The story line is getting old

I have friend who's a 24 (the TV show) fanatic. He just posted that it got boring.

The Day 24 got boring. April 23, 2007. Another 24 fanatic just came in my office and announced that to me. Unfortunately I agree. I watched it last night with Amy, Jason, David, and Jill and we all had that ho-hum look on our face when it ended. Oh well – it’s rare that a show makes it six years anyway before it loses it.

I think this is a great example of how being in a state of constant tension, regardless of how thrilling the tension is, eventually, gets old.

That's what's happening in America's political climate right now. You can say 'terrorist!' only so many times before it stops working and, man, has it stopped working. Interestingly, he infers that 6 years' is a good run. Isn't that about how long Bush has been beating a story line very much like 24?

I agree with him, it's getting old. Time for a new story.

Apologies for using his blog post as a political metaphor, but I suspect he doesn't mind.

I'm going Mac, why? DRM.

I never thought I'd be saying this but I've decided that all my computer purchases in the future are likely to be Mac's. The reason isn't intuitively obvious either because it's DRM.

From The Inquirer article: Avoid the Vista Badge, it means DRM inside.

He who controls the DRM infection controls the market. DRM is about preventing you from doing anything with the devices without paying the gatekeeper a fee. This is what MS wants, nothing less than a slice of everything watched, listened to or discussed from now on. DRM prevents others from playing there, thanks to the DMCA and other anti-consumer laws.

The article goes on to reflect on just some of the evils of DRM built into hardware. I suspect we'll see more (and more) compatibility and ease of use issues as more people buy a new PC with Vista enabled hardware over the coming years.

Oddly, Apple, a company I used to work for and adore, then lost respect for and who I've bashed more than a few times here, largely about DRM with their iTunes software, is the good guy. Also, oddly, my one Mac, a dual core intel laptop, is my favorite machine for running Windows (and Linux). And yes, I have many machines (8 between two offices and home).

Using multiple OS's on an Intel based Mac is wonderful. It's simple to set up, simple to switch between OS's and fast as hell. And, when you look at the cost, it's only slightly more expensive (the XP license) and you get a great OS, OSX, thrown in for free.

The vast majority of my time spent on computers nowadays is using something on the internet. Virtually all my productivity software lives online (currently provided, mostly, by Google via gmail, googledocs, etc.). What OS I'm using isn't overly important anymore, as long as I've got FireFox on the box.

So, thank you Apple. Man....who'da'thought that the king of proprietary hardware/software systems would be the best 'open' PC choice (at least for me) available in the market today?

Time to start a next generation local media & news portal in Chicago, LA, Balimore and 13 other cities

And the battle begins. Sam Zell is buying the Tribune Company (16 newspapers including the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun). In a recent Washington Post story. From the WP story:

In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators.

"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" Zell said during the question period after his speech. "Not very."

Wow. I wonder if he knows the demographics of the newspapers he just bought very well? Has he asked any of his under 30 (hell, under 40) grandkids if they subscribe to a newspaper? Just one? I doubt it.

Now would be a very good time to start putting together a web based locally focused online media startup for each of these 16 cities where the Tribune is, apparently, going to turn off (or try to start charging somebody) for the online component of their newspapers.

It's too bad he's not thinking of newspapers for what they are: The best source of LOCAL content available in a community (regardless of where the community gets is- paper or online) vs. a ground up tree with ink smeared on it.

Companies have been experimenting with local online communities that were supposed to replace newspapers, radio and TV for years. I think the window to start really focusing on it may have just opened up.

Microsoft died in 2005.

I just read a great essay by Paul Graham that made me stop dead in my mental tracks and go oh yea... damn! I love Paul's writing. He's generally dead on with his observations and this one's right in line with that trend.

His claim? Microsoft died in 2005.

How?

1) Google. Need I say more?

2) XmlHttpRequest- Created by MS for Outlook, Mixed with JavaScript you get AJAX and that was the beginning of the end for desktop applications. This made it possible to move applications to the web. One of the first was Gmail. Now you can get photoshop functionality on a webpage.

3) Broadband internet. The faster your connection, the less you need the desktop.

4) Apple. Ever check out anyone working on what's next? Chances are he or she's on a Mac. Windows? For grandma.

Read the whole thing. It's here and by Paul Graham standards, fairly short. Anyone who's been around for awhile will go.. oh, yea... that's it. Damn!

www.scottconverse.org

So, I finally cleaned up my domain name/URL act procured the www.scottconverse.org URL and pointed it at this blog. From now on, even though blogger is where I'll keep my blog for now, when I change my platform, the URL will stay the same. So, if you care about stuff like this, take out the blogger URL for this blog and put in http://www.scottconverse.org

Design Is Inherently About Control. Or is it?

Great blog post on the tale of two architects. See the entire post at the Logic + Emotion blog.

"Design is inherently about control"

In a nutshell: They both build a playground. One architect goes to watch the unveiling and cringes as the children play in ways he never intended. The other goes to watch and sees same but is delighted, takes notes and plans on how to integrate what's happening into the next project.

Which are you more like?

I know that, by nature, we have a vision of what it is that we're building. We know how it's supposed to be used. When your audience does things with it you never considered, is that a bad thing? And if so, how do you stop the buggers?

I would conjecture that no, it's not bad. I think the second architect has it right. One mind can imagine only so much. Many minds can imagine so much more with the same materials. The trick is to pay attention, learn quickly from what you're seeing and incorporate it into your work.

In our world of agile software development, SCRUM's, rapid release schedules and (close to) unlimited flexibility, it's a gift to watch and learn. To do this you need to make sure you're tools are in place. Watch the numbers. Pay attention to the features that get used and expand them. Lower the priority on features that don't get used (and don't get overly attached to them, even if they're "Key To Your Grand Plan"). Examine and learn from the creations people make with your products capabilities. Talk to your users regularly and make sure your development team has customer interactions. Most of all, make sure the people that design and create aren't walled off in dark cavern full of computers and Redbull.

So is design inherently about control? At first blush, it feels that way, but in the real world, it almost never is.

When the Internet Was Young

I was going through old files tonight and stumbled on something I hadn't thought of in awhile. I'd pretty much forgotten this article in Wired back in 1994 (above). 1994. That's the effective 'birth year' of the commercial internet as we know it today. This article was written about a hobby of mine that I did outside of work called OneNet (the OneNet Member Network). I started it in my garage and when I finally moved on I had about 15 computers and 24 phone lines running into that thing and there was somewhere around a 800K to a million people using it around the world.

What's interesting about this is the time that's passed. 13 years.

Now think about that a little. The cutting edge/state of the art online systems of the times were being run by guys like me out of their garages (big numbers considering these were run on Mac SE's, granted, but really they were primarily hobbies on steroids).

13 years ago. That's not really that much time. Look at where the internet is today compared to Mac's running BBS software with store and forward protocols for conferences and email.

What's really interesting is that OneNet was about mostly one thing: Community. In particular, creating online community that transcended geography. Today we take it for granted and we make up new phrases for it (like social networking) but it's all the same stuff with more advanced technology (and richer media).

What's old is new yet again.