Digital Common Sense

Interesting conundrum here just recently. My Palm Tungsten C died. Dead dead dead. Given that it’s about 3 years old, that’s not terribly shocking, although I have gotten better life out of other Palms, and have some really really old ones that still work fine.

You have to appreciate that in my normal routine day, with me are the T|C, a Blackberry, a Motorola V265 and a Motorola Talkabout two-way pager. Yeah, I’m fairly connected. And yes, I use them all. A lot. The right tool for the right job. They do have different needs they serve.

Replacing the T}C isn’t an option. It’s a requirement. But with what? I can still get the same model from Palm, but it’s really discontinued now.

Why not a Treo to replace the T|C? Well, the Treo has less memory, less functionality and no Wi-Fi built-in. I could add a Wi-Fi card, but then the slot for my 1G SD card would be consumed. All the reasons that kept me from getting a Treo all along prevail. It doesn’t give me what I need.

Why not another Blackberry? Well it’s an interesting mix of the best and worst of everything. A great email tool, but I need to at least read (preferably edit/create) Word and Excel documents on the fly. And I have hundreds of PDF files on the SD card. Blackberry is useless for those. The other thing that annoys me about the Blackberry (I have a 7250), it is without doubt the crappiest cell phone and form factor for a phone I’ve ever used. That’s the only model available through my wireless provider. And again, no Wi-FiWhile I use the one I have for some very specific things, it doesn’t serve my needs as the right tool for the job.

Now I’ve determined that I can’t combine to a single device. None meet my needs. I still need a handheld and phone as a single converged tool. While I lean toward Palm, I did go look. PocketPC or Windows Mobile or whatever it is we call wince (remember it began as WinCE) today all meet my needs. But to meet my needs I have to throw so many add-ons into the mix that they cost the same as a laptop. Cost-to-value ratio just never has been an equation that made any sense. It still doesn’t make sense.

If it were readily availble in the states at a fair market price, my choice night be the Sharp Zaurus SLC760 running Linux. But it’s only available in Japan, very pricey and not a viable option.

I admit I’m a fan of Palm. The T|C was my ninth Palm device, dating back to the very first one. They’ve always been solid and reliable. Three options - T|C, T|X or LifeDrive.

While replacing the T|C with a twin was the first thought, it turns out the T|X actually has more memory and horsepower for $100 less, sans the built-in keyboard. So the T|C dropped off the list of choices.

The LifeDrive - now there’s a whole different approach. 4G drive built in. Drag and drop file transfer. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. And a multimedia tool Handheld/PDA, USB flash drive workalike, iPod shuffle-like replacement (I’m not presently a pod person), and my 1G SD card slips right in to give my 5G of information in my shirt pocket.

In the end, I wound up with the T|X. The LifeDrive looks sharp, but has had lots of issues with battery life and heat. The fact that it’s a microdrive does impact performance, and just doesn’t make sense for 4G of space. So I’m fiddling a bit with the new T|X getting things reorganized one more time.

Well, that was posted on Saturday night. But for the second night in a row, the TungtemnT|X lost all battery charge overnight. I can’t live with a PDA that’s a rock in the morning and has to be plugged in all the time to operate. So it went right back where it came from. Words cannot my utter displeasure at this turn of events. Now the question remains is my problem because this new T|X isn’t so great, or did I just get a lemon? And do I care?

As it turns out, I do care. Enough that after two days of fighting with the T|X, but getting a chance to use it a bit in between problems, I decided to go get the LifeDrive after all.

While I’m not overly impressed with the idea of a micro drive in a handheld initially, I think about where things are headed. I actually want a handheld with an 80 Gig microdrive, so maybe I need to get off the flash mindset and think about reality. Swappable micro drives could do the trick.

I’ve loaded it up with about 300 meg of tunes and a couple hundred in podcasts. I’m still not a pod person, but I’m going to give it a whirl. Mostly I’m planning for another trip to DC in a couple of weeks and gearing up for some entertainment to pass the time en route. With the LifeDrive autosynching capability, it’s really easy to have iPodder pick up the stuff I want to listen to and have it all ready to go whenever I want to walk out the door.

Videos are the same. There some portable DVD stuff that allows copying movies. I’ve loaded a few videos I had around, but no movies. Mostly checking the quality. Battery life appears to be good for some work, surfing and a couple of movies if you’re really cranking on it. Enough to do a SEA-IAD flight anyway, but I’m more a book person on planes most of the time, so we’ll see.

I think one of the biggest pluses is the ability to click into drive mode and treat the whole things as a USB flash drive. I lopiedc Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird setups from a working USB drive and it flies like a champ. So any PC with a USB port becomes a launching pad for all the files I’ve installed and basic net connectivity tools.

I have a few programs I’ve cleaned out and disposed of. Old Palm software that’s been hanging around forever. I still have a couple to install and set up. Notably, I have to get MobilDB reinstalled and configured, then port my 90 some-odd databases back in for use.

So far, everything works. Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint files, PDFs, MP3, MOV, all the basics.

Naturally, if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I’ll keep quiet. Yeah, right….

Filed by Ken at 8:19 pm under General, Mobility & Handheld, Technology
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A friendly reminder…

A Guide For The Un-Initated To Buying Guinness In An Irish Pub

1 Choose your pub carefully. A pint of Guinness does not appreciate loud music, loud people or bright flashing lights.

2 Ask politely for a pint of Guinness. Depending on the pub, it is possible to catch the barmans eye and mouth the word “pint”, he will translate this accurately.

3 The barman will fill the glass between 70% and 80% capacity. It will then be put to the side for a few moments to allow it “to settle”. Once the brownish liquid has almost turned to a solid black the barman will then fill the rest of the glass. NB: do not under any circumstances take the glass before it is filled. Some virgins seem to think that the settling stage is the final stage and walk away with an unfinished pint. At this point we Irish DO understand the predicament, but I assure you it causes endless mirth as well.

4 Once you have received your pint, find a comfortable stool or seat, gaze with awe into the deep blackness, raise the pint to your mouth and take a large mouthful. Be firm.

5 A good pint can distinguished by a number of methods. A smooth, slightly off- white head is one, another is the residue left on the inside of the glass. These, surpise surprise, are known as rings. As long as they are there you know your’re okay. A science of rings is developing - the instance that comes to mind is determining a persons nationality by the number of rings (a ring is dependent on a swig of Guinness each swig leaving it’s own ring). An Irishman will have in the region of 5-6 rings (we pace ourselves), an Englishman will have 8-10 rings, an American will have 17-20 (they sip) and an Australian won’t have any at all as they tend to knock it back in one go!

6 As you near the end of your pint, it is the custom to order another one. It is a well known fact that a bird does not fly on one wing.

— mo:Blogged

Filed by Ken at 10:31 pm under General
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Just trying out software to make sure things are all working ok.

— mo:Blogged

Filed by Ken at 10:02 pm under General, Mobility & Handheld
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I suppose that’s a rhetorical question, but does anyone care? I find it
especially odd because this evening I got email from a LinkedIn contact that
he’s moving everything to Friendster. If people are actually still using
Friendster, I guess that’s ok. if it works for them. It never worked for me
because I wasn’t a 20-something in the meat market looking to expand my
libidinuous horizons. That seemed to be the primary audience.
I was just quite taken aback. I haven’t heard Friendster mentioned by anyone
in two years. now to have a tech sector person I consider a leading edge ype
leave LinkedIn for Friendster just feels so very 2002.

I won’t be rushing back to check it out anytime soon myself. LinkedIn has
been the only “social network” I’ve used for quite some time, and the only
one of the mix that ever showed a hint of usefulness for me. Your mileage
may vary.

Filed by Ken at 10:14 pm under General
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I’ve been playing with Postie, a post by email plug-in for Wordpress a bit.
I don’t honestly have a lot of reason to post by email, although posting the
occasion camera phone pic might be nice. However, as you can see, Verizon
includes lovely crap wording with every post from the phone, so I won’t be
doing a lot of that. Or maybe I can strip it like it’s a sig line. I’ll
fiddle as time permits.

Posting by email may allow some ease of posting of some other things,
although it wipes out format control. I want to see if I can default it to
save as draft rather than post directly, but for the moment, I’m just
fiddling.

NOTE: Solved the Verizon text problem easily enough. Now I just have to decide whether I’ll actually use this enough to leave it installed and enabled.

Filed by Ken at 8:16 pm under General
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This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

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Filed by Ken at 7:35 pm under General
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This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit
www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Filed by Ken at 7:35 pm under General
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may have been here.

Please signify “getting it” by clapping one hand.

Filed by Ken at 5:26 pm under General
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There’s a lot of talk online about Web 2.0, corporate blogging, marketing and blogging, and such. Lots of talk. Talk talk talk.

One of the projects I’m anticipating involves a different approach that support what the marketing dweebs would call “target market” or “customers” in a different way. A new approach to community from a business perspective.

I can’t really share any more than this, but in the next few weeks you may be seeing some new thoughts an ideas as this community approach takes off. It will be a busy and exciting run to launch once things begin. Standy by for more…

Filed by Ken at 5:16 pm under General, Technology, Unified Communications
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Yes, I wonder why my brain farted that subject line out too…

All I can say is that it was triggered by Hugh’s post the stormhoek thing. mostly in frustration. Hugh says -

Here’s the deal. If you’re a blogger, and I link to you under “The Stormhoek Thing” banner, Stormhoek will send you a complimentary bottle of Stormhoek wine.

[CAVEAT: We can only ship bottles to where it’s legal to do so. Which means, for example, until we get the new U.S. distibutor up to speed around New Year’s, you Americans may have to wait a while for the bottle to arrive. Apologies in advance.]

Ok, he says some other stuff too. In case you haven’t noticed, Hugh’s always saying lots of other stuff.

But the point is that we folk in the states are stuck without. I mean, sure, I can zip off to Trader Joe’s and by cheap but good Chilean, Australian, New Zealand, South African. Even a nice ice wine from Slovenia (yes, it’s a real country, and yes they do make really good ice wine). But some of us just enjoy the experience of drinking wine. Not collecting it. Not snobbing over expensive ones. Just drinking and enjoying it.

The unavailability of Stormhoek here in the states makes one fairly want to become a distributor or something just to be able to talk about it. Postively frustrating.

Filed by Ken at 9:34 pm under General
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EmptyBottle.org: Wonderchicken Resurgent

‘Wonderchicken returns, brethren and sistren! He returns! Dance dervish, and spill the blood of politicians in tribute and walleyed joy!’.

Filed by Ken at 4:57 pm under General
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Ok, so I promised an update on the granpda pictures and I haven’t posted any in quite some time.

First notice the concentration and focus with a keen eye on the prize.

And what else can you really do but let ‘em eat cake.

Filed by Ken at 8:51 pm under General
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I’ve mentioned lately that I’ve got some projects underway..irons in the fire. One project is writing VoIP Security in the Enterprise, a modest new e-book effort. That’s opened a new relationship and added another link and logo over on the right for realtimepublishers.com.

I’ve had many email exchanges with these folks over the past year or two, but until now there just hasn’t been a good fit. This modest project seems to be a good fit for both of us, and has led to some discussion about other opportunities that may pan out to be real exiciting down the road.

I’ve been doing some podcasting things lately, but not here. That’s a bit of an anomaly for me since I don’t actually own an iPod, or any other MP3 player beyond the laptop. I don’t listen to them much myself, but find I’m creating them more and more for special purposes. Lately the same goes with webcasting. I actually found some commercial software that seems to easily allow creation of both, and without a huge investment in studio gear. Yes, at some point the podcasts may find their way here, but I doubt they’ll take over. I find the act of writing by hand or with the keyboard far more relaxing than putting together an audio or video presentation. I mean, I love you guys, but you don’t pay me enough to put on a show.

Ok that may be stretching. Putting a podcast together is really nothing if it’s just voice. Mixing media and doing a nice job of it take some work. One thing I haven’t done just yet is incorporate a Skype interview into the whole podcast. I’ll play with that and we’ll see where it leads.

Keep in mind that I do have a real job on top of all this stuff. And while my real job is not for the faint of heart, I’m finding a large number of writing, speaking, teaching and consulting opportunities popping up on my radar of late. I’m not ready to leap back into the world of being self unemployed just yet, but it would sure be easy, and sometimes it sure does look tempting. Soometiit even boggles the mind.

Connor is 1 today, so you should expect a proud grandpa moment sometime over the weekend as I find a picture to post. Meanwhile, today isn’t just Connor’s birthday. It’s Mrs. C’s birthday too. So we’ll wander over to see him, then go grab a bite to eat. No huge plans. Actually a quiet evening is planned.

I have a rant packed away that I’m just not ready to post. I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction we’re headed in as a society with regard to literacy, or lack of it, language skills, or lack of them, and the general state of management in business, or mismanagement perhaps. But, as I said, I’m not ready to post that just yet. I may not ever post the current train of thought.

Hope you all are well.

Filed by Ken at 2:36 pm under General
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Before she took off to parts unknown for more important things the other day, Shelley left us with this thought.

The Specks have been seen quite a bit here lately, and they make an obvious point. However in a case of life mirroring art, or perhaps to prove it does, let me share the real thing with you.

The above picture was found in a BBS news story. It’s actually “A swirling image of a peregrine falcon sweeping into a flock of starlings has won Manuel Presti this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. ” And well done it is. The winning pictures, as always, are pretty fabulous this year.

And both signify the same thing…the feeding frenzy that is the net. Millions of starlings, surfing the net mindlessly, aimlessy, sometimes even foolishly. But too often, they fall prey to someone or something bigger or faster.

This moment of clarity brought to you just because. The feeding frenzy can now continue.

Amended later in the evening - Doing some other work this evening, I searched for an old post from long ago and stumbled across - Once You Recognize… - a post from last March that reinforces my thoughts here.

Filed by Ken at 5:27 pm under General
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Thanks to the Head Lemur, in his post today, Web 2.0 the Naked Truth, all your questions have been answered. This is the seminal work on Web 2.0 and anything beyond this adds fluff and filler.

Web 2.0 is about dialogue. That’s it, the litmus test, the final answer, the naked truth.

At any given moment you can google for Web 2.0 and the number of answers and references you receive will probably make your brain explode. A little history is in order. Web 1.0 was all about monologue. Monologue is a single voice. From start to finish Web 1.0 presents us with a singular point of view.

Web 2.0 is about dialogue. It is binary as we have the ability to not only present our point of view but to receive commentary and criticism on those views. This is the heart of Web 2.0. The primary enabling technology for Web 2.0 are Weblogs, or blog’s.

Blogs are Web sites that present writings and or images that can be publicly commented upon. This is Web 2.0. If you do not have the ability to comment wherever you go, you are on a Web 1.0 site. That’s it, the litmus test, the final answer, the naked truth.

You’ll read talk here and there, but you won’t find more value. There is no more clarity than this. Take the information in this distilled form for what it is — all you need to know. What’s said beyond this is simply metaflogging, aka astroturfing, and will not add value to the bottom line. And I personally will try to not speak of it again.

Filed by Ken at 2:07 pm under Technology
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There’s a disturbance in the force, Luke.

Ok, so comment spam is a nuisance we’ve all had to deal with in one form or another. In one regard, it’s why I abandoned Movable Type as a blog tool. Yet, even at it’s worst, when I was getting 400 a day, I mostly found them quite manageable and had no real problems visibly.

But, I am one of those people who hunts scum and does vindictive things. I like blacklists. And if you land on one and can’t complain to me about it, well, I probably don’t care. It’s how I am. Some things in life deserve punishment. Stupidity should carry a price tag. Spamming is a punishable offense in my world.

Recently I got hit with a few dozen spam comments and decided to see what tools were already out there for WordPress. I quickly found SpamKarma 2. And if this crap troubles you, I encourage you to go check it out. It takes less than 10 minutes to install and configure. In most cases, it will work “out of the box” with no problems. As add-ons go, it’s nothing short of stupendous.

Some background -

The Machine
Spam Karma 2 is the proud successor to Spam Karma, with whom it shares most of the development ideas, but absolutely none of the code. It is meant to stop all forms of automated Blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters.

The Man
Dr Dave is a card-carrying Evil Genius busy plotting world domination from his volcanic lair in Tokyo, Japan. When he is not wasting his time coding ridiculously elaborate anti-spam plugins, he also writes somewhat offensive entries on miscellaneous pointless matters in his blog.

Just in the past week I’ve noticed that the new tactic seems to be to hit current posts. Even within hours of posting. That tells me the spammers are probably doing automated RSS feed monitoring and hoping to tag into current message threads rather than just hammering old posts that are collecting dust in the back corner of every blog.

Slippery bastards these spammers. And how many of them are sploggers over on SplogSpot? I stayed out of that conversation sideline for a couple of reasons. I agree that there are many highly respected bloggers there, and that not having your own domain in no way denigrates your standing in society. Standing in society????? It’s the freaking Internet. There is no standing. Everyone here is a 1. Everybody absent is a 0. That’s how binary systems work.

I also feel the splog problem on Blogger isn’t about user aunthentication to leave comments. The problem I see is that in 10 minutes, I can create 10 email aliases and 10 new slogs under each of them. All for free. All with no real authentication that I’m going to do anything legitimate. And you know what? If I violate the terms and conditions, they won’t ever know. At least not any time soon. I could be under the radar with a hundred new splogs before Google/Blogger/whoever can begin to react.

It’s about being nimble and adaptable. It’s about being responsive to user complaints. And it’s about being smart about how you grant access to free services. And the folks involved…well, they’re none of the above. We know that. They prove it repeatedly. Sure, they were all good at some facet of those three once upon a time, but not today. Today, they move with the agility and grace of a three-toed sloth. Then again, look at who they’re competing with…

Filed by Ken at 5:11 pm under General
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If you’re like me, you read a lot of blogs that you don’t always link to or comment about. I read Om Malik daily, but rarely point back. I realized this morning that one reason is because much of my reading is in Bloglines, and linking back properly requires the time and effort to click another link in order to link to the right place. Today I took that effor only to share a passing thought. In his post Web 2.0, Community & the Commerce Conundrum Om says -

I wondered out loud, if this culture of participation was seemingly help build businesses on our collective backs. So if we tag, bookmark or share, and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commercial entities, aren’t we seemingly commoditizing our most valuable asset - time. We become the outsourced workforce, the collective, though it is still unclear what is the pay-off. While we may (or may not) gain something from the collective efforts, the odds are whatever “the collective efforts” are, they are going to boost the economic value of those entities. Will they share in their upside? Not likely!

This eerie deja vu feeling swept up my spine because this thought isn’t new. If this issue intrigues you in any way, I suggest you go read Prometheus Wired (ISBN: 0774807962) by Darrin Barney. Subtitled The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology, Barney paints a Marxist picture of man as the input to the machine the reverberates with Om’s underlying observation.

Swipe your ATM card. Key in a door code. Click a URL. Make a phone call. You’ve fed the machine that’s gathering data. That leviathan of the deep, sleeping down in the depths of the net, sucking down krill, just inhales every input and stores it away.

Ok, there’s my portion of feed to the machine for the moment.

Filed by Ken at 5:55 pm under General, Technology
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“Politicians are the same the world over: they promise to build a bridge even when there is no river.”

- Nikita Khrushchev

Filed by Ken at 1:10 pm under General
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Shelley’s post pointed me off for a peek at Weblog Usability: The Top

Great clues from someone who doesn’t get it for people who don’t want to really get it, but want to pretend they do and pose as members of the community.

Filed by Ken at 7:17 am under General
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Lately I’ve been doing several things somewhat away from here, but related in an odd roundabout way. I’ve been playing with some podcast/webcast software that’s pretty solid. I think my demo period’s about up, so I’ll have to invest in it. Also time to grab a mic, mixer and headphones to do some more serious podcast work, although I don’t know how much of it will show up here. What I’m doing is very focused, and destined for some other knowledge portal areas.

I’m working on a e-book that will be completed before the end of the year. My work will be finished in early December and it will be “out there” at some point afterwards. Not sure where that will lead, if anywhere. For now it’s just a nice little project to work on, but the publisher has talked to me about some other things that sound pretty intriguing if they come to fruition.

Summer’s slipped away into fall, so the long sunny days are quickly becoming gray, blustery, drizzly ones. I do enjoy being in a part of the country where seasons actually change. For so many years in southern California they all blurred together into one unchanging season.

I haven’t posted a picture of Connor in a long time here. He’ll be a year old next Friday, so I’ll be sure to post something new so y’all can see how he’s grown. He’s becoming quite a little boy these days.

If any of you all will be a SecureWorld Expo in Seattle this week, holler. I’ll be there all day on Wednesday myself. I’ve been invited to one of the evening dinner events that night, but don’t know at this point if I’ll make it to that or not.

Just hustling lots of project stuff at the moment. And I’ll be off to DC again the week of November 15th if any of you all will be there. I’ll be downtown in the hubbub. 10th and H my next few trips there.

In the background, I’ve also been doing some wiki things. Had something just about geared up to launch into visibility, but have decided I don’t have the time or drive to make it fly, so I’ve backed it all down and archived it away. It was too much like blogging about bloggers blogging about blog conferences or something. It just felt to meta craptastic for me to go through with it.

Watched Sideways last night. Now there’s a movie that should have stayed on the cutting room floor. What a terrible waste of some great talent. Some interesting scenes that just never wove together into anything but a headache. Blech, what a loss.

Enough rambling. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m sidetracked into many other things, but I’m around.

Filed by Ken at 4:27 pm under General
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