Spirited Thought

It is not new news that a current is underfoot, one that has us moving away from overly complex IT. Google is often associated with the desired model of application design. Gmail, Goggle Maps and the slew of other rich web and light client applications that over deliver on expectations – delighting users. Microsoft launched its live software offering to try to capture some of the attention. At the end of the day, it is not the Google Labs that is going to threaten competition. Among several things, it is the fact that Google has built its tooling on a base that begs to be remixed – pulled a part, embedded, extended and done so in short order. Moving to simple does not mean IT problems get easier. There is plenty of heavy lifting behind many important solutions, its just that we need to offer the interfaces that enable the move to simple. This is like a flash back to four years ago and the argument for web services. A measure of success will center around how remixed a solution is. If you remixed a lot then you reduced development cycles and shortened time to market or time to productive use. If your services are remixed well then you exposed the right interfaces that support so much follow on innovation. I wonder if we make simple, complicated?

This past Friday I received an email from a publisher about updating my contact information so I can receive a royalty check. Mind you, I have lived at three different addresses since the beginning of pulling the book together – New York City, Westford, MA and now Norwalk, CT. One of the frustrating aspects of traditional press is that the distance between idea to book is often twelve months or more.

As a co-editor on Peer to Peer Computing: The Evolution of a Disruptive Technology this annoyance is evident – probably only exacerbated more by the fact that editors see to every step, solicitation of chapters thru pre-press review. The goal of the book was to pull from both academia and IT practitioners to explore the impact of the P2P shift on a variety of domains. Traditional publishing is on a delayed release so some of the content is bound to feel dated. On the other hand, it is newer than whatever came out before it.

Frustration aside, I am looking forward to cashing the check!