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October 31, 2006
Logitech Panic
For a while, I have occasionally had my MacBook Pro panic when I unplugged the USB cable. For you non-Unix geeks, that means the machine stops--dead--and has to be rebooted. OS X hides the reason from you. Even when you restart, it simply asks if you'd like the problem reported to Apple.
However, if you push the right buttons on the dialog box, you can see the dump. When I did this, I discovered that it was the Logictech Control Center that was causing the problem. LCC configures Logitech mice and keyboards. I did the usual thing and updated to the latest driver with no joy. So, I did the natural thing: I bought a new Apple wireless keyboard and that solved the problem.
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More on Online Docs
Jordy has a nice write-up of last week's CTO Breakfast on his blog. He concentrates and adds to the discussion of online word processing and spreadsheet tools.
I think online doc sharing just hasn't reached a critical mass yet. It's too new, and too early in the product life cycle, especially when other (albeit clumsy) solutions are already in place. I had the hardest time getting my classmates to use a wiki for collaborative writing, and that was only a year ago. I'm sure that some of them will use them in the workplace or on social networks now that they've tried it out, but it was a hard transition. A true WYSIWYG editor would have helped to level the learning curve a little, but long years of editing and forwarding email attachments have proven hard to shake, despite being a clearly inferior way to collaborate. But wiki, Google docs, and other newish collaboration software will be huge in no time. Just give the early adopters (geeks and nerds) some time to do their thing.From Jordy Blog » Blog Archive » CTO Breakfast: October 2006
Referenced Tue Oct 31 2006 09:31:24 GMT-0700 (MST)
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If You Can't Walk On Water, Write On It
This article about printing on the surface of water amazes me. Having taken my share of undergraduate and graduate fluid mechanics classes and having struggled with waves in engineering physics, it boggles my mind to think someone could control them this well.
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October 30, 2006
Tin Foil Helmets Don't Help
So...where are you putting your cell phone? Cell phone usage apparently affects sperm quality.
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CXO Bloggers
I'm quoted in a story on CIO bloggers in Information Age by Michelle Price. The article also has profiles on four active CIO bloggers. The biggest problem CXO bloggers face is that it's impossible for people to separate the views expressed on the blog from official policy or decisions. That puts significant pressure on CXO bloggers to weigh their words and is the reason there are so few.
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October 27, 2006
Ruby and Unicode
Kevin Tew and Devlin Daley, two of my students went over to RubyCon last week. When I asked them how it was, they said the usual things people say about a conference, but they only mentioned one presenter by name: Tim Bray. Tim gave a talk on unicode, internationalization, and multilingual issues in Ruby. He has a post on his blog that talks about those same issues and includes some of the slides from his talk.
This is one of those topics that makes most programmers eyes glaze over because it's not all that sexy and it's pretty hard to get right. Someone sent me a draft copy of the Unicode 5.0 standard--it's 4 inches thick.
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October 26, 2006
CTO Breakfast Report for October
I posted a piece on why mobile data centers matter at Between the Lines. My thoughts were in response to the most recent Gillmor Gang where Sun's new mobile data centers were discussed.
Another interesting tidbit from that show was a discussion of Google Office. The consensus of the gang was that Google Office was a winner because of its collaboration features. Calacanis mentioned that he likes to have group editing sessions with people with everyone on a phone conference, getting a document ready.
I asked the group at my CTO Breakfast about Google Office this morning. Several had used it in exactly this way and reported that it's a great way to collaboratively edit documents.
One person reported that he tried to get a sales guy at his company to use a shared spreadsheet with him and the guy balked "because he already had a Hotmail account and didn't want a Google account." This is just one data point, but I think it's indicative of the resistance that online services will face. You can't share an MS Live spreadsheet to a Google user and visa versa. There's a whole new round of incompatibility coming.
Someone asked if I knew if students were using Google Office and similar tools much. I don't, but imagine that they're a great audience for this kind of thing. And once you get them using it in school, they'll take it to the business world.
I wrote about Oliver Rist's experiment with online office suites a few weeks ago. He concluded they weren't quite ready for prime time, but he's got fairly sophisticated needs as a journalist with established habits. I don't see these tools replacing Word and Excel anytime soon, but they're a great augmentation for collaboration.
We had some other great discussions about programming languages, VoIP, and Web development frameworks. Someone made the comment that PHP programmers are better if they've known another language first. PHP doesn't do much to support good programming habits, so it's a big win if developers come to the party with those habits already firmly ingrained from another project.
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Cardinal: Ruby on Parrot
At the next Provo Linux User's Group meeting on the 8th of November, Kevin Tew will be presenting Cardinal, a Ruby implementation on Parrot that he's working on.
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Building Emacs for OS X
I rebuilt Emacs today. I've been relying on a binary I transfered from my old machine. Rosetta is so good, you'd never know it. Boy is EMacs faster when it's built for the Intel chip. I used these instructions and they worked great. No issues at all.
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October 25, 2006
Matz Talk on Ruby Design Principles
Last week, Matz, the chief designer and creator of the Ruby programming language stopped by BYU on his way to RubyCon. I was fortunate to go to lunch with him and capture the colloquium talk he gave. I've posted his talk on IT Conversations. I'm still working on getting slides to post.
Update: Slides from Matz's talk are available.
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First Snow
It's snowing... First snow of the season. None of it's sticking yet, but it's fun to watch outside my window. I hope we have a good winter.
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October 24, 2006
Quotes from the Software 2006 CIO Panel
Thomas Beck has some thoughts about the CIO panel from Software 2006 that I put up on IT Conversations last week. He pulled out a few key quotes:
[On dealmaking] "You've got to remember, the people that cut the deal aren't the people that manage the relationship. I don't care if the [software] salespeople leave with blood coming out of both of their ears. I'm not going to see those guys again."
[On the widespread use of wikis and blogs at Motorola] "Where the real work gets done is down in the ranks that interact with each other and exchange information and build ideas and come to conclusions and do stuff. Management is just overhead."
[On introducing wikis and blogs at Motorola] "I purposefully didn't tell anyone upstairs or laterally that this was going on until we got to a scale where we couldn't stop it."
[On vendor dislikes] "The easiest way for you to watch me pull the trap door lever in my office and drop you into a pit of crocodiles is 'tell me about your problems.' 'Hmm... interesting, we have some software that we think will fit your problems.'"
[On vendor likes] "I love honesty. My best vendors pull me aside and say 'you know that idea you have, it's stupid. Don't do it, it's a bad idea and here's why.'"From Beckshome.com - Great Audio
Referenced Tue Oct 24 2006 21:31:48 GMT-0600 (MDT)
I used to hate when sales people would ask me to tell them about my problems. Ughhh!
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CTO Breakfast Reminder
Just a reminder that the CTO Breakfast will be held this Thursday at 8am in the Executive Conference room of Building L at Canyon Park Technology Center (the usual location, in other words). Come grab some breakfast at the food court just outside the conference room and join us for a great conversation.
From time to time I have people tell me that the name scares them--they feel like the won't fit in with all the CTOs in the room. There are a few CTOs, CIOs, and the like who come, but the most important criteria is not your job title, but an interest in technology and developing technology-based products.
Please put the following dates on your calendar for future breakfasts:
- October 26 (Thursday)
- November 30 (Thursday)
- No CTO Breakfast in December
- January 25 (Thursday)
- February 15 (Thursday)
- March 22 (Thursday)
I look forward to seeing you there!
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October 23, 2006
Using OpenID and Liking IT
Norman Walsh is using OpenID in his photodata.org application and liking it. He has Ruby code (not Rails) that you can swipe if you like.
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Audio Podcasts: Competing with Non-consumption
Brett Nordquist likes IT Conversations better than the Scobleshow, although his reasons have little to do with content and much to do with format. Simply put, video podcasts compete with a different segment of the 'Net for user's time that audio podcasts do.
Brett comments that when he's at his computer watching video its far more likely to be YouTube than it is a video podcast on technology 'ala the Scobleshow. Audio podcasts compete with radio, music, or, in some cases, non-consumption (i.e. the fill time that the listener wouldn't be listening to anything else). This doesn't change with better video iPods.
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Emacs and Ruby
Jao at Programming Musings linked my my post on tools with a nice article on using powerful editors.
Jao's post included a link to a screencast on using emacs and ruby by Marshall Vandegrift. I've been using emacs for 20 years, but I learned a lot of useful little tricks. Vandegrift has a post giving links to the various packages he uses in the screencast. Here's the ones I found interesting.
One of the things I've always liked about TextMate is its signature directory listing on the left hand side and the ease with which that allows you to move between files in a file-based programming language like Ruby (or Java, for that matter). I should have known that emacs could do it. The package is the emacs code browser. Note that there are three packages it depends on. Nothing tricky in the installation, but it takes a little time. Once you get it installed, it's the middle mouse button that selects things in the menu (that, of course, can be changed).
I've used ispell for 15 years, but had never heard of flyspell, a package that's included in emacs and gives you on-the-fly spell checking. Good to know.
Another thing you might find handy (that Vadegrift used in the screencast, but didn't talk about in the post) was electric mode. There are electric modes for various languages, I hadn't looked for one for Ruby. Here's a post from Hyperion Reactor that gives a setup for electric mode for ruby and rails.
Note that I'm not writing all this to convert the dedicated vi users or anyone else. If you've got something that works for you, then good enough. But if you're searching for a editor that's programmable with plenty of headroom, then give emacs a try. There's a steep learning curve, but the view is great from the top (or even half way up)!
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October 20, 2006
My HTML Mode for Emacs
Some people have asked what HTML mode I finally settled on. I'm using a customized version of Daniel Pfeiffer's adaptation of James Clark's sgml-mode. Yeah, there's lots of SGML stuff that I don't use, but it has a set of HTML keybindings and is easy to add things to. For example, here's my code for inserting an image from Amazon:
(define-skeleton amazon-image
"HTML image tag for an Amazon book"
"ASIN: "
'(setq input "")
"<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/"
str
"/windleyofente-20\">
<img src=\"http://images.amazon.com/images/P/"
str
".01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg\" border=\"0\"
align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" /></a>"
)
You can do much more complicated things. For example, I like to build tables of image thumbnails for use in blog articles from time to time as in this example from WWW2006. I created a picture-table function that codes up these tables with relatively little fuss and they're just the way I like them.
I think it's fine to talk about some product being a great editor and having good support for language Blub, but I want more than that. My editor has to be customizable to exactly fit my needs. I can't imagine a non-programmable editor being flexible enough to provide significant support for that task. If your editor isn't programmable, you're missing out!
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Pop!Tech Live
Pop!Tech is happening now in Camden Maine. We'll have all the sessions on IT Conversations later this year or early next year. If you're interested in listening live, Pop!Tech is streaming conference sessions with video. There's also a blog stream that's fun to read.
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October 19, 2006
Computer History Museum
My post yesterday about Ralph Griswold's death sparked a comment by Chris Loosely about the Computer History Museum's founders series. David Berlind has a post, with video, from that event. Incidently, we're holding IIW2006B at the Computer History Museum in Dec. We had IIW2006A there in May and it was an excellent venue.
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October 18, 2006
DHCP Wars
Here's a little gem for you: Vonage sends out the Linksys RTP300 analog telephone adapter (ATA) with DHCP enabled by default. That's handy when it's the only router you've got, but when you plug it into your network and it starts fighting with your other DHCP server, life gets interesting.
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Ralph Griswold Dies
I learned the Icon programming language as a grad student at UC Davis. Ron Olsen, then a new assistant professor had just gotten his Ph.D. from Arizona where Ralph Griswold, Icon's inventor taught and he brought it with him. Icon has a number of interesting programming language features. Griswold was also the inventor of SNOBOL. He died a few weeks ago. Computer Science has always been a discipline where the founders were still around. That's changing.
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When You Pick Your Tools, Pick Those That Can Build Tools
This morning I was listening to Karl Fugel talk about tools developers need and thought about Doug Kaye. Here's why...
Yesterday Doug sent out a note to a few friends asking what editor they used to writing code on OS X. I use emacs. not only do I use emacs, but I thrill to emacs for one simple reason: it's infinitely malleable. It can be made to do almost anything and has. I use it for just about everything I do.
Programmers should be tool builders. If you're not building tools to make your life easier, you're wasting time. That was really the point of Karl's talk. Although he was making the point in terms of open source projects, the concepts apply universally.
Now, back to Doug and emacs. Doug is, unknowingly, responsible for me getting back on the tool building wagon. I'd fallen off and was plugging along, making do. At ETech last year Doug saw me editing HTML in emacs and made fun of me. He was right. It wasn't that I was writing HTML by hand, that's perfectly reasonable. It was that I typing all the tags by hand when there were easier ways.
Emacs has several HTML modes. I'd used them off an on, but unfortunately, it seemed that every time I reinstalled emacs, for whatever reason, I ended up with a different version, with different key bindings, and I just got out of the habit of using the tool.
When Doug gave me a bad time I realized I was losing productivity because I was unwilling to spend an hour sorting out the situation. I spent a little time researching the various HTML modes and when I found one that I liked and understood (so I could modify it), I put it in my personal elisp directory and made sure .emacs was set to load it.
Next, I spent some time customizing it to add features I wanted. For example, I frequently reference books in my blog and want links to Amazon. One action takes an Amazon product code and creates the link for that book, including my Amazon Associates ID. That alone has saved me a ton of time.
Another small example: I recently built a tool in Perl for generating course schedules from a specification. Students like to see the course schedule on the Web, but it's a pain to do since the dates change every semester. My tools allows me to create schedules like this from a simple textual specification. Tools aren't always just for productivity. Frequently the result in a better product because the tool automates its creation.
I've been spending a fair amount of time with Rails lately. This is a perfect example of this idea. David Heinemeier Hansson built tools to make his job easier and made them good enough that they've sparked a revolution.
I like emacs and Perl because they're great platforms for building tools upon. I like OS X because with it's Unix at its core, it comes with good shells and a full compliment of programs like awk, grep, find, and so on that frequently find their way into tools I make.
I was thinking about this the other day and concluded that it must be awful to not know how to program. You're at the mercy of other people to build your tools. I'd hate it. It would be like not knowing how to drive.
Anytime you've got to do the same thing more than once, consider building a tool. And when you pick tools, be sure to pick tools that allow you to build your own tools and can be customized to meet your needs. If you get into the habit now, you'll be more productive down the road--guaranteed.
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October 17, 2006
The IT Conversations Seal of Approval
This morning I was listening to Marc Senasac's talk about People Aggregator from Mesh Forum. I've been listening to Marc Cantor talk about the People Aggregator for a while now. It felt good to have a description on IT Conversations.
My relief, if that's not too strong a word, was based on my belief that IT Conversations is an archive of ideas. We try to choose shows that have a long shelf life and that someone might want to listen to five year or even ten years from now. We don't always succeed in that ambition, but for the most part I think of IT Conversations as a great collection of talks and interviews on the state of high-tech.
That led me to another thought: speakers and conference goers ought to look for conferences that use IT Conversations. Because we're committed to good quality audio and keeping shows around forever, speakers can be assured that their talk will be heard by thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, more people that they would otherwise. Conference attendees know that they can go back later and listen to a talk that piqued their interest or even one that was double booked with another session they went to.
Many conference organizers have recognized this value and we're grateful for their support. Be sure to help us know what you value by taking a minute to rate shows you've listened to. We rely on those to know where to put our limited resources.
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What To Do After You Lose Your Job
Imagine this scenario:
Yikes! You just lost your job! You've been so busy at *work* that you don't feel your network is as strong as you would like it to be! What are you going to do with (and to) your network in the next 6 weeks as you begin an aggressive job search campaign? And, outside of your network, what job search tactics will you employ? Or your best networking tips related to job searches.
That's the question put to me by Jason Alba as part of a "blog carnival." At some point he'll link to all the people who've posted on the topic. When he does I'll point it out. But in the meantime, what about those questions?
It's hard for me to imagine being in this exact situation since I've always spent a good deal of time working on my "personal brand." I think part of that stems from my start as a university professor. Professors are very individualistic. Not too many teams in academia. You live and die based on the reputation you build as a researcher.
I always tell my students to never confuse their job with their career. Fifty years ago, that might have worked, but no longer. All of us know that we'll probably have multiple jobs, but most don't like idea. I believe in embracing it.
So, what Jason's scenario tells me is that I haven't been speaking much, I haven't been blogging much, and I haven't been to many trade association breakfasts or lunches. Jason asked that I write this from my point of view: What would I do?
First of all, a few pre-requisites:
- You should always have a couple months salary on hand for this kind of situation. You ought to be able to live while you get your next gig. Consider severance icing on the cake since you don't always get it--even when it's owned to you. Trust me.
- I was talking to Scott Lemon a few days ago about why he always buys his own laptop: you should own your tools. If you've got a computer, you can do all kinds of things to get by and reconnect. If losing your job means losing your computer, then you've got to go buy one. Yikes.
With those out of the way, here's some thoughts about what I'd do.
Blog. First thing I'd do is pick up the blogging pace. Start writing about things you know and the areas you want to establish your expertise in. Don't have a blog? Start one.
Update your resume. I'd bring my resume up to date with the latest stuff I've been doing and make sure it emphasizes the areas I'm interested in pursuing.
Call some headhunters. Once my resume was up to date, I'd call all the local head hunters I know and schedule times to go talk to them. I'd schedule phone interviews with any who were out of town. Most of them are eager to talk and get to know you. Any you've paid commissions to owe you at least a meeting. They know who's hiring and what's hot. I've gotten lots of good advice from headhunters over the years.
Go to conferences. Local ones are cheap, but even ones out of town are affordable if you can use frequent flyer miles and get a discounted conference fee.
Refuse to be unemployed. If you're a programmer or IT professional, don't think of yourself as unemployed, think of yourself as an independent contractor and go get some work. I loved the freedom of consulting the 18 months I did it. I didn't like constantly scrambling for the next gig. You might enjoy it enough to just consult forever.
Go to events. There are probably all kinds of industry association events--formal and informal--in your area. I would go to as many of these as I could and start getting to know people. Offer to speak, take tickets, whatever. Be involved.
Write a book. You've got some time, make you name by writing about what you know. You'd be surprised what writing a book will do for you as far as employment goes. It immediately establishes you as an expert.
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Federated Identity Hubs
I put a piece on federated identity hubs like InCommon and Covisint up at Between the Lines.
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October 16, 2006
Rails, Streamlined, and DabbleDB
I've been playing a little with Rails over the last week. This is the first time I really tried to build something I cared about in Rails as opposed to just running someone else's scripted tutorial. I'm having fun and I continue to be impressed with its power.
I've reversed roles in this endeavor--one of my grad students, Devlin Daley, has become the teacher and is kindly answering my questions so I don't end up stuck in too many places. Today he showed me a couple of screencasts of data-drive application builders that left me slack-jawed.
The first was Streamlined, a CRUD application framework that works on top of Rails to build data-driven applications with relationships (with Rails, you build all the relationship data later, after you generate the Rails scaffolding). Here's the screencast.
The second was dabbledb, an online data exploration application that anyone who's managed data in a spreadsheet would love. Importing data from a spreadsheet, you can incrementally build a relational model of the data. This is what everyone wishes Access was. Here's the screencast. One interesting note: I understand that dabbledb is written using Seaside, a SmallTalk-based application server with continuations. Cool...
Not too long ago applications ran on one machine and used custom data formats--if they used data at all. Now most interesting applications are connected to databases and usually online.
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Matz Speaking at BYU
This Wednesday at 3pm (note the time change), Yukihiro Matsumoto, aka Matz, the creator of Ruby will be giving the colloquium in 1170 TMCB. The colloquium is open to anyone who's interested in attending. I suggest getting there early.
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October 13, 2006
Decentralizing Security
Gunnar Peterson has a couple of great posts on decentralization and security. He starts off with this thought:
Now let's consider security architecture. How many times have you heard a security architect say "if we could just centralize X" our problems would go away? Guess what buddy, your business is not going to centralize everything any time soon, and they REALLY are not going to centralize just so you can roll out your Access Management suite or whatever.From 1 Raindrop: Decentralization and "Good Enough" Security
Referenced Fri Oct 13 2006 10:29:25 GMT-0600 (MDT)
There's lots of tie-ins and cross references to security in the global, world-view sense as well. So much so that Thomas Barnett referenced it as well. Gunnar's reinforcing a lot of the ideas that Barnett makes in Blueprint for Action.
This idea is the premise of my own book on digital identity: the old centralized models that require everything behind a firewall no longer work and good identity infrastructure is crucial to resolving that dilemma. I'm writing specifically about idenity in the computer-system sense, but there are close parallels to the global world as well. Note that if you've read my book you'll understand that this is a far cry from a call to implant RFID chips in everything that moves. (Read Jim Harper's Identity Crisis for more on this as well.)
Gunnar's two posts are long, but if you care about security, whether from the computer security point-of-view or otherwise, they're worth reading.
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October 12, 2006
Remembering Ray Noorda
Ray Noorda had a great affect on high-tech in Utah. He took a small, ailing networking company and transformed it into a 12,000 person powerhouse. While he died this week, his struggle with Alzheimer's meant that he's been absent for some time. I never knew him, never even shook his hand, but I've known dozens of people who did. Here are a few remembrances I liked:
- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols remembers Linux's debt to Noorda
- Craig Burton calls Noorda an enigma
- Rocky Mountain Voices records comments from Darl McBride, Ron Heinz, Drew Major, and Ty Mattingly
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October 11, 2006
Another Batch of Mac Ads
Some people hate them. I happen to think they're very funny. In any event there's a new batch of Mac/PC ads out. Watch the expressions on PCs face when Gisele Bündchen walks out in the "Better Results" ad--he's very good.
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The Semasiology of Open Source
I had the privilege of hearing Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz deliver both part I (the thesis) and part II (the antithesis) of his Semasiology of Open Source talk in person at the Open Source Convention.
This year, I wasn't able to attend OSCON because I was on vacation, so I was sorry to learn that he'd finished the series with part III (the synthesis), it was a big disappointment. (N.b., the threefold manner of presentation is called a Hegelian dialectic, so having done the "synthesis", r0ml is done with this topic.) Fortunately, IT Conversations has the third part of talk and I was able to listen to it last week on the way home from USU.
I'm sure r0ml's style of presentation isn't for everyone, but I sure enjoy it. He's funny, engaging, and interesting. His literary asides alone are worth the time.
r0ml's presentation ranges from a discussion of Terry Winograd's Understanding Computers and Cognition, a book I haven't read since I was in grad school (when it was new), to labor relations. What does any of this have to do with Open Source? r0ml ties it all together. I loved this talk.
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October 10, 2006
Remembering the Beepwear Pager Watch
 My old Timex Beepwear watch (click to enlarge) |
This morning while I was rooting around in a drawer, I found my old Timex Beepwear Pager watch. I bought it back in 1998 when I still wanted a pager and thought it was pretty cool that it would hold my appointments too. It's ugly and I thought it was a boat anchor. I didn't wear it much.
By coincidence, I was reading O'Grady's PowerPage blog today and saw an article about Sony Ericsson's BLuetooth watch. The watch definitely looks more stylish than the Beepwear watch, but it's even heavier. The Beepwear is only 74 grams including strap and battery. This thing is 190 grams. Either it's filled with uranium or it's a lot bigger than it looks in that picture.
I like the idea of a Bluetooth watch, but I'm not sure I'll like the execution.
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Scary Voting
I just put an article up at Between the Lines on why electronic voting is scary.
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OpenID Sightings
Stuffopolis is accepting OpenID for users leaving reviews.
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Web-Based Office Suites Need Some Jujitsu
I know several people who use Google Mail, Yahoo! Calendar, web-based feed readers and the like in an effort to free themselves from any one operating system or any single machine. You'll see them with their Mac one day at a conference and their tablet the next--just because they can.
This works OK for them, but they're die-hards--intent on doing it for the sake of know how it works. The big fly in the ointment is the so-called office suite: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation applications.
Oliver Rist decided to spend a week using nothing but a browser and see how things went. His story appeared in InfoWorld last week. His conclusion: the applications are mostly not worth the trouble, but ZoHo was the best of the bunch.
Writely (Google) and ZoHo's Writer are both pretty good and you'll find the feature sets adequate for most of what you do (go try Writer, it's kind of fun). The problems are, as you'd expect, to be found in the interoperability with Word--something you probably can't live without.
Oliver makes an important observation:
Google’s Writely and Spreadsheets are impressive examples of Web 2.0 technology, but neither can compete with a desktop app on its own. And neither takes enough advantage of the Web’s particular technologies as yet.From Can Web-based applications outwit, outplay, outlast the desktop? | By Oliver Rist
Referenced Tue Oct 10 2006 08:41:23 GMT-0600 (MDT)
That's really the key point, I think. For various reasons, Web-based application will fall short of their local-app cousins for a long time to come. They win and offer value by taking advantage of the Web, not making excuses for it. A little Web jujitsu, if you will.
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October 9, 2006
TubeSock: In Honor of YouTube
In honor of the acquisition of YouTube by Google (which I wrote about on Between the Lines), the app of the day is TubeSock. Tube Sock grabs YouTube video and converts it to run on your iPod or PSP. Now you can take the insanity with you where ever you are and make archives of your favorites. Enjoy...
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Online Communities and Health Care
Last week I put up a show from the Zend PHP conference that featured Adam Bosworth talking about "content" and the fact that it's still King. Adam is thought provoking and entertaining. This talk is no different.
Interestingly, Adam talks about content in the context of community (no big surprise there) and spends a great deal of time talking about the health care industry. Adam claims that there's a growing need for tools that allow patients to add value to health-care related communities by sharing information and experiences. These tools could lead to better predictors of health conditions, earlier diagnosis, and more successful treatments. And we'd save a lot of money too. What's not to like?
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UN Response to North Korea's Nuclear Test
With North Korea's testing of a nuclear device, the UN Security Council will be under pressure to take harsh measures. For example, they might condemn the test in vehement tones.
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October 5, 2006
Reputation at USU
I had a good time speaking at USU today. I gave a talk on digital identity and the reputation framework. While I was there I met and got to spend a little time with Justin Ball and Dave Wiley from the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. They've got a project right now that will require them to choose a cross-domain identity (user-centric ID) system. We had a good discussion of the options.
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Digital Identity and a Pint
Stephanie Kesler sent me a link to Isaac Szymanczyk's blog showing a picture of my book. Cheers, Isaac!
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Speaking at USU
I'm going to be speaking today at Utah State University on digital identity. I believe the talk is at noon in room 416 Old Main.
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October 4, 2006
Announcing IIW2006B
The announcement for IIW2006B has been up for a while, but we really haven't drawn much attention to it. Please put Dec 4-6 on your calendar if you're planning on coming. The format and organization will be about the same as May's IIW: half a day of more tutorial material on Monday followed by two full days of open space/unconference on the 5th and 6th.
You can register using the IIW registration page. The costs are the same as last time, $75 for students, $150 for unaffiliated and independents, and $250 for corporate folks. If you're company's going to reimburse you, please pat the $250. It's strictly honor system.
If you can register now, please do--I need to give the Computer History Museum (same location as last time) at check for the first installment of our lease on Oct 15th and getting some early registrations would make that easier.
As with the last IIW, we're looking for corporate sponsorship help with meals, breaks, and so on to keep the cost low. The corporate sponsors from last time helped make the conference a memorable event with some great dinners and good breaks. Here's what we're hoping for:
- Morning Break, Dec 5 and 6 ($800 each)
- Afternoon Break, Dec 4, 5 and 6, ($800 each)
- Lunch on Dec 5 and 6 ($2400 each)
- Conference Dinner, Dec 5 ($4000)
If your company can help on any of these, please contact me. You will not get any extra speaking time for sponsoring but you will get thank-yous and community love.
The IIW2006B wiki is up and functioning. Once you're registered, please add your name to the "who's coming" list so that other's can see that you're coming and feel free to start a list of suggested sessions.
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October 3, 2006
John Furrier and Rock Mountain Voices
I just got done listening to Denise Howell's interview with John Furrier, the founder and CEO of PodTech.net. John will be in Salt Lake on Thursday for a meetup with Rocky Mountain Voices.
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October 2, 2006
GuruLib Not Hitting on All Cylinders
 GuruLib Screenshot (click to enlarge) |
I don't often put things on my blog that people send me unsolicited, but occasionally it's relevant--or just catches my interest. Not long ago, I got a note about something called GuruLib, an online system for keeping track of your books. A while back I reviewed Delicious Library, an OS X app that I use to manage my library.
As you can see from this public library from the creators, GuruLib uses the same "wood grain paneling" mode as Delicious Library, but don't hold that against it--that can be turned off in both. The feature set seems to be sufficient--the tie into Amazon and public libraries making it very convenient for uploading books.
I like that it's online and that it's pretty easy to use. I like being able to leave comments and ratings on books I upload. I like the list view, but wish the thumbnail image of the cover were displayed instead of a generic book icon. In the thumbnail view, book details are shown on mouseover which is a nice way to get more information about a book.
At first I thought that there was no way to create private bookshelves. But it turns out that you can create bookshelves that are private. You can also set other shelf properties (this is where you select wood grain, if that sort of thing appeals to you).
I didn't like that it required my birthday or zipcode to sign up. The queries aren't RESTful, so I can't link to specific searches. Mostly I didn't like that I can't enter my Amazon Associate ID, so when someone buys a book from the service, GuruLib gets the love.
I don't mind that they get something for their efforts, but it seems to me that they could share the wealth a little and not only be more fair to the people helping to build their service, but also give people an incentive to share their library. For example, let me enter my Amazon Associates ID and then give me every other referral. Maybe even give people with over a certain number of books 2 out of 3, or whatever. Incent people to use the service and get a little smaller piece of a much bigger pie.
Without some incentive, I'm unlikely to type in 1000 ISBN numbers (I've got at least that many books). Delicious Library, as an application that runs on my Mac takes advantage of the iSight camera to scan the bar code. Even as easy as that is, I only add things when I need to (usually when someone is borrowing them and I need to keep track of it) In any event, take a look at my test library.