Dan Hanson's Radio Weblog

Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:14:57 GMT

The success of the WiFi network at Gnomdex convinced me to try for one at our APCUG conference in Las Vegas at Comdex.

Looks like Intel is interested in sponsoring and setting it up. Should make for some dramatic changes to the conference.

I wonder how many people will have wifi connectivity - probably not as large a percentage as at Gnomedex but who knows by November.

Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:15:55 GMT

Gnomedex - The Gathering of the Geeks

I’m back from Gnomedex and it was an amazing conference. I have to consolidate all my notes and figure out where to publish the vast amount of info I gathered. Probably will do at least one Inside Business column on it.

Expect some on the Magnum site and some in this blog. Maybe a few items just for the Magnum PI people.

Here's 2 things to whet your appetite.

Having a Wifi network and 600 or so people with wifi devices changes the whole makeup of an event. When a speaker asked an obscure question for the raffle prizes, he didn’t realize (at first) that hundreds of people were googling and would have the answer in seconds.

People took cell phone camera photos at the event and they were immediately available on the site moblog.

Instant messaging and blogging were ubiquitous. You could even change the crowd’s reaction to a speaker by blogging to the others and asking them to make a noise the next time a speaker said a certain word, for example.

Another amazing thing was the audience. I knew the speakers would rock - John C Dvorak, Tim O’Reilly, CmdrTaco (Slashdot founder), Nelson Minar of Google, Jim Louderback, Dan Gillmor (San Jose Mercury News), Chris Pirillo and others were great as expected.

But the audience was loaded with heavy hitters. Example - As Pirillo spoke about the importance of RSS (probably the topic of my October Inside Biz column) he pointed out some people in the audience like Scott Johnson who wrote Feedster.com and Nick Bradbury who wrote Feed Demon (he also did Homesite).

The place was packed with the heaviest of hitters - especially in the RSS, Blog, on-line publishing world. Way cool.

Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:01:02 GMT

What the heck have they done with the Flats?

How can you take a goldmine - the best environment in town (nothing beats sitting on the river) - and screw it up so bad?

I usually go to lunch in the Flats 3 or 4 times a month - even in winter. It’s easy and cheap to park and I love the river. But over the last few years there are fewer and fewer places to go and it looks like a ghost town.

It’s not unusual to be one of only a handful of tables at these establishments during lunch - how do they stay in business?

Today we went to Joe’s Crab Shack. The weather was perfect, we were outside right on the river, the lunch specials were tasty and inexpensive. Yet only about 6 tables were occupied. It looked like Shooters had more action but Dick’s and others were equally empty.

Even river traffic seemed down. The Goodtime chugged by and a few pleasure boats and jet skis (even a canoe) but the armada of boats that should be on the river in late July in beautiful weather was nowhere to be found.

I’ve been going to the Flats since before I could legally drink. It’s always a place to bring out-of-town visitors too. But the negative publicity over the last few years about a few isolated crimes and behavioral issues has scared people away.

Along with the media, I blame the powers that be in this town for managing to screw up one of our city’s best features.

If you work anywhere near downtown, spend some dough at one of the Flats restaurants to keep them open until someone with some vision and funding can revitalize the area. It’s a damn shame.

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:38:16 GMT

Gathering of the Geeks

Yep, I’m off to Des Moines for Gnomedex 3.0 - the Gathering of the Geeks.

While Comdex and other trade shows are geared toward corporate or resellers, Gnomedex is strictly for geeks.

Should be a wild time.

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:35:39 GMT

It’s that time of year again.

I got my Brown’s season tickets in the mail. What’s interesting is that they have included 2 extra tickets - one for a home Playoff game and 1 for the AFC Championship Game.

Each ticket has a unique barcode so if the browns should host a playoff game (or 2!) we can activate the tickets via the Internet. Pretty cool.

After such a tough playoff loss last year and some questionable moves in the off-season I wasn’t very confident of a playoff spot this year. But I like their first round pick - a kick-*ss center who doesn’t just block, he knocks people down. Seems like an instant leader too.

The other trend toward physical assets - size and speed - is a good one too. As much as I like “smart” players who used all their ability (Brian Brennan comes to mind), it’s nice to have some real horses that you can teach the skills to.

I have been tracking the voting as to which Cleveland team (if any) will win a championship first and despite a surge after the LeBron James signing, the Browns are leading the poll. What do you think?

Vote easily and anonymously.

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 14:59:45 GMT

Water water everywhere

I am constantly amazed by intelligent people who have absolutely no clue about US geography outside of the Coasts.

I was talking to a friend who lives in Vegas - a smart person. I mentioned that I was heading to the beach for a day of sand volleyball.

She replied, “Where is there a beach near Cleveland?”

She had a vague idea where the Great Lakes were but never imagined that Cleveland was on a lake. She thought we were in-land, like the rest of the “heartland” as she calls it.

I thought about that as I swam around in between games yesterday. Headlands was packed, as always, and I am sure that many of the other local beaches were too. We have such a great resource here with our water and shoreline. If you don’t take advantage of it regularly, you really should.

I am sure the Vegas and other Western people will learn a little more geography as they run out of water and start making inquiries about tapping into our supply.

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 14:52:58 GMT

A good one from Kevin James:

“So, computers. I hear they basically break down to a bunch of ones and zeroes. I don’t know how that means I can see naked women on my screen, but God bless you people.”

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 18:31:40 GMT

Mergers and Acquisitions and Takeovers - Oh My!

OK, I can see SCO stirring up trouble in the *NIX world in hopes that a giant will buy them out to resolve the mess. Makes sense in a way but is also very likely to backfire.

It also makes sense for Palm to buy Handspring. The 2 head honchos of Handspring (Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky) were the key players at Palm after all. It never made sense for them to split and fight against each other instead of focusing on the Pocket PC threat from Redmond.

But it really gets crazy in the app vendor market. PeopleSoft was going to merge with J.D. Edwards. OK. Then Oracle steps in and announces an unsolicited, unwelcome attempt to buy PeopleSoft.

This could be a way for Larry Ellison, the world’s 6^th or 7^th richest person, to either A) Kill a competitor by acquiring them or B) Hurt the competitor by causing uncertainty enough for PeopleSoft customers to postpone buying decisions. Or both.

J.D. Edwards has now filed suit against Oracle for $1.7 billion. Heck, Larry can whip out his checkbook and write a check for that amount.

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 18:19:35 GMT

Prodigy - 1992

It was 11 years ago (1992) this week that Prodigy became the first major online service provider to grant access to the Internet. That was pretty revolutionary at the time.

Back then services like CompuServe had a huge installed base of users and fantastic forums of information. In fact the moderated forums on CompuServe still have no match on the Internet. Sure you have newsgroups but there is so much junk there that it’s hardly worth the effort.

I always give my “back in my day” speech to newbies who think the online world started with Netscape in 1995. I was on-line (albeit in text mode and a snail-like 300bps) in 1983 and the community, though small, was outstanding.

Using the FIDO and other networks we could communicate with others around the globe and somehow we managed without the GUI and hyperlinks that the web brought us.

Prodigy failed a few years after because it gave the users a subset of the Internet - the proprietary Prodigy version - and users discovered providers and browsers that gave them the entire Internet. All except for AOL users who STILL don’t get it.

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:49:47 GMT

Joke?

Tina Fey from SNL had a good news item:

An e-mail computer virus sweeping across the globe automatically opens porno websites on the victim’s screen.

Authorities intend to track down the hackers responsible for the virus just as soon as somebody complains.

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:58:38 GMT

Excellent!

We had a most excellent adventure to Kent State's Liquid Crystal Institute yesterday.

This is truly a world-class facility. The research and education going on at KSU is also being turned into products by the big boys (Intel, Corning, Kodak, etc) and startups.

Check out the details and some pictures.

The next Bob & Dan's Excellent Adventure will be July 28th when we go to Hyland Software.