Web-Tones

Web Bootable

I just made a decision on an RSS aggregator and given the power of the Web to quickly reduce transaction costs (cost related to decision making) I settled on Bloglines (the decision was made in less than an hour). Why? Because it is "web bootable", in other words I do not have to load anything on my PC to use it. The differentiator between "my PC" and something that is "web bootable" is that I can use any PC to plugin. Since I am often (mostly) on campus these days, that could mean any of 100 PCs and since my laptops keep dying, that could mean one of four computers at home as well. In addition there was no integration necessary with other third party software. I signed up and was receiving feeds in ten minutes. Geoff Moore writes about the implication of being "web bootable" here on Dealing with Darwin and I wrote about it here on Web-Tones.

Tablet PC

A Tablet PC is somewhere in my future. Why? Because I already have a compelling application for it and one that is likely emerging. I have found that I can capture almost word for word (using a growing list of mnemonics that law students quickly adopt) with a pen and not nearly as much typing on a keyboard. Pencil and paper has the added advantage of quick annotations and drawing relationships between thoughts etc. Also, now this might be a personal quirk, but there seems to less "cognitive dissonance" between active listening and writing with a pen, then there is between active listening and keyboard input (your mileage may vary). I was in technology for twenty years and my typing skills are decent, so I don't believe that the speed of keyboard input is a significant issue, of course faster is always better, but probably only incrementally so. As notoriously competitive as law school is, and as daunting as the "time crunch" is, I still find that comprehensive paper based notes are an advantage. Ah, but when reading week comes, you have all this paper that you have to deal with and no backups! That is where the Tablet PC comes in...

As I reflect on my professional career, I never liked taking a laptop to meetings because it just didn't feel "natural", however others that did (especially project manager types) were probably somewhat more effective in their information gathering and dissemination tasks (i.e. a large part of what a project manager does). So I can see how legal work, where meeting and writing appears to be the lions share of what you do, would lends itself well to the Tablet.

Tribes of the internet

Yeah this is all quite interesting about the Tribal Amplification that could/is occurring on the Web. However, it is what it is, and the genie is not going back in the bottle anytime soon and we should not be surprised that the Web will amplify both terrorist organizations and soccer moms that want to unite. There is nothing to fear on the Web but fear itself (yeah I stole that) and these types of arguments always come down to "in aggregate is man good or evil?" If you believe the latter than you have every reason in the world to be pessimistic and seek out others of this ilk. Personally, I believe the former and while acknowledging the "problem of evil", do not lose much sleep worrying about it in the abstract.

Disaster Recovery

OK so disaster recovery from computer perspective is a pet peeve of mine and what happened to the legal community (Law and Lawyers Post-Katrina) in New Orleans is a case in point. I lived in New Orleans during my high school years and know the city quite well. My mom and my sisters (both attorneys) weathered the storm in New Orleans and had to be rescued after watching neighbors perish and seeing their homes completely wiped out. Let's just say that Katrina had a huge impact on all of us and my mom and sisters are still in the process of rebuilding their lives. So I realize that the destruction of computers and data is trivial compared to the lost of life and the emotional damage suffered by the survivors.

BUT while nature wreaked havoc on the New Orleans and we will debate for quite a while how much of it was preventable, the damage to computers and data, both private and public, was almost entirely preventable. How so? Well to begin with, backups and off-site storage for tapes would have been a good start. If you are lucky and your off-site storage site wasn't flooded then perhaps all you lost was a week or less of critical data. However my twenty years in IT has proved that most small to medium size businesses (and many large ones) do not even do the basics correctly. What is more, even if you did, if your entire infrastructure was wiped out (e.g. your network) then the potential recovery might last months or more. Bottom line is that partnering with a hosted solutions provider (e.g. Vericenter) with "hot" sites potentially available in remote locations solves many of these problems and prevents the computing recovery from contributing to the disaster.

Attorneys and many other professional services providers need to get out of the computer/data management business and focus on practicing law, medicine, consulting etc. Managing this stuff in house is becoming more and more a losing proposition. Why bother when these services are available 24/7 from a utility provider? The trend is captured in an article by Nicholas Carr.

Information Warfare now dominates the thinking of the best military minds. In future wars, the nation(s) that will prevail are those that dominate the "electronic battlefield." On the one hand there is a certain "duh" factor to all of this since it seems fairly obvious to even the most uninformed digerati that controlling this battlefield is central to military dominance. But on the other hand it is apparent that a larger, and perhaps more important, strategic imperative is being missed with our myopic focus on hard science.

But before I get to that I must admit that the rate the military is adopting technology is impressive. My brother in law, a major in the Army, provided some anecdotal evidence of what is being done on the electronic battlefield. The advances that have occurred during his time of service are compelling. The foot soldier of the future will be totally wired node of a war making network. There is no doubt that sophisticated use of networking technology will prove to be a competitive advantage.

However, as we are finding out in Iraq, the urban guerrilla wars that we are most likely to fight going forward will require a knowledge of foreign language, history, culture and other "soft" skills that are the antithesis of hard science. This is the domain of a liberal arts education that has been in decline in American universities for quite some time now, at least since WWII, if not before. So the real cadre of information warriors will not only need to master advanced technologies, but be creative generalists as well.

Total (online) Holiday Spending Hits $25 Billion

Looks like the online retailer's are doing just fine Total Holiday Spending Hits $25 Billion, thank you very much. This is a 25% increase over 2004 and the trend is probably not surprising to anyone that tracks these numbers (I don't). However it would be interesting to account for how many consumers are repeat buyers and just buying more, and what percentage are new consumers. The techno anthropologists would then be able to use this data to calculate rate of adoption and make inferences about what this means to the culture, the society, etc.

However most lay people would probably conclude (and correctly I think) that these numbers just reflect the fact that more and more people are becoming comfortable with the medium, and therefore this not only has an impact on online consumption, but on online healthcare, law, education etc. In other words the markets as conversations meme rages on. As consumers become more accustomed to participating in online conversations they will notice when the conversation is lacking from other providers, given the level of conversation that happens at Amazon, eBay and others.

As Geoff Moore likes to say Darwin is at work here and those providers that don't realize that are likely to be on there way to extinction, although the rate that this happens will vary, and in some cases could take years or a generation to play out (death of a thousand cuts).

I am reading the book Unlikely Heroes the stories of how the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals transformed the South via the "dirty work" of implementing Brown v. Board of Education. It is a fascinating account of how a few judges transformed the South via the enforcement (and development) of civil rights law. It is an epic account of American history and American jurisprudence. It serves to remind us that it takes courage to change institutionalized hatred, and the history of this social experiment we call America is full of people that were willing to put their lives and reputations on the line for their convictions. The fact that institutionalized hatred has all but disappeared in America is a testimony to their courage. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

That their efforts bore fruit is undeniable. Progress has been made and should be celebrated, however that doesn't mean that the war on hatred is over, it has morphed into a more clever guerrilla warfare of a different sort. We owe it to these judges, the foot soldiers that supported them, and others in "high places" that provided the required support at critical times to continue to fight the good fight. The weight of history is on our side but the enemy still has plenty of ammunition left and we must remain "forever vigilant."

How does the Web figure into all of this? It is clear that it is citizen journalists that have taken up the responsibility of the "daily watch." This war has nothing to do with left or right and everything to do with right and wrong. In such a war, to borrow a phrase from the boss, there can be "no retreat and no surrender"...therefore blog on because millions of small voices can make a sound powerful enough to conquer all obstacles.

IP on The Global Net

Well you don't have to agree with everything that John Perry Barlow writes ( Thomas Jefferson of Cyberspace) in the "Economy of Ideas" to be fascinated by how relevant it still is, and how you see different things in it upon each reading. Tom Peter's idea regarding PSF (www.tompeters.com) and JB's ideas of the "real time" theater of professional services are astonishingly similar--services will continue to rule, software is just something we use to deliver services. In this universe copyright becomes less and less important because it is the access to the information source that is paramount. This will hold true for everyone that is basing their business models on services--just about everyone from Home Depot to IBM--or as Tom Peter's suggests any business enterprise interested in it own survival.

It will differentiate the "old" professional services providers (doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs) in spades. The partnerships that evolve, and the things that consumers are willing to pay for, will be largely information based "stories" that enhance the services provided. This is the "markets are conversations meme" in action.

Book - codebook - JotSpot

OK so I am doing a little research to get caught up on (and in some cases newly informed on) Internet history and I run into Lawrence Lessig 2.0 (http://lessig.org/) version of Code (the book) being developed completely in a collaborative way and on a collaborative platform (Code 2.0 Wiki). That an author is willing to take on this experiement is significant! Lessig is allowing others to update "his" thinking, or perhaps it is "our" thinking that he is allowing us to update? After all who owns the ideas?

I just spent some time reading Tom's rants in Project 05 and I am always amazed at how good he is at doing what he does. All the world as a Professional Services Firm (PSF in Tom's lingo)! Now Tom has been saying this for a long time now, and what is interesting is that his story (and the way he tells it) just keeps getting better and better! Want to know where we are heading in the "new economy?"--there is probably no better starting point then to listen to a few TP rants.

Welcome!

Welcome to Web-Tones!

This blog is dedicated to tracking how the web has impacted, and continues to impact, just about everything! It will point you to the thought leaders that are shaping its continued evolution. While technology continues to play an important role, this blog will focus more on applications that leverage the platform, rather than the standards and protocols upon which it is built. That said, where enabling standards and protocols touch and influence applications will certainly be fair game!