[via CICLOPS]

New raw images from Cassini have captured breathtaking views of Saturn’s splendid moons and rings, including distant shots of Enceladus and its icy plumes.

[via Marc, again]

Metric driven management from Scott Maxwell, a difficult but so strategic part of leadership, specially when your company is growing. Very interesting.

When you can accurately predict your results in each operating unit, it means less risk and a greater opportunity to scale your company without blowing your capital (missed quarters get more and more expensive as you grow!). Being able to make accurate predictions also means that:

• You have an operating model (not just a collection of people), which allows you to scale better,
• You understand the key drivers of output in your operating model,
• You are consistently managing the unit to your operating model,
• You have a set of early warning signs (your key drivers) that you can focus more attention on when they get below certain thresholds (i.e., it helps you to know where to spend your time),
• You have a set of measures that you can benchmark against other companies to understand where you have opportunities to move to best practices, and
• You know when you need to add staff or other resources well before you get caught short.

Finally, the understanding of the above gives you a solid platform for experimenting with new approaches and accurately evaluating the effectiveness of the new approaches (thereby allowing you to kill the approaches that don’t work and expanding the approaches that do work).

Over time, the nature of emerging growth companies is that they move from simpler approaches to more sophisticated approaches (more specialists, more channels of distribution, more products, more marketing channels, more approaches to customer service) and you want to make sure that you continue to evolve in the right direction (note: this is not an argument to get more sophisticated as an end to itself, just that getting more sophisticated leads to better operating results as you growl…you clearly need to keep your operation as simple as possible).

[via Mercer]

Wow, it seems that we are not the only one in ecenter solutions thinking that Zurich is a *great* city :-)

How it works

The analysis is part of an annual World-wide Quality of Living Survey, covering more than 350 cities, to help governments and multinational companies place employees on international assignments. Each city is based on an evaluation of 39 criteria, including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport, and other public services. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, which has an index score of 100.

Ranking

Zurich ranks as the world’s top city for quality of living, according to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The city scores 108.2 and is only marginally ahead of Geneva, which scores 108.1, while Vancouver follows in third place with a score of 107.7. In contrast, Baghdad is the lowest ranking city in the survey, scoring just 14.5.

Europe and Middle East

Almost half the top 30 scoring cities are in Western Europe. In this region, Vienna follows Zurich and Geneva in 4th position with a score of 107.5. Other highly-rated cities include Düsseldorf (107.2), Frankfurt (107.0) and Munich (106.8) in positions 6, 7 and 8 respectively. Athens remains the lowest scoring city in Western Europe, scoring 86.8 at position 79.

London is the UK’s highest ranking city and is stable at position 39 (score 101.2). The two other UK cities covered in the survey are Birmingham and Glasgow, which both score 98.3 and climb one place to joint 55th position.

Dublin has dropped two places to 24th position, scoring 103.8, mainly due to increased traffic congestion.

As predicted, cities in Eastern Europe such as Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague, Vilnius, Tallinn and Warsaw continue to benefit from incremental score increases and are gradually climbing the rankings.

Americas

Honolulu, the highest ranking city in the U.S., drops two positions to 27th with a score of 103.3. San Francisco remains at 28th position and scores 103.2. Boston, Washington, Chicago and Portland follow in positions 36, 41, 41 and 43 respectively (scores 101.9, 100.4, 100.4 and 100.3) while Houston remains the lowest ranking city in the U.S. at position 68 (score 95.4). Overall, U.S. cities continue to slip slightly or remain stable in the rankings, except Chicago which has moved up 11 places due to decreased crime rates.

Asia Pacific

Auckland and Wellington have both moved up the rankings from 8th to 5th and 14th to 12th places respectively, mainly due to strong internal stability relative to other cities, while Sydney remains at position 9 with a score of 106.5.

In Asia, Singapore ranks 34th (score 102.5) followed by Tokyo, Japan’s highest scoring city, at position 35 (score 102.3). Hong Kong’s modern and efficient infrastructure, including its airport (which is considered one of best in the world), has pushed it up from 70th to 68th position with a score of 95.4.

The top-ranking city in China is Shanghai in 103rd place (score 80.1).

I haven’t posted for a while about the last interesting stuff I have listened to in the last time. Some great CD’s and DVD’s, all in one post.

Gotan Project – Lunatico

Something completely new for me, the second album of the Gotan Project, Lunatico. Refreshing and excellent!

Skillfully mixing the heated passion of tango with the cool insistent beats of dance music, the group kept the best of both genres as it offered up an unheralded fusion. This time around, the production team delves further into the tradition, cutting down on the dub production filigree and overarching electronic programming–now sexy grooves often come on the back of organic beats and an unprocessed sound captured during live studio sessions in Buenos Aires. This new focus is furthered with conventional bandoneon soloing as well as acoustic piano and string section backing.

Placebo – Meds

I have already posted in 2004 about Placebo concerning their CD Sleeping with Ghosts and the corresponding DVD live Soulmates never die, both totally great.

Placebo released thir new CD – Meds – for a while (it was funny because the CD was released 4 days earlier in Switzerland than in France…). There is a Limited Edition CD/DVD, with some interesting bonus on the DVD:

• a good documentary about the band
• 3 demos
• some video live (with The Cure, at Live8, at Wembley, etc)

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris – All the roadrunning

In a complete other style, Mark Knopfler and Emmylous Harris have published together a marvelous album called All the roadrunning.

For several years, the iconic Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris have been quietly recording a remarkable collection of duets whenever the Grammy winning artists could steal away from their own illustrious careers. The extraordinary result is All the Roadrunning. The songs from their Nashville sessions, all originals, while undeniably modern, have the appeal of classics, whether country, Celtic flavored or gently soulful. All the Roadrunning is Knopfler & Harris making music and, as the lyric for “This is Us” puts it, making history.

Herbie Hancock – Possibilities

That is another great experience from Herbie Hancock, at the same time incredibly complicated, groovy and wonderful. Surely not “pure jazz”, but who cares? *Very* exciting!

“Possibilities” is the musical event of the year. The album is a series of inspired encounters between Herbie Hancock and world-renowned musicians – including John Mayer, Sting, Trey Anastasio, Annie Lennox, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan, Santana and Angelique Kidjo, Paul Simon, Christina Aguilera, Jonny Lang, Joss Stone, and Raul Midon. Herbie Hancock describes “Possibilities” this way: “This is a real collaboration that we’re doing here. It’s all been decided at the session, a record without borders, woven like a tapestry with many colors. The possibilities are endless”

We have had a great interview with Ed Cone for a while for the CIO Insight magazine, who published a very positive article about the ecenter case (“Insuring the future”, great title :-).

Has has started a very interesting blog called Know it all (rss), have a look!

After the 2004 and 2005 editions, I have reserved our tickets for the coming Montreux Jazz Festival on July 11. We will have the chance to be at two concerts:

• Fourplay

• Bassist: Nathan East
• Pianist: Bob James
• Drummer: Harvey Mason
• Guitarist: Larry Carlton

You can find the whole program here and buy the tickets online here.

[via Google Blog]

Great localized stuff!

We’re excited to announce that we have just launched beta versions of Google Maps for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These sites include the full suite of interactive street maps, driving directions, and integrated local business search. This has been a global effort with Google teams in Paris, Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, New York, Mountain View, Kirkland, Sydney, London, Dublin, and Zurich working together for much of the past year to build a truly “local” product.

[via Marc]

Food for thoughts in this post from Tom Foremski. It is about software licencing, the new positioning of Oracle, the great and healthly pressure coming from Open Source Software models.

Mr Nolan’s view is that Oracle is probably assembling a middleware stack and wants to use open-source components so that it can offer a subscription based pricing structure. This is exactly the direction that Sun Microsystems, Computer Associates and other IT vendors are moving towards.

He is right, we are coming to the end of the licensing model for enterprise IT software, and in Sun’s case, John Loiacono, Sun’s Software chief, told me late last year there would be a time when Sun would even throw in the server hardware for “free” as part of the monthly subscription price per user.

And SAP is riding that trend but so are others. IBM is very strong in middleware but Mr Nolan points out “this whole middleware stack is becoming commoditized very quickly.” SAP’s strategic strength is in its dominant position in enterprise applications and business process; and with a very broad customer base of more than 32,000 companies.

Oracle’s strategy is based on the belief that owning the database is the key to owning the glass house of the IT organization. And its database is used by most of the Global 2000 enterprises, which is a trusted role.

It can try to commoditize the middleware through the use of open source components, and use the open-source platform to integrate its PeopleSoft and Siebel enterprise applications which would create a powerful alternative to SAP.

Oracle could hurt IBM because IBM does not have any enterprise applications. (BTW, Ray Lane, former president of Oracle and now a leading VC, at Kleiner-Perkins has advised IBM that it should acquire SAP. Otherwise its lack of apps will hurt its software business.)

IBM also has a large database business and a strong middleware business but the commoditization of middleware by Oracle and Sun mean that Steve Mills, IBM’s Software chief, has to scramble higher up the stack. And for IBM that means automating business processes, and a creating a closer partnership with its top business consultants from its acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

SAP could become squeezed at the top by IBM’s business process push–and Oracle pushing from its database customer base–into enterprise applications. Then there is the roll-your-own software brigade, or what I call skinny apps, custom crafted IT applications created by departments using powerful application development platforms. Jotspot and SocialText are examples of this type of technology, which will only improve over time.

Then there are the numerous web services applications companies using AJAX-type technologies that will allow organizations to create mashup suites of IT applications.

[via NASA]

Beautiful picture of the surface of the sun.

It was a quiet day on the Sun. The above image shows, however, that even during off days the Sun’s surface is a busy place. Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. Large sunspot group AR 9169 is visible as the bright area near the horizon. The bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots has a temperature of over one million degrees Celsius. The reason for the high temperatures is unknown but thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma. Sunspot group AR 9169 moved across the Sun during 2000 September and decayed in a few weeks.

A new publication based on an interview we had last week with Heather Havenstein. You can find the article online or here as pdf.

Some extracts:

The Final Payoff

Despite the technical and cultural challenges of SOA, the returns can be substantial, successful users say.

SOA veteran Helvetia Patria Group, an insurance company in St. Gallen, Switzerland, has seen a 201% return on investment since launching its SOA six years ago. Helvetia officials said the SOA project cut IT costs for the company’s Internet-based businesses by 59%.

Helvetia overcame the “tough exercise” of bringing developers on board by using a change management program from Hewlett-Packard Co., said Didier Beck, director of Helvetia’s eBusiness Center.

Beck said the HP tools and services helped developers integrate 15 systems into a centralized SOA platform. “The way we are working today is really very different because before, there wasn’t any contact between the different subsidiaries — they had all their own development processes and tools,” Beck said. “The consequences and impact were really quite high.”

The new development processes included centralizing change management and software-release schedules, Beck said. In addition, the company now provides all new developers with six to 12 months of training at its eBusiness Center, where it centrally manages the SOA.

“An SOA implementation is really a journey,” Beck said, “and you have to invest a lot before you can reach a new agility level.”