Fond memories of early experiments with hypertext

This one will really resonate with Mac users of a certain age -

Miss Hypercard? Try Tilestack.

Stacks can be published to Blogger, Facebook, Wordpress, and your (or somebody else's) iPhone, among other places.

The cluetrain left the station some time ago

There are many ways to measure how screwed Republicans are after the last election.

You can look at the avalanche of swing states that broke big for Barack. You can look at the demographic shifts that left McCain-Palin with decisive wins only among voters over age 60 and towns with populations under 50,000. Or you can look at my emergency telegram from John McCain.

For the uninitiated—and that would be anyone under 60—telegrams were the instant-message of the horse and buggy era, the Internet boom of the 1850s.

Telegrams don’t exist any more. Western Union sent its last telegram without much fanfare in 2006, after modern technology (beginning with the telephone) left it nothing more than a sentimental novelty.

But nostalgia is apparently alive and well at the RNC. They’ve been sending these same fundraising letters since at least the 1970s, when a portion of the population could still equate “telegram” with “urgent.”

Technology Gap - John Avlon @ The Daily Beast

Pricelessly (and tellingly) a source interviewed for this article goes on to describe McCain's election strategy as "...trying to scare the Abe Simpson vote."

And: on Meetup.com, McCain was not only comprehensively outdone by Obama, but in sheer numbers, by Bob Barr!

Vintage computer ads

If you've been interested in the computer industry for a while, BoingBoing has assembled a collection of 101 vintage magazine ads that will be a real stroll down memory lane.

Just let me get my walkin' cane.

Below, what looks to be a newspaper circular ad for one of the best computers I ever owned, bang-for-the-buck, and considering existing technology at the time: the Radio Shack Model 100 was an ultraportable machine that ran on AA batteries (!) and was a writer's dream.

(via Gizmodo)

Herding cats

I don't know who said it first, but it's a truism: managing IT projects is like herding cats.

EDS turned the concept into a very funny television ad:

This could give new depth of meaning to "dead spots" in cellular coverage zones

Telemetry - the process of measuring critical indicators, and then relaying that information to a remote site for interpretation - has all kinds of interesting implications for improvements in the ways we manage what we measure.

Let's say the critical indicators you're measuring are a human being's "vital signs" (respirations, heart rate, blood pressure, etc.)

We've done this for race-car drivers, pilots, and astronauts for many years now, and equipment that does this kind of thing in a medical crisis is on the back of many (if not most, by now) ambulances. Smart defibrillators, which "interpret" a person's EKG and administer an electric shock to stop dangerous arrhythmias, can be found in mall food courts these days - or you can buy one for your home or office at Amazon.com for roughly the same cost as a Macbook.

Now, consumer-level medical telemetry appliances are about to proliferate. Although I hope for many more years of relatively good health, I am hopeful that when the time comes, I will be able to be fitted out with the nth generation of this gear:

The Bluetooth wireless technology that allows people to use a hands-free earpiece while making a mobile telephone call could soon alert the emergency services when someone has a heart attack, Ofcom predicts.

The communications regulator said that sensors could be implanted into people at risk of heart attack or diabetic collapse that would allow doctors to monitor them remotely.

If the “in-body network” recorded that the person had suddenly collapsed, it would send an alert, via a nearby base station at their home, to a surgery or hospital.

New wi-fi devices warn doctors of heart attacks (Times Online, 7 May 2008)

Information overload: it's official

We’ve hit information overload: The amount of data people create now exceeds the amount of space available to store them.

People sent emails, took digital pictures, processed credit cards and generally did things that collectively created 281 exabytes of data by the end 2007, according to the research company IDC. (“Exabyte” sounds made up, but it’s a real term meaning 1,000,000,000,000 megabytes.) IDC also added up all the computer drives, backup tapes, CDs, DVDs, memory sticks and other devices that store data and estimated that their total capacity is only 264 exabtyes.

There aren’t data just drifting in the ether somewhere. A lot of the data that get created—say, an Internet phone call–never get stored. Other data get erased or recorded over. It’s the digital equivalent of a conversation going in one ear and out the other. But for the first time in human history, we couldn’t save all this information if we wanted to, according to IDC.

It's Official: There's Too Much Information (Wall Street Journal Business Technology Blog)

Nearing his Canadian breaking point

Several years ago, I had the chance to visit a tech-support call center for one of the big computer companies. The technician gave me a second pair of headphones so I could listen in on his conversations with the hapless users.

I learned so much that day. I learned that all computer companies outsource tech support to dedicated call-center companies. I learned that the Users can be outrageously rude to these hapless tech-support reps, taking out their built-up frustration on somebody who had nothing to do with causing the problem.

And I learned that when they say, “Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes,” that’s only partly true. They also record your calls so they can pass around recordings of the funniest ones.

[...]

A Canadian customer was calling to find out if there was a faster way to trigger menu commands than mousing up to the menus.

Agent: Certainly, sir. There are keyboard shortcuts for many of those commands. For example, suppose you want to trigger the Select All command…

Caller: Yes, I use that one all the time! How do I do it?

Agent: Well, you just press Control-A.

Caller (after a pause): Well, that’s not working for me.

Agent: Do you have a text document open in front of you?

Caller: Yes, I sure do.

Agent: OK, now press Control-A.

Caller: I am, but nothing happens.

Agent: The text isn’t highlighted?

Caller: No, there’s no change at all.

Agent: That’s odd. If you press Control-A, the whole document should be highlighted. Try it again. Press Control-A. Tell me exactly what’s happening.

Caller (nearing his Canadian breaking point): Listen. I’m pressing Control, eh? And nothing’s happening, eh?

David Pogue: Tech Support Gets a Reprieve While Users Take a Hit (6 March 2008)

Hat tip: Greg

OLPC hits a snag or two

The One Laptop Per Child initiative is foundering on the rocky shoals of politics... and tech-company hardball:

In an interview with the BBC, Nigeria's education minister questioned the need for laptops in poorly equipped schools.

Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku said: "What is the essence of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

"We are more interested in laying a very solid foundation for quality education which will be efficient, effective, accessible and affordable."

The previous government of Nigeria had committed to buying one million laptops.

Dr Aja-Nwachuku said he was now assessing OLPC alongside other schemes from Microsoft and Intel.

[...]

Professor Bender said there was still an "aggressive" effort to undermine the charity.

"There is still a concerted misinformation campaign out there," he said.

Mr Bender said he would not speculate on who was behind the alleged campaign.

"Wherever it is coming from, it exists," he told BBC News.

Politics stifling $100 laptop (BBC News)

Technology companies, which at the end of the day are driven almost completely by ideas, are FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) generating machines.

When they perceive a threatening idea, they attack it publicly by spreading FUD (like a squid sprays ink), while privately angling to cut the best deal for themselves.

OLPC supporters see the project as almost pure altruism; Microsoft and Intel see it as having just created a massive new market... and one they desperately want a piece of.

As a practical matter, the laptop design that finally makes it to the masses is likely to be running some version of Windows and have "Intel inside."

Service Journalism 2.0

San Diego public radio station KPBS FM was knocked off the air when the wildfires raging in their area burned down the power lines feeding their transmitter.

But they're not only broadcasting again over another area station, they're leveraging technology to create superb, computer-enhanced situational awareness for people in the area.

I've seen the future and it works.

KPBS is maintaining an incredibly useful Google Maps-based data site for people in the area, and also offering regular status updates via Twitter (which can send information to a variety of platforms, including mobile phones.)

This must be a complete godsend for anyone who's trying to keep up with the latest news and understand how it might affect them.

(Here's the link to the KML file if you want to view the area in Google Earth.)

Party like it's 1999

mr bubble
Originally uploaded by Carol Esther.

Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.

Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.

Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.

Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.

More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.

There's a lovely symmetry in the choice of Yahoo as the benchmark for 2007 dotcom value vs. Facebook.

Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again (The New York Times)

Meet the Geek Marketers

In my Advertising Age column this week I wrote about a new career path I see emerging. It exists both in PR/advertising agencies and on the client side as well - The Geek Marketer.

My thesis is this: it's very difficult for anyone in marketing to keep up with all the twists the digital space because technology changes so darn fast. It's like chasing a cheetah. Most marketers - be they clients or agency side - are heads-down running their business. Therefore, companies are creating a new role. They're hiring people who act as translators between the ultra geeks and the marketers, if you will, and shepherd the development of pilot programs...

...These cross-trained specialists are fluent in both worlds and bridge them. They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.

(Micro Persuasion: The Geek Marketer, September 4, 2007)

I think blogger Steve Rubel is on to something here, and not solely because he's just neatly summarized important aspects of my job description. :-)

There has always been money in being the resident geek-to-suit translator, especially in the IT business. I concur that it's the *pace* of change that is now driving this to the fore.

I'm going to have sanction you for "word processing while clueless"

The FTC spills the beans on Whole Foods' acquisition strategy, including a plan to contain Wal-Mart as they move into the organic grocery space... via a very elementary editing error while using Microsoft Word (and, presumably, Acrobat or something like it to create distributable PDFs.)

The Associated Press loves it:

Many of the details in the documents, which FTC lawyers filed electronically, were not meant to be released publicly, but words intended to be redacted were actually just electronically shaded black. The words could be searched, copied, pasted and read in versions downloaded from court computer servers.

Court officials realized the mistake and replaced the filing with a version using scanned pages of the redacted documents. Like covering up parts of a page with black paper before photocopying, there is no way to remove the blacked-out portions from the final copy.

The Associated Press downloaded the document from the public server before it was replaced by a properly redacted version.

In a statement late Tuesday, Whole Foods said it was investigating the "apparent improper release by the Federal Trade Commission of confidential proprietary business information."

"All information shared with the FTC was done so with the reasonable understanding that it would be handled appropriately," the statement said.

FTC spokesman Mitchell Katz declined to comment on the matter.

FTC's Whole Foods Case Revealed (AP, via Yahoo News)

I'll bet.

Automation, not outsourcing, will take your job

By 2015, 40% of today's IT job roles will be lost to automation, predicts [the Gartner Group.] Although the number of people employed in the US manufacturing sector has declined steadily during the past 50 years, productivity per worker continues to rise and has doubled in the past 20 years.

'The same trend will be true of IT-related jobs as we move further into the information age. Multiple, simultaneous trends are converging in IT departments' say the analysts.

Gartner predicts: Nearly Half of IT Jobs will be Lost to Automation by 2015 (Usability News, February 4 2005)