Monday, June 13, 2005

Today, who feels threatened by Microsoft? But four years ago I was asking if people wanted to try Microsoft-free Fridays. Today, to some, the menace is Google. And to others, Wikipedia. I've gotten into an extensive discussion with people on and around a Harvard mail list about it. Researchers and librarians are not happy, but don't dare say so publicly. Like the mania about open source in the 90s. It was going to change everything, but open source already existed before the mania, and honestly, the mania ended up changing nothing, except a lot of people got distracted at a time when we should have been focused on the new power of networking, for users. But there was so much shouting then, much the way there is shouting today about Wikipedia.  

Chris added a third keynoter, Dean Hachamovitch from Microsoft. He's the top guy on the MSIE team.  

BTW, Dave Luebbert, who's working with me on the outliner, used to work with Dean on Word. And Dave, is in charge of the Mac version, is looking for someone who can join us who knows how to do MacBird dialogs. 

After Gnomedex, ConvergeSouth, Greensboro, 0ct 7-8. 

A podcast feed of old time radio shows. Excellent. 

John Robb on Instant Outlining. "Radically improves team productivity." 

He predicts a Business Week cover story in three years. The way things are going, it'll happen before the end of the year.  

BTW, the instant outliner I ship will be free. The kernel is open source, already released under GPL. Haven't decided whether to open source the I/O functionality. 

People who have experience using an Instant Outliner as part of a workgroup: Lawrence Lee, Jake Savin, Brent Simmons, Robert Scoble, John Robb, me. Who else? 

Jon Udell on Wikipedia's way of dealing with integrity issues.  

After a doctor's appt that I had to fast for (blood work) I went out to breakfast, and just for fun took out my laptop and what do you know there's wifi. And it's free. Heh. How about that.  

I agree with Ed Cone (what else is new) about the use of the World Trade Center site. A park, a baseball diamond. A place to have Simon & Garfunkel concerts in the summer and picnics for people who work in the financial district. Cross-country skiing in the winter. Some nice trees. Parents with baby strollers. Jazzercise and martial arts. Invest in the spiritual and physical health of the planet. Please no more monuments to nationalism or world trade. We've already got plenty of those. 

9 days to Gnomedex and word comes from Chris Pirillo that it sold out. Excellent. Every seat will be filled. Hopefully with a friendly face.  

NY Times: "The cafe filled with laptop users each weekend, often one to a table meant for four. Some would sit for six to eight hours purchasing a single drink, or nothing at all." 

Coding in 2005 

I spent about four hours programming in the middle of the night.

Why? The same reason I programmed in the middle of the night in the 1970s, the computers are faster then.

But 2005 is different from 1977, in so many ways.

I write a script that inserts ten lines into an outline. Each insertion causes a scroll and a display refresh. The script runs in a tiny fraction of a second. In 1977, well let's say it wouldn't have been quite that fast.

It's logging code. Should I save the logs to the disk? Maybe the disk will fill up? In 1977 I would have had a serious concern. In 2005, nahhh. Write it to disk. Not to worry.

But we do have our concerns, limits, tradeoffs. It used to be time versus space. Today it's viruses, spammers, spyware and hypesters.

Back in 1977 I would tell my university roommates that someday everyone would use a computer. They looked at me like I was out of my mind. I was a hypester then. I was selling snake oil. My claims were not believed. I think this was good. It's good that people tell you things you don't believe that turn out to be true. That means you live in amazing times. But far too often people tell you amazing things, that we believe, that aren't true. That's terrible. It's better to be suspicious of great claims. At least that's the way I was raised. If something seems too good to be true, trust that.

Between 1977 and 2005 we became innocent, of course people took advantage of that, and now we're cynical again. We need to find a comfortable place inbetween.

But one thing's for sure, the time-vs-space tradeoff is way way behind us. Left in the dust. A distant memory. Farewell old friend.