| Author: |
Antonio Chagoury |
Created: |
Saturday, January 27, 2007 |
 |
A chief technical officer or chief technology officer (abbreviated as CTO) is a executive position whose holder is focused on scientific and technical issues in a company. It emerged in the United States in the 1980s as a business-focused extension of the position of Director of R&D.
During the dot-com and computer boom of the 1990s, many companies used the CTO title for their main technical person. The MIS and IT community often use the title CTO as either synonymous with Chief Information Officer, or as a subordinate to the CIO who is more versed in the technical intricacies. The role of the CTO varies between companies and industries, but usually relates to technology. The roles include:
- Short term technology direction (tactical)
- Business-focused oversight of R&D
- Software used in the corporation
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Not too many of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting during the last 9 years know that I have lived in Africa for the better part of 25 years.
As a matter of fact a big portion of my family still lives and work in West-Africa, in Nigeria to be exact.
 My father was born in Lagos, the capital city of Nigeria in 1943. To be exact, he was born on Broad Street in downtown Lagos, a street that is now the large artery that goes through the ci ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Saturday, February 17, 2007
I think the blog title alone gives you a good hint on what I am talking about. Yes, that Mac commercial (hilarious, by the way) where the PC's body-guard prompts for a "Cancel or Allow" on literally everyting PC does.
(If you have not seen this commercial before, then click the "Play" button on the image below)
While I do think the commercial is very funny (These Mac marketing folks are good, darn good!), I must admit that it goes too far.
Just to set some context, the commercial pokes fun of the new Windows Vista operating system, which hosts a new and improved security system.
Windows Vista does not ask for your permission when you start an application, browse the web, send emails, chat on IM etc. These are recognized by Vista as common tasks that users perf ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Friday, February 09, 2007
This sums it up pretty well... need I say more?
To see Colbert's view click here!
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
BT Tradespace Beta Now Available
British Telecom and SMBLive yesterday released the public beta of BT Tradespace (www.bttradespace.com). With BT Tradespace, small businesses can use the power of social media to promote themselves online, and can communicate with prospects and customers through blogging, podcasting, click-to-call, and text messaging.
The Latest Example of SaaS Innovation for Broadband Service Providers...
BT Tradespace is the latest example of how SMBLive continues to develop channel-ready Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools designed to help millions of small businesses work more effectively, attract more customers, and grow revenue -- with absolutely zero IT required.
Other examples of SMBLive products include BT Workspace (www.btworkspace.com) and TELUS ePoint (www.telus.com/epoint).
A ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Friday, February 02, 2007
Google will now attempt to personalize searches for authenticated users.
If you’re logged into gmail, adwords, or some other Google product, Google will track your searches and try to see what your interests are, and then serve results based on that.
This is undoubtedly going to raise the importance of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) since SEO-related efforts will grow increasingly harder to attract a mass audience.
At least with PPC, you’ll be able to have your ad run for everyone (for now). Ultimately, that too would logically change. Microsoft has demographic filter in its adCenter as of today, and Google will probably add this feature to Adwords soon as well – based on the demographic of authenticated users.
Sources that have spoken to Google engineers last August confirmed that this was under an opt in program, which meant you had to go to your account page and navigate to this feature and activate it.
Now that ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Friday, February 02, 2007
Recently some Google users lost all the emails and contacts! Yep, one fine day, they logged in their GMail account only to find out that all their stuff was, puff, gone!
While the loss was contained to only a few people it does make me wander whether I (or anyone else for that matter) should rely on Web services to store data.
A slew of Web 2.0 storage services such as Box.net and StreamLoad are making their debut and are quickly gaining large user bases.
You may argue that these service providers are backing up your data, but Google did too; yet the loss was irrecoverable.
This issue is one of trust. Not only must you be sure that your data is secured from prying eyes (Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Monday, January 29, 2007
Do you own a CentralDesktop Workspace account?
If you do, then you should seriously reconsider your options!
If you do not, then read on and judge for yourself whether or not you should become their customer.
I was in the midst of evaluating CentralDesktop's document library when I stumbled upon the fact that any document I upload on that library is accessible by anyone. And by "anyone", I mean just that. You do not have to be authenticated to see this file, do ya? No kidding, the file you just saw is on my Company's Document Library on CentralDesktop (here is the actual url: http://www.centraldesktop.com/home/viewfile ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Sunday, January 28, 2007
I was doing some research this evening on some Office 2.0 applications (more on what these are later) and ran into a slew of AJAX based desktop-like web apps.
Granted, I have known of websites like PageFlakes and konfabulator (now a Yahoo company) for a while now but it seems that more people keep on coming up with more of the same concept.
The one thing that baffles me is how these folks are able to sustain such ventures without necessarily having a monetization strategy. Unless they are VC funded and plan on another YouTube-like buy-out, I am not able to see how these guys will survive.
It seems that social networks are popping up every minute, everybody is doing this Web 2.0 thing. I just wander when will these guys wake up a smell that sour coffee.
Just as the social networking space is getting crowded so is the AJAX desktop space. Even the giants are in on it. ...
Read More »
|
By Antonio Chagoury on
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The speed at which technology progresses never seizes to amaze me.
Not more that 3 or 4 months ago I was looking at PageFlakes. I remember thinking to myself "here another one of these Web 2.0 wanna-be's".
Everyone seemed to be getting into the "AJAX" band-wagon and all kind of websites were popping up and down their interpretation Web 2.0.
Today, I once again decided to take a look at PageFlakes only to be very pleasantly surprised at the progress they have made in such a short period of time.
To be quite honest, I still do not see the "real value" it gives the consumer - take my mom for instance, will she ever find this useful? - Uh, nah. I don' think so.
The technology behind it is absolutely cool, don't get me wrong, but I would like to learn and understan ...
Read More »
|
|
|
|
|