Western Geocaching

There wasn't time during the two and a half hour drive from Denver to Laramie, Wyoming to look for some of the many geocaches and benchmarks, but we did take an hour to find two interesting geocaches in Laramie. The first cache is associated with "Welcome to Laramie" and is located at 41.3 degrees north and 105.54 degrees west. Exactly due east from home but 32 degrees further west and more than a mile higher in elevation.

The second cache -- StarBrand's Rhyme Time #2 -- was different than any I have seen so far. It was hidden in a tupperware container under a log out in a field. On a sheet of paper were listed 100 words. In order to count the cache as a "find" you have to pick a word and write a four line poem with at least two rhymes with the word you selected. Since we were there for one of our son's graduations from Wyotech, the poem was easy to compose....

We came for our son's graduation
Mom and Dad are filled with elation
The ceremony was quite a creation
The students received an ovation
We had a fear this day would not be near
Now we're here shedding a tear

From Wyoming, it was back to Denver for a flight to Las Vegas to participate in the Stratus Technologies Conference. Staying at the Venetian was tough duty but somebody had to do it. Not being good gamblers, we found three very interesting virtual caches. A virtual cache is one where you go to a specified latitude and longitude and observe something and then send an email to the cache owner or post a picture to validate that you had actually found the cache. In some cases you have to report certain information that you would only know if you had actually been there. The first one was a commemorative plaque that had to be reported. At the second one a pose by a statue was required. The third one was most difficult to find and there were three questions that had to be answered and reported to the cache owner. Aside from the educational aspect of this cache, the surrounding scenery and wildlife made the walk worthwhile.

On Monday morning I gave a speech at the conference for 500 people and talked about the key trends I see with the future of the Internet. In the afternoon I participated in an executive roundtable to drill a bit deeper into the issues. My theme is still that we are only 5% of the way into what the Internet has in store for our business and personal lives. As for geocaches and benchmarks, the 84 I have found so far are less than one one-hundredth of a percent of those that are out there.

Conferences , Internet Technology , Travels March 28, 2006 10:08 PM

Wired

Wired Magazine has been a pleasure to read for more than ten years (published in San Francisco, California since March 1993). Each issue that arrives becomes part of the "read" file for the next airplane ride. I find the magazine provocative and insightful. Increasingly over recent years it has become movie and game oriented and although I am not a gamer or video fan, it is good to stay on top of where things are going with the younger generation. (Note: I am told the average gamer is now more than 30 years old).

The current issue of Wired includes an interview (sponsored by Lexus) by Charlie Rose with Eric Schmidt (CEO at Google), Ivan Seidenberg (CEO at Verizon), Michael Eisner (CEO at Disney), and film director George Clooney. The piece was obviously an advertorial and contained a lot of self-serving comments, but nevertheless, I found it very interesting and prescient.

It was surprising that Clooney, Eisner, and Seidenberg mentioned the Internet more than Eric Schmidt did. It was not that long ago that Hollywood and Telco were in denial about the Net. Eisner talked about billions of people downloading movies in minutes and said that the industry would see a lot of "bubbles breaking" but that in 5-10 years the music, movie, and television industry would be "unbelievably strong". Clooney said he thinks people will still go to theatres because they are an "event" but the content will be 100% digital with movies instantly downloaded into 300 theaters across the country.

Eric Schmidt was very consistent with the Google vision to organize the world's information. He said that all their best ideas come from the "spend 20% of your time to work on whatever you want to" employment policy. He also said that only 1-2% of the U.S. half-trillion dollar advertising spending was on the Internet -- obviously leaving a lot of upside for Google. Seidenberg wants to wire the country with fiber optic cable to every home and offer tens of megabits for multiple HDTV's, telephony, and Internet service.

The good news for the rest of us, as long as the lobbyists don't get in the way, is that there is going to be a lot of competition in every aspect of what the interviewees discussed. The result should be faster speeds and lower prices. The bad news is that we may have to put up with old-fashioned shotgun style advertising for a while and meanwhile there are a lot of startup companies investing heavily in new advertising techniques to identify us, target us, and blast advertising to every form of communication that we engage. Fortunately, there are also companies working on methods to preserve our privacy and protect us from being harassed.

Internet Technology , Media March 25, 2006 12:47 AM

Travels

I have been very fortunate to be able to travel around the country and the world, especially during the last fifteen years while sharing and learning a lot about the future of the Internet. One of my hobbies for many years has been experimenting with the Global Positioning System. When traveling by car or motorcycle I always have a GPS receiver of some kind with me. For quite a few years I would capture a latitude and longitude wherever I went and put them on a "GPS Log" page and then send emails to friends and family that said "click here to see where I am". I have not updated this for a number of years (I keep it for historical purposes). Perhaps I am a bit more security conscious than I used to be -- I do share through the blog where I have been, but I do not share where I am.

Making maps is one of oldest skills on Earth. We can all identify with maps -- they help us get to where we are going. Many of us use handheld or dashboard mounted GPS devices as a way to display maps, although paper and plastic coated maps are still nice to spread out on the kitchen table to plan a trip. The Census Bureau has been operating the Tiger Map Service for more than a decade which I used to link latitude and longitude to online maps but now there are various commercial services to choose from. I like the Google Map service (Google is doing a good job with maps -- both for Earth and for Mars) because it is easy to integrate Google maps directly into web pages. For example, here is a map of where the March 2006 PC Forum was held. II will be sharing more maps over time.

Travels March 20, 2006 03:01 PM

RHIO's Are Coming

One of the focus areas of PC Forum was healthcare. Scott Cook, Co-founder of Intuit, which makes Quicken, talked about the importance of quality control in hospitals in order to reduce medical errors which lead to unnecessary deaths. He also talked about Intuit's hope for Quicken Medical Expense Manager, a new tool to allow individuals to track and manage their healthcare expenses. J.D. Kleinke, Vice Chairman at HealthGrades talked about they are shifting emphasis to consumers and providing them with comparative information about doctors and hospitals. You can visit Healthgrades and see how your local hospital stacks up. J.D. is also Executive Director of Omnimedix Institute where they are hoping to create a non-profit organization where you can get your healthcare data. The concept is that laboratories, pharmacies and healthcare providers would upload (with your permission) all the data relevant to you. You and other healthcare providers (with your permission) would have access to the information. This is a really good idea but there are many obstacles to making it happen. Ironically, even though the benefits to consumers would be huge, there is little apparent demand.

A woman in the audience made an emotional plea to one of the panels to make software available to consumers that want to track their healthcare issues. There are actually are a number of such programs already available. I use Healthfile and I think of it as "Quicken for my body". It allows you to enter doctor visits, medications, tests, vaccinations and much more. Healthfile can run on your PC but also on a Palm or Pocket PC. This makes it easy to enter information while you are in a waiting room and then synchronize it with your desktop when you get home. Even better will be the day when you don't have to enter any data other than how you feel today. The rest will be tied together through Omnimedix or your local RHIO. There are already one hundred Regional Health Information Organizations in operation. Soon they will be exchanging data within and between other RHIOs so that when someone moves or has a medical emergency, providers will have access to data that can save their life. Much more to come on this subject.

Other patrickWeb healthcare related stories

Healthcare March 18, 2006 06:06 PM

PC Forum 2006

PC Forum has normally been held in Phoenix but this year (15th for me) moved to Carlsbad, California (near San Diego). The travel to conferences is not always a joy but they do tend to be in nice places -- too bad I am not a golfer. PC Forum is always interesting because it focuses mostly on the big picture. It is also interesting because after all these years one gets to know a lot of attendees and catch up with them at breaks and meals and it is also rewarding to meet new people each year.

Esther Dyson opened the conference and set the stage for the theme which was "Erosion of Power: Users in Charge". The concept of "power to the people" is not a new one -- I wrote quite a bit about the idea in "Net Attitude" -- but PC Forum drilled down deeply on the subject and brought a lot of experts from all walks of life into the dialogue. The first speaker was Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Swarthmore College. He talked about his book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less". It was a topic everyone could identify with -- going to the store and finding 285 salad dressings, 35 toothpastes, and endless other choices. coffees, and getting a cell-phone model choice that includes an mp3 player, nose hair trimmer, and mini blow-torch. People already are beginning to ask, "Do you have a phone that doesn't do too much?". Even in healthcare, you are given choices. The Dr. won't tell you what to do but will give you choices with pros and cons. The bottom line is that people are overwhelmed with choice and instead of the choices liberating them, they are being paralyzed by them. "People may do better with more choices but not feel as good about it".

The end of the first day of PC Forum was an interview with Pierre Omidyar. The young billionaire is down to earth and has committed large amounts of money to the greater good through the Omidyar Network. Pierre personifies "giving back" and is setting a great example for others. Many of the remaining speakers were inspiring. More to come.

P.S. I did find one geocache at the end of the last day of the conference. It was more of a hike than I expected but rewarding to add it to the "found" list

Conferences March 16, 2006 10:14 PM

FeedBlitz

I greatly appreciate the readership and feedback from those who visit patrickWeb. Readers "visit" in one of three ways. Most use one of the many blog readers that are available. The Opera browser is a good choice -- it has a very nice built-in RSS (blog) reading feature. When you click on the orange XML icon on a web page, Opera will ask you want to subscribe. It keeps all your blogs up to date under an RSS tab in the browser. I can also recommend BlogBridge, especially if you like to keep track of a large number of blogs. See "blogspace" for a list of additional popular blog readers. Some patrickWeb visitors just go to the patrickweb.com homepage when they feel like taking a look for new stories.

There is a large group of readers who prefer to receive an email version of new patrickWeb stories. The advantage of the email approach is that the new stories become part of the inbox and many people "live in their inbox." FeedBlitz automatically sends an e-mail to all subscribers whenever I write a new story. If you are currently a Bloglet subscriber, no action is necessary -- I have added all existing Bloglet subscribers to the new FeedBlitz model. Feedback on the transition is welcomed.

Subscribing To patrickWeb

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Blogging March 11, 2006 09:50 PM

"That's not going to change"

While driving to Reading, Pennsylvania, earlier this week to visit Maestro Sidney Rothstein for a conducting lesson (more on Beethoven's Prometheus Overture later), I tuned in to Bloomberg radio. The reporter was interviewing John Thain, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (NYX), which had just started its first day as a public company. The interviewer asked about the possibility of the Exchange becoming "all electronic" to which Mr. Thain responded that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that people are required to balance the many buy and sell orders received and that the human element is essential and "that's not going to change".

Mr. Thain's words immediately rang a bell with me. It sounded like ten years ago when the CEO's of banks and brokerage firms (and Microsoft) were saying that the Internet was interesting but that it would never be used for banking or securities trades. Over the ensuing years financial services companies ran print advertising campaigns saying how important brokers were and how they provide advice from people you can trust. After the denial phase was over the firms couldn't get into online trading fast enough and now Barron's does in depth analysis of which securities firms have the best web-based trading and investment advice capabilities.

Computing power and networking speeds are accelerating rapidly beyond the already amazing capabilities of today. Computational biology has made it possible to decode the human genome years ahead of the projected time. Human proteins are being designed that may provide cures for cancer. A supercomputer defeated the world's greatest chess player. Two robots are driving around the surface of Mars under computer control from Earth. But buy and sell orders for securities can not be modeled, optimized, and matched by computers? Is it possible that the financial services leaders are once again benighted about what is in front of them? Could it be that the jeopardy of profit margins and bonuses could blind them from seeing what is ahead?

Go Figure March 9, 2006 07:24 PM

Doral Happenings

What brought me to the Doral Golf Resort in Miami is a conference where I will be discussing my thoughts about the future of the Internet with management and clients of CSG Systems, Inc. CSG is a leading provider of outsourced billing, customer care and print and mail solutions for the cable, broadband, and satellite companies. If you get a bill every month from your cable company, for example, chances are that it was printed and mailed by CSG.

The Doral is always busy but yesterday when I arrived there were 37,000 people here to watch the Ford Golf Championship. I am not a golfer and know very little about the sport but I certainly respect the professionals who were here. Tiger Woods and the others perform way beyond what most people would consider perfect.

Conferences March 6, 2006 06:59 PM

Rooftop WiFi

The doubters about WiFi's ultimate potential often talk about the lack of ubiquitous WAPs (wireless access points) to justify their skepticism. One of the reasons for my optimism to the contrary is "mesh" networking technology. The idea is that people or organizations put WAPs on their roofs. At least one of the WAPs has a high speed Internet connection and the rest of them share the bandwidth.

A group of researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is actually doing this -- the experiment is called Roofnet. The concept of WiFi mesh networking has been around for years but the project in Cambridge, Massachusetts may be the most sophisticated implementation to date. The MIT Lab is giving away Netgear routers that are loaded with special software that allows wireless signals to be propagated from WAP to WAP. More importantly, the Lab is making the software available free of charge to anyone who wants it. The result may be more and more municipalities and emerging countries being able to offer access to their citizens. In particular, the One Laptop Per Child program could get a boost from the Roofnet approach. Many of us complain about slow network speed but if you are in a country that has no bandwidth for the majority of the people, being able to share a small amount of bandwidth from a nearby roof-top (or tree) could be a fantastic development.


Other patrickWeb WiFi stories

WiFi March 4, 2006 03:58 PM

Open and Closed

The central theme at the IBM Open Source IT Analyst Conference in Stamford, Connecticut this week revolved around the word "open". The term is used with "open source" and also with "open standards" and there is often confusion about the meaning of the two terms. A standard is like a blueprint. An open standard is one that is freely available. Open source is software that is freely available and which may implement open standards. The two terms are independent.

At one extreme, open means you can take my idea and do whatever you want with it and you don't even have to tell me you did so. At the other extreme, closed means my idea is mine and you can not use it or even see it. In a practical sense there is a wide spectrum in between open and closed. There are many factors in the debate but long term it is breakaway innovation among communities of developers and inventors that share a common vision that is the most important argument in favor of the expansion of open source software. The downside for entrenched monopolies or those resistant to change is that open source can cause disruption and a ton of incremental competition in markets. IBM's Dr. Bob Sutor, vp for standards and open source, says "tough". Only the greatest sinners of the past can truly repent.

The most visible example of the open standards debate is what is going on in Massachusetts. (see prior story). Some people are calling the state's decision to separate data formats from applications a "Bill of Rights" around information. A gentleman from Boston University told me he not only is confident the decision will stick but that it will be a model for the free world. A Norwegian official said that proprietary data will no longer be acceptable. It is a struggle against existing ways of doing things but long term there are huge benefits for all of us if open document forms proliferate resulting in consistent, error-free, structured ways of doing things. Electronic physician notes about our healthcare would be a good example. IBM has targeted healthcare and education as two industries that can benefit from open documents and the company is opening up it's intellectual property treasure trove to help enable these two industries to make a quantum leap.

What about patents? Similar to open vs. closed, patents are not all good or all bad. It is quite impressive to see how IBM has been able to balance it's proprietary products and it's open source solutions. They are building proprietary code and innovation on top of the open source base. At the same time they are giving patents away that have the potential to accelerate the quality of healthcare and education. In parallel they are leading an effort to improve the quality and integrity of the patent process that all companies use. The patent process has been like the jury system -- not perfect but nobody has come up with a better way. In the case of the patent system, while many companies complain about the system, IBM is taking the lead to do something about it.

Other patrickWeb stories about open standards
Bob Sutor's blog

Conferences , Healthcare , IBM , Internet Technology , Public Policy March 3, 2006 10:40 AM

Phone Service

Chris Herot, from Lexington, Massachusetts, wrote in response to the prior post about the telephone services offered at the Stamford Marriott. He agrees there is a "declining number of people will pay those outrageous charges by raising the price for the few suckers who remain". He provided an example where upon checking out of a hotel recently he was confronted with a charge for more than $10 for a two minute phone call.  He said the front desk sheepishly acknowledged it was a rip-off. They cheerfully removed the charge from his bill.

On a positive note, the more enlightened hotels are starting to offer a bundle of services people will pay for. The Marriott "Wired-for-Business" connectivity offer which enables guests to "Work smarter with unlimited..." in-room high-speed Internet access plus local and long distance phone calls for $9.95 per day is not a bad deal unless -- you have your own EV-DO service and a good mobile phone plan. There is also some innovation going on In the directory assistance area where 800-FREE-411 is providing a nice alternative to the old-fashioned 411 system.

But what about customer service? This week received two telephone company bills -- both had significant errors -- caused by outdated backend batch-oriented systems. One took 21 minutes to resolve, the other one 49 minutes. Some would say that telephone customer service is an oxymoron, but I have noticed a significant difference in recent months in terms of attitude. Although I have had issues with Comcast, Verizon, and Cingular, the customer service representatives act like they care. Unlike the past, they apologize for service problems, they thank you for your business, they identify with the problems you have, and they sincerely work to get them resolved. At Verizon, the reps are empowered to offer on the spot credits to resolve issues. Competition seems to be driving these companies to start caring about their customers. You can lock customers in with contracts but you can't make them happy unless the service reps show good attitude. I see a real shift in a positive direction. If we can keep the regulators and lobbyists in Washington from reducing competition we can expect to see service and pricing get better and better.

On Demand March 2, 2006 03:37 PM

IBM Happenings: February 2006

The month of February was cold in many places but hot for IBM. There was a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and corporate initiatives. Here are the announcements made by the company during the month. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.

IBM March 1, 2006 03:57 PM