Bandwidth discussion with excerpts from Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, Mike O’Connor’s Sex & Podcasting, a snippet from John Furrier’s Podtech series and a Podshow Podsafe Music Network artist The Ride Theory and their song “I’m On Board”.
Care & Feeding of my Blog & Podcasts
July 28, 2005 By Leave a Comment
I suppose I’m like most humans that struggle with organization. When my blog started nearly 8 months ago, I didn’t create categorization (or taxonomy) of my posts since I wasn’t really sure where blogging would lead me. Consequently, all of my posts were uncategorized and a bit of a mess.
Over the last few nights I’ve invested about 12 hours in creating categories and tagging my posts. If you look to the left at my categories, you’ll see 20 of them! I know, I know…Melvil Dewey would shake his head in disgust but I wanted to make certain my eclectic and diverse posts were covered.
Thinking I was done (oh, how we deceive ourselves), tonight I peeked at iTunes and there were only four of my 11 podcasts showing! What I didn’t realize was that the RSS feed was only displaying those podcasts it could “see” on my main blog page. Any that had rolled off were no longer seen by the feed and consequently by iTunes.
So I invested another few hours to re-publish all of my podcasts on a single podcast page, re-publish my feed at Feedburner and now everything shows up appropriately. What this will necessitate going forward is publishing my post on my blog *and* on the podcast page. A tiny bit more work but this will ensure all posts appear in iTunes or other podcatching program.
Phew! There are so many little gotcha’s like this that — in the words of your hero Mr. T – “I pity the fool” that tries to get all these pieces working right now. From content to recording to publishing online, this is still not easy.
Bye Bye Phone Books…
July 26, 2005 By 3 Comments
My home office has a huge set of windows facing the street in front of my home. Moments ago an older couple (obviously performing part time work) drove up in their van. They’re distributing Yellow Pages from YellowBook.com and dropped a huge yellow book with a plop on my front stoop.
Unfortunately, we don’t use phone books anymore so I immediately took it and dropped it in to our recycle container. I wonder how many other people do the same thing?
What does our family use instead? Everything we need is at our fingertips over the internet and we use a wireless laptop in the kitchen eating area (which is always on) to immediately look up whatever we need. It’s much faster than paging through paper books and more current. We use sites like Switchboard, Anywho, Bigbook and WhitePages. When I’m mobile, I use Google SMS to make a query with an near instantaneous return (it helps, though, that I have a Blackberry since typing on a mobile phone is painful and a city/state needs to be input as well).
Every year Qwest drops off two enormous yellow page books and one white page book which get tossed right in to the recycle bin. A book for my city of Eden Prairie gets dropped off too…though it’s fairly small and does get used some times.
It wasn’t until these people walked up tonight that the realization dawned on me about what a profound change had occurred. Besides not using phone books anymore, we’ve also been toying with the idea of cancelling our home phone and use our mobile phones exclusively (along with Skype) and we’ve already cancelled our second line (which was primarily a fax line used maybe 5 times per year).
I’d sure hate to be in the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) business right now…or a publishing company dependent upon use of a yellow or white page to sell advertising.
TSA and Secure Flight
July 25, 2005 By Leave a Comment
In a post today from noted security expert Bruce Schneier, he examines the Transportation Security Administration’s “Secure Flight“. It’s a pretty sobering read.
As I’ve expressed previously on this blog, I’ve been specifically steering clear of discussions of politics (e.g., geopolitics), macroeconomics, and other areas where I actually do connect some dots but those dots are in areas in which it seems prudent to be distant. It’s pretty clear to me that a climate of fear is slowly rising in the U.S. and, one could argue, concern over our terrorism-related tactics domestically, treatment of those suspected of having intelligence as well as our foundation-lacking motives to take over and build a strategic position in Iraq has already manifested itself in to distrust globally.
I’m concerned that a continued raising of a climate of fear and accelerating profiling of the American citizenry will raise barriers to internet innovation (in my view an engine for the economy) right here at home as well as abroad. We’ve already seen moves by the government to ensure that the internet can be monitored globally with initiatives like Echelon and the highly controversial domestic Carnivore system. I believe that this increase in monitoring the internet has profound and troubling security, privacy and trust implications. These negatives could materially and negatively impact the U.S. use of internet-centric innovation by businesses and organizations which absolutely must compete on a world stage.
Every time I fly I’m struck by the illusion we all have that we’re somehow safer and less prone to terrorist attack. Isn’t it curious when you realize that all the Dept of Homeland Security color-coded alerts that occurred in the runup to the last election occurred at major holidays — when the maximum number of travelers would be in our airports afraid of terrorism? Isn’t it also interesting that — since the election — there haven’t been any warnings of note? Does that mean our investment in the TSA has stopped air terrorism?
In a talk on IT Conversations with Mr. Schneier some time ago, he pointed out the obvious: that our overwhelming investment in airport/airline security is like padlocking the barn door after the horse has bolted and is long gone…and that terrorists would simply look for other targets minimally secured (and there have been numerous stories written and produced about the lack of security at other main targets). One example of this was the knee-jerk reaction by the transit authorities nationally after the London bombings. I worry about the Mall of America in my own backyard as well as other sensitive targets I’d rather not point out in public.
If what Mr. Schneier describes (TSA building a draconian extensible and scalable data warehouse for collecting information for “profiling” passengers) is true which I believe is the case, the implications of this far exceed the boundaries of protecting air travel, will raise the climate of fear amongst the US citizenry and add to the dim view many countries in the world now hold toward us.
CTD for July 24, 2005
July 24, 2005 By Leave a Comment
This week’s show discusses the Technorati “monetizing controversy”, the internet as collective consciousness and a beautiful tune by Lisa Bell provided by the PodShow Podsafe Music Network.
(NOTE: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes here)
Harvesting the Blogosphere
July 22, 2005 By 1 Comment
On my way to work this morning I listened to the Gillmor Gang’s latest podcast called “Gillmor Gang Raw” and one topic hit a hot button with me.
The discussion topic I was hot on was about the latest — and quite public — debate about Dave Sifry’s Technorati blog tagging & search offering monetizing what exists within the blogosphere. There’s an excellent article on SiliconValleyWatcher.com that explains the agitation that exists within the blogosphere and about what Dave and the Technorati crew are driving towards.
My opinion? Harvesting the blogosphere — and the collective consciousness that exists within it — IS THE WHOLE POINT! In fact, two weeks after I began this blog, I wrote a post about the collective consciousness that blogging represents. Offerings like Technorati are an incredible way to tap in to what people are thinking about politics, products, services, other bloggers, you name it.
Companies will pay for this information. My blogging bride is an international trend expert in home furnishings identifying the trend curve and providing intelligence to manufacturer’s, retailers and interior designers. We’ve had several conversations about how cool it would be to be able to track opinion-makers and the average Joe through blogs (to better understand motivations that could potentially impact home furnishings) but the tools are a long way away from offering her that capability. Clearly the opportunity is so obvious that Dave Sifry sees the chance to monetize the harvesting of common (or even niche) thought. Money for Technorati means more servers, more innovation, and acceleration of both.
In my view, harvesting for the common good is where it gets really interesting. Many people talk about the power of Slashdot and its ability to instantly focus geekdom on the topic of the moment and the infamous Slashdot Effect is well known. I’ve seen another Slashdot effect of polarizing the nerds but ultimately coming to some kind of tacit agreement and even helping out someone who has asked for it by providing links, suggestions, or general comments…some times by the hundreds! When the tools mature to the point of being able to provide researchers, analysts, and other interested problem solvers with access to tens of thousands or millions of minds simultaneously, all I can say is “Wow” (then I throttle my happy-assed optimistic side and think of the Borg).
Bloggers linking to other bloggers threads together this common thought. It spreads the word. It holds the promise of focusing the collective consciousness on problems, issues and ways to move the world forward — and Technorati can help keep chaos at bay by kinda, sorta structuring blogs through tagging. Though there may be ways to monetize even this common good use of the blogosphere (e.g., ads wrapped around all searches, reports, etc.) the point would be to provide a way to identify and solve problems through the network effect vs. talking about diaper changing, ones latest girlfriend or other diary-type entries.
UPDATE: Here’s a “hmmm…” article I just came across in USAToday about cities (including my own Minneapolis) that are, shall we say, ‘leveraging’ the blogosphere for tourism. Is this gaming the system? A natural extension of an explosion in interest in blogs? A use desperately in need of disclosure so that — when we *do* harvest data — it’s real instead of gamed?
New photo sharing site: 23People.com
July 21, 2005 By Leave a Comment
Stumbled across a new photo sharing site tonight called 23People. I’ve uploaded some photos from my recent trip to Japan to try it out.
While Flickr is pretty cool (especially tagging), I was always troubled by the user interface and layout. Seemed too pedestrian and function over form. Since they’ve been purchased by Yahoo — in my view “home of pedestrian design” — I’ve been interested in who might be coming on the scene to compete in the photo sharing space.
Whois shows a domain registration in Denmark yet all the photos on the home page are people of Asian heritage. Don’t know what that means.
It’ll be interesting to see how this site unfolds and to hear the story of its birth and who is behind it.
Scotty’s been beamed up…
July 20, 2005 By Leave a Comment
Actor James Doohan, Lt. Commander Scott (Scotty) on the original Star Trek series died today at the age of 85.
His passing has some signifcance for me — though I was never a “Trekkie” or at a Star Trek convention — as I remember being a huge fan of the show as a kid and I also met him in the mid-Nineties while at NewTek. The company had fun Christmas parties where a variety of B-list celebrities were invited and in attendance. The focus of the invites was on those actors who starred in TV shows and movies which the NewTek technoweenies adored. It was almost a geek cult of space science that had Star Trek at its core and the NewTekkians loved having him there (as well as Wil Wheaton from Star Trek, Next Generation who has a short post here).
Doohan was paid for his celebrity attendance at our Christmas party and was a little lit up as I recall. It must’ve been uncomfortable for him to be in Topeka, Kansas at this party where people revered him. We talked briefly and I tried to treat him with respect when others around me were hanging on him like he was a Trekkie convention trinket…and were reciting damn near every line the guy ever spoke on the TV show.
It’s hard to imagine what it would’ve been like to act in an obscure, Western-like space show in the Sixties that inexplicably leapt to the forefront of American culture. According to the news articles I’ve just skimmed, he was seemingly agitated about his typecasting as “Scotty” at first until advised to accept it, enjoy it and move on. By the time I met him, he was clearly in that place and was really enjoying himself and the fan adoration at our party.
Whenever someone so ingrained in the popular culture passes on, it makes me stop, consider their contribution and then think about my own which is usually sobering. Though I haven’t watched any original Star Trek episodes for years (and the special effects are almost surreal and campy now), I’m going to rent a couple of DVD’s this weekend. Thanks Scotty…
AO Innovation Summit webcast: Noise, anarchy or influence?
July 19, 2005 By 2 Comments
Just finished watching about a 2 hour webcast from the AlwaysOn 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. It was quite an interesting adventure and thought I’d take a moment and provide some thoughts.
Like the AlwaysOn web site, the streaming video window was attractive and I eagerly anticipated participating. I was dismayed over the latency I was experiencing (and I have a FAST broadband connection) and it was materially more noticeable than other streaming media events I’ve watched. Much more noticeable — especially for an “Akamaized” webcast.
Kudos go to Tony Perkins for having the big swingin’ gonads to have the live chat projected on a screen in front of the audience. Tony referred to the chatters on occasion as many of us were *very* agitated by the line of questioning to panelists Sandy Berger, Jerry Brown and Michael Medved. Though Perkins was clearly attempting to have a domestic, geopolitical and macroeconomic flavor to his line of questioning, it SCREAMED “off topic” to the chatters…and to me. The point of how the discussion tied to tech innovation was lost in the noise and tangents taken during the discussion.
When logging in to the webcast, I put in my real name but only a few others followed suit. I think AO should, in the future, have pre-registered webcast attendees so people at least are required to enter a real email address and hopefully their real name. Otherwise, the problems with human motivation to do stupid crap and say things they wouldn’t in person leap to the fore. I was embarassed by many of the others in the chat.
Still, I’m hungry for the content from this event as tech innovation accelerates again and wish that I could have attended this event. Being there, hobnobbing with other attendees and physically being present (in the audience and “the moment) would’ve ensured that the maximum impact is gained….which is what I love about trade shows and conferences.
Pompeii Treasure
July 18, 2005 By Leave a Comment
As a kid I studied the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and how the volcanic ash surprised and buried the residents of Pompeii…some like the picture at the left. Archaeologists painstakingly uncovered the “volcanic shell” which had encased the human beings that fell. Some screaming, some clutching babies, some with their dogs. It was macabre and stunning — especially to a 10 year old doing a class report.
Today brings news about Pompeii treasure and the unveiling of a silver set contained within a basket and buried in the volcanic ash from the Mt. Vesuvius eruption. It made me recall my study of this as a kid as well as sparked thoughts about what they must’ve gone through — similiar to the surprise which the tsunami victims must’ve experienced.
When I think about Pompeii citizens that lived 1,926 years ago, I wonder if any of them shared thoughts like I have today: what will I leave behind — just my kids? Have I made an impact in the world? What is my legacy? Imagine the craftsman that actually silversmithed this set revealed today and who knows, maybe they were thinking about leaving behind their silver creations. Or maybe they just had simple mundane thoughts about things we all do daily and maybe *everyone* was going about their business though the Pompeii population was estimated to be greater than 12,000 and only 2,000 ash-encased bodies have been found…so many must’ve had thoughts like, “That mountain is rumbling…let’s get the hell oughta here!”.
Here is a Wikipedia article with lots of great links about Pompeii, a virtual tour of the city and some photos from modern day.
Steve’s Social Stuff