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    • The Next Chapter: Rattle the Tech Industry
    • NetBeans 6.8, Kenai, and Immutable Service Containers
    • Green Grid - Data Center Pulse Collaboration: A Model for Industry
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    • Building Change
    • "... Get the Client to Not Use Corporate IT ..."
    • Eco Responsibility is Fiduciary Responsibility
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    The Next Chapter: Rattle the Tech Industry

    Today marks the end of a protracted and difficult delay of Oracle's acquisition of Sun. Change in Control from Sun to Oracle was announced when stock trading opened at 9:30am PST. I now work for Oracle Corporation. I am told this will put the swagger back in my step.

    The industry press has had a field day (er, make that 281 days,) tracking this mega acquisition. Amid the storm of speculation about what this newly forged titan will bring to the the world of IT, InformationWeek's Bob Evans yesterday surmised Ellison's motivations for the acquisition in a nice Top 10 List. For my part, reason #8 on his list is the most compelling:
    To rattle the tech industry and force a series of changes Sun-Oracle_logo
    based on Ellison's own terms.
    In public comments, Ellison castigated the IT industry for dumping assembly and integration work on customers who have no desire to be assemblers and integrators, and intimated that his newly constituted company would force a major change in that model: "We've treated customers like computer hobbyists—go buy an operating system, go buy some network software and routers and a database and some applications and hire a lot of programmers and—we've been selling components. It's what Andy Grove referred to as 'the horizontal computer system'—by the way, I think Andy Grove is a brilliant guy—I just think he's fundamentally wrong. He believed the right model is everyone is specialized in one area—you make memory chips or you make microprocessors—but at some point somebody's got to be the integrator, and the question is, is the integrator IBM Global Services, or is the integrator a systems company like Oracle/Sun, where the database and the hardware and the networking and the middleware and the applications all work together, and we believe that the right place to integrate is at the engineering level, not what IBM Global Services is trying to do, which is to integrate at the consulting-service level." Any CIOs out there want to push on Ellison to let you keep all that cool assembly and integration work??

    I would say that Larry's words here are prescient, except that Scott McNealy had been saying the same thing to Sun customers for years: (paraphrasing,) "You can build a jalopy from parts, or you can buy a fully integrated vehicle from Sun". Ellison's and McNealy's value propositions are essentially identical. The principal difference stands to be in the execution against that value proposition. In his farewell email to Sun employees yesterday, McNealy said it all: "Sun innovated like crazy." No mention of integrating like crazy in that memo. Sun barely scratched the surface of potential for integration across it's vast portfolio of technology. Sun's products were just that - products. Solutions were left as an exercise for the reader. Making it all work seamlessly was someone else's job.

    The deep conviction among many leaders at Sun was that, with such obvious potential, surely an army of entrepreneurs and VAR's and ISV's and system integrators would come rescue these technologies from obscurity by combining them with other technologies. And they did. Just check Sun's patent portfolio to see how much of it is embedded in the products and services of thousands of companies. But the primary point of monetization for these technologies did not lie with their inventor. For Sun, the real money was made in the perpetuation of jalopy building by Sun's customers' IT departments, those money pit cost centers of the corporate world.

    Larry's vision for integration preeminence is a timely redux of McNealy's, tantamount to tearing down the traditional IT department. God Speed You Fair Emperor. May CIO's rattle their swords with you, not against you.

    I am personally very conflicted by the profound implications of all this rattling. On the one hand, I, like many of my colleagues who work with customers day in and day out, had become quite proficient in guiding the jalopy building. Further, many of my customers are not only jalopy builders by choice, their jalopies happened to be running some of the most innovative and popular services known as Web2.0.

    But, Sun's lesson from trying to supply IT infrastructure to this "red shift" Web2.0 market was that there's no money in it. (There were flaws in the analysis that led Sun to believe Web2.0 was an under served market ripe for Sun's reapers, while corporate IT was an over served market shriveling on the vine. The flaws were exacerbated by assumptions about operational competencies we didn't have - there were plenty of white boards in Sun Marketing that looked like a Sidney Harris cartoon. Maybe Marketing was following the CTO's lead, while the CTO was following Marketing's lead, neither the wiser.) Meanwhile, Oracle figured out that there is good margin in supplying highly differentiated and well integrated solutions to large enterprises, and even better margins when you can do it on your own terms. So, it seems logical to let Dell and HP battle with SuperMicro and Computers-R-Us over the 1% margin on every server sold to the jalopy builders, while Oracle goes after those who eschew the assembly and integration.

    I'll miss serving the jalopy builders, because it means I'll be somewhat more removed from delivering on the altruistic promise of the Internet - that great level playing field, where the rising tide floats all boats. And, nearly indistinguishable from the promise of the Internet, is the promise of Open Source. I can only assume my new job duties will recede too from the transformative power and nuance of Open Source.

    On the other hand, Oracle knows a good value proposition when it hears one. One of Sun's value props was Low Barrier to Exit. Entrepreneurs should not take this one to investors, but it resonated well with Sun's customers, and especially with those mutual customers served by Oracle and Sun. Sun worked hard to put this on customers' scorecards and into their RFP's. Oracle will not score well on this criteria. The trick with a good value proposition, I've learned, is that it needs to work for both the customer and the supplier. Oracle gets that.

    Oracle revenue derives, in large part, from an architectural sale. Especially at the level of business architecture, a.k.a., Enterprise Architecture. I really enjoy the practice of enterprise architecture, yet rarely found the opportunity to do it at Sun. Solving complex challenges across a range of stakeholders is just not the way to sell servers. The notion of "Solution" at Sun stood on shifting sand. Oracle's track record leads me to believe I'll have the opportunity to practice enterprise architecture, mapping a rich and stable portfolio of solutions to customers' business challenges.

    I've grown a lot personally and professionally over the course of 15 years at Sun on three tours of duty. Oracle's acquisition of Sun, and the roller coaster ride it triggered, was perhaps the single most important growth experience for me because it challenged many of my long held beliefs. It's been sobering to accommodate certain lessons into my views on work, technology, and economics. The stubborn primacy of shareholder return. The incompatibility of altruism with managing the indomitable corporate bottom line. I thought Sun was a sufficiently successful and influential economic engine to move the needle on things like a more comprehensive bottom line that accounts for social and environmental profit and loss. I'd like to think it did, for a while. Sun took it's inescapable role as shepherd of technology with some sense of responsibility to society, and particularly the developing world and those on the other side of the digital divide. Turns out that much of that altruism was working against Sun's obligation to its shareholders and, ultimately, against the success of Sun. As Hemingway wrote, The Bill Always Comes.

    At Sun the inspiration:perspiration ratio favored the tinkerer and researcher. At Sun, to err on the side of transparency and integrity was more than de rigueur, it was constant. This made Sun a cool place to work for an altruistic technologist like me. Oracle, like many Silicon Valley companies, share certain of these values. I have hope that, by virtue of the Sun acquisition, even more of these values can thrive at Oracle.

    If I continue the journey through this next chapter as employee of Oracle, I expect it will involve a transformation from altruistic technologist to pragmatic technologist ... with altruistic swagger. I'll let you know how that goes.
    • Café Press is selling mugs with the Sun R.I.P. image posted by James Gosling
    • McNealy's bittersweet adieu to Sun posted on CNET News
    • Schwart'z coded internal farewell memo - spells "Beat IBM"

    January 27, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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    NetBeans 6.8, Kenai, and Immutable Service Containers

    I downloaded NetBeans 6.8 today and was immediately impressed by its clean integration with Project Kenai, th project onramp for open source developers. Complete with support for CVS, Subversion, Mercurial, and Git, and nice chat capability to communicate with other members of your project, the Kenai integration with NetBeans is the ultimate developer web service. More than 7,000 projects have been added to Kenai since it was launched less than a year ago. If you're wondering where to put your next open source project, you really should check out Kenai.Screen shot 2009-12-16 at 7.35.17 PM.pngThe NetBeans support of Kenai includes a nice instant messenger capability and full JIRA support to boot.

    From NetBeans I logged in to my account on Kenai (menu: Team->Kenai->Login) then picked Immutable Service Containers (ISC) from MyProjects, and went to get the source code for the project (Sources->get). NetBeans complained, "Mercurial could not be found. Please check Mercurial is installed and on your PATH." (Forgot I hadn't yet installed Mecurial on my new MBP.) This was easily remedied with the aid of Macports, 'sudo port install mercurial'. Once installed, NetBeans stilll complained with the same error, despite 'hg' being in my $PATH. Poking around, I found that you need to add the path to 'hg' in NetBeans->Preferencese->Versioning->Mercurial: Mercurial Executable Path. (This probably qualifies as a UI/error message bug in NetBeans.) Once Mercurial was resolved I was able to get ISC source, browse it and begin to make my own tweaks in the project.

    I'm very impressed with the new NetBeans. The Kenai integration is just one of many new features, like enhanced PHP support (including PHP 5.3), full support of JEE 6, and improved Ruby support, that make NetBeans 6.8 really compelling for many different kinds of developers. Combined with the recent release of Glassfish v3, this release of NetBeans makes it a really good time to renew the definition of state of the art development environment.

    December 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

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    Green Grid - Data Center Pulse Collaboration: A Model for Industry

    The Green Grid Technical Committee heard a compelling proposal from Data Center Pulse Founder and Chairman Dean Nelson today. His recommendation addresses a weakness in the otherwise formidable Green Grid value to the IT industry, which today is dominated by vendor interests.

    Data Center Pulse is driving an agenda built around addressing data center operators' primary pain points and opportunities for improved efficiency. Dean's proposal to The Green Grid (TGG) was to establish formal collaboration between the Data Center Pulse membership - individuals who run data centers - and TGG's consortium of companies. Their list of Top 10 Challenges provides the roadmap for collaboration.

    the-green-grid.png
    The collaborative approach between these two influential groups is a pragmatic one. Data center operators and IT vendors are both confronting the possibility of regulators stepping in to dictate metrics and compliance criteria. In the highly complex business of data centers, it will be very hard for bureaucrats to get it right. Standards and metrics forged directly by not only the companies producing data center products, but also by the people using them, will result in more appropriate and achievable compliance goals. Regulator, vendor, end user, and public interests are highly aligned around the top level goal of improved efficiency, so this collaborative model presented by Data Center Pulse should bolster the IT industry's defense of self regulation.

    Taxpayers and industry interests alike should welcome this kind of opportunity to avoid greater bureaucracy. I'd go even further to say this model should be the preferred approach in all industry regulation scenarios. Bureaucrats can contribute by examining the balance and effectiveness of collaboration between end users and vendors, between the producers and consumers, rather than forming expensive, often misguided, and inevitably insufficient regulatory bodies to inspect individual operations. Of course, the TGG - Data Center Pulse collaborative model is the exception much more that the rule when you look across industries. Little is being done to connect end users of USDA beef, with feedlot operators and meat packers, for example. A lot of work and cultural shift will need to occur before consumers of car wax will have any say in the design and production of Turtle Wax. Still, I think this is a worthy goal, and one I believe can be achieved by following the many lessons of the IT industry's ability to regulate itself, like this collaboration between TGG and Data Center Pulse. Thank you Dean for a successful proposal.

    December 03, 2009 in Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    I Smell the Future

    SixthSense is the much heralded Augmented Reality technology developed at MIT's Media Lab by Pranav Mistry. No, it doesn't actual bring the sense of smell to the digital world, but it does give us a new way to blend the digital world and real world in a much more seamless and natural way.

    In his November 2009 TEDIndia talk, Pranav shares his belief that this technology has the potential to reclaim our humanity. SixthSense will steer us from becoming Computers interacting with Computers to humans interacting with the digital world as we would the real world.

    SixthSense was first brought to the global stage in March at TED in March 2009 by Pranav's professor, Pattie Maes. Comparing that talk with Pranav's November talk, you see that this is not another grad student project destined to sit on the shelf after the inventor graduates - the catalog of use cases has clearly expanded in past seven months. One use case that Pattie alludes to, but is missing from Pranav's more recent talk, is the potential to evaluate the environmental impact of retail goods while you're shopping. This use case is at the heart of what we want to enable at downstream.org. Today by the use of barcode, and tomorrow, thanks to SixthSense, visual object detection/recognition.

    The future for SixthSense is made more exciting by Pranav's plans to opensource the technology. He cites his desire to bring it to the masses, rather than keep it cloistered in the research domain, as motivation to open this up. Let's hope he is successful in those plans. Choice of license may be one of the most important decisions he makes in the evolution of SixthSense. With so many obvious and wide ranging improvements it would be a shame to see the potential get locked up in a commercial fork that dominates the device options and turns it into nothing more than an ad platform.


    More background on SixthSense and Pranav Mistry:
    • IBN video story on SuperStars of Science
    • MIT Research Highlight on SixthSense
    • Whitepaper: Wear Ur World - A Wearable Gestural Interface (PDF)
    • Other projects from the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT

    November 23, 2009 in Commerce, Participation | Permalink | Comments (0)

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    Building Change

    As blame for the 2005 Katrina disaster continues to be doled out, residents of the devastated region are taking steps to protect themselves against future storms and to not fall victim to "gross negligence" on the part of federal agencies.

    A recent example of this self reliance is the Biloxi, MS Model Home "Porchdog". This residence, recently completed and now occupied, is the product of a design process that took the local conditions and occupants needs into consideration and was facilitated by Architecture for Humanity.

    November 21, 2009 in Sustainability | Permalink

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    "... Get the Client to Not Use Corporate IT ..."

    In one of the talks at tonight's San Francisco Drupal User's Group meeting David from Razortooth Communications gave some interesting advice. The audience for the 20 minute site showcase probably did not find anything Earth shattering in the presentation, but considering the focus on Razortooth's client, PARC, a long reigning Silicon Valley tech establishment, I found the advice illuminating...
    "TRY TO GET THE CLIENT TO NOT USE CORPORATE IT HOSTING"

    PARC's IT department, like those at many mature technology driven enterprises, does not readily abdicate IT control to a band of developers with a new idea. Just last week I was reminded of this when I presented on the topic of cloud computing to a group of IT managers at another large tech company. When I asked if they saw the relationship between developers and IT changing, one manager said simply, "They have to get their IT resources through us." His colleague then quipped, "and they wear knee pads".

    With attitudes in IT like this, it's not surprising that application developers are increasingly circumspect about the traditional model of centralized IT services. Precious time lost to the traditional IT cycle of procurement, receiving, and provisioning, and the constraints of working within a corporate standard type and size of infrastructure drives developers to avoid corporate IT. The innovators among them will find other ways to get the job done. What was once jerry rigged on (mis)appropriated corporate assets is giving way to another more efficient form of ad hoc infrastructure: cloud computing services.

    It's clear to anyone developing in open source communities like Drupal, that traditional IT is becoming less relevant by the day. What is less clear is whether corporate IT departments can survive the shift toward self service, pay-as-you-go infrastructure by emulating those traits within their own data centers, or if they'll further alienate developers with draconian measures or declaring virtualization to be a satisfactory compromise that ultimately does less to enable innovation and more to perpetuate the status quo.

    November 09, 2009 in Drupal | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    Eco Responsibility is Fiduciary Responsibility

    My employer, Sun Microsystems, is running mandatory employee training on Safeguarding Sun's Reputation. A comment posted in the training's internal discussion forum gave me another glimpse into the lack of awareness workers have regarding the connection between good business and green business. Here's an excerpt from the discussion forum:
    "... In the question concerning which employees or groups help Sun comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, I'm sure ... Sun's Eco Responsibility team is very vital to Sun but I fail to see how it relates to Sarbanes-Oxley."
    Eco Responsibility is a core platform for innovation within Sun. The test question being challenged was designed to assess how well employees understood the depth and importance of this platform. This frustrated employee's repsonse represents a common misunderstanding of the relevance of environmental responsibility to fiduciary responsibility. I tried to clear the air with a reply in the forum...
    eco_logo_smi.png
    "While there are no explicit guidelines in SOX for establishing carbon inventories or demonstrating protection and responsible use of natural resources, it is the intent of SOX to establish a basis for evaluating the company's performance of its fiduciary responsibilities. The inclusion of Eco Responsibility in Sun's compliance reporting is a proactive step toward addressing the increasing concern that *irresponsible* use of natural resources and neglect of environmental concerns is detrimental to the future earnings potential of the company. Shareholders of many companies are increasingly associating eco responsibility with fiduciary responsibility."
    Indeed, "green" behavior by companies is increasingly expected by shareholders, not to mention customers and employees. Gil Friend brilliantly addressed this topic in a recent appearance at the Commonwealth Club of California. He related lessons he has learned over 37 years of advising companies on how to improve business performance and be ready for an unpredictable future by being environmentally responsible. In his handy new book, The Truth About Green Business, Gil makes the connection in a section called "Future Proofing" (Truth #52):
    "When your company is not in tune with the laws of nature (for example, if it depends on toxic materials, uses lots of nonrenewable resources, or still creates "waste"), you're at risk with regualtors, competitors, customers, and simply the resources you need to operate. Operate in tune with the laws of nature, and the risks diminish. You'll be well ahead of changing regulatory expectations, while your competitors are stuck playing catch-up.
    "As industry moves toward sustainability in a carbon-constrained world, you need to be ready to adapt to changes in carbon regulation and natural resources. To do that, you need strategies that work in multiple scenarios (See Truth 51, "Scenario Planning"), because you'll never know which future will uinfold - and you need to be ready to continually rethink and adapt those strategies further."
    It is clear that the frustrated employee's understanding of this connection is the norm, not the exception. But when employer's expect employees to recognize the connection, as Sun does, the awareness that Eco Responsibility is fiduciary responsibility will cease to be an exception.
    In 2007, it appeared that Financial Services would lead the transformation. Does it still look that way in 2009? It seems to me that the whole movement has taken on a more grass roots character, wherein social networks, and watchdog groups, armed with sophisticated tools on the Internet, are really the source of most awareness building. Fodder for a future post.

    August 21, 2009 in Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0)

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    OpenSolaris Server !Desktop - How to Minimize OpenSolaris

    OpenSolaris is widely know as a state of the art and feature rich server operating system. So, it's a little surprising to many users trying it for the first time when they find that it is also a full fledged desktop environment. But what if you don't want all that Gnome-Firefox-VNC-Xorg goodness in your base installation? Well, you could pick through all the packages on the system looking for the desktop tools, examine them for dependencies, and build a manifest for removal. Or, if you're on OpenSolaris 200906, then you could just use Glenn's minimization script that comes in the samples with Immutable Service Containers (ISC) Construction Kit for OpenSolaris. To get it, grab a copy of the ISC project:
    	$ hg clone https://kenai.com/hg/isc~source  isc
    
    Then run the script:
    	$ pfexec isc/opt/samples/minimization.ksh
    The script will remove 237 packages and disable 11 services that are non-essential to running OpenSolaris strictly as a server. The project page on Kenai gives a little more background on the minimization script. Note: this minimization is separate from the hardening that the core ISC installation will perform on the systems. While you're at it, you might also try ISC itself, or install the pre-configured OpenSolaris ISC image, which is available in OVF format. Instructions are on the Immutable Service Containers Construction Kit page.

    August 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

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    Voilá! DrupalCon Paris Set for Sep 1-5

    Registration for DrupalCon Paris opened this weekend, and already several sponsors have claimed coveted top sponsorship spots for the September 1-5, 2009. Whether or not Sun will sponsor for the 5th time in a row is something I'll be checking into over the coming weeks.

    Although the agenda and session schedule for DrupalCon Paris has not yet been posted, there is already some interesting content planned for the event, including full day immersion style training in Commercial Training tracks. Whether or not Sun sponsors this DrupalCon, I plan to make this one my 5th in a row.

    In other DrupalCon news, San Francisco is making a bid for North America's DrupalCon in March 2010.

    May 25, 2009 in Drupal | Permalink

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    The Sustainability Challenge: Can the Internet Help?

    Today's Green:Net event in San Francisco's Presidio District brought together some of the most informed and influential people working at the intersection of sustainable business and high tech. It was good to see this cross section so enthusiastically pursuing opportunities for improving the environment and their bottom lines while most of the rest of the economy is struggling to stay afloat. I was proud to represent Sun, which was one of the three event sponsors.

    No Consensus Here

    Kudos to the Green:Net organizers for hosting a wide spectrum of perspectives in the keynotes and panels of this one day conference. The poles of the spectrum were aptly represented by Saul Griffith and Bob Metcalfe. Both of these engaging speakers are big heros of mine. Greennet

    Both have expansive knowledge relevant to dealing with society's energy dependence. But they differ on the approach to meeting the challenge. I think Griffith would agree with Metcalfe when he said, "Our goal is not to darken the Earth," but he would differ with the Internet tycoon on priorities. Metcalfe, true to his venture capitalist roots, believes the real challenge is to feed the every increasing demand for energy, and he cites the evolution of the Internet as a great reference case for meeting that challenge. Griffith's perspective, on the other hand, places the priority squarely on conservation. I have to side with Griffith, with all due deference to the man behind the Law of network effects, if for no other reason that it represents a bigger shift for society and implicitly acknowledges that there is much that is broken in our current consumption orientation. In an era where some mainstream scientists are projecting the decimation of human populations, knocking our species down from six billion to one billion by the end of the century due the effects of climate change, it's time to consider an emergency exit strategy. Griffith gave his emergency exit strategy in a condensed version of the one hour talk he gave to the Long Now in January, and still managed, in 20 minutes, to convince many of the 200+ attendees that the situation is dire and, crucially, that we (that's the royal We,) have a shot (about a 1 in 3 shot,) of keeping CO2 below the 450ppm threshold where scientist agree we might still avoid irreversible feedback effects. Griffith and Metcalfe effectively sanctioned the rules for the Green:Net conversation: consensus is not required to participate; differing opinions are valued.

    Open_Source is a Verb

    One of the highlights of the event was the Sun Workshop titled, Open Sourcing The Sustainability Challenge: Technology for Social Good. The panel discussion was Moderated by Josie Garthwaite with Sun's own Lori Duval, Natural Logic's Gil Friend, EQ2's Steve Burt, and AMEE's Gavin Starks providing the subject matter expertise. Data was the focal point of this discussion with lots of emphasis on accuracy and integrity being critical success factors for measuring GHG inventories and environmental effects. It was clear that these leaders appreciate the magnitude of the challenge, yet they do not shrink from it. It was also clear from this workshop that the companies and NGO's and governments building these data collection and analysis systems are going to need a lot of computing infrastructure and specialized information systems knowledge to manage the Big Data sets required for accurate and meaningful analysis. Openeco.org was cited in the discussion as a good example of an open model for collecting, protecting and comparing data. However, Openeco.org, and the range of the carbon calculators and GHG inventory tools on the web do not fill the need for a comprehensive analytics system needed by decision makers who deal with GHG emissions policy and standards. Bigger, more sophisticated and integrated systems are needed here.

    Can the Internet Help?

    Another highlight for me was the Panel titled The Green Web Effect, which dealt with the use of web technologies to create a successful call to action in the green business movement. Much of the highly evolved thinking about the network effects of the Internet that is typified by Clay Shirky's work was abundant in this panel consisting of Moderator Alexis Madrigal, Erin Carlson, Director of Yahoo! for Good, Ron Dembo, Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, Jason Karas, Founder and President of Carbonrally.com, Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google, and Dara O’Rourke, CEO of GoodGuide. Alexis opened the discussion by saying, "We didn't necessarily start the fire, but we're trying to help put it out." Framed in that context, he then asked the panelists, "What do you want to have happen out in the world?" I liked O'Rourke's answer the best, because it aligns with a vision I've had for many years. He said, "We want to help people to make better decisions by providing the right information at the right moment." He was speaking of the GoodGuide service, which helps consumers understand the environmental, social, and health impacts of their purchases at the decision point in a retail environment. I've just started using their new iPhone app and am pretty impressed with what they've accomplished in less than a year as a business. I am very excited about the potential for this service when they add barcode scanning capability. I'd also really like to see them add some reputation enabled crowdsourcing capabilities. I'd also really like to help them build that.

    At the end of the day, I think it was pretty clear to everyone at the event that open networked systems for dealing with global warming, and energy efficiency are not only possible, but imperative if we are going to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic consequences of climate change. The event was another reminder of why I'm proud to work at Sun.

    March 25, 2009 in Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0)

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