Wherein I finally surrender to Facebook

Alright, alright — "Mr. Ross finally turned himself in to cyber-authorities in August, 2009, thus becoming the 487th 'Bill Ross' on Facebook." In the words of one friend — the actual, real-world kind — "Now everyone in the world is on Facebook." (Really? You mean, like, I am the last one in? I guess it wouldn't be the first time...)

It's worth noting that my old buddy, Neil, sent that message literally within three minutes of me signing up; I was still in the process, in fact, and when I first went to my inbox, I already had mail. (Better'n old aol right there, I can see that.)

But at this late date, I feel somewhat obligated to explain where the hell I've been, and what the hell took me so long?

First, it would be more factual to say that I was kidnapped into Facebookland, since my sister Cindy announced to me when I was down there last weekend that, having duly consulted with other very cyber-aware family members, she was signing me up. And it was so.

But credit's equally due my ol' buddy Val Vadeboncoeur, who's become quite the FB operative and connoisseur, and had been hectoring me all winter about getting in. He'd been a holdout for quite some time, but when he finally did sign on it was an exciting revelation for him. So I knew it was just a matter of when.

My resistance was based on a single word: Overextended. I've had a website for most of the last 12 years for my professional pursuits, which I'll sum up as technical marketing writing and Mac/Win tech support and training, which carries my writing samples, reviews, and various tech service pitches.

I started this blog commenting on technological issues in 2006, and post once or twice a month. Lately I've focused on Green tech developments in the Hudson Valley, where I've been living for the last 2 years. (Recently added a custom Google map of same: the Sustainability 'Heat' Map.) Oh, and how about Working, now most often done entirely on the computer, and the always-bigger job of finding work, ditto there.

Then, on the evening/personal pursuits side, I play once a week with a small group of musicians, record it, and post the good tracks on a page (which I keep separate from all the business linkage). As anyone who's worked with sound knows, that involves a goodly amount of ongoing time to listen through, select from and edit those recordings.

And best of all, I've got old-fashioned email and I'm always behind by a couple correspondents. And these aren't usually people that my "friends" are talking to, which could mean anything from my friend's point of view, but people I've chosen at some point to directly engage with.

Let's see, am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah Real life! The physical world, food, the fresh air and exercise, and people with actual, fleshy faces, etc. 'Body language' is only the most obvious additional channnel available in that medium; these are devices which communicate in far more ways than we are even aware of, or, I'll bet, have yet discovered.


Ah, but that was then; I finally wised up and realized my point was simply that I can't spend any more time online than I do now. So I'm just going to have to appropriate time from something else, and that'll have to be all the news sites that I probably spend way too much time reading. There you go — another win for Reframing The Question.

The clincher was my sister putting it in a way that made sense to me, and that was that right now was a moment when, simply, everybody was on Facebook — and that may not be true a year or whenever from now.

That was the Ah-ha moment for me, having witnessed enough waves of technology wash by in 25+ years to recognize that old, familiar pattern. So I'm in there now, ready to ride.

See you on the wall, then.

Related, here (on that old paradigm):

"Slow-Blogging" 2009

"Twittering on about Facebook, etc."

"Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"

New Points on Local Green Map, Prism Solar Ribbon Spinoff

Added a few newsy spots to my Sustainability 'Heat' Map of Hudson Valley, explained and windowed-into in the preceding(/following) post.

The biggest news recently was Prism Solar Technologies' announcement Tuesday that they'll receive $3.6 million in federal money to spin off their R&D on a new form of photovoltaic technology in the Hudson Valley. They predict the new company will create 300 jobs over the next three years.

The new flexible solar ribbon cell is highly efficient, lightweight, made with much less waste, and has other unique characteristics, but its flexibility that's the main attraction. That allows countless applications, from the hood of a car to the outside face of a building, from cellphones and laptops to equipment for the U.S. Military, which has shown interest. Congressman Maurice Hinchey announced the grant with Prism Solar CEO Richard Lewandowski.

"Prism Solar gets $3.6 million in federal funds" - Poughkeepsie Journal, Sarah Bradshaw, 8/11/09

"Solar company to create spin-off, create 300 jobs" - Mid-Hudson News

= = =
…And I added these two places to the map:

"Green Living" index, Times Herald Record

The venerable Times Herald Record, published from Middletown, NY and in its modern form at Recordonline.com, covers all things renewable in the region with its page on "Green Living - local coverage of the green revolution." It's a handy spot from which to keep updated on all recent related activity.

Author Joanne Michaels' "Hudson River Valley Farms"

Joanne Michaels' latest book, published July 2009, is "Hudson River Valley Farms - The People and the Pride Behind the Produce." This beautiful book, thanks to the wonderful photography of Rich Pomerantz, is portrait of 44 farms from Westchester to Albany, taking the reader on an amazing journey through the heart of the Hudson Valley. The appendix covers close to 100 farmers' markets in eight counties, including driving directions.

Joanne, the former editor of Hudson Valley Magazine, has published numerous books which draw our attention to the profound beauty of the region, including "The Hudson Valley & Catskill Mountains: An Explorer's Guide," and coauthoring with renowned photographer Hardie Truesdale the stunning "Hudson River Journey" and "Adirondack High."

Joannemichaels.com

Sustainability 'Heat' Map, Hudson Valley NY

Here is the happy result of hearing myself tell someone that I was in the midst of mentally constructing a "heat map" of what's being done in the region to promote sustainable businesses and life. Fortunately, a spark flew: customized Google Maps! I could create my mental map on the freakin' Web, adding one more small node of nutritious info to the area's green network.


View Sustainability 'Heat' Map, Hudson Valley, NY in a larger map

On its own page in Google Maps, of course, you'll see the column on the left listing all the institutions that lie behind the droll icons. (I worked with what they had, which explains why TechCity is represented here by a tent, usually denoting a campground, and utility Central Hudson is left with the campfire. But for Congressman Hinchey, what better symbol than the House?)

This will very much be a work in progress for some time to come, and of course I'd be glad to incorporate related links that are suggested, that I can do some research on, of course. That's because it's really only useful to pass along information that you've qualified somehow, sifting out the low-to-no value stuff, as opposed to those endless lists you find on the net that people seem to have thrown up on the wall with their eyes closed.

Map © 2009 by Bill Ross, Rosswriting.com
but free for use when attributed
and linked to, please.

Related, here:
Posts tagged Green tech
and Appropriate technology

Some Regional 'Green' Forces: newspaper, nonprofit, and gov't

When I set myself the task of finding out what was happening with renewable energy and things Green in general in the Hudson Valley, I was frankly not prepared to find as much as I did. I'm going to be writing more about some of these efforts that are underway, but there's far more than I'll be able to find time to discuss in me own little blog.

So I thought I'd just start listing and linking to some of them, to share some of the relevant, mostly very hopeful stories found in only the last few months or ongoing. All deserve more in-depth treatment, since this is some exciting stuff when you care about the world being built with the long term in mind, but better to do a little now than wait for the big day.

To lend some sense of rhyme or reason to the selection, I decided to pick out entities from different fields and slants on the subject. So for now, here is a newspaper's coverage, a non-profit campaigner/facilitator, and a government program.

Green Living index, on Recordonline.com

We'll start with the heroically embattled Fifth Estate, in the form of the Green Living index on recordonline.com. That's the "Web press," we might say, of the Times Herald-Record, which seems shy to admit it's published in Middletown, where it traces its lineage of daily editions back to the middle of the 19th century.
By whichever nameplate, they do a good job of covering all the major green-tinged news in the Valley and State.

"Local coverage of the green revolution" - Times Herald-Record

Sustainable Hudson Valley

Next, a non-profit that's been promoting sustainability in this area since the mid-90's, Sustainable Hudson Valley is currently working with many partners in the region as "a resource broker, a consensus builder, and a source of both technical and moral support, assisting each community with achieving its unique goals" towards "an environmentally advanced and restorative 'green' economy".

This year, besides advising local governments on getting positioned for clean-energy stimulus funds — and managing to stir up a bit of a ruckus — Sustainable Hudson Valley is focused on the Kingston Green Trail. It's a partnership of agencies to try to stimulate interest in " a transformed urban environment, where people can move by cycle and on foot... gardens, parks and tree cover are abundant... renewable energy and recycled materials create economic advantage... and these activities form the base of a vibrant knowledge economy."

Plus, I liked this part: "Our work is to stimulate a home-grown green economy that gains security from a base of businesses with loyalty to this place."

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)

New York State has been fairly progressive with forward-looking energy programs. NYSERDA supports "energy-efficiency programs, research and development initiatives, low-income energy programs, and environmental disclosure activities," such as their Residential Green Building Program (RGBP), currently in development, "to provide incentives to owners of new and substantially renovated residential buildings," and many more.

www.nyserda.org

Related, here:
How Green Is The (Hudson) Valley

Photo from Flickr by Philip McCluskey
(that's from the old firetower on top of
Overlook Mountain, with the Hudson
River that slight band in the distance.)

Is Your Head (Lost) In The Cloud?

Google's recent unscheduled downtime came at a good point, perhaps, with so many technology promoters urging us all to hurry up into the Cloud for all our computing needs.

PC World reported that the May 14th outage "left 14 percent of its user base without Google's wide variety of online services for a few hours." PC World's story was accompanied by this graph of North American Web traffic that day, from an Internet security company, Arbor Networks, which tells the story in concise and dramatic fashion.
Google said, in one of their blogs, it was the result of a simple traffic jam at a data center. Oh, that's really reassuring. What if it had been the dirty work of some of those cyber-crooks, who decided to put their botnets to work on taking down or compromising the All-Seeing Eye? How long might it have taken them to get all their services back in operation then?

"Ultimately, the outage was a fixable error and the Internet didn't come crashing down because of it," PC World said, but asked, "Just how smart is it to depend on a company to store all your data online?"

Cloud computing is a natural development of the technological path we're on, and of course it has many benefits, like being able to get at your information from anywhere there's an Internet connection. My point is just this: don't over-depend on it.

Do not assume that what you upload to any brand of cloud formation will necessarily be there when you next look for it — like the young lady I knew whose emails, years' worth, disappeared one day from Hotmail, never to be seen again.

When it's crunch time, especially with free services, host companies have oft responded by saying, Gee, sorry, there's nothing we can do about that now — but you know, it is a free service. (Implying about their own no-cost, no-guarantee offerings that YGWYPF: You Get What You Pay For.)

So, okay, these services can be highly useful. Just don't forget, in a tenet from the earliest days of computing: Back It Up!

"Google Outage Lesson: Don't Get Stuck in a Cloud"
by Ian Paul, PC World

Related, here:
Crackberry Down!

"Baaack it up!" * (Before the Botnets get it)

Web-based apps vs. Verizon customer service

(P.S.: Appropriately, I got this message several times while trying to post this: "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying...")

How Green Is The (Hudson) Valley

The injunction to Think Globally, Act Locally always made good sense to me. So I thought I'd make use of this space to start talking about the companies in this region that have sustainable energy solutions on the ground and running, and some of the forces helping to make it happen.

It's one thing to talk about the value of sustainability in planning how to proceed from here, and of course these issues need to be talked up, and ever more urgently. But special in the sight of earth-loving people are those who have moved past the planning and are already Doing something about it, and that's who I'm going to focus on.

It's only logical to assume that the Hudson Valley can develop into a leader in putting clean local energy sources to work. The area has more than its fair share of sun, water, earth, and all them thar natural elements, a highly inventive, forward-looking population, and a central spot in the history of environmental activism to boot. (Happy 90th Birthday, Pete Seeger! That's his famous floating environmental classroom, the Clearwater, above.) Here are a few of the players I'll start getting into more detail on in coming posts.

I crossed the river to check out the Hudson Valley Green Fair at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck a couple weeks back, where they filled a couple of halls with more than 80 exhibitors, and slated two days of workshops on every hue and shade of green activity. This was only the Fair's second year, and they hosted quite a variety of businesses and groups that offer to do more with less (energy).

Talking to people in the booths, the sense is the potential for this is still on the verge — which is pretty much where it's been for the last 30 years. But now everyone's optimistic, somewhere between waiting (because you can't just wait) and hoping for the other shoe to drop — from that mighty foot in Washington, D.C.

So the big news around here earlier this spring was the announcement from U.S. Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley), another local stalwart on the issue, that Washington was bestowing about $3.2 million on the Hudson Valley’s solar energy industry this year. Most of that will be funneled through The Solar Energy Consortium (TSEC), which Hinchey was a driving force in the development of. The funding bill also included 400 thousand plus for several renewable energy projects for local hospitals.

"Hinchey secures $4 million in funding for solar power, energy efficiency"
By Alexa James, Times Herald-Record, 3/2/09

At the Green Fair I found out how New York State is pitching in, too, with a variety of initiatives and programs both pilot and productional. In the "Environmental Disclosure Label" twice yearly in their electric bill, New Yorkers can now see where the energy they buy for their home originates from, hopefully inspiring them to choose to buy Green Power from participating providers. That's one way the state's Public Service Commission is supporting the development of renewable energy service from utilities that serve New York, and working at drumming up further interest in it among the general populace.

Related, here:
Posts tagged Green Tech
and the wider topic of
Appropriate Technology

(Photo of the sloop Clearwater
from James.Doyle on Flickr)

"How do we come up with new ideas?"

Alison Arieff, blogging on design in the New York Times, asks this always-useful question, by way of giving some serious room to a gentleman who vividly "illustrates" the practical value of plain old seat of the pants blue-sky imagining.

She begins by listing a battery of common distractions we're all fighting through to remain optimistic enough to keep creative and productive, remarking,

"I can’t help thinking that we’re all so mired in it that we’ve forgotten how to get out of it — how to daydream, invent, engage with the absurd.

"That’s why I am so enamored with the work of inventor/author/cartoonist/former urban planner Steven M. Johnson, a sort of R. Crumb meets R. Buckminster Fuller. Many of his musings are simply whimsical, existing primarily as a source of inspiration or delight. Others tackle very real issues, from environmentalism to alternative transportation to homelessness."

(Johnson's caption:)
"Auto Abandonment Zones are built to acccomodate growing numbers of drivers who lose the will to proceed further in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic. Drivers may pull off, leave car keys with an Abandonment Officer, and board a nearby train, phone relatives, or calm themselves in 'parks.'" (Bolding mine.)

As one who has spent far-r-r too much time edging along in traffic, in the pre-mostly-virtual world when the only way to get paid was to show up somewhere every day and be there throughout regular work hours — thus condemning you to rush hour drives — I found that to be wickedly dry humor. Arieff continues,

"In Johnson’s oeuvre, nothing gets to exist if it doesn’t have at least two functions: the skylight uses solar energy to cook the dinner, for instance, and the exercise bike operates the washing machine (cleaning clothes and toning the wearer’s muscles simultaneously)."

"Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas" (On Design blog), 5/4/09

For more examples of witty yet functional doubling-up, Johnson has visually proposed an array of gardening tool footwear, including the Weeding Oxfords, Shear Shoes, Lawn Aeraters, Lawn Edging Spurs, and the Watering Sneakers. Presumably, you could accomplish a lot of tasks among the dirt and weeds just by walking around — in a very deliberate manner, one would guess. Afterwards, you can relax in Johnson's Ten-Speed Hammock, or the Blooming Rose Chair with Ottoman (p. 62 in the book preview).

Now, a lot of this stuff is intentionally (we hope) zany; besides demonstrating some fairly precise drafting skills, the man's also a comedian. But the creative thinking on display, focused on real-world objects, can only spark a few fresh thoughts in anyone trying to see where things can progress in their own sphere of influence.

A vast number of such thoughts are drawn out in Johnson’s 1984 book: “What the World Needs Now: A Resource Book for Daydreamers, Frustrated Inventors, Cranks, Efficiency Experts, Utopians, Gadgeteers, Tinkerers, and Just About Everybody Else.” Let me recommend the final, how-to chapter, "Author's Tips for Inventing Useful and Useless Things," which is excerpted there at the other end of that link.

"I sit on the living room rug at home and look out the window at the garden. …I avoid my desk and drafting table, as such furniture has the connotations of serious endeavor, deadlines," etc.

He places a stack of typing paper and a pen or pencil on the floor next to him.

"I find that a few key words and a blurry scribble are all that I need for capturing an idea, but it is important to note down all ideas, since like dream images these products of the imagination evaporate easily and are usually impossible to retrieve."

===
Related, here:
Building 'Living Space' Around Railroad Stations

Where Do Great Ideas Come From?

Posts tagged innovation and creative thinking

Pres. Obama on the Tonight Show

In observance of the fact that this man practically IS the news these days, given the mind-boggling situation that our society is in, here's the full interview of the Prez by Leno on the Tonight Show. Obama spends much of the time speaking plainly about all the issues of the day, the nature of the overall financial crisis, the AIG and other bailed-out bonuses, and the whole sordid lot. It's a great opportunity to hear directly and at length -- not just in soundbites -- how he's thinking about what he's doing for the country.

Sure enough, two months into the job and the man is getting loudly criticized all over the place -- and not just by the Party Of No, but by all those whose job it is to stir things up and get people arguing with each other. So much for bipartisanship; but who could possibly be surprised, in a culture that's become so intensely critical and uncooperative?

In here, Jay asks Barack (who's been a guest on the show before and seems right at home,) how he's adjusting to his new life, and Obama tells us that Washington is like a reality show where everyone is Simon. Ouch! Towards the end of the interview, pressed for news on the urgent, much-discussed issue of the new White House Pet, he relates a Beltway aphorism: "They say if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Appendix: found this excellent defense of the President's efforts on the link tree today:
"Obama's multitasking with a smile is driving detractors crazy"
By Bob Ray Sanders, McClatchy Newspapers

Related, here:
"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"

Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States(!) (Nov. 5, '08)

"Tech’s Fingerprints on Stimulus Package"

Let's hope so... about the proposed "stimulus package," as it stands today:

"While much of the sprawling $800 billion legislation consists of tax cuts and broad spending increases for existing programs..., the biggest outlay on initiatives is essentially a technology industry wish list: in the Senate version, about,
- $7 billion for expanding high-speed Internet access,
- $20 billion for building a so-called smart grid power network,
- $20 billion for digitizing health records.

"To many on K Street, the stimulus bill was the clearest guide to the new administration’s closest friends in the business world. What oil was to President Bush, some say, clean energy and technology are to the Obama White House.

"At the transition’s request, I.B.M. (which is in both the smart grid and healthcare data businesses,) prepared a research report concluding that $30 billion in spending this year on the smart grid, broadband access and digitized health records would create approximately 949,000 jobs."

"Technology’s Fingerprints on the Stimulus Package"
NY Times, By Charlie Savage and David D. Kirkpatrick, Feb. 10, 2009

"Slow-Blogging" 2009

The only appropriate way for me to start posting in the new year, on the 15th day of that year, is to hearken back to something I bookmarked for this purpose a couple months ago on the concept of, what else but Slow Blogging. Clearly, I'm a grizzled veteran of this only recently-named approach.

Web-logging began as one of those breathlessly, literally up-to-the-minute Internet phenomena, where the idea was not only of posting every day, but of how many times per day you could publish. Never mind that these rapid-fire essays contained only the barest minimum of thought; the point was they were so timely.

But as we've now seen, especially in these past few months, perhaps we need to incorporate a bit more reflection into our culture's modus operandi. It turns out that, even in a world wired with communication speeds of gigabits per second, Haste Still Makes Waste. Just lots more of it now, and much quicker.

I found this approach to online writing in a November 21, 2008 article about this "small, quirky movement" in where else but the New York Times (slow blogging about Old Media -- even worse!), "Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace." I was relieved to find some brethren whole-heartedly embracing this approach.

"Slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants," author Sharon Otterman writes, "great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul."

Not convinced, O thou wired child of our frenzied times? About the slo-mo thesis, or the relevance of quoting hopelessly out-of-date Old Media? I give you these words of none other than A-list blogger Om Malik, writing about the reporting on the Mumbai terror attacks in his native India, in a post titled "With Twitter, a Desperate Need for Context":

"Even with all the news coming at me from the local Indian channels by way of streaming on the web, no one was offering context, analysis or a comprehensive overview of what was unfolding around them. It wasn’t until The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times offered up their reports that the whole time line and sequence of events started to make sense."

Ah-ha! Take that, New Media bigots. But my point isn't either/or; the point, as ever, is balance. There's no way around the fact that we live in a hyperdrive world, and we've got to keep up or be left behind. But neither has the world fundamentally changed so much since Aesop posited that, as my grandfather was found of quoting, "Slow but steady wins the race."

Related, here:
Twittering on about Facebook

Illustration by Milo Winter in a 1919 Aesop anthology,
from Project Gutenberg via Wikipedia

The 20th WebInno Packs The House

I drove the length of the Mass Pike to Cambridge yesterday to attend the latest Web Innovators Group, "an informal gathering of people interested in internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area." (Legally speaking, The People's Republic of Cambridge is part of Boston, but don't try to tell the people there that. This was not an event for the comrades, though; the host hotel just so happens to be down the street from MIT.)

David Beisel of Venrock, a venture capital firm, started the WebInno meetings in late 2005, I believe. I'm estimating that by the little post about WebInno #7 that I put in here in July '06; they're held every two or three months. The next one is scheduled for March 2009.

David was rightfully proud to greet the crowd of 600 by briefly reflecting on the event's modest start in contrast to what he saw, when, "tonight we've filled the entire grand ballroom." WebInno's long been an acknowledged hotspot for the area's technorati.

The focus is on early-stage startups, and the format's always been three "main dish" presentations to the assembled group, followed by open networking time when another number of "side dish" presentations by other hopefuls are set up in simple tabletop convention style.

With three main dishes and a half dozen sides, there's really far too much to say to do justice to any of them. So, with that caveat in mind, a quick pass through some highlights.

Trip Chill is putting into practice a widely desired service: a full-service digital travel agent and concierge. Plan and book your trip through their site, then get updates and automatic Plan B's directed to your iPhone or any mobile device. If your flight is delayed, for instance, it'll book you on another one, according to any preferences you originally entered on the website.

I was very keen on the prompts they'll send to remind you where you parked your car when you land back at your home airport. (Sign me up!)

Presentation-wise, too, these guys really had the right idea: presenters always have two people at the podium, one doing the talking and the other running the slide show. So Trip Chill's two speakers acted out their story, and with low key comedy. "How was your flight?"
"Oh, brutal. My flight was cancelled, I was stuck at O'Hare," etc.
"That's too bad -- I used Trip Chill(!), and it notified me, booked me on another flight," etc., etc. Host Beisel then conferred on them the spur-of-the-moment award for "best acting in a WebInno presentation." They had the crowd's full attention, laughing and engaged.

Don't just tell your story; whenever possible, Show it.

Next we had the exotically named Crimson Hexagon, promised a service to "make sense of the massive amount of information on the Internet." That turned out to be basically a digital clipping service for anyone who's written about more often than they can keep track of in Google Alerts; which they estimated at more than 25 a day. It's sold as an annual subscription, or, for now, by the month.

Crimson Hexagon (the name is a construct from Argentinian magical realism author, Jorge Luis Borges,) tracks, "reads" and summarizes everything that's being said about your company on the Web. They demonstrated the kind of intelligence gathering this makes possible by revealing that, in aggregate, the biggest attraction to the iPhone is the App Store, and that 14% of people who drink Gatorade do so for a hangover cure. (Note: this statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are solely the opinions of 14% of the sport-drink buying Internet population.)

Local Motors was the last and somewhat curious main dish, since the definition of "mobile innovation" was stretched perhaps beyond recognition to include a custom car company. But no, they belonged there because the design of their cars is crowdsourced. People post car designs, who the Local Motors man emphasized are paid if their design is selected (good for them! There's a practice conspicuously missing from most Web ventures).

Then the community comments, adds and critiques, and the company gets to hear "what people think of it real-time." At the point that, I suppose, that input plateaus, the company says, "this is the car we'll build here," since they'll create versions most appropriate for various locales; Boston and Hawaii were mentioned as examples. They'll build a hydrogen powered car for states that have that kind of "gas" station; they economize overall by using off-the-shelf power plants and components (although no sticker price was mentioned in the main pitch).

A very intriguing idea, especially on the umpteenth day that Washington-in-transition told us they just about had a bailout in place for the old Big Three carmakers. And they had some very sexy, European racing car designs that, together with their man's strong presentation, earned them the designation of Tastiest Dish of the.. . no, excuse me, that was "Audience Choice Award."

Web Innovators Group

Photo on Flickr by BostonDave (as of this writing, pix from WebInno 18)

=0=

When I got off the road and into the hotel where the event's usually been held, having already decided that I wanted to do a little report, I was confronted with one of pressing questions of our time. Should I "live" blog the affair, or go by the traditional, Old Media approach of taking notes and putting it up tomorrow?

(I remember at one of the earlier WebInno's, around three years back, when blogging was still the breathlessly hot new thing, there was some pride in the room that it was being reported live by at least a couple different speed typists.)

I decided to go for the latter, because I knew that today I'd cringe at what I threw up here without review; but mostly because if I get as focused as one needs to be to write and post a entry, I wouldn't have really been there. You know, the way it is with cameras: either you're documenting it, OR you're really there.

You Can Only See It If You Stand Right Here

Here's a visual/conceptual treat, a little eye and brain candy, containing the ever useful reminder that sometimes your perspective is all about where you're standing.

Axel Peemoeller's avant-garage

Within a certain range, a small slice of the pie, the words are easily read. Presumably, that's at the physical point where you need it, because good design is primarily about usefulness, carefully refined functionality.

From anywhere outside the sweet spot, it's decorative; it's "Ahhht." But since a particular message isn't needed from that location, or even could be confusing and darnright counter-productive, there's no reason that space can't be used just for expression. In a case like this, any more interesting message than "parking garage" would be a welcome experiential improvement for the parkers, and the parkees.

Funny, it didn't occurr to me until now, a couple paragraphs into this, that maybe the reason I'm so drawn to a lively paint job for a parking garage is that I worked in one for a year or so, when still a very young feller. Fortunately my booth was on the street, just inside a very wide mouth of the building, so the air wasn't that awfully bad, either.

So, by all means, buy some paint! (And get those emissions checked, please.)

Here's Axel Peemoeller's home page, which I am disappointed to report is an all visual, unnavigable "artistic" mess -- no text clues on where to click for what. We're invited to "drag and drop and click on items," but mousing over the goobley graphics only offers invitations to "double click." So besides that the garage is in "Melbourne," I can't tell you anything else about him or the project, because I gave up trying to find out more. A fine model of usefulness, indeed.

So how did I come across this? The pictures above and below originally came to me via the traditional email full of non-attributed photos, which I found in this case to be sparky stuff. So I sleuthed it down, using the mighty Internet, and found the originator, in observance of our personal motto (and tag) here, "Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due."

Epson's Built-In Cheating Mechanism

(A little righteously indignant background music, there, maestro... just a bit lower? Thank you, that's perfect.)

I turned on my printer yesterday, and it informed me that the ink was out in three of the six cartridges. Okay, these things happen. But then there are these puzzling occurrences, and a rather troubling number of them, in fact.

This is a printer series that is infamous for shutting down and not letting you print once it decides any one of the cartridges is "out" of ink. (You can guess there's more to this subject, and I'll get to it in turn.) I didn't realize when I bought this thing that Epson was withholding the right I'd enjoyed with every printer I ever owned or used to that point, to print a faded copy of something I needed right then.

First of all, even though I'm supposedly out of a color ink, it refuses to print even a purely black-and-white page. There is really no reasonable justification for this, except to hasten the hapless owner's purchase of more of "the Barbie clothes." (Would prefer to use "razors and blades," but that one is so over.)

Secondly, while "the paperless office" is an absolute that is still beyond reach, I certainly live and function in the "much-less-paper office," and as such wind up printing very little. I use this machine much more often for its scanning.

So it was obvious to me when I turned the machine on several weeks ago and it informed me that the ink was getting low on those three cartridges, that I hadn't printed anything between the last time the device was on and then. Some timer had clicked over a notch, and the ink in half the cartridges was duly reported as having evaporated below the sensor lines or escaped or something.

But Wait, There's More: yesterday I turned the machine on for the first time since the last time, still not having printed anything, and was informed that I was completely out of ink in all three of those cartridges.

It turns out that in 2005, Epson, the maker of my Stylus Photo RX620, settled a a class action suit against them for exactly this behavior. According to a PC World article when legal actions were filed in, oops, 2003,

"…chips are used to monitor the amount of ink inside the ink jet cartridge. Cartridges actually contain up to 38 percent more usable ink after the chip cuts them off, according to research cited in the suits.
"The chip does not measure the real volume; instead, it estimates the amount of ink used and predicts when the cartridge will be empty. The chip transmits estimated ink levels to the printer, which alerts the user with a screen message."

The gist of that message: "You're Gist Out Of Luck!"

In the settlement, any owner of an Epson printer manufactured and bought within some period of time, and who heard about this in time (it wasn't referenced on their home page when the settlement was in force), got a $45 dollar certificate from Epson's own online store, as I recall. Since you pay full retail there, that's not even three cartridges. And, critically, Epson was not required to change the programming in the chips or offer a download to correct the cheating calculations, and give an accurate reading of the ink levels. Bad settlement.

It's a shame, and an insult to the engineers who put this printer scanner copier together, because they did a really nice job. It prints beautiful photos, the scanner works fine and has very good, well integrated software. But somewhere between the various departments with input on this design, the dark directive came down to operate on its brain to turn it against its owner. (Hm, sounds like a great sci-fi movie concept.. .)

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Good grief, I think I just released my first real, full-out rant. !, even. My apologies; but these skunks should be aired out appropriately. And I feel a little better now.

Epson Faces Consumer Suits - PC World (10/24/03)

Epson ink cartridge controversy - Wikipedia

"Can America Invent Its Way Back?" & "No Time to Forget Innovation"

Extracts of today's and another recent post I put together for the Heart of Innovation, the blog of Idea Champions.

Nov. 24 '08 -
"Can America Invent Its Way Back?"

A recent article in BusinessWeek by Michael Mandel asks this highly relevant question, noting that while the U.S. has spent almost $5 trillion on research and development and on higher education, "employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen."

Mandel's focus is on the new field of "innovation economics," which studies what forms of funding drive successful innovation.

The first launch at Cape Canaveral, 1950 (NASA)

Nov. 4 '08 -
"It's No Time to Forget About Innovation"

Writing in the New York Times, Janet Rae-Dupree reminds us that even or especially in times "of corporate belt-tightening," companies reduce their efforts to strengthen innovation at their own risk. For example, "a large acquirer's interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don't, based on the innovation you have to offer."

Hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration... Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times.

"That's Why He's A Great Player"

Once again, the somehow perennially useful reminder that you'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take. (Who first said that, I wonder?) Here it was the other day, voiced in the form of the champion Boston Celtics' coach Doc Rivers commenting on the amazing Paul Pierce. The Celtics' leading scorer had been in a slump recently, but on this night...

"The Raptors... were up by as many as 16 points but fell, 94-87, last night thanks in no small part to the 22-point period Pierce assembled as a part of a 36-point bailout. ...It was, as Doc Rivers said, the kind of night the Celtics had been waiting for out of their captain. Every shot seemed like a big one in a quarter that saw Pierce hit seven of nine attempts and drill two from 3-point range.

"Rivers never had any doubt that Pierce would keep shooting. Mostly because Pierce guaranteed as much in one of their huddles.

"'That's why he's a great player,' Rivers said. 'That's why great players are great players. The average player could not have withstood that. The average player misses shots and he shuts off.

"'The great player misses shots and he starts thinking the odds are on his side.'"

("After playing just 28 minutes against Detroit Sunday, Pierce said he could have played for hours, especially now that he had found his rhythm.")

"Pierce scores 32 in Celtics 94-87 win over Raptors" --
"Their captain became a quarter-master," by Julian Benbow, Boston Globe, 11/11/08

"Paul Pierce For Two" - Photo posted to Flickr by TimDD
(Okay, that pic is from a Lakers game, not this one;
but how much better is one of Pierce blowing by Kobe?)

(...Just like ol' Mr. Hank Aaron, who tipped our hat to early in the year. In baseball terms it comes out as "Just Keep Swinging.")

"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"

Okay, it's official: Green is in, and funding is loudly touted for initiatives on recovery and sustainability. We have every reason to expect this support to flow significantly from the highest levels, since, for example, just today the President-Elect(!),

".. .reiterated a campaign pledge to invest $15 billion each year in the development of clean technology...

"'When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.'"

- "US president-elect promises 'new chapter in America's leadership on climate change'"
The Guardian, guardian.co.uk

(I just can't help but saying, while still at this early point, is it not a profound relief to see the President of the country saying this? Alright alright, "-elect" -- but you've got to admit that in spirit he's already effectively taken charge of the country.)

If this new enlightened age for Green Sustainable Whole Earthitude is for real, or to whatever extent it is, then the focus must shift to two types of things:

• Finding out which are the best ideas, the ones that should get the big-league support, and
• Recognizing which companies and countries are already doing it right. This also must involve keeping the believability of the whole movement alive by vigorously exposing "greenwashers," those soulless touts trying to pass off their net-effect polluting employers as a saints of save-the-earthness.

So it's good to see the CNN/Money/Fortune magazine agglomeration "rank the world's 100 largest corporations by the quality of their commitment to social and environmental goals."

"10 Most 'Accountable' Big Companies"
Five U.S. companies were in Fortune's top 20 Most Accountable, with one or two in the top ten (since the tenth spot was a statistical three-way tie, with just .1 out of 100 separating their scores).

England's Vodafone was #1; the top U.S. companies were:

#2: GE
11: Hewlett-Packard (really tied for 10th)
16: Chevron
17: Citigroup (Uh-oh...)
23: Ford (Uh-oh!)

Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States(!)

First of all… Whew!

If you write, you kind of have to write on a day like this, an historic occasion if ever there was one. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is something I never thought would happen in my lifetime, and it is due both to the moment and, significantly, to the extraordinary character of Barack.

Maybe it was close earlier, maybe the Democratic candidate would have won anyway just on the strength of being the Anti-Bush, but there were two factors that decisively tipped it Obama's way. McCain's choice of the beauty pageant queen for his VP did send the hearts of the faithful to flutterin', but once revealed in Katy Couric's pivotal interview, Mrs. Palin caused everybody else to seriously doubt his judgment, and turn even conservative stalwarts like Christopher Buckley (William F.'s son, no less,) against him.

The other, less self-inflicted blow (given his legislative participation in the debacle,) was that little dust-up recently in the markets, the timing of which turned out so poorly for his campaign. Once again, It Was The Economy, Stoopit.

Note, though, that the all-but-complete count as I write this is roughly 53 million Democratic votes vs. 46 million Republican. That many people, a little over 46 percent of the voting population, voted for the maverick military-man version of the same old thing.

So how wise has it been of Obama, even through his victory speech, to strike a conciliatory, inclusive tone, recognizing the strong, deep differences that divide the people in this country, even as we face the same set of problems -- excuse me, "challenges." (Because it turns out, it actually does make a difference how we phrase these situations to ourselves.)

Yes, I got the chills, again, from his acceptance speech, especially when the crowd kept calling back, "Yes, we can!"

Some favorite views of the day:

History in the making: News headlines across the US - slide show, Boston Globe

Reactions from around the world - slide show, Huffington Post

World welcomes Obama with open arms, demands - Amanpour, CNN.com

What the world expects - BBC correspondents

The Last Three Weeks in the Financial System: Quotes & Observations

Like pretty much everyone else, I've been watching the news unfold about the financial world, and the bit of a sticky wicket they've gotten themselves (and us all) into, with the sense that I was watching an utterly surrealistic drama. Being no whiz on high finance, I’m not going to attempt any big analysis. But I still wanted to simply record a few phrases that I saved, ones that leapt off the screen as I read them, crystalizing the profound hard-to-believability of what's just gone down.

Let's hope we can look back at this, someday not too far off, and say, "Whew! Good thing we got out of that one in not too bad of a shape. Thank goodness we escaped the worst of that!" Not that I see that as exactly likely, but hey, let's be positive! : - 0

Specifically, here at last is a moment when doing business mainly by constructing all these houses of cards, trying to build prosperity and/or wealth based on no productive work, investing in mental constructs not tied to any physical correspondence, is shown as the empty and ultimately useless approach it is. Oh, and even better, done without any much regulatory oversight or, y'know, rules.

Here are some of those quotes, much of them in the carefully measured words of the New York Times, made all the more startling because the Times is not what you'd call a paper known for sensationalism.
This one was a good, nutshell explanation of why the potential collapse was so widespread:

"Outside the public eye, Fed officials had acquired much more information since March about the interconnections and cross-exposure to risk among Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and traders in the vast market for credit-default swaps and other derivatives. In the end, both Wall Street and the Fed blinked."

Lehman Files for Bankruptcy; Merrill to Be Sold
(9/14/2008 )

"Days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system"

"As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program 'Good Morning America': 'The congressional leaders were told that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.'”
(9/20)


".. .a week that has shaken the core of the American financial system."
(10/3)

I mean, who'd-a thunk it: Lehman, Merrill, among the handful of firms that were routinely described as the very Pillars of the Financial System! This has got to be the best use of the word "incredulity" that I've ever seen.
And from MSNBC:

The "Bankruptcy of 'law of the jungle' capitalism"

"This crisis underlines the excesses and uncertainties of a casino capitalism that has only one logic — lining your pockets," said German lawmaker Martin Schulz, chairman of the Socialists in the EU assembly. "It also shows the bankruptcy of 'law of the jungle' capitalism that no longer invests in companies and job creation, but instead makes money out of money in a totally uncontrolled way."
- "U.S. gambles blamed for world’s financial crisis"
MSNBC.com (10/1)

Blunt Financial Instruments Used for the Crime (cont'd)

More memorable quotes on the last three weeks of high drama:

"The riverboat-gambling scheme of investment banking"

"As long as people are compensated hugely for taking risks with other people’s money, and do not suffer equally on the downside, then those risks will inevitably become outrageous. Whether markets are efficient or not I don’t know for sure, but I do know that if there’s a way for someone to make money at another’s expense, he will. In spades. I want out."

"These companies need to tie compensation to long- rather than short-term performance. This won’t be popular on Wall Street, but if we want to turn investment banking back to performing something useful and positive rather than some sort of riverboat-gambling scheme on which we are all unwitting participants, then there’s not much choice."

- "For Wall Street, Greed Wasn’t Good Enough"
by Paul Wilmott, founder of Wilmott, a journal of quantitative finance
NYT Op-Ed section (9/17)

Lehman's reward for failure
(9/23)

">> 'But things are looking up for the long-suffering employees of investment bank Lehman Brothers.'

"But wait. Wasn’t it Lehman that filed for bankruptcy just last week?

"Yes, it was.

"But as luck would have it, that sorry, sorry turn of events apparently had no effect on the $2.5 billion the bank set aside for staff bonuses. So, according to The Independent, Barclays, which is buying Lehman Brothers for $1.75 billion, plans to make good on those bonuses, though it has no obligation to do so.

"Two-and-a-half billion. Plus whatever portion of that $39 billion they were given last year. And then there are the pay and severance packages. Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. made $34 million in 2007. He also banked $490 million from selling Lehman stock.

"Such is the price of failure."

- "Lehman Brothers: $2.5 Billion for a Bankruptcy Well Done"
from Digital Daily by John Paczkowski
on All Things Digital

From 1999 to 2007, Paczkowski wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News

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With all this about the brokers and bankers, let's not forget how this is playing out with The Rest Of Us; for example,

Tent Cities Spread In U.S. As Economy Sags
Foreclosure Crisis Blamed For Rise Of Homeless Camps In Cities

RENO, Nev., Sept. 19, 2008
"From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation."

"Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening."

" 'It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased,' said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. 'The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future.' "

"The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up."

- CBSNews.com

Just Plain Beautiful

"Raine Island Reef, Australia"

Just some relief for your weary eyes and mind, a peaceful image by photographer Paul Sutherland, from the National Geographic (where they're celebrating the 120th Anniversary of the National Geographic Society). 

This is from their "Underwater Landscapes" photo gallery, free-downloadable for wallpaper.