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Monday, December 18, 2006
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Turning 50.
It’s been an unusual week. On December 3 I turned 50. On Dec 8 I
announced that I’m leaving InfoWorld and joining Microsoft. It’s not a
coincidence. When I saw 50 looming, a couple of years ago, I started to
get really clear about what I want to do with the next 25. I’ve been
laying out the vision to anyone who will listen, and I’ll continue to
do so here, but first things first. Yesterday’s announcement left a couple of questions unasked and unaswered, so without further ado:
Q: Are you relocating to Redmond?
A: No. I’ll continue to work from my home office in New
Hampshire. At first I’ll be spending maybe one week in four in Redmond,
because there’s a lot of connecting to do. In the long run I may wind
up traveling almost that much, but I hope to locations elsewhere than
Redmond as often as not.
In January, for example, I’ll be speaking at Techology, Knowledge, and Society in Cambridge UK. And in May, at GOVIS in New Zealand. As was true for my recent talks in Guadalajara and Ann Arbor,
I don’t expect to encounter any Silicon Valley regulars at these
events. I do expect to give and to receive important insights about how
people everywhere can use infotech to further their occupational,
educational, personal, social, and civic agendas.
Q: What will happen to your weblog.infoworld.com/udell archive?
A: I’ve experienced namespace disruption
before, and am very keen to avoid it this time around. Fortunately it’s
in InfoWorld’s best interest to preserve my blog archive. Worst case,
the material will be rehosted because nobody else at InfoWorld uses
Radio UserLand anymore. In that case, I’ve offered to help redirect the
current namespace to a different one. I’m keeping my fingers crossed,
but I hope there won’t be a problem.
Q: Why would you work for them? Not since Standard Oil has such
a brutal vicious rapacious thuggish company with such power existed.
A: That question, in private email from someone I deeply
respect, reminded me that yesterday’s Q and A left some important
things unsaid. In particular, although I mentioned Ray Ozzie and Kim
Cameron and Jean Paoli and Jim Hugunin and JJ Allaire, I egregiously
failed to mention such equally important folks as:
Tim Fahlberg, who wants to use screencasting to reinvent math education,
and who was thrilled that I picked up on his mission and amplified it
in InfoWorld, but who because of that only gained a tiny bit more of
the exposure he deserves.
Dan Thomas, who’s pumping the operational data of city government out onto the web where, despite all my efforts so far, nobody except me sees that it’s there or imagines what to do with it.
Mike Frost, who’s building out a version of the energy web today instead of waiting for government to never do it.
To these stories I’ll add my own NHPR commentaries
about online-map-enabled community work, rediscovery of the local
library, and the social capital we can build when we work from home.
My proposal was to be an evangelist for the Net, to continue
discovering and telling these kinds of stories, and to use them as the
framework within which to explore and explain Microsoft’s current and
emerging technologies.
When I met with Jeff Sandquist I had just finished this podcast
with Jim Russell. It’s a story about migration and the mobility of
intellectual capital, refracted through Jim’s experience with the
Pittsburgh diaspora. Neither Microsoft’s nor any other vendor’s
technologies are discussed. I’m certain that the ideas Jim lays out in
this podcast will inspire new business models for social software, but
it’s all rather speculative.
I explained to Jeff that it had taken me most of a day to interview
Jim Russell, then edit our rambling two-hour discussion down to
something more coherent. And I said: “Reality check, you’re OK with
that?” He said yes. I do not regard that answer as evidence of
thuggishness or rapaciousness. I regard it as a sign of enlightenment,
and I am calibrating my expectations accordingly.
[Jon Udell]
9:41:16 PM 
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Being here, being there. Mike Champion raises an interesting point that applies to Microsoft but also more broadly:
The culture at MS is very F2F-oriented…if you’re out of sight, you have to work hard not to be out of mind.
But then he adds:
Geographic distance will help keep you from getting
sucked into the groupthink of whatever group you’re in. Microsoft
collectively needs to be constantly reminded what the world looks like
to people whose view isn’t fogged up by our typical drizzle or
distracted by the scenery on the sunny days.
We’re entering an era in which our personal, social, and
professional lives are increasingly network-mediated.
Trust-at-a-distance is a new possibility, with economic ramifications
that everyone from Yochai Benkler to Jim Russell
is trying to figure out. As someone who’s worked remotely for 8 years,
and is about to work remotely for a company with relatively few remote
employees, this question is extremely interesting to me.
On the one hand, I’ve learned that I can accomplish a lot because I spend an abormal percentage of my waking hours in flow
rather than in meetings. I’ve also learned that network-mediated
interactions can be more productive than F2F interactions. Consider my August screencast with Jim Hugunin, or my May screencast
with Anders Hejlsberg, or indeed any of the other screencasts in that
series. They’re all scheduled events, mediated by telephone and
screensharing. I can’t see how physical colocation would improve them.
On the other hand, there’s the “watercooler” effect: being in a
place, you see and hear and smell things that aren’t otherwise
transmitted through the network. I have no doubt whatsoever that shared
physical space matters in ways we can’t begin to describe or understand.
But as collaboration in shared virtual space takes its rightful
place alongside collaboration in shared physical space, shouldn’t a
company whose products are key enablers of virtual collaboration be
eating its own dogfood?
Of course things are never as black-and-white as they appear. So I’m
going to bookmark this posting and return to it in six months.
Hopefully by then I’ll know more about the value of being here and of being there.
[Jon Udell]
9:39:22 PM
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Trailing-edge requirements for a community app.
One of the projects I’m tackling on sabbatical is a community version
of LibraryLookup. The service I wanted to create is described here:
an RSS feed that’s updated when a book on your Amazon wishlist becomes
available in your local library. Originally I planned to build a simple
web application that would register Amazon wishlist IDs and produce
custom RSS feeds for each registrant. But as I thought about what would
make this service palatable to a community, I saw two problems with
that approach:
- Familiarity. Most folks will not be familiar with RSS. If
the primary goal is to get people using the service, rather than to
evangelize RSS, it should use the more familiar style of email
notification.
- Deployability. A web application needs to be hosted
somewhere. In most communities, the library won’t be able to host the
service on its own infrastructure. But if it’s hosted elsewhere, there
will be a (rational) reluctance to take a dependency on that provider.
To address the first concern, I’m doing this as an old-fashioned
email-based app. You subscribe or unsubscribe by sending email with a
command and a wishlist ID in the Subject: header. And you receive
notifications about book availability by way of email.
To address the second concern, I’m doing it as a client-side Python
script, so that the only dependency is some version of Python and an
Internet connection.
Because a library might not even be able to dedicate an email
address for this purpose, I’m exploring the use of Gmail as the
communication engine. In order for that to work, Python has to be able
to make secure and authenticated POP and SMTP connections. Happily, it
can.
The recipe for connecting Python to Gmail’s POP service is trivial:
import poplib
p = poplib.POP3_SSL(’pop.gmail.com’)
p.user(’USERNAME’)
p.pass_(’PASSWORD’)
The recipe for connecting Python to Gmail’s SMTP service is less obvious:
import smtplib,
s = smtplib.SMTP(”smtp.gmail.com”)
s.ehlo(’smtp.gmail.com’)
s.starttls()
s.ehlo(’smtp.gmail.com’)
auth = ‘x00USERNAMEx00PASSWORD’
eauth = base64.b64encode(auth)
s.putcmd(”AUTH PLAIN”)
s.putcmd(eauth)
This won’t work with no authentication, but neither will it work with the SMTP module’s login() which uses the wrong authentication type (i.e., LOGIN rather than PLAIN, I think).
Any POP/SMTP servers can be used, of course, so there’s no
dependency on Gmail here, but it’s nice to see that Gmail can easily be
pressed into service if need be.
It feels retro and trailing-edge to do an email-based app but, in
order to make it familiar and deployable that seems like the right
approach.
[Jon Udell]
9:36:30 PM
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Thursday, October 26, 2006
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CHIL, Electronic Jeeves. 
Communication tools often force the user to adapt human communication
methods to the needs of the technology. The partners in the CHIL project are attempting to turn the tables, and to put human needs first in the development of new communication technologies.
CHIL is, at time of writing, still in progress. However the project
partners have already developed some fascinating communication tools to
assist human beings in their day-to-day interactions with others. The
context for these interactions is the meeting room, lecture or
classroom.
read more [Technology News Daily -]
8:03:57 PM
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Friday, October 13, 2006
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Great quote. This is a great passage from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson:
“Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone
near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into
it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the
information being imparted. But your older nerd has more
self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need
to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore
understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are
already known to all present is part of the social process of making
conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under
any circumstances.”
I don’t think the above is always true but there are a good number of our fellow nerds for whom this is pretty accurate.
[Nerdherding for Beginners]
8:16:45 PM
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IT Security Industry Becomes Proactive. 
Reducing security breaches is a key business priority for CIOs, and the
security industry is addressing this priority as it moves to the next
phase of its evolution, according to Gartner, Inc.
This next phase for the security market will integrate security into
each new wave of technology when it enters the market, not after a
security attack.
read more [Technology News Daily -]
8:07:44 PM
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Thursday, October 05, 2006
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Konica Minolta shows wearable display prototype. (InfoWorld)
- Konica Minolta is developing a lightweight, holographic wearable
display, a prototype of which was on display this week at the Ceatec
exhibition in Chiba, Japan. 
The Holographic See-Through Browser prototype resembles a pair of
eyeglasses and uses a prism with a thickness of 3.5 millimeters and a
holographic element to reduce the weight of the display to 27 grams.
Konica Minolta has just begun development of the lightweight display
and is looking for an application where the device could be useful,
said Hiroshi Itou, an assistant manager at the business development
group of Konica Minolta Technology Center Inc. Possible applications
under consideration include giving workers access to an instruction
manual or allowing commuters to watch a video while riding a train, he
said.
In a video demonstration of the technology, Konica Minolta showed
how a user could watch a motorcycle race on the display while walking
around their house. In this demonstration, the see-through image of the
game appeared to be float in the user's line of sight.
The display image is produced by a small attachment above the
glasses, which contains an LED (light-emitting diode) that projects the
image through a condenser lens and a prism. Once the image travels
through the prism, it passes through the display where it is projected
onto the holographic element.
The display attachment on the glasses is connected by a cable that leads to a small, wearable device. By Sumner_Lemon@idg.com (Sumner Lemon). [InfoWorld: Top News]
9:08:03 PM
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On Avatars and Identity.
For many undergrads, college is as much an experiment in identity as it
is a pursuit of knowledge. So it’s no wonder why Second Life strikes
a chord with students: The virtual world, which lets users create their
own fanciful avatars, offers almost limitless possibilities for
self-presentation, as The Christian Science Monitor observes.Bill
Moseley, a professor who teaches a course in Second Life at Pepperdine
University, says that about 70 percent of his students create Second
Life avatars that look similar to their real-world selves. But the
other 30 percent—including students who switch genders and, often,
species—look “strikingly different� in their virtual bodies, he
says.But technical problems occasionally stand in the way of clever
self-presentation, as Scott James, a student from Mr. Moseley’s
class, points out:At one point, when he tried to put new clothing on
his avatar, Reign Buchanan, the words “no image� appeared instead
of a head. “I was pretty much missing a face,� he sa The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation]
[Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]
8:16:28 PM
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Autumn is EduConferencePalooza Time.
Leaves are falling (somewhere) and it's time to get the luggage out and
truck off to an educational conference. Or not, stay at home, put your
feet up, and jump into an online conference! This dog's bowl is a bit
full the next few months of conference, and conference-like activity.
Sorry, but I am likely the one ed tech NOT going to the EDUCAUSE annual
conference in Dallas. Eeek, crowds of 10,000 scare me. Maybe someone
can send me a conference bag or some Blackboard swag.. No, there is too
much going on, and the big show is... well so big. So let me toot some
horns for some other events, especially ones I am associated with The
NMC Online Conference on Digital Media October 24-25, 2006 is
associated with our work for the MacArthur Foundation's Series on
Digital Media and Learning, a project involving the heaviest of heavy
hitter academic authors. Our 2-day event wil feature sessions
associated with the series' themes: Identity and self-image,
Credibility CogDogBlog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation]
[Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]
8:01:09 PM
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PowerPoint is 2.0-fied with SlideShare.
Very cool-- after reading on TextCrunch about Introducing SlideShare:
Power Point + YouTube I checked out the site to see its one of those
betas. But you can ask to get in, adn I got an account before I had
finished lunch. TextCrunch is right- this is YouTube for PowerPoint,
even the interface is a dead ringer for the popular video sharing site.
You upload those heavy, creaky, bullet laden PPTs (20 Mb limit), and
Slideshare converts it to a Flash format, that can be embedded in a
page (see below), direct URL linked (once the site goes public), tag
shows, share them, and all the now run of the mill groovy social
software stuff. My "slidespace" showing slide shows I have uploaded As
you search, browse tags, and look at a Slideshare page, it is just the
same function as YouTube: And from here, you can thumb through the
slides, flip to full screen mode (which looks great). They even
consider slides as "micro-content", so via the URl you can link
directly to sl CogDogBlog, October 5, 2006. [Conversation]
[Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]
7:34:40 PM
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Sunday, October 01, 2006
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Friday, September 22, 2006
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HP lawyer gives blow-by-blow of leak probe.
The Hewlett-Packard surveillance campaign ranged from internal
monitoring of e-mail and instant messages to physical surveillance of
an HP board member and at least one journalist, according to one of the
lawyers at the firm recently retained by the company to investigate its
conduct in the matter.
 [Computerworld Breaking News]
10:14:33 PM
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
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ATM Maker Readies Anti-Hack Patch.
A high-tech scammer may have used an easily obtained default pass code
to reprogram an ATM into giving out free money. With 75,000 cash
machines in service, the manufacturer says it's developing a software
update to force careless operators to change their codes before the
cash scam gets out of hand. By Kevin Poulsen. [Wired News: Top Stories]
7:40:27 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Judy Smith.
Last update: 12/18/2006; 9:56:15 PM.
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