SATN. Wow, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, and David Reed have gotten together for a group weblog called SATN. [Hack the Planet]

Wow pretty much sums it up. These are major smart guys who deeply get the connection between technology and strategy. Sit at their feet grasshopper and learn.

10:12:30 PM •  • comment  

Know Your TCO? "While TCO (total cost of ownership) has long since entered into IT jargon, most people who I've heard toss the term about with knowing looks don't appear to understand it." We all know we should make decisions and recommendations based on TCO, but how do you go about comuting it? Mike Tarrani has posted a number of links to TCO-related resources including a good overview. TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes from the Field [Blogarithms]

Looks like a worthwhile reference..

9:56:25 PM •  • comment  

A Vision of the Office of the Future - from today's NY Times (registration required)

BlueSpace, which I.B.M. designed with the furniture company Steelcase, represents their joint vision of how technology might solve myriad frustrations of daily work life, from uncomfortable temperatures to hard-to-find colleagues to cramped meeting space. And it embodies the companies' notion that the distinction between inanimate furniture and dynamic devices will soon blur.

"We were both going after the same holy grail, a way to integrate architecture, furniture and technology, and let users control their environment," said Mark T. Greiner, senior vice president for research, concepts and ventures at Steelcase.

Concept spaces are probably like concept cars. Full of lots of different ideas most of which will never appear in the real world. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the Times considers this line of work to be worthy of attention.

We don't really know all that much about how physical space or software environments affect knowledge work and we know even less about how the two combined might interact.  What I wanted to see in this piece, and didn't, was some hint that the designers of all this stuff had spent time watching how people actually did there work. Then we might be on to something important.

9:24:54 AM •  • comment