Rourke McNamara

I’m in Orlando this week at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit as part of TIBCO Software’s launch of TIBCO ActiveMatrix. Our booth has been mobbed with people asking questions about ActiveMatrix and Service Virtualization. Response to this new technology has been very positive, though there has been some confusion. Explaining what ActiveMatrix does in 90 seconds isn’t easy, but we (in the booth) have all gotten better at it in the course of the last day.

I’m proud to work for a company that produces innovative software in a space dominated by companies who purchase innovative software companies but rarely innovate themselves. Today TIBCO (my employer) launched three new products under a new brand, TIBCO ActiveMatrix. These products are designed to mitigate some of the complexity that comes along as an unfortunate side-effect of embracing SOA styled development.

Forget the marketing terms and high level messages — what do the products that TIBCO released today really do?

Want to really suffer on a domestic redeye? Pick the aisle seat. Don’t bring a blindfold. Get too little sleep the night before. Take Dramamine only to realize that sleep isn’t in the cards anyway.

Seriously, though. I’m on a flight from San Francisco to the Gartner show in Orlando and, out of habit, I chose the aisle seat on a plane that doesn’t have an adjustable headrest. In a window seat I would have been able to lean against the wall. If I’d managed to fall asleep there wouldn’t have been any need to get up during the flight. To make matters worse, this old plane has huge CRT screens in the aisle, and one of them is three feet in front of my face. I’d forgotten how bright those old sets could be with the cabin lights off. With a blindfold I might have been able to ignore it.

I’m on a quest to reproduce the Breton-style savory crepes they serve at Ti Couz in San Francisco and Beau Monde in Philly. The first time I tried this I made Alton Brown’s crepes and substituted half whole wheat flower, but I wasn’t too satisfied with the result. AB’s crepes are a great place to start because they handle really well and are easy to work with, but they definitely don’t stack up to what Ti Couz is serving.