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Monday, April 4, 2005

The Spy That PDF'd Me

It was only a matter of time before all the structured, linked, DRM’d functions of the proprietary PDF format were tied back into a low-cost, low-burden, viral tracking mechanism. It seems likely PDFzone author Don Fluckinger is right to suggest this is just the beginning of a movement to make PDFs increasingly invasive. PDF is a great tool when used properly, but look for this to become a real issue and a battle cry for the anti-PDF crowd. Be interesting to see what, if anything, Adobe does with this.

Me? I dunno. I’m not sure I’d buy a PDF that required me to be connected to open it. Rather defeats the purpose, IMO. But it’s likely most sellers won’t disclose that little tidbit before the sale. Found via Privacy Digest. Read the whole thing at PDFzone.

PDF Tracking On the Way

PDF Tracking On the Way.  (el)Capitan.Nick writes  "PDFzone reports that the company Remote Approach has launched a service to track the movement of PDF documents with its tool Map-Bot. The purpose of this service is to allow PDF publishers the ability to measure their audience, as web publishers can already. Though personal information is not gathered from machines, IP addresses are. PDFs can require users to be connected to the Internet in order to read them, and every person you email the PDF to is subject to the service. As PDFzone's opinion article states, while 'the chances of running into a Remote Approach PDF right now -- and in the near future -- are pretty remote ... the potential for the technology to tarnish PDF's image [of security] is staggering.'"  [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 2:30 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print, Security, Technology

Saturday, April 2, 2005

Skype Productivity Progress

As a Treo 600 owner and reluctant Outlook user these two bits in Stuart Henshall’s Skype Journal caught my eye, but there’s a bit of a fly in each. The main theme of the Treo integration is forwarding calls to Skype – not economically viable if you have a Sprint account and forwarded calls count against your usage. As for the Outlook Skype, I’m afraid the requirement to set IE as the default browser is a show-stopper. Still, these two folks are pushing the envelope, moving Skype closer and closer to the mainstream.

Skype and Treo Solution

Steve writes in Adventures in Home Networking how he coordinates his Treo and SkypeIn and SkypeOut into one effective communications solution. He doesn't like to mess around with headphones. He documents his solution for the home office, around the house, and around town. He sums it up as completely changing the way he communicates.

At my home office:

* when I get home I put my mobile (Treo 600) in its cradle and this initiates an automatic auto-forward to my SkypeIn number, which also comes with free voicemail.Microphone
* at my desk I am using my Logitech noise cancelling USB Microphone and my desktops speakers, people tell me the quality is very good – so there is no need to mess around with headphones Adventures in home working

Outlook Skype

Peter Kalmstrom has been developing plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook for a long time. Now he too has created a solution to integrate Skype into your contact list.

The next big thing in the IT world is telephony and voice. There will be a lot of interesting developments in this area in the years to come. One of those developments is already here: Skype. It is a peer-to-peer network based IP Telephony application. I like it a lot and decided to build an Outlook add-in for it. Outlook Skype 

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:18 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Technology, UnWired

Six Myths of Nanotechnology

A good article in TheStreet.com on what nanotech is, and isn’t, found via Brandon Rash at EEJD via Nano Tech Lex. The article highlights five common myths about nanotech. I think there’s probably a sixth – that small startups are going to have big impact in this space. I’ve seen a well-known VC guru touting this at conferences, but it seems far more likely that established companies like Cabot Corp (carbon black), General Motors, Monsanto, and Dupont will be the only ones with the resources, experience, and scale to drive nanotech progress.

Five Myths About Nanotechnology

NanoTech Lex points us to five myths about nanotechnology:

1. 'Nanotechnology is an emerging industry.'

2. 'Nanotechnology is new.'

3. 'The nanorobots are coming.'

4. 'New nanotech applications offer high-margin opportunities.'

5. 'Nanotechnology will bring revolutionary change.'

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:51 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Business & Finance, Technology

Friday, March 25, 2005

Datablogging Brings Value to the Enterprise

The ideas of using RSS as a report-out language from enterprise systems and weblogs as a friendly UI have been roiling around for quite a while. But no one has tried to make a business of it. It’s a great idea and far more appealing to the pragmatic bean counters of corporate America than the touchy-feely innovation/sharing/conversation-building stuff that gets all the air time (and which bean counters hate). Below John Robb, who spurred the early conversations around this on his k-log discussion group, points to a new blogging offering designed to cater to this market.

If you want to try your hand at doing some of this for your own company have a look at Conversant, it has all the requisite parts to create a datablogging environment - custom fields for data, page- and directory-level security by user, sophisticated query functions, and multiple I/O channels.

Datablogging!

Joe Reger's new datablogging venture is awesome. This is something that has been showing signs of life for years now, but nobody wanted to start a venture to capture its value. Early applications included a server status weblog and even a blog that pulled sales data from Siebel (a very popular weblog at a huge corporation that will remain nameless). Personally, I think this method of weblogging has more of a potentially to storm the enterprise than any other application.

The concept is simple. Data is usually locked up in monolithic applications (CRM, ERP, etc.). Application seats are expensive. Training is expensive. Etc. People that need the data often can't get to it.

What if human readable data flows (via RSS) could be generated by these applications? It would allow the development of easy to read weblogs (that republished these RSS flows) that almost everyone in the company would find valuable. The combinations are almost limitless and the flow is completely automated.

The flip side is also extremely valuable. Using a weblog model of data entry, it would become much easier to train people to enter data in a timely fashion. Further, they get immediate feedback on their efforts since the data they post is transformed into an entry on the blog.

Needless to say, this is very cool.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 2:18 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Business & Finance, Productivity, Strategy, Technology

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