Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • The best music video you’ve never seen

    So, I was playing around on my iPod touch the other day, searching YouTube via the iPod’s Wi-Fi capabilities. I’ve never been a fan of YouTube, mostly because watching video on my laptop seems inconvenient to me. But on the iPod touch with that screen (there’s no other way to describe the quality of the…

  • My new pals at Enigma

    I wanted to make sure that readers of this blog check out an exciting new voice. My pals at Enigma have started blogging, and I think that their first post (at least the first post I didn’t write) is pretty compelling. Clearly, I am involved in setting up their blogging efforts, but today when Joy…

  • Shiny new blog

    One of my favorite New Wave tunes was New Toy by Lene Lovich which contained the memorable chorus “I want a new toy, Oh ay oh!” OK, so poetry it ain’t. But we loved dancing to it at Spit on Lansdowne Street. Anyway, that chorus comes to mind tonight because I have just (finally!) upgraded…

  • (get a) Rule(r), Britannia

    Tonight, after a long day at work, for fun, I turned to an issue of Auto Week that I’d been saving to read up on the new Aston-Martin DBS. The only Aston-Martin I’ll ever come close to is the silver DB9 that some show-off uses as a daily driver (in the freakin’ snow!) to drop…

  • Are insanely aggressive entrepreneurs extinct?

    Whew…what a relief! After reading this piece about being “Googley” in The Atlantic, I wondered if in fact the nakedly aggressive technology company was a thing of the past. I disagree with Joshua Green’s unsubstantiated assertions that we’re totally transitioning to the cloud and that Google doesn’t intend to do evil, but he does make…

  • One lucky winner will receive…the Perfect Woman

    OK, I am not sure if it’s a scam or not, but I am totally blown away by the Perfect Woman Project. It certainly looks real…but of course it might be a huge scam of one kind or another. Whatever it is, it’s a fascinating idea. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way…

  • Whatever you do, don’t stay at the Hilton Paris

    I’m in the middle of an exhausting business trip to France. As anyone who’s been on these slogs knows, the hotel is your haven…a necessary place to be able to kick back and sleep off the long days and stress. And wouldn’t you think that a Hilton next to the Eiffel Tower in downtown Paris…

  • The empire doesn’t strike back

        Last Friday, I attended a conference sponsored by BU on the legal implications of new media. What a snore. Distinguished bloviating attorneys showed how smart they are by (choose one or all): Creating long-winded "hypotheticals" about topics from liberty to copyright Convincing the audience none of them had ever read a blog, much…

  • Verizon FiOS: Tribbles Make for Troublesome TV

    Remember the Star Trek episode entitled “The Trouble with Tribbles“? Remember how the furry creatures ingratiate themselves with the crew, then multiply so rapidly they nearly overtake the ship? FiOS TV is like a tribble. With apologies to Dr. McCoy, FiOS TV is born pregnant with problems. I spent most of 2006 and part of…

  • OK, I admit it…the borg have won

    Those of you who know me well know that on one topic I have been completely consistent: for years I’ve considered Microsoft the ultimate market bully who simply assimilated (or copied) any technology or company it wanted to. To this day, the blood feud between IBM and Microsoft on the messaging and desktop application battle…

  • Porky Pig will love the new iPod Classic

    I was in the new Natick Collection Apple store tonight. (Yes, the “Natick Collection” is just a mall — but to be tragically hip it had to become a “collection”.) The place was mobbed and we finally got a chance to try the new iPods. I immediately went for an 80GB iPod Classic to compare…

  • Uncle Sam almost finds his (podcasting) voice

    You know how sometimes an institution comes so close to getting it, but then stops short? If it’s the US government, you kinda wanna scream a little, don’t you? Case in point: the Securities and Exchange Commission. There’s a credit meltdown going on these days, and I was using EDGAR to check up on my…