Something new...

I’ve been reading John C. Dvorak’s tech writing for as long as I’ve been interested in this stuff. He was the first general columnist I became aware of after Jerry Pournelle’s writing in Byte Magazine. My first computer was an Amstrad PC1512 and I was an early subscriber to PC Magazine where I came across John’s work. I stopped subscribing to PC Magazine once the Amiga, and later the Mac, became my main machines. I always remembered John’s style and one of the pleasures of the developing podcast world is now listening to him.

One of the strings to his bow is a short podcast called Tech 5 and he’s testing out delivering it directly to blogs, about ten or so initially, including mine.

I like his take on tech generally, though I’ve disagreed with him on occasion naturally enough. What I really like is his understanding that matters technological and business have a certain lifespan, they come and they go. Hype is just not something he’s going to participate in.

So readers will come across John’s show in my feed, hope you enjoy.

Related Tags:

Comcastic Speed

 Comcast upgrade works. Now I get as high as 22 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. The numbers fall off when you go overseas. Apple rolling out 4 more non-exclusive iPhone deals. Yahoo being sued. It decided to conceal details for some unknown reason. Missouri woman now indicted for cyberbullying. Comcast still being accused of throttling bit-torrent. Sprint says 2008 WiMax. Yeah, right. I like the Aliph Jawbone. ASUS making all its motherboards "instant on!" Wow.

Click to listen: [audio:http://m.podshow.com/media/12115/episodes/112616/tech5-112616-05-16-2008.mp3]

Headlong

Headlong, originally uploaded by Dromahaire.

Just came across this shot in my trawl through my photos after I imported my iPhoto library into Aperture. I've always liked it, there's something about his energy that's conveyed here. Headlong and curious. the world open before him.

I remember this trip up the Leitrim mountains well, he plunged his arms deep into rabbit warrens, climbed higher than I felt comfortable, belted rocks with his geology hammer hoping to find a cluster of quartz.... He brought a hammer, I brought chocolate...

And yes, that is a Toy Story backpack.

Alles

There’s many nice things you can receive in the post from a festival, an acceptance letter, a prize and hey, a cheque is always good.

Last week, we got an envelope at the office we didn’t expect. The Berlinale sent us out an envelope with t-shirts for each of our lead actresses, all wrapped up in festival posters for them, together with a photo for each of them and a lovely one of Marian at the Q&A in Berlin. There was a nice letter from the festival director and a press pack and DVD of still images from the premiere.

But best of all was a whole stack of filled in response sheets to the film. The first to catch my eye was one with only one word on it, they ticked the ‘sehr gut’ box and simply wrote ‘Alles“ for what they liked, really just great to hear. Theirs was the briefest, others had plenty to say. About half of them were in German and the other half in English and I’m definitely going to have someone translate them for me. It was a total kick reading through the english ones and what people’s response to the film was.

It says so much of the festival that they do this, the Festival was two months ago, they are one of the world’s leading film festivals, they really didn’t have to do any of this. And the thought came to me, that perhaps they are one of the best festivals in the world, simply because they do things like this, the little things that make such a difference.

I definitely have my own personal ‘sehr gut’ and ‘Alles’ to the good people working in the Berlinale Office, who were a pleasure to deal with from start to finish.

Related Tags:

Charlie Rose - Redux

I blogged about the Charlie Rose site before but I thought it might be worthwhile revisiting it now that I’ve been checking in for a few months now.

Charlie Rose as a site is a very impressive venture indeed. It hit the ground running and hasn’t let up. Any improvements that have been implemented have been subtle and well judged, the structure has remained constant, each tweak focussed on improving the access to the material available to them.

And what material they have... I’ve been extremely impressed with not only the sheer volume and quantity of high end interviews over the years but with how it delivers it to the visitor. It certainly achieves that primary aim of maiking all that archival material available. As a chronicle it’s superb.

But what has quietly impressed is a sense of currency, each night’s episode is available the next day. The query ‘what’s on Charlie Rose tonight?’ which a regular television viewer might have has been seamlessly transferred to the website.

There’s a keen editorial mind at work too, unearthing interesting interviews relevant to todays episode and provide a lot of context setting. All of which means that the site is ‘live’ in a way that a show chronicling current affairs and topics of interest should be.

The site has one major problem which differentiates it from other sites with large archives of video of similar quality, TED comes to mind. The site launched when Google Video seemed like a viable proposal and the site remains tied to that format and approach despite it’s failure. It would be so much better if it was in Quicktime and RSS was offered. I would love to see it offered as a video podcast. So the only options are to embed it on sites or to view it on the actual Charlie Rose site. To it’s credit, the level of production on the site certainly makes a good case for visiting there. I do think, however, that Charlie Rose as a podcast would penetrate the global consciousness, much as TED has done, if it took the same approach as TED. TED provides a compelling site, lots to explore and see, but it also offers RSS streams to subscribe to. With the coming election, a more accessible Charlie Rose delivered to iPods around the world could reach a huge audience interested in it’s outcome.

Any other criticisms are minor. They’ve done an excellent job tagging, but there’s no way for the visitor to tag. They do provide indexes by interviewee and topic, but I do find the browse method a bit intimidating and lacking an intuitive appeal, something material of this quality deserves. And there is a slight niggling sense that the ability to edit out Charlie’s vulnerabilities is given some leeway, his recent accident highlights this, on the broadcast show, we got a full “Hell yes” as he tells the audience what happened. But online this is cut out. I feel this is a mistake, the relationship with him is at least part of what’s at work here.

But all that said, If you ever wanted an argument of why this stuff is better online than over the air, Charlie Rose is the best example you could ever ask for, the ability to cross-reference with the archive alone is worth your attention. Roll on November, this is the place to see the Election played out.

Related Tags:

IT Conversations - pick #1: Ajax Security

If I had to pick one tech podcast and discard the rest it would be the originator of the species, IT Conversations. This blend of different shows has a wide-ranging remit from biotechnology to web development. They have a number of presenters who interview innovators and leading technologists, and they also put out recorded presentations from top conferences, which can be especially valuable. They’re all free and available via iTunes.

I listen to them regularly, good meaty discussions which can be satisfying in the midst of the other more newsy, gossipy fluff that fills the tech podcast world. Sure, a lot of it is not for me, I usually have my thumb poised, ready to click through to the next one, there’s a lot in the feed so you have to be selective.

But quite frequently you hear something that’s well informed, interesting and current, covering an aspect of technology that you don’t really see discussed anywhere. So I thought I’d point out ones that have ticked those boxes as I come across one. So, that’s why I have a #1 up there in the title, it’s going to be the first in a series.

Today, I heard Billy Hoffman discussing Ajax Security with Phil Windley in the Technometria channel on IT Conversations.

As Ajax spreads and more and more sites become web applications, the hype online is that desktop software is moving out to the web. The reality is that a lot of these sites push code, especially javascript, out to the users machines, frequently with scant regard to security, exposing them and the site to malicious code. Billy Hoffman covers a lot of different examples of poor implementation which will give anyone pause. More entertaining and enlightening than you might have expected from the title.

Technometria on Ajax Security with Billy Hoffman.




Related Tags:

Goodbye To All That No.2

Robin Morgan wrote a seminal essay on women and politics in 1970 called Goodbye to All That. As voters in the US debate Hillary versus Barack, she’s been moved to write again. The opening is below but the whole thing is well worth a read, no matter where you stand.

Goodbye to All That No.2

Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
—She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains?)—When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness  . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame. 
Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame. 
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison.  Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

Related Tags: