Sonos - wireless streaming recommendations?

Is it just me that fell for Sonos? It all looked like a such a nice, easy and reliable gig. It's not so bad, given how rarely used it is. But I'm an audiophile by nature and just feel that I've gone down the wrong track with this one.

A proprietary network, no integration with iTunes, slow controller apps - I know audiophile and itunes don't naturally go together either but I use n iPhone so I'm locked into that nonsense too - it all feels so wrong.

Am I missing the point of Sonos? I'd like not to smirk at it, thinking 'your time is up sucker,' when I see it gleaming the corner of the room.

If I have, as I suspect, backed a wong'un, what would you suggest for wireless streaming - I mean from the NAS to the eardrum?

Freedom

I'm very much of the opinion that the basics of running a virtual machine should absolutely be free. The notion of paying for hypervisor is simply ludicrous. There's nothing to it. Management is another matter, as some of the pioneers of this latest wave of virtualization seem to have recognised some years ago, if you can integrate the management of these virtual platforms and environments into a broader suite of solutions it's real value add - hence it becomes a chargable effort, and something that I'm prepared to pay for.

hear hear

I've certainly got better at it over the years!

A Job?

A bloody Nobel I reckon.

Choice is the absolute key

The choices are available are fairly rudimentary. Don't do proprietary - else you're locked in for years and face a nightmare task of migrating at some point - unless you're a fully fledged MS shop. Note I'm not even including the toy that is blackberry.

Once you've made that choice it's a questions of what you actually need - if this is just for email then it's very easy. Web interface and browser - all data stays on the server so no there's no security issues no matter what happens with the device.

We went IMAP a couple of years ago for around 80 users and have had no problems - apart from the odd drunken email written out of hours. But that would have happened with a laptop anyway.

The key is keeping it in line with organisational usage generally - once your users are educated in a standard you've got to keep it there.

Very good, very depressing - what about the charities?

Headline says it all really.

The one thing i'm ot entirely grasping however is how the charity fits into the equation? Are they just funded by the pharma industries? Or are they, as i've long suspected, simply pointless entities with no clear goals, no tangible knowledge providing jobs for people with double-barrelled names?

Obviously it's not directly related to cancer, but we really should ban these damned charities -- smeering the world in their particular brand of middle-class vanilla smiles and, it would appear, misinformation.

Business benefits from BI

Business Intelligence is a beautiful thing but so few businesses - my own included - understand how to make it so. There's 3 problems as i see it:

1. Soooooo much data

2. So many people thinking they need that data

3. Getting that data into something useful

To give detail on that, the amount of data a business generates is something of a self-perpetuating ritual. Everyone thinks they need to know everything about everything. But clearly they don't.

I'm currently working on a major BI case across four business units - all baying for data. The rule of thumb I apply, and indeed my mantra is:

' How will you action that peice of data into something that delivers a business benefit.'

That throws a lot of people. But if you start off with the major list and then work it through into:

Data X will enable us to deliver a 0.1% improvement on ROI via department Z and - person A will be responsible for that delivery.

That sorts the wheat from the chaff. It keeps everyone focussed and makes them realise that, half the time, they just want data to feel important.

Knowledge is power - but only if you know what and how you'll use it.

Secure? Hardly.

Email security on mobile devices is a difficult one. We now have a mobile workforce that’s topping 100 and, whilst we can keep the transmission and delivery pretty secure, it’s lost devices that are a problem. Mobile operators have for years promised to do something to lock these things down but nothing’s happening. Why? Because it’s damned near impossible unless you can come up with a way of the device knowing when it has been stolen or lost. Having the ability to fry the system, and obliterate all data, by text message would be a great bonus. But that rather assumes the device is switched on, and that someone doesn’t just rip the sim and all the data without switching it on.