via Spitzer Space Telescope

A marvelous picture from the NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Absolutely fantastic!

This dazzling infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy. In visible-light pictures, this region cannot be seen at all because dust lying between Earth and the galactic center blocks our view.

In this false-color picture, old and cool stars are blue, while dust features lit up by blazing hot, massive stars are shown in a reddish hue. Both bright and dark filamentary clouds can be seen, many of which harbor stellar nurseries. The plane of the Milky Way’s flat disk is apparent as the main, horizontal band of clouds. The brightest white spot in the middle is the very center of the galaxy, which also marks the site of a supermassive black hole.

The region pictured here is immense, with a horizontal span of 890 light-years and a vertical span of 640 light-years. Earth is located 26,000 light-years away, out in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Though most of the objects seen in this image are located at the galactic center, the features above and below the galactic plane tend to lie closer to Earth.

Scientists are intrigued by the giant lobes of dust extending away from the plane of the galaxy. They believe the lobes may have been formed by winds from massive stars.

This image is a mosaic of thousands of short exposures taken by Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), showing emissions from wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange), and 8.0 microns (red). The entire region was imaged in less than 16 hours.

The center of the Milky Way galaxy: [click to enlarge]

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Stolovy (SSC/Caltech)

via Leo and Wikipedia

“Mandantenfähigkeit” and Multitenancy

We had on last Tuesday an internal discussion about our innoveo product and we discussed, among others, the fact that our components are “Mandantenfähig”. This term is a German word and we had quite a long discussion within the team to explain in English what does that means. Because we didn’t know *any* translation in English and/or in French.

I had a look at LEO (the best way to translate properly from German to English and vice-versa), no translation but quite a lot of discussions in their forum. And finally a very good proposal for the translation with
a link to Wikipedia and the explanation and definition of “multitenancy” (adjective : multitenant). I haven’t heard this term (or read it) but it is exactly the definition of “Mandantenfähigkeit” ;-)

Multitenancy – what is that?

Multitenancy refers to the architectural principle, where a single instance of the software runs on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor’s servers, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). Multitenancy is contrasted with a multi-instance architecture where separate software instances (or hardware systems) are set up for different client organizations. With a multitenant architecture, a software application is designed to virtually partition its data and configuration so that each client organization works with a customized virtual application instance.

Multitenancy – Economics

Cost Savings
Multitenancy allows for cost savings over and above the basic economies of scale achievable from consolidating IT resources into a single operation. This is largely because of the licensing costs of the underlying software (such as operating systems and database management systems). Put crudely, if you can run everything on a single software instance, you only have to buy one software licence.

Complexity
Because of the additional customization complexity and the need to maintain per-tenant metadata, multitenant applications require a larger development effort than applications designed using a more isolated approach. But, because they can support more tenants per server, their ongoing operational costs tend to be lower.

Multitenancy – Requirements

Multitenant applications are typically required to provide a high degree of customization to support each target organization’s needs. Customization typically includes the following aspects:

• Branding: allowing each organization to customize the look-and-feel of the application to match their corporate branding (often referred to as a distinct “skin”).
• Workflow: accommodating differences in workflow to be used by a wide range of potential customers.
• Extensions to the data model: supporting an extensible data model to give customers the ability to customize the data elements managed by the application to meet their specific needs.
• Access control: letting each client organization independently customize access rights and restrictions for each user.

Conclusion – innoveo product

First, it is really cool to have found a translation after years of tries.
More seriously, it is absolutely crazy to read this Wikipedia definition because we got the feeling to read…a definition of what we are doing at innoveo! The economics are very clearly described and after 7 years of experience with such kind of development, I can tell you that these descriptions are completely representing the reality. Also from a requirement point of view, they are really greatly defined and summarized in these 4 bullets above.

So, if you are searching for a real proven and solid multitenant solution for your development, please take contact with us, we can definitely help at innoveo!

Above a list of the different publications and articles linked with my work in the last years by Helvetia, ecenter solutions, and now, innoveo.

This list is not the definitive one, I know that some stuff are missing (at least: one book, one award, and one article).

via Seth Godin and VirtualHosting.com

Food for thoughts and, for some parts, “scientific” explanation of our implicit way to present information. Really excellent!

Eye-tracking studies are hot in the web design world, but it can be hard to figure out how to translate the results of these studies into real design implementations. These are a few tips from eye-tracking studies that you can use to improve the design of your webpage.

Above the 23 Lessons Learnt:

1. Text attracts attention before graphics.
2. Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
3. Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
4. Readers ignore banners.
5. Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
6. Show numbers as numerals.
7. Type size influences viewing behavior.
8. Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
9. People generally scan lower portions of the page.
10. Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
11. One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
12. Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
13. Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
14. Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
15. Bigger images get more attention.
16. Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
17. Headings draw the eye.
18. Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
19. Lists hold reader attention longer.
20. Large blocks of text are avoided.
21. Formatting can draw attention.
22. White space is good.
23. Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.

via U2log.com

If you like U2, or simply music, you should have a look at this never-released video of surely one of the best song of the Irish band: Red Hill Mining Town.

This song was released on the “Joshua Tree” album, for about 20 years!!! And U2 didn’t release this video till today, although it is quite cool ;-) specially after 20 years! Have a look at over videos which are 20 years old, will be funny.

The Joshua Tree is already 20 years old, pfffuuuu. To my mind, one of the best album ever released, just exceptional.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRekLUX3GE]

I have told you for a while that my “preferred” webcam showing the marvelous Bay of Saint Jean at Saint Barth is working again.

Have a look at the picture taken this afternoon (16.00 – Saint Barth time), absolutely fantastic! Great and nice colors. And, you know, I will be there in exactly 71 days ;-)

[click to enlarge]

Loic and Géraldine LeMeur (Loic, you are *always* interrupting your wife ;-) have given a press conference (in French) some days ago. Quite interesting, they have presented the whole event and the program. Some highlights below.

The conference

• fourth edition of the conference
• as usual, in English
• last year: 1’300 participants and 36 nationalities
• this year, about 1’500 participants expected, 2’000 as a maximum. for the three first editions, people were refused
• 907 participants already registered
• budget: about 1 million EUR
• 120’000 EUR just for the wifi setup, bandwidth of 250 to 300 MB/s expected
• also as usual, no ads or mailing campaigns, just word of mouth, specially through the bloggers
• about 32 (!) partners for the conference among others google, microsoft, ibm, nokia, orange, …
• one central “plenary” room for 1’500 people, a second room for networking with a direct retransmission of the central room presentations, a third room for the startup competition
• start-up competition: 120 startups registered, 30 have been pre-selected for the competition, and grouped in 4 domains:
  • b2b
  • video
  • mobile
  • consumers

The program

There are just some highlights and notices for myself for the conference ;-) You can find the official program there and the workshops program here.

• First day

• micro-blogging, Evan Williams, founder of Twitter and Blogger
• social information (controversial), with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg
• why books and school lectures still exist, Hans Rosling
• creation and innovation as a isolated process, Philippe Stark
• impact of technology on corporate culture, Nelson Mattos from Google
• technology and its impact on our society, June Cohen from TED conference
• Karl-Heinz Brandenburg, the creator of the MP3 format (!)
• 3 tracks about the future of the music industry
• digitized world, Joi Ito (!), about virtual worlds and games and specially World of Warcraft
• casual games, Jeff Clavier, Mathieu Nouzareth from Boonty
• disruption and innovation, Hugh MacLeod
• and a last track about branding in virtual worlds

Promised, a last picture of our office! At the very beginning of the renovation works. Thanks to Nick ;-)

Beginning of this week, I have presented you some pictures of the works in progress in our future innoveo’s office.

The situation there this afternoon. Almost finished!

[my future office]

Cool!

After a break of 3.5 months, the nicest webcam of St Barth is back. Marvelous view of the Saint Jean Bay. Small (resolution: 555×420) and big size (resolution: 1280×960) are available.

[click on the picture to see the bigger one]