Intel's ARM replacement?

So Intel has announced their ARM-killer device: the "Medfield".

Medfield is a power-constrained dual core Atom. Although Intel hasn't said as much, it's reasonable to expect that they'll be making system-on-chip (SoC) devices using the Medfield core, particularly given recent acquisitions that enhance their silicon portfolio to include modern wireless and graphics support.

Will it be enough?

Unlike Microsoft, Intel doesn't have a great history of entering markets opened by its competitors

It's a hard one to predict. Unlike Microsoft, Intel doesn't have a great history of entering and then dominating markets opened by its competitors. In fact, it's often struggled to retain control of its own core markets. AMD, for example, has taken and retained a significant portion of Intel's market share with its lower-cost x86 processors. That's despite being a market follower, not a market leader, and hence always a generation behind its larger rival. (It's notable that AMD hasn't attempted to compete in the mobile device space, preferring to concentrate on CPUs for desktop and server products.)

ARM CPUs achieved their popularity because of three killer benefits: great processing power per watt, a really low price:performance ratio, and small physical size, all of which earned them a massive lead in the small embedded systems market.

But that's not why ARM dominated their competitors. The real reason has little to do with those benefits. ARM achieved their lofty position by moving from being a chip manufacturer to being a processor core licensor. At a stroke, they improved their cashflow, as intellectual property (IP), once created, doesn't have a lead time to manufacture, and you don't have to warehouse huge stocks of IP somewhere air-conditioned, waiting for someone to buy it: "dead money" until the customer orders them and pays the invoices. They made those difficulties, endemic to manufacture, someone else's problem.

That's why ARM survived successive boom-busts, but the real success came from the number of companies who licensed ARM cores and embedded them in their own products. It reads like a high-school register call of everyone in the embedded device space. I'm not going to list them here: go to ARM's site and read it. It's long - no less than 158 licencees and foundries - and very impressive.

Intel's biggest problem is going to be that it's going to be fighting a war on 159 fronts

Intel's biggest problem is going to be that it's going to be fighting a war on 159 fronts - including ARM, of course - if it wants to claim for itself some of ARM's market. It's going to be doing so against opponents who are well armed, well-entrenched and fanatical to their cause. It's going to be trying to make alliances with sovereign powers that are well-disposed to ARM, cynical of Intel, and little inclined to switch, unless the benefits over ARM are very, very compelling.

Intel's Atom offerings to date haven't exactly set the world alight - well, unless you count heat dissipation. Potential partners have responded to Intel's bugle with a resounding..."Meh." Those that did venture to make Atom-based products found that their netbooks, supposed to change the portable computing battlefield, instead met a "Meh" from the buying public too.

This has put Intel in a very difficult position. The Atom was specifically designed for portable computing devices, and the indifference that met netbooks has, by association, hit Atom too. Intel is scrambling now to find a niche in which Atom can play successfully, and my feeling is that Medfield is probably their last serious attempt to achieve a real share of a sector in which they've never really sat easily - and their partners, burnt in the netbook fiasco, are going to need a lot of persuading to put big money behind Atom a second time.

Intel's Atom customers have a single point of supply; a single point of failure

And let's not forget the point I made above, the biggest difference between the two companies. ARM is a licensor, with a huge number of partners all making their own devices, and a very healthy cashflow that can only be damaged if manufacturing problems hit all their licensees at the same time. Intel is a chip maker, and - as the recent $700m recall of the "Cougar Point" chipset demonstrates - its customers are very vulnerable to Intel manufacturing issues: a single point of supply (for Atom devices) means a single point of failure, whereas they can buy ARMs from almost anyone.

I have no doubt that Intel will be marketing Medfield aggressively - and maybe, just possibly, that might tip the scales. But I can't help but think that it's the wrong product, too little, too late. AMD seems doomed to be the Intel wannabe that can't win, but won't die. And now Intel tries to be the same thing to ARM.

Ironic, no?

Why Steve Jobs' absence might help Apple's health

I'm not the kind of person who wishes ill health on anyone, even my worst enemy. I took no pleasure in the news that Steve Jobs is stepping back from Apple for the sake of his health. But I do have some hope that it might signal a new direction for a company I respect, but whose products I don't want.

Let me explain what I mean. I was at a friend's a few evenings ago. He's a big fan of Apple's kit. We were chatting, and listening to music on his Apple TV. There was a track on my mobile phone I wanted him to hear. The conversation went like this:

"Has the the Apple TV got Bluetooth?"

"No, sorry."

"OK, well, if I put my phone on your network and set it up as a UPnP audio streamer, it'll pick it up and browse it, right?"

"No, it doesn't do ordinary streaming. I can send files from the iPad, though."

"Huh. Look, the iPad has Bluetooth, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my phone knows A2DP. You can pick up the file from there, yes?"

"iPad doesn't know A2DP."

"Well, how about I 'tooth the file to the iPad, then you can send it on to the Apple TV." (Getting desperate now; I don't like copying IP around.)

"It won't accept Bluetoothed files."

"And it can't browse my phone over wireless, using uPnP?"

"Nope."

"Right, well how about I hand you over the microSD memory card from my phone?"

"iPad doesn't support removable memory."

I played the song using my mobile's speaker.

Now, that's a couple of self-confessed alpha geeks, using every trick in their books to try to play a tune from my phone using Apple kit. What chance do mere mortals have? And every way was blocked because Apple decreed it so. It wouldn't have been difficult for Apple to have included those facilities, but they said:

• Thou shalt have no streaming server support in Apple TV"
• Thou shalt have no streaming server support on iProducts
• Thou shalt not use Bluetooth the way God and Ericsson meant it to be, but only in the ways decreed by Us
• There shall be no removable anything in our iProducts. What you've got, you've got. Be glad of it, and want no more. Or buy the next, bigger, one when it comes out.

See what I mean? Welcome to the world of jaw-droppingly expensive consumer disposables. When your battery starts losing capacity, pay a fortune to an Apple Centre to get it replaced, or buy a new device. When your battery pegs out on a long plane flight, be glad you had the use of it whilst you could. Don't expect to do anything other than what Apple decrees on its own hardware. Because you don't own the hardware really; Apple does, and Apple says what you can do with it.

Actually, I can tell Apple what it can do with it. I like being able to carry a charged spare battery on the place. I like to watch YouTube every now and then. I like being able to stream my phone's music to my Bluetooth-enabled car radio. I like to add to my device's memory when it's getting a bit full.

The annoying thing is that I want to buy Apple's stuff. I was an early adopter of the Mac Mini, and loved it. If the MacBook Air had a removable battery and a DVD burner, I'd have it. If the iPad were about half or two-thirds as expensive, and had a microSD slot, Flash support and a user-replaceable battery, my wife and I would probably have had one each by now. It's hugely frustrating to me that every time Apple comes out with a nifty new piece of kit, it doesn't meet my needs. And the decisions that dictated the specs that caused that problem arose, I believe, from Apple's Executive Office.

Jobs' illness is very unfortunate, and I genuinely hope he recovers and goes on to lead as long and healthy a life as any liver transplant patient could hope for. But I think it will be best both for his health and Apple's if he does what he promises, and stands back from the company now.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, his vision transformed the company and its products. But now I believe he's become a hindrance: a portcullis between the company and its customers, and a barrier to its growth - yes, Apple could grow faster, if its products were less encumbered by executive doctrine.

Get well, Steve. But let Junior fight his own battles now. It's time for Dad to step back.

Starting your own UK Company - it's not that scary!

[This article is about forming Companies in the UK. Specifically, my experience covers England and Wales. To the best of my knowledge, the details are the same if forming in Scotland or Northern Ireland, but there may be differences in companies law in those countries, so please seek detailed advice if you are forming your company there.]

Whether you're launching yourself as a consultant, or starting another kind of business, the one thing you really need is a company of your own. For a lot of people, that's a big, scary idea, and they simply don't know where to start.

The good news is that it's trivially easy, and not very expensive either.

Finding a name

So what do you need? Well, the first thing is a name. You want a name that's memorable, and descriptive or suggestive of what you're selling (without limiting the future scope of the company). Being earlier in the alphabet is also useful. Don't use a dictionary word on its own: firstly, someone will already be using it, and secondly, you can't trademark/service mark dictionary words, you need to do something with it such as write it in a unique font or combine it with other words. ("Bright" isn't a trademark; "Bright Flight" is.) Be as inventive as you can.

Your best friends here are Companies House (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/), Google and WHOIS - I use http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/whois.php when I'm not using a Linux PC. Companies House's WebCHeck (their capitalisation) service lets you look for past, present and proposed company names, and make sure you're not going to conflict with someone else's trading name. WHOIS lets you search for related domain names. You want a .com or a .co.uk (both, ideally) as a bare minimum. Ideally, you want the full set of .com, .org, .net, .co.uk, .org.uk, .info, .eu and .biz available. You may wish also to consider .gb.com, .uk.com, .gb.net and .uk.net.

My experience is that this process - coming up with a list of candidate names, removing the ones that conflict with other entities and owned trademarks - takes several days. Don't get upset if your favourite name gets eliminated, or you'll find it a depressing process!

Domain names

Before you register the company, buy the domain names. They're not expensive. Getting the full set above (apart from the ones in the "You may also wish to consider" list) will cost you only £111+VAT from VirtualNames (http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/) - a domain registrar/ISP that I strongly recommend.

Why do you want to register the domains first? Because it stops cyber-squatters, who keep eagle eyes on newly registered companies at Companies House, from getting there before you.

Once you've secured the domains, you're ready to move onto company registration.

Buying your company

Now you're ready to buy your company. I'm going to assume that you want to form a Company Limited By Shares, the "standard" kind, but I'll cover other options later.

Years ago, it cost a small fortune. You'd have to buy a pre-formed company with a stupid name from an accountant or solicitor, along with its Company Seal, then go through the faff, bother and expense of changing the name to something you preferred - usually paying the original registrant even more to help you. Alternatively, you could operate it under another name...but "Clever Ideas (trading as Dumbsmart Bridge Ltd.)" never struck me as a great look.

These days it's a lot simpler - and you don't need a Company Seal any more! You can do it all yourself, direct with Companies House, but it's a lot easier to get someone else to do it. Surprisingly, it's often cheaper, and they'll provide you with Articles of Association, Memoranda of Association and a few other extras too. The firm I've used most of all is Companies Made Simple ("CMS" for brevity), at http://www.companiesmadesimple.com/ - and I'll use their prices here, all of which are ex-VAT. Other registrars are broadly in line with CMS's pricing, or slightly highter.

CMS's cheapest registration package costs all of £16.99, with a three-hour formation time. That compares very favourably with Companies House's £50 same-day service! They throw in a Google AdWords voucher that almost pays for the cost of registration too. I'd remove the Barclay's Business Banking option; I've not been favourably impressed with their service. We'll cover banking a little later.

If you don't want (or are not allowed) to register the company at your home address, many registration agents offer a Registered Office service with mail forwarding. CMS's package including that service for a year is £49.99 (this is instead of the £16.99, not in addition), and there are some added extras included. You may also need a Company Secretary. CMS offers this for an additional £75, although they hide it well!

So, the cheapest way to register (let's assume you want the .com and .co.uk domains, and don't need more than the basic services) is going to cost you (ex-VAT):

.com	£8.50
.co.uk	£18.00
Company formation	£16.99
TOTAL:	£43.49

That's a total of £52.19 inclusive of the new 20% VAT rate - the equivalent of a couple of months' mobile phone costs, or less than a tank of petrol.

Alternatives to a Limited Company

You don't have to have a Limited Company; there are other options. One that will appeal to group consultancies, and the likes of solicitors and accountants, is the Limited Liability Partnership, or LLP. This is a kind of half-way house between a conventional Partnership and a Limited Company. Unlike a traditional Partnership, where its membership is written into its Articles, the LLP is an independent legal entity. Partners can enter and join without major upset. Whilst each partner is responsible for their own actions, and jointly liable for the LLP's, they are not responsible for each other's.

An LLP can reduce paperwork, compared with a Limited Company. LLP registration can be a lot more expensive than a Limited Company's, though: ex-VAT prices vary from £94 to £150 or more. I find this strange, as Companies House charges only £15 (or £30 for same-day service). If you are thinking of forming an LLP, I'd suggest doing so directly with Companies House, and sourcing a standard Partnership Agreement (optional, but advisable) separately.

Banking

Now you've formed your company - from now on, I'll use that to mean either Limited Company or LLP - you need to consider banking.

If you're expecting to handle significant amounts of cash, or if you're going to need a direct relationship with a named account maanger, you should probably be looking towards branch-based banking. Branch accounts are generally a little more expensive to operate. Beware of non-optional "optional" extras: Barclay's, for example, likes new companes to rent accounting software from them, and it can be a bit difficult to persuade them that you want a basic account.

If you don't have those requirements, and you're happy to deal with centralised internet-based banking, I'd recommend Santander Business Banking (http://www.santander.co.uk/business/), currently operated under their recently acquired Abbey Business marque. Almost all transactions are free "forever", provided you don't exceed a substantial turnover level (£1 million at time of writing), and you can still pay in cash amounts (up to £3000 per month) free at Santander branches. They don't charge for cheque books or paying-in books, nor for cheques issued. For a small to medium sized business, that's a pretty good deal. The one warning I'd give is that they inherited Abbey's creaky computer systems. I think they're improving, though.

[Later note (2012-01-25): they didn't, and we sacked them in favour of HSBC Business Banking. In particular, we got very, very tired of Santander not being part of the BACS Faster Payments scheme, so that our payments to other UK banks were delayed by most of a working week, and any payments over a few hundred pounds having to be confirmed as non-fraudulent before they would be passed. That kind of fraud prevention may be fine for low-net-value personal accounts, but not for business accounts, where there's an established trading pattern, and transaction accounts are routinely in the thousands. There were other problems too, including more computer problems and outages at their end. HSBC offers small businesses an initial year of fee-free banking, and then a transition to a primarily online account that has no fees for normal operation, and this is now my recommendation.]

Your web site

So you've got your domains, and your company. Now, and finally, you need a shop front: a web site and corresponding letterhead. For these you need three groups of helpers here, and often you can find them all in one place. The really good news is that at Adeptium Consulting, we can provide all of these for you, and we're not as expensive as you might think, so don't panic! More about that at the end of the article.

The first helper is a designer. You've got a company name, and that's the starting point for creating a corporate image that fits it. Now, you may think, "Why do I, just a singleton consultant, need a corporate image?" Believe me, a good logo combined with a complementary colour scheme makes a great impact, whether it's on a letterhead or a web site. If you're handy with graphical design packages and/or fonts, you might even take this part of the work yourself, but if you do, do pleasse get opinions on your ideas from both strangers and potential customers.

The second and third groups are web site designers and web site hosting providers.

For the design, you'll need to work with a company that creates good, clean web sites that can be maintained and extended by someone who's not a computer guru. After all, you may want to be writing articles yourself when you get new contract wins, without having to pay someone else to do it. That's only the starting point, though.

You're going to need two sites - one that's "live", and one that's a private prototype area not accessible by the public, which parallels the live site. The objective is to make all your changes to the prototype site, never to the live site. Once your prototype site looks good, you've proof-checked it, and you are ready to roll it out to the live site, you need an easy and secure way to make that happen. Finally, the vital bit that many new business people forget - you need backup! Backups should happen regularly, and before each live rollout. Those backups should be sent securely to a server on a different network, so that if your web server fails completely, or a hacker wipes its disk, you can get up and running in minutes, not days or weeks.

Your hosting providers must be able to provide stable, reliable and scalable site hosting. If your business takes off, you want to be able to boost the hosting facilities to manage the increasing load, without visitors ever noticing. Your site designers should be able to work with your hosting providers to set up everything for you and document how to operate your site.

Epilogue

I wrote this blog article to help other business people and pass on some of the tips and tricks I've learnt, having formed quite a few companies, and set up many clients with web hosting, but I'm going to make no apology for a bit of promotion. After all, you got all this advice for free!

One of the companies I've formed, Adeptium Consulting Ltd., can help you with every stage of starting a new company - whether it's just setting up your web service, or the whole package from helping you find a company name, through registration, to sorting out your IT. We can even provide you a portfolio (that's to say, part-time and pay-as-you-go) Technical or IT Director who can be named on your Companies House register of Directors, to advise you on your technical needs, and help you present a much more attractive proposition to prospective customers or potential investors.

Finally, I'd like to make it clear that, with the exception of Adeptium, I have no beneficial interest in any of the companies I've recommended. That is to say: at the time of writing, I don't hold shares in any of them, I don't sell products or services to any of them, and I get no benefit from the recommendations. I have been a satisfied customer of products or services provided by them, and it's solely on that basis that I make the recommendations.

Musical finds, fiends, friends and enemas

Every now and again, I feel the urge to write something about musicians I've discovered or been pointed towards. This posting is sponsored by Spotify and the letter 'F'. Or not. Depending.

At this time of the year, the BBC publishes its list of musicians to watch for in the coming year. You'll find the current list on the Sound of 2011 mini-site. Usually, it's a pretty reliable selection of really decent talent. The 2010 list, for example, included Ellie Goulding, Marina and the Diamonds, The Drums and Owl City, all of whom were doing stuff that was fresh and good. (Marina's my favourite - she's intelligent, barking mad, and a damn good songwriter too. What more could you want?)

BBC's Sound of 2011 list is a bit of a disappointment.

The 2011 list, though, is a bit of a disappointment. I've watched all the videos, to spare you the indignity - and the only artist that got my attention was a grime MC who goes by the tag of Wretch 32. That's a pretty hefty indictment of the others, as hip-hop's not usually my bag, but this guy's good, and the production on Traktor was really slick. If his other tracks are as good, I'm getting the album. As for the other artists - sorry, but ... whatever. There was little else that wasn't derivative. Maybe I'll revisit the site in a while and have a second listen.

All of which means I have to do some actual research and find some names for you. Spotify's a great tool for finding artists you'd never heard of - just type a random word into the search box, listen to a few tracks and discover. Today, it's thrown up a strummer new to me: Paul Gilbert. Formerly of Mr. Big, and now with Racer X, he's a powerhouse guitarist who plays with accuracy and precision. For me, he's way ahead of Joe Satriani, whose work Gilbert's resembles. Much fuzzbox and overdrive, but the tunes aren't samey.

Something hip-hoppy, folky and ... Basque?

Fancy something hip-hoppy, folky, trance-y, techno-y and ... Basque? Look no further than Crystal Fighters. Mix Catalan instruments with Marina and an MC - and you've almost totally failed to grasp their range. Earlier in the year, they performed on Later with Jools: you can see the performances here.

More when I remember them.

I told you so!

Regular readers will remember that I dropped a hot little piece of tittle-tattle about a month-and-a-half ago. In this blog posting, I happened to mention: "Will we see Windows and Office for ARM? Well, here's a bit of gossip: keep your eyes open in the next twelve months."

And, lo, it came to pass.

Today, The Register published an article that blew the secret wide open.

So was it just speculation on my part? No. What I wasn't allowed to say in that November blog piece was that I'd got the information from an authoritative source within Microsoft. In fact, I'd been sitting on the coup for about two months because I wanted to leave enough time that the source in question couldn't be traced - and it still hasn't been.

The Register's earlier article mentioning the Microsoft/ARM pact shows how much they'd been misled - or misled themselves. El Reg had speculated that the ARM licensing was to do with the next generation of XBoxen. With the advances made in recent ARM architectures, that might yet come to pass, but the real deal was the one that no-one had dared suggest: Windows and Office on ARM.

Glad to be of service.

Musings and Microsofts

You know, some of my recent blog posts (here, here, and here, for example) probably make me look like a rabid Microsoft-hater.

But I'm not. Not any more.

Sure, I don't like their business methods, and never have. Their software products in general are heavily bloated and inexplicably resource-hungry. (MS SQL Server 2005 Express needs over 1.3GB of disk space! How can a SQL server possibly need that much disk space?) They produce a very small amount of genuinely innovative technology (Kinect), and a lot of mediocrity. They are constantly trying to shoot down Open Source, a battle they know they can never win.

There's a lot to like, or at least admire, about Microsoft

However - there's a lot to like, or at least admire, about MSFT. They have some very smart people indeed. I've worked alongside or for a number of them, in my career, and I can't think of one who didn't deserve respect. (Declaration of interest: MS tried to head-hunt me once. I took a rain check.) Microsoft are superbly good at owning and controlling a market - try to buy a PC without Windows from a major retailer, and you'll see what I mean. Their marketing is sometimes hilariously inept ("I'm a PC!" - what, you're beige inside and out? "Windows 7 - my idea!" Yeah? I bet you drive your Ferrari 430 everywhere in first gear), but it clearly works sufficiently well. Some of Microsoft's products are rather good: their keyboards and mice are largely bland, but solidly built and just keep working; their Visual Studio development environment is recognised as probably the best in the industry.

The thing is, we - all of us - need Microsoft. We need their products to set a certain performance and behaviour standard, so that its competition knows how far they have to extend to better them and distract the public eye. The haters need a bugbear they can fulminate against. The City folk need a bellwether for the health of the technology industries.

However much MSFT huffs and puffs, Open Source isn't going to blow down.

I used to hate Microsoft too, for stifling technological progress and competition, but I think their Big Bad Wolf has come up against the brick house at last, and it's called Open Source. However much MSFT huffs and puffs, that house isn't going to blow down. If it wants inside, Microsoft is going to have to put the teeth away, ask nicely, and try not to eat the occupants.

It used to be the case that big corporate and Governmental buyers would call in the Microsoft guy with the clipboard and the tick list, much as their predecessors did with IBM and their mainframe products. The adage always was, "You can't get sacked for buying [IBM, Microsoft]." But things have changed. After a ropey start, Open Source is now considered commercial-grade, enough to get the attention of the big buyers. For some time, we watched MS offer Government purchasers ludicrously low prices for Windows and MS Office licensing. You don't often see those stories now, and it's not clear why. I suspect it's because the buyers' attitudes have changed. Where once they would raise the spectre of Open Source, to force Microsoft to discount their pricing below cost, now they're just not interested in paying for MS products any more, so there's no point having the conversation.

I don't want Microsoft to fail: I want them to change their approach.

I don't want Microsoft to fail: I want them to change their approach. I can't see Windows or Office going Open Source, however much I might wish it, but I can envisage a Microsoft that is driven by its market, rather than vice-versa; a Microsoft that engages with open standards without a killer agenda; a Microsoft that collaborates, not competes. It sounds like a hippy agenda, but it's not. IBM switched to that model, and saved itself from destruction. Sun Microsystems tried, but it was too late, and didn't fit well with a business model dependent upon declining chip and system sales. I don't think MSFT can make that change with Steve Ballmer at the helm (although I hear he's handy at rearranging furniture), but I have my doubts that Ballmer will hold his tenure for much longer. Windows 7 has gone some way to recovering from the train wreck of Vista, but Open Source is hurting Microsoft, and the hurt's only going to get worse. Ballmer's combative style is looking more and more outdated in the face of the modern market.

Another thing I never thought I'd say: good luck, Microsoft.

Microsoft: Linux is at the end of its life-cycle. Oh really?

Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft Russia, has reportedly claimed that Linux is at the end of its life-cycle.

I think that comes under the category of, "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

There are a lot of companies that'd envy that kind of "end of life-cycle" product!

Linux works on just about every hardware platform bigger than a PIC, supports a mind-bogglingly large range of hardware, is used on everything from the smallest gadget to the world's most powerful supercomputers, and the average person in the street probably has at least five to ten times as many Linux OS licences as they have of Microsoft products. There are a lot of companies that'd envy that kind of "end of life-cycle" product!

ARM devices are squeezing Microsoft out from the bottom up, on embedded devices, and the top down: the new Cortex-A15 based chips will create Linux-friendly servers that should be hugely more power-efficient than the Intel/Microsoft combination manages - and Microsoft doesn't currently have mainline ARM products (Windows, Office) to defend its space - not yet, anyway. I blogged about the consequences earlier this month.

Pryanishnikov's comments form part of a recent FUD campaign Microsoft's been waging against Linux, and Open Source in general. (I blogged about more of it a month ago.) The campaign says more about Microsoft than Linux and Open Source Software (OSS).

The more Microsoft tries to chop off Open Source's Hydra heads, the bigger the problem they create.

The more frantically Microsoft tries to chop off Open Source's Hydra heads, the bigger the problem they create for themselves. Desperation is hard to hide; increasing desperation, even more so. The solution for MS, of course, is to accept Open Source, concede that MS doesn't have answers in a number of OSS's key markets, and probably never will now, and change the business model to work with OSS, rather than paying lip-service in public, and waving knives behind the scenes. I don't think Microsoft has the ability to make that change, though. It would involve admitting that revenues have peaked, which wouldn't please Wall Street one bit - but better restructure now than face a collapse later, which is where MSFT is heading without some creative thinking that has to happen now.

Ironically, conditions in both customer and stock markets could well mean that MS is closer to end-cycle than its competition.

Aww, a cute baby business-person!

What should you use for your forum "avatar" picture? Should you use your photo, a caricature, even a picture of you as a baby?

The more I think about them, the more I realise that the answers are completely different depending on whether they apply to business-to-business (B2B) sites like LinkedIn, or to informal social media sites (Facebook, etc.). I'll answer for B2B.

Linda Lee-Potter used a masthead photo from the 1960s. I always thought that a bit tragic.

It's not uncommon for photos to be a few years old, but it's daft to present one that's not clearly and recognisably you, now. For decades, the late Linda Lee-Potter, columnist for the Daily Mail, used a masthead photo from the 1960s, judging by the hair and the style. I always thought that was a bit tragic. B2B social media like LinkedIn can lead to personal meetings. Particularly for a businessperson, a really out-of-date photo can lead to an instantly negative reaction when the reader then meets them in person - which may carry over to their attitude to doing business with them

You want the in-person relationship with your counterpart to carry over naturally from your online discussions, you don't want to be jarred by meeting what appears to be your correspondent's Dad¹! So, if you're planning to use a headshot, keep it recent and honest.

I don't see a problem with caricatures, provided they're recognisable - a good caricature is quite a neat way of presenting the "personal brand" with a bit of self-deprecating humour, particularly if the subject's a bit camera-shy. Whether it's appropriate depends largely on the writer's business sector. I guess the risk is that the cartoon eventually takes over as the "brand". When it becomes clearly out-of-date, replacing it with a new one means the "brand"'s starting again from scratch, as it'll be some while before the new picture's known, recognised and accepted by those who knew the old one. Photos don't have quite the same problem. Update them every few years, and the "brand" carries over to the new one seamlessly.

There's humour too in a photo of one's self as a child - I've a good friend who does this. It's perhaps not a great idea for a "brand", but fine for non-business networking or media-related sites. On the other hand, I don't think it's appropriate to use a family photo with kids as there are some inherent risks no parent should feel comfortable about. Even a picture with one's spouse is probably not a great idea on a B2B site, unless the spouse is a business partner too. Leaving aside personal risks, publishing a new picture of just the blogger alone could imply marriage (and therefore business) problems to canny readers.

I'm not convinced by the idea of using a non-personal picture/avatar of some sort on specifically B2B sites - it suggests that the person's hiding behind it, which raises the question - why? If they're going to be posting to forums on a B2B site, presumably they want to do business at some point. Being unwilling to admit to their appearance carries a host of negative connotations, and no positive ones, and makes first meetings awkward. There's a big exception to this: look for elephants later on in this post!

Photos are insidious. They create expectations in our minds.

I don't think there's a huge investment of readers' interest initially, but photos are insidious. They create subconscious relationships, associations and expectations in our minds. Not surprising when you realise how much of the human brain is devoted to sensing, recording and analysing images - nor that the first image the newborn brain learns to process accurately is their mother's face. We see faces everywhere, even where they're not. Readers will combine the picture with the person's online persona to form an expectation; it's how we're wired. And that means that the choice of picture is crucial.

However - there is an elephant in this room.

Unfortunately, if a businesswoman is attractive-looking, and publishes her photo, she will be likely to get unwanted attention from the knuckle-dragging² contingent on the one hand, and short shrift from the Old Skool types on the other. Things are improving year on year, but however much the more enlightened males (and females) might abhor it, it still happens. Deflecting those issues by using an image that's not strictly a portrait - perhaps a company logo - or not using one at all, might suit her purposes better. It's all down to what works best for the individual. Martha Lane-Fox, Carly Fiorina and so on have used their images as her calling cards, and done terrifically well out of it, so there's no general rule.

Blimey, I'm sounding like an image consultant. Next stop, square red-framed glasses (*shudder*).

¹ Particularly if they're female.
² The Urban Dictionary defines "knuckle-dragger" as a racial epithet - which is not what I'd meant at all. I was referring to about the second image in the famous Ascent of Man image - an unreconstructed male of primordial mindset.

Desktop ARMs - and what they'll mean for Microsoft

[Background: the blog post I wrote on ARM's new Cortex-A15 MPCore processor core.]

If Apple finds that the ARM processors out-compete Intel on price and power consumption, and at least match x86 for performance, the choice to switch is going to be a no-brainer.

Apple has enough cash to buy every person in the world a McDonald's burger and fries.

Would Apple risk a legal challenge to any preferred-supplier lock-in agreement with Intel? Let's put it this way: at the time of writing, INTC market cap: $120bn, up 7.5% year-on-year and generally flat; AAPL market cap: $280bn, up 48% y-o-y and climbing consistently. Apple has around $26bn sitting around in the bank. That's an astonishing amount of cash. To put in context, that's enough to buy every man, woman and child in the world a burger and fries from McDonald's, and have change left over. Here's a statement I never thought I'd make: with a stock and cash exchange, Apple. Could. Buy. Intel.

Except Apple's got too much sense. If Apple switches to ARM for its MacOS products, Intel's stock will tank - while Apple's will go ballistic. And there's nothing Intel could afford to do about it, because Apple would buy them then, at the bottom of the market, just to shut them up and send their lawyers packing.

Will we see Windows and Office for ARM? Well, here's a bit of gossip: keep your eyes open in the next twelve months.

Microsoft knows that unless it raises its game, it'll be the meat in an iPad and Android sandwich.

Microsoft is not blind to ARM's incursion into desktop-grade computing, by way of Android and iOS tablets. With ARM's announcement of its Cortex-A15 MPCore architecture, Microsoft knows that unless it raises its game and is prepared to abandon positions entrenched for a quarter of a century, it's going to be the thin layer of meat in an iPad and Android sandwich, because for the first time since ... well, since the very emergence of the industry, corporate computing's got sexy.

And beige bricks aren't.

Once it's feasible to run MS products natively under MacOS's Boot Camp on an ARM, it'll complete Apple's business case for an ARM MacOS port, and the dominos start falling.

Let's look at the consequences if MS doesn't follow through on its internal projects. Documents To Go is already available for both iOS and Android. With the potential to take MS's market away from them, DataViz would be insane not to consolidate, add Open/LibreOffice support, and evolve their mobile application into a fully featured corporate-grade tool. QuickOffice is also available for both platforms, but to my mind isn't quite up there with DtG quite yet.

The fate of LibreOffice (as OpenOffice.org now is - daft name, but there you go) will be interesting. Based on C++, it's not in a great position to convert to ObjectiveC (iOS) or Java (Android). Of course, there is a development route for C++ into Android, via the Native Development Kit, but compared with the Java environment it's like pulling teeth, and it doesn't play nicely with Dalvik for now. LibreOffice may find itself the second layer of meat in that sandwich unless its developers can at least port to Android - ObjectiveC is probably too big an ask for now.

But anyone who's been around in the industry knows that Microsoft, whilst often slow to spot emerging markets, will adapt its products, marketing and spin to shut out competitors before they can cause too much damage. Microsoft is more vulnerable now than at any time in the past two decades, but it's still got teeth. It may yet be able to use them.

ARM's Cortex-A15 CPU, and how it will change your world

[From a discussion on LinkedIn (registration may be required to read it).]

Steve Liebson wrote a recent article on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, launched at the ARM Technology Conference in Santa Clara on the 10th November 2010. It's a very interesting read.

ARM is closing in on the Big Iron server market, Intel's traditional home ground, with a processor capable of 2.5GHz operation, eight or even 16 cores per chip, and some smart interconnects and support to make them fly. It's an open secret that Amazon, Google and other intensely server-critical firms are keeping a watching brief, as the A15 promises remarkable improvements on their power consumption and heat dissipation problems. It's hard to believe that VMWare, Citrix¹ and other cloud infrastructure providers don't have at least tentative roadmaps for rolling out their Type 1 hypervisor products to the A15.

What few people seem to be picking up upon, though, is how the A15 could change the corporate desktop market too.

Of course, it all depends upon the power figures, which, as Steve notes, ARM isn't yet publishing, but try this for size...

Put a dual-core 2.5GHz Cortex-A15 in a tablet and load Android 3. Make a desktop drop-in charge/kbd/mouse cradle for it - maybe inductive charging and Bluetooth inputs so it's contactless. Now you've a tool that will act as a touchscreen PC on your desk, or grab it from the cradle and bring it to meetings as a note-taking tablet. You've got the performance of an Apple desktop or mid-range PC product when you need it, and it should run a lot cooler than a laptop.

It's been a fair while coming but if the industry gets the right ideas, this could well be the processor that killed the PC and (with Android) stood up to Apple on its own ground.

So here's the real left-field question: given the power and BoM cost savings, how long now before Apple ditches Intel completely for ARM?

¹ Since writing this article, the author has provided paid consultancy to Citrix. The comments made above are solely the author's own, were not made in the light of any "inside information" obtained from Citrix or its current or former staff, and have not been updated since the start of that consultancy, other than to add this footnote. Oh, and this footnote was added entirely from the author's free will - as a declaration of interests, not because of any lawyerly intervention or contractual obligation.

The East London Tech City: what will happen after the 2012 Olympics?

There was some interesting editorial on the "East London Tech City" on page 50 of Tuesday 9th November's London Evening Standard. (You can read it at standard.co.uk for up to 28 days: select e-Edition; free registration required.)

There appears to be an expectation that, despite the apparent technology bias suggested by the name, the majority of businesses resident there will be focused upon solutions for the financial sector, rather than pure technology per se.

It's going to be a fascinating thing to watch. Normally, I'd suppose that that would have to be the overwhelming business sector, since the costs of renting relatively central London property for a company would be way beyond the pockets of any but the firms most benefiting from rich City clients. However, I can imagine a certain amount of desperation on behalf of the land owners to get units occupied however they can, as soon as the athletes move out. It may change the rules of the game, at least for a while.

Could East London be the next M4 Corridor? It's not impossible. But the difficulty of commuting into the area from affordable suburbs might just restrict its potential. In the end, it might just be the haunt for City-related businesses anyway - after all, even in a property slump, few others' employees can afford Docklands warehouse-conversion flats.

On Microsoft's "OpenOffice Perspectives" video

[Based on a comment in a LinkedIn discussion.]

Microsoft recently published a video entitled "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org"¹

Publishing the video is a clear sign of weakness and worry on MS's part.

Let's compare. Microsoft is a NASDAQ-quoted corporation with about 90,000 employees, and a market capitalisation of around $223bn on annual revenues of about $62.5bn.

OpenOffice.org is a small business unit of Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems), producing a standards-based free office suite.

Why would MSFT even bother to acknowledge OpenOffice.org? There are only two possibilities that come to mind:

1. MSFT doesn't like Oracle, so it wants to damage them as much as possible. Well, that's plausible;
2. MSFT's very seriously worried about its free-as-in-beer competition, and it's hurting.

Even if the true reason's 1., going to that much bother to try to rubbish OO.o makes it look to the world like 2. I suspect it's a mixture of both. More and more businesses are seeing the sense in not licensing N thousand copies of MS Office if they can have a free competitor that works well and can usually read MSO documents that don't contain too many macros.

But that video can only be considered a desperate rear-guard action. Let's face it, any business with the market penetration of MSFT can scare up a few customers who tried the opposition's product and came back into the fold - it would be shocking if it couldn't.

Publishing the video is a clear sign of weakness and worry on MS's part. Ironically, it probably helps the Open Source community more than it hinders it. After all, it's a backhanded validation of the OO.o suite of programs - and how much revenue does OpenOffice.org stand to lose?


¹ Follow this link, and you ought to see "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org" as the only option. MS appears to invalidate direct links, so you have to use the search function to get to it. You'll probably need SilverLight or MoonLight installed too.

Black Country Communion

It's not often I feel the urge to write a review of a single song.

Planet Rock sent me an email today, promoting their showcase this evening for Black Country Communion's self-titled début album.

Not surprisingly, I immediately Googled for the band's web site. Promising - Jason Bonham, Joe Bonamassa, Glenn Hughes (all of whom I'd heard of and respected), and Derek Sherinian, a name new to me. With that kind of line-up, it should be a no-lose.

From that site, I hopped across to their MySpace page. That page only had one song - One Last Soul - to show for itself. A little sparse for an album release; I'd expect snippets from most or all of the tracks. Enough, already: let's hear it!

What an utter disappointment.

A track that white-bread parents would be comfortable for their 11-y-o son to own

"One Last Soul" has been produced to within a gnat's firkin of its life. The song itself is a monument to early 1980s Big Hair Rock, American style. Aerosmith, Europe, Def Leppard all spring to mind, not Led Zeppelin, nor more recent rockers. The track has nothing to say to me at all. It reminds me of all the AOR albums that came out in my student days - albums I never wanted to pay money to own, and gifts I would probably have passed on to more appreciative friends. There's no rock honesty here - just a track that white-bread parents would be comfortable for their 11-year-old son to own.

If this is the best that Black Country Communion can come up with - and given that it was the only promotional track on their MySpace page, we must assume so - then they ought to pull the big wigs off their balding scalps and retire to spend more time with their royalties. Sorry, but there it is. I don't need a banal track so over-polished I can see my razor stubble in it.

[Later addition]
Some time after I wrote this, I ended up on Black Country Communion's YouTube page. There were other tracks here. "Mistreated", a live performance evidently videoed by a fan (given the poor quality of both picture and sound); and "The Great Divide", filmed in the recording studio and overdubbed with the final mix.

A lot of fake emoting over dressed-up arpeggios

Mistreated is an improvement upon One Last Soul, but not by much, and The Great Divide is probably the best track of them all. Not that that's a great recommendation; more like damnation by faint praise. Both tracks involve a lot of fake emoting over what are essentially dressed-up arpeggios. Can some of rock's leading lights not manage better than this? I thought better of Planet Rock, too. Still, since they got an exclusive live performance, I suppose they were duty-bound to set their critical faculties to one side and use it to their best advantage.

[Even later addition!]
All is revealed! I hadn't been on the Planet Rock website for a while, so I hadn't realised that Joe Bonamassa is actually an occasional presenter at Planet Rock! Even if it is for just one show a month, at an inconvenient time slot: last Saturday in the month at 6pm. I wonder which was the chicken, and which the egg: did he take the gig to get BCC promoted through Planet Rock, or did his pre-existing presenter slot mean Planet Rock was honour-bound to do the launch show?

Actually, in all fairness I suspect it was a lot simpler than that, and less cynical: he probably gave them the launch party on a plate, and they said, "Ta very much, we like exclusives!"

Airport TV shows

You know, when there's a reality police show presented by some testosterone-boosted tooth-enhanced ex-Sheriff type, it starts with a load of legal boilerplate along the lines of "We're not showing this to entertain you (heaven forfend!), it's to educate you on what goes wrong when you break the law and run away from the cops afterwards."

But funnily enough, airport shows don't. The endless capacity of would-be passengers to admit the fault of anyone but themselves never ceases to amaze me. They probably watch the programmes at home, and jeer at the arrogant jerks who think that every rule will bend in the face of a loud enough complaint - then they arrive at Gatport Airwick (I might have got that wrong) and turn into just the same kind of clueless bozo they so despised last night.

So I thought, why not have some boilerplate for airport shows instead? Here's mine. Imagine the opening titles, and Sheriff Teeth (Ret'd) intoning this over them:

1. If you arrive at check-in after it's closed, it's closed, regardless of how inconvenient it is for you. The pilot has uplifted fuel for the calculated takeoff weight. The hold luggage is on its way, or already loaded. Every minute you spend harranguing staff and demanding to shout at superiors reduces your chance of getting a free ticket change. Oh, and the airport staff can't issue a refund. Get over it, and accept a later flight, or give up and go home. You choose.

2. If you roll up to check-in having chased ten beers with half a bottle of Smirnoff, don't expect to be accepted onto your flight. If you get rescheduled to a much later flight, and decide to drown your sorrows in the bar with something a bit more alcoholic than espresso, don't be surprised if you get refused later, too. Permanently. Just lie down, point your feet at your destination, and light your breath. You'll stand a better chance of getting there.

3. Don't expect an airline to accept your bus pass as a valid identity document. Nor your driving licence, nor the passport that's been through the washing machine, the tumble drier, and finally had its photo page steam-ironed.

4. You are not your sister, nor your brother, nor your cousin, not your deceased granny. The picture on that passport doesn't even look the same species as you, much less the same gender, and it expired years ago, as did its former holder. Under precisely which circumstances did you expect the check-in staff to accept it?

5. The hold luggage limits are stated, clearly, on the website through which you booked your tickets. There isn't an airline in the world that will accept your 120kg travel trunk, so undo the straps and tell your big sister to climb out. And no, you can't take her on board as cabin luggage.

Now travel safely, folks!

Friday 13th, three days late

Business as usual on Monday. Well, for the first ten seconds.

I couldn't log into my Linux PC. Which was a bit of an issue, because without it I wasn't going to get a lot of work done. A bit of exploring showed that it couldn't see the authentication server. So I try to log into the PC using a "local" user ID instead (one whose details are stored on the machine, not the auth server). No joy - it was still trying to check the auth server, and the login times out before it gets a reply. Actually, as it turned out, the heat death of the Universe would have happened before it got a reply.

Time to dive into what I jokingly call the machine room to check out the auth server. It's running, but won't respond to keyboard or mouse, and the screen is blank. Hmmm. Nothing for it but a hard reboot. Guess what? It's not booting. Take the cover off, and try again. The hard drive sounds like a miniature jack-hammer; looks like the heads are just ramming their end-stop. The auth server (a recycled older PC) is officially toast. And I don't have a drop-in replacement, not to hand.

It's time to go back to my Linux box, and reboot it into single-user mode (which means I can get into the command line without logging in). Set it up as a temporary auth server, in addition to the hundred-and-one other server tasks it's acquired. Reboot it back into a full running state, and log in.

Joy! I can log in now.

The joy is short-lived, however. I need to install PDFEdit, and I roll in a few security updates too. A quarter-way through, the download stalls.

I try to restart the download several times; no luck.

I reboot the Linux box. No difference.

I restart the local network switch. No difference; I can ping other machines on the same switch, but can't see beyond it.

I restart the powerline modem that feeds the switch. No difference; can't even ping the edge router that feeds the whole network.

I restart the powerline modem connected to the edge router, the other end of the connection. No difference. A laptop that connects to the edge router through WiFi seems OK, so we haven't lost the router.

I restart the edge router, just on the off-chance. Hah! I can see out again! Well, for a moment. About 3MB into the updates download on my Linux box, it stalls again.

There's only one thing left to do, and that's replace the powerline modems. They're both Advent units (PC World own brand; yes, I know, I should know better). I happen to have a couple of Devolo models knocking around and pre-configured, so I swap out the Advents for the Devolos.

It works! It was about time something did - I was beginning to lose the will to live.

This time, the updates and PDFEdit download and install without a glitch.

And then I discover that PDFEdit - the installation of which was the whole point of the exercise - can't even do something as simple as move an item from one point on the page to another.

Definitely One Of Those Days.