I tested here different panoramic stitching products. I got a very good impression of The Panorama Factory v3.2 from Smoky City Design.
After some intensive tests and more than 10 days of usage, I decided to buy this product ($59.95), which is really great.
Since about 10 days now (see this post), I am using Sauce Reader from Synop.
I had at this time a good feeling/first impression concerning the tool, and, I must say, I am quite convinced about it. Great interface, very active development team, some good ideas. You can find the last realease here (free for personal use):
For me, the best tool on MS platform at this time :-) Let’s see how the competitors will move on.
Laurent is also testing intensively the tool. His impression here, and an explanation how to configure Sauce Reader for blogging on .Text (I got really no problem to configure the Blogger part ;-).
I was here today – a pond near Suarce in France, very restful day with the whole family. Nature and familiy are helping to keep the right priorities :-)
It is now time to talk about the Hedgehog concept of Jim Collins.
In this famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Those who build the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog Concept for their companies. Those who lead the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying advantage of a hedgehog concept, being instead scattered, diffused, and inconsistent.
The essential strategic difference between the good-to-great companies and the comparison companies lay in two fundamental distinctions. First, the good-to-great companies founded their strategies on deep understanding along three key dimensions – what we came to call the three circles. Second, the good-to.great companies translated that understanding into a simple, criytline concept that guided all their efforts – hence the term Hedgehog Concept.
A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, cristaline concept that flows from the deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles:
1. What you can be the best in the world
(and equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you posses a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
2. What drives your economic engine
All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash floww and profitability. In particluar, they discovered the single denominator – profit per x – that had the greatest impact on their economics (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector).
3. What you are deeply passionate about
The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stiulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.
Suppose you were able to construct a work life that meets the following three tests:
If you could drive toward the intersection of these three circles and translate thet intersection into a simple, cristaline concept that guided your life choices, then you’d have a Hedgehog Concept for yourself.
I bought this afternoon a Creative MuVo2 4GB, an MP3/WMA/WAV player for about 280 euros
(real size: 6.7 cm x 6.7 cm x 2 cm)
It contains a Hitachi HD (3.78 GB free), which is very fast and quiet. The MuVo2 needs no special installation on XP, it is seen as an external HD, the copy works fine and fast thanks to the USB 2.0 connection. The Winamp playlists are recognized without any problems (.m3u, ID3 tags). Battery life should be ok, let’s see next week with a real utilization.
Its small 132×32-pixel blue-backlit LCD offers ample information while a song is playing, such as the filename, the elapsed time, and the number of tracks in the current directory. It remains small, with just one line for displaying the information but it seems to be ok.
Last but not least: what about the sound quality? In this field, I’m a kind of – umh – annoying user… For me, the minimum acceptable bit-rate for MP3s is 256 kbit. I’ve tested the player with my AKG headphones, which are one of the reference for profesionals, largely used in studios. In a sense, they are my ears’ reference :-) I must say that the MuVo2 is really great in this field, an astounding sound quality!
So, first impression: great! Let’s see in some days.
Yesterday during the Microsoft CEO Summit, Bill Gates presented some of most important trends which are driving the IT industry. And, surprisingly, he talked about … blogging and RSS. Not bad ;-)
Another new phenomenon that connects into this is one that started outside of the business space, more in the corporate or technical enthusiast space, a thing called blogging. And a standard around that that notifies you that something has changed called RSS.
This is a very interesting thing, because whenever you want to send e-mail you always have to sit there and think who do I copy on this. There might be people who might be interested in it or might feel like if it gets forwarded to them they’ll wonder why I didn’t put their name on it. But, then again, I don’t want to interrupt them or make them think this is some deeply profound thing that I’m saying, but they might want to know. And so, you have a tough time deciding how broadly to send it out.
Then again, if you just put information on a Web site, then people don’t know to come visit that Web site, and it’s very painful to keep visiting somebody’s Web site and it never changes. It’s very typical that a lot of the Web sites you go to that are personal in nature just eventually go completely stale and you waste time looking at it.
And so, what blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to write something that you can think of, like an e-mail, but it goes up onto a Web site. And then people who care about that get a little notification. And so, for example, if you care about dozens of people whenever they write about a certain topic, you can have that notification come into your Inbox and it will be in a different folder and so only when you’re interested in browsing about that topic do you go in and follow those, and it doesn’t interfere with your normal Inbox.
And so if I do a trip report, say, and put that in a blog format, then all the employees at Microsoft who really want to look at that and who have keywords that connect to it or even people outside, they can find the information.
And so, getting away from the drawbacks of e-mail — that it’s too imposing — and yet the drawbacks of the Web site — that you don’t know if there’s something new and interesting there — this is about solving that.
The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it, and we’re progressively getting better and better at that by watching your behavior, ranking things in different ways.
After the first pair of swallows who came back on Mai 9, a new pair of swallows are now making their nest.
He set the highest standards of technique and uncovered possibilities in multi-layered rhythms which are still being explored.
Elvin Jones, regarded by many (and by myself) as the most influential modern jazz drummer, has died in the US of heart failure. He was 76. Jones was a member of the John Coltrane Quintet and played, among others (500 recordings!), with:
His health had deteriorated in recent months, but Jones only played his final show with his group last month, using an oxygen tank while on stage (!).
Like jazz drum greats Kenny Clarke and Max Roach before him, Mr. Jones de-emphasized the standard time-keeping role of jazz drumming. But he then went several steps beyond, constantly subdividing the beats he played and creating a free-flowing pulse that was a marvel of intricacy and invention. His stunning work earned him a broad array of admirers, including such top rock drummers as Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead and former San Diegan Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam.
After having talked about the Level 5 leaders, let’s have a look at the central concept “first who, then what”.
First get the right people (on the right seats) on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it.
If you begin with WHO rather than WHAT
If you begin with WHAT rather than WHO
Are you rigorous or ruthless?
How to be rigorous:
