My Steve Jobs memories

My Steve Jobs memoriesAs a kid I learned to program on Comodore64′s and on the Osborne “luggable” my father had from his work. My mom was a mainframe programmer but we were relatively early adopters of computers – however as we didn’t have a TV we didn’t get an Atari or other home computer for a while. But I did use Apple’s at various schools and learned to program them.In the 1980′s my parents bought one of the very first Mac’s, a Mac512 which we later upgraded to a MacPlus with a whole 1mb of memory! (they still have this – likely now it is a collectible). In 1991 as I prepared for my first year of college I bought my first computer of my own – it wasn’t a Mac, nor was it a Windows PC, I bought a used NeXT cube. The bit over $6000 I spent on that NeXT was probably among the best purchases I ever made in my life – more than college, more then my first condo. Okay not more than a certain ring I just bought but other than that, one of the most long lasting purchases of my life – as the skills I learned connecting that NeXT to the Internet have lasted to this day. In 1991 from my college dorm room which included wired Internet access I had a static IP address and had nearly 1000 users from around the globe playing the MuCK which I ran for some friends on the NeXT (named Collatz). While I wasn’t ever a highly active player of the MuCK I helped to run that experience and the ongoing experience of the NeXT OS as an interface to the Internet in 1991 has shaped me and my technical interests to this day. I purchased the NeXT largely because it came bundled with Mathematica (I thought I was going to be a Math or Physics major and had been an avid Mathematica user while working at Argonne National Lab). There are still UI and software elements of the NeXT which I think still would be innovative today – the multi-dimensional spreadsheet for the NeXT OS was really impressive and the mail included the ability to link photos to addresses (something only gradually available today via add-ons such as Rapportive to Gmail though Google is also making some strides to add this – but it still is far from standard). A few years into to college, however, i sold my NeXT and bought my first laptop, which wasn’t a Mac but a PC. That served me well as a writing tool but less well as a technology tool and the various PCs I owned in the 1990′s and early 2000′s weren’t much better. Finally fed up with Windows I switched to first an iMac for my home computer a few years ago and then added the MacBook Pro I’m writing on at the moment. Earlier this year my fiancee and I each bought an iPad and I’ve had an iPhone since the first version. I’m still not a full power user of the latest MacOS (Lion) and I don’t do a lot of coding these days (though I did hack up an iPad app a while back and may try my hand at that again later this fall) but I’m appreciative of the power of the Mac platform and the reinvigorated Apple company that is Steve Job’s legacy. View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post on Google+»

Why I don’t accept most connections on LinkedIn or circle back on Google+

Why I don’t accept most connections on LinkedIn or circle back on Google+Recently I have read articles which note that it is apparently the “accepted norm” on LinkedIn that most people accept all connection requests. Perhaps this is true, but if so it also explains why I haven’t found LinkedIn very useful since that became the norm. When LinkedIn first launched (I was one of the first 1000 users of LinkedIn) my network on LinkedIn though I kept my direct connections to people I both actually knew and would refer business to (i.e. I didn’t then nor do I now accept connections on LinkedIn from anyone I wouldn’t do business with myself) I still had a reach that included much of LinkedIn’s membership. In those early years I got a lot of referral requests for people a few degrees away from me, when the request was well written and reasonable I would forward it on to my contact who in turn knew the person who was trying to be contacted. This was a great system in that it was an opportunity for me to connect with and reach out to my contacts and in general it was highly effective as a business tool. But now that most of LinkedIn have adopted this nearly valueless method of making connections the network graph on LinkedIn is far less valuable or reliable. As a result I rarely use LinkedIn other than occasionally as a research tool (but not for network connections or referrals but rather for information about a given business – i.e. the number of current and former employees they have, their job roles and types, the velocity of turnover at that business etc). All useful but not so valuable that I use LinkedIn frequently. View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

We live in the beyond past Science Fiction…

We live in the beyond past Science FictionI am a science fiction fan. What is more I was, perhaps still am a member of the subset of SF Fans who are SMOFs (“Secret Masters of Fandom” i.e. the folks who organize and run science fiction conventions – I started a new science fiction convention over 20 years ago at my high school which as far as a I know is still happening once a year and I used to help volunteer at and helped fun other local to Chicago SF conventions).But I fear that Science Fiction Fandom thinks far too small these days and that SF Fans as self-defined, have not, in most cases, kept up with a world which has surpassed the imagination of our past futurists. A small example of this – a bunch of great SF writers and fans have launched The World SF Travel Fund (see http://peerbackers.com/projects/the-world-sf-travel-fund/) but note the highly limited scope of their imagination. One Fan each year to One Science Fiction convention. $6000 for two years of running the fund (i.e. implying $3000/award which seems about right) The “World” Science Fiction conventions, one of the oldest science fiction conventions still happening now draw between 2000-6000 people each year depending on where it is held (the lower numbers in years when it is held outside of the US, the larger numbers when it is held in a major US city). But at the same time conventions such as San Diego ComicCon, PAX Prime and PAX East sell out every single year and attract 125k+ attendees (in the case of ComicCon). These are massive events with the participation of many of the largest media companies in the world. At the box office SF and Fantasy films dominate every year with billions of box office (and billions more in other revenues). Likewise while there are hit computer games that aren’t SF (EA Sports franchises, Rock Band etc) many of the biggest and most profitable franchise in gaming have SF or Fantasy elements – the over $1B/year World of Warcraft franchise, HALO, Diablo, Starcraft and countless others. And leaving media and entertainment aside (I haven’t even mentioned the billions more in revenues from SF or Fantasy TV series over the years) we ourselves live in a world surrounded by real gadgets and experiences unimagined by most of our fiction, especially most of our Science Fiction, of the past decades. A few examples 1) Everything Apple makes – the iPhone, the iPad, the AppleTV, the MacBook Air. All woven together in ways that dwarf the imaginations even of the 1980′s and 90′s “cyberpunks” and with capabilities in excess even of the perhaps original inspirations such as the Star Trek PADD (see http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-trek-padd/id446277240?mt=8 to turn your iPad into a version of one) or the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – see Wikipedia there… 2) Sometime earlier this year the number of cell phones globally hit over 5 Billion. That means that over 2/3rds of the planet likely has a cell phone (there are many people who have more than one phone so the exact # without a phone is hard to estimate). The societal, cultural and economic impact of that has yes to be explored – but the reality of this is something few writers have explored in our fiction (indeed most fiction – whether “science fiction” or “serious” rarely is written set in our current world – few characters have cell phones, smartphones etc) 3) Global logistics. This is the not-so-sexy stuff that allows you to place an order in CA on the weekend and get product from halfway across the planet delivered in the middle of the afternoon to your doorstep less than a week later. This is what allows you to order a customized piece of electronics, a made-to-order car, even entire homes or in the case of San Francisco most of a bridge to be built across the planet and shipped as needed.This is what ties businesses, people and countries together. This isn’t sexy and rarely is acknowledged in fiction but this is what has changed the planet in the past few decades (along with the Internet in the past two decades) and there is much more Peerbackers | The World SF Travel Fundpeerbackers-logo. Join Peerbackers Write About Us Get in. How It Works; Back Project; Submit Project; FAQ; Blog; Resources. Explore By. select an option to browse; closest to goal; buzz (most backers)… View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

The Illuminatus Trilogy and why I run conferences…

The Illuminatus Trilogy and why I run conferencesI own two SIGNED and inscribed copies of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. One signed by Robert Anton Wilson and the other by his co-author Robert Shea. When I was in high school I co-founded a local science fiction convention, run by the high school science fiction and fantasy club, OPCon became our annual fundraising event plus a really fun event (yes I’ve been starting conferences and events for over 20 years). We contacted Robert Shea and asked him if he would speak at our conference. He said he would but needed a ride. So I found myself seated at his kitchen table on spring day meeting his family and waiting for him to get ready. As a result of his speaking at OPCon some of the organizers of other conferences and conventions around Chicago realized that Robert Shea lived in the Chicagoland area and he was invited to speak at ChiCon in 1991 (the World Science Fiction convention the last time it was in Chicago until next year). There I was witness to a panel discussion which had the following panelists: Robert Shea Robert Anton Wilson Philip Jose Farmer some other guy from Tor I think and making a grand entrance Timothy Leary. The audio tape my friend Dwight made of that panel is one bit of lost audio I dearly wish I had a copy of somewhere. After that panel I got a copy of Illuminatus signed by Robert Anton Wilson. I am not a Libertarian, nor am I conspiracy theorist or a drug user (haven’t even tried anything) but I love The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Reading it as well as getting to know, even briefly and lightly Robert Shea (and reading all of this other books which are also great) change my course in life in many small and some major ways. Major Spoiler is one of my favorite podcasts – you owe it to yourself to go subscribe. This isn’t a typical episode but it is a fascinating and great discussion. Major Spoilers Podcast #327: The Illuminatus! Trilogy | Major Spoilers – Comic Book Reviews and NewsIn this issue: A special guest drops by and joins Stephen in a discussion of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy in our latest (and much delayed) installment of The Other Word B… View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

Idea a shared beautiful calendar of cool events and happenings

Idea – based on posts I’m seeing on Google+ (and on many other sites) – a shared, beautiful calendar of cool events and happenings across the globe.With the following features: Navigation is via TIME (i.e. timelines/calendars) but that navigation triggers the following distinctly different experiences: in the NOW and “nearly now” portions pretty aggregations of near-realtime posts about events and happenings, recent photos, Google+ shares, Tweets, Tumblr posts, Justin.tv live streams etc. Aggregation and curation of this would be hard, might need to be humanpowered or at least reviewed and refined but the overall experience should be Flipboard like. in the PAST (perhaps defined as more than a week ago) use a view similar to the “NOW” view but layer on social signals to hide cruft – i.e. filter out content without some threshold level of +1′s, likes, retweets,@mentions etc. Editing should help find the most authoritative (and accurate where possible to define that) articles, summaries, videos etc. in the FUTURE use the knowledge of the PAST to show TWO sets of related features: 1) ADD deadlines and related events when a major event is added. For example show when tickets go on sale for an event, show when prices for an event get bumped up, show when deadlines to apply end (and start) etc. 2) SHOW the event dates – correctly adjusted for local geography and timezones 3) SHOW “great” articles talking about future events – show these with increasing frequency and prominence as the event approaches (i.e. in the run-up to San Diego ComicCon the many great articles that discussed what to expect or what panels not to miss) Getting the UI for this right would be hard. Getting the right content both for a generic “public” viewer and better yet tailored to a specific user based in large part (but not exclusively) on their own social connections and “circles” will be harder still. But the result would be compelling and beautiful. [full disclosure - in 2000 I started my company JigZaw Inc with the vision of building a smart calendar which would update itself. I built a lot of complex AI driven capabilities and also a full, complex web based calendar, but the timing of my business, perhaps ironically, was bad. But this is a space I remain passionately interested in and one where I do have some existing IP which might be helpful] View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

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Being political – taking a risk – some suggestions…

Being political – taking a risk – some suggestions for job creation Tonight President Barack Obama gave a speech about the looming debt ceiling crisis. I haven’t yet had a chance to view the video of, though I’ve seen summaries of his speech and the initial reactions.I am a firm and strong supporter of President Obama – have been since he was my senator when I lived in Illinois (though in his initial primary race for that position he ran against a neighbor of mine whom I knew personally from our local coffeehouse, however once he won the primary I was proud to vote for him for the Senate and years later for President). Many friends of mine have joined his administration and I hope to do all that I can to reelect him. But after we get past this debt crisis, assuming that we do, there remains many major problems in the US today – problems which are pervasive and nearly universal and which resist any easy solution. These problems stem in part from the excesses of the past decade, from the growing disparity in incomes, opportunities and outcomes around the country. There are no easy answers – I support President Obama’s proposals – to make the very highest earners in this country pay a little bit more each year and to close a wide range of loopholes but there is much more that needs to be done to fix government and as importantly fix the US (and the larger global) economy. And yes, if all goes well next year this might mean that I personally have to pay a little bit more in taxes. Here are, however, a few suggestions. 1) Hold the telecom and cable industries in the US to past promises and commitments The US has some of the slowest and worst broadband speeds of any major country in the world at the moment (and are far slower than many smaller less “major” economies as well). Not to mention a very dysfunctional cellular service in much of the US. All of the companies – telcos and cable companies use public assets (rights of way, spectrum) and in most cases have limited monopolies (or duopolies). In exchange for tax breaks and the purchase of rights to various spectrums etc they have made many promises but have rarely been held to them. Fixing this wouldn’t be easy but would both require a LOT of new jobs directly (to upgrade copper to fiber, to install more cell towers, to upgrade switching stations etc) and indirectly could spark major changes in how the US workforce works – allowing people to work more productively from homes or to work in smaller offices closer to their homes. It could also spark entirely new business opportunities based on real high speed access. 2) Streamline and simplify zoning rules across the country and make it easier for mixed-use and creative re-use of spaces to occur This takes effort in 1000′s of local jurisdictions across the country but the current model of land-use across most of the US is broken. It relies on the separation of residential, commercial, office and industrial spaces from each other, encourages much of the urban and suburban landscape to be devoted to cars (and parking of cars) and discourages uses of spaces once abandoned in a way different from how they were initially constructed. This means that housing developments built for single-families can’t easily in many cases be turned into rental homes or multi-family residences. It means that as factories close they can’t easily (in most cases) be converted to commercial spaces or loft apartments. It means that most Americans can’t meet their regular shopping needs within walking distance of their homes but need to drive just to get some milk or to drop off dry cleaning. This change would take time and would change the “character” of many parts of the country – but in turn it would unlock massive entrepreneurial opportunities and help create 1000′s, likely millions of jobs in the process. 3) Adopt serious efforts to reduce oil consumption across the board Moving to California from Illinois I have been struck by one very puzzling difference in the architecture of California to that of Chicago. Throughout California homes, apartments and office buildings alike seem to mostly have been built without the use of insulation or the many steps standard in Illinois to help manage energy use of buildings. Sure my condo back in Illinois when I bought it had single pane windows but as I lived there the entire building was upgraded to double pane windows (at a cost of well over $1M) with an immediate result of a major reduction in the energy use of the building. Here in Northern California an investment into the infrastructure of our homes and office buildings would result in massive long term energy savings while also creating 1000′s of jobs in the process. Sure homeowners would need to spend money (as would other landlords) but this is a case where in many cases they would see a return in that investment rapidly. Furthermore this is a place where simple, low cost government efforts could spark much of this investment at low cost. For example… View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

Feature I want soon on Google+ (see some …

Feature I want soon on Google+ (see some of my recent stream items to see why) is an ability to EXCLUDE certain circles I create from my “all circles” groups – i.e. an ability to mark special purpose circles I create as just that – something special and other than the norm.- typically these might be circles with ONLY “send to email” members – frequently just one (i.e. to archive an item to Evernote or to post something I share here to my personal blog as I’m going to do with this post - or these might be a circle I create just including myself to save things to read later or to save drafts etc. But these should be something other than the “all circles” option. Another way of phrasing this might be that at some point in the future I would like the ability to create Circles with other circles. i.e. to have a “default post” collection of circles or to have a personal circles collection (i.e. in my current schema this would exclude my “following” circle who are folks I don’t actually know personally View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

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Similar to the Google+ to Evernote trick …

Similar to the Google+ to Evernote trick going around you can also post stuff you share here on Google+ to a wordpress blog you control via a similar method.On WordPress.com go to the “My Blogs” page, there you will see a list of the blogs you can post to. For ones you control, there is a “post by email” option. Enable this and you will generate a secret email address to use to post to your wordpress.com blog. Now on Google+ create a circle and ADD this secret email. I’d suggest calling is something like “Post to <name of your wordpress.com blog>” so you don’t forget what it is for. Then when you SHARE something with that circle be sure to check the “share via email” option when you share something with this circle (as the wordpress.com secret email address won’t be joining Google+. And bingo a very easy way to post to WordPress.com blogs when you share something on Google+. I personally would suggest you limit your use of this to content you personally create or to links you share with extensive commentary – posting other people’s content to your personal blog seems off to me (but plenty of people do that). A very similar trick likely is possible with Tumblr and Posterous blogs as well. View or comment on Shannon Clark’s post »The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

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Engaged – personally and professionally

So big news which I’ve now shared with most of my friends and family so I’m also posting a quick update here as well.

As of last Wednesday we are officially engaged (my girlfriend and I) – we’ve told the parents, are having my sister make us some rings and have already started looking at lots of venues around the Bay Area.

A rather big life step and yes being in a serious relationship, starting a company (more on that in a bit) and working on various consulting projects have all meant I haven’t been updating my blogs as often as I would like (though I’ve remained perhaps too active on Twitter). I hope to start documenting some of what I discover throughout this wedding planning process here and perhaps on other blogs and websites. But don’t fear this won’t turn into a wedding blog (or not only a wedding blog) and I do plan on doing more writing this summer than I have in the past few months.

On a professional front I have a number of new clients and in partnership with an old friend from Chicago I have been in the midst of starting a new design firm – in the IDEO model we are focused on product design and innovation services – we are not a graphic design firm but rather a business design firm. One major project of our new firm, wwbll, is called Beyond Age – this is where we will be applying our innovation consulting services towards the design and development of new products and services for older adults. The older adult market (by which we mean people over the age of 45) is underserved by many businesses today yet is a rapidly growing and changing market as the Baby Boomers continue to age and as our generation starts to reach this age as well. We believe there is a great deal of opportunity in creating products for active but older individuals, people whose needs and interests are very different from older adults of the past.

Ideas for the city and other end of week links

A few links and notes at the end of the week.

The city of San Francisco, or at least a few organizations here in SF have asked for ideas from residents. I submitted one suggesting that the Mayor’s office talk with BART about extending hours of service to at least one hour longer than the bars are allowed to be open. If you like that idea follow the link and vote for my idea or one of the many other good ones.

At the beginning of this week I had the pleasure of attending the Data 2.0 Conference held here in San Francisco, while there Twitter announced a new partnership with MediaSift to offer DataSift which offers powerful filters applied on demand to the full firehose of Tweets. As a new alternative way to filter and analyze Twitter at highly affordable rates DataSift will likely play a role in some of the ventures I am working on at the moment where the ability to search against Twitter and detect trends and perform other analyzes against the full firehose will be a useful addition to other research we are doing. I suspect that in the coming weeks and months many businsses will find creative and innovative ways to build on top of Datasift.

On a personal note I spent this last week unpacking from my recent move and on Sunday I will be having a garage sale with my girlfriend and some nearby friends. To see the updated listing for the garage sale take a look at my Craigslist post (link good until the post expires).

This has been a busy week my new venture is progressing well and taking on some exciting dimensions and I have been approached by an old client to do some consulting work ahead of a major event for his new organization.