Unbound Spiral

I've been working though MOVEABLE TYPE for a week. It's still not working like I want. The whole process is becoming a little time consuming, and I fear I lack the programming skills.

I've found the support discussion helpful and fast. My real frustration traces to little things, more like gremlins than anything else. Want additional functionality. Subscribe, etc. Have to work each one out. takes time.

Despite the poor documentation for Radio, I'm going to try and load my Radio blog in here. I like the new subscription service. But have no idea how to do that in MT. Similarly Google news.

Info pours into my e-mail daily, magazines into my mailbox and there are few other forms of media I am not confronted with. Some of this is useful. Some is thoughtprovoking, and some stimulates new thinking and ideas. Sometimes weeks later, in a meeting I remember facts, require quick points of reference. Often I know roughly when and where it was. Usually I can find it. Still it could be easier. It may have been printed out, downloaded, saved to a file folder --- really who knows. There is so much it is all rather chaotic really.

So why blog? For me the blog looks like a better way of making use of my notes, refering to links and capturing my story. Here's my business lifestream. At least the public parts of it. When David Gelertner published his piece on Lifestreams (checkout Edge too) it made great sense to me. Fundamentally, he says:"A "lifestream" organizes information not as a file cabinet does but roughly as a mind does." Hmmm not sure this is really welcome to my mind. Still the blog is the first opportunity to really start linking my thoughts in a real-time lifestream to a broader "as yet unknown" community.

This is important. For it is often the links you don't know you have that pay the biggest dividends. Some of you may have read my paper on COMsumers. I put it on the back burner. AND YES!!!! I have a couple methods for how decentralized groups of consumers could be motivated to seemlessly accelerate the sharing of profile information. Still that is another story. The point here is Bloggers are sharing aspects of their profiles and information they didn't know they had. The intangibles currently hidden in blogging communities have enormous potential for growth. If you have paid any attention to Napster, Kazaa, eBay or Messaging systems, you may agree with my thoughts on how these communities are learning faster. Participating now... is part of testing my own hypothesis. Nothing like Prototyping to the future.

Back to the basics. I've often observed friends who keep a business diary, noting every meeting and what transpired. Clearly they work chronologically, but fail even when ring bound to capture all the related information, which loose usually falls out and gets lost. With a blog as I link I grow the value of what I capture. With time a story or many stories may emerge. Reflections may later take me back on new and updated journeys.

Let's face it. In the collaborative economy of today it is more important to give information and thoughts away. It cost's me nothing and I may get noticed and generate significant new and unexpected returns. I hope for "generative relationships" that help me grow with those that want to acclerate innovation and strategy development in their organization. I'll be happy to actually receive comments and suggestions. I can't know where to look if I don't know where I should be looking.

Thus my first objective is almost now complete. That was install Moveabletype, set up a basic structure and get it running. The rest can follow

Joi, thanks for sharing your comment on the living web (below)".

My feeling is it's "real-time", yet it's not a conversation without exchange. And yet here's an exchange that I persume will be logged. If the "living web" provides "simulated annealing" then we can use "chaos" to contol "chaos". On their own, weblogs (are we reaching hypergrowth yet?) are being linked and I imagine the more the merrier. Afterall a little bedlam can a be a good thing for crowds and data flow. The noise should simply add to the creativity and enable us all to learn faster.

So we do it to live new conversations. Seek out new voices and outside perspectives.... We aim to "live in" the conversation. We can by seeking new -- perhaps slightly controlled elements, that are different and outside our usual perspectives.

Reminds me that I must check on complexity metaphors around blogging. Probably, it's already been done. Yet for my blog to be part of a swarm... I'll need to connect it in new ways.

Joi Ito's conversation with the living web [ Blogging about Blogging ]
by Joichi Ito at November 01, 2002 10:35 PM
What do you think of the slogan, "Joi Ito's conversation with the living web"? I got the conversation part from The Cluetrain Manifesto and the living web part from 10 Tips to Writing the Living Web. People kept asking me what the difference was between a blog and a web site. I said it was different because I wasn't publishing, I was having a conversation. I didn't have "readers" I was part of a "living web". I have no idea if that gets the message across, but I sure like the sound of it.

Michael Lissack on simulated annealing: "Simulated annealing, for example, translates into ascribing a creative value to "noise" and seeking to make use of that value --in one example, by bringing outside perspectives into focus groups at critical moments when making decisions."

Plum Design provides a neat visual thesaurus. If you are brainstorming words and just need some new phases or new words check it out. Not sure this site has street or fashion smarts. Clearly it isn't linked into blogging. No results were found.

You may like the mindmap like rendiditons that this provides. However it is no subsititute for creative minds engaged and playing.

Author, programmer, tech analyst and future open source entrepreneur David Duval is worth following.

I think he is playing with more than words when today's blognovel picks up the theme below. Is this about SPACES or is the context just paraphased here?"

"You close your eyes, open them again, and nothing will ever be the same. It might not be obvious at first. It might not even be obvious later. But it's still there, that newfound feeling of uncertainty, of something lost, and something found, only you don't know what it means yet. " PlanB

Maybe I will have to read his serial. There are at least three threads here. David Duval - interesting person, PlanB- his blognovel and lastly the software application Spaces. Take some time and follow the links.

THREAD ONE: David lists his research interests as "self-organizing and wireless networks, complexity theory, dynamical systems, and molecular nanotechnology among others....... Other than that, he's clearly a good bloke who knows where to find an Irish pint!

THREAD TWO: His blognovel runs on the serial concept. StoryTelling opportunities, serial, case studies etc. There are many applications here and some new opportunities. For more proof that there is a bigger debate around blogging opportunties see Slashdot. Enjoy the FAQ
Stories usually have a strong element of time built into them, just like a weblog. A weblog, however, is a story where the beginning changes every day: what we see is the last element that was posted. Follow this link to PlanB's description.

THREAD THREE: DynamicObjects has just lauched an alpha PIM. It is naturally object oriented. I sense the objectives again to create a more collaborative space. Perhaps today we have the answer in the making to yesterday's PLAXO. David writes: "... spaces is qualitatively different. It shares many features with standard email/PIM software like Evolution or Outlook. However, its abstractions over information management are designed to simplify organization and access to information and for collaboration from the ground up. Along with the simplicity of its user interface, these elements will not only make spaces a better PIM, they will also allow it to be an ideal tool for collaboration between individuals and small groups....

......Using self-organizing P2P technologies, there will be no need for servers. Having designed the interface for collaboration from the ground up, there will be no need for five different programs that always do things differently and need a subpoena to talk to each other. The FAQ contains more information on what features are available now and the schedule for additional features.

To this layman... that sounds pretty good.

Then there is the final story of how I got this post. It goes like this. I was again searching MoveableType. Looking for answers. For the first time I noted that MT actually has a list on their home page of recently update MT sites. (I have paid my donation and no I haven't solved my automated ping yet). I clicked on an interested name... Orbitalworks and noted the link to spaces. Captured by Names and a good hour of reading. Hope I've simplified the places to look

"CollectiveSome is the odd-sounding name for something I'd argue is pretty important. It's the idea that applying a group's perspectives, preconceptions and blind-spots to a problem at hand yields something quite remarkably different than anything any *one* person could." Tom Portante.

Tom! Rather gratifying to see you here after coffee just two days ago. There is more to this story than will ever be posted here. not sure where the linking will take us. It is the right thing to do. I can't think of a better method today to accelerate my own "creative friction" points and thus illustrate how it streams "discovery capital".

And it works. I've filled my head with links (a selection) this morning. Looking for methods and ways that change the game. Discovery Capital leads to market changing concepts, and that's what leads to value creation. The CollectiveSome, the Unbound Spiral, what ever we call it the need is here now the capability to provide it perhaps closer than we think.

Then Tom posts on Beyond Certainty this am. I know I have to write another piece. "Radical Strategy Innovation"

Like food? Enjoy wine? Pleasant architecture? Need a day out? Head to Napa and Copia. There you can feed your mind, discover and indulge at the American Center for Wine, Food & the Art. (It worked for my kids too!)

A collection of great exhibits, nice cafe (appealing restaurant too) I left with a brochure in hand. Have a feeling for a group interested in food, packaging, dulinary arts... Copia may design into an excellent stop on a facilitated learning journey.

This is the last panel for the day. The previous one... was interesting but not particularly reportable. This panel Duncan Davidson - SkyPilot, Glenn Fleishman, Dave Hagan - Boingo, Martin Rofheart - XTreme Spectrum and David Sifry Sputnik.

KW The reason this session is last is perhaps this is the most exciting thing happening in the world. Here is the potential to overturn our current model.

What's apparent from listening and the notes is the speed and simplicity that WIFI is enabling. The growth is enabling fast connections everywhere. There is also rapidly appearing unintended consequences of this model. High speed in easy to carry devices, will provide new utility for consumers. Expect new applications for messaging, voice, e-mail, photos, etc. Some of these devices will also carry different identities. Don't expect them all to be just like the phone! Then batteries may still be a problem. For the first time... I want a Pocket PC with WIFI and heaps of storage. That may help my experimentation. I better go shopping! Bye Bye phones.... hello "communicator"!

Notes and links:

GF facilitating. 802.11b weblog. Layers, one though seven. It's exciting because it has captured communities generosity of many, and is separate from the communication infrastructure. WIFI is juice and bandwidth. It may be one of the best technology stories of 2002 and perhaps 2003.

MR Extreme Specturm ultrawideband chipset... extremely disruptive technology. DD from Skypilot. uses an array of atennas that point to each other. as a way to push out more bandwidth.

DS from Sputnik Startup making 802.11 software - where firewalls are required etc. Build a way to manage a bunch of access points.

DH from Boingo a aggregator of 802.11b hotspot services to assembling hotspots around the country. Building applications so they can control the client experience from hotspot to hotspot.

KW How will a decentralised approach to deployment of technology affect consumers adoption?.... Implications of unlicensed bandwidth, few ranges open, and wildfire spread for adoption.

DD WIFI and mesh archtecture. How build an unlicensed carrier nationwide? In future may have lowest cost DS WIFI spreading like wildfire. People are using it at home, or at the office, eg someone still wants to read e-mail etc. How do I deal with it? Who else? How do I stop them? Should we ban? Corporate Intelligence, hacking into the netorks. Sputnik people are treating these devises in the system.. It then immediately get recognized and then managed. Sputnik can then use to ferret out rogue access points. So I can then make sure that people are physically available in the building using triagulation. Therefore we can solve the security problem. DH Boingo... decentralization based on fragementation tracing to low cost points even with the big carriers. No way anyone carrier can garner any one particular market. Boingo is solving by developing client software that makes it easy to connect. MR is using a different technology. EWB could replalce 802.11b.

KW Are open networks terrorism? What kind of open networks?

ANS universal acccess ubiquitious. There are issues around identity and authorisation as well. Can send a message from a public library. More concened about the backlash from non security type events. When someone drives up to a corportate parking lot an immediatley starts spamming off the t-3 line out. The SRI stuff was just crap. Rational minds will prevail. Will policy be made from these types of reports? Tone down the hype. Tech that is cute won't be adopted. At Skypilot do you need a network operator? How do you manage access in and out of the network? Security is an arms race. People need to take a differnt look at this. The theft thing is interesting. Cable companies are now making the same sharing complaints as the music industry.

KW What are the killer applications for open spectrum?? Unlicensed Spectrum?

The killer aps are clear. What you do when you are connected everywhere? When people need to have a broadband signal everywhere?

MR EWP development. See FCC february this year. The FCC process has evolved to handle big cos. doesnt' help the small start-ups. How do you get an unlicensed tech decision through the FCC.

The FCC is now in a real political box. Driving down to true monopolies --- staffers are trying to make lots of license spectrum available. They now believe that out of unlicensed spectrum can come a 3rd path... must make it the final mile. 2.4 difficult, 5 hard. Perhaps they can find a solution that creates an independent third pipe. Unlicensed space is "tragedy of the commons"

At prior shows there has been all sorts of congestion trying to get on the network. It's manageable, and then making sure it is available. Two fundamental camps. one is trad and new is the 802.11 technology that sells it. eg fixes the quality. fix crowding, fix cells, etc.

The alternative is mesh archtecture and scale it to very a high degreee. I should be able to route around problems that create infinite spectrum. Will humans create the human dilemma. The question really starts to become what should the FCC do re the allocation and the role. Even when the best tech should win.. Polite radios should win? How do I create a radio that will interfere at a minimum level versus others, ega polite member of this spectrum. Save battery power too!

In a spectrum where the owner has control this situaltion cannot emerge. Specturm policy task force. See the May REPORT more technical on the FCC ....

Command and Control the traditional FCC model doesn't work. Looking at a new stream. includleing property. including unlicensed easements. specturm underlay... interference below.. best of property and commons under this. This starts tomorrow. What will be the effect of smart radios in the unlicensed services.

?What's happening out of the US? ieee 802.11h 5ghz enables it to work in Europe.

Rest of the world... buildout is happening everywhere. WIFI carriers happening everywhere Boingo is going workin on setting it up internationally. Setting up hotspots everywere.

Nick Denton is following his hunches in his weblog media posting perhaps termed "nano-publishing". If you want a model for how to build a magazine on a budget this might be it.

However, what's more he says "The more ambitious is a news filtering system, about which more below. That project launches later in 2003." The link is broken, still at Supernova this sounded a lot like the idea behind Sense Connect.

Yesterday when asked about wishes for the future Nick said: (approximately) "Want a personal news one-page of items day - hour etc. The capability to locate myself within a social network, and then 1 -2 -3 degrees out recommending things to me.

That's interesting and perhaps can be built on. I added new blogs to my blog roll this morning. Now can someone give me the power to view additions to linked rolls at 1 degree, 2 degrees, 3 degrees.... IE LET ME KNOW WHAT IS RUNNING AROUND IN MY PERIFERAL VISION? Using RSS feeds in a real-time window. Equally who got booted? That might make them more interesting. Bet I'd learn faster. More importantly... automating the news feed would eliminate my manual need to add to it. Then perhaps I could have some reminder features too, like show me it again in a month etc. while making it more intelligent and adding reputation features.

Of course this sounds a lot like what OpenCola was doing, so I checked to see if it had died and there's an offering and free trial. A personal version just launched at a librarians conference. Not quite the same thing still worth further study.

Nick also said here "Marketers are increasingly aware of the power of weblogs to establish word-of-mouth for products such as movies, books and gadgets. But sponsorship buys across thousands of sites are too time-consuming, and traditional public relations outreach is more liable to irritate key influencers than persuade. "

Maybe optimistic, still if you are a gadget freak, perhaps Gizmodo is pretty cool.

Salon.com Technology | Life on the edge

Scott Rosenberg provides a well balanced review of: "The geek-driven world of new "decentralized" technologies like Wi-Fi, blogging and Web services is more about cutting out the middleman than finding a business model."

See Supernova 2002 Photos

Last week at Supernova, there was some discussion on who blogs - male or female, and the demographics. Doc Searls also asked the question in his Saturaday blog. Fact is no one knows. However one set of facts can be cleared up. Live and Dead journals include 945,000 users that have updated with over 250,000 updating in the last seven days.

Are they guys or gal? Despite the names, both services are predominantly female. 65% at LJ and almost 75% at DJ. DJ skews slightly younger than LJ pulling stronger against 15-16 year olds while LJ peaks around 17-20 year olds. I'm sure addionatal data exists:

Live Journal Statistics

Dead Journal Statistics

The parallels in statistical data access reflects that both DJ and LJ use the same back end which is open sourced. These sites provide useful functionality that is not available in blogger, Radio, or Moveable type. In particular, the profiling capability and the community of friends listings. It's the profiling that provides the statistics. Possibly a profile system like blogroll could enable improved statistics access for all who participate. You could spread it virally.

Whether industry or backend, "blogging" needs better statistics for the community and for the operators that are trying to make it a business. There is an opportunity for Weblogs here. I presume feeds can be extracted off Weblogs pretty easily to match the LJ/DJ data.

Additionally, many of the blogging organizations provide useful forums - for example: LiveJournal Business Forum Similarly MT and Radio have discussion forums. These are great places to learn what the customer wants and how they differ. However I have a suspicion that few in the forums go looking cross-forums / platform. Perhaps they should.

Additional Data:

Live Journal:
Male: 213719 (36.3%)
Female: 374294 (63.7%)
Unspecified: 139876

Dead Journal
Male: 63754 (25.5%)
Female: 186091 (74.5%)
Unspecified: 53382

Live Journal
Total users: 815360
Users that have ever updated: 674785
Users updating in last 30 days: 295826
Users updating in last 7 days: 211814
Users updating in past 24 hours: 85891

Dead Journal
Total users: 364589
Users that have ever updated: 270856
Users updating in last 30 days: 63752
Users updating in last 7 days: 40677
Users updating in past 24 hours: 15689

Live Journal : Free Account: 757287 (93.2%)
Early Adopter: 14294 (1.8%)
Paid Account: 38977 (4.8%)
Permanent Account: 1228 (0.2%)

Bully Magazine - Jackass Journalism, or Friends Don't Let Friends Start Blogs, or Who Needs John Ashcroft When We've Got Livejournal.com?

From the NZ Herald and various sources. The America's Cup is known for innovative breaking of rules, tough competition and billionaires. What's less known round the world is where the innovation comes from. New Zealand yacht racing is a worthy study, for the NZ skippers, team leadership (Russell Coutts - Allengi, Chris Dickson - Oracle and Dean Barker TeamNZ) and the technology that bubbles out from the latest in hulls and spars to wireless heads up displays on Oracle. Here sweeping changes of logic can make huge differences. Revisiting ideas given up on earlier may find new life.

Team New Zealand's new boats uses a 'false hull' to increase the effective sailing length and, therefore, the boat's potential speed.

Some suggest that being allowed to design a basic hull that looks less powerful, and then attaching a second underwater skin that restores not only full power but extra power, means the Kiwi yacht should have an unassailable advantage.

It's been hard to the keep secret and so they are not now alone. Alinghi's false hull is in trial and it looks like Oracle is ready to follow. Note: With the exception of Alinghi's mast - Alinghi, Oracle and OneWorld all used New Zealand boatbuilders and Southern Spars.

We'd probably find more innovations if we looked on board. "It is a heads-up display, it is a wireless connection to the instruments," Doyle said. "I sit in the back of the boat and I struggle to see the instruments through bodies. This has a tiny screen I can put down and call up different readouts." Michael Schumacher has one too. In the last cup match the Kiwi's constant chatter using "receiver based" communication led to smooth sailing and quick wins.

There's a lot to be learned from these small innovative teams. They are working with millions, getting results and changing the rules everyday. Then TeamNZ is working with even less.... and doing more! That's attitude - and what we all should be doing.

Two quotes recently forwarded to me, by names I don't know lead me on two interesting journeys. The first is about time. Time provided an important theme for his plays. The second is more spiritual in nature and plays to different rules for time while leading me to an interesting set of lectures.

"We do not go round a circle (of existence). That is an illusion, just as the cycling of the planets and the stars is an illusion. We move along a spiral track. It is not quite the same journey from the cradle to the grave each time. Sometimes the differences are small. Sometimes they are very important. We must set out each time on the same road but along that road we have a choice of adventures."
J. B Priestley, I Have Been Here Before

Priestley wrote three time plays around passing time, a time for slowing down of experience for contemplation, and a time for speeding up creative and imaginative. Priestley made people thing about how time passes, whether slowly or quickly. He believed there were many dimensions to time. Including our clock time, passing time. perhaps a fifth dimension, enduring time, in which anything that has happened goes on happening. These ideas of time fed into his idea of Eternity: "Eternity is not unending time. It is outside time. It involves another dimension of things. If we think of time as a line, then eternity is a plane. Life in time is existence along the one way train from the cradle to the grave. Eternal life is always a new and heightened experience of the here and now...all moments of noble living, the ecstasy of love, the compassion and understanding that enter into every genuine personal relationship. All demand the unknown dimension, this timeless being." We can be sure his perspective was not framed by internet time or real-time!

Little in his perspective was framed by the "energy of time" or by today's networks. The network of time. Thus my attraction to the second quote and the link to the lectures above by his wife Eva Perrikos.

"When streams of energy are drawn together, they superimpose in a spiral, which is the fundamental shape of creative activity: witness the structure of galaxies and cyclones, cells and crystals. The spiral form of orgone movement is visible in human auras and in a blue envelope around the earth..."
John Pierrakos.

This spiral reflect a more spiritual path to life's energy, healing and spirituality. Here there is a different sense of time. Perhaps it is also more rewarding?

Sign of change. I joined the 10's of thousands (my estimate about 75000+) marching for peace in San Francisco today. We came from all walks of life, many like me had never protested before.

It was worthwhile! Yet no words emerged from the crowd or from the speakers that were easy to take home. The crowd values represented an outpouring of uncomfort with America's current path in the world. Time to change course and take responsibility to make the world a better place.

As we rode home in jamm packed BART cars, it was silent, all with many thoughts. We all knew we were not alone. While the factions on the podium could not speak for us, and Martin Luther King's quotes out of time, on his birthday there was a place for them.

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." MLK

More on Live Journal stats and posted by Ross Mayfield. Seem to remember blogging these a month ago should have used fancy grapics and made it more memorable.

On the statistics front. Can anyone give me the current total on RYZE, ecademy, and Buddynetwork in beta, oh and Friendster too?

Britt Blaser introduces a nice post on forging a federation today to make a difference with:

"Now consider that we are helping in the birth of a ubiquitous global network, for it's not the "frozen" Internet Infrastructure that matters, it's the connecting of most humans who wish to be, using words and gestures that seem natural to them (not yet, but real soon). We all know this is what we're about, but it's good to pause and wonder at our good luck to be at this place at this time."

As always a few with an impossible dream can shape the future.

PHOTO-SHARING SITES PROVE POPULAR 13 million Americans visited photo-sharing Websites during November 2002.

Latest studies reveal that Yahoo Photos is the most popular photo-sharing community among home, work and university Net users with 5.2 million visitors. Three other photo-sharing website had at least a million visitors each during November 2002. MSN Photos attracted two million unique visitors while Ofoto and Picturetrail.com drew 1.3 million and 1.2 million respectively. The findings also indicate that broadband users accounted for 47 percent of visitors to photo-sharing websites during the month of November.

AMR Research surveyed US net users about their 2002 holiday purchases and found that 28% of their budget was spent online whereas just 4% was allotted to print catalogs

AMR finds that just 4% of net users' holiday shopping budgets went to catalogs, which means that 20% of the retail channel's share in 2001 went to the internet in 2002.

Overall 20% of retail spending was online in 2002.

Useful read "Digital ID and eGovernement"

"Summary: Governments are vitally concerned with identity and yet, paradoxically, most governments have been largely unwilling to take a leadership role in the digital identity arena. This article explores what government's relationship to identity is, and should be..."

LJ/DJ provide useful functionality that is not available in blogger, Radio, or Moveable type. In particular, the profiling capability and the community of friends listings. It's the profiling that provides the statistics. Possibly a profile system added to blogroll could enable improved statistics access for all who participate. You could spread it virally.

Saw David Galbraith also suggesting an XML profile. Broadcasting.... consumer profiles. I don't think that is what is intended, an unintended consequence?

Am I watching the Napster - (Ryze) vs Kazaa (broader blogging) aspects at play here?

Hearing from a friend that Huminities was a recent discussion item in the Well.

Huminity is a free software that enables people to share, create, modify and navigate a global map of connections via highly graphical animated maps.

Sounds okay until you give it your Outlook address book. Beware! Another that seems to duplicate mistakes already made. See Plaxo....

From Smart Mobs - "The latest issue of the Economist on-line includes a series of articles on the future of the internet. Essays address privacy, always-on connectivity, intellectual property, surveillance, and cyberculture development through social norms.

On privacy the Economist:
"That may be the wrong conclusion. Instead, privacy is likely to become one of the most contentious and troublesome issues in western politics. There will be constant arguments about what trade-offs to make between privacy on the one hand and security, economic efficiency and convenience on the other. Most people are repelled by the idea of near-constant surveillance, but they either find it difficult to believe that it will really happen, or they do not know how to stop it."

Strikes me that the Economist whose home is the most "big brother" watching society of them all is missing some emerging trends. We should fear the dark side in many of these articles. Let's hope they explore new collaborative technologies in more detail in their next survey.

Another great linking post from Mitch RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing Follow the links in his blog.

I, me, mine
Jon Udell has charted the relationships between one's identity, groups and devices in a simple layout that describes many of the challenges of user experience design. Marc Canter adds his riff:
Jon's right. Whether it be by yourself, or with a group of people, conversing, intercting publishing, communicating, listening, watching, playing - EVERYTHING - all activity first and foremost starts with YOURSELF. YOUR Identity.

Not to be shrill, but it is all about individual power. Any corporate-defined system becomes confining, like being shut inside a focus group forever.

This was the post that pushed me to re-register an idea that a colleague and I registered back in 1999. We never worked out quite how to use it then. We dreamt it up one afternoon while damming Amzaon's purchase circles concept at the time. It lapsed. I just renewed it! It's powerful. Remember the childs words.... usually 2 or 3 years old..... where they say "You are not the boss of me!". Well just possibly IOWNME could work a little harder on behalf of your identity. Now maybe that's something to hang a concept or two on!

Planetwork consortium. Last night I attended their session at the Exploratorium. Was led by Jim Fournier. We had a chance for networking and then speakers made brief presentations. Enough to stimulate more networking afterwards. These are brief notes.

Tom Munnecke of Giving Space. His project is using the ontology of the uplift. used the phrase "The Missing Nothing" like it. They have a small grant and are working towards "A Global Day of Uplift" on September 12.

Sam Hunting, will awe you with his passion for topic map systems and implementations. He wakes every morning knowing that what lasts and endures are things that are beautiful. He works with beautiful data structures, "Topic Maps". "Not everything we can talk about can be loaded into a computer", "people together because they ahve things they want to exchange". Topics are proxies for subjects and GOOGLE just doesn't go there! Apparently 6 approaches in beta, 3 open source.

Next up is a lady whose name I've missed. She's using the phrase "DIGNIFIED" online communities. I think this is a wonderful word and thought. Is a lack of "Dignity" in the online work holding back participation?

Victor Grey is sharing his upcoming upgrade the FriendlyFavors permission engine. Afterwards I learn it's not his fulltime job. Here's yet another developing an identity system without real funding. Seems like something is wrong here.

The Social Capital Network is introduced by David Boyd. He's developing methodologies for accounting that address "Social Value". How do we measure the impact of a grant? Often the accounting systems are almost non-existant. As I listen I can't help wondering whether these are the measures that will enable a more innovative - creative society.

Eugene Kim Blue Oxen had a great line for thinking about what keeps him going all day. "the less dumb metric" --- Everyday... am I less dumb? He's working on research within the open source community trying to research "patterns of collaboration" and spoke about "Science of Collaboratories". One to watch!

That wasn't all, networking continued and I have further leads and correspondence to run down. Well worth going.

I just read in the SF Chronicle this morning more research on SPAM. The research is all flawed. It assumes that the government or organizations or both should take some form of action. The questions are all asked that way. Simply because no-one understands that perhaps you and me and others together can do something about it. How can you change paradigms when the research is constantly promoting a dialogue round the current impasse?

More government regulation particularly of the opt-out kind will only make the problem worse. While almost certainly (I presume) giving the government more power to track, and even tax exchanges.

Brain overload. So many connections over last couple of days with many links and no time to blog them. They are out there in blogsphere somewhere. The context for much remains in the mind and between the links. These threads are thus placesetters.

Andre Durand on Intersecting Identity. "do so in such a way that only 'certified' individuals (people who have been added to your Personal Area Network or Roster) can actually send you email (thereby eliminating spam) -- now we might have something both unique, new and interesting."

Few posts around Tony Perkins new venture AlwaysOn uses Salesforce.com as the customer database. Good to see others found the model both intriguing and scary.

There have been recent CNET postings and comments by Jonathon Patterson on ENUM a clever way to bring phone numbers to web addressess. More leads may add to the confusion. This reminds me slightly of .geo (SRI initiative) where url was a geograpic mapped location. I'm not sure what value phone numbers have in a mobile voip world. Can someone tell me how a phone number adds to my sense of identity? Yahoo IM doesn't need a phone number. We choose our own!

Then Flemming Funch on “me” and networks and takes it further today with his post "Give me personalized collaborative ranking" Sounds very familiar. Perhaps blogging will really connect us all up.

Ross Mayfield discussion and Power laws continues to adds more twists.

Participating in Joi Ito’s Emergent Democracy happening has provided a number of thoughtful challenges..

Then noting Microsoft’s Three Degrees beta announcement today and Googles purchase over the weekend of Blogger. Generally well coverd.

Then there is some research going on around Ryze. More later. It's interesting. I've also added additional friends. Michael Dunham is the latest trying out Ryze.

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen." FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Despite some cynicism out there. You can make great connectons on Ryze. My numbers are increasing rapidly. See b.cognosco: Friday, February 28, 2003

"This week I had two very interesting brainstorming sessions thanks to the Ryze community. First, Gordana Bischoff, a strategic consultant in Cape Town, South Africa spent an hour with me discussing value creation in the SMB community. Today I spent 45 minutes with Stuart Henshall, a strategic consultant in the Bay area, discussing how new collaborative technologies, DigitalID, and social networking tools are inverting."

We did indeed Terry. Thanks for your time.

The Curta Calculator circa 1947.

Major components of the machine are: the carriage that can be moved to Six different positions for multiplication and division; the number transmission mechanism; the ten's carry mechanism; and the result and counter dials.

This precision calculator that weighs eight oz performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, cubing, and square root operations. The number set is transferred to the result dial once for each turn of the operating handle while the revolution counter records the number of these turns.

Capacity of the machine is 8x6x11 places. Eight place digits can be set for addition or subtraction; six place multipliers can be used; and maximum results of eleven places can be obtained.

A recent article in Fortune provides another angle on why we all should be concerned about the "Perils of E-Mail". When electronic information takes on a life of it's own, where context can be debated and records may be incomplete, looks like the lawyers win. Should we wonder why consumers are scared about going online? The press frankly doesn't help. We have "Death by Spam", now "Perils of E-Mail", and that's not even closing in on identity fraud, and credit theft. Should we wonder why consumers adopt different identities, IM names that aren't their own etc.? Why are we looking at national do not call lists?

The Perils of E-Mail
"It was supposed to make life easier. Now e-mail has become a prosecutor's No. 1 weapon and the surest way for companies to get sued. How e-mail became e-vidence mail--and why the solution is often worse than the problem." FORTUNE Monday, February 3, 2003 By Nicholas Varchaver

Separately at AlwaysOn Network "The Social Risks of New Technologies" "I see the increased public attention and the general level of clamoring as the beginning of full-scale social debate on a truly complex set of issues."

I've just added the search function linked to yesterday by Micah. I searched my friends for Digital Identity. Pretty cool. It does take a while to crank though the list. must check the code and see if I can get it to list the last 3 posts per friend... most recent first. It's referencing my Radio subscriptions file which is similar to my current blog role. In using this search tool I have no idea what information value is collected, while it operates from Micah's site. Seems like a neat function. Why aren't these things just incorporated into MT?

I have a feeling it's time to change the look of this blog. Fix the things that don't work. Try some other templates etc. Perhaps soon. Having just checked the new Plug-ins Directory there is plenty more I could busy myself with.

While I've delayed playing with this one, I have changed my radio news clips blog and it's now ftp-ing to henshall.com/radio

I'm testing out a new WYSIWYG text editor I've just installed.  Just frustrating to have such limited functionality in the base edition.  (Note this only works with Internet Explorer 5.5+ for Windows). 

This post uses the new Wysiwyg editor Colors, bullets, indent, pictures etc.

• From Interative Tools 
• With help from the Moveable Type Support Forum 
• Despite the instructions, it wasn't until I went back to the support forum and got an instruction from Ian that it worked. 

I also managed the upgrade to 2.62.  I'm still looking for clarification from the help group on why my installation doesn't ping weblogs.com appropriately.  With the upgrade each failure is now noted in my Activity Log.  It's always been a manual ping so far.  I have LWP installed -- from the support groups that seems to be the problem. There isn't a one line solution.   

I've also experimented with other plug-ins etc before.  For the most part I've had little real success and I've learnt that playing around is time consuming.  

Update on the Wysiwyz, is it is not perfect.  Copying a document from word meant that I had an immediate conflict with my CSS stylesheet.  If I'd copied into the extended entry column and then to the top box I'd have been ahead.  Will use for a week.  May not be the solution I'd hoped. 

Did you know that a home without an international calling plan is like running around without medical insurance?  You could lose your life savings if you or perhaps an unwitting stranger starts dialing from your Sprint home.

What’s the admin cost of sorting out the mess that telemarketing, regulation, and administrative bureaucracy, have created?

What’s a customer to do?  BLOG it!   Then google “Sprint Rates International DeceptionPlanetfeedback FTC(FTC notes at end) 

I'm not sure how I feel about this Ruling Backs Anti-Spam Activist (TechNews.com)

"An Internet site that provides personal information about an alleged purveyor of mass e-mail is not harassment and does not need to be removed, a Maryland district court judge ruled yesterday."

I haven't looked at the anti-spam site in detail.  .  While it is on Slashdot too. Francis Uy's (Spamhaus?) personal site is not so  obvious. He says:

"George tried to send me a message, and wanted to make an example of me," he wrote. "Instead I had a message for him: Every time you try to mess with me, I will post it on the 'Net, and more people will learn about you. I don't encourage harassment against you, and I don't need to. The facts speak quite loudly enough. Your best option is to crawl back under a rock and suck it up, or move to some state other than the one I live in."

This solution looks like the makings a larger arms race. I note that John Robb posts today on a McAfee anti-spam product.  How much will that cost?  It's $39.95.   

John says:"Hmmm. I just installed the McAfee anti-spam program.  It seems to work relatively well however, it doesn't seem to be able to force my e-mail program (Outlook Express) to gather new e-mails after it spots a valid e-mail during a check.  Here is a datapoint:  I got 950 spam messages this weekend.   Today I got 2. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]"  

Looks like the consumer costs of being online just keep escalating! It will need a consumer centric solution.  McAfee only makes money on this product as long as spam exists. Don't see them sponsoring Spamhaus! 

A whole new world just opened up! My frustration with blogging and trying to install various functions traced almost completely to a poor service provider.  For the past few weeks I've thought about conversational blogging (I've been sitting on a post never quite got it how I wanted. Will post next.)

I'm looking for conversation and my blog format doesn't encourage it.  It doesn't yet contain some of the elements I've enjoyed with Ryze, there's no guestbook etc.   So I've been busy trying to change things.  For a long time I've felt that blogging systems are not easy, friendly or particularly helpful when it comes to documentation.  The flood of people still taking up blogs I hope will apply more pressure on suppliers and hosts to come up with better solutions. While I've enjoyed the learning lesson many should be buying a good setup service.  Ah the capabilities I have to start people in blogging today!

So my experience has run the full spectrum in the last few days. From finding a new provider Insider Hosting which has cut my monthly fee in half and more than doubled space and bandwidth.  In addition I can now host my other domains have a nifty control panel and let rip with everything from guestbooks, forums, chat, publishing, to emails and lists.  I'm impressed. I'm also building out my site so it's not transferred yet. I also am just stunned. Before I heard open source.  Trying instant installations of phpwebsite, three different forums etc. The tools are revolutionary and they are hear now. 

Consequently I completed a new installation of MT, moved to MYSQL (whatever that means) and have now almost got to the point where I can move things over.  Today has brought my back to MT template and stylesheets. Something I was meaning to do for ever! In a week when on the new site I should finally get Trackbacks to work! I note pinging from there already does.  Something I've never managed with this current provider.

I put up with the flaws in my MT installation because I really didn't know much better.  There's no website garage for MT that I know of.  I put up with my host provider because I assumed I was getting great everything.  Like the telephone company, you think it is hard to change.  It's a little more than a phone call.  It's still not hard.  In their case I don't think they were interested in the little guy! So much for Hurricane Electric 

PS I'll take all ideas for further improvements.  I found I had to strip some items out of the templates today.  They won't work until I move it over.  I'm most proud that  I worked out how to create drop down boxes in my header.  Took me ages!

Finally a rebuilt MT (with trackback) on a new server. More interestingly it already pinged old trackbacks.  I'm going to enjoy the new functionality and connectivity.  Should help with the conversational thrust and enable more effective discovery with fellow bloggers that because my system failed to ping were dead to me before. 

I'll forget boring you with all the little hiccups.  I've learned a lot from it.  I've picked up decent stats and the desire to try out a number of elements in the templates.

Let's hope that next week sees it all running again. It looks like the new sql database has renumbered all my old posts.  So my guess is I've left broken links everywhere.  Not sure how to fix that.  Probably too late. 

To arrive in France is always an experience. This time was no different, just the experience was a little unexpected. Most flights from London to Paris were cancelled. Turned out the whole country was on strike. Well almost. The whole government sector, so no public transportation, no trains, not buses, just the odd taxi. Made my trip out to Fontainebleau a little more challenging and expensive than it might otherwise have been. As always these things work out… we made it to the destination just a few hours later than expected.

A separate anecdote for the small world. When the snacks were served by BA the traveler next to me said to the Stewardess, “I’ll have a wine – must support the home country.” I thought this a little strange --- while flying to France he clearly wasn’t French. Looking at the label I saw it was a New Zealand wine and so naturally made a comment. Turns out he worked for the NZ Treasury and was attending a World Bank Conference in Paris. As we talked --- scenarios emerged --- and he asked if I knew a colleague of his who had taken a scenario course in SF and returned raving about it. Turned out it was a program Jay Ogilvy and I had run. Yep it’s a small world and just another benefit and reminder for reaching out.

• One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. Sophocles
• Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. Immanuel Kant
• Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.  Martin Fischer:
• An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. Sydney J. Harris:  
• These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.  Vernon Cooper:  
• The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery Anais Nin:

I found myself with a real dilemma this week.  My heart having made a short notice commitment to attend the 3 day IDCommons Meeting - an undertaking important to how society moves forward. If Mead's short quote about a few people changing the world was ever relevant -- then this is one of those possiblities. I'm sorry I won't be there.  It's a great group of people. 

While I wanted to be there...the head said --- you have some client obligations that must be achieved before you go on vacation.  So I rationalised and so I will take some time to be at the WFS meeting that is on this weekend in SF.  It's hardly likely to be a substitute.  I will be looking at it to see whether the "futurists" really get it. 

There is a nice quote from somewhere that says... "the future can no longer be taken for granted..... it just needs to be rescued."

I saw different views on my vacation over the last 3+ weeks through England and France. Plenty of observations too around internet connectivity or the lack of it.  Generally connections were just simply too hard... from French phone plugs to cottages without land lines. At first I was frustrated.  By the time I found a free Internet connection near Alnwick in a pub courtesy of the Newcastle city council I'd put all e-mail on the back burner and just enjoyed it.  Yes it was a good time and I didn't blog at all. Next time I'm not lugging my laptop at all.

Now I must get back to work.  Despite everything the future has never been brighter.  I might just be able to rescue some reflective thoughts later.  Right now I hope this post simply fixes the fact that my index page looks blank.  Look forward to picking up the conversations again.  My newsreader is going to be busy! 

From day one I enjoyed the 600E's portability, great screen and almost perfect reliablity.  With once exception it never failed me.  (I had to replace the screen which died at 37 months one month beyond the guarantee (purchased a replacement screen on eBay for $100 and one week later it was going again).  It's gone from Win 98 to XP and Wi-Fi cards.  It memory is maxed out... and hard drive full.  It has had its day. 

From my perspective this is a great brand story.  Yes I've always felt good enough carrying it around.  Like an old Mercedes... Hard to tell which year and model you may be driving.  Even as others got faster notebooks mine keep on going.  Products like these deserve some timeless respect. 

Then I bet there is that feature it has that some hate and other love.  The little trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard.  Yep it's on a few other laptops.  Other than...general performance it was the item that was most important in choosing a replacement.

No surprise - I bought another IBM.  T40 this time, on the outside... hard to tell, on the inside... well there's a lot more inside. The only feature I wanted but couldn't get was a DVD R burner on it.  Available on a Sony.  Still not sure Sony really provides appropriate next day sales and support service.  Oh yes I looked at Dell --- but who wants to drive a Chevy. 

So I'm pleased... I know my T40 will ride better, drive, cruise and surf faster and actually run when the lights go out.  Still it is disappointing to realize that little real progress has been made in five years.  IBM, Intel, and Microsoft may disagree, yet I can think of nothing that I will be able to do with it... that will radically improve the way I work, communicate and have fun.  No wonder this market is full of commodity product.  Time manufacturers did some real innovative research. Nice if we could get some elegant design too!

Wow... boom sharp quake about 8 miles away at 18:39.  Want information.  Google.  Almost in real-time by 18:44 I'm sharing a map with my daughter.  Who needs reporting when the instumentation is online.  Cool!  Actual report is here magnitude 4.  Was strong enough to throw pictures off the piano. 

Enough to mess up Bart timetables tonight!

Last night I had a great time meeting with some colleagues. I'm used to being introduced from time to time with a New Zealand story in the mix. Recently there was press about NZ and its cows. So you can imagine my smile when New Zealands efforts to control Cow Farts with the Flatulence Tax was shared. Like National I know know they are laughing round the world.

Be thankful it's not Skype! No bull.

Stewart Butterfield provides the best one liners from last nights Vlab in Stanford. Many-to-Many: Social Networking for Social Networking

Forgetting the jibes: Tony reported Match would turn $200m at a 70% operating margin. Build it - go viral and VC's may invest. However, Social Networking is not a business model. Cynthia reinforced a key point. "career data must be owned by the individuals". My read is this is too easy for the majority of these entrepreneurs to forget.

The Silicon Valley Guest Blogger slips again on stage.

<Jonathan Sc