Connecting the Dots

Minnov8: Showcasing Minnesota Innovation in Internet & Web Technology

If you're out in the Bay area or on the other coast in New York or Boston, it's pretty easy to be smug about your culture of risk-taking, pool of top talent, and strings of successful, world-changing innovations. But as the world continues its acceleration to one that's increasingly connected and ways of collaborating make distance irrelevant, smart people will pop up everywhere and I'm convinced we'll see a flattening of the geographic advantages these pockets of innovation represent.

Six of us were bugged that there was so much going on in Internet and Web technology innovation right here in Minnesota, that when I suggested we start our own blog to showcase that innovation, there were nods of agreement and a willingness to dive in and make it real.

The biggest reason we were all interested in this blog is that these showcases and interviews are what we wanted to read and there wasn't anything like it out there.

The result is Minnov8: Minnesota Innovation in Internet & Web Technology. This past weekend was the biggest Barcamp yet, Minnebar, and over 400 people showed up to present, learn and participate. Rather than recreate everything on this blog, why not take a peek at Minnov8? This and this post are ones that will recap what took place.

Wherever you live and whatever space you care about (e.g., technology, education, greentech, etc.) and where there are a critical mass of people willing to leap in and work together as multiple authors, I'd encourage you to start one of these...it's pretty simple to do and fun to boot.

You're not naked...but what about your computer?

In January of 2005 I wrote Are You Naked? and again in July of 2007 Are you *still* naked in a coffee shop?. My objective was to try and elevate the discussion about the fact the overwhelming majority of us who use free wireless internet access in public hotspots are completely "naked" since it's trivial to capture your wireless packets as they fly through the air.

There are certain things I never do in a coffee shop: use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but instead the Secure FTP; never access my banking or stock sites; set my firewall and more (for best practices, see that second post on the subject here).

Managing eight email addresses through the Google Gmail interface, I've always made certain that I access Gmail through Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which is the encrypted security protocol used by banks, stock sites, ecommerce and any other transactional site with security (you know you're using SSL when you see the little padlock in your browser and an "s" after "http" in your browsers address bar). Felt pretty good about it too and I've trusted the big brains at Google to be 110% on top of security issues.

Now comes word that there is a security hole in Google's Gmail javascript (used in Gmail for the fancy-shmancy Ajax interface framework and elements):

When Robert Graham demonstrated how Web 2.0 wasn’t safe at last year’s Blackhat, it was thought that at least the SSL mode (HTTPS) of Google Gmail would be spared from sidejacking.  That presumption now appears to be false according to this updated blog posting from Graham.  Even with SSL enabled, Gmail sessions can still be hijacked by Graham’s Hamster and Ferret (or less easily with Wireshark and Mozilla’s cookie editor).

This is just great. If me, Mr. Security and Web Application Awareness, has an opening for his laptop and Gmail session to be compromised, what about everyone else?

My daughter logs on to any wifi hotspot with her iPhone or Macbook and sees zero harm -- though I'm trying to educate her on how to be safe (which feels to me like havng a safe sex discussion and we know how effective THAT has been globally...but I digress). This means, for example, a "packet thief" could sit in a coffee shop, log in to the free wifi and setup a rogue hotspot (it's simple to set up your own laptop to pretend it's a wifi access point and lure in the unsuspecting) and then fire up the tools on their laptop and capture my daughter's packets that come through the packet thief's own laptop. Voila! The packet thief now has her username, password -- or in the case of Gmail's cookie security hole -- the cookies with temporary credentials in them.

With a temporary cookie session initiated, the packet thief can now change her password and have complete control over her email (and, God forbid, her banking, stock trading, or any ecommerce transactions executed while accidentally logged on to a thief's laptop).

Fix this Google...now.

Sprout: A mashup & application tool for the masses

Our pals at Techcrunch just posted about a new company that debuted today at DEMO called Sprout and thought I'd attempt to get in on the private beta and lo-and-behold...I got in.

The 'sprout' (their term vs. 'widget') you see below is one I created in 15 minutes. It took me longer to open Photoshop, reduce the size of the Connecting the Dots header and to type in the pathnames to my podcasts (yes I know...they're OLD) then it did to create the sprout!

I just grinned and shook my head in disbelief as I used it since Sprout has delivered on my pent up desire to have just such a mashup and creation tool which begs the question: why the hell didn't Adobe do this with their rich internet application (i.e., RIA or Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)) strategy? To date mere mortals -- who are savvy enough to use InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and the like -- can't truly deliver on AIR, Microsoft Silverlight or even Webkit apps unless the propeller on their beanie is fairly large.

There are a few nits (the words "Click on any playlist..." were bolded and italicized which didn't publish) but they're so few compared to the power Sprout has unleashed they're easily overlooked. I also want to understand what they'll charge for the service -- or those I direct to Sprout to create -- before I get too fired up about recommending people leap on the tool and deliver mission-critical products.

I also noticed a slight latency as my 'sprout' loads which you might notice also. I've been a broken record on the topic of the "dirty little secret" -- that Internetwork latency is already affecting mashups, Web/Enterprise 2.0 applications, video delivery and essentially everything we do over the Internet -- but this latency won't likely slow down the creation and delivery of mashed up applications. I hope, really hope, that this latency doesn't crush the spirit of those of us truly wanting to create and deliver significantly higher value on the Web with tools like Sprout.

Using this tool for 30 minutes tonight has sparked about 25 ideas for how I'd use it. From completely self-contained multimedia slideshows to a different sort of ebook to a poor man's RIA, I suspect many others will have exactly the same reaction and start building these things like mad.

Reality of One Laptop Per Child?

So much has been written about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that I won't rehash it in this post, but will say that my position has always been that the primary value in the OLPC project is that the Internet is the biggest shift in human communications and knowledge storage ever, and ideas, innovations and human connection now move at the speed of electrons. Denying anyone, any kid, from being a part of that shift -- no matter how small and regardless of the technology used to participate in it -- is relegating them to a future of intellectual and knowledge poverty.

When I was invited to join the Institute of Distributed Creativity mailing list (comprised of many academics and thought leaders in education, learning, social media and more), I was part of a very spirited discussion about the OLPC with people's opinions being slanted toward it being "male created technology" or that we Americans (OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte in specific) were acting as "imperalists" or "capitalists" within the context of OLPC, pushing our way and consumerism on the third world.

After participating in this OLPC discussion, I then ranted on the list that I'd expected the list members would be comprised of deep thinkers and those who appreciate vision and are trying to move the world forward. People who push against the membrane of the future rather than pull back from it as critics (and I felt I was seeing more criticism than critical thinking). I've been accused of being a happy-assed optimist (my words) in the list with respect to technology and am guilty as charged, but at least Negronponte was doing something while the list members pontificated about their views of such a project and how it should be done or not done at all.

Then the thread went silent....until today when a man named Martin Lucas weighed in with such a well written counter-point to my optimism -- and the varying perspectives about OLPC -- that I asked him if I could publish it on my blog in total as it's too good to leave on a closed list.

Continue on to read Martin Lucas' "One Slate per Child" paper that gives a dose of reality -- from someone on the ground in the African state of Malawi -- about the reality of introducing the OLPC and obstacles faced in one country ostensibly a perfect target for OLPC...

Macworld 2008: Tablet? Mac Touch? Let's pay homage to the Apple Newton

Next week sees Steve Jobs on stage giving his Macworld 2008 keynote. Some things are obvious (new Mac Pro announcement this week shows machines starting at $2,798 so there's a huge gap to be filled below it, probably with a midlevel, headless machine) and rumor speculation is rampant with an ultraportable Mac near the top of the list.

I still have an Apple Newton with an Apple fixed asset tag on it (they didn't want it back when I left the company in 1999). While I didn't like it well enough to have paid money for it (even with my employee discount), the handwriting recognition in the 2.0 software was excellent and not rivaled for several years until Microsoft debuted the Tablet PC.

In the spirit of yesterday's post of how slooowly things move -- and that each of us should be grateful and amazed by how far we've come in such a short time -- let's pay a little homage to the Newton by viewing this getting started video for the device. Seeing how archaic it seems today will surely make you appreciate the ease-of-use of a touch-enabled iPhone or iPod Touch all the more and get you ready for whatever "one more thing" happens next Tuesday.

I bet it will be "touchy".

Getting Started with Apple Newton

CES: Hey Linksys...it's 2008!

In a day of accelerating Macintosh market share (Windows is still over 90% of the market...though declining) and where Internet-centric applications, communications and participatory social media make your device choice less relevant, I'm taken aback when a vendor the size of Linksys (owned by Cisco) announces a brand new, very affordable ($120 or $99 street price) stand-alone webcam that only supports Windows.

Linksys' User Guide says this in the FAQ, "The Camera is designed for computers running a Windows operating system and Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. You cannot view video on a Macintosh."

This lack of support is not what many people experience with, for example, their ISP (mine is Comcast) who often state, "Ahh...we don't support the Macintosh" but it turns out they don't because they don't have that machine sitting in front of them to troubleshoot nor has the ISP's customer service group created scripts for the clueless drones to read.

This is no exaggeration: Out of the 100 or so geeks and early adopters that I know, well over 90% of them use Macs. Most have RAM maxed out and are using Parallels to run Windows and Linux within a virtual container inside of Mac OS X (I do the same thing, though mostly for goofin' around vs. serious geek work). Every company chases influencers -- especially in a day where social media is exploding and people want guidance as complexity increases -- so it's really puzzling why Linksys would turn its back on influencers.

Is that an LED projector in your pocket?

Minnesota-based 3M announced today that they have released an earpiece-sized LED projector for mobile and handheld device projection.

3M is now providing consumer electronics manufacturers with a revolutionary advancement in the emerging field of miniature projection technology. 3M scientists developed a breakthrough ultra-compact, LED-illuminated projection engine designed for integration into virtually any personal electronic device. Roughly the size of a wireless earpiece and less than half an inch thick, the 3M mobile projection engine delivers brilliant VGA resolution images and is available today.

This company creates and develops alot of cool technology, but is primarily a supplier of infrastructure materials or building blocks that others turn into finished goods. They do say in the press release that they are "...partnering with leading consumer electronics companies that plan to launch products in early 2008."

Before I get too excited I'll have to see one in action. Though I love the several smaller-than-dime-sized-lens 7 megapixel Panasonic and Canon cameras we own, when I'm serious about a photograph I'll grab my Nikon digital SLR with its huge sensor and lens about the size of a small apple. The resulting image is low on noise and high on clarity.

Of course, cost and convenience are why we always buy the tiny, less qualitatively nice gear, heh? When I look at this tiny little projector component in the 3M picture, I can't help but remember wheeling  a huge Sony 3 gun projector (like this one) into a large group presentation and have been enjoying the continued reduction in size -- and increase in quality -- of the small projectors. At some point I'll buy one when I'm confident a small one will be decent.

Comcast: No iChat, No Choice

Since I rarely use Bittorrent and have experienced just a few issues with using Skype (and none with Vonage) services over my Comcast High Speed Internet connection, the confirmed accusations of Comcast's packet shaping have been troubling but haven't yet personally affected me and -- like most of us with so-called "broadband" (which others outside the US laugh at in terms of speed) -- we have no choice in high speed providers unless we want to go dog slow with some flavor of DSL or go back to using a modem.

In a bizarre twist, what has affected me is a quite useful product (iChat) and I'm growing madder by the day: Using Apple's iChatAV in a session with video or screen sharing starts off just fine but within minutes deteriorates and becomes unusable (pixelated video, audio dropouts, slow response with screensharing).

iChatAV is incredibly useful since my 81 year old Dad, my sister and other family members have it and I can easily perform remote management of their machines through simple chat. It's so laughingly easy that it has taken me minutes to teach someone how to use audio and video chat or to share my screen -- or ask to share theirs so I can troubleshoot some difficulty they're having -- and thus I can sprinkle my knowledge around as needed and help my loved ones out (without getting in the car and driving over or flying).

I'm not the only one that is having this issue as evidenced by this Macintouch thread here (look at October 2007 comments on) as well as this long one in the iChat AV forum at Apple's site. There are numerous fixes people have tried (throttling iChat's bandwidth; rebooting the modem; opening a window and shouting) which sometimes works and mostly doesn't.

After the jump, you'll see the note I just wrote to Rick Germano, the SVP of Comcast Customer Service and a link to a page you can use to also send Mr. Germano a nice note...although he and his executive cronies at Comcast probably sit around at cocktail parties guffawing over people having issues with their service, "Oh yeah....so what are they gonna do....switch!?!" (Insert a bunch of lit-up guys howling with laughter here).

NetRadio's 1995 debut in Minneapolis

If you weren't deeply immersed in the Internet's early days as I was, it's hard to remember the pain, the obstacles and the now almost quaint state-of-the-art in 1995.

It was that year in November that NetRadio made its debut here in Minneapolis and is an invention and milestone that needs to be lauded and remembered. Invented by Scott Bourne and Scot McCombs (more here), NetRadio used RealAudio's first player and server technology to run. A former Authorware (now part of Adobe) colleague of mine, Rob Griggs, was an early investor and co-founder and he invited me to the offices you'll see in the video below (via TWiT) to see their new radio offering streaming over the Internet.

At the time I was impressed and could easily visualize the possibilities, but also knew in every cell of my being how long it would take before this was anything more than cool and a novelty. In fact, my belief as to one, key cause of the dotcom crash was that there was a HUGE amount of Web content pouring into the top of the funnel (i.e., being served) and most of us were sipping through the tiny hole at the bottom of the funnel (i.e., with dial-up 56k modems) and there was no way rich media of any kind -- including low audio quality radio -- would yet flourish over copper wires for quite some time.

In 1995 there were, as the video points out, roughly "110,000 Web sites" and that NetRadio received "about 25,000 Web visitors in the first few days". Impressive at the time, but so was the Model T in 1908.

Biker identified with iPod: Adam Finley

Turns out that the 30 year old guy, Adam Finley, who was hit and killed on his bike near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis last Thursday -- and was identified only because the police worked with Apple Security First Tech Apple experts to identify him from the iPod he was carrying -- was a blogger and TV Squad is reprinting some of his articles in memoriam.

It also brought back bad memories since I was hit by a car jogging on that exact same intersection when I was 29 years old, carrying no identification and listening to a Sony FM Walkman at the time.

A drunk was making a left turn westbound Lake Street and fortunately was going very slowly. I turned and saw him at the last minute simply coming at me and it gave me time to leap up in the air, landing on the hood of his car. I slid off, he hit the brakes and the rear tire ended up six inches from my head.

Others snagged his keys and kept him there until police arrived, and I was just damn lucky I wasn't killed -- it just tore my jacket and gave me a few bumps and bruises. Adam's untimely death -- though I didn't know him or read his blog -- really has given me pause about how quickly things can go the other way, how lucky I was and how I've carried identification ever since when I'm out running or biking.

Take a moment and think about how interesting it is to live in a time when digital breadcrumb trails can be left by people like Adam in blogs, podcasts, MySpace pages...or by you...and how good it is to remember someone partially by the contributions they've made. I think often about preserving my blog and podcasts to be discovered by some interested descendant of mine who might wonder who I was and what was happening when I was alive. In a small way, I now have a glimpse into Adam Finley whose life stopped far too early.

Hacking the iPhone

For the last month I've been hacking my iPhone with iFuntastic. Adding ringtones, moving stuff around and so on is fun...but I want more. I want applications. Why? Because as much as I enjoy and truly love my iPhone, I'm bored. I'd love to be able to buy an application, for instance, that would allow me to have a To Do list that is useful (that little note pad is pretty worthless).

The problem is that the hacks don't work well and few developers are willing to invest in application development if the runtime is dependent upon a hack to make it work. For example, iFuntastic allows icons alone or icons with captions...but not all turn off. It's a little thing but it ruins the aesthetic of the iPhone when it's all kludgy looking. An Apple update for the iPhone often removes the hack and a restore is necessary...not something a developer would be to keen on.

This post on Lifehacker is one I'll try next.

Whether or not you have an iPhone or if you've hacked it or not, the energy around trying to arm-wrestle this device into submission is one in which I delight. There are people just like me -- bored but with the technical acumen to actually hack the device -- that are providing ways to customize it. The recent SIM card hack is one example of how people are figuring out how to make it more useful, including having it run in places Apple would prefer it doesn't at this time.

What is interesting about this phenomena is how companies try to position and control technology and its release...but people mold, bend and shape it to their own ends. With the instant access to news and information (and how-to's) flying around the internet at the speed of electrons, control is being lost and quickly.

Are you *still* naked in a coffee shop?

Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome email newsletter had a link to this article Travelers Who Use Laptop Computers: Beware and it made me realize that there are now even more people accessing Wifi hotspots than ever before and most of you are naked.

Back in January of 2005 I wrote "Are you naked?" as a post that had this paragraph in it: Security is an issue other than just at home...but it's an underreported problem in internet cafes or public places that leave their networks wide open so it's easy to get on them. Without a company Virtual Private Network (VPN) for your personal laptop, or some way to create a Secure Shell (SSH) to another computer for a secure tunnel, you're vulnerable to prying eyes (email passwords go in the clear, etc.).

The latest discussions about the iPhone "hack" (which I posted about a couple of days ago here) is bringing more attention to the inherent insecurity of Wifi hotspots. While I know exactly what to do to ensure I and my loved ones have secure access when in a public hotspot, literally everyone else I know is completely clueless.

Case in point: while at the Web 2.0 Summit last October, I mentioned to several conference organizers that there were a significant number of ad hoc wireless networks setup (where a person sets up their laptop to act like a wireless access point) with names like "Free Wifi" or "Summit Wireless Access" placing attendees in jeopardy of nakedly exposing their data.  One conference leader who shall remain unnamed said, "Steve, of any group of people this one especially shouldn't be stupid enough to connect to an ad hoc network." You know what? In my informal poll of 20 people while there, every one of them had attempted to connect to one of these ad hoc networks since the main conference access point was either slow or they couldn't get connected to it.

The good news? There are specific things you can do to make certain you're secure when accessing a public hotspot.

Questionable iPhone 'hack'...unless you're a bonehead

NEWS FLASH: If someone steals your iPhone, they can see all your contacts and make calls and send SMS messages on your account.

Apparently there is a new iPhone hack that allows hackers to take control of an iPhone and send off personal data residing in the iPhone memory -- but it's about as big a threat as having your iPhone stolen and I assume you keep control of your $500-$600 device. Upon seeing a link to this New York Times article, I was initially and instantly concerned and thought "Oh, that's just great....the first security problem with the iPhone." until I read it thoroughly.

Upon reading the site Exploiting the iPhone, I thought "What's the fuss all about?"  The exploit is delivered via the Safari browser on the iPhone but the risks seem quite low. Read these three points very, very carefully before you get too excited or concerned about this so-called exploit:

1) An attacker controlled wireless access point: Because the iPhone learns access points by name (SSID), if a user ever gets near an attacker-controlled access point with the same name (and encryption type) as an access point previously trusted by the user, the iPhone will automatically use the malicious access point. This allows the attacker to add the exploit to any web page browsed by the user by replacing the requested page with a page containing the exploit.

2) A misconfigured forum website: If a web forum's software is not configured to prevent users from including potentially dangerous data in their posts, an attacker could cause the exploit to run in any iPhone browser that viewed the thread. (This would require some slight changes in our proof of concept exploit, however.)

3) A link delivered via e-mail or SMS: If an attacker can trick a user into opening a website that the attacker controls, the attacker can easily embed the exploit into the main page of the website.

Are these real possibilities? Yes, but remote unless an iPhone user is a complete bonehead. Most forums disallow HTML in forum posts because of malicious stuff being put in and links in emails from those you don't know should NOT be clicked on (and if you DO click on them, DON'T ANYMORE). Spurious links in SMS are rare, and who is getting spam SMS messages anyway?

Of course, I suppose most people are so naive and inexperienced that perhaps they don't think critically about security online and I guess those of us more savvy have to protect them against themselves. I just don't see the threat being all that big a deal unless you're with that group of security researchers at Independent Security Evaluators who uncovered the 'exploit' and are certain to have done it to gain attention (which they got....thank you New York Times).

Will you take your iPhone or laptop?

With my Dad in the hospital after surgery for the next 6-8 days, I've been spending a lot of time there. Thankfully they have free Wifi and I've taken my laptop along so I can get stuff done during down times or when he's sleeping.

Yesterday I took only my iPhone. Getting it connected to the hospital Wifi was incredibly easy and when I came back later in the day I took only it and not my laptop. This got me to thinking about how many times I'd hoped for a smartphone (like my Treo 700p) which could've functioned as a laptop replacement for those trips or outings where I would've preferred to not take my briefcase with a 6 pound computer in it.

I'm not suggesting that I can be anywhere near as productive with a smartphone as I can with a laptop...especially one where I can also boot up Windows (in Parallels) and use that OS too. I use Photoshop, InDesign, Powerpoint and Keynote, Word, Excel and many other applications where screen real estate is key. But as more of my life migrates to the Web -- as I'm certain yours is too -- having such an easy to use device as the iPhone is critical.

I expect a triangulation to occur soon that will make the iPhone even more productive. There will be a middle man between the iPhone, the desktop and the cloud (i.e., the Internet) called an actually and finally useful .Mac service. Since it's been laughingly simplistic for only the most newbie Mac user or family, having Steve Jobs publically say that Apple will "make up for lost time" with a new .Mac service, I expect a lot will happen. Perhaps I'll be able to access my files and folders, use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in some sort of unified fashion, sync the iPhone with my digital life and feed the dog.

Long Now Foundation membership...

Since I first heard about the Long Now Foundation and its mission I've been delightfully intrigued by it. It's mission: "The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

* The Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years."

Yesterday's mail brought my charter membership card for the Long Now Foundation. It's made out of metal (hmmm....guess it will last awhile) and I haven't been paying attention as they began taking memberships and, as it turns out, there were 995 people already as members! I quickly signed up (I'm number 996) and they're at 1,084 members as of 5pm CDT (GMT -6) on July 4th.

One reason I'm intrigued is how they'll make a clock that will last 10,000 years and be positioned in a geologically constant place that will potentially be unaltered for that length of time. I like thinking we may be around that long and not be forced to flee the planet as we use it up, pave it over or excrete enough carbon so that all the world is like Phoenix in the summer.

Besides being challenged to look forward for 10,000 years, I can't imagine 10,000 years back when humans were hunter/gatherers and civilizations like Egypt were thousands of years in to the future. The difference now, of course, is that humans could lay waste to this entire planet in the blink of an eye and destroy ourselves and everything upon it. We also might breed ourselves into destruction (the world population is expected to hit over 9 billion by 2050!). It's imperative that we all think about how we're all connected, how what we do impacts our own lives and those of our childrens -- and instead focus on the next several hundred or thousand generations. To net-it-out, that's the goal of creating a foundation with projects like this one...get people to think really long-term.

This is a very serious project and the minds, money and effort going into its creation and deployment is impressive. Poke around the site awhile and consider becoming a member.

iPhone: Perhaps a unique perspective...but maybe not

Picked up two iPhones over the lunch hour today: one for my daughter and one for me (I'm guessing we'll convert my bride too). There has been so much written about this device, I won't go on and on about it but instead, perhaps I'll bring forth a new perspective worth a few more bits of text into the Internets.

Anyone lobbing anything negative at Apple right now is nuts. This device is such a huge leap forward in usability and packed with so much technology that just shutting up and marveling at it for awhile is what's warranted.

OK...enough marveling.

Instead of talking about the iPhone's shortcomings, however, I'm going to point out what might come to fruition and pretty quickly.

I think we'll see tighter integration between Google web services and Apple (both computer and iPhone based). New form factors (tablets?) that use this new user interface paradigm. The use of iWeb to create iPhone-centric apps (similar to what Rapidweaver has done here).

Though this device absolutely needs third party application development and delivery, you can see how it's already positioned to be a user generated content machine that's with people at all times.

It's been a long time since I've been as blown away with a product as I am with this one. I see so much and get early peeks, I'm usually jaded...but not this time. This is -- as Dave Winer said -- "Basically I like all Apple products. To me, it's a way to buy a BMW every month, without having to pay $60,000." There are certain products that you get into and say "Whoa!" and then "Ahhhh" as you get into the experience. It's that way with the iPhone after you get over the initial shock that it costs $600 for the 8GB model!

---

UPDATE on July 4th: After setting up the iPhone at Noon, it took until 10:30am this morning -- 22.5 hours later -- for incoming calls to be routed to and accepted by the new iPhone. Until this morning, I was carrying around two phones.

But here's the kicker: several people I talked to today were surprised and stunned when I told them we were talking on my new iPhone. Comments like this one from my sister, "Oh my gosh...I thought you were on a landline" were common. Besides all the aspects of the iPhone that everyone is writing about, this is simply a great phone.

Get Smart about Helping Others Understand Technology

Was poking around Brightcove's site this morning and found a Time/Life channel with the clip below. I remember this show, Get Smart, and its bumbling spy Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams). It was campy as hell but was fun to watch nevertheless.

This clip -- complete with a pinkish red wrapper and an ad for the series on DVD (Note: for some reason I noticed today, July 12th, that it had been taken down so I put up a new version) -- was still one I wanted to include in this post today. Why? Because the way Maxwell is using all his phone gadgets is how I sometimes think people see me when I'm goofin' with all my gadgets and technology. This might be an enjoyable clip that may also make you stop and think about what those of us deeply embedded in Web 2.0, the Internet, software and gadgets present with our use of technology. Let's help the rest of 'em catch up, heh?

Skype at WAL*MART

Was surprised to not see a lot of buzz on Techmeme this morning about the press release regarding Wal-Mart to display Skype phone gear.

This is huge for Skype and really puts them front-n-center in VoIP. The plan is to rollout accessories and calling cards for Skype to ~1,800 of their 3,300 US stores.

I've talked to a few people this morning about this after reading a small article in The Wall Street Journal. Reactions ranged from an elitist "harumph...who shops for technology at Walmart?" to "This really puts Skype telephony on the map."

I agree with the latter statement. I've evangelized Skype to numerous groups and individuals with great success and it has materially changed their ability to easily and affordably talk with people (and loved ones as I've helped some seniors get started with Skype so they could see their grandchildren growing up in other countries for example).

My hope is that this also shifts the mindset of telephony products vendors who've pretty much abdicated the delivery of Skype phones to either Asian or geeky product providers. Simplicity is what will continue to accelerate VoIP and it's still a little too "bit-twiddling" for Joe SixPack.

EFF Pioneer Awards

Last night I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards. Just simply being at this event and absorbing the vibe was meaningful for me and I'll bring forth a perspective that may be atypical and worth putting into the conversation about EFF.

Nearly four years ago was the first time that I donated to EFF and began my support of this organization. Though I look like "a suit", a Republican and a mainstream sort of guy, I'm an independent, a closet liberal, enjoy some Libertarian leanings and am quite open to growing in my perspective as I learn -- especially legally and politically -- as we all push against the membrane of the future.

Five or so years ago I became more enlightened. I was stunned by the multiple, parallel, onrush of efforts by copyright holders, Congress, world intellectual capital bodies, governments globally as well as intelligence communities, to command, control and infiltrate all aspects of the Internet.  As I started to try getting my head wrapped around even a few of the issues, I realized that there was NO way that I could be competently informed about even ONE of these issues shaping our future....let alone dozens of them at a time!

Enter the EFF. I learned that here was an organization whose mission was to be that competent, informed entity who'd act to intervene, stop or shape the debate about the most important issues facing us in our digital future. With more and more of our relationships, commerce, free speech, entertainment -- you name it -- being created or delivered digitally, I (and you) could either pull the covers over our collective heads or get involved...and support those who've rolled up their sleeves, dug their hands in the muck and are in the fray.

So that's what I did.  Last night was great for a lot of reasons and validated (in spades) the vital importance of this organization and the people who've dedicated money, support and all or part of their lives to the mission.

Connecting dots at Etech

Am absolutely delighted to be heading out today to San Diego for O'Reilly's Emerging Technologies conference and expect the usual great human connections to be made, conversations held and dots connected.

It's taken me a lot of years (look closely and you'll see gray hair in my photo), a "bet on myself" leap of faith as an Internet-as-a-platform/Web 2.0 management consultant, two strong executive-level guides (Entrevis) and a smart and supportive circle of family and friends to bring me to this place where I'm completely clear on my skills, strengths and what puts a spring-in-my-step.

One of the many things that I've come to be enlightened about on my journey is the sheer delight and highly effective ideation and brainstorming that occurs when I get together with people who already get it (most...if not all...of the people at this conference). There is an energy, an excitement and a shorthand that happens. A leaping forward in thought exploration that occurs when I'm surrounded by people more knowledgeable than I am or are in-the-game building stuff, creating standards or trying to persuade others to move in some direction...and we don't have to start off talking about the basics!

I used to be hard on myself that I'd be at these conferences absorbing, connecting with others, thinking exploratory thoughts and not be heads-down typing away blogging about a session or some technology I just saw. No more.

My experiences over the last few years -- as I've been essentially journaling about all the "dots" I see while swimming in a river of information and change -- has taught me one thing: the only way to connect the dots is to take it all in and then gain perspective. The only way to gain perspective is to let it sink in, think about it, wonder, take my mind off of it, do something completely different, and connections I least expect sometimes get made without my conscious interference. Sometimes I have to work at it pretty hard though.

Blogging may-or-may-not be light this week. Hopefully my posts will be all about perspective and not just some cool happenin' that occurs.

Mobile Global Grid: When the World is At Your Fingertips

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.

Why TV Will Never Be The Same!

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.

Gorillapod: A useful tool for you content creators

Over my lunch hour I stopped at Best Buy and picked up a Gorillapod for $20. I normally don't play fanboy and gush about products on this blog, but this little product instantly met a need: steady low light photography with my new Lumix as well as being able to place the camera in places to snag video...and I've fallen for it.

The Joby Gorillapod firmly secures your camera to just about anything- anywhere and everywhere! Unlike traditional tripods, the gorillapod doesn't require an elevated surface for you to take the perfect shot.

On the way back to my office from Best Buy, I attached my camera and wrapped the Gorillapod around my rear view mirror and grabbed some video. It was shaking a bit and there was some rattle being picked up (I hadn't secured it very well) but I shot 10 minutes of video of me talking in the car. While not useful for anything but ridicule (which is why I'm *not* posting it), it did allow me to test a quick proof of concept and it worked!

It's so laughingly lightweight that it'll fit in my briefcase alongside the tiny Lumix camera and I'll be able to capture steady video and low light snapshots easily. They also have beefier models for prosumer and heavier SLR cameras if you need that capability. 

Video from digital cameras...

My new toy is the Panasonic DMC-FX50. Though I love my Nikon D70 digital SLR for 'serious' photography, this slim, small camera has allowed me to have it with me all the time. I toss it in my briefcase or in my pocket...no muss, no fuss.

Where I've developed a shine for this little wonder, however, is with its high quality, 30fps video capture. I bought a 4GB SDHD card for it and can snag about 44 minutes of 640x480 video and store it. As a Mac user, I appreciate the Quicktime formatted output as it helps streamline my personal workflow.

I've been in three situations where someone has demonstrated a technology, process or service and I *knew* that I needed to grab the demo in order to show it later to a client. Asking the person if snagging some video would be OK, I'd proceed to take out the camera and shoot. A little technique and a steady hand helps, but a moving picture is worth 100,000 words in many instances. As more and more of us collaborate on the Web and participate with our own generated content thus communicating in a richer and deeper way, the ability to quickly grab good quality videos is only going to increase in value.

My first night with the camera I grabbed the following in the car as I went to pick up my son at a local coffee shop where he was doing homework with others. The quality -- transcoded here to Flash and delivered via my Brightcove channel -- is pretty good but the original in Quicktime is, in fact, qualitatively better and Flash means virtually everyone can view it. The video this camera takes is certainly not high definition nor even digital video dimensions, but for most presentations or Web communications I do, it's absolutely perfect.

NOTE: for some reason in this video, there is a slight warping of my head making it look a bit convex. While my head probably is warped and that explains why my kids say "You don't get it Dad" fairly often, it's the fact that the camera is in my slightly outstretched left hand two feet from my head as I'm driving (and yes, I'm demonstrating a couple of the techniques taught at the "Steve Borsch School of Dangerous and Aggressive Driving" in this video).

Just one word....mobile

In the movie The Graduate starring Dustin Hoffman, Mr. McGuire (a family friend) is giving career advice to Hoffman's character Benjamin, "I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening?" Benjamin says, "Yes, I am." McGuire then leans in and says, in a low voice, "Plastics."

If that scene was repeated today, that one word spoken in a knowing, low voice would be "Mobile."

No less than three venture capitalists I'm connected with (all of whom have made major bets on mobile offerings), a friend that runs public sector and education for a major mobile smartphone company, and several friends that own their own companies concur...the world is accelerating toward mobile.

Apple's iPhone got a lot of attention and rightfully so. This article in eWeek, however, spells out what's happening globally that's significantly more important than what is happening in the US...namely that mobile devices dwarf all other connection types:

Global sales of mobile phones totaled a record 1.02 billion units in 2006, an increase of 25 percent over 2005, and 299.6 million units in the fourth quarter, a survey found on Thursday.

Right now, my Treo 700p lets me connect to: Google search; Google Maps; Yahoo News; to my IM via an application called Toccer; a Flight Status app; my RSS reader, Newsgator;  and essentially anything on the Web. Though not as easy to use as I like, I still have access to the world's information in my hand wherever I happen to be at the moment. How huge is that...and we have only just begun connecting humans to the internet with a variety of device types and applications!

My excitement over the coming acceleration in rich, internet applications in 2007 is palpable but, at the same time, my concern is growing. Anything my clients deploy or use on the Web -- especially if repurposed as RIA's -- needs to be accessible with mobile devices. There is still a tremendous amount of work necessary (e.g., the W3C Mobile Initiative) but a big chunk of the future is summed up in that one word....mobile.

iPhone: *Any* Publicity is Good Publicity?

Apple has hit a nerve with the iPhone. Not only several billion dollars in additional market cap happened within hours of the announcement as the stock leapt in value, but the meme trackers (Techmeme, Megite, Tailrank) exploded with blog conversations about this device as did the mainstream press. I haven't seen this level of conversation on these trackers ever before which is both interesting and potentially troubling to Apple...but maybe worth the publicity?

The conversation has shifted....dramatically....and the device has only been in the hands of laughingly few people! The concern is over the closed nature of the device itself (only Apple will approve which apps are loaded on the iPhone), the demands to take down a faux iPhone user interface skin for Windows Mobile and Palm, the iPhone trademark issue (Cisco allegedly has one) and whether it's actually worth $500.

All of this just makes me chuckle. Even if Apple used all of its cash on hand (more than $9B as of 9/30/06) they couldn't buy this kind of publicity! Long masters of event marketing, Steve Jobs has often been held up as a model for how to launch products (BusinessWeek, April 2006).

In my view, ONE sentence in that BusinessWeek article above is what EVERYONE is missing: "Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience." THAT is the whole point to everything discussed above: the closed nature to the iPhone; the demands to take down the interface; the trademark issue. It's all about the experience.

iPhone: Changing the paradigm of connection

There are dozens of thoughts swirling through my head after Jobs' keynote at Macworld, but there is one that is uppermost in my mind and, perhaps, is a slightly different perspective than others about the amazing package Apple has delivered with the iPhone.

The accelerating human-to-human connection that a global internet and mobile telephony provides is astounding. But when you think about the implications of the world's knowledge AT YOUR FINGERTIPS with extremely powerful handheld devices it gets even more interesting, lifechanging, and truly an enormous catalyst to drive interactions online.

Not that smartphones haven't existed before...it's that they've been "just OK" since they're replete with compromises. I love my Treo 700p and think it's cool...but the operating system and applications on it (I use the PalmOS version) feels like the old, shaky, MacOS 9 instead of the robust, unix-based Mac OS X operating system (which the iPhone is based upon). The Windows Mobile version of the Treo is worse since Windows Mobile feels like Window98 stuffed into a phone and has a PC-centric user interface.

The iPhone is a reinvention of the concept of a portable, rich, elegant, comprehensive communications device for your hip or purse and if the keynote or Apple web site animations are any indicator, this is going to be one phenomenal device. Are there tradeoffs and compromises? Probably...but sitting on my desk right now is the first generation iPod which looks laughingly clunky right now even though it was launched in October of 2001. My...how things have changed with the iPod devices in that short time. We can expect the same with this class of device from Apple and others.

Now think about the trends in social software; in Web applications; in video, audio and animations; in education. How cool is it that you could easily and seamlessly interact with them all from wherever you happen to be at the moment?

I can only imagine the possibilities of searching Google and having location-based advertising show up. Or being able to grab a picture and moblog on the spot. Or working on some machine and quickly looking up the manual online (I do so now but go to my computer, find the PDF, print the page and take it with me). Learning (education and training) is the category that promises to be changed the most since why bother to memorize tons of information and data when you can just look it up? Having the world's information at your fingertips will have profound implications and I'm already experiencing many of them today via my Treo and the fast Verizon EV-DO network.

I have one year left on my Verizon contract with my Treo 700p but will undoubtedly buy one of these anyway and sign up for Cingular. Wow.

Mind Control of Video Games

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.

Your Business Model is in my Cross Hairs

Inefficiency is being eliminated because of the Web and since we're all increasingly connected by the internet. As the Web accelerates in capability and with new applications, more intermediaries seem to be popping up to make life easier for all of us and, at the same time, is adjusting or killing many current business models.

Nobody can offer everything to everybody and *especially* since we're seeing the whole Web 2.0 application direction offer up narrowly focused, thin slices of application functionality that meet needs in new ways. As a consequence, mashups of these applications are proliferating and sites that see ways to expose and slice-n-dice data in new ways are growing.

What I think is most intriguing, however, is the onrush of disintermediation sites that are simply looking at problems and needs from fresh perspectives and delivering useful Web applications. Here are three examples:

• Flyspy: Written up in today's Minneapolis Startribune (on the front page, no less) is this alpha-stage company that is swinging some of the algorithmic power -- currently held by the airlines and used for "yield management" -- and placing it in the hands of consumers.

• GetHuman: A database of ways to get right past the always frustrating voicemail hell and cut-to-the-chase and get to the department or area you need now. Many companies manage costs by routing calls to where you're either performing your own self-service or talk to a call screener; defray costs by upselling/crosselling you while on the phone (some even sell advertising while you're on hold)

• Bugmenot: A fun site of "generic" usernames and passwords to get, for example, past the walled gardens of major newspapers and other places where free registration is required.

I could go on and on...but you get the idea. In the examples above these are good things for consumers. In the example of, for instance, Wikipedia as a disintermediator and disruptor of the encyclopedia space, this is a very bad thing for Encyclopedia Brittanica and others. Edmunds.com put power into the hands of consumers by delivering high quality, accurate information on rebates, financing and more so buyers would be empowered before facing auto sellers.

It's inevitable that inefficiencies will continue to be made efficient as the Web and applications accelerate. All of the apps mentioned in this post are either disrupting, destroying or dramatically modifying current business models. What are you seeing that is not obvious to most of us?

Energy

Been thinking about energy today and I'm curious if you think about energy in the same contexts as I do. There are so many aspects to that word it requires a bit of explanation to the flood of thoughts that came into my brain on this Monday.

It was 102 degrees today in the Twin Cities. I sat with a woman from New York earlier today who complained bitterly about "the heat wave" there. A buddy of mine from California and I talked earlier about the crisis of possible blackout conditions due to the heat there. All the discussions and awareness about global warming of late made today's heat a constant reminder of my personal energy consumption and the carbon I'm spewing into the atmosphere.

But my personal energy consumption and outlay goes beyond carbon-based and other generated fuels.

• I'm spread fairly thin in my work life and someone close to me is ill. I'm only able to invest my personal energy in so many places simultaneously which has made me consider all of my personal energy investments and where I want to place them going forward. My choice has been to eschew new commitments and I'm struggling to take care of existing ones...but have put everything on hold to attend to someone for the next few days.

• My podcast has waned. I enjoy the hell out of podcasting but have been experiencing a challenge of motivation to continue it due to all the other pressing commitments I've made. I used to be obsessive about blogging every single day no matter what but find I'm prioritizing all the time and sometimes this blog suffers.

• My news aggregator has exploded with articles. Just a few months ago it was 500-600 articles a day and is now up to nearly 1,000 per day. I've only added a few blogs and news publications to the mix, so people have become more prolific in their writings and the energy being invested in blogs is amazing...but now I'm questioning the payoff from my energy used to consume all these writings.

• My iTunes podcast subscription list has grown and the podcasts have also grown...longer. No longer enjoying (did I say "enjoying"?) a 30 minute commute twice a day, I find less time to listen.

• I've always had several books at various stages of being read, but for some reason that list has accelerated to seven! Plus, for the first time in my life I walk into Barnes & Noble or go on Amazon and lament the fact that I'll never have time to read everything I want to in my life.

• Then there are meatspace friends and my imperative in life, my family, as well as social sites and virtual friendships (specifically people I've connected with via my blog and podcast) that I'd like to nurture and grow.

I look at all of this and don't feel anxious, sad or depressed. Instead I look at all of this abundance with a bit of wonder and amazement and am now trying to figure out which to choose and where to invest my energy. It's all about choice so here is the question for you if you also have so much choice: How do you prioritize your energy investment? Alot of geeks seem to be embracing David Allen's Getting Things Done, Merlin Mann at 43 Folders is a huge fan and there are a ton of tools available, but is this a trick or an authentic method for superior levels of choosing, prioritizing and then executing? I've not invested enough energy in it yet to determine it's efficacy and would be curious what you think.