Daddy, did they have chat rooms when you were a kid?

My 12 (going on 19) year old daughter asked me this amazing question over the dinner table last night.  Putting aside the rather worrying undercurrent for any parent, it meant I launched in to an impromptu history lesson of computing.  I explained to her that most of what she understands as the Internet has really only developed in to the public phenomenon that it now is during her own lifetime.  I told her that the closest I got to a computer when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s was in one of my science fiction books.  I didn't tell her that my first contact with a computer was at University in the 70s typing 80 column cards on an IBM 029 card punch - that would make me sound like a dinosaur rather than the cool Dad I try to be.  I did tell her that in the late 70s and early 80s when my, then, employer (IBM) developed a company wide e-mail system we found it fantastically useful, but didn't seem to mind that we couldn't use it to communicate with anyone in the outside world.  I remember, in 1986, cancelling my order for an Amstrad PC because I was fed up with waiting for it, and buying an IBM PC for myself instead for around £3,000 (including the printer) - it sounds such a ridiculously vast sum of money if you take in to account the value of the pound in your pocket back then.

It seems amazing that Tim Berners-Lee only came up with the term World Wide Web and developed the first browser around 1990. 

During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology. Tim proposes 'World-Wide Web'. I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French.

- Robert Cailliau, A Short History of the Web, 2 November 1995.

To put a different perspective on this, I often think about the world of Star Trek.  A 1966 TV programme set in 2263, where people carried personal communicators and hand held computers that they could write on.  Doors opened when you got close to them, and you could communicate with the computer by voice commands, as well typing on a keyboard.  That computer gave them access to all of the combined knowledge, history, and literature of the world.  If you plucked someone from 1966 and brought them to 2005 they would be staggered by how much of that vision exists today, but confused by the fact that we haven't already got a manned base on Mars. 

Just as I've been writing this piece I've received a research release from the Center for Media Research.  It is a US study, but it says:

About 21 million, or 87% of kids ages 12-17, use the Internet. According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the Internet have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. The study considers them "Content Creators."

Also, while I've been writing this I've been having an IM conversation simultaneously with my friend Dennis in Spain.  He just told me:

We won't see our kids or grandchildren this Xmas so I'll do a podcast mashup - they understand that!

So it is only since the early 90s, when my daughter was born, that most of us have been using the Internet and the web, and the rate of change is truly amazing.  Use of Skype, IM, and the Internet arriving on my mobile phone have all really only got off the ground in a mainstream way in the last year or two.  The blogosphere and podcasts are upon us, changing the worlds of media, marketing and business, as well as personal life.  I expect even greater changes in 2006, which is all very, very exciting.

Right… now I have to go and investigate if some bloke called Jason, who lives near Gatwick, that my daughter met on an Internet game called Runescape is a potential threat or not!
Technorati Tags : Internet, chat, IM, Berners-Lee, history, Star Trek

 

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Personal productivity tip

For the last few months I've been using a neat little program called ActiveWords.  It sits between your keyboard and your operating system and allows you to trigger things to happen as you type, to save you time and helps you avoid using the mouse and diving between programs.  It can trigger key words to launch applications, it can recognise a key word to open a browser and jump to particular web page, it could capitalise a word or a name, or correct miss-spelled words (a spell checker that works for every program).  The action can be triggered by a double space if you want to launch a program, or a space if it is to correct spelling, and you can configure it in a variety of ways.  This is one of those things you need to try out to see how many keystrokes and hand movements it will save you.   It costs $30/$50 and there is a 60 day free trial.  Treat yourself for Christmas.

Technorati Tags : ActiveWords, productivity

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Low cost collaboration tools

We often use JotSpot as a very cost effective collaboration tool - an ideal SaaS based intranet.  However, I recently sat through a presentation by Neil Darracott of a small company called Xolve, explaining how they use Groove Networks product for project collaboration.

I'd heard of Groove, because of their recent acquisition by Microsoft, but didn't know much about it.  This is a different approach to collaboration.  You download the tool and it creates a peer to peer link for you between the various computers you or your team use.  It allows you to share folders and files between the team, using your normal desktop applications and the Windows Explorer you use now (with an extra button added).  If you are working on a file off-line, Groove synchronises it with the other team members the next time you are connected.  It costs a one off licence of $69/$179/$229 depending on the features and options you chose.

But on further investigation I discovered Microsoft had also acquired Foldershare, which seems to be the same basic technology as Groove, but is available as a free download - a very cost effective approach to collaboration!  These products are going to be components in the forthcoming "Live" products that Microsoft announced recently.  It will be worth your while keeping track of them.  Marc Olson writes this blog covering the way Groove will be integrated with Office 12.

I still believe the SaaS based approach has significant advantages, but the pricing of these products ,and their integration to MS Office, ought to make a number of the current collaboration tool vendors just a little uneasy!
Technorati Tags : SaaS, collaboration, Goove, Foldershare, intranets, Live, Microsoft

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It's that predictable time of year

I still continue to be surprised at the number of people I talk to in the IT and software world who haven't properly woken up to the new wave of Software as a Service and Open Source, and the effects they are producing.  IDC's predictions for 2006 have them at the heart of things:

"A critical new ingredient we'll see in 2006 is the acceleration of disruptive business models – 'open innovation' in IT product and service development (the open source effect) and online delivery of IT as a service (the Google effect). These disruptive shifts will force most vendors to perform a strategic gut check as they enter the year," said Frank Gens, senior vice president of Research.

I see they feature in Dennis Howlett's accounting world view of the coming year.  And the SaaS and Utility computing topics are being mentioned pretty regularly in a variety of media spots - see the following random selection:

Managing Automation

IT Jungle

VNUnet

Tekrati

The "stone age" software types better wake up in the new year.

Technorati Tags : SaaS, utility, 2006, predictions, IDC

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What not to do

After he sold his business to Hasbro, serial entrepreneur John Osher decided to make a list of the 16 mistakes he'd made or seen other entrepreneurs make in business.  It has since been expanded to 17 and he added 5 things you must do to succeed.  It has become a case study used in the standard curriculum at Harvard Business School.  When I found it and read it recently in this Entrepreneur.com article, I thought that many of the points, like so many ideas in good management textbooks, were either obvious or common sense.  However, in the heat of the battle, when you are under fire from all sides, sometimes you miss the obvious.  It is worth taking a few minutes out of the busy schedule to remind yourself of these things.  The important ones for me were:

"Mistake 11: Accepting that it's "not possible" too easily rather than finding a way"

"Mistake 12: Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit."

 

"Mistake 15: Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose."

Particularly this last one of clarity.  Sometimes the objectives you set for the business can take over from your objectives for starting the business in the first place. 

Technorati Tags : entrepreneur, business, strategy., Harvard

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Can you Digg it?

Here is an example of how blogging, posting, RSS feeds and social media are changing the way news media works.   I've just found Digg, which is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control.  With Digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users themselves do.  This an intriguing concept in web based democracy, where anyone can contribute, and an editorial collective (of people like us) votes on how prominently the story is featured.  And Digg have just announced that they are moving in to broader categories, beyond just technology.  Definitely a site and a concept worth watching.

Technorati Tags : blogging, technology, news, Web2.0, Digg

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