2007 March

Brain Hacks: Will this amazing one continue to work?

March 16, 2007 By Steve Borsch 19 Comments

NOTE TO VISITORS FROM LEARNING BREAKTHROUGH’S SITE: We’ve stopped using this program and you might want to read my June 9, 2008 Final Update on Learning Breakthrough here to find out why.

Something amazing has occurred that my pragmatic, cautiously optimistic self usually would wait to discuss in such a public way and after being armed with more evidence, but maybe…just maybe…this will be of benefit to others so I’m going to leap forward with my very preliminary results and post about our progress over the next 12-15 months.

As I discussed in my podcast on March 11th, I’ve got ADD and my son inherited mine with a hyperactive twist (i.e., ADHD) which, by the way, I view as a positive and not as a “dysfunction”. Fortunately, his Mom and I have taken an extraordinarily proactive approach to dealing with it in an attempt to shield him from many of the negative effects that often befall young people as they progress through their teen years (e.g., chemical dependency, criminal or aggressive behavior, lack of achievement and failure in school, etc.). So far he’s remained his delightful, 99th percentile IQ, voracious-reading self but is struggling with organizational issues (or should I say the complete lack thereof).

We’ve been to the Amen Clinic and had the Brain SPECT imaging performed which added to our knowledge and really helped us narrow down my son’s ADHD subtype. In terms of regimens, we’ve done diet, exercise, reward, herbal, medicinal and other approaches with only modest success.

Fairly desperate, we’ve continued to be on the hunt. A few weeks ago, after meeting with his exasperated teachers and the school staff due to his missed assignments, disorganization and lack of focus negatively impacting his achievement, I came home and Google’ed my little heart out for hours looking for cutting edge research and approaches.

I found one…and it seems too good to be true and damn, its effects have been almost magical!

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Filed Under: Brain/Mind

Why in the world would Cisco buy WebEx?

March 15, 2007 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

When Cisco bought into the social networking game, there were a lot of folks in the blogosphere scratching their heads wondering why they did it. I didn’t pay much attention to this acquisition since it seemed tactical and not terribly interesting. But now with Cisco buying WebEx (press release here) it sheds a whole new light on their potential strategy to become even a bigger and more material part of the Internet-as-a-platform layer.

What could this mean and why should you care?

If you’re a developer, it’s important to keep an eye on strategic moves since (by their very nature) companies try to position themselves for category dominance. Unfortunately, this often translates into trying to wrest control of standards and protocols or otherwise defend against competition, maintain growth and enjoy huge gross margins often to your detriment.

If you’re a buyer of I.T. products or services, you need to understand what’s happening strategically so that you know which horse to bet on and ensure you don’t paint-yourself-into-a-corner with some given vendor and their approach.

But there’s alot more to this acquisition than meets the eye.

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Filed Under: Metaverse, Technology, Web 2.0

Mobile Global Grid: When the World is At Your Fingertips

March 14, 2007 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

Like me, if you’re paying any attention to the signs, trends and foundational elements upon which innovation in technology occurs, then you have to be seeing what I’m seeing…it’s sooo close. Do you see it?

Right there. Don’t see it yet? OK then, let’s push against the membrane of the future together for a minute.

If you look now you can just make out a mobile device, connected to a ubiquitous wireless network (that you can use even when you’re miles from a major metro area, off the autobahn or Interstate highway system, or at some point in the future on the Serengeti plain in Africa) and is so simple to use that you’re able to connect and re-connect to the global grid in an instant and have all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips.

When you’re in your car, at a restaurant, a dinner party, at a business meeting, at school…anything connected to the global grid you’re authorized or able to grab is yours for the snagging from a device in your hand.

We’re partially there now and more is coming.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Apple’s eagerly anticipated iPhone is the closest concept yet to a just beyond the membrane of the future simple to use, multi-function device that will be useful for the masses to leverage our currently decent wireless network…and is one set to expand dramatically.

According to GigaOM today, there are distinct chunks of spectrum that hold the promise of mass geographical coverage and expanding the grid. An increasing number of mobile communications online applications are proliferating (e.g., this list at eConsultant). The World Wide Web Consortium’s Mobile Initiative adds even more fuel to the fire of a mobile, global grid.

Couple that with the always-on, always-connected, culture of participation (see "Rise of the Participation Culture") and you have a brew from which all sorts of possibilities come forth!

Though I look like some geek when I do this, at least twice a week I’ll be in a conversation and someone will say something like, "You know…that ocean…the one by (country here)….what’s that called?" I’ll whip out my Treo, go to Google, enter a search string and, I swear to God, almost instantly I can find a reference to that country and there’s an obvious link that contains the data where I can answer that question. It’s a bit of a conversation stifler at the moment as I futz with the device, but I’m pretty good at glossing over my thumbing on the Treo, we carry on the conversation, and I circle back to the fact and insert it into our discussion. Works great.

Did this at a dinner party one evening awhile back when people were struggling with an artist and a song. No one knew, the conversation continued, and about two minutes later I mentioned the artist. "OH YEAH!" came the head-slap comments and we carried on. Trivial in the scheme of life I realize, but extend this to the DOZENS OF TIMES PER DAY that I look something up on Google, use Google Maps, find a phone number on Directory Assistance, send SMS messages, send a photo/blog post to one of my private client blogs, use Instant Messaging….all from applications that run on my Treo!

So how is this going to transform the world? In ways predictable but mostly ones that are not. Who knows what will be the killer application for the always connected world — especially when better geotracking is in the mix? What I do know is that some of it is already here…and if you push just hard enough on the membrane of the future you’ll have a good indication of what’s coming.

Filed Under: Blogosphere, Brain/Mind, Commerce, Computing, Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Metaverse, Open Source, Podcasting, Technology, Travel, Vlogging, Web 2.0

World Population to Hit 9.2 Billion by 2050

March 14, 2007 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

If there were ever a reason to work toward reducing our carbon footprint, building Web applications, online virtual spaces and other activities that allow humans to minimize our impact on the Earth, it’s the report from the United Nations that, "The world population continues its path towards population ageing and
is on track to surpass 9 billion persons by 2050, as revealed by the
newly released 2006 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections." (More detailed data is here as both a PDF and Excel spreadsheet).

Holy crap. Over 9 BILLION?

To give you some perspective on how population change is ACCELERATING, this quaint little map from the British Empire Atlas from 1918 that you see above says in part, "The population of the World is 1600 millions, the bulk of which is settled in two regions: the Indo-China-Japanese region about 800 millions (half the population of the world), and the Central European region about 360 millions. The only other densely populated region is the Eastern side of the United States and Canada with about 90 millions." (More here).

Though population estimates are significantly more accurate today, 1.6 billion to 9.2 billion in 89 years is a pretty frightening increase.

As I think about these numbers, the sustainability questions flood my brain: How can the Earth sustain this number of humans? What will we eat and drink? As industrialized nations move from growing food to growing renewable energy resources, is there enough to go around? Since most of the population growth is in developing nations, will the pressure on richer nations mean more wars, negative economic impacts or, God forbid, ways to accelerate genocides like what’s happening in Darfur?

A continual migration from real-world to virtual questions abound: What happens as we disconnect from the natural world and move online? Will all of us move into our heads and be less in touch with the natural world? Even though I’ve shared many experiences with them in wilderness, I’ve found that my kids already are pretty unaware of the subtelties and nuances of the shift in seasons, how to align with nature and even their expectations as we travel down an Interstate highway in a remote area that a few miles off the highway there is….no one.

Lastly, the enormity of the problem, the strategic political and governmental necessities, and the moral ambiguities between cultures and religions exacerbate attempts at controlling the problem. I wonder how those who consider themselves religious ignore these realities and object to birth control (no….I’m not going to discuss abortion) as a means of population control?

Remember last year when physicist Stephen Hawking proclaimed that humans *must* colonize other planets — he believes global warming, nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus could wipe out the earth –in order to survive as a species and he was ridiculed in many circles? I read dozens of blog posts, news articles (like this one) and opinion pieces that missed the point of his central argument: humans all settled in one place (i.e., our planet Earth) are vulnerable to mass extinction.

He didn’t even get in to a discussion that we might breed ourselves into extinction.

Filed Under: Blogosphere, Current Affairs, Earth, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Metaverse, Technology

Qwaq Launches Virtual Workspace

March 13, 2007 By Steve Borsch 5 Comments

Last week I was delighted to receive an offer to be in a hosted session with Greg Nuyens, CEO of Qwaq, to take a pre-launch peek at a secure, virtual workspace product called "Qwaq Forums"…a product built upon the open source Croquet project (site Croquet Consortium site here).

In April of last year I wrote a post entitled, "Is Second Life the Future of Collaboration and Social Software?" since I’d been thinking deeply about the implications of metaverse world’s like Second Life providing us with ever higher ability to be involved in an immersive, persistent, engaging, fun and creative space. But just like Skype’s proprietary protocol limits the ability to leverage their IP telephony or Apple’s closed iPod (and soon to be closed iPhone launch) limits the expansion, this seemingly needed control limits what organizations can (or will) do with technology.

Qwaq’s approach is that their product, Qwaq Forums, "…enhances the productivity of distributed teams by bringing critical resources together in a virtual place, as if they were in an actual physical location, and providing them with all the tools and collaboration capabilities they need to work more effectively together. With Qwaq Forums, users can work together to establish workflow steps, create or review information in software applications, and evaluate designs in 2D and 3D, all while discussing topics using built-in text and voice chat. Further enhancing employee productivity, Qwaq Forums virtual workspaces are always available so users can return to a forum at another time to access and view changes that have occurred since they last visited the virtual space."

So what was my experience like and why should you be keenly interested? I think you might be surprised by my perception…

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Filed Under: Brain/Mind, Innovation, Metaverse, Open Source, Space, Technology

CTD Podcast for March 11, 2007

March 11, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

(click for larger view)

Are you blessed with a child (or yourself) who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)? Then you might want to listen to this week’s podcast where one guy who has ADD discusses it (and how he’s wrestling with his son who also enjoys ADHD).

Signs point to Thomas Edison, Wolfgang Mozart, Ben Franklin, Winston Churchill and others who “suffered” with this “deficit”. Discussed is Thom Hartman’s “hunter in a farmer world” metaphor that he espouses in his book ADD: A Different Perception. Also discussed is the Learning Breakthrough program and the Dore program (which is partially based on the LB methodology) and the possible cerebellum exercises which might offer some brain hacking breakthrough.

Listen to or download the podcast

Filed Under: Brain/Mind, CTD Podcast, Podcasting

“Building New Synapses for the Global Brain”

March 9, 2007 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

The post title above sums up what is being delivered with a new offering, Metaweb, and is a quote by (and contained within) Tim O’Reilly’s very cogent overview of its core essence (John Markoff’s New York Times article is here).

As you’re well aware if you read this blog, my synapses fire like crazy as I connect the dots. What excites me to no end about the acceleration of the Internet-as-a-platform and the collective consciousness of humankind being connected, is the web of interconnected knowledge being built so that billions of dots can be connected through our collective effort. There just haven’t been a lot of tools available for us to easily and seamlessly connect disparate pieces of information that alone, have no apparent connection, but once connected clearly show a whole, a pattern, or some previously unforeseen new value.

I am absolutely convinced that we’re on the cusp of a major evolutionary leap in knowledge, creativity, innovation and social connection (and this post of mine sums up a bit of my excitement). But we need our “smart” machines (i.e., computers) to take the some of the burden off of our inefficient, cumbersome, laborious connecting of dots and our increasingly vain attempts to see and understand it all. It’s just not possible anymore as information exponentially increases.

In the same way that the plow, the cotton gin, assembly lines, factory automation, transportation, distribution and other systemic, machine-based systems allowed us to produce more, perform significantly more work and further specialize by amplifying our meager abilities, having methods for humans to make connections that machines could later use will jumpstart computer’s capabilities to make new, more likely connections for us or at least present top possibilities in a more efficient manner.

On a daily basis I invest HOURS in staying on top of everything I can on the Internet and Web. It’s one reason I’m now shunning TV, radio and many books. The issue? Even all that time invested can’t begin to ensure that I see it all.

Case in point: yesterday’s post about JumpTV. I’m fairly on top of the innovation and offerings in the Internet TV space but hadn’t heard of them. Why is that? They were probably on a list somewhere but I glossed over it. In fact, I’ve been peripherally aware of Metaweb and a one sentence description of what they were up to (it was something about the Semantic Web and I thought, “Oh yeah…and they’re going to boil-the-ocean right after they ship Metaweb“) so I ignored it until today when more information was released.

One of my favorite shows from the past was James Burke‘s BBC Connections. There was one show I vaguely remember where he was describing all of these VERY different inventions, processes, discoveries that all led up to…the clock. Each one on the surface made NO sense at all…but when Burke connected them all every single disparate piece made perfect sense and the viewer could instantly see that the clock wouldn’t have been invented had it not been for each of them!

The Metaweb holds the promise (though note my emphasis on “promise”) of all connected humankind weaving a tapestry of connections that more and more of us will be able to stand back and say, “Hmmm….I see a pattern here” and thus be able to invent ever higher value, solve deeper and more profound problems and take us all to places we can’t yet imagine.

Filed Under: Innovation

Why TV Will Never Be The Same!

March 8, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

I’m amazed at what comes my way every single day as the Internet explodes as a platform and — besides the obvious sites on everyone’s radar screen like YouTube, Revver and Brightcove — there are other very interesting ones *and* the tools to create extremely high quality visual content are accelerating too. So let’s connect a couple of dots that hit my radar screen today as further evidence as to why TV will never be the same.

Case in point: a colleague’s son-in-law is involved with JumpTV and he sent me an email as an FYI with several attached links (here, here, here and here) about the company.

I went out to their site and was delighted to see the capability to stream live video from many other countries all over the world. Though there are other solutions for streaming live TV, this is the first one that seems as straightforward as needed so that non-technical people can subscribe and watch IPTV.

I immediately emailed my friend John who married a woman from Peru (who works in international marketing here in Minnesota for a Fortune 100 company and my family and I traveled to Peru for the wedding two years ago…but I digress). I’m pretty certain that she’ll find it wonderful to be able to watch a channel(s) from home over the internet (as well as her ex-patriated friends from Peru now living here). JumpTV is making the world just a little bit smaller by this enriched content being available to those interested.

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Filed Under: Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Open Media, Vlogging, Web 2.0

My Dad + Macintosh = Ahhh…

March 7, 2007 By Steve Borsch 7 Comments

Much to my surprise and delight, about five years ago my Dad started taking computer classes at a senior center. My sister’s and I bought my (then) 76 year old Dad an inexpensive eMachines PC running Windows XP for Christmas. The computer, 17″ monitor and cheap inkjet printer was less than $600 so we got him setup quickly and easily without breaking our holiday budgets.

Since I’m the family propellerhead, all tech support was my responsibility (I support both Mac’s and PC’s). Though Dad is only about 20 minutes from my house, I set him up with a VNC server that I could get into securely so I could perform remote tech support for him. Every time I touched his system, there was an incredible amount of spyware and adware on it or something had gotten hosed up somehow.

Dad is now 81 years old. Since he loves his computer, broadband connection and uses them often, I wanted to upgrade the memory and get it to run faster. But it was worse than just a slow machine. When I was at his house fixing something there were dancing naked ladies on his taskbar since he’d inadvertently clicked on a spam email attachment and this garbage was loaded. It was sort of funny if you knew my Dad…but also I was just tearing my hair out over the constant tweaking necessary to keep the system running. After looking into the cost of upgrading this ancient computer, I decided to make HIS life and MY life alot easier: I bought him a Mac mini, an LCD monitor and my sister got him a new printer.

If you’re a PC user that helps out family and friends or is incredibly frustrated as you spend hours futzing with your Windows PC…listen up. If you’re a Mac user, this is old news so feel free to take a quick nap.

My Dad loves the new Mac. I made the icons huge so he can see everything, it’s easier to navigate, and the spyware and adware are now a complete non-issue. There’s nothing that he cannot do on this computer and I *rarely* have to do any remote logging in to fix something. I’ve now discovered that one of my favorite utilities (Onyx) can “lock” the icons in the dock so the last little problem of him inadvertently dragging an application icon from the dock and having it disappear is soon to be another non-issue.

You’re undoubtedly well aware of the religious wars between Mac and PC users and it’s not my intention to fan the flames since I really don’t care what anyone else is using. I just quietly revel in my delight with my own machines and choices. But damn…this one decision has saved me HOURS of time and his machine just runs…and runs….and runs.

I’m not alone in this position. All around geek and multi-platform media god, Leo Laporte, is a TV, radio and netcasting master at helping people with computer issues and routinely recommends that neophytes or modestly techno-futzing people buy a Mac vs. wrestling with a PC.

Filed Under: Innovation

Thoughts on Building a Blog Audience

March 6, 2007 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

After I wrote a post wondering out loud who was in my audience of blog readers, I was delighted that I heard from many of you….and some of you who read this blog came as a bit of a surprise.

I have a lot of hard core, alpha male geeks who are interested in my posts on Web 2.0, design and usability. Next is a fairly large base of readers who are comprised of educators (K-12 and higher ed) as well as non-profit and association leadership. I must admit the latter came as a bit of a surprise, but several of you told me that it was because “...you have a knack for distilling abstract technical concepts down so we can understand them, and are great at telling us why they’re cool and useful.“ That was flattering and helped me understand why people read.

Lastly there’s sort of a mix of folks that range from small-to-midsize-to-enterprise I.T. and business people as well as about 200 or so who wander by daily after hitting upon a post via Google. I can tell from the referral logs how someone gets to one of my pages and I can follow a breadcrumb trail as they wander through my archives, click on my About page, and read a bunch of stuff. Last week someone came in from Google and read nearly every one of my posts since December 2004! God how I’d love to talk to that person to see what they thought.

A few times I’ve been “Dugg” at Digg.com which resulted in multiple thousands of unique visits — usually because of some provocative post title I’ve used. Someone also inserted one of my posts in StumbleUpon and that drives dozens of pageviews per day frequently. On occasion I’ve had any of my Apple-centric posts GO WILD and get huge numbers.

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Filed Under: Conversational Marketing