Connecting the Dots

Voice will be free and will converge with data (which will not be free)

AOL is the king of instant messaging (IM) and a cross-platform solution (but proprietary OSCAR protocol) but is doing little with true Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Apple has iChatAV with voice, video and IM (on Mac's only but interoperates over OSCAR with others). Yahoo buys Dialpad to add voice to their IM capability (on the PC only). Google Talk debuts with voice (IM cross platform but voice on the PC only) and now our pals in Redmond pull-the-trigger and buy Teleos to add voice to *their* IM client (and I'll bet it's PC only).

Then you've got new VoIP vendors like Packet8 and Vonage...as well as VoIP offerings from the cable companies and traditional telephony providers...all scrambling to get in the VoIP game with their own products. Oh yeah...then you have the open Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which purports to be a rapidly accelerating VoIP standard protocol. The intent of SIP is to enable providers to write their software to a common protocol so that all VoIP telephony products can interoperate vs. going off and building proprietary protocols with the primary intent to capture customers (a good example of a computer-based SIP offering is the Gizmo project).

So what's up with these moves in to voice? Who is going to end up at the top of the pyramid?

A Nikon example of why I *hate* rebates

Earlier this month I purchased a Nikon 70-300MM zoom lens. It had a $50 rebate. A letter from Nikon just arrived letting me know they declined paying me the rebate.

For those of you who've read my blog for awhile, you know I hate rebates. Rebating is a scam since roughly 30% of consumers apply for them and those that do -- like I did with Nikon by dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" -- can still end up with nothing and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Rebates and "buy the extended warranty" are the dirty little unethical secrets in retail that'll never stop until consumers wise up.

The letter from Nikon's rebate folks (click on the image of it at the left if you want to read it) states the declination of the rebate was due to, "The Original Yellow Part-2 world-wide warranty form was not included. Copies are not acceptable."

Absolute bullshit. I'm *very* meticulous and careful when providing rebate information (having been screwed in the past) and this was absolutely included. I went over the required items several times to make sure all the relevant items were in the envelope prior to sending. Of course, they also state in the letter, "Please be sure to resubmit all materials within 21 days of the date at the top of this letter to be eligible to receive your rebate." Hmmm...not possible SINCE THE MISSING MATERIAL WAS IN THE ORIGINAL ENVELOPE!

I wrote a post awhile back about a very poor customer experience with Cisco's Linksys business unit...and I've had approximately 1,200 separate pageviews of it (after people did Google searches for the Linksys WGA11B wireless game adaptor and clicked a link to that post) and I've got to believe that it has negatively impacted sales of their adaptor. Does Nikon want bad PR over $50? Well, they got it and it's worth $50 to me to vent.

Oh yeah...did I mention that I HATE REBATES and that Tokina and Sigma lenses are looking more attractive today?

Comedy writing on Amazon.com

Been thinking about getting a Segway. So last night I was online looking at Amazon.com's listing of Segway's and scrolled down to read the user reviews. Unbeknownst to me there's a comedian among the reviewers!

A guy named, Smith T. Aames "s.t.a." had written this in his Segway review, "When I hit 300 pounds, I knew something had to be done. When I walked from one end of the street to the other, my thighs rubbed painfully together, chafing my tender skin. Then I heard about the Segway. I knew as soon as I saw this incredible invention that my worries were over. I bought a Segway immediately, and for the most part, I am really pleased." You've got to read it for yourself.

Then I clicked on, "See all my reviews" and saw that this guy had 13 pages filled with dozens of reviews for all kinds of products! (...and many a bit risque). Another hilarious example is his "review" of the Donald Trump doll:

The Donald is not The Doll for me, January 25, 2005

I bought this doll because I like Donald Trump. He's a fine specimen of man. I wanted the doll so that I could satisfy some of my more primal urges for The Donald. However:

-The Donald Doll does not smell manly like Donald. It smells chemical like plastic.

-The Donald Doll is not anatomically correct. Its pants don't even come off.

-The Donald Doll does not have real hair. Its hair doesn't even move.

I still love Donald, but I will probably let my dog, Mexican Hairless McGee, bury the doll in the yard with the Scary Spice doll I bought last year.

If I had known stuff like this was being done on Amazon...I'd have read a lot more of these reviews. If stuff like this happens often (and I don't know if it does), the rest of Jeff Bezos' hair is sure to fall out...if he doesn't pull it out himself.

Last but not least is one other I thought amusing:

DOG SWEATER WITH TWINKLING, LED FLASHING LIGHT!!
Offered by Parti Poodle Pet Supplies
       
Animal population control?, April 11, 2005
Tired of having a dog? Buy it this sweater, and it will off itself in just minutes following the howling laughter of all who see it.

CTD for August 28, 2005

This week's podcast is a brief discussion about Mac OS X vs. Windows vs. Linux from one person's perspective.

Frustration started with an attempt to install Linspire (a Linux distro) but it hung...creating a cascade of events with effort to rescue data from a hard drive that got corrupted, necessitating a re-install of Windows. Knoppix is discussed briefly which is a bootable CD distribution of Linux and -- going forward -- the only way Borsch will use Linux!

Also, the segment "The Radar Screen" follows with a brief recap of the items that hit Borsch's radar screen this past week.

Download MP3 of this week's show

In cyberspace...no one can hear a blogger scream

Doc Searls said today, "Vanity isn't the only reason to have feeds of searches for one's own name. It's also one of the best ways to start, join and participate in public (multi-blog) conversations. Also to see what works and what doesn't. I'm often amazed at how little traction some posts get. I put a lot of work into Open the Pod Bay Doors, for example, and it got approximately squat — as did the conversation I had with Steve Gillmor while I was writing it."

I agree it's all about conversations. What I find interesting, troubling, and some times defeating are the more than 1,000-1,500 unique visitors per month I have visit my blog...and few leave comments. I often wonder -- like the tagline "In space no one can hear you scream" for the movie Alien -- if I'm out here investing time, energy, effort and enthusiasm in blog posts that quickly roll off and in to the ether -- and that no one gives a crap. Multi-blog conversations? Most of my stuff doesn't seem worthy of many trackback links (though I have dozens) and I'm certainly not involved in "multi-blog conversations." Perhaps one has to be one of the cognoscenti in a specific discipline (with people that blog too) to be worthy of a multi-blog conversation.

Yes, my posts appear high on the relevancy rankings in Google and Technorati A LOT and people come to my blog via those routes. Yes, many of the people I care about follow along and frequently comment to me personally. Yes, I find that my blog is almost a diary of my personal brand, my consciousness and my being which has proven worthwhile. Yes, I read my past posts and feel pretty good about the overall body of work I've generated. Still, I've been having thoughts lately about the payoff (not monetary but engagement in conversations and connection with people around issues I'm writing about) or the lack of payoff and how it balances against all my effort (I've got a day job and a family with a bride that has lately been second-guessing the energy and effort I'm investing in blogging and podcasting).

As a benefit of this effort, I'm delighted to be involved in several email penpal-like conversations with people in Canada, Amsterdam, the U.K., Japan, Australia and various points in the US. That alone is worth the effort...though I'm not sure if I'll ever meet them face-to-face. Also, my purpose with diving in to the blogosphere, becoming a podcaster and totally and completely immersing myself in Web 2.0 (the acceleration and momentum which is becoming palpable) is to figure it out, be in-the-game and gain an intuitive understanding of what's happening as the collective consciousness of mankind gets connected. The only way to understand it is to live it and what's happening right now is the most fundamental shift I'll see in my lifetime.

So while it's cool that Google spiders blogs and Technorati has focused tagging and rankings, it would be great if there was some sort of way to affix a value ranking to a post and its tag in order to kickstart these so-called multi-blog conversations. If I get connected with someone with some sort of intrinsic value (e.g., writes about Apple and used to work at the company) then he/she would have a higher ranking. Maybe, just maybe, we could enable this within the Identity Management effort currently underway?

Oh yeah...feel free to leave a comment!  ;-)

Geek Squad Gets a Ticket

So this is one of those stories that I almost immediately dismiss to the "Ahh...I don't care" categories but the more I think about it the more ridiculous it seems (and there's a local connection since Best Buy headquarters is 10 minutes from my house).

The California Highway Patrol (CHP) apparently has an issue about the paint jobs on the Geek Squad cars looking too much like a cop car (this firm is a part of Best Buy now  and is a Dragnet-like services firm performing a variety of offerings to ensure PC's work for customer's) and ticketed a Geekmobile in Walnut Grove, CA this past week.

Reading this morning's Minneapolis Star/Tribune, I came across this article (subscription) that indicated the head of the Geek Squad, Robert Stephens, has "...reluctantly agreed to repaint the doors of all 150 "Geekmobiles" in California to black."

Huh? Maybe this is making a mountain-out-of-a-molehill, but the only thing the CHP *didn't* do was to fall back on it being an Homeland Security imperative. If a driver in California mistakes a Geekmobile for a police car, this State has bigger problems than an electronics retailer's technical support Joe Friday's.

Steve's List O' Links

There is so much information available on the internet, newspapers, television, radio, podcasts, books and more...that it's really, really hard to stay on top of it all!

I've used NewsGator in the past (which I prefer visually to Bloglines) but Bloglines allows me to expose my bookmarks to the public and NewsGator doesn't. Pretty cool and useful since I have my list o' links that I view every day (some times multiple times per day). It allows me -- at a glance -- to snag hundreds of headlines and blog posts (though interestingly it's much faster to scan formulaic news sites vs. blogs).

I get many requests each month from people that I send some relevant piece of information to that is started off with, "How the hell did you find that!?!" and viewing these sites are one way I do. Like I've talked about here on my blog in the past, the amount of information I'm being exposed to and am consuming is like drinking from a firehose (right now I have 21 hours worth of unlistened podcasts sitting on my iPod!). There are days when I just want to pull the covers over my head and shut it down, but mostly I'm delighted it's so incredibly simple to skim dozens and dozens sites and blogs through a single interface.

Oh yeah...all of this is brought to you by a simple XML specification called RSS (flavors are Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) which allows a "feed" of what is posted to be delivered to a "subscriber" of that feed with no muss or fuss. At some point in the near future, expect to have "feed clearing houses" that allow you to select feeds that are customized just for you.

Podcasts over your mobile phone

A new startup called Pod2Mob has released a beta of their technology that runs on your home computer and streams audio files from your computer to your mobile phone using its data connection (so you wouldn't pay for a phone call as long as you're paying for the mobile internet connection most providers supply. Mine is TMobile and I pay them $19.95 per month for an all-you-can-eat data connection).  Besides streaming from your home computer, you can also use Pod2Mob's mobile server right from your mobile phone (at www.pod2mob.com/mobile) to stream podcasts that are served up from their own servers.

So I signed up to try it out....

Google's World Domination Strategy

Microsoft's, er I mean Google's, world domination strategy has taken another step forward with Google Talk, an instant messaging (IM) and voice service. It's kinda, sorta open but the full and complete Google Talk client requires Microsoft Windows to function.

Huh!?!  Where is Linux? Mac? (Should point out that there are IM clients that work with Google IM but not the 'Talk' function). So maybe this should be branded, "Google Talk if you run Windows since you're a butthead for not running an operating system like most of the planet so you'll have to type instead of talk." I know, I know...it's a bit long for a trademark or tagline.

The whole point to Tim Berner's Lee invention of the World Wide Web was openness and interoperability. I've been pissed off for years when I use web applications or systems that require an OS or browser specific implementation to run. I should mention that I use Windows at work and home, Mac OS X at home (my preferred platform) and run a Linux distro (SuSE) at home too...mainly just to goof with and learn. So I *could* use this service instead of Skype if I could use it on any OS.

Skype has clients for Windows, Mac and Linux. Google is being touted for their very cool AJAX web application called GMail (which I *love* and use all the time...but it's platform and browser agnostic). So how hard would it be for them to develop a base-case platform that a client could access from any OS?

Look at what they're doing with Blogger, Picasa and Google Toolbar and the Windows-centrism they sport. Perhaps that is why they're raising another $4.2B and have hired tons of software engineers -- to actually deliver open format solutions regardless of platform.

By the way, nice Salon article by Scott Rosenberg that concurs and is a good read.

Glass is half empty today...

Normally I'm a "glass is half full" guy but here are four "glass is half empty" items from Sunday and today's news for your leisure reading pleasure and, hopefully, a bit of critical thinking on your part:

• On 60 Minutes this past Sunday was a repeat of an original interview between reporter Steve Kroft and CIA analyst (and Bin Laden expert) Michael Scheuer. Here was one of Scheuer's answers from the interview that leapt out at me:

"You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," says Kroft. "You believe that's going to happen?"

"I don't believe in inevitability.  But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable," says Scheuer.

Talk about something over which we have little control! That said, I sure hope marshall law, underskin implants, RFID tags in our passports and increased surveillance (PDF) isn't the inevitable reaction by our Federal government from an occurrence of this sort. Sadly, I'm afraid that a knee-jerk reaction is also inevitable if the citizenry isn't aware and balances fear with restraint.

• Conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying the leftist leader wanted to turn his country into "the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
  

Does this guy represent *your* God or His Son? Of course, we already know what cloth Robertson is cut from when he criticized President Bush's faith-based initiative and then bent over to accept funding. Our separation of church and state lets this guy have a tax free existence on top of it. He's free to speak but those of us who think he's a maniac need to speak too.

• Propaganda extends to military gravestones.

• Government Proposes New SUV Fuel Standards. The Bush administration proposed new fuel economy standards for pickup trucks, minivans and some sport utility vehicles on Tuesday, calling upon automakers to make modest improvements to gas mileage amid rising prices at the pump.     But the plan does not apply to cars and the largest SUVs, such as the Hummer H2.

I understand that every move by a Republican-led administration thinks about business first and everything else second. Fuel prices are at record highs yet oil companies make record profits. Automakers most profitable vehicles are the huge SUV's so they're exempted from obvious standards.

Sigh....

Open Source: Are we at the tipping point?

Over this past weekend I read an intriguing article in Computer Reseller News (CRN) about open source software (OSS) being touted at LinuxWorld -- specifically open source application software.

There were several interesting aspects to this article -- ones that I'm seeing as well -- but the essence of this story about adoption of OSS applications compels me to mention CRN's primary audience: the key readership of this trade rag are those Value Added Resellers (VAR's), Systems Integrators (SI's) and other service providers that make money off of specific targeted customer segments and the products and solutions they can sell and deliver to them. If OSS is truly becoming an accelerator for small to midsize businesses (SMB's) that many interviewed for this article think it is, than we may have reached a tipping point for OSS adoption.

It's not the stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) that is the reason SMB's will adopt OSS. It's the applications! I should note that Fortune 100-type enterprise businesses have already adopted some application-based OSS articulated somewhat in this LinuxWorld story, but accelerated adoption within SMB is what will give OSS application software critical mass and is THE big story.

For more on this story and some counterpoint (and that open source application software was actually little seen at LinuxWorld) see an interview with pundit John C. Dvorak, this article on Yahoo, and this one about HP and OSS licenses (since standardizing licensing will help to accelerate use and adoption of OSS).

My intuition tells me that we're either at the tipping point now or very close to it. I still have not seen quantitative data about actual implementations (and downloads or activity at Sourceforge.net are an indication only of downloading and activity and not of deployments and use). When I see actual data of both enterprise and SMB use of OSS applications -- and the trendline of adoption -- than I'll be convinced that my intuition is correct.

WiFi in the Northland

It's amazing how hard it is to find WiFi internet access on the north shore of Lake Superior. Duluth isn't much of a problem (and I'm sitting right now in a log-built Dunn Bros with free WiFi access) but venturing north of here means there's a paucity of connections. In the past, I've gone wardriving but have been getting a little hinky about doing this when stuff like this occurs.

Of course, the whole point of having a relaxing vacation is to relax and one could argue that getting online negates that benefit. I'd argue that this is not the case: for me, it's as necessary as having access to a telephone. I find newspapers still useful but receive 90% of what I'd like and need through the dozens of blogs and news sites I frequent daily. (I should note that it's also troubling when I travel more than 45 minutes north of Duluth and lose cell signal!)

As more and more of us talk about "Web 2.0", podcasting, videoblogging, blogging, sharing sites like Flickr and more, we need to keep in mind that there are still a lot of places in the U.S. that are slowly dragging themselves out of the 1980's with respect to technology.

By the way, this 5th Annual Dad & Son Adventure has been another home run. Hiking, tossing rocks in Lake Superior, fun meals at places like Grandma's in Duluth, and our fire on the rocky Lake Superior shoreline last night remind me of why I so adore my little man and am glad I'm a Dad.

CTD for August 19, 2005

It's a podcast from the 5th Annual Dad & Son Adventure. Up at a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior for the weekend, Alex and his Dad record this week's podcast.

Besides goofing around (and Alex dissing his Dad constantly), the theme was how Alex's world with technology (and books) is incredible in comparison to what Dad experienced at 10 years of age. A lot has changed but the lake -- and the waves rolling in you can hear on the podcast -- have not. (Though it's probably fair to point out that, due to its proximity to the Minneapolis/St. Paul, the north shore is quickly being built on, traffic is increasing and it's becoming more commercialized).

Listen to or download this week's podcast.

New Government Agency? The "Ministry of Reshelving"...

Did you know there is an association of Anarchist Librarians? How about that there are Librarians for Peace?  OK then...what about a collective of volunteer library workers (called Radical Reference) who believe in social justice and equality? Or Library Juice, a site devoted to "Intellectual Freedom, Social Responsibility and Flirting at the Reference Desk?"

Yeah...me neither. Until I saw something on Boing, Boing that led me off on a quick web surfing adventure over lunch today and the discovery of these sites.

Judging by the sites above and the prank below, I guess it's not just me (and luminaries speaking out on the choking of public media and control of the message like Bill Moyers) becoming increasingly concerned about the level of command-n-control measures being driven in to place around government messaging, the media outlets that disseminate it and more. It's one thing to protest. It's also fabulous that blogs, podcasts and video blogging exist right now as an alternative to the allegedly timid mainstream media acquiesing to command-n-control. That said, it's quite another to pull a prank that gets people to start thinking critically. I just love this kind of stuff! If this story doesn't get picked up by the mainstream media, I'll be surprised.

Ministry of Reshelving
Got quite a chuckle out of this prank. Here are the rules from the "Ministry of Reshelving" about moving the book "1984" (George Orwell's description of a totalitarian society in which the government, referred to as the Party, had almost complete control over the people) to more "suitable" shelves..

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as "reshelving", and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

Is air travel more secure if they know who you are?

If you fly and are in airports, you've experienced the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) having you take off your shoes. They take away fingernail clippers. All bags are rigorously scanned. Random complete searches are done to ensure someone can't predict when they'll be pulled aside. This randomness creates a climate of uncertainty for a person attempting to slide by with prohibited substances or anything that might compromise air safety. Security screening is thorough and complete...and I feel quite secure when I travel.

Since everyone is screened completely -- and baggage going in the hold too -- why does it matter what your name is? Your birthdate? Your address? Those have absolutely *nothing* to do with whether or not you should-or-should-not be screened more fully and *nothing* to do with increased security -- especially since it is highly unlikely the next target of terrorism will be airplane or airport-centric.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's page surrounding CAPPS II and the issue of adding *your* personal profile to the already complete airport security measures, the "...TSA has announced plans to implement CAPPS II, a controversial passenger profiling and surveillance system that would require you to give your birth date, home phone number, and home address before you can board a U.S. flight.  Under CAPPS II, travel authorities would check these and other personal details against the information collected in government and commercial databases, then "tag" you with a color-coded score indicating the level of security risk that you appear to pose.  Based on your assigned color/score, you could be detained, interrogated or made subject to additional searches.  If you are tagged with the wrong color/score, you could be prohibited from flying."

As has been pointed out by security experts a lot smarter than me, knowing all this personal data would just ensure that "Suzy or Sam Terrorist" would be people that would have zero criminal records and would pass and receive positive color/scores. Again...strong point-of-entry security measures at our nation's airports (like we ALREADY HAVE IN PLACE) would ensure nothing gets on board an aircraft.

If you've got a moment to get your head around this issue, here are three quick reads:

1. Wired news article here
2. Security expert Bruce Schneier's post here
3. An entrepreneurial millionaire's civil disobedient protest around this issue is laid out here.

UPDATE 8/16/05: Wow....what better way to make the point than this article! Babies Caught Up in No-Fly Confusion: Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly list."

CTD for August 14, 2005

Topics: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution; PodcastMN meetup; a new segment called "Radar Screen" which covers several of the past week's events that hit Steve's radar screen.

Washington Post 8/14/05, 9:33pm: Harvard Jumps in to the Evolution Debate. Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began.

Evolution is a fundamental scientific theory that species evolved over millions of years. It has been standard in most public school science texts for decades but recently re-emerged in the spotlight as communities and some states debated whether school children should also be taught about creationism or intelligent design.

The Onion, 8/17/05: You might get a chuckle out of this...


Download MP3 File

Broadband, schmodband...

This past week I called my cable internet provider, Time Warner Cable's Roadrunner service, to find out what it would take to remove the cap from my home broadband. Why? I can download fast at 5 million bits per second (mbps) but uploads are slow since they're capped at 384 kilo bits per second (kbps). I know this is arbitrary and done to keep people from running web servers, performing file sharing and any other activities which may suck up bandwidth TWC would rather not provide, but it pisses me off since my needs are legitimate.

There are a lot of reasons why upload speed is important to me:

• I upload photos to a web site I have and a 100 photos (just took 500 in Japan, for example) is 400-500 megabytes! At my upload speed in the thousands of bits per second, uploads like this take several hours

• When delivering my wife's publications to her printer in Texas, her files are 150 MB's or greater

• Backing up machines at home to our online storage location is *very* tedious and time consuming

• I setup my home machine for file transfer availability (FTP) and it's great to be able to retrieve needed files from anywhere though it's *very slow* since the uploading from my machine sitting at home is capped

• I use Skype and would like also to be able to use it for interviews inserted in to my podcasts as well as the ones my wife would like to do for her business. Faster uploading speed minimizes or eliminates drop-outs on the phone calls.

Roadrunner's only options are business services. I can get a "home office" business service that would give me 784kbps up with 5mbps down for $99 per month (double the price I'm paying now). 784 is fine, but I'd like 1-2mbps uploading with that download speed the same. That would cost $249 per month but, they assure me, the quality of service is MUCH higher! (I could buy a dedicated T1 line with symmetrical 1.5mbps up/down for not much more than that).

Om Malik (a broadband blogger) writes about a company that is planning to build chipsets that would enable 2.5 gigabits per second over one of the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) flavors. Anyone who is in-the-know in any way gets that the amount of consumption of big blobs (binary large objects) like audio, video, PDF's, photos is exploding. More and more of us will demand that the US stop suckin' the hind teat of the world with our adoption of what we euphemistically call "broadband". Gotta go faster and I absolutely believe that true broadband, ubiquitously deployed, will toss gasoline on the fire of our economy (especially the 'net-based one!).

The FCC defines high-speed connections to the Internet speeds greater than 200kbps (you gotta read this for a chuckle while you're at it). That's like riding a bike to work but you've got a 30 mile commute. You'll get there, it's just gonna take an hour and a half and you'll be pretty sweaty and tired upon arrival.

CTD for August 12, 2005: iRiver iFP899 Test

In an ongoing quest to find an affordable and high quality portable podcasting device, I make a brief recording with the iRiver iFP899 using the AudioTechnica ATR55 shotgun, powered, condenser microphone with mini-plug.

After investing about two hours trying out this device and putting it through its paces, I decided that it wouldn't be acceptable for portable podcasting. I need a device that is as simple as a point-n-shoot digital camera if I hope to focus on the audio content vs. goofin' with the recorder (and its crackling mini-plug line-in is a deal-killer). Also, my bride won't be able to quickly perform on-the-spot interviews at trade shows unless it's just like using a handheld digital camera: powerful and of excellent quality but able to take those shots a person has two seconds to set up.

Take a listen and you'll also hear the crackles and pops of the mini-plug moving around...not good. So I'll be returning it to Best Buy tomorrow morning and I'm back on the hunt for an acceptable quality, easy to use, portable podcasting device.

Still going to check out Giant Squid whose products have been discussed at the Podcast Alley forums and people seem to love his stuff.

MP3 File

Global Warming

I'm still surprised that there is debate over the effects humans are having on an overall rise in global temperature warming the Earth. Of course, with momentum behind teaching intelligent design vs. reasoned, scientific analysis and discovery in our public schools, perhaps we can just turn over this problem to a higher power to fix (sarcasm intended).

Today's article in The New Scientist is pretty sobering. Here's a snippet:

THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

It goes on:

His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. (my emphasis)

20 times more potent!?! Oh great. Just what we need: an accelerant for global warming. Though I'm not steeped in the finer points of the Kyoto Protocol which the United States has opted not to participate in, are we going to sit around and wait until there is catastrophe? Where is the sense of urgency and major investment in alternative energies? Maybe, just maybe, (and hopefully) President Bush's signing of a massive windfall for energy companies is to spur and accelerate investment.

Turn off the internets...

"I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —George Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004"

In two days, the writers at the Washington Post have written articles about "Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations"  and "The Web as Weapon".

The first article said,

"...Western intelligence agencies and outside terrorism specialists to conclude that the "global jihad movement," sometimes led by al Qaeda fugitives but increasingly made up of diverse "groups and ad hoc cells," has become a "Web-directed" phenomenon, as a presentation for U.S. government terrorism analysts by longtime State Department expert Dennis Pluchinsky put it. Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence."

The second one said, "

As with most breakthroughs, it was a combination of technology and timing. Zarqawi launched his jihad in Iraq "at the right point in the evolution of the technology," said Ben N. Venzke, whose firm IntelCenter monitors jihadist sites for U.S. government agencies. High-speed Internet access was increasingly prevalent. New, relatively low-cost tools to make and distribute high-quality video were increasingly available. "Greater bandwidth, better video compression, better video editing tools -- all hit the maturity point when you had a vehicle as well as the tools," he said.

The original al Qaeda always aspired to use technology in its war on the West. But bin Laden's had been the moment of fax machines and satellite television. "Zarqawi is a new generation," said Evan F. Kohlmann, a consultant who closely monitors the sites. "The people around him are in their twenties. They view the media differently. The original al Qaeda are hiding in the mountains, not a technologically very well-equipped place. Iraq is an urban combat zone. Technology is a big part of that. I don't know how to distinguish the Internet now from the military campaign in general in Iraq."

The very architecture of the internet that routes around damage makes it virtually impossible to stop the dissemination of information from these scumbags showing their horrific videos and using the internet as a primary means of communication....unless we turn off the internets.

Shutting down the internet simply isn't possible. The American populace (and the rest of the world increasingly dependent upon it) will not stand for draconian control measures, back doors, and sweeping eavesdropping by *any* government...even the one that invented it. Investment and stepped up effort on identification and shutdown of these al Qaeda sites is the only course of action. As I discussed in this week's podcast, I'm not willing to hand over my privacy, civil liberties and free speech for security and choking off information (regardless of its horror) as it is a very bad precedent. Focus the war on extremism (apparently the new euphemism for the war on terror) by leveraging the internet for its information dissemination qualities and use it for gathering intelligence.

Sigh...if it were only as simple as capturing a Wehrmacht Enigma machine and starting an Ultra program.

"The Brand Called You" and blogging

Way back in 1997, Fast Company magazine had a cover that looked like a Tide box (denoting a well recognized brand) and an article inside by business management guru and author Tom Peters entitled, "The Brand Called You."

Pontificating about the absolute need to brand yourself, Peters starts out that article espousing the virtues of personal branding, "It's time for me -- and you -- to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anyone who's interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It's that simple -- and that hard. And that inescapable."

I drank Peters' KoolAid then...and I'm drinking it today. It's important to position oneself correctly, package ourselves up and always be cognizant of our brand (i.e., perceived and actual value we can offer to the world). People are hired for their value. To build. To meet needs. To achieve. To create. To think about better and different ways to move an organization forward. To add more value than we 'cost' an organization.

Though this article is now nearly 8 years old, it's worth reading again if you've got a moment. In my view, it's more important than ever that we brand ourselves and invest in our brand with a focus on value-additions (get more schooling, learn something new, stay on top of trends in your industry, listen to podcasts, read blogs, read, read, read). Doing your own blog is a fabulous way to showcase your value -- if you're willing to take a risk and publically expose your thoughts, feelings and perspectives that could be available for years to come.

If you don't brand yourself, who will? Maybe if you're a movie or recording star, you can get an agent to do it for you. For most of us, finding our own way to achieve personal branding is all part of the adventure we're on in life.

CTD for August 7, 2005

INCENTIVES AND FEAR: This week's show is going to take a bit of a twist on connecting the dots and hopefully will act as a wakeup call. The focus is on seemingly benign moves that could become a threat to you if you’re not watching, listening and thinking.

Freakonomics, Beyond Fear, the FCC, terrorism, and the government all play a role in this week's podcast.


MP3 File

Location Awareness & Open Tagging

Was delighted about a couple of things today -- one cool and one enlightening -- that I wanted to share with you. Two more examples of the energy and excitement that is continuing to build as the dots are being connected all over the place with the internet acting as catalyst:

• Plazes: I've been a big fan of presence awareness for some time, though see the benefits of being invisibly located (on my cell phone or Blackberry and people think I'm at my desk...when I'm at Starbucks or elsewhere) but I also see the benefits of having my trust network be able to locate me in addition to having access to my presence. Here's what it says on the Plaze beta site...a new location awareness service: Plazes is a grassroot approach to location-aware interaction, using the local network you are connected to as location reference. Plazes allows you to share your location with the people you know and to discover people and plazes around you. It's the navigation system for your social life and it's absolutely free.

• Stowe Boyd at Corante who had a *very* articulate post about Open Tagging. Since I'm a huge fan of open source everything (software, formats, courseware, business models, now tagging) I really enjoyed how he actually was able to say what I'd attempted to in my huge rambling post here on July 14th.

I thought this sentence was the essence of Stowe Boyd's proposal on Open Tags "For the open tag model I propose that Technorati-like services request an RSS feed from users that they, in effect, would subscribe to."  Why the essence?  I ended my July 14th post (where I was talking about how "Apple doesn't know me") with these two thoughts that about sum up my thoughts about tags and where they should "live":

Here are two thoughts....

• What if there was an online repository of pre-done tags by the manufacturer of a product or deliverer of a service? Or, a place where a person or organization could complete a "Tagging Form" at some place like "TagCentral.com" that would have possible fields to be filled in for a tag? I could envision a tag for a Nikon D70 RFQ that had every attribute of the camera and -- as tags were added -- the D70 tag would automatically proliferate to *every* place that tag resides around the Web

• Identity Management and directory services have a lot of issues to be solved before there is agreement amongst everyone in the community. Still, I would love to have a Reference ID alias representing Steve Borsch that would allow me to own and manage my identity and profile while providing a complete "interest and/or RFQ profile" of tagged products, services, information, audio/video content and more that would live within one central directory and be available to advertisers and sellers to ping me and make me offers. Apple could use a directory like this to send custom offers to "me", to power users, newbies, iPodders and any other slice-n-dices of individuals.

Vloggers are getting ready...

That's me with my sisters one year when Nancy received a "Give a Show Projector" for Christmas. It was about as close as we got to being able to put on a media show...and we did for friends and family (and charged admission). Yes...we really were that goofy with the fake expressions of joy and surprise.

Lots of people are getting ready to "give a show" by vlogging right now. If you think podcasting has been hot, just wait to see what happens when tools (iMovie, cameras, blogging) meet a device and an online movie store (rumored video iPod and iTunes-like movie store) and their videos are available via the potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands of "channels" (look at this) and places to distribute and/or find vlogs (mefeedia, Open Media Network, etc).

To give you just two examples of the energy focused in this area, peek at the behind-the-scenes look at the 'studio' that media poster child Eric Rice is building, as well as what the former TechTV Screen Savers show guys are doing (the Diggnation podcast while also shooting and posting video). Hmmm....wonder what they know that you don't. These two will give you a sense of what smart, plugged in people in the Bay Area are anticipating and working toward to ensure they're getting in front of the curve as vlogging inevitably explodes.

Click on "Vlogging" in the Categories in my blog left column or click here to see more posts about vlogging.

A battle for control over wireless broadband innovation

You probably have a WiFi connection at home for wireless internet access. You may have heard about WiMAX (and the European version called "Hiperman") which you can think of as city-wide (or a theoretical 31 mile radius) large scale wireless internet access. What you probably haven't heard of is a new technology offering called "xMax" which appears to be magic.

Oh....if it were only so easy to simply get excited about ubiquitous (and either free or low cost) internet access without a governmental, micromanagement tug-of-war occurring first:

• Congressman Pete Sessions (who also happens to be a former telecom executive) has introduced a bill, H.R. 2726 (PDF here), that would prevent cities from establishing their own Wi-Fi networks. The intent is to prohibit municipal governments from offering telecommunications, information, or cable services except to remedy market failures by private enterprise to provide such services.

• In opposition, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have  introduced legislation that specifically permits municipalities to offer low-cost broadband service and have made it a part of their previously announced Community Broadband Act of 2005. Their intent? To amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to preserve and protect the ability of local governments to provide broadband capability and services.

Still...being in a tug-of-war is precisely what they're there for and my respect and admiration for Senator McCain grows all the time. He "gets" that the job of government is to be a catalyst to incubate innovation vs. protecting special interests and tying up innovators with regulation.

Mac OS X + Intel = Tight Control?

Reading one of my favorite sites Slashdot this evening, a disturbing post that Apple's Mac OS X kernel uses DRM compelled me to go off and read more about so-called "Trusted Computing" and Apple's tie to Intel. I also thought about all the other ways we've got content producers, computing/software vendors and trade organizations colluding-to-control -- with government playing right along -- but this post will focus on Apple and Intel.

Trusted Computing is an alliance of Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD (there's a good objective article about trusted computing here and one from the Electronic Frontier Foundation here).

A couple of snippets from that first article:

Every major hardware and software company has embraced Trusted Computing (TC), a technology that involves placing special security hardware inside every PC. Opponents say it's designed to prevent competition, hinder interoperability, and perhaps give vendors permanent control over every PC they ship-even after it's been bought and paid for.

Vendors disagree, of course. According to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), the trade association that sets the specification for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), the most important component in TC, it will improve network security. The TPM ensures that the machines at each end of a link can be certain of each other's identity and configuration. TCG members say this will let enterprise networks detect and isolate client machines containing viruses and other malware, and warn computer owners if a machine has been tampered with.

It goes on (emphasis mine):

Despite its name, TC isn't really about trust. It's about verification to make trust unnecessary. This is achieved through digital signatures, which can be used both to authenticate a machine and to confirm its configuration. By signing measurements of a PC's hardware or software, or a user's biometrics and presence data, a TC device can vouch for a machine's state, not just its identity.