40 - How Do I Track Those Calls?
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 40 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 29th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
- AT&T - did they deep-six iPhone sales for the holidays?
- How Do I Track Those Calls?
- Yahoo's Experts get slammed.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech News:
Bloomberg reports today that AT&T's chief Randall Stephenson has let the apple out of the bag by saying that Apple will be releasing a 3G-capable iPhone in 2008. Granted, Stephenson is not an Apple employee and is therefore perhaps not subject to the purported reality distortion field...but don't you think he'd consider it wise to not let this information slip until after the Holiday buying season? C'mon now, really!
Interestingly, yesterday evenings roundup from thestreet dot com, Cramer's "Recap: Gone Bottom Fishin'"....Cramer is talkin all about going by his 1990 playbook and buying up financial sector stocks such as Citi Group and Goldman Sachs. He states that in 1990 Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia bought a stake in Citi, and that now, in 2007, an investment fund from Abu Dhabi is buying a similar stake in Citi. So, we're talking about bottom fishing. Remember folks....bottom fishing. In the very next breath...or paragraph...Cramer says oh, yeah, and also buy some Apple, RIM and Google. Are these bottom fishing stocks? Perhaps after the recent pullback, they are...but during the pullback would have been the opportune time to sing the buying song. Note that with Apple, pullbacks only seem to last a week or two...then something pushes Apple back up to new highs.
And the most recent bit of news - Pittsburgh software and podcast hosting company Wizzard Software's CFO John Busshaus was named Pittsburgh CFO of the year by the Pittsburgh Business Times. Narrowed down from a group of fellow nominees, Busshaus was noted for having "guided the company through four successful acquisitions in less than one year, as well as two capital raises (private placements) worth approximately $10M".
A link to the related article is in the show notes: Wizzard CFO Busshaus
Tech Question:
The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "How Do I Track Those Calls?".
When taking calls and helping people resolve their various issues, whether it's dealing with a product from your company, or a document that their trying to type up, or a random object for which you're rendering help, it's good to have ways to identify the caller so that you can both track the progress of their issue, and later you can extract data about their call to provide call analysis for the management of your organization, to show the effectiveness of your service.
How do you track this information?
Well, you can use paper tablets, just writing down the information...and after a month of writing, you have a pile of paper tablets with gobs of information that you cannot readily access.
A slightly better solution is to use tabulated paper sheets, with categorized information boxes in which you can write down the caller's details. This format allows for some categorization of information...but still requires later data entry into a spreadsheet program to allow for analysis.
An infinitely better solution is to just enter information as it comes in into a spreadsheet program, such as Excel, Open Office, Apple's Numbers or Google's Spreadsheet. This way the information is in a ready format to be crunched at day, week or month-end. With this you can analyze for duration of calls, types of calls, geographic location of callers, and, with a bit of metadata about each caller, the product or systems that seem to be exhibiting the most calls.
The next step up is to have a database back end with a dataentry front end. The database will have far more capacity for information entered, will likely have more multi-user ability if you have multiple people taking calls, will probably be added to nightly server backup schedules, should your back end servers lose power, and allow for front-end calculations to show data analysis to both the call reception staff as well as the management, with built in business logic/programming.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
As I use many of the major "portals" for news: news.google.com for general, business and science headlines, and Yahoo's finance site for finance news and research, I tend to see the posts by Yahoo Finance's various "Expert" columnists, Penelope Trunk, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki and Ben Stein, to name a few.
These columnists have very good columns on everything from personal finance to leadership to stock picks. To write this sort of thing, you have to be either living in the thought clouds or surrounded in part by those who are, so that you can either draw from examples of things you see around you or write from personal experience. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher from 2,600 years ago, a contemporary of Confucious (Kung Fu Tzu), wrote some pretty amazing head-in-the-clouds things about leadership, character and general outlook in his Tao Te Ching verses. Do you think he worked in kitchens or dug ditches or waited tables through his life? Not likely.
In order to have people who write good articles, or philosophical treatises, you have to allow for them to have slightly higher existences than we do. If they then choose to contribute their up and down wisdom to the web-aether, and we who are far lower benefit from their writings, so much the better for civilization. I'm referring to all of this because Ben Stein and Rob Kiyosaki have had some pretty negative comments written in response to their recent articles. Comments are good...and we need to support the freedom to always be able to comment on other's writings...but many of these have been strident criticism of the foundations that have brought these various columnists forward. I, for one, am very thankful that they are taking the time to spill part of their souls onto digital paper for the benefit of others. And if they reap an outsize monetary benefit from this....well then, perhaps we each need to take a hint and start thinking, writing and publishing for the good of our peers.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- AT&T - did they deep-six iPhone sales for the holidays?
- How Do I Track Those Calls?
- Yahoo's Experts get slammed.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
phyllostachys 54 - Minute Tech 39 show notes
39 - What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 39 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Tuesday, November 27th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech News:
Amazon's Kindle is amassing more and more commentary. Peter Brantley of O'Reilly Radar presents reviews by two reviewers, Jason Epstein, co-founder of On-Demand Books, and Mike Shatzkin, CEO of the Idea Logical Company and BaseballLibrary.com. Both views are well-written...and as usual, the comments at the bottom of Peter's O'Reilly page are very to the point.
Last friday was Black Friday, the first official shopping day of the 2007 holiday season, kicked off by 5 am sales around the US for those souls who weren't knocked out by the previous day's festivities. My family thought about getting out of the house....by noon. Then yesterday, Monday, was known as Cyber Monday, presumably the day when holiday revelers would be getting in to work and surfing the web for hot deals. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday provided a nice little boost to the retail sector of the US stock market...which is a good thing...too much bad new lately has been taxing.
Have you heard of Solid-state hard drives? these are flash-ram based hard-disk replacements, with capacities ranging from 4 to 64 Gigabytes, which are purportedly going to allow Apple to release a flash-based notebook computer at MacWorld 2008, coming up in January. This is the primary bit of technology that most web pundits are blogging about as upcoming, since Leopard has been released, the iPods have been well refreshed and Macs are selling like hotcakes.
Tech Question:
The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "Help Desk Call - What Three Things?".
In the previous show, we walked through a sample support call. We greeted the caller, we found out the rough details of the problem, we replicated the problem, in this case by opening a copy of the document in question and seeing what the issue that the caller was calling about, and then reached into our personal store of information to answer the question based on observed phenomena.
There are three things about answering a Help Desk call you must do:
(1) be polite to the caller;
(2) provide some sort of answer or solution;
(3) Identify yourself and your organization, and provide contact information.
So, number 1. Be polite. Generally, a caller is calling because he or she has exhausted his/her capacity to solve the problems and must rely upon somebody else to solve the problem, so by being polite you're helping to support the caller's self-esteem, which may have taken a hit by having to rely upon us. Of course, the people may just be calling as they're used to delegating certain informational tasks...so being polite just makes the conversation roll more easily.
Number 2 - provide some sort of information. You may not have a ready answer, so make sure to do something that will get the caller to the next level, such as provide the name and number of the person whom you will ask to call the user back. If you do have a ready answer, allow the caller to know that you have an inkling, and either answer it right away, or a request access to the item with which they're having a problem so that you can clarify and demonstrate the answer. This could be as simple as asking them to email a current copy of their document to you, or as moderately complex...but infinitely more useful...of remotely connecting to their desktop and showing them how to resolve the issue.
Number 3 - make sure that your name and contact information is always present for the caller. There is nothing quite so frustrating in the use of technology than to be partway through the resolution of a problem...and realize that you don't know who you spoke with, and what his or her name is. When you answer the call, identify yourself. When you send an email, even if internally, make sure you have a signature with name and phone number. When you complete the call, invite the caller to call again.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
First, I apologize to listeners...something was up with the audio on my system Sunday...Episode 36 on Sunday morning sounded awful due to some sort of electrical interference. Was I running a microwave? Something was jamming the audio recording signal...so I shall re-record that session this week, so that at least iTunes searchers don't come up with awful copies. Unfortunately, with my production schedule, I don't leave much time for troubleshooting shows: they get recorded, converted to .m4a and .mp3, and pushed out to the website immediately so that I can get on with the day.
Then, yesterday, Monday, the show didn't get out. But we're here now!
Okay....listened to my first five John C. Dvorak Tech 5 podcasts on Monday...along with the most recent Marketing Over Coffee and The M Show podcasts, with John Wall and Christopher Penn. I'll have to re-listen to the Marketing Over Coffee...I just remember that Christopher Penn was saying some awesome things....but that was Monday morning. Last week I listened to several of his Financial Aid Podcasts to see how they flowed...and he has such a natural voice. I'll have to ask...but can he possibly be going sans script? whoa! He can really talk up a show. Well, actually, see his podcasting 101 video on iTunes...very well done presentation on podcasting.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 39 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Tuesday, November 27th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech News:
Amazon's Kindle is amassing more and more commentary. Peter Brantley of O'Reilly Radar presents reviews by two reviewers, Jason Epstein, co-founder of On-Demand Books, and Mike Shatzkin, CEO of the Idea Logical Company and BaseballLibrary.com. Both views are well-written...and as usual, the comments at the bottom of Peter's O'Reilly page are very to the point.
Last friday was Black Friday, the first official shopping day of the 2007 holiday season, kicked off by 5 am sales around the US for those souls who weren't knocked out by the previous day's festivities. My family thought about getting out of the house....by noon. Then yesterday, Monday, was known as Cyber Monday, presumably the day when holiday revelers would be getting in to work and surfing the web for hot deals. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday provided a nice little boost to the retail sector of the US stock market...which is a good thing...too much bad new lately has been taxing.
Have you heard of Solid-state hard drives? these are flash-ram based hard-disk replacements, with capacities ranging from 4 to 64 Gigabytes, which are purportedly going to allow Apple to release a flash-based notebook computer at MacWorld 2008, coming up in January. This is the primary bit of technology that most web pundits are blogging about as upcoming, since Leopard has been released, the iPods have been well refreshed and Macs are selling like hotcakes.
Tech Question:
The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "Help Desk Call - What Three Things?".
In the previous show, we walked through a sample support call. We greeted the caller, we found out the rough details of the problem, we replicated the problem, in this case by opening a copy of the document in question and seeing what the issue that the caller was calling about, and then reached into our personal store of information to answer the question based on observed phenomena.
There are three things about answering a Help Desk call you must do:
(1) be polite to the caller;
(2) provide some sort of answer or solution;
(3) Identify yourself and your organization, and provide contact information.
So, number 1. Be polite. Generally, a caller is calling because he or she has exhausted his/her capacity to solve the problems and must rely upon somebody else to solve the problem, so by being polite you're helping to support the caller's self-esteem, which may have taken a hit by having to rely upon us. Of course, the people may just be calling as they're used to delegating certain informational tasks...so being polite just makes the conversation roll more easily.
Number 2 - provide some sort of information. You may not have a ready answer, so make sure to do something that will get the caller to the next level, such as provide the name and number of the person whom you will ask to call the user back. If you do have a ready answer, allow the caller to know that you have an inkling, and either answer it right away, or a request access to the item with which they're having a problem so that you can clarify and demonstrate the answer. This could be as simple as asking them to email a current copy of their document to you, or as moderately complex...but infinitely more useful...of remotely connecting to their desktop and showing them how to resolve the issue.
Number 3 - make sure that your name and contact information is always present for the caller. There is nothing quite so frustrating in the use of technology than to be partway through the resolution of a problem...and realize that you don't know who you spoke with, and what his or her name is. When you answer the call, identify yourself. When you send an email, even if internally, make sure you have a signature with name and phone number. When you complete the call, invite the caller to call again.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
First, I apologize to listeners...something was up with the audio on my system Sunday...Episode 36 on Sunday morning sounded awful due to some sort of electrical interference. Was I running a microwave? Something was jamming the audio recording signal...so I shall re-record that session this week, so that at least iTunes searchers don't come up with awful copies. Unfortunately, with my production schedule, I don't leave much time for troubleshooting shows: they get recorded, converted to .m4a and .mp3, and pushed out to the website immediately so that I can get on with the day.
Then, yesterday, Monday, the show didn't get out. But we're here now!
Okay....listened to my first five John C. Dvorak Tech 5 podcasts on Monday...along with the most recent Marketing Over Coffee and The M Show podcasts, with John Wall and Christopher Penn. I'll have to re-listen to the Marketing Over Coffee...I just remember that Christopher Penn was saying some awesome things....but that was Monday morning. Last week I listened to several of his Financial Aid Podcasts to see how they flowed...and he has such a natural voice. I'll have to ask...but can he possibly be going sans script? whoa! He can really talk up a show. Well, actually, see his podcasting 101 video on iTunes...very well done presentation on podcasting.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Monday, November 26, 2007
phyllostachys 53: Minute Tech 38 show notes
38 - How do you answer a Help Desk call?
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 37 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 26th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
- the youtube video "the office is closed"
- How do you answer a Help Desk call?
- the short-format podcast - listening to others.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech News:
(1) Have you seen the "The Office is Closed" youtube video? Greg Daniels and Paul Lieberstein, co-executive producers of the popular NBC sitcom "The Office" discuss the Writers Guild of America strike against their own show, detailing the lack of pay for internet distribution and production as the reasons why they are striking. Is this right? Should they be striking? Do we even understand what they're striking against? Actually, forcing the large content networks to quantify how workers get paid for online content could be a very good thing for writers and producers worldwide, as content creation and production will only be a growing phenomenon over the next several decades, so go WGA!
Tech Question:
The tech question for today, and essentially for this week, "How do you answer a Help Desk call?" is the culmination of the constant mental thrash of what to write about. In the end, however, answering help desk calls quickly, efficiently, politely and effectively is what I do and do well at the moment, so here goes. Today I'll just review for you a typical call; in subsequent episodes this week we'll review some of the techniques for helping the typical set of callers.
A typical call might go something like this:
"[current organization] Help Desk, Alex speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hi, I need help with this brief I'm working on, the lines aren't lining up with the line numbers."
"Okay" I say, "what's the document number?"
In my current work environment, the client has a firm-wide document management system, abbreviated as DMS. A document management system allows for all documents, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio, Adobe Acrobat and MP3 files to be stored on a network server that has nightly tape backups run, and for they documents to be catalogued in a database front-end that allows for easy categorization, searching and retention.
"999999999, version 12" comes the answer from the caller. Generally, I'd ask the user's login code to enter into my call tracking software program...but sometimes the flow of the call is such that I can get that code a number of ways. In this instance, as the caller quickly supplied a document number, I can get the login code from their document usage history on the DMS.
"Okay, I'm searching for the document now" I say as I choose which of the firm-wide document libraries the document might be located in. Each of the 20-plus offices of the client firm has a different document numbering schema, so the office location can be identified easily by mentally equated the doc number with the office.
"I've found your document. As you're currently in it," I say, seeing the tell-tale on the database front-end showing the document is in use, "I'll pull up a copy".
"That's fine" the caller says. "I just need a quick guide on this".
As I open the document, I see the problem. This is a court pleading with double-spaced paragraphs and special line numbering down the left-hand margin, which allows courts to reference sections of a document more easily. The paragraphs are not lined up properly with the margin lines, which can be a quick fix".
"I see that your document has no headings through the document, so, just change your paragraph spacing from double-spaced to Exactly 24 pts, and your text will line up with the line numbers".
The caller does this and notes happy surprise that this has fixed her document.
"Oh, thank you. That looks much better. Now we can file this document electronically in 10 minutes. What was your name again?"
"Make sure you save the document next," I advise. "My name is Alex. Please call us back if you need further assistance", I say, just before ending the call.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
The optimum podcast length and content model - what is this? Everyone has their own length, their own method for putting things together. My listening goal this next week will be to find a couple of other short podcasts and listen to their shows to see how they accomplish this format. I'll listen to some more of Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid Podcast, and John C. Dvorak keeps mentions on This Week in Tech that he has a short-format podcast too. I think it's called Tech 5 - I'll download those shows and listen to them, too. John has a rather dry sense of humor and comes up with rather pointed opinions about technology...so this should be an interesting "listen".
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- the youtube video "the office is closed"
- How do you answer a Help Desk call?
- the short-format podcast - listening to others.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 37 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 26th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
- the youtube video "the office is closed"
- How do you answer a Help Desk call?
- the short-format podcast - listening to others.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech News:
(1) Have you seen the "The Office is Closed" youtube video? Greg Daniels and Paul Lieberstein, co-executive producers of the popular NBC sitcom "The Office" discuss the Writers Guild of America strike against their own show, detailing the lack of pay for internet distribution and production as the reasons why they are striking. Is this right? Should they be striking? Do we even understand what they're striking against? Actually, forcing the large content networks to quantify how workers get paid for online content could be a very good thing for writers and producers worldwide, as content creation and production will only be a growing phenomenon over the next several decades, so go WGA!
Tech Question:
The tech question for today, and essentially for this week, "How do you answer a Help Desk call?" is the culmination of the constant mental thrash of what to write about. In the end, however, answering help desk calls quickly, efficiently, politely and effectively is what I do and do well at the moment, so here goes. Today I'll just review for you a typical call; in subsequent episodes this week we'll review some of the techniques for helping the typical set of callers.
A typical call might go something like this:
"[current organization] Help Desk, Alex speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hi, I need help with this brief I'm working on, the lines aren't lining up with the line numbers."
"Okay" I say, "what's the document number?"
In my current work environment, the client has a firm-wide document management system, abbreviated as DMS. A document management system allows for all documents, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio, Adobe Acrobat and MP3 files to be stored on a network server that has nightly tape backups run, and for they documents to be catalogued in a database front-end that allows for easy categorization, searching and retention.
"999999999, version 12" comes the answer from the caller. Generally, I'd ask the user's login code to enter into my call tracking software program...but sometimes the flow of the call is such that I can get that code a number of ways. In this instance, as the caller quickly supplied a document number, I can get the login code from their document usage history on the DMS.
"Okay, I'm searching for the document now" I say as I choose which of the firm-wide document libraries the document might be located in. Each of the 20-plus offices of the client firm has a different document numbering schema, so the office location can be identified easily by mentally equated the doc number with the office.
"I've found your document. As you're currently in it," I say, seeing the tell-tale on the database front-end showing the document is in use, "I'll pull up a copy".
"That's fine" the caller says. "I just need a quick guide on this".
As I open the document, I see the problem. This is a court pleading with double-spaced paragraphs and special line numbering down the left-hand margin, which allows courts to reference sections of a document more easily. The paragraphs are not lined up properly with the margin lines, which can be a quick fix".
"I see that your document has no headings through the document, so, just change your paragraph spacing from double-spaced to Exactly 24 pts, and your text will line up with the line numbers".
The caller does this and notes happy surprise that this has fixed her document.
"Oh, thank you. That looks much better. Now we can file this document electronically in 10 minutes. What was your name again?"
"Make sure you save the document next," I advise. "My name is Alex. Please call us back if you need further assistance", I say, just before ending the call.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
The optimum podcast length and content model - what is this? Everyone has their own length, their own method for putting things together. My listening goal this next week will be to find a couple of other short podcasts and listen to their shows to see how they accomplish this format. I'll listen to some more of Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid Podcast, and John C. Dvorak keeps mentions on This Week in Tech that he has a short-format podcast too. I think it's called Tech 5 - I'll download those shows and listen to them, too. John has a rather dry sense of humor and comes up with rather pointed opinions about technology...so this should be an interesting "listen".
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- the youtube video "the office is closed"
- How do you answer a Help Desk call?
- the short-format podcast - listening to others.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
phyllostachys 52: Minute Tech 37 show notes
37 - Who were the Ancient Africans?
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 37 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 24th and 25th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
explorers in Antarctica and in Earth orbit and Apple's Burst settlement,
we'll discuss who were the ancient Africans, talk about twitter posts and recent beer findings,
and wrap up with a biographical sketch of Willa Cather.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
A couple of Show Notes for today: Back from the brief Thanksgiving holiday hiatus and back on schedule; I got some excellent critiques from listeners and will be attempting to streamline the show. I'll alter the intro to highlight the topics of the current podcast, and try to keep the topics somewhat more focused. The changes at this point to the three primary sections of the podcast: the "Tech items" section will become "Tech News"; the Tech Question will remain as it is, and "Podcasting/Blogging tidbits" will be renamed to "Podcasting - Blogging News."
Tech News:
(1) Astronauts on the International Space Station, or ISS, have just completed a new set of space walks. They added power and coolant fluid lines to the newest module and re-inspected the solar panel movement joint, which had been found to have metal shavings in it;
(2) Canadian Cruise Ship Explorer was attempting to re-enact the 1914-1916 expedition of Ernest Henry Shackleton, motoring through waters around Antarctica, when it struck an iceberg and slowly sank. All 150 of those aboard, from Canada, America, Europe, Australia and Japan, successfully escaped via lifeboats and were eventually taken to a Chilean air base on Antartica, before being flown to Chile.
(3) Apple Inc. settled it's patent litigation with Burst.com. Burst owns patents covering compression technologies for sending large files, such as video and audio content uses, over the internet, and had sued Apple for using some of their technology in Apple's products. Apple has settled by paying Burst.com a 10 million dollar licensing fee. Burst.com will now search for others who seem to be using their patented processes.
Tech Question:
Who were the Ancient Africans?
As I said in a previous podcast, if you look back in time far enough, we all emigrated from somewhere to our current locations. I personally moved from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. My ancestors variously moved from various parts of Europe to America. My distant ancestors probably moved north from southern Europe to northern Europe, and if we look back 10's or 100's of thousands of years, I wouldn't be surprised to see, as science tells us, a movement of peoples from Africa and the Middle East out to other Mediterranean lands and eventually north to Europe, bringing domesticated animals and crop-growing techniques.
A timeline of human culture in Africa suggests the following, about the time-period of 600,000 to 200,000 years ago:
"Wide spread of species across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Fire use develops. The earliest true human being in Africa, Homo sapiens, dates from more than 200,000 years ago.. A hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools, Homo sapiens banded together with others to form nomadic groups; eventually nomadic San peoples spread throughout the African continent. "
This information comes from a timeline from Cora Agatucci's class listings on her culture & literature of Africa courses at the Central Oregon Community College - a Link will be in the show notes. Is it accurate? Learn and investigate.
So, the ancient africans were not only the peoples who arose into the native africans of today, but also the nomadic peoples who spread out of Africa in search of better game, more land and different resources.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
From my region of Twitter Space this morning, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times twittered that he'd nearly run down the batteries of his Amazon Kindle by surfing the web wirelessly, and Merlin Mann of 43 Folders gave a link for his 10/21/05 podcast in which he jokingly spoke of provide transcripts for each of his podcasting shows, including some level of transcript on cuneiform clay tablets.
Perhaps I need to do a series on beer and wine - every now and then I get the bug to learn how to brew beer or vint wine...and then I taste some of the awesome beers and wines that others are making...and the desire leaves. Just like that. This past weekend I picked up a six of Bell's Expedition Stout. I have never tasted such a thick, heavy stout as this. The foam is even dark. Whoa. Now, I'm not having any this morning, but remembering from the last few nights. I got this in Cleveland, at the Wild Oats food store in Beachwood...I wonder if I can get it locally? Guess I'll go to their website, www.bellsbeer.com to find out!
Our biographical note for today: Willa Cather -- born in Virginia in 1873, Willa Cather was an influential American writer
who began her writing career in Pittsburgh, writing reviews for the "Pittsburgh Leader." After Pittsburgh, Cather moved to New York City to write for McClures magazine, which published her first novel, "Alexander's Bridge", in serial format. Cather went on to write such titles as "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia".
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Explorers in Ocean & Orbit?
- Who were the ancient Africans?
- Twitter news from Ihnatko and Mann.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 37 of the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 24th and 25th , 2007
On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:
explorers in Antarctica and in Earth orbit and Apple's Burst settlement,
we'll discuss who were the ancient Africans, talk about twitter posts and recent beer findings,
and wrap up with a biographical sketch of Willa Cather.
---------------
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
And:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
A couple of Show Notes for today: Back from the brief Thanksgiving holiday hiatus and back on schedule; I got some excellent critiques from listeners and will be attempting to streamline the show. I'll alter the intro to highlight the topics of the current podcast, and try to keep the topics somewhat more focused. The changes at this point to the three primary sections of the podcast: the "Tech items" section will become "Tech News"; the Tech Question will remain as it is, and "Podcasting/Blogging tidbits" will be renamed to "Podcasting - Blogging News."
Tech News:
(1) Astronauts on the International Space Station, or ISS, have just completed a new set of space walks. They added power and coolant fluid lines to the newest module and re-inspected the solar panel movement joint, which had been found to have metal shavings in it;
(2) Canadian Cruise Ship Explorer was attempting to re-enact the 1914-1916 expedition of Ernest Henry Shackleton, motoring through waters around Antarctica, when it struck an iceberg and slowly sank. All 150 of those aboard, from Canada, America, Europe, Australia and Japan, successfully escaped via lifeboats and were eventually taken to a Chilean air base on Antartica, before being flown to Chile.
(3) Apple Inc. settled it's patent litigation with Burst.com. Burst owns patents covering compression technologies for sending large files, such as video and audio content uses, over the internet, and had sued Apple for using some of their technology in Apple's products. Apple has settled by paying Burst.com a 10 million dollar licensing fee. Burst.com will now search for others who seem to be using their patented processes.
Tech Question:
Who were the Ancient Africans?
As I said in a previous podcast, if you look back in time far enough, we all emigrated from somewhere to our current locations. I personally moved from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. My ancestors variously moved from various parts of Europe to America. My distant ancestors probably moved north from southern Europe to northern Europe, and if we look back 10's or 100's of thousands of years, I wouldn't be surprised to see, as science tells us, a movement of peoples from Africa and the Middle East out to other Mediterranean lands and eventually north to Europe, bringing domesticated animals and crop-growing techniques.
A timeline of human culture in Africa suggests the following, about the time-period of 600,000 to 200,000 years ago:
"Wide spread of species across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Fire use develops. The earliest true human being in Africa, Homo sapiens, dates from more than 200,000 years ago.. A hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools, Homo sapiens banded together with others to form nomadic groups; eventually nomadic San peoples spread throughout the African continent. "
This information comes from a timeline from Cora Agatucci's class listings on her culture & literature of Africa courses at the Central Oregon Community College - a Link will be in the show notes. Is it accurate? Learn and investigate.
So, the ancient africans were not only the peoples who arose into the native africans of today, but also the nomadic peoples who spread out of Africa in search of better game, more land and different resources.
Podcasting - Blogging News:
From my region of Twitter Space this morning, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times twittered that he'd nearly run down the batteries of his Amazon Kindle by surfing the web wirelessly, and Merlin Mann of 43 Folders gave a link for his 10/21/05 podcast in which he jokingly spoke of provide transcripts for each of his podcasting shows, including some level of transcript on cuneiform clay tablets.
Perhaps I need to do a series on beer and wine - every now and then I get the bug to learn how to brew beer or vint wine...and then I taste some of the awesome beers and wines that others are making...and the desire leaves. Just like that. This past weekend I picked up a six of Bell's Expedition Stout. I have never tasted such a thick, heavy stout as this. The foam is even dark. Whoa. Now, I'm not having any this morning, but remembering from the last few nights. I got this in Cleveland, at the Wild Oats food store in Beachwood...I wonder if I can get it locally? Guess I'll go to their website, www.bellsbeer.com to find out!
Our biographical note for today: Willa Cather -- born in Virginia in 1873, Willa Cather was an influential American writer
who began her writing career in Pittsburgh, writing reviews for the "Pittsburgh Leader." After Pittsburgh, Cather moved to New York City to write for McClures magazine, which published her first novel, "Alexander's Bridge", in serial format. Cather went on to write such titles as "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia".
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Explorers in Ocean & Orbit?
- Who were the ancient Africans?
- Twitter news from Ihnatko and Mann.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
phyllostachys 51: Minute Tech 36 show notes
36 - Who were the Minoans?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 36 - Who were the Minoans?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
A couple of Show Notes for today: Due to my traveling during America's Thanksgiving holiday, I may not have a chance to produce or publish a Friday 11/23/07 show...but should be back on the digital airwaves for the Saturday/Sunday edition. Also, I'm glad I've gotten over the issues from two days ago regarding an overly general topic...I think you may find today's a bit more conversational.
Tech items:
Amazon's Kindle reading device has apparently sold out...but the noise about what it brings to the technology table is just rising. People say: it's wireless is too weak, it's wi-fi is gelded, it's keyboard is silly, it's screen is not useful enough (being the same "E-Ink" screen tech that the Sony Reader uses), that its too expensive ($399) and numerous other things. Wait! stop the presses...or turn off the mic! Go read David Pogue's review of the Kindle in the New York Times technology section. You can google this phrase:
"An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On" He reports some interesting stuff, including that kindle sports an SD card reader and can get to g-mail...hmmmm.
I don't talk much about politics or sports...those aren't areas of life that much interest me, so I have not spent unholy amounts of time learning and retaining useless sports statistics or political platforms of various candidates, so you won't hear me talk much about those things here...unless they pertain to technology. In the Tuesday 11/20/07 Wall Street Journal, page D2, an article titled "New Drive for Fuel Efficiency" the author notes Hillary Clintons "plans to push to double the fuel economy of U.S. cars and trucks to 55 miles per gallon by 2030". Much of the auto industry feels that they cannot increase fuel efficiency much, because "America demands more powerful engines". We do?? I would love to have a smaller engine in my car if it meant getting 40 or 50 MPG. Currently I drive a year 2000 Saturn coupe, the 1.9 litre 4-cylinder engine of which gets 35-40 MPG. The newer Saturns have at best a 2.4 litre 4-cylinder which provides 32 or 33 MPG at most...although the Sky two-seater Redline (top power unit) has a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine...but that's still only 26-28 highway MPG. Why couldn't GM/Saturn have focused on improving smaller engines like the 1.9 litre? Does anyone have thoughts about that? I'll do some web research to see if I can find discussion on that point.
In the same WSJ article, GM's Bob Lutz says the idea of just "re-tooling" the manufacturing process to accomodate better fuel economy is naive...that there's too much high-tech wizardry needed in each car to achieve much higher fuel efficiency. Perhaps that's true...but before we jump into hydrogen fuel cells and Mr. Fusion flight devices, wouldn't it be fairly easy to add kinetic-energy generators (to gather energy from slowing the vehicle down) and photovoltaics on each roof to provide electric assist to every automobile?
Tech Question:
This morning's tech question, "who were the Minoan's?" points to one of two pre-historic cultures that predated the Classical Greek and Roman cultures in the Mediterranean - but was contemporary with various Egyptian dynastic periods, namely the MInoans and the Myceneans. Finally, an ancient culture that I can speak with some familiarity, as I studied these things way back in my college days.
Suffice it to say that my college experience itself is fading into the historic past, but my studies of these two early Mediterranean cultures is what turned me on most to early ancient cultures. We know so much about classical Greece and Rome, down to the political intrigues, drinking parties and the various ways they found to amuse themselves - other than drinking or talking their gymnasium colleagues into corners, a la Socrates. But what do we know about the Minoan and Mycenean cultures? Very, very little. Part of this is due to the fact that the writings that have been found from those cultures have not been fully translated yet, even a century after finding such clay tablets.
The Linear A and Linear B tablets and artifacts show the tabulations and fragmentary writings of both the Minoan and somewhat contemporary or later Mycenean. Archaeologist Arthur Evans, during the early part of the 20th century discovered and helped to catalog the early Minoan and Mycenaen sites and artifacts, finding some 3000 clay tablets at the site of the Knossos palace in Crete. From his excavations we see that the Minoans had a very lively culture, including a very interesting activity known as bull-dancing, which could well be a cultural pre-cursor to such activities as the running of the bulls in the festival of San Fermin, Pamplona Spain. We don't know what the significance of the bull-dancing is, other than that the bull is a very powerful symbol of power: Europe is named for a woman who mythologically road a bull (Europa) and America's stock market has popularized the reference to a Bull Market as a time when a powerful upsurge is occuring in prices...much like the running of the bulls.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
As this is purported to be a daily podcast, I'm beginning to research (listen to, that is) other daily podcasts - the first that comes to mind is Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid podcast. Why do people do this on a daily basis? How can they do this on a daily basis? If you know of any other daily podcasts, please send me a note about them to the minutetech@gmail.com address.
The Pittsburgh woman for today:
Mary Cassatt, born in Allegheny City (now the Northside neighborhood of Pittsburgh) in 1845, was one of America's first great female artists. Check out wikipedia's article on Mary Cassatt - the article describes her education and her life-long shift in focus from impressionism to a "more straightforward approach", and shows five of her paintings: Self-portrait (1878), The Boating Party, Tea (1880), Summertime (1894) and The Bath (1893). Mary served as a role model for young female artists, and was a supporter of America's women's suffrage movement, bringing more attention to a woman's right to cast a ballot, as a any other citizen of the country.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- David Pogue's Kindle review & MPG;
- Who were the Minoans?
- daily podcasts; Mary Cassatt.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 36 - Who were the Minoans?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
A couple of Show Notes for today: Due to my traveling during America's Thanksgiving holiday, I may not have a chance to produce or publish a Friday 11/23/07 show...but should be back on the digital airwaves for the Saturday/Sunday edition. Also, I'm glad I've gotten over the issues from two days ago regarding an overly general topic...I think you may find today's a bit more conversational.
Tech items:
Amazon's Kindle reading device has apparently sold out...but the noise about what it brings to the technology table is just rising. People say: it's wireless is too weak, it's wi-fi is gelded, it's keyboard is silly, it's screen is not useful enough (being the same "E-Ink" screen tech that the Sony Reader uses), that its too expensive ($399) and numerous other things. Wait! stop the presses...or turn off the mic! Go read David Pogue's review of the Kindle in the New York Times technology section. You can google this phrase:
"An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On" He reports some interesting stuff, including that kindle sports an SD card reader and can get to g-mail...hmmmm.
I don't talk much about politics or sports...those aren't areas of life that much interest me, so I have not spent unholy amounts of time learning and retaining useless sports statistics or political platforms of various candidates, so you won't hear me talk much about those things here...unless they pertain to technology. In the Tuesday 11/20/07 Wall Street Journal, page D2, an article titled "New Drive for Fuel Efficiency" the author notes Hillary Clintons "plans to push to double the fuel economy of U.S. cars and trucks to 55 miles per gallon by 2030". Much of the auto industry feels that they cannot increase fuel efficiency much, because "America demands more powerful engines". We do?? I would love to have a smaller engine in my car if it meant getting 40 or 50 MPG. Currently I drive a year 2000 Saturn coupe, the 1.9 litre 4-cylinder engine of which gets 35-40 MPG. The newer Saturns have at best a 2.4 litre 4-cylinder which provides 32 or 33 MPG at most...although the Sky two-seater Redline (top power unit) has a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine...but that's still only 26-28 highway MPG. Why couldn't GM/Saturn have focused on improving smaller engines like the 1.9 litre? Does anyone have thoughts about that? I'll do some web research to see if I can find discussion on that point.
In the same WSJ article, GM's Bob Lutz says the idea of just "re-tooling" the manufacturing process to accomodate better fuel economy is naive...that there's too much high-tech wizardry needed in each car to achieve much higher fuel efficiency. Perhaps that's true...but before we jump into hydrogen fuel cells and Mr. Fusion flight devices, wouldn't it be fairly easy to add kinetic-energy generators (to gather energy from slowing the vehicle down) and photovoltaics on each roof to provide electric assist to every automobile?
Tech Question:
This morning's tech question, "who were the Minoan's?" points to one of two pre-historic cultures that predated the Classical Greek and Roman cultures in the Mediterranean - but was contemporary with various Egyptian dynastic periods, namely the MInoans and the Myceneans. Finally, an ancient culture that I can speak with some familiarity, as I studied these things way back in my college days.
Suffice it to say that my college experience itself is fading into the historic past, but my studies of these two early Mediterranean cultures is what turned me on most to early ancient cultures. We know so much about classical Greece and Rome, down to the political intrigues, drinking parties and the various ways they found to amuse themselves - other than drinking or talking their gymnasium colleagues into corners, a la Socrates. But what do we know about the Minoan and Mycenean cultures? Very, very little. Part of this is due to the fact that the writings that have been found from those cultures have not been fully translated yet, even a century after finding such clay tablets.
The Linear A and Linear B tablets and artifacts show the tabulations and fragmentary writings of both the Minoan and somewhat contemporary or later Mycenean. Archaeologist Arthur Evans, during the early part of the 20th century discovered and helped to catalog the early Minoan and Mycenaen sites and artifacts, finding some 3000 clay tablets at the site of the Knossos palace in Crete. From his excavations we see that the Minoans had a very lively culture, including a very interesting activity known as bull-dancing, which could well be a cultural pre-cursor to such activities as the running of the bulls in the festival of San Fermin, Pamplona Spain. We don't know what the significance of the bull-dancing is, other than that the bull is a very powerful symbol of power: Europe is named for a woman who mythologically road a bull (Europa) and America's stock market has popularized the reference to a Bull Market as a time when a powerful upsurge is occuring in prices...much like the running of the bulls.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
As this is purported to be a daily podcast, I'm beginning to research (listen to, that is) other daily podcasts - the first that comes to mind is Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid podcast. Why do people do this on a daily basis? How can they do this on a daily basis? If you know of any other daily podcasts, please send me a note about them to the minutetech@gmail.com address.
The Pittsburgh woman for today:
Mary Cassatt, born in Allegheny City (now the Northside neighborhood of Pittsburgh) in 1845, was one of America's first great female artists. Check out wikipedia's article on Mary Cassatt - the article describes her education and her life-long shift in focus from impressionism to a "more straightforward approach", and shows five of her paintings: Self-portrait (1878), The Boating Party, Tea (1880), Summertime (1894) and The Bath (1893). Mary served as a role model for young female artists, and was a supporter of America's women's suffrage movement, bringing more attention to a woman's right to cast a ballot, as a any other citizen of the country.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- David Pogue's Kindle review & MPG;
- Who were the Minoans?
- daily podcasts; Mary Cassatt.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
phyllostachys 50: Minute Tech 35 show notes
35 - What is civilization? Quants and Quanta
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 35 - What is civilization?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
show notes before I get into the usual three sections:
I didn't get this show out yesterday, Tuesday the 19th, due to timing and the fact that my "civilization" topic was way too broad to pull together something in less than an hour. I was overwhelmed, and perhaps suffering a biorhythmic trough...who knows. Suffice it to say that by the time I had to help the family get organized, and then head out the door for my commute, only the show notes had been posted...and I'll be altering those a bit with these new items.
I'm my own boss on this podcast, so I won't come down too hard on myself for missing a show...just get it out the next time around. I suspect that I have an ongoing audience...and that doesn't really matter, cause I'm in part doing this for myself, as a way to institute creativity, success and capability with scheduling.
You may have noticed the advertisements? I'm playing with that formula to see how it works - the tai chi and Ravelings advertisements are essentially classified ads - free advertising I'm providing for my friends don't have the access or facility with internet communications that I have. How do they work? Any thoughts?
Tech items:
Amazon's Kindle is ...ah...starting the fires of digital book advocates everywhere. Chris Brogan, that magnate of new media, gives a video overview of kindle on his advantageUPGRADE video blog, stating that he doesn't feel that the home for digital books has yet been found. Blackberry's too small, Amazon's Kindle's too, well, new, Sony's Reader is too Sony, Audio books, such as those on tape, CD or downloadable from Audible or Gutenberg.org are good until your ears give out.
What's the solution? How about the Apple iSlate? this is a mystical, hypothetical, maybe future product which could be many things...but if you could match the New York Times front page with Apple's iTouch interface, wouldn't you feel right at home reading the paper or listening to your newest novel or viewing your newest logos.blip.tv videocast on your new iWhatever?
Quants - another example not throwing the baby out with the bath water:
google the phrase ["Quant" is an elastic word] and click the cache link to the first article.
In the Technology Review, Part I: The Blow-Up...In Wall Street's summer of scary numbers, all eyes were on the mathematically trained financial engineers known as "quants." Bryant Urstad
Quants are the mathematicians & physicists turned financial wunderkind who've driven Hedge Funds and specialized investments field since the '80's, when easy access to newer forms of calculus could be married with computing power. Please remember, as with any technology, taking multiple approaches to investing your time and your money will help to level out the hills and valleys of typically chaotic life.
Tech Question:
what is civilization? Where did it begin? What defines it? ....
Now wait a gol' durned minute -- this is way too broad a topic....what're you trying to do, trip yourself up before even getting started. you know you can't just wax philosophic on the podcast about such an amorphous subject as "civilization"!
Let's take look at two things that define a civilization...and suffice it to say that either of these two things mark a collection of individuals as a civilization: that's recorded records of something, whether that's grain stores or labels for amphora or written histories of events; and, that's technology. Now, granted, chipped arrowheads don't necessarily denote a civilization...but large smoothed limestone slabs put together to form walls of many houses, such as you see in the British Isles some 5000 years ago, may.
Let me just throw out two words from our civilization which are in a sense related, and yet not. Quants I mentioned before: the people using quantitative, or mathematical analysis for finance and other business goals - every other truck I see on I-70 seems to be from some logistics delivery company - just in time delivery based on mathematical calculations; and quanta, which are the original ideas Albert Einstein used to describe the wave/particle dual nature of the emanations of light.
Two enormously different ideas - Quants and Quanta...yet both intertwined with the use of mathematics to describe the apparently increasingly complex world around us.
The correlation to Quanta comes from this: I'm currently listening in the car to Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, read by actor Edward Herrman. This book was written after the opening of letter archives following the death of Einstein's first wife (I think that's how it was described). Edward Herrman does a wonderful job reading - very expressive - and a history about such a man and the new world which he created for us (for better or for worse) always bears re-telling and an attempt to understand.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I asked on twitter and I'll ask you: send me examples of women who've mattered in your life &/or women who've mattered to civilization in general. Women of all races and levels in social strata are both our most precious resource and our most squandered resource - how can we rectify this situation? For both our sons, our daughters, our families and our friends: encourage equal treatment, encourage maximum learning, encourage maturity, but also encourage the right and ability to play, to express themselves and to live lives full of dignity and fulfillment.
I suggested to my wife, Jennifer, that she come up with names of local (Pittsburgh region) historical women, and this is the first of that series:
Rachel Carson: A biologist and writer on nature and science, Rachel
Carson is best known for her 1962 book "Silent Spring," which touched
off a major controversy on the effects of pesticides. She was born in
Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Kindle and Quants;
- What is civilization? Quants and Quanta;
- Encourage; Rachel Carson.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 35 - What is civilization?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
show notes before I get into the usual three sections:
I didn't get this show out yesterday, Tuesday the 19th, due to timing and the fact that my "civilization" topic was way too broad to pull together something in less than an hour. I was overwhelmed, and perhaps suffering a biorhythmic trough...who knows. Suffice it to say that by the time I had to help the family get organized, and then head out the door for my commute, only the show notes had been posted...and I'll be altering those a bit with these new items.
I'm my own boss on this podcast, so I won't come down too hard on myself for missing a show...just get it out the next time around. I suspect that I have an ongoing audience...and that doesn't really matter, cause I'm in part doing this for myself, as a way to institute creativity, success and capability with scheduling.
You may have noticed the advertisements? I'm playing with that formula to see how it works - the tai chi and Ravelings advertisements are essentially classified ads - free advertising I'm providing for my friends don't have the access or facility with internet communications that I have. How do they work? Any thoughts?
Tech items:
Amazon's Kindle is ...ah...starting the fires of digital book advocates everywhere. Chris Brogan, that magnate of new media, gives a video overview of kindle on his advantageUPGRADE video blog, stating that he doesn't feel that the home for digital books has yet been found. Blackberry's too small, Amazon's Kindle's too, well, new, Sony's Reader is too Sony, Audio books, such as those on tape, CD or downloadable from Audible or Gutenberg.org are good until your ears give out.
What's the solution? How about the Apple iSlate? this is a mystical, hypothetical, maybe future product which could be many things...but if you could match the New York Times front page with Apple's iTouch interface, wouldn't you feel right at home reading the paper or listening to your newest novel or viewing your newest logos.blip.tv videocast on your new iWhatever?
Quants - another example not throwing the baby out with the bath water:
google the phrase ["Quant" is an elastic word] and click the cache link to the first article.
In the Technology Review, Part I: The Blow-Up...In Wall Street's summer of scary numbers, all eyes were on the mathematically trained financial engineers known as "quants." Bryant Urstad
Quants are the mathematicians & physicists turned financial wunderkind who've driven Hedge Funds and specialized investments field since the '80's, when easy access to newer forms of calculus could be married with computing power. Please remember, as with any technology, taking multiple approaches to investing your time and your money will help to level out the hills and valleys of typically chaotic life.
Tech Question:
what is civilization? Where did it begin? What defines it? ....
Now wait a gol' durned minute -- this is way too broad a topic....what're you trying to do, trip yourself up before even getting started. you know you can't just wax philosophic on the podcast about such an amorphous subject as "civilization"!
Let's take look at two things that define a civilization...and suffice it to say that either of these two things mark a collection of individuals as a civilization: that's recorded records of something, whether that's grain stores or labels for amphora or written histories of events; and, that's technology. Now, granted, chipped arrowheads don't necessarily denote a civilization...but large smoothed limestone slabs put together to form walls of many houses, such as you see in the British Isles some 5000 years ago, may.
Let me just throw out two words from our civilization which are in a sense related, and yet not. Quants I mentioned before: the people using quantitative, or mathematical analysis for finance and other business goals - every other truck I see on I-70 seems to be from some logistics delivery company - just in time delivery based on mathematical calculations; and quanta, which are the original ideas Albert Einstein used to describe the wave/particle dual nature of the emanations of light.
Two enormously different ideas - Quants and Quanta...yet both intertwined with the use of mathematics to describe the apparently increasingly complex world around us.
The correlation to Quanta comes from this: I'm currently listening in the car to Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein, read by actor Edward Herrman. This book was written after the opening of letter archives following the death of Einstein's first wife (I think that's how it was described). Edward Herrman does a wonderful job reading - very expressive - and a history about such a man and the new world which he created for us (for better or for worse) always bears re-telling and an attempt to understand.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I asked on twitter and I'll ask you: send me examples of women who've mattered in your life &/or women who've mattered to civilization in general. Women of all races and levels in social strata are both our most precious resource and our most squandered resource - how can we rectify this situation? For both our sons, our daughters, our families and our friends: encourage equal treatment, encourage maximum learning, encourage maturity, but also encourage the right and ability to play, to express themselves and to live lives full of dignity and fulfillment.
I suggested to my wife, Jennifer, that she come up with names of local (Pittsburgh region) historical women, and this is the first of that series:
Rachel Carson: A biologist and writer on nature and science, Rachel
Carson is best known for her 1962 book "Silent Spring," which touched
off a major controversy on the effects of pesticides. She was born in
Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Kindle and Quants;
- What is civilization? Quants and Quanta;
- Encourage; Rachel Carson.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Monday, November 19, 2007
phyllostachys 49: Minute Tech 34 show notes
34 - Who were the Etruscans?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 19th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 34 - Who were the Etruscans?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech items:
googles news site brings us this from Time's web presence - a relatively new variant of the common cold, an adenovirus called AD14, seems to be making the rounds. This variant was originally detected back in 1955, but has been making its way through small human populations in the US over the past 18 months, sickening 140 but only killing about 10.
Also, Pakistan courts have ratified Musharraf's re-election...after he cleared the courts of those he feared would not ratify...and Bloomberg reports that Japan's whaling fleet is out to kill some 1000 whales in an apparently scientific expedition to analyze the arctic whale population. I hope they don't try to analyze other populations...
Tech Question:
Who were the Etruscans? The people whom modern English names the Etruscans, were called the Turraynioi in Attic Greek - the dialect of Greek used by those we know of as the "ancient Greeks", and the Rasenna or Rasna by the people themselves, lived in Northwestern Italy from about 800 BC until their assimilation into the Roman culture commencing with the sack of the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BC. The Etruscans were predated in that region by an Iron Age culture known as Villanovan - so named for a 19th century excavation near the village of Villanova.
It seems from various accounts referenced on wikipedia's Etruscan article that the Etruscans were ancient - moreso that Romans or the classical Greeks - inhabitants of north-central italy who had many sea-faring roots, perhaps coming originally from as far as Troy, in Asia Minor - the name Tursci in the Etruscan language has the meaning of "tower builders"...and the Trojans were known for this also.
As scant written historican items remain from the Etruscans, most of what we know about them survive through Roman and Greek authors whose writing survive. What the Etruscans seem to have given the modern world may have been the founding of Rome and culture in that section of Italy, as well as a mixture of trade and cultures between Spain and other western Mediterranean cultures and the eastern Mediterranean cultures, namely Greece. The Etruscans tended to build high walled cities up on hilltops...and indeed Rome is known for its seven hills. And, the Etruscans liked arches:
"In addition to their walls, the Etruscans insisted on sewage and drainage systems, which are extensive in all Etruscan cities. The cloaca maxima, “great sewer”, at Rome is Etruscan. The initial Roman roads, dikes, diversion channels and drainage ditches were Etruscan. More importantly, the Etruscans brought the arch to Rome, both barreled arches and corbelled arches, which can be seen in gates, bridges, depictions of temple fronts, and vaulted passages."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_architecture
Most of all, the Etruscans brought mystery to this region of antiquity, and perhaps influenced later peoples through their lack of written histories. Although we know that conquerors write the histories, and many times destroy the written works of predecessor cultures, it seems unusual that we only really know the Etruscans through references by Greek and Roman historians, and by the art within their elaborate well-constructed tombs.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Check out http://nemu-nemu.com, the site of some very interesting web cartoons. They've recent completed the artwork on cartoon #202 (a la twitter) - stay tuned. Also, about their blog: anyone who can geek out over some specialized drawing erasers may be producing some interesting material. Just a circumstantial observation on my part.
Books are most incredible things, probably only to be surpassed at some point by computers...but not yet. Please make sure you take care of books, rescue books, and frown upon people who used them for kindling. Als
"Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage."
Petrarch
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Adenovirus AD14 making the rounds;
- Who were the Etruscans?
- Nemu-Nemu.com & Petrarch.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 19th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 34 - Who were the Etruscans?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech items:
googles news site brings us this from Time's web presence - a relatively new variant of the common cold, an adenovirus called AD14, seems to be making the rounds. This variant was originally detected back in 1955, but has been making its way through small human populations in the US over the past 18 months, sickening 140 but only killing about 10.
Also, Pakistan courts have ratified Musharraf's re-election...after he cleared the courts of those he feared would not ratify...and Bloomberg reports that Japan's whaling fleet is out to kill some 1000 whales in an apparently scientific expedition to analyze the arctic whale population. I hope they don't try to analyze other populations...
Tech Question:
Who were the Etruscans? The people whom modern English names the Etruscans, were called the Turraynioi in Attic Greek - the dialect of Greek used by those we know of as the "ancient Greeks", and the Rasenna or Rasna by the people themselves, lived in Northwestern Italy from about 800 BC until their assimilation into the Roman culture commencing with the sack of the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 BC. The Etruscans were predated in that region by an Iron Age culture known as Villanovan - so named for a 19th century excavation near the village of Villanova.
It seems from various accounts referenced on wikipedia's Etruscan article that the Etruscans were ancient - moreso that Romans or the classical Greeks - inhabitants of north-central italy who had many sea-faring roots, perhaps coming originally from as far as Troy, in Asia Minor - the name Tursci in the Etruscan language has the meaning of "tower builders"...and the Trojans were known for this also.
As scant written historican items remain from the Etruscans, most of what we know about them survive through Roman and Greek authors whose writing survive. What the Etruscans seem to have given the modern world may have been the founding of Rome and culture in that section of Italy, as well as a mixture of trade and cultures between Spain and other western Mediterranean cultures and the eastern Mediterranean cultures, namely Greece. The Etruscans tended to build high walled cities up on hilltops...and indeed Rome is known for its seven hills. And, the Etruscans liked arches:
"In addition to their walls, the Etruscans insisted on sewage and drainage systems, which are extensive in all Etruscan cities. The cloaca maxima, “great sewer”, at Rome is Etruscan. The initial Roman roads, dikes, diversion channels and drainage ditches were Etruscan. More importantly, the Etruscans brought the arch to Rome, both barreled arches and corbelled arches, which can be seen in gates, bridges, depictions of temple fronts, and vaulted passages."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_architecture
Most of all, the Etruscans brought mystery to this region of antiquity, and perhaps influenced later peoples through their lack of written histories. Although we know that conquerors write the histories, and many times destroy the written works of predecessor cultures, it seems unusual that we only really know the Etruscans through references by Greek and Roman historians, and by the art within their elaborate well-constructed tombs.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Check out http://nemu-nemu.com, the site of some very interesting web cartoons. They've recent completed the artwork on cartoon #202 (a la twitter) - stay tuned. Also, about their blog: anyone who can geek out over some specialized drawing erasers may be producing some interesting material. Just a circumstantial observation on my part.
Books are most incredible things, probably only to be surpassed at some point by computers...but not yet. Please make sure you take care of books, rescue books, and frown upon people who used them for kindling. Als
"Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage."
Petrarch
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Adenovirus AD14 making the rounds;
- Who were the Etruscans?
- Nemu-Nemu.com & Petrarch.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
phyllostachys 48: Minute Tech 33 show notes
33 - What is Nunavut?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 17th & 18th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 33 - What is Nunavut?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech items:
As usual, when a company brings out a decent product which sells well, people begin bandying about the M word. That's M for Monopoly. Journalists have been after Apple for being a monopoly in the music distribution arena. Do you think Apple is a monopoly? I don't - you can get your music online through iTunes, you can go to a local music store and buy CD's, you can join a CD music club, and you can visit any number of second-hand music stores. Now, is Apple a monopoly because they have the only decent music player? SanDisk, Creative and Microsoft each make very useable music players...and very affordable, perhaps more-so than Apple's range of iPods. So...what makes Apple a monopoly? Are then bullying other music distributors? Are they forcing others out of business using methods other than the rule of feet (consumers can choose which store to walk into)? Let me know what you think.
Tech Question:
What is Nunavut?
Christopher S. Penn, on his self-named blog, asks whether America and the UE will respect Canada's assertion that the Arctic Circle shipping route over the North Pole belongs to Canada, as it's within the territory designated by Canada in 1999 as Nunavut. Mr. Penn suggests that America's track record in respecting other's sovereign territories over the past several years has not been stellar, and that perhaps this behavior will move on to use of the "Northwest Passage", a holy grail of shipping industry.
For Europe, the shipping will be far easier with a bigger or permanent shipping route through the North. The Northwest passage from Europe to San Francisco is shorter than via the Panama canal, and the Northern Sea Route, formerly known as the Northeast Passage is far shorter than traversing the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Indian Ocean, South China Sea and western Pacific to reach Yokohama, Japan.
Nunavut is a land of just over 29,000 inhabitants, spread over an area equal to the size of Greenland, but with half the population. Nunavut has been continuously inhabited for roughly 4000 years, with first contact by Europeans being by Norse sailors in the 8th or 9th century, and the English, specifically Martin Frobisher, in 1576. The anthropological understanding is that the North American and South American peoples may have crossed from northern Asia some 20,000 years ago via a so-called land-bridge formed at the site of the Bering Straits in Alaska. I want to be careful here, though - go to www.native-languages.org forward slash bering.htm and check out the discussion on the "Bering Strait Theory". Native Americans certainly have a right to not have a migration theory forced upon them....suffice it to say that if you look far enough back in history, we all emigrated from somewhere...and are native to wherever we were born.
But I digress. Is the Northwest or Northeast passage going to be a bone of contention? Again, Check out Christopher S. Penn's blog post. Who knows where this global warming trend with take us?
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
If you follow @pistachio on Twitter, you may have seen that she is currently in India, far from her Boston home, but also with family there, doing speaking tours on what she knows best. check out www.pistachioconsulting.com.
Chris Brogan of podcamp fame has moved on from Pulvermedia to work with CrossTechMedia, the producers of the ITEC conference and Exhibition, which will be in 18 locations in the US and Canada during 2008. Chris, good luck on your new venture!
Have you checked out the MacBreak video shows on iTunes? Their recent shows in the studio discussed "Multicam Editing Essentials", that is the use of cameras from multiple angles to highlight whatever you're shooting, and "Droplets and Compression Templates in Compressor".
Finally, one of my favorite podcasts is back after a brief hiatus: VentureCast, with David Hornik and Craig Syverson..and they're back to their two-week schedule. VentureCast 27 dealt partially with an un-advertised conference titled Out of the Lobby, where tech and VC types got together in Hawaii to discuss...well, whatever they discussed.
Do you have a favorite podcast or blog? Let me know...or go to pghbloggers.org to see Pittsburgh Region blogs.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Apple’s monopolistic tendencies?
- What is Nunavut?
- Pistachio, Brogan, MacBreak and VentureCast.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 17th & 18th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 33 - What is Nunavut?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Also by:
Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.
Tech items:
As usual, when a company brings out a decent product which sells well, people begin bandying about the M word. That's M for Monopoly. Journalists have been after Apple for being a monopoly in the music distribution arena. Do you think Apple is a monopoly? I don't - you can get your music online through iTunes, you can go to a local music store and buy CD's, you can join a CD music club, and you can visit any number of second-hand music stores. Now, is Apple a monopoly because they have the only decent music player? SanDisk, Creative and Microsoft each make very useable music players...and very affordable, perhaps more-so than Apple's range of iPods. So...what makes Apple a monopoly? Are then bullying other music distributors? Are they forcing others out of business using methods other than the rule of feet (consumers can choose which store to walk into)? Let me know what you think.
Tech Question:
What is Nunavut?
Christopher S. Penn, on his self-named blog, asks whether America and the UE will respect Canada's assertion that the Arctic Circle shipping route over the North Pole belongs to Canada, as it's within the territory designated by Canada in 1999 as Nunavut. Mr. Penn suggests that America's track record in respecting other's sovereign territories over the past several years has not been stellar, and that perhaps this behavior will move on to use of the "Northwest Passage", a holy grail of shipping industry.
For Europe, the shipping will be far easier with a bigger or permanent shipping route through the North. The Northwest passage from Europe to San Francisco is shorter than via the Panama canal, and the Northern Sea Route, formerly known as the Northeast Passage is far shorter than traversing the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Indian Ocean, South China Sea and western Pacific to reach Yokohama, Japan.
Nunavut is a land of just over 29,000 inhabitants, spread over an area equal to the size of Greenland, but with half the population. Nunavut has been continuously inhabited for roughly 4000 years, with first contact by Europeans being by Norse sailors in the 8th or 9th century, and the English, specifically Martin Frobisher, in 1576. The anthropological understanding is that the North American and South American peoples may have crossed from northern Asia some 20,000 years ago via a so-called land-bridge formed at the site of the Bering Straits in Alaska. I want to be careful here, though - go to www.native-languages.org forward slash bering.htm and check out the discussion on the "Bering Strait Theory". Native Americans certainly have a right to not have a migration theory forced upon them....suffice it to say that if you look far enough back in history, we all emigrated from somewhere...and are native to wherever we were born.
But I digress. Is the Northwest or Northeast passage going to be a bone of contention? Again, Check out Christopher S. Penn's blog post. Who knows where this global warming trend with take us?
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
If you follow @pistachio on Twitter, you may have seen that she is currently in India, far from her Boston home, but also with family there, doing speaking tours on what she knows best. check out www.pistachioconsulting.com.
Chris Brogan of podcamp fame has moved on from Pulvermedia to work with CrossTechMedia, the producers of the ITEC conference and Exhibition, which will be in 18 locations in the US and Canada during 2008. Chris, good luck on your new venture!
Have you checked out the MacBreak video shows on iTunes? Their recent shows in the studio discussed "Multicam Editing Essentials", that is the use of cameras from multiple angles to highlight whatever you're shooting, and "Droplets and Compression Templates in Compressor".
Finally, one of my favorite podcasts is back after a brief hiatus: VentureCast, with David Hornik and Craig Syverson..and they're back to their two-week schedule. VentureCast 27 dealt partially with an un-advertised conference titled Out of the Lobby, where tech and VC types got together in Hawaii to discuss...well, whatever they discussed.
Do you have a favorite podcast or blog? Let me know...or go to pghbloggers.org to see Pittsburgh Region blogs.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Apple’s monopolistic tendencies?
- What is Nunavut?
- Pistachio, Brogan, MacBreak and VentureCast.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Friday, November 16, 2007
phyllostachys 47: Minute Tech 32 show notes
32 - What is In Flanders Fields?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Friday, November 16th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 32 - What is In Flanders Fields?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Tech items:
Somehow I inadvertently happened upon an abbreviated version of Gmail last night. If you type for your gmail login "mail.google.com / mail / x" - you get a text only version of gmail. I mean...I thought gmail was already quite svelte in layout...but this is nearly as devoid of color as that entry-level Linux favorite Pine.
I currently work as an "applications support specialist" for an onshore outsourced word processing (which we call "document services") department for a global law firm....in Wheeling, WV. The outsource firm is Williams Lea, inc. Williams Lea is a British company specializing in uber-cost cutting for companies who want to save 30% on their internal services, by outsourcing mailroom, print/copy, document processing and even IT. Note that outsourcing primarily saves by cutting salaries and healthcare expenditures for that group of outsourced positions...the outsourcing company must figure out how to (1) maintain the same level of service, but with (2) tighter fiscal outlay. That means tighter wage policies, less year-end-bonus, and potentially tighter healthcare outlay.
In my mind, these items are the reality of business - outsourcers are just showing more profitable companies how to provide services for less cost. As in any other industry, a profitable company wants it's profits kept, although paying employees is a necessary....uh...thing to do.
Foreign companies, like Williams Lea, Tiger Direct, Tata Consultancy and Infosys are not the only companies doing this thing called BPO, or business process outsourcing - Northrop Grumman, of aerospace fame, has successfully contracted with the State of Virginia to take on the state's IT services. This may be small in scope compared to a multi-national corporation...but it's a start.
Go to www.offshoringtimes.com and click on their "What is BPO" link for more information.
http://www.offshoringtimes.com/WhatIsBPO.html
Tech Question:
What is in Flanders Fields?
In Flanders fields is a poem written by poet John McCrae, in the trenches of World War 1, on May 3rd, 1915. Flanders, in Belgium, has a wealth of poppies growing its fields...and this beautiful red flower is a symbol of remembrance for the fallen in World War 1.
One year ago I was in the "record neat things in GarageBand" kick, and recorded the following when my family e-mailed around about the remembrances of Veterans Day. This recording is about 1.5 minutes, after which I'll jump into the podcasting/blogging section.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I recently stumbled back upon the online writings of a serial entrepreneur and author, Paul Graham. If you go to Paul Graham dot com, you'll see that he has many interesting essays on many interesting topics. The most interesting to me are the writings on doing a startup. Am I thinking down this road? It'd be interesting...but lets write about it for now.
As Paul writes, it's not the idea that is important, but the group of people. If you have the right mix of people, who think unanimously toward goals and actions, then the ideas can flow from one thing to another.
One interesting example of this was a company originally called CacheFlow, which mid-stream, during the tech crash at the beginning of this decade, changed direction from selling very popular web caching appliances to developing a business in a slightly more arcane arena, Proxy management. This company is now call Blue Coat Systems Inc (BCSI), and they're doing an awesome global business.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Text Gmail and BPO
- What is In Flanders Fields?
- Paul Grahams essays and CacheFlow.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Friday, November 16th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 32 - What is In Flanders Fields?
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Tech items:
Somehow I inadvertently happened upon an abbreviated version of Gmail last night. If you type for your gmail login "mail.google.com / mail / x" - you get a text only version of gmail. I mean...I thought gmail was already quite svelte in layout...but this is nearly as devoid of color as that entry-level Linux favorite Pine.
I currently work as an "applications support specialist" for an onshore outsourced word processing (which we call "document services") department for a global law firm....in Wheeling, WV. The outsource firm is Williams Lea, inc. Williams Lea is a British company specializing in uber-cost cutting for companies who want to save 30% on their internal services, by outsourcing mailroom, print/copy, document processing and even IT. Note that outsourcing primarily saves by cutting salaries and healthcare expenditures for that group of outsourced positions...the outsourcing company must figure out how to (1) maintain the same level of service, but with (2) tighter fiscal outlay. That means tighter wage policies, less year-end-bonus, and potentially tighter healthcare outlay.
In my mind, these items are the reality of business - outsourcers are just showing more profitable companies how to provide services for less cost. As in any other industry, a profitable company wants it's profits kept, although paying employees is a necessary....uh...thing to do.
Foreign companies, like Williams Lea, Tiger Direct, Tata Consultancy and Infosys are not the only companies doing this thing called BPO, or business process outsourcing - Northrop Grumman, of aerospace fame, has successfully contracted with the State of Virginia to take on the state's IT services. This may be small in scope compared to a multi-national corporation...but it's a start.
Go to www.offshoringtimes.com and click on their "What is BPO" link for more information.
http://www.offshoringtimes.com/WhatIsBPO.html
Tech Question:
What is in Flanders Fields?
In Flanders fields is a poem written by poet John McCrae, in the trenches of World War 1, on May 3rd, 1915. Flanders, in Belgium, has a wealth of poppies growing its fields...and this beautiful red flower is a symbol of remembrance for the fallen in World War 1.
One year ago I was in the "record neat things in GarageBand" kick, and recorded the following when my family e-mailed around about the remembrances of Veterans Day. This recording is about 1.5 minutes, after which I'll jump into the podcasting/blogging section.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I recently stumbled back upon the online writings of a serial entrepreneur and author, Paul Graham. If you go to Paul Graham dot com, you'll see that he has many interesting essays on many interesting topics. The most interesting to me are the writings on doing a startup. Am I thinking down this road? It'd be interesting...but lets write about it for now.
As Paul writes, it's not the idea that is important, but the group of people. If you have the right mix of people, who think unanimously toward goals and actions, then the ideas can flow from one thing to another.
One interesting example of this was a company originally called CacheFlow, which mid-stream, during the tech crash at the beginning of this decade, changed direction from selling very popular web caching appliances to developing a business in a slightly more arcane arena, Proxy management. This company is now call Blue Coat Systems Inc (BCSI), and they're doing an awesome global business.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"
- Text Gmail and BPO
- What is In Flanders Fields?
- Paul Grahams essays and CacheFlow.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
phyllostachys 46: Minute Tech 31 show notes
31 - Veterans Day Revealed.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 15th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 31 - Veterans Day Revealed
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Tech items:
What do Gandalf, Harry Potter and Libsyn all have in common? Why, they're wizzards, of course!
Libsyn, the podcast hosting website, is now a subsidiary of Wizzard Software of Pittsburgh. Wizzard Software, which has been around in various small company formulations since 1998, yesterday announced stellar revenue increases...though as a truly growing company, their net income, and the hence earnings per share, were in decidedly negative territory.
Go to the SEC's website and search on W-I-Z-D and you'll find Wizzards 10q report. I'll link to it here in the show notes.
Let me read to you a brief blurb about the company from a recent SEC filing - yes, I read those things and love 'em!
"Organization - Wizzard Software Corporation ["Parent"], a Colorado corporation, was organized on July 1, 1998. The Company operates in two industry segments, Software and Healthcare. The Software segment engages primarily in the development, sale, and service of custom and packaged computer software products, and podcast hosting services. The Healthcare segment operates primarily in the home healthcare and healthcare staffing services in Wyoming and Montana. On April 9, 2004, Parent organized Wizzard Merger Corp., a New York corporation, to acquire and dissolve into the operations of MedivoxRx Technologies, Inc., a New York corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. On September 8, 2005, Parent purchased all of the issued and outstanding shares of Interim Healthcare of Wyoming, Inc. ["Interim"], a Wyoming corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. On February 27, 2007, Parent organized Wizzard Acquisition Corp., a Pennsylvania corporation, to acquire and dissolve into the operations of Webmayhem, Inc. [Libsyn], a Pennsylvania corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. Libsyn engages primarily in providing podcast hosting services. On April 3, 2007, Interim purchased certain assets of Professional Personnel, Inc., dba, Professional Nursing Personnel Pool ["PNPP"]."
Tech Question:
Veterans Day Revealed....or what truly is Veterans day?
Did you know that Veterans Day is the same as Armistice Day as it's celebrated in Europe? World War I ended on the "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice". As of 1926, the US government made November 11th to be celebrated in the US as Armistice Day. In 1968 the US government changed the observed holiday to be called "Veterans Day" and to always fall on a Monday - Veterans groups rightly protested...so the official day is on November 11th, with the government and banking holiday (though not the stock market, etc.) falling on the Monday holiday.
Wikipedia tells us that
"Remembrance Day (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom), also known as Poppy Day (Malta, South Africa) or Armistice Day (France, New Zealand, and a number of other Commonwealth countries; and the original name of the day internationally) is a day to commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war, specifically since the First World War. It is observed on 11 November to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918. The day was specifically dedicated by King George V, on 7 November 1919, to the observance of members of the armed forces who were killed during war; this was possibly done upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey to Wellesley Tudor Pole, who established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917.[1][2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
The cool thing about setting a topical theme for the week on this podcast is that little by little I learn more about the subject...and different ways in which to present it. How do you present things?
Also, how do you present advertisements? I've designed the brief advertisement for my teacher's tai class at the beginning of this 'cast. A valued listener suggested putting a related trailer at the end. How do these work for you?
I mentioned using twitter recently...but didn't mention an alteration to my twitter habit, involving the ubiquitous twitter feature, the "tiny URL" www.tinyurl.com is the home of a service that twitter uses to short URL's, the links to everywhere on the internet. This is so that messages stay short, no matter how long an internet is...and some can be 10's or 100s of characters long.
But....if you paste in your long URL after a lengthy message in Twitter...you get told that the message is too long...even if the eventual tinyURL converted link will be short. So, a resolution.
If you go to www.tinyURL.com, you can paste your URL into their web page...and have it converted for you before you compose your Twitter message! Go try it out...that's how I'm making my twitter posts just as windy as usual! :-)
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- Wizzards, one and all;
- Veterans Day Revealed.
- Use tinyURL to enhance your twittering.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 15th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 31 - Veterans Day Revealed
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.
Tech items:
What do Gandalf, Harry Potter and Libsyn all have in common? Why, they're wizzards, of course!
Libsyn, the podcast hosting website, is now a subsidiary of Wizzard Software of Pittsburgh. Wizzard Software, which has been around in various small company formulations since 1998, yesterday announced stellar revenue increases...though as a truly growing company, their net income, and the hence earnings per share, were in decidedly negative territory.
Go to the SEC's website and search on W-I-Z-D and you'll find Wizzards 10q report. I'll link to it here in the show notes.
Let me read to you a brief blurb about the company from a recent SEC filing - yes, I read those things and love 'em!
"Organization - Wizzard Software Corporation ["Parent"], a Colorado corporation, was organized on July 1, 1998. The Company operates in two industry segments, Software and Healthcare. The Software segment engages primarily in the development, sale, and service of custom and packaged computer software products, and podcast hosting services. The Healthcare segment operates primarily in the home healthcare and healthcare staffing services in Wyoming and Montana. On April 9, 2004, Parent organized Wizzard Merger Corp., a New York corporation, to acquire and dissolve into the operations of MedivoxRx Technologies, Inc., a New York corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. On September 8, 2005, Parent purchased all of the issued and outstanding shares of Interim Healthcare of Wyoming, Inc. ["Interim"], a Wyoming corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. On February 27, 2007, Parent organized Wizzard Acquisition Corp., a Pennsylvania corporation, to acquire and dissolve into the operations of Webmayhem, Inc. [Libsyn], a Pennsylvania corporation, in a transaction accounted for as a purchase. Libsyn engages primarily in providing podcast hosting services. On April 3, 2007, Interim purchased certain assets of Professional Personnel, Inc., dba, Professional Nursing Personnel Pool ["PNPP"]."
Tech Question:
Veterans Day Revealed....or what truly is Veterans day?
Did you know that Veterans Day is the same as Armistice Day as it's celebrated in Europe? World War I ended on the "the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice". As of 1926, the US government made November 11th to be celebrated in the US as Armistice Day. In 1968 the US government changed the observed holiday to be called "Veterans Day" and to always fall on a Monday - Veterans groups rightly protested...so the official day is on November 11th, with the government and banking holiday (though not the stock market, etc.) falling on the Monday holiday.
Wikipedia tells us that
"Remembrance Day (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom), also known as Poppy Day (Malta, South Africa) or Armistice Day (France, New Zealand, and a number of other Commonwealth countries; and the original name of the day internationally) is a day to commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war, specifically since the First World War. It is observed on 11 November to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918. The day was specifically dedicated by King George V, on 7 November 1919, to the observance of members of the armed forces who were killed during war; this was possibly done upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey to Wellesley Tudor Pole, who established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917.[1][2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
The cool thing about setting a topical theme for the week on this podcast is that little by little I learn more about the subject...and different ways in which to present it. How do you present things?
Also, how do you present advertisements? I've designed the brief advertisement for my teacher's tai class at the beginning of this 'cast. A valued listener suggested putting a related trailer at the end. How do these work for you?
I mentioned using twitter recently...but didn't mention an alteration to my twitter habit, involving the ubiquitous twitter feature, the "tiny URL" www.tinyurl.com is the home of a service that twitter uses to short URL's, the links to everywhere on the internet. This is so that messages stay short, no matter how long an internet is...and some can be 10's or 100s of characters long.
But....if you paste in your long URL after a lengthy message in Twitter...you get told that the message is too long...even if the eventual tinyURL converted link will be short. So, a resolution.
If you go to www.tinyURL.com, you can paste your URL into their web page...and have it converted for you before you compose your Twitter message! Go try it out...that's how I'm making my twitter posts just as windy as usual! :-)
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- Wizzards, one and all;
- Veterans Day Revealed.
- Use tinyURL to enhance your twittering.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
phyllostachy 45: Minute Tech 30 - Empathize
30 - Empathize your Hero's
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 30 - Empathize your Hero's
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - email leonardtolbert@hotmail.com for more info.
Tech items:
I've spent so much time this morning researching the latter parts of this show, that the news items will suffer. Suffice it to say that Data, Lore and Nunian Sung are not alone:
Google has released it's own Android - an architecture for creating mobile wireless software programs - think e-mail, facebook, etc.
Apple and it's tech co-horts have bounced back from a 20% decline - yesterday rising on the NASDAQ to the tune of some 10%. Talk about volatility - this type of market is why some go screaming from Tech companies, while others revel in the uncertainty.
Tech Question:
Empathize your Hero.
How can you emulate your hero without truly empathizing with the feelings and experiences of your hero?
Sure, you can put yourself into just the glory moments of your hero: the steps up to the private jet, the end of the mililtary campaign with victoriously bloody sword held high, viewing the sunset from the water-side villa in Thailand, putting the pen down at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or sinking that victorious putt on the 18th green.
But remember that your hero is human, too: they must deal with the fear of their King's rejection, they must plan to mobilize the troops, he or she who's smile has launched a thousand emulators must deal with loosing teeth, and he or she who has amazed the masses with decades of virtuousic music must deal with the uncertainties of sudden illness.
Monday's Wall Street Journal has a story about Japanese Pianist Izumi Tateno - who has reformed his music abilities after suffering an age-related debilitating stroke. What a story to empathize with - what a hero to emulate.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
After 30 episodes of the Minute Tech podcast, I'm considering both ways to improve the current workflow, which I've detailed in an early blog post on the Minute Tech blog, as well as ways to augment content.
One of the important things to consider in message is simplicity. Simple messages stick with your audience more easily than complex messages. Also, the ideal in presenting messages is to chunk you message into sets of three: three main subjects, three ideas that the audience can grasp without loosing sight or concentration, three concepts.
Currently, I have three segments:
Tech Items - which can be comprised of tech ideas, concepts or news items;
The Tech Question - the main focus of the episode, focusing on one main idea;
The podcasting/blogging tidbit - providing news or information about the medium in which I'm working.
So, I don't necessarily want to dilute this framework...but I want to insert other items, such as a periodic biographical reference to a famous person who people can emulate. Perhaps, thinking about it, I could insert this as a weekly special segment. Hmmmm. I think its really important to provide people with the hope that their situation has been met and overcome by others before....just how to embed this "meme" within the current framework is the question to be resolved.
I recently came across information about a local Pittsburgh company called Elliance, Inc., formerly known as Research Access, Inc.. Elliance provides web services in the areas of marketing, e-commerce website design and a new field called Search Engine Optimization - depending on your perspective, the three service areas can be considered facets of one - your overall brand. On their SEO website, they have a graphic pertaining to optimizing podcasts - check it out via the link in the show notes, or Google the words "elliance podcast optimization" (don't quote them in the google search) and click the first link.
http://searchengineoptimization.elliance.com/search-marketing-resources/seo-infographics.aspx?title=Podcast-Optimization
http://searchengineland.com/071113-125726.php
http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_23935.html
http://www.elliance.com/About/speakersBios.asp
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- Android in the making, and Apple stages a comeback;
- Empathize your Heros.
- Focus on three ideas; elliance.com.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
phyllostachys 44: Minute Tech 29 - Emulate
29 - Emulate your Hero's
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 29 - Emulate your Hero's
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - email leonardtolbert@hotmail.com for more info.
Tech items:
Apple is apparently in talks with China Mobile to distribute the Apple iPhone in China. This means three things:
China Mobile may be preparing to offer a hugely useful cellular/entertainment device to its customers;
Apple may be about to enter a market where it's iPhone sales could triple overnight;
China Mobile could see it's Market capitalization eclipsed by that crazy computer designer, Apple Inc.
The New York Times mentioned this morning that our love of chocolate may go back to as old as 1100 BC, when Central Americans in Honduras and other regions may have used the Cacao bean to brew a fermented beer-like beverage. So that's what a nice glass of Stout means by chocolatey taste! :-)
Tech Question:
Emulate your Hero.
Who is your hero? One of the greatest and longest lasting forms of technology has been the idea of hero worship and emulation.
Ever since Ugg heroically threw a sharpened stick down from the tree to skewer the saber-tooth cat, providing Ooogee and Aaaggee a point for emulation in their own fight-off-the-australopithecus-eating-monster role-play, up through Helen launching the thousand ships and Abraham Lincoln fighting to end human slavery in North America, Heros have been an extremely important part of the human psyche.
What can be more important than creating a mental focus for all of your energy? Humans long ago realized that life is far more productive if the mind can be focused away from only procreation and eating, to other areas such as protection of the community, building of shelters, braving the deep lakes and oceans, and developing systems for mapping time and nature.
Veterans Day gives us the opportunity to open our hearts and minds to those great men and women who have literally fought to maintain our present way of life, so that we collectively and individually can move beyond border disputes to the task of maintaining a growing civilization through the next century. When we see what those men and women have done, let us look into their lives - seek the positive - we all have negative aspects - we can learn to emulate the positive and learn from the reality of the negative.
In the show notes, I'll provide links to wikipedia for the following people: Lucy, Helen of Troy, Molly Pitcher and Abraham Lincoln.
Lucy
Helen of Troy
Molly Pitcher
Abraham Lincoln
As a side note, one of the most interesting business newspapers in the US is Investors Business Daily, or IBD. This paper is important to experienced investors, as it provides a well thought-out and orchestrated system for investing in the stock market. But perhaps more importantly, IBD gives us biographies of hero's to emulate. Buy a copy of IBD today.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I've mentioned this before, but the Quirks and Quarks science radio show from Canadian Broadcasting Corp is a hugely amazing set of weekly stories about humans, the world they live on and the universe in which they live.
Two recent episodes, which you can subscribe to for your mp3 player:
November 10, 2007 Story summaries, links and sound files. Before the Big Bang, Messing up Migration, Soft Body Fossils, Chemical Class for Fish Schools
November 3, 2007 Story summaries, links and sound files. Nervous Arm, Vibrating Mice, Ventriloquism and the Brain, Fossil body prints, The Primate's Closest Cousin, Auklets and Aphrodisiacs
Go to www.cbc.ca forward slash quirks.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- Apple and China Mobile?
- Emulate your Heros.
- Quirks and Quarks - from the Macro to the Micro.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 29 - Emulate your Hero's
Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:
Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - email leonardtolbert@hotmail.com for more info.
Tech items:
Apple is apparently in talks with China Mobile to distribute the Apple iPhone in China. This means three things:
China Mobile may be preparing to offer a hugely useful cellular/entertainment device to its customers;
Apple may be about to enter a market where it's iPhone sales could triple overnight;
China Mobile could see it's Market capitalization eclipsed by that crazy computer designer, Apple Inc.
The New York Times mentioned this morning that our love of chocolate may go back to as old as 1100 BC, when Central Americans in Honduras and other regions may have used the Cacao bean to brew a fermented beer-like beverage. So that's what a nice glass of Stout means by chocolatey taste! :-)
Tech Question:
Emulate your Hero.
Who is your hero? One of the greatest and longest lasting forms of technology has been the idea of hero worship and emulation.
Ever since Ugg heroically threw a sharpened stick down from the tree to skewer the saber-tooth cat, providing Ooogee and Aaaggee a point for emulation in their own fight-off-the-australopithecus-eating-monster role-play, up through Helen launching the thousand ships and Abraham Lincoln fighting to end human slavery in North America, Heros have been an extremely important part of the human psyche.
What can be more important than creating a mental focus for all of your energy? Humans long ago realized that life is far more productive if the mind can be focused away from only procreation and eating, to other areas such as protection of the community, building of shelters, braving the deep lakes and oceans, and developing systems for mapping time and nature.
Veterans Day gives us the opportunity to open our hearts and minds to those great men and women who have literally fought to maintain our present way of life, so that we collectively and individually can move beyond border disputes to the task of maintaining a growing civilization through the next century. When we see what those men and women have done, let us look into their lives - seek the positive - we all have negative aspects - we can learn to emulate the positive and learn from the reality of the negative.
In the show notes, I'll provide links to wikipedia for the following people: Lucy, Helen of Troy, Molly Pitcher and Abraham Lincoln.
Lucy
Helen of Troy
Molly Pitcher
Abraham Lincoln
As a side note, one of the most interesting business newspapers in the US is Investors Business Daily, or IBD. This paper is important to experienced investors, as it provides a well thought-out and orchestrated system for investing in the stock market. But perhaps more importantly, IBD gives us biographies of hero's to emulate. Buy a copy of IBD today.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
I've mentioned this before, but the Quirks and Quarks science radio show from Canadian Broadcasting Corp is a hugely amazing set of weekly stories about humans, the world they live on and the universe in which they live.
Two recent episodes, which you can subscribe to for your mp3 player:
November 10, 2007 Story summaries, links and sound files. Before the Big Bang, Messing up Migration, Soft Body Fossils, Chemical Class for Fish Schools
November 3, 2007 Story summaries, links and sound files. Nervous Arm, Vibrating Mice, Ventriloquism and the Brain, Fossil body prints, The Primate's Closest Cousin, Auklets and Aphrodisiacs
Go to www.cbc.ca forward slash quirks.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- Apple and China Mobile?
- Emulate your Heros.
- Quirks and Quarks - from the Macro to the Micro.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Monday, November 12, 2007
phyllostachys 43: Minute Tech 28 show notes
28 - What is Veterans Day?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 12th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 28 - What is Veterans Day?
Tech items:
One of the greatest technological inventions of the modern era is the calendar.
Calendars gave all organized cultures the ability to measure time year in and year out, or month by month, week by week so that harvests could be scheduled, floods could be scheduled, religious festivals could by planned, logistical needs could be planned for...and birthdays could be celebrated.
Types of calendars:
- the Lunar calendar, based on the movements of the moon,
- the solar calendar, based on the movements of the sun,
- day-based calendar
- Multi-cycle calendar (day, week, month, year)
- a Fiscal calendar, which fixes months with a specific number of weeks, to enable month to month and year to year fiscal comparisons;
- an arithmetic calendar which uses calculation rules to determine the structure of the calendar.
Tech Question:
the answer to the question "what is Veterans Day" is enormously simple: A day on which we can honor those who've served in our military services, both in times of peace and war.
The answer to what comes after Veterans day is enormously complex.
The focus of Minute Tech this next week will be to discuss Veterans day and veterans from six viewpoints.
Today's viewpoint is just to understand. To take some time to reach out with your mind and "understand" all the facets of the word veteran. To serve. To fight. To kill. To police. To adjudicate. To enforce. To provide.
Understand
Thinking about veterans day is difficult because it encompasses a huge realm of emotions. To serve is an emotional decision. To stay at home while one serves is an emotional decision. To deal with return of a loved one is an emotional issue. To deal with no return of a loved one is a life-changing emotion.
Perhaps the best way to deal with Veterans day is to Thank all Veterans, equally...and to attempt to put yourself into the shoes, vicariously, of all others who made or lived with decisions made - the veterans are not the only veterans, but the families who supported them and the people with whom they came into contact during their time of serving: the townspeople, the supporting country and the "enemy combatants" of any conflict are now veterans. Huge ranges of emotions are encased in the one word "Veteran" - and the best way to deal with it is to take a moment to understand.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
What is it to Twitter? What is it to blog? At what point do you feel burn-out....or do you have some way of recharging to discourage burnout from even entering your vocabulary?
Twitter is a good place to both gauge that in yourself, and recharge it. You gauge your potential for burnout when you see all the positive or negatively-charged comment streams and determine where you are within that stream....and take web journeys based on the TinyURL's posted by others to recharge: see the serious, see the business, see the social, see the inspirational.
Take a ride on Twitter. Let me know what you think!
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- The Calendar;
- What is Veterans Day?
- How to you experience Twitter-verse?
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Monday, November 12th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 28 - What is Veterans Day?
Tech items:
One of the greatest technological inventions of the modern era is the calendar.
Calendars gave all organized cultures the ability to measure time year in and year out, or month by month, week by week so that harvests could be scheduled, floods could be scheduled, religious festivals could by planned, logistical needs could be planned for...and birthdays could be celebrated.
Types of calendars:
- the Lunar calendar, based on the movements of the moon,
- the solar calendar, based on the movements of the sun,
- day-based calendar
- Multi-cycle calendar (day, week, month, year)
- a Fiscal calendar, which fixes months with a specific number of weeks, to enable month to month and year to year fiscal comparisons;
- an arithmetic calendar which uses calculation rules to determine the structure of the calendar.
Tech Question:
the answer to the question "what is Veterans Day" is enormously simple: A day on which we can honor those who've served in our military services, both in times of peace and war.
The answer to what comes after Veterans day is enormously complex.
The focus of Minute Tech this next week will be to discuss Veterans day and veterans from six viewpoints.
Today's viewpoint is just to understand. To take some time to reach out with your mind and "understand" all the facets of the word veteran. To serve. To fight. To kill. To police. To adjudicate. To enforce. To provide.
Understand
Thinking about veterans day is difficult because it encompasses a huge realm of emotions. To serve is an emotional decision. To stay at home while one serves is an emotional decision. To deal with return of a loved one is an emotional issue. To deal with no return of a loved one is a life-changing emotion.
Perhaps the best way to deal with Veterans day is to Thank all Veterans, equally...and to attempt to put yourself into the shoes, vicariously, of all others who made or lived with decisions made - the veterans are not the only veterans, but the families who supported them and the people with whom they came into contact during their time of serving: the townspeople, the supporting country and the "enemy combatants" of any conflict are now veterans. Huge ranges of emotions are encased in the one word "Veteran" - and the best way to deal with it is to take a moment to understand.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
What is it to Twitter? What is it to blog? At what point do you feel burn-out....or do you have some way of recharging to discourage burnout from even entering your vocabulary?
Twitter is a good place to both gauge that in yourself, and recharge it. You gauge your potential for burnout when you see all the positive or negatively-charged comment streams and determine where you are within that stream....and take web journeys based on the TinyURL's posted by others to recharge: see the serious, see the business, see the social, see the inspirational.
Take a ride on Twitter. Let me know what you think!
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- The Calendar;
- What is Veterans Day?
- How to you experience Twitter-verse?
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
phyllostachys 42.26: Minute Tech 026
Show notes/transcript for Minute Tech 26:
26 - What is Lampwork glass?
- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Friday, November 9th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 26 - What is lampwork glass?
Tech items:
Apple's iphone goes on sale today in Germany and the UK. While they don't expect quite the sales volume as the US had, I think that the intent of the halo effect is both well understood and works well...
Yellowstone park is sitting on top of an extinct volcano - did you know that?
one of my scientific interests is the type of thing that could affect us all, volcanoes being one of those things. I keep an eye on volcano news worldwide, and through some of this research had already learned that the geysers at yellowstone are the remnants of an eruption some 70,000 years ago. But did you know that all of yellowstone sits atop a 40-mile wide volcano that blew it's top - and or fell in upon itself, some
640,000 years ago? The entire volcanic field of that region spans some 300 miles, and the recent news is that for the past three years the magma, or lava, chamber under Yellowstone has been pushing up to the tune of 3 inches per year for the past three years - more than three times the rate since record-keeping started in 1923. Probably no cause for alarm - unless you expect to be around for another 50,000 years.
Astronomers have detected a 5th planet orbiting a star some 41 light-years distant from our solar system...which puts it well within the local neighborhood. This seems to signify that perhaps a star with multiple planets may be a common celestial occurrence.
tech question:
I mentioned art glass yesterday. Let's ask my wife Jennifer what lampwork glass is:
[insert]
you can find jennifer on the web at themacmuse.blogspot.com
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Okay, so some small part of this podcasting is going the way least expected. I really am realizing that this is, in part, therapy for me. In general, the only therapy I need is an internet connection, or two hours in the evening with my family, but us liberal arts majors tend to have many interests, so I need to think through the investing angles too.
I am not at this time an investment professional, and do not hold myself out as an advisor. People may ask me for advice, but I always advise taking whatever I say and then do their own research - they may use the same free online resources I use, or they may use others.
Whatever I talk about, assume that I'm some how involved with it. If I talk it down, think through my comments and may consider that I may be selling; conversely, if I talk it up, assume that I may be buying on my own account, and therefore consider whether my comments are good observation or merely hype.
There are 3 things that're important in all of investing, whether you're jane investor putting her monthly saving into XYZ mutual fund, or BHP Billiton seeking to buy out Rio Tinto for 124 billion dollars:
finding
deciding & holding
maintaining perspective
more on these later.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
26 - What is Lampwork glass?
- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Friday, November 9th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 26 - What is lampwork glass?
Tech items:
Apple's iphone goes on sale today in Germany and the UK. While they don't expect quite the sales volume as the US had, I think that the intent of the halo effect is both well understood and works well...
Yellowstone park is sitting on top of an extinct volcano - did you know that?
one of my scientific interests is the type of thing that could affect us all, volcanoes being one of those things. I keep an eye on volcano news worldwide, and through some of this research had already learned that the geysers at yellowstone are the remnants of an eruption some 70,000 years ago. But did you know that all of yellowstone sits atop a 40-mile wide volcano that blew it's top - and or fell in upon itself, some
640,000 years ago? The entire volcanic field of that region spans some 300 miles, and the recent news is that for the past three years the magma, or lava, chamber under Yellowstone has been pushing up to the tune of 3 inches per year for the past three years - more than three times the rate since record-keeping started in 1923. Probably no cause for alarm - unless you expect to be around for another 50,000 years.
Astronomers have detected a 5th planet orbiting a star some 41 light-years distant from our solar system...which puts it well within the local neighborhood. This seems to signify that perhaps a star with multiple planets may be a common celestial occurrence.
tech question:
I mentioned art glass yesterday. Let's ask my wife Jennifer what lampwork glass is:
[insert]
you can find jennifer on the web at themacmuse.blogspot.com
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Okay, so some small part of this podcasting is going the way least expected. I really am realizing that this is, in part, therapy for me. In general, the only therapy I need is an internet connection, or two hours in the evening with my family, but us liberal arts majors tend to have many interests, so I need to think through the investing angles too.
I am not at this time an investment professional, and do not hold myself out as an advisor. People may ask me for advice, but I always advise taking whatever I say and then do their own research - they may use the same free online resources I use, or they may use others.
Whatever I talk about, assume that I'm some how involved with it. If I talk it down, think through my comments and may consider that I may be selling; conversely, if I talk it up, assume that I may be buying on my own account, and therefore consider whether my comments are good observation or merely hype.
There are 3 things that're important in all of investing, whether you're jane investor putting her monthly saving into XYZ mutual fund, or BHP Billiton seeking to buy out Rio Tinto for 124 billion dollars:
finding
deciding & holding
maintaining perspective
more on these later.
Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com
- The iPhone's European debut; Yellowstone rises;
- What is lampwork glass?
- Cisco's earning estimates yields 9.5 Richter scale quake.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
phyllostachys 42.27: Minute Tech 027
Show notes/transcript for Minute Tech 27:
27 - What is touch-screen glass?
- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, November 10th & 11th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 27 - What is touch-screen glass?
Tech items:
Apple iphone sells some 10,000 phones friday in Germany. much speculation that as the German population is 1/4 the US population
phones being sold through t-mobiles stores in germany
what is wplug? western pennsylvania linux users group
founded in fall of 1997 with Jeremy Dinsel, of California university of pennsylvania
Red Hat released Fedora 8, the free version of Red Hat's Linux product, this past week.
Ryan Paul at Ars Technica references the PulseAudio sound daemon as the most impressive feature
Tech Question:
what is touch screen glass?
Apple's iphone and ipod touch uses a scratch resistant glass surface, with a subsurface that detects the users electric field and responds with screen interaction.
wikipedia describes several techonologies that can be associated with a touch screen interface: the Capacitive touch screen panel of the iPhone and iPod touch have a coating that carries a continuous charge that detects touches by unshield human touch, since the human body had a slight electric field (that's how signals get from your fingertips to your central nervous system).
other touch screen technologies:
An infrared surface might either detect thermal interaction with the screen or disturbance of vertical and horizontal light beams.
a SAW or surface acoustic wave technology detects the disturbance of a sound wave that's passed over a surface.
A resistive touch screen has several layers which include electrically conductive and resistive layers, separated by a thin space - when the two layers come in contact, the resulting electrical charge provides the interface.
in related technology, a graphics tablet uses a grid system to transmit coordinates to a receiving circuit in the pen, identifying location information on the tablet, useful for artist to simulate painting or drawing.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Attended a pre-wedding party for a lucky Pittsburgh couple at a local Dave and Buster's facility - the attendee's were a sort of who's who of the local university computing establishment. Some of the people I met work at a local software company called Sherpa software - they produce e-mail management systems for MS Exchange and Lotus Notes - their motto is "Your guide to email terrain".
Of two other couples we interacted with, one is associated with IBM via their Almaden research facility in San Jose, CA, and the other with Seagate technology in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, because of Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, has become an interesting computer company town, with offices for Seagate, Apple, Intel and Google, as relatively recent startups like Panasas.
The Register, a British Internet-based technology newspaper, has a podcast called semi-coherent computing, by Ashlee Vance, interview with Dave Patterson
Talking about Dave's history of studying RISC & multicore processing, as a well as his authorship of paper at Berkeley in 1985, with Garth Gibson of Panasas, the seminal paper on RAID storage architecture.
How to make computing more powerefficient, and how many multi-cores to add to pcs? When will software writers say enough cores are enough? And when they do cry uncle, will that stop meaningful software development....or is the accumulation of multi-cores just another facet of Moore's law?
- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
27 - What is touch-screen glass?
- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, November 10th & 11th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 27 - What is touch-screen glass?
Tech items:
Apple iphone sells some 10,000 phones friday in Germany. much speculation that as the German population is 1/4 the US population
phones being sold through t-mobiles stores in germany
what is wplug? western pennsylvania linux users group
founded in fall of 1997 with Jeremy Dinsel, of California university of pennsylvania
Red Hat released Fedora 8, the free version of Red Hat's Linux product, this past week.
Ryan Paul at Ars Technica references the PulseAudio sound daemon as the most impressive feature
Tech Question:
what is touch screen glass?
Apple's iphone and ipod touch uses a scratch resistant glass surface, with a subsurface that detects the users electric field and responds with screen interaction.
wikipedia describes several techonologies that can be associated with a touch screen interface: the Capacitive touch screen panel of the iPhone and iPod touch have a coating that carries a continuous charge that detects touches by unshield human touch, since the human body had a slight electric field (that's how signals get from your fingertips to your central nervous system).
other touch screen technologies:
An infrared surface might either detect thermal interaction with the screen or disturbance of vertical and horizontal light beams.
a SAW or surface acoustic wave technology detects the disturbance of a sound wave that's passed over a surface.
A resistive touch screen has several layers which include electrically conductive and resistive layers, separated by a thin space - when the two layers come in contact, the resulting electrical charge provides the interface.
in related technology, a graphics tablet uses a grid system to transmit coordinates to a receiving circuit in the pen, identifying location information on the tablet, useful for artist to simulate painting or drawing.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Attended a pre-wedding party for a lucky Pittsburgh couple at a local Dave and Buster's facility - the attendee's were a sort of who's who of the local university computing establishment. Some of the people I met work at a local software company called Sherpa software - they produce e-mail management systems for MS Exchange and Lotus Notes - their motto is "Your guide to email terrain".
Of two other couples we interacted with, one is associated with IBM via their Almaden research facility in San Jose, CA, and the other with Seagate technology in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, because of Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, has become an interesting computer company town, with offices for Seagate, Apple, Intel and Google, as relatively recent startups like Panasas.
The Register, a British Internet-based technology newspaper, has a podcast called semi-coherent computing, by Ashlee Vance, interview with Dave Patterson
Talking about Dave's history of studying RISC & multicore processing, as a well as his authorship of paper at Berkeley in 1985, with Garth Gibson of Panasas, the seminal paper on RAID storage architecture.
How to make computing more powerefficient, and how many multi-cores to add to pcs? When will software writers say enough cores are enough? And when they do cry uncle, will that stop meaningful software development....or is the accumulation of multi-cores just another facet of Moore's law?
- Apple's iPhone sells 10,000 units in Germany;
- What is touch-screen glass?
- Pittsburgh computer companies; Semi-Coherent Computing podcast.
Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
phyllostachys 42.25: Minute Tech 025
Minute Tech 003 - What is a Tool?
Show notes/transcript:
25 - What is glass to a modern human?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 8th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 25 - What is glass to a modern human?
Tech items:
Don't Panic was written in big friendly letters on the front of what travel guide?
Okay, here's my panic item. I'm afraid as to what this podcast could turn into.
You see, one of my minor obsessions (a liberal arts major can have many) is the stock market.
Within the stock market, I'm a tech stock junkie.
My maternal ancestor has asked me for the past 36 months if I have any hot tips...and all I could say was "Apple Computer".
So, please beware....if I'm talking up a company...I could well be long that company, and singing its praises.
By the way, I don't, as yet, sell short on companies - I can stomach risk....but I'm not yet ready for that much risk. I take Rothschilds suggestion to buy at the sound of cannon...but not to extremes...though it's at the extremes where the most return can be had.
So, the best way to deal with this type of obsession is to feel around the edges of it. A tech podcast might be a good start, as long as it doesn't focus on tech stocks, but on technology in general. Will you forgive me if I periodically sink into investing as a topic?
tech question:
Okay, if yesterday's litany of the methods of glass manufacture over the centuries wasn't boring, I have a 1963 version of the Encyclopeaedia Brittanica you could read next.
What am I really trying to say about glass here?
Its an incredible technological item...one of the easiest things to take for granted. Window glass, eye-glasses, light-bulbs, automobile headlights, traffic signals, computer screens, for which alternatives to glass are constantly being sought. Where will it stop?
My chief concern, which is probably a non-concern is: how would we cope if our way of life came to a standstill? Think about it. I guess with our just-in-time method of food production and delivery, we'd all starve before we could worry about replacing broken window glass, so why worry.
My other concern is a love. I know, i know...love is not a "fact", its a feeling...and feeling are what make this earth, for humans at any rate, really spin. Facts are for the Mr. Gratgrinds of the world....a nod to Charles Dickens.
The love is for Art glass. Art glass is glass produced for the purpose of enjoying looking at the shape, color or texture of the glass rather than using it for any particular utilitarian purpose. Hopefully more on this tomorrow, if I'm able to get a special guest to tell us what lampwork glass is for.
Suffice it to say, Dale Chihuly's work is out of this world....and yet, so much a part of it.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Seesmic is something new.
Pistachio, a.k.a "Laura Athavale Fitton" of Pistachio Consulting, has been twittering of late of her trip to India and filming gigs there. Several times in her short sub-140-character posts she mentions the word "seesmic". Okay, what is that?
google it. Seesmic is another San Francisco web startup, which is a purveyor of video content. Check out their web page, which had video's documenting the startup of their company. One of the interesting items on the blog of founder Loic Le Meur is about his recent visit to the White House to meet President Bush during a reception for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The idea of Seesmic being a video version of twitter comes to life as Mr. Le Meur details the buildup to the visit, with an over-arching question: if you were to spend 30 seconds with Pres. Bush, what, honestly would you say or ask? Very interesting question.
Show notes/transcript:
25 - What is glass to a modern human?
Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you for Thursday, November 8th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 25 - What is glass to a modern human?
Tech items:
Don't Panic was written in big friendly letters on the front of what travel guide?
Okay, here's my panic item. I'm afraid as to what this podcast could turn into.
You see, one of my minor obsessions (a liberal arts major can have many) is the stock market.
Within the stock market, I'm a tech stock junkie.
My maternal ancestor has asked me for the past 36 months if I have any hot tips...and all I could say was "Apple Computer".
So, please beware....if I'm talking up a company...I could well be long that company, and singing its praises.
By the way, I don't, as yet, sell short on companies - I can stomach risk....but I'm not yet ready for that much risk. I take Rothschilds suggestion to buy at the sound of cannon...but not to extremes...though it's at the extremes where the most return can be had.
So, the best way to deal with this type of obsession is to feel around the edges of it. A tech podcast might be a good start, as long as it doesn't focus on tech stocks, but on technology in general. Will you forgive me if I periodically sink into investing as a topic?
tech question:
Okay, if yesterday's litany of the methods of glass manufacture over the centuries wasn't boring, I have a 1963 version of the Encyclopeaedia Brittanica you could read next.
What am I really trying to say about glass here?
Its an incredible technological item...one of the easiest things to take for granted. Window glass, eye-glasses, light-bulbs, automobile headlights, traffic signals, computer screens, for which alternatives to glass are constantly being sought. Where will it stop?
My chief concern, which is probably a non-concern is: how would we cope if our way of life came to a standstill? Think about it. I guess with our just-in-time method of food production and delivery, we'd all starve before we could worry about replacing broken window glass, so why worry.
My other concern is a love. I know, i know...love is not a "fact", its a feeling...and feeling are what make this earth, for humans at any rate, really spin. Facts are for the Mr. Gratgrinds of the world....a nod to Charles Dickens.
The love is for Art glass. Art glass is glass produced for the purpose of enjoying looking at the shape, color or texture of the glass rather than using it for any particular utilitarian purpose. Hopefully more on this tomorrow, if I'm able to get a special guest to tell us what lampwork glass is for.
Suffice it to say, Dale Chihuly's work is out of this world....and yet, so much a part of it.
podcasting/blogging tidbit:
Seesmic is something new.
Pistachio, a.k.a "Laura Athavale Fitton" of Pistachio Consulting, has been twittering of late of her trip to India and filming gigs there. Several times in her short sub-140-character posts she mentions the word "seesmic". Okay, what is that?
google it. Seesmic is another San Francisco web startup, which is a purveyor of video content. Check out their web page, which had video's documenting the startup of their company. One of the interesting items on the blog of founder Loic Le Meur is about his recent visit to the White House to meet President Bush during a reception for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The idea of Seesmic being a video version of twitter comes to life as Mr. Le Meur details the buildup to the visit, with an over-arching question: if you were to spend 30 seconds with Pres. Bush, what, honestly would you say or ask? Very interesting question.
phyllostachys 42.4: Minute Tech 004
Minute Tech 004 - What is a Document?
Show notes/transcript:
Hello, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you on Saturday & Sunday, October 12th & 13th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 4 - what constitutes a document?
004 - document - what constitutes a document?
tech news - Youtube, one of many online video sites, having been gobbled up by the Google (the new Borg?), can be both a source of entertainment and a source of learning. Periodically, though I might troll the site for vids of lego figurines engaged in light-saber duels and going to pieces over their day-to-day anxieties, I've also used Youtube to variously catch up on the news surrounding Bungie's new game Halo 3, and solidify my recent learning of wu style tai chi. My teacher won't yet let me include him in video documentary....but many others have done so for posterity's sake.
Youtube:
Lego figurines
Bungie's Halo 3
Wu Style Tai Chi
tech question - What constitutes a document?
A document (noun) is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate.
A document. A collection of words: a letter, a recipe, an agreement, a newspaper, a pamphlet, a sign, a chart, a map (insofar as it includes words in key's, indexes, etc.)
you can create a document with paper and pencil, pen, quill or crayon, or on the computer you can use everything from a basic text editor such as vi on Linux, Edit on ms-dos, Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, to publishing programs such as Quark, Pagemaker, or Apple's new Pages program.
podcasting tidbit: Listening to podcasts is a similar activity to reading a paper or magazine, or watching your favorite shows on the one-eyed baby sitter: you can pass away the time with aimless talk (many tech podcasts have "after-shows" which are far more entertaining than the show content), or you can find extremely on-point information for your interest areas. One such podcast, John Foster's Beer School, initially sounds like aimless conversation...but suddenly the tun's of information jump out at you, if you're in a receptive mindset, and sends you scurrying to google, wikipedia and the local library for further information on the arts of beer-making and the horticultural aspects of grains, hops and yeasts.
Show notes:
Tech item - we discuss the uses of Youtube: watching vids on Lego figurines, Bungie's Halo 3, and Wu Style Tai Chi
Tech question: What constitutes a document?
Podcasting: podcasts can be aimless, or highly directional - in this way, they are similar to the media forms that preceed them: newspapers, magazines & television.
Show notes/transcript:
Hello, this is the Minute Tech podcast -
coming to you on Saturday & Sunday, October 12th & 13th, 2007
We take a few minutes to talk about technology
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 4 - what constitutes a document?
004 - document - what constitutes a document?
tech news - Youtube, one of many online video sites, having been gobbled up by the Google (the new Borg?), can be both a source of entertainment and a source of learning. Periodically, though I might troll the site for vids of lego figurines engaged in light-saber duels and going to pieces over their day-to-day anxieties, I've also used Youtube to variously catch up on the news surrounding Bungie's new game Halo 3, and solidify my recent learning of wu style tai chi. My teacher won't yet let me include him in video documentary....but many others have done so for posterity's sake.
Youtube:
Lego figurines
Bungie's Halo 3
Wu Style Tai Chi
tech question - What constitutes a document?
A document (noun) is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate.
A document. A collection of words: a letter, a recipe, an agreement, a newspaper, a pamphlet, a sign, a chart, a map (insofar as it includes words in key's, indexes, etc.)
you can create a document with paper and pencil, pen, quill or crayon, or on the computer you can use everything from a basic text editor such as vi on Linux, Edit on ms-dos, Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, to publishing programs such as Quark, Pagemaker, or Apple's new Pages program.
podcasting tidbit: Listening to podcasts is a similar activity to reading a paper or magazine, or watching your favorite shows on the one-eyed baby sitter: you can pass away the time with aimless talk (many tech podcasts have "after-shows" which are far more entertaining than the show content), or you can find extremely on-point information for your interest areas. One such podcast, John Foster's Beer School, initially sounds like aimless conversation...but suddenly the tun's of information jump out at you, if you're in a receptive mindset, and sends you scurrying to google, wikipedia and the local library for further information on the arts of beer-making and the horticultural aspects of grains, hops and yeasts.
Show notes:
Tech item - we discuss the uses of Youtube: watching vids on Lego figurines, Bungie's Halo 3, and Wu Style Tai Chi
Tech question: What constitutes a document?
Podcasting: podcasts can be aimless, or highly directional - in this way, they are similar to the media forms that preceed them: newspapers, magazines & television.
phyllostachys 42.3: Minute Tech 003
Minute Tech 003 - What is a Tool?
Show notes/transcript:
003 - Minute Tech 3 - What is a Tool?
tech news - iphone approved apps
http://www.apple.com/webapps/productivity/
reQall - the real question here, despite the cool app: when will they IPO?
tech question - what is a tool? screwdriver, hammer, personal computer, Mainframe computer, calculator, a stick for drawing ants out of ant-hills? Ask your 5-year-old what a tool is - stretch their imagination with this one!
podcasting tidbit -
Do you have a Favorite blog or blogger?
Two who are frequently linked to from finance.yahoo.com
Seeking alpha -
the brazen careerist - is your image hurting your career?
Two insightful Pittsburgh women are putting software reviews and observations together on two blogs
themacmuse.blogspot.com posts about hardware and software - see her rebate code for the Drobo USB storage device!
LyriqueTragedy.blogspot.com posts about writing, education, books and life.
Show notes/transcript:
003 - Minute Tech 3 - What is a Tool?
tech news - iphone approved apps
http://www.apple.com/webapps/productivity/
reQall - the real question here, despite the cool app: when will they IPO?
tech question - what is a tool? screwdriver, hammer, personal computer, Mainframe computer, calculator, a stick for drawing ants out of ant-hills? Ask your 5-year-old what a tool is - stretch their imagination with this one!
podcasting tidbit -
Do you have a Favorite blog or blogger?
Two who are frequently linked to from finance.yahoo.com
Seeking alpha -
the brazen careerist - is your image hurting your career?
Two insightful Pittsburgh women are putting software reviews and observations together on two blogs
themacmuse.blogspot.com posts about hardware and software - see her rebate code for the Drobo USB storage device!
LyriqueTragedy.blogspot.com posts about writing, education, books and life.
phyllostachys 42.2: Minute Tech 002
Minute Tech 002 - What is a blog?
Show notes/transcript:
002 - blog/vlog - what does blog mean?
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
tech news - RAID - the old acronym for redundant array of inexpensive disks is being redefined, in a sense: Panasas, Inc is releasing an extension to the RAID paradigm that they call Tiered Parity Architecture. go to www.panasas.com for mroe info
tech question - what is a blog? a web log, a place to write your daily, weekly or just periodic thoughts, ideas, plans, gripes, etc.
podcasting tidbit: MacCast PME episode, along with various blog snippets from Chris Brogan and Christopher Penn, are the influences for my creating this podcast. If you have something you can say, take the initiative to say, say it well and say it enthusiastically.
Show notes/transcript:
002 - blog/vlog - what does blog mean?
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
tech news - RAID - the old acronym for redundant array of inexpensive disks is being redefined, in a sense: Panasas, Inc is releasing an extension to the RAID paradigm that they call Tiered Parity Architecture. go to www.panasas.com for mroe info
tech question - what is a blog? a web log, a place to write your daily, weekly or just periodic thoughts, ideas, plans, gripes, etc.
podcasting tidbit: MacCast PME episode, along with various blog snippets from Chris Brogan and Christopher Penn, are the influences for my creating this podcast. If you have something you can say, take the initiative to say, say it well and say it enthusiastically.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
phyllostachys 42.1 - Minute Tech 001 show notes
This commences the posting of show notes for the Minute Tech podcast.
001 - word processing - a person or a software program?
Wednesday, October 10
tech news - the ipod dev team "update"
tech question - word processor - the person and the software
podcasting tidbit: marketing over coffee
001 - word processing - a person or a software program?
Wednesday, October 10
tech news - the ipod dev team "update"
tech question - word processor - the person and the software
podcasting tidbit: marketing over coffee
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