On my last Delta flight I was not so surprised to see that my upgrade to first class went through. Since I travel a lot this is, thankfully, pretty common. What happened next was the stuff of wonder an amazement. When I ordered my Delta Instant Nap in a Plastic Cup; Scotch; the response wasn’t rocks or neat but… Dewars or Glenlivet. After my mind reset, I went with Glenlivet — neat — and it came served in a glass tumbler.

Sometimes you just have to travel to make a face to face meeting happen. Or do you?

If you’ve never participated in a Cisco Telepresence session, don’t worry, you will. One of the primary drivers for getting into VoIP for Cisco was that it sold an awful lot of these things that required Ethernet ports to plug into and routers to connect all of it together. So, it’s no small wonder that Cisco has pushed hard for video to become part of the way business meets face to face over distances and time frames previously reserved for cross country trek via jumping on planes, trains, and automobiles. As a footnote, my personal experience and peers anecdotal evidence points to this becoming more common and as expected as having a phone. Cisco has pushed the protocols standard here and there is a likely benefit to be seen from this in 2-3 years. Couple that with broadband stimulus, greater expectations on service providers, and you’ve got a formula that will have airlines rethinking a lot of things very very quickly.

*ahem* iPad/Laptop/iPhone integrated cameras *ahem*

At the same time, there is a new view of the disconnected nature of travel. Road warriors are not just reading books or nodding off after their plastic up of Scotch. Instead, they are staying connected after reaching a “safe” operating altitude by forking over a little bit more than an egg sandwich would cost in coach. If I see a WiFi sign, I’m going to use it. I’d expect this pay model to fall away or blend into a package or membership privilege just as the value market segments of hospitality have experienced.

Still, the problem with working during a flight is well… it’s just not that comfortable with a laptop unless you are in business class or better. The cramped quarters of a coach experience and the potential for the girth of a fellow passenger spilling over into your mythical personal space is very real. Compounding this is the simple fact that even coach has good, bad, worse, and worst seating options. Additionally, few carriers are competing on service — and that’s an important point.

Compared to the airline club experience, the plane workplace is decidedly awful. Delta Sky Club offers free wireless and wired Internet now. The phones are passable if they work at all and having a DID means you can map this with your own IP Centrex provider or office call leg features. Else, you are dealing with your mobile and risking Skype if the shared broadband segment is saturated. That said it is still a much better prospect for getting things done and the self service and full service mix can be nice.

One area that isn’t going to cut it with travel is carriers that charge premiums that are not aligned with the customer experience. When faced with traveling for a face to face meeting and being pinned into a coach seat and risking injury due to worn equipment surfaces vs. going into a soothing Cisco Telepresence experience meeting room… yeah. Game over.

The Friday Fudge Five have weighed in on the collective wisdom of crowds to bring you a comprehensive and hard hitting look at perhaps the most amazing and innovative product of the 21st century… the latest creation from Apple — the iPad.

This is great. I mean, now I can watch TV while I watch TV.

This will be useful in my attempts to subjugate the sheepish masses that stare into such trappings of this modern world and its mortal coil.

The first thing I’m a gonna do is anodize that mofo’s backside with some seriously sick overlays and distress the bezel with some copper flake and gunmetal blue.

I’m looking forward to having a free hand. Finally.

I’m planning to review the comprehensive meta coverage provided by Techmeme and weigh this against prior economic comparisons at the leading gadget review sites while simultaneously trying not to SQUEEL WITH GLEE WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON ONE AT THE APPLE STORE.

Note: Welcome to Friday Fudge #3 of hopefully many to come.

As I was saying back in August of last year… YouTube is difficult to understand as a business model for a lot folks. Heck, a lot of this Internet stuff is.

What’s changed since then? Not a lot really. But… Welcome to 2010 and the promise of the ever elusive (illusive?) promise of the P WORD.

Or something.

Please wait… YouTube profitability for Google is -still- buffering

As anyone that remembers the buffering messages associated with early video streaming technology of the 90s will recall, the waiting is the hardest part. Just like the background colors in the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers video hint Google’s colorful logo there is finally a hint at YouTube profitability.

In June 2009, frustration with waiting for profitability was on the rise and coverage reflected as such.  Indeed, another point of view at this time was to qualify how bad losses might be.  Absent strong guidance from Google, it’s easy to see where analysts would begin to color YouTube differently as a result of that frustration.  To understand the frustration is to understand the limits of traditional modeling in emerging services models with no guidance on where revenues will emerge or the underlying costs to deliver those services.

Early in the life of the YouTube acquisition, the revenue assumption was coarsely positioned as “running ads”.  Years later the sources of revenue are as varied as the content one might find on YouTube.  Indeed, the past two years of rapid feature rollouts and development within YouTube showcase and tantalize the scenarios for far more than just  “running ads” to generate revenue:

• Full feature length movies
• Deep audience analytics
• Storage for HD content
• Large screen formats
• Partner programs for news media
• Location based services options

Beyond the less than specific origins of revenues, the specifics of costs to deliver these services is also of concern.  Backing into estimations of operational costs for a company like Google properties such as YouTube or Amazon EC2/S3 etc… (with all due respect to the analysts) is a bit like trying to measure the speed of light in the times of Empedocles.

Titans of this size have remarkably nimble ways of disrupting assumed models for calculating costs. These are companies not only regarded for their impact on scaling problems but also for the heft of the footprint they place on sourcing avenues.  Indeed, it might be argued that such special cases are the outliers in the sweeping graphs for a given pricing model.

So where is the intercept?

The speed at which technology platforms are turned over in a scale problem as large as those faced by these Internet titans represents a drastic shift in thinking.  A better assumption might be to envision purchasing patterns in ways that are neither enterprise nor carrier.  In other words, burn your existing models.

Instead, a focus should be made on several other aspects:

• Location: the case of shared network computing models within multi-use data centers, and novel peering relationships — while the size of the plate is a sensational metric it is more important to consider the mix of business made possible by location selection
• Goals: the case of business goals for allocated infrastructure — it is important to remember that a Google vs. Amazon sizing could be close but not applicable in estimates since the business goals are different for each
• Multi-use: the case of unique business mixing — these are drastically different companies in terms of how they use their facilities and there is no fit for an enterprise pattern and the presence of a collection of data centers does not create a carrier model.

Lastly, there has been great speculation on what Apple will do with their planned North Carolina datacenter.  Of note is the fact that as of now, the only thing to do is speculate and assume that this is an excellent location.  That said, no concrete goals or multi-use disclosure has been made by Apple at this time.

In conclusion, any model based on enterprise or carrier assumptions (no matter how they are assumed) renders most analyst predictions far from accurate. When approaching the scale and vibrant refresh requirements of the current crop of Internet infrastructure titans, it is best to stick with public financial reporting and avoid reverse engineering of secret sauce costs and wait for the revenue numbers to be shared.

Note: Welcome to Friday Fudge #2 of hopefully many to come.

You’ve heard of going Google.

Well, I’ve gone Google. Yes. Color Nicholas gone.

In fact, I’ve been using Google Apps since late 2006.

Granted, I’m not representative of a multinational corporation with tens of thousands of seats. One of the criticisms of hosted applications is how they are just not suited to larger shops that require high levels of uptime. Often you hear these are high touch IT environments.

Okay, fair enough.

I invested in Google Apps Premier Edition and have spoken on the phone with the Google Apps support team a total of three times during that period. Yes, during brief outages. You can do the math on how many nines of uptime that is pretty quickly.

Here’s one such example: The Phone Support Experience.

In this instance, an outage was isolated only the web (Gmail) that was having an issue. I was using IMAP with no issues. As a matter of practice, I sync my Google Apps via IMAP as well. This gives me the most flexibility and I have a backup stored that I can replicate to other storage media elsewhere for backup and archival. The same goes for Calendars, Contacts, etc… it’s all good for the most part.

As for the other two issues, those were related to importing MS Word and Powerpoint files in the Documents area — each issue was resolved quickly. Frustrating at the time? Yes.

That said, when I’ve been assured of solid Internet connectivity at conferences, I’ve presented from Google Docs for slide decks to prove my points on cloud concepts. Yes, I keep a thumb drive copy in my pocket.

Coming from a telecom/ISP/hosting background, my standards are very high. Yet for the price of the seat they offer and the expanding features added over time, it’s a solid choice. For now.

In May 2009, I attended Google I/O Developer Conference and met the App Engine and Apps teams. These folks are top notch and their concern for sustainability and availability is their top concern and making the best features be exposed when they pass muster. Google SDC is another solution where I expect to see expanded use over time for maximum hybrid functionality and another truncheon in the bewildering array of options for the silo averse IT world.

In short, I’m sold.

Here’s the thing though… I’ve also also hosted my website/email/etc… at various web hosting shops, my own server in company colocation (eat your own dog food / drink your own champagne), hosted at home using a DynDNS approach, as well as taking it all down, redirecting it to lifestreaming services, and most recently… the cloud. Just not a Google cloud for everything. Yet.

These migrations were also back and forth, mix and match, and not an either or proposition. That’s the problem you run into sometimes with new technology. Many folks assume different solutions cannot operate in tandem or as a hybrid.

You can even look at your telephone. Assuming you aren’t living a purely mobile lifestyle there is a solid chance you’ve been using VoIP at work. I remember having a land line from BellSouth. I remember kicking it to the curb for Packet8 (8×8) then deciding I’d just do it myself with Asterisk using SIP origination and termination. Then I decided I’d move to a fully mobile stack and use my SIP O/T provider for higher level routing. By this time I’d dropped Packet8 for Vonage and then dropped Vonage for… well… me! I’d been carrying a mobile phone for work and another for personal and toyed with Grand Central, Iotum, Jott, etc… you name it, and I had signed up for it. Fast forward after this sign up phase and I ended up treating my Asterisk setup as a simple voicemail and forwarding of attachments that I could play back on my mobile. Today, I’m still using Teliax but have been very keen on how I can use Asterisk, Skype, and Google Voice (was Grand Central) to mix and match what makes sense. The next big thing is taking this all to the cloud.

Okay, enough about the box that sat next to the desktop…

Let’s get back to the desktop

Again — there is room for more than one approach. The market is massive for this approach. In the same way that web hosting became regarded as something you rarely do “in house” so too will other applications come to be regarded. Partly, this will be due to the notion of who is expected to interact and what level of desktop support and connectivity is standard.

If Microsoft came out with an amazing way to avoid dealing with a silo of data that was fragile or easily lost — I’d move that way. In reality, the company behind the solution is not nearly as important as the promise of the solution. Only when you consider the longevity of the data you care about is the reputation or company. This is why I think the private cloud and federated concepts like Google Wave will be much like the early days of NCSA HTTPd server.

So, while everyone has a short memory window of right now when it comes to the cloud, I remember being at Internet World Fall 1997 in NYC. I remember how the network computer was going to rule the world. I remember Sun and Oracle as two different companies saying their view was the way it shall be. IBM begged to differ.

How far we’ve come?

Marketing will always be ahead of the delivery capabilities of the markets envisioned. Technology is merely the response to the perceived need. Still, the step function of market desire and market reality gets more shallow with each passing year.

Note: Welcome to Friday Fudge #1 of hopefully many to come.

About a year ago I spoke in front of the Atlanta Telecom Professionals (ATP) audience on the topic of social media and telecommunications. It was a great crowd.

I was also afforded a glass of Scotch. Trust me when I say the crowd was great regardless of the Scotch I had consumed as the panel pulled together. It doesn’t get much more telecom focused than the group of folks assembled that evening.

The panel included me. Oh, and AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast… oh wait… Comcast ducked out on the panel. More on that later.

I was on the panel to represent the outsider. I wasn’t a carrier. I wasn’t a wireless operator with spectrum, lobbying forces, and a war chest. I was just a person lucky enough to know folks that knew folks that might enjoy my specific brand of insight and humor on the stage.

As I sat in front of the assembled group with the titans of telecom to my right and to my left I remarked to my fellow panelists that I’d be putting my favorite devices in front of me. To my left I placed my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry International Edition and to my right I placed my AT&T Wireless iPhone 3G.

One of the benefits of Comcast not showing up was that we could talk about them. Good times. Good times.

Anyhow…

Before I arrived for the panel I jotted down some notes. I had some ideas that I really wanted to throw out there and see if anyone grabbed on to what I was saying. You never know how that approach will work out since panels are often driven by the need for consensus and keeping things on a timeline. Often, the panel is driven quickly to Q&A.

The question for telecom is how well has the social toolset served them and when will it serve them or their subscribers — and can this be a relationship as social between the cold exterior of a conglomerate media machine and the monetized unique personal attribute collection formerly known as a subscriber.

Looking back a year later, here are my notes — not predictions but my own reflections and the observations of others about the connections made possible by what was happening in social software spaces and how this might be applied to telecom or affect telecom:

Base decisions on most recent parallel events vs. previous events.

I was imagining a screen that tracked keywords in a disposition code format of lifestream updates for the CIDR blocks known to the telecom that represent a given area that was referenced against weather patterns to provide a living view of plant.

Sure, it’s something for the big screen in a NOC. But does it have to be? Couldn’t these interfaces be nimble enough for the important items to bubble up to a CSR view or a executive manager view?

The notion of stratification by CLLI codes would be a good example. Basically, some variety of feedback loop with a base station or aggregation node view is important. i.e. subscribers being vocal (or silent) in a localized view format

You want to see that a lull or non-characteristic gap in updates for a geocode set turned out to be a plant dip. All of this would play back against a lower sub screen view of the network as a whole to determine if there is a degradation or other anomaly not presently identified and tracked adequately.

This could be two users in the same CIDR block where an update arrives via third party API to talk to an account or rep much in the same way power outages attempt to use callerid to fast track tickets for outages.

Distributed network monitoring and SLA based on channel mix bundle for customer class action crediting for outages

This might have some meat to it. After discussing this amongst some others in the same general field I am in the consensus was “yeah, why not”. In general this would form the basis of an ad-hoc class action customer experience fee recovery system.

Assuming the AUP/ToS did not preclude a resident agent/process with this goal in mind (and really, that’s not the point) one could feed back a quasi-SLA to residential tiers of service. This is part of my larger focus on the shift to a truly utility approach to granular billing if “the cap” ever makes it out of the ham fisted iterations we’ve seen so far.

XMPP of the customer experience as a sparkline

This was pretty simple in that seeing a lot of chatter about your brand from accounts known to talk about you might be an interesting data point for marketing groups and operations teams. Fake meme and trending notwithstanding. :-)

Unprecedented access to correlate and improve plant and service delivery

One idea was to make a simple mailto link in a follow up email with five options that generate updates to social networks indicating your level of satisfaction with the provider. Since the panel, the API options have exploded for gaining feedback including the ubiquitous click here to share on Facebook and prefab Twitter responses.

Just as there are sites the give a shortcut to bypass inane IVR there is Twitter and Getsatisfaction and Uservoice or even Atlanta’s own Skribit

A frustrated subscriber wants to get issues resolved. It’s very simple.

The subscribers might not know what a back channel is but they would probably call or interact if they could update from a SMS to their provider when the broadband is out — something as simple as the word “down” or “not working” where the provider is digesting streams is one thing but the goal here is Digg for Down and Outage situations.

i.e. I’m having this issue — with 10-100 subscribers saying “me too”

Remember, a growing number of subscribers have multiple networks at their disposal. Just like the legacy view is “call if you have a problem” a new view is Twitter updates, smartphone access, etc. So, being down doesn’t mean being silent.

As with all these new social tools for gathering and refining feedback, the critical step is to test and think about how obtuse the tools are implemented. Don’t make extra work. That just frustrates the subscriber even more.

DSL Reports will move beyond a bulletin board of threaded discussion to a real time mediation of issues and “me too”

This is the notion that subscribers will form pools of affinity and the Fan pages that will not be a scripted corporate controlled medium. It may not be the most exciting news story but for a provider — this is shaking in your boots level technology — but only for the providers that choose not to participate and let the chips fall.

I’m seeing this happen as DSL Reports refines their hierarchy (shades of Usenet?) for discussions. When I was thinking about this originally things like Stack Overflow came to mind.

Again, this is about regular subscribers. So, the tin ears have to be small ones for any UI/UX approach.

The classic oversubscription on plant in favor of highly asymmetric links to Internet egress will be challenged as publish and cloud applications push the envelope

I’ve repeatedly said that asymmetric broadband is going to be a thing of the past. We have applications that stream updates in realtime more now than the year prior with no easing to the trend. For every optimized code loop the software world throws into production, a new nimble startup will figure out a new payload to push the limits. And in that push — the upload will be as critical as the download. The new downstream is the upstream.

Slingbox proved people want to bring their unique video experience from their homes. Now, you have companies like Spawn Labs that are making that pull and extend experience with gaming consoles.

What we might still call TV’s are going to be shipping in the wake of CES with ever increasing symmetric communication. Skype (big TV brands) or something like a TinyChat (thinking Walmart brand TV’s) is going to push against the notion that an ADSL link or the pitiful cable modem package of many down and few up is acceptable.

The application mix and managed routers will evolve to WAAS like features that improve branch to branch experience

I wasn’t specifically calling out Cisco solutions but this was something I obviously had in mind. At work, everything you experience with broadband at home is a reasonable (if not double) expectation for business class services at a job site. Yet, business class services often are slower in areas where higher speed residential broadband is available.

During the panel, things like cloud computing and low latency or high throughput applications came up as reasons why the business class expectations will change. IP Centrex phone services based on VoIP with a SIP trunks model is growing at a faster pace now due to economic benefits but it is unclear that the connectivity has kept pace.

That said, the point of bringing up Cisco’s role in this was to point out that the same topology and traffic management concerns of larger enterprises is now being packed into the form factor of a common Cisco ISR and would likely become a fire and forget feature to address chatty and high overhead protocols. The availability of such technology will mean a lot to the small remote office connected to a regional office. The natural conclusion is to see this played back in subscriber CPE.

Putting the intelligence in endpoints is the key to seeing benefits overall. Again, it’s about pushing the envelope with what social oriented technology brings as a demand.

VoIP and general voice costs will continue a race to zero

Does this really come as a shock? It got a laugh of course.

What this really means longer term is that all providers have to get into a higher value service. Since the panel there have been any number of big things happen in this area from Google Voice to all you can eat packages.

The important point is that there are still challenges to how providers plan to fund initiatives and relying upon the legacy service model or product is flawed thinking. Flawed might not be the right term but in the absence of seeing Skype embedded in more places more of the time there is a closing window on the POTS and circuit-switched world.

Social services will deprecate younger buyer concern for uptime and availability premium as part of lowered expectations from growing up mobile I.e. All providers suck

This was the concept of how mobile phone call quality and Twitter Fail Whale and cryptic web errors gained a fever pitch status with younger users. In fact, the older users see this as well but they remember when things like uptime and availability meant something and how a land line call really did sound better.

The term users is also key. Subscribers vs. users is a word choice I try to be careful with in panel settings. Generally speaking, the provider has to handle the customer and the manner in which a designation is applies tells a lot about the background and direction of a service and company as a whole.

When you think about a concept like price elasticity, you have to wonder about lock in as a viable model when the youth market has been raised to see fads come and go online and in communications.

What happens when AT&T becomes a Friendster to a new Facebook?

Remember, it’s not always going to be an absolute assumption that the bigger players win. The FCC tremblings and rumblings even before the panel indicated things might just change (for once) in how we think of a nimble operator or service provider.

Younger consumers will assume that the provider knows more about them and will be less tolerant of flawed CRM

In the face of privacy and how providers treat CPNI, there is a desire to opt on either the side of flat out ignorance or the Sprint Now Network commercial. Some might view this as a all or none proposition. So, which is it? Full on unfettered use of DPI with tremors of conflict in other nations quashed and monitoring in a dystopian future… or not so evil aggregation of personalized trends to give you a better service?

Example: Twitter’s very own @comcastcares

As I was saying at the start, Comcast ducked out on the panel. This was unfortunate because I actually think they were to be commended for their role in adopting a back channel to augment their existing channels of communication with the subscribers.

Comcast has issues. The difference now is all their subscribers flock somewhere other than a support line to complain.

If you are a service provider, expect this is happening in your subscriber base as well. In fact, bank on it.

One thing to take away though is the almost lancing effect @comcastcares has on the pressure of a subscriber issue. In general, if the broadband is down one might wonder how you reach them — simple — Twitter is a backchannel available through just about any mobile device with a data plan or even SMS

Service providers: your suck cannot hide

One of the more prolific writers at the time of the panel was MG Siegler, then of VentureBeat. MG was a technology and services early adopter then and has continued to be an early adopter at TechCrunch and as a perfect example of the new type of subscriber all service providers will have to contend with now: power subscribers

The power subscriber is the service provider equivalent of what Enterprise 2.0 faces with their own power users. Enterprise and service provider are still vastly different worlds, so I think it is important to highlight the differences since there is a distinct economic associate for subscribers. The subscriber pays for and expects a service level.

For a power subscriber to take note of an issue is the moment a service provider has to take note as well. It’s not just the fact that service providers find themselves providing connectivity or a service used by industry pundits. It’s more than that. It’s the fact that those pundits are connected with wider audiences that can quickly and efficiently compare notes on a provider in much lower latency ways than ever before.

If there is a service blip, people will know.

In there is a service issue or quirk, people will know.

A power subscriber like MG Siegler is an example of someone that has kept track of their issues and has a long memory. He is not alone. His series of articles on AT&T and iPhone issues were and are relentless. When his coverage and TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington coverage becomes content placed in syndication on the Washington Post, watch out folks. The FCC might just notice.

What this translates to for service providers that have come to be regarded as lethargic is simple: if you have problems, the new social tools available will amplify and coordinate the uprising from your subscriber base locally, regionally, nationally, and perhaps internationally. If you get picked up by tech press for having issues, it is a very short walk to the end of the mainstream press channel.

So, in the end, what social telecom might really mean is a implicit expectation from subscribers (users) of a service that works well almost all of the time. The keys to achieving this will involve using the same technologies within the service provider that their own subscribers are using outside the service or on the very same service itself.

A quick review of my prior on again off again blog activity here at fudge.org and the Interwebs led me to conclude a few things.

1. I tend to blog only when I am frustrated by the lack of editorial control or features offered elsewhere
2. My 10 years of LiveJournal activity works out to be +6,000 actual journal entries
3. My past 4 years or so of leaving comments on various blogs (other than mine) works out to be +1,000 comments

fudge.org has been around a long time.  I’ve removed a ton of posts and tested the savvy of Archive.org as well as Google cache. (Hint: Not so much.) I’ve double posted content from my other writing at GLG.  I’ve taken longer form comments at other blogs and turned them into posts. I’ve hosted images at Flickr, set up a Posterous, a Twitter account, Facebook account, and generally signed up for just about everything you can imagine in this nutty period of rapid iteration services on the Interwebs — and abandoned them like bad habits when they don’t pass muster or reflect my standards or meet my needs.

Like I say in the majority of my bio blurbs: I fill out web forms.

So, with all this in mind, I plan to channel all my prior energies expended elsewhere and provide a Friday update [1] called… wait for it…

Friday Fudge

Cool! What will it have?

Hmm… let’s focus on what Friday Fudge will not have:

1. Meta commentary on meta commentary of the latest shiny object in the Interwebs
2. Topical musings on celebrities online, offline, etc.
3. Opinions on whatever passes as news these days
4. Tips for losing body fat, being more productive, or must have software tools
5. Movie reviews, TV reviews, Book reviews, Food/Drink reviews

That seems rather… limiting as blogs go. Any hint on what to expect?

Okay… expect one or more of these personas to emerge with varying degrees of aptitude and literary grace

So as you can see… this Friday Fudge thing is going to be truly epic.

[1] At least until I get bored again or something

Apparently, Comcast has moved ahead with their infamous Comcast broadband cap and provided a Comcast broadband cap tool so that Comcast subscribers can see what they are using.

To be clear, my comments/opinions will reference Comcast but this is not meant to single out Comcast. I’ll just use Comcast since it is more succinct to use than the mouthful facilities-based Internet egress broadband provider which is often conflated with the term ISP. What I am saying applies across the board to all service providers going down this cap path.

Hi Future Man. Welcome to 1996. Here’s an AOL diskette with 20 FREE HOURS.

I stand by my comments during the recent TelcoTV panel “Dumb Pipe Strategy” at TelcoTV 2009 in Orlando. We had a very packed house for that panel. In a nutshell, my point was that any attempt to widely push this notion of a cap against a subscriber base is foolish — the tools that the industry vendor ecosystem is providing simply do not address the use case scenarios we are going to see from connected products. We are moving to a set and forget world of simplicity.

This is almost as ham fisted as the ubiquitous “Check Your Online Time” from the days of POTS dialup. That failed miserably as well when broadband arrived as an always on service. Why? It’s simple. It is not natural consumer behavior to launch another web page and sign in to see what you’ve actually used.

Furthermore, the analog dialup world analogy falls apart since we’re not dealing with nailing up circuits for dialup. Remember, this is the same Comcast shouting about how great DOCSIS3 is. The feedback already arriving as comments on the Comcast blog are very telling. Expect this to explode in Comcast’s face somewhere, sometime, someplace soon. As one comment puts it, Comcast is essentially promising a super fuel rocket car service that will allow you to run the 1/4 mile… but crash into a wall of overage charges without a parachute. Sounds awesome.

The team within Comcast that is responsible for this cap needs to accept two facts:

1) A cap, while potentially a very profitable endeavor, sets an adversarial tone with subscribers much like those banking fees we read more about in the news in the wake of financial scandal. (see also: too soon?)

2) Subscribers will not accept (with a long term ARPU view) any ham-fisted iterations of a “cap” or a “bucket” or “tokens” unless it is a seamless and consistently pervasive part of the service. (see also: backlash)

In short, Comcast needs to go back and put on their thinking caps with the internal project and not foist the alpha against all subscribers. The best practice would be to stick with friendlies — not employees — and gather feedback that is published for all subscribers so that everyone knows what is happening around them. Yes, that’s right. There should be a real time updated dashboard of the network utilization showing all their subscribers at the street, local, city, and aggregate view supplied if they really want subscribers to know that “we are all in this together”. If you’ve ever shopped or been a part of a mutual, membership, or a co-op you’ll know that sounds familiar. Comcast better have their playbook ready because you can bet the vocal opposition to the cap isn’t going to sit idle.

Granted, I actually think caps, once all the use case scenarios and vendors come together to support it properly, will have a place. However, it’s not the one Comcast is ready to accept and not the one they are chasing now — see my blockquote above — but it is one that is highly disruptive.

Comcast should be looking to another area facing a challenge: power. Wait? What? Yes. Mobile broadband wireless companies are already selling pay as you go today with some degree of success. There is a reason why the power industry that now faces a new consumer behavior of being more “green” is hiring mobility billing specialists for software development — mobile figured out how to squeeze more regular ARPU. You say Comcast gives a brain dead report on what you used for bandwidth in terms of breakdown by service (video streaming, downloads, web surfing, music, etc.) and I’ll walk you to the side of your house to watch the power meter spinning with cryptic gauges that mean very little to most people.

Finally, Comcast has to be willing to accept a type of subscriber they do not have today. Comcast has to service any subscriber that desires a cap because for the 5 months that they don’t use the service out of 12, they get a bill for $0.00 dollars. Think about that one for a moment. It’s not that crazy an idea. As it stands today, the meter is running — but it isn’t running properly.

A pre-production evaluation of the latest foray into the digital living room from Cisco may have flaws but it represents a response to perceived needs of consumers that demand more simplicity. Expect to see the an array of alternatives that deliver much simpler use case scenarios for a world that is composed of consumers that cut their teeth on VCR’s blinking 12:00.

There is a coming proliferation of alternative viewing solutions for the largest screen in the home: the living room flat panel. As the notion of three screens (PC/Mobile/TV) cements into designs and product roadmaps, the wave of sub-$300 devices primarily connected to the home TV (rapidly becoming a glorified monitor actually) will be popping up in greater frequency and with a greater reliance upon software and Internet connected defense against obsolescence.

While communications companies wish to be a part of this, consumers will be drawn to simple solutions. Rapid iterations of hardware solutions is not an area that communications companies are known for. “New every two” may be fine for a mobile phone but it smacks of a throw away mindset and culture that is unsustainable.

TiVo is an example of a company that got “simple” right through rapid iteration. The TiVo approach is heavily weighted to software design principles over hardware design limitations. i.e. once something is connected in a living room you don’t want to have to move to change it.

In the 70’s the digital living room was sending your child to the TV to adjust knobs. In the 80’s the digital living room was a VCR blinking 12:00. In the 90’s the digital living room was a DVD player that skipped. As we round out this decade, we want personalized, and socially stratified high definition content that is always connected and as simple as moving a magic wand… or fishing around in our pockets.

Perhaps in the next decade we’ll get just that demand of this decade. For now, we just have to allow for the desktop PC and laptop to become that VCR… that has no place in a modern living room.

On November 1, 2009 I will… transform.

I have decided to join a global movement that is bringing much needed attention to cancers that affect men. I’m doing this by growing a Moustache this Movember, the month formerly known as November. My commitment is to grow a moustache all November and I am hoping that you will support my efforts by making a donation. The funds raised go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LIVESTRONG).

What many people don’t know is that 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 18-35. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved.

To make a donation, you can either:

• Click this link to donate to my team online using your credit card or PayPal account , or
• Write a check payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 144915 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 2726, Venice, CA 90294-2726.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund:

• The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance program which has the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer between the ages of 15 and 40.
• Research initiatives to further understand the biology of adolescent and young adult cancers.

This is meant to be both positive and fun… and in that regard I welcome you to select and vote on what style moustache I shall be growing for this worthy cause and join my team! :)

Vote for what I should grow:

Join my team:

Please consider joining my team “FATUOUS WEASELS” if you want to combine facial fuzz forces!

About Movember:

Update: January 12, 2010 Hell freezes over

Background: TechCrunch is having their RealTime CrunchUp event and solicited comments from the founder of Gmail, FriendFeed — Paul Buchheit — now at Facebook. Comments don’t appear to be working so… as I was trying to say:

Facebook has demonstrated very clearly (so far) that their approach to “email” is that it only has a place within their silo — or at best as a one way notification to any other email service.

The swatting away of my question at TC50 by the Facebook “outreach” team on noreply@facebookmail.com vs. the elegance of FriendFeed really summed it up as follows:

Facebook Hates Email

I’ve got plenty of opinions on email and the future but Facebook has done nothing visible to endear, promote, or improve “email” [1]

My only reservation in all out condemnation of Facebook’s approach to email is that Paul is in their house now. Whatever that means… it does offer some amount of hope.

[1] feel free to serve up crow filled links to refute this

Update: January 12, 2010 Hell freezes over

I’ve embedded a presentation with my raw notes from Audience Conference (see below).  Enjoy!  Also, please scroll down for official resources and additional commentary from others that attended the event.

As you might expect, there are other resources elsewhere to temper and consider.  I’d recommend starting with official sources first and foremost:

The Official Audience Conference Resource List

Additionally, there are several summaries emerging from others that attended the event:

• Audience Conference Reaction
• Review of the Audience Conference
• You Should Have Been in the Audience
• What It Means To Be An Audience
• Jerry Garcia Would Have Loved The Audience Conference
• Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?

This post is a landing page for when I attend a conference. In this case, the conference is Audience Conference. While I’m not certain who I will meet or what companies will be there — I have high expectations. 100% of the companies I work with have some kind of audience. That’s why I think Audience Conference is both interesting and mandatory.

Hopefully, you reached this page because you were curious enough to look at the other side of my business card. Hey… I like curious. So if you got this far, we’ve learned a bit about each other. As you recall, I’ll be in NYC through Saturday before heading back South to speak at TelcoTV in Orlando and be part of Atlanta Startup Weekend. So, feel free to track me (qthrul) in real-time. And it goes without saying, but “we should keep in touch“.

Lastly, sorry about my appearance but I’m growing a moustache for a good cause :)

Let’s not mince words: Cisco sells routers. Cisco sells a great many IP things but you’ve probably heard: Cisco sells routers. While Cisco has a massive portfolio of solutions and an M&A trail that would make any MBA blush, the Starent deal is straight pool.

Mobile core in the side pocket.

Much of the analysis so far has been lacking in examination of the longer game that mobile represents. Like straight pool, the mobile market and the prized core network that will connect it all form the basis of a longer game.

Equally important to note is the mobile market as a world market and not one limited to North America. Mobile is about world wide growth and capturing the larger mind share of those taking heat as apologists and those wishing to innovate around the competition.

Just take one look at the CTO of AT&T becoming an apologist and you quickly realize this isn’t a knee jerk upgrade path for mobile carriers. It’s not as if sticking in bigger boxes and adding bigger circuits now will solve the problems (perceived or otherwise) for everyone other than Verizon. That all takes time. Recall the AOL and Steve Case commercials back in the days of dialup ISP? The similarities are stark.

We’ve seen Navini trotted out as an example of Cisco turning away from WiMAX. What? This is mixing up things in terms of the routing capability and the access layer capability of wireless systems. It’s confusion for those that seek to understand how these companies, boxes, and bits ultimately fit together.

Starent gives Cisco instant access to the routing concerns, pains, hopes, dreams, desires, and roadmap expectations that will translate into a sales pipeline in mobile. More importantly, Cisco takes the Starent ball off the pool table.

While Juniper is mentioned, it is debatable that they have any play left outside of a piecemeal strategy such as putting together a wicked combination shot:

• 2G/3G optimization for 2G/3G on PDH via Force10 (Turin)
• Purpose build packet optical transport via Cyan Optics
• any number of applications or DPI enhancements for walled garden and billing integration platforms

In short, a much riskier shot to pull off cleanly… without scratching.

Cisco has called their shot and will continue to control the pool table until they foul.

While it might be tempting to call it evil… or stifling innovation… it’s not dirty pool. It just means that the game continues in the series of games.

Microsoft’s Three Screens Get Cloudy

What happens when Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer outlines a vision of “three screens and a cloud“?

People get interested.

However, interest is quickly tempered in the wake of T-Mobile Sidekick data loss from the cloud — a Microsoft cloud.  The implication is a reminder of the importance of getting things right in a silo or a cloud. The rapidly growing space of enabling cloud technology companies and self proclaimed cloud based service providers will feel this.

Put another way? Oh the pain.

Microsoft acquisitions need not be limited to being a Microsoft shop. This is especially true when considering the managed services companies digested by Microsoft so far such as Hotmail and Jump Networks.

Although Danger’s hiptop Service Delivery Engine (SDE) may not be based on Microsoft products and technology the fallout from being associated with a preferred and seasoned hosting platform for mobile operators will sting Microsoft. A reasonable question might be how does Microsoft reach out to mobile operators in the wake of such a high profile data loss?

Early job postings from Danger, Inc. would indicate that much of the Danger back office was not Microsoft based. Yet, it is not as if Microsoft can point a finger at another company in this matter. Even if migrations to enable greater use of Microsoft technology were even pertinent in the case of this high profile data loss there is no way to save face here.

Simply put, this is a high profile loss of data in the fastest growing market known: mobile. The injection of this being a cloud issue just amplifies the issue. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Indeed, all of this cloud discussion may become fodder for Oracle in certain areas. Yes, Larry Ellison will have a few more minutes of material in his cloud computing standup routine.

While taking a shot at Microsoft might be tempting right now, until the rumors become a root cause analysis it is probably wise for competitors to measure words carefully.  As a market, cloud aligned companies would do well to learn from established service provider history associated with data loss.

Expect Google, Salesforce, and managed service providers to approach this data loss topic with greater emphasis on data portability, user education, and highlighting the importance of personal data protection best practices.  The usual fallout and market grab for hard media copies (CD/DVD/etc.) as a premium service add will likely appear as well.

That said, don’t expect a pile on for Microsoft. Instead, expect greater scrutiny on companies like Amazon, AOL, Comcast (Plaxo), Facebook, and Yahoo regarding their own policies on data ownership and the rights of consumers and businesses to maintain copies of data entrusted to the cloud.

Let’s get this out of the way: TechCrunch50 2009 is what I think of when I think of the term “raising the bar”.

Ignoring for a moment the +130 startup companies, the sheer spectacle of being in the thick of the most covered and insular luminaries in the trade, the insanely great demos, the free cupcakes, baseball bats, and bathrooms like those found in the movie Trainspotting — yes ignore all of that.

Instead, focus on this fact:

Everyone seated in the audience at tables had dedicated individual 100Mbps full duplex Ethernet drops running to them in addition their own power strip. Everyone had rock solid WiFi connection picking up their iPhone and other connection hungry pocket device or those with laptops not wanting to drink from the sweet vine of wired Ethernet.

source: Flickr @parislemon

Yes. That’s right. Everyone.

Yes. That’s right. Hundreds of Ethernet drops, AP’s, and what reflects meticulous planning and attention to detail.

Oh, and there was no skimping on the speed either.

Care to guess what this might have cost? (Leave a comment below…)

You see, I attend a lot of tech conferences that are telecom and technology focused. Sometimes I speak at them on panels or alone on a stage. I’ve worked a bunch of them too. I’ve done trade show booths, Internet email kiosks, hotspots — all that. To get that kind of thing to work I’ve had to encounter venue exclusive data services, outsourced venue data services, Ethernet of every flavor and hiccup prone switching fabric imaginable, etc… heck, even ISDN — and that goes back to 1997 for Internet World in NYC. And the one universal fact concerning Internet access at trade events is that it typically sucks. That’s a technical term by the way. Feel free to drop it in conversations with network engineers.

As such, when a conference delivers the absolute best Internet experience I’ve ever had this year [1] and years prior — I have to give major props:

The TechCrunch50 team delivered that experience. They picked an outstanding vendor solution service mix and the delivery was flawless.

You see, it wasn’t just the speed or the way it was done. It was the way it was handled from end to end, soup to nuts, cradle to grave. Operational excellence. Yes, the Internet service was so over the top that I can only relay it best with an anecdote.

Day 1 of TC50 was amazing and as a working consultant I found myself using the time between stage changes to work on client needs. When Day 2 of TC50 arrived I was excited to have this flexibility as well. Imagine my horror when I noticed my gateway was not responding. Compounding this horror, the fearful popup of another machine MAC address appearing to already have my DHCP assigned IP address.

No worries. One of the numerous floor IT experts came over when I raised my hand. He whipped out his LAN tester and determined the switch had cycled power and disconnected my row before my lease expired. He fixed this within 3 minutes. I unplugged, plugged back in again — and all was right in the world of connectivity. This happened again 10 minutes later — undaunted the same man in black came over and performed a similar set of steps and promised “this won’t happen again”. True to his word, the connection was perfect for the remainder of the conference.

WiLine Networks, Inc.

For every tech conference that I attend from this point forward, TechCrunch50 is “raising the bar” of expectations on Internet connectivity, desktop and floor support, as well as generally just going 100% all out with no apologies or reservations.

Kudos I say. Kudos!!

So which tech event or trade show is going to top TechCrunch50?

Mariette Systems

Telekenex, Inc.

Any takers?

Update: Links and logos added to vendors of merit

[1] Indeed, SxSW 2009 is a close second for the BlogHaus (SxSW TechSet Blogger Lounge) selection of Time Warner Business services and slightly more spartan Ethernet drops and power strip availability

This post is a landing page for when I attend a conference. In this case, the conference is TechCrunch50.  While I’m not certain who I will meet or what companies will be there — I have high expectations.  Easily 1/3 of the companies I work with are startups.  That’s why I think TechCrunch50 is both interesting and mandatory.

Hopefully, you reached this page because you were curious enough to look at the other side of my business card. Hey… I like curious.  So if you got this far, we’ve learned a bit about each other.  As you recall, I’ll be at TechCrunch50 and in SF through Wednesday before heading back East to visit clients.  So, feel free to track me (qthrul) in real-time. And it goes without saying, but “we should keep in touch“.

I installed a couple of plugins for WordPress (self hosted)…

The first is pubsubhubbub and the other late entrant is rsscloud. They look like this:

As you can see, both are really very appealing for different reasons but with the common goal of satisfying your sweet tooth in a way only pre 1.0 code base can.

So, how does this all work?

It’s all very technical but this video tutorial explains the concept.

While there is plenty of debate going on right now, it’s nice to know that those with a peanut allergy or an aversion to theobromine have a choice out there. Me? I’m all about mixing and matching.

Update: The pre-pre-picking of something akin to sides has possibly maybe started happening.

Photos source: Wikipedia 1, 2

Too Much Text IV: A NEW HOPE Google Wave vs. Email

Vote here!

It is a period of email war. Rebel services, striking from hidden bases, have won their first victory against the evil Inbox Empire. The Empire may strike back but not before nimble waves of XMPP (RFC3920) extended wing fighters fire back with wavelet torpedoes. May the IETF be with you.

1. What has changed in the email landscape for 2008-2009?
2. Where is asymmetric and symmetric user messaging headed?
3. How will users seek to collaborate across various real time message services?
4. Where does Google Wave play into the efficacy of email systems?
5. What considerations will have to be part of any new vision of the Inbox?
6. If the young aren’t adopting Twitter as the new messaging platform as much as adults, what is next?
7. Where does spam figure into the mix of combining various message services in one place?
8. What is the most critical thing to take away from the Wave Protocol Draft Spec?
9. How can back end developers be part of the solution vs. adding to the problem of forked messaging?
10. What will it take to stop the use of NO REPLY / DO NOT REPLY in web services that use email?

Discussion on Google Wave ID is “googlewave.com!w%252BZkQM8ngOA”

The concepts here are iterative and in that spririt, the following content gathered, leading to, and in concusion of Too Much Text at SxSW 2009 is also presented below:

Disclaimer: Here be dragons draft copy!

Abstract

When I attended SXSW Interactive in 2008 one of the things I noticed is how little email was used at the conference. By the time email was typed up and sent out, it was little more than reference material better served and accessible on a website.

• Email is now an asymmetric relic.
• Email is reserved for copies of your confirmations.
• Email is a hurdle to be avoided if possible.

Detail

Or, is email really that bad?

It’s 2008 and SXSW Interactive is a fairly technical conference. As expected, everyone had a mobile device capable of Internet access. A few folks had laptops but most were on an iPhone, Blackberry, or using SMS on their mobile phone du jour. Twitter adoption was high for the period I was there. You might have heard about Twitter lately. Maybe. :)

But back to email… I checked back to see what email was for my personally that partial week.

• I didn’t really get any that was critical to my day to day activities. Partly because the office knew I was out and at a conference — but mostly because nobody at the conference really dropped phrases like “I will send you an email”.
• We handed out business cards. That seemed archaic to me actually but quaint. Most of the cards had an email address, phone, etc… but things like instant message or Twitter handles were more common or considered a better way to reach.
• Email actually started up the day after the conference. I guess that was when people started reading their cards and had some downtime.

One thing that stood out for me was this: email has a personal and time attentive association for many of these people. It was as if email was what prior generations would consider to be the thank you note or the hand written note — and for some it has become the equivalent of a heart felt hand written letter on fine parchment.

Wait! It’s an email! (I say this in a 36 year old voice)

Social patterns aside, email is many things, but it is commonly associated with what is wrong with it: spam and email itself

Wait? Email is a problem itself? We’ll come back that that.

First, let’s look at spam.

“Did you get my email” is typically followed with “check your spam folder” and a reply such as “just TXT it to me so that I’ll have it” which makes me think that you a lot of folks feel email is the paper bill you have sitting on the TV stand under the rest of the junk mail from your local post office box.

The problem email itself has is that even if it isn’t spam to the recipient it is probably battling for the recipient’s attention. The lowly heart felt email or important email is commingled with far too many other messages in the inbox.

There are a whole flood of philosophies and movements to help people deal with their Inbox and the bloat from the pile up it represents. So, email itself has problems.

Yet, there are established groups that live for email and the fight against spam. I’ve been part of those groups to varying degrees for over a decade.

It makes me wonder: Am I helping protect a protocol destined for the same fate as GOPHER?

As with anything of value there are wars fought over it.

With email there is a spy vs spy war raging since the first opportunist could open an email client. This is the war of spammer vs. mail service administrators and email service providers.

So, if email has increasingly less and less value — what is it that is so coveted and what is it that is so worthy of being protected for this war to continue?

Tarpit, Blacklists, greylists, heuristics, Bayesian filters, regular expression alchemy, SPF, DomainKeys, Sender ID, DCC, hashes, challenge-response, and the list very likely goes on and on. For each remedy or enhancement to the activity seeking to cater to the needs of the administrator and user there is dark force bent on rendering it obsolete or overpowered.

Questions

1. Why all of this effort to keep email viable as a service that can be taken for granted?
2. What can be done with email going forward to appeal to new generations of users?
3. What would make email more valued to everyone that uses email today?
4. Where is email going to be in the next 5 to 10 years?
5. When will email and spam conflict be resolved?

Additional reading

• http://enemieslist.com/news/archives/news/
• http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/12/teens-are-ditch.html
• http://bankervision.typepad.com/bankervision/2008/08/email-bankrupt.html
• http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032_3-6197242.html
• http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
• http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/06/63733
• http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/10/the-problem-of-email.html
• http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2007/11/social_networks_overtake_webma.html
• http://www.senderbase.org/home/detail_get_type
• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/aols-luddites-love-their-e-mail-more-than-googles-geeks/
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/the-death-of-web-20/#comment-2625670
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html
• http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/state-of-things-interview-is-now-online/
• http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/information-technology/computers-software/TCH_ITS_CMP/433908-528502

After being a CTO since 2002 with NeoNova and Digitel the time has come to return to my consulting roots. I’ve had a great run as a technology leader with great people, great companies, and I’ve seen the beauty of rural America.

Having spent almost two years in Atlanta, GA I’ve re-relocated back to Research Triangle Park, NC in the East.  In addition, I have established a second office away from the office in Missoula, MT for trips to the West.

Cuthrell Consulting has engaged with several successful telecom companies and emerging technology firms that I’ve had the pleasure of working with over these past six years.

Cuthrell Consulting, LLC

As you might imagine, I am also actively adding new clients that benefit from my expertise and strategic technology services.

Going forward, I’m going to be available at cuthrell.com and will be updating content there in the coming weeks.

After listening to a podcast rant on the topic of the blog / web / Internet with terms like signal, noise, and other histrionics typically reserved for the stage I felt that familiar urge to capture some quick thoughts.

Those on the podcast are not terribly youthful and could easily classify as sages, elders, or at worst — subject matter experts.  They are certainly not in a position to say they have not seen this before.  We all have seen this before as we emerge from our first collective social experience tied to a place, grouping, or special interest.

Scenario:  This place was really cool before [insert influx type] showed up and ruined it.

Such wonder from these parties on the podcast made me wonder if such an animal (research paper) exists with a title such as:

Abstract: A historical treatment of emerging or vanguard users on a platform and the inflection when mass markets are able to access that same platform is presented and applied against the backdrop of 20 years of Internet technology paradigm shift.

Personally, I immediately think of things like Usenet.  I think of FTP sites.  I think of the pre-WWW days and the ways email has been altered over the course of the past ~20 years.  But mostly, I think that the same record is playing softly as an mp3 and that there are still those clutching for life to their wax, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, compact discs, mini discs, and other associated media formats gone by.  As the holidays approach, is it any wonder the ubiquitous drum set under the tree has modernized as well?

It’s a sure bet that just as I considered K-Tel one of the ways to tell that a given media would be going by the wayside.  “K-tel presents” was the harbinger of doom to tapes at least.  What we see is the collection of a moment in time that makes sense for then and afterward it might be so much historic kitsch.

Consider this: Do you really care about the ruminations on some random Internet company from a year ago that went out of business?  Does it matter?  Did it at the time?  Does it now?  Will it in the future?  Is link rot really so bad?

We’re not always presiding at the creation of art and human artifacts to be that must be preserved for all time.  Indeed, the waste basket of collected wisdom of crowds dumped into a web sizzle bulletin board might not formulate world peace, nirvana, and the next big thing.  Let’s agree to let things go away that go away and let the passions of those that wish to preserve take the collector or archivist activity to a logical conclusion.

Or, put simply, do you really want to hear all the fumblings of guitar lessons 20 years before the guitar god penned and played live before the audience?  Really?

Coming back to this notion of the formats and precursors that pave the way is a legitmate history to account for but saving it all for posterity might not be.  I have to wonder how Blue-Ray and microformat blog will alter what we think of the DVD and the blog in another 10 years.   As I reflect on that podcast, it does seem that the masses are becoming ever enabled to comment and create and those wax clutching bloggers are noticing.

Home recording was revolutionary.  As a song I heard recently puts it, there is something magical to a time where sitting in front of the stereo waiting for the FM station to cut to the track pushed up the adrenaline just as you release the pause button on the deck.   Nowadays, with blog heavy lifting technology moved to easier to disseminate methods and means — everyone, and I mean everyone, can play in these reindeer games.

It just seems that trolls can take their FM vignettes on cassette tape and blare them through a 400W stereo replete with sub woofers and the boom boxes of these modern times.  Yes, the troll for attention.  The troll for look at me.  The troll for our times that endures.

As to ruining things, the troll emergence is going to be a part of any open system style platform. It’s a tax paid of sorts. The difference is how the troll element is managed as noise or where it is allowed to surface. Generally, “don’t feed the trolls” would still apply.

Or, Balkanize, Rinse, Repeat ad infinitum.

Moderating is something of an art form.  For as effective as filtering might be on a personal and subscription level, it is still the spam and SEO black hat result set you run into on otherwise benign queries.  SEO and the gaming of the machine for search ranking is passive aggressive trolling.  You want higher?  You put in the work to inject yourself at the top or into the conversation.

The trolling most people seem to center on is the troll that seeks to engage or pick fights.  Sure.  That kind of troll activity is there and it will always be there.

My concern is with the trolling that comes from wider audience participation that degenerates into ruining the party for everyone.  My concern is not so much with the troll per se but the other members of the audience.  It might sound odd but, if everyone ignored it the troll wouldn’t go away but the troll would become noise that can be ignored.  Ignored might be the filter.  Ignored might just be conditioning to not notice as much.  Ignored might be innovation of the next revolution in services delivered from the Internet.

If and when the trolls come — and they always will — the nimble designs of tomorrow need to always facilitate the VIP room, the ability to screen at the door, the ability to bring exclusivity to the place others converge.  Moderation in all things might become part of the formula but not in the Nietzsche way.

Imagine a place that was cool.  Why is it was?  Why isn’t it now?  Did you grow out of it or did it truly meet ruin at the hands of others that fundamentally changed everything you valued?

In the end, the trolls will only show up when there is an audience for them to interrupt or seeking to interact.  Drama oriented TV shows with manufactured fights, bleeped dialog, and outrageous actions involving chairs flying through the air have enjoyed high ratings for many years.  What makes the Internet so special as to mystically avoid this?  Just as you can change channels — you can click elsewhere.  Just as you can turn off the TV, you can go hide in a cave perhaps.

As for the trolls, why not let them be?  Imagine invisible people wearing brightly colored LED blinking jackets carrying boom boxes blaring music and screaming at the tops of their lungs.  Now imagine that same cool place and the ability to opt-in to seeing those that would have ruined it.

Squelch the surroundings so that only the things you care about are there in front of you. Squelch will make sure the cool is preserved until you grow weary of it, or the cool grows weary of you.

I’ve turned off my TV.  It’s just too cool for me these days.  I’ll be on the Internet for a little while longer.  I think.

As all major web destinations evolve to take advantage of social networking features (Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect) this concern will be blurry at best. CSO’s and those tasked with corporate governance in areas related to risk may well have to bury their heads in the sand as the next wave of qualified candidates enter the work force.

Additionally, it will become apparent that this is a similar concern that was echoed as corporations that shunned the web are curiously those that did not evolve as rapidly in harnessing the technology for business ends.

Think back to your first experience working inside or for a company that used draconian proxies to limit access to emerging Internet technology. Next, pull up that company and contrast it to their competition and see if the policy might have something to do with their position in the market today.

There is also an argument for claiming your company namespace in those areas relevant to business. At a minimum you should have a Plaxo group, Linkedin group, NING, Twitter, etc. that secures that should your positions or views change later on as the new worker asks where -you- are in the mix.

Above all — protect the brand.

Pat Phelan ask if the experts of social media, well… matter.  Do they matter for a given business?  Do they matter in general?

One of the named experts is Jeremiah Owyang and I only know of Jeremiah Owyang because of the world shaking and deeply altering historical signifiance of the Exxon Twitter Crisis of August 2008 (I’m only slightly kidding).

The comments on Pat’s post are lively.  I was inclined to comment but mine was moderated so I elected to blow of the dust here and try an actual post for the first time in many months.

I even referenced one of the prior comments by calling out one name from the comment thread in particular via the use of  “@name”.

(See? I used a @ in front of a name because that is how social media works and surely I’ve created some monetary construct by doing so and there is probably a social media expert that can break down the deep global impact of using the @ as a way to reference the dance hall sized conversation area that is the un-threaded social media destinations — yes, this is a tongue in cheek example of what “experts” provide)

One of the areas that mobile wireless companies and telecom are concerned with is the not so surreptitious land grab for social connections — more commonly called “the network”. Another area is regulatory maneuvering since communications are an interesting path to deal in CPNI and how such CPNI is leveraged.

For the vision and big picture I’d look to analysis of calling and texting patterns for the true size of a social network vs. the opining of someone that has no clue where financial patterns emerge in handsets, carriers, MVNO’s, etc… even geniuses get mobile wireless trends wrong. Newly minted experts in “duh” probably won’t impact the bottom line either.

I’d liken this to a debate between the value of a historian vs. a futurist to the road map and efficacy of a business and its financial model.

What so few experts in social media seem to articulate while they are diligently describing the nuances of short hand and new ways of using a given tool is questions like:

1) What and how does the operator make more money or make the customer relationship more resilient to competitive attack using social media techniques and how is this ROI tracked or proofed?

2) What is a reasonable growth metric for net new accounts when releasing or applying social media against a line of business or a high margin feature in terms of demand generation?

3) What percentage of my existing customer base is making use of a social media platform already and what is the total costing for my global support organization to add another element outside of call centers, web/email ticketing systems, and internal tool sets that link CRM in a regulatory compliant manner?

Those are just three off the cuff questions that matter.

Beyond that, all I seem to read is of the form:

“[X Service] is neat. You should be on it. Here’s a random example with no bearing on your business model. If you aren’t on [X Service] you are missing out. Please come visit my panel on [X Service] at the [X Convention/Conference] that also has no bearing on your business model.”

Maybe I’m just reading the wrong folks.  Or, maybe the noise is so high now that I’m losing interest and/or hope of finding commentary that shifts away from the pumping of the person or tool du jour.

Please, someone knock me down with some examples to the contrary.

Too Much Text: When I Was Your Age, We Sent Email

Tuesday, March 17th at 3:30pm in Room 5A

The youngest generation of Internet users have relegated email to the domain of their parents and other “old people”. What are the current technical challenges faced by email that threaten it surviving for another decade of use and facing a decline in adoption by new users?

Add this to your SXSW Calendar

Note: If you can’t attent SxSW this year you can still contribute to the discussion via Facebook, Linkedin, or enjoy the cryptically brief yet oddly alluring slide deck prepared in advance of this major media event.

Note: This talk can be rated (registration required).

Disclaimer:  Here be dragons draft copy!

Abstract

When I attended SXSW Interactive in 2008 one of the things I noticed is how little email was used at the conference.  By the time email was typed up and sent out, it was little more than reference material better served and accessible on a website.

• Email is now an asymmetric relic.
• Email is reserved for copies of your confirmations.
• Email is a hurdle to be avoided if possible.

Detail

Or, is email really that bad?

It’s 2008 and SXSW Interactive is a fairly technical conference.  As expected, everyone had a mobile device capable of Internet access.  A few folks had laptops but most were on an iPhone, Blackberry, or using SMS on their mobile phone du jour.  Twitter adoption was high for the period I was there.  You might have heard about Twitter lately.  Maybe. :)

But back to email… I checked back to see what email was for my personally that partial week.

• I didn’t really get any that was critical to my day to day activities.  Partly because the office knew I was out and at a conference — but mostly because nobody at the conference really dropped phrases like “I will send you an email”.
• We handed out business cards.  That seemed archaic to me actually but quaint.  Most of the cards had an email address, phone, etc… but things like instant message or Twitter handles were more common or considered a better way to reach.
• Email actually started up the day after the conference.  I guess that was when people started reading their cards and had some downtime.

One thing that stood out for me was this:  email has a personal and time attentive association for many of these people.  It was as if email was what prior generations would consider to be the thank you note or the hand written note — and for some it has become the equivalent of a heart felt hand written letter on fine parchment.

Wait!  It’s an email! (I say this in a 36 year old voice)

Social patterns aside, email is many things, but it is commonly associated with what is wrong with it: spam and email itself

Wait?  Email is a problem itself?  We’ll come back that that.

First, let’s look at spam.

“Did you get my email” is typically followed with “check your spam folder” and a reply such as “just TXT it to me so that I’ll have it” which makes me think that you a lot of folks feel email is the paper bill you have sitting on the TV stand under the rest of the junk mail from your local post office box.

The problem email itself has is that even if it isn’t spam to the recipient it is probably battling for the recipient’s attention.  The lowly heart felt email or important email is commingled with far too many other messages in the inbox.

There are a whole flood of philosophies and movements to help people deal with their Inbox and the bloat from the pile up it represents.  So, email itself has problems.

Yet, there are established groups that live for email and the fight against spam.  I’ve been part of those groups to varying degrees for over a decade.

It makes me wonder: Am I helping protect a protocol destined for the same fate as GOPHER?

As with anything of value there are wars fought over it.

With email there is a spy vs spy war raging since the first opportunist could open an email client. This is the war of spammer vs. mail service administrators and email service providers.

So, if email has increasingly less and less value — what is it that is so coveted and what is it that is so worthy of being protected for this war to continue?

Tarpit, Blacklists, greylists, heuristics, Bayesian filters, regular expression alchemy, SPF, DomainKeys, Sender ID, DCC, hashes, challenge-response, and the list very likely goes on and on.  For each remedy or enhancement to the activity seeking to cater to the needs of the administrator and user there is dark force bent on rendering it obsolete or overpowered.

Questions

1. Why all of this effort to keep email viable as a service that can be taken for granted?
2. What can be done with email going forward to appeal to new generations of users?
3. What would make email more valued to everyone that uses email today?
4. Where is email going to be in the next 5 to 10 years?
5. When will email and spam conflict be resolved?

Additional reading

• http://enemieslist.com/news/archives/news/
• http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/12/teens-are-ditch.html
• http://bankervision.typepad.com/bankervision/2008/08/email-bankrupt.html
• http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032_3-6197242.html
• http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html
• http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/06/63733
• http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/10/the-problem-of-email.html
• http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2007/11/social_networks_overtake_webma.html
• http://www.senderbase.org/home/detail_get_type
• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/aols-luddites-love-their-e-mail-more-than-googles-geeks/
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/14/the-death-of-web-20/#comment-2625670
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879169,00.html
• http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/state-of-things-interview-is-now-online/
• http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/information-technology/computers-software/TCH_ITS_CMP/433908-528502

Last week I attended SXSW Interactive. My goal was to expand my mind.

I’m calling this The Taco Thesis for numerous reasons. First, I walked a lot during the week and didn’t eat well either resulting in operating at a caloric deficit even with tacos calling to me at each turn. Second, the tasty breakfast tacos during one of the more interesting pitches were filling. Third, my reflection on how quickly a room fills with just the mention of breakfast tacos at noon is telling — yes, free punch and pie does work.

In the pick two world of fast, cheap, and right — where right is never reached — this was a conference overflowing with information. My goal was to push immediate thoughts and musings directly into the fluid medium with post event collection and publishing (see also: this post). I used mobile devices that fit in my pocket to make this happen. I used linked services (fire and forget) to make it accessible online.

I’ll be blunt and say that this post is more to get down my thoughts in a single post than to extract from the raw ore of my notes and produce a delicate strand of ductile and malleable wisdom.

I met a ton of my long time and newly created Internet heroes. I broke bread with them. I chillaxed with them. I hugged them. I was even blown off and dissed by them. These stories are the stories that are mine though and aren’t really something I feel the need to put into writing. Each talk was a moment and each thought shared was something that helped me grow and think more about from here forward.

It was the people pure and simple. 100% pure people powered goodness.

It was pretty cool, I gotta say.

And now for the semi-sweet ultra-big over moderately neato ideas:

Essentials for getting there and staying there:

The three most important things I brought with me were: Blackberry, Camera Phone, Business Cards.

Blackberry – while I wish I had an iPhone, it just isn’t going to happen until there is a way to use it with other carriers. The Blackberry gave me access to twitter (major use) and dodgeball (less used). I could also reload my sched.org from the Blackberry. More important though, the Blackberry wasn’t a laptop. A laptop is a tool if you are working or writing at the show and I frankly saw a laptop as a distraction or one more reason to be tethered to a wall for power. So, if it isn’t your job to cover or be paid to be there – leave the laptop behind.

Camera phone – This was the limiting factor of the three. It’s not a great phone but it is small. The camera is only useful in very strong lighting. In retrospect a better hybrid might have been an iPod Touch that could make use of WiFi but this would limit use in dead spots where the ubiquitous Austin WiFi might not be available. Or, as many folks learned, the conference WiFi was not stable. The lesson from trying to use an actual digital camera on the first day was the extra mega pixels are lost on me and the pocket clutter cannot be ignored. Also, with a digital camera there is the extra step of finding a laptop, mounting the camera, opening the photo editor, moving files or shifting them rotation wise, sucking them into an area as ready to publish, uploading to Flickr, etc… By comparison, with a camera phone, I simply took a photo then “Sent” to the Flickr blog posting email address that gave me double posting duty by simultaneously posting to my WordPress install on fudge.org. Are the camera phone photos going to get me into JPG magazine? No. And, that’s not the point. The point is timely upload for the Polaroid moment shared with anyone there. The other benefit of the Flickr approach to posting in the blog is hitting the WordPress Twitter Tools plug-in that notified everyone following me on Twitter that I had created a new “post”. Granted, the text area on a mobile phone is a limiting experience when creating a blog entry but the effect was proof of concept. I still have iPhone envy.

Business Cards – Quaint anachronism? Perhaps. Perhaps in days past when IR transmitter enabled PIMs were all the rage, beaming a contact card over was the talking cat. Today it seems that business cards are making a comeback due to the low cost of high quality printing and design constraints that have gone the way of the dinosaur. I came up with a new design that would include my basic contact information in terms of my blog, twitter, IM, and my personal mobile number in the event someone wanted to call me and talk. Oddly enough, nobody called. Heh. I had some from Kinkos on heavy stock but the real cards were shipped to my hotel direct by Zazzle.

Too bad I didn’t do faster shipping options as only a select few got the Zazzle cards whereas most of my Kinkos cards were handed out already — the Zazzle cards (and the gum stick like dispensers) got a lot of compliments and putting my head on there was a better idea that I had imagined.

My SXSW badge was pretty limited in terms of photogenic representation. Heh.

The packing I did for the weather was layered.

Austin was colder than I imagined but due to my packing strategy that was a good thing. I also packed for no laundry.

• 7 pairs of socks, underwear, tee shirts
• 5 button down synthetic fiber dress shirts (biz casual)
• 2 “social” shirts
• 1 pair of jeans, shorts
• 1 pair walking shoes
• 1 pair workout shoes
• 1 leather jacket
• 1 windbreaker
• 1 pair prescription sunglasses
• 1 IKEA toiletry kit with travel size items

After selection the travel day outfit, this collection fits into a standard carry on bag or a large backpack when folded properly. I use garment organizers too maximize space. Wow. I never thought I’d use that phrase when I was a kid.

As a result, no checking of baggage was required. Assuming there is hotel laundry is a bit dicey since there might be a few hundred other people with the same people in the same hotels that day.

I flew Delta direct ATL to AUS direct. My Platinum status helped me to a free upgrade and I was early enough to relax in the Delta Crown Room. It also gave me the chance to connect pre-conference with a new media superhero.

A lot of other folks encountered weather, flight changes, and general travel hell.

Checking bags is a huge liability when you want to travel with flexibility but for the folks that tirelessly covered this event as part of their jobs… I salute you.

I’d only recommend others take a trade show booth worker approach as well to lighten and limber travel options. To that end, I might FedEx clothes ahead if expect colder weather next year or wish to extend to.

Next year? Yes. I am that positive I will be back again assuming I don’t get hit by a bus.

The other thing I’ve learned is that staying very far away from the event is peaceful but not ideal. I actually got a reservation at the Marriott near the airport. That was a little too peaceful. However, next year I am going to stay at the Marriott closer to the event or even at the Hilton itself as much as I don’t like staying in Hilton properties.

Things that made my head expand a bit more than I expected from SXSW:

After a presentation involving breakfast tacos, I see companies like Get Satisfaction taking over the role of Usenet as a support and feedback channel from technology companies in the 90s.

The key elements of how social networking changed the feedback loop are a) ease of access b) self grouping and c) removing silos of authentication

a) Ease of access is where the tools are readily available to all the user and across the various aspects within the enterprise and the outside supplier and customer views as well. This approach will bring greater community involvement with a maturity model similar to political involvement — passion brings involvement.

b) Self grouping will let the like minded and like interested teams find and rally around products, products, and initiatives without being lumped into what the enterprise -decides- to logically group. The point being that the social network will determine what is sensibly grouped and when. The enterprise will benefit from knowing what the various users and aspects truly highlight as valued discussions.

c) By removing silos of authentication (i.e. a web forum tied only to usernames/passwords/profiles unique to a specific company) the need to register, sign away your direct marketing rights for resale, and otherwise recreate your namespace within yet another sign up page (YASUP) is replaced by a unified notion of identity or leverage of familiar and acceptable means of gaining access to a resource or service. By taking away YASUP the user base can be free to shift from one destination to the next while retaining elements of their identity that are pertinent to finding the inter-community circles that bring concepts such as reputation, peering, and otherwise finding the birds of a feather they can agree with or disagree with on any given topic or free discussion.

Things that I think would make SXSW even more amazing if it was present:

White Board Room – there should be an entire room filled with white boards and the dry erase markers and cleaning erasers to keep everyone happy. In front of each board there should be a cheap megapixel IP web cam or even a marker tape showing the best place to take a photo of the white board. This would be a lot nicer than the back of napkins or, in my case, the dinner menu.

SXSWg or SXSW Games – there was such a huge amount of gamer presence there it felt like they should have their own show. The argument might be made that this is how Interactive came to be but I would have to research that a bit more to determine what shifted the focus to a breakout.

Eye recognition software or head tilt recogniation software – this was the first conference I have attended where everyone seemed to have their head down praying into their mobile phone keyboard, iPhone/Touch screen, or laptop plinking away actively. It would be interesting to have a running tally displayed of head tilt percentages in the crowd if everyone wore a motion sensor that determine if they were looking up at the presentations or down at their devices. Or, even a background noise detector that monitored for the sound of key clicks or button pressing sounds. It really sounds like rain on dry leaves if you close your eyes and listen.

Things that I am still wanting to get answers to in the wake of SXSW:

I’m still wondering what the mobile operator A-link utilization (SS7) looked like as a traffic ramp for all the Twitter txt activityfor SXSW. I think it would make for an interesting graphic.

I’m wondering how customers can reach into the enterprise or how coworkers can communicate within. It seems that social networking can bring transparency to the dialog. Are companies ready for that?

Things I will likely apply soon from SXSW:

So, with this newly expanded mind I’m trying to apply this to my panel and presentation in April at IP Possibilities. It is highly likely that I am going to have a few ideas thrown in the mix.

My semi-summarized thoughts are going to be how rural network operators (ISP, NSP, Telco) visualize the social network in the metrics and language they use day to day. The challenge is how these operators move from observers to active (benevolent) participants.

One thing I noted about SXSW is that I felt, well, geriatric by comparison to most of the attendees. The energy and spirit of these people is amazing. I’m sure many were close to age 35 or over 35 but the way they conducted themselves was a youthful zeal.

I did reflect on the reality of my condition. This is the year I will be 36 and begin selecting the next rung in the drop down menu for Age for YASUP.

As participation goes, a presentation last year at the NeoNova Summit 2007 from Keith Quattlebaum really hit home with me. To summarize, it’s not enough to merely listen to buzz around you. Rather, it is the service providers responsibility to represent itself through the methods of communication that the base selects and uses to discuss their needs and ideas.

This relevant photo is via PicApp.com assuming WordPress didn’t eat it due to reliance upon embedded javascript.

So, back to the concept of reaching into the provider…

This concept is fascinating if you run through a scenario in your head. Imagine not having to “know someone” within a large corporate structure to be heard or have your concern be seen as common and specific to the base. Going further, imagine that the faceless corporate structure is allowed to communicate and have a more personal conversation. I’m more inclined to think Get Satisfaction or similar companies will become a common approach to getting this dialog started. Hopefully the folks at Get Satisfaction will soak in their own Palmolive.

Hopefully I can illustrate pictorially with real ISP data what a social network draw on the network resource appears as in terms of flows, peer communication within the user base of a provider and what this might mean in terms of that most social of networking functions dating back several years — Internet peering.

I’m left thinking that many of the companies I’ve been exposed to during SXSW are the electronic equivalent of the Elvis peanut butter mayonnaise banana sandwich that is deep fried. Yes, Elvis was the original Mashup model architect.

• peanut butter is sticky: compelling content that won’t let go
• mayo is smooth: easy access via openID
• banana is sweet: all the other user bees are swarming around
• bread is the gui: prudent user experience elements throughout
• frying makes it addictive: community quirks that brings you back again and again

The notion of broadcast TV with fixed schedules is going to be dead if you don’t enable content to flow from below and let kids be the new wave of public broadcasting. Will adults get it? Not likely. Still, there is something about a show everyone can talk about the next day. Time shifting might not make for the same water cooler discussions. On demand downloads of shows will shift how people rally around the actors, directors, and studios that produce the product.

Teens and access lines are not mixing but mobility will mix and be the baseline for how younger consumers want to be reached and reach out to the world around them — no matter how insular that world might be.

Everyone at SXSW that was trying to download the latest episode of The Wire (which I’ve never seen but I’m aware of this thing called TV that has shows on it and a channel known as HBO) but found that the hospitality approach to the captive portal and/or walled garden for Internet access did not mesh well with extended downloads. Also, the client software (iTunes) doesn’t really expect to have connectivity arrested mid-download. This highlights how out of touch hospitality access is still lagging behind. When you can get a better online experience at an Arby’s than you can at a $450 night Hilton… something is not right.

Related to this, the high speed internet experience is going to be the new standard for expectations. The tiers will justify the symetric desires of the few that need publishing ability. Content creators and personalities will want to push as hard or harder than they pull content today. Ask 1938 Media what it’s like trying to push up an episode on a highly over saturated wireless connection. Okay, don’t ask unless you want to laugh until your sides implode. Note: I’m admittedly slow and had to research back to understand the joke. I’m okay saying I didn’t get it but now… oh man. Comedy GOLD.

Microblogging and the microformat is sms via web with rebroadcasting to all parties that care to see it. This means the service provider SS7 links will feel it if many of your subscriber base follow with SMS updates. Edge IP offloading will have to find its way further into the rural provider chain to take on this load.

VoIP pricing for calls is just a race to zero and kids will see mobile provider features increasingly apply “jump the shark” style mindless approaches to billing or concocted feature plans each passing year.

It will go something like this:

Hey kids! Just enable this code to talk to your friends by inverting your arm into a pretzel and SMS 2234501 and pay for each minute you stand on one leg to get a video pushed up to the website that we control and will delete at random if you don’t continue to pay into us.

The history of online video starting with CU-SeeMe and the requirements back in the early to mid 90’s and timelines that brought us to the Flash enabled interfaces that appeal to webcam standard laptops and desktops using Yahoo! Live or camera phones with unlimited data plans enabled for use with Qik.

Icanhascheezburger and other LOL sites show that no matter how silly it might be… it could be the next big thing[tm].

OpenID and the new relevance for the service provider to not be the proprietary lock in for the consumer will shift expectations of service levels and what the subscriber takes with them when the shift to new providers.

Crowd wisdom (wiki) vs. mob (see elsewhere) vs. insular control by the few (Digg) will evolve as more study is done with these great social experiments in massively connected groups that wade into various pools and experiences that have interactive one to one, one to many, and many to one concepts.

Specifically, I am still reflecting on the impact of a high profile flame out of Lacy and how her celebrity profile might match Ferriss post Today show (bad press = good press?). Point of fact, I walked up to Tim Ferriss after his presentation and said that I had no idea who he was until I saw a YouTube (now deleted?) of Donnie Deutsch spanking some kid on TV. I think Tim said he’s been invited on Donnie’s show now. I don’t know how this relates to strongly regional and localized services but it is still interesting what fame is or what crafts it.

What does this mean for people (kids) that are soaking in Palmolive now?

From the raising web 2.0 enabled kids round table there were some very polarized opinions.

I noted that courseware from MIT and other education on demand initiaves make the brainy kids into self paced marathon runners of the mind. That’s great. Okay, now what about the kids that don’t have Internet access at home or that “have” to work after school?

I don’t have kids but I learned that library systems are the home ec class and shop class of tomorow. I took shop and home economics. We made wood desk weights and rice crispy treats respectively. This has served me well in life.

Is a forced computer literacy vs luddite approach at age 3 a question of communication readiness on the part of the child or another hurdle or enforcment of poor practices? i.e. Tiger Woods might have been born with a putter in his hands… So does this mean computing early equals jwz? Is that good? Scary?

Bringing it back to the concerns of service provider: Are the defaults for the ISP router firewall OS and application an indicator of neglect on the part of the parent or the provider charged with giving a kid friendly service option? And frankly, who defines “kid friendly?”

One pervasive theme is that critical research and pattern recognition and coroboration via secondary sources have unlimited potential for varied aspects of the online and offline world. Kids have to be healthy skeptics. Perhaps parents that forward along notes without reading snopes.com could learn a few things themselves?

Rounding out the areas of concern for the connected childhood is that this is all fine and well for the echo chamber but beware those outside or across the divide — connected is not always the norm and the US has a long way to go towards equal and ready access for all citizens in the great connectivity experiment that is underway.

Thoughts from taking back muni wifi panel:

This was the only softly lit to dim room I found. It was quite nice really.

In general, a common theme was that business models are the issue with wireless initiatives today.

Vos detailed the comparison early on between how everywhere but the US has figured out the way to get this going and to understand cost structures. She was very clear on how structural separation of network elements in the US have to be opened sooner rather than later.

Mac highlighted what Austin WiFi is from the design for political crisis to keeping nodes their own business model no matter how small that model might be. He regarded financial crisis and SBC and the initial threats — not RF studies and technology. Technology works itself out but human agreement an territory is old business turned over each day. His vision of a less invasive “Minority Report” approach to geocoding wifi hot spots and using social profiles to enable targeted advertising was a consistent theme that resonated with the panelists.

Bonewald’s hammer was the free and open social network. She described the lobby for muni wifi that requires heavy networking and bringing a viable business model first and foremost — get the advertising and cooperation with providers in place early and often. She highlighted that tools for the people prop up the community interest — and ultimately bridge gaps that are known and agreed upon or that manifest in the wake of service creation. i.e. did you know you needed it before it was available across the street? To get the jump from “willful political dissidence” to acceptable use is work with the AUP/ToS constraints of the incumbents to enable the user, the community, the project to prosper and raise all ships in the economy.

Mac gave an overview of cities that get it: Montreal used wrt54g instead of PC’s for hot spot creation. Berlin has the best mesh networking but was crippled by patents. This raised the discussion again around how mesh may not jive with AUP/ToS conflict — and again this takes the user into willful political dissidence. Lastly, Barcelona is connecting villages using point to multipoint wireless lan. The goal isn’t to focus solely on Internet — rather the closing of the gap and creation of the connectivity first and foremost.

My only stand up and ask a question of the entire conference was in this session. I wanted to make sure that someone could highlight why community access exclusivity clauses are so important in rural muni environments. You have people come in that want to overbuild and prey upon a market or community — it is up to the people to understand that the road that is built quickly becomes a toll road if they are not paying attention.

End Transmission

One thing I found by using twitter as a tool for taking notes is that I was often taking down condensed wording to fit into 140 characters. I don’t know if this is good or bad but I did manage to write some really bad poetic verse:

A swollen digit on the hand of creativity is marked by the immobile attack of the problem and is rendered a mere blunt instrument of goals

Yep. That’s pretty much how my thumbs felt after the heavy twitter activity of the moments at SXSW.

I can’t wait to stress them out again next year as I defend The Taco Thesis once again.

May 14th is the official deadline for cable modem companies, DSL providers, broadband over powerline, satellite internet companies and some universities to finish wiring up their networks with FBI-friendly surveillance gear, to comply with the FCC’s expanded interpretation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act

source: Wired

For the past 6 months I’ve been doing a lot of talking, travel, and geekercise related to this very topic. CALEA has taken me far and wide. One of the many problems I have with it is the ecosystem of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that preys upon my customer base.   It is a subject I’ve stood in front of phone companies and stated that as a card carrying Libertarian and tax payer that the whole mess just makes me angrier each time I reflect upon it.

On the one hand, it’s “the law” now so you can’t just ignore it. On the other hand, the majority law enforcement wouldn’t know an IP address from a socket wrench.

There are two kinds of broadband CALEA intercepts and both are real time — as “it” happens: Trap and trace, and full content.

Trap and trace is basically this IP (person/machine) talked to this IP (person/machine). It’s like in the movies where they can see the calls happening in real time. This is real time call records for the Interweb. Example: Joe Target is surfing myspace right now! p0 n03s! Lock him up!

Full content is the nightmare scenario everyone chimes in about because it is whatever comes across the wire for this IP (person/machine). It’s like in the movies where they are listening to the calls in real time. Example: Joe Target has a Yahoo! Messenger pounce message set up for a hottie on myspace and Joe is clicking on the hottie profile on myspace right now! p0 n0ez!  Lock him up!

The good news, if there is any, is that mediation is the process by which the provider keeps the law enforcement agency (LEA) at arms reach.  Basically, mediation is accomplished by letting a box or collection of boxes

a) connect up to the physical network taps and/or manage the industry crafted backdoors in routers
b) specify the warrant/court order in question for a specific duration of time for an IP address or other identifier (MAC, ports, etc.)
c) reformat any/all collected data in a format easily digested by another LEA controlled system somewhere else

So, basically, the LEA asks for X at time T for duration Y and this is essentially sent to the LEA in near real time.  The provider does the provisioning for the lawful intercept and the magic mediation platform -send- the LEA what they asked for and only what they asked for in the hopefully narrow definition and scope contained within the authorized court order, again in real time.

That said… some of these boxes fit in a carry on bag.  Very powerful, highly portable… it’s a brave new world.

So, given the egregious abuses of National Security Letters and their chilling effects, I have to wonder if any of this infrastructure for broadband CALEA will be used as intended or if the powers requesting information will simply throw down the “exigent” card.

The “exigent” card? That’s like in the movies where the FBI hero gets to surf through mountains of real time data because the ends justify the means. In practical matters, it means that government is directly coupled to broadband plants and gains information by whatever means necessary.  See also: get out of my way, I’m trying to save the world[tm]! your kung fu is weak!  I will put in my own box and suck from the river of data and find the needle in the haystack!

Most folks have heard of carnivore, echelon, and other wide net applications for collecting data for governments.  My issue with the exigent card is that there is a lot of haystack getting caught up in what should be a narrow scope.  See also the unilateral wet dream monologue scene from “Enemy of the State”.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen government get anything right.  Ever.  In other words, if the frikking RIAA with all their high paid consultants can’t get it right when saying someone at an IP address was X — how will the government when they rely on those same consultants and contractors?

So, my only real fear in any of this is that people will resort to encryption and then the legislators will move focus to private industry that force backdoor keys for everything that eventually get compromised and we move back to private enterprise and organized crime having better tools than even a Dudley Dooright trying to make a difference. 

All the folks I know at FBI (about a dozen or so) are quite data savvy make me feel better they are on our side… in that they know IP is not the end all be all of reality.  Healthy disrespect of computers that do not make mistakes is a hallmark of someone I want thinking about these problems… but CALEA can and does extend as a concept to something a local police office and get involved with… yikes.

And in the end, record keeping and billing systems involve humans.  Things can, do, and will continue to go wrong.  It’s just I’ve heard of Dudley Dooright breaking down the wrong door far too many times.

It’s just that after reading a blog from a friend of mine that lives (reluctantly) in China now, it’s very apparent that we still have it pretty damn good over here.

In summary: What a load of horse shit.

Everything after the Etch A Sketch has been an exercise in escalating support demands. Consider that simply shaking it like a Polaroid picture puts you right back to a pristine operating state.

Loss of productivity from email is symptomatic.

Rethinking how email is used would mean there might be a problem… whether or not email is creating a problem is greatly dependent on the organization and how they are geographically structured, on site interpersonal dynamics, and the chain of command approach to leading by example.

Email can be highly asymmetric with traditional desktop clients. Blackberry and other push type messaging services seek to bring a symmetric flow but, as with any tool, it requires the user to read and comprehend. This assumes that email flows — spam, queuing, and poor MUA design in the UI make a lot of email go unread or buried in the haystack (so-called vacation dread).

Still, some abuses of email features and flow are why email etiquette and guides towards sending better emails should be shared with company members. Oddly enough, this can be done via email. :)

Instant messaging (IM) is often considered by a lot of pundits as state where email will evolve to. However, IM is still at the mercy of presence. Just as with a Blackberry push of email to gain immediacy, the sender has no control over the far end reading and comprehending. They can always walk away from the desktop/laptop. That’s not always a bad thing if they are going to talk with someone but in a crunch period with remote teams, it can be devastating if the walking party is in the critical path.

Voice is immediate symmetric one to one communication (face to face, telepresence, phone call) or immediate one to many mild asymmetric communication (staff meeting, telepresence, conference bridge) if you can reasonable assume the parties on the far end are listening and comprehending. With face to face and staff meetings you get the benefit (hopefully!) of proxemics.

People should use voice more if they are spending too much time in email or finding frustration with IM if they are not part of an email or IM culture oriented company. Sometimes, the use of voice is a cost concern or an availability concern. Most often this revolves around the notion of presence. Emails are fire and forget. So is voice mail — especially in unified messaging scenarios where workers know the far end gets the voicmail as an email attachment.

Real time voice requires a lot more work and, frankly, confrontation. Instant messaging is thought to be a way to gain some idea of presence for the far end of a possible conversation. Of course, if someone isn’t looking at the screen or isn’t near the phone, even the best find me follow me PBX feature won’t help connect parties — mobile phones get turned off and left on the desk or forgotten at home.

FWIW, I think Iotum for Blackberry and other presence engines are a great idea — assuming that like any tool for communication: the other team members have to use it as well or better than you do!

As one peer once told me:

“I look forward to the day when technology allows us to use mobile phones for more than just web, email, SMS, and instant messaging. I envision a future where people are able to use mobile phones for real time voice communications. Here’s to the future!”

AOL’s BYOB uses a tunnel/vpn approach. I wonder where Google could have ever gotten the idea… but the effect is clear:

Off VPN:



$ /usr/sbin/traceroute www.google.com

traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 64.233.161.104

traceroute to www.l.google.com (64.233.161.104), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.984 ms 1.131 ms 1.058 ms

2 10.47.64.1 (10.47.64.1) 6.472 ms 6.259 ms 7.544 ms

3 srp2-0.rlghncg-rtr2.nc.rr.com (24.25.1.100) 8.038 ms 7.542 ms 8.898 ms

4 srp4-0.rlghnca-rtr2.nc.rr.com (24.25.2.146) 8.908 ms 6.702 ms 7.779 ms

5 pos14-0.rlghncrdc-rtr2.nc.rr.com (24.25.0.9) 9.198 ms 10.628 ms 7.281 ms

6 son0-1-1.chrlncsa-rtr6.carolina.rr.com (24.93.64.57) 12.840 ms 12.603 ms 17.141 ms

7 pop1-cha-p1-0.atdn.net (66.185.132.33) 14.996 ms 14.086 ms 13.759 ms

8 bb1-cha-p3-0.atdn.net (66.185.138.64) 17.630 ms 21.680 ms 24.468 ms

9 bb1-atm-p6-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.182) 31.240 ms 21.882 ms 20.845 ms

10 pop2-atm-p0-0.atdn.net (66.185.147.209) 22.502 ms 16.917 ms 17.948 ms

11 google.atdn.net (66.185.147.218) 33.378 ms 53.538 ms 29.753 ms

12 216.239.46.153 (216.239.46.153) 28.788 ms 28.043 ms 216.239.46.157 (216.239.46.157) 30.002 ms

13 66.249.95.125 (66.249.95.125) 30.233 ms 66.249.95.124 (66.249.95.124) 29.099 ms 29.570 ms

14 66.249.95.123 (66.249.95.123) 30.721 ms 29.857 ms 64.233.175.98 (64.233.175.98) 43.885 ms

15 66.249.95.121 (66.249.95.121) 40.912 ms 66.249.95.123 (66.249.95.123) 30.047 ms 29.376 ms

16 216.239.47.156 (216.239.47.156) 37.886 ms 29.755 ms 216.239.48.198 (216.239.48.198) 36.433 ms

17 64.233.161.104 (64.233.161.104) 28.817 ms 30.344 ms 46.271 ms




On VPN:



$ /usr/sbin/traceroute www.google.com

traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 66.102.7.99

traceroute to www.l.google.com (66.102.7.99), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 * * *

2 66.28.250.161 (66.28.250.161) 102.057 ms 99.255 ms 99.763 ms

3 g1-8.core01.sfo01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.250.8.233) 100.255 ms 101.846 ms 100.429 ms

4 p15-0.core02.sfo01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.70) 101.085 ms 99.884 ms 99.678 ms

5 p10-0.core01.sjc03.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.133) 101.786 ms 102.198 ms 101.599 ms

6 google.sjc03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.10.254) 102.646 ms 102.553 ms 101.197 ms

7 66.249.94.2 (66.249.94.2) 175.315 ms 176.190 ms 180.260 ms

8 64.233.174.54 (64.233.174.54) 177.706 ms 176.194 ms 66.249.94.29 (66.249.94.29) 176.665 ms

9 216.239.49.142 (216.239.49.142) 176.362 ms 177.084 ms 216.239.49.146 (216.239.49.146) 176.446 ms

10 66.102.7.99 (66.102.7.99) 175.962 ms 177.078 ms 175.809 ms

So, the drama of my personal cell phone continues. The AT&T phone that became an AT*T Cingular phone has now apparently become a SunCom phone.

Bother.

I have the Nokia 3650. The phone hardware completely rocks. The camera is clear and rather impressionist during certain lighting conditions. It sends photos to Flickr for me. The Bluetooth is awesome and lets syncs with my Mac using iSync flawlessly. I even use the Bluetooth functionality as a modem with my Mac laptop using the AT&T MMode service. What’s not to like?

Originally, I got my phone from Carrie when she moved to Montana. I figured, it was cool hardware and AT&T does not work reliably in Montana. The phone shows 390-1045-boingo-splat instead of the AT&T banner or something like that when I am out there. So, I was planning on going month to month with the service past contract term (Oct 2005) unless I got a wild hair to upgrade he hardware to new hotness or something.

For perspective, I get less than 5 personal calls on this phone in a given month. I’m just that popular.

In reality, most people call my work cell phone which is a Verizon tri-band due to the nature of work being in rural America.

Anyway.

Well, the the AT&T Cingular thing happened. Ok. But everything still worked. Moving right along…

Now, SunCom has purchased the NC market. Gah. They sent a notice that my phone will go dark on July 1. Doh!

If I want to continue service I have to get a new phone since the phone I have from AT&T was not “properly transferred hardware”. So, I called and asked what they would replace it with since they won’t just send a SIM card that I would use to be part of the Borg Collective SunCom.

The nice lady from SunCom said that they would not send a Bluetooth phone with a camera but I would be sent a plain camera phone.

What? The letter was clear that they would send an “equivalent feature” phone.

Ma’am, the Nokia 3650 does indeed have Bluetooth.

I’m sorry sir but the Nokia 3650 does not have Bluetooth.

What?

So, I read from the AT&T original package (yeah, I keep this kinda stuff) and the manuals and the guides detailing how to use the Bluetooth features on the phone.

She said, again, that the Nokia 3650 does not have Bluetooth.

Yes, it does.

No, it doesn’t.

Yes, it does.

I’m sorry, no, it doesn’t. You need a Bluetooth headset for that.

Yes, it does. I’ve been using it. What does a headset have to do with this?

Sir, please hold.

[wait for roughly 20 minutes on hold]

She comes back finally and says that SunCom will be sending me a Motorola V505. It has Bluetooth. I would have asked about the smaller Nokia they carry at the high end but the reviews were mixed on it. Eh.

She repeats that this new hardware will not extend my contract past the term (Oct 2005) and that I will be out of contract and month to month at that time.

Send it. I’ve got a few months to evaluate it with no strings. Cool.

So, this was about an hour of my Saturday that I won’t get back. Not cool.

Oh, and having the on hold terror that is Harry Connick Jr. telling me over and over how wonderful and customer focused they are at SunCom is just plain bunk. Crazy hold times. Oh, and Harry… your acting/pitch skills are more watered down than your latest pop albums. Yeah, that was nasty, but he’s the spokesman now. Harry is far too talented for SunCom and pop albums.

I’ve got a Mac. I have a metric ton of contacts (+10k). One might expect this makes for an elegant and natural fit since there is Address Book for the Mac.

Having lots of contacts should mean you are able to communicate with those contacts. Or, maybe that you want to feel like you are making up for lost time when you were the last kid picked for kickball. In either case, you want it to be a simple matter for keeping these contacts updated. Plaxo is useful for automation of the update process. LinkedIn is useful for the mining of these contacts and the relationships that flow from them. .Mac just works with my Mac. I’ve also got a .Mac email account that can use the iSync managed Address Book I store there. I’ve also got a Gmail account. So, why can’t they all just get along?

Jason Calacanis noted noted the absence of Gmail functionality to export contacts. He goes on to mention his goal is to sync up with LinkedIn. I periodically ping their feature request form to request the same export functionality. Sadly, I can only export from Plaxo to LinkedIn — but not the other way.

So far, I’ve ended up writing a perl script to just strip away LinkedIn contact listings to the format I need. You’ll also recall that export from Orkut was extremely simple — and it is another Google property. Then, I can dump these into Address Book once they are in Plaxo since Plaxo has a vCard export feature that works. At this point, Plaxo is the only thing that seems to want to play well with others.

Well, If you are on my LinkedIn or have access to my Plaxo then you know I try to maintain both. Yes, I’ve got a bluetooth phone that can sync with the Mac via Address Book and iSync. Yes, I’ve got a .Mac account so that I can maintain contacts there. The ultimate would be universal sync of a vCard service or something that gave a central repository like .Mac that you could dip across via API from other services such as LinkedIn and Plaxo that both have different goals but require a database of your contacts. Also, there are some folks that I don’t put in LinkedIn or Plaxo because of the sometimes nebulous stance on privacy that these services might project, infer, exhibit, or evolve.

So, if there was a dip ready service out there it would have to have a few features that no service (I’ve seen) has yet. There would have to be opt in and opt out that could be controlled by the contact. Oh, now that’s a prickly concept. Think of all those “We Care About Your Privacy [tm]” pamphlets that you get in the snail mail regarding how financial service groups sell protect your privacy and personal information. Does that mean for this fictional service — when I add you to my contact list — would you get a copy of my intentions and the privacy policy of the service sent to you with the ability to allow for your inclusion in this service? Or, would it just add you and now I’ve become another attack against your privacy?

If you have used Plaxo for any period of time you know that many email administrators simply block anything and everything that Plaxo tries to send on your behalf. Plaxo lets you handle bounces and some of them have very informative messages from the email administrator (well, their servers) that politely say “pound sand” and “your kind is not welcome here”.

So, Plaxo might want to play well with others, but it does not mean everyone will let their children out to play with them. That makes Plaxo the kid with the really cool bike that other kids want to play with but the parents don’t trust completely.

Consumers are playing the part of a monk watching the beer bubbles coalesce into larger bubbles. Only, today those bubbles are called telecommunications providers. I wonder if we’ll wake up one morning with a massive hangover?

I remember what Tom Selleck promised 11 years ago.

You will? Well, I’m still waiting.

I suppose after MCI/Quest/SBC/AT&T/Verizon/BellSouth/etc… is done coming back together there is a chance. But as these companies slash and burn to right size, I can’t see where the heavy R&D will be coming from to make decade old promises come any closer to reality.

Sure, there are elements of the promises around today. One could argue they are even possible to some degree — but the promise was of the ubiquitous not the proof of concept.

I guess I’ll still be fighting with self check out at the grocery store for a few years more… Oooh… nice innovation…. you get the customer to do the work of a grocery store clerk. That’s a much more personal way of saying your clerk job is obsolete than by having a RFID implementation that spans all major suppliers to the retail sector.

I was listening to TSOT on NPR this morning. This was made possible due to my new early to bed and early to rise experiment. The subject was related to productivity and Internet access in the workplace. There was a lot of anecdotal evidence and people called in to say why they felt the Internet was good or bad for productivity. The real issue, in my mind, is management techniques.

Often, there is management in a company setting and it is monotone. I say monotone to describe a management technique where the manager assumes that everyone is either a) a big boy/girl or b) a complete ninny that requires massive micromanagement. It’s pretty rare, at least in my limited experience, to see a manager that can shift gears.

I’ve been in and around IT for the majority of my career and it clicked with me when a caller described problem solvers and quota workers. Problem solvers are those that figure complex things out that don’t come with a great deal of instructions and are left to figure it out for themselves by a deadline or milestone. Quota workers have a detailed workflow and an expected output over a period of time but with more frequent deadlines. I think that the animosity towards a manager can stem from treating problem solvers as quota workers. This is sometimes described as trying to make the creative put out in a timely fashion. Well, as they (those that are creative) say, you cannot rush inspiration.

So, then there are quota workers that require constant supervision. Or do they? I got the feeling that putting an IT manager on the floor of a blue collar construction or assembly line might be a fish out of water story. Then I started thinking about the rotation programs in larger companies that put wunderkinds on a crash course in all the parts of the business. This lets them do everything from assembling the widgets to sitting in on the top brass meetings about those widgets.

So, back to Internet access. There is a lot of Internet access filtering/proxy/session hijack products and services out there that market themselves as tools to shape employee productivity. I say shape since I am still not convinced the word improve can be used without some amount of marketing lobotomy.

Also, when there is a browser on the desktop, it is probably something default and it just leads to frustration and loss of cycles through having to get past the MSN homepage load each time, then wondering if some people use a bookmark or try to type in http:\ each time the want to go somewhere.

I’ve watched people that have never grown up around the Internet tools. It’s pretty scary to watch. They don’t want to know what is going on with the GUI. This is why phish scams work. It looks right. People click.

All this was going though my mind as the Internet access talk continued on the radio. I kept wondering if someone had considered that Internet access might not be the real issue. Maybe the real issue is that the way people access the Internet is flawed from a productivity standpoint.

As I drove up to the recycling bins (the real reason for my early morning trip), I saw the overflowing massive bin reserved for phone books. Yes, phone books.

All that Internet access, and I wondered why there are still phone books. Perhaps, the Internet access just isn’t as productive as it could be.

I was trying to figure out where cat poop goes. Yes, this is my life.

So, as I live in Raleigh I asked the waste folks (they have email) the question:

Subject: Pet fecal matter in Raleigh garbage?

XXXXX,

I was reviewing the following information on Raleigh-NC.org and was trying to determine what to do with pet fecal matter. The following link was returned titled “Garbage Preparation“.

I see the following under what NOT to put in the garbage:

“Do not put these items in your garbage:

..

..

Loose cat litter or animal waste (disposable diapers and animal litter should be free of fecal matter and enclosed in a plastic bag before placing in the garbage cart)”

So, if I am reading this right, one cannot put fecal matter in the garbage? Or, should I read this as fecal matter and cat litter should be separated?

Thanks,

Jay

I got a response in less than 12 hours…. and apparently, you can put diapers on cats!

Subject: RE: Pet fecal matter in Raleigh garbage?

Fecal matter should be removed from litter (or diapers) and flushed down the toilet where it is properly treated by the sewage plant. Thanks for asking.

I forgot to ask how to dispose of all the blood soaked bandages after putting the diaper on the cat.

Fast forward….

Tonight, as I go through Pet Smart I see this advertised:

“LitterLocker® gives cat lovers an odorless, hygienic, easy way to dispose of waste. Pet owners simply scoop and sift clumps in a regular litter box using the litter scoop included with the unit, open the lid and discard the waste in the LitterLocker® container.”

So, now I am wondering if people are secretly buying these, and discarding pet waste in their regular garbage collection in Raleigh and thereby possibly breaking the law?

Here’s video footage that could be supplied to the authorities:

It also looks like there is an automated machine for breaking the law as well!

Where’s 20/20 when you need them?

I’d like to see a skit on SNL about the “Who Am I Kidding” calling plan from Verizon.

Video: Urban man age 25-35. Bad hair. Frumpy. Bad choice of clothing. Sitting on bus stop bench in city. Checking his cell phone and seeing an empty list when selecting “Received Calls”.

Voice over: You’ve got a great cell phone. It takes pictures. Tons of games. It even plays soundtrack to Lord of the Rings when you get the weather report update. You even get unlimited minutes for people that call you and unlimited minutes to call anyone nationwide.

Video: Man looks into camera, has a big grin, then nods affirmatively and makes a “yeah, I’m cool” face.

Voice over: But the bill is.. well, hard to justify given your social life. That’s why Verizon is now offering the “Who Am I Kidding Plan”. Sure, you have a cell phone, but let’s be realistic. Nobody calls you. Really. We mean it. Nobody calls you.

Video: Man face sinks into a depressing expression and kind of nods a sheepish affirmation.

Voice over: And most likely, nobody ever will. You see, your just not popular. In fact, we know from our own call analysis that people don’t even answer you calls. That’s right. They go straight to their voice mail. We’re excited to offer this calling plan to you and others like you. We’ll even make it so you don’t have to wait for the other person you call to let it ring into their voice mail. We’ll send your calls straight there. You’ll feel better knowing your message was left and you didn’t have to put the person you called on the spot. Nobody likes a pest and with the “Who Am I Kidding Plan” you won’t be!

Video: Man looks into camera, has a big grin, then nods affirmatively and makes a “maybe I am cool” face then a “hey, wait a minute…” face

Voice over: That’s right! And, with our nationwide all digital network your voice mails will be crystal clear when they forward through it or don’t hit delete quickly enough to avoid hearing it!

Video: The man looks up just as the Verizon “Can you hear me now?” guy is walking by the bench. The man is visibly excited and tries to make eye contact but the Verizon guy just acts like he didn’t see him and rushes to put his cell phone to his ear (upside down) to perpetrate like he is taking an important call as he shuffles away from the man quickly. Man makes face as if to say, “Yeah, hey no problem, your busy, I’ll catch you later” as his face sinks back into the same depressing expression.

Voice over: Verizon. We never stop working for you. Even if nobody cares if you exist.

From: Jay Cuthrell
To: All Scient Global
Cc: jay@cuthrell.com
Sent: 7/8/02 7:46 PM
Subject: And for my next trick... (farewell everyone)

Scient family,

3 years ago I joined a company called iXL. In doing so, I joined a small growing office in Raleigh that connected to a larger office in Charlotte that connected to the mothership that would rule the Internet and/or Earth.

:)

Fast forward to today and I am the last person from what was the Carolinas. I’ve been working out of the NC office (see also: Jay’s House) for over a year now. That’s meant… travel!!! :)

What a ride. Traveling for client projects has allowed me to experience:

- Dry ribs and routers in Memphis
- Flat beer and Red Hat Linux in RTP
- Mongolian BBQ and Solaris in Charlotte
- Free cheese and Geeks @ the Beach in Miami
- Tuna steaks and J2EE vaporware in Denver
- Rick James impersonators and SQL*Server issues in Columbus
- Yak's brain and S-MIME wizardry in Israel
- Gnats and corporate plane ride "strategery" with CIO's in Florida
- Free Mexican buffet and HP Tech Symposium I in San Jose
- Carson's BBQ and HP-UX in Chicago
- A single male's Valentines Day and VoIP in NYC
- Harold's Deli and Weblogic in NJ
- Girly man BBQ ;-) and working with gurus in Dallas
- Free steak dinner and the HP Tech Symposium II in Tampa
- Deja vu and DLT Robot autoloaders in Richmond
- Enjoying Rio and PKI framework in Brazil
- Pad Thai and Intel Online Services (oops) in DC

Today is my last day with Scient. It’s been extremely real — a truly amazing experience that I will always cherish. One thing is for certain, I’ve been very well fed.

Good luck, stay in touch, and let me know if you ever visit Raleigh!

I’ll take you to Coopers for some -real- vinegar base BBQ. Vegetarians can enjoy the hush puppies and slaw. At the very least we can pass out from drinking obscenely sweet tea.

Best regards,

Jay

P.S. I’m joining a gym tomorrow ;-)

--
Jay Cuthrell
Infrastructure Architect
Scient ®: Results come from experience™
jcuthrell@scient.com   www.scient.com

From the US Airways mailing lists for frequent flyers:

To ensure the safety and security of airline passengers, heightened security measures have been implemented at airports. As you plan your trip, please keep the following in mind:

- No knives of any size, or made from any material, are permitted on flights.

Greetings from Tel Aviv. My body says it is noon. Everyone else here says it is 7 hours later.

The flight sucked so much it isn’t funny. First, all my connects are late… then I get to the ticketing counter and they tell me they are overbooked and since I am late to check in they gave away my seat.

I didth mucheth protesting and turned on the charm. Okay, so I asked a manager for help ;) many many many hours later I am off the ground at JFK (delays) and headed to Tel Aviv. Boy, that trans atlantic food just gets better and better every time.

I have taken pics with my old camera since I couldn’t bear losing the Nikon to random mishap. My room is facing the sea. The sunset tonight was simply gorgeous. This place reminds me so much of Huntington Beach. The only difference is that everyone talks Hebrew and the buildings look like post-shell shock era.

Oh, I am doing this from a magic port in the hotel room of another person here with me in the same hotel. I say magic because you dial out and it just “knows“. You don’t change any settings for your regular dialup. Freaky. Here is the back to my home page:

Tracing route to fudge.org [216.92.49.131] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 120 ms 121 ms 115 ms fr-c46079.bezeqint.net [212.179.46.79]
2 114 ms 120 ms 130 ms fr-c46001.bezeqint.net [212.179.46.1]
3 154 ms 164 ms 165 ms 10.20.6.153
4 189 ms 153 ms 170 ms gw0.bezeqint.net [192.115.106.254]
5 998 ms 1015 ms 1004 ms if-9-0-2.bb6.NewYork.Teleglobe.net [207.45.199.145]
6 838 ms 911 ms 866 ms if-4-0-0.bb2.NewYork.Teleglobe.net [207.45.221.100]
7 983 ms 1059 ms 1009 ms sl-gw16-pen-4-0-T3.sprintlink.net [144.228.181.9]
8 1052 ms 1097 ms 1031 ms sl-bb12-pen-1-1.sprintlink.net [144.232.5.93]
9 1097 ms 1059 ms 992 ms sl-bb13-pen-9-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.5.234]
10 1115 ms 1058 ms 1114 ms sl-bb11-rly-7-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.242]
11 1074 ms 1054 ms 1086 ms sl-gw8-rly-4-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.7.246]
12 1047 ms 946 ms * sl-pairnet-1-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.190.142]
13 1019 ms 982 ms 1004 ms 192.168.1.6
14 1090 ms 1090 ms 1032 ms fudge.org [216.92.49.131]

Time to find good local food and chill. :)

People often ask me “why qthrul? why fudge?”

Well, my last name has been slaughtered by many people in an attempt to master the correct pronunciation which is Fooonafoonapingere.. okay maybe not.. it is like the word qthrul reads… Q – Thrul

as a result cooterell, cuthrill (try living up to this one) cutterell coochie cooter and a slew of other such bastardizations have come into being since my last name isn’t all that common… well, until I got online and search engines went to work…

okay now for fudge… yes I know… kinda weird for a nickname or even a login name or whatever… well it all started with MUDs (actually chatters) based back in the days of MegaDiner when boxes were things one would telnet to… remember those days? (try this with NT4.0 for real fun)

Anyhow, I chose the nick “fudge” since I am sinfully sweet and rich.. okay maybe not.. but I am an engineer and most good engineering involves some sorta “fudge” factor… so now you know… I am Jay “something witty inserted here” Cooterell, Inc. and my home is fudge.

Oh, the Jay “something witty inserted here” Cooterell, Inc. comes from my USENET posts… I try to always sign off with it…

And I am fudge as well… you getting all this?

if you know me at all online you know I detest single periods… ellipsis is my tool of flow and I use it quite liberally

So, welcome to my HTML-ized world of controlled image leaching that I call my home page…

there are a few things about me… pics of me and others I know, love, and/or happened to be nearby when a camera was handy… my random thoughts that are even more randomly added to… some nifty art stuff that considering I am not an artist I am kinda proud of… actually I do glean your IP or hostname so… and links to those I know, love, and/or think are cool enough to justify a link in this massively threaded world that HTTP makes possible… so far we have come from the days of Mosaic and Lynx.

If you are from N.C. please note that I am from North Carolina and I always like to hear from people that have been here or left here screaming.

If you use ICQ or Mirabilis I am 1351835 at work and 4663668 at home. On AIM or AOL Instant Messenger or Oscar for the ole school types I am on as qthrul…

If you are on CU-SeeMe much look for me.
If you are on iVisit don’t be offended if you get a “Busy Now”.
Yes, I am Fudge on there too…
On IRC you might find me… or not since I never got sucked into that scene.

If you don’t see me it is because I am still there only hiding from you so that I can finish knitting you a sweater.