Chakra and Feng Shui of Site Privacy and FCC Policy

I dunno.... maybe its the haze of the pork roast slices I grilled off for a whupass stew that's now biling in the oven.... but I swear like I truly saw an insightful piece in [here] and when I clicked the thingie was taken to a page that began:

"Our site visitors’ privacy and trust are important to us. We provide this notice in order to make sure that your expectations and our practices are aligned, and that you are aware of your choices with regard to our use and disclosure of the information you provide to this site."

1. The policies are even more important to me, t'ellwith "us".

2. Aligned expectations and practices? Oh for the love of....

I'm too unaligned with damn few chakras left these days, and the colors I'm projecting just are purely inconsistent with Feng Shui best practices.

In any event, upon careful reading (ty to the coffee now kickin in) I found the piece to be a rehash of things already published regarding the flat out goofy practices of collecting user data for broadband by zip code (which has the approximate granularity and utility of keeping mosquitos off of the porch with chicken wire) plus an attempt to define broadband with 2meg down, 1meg up as a starting point.


So, in the great blogging tradition, this is a string of ad hominem, invective, and futile musings with no discernable purpose.

Time to go stir the slow cookin good eats.

Happy Christmas & Best

1977 by God

A wanker old friend today had the temerity to suggest I lived in a situation involving a 1966 Ford Pickup with further vile and presumptive opprobrium in reference to the Southern End of Illinois.


This beauty is from 1977 with extensive customization (sort of a security feature, when you think about it.... plus there's no gas tank since July 2007).

Black Friday Haiku.... New Storage Demands

1Gig MP3 Player At Discount Chain $30
20Gb Local ISP "data backup" $ 600 USD/Year
40 Gb Google extra storage $75 USD/Year

Not a very large sample, but thecreation and consumerization of the datasphere's happening apace. Time to dust off the "evergreen" plan and consider the innovation rate plus (for the non rural consumer) improving network speeds.

This may be old news but... several companies (my own employer included) in the days after 9/11 successfully restored the formal data and resumed operations.

The informal data, PDAs, rollodex, abandoned or destroyed laptops, etc. held the heart and soul of relationship information comprising customer contact info and the aggregation of information, most of it informal.

BOHICA, folks.

The complexity and pure units x density calculations will be hitting infrastructures across industries.And from the (rigorous!) pricing example above, the growth of ubiquitous personal and informal data, showing up on iPods, digital photo frames, compliance logs of videoconferences or morning calls, security systems, entertainment....

Well, disruptive would be a mild term.

Common Economic Development Terms

Definitions can be found at www.neogis.org/keywords.pdf.

While this was compiled for the Team NEO (Northern Ohio), it seems a good generic set of definitions.

Covers Business Improvement Districts, TIFs, and etc. Its value is as a "pointer" to more thorough discussion (the document has many links).

Thank You Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich, founder of Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC)and author of many essays of ethical pondering and proscriptive advice in education (Deschooling Society, for example) anticipated the deconstruction and ubiquity of informational systems as resource webs.

"Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags. New educational institutions would break apart this pyramid. Their purpose must be to facilitate access for the learner: to allow him to look into the windows of the control room or the parliament, if he cannot get in by the door. Moreover, such new institutions should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree--public spaces in which peers and elders outside his immediate horizon would become available."

"Educational resources are usually labeled according to educators' curricular goals. I propose to do the contrary, to label four different approaches which enable the student to gain access to any educational resource which may help him to define and achieve his own goals:

1. Reference Services to Educational Objects-which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these things can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and showrooms like museums and theaters; others can be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off hours.

2. Skill Exchanges--which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as modelsfor others who want to learn these skills, and the addresses at which they can be reached.

3. Peer-Matching--a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.

4. Reference Services to Educators-at-Large--who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, paraprofessionals, and free-lancers, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators, as we will see, could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients."

"I will use the words "opportunity web" for "network" to designate specific ways to provide access to each of four sets of resources. "Network" is often used, unfortunately, to designate the channels reserved to material selected by others for indoctrination, instruction, and entertainment. But it can also be used for the telephone or the postal service, which are primarily accessible to individuals who want to send messages to one another. I wish we had another word to designate such reticular structures for mutual access, a word less evocative of entrapment, less degraded by current usage and more suggestive of the fact that any such arrangement includes legal, organizational, and technical aspects. Not having found such a term, I will try to redeem the one which is available, using it as a synonym of "educational web."

"What are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching."

Illych began the work which comprised "Deschooling Society" in 1967, and finalized the published work after discussions in Cuernavaca at Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) in November, 1970.

Now that's futurism. After 37 years, reality starts lining up with the vision.

I've relied upon Illych's "big ideas" in crafting my own educational path after attending CIDOC in 1974. Later, I returned to Illych's thoughts in developing technology adoption "models" for telecommunications clients and financial companies who needed to deal with what was apparent chaos but in fact celebration of the access and flow of information.

Thank you, Ivan Illych.

You know, the tubes of the Internet are challenging

Result from a Google search:

This is probably the most important area of your Meta Tags. Make this interesting, load it with Keywords or Phrases, and LIMIT it to 250 characters or less.

Book List / Recommendations

I've read all of these (maybe not *too* recently) and found them quite useful (by degree). Some are for skimming (like the subtle issues of 501 corporations....) but others have good staying power.


This list was first prepared by me as volunteer staff work for a "Main Street" community in May 2006.

To describe work with them as informing me of the issues in change management and organizational development... that experience rather resembles finding gravel in the salad.

Gresham's Law of Organizations as Restated by Me: Bad management drives out good.

Ok. Totally useless opinion but I'm feeling better now.

Clicking any of the links will take you to Amazon.com where you can read 3rd party reviews.

Executive, Board, and Administrative

Starting & Building A Nonprofit: A Practical Guide by Peri Pakroo
Very good basic information in the formation and management of non profits. I found the pieces discussing roles and responsibilities(e.g, what board members do, legal complications, common sense) quite applicable.

Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
While written for engineering (software) projects, this has universal application in managing and creating effective teams.

The One Minute Manager Anniversary Ed : The World's Most Popular Management Method by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
I trained with one of Blanchard's disciples in the mid-80s. Good common sense on communications and leadership skills.


Development and Historic Preservation


The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series) by Jane Jacobs (Marion Library System has)

The Experience of Place : A New Way of Looking at and Dealing With our Radically Changing Cities and Countryside (Vintage) by Tony Hiss

Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler (Paperback - Jul 26, 1994)

Edge City : Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau

Boomtown USA: The 7-1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns by John M. Schultz

A Pattern Language : Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series) -- by Christopher Alexander (One of my personal favorites; I used it for training new hires in how to think about design and planning).

Urban Food Producers and Pondering

In Michael Shuman's Going Local, he cites (p.59) the productivity of urban growers:

"In Hong Kong, which has an extraordinary population density, nearly half of all vegetables consumed are grown within the city limits, on 5 percent to 6 percent of the city's land."

He works through Training and Development Corporation http://www.tdc-usa.org/about-us

More information on local growing, organics, community sponsored agriculture, and food for thought (heh) at AlterNet, in the piece Food of the Future which provides other references to local food systems.

Shuman's ongoing work gives the local food issue a useful context: that local food efforts involve also the transformation of local economies.

Campbell's Law of Everything applies: "You can't do just one thing."

For example, to develop more decentralized food systems, changes in local zoning may be essential enablers for local production to come to life.

Chickens, for example, were common part in the little Illinois river town where I grew up.

There was an "egg man" who visited each Saturday with product from about 1/2 mile away. And those who wanted had a couple of chickens even (gasp) in town. My grandma would get the garden (next to our house) turned over by a neighbor with a horse. The horse lived in a small barn about 100 yards from my house. The horse could find its way home from the bar on Front Street with the owner in (not on) the wagon. If the owner overstayed, the horse would go home under its own power.

How many things intertwined to make this happen?


This was in the 1950s through the early 1970s.

Things change.

Local food, local community, trade.... all forms of interconnected systems. Some of these systems are hugely dependent upon societal, policy decisions. Many of the food systems today suffer from the "unintended consequences" of regulation, which so often has driven to centralization and concentration of the markets and producers.

The cousin of the bacteria from the custard pie which sent the church elder to the bathroom for a rough night after the fundraiser now visits hundreds of thousands of families at the speed of a truck fleet and forces a national recall of the "product"; which, of course, is the newspeak for food.

Not that centralization, per se, always has problems, but centralization certainly always has consequences.

Rather than edit and tighten this up, I'll post and ponder.

Leads not to write

Live from the tubes of the Internet at Google News:

Midwest governors pass greenhouse gas pact in Milwaukee

Wisbusiness.com - 58 minutes ago
By Ryan Cardarella

Governors who signed a pact today to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses touted the accord as an example for other regions of the country and one that would establish the Midwest as a leader in the fight against global warming."

I think it needs a colon.

The Big Lebowski: Review

"Well, there's really only one dirty word in the movie."
That, from an English teacher.....

Thinking About The Farm Bill

The National Farm Bill's part of the defining "system" settings for how farms can innovate by virtue of "big dials" in the subsidy and tax mechanisms.

Michael Pollan, notes that:

"the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did.

The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow."

From: New York Times Magazine, April 22, 2007
The Way We Live Now: You Are What You Grow
By Michael Pollan
Will this year's farm bill make us fatter and sicker?

Pollan goes into far more depth in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, I found it a slog but a valuable reference piece. Very worthwhile writing, though, and I think it is a "must read" for the, searching for right word.... conversations based upon data rather than belief. You'll catch many of the book's key points in the above article.

NB: He snipes at Twinkies, but thank goodness he did not dis Moon Pies and RC.

When I read this.... I nod knowingly.... and find a door.

In a recently received status report:

"RIGs are limited National Emergency Grant (NEG) resources to assist local WIBs."

I like *so* want to know more.

You give me fervor: dSt/dt = a(C, P, ...) [St/Ut] * [1 - St/Ut]

Having made stuff up conducted trend analysis and flipped coins integrated qualitative research for about 30 years, this generation of nets and boxes begins to rock in pretty disruptive ways. In this new place, massive networks of storage, more consumer driven than ever, connected by faster networks and wicked magic small tech.We've only hadaspirin around for 110 years. Modeling complex systems with itty bitty Reverse Polish Notation in the hallowed HP-45's ten or so registers and 49 programming steps.Writing decision support programs in Lotus 1-2-3 with 5 inch floppies.... and that dreamy IBM PC XT with what, 10 or 20 droolworthy Megabytes of storage. Then HyperCard and hmmm.... I think it was Mac with 6.something used to model Automatic Teller Machine user interfaces with real live consumers pointing and clicking.... And these kids today: so many tubes!Adoption curves (usually s shaped, often tied with knowing marketing hosers arguing either for or against the adoption of the Next Big Thing depending upon whether said hoser has (or can assert ownership of) the Next Big Thing) apply, but do the curves start to point ever more upward?More people. More networks. More transparency to the tech. Better abstraction and generalization of interfaces (none dare call it commoditization). Like whoosh? Potentiated equilibrium? Chicxulub?

Andy S. Kydes for the US Department of Energy provides a concise review of how capital budgeting decisions occur in the context of changing technology. (The model best applies, I believe, to infrastructure decisions which tend to be big lumps of capital and concurrent retooling of skills, but is nonetheless useful in exposition of the dynamics of market adoption.)The "dSt/dt = a(C, P, ...) [St/Ut] * [1 - St/Ut]" bits concern, essentially, the rate at which an infection moves through a population. Technology adoption follows this kind of logic. A few try it, they like it, they tell their community and the new drives out (or back) most (sometimes all) of the old.NB: Experienced technology managers will recognize that for early releases the infection model truly speaks truth. Although the DOE's exposition of tech adoption does involve energy components (coal, nukes, etc.) but the principles of how one generally assesses and then opts to adopt a new technology inform the supply side of storage componentry and the demand side of direct storage consumers (thumbdrives) and service providers employing storage as a means to an end (Google, Carbonite, HuLu, yadda yadda).What continues apace: Acceleration Interesting to see the delivery of high capacity spinning media, high density flash media (Gb), and emergent nanotech promising huge efficiencies and availability in something like 18 months (mid-2009) in terabytes.Well, interesting in the sense of wonks, not interesting like "the promise of moonlight in a martini", as Mr. Shanley noted.Curious as to how the Technology Adoption Life Cycle morphs. Do we all become Early Adopters? Seems that time to market becomes the critical success factor.... I mean.... like really really vital on the supply side (sell 'em) and the demand side (buy 'em for the benefits). Hmm.... so let's say I can abstract the command and control systems in some stable overlay that permits rapid change out in underlying components, thereby reducing the friction of changing out the So Last Year blinkenlights for the So Happening new blinkenlights. Doodling time. Time for coffee. Or moonlight.

Measurement, Innovation, & Success

Assessment schemes have long been a core component of educational systems. From primordial extreme evaluations (of, say, that Socrates guy) to contemporary network based rubric, evaluation, and information management systems (such as WEAVE) they have been welcomed and loathed by the implementers.

From a skim of sources published over the last several years, the essence of the loathing comes from imposed, non collaborative implementations.

A blogger (college professor), complains of the “here’s a miracle and the guaranteed fix to all things ailing the school” approach.

In a 2007 interview with a retired department head in an Illinois regional high school, she noted that (circa 1970) she had the distinct feeling that once all of the forms filled out, all reports written, all notes taken, all revisions made, all retyping at the kitchen table concluded….. that all that material got stuck into the Superintendent’s safe and was never used again.

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
KoKo: The Mikado

This burden of method not unique to education.

The Red Tide of performance management, quality control, institutional “dashboards” representing key variables appeared throughout industry in the 1980s.

An example, from the aviation industry, is indicative:

Total Quality Management Systems (TQMS) were de rigueur… TQMS became known to middle managers of Long Island's Grumman as “Time to Quit and Move to Seattle.”

Meanwhile, other practitioners of the particular craft of programming encountered massive Methodologies (capitalization intentional) which examined the needs of a project the way Audubon examined the beauty of the bird: at the end of the process the souls and the birds were dead.

By the time the “specification” got nailed down, the needs had changed, interests had faded, and often the beginning of the specification was so aged that it had to be refreshed over and over and over.

Planning lemma: the sampling of the change in the environment has to be faster than the change rate of the environment. (This is with apologies to Dr. Claude Shannon and his work in information theory.)

Trends: Faster Networked Assessment as Design Feedstock

Collaboration and engagement.

Non judgmental evaluation.

Participatory design. Evolution and extension. Artifact. Portfolio.

Surely a hefty string of buzz words, but in context they offer accelerating improvement in educational design, delivery, and outcomes. The positive outcomes extend beyond the student: the strength of fact based design and implementations drive innovation and, typically, the joy of good work.

Less time is spent mulling over basic questions (how many, when, averages) and actually the questions become better because the reference data have worth and credibility. Fact Books, institutional almanacs, reduce the search time and improve the visibility of trends in student, institutional, and increasingly, world data.

An observation: these data become part of the institutional memory. The data are "owned" by the culture; "Joe's report", or "Madeline's Chart" become institutional assets.

Long time assessment practitioners, such as Boston College and Delaware County Community College have adopted Institutional Research and assessment mechanisms as their “tao” of pedagogy.

Libraries of assessment frameworks have started to appear on the Internet, although most of these libraries target elementary education.

These Internet resources have not matured, but they change on Internet time: rapid, and characterized by both incremental change (like the adoption of new programming languages) and discontinuous punctuated equilibria (like the takeoff of YouTube or American Idol).

These resources will become authoritative and likely “peer reviewed” as moderated wikis (although state of the art will move beyond the wiki).

Networked systems will begin to "understand" content through implementations of the emerging Semantic Web: a common framework to allow data and resource sharing across organizational boundaries. The underlying mechanisms of the Semantic Web promise interoperability and heightened reuse of educational materials (a low level specification of the Semantic Web is even called Knowledge Interchange Format).

A key learning of these sources: effective assessment schemes depend upon the involvement of all layers of the educational institution:

• Instructors (design and delivery)
• Program Design Teams
• Institutional Research
• Accreditation Organizations (e.g, North Central)
• External Partners (Microsoft, Autodesk, John Deere....)
  

Broader Scope & Fragmentation

Increasingly, students, prospective students, and community educational partners have become integral to the measurement and assessment process. This involvement appears more in the cradle to cradle cycle starting with the (argot alert) formative (prospective) contributions to answer questions of what curricula are needed now or will be needed in the relevant future, and the (argot alert) summative (retrospective) programs which evaluate “what we wanted to do, what we did, what went right, and what went wrong” issues.

More types of information have been included in the “assessment environment”, adding to the base information (how many, what kind, how’d they do) with more qualitative narratives of how the educator, the student, or the employer found the results being worthy of praise or correction.

Assessment “refresh” times have decreased and should continue to decrease. Colleges generally and Community Colleges in particular face a fragmented market where mass production shifts to mass customization. The use of good practice, mostly learned from the industrial and software domains, will be essential to innovation and survival, hence quality and job satisfaction, in education.

Good assessment practices uniformly emphasize that this is an iterative and continuous improvement process: there is no tape to break, no line to cross, no “well, that’s that”.

In applying evaluation and assessment to the dynamics of communities and human beings all reacting to changing relationships, technologies and practices.

Growing Startups

So, how to encourage early stage knowledge based companies?

Specifics change, but the necessary conditions for success seem constant. For example:

• Great Ideas,
  
• Commitment,
  
• Community, and
• Infrastructure

"Europe has all the right ingredients – environment, talent, capital and role models - to build world beating technology businesses. It’s hard for young entrepreneurs to secure funding, develop the right connections and build teams to supercharge their business."

"So Europe is a few cycles in the entrepreneurial ecosystem
behind silicon valley, but if you are an opportunist that
should set off alarm bells."

From Seedcamp's blog.

Seedcamp itself identifies "venture side" criteria as applicable to Southern Illinois as they are to Romania.


NB: Seedcamp was influenced by the American venture work by Y Combinator. Note especially the emphasis upon early stage companies.

Quick summary at www.e-consultancy.com/

The Need for Broadband Networks in Local Food Systems

Although some "local" farm telecommunications can take place with relatively slow speed private networks (such as those which support remote low data rate sensors for water or nutrients) and basic "telephone" calls, the bulk of the information needed for the Local Food farmers and eaters has trended along with the Internet traffic patterns generally: more and more information comprises richer media: video and audio.

"Digital Divide" has been used to describe the disparity of computer and network access - typically in the context of relative incomes. In other words, poorer people use (or have access to) significantly less computing (and networks) than wealthier people. With respect to Local Food Systems, the Local Food System digital divide breaks along geographic disparities - especially population densities - and the willingness of incumbent network providers (telephone companies and cable companies) to provide access to the "thinner" parts of their service areas.

And these poorly served areas are rural, holding farmers, ranchers, and consumers who cannot reasonably gain access to higher capacity networks. The network potential benefits resemble the effects of Rural Electrification during the 1930s. Illinois citizens - particularly at the south end of the state - are merely one generation removed from kerosene lanterns and battery powered radios.

History Does Not Repeat Itself But It Often Rhymes

Attributed to Mark Twain

Regarding Rural Electrification from http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva10.htm

"In 1935 the Rural Electric Administration (REA) was created to bring electricity to rural areas like the Tennessee Valley. In his 1935 article "Electrifying the Countryside," Morris Cooke, the head of the REA, stated that

In addition to paying for the energy he used, the farmer was expected to advance to the power company most or all of the costs of construction. Since utility company ideas as to what constituted sound rural lines have been rather fancy, such costs were prohibitive for most farmers. [ footnote]

Many groups opposed the federal government's involvement in developing and distributing electric power, especially utility companies, who believed that the government was unfairly competing with private enterprise (See the Statement of John Battle ). Some members of Congress who didn't think the government should interfere with the economy, believed that TVA was a dangerous program that would bring the nation a step closer to socialism. Other people thought that farmers simply did not have the skills needed to manage local electric companies.

By 1939 the REA had helped to establish 417 rural electric cooperatives, which served 288,000 households. The actions of the REA encouraged private utilities to electrify the countryside as well. By 1939 rural households with electricity had risen to 25 percent. The enthusiasm that greeted the introduction of electric power can be seen in the remarks of Rose Scearce.

When farmers did receive electric power their purchase of electric appliances helped to increase sales for local merchants. Farmers required more energy than city dwellers, which helped to offset the extra cost involved in bringing power lines to the country."

Interface Design Koans @ Business Of Software Blog

Nice piece by Neil Davidson on the eat your vegetables don't run with scissors principles of software interface design in a piece called:

Porridge, Wonko the Sane and restrooms: the good, the bad and the ugly of user assistance

Go and study. Clarity, precision, and the idea of being "just clever enough" as covered in Programming Pearls.

NB: In a mid 1980s survey on compilers (conducted by a colleague, not moi), respondent described "C is a write only language, cause I sure can't read it later...."

Sing a song of documentation as well as unambiguous (or, at least, tested) iconography.

Complex Problem Management From My Alma Mater

One of the most wonderful places where I ever committed consultancy was PA Consulting Group.

I still had hair, was in the midst of transitioning from pure telephony into distributed computing/networked computing. PA was rocking & rolling in the United States, and brought a hugely successful history of management consulting from the "scientific management" school.

I learned from silverbacks such important koans as "a good manufacturing facility is an undramatic manufacturing facility," which gives one a new perspective on the "hustle and bustle" of work which is, in fact, churning.

I picked up a piece by PA Consulting:

Conventional project management techniques are unsuited to complex projects that behave dynamically and often contain considerable rework.

More at PA Consulting

Netting it out: the article provides a worthwhile taxonomy for figuring out "whazup".

Other lessons learned from PA: minibar operations principles, the difference between cabinets and closets, and project fu.

Market Information Networks For Local Farm Products

As an example of the pervasive effect of information networks, a Google search of "Black Locust Flooring" produces links to WoodPlanet.com, a national electronic for buyers and sellers of all types of wood products.

The point: even "old timey" businesses may benefit from networked exchanges, whether for growth or survival.

This piece is, frankly, a placeholder dealing with the issue of "how big" and "what tech" and "who plays" in the context of Local Food issues.

There seem to be emergent "big dogs" in the link lists (notably, Localharvest.org has the attraction of being, as a rule, pretty agnostic and having enough scope to have some effect) and the technology promises to be très amenable to Web 2.0 mojo.

Local Harvest's underlying data sources also leverage non proprietary CSV (comma separated value) files; sort of a lingua franca for data visualization.

Current Limitations and Issues

One notable affect of the listing systems: minimal transparency and problems with authentication of participants.

While limiting, I'm thinking we'll see more "regionalism" for the information, with some accommodation of bid/ask mechanisms (eBay4Beets) and some other incentives to increase the participation of regional, many times (but my no means always) technology averse producers and consumers of Local Good Eats.

The idea of local, well, it has a lot to do with local.

There seem to be systemic disincentives for collaboration from the perspective of public funding sources (grants) and the Jack Russell terrier behavior involving "turf".

So, an organizing cry around this issue validates the IWW and One Big Union vis a vis regional and US Domestic market opportunities.

Ok. Time to think.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger @ Pixelodeon

Blogger Buzz: Blogger @ Pixelodeon

I so would have ranted to LA friends to get to this Pixelodeon film festival....

Nomadic Computing Approaches

Just how lightweight and cheap cost-effective can computing be?

I've resurrected an HP-620LX as a starting point... and have gained experience in stretching the capabilities of the Concord IQ Mini (which, as a USB attached camera surprises me for a thing bought from a rack at a Rite-Aid in 2000 or so for about $20.)

I look at some things as vade mecum... in lieu of true reference I settle for pencil stub and quartered paper. Also in the getaroundtoit plan to use vade mecum or equivalent as a text reader once I take the time to get (just) smart enough to fiddle with it.

But the little HP affords (admission) solitaire (I promise I'll stop after one more game) and the ability to read materials from gutenberg.org et.al. so I can get smart on rereading Hamlet (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern actually do have a few lines more than I recalled) and gems like Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses.

[NB: Friends will notice that my phobia of being stranded in a place with nothing to read remains constant as Polaris.]

The keyboard is a bit of a learning curve, and short trimmed fingernails seem necessary (but not sufficient) for results at any kind of speed.

At least I have a charming redhead to support me in my various geekly quests.

Other role models for this: Steve Robertsand his many projects around nomadic "systems" and players to be named later... I gotta get the Sunday Paper.

-30- for now.

Williamson County Airport (MWA) Hub To LAS

Significant Good News Pending... oh pretty please!

Allegiant Air looks to be coming to Williamson County Airport, as reported in The Southern.

Both Las Vegas and Orlando provide serious trade show venues in(my interest)software and networks. LAS has great access into West Coast (eg, San Jose, Seattle...) and Orlando in kind has flights "everywhere".

Don't even get me started on Theme Parks and Cheap Slots.

But business: that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

The direct connections from Williamson County would be a strategic asset for this region.

NB: I also hope that this closes out landfill plans and the bird hit issue.

What a difference a paragraph makes: Ohio Broadband

So there it is: backbone, anyone?

Authorizing Connections to the Broadband Ohio Network.

Because a primary goal of updating the State’s data network services is to ensure that there is viable access to superior broadband services in all parts of Ohio, including access for non-state entities, I am directing the Broadband Council to authorize connections to the Broadband Ohio Network, when it becomes available, to both governmental and non-governmental entities.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland

Discussion (wear your aluminum hat) at slashdot and the Massachusetts $25 Million rural broadband funding initiative covered at broadbandreports.com.

More On Google Wireless at dslreports.com

Titled "700 Mhz & the Highest of Theatre" article follows up on Google, links to Bob Cringely.

Google On Wholesale Wireless

Thoughtful piece on upcoming FCC spectrum auction by Google's council.

What's fascinating (well, in the same sense as watching a loop of a pratfall) is the "business knows best" themes vis a vis public policy.

Google fer sure will serve its own interests but at least the concept of bandwidth liquidity and reduced friction (prayer here) could point to more rapid innovation and market entry by new competitors, such as:

• peer to peer small cell networks
• gigabit (wave hands here) overlay networks
• the favorable innovations driven by open access, in that I don't have to master, lock up, and control the entire application, end device, and bandwidth melange. (NB: Read your cellphone contract and just try to download verboten things.... like new non incumbent approved software.)

The paradox is delicious: one FCC commissioner touts that government should be totally hands off and let "the market" work.

Groovy, if that market were competitive.

Groovy if that market were provisioning into rural sites in the US. Groovy if that market worked. Back when, I recall a quote in an econ course.... "markets are great slaves but horrible masters."

Now, the market does work pretty well, but there are cases of market failure or cases of public policy wherein the innovation can be supported through enlightened government policy.... even if that policy is just to enforce playing with each other nicely and not kicking the public's back seat.... cause we're not there yet, are we Bub?

REA, anyone?

The incumbents, I perceive, have residual DNA from the time that ISDN was hoped to sell at 25 or 50 cents per minute.

The further rationale that "we have invested in the build out" could well be emended with a view of that "investment" as sunk cost, expense, not investment, and perhaps representative of obsolete technology.

This is precisely why I ran screaming from Macro to Micro economics back when I had hair and why I should really think about getting away from strong coffee.

The Business Of Software Blog

Ok. I'll fess up: went to The Business of Software Blog to get a free ebook and got drawn into it. Language is a virus.

They're talking about Tim Lister and Ted Nelson and many things bidnezzy and design.

I'm in the amen corner. Good thoughts.

They have a conference coming up... likewise an interesting crowd.

Economic Garden Resources

Many many links at the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables on the newspeak of "Economic Gardens".

Just to raise myself a crop of dental floss.

Intruder Alert

One should always keep an eye out for the unexpected.

Broadband Deployment Comments to the FCC

From the Illinois Broadband Council.... a listing of comments from (most) of the usual suspects.

For those of us without broadband.... these are pdfs. I shall not comment upon the wisdom of some of these submissions amounting to 9 megabytes or so.

I find the CCIA comments quite worthwhile regarding

• the evolutionary view of "what's broadband",
  
• inclusion of wireless broadband in demographics,
  
• consideration of market competitiveness and
  
• improving the granularity of service coverage statistics (viz, zip plus four)
  

Broadband Deployment (From The Illinois Broadband Council)

Comments, GN Docket No. 07-45

" 5/16/2007 - The following comments have been filed in response to the Commission's April 16, 2007 Notice of Inquiry concerning the deployment of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. NTCA believes the FCC should continue to develop rural broadband incentive programs targeted towards unserved and underserved areas, provide rural carriers with a sense of regulatory certainty, and ensure that all providers who use rural ILEC networks are required to pay their fair share of network costs. AT&T believes the Commission should maintain a stable deregulatory environment by keeping the status quo."

Alexicon Telecom Consulting

Alliance for Public Technology

American Library Association

AT&T

Clearwire Corporation

Computer & Communications Industry

Connected Nation

Consumers Union

Covad Communications

CTIA

Embarq

Fiber-to-the-Home Council

M2Z Networks

Metro Washington Council of Gov

NASUCA

Native Public Media

NATOA, NLC, NACo, USCM

NCTA

Nebraska Rural Independent Cos

NJ Division of Rate Counsel

NTCA

NuVox Communications

OPASTCO

Pacific Lightnet

PCIA

Puerto Rico Telephone Company

Qwest

Roy Elloitt

Sprint Nextel

Telecom Industry Association

Time Warner Telecom

Tropos Networks

Verizon & Verizon Wireless

Wireless RERC

Design for the Real World

A new show at Cooper-Hewitt examines solutions for "the rest of the world" from the design perspective of "what does the person need".

Unfortunately, that sounds like a novel idea.

Design for the Developing World is an audio piece from theworld.org.
"A new exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York highlightssimple technology and design concepts that can be used to improve thelives of poor people in the developing world. "

The Cooper-Hewitt site "Design for the other 90%" has several examples of how these programs have been implemented. I'm disappointed that communications(tele) does not have its own focus area.

"Why are designers so focused on designing for the wealthiest 10%?" is covered at livemint.com.

These pieces are evocative of the foundation work done by people like Victor Papanek's reality-based thinking in Design for the Real World, Buckminster Fuller's spaceship earth canonical "design for everything" principles out of his book Critical Path, and other good practices in understanding what the Spice Girls were at with the "tell me what you want what you really really want".

This might be a good day to shift to decaf. Or not.

-30-

Collaborative Software Initiative

I don't know bubba.... but why does every rural county run its own 911 system?

Why does every hospital have its own admissions system? Why the serious variance in quality? Why does each doctor's office have its own crappy looking low quality paper form for patient history? Even better, why would a doctor working with geriatrics have tiny, broken, print from a multiple generation photocopy?

There are days that it looks like the part of the country I live in is driven by a new democratic principle of "one building, one grant".

It's consolidation opportunity, baby!

The Collaborative Software Initiative looks to the pooled interests of "software consumers" to leverage quality and costs. The coopepetitors (my neologism, dammit...) gain the advantage of common code that's out of their strategic differentiation zone... like....

• would a school differentiate on the basis of its transcript generating system?
• how many patient history forms does a region need?
• what about the data manipulation underneath a sales-lead tracking system?

Ones' mileage may vary, but this new company, with focus upon open source software stacks (LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) looks to be getting to the headaches in the consuming business/government/educational communities. They've also secured alliances with IBM, HP, Intel, and Novell (for starters) and seem to be in the right market place to deliver great value.

Although humans look for patterns in data, (see the face in the clouds?) the Collaborative Software volk fit in with the other coolhunting I've been after:

• open source appliances such as the edgeBOX for all in one branch office solutions
• CUWiN's open source community networking using open source
• the compelling economics of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) and Open Source
• the already past but becomming more obvious effect of consumer gizmo volumes inverting the old early adopter TALC models.... but I need to wave hands on this topic at a future posting.

Wisdom of crowds.... boy howdy.

-30-

Minitel Redux: Putting The App Into Appliance With Easy Neuf

The International Herald Tribune covers an innovative Internet Appliance developed by Neuf Cigatel - the Easy Neuf. Little box with magic.

What I like about this:

• Linux Core
• Open Source Word Processing, Browser, and Spreadsheet
• €10 preminum for "the box" and "cheap" peripherals (keyboard, tube)

A long time ago.... I described the interaction of fast reliable open networks and "thin clients" as a 'nuthin but net model. Whilst mileage may vary, the use of stable open source appliances will drive adoption by consumers and small businesses who do not (can not) manage the deathly complexity of dueling operating systems. Don't even look at the machines blinking 12:00...

As an example of the business implementation, look at Critical-Link's edgeBOX product - again using Linux core with applications nougats (firewall, email, VoIP... plus partner-provided applications).

So.... do I smell an ASP milling about. How about running payroll and sales tracking along with supporting the must-do office applications "hands free" for the customer/consumer?

Meanwhile, thank you for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) as a brilliant design initiative to open the discussion and markets about what (ubiquity) verus how (Windows, Linux, et.al.).