tech ronin

G5 PowerMacs - Oops!

These specs appeared briefly on the Apple Store yesterday. Heads will roll! A dual 2 ghz PowerMac is mouth-watering good news to me. Whoa! And I thought my dual 867 was fast. I'm hoping we'll see official information and a peak at the rumored new design on Monday when Steve does his thing at the Apple Developer's Conference. The Palo Alto Apple store will be showing the live webcast at their little theater at 10 am. I'm tempted to make the 50 mile trip just for the fun of it. I know there will be a humdinger of a line which will be a guaranteed blast - the salivating Apple faithful are great fun. However, I would need to leave early - not one of my favorite things on a Monday morning. If that doesn't work, I can catch a replay in the pm via Quicktime at the Apple site here.

Sidewalk Surfin' 2

One of my current research projects is finding good web content for a 240x160 pixel screen with slow, 50 kbps Net access. Mobile surfing needs to change to fit the constraints. I need to actively minimize number of pages loaded and maximize information per page. I created a page on my website called Tiny Screen Links where I will build up my URL list - I'll make it the default homepage for my sidekick.

Surfing has a ways to go. My most fun so far is portable email and the occasional good, long, mostly text, web pages I've stumbled upon.

I'm also researching chat and instant messaging. These things have become very popular with teenagers, but I hear the live aspect can be really cool. Now that I have the ultimate chat/IM device, I'm going to find out.

Treo 600 official

Treo|Central has a great story on this new device announced today. I've got until June 25th to finish my eval of my own new T-mobile Sidekick. Think I'm gonna stay the course, but with technology surging forward all around me, my eyes are glued to the web to make sure I'm not missing something even sweeter in the wings.

The Treo 600 is scheduled for a Fall release. I first wrote about it on June 7th. This thing is looking great but has a fatal flaw that keeps me singing sidekick. It's only got a 160x160 pixel screen compared to my sidekick's spacious 240x160 - 50% more real estate. Tiny-screen surfing on my sidekick is already challenging. Every pixel is prized on a screen this size.

I'll pass on the Treo 600, but here are the otherwise satisfying specs:

• ARM 144 mhz cpu - same as Zire 71
• Sleek: 4.41 x 2.26 x .87 inches. 6 oz.
• Camera built-in: 640x480
• MP3 player
• Runs Palm OS 5
• Web browser supports Javascript
• Easy overlaid numeric keypad for dialing
• Slot for SD/MMC, bluetooth or wifi cards

The Sidekick wins today because it has a killer QWERTY keyboard, a big enough screen, easy user interface, enough memory and 24/7 cellular Net access and $20/mo unlimited Net access. If this Treo would have had a beautiful 320x320 transflective screen like the Tungsten C and Zire 71, I would wait for it. But it doesn't.

Lack of women in IT

I just posted the following as the 25th or so comment in a thread about the dearth of women in IT. As a seasoned female computer professional, I was compelled to put my two cents in - please refer to the thread to see the context I was writing into:

I want to throw out a few of my ideas about all this. I’ve been a full-time computer professional since 1980. Have degrees in Psych, Sociology and MBA in marketing with quite a few computer courses sprinkled in along the way. First a couple facts about me for context.

I always liked computers - I like the “possibility machine”ness and intellectual stimulation of software.

I like gadgets (I was a tomboy, have 2 older brothers with Master's degrees in math - one's an actuary, one’s a systems programmer and my Dad’s a civil engineer.) I never found math very interesting, but computers are fascinating to me. I like the application of them. The ease of creating. I’m an abstract thinker, so they are easy for me.

I was an ardent feminist in my college and early grad school days. I even went through a man-hating phase. I was mad that movies were mostly about men. I was mad that my weight was such a big deal in determining whether I was considered dateable by men. I was mad that being smart, openly, was a turnoff for the vast majority of men. I was mad that there’s very little in the way of a history of women or women in arts and literature. I was mad that women weren’t expected to be creative, powerful, athletic and smart. I was mad that I was expected to be a secondary player in life. After a few years, I calmed down and essentially got over it. I think I had good reason to be mad.

I leaned towards working in a male-dominated field because the pay and respect was better. I didn’t necessarily think through all the negatives of being a minority and the negatives of dealing with stereotypes and being the token woman, etc. I also didn’t consider ahead of time but ran into the fact that these good jobs in male-dominated fields were predicated on the job-holder having a wife to keep the household and social life going. I didn’t have a wife so it was harder to come up with the energy to compete and excel and succeed as much as I wanted to.

So enough on me. Here are a few guesses:

1. Women are on-average more interested in social stuff, less interested in abstract stuff including computing. But there are lots of women who don’t fit that mold.
2. The numbers of women getting into computing now are probably going negative because of the dot-com bust. Women were willing to go into computing - perhaps not their first choice, all things being equal, which they are not - because computers has been the hot career ticket. When that perception changed, some women who weren’t really, really interested in computers, dropped it.
3. I do think that if there were more cool pieces of software, games and otherwise, with more social elements - I at least - would be more interested. I was immediately attracted to the concept of social software. I'm also attracted to personal growth software though I’ve seen little to none of it. I think there’s been less interest in these things because the field is male-dominated.
4. Whenever you are in the minority, it’s more awkward and uncomfortable. Also, you are breaking the female stereotypes which has a social cost. You don’t get as many strokes.
5. If you take the social role woman, it’s complicated and includes mother, homemaker, wife, do-gooder, willingness to help someone succeed and play the subordinate role for starters. These role expectations, and some of them get internalized, have to be accounted for by women when they make career decisions. I think all this stuff leads to fewer women applying to speak at conferences - it’s time-consuming and the expected return on effort isn’t all that high. AND, as a woman whose gone to lots of computer conferences - it’s a little isolated.

Here’s what I would like to see. I would like to see people who are in a position of authority/power at these conferences, at universities, in the press, at game companies, computer hardware and software companies and men at large:

• be sensitive to a woman’s plight.
• open your mind to see what’s missing in the computer field because there are so few women, especially women in positions of power and influence.
• solicit input from women
• hire qualified women in good jobs
• invite them to speak at conferences and make it easy for them - even give them special dispensation just so you can alleviate a bad situation and encourage the influx of new ideas, sensitivities and points of view that women can bring.
• fight for job descriptions that allow men and women to participate equally in family life and homemaking and careermaking

Thanks to those who’ve participated in making this a worthwhile inquiry and provided valuable information. Thanks for reminding me about this so I can keep it in mind - it’s hard sometimes swimming in an ocean that has blinders on (mixed metaphor for sure) that doesn’t acknowledge your experience.

I would like to be one of the movers and shakers in this new field called social software. Hello.

Sidewalk Surfin'

This is the lifesize screen of my new Sidekick. You can see the size of the type. Unfortunately, what you can't see is how crisp and clear the type really looks. The content of the screen is this post a couple edits ago without the photo.

My new super cell phone activated in about 20 hours and it's just now working on all cylinders. I called T-mobile's 24/7 techline. Very nice people. Well-organized and professional. But, they didn't pick up on the fact that I was signed up by CompUSA for a regular smartphone account instead of a special Sidekick account. Supposedly my Sidekick account is in the works and I will soon be able to upload my contacts database to the Danger server so they'll all auto-magically appear on my Sidekick.

I'll be able to enter data via my Safari web browser instead of typing in calendar entries etc. from my Sidekick. The thumbboard is cool and great for low volume entries as a I move about my world, but when I need to enter a bunch of text I would rather use my computer keyboard and type my usual 100+ words per minute - I was wondering, I think I'm about a 30 word per minute thumb typist at best. But, I plan to get faster - 50 wpm seems achievable. I'll let you know.

Now for the good stuff. It's working! I did my first test run this afternoon. First, I walked down to Peet's on Ethel - a back street FAR from the freeway and with lots of trees between me and the main Miller Avenue drag. I needed a music fix, so listened to Bonnie Raitt and Christina Aguillera on my way downtown. Once I arrived, however, I whipped out my Sidekick and put away the iPod. With the help of a decaf Mocha Freddo, I was on my way - Peet's decaf is like Starbucks regular - almost! I logged into Plasticbag.org one of my current favorite blogs. Access was pretty fast. I am not at all disappointed with speed. I was getting full signal strength at Peets. Woo hoo! I may be able to keep this little guy.

By the way, yesterday, one of the intellectuals of Pete's - a regular - told me that my Sidekick screen would be unreadable even in moderate sunlight. Not! Direct sunlight works great. Dark works great. The screen is superb. The type is razor-sharp! There's no sign of a big font option. I prefer the small type so I can get more screen real estate, but not everyone will go for this tradeoff.

On my way back through the trees again, I surfed, mostly reading one long blog entry that Tom Coates linked to called the Simple Guide to the A-List Bloggers. It's a parody. Not particularly generous - but perhaps there is some value in parody. It makes me wonder what this blog sounds like. And, don't tell me everyone doesn't surf or at least read a book when they walk. Multi-tasking - isn't it wonderful? Luckily, Ethel has little to no traffic. I have to be a little careful, especially when I've got my headphones on listening to my iPod. I don't hear the cars coming. Also while walking home, I made a phone call and sent an email. I just added a rule to my regular email program to redirect any email I receive that comes from someone in my address book to my sidekick's live email account. I assigned a sound to incoming email - it's very cool. And fun. When they designed this for the 18 to 35 year age group, they didn't scrimp on the fun factor!

This is so cool! I bet in a year or two this kind of thing will be the norm but right now it seems pretty thrilling. But, alas, I know I'll get used to it in a few months and take it for granted. Notice that I'm already assuming that I will be keeping this little guy. I am signed up for a plan that gives unlimited data (the only way to fly), 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends and free long distance for $60/mo. I'm gonna try to make that work at least initially. Hoping soon to cancel my AT&T cell service which is running me $80/month for 1000 anytime minutes. See. I may be a spendthrift but at least I try to be good.

1st U.S. Weblog Conference

Just found my first good blog of the Clickz Weblog Business Strategies Conference that was held in Boston Monday and Tuesday. This banner is pretty boring - I gotta say. And somehow a business weblog conference sounds boring too. Everything about a weblog is personal to me. It can be about business I guess... I have an MBA and am really into emarketing but it still is kind of a turn off. I guess I'm a little afraid that business as usual will ruin the good thing that weblogs are...

But this is a weblog conference. How cool is that? It's on Timothy Appnel's tima thinking outloud blog. Tim specializes in "identifying emerging technology trends such as Web Services, mobile computing, and peer-to-peer. As an independent consultant he writes about emerging trends and helps businesses to leverage technology to capitalize on new business opportunities". He's a consultant and a writer - let me see, I think I could stand doing that!!! A lot of the stars of the weblog world were there: Doc Searles (Cluetrain Manifesto), Dave Winer (Radio Userland), David Weinberger (Small Pieces Loosely Joined), etc. Check it out!

Activating Sidekick!

I'm sitting in my favorite corner of my living room - by the window on my black leather couch. On my left is my new 65,000-color T-mobile Sidekick. It is displaying the following message: "Waiting for Activation". I'm getting 4 bars of signal - the highest you can get. Sometimes it goes down to two bars and once it went down to one bar. All while sitting in the same place. Hmmm... I wonder why that is? Anyway, the directions say that activation takes up to 48 hours. That sucks! They also say that it usually takes only 1 to 3 hours. So, I'm sitting here with my Powerbook writing in my blog about the experience.

I went to CompUSA last night to buy it - I was wavering back and forth and finally left my house at 8:30 pm - they close at 9. I rushed out the door and made it over there by 8:50 pm. They had two left in stock and it took till about 9:00 pm for one of the store guys to find one in the back.

It being 9 pm, he didn't want to sign me up and said it would take about an hour. I raised an eyebrow and said fine. He eventually got rescued by another more senior guy who suggested I come back tomorrow (today) when their cell phone guy was there. So I went over around 3 pm today and bought myself a Sidekick.

I was considering going to a movie after my purchase when I left the house, but by the time I had the box in my hands, it was clear that the thing to do was to go directly home and start charging it and getting it activated. Couldn't quite do that, though, since between CompUSA and home is a Peet's Coffee and I'm hooked on their Mocha Freddos.

I went into Peet's and saw a couple folks I know - they wanted to see what was in the box I was carrying - I brought it in so I could study the manual while drinking my Freddo. Fat chance! Three more guys started hovering around. One of them suggested that I plug it in so that we could see the screen. He found an outlet across the room and bingo we were checking out the interface. Very cool! I need to photograph this thing ASAP. Maybe right now. Just a minute!

Not too bad a pic considering I'm holding the Sidekick with my left hand and taking the picture with my right - not easy, but I knew you would want to see this little guy for yourself. The text is much clearer - very sharp - than it looks here. You notice the keys light up nicely. I'm very impressed. When I first started it up, bells chimed sweetly, the scroll wheel on the right turned green and it was love at first sight. I'm hoping the cell signal in my local hangouts will be good. If not, I may need to be practical and return it within the 14-day return period. I can already tell that won't be easy. Wish me luck!

Free Agent Nation

I've worked as an employee for ten years (5 government, 5 corporate) and have had my own microbusiness for the last seventeen. This book tells it like it is and reminds me why I'm so addicted to personal technology - these are the modern-day equivalents of the tools of production that Marx wrote about. These are the tools of liberation. OK, maybe they are fun toys too! But who says you don't get to have fun in this life?

I'm an amateur futurist keeping up with big-picture books on social trends since starting with Alvin Toffler's Future Shock in the late sixties to The Third Wave, Megatrends, and, later, Megatrends 2000, Free Agent Nation and the Cluetrain Manifesto and many books in between. FAN is a very good book. As a microbusiness owner in 2003, it helps me understand myself and my situation better. It gives me LOTS of ideas and inspiration to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in this time of transition and economic challenge.

I started my business 17 years ago after reading a great book called Maverick Career-styles: The Way of the Ronin. The writing was on the wall even then - in the mid-eighties. I was willing to take a chance and strike out on my own after ten years of traditional employment because that book gave me a way of seeing that I might be more secure as a wiley and agile independent professional than I would be as a corporate drone. Dan Pink speaks my language! Well-written, entertaining and valuable read.

Amazon's Favorite People button

Ooh. I just found this button on Amazon while reading the customer reviews of a book. It says: "Add this reviewer to your list of Favorite People. Whenever one of them writes a new review, you'll see it on the Friends & Favorites home page. " I was just saying the other day that I want a way to find, collect and catalog "favorite people". This is very commercial and has a ways to go, but it's a start.

Amazon takes things a step further by notifying me of new reviews by my favorite people. This obviously serves Amazon's interest in exposing me to more new products, but it also serves my interest in hearing the opinions of my favorite people. I would like to see much more of this with variations and permutations throughout the online world. Not only can I find interesting people and log them, but, equally cool from my point of view, I can be found and become a favorite person too. There's lots less labor involved in being found by kindred spirits than there is in going out and finding them one by one. Can you say personal branding?

If this little favorite people button could spread, like a good meme does, throughout the Net, we would really have something. I know that little web services apps have been written that suck Amazon's CD cover art into a personal database. What if I could suck the favorite people data out of various "places" and then compile it into one big database? What if that could all happen automatically and continuously or just be regularly updated when I click a button? Then we would have a way to track our favorite authors'/people's work. We would have a way to track our own work as well.

Sidekick Sings

The new color T-Mobile Sidekick just went on sale at CompUSA. I went in on Friday to my local store, but they didn't have the color model yet. I tried out the old greyscale version since it's almost identical physically except for the color screen. With its horizontal orientation, the Sidekick is wider than my other suitors. The thumbboard feels great! This is a hot little machine. But how does it stackup against my new cell-pda wishlist?

• Thumbboard - best out there
  
• 320x320 screen - only 240x160 but the screen is large which helps a little
  
• Transflective 65,000 color screen
  
• Cellular wireless - T-mobile with GPRS support
  
• 802.11b wireless - nope
  
• Bluetooth - nope
  
• Affordable - $299 with new T-mobile plan
  
• Affordable service plan - $20/month extra for unlimited data access
  
• Cell functions - MIDI ringtones, call log, phone list dialing, 2x text messaging
  
• PDA functions - calendar, contacts, to do list, notes
  
• Email - comes with its own email address - supports 2 other POP3 accounts
  
• Web - Chat - AIM
  
• Synching software - not ideal, web synchronizing only
  
• Sleek and light - a might bulky, 6.2 ounces, 1.1" thick
  
• Speakerphone - nope
  
• Voice recording - nope
  
• Scrollwheel - translucent and changes colors - plus an 8-way D-pad
  
• 64 mb built-in - 32 mb
  
• Memory expansion slot - nope!
  
• Camera - 640x480 - no but tiny plug-in 320x240 px camera is a $39 option
  
• GPS locator - nope

c|net rates the color Sidekick as 8.2 and an editor's choice handheld. Maybe I could sell my Treo 90... what do you think?