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Wednesday, September 29, 2004 |
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The Rolodex
To build my "Rolodex", I started to accumulate contact records more than twenty years ago using a system at IBM called PROFS (The IBM Professional Office System that allowed users to "send and receive information via a computer terminal") which employees used mostly for internal communications. In the early 1990's I got to know Bill Machrone at PC Magazine. Shortly after that I got hooked on learning everything I could about the Internet and I discovered a set of standards called X.400 which provided a way to send emails between various incompatible email systems using the Internet as the transport between them. Back then most companies had no connection between the Internet and their internal systems even though today we just take it for granted that all email conforms to the Internet standard called SMTP which assures compatibility. I still remember the joy (and complexity) of sending Bill an email and him replying to it. Bill and many consultants and members of the press were using MCIMail, a proprietary messaging system that used addresses that were like phone numbers; e.g. 445-4496. I began to accumulate contact information for those with whom I corresponded on various systems including Compuserve, Spectrum, and Prodigy. In 1994 I began to use Lotus Notes and I consolidated all of the contact information into the Notes address book. I continue to use Notes with IBM but, for various reasons since I retired in 2001, I primarily use Outlook. So much for the history -- the cumulative result of many years of messaging was a contact list numbering 3,838 names with corresponding email addresses, fax and phone numbers, snailmail addresses and other information. I have always considered the contact list to be an important asset and have regularly kept multiple backup copies of it on my ThinkPad, my server, on DVD, USB Keys and a synchronized copy of the Sony Ericsson P900. I can not imagine losing it. On the other hand, a lot of the information had become obsolete. People move, retire, and unfortunately pass on. I decided to take the time to go through each and every entry, pruning out those that I knew were duplicative or invalid for whatever reason. It took quite a few hours and the end result was a reduction in the number of contact records from 3,838 to 2,475 or 35.5%. A savings in space but more importantly an upgrade in the quality of the asset. (read more) |
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Tuesday, September 28, 2004 |
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IBM Happenings
IBM delivers in-car speech recognition - Working with Honda Motor Company, the two have jointly developed an in-vehicle speech-recognition system using IBM's Embedded ViaVoice software. |
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004 |
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One Million Downloads
The reasons the Opera browser makes such a big difference are twofold. One is that it supports Internet standards including CSS. The other is SSR (Small-Screen Rendering), the technology that displays Web pages in a way that is entirely customized to best suit a handheld device's screen size and resolution. The Opera browser is very popular in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Recent deals made with Motorola and Qualcomm and the announcement by Opera that it is porting to the Microsoft smartphone platform will make Opera much more available in North America. |
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004 |
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Rolling Thunder - 2
After a gas stop and lunch at McDonalds, we rode to the Inner Harbor at Baltimore, Maryland to hang out for a few hours on a bright and sunny afternoon. We then rode to York, Pennsylvania for the night, including the traditional karaoke at San Carlos The Hop, and then to a tour of the Harley-Davidson factory in the morning. Harley-Davidson Vehicle Operations in York, Pa., is the company's largest manufacturing facility. It covers more than 230 acres and has more than 1.5 million square feet under roof with more than 3,000 employees. Working hand in hand with many robots, the manufacturing team was very busy punching, pressing, forming, machining, welding, polishing, chrome plating and painting millions of tons of steel, transforming it into shiny new bikes. There were many interesting processes including the painting of a fender which follows a five-mile-long path that takes nearly half a day. Every new bike is tested on a roller bed and inspected before being packed and shipped to dealers all over the world. (read more) |
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Saturday, September 18, 2004 |
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The Pyramids
The flight from Frankfurt to Cairo (often spelled Kairo in Europe) departed exactly on time and headed on a southeasterly course over Germany for the nearly 2,000 mile flight. We passed over Munich and south of Salzburg, Austria, along the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea toward Athens, Greece. At 39,000 feet and 540 mph, I could see the eastern European cities including Zagreb, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, and Titograd pass by on the flat panel in-flight display. The displays help you appreciate what a really big place the world is. As we came across the Mediterranean Sea, we were moving at 580 mph. Bagdad was two hours to the east. The purpose of the trip was to participate in the Egyptian International Economic Forum. Egypt has made serious efforts toward becoming a dynamic emerging economy on both macro and micro economic levels including making changes in its legal and regulatory framework. The goal of the country is to become a larger player in the international marketplace. Signs are encouraging as international players have reacted through capital inflows and hiring which have triggered growth in new areas for Egypt. (read the full story -- including a visit to the Pyramids) |
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Sunday, September 12, 2004 |
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DemoMobile 2004 - part 2
Pete Kelly from Opera Software showed everybody he could how the Opera browser offered dazzling performance and fidelity on the Sony Ericsson P900. Verizon, Vodaphone, Sprint and SK (Korea) talked about their plans to roll out advanced high speed networks to support mobile devices of all kinds. Our Pictures, Inc. showed solutions to send pictures from a cell phone to your mom's TV set -- literally. Mirra demonstrated a home server that automatically backsup, synchronizes, and versions all the PC's in your home LAN. Aliph showed Jawbone, a headset that enables you to have a clear conversation from your mobile phone even if you are driving a car with the window down or standing next to somebody ten feet away who is using a weed whacker. Handmark showed a suite of applications that keeps your mobile phone up to date with news, weather, sports, stocks, and movie reviews. Yahoo, AOL, American Greetings, and Nokia Ventures discussed plans to make their content offerings relevant for mobile users. And on and on. It was a very exciting couple of days with technology executives, venture investors, journalists and analysts who had converged to preview, review, and discuss the many new ideas. As usual, the best part of the conference was the opportunity to network with many old and new friends. Chris Shipley, executive producer for DemoMobile, kicked off the conference with a keynote talk about her view of where things are and where they are headed. This was followed by a number of talks, panels, and of course demos. I enjoyed moderating two of the panels. There were a lot of comments from panelists about how important the operators/carriers are -- at times I got the feeling it was the operators/carriers who are the customer of the mobile industry. The question I wish I had asked the final panel was about who the real customer is and what they want. If you believe that eventually you and I and our friends, family and colleagues around the world will prevail and get what we want then it is clear as a bell to me what that will be. We (the real customers) want all the content and applications to be accessible in any standards-compliant browser, for standards-compliant browsers to work on any phone, and for any phone to work with any network operator. This is what open Internet standards are all about. The glass is half full, not half empty. The grass roots will prevail in the end.
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Friday, September 3, 2004 |
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WiFi Update - No. 9
The CIO for Philadelphia, Dianah Neff, says "It's a technology whose time is here." Other cities have announced similar plans but none as comprehensive as Philadelphia. Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University, which is spearheading a WiFi project in Cleveland said, "We like to say it should be like the air you breathe - free and available everywhere. We look at this like PBS or NPR. It should be a public resource." |
It was a rainy day and so I decided to work on something I have been putting off for a long time -- cleaning up my contact list. We all have contact lists. Some of us keep them in a Palm Pilot or other 
The Opera browser has become even more popular since all the bad press about how insecure Internet Explorer is. If the Opera desktop browser is red hot, the Opera Mobile browser is white hot. Earlier this week, Opera Software announced its one millionth download of Opera Mobile from 
The long trek to Cario, Egypt began on the afternoon of September 5th with a ride to 
Where is