crankygeeks

John C. Dvorak - the thoughtful, irritatingly prescient columnist from PC Magazine has started a new video site - can I call it a vlog? - not technically, I suppose. Anyway, it's a great way to keep across new trends and social issues related to ICT. JD gets a pretty knowledgeable crew together for each show. I'm in - and it's free.

crankygeeks
Today's Guests:

Sebastian Rupley – West Coast Editor, PC Magazine

Peter Galli- Senior Editor, eWeek

David Spark – Host of ‘The Communications Insider’



The Topics:

CeBIT... Dvorak dissects the massive trade show hosted in Germany.
Origami: More powerful than a PDA, smaller than a laptop Who's gonna buy it?

RFID Chip Infection: Nothing new here, or yet another thing to worry about?

Web 2.0... is Web 3.0 here already?

I, Nanobot

Alan H. Goldstein writes a compelling plea to look at what we are experimenting with when we don't yet understand what we are doing or risking. The prose is a little off-putting but the article is worth perservering with. Nono biology is the new ICT.

Salon.com Technology | I, Nanobot: "Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier -- creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready." .............

"Quick. What's the difference between artificial life and synthetic biology? Don't know? Neither does anyone else, but that isn't stopping nanobiotechnology researchers from building them -- or it, or that, or whatever. To stay up to speed, there is always Artificial Life, the official journal of the International Society of Artificial Life. According to the editors, the humble mission of the journal "is [to investigate] the scientific, engineering, philosophical, and social issues involved in our rapidly increasing technological ability to synthesize life-like behaviors from scratch in computers, machines, molecules, and other alternative media." Whoa!"

Geotagging photos

Synchronise clocks on your GPS and your camera so that you can match photos to location by time. To place on web:
Solutions from PC Magazine: Location, Location, Location: "users of the Flickr photo-sharing site can also make use of extensive user-contributed scripts available in the Geotagging group ( http://flickr.com/groups/94823070@N00 ) to tag their images for use with either the aptly named Geobloggers site ( www.geobloggers.com ) or Google Maps."

Apply the Snark Rasp to the sharp corners of your writing

Why would I link to a Literary Agent site? Especially one that is described as "In which Miss Snark vents her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushes them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark.". Because Miss Snark provides brutally honest and therefore immensely valuable insights into the world of writing. In this archive Miss Snark runs her "crapometer" over 101 synopses submitted by brave authors for comments.

The blog has created arguably the most incisive collection of accessible, critical but uplifting analyses of writing that I am aware of. Although the focus is on fiction, reading the whole blog will show examples to help almost any form of writing. It is now so large that reading the blog takes a determined effort, but the content provided by so many contributors and the knowledgeable, dry wit (even drier than her Gin) creates a compelling read. If you are serious about your writing - even report writing - then read this blog. Now.

Thought for the Day: Design and Products

We've had a number of comments about the cumbersome name of the Institute of Government Business Analysis and Process reengineering. Quite valid too. "IGBAPR" doesn't roll off the tongue easily. But the reason underneath this is our concern that the IT discipline and the Business discipline must work together if the outcome is to be successful. BA's that just automate the existing process do no-one any favours. That's why I've linked to this entry:

ryskamp.org | brain | Design and Products

"Thought for the day: It’s not hard to create good designs; it’s hard to create well-designed products.

The difference? Any industrial design student can create a beautiful design, but to become real products, a design has to make it through a company’s entire product creation chain. Companies that make this process easier (read: Google), or have champions/dictators to force things through (read: Apple/Steve Jobs), will end up with better-designed products.

Good design depends as much on business process as it does on designers."

Well... how true. It applies to all our ICT projects. Ultimately they almost all relate to business processes.

The dot com domain allocated with price hike provisions

Hot Points – A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons

Something that will affect us all has been noticed by Godaddy.com. They've said:
"
Go Daddy opposes ICANN-VeriSign agreement

Yesterday, February 28, ICANN announced that its Board of Directors met and approved the pending deal with VeriSign for the .COM registry. The agreement will let VeriSign raise registration fees by 7% annually in four of the next six years. It will also give VeriSign control of the .COM registry indefinitely, as it extends VeriSign's "presumptive renewal" right when this agreement ends in 2012."

If you are a US citizen you may be able to have a say before final ratification. Go to Bob's blog to read more.