I am glad to see that after some hiccups, our Google migration has begun again and we are all keeping our fingers crossed that it should proceed well. I am thankful to have such a dedicated and hardworking team of LTS staff who are managing this project well under difficult conditions. No change is ever easy!

A recent news is that Borders, which filed for bankruptcy protection earlier, is unable to find any buyers, so it is likely to liquidate.  Apparently, this is not good news for Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Why? Because the book buyers are likely to flock to Borders to pick up the books at cheaper prices. This is true, but, it is for the short term.

The other major item that has been hogging the news recently is the phone hacking scandal.  It runs like a mystery novel – celebrities, a rising star within a powerful media empire who is implicated in the scandal and is arrested, a whistleblower was found dead etc. This is a serious issue related to privacy that goes beyond just phone hacking.

(more…)

I was out in Jupiter FL during the Memorial day weekend to attend my wife’s nephew’s high school graduation. For me who has been used to small high school graduations (my children’s graduating classes were 155 and 170 students respectively), this was grand. It was held at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, where a group had to go early to reserve seats, despite being asked not to do it! Some of us joined a little late after a nice nap. As a result of this trip, I missed the commencement, well sort of… I was out that day, so I watched it on my PDA. It was great quality stream. There were 700-1000 views during the 10:30-1:00 PM live cast. We have heard very good feedback, and I am sure several parents and relatives of international students who could not make it here in person, benefited from watching this remotely.

Information overload is everywhere, it is also local. We routinely hear from our users how they did not know about something important that we have communicated to. This will continue to be the case because what is important and relevant is in the eyes of the beholders and depending on how it is conveyed, it may or may not sound important! One of the major problems is the lack of coherence – information is all over the place. This is where, the promised land of enterprise portals comes in.

(more…)

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote a post here. It is certainly not because I have been busier than usual – in fact I forced myself to work from home a couple of days in the past two weeks to get some real work done. Time just flies, especially when there is a lot going on. Yesterday evening we went to hear a South Indian classical music concert by T.M. Krishna at the Stata Center in MIT. It was a fantastic 4 hour concert that once upon a time only those living in Chennai in South India were treated to. This is one of the benefits of living near Boston – we get to hear a lot of quality Indian music. We used to drive two hours from Middletown, CT to come to Boston to hear some of the best artists. Our jealous friends from central CT, who had two hours of driving left while it was a mere 20 minutes for us now, were making a note that how bright it was (at 8 PM) – as if it was going to last till 10 PM!

I got up at my usual time at 5:30 to see the brightness after a whole week of miserable weather. The apocalypse that was promised on 21st of May has come and gone and we all are still here. I remember the days when the academic cycle’s effect on libraries and technologies were far more noticeable than now – especially on technology support. Summer was a time to engage in all sorts of major projects (because it was the “lean time”) to get ready for the Fall. Whereas this continues to be true (you can tell that the summer has begun by looking at all the books that are waiting to be shelved!), it just doesn’t feel the same. It seems that we are engaged in major projects all the time!

(more…)

It is that time of the year when semesters wind down and everyone is looking forward to the summer and graduations. I am off to Florida later this month to attend my wife’s nephew’s high school graduation, and of course play some golf. I was talking to a friend from India this past weekend when my wife was at UConn commencement about how different things were back home. We did not have graduation ceremonies for high school or for finishing undergraduate degrees! We all wrote our final exams and the results were published in newspapers (now they are available online). The day after the results, newspapers carried stories about the disappointed souls – some of them way too disappointed because they did not get the highest ranks in their respective schools! I completed my Masters degree in Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where we had a commencement, primarily due to the foreign connections of the IITs. Things are beginning to change there.

For administrative staff in Higher Ed, this is also the time when performance reviews are done and goals are set for the upcoming year. Having worked in Higher Ed for 25 years, I know that these processes have been relatively new. I was a skeptic about this whole thing when we got started, but over the years, I have come to understand the value of the process.

(more…)

Do you know where you have been during the last few days? No worries, especially if you have an iPhone. There seems to be an App for that! I’m sure many of you heard about how iOS 4, the Apple operating system for iPhones and iPads, “secretly” records your location in a file (consolidated.db). If you sync your device to a Mac, you can look at it – here is the recipe. I am safe on my iPad because I don’t have a 3G. On the other hand, I voluntarily let everyone know where I am (using Twitter and Foursquare).

This is indeed big news, but, as Scott McNealy (former CEO of Sun) pointed out “You already have zero privacy, get over it” has unfortunately been true in this well connected world. Your cell phone carriers have had this exact information all along – except, they need a subpoena before they look at it (Hmmm….).

With technologies coming at us such a rapid pace and with companies (OK, not all companies!) paying a lot of attention to friendly user interfaces, technology training is fast becoming a challenge. Take the iPhones and iPads as examples. They are so easy to use that there are no user manuals. Great! Except, many users are not diligent about syncing their devices to a PC or a Mac, until that day arrives when their device dies. Many home users set up wireless and don’t either read or don’t understand the techno mumbo-jumbo that their access point is up for open manipulation by tech savvy neighbors.

Having some basic training would help in these and many other cases. But who has the time and inclination? This is a huge challenge.

(more…)