Today I saw a new way of tricking people into opening an email attachment. An email from American Airlines (supposedly) confirming a flight that I (supposedly) had booked in the US was sent to me. Strange thing only that I did not book that flight at all. Obviously someone tried to trick me into opening a zip file attachment.

It is the Ticket_AA.exe that would be the problem if I had opened it. I wonder how many people got this email and what the percentage of people is that actually opens the attachment.

Today I attended The Green Grid meeting in Paris at the Schneider Electric headquarters.

The Green Grid has made itself a name by being able to have three continents (US, Europe, Asia) to agree on a clear definition on how to calculate the PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) metric. The PUE value is inside a data center the power ratio of the total power used by the whole facility divided by the power used up by IT equipment. A PUE value of 1.3 means e.g. that 30% of the total power used is for cooling, power loss and other facility sources on top of the power used for IT (1.0). So the smaller the value the more efficient the data center. Of course this value depends on when it is being measured. During a cold winter day it will be better than during a hot summer day assuming free cooling is being used. The Green Grid wants data centers to measure the value over a period of 12 months which makes lots of sense.

Now PUE might not necessarily be the best value to use although it is great as mentioned that a metric has been agreed on internationally. There are the following shortcomings:

• PUE does not include information on availability, a more redundant data center would have naturally a higher PUE than a very low or not redundant data center
• total utilization of a data center is also not reflected, a new big data center with few clients can have the most innovative green measures in place but still achieve a bad PUE
• it is also very possible that measures reducing IT load such as consolidation of servers enabled with virtualization increase the PUE
• while electrical energy is important to look at also water used, CO2 production, reuse of waste energy and other resource efficiencies are not reflected
• an older data center will most likely have PUE values that will be higher than a new data center with latest innovative cooling systems used

Seth Godin caught my interest once more with an article, this time on how to do business development successfully. I think he is mostly right on. Take a look yourself…

This report forecasts that the worldwide smartphone market will grow from 160million units shipped in 2009 to more than 500 million in 2012.  I am asking myself how much of that was initiated by Apple’s iPhone vs. the inherent interest/need in having a PC substitute with you all the time.

In any case, it is good news for the mobile industry who will enjoy impressive growth also in mobile data services as the smartphone users will of course drive that market too.

This morning I came across a blog on Android and then saw that it belonged to a big network of other smartphone blogs (iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm and Windows Mobile). Now as it looks like the company behind it, Smartphone Experts, ranked among the fastest growing companies in the Inc. 500 list and was even the fastest growing one in the retailer category.

Looking at their concept is a model case for how to effectively use blogs and its communities to attract people and serve as entry points for the online shop network that they own or partner with.

To make this concept work it is crucial to provide neutral and up to date information in each of the different smartphone categories. I think this is a great example of how communities can be used to win in a highly competitive industry. While this is a retail specific B2C approach it shows still what potential online communities have also if you are in a smaller community B2B type of business. What is needed to succeed in B2B as well you can read on our blog site in some of the next blog posts.

The mobile industry is on its way to its largest event worldwide: the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

I expect that there, too, fewer exhibitors and far fewer visitors will attend. As the event has been overcrowded over the last few years, it could turn out to be a pleasant experience — although exhibitors of course won’t like it at all, not to mention the organizesr.

We plan to be there and also to record a video that we will post then onto this blog and onto our Product Marketing reference work website.

If you take a look at the exhibitor list, you will see how many companies are attending per country. I did a little counting; question is if there is a correlation between the number of companies from a country and how big wireless is in these countries — relative to their size, of course.  I think it does to some extent correlate with the activities undertaken, although it does not say anything about how successful these are; for that I would have to also add up revenues. Some other observations: Spain of course has so many companies attending because the event is hosted in Barcelona, Spain. China has only a few, but two very big ones with Huawei and ZTE. France, Ireland and Israel are heavily supporting startups, so they have many small ones. The low attendance rate from Japan maybe reflects the economic situation there.

MIT wearable computing video

MIT wearable computing video

Three books I was just reading I’d like to review for you.

Ken Follet, World Without End
I was reading Ken Follet’s first Middle Age book The Pillars of the Earth a few years ago and loved it. Naturally I got his latest second book World Without End as well and can highly recommend it. On 1100 pages Ken Follett brings the Middle Ages to life. He is not only an outstanding story teller but also works hard researching the details to make his stories appear as real as possible. I am personally a big fan of Ken Follett as I think in addition to great story telling skills also hard research work nearly like a scientist is is his recipe for success. You don’t need to have read his first book at all, by the way- you will still be able to understand just about everything. But I recommend you read them both. His new book drew me deeply into the Middle Ages with all its roughness and daily fight for survival. Ken Follet provides insights into daily lives ranging from simple laborers, nuns, priests, builders, noblemen, knights, and all the way up to the kings. One other part of his success is that he brings into his story human beings with all their strengths and weaknesses: intrigue, prejudice, politics, greed, rudeness, ambition, persistence, revenge, warmth, caring to name just a few. 1000 years have passed now but not much has changed at all in this respect, you start thinking, and I am convinced this is actually true. I can highly recommend this book to everybody who loves to be drawn into a different world but also likes interpersonal relationship stories. I was glued to the book and my family was surprised to see how fast I read through these 1100 pages.

In short: great entertainment in a realistic, very well researched Middle Age setting showing lives across the whole population from day labourers to nobility.

Olaf Ihlau, Weltmacht Indien
When it comes to books on India or China the Germans are typically not the experts. For China, American-born Chinese (”ABCs”) or in India the British have better insights and hence are able to write more accurate books. Peter Ihlau’s new book on India seems to be a rare one, though, from a German correspondent who has worked on Indian stories for now 30 years for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the magazine Spiegel. As I am not someone who can judge the quality of a book on India I only assume, based on his background, that he writes well. The book not only writes about India’s newest developments in IT outsourcing and the huge number of excellent universities producing half a million engineers every year but also spends a big part on its challenges, and there are many more than one might think of: strong influence on daily life of countless different religions; huge poverty in most rural areas and in the slums of the urban cities; ongoing tensions with nuclear-armed Pakistan about Khasmir; anarchical areas in the northeast of the country that are entirely out of control; a caste system that is officially illegal but practically existent everywhere and determines people’s faith by virtue of birth.

In short: comprehensive insight into the daily challenges of the next superpower India, the book is in German only right now.

Marvin Appel, Investing with Exchange Traded Funds
In case you still have invested money in mutual funds you might not like this and many other books on ETFs as they would tell you that you not only waste lots of money paying high management fees but in addition not even increase but decrease your chances for investment success. This book here on ETFs is written by an American investment consultant and covers the viewpoint for US investors. Still most of what he recommends can be applied by Europeans as well. The book is excellently written and leads you step by step to a flowchart of a decision-making process that allows you to maintain the “ultimate ETF investment strategy portfolio”.

In short: excellent book explaining how to use ETFs and providing a great flowchart on a portfolio selection decision-making process. Also very usable for non-Americans.

I just read another great blog post from Bob Cringely, this one on how to pick IT consultants. In case you have not heard of Bob (Robert X. Cringely to be precise) he’s been an IT writer for now “30 years in and around the PC business”. Looks like he has worked in other areas too, such as the oil industry, at least one other great blog post from Bob mentions that he attended OPEC meetings. Bob writes pretty long and exhaustive blog posts so you need to put a little time aside for reading his blogs, but it is worth I can tell you! He also does not take himself too seriously it seems - at least that’s how I read his own short bio “Sex symbol, airplane enthusiast and intrepid adventurer Robert X. Cringely - the nerdiest of them all?”.

From his IT consultant post this check list here could come handy when you select IT consultants for a project:

“Now to the 10 most frequent lies told by IT consultants. When you hear these lines spoken you have two alternatives: 1) fire the consultant on the spot, and; 2) bring your smartest and most crotchety nerds into the room and make the consultant explain his or her statement to their satisfaction then back it up with some performance guarantee and penalty clause.

1 ) “This can only be accomplished through a large custom development project.”

2 ) “Of course your data is safe.”

3 ) “We’ll need a day or two for optimization and debugging.”

4 ) “Yes, we’ve done this before. There are several companies using this product (or technology). They really like it.”

5 ) “Server consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”

6 ) “Storage consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”

7 ) “The upgrade (or change) will be seamless and will not affect production.”

8 ) “The upgrade (or change) will be transparent to users.”

9 ) “Yes, we tested this thoroughly before installing it.”

10 ) “If you install Tivoli it will solve all your support problems.” “