Steve’s Tech Journal

Ok, they don’t call it that, but the folks at AMEX Open Forum have posted an excellent set of short video interview clips about web 2.0 for small business, with Sean Parker of Facebook,  Jimmy Wales of  Wikipedia, hosted by Seth Godin, marketing blogger.

I’m often involved in helping traditional businesses grapple with the impact and opportunities associated with the emergence of social networking, blogging, and web 2.0.   They are usually frustrated and concerned about how the conversation and image of their company has escaped their control in today’s google keyword era.

Instead of a problem, this really is an opportunity.   By having real people express real opinions, the social nature of the internet provides one of the best platforms for marketing that there can be.   But, it takes some knowledge and experience to know the right way to engage.   These videos are a nice little layman accessible resource providing a general introduction.

In fact, the more I poke around the Open Forum site this morning, the more I like what they have done.   Bravo.

Technorati Tags: AMEX open, web 2.0, Jimmy Wales,   Sean Parker, Seth Godin

I really debated a few years back when I gave up my Linux desktop and moved back to Windows.  I was a bit reluctant to do it, but I had just too many instances of clients needing me to run a Windows-only app, and then there was the blackberry/email integration, which truly only works well with a complete Outlook/Exchange/BES configuration.  Keeping a VMware windows build running got in the way just enough to slow me down.

So I finally made the switch back in 2006.And I’ve regretted the move at times.    Occasionally I’ll get an app freeze.  Occasionally Windows will take 5 minutes to boot (I think it’s either my AV scan or else desktop search indexing).    But by and large it’s been OK.

So, situations like Google releasing Chrome on Windows first, are the payoff for me.   I get to play with some new technology, as opposed to being an envious onlooker.  I really like Chrome so far.    It’s fast, much faster than  firefox or IE on a complicated site like say my bloglines feeds.   Tabs appear quickly.   The other feature I really like is the unified address/search bar.   Just start typing man.  Keep going until it pre-fills enough to cue you that you have the right entry, and hit return.  If you wanted a search, it searches, if you wanted a URL, it goes to the site.    It works very well, and reduces a lot of clutter from the multiple toolbars that I’ve collected on firefox.

So, today I switched Chrome to my default browser, and celebrated with my first post from Chrome.

Technorati Tags: google chrome

First names have a longer, thinner tail than long names:

•  130 first names cover 50% of the US population
• 2500 last names cover 50% of the US population

From another large database:

Most popular first name (male):  Michael

Most popular last name: Smith

Now, for the interesting part …

My brothers name:  Michael Smith

Freaky, huh?

I’m freshly back from a great family vacation to Maine, and thought I’d plunge in and get a fresh post onto this blog.   Here’s a collection of tech things I’ve been thinking about in the last week:

•  The GUI or rather the VUI for GPS’s have some really subtle challenges.   We have an older Garmin unit from 5 years back, and a newer TomTom.  Our newer TomTom One has a great screen, with a rotated 3d perspective.   But it often gets slightly confused, e.g. if the street we’re on bears left and then we have a right hand turn a hundred feet afterwards.  It will often say “turn right ahead”, just as we’re coming to the big bear left.   It makes you feel like you’re doing the wrong thing by bearing left.    The Garmin although having a much older and unsophisticate screen display, didn’t suffer from this problem as much.
• I got to play with my daughters iTouch, using it with Safari on some wifi networks.   I found it reaching the point of becoming usable, but I did have trouble clicking on just the right hyperlink, and I didn’t master how to enter data on forms.  I did manage to do some google maps directions, though, a feat I wouldn’t have attempted on my blackberry.
• Speaking of blackberry, when is that darn Blackberry Bold going to come out.  ATT first said June, then it was moved to July, then August, and now I’m hearing October.   In spite of the fact that it’s available in Germany and Chile.   I did take a good look at the iPhone and considered jumping, but the lack of a good international data roaming plan holds me back.  I’m in Canada just enough that I think it will get too costly.
• I was recognizing again the value of introspection.  I read a couple good books, one auto-biographical, and thought that taking time to carefully examine ones thoughts and understanding of an issue, and then putting effort to clearly describe it; benefits the author as much as any reader.
• I have a couple looming sysadmin tasks that I need to get to, including revamping my off-site storage strategy to use Amazon S3, and also to move this blog over to wordpress.org, so that I don’t have to continually update my wordpress version (3 versions out of data again, grrrr).

Happy back to school week!

Did you know you can do math and conversions in the google search bar? I needed to convert 82 7/16 inches to mm, so I can program my cycle computer for the new wheel size (changed by about 2%, so I didn’t really ride 104 miles in last Sunday’s century, more like 101.5). Anyway, being in my 40s I offhand didn’t recall that there are 25.4 mm per inch. So I googled it. And, in addition to finding this conversion factor, I followed the link and learned about the google calculator.

This is so cool. You can convert units. Currencies. You can ask for definitions “define soup”. You can do Roman numerals. You can do different base mathematics.

And, go ahead and try it. Cut and paste “82 7/16 inches in mm” into the google search bar, and hit return.

(82 7/16) inches = 2 093.9125 millimeters

That’s the distance my new tires cover in one full revolution.

Technorati Tags: google calculator

Thanks to Kellan, I’ve clued in about this weeks IgniteBoston at Harvard Sqaure on Thursday night.  Who can resist topics like:

• Telepresence robots on a budget
• Interface design tenants for beautiful design
• Stage magic in virtual worlds
• and …
• The environmental impact of a website

Plus Microsoft is sponsoring and offering a free beer (free as in beer) — I can finally get back $4.00 or so out of the thousands of license fees over the years.

I’m planning to go and happy to offer a ride to anyone out my way if we want to make it a group outing.

Technorati Tags: IgniteBoston