Outlook.Com does the job - including security

So it's been two weeks since I 'converted' from Microsoft's Hotmail to the new format Outlook.Com. And my verdict? I like it. The user interface is intuitive and migration was simple. The organisation features work well. What's not to like?
Microsoft desperately needed to improve on the tired and 'clunky' 1990's Hotmail interface (sic), where the likes of Google's Gmail and even Yahoo! have recently shown a much tidier set of functions.
And Microsoft has done what it always does best. Identify the features that users seem to work with most in rival products, and put those into its respective offering. This has meant that Microsoft software can never be seen as 'leading edge', and it may never be rated as the 'best' in a particular area, but it will be good enough for the vast majority of users/businesses and offer a reliable product. A while back I visited Microsoft Labs in Cambridge, UK, and was told that all the products developed in the labs are rewritten by a 'production team' to an engineering standard if they go mainstream, to ensure the reliability.
What has disappointed me about the launch of Outlook.Com is not the product, but the reaction of commentators that the 16 character password limit is not enough, and that Yahoo!'s 32 limit and the reportedly 200 for Google (and its ability to also use two-factor) are better for the job.
I know as well as anyone that the strength of a password is linked to its length. But so is the difficulty in remembering it! A lot of awareness raising has been done to push users to create complex passwords with a combination of upper and lowercase letters, characters and numbers. But the reality is that most home users, given the chance, will use the same, even complex, password on all their electronic accounts.
A much better way of getting users to make stronger passwords is to encourage the use of a standard pattern (algorithm). For example using a set string of characters and appending the characters from specific positions in the site's URL. Even at 8 characters that will be stronger than a 32 character password that is used on everything from Twitter to eBay.
Whist one of the arguments to moving to Outlook.Com was that it would look more 'business like', (just like the move of Googlemail to Gmail.com) the reality again is that the majority of Outlook.Com accounts will be home users, and the password will be protecting emails that mostly contain invitations to stag nites (sic) and the pictures of the dog/baby/etc. They may be protecting online banking, (which I would always recommend has a unique password), they will not be protecting accounts of large enterprises and 'national security' et. al. Those latter organisations use Exchange/Active Directory/Outlook client, etc. and are subject to polices that enforce 'secure' passwords, (although I would guess that many users utilise their 'work' password on 'home' accounts).
Outlook.Com is a 'good enough' product for the majority of the millions of users that it is aimed to support.
So which of Gmail, Yahoo! and Outlook.Com will I continue to use as my primary email address?

Can we visualise Big Data?

EMC hopes so. In "The Human Face of Big Data", a photo journalism project it is sponsoring, it is asking 100 of the world's leading photographers, in 30 countries to visually document the collection and use of data.

Working with photographer Rick Smolan, and his company Against All Odds Productions. The objective is to create a coffee table book and iPad app showing the best of the photographs, using the images to demystify the term that seems to have N+1 definitions for the N commentators writing about it. EMC is hoping that the book, to be published in the autumn will be a national "best seller" and is also intending to distribute copes to 'influencers'.

Of course EMC as a storage provider has a vested interest in Big Data, both on premise and in the cloud as a service. The company which recently announced $5.31bn revenues for the second quarter of 2012 makes a lot of cash from storage and with, most notably the Greenplum database, is aiming to offer organisations on premise and/or cloud solutions to meet Big Data needs. 
Illustration of Big Data by those of us in the the analyst community trying to communicate the issue to IT decision makers has always been an issue. We have reached for images of overloaded donkey carts and pictures of people running from tsunami waves. But whilst these raise wry smiles from an audience, they do not in my opinion convey the enormity (pun intended) of the subject, its challenges and opportunities for CIOs and other decision makers.

A long time ago, when I was an IT Manager in the UK NHS, I almost had sleepless nights wondering what I would do when our storage requirements reached 1 terabyte. Lately I have been known to show a photo of the 1000+ DVD collection we have at home, (don't ask) organised by genre/series or artist - that is 5 terabytes 'under management'. I wish the project well.

As a footnote I would (tongue in cheek) like to nominate this Dilbert cartoon http://bit.ly/MTQ97G suggested by @TonyBaer.

Big Data Forum - London

5 July - Attended Unicom's Big Data Forum in London really interesting session with James Howard (ex BBC) on the data requirements for sports journalism,(very relevant ahead of the London 2012 Olympics), and also multi-patent holder Andrew Byde of Acuna on what is big data - “if you can fit it in memory, it is not big data”.

BOX.COM launches in Europe

18 June – the team from BOX.COM are in London in advance of the announcement that they are expanding into Europe, in the first instance through a London base. BOX has (unashamedly) long been a favoured company for myself in that, whilst developed in a University dorm, it was designed from the outset to be an 'enterprise ready' rather than a 'consumer' product – (add your own names here). It will sync with corporate directories and the organisation retains control of all the content.

Previously described as 'ECM in the cloud' msmd advisors believes that BOX like Salesforce.com is taking a lead, in offering organisations an alternative to on premise proprietary solutions, whilst ensuring that corporate security strategy is adhered to. (It is notable that a little time before Microsoft announced it was to acquire the Yammer collaborative suite, and in msmd advisors' opinion, the Redmond behemoth was trying to address the same issue).

However, msmd advisors believes that BOX is a product of it's time. The 'perfect storm' of widespread wifi and broadband access across the world, the emergence of other form factors/devices, such as netbooks, tablets, Android and iOS phones as access devices, and the adoption of a increasing  range of standards for file formats has made this opportunity possible.

Alongside the expansion into Europe to support multinationals etc., BOX has added a whole range of extra tools to ensure differentiation from the 'cloud storage' competition.(again add your own names).
In addition BOX has used its rapid growth to date to recruit key industry individuals to support of its founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, such as general mangers and marketeers (such as Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck from EMC, Joely Urton from Oracle, and Meghan Hughes from Text 100). These people are not only highly experienced and referenced, but all have significant influence n the market(s) that BOX it is aiming to penetrate. They also, like the founders, seem to have a delight in making business fun (which is something that is missing in many companies today). Welcome to this side of the pond.

Adobe saved my wallet

As I write this with the third day of the London 2012 Olympics in full swing I have to say (without endorsement of the company or the products involved) a big thank you to Adobe for the fact that I don’t have to invest in satellite television and recorder.

My eldest daughter is an avid equestrian fan and was insistent that so she could catch up with the events she would miss whilst working, we needed to move on from what I consider to be a perfectly satisfactory Freeview service.

She was very persistent, but I held out, recognising that this would mean she would inevitably monopolise our main TV for the duration, and more relevantly having noted the announcement by the BBC in April that it would be video streaming  24 HD channels simultaneously to multiple devices, with the ability to replay as required
On the day before the open ceremony it was confirmed that the BBC would use Adobe’s Project Primetime to deliver both the live steaming and to create a video on demand (VOD) package for catch up. 
In Project Primetime, Adobe has assembled a video technology platform which aims to deliver seamless viewing of live and recorded video content across multiple devices. The components that make up the Primetime platform include Adobe’s Access, Auditude, Digital Marketing Suite, Media Server, and Pass products with the addition of Primetime Highlights to rapidly generate VOD.

Besides desktops and SmartTVs, Primetime will also support all major mobile platforms including Android and iOS. Whilst designed for TV supported by paid advertising, the licence fee funded BBC is the first broadcaster to use the platform.
Although the live streaming is impressive, even in our rural village, with its relatively low bandwidth and high contention, it is the Primetime Highlights that have caught my eye. The product enables the BBC to create and deliver VOD coverage of the live events in real time, meaning that it is immediately available for replay.

So what was the opinion of the Davis household after day two of London 2012 and the BBC’s use of the Primetime Platform? My daughter with her usual eloquence and enthusiasm “It’s not bad”, her father (and his bank balance) was breathing a sigh of relief.

Is life imitating art?

A post on the BBC news website speaks of 'A spokesman for the social network' when referring to Facebook. As friends of Kevin Spacey will know The Social Network was the title of his biopic of the estabishment of Facebook.

Internet search engines biased? Duh?

The news that Google is in discussion with European Commission (EC) to settle the alleged antitrust case around the biasing of search results to promote its own products, was inevitable, given that a similar allegations are being investigated by the FTC in the US.
What is surprising however, is that users of the dominant internet search engine in Europe apparently cannot recognise the bias.
Google is a business, it is not a charitable endeavor like Wikipedia. As a company it would be niaeve, in fact iresponsible to to its sharehol;ders not to promote its own, and other sponsored products.
When I go to my local Tesco supermarket, at the end of the isle will be the branded goods being promoted (and which Tesco is paid to place there). Then down the isles there will be a mix of branded and Tesco own label goods, with the own label goods often having a promotional price on the shelf edge.
Despite the ideal of a totally free internet, it has to be paid for somehow. Even Jimmy Wales has to post a donation request message once a year.
In due course Google will stump up lumps of cash for both the EU and US treasury coffers, and will make some changes to the algorithms. Let's just hope that the organisation currently funding the lobbying of the EC, Microsoft has the algorithms in Bing ready for inspection.