... my name is John Patrick and Attitude LLC is the name of 
my company. My activities include writing, speaking, and board service. I am fortunate to have quite a few affiliations and I get to work with people from whom I am constantly learning. Prior to "e-tirement", I was vice president of Internet Technology at IBM Corporation. Nearly everything I have ever said or written is here at patrickWeb or in my book, Net Attitude.
As of today, the patrickWeb blog contains 877 postings. I hope you enjoy reading them -- and listening to some musical selections!
Geocaches found: 90. Benchmarks found: 90. Trike miles: 10,717
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Friday, September 5, 2008 |
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IBM Happenings: August 2008
The LitSite Alaska interactive Web site has a wealth of information, insights and stories about the history, diversity, culture and traditions of Alaskans and the IBM speech technology is bringing the stories life. A visitor could just read the stories but Alaskans believe that the ancient tradition of oral storytelling is more effective and it helps preserve native Alaskan language and culture. The oral tradition, an integral part of the lives of Alaska Natives, is in fact essential to learning and to passing on cultural knowledge and life skills. More than 1,000 pages of text have been enhanced with audio files using the IBM WebSphere Voice Server text-to-speech software. The audio files even include uncommon pronunciations of Alaskan native names and words such as KwaashKiKwaan, Tlingit, and Inupiaq. These words remind me of things I heard in Greenland.
IBM , Internet Technology , Travels September 5, 2008 10:54 AM |
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Sunday, August 31, 2008 |
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Greenland 2008
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Saturday, August 30, 2008 |
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Greenland - Part 3 (The conference)
Brian Pedersen kicked off the conference by describing how the Tele-Post vision of a "Global Greenland" continues but the mission is changing from “communication without borders” to "a global Greenland - in the middle of the world". He said the submarine cable would put Greenland on the net in a way that creates Safarissoq -- the name for the part of a stream where the speed accelerates. The result he said will be to strengthen the economy of the country and create new jobs. Flemming Jensen then took the stage in his tuxedo and began an eloquent speech. It was in Danish and I did not understand a word of it but people began to laugh. At first I thought he was just a good speaker with some added humor but by the time the audience was nearly rolling on the floor in laughter I realized he was something much more. I later found out he is an actor, director, and comedian from Copenhagen. His multiple appearances on stage added a great deal to the conference. Jesper Refiner had the toughest job at the conference. He was responsible for the overall program including the roles, rules, logistics, flow, support and administration. He did not a marvelous job of coordination and only one person let him down. A translator had been hired to enable non-Danish speaking attendees (like me) to listen through headsets. The headsets were available but due to ideal hunting conditions in the North and labor rules to the left, the translator called in "sick". I believe my wife and I were the only ones of 250 attendees that only understand one language, so although we enjoyed meeting many new friends and speaking with them in English, the conference was 99% in Danish. Preben Mejer, a founder and distinguished technologist of innovationlab, set the technical stage with a broad view of consumers on the net to 3D printing to intelligent band aids. After lunch, yours truly gave a talk (unfortunately I could not do it in Danish) about "The Future of the Internet". I won't repeat my key messages which can be found throughout this blog. In a short TV interview afterward a reporter asked what impact the emergence of broadband in Greenland would have on the "remote" areas of the country. As she asked the question it came to me that the impact will be that there will be no such thing as "remote". A great idea from any part of Greenland will be shared with the rest of the world and vice versa. Tom Friedman had it right -- the world is flat. Speaking of broadband, Lars Tofft -- president of Ericsson Denmark -- drilled down on what broadband is all about. He painted a vision of mobile broadband being much faster in the not too distant future than wired broadband is today. This will open up the possibilities that Preben and I had outlined earlier. Like the other presenters, I could not understand the words they said but I could tell from the slides that all the speakers were all on the same page. Day 2 focused on applications: e-Home, e-Health, e-Ducation, e-Citizen, and e-Trade. The speakers were all superb and then there were buses to take people to local venus such as the hospital to see the applications in action. Søren Duus Østergaard from IBM Denmark did an excellent job of summarizing the day in his blog. Throughout the conference there were demonstrations in the lobby of the Katuaq cultural center and the public was invited to visit. There were crowds throughout both days right up to the end. There were many school children who visited and they loved seeing and holding the Pleo baby dinosaur. One of the other big draws was 3D printing. It was amazing to see a nice vase "printed" each few hours. The most impressive demo to me was the haptic feedback device. It is a bit hard to describe -- one of those tings you need to "feel" to believe. You move the hand-held cursor over a "rough" object and you can "feel" it in the device you are holding on to. A lady described how she was planning to sell seal skin purses on the web by allowing people to be able to "feel" the texture of the skin on-line. The potential for engineering collaboration is quite evident. The flight from Nuuk to Keflavik on the way home was uneventful and followed by a 45 minute ride to downtown Reykjavik. Unfortunately it was cold and raining but it was still a nice walk around the harbor and the city. Dinner at Laekjarkrekka was outstanding. I added it as a five-star in the favorites. The flight back to JFK was followed by a short flight to Mt. Pocono and then a half-hour drive back to the lake. It was nice to get back but we have fond memories of new friends and a place we had never before visited.
Favorites , Internet Technology , Mobile , Travels August 30, 2008 04:28 PM |
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Thursday, August 28, 2008 |
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Greenland - Part 2 (A unique place)
Vikings reached the island in the 10th century from Iceland and Danish colonization began in the 18th century. Greenland was made an integral part of Denmark in 1953 and joined the EU in 1973, but withdrew in 1985 in a dispute over fishing quotas. Greenland was granted self-government in 1979 although Denmark continues to exercise control of Greenland's foreign affairs in consultation with Greenland's Home Rule Government. A vote by the people is coming up shortly to determine if Greenland should become a fully independent country. It would be presumptuous of me to say I know the Greenlandic people, but I can say from what I saw on the flight from Iceland and around the area of downtown Nuuk, that the Inuit people are attractive, hopeful, and very self-sufficient. Like all counties there are those that are dependent on the government but in Greenland it seems most people can live happily from the bounty of the land. Greenland is slightly more than three times the size of Texas and is very rich in natural resources including coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, molybdenum, diamonds, gold, platinum, niobium, tantalite, uranium and, of course, fish, seals, and whales. Hydropower is also natural and there is the possibility of oil and gas. A priority is the protection of the arctic environment and the Inuit traditional way of life, including whaling and seal hunting. Internet connectivity in Greenland is via satellite. It works but is not very fast and not always reliable. The new submarine cable, currently being laid at the bottom of the ocean, will include four strands of glass, well protected in a multi-layer set of metal and petrol based materials to allow it to buried three feet below the bottom of the ocean -- in some areas as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface. The four glass fibers will have a capacity of 2 terabits per second. Compared to what the country of Greenland has today this will be a nearly infinite jump. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the potential that the increased bandwidth will offer. More on that to come. There are some pictures in the photo gallery. As usual, I have to confess that I am not a very good photographer. The iPhone takes pretty good pictures in good sunlight but unfortunately we did not have any of that during the trip. Greenland is a beautiful place and hopefully some of the pictures will at least give a clue.
Internet Technology , Travels , iPhone August 28, 2008 10:23 AM |
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Wednesday, August 20, 2008 |
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Greenland - Part 1 (Getting there)
Other than normal late departure from JFK, Icelandair's Boeing 757 made the flight to Reykjavik, Iceland in just six hours. After a three hour layover we boarded the 38 passenger Dash 8 twin-engine turboprop for a three and a half flight to Nuuk, Greenland. The flight was uneventful for the first three hours when the pilot then announced that the Nuuk Airport was closed due to high winds and heavy rain and that we would be diverting to Kangerlussuaq (also known as Sondre Stromfjord and one of four airports in Greenland) for a refueling to enable us to make a second attempt for an approach to Nuuk. The Kangerlussuaq airport was interesting in that there did not appear to be any roads in the vicinity. One of the Greenlandic passengers told me that the main purpose of the airport was to accommodate flights that are unable to land at Nuuk. There were eight planes there waiting to head for Nuuk. (I later learned that there are not many roads in all of Greenland). We were the first flight to finish refueling and depart for Nuuk. After an hour of flight we entered a holding pattern and the pilot told us he was hoping to get an opening in the clouds and more importantly a break in the winds so that he could attempt a landing. Being a pilot myself I have experienced landing in high winds and even extreme cross-winds but never before have I experienced winds like those at Nuuk. The pilot told me the winds had been 68 knots but they had subsided to 48 knots when he decided to make the landing. The buffeting was tremendous and once the Dash 8 was on the ground and had reached a full stop it felt as though the plane was still flying. People in Nuuk say that Greenlandic pilots are the best in the world because they constantly experience adverse conditions and are always on their toes. I was quite impressed with their skills and calm. We were met at the airport by Anders Læsøe who is VP of Business Development at Tele Greenland. Tele was the host for the Sarfarissoq -- En Rejsei Fremtiden, a conference about the future of technology. More to say about that in the next posting. Nuuk (known as Godthåb in Danish) is the capital and largest city of Greenland. It is located at the mouth of a very large fjord called Nuup Kangerlua on the west coast of Greenland, about 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle (and 2,300 miles from home). The population of Nuuk is roughly 15,000 or 40% of the entire country. Approximately 80% of the population were born in Greenland. There were some exciting things at the conference that I will describe shortly -- I learned a lot and met many new friends. There is a very big and special thing happening for the people of Greenland. You can get a preview in the following video.
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Saturday, August 16, 2008 |
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Supernova 2008 - Part 6 (final)
This will be my final comments about things I learned at Supernova 2008 in June. The prior comments are all in the conference section of patrickWeb. A "People" panel was moderated by BJ Fogg, whom I first met when he presented YackPack at Demo a few years ago. The research shows that people are endlessly creative, that the majority of most people's time is spent offline, and that there are very large differences between the skills people have in using the Internet. There is a correlation between skill level and willingness to share -- the more people know about the Internet the more likely they are to share what they know. Some argued that the skill level is a function of priority given. I am certain of that point. I know many people who could be web savvy if they wanted to be but they would rather play golf or work in the garden. Nothing wrong with that. There is a social technographics ladder that includes people who are inactive, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators. Some postulated that user background is related to digital media savvy but that it is not an age thing. Another study however showed a very strong correlation between age and these various categories. The study would suggest that at my age I should be technologically inactive! I guess I just don't fit the mold. Social information discovery is a relatively new term but the phenomenon has been around from the beginnings of the Internet -- you can ask a question and get a lot of people to answer. Sharing today is still done mostly in email which puts high social activation energy on the sender but social networks are changing this. We will share a lot more in the future. Social sites are causing an evolution to the entire web becoming social. User generated content used to be something you go to a site to do like epinions.com or or ticketmaster to find out what people are saying. The problem is that you don't know the people who are making the comments. In the emerging social web you can see what your friends and colleagues think or what they are doing or what the friends of your friends think about restaurant, book, or movie. It is much more relevant. There are a number of inhibitors to social networks reaching their potential. Our identity is too fragmented -- logins and passwords galore. We have profiles here, there, and everywhere. Applications are incompatible among the various social networks. I am optimistic that this will all come together in a way that meets our security and privacy expectations. The short answer to these concerns is the evolution of standards. OpenID is trying to create a single identification that you can use at any web site. Oauth is an emerging approach for authentication so that you can allow access for a web site to get information about you from another web site but only certain information you have authorized, not all the information. OpenSocial is developing an approach to allow a Facebook application to work at MySpace or any other social network. Google Friend Connect is attempting to bring all three of these together into a social web. Although I remain optimistic about the concerns, a panel on "Privacy and Security in the Network Age" with Moderator Andrea Matwyshyn (Wharton), Bruce Schneier (BT Counterpane), Fran Maier (TrustE), Gerard Lewis (Comcast), and Lauren Gelman (Stanford CIS) dug into some of the stark realities. They attempted to answer the question of whether we are entering an era where individuals gain new control over their public personas, and powerful means to leverage reputations or will we be forced to abandon any hope of protecting our privacy and trusting what we encounter online? Although he claimed to be optimistic, Bruce Schneier, a world renowned expert on privacy, was actually quite gloomy. Everything we do creates a transaction record and the resulting data records have value to others. Storage costs online are now so cheap, nothing gets thrown away. Google, your wireless provider, your healthcare insurance company, etc. all save every piece of data about you and what you do or look for. The trend will accelerate. There are many invasive technologies out there -- surveillance video cameras will be so small in the future that we won't know they are there. Our every movement will be captured. Soon we will be living in a world where no conversation will be private. While some frame the debate as security vs privacy, Bruce framed it as liberty versus control and said that "data is the pollution of the information age". In spite of these pronouncements, the experts are short term pessimistic but long term optimistic. Me too. The government may be watching us but we can watch them too. The final session I attended was about Broadband Policy. The United States now ranks 15th in the world in terms of availability of broadband to consumers. We had a discussion about what we would do about it if we became policy advisor to the new president. We came up with the following. A lot of us suggested getting rid of the FCC. It's an ineffective political entity. Other suggestions were to map the gaps where infrastructure and users are and are not, take spectrum policy and flush it, take on universal service and revamp it to focus on broadband instead of pay phones, Un-ban municipal wireless broadband, and benchmark the US against other countries. There are some good things happening such as Verizon's deployment of optical fiber but overall there is not enough competition and there are too many lobbyists seeking protection for large telecommunications companies. When I spoke at the World Wide Web conference in Paris in 1994 the U.S. was the Internet leader. France was skeptical to be kind. Today France is enabling WiFi throughout the country and partnering with utility companies to offer broadband at 100 times the speed of what the U.S. telcos define as broadband. I would like to be more optimistic on this front but I do not know of another industry (telecommunications providers) that have so many lobbyists urging protection and so many customers who are locked into services that they don't like. Conferences , Internet Technology , People , Public Policy , WiFi August 16, 2008 11:15 AM |
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Sunday, August 10, 2008 |
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IBM Happenings: July 2008
Cloud computing will become more and more pervasive in the news over the next few years. So far it has been mostly consumer facing activity such as what Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, and others are doing, but behind the scenes IBM is investing heavily. The clouds that IBM operates are more enterprise, education, and research oriented. The company is
spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create two ultra-sophisticated data
centers that will power the cloud computing model that in turn will enable large institutions to offer their clouds to their customers. Another way to say it is that IBM is creating a cloud of clouds.
IBM is also providing advanced new server hardware to enable others to build clouds. Microsoft is among the first to implement IBM's iDataPlex system, a new category of server that brings supercomputing power to cloud environments. IBM is also going green -- the latest Supercomputing Green 500 List shows that 39 of the top 40 systems ranked on supercomputing energy efficiency
are IBM-based. The company is designing technologies to cut energy use in half by 2010, while increasing computing capacity by a factor of 10. On the people front, IBM's new Corporate Service Corps program is getting some well deserved headlines. A software-development manager from IBM's Raleigh, North Caroline office spent July in Timisoara, Romania, where he helped a furniture manufacturer become more efficient and more computer-savvy -- offering his expertise for free. With Mr. Chakra in Timisoara were eight IBM colleagues from five countries. Each was assigned to help a different company or non-profit organization, sharing their experience and cultural backgrounds with the local staffs and one another. It is analogous to the Peace Corps. In the short term there is a lot of skills transfer but in the long term IBM gains a foothold in emerging markets and the assignees gain a tremendous breadth of experience which prepares them for key roles as the company continues to grow as a global leader. |
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Thursday, July 31, 2008 |
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iPhone - Update No. 14 (Geocaching)
The reason I was sitting in the parking lot was to look for a nearby geocache. Geopher Lite is a GPS based iPhone application which allows you to find geocaches "quickly and easily" on the go. It actually wasn't that quick and easy but when I got back to the lake a few hours later I checked for iPhone updates. Sure enough there was an update for Geopher Lite which incorporated some of the obvious deficiencies. This is the great thing -- apps are always brought up to date with a touch of the phonetop and developers are constantly going to be making improvements. I can see that tight integration with geocaching.com is just a, probably short, matter of time. If I was in the handheld GPS business I would be concerned. The iPhone is going to disintermediate a lot of businesses. Epilogue: Speaking of gouaches, I found a very interesting one yesterday titled "William Howard Taft's Forefathers and Family". Finding it was not much of a challenge but seeing the small cemetery across the road from the Lake Wallenpaupack Observation Dike was quite a surprise. I have driven by it hundreds of times and did not even know it was there. The cemetery was built by the Taft family more than 150 years ago and holds the remains of the great, great, great, great grandfather of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, along with about ten other family members.
Geocaching , Hiking , Mobile , People , iPhone July 31, 2008 05:50 PM |
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008 |
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iPhone - Update No. 13
Some are saying that since the new iPhone 2.0 software is available for the original iPhone that there is no need to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. It is true that there is no need to but there are a number of good reasons to. The new iPhone uses the new "new AT&T" 3G network which is claimed to be twice as fast -- as something. Speed claims are rarely delivered upon but no doubt that the 3G network is faster. The receiver in the iphone is also better even when communicating with an AT&T non-3G tower. I have noticed at least one bar improvement here at the lake where there is no 3G tower. The WiFi implementation is better too. Not sure if it is the hardware or software that is improved but it is much more reliable and doesn't get confused about whether to use the cellular signal or the WiFi signal. I am getting ahead of myself but one of the neatest new applications is TruPhone. TruPhone allows you to make a phone call from your iPhone via WiFi even if there is *no* tower of any kind. This happens. I was visiting friends in New Hampshire last weekend and we had brunch at a nice place in a remote area. There was no AT&T or roaming partner signal. None. No service. The restaurant, however, had a very nice free WiFi signal. With TruPhone you can make calls to anywhere in the world at a very low price -- pennies per minute. If you are calling another TruPhone user, it is free. I made some calls with it today and the quality was quite good. There are other reasons to get the new iPhone. It is a bit thinner and more rounded and feels really nice to hold. It is a joy to use. The 3G has a real GPS receiver so when you use maps it is not an estimate of where you are based on cell phone tower triangulations -- it is using satellites to pinpoint exactly where you are. This opens up a slew of "location based" applications -- where is the nearest pizza place? What are the nearest geocaches? How do I get from where I am to wherever? The battery life is claimed to be better but I am not so sure of that. The iPhone has so much more to offer that I think the usage will be higher and maybe effective battery life will actually be less -- that is the case for me so far. Good idea to have a car charger on hand. One of the irritating things about the original iPhone is that you can't plug your favorite headset into it without a special adapter. The new iPhone accepts any headset and does so without any adapter. Bottom line, it is a really great device. There are many iPhone killers out there and more coming but I don't think they will match the overall experience of the Apple iPhone. The network is another story and I have written about it in not so glowing terms in each iPhone update. I do think they are getting better. As I have always said, it depends on where you live. In the Northeast, Verizon has better coverage but AT&T is putting up new towers -- one just came online two miles from where I live in Connecticut. Naturally, major cities are covered. I also detect that AT&T customer service is really trying hard to satisfy their customers. The overall model of the industry is bad -- limited choice, get locked into two year contracts, and penalties if you want to move to something better. iTunes continues to dominate online digital music sales but is facing more and more competition. I have been buying my music from Amazon. They have a nice downloader that puts the mp3 music directly into iTunes and there are no digital rights management restrictions. I like this because I can put purchased music on the iTrike. One of the other great applications on the iPhone is Pandora. This has become my music of choice and I play it through the Squeezebox. The Music Genome Project is awesome. If you love music, I highly recommend it. iTunes is is integrated tightly (as all things Apple are) with the App Store. Both present easy ways to spend your money from your iPhone. I see this as a huge emerging trend. Call it m-Commerce (mobile commerce) if you want. While sitting in the dentist office awaiting your turn you can buy music and applications from your iPhone. An eBay application let's you spend your money -- or monitor your auctions-- there too. On launch day earlier this month there 500+ applications available for the iPhone. There will be many thousands of applications. So far, about 25% of them are free and supported by various flavors of advertising. You click to find the nearest pizza place and Apple gets a slice of the pie. Some are expensive but add huge value. I bought an aviation application for $69.99 that does everything a pilot can imagine. You can file flight plans with the FAA, check weather radar, airport runway lengths, pilot advisories, and much more. I am not a gamer but millions of people are and the iPhone accelerometer allows you to shake or wave the iPhone as inputs to the game. I have to admit that the Phone Saber is fun, albeit a bit geeky -- lets you take on Darth Vader. The impressive part to me is that the applications are stored in the iPhone but also in iTunes. When you sync you are syncing calendar, email, contacts, and the applications. When you click the App Store icon on the phone it tells you if any of your apps have an update available. When you do a search at the iTunes Store, the search results are organized by artists, albums, movies, etc. and applications. On the flip side, organization is an issue. So far I have 55 applications. I expect to get many more. The human mind is amazing in terms of icon recognition. You just know that the Phone Saber is at the upper left of the fourth page of applications. But at some point it is overwhelming. I expect Apple or perhaps a third party developer will soon introduce an "app launcher" that allows you to tag an application as news, weather, financial, aviation, game, etc. and let you drill down to what you want. Last, and I hope not least is MobileMe. Apple says it is the "Simple way to keep everything in sync". The vision is great -- your photos, contacts, email, and calendar are all pushed to your iPhone from the "Cloud". You can make a change on the iPhone and it shows up in Outlook or you can make a change in Outlook and it shows up in your iPhone. Those that work for companies that have Microsoft Exchange or IBM's Lotus Notes already have this kind of capability but there are millions of us who are "independent" and have our own mail server or use gmail, or Yahoo! or any of numerous other services. With MobileMe we can be like the "corporate" world but we can set our own policies and practices. We can have Exchange or Notes without Exchange or Notes. The cloud approach is clearly the next big thing (see prior stories on this and also by Irving), but Apple has stubbed their toe big time on this. There are numerous analysts, bloggers, and experts who have ripped them apart about the failings. As previously reported, I struggled with MobileMe the first few days but then it began to work properly for a few days albeit with some hiccups. Beginning this week it is not working properly. Calendar entries get duplicated, synchronization is sluggish or doesn't work at all at times. It is not like Apple to fail big time like this and I am sure they are scrambling to straighten things out. I got an email from MobileMe@InsideApple.Apple.com the other day asking if I would be interested in a trial of MobileMe! Seems they didn't check their subscriber list first. The MobileMe web site says that "1% of MobileMe members have limited access to MobileMe Mail. Full service will be restored to these accounts on a rolling basis over the next few days". 99% and in a few days were good in the old days but not these days. I decided to try the online chat support to see if they could help resolve my problems. After sending my initial "instant message" I got a reply saying "A MobileMe Support Representative will be with you in approximately 26 minutes. We look forward to answering your questions". I got a reply while I had stepped out of the room for a minute and then had to start over and wait another 26 minutes. After 3 hours and 14 minutes the support rep said he had to escalate the problem to a specialist who would contact me by email. More than two days have gone by and I have had no email from Apple. This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". It was "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. IBM doesn't always call it cloud computing, but they have built the largest clouds on Earth -- in the clouds. Apple has a lot to learn. I am confident they will. Their brand loyalty depends on it.
IBM , Internet Technology , Mobile , Personal Computing , iPhone July 30, 2008 08:53 PM |
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Monday, July 28, 2008 |
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IBM Happenings: June 2008
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Sunday, July 27, 2008 |
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Book Update: July 2008
I found the the last handful of books quite extraordinary. Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University who inspired countless students in the classroom and others worldwide with his work in virtual reality and entertainment systems died on Friday of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. I had first heard about Randy in a Wall Street Journal review of his book, The Last Lecture. It was his way of leaving a legacy for his young children so they would know who their father was and what he was about. The lessons of the book hold a lot of value for all of us. I highly recommend this touching book. The Last Patriot by Brad Thor is quite a thriller. If you like terrorist plots linked with history -- Thomas Jefferson and Islam in this case -- you will love this one. It is hardly a light book. In fact the gripping intrigue won't let you put it down until you finish it. On the business front,
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky gives many insights about social networking. I had heard Clay speak at Supernova in San Francisco last month. We have been kindred spirits over the past fifteen years. A Prisoner of Birth by Jefferey Archer is an imaginative Archer classic. I have enjoyed all of his books but found this probably the best ever. A young man at a bar with his girlfriend and her brother is framed for murdering the brother and goes to prison. The life he lives there and the people he becomes close to are a great story on their own but nothing compared to what happens when he escapes in an identity swap. The new life he then lives focuses on revenge at a very creative level. Great book. The summer is still young another novel underway -- The Shack by William P. Young. Comments to follow in the next book update. |
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008 |
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Supernova 2008 - Part 5
A social network is a structure consisting of nodes (people or organizations) that have a common interest or increasingly a dependency. The tie that binds us can be one or more of many things: values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, food likes or dislikes, buy or sell trading, links to each other's blogs, epidemiology, or airline routes. The resulting ontologies are very complex. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families to countries. The use of the networks is beginning to be a key tool in collaboration to solve problems, how people achieve their goals and even how organizations are run. In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all the relevant ties between the nodes (people). One of the first social networks was Linkedin and I have been a member of it from nearly the beginning. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get several invitations to become a "friend" or "colleague" with another Linkedin member (or Plaxo Pulse or Facebook). To gain the real "network effect" I recommend being selective in dealing with these invitations. Otherwise you end up connected to everybody which is as valuable as being connected to nobody. There are many people who are looking for people to send press releases to or to throw you into a recruitment pool or just be able to say they "know" someone or is their "friend" because they saw your name in the paper or saw you at a conference. The real power is not in the numbers per se but to really know someone who knows someone who knows someone and to have the credibility with the person you know such that they are willing to help you to connect to someone else. I have 178 trusted friends and colleagues in my Linkedin network. Two degrees away -- friends of friends; each connected to one of my connections -- there are more than 60,000 people. Three degrees away -- members who can be reached through a friend and one of their friends -- is 3,200,000 people. If you are discerning about it you can develop considerable social capital. There are many issues in the social networking space. One of them is that there are so many networks. If you take a look at the end of this story you will see -- and if you like the story and click on the green icon, a dialogue box offers you three functions. You can send an email link to the story to friends. A second choice is that you can post the story to your own blog. Perhaps most important is the third choice which is to post the story at one or more of your favorite social networks. The dialogue box displays icons for the various social networks -- Facebook and thirty-nine other of the top forty networks! A few mouse clicks and you have the ultimate chain letter. I think ShareThis has great potential. How many social networks should you belong to? Certainly not forty. I belong to Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, and MySpace. Four is enough for me. But is it? There are many niche networks -- such as A Small World -- that will be of interest to m any. But do you want to create a profile of your personal information at each of the networks you choose? And keep them up to date? And tell your connected friends what you are doing and exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) and what music you like or even what song you are listening to at the moment? To me the glass is half full. I am hopeful that protocols will emerge such as OAuth, OpenID, and OpenSocial that will level the playing field. We will be able to use one single "sign-on" for all our web sites and create *one* profile and have control over which networks and which parts of the profile it appear in. For example, it would be nice to create a comprehensive profile that is encrypted and totally under the user's control. You may choose to have your favorite songs be accessible through Facebook but not your medical records from Google Health and your Google Health electronic medical record to be accessible to your primary care physician and your hospital but nobody else. The application you create for your consulting business or a new game you created could be available through *all* the social networks. Social networking is the next turn of the crank of the Internet. By combining networks, such as a mobile phone networks, mobile payment systems, the Internet and a network of people all sharing a common cause, a viral effect can take place resulting in a lot of money or assistance flowing to the need -- political, emergency response or (hopefully) humanitarian. Security and privacy issues with social networking? Another story to come soon.
Blogging , Conferences , Internet Technology , Public Policy July 23, 2008 09:35 PM |
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Sunday, July 13, 2008 |
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iPhone - Update No. 12
The activation and iTunes problems are well documented in the media but I am surprised that there is not more coverage of the MobileMe issues. MobileMe is a key part of Apple's strategy. It is basically a "cloud computing" offering that enables you to put all your email, contacts, calendar items, and data files at me.com which is Apple's name for their cloud. Once in the cloud, you can then synchronize everything with Outlook. If you make a change in Outlook it goes to the cloud and then down to your iPhone. If you make a change on your iPhone it goes up to the cloud and down to Outlook. If you go to a kiosk at the airport or use a computer at a friend's house and make a change, both your iPhone and Outlook are updated automatically. I took the bait -- hook, line, and sinker. After installing the MobileMe software on both my iPhone and PC, I synchronized with iTunes. This resulted in all my contacts and calendar items being removed from the iPhone -- they would now be replaced by an update from the cloud. One big assumption -- the cloud (Apple servers) has to be working -- and it wasn't. This is the problem I anticipated in the last post. Apple does not have their act together in maintaining their cloud. I called support today and they said "MobileMe is not working -- all the servers are down". Not good. The great thing about clouds is that you do not have to worry about Windows, your varivous PC issues, etc., but the bad news is that you become totally dependent on the cloud provider -- in this case, Apple -- and they are not a proven player. At this point, all my data is in the cloud and none of it is on my iPhone. This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". Dave Grossman, of our team, called it "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. Apple has a lot to learn.
IBM , Internet Technology , Mobile , iPhone July 13, 2008 10:58 PM |
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Saturday, July 12, 2008 |
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How To Remove AOL Advertising - Part 2
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Friday, July 11, 2008 |
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iPhone - Update No. 11
The store opened at 8am and people were let in by security five at a time. The manager of the store went down the line outside and asked each person what they wanted, explained their various rules on eligibility, etc. They treat it as quite an honor to be able to get an iPhone -- and they charge accordingly. The manager said it would take 15 minutes per batch of five people. The first person came out at around 9:30! The manager explained that they were having systems problems. That is an understatement. I would not want to be the CIO at Apple or AT&T today. A half-hour later the manager reported that the problem causing the delays was iTunes at Apple. "Everyone is trying to activate phones at the same time". What did they expect? At 10:30 it was my turn. I asked for the 16GB Black iPhone 3G, the sales associate picked up the phone to ask for it, and seconds later someone put it on the counter. It turned out to be the last one. Lucky me. I handed over my AMEX card and driver license. Then the AT&T system crashed. A half-hour later, after I had signed an agreement and charge, the sales guy said that they had discovered a shortcut that would speed things up -- he could do a partial activation and then I could just sync up with iTunes to complete it. I got to the lake and discovered that the new iPhone did not yet work and the old iPhone did not either. The AT&T store had partly activated the new phone and in the process deactivated the old one. No problem. All I had to do was download the new version of iTunes and connect the new iPhone to the ThinkPad and activate with iTunes. For the next couple of hours I tried repeatedly but iTunes was not responding. The Apple servers were swamped. Bottom line after eight hours I had two iPhones that did not work. The "upgrade" cost $18 plus a new two-year commitment plus an upgrade to the monthly data plan of $15 -- a 75% increase. The data plan upcharge is justified because the 3G network is so much faster than the "Edge" network that has been criticized here many times. The only thing is that the new 3G network is not available in many places. At the nine-hour mark I was able to connect to the iTunes server, activate the phone, and synchronize all my contacts, calendar, and email. This is Apple's strength -- making things easy by tightly integrating all the pieces. The downside is that you have to get locked into the "new" AT&T. I do think AT&T is improving and putting a lot of emphasis on customer service. The service question at this stage is with Apple. They have proved they are not flawless when it comes to systems management. Seamless integration of devices and software is one thing -- seamless integration of millions of users all trying to connect at the same time and making unpredictable demands of the "cloud" is something much more challenging. They are not off to a good start with iPhone 2.0 after all the hype. In spite of the challenges, the iPhone 3G gives a great initial impression. There are a number of nice new features and, as predicted, a flood of new applications in the "app store" which is tightly integrated in iTunes. I am quite impressed with the first dozen or so that I have acquired. Some of them are expensive but many are actually free. I expect to see many thousands of highly useful applications that will drive millions of people to get iPhones. |
© Copyright 2007 John R Patrick.
This was my first trip to Greenland and Iceland. I have been fortunate to visit many countries around the world but have never been to these two unique places. Thanks to 
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Thoughts about the conference to follow shortly, but since 
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I am sticking to my story -- the 
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A number of readers have sent me feedback about the AOL advertising trailer in their email. One person was extremely happy and had been trying to get rid of the ads for a very long time. His response to the blog post was "Bless you!". Not sure if deserves a blessing but a number of people are really thankful to get rid of the obnoxious ads from the email they send. Two people told me that the link to remove the trailer did not work. I can't explain why it works for some and not for others. The only suggestion I can make is that if you are now aware of what is going on and want to stop it then try 