November 3, 2007

  • Cabin Fever Ramblings


    Since I’m still layed up with a sprained ankle, I don’t have much interesting to share today.  I’m getting cabin fever, so hopefully I’ll be able to at least walk around to go to a movie or something tomorrow.  In the meantime, here are some random things I’ve been thinking about.



    I was just looking through all of the emails I got about my fire photos last week, and it made me realize how much I love Gmail.  The fact that all 37 messages are grouped in one “conversation” (email), is really quite brilliant.  I’m not sure why everyone hasn’t made the switch.



    At any rate, just because the fires aren’t the #1 news story any more, doesn’t mean they aren’t still affecting thousands of people.  I got this email yesterday from a business associate.  Very sad.

    Thank you for your emails, phone calls and support.  It is difficult to reply to each and every call and email, so I will try to summarize this email as an update to everyone in my address book. 

    In a nutshell, our home is still standing, however, the interior is 50% destroyed and 24 of our near by neighbor’s houses are burned to the ground.  My next door neighbor whom you may know of – David Justice (x-Atlanta Brave) home is burned down completely.  We received the call at 4am on Monday morning to evacuate with only 5 minutes before the fires hit.  He and his 5 kids had to leave with the clothes on their backs as we did.  All his baseball cards, gloves and memories (including his golden glove World Series glove) were all burned down.  He has no tangible memories to remember his career, along with many of our other neighbors.  In this regard, we consider ourselves blessed.

    Our home is being repaired; however, the view of our burned neighborhood and half our belongings destroyed is too much for my wife and daughter to bear.  The ash material that is in our home (smoke and ash 1/4 thick on everything) will never be completely removed from the house nor our belongings.  This material is serious cancer causing material made up of many chemicals (not to mention our neighbor’s homes and belongings) and the smell is terrible inside and outside the home. 

    Therefore, we have decided not to return to our house and are looking for alternate housing.  With over 500 homes burned down in a 5 mile radius, rentals are scarce.  For now, we are living in a local hotel with moderate accommodations and have a very good insurance policy covering the costs.  We do not need money, food or anything as we have everyone we would ever need – our family.  All we are asking our friends and associates is to continue to pray for those who have nothing left and or make donations to the Red Cross.  My family is blessed with our lives and the material things do not matter.  We are helping our friends and family who lost more than what we lost.  By us giving to those who are in need, gives us relief.

    My daughter’s good friend lost his parents in the fire.  If you heard on the news, this was the couple that was found burned beyond recognition in their garage as the fires moved so fast (100+ mph winds) and they couldn’t get out in time.  Their neighbors swam in their swimming pool for 3 hours until the fires swept completely through their home.  They were lucky to make it through alive.  Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Bains did not make it.

    We are fighters and our faith in God will get us through these difficult times.  Thank you for your support.  In then end, we will be victorious and we will get back some normalcy in our lives.  Thank you all for your offers of help, we truly appreciate it.

    Social Networking Commentary of the day:



    Speaking of Google, not everyone is a fan.  Google recently announced its new Open Social technology, which allows common APIs for building social applications across many websites.  This is exactly what Facebook already does, except what they do is proprietary, not open.  This is the next logical extension of the Internet.  There are pros and cons though, as detailed by Ted Rheingold of Dogster.

    OpenSocial will be very beneficial. Here are 10 reasons why.

    1. Its de facto purpose is to be a universally functional data sharingstructure, and its de real purpose is to be so good that Facebook andproprietary platforms do not inherit the web. These goals are verywell-aligned and will be difficult to pervert.
    2. OpenSocial is so well-backed (Google, MySpace, Bebo, Six Apart,Hi5, LinkedIn, etc.) it cannot be ignored. Yet, it’s so well backed asingle party, not even Google, will be able to control its growth andpurpose.
    3. It will stave off the Balkanization of the web into platforms,which means we as an industry may only need to develop for 3-5 majorplatforms (including mobile) vs. dozens.
    4. APIs may all use friendly XML markup, but not all APIs are thesame. Hardly. Right now the situation with APIs could be compared toRomance languages. They use the same alphabet, but all the words aredifferent. OpenSocial APIs will be akin to using the same alphabet and the same words.
    5. The ‘platform’ of OpenSocial is closer to the middle of theinternet, where business, open standards, and internet experimentationmeet, not off within one compound that offers in-and-out privileges.
    6. It will quickly ossify the universal data encapsulation of thesocial graph. (I always liked Mark Z’s term ’social graph.’) Friendlists, event feeds, public calendars, personal profile values, etc.,etc. should, in reality, all be highly accessible yet with highlyrespected and standardized privacy settings so users have completecontrol of what they share with whom. OpenSocial will hasten theformalizing of these data structures much faster than 25 rivalentities.
    7. Since its charter is so firmly open, even if, for example, Googlemakes quick hooks that allow for Google CheckOut or AdSense usage(which it absolutely should) those hooks will be equally easy forPayPal, Amazon, Yahoo, Lookery (what up Scott ;), etc. to use as well.They will be open to all.
    8. Everyone—App makers, social networks, everyday people—will be ableto get the most out of everything the whole system can collectivelyoffer. Facebook showed the potential of formalizing the social graph.OpenSocial, with Facebook, will get it to escape velocity.
    9. It will challenge the excellent Facebook platform, and any otherplatform provider, to make its offering the best it can be, which willthen force the OpenSocial platform to be as good as it can be. Real,emotional public challenge for superiority is good in technology.
    10. The days of screen-scraping-as-an-API need to end. Storing people’spasswords for other services is digital upskirting and fosters bad userhabits. Standards will make the data open faster.

    Here are 3 reasons why OpenSocial will be problematic.

    1. Security will be up to the container provider (i.e., the socialnetwork), which means if it is not vigilant, slippery tentacles ofnefariousness may be able to wiggle past them in all types of new andunforeseen ways.
    2. As open as it will likely be, Google will be able to take advantageof its central role. Google currently has so much information alreadyon users and their actions, each new subset makes it all more valuableand all the harder to not exploit. So what seems like ether data to thesmall nodes most all of us are, becomes meaningful (and lucrative) whenviewed at Google-scale.
    3. The inexorable extensibility of its charter may make it atroublesome beast in five-plus years’ time as online sociality may growin ways far deeper then we can currently grasp. Five years ago the termSocial Network hardly existed, same with syndicated blog feed, friendnews, proximity aware, etc. Things may be forced opened that shouldremain closed.

    To get yourself up-to-speed quickly on this very new reality, read entries on OpenSocial by Marc Andreessen, Dave McClure and Anil Dash.

    What I hope this will eventually accomplish is the ability for users with one central web identity (Xanga for example) to share/manage of all my web apps in one place.  Be able to display my Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Picasa, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. all from my Xanga.  Wouldn’t that make life simple?  I’m sure that Google thinks so, though I doubt the others do.

    Some of this stuff is getting a bit ostentatious though.  Twitter, is being called the next “killer app”, and all it does is basically what Xanga’s pulse feature (and Google’s own Jaiku) does today.  While micro-blogging within social networks does have definite potential, I don’t think we’re there yet.  Placeshout, is showing some potential, but I think this concept can be extended much further.

    Ridiculous Windows Vista message of the day:



    I got this while copying a DVD to my hard drive today.  Good thing my ankle is sprained, as I guess I’ll be here a while!  125 years, 3 months and 3 hours to be exact.  LOL 

    Outsourcing Video of the day:

    Seth sent me this pretty funny video about outsourcing.  All in good fun. 



    Space Station Photo of the day:

    Here’s a picture of the International Space Station that my Dad took the other night:



    Leona Lewis Video of the day:

    Leona’s first single is outselling the rest of the Top 5 singles in Great Britain put together!  Check it out:

     

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