August 27, 2004
Enterprise DRM?
If we are going to have "enterprise DRM," such technology must become a key and well integrated part of the larger enterprise infrastructure that includes content management, document management, application serving, security, and other enterprise technologies. Many organizations are investing in several of these applications, but don't yet know how they all fit together. There are some piecemeal solutions out there--where a collaboration tool or CMS has been linked with DRM. But does any organization yet have a fully integrated environment, where DRM spans single sign-on and all content applications?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:27 PM
Documents on Categorization of Government Information
I don't republish many things, but I thought the following announcement would be of interest to some readers.
The E-Government Act required the Office of Management and Budget to establish the U.S. Federal Interagency Committee on Government Information (ICGI). ICGI is required to make recommendations by December 2004 concerning certain aspects of government information management.
Two recent drafts have been posted at the ICGI Web site for public comment.
One of the drafts defines requirements for enabling the identification, categorization and consistent retrieval of U.S. Federal Government information. It addresses: What government information is categorizable? What are searchable identifiers and how can they be applied to government information? and, Why should Agencies and Departments apply categorization?
The other draft is a recommendation that builds on a requirements document that was opened for public review in February. This draft recommendation concerns how the U.S. Federal Government should adopt a search service standard to enhance interoperability among networked systems that aid in the discovery of and access to government information.
Comments on both documents are due by September 27. Comments should be sent to the editor addresses as indicated in each document.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:47 PM
August 25, 2004
Big Daddy
I miss hockey. I miss the rush of it--skating full bore, legs pumping. And I miss the insane blood lust of it--chasing a puck carrier the length of the ice, poking and slashing at his arms, legs, and body with my stick. Harassing the shit out of him. I read once that a hockey player at top speed exceeds 30 miles an hour. I also read once that 30 miles an hour is the speed at which serious injuries begin to appear in car accidents. I have no doubt these two facts are somehow related.
It is fully within the rules of hockey to hit someone at full speed. You can't line someone up and plant them into the boards, you can't hit them with a raised stick, and you can't connect primarily with your arms, elbows, or an outstretched leg. Technically, if I remember the rules correctly, you cannot take three or more strides directly at an opponent and then check him. But the reality of hockey is that very little skating is done in a straight line. You are constantly shifting, cutting, turning, deking--doing anything to get around obstacles and get the best angle on the puck. So if someone is in open ice, head down, and your trajectory just happens to intersect with him, well, Katie bar the door and you better check your dental insurance, may the best man win.
I have been at both ends of such collisions, but more often on the receiving end. Once, retrieving the puck behind my own net, I turned 180° and started to head up ice. Bad idea. I was looking up ice and never saw my opponent, who hit me low--I felt the impact at mid-thigh. As I was pin-wheeling through the air, I found myself admiring the little prick for executing such a perfect check.
Smaller opponents loved to take me down. At 6'2" I was often the tallest player on the ice. This gave me a significant advantage in terms of reach, but I was so damn skinny that my center of gravity was somewhere between my sternum and my Adam's apple. And smaller opponents took advantage of this. Once, lining up for the opening face-off against an all black team (yes, a rarity then, and now), I found myself facing off against a menacing boy a foot shorter but perhaps three times wider than me.
"Oh, Lordy!" he said, before fixing his mouthguard in place. "I've got myself a big one here!"
His linemates chuckled knowingly. "Get him Big Daddy! Take him down!"
When the puck dropped and play started, I found myself putting as much distance as I could between myself and Big Daddy. But hockey doesn't work that way. You can't challenge someone for the puck from 30 feet away, no matter how tall you are. On the first line change, my coach greeted me at the bench. Grabbing my facemask, he leaned in and hissed, "What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?" He then let me sit for a good long time before finally putting me out to kill a penalty. "Now go out there and hit somebody," he barked before sending me out.
Killing a penalty was my thing. I was not a good scorer or passer, but I was an above-average skater, and tireless. I also had that great reach and the witless tenacity of a terrier. As the opposing team tried to use their extra skater to set up some kind of play, I would relentlessly dog them. Check them, poke at them, chase them all over the ice--anything to get them to hurry their play and make some kind of mistake. Being a penalty killer meant being an agent of chaos, and I loved this role.
As luck would have it, Big Daddy was on the ice for their power play. Standing at the "point," the blue line that straddles the ice about 45 feet from the goalie, Big Daddy was at a safe distance from the corners where he could do me grave harm. But being at the point also put Big Daddy in a position where he might get set up for a shot, and I would have to close the gap to him as quickly as possible.
Of course, this is precisely what happened. The puck came out to Big Daddy and I was the closest defender. As he lined up his shot, I had a very clear thought--Big Daddy might be scary, but my coach was scarier. I was not going back to the bench without challenging this shot.
So challenge I did. I headed straight for Big Daddy and closed the distance between us in two strides. Now there are perhaps two safe ways to challenge a shot in this situation. You could slide, putting your skates and well-padded shins in the path of the puck and your head a safe distance away. Agile players do this, and you see professional and major college players do this brilliantly. You can also simply skate directly at the shooter, in the hope of rattling him, confident that the shot will hit you fairly low on the body and in a well-padded spot.
Bizarrely, though, I did neither. Desperate to attack the shot, I instead lunged at Big Daddy, reaching out to my full length to put my stick in his way as quickly as I could. Big Daddy unleashed a furious shot. My teammates later told me that his slapshot glanced off the oncoming blade of my stick and rose to hit me squarely in the face.
"You went down like a ton of bricks," one teammate told me, with too much glee. "You were out fucking cold."
Another teammate chimed in, "It's like you said, 'Here, shoot it at my face instead.'"
I came to in the ambulance. The puck had hit me high on the face mask, almost where it meets the helmet, so I felt like I had a divot in my forehead. The EMTs were unimpressed, though. This was a tough neighborhood, and they had seen far worse. "You'll be fine," one said. "They call us because of the insurance or something."
My next concussion would convince me to quit hockey. I was killing a penalty (again!), chasing the puck carrier around the net when my skate caught a stray piece of netting. I hit the boards head first, at close to full speed, and got my second ambulance ride in a year. This time, the EMTs seemed more concerned. They must have asked me who was President 25 times, and never seemed satisfied with my answer, no matter who I tried. The smelling salts finally brought me around.
"You really should think of a different sport," the EMT offered. He was right of course. Even at 17, I was smart enough to know it wasn't worth it. I wasn't much of a player, but I loved it. God help me, I loved it so.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:53 PM | Comments (1)
Web Services Technology Companies
I have been giving some thought to what companies sell technology to support Web Services, or, more broadly, Service Oriented Architectures. I have put together kind of a strawman taxonomy of the vendors, and have begun discussing it with some of the vendors. This is still prelimary, and does not reflect any of the feedback I have received thus far.
One consistent bit of feedback I have received thus far is that I should differentiate more between "platforms" and "tools." I will give this more thought.
Any thoughts out there?
"Major Platform Players"
> IBM
> Microsoft
> Sun
> Oracle
> BEA
> Hewlett Packard
> Computer Associates
"Traditional EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) Vendors" who are now Web Services focused
> SeeBeyond
> Tibco
> Vitria
> webMethods
"Web Services Pure Play Vendors"
> Intalio
> Lombardo
> Ultimus
> Savvion
"Web Services to Go" or "Web Services Networks"
> StrikeIron
> GrandCentral
> Infravio
> Actional
> AmberPoint
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:04 PM
August 24, 2004
By Way of an Update
I was on vacation for a bit, and then in San Francisco at a conference. While in Maine, I attended Jim Ellefson's writing workshop again, and have some new material in a notebook that I will get online soon.
While I was in San Francisco, I had dinner at my nephew Max's restaurant, Frascati. It was a great meal, and a great time.
Careful readers of the blog will note that I haven't mentioned Joyce's Ulysses lately. Fear not. I am making progress! I am on page 559, most of the way through the lengthy chapter referred to as Circe. The online guide I have been using summarizes Circe best, saying, "Chapter Fifteen opens with Bloom arriving in 'Nighttown', trying to catch up with Stephen but getting caught up in his own guilts and lusts, which appear as a riot of hallucinations, all presented in the style of a stageplay's script."
I have had a few reading side trips this summer, taking time out to read Pete Hamill's memoir, A Drinking Life, and some poetry. Which reminds me: am I the last person to discover Billy Collins?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 PM
August 18, 2004
Traction for MathML?
Seybold does not have a concentration of XML vendors, but one area where there is quite a bit of activity is in Math typesetting and conversion. MathML seems to be gaining ground, and one company, Design Sciences, really seems to be taking over. As some of you know, they provide the math editor in Microsoft Word, MathType, and are also the math editor in ArborText Epic and XMetal. They have announced, but are not yet shipping, MathType editors for Quark and InDesign.
One cool thing they provide is a free MathML "player" for Internet Explorer.
It displays MathML in the browser, and it also has an accessibility feature that "speaks" the equation. The text to speech will not blow you away, but it is a first version which was partially funded by the National Science Foundation, and they are still working on it. The text-to-speech work in the electronic version of the American Heritage Dictionary, as one example, is much better, but it's interesting to see it done with mathematics.
Design Sciences also has a new product offering, MathFlow, which manages the workflow and conversion of math from Word to desktop publishing formats.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:22 AM
August 17, 2004
Blogging from Seybold
I am at the Seybold Conference this week, where I will be visiting with a number of vendors before moderating sessions on eForms and content management later this week.
I spent an interesting day at Oracle yesterday, learning about their XML support in the core platform and in some of their additional products. More on this later.
I shouldn't have had to come all the way to San Francisco to see this, but I found an online forum at Adobe.com that provides user-to-user interaction on their major products. I will be adding a forum on Adobe Designer to my eForms Resources page. (Note that the Adobe forums require you to register on the Adobe site.)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
August 10, 2004
A Love Story
The following appeared, in a slightly different form, in the journal Willard & Maple.
Miss Beaver: A Love Story
By Bill Trippe
I am too tempted to play with her name, but I won't, as it obscures the more obvious truths about her.
The most important thing is that she was beautiful--long blonde hair, an open pretty face, big blue eyes--and by far the best-dressed teacher I had ever seen. Brilliant patterned dresses, big colorful scarves--one day her hair in a thick braid, the next day up on her head and coiffed. It is a ridiculous understatement to say she stood out amidst all of the other teachers--all hopelessly stern--all gray in looks and dress and demeanor.
The only drawback was I only saw her once a week, for music, for an hour. But what an hour it was! She radiated warmth and fun in a building that knew precious little of either. Within moments of entering her space, we would be up, moving, clapping, and singing at the top of our lungs. It was 1970. The folk revival may have been waning, but not in Miss Beaver's 5th Grade Music Class. Songs like, "This Land is Your Land," "Goodnight, Irene," and "Blowing in the Wind" roared from our lungs and throats, and left the fluorescent lights buzzing when she would signal us to a rest.
When she told us one day she was forming a glee club, I was far too smitten to do anything but volunteer to audition. I may not have learned higher math yet, but this formula was simple to me--glee club meant more time with Miss Beaver. Imagine my surprise and anxiety when I looked at the list later and realized that precious few other boys had volunteered. And the ones who had volunteered--beside myself of course--were all hopelessly out of step. Nerds! I realized. Not a hockey or baseball player among them. This was trouble.
To make matters triply worse, word came down that auditions would take place in none other than music class. In front of the whole fifth grade! The indignity I was facing--the sheer horror of it all.
With D-Day approaching, I quickly thought through and just as quickly eliminated every conceivable scheme to back out. I was too chicken to play hooky, and even if I had deluded myself into thinking I had a singing voice (at least one good enough for a glee club), I knew that I wasn't enough of an actor to feign illness. The next thing I knew it was Wednesday afternoon, and I was slumped in the back of Miss Beaver's class, feverishly praying she would somehow forget me.
But I was the tallest boy in the class, and the son of her teaching colleague. I knew she had already told my mother I was auditioning. She wasn't going to forget me. And even if by some miracle she had forgotten me, the three girls in front of me weren't about to let me or her forget. After virtually everyone else had auditioned and she called out, "Who's next?" I felt her eyes alight on me as my three persecutors chirped, "Billy Trippe hasn't gone yet."
I was in front of the room now. Miss Beaver facing me, her pretty face radiating warmth and encouragement. But behind her, 100 flavors of torment--every fifth grade boy and girl in the school. I could see the sneers already, here the giggles of looming disappointment. Even the most encouraging faces--my best friends, a goodhearted neighborhood girl--were reflecting my alarm.
Miss Beaver sat at the piano, hands poised. "I'll lead you in," she said. "Shenandoah, the first two verses." She led me in, sang the first few bars with me, and left me dangling out there. When I heard my own frail note, alone, out there, I choked. Is that the right word? Choked? Croaked? Chirped? Whirtled? In truth, all of the above, in a space where only a middle C should have appeared.
Disaster! Worse than disaster! Abject and total humiliation! A rout! A wipeout! The laughter exploded out of my classmates with such force I winced in pain. My mind spun with humiliation--a blur of confusion and white noise all at once. I had this sudden, specific fear I would lose control of my bladder and bowels. But then just as suddenly, Miss Beaver was up, on her feet, her warm face in front of mine.
To this day, I have no recollection of the next few moments. I have no idea what she said or how she said it, what technique she offered or what reassurances. I have no idea how she calmed me and quieted the room all in an instant. But she did. The following facts are indisputable--a matter of record. She was back at the piano. I was standing up straight, shoulders back, looking at her and only her, awaiting her cue to start again.
It is amazing how much emotion and information and understanding can pass between two people in a moment--indeed, perhaps without any time passing at all. But all at once I knew what Miss Beaver expected of me--to follow her cue, to sing well, to reach the far note I needed to reach. The other boys hadn't sung well. She needed me. She led me in. I drew a deep, full breath, looked into Miss Beaver's smiling face, and belted it out.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:14 PM
Is Word Ready for XML Primetime?
I have a recent article in Transform magazine that looks at Word 2003 and how many organizations are using its XML capabilities. To quote briefly from the article:
With the release of Office 2003 last year, much was made of the XML capabilities built into Word, the ubiquitous word processing tool from Microsoft. Word 2003 supports XML in two ways: it lets users to save documents to a Microsoft-specific XML format called WordProcessingML, and also enables users to structure documents according to valid XML schema.
Ten months after its release, Word 2003 is not yet commonly used for XML authoring on its own, but it has given rise to a cottage industry of XML editing add-ons.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:18 PM
DRM Book now in Japanese
How cool is this? The DRM book that I wrote with Bill Rosenblatt and Steve Mooney is now available in Japanese. Of course, you are still free to buy it in English.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:08 PM
August 8, 2004
DAM Consolidation Continues
Artesia has been acquired by OpenText, continuing the trend over the past two years for DAM vendors to be acquired by vendors of broader ECM platforms. This leaves NorthPlains as perhaps the last of the standalone "enterprise DAM" vendors.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:10 AM
