Technology
My online social networking plan
February 17, 2008
After struggling yesterday on multiple social networking sites to manage settings I didn’t even know existed, I realized I needed a general plan for my use of these programs. General themes: It is good to be findable At some point,...Continue reading...
Web Geekery
November 28, 2007
37 I missed some pretty obvious ones, unfortunately…...Continue reading...
Mobile phone use 2007
July 20, 2007
The Economist has published some great research on phone use. Highlights: 60% of men carried their phones in their trouser pockets, whereas 61% of women carried their phones in handbags A typical person spends 80% of his or her time...Continue reading...
Like video, but without the picture
April 27, 2007
At Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day yesterday, a radio reporter was asking kids if they wanted to do an interview with him. Apparently some kids expressed confusion about what radio was. His pitch? “It’s like video, but...Continue reading...
The new news
April 16, 2007
Today was the first time Facebook was my source of (unfortunately sad) news. Then I read in Fast Company Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that “We’re actually producing more news in a single day for our 19 million users than every other...Continue reading...
Sony Ericsson w810i memory stick full or will not delete images
April 10, 2007
Writing this for Google… If your Sony Ericsson w810i won’t delete images, or if your memory keeps getting full despite your deleting all images and files, it’s likely because they’re not really being deleted from the phone. Try connecting the...Continue reading...
Notes from "Bridging the Digital Divide: Smart Tools for Addressing Health Pandemics in Emerging Economies"
April 17, 2006
A conference at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, April 7-8, 2006 Michael Free, PATH Prevention -> Detection -> Treatment Focuses on Prevention Vaccines are slow to grow -> Thermostable vaccines Vaccines are limited -> New ways of...Continue reading...
Notes from The Second Coming - A Manifesto
July 23, 2005
David Gelernter has been through a lot, from inventing computer languages and forecasting the WWW to suffering a misguided Unabomber blast. This manifesto, written in 2000, is already beginning to come true… Google’s on the right track, basing their model...Continue reading...
Essential Firefox Extensions
July 14, 2005
Everyone’s got their own list, but after I had to manually go find mine again after a Firefox browser reinstall, I thought I’d keep track of them here. IEview Web Developer Toolbar Tab Clicking Options Adblock (and my filters) Aardvark...Continue reading...
Agents and Decisions
January 19, 2005
I’ve been reading a thesis on Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant, written by an ex-freshman dormmate of mine, Luke Swartz (not to be confused with the paper on folksonomies written by another ex-freshman dormmate, Adam Mathes…it was quite the dorm)....Continue reading...
The Internet: Not For Public Consumption
September 09, 2004
I’ve come to the conclusion that the internet is not delivering on all its promises. It isn’t doing my laundry, walking my dog, cooking me dinner or snuggling with me at night. In the internet, we don’t have anything that...Continue reading...
Angle Brackets and the Future of the Web
August 23, 2004
I’m tired of typing angle brackets, so here are some notes on what the future of content creation on the web might be. To change code, it’s easiest to have modular elements that can be imported on the server side....Continue reading...
Virtual Self-Storage
June 30, 2004
This sentence in the recent Trendwatching newsletter made me sit up and take notice: TRENDWATCHING.COM expects services like Gmail to morph into the digital equivalent of self storage spaces now found in most big cities. That’s what’s really going on...Continue reading...
Power Laws of Information (Draft)
June 05, 2004
Forbes has an interesting article this month that explores the vast quantity of information our society produces (furled). In 2002 it is estimated that the world created about 5 exabytes of data. For comparison, one exabyte is what a digitized...Continue reading...
Bookmark Management Woes
May 02, 2004
There is a hilarious segment in The Oval Show Gets a Job where my friend Matt interviews a woman from the now defunct HotLinks.com: Woman: “It’s all about accessing your favorite links from anywhere in the world”. Matt: “My favorite...Continue reading...
Too Much Information
I’ve argued before that “too much information” is rarely the problem—if you know enough to create problems, you usually also know enough to solve them. But there will be growing pains in the interim, and that is the focus of...Continue reading...
Life Blogging
February 14, 2004
My contention is that…blogging is so far the only widespread computing tool that acknowledges its user is a human being in the real world. Despite the best efforts of our fast-forward culture, we can still be in only one place and do only one thing at a given time. We move through the world one step at a time, constantly changing and building on what has come before…Yet our computing tools still present our information to us all at once.
Continue reading...Futureproofing Myself
January 30, 2004
Love: the ultimate futureproofing. It's ambiguous, general, and utterly impossible to apply to real-world, categorized situations. But it's the only way to truly succeed and be happy, and you can rest assured that if it is applied in every question and decision, it will not fail.
Continue reading...Futureproofing My Work
In my search for truth in all aspects of life, I tend to look for patterns and systems that will allow me to go beyond mere philosophy and actually apply principles to each day. My passion lies not in the creation of statutes, but in the aid of a successful lifestyle.
Continue reading...Alphabet soup of web standards
October 06, 2003
It strikes me that similarities between xml and database structure are fairly common. This article at A List Apart explains the similarities and differences. The process of converting an XML document into something viewable by a browser (or into anything...Continue reading...
Machines that think for you
August 15, 2003
Went to a talk this Wednesday about "customer relationship management systems"--basically call support centers and the software that runs them. Interesting to me was the fact that basically untrained employees come in to work, and sit down at a computer...Continue reading...
Information Overload
May 25, 2003
In an ironic coincidence that is completely beyond my ability to make sense of right now, this morning's web browsing turned up about 50 web pages that I HAD to read (equivalent to about 150 printed pages), and several of...Continue reading...
Mozart the Librarian
April 09, 2003
"Everything has been composed; just not yet written down." - Mozart, in a letter to his father Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, calls himself a "digital librarian". In a talk he gave (video available online, a good...Continue reading...
Phones in Perspective
April 03, 2003
From the horse's mouth on cell phones, the inventor speaks, 30 years hence....Continue reading...
Information vs. Knowledge
March 07, 2003
What distinguishes information from knowledge? Steven Johnson, Sony Ericsson Clicker, Xerox and Google weigh in.
Continue reading...Price your Name
March 04, 2003
this harvard biz school research found that a good reputation on eBay was worth a 7.6 percent higher selling price for the same set of 200 items. this is nice, quantitative support for a trust-based system of identities. it makes...Continue reading...
Color and Commerce
February 28, 2003
i've searched for months for an effective alternative to Pantone's color kit, which i can't afford. but this morning, whilst shopping at home depot i picked up several amazing color guides for FREE in the paint section. sure, they don't...Continue reading...
So Very Productive
February 19, 2003
so i'm wondering if all this work i do online is desensitizing me to real, physical needs and work. recently i've found myself working for hours at a time on websites and computer applications, and at the end of that...Continue reading...
Highlights of yesterday's websurfing
February 16, 2003
i surfed for a LONG time yesterday--check this stuff out: milton glaser's comments on life cool location-based information (for conferences (or campus?)) a review of it is here. the digerati--from a few years back . . . (i met #2!)...Continue reading...
Cellphones with manners
January 29, 2003
Kyle sent me this article about IDEO designers creating prototypes of situation-considerate cell phones. among the concepts are phones that send electric shocks, use knocking as ringtones, and sport joysticks for nonverbal communication. all good concepts, and ones i finally...Continue reading...
HeyBob
January 16, 2003
i think a good name for the personal computing device of the future is "HeyBob". that way you could, in the midst of conversation, say "HeyBob, what's the capital of Sri Lanka?" it functions as a command for an application...Continue reading...
Big Brother's Minority Report
December 31, 2002
an article in Wired News reports that facial surveillance plans have been scrapped for the upcoming super bowl. last year some firms made headlines by scanning everyone's faces to catch criminals. they found 19 people with criminal records out of...Continue reading...
Schools and Computers
December 30, 2002
in the same vein as yesterday's note, an article today is reporting that computers have an adverse effect on learning in our schools. IT skills are up; basic math and english skills are way down. the real challenge then becomes:...Continue reading...
Memories
December 29, 2002
just a quick note for now--i've been making the argument lately that it doesn't matter what you KNOW; what matters is what you CAN know on command, for instance with an instantaneous connection to the internet hardwired to your brain....Continue reading...
The Future of ISIS (and computing)?
December 15, 2002
steve jobs has repeatedly made the argument that apple is not interested in making a PDA. he bases this on the assumption that the mobile phone, not the mobile computer, is what portable devices are converging upon. with the combination...Continue reading...
ISIS Blog
we now have a blog for the ISIS project at the private ISIS team website. team members can sign in and post to the blog, to make it a live, rich, and archived source for internal team information....Continue reading...
Trusting Others' Ratings
December 12, 2002
this slashdot thing reminded me of rheingold saying (and me believing) that trusting people could come from their rating by others . . . but of course i forgot that i don't trust most "others" to begin with . ....Continue reading...
Other Digital Signage
some pretty cool stuff in the ny times today. looks like the technology ISIS is exploring is, surprise surprise, also being researched and implemented by for-profit advertising agencies. the coolest one mentioned was Thinking Pictures, an MIT Media Lab spinoff...Continue reading...
The ISIS promotional video featuring
The ISIS promotional video featuring "Bill, Student Leader" is now online at the ISIS video archive....Continue reading...
New tools from Google Labs!
December 10, 2002
New tools from Google Labs! And a new beta product search site!...Continue reading...
Identity and Computing
went to a talk today by some hp engineers working on the "cooltown" project. basically its aim is to introduce pervasive and ubiquitous computing to entire communities at once, with their pre-setup system. it was actually pretty solid, with good...Continue reading...
The Rise and Fall of Skater Punks
December 01, 2002
one more thought for tonight. another of Mike Langberg's predictions was that soon anyone who wanted to get in touch with us would be able to at any time and in any place, thanks to GPS tracking and global wireless...Continue reading...
Computer as Concierge
was thinking today about the evolution of computers, prompted by my recent purchase of voice recognition software and the article today by Mike Langberg on the top 5 tech predictions for 2002. what struck me was that it's about time...Continue reading...
Simulacra and Simulation
November 27, 2002
reading "Simulacra and Simulation" last night, i was intrigued by one of the thoughts. the argument was: if the simulation is good enough that it has symptoms of the original (for instance, a simulated illness producing a high temperature and...Continue reading...
Are we smart enough to use computers?
November 10, 2002
so the object is to create the next paradigm of computing . . . the first was using the raw power of the processor to do things faster than humans could--to extend the power of our brains. the next was...Continue reading...
How do i love amazon.com? let me count the ways . . .
November 08, 2002
why do i love amazon.com so much? the other night i had some (rare) time off, and actually got a little bored. tv didn't seem interesting, and my books are all still packed away from the recent move. i wanted...Continue reading...