2006 October

Design Matters: iWeb vs. Typepad

October 14, 2006 By Steve Borsch 6 Comments

Iweb_2
I’ve decided to stop trying to use a bazooka to kill an ant.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been constructing a report on what’s happening with the culture of participation surrounding Web 2.0 (which I’ve taken to calling “FutureWeb”, by the way) and am intending to deliver a free ebook and had thought of doing so as a PDF. I’ve got quite a bit of experience delivering compelling, screen pleasing and readable ebooks — and PDF is a ubiquitous container that is cross platform — and good page layout tools and Acrobat Professional offer the ability to deliver great design, some interactivity and, most importantly, rapid ebook creation.

I decided instead to deliver this report online. Hyperlinks are imperative within this ebook and I can also make this a living, breathing dynamic product since change is accelerating. Wanting to leverage Typepad (and commenting, trackbacks, etc.) due to its ease-of-use, I spent HOURS tweaking the Typepad CSS and ended up stuck on the inability to deliver good navigation and, most importantly, to have good enough design. The process was exhausting, building it out laughingly slow, and the “blog look” was just simply too pedestrian.

I went on the hunt for another tool to quickly deliver this ebook with good design and solid functionality before I gouged out my eyes with a spoon and ran out of my office screaming at random strangers.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogosphere, Innovation, Podcasting, Vlogging, Web 2.0

Will Desktop Linux Be Successful Due to Web 2.0?

October 11, 2006 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

The tech publisher Tim O’Reilly has famously asked a question of audiences during talks about open source. "How many of you use Linux?" and a show of hands and only a few are raised. Next he asks, "How many of you use Google?" virtually all hands shoot up as O’Reilly then launches into an explanation of the fact that they’re using the world’s largest Linux application, Google, every time they perform a search.

Whether or not Google’s Linux purity is still 100% true or not is a guess. What is true is that hosted Web applications are so amazingly desktop operating system agnostic that most of them are accessible through a Linux desktop.

As I read this blog post about the Linux-friendliness of the just launched Google Doc’s and Spreadsheets (as their salvo into the hosted office application suite game), it made me realize that the onrush of Web 2.0 applications; open or ubiquitous standards like PDF and Flash (the latter, for instance, with its use in video delivery is a game-changer and there’s a fabulous article here worth a read); and super-simple Linux distributions like Ubuntu are all combining to make Linux increasingly a strong option for desktop operating system use.

I’m almost ready to predict that we’ll see an upsurge in Linux desktop adoption in 2007 and 2008 due primarily to Web 2.0 applications reaching critical mass coupled with a continued increase in online functionality making the desktop operating system increasingly moot.

Filed Under: Innovation, Open Source, Web 2.0

Mind Control of Video Games

October 10, 2006 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

Over at Slashdot was a post about a teen who controlled the video game Space Invaders with only his mind (article at the web site of Washington University in St. Louis where it occurred).

Just like my interest in robotics, the whole field of brain computer interface (BCI) is a fascinating one. Frankly, I hope to live long enough to have the ability to jack into my computer, get into a virtual world like Second Life, and simply control my avatar through thought.

Another thing I’d like to do is to have experiences that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Imagine a buffered (to eliminate latency) video feed from a rover on Mars. While it wouldn’t be practical to have individuals pilot the vehicle with their individual minds, imagine collectively jacking in and having an immersive sensory experience of the surface of the red planet!

Lastly, the speed with which thought could be transmitted would be amazing. The collective consciousness of all of us could work on problems…or we could absolutely turn into the Borg.

Practical and far more meaningful uses would be enabling the disabled (great Wired article here). As more and more of our work migrates to knowledge-based collaboration activities that are online, the better able all of us — including the disabled — will be in manipulating objects and our virtual representatives in the metaverse.

Filed Under: Brain/Mind, Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Space, Technology, Web 2.0

In the ring: bloggers vs. mainstream media

October 9, 2006 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Mike Arrington sounds like he went a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. Weary, punched, but feeling good that he didn’t back down.

An old mentor of mine made sure that I understood early on that “if you’re delivering your radically different point of view and are interested in persuading, presenting something difficult needs to be done in a way that causes people to stop, think, and examine their status quo vs. bitch-slapping them with it.” Maybe Mike bitch-slapped them?

In a time of accelerating change, status quo won’t cut it and boy-oh-boy…are we in that time! Journalism has so many faults dragging them down as things accelerate: walled gardens; timidity; lots of process caused by imperative but laborious fact-checking; but all are intended to get the story as objectively as humans can deliver it and to get the story right (Sometimes? Usually? Never? Maybe all three?). Mike’s point about mainstream media’s non-disclosure of their incentives is, in my view, a huge problem but the overriding issue is reporting vs. opinion, speculation and group-think.

Arrington mentioned Digg in his remarks. While I find Digg entertaining, sometimes enlightening and often illuminating to know what the masses think are interesting, that’s NOT where I turn to get my news, balanced coverage or ESPECIALLY not where I go to deeply examine an issue. Even TechMeme, while useful, is too limiting about anything but what’s happening in the moment.

When a bunch of bloggers pounce on a story fueling each other’s
non-critical thinking about an issue and makes it a big deal…is that
reporting?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Blogosphere

Death rattle for the printing industry?

October 6, 2006 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

When I was with Apple in the late 90′s, the prepress space was one that the company dominated (something like 87% of all color publishing was/is done on Mac’s). One of the largest companies in the prepress space was Banta Corporation in Wisconsin.

On a tour of their plant in Eden Prairie, MN in 1998, I was stunned to see 80 people in the bullpen working on Mac’s performing prepress tasks. I inquired, "Gee…won’t the ability for companies to collapse everything into PDF (which had just taken off in prepress) obviate much of what these people do?" She replied with an "absolutely yes" and within a year many of them were gone.

I had an incredible knowing even then that the Web was going to continue to accelerate and eventually make much of what ended up as ink on paper be digitally delivered instead. Of course, gigantic, industry shifting changes take many, many years to unfold and I — like many of us — tend to ignore basic and fundamental shifts that take place over a long period of time.

A piece of evidence came across my desk just now that confirms my knowing back then: Banta is closing their Eden Prairie plant altogether as well as five other plants and lay off 500 workers. They’re apparently "in play" as well since a suitor has appeared to buy them.

I’m a bit disconnected from Apple and the importance of what was (printing and publishing) one of the cores and mainstays of their business. Perhaps the embrace of video and audio tools; even lame attempts at Web publishing (with iWeb); and the apparent teaming with Google (with Eric Schmidt now on their board) are all the moves Apple is making to replace and extend this printing and publishing paradigm to the internet.

Or maybe this is just a natural evolution of the printing/publishing tools, PDF and the skills gained over two decades of being in this space. I know that we produce many color publications in our business and do nearly 100% of all prepress activities as a natural course of our preparation for publishing.

Filed Under: Innovation

Destined to Repeat History?

October 5, 2006 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

As I struggle to deepen my understanding on what’s transpiring politically in the US, I’ve been reading numerous books (e.g., American Theocracy; State of Denial), visiting both "right" and "left" leaning blogs, and thinking about those things historically that might inform what many of us sense is transpiring: a grab for domestic and geopolitical control.

Some weeks ago I was perusing a book shelf at home and was compelled to pick up and re-read William Shirer’s famous tome, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". This time, I actually read what I’d previously just skimmed (to get to the "good parts", the war years). What was particularly interesting this time was the political machinations that led to the rise of a regime led by a former tramp and junior officer. A regime that wouldn’t have been possible save for the acquiescence of the German people, including business leaders, the military, and all workers — as well as the appeasement of other countries.

Many reactionaries opt to paint our current administration with a brush that implies corrollaries between Bush and Hitler. While I don’t subscribe to those theories, what I do watch for are signs that those interested only in power and control are making their moves…and I’m seeing so many moves that are disturbing that I’m writing this post, knowing I’m going to catch heat for it.

The reason for this out-of-character, political post is because of the first third of Shirer’s book which describes — in great detail — all the things that sloooowly happened to allow the Nazi party to get into power, how both other governments and the German people acquiesced to their direction, and how none of them put up any kind of a fight (and could’ve crushed the party many times over). What most of us don’t realize is that it was more than five years between Hitler’s power grab to become Chancellor and the outbreak of WWII.

During that time there was a constant, methodical and slow erosion of Jews’ rights, honest intellectual education, free elections, and an acceleration in the police state. Due to Hitler’s truly phenomenal economic trickery that resulted in untold prosperity, the majority just went along with whatever the leadership wanted to do.

Are you not seeing slow, methodical erosion of those same sorts of things right here, right now? If not, open your eyes. It’s been interesting to me that several years ago I felt more frightened for the future of my country than at any other time in my adult life. I feel less fearful now since so many others have had their eyes opened and are willing to fight for liberty and justice for all.

Filed Under: Current Affairs

Guess who NEVER will be on the cover of People?

October 3, 2006 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

I’m often at my desk early scanning my news aggregator (I awake to 300+ articles already populating my aggregator from the 200 or so blogs and other news feeds I follow with nearly 1,000 total articles coming into it daily) and something this morning struck my eye.

Scrolling down Yahoo News Top Stories, there were two articles (here and here) on the recent Nobel Prizes won by Americans. Just below the second one on John Mather (who is pictured at left in the photo) was an article about George Clooney’s thoughts about punking paparazzi by dating a different actress every night for months.

You should know that I’m a Clooney fan and admire that he has big ballocks which he used to great effect delivering his recent films Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana. But I’m even a bigger fan of those people who are inventing our future, people like John Mather and George Smoot and the irony of this juxtaposition of news feeds was too blatant for me to ignore.

I’d be living under a rock if I thought for a moment that John Mather would make women swoon like Clooney and therefore would be a good candidate for the cover of People magazine. But the constant and incessant focus on "stars" over scientists is a concern if you care about the minds of those who will invent our future (i.e., our children) and how we’re molding and shaping their thoughts about what’s important and where they should focus their attention.

The September 26, 2006 Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007 released by the World Economic Forum had this to say about U.S. competitiveness:

Switzerland, Finland and Sweden are the worldâ€™s most competitive economies according to The Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007, released by the World Economic Forum on 26 September 2006. Denmark, Singapore, the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom complete the top ten list, but the United States shows the most pronounced drop, falling from first to sixth.

So who should we be lauding? Putting on the cover of magazines? Encouraging our children to emulate? My own 12 year old son — who is in the 99th percentile for IQ and reads voraciously with all the promise in the world — wants to be a video game designer because that’s what he thinks is cool. Nothing wrong with that (and I’ll encourage his passion whatever that ends up being) but our focus with him is on helping him think about focusing his talents toward building, exploring, creating and we frequently talk-up the accomplishments of those that do (and he could care less about false "heroes" thank God).

I know, I know…there aren’t publicity machines that drive revenue from promoting scientists like there are for sports "heroes", movie stars and anorexic models, so this cacophony of noise about false heroes is unavoidable perhaps. But as a nation we should hammer, hammer and hammer on achievement, accomplishment, and thought leadership over who is hot or can hit more home runs.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Innovation, Space

What’s a Widget?

October 2, 2006 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

There are so many interpretations of what a widget is, it’s often difficult to explain the concept. Konfabulator (acquired by Yahoo who has a fabulous widget site) was arguably the first widget engine and this company was in the business of making them for Apple’s Mac OS X. Then Apple allegedly hijacked the concept and shoved it into OS X in the form of Dashboard — extending the concept and giving it more traction in the marketplace. Opera has widgets. Typepad has widgets. There are widgets for WordPress. The cool Wigipedia for widgets is representative of the kinds of directories in place to locate widgets. Phew!

The kicker is that there are operating system-centric widgets and browser-centric widgets (e.g., blog; MySpace; or web page-centric) but the two have discrete methods of displaying their content which causes alot of confusion.

Widgets share one attribute: they’re tiny "windows" into the functionality of some, internet-hosted application or service allowing it to be easily and seamlessly accessed with these small, ahh, widgets. I predict that the promise of web services is being realized by these little chunks of functionality and the momentum for hosted internet-centric applications and services to deliver their core with API’s.

We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg with widgets.

Filed Under: Innovation