Simon Scullion

Great players. Great football. Great team.

Congratulations España!

Image credit to yonmacklein

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

I caught the tip from Gia Lyons “About” page, hadn’t heard of the tool before, so thought I’d check it out given my issues installing Windows Live Writer.

Disappointed that it is a 30 day trial, the full version is €29.95. I will give it a try and let you know what I think before splashing out!

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

As if we haven’t had enough contention since Alinghi’s successful defense, I can’t see this one stopping here.

The America’s Cup between holders Alinghi and challengers Oracle is to be held in March 2009, a New York Supreme Court judge has ruled.

Judge Herman Cahn ordered the series to take place in Valencia, Spain, or another location chosen by Alinghi.

The winner of the duel will have the right to organise the subsequent event under the more usual multi-team format.

So if this is how it stands, and I have understood things correctly, BMW Oracle Racing have basically won themselves the right to race for the cup, avoiding a challenger series!

What about all the other teams who are expecting a crack at it, and are who made this the media success the last time around? What about Team Origin’s attempt at mediation and a compromise?

Despite their not-so-clean reputation in all of this, if it is what ends up happening, all I hope for is that Alinghi thrashes Oracle on the water, and we can return to some normailty.

Short of banging a few rather rich heads together, some common sense needs to be brought back into the process in order to ensure that the America’s Cup remains the fantastic sporting and technological spectacle it should be.

Car giant Ford has sold its luxury UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover to Indian company Tata.Tata, India’s biggest vehicle maker, is paying $2.3bn (£1.15bn) for the British brands after months of negotiations over price and supply relationships.

BBC NEWS | Business | Tata buys Jaguar in £1.15bn deal

Interesting developments, given the importance of Indian IT firms not just in the outsorcing market. I wonder what sector will they take on next?

Tags: cars, manufacturing, india, outsourcing, jaguar, landrover, tata

Must.Watch.Too.Funny!

Tags: humour

Yet more bad news!

The 2009 America’s Cup in Valencia has been postponed because of a legal row.BMW Oracle Racing and champions Alinghi have been in a dispute over Desafio Espanol’s status as challenger in the prestigious yachting competition.

BBC SPORT | Other Sport… | Sailing | America’s Cup postponed over row

So, not only have we to wait until 2010 to see England play in an international football tournament (assuming we can qualify!), but now it looks like we won’t even be able to enjoy the spectacle that is the America’s Cup before then either!

This is leaving me feeling rather fed up!

Tags: England, football, AmericasCup, Alinghi, BMW Oracle Racing

if this is as safe as personal data gets in government hands, then we have just been handed the single most compelling argument against ID cards. Ever.

Chris Linfoot | A tale of two realms…

Read the full post, including the comments. A very clear take from Chris, on what is a shocking mess.

Tags: data, security, HMRC, personal, ID, theft

I’m looking forward to hearing from Josep Alemany how the first Spanish Lotus User Group meeting went yesterday, held in the IBM Fourm in Madrid.

The agenda looked interesting, I hope the turnout was good, Josep put a lot of effort into getting this off the ground.

In the end I was extremely disappointed I was unable to attend, hopefully I’ll be able to make it to Barcelona in a couple of weeks!

Sorry Josep!

Tags: Spanish, Lotus, Users, Group, SLUG2007, Spanish Lotus Users Group

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Eric Mack makes some fantastic points in questioning some of IBM Lotus’ marketing efforts based on real experience out there in the Knowledge Management space in his post “Lotus Notes/Domino is a dead product”.

I had stopped by to ask if their search technology could crawl a Notes/Domino database. At which point I was told that the company saw no value in creating an add-on for a dead product. “IBM isn’t even here at KMWorld, look around - do you see them anywhere?” I didn’t.

He goes on to say:

I stayed at the vendors booth, convinced them that Lotus Notes is indeed alive and well, and growing, and that they could seize a large opportunity if they integrated support for Notes/Domino into their KM product. I convinced them (I think) to attend Lotusphere in January to see the market for themselves, meet developers who can help them add Notes/Domino support to their product and test the market.

Worth a read, as its a balanced article rather than a cheap shot at Lotus Marketing.

Tags: lotus, km marketing