Well, let’s just blame it on Twitter. Or on the new iPhone. Or on two clients wanting 70-hour weeks from me all month. Or on processing 4 hours of teacher training videos.

Nah, let’s just blame it on Twitter.

Twitter seems to have taken a big bite out of my blogging energy lately.

I primarily use Twitteriffic on my iPhone to both follow and to create new tweets, but I also love Twitterfox (a plug-in for the FIreFox browser) if I’m at a computer (it just pops up a little panel showing the most recents, and lets me quickly twipe a new tweet whenever I feel the need.

But why do I even bother with Twitter? – because I get stoked with a dozen new ideas every day! In the old days, “kids” used Twitter to vacuously and narcissistically communicate “I’m having breakfast” or “I’m on the bus” or “I’m at the coffee shop.” But somehow a large number of busy people realized that not only was this a waste of a good communication medium, but something better could actually be done with it – and now what we do is communicate concepts, places, activities and ideas of interest to our group. Someone might be experiencing writer’s block and need inspiration and put out a call for help that explains the concept she’s working on, and get back a half dozen interesting tangential ideas! Another might have returned from a trip and posted photos – and will put up a tweet pointing to the photos. Someone else will be at a conference and will tweet about each speaker’s primary concept.

You have to carefully pick who you “follow” (whose tweets you subscribe to) on Twitter, but once you have your list tuned well, you have constructed a channel that lets you really stay in touch with the ideas and activities that will surface as blog posts and news in the next 24 to 48 hours. And you get a real boost from knowing what your friends and colleagues are working on and thinking about.

The post Twitter made me (not) do it appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Clear is the program that pre-screens travelers, collects biometric data, puts this on a smart-card (embedded processor+memory, not RFID) and then allows travelers at a few high-traffic airports to go thru a quick-screen line (including a retinal scan to verify ID) rather than stand in lines with un-pre-screened passengers. They still get screened, but they “jump line,” sometimes skipping ahead of a hundred or more who are waiting in the regular lines.

Almost predictably, a laptop containing the data of 33,000 applicants (not participants) was stolen from a secured room at SFO. A spokesperson says “it [the laptop] was protected by two passwords” – but that doesn’t tell us whether the information was encrypted, how secure the encryption was, nor why sensitive information would be on a computer that is portable (and thus easy to steal) computer. (It is pretty easy to bypass password security unless the data is also encrypted – I’ve done it myself more than once on client computers where they’ve forgotted a password – takes about 10 minutes.) And we don’t know what other types of information might be on this computer.

Clear is run by an independent contractor under TSA oversight.

One interesting outcome was the comments ABC7 (San Francisco TV) collected – for instance “Clear customers say the sooner the changes are made the better, although no one seemed too worried about the security breach. ‘You’re information is everywhere and people volunteer their information on places like Facebook, on Twitter, on MySpace and stuff,’ … a traveler.” I don’t actually think they understand the breadth of information that was reported to be on that computer – this is information that is to be used in a security screening, not just social security numbers (though those may not have been present), and presumably known only to the applicant – a far broader range of confidential information than most other systems would hold. It just shows that people are resigned to living in a transparent world – probably until they are directly affected, of course.

KTVU reportage on this same story. KTVU also reports “The TSA requires RT service providers and sponsoring entities to encrypt all files containing participants’ sensitive personal information. Noncompliance with such requirements can result in actions including suspension of a program and possible civil penalties.” I have not verified this, and we don’t know the type of encryption that’s required – for instance a password on a ZIP file is probably not very secure, while encryption with a 2048-bit RSA key would be a lot harder to crack.

I earlier reported on “odd” scanning of my driver’s license at a regional airport, to which TSA replied (in comments on my blog) that it was (probably) an ultraviolet light (blacklight) being passed over the license to be sure it was genuine (this process reveals the “holographic” images in the license’s plastic layers). As I said, I was concerned that any scanned information that passed into a laptop computer allowed potential theft of this confidential information. Well, I guess this Clear incident further emphasizes that security information has no business being stored on a computer that can be physically stolen.

The post Let’s be Clear About This – Lots more Laptops will be Stolen appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Then came the iPhone. And rich (HTML) email entered the picture for mobile devices. And richer and longer in-game responses from players. (SMS is only 160 characters, while email doesn’t have this limit, and thus is so much more fun.)

Well, over time that changed. Sometimes text messages are delayed for a substantial time (can tale hours), and our games are real-time so any delay beyond say one minute is a catastrophe. And then more and more phones became capable of sending text messages to email addresses – it had only been T-Mobile at first, and now it’s most phones. Today, at least 50% of phones in the US are capable of sending/receiving email, even thru the SMS mechanisms (there is an SMS-to-email interface on all systems).

So we’ve made a number of improvements in our games that permit play from regular email as well as mobile email-capable devices like phones, PDAs and smartphones.

And it looks like 2008 may be the year that we’ll develop more of these new, rich street games based on HTML email, and still played from mobile devices like the iPhone.

Yesterday (July 31st) we sat down and planned the trajectory for the next few such experience for YBCA – this is going to be fun. Watch for more on this as we announce the next YBCA game (October).

The post Bye Bye SMS appeared first on Sky's Blog.

The thing that made the biggest impression on me is the number of countries that block bloggers or Flickr. (You can check this yourself by going to their site and clicking the pushpins on their Google map.) ·Opennet.net also tracks blocking/filtering worldwide. They look at the reasons given for filtering and compile maps tracking four different types of filtering.

• Political content (illustrated at right) – Content that expresses views in opposition to those of the current government, or is related to human rights, freedom of expression, minority rights, and religious movements.
• Social content – Content related to sexuality, gambling, and illegal drugs and alcohol, as well as other topics that may be socially sensitive or perceived as offensive.
• Conflict/security – Content related to armed conflicts, border disputes, separatist movements, and militant groups.
• Internet Tools – Web sites that provide e-mail, Internet hosting, search, translation, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone service, and circumvention methods.

The post Access Denied – Which Countries Filter and Why? appeared first on Sky's Blog.

And like most of the fanboys and fangirrls who have their phone already (it’s my first 48 hours) I am just really pleased with this communication device. And it has given me its own set of challenges as well.

Social behaviors: I had a great time observing social behaviors while waiting in the line for 4 hours:

• The store opened at 8:00am on Friday (July 11th, 2008). Some folks had arrived as long as 48 hours in advance to be first in line. But this was one of those hockey-stick growth curves, to point. I think that  the first 100 or so people arrived maybe 6 or more hours in advance, and anther couple hundred arrived in the morning. After that the line was more or less constantly at a few hundred.
• I decided to sleep late, and made my 45-minute drive to Palo Alto so that I arrived around 8:15am. Sales had begun already. Just as I crossed the street to grab a place in line, a tall curly-haired guy came out of the store holding aloft a tiny Apple-branded shopping bag (tiny, to match the size of the iPhone box) above his head – and the crowd burst into cheers and applause. TV cameras for Channel 7 caught the moment for the evening TV news. I continued around the corner in line-seeking mode, only to see a nearly-block-long line formed along the sidewalk tailing away from the store (a long tail?). And I took my place at the end of the line.
• By happenstance, the person who pulled into line right after me was a 50’s-ish man who had a fascinating history in Silicon Valley and also happened to be a (retired) hang-glider pilot and knew Yosemite (my favorite place in the world) like the back of his hand. We began a chat that just didn’t stop until we reached the front door and had to finally pay some attention to the process. He had many times strapped on his hang-glider and jumped off the edge of the cliffs above Yosemite Valley, and cruised in the air around the valley, landing down on the meadow. And had taken flight at Fort Funston, another of my favorite hiking spots, and a favorite hang-glider location. He also knew microcomputers as far back as the 1970s – just as I do. Perhaps more interesting to you, we maintained an interesting social distance, not talking about our names or companies, but just participating in an open sharing of things we had done and activities other than our professional activities for the most part. I had a GREAT time doing this. And at the end we said goodbye and treated it as an enjoyable chance encounter.
• I think I may have had the only gray hair in the line. The median age was probably 28. Half of the customers might have been Stanford students. A quarter of them were probably Silicon Valley early-adopters who specifically targeted the Palo Alto store. (I didn’t want to brave the San Francisco store at all, and I had three appointments in Palo Alto that day, so I just pushed the appointments to the afternoon.)
• “Position in line” was treated as a sacred trust! For instance, the man behind me started out behind me, and we stood next to each other for hours talking, and then when it came time to talk to the sales clerk and get our phones, we all filed into the store in the precise order we had joined the line in the first place.
• I also ran into two old friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen for 8+ years and the other I hadn’t seen for maybe 5 years. We had short conversations before they got nervous and went back to their positions elsewhere in line.
• In short, I had a great time, and the purchase experience was good (except they couldn’t port my existing T-Mobile number to AT&T, and I love the phone, which I will be exploring for weeks to come.
• The length of the line at the Palo Alto store remained constant all day. Probably never fewer than 200 people waiting.
• The next day (Saturday), in San Francisco, I passed by the Apple Store and the line there was equally long – the better part of a city block, and probably 400 people waiting. Same for Sunday. So this is a really popular product roll-out. And I’ll have more to say about how good or bad this device is, later on. It does have its pros and cons.

The pitfalls.

The post Buying an iPhone as Social Event appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Tibetan monasteries empty as China jails monks to silence Olympic protests in TimesOnline UK

“Chinese authorities tightened security around Tibet’s main monasteries and banned visits to a sacred site on the edge of the capital, Lhasa, for fear of a fresh outburst of unrest on the Dalai Lama’s birthday.

“Few monks remain, however, in the province’s three most important monasteries. Many have disappeared, their whereabouts a mystery. Chinese officials have deployed troops and paramilitary police around the ancient religious institutions, suspecting these sprawling hillside communities are at the heart of the unrest that has swept the region since early March.”

Seems to me that the theory must be that silencing protest during the Olympic Games is intended to remove it from the world’s stage (Shakespeare “All the world’s a stage…”) at a time when China is receiving increased attention – but it certainly will backfire because it is happening at a time when China is center-stage, and even after the restraints are removed, it will keep China center-stage in the human rights spotlight for a longer time.

This report has naught to do with electronic media, networks or technology. It’s just unfortunate to see how governments  deal with the things that embarrass those in power by muzzling the mouths (and sometimes the bodies) of those who disagree with the powerful.

The post Silence is… appeared first on Sky's Blog.

The FCC regulates the airwaves in the US and next year they’re taking back the portions of the RF spectrum that have been devoted to analog television (broadly-separated frequency bands for VHF in the 1950s with a UHF band of frequencies added to that later on), and the broadcast digital television that’s been “under construction” since 1998 will be what’s left. The new technology can carry more channels and information, and much of that in high-definition, but old television receivers will be unable to decode it.

I’d guess that many people simply won’t convert. Cable and satellite TV users won’t be affected and their old TV sets will work, but millions of old analog sets around the US – those who depends on rooftop antennas and rabbit ears – will receive nothing but “snow.”

And where will Mom and Pop Public go?

Well I’m on satellite, using a TiVo box (a DVR), and I long ago time-shifted almost all of my viewing. I no longer know exactly when my favorite shows are broadcast because the TiVo records them and I watch them when I have a spare evening. Like most time-shifted viewers, I mostly shift “scripted shows” (Lost and Battlestar Galactica, for example) as opposed to news and shows with real-time content.

Well, here’s where I think the viewing will migrate, based on Doc Searls’ and my own experience.

• Some will switch to cable or satellite; and will increasingly move to time-shifted viewing [notes: networks want to take time-shifted viewing into account when setting advertising rates; Nielsen ratings did not take time-shifted viewing into account until 2006 – now it seems everything is tracked.] Cable and satellite are not affected by the 2009 FCC-mandated migration.
• A large number will get their video from online sources, though it will be painful because broadband is slow in the US and has been getting more congested (at least here in San Francisco – I can barely play video without stuttering even when on my 1.5mbit cable connection);
• Over time the “online” users will download more and more shows to devices like iPods which, of course, is totally time-shifted;
• The “rental” model of viewing downloaded video will have to change because the current rental time-period is too short – longer-term rental will have to be made available (perhaps lasting for years);

I’ve always suspected that TiVo was tracking my viewing of time-shifted shows, including looking at whether I skipped the commercials, which I always do. Clearly they do, and I’ll investigate that more. Perhaps you already know more about that and would share your knowledge?

The post The end of analog TV will accelerate a paradigm shift appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I have always contended that my method in life was to avoid “work” in favor of something that I enjoy doing. And for me, enjoying means not only that I’m happy, but that I make some sizeable contribution to the welfare of humanity at the same time. So when I label something work, I am referring to something that I really don’t want to do, but have to do for some reason.

And people have always said to me “you’re always working.” But, I actually don’t do very much that I’d classify as work by my definition. I’m fanatically dedicated to what I do, but it’s more often not really work.

So let me say more about balance…

For me, balance requires doing things in my professional life that are fun, productive, tough to do, and contribute to the welfare of large numbers of people.

Balance also involves doing things outside of my professional life that are enjoyable, yet may be hard physical or intellectual work, as well as things that are fun and easy. I’d say they’re in Nicole Lazzaro’s category of hard fun.

In danah’s post, she says “…there’s a core point here: those who are passionate about what they do do it to extremes.” And I couldn’t agree more. This is indeed the core.

For example, I plan and execute (get it, “execute”?) what my buddies lovingly call a death march almost every summer at Yosemite National Park – in the wilderness. I would just call it a sizeable trek. Last year we covered about 70 miles during seven days of hiking. Yes, we were all tired at the end of each day, but damn, this was the most beautiful place, and it is always a real experience to see more and more of the Yosemite wilderness.

For my entire adult life I have cycled between executive and technical positions. Start with tech, then build the company to the right size, act in an executive position for a few years, then leave and go learn a new technology for a few years. Most people, once they leave programming and enter the executive ranks, stay there forever because their tech skills dry up and blow away. But I always come back for more – and believe me, at the moment I am really enjoying what I’m learning in this particular tech cycle I’m in.

So the point, for me, is that unlike the suggested path in the NYT article’ – that bloggers just go until they drop – I let off steam by switching my whole occupational focus every few years. I go with a company until it’s big enough or mature enough that it’s a grind, and then I drop out in favor of more solitary pursuits until I decide to ride the up-cycle again.

I think that ultimately it comes down to Joseph Campbell’s contention that you must “follow your bliss.” And don’t worry about how much time you spend on it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

PS: Jessica Margolin responded to danah by pointing out that sometimes one side of the equation pulls harder than the other. As Jessica says “The underlying conflict, I believe, has to do with a rigid sense of control. I can control my band schedule, my art and cooking classes, my off-grid-mountaineering-travel schedule. If it’s too onerous, I can always just walk out, after all. But I can’t control my child suddenly having trouble at school.” Yes! That is truly important to understand. Sometimes we make decisions that set our course for years to come. And sometimes those decisions strictly limit the kinds of choices we can make when trying to achieve balance in our lives. And danah’s (and my) contention that one chooses in-the-moment, might only by fully possible for people at certain stages of life.

The post Does */* balance exist? appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I’ve been having recent conversations with Howard Lieberman, who following successful runs at company-building, rented an office on Sand Hill Road (Palo Alto) for a year and then decided to dump it in favor of going virtual. He said that the expense of the office just wasn’t worth it – everything could be done from mobile platforms and you could always get/find a meeting room somewhere.

I agree with Howard’s action, if you are well-enough-known to be able to make connections in other ways. And if you already have some other connections to keep your business alive. And the other factor is that you have to be “in the area” once in a while, so you can visit F2F with backers and customers.

I repeatedly find that if I’m not “in the face” of a customer they can pretty rapidly forget about me. Especially if the product I’m selling is a bit on-the-edge and they don’t quite understand how much they really want it.

As a counter-example to the University-Avenue post, I founded a company in 1980 in San Francisco, and in 1982 we relocated to the China Basin Building south of Market (SOMA). In those days all the action was in Santa Clara and Cupertino, and my 1968 Volvo 142 got mileage put on it like crazy going from SF to the South Bay for meetings – things like a couple of times to pick up Steve Jobs, who in those days did not drive a car, to go see interesting things (like PLATO-IV) at other companies. My company did just fine, even though none of our customers were SOMA – they were all in Chicago and New York, and a couple in The Valley. As long as I saw customers once a month we grew and fluorished. And our VC investors were primarily in Palo Alto, and they loved coming up to The City to meet with us.

Then came MCI Mail (anybody remember it?), and AOL email, and finally AOL got connected to the Internet, and we moved into the current era of tight virtual connections. Now I do most business electronically, but only after I have set things up face-to-face. And I’m still in Palo Alto at least once a week, which gives me the ability to meet with people and stay in their sphere of awareness, which has more than once gotten me work that I would not have otherwise gotten. There’s no substitute for some F2F contact!

The post How much does proximity count? appeared first on Sky's Blog.