TECH: Open Source & Open Standards … the nerd’s way out of the licensing swamp!?!

Friday, July 28, 2006

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/07/four_big_ideas_about_open_sour.html

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The architecture of participation beyond software.

Asymmetric Competition.

How Software As a Service Changes The Points of Business Leverage

Open Data. One day soon, tomorrow’s Richard Stallman will wake up and
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I’m not sure I’d say it that way. Here are the dimensions that I would use.
(1) “Open Source” kills the expensive software license business model. Think Open Office as opposed to Microsoft Office. The BSA can take a hike.
(2) “Open Standards”, the xmil-izing of the planet, kills locking people in by holding their data in a proprietary format. An example is how OPMLs have launched RSS readers with easy transfer of reading lists between readers. Think of your Outlook Contacts  exported into a series of VCF files and import into any contact manager.

(3) “Participation” allows an ordinary store of data (e.g., book titles) to be developed into a store of knowledge (e.g., what do others think and say about a particular title). If there was reputation, then it’s be wisdom (i.e., who is knowledgeable about the topic).   Think Amazon as opposed to Barnes & Noble.

(4) “Service” that satisfies any user’s need at a reasonable price can be turned into a lucrative revenue stream. Think Mozy as opposed to doing your own backups when you remember. The more transparent you can make it then bigger the hit. It doesn’t even have to be cheaper. Think GoToPC as opposed to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop.

(5) “Micro payments”, that is the ability to charge a hundreth of a cent for something, will blow the lid off the marketplaces of content or service. Notice that suing the Customer like the MPAA is doing is so counter productive that it has to be a jugundo blunder.  If I had a virtual credit card that would allow me to pay hundredths or a thousandth of a cent, then I wouldn’t care about paying for certain services or content. Then, when you get a million page hits, you are not depending upon advertisers.

(6) “Crypto” is over due. My email should automagically establish a private conversation with my counterparts. It could allow, for example, bank statements over email with zero risk. It could put spammers out of business. The ISPs have to help support the key exchanges. People can exchange keys personally to jumpstart the process. Lame attempts like Vangard’slogon change wouldn’t be necessary.
IMHO

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: VWBBie (Verizon Wireless Broad Band)is getting bad press.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/verizon_unlimited.html

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unlimited

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Interesting that “unlimited” is really limited!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: VANGARD changes its logon!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

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Protecting your information is very important to Vanguard. Over the next few months, we’ll be introducing significant security enhancements to better safeguard your information on Vanguard.com®. These changes will help ensure that only you—or those you’ve designated to act on your behalf—can access your information online.
***End Quote***

They’re basically splitting the  logon and password screens and putting a user selectable picture on the second page. I guess if you don’t see your animal, then you’re not supposed to put in your password. I don’t understand how this prevents a man-in-the-middle attack. It does prevent a dumb phishing but not a sophisticated one. If you present yourself at the phish site, it can quickly open a connect to Vangard, present you credential, take the screen, show it to you, and you’ll give them your password. It’ll probably take a day of a good coder’s time to beat that one. And, it breaks all teh login tools that people, like me, currently use. ARGHH!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “CARDSCAN” … a great tool … is acquired by Rubbermaid. What will change?!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Dear F,

Did you ever hear the expression, “The more things change, the more they stay the same?” Well, once again I am delighted to deliver great news about the exciting changes that are happening at CardScan – and to reassure you that CardScan will remain the company you’ve come to know and trust.

CardScan joins DYMO as part of Sanford Brands, the office products division of Newell Rubbermaid.
After 13 years as an independently owned company, CardScan has been acquired by Newell Rubbermaid, a giant in the field of consumer products and owner of some of the best known brands in the world. As the newest member of its Office Products division, Sanford Brands, CardScan becomes a part of DYMO and joins such famous brands as Sharpie, Waterman, Papermate and Expo.

Greater opportunity for us to deliver even greater products and services for you.
While we are proud of what we’ve accomplished as an independent company, we believe that becoming part of Newell Rubbermaid will give us the best of all possible worlds – the continued freedom to develop better products for our customers and the much larger resources to bring those products to market more quickly and support them more thoroughly. As always, innovation will continue to drive us to break new ground in contact management as we continue to provide our usual high standards of technical support and service.

Thank you for your past and continuing support.
I hope you join us in celebrating our exciting news and that you will continue to turn to CardScan for superior contact management products. As a thank you and a welcome to the Sanford Brands family, we invite you to a special offer from DYMO to CardScan customers. And, as always, if you have comments or suggestions about CardScan, feel free to contact me directly at pweyman@cardscan.com.

Sincerely,

Peter Weyman
President
CardScan, Inc.

Please don’t reply to this email. The mailbox is not attended. To reach me, please send an email to pweyman@cardscan.com.

CardScan, Inc. 25 First Street Suite 107 Cambridge, MA 02141

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Changing the model. Change the tech. Change our thinking!

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Journalist Dilemma

July 23, 2006
The Journalist Dilemma
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I definitely agree with the absurdity of having thousands of journalists all covering one single-dateline story, whether it’s a convention or a Michael Jackson trial. But I wonder, too, how this obsession with new approaches to media — citizen journalism, community interaction, local coverage vs non-local — is going to look a few years down the track. For sure, there’s a lot to be said for breaking down the barriers between newspaper and community between professional and amateur reporter/photographer/editor. But this movement will also have some heavy long term effects that aren’t really discussed in this blogocratic world.

***End Quote***

I find little that is truly “local”. I find a lot of tech that is all over the field. I find little that changes my thinking. That’s the most valuable. In the DIKW scale, I get a ton of D and very little W. But I guess that is to be expected.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Microsoft Outlook has morphed once again into LookOut!

Monday, July 24, 2006

After a recent mandatory Outlook update for “security”, I see two things have happened:

(1) Links are turned off in all email messages. Who agreed to that?

(2) The junk mail filter is capturing good emails. Even people who are in the Address Books. What’s that about?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: ZIGGS is a social networking site that was seeded with all public pages

Saturday, July 22, 2006

http://www.ziggs.com

It’s interesting that the site started by taking every public page that cited people and using that to see its social networking site. Now you can go an put your own page there. Interest for turkeys, seekers, and egotists who can brag about themselves. Not sure what the business model is?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Vampiring a website database

Thursday, July 20, 2006

For many reasons, I often want to vampire an online site. I first tumbled to the concept when a certain online resource that I was using for my alumni research activities went offline for good. I was kicking my self for not having a copy. So I developed the technique of vampiring a website manually in a very organized fashion into a local copy. The problem occurs when you want to stay in sync sort of with it. That is can you come back to it a month later and find the adds and deletes. Changes are a much more complex problem. So here’s how I do it for the XYZZYX website.

(1) I use a spreadsheet to track the “database”. The first column is the web page sequence number and the second column is the entry number on the page. So the Fifth Sequential Page Seventh Item referred to Jones, I would represent it as “5”, “7”, “Jones”, and anything that was important to me.

(2) I’d open the Jones subpage and copy it to a text file (much smaller than HTML) saving it in a directory XYZZYX. If it’s going to be a LARGE number of entries, I may create 26 subdirectories A thru Z.

(3) I’d go thru the website db capturing data. When I revisit the database, since some most are too big to suck out at one sitting, I can then check key pages to see that the last entry on a page still lines up with my sequence number.

(4) If it lines up, I resume where I left off.

(5) If it doesn’t line up, I split the difference and check that page. In a 500 page database, I see I am out of sync when I try to resume at page 450. I’d go check page 275 and see if I was in sync there. When I find the discrepancy, I insert a new line in my spreadsheet for the new data and adjust columns 1 and 2.

Is this ugly, yup. Does it work? Sort of. It is posible to keep tabs on website data bases if you have an organized approach.

When you come back to look at it, you can spot check as above.

It is ESSENTIAL that you have an organized approach. It’s easy to become confused and frustrate yourself.

Questions?

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: “OUTLOOK” does a lookout again!

Thursday, July 20, 2006

(1) Apparently, LookOut (Microsoft’s Outlook’s evil alter ego) doesn’t honor the don’t send until flags. Argh!

(2) Apparently, Microsoft in its infinite wisdom has decided that now before I can click a link in an email, I have to say ‘mother may”. That’s is it turns off all links and it takes two clicks where one would do! Arghhhhhh!!!!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH: Understanding the value of RSS as opposed to email.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

http://www.llrx.com/features/rss.htm

The Future of RSS – Is E-Mail Publishing Dead?
RSS-based Information And News Feeds: Pros and Cons For Content Distribution Through RSS
By Robin Good
Published September 29, 2003

Robin Good (Luigi Canali De Rossi) is the Editor of Sharewood Tidings, the alternative and independent news source on the effective use of new media technologies for online communication and learning.  He is the author of several web guides, including Robin Good’s Mini-Guide, Become A NewsG-d.

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E-mail is a two-way communication medium while RSS is only a distribution one.

***End Quote***

To that, I would add that IM is email in real time.

This is still an excellent summary of the value of RSS. Or, distribution as opposed to communication.

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Posted by reinkefj

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