The final speaker at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles was Nick Donofrio, the company's Executive Vice President for Innovation and Technology. Always an emotional, enthusiastic and at times nostalgic speaker, little did the audience know that the next day IBM would announce that Nick will be retiring on October 1 after a fantastic career of forty-four years. I have no doubts that he will end up involved in many activities and will find that he may need to go back to work to regain some spare time.

One of Nick's many leadership roles at IBM has been with the Global Innovation Outlook program. One of the recent GIO events brought together a diverse group of global thought leaders for a series of brainstorming sessions about the future of innovation and economic advancement in Africa. One of the greatest needs identified was to provide access to capital and financing to more of the African population. It was clear that there could be significant growth and transformation if there was a more open, scalable, lower-cost microfinance hub serving the African continent.

IBM and CARE have announced plans to enable microfinance institutions to dramatically lower the costs of providing financial services to large populations in the region who have no access to banks. The goal of the new Africa Financial Grid is to help alleviate poverty and promote economic development in the Sub-Saharan Region. The two organizations plan to establish an Africa Financial Grid built around a shared services and infrastructure model designed to significantly reduce operating costs, streamline lending processes, scale rapidly, and integrate with other resources such as credit bureaus, financial institutions and international payment networks. The Grid will also eventually be able to link with mobile payment providers in Africa to enable customers to repay loans or transfer money via mobile phones. The project will initially target 11 countries with a combined population of more than 400 million people.

There are millions of people with business ideas and aptitudes but with incomes of less than $100 per month, it has been impossible to get financing. A small loan can make a big difference. For example, a loan of $50 enabled a mother of six to purchase fabric and sell embroidered products. Based on her success she was able to get subsequent loans and expand her business. Very small loans can have a big impact but it has been too costly for financial institutions to make the loans practical. The combination of technology and expertise that IBM and CARE bring to the table has the potential to change the model and have a huge impact. One more example of how the Internet continues to empower people.

The purpose of the trip was to attend IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference. The event was attended by roughly 1,000 business partners, IBM executives, members of the press, and information technology analysts. See "IBM Happenings - May 2008" for a list of some of the announcements made by IBM during the meeting. At the end of the first day was a special event at the University of California School of Cinematic Arts. The invitation only event included 100 or so analysts, members of the press, faculty members and students. IBM and USC had been holding discussions to map out a collaboration between some of the most creative minds in Hollywood with some of IBM's top scientists. Having known some of them for years I was really pleased with they selected. The moderator was Dr. Bill Pulleyblank, mathematician, computer scientist and predictive analysis expert. Bill is known for having managed a project in which a supercomputer named Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a six game rematch. The panelists were all quite distinguished. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, was the first ever to precisely manipulate individual atoms and spelling the word "I B M". Jeff Jonas, IBM Distinguished Engineer, expert in security and privacy, created much of the technology used in capturing criminals in Vegas casinos. Sharon Nunes, Head of the Energy and Environment business at IBM is a research expert in materials science and is working on numerous projects to save the environment. Last but not least was Ajay Royyuru, who leads IBM Research's computational biology team and IBM's liaison to the National Geographic Genographic project. Ajay participated on a past panel which I had the honor to moderate at Demo.

The breadth and depth of the panel could have kept the audience spellbound for quite a few hours. Will the future be like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future, Incredible Journey or Star Wars? How can scientists help filmmakers create prescient depictions of the future?

Much of the discussion revolved around the merger of biology and systems. Some of the breakthroughs discussed included using nanotechnology to assure the availability of clean drinking water everywhere on the planet, self-healing spinal cords, and life span stretching well past the century mark? The human genome has been mapped but that is just the beginning. In effect the mapping provides the parts list of the human bodies. The next phase of research is to figure out what all those parts do and how they fit together. Not only will regenerating entire body parts be possible but embedded processors under our skin will make it possible to gain significant human augmentation of our capabilities. A project in Europe called Blue Brain is using IBM supercomputing technology to built a simulation model of the human brain. This is a very big undertaking but someday it could lead to curing some of the most dreaded diseases that afflict our societies.

Computer processing is already awesome but we haven't seen anything yet. A Mini Cooper has more computing power than Apollo 13 had. At the exponential pace of growth of computing capacity we may actually reach the Singularity in the next couple of decades.

Security and privacy are obviously crucial elements to the research agenda. We will be able to have an embedded super-PDA that can record every conversation you hear or say during a lifetime. Existing databases make it possible to specifically identify a person by only knowing their zip date of birth and gender. So much for witness protection programs. The good news is that ubiquitous sensors can make the world is less dangerous place. Yes, the government can watch the people, but the people can watch the government too.

I think we are very fortunate that IBM focuses vast sums of money and thousands of top notch people on solving some of the tougher global problems. There is money in some of it and long term business value is created but along the way societies around the world benefit greatly from IBM's work toward the greater good. Take a look at the most recent report on this to get an idea.

As for film making, I learned a lot in talking with some graduate students at the reception. They are all hoping to be as successful as Steven Spielberg, and no doubt some will. The surprising thing I learned is that the best quality movies are still captured on cellulose acetate based film. It is rare these days to see a professional photographer use anything other than a digital camera and apparently with wide angle, high contrast movie making, the industry is not quite there. Consensus was that it would be all digital within five years. Computers already play a huge role (no pun intended) in film making either for augmentation of scenes or for creating the very characters of the movie.

"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" became Yahoo! -- an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" but Filo and Yang also claim they also selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." The Yahoo! web site ran on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," and Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers. I don't know for certain but I would bet anything these were both Unix systems. I also suspect that most of their development since the early days has been with Unix or Linux and certainly a lot of open source software in conjunction with the proprietary innovations they have created.

Microsoft has a lot of money and a lot of really smart people but the culture is different. Seems reasonable to assume that MSN was built on Microsoft's software -- if not then that is another story. MSN and Hotmail do not have the best reputation -- at least with those close to the Internet. Some would say Microsoft had sought to subsume the Internet in the early days while Yahoo has consistently embraced the Internet from day one. Microsoft has the reputation for being a place where workers toil individually while Yahoo has been is a Silicon Valley archetype where employees tend to work collaboratively.

The bottom line is that Microsoft and Yahoo! are both successful in their own ways but arguably they are oil and water. Merging them might make sense to the financial analysts but it makes no sense to many observers. If they were to come together financially it would take a decade to fully integrate the two to gain the benefits that would be expected. It may not be possible.

One thing is for sure. The beneficiaries of the failed merger will be the lawyers who will take many millions of dollars from both company's shareholders to sue and defend the failure to buy or sell.

Complete index of IBM Happenings]]> 855@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ IBM 2008-05-02T14:10:44-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_04.php A reader of the story about the hospital SmartCard project asked me if the card could store an MRI. The short answer is no, not today, but in the long term, yes for sure. The most important short-term role for the smartcard is authentication. The best example to explain that is Clear. The Clear smartcard contains a digital representation of each iris, all ten finger prints, and your photograph. When you present your Clear smartcard at the airport, there is no doubt that you are who you say you are. You then "fly through airport security" to your destination. Imagine the same at the hospital -- no more clipboards and filling out information they already have. It seems like a dream today but in the not too distant future we will be able to "fly" through the healthcare process, experience personalized medicine, and feel like the providers are giving us concierge treatment.

Back to the MRI question, where are the MRI's -- and CAT scans, X-Rays, and mammogram's -- stored? They used to be on film and the patient would carry them around from specialist to specialist and the hospital would keep football field size storage rooms loaded with them. Progressive hospitals today use a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System). The performance and reliability of PACS are critical to a hospital's ability to provide patient care. The PACSs have gotten better and better but physicians are continuously raising the bar. Understandably, CIO's and CFO's are concerned about the fast growth of storage needed as the imaging technology supports higher resolutions, more images per study, and escalating federal and state government storage requirements. Physicians want online access 24x7 from the office, hospital or their home to not only the MRI you had today but the one you had a year ago and maybe ten years ago. Hospitals have tried to cope with the increased demand by offering online storage for very current images and "nearline" storage for those that have been archived. Nearline often means that the image is stored on tape and can be brought online if a special request is made. Increasingly physicians and patients do not feel there is anything "special" about it -- they expect all data to be online all the time just like Amazon. The online retailer has every order they have ever received since the company started in 1995 online and available 24x7. Easy for them some might say. An order for a book is trivial compared to a digital MRI image.

How big is a digital MRI image? A recent cervical spine MRI contained 160 images and was approximately 60 megabytes in size. About the same as 200 iPhone pictures or 20 iTunes songs. Let's suppose a community hospital has 25,000 patient visits per year and that on average a patient has two image studies performed. That would be 50,000 times 60 megabytes which equals 3 terabytes. Now let's consider what size storage is available and how much it costs.

In the mid 1970's an IBM "disk pack" for a mainframe computer had a capacity of 200 megabytes -- about three MRI's. The entire storage system could contain eight "drives" for a total of 1.6 gigabytes. It seemed like a lot at the time. The cost of the disk drive that the disk pack fit on was nearly $200,000. During the last thirty years the cost has continuously plummeted while the capacity has skyrocketed. The Apple Time Capsule has a capacity of one terabyte and costs $499. IBM has a new storage system that offers up to 1,176 terabytes in a single system. Soon we will be talking about petabytes (1,000 terabytes) and then exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes. When I had written a story about yottabytes back in 2005 a reader said the term should be "alottabytes". A yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

The bottom line is that there will be plenty of storage to put all our images online. The key challenge is the management of the data -- keeping it secure, backed up, resilient to disaster, and easy to access and manipulate. Many providers will decide to put all the data in the "cloud" and let someone else manage it. Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) is the tip of the iceberg. They charge $0.15 per gigabyte per month of storage used. IBM offers a wide range of storage services and also partners with many healthcare information technology companies.

The normal reaction would be that having all the images online is too expensive. I think many of us will instead think of it like electricity. Healthcare providers use a lot of electricity and some are beginning to cogenerate their own to save money. One thing they don't do however is consider having some of their electricity "offline" or "nearline". It is online 24x7. That is the way we will soon think of medical images.

Other patrickWeb stories about healthcare]]> 854@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Personal Computing 2008-04-29T13:18:35-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_04.php In the story about the hospital SmartCard project, I made a reference to both Wrigley's Gum and M&M Mars candy. Little did I know that a few days later would come an announcement that Mars Inc. -- with some financial backing from billionaire Warren Buffett -- is buying The Wrigley Company, the one-hundred year-old powerhouse of chewing gum. The price tag for the acquisition is $23 billion and the merged companies will be the world's largest confectionery company.

Patient safety, ballooning costs, and government budget pressures are accelerating the move toward electronic medical records. There are many variations on the theme. EMR's in the hospital, Personal Health Records on a smartcard, and Personally Controllable Medical Records on the web. EMR's are emerging from insurance companies, pharmacies, community doctors, hospitals, regional health information organizations, employers and software companies. It is not yet clear which EMR or combination will prevail. Personally, I will be glad when all my medical information is encrypted and stored on the Internet where I will know that at last it will be safe and under my control.

One thing I know for sure is that it is time to make major strides. There will be many participants in making it happen. Government and non-profit organizations such as HL7 must play a key role in establishing standards so that the various kinds of EMR's can be compatible. Most experts agree that Personal Health Records sponsored by healthcare providers have the best chance of success in the short term. Longer term "cloud-based" PHR's such as proposed by Google, Microsoft, and others have great potential but need to overcome trust and privacy concerns of consumers.

One provider pilot program that I think has potential is the "SmartCard" at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. Five-hundred patients in the trial program can insert their smartcard in a kiosk (very similar to an ATM), confirm the identity displayed, and then receive a "ticket" -- just like at the deli -- to await being called for their test or procedure. The patients like it because they don't have to use the "clipboard" and the staff like it because they don't have to ask patients to use the clipboard. The potential goes well beyond just automating the check-in process. The smartcard can be the "carrier" for our electronic personal health record. At some point our mobile phones may take over the task but in the short to medium term the smartcard may prove to be a very effective aid to empowering consumers to manage their own our healthcare.

The potential is huge. Upon entering the office of our primary care physician the office system could recognize our smartcard and an exchange could begin which updates the hospital with the latest information on the card, updates the card with any updated test results the hospital may have, and updates the primary care physician with the latest test results plus notes from any specialist consultations. If the primary care physician "writes" a script on his or her system it could be automatically transferred to the smartcard and to the pharmacy system and when the patient gets to the pharmacy the card could be recognized and the prescription would be filled. All the information on the smartcard would be encrypted and accessible only after authentication by the smartcard holder. This could be done using a password or a biometric such as an iris scan or fingerprints. This may sound futuristic to some but similar things are already being done. Denmark began a drive toward paperless hospitals more than a decade ago and is achieving much success. Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has a vision of using smartcards to enable us to breeze through airport security lines. The Fly Clear smartcard contains digitized versions of both your iris scans and fingerprints.

There are numerous technical and financial challenges inhibiting the rollout of a smartcard system in a pervasive way. The biggest challenge is that the benefits are "shared" -- neither patient, provider, or payer can justify the cost but collectively everyone wins. It reminds me of the UPC challenge of the 1970's. In spite of large benefits from knowing what got sold and when, the grocery stores were hesitant to invest in UPC scanners because there were no products that had UPC symbols on them (the first product to have a code was a packet of Wrigley's Gum in 1974). The stores found it difficult to justify the cost even though there would be labor savings from scanning versus "ringing up". The package goods manufacturers were also skeptical, despite the benefit of knowing exactly how their products were doing at retail on a timely basis. I remember visiting the M&M Mars candy factory in Hackettstown, NJ in the early 1970's and discussing UPC scanning with the director of product packaging. She said there were not enough benefits to offset giving up the "real estate" on the candy bag to place a symbol for which there were hardly any scanners to scan them. (The first UPC scanner was installed at a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio in June, 1974). It took strong leadership, competition among retailers, and perseverance to get us to the ubiquitous scanning which we enjoy today.

Likewise with personal healthcare records. The benefits are huge -- increased accuracy of information leading to better outcomes and reduction in duplicative procedures, and ultimately personalized healthcare. Physicians will spend less time ordering procedures and medications, liability costs should go down due to fewer errors, increased collaboration will improve caregiving, patients will be able to relocate and take their healthcare data with them, and patients will be able to take a more proactive role in their own health and selection of providers. All it takes is strong leadership, competition among healthcare providers, and perseverance. The glass is half-full, not half-empty. It is likely that in the next five years we will see more progress toward electronic medical records than we have seen in the last twenty.

Other patrickWeb stories about healthcare]]> 850@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Healthcare 2008-04-22T21:22:08-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_04.php My apologies for the serious typo in my latest post. I can not explain it. Thank you to the many who were kind enough to send timely email about the error which enabled me to fix it quickly. There are some things the spell checker doesn't catch.

What attracted the 6,300 people to fly to Las Vegas and fill every hall, ballroom, salon, patio, and restaurant at the MGM Grand? IBM calls it "Smart SOA". I call it The Application Web.

Only the most brilliant technical people could come up with SOA as a name for something. Let's see, is it safe operating area, School of the Americas, Skies of Arcadia (a Nintendo game), Society of Actuaries, state of the art, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act? Nope. The SOA that brought all these people together stands for "service oriented architecture". It is really important. The wikipedia has a comprehensive definition of SOA but basically it represents a new way for companies -- and hospitals, schools, and governments -- to enable their customers -- and suppliers, business partners, and employees -- to get things done on the web. Actually it is isn't new -- the idea has been around for decades -- but now it is really happening. It is so much a part of the vernacular at IBM that they just matter of factly talk about "so a".

In a nutshell, SOA will allow web sites to do much more than “click here to buy”. In fact web sites built with SOA will result in us standing in fewer lines in the physical world and have to endure fewer telephone call centers that want to control us. Fulfillment models at our favorite retailer’s web site will result in the staple goods we need just showing up outside the garage door when we need them. If businesses have the right attitude, SOA will enable them to get closer to the ultimate Internet -- to build a people-oriented and user-friendly experience that is tightly integrated with all the appropriate business processes of the company.

Over the last fifty years there has been an explosion of computer applications, but many of them were built in silos and were highly inflexible. In some cases companies thought decentralization was the answer so they allowed divisions and departments to do their own thing. The result was that many have a hodgepodge of incompatible systems that nobody is happy with. The web took things a big leap forward. At last there was a common way (the browser) for accessing and displaying information, even though the applications that run on the server -- that do the pricing, inventory lookups, shipping estimates, invoicing, etc. -- are still proprietary and usually tied to one particular IT vendor or system. The applications have also been very monolithic; i.e. in order to fulfill the expectations of customers on the web the application has to do the whole job. Soup to nuts; present the right price, confirm if the item is in stock, calculate shipping, and confirm the status of the order. Increasingly, customers want to get access directly into the supply chain and see exactly where their order stands. In short, applications have gotten larger and more complicated -- harder, not easier.

SOA -- arguably the biggest change in information technology in decades -- is poised to change the way applications are created and how they interoperate. Instead of building a monolithic application that takes a customer order, does credit checks, checks inventory, looks through the supply chain, arranges for payment, charges the customer, clears credit card transactions, etc., with SOA these various functions are built as separate "pieces". Think Legos. The individual programs are called "services" and they are called upon as needed. A sales tax calculation "service", for example, could be used by many different divisions of a company thereby eliminating redundancy. IBM has been practicing what it preaches in this regard. It has reduced the number of programs it uses to run the company from 16,000 to just a few thousand -- and declining.

great summary of IBM’s “Smart SOA” vision
]]> 848@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Conferences 2008-04-15T20:25:14-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_04.php The month of March was another busy one at IBM. The month was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made by IBM during the month is here. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here. A number of the announcements are related to datacenters. IBM builds state-of-the-art data centers around the world, not only for itself but for companies of all kinds. One of the most recent contracts was with Telecom Egypt. It will include the world's most sophisticated energy-efficient technologies.

Complete index of IBM Happenings
]]> 847@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ IBM 2008-04-06T09:03:18-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_04.php patrickWeb Blogroll

The patrickWeb blogroll has been around for more than ten years. A blogroll is basically a list of blogs of other people. In my case, it is a list of blogs of people who are either good friends, people whose opinion I respect, or blogs I have found useful. I learned about blogrolling from my friend Joi Ito and then learned how to actually do it from blogrolling.com.

Now that we all live in a world of social networking, there are many ways to share not only links to your favorite blogs, but links to your favorite anything. (There are also numerous specialized ways to "tag" stories, pictures, songs and videos). At sites such as del.icio.us you can put all your bookmarks in one place and share them with anyone and everyone. But, it is still ok to have a good old fashioned blogroll.

One of the entries in the patrickWeb blogroll is The Guidewire. Guidewire Group is a market intelligence firm that is focused on technology entrepreneurship, early-stage companies, and emerging technology markets. The insight they have developed over the years is quite valuable to their clients and the community that has built up around them. The Guidewire Group analysts meet with hundreds of innovative companies each year and a subset of the companies ends up launching their product or service at a DEMO conference.

There are a number of stories about the DEMO conferences here in this blog but over at the The Guidewire blog there is quite a buzz going on. There are always debates about the future of emerging technology and whether we are living in a post-bubble or pre-bubble period . Now there is a debate about the future of the emerging technology conferences. The latest story is called Let's Get Real: Business is Not Personal.

patrickWeb blogroll
patrickWeb stories about conferences

There are many GPS receivers on the market now with some breaking below the $100 mark. The hot area is GPS for cars. Many new cars offer built-in units as an option but the "after" market is much larger. One of the newest entries is Dash. The new Dash Express claims to be the first two-way, Internet-connected GPS navigation system. The device delivers traffic and destination information in a new way. You can look up somewhere that you want to go using the Internet and then have that "waypoint" delivered via cellular or WiFi signal directly to your Dash. You then select the new waypoint and the GPS will guide you to your destination. The Dash can also show you the location of all other cars nearby that have a Dash. That makes it a good proxy for traffic but what would be much better would be if all the GPS manufacturers got to together and agreed on a standard for information sharing so that each GPS could actually show the "total" traffic in the area, not just traffic of those cars that have a Dash.

I have been using GPS devices for quite a few years and have or have had most of the manufacturers. On the trike, I have the TomTom Rider. On other bikes I have Garmins. For the last few years I have been using a Magellan for geocaching. They make a really nice device but I don't like their software. GPS is becoming ubiquitous but the formats for the data storage and data interchange with PCs is a Tower of Babel. Magellan is not alone -- the entire GPS industry thrives on proprietary formats that they think help them maintain market share but actually constrict the market and confuse customers. Thankfully, there is a great piece of software called GSAK (geocaching Swiss Army Knife) that is indispensable for anyone who wants to exchange GPS data with their PC. I highly recommend it. GSAK allows you to download thousands of caches from geocaching.com to an easy to use desktop application. You can then sort them, search them, organize them in various ways, see all the logs of those of have found (or not) the caches, and a Google Map to show exactly where the caches are. Once you are ready to pack up and head for the trails, GSAK allows you to easily transfer the selected cache information to your GPS.

As soon as the backorder gets filled I will be ready to go geocaching with the new Garmin Colorado 400t. Looks like the Colorado will be a rugged and advanced handheld and it will be pre-loaded with detailed topographic maps with a 3-D map view, a high-sensitivity receiver, barometric altimeter, electronic compass, an SD card slot, picture viewer and a bright color display. I will be reporting on whether it is as good as it sounds or not. Meanwhile two of my Magellans went on eBay this week and hopefully they will make a new geocacher somewhere happy.

Other patrickWeb stories about hiking, geocaching, and benchmarking]]> 844@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Hiking 2008-04-04T11:20:48-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_03.php The "e-book" -- replacing the paper book with something electronic -- is not a new idea. Project Gutenberg started in 1971 and now has a collection of 24,000 books which have been digitized. Digital books can be read on a PC and there are various software offerings that can enable you to read books on your mobile phone or personal digital assistant. Over the years there have been various "e-book readers" introduced. The idea behind the e-book reader is to have a dedicated device that is optimized for reading. I have never met anyone, myself included, that found reading a book on a PC, a handheld device, or an e-book reader to be a good experience. For years I have believed that the day would come but that so far nothing can compare to a real book. That was before I became "Kindlized".

I first saw the Amazon Kindle in early February when Steve Brotman, a fellow director of Knovel Corporation, showed me his at a board meeting. I was not convinced it would be different than the many predecessors I had tried but I was intrigued enough to order one. After waiting a month for the backorder to be filled, I opened the box, turned on the Kindle and within a couple of minutes I was reading Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth in a new and comfortable way. I had recently purchased the paperback version of "Pillars" for $14.97 and was about half-way through the gripping 1,000 page novel. With my new acquisition I visited the Kindle bookstore on the device and keyed in "pillars". I selected the Follet novel and in less than a minute the Kindle version was ready to read. The $7.99 charge for the e-book was automatically placed on my credit card. There is no login, user id, password or network connection process. The "Amazon Whispernet" (from Sprint) is totally seamless. In addition to more than 100,000 books, you can also choose from a dozen or so top newspapers and magazines plus a few hundred blogs. If you are an author, there is a streamlined process to Kindlize their books. It took me less than five minutes to add Net Attitude to the Kindle Bookstore. You can also add virtually any document of your own such reports, long emails, user guides, or just about anything.

The most amazing thing about the Kindle is how easy it is to use. Amazon set out three years ago to create an entirely new portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers. The Kindle uses "electronic paper" that makes the screen as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper without the strain and glare of a computer screen. You have to see it to believe it. The device weighs ten ounces, never becomes hot, and is easy for both "lefties" and "righties" to read comfortably at any angle for long periods of time. I have arthritis in my neck and need to read without bending my head down. I use a reading stand which works very well except with large books like "Pillars", it is hard to keep the book open on the stand. No problem with the Kindle. It just sits there and when it is time to "turn the page" you just tap a button on the Kindle and the next (or previous) page appears. You can select from six font sizes to suit your taste and compensate for lighting conditions. If you encounter a word you are not familiar with, a couple of clicks the built-in New Oxford Dictionary displays the definition. You can add bookmarks, notes, and take "clippings" as you read. It is a joy to use. All things considered, I think Amazon has hit a major home run with the Kindle.

The Chinese invention of paper in 105 A.D. changed the way the world communicates. The invention of "e-ink" may change it again. The electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper. The screen displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting. There is no glare and you can read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room. With the addition of a $10 memory card, the Kindle can store more than 1,000 books. All you put in your briefcase is the paperback sized Kindle. The battery life is good and full recharge takes just 2 hours. Don't forget to pack the charger when you go out of town. I am away for a few days and forgot mine. I finished "Pillars" but now I have to wait until Tuesday to start another book.

Other patrickWeb gadget stories ]]> 843@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Gadgets 2008-03-23T17:25:53-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_03.php The month of February was another busy one at IBM. There was a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. See the full list of announcements made by IBM during the month and the complete index from prior months. One announcement that I found particularly interesting was that IBM scientists -- in collaboration with the University of Regensburg in Germany -- were able to measure the force it takes to move individual atoms on a surface. This was the first time that this has ever been done. Understanding the force necessary to move specific atoms on specific surfaces is one of the keys to designing and constructing the small structures that will enable future nanotechnologies. Building a steel or concrete bridge would be impossible without understanding the forces on the various structures -- likewise when building things at the atomic level. Miniaturizing storage and computing devices to the ultimate limit – the scale of just a few atoms – will require radically new designs and manufacturing methods and the breakthrough ability to measure the force it takes to move an atom will become a fundamental ingredient. Nanotechnology will be changing our lives in the years ahead by enabling vast amounts of personal information storage and incredible new capabilities in healthcare, and just about everything around us will contain amazing new materials]]> 842@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ IBM 2008-03-19T14:15:00-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_03.php The trip is over and things are back to normal, but South Africa has left a lasting impression on me. All the stories and pictures are in the index below. For anyone who wants to print the stories, they are all combined into a single pdf file. I hope readers find it interesting and that some are able to go there and see some of the great sights.

Back From Africa
Luggage Back Too
Johannesburg
Infrastructure
MalaMala
Victoria Falls
Cape Town
Giving Back
Gallery of pictures from Africa
South Africa 2008 (all stories in single pdf)

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Of all the people who are able to fly to South Africa on business or vacation trips, surely the least among them is far more fortunate than those in the depressed areas of South Africa. For those so inclined, are there ways to give back? I have been asking myself that question. Fortunately, there are many choices and I plan to act on some of them.

Among the time-tested organizations that have long-term experience working in Africa are the following...

Habitat for Humanity South Africa builds on the basic The Habitat Vision -- “A world in which every person has a decent place to live”. HFHSA has been actively building in South Africa since 1996 and to date over 2,000 houses have been constructed across Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

Africare, founded in 1971 is a self-help program to assist Africans in the broad areas of food, water, the environment, health, private-sector development, governance, and emergency humanitarian aid.

The Africa Fund reaches out to local religious leaders, community and labor leaders, as well as state and municipal officials and their constituencies. The Africa Fund works to support human rights, democracy, and economic development on the continent.

The African Medical and Research Foundation, founded in 1952, is committed to empowering the disadvantaged people of Africa. The organization works in close partnership with local communities, government ministries of health, UN agencies, other NGOs to develop locally appropriate models for improving health, to contribute to capacity building at all levels, and to develop an enabling environment for health improvement.

The African Services Committee was founded in 1981 by a group of refugees and provides relief and assistance for diverse ethnic immigrant and refugee groups in need of food, shelter, clothing, medical care, legal services, housing, and employment.

Books for Africa, founded in 1988, Minnesota-based Books for America collects, sorts, ships, and distributes books to the children of Africa in partnership with Rotary Clubs, YMCAs, churches, schools, and various community groups.

The Global Alliance for Africa, is a Chicago-based group that works in concert with local and international partners to bring medical care to those regions of Africa most in need of help.

The South Africa Development Fund, was founded in 1985 by South African exiles living in the U.S. and it works in partnership with community-based organizations to provide financial and technical support to communities disadvantaged by decades of apartheid policies. 

All of these fine organizations accept online donations.

Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

There are many things to explore outside of Cape Town, most notably the Cape of Good Hope.The rocky point is a called a headland which means it is an area of land adjacent to water on three sides. I always had thought that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern most tip of Africa, but that distinction actually goes to Cape Agulhas, which is about 90 miles to the southeast. The Wikipedia says that the rounding of the cape in 1488 was a major milestone in the attempts by the Portuguese to establish a sea route to the Far East. More than 500 ships were wrecked trying to go by the Cape and instead crashing on the rocks. You can see water bubbling around the rocks off shore but many ships in bad weather could not. Now with GPS every ship can know precisely where it is and where any obstacles are. We also visited Cape Point which is just over a mile away. Both are well worth seeing. It was quite a climb to get up to the lighthouse. Unfortunately, the weather gets so bad that the lighthouse was not visible at times and therefore not effective. A few years ago we rounded Cape Horn on a cruise but the weather was so bad I was not able to get a very good picture. Here are some pictures from Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope. At the end of the day we made a visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. I don't much about flowers but I have to admit that it was quite impressive.

No trip to Cape Town would be complete without visiting the wine country. Just like California has Napa and Sonoma, South Africa has eleven different wine areas with nice towns and "wine farms". The region we visited is called Paarl and the tour and tasting was at the Seidelberg Wine Estate. The views were beautiful and the wines were excellent.From there we rode through Franschhoek, where the French first made wine in South Africa 300 years ago. We stopped at Haute Cabriére Cellar Restaurant for lunch. The unique restaurant was built into the side of a mountain.

We got to the Cape Town airport at 2 PM thinking we had plenty of time but it turned out to be a chaotic Friday afternoon. We got home twenty-eight hours later. Our luggage arrived twenty-six more hours after that. All in all a really fun and educational trip.


Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

A bit conservative but we left Sandton at 9am and got to the airport at 9:30 for a 12:15 flight to Livingstone, Zambia. The first surprise, of many to come, was the $135 per person visa fee to enter the country. Ground transportation had been arranged and two young gentlemen escorted us to a small van to begin the 15 mile trip to the Victoria Falls Hotel. The first stop was at the immigration center as we left Zambia. This was followed by a stop at another immigration center as we entered Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe charged $50 per person to enter their country. Both immigration centers had long lines of people and trucks. The people are in poverty trying to survive in a country where the government leaders have done nothing for them and have bankrupted the country, but not themselves. Inflation is running at 100,000% while life expectancy has declined to 38 due to 17% of the male population having HIV infection.

We had to remove our luggage and change cars and drivers at the border so that the car service would not have to pay the visa fees. Dozens of huge tandem flatbed trucks carrying copper and industrial materials lined the shoulders of the poorly paved road. Some would have to wait a day or more to get clearance to cross the border. There were people along the road selling various food, carrying huge loads of goods balanced on their heads, and a baboon or monkey here and there. We finally arrived at the hotel after nearly seven hours. The ground transportation had to be paid in U.S. dollars -- no credit cards. After all the government fees -- which likely go to politicians, not education or road repairs -- I was out of U.S. dollars.

The next surprise was that the hotel informed us that there would be a $20 per person charge to enter the trail to visit the famous water falls. No credit cards. No local currencies accepted -- only U.S. dollars. Could the hotel advance some cash and charge to our room? No. They will accept U.S. dollars as payment but they will not give out any dollars. "Sorry for the inconvenience". How do I get some dollars to go see the falls that I have traveled all day to see? You have to go to Zambia to a bank. There are no dollars available in Zimbabwe. I was beside myself to put it mildly -- feeling like I was in a small room with two doors that both said "No Exit". Fortunately, the driver was still in the lobby and he took us to the bank, with stops at both immigration centers, a wait in line to get our passports stamped and change cars again at the border.

The bank in Zambia was open and dispenses U.S. dollars against an American Express card -- except that international money transfers ceased at 3:30 PM. It was 3:45 PM. Back to the car and on to a shopping center five miles down the road to an ATM. After entering my PIN I asked for 1,500,000 Zambian kwachas, which I estimated would be about $400. The hourglass on the ATM screen flashed for a few minutes and then displayed a message saying "This ATM will be temporarily unavailable from 4 PM to 4:30 PM daily". It was 4:15. (The next day a charge for $402 appeared in Quicken from my credit card account). Back to the car and down the road to another ATM. This time I requested and was able to withdraw 2,000,000 Zambian kwachas. Now on to a "Currency Exchange Center". Sounds fancy but it was downscale from a strip mall dry cleaning business with handwritten posters on the wall showing the exchange rate. I presented an inch thick wad of bills and walked out with $522 plus a remainder of 900 kwachas because they don't handle coins. The 900 kwachas were worth twenty-four cents.

Back to the car, through the two immigration centers, passport lines, car change, and finally to the Victoria Falls park at 5PM. How long does it take to walk through the park and see the falls? Two hours but they close in one hour so it is too late to go. The day could have been a Chevy Chase vacation series movie.

The Victoria Falls Hotel overlooks the Victoria Falls Bridge and the gorges below. It is historic, elegant, and tranquil but not necessarily equal to the international acclaim advertised. The main thing going for it is the falls being within walking distance. The rooms are expensive and the food was the most expensive of the trip. Not sure if it was the malaria medication in preparation for MalaMala or the hotel food that made me sick the following few days. I think it was the hotel food. The wine selection and quality was poor. The dining room was hot and humid -- no air conditioning. The service staff were all very friendly and it would not have been fair to take out the uncanny day on them.

The next morning we walked to the falls. Once off the hotel property we were met with local young men offering various souvenirs for sale. Offering would not actually the right word -- they were hounding and begging. You have to feel sorry for them but you can't solve the problem by buying from them. One of them had something I had been looking for and when I offered $15 the few sales people suddenly became a throng that would not leave us alone. We paid our $20 U.S. dollar entrance fee at a gate and headed into the jungle to see the falls. As we got closer the mist in the air turned to a sprinkle and eventually pouring rain. The sky was blue but the tremendous amount of water from the falls makes the area feel like a rain forest. After an hour we returned to the hotel soaked through to the bone. The experience of the past day and a half made me feel soaked in every way. I was really happy to get back to Johannesburg to begin the last leg of the trip -- to Cape Town.

Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

The most interesting part of MalaMala is seeing the animals but I was also interested in the aviation aspects of the trip. We headed to MalaMala from Johannesburg aboard a 29 passenger Jetstream 41 regional turboprop airliner which is made by British Aerospace. Their were two pilots, a flight attendant, and six passengers. I don't think South African Airways made much money on the flight. I was impressed with the Jetstream. It has two 1,650 horsepower Honeywell turboprop engines with McCauley five-bladed propellers. The pilots have a digital radio communications system and a fully digital automatic flight control system. The MalaMala Airport is a different story. The "airport" is actually a mile-long paved strip in the middle of the bushveld. There are no buildings and the emergency ground resources consist one fire truck sitting in the weeds. I don't believe there are any navigation aids on the ground. Nevertheless, I am quite confident that the daily flight into and out of MalaMala is as safe as any flights anywhere.

The MalaMala Game Reserve has been in existence since 1927 and claims to be the largest private "Big Five" (lion, leopard, buffalo, rhinoceros and elephant) game reserve in South Africa. MalaMala has 40,000 acres of land with a 12 mile unfenced border with the world-renowned Kruger National Park. There are several different "camps" where one could stay -- we were fortunate to be at Rattray's. Not only does MalaMala provide an exciting wildlife experience but it also is very focused on preserving and protecting the animals and the ecosystem. This became evident from the outset when Rob, our ranger, briefed us on the protocol to be followed while out in the bush. No getting out of or standing in the Land Rover, no waving of arms, and no making of noises to try to attract the animals attention.

Each day started at 5:30 AM with a wake-up call from Rob. After a cup of coffee we headed out in the Land Rover with our new friends, Gerhard and Hiltrud, from Germany. In total we made five trips into the bush. Rob and Culver, our tracker, had an uncanny sense of when various kinds of animals would be in certain places. The reserve has more than 1,000 miles of "roads" and frequently the Land Rover would suddenly pull off into the grass to see one of the big five or other animals. Rob would shut off the engine and we would just sit and watch. The rangers are in constant radio communication with one another to keep each other informed about the location of the game. The animals at MalaMala have grown up with engines as part of the ambient noise of the bush. They were not intimidated or seem to notice us whispering to each other as we were in awe of these great animals. We were typically twenty to fifty feet or so away and sometimes less than ten feet. (see photo gallery).

We got back to camp at 9am for breakfast. In the afternoon we would meet at 4 PM and head out until 7:30 PM and then meet for cocktails and dinner. All three meals each day were prepared by the on-site natively-dressed staff. Our ranger sat with us at each meal and the homemade food was extremely good. On the second night we dined outdoors in the boma by the crackling fire pit. After dinner it was time to return to our khaya (Zulu for ‘home’).

Although the facilities were more than expected, the real attraction was the animals. At departure we received a certificate validating that we had indeed seen the big five. We actually saw many more animals including jackal, hyena, baboons, water buffalo, cheetah, giraffe, zebra plus many different birds and interesting plants and trees. The lioness playing with her four cubs was a special treat. As usual, I have to apologize for my poor photographic skills but the photo gallery is worth more than whatever else I can say, except for one thing that I found truly amazing. A leopard had overtaken and killed an impala. An impala is a fast runner and weighs 150-200 pounds. They can jump a distance of thirty feet. Whatever it's abilities, it was not enough to get away from the leopard. It dragged the impala to the base of a tree and we sat thirty feet away in the Land Rover watching as it planned the next steps to protect the "kill" from being taken by other leopards or by hyenas. After devouring enough of the meat to lighten the weight a bit, the leopard picked up the impala by the neck with it's teeth and raced straight up a fifty foot tree like a rocket ship. I could barely believe it as I saw it. Leopards are said to be able to carry three times their weight up a tree. The leopard placed the impala between two limbs near the top of the tree with head and antlers and two legs hanging over one part and the other two legs hanging over the other. The leopard then parked itself spread-eagled over a lower part of the limb and rested. We went back that night and saw hyena (notice those nasty teeth) laying in the grass hoping the leopard would get sloppy and let the impala fall to the ground. We went back the next day and the leopard was still up in the tree. Too bad I did not have a night vision zoom lens. Hopefully this picture conveys the story.


Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

Other aspects of infrastructure in South Africa were a mixed bag. Broadband Internet access was available everywhere we visited including the MalaMala bushveld (via satellite). Even Zimbabwe had dial-up access in an Internet lounge. It was $4 for 15 minutes if you paid cash, or $8 if you put it on your hotel bill. According to the Internet World Stats, just over 10% of the population of South Africa had Internet access as of 2006. I suspect the number is much higher now, especially if you consider Internet Cafes. We saw many of these throughout Soweto. iBurst, one of South Africa's largest wireless broadband providers, is planning to roll out 20 000 Internet cafes by 2010.

Availability of electricity in Africa is a challenge -- even in major cities in South Africa. When we checked into our hotel in Johannesburg, there was a letter under the door from the hotel general manager saying that if elevators stopped working, the emergency power generator should kick in within eight minutes. There are rolling power outages throughout the country. People say it is due to poor planning by the government. Rolling blackouts are annoying but the bigger problem is total lack of electricity in many parts of Africa. Without electricity it is hard to move water. Without water it is hard to build an economy and grow food. The big potential is solar, as Africa is very well positioned geographically. The UN and non-profits such as SELF are trying to break down economic and governmental barriers to exploiting solar's potential.

Finally is mobile communications. I took my iPhone because that is where all my calendar and contact details are, but when it comes to phone calls and the mobile Internet, the Apple - AT&T team does not make it easy. Apple locks the iPhone so you can not put a Vodacom South Africa SIM card in it -- Apple wants to be sure to get their commission from AT&T. In South Africa, AT&T charges $2.49 per minute for inbound or outbound calls, fifty cents for a text message, and $20 per megabyte for data service. (Some modest discounts are available if you sign up for a monthly international plan). Some unwary travelers have forgotten to turn off automatic email retrieval in their iPhone and ended up with thousands of dollars in charges from AT&T.

Maxroam is an innovative VoIP company in Ireland. For a little more than $40 they send you a SIM card which you can put into any unlocked GSM phone -- such as the Treo which I held onto after getting the iPhone for use during international travel. Maxroam gives you a U.S. mobile phone number. If someone calls my iPhone while I am out of the country it will automatically forward to the Treo. If I want to make a call I dial from the Treo using whatever local GSM operator is available. The cost for Maxroam varies by country -- in South Africa it is 39 cents per minute for inbound calls and 49 cents per minute for local or outbound calls. The Maxroam proposition was very appealing but unfortunately it did not work. I called and emailed the company with no response. If not Maxroam, someone will figure out how to use VoIP to get around the outrageous international mobile roaming rates. Fortunately, I was able to get a Vodacom prepaid card for the Treo. It worked very well for local and international calls. Most international calls were made from the hotel room with my ThinkPad using Skype at two cents per minute.


Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

On the arrival night, it was a pleasure to meet Matimba Mbungela, a managing executive at Vodacom South Africa, in person after having exchanged email and phone calls during the prior week. Matimba introduced me to his colleague Chris Ross, the senior sales executive for Vodacom South Africa, who would be host of the conference taking place the next day. Vodacom is a Pan-African cellular communications company providing world class GSM services to more than 30 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique. More than 500 Vodacom business partners attended The Future of Technology conference to get an update on the various Vodacom offerings. My keynote at the end of the day offered a view of The Future of the Internet. That evening a delightful gala was held to recognize the sales achievements of the top Vodacom partners and dealers.

Like most conferences, there was an exhibition area where dozens of hardware, software, and services companies showed off their latest offerings. One of the most interesting one was the Firefly, from Grapevine Interactive. The Firefly is a parent-friendly mobile phone for young children. The tiny colorful phone has three prominent buttons on it. One to call Mom, one to call Dad, and one to place an emergency call. The phone can also store twenty parent-approved phone numbers.

Another conference took place later in the week in Midrand at Vodaworld, the company headquarters. The top 200 senior level executives of Vodacom came together as part of their professional development and to network with one another. The first part of the morning focused on The Future of the Internet and the second half we discussed innovation and how to nurture big ideas. The latter session was based on a class I led at MIT in September.

During the second half of the first week we stayed at the Intercontinental in Sandton, just a few blocks from Nelson Mandela Square. The giant statue of the former President of South Africa is impressive as is the life of the man who was first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election in the country. Mandela had led the anti-apartheid movement. We could see Robben Island, where Mandela spent 27 years in prison, from the waterfront the following week in Cape Town. We also visited his former home in Soweto. The respect for Nelson Mandela is universal regardless of ethnicity or political leaning. He will be 90 in July.

Nearby in Soweto is Orlando West stands the Hector Pieterson memorial square. Pieterson was killed at the age of twelve when police opened fire on protesting students in 1976. More than five-hundred were killed in the struggle. Soweto, which stands for townships southwest of Johannesburg, consists of dozens of townships and represents more than a third of the population of the city. The poverty is incredible. Some progress is being made but the results of decades of repression are obvious. The sights are breathtaking and not in a positive way. Hard to imagine that a government rationalized the extreme segmentation and discrimination. After a half day touring Soweto we had lunch in the Dube section of Soweto at Wandies Place. I could not identify most of the food in the buffet but it was very tasty.

Another half-day educational visit was to the Cradle of Humankind. It was well worth the one hour ride north of Johannesburg into the Gauteng province to see the Sterkfontein Caves where the 2.3-million year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed "Mrs. Ples"), an early hominid, was found in 1947. We literally had to crawl on hands and knees to get to the bottom of the enormous limestone cave hundreds of feet below ground. Although there was not much light, we could see huge stalactites and stalagmites and an underground lake that is fed from more than fifty miles away. Excavation at the site continues. In case you did not know it, we all came from Africa. The guide said "welcome back". If you are interested in finding the path taken by your ancestors to get from Africa to whatever part of the world you live in, take a look at the human genographic project.

Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008

I visited South African Airways (flysaa.com) and at the bottom of the "After your trip" page was a link for "Lost/damaged luggage". Could it be? II entered the file reference number from the printout and voila! Information about each of the four bags was displayed along with the status. As the day went on the status changed from "No information available" to "Arrived at airport" to "Delivery process underway". It took thirty-six hours to get the luggage but I was impressed with how South African Airways had integrated a very old application with a user-friendly web front end. Apparently the people at the airport are not aware of it. The airline could certainly take some anxiety away and offload an extremely busy call center by informing their customers about the web application and including the url on the printout. The ideal solution would be to have the application automatically generate an SMS text message to your mobile phone every hour with the status.

The pictures are uploaded to the gallery and the stories will start soon.

Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008]]> 834@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Internet Technology 2008-03-03T16:58:09-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_03.php The trip back from Africa took twenty-nine hours. If you include the half day in Cape Town's wine country before going to the airport plus an evening event back home, the forty-five hours made for a really long "day". We left the hotel in Cape Town at 9am on Friday morning -- it was 2am in New York at the time -- and we got to JFK an hour late at 7:30 am Saturday. After waiting for two hours we were told that all the bags were off the plane. Ours remain somewhere between Cape Town, Johannesburg, and New York. We had hoped to see them the next day but South African Airways said it could take up to five days. In spite of the long trip home and missing luggage, it was a really great two weeks. There is much to share -- in words and pictures -- about the country, the people, the culture, the status of technology, and of course, the animals. The index below will be updated as the stories come to life.

Index of stories and pictures from South Africa 2008]]> 833@http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/ Travels 2008-03-02T11:06:16-05:00 John Patrick Audio content from John Patrick's weblog Explore the world of blogging, WiFi, motorcycles, Mozart, and Internet Technology with John Patrick http://www.patrickweb.com/weblog/archives/2008_02.php There are quite a few stories here in the blog about "Long Distance". What is long distance? When the grandkids come from the Philadelphia area to Connecticut to visit, they consider that a long distance. When visiting Singapore or New Zealand or other parts of Southeastern Asia, you know you are a long way from New York -- like 10,000 miles or so. When we head to Johannesburg, South Africa from JFK tomorrow, that will be a long distance (approximately 8,000 miles).

When it comes to a "telephone" conversation, the words "long distance" don't really mean anything. Many of us remember the phone ringing decades ago at grandma's house at holiday time and the room immediately being urged to "shhhhhh" because the call was "long distance". Hurry, we woul