The thing that amazes me most is how fragile the supply chains are these days. A sports event is going to have an effect on global drug prices….
“Over the past decade, many chemicals factories in India have closed down, as they were unable to compete with imports from China.But during the Olympics, Mr Majmudar says factories around Beijing have been shut in an effort to cut pollution.”
For years I spent about one week a month in Chicago. Every visit included multiple visits to Starbucks; I loved the shops, the coffee and the brand.
Then they opened in Paris; within a month I’d had my full. I now visit the Starbucks opposite my office about once a quarter! Which means less than when they were on the other side of the world.
Seems that I’m not the only one to suffer from this.
Ed Brill works at the IBM Software Group and has repeatedly made claims that Accenture didn’t migrate off Notes as publicly claimed by Accenture and Microsoft.
“I have a slide in the presentation that is based on my “Then and now, episode 2″ blog entry from February. The slide shows the same two graphics that are in the blog entry — Accenture/Avanade’s claim around when they migrated off Notes, and the reality of Accenture hiring Notes developers (and using hundreds of Notes applications) today.”
And…
“It’s clear that Notes is not only not gone from the Accenture IT environment, but rather that it is still a key technology.”
It would be nice if someone from Accenture put his straight officially but nobody seems bothered. Therefore, I’ll do it unofficially…
Notes isn’t a key technology at Accenture, hasn’t been for a while. As far as I know, it exists as client software mainly so people can read their old data but Accenture is very clearly a Outlook/SharePoint shop.
So why are they hiring Notes developers? To help clients. Accenture doesn’t have a supply chain to manage but you’ll see a lot of adverts for supply chain expert jobs.
“Really that’s water polo? Where are the horses?”
In other Street View news. One of their cars went down our street yesterday. Try explaining to your father-in-law what street view is and why seeing the car is cool!
Where did all the paper go?
“I receive on average 6 to 10 letters each month composed each of several pages to which you need to add the paper of the envelop. Raw calculation: 10×3 (pages)x12 = 360 pages a year envelopes. This is about half a kilo of paper (equivalent of printer paper bucket). HALF A KILO!!!”MYBLOG by Ouriel: Message to my bank: STOP sending tones of papers, i have an email
Every month I used to do a little rant about this. Every month the bank would send us five bank statements in seperate envelopes that would all arrive the same day. It was madness, then suddenly overnight it changed.
We now receive next to nothing from Societe Generale. Even American Express has gone electronic. This in old world financial France.
The final stage happened last month; I almost fell off my seat. The bank has added an email system to the web site; and they answer the emails.
All this is good but try moving branches; the amount of paper is scary.
“As Domenico Fontana was to Pope Sixtus V’s Rome; Peter the Great to St Petersburg; L’Enfant to Washington DC; Hausmann to Napolean III’s Paris; Frederick Law Olmstead to Manhattan; Edwin Lutyens to New Delhi; and Walter Burley Griffin to Canberra, so Sheikh Mohammed’s vision for a new Dubai will redefine the quality of civic life for the citizens, residents and guests of the Arabian Gulf.”
CivicArts | Eric Kuhne Associates – Mohammed Bin Rashid Gardens
I’m often hit by a strange realization; I almost always like the least popular product of a sucessful company. Yes, I’m the one that drinks Cherry Coke, liked the McRib and bought a Smart car! At best I love something before everyone else or long after they’ve left it.
Mr Hugh MacLeod (or Mr gapingvoid) is a case in point…
Hugh’s blog says, rightly, that he’s a …
“…cartoonist and professional blogger, known for his ideas about how “Web 2.0″ affects advertising and marketing.”
Now all this is true except that I don’t like the cartoons too much and his blog is about marketing. I read the blog and smile at the cartoons as Hugh publishes them; but they don’t tend to connect. I’m not in marketing and I’ve not spent too long in any New York bars!
However, Hugh has a more minor product that I adore. Pure art! Things like this…
gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: the cloud’s best-kept secret
There is something about these works that I love. I have a collection on my hard-drive; it’s difficult to describe but they touch something deep inside me.
The earlier this year Hugh announced that he was going to be doing more of these larger works. And started showing pictures of Fred 42.
I had to act quickly. How I did is for Part II.