns of users – this is thanks to the Internet’s evolution (in terms of technology, the Internet’s reach and bandwidth improvements – the above is a perfect example) and revolution (with the dawning of social network sites) both contributing to the explosion of Internet users making the internet the norm for information gathering and importantly, sharing. No longer do people visit travel agents as their main research point for holiday travel or a simple website but rather they use a myriad of sources such as interactive maps – where a potential visitor can explore the services of the facility / area, or user generated content (previous visitors have shared comments along with pictures and movies) which gives the customer a much better appreciation of the experience of people with the same make up – the reputation of companies is now totally in the public domain.

CRM, ERP, BI and other operational systems – are they worth implementing?

IT is an enabler and can be used to give a competitive advantage in any industry; this is true of the hotel and leisure industry. Information and data which is held by a company is an asset and like all assets this should be fully utilised. The data held on customers (nationality, number of guests in the party, stay, frequency of stay, questionnaire responses, activities) should contribute to building up the picture of the types of people who should be targeted – this can assist with marketing campaigns, it can ensure continuous improvements to cater for the guests and also potentially show opportunities to highlight potential weaknesses or opportunities to partner. Planning for events should use the benefit of hindsight and therefore historic data so that effective planning can occur. The information you have should also be enriched with other data which is in the public domain – dates of games, weather, scheduled trips etc so that an effective looking glass is available to use what if analysis. The other facet of technology which may be utilised is collaboration – find out what your staff think, find out what your guests think while they are there, share ideas and thoughts with partner operators or even competitors.

Gearing up for 2010 – how IT can help.

Whether you are a small or large firm we are approaching a fantastically exciting time with 2010 for the hotel and leisure industry in South Africa - technology is here as an enabler and an accelerator - failure to use it is not asking to fail but it increases the risk of missing out on making the most of this opportunity – 2010 can be a spring board to an exciting future and technology will give a competitive advantage – the customers are using it shouldn’t you? As the old adage goes the customer is always right - with the explosion of user generated content the customer is now always right and if he is not happy he will tell the world and they are listening.

On this subject, I am in Seattle this week for a conference and have noticed that in the hotel lobby there are Surface devices to explore the local area and facilities which is quite cool although the people who were on them earlier where playing draughts / checkers – still collaboration, right?…

Would love to hear your thoughts,

John

Technorati Tags: Data Visualisation,Data Visualization,South Africa 2010,Knowlege Management,Information Visualisation,Innovation

Brand – The gap filler

2009-08-26T22:57:21Z

I am currently working in South Africa where we are starting up an EMC Consulting practice – very exciting, daunting, awesome and frightening all at once. But this post isn’t about what we are doing as EMC Consulting but an observation of something that I have noticed since been out here – brand is important.

Obviously there are a myriad of questions which pop into your head when you move abroad – but having been here now for a couple of months it is awesome. So the questions I have had range from the serious:

Where am I going to stay?
Where is safe?
What happens in an emergency?
How do I get around / where can I hire a car?
What are the risks?

All the tricky things you need to know about a new place and when you are finding your feet and then the not so serious:

What is the best type of beer?
Will I hear lions from the office / hotel (thanks to the guys who had me believing this for a week)?
What car shall I hire / where shall I get it from?
What is for dinner?
What can I drink?

As I found myself finding answers to these questions I realised that I was relying heavily on the brand identities that I knew, reinforcing the power of brand - I bought a TomTom, drank water and beer (not always my favourites but out of the ones on offer my favourite available). Then as I got more used to the place and met residents I hired a car - local outfit which was recommended as I would have gone to Avis, I also tried Castle and then Windhoek (sp?) beer on recommendations of locals. I realised that in the absence of local knowledge you only have the brand name to go on. I also realised that brands have very different meanings dependent on the markets that they are targeting. I also noticed that I would try something new rather than a brand I didn’t like. I was essentially substituting the brand for local knowledge and using the preconceived ideas associated with a brand, the familiarity to bridge the void of local knowledge. Then I started thinking about the World Cup; the branding, the image and how it ties into the location and geography… – maybe for my next post…

Any thoughts always welcome,

John

Technorati Tags: Observations,brand

Outsourcing the information worker

2009-07-19T18:25:27Z

You may have heard the latest developing trend around outsourcing the information worker such as the law firm Pinsent who outsource litigation work to South Africa, however I was very impressed by this article which Matt Harris passed on to me – essentially the Telegraph have had a fantastic couple of months with the expenses scandal and held all the cards on this huge story… that is until the information entered the public domain, this is where the Guardian came up with the ingenious plan – get the public to sift through the information and spot new insights.

The user goes to the site and can then trawl through the claims, through a simple interface certain storeys can be flagged and then the Guardians journalists can investigate the most interesting / highlighted cases – almost feels like you are playing a game / being nosey:

At the time of writing – of 458,832 pages of documents 200,139 have been reviewed by 23,089 people. So only 258,693 to go...

There is another site, Galaxy Zoo, which I know of which harnesses the power of the public as a free resource and that is in identifying galaxies

Next question – how can you make this work for commercial gain – Guardian have started already in identifying areas of interest in order to get their employees to do the high value investigation / analytics rather than trawling. Keen to know your thoughts?

Thanks,

John

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing,Information Worker,Data Visualisation,Data Visualization,Information Visualisation,Information Visualization,Knowledge Management,Social BI,User Experience,User Interaction,John Brookmyre

Google Chrome OS

2009-07-08T07:58:47Z

Do you use Google Chrome? Or do you use the web? Well if you answer yes to either of those this will be of interest - Google have announced that they are in the early stages of developing a lightweight OS - “It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be”. Google Chrome OS will primarily be aimed at people who spend most of their time on the web and is separate to Android “Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices… While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.” There isn’t a huge amount of detail on the Official Google Blog but there is enough to perk up interest as Google move into the OS space. Highlights:

open source
will initially be targeted at netbooks
Q4 2009 will open-source its code
Q3 2010 netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available
seperate to Android

It sounds like the OS will be web centric and it will be interesting to see how this progresses – taking on Linux distros like Ubuntu or going for the jugular by competing with Microsoft’s netbook version of Windows 7 and also beyond…

Thanks for reading,

John

Geo Data Visualization – Here and There

2009-06-23T21:47:01Z

I have come across a visualization technique called Here and There by Schulze and Webb from Alexis Kennedy (as ever thanks), other blogs and Wired Magazine (UK, June 2009). See below what it looks like:

As mentioned in Wired, it is like street view on a roller coaster – eye level and birds eye view. It is definitely innovative but it is not immediately clear what this gives above the “old world” of Google Maps and Google Earth. It is cool but what benefits can it offer - Some ideas that are suggested on S&W’s blog are:

see through the city into the distance
real-time activities like:

traffic volume overlaid on the distant city map
taxis or other services
bottle necks
all the things you can do with Google Earth / maps

All the same it is always nice to see a new way of visualising. Comments, thoughts and ideas would be appreciated!

John

Technorati Tags: Data Visualisation,Data Visualization,Geo,Wired,John Brookmyre,Information Visualisation,Information Visualization

The Internet is changing… on June 16th at 9:00 a.m (CEDT)

2009-06-14T08:28:47Z

This is the bold claim by the web browser company - Opera. Watch this space on Tuesday. What this actual means is unknown and any conjecture is circumspect but there is an article on The Register here which explains what this could be…

So on Tuesday at 9 AM (8 AM BST) the web will be reinvented here – it is great that outlandish claims are still being made and that hopefully this will show innovation is still rife. With the logo it is clear that this will be cloud related (what isn’t?) but details are very much unknown. Thinking a loud based on current trends it could be:

Collaboration and integration – a Google Wave-esque experience or Twitter / Facebook-type features
Single Experience – improvements to users having a single online experience and saving there information and data. A new Live Mesh?
Search – a(nother) new approach to search
Any ideas?

Hopefully this will be something interesting and not just a market gimmick for a new gadget which might be cool but offers little benefit. If you have any thoughts on what this might be then feel free to comment below!

Thanks for reading,

John

twitter.com/brookmyre

Technorati Tags: Opera,Innovation,Future Trends,Cloud,EMC Consulting,John Brookmyre

European Elections – Data Visualization

2009-06-08T07:20:37Z

Recently I have been writing a lot on search engines and specifically Google, now I want to go back to the topic of visualization and to quickly share some of the impressive visuals that the BBC used last night to show how the voting was going across the UK and the rest of Europe:

Here is the visualization tool that was on the website so you could slice and dice by various dimensions such as country, reference back to the 2004 elections and drill into detail:

Any comments or other links are welcome and thanks for looking,

John

twitter.com/brookmyre

Technorati Tags: Data Visualisation,Data Visualization,Information Visualisation,Information Visualization,European Elections,BBC

Bing

2009-06-07T10:23:44Z

Microsoft have launched a new Search Engine called Bing incorporating the technology comes from Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset (not just a rebrand of Windows Live). It is being marketed as more than just a search engine, rather as a decision engine. It is in preview and you can try it out here, the video is worth a look too.

The decision engine is multi faceted with Bing, Multimap and Ciao (for shopping), here is a video here which gives an overview of the tool:

In a press release Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying - “Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find”. A good premise! So is this a reason for Google to wake up screaming in the night? Only time will tell but here is an amusing article on Search Engine Land by Lance Loveday who dispels this and explains that whilst Microsoft are onto something it probably won’t break the Google habit (Gord Hotchkiss concept). I like Gord’s article and this also brings to bear (in my mind at least) the thoughts I have been having on the command line interface to the Internet / World that is Google – I search for everything even if I know the web address or have a bookmark I normally just bash it into Google, or I can find out the currency conversion rates or weight conversions and loads more… but that is for another post... One plaudit for Bing is that it is getting good traction and depending on who you believe it is creeping up on Yahoo, here is a post by Greg Sterling on the stats that are out at the moment – looks very promising for Microsoft.

One thing for sure is that search is morphing and with Bing, Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared innovation is rife and should be applauded. I have noticed a lot of criticism for the tools but it is worth remembering that these tools are in beta / previews and under development so get into the vision and the execution will follow… hopefully.

Thanks for reading,

John

twitter.com/brookmyre

Technorati Tags: Search,Bing,Google,Wolfram|Alpha,Future

Google Wave

2009-05-31T09:00:08Z

Google have launched a personal communication and collaboration tool called Google Wave – all web based and open source of course. Its primary goal is to make collaboration more efficient and easier – Looks like it could be a real competitor for Outlook, Office and SharePoint. I can’t wait to get the invite to try this stuff out if I get a developer preview hint, hint Google (John.Brookmyre@EMC.com).

Here is a talk by Vic Gundotra (Vice President Engineering) and some of the Wave Team introducing the tool including Jens and Lars Rasmussen (of Maps fame), Stephanie Hannon and others:

The video is over 1hr 20 mins long but here are the key points:

Premise	05:30
Demo	07:37
API	18:20
Document Sharing	30:00 (ish)
Organisation (tags)	40:12
Extensions	43:20
Efficiency Benefits	49:05
Games and more extensions	51:00
Extensions with existing workflow	1:01:50
Protocol	1:06:05
Language translator	1:12:00

The premise behind this is - What would email look like if it was invented today? Based on all the knowledge and tools that we have today (wikis, bulletin boards, collaborations, IM…) it would have been done differently, it would look like this.

Some of the benefits:

Email and chat can be done seamlessly
Discussion and content in one tool (blurring emails and wikis etc together)
Chat can be live (no more waiting seeing - “<User> is entering text”) - This is all web browser based (HTML 5)
Play back to the see the history of the Wave - historic messages / Waves (even if you are added later) - This is all web browser based (HTML 5)
Private messages within Waves – a tree structure of messages
Spell check – with contextual checking against a language model based on the Internet! Can I have some bean soup? It has been so long - This is all web browser based (HTML 5)
Drag and drop attachments onto the Wave with thumbnails showing before the files are copied - This is all web browser based (HTML 5 + Gears)
Advanced collaborative with blogs functionality – updates and comments
Source control inspired sharing and collaboration to work on sections of documents
Collaborative editing - Multi-user simultaneous editing
Multi language support and language translator!!!
Drag and drop Wave links (Wiki-esque behaviour)
API to change behaviour and extend such as embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets
Gadgets / Extensions and Robots to extend the functionality
Built on the Google Web Toolkit
Extensions can add Twitter or other 3rd parties through the APIs (TWaves for Twitter)
Federation – open source / open system
Google Wave Federation Protocol which is the underlying network protocol for sharing waves between wave providers
This is all web browser based (HTML 5)

For more info on the Wave check out these links:

About Wave
API
Protocol (white papers and forum)

There is a Q&A session here too (video at the bottom – not great quality).

I can’t wait to get the invite to try this stuff out with a developer preview (John.Brookmyre@EMC.com).

Any comments or opinions would be much appreciated,

John

Technorati Tags: Google Wave,Collaboration,John Brookmyre