tech ronin

Added my Twitter feed here in the side bar

Hi folks. I just added my Twitter feed (the feed will always show my latest 5 posts) to the sidebar near the top of my page. For the most part, these are my 1-liner ideas as they occur to me. Some of ideas the I post on twitter may later appear in a blog post where I have plenty of room to do them justice.

One of the things that stops me from doing some blog posts is that the idea is either too short or too involved. Now I have a place to put my quick insights, opinions and finds.

Lately, I've been surfing the social web. These are the sites that take advantage of exciting social web and web 2.0 concepts like friends, groups, ratings and comments. The top one at the moment is Twitter. I like following the thoughts of smart and interesting people who are interested in some of the same things I am.

If you are going to use Twitter as an information source, all you need to do is find people whose thoughts and discoveries you want to follow. A good way to do that is to use TweetScan or Summize to find people who are engaged with some of the things you are.

If you just bought an iPhone, you'll probably want to search for the word iPhone. That sort of thing.

Oh, you'll want to get yourself a free Twitter account, of course.

The second thing you can do with a Twitter account is to post your own thoughts and discoveries in 140 character blurbs. You can include URLs by typing or pasting them in.

You'll want a Twitter client if you get more serious about it just because then you have a more powerful tool at your disposal. I'm using and enjoying Twhirl on my Mac these days.

As far as what to post, the rule that unless you are only trying to communicate with close friends, don't post about the mundane things you are doing, is a good one. If you are going to watch or finished watching a movie and can add some interesting comment about it that's good. You can really post whatever you want. Maybe just type something in for now.

Later on, if you enjoy writing to an audience, you'll be thinking of them when you write and that will guide what to post. If you use Twitter professionally or want to build up your blog readership, this could start feeling like work. That's OK in those contexts, but otherwise, have fun with what you want to do and if something seems like a good share, share it.

This really wasn't meant to be an introduction to Twitter, but I wanted to explain what the Twitter posts are doing on my blog page and while writing, thought of a few tips for those of you who are interested in what Twitter is all about.

New Blog Look for the New Year

Sometime in the last week, I just got sick of the look of Tech Ronin. Too bad because it is a lot of work to change things. But then, it is quick to get started and that's what I've done so far.

Here's the new look. Yes it is still me. Still Tech Ronin. And this may be a transitional look. I'm not sure how much of this will stay but someone at TypePad put a lot of work into this look and I really like it. I want to add something so every link in the side columns isn't underlined, but other than that, this is AOK by me.

Right now I am doing spring cleaning of my long neglected link lists. It takes a while. You need to click every link and see if it works, change it if the URL has changed and delete things that are dead. Good stuff! Once I clean out the old, I can get more enthused about adding some new things.

My favorite new feature is the categories cloud. I've wanted one of these for forever and now it is a simple option to check or not check. That's what I like, click to get a new feature. I can program, but I'm busy and would rather get what I want without getting down and dirty with the code.

I have also added links to my flickr, del.icio.us and twitter accounts on the left. And a Save to del.icio.us link underneath each post. All by simple menu selections. Go Typepad!

Consumers are Rising Up Out of their Barcaloungers, Part 1

As you may have forgotten due to a large outpouring of blogging about personal technology lately, my blog is called Tech Ronin. And it's not meant to be just about gadgets. Gadgets and personal technology including computers and software are the tools of modern times that make it possible for individuals to create their own careers and successful businesses.

The other half of the equation in Tech Ronin is the individual -- knowledge-, tool- and network-enhanced. Modern times have largely taken away the security, predictability and practically guaranteed comfortable lifestyles many of our parents and grandparents *enjoyed* in the 20th century. The corporate job. The staying with a single employer like Ma Bell, PG&E or the government through to retirement.

My own father worked for the federal highway department as a bridge engineer through to retirement and got a very nice pension. And he's retired. What a concept! To be sure, there's still the government with some jobs there and big companies that seem likely to be around a long time but there's also a lot more turbulence and uncertainty about that longevity. Add in 9/11 and Katrina lately and things seem pretty darned unpredictable.

As I've mentioned before (such as Social Networking Made Easy, Part 4, 5, 6, 7, Jobless Recovery), our whole idea of the phrase good job has slipped out of our grasp. Good jobs used to seem like they had a fairly long duration. Tom Peters, corporate guru par excellence, strongly suggests that you regard yourself as *Me, Inc.*. This is a strong hint from someone who knows. Inside or outside the corporate walls, this strategy applies.

But, let's say, like me, you are outside the corporate walls (or would like to be if you could make it work). Let's say you have a company of one or more that's providing probably professional services of some sort. That's a lot like being a *gun for hire*. Might look like subcontracting. It's not a real business like where you mortgage your house to start creating widgets you hope will sell. You can start your business with a credit card (or modest savings if you are one of the seemingly rare Americans who has some savings).

It starts simply by going out and getting or creating your own business cards and putting up your first website, which I highly recommend be a blog with some flexibility to put up auxiliary *static* pages for background information. I think TypePad is quite useable for this at this point albeit with nowhere near enough documentation (hint, hint).

The world that we knew with workers and employers seems to be breaking down fast in the face of modern technology. It's crumbling into a finer granularity -- individuals. First we got our own computers. Wow! Now we have a global Web full of web sites and services, eBay (global marketplace), Craigslist (Net-enhanced local marketplaces), TypePad (your own printing press), Skype for free or near-free long distance calling. And those are just a few bigger names you already know.

I just got my latest issue of Trendwatching.com's newsletter this morning (it's an ezine but newsletters nowadays are almost always ezines aren't they?). It's called Minipreneurs:

a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on.

I love it. Looks like there's a much bigger wave of self-employment and entrepreneurism in the works. Instead of being fired or quitting your job, you dabble in some way in the global market for goods and services (not the stock market). It might be by having a blog (Typepad helps you put text ads into your blog now to make a little extra money). But it could be trading a couple things on eBay. Just sticking your toe in. A way to make a few extra bucks on the side maybe. An offshoot of your hobby that someone is willing to pay for. These mini extensions into the world of commerce are accessible to everyone! Not only professionals, whatever they are.

Trendwatching.com talks mostly about consumer trends, but luckily they don't think of consumers as just consumers anymore. They are very much watching and analyzing from the point of view that the days of the passive consumer are over. So-called consumers are rising up out of their barcaloungers and creating -- and selling what they create or just selling stuff they already have or know. Cool stuff. Read it. More on this.

Technorati Tags: careers, meinc, minipreneurs, personalbranding, quittingyourjob, ronin, selfemployed, solopreneurs, yourownbusiness

My New RSS 2.0 Feed Here

Hi folks. I got with the program and started using Feedburner to generate my news feed. Now when you subscribe using my orange FEED button in the left column or just grab this, you'll get the finest of RSS 2.0 feeds. Try it! If you do, you'll also help me track my readership which I will greatly appreciate. Who knows, maybe all that readership information will inspire me to greater blogging heights?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, RSS

The World is Flat, Now What?

I'm just digging into The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and am enjoying it. Lots of good stuff. I'm on page 29 and it is a 479 page book. I can already tell you one major issue I have with it, though.

There's a working assumption that globalization is overall a good thing. That's not so bad, but it seems that Friedman looks for every opportunity to sell it. He is already trying to make the case that even though outsourcing is moving jobs out of the US at an accelerating pace, it's all gonna be fine:

I firmly believe in the lesson of classical economists about moving work to where it can be done best. ...Work gets done where it can be done most effectively and efficiently. That ultimately helps the New Londons, New Bedfords and New Yorks of this world even more than it helps the Bangalores and Shenzhens. It helps because it frees up people and capital to do different, more sophisticated work, and it helps because it gives an opportunity to produce the end product more cheaply, benefiting customers even as it helps the corporations. ... India's growing economy is creating a demand for many more American goods and services. What goes around comes around. p.20 - 24

Wouldn't that be nice? This is the argument/religion of economics and the argument of the pro-globalization folks. Work should go to the lowest cost producer. That's efficiency. That drives the economy. There are some negatives in these low cost working conditions and for the environment (work goes where environmental regulation is least), but hey?

I have an MBA so I know this drill. I like the drill to an extent. But I live here in the US. I was born here and was planning to die here. But this whole leveling of the international playing field thing could be a problem for us high-living Americans. We are talking about the hollowing out of the American economy here.

Let me get personal and use myself as an example. I'm currently selling my Studio Manager software product 40% internationally and 60% in the US. Few of my sales are local and I rarely ever meet with my customers face to face. I talk with them on the phone and do a lot of emailing and every once in a while a client pays to have me fly to their location to provide training, consulting and customizing services. But most don't.

I doubt if a business like mine would exist except in these times where I can make my product known online and email my software and annotated pdfs, email and talk long distance very inexpensively. I'm on the receiving end of some of the benefits of globalization. I work out of my home. My employees are actually freelancers who work out of their homes and meet with me typically once or twice a week as needed. Work ebbs and flows - I have flexibility, they have flexibility.

But then there's the other end of the equation. I live in Mill Valley, California. One of the most expensive places on earth to live. Real estate is astronomical here. Labor costs are about as high as anywhere. There are places in the US that have a cost of living that is half of what it is here. Does my Mill Valley location help me economically? Not as much as it used to when I had a local business. Now I compete with software solutions that are made anywhere not just local consultants who have cost structures similar to mine.

I'm doing OK so far. There's still lots of cultural friction that is to my advantage. My product is in English and appeals to English-speakers (but individual customers have spent the time to translate it to Spanish and Japanese and a French version is in the works). Most of my sales come from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We share a relatively common culture and that produces a sense of confidence that plays a key role when software purchase decisions are being made.

But, longer term, I may have to consider moving to a place where it won't cost me so much to live so that I will be able to compete with low cost providers. To increase my advantage further, I should consider outsourcing some of my development. Perhaps I should have an English-speaking East Indian helping me with my FileMaker work. That's what this world is coming to.

The funny thing is that I know a FileMaker developer who has moved from Vermont to Panama in the last six months to save money and is now paying $400 a month for a three bedroom house. He has three brilliant Siberian programmers doing most of his development for him. He communicates with them by instant messaging every day. I have no idea what he pays them but he sells their time to his customers for $65 per hour. He's taking this globalization thing seriously.

I identify as a free agent. At this point in time, being a free agent seems very appropriate and adaptive. Working for myself, I have to be a generalist and handle all sorts of disciplines. I'm light on my feet. I keep current. I look for opportunities. I try to find ways to take advantage of new technologies and ways to land on my feet when faced with the inevitable ups and downs and twists and turns. I feel like a ... tech ronin.

Technorati Tags: Books | Social Trends | Economics | New Economy | Career | Tech Ronin |

Blogging: Improving the Quality of your Hits

Have you ever looked over the stats for your blog to see what people are reading? I have, and it's not pretty. Let me show you a random bit of stats for this blog compliments of Typepad:

These are almost all coming from Google and they are almost all about the latest *hot* gadgets. A more impressive term is personal technology, but still. I have to say that these *searchers* have good taste. Only the best for my google-based readers.

The truth is that I always have my ear to the ground for the best personal technology. It's really just me being curious and trying to get what I want. But, because of that, I track about 40 different sources with some regularity and hit places like Gizmodo, Engadget, The Gadgeteer, PDA 24/7, Russell Beattie, et. al. almost daily with my trusty newsreader NetNewsWire. I find stuff that's hot. And when I know it's new, hot and cool, I often write about it with my particular slant.

My blog name is Tech Ronin, after all. Tech is a major feature, whether it is gadgets or software or the impact or opportunities of technology. Anyway, the confession is that I do these little personal technology articles partly because I know they are going to get a lot of hits.

But what I really want is a following. And not just because I find cool technology. I really want the following to be about my authentic voice, my ideas, my writing. Stuff that's much more subtle than things you can find by putting a word or two into Google.

I guess you could say that my personal technology stuff is partly my loss leader. I'm really up to bait and switch. Maybe some folks who find me on Google will decide to subscribe. I want subscribers because that starts to feel like friends, associates, partners, community. It would be cool to gain financially, but that's way down the list.

OK, I think I promised to tell you how to improve the quality of your hits. Here's how. Don't sell out and narrow-focus your blog to the point that you forget that it's the added value, the personal touch, the writing, the connection and accessibility that will get you fans.

I Wanna Be a *Clean Freak*

Found this timely article in NewsWeek magazine and, naturally, it's available free online. Apparently I'm not the only one with this problem! I love organization but, all the stuff in my life gets the best of me - frequently. If you feel trapped by too much stuff and/or have trouble finding things, read this little article.

Right now I'm aspiring to acquire the Getting Things Done habit but I've still yet to set aside the requisite 2 straight days to create a gigantic pile of to do items and then create the system around them such as an A-Z filing system, project and someday/maybe list plus action items for many of those things. The end result is amazing I hear.

I'm building up to it... You see I just needed to acquire some of the basics like my new Zire 72 and Shadow Plan for starters. I also got a really cool chrome stapler. Industrial strength for sure. And, don't forget the amazing Brother label-maker plus tons of bright and shiny file folders. Don't even think about telling me I'm procrastinating!

I even have put a few things into folders with pretty labels on them. It's helped. A little. Obviously, I'm in need of the triple-strength GTD marathon weekend! Hope to report back soon that I've done the work.

One more thing. I was perusing David Allen's Tips & Tools page and ran across his Phone Logs - Get Rid of Them post. According to David, it is way uncool to have a phone log. As he says:

Actually, you should just blend it into your "notes" category for in-coming ideas, input, and information.

Come on--if you need a "phone log", then you need a "they-stopped-me-in-the-hall log" and an "oh-yeah-I-just-remembered log". Can anybody tell me what's the difference?

You get the picture. I've been worrying about the fact that I don't have a phone log for a while now...

Now Full Newsreader Feeds

Sorry if I've been slow on this, but I am now featuring complete RFD feeds compliments of TypePad. If you like reading your blogs with a newsreader like my favorite, NetNewsWire, you'll be pleased that you don't have to click to my blog to read the rest of a post that you like.

The reason I've been slow to use the full post in the feed is that it didn't look very good. Now I get the little graphics that I use in my posts plus proper paragraph breaks at least. Now I don't mind the way the posts look. Good to go! I was wondering lately why I could see graphics in other people's posts on my newsreader but not on mine. Apparently excerpts don't get the full treatment. Figures. I was a little slow on the uptake. Next would be TypePad's ability to offer an XML choice where comments are included. I really like that option.

I go back and forth between my newsreader and surfing people's blogs via my Safari browser. That probably won't change, but I sure like it that I can efficiently see whose talking about what in a hurry with my newsreader. And, the best part is that I can go offline with it on my Powerbook when out in the world with a spare few minutes and no Wifi connection. If we could get micro-notebooks at about 2 lbs with at least 640x480 TFT screen for about $600, I'm there.

I've been carrying my 5-1/2 lb Powerbook 15" around in a backpack the last 6 months when I do my daily exercise walks to Starbucks and downtown Mill Valley, but I've stopped because I think it's starting to bother my back. Major bummer! Now I'm stuck trying to surf with my P800 - the screen width of 208 and the tiny letter size is cramped to say the least. I don't have a newsreader for my P800 yet either.

I still think we need two go-everywhere mobile devices. With Bluetooth on the 2 lb unit (lighter is even better), I'll be able to surf even when I'm not near a hot spot via my P800 or whatever my next Bluetooth-enabled cell phone will be. I've invested in 3 pairs of pants with cargo pockets, so I'm ready for this slightly bigger-screened device when its available. Right now, I'm down to putting slim paperback books in these pockets. Right now I have Google Pocket Guide in one pocket and Panther Pocket Guide in the other.

I wish Apple would do a 2004 version of the Newton with color TFT and hi rez. I still have my original v1.0 Newton in the closet. Too slow but really innovative try. I wonder where, when and whether the iPod and Newton will meet? With the tech economy showing signs of life, maybe Steve will help us out...

Where to Live?

Ever since I started hearing about the internet, I started thinking about the possibility of someday moving out to some remote location with lots of trees, open space and cheap property. Of course, that remote location would need to have internet access and some kind of express delivery like FedEx. I live 10 miles from San Francisco, so I pay a substantial premium for being so close to a major city. It's very convenient, believe me.

As I started thinking about moving out to the boondocks somewhere, I thought it wouldn't work for me because I've been primarily a computer consultant and my base of customers is very local. After doing consulting for 18 years, I've got a big reservoire of satisfied customers - well, maybe there's a couple out there who aren't ;-). I get a lot of business from local referrals. I thought I needed to be a writer *or* create a software product. Then I could move to the boonies.

That led to my developing a software product to experiment with the possibility of having a business that wasn't location-dependent. And, lo and behold, my software business is now my primary source of income with my consulting a second and lots of the consulting is done remotely using phone and email with lots of pdfs and file exchange. It works quite nicely.

So now that I am capable of living somewhere else, where could be as good as where I am right now, I wondered? My first thought is - probably nowhere except other similar situations near really cool English-speaking cities such as Vancouver, BC, Seattle, WA, New York City, San Diego, CA (the beaches are so great down there). So, one option is to move to one of these other places and work and just have a great time seeing what it's like there. I would throw in a few *foreign* cities as well such as London and Sydney. Two years per - or would it be 5 years?

I bet some people do this now and more will in *the future*. The reason I'm not likely to do it is that I am introverted enough that I would be homesick and have trouble making deep friendships quickly and would miss my friends and family. Or at least, that's what I imagine. The way you handle part of that problem is to either move somewhere where one of your friends has already moved or take one of your friends or partners with you if you can convince them to move.

But, this doesn't really fit my original idea of moving out to the boondocks where it is cheap. So here's my second idea: What if you could form a community or find a community out in the boondocks that was full of talented, creative, progressive and interesting people? I am spoiled by the big city of San Francisco - the cosmopolitan and liberal social standards. I like a *live and let live* environment. I like a place that frowns on ethnic and any other kind of prejudice even if everyone still has to struggle with it due to enculturation. I like a place where people are growing and experimenting. I don't want to worry about being harassed by rednecks because I'm not dressed conventionally. [To be continued]

Technolust needs balance

Due to some rather unpleasant medical bills this last couple of years and the economic downturn, I've had less disposable income than I've become accustomed to. Given the uncertainties I've talked about and the way in which we've lost the security that used to be part of the *good job* and all the rest, I've been thinking that there needs to be a balance in my weblog between rampant techno lust and economic sanity. Here's a few starters on this topic:

• I was known as the spendthrift by my father even as a child (among 4 children)
• I mentioned recently that my practicality quotient is near zero
• I'm an N (Intuitive) on the scale between S (Sensing) and N in the Myer's Briggs scale. Don't bother me with the details. I like the big picture.
• We in the U.S. are big spenders. We've consumed the world's natural resources this last hundred years like nobody's business.
• We've wasted so much - look at the full landfills around us
• We buy new clothes all the time
• We each individually drive cars
• If we can afford it, or, in many cases even if we can't, we buy big fancy houses and cars - the latest is SUVs
• But lots of us in my *boomer* generation and younger feel consumption guilt. We hate to throw things out because it reminds us how little we actually used it if at all. We recycle but know that not a whole lot gets done with all that recycling in a lot of cases.
• We either have money and spend it profligately or we don't have money to keep up with lifestyles we see on TV and in the movies, so we spend like heck the money we DO have. Lots of cheap stuff is very popular in some circles. And, of course, there's always the fancy shoes in the ghettos.
• I'm speaking for the Ronin among us and probably mostly the Tech Ronin who read this figuring the techier types read more blogs than the less technically inclined do. As independent contractors and micropreneurs surfing the waves without a safety belt, we might want to consider finding ways to live well without spending enormous sums of money all the time. We might want to break out of the hypnosis of the latest and fastest and smallest and coolest new gadget - even. I know its heresy, but I'm just thinking out loud here.
• I think I'm going to add a stream or category about small is beautiful or something because I see it as a great solution for those of us who may still be trying to adjust to the loss of the dot.con boom and the death of the good job. We might need to explore how to downsize in a smart, quality, personally satisfying and healthy way. This from Ms. Spend Thrift par excellence! We'll see how long my enthusiasm lasts but there's really lots to talk about. I will probably not go into the old standards very often - like bargain hunting tips or where to get the best deals. I'll be being my big-picture self and be looking at overall concepts.