The PBS talk show devotes 23 minutes to singing the praises of Steve Jobs' latest creation

Rose (right) and Carr. Source: The Charlie Rose Show

In a segment that aired Thursday night, the Charlie Rose Show invited three A-list tech commentators — the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, the New York Times' David Carr and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington — to gush about (and find a few faults with) Apple's (AAPL) iPad.

[UPDATE: A YouTube version of the video has become available through TechCrunch and is pasted below the fold.]

Mossberg was the most viewer-friendly, taking time to define Flash and HTML5 and to explain to the PBS audience how the iPod touch is different from the iPhone.

Arrington was uncharacteristically gracious, complimenting the device — and saying that he couldn't wait to get one — without mentioning his own failed effort to build a competing tablet computer.

But Carr got the best lines:

• On the iPhone: "One thing you have to understand about this gadget is that the gadget disappears pretty quickly. You're looking into pure software."


• On the Amazon Kindle: "It looked like something the Mennonites made 150 years ago."


• On the nitpickers: "I'm sure there are a few fanboys out there who aren't totally waving the pom-poms about everything about this device."


• On Steve Jobs and Apple: "He may have been thin. He obviously is vigorously engaged in building out his version of the future with this company. There's been no loss of momentum, no loss of ambition, no loss of scale. Whatever he went through in terms of medical issues or illness issues — which was a significant source of concern to shareholders — seems to have had zero impact on their product release schedule, on their reach into the culture, and their ability to preoccupy conversation."

Let's go to the video:

If the video has been removed from YouTube, you can watch it here or here.

See also:

• Apple's iPad pitch: The awesome 3-minute version


• Apple's iPad: The ultimate couch-potato computer


• How many iPads will Apple sell?


• Apple's iPad: Is it a game changer?


• Live blog: Steve Jobs presents the Apple iPad

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Apple's CEO flies to New York City to work his magic on the media elite

Photo: Apple Inc. Cheesy Photoshop job: Philip Elmer-DeWitt

The tech blogs were abuzz this week with sightings of Steve Jobs in Manhattan — in the newsroom of the New York Times (NYT), on the third floor of the News Corp. (NWS) tower and in an Asian fusion restaurant wearing, according to New York magazine, "a very funny hat — a big top hat kind of thing" and ordering food, Hollywood mogul style, off-menu.

[UPDATE: On Friday morning he showed up at the Time & Life Building to demonstate his new tablet computer to Time Inc. (TWX) CEO Ann Moore and a roomful of magazine editors.]

Jobs is not the first Apple (AAPL) executive to pitch the iPad on Publisher's Row — indeed, leaks from loose-lipped media tycoons helped build buzz for the device in the weeks before its unveiling.

But the fact that Jobs himself flew to New York a week later — and that the top executives of America's leading national newspapers and magazines turned out to meet him — may be taken as a sign of how badly both sides need each other.

Although the 140,000 or so iPhone apps — including 22,000 games — that will run day one on the iPad give it a huge advanage over all the tablet computers that preceded it, Apple needs media partners if its new device is to achieve anything like the iPod's or the iPhone's mass-market appeal.

As for those media partners, each is in a different boat, each sinking slowly in its own special way.

• Books. "People don't read anymore," Jobs told AppleInsider when Amazon (AMZN) launched its Kindle reader two years ago. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year." Jobs was arguing that the whole dedicated e-book reader concept was "flawed at the top," but the fact that Apple is building its own iBookstore proves that he thinks even a business that small is worth pursuing. The publishers, for their part, are already using the iPad as leverage to get Amazon to switch from the $9.99 price point they hated to an "agency" arrangement where the publishers set their own price and Amazon takes 30% off the top.


• TV and Movies. Hollywood is not in as bad shape as the book industry; they haven't been hit yet with the widespread DVD piracy that nearly killed the music CD business, and they're still raking it in at the box office. So although some studios have been willing to put their content on Apple's iTunes store and Apple TV, they have balked at Jobs' offer to repackage their shows and sell them to iPad owners as a "best of TV" subscription service for $30 a month.


• Newspapers and Magazines. Which brings us to the reason Jobs was in New York this week. Print publishers are desperate for new venues and new business models; not only has the Internet generation lost the habit of reading printed newspapers and magazines, but the Web is siphoning off the advertising dollars that made the Murdochs, Sulzbergers and Luces rich. So it was no accident that the Times flew its top new media expert to San Francisco last week to share the stage with Steve Jobs, or that Time Inc. is busy making tablet-ready versions of its leading magazines, starting with Sports Illustrated. But there are some tricky details to work out — like pricing, discounts, cross-promotion, revenue sharing and who gets access to subscribers' names and credit card numbers.

Which side needs the other more remains to be seen. The publishers — like Steve Jobs — are no strangers to hard bargaining, but we suspect they'll cut some kind of deal before the iPad ships this spring. Given their past record for keeping Apple's secrets, we'll probably hear the details well before then.

See also:

• The myth of the free Apple iPad


• Apple's iPad pitch: The awesome 3-minute version


• Apple's iPad: The ultimate couch-potato computer


• How many iPads will Apple sell?


• Apple's iPad: Is it a game changer?


• Live blog: Steve Jobs presents the Apple iPad

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Building technology to suss out bad guys is the easy part. Getting agencies to collaborate? Not so much.

By Stephen Brobst, chief technology officer, Teradata Corporation

Brobst: Don't blame volume of data for security lapses. Photo: Teradata.

When President Barack Obama or then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice observed that intelligence agencies failed â??to connect the dotsâ? for either the botched Christmas bombing of Northwest flight 253 or the tragedy of 9/11, they evoked a simple childrenâ??s game of drawing lines on a page to complete a picture. Connecting dots about known terroristsâ?? plans, then, sounds simple.

Letâ??s be realistic. Itâ??s not.

The biggest challenge our security organizations face involve overcoming cultural clashes and power struggles within and between them â?? and only strong leadership in Washington can address those issues.  There also are complex technology issues involved in deploying a comprehensive, responsive, and collaborative analytics system across multiple agencies.  This may be the easier problem to address.

After all, the commercial sector has been successfully collaborating across technology organizations (think suppliers and purchasers or merged companies) for years.  Intelligence agencies are awash in data from various legacy systems running multiple databases that are seen as barriers to implementing a practical, centralized repository of data.However, I know of one major healthcare provider that was able to consolidate operational data from hundreds of facilities into a single data warehouse. The companyâ??s supply chain operation alone depends on 16 discrete databases, which only can retain data for 30 days. Now, all those databases feed into the central data warehouse and overall historical trends are visible to procurement analysts, resulting in savings amounting to millions of dollars through such things as tighter inventory management and improved contract negotiations.

Although saving lives rather than money is the primary goal of intelligence analysts, among the benefits prized most by the healthcare provider I mentioned is the â??ability to analyze, understand, and respond effectively to complex market developmentsâ? as they are happening. Swap â??terroristsâ? for â??marketâ? and you have exactly the kind of system that will help connect dots.

Data volume is not the problem

Some people expressed concern because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabâ??s name was in the sprawling Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE database of 550,000 people suspected of having connections to terrorist groups. Itâ??s been said that the size of TIDE was the problem, allowing the failed Christmas bomber to board his flight.

Thatâ??s nonsense. For a well-designed data warehouse, getting actionable information from data on that many individuals is easy.

Many thousands of companies have hundreds of terabytes of information in their data warehouses. And there are increasing numbers of companies with petabytes.

Thereâ??s a major U.S. Internet site, for example, that maintains many petabytes of information on its 89 million active users worldwide and lists more than 200 million items online. Daunting, yes, but with the right tools, an information treasure chest. For example, the company not only knows that in 2009 the site moved more than a half million items related to the Twilight series, but also that 31,871 of them pertained to teenage heartthrob Robert Pattinson, while only 4,183 were about his co-star Kristen Stewart. This kind of granular detail is critical for detecting and reacting to market trends.

Modern data warehouse and business intelligence technologies are definitely up to the task to deliver real-time information to cross-agency intelligence analysts. These tools can be installed and would begin providing information within months of deployment. So, what is standing in the way?

Culture is the weak link

Historically, an enterpriseâ??s culture is the culprit. Organizations are slow to change. Studies by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) and others have shown that data warehouse deployments fail primarily for one or more reasons involving weak management support, lack of user involvement, staff turnover, organizational politics, or an inadequate grasp or ever-changing nature of the projectâ??s scope. Low on the list of stumbling blocks is technology.

In discussing the intelligence failures of 9/11 in 2005, Sunil Desai wrote in Policy Review that â??the essence of the problem is that the entire interagency community is dominated by individual agency cultures rather than a common interagency culture.â? As evidenced by the recent Christmas bombing attempt, the interagency culture problem persists.

The Obama Administration is trying to encourage greater collaboration among intelligence agencies. While it is relatively easy to integrate data from disparate sources into a single repository, it is much more difficult to achieve interagency collaboration. The Project on National Security Reform has identified numerous structural problems among the various intelligence agencies. Managers and staff, for instance, are not evaluated on how well they collaborate outside their agency. Also, there are few, if any, mechanisms to work horizontally with other agencies. The groupâ??s 2009 report repeated Desaiâ??s insight that no interagency culture exists.

Intelligence professionals need to understand that their careers and peopleâ??s lives depend on interagency collaboration. Leadership from the highest levels must instill that change into their organizations and create mechanisms, including interagency data warehouses, for an interagency culture to flourish. When that happens, and with the right analytical tools in hand, intelligence analysts will have a fuller picture of terroristsâ?? plots to work with, not just the dots.

Brobst is chief technology officer for Teradata (TDC), a Dayton, Ohio-based company focused on data warehousing and enterprise analytics.

The President may carry a BlackBerry, but his assistants are glued to their Macs

White House staff and others use Apple (AAPL) MacBook Pros to monitor President Obama's live YouTube interview Feb. 1, 2010. (Official White House Photo of the Day by Samantha Appleton)

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

How millennials are altering the IT landscape, mostly for the better.

By Gary Curtis, chief technology strategist, Accenture

Curtis: Ignore Gen Y at your peril. Photo: Accenture.

For a new generation of employees, information technology is no longer a question (â??is this okay with you, boss?â?) but rather an answer (â??thatâ??s what it took to get the job doneâ?).

As the baby boomers begin to retire over the next decade, millennials â?? those ages 14 to 27 â?? will become increasingly prominent in the workplace as employees, customers, partners and competitors, and Gen Y canâ??t and wonâ??t be ignored.

Organizations that fail to understand and embrace millennial behavior will face problems recruiting and retaining young people and gaining the competitive edge they can provide because of their intimacy with and expertise in using the latest technologies.

Weâ??re not just talking about American millennials. New Accenture research shows milliennials around the globe are tuned into technology in their personal lives and in the workplace.

• The next new thing rules: Millennials in the 13 countries surveyed (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States) are all profuse adopters of new technology, those in the Americas and Asia-Pacific have more positive perceptions of technology than European millennials.  Technology features most prominently in millennialsâ?? employer decisions in India (72%), the U.S. (52%) and China (45%).


• Online forever. Chinese millennials in particular spend an extraordinary amount of time in the virtual world for both business and personal purposes â?? an average of 34 working hours a week compared with less than 11 hours for the rest of the world.


• Lack of workplace access in Europe. A large share of young people in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy believe that technology consumes too much time.  This negative perception may result from a lack of access to effective technology; only 18% to  21% of millennials in these countries say they have access to the right technologies in the workplace, compared to 66% in the Americas and 54% in Asia Pacific.


• See you on Facebook.  One in two millennials globally â?? and almost four in five in China and India â?? use social networking to investigate employers, superiors, clients and service providers.  They also regularly download free, nonstandard technology from open source communities, including â??mashupâ? and â??widgetâ? providers.  Globally, about half have accessed online collaborative tools, online applications and open source technologies from free public websites when those technologies are not available at work or when the versions offered at work donâ??t meet their expectations.

When it comes to adopting new technologies, national borders are largely irrelevant.  Millennials expect to use their own technology and devices rather than those supplied by their employers â?? almost half expect not only to use the computer of their choice on the job, but also to access their preferred mobile technology and software applications. E-mail usage is becoming a thing of the past. While older millennials still spend an average of 6.8 hours per week writing or receiving work-related e-mails, those millennials already in the workforce say they spend just 4.2 hours a week on e-mail, preferring text or instant messaging.

Similarly, a staggering 45% of employed millennials globally use social networking sites at work â?? whether permitted or not. The same trend applies to corporate IT policies. Whether from lack of awareness or blatant disdain, 66% of millennials globally donâ??t abide by corporate policies. Additionally

• Nearly a third â?? 29% -  claim they donâ??t know if their company has such a policy;


• Some 17%  claim their employer has not published such a policy;


• About 11% say that whatever policy their company has published is too complex to understand;  and  9% say they will post work or client information on public sites regardless of any policy, at least when communicating with colleagues;

Policy? What policy?

In many cases, millennials are doing more than just expressing disappointment with their employersâ?? lack of leading-edge technology; they are bypassing corporate policy to install and use external devices and applications that are more to their liking. Consider that 39% of working millennials globally say they use mobile phones that are not supported by their employer for work-related activities. The percentages are high as well in regard to unsanctioned use of instant messaging (33%) and social networking sites (43%).

Dealing with the dynamics created by this changing demographic represents a real challenge for most companies.  On the one hand, companies must accommodate and integrate millennials to take advantage of their technology savvy. At the same time, they must continue to protect the technology and information assets of the business and prevent millennials from either finding ways around the barriers or, in their frustration, leaving for jobs elsewhere â?? truly a difficult balancing act.

Gary Curtis is the chief technology strategist at Accenture, a global consulting and IT services firm. He can be reached at gary.a.curtis@accenture.com.