J. Rhoads Research / formerly MobyApp

Saturday I went to the GW EMIS Capstones. For those of you not in the know, EMIS is the Executive Masters [MSIST degree] in Information Systems program at the George Washington University's School of Business. The Capstones are like a Thesis Paper that a Master's student would deliver in order to satisfy the requirements of their degree program; the Capstone is a team project. The goal of the project is to deliver a working product with a business plan demonstrating a feasible ROI and expected profitability timelines! Good work and best of luck to the (fall) class of 2009

What? Yeah I am going to pursue a PhD to forgo my student loans! All kidding aside, why do I want to pursue a PhD and on what subject? I am going to do my dissertation on IT Right Staffing. Remember IT is about the people ! (Check out the hyper link and read it) The dissertation will focus on designing a functional organizational chart, with the necessary education and skillets of the positions. I am going to focus on everything from Helpdesks/Service desks to Project Management Offices and everything in between such as Engineering and Operations up through [Enterprise]Architecture. They [Engineering and Operations] are not the same as many non-technical managers seem to believe i.e. Engineers design and Operators operate and fix! To give you a little idea on what I am doing research on (and writing about): For example, I am going to focus on what an Operator and an Engineer are. An Operator will have some college and certifications as well as a break/fix mindset (hence the cowboy). An...

Hey followers, I have been off the radar for a while. Happy to say I am back. I've been under a lot of deadlines at work --gotta love SOA applications ! Well I won't be talking about SOA , I will be talking its brother, cloud computing. I was reading an article about a trip into the secret, online cloud. A guy from San Jose, CA wanted to know what this magical cloud was. So he started asking some questions and eventually toured an IBM datacenter . He was amazed, yet came away with some valid questions and concerns. What happens to the data? What if IBM closed its doors? Is it secure? What if a datacenter goes offline? I guess good faith in a cloud provider is needed.... He brought up some interesting points. As I work in the Government, there has been talk of using the cloud. Actually we would have to build our own cloud and have government entities give up their data and applications in order to drop them into the cloud. Maybe build a GSA cloud and put things like HR, benefi...

So I thought LPARS started back in the 1980's. Apparently they started back in the 1960's, who knew :) Here is an email I recieved from a reader of my blog: Jerry, Here’s the response I got back from the mainframe folks at IBM. Pretty interesting history…virtualization/lpar’s can be traced back to 1960! In early 1960, IBM used an internal tool call CP-67 to create virtual systems to test S/370, a predecessor of z/OS. The tool eventually became a commercial product in 1972, VM/370. After many iterations of VM/370, in the early 1980s, Poughkeepsie baked the assembler code of VM into "machine code" (we now call it microcode) such that it ran much closer to the hardware. This was to reduce the already single digit overhead of VM and create LPARs at the machine level as opposed to create LPARs at the OS level. So the LPAR code in z and p today can trace their genealogy to CP-67. If I equate virtual machines to LPARs, then the use of "LPAR" really started in...

I have often spoken of how I love the green screen! Nostalgia aside, a mainframe computer was (and still is) a scalable solution, if you needed to run more programs you cut out another logical partition also known as a LPAR. LPARs were first used on old systems like the IBM ESA/390 circa mid 1980’s. Eventually you had to add more processors, memory, and disk space to your mainframe –alas buy it by the drink! I often hear this phase; buy it by the drink. I often wonder what it really means. In looking to the past, I know this task was accomplished with mainframes. Every CIO that I know of wants to employ the “buy the drink” idea. Question is how do their direct reports develop a solution and execute that solution? I think this is going to require some thinking out of the box. Cloud computing or grid computing is a solution for a "buy it by the drink" requirement. The boundary of a system should be the datacenter, inside it is chuck full of storage, processors, and memory. Goog...

Jerry's mobile thought of the day: Peel the Onion!

I am starting my new company, MobyApp LLC. Look for My Fitness Buddy and The Bar Hop from Captain Ahab --MobyApp. Here is a screen shot showing my dabble with the iPhone SDK!

Apple just approved an iPhone application which lets users find their nearest CANNABIS dealer has been approved by Apple. Simply named CANNABIS, the $2.99 app lets users search by city for their nearest medical cannabis suppliers, doctors, clinics, lawyers and other relevant organisations. Also while checking for CANNABIS, I came across the CALIFORNIA HERBAL CAREGIVERS (CHC) application. This app goes for $ .99 and boasts it " allows you to obtain your weed in a legal, medical, and convenient fashion". Plug in your zip code and/or search by city and you will be linked up with one of 700 Medical Dispensaries. Wow, I could say something, but I will not! But I will say there are a lot of apps out there --I better get busy on mine. "And that's the way it is" -Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

Jerry's thought of the day is: "technology will not solve your people problems"

AFL-CIO Hard Hats The AFL-CIO is passing around these hard hats today to every office on Capitol Hill. Check out where they're made, China! Check out the a the story here AFL-CIO Hard Hats . I think this is pretty sad, a union telling people to buy American and yet they bought a product made in China. As I read the story, I paged down to read the associated blog. All I can say is wow! I have included some of the posts in order to make some comments. Here is a comment from We Made a Mistake and he writes: " What hypocrisy. 50 years ago the U.S. was the world leader in machine tools, electronics, steel, autos and aircraft. The unions destroyed all of them with their demands, demands, demands and never compromising demands. I am going to be amused at watching them along with President Narcissist destroy Chrysler and GM. My guess is, even after destroying them, they will blame Bush....anyone but themselves. Sounds just like a liberal's way of thinking." Another posted...

The CIO roles have changed over the last 2 decades and the number of corporate CIO’s are increasing. The CIO's job roles and responsibilities have been shifting from the paradigm of technical business (data processing) to the role of “knowledge” management. CIOs are at the center of the reengineering that is taking place in global economy. The job of the CIO has been redefined from IT technical planning and implementation to corporate strategic planning. Today’s CIO incorporates a holistic approach to the IT function to ensure seamless delivery and support for the company’s business strategy. In addition to the traditional CIO job responsibilities, the CIO now manages business process streamlining and restructuring; negotiates smart outsourcing agreements, and finds innovative ways for IT to advance the business objectives of the company through technology. CIOs are building relationships with their senior management teams, and they are adding value to their organizations versus th...

Testing from iPhone

Last month I graduated from GW and the celebration was on the mall. It was awesome, now what do I do with this piece of paper? True I learned some new skills and I've sharpened others. But now what? Well let’s figure out how to use it. As I often say, IT is about the people --true the technology is cool. Yet the people will MAKE or BREAK the technology and in the end, the CIO will pay the price. The challenge in any field is managing your people. I've have come to find out there are 2 types of managers --micromanagers and hands off managers. Both of these can be successful, but often times they are not. Here is why. Let's look at the "micromanager". The micromanager has his/her hands in everything. All decisions come from the top. If the micromanager heads a small department, this concept will work. Granted they will upset their employees and may find a revolving door in terms to staffing. I believe the cause of micromanagement is the fact that the manager does no...

Hi all, Looks like there will be a new iPhone afterall. The new phone will be called the iPhone 3G S. It will be faster, come with a 3 mega pixel camera, and can take video. Just to think I just bought a 3G two months ago!

Hey All, I know it has been a while since I blogged. I've been busy! Working on starting a new company to develop mobile applications. My first venture will be in the iPhone arena. Been busy learning ObjC , Cocoa, and X-code. Just wanted to drop you (all) a note. Should have a new iPhone application out by August, been slacking off for the summer! Now on to my title, the iPhone 3.0 is coming! Apple has been quiet in regards to new hardware, thank the gods --just bought a new 3G. The old iPhone will be used developing my apps. I have to say the old iPhone is (in my opinion) more sturdy and easier to type on (the old iPhone was longer). Maybe I will get used to it as I used the old one for 2years. The new iPhone 3.0 software should have many new goodies, such as cut and paste, bluetooth and usb tethering (the code is there, idk if it will be turned on), and the camera takes clearer pictures. Happy Summer!

Question is what to write about today? I've been checking out other CTO/CIO blogs such as CTOvision and Paul's NJVC Blog . Plenty of good articles on these blogs. Today I feel like blogging on the values of Social Networking. I heard once (at work), what's next FaceBook for the boss? Well, Hell yeah!!! So I've been thinking what value would social networking bring to my job. Well if I were in the big seat (the CIO), this would be a good way for me to be "in the know" about my organization. The CIO doesn't have the time to hang with the troops (even though I know he wants to). I feel that information gets distorted as it is passed up --I am not saying this is intentional, but it happens. Social Networking can help, blogs can help share the information in its raw and direct form versus getting information to the boss 3rd and 4th hand. Corporate Social Networks will be the "go to" place to find the status of a project or what went wrong or right wi...

CAN YOU GUESS WHAT'S IN THE BOX BEING LOADED ON THE AIRCRAFT? It's a hard disk drive (HDD) in 1956...with 5 MB storage.In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive. The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5 MB of data. Appreciate your 8 GB memory stick!

On thing I have found in the world, is that people are necessary. People are the root cause in everything we do. They are why we go to work. They are why we come home from work. Heck, we encounter many of them on the way to work --some of them not so nice! In the IT world, they are the doers. However it is important to understand the basic concepts in managing them. What is a technical person? Ask around and you will get answers ranging from, someone who can make their iPod work, works on the helpdesk, performs desktop support, defines IT rules and governance, IT Security personnel, System Administrators and System Engineers/Network Engineers. The list is tremendous. So why am I talking about this? Well how many times has your email gone down or blackberry acted up? Was it the machine or its software that failed? In most cases it the problem can be traced back to a person. The person didn't design the system with your needs in mind, or something as simple as not checking the system...

Hmmmm ... soooo much to say! Well now that I have all this time, what will I do? As you know I am a techie of sorts (nah really EMIS Techies?), and I love to use FaceBook and MySpace --well mostly FaceBook . I plan to make my millions off social networking and I have two ideas in the pot (not going to post them just yet). Besides have to work on the NDA's and other stuff with my attorney. That reminds me I need to call her so I can get out of the ticket that I got on the last day of class. Hey EMIS 18 remember my 79 in a 55 reckless driving ticket? So anyways back to whatever the hell I am talking about....Social Networking! Social Networking is great, it is a Web 2.0 technology that you are using right now by reading my blog! WOW!! I like FaceBook because I can tie my blog and the other components of my [online] life into one place. FaceBook can even help with my "dating" activities. One app in particular, "Are You Interested" is pretty handy. Howeve...