Craig Bailey on Microsoft

I don’t know if you read CIO magazine. I do because I plan on being a CIO in the next 5 years.

Of course, I realise that reading a magazine won’t make you into a CIO, but it sure does highlight the skills you need to work on. Take last month’s edition for example. In the Generation Tech article, the following advice popped up (p37 June/July edition):

“In part CIOs of the future will achieve alignment by securing explicit support for appropriate separation of concerns, ensuring that disruptive 'burst through' between IT and business domains does not occur outside control.”

Concerned that I was reading a different language I copied the text into Google translator, converted to Russian, and then converted that to English. Here’s the result:

“CIOs in part in the future be able to achieve consistency in providing unequivocal support for appropriate division of problems, providing subversive "broke through" between IT and business domains does not occur outside the control of”

I think it may have actually improved the message.

But I digress. My point is, the article highlighted a few things for me to work on, on my journey to CIO-hood: Firstly, I need to be able to understand what that guff means. Then I need to be able to deliver it. However, the real success, and the sign that I’ve made it, will be when I can pump out that kind of tosh in management meetings and keep a straight face.

(Jokes aside, it’s actually a very good publication – but snippets like this are a nice little distraction on a Friday afternoon)

Having your code name objected to is nothing new. This (possibly hoax) story about Fiji (the island nation) objecting to Microsoft’s use of ‘Fiji’ as a code name is nothing new. Most recently this happened when the Visual FoxPro team were releasing the Sedna Add-ons and received numerous complaints from the inhabitants of Neptune :-)

(via Mary Jo Foley)

What a classic - David Meerman Scott analyses the use of meaning phrases by news services.

Topping the list: 'next generation', 'robust' and 'world class'.

See also his Gobbledygook Manifesto.

Great stuff - perfect for your next game of wank bingo.

Yep, I agree with Wayne that this is getting silly. Sesame Street being wound back due to all that harmful stuff they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s. No wonder this world is in such a mess :-)

But fear not, the pendulum swings both ways and in a decade or so we'll see the push back on political correctness going way too far the other way.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, my favourite word is: balance

We need balance in every areas of our lives. Life is often just a process of adjusting and re-adjusting the balance. It is, at any point in time, too far off to the left or the right, and our days are used correcting this imbalance.

Ok, enough of the philosophy, back to your regular scheduled program...

Not wanting to be the only person on the planet who hasn't linked to this, here's my late link.

After some silly copyright hoo-haa last week, a revised version is up on YouTube. This time there's some bonus material - the credits (which will be read by a total of 4 people, maybe less :-).

Well, not really. This wonderful interview with Stephen by Time magazine is a nice rebuke to what the media tells us is important news. IF the media is right about what is important to the public, then we should be making Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan the Time Persons of the Year. Or so claims Stephen. He makes a good point.

From Google Blogoscoped comes this gem on what GMail would look like if Microsoft had designed it. It's too close to reality to be funny... :-)

Jason Yip eloquently captures the easiest way to derail a project.

This is seriously one of the funniest sites I have witnessed - I was in pain laughing at some of his amazing solutions. The attention to detail is priceless. The best IMO is his tip to increase WiFi strength, followed by his now famous How to Sign Up for GoogleTV Beta, but all of them are good. Mark Erickson is a genius.

Even reading his blog is amusing.

There are more of his videos on YouTube.

Morgan Webb has the full behind-the-scenes story.

Anyone reading today's news article on an email scam involving the late Kerry Packer would probably smile at the humour of it all. After all, who falls for these grammatically incorrect, spelling mistake-ridden spamming irritations. Well, scroll down to the bottom of the article - apparently plenty of well informed Aussies do. Disturbingly, $500K a month is sent from Queensland alone into Nigerian bank accounts. And we call ourselves the clever country...