vanderwal.net

Doing this how long

I realized today that I have been marking-up and posting to my own personal Web pages since November 1995. I have been trying to figure out when all this started. The pages started as "The Growing Place", which included the links page along with a handful of other pages on CompuServe's initial hosting of personal pages. I moved from there to Clark Net in late 1996 so I could get CGI access and have my own e-mail (well not really my own). In late 1997 I bought vanderwal.net and finally moved it to a couple hosting homes in 1998 and 1999. Then has been with its current host since 2000, which has provided great service and resources since then (I actually had an other personal site with this host much earlier and ran not so personal site the host for a short while.

Why all of this today? Don't know. It could be that I finally found when Compuserve started hosting member's pages. It does not seem like that long ago until I think that I have been building a presence on the Web for coming on nine years. I have been doing this professionally since 1996. I have been working professionally as a geek since 1988, either as my full-time role or just one of the hats I wore. I have learned a lot about application development and Web development in all these years. It is still about getting the information into the hands of people that are looking for it when they need it.

Project Oxygen Still Alive

Project Oxygen has progressed quite well since we last looked in (Oxygen and Portolano - November 2001). Project Oxygen is a pervasive computing system that is enabled through handhelds. The system has the users information and media follow them on their network and uses hardware (video, speakers, computers, etc.) nearest the user to perform the needed or desired tasks. Project Oxygen also assists communication by setting the language of the voicemail to match the caller's known language. The site includes videos and many details.

Project Oxygen seems to rely on the local network's infrastructure rather than the person's own device. This creates a mix of Personal Info Cloud by using the personal device, but relies on the Local Info Cloud using the local network to extract information. The network also assists to find hardware and external media, but the user does not seem to have control over the information they have found. The user's own organization of the information is important for them so it is associated and categorized in a manner that is easy for them to recall and then reuse. When the user drifts away from the local network is their access to the information lost?

This project does seem to get an incredible amount of pervasive computing right. It would be great to work in an environment that was Project Oxygen enabled.

Drawn by the Weather Project

Okay, I admit it, I have a passionate interest in the Weather Project. I have been enrapt with the photos of the visitors (David Gallegher, Eliot Shepard, Dan Hill, etc.

I have yet to completely figure out what has me fascinated with this exhibit. One element is the color as well as the light. There were early mornings in San Francisco when I was heading east on California Street near Masonic and watch the new sun rising over the hills and the bay with an orange-red glow. That was one of the more spectacular views I have seen anywhere. The weather project has a similar color and intensity, but with a more ominous power than one of striking beauty.

New Content Area at Off the Top

There have been a few additions to Off the Top this weekend. The most noticeable is the Quick Links in the side bar. The Quick Links are just links to check out and will be posted when I either have nothing to say about them or I do not have time to post much else. The links have categories associated with them and may be pulled into a global category page at some point in the not too distant future. I have built the whole of my admin tools so that they are quite usable from a mobile device.

The other addition is just one for me, a comment tracking tool. This may get further expanded into a tool you can see and use, but for now I just needed a way to aggregate all the comments into one interface.

There are a couple other large modifications coming in the near future. I have set and tweaked the databases, now it is just getting the time to code and test.

There are times when I think I am going to move the site to Movable Type or some other tool, but I have fun building and tweaking my own tool. I get to see the tools built and integrated how I can best use them. I do have a few side endeavors that use TypePad as they are somewhat separate from the things done here and the limitations (although few) still bug me.

Keeping the Found Things Found

This weeks New York Times Circuits article: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites, which covers the Keep the Found Things Found research project at University of Washington. The program is summarized:

The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are looking for (books, articles, web pages, CDs, etc.) from a very large set of possibilities. This classic problem has been studied in many variations and has been addressed through a rich diversity of information retrieval tools and techniques.

This topic is at the heart of the Personal Information Cloud. How does a person keep the information they found attracted to themselves once they found that information. Keeping the found information at hand to use when the case to use the information arises is a regular struggle. The Personal Information Cloud is the rough cloud of information that follows the user. Users have spent much time and effort to draw information they desire close to themselves (Model of Attraction). Once they have the information, is the information in a format that is easy for the user or consumer of the information to use or even reuse.

Portable Personal Information Repository

MIT's Technology Review discusses Randolph Wang's wireless PDA for personal information storage (registration for TR may be required). This brief description (I could find no longer nor explicit description at Wang's Princeton pages nor searching CiteSeer) is very interesting to me.

One PC at work, another at home, a laptop on the plane, and a personal digital assistant in the taxicab: keeping all that data current and accessible can be a major headache. Randolph Wang, a Princeton University computer scientist, hopes to relieve the pain with one mobile device. Designed to provide anytime, anywhere access to all your files, the device stores some data, but its main job is to wirelessly retrieve files from Internet-connected computers and deliver them to any computer you have access to. Wangís prototype is a PDA with both cellular and Wi-Fi connections, but the key is his software, which grabs and displays the most current data stored on multiple computers. Wang has tested his prototype with more than 40 university and home computers on and around the Princeton campus. He eventually wants to shrink the device down to the size of a wristwatch to make carrying it a snap.

This is really getting to a personal information cloud that follows the user. This really is getting to the ideal. Imagine having everything of interest always with you and always available to use. Wang's solution seems to solve one of the ultimate problems, synching. The synching portion of this seems to stem from PersonalRAID: Mobile Storage for Distributed and Disconnected Computers, which was presented at a USENIX conference. I really look forward to finding out more about this product.

Music for Real People

The Internet, particularly the Web, has become a solid replacement for traditional radio, which most people believe only provides a service for background noise. Traditional radio in the U.S. fails the listener as a medium for finding new music, be they bands, artists, or labels that insight the users to want to own the music. (I am using ownership in a broad sense of the term, which can entail purchasing CDs or downloads as well as downloading free music offerings as defined and offered by the creator of the music.)

The Internet provides a great platform for finding new music. One means of finding new music is from others sharing what they are listening to. The sharing can be done on Macs using iChat and iTunes where iChat shows others what your are currently listening to. Others share music on their personal sites, like Dan Hill does on City of Sound in his year end review or Jeffrey Veen does in his sidebar offering of "heavy iPod rotation". People also share in their finds in their weblogs, which are more difficult to track. Other options are to peruse Amazon wishlists.

Other Internet options are listening to Internet radio broadcasts. There are many options, like Radio Paradise, that offer broadcasts of genre specific music. These stations also usually provide metadata that helps the listener know the creator of the music and the title.

Many people want to consume music, but traditional radio and even record labels have forgotten that people want to consume music, if only they could find music they want to consume. Apple's iTunes has expanded the offerings for purchasing music and also does a decent job (though not great, Amazon does a much better job suggesting related music and provides a means to store music of interest) of suggesting other music that would be of interest.

Quick list of Treo Resources

A handful of Treo resources: Treo Central (info & store); Treo 600 World (news & store); Handango - Palm Software (software review and purchase); MobileWhack Palm (reviews and links); and TreoMB (news, reviews, & message boards).

Ah Treo 600 Arrives

I took the plunge and ordered a Treo 600 with Sprint PCS service. Since adding a solid portable music player to my menagerie of gadgets, I was having to attend to four devices each morning. Yes, four. My normal cell phone with very good connectivity, but horrible customer service (a the customer is always wrong mentality). My HipTop, which got me hooked on mobile e-mail, Web, and IM, but did not have great connectivity and the PIM applications did not synch (only import and overwrite). My Palm which was my true PDA/mobile PIM and all information on it truly synched, but it did not have mobile connectivity. Lastly my iPod, which has been a great addition to the daily workweek commute and will soon be nice on longer drives and with great expanse of mobile memory.

The only things that may bug me are the smaller screen and the lack of bluetooth. The bluetooth may bug me the most as I have also had it with wires running every where. I chose Sprint for two reasons, great rebates when purchasing from Amazon and the faster connectivity.

One device will now replace three (Palm, cellphone, and HipTop) devices. I have already added the AOL IM (using the UK version as it is free, thanks to Real's tip on MobileWhack). I am feeling lighter already. I will be keeping this topic running for a while, I do believe.

The customer service from Sprint has been a little slow, but insanely courteous and helpful when you do get somebody on the phone (even "Kevin" who had a hint of an Indian accent).

Doing Paper Prototyping

Matt asks for examples of people doing paper prototyping and he receives. This brief post with a few comments provides a great overview of this successful method of design and user testing.

AvantGo Synch for Mac OS X

I am now able to synch my Palm with AvantGo from my Mac. AvantGo USB Sync for Mac OS X is the key to getting this working. AvantGo has not supplied a Mac OS X interface. This worked exceptionally well. This was one of my last tethers to my PC. The PC has been very flakey with Palm hot synchs the past month or two, which is bad as one leaves for work with out of date info. Yes, in one day things can be horribly out of date.

Blogs highlighted on Meet the Press

While I am not a huge blog-for-blog-sake person, Meet the Press has a relatively long roundtable discussion on blog and the Democratic presidential campaigns. The talk about how Joe Trippi not only uses the blog to communicate with potential Dean supporters, but how he and others cull ideas from the blogs.

This highlight how new innovative ideas can quickly get posted by individuals, culled, and directly or with modification get implemented to better an endeavor. One clever idea that was culled from a weblog was the ability to have individuals share their unused weekend cell phone minutes and have the campaign use these minutes to call voters in Iowa. A rather clever idea and even smarter use of culling the Internet's vast cacophony of voices to find good helpful ideas to run a business/organization better and smarter.

Lake Effect Snow in Washington DC

Lake effect snow warning or not, for Washington, DC. Yesterday, I had a handful of severe weather warnings popping into my mobile devices and my desktop. I read the alerts, which were for "lake effect snow" and blizzards in the next four to 12 hours. The area impacted were the counties around Washington, DC, including Washington. From there I checked a couple weather forecasts and live weather stats, 39 percent humidity and no clouds on the eastern seaboard.

A couple hours later a retraction was made by NOAA and the National Weather Service. It seems they were testing software alert messages and the tests were dumped in the live system database. Oops. Somebody got the lesson of a lifetime and a lesson on how to verify what system is being tested.

Victor Summarizes Recognizing Digital Genre

Victor provides an overview of Recognizing Digital Genre, which is very similar to Andrew Dillon's Shape of Information. The quotes and insights of Recognizing are quite interesting to me. When you perform a lot of user testing this becomes apparent as you watch users place their mouse where they expect information as they try to perform tasks. I am thankful for the link to research.

Ontology Primer

What is an Ontology and Why We Need It is an essential overview to ontologies.

Hearts and Cheese Cubes

There are two things I have been enjoying putting in salads of late, Parano cheese (a Dutch cheese with a parmesan taste, but a dense smooth gouda texture) and artichoke bottoms. The artichoke bottoms, a.k.a. hearts, are hard to find as they have no leaves. I have found I really prefer the ones from Trader Joe's in a jar to others, which come in a can. If the canned variety is all that is available, try to find them at Whole Foods. I am sorry, but I do not have the brands imprinted in my mind.

Just thought to share, you may go read something else now.

Mixed Feelings about Apple Store in Bethesda Maryland

Mac Network News is reporting an Apple store coming to Bethesda, Maryland in Montgomery Mall.

I have very mixed feelings about the Apple store coming. While I trek to the Tysons and Clarendon stores in Northern Virginia and would love a store 5 to 10 minutes from my house, I still feel a very close tie to the local Apple resellers. I am a huge fan of the Absolute Mac store as they have an extremely knowledgeable staff, great customer service, and quick turn around times on perfectly done repairs and upgrades (I am willing to make the 20 minute trek to the store on Saturdays -- no late weeknight hours). (Absolute Mac has also been a fantastic resource to the local business community that understands Apple products let them get their job done and not have the computer get in the way.) I am also a customer of Mac Upgrades here in Bethesda and enjoy the ability to drop in on my way home from work or as a walk-in while doing other errands.

The local Apple resellers have provided expertise beyond what the Apple stores have provided and have better turn around on service times. The local stores are also very tied to the local community. The Absolute Mac store has been pushing to start a chapter of the local MUG, Washington Apple Pi, which would be a great meet-and-share for the Maryland Apple fans, while Mac Upgrades is a sponsor of Apple Pi.

All this said, I look forward to the Apple store coming to Montgomery Mall (my guess is it is going in where the Eddie Bauer store just vacated, which is near the official Palm kiosk). The Apple stores do a great job of introducing Apple products to the frustrated uninitiated PC consumers. The Apple stores are great venues to sit and watch new Apple users, be it iPod, iTunes, or Mac computers, come in and rave about their new found joy in digital consumer products and great computing products that actually let them do their job. I don't know how many times I hear customers stating they no longer battle their computer to do their work and are no longer wasting time or a lot of money on support for their PCs. These folks have been hardcore software programmers, business managers, store owners, students, designers, stay-at-home moms, etc. The love affair for Apple product grows from new seeds in Apple stores. The stores also provides hands-on experience to third-party consumer products and a broad array of software and add-ons.

While the Apple stores are great outreach and expansion devices for Apple and its great computing resources for consumers and enterprise buyers, the support and feeding on the Apple community has been performed by the local resellers and authorized repair shops. It would be great to have the Apple store offer repair and other services from Absolute Mac and Mac Upgrades, where applicable. Apple really needs to foster these relationships that have maintained and grown fans of great products for years.

InfoDesign is Now InformationDesign

Bogieland's InfoDesign has redesigned, restructured and moved to InformationDesign. The new site still has the great daily content and gems, but now includes sections for events, people, and others that have been part of the site, but not as easy to find. I also like the new XML feed, which will make seeing the updates more easily.

The new structure and design may make this site more than just my must read every morning before work, but also a resource to come return to regularly when I have more time. Peter and conspirators have done a great job with the new site.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!!