Commentaire de Thomas : "Je connais deux sortes de camion de pompiers: le pompe tonne et le camion avec la grande échelle. Ici j'ai dessiné le pompe tonne"
Yesterday I spent some time improving my start page. You can now browse my published articles month by month and one by one. See some details here : http://www.lowas.be/index.php?pagename=BrowseNews
When discussing about SOA a very common question goes about the granularity of services.
I have always applied two principles to decide for myself if a service has the right granularity :
1. Does it make sense ?
If a Business User of this service reads the service specification, he should be able to understand it. This requires to have servcice specifications in natural language.
2. Is it Human ?
Services are ways to request for information. My basic belief is that it should be possible for a normal human being to process that information. I like to think about services in terms of web pages : how would it look like if it was a web page ? (That's probably because I'm a fan of the Semantic Web vision). The rationale is that if the service provides something that is not human (thousands of records) there is room for service re-factoring (by using an iterator for instance).
A service that would dump all your emails at once on your screen in one page would be useless. What you want is a service to browse emails titles 20 by 20 and the possibility to open an email by selecting it. In addition you want a search function. Paging, Summaries and Searching are examples of human services.
This week I completed a TOGAF 8.1 Certifcation course. This means that I should be TOGAF Certified in the coming days. This is the second Certification I pass this year after the ITIL Certification (Thank you IBM!). TOGAF is about Entreprise Architecture and it's a fascinating topic. I'll blog about the highlights of this TOGAF course soon.
J'ai uploadé sur Youtube une vidéo d'une partie de foot filmée sur la plage de De Haan ce 28 septembre 2008. Je joue avec avec Thomas et Jonas (rencontré sur place).
J'essaye de ne pas dire de bétises sur le cas Fortis mais je n'ai pas su me retenir de commenter le post suivant sur le blog "Je suis Belge mais je me soigne":
I just received an Information Letter from PlayMobil where they propose me to have a look at a book about Egypt : "Découvre l'Egypte".
This book is rendered using a technology that I have seen for the second time and that I find very interesting : FSI-Viewer.
Those guys found a way to put flyers in a browser. It's much better than the traditional pdf (which is never in Landscape and always in Portrait, obliging you to scroll).
I just received an Information Letter from PlayMobil where they propose me to have a look at a book about Egypt : "Découvre l'Egypte".
This book is rendered using a technology that I have seen for the second time and that I find very interesting : FSI-Viewer.
Those guys found a way to put flyers in a browser. It's much better than the traditional pdf (which is never in Landscape and always in Portrait, obliging you to scroll).
Two days ago, with a colleague, we had an interesting discussion around the future of Entreprise Portals.
Today in a SOA, Services are consumed by consumers like Fat Clients (Lotus Notes for instance) or Thin Clients (via a Portal).
The arrival of Web2.0 technologies like Rich Internet Applications (RIA) like Google Calendar, Google Docs ect will puzzle this architecture.
At IBM we already have two examples with Project Zero and Websphere Business Spaces. A Portal product is than no more necessary for consuming and exposing services in a browser.
What becomes than the role of a Portal in the SOA ? Probably it becomes a provisionning and security platform for RIAs and Mashups. At the security level, it means offering an Identity and Access Management platform. At the provisionning level it becomes a place where you can search for a mashup, configure it and use it immediately.
If you start using Netvibes you will understand how you can mix content on your own page using Widgets. Those widgets contain their own application logic (Gmail, Google Notes, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook....). Netvibes doesn't own the widget's code like a traditional Websphere Portal would.
Therefore the future of Traditional Portals like Websphere Portal is to provision those kind of Widgets in a secure way.
Last week we (Mireille and I) went to the Vlerick Marketing Alumni Event : How Social are you ?
The evening was about a marketing approach on the Social Networks and Online Communities.
Robin Wauters started with an Introduction on Social Networks. I didn't learn much on that introduction (maybe I know already too much) except that the groups that exist on different networks like Facebook are a target for Marketeers.
So creating or using social networks is now the objective of good marketeers. Pieter Goiris (CEO Boondoggle) showed us how the Heineken Music site to illustrate how brands try to engage in a give & take relationship with online communities. By the way this website is a wonderful Mashup (Stoemp) ! Web2.0 is also about involving the users to make the content. It's the case of Sensoa, a Flemish website where people can ask all questions about Sex.
Luc Colson of 4C Consulting explained us that in a Social Network, three kind of people are very interesting for the Marketeer : the people with most connections within a group (Let's call them "Leaders"), the people linking independant groups to each other ("Connectors") and people on the path between the two profiles ("Relays"). The "Leaders" would allow to influence the group. If the Leader has an excellent experience with your brand, others will know it. "Connectors" allow to transfer the brand experience from communities to communities. "Relays" are a way to accelerate the transfer from Community to Community (they connect the Leaders to the Connectors). Those concepts are for instance exploited in the Telecom sector to enforce operator loyalty and reduce the risk of churn.
Steven Van Belleghem (Insites Consulting) gave me the best impression. He explained that Marketeers have to understand how the new technologies can impact the way branding works. Marketeers have an important challenge to learn surfing on the web2.0 advertsing wave led by FaceBook, Google... There is a change of paradigm going on. Before the Marketing equation was the following :
Advertising ... Brand ... Sales
Today the chain is the following :
Brand ... Advertising ... Conversations.
The goal of the marketeer is to land in the conversation zone. Consumers need to talk about the product, advertsing is not enough anymore...This session gave me a better idea on how marketeers think about Web2.0. I see it as a great way to discuss with people and a great technology at the same time. I see the promise of the semantic web. They see segments, focus groups, communities, conversations, advertising...
Note 1 : For the Vlerick Alumni people, that kind of event is the best rather than just have a beer, let's also have some content.
Note 2 : From web experts websites, I'm not always impressed : 1) I hate the Boondoggle's website (try searching Heineken in it...), and 2) how is it possible to have an URL like http://www.4cconsulting.com/Templates/home.aspx?id=32&langType=1033 when you know the following principle : "Good URLs never Change"
Yesterday when watching the Champion's league, I found very funny that when eventually the best french players are performant, they score against a French club. Malouda and Anelka have killed... Bordeaux.
On Sept 11th 2008, we attended the Samsung Omnia night.
The party was not as good as the last one but there was more content : the presentation of the new Samsung Omnia.
The Samsung Omnia is a great MulltiMedia device (Music, Video, 5 MegaPixel Camera, GPS, MS Office Integration, Push Email...).
It also has a touchscreen like the iPhone. If I had to choose between the iPhone and the Omnia, I think I would choose the Omnia because it's more compact and Windows Mobile 6 would allow me to install more custom applications.
However I still have a phone with a keyboard (Samsung SGH I600) and I'm not convinced about the Touch screen yet.
Yesterday when watching the Champion's league, I found very funny that when eventually the best french players are performant, they score against a French club. Malouda and Anelka have killed... Bordeaux.
This weekend we did De Gordel, a bicycle tour around Brussels.
Our goal wasn't political but rather sportive. We did 120 Km. The tour of 100 Km makes in reality 106Km. As we left and went home by bike we did another 7Km. Also, I had a flat tire in Meise and the assistance truck brought us back to Wemmel, it added 7Km to the trip.
The organization of the Gordel is excellent. If you have a mechanical problem, a truck brings you to a repair centre. The people of VAB repaired my bike, I had nothing to do do except pay the inner tube.
The weather was horrible in the morning : rain, rain and rain. Only in the afternoon after more than 60 Km it stopped and we could enjoy the tour a bit more.
The parcours is not very difficult. I expected more climbs. In fact, the most difficult part is between Zaventem and Overijse (Vossem, Duisburg) and that was the last part for us. Or was it the most difficult because it was the last ? Perception is reality...
De Gordel was our main bicycle objective this year and we are quiet happy we did it ! We will do it again.
PS : Is it politically correct to blog about De Gordel in English when you are a native Walloon and and live in Flanders ?
