ABCEDmindedness

Election Newspapers

2008-11-07T12:41:00.004-05:00

With the Washington Post and other newspapers continuing to sell Election Newspapers I am again reminded of JFK and RFK. Just as people are buying these images of Obama, so people acquired photos of these two heroes and displayed them in their homes. Our new President Elect restores that hope for not only recent generations but for those hopeful for a RFK Presidency.

The Whole World Is Watching - Obama Victory Means To Me

2008-11-05T06:51:00.007-05:00

"The Whole World Is Watching, The Whole World Is Watching"

Our country has moved forward, has taken a huge step forward.

Forty years ago in Grant Park a generation chanted "The Whole World Is Watching". This was after the assassination of President John Kennedy. After the assassination of Martin Luther King. And the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the likely Democratic candidate. Forty years ago the hope of a new generation was put down in Grant Park under the stick of the Chicago Police and Mayor Daley.

It has taken a generation to move beyond the losses of those assassinations. It took Barack Obama to bring back that hope that millions saw with RFK. It has taken a person from a new generation to move us politically beyond those scars.

This is not an us versus them or any other competition. Not good versus evil. This is beyond a zero sum game that we've seen in past elections. We will be asked to sacrifice, to accept the compromise of politics, and to change our behavior.

Last night the whole world watched Grant Park in Chicago and saw some of the best of America. I'm a proud American today.

Replay

2008-08-20T22:03:00.002-04:00

I heard this review and I'm now reading Replay. It is as good as the review suggests. Maybe better. ... but what if an author wrote it today so 1988 is 2008?

Sproutcore

2008-06-24T09:17:00.004-04:00

Sproutcore may be just the framework I've been waiting for. It was always pretty clear that the application should be written in JavaScript and the server should serve data. With recent progress with REST, JSON and now Sproutcore, it looks like we are there. It might take the Sproutcore community a year or so to push get some "maturity" on this. But given the activity on the mailing list and wiki, it may take considerably less. And remember, this is not something brand new; it has take a couple of years to get to this point. Have a look yourself.

Mark Warner site

2008-05-08T10:39:00.001-04:00

This is a good example of how not all the content is within a web site: Mark Warner for Senate.

Age gets to abcedmindedness, sorta

2008-05-02T23:23:00.002-04:00

New York Times article about boomers wanting mind exercises. Anyone ever thing that reading (ABCED) has anything to do with it?

Breakfast with Jeff Pulver

2008-04-30T05:26:00.004-04:00

I don't know Jeff Pulver and I don't know if I'll even meet him, but I'll try to meet and tag a bunch of people at his DC breakfast. Found out about the event by reading his blog post about startup funding.

Ruby as Enterprise Language

2008-03-25T09:09:00.000-04:00

I'm now convinced that Ruby should be the language of choice for any enterprise. The biggest benefit is that every IT person can help every other IT person when they have a question. Sysadmins can talk to developers who can talk to qa people. New companies are starting this way. Legacy companies will follow.

Chumby for Christmas

2007-12-25T14:24:00.001-05:00

Juno and Rembrandt

2007-12-10T04:02:00.000-05:00

With the attention on the Juno movie, all things Juno are getting noticed. One not in the Wikipedia page about Juno is Rembrandt's famous painting Juno.

Diablo Cody's screenplay Juno

2007-12-06T12:48:00.000-05:00

My daughter's name is Juno. We heard about the movie Juno shortly after the birth of her son Kyle. Diablo Cody wrote the screenplay and Jason Reitman directed. Life is now fiction on the screen. I'm not sure how my Juno will like the Juno movie. Unintended pregnancies are difficult.

Voice of experience on Open Social

2007-10-31T21:27:00.000-04:00

Dave Winer is the voice of experience on Open Social. There is something evil about Google leading the charge against Facebook. It reminds me of MicroSoft coming out with PowerPoint or Internet Explorer. In my opinion, Google can take a big hit on this one. Don't get me wrong, I like standards. Because of my experience, I'm more and more doubtful of Google as they dominate more and more.

Build a House

2007-10-18T05:48:00.000-04:00

How is this for a house? Only $23,650

Screencasts meets Zlides and RSS

2007-10-09T04:36:00.000-04:00

I'm working on yet another presentation. I'm having trouble getting it written because I really don't have the right tools.

Screencasts are the greatest way take an presentation and make it available on the web. Just making your PowerPoint available does not cut it. Sometimes people read their PowerPoint stack as their presentation, but then you have a terrible presentation.

Also, most of my presentations talk about the web and web sites. I'm sick and tired of screen capturing into PowerPoint. Besides, think about the workflow. Go to web site, screen capture, paste into PowerPoint, convert PowerPoint to web, post on web. This is not very efficient and makes for a terrible presentation if you have to cut away from your PowerPoint to you browser.

So I was thinking more about Zlides.com and how to make a better presentation. The basic premise of Zlides is that the presentation is a RSS feeds. That is the elegant design.

But Zlides as it currently exists depends on creating the content within Zlides. I think I have a way to incorporate an demo within Zlides. So for example, the presentation would go: Zlide one, Zlide two, http://www.abcedmindedness.com, Zlide four. In other words, the third zlide would not be content from zlides.com but rather a redirect to a website's page. The problem is that the zlide's player was meant to be a single page web application and I would need a new approach.

What got me thinking about all of this was the tabs in Firefox. Why not load up the presentation in Firefox where each "slide" was a different tab. Since the presentation is an RSS feed, you could "subscribe" to the presentation as a "Live Bookmark". Then you can "Open All Tabs" to load all of the "slides" including the demo web pages into your browser. Hit F11 and then tab through your presentation live.

Now take your presentation and use your favorite screencasting software. With very little effort you now have a screencast of your presentation which is much more effective than putting the PowerPoints online.

Now to make this work.

Frameworks have it wrong?

2007-09-26T09:35:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning to think that programming frameworks like Rails and Struts have it all wrong. It started with looking at how they do Ajax/JavaScript. Agile and Getting Real says to create the interface first. Frameworks are not about interface. Still thinking.

Dream Car

2007-09-13T00:53:00.000-04:00

My dream has nothing to do with a car. Are two words when put together always an ad pitch?

Social Bookmarking Video

2007-08-22T08:54:00.000-04:00

This is a great explanation of how to get started using del.icio.us.

Flyod

2007-08-17T10:57:00.000-04:00

Sara Corbett's article about Floyd Landis, '06 winner of the Tour de France, describes the purgatory of awaiting a verdict. Smartly she uses the phrase "suspicious imbalance in his body's testosterone" to describe the drug test results that started Landis' trouble. This is far more accurate than almost any other reporting. Even if the verdict is in his favor, the only redemption for Landis may be another shot at the Tour de France.

Figleaf presents Adobe ColdFusion 8

2007-08-01T07:42:00.000-04:00

Fig Leaf Software had the Tim Buntel, senior product marketing manager from Adobe in DC yesterday to present the latest and greatest version of ColdFusion. With version 8, ColdFusion still maintains a place at the table for Web Development. Actually, calling our work web development is misleading because we are really developing internet applications for a wider variety of formats and devices. For example, it is now possible to create an application that is entirely pdf based. I hadn't thought of pdf as Web 2.0 (an Adobe did make this claim). The presentation yesterday made it clear that when looking at this wider scope of application, especially for the enterprise, ColdFusion not only is at the table but elbowing a few others to take a more prominent place. Since Allaire, the product has now fully transitioned from a cutting edge, inexpensive, solo web programming tool to an enterprise application with support that works with the enterprise backend. So thanks to Fig Leaf folks for keeping us update on ColdFusion and Adobe.

microformats and Firefox Operator

2007-07-28T05:38:00.000-04:00

Just installed a great new plugin for Firefox called Operator and I highly recommend it. It will let you view and export microformats. I'm incorporating the hcard into greatuncle.com.

Jared Diamond on Colbert

2007-07-19T05:42:00.000-04:00

I've recently been reading Jared Diamond's books. These are the "missing" history books that I wish I had in high school. If you have ever considered picking up one of his books, I can highly recommend both Collapse and the Third Chimpanzee. Next I will be reading Gun, Germs and Steel.

For now, Collapse is one of the ten most influential books I have ever read.

Open House Crank

2007-07-09T01:17:00.000-04:00

Open houses are a game. People walk in and they are watched because so few are serious buyers. And it must be boring for agents sitting in a house for 3 hours when you'd rather be with your family and you know the odds to getting a buyer a slim. But too many real estate agents give up too early and lose focus. Even though I'm in a T-shirt and bike shorts I have the money to buy this house! I'm getting tired of your attitude and your commission!

Renee Eats Ice Cream

2007-07-08T15:11:00.000-04:00

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 Best and Worst Crank

2007-07-02T04:13:00.000-04:00

Tim-Berners Lee started it. He said a list of links is content.
PowerPoint promoted the a. idea b. concept c. meme
Yahoo started with lists and a Google list is common as bread
Digg.com is just full of 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 Best and Worst content
HTMLers love lists and dl, ol, ul and li
CSSers love to distort lists into navigation or calendars or read A List Apart
CNet is video podcasting even to TiVo, the top 5 or 10 lists every 7 days
NY Times and WP love to tell you about the most read, emailed or blogged lists
Keith Olbermann even delivers news via the Countdown list of stories
Are we so 2 dimensional that a top 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 list is how we communicate 2 each other?

Headline Writers Crank

2007-07-01T08:53:00.000-04:00

NY Times posted an article today with a headline of "Can She Turn Yahoo Into, Well, Google?" I'll ignore the question about why Yahoo would want to be Google which Susan Decker addressed previously: "We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google"(see Clickety Clack).

Many times we forget that that person who writes the story does not write the headline. So no shame on Miguel Helft, but the headline is awful bordering on disgusting. Can we not do better in this age when most college graduates are women? Would the headline write had written "Can He Turn ...".