the corner office

British classism is a very strange thing. As a foreigner sometimes you notice it, and other times you go for ages without even realising it's there. But it's part of the culture, and it seems to be a really big thing to a lot of people.

I really like this quote by Shaffiq Mahmood, a commenter in response to this article:

As a child of immigrants I have not had anything to do with the British class system. Education, degree, hard work, aspirations to get on in life were the drivers - class or social position did not even come into it. In fact never even considered myself as part of anythin class or social group - I guess immigrants live a meta culture of get on with it.

In the Times tonight:

Article 1 - Q&A: Alcohol and teenagers:

My sixteen-year-old son is off to Newquay on a holiday with some friends soon. What safe drinking advice can I give him?

Article 2 - Alcoholic Gary Reinbach dead at 22 after transplant refused.

Mom is up north to visit a friend this weekend, and the boys are going it alone. Mom's off, the cigars and pizza and chocolate cake are stacked up. Sorted.

If you're a Lotus Notes developer or ever were a Lotus Notes developer, then you probably follow Damien Katz's blog, and you smile knowingly when you see the rest of the world trying to get to grips with CouchDB.

I remember reading Damien's first Couch-in-current-form post back in 2005 and thinking 'sounds cool, interesting project he'll be blogging about until he gets another job'. As Volker Weber pointed out, CouchDB has come a long way since then, and it's going places now.

So now, reading Damien's latest post:

Right now I'm exploring some ideas of integrating CouchDB with some Lotus technologies, and perhaps creating some new browser-based applications called CouchApps.

...

So I want to know what the Lotus community thinks about CouchDB, do you see a future for Lotus and Apache CouchDB? What do you see it looking like? What sorts of tools, support, applications ,etc would you need to make it something viable?

My first reaction is thinking it's a great idea but too much work to turn into something as all-encompassingly powerful an app platform as Notes can be. I think this because the data store is important and has huge potential, but it's what you build on top of the data store that's really going to count. CouchApps may be nifty, but if you know Notes you know that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Then I remember what I thought back in 2005, and how wrong I was. And now that Damien's eyeing application territory... much like I said yesterday, it'll be quite interesting to come back this post in a few years' time and see what's happened since.

Going back to his post though - I see some interesting words: "integrating", "applications", "support", "viable".

My own suspicion is that the cat is amongst the pigeons a bit in IBM right now. CouchDB has the potential to become the foundation of a 21st century Notes, and people in IBM must know it. Unless there's some faint plan to marry the two (which I can't see), you have to regard CouchDB as a competitor to Notes. IBM is a many-headed beast, and I'm not sure IBM itself quite knows what to do with it, but in many respects, CouchDB is a very disruptive technology.

From my little corner, Microsoft's online version of MS Office is just fluff. I don't see the success of (say) Gmail translating to Google Docs, which looks nice enough but (in my own experience) can't help but be sluggish and unweildy in comparison to a desktop app.

So this is just defensive marketing, an 'us-too' to appease CTOs who don't really know what they or their users want but would like to sound hip by getting onto the 'cloud' bandwagon.

Is there a use case? I'm sure there is. But Microsoft has no hope of dislodging Google to the extent that the world moves online, and Google Docs won't kill MS Office to the extent that big and bulky spreadsheets and word applications will work best as local apps.

It will be interesting to revisit this post in 5 years' time and see how far off the mark I was.

I don't get Twitter. Or should I say, I think I get it, but I haven't wanted to get it, if that makes any sense. That might be a sign that I'm getting old. So I signed up. Dunno who I want to follow or what I want to say, or why I'd want to say it when I do. Off to Mordor we go.

This is my favourite Dilbert in quite some time.

Google announced today that it intends to release a new operating system, called Chrome OS. I think it's interesting, I think competition is good, but that's about all I think of it right now.

• Google's official announcement
• The BBC: Charge of Google's light brigade, somewhere between analysis and blah blah blah blah.
• Fake Steve Jobs: Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspective (via).

This blog has always trodden a bit of a tenuous path between being a tech blog and a personal blog, and despite it being around for 6 years I don't know if I've ever gotten the mix right. These days I definitely don't. I don't write as much technical stuff as I'd like because I'm mindful of scaring off or boring friends and family who regularly (or occasionally) pop by. Ditto in the other direction.

What I really want is one thing which is personal and non-technical and conversational, and then something else where I can indulge in uninhibited geekery, and be as free-form and self-indulgent as I like.

So I think it's time for me to split things up.

I'm not sure how yet. The Corner Office will either be a tech blog with another personal diary-style blog somewhere else, or else this'll be the diary and a new tech blog started up elsewhere. Perhaps I'll tweak my link blog, which has occasionally threatened to become a tech blog anyway.

Watch this space.

Update: here it is.

This is one of those arb medical articles telling people (like me) what they want to hear:

Three large cups of coffee a day could help to slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease and even reverse the condition, researchers say.

A daily dose of caffeine can suppress the degenerative processes in the brain that can lead to confusion and memory loss, a study in mice suggests.

Of course, if I knocked back 3 large Americanos before lunchtime I'd be suffering from confusion and memory loss, regardless.