Social networking - Facebook privacy changes

A week ago, Facebook changed their privacy settings, after much criticism of their previous approach. What's the view a week on?

Firstly here's the BBC's take on the new screens. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains the rationale. Further official details are here.

Secondly Facebook yesterday released a new privacy page, in the form of a Facebook wall. This is being continuously updated with new advice and privacy material. They also released a second, short explanatory video, called "Controlling Sharing on Facebook: Part II".

If you still think there is work for Facebook to do on privacy, then you can provide feedback directly.

3 types of privacy

There are in fact three types of privacy relevant to Facebook:

1. What people can see and do on your "wall"
2. What computers & "bots" can see
3. What information Facebook is actively giving or selling to advertisers and other people
   

... to be continued ...

Excel Hell - ways to escape

Over the last few weeks we've looked at various ways to escape Excel Hell.

I hope you find this summary useful:





(1) Replacing Excel

Moving from Excel to a database solution for order processing

Using other tools for budgeting and forecasting


(2) Enhancing Excel

With add-ins or integration

Dashboard gauges


(3) Upgrading to Excel 2010

PowerPivot

Business Intelligence – PowerPivot for Excel 2010

It’s very difficult to be enthusiastic about a Microsoft product that promises to “help improve IT efficiency” when I’ve lost so much time with Windows playing up. Apologies for the rant, but when I loaded a document about PowerPivot from the Microsoft website, the processor went to 100% on some set of background tasks Windows wouldn’t let me see or manage.

This stopped me from making any progress on writing this article, which was going to be a lot longer. It will now have to be only a short introduction! Then came an error message presented from Adobe Reader. No wonder Apple doesn’t want Adobe software on their iPad!!

Anyway ... back to PowerPivot

Last week we looked at “Business Intelligence – what the hell does it mean?” David Carter pointed out that a common BI tool is the pivot table functionality within Excel. This started in Excel in primitive form right back in 1993.

Pivot tables (which are also available in other spreadsheets and BI software) can automatically sort, count, and total the data stored in one table or spreadsheet and create a second table (called a "pivot table") displaying the summarized data.

PowerPivot (formerly known as Project Gemini) takes this a stage further as an add-in for Excel 2010. As Robert Cain at “ArcaneCode” says in his article “Introducing Microsoft PowerPivot”
“PowerPivot sits inside Microsoft Excel [2010 only]. It not only can create basic pivot tables but has all the full featured functionality of Excel at its disposal. It can format pivot tables in a wide array of styles, create pivot charts and graphs, and combine these together into useful dashboards. Additionally PowerPivot has a rich set of mathematical functionally, combining the existing functions already in Excel with an additional set of functions called Data Analysis eXpressions or DAX”

He’s summarised this article with further diagrams in a concise presentation. This also describes the relationship with SharePoint 2010 to distribute PowerPivot reports across an organisation.

Robert’s article and presentation date back to last November. From the official Microsoft site, it’s not worth seeing the videos (unless you’ve got time to waste, and haven’t eaten recently!). But it is worth reading the latest pdf I mentioned: (It seems to load better from Internet Explorer than Firefox)

PowerPivot vs SQL Server Analysis Services (SSaS)

So if PowerPivot is effectively bringing Analysis Services functionality from Microsoft SQL Server into Excel on the desktop, is there any future role for Analysis Services?

Microsoft’s view is that “power users” in the end–user community will be able to use PowerPivot for many reporting requirements, but SSAS will remain an IT-department tool for more complex requirements.

PowerPivot vs PerformancePoint

Then wasn't PerformancePoint supposed to be "Microsoft Business Intelligence"? Well yes PerformancePoint is still here (despite losing its budgeting/forecasting capability). If you've got a stiff drink to hand, then this white paper explains how to use PowerPivot within Sharepoint 2010.

PowerPivot vs OLAP

I’ve also heard it said that “pre-calculated cubes become obsolete overnight”. Perhaps suppliers of traditional multi-dimensional OLAP software would like to comment

Availability of Excel 2010

Excel 2010 will be available in all three versions of Office 2010 for home, SME and Pro use. It will run on Windows XP (SP3 only), Vista, Windows 7 and equivalent server systems (see full technical requirements). As of 12th May, Office 2010 has been a “release candidate” trial version of the Pro version. Beta versions of the home and SME versions are also available.

Full release of all three versions is expected towards the end of June 2010, though no precise date has been published, pending feedback from the trial and beta users. A comparison of the contents of the three versions is here, where you can also place advance orders. Microsoft obviously benefit from this, but could anyone explain why it would be worth doing? Cheaper?

Upgrade from earlier versions of Excel

Those who buy Office 2007 after 5 March 2010 will get a free upgrade to Office 2010 – but there are stringent conditions that must be checked first. Earlier purchases will not be entitled to any upgrade discount. Once Office 2010 is fully available, worth looking whether 2007 can be bought more cheaply than 2010 (from an official source), and then upgrade for free. But check carefully how this would be done before purchase, especially if you have Office 2003 or 2007 already installed!

Cloud Industry Code of Practice

Is it only in London where you wait hours for a bus, and then two or three (or maybe even four) come along at once?

The Cloud industry has made a number of initiatives to improve the overall approach to the market, for the good of both vendors and users.

The latest initiative is the 2009-formed “Cloud Industry Forum” which has published an “Industry Code of Practice” under a public consultation recently. Anyone who would like to download a copy and perhaps submit feedback should click here as soon as possible.

The Intellect Technology Association (“Intellect”), which represents the IT, telecoms and electronics vendors, has also published a “Business case for Software as a Service“. Although the title suggests a preference for SaaS, the document is actually a very balanced, concise yet useful factual summary of the two approaches.

There is a summary of security issues on page 13. Some of the key points made are:

“While the SaaS model offers significant advantages over on-premise, it does carry potential risks that must also be considered.”

“For SaaS providers [security] is mission critical, and is generally taken very seriously to the point where data security is as important, if not more so, than the SaaS product itself.”

“…it is worth contrasting [SaaS] with your in-house security and compliance before becoming unnecessarily worried about storing your data outside your organization”

Whilst my experience of using SaaS systems first hand suggests there are aspects that need to be added to both documents, both are worth reading if you are a vendor or user of SaaS services.

Further thoughts on the Cloud Industry

Keeping to the transport theme, it’s interesting to think that when the Titanic went down, shipping didn’t stop. However when the Hindenburg burst into flames, it was the end of giant passenger-carrying airships for many years. The difference? In the case of ships, there were no credible alternatives. For airships, there were credible alternatives, and any advantages were outweighed by the risks.

Whatever the cause of the Hindenberg disaster (the hydrogen may have only fuelled a fire that had started elsewhere), the effect was the same – the death of the passenger airship industry.

The cloud industry is relatively new, and on-premise remains a credible alternative. Whilst a major problem in a cloud system might not be a disaster in the sense of the Hindenberg, would the cloud industry be immune from a Hindenberg-equivalent disaster that would take the cloud industry to its knees?

Or for the sake of both users and vendors, should the industry be looking very carefully for any “Hindenberg” risks, be they equivalent to hydrogen, or less obvious? The “Industry Code of Practice” is a good step towards making sure the industry avoids a disaster, and can recover should one occur. Who would want a lower quality cloud vendor to sink the whole industry?

Weekly Review - iPad / Loss of confidential data

Apple iPad

One of the most interesting pieces of news from this last week is the UK launch of the Apple iPad. See details in my previous article.

PCWorld and Currys are both showing stock at many of their stores. Honest and truthful? If you’ve been looking for an iPad, what’s your experience of availability? Still stock at Apple stores?

Loss of confidential data

Last week saw another case of data being disclosed or lost by a Government department – an HMRC printing error resulted in personal details, including bank and salary details, being printed on tax credit award notices by mistake.

There has also been debate about the security of SaaS cloud applications, and how they inherently compare to typical on-premise installations. Your view?

Furthermore, why do we all still use unencrypted email, when encrypted services are available?

(P.S. Apologies for this short Bank Holiday posting)