Tuesday on the night of Obama’s election

I had travelled to the USA for some more training and so was in the USA for the day of the Presidential election. Last night was very quiet, I went to Kapps in Mountain View. I had left the office where a number of people were, oddly, watching the BBC web site report via a wall screen display. I had also enabled the facebook and multi-protocol chat applications on the ipod and discussed the elections with my son at home in the UK. This was pretty good  …

Better Icons in Google Maps

I have been planning my next trip to Slovenia, sadly its only business, and been using google maps to work out the easiest journey; there aren’t that many direct flights to Ljubljana from the UK. I came to the conclusion that the provided icons are still missing some useful objects. I wish they had icons for an office, hotel and school/college. I am using the red bed as a hotel symbol, rather than as a hospital and the extras would be good. How about a mortar board, or is that insufficiently international. …

Sailing in the Ionian

Sailing in the Ionian

I went on a flotilla sailing holiday in the Ionian Sea, and recorded some of what happened on my sun/oracle blog. This version of the article which is an aggregation of the originals was posted on this blog in July 2016.This holiday had been a long time ambition of mine in order to see Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus from the sea. Actually I wanted to land there and explore, but for various reasons, this didn’t happen, and at least I have an excuse to return.  …

Future of the Internet

In March, I attended the EU’s “Future of the Internet” conference. This was a meeting of Europe’s top computer scientists from both business and academia, planned to discuss future research and development. The meeting was jointly convened by the rotating Presidency (the Government of Slovenia) and the Commission, and held at Lake Bled. I attended a number of sessions dealing with technical, societal and economic issues together with the state of research in the European Union.  The original articles were written from notes taken at the time, posted the following week and back dated to the approximate time the speech was given; they were copied across to this ominbus blog in July 2016. It is now, really quite long. The sessions included, Dr Ziga Turk, who spoke of enlargement and the 5th freedom, Dutton on Privacy, Trust and economies of scale, Wyckoff Lovink, Johansen , Vasconcelos in a panel on economics and Heuser, Grégoire, Uddenfeldt , Nathan , Hourcade on the development of technology in Europe, and speakers from the US and Japan. …

Hong Kong …

I have never been to Hong Kong before but have just returned from a trip there to meet up with my new colleagues, the Chief Technologist for the Asia-Pacific region, his country Chief Technologists and their management peers and bosses. It was great to meet such a diverse yet energetic team together with the conversations and social events. I visited one of the restaurants on the peak for the evening and had one of the largest meals I have ever eaten, or at least one with the most courses …