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See you there…

Congratulations to the winners. The ceremony was a bit of a haphazard affair, but that’s understandable for something just taking off. Maybe next time, use some more slides to indicate the names of the winners and maybe a bit about their website, instead of just showing the category.

To all readers and voters, thanks a lot! This isn’t a competition – provided you enjoy what you see here, I’m happy

You’ll see both day 1 and 2 posted almost immediately following one another. Not intentional, just the lack of bandwidth as explained earlier. For your benefit, day 2 saw less than interesting content. So I’ll keep this short – very short.

A two hour session on tuning and optimizing your Analytics Server. Needless to say, this was not exactly riveting. Some more customer experiences, of which Telkom’s story was interesting.

So ends the Microsoft BI Conference 2007…

I’m writing this on the day it’s supposed to be posted. The question of posting on time is up in the air; a note to the aspiring traveller – should you find yourself in the area of the Vaal Dam, or the Emerald Hotel and Casino, to be precise, forget about trying to get online. 3G is non-existent, and the GPRS connection on both the Vodacom HSDPA card and my JAMin are less than reliable. Trying to coax anything more complex than the bare-necessities Google page to appear in the web browser is an exercise in frustration and futility. You’re probably reading this tomorrow. That’s ok. Don’t get too concerned about temporal displacement. Time.Machine.Does.Not.Exist.

Normally, I would be careful to place the words Intelligence and Microsoft in the same sentence. Seeing as this event was hosted by that company, I’ll dispense with that, notwithstanding the fact that more than one presenter, including a self-professed independent analyst, had less than complimentary things to say about SAP’s BI product. Justified, then.

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Microsoft BI conference

Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.

These are just too good not to share…

We can laugh about it…for now.

The beta release of Ubuntu, the Feisty Fawn release is available. Being a beta release, there is probably little point in trying things out unless you’re not dependent on how well things work.

To make migration for new user easy, there’s the Windows migration tool: The new migration tool recognises Internet Explorer bookmarks, Firefox favourites, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, and Yahoo IM contacts, and imports them into Ubuntu during installation. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual-boot system.

Due to licensing restrictions, media playback can be an issue on Linux systems. To ease the transition for most, Feisty Fawn features easy-to-install codec wizards. A new guided wizard for installing codecs not shipped with Ubuntu gives users a safe way of installing codecs they can legally use to view multimedia content.

Mac users have long since had the benefit of intelligent networking. Bonjour is one example. Plug and play network sharing with Avahi. This new feature allows users to automatically discover and join a wireless network and share music, find printers and more.

Linux needs all the support it can get. With this being another easy-to-use, feature-rich product, get downloading and installing!

The standard Wordpress interface for entering text and formatting HTML is good. There are a number of buttons to assist with the insertion of tags and the preview window gives a good idea of what is to be expected once the publish button is pushed. The standard Drupal interface is rather spartan and you’re left to your own devices when it comes to formatting text and entering HTML tags. In fact, the most annoying aspect of Drupal is the necessity to select a formatting option. That can wreak havoc with your troubleshooting: having entered a few HTML tags or PHP code and wondering why it doesn’t show up as planned is often simply due to the wrong input format having been selected.

There’s always the option of installing TinyMCE, but I find it clutters the screen and doesn’t really help.

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HTC are remaining true to their promise: roll out as many different types of Windows Mobile devices as possible to suit a wide audience. There is a fair bit of excitement about some of the recent devices HTC have launched, but one I’m looking forward to seeing in the flesh is the Kaiser, a replacement for the present Tytn. The Kaiser has been spotted in the wild, and Mobile Life has been fortunate enough to get some pictures of the unit:

In addition to the now-standard connectivity options everyone expects, the Kaiser features a unique flip-up design to make typing much easier. Similar to the present Nokia Communicator, but in a much more compact and elegant package. Promising a 3MP camera and a built-in GPS, this Windows Mobile 6 device has a lot going for it.

We can expect to see it in ZA in about eight months time. In the meantime, stay tuned! I should have the opportunity to take a variety of new HTC’s for a test drive in the next few weeks. Let me know which devices are of interest to you, and I’ll see what I can do

The irony and the symbolism may be unintended. After 60 years fighting the enemies of Yankeeland, including some foes found within that country, the hero known as Captain America is no more.

Certainly not a comic or a character I’ve had any interest in, Captain America has been assassinated in a Marvel staple: the huge, multi-issue, multi-character-involving crossover saga. This one, titled Civil War has Steve Rogers (Captain America) killed on his way to an arraignment at the Federal Courthouse in New York City by a sniper.

Will Captain Yankee be resurrected, like Superman was? Who cares. The death of this hero could be interpreted as a parallel to the real USA and its timing is no coincidence. According to Marvel, the comic story line was intentionally written as an allegory to current real-life issues like the Patriot Act, the War on Terror and the September 11 attacks. No mention of Iraq, though.

Resurrection of a comic book character is a lot easier than the resurrection of respect for a country, its president and its people…

No matter how much fuss is created around the XBox 360 and PS3, the Nintendo Wii is capturing a lot of attention and quite a few sales, too. You’d think only kids and bored adults would buy one of these, but SAP geeks are getting into the act too: instead of concentrating on making decent toothpaste, a bunch of guys from Colgate-Palmolive have managed to make the Wiimote function as a mouse in a Netweaver environment. Possibly a pointless exercise, depending on your point of view. Imagine seeing people at desks flap their arms around in attempts to click an icon…

But it’s certainly fascinating if you consider the technologies available nowadays. This also proves once again that anything can be integrated into SAP! If you own a Wii, you may want to follow the instructions to replicate the feat. You’ll need a Netweaver 2004s system running, a Wii and a log on to the SAP developer network. Some open source software and the ability to work with a soldering iron would be useful too.

Oh, and the last thing you’ll probably need: your kids’ permission to take the Wii from home and the manager’s permission to bring the Wii to the office.