Skiing, Beer, Software - three of my favorite things to do

I am at Mt Bachelor ski area in Bend, OR for the kids ski race.

First stop was Boneyard Beer to fill the growlers.

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Talking software is kind of easy with a bunch of other skiers who are Microsoft working in Xbox, Office, and Windows.  This trip I went to see a software company HQ in Bend, OR that does some cool 3D graphics.

Kids will have three days of skiing and part of my job is take pictures.

Vic Gundotra Leaves Google, where will he go next?

Vic Gundotra’s departure from Google has hit the news today.  One day after Facebook announces record profits.  A coincidence or time to change to someone who can compete against Facebook?  It’s time to loop back to some ex-Microsoft friends who I worked with and reported to Vic at Microsoft and exchange some views.  Many of us have a different view of Vic working in his organization at Microsoft than his bigger than Life at Google.

New York Times (blog)

 

Google+ Head Vic Gundotra Leaving Company

Re/code-2 hours agoShare
Vic Gundotra, who aggressively led Google into the social world with the creation of Google+, is leaving the company. A Google spokesperson ...

Re/code hints at some of the issues.

Key to Gundotra’s often pugnacious approach with Google+ was the wonky idea of “circles,” where people could define who they want to share information with in different contexts, rather than all relationships being equal and two-sided, like Facebook’s notion of friends.

...

While no Facebook killer, Google+ has most definitely become a powerful sharing and identification tool for users and, most of all, for Google. It, along with the success of Google I/O, also vaulted Gundotra into the powerful inner circle of Page, from which he now departs.

Where will Vic go next?  Re/code closes asking the same.

On his Google+ page, Gundotra’s introduction notes: “Fell in love with the power of software at age 11, and am still in love.” But in love with what now?

Presumably, we’ll see soon enough.

Greenpeace says Apple has done the most to Green its Data Center & Internet Ecosystem

Forbes has a post on Apple, Earth Day and Leadership.  In the post is a reference to Greenpeace.

Greenpeace spokesman and ‘Clicking Green’ Report co-author, David Pomerantz, states, “Apple has done the most of any data center operator to make its part of the internet green,”

Apple has chosen to take a leadership position and it looks like its PR machine is behind it as well.  Google’s data center footprint is bigger which makes it harder and its PR machine is not like Apple’s.  So much of the media are fanatical Apple users.  Don’t know many media people who are fanatical Android users. 

A World of Friends in the Data Center Industry

I was talking to a friend who has taken on a new job.  Today movers are coming and tomorrow he will get on a plane.  He’ll be working as a data center analyst and we have had a good time discussing ideas.  In the past I’ve introduced him to some other friends who are forward thinkers, and we have discussed some new ideas.

One way to judge a person’s abilities is by their friends and who they hang out with.  The good ones have good friends.  

Making new things is hard, but much easier if you have good friends.

I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by our hero Remy, a rat. Voiced by the great Peter O’Toole, Ego says that Remy’s talents have “challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking … [and] have rocked me to my core.” His speech, written by Brad Bird, similarly rocked me—and, to this day, sticks with me as I think about my work.

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”

Catmull, Ed; Wallace, Amy (2014-04-08). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Kindle Locations 2257-2265). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

64-bit ARM Servers coming Sooner than expected, thanks to Apple A7 waking up the 64-bit opportunity

CNET has a post on 64-bit ARM processors catching ARM and other fabs flat footed.

Phone and tablet makers are rushing to embrace 64-bit designs, surprising even those executives behind the chip platform.

Tom Lantzsch, ARM's executive vice president of corporate strategy, spoke with CNET after the company reported first-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

ARM supplies virtually all of the basic processor designs for phones and tablets running on Android.

"Certainly, we've had big uptick in demand for mobile 64-bit products. We've seen this with our [Cortex] A53, a high-performance 64-bit mobile processor," he said.

This caught the chip designer's executives off guard, as they believed that 64-bit ARM would only be needed for corporate servers in the initial phase of the technology's rollout.

"We've been surprised at the pace that [64-bit] is now becoming mobile centric. Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Marvell are examples of public 64-bit disclosures," he said.

Past assumptions is only large memory addressing would address the need for 64 bit chips.  But, thanks to Apple’s A7 the market has found a new feature to differentiate on.

This echoes comments from a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. executive last week, who said the conversion to 64-bit has in the mobile device industry accelerated in the last six months after Apple made its 64-bit A7 processor -- also an ARM design -- announcement.

How soon are the 64-bit chips showing up?  By Christmas.

So, when will the transition to 64-bit processors happen for Android phones and tablets?

"We believe the capability will be there for a 64-bit phone by Christmas," he said, referring to phones and tablets with 64-bit bit processors.