Trench Talk

2011-01-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

Blogging vs facebook and twitter

Yikes, seems i've completely ignored my humble blog for well over a year. Ironic, or perhaps expected, how the immediacy and simplicity of twitter tweets and facebook updates pushed blogging to the sidelines for me. Still need this though, as a simple way to test stuff like site instrumentation tags.
lyndonwong

America's First Internet Generation Presidency

2009-10-23T17:11:00.001-07:00

P060509PS-1245
Originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream

Oddly, I just discovered that the White House now has a flickr feed with high-resolution photos available for public viewing and civic use. Duh, of course a social media enabled campaign leads naturally to a social media enabled White House. Our political discourse takes a leap forward permanently (unless the next American President deletes all these social media accounts, or these social media services cease operations).

Wow, elementary school SHOULD be awesome now, assuming kids get to use digital media tools and the Internet to assemble commentaries and reflections with all this great material available for mashup (somehow, I fear we're not even close to this at the moment).

2009-10-22T11:51:00.001-07:00

CEO 2.0

This is the desk of Zappo's CEO/founder Tony Hsieh. It may be a humorous jab at old-school images of CEO desks. But maybe it reflects the realities of the modern Internet-enabled organization and executive. Heck, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings doesn't even have a desk/office/cube... just walks around to his meetings or sits in an empty meeting room with his laptop on the wireless network.

lyndonwong

2009-09-24T19:42:00.001-07:00

Kent Libbey and Adam Wolff: ShareGrove DEMOgods

Kent Libbey and Adam Wolff: ShareGrove DEMOgods
Originally uploaded by ShareGrove

Well deserved recognition at Demo 09 for a lot of hard work on a very innovative communications app called Sharegrove.

2008-12-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

They're all computer monitors now

Back around 1991, at the dawn of the interactive media "revolution", I made a silly vow that the largest video display in my home would always be a computer monitor. The line of reasoning was "everthing worthwhile would emit from a computer screen rather than a television screen".

Now, 18 years later, the vow seems silly, but I actually kept it, and my thinking proved essentially correct. Because today, the largest and best screen in many of our homes is a flat-panel screen with a multitude of connectors for various video, computing and gaming (e.g. specialized computing) devices. Yeah, we can call it an LCD or plasma TV if we want, but we know it's much more that that.

So I found it rather odd that this recent New York Times piece on why we no longer need TVs came so close to reaching a similar conclusion, yet unnecessarily backed off at the end.

lyndonwong

2008-11-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

Pre versus post Internet era mindsets

Interesting essay by Bruce Schneier in the Wall Street Journal about Barack Obama's right to use a personal PDA. The essay closes with an astute observation:

The Internet is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. We're now witnessing one aspect of that generation gap: the younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as written correspondence. Until our CEOs blog, our Congressmen Twitter, and our world leaders send each other LOLcats – until we have a Presidential election where both candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were teenagers– we aren't fully an information age society.
When everyone leaves a public digital trail of their personal thoughts since birth, no one will think twice about it being there. Obama might be on the younger side of the generation gap, but the rules he's operating under were written by the older side. It will take another generation before society's tolerance for digital ephemera changes.

Now I recall mulling over this same issue a couple of years ago...framed at the time as the "transparent versus opaque generation gap".

lyndonwong

2008-10-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Powell's most important point...

... something I am surprised has not been more widely expressed. Colin Powell concludes his endorsement of Barack Obama with the observation that conjecture about whether Obama was ever a Muslim is wrong-headed. What ever happened to the principle of religious freedom in America?

lyndonwong

2008-10-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

An inspiration: Two honored guests at a fundraiser

The above video clip made me swell with emotion and pride in the vibrancy of the American experiment. Two truly remarkable individuals exhibiting immense grace.

Spotted in this New York Times blog post.

lyndonwong

Handling a Netflix outage, 2008 Aug 15

2008-08-15T23:37:00.001-07:00

Handling a Netflix outage
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

For much of this week, I witnessed first-hand Netflix's integrity in dealing with a major service outage. Colleagues worked round the clock. Throughout the ranks, there was resolve rather than fear, and always a determination to do the right thing.

2008-07-01T20:28:00.001-07:00

Yahoo! Smart Ads still kicking

Yahoo! Smart Ads still kicking
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

Ironically gratifying to see Y! Smart Ads, the initiative I incubated with many wonderful collaborators, featured on this slide about Yahoo's efforts to maintain a leadership position in display advertising. Part of a shareholder presentation, filed with the SEC in late June 2008, that argues to preserve the company's present strategy, management team and board of directors.

2008-05-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

Back to the Future: Netflix TV

As of an hour ago, Netflix and Roku unveiled a $99 little wifi-enabled box that brings Netflix to the television. This finally makes one of the original dreams of the broadband internet a pragmatic reality for the mass market (or at least that part of it with broadband in the home).

Here's some screen captures of one of these devices in action with my personal Netflix queue:

Much like the Netflix service overall, the Netflix TV offering is refreshingly simple, easy-to-use, and grounded in the realities of what can be delivered today. It's a reflection of everyone involved from Reed Hastings onward, and it's part of what has made my first couple of months of employment at Netflix so enjoyable.

I look back a decade to my stint with the @Home Network and realize with some nostalgia, that I really have gone back to the future.

lyndonwong

2008-04-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

Taste of the Balkans

With so much social, political and economic turbulence throughout the world, there's irony and perhaps inspiration in finding the opposite where the term "balkanization" originated. Laura and I recently enjoyed a carefree trip to Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro - stunningly beautiful countries running along the Adriatic coast of the Balkans. It's difficult to imagine the violence that shook this region in the recent past. All we encountered was dramatic scenery, wonderful food and friendly people.

lyndonwong

2007-12-08T17:57:00.001-08:00

Ryan Anson: Straddling Worlds Apart

In preparation for my wedding with Laura this past May, I discovered and retained the services of San Francisco photographer-journalist Ryan Anson. He captured our wedding admirably. We felt honored to work with him, and to do our part to support his broader photographic endeavors to illuminate events in troubled parts of the world.

So I was very happy to see PBS recently feature his multi-year photographic expose of the turmoil in Muslim communities across Southeast Asia: "PBS Frontline: On the Edge of the Crescent". His highly reflective photo journalism deserves wide distribution.

Way to go Ryan. Thank you for providing us with a provocative and humbling glimpse of the human condition everywhere.

lyndonwong

2007-09-14T15:23:00.001-07:00

Chrysler champions Y! Smart Ads

Dodge Caravan SmartAds 2007 Sep 13
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

Yesterday marked a significant inflection point for "The Initiative". Chrysler has publicly endorsed the merits of dynamic message personalization as part of an online advertising strategy. They did so by confidently associating the launch of the 2008 Dodge Caravan with Yahoo! Smart Ads.

We (the extended Y! Smart Ads team) will make them proud.

2007-07-06T11:29:00.001-07:00

Yahoo! Smart Ads see the light of day

CNN segment on Y! Smart Ads
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

In quick succession, the New York Times, NPR's All Things Considered, the Wall Street Journal, and CNN's Jim Ledbetter have reported on the recent announcement of Yahoo! Smart Ads.

This counter-point essay in the NYT Bits Blog lays out the challenge and thus opportunity that Smart Ads present to the advertising industry:

It's gratifying, and a bit startling, to see this idea to increase the relevance of display advertising so quickly capture the imagination of highly intelligent and articulate observers. There's no turning back, because we certainly would not wish the alternative on anyone.

Oh, I almost forgot... I'm hiring product marketers dedicated to the Yahoo! Smart Ad initiative -- the positions are on LinkedIn, and on careers.yahoo.com

In Praise of the Canadian Rockies

2007-06-10T00:02:00.001-07:00

Rocky Mountain Flowers
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

My partner-in-life Laura and I recently honeymooned in the Banff and Jasper national parks of Canada. I can not think of enough superlatives to describe this UNESCO World Heritage site. Up close, and from afar, the entire region exudes epic beauty.

2007-06-09T21:57:00.001-07:00

Behind the Beat

Henry Hung Quartet
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

The above quartet of talented jazz musicians led by Henry Hung deserves much credit for the festive atmosphere of our recent wedding on May 19, 2007. Trumpeter Henry Hung, guitarist Brian Moran, percussionist Micha Patri and the unidentified bassist brought their unique jazz touch to a repetoire spanning Aaron Copland, Cole Porter, Joao Gilberto and the Beatles.

These musicians rocked the house, and even brought my father to his feet in an enthusiastic drum circle. That was no small feat!

2007-05-29T06:02:00.001-07:00

Feel the Beat

Feel the Beat
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

Laura and I pulled off our wedding on May 19, 2007. In celebration of our special moment, we engaged in the traditional drumming of the garbage can lid and cow bell.

We are indebted to our families and friends for helping to make this joyful day possible. I've posted some photos taken by guests.

In praise of small homes

2007-03-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Pope Leighey House interior
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Interesting NY Times article this morning about Loren Pope . While the writer focused on Pope's admirable impact on college counseling, I gravitated to the short mention of Pope's association with Frank Lloyd Wright.

With further research, I found wikipedia entries on both Pope and the 1200 square foot home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Pope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope-Leighey_House

What a fascinating individual!

Barack on Flickr

2007-02-16T20:12:00.000-08:00

DSC_0045.JPG
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

A Yahoo staffer noted this recently... Barack Obama, or more likely his campaign team, has established a flickr photo feed to cover his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Here, he announces his candidacy to the residents of Springfield, Illinois -- poetically associating himself with Abraham Lincoln.

I suspect of all the presidential aspirants, he will be covered most extensively by user-generated content and various social media systems.

2006-12-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

It's Really Official

Let the Flickr record show that on Thanksgiving Day, 23 November 2006, Laura Lane and Lyndon Wong ran across the Golden Gate Bridge and got engaged at Kirby Cove.

Flickr's geotagged photo map provides a satellite view of where I presented Laura with a ring:

and displays some photos capturing the occasion.

lyndonwong

2006-10-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Rodrigo y Gabriela, Oct 24, 2006 at The Independent
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

An intimate sell-out crowd gathered tonight at The Independent in San Francisco to hear virtuoso acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela perform. Most of us heard about them the same way... some radio airplay on KFOG or word-of-mouth supported by audio and video snippets on YouTube and MySpace. Social media clearly helps new ideas spread fast with minimal advertising spend, especially when it concerns music.

My personal highlight from tonights performance had to be the guitar duo's rendition of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. RodGab, as they label themselves for short, will go far. Thanks to social media, even a middle-ager like myself, unconnected to the latest in music, quickly recognized their talents.

Fans may appreciate Mike Peyzner's excellent photos from the concert, including the shot of Gabriela above.

Flickr geo-tagging

2006-10-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

Flickr geo-tagging
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Finally, this weekend I had a chance to try out Flickr's relatively new geo-tagging feature, using images taken on a recent visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I could zoom-in to specific satellite views of the canyon, and place photos from my trip onto specific segments of hiking trails visible in the satellite map imagery. Despite the high number of photos already available for the Grand Canyon region, I applied the world's first Flickr geo-tags for photos of the Indian Gardens and Plateau Point, both well-known hiking destinations accessed via the Bright Angel Trail below the South Rim. In a modest sense, I felt the joy of a pioneer :-).

Flickr geo-tagging is a fascinating social media user-experience for both the content tagger and the viewing audience. Andy Laakmann, founder of Webshots, actually discussed a very similar notion around the year 2000. But at that time, sateliite-image enhanced maps were not readily available, nor were the rich browser UI capabilities and mapping mash-up API's that enable a compelling no-install user experience.

All goes to illustrate that every good idea has a proper place and time. Flickr turned out to be the right place, and August 28, 2006 the right time. For the curious mind, this approach surly beats spinning a plastic globe and flipping through textbooks. Variants of the Flickr geo-tagging experience could be of great value for identifying lodging and dining options, submitted either by the user community or advertisers, preferably an orderly combination of both.

2006-10-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

Free coffee at Dunkin Donuts

Some friends at extremebumming.com put together a reality video bit on Dunkin Donuts' recent free-coffee promotion with Yahoo.

Hillarious. Gosh, I envy today's young-at-heart! What fun they can concoct! And all this is a compelling demonstration of how social media changes the nature of marketing goods and services.

lyndonwong

2006-10-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

HackDay 2006

Cool and genuine, this Sept 29 - 30, 2006 HackDay event hosted by Yahoo. Here's what the Sunnyvale HQ campus looked like, complete with overnight guests:

Flickr photo by laughingsquid

And here's a funky video commemorating the event by the musician Beck, who performed Friday evening for the assembled crowd of 500 or so:

Thousands of photos on flickr tagged hackday06.

I must concur with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch... "something special happened at Yahoo".

lyndonwong | hackday06

2006-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 Business Models?

Spending this early Sunday morning catching up with blog activity from various former colleagues. Especially like thoughtful posts from Adam Wolff, Narendra Rocherolle and Raj Kapoor - all gifted digerati actively grappling with the future of software. They comment on aspects of Web 2.0 that many find befuddling. Why is this important? How does it make money? What is the basis of recent valuations of acquired applications?

The new services seem destined to be free, and to generate economic value only as potential ad media placements or as acquisitions. Presumably, all those teenagers and young adults reveal enough via their open communications for marketers to instigate a stampede to various products and services. And the economic opportunity appears confined to serving the young audience, because older generations do not adopt these Web 2.0 services in sufficiently large numbers to support significant advertising business models.

Interesting riddle.

lyndonwong

2006-09-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

Funtwo's Canon: Digital Media Tipping Point

I was struck by recent New York Times coverage of a mysterious virtuoso electric guitar rendition of Johann Pachelbel's Canon that has become the sixth most popular video of all time on YouTube.

Quoting from the article:

This process of influence, imitation and inspiration may bedevil the those who despair at the future of copyright but is heartening to connoisseurs of classical music. Peter Robles, a composer who also manages classical musicians, points out that the process of online dissemination — players watching one another’s videos, recording their own — multiplies the channels by which musical innovation has always circulated. Baroque music, after all, was meant to be performed and enjoyed in private rooms, at close range, where others could observe the musicians’ technique. “That’s how people learned how to play Bach,” Mr. Robles said. “The music wasn’t written down. You just picked it up from other musicians.”
At a moment in pop history when it seems to take a phalanx of staff — producers, stylists, promoters, handlers, agents — to make a music star, I asked Mr. Lim about the huge response to the video he had made in his bedroom. What did he make of the tens of thousands of YouTube commenters, most of whom treat him as though he’s the second coming of Jimi Hendrix? Mr. Lim wrote back quickly. “Some said my vibrato is quite sloppy,” he replied. “And I agree that so these days I’m doing my best to improve my vibrato skill.”

A complete chain of digital media creation, publication and appreciation technologies have at last been made accessible to non-specialists, to stunning effect. Do those enjoying the fruits of the Internet revolution fully appreciate how fortunate they are?

lyndonwong

Rare Sunset at Baker Beach

2006-08-22T21:48:00.000-07:00

Sunset at Baker Beach
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Tourists and locals alike can appreciate the rarity of this moment captured in a photo. Baker Beach in San Francisco is warm enough for shorts, and the horizon is sufficiently clear to allow a setting sun to cast a warm glow on happy faces. The norm is coastal fog, wind and sub-60 temperatures by this time of day.

YouTube Outage Announcement

2006-08-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

YouTube System Diagram
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

While trying to upload some video on YouTube yesterday, I got the above message screen. They've got a great sense of humor!

Geared up for SF Marathon

2006-08-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

Organized for the 2006 SF Marathon
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Gathered up some key items on the evening before the 2006 San Francisco Marathon, and found the montage of gear and fuel rather eye-catching, so I caught it for posterity.

The event was great fun, shared with various SFRRC running friends under beautiful weather conditions. I came in around my goal, completing the 2nd half course in 2:01:33, beating my time in the first half of the 2005 SF Marathon by nearly 10 minutes.

Leo Hindery Issues Fatwa on Portals

2006-06-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hindery Fatwa on Portals
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

After the final demise of ExciteAtHome in 2002, I reflected a bit on my experience with the Internet Bubble, and among other things, read "The Internet's Coming of Age" a 2001 publication of the U.S. National Academies drafted by a committee including ExciteAtHome CTO Milo Medin and future Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This monograph outlined how the architects of the Internet foresaw the relationships between content (data), services (software applications) and distribution (network connectivity). One key attribute of the Internet architecture is the separation between the network layer and the application layer, deliberately putting the 'intelligence' of new services at the edges of the network (where servers executed software), and keeping the pipe 'dumb' (see CSTB 2001). The architects expected this would make innovation on the Internet easier, by eliminating any network dependencies when deploying a new application. If Internet application developers seem to be eating the lunch of the cable and telecom companies, it's in some respects a natural consequence of how the Internet was designed to work. Had the arrangements been different, the concept of "Internet-speed development" would not have arisen, and today's Web would have evolved for the worse.

Because each of these three legs - content, applications and distribution - requires substantial investment in capital, human or otherwise, I find rather comical the recent remarks by former @Home board member Leo Hindery on the impending death of the major Web portals. The economic role of portals is more accurately reflected by the Web applications they host than by the content they present. The expertise required to conceive of and deploy these software applications is quite distinct from the talent to create content (merely data to a software developer) or the logistical muscle to build physical networks (all those truck rolls for installing broadband access everywhere). The disparate nature of these talents contributed to the failure of convergence via vertical integration at AOL-TimeWarner and ExciteAtHome.

But there's no need to belabor the point further. The reaction of the blog-o-sphere (e.g. TechDirt, John Battelle) makes better reading. Twenty years from now, we'll all share a good laugh, because these bits will still be around for everyone to read with bemusement. In the meantime, let us hope that only a minimal amount of investment capital will get mis-allocated along the way.

Tags: convergence, lyndonwong

2006-06-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

SF StadiumToStadium Run, Sunday, 13 August 2006

Here's an interesting new civic-minded recreational run, set along San Francisco's eastern shoreline:

StadiumToStadum Run/Walk
Sunday, 13 August 2006
San Francisco, CA
Start: 8:45am at Monster Park (SF 49ers stadium)
Finish: ATT Park (SF Giants stadium)

From the event web site:

"Join San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, and world class runners Dean Karnazes and Marian Lyons in Shape Up San Francisco’s first Stadium to Stadium Run/Walk for Health. From Monster Park to AT&T Park with a “Keep it Movin’ ” Health Fair at the finish line. Get in motion today! The purpose of the Stadium-To-Stadium Race/Walk is to raise health awareness in the southeast sector of San Francisco, especially among youth. The proceeds will benefit sports, health and educational programs for children."

The event is a nice idea, addressing important social issues at several levels. Along with many members of the San Francisco Road Runners Club, I plan to participate in a show of support.

Tags: sanfrancisco, running, sfrrc

Cooqy: another glimpse of Web 2.0

2006-06-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

Cooqy Screen Shot
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Just discovered the Cooqy environment for eBay shoppers this weekend while catching up with Sarah Allen's blog. Very inviting environment built with the eBay developer APIs and OpenLaszlo. The project is still very much in progress, but already gaining some attention ( ZDNet | GigaOM | web search).

Tags: cooqy, openlaszlo, web2.0

2006-05-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

YHOO and the 'user-generated' look

If we drink the current digerati kool-aid (e.g. The Economist New Media Survey, 2006), user-generated content will inherit the Earth, and everything will look like it came out of the living room of Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar. Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo try the approach with their own product plug (Announcing the new Yahoo! homepage ), perhaps not nearly as funny as the beloved Wayne and Garth, but still impressively charming for a couple of billionaires:

Newscloud view of Google News

2006-05-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Newscloud view of Google News
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Neat little experimental front-end to an online news site. Found via digg at:
http://digg.com/technology/Google_News_Cloud

2006-05-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

Ironman in Action at Wildflower 2006

Tom Knauer, a Hawaii Ironman qualifier and tireless evangelist of the triathlon sport, generously led over a dozen friends on a weekend RV trip to Wildflower 2006. He showed us all a wonderfully fun time, no matter what event we took on.

Here's a much-deserved digital media toast to Tom:

May your pre-race bike tuning always go without a hitch:

And may you always finish with cheering crowds (note: video requires broadband connection and contains VERY LOUD crowd noise - adjust your speaker volume before play):

Thanks for sharing the joy of the sport , coaching a few of us through our first tentative steps, and for suffering all the unforseen headaches of pulling together this road-trip.

triathlon

If we are what we eat...

2006-05-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

Lunch 2006 May 3 Wed - sandwich
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

... then this flickr feed is my self-portrait in the making:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyndonwong/tags/eatinghabits/

I recently volunteered to subject my eating habits to analysis as part of a sports nutritional study. I've never known much about the topic, other than the notion of fueling up on carbohydrates before endurance activities like long runs.

To minimize the tedium of recording every little thing I ate, I had the brilliant idea of photographing my food (...a picture can capture a thousand calories in an instant, and digital cameras make it viable to record everything). Of course, vanity quickly set in, and I started to:

1. adjust my eating habits to make the photo stream look more flattering

2. leave out photos of some between-meal snacks

OK, so I cheated, just slightly... but overall, my little experiment hints at one of the many potential benefits of leading a transparent life, aided by social software. Imagine if all of us had photo streams of our daily food intake... and concerned friends, strangers, and nutritionists weighed in with comments.

Since the public appetite for 'reality media' seems quite high, this could one day trump watching silly television shows. I personally would love to follow what Lance Armstrong eats week-in and week-out.

Transparent or Opaque: a generation gap in progress

2006-04-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

My new homepage, 2006 Apr 23
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Over the weekend, I re-organized my homepage and briefly mulled over whether to incorporate a 30Boxes calendar badge. Was I comfortable with anyone being able to see my calendar? My little dilemma seemingly frames the new generation gap, between the young who eagerly live their personal lives transparently on the Web, and the old who cautiously debate what to make private or public.

The new applications categorized under the "Web 2.0" moniker cater to a willingness to be open about one's opinions, travels, schedule and interests. The old, especially outside of software-focused fields, find these 'digital life' sharing applications of limited relevance, and even caution the young to beware of the consequences of public expression when seeking future employment.

But how carefully groomed and scripted should all of us be from the moment we exist on the Web? What should a prospective employer, customer, friend or romantic partner think of any person who surfaces nothing authentic from a Web search? Whom should we trust? In the Internet Age, the important choice facing all of us is not whether to be digital or analog, but whether to be transparent or opaque.

lyndonwong | web2.0 | 30boxes

2006-04-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Wildflower For A Cause

Friend Mika Hirota is training to complete the long course (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile ride, 13 mile run) for this year's Wildflower Triathlon , in part to raise several thousand dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She has set a wonderful goal on multiple fronts, and I've contributed via her donation page.

Tags: triathlon

2006-03-29T19:41:00.000-08:00

Creator of "Beijing or Bust" documentary detained

The disappearance of film-maker Hao Wu has been brewing in the blog-o-sphere for a few weeks, with requests by some concerned individuals to minimize publicity while Hao's family quietly communicated with his detainers. But Web-savvy sympathizers have quickly mobilized. Reuters reported two days ago on Hao Wu's detention by Chinese police, and Reporters Sans Frontieres reported earlier on efforts by Hao's sister to secure his release.

I simply know Hao as a former colleague from Excite@Home who was justifiably proud that his first documentary film was aired on PBS station KQED in December 2005. I hope for Hao's speedy release.

2006-03-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Metamorphosis

Photo by The Jud

Fascinating to witness the Tom Cruise visit to Yahoo spin from an internal speaking engagement into a mass-media event through a chain of digital transformations from employee camera-phones to blogs to network television (see "Inside Edition" coverage using Yahoo employee-posted media). If nothing else, this rapid metamorphosis and associated public debate demonstrates the growing impact of user-generated content. Or, consider it a "Web 2.0" style buzz-marketing stunt. Either way, very impressive :-).

OpenLaszlo Meetup

2006-03-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

Meetup.jpg
Originally uploaded by PTWithy.

Thanks to Tucker Withington, I finally got a peek at the OpenLaszlo Meetup last week in San Francisco. Rain and traffic conspired to delay the return of my Yahoo commuter shuttle back to the city in time for the meetup. As a result, I missed free beer, free pizza, demos of exciting multi-runtime AJAX technology, and what was undoubtedly a cool party as well (see flickr photos).

It's Tom and Jerry

2006-03-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

It's Tom and Jerry
Originally uploaded by maidelba.

Referring to the men rather than the mice, caught this morning at URL's Cafe on the Yahoo campus either debating the future of the Web, or just looking for some good cheese .

In What Language do Deaf People Think?

2006-03-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the innovative social software application, Digg, I discovered this interesting post on how the prelingually deaf think since they've never been exposed to spoken language. The article notes that the gestural/visual nature of sign language makes it conceptually closer to written Chinese than English. DIGG readers may be naturally drawn to the article because of the implications for the cognitive and computer sciences...

read more | digg story

... this brings to mind a book I'm currently reading, Noam Chomsky's "On Nature and Language", as well as a favorite read from several years ago, John Searle's "Mind, Language and Society". With the Internet getting better at revealing so much worthy of my curiousity, I am humbled by the saying, "Life is short."

lyndonwong

Now I Yahoo

2006-03-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

Yahoo HQ Sunnyvale
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Well, after commenting back in November 2005 that three capable competitors may have a lock on the future of consumer software, here I am at one of them -- Yahoo. My mission here is to help software remain free for end-users by improving Yahoo's already formidable targeted advertising solutions.

I am among many old friends from the former ExciteAtHome, and I see from Y!360 that fellow OpenLaszlo proponent Marc Canter makes the rounds here as well.

2006-01-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

Will all software really be free?

While taking a short break on the island of Kauai, I've reflected a bit on my experience within the software sector, and reached a dozen conclusions. At risk of stating the obvious to some, and positing absurdities to others, here they are:

The shrink-wrap desktop software and licensed enterprise server software markets are now mature, consolidating, and in decline.

Open source platform software will power the overwhelming majority of Web applications.

As Web 2.0 gains momentum, the most innovative and valuable applications will emerge on the Web rather than the desktop.

Web applications with broad appeal are destined to be acquired by the major consumer portals, and offered as free services under the ad revenue model.

As with Web 1.0, most aspiring creators of a new application category see acquisition by a major portal as the best-case business scenario.

Advances in software development technology enable the above, with small teams or individual developers now able to rapidly develop and deploy substantial software applications with minimal funding.

New categories of software are primarily works of creative authorship rather than 'design and construction'.

The 'interactive' results of programming gain audiences of application users, just as 'narrative' works of authorship gain readers or viewers.

Web 1.0 proved that the ad media model can support some categories of Web information services. Web 2.0 hints that more advanced versions of the ad media model will sustain sophisticated software applications as well.

As Web applications continue to evolve as 'creative' works, the major business opportunities involve service infrastructure. Businesses providing this infrastrucutre enable the creative programming teams to efficiently reach audiences and sustain a living from their efforts.

The major Web portals will be the dominant 'publishers' of Web 2.0 applications.

The distribution of economic rewards for creators will follow the 'rock star' pattern, with inordinate levels of compensation accruing to a relatively small number of programmers who attract the largest audiences.

The above trends stray from the original vision of Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement. Beginning in the late 1970's, he observed that software code was a work of creative expression, and that intellectual property laws hindered the ability of software authors to advance their art, to the ultimate detriment of society. Stallman thus forcefully argued that software should be free, as in 'liberty', so that software authors could learn from each other.

Now, software is free as in 'beer', and much like works of creative authorship under the old media, it attracts audiences of value to advertisers. So, while the few may continue to advance free software in the name of liberty, the many will advance free software in the name of marketing.

The above leaves me with a few questions to ponder in the months and years ahead.

1. Will software follow older 'narrative' publishing industries in the sense that fee-supported works should be of generally higher quality than ad-supported equivalents?

2. Will new portals, or a new generation of software 'publishers', emerge that address the interests and needs of niche audiences? Or will a few existing portals dominant the entire sector for years to come?

3. What categories of software will be best supported by the different business model options?

Well, the sun is starting to emerge from the rain clouds here on the north shore of Kauai. It's time to return to the beach.
lyndonwong

2006-01-05T16:35:00.000-08:00

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Life is simply more fun with cohorts like Oliver Steele. His latest hack-in-all-seriousness is Expialidocio.us, a witty extension of the social bookmarking application del.icio.us, created in response to a blog post by Jon Udell. Oliver elaborates on this and a few other recent 'short-form' programming projects on the openlaszlo blog.

Interest in del.icio.us has surged since their recent acquisition by Yahoo. I find the bookmarking service quite useful, as it helps me to assemble a personalized library of online content, organized via labels (tags) of my choosing. Friends, colleagues, and in this increasingly open world, even complete strangers, can follow my interests via an RSS feed of my bookmarks.

2005-12-28T23:59:00.000-08:00

Hao Wu's "Beijing or Bust"

KQED, the San Francisco PBS station, just finished broadcasting "Beijing or Bust", a documentary on the experiences of American expatriates of Chinese descent living in present-day Beijing. It's an intriguing vignette by first-time film-maker and former Excite@Home colleague Hao Wu. His interview subjects are intelligent and articulate observers of what is currently happening in China and of what is happening within themselves as they embrace it. I admire each of them for their ability to navigate this fascinating place and time.

Congratulations to Hao for a truly impressive maiden effort, and many thanks for insightfully conveying the adventure of present-day China to the American audience.

2005-12-16T00:06:00.000-08:00

PhotoBlox pop-up windows

Using rich media while keeping page weight light

I stumbled across some old tests of ways to incorporate the Laszlo PhotoBlox and realized I could make any in-line image spawn the PhotoBlox in a pop-up window. The small thumbnail to the left works in precisely this manner. This seems like an ideal way to incorporate that rich media widget while keeping page weight to a minimum. Now, if only this were made easier for the general user, the popularity of the PhotoBlox could increase 1000 fold.

Tags: openlaszlo | laszlo

2005-12-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

Living the Analog and Digital Life

Basis of the New Generation Gap?

The Music

The Crowd

The Band

Business Week's recent article on the MySpace Generation underscores the newest generation gap. In contrast to most of my peers, younger Americans in or recently out of school appear to have embraced the 'digital life' enabled by Web communications and publishing tools. They blog their thoughts openly instead of, or in addition to, keeping private diaries. They embrace new technologies freely in part thanks to their fluency with markup languages such as HTML. Activities confined in older circles to software developers and the digerati, seem second nature to a much broader cross-section of our youngest adults.

Well, just to prove I'm no dinosaur (yet), I offer my own MySpace style blog entry complete with Amazon Music link. While Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony may not top the pop charts, their performances of the music of Aaron Copland are the cat's rear end. Short of checking them out live, I suggest you buy the CD!

lyndonwong

2005-11-19T20:27:00.000-08:00

Running Rails and MySQL on OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Working through the "Depot" example in the widely praised book "Agile Web Development with Rails", I encountered a well known problem with Ruby and MySQL on OS X 10.4 (Tiger), identified in the footnotes of the book on p. 53:

"Unless, perhaps, you’re running OS X 10.4. It seems as if Tiger has broken Ruby’s
standard MySQL library. If you see the error 'Before updating scaffolding from new DB schema, try creating a table for your model (Product)', it may well be because Ruby (and hence Rails) can’t get to the database. To fix Apple’s bad install, you’re going to need to reinstall Ruby’s MySQL library, which means running the script on page 21 to repair the Ruby installation, and then reinstalling the mysql gem."

The book's advice did not work for me. But Tony Arnold's advice did work. I needed to install the Xcode Tools from the OS X 10.4 Developer Tools CD. This provides the GCC 4.0 "C" compiler needed to build a working Ruby MySQL binding from source.

My working configuration:
MacOS X 10.4.2
ruby 1.8.2 (2004-12-25) [powerpc-darwin8.0]
Rails 0.14.3 (updated from Tony Arnold's Rails distribution for OS X Tiger)
mysql-standard-5.0.15-osx10.4-powerpc.dmg
mysql-ruby-2.7 binding compiled from source using GCC 4.0

I converged on Tony Arnold's information only after wading through much other material surfaced through Web searches. The information on the RubyOnRails site covering this same topic struck me as more complex to digest. I can not confirm whether that material works, but the commentary reveals some confusion among developers. Hopefully, recording my successful experience here will save others some time.

Business Card Art

2005-11-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Robert Scoble's business card
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Robert Scoble presented his tres-hip business card earlier this morning at the Laszlo offices in San Mateo. With Robert's permission, I've posted it on Flickr. The impressive design by Hugh Macleod reminds me of the work of the esteemed Saul Steinberg, which I hope Hugh will accept as a high compliment!

openlaszlo

Laszlo Mail goes public

2005-11-09T19:21:00.000-08:00

Laszlomail
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Laszlomail is a grand example of what OpenLaszlo makes possible. It's now available for the world to try out, in the spirit of a living laboratory.

Interesting reading material is available at the Laszlomail blog.

Tags: laszlomail

2005-11-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

Design, Markets, Customer Knowledge

Lessons from Sea Ranch, California

I recently discovered for the first time the many charms of Gualala and the nearby Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast. I found much to my liking, including Maynard Lyndon's Placewares, Joel Crockett's Four-eyed Frog Books, the 'lusty, zaftig soulful food' of Pangaea, the charming Tree House and of course, the Sea Ranch's wonderful synthesis of the built and natural environments.

This beautiful region also brought to mind the tension between 'good design' and 'market appeal'. In both software and residential architecture, what the design professions deem good may only be recognized and appreciated by sufficiently knowledgeable end users. Hence superior ideas risk addressing a smaller market.

For example, among the digerati, Yahoo's Flickr is recognized as an outstanding example of Web 2.0 software design. But in order to deliver Flickr's immense power and flexibility as an online photo-sharing service, the UI design dispenses with old, restrictive metaphors, such as albums, in favor of new metaphors which presume greater familiarity with the abstractions of the Web. For those less familiar with the Web, Flickr requires greater effort to understand and use than earlier online photo sharing services.

Similarly, in the architecture profession, the Sea Ranch is heralded as an exceptional example of modern architecture and planning, melding people and the environment in an enlightened manner. To do so, the Sea Ranch allocates much of its land area to permanent, communally-owned open space and imposes strict planning guidelines for continued development. But the Sea Ranch approach to the built environment only appeals to home buyers who perceive the value of relatively esoteric ideas understood by few beyond the design professions.

In comparison to the built environment, the Web fortunately enjoys the advantage of greater maleability and rapid iteration. Thus both designer and end-user may quickly experiment, learn and evolve together. While good novel ideas in architecture may require decades or generations for the real estate market to digest, similarly beneficial ideas in software may only take months or years for the software market to embrace. In either case, progress requires a well-informed market in a position to understand the value of the latest advances.

Tags: web2.0, lyndonwong

Tuned-in to Pandora at TechCrunch

2005-10-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

Tuned-in to Pandora at TechCrunch
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

I headed over to the TechCrunch BBQ (#3)last night, in part to find out what all the fuss was about, and to see how the audience might respond to the Pandora demo. This fuzzy cell phone photo captures the attention Pandora attracted. Everbody appreciates a personal DJ at your service 24/7, spinning tunes you love and catering to your every wish. Pandora does just that via a practical AI implementation matched with a zen-simple user interface.

Tom Conrad closed his demo thanking OpenLaszlo, the GUI technology behind Pandora, and gesturing toward Jim Grandy and I. That was most thoughtful of him, and we were surprised by the spontaneous ovation.

Without doubt, the gracious tone of the whole event was set by the hosts and organizers - from opening up their residence, to creating an event t-shirt, and serving food and beverages for 200 strangers. With more gatherings such as this one, Web 2.0 may prove to be a more social version of the original Web boom, in several senses of the word.

Tags: techcrunch, pandora, openlaszlo, laszlo

Neil Mix of Pandora with Laszlo team

2005-10-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

Neil Mix of Pandora with Laszlo team
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Pandora CTO Tom Conrad and lead engineer Neil Mix paid Laszlo Systems a visit yesterday to discuss the experience of launching their new music discovery service. Much of the Laszlo engineering team is pictured here, digesting both pizza and Neil's remarks on the evaluation process and final decision to base the Pandora UI on OpenLaszlo.

I continue to be amazed everyday by the growing impact of the Web. Perhaps part of the secret behind it all is captured in this photo. Tom and Neil will demo Pandora again, tonight at TechCrunch.

Tags: openlaszlo, pandora

2005-10-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

SoundBlox, Remix Culture and the Digital Life

The Laszlo SoundBlox, an open source MP3 blog widget, has quietly gathered an enthusiastic following around the world since its initial release in December 2003. Just this morning, I received a note of thanks from Patxi Trapero from the Basque region of Spain, who informed us of his wonderful use of the SoundBlox, complete with a mix of acoustic music, beautiful photographs and endearing personal videos.

Patxi's SoundBlox is another example of the human impulse driving what some call the digital life and others dub the remix culture. I find this impulse supremely humanistic and hope-inspiring. Thanks Patxi, for sharing your life, and for having the patience required to program the SoundBlox XML file! The SoundBlox of today requires substantial technical prowess to customize. In the years ahead, Laszlo Systems hopes to make this kind of digital life activity far more accessible to the world-at-large.

Tags: laszlo, digital life

The Boom is Back: Web 2.0 2006

2005-10-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

Conversation with Terry Semel
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Technologists, investors and journalists have packed the Argent Hotel today for Web 2.0, including many gilded as well as scarred veterans of the first Web boom. The Web 2.0 Conference, now in its 2nd year, feels much like the Demo conferences of the late 1990's - meaning, John Battelle's hand-crafted industry gathering has quickly established itself as a preeminent gathering and oracle of the information technology sector.

My modest contribution to the event coverage takes the form of a photostream, mostly capturing a defacto reunion with numerous colleagues from the once-mighty ExciteAtHome.

TAGS: web2.0

Mobile Media and Blogging

2005-10-02T22:57:00.000-07:00

SF BridgeToBridge 12K, Oct 2, 2005
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

On this morning's BridgeToBridge 12K race in San Francisco, I finally internalized the reality that everyone with a modern cell phone is a potential reporter of events in the world, complete with still photos, video and sound. Are you curious about my morning today? Probably not, but that is beside the point. The amazing thing is that I could report on it with minute detail even while on a rigorous run.

A commentator this morning on public radio station KNPR observed that all of us spend increasing portions of our lives consuming media. I would add that going forward, more of that will be the personal media of our family, friends and colleagues rather than the professional or mass media of prior decades. In this way, with the help of the latest generation of Web applications, the world potentially grows more intimate for each of us.

2005-09-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Scott Mace met David Temkin and I at OSCON to conduct a short podcast interview. The result is now available on the IT Conversations site. It's part of an intriguing podcast series called "Opening Move with Scott Mace"

A descriptive synopsis from the IT Conversations web site:

"Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with Macromedia's Flash Player to deliver richer Web experiences. In this conversation with Laszlo founder/CTO David Temkin, learn why he chose the Flash Player as a platform and why Laszlo went open source choosing IBM's Common Public License. What is planned for Laszlo Mail and Laszlo Calendar and how he plans to leverage rich client environments other than Flash Player."

It's a nuanced ramble on the genesis, status and future of OpenLaszlo. Ideal iPod listening for the home commute :-).

Pandora: a new service with UI powered by OpenLaszlo

2005-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Pandora music discovery
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Tom Conrad and I first met at Rob Scoble's Geek Dinner in December 2004, where Tom introduced me to the interesting work of the Music Genome Project, and I in turn introduced him to OpenLaszlo. Now, 8 months later, the result of our chance encounter is Pandora, a new "music discovery" service that combines a Music Genome recommendation engine with an OpenLaszlo-powered user interface. Tom has received enthusiastic early feedback on this excellent example of where the Web is headed. My only 'special request' to Tom is to add more world music to the service, especially from Latin America and Africa. But according to the Pandora FAQ, some of this is already on the way... awesome!

Tags: pandora, openlaszlo, laszlo

Setting up at OSCON 2005

2005-08-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

OpenLaszlo at OSCON 2005
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

The OpenLaszlo team has arrived at OSCON 2005 in Portland, Oregon. John Olmstead (pictured) has kindly come up early with me to setup our booth. David Temkin will present a case study on Going Open Source. Friend Raven Zachary of the Enterprise Open Source Journal will hook up with us tonight for dinner. We look forward to a stimulating several days.

Convergence is a 'background assumption' at Supercomm 2005

2005-06-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

Chicago Night View
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Spent last week at the SuperComm show in Chicago. Besides getting reacquainted with Chicago's majestic downtown, I got a first-hand glimpse of the current state of the Telecommunications sector. Here, telecom engineers told me their networks would be all IP-based within the next 5 years. So 'convergence' is now a background assumption, and all services will be IP applications.

The original architects of the Internet predicted communications services would converge onto a common network infrastructure, and make integrated applications possible.

The above seems abundantly clear to the exhibitors and attendees of SuperComm 2005. This bodes well for the near future of communications services.

Rogue River trip 2001

2005-06-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

Rogue River trip 2001
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Well, friend Narendra Rocherolle wants to become the #1 search result for Google queries on "Narendra". Here's my helping hand, augmented with a photo of the two of us in 2001 on a trip down Oregon's Rogue River. On the stretch of river captured in this photo, Narendra earned the moniker "human river probe".

2005-01-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

Bloggers and the propagation of knowledge

2004-12-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

Information Technologist as Merchandiser

Oliver Steele's remarks about "The Apple Boutique"

Colleague Oliver Steele made some interesting observations about his recent decision to switch to an Apple laptop computer. Rather than lamenting the loss of broad choices he enjoyed with his previous Wintel laptop, he felt relieved.

Oddly, given his computer science prowess, Oliver enjoyed deferring decisions on hardware and software to Apple. He ascribed his relief to confidence in Apple's good judgement. To Oliver, Apple as an IT vendor appeared analogous to a builder with good architects, a retailer with good merchandisers, or a newspaper with good editors.

If the proliferation of computer hardware, software and services proved overwhelming to the likes of a 'smart m.f.' like Oliver, imagine how all this has impacted the lay public. Perhaps this explains why some believe the I.T. sector has reached a phase where the market needs are more about improved services than about increased product innovation. From consumers to companies, the buyers of information technology may want less rather than more. If Oliver's sentiments are shared by others, some vendors could actually improve profit margins by demonstrating that "less is more".

2004-11-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

PhotoBlox touches Rome to reach home

On the 'one hyper-linked world' front, Italy's Robin Good Blog recently wrote a flattering entry on the Blogbox Project, providing extensive coverage on the PhotoBlox in particular. A few days later, the site got a 'thank you for the info' comment post from Cynthia Typaldos, reaching a local personality from the project's point of origin in Silicon Valley, California!

Just another example of how the Internet has usurped geographic proximity in the propogation of information. And I admit it is gratifying to see my Southeast Asia travel photos spreading around the world.

2004-11-20T02:50:00.000-08:00

Two Cultures?

Growing up as an American of Asian descent, when someone discussed the "two cultures", I assumed they referred to "East meets West", with China representing the East, and California representing the West (plz forgive me...). Later, I learned of other pairings. There were the two cultures dividing the university -- the sciences and the humanities. And there was Islam versus Christianity.

Since the recent U.S. presidential election, I've been reminded of yet another juxtaposition of two cultures, humorously represented by some maps of North America.

After we all share a laugh or two, appreciative of our democracy and our privileged lives, we might consider feeling a bit depressed. Which oddly, reminds me of a great American who wrestled with two cultures in his day. You remember him..."a house divided against itself can not stand...".

Yankee desperation versus the Red Sox

2004-10-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

Annonymous photo remix
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Spreading through the Internet... a slightly modified photo of the infamous play that required deployment of New York riot police to restore order.

In Game 6 of Red Sox versus Yankees 2004, Yankee base runner Alex Rodriguez attempted to reach first safely by swatting the ball out of the out-stretched glove of the Red Sox pitcher. The first base umpire called 'safe' in part because his line of sight was blocked by the Red Sox first baseman, enabling another Yankee base runner to score. Sensing something amiss, the umpires huddled, corrected their mistake, called Rodriguez out for interference and brought the scoring runner back to first base. In the ensuing confusion, New York fans pelted the field with baseballs in protest and New York Police in riot gear were called onto the field to restore order. The Red Sox eventually prevailed in Game 6, to tie the series 3-3. The following day, they won Game 7 as well for the championship and became the first baseball team to come back in post-season play from an 0-3 deficit.

As for the dainty fashion accessory composited onto Rodriguez' forearm in this photo... it appears someone is calling him a "girlie-man" -- some harmless digital imaging humor, and a timely example of the "remix culture" championed by Larry Lessig

2004-10-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

Google SMS

yet another Google revenue stream on deck...

Colleague P.T. Withington brought an interesting new Google SMS service to my attention. It looks like a very interesting market test.

If Google finds positive user feedback and usage, I suspect they would have very good leverage in negotiations with cellular carriers to incorporate Google SMS into default menus of shipping cell phones. This would make money for the carriers, and I would guess Google could extract payment for co-marketing activity. Anything that increases SMS queries would look pretty good to the carrriers. Often times, SMS sends cost money while SMS receives are free.

If Google accepts payment for priority listing submission or priority order in the response SMS, then they have a revenue opportunity for local business information directory services to the mobile device market. That possible future is hinted at on the HowToUse page. This could bring the yellow-pages style revenue model to SMS -- Google could incent carriers to provide Google SMS sends and receives for free by sharing listing services revenue with them, and increase two-way SMS usage all around.

Impressive.

2004-10-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

Permission Culture versus Free Culture

Lawrence Lessig's remarks at Web 2.0 in San Francisco

Earlier this afternoon, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig delivered an eloquent plea for the need to rethink our notions of content copyrights. He observes that digital technology has made the 'remix' a viable activity for the many. Using examples of network television audio and video creatively repurposed to form political satire, Lessig makes the case that remixing is a way of expressing important ideas and not simply theft as our current laws imply. He draws a parallel to the text media type, where writers must be free to quote others and create variations on phrases in order to convey and advance ideas. What some consider a battle against piracy in the name of property, Lessig redefines as a campaign for liberty in the name of human progress. In so doing, he extends into new realms the lessons of the Open Source movement and Richard Stahlman's defense of "Free Software".

Lessig's ovation-worthy talk was part of a reinvigorating O'Reilly Conference called Web 2.0.

2004-10-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

Announcing OpenLaszlo at Web 2.0

Laszlo's contribution to the Web 2.0 diaspora

At the O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference, we announced the open source release of the Laszlo platform, and launched the associated OpenLaszlo Project(which I set up, wrote and coded in substantial part with my own hands). This has created a stir in the developer community, and swampd Laszlo's servers. Thank goodness we put our sites on the Akamai network on the day prior to the announcement.

Web 2.0 was a thoroughly stimulating event. For three days at the Nikko Hotel in San Francisco, luminaries of the Internet Boom pondered the future of information technology and society. It was nice to run into familiar faces, including a few former executives from ExciteAtHome whom I had not seen in a couple of years. I even had the good fortune to win one of twenty Apple iPod Minis Jerry Yang gave away in his conference-closing session on the past and future of Yahoo.

In a fitting conclusion to an eventful week, I'm going to 'rip' a few favorite music cd's and relax with my nifty new iPod MP3 player.

2004-09-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

What good is a personal online forum?

Questioning aloud what to do with phpBB on my personal website

Have I hit the limit with "because I can" thinking? I recently created my first "real" public website, lyndonwong.com. I shut down my old ATT Worldnet homepage in favor of registering my own domain and using a host with basic PHP and MySQL support. As a result, I can now indulge in experiments with a rich array of open source PHP-based data-driven server apps. I recently installed phpBB, an app I first heard of in the context of the 2003 Webby Awards. It powers my own personal online forums. Now, all of my friends can engage in public discourse with me on a wide range of topics, whenever the mood strikes, from anywhere in the world. The only catch is so far none of my friends have any interest in doing that. They'd rather catch up on the phone, perhaps exchange some emails, or best among all options, actually meet up for a meal or some outdoor fun.

This begs the question, can a mere mortal such as myself make any use of a Web bulletin board? If I were California's current governor, my forum might be useful and popular on multiple fronts. But would any of my conversations in that context actually be with my friends? I could require a log-in to view a forum and provide some privacy to our discussion threads, but then we might be better off using gmail.

One thing forums do especially well is generate a searchable online knowledge base, as technical support operations have known for a number of years. Could my close family and friends have any use for such an arcane repository?

Or have I created the cyberspace equivalent of a personal one-lane bowling alley? Cute but ridiculous.

2004-07-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

Permanently Important Information Systems

During the heyday of the Internet Boom, I started to chat with colleagues about the nobility of 'permanently important information systems' -- anything less seemed unworthy of the energies of the gifted engineers and designers I had met. Digital media content and games seemed to attract a disproportionate amount of attention in those 'convergence' years. But my highest admiration was reserved for the builders of large-scale information systems. As we've grown comfortable with the Web, we've seen how software can enhance our most important institutions, making government more transparent and effective, engaging more people in the political process, and generally strengthening our democracy. Growing numbers of us are beginning to recognize the need for 'permanent' systems, with open data formats and no vendor lock-in.

But there are far more qualified commentators than I on this subject. Ted Leung of the OSAF makes some interesting remarks on a recent essay by Dan Bricklin on software that lasts 200 years. The sentiment is out there, among the key influencers.

2004-07-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Favorite Reads: Karl Popper, "The Open Society"

Fifth in a series of favorite reads on human nature, society and information technology.

When Karl Popper made the case in 1943 for guiding human society in an open manner with modest 'piecemeal' social engineering replacing grand 'oracular philosophy', his arguments foreshadowed a battle waged over how to develop software systems. Popper reminded us of a much older question: Should aristocracies make decisions on behalf of the general populace, or could the populace be trusted to judge and decide on the best course of action? In the software realm, 'oracular' interests favored specification-driven methodologies while 'piecemeal' advocates argued for an iterative prototyping approach.

Centuries passed before democratic institutions could establish their efficacy in the eyes of the world. But only a few decades were required to confirm the viability and enhanced quality of software systems developed iteratively in an open manner. The parallels between Popper's prescriptions for humanity and the ideas espoused by the open source software movement beg for a careful study of both.

On images and blogging

2004-07-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

9-11 Memorial Site
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

The combination of writing and photography makes both elements more interesting. Those fortunate enough to live and think today have incredible tools of expression at their disposal, and the rest of us are fortunate to be their beneficiaries via the Web.

In centuries prior, the ability to express ideas with a synthesis of writing and imagery took considerable effort to cultivate, and could be shared only with the privileged few. Now, the tools required to develop these talents, and to share the progress with everyone, are available to vast numbers of us.

What does any of this have to do with a photo of tourists surveying the site of 9-11-2001? It reminds me of how fortunate I feel to live in the present, despite the challenged state of the world.

Flickr, blogs and photo sharing

2004-07-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

NYC Sunset
Originally uploaded by lyndon.

Just surfaced from 1.5 hours riveted by the FlickrLive environment, where I may have witnessed the future of online photo sharing -- nearly 6 months after Marc Canter said as much to the whole world. Flickr successfully melds a number of ideas about online communications, photo-sharing and community building. It's simple to use, integrates well with multiple blogging services, and it works from essentially any Web browser on any OS. Ludicorp's Flickr thus also proves the viability and joy-in-use of rich Internet applications delivered via the Flash player.

2004-07-03T00:23:00.000-07:00

Software engineering for Internet applications

Stumbled on an interesting book based on a relatively new undergraduate CS course at MIT. Focuses on creating community-oriented web applications.

Worth marking for future reference.

http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/

2004-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

GoogleBloxlet

Here's a nice hack, that works in 'most' modern Web browsers (circa 2004). Andrew Wooldridge uses some fancy JavaScript to spawn a Laszlo blogbox right inside a web page:

Launch GoogleBloxlet

GoogleBloxlet is Andrew's spin on Antun Karlovac's neat little blog widget that enables Google search queries via the GoogleAPI.

2004-06-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Sunrise through the mist at Buena Vista Park

The free Picasa Hello client provides direct photo uploads to Blogger. Interesting feature to add to an online photo-sharing client. Interesting marketing alliance too, announced May 10, 2004. Picasa provides free image hosting for users of free Blogspot accounts, and ostensibly hopes these bloggers will purchase the Picassa photo-organizing software at a sufficient rate to make a profit. Google's Blogger gets to provide yet another free premium feature, on top of built-in commenting and Atom XML feeds - passing along the hosting costs to a hungrier startup. It feels like 1997 all over again. :-)

Epilogue: Google acquires Picassa.

Looking east to Buena Vista Park in San Francisco at sunrise.

2004-05-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

A reminder to myself... a number of favorite authors are all profiled at: http://www.edge.org/. Worth perusing further.

2004-04-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

A Complete History of Software ;-)

Noticed a post by David Temkin on "The lost art of user interface programming". Got me thinking about my own direct experience with the evolution of software, and what I've observed about the user experience along the way. Being fond of 2x2 matrices, here's my four quadrant history of software, based on producer-consumer relationships:

I. When software was for organizations serving organizations

My first job out of college was with Andersen Consulting, now known as Accenture. Andersen originated in the world of mainframe information systems, that typically served the needs of institutions rather than individuals. I still have a coffee mug commemorating my work on the Tax Accounting System for the Employment Development Department of the State of California. The design center of such systems was the flow and processing of data records through an organization, rather than the task goals of an individual user. The user interface was relatively crude -- here it was the user's job to interact with the system, and periodically give user-friendly reports to superiors, who would rarely seek to interact with such systems themselves.

II. When software was for individuals serving organizations

When the personal computer came along, suddenly software served the needs of individuals on a mass scale, and the shrink-wrap software industry was born. New categories of staple products emerged, including spread-sheets, desktop publishing tools, word processors, image editors and even complete accounting systems. Those accounting systems were availabe for the equivalent of less than an hour of consulting time by an Andersen partner -- what a deal!

These products needed to be accessible to an individual rather than to numerous operatives within multiple departments of an organization. It was all part of the productivity revolution of desktop computing. Extensive system manuals needed to be eliminated along the way -- and to the greatest extent possible replaced by self-documenting user interfaces. Today, few of us fully appreciate how many people were once required to accomplish what one person with Quicken, Photoshop, Excel or PageMaker can get done. We forget that there were generations of people who actually had someone else type their correspondence, and relied on entire departments to produce presentations.

III. When software was for organizations serving individuals

While productivity tools for individuals garnered most of the attention, the needs of organizations did not disappear. Data processing systems also advanced by combining server-based business processing with the superior GUI capabilities of personal computers. In most of these cases, the user experience could be simpler than what was required for personal productivity software, but still leveraged the GUI paradigm to make the IT system more accessible to non-specialists. The only problem was there was a lot of desktop client software that had to be distributed and updated every time a system was launched or modified. Deploying and maintaining distributed client-server apps was a hassle.

The Web came along and changed everything, mostly for the better. Deployment became instantaneous on a global scale. A new generation of data processing service providers emerged to expose information systems to the public at large rather than only serve internal constituents. These new "Dot-com's" also needed to deliver self-documenting user experiences, and had an interest in making their offerings as broadly accessible as possible. What they lost in capability with the Web browser, they compensated for with the value of instant global reach.

IV. When software is for individuals serving individuals

But the Web browser is not the end-all. Under some circumstances, software creators need to deploy desktop client software. The quality of the user experience seems to rise to the extent that software considers the needs of individuals over organizations. A new category of software enables individuals to serve each other directly without any organizational or instititutional intermediaries. One of the more stunning examples is Internet file-sharing software. Here the concerns of individuals outweigh the needs of not just organizations, but entire industries -- and governments must step in to arbitrate.

This last quadrant of activity is quite new, and in some cases is referred to as "social software". Individuals now routinely serve each other in a growing variety of online activities. While there are risks associated with these 'unmoderated' interactions, there are also potentially great efficiencies. Surprisingly, the creators of these systems sometimes opt to distribute client software rather than rely on Web interfaces.

Takeaway

From these observations I surmise that institutional incentives impact the quality of the user experience -- the broader the scope of a software solution, the greater the impact of these institutional dynamics, and the more challenging the task of creating an effective user experience. Usability matters. Technology matters. Economics matters. The path of progress can be indirect, though we tend to find it eventually.
lyndonwong

2004-03-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

PhotoBlox Unleashed

Last week, we unveiled the sequel to SoundBlox -- the PhotoBlox, a viral, highly customizable Internet image slideshow application. Here's an example that launches in a pop-up window:

Like every 'blox' in the series, PhotoBlox can be embedded in a personal blog or web page, customized extensively via an external XML data configuration file, and viewed via any modern Web browser while delivering the type of user experience normally associated with desktop client software.

Time will tell how PhotoBlox is received. To date, the SoundBlox has been put to use by EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, by the Internet Archive and numerous others. It also garnered a favorable reaction from Dan Gilmor of the San Jose Mercury News. PhotoBlox is a much more feature-rich application, and should appeal to an even broader audience -- let's see if my hunch is correct.

2003-12-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

Laszlo SoundBlox

An MP3 playing embeddable blog widget

Launched the Laszlo SoundBlox recently in collaboration with Grig Bilham, Peter Andrea, Max Carlson, Marc Canter and Bret Simister. It's embedded in my blog gutter on the right. Details on setting one up for yourself are available at this informal 'product page':

http://soundblox.blogspot.com

The app can be extensively customized via an external XML file... a precursor of the Web to come. Hopefully, the blog-o-sphere will agree!

2003-10-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

miniSlideshow.lzx

My latest small contribution to the Laszlo widget universe

A miniSlideshow Laszlo widget is now incorporated in my blog gutter on the right. This widget displays a sequence of small photo thumbnails defined in an external XML file. Just click on the widget to start the show.

The widget is built with Laszlo's XML language. The source code, default XML configuration file and default slideshow images are hosted for free at mylaszlo.com.

Given the location of an XML configuration list and associated 120x90 pixel JPG images, this widget can play any externally defined slideshow. This is accomplished by passing a 'slideshow_url' parameter to the widget in the form:

http://www.mylaszlo.com/lps/lyndonwong/miniSlideshow/miniSlideshow.lzx?slideshow_url=[URL of xml list]

See for example this slideshow that invokes the miniSlideshow app on mylaszlo.com with an XML file and images hosted at GeoCities:

Slideshow Assets | Widget invoked with slideshow_url

2003-10-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

Laszlo Blogbox

Nudging the World Wide Web forward ever so slightly

Last night, Sarah Allen and a merry band of collaborators including Mark Davis, Yossie Silverman, Marc Canter and myself launched a first incarnation of a simple 'widget' that the world at large could customize and add to their personal blogs and web pages. It was an honor, really, to be invited to assist such a stimulating crew (I was the best HTML designer available for the project...don't laugh, my services were free :-).

The technical implementation of the Blogbox is of note. The entire app, currently sitting in my blog gutter, contains a mere 113 lines of code comprised entirely of XML tags and JavaScript. This app is deployed and thus centrally updated from a server, and works within any Web browser enabled with the Flash Player (version 5 and above).

What do users get as a result? They get an app that can be discretely added to any web page, accessed from over 95% of the world's deployed Web browsers, and can be customized to suit by editing a simple xml file hosted anywhere on the Web (mine is on Yahoo GeoCities). For the hacking inclined, by generating that xml file dynamically with a CGI, the Blogbox's list of links can change at will. Perhaps some creative souls out there may spot in all this new opportunities to make the Web an ever more integral part of all of us.

2003-09-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

Artificial Stupidity :-)

A gripping read on Salon.com about some of the colorful characters behind the 'AI Bubble'

After working professionally with John Sundman for several months, I recently discovered a slice of his literary life. John's Salon.com essay, " Artificial Stupidity" introduces some of the colorful, esteemed and wacky characters behind one of the other great technology "bubbles" of the 20th Century, the "AI Bubble". Beneath the amusing exterior of the essay lies a near-epic drama on human ambition, folly and the unpredictable path of progress.

2003-09-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Waterways of the Information Age

The obvious restated at risk

A blog post by P.T. Withington sparked a water-cooler conversation with Bret Simister and Sarah Allen about the notion that access to the Internet is analogous to proximity to a waterway in prior ages.

Once upon a time, locating on a river or coast was crucial for access to a steady flow of information, goods and services. Owners of such sites enjoyed enduring prosperity. The Internet serves this role today. And the faster the connection to this digital waterway, the greater the flow of information, goods and services. These notions seem rather obvious, given the general recognition of the importance of broadband and the common use of geographic metaphors when discussing the Internet.

Yet some deployers of 802.11 WiFi access points essentially want to improve their own land, and convince strangers to pay for it. Most of us would only co-invest in property improvements in exchange for a share of the return. Otherwise, property owners should be content if their efforts increase foot traffic, a common measure of retail property lease value.

The merchants of Newbury Street in Boston, wittingly or unwittingly, endorse a new variation on the first rule of real estate ('location, location, location'). They can not relocate alongside a river or coast, but they can offer a substitute with similar virtues. By bringing complimentary WiFi coverage to their street, they provide in reality what rivers today only imply -- ready access for all to information, goods and services. This simple act accomplishes for them what it has done for all trade centers -- it makes their vicinity a better place to do business and to live life. Will they be surprised if greater prosperity follows?

Tags: lyndonwong

2003-09-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

Favorite Reads: Jorge Luis Borges, "Ficciones"

Fourth in a series of favorite reads on human nature, society and information technology.

The celebrated collection of short stories in "Ficciones" so impressed me that the author, Jorge Borges immediately became my favorite fiction writer ever. I vividly remember "The Babylon Lottery", about a society addicted to a lottery run by a mysterious company where winning meant the fulfillment of dreams while losing meant death. Of course, my one sentence summary does a huge injustice to the piece, which like all the stories in the book, seems to conjure up our deepest debates about human nature and how we should best structure our society.

My gushing admiration for Borges was shared by Herbert Simon, who devoted a chapter in his autobiography to a personal encounter with the great writer. Quoting Simon ("Models of My Life", Chap. 11 Mazes Without Minotaurs):

"In December 1970, Dorothea and I visited Argentina, where I was to give some lectures on management. In my correspondence about arrangements, I did something I have never done before nor since -- I asked for an audience with a celebrity. For a decade, I had admired the stories of Jorge Borges... I wrote to him...".

I wish I could have been there to witness the subsequent meeting between the great American social scientist and the Argentine literary giant.

2003-09-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

Favorite Reads: Christopher Alexander, "The Timeless Way of Building"

The third in a series on favorite reads related to human nature, society and information technology

I marvel at the 'great' architecture of the world, both modern and ancient. I even cherish a baseball autographed for me in 1988 by the renowned architect Frank O. Gehry. Yet I find other places shaped by anonymous collaborators perhaps more inspiring. I refer from experience to the Cinque Terre in Italy, Santorini in Greece, and Lijiang in China. These built environments posess grace and charm beyond description. Each is magically gratifying to stroll through, and draws admirers from throughout the world.

When the architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander speaks of architecture fit for living in, I believe he has such examples in mind. He champions an 'unheroic' architecture, where the people of a community assume primary responsibility for shaping their living environment, applying proven design patterns to suit their aims, perhaps under the guidance of a new type of architect who helps them with the planning, design and building process. Alexander's arguments are profoundly democratic, and represent a dissenting voice within an historically aristocratic profession.

Alexander champions iterative approaches to design and construction as the best means of creating truly livable communities and towns. Though his ideas have been criticised within his own profession as impractical, they have been embraced by software developers, many of whom favor deploying rough implementations of applications quickly, and seek user feedback to shape subsequent revisions. The prevailing modern programming languages support this process explicity. Admirers speculate Alexander will ultimately have a greater impact on computer science than on architecture.

2003-09-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Favorite Reads: John R. Searle, "Mind, Language and Society"

Another of my occassional entries on some favorite reads on human nature, society and information technology.

Since I started my 'favorite reads' list with a founding father of artificial intelligence research, perhaps it is fitting to next mention a famous critic. John R. Searle achieved notoriety for a critique of AI known as the Chinese Room Argument. The ensuing controversy kept a few generations of graduate students and journalists well-occupied.

In "Mind, Language and Society", Searle provides a lay summary of his life's work. The book outlines Searle's efforts to demystify the human mind by removing the cultural baggage which hinders objective analysis of it. For Searle, the mind is an impressive biological organ which in the human species is able to generate language. Language provides the mechanical foundation for our most distinctive talent -- the ability to construct social realities on top of the physical realities around us. While attempting to outline the mechanisms by which humans are able to create stuff like culture, Searle hopes to bring the dispassionate methods of empirical science to a realm often shrouded in mystical terminology.

Searle's ideas about language and the construction of social realities seem especially interesting given the rise of the Internet. People now have widespread access to social software. These new tools simplify the creation of human institutions that may have no physical presence other than the digital bits on a server's hard drive.

It is noteworthy that Searle's social and physical realities seem to parallel Herbert Simon's artificial and natural worlds (see below).

2003-09-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Favorite Reads: Herbert A. Simon, 'Sciences of the Artificial'

This represents the first in a series of occassional entries on some of my favorite reads on human nature, society and information technology.

In 1990, I had the good fortune to stumble upon the late Herbert A. Simon's Hitchcock Lectures at U.C. Berkeley. In a series of three talks loosely related to cognitive science, Simon addressed the schism between the arts and the sciences, and attempted to show how each could advance the other. During one memorable example in support of the above, he demonstrated how visual inspection could solve a physics problem far more effectively than mathematical analysis.

Simon displayed the most stunning intellect I had ever encountered face-to-face. Of course, I was hardly alone in this assessment. By that point, he was already a Nobel Laureate in economics, a recognized 'father of artificial intelligence', and a distinguished 'professor of everything' at Carnegie Mellon University.

A number of years after that encounter, I picked up a copy of Simon's 'The Sciences of the Artificial', an ecclectic treatise originally published in 1969 on the social sciences, human nature and the design of complex systems. The 'natural' world was the world provided by nature. The 'artificial' world explored by the book was the world shaped through the imagination of humans, encompassing cities, social institutions and computer programs. In a compact 216 pages, Simon thus managed to relate information technology to everything.

Full Disclosure: Amazon.com will compensate me with gift certificates for purchases generated from this blog.

2003-09-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

Knowledge, search engines and blogs

Comments regarding the impact of blogs on the propagation of knowledge

Some Data Points

Over the last couple of months, I have twice found more reliable information from blogs than from 'official' sites on the Web:

Case 1: a problem with Python XML parsing on Mac OS X 10.2.

Case 2: a problem with a 'hijacked' Microsoft IE Web browser

Case 1 is rather arcane, involving an issue only a very small percentage of OS X users would be concerned with. But since the apple.com site does not permit users to post entries, there is in fact no way for Apple customers to share information via the Apple site. An email to Apple providing this information would probably languish in a low-priority queue, because the issue does not affect a significant number of people. Instead, this knowledge must reach the world via various blogs indexed by search engines.

Case 2 constitutes a growing problem, but is addressed in an overly complex manner on the Microsoft support site, with no mention of easier solutions available elsewhere. A Web search on 'IE Internet Options missing tabs' yields a confusing laundry list of sites with no clear solution. However, a Web search of 'blog IE Internet Options missing tabs' yields a complete personal account of someone's experience with this problem plus her recommendations of resources to help fix the issue, including invaluable referrals to www.spywareinfo.com and a program called HijackThis , which in combination fix the compromised Web browser efficiently.

What's Happening?

Numerous colleagues report anecdotally that blogs often provide more reliable information than official sources. On reflection, this makes sense. In both of the above cases, the pre-Internet method of propagating information involves passing first-hand knowledge through intermediate filters. One of the occassional side-effects is that the explantion from an expert is written or re-written by others with less domain knowledge. This pre-Internet 'work-flow' is obviously streamlined by Web logs. Information can now come straight from the source.

So far, I sense only the benefit -- knowledge is propagating faster, without the delays and occassional dilution introduced by formal publishing processes. I suppose the opposite is also possible -- the propagation of lies, without the protection of editorial review. The unfolding of the blog phenomenon may thus serve as another portrait of human nature. On the balance, I expect the portrait to be flattering.

2003-09-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

Encounter with Web Browser 'Hijacking'

It's a relatively benign nuisance in comparison to other types of 'hijackings', so the label is perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but there is a spreading phenomenon known as a Web browser hijacking. By visiting an unscrupulous URL or clicking a hyperlink in a spam email, you can actually lose control of your web browser. Most of these attacks victimize users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The attacking code exploits security holes in the browser to reset your prefered home page, add links to your Favorites list and, most dramatically, remove tabs from your IE Internet Options panel. With that last step, the attacker prevents you from resetting your browser options -- a very effective technique to force a few extra page views to their site, until you reinstall your system software in desperation or discover a simpler solution.

So this actually happened to me yesterday -- the hijacking attack changed my default home page to an ad supported portal page, and removed the General Tab under my IE browser's Internet Options, thus preventing me from resetting my homepage back to the original URL ('blank', in my case).

After a few hours of fumbling around the Web, trying to figure out what happened to my computer and how to describe it for a search query, I converged on the following explanations:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked

http://www.geekgirls.com/net_hijacked.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q320159

Oddly, the best solution came not from Microsoft's support site, but from SpywareInfo, and their amazing online forum, combined with a shareware program provocatively named HijackThis. Volunteers on the SpywareInfo forum have assisted thousands of individuals across the Internet to combat a dizzying array of Web-related programmatic attacks which fall outside the realm of 'viruses' per se.

Following the recommendations of SpywareInfo, I repaired my IE web browser as follows:

[1] Downloaded and ran SpyBotSearch&Destroy

[2] Downloaded and ran HijackThis

Following the HijackThis instructions, I saved the resulting hijackthis.log report and posted it to SpywareInfo's online support forums for analysis by their forum monitors. These individuals inspect the log reports to identify improper Windows OS registry settings introduced by the hijacking attack. You can see the daily action at:

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showforum=11

A forum monitor named Tony Klein responded within 30 minutes identifying the two fixes I needed to apply via the HijackThis application. After completing the fixes and rebooting, my IE browser was restored to health. I felt like I was just saved by a 'firefighter of the Internet'.

Life Lessons:

Though I hope never to encounter this nuisance again, the experience has been enlightening.

1. The best information and support on the browser hijacking problem came from non-professional sources, lacking financial compensation perhaps, but not lacking integrity and commitment.

2. In the same sense that 'bio-diversity' makes ecosystems more resilient, 'IO Diversity' may help protect our global information systems. The 'hijacking' attacks referred to above target vulnerabilities in the code base of Internet Explorer. Other Web browsers with different code bases are immune to these specific attacks. Perhaps variety in the code bases of browsers and all underlying software systems may be beneficial for reasons beyond maintaining economic competition.

2003-07-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

Grappling with Python XML parsing on OS X 10.2

Run-time errors encountered trying Google Hack #57: Python and the GoogleAPI

After struggling with various Python programming examples related to XML parsing, I discovered that the "Python No Parsers Found" run-time error is common on multiple platforms, and reported in numerous places on the Web. A thread describing the issue and suggesting a solution can be found at:
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2003/05/10/python_and_xml_and_the_agony_of_defeat.html

Jean-Yves Stervinou, the solution provider, also reported the issue at:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001103/2003/02/05.html

But the most complete thread on the issue and the solution I finally used was found at:
http://paulbeard.no-ip.org/movabletype/archives/000493.html

Like myself, these individuals were using the default Python installation on Mac OSX 10.2 Jaguar, and all encountered run-time errors when attempting to parse XML in Python. The solution that worked for me was installing PyXML 0.8.1, as suggested on the last blog listed above. I was then able to successfully invoke Google Hack #57 from the UNIX command line on my server. Another hack that accessed an XML stock quote via a Python CGI also worked successfully.

I will update my own post at hacks.oreilly.com re: Google Hacks #57 (a Python-based example) to assist others encountering this problem:
http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/177

Ahhh...the joys and challenges of hacking code. I must admit this whole experience confirmed the amazing value of the Web, Blogs and search engines in sharing and advancing knowledge None of the above material could be found at the Apple Computer Web site or online support knowledge base, at least around the date of this posting.

2003-05-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

A Layman's Attempt to Digest "XML Web Services"

I rediscovered this note written during the spring of 2002, and decided to add it to my blog. The note was originally drafted to help me internalize readings on emerging Web Services. Maybe others will find this a helpful read.

What's a web service?

There's an incredible amount of hype on this topic at present (since 2001). Numerous books have been published in early 2002, including a series of O'Reilly titles, all dedicated to Web Services on the Sun J2EE platform (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and the Microsoft .Net Framework. In the simplest terms, the emerging Web Services standards promise to simplify the sharing of data between software information systems over the Internet, using open rather than proprietary standards.

Integrated Software Experiences

From a lay perspective, we know that it's very useful for distributed information systems, and even desktop applications to be able to easily exchange data. It's great from a user's perspective to work with a well integrated software system. Imagine if you could automatically extract financial information from all of your financial service providers (credit cards, banks, brokers) into your favorite financial planning software. It's not reality because the scope of the human and software-based information systems involved is large. Strong integration has occured on the personal computer desktop, since that's a more tractable domain, where the disparate systems involved all run on a single computer, and most often are used and adminstered by one person. The Microsoft Office suite would be a good example, where you are able to easily share data between a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool and even a web browser.

Two Paths to Integration

The benefits of an integrated software system can only be realized when the back-end systems are able to communicate with each other. This back-end communication must be standardized in some way to enable large numbers of software developers to write applications that can interoperate.

In the past, systems were integrated using proprietary, vendor specific APIs. This meant vendor "lock-in" for customers. For example, if you wanted a spreadsheet that interoperated well with a word-processor, it helped to buy both products from the same vendor. Developing integrated software is much easier when all the engineers work in close contact under unified leadership.

In the world of networked information systems, as opposed to isolated desktop applications, it also eased interoperability to buy solutions from a single vendor. This mode of industry practice helped software integration in the short-run, but seemed to stifle software innovation in the long run.

The information systems industry has since evolved toward open standards. These industry-wide standards enable companies to compete in the creation of software products without requiring monopoly power to provide interoperability. A pervasive global information system has evolved rapidly since the rise of the commercial Internet. To enable integrated software experiences on this scale, vendors do not entertain the notion of one solution provider winning over all others. Instead, they hope to agree on methods to enable these systems to communicate with each other. Hence we have the current landscape surrounding the standards for communication between distributed systems over the Internet, the standards intended to enable a future filled with "web services".

2003-05-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Impact of a Consulting Assignment with Laszlo Systems

Notes on exposure to the 'state-of-the-art' of information technology during the last few months

Feeling more connected with the 'state-of-the-art' on the Internet. Partly the result of the last half-year of consulting with Laszlo Systems on the product launch of the Laszlo Presentation Server. Besides developing the original White Paper, various pieces of marketing collateral, and a product review guide, I also orchestrated the unveiling of the platform through a series of technology conferences and trade shows, including Demo 2003 , O'Reilly 2003 Emerging Technology Conference and JavaOne 2003 . The O'Reilly conference was particularly eye-opening, with a parade of IT industry luminaries speaking and in attendance. During this consulting stint, the LPS received a 2003 Webby Award nomination for technical achievement , alongside fellow nominees Google, Linux, Apache and phpBB. This nomination stunned the Laszlo engineering team, given the cult status of the other technologies recognized by the Webby committee. But the most rewarding part of the experience for me was the exposure to recent trends with programming languages, open standards and Web application development. I have been surprised by the variety of uses for XML from declarative application programming languages to server configuration files. In old age, I will look back feeling privileged to have participated in the early commercial development of the Internet.

2003-02-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

Project Kontak: term project for my IT sabbatical

The end result of my Post-ATHM information technology sabbatical was my first complete, publicly deployed web application: Kontak, a personal contact application that permits a visitor on my Homepage to pop open a small browser window, and send email messages to my Web-email account or my cell phone, without knowing my actual account address information. In this manner, I shield those accounts from spammers, because I never give them out! Kontak also logs all messaging activity, so I can see who sent me what from where and when.

Kontak is based on the following set of technologies:

[1] The Web HTML forms, server-side 'business logic' and control of an SMTP mail server are all done in the PHP scripting language, running under the Apache Web Server on a Mac OS X 10.2 server.

[2] The message activity log is maintained in a MySQL database, running under Red Hat Linux 6.2 on a 2nd server (in my dining room data center ;-). PHP provides simple API's to access databases built in MySQL.

[3] The Kontak app, or really the Apache Web Server behind it, is exposed on the open Web by maping the dynamic IP address provided by my dial-up ISP to a static hostname using the service at dyndns.org.

[4] As a security measure, the OS X server is shielded from the Internet behind a NAT router (Network Address Translation), which in turn provides the Internet connection via an integrated dial-up modem. The two servers powering Kontak are assigned private IP addresses within my development Intranet. The Web server's IP and port number (80) are then mapped by the router to my public dynamic IP address, to recognize server requests from the open Web.

Kontak represents a grand tour of contemporary Web application technologies, and provides a hands-on understanding of how modern application developers make things happen on the Internet. All in all, a very rewarding journey for a software technology product-marketing person!

2002-11-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

Monkeying with my Personal Homepage

Learned something new from the blogger.com site today... the FAQ notes that our personal blogs can incorporate 3rd party search engines. heard good things about AtomZ's free site search trial service, checked it out, and now have it integrated into my personal home page (linked off this blog). One virtue of this idle period is that I've been able to immerse myself in the boundless capabilities offered by various web application developers. So much functionality out there, that very few of us really know anything about...seems a lifetime could be spent only in cyberspace discovering all of it and trying to figure out what to do with it.

2002-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Post-Internet-Bubble Rant

As it turns out, I, and many cohorts far brighter than I, spent much of the last decade on economic activities that the Invisible Hand has deemed worthless (or at least not very worthy :-). So while the world continued to grapple with hunger, disease and want of material goods like TVs, kitchen appliances and ever-larger SUVs... I did little to help in those great causes.

So what next? In my case, a period of immersion in contemporary Information Technology, to catch up with the developments that led to the Web boom in the first place.