Steve Pilgrim is really struggling with the transfer of his weblog over to a domain hosted by ProHosting.com. I hope he gets it solved, I really like Steve's weblog, but I read some of his testing comments and can see he is really frustrated.

I just had a similar experience with BlueDomino.com. BD is a new hosting outfit run by the guys at CoffeeCup Software. It's appealing becasue it is so affordable -- starting at $8.95 per month. Unfortunately, their tech support sucks like a Hoover and they have no interest in supporting Radio users.

I think the problem lies in BD's use of the ProFTPd ftp server. I was never able to get Radio to upstream files to the BD site. Lawrence Lee of Userland was quite helpful, and he was able to get a successful upstream to the site. I never could and neither could another new Radio user who was also testing BD, but using a completely different computer and network.

Despite several attempts by Lawrence Lee of UserLand to gather ftp session data and help me debug the process we were ultimately unsuccessful. Thankfully, I was only trying to upstream a category -- and it was just a test category, at that. No harm done.

But Blue Domino is not a place that Radio users should consider. They made no effort to help or provide any useful information. I'm not even sure they looked into the problem, although I did get a blow-off answer from one off their tech support reps.

What does this have to do with Steve? Well, I was considering trying ProHosting next. I know several people who use ProHosting successfully, and CRM Association (an industry group I work with) has used ProHosting for two years without a hitch. But I am leery now of trying them with Radio.

I guess the point is that, for a reason I can't fathom, Radio may exhibit some issues with certain ftp servers or host systems and we need to be careful where we plan to move Radio-based weblogs. I successfully upstream ftp to Interland and Mindspring, but failed at BlueDomino.

If you're going to move your weblog be sure you start out slow and test the waters with a simple Category upstream first. Check with others to see if they have used that hosting company successfully. If not, see if you can get the host company to give you a test directory for testing before you move your domain. But try to validate your ability to upstream successfully before you commit.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 1:02 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

XCOPY and myFixFilePaths Don't Synch For Me

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I'm getting ready for a long stint of travel and thought it would be nice to have Radio with me on the road. I use the Mail-to-Weblog feature, but it really isn't what I want when traveling. So tonight I experimented with using XCOPY to transfer Radio to my laptop.

In a recent post on Radio Supports XCOPY Deployment and Synching I used a piece from Jon Udell's weblog on how to use XCOPY to synchronize Radio on multiple computers. I thought this was pretty useful but thought it would likely need Andy Fragen's myFixFilePathsAndAddresses script.

Tonight I tried both. I've been using XCOPY (actually XXCOPY) to backup my Radio folder to another drive, but I haven't tried to run Radio from there. Tonight I XXCOPY'd the Radio folder over to my laptop, then started it up and ran the file paths script.

The XCOPY and the script both ran as expected, but Radio didn't work corectly afterwards -- I had some errors when I tried to change a couple of Prefs settings.

I didn't spend much time on it yet. I may spend more another day. Tomorrow I have 15 hours of road time ahead of me and I don't feel up to the challenge.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:44 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Monday, July 29, 2002

Traction and Radio are Not Exclusionary

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Paul Kulchenko of toolbox makes some good additions to my quick-and-dirty overview Traction vs. Radio - A Personal View. I like the idea of news2email and mail_to_category, but I can't get the script noted in Paul's post to work. Anyone who's actually installed the mail_to_category script feel free to chime in.

I'm running community server behind the firewall and for some business users it's very important to be connected via email. Although, there are some [Radio] tools like news2email and the ability to mail to category that allow you to do that.

And also:

[...]I'm all in favor of bottom-up approach, but it seems like the most practical approach is somewhere inbetween: company will benefit from using both, top-down and bottom-up systems, they just have to be well-connected. [toolbox]

Also, John Robb chimed in via e-mail to point out that Traction and Radio are quite complementary -- Radio being a great tool to get users over the start-up hurdle and get them contributing; Traction as a higher-end solution for a small core of knowledge architects to use in gathering together all the company's disparate knowledge sources.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 8:16 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

2002 GATF InterTech Awards

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Perusing this list of technology winners for the graphic arts industry really points out the level of stagnation that has set in across the industry. It also shows the relative misplacement of focus on rather simple, user-level advancements such as PDFTansit as opposed to developments that can really change the fundamental production models of the industry.

Adobe is a great company and has done more in the graphic arts space than anyone. Their PostScript, and then PDF, technologies have literally revolutionized the entire industry. But to choose PDFTransit as the top technical achievement in 2002 is like granting Schering Pharmaceuticals an achievement award for their remake of Claritin into Clarinex -- it is a change from existing products, but not much of one.

Eleven Technologies Honored with a 2002 GATF InterTech Technology Award [WhatTheyThink]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 7:15 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Why Shouldn't I Use AMD

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I'm thinking of building a new desktop computer -- although I really like my present setup, I guess 733mHz is getting a little long in the tooth. But I really don't want to spend a lot of money. It looks like an AMD processor and AMD-compatible mobo from Gigabyte or Asus or someone could be had for 15-20 percent under comparable Intel parts. Is there any good reason I should not use AMD?

I don't presently do any 3D modeling or gaming. If I do so in the future it will be quite limited, I suspect. But I might do a little video editing if I get an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500 video card.

Comments welcome.

Prices are falling at AMD. Vendor cuts Athlon, Duron price in bid to stay with Intel [InfoWorld: Top News]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 7:07 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

My Patent is Bigger Than Your Patent

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More patent silliness from two companies we all know and love.

Adobe, Macromedia settle patent suits. CNET Jul 29 2002 4:20PM ET [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 6:29 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Inside Views from CIO Summit

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Phil Windley's trip report from the Western CIO Summit provides some great insight into how our government officials are thinking and acting on the issues of Homeland Security and IT. Everyone should read it.

Windley is to be congratulated. I'll say this, if the CIO of every state were as open as Windley and made his views public we'd all know one hell of a lot more about what is going on in our bureaucracy and we'd be a hell of lot less at the mercy of our conniving politicians.

I think I'll move to Utah...

Second Day at Western CIO Summit.
Here is my trip report from my second day at the Western CIO Summit sponsored by Western Information Technology Council. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 3:31 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Friday, July 26, 2002

Improvements in Paschal's Kit

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Kit is probably the single best improvement in Radio I've made in my brief experience. The news aggregator filtering is a great improvement over the standard Radio aggregator, and the search tool is very good. I haven't used the date modification tools yet, but I'm beginning to understand how they could be used. Highly recommended.

I suspect activeRenderer will be an equally enlightening addition, as soon as I can figure out how to ger a browser that works with it.

Kit 1.1.7 [markpasc.blog Headlines]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 5:47 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Publisher Profits Up

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McGraw-Hill Reports Profit Rise of 14%. New York Times Jul 26 2002 2:06AM ET [Moreover - Book publishing news]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 9:12 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Thursday, July 25, 2002

Lessig In Law Journal on Libraries and Copyright

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I wrote about this earlier -- how Librarians are our first, best hope for stemming the Copyright Cabal. I need to find it.

Library Journal | Cahners - Copyright in the Balance: LJ Talks with Lawrence Lessig. Lawrence Lessig" title="Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace - by Lawrence Lessig" >
Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig is certainly no stranger to the library community. Considered the nation's most eminent legal scholar on the nexus of copyright, technology, and the Constitution, he is the highly regarded author of the landmark works Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Bks.) and, most recently, The Future of Ideas (Random). In these works he eloquently defends the need to balance creators' rights with public benefits. Now, in a more direct way than ever before, Lessig carries the hopes of the library community, and by extension a largely unknowing public, squarely on his shoulders.

In a promising sign for libraries and the public, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in February 2001 to review whether Congress overstepped its bounds in 1998 when it passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, extending copyright terms for another 20 years. Lessig will argue the case, Eldred v. Ashcroft, on behalf of a group of online publishers that offer digital editions of public domain books for free over the Internet. Two lower courts already ruled against the plaintiffs, but hopes are high in the library community that the third time could be the charm.

[ ... ]

This simplistic notion of what copyright is and how people think about it is weakening the debate substantially. We need to be much more aggressive in calling people on this rhetoric, because it's just wrong. It's just not the case that copyright has ever been understood to mean that if you use a copyrighted work in a way unintended by the copyright owner that's "theft." [Privacy Digest]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:15 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Klogging: Chapter and Verse

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I took a quick run through the on-line version of Chapter 8 and have to say it looks pretty good. 2.5 minutes at midnight isn't a fair assessment of anything, but it looks like this chapter does justice to both the concept and content of business blogs -- enough so that I'm going to see if I can find an on-line copy down at the Georgia Tech Library like Paul Holbrook mentioned when I meet him for lunch on Thursday.

Blogs and Business, Take 3.
The BlogRoots authors are publishing their book on the Web, in its entirety. Chapter 8, Using Blogs in Business, is online now. Excellent. [Scripting News]

The birth of a meme. I've now counted at least five separate sources of info on the blogs and business topic. And I got my copy of Information Week today with the cover dedicated solely to blogs:

"Give individual employees within a company their own weblogs, encourage them to document their best ideas and personal experiences, link them, add search capabilities, and it's easy to imagine that at least some innovation will arise from the ordinary."

More on this later. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:07 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Business Weblogs and Their Uses

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A brief but useful article hitting many of the highpoints of weblog usage, but also noting a couple of the gotchas.

Web logging can serve many roles. Good article by Paul Andrews of the Seattle Times on "corporate weblogs" and their potential in organizations. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 10:34 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Managing Subject Matter Experts

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Ten tips for ensuring that outside expertise actually helps your project. According to the article, there is good reason to worry.

Beware: Mismanagement of SMEs can have serious consequences. Your project may:

never be completed
go over budget or be delayed
result in training that lacks substance or, conversely, is too advanced for the target population
create conflict between training and line management.
Subject Matter Experts. Learning Circuits has posted an article on Getting the Most from Your SMEs, which talks about how to manage the [Column Two]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:19 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Business Use for Instant Messaging

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Ernie the Attorney provides a short, succinct scenario for the business use of IM. It will become common in the enterprise.

Business Use for Instant Messaging? - Yep, apparently Lands End uses it to answer customer questions as they browse the catalogue company's website. The cheery representatives will even use IM to redirect the customer to a particular page on the website if necessary.
I see IM working its way into law firms too. The other day was illustrative. I was on the phone with an important client in one of those situations where I couldn't get off the phone no matter what happened. A call came in on my other line, and I ignored it. Thirty seconds later I was paged by the receptionist. I had to E-mail her to let her know I was on the phone, and we traded E-mails so that I could (1) find out who was looking for me (2) tell her to tell the person to call back in 10 minutes. All of this took more time than it should have. Instant Messaging would have been much faster. Of course, now I suspect most law firms will view IM as some sort of frilly toy. [Ernie the Attorney]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 9:21 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Self-publishing Firm Provides More Marketing Support

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Following the M.J. Rose column today, which covered big-name publishers picking up self-published work and taking advantage of authors' self-promotional initiative, iUniverse has annouced a marketing kit to help their authors get more attention. Every little bit helps.

iUniverse Introduces Marketing Toolkit
07/23/2002

Answering a need voiced by thousands of authors worldwide, iUniverse, Inc., announced today the launch of its Author Marketing Toolkit, a complete, customized marketing guide that helps authors publicize their work, create demand and sell books. [iUniverse]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 8:09 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Broadcast Brouhaha

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Thanks to Ernie the Attorney for this one. This business with the Fritz bill, and the FCC broadcast flag brouhaha is asinine. Some argument may be made (I dont necessarily buy it) that government intervention is called for to protect certain industries and American jobs from foreign competition. But since when does the government of the US of A intervene to protect specific industries from their own customers?! How idiotic is that?

From the New York Times:

Hollywood studios have maintained that they will not send digital copies of movies and other programming over the airwaves unless safeguards are in place to prevent perfect copies from being redistributed online. That, in turn, is seen as holding back the market for digital televisions and the on-demand services that might come with them.

I can assure you this is not the case, and if it is the market will respond with a solution far better for consumers than what the television networks purport to do. There is no way that legislation written by a bunch of sold-out, technology-ignorant legislators for the sole purpose of protecting an entrenched media aristocracy can do anything but harm for consumers and the market in general.

Legislators should be debating the extent of copyright protection, the applicable penalties for violation, and what -- if any -- changes should be made in the balance between spurring innovation and rewarding creators. Nothing more. As Ernie said in Ignorance is Bliss

Sometimes too many people working together on one thing do not create a bold new thing. Instead, they create a patchwork of compromise, where the whole is vastly less than the sum of the parts.
This happens in lawmaking too, but mostly because of the influence of lobbyists representing special interest groups. It's not just a problem of too many people, but rather it's a problem of people having too much information.

First, every legislator should be forced to read The Broadband Difference: How online Americans' behavior changes with high-speed Internet connections at home from the Pew Internet Project. If they cant read it themselves then they should be tied in a room and have it forcibly read to them. Then they should be required to go to the blackboard and write 100 times each, The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV

This whole episode shows how woefully ignorant most of our legislators are regarding basic economics, market theory, and basic technology. And my, how thinly they disguise their motives.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 2:35 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Flawless Consulting: How to Get Your Expertise Used

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Flawless Consulting by Peter Block is one of the better, and most practical, how-to books on consulting I've read. [More...]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 1:37 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Book: reviews

Permalnk Revisions Needed

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Radio Wishlist - Permalinks in Categories.

Permalinks in categories point to those posts on the home page and home page archives, not to their instances on the category home page or in the category archive. Permalinks just don't understand their page's category. I explain further and with examples on the Radio UserLand discussion list.

[aka Blue Sky Radio]

[a klog apart]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 11:53 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Interesting BookBiz TidBits from M.J. Rose

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There are some good ideas in today's Wired News column by M.J. Rose, and some validation for authors like Hugh Madison at American Invisible.

Before 1998, it was rare for established publishing companies to bid on self-published fiction. But in the last 18 months, thanks in great part to authors' ability to use the Internet to market themselves, more than three dozen self-published novels have been picked up by major houses. [...]

Also, a very entrepreneurial idea from Florida-based Chapter-a-Day: sending out excerpts from popular business books via daily e-mail:

The business of book clubs: From Good Morning America to the White House, book clubs are flourishing. And now businesses want them too.
Wells Fargo already has one. So do sales and marketing executives in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Chapter-a-Day, a Sarasota, Florida, company that builds and maintains online book clubs -- sending out daily book excerpts for libraries and book stores -- is getting as many as a dozen inquiries a week from corporations. [...]

I love this idea. It's a variant of the book summary/abstracting services offered by several companies. I think the bite-sized nature of this makes it very appealing. One of my favorite services comes from Audio-Tech Executive Summaries and is called Business Briefings.

It's on CD rather than e-mail, but every month they review some 300+ publications and send out a very interesting bite-sized summary of ideas, concepts, research, and publications that are or will affect business. It's one of the most interesting services I get, and I think it's because of the bite-sized nature of things.

Self-Publish Stigma Is Perishing. Major houses gobble up rights after authors create a buzz for their work. Also: Book clubs that work for business ... and more in M.J. Rose's notebook. [Wired News]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 10:55 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

K-log Implementation Challenges

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More on Klog Implementation Challenges.
www.davidwatson.org wrote a piece back in June about the difficulties a klog implementation could face. Training and organizational culture again. This is worth checking out as another addition to a balanced view on klogging.
[High Context]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 10:45 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Weblogs die too..

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Weblogs die too..

FuckedWeblog catalogs distressed, absent or departed weblogs. See recent ones or submit an blog site's suicide note or obituary.

This might be useful in an intranet. Part of pruning the tree, finding successors, acknowledging the need for archival.

[a klog apart]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 10:41 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Monday, July 22, 2002

Update: Talk About Roundabout

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More Synchronicity -- go read Atlanta blogger Daniel Taylor at Dreaded Purple Master.

I know this is old hat to you long-time bloggers, so forgive a newcomer's enthusiasm. Phil Wolff over at a klog apart made a post on job searching -- which I should be doing, but I'm not. If you are smarter than me (and less convinced of your own infallabillity) read the whole thing.

What I want you to read is here:

Jay Manifold, Project Manager, Kansas City, Missouri..
I like Jay's blogging voice. His blog, A Voyage To Arcturus, is a delightful blend of philosophy, astronomy and space, and life.
Will Project-Manage for Food
I got laid off. OK, it ain't up there with what happened to this guy, but it shut me down for a few days. Not moping -- updating a résumé and networking like mad. [...] [aka bloggers for hire]
[a klog apart]

 

Buried unceremoniously in this post from Phil, which he got from someplace I never heard of, quoting someone else I never heard of, who puts in the line what happened to this guy, is a link to fellow Atlanta blogger Daniel Taylor, aka Dreaded Purple Master.

Taylor is <strike>funny as a crutch</strike> laugh-out-loud funny. Why I followed that particular link I'll never know. He has apparently been writing forever, reads stuff I read, watches the one TV show I watch, and lives just a couple of miles from one of my favorite parts of the city.

I don't know him, and would likely never meet him. I just find it insanely cool that this blogging business leads to this sort of thing.

And I was a gen-yoo-whine blogging skeptic. Someone pass the crow. Maybe I'll even make it to one of them Blogger Meet-Ups real soon now, ya hear.

Update: I've been brought up short and had it pointed out to me that had I spent more time watching the 70s TV show Happy Days I would have known the phrase "funny as a crutch" was not a compliment. Well, what do I know. I'm from Texas.

So here's to Daniel Taylor -- funny as whoopie cushion; funny as a 24-hour Jonathon Winters TV marathon; funny as a Gallager Sledge-O-Matic skit; funny as a ... well, you get the point.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 11:58 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

My New Scanners Are In! My New Scanners Are In!

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Is the Internet cool or what? On Wednesday I made a post about a personal library app. On Friday Jim McGee responded. On Saturday I picked up Jim's post in my News Aggregator and immediately went to ReaderWare to check out the software.

By 10:3O AM EDT I had decided I needed this software and a barcode scanner. Readerware suggests a CueCat and suggests eBay as the place to get them. By 11:00 AM I had scrounged eBay, found a likely source, and did a Buy It Now! for 2 CueCat USB scanners for a total of $8. I paid via PayPal

By 4:00PM I had an e-mail from the seller saying he had the money and would ship that afternoon if he could find a Post Office open. At 10:30AM this morning my new CueCat barcode scanners arrived!

This is as close to instant gratification as I can stand to get. I'll be a book scanning son-of-a-gun by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks again to Jim McGee of McGee's Musings.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 9:09 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Holy Sh#t! Guess Who's Tracking Your Downloads

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Gimme a C! Gimme an I! Gimme an ...

Ugh. I wish this was a surprise. But there's no conspiracy here. Really.

One thing I don't get about the EFF. Why don't they blow the trumpet on comScore? This company has tricked millions of people into "download accelerators" and other trojan horse software that tracks their traffic, credit card usage (it actually captures numbers), and more -- all in the name of so-called research. Most of the download accelerator software providers they use are front companies.
Hey, this is one of the worst violations of privacy I have ever seen and nobody knows about them. You know why they don't? Here is the address of the company:

Reston Office (headquarters):
11465 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 200
Reston, VA 20190
Telephone: 703-438-2000
Fax: 703-438-2051
Yahoo Driving Directions
If you don't get the implications of this, ask someone what government agency is based in Reston VA. BTW, comScore just bought Media Metrix and now own the online consumer data market. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] [Ye Olde Phart]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:44 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Sunday, July 21, 2002

Sen. Earnest Hollings Should Be Removed from Office

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In a sad case of a politician who has lost all contact and credibility with his constituents, Sen. Earnest Hollings of South Carolina has written a letter to the FCC demanding they implement a broadcast flag requirement whether or not Hollings can get his despicable legislation passed. I wonder just how many millions Hollings has pocketed in campaign funds from Hollywood? "Hollings: Broadcast flag now, by FCC mandate" [Daypop Top 40]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 11:26 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Digital Asset Management -- A Disappearing Act

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Is Digital Asset Management (DAM) losing its value? According to this article in CIO:

Digital asset management (DAM) products may be a hot topic now, but a January report by Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group predicts that by 2004 or 2005, such tools will likely evolve into nothing more than a set of features inside more complete enterprise content management tools." [CIO]

In 1999, while working for print industry consulting firm CAP Ventures, I wrote a fairly extensive research paper on Digital Asset Management for the print industry. (While a bit dated, you can still read the executive summary from that paper.)

Even back then I concluded that any discussion of DAM was incomplete without considering a much broader media context. But there is still a need for properly handling files for print, and many in the print industry can still use smaller systems than those sold by Artesia or Bulldog/Documentum.

This brief article is a good summary of the current state of DAM, covering several applications and giving a brief overview of the wide variety in price and features that today's products offer

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 11:06 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Visible KM

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Hugh Madison at American Invisible provides a thought provoking post on what it takes for KM to really succeed. Hugh has clearly been there before.

KM
Some personal thoughts on Knowledge Management. [American Invisible, Inc.]

Hugh's RSS feed didn't include some key points from his story, so I've listed a few below:

A successful KM initiative needs:

A compelling reason why each employee should buy in - rewards are called for

training so that everyone appreciates the value of context. [...]

training so that people learn to write for an audience outside their own group of contacts. [...]

training so that people understand that most knowledge is specialized. [...]

Someone VERY senior to champion the KM cause.

There's a pattern here. See it?

As Robert Buckman said in the interview John Robb posted yesterday, 90 percent of the effort put into the Knowledge Sharing system at Buckman Labs was spent encouraging people to share. And as I wrote in The Power of Knowledge Sharing, while some people will refuse to do this, most people simply don't know how.

The fact that the cost barriers for KM tools have plummeted means that those of us who already want to share can do so with less effort and less dollars. Now, how do we get those don't already want to, to join the group and be effective?

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 6:17 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Windley on Blogs for Sprawling Organizations

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Enterprise Development in Utah.

On Wednesday, I spoke to the enterprise development group on my principles for enabling web services. The enterprise development group, or eDG as they call themselves is a group of specialists from across our IT organizations that meet regularly to share expertise and develop some de facto standards for multi-tiered applications in Utah.

I'm very supportive of these kinds of groups since I think they represent our best hope at building community in an IT organization that is best described as "sprawling." We have talented experts buried deep within the organization and, often, the biggest problem we face is being able to get the right people on the job. When an issue comes up, we likely have someone who knows just want to do, but no way to get that expertise to the job. Building overlapping communities of specialists and communities of interests seems the best way to attack this problem. My open offer on blogs is an attempt to jump start some of those communities.

[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 1:21 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Klogs Get Official Support in Utah

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K-logging at the statewide level. Top down endorsement for klogging..

The Utah State CIO made this Offer to Utah State IT Employees.

I believe that the 900 or so IT employees of the State of Utah would benefit from speaking and listening to each other more. I think we need groups of specialists inside various departments to communicate with others in their specialty and without. Consequently, I'd like to see more people writing blogs and communicating their ideas through an open forum like the one blogs engender. To that end, I'm willing to pay the licensing fee to Userland for the first 100 employees who start a blog. Here are the conditions:

Download the software and begin using on the 30-day free trial. I'd like to see you get a start before I pay the fee. Let me know when you're up and running.
I'm biased toward IT employees, but other are welcome too, particularly if they're interested in eGovernment.
You're responsible for what you post. If you're going to talk about things that shouldn't be public on Userland and need to be kept behind the state firewall, let me know and we'll set up a place inside the state network for that. We could even set up an authenticated area, if needed.

"It is good to be king." Royal suggestions cut through all kinds of trust issues and formal decision making. I've been asking for prerequisites to success on various knowledge management lists. Uniformly the top answer is "senior management endorsement, buy-in, enthusiasm."

UserLand's hit a sweet spot too.

Low price point cuts risks of trying and eventual rollout
Newbie-friendliness gives immediate satisfaction (egoboost, social affirmation)
Syndication/etc. amplifies social networking effects, reinforcing current participation and bringing in new users

One other thing: you can see from Windley's post there is something real about the sense of ownership and control you feel when the tool and your writings are on your desktop. Radio gives you this. The tradeoffs of remote access and managed desktop are also real, but have much less emotional investment. These feelings of control worth of attention as the klogging meme spreads.

[a klog apart]

I'll have to encourage my buddy Bill Kendall, who's in the Salt Lake City D.A.'s office, to look into this. (Granted, that's city and not state government, but wouldn't it be interesting to see that combination as well?)

[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 11:53 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Knowledge Networks for the Cost Conscious

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Creating affordable Knowledge Sharing networks seems to be a theme these days, given the unmitigated failure of big-buck alternatives. David Gammel of High Context goes the final mile and provides a nice overview of creating an almost no-cost KS network.

Low-cost Klog Network
The level of investment required for really excellent km tools, such as weblogs, has gotten so low that it is much easier for a relatively low level employee to start a grass-roots movement within the staff if they are motivated. Given the failure of enterprise level KM initiatives and the burst .com bubble, this could be the perfect time to stealth in some web-based knowledge sharing tools.
In this article I will discuss how you can create a low-cost knowledge weblog (klog) network using free and/or donor supported software. This method is well suited to the stealthy introduction of weblogging as a knowledge management tool. All you need is one server to host the klogs and you can be off and running before senior management has a chance to quash your initiative. Or take credit for it. :) Read more... [High Context]

There are very important ideas in this:

With no investment chances are you can sneak this into your Dilbertian department without raising suspicion. You still need a bit of a geek to set it up and run it, but you can do it for almost free.
Even small enterprises can now afford this stuff. In fact they can no longer afford not to have it.

Young, entrepreneurial companies eat away from the bottom of the big Dilbert-company markets, but to do so they have to move fast and spread themselves thin. Most struggle to reach across geographic boundaries for anything more than marketing or a little customer support. True knowledge sharing across the country is just about impossible for the small- to mid-sized enterprise. ASPs, Salesforce.com, and MSOutlook's Public Folders haven't really helped. Most still get by on sheer luck and determination.

What David describes can be done by almost anyone with access to a geek. And not an uber-geek. Probably any 17-year-old with a knack for Python or pearl will do. That's still too techie for me, but even if you have to shell out $40 for Radio it's still an affordable way to get started.

This is great stuff, David. Thanks for bringing it to us.

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:19 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Saturday, July 20, 2002

LinkBack to List Referrers Locally -- More Ways to Weave the Blog

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Looks similar in concept to TrackBack and kmPings (you guys will correct me if I'm wrong), but based on specific referral pages. I'd sure like to see someone do a write up on just what all these things do, and how they relate/interact with each other.

Linkback Referrers.
I spotted Stephen Downes Referral System via www.davidwatson.org.
Very cool little script. I have added it to my templates here on high context. It will display the referrers to each individual page. So if you link to anything on this site your page will be listed on the sidebar as people follow the link.
One small bug I've discovered with Mozilla is that a local referral within the same site creates an unexpected value for document.location in the javascript code. No problems in IE so it must just be Mozilla. [High Context]

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Terry Frazier at 3:54 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Gaining Parity with e-Mail

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This posting from Jon Udell on collaboration technologies that have caught the eye of Esther Dyson. I note among them is Parity -- a venture I believe is being headed by graphic arts visionary Paul Trevithick. Seems Paul is, as usual, on the leading edge and drawing attention from some big names.

What if being non-communicative weren't an option?
This Fortune article on Esther Dyson was cited on a private mailing list. It's interesting to see where she is placing bets:
A big challenge for managers will be encouraging employees to share information instead of hoarding it. Dyson has made investments in several companies that help employees communicate with one another continuously and effectively, especially by e-mail. One, called Tacit Knowledge Systems, has software that (with user permission) reads and categorizes e-mail sent within an organization. Anyone needing information about a topic can turn to Tacit to find an expert and forward a request to get in touch. Another company, Parity, has a so-called "commitment-management tool" that lets the sender specify the action an e-mail requires. The software helps the recipient meet deadlines--like responding to a customer by tomorrow afternoon.
I think I can see the handwriting on the wall. Groupware has failed forever because people by and large don't want to communicate continuously and effectively. Opting out of that flow may cease to be an option. If so, jumping on the weblog bandwagon for internal corporate communication looks like the offense that is the best defense. If your flow is a corporate asset that's going to be managed anyway, wouldn't you rather control it yourself? [Jon's Radio]

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Terry Frazier at 11:30 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Readerware -- Fan-freaking-tastic!

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How could I have missed this? If I die tomorrow the blogosphere will have made my life complete with this response from Jim McGee. Well, ok. Maybe that's a little dramatic. But I have wanted something like this a long time.

Now excuse me, I have to go scrounge on e-Bay for CueCat.

Readerware - personal library app.
How About a Personal Library App. Maybe it's just me, but I never saw any way Amazon was going to be profitable until they took over the e-Commerce and web operations for Borders. [Blunt Force Trauma]
Terry is looking for a program that will let him build and maintain a database of his personal library using the data available from Amazon and elsewhere on the web. It already exists and it's called Readerware. I now have over 3,000 books catalogued using it. It also supports CD and video libraries. Recommended. Less than $100.

[McGee's Musings]

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Terry Frazier at 10:33 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Recycling Does Not Improve Government

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I was terribly unhappy about the bumper crop of experience-free children the Clinton Administration ushered into the White House in 1992. Now I'm equally unhappy about the seemingly endless stream of political retreads being rounded up by the Bush Administration.

Sometimes I just want to opt out...

Thanks (I think) to Dan Rosenbaum for this one.

Fool Me Once, Shame on Me. Fool Me Twice.....
Semi's gonna have a ball with this one.
There's a new director of the Pentagon's new Information Awareness Office, part of the DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (It was DARPA's organizational predecessor that gave the world the Internet. But I digress...) This new director is one John M. Poindexter.
Yes, that John Poindexter. Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor. The one who was convicted in the Iran-Contra affair. Remember? He sold weapons (illegally) to Iran, and used the cash to (also illegally) fund the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. Ollie North's buddy. It was in all the papers.
Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying documents. The convictions were overturned; Poindexter had been given immunity before Congress (after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights). His testimony, though public and nationally broadcast, was inadmissible, courts said.
So here he comes sliming his way back into public service, this time running an office that is supposed to:
"create a new intelligence infrastructure to allow ... agencies to share information and collaborate effectively, and new information technology aimed at exposing terrorists and their activities and support systems.... The key to fighting terrorism is information. Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment to determine the most probable current or future scenario."
To me, this sounds a lot like what the NSA is supposed to be doing. If you read the IOS's page closely -- and there's no way to read it casually -- it looks like IOS is developing ways to massage and pass around raw data that the NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office and all that crew develops.
Which is not a bad thing. And it's surely a comedown for a past National Security Advisor to have an office that's probably deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, far from corridors of power. And it speaks well of the man that he still wants to be in public service.
But still. John Poindexter should be in jail, not in the Pentagon. He waged a private war that was contrary to the policy of the government he swore to serve. He should not be pulling a government paycheck -- much less with a high security clearance. Here's a ton of links about Poindexter and Iran-Contra. Thanks to bOing-bOing for the original link. [Over the Edge]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 12:05 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Friday, July 19, 2002

User-centered Software Design

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I've been looking for an Information Architect/Information Retrieval specialist to help me better understand the basics of good information systems design. I'm amazed at the wealth of knowledge available to us all via the weblog community and how some of the people in it make complex things so comprehensible.

James Robertson at Column Two posted this helpful example created by Donna Maurer, showing how user stories clarify and enhance requirements documents.

It is an interesting approach and one that I, being neither an engineer nor designer, like quite a lot. It gives the software designer a human goal to achieve.

I thought the accessibility series over at dive into mark used this pretty well, too.

Personas and scenarios. Donna Maurer has written a very practical blog entry on using personas and scenarios. To quote Donna: These were so powerful! It is amazing how much extra information stories can give.

[Column Two]

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Terry Frazier at 11:40 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Triangulating on Shared Knowledge

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Today John Robb made a thought-provoking post on Yahoo! Groups: K-Log and it should be passed along. The essay he refers to really hit home given some of the research and study I'm currently doing, and it is well worth reading. There is much good thought taking place right now on how to bring people within a business together on both emotional and intellectual levels. I think the scandals rocking corporate America have a lot to do with that. [...more]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 4:50 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Migrating Weblog to Different Server, Fixing Links

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This thread in the discussion group covers setting up a Meta redirect tag in pages on the Radio Communty Server so that calls to that server will be sent to the new one.

Also see this thread:
http://radio.userland.com/discuss/msgReader$16813?mode=topic&y=2002&m=7&d=19

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 4:24 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Making Companies Human

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A nice complement to today's thoughts on klogging and business strategy.

Weblog as the interface to a person.
Time for people. Paolo Valdemarin: Time for people. "Time for anonymous companies is over, we have all had enough, it really looks like it's time for people, time for weblogs." [Jake's Radio 'Blog]
Also this comment by Paolo:
I have had a company web site for about the last 7 years, but I have never received much feedback from it. Since I have opened my blog I'm receiving lots of messages from people all over the world. This is happening because they perceive the weblog as the interface to a person, while the company site belongs to a faceless entity, even if for some of those 7 years, behind that company web site there was only one person: me. [emphasis added]

If you start connecting the dots between the weblogs and k-logs space with the recent books such as Free Agent Nation , Bobos in Paradise, and The Rise of the Creative Class you can see the acceleration of a fundamental shift in the relation between employer and employed.
Pay attention; it will affect you. [McGee's Musings]

Posted by:

Terry Frazier at 3:48 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |

Building Business Relationships via the Blog

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If you read only one post today, make it this one. This post from Rick came across my aggregator and triggered my thinking. When I put it with the

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