Author: admin

Microsoft Surprises Again With Purchase Of Minecraft

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Like the rest of the world, I was fairly shocked yesterday when I heard about the Microsoft purchase of Minecraft and its creator Mojang for $2.5 billion. That’s twice now that Microsoft has shocked me with its videogame strategy. The first time was about 15 years ago, when the software giant announced it would launch a new home console called the Xbox into an already crowded console market. The Xbox turned out to be a smashing success that continues to fuel a tiring Microsoft brand.
Most analysts paint the Minecraft purchase as a mobile strategy: Windows phones show a scant 3% marketshare, and Minecraft is one of the most popular apps for mobile platforms. True to a point, perhaps. But I also think the Minecraft purchase is another attempt to refresh the tiring Microsoft brand.
Think about it. On the one hand, the Xbox is hands-down the M-rated console, defined by blood-and-degradation titles like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Buy a 10-year-old an Xbox 360 and then try to find a game rated below Teen. You’ll be sadly disappointed.
On the other hand, Minecraft is appropriate for gamers of literally any age. It’s creative, it’s open-ended, and it singlehandedly launched the modern mega-million-dollar sub-economy in which of millions of gamers watch hundreds of gamers play games on “Let’s Play” YouTube channels. Minecraft delivers a feel-good salve for Xbox-hating parents, a feel-good salve for open-source-loving, Windows-hating millennials and a direct patch into the massive YouTube economy.
For a solution that broad and powerful, $2.5 billion doesn’t seem so high a price.
A few interesting links:
If you’ve never watched anyone play Minecraft on YouTube, here’s a good starter video from Tobuscus (note the 5-million-plus views):

If you have trouble understanding why anyone would want to spend hours watching a video of someone else playing a videogame, you’ll love this classic parody from The Onion about the World of World of Warcraft expansion pack.

(Feature image from WallpaperFO.com)

Five Quick Diagramming Tips For Tech Writing

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Used to be that writing was enough and those of us in the publishing biz followed a pretty simple formula: Writers write, artists make. Things began to change in the late-’90s with the dawn of matrix-balanced metering and balanced fill flash for photography. Suddenly writers and editors could shoot tack-sharp and perfectly exposed photographs to support their stories. A quick crop in Photoshop made creative imagery that much easier. I remember how, almost overnight, the photo budgets at my magazines dropped by tens of thousands of dollars.
A half-decade later mobile photography became the rage – sort of the same way the shakycam grew to dominate TV cop shows and mockudramas. So we’ve come full circle and now, if you want to make a living writing, you need to also make a living making.
One tip I have for anyone who wants to be a professional writer is to learn to shoot excellent photography – especially understand what it means to shoot the creatively correct exposure – and learn to digitally edit your own photos.
But if you make the jump from creative or popular-media writing into tech writing, as I have done, then you’ll need an additional skillset: The ability to create, edit and embed digital illustrations and drawings of various types. Here are some tips to get you started:

  1. Learn The Big 3. In everyday tech writing you’ll primarily deal with three different programs – Visio, Gliffy and PowerPoint. Visio is the gray lady from Microsoft, Gliffy is the new rage (and runs natively in a browser and within wiki), and PowerPoint is loved by the same management that okays your projects and writes your checks (so you love it to!). Hunt out online tutorials and learn these tools. You’ll need them.
  2. Get The Original. Flattened JPEGs and PNGs are no good to the tech writer – you can’t edit them. So do whatever it takes to get hold of the original versions diagrams. These will have file extensions like .vsd (Visio), .gliffy (Gliffy) or .ppt (PowerPoint) and will allow you to add and remove arrows, edit text, delete boxes and all that other great stuff. Most times the diagrams for legacy technology are stuffed away on somebody’s desktop in a forgotten folder. Take the time to hunt around.
  3. Download and install as many shape libraries as you can. Shape libraries are constantly updated with new icons and shapes for different types of networks, machines and appliances. Work with the latest and greatest and your illustrations will stay contemporary. That’s the way to impress.
  4. Don’t get frustrated. I’ve known a lot of writers who shiver and quake the first time they can’t get their arrow to point straight or their text to sit inside of a shape instead of behind it. If you have a problem with a diagramming tool or function, do a bit of research online – just like you would for the written portion of your project. Use a natural-language query in your favorite search engine and you’ll find the solution in a few clicks. Example: “How do I change my arrow color in Powerpoint?”
  5. Harness the power of Shift-Select. Writers use Select-All so much it’s second nature: CTL-A, CTR-C, CRT-V. Works with diagrams too, sometimes. More often, though, you’ll need to highlight and copy certain elements of a diagram. To do this, hold down shift as you click to highlight. Once you’ve highlighted what you need, hit copy and then paste as you wish.

I’m curious: Does anyone out there have any other quick diagramming tips for writers? Let me know with a comment below.

IBM Leverages SoftLayer To Offer API Management Service

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A new cloud-based API-management tool from IBM offers businesses and developers an easy, secure and flexible service for the exposure, monitoring and management of APIs. IBM plans to release an evaluation version of its new API Management Service on Sept. 26, 2014, and the initial specs show a lot of promise – especially for SMBs that want to quickly and effectively participate in the mobile and API economy, or for Fortune 500s and 1000s that want to more efficiently manage their sprawling API exposure and footprint.
The cloud-based service allows developers to easily manage SOAP and REST APIs through a single console. At the same time, it provides a simple and scalable method for businesses to advertise, market and sell their APIs worldwide across public, private and semi-gated developer communities. Just as important, it provides businesses with the tools to track and monitor API usage to measure market penetration and streamline developer billing and use-charges.
There’s no coding involved, according to IBM, and the attractive developer portal will help entice partners within the already ultra-competitive and time-strapped API economy.
The latest IT buzzword isn’t cost-control, it’s cost-optimization – in other words, how to use existing IT investment to its full potential. For many companies, the most effective path toward cost-optimization is to expose key business services to drive new collaboration and revenue. It can be done through APIs, and now it can be done entirely in the cloud through IBM’s API Management Service.
TxMQ is an IBM Premier Business Partner and can help your company with all its cloud-based computing and API needs. For a free and confidential consultation, contact vice president Miles Roty: (716) 636-0070 x228, [email protected].

How To Integrate Salesforce Enterprise Data Using WebSphere Cast Iron

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As I’ve discussed in previous blogs, IBM’s WebSphere Cast Iron is the choice solution for integrating Salesforce data with other applications and/or other data across the enterprise. It’s a functional solution because the various integration paths (called orchestrations) are displayed through a graphical interface and can be managed and maintained by staff members who aren’t necessarily IT specialists. TxMQ helps with Cast Iron deployment, for example, but then hands off the project to internal staff once the deployment and initial orchestrations are in place. It’s really that simple (which, by the way, is one reason Cast Iron is so appealing to limited-staff SMBs).
I did want to take a bit of time in this update to discuss some of Cast Iron’s specific Salesforce integration and data-management solutions. The biggest  issue – especially when an integration involves both internal and external data – is synchronization. Whether your industry is finance, healthcare, transportation,  manufacturing, retail, digital media or any other, you’ll inevitably need to sync your Salesforce data with your customer data, sales data, supply-chain data, logistics data, advertiser page views and so on. Any loss of synchronicity can immediately compile errors and create blockers that munch away at your uptime.
To help frame the possibilities for your company, note that Cast Iron easily connects Salesforce with:

  • ERP including SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, BAAN, QAD, Lawson, Great Plains, etc.
  • CRM including Siebel, Clarify, Remedy, Oracle, Kana, Vantive, etc.
  • Customer support systems
  • All major databases including Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, mySQL, Sybase, Informix, etc.
  • Flat-files using FTP, HTTP(S), Email
  • XML and Web Services
  • EDI
  • Middleware and all major EAI platforms
  • Project management applications including Clarity/NIKU
  • Custom applications
  • And many, many more

Once connected, Cast Iron supports real-time sync between Salesforce and other systems, a few examples of which include:

  • Data migration from other CRM systems
  • Accounts and Contacts with ERP customer master
  • Opportunities with Order management systems
  • Forecasts with other CRM systems
  • Quote requests with Order management systems
  • Leads and Campaigns with marketing automation systems
  • Activity history with external reporting systems
  • Invoices with Billing systems
  • Case data with Customer Support systems
  • Pricing and product catalog data with PLM systems
  • The list goes on…

I’m curious: Do any readers have a Salesforce–Cast Iron use case different from the ones above? Please sound off with a comment and let’s keep the conversation going.
As always, TxMQ is ready to confidentially answer any Cast Iron or other integration questions. For a free initial consult, please contact vice prez Miles Roty: (716) 636-0070 x228, [email protected].

Four Different Options For WebSphere Cast Iron Deployment

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IBM’s WebSphere Cast Iron cloud-integration product is the industry’s best-in-class solution for two reasons: 1. Its cross-service flexibility, and 2. Its ultra-easy graphical interface.  Deploy Cast Iron then drag and point your different integration preferences.
Cast Iron is perhaps best known for easy and complete Salesforce integration – use Cast Iron to integrate Salesforce data with the rest of your enterprise data – but Cast Iron recently reached a new critical mass centered on the integration and synchronization of mobile-application data and social-media data across the enterprise. Cast Iron is especially effective for integrating contemporary data, like that from mobile and social, with legacy data driven by homegrown applications.
Cast Iron is easy to adopt and deploy and there are four different deployment options. They are:

  • Cast Iron Hypervisor Edition: This is a virtual appliance that sits on existing servers by way of virtualization technology. It’s a great way to speed the path through demo and staging to production, and as of June 2014 it includes Xen server support.
  • Cast Iron Express: A cloud-based version that assists in the integration of Software as a Service (SaaS) data with other data sources. This is the most popular Salesforce solution.
  • Cast Iron Live: This is a cloud-based multi-seat version that’s best for cloud/on-premise hybrid environments.
  • DataPower Cast Iron Appliance XH40: This is real metal – a self-contained, physical appliance that connects cloud and on-premise applications.

TxMQ specializes in Cast Iron integration solutions for businesses of all sizes. For more information, contact vice president Miles Roty – (716) 636-0070 x228, [email protected] – for a confidential and free initial consultation.

Alan Turing's Triumphs And Tragedies Onscreen For All To See

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I was truly stoked when I heard the buzz surrounding the new biopic of technology pioneer and war hero Alan Turing. The Imitation Game,  from Norwegian director Morten Tyldum and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Kahn, Star Trek Into Darkness), received triumphant ovations and cheers at the Toronto International Film Festival this week and is already an early pick for a slew of Oscar nominations.
Turing is a legend. He’s a pioneer of modern computing and the father of artificial intelligence. The Turing Test, which measures the ability of a computer to respond to a human subject, was a staple principle in every coding class from the early days of Basic. And Turing’s technological brilliance literally saved the world from the armies of Fascism.
I’ve felt a connection to Turing’s work for long time – one, because of my interest in the history of philosophy of technology, but two, because of my deep Buffalo, NY Polish roots.
We never knew Turing’s true contribution to the war effort until the Enigma files were declassified in the early 1970s. That’s when news first went public that the Allies had been able to read the German Enigma-machine ciphers, and that Turing and a small band of brilliant British scientists constructed the world’s first functional modern computer to break the daily cipher. So often, it’s war that drives invention.
Enigma allowed the allies to prevail in the Battle of Britain, we knew about the invasion of Russia (a warning which Stalin chose to ignore), and we were able to successfully land in North Africa, Italy and Normandy. It’s a testament to Turing’s genius that the breaking of the Enigma code was such a closely guarded secret during the war, and for 30 years after.

Nazi Enigma machine
A German Enigma cipher machine on display at the Museum of Computer History in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Polish connection? It was the Polish resistance that successfully captured an Enigma machine, through great torture and loss of life, and delivered it to the Brits as the Nazis swept across the Polish plain. Buffalo during wartime was a center of US Polish culture. My grandfather was a Polish butcher on Buffalo’s East Side. Polish was spoken in his store. Our family name was changed from Zawieurcha to Storm a few months after the war ended.
Throw in the fact the film will be released in the U.S. by Harvey Weinstein – a former Buffalo resident who started his empire as the first name in the legendary Buffalo-area Harvey & Corky Productions company – and the whole story squarely hits home.
I recently toured the Museum of Computer History, where an actual Enigma machine is on display. It’s chilling. The photo is to the right.
When The Imitation Game hits theaters on November 21, it’ll be a day of celebration for those who’ve privately celebrated Turing’s contribution for decades. The ultimate irony, and the great sadness, is that Turing was doomed by the same dark forces he worked so hard to defeat. He was arrested and prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, which after the war was still illegal in Britain, and chemically castrated. He committed suicide 2 years later.
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Even More Integration Options For the DataPower XB62

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I wanted to continue yesterday’s blog with a few more details about the WebSphere DataPower XB62 appliance – in particular, its flexibility. Along with application and B2B integration, the XB62 can also very rapidly transform data between a number of different formats such as XML, industry standards and even custom data formats.
Furthermore, the XB62 is capable of broader integration functions including routing, bridging, transformation and event handling. And because it’s also a security appliance, DataPower integration solutions by their nature are stable, secure, reliable and performance-oriented.
The DataPower solution is especially elegant for companies that handle more than XML and find themselves needing to connect their B2B and SOA deployments at the same time they manage a stew of proprietary, legacy and trading-partner-specific data formats.
Essentially, the XB62 is a true drop-in B2B and SOA integration point that can stretch vital applications across the enterprise. The immediate benefit is that a company can bring services to market more quickly, and better accommodate clients and partners via painless and secure data and application integration.
For more information on TxMQ’s many DataPower solutions for all industries, contact vice president Miles Roty – (716) 636-0070 x228, [email protected] – for a confidential and free initial consultation.
Illustration by Sean MacEntee (Creative Commons license).

Internet Of Things In Focus At Europe's IFA Fair

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Stroll through any box electronics or homestore nowadays and you’ll see the beginnings of the Internet of Things (IoT) – formal slang for the coming world of interconnected everyday devices. Best Buy is selling a smartphone-controlled garage-door openers and smartphone-enabled deadbolts as just a few examples.
Some true action on the IoT front took place this week at Europe’s IFA tradefair, held this year in Berlin, Germany. It concluded today and is touted as “the world’s leading tradeshow for consumer electronics and home appliances.” German engineering is always front and center at the show.
Early reports out of the show point to several highlights:

  1. A robotic vacuum cleaner from British sensation Dyson
  2. A growing horde of smartwatch competitors, led by Samsung’s Galaxy Gear S (Apple had its own homegrown Watch rollout concurrently in California)
  3. TVs with convex screens to better mimic the cinematic experience
  4. A new Sony glass to compete with Google Glass in the market of aug-reality
  5. Appliances for the interconnected home

About No. 5: Bosch and its partner Siemens debuted their first Home Connect oven and dishwasher, which should be available before the 2014 holidays. The Home Connect app, announced last spring, will run on iPhone and Droid and control compatible devices through the app.
The important part of this news is to track the competition for the overall IoT standard. Home Connect is an open standard that Bosch-Siemens developed. Both  brands use it, and curiously, it supports other competitive brands. Bosch and Siemens in fact passed on the Apple HomeKit connection standard in favor of their own proprietary system.
The Home Connect appliances are definitely cool. The engineering quality is crazy good – you’d expect nothing less from brands like Bosch and Siemens. But in terms of the IoT, they still only talk to each other. We’ll see in the coming year whether other manufactures develop for the Home Connect standard, or whether Google Nest, or Apple HomeKit or other emerging platforms can successfully attract brands into their big tent.

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How The IBM DataPower XB62 Bridges Internal And External (B2B) Integration

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One of the more elegant features of the DataPower XB62 appliance is its dual ability to govern internal application integration as well as external B2B (or Trading Partner) integration. In essence, the XB62 bridges the gap between internal and external integration, which is what makes it such a complete solution for so many different types of businesses.
In support of the XB62, IBM states that the company “recognizes the convergence” of internal and external integrations. And it’s obvious that the need for integrations near or at  the edge of the network is growing rapidly. By opting to deploy the XB62 you can better support complex B2B flows and become more flexible in routing and file processing. It’s therefore much easier to bridge between the DMZ and protected networks without sacrificing security. This in turn allows you to attract more partners due to the ease, flexibility and security of the external integration.
One oft-cited example of an XB62 deployment is to have the XB62 sit in the DMZ, where it securely connects to trading partners, but that same appliance also exchanges data with a DataPower X152 appliance within the protected network, which handles all the enterprise service bus functions.
TxMQ successfully deployed a DataPower XB62 solution for Medical Mutual of Ohio that serves as a strong example of the appliance’s secure integration capabilities. Medical Mutual wanted to take on more trading partners and more easily align with government protocols, but lacked the infrastructure to support it. “We needed to set up trading-partner software and a B2B infrastructure so we could move the data inside and outside the company,” says Eleanor Danser, EDI Manager, Medical Mutual of Ohio. “The parts that we were missing were the trading-partner software and the communications piece to support all the real-time protocols that are required from the ACA, which is the Affordable Care Act.”
TxMQ’s DataPower XB62 solution delivered $250,000 to $500,000 annual savings on transaction fees for Medical Mutual, as documented in this story published by Insight Magazine.
For more information on TxMQ’s many DataPower solutions for all industries, contact vice president Miles Roty – (716) 636-0070 x228, [email protected] – for a confidential and free initial consultation.

The Apple Watch Measures The Pulse Of Where We're Going

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It’s always great to step up the technology vista and peer over edge. We did that today with another big-tent, big-roar presentation from Apple for its worldwide debut of the Apple iPhone 6, Apple iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.
At first glance they’re all killer products. The iPhone 6 ups processing power and display size. The Plus version, with a 1920×1080 (2-million-pixel) display, nests within that space between a phone and pad. The standard 6 model boasts a 334×750 (1-million-pixel) display. This is a great step up for users, but will certainly tax iPhone-only developers who are accustomed to developing for a single screen size. Expect to see the premier Droid-iPhone shops to have the best-performing third-party apps right out of the gate.
About the Watch: I think it’s a glimpse at what’s coming and this is the necessary next step. I was front and center for the first electronic-watch revolution in the late-’70s, when we all wanted to wear a calculator, digital stopwatch and moon-phase calendar on our wrists. When Mario Bros. came out on a wristwatch a decade later, we all needed a videogame on our wrist.
I think the Apple Watch is different, though, because it centers its appeal on two critical trends – personal fitness and e-pay.
The Apple Watch is a stunning personal-fitness tool, and because it’s open to app development, fitness apps will quickly flood the App Store. What’s especially important, I think, is how the phone tracks sit vs. stand vs. walk vs. run time. A simple extra 30 minutes of standing a day can increase fitness, leg and foot health and general confidence and attitude.  The Apple Watch can measure, graph and remind its user of all these daily activity measures and more, including heart rate – all while connected to our social networks through the partner iPhone.
Apple is also touting the watch as a checkout-payment system: Swipe your watch, not your card. It’s where we’re headed as a society, certainly. And Apple must be salivating at the volume and depth of real-time big data that might stream in from 10 to 30 million active shoppers using their watches at retailers. But again, I think today was the vista – a look at where we’re going. The problem with the watch is that it must work in conjunction with an iPhone 5 or 6. So why not just use your phone to pay? The answer, I presume, is that the watch doesn’t yet have the connectivity to support standalone, real-time transactions. That’s still the exclusive domain of the cellular-data phone.
Count me as fascinated, though, and as someone who’d like very much to engage with a more personal piece of wearable tech and lite versions of apps that have a direct impact on personal health and social interconnectivity. And I can’t help but think this is somehow a step toward an era we’re all wanting – a time when passwords become arcane and we use a small item, something like the Apple Watch, to bio-authenticate our logins and purchases. If that’s truly the pulse of where we’re going, the Apple Watch is here to help show us the way.
Photo by Apple.