tech ronin

FlipStart Micro PC 1lb

It looks like my back problems will soon be over. We've got a 1 lb micro notebook running XP coming this fall from Vulcan (a Paul Allen company). Pixel count first: 1024 x 600!!! I'm sure hoping this is going to have mega brightness to allow me to read the screen. The pixels can't be all that big. [Vulcan's Flash demo]

Here are FlipStart's dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1in. Twice as thick as the new iPod mini. A big pocketful I would imagine. But I didn't figure on getting this many pixels - enough for great websurfing, reading, writing or basic drawing - without paying some price in size. Another *drawback* I can live with is that you'll be thumb typing on this little guy but people are starting to get good at that.

And it has a 1 ghz processor, 802.11b/g built-in, 30 gb hard drive, 256 mb RAM, a USB2 port, internal microphone/speaker, headphone jack, integrated 1.3mp camera. Now the only immediate problems I've got are (1) waiting for it to arrive, (2) it's not a Mac and (3) price. $1500. I was hoping for half that but I have to admit I was not that optimistic I would get it. Maybe we can get one for $1200 street? I'll save my pennies for a machine like this!

Vulcan is thinking the way I've been thinking (and they've done something about it): "Vulcan's idea is to offer a machine that has the compatibility, power and application base of the mainstream Microsoft OS with a form factor that's little bigger than a PDA yet features a full QWERTY keyboard." Here's hoping Apple does the same for OS X with equal alacrity.

[Photo and quote compliments of The Register and release date and price estimate from Amy Wohl]

Releasing Clutter

Not my usual topic, but I've got a ton of it in my house and home office. I have filed away a lot of stuff that is no longer useful or relevant anymore and I'm resisting going through the files and dumping about 2/3rds of it. And then there are my multiple desks and surfaces and filing trays with unsorted piles of miscellaneous stuff that I haven't figured out what to do with or know is important but haven't taken the time to deal with. So, all the time I have the problem of not being able to find things quickly. An article I read today called simply Clutter 1 by Sally Shannon points out 3 compelling reasons to get rid of clutter:

1. We don’t trust our own resourcefulness. Not only will we find it (on the Internet, at the library, calling content experts…) when we need it, but we will have the most current iteration!


2. If what we need is buried in or hidden by our clutter, what difference will it make if we have it when we need it? We can’t find it. It’s taking up space and wasting our time looking for it.


3. Or even better, we don’t even remember that we have it. Then, as fate would have it, shortly after an event or circumstance or problem, we stumble on something and think - “Now, I could have used that last week/month….”

Maybe the reason I'm able to talk about my clutter is that this morning I had had enough of the clutter in my bedroom and spent about 45 minutes getting rid of things and putting them away. Both methods work. With that task out of the way other possibilities beckon...

Flickr YASN Rocks!

This Flickr thing is way cool. And you don't need an invitation!!! No problemo. Just go there and register. No hassles. You don't have to enter a lot of info if you don't want to.

Every group has a chat channel associated with it with the ability to drag and drop photos in, drag them out of the chat area into your own shoebox if they are *public*. Comments or messages can be attached to a photo. Photo thumbnails aren't displayed unless you click on the button. If you do you get a large thumbnail about 128x128. You can click again to get a full-sized photo which can be no more than 400px on its longest side.

So, of course, as a social scientist, I had to check it out. I joined up. I know, I know. How many of these YASNs can you do justice to? I don't know. Staying flexible right now seems prudent. But people whose opinions I trust were saying that it beats Orkut hands down. What's Ms. Curiosity to do?

So I just copied and pasted info from my Orkut profile into my Flickr profile. That took a couple minutes. I did need to make a 48x48 buddy list photo by cropping the photo I cropped to get my main Orkut photo. Different size but that didn't take long either since FireWorks was already open.

What's cool about Flickr is that it has its roots in a really awesome chat-oriented gaming technology from the Game Neverending which I know next to nothing about except that people whose opinions I trust like Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web think it is really hot and innovative. From what I can tell, people use the word addictive very frequently in reference to this game.

Founder Stewart Butterfield's vision for GNE really resonates:

It's a social space designed to facilitate and enable play... We play all the time, even when there is nothing like a formal game going on - think of great conversations and all the verbal play of "goofing around," of flirting, of musicians jamming: these are all moments where the creativity is flowing, you feel completely alive, and you are able to fully express yourself at the peak of your ability without even trying. It is the new possibilities for these kinds of states that we are trying to create.

Stewart and his mates decided to extract the 75% of GNE that was useful to a non-game YASN and put it together and came up with flickr. It's day one for me again - newbie again. But I can see that these photos are a great way to share personal information or just cool or illustrative pix in the context of a conversation. I can see wanting to be able to draw on the screen to illustrate something (that's not part of the technology - yet) in the moment. I can see collecting and taking photos with flickr in mind. I picked up 8 tonight at the FlickerCentral channel.

The other fun surprise is that Dina Mehta came online while I was there. Because I had already listed her as an acquaintance and vice versa, she showed up on my contacts screen as online. So I clicked her pic and IM'd a greeting. We proceeded to have our first ever conversation - we've never even emailed each other before, just exchanged guestbook entries on Ryze. She showed me a photo of her baby nephew. I showed her a funny Bush photo. We talked about flickr's business model and what not. I feel much more connected.

Remember my Orkut Day 7 post when I talked about how there needed to be "more new features and developments to keep me and everyone else interested...more things going on"? Flickr's real time chat and instant photo exchanges provide that extra thing that is missing at Orkut. If you are on Orkut, why not come here instead? This is more fun! And not-so-serious play greases the wheels of social networks better than anything I can think of.

I'm definitely coming back for day 2. If you read my blog and want to check out Flickr, look me up. And when GNE beta comes out, I'm there. I don't have any more time than you do. I would just rather explore things like this than watch TV. TV is so 20th century, you know. ;-)

References:
Mindjack interview with Stewart last Spring about GNE: Thinking Outside the MUD.
eWeek's Feb 12 Flickr write-up.
Where is My Mind? Flickr - Birth of an online community
Stuart Henshall's slightly cranky take: Go Flickr Go Figure

Angling towards the A-List

What to do when you are out in the boonies when it comes to the weblog world? Liz Lane Lawley just wrote an account of her gradual entry into the inner circles of blogging plus a mild rant against the *not so nice* complainers who are bad-mouthing some of the great A-Listers she's gotten to know and like.

My initial reaction to Liz's post, was yes, this is great. I'm glad Liz has had that experience. It's good to know that it is possible. Like Liz, I figured out after a while that it helps to link to and comment on someone's blog if you want them to someday link your way or comment. And I blogged it when I started the process: Blogging as Social Networking. Makes sense.

But as someone who didn't get lucky or employ the strategy Liz describes and have someone of Joi Ito's stature and centrality in the blogging community, comment in my blog early on in my blogging career, I can see the other side very well too. I've been blogging since about May 1st 2003 and I am out in the boonies from the standpoint of readership and google-juice. But I'm gradually, oh so gradually, making progress and am actually much more optimistic about gaining a readership that makes my writing efforts seem worthwhile than I was the first few months.

When you are starting and hoping to achieve a readership, it sometimes feels like the deck is stacked against you. After a while, you realize that people look at other people's links to decide what to read. You know they look at Technorati which weights links to your blog based on how many links the linkers have. And that's how Google decides who to put at the top of a Google search. As Clay Shirky has said in Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality, there's such a thing as a power law that's at play.

A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. This complaint follows a common pattern we've seen with MUDs, BBSes, and online communities like Echo and the WELL. A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on... later users come into an environment shaped by earlier users; the thousand-and-first user will not be selecting blogs at random, but will rather be affected, even if unconsciously, by the preference premiums built up in the system previously...

The early bird gets the worm. In this case, people early on the scene have an *unfair* advantage in terms of their position in the network. And it gets worse because *outsiders* can get *in* by linking to and commenting in the the blogs of the top dogs. So then you have people putting the A-List in their blogrolls hoping that an A-Lister will *discover* them and point back in their direction in some way providing a lot of visibility and google-juice. It works and the side-effect is that it reinforces the tendency for new readers and the old readers to read the A-list. And, of course, it's not just the A-List, but the B-List and C-List.

In fact, as a blogger advising someone on how to get some readers, I would suggest that you look for the not so famous but somewhat established blogger (that you like) to link to and read their blogs and comment in them. They might have more time for you than the A-List which as has been described elsewhere may be more in broadcast mode than networking mode. They have so many readers that they may not have the time to respond to many comments. Their *network* cards are full to overflowing.

What some of the good writers and observers who got into blogging late are thinking is: "I can blog as well as those A-List bloggers but I'm twisting in the wind out here with few to no readers". Then the thought might sneak in: "Do I have to kiss up to the A-List to get read? Whatever happened to the democracy of publishing that was supposed to be one of the big good things about blogging?"

Now, circling back, I totally agree with Liz that the A-Listers are good people. I'm sure if you approach them appropriately with good quality comments and links, they'll *let you into their club*. There is no club, officially or unofficially. Just a bunch of people who know each other and often like each other and network with each other and share ideas with each other (and perhaps link to each other). Nothing wrong with that. It's not a conspiracy at all. Just an artifact of the network effect.

It's not the democracy we could dream of. But, you know... You can still get known if you work at it. It might take a while. That's fine. The beauty really is that it's possible. And, besides, if you make a little effort and write OK, you'll get some readers. First one. Then two. I like it. I like the process of finding good bloggers and then linking or commenting. I want to spread the good word. And I have A-list, B-list, C-list and newbies on my list. Since I identify with the newbies and aspire to being slightly-famous, I like to give them exposure.

This is going to work out. But, I do still sometimes get pissed off when the A-List is always at the top when I do a search. I wonder how to find the late comers to the party who are especially good or just have the information I want right now. I'm all in favor of compensatory structures that can help level the playing field with grace.

iPDA sighting? Not!

Entitled "Advanced Sneak Peek of Apple Hardware", this pic is a small crop of a photo on Anil Dash's Link blog posted today. Anil says: "this tiny handheld device will revolutionize portable gaming". Hmmm... Maybe there is something to the rumor afterall. Looks like a little notebook with modem and ethernet ports in the back except smaller and narrower. I would rather it be wider than taller, but cool!

UPDATE 2-13, 11 am: On second thought, Anil is an avid PC user and perhaps this possibly doctored pic (the Apple logo looks funny) is his idea of a joke. Also the black *heavy* design would be a departure from Apple's current design standards. Not impossible, but unlikely. Foiled again! :-(

iPDA Rumor Questionable

Hi folks. When I wrote my last post about the iPDA rumor, it seemed a little iffy but I liked the prediction and hoped it was true. However, now that some time has passed, I've noticed that no one else is writing about it and one of my dear readers, Rich, suggested in his comment that Mr. Manzione doesn't have a lot of credibility. Rich referred me to a sort of *poison pen* post about Apple and its future that Mr. Manzione had written last Spring two weeks after Apple wouldn't provide a free replacement for his 17" Powerbook whose screen had broken too easily from his point of view (the matter seems to have resolved in John's favor later).

I'm not a regular reader of Mr. Manzione, so can't comment on his credibility in general, but he is still to this day an avid Mac user having just bought a new 15" Powerbook and blogged it enthusiastically today. He was awfully mad last Spring but still hangs in there and devotes himself to writing about the Mac.

Right now, this is a just one rumor with one person putting it out there and not giving any evidence except his word to support it. I recommend that you not have your hopes up too high on this rumor until some of the major rumor sites like Think Secret or MacOS Rumors have specifics that match up with Mr. Manzione's.

The PDA market is shrinking (17% in unit terms last year) but then the smartphone market (which is a PDA within a cell phone is increasing). My arguments and analysis in my last post still stand. I think it is inevitable that we will have palm-sized or slightly larger computers with at least 640x480 resolution in the next year. I hope Apple is one of the players. I like the idea of a hard drive inside such a device. We'll see how it plays out.

iPDA rumored by July

I made the name up, OK? But, sounds good doesn't it? John Manzione has a post on MacNETv2 claiming he is certain that there will be a hard drive-based PDA from Apple by this July, maybe sooner. Today Palm announced at its developer conference that it's upcoming Palm OS 6 - now dubbed Cobalt - will not support Mac OS X. So, John says, this forces Apple's hand to pre-announce or rush deliver their secret PDA. (However, Mark/Space says they'll release a version of Missing Sync for Cobalt later this year in time for the release of Cobalt-based devices.)

This *iPDA* is said to be cross-platform and to synch with iSynch. It will be an iPod and play well with iTunes. John says the screen will be 480x320 with 65k colors. You know I want 640x480 - come on Apple! There's already a PocketPC out there with 640x480 and the clamshell Sony Clie UX50 had 480x320 in September with big borders around it that looked like more room for pixels to me.

There's a sweet spot between a cell phone and a notebook if you give us enough pixels to work with. The device is supposed to use an "OS X-like operating system" and I'm reading that to mean a subset or lite version of OS X with less cpu-sucking UI glitz and *not* an upgrade of the iPod OS. That would be an interesting possibility. MacOS Rumors has recently speculated that OS X 10.4 would have closer ties to Linux. There are several Linux-based PDAs. Maybe there's a connection there.

If this is more of a tiny notebook than a big PDA, I like the direction. Hardware is getting fast enough to give us a full-fledged computer in our hand, more in the vein, but hopefully markedly better than, the PocketPC platform.

John says it will have a keyboard and a flip screen with Bluetooth, USB and Firewire. Guess it doesn't need a card slot. If not, you better have a way of getting wi-fi on it. Or maybe Steve is counting on us running Bluetooth cell phones with fast Net access like Edge or something? I could deal with that. Then I would go with a small bluetooth phone plus the iPDA or color iPod or whatever it will be called.

One more thing, as mentioned above, John says it will have a hard drive. Its supposed to use the same drive as the new iPodmini but with a larger capacity. Sounds like summer to me before Apple could pull that off since those bigger drives don't exist yet.

ETcon: blog report picks

I'm planning to add to this list. I know, the best laid plans...

Here's my first pick for best blog of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference: Ross Mayfield's blog. He magnificently propounds the social software perspective, so if you like that stuff, this is treasure to those of us who couldn't be there. He does a post for each session he attended. Hard worker, that Ross. And insightful, pithy reporting and commentary!

Here's a snippet from his Transcendental Social Networking post that really piqued my curiosity:

Motto: Don't build application, build contexts for interaction... Instant chat. Groups are objects. Using the social network as a whitelist.

OK, you should go to the O'Reilly Network ETcon page too. They have tons of links to coverage of the conference.

ETCon: Barcode Surfing

I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I've got a Master's degree in Sociology, so I like it that Microsoft has a resident sociologist, Marc Smith. At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this week, Marc presented about his research project called AURA (Advanced User Resource Annotation).

Once you are carrying wireless around with you in a cell phone or PDA, you are likely to soon be able to *listen* to the products on store shelves and hook into all sorts of useful info from the Net.

Posting on the presentation, Phil Windley says:

The project maps barcodes to names. Once that's done, all kinds of things are possible.

• Google the result for news, images, and other information.
• Annotate the product packaging
• Offer alternatives
• Show how and where it was manufactured
• Give alternative views of the nutritional data

[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Collaborative Environments

If you are a free agent, you may like me wish for the ultimate collaborative environment that enables you to easily work with other untethered, non-local free agents as if you were in the same place and organization. Email was the first solution and remains the best and most ubiquitous at this time. Email works for low intensity needs.

Online communities and their latest offspring, social networking services, are *lite* collaborative environments. You get messaging, testimonials and fancy bulletin boards. Community members can create them. This gives you conversations around topics of interest.

In her excellent post today entitled the Uncompany, Jeneane Sessum asks for more. She talks about the features of a powerful and expensive collaborative environment called e-room that she used at Ketchum Communications when she worked there.

Jeneane's post put collaborative environments front and center on my radar screen. Her description of e-room made me realize that this is one of the key missing pieces in making our distributed, near-jobless future work.

We have tons of software and hardware technology to make a great collaborative environment. I often work alone rather than try to coordinate with remote free agents. What if we took all the little pieces of technology floating around from bulletin boards, social networking services, email, wikis and blogs and brought them together for the purposes of letting us work together remotely?

I had never heard of e-room. Jeneane also mentioned Basecamp - a brand new collaborative environment for creative services businesses. She noted that Basecamp lacks a key ingredient from her perspective, a central server where you can put files in a place that lets teammates and clients have limited or unlimited access to them.

Now that I think of it, a few months ago, one of my clients asked me about something like this. He wondered how much it would cost to put an online environment together that would let him present educational materials and management tools to his entrepreneur clients and have them be able to enter information into the tools or comment on the materials online so that they could all benefit from the interaction without having to get together for a meeting in *meatspace*.

I can see this kind of thing being delivered as a service which would include the option to have say 250 gigs of storage for file sharing (1 big hard drive these days). There would probably need to be levels of service because some industries need collaboration more than others. In the creative services world, you need a *lot* of shared storage for one thing and teamwork is *central* to the performance of the work.

Business networking would be a great companion to this type of collaborative service because once you have the ability to collaborate with adhoc teams, you want to have a great network full of potential teammates. And every time you work with people you strengthen your knowledge of their skills, abilities, personalities, values and workstyles.

In fact this lack of collaborative tools has limited the value of business networking services. They currently are all talk. The best you get is conversations around bulletin boards. People don't put much at stake in these environments. If people start working or playing together online, they not only get to know each other better but they get to build trust by tentatively and then more intensively collaborating.

This is all new to me. But I now see how it fits in as another crucial piece of the tech ronin puzzle. Stay tuned.