Alfred's musings

I just saw that Tesco is now selling private cloud generators for cheap . I'm very tempted to buy!

Just as I arrived at Google this morning, I discovered what *really* happens to the 5bn-odd spam emails that Postini (or more accurately GMS, Google message security) catches each day for 100k businesses and 20m users (oh... not counting gmail users...) Spam removal services at Google Once caught, the spam is packed densely in these yellow boxes (that resembles some nuclear waste removal boxes), and are then taken away by these friendly people, to be stored somewhere where the sun does not ever shine.

I had the privilege to attend an exclusive presentation course delivered by the   Bob McDowell  (Microsoft) many moons ago, and some of his advice to deliver great presentations still resonate in my ears. He hated Powerpoint. He loved the "b" button during powerpoints, and he really made me change the way I deliver presentations for good. Listen to the audience first. Craft a good story. let the slide *compliment* your talk, not distract from or duplicate. Recently, I shared some of these secrets and learnings with  Martin Manser , and he published a good short, sharp book on the topic . And when I saw this 4 minute comedy on poor powerpointing , I thought it's worth sharing it! And while on the topic: SlideRocket and Prezi are two alternatives that are amongst my favorites for delivering eye-popping presentations! 

I really value the opportunity to have a platform to share my thoughts. I'm not vain enough to think I should have a big following, but fortunately... there is a pretty good search engine out there that will highlight some of my musings to you if you happen to search for something I happened to blog about. I have an older blog available on http://alfred.spaces.live.com , but paused my blogging there a good few years ago, when I took on a sensitive role in Microsoft that meant it was no longer appropriate for me to share my daily thoughts with the world. This morning, I reached a tipping point, wanting to again have a channel for my thoughts. And this is it! And, for several reasons I decided to proceed in a fresh home... now on blogger. So - no longer the old blog called "Alfred's 2p worth"... I've self-downgraded the value to just musings :) Free. Just to set the context: I'm now at Google, working in the Enterprise business... the part of Google that