Lukas Svoboda: Strategy, Architecture, Governance & Technology

I was just catching up on WLAN standards as I'm wondering what the best standard is for my upgraded WLAN at home. I ended up came across this well written resource on about.com on WLAN standard. It explains all the standards, the history, the pros and cons and is quite up to date. Useful!

Okay, a very quick note on Zune 2 first impressions - IT ROCKS! WOW! More on this later once I've played more, but I'm really impressed with this device. Very very impressed!

Since Gianpaolo blogged me blogging/recording him I thought I'd do the decent thing and blog him back. Must be something to do with the state of my mind today J Oh and hobbits – yes hobbits are relevant to this post…!

Although the Zune 2 is not available in NZ, I've managed to score one of these devices. According to UPS it's already landed in NZ and hopefully being sent to me shortly. I previous had an opportunity to get the original Zune but it really didn't tickle my fancy. The Zune 2 looks good, finally comes in black, is small and has a whole host of features that make it worthwhile. It's interesting to note that's it's receiving a lot of positive press for being a real iPOD contender. I'll post more once I've played with it. Otherwise, here are some interesting links on the Zune 2 I've been reading in my lunch hour:

Five things Microsoft did right with the Zune 2 (The comments from Apple Fans and Anti Apple Fans make interesting and funny reading!)

Walter Mossberg's Review of the Zune 2

Wired Zune 2 Review

Gizmodo news on Zune 2

Some design speculation on the "Zune 3"

Zune 2 FAQ

Zune 2 versus iPOD comparison charts

Paul Thurott Zune 2 Review (A lot of good history on the Zune here).

Okay, I guess this is slightly off topic for this blog but it's strategic for me!

Check out my post on the "Lukardo" (AKA as a Frontado). A coffee creation i had the pleasure of "refining" (rather than strickly creating) recently. 

Over on ARCast NZ, I've just published a podcast with Gianpaolo Carraro on Software plus Services from an Architecture perspective. The talk covers the following topics plus more:

• What is the difference between "Software plus Services" and "Software as a Service"
• Explore the different audiences of S+S/SaaS: Builders, Hosters and Enterprise Consumers
• Explore the focus of many SaaS providers around purely being web based applications
• How Microsoft technologies aid S+S initiatives
• The significance of SOA to S+S/SaaS

Gianpaolo is the director of Architecture Strategy at Microsoft and focuses on thought leadership and best practices around various architectural trends such as SaaS/S+S and SOA.

An excellent article on the InfoQ on the The Seven Fallacies of Business Process Execution. This article demonstrates and discusses many of the issues with Business Process Execution models. Clearly after many years of promise from the vendors we have yet to see seamless execution based on analysis models. The discussion around the mismatch between BPMN (the Business Process Modeling Notation) and BPEL (the Business Process Execution Language) is particularly interesting.

Following the canning of the PDC 2007 this year, it has been announced that PDC 2008 will in October 2008. I personally went to PDC 2003, but did not manage to get to PDC 2005. For those who don't what PDC is it's the "Professional Developers Conference" for Microsoft Technologies. Don't let the rather misleading name fool you, as much as there is a developer focus it's also focused heavily on architects and future planning. PDC is completely different to the Microsoft TechEd conferences as it focus on the future roadmap of Microsoft technologies (often years into the future) and focuses on demonstrating working prototypes. In PDC 2003 I got my first copy of Vista (Then called Longhorn) with working versions of all the current .NET 3.0 framework including a then working prototype of WinFX. I was completely blown away at that point with the technology Microsoft had planned – and as we know Microsoft took another 4 years to fully release Vista. So that gives you a taste of the type of information you're going to get wind off. I hope to be there!

Not that I'm changing things drastically but I'm focusing my blog a bit more on the what the "newish" titles says: Strategy, Architecture, Governance & Technology. Most of the topics are/will be focused on doing good IT (Strategy, Architecture and Governance) and the interesting technologies that either align with this or just generally catch my attention. Hopefully most of my recent postings have already been consistent with this.

I'm also thinking about moving blog platforms. Currently I'm running this on the .NET 1.1 of DasBlog. I like the control I've had with this software but it is starting the lack a few features. Any suggestions from any other bloggers out there? I'm open to either a hosted offering where I can use my own domain cheaply or changing blog software on my machine. The key requirements are as many useful web 2.0 blog features as possible and the ability to easily migrate all my existing posts.

Slightly offtopic from this blog, but if your interested have a look at my personal blog for my results of movember here and some more movember fun and games here.