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links for 2007-06-21

Posted on by charlie
Strategy/The Narrative

Bad mood makes me cynical on services

Posted on by charlie

Today has been one of those days where a few of my service providers failed me.

But, one, which I am not particularly prone to use, just rubbed me the wrong way, considering the tone of the day.

LinkedIn sent me this email telling me that there were a ton of folk ‘I know’ that I haven’t connected to (see below).

I work for a large company and cannot possible ‘know’ everyone. Why does LinkedIn assume that someone who worked or works at the same place as I is a colleague I want to link up with or even ‘know’? And what’s with trying to connect me with some random person who worked at a place I worked at a long time ago?

And this totally scares me. I don’t want to be an ingratiating service provider, with a hollow ‘Namaste, Charlie’ or other saccharine baloney. How does one balance the intelligence and politeness of a butler (or a puppy) without being overly courteous?

Sigh.

Need to get a refresher from Tom Armitage.

My note from LinkedIn:

People you know are not connected to you…

50 people from Nokia

41 people from Nokia Multimedia

1 person from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Thousands of professionals join LinkedIn every day, including people you’ve worked with in the past. Follow the links above to see who’s joined and get reconnected with colleagues now.

The Narrative

Social networks repeat themselves or collapse upon themselves like some supernova…

Posted on by charlie

At Loïc’s confab back in Dec, I met Kevin Slavin from Area/Code.

Really nice guy. Clever, too.

Well, he added me to his Twitter list and I was pleased, since he was always on my mind.

Now, it looks like I we might do something together. Because of that, he now invited me to Dopplr (from Matt Jones and Matt Biddulph) so that we could make sure we hook up when our travel lines cross (we travel all too much, so it’s a pain in the tusch to always try and coordinate).

I signed up, futzed around, started adding some trips. Then I decided to just see who’s on Kevin’s fellow traveller’s list.

I think I knew personally a good number of them.

Thinking back to the number of folks I knew at reboot 9 (many on Kevin’s list, too), I think I’m linked somehow to this loose but stable network of people and whenever I pick up one thread, a bunch of others I know about show up.

Kinda funny.

I’m glad I know these folks. For sure they make me think (among other things). I highly respect the cool things they do. I am tickled pink that they include me, too.

Thanks.

Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative/Tips & Tricks

The veil between Web and Desktop becomes even less defined.

Posted on by charlie

I don’t know when it was launched, but I am sure all of you do.

One of the biggest downsides of going completely online with all these rich internet apps was that when you were not connected – a fair chance these days – then you were unable to do anything with your fancy rich internet app: no catching up with your email, no working on a document, no messing with your spreadsheet, no updating or accessing your calendar.

Of course, I expected there to be a day when the internet-only folks realized that they needed an offline version of their popular apps. Our team here at least understands that it’s not an either-or proposition, but that there is continuum between full Web app to various mixtures of internet and desktop to some full desktop app. The internet is the network behind it all, but various degrees of local storage can do wonders.*

I’m gonna install it as soon as I have the time.

Link: Google Gears (BETA):

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs

  • Store and serve application resources locally
  • Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
  • Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

*Heh, this seems to be recapitulating the whole transition from dummy terminal to networked desktop computing.