This morning was a good crowd of people … with several new faces to
me. With this many people we were sure to have a number of great
conversations.

I started things off by sharing some of what I have been learning about
China. On my recent trip to Singapore I began reading a book
given to me at work called China, Inc.
… an eye-opening review of what is going on in China. One of
the interesting areas is where the Chinese professors that I met one
evening started to explore my thoughts on Open Source software.
They wanted to know who in America really thought they could compete
providing service and support for Open Source compared to the work
force they are creating in China. Good question …

We then ventured into discussion about Utah State Education. One
of the people who came works for the state school board. After
covering some of what the board does, we heard about what the new
`charter` schools are … they are a new type of school popping up all
over the state.

Since an employee of Utopia was
here, we got to hear about the progress of this 100% fiber build out
here in Utah. Some of the other people that came, who live in
some of the original 14 cities, were anxious to hear when they will
eventually be able to connect. There was a lot of complaining
about the lack of information about the progress of the Utopia build
out. What was amazing to hear, was that the biggest product that
is selling is 10Mb of Internet bandwidth – fully symmetric! – for
$39.00 per month! I want to see Wasatch County and Heber City get
involved in this!

While talking about streaming media over Utopia, we got to hear about
Phil experimenting with streaming, and that got us into talking with
streaming over wireless. As we explored this conversation we
returned to the conversation about Utopia.

As the meeting went on, we talked about various job opportunities in
the valley, and then got to hear from a couple of the folks from CleanFilms who are providing cleaned versions of movies to their customers. We also talked about ClearPlay
who does a similar thing. They are both dealing with lawsuits
from Hollywood about destroying the `artistic integrity` of their
movies. Looping back, I suggested that they might look to China
as a market where editing of content and `censorship` of content is
government sponsored. They indicated that the recent arguement
from Hollywood is that they fully intended to enter into this market
themselves.

I brought up Google Talk, and we exploded into the whole conversation
about where is this going.  There were a lot of good ideas, and
this spun into the entire discussion about identity, digital identity,
certificates …

Too much to talk about … it was a great morning … we probably could have gone all day!

Well … I got here in only 24 hours!  We left Salt Lake City at
~11:15am on Sunday, and got here to Singapore almost exactly 24 hours
later.  It was a great set of flights, and a nice trip.  We
took Singapore Air from Los Angeles through Tokyo, and then on to
here.  What a great airline …

Anyhow … I’ll be blogging more.  I was able to read the entire
book Blink … very cool book, and I have some thoughts that I want to
write about.  I also got my new Zire 72 working, and am going to
see if I can get the GPS operational …

Anyhow … good night for now!

OOPS!  I forgot to complete editing this before posting …  🙂
==========================================
It’s that time again … and I got here on time. This morning was
again Phil Windley’s CTO Roundtable. There is a good group of
people here, and as usual the conversation went from topic to topic.

• Cogito – we talked about a local company here (since some ex-Cogito people are present)
  and what is going on. There has been a huge management shift at
  Cogito, and a lot of people left. This lead to a discussion about
  the confusion of the thinking behind the investors choices.
• Google
  – we spent some time talking about Google, and where they are
  lately.  I think Phil brought up that they recently added RSS
  Feeds to their Google Personal Hompages.
• WiFi – We then took a turn into the discussion of whether
  long-term WiFi will be free or not.  Or, maybe we’ll see that both
  will exist?  I think that overall, it was agreed that both are
  going to be around … there will be some folks who want to offer free,
  and others where you get what you pay for.

I had to step out and take a phone call with some researchers at
CMU. At Agilix we are now working with a large number of
researchers in eLearning and Tablet PCs in education. CMU is
doing some amazing work in eTextBooks, etc.

• Anti-Spam and e-mail addresses – we talked about the various
  services that people are using to create unique e-mail addresses for
  everyone that they give their e-mail address to. Some folks are
  using PostFix, I use Qmail, someone brought up PookMail.
• We ventured into storage issues … terabyte hard disks, SanDisk’s new products, and how to backup all of this data.
• Wireless
  in the home – there was talk about whether fiber in the home, or CAT-5e
  in the home, is still going to be big … or can we go all wireless
  within the home?  I really think that all of the interference
  issues will be solved … wireless rocks.
• Jumping
  on Open WiFi – I brought up the 2600 article, that I read, about all of
  the data and identity information that was gathered from someone on an
  open AP.  It’s amazing in this day and age how little people
  understand about security and encryption.  This led to the next
  topic …
• Using clear protocols – we talked about
  how little SSL is being used, and how many people and company still use
  “open” SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 for e-mail!  Crazy!
• Phil brought up Make magazine – mini Linux server … very cool stuff!

That was about it … I did bring up that I am looking for some
PHP5/MySQL talent, and also that Agilix Labs is looking for some C# .NET
developers who want to make some side money creating plug-ins for our
new GoBinder SDK.

Overall … a great meeting as usual!

I was looking forward to this mornings breakfast … it’s always a good
set of conversations. I got to share my success in getting
OpenDarwin working in Virtual PC 2004 … I also started a new OpenDarwin Experiences blog where I’ll write about my experiences.

We started off talking about Yahoo! and Google for a bit … comparing
their financials and discussing Google AdWords and search technologies
in general. It was surprising to see that Yahoo! still exceeds
Google in revenues. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

Someone brought up the subject of Google Maps,
and the various hacks that are out there. It’s amazing to see
just how far people are taking this amazing new medium. I brought
up the USAPhotoMaps product that my friend Joe Skehan showed me.

The topic of Microsoft’s new XML file formats came up, and that took us
off into a conversation about whether the open/proprietary formats
really matter. I don’t feel that they make much difference
anymore, and I used C# and Visual Studio as an example … even though
the C# language is now supported cross-platform by the Mono project,
the Mono development environment does not come close to the level of
functionality provided to a developer in Visual Studio.

Phil brought up ActiveGrid
which is a “LAMP stack based system for building web
applications. It looks like a pretty impressive solution for
developing SOA applications. This (for whatever reason) caused me
to think about my recent experiments with Greasemonkey and what I
think is the next generation of real innovation in browsers. I
really believe that client side post-processing of web pages is going
to grow and become more and more commercialized.

The subject of identity theft came up, with one of the folks telling us
about how someone had recreated a physical copy of his credit/debit
card and was using it … in Indiana! They indicated that the
“card was present” at the transactions … even though his wife and him
were here in Utah. We talked about whether RFID would solve any
of this, but I talked about how you could probably create an RFID
skimmer, just as easily as a ATM Skimmer.

We wrapped up talking a little about hacking – and getting hacked – and
the potential for Open Source Web Service intermediaries.

This morning was the  May CTO Breakfast
coordinated by Phil Windley.  There was a good group of people,
and the usual varied topics.  I came in a little late and so I
missed the beginning conversations, however we quickly moved into
languages.

We spent a good bit of time talking about computer languages … from COBOL to APL,
C to Java to C#.  I linked to APL since we spent some time on APL,
and talking about what the core values were of this language.  I
suggested that computer languages have evolved to meeting the demands
of individuals who want to describe or communicate an abstract concept
into a form that a computer can use and process.  There is a huge
human side to computer languages … the computer language of choice
seems to be related to the ability of the individual to express their
ideas – the abstract thought, concept, or process – in that
language.  In addition, it was brought up that there could be a
better language that is more effective or efficient for that individual
… however they might not have ever taken the time to learn that
language.

Another point that was brought up was how corporations and developers
often develop in the languages they know … even though it might be
far more cost effective to develop the solution in a different
language.  One thing that is changing all of this is the
translation of software source code into intermediate langauges that
are executed by various run-time engines.

The subject of differences in global cultures – from here in the USA,
to Europe and China – also came up, and the motiviation of younger
generations in these other countries.  We ended up talking about
how “guilt and humiliation” can often be good motivators, and are
present in other cultures.  In addition, we talked about the
various role models that are present here in our country.

Finally, the topic of schools and education came up.  It was
interesting to hear the various points of view about our education
systems in the country, and how it is the parents involvement that
directly relates to the behavior and participation of the student.

Overall … as usual … a very interesting set of discussions. 
Of course afterwards I spent some time chatting with Phil about some of
our ideas, and some of the projects that I am working on.  I’m
about to announce a demonstration of one of them … and there is one
that I might be able to work with Phil on.  We’ll see …

At todays CTO Breakfast, we talked about Fernando Flores … someone
whom I respect tremendously. While searching for a link to his
book, I found this Fast Company article – The Power of Words – that outlines some of his controversial, yet effect work.

What is interesting is that this article talks about his links and association with Werner Erhard and the work that he is doing to transform peoples lives … and thus the organizations that they are a part of.

I had the priviledge over the last number of years to take a whole
series of courses offered by Landmark Education – “Erhard’s original
thinking and the processes developed from it are found updated and
further developed in the programs of Landmark Education.”

For anyone who truly wants to understand the power of words … to see
how language determines our future … I can not recommend these
courses enough. Hmmm … I might have to go and review some of
these soon …

This morning is another CTO Breakfast. I always enjoy the people
that I meet and the topics that we discuss. There is no specific
agenda … the conversations just flow from one meme to another, with
the occasional leap.

This morning we talked about a variety of things:

• Simulation of Systems
• Java and C#
• Simplicity, and the natural tendancy towards complexity
• Fernando Flores and his book Understanding Computers and Cognition
• There were questions about the new Tiger Mac OS
• Genealogy technologies and the issues with identity
• a huge project was described …
• working with ~500 million to ~1 billion individuals (person objects)
• differences in identity caused by multiple observers
• SuSE SLES9 based platforms
• using Oracle, written in Java
• this led to more identity conversation
• identity is given from community
• identity only exists in the context of a community

It was another fun morning … with lots of good conversation …

Wow … I’ve been really out of communications for about two weeks
now.  I have a lot of  things to write about … we took a
trip out to Topaz Mountain, and then I had a long week with a lot of surprises.  I ended last week by going to a Third Eye Blind concert, and then had a great hike with my friend Ted this last Sunday.

I’ll post more about all of these … oh yeah … I have pictures to post also …

This morning at Brainshare the first keynote was the Governor of Utah,
Jon Huntsman Jr., and he discussed a lot of information about
Utah. I started to wonder why he was talking at Brainshare to a
bunch of geeks, however he finally touched on the core aspect of his
talk … the newly announced Open Source Technology Center.

I really like the idea, and I look forward to finding out more about
what they are going to offer, and at what cost. I have been
working with folks at the Miller Business Innovation Center
in the Salt Lake Valley, and I have learned alot about how they
structure their deals and offerings. I am currently working on
some start-up ideas that might benefit from such a location.

The funny part is the “other side” of this new announcement. This
is what Novell is going to do with all of the “empty buildings” on the
Provo campus. With all of the layoffs, and the shift of power to Cambridge, the Provo campus has started to become a ghost town.

I have to admit that this is the strangest looking USB peripheral that I have seen to date. It is advertised as a USB Eye Messager! I’m not sure if there was more that I could say about this … or more that I would want to say about this!