Objective - Chris Hollander's Blog

Digital Identities. I Has them.

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:31:46 GMT

SO, its been a few months since my last post here on objective, so I figure why not share some love with the Internets.

It only took me 2 years, but I think I've finally sorted out my Social ~~network~~ ~~applications~~ ~~media~~ presence on the web.

Facebook is my home on the web for the next 3 years. Facebook is how I plan on sharing anything and everything with people who I actually know, IRL. If you actually know me (i.e., we've shared a meal or a drink or something), then you should add me as a friend on facebook.
FriendFeed is where i'll do my blogerati naval gazing. I'll still do the majority of my reading in my RSS reader, but I'll do most of my commenting on FriendFeed. If your interested in participating in the same online conversations as I am, then you'll likely find me on FriendFeed.
Delicious is where i'll keep all of my interesting (lol) links. Feel free to peruse my hawt linkage.
this blog, Objective, is going back to its roots. From this post forward, this blog will be devoted to 100% geekery. Hardcore geekery. potentially NSFH (not safe for home) geekery. This will include:
- Code. Lots of it.
- Tales from the trenches of a public sector consultant.
- hardware/gadget obsessions.
- Warcraft stuff. (yah, thats right.)
- etc.

I've decided to sort all of this out because, after quite a creative draught, I suddenly find myself wanting to write again. I have a story to tell. I have an alternative perspective to share. I want to geek out in a big way, and I needed a venue to support that- My friends don't need to be exposed to the horrible gory depths of my geekery, and you, dear Internet (glares at search engines...), don't need to be exposed to the intimate details of dealings with my friends (facebook is just fine for that).

I need to know that I can post code, and not bore my friends. I also need to know that I can post videos, and not ruin my friends future presidential campaigns. ;)

And finally... I want to re-establish a weathered connection. 6 years (gasp!!) ago, when I started blogging, I was known (ok, known might be a strong word here..) as one of the first Microsoft bloggers. Back then, there was a list (blogroll, it was called, way back then..) of about 20 or 30 of us Msft bloggers, and I was proud to be one of them. Then the blogosphere entered its inflationary phase, and thousands of awesome M'softies sprang up and took the Internet by storm. Around the same time, I started in a new position at Microsoft, and I didn't feel super comfortable sharing the details of my day job publicly.

but as of Today, I am the Empire. This Saturday, I fly back to Redmond for a new swig of corporate cool aide. I'm going to spend a week soaking in as much as I can, then I'm going on a 2 week European vacation. When I come back, I've got about 20 posts lined up... fire up your aggregators. :)

iPhone 3G. The G stands for groan. :(

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:04:44 GMT

I really, really wanted to love the new iPhone. See, the original was really wonderful, but still not quite good enough for me... I have an unnatural, unhealthy relationship with my smartphone, and I was hoping that the new Iphone would bring Apple's device at least up to par with what I have, but it fell short. :(

The good:

Support for Exchange is awesome- I've relied on having access to exchange on my phone for years now, and I couldn't imagine having a phone without it.
"MobileMe" is super cool... like they say, apple delivers "exchange for the rest of us". I've been living in an auto-synchronized world for a while now.. my multiple PCs and smartphone have synchronized email/contacts/calendar, and its all accessible on the web thanks to Outlook Web Access (by far, the coolest (and one of the first) ajax apps I've ever seen.. but that's another topic). It's great to know that my friends who don't work at corporations that use exchange can finally stop worrying about syncing up their address books....
no suprises with the API announcements. any platform live and dies by its developer support- now apple is on par with windows mobile development, and positioned as a competitor to android.
I love the notion of location information as a first class citizen in the platform... I hope to see windows mobile catch up with this, soon.
the price... quite nice.

the bad (and the ugly):

I can't imagine owning a phone that doesn't have expandable storage... Am I being unreasonable here? I just bought an 8 gig micro SD card for my phone for less than 50$, and I can get 32 gig of SD memory for around 100. If the 8 gig iPhone had the potential for me to throw a card in to upgrade it to 40g, that would certainly sweeten the pot...
Their "exchange for the rest of us" solution stops a bit short of revolutionary. revolutionary would be if the entire sync infrastructure were open to 3rd party developers, so that, for example, facebook could write a "fully synched" client.
I find it outright insulting that in 2008, a company would dare release a phone/media device without advanced bluetooth (A2DP, tethering) compatibility.

my fingers are crossed. Maybe, just maybe, next year, Apple will introduce their next iPhone, and it will have enough substance to pry this smartphone out of my white-knuckled fist. lets see.

Yes, the web is in peril...

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:10:53 GMT

according to Scoble, the web is in danger. The stage is being set for a grand battle with Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook on one side, and Google and the open web on the other. The preemptive strike is the (completely speculative...) Microsoft acquisition of both Yahoo search and Facebook:

This is a fight for the Web. We all just crawled inside a box that locks Google out.

Lets suspend disbelief for a moment, and imagine that things play out exactly how Scoble predicts. In his dystopia, Facebook becomes an isolated island in the open sea of the google-accessible web. Users who are "trapped" on the Facebook island are forced to.... well, they're forced to socialize with their friends, use well documented APIs to create and share applications, and proactively manage their online identities. Further, they will have access to the (second) best search tools on the planet- but those tools could be specifically tailored to fit the well defined needs of their tiny little island... heck, they might not be the best in the world, but maybe... just maybe... they would be "good enough".

Its a hard life for these poor fools, stranded in Facebook.

Life on the outside is so much better, amirite? I mean, out in the free web, All Your Data Are Belong To Google, and Google Does No Evil. Which means that your personal information, browsing habits, attention, gestures, opinions, are definitely not for sale to the highest bidder, right? Do no evil also means not making tons and tons of money by backing web spam, domain squatting, and malware distribution, right?

ok, that's probably enough sarcasm for now. See, the thing is, yes, I agree, the Web is in peril. The Aggressor, though, isn't Microsoft/Yahoo/Facebook- it's spam. Or more generally, its unwanted, intrusive attention, regardless of vector. For years, spam has been slowly eroding the value of the open web, and it's not going to stop any time soon.

What we've wanted, for years, is a network that we can trust. A network based on real identity.
A network architecture that puts the user in control of her own information.
A network that allows users to opt in or out of participation
if Google could provide that, I would be there- but they can't. I can't trust Google. Most people out there don't trust Microsoft. But Flickr and Delicious have never betrayed my trust, and neither has Facebook.

If you need me, you can find me on the island.

btw, these opinions are mine, and are not endorsed by my employer.

Technorati Tags: Scoble,Microsoft,Yahoo,Facebook,Google

I know what the Frozen Donkey Wheel Is.

Fri, 16 May 2008 17:45:51 GMT

If you've found this post, then you know what I'm talking about.

You came here looking for the Frozen Donkey Wheel. You've spent hours searching. You've been pouring over the web, following endless chains of links, chasing rabbits, loosing hours. You've read a thousand theories, and none of them have satisfied your hunger. You know that the answer is out there, just out of your reach, just behind the next link.

You've already found it.

You've been in it all along.

The Frozen Donkey Wheel, of course, is the Matrix.

No, really, stop laughing. Like the Matrix, the Frozen Donkey Wheel is a system. It's a control. It's a tool. Specifically, its a beacon. It's a crib. It's a tarbaby. The more you write, the more you read, the more you fight, the more it leads, the deeper you fall, the tighter the trap. half a million sites across the web tie themselves to the Frozen Donkey Wheel. And the frozen Donkey Wheel leads back to the original interviews. Which lead back to websites that are owned by Big Media. Which sells adds. And makes millions and millions of dollars. That's all the Frozen Donkey Wheel is.

At TED, JJ Abrams delivers a talk about the mystery box. The producers have talked, at length, about the importance of the Internet in relation to the show. They've said that the show simply could not have existed without the Internet. The Frozen Donkey Wheel is an ad-hoc, dynamic, invisible, real-world mystery box.

JJ Abrams hasn't opened his mystery box yet. And he's not going to any time soon. the secret isn't out there. Your not going to figure it out. It's not the answer you seek, its the question.

Your not searching for the Frozen Donkey Wheel because you want to find it.

Your find it because you want to search.

Technorati Tags: Frozen Donkey Wheel,breeereport,4 8 15 16 23 42

With Authority comes Responsibility, or something...

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:18:58 GMT

So, here's the thing with the Internet. Thanks to search engines, all sorts of people find this blog- but when they get here, I doubt they find whatever is is that they were looking for. Hopefully, this post will help redirect the poor, lost surfers* who stumble across my meager little blog in their search for the answer to life's questions.

I was surprised to see that this post about my mobile phone as the ultimate transition object was ranked pretty high on the major search engines for the term "transition object". My posting is a somewhat nonsensical ramble about my personal attachment issues with my mobile phone- conversely, this is a real discussion about transition objects from a psychoanalytical perspective, if readers are so inclined.
I still get a bunch of folks who search the web for the Lost numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42), and somehow find my posts on the subject. It has been a very, very long time since I've updated these posts, and quite honestly, much more interesting stuff is going on in the Lost-o-Verse- might i suggest checking out these awesome theories about how Lost is a video game, or about how the Lost is based on Time Loops? Also, people seem to land here after searching for "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" in French. They find a post I wrote a few years ago, back in season 1, when we had absolutely no clue who or when or what was happening on the Island... actually, we still don't really know any of those things, but that's besides the point- the point is, just about every single person involved with that little plot point is dead now. so... yah.
I'm quite happy to know that if you search the web for "how to find misplaced items", my post about finding lost things comes up first. This whole web thing might just work out after all.

*do we really not have a better metaphor than surfing yet? Because, like, the web is nothing like a wave... and a browser is nothing like a board...

Ok, that's pretty cool.

Wed, 07 May 2008 22:48:37 GMT

yes, yes, i understand, my keyboard is a mess. You're missing the point. Look closer. The F4, F5, and F6 keys say "New", "Open", and "Close", respectively. I had no idea what their purpose was. Until today.

Those keys manage my browser tabs. Let me say that again: those keys manage my browser tabs. that means one button access to opening new tabs, closing existing tabs, and entering Urls.

My whole browsing world has been radically altered.

Its times like these that I realize just how much of a geek I am.

Where it's at.

Mon, 05 May 2008 20:21:44 GMT

two years ago, I wrote about the then discombobulated state of social networking. Things have improved a bit since then:

Del.icio.us is still, well, Delicious. I still find Delicious to be the easiest way to participate in the read/write web- I've tagged close to 1500 items, used it to share stuff, used it to find stuff, used it to remember stuff... in many ways, its the current focal point of my online experience.
Sharing pictures online is still a mess. Flickr is cool, but to put it simply, none of my friends use it. Instead, my friends upload pictures to myspace, facebook, or older photo sites like kodak. Low-res pictures get emailed around, and eventually disappear. For a while, I tried to use Windows Live Messenger Shared Folders (thats alot to type..) to share pictures with my mom, but that didn't quite work out. I am still looking for the perfect way to share pictures, and very soon, videos. Flickr may win by default...
43 Things was a cool idea that fizzled. not sure why. That's all I have to say about that.

The new hotness (and by new, I of course mean old to everyone except me...), surprisingly, are a series of services that attack social networking from surprisingly different angles.

Twitter is anti-blogging. It's often referred to as micro-blogging, but I don't think that sums it up quite right- Twitter boils blogging down to its most pure form (answering the question: "what am I doing right now?"), and throws away everything that is horrible and annoying about blogging: trackbacks, linkbacks, comments, spam, tags, clouds, feeds, etc. Some might call it glorified IRC chat, some might call it a conversation bus, some might call it the future- all of them are right.
I think Facebook is probably best described as the first true social operating system. See, in geek terms, an "operating system" is the software that provides developers with a layer of abstraction so that they can write applications without worrying about the details of the computer machinery that those apps will run on. That's exactly what Facebook does, but for the social Internet. Developers write applications (like, 25k+ at the time of this posting) that run on facebook, and they don't have to worry about all of the nitty gritty details of how to manage communities- Facebook takes care of all of that, and the apps just hum along. its pretty damn cool- and, to top it off, the abstraction works both ways. as a user, I don't have to pay attention to dozens of different web sites, accounts, friends lists, etc- i just do that once, in Facebook, and I get a "portal" experience for all the different apps that I'm interested in. Cool.
- the other thing that I find interesting about facebook is that it's essentially a walled garden- there is no notion of "public profiles" that just anyone can see. It's built on the premise of adding technology infrastructure to existing, established social networks- not on the notion of building web-wide social networks out of the ether.
FriendFeed, quite possibly, is the coolest of the bunch. FriendFeed takes on the task of aggregating all of the silly little crumbs that we leave across over 30 different social network properties (including every single one thats ever been mentioned on this blog) and coordinates them into a single, global, threaded discussion. Here is a list of just about everything that chris hollander has contributed to the interwebs, going back to 2005. gotta love that. :)

So.... what's the point of this blog post? after spending a few months in "Read Only mode", I'm ready to start contributing to the web again. This is due, in part, to the culmination of social network stuff outlined above, but also due to the alignment of a bunch of awesome tools: Windows Live Writer, Live Gallery, Witty, Live Mesh, and my smartphone... but that's a whole other post.

Update.

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:33:43 GMT

My walk outside went well.

My inbox is still clean.

I have one less inbox than I used to.

My action items were completed, delegated, or turned into full scale projects.

I have followed up. I have closed all previously open loops.

There are exciting opportunities ahead. I may even be able to write about some of them.

All of my bills are still payed- and there are no new ones.

All of the documentation for my previous project was submitted and approved.

My new project requires extensive documentation. The action items are defined.

My desk is a mess.

I have at least one shiny new toy, with more on the way.

I have found my favorite new quote: "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital" - Aaron Levenstein.

clean slate.

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:46:46 GMT

My work inbox has zero items in it.

My hotmail inbox has zero items in it.

I have zero unread items on bloglines.

I have no unread notes or open friend requests on myspace.

All of my bills are paid.

All of the documentation I needed to do for my current project is complete.

my desk is clear.

I have generated about 80 next action items.

I should really go take a nice walk outside while the sun is still shining.

winter is official over...

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 20:40:21 GMT

...at least for me.

Today marked my triumphant retun to a ten minute mile- someting I haven't been able to run in about six months. My "winter hibernation" is officially over!

I haven't been to the gym in weeks- since my usual (bad influence) lunch buddy wasn't available, I decided to hit the gym during my lunch hour. A minute or two into my treadmill warm-up, This is How I disapear (My Chemical Romance) came on, and I started mashing the "speed up" button. the next song that my phone shuffled up for me was Everlong (Foo Fighters), which starts off relatively slow (which was gave me a second to catch my breath and grab a sip of water), but quickly ramps up and ends incredibly high (which led to more speed-up-button-mashing). When I run treadmill, I usually cover the time/distance/heart rate thingee with my towel, so that I don't get caught up counting seconds- I pulled away my towel, and was shocked to see 1.04 miles in 9:43... and that I had been running over 8 miles/hour for the last two minutes!

It always suprises me how much easier it is for me to accomplish some things, in spite of paying absolutely no attention to what i'm doing...

The ultimate Transition Object.

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 03:00:28 GMT

The thing about spending your life working with computers, software, the web, and bits in general is that things have a way of staying relatively abstract. The actual relationships between things become very well defined, very predictable, very understandable.

Have you ever seen what happens the moment an executive realizes they left their blackberry on a plane?

In the last 2 years, i've left my cellphone home about three times. Today is one of those days. Its a disaster. My hands shake, i'm constantly worried that i'm late for things- I obsessively check my email. I constantly check my pockets. If I wanted to talk to someone right now, I'm fucked. I don't know my best friends phone numbers. I don't have a quarter for a pay phone. If I did, they wouldn't never take the time to accept an anonymous call from some weird pay phone number. I have nothing to stare at during boring meetings. I have 101 keys beneath my fingers, but all I want is my 12 key pad and T9. I don't even want to think about all the people who might choose today to call me. Who know that when they call, their numbers and names and pictures and songs will blare out of my phone, and will assume that I'm not answering because I'm dead in a river somewhere.

Its really not the phone. the phone is the cheapest pile of plastic, silicon, LCD, and battery that could be cobbled together and resold for the highest possible price. The thing is, my life is in that thing. I carry everyone that I care about in my pocket. My neurons fire through its circuitry, and spray a mess of life onto my caller. I hear voices. I see faces. I connect. The cell phone is the ultimate Transition Object.

A Transition object is a thing that you use as a substitute for a relationship. Infants have pacifiers. Catholics have crosses. Butch held on to his fathers watch. You probably still have your highschool sweetheart's t-shirt in a drawer somewhere. My phone is my ulitimate transition object. It proxies every relationship in my life. Everything important to me ends up on my cell phone, somehow. People, places, music, messages. A transition object is a tool. You can take out your transition object whenever you need to, and recieve a quick dose of comfort to ease your anxiety.

I often wonder if modern cell phones were specifically tailor made to serve as handheld substitutes for disconnected relationships. I wonder if america is last to catch on, because it seems like mobiles are a much bigger deal everywhere else in the world. I wonder how many people still have still hang on to lost relationships, lost loved ones, and lost places and times by clinging to digital bits stuffed into their pockets. I wonder how many people only consider a friendship truly over once their contacts have been deleted from their respective phones.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... I really wish I didn't forget my phone today.

What i'm reading...

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:34:03 GMT

maybe i need a new typewriter...

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:37:06 GMT

because this blogging thing is barely cutting it for me.

I'll make you a promise. before spring comes, I am going to write something worth reading here. otherwise, fuck the whole thing.

H to the izzo... Chem to the romo?

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:59:57 GMT

So, have you listened to Jay-Z's new album yet? (if not, you can listen to it for free at clear channel)

In general, I would rate every track i've heard so far pretty highly... jigga shouldn't have any problems maintaining his crown, imo.

I was particularly suprised, though, to hear him shouting out "My Chemical Romance" and "The Black Parade" about 1:30 seconds into the track "Oh My God"... you gotta wonder if this is just an expensive cross marketing ploy, or if theres some emo-fueled mashups (ala linkin park?) in the near future...

Also, in Beach Chair, Hova goes out of his way to tell us that he's never been on myspace... seriously? really? im thinking he's reaching a bit here...

New toy;)

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 16:43:04 GMT

NY Hackers: the last generation

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:22:00 GMT

it seems like a lifetime ago:

"Though related to Defrag, Comport looks nothing like his cousin. He has a wiry medium build and thick, straight black hair that reaches to the bottom of his ears. Under a black leather jacket, he wears a plaid flannel shirt buttoned to the top, and carries a backpack slung over one shoulder. He is not a stereotypical nerd, but rather an intense presence at the meeting who loves to debate and argue and theorize about computers in a fast, powerful voice which he uses authoritatively. Quieter people in the room are drawn to listen in on his conversations and debates about mother boards and Unix boxes and computer security. He gives the impression that he is both informed and intelligent, and prepared to prove it."

Hi. I'm comport. ;)

The paragraph above comes from Arik Hesseldahl's Masters project at Columbia University, entitled New York Hackers: The New Generation. More than ten years ago, I met Arik (aka Zero) on the first Friday of some random month at the 2600 meeting, at citicorp. It's incredible to look back and see how dramatically everything in my world has changed since that time.

In 1996, I worked as a network admin in my college's computer lab. I think I was making 15 dollars an hour. I ran about a dozen servers under my desk; I had slackware, NT, windows95, and os7 machines all doing interesting things... there may have even been an OS2 box in there. I was running web, FTP, IRC, and of course, quake servers. My career as a hacker was off to a good start. ;)

In 2006, I'm an Enterprise Strategy Consultant, working for the largest software company in the world, assigned to one of the largest school districts in the world. My smartphone probably has CPU, ram, and storage than the entire pile of chips that I squirreled away in my old office.

In 1996, I looked forward to meeting with dozens of fellow hackers on the first Friday of every month, at citicorp. I spent every spare hour I had scouring bit-space- searching for my next hit. I wrote a program to keep track of all of the shell accounts I had stumbled upon... I wrote a tumbling key, real time cipher algorithm, that me and my friends used to secure (lol) our hyper-confidential conversations.

In 2006, I rubbed elbows with some of the best known minds in modern software architecture at week long conferences. I gave presentations on emerging technologies, and deployed a solution that lets over ten thousand professionals throughout New York City use a standard telephone to better service the needs of over 150,000 special education students.

In 1996, Amy was my girlfriend, for about three years. she would sleep quietly in my bed, in my mom's old house, while I would stay up all night writing code. Every once in a while, someone in my house might pick up the phone, and disconnect my blazing fast 33.6 Internet connection; when I logged back on, I would muffle the modem squawks with a T-shirt so that they wouldn't wake her up.

In 2006, Amy is my wife, for over four years. We're living in a beautiful home in Maspeth. Our house is bathed in wireless internet access; as any given day winds down, it wouldn't be unusual to find myself on the couch browsing blogs on my tablet, and Amy in the home office shopping for shoes on the web.

in 1996, Hackers were cocky, idealistic, cynical, and weary of an overcontrolling government. Hackers crawled through the dimly lit, mysterious, alluring series of tubes- probing for vulnerabilities, hoping for a ledge to hang on to, knowing that they would ultimately find the lever that proved that we were smarter than them. Back then, there was an adventure at the end of every IP address; every server was a new opportunity to measure yourself. We all knew that the emerging system was going to change the world. We were happy to plead guilty to the crime of curiosity. We were guilty of knowing more than most. Back then, we dreamed of a day when everyone would bathe in the beauty of the baud; when the world would be awash in free access to the grid.

in 2006, we've won. You couldn't stumble down the street without phasing through a dozen overlapping broadband networks. In minutes, a ten year old kid with a Nintendo DS does what took me a week, ten years ago. Every 6th grader has a myspace page. My mom and I video conference. Presidential Candidates have blogs. The deep, rich, interconnected network of hacks, exploits, bots, sites, channels, hackers, hard drives, shell accounts, clandestine meetings, and obscure handles is.... completely obsolete. The smartest people in the world used to be hackers; now their security consultants, CTOs, and chief architects. Hackers used to be criminals, their crime was curiosity. Now, criminals hire hackers, and their crimes are identity theft, extortion, and terrorism.

On the first friday of October, I would love to head into the city, and see who's showing up these days for the citicorp meeting. I would love to, but i cant... I'm flying down to Atlanta with Amy, to spend some time with family. I would love to know if there is a "new generation" of hackers once again, or if we were actually the last true generation.

what a dork.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:48:46 GMT

no, but seriously... what a dork. I haven't posted here in over two months, and the last post i leave up is a dork'ed up rant on my awesome geek toys... pretty sad, really.

So, in the past two months, i've been insanely busy at work, busy going insane during the last episode of lost, and lost important episodes of my favorite shows because my time warner DVR sucks. :(

We've also thrown a few parties at the house; most notably, Jill and Dave's going away party, and Dave's 30th birthday after party.

I have a trip to ireland scheduled this July. :) does anyone want me to bring them back anything?

Expect pictures from the parties soon, and pictures from Ireland later.

P.S. Did i tell you about the time our house was invaded by the irish for 5 weeks? if not, expect to read about it soon...

How I Work

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:13:02 GMT

From MicroPersuasion:

Fortune has a really cool series called "How I Work." They interviewed an array of business leaders and celebrities about the tools and techniques they use to manage their day. I thought it would be really cool if bloggers did the same.

For a while now, I've been meaning to put together this post; Luckily, Steve has Meme-ified what Fortune has started, and it's pretty hard for me to resist a good meme. :D

My work is completely centered on two devices: my Tablet PC and my Microsoft Smartphone. My tablet is a 2 year old Motion computing slate (40GB HD, 1GB ram). My smartphone is a Audiovox 5600 with a 1GB mini-SD card.

On my tablet, my most important programs are Outlook, IE 7, and MSN Desktop Search. Desktop search currently has almost 200k documents indexed; over 5 years worth of email, hundreds of contacts, thousands of photos, presentations from dozens of conferences, source code, project plans, meeting notes, everything. I start most tasks from desktop search; I type a few key phrases, and most of what I need is there.

Living in outlook (with exchange server) means that most of what's important to me, from a work standpoint, is guaranteed to be in available to me in at least three ways; on my tablet, on my phone, and over the web.

Getting Things Done has dramtically improved my productivity. Every day, I bring my inbox to zero before I leave the office. I do brain-dumps in OneNote, and turn notes into outlook tasks. I record audio notes on my smart phone, sync them into OneNote, review them, and turn them into outlook tasks as well. I use the GTD plug in to quickly churn through my inbox. I sync tasks to my smartphone, based on context.

OneNote has completely changed the way I organize or attend meetings. I have my handwritten notes from the last two years archived, flagged, organized, tagged, and accessible- most with synchronized audio recordings from the meetings. I can search for a specific phrase (i.e., "Fiscal Accountability"), and see every mention of that in a meeting over the past 2 years; i can then click to hear exactly who was talking at that time, and what they were saying.

My smartphone is my primary point of contact to my email, calendar, contacts, photos, music, web, and MSN messenger. I contantly filter my incoming mail from my phone, GTD style; within 10 seconds of arrival, I know if I have to delete, follow up, or file a message. All of my appointments are on my phone, so my phone knows when its ok to disturb me and when its not. I have about 150 of my highest rated, most viewed pictures from Flickr on my phone, so I can share them with folks I meet. I take pictures of products in stores with my camera phone, and then turn those into "@ToBuy" tasks later on when my tablet is available. I have my highest rated, least listened to, most recently purchased songs automatically synched to my phone through windows media player 10. I am often signed into mobile MSN messenger, and I have instant access to bloglines though pocket IE.

During down time, or low energy time, or between meetings, tabbed browsing in IE 7 provides a great reading experience. My "Home page group" consists of Live.com, tenbyten.org, bloglines, and popurls.com. I work my way through my home pages, opening up new background tabs for each interesting link I come across. Once I make it all the way through my multi-tabbed river of news, I hit Ctrl+Q for quick tabs, and then click through to each of the items i've opened. Stuff thats particularly interesting gets posted to Del.icio.us.

While my tablet and my smartphone are my primary devices, they're far from the only machines I use; I have at least 4 other machines that I use on a fairly regular basis. I have dev machines at home and at my client location, workstations that I have to give presentations on, etc. Most of the time, I set my tablet down and Remote into it using the Remote Desktop services built into windows- giving me the obvious benefit of controlling multiple PCs through a single keyboard/mouse.

technorati tags: How I Work

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:55:54 GMT

The web has been abuzz lately with the ongoing conversation between the Naked Conversations folks and Amazon.

In short, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel pitched the value of blogging to an audience at Amazon; Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, pushed back, asking Robert and Shel to essentially provide emperical evidence for the value of blogging.

This has since erupted (ironically, in true naked conversation style) into web-wide discussion of the value of blogging- but I don't see many people addressing the base disconnect.

As a CxO, Werner was looking for hard, emperical evidence pointing to a business value for blogging. For example, how does having employee’s blog help:

Increase total sales?
Reduce operating costs?
Improve supply chain management?
Reduce inventory on hand?
Reduce support call costs?

Further, if blogging can help in these areas, how much? What percentage can my sales increase? What percentage of my employees has to blog? What is the cost of that? How long do my employees have to blog before I see change?

As Evangelists, Robert and Shel were promoting (lower case r) religion. For this discussion, "religion" is a good catch all phrase for trust, attention, faith, word-of-mouth, buzz, and everything else that makes up evangelism. There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence for the value of blogging; blogging tripled the sales of that one wine company. That one web app was bought for n-million dollars based on the power of blogging alone. Every time an oppressed individual blogs, an angel gets its wings; we get it, blogging is chicken soup for the web's soul.

At the end of the day, though, Werner's questions represent questions that every CxO in the industry really should be asking (and every entrepreneur should be answering). I was lucky enough to meet Werner at the 2003 PDC; we hung out, talked for a few minutes, and went our own way. Back then, he was already blogging for years. Werner Gets Blogging, in a truly deep way. I may be wrong on this one, but I'm going to guess that Werner wasn't asking those questions in order to punch holes in the concept of corporate blogging; instead, he was trying to draw some attention to the issues that really matter from an executive perspective.

technorati tags: Naked+Conversations, Scoble, Amazon, Microsoft, Blogging

How to find things.

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:16:55 GMT

I hate losing things. As in, fingernails-on-chalkboard caliber torture. I lost my ID card holder this morning. as I frantically searched through my house, I thought that there has got to be a better way. Though I hate losing things, I'm actually pretty good at finding stuff- especially for other people. Like most things I do correctly, I find that having a methodology helps. So, without further ado, here's my methodology for finding things:

Calm Down. First, breathe. Whatever it is that you lost, you are likely to find it- and if you don't, you will either find someway to replace it, or you will find some way to live without it. If your in a panic, it will only take you longer to find what you lost. When we panic, we lose the ability to focus on details, we gain tunnel vision, we have a hard time remembering things; none of this will help right now. When your relaxed, you can see the bigger picture, trace your memory, notice detail.
Search mentally first, then physically. You can think much faster than you can move. When we say something is "lost", we're not referring to where it is physically; physically, its exactly where we left it. When we say something is lost, what we mean to say is, "I can't remember where I left...". Losing an item is a mental lapse, not a physical one. So start in your head.
Tell the story, out loud. Talking is thinking out loud. verbalizing a situation forces you to sort our the situation in your head, and provides a framework for solving your problem. Tell the story, out loud, to yourself or to whomever is with you; say exactly what you lost, when you think you lost it, and why it's important that you find it. For example, this morning, I would have said, "I Can't find my ID wallet. I misplaced it sometime this weekend; I really hope I didn't leave it at the Club on saturday night. I have a flight on wednesday; If I don't find my ID, I am in a real jam, because I probably won't have time to replace everything by then". Saying stuff like this lets people around you know what state of mind your in; It also helps you from mentally obsessing, which you can't really afford right now. You want all your efforts focused on finding, not thinking about not-finding.
Successful thought patterns for finding stuff. Ok, now that your mind is a bit clearer, here are some specific thought patterns that may help you. At this stage, your goal is to get a better understanding of where your item might be; along the way, you might actually remember exactly where it is! if so, game over, you win- if not, you at least have a battle plan.
1. Last known use. Think about the last time you actually used the item your looking for. Go over those moments as carefully as possible- make them as substantiated in your mind as you can. talk it out, if you need to.
2. Last Sighting. remember the last time you actually saw the thing your looking for. Was it dirty? clean? was there ketchup on it? was it on the floor? far away? close? who was holding it? exactly where were you?
3. Determine your event horizon. Divide the history of the world into exactly two epochs; before you lost your item, and after. The moment you misplaced your item is the point that divides history; nothing before that moment can influence the (relative) position of your wallet after that moment. I talk this out to myself, as well: I used my ID to get into the club, and that was about 11:30 PM, saturday night. I put my coat check-stub in my ID holder, and that was inside the club, So I know that the wallet made it at least that far. I have my jacket right now, which means that I must have had my ID wallet when I left the club, Which was at about 4am. I don't remember seeing it after that- its 7AM on monday right now, so that means that the wallet has been lost for about 27 hours. Sometime in the last 27 hours, I put my wallet someplace, and I can't remember where. I was asleep for about 15 of those hours, so that means that I have to review about 12 hours.
4. Create your Hit List of probable places. After going through the above steps, you probably have some ideas of where your item might be; Pockets, car, hallway, kitchen, etc. Enumerate them; list them out physically, if you need to.
  1. Think about the last time you found this item. There's a good possibility that this isn't the first time you've lost this item. Think about the last time you found this item; add that spot to your hit list.
  2. Think of deviations. Think about any unusual, or out-of-the ordinary things your done after the event horizon; add those spots to your list. Did you clean the gutters on the roof since you lost your favorite screwdriver? check the roof. check the spot where you keep the ladder you use to get on the roof.
  3. Think of the last thing you lost before you lost this. Were you searching all over the house for your keys? did you empty your pockets out somewhere other than you usually do? When we search frantically, we loose other things easily.
Find. If you haven't remembered exactly where your item is after thinking it through, you begin your search. you have your story, you have your event horizon, you have your hit list- here are some tips for actually finding.
1. Retrace your steps, physically. if possible, retrace your steps as close to your event horizon as possible. Being in the same places, seeing the same things, and hearing the same sounds might help trigger the memory of where your item is.
2. Eliminate space. Try to look in each space exactly once, and only once. Look thoroughly and carefully, then have confidence that the item isn't in that space. Start with your smallest, cleanest spaces first. i.e., I know that my wallet is not in my jackets, my car, my foyer, the bathroom, or the kitchen.
3. Turn the lights on. Light helps. Even if you have natural light in a room, turn on the room lights; get as much light as you can. This serves many purposes- light uncovers nooks and crannies that things easily get lost in; light helps you think more clearly, and turning on the lights as you go helps you easily recognize areas that you haven't looked in yet.
4. Look under and behind things. It's easy to loose things under and behind other things. under a book. behind a dresser. under a shirt. Behind the door. under the mail. Behind the shed. Under the desk. Behind the picture frame. It seems pretty obvious, but if things were out in the open, you probably wouldn't be looking for them.
5. Make piles. Dont loose things while your finding. create order out of disorder, not the other way around; take the messy pile ofmagazines, and stack them nicely on the desk; you are now sure that the thing your looking for isn't under there, and you don't have to check through those magazines again, because you know that you piled them up while finding.
Repeat this cycle as many times as it takes; search mentally, then physically. When your physically trying to find, your going to get anxious... It's a side effect of moving around, concentrating, and thinking. When you feel panic coming on- when you are having trouble concentrating, when your getting tunnel vision, when your anxiety is acting up- Stop yourself, and go back to the thought patterns. Re-tell your story. Re-define your event horizon. Develop your hitlist.
Expand your scope. If you've been through a few iterations and haven't found anything yet, expand your scope. Try to recall every possible location that your item can be in, since the event horizon. Enlist the help of others. Ask friends and family- review the mental exercises with them- ask them when they last saw the item. Refine your deviations. Redefine your event horizon.

Of course, the best way to find things... is to not loose them in the first place.

A place for everthing. Everything important to you should have a pre-defined, well known place for safe keeping. My car keys hang on a key organizer by my door. My driving glasses are in the car. My laptop bag is in the office. The remote is in front of the TV. My passport is in a safe place. My Cufflinks are in my travel bag. The umbrella's are in the closet by the door. As long as I remember to put things in their proper place, they'll be easy to find when I need them.

technorati tags: lifehacks

Photo Album: Our Anniversary Trip to Hawaii

Fri, 09 May 2008 16:04:24 GMT

Our Anniversary Trip to Hawaii

the view from our room at the kanapali beach hotel

IMG_0633

waterfall in maui

plasticy looking flower in hana

according to Surfer Sue, these are "brocks", not leaves, in hana :)

People have plants like this in the corner of their living rooms. this one is considerably bigger. :)

Reminded me of the tree in lost. :D

thought this would make a cool background

Amy in Hana

DSC_0071

More Photos...

Photo Album: Me and mine...

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:43:44 GMT

Me and mine...

South beach 03. the night only got better from here...

the crew for Emi's Birthday

louie and me

Amy, chris, and Kelley

they're Flotation devices... no, really!

You haven't had a guiness unless you've had a pint in ireland.

Me and an unnamed but strange bedfellow..

Kelley caught up in a Chris Sandwich

The Hamptons. Slumber party. Candyland was played... be afraid.

Cock it and pull it, as the fallout boys say

More Photos...

Photo Album: my peeps...

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:51:58 GMT

my peeps...

$16C

$5E

$FF

012_12

014_14

018_18

019_19 copy

2003.08.31.11.31.24.sargee

20040929[1] (1) copy

20040929[1] (4) copy

More Photos...

Photo Album: SnowBunnies birthdays

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:40:09 GMT

SnowBunnies birthdays

Untitled Photo

More Photos...

Photo Album: New years 2005!

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:34:03 GMT

New years 2005!

AA001A

AA002A

AA003A

AA004A

AA005A

AA006A

AA007A

AA008A

AA009A

AA010A

More Photos...

Photo Album: New Years, 2006!

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:21:23 GMT

New Years, 2006!

cher, Kelly, and me

Jill and Dave

Cher and George

George and Cher

louie

Louie, with damp snowy ass...

George and Emi

Cher and Emi

The pre-midnight gang...

Cher and DAve

More Photos...