Weekly report for the week ending 30th of May

Last week I said I would:

1. Get agreement on a more detailed schedule for the cross product integration plans (done)
   
2. Help run the SWG Ireland All-hands meeting through the new Sametime Meeting
   Room with AV support to showcase the use of our own technology. (done)
   
3. Help Gabriela to revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project (not really done - Gabriela wants to do this draft herself)
   
4. Announce that we will drop the proposal for Ireland/China exchange program (done)
   
5. Complete first pass of the 2010 promotion review process for the more junior
   bands (done - but with minimal involvement from me personally)
   

Next Week I will do the following actions:

1. Help with the Sametime 8.5.1 project - especially with Linux cleint testing
   
2. Blog internally about experiences using Sametime AV technologies for the All Hands meeting
   
3. Help Gabriela to revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project.
4. Start the salary review process
   
5. Start the 2010 promotion review process for the more senior bands.

Why do parks need locked gates?

Waterville Park - Closed Entrance
Originally uploaded by Brian O'Donovan

Many of the people who would use a park outside of daylight hours are probably not going to be using the park in a socially responsible way. Therefore I can understand why park authorities feel the need to restrict park opening hours and lock the gates around the time when the sun sets. However, a large portion of the park maintenance budget can be spent paying the person who opens the gate in the morning and and locks it at nightfall. It really only makes sense to spend this money if the entire park is actually surrounded by a secure wall or railing.

An example of silliness is the recently established Waterville Park. On two sides it is surrounded by a large fence with gates that are locked at night. The third side is effectively blocked off by a combination of the M3 motorway (still under construction) and the Tolka River. However, the fourth side is completely open and anyone can enter at any time. Although there are signs up telling people about the park opening hours there there is no physical barrier to stop people entering at night to vandalise the plans and/or hold a drinking party.

Waterville Park - Open Entrance
Originally uploaded by Brian O'Donovan

This means that the locked gates are of no use in keeping the park safe, but at the same time they effectively stop people from walking through the park as a more pleasant alternative to going on the road around it.

Many of the residents of the Waterville estate would use this route as a short cut to get to the school or Hospital that are beside the park. I myself can sometimes incorporate this park into my route to work. In theory the gates should not be opened until 10am, but often they are opened much earlier - the trouble is that I don't know until I get to the gate whether or not it is going to be open. If it is locked I need to retrace my steps because as you can see from the picture it is not really feasible for me to climb over the gate while carrying my bike.

I think that the council could save themselves a lot of money and make the park a more useful amenity if they simply left the gates open all the time. The increased number of socially responsible people walking/cycling through the park would also make the park a less attractive venue for teenage drinking parties.

Weekly report for the week ending 23rd of May

Last week I said I would:

1. Get agreement on a more detailed schedule for the cross product integration plans (not done - there was a change in management team in the other group and so the other manager needed some more time to familiarise herself with the detail of the project before committing)
   
2. Revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project. By the middle of the next week I hope to have an updated version ready for review within the team so that we can send to Springer ahead of our commitment at the end of May. (partly done - I have exchanged emails with Gabriela about the changes, but we agreed that she will do the physical typing so I need to wait for her)
   
3. Make a final attempt to agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program - or else get agreement to drop the proposal (made attempt but not a positive response)
   
4. Start work on the 2010 promotion review process (done - process is under way)
   

Next Week I will do the following actions:

1. Get agreement on a more detailed schedule for the cross product integration plans
2. Help run the SWG Ireland All-hands meeting through the new Sametime Meeting Room with AV support to showcase the use of our own technology.
   
3. Help Gabriela to revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project.
4. Announce that we will drop the proposal for Ireland/China exchange program.
   
5. Complete first pass of the 2010 promotion review process for the more junior bands.
   

The browsers that people use to visit your site depends upon the site contents

Many people argue about which browser has the biggest share of the market. It seems that the consensus is that a few years ago Internet Explorer (IE)  was the dominant browser with well over 90% of users using it to browse the internet. In recent years however, this share seems to have been eaten away by the growth in usage for Firefox, Safari and more recently Google Chrome.  However, it is very hard to get definitive figures because everyone's data seems to give different results.

I publish two different blogs. On this blog I write about topics of interest to geeks like myself and on another blog I write about a girls soccer team that I coach - which has probably a more "typical" set of readers. I decided to look at the reader statistics collected by Google Analytics for the last three months for both of these sites. Both sites received slightly over a thousand visitors in the last three month - a very small number in internet terms, but still enough to draw some conclusions. As you can see from the following table there is a bug difference between the percentage of people using Firefox and Internet Explorer on each site:

Browser	http://www.brianodonovan.ie/	Soccer Site	Difference
Firefox	67.75%	31.95%	35.8%
IE	16.30%	45.29%	-28.99%
Chrome	8.30%	6.44%	1.86%
Safari	5.27%	15.86%	-10.59%
Other	2.38%	0.46%	1.92%

I guess that people interested in the geeky topics discussed on my regular blog are more likely to be well informed on the merits of various browsers.This group seem to have opted mostly for Firefox, while the readers of the soccer news are more likely to choose Internet Explorer for the simple reason that it is the default on their Windows system. I am not sure why Safari is more popular than Chrome among soccer fans - maybe they are more likely to use a Macintosh or an iPhone, but maybe it is just pure chance because as I said the sample size is not huge.

A smarter way to advertise the Location of your business

The North Western part of Dublin where I live is changing rapidly. A large number of businesses are constantly opening up (and closing down). In addition new roads are constantly being built and as a result it is very difficult for people to find their way. People running businesses are concerned to see that their business can easily be found by potential customers. As a result businesses will often spend money erecting signs like the one shown in this picture directing people to their business. Since many people now have SatNav systems it would be much better if businesses would merely publicise their latitude and longitude.

For example, this sign is quite a distance from the Hotel to which it is directing you and because of the way it is positioned is  not clear whether it is directing you straight through the roundabout or to turn left (possibly it was knocked off course by the wind). In fact you could get to the hotel in question quite easily by taking either direction. If you look for directions from Yahoo maps, you will be directed straight ahead at this junction, but there are 11 steps in the directions from Yahoo and when I travelled along the route recently only 3 of these had signs directing you which turn to take. So someone whose only clue was the signs erected by the hotel would get hopelessly lost.

The hotel web site has a page giving detailed directions how to get there. They also state the their "Go Code" is "L2H GJFK". After much searching on the web I found that this code comes from a company who are trying to promote their own scheme of post codes for Ireland. The company has a secret formula for converting between Go Code and Lat/Long coordinates (the only way to convert between them is by using the companies web site). It would be much simpler if the Hotel advertised that they are at latitude 53.366 and longitude -6.389 (I found this out using this simple tool I wrote a while ago - but there are many other ways to do this).

IBM follows this strategy for the page listing the IBM locations in Ireland. It is trivially easy for anyone to enter the latitude/longitude coordinates of the site you want to visit into any brand of SatNav and/or any of the popular mapping tools. The measurement of position by latitude and longitude are one of the few systems that work anywhere in the world. This is especially useful in countries like Ireland who have no widely accepted standards for how addresses should be written.

Weekly report for the week ending 16th of May

Last week I said I would:

1. Get schedule commitments on the cross product integration plans (done - high level commitments received but will need to transform these into a more detailed schedule).
   
2. Revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project. This week I hope to have an updated version ready for review within the team so that we can send to Springer ahead of our commitment at the end of May. (partly done - reviewed all existing content and agreed what changes need to be made - but a substantial amount of work still required to implement these changes)
   
3. Make a final attempt to agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program - or else get agreement to drop the proposal (sent some emails, but still no clear agreement)
   
4. Update the work information on my CV (done)
   

Next Week I will do the following actions:

1. Get agreement on a more detailed schedule for the cross product integration plans
   
2. Revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project. By the middle of the next week I hope to have an updated version ready for review within the team so that we can send to Springer ahead of our commitment at the end of May.
3. Make a final attempt to agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program - or else get agreement to drop the proposal
4. Start work on the 2010 promotion review process
   

Weekly report for the week ending 9th of May

Last week I said I would:

1. Get everyone to commit to the latest version of the plan for Portal and MashupMaker to move to the latest Sametime API (not done - got commitment on the technical details of what we will do, but yet to get agreement on the schedule for the work)
   
2. Help with testing of the latest Sametime Beta candidate especially focusing on Linux readiness (done - I expect that the Beta will ship shortly with AV support on Linux for the first time which is a major achievement)
   
3. Restart work on the IBM 2.0 book project (done - revised the stories to go with the sample chapter)
4. Agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program (not done - still awaiting a response to my email)
   
5. Update the work information on my CV (not done)
   

Next Week I will do the
following actions:

1. Get schedule commitments on the cross product integration plans
   
2. Revise the sample chapter for the IBM 2.0 book project. This week I hope to have an updated version ready for review within the team so that we can send to Springer ahead of our commitment at the end of May.
3. Make a final attempt to agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program - or else get agreement to drop the proposal
   
4. Update the work information on my CV
   

Weekly report for the 2 weeks ending 2nd of May

I am still operating below par due to my slowly recovering ribs (it turns out that I had three broken ribs instead of just one that they originally thought) so I decided to skip last weeks weekly review and instead review 2 weeks in one.

Last week I said I would:

1. Finalize the plans for Portal and MashupMaker to move to the latest Sametime API (I thought that this was done, but the plan turned out to be flawed and so we had to revise it. The plan has now been revised, but I a still need to get people to commit to the new plan)
   
2. Start getting feedback on my picture of the Sametime programming methods (I have completed an accurate picture of the current toolkits. I also started about how we might change the model, but I am putting this on hold because people are too occupied with the upcoming Beta to devote time to strategic reviews)
   
3. Write blog post about using Notes as a GTD tracking system (done)
4. Agree evaluation method for Ireland/China exchange program (stalled)
   
5. Update my CV (almost done)
   I migrated my CV from my old site to pages on my blog and I updated all sections except work information. I am struggling to write it up in  way that is detailed enough to be useful, but still does not become out of date as soon as my project responsibility changes (since this happens frequently)
   

Next Week I will do the following actions:

1. Get everyone to commit to the latest version of the plan for Portal and MashupMaker to move to the latest Sametime API
   
2. Help with testing of the latest Sametime Beta candidate especially focusing on Linux readiness
3. Restart work on the IBM 2.0 book project (Springer have expressed interest in the proposal, but they want to see a draft chapter revised to meet their requirements - this will be a major focus for the next month)
4. Agree next steps for Ireland/China exchange program
   
5. Update the work information on my CV