bamboo thoughts

Video Taiji Twenty-two - Weight Distribution

2010-05-17T06:46:00.002-04:00

Video Taiji Twenty-two - Weight Distribution -

Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense. Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Thirty-three Before Thirty-two

2010-04-21T05:39:00.002-04:00

Well, looks like a YouTube upload error this morning on episode 32 is causing me to upload episode 33 first. Ep 32 is some 600+ MB and roughly 8 min long, longer than I like to film, but there you go - it's about breathing, and you can't, or shouldn't, rush breathing. :-)

Thirty-two filename: VideoTaiji32-BreathinginTaiji.MP4 ... then changed to VideoTaiji32.MP4

Upload error: The upload failed due to an unknown error. (helpful, eh?)

Thirty-three filename: VideoTaijiThirty-three-GoalsinTaiji.MP4

Video Taiji Twenty-nine - WuChi

2010-04-18T08:13:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Twenty-nine - WuChi

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Podcamp Cleveland 2010 - Video Taiji

2010-04-12T15:13:00.004-04:00

Podcamp Cleveland, taking place at the Cuyahoga Valley Career Center in Brecksville, Ohio, is almost upon us. Saturday May 1st, May Day, will be the day.

I will be present a discussion of shooting and uploading to YouTube with no post-production. Why would you do that? How can you do that? Who's crazy enough to contemplate such a thing?Well, Video Taiji creator, Alex Landefeld, of coure. Learn to roll with the punches in quickie, impromptu videos.

Come Podcamp with us in Cleveland

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Video Taiji Twenty-one - Push Hands

2010-04-11T08:13:00.003-04:00

Video Taiji Twenty-one - Push Hands

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email Video Taiji

Video Taiji Twenty - Sitting Commencement

2010-04-11T08:05:00.003-04:00

Video Taiji Twenty - Sitting Commencement

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email Video Taiji

Video Taiji Nineteen - Part Wild Horses Mane

2010-04-08T08:23:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Nineteen - Part Wild Horses Mane

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Eighteen - iPad

2010-04-07T07:51:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Eighteen - iPad

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Contact Video Taiji via email or comment on this blog post.

Video Taiji Sixteen - Our Form

2010-04-05T06:51:00.003-04:00

Video Taiji Sixteen - Our Form

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email Phyllostachys about Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Fifteen - Back to Commencement

2010-04-04T10:29:00.003-04:00

Video Taiji Fifteen - Back to Commencement

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email questions to phyllostachys

Video Taiji Fourteen - Class

2010-04-03T09:23:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Fourteen - Class

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Contact Video Taiji by email.

Video Taiji Thirteen - PullBack

2010-04-02T08:03:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Thirteen - PullBack

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Twelve - WardOff

2010-04-01T08:14:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Twelve - WardOff

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email phyllostachys@gmail.com about Video Taiji.

Video Taiji on iPad?

2010-03-31T17:05:00.004-04:00

Are you, as is the creator of the new YouTube series "Video Taiji", also wondering how to address the intersection of YouTube and the exponential growth of Apple's mobile Universe?

What is the right way to address this opportunity? Clearly the first thing to do is to start creating a presence, start putting your idea into motion. Twitter doesn't seem to have had a clue about monetization before they started, and YouTube itself has only recently begun to add fee-based services, so get going. What've you got to lose?

Video Taiji Eleven - Thirteen

2010-03-31T06:47:00.002-04:00

Video Taiji Eleven - Thirteen

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Questions? Email phyllostachys about this podcast.

Video Taiji Ten - Grasp Sparrows Tail

2010-03-30T09:26:00.002-04:00

Video Taiji Ten - Grasp Sparrows Tail

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email phyllostachys with comments about Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Nine - Knees

2010-03-29T11:35:00.002-04:00

Video Taiji Nine - Knees
- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.
Taiji Can be You.
Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email phyllostachys if you've questions about Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Form 1

2010-03-29T06:21:00.003-04:00

In developing a new Taiji form one faces many directional stresses: Why, Where, What, and How.

Why do you need to diverge from what history has given us? Where can you teach a new form and find a new audience for this form? What does this new form give us that we don't already have? And, fourth, how do you construct a new form?

I don't need to address these questions, but allow them to percolate through your mind as we're reviewing the new form I've constructed for the Video Taiji series. This form is plainly labeled "Video Taiji Form 1" so as to allow it to relate to many historical precendents and allow it to be applied in many directions.

The named postures in the form (remember, the named Tao is not the eternal Tao...) are but the tip of the iceberg, as is standard in Taiji forms:

1. Commencement

2. Part the Wild Horse's Mane

3. White Crane Spreads its Wings

4. Fair Maiden Works Her Shuttles

5. Snake Creeps Down

6. Apparent Closure

Okay, so we have six named postures. These can certainly be pieced together in a number of ways - we'll describe how in future posts and in the Video Taiji YouTube series.

Video Taiji Eight - Stress

2010-03-28T07:04:00.002-04:00

Video Taiji Eight - Stress

- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Email phyllostachys if you've questions about Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Seven - Stepping

2010-03-27T11:19:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Seven - Stepping
- Taiji can be an exercise, a meditation, or a form of self-defense.

Taiji Can be You.

Find a Teacher, Read a Book, Watch Video Taiji.

Video Taiji Six - Books

2010-03-26T08:04:00.003-04:00

The Dao of Tai Chi Chuan: Way to Rejuvenation
By Jou Tsung Hwa

Wu Style Taijiquan
by Wang Peisheng and Zeng Weiqi

Video Taiji Five - Space

2010-03-25T17:47:00.001-04:00

Video Taiji Four - Skill

2010-03-24T12:04:00.000-04:00

Video Taiji Three - Sitting

2010-03-24T12:03:00.000-04:00

Video Taiji Two - Commencement

2010-03-24T12:02:00.000-04:00

Video Taiji One - Attitude

2010-03-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

phyllostachys 83: MC Escher Shows the Way!

2008-10-24T11:56:00.002-04:00

Wouldn't it be cool if we could edit Chogger comic strips?

What do you mean "what's chogger"???

If you like to blog, if you like to tweet, and if you like to play with drawing or manipulating pictures, Chogger.com is for you!

..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys 82: Collecting Thoughts

2008-05-15T04:12:00.004-04:00

At what point do you sit back and collect your thoughts, as the maelstrom of life swirls about you?

Pick a point, any point.

I'm picking this point.

Many, many indicators are pointing in the direction that it's time to be creative again. Minute Tech podcast faded in February of this year. Blogging in many forms also faded. Twitter suffered for several weeks. And I've been in such a general malaise (more figurative than literal) that I've not put finger to key to talk to the world in quite some time.

Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 is serendipitously coming up in the fall, and we all know how involving yourself in an event, and/or planning of that event, can help to jump-start the juices. I often allow external stimuli such as Podcamp Pittsburgh to help move me in the right direction, as I realize that my internal stimuli won't always do the jump-starting.

So, here I sit. I feel that to break out of the malaise, I must begin to create an artificial structure of the ideas I'm having, and then see how that structure brings the ideas into my creativity, and the creativity then renders ideas for the world to see them.

Here's just a brief synopsis of things:

Family activities:
vacations - what are those? you mean I have vacation days? :-)
visiting relatives - they all live outside of Pgh...
ice skating lessons - lessons for the offspring, refresher for me
reading - for fun and education
driving a certain little yellow car

Self learning:
stock market - learning and growing: aapl, bcsi, mrvc, ge, sncr, etc.
WSJ - learning and observing the world
Tai Chi - learning Wu Style, attempting to keep up with both Wu and Yang
philosophy - learning in relation to tai chi, evolution, science, business, etc.
Kayaking - expensive hobby, so how easy to build one? what materials avail, besides bamboo?
Canoeing - time to repair/refurb the kevlar Adirondack Guideboat...built originally by Charles
web development - slowly learning through on-the-job the huge number of facets this encompasses
Marketing - so many facets, on-the-job
Social Media - podcasting, blogging, Podcamp, etc.
Filmmaking/podcasting - create, produce, involve, learn the art(s)

Homes:
projects: painting, trimming, cleaning, gardening, bamboo
maintenance: trimming, cutting grass, bamboo, abating wetness around the house
Sales - get old houses sold, on Craigslist, etc.
- 589 Ayers Ave., 15145
- 583 Ayers Ave., 15145
Rebuild antique barn - who to do this, at what cost?

What more? time for a few hours sleep, then more here.

BTW, partial catalysts for rekindling blogging here are the ongoing bloggings of Dawn Papuga, Justin Kownacki and Susan Courtad. :-)

..phyllostachys

phyllostachys 81: Minute Tech 66 Show Transcript

2008-01-21T06:55:00.000-05:00

66 - How do you organize information? Databases.

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 65 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday, January 26th, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- HBO's got milk and India's going orbital;
- How do you organize information? Databases.
- Seesmic is setting itself apart by micro-vlogging.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert, teaching taiji and qi gong. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu stylists, as well as Shaolin Wushu & Capoeira meistre's, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet.
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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

As certain fruity companies are expanding their movie download and rental options in conjunction with lowering the price of their streaming device while allowing the device to operate separately from a managing computer, other established players at rushing to offer similar capabilities. Gina Keating reports through Reuters that Time Warner's HBO will be launching tomorrow their "HBO on Broadband" service that will allow subscribers to download movies and television shows. HBO's initial launch for subscribers in parts of the State of Wisconsin will, in conjunction with HBO's On Demand service, allow for people to "time shift" their viewing, that is view content that broadcasts at a certain time at some other time of the day. With HBO on Broadband, time-shifters can use their personal computers & laptops to extend the viewing beyond the living room.

Separately, another staple of our daily diet, cow-produced milk, is increasingly coming from dairies that use growth hormones in their livestock to increase the production of bovine milk. The milk industry nearly succeeded in allowing milk producers to not label whether their milk is from growth-hormone treated cows...but Lisa Stein reports in Sciam.com that the State of Pennsylvania has stepped back from a labelling ban due to pressure from consumer advocacy groups who feel that consumers have a right to know whether the milk they're buying for themselves or their families have come from cows so treated. Many consumers may not pay attention to these issues...but many more do, and wish to curtail the infusion of potentially harmful substances into their diets. Of course, they could all just switch to soy milk...but even there you're them potentially dealing with GMO's in your crop products...

And finally, India's latest endeavour for it's 45-year-old space program has been to successfully launch a polar-orbit spy satellite for Israel. Facing increasing global competition from the ESA, NASA, Russian, Chinese and Ukranian space facilities, India is seeking to provide launch services to other countries in an estimated $2.5bn market. Similar to the services provided to Israel for their 300 kg satellite, India launched an Italian satellite in April of 2007 for a fee of $11M.

Show Note: This has been one interesting week - I started a new job with a web-development and marketing software company in Pittsburgh, Elliance, Inc., and the 1st-week process has thrown a small monkey-wrench into the production of this podcast. But, as I'm a flexible kinda guy, we'll see how both the new job and the podcast mold themselves together.

Two other events occurred which could help the overall podcasting effort: Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 had it's first preliminary meeting at Pittsburgh's Creative Treehouse this past week, where I learned that Minute Lit podcast co-host Dawn Papuga has also started a new employment gig...putting her just across the river from my new job...so Minute Lit, or an evolutionary podcast could find its way to your ears. And secondly, Elliance's founder Abu Noaman wants us to "life-cast" or broadcast via the web the upcoming Elliance holiday party. Figuring out how to do this and how to promote it to the world in a way to bring the world to Elliance's doorstep is our next task. How would you do this for your company?

Stay tuned for related info on Seesmic in a few minutes.

Tech Question:

The Tech question for today: How do you organize information? Databases.

In the previous Minute Tech podcast, we talked about the oodles of information stored in computers that give us these environments to manage the computer - hard disk, memory, security, software systems, etc. - while we at a higher level do more fun things like type, crunch numbers, play games, surf networks for other information, send e-mail, manage files and collect external information. The environment is the disk operating system...and this environment is the result of huge amounts of text-based information creation, testing and storage by the global designers of computing systems. At the human interaction level, even more information is stored in the form of databases and programs that use database-like storage methods.

What is a database? A database is essentially a digital structure for holding information, just as a corncrib might store corn cobs or kernels -- though a database keeps information orderly contained such that each bit of information can be readily accessed, whereas corn in a crib can only be accessed by emptying the container and processing the contents as it empties.

When you check your e-mail, pull up your Quicken checkbook management software, run a web search engine query for images of cows, or search your document management system for all documents listed under your author code, you are using databases. Finance programs use them, search engines use them, DMS' use them, operating systems - most computer programs use some form of database.

What programs do you use on a regular basis that could contain an underlying database. Have you ever thought of your Word document as essentially a database for formatting text? That's what it is, though you only see the very high-level view. Have you ever thought as your company's website as a database? Even if your website is as simplistic as a collection of HTML pages linked together, that is a form of database, using the index.html file as the primary listing. But, if you run a business, then more likely your website really is governed by an underlying database, sometimes called a CMS, or Content Management System.

What databases do you use? Do you have questions about databases? send us a note at minutetech[at]gmail[dot]com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Hey, got my Seesmic invite earlier this week. I signed up at Seesmic this past monday morning under the username "alexlandefeld". What is Seesmic, you ask? Seesmic is a video micro blogging web app, started in San Francisco by French blogger Loic Le Meur and reaching around the world for content. What is micro blogging, you are probably wondering? Micro blogging involves the use of blogging in short snippets of text, as one does for Twitter, the ultimate in micro blogging. Twitter allows you to chunk your information in short 140-character segments, allowing users to post from the web, from their cellphones, from Facebook, etc.

Seesmic released short video's of itself starting up, video blogging the small enterprise, as a way to build interest in the micro-video-blogging idea, in the company, and to show people that video of such mundane activities could be interesting in itself. Of course, it helps that the whole company is built on blogging and creating video personalities and encouraging others to do the same. This is what sets them apart from other video sites: they're encouraging people to post short video blogs of anything and everything, including the business of life and the life of business. What could you video blog about? Remember, this social web thing is not so much about you....its about your voice in a community of voices, wherever that community may exist.

That's 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"

- HBO's got milk and India's going orbital;
- How do you organize information? Databases.
- Seesmic is setting itself apart by micro-vlogging.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 80: Minute Tech 65 Show Transcript

2008-01-18T06:57:00.000-05:00

65 - How do you organize information? Computers.

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 65 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, January 18th, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Batteries Get A Charge Out of Silicon Nano-wires;
- How do you organize information? Computers.
- and, Stephen Hawking's Popular Book Moves Forward in Time.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert, teaching taiji and qi gong. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu stylists, as well as Shaolin Wushu & Capoeira meistre's, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet.
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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Using silicon nano-wires as the anodes in new batteries instead of graphite, Stanford University researchers have been able to give a tenfold increase to average battery life. Alex Serpo, for CNet News.com reports that Stanford's Yi Cui and colleagues have found that their new silicon nano-wires will swell up to 4 times their original size when "charged" with lithium ions, with out fracturing like earlier generations of silicon nano-wires. Graphite apparently, perhaps due to it's tightly bound carbon crystal lattice, restricts the amount of energy that can be stored. With this new discovery, the MacBook Air could potentially go from 5 hours of battery life to 40 or 50 hours of battery life. I suppose this could be extended to the automotive industry as well, propelling the world further out of the clutches of fossil fuels.

A tenfold improvement in battery life?

Now, if you think that the age of discovery has ended, and just about all the new things to be discovered have been, from silicon nano-wires to string theory, from the iPod to Data's emotion chip...I submit that you're just plain wrong. As we scale our ability to observe, save data, economize on energy and teach more and more of our children to think for themselves, we constantly discover new things throughout all the facets of life. Take asteroids, for example. A Slashdot posting tells us of a group of three Racine, Wisconsin high school sophomores who, using a remotely controlled astronomical telescope in New Mexico, compared a group of photos snapped of the night sky two nights in a row, and have discovered what may come to be named "2008 AZ28". This asteroid, with about a 5-year solar orbit, is part of a class of celestial objects that, giving no light of their own, are about 10,000 times fainter than anything you can see in the night sky with your un-aided eyes. Telescopes snap photos of various parts of the night sky, and researchers, including high school students, compare successive photos to see if any movement can be detected in objects, and, if so, what the moving objects might be.

Tech Question:

How do you organize information? Computers.
For some 50 or 60 years, humans have been moving beyond manual and mechanical methods of calculating numbers to using digital electronic machines called "computers" to compute various mathematical problems. Little did mathematicians know that raw number computation would give rise to storing vast amounts of human knowledge in binary format.

Now, I'm not talking here about re-creation of humanities published works on such sites as Gutenberg.org or Google's book project, but rather the constant creation of computer programs which humans have been producing for decades to enable the storage of those books, to ease the use of the computers themselves, and to ease the ways in which programmers control the internal circuitry of the computers. These "programs" are basically human-language methods for translating human ideas into binary bits that machines making billions of on-off on-off on-off switches per minute can understand.

When you hear of a computer operating system such as Windows 95, Linux, OS 2, BSD, Vista or Leopard consisting of millions of lines of code...this code is essentially all originally hand-typed information that humans have used to create usable environments within the realm of computers. These usable environments are created, therefore, by text-based information that humans have converted from human-language to computable binary (or assembly) language.

This moves way beyond the reason for books. Books store information that humans have designed to be stored in books. That's the sole purpose of books, magazines, pamphlets, etc. -- to store information that humans don't want to commit to memory and also want to disseminate to a broad swath of their contemporary fellow humans. Although this books stored information may be said to store all sorts of different worlds within them...these worlds only come to life when humans read the books (listen, etc.) and translate the words or symbols into mental images.

In computers, however, the stored information is already embodied as images...this therefore is the logical next level to which human information storage must push: storing immense amounts of computer-world-building coded text to generate images which will transmit all sorts of information to humans, other computers and perhaps off-world entities.

The next time you use any sort of computing device to access your bank account, read a copy of Plato's Dialogues or write down your thoughts for the day in 140 characters or less...take a moment to think about the humans who have come before you, writing the underlying code that allows you to interact with that computer. Where can this thought take you? Where will it take all of us?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

I've recently been listening to an unabridged audio book of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's A Briefer History of Time, a 2005 update to Hawking's 1985 blockbuster book about physics, quantum theory, black holes and time. This new book takes on the historical ideas of the original book, but packages them with the understanding of newer theories, such as string theory. String theory is a new attempt to move closer to the battle that Albert Einstein had been fighting....to seek to find a "unified theory" in which we could see how his General Relativity, which explains the macro universe, can sync with Quantum Mechanics, which explains the atomic/sub-atomic universe. The forces which hold the parts of an atom together do not seem to coincide with the forces which hold a solar system or a galaxy together. Also, the sci-fi attempt to use faster-than-light travel and "transporter" technology is intriguing...but how close does it come to reality? A Briefer History of Time brings us far closer to understanding all this stuff. Why is this important? Without Quantum Mechanics, we wouldn't have nuclear energy and microprocessing computers. Without a unified theory, we won't have a more complete understanding of the universe in which we live.

That's 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"

- Batteries Get A Charge Out of Silicon Nano-wires;
- How do you organize information? Computers.
- and, Stephen Hawking's Popular Book Moves Forward in Time.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 79: Minute Tech 64 Show Transcript

2008-01-15T07:19:00.000-05:00

64 - How do you organize information? The Book.

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 64 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Google Crunches Petabytes daily;
- How Do You Organize Information? The Book.
- Dawn Papuga & the Stage Representation of Scar.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert, teaching taiji and qi gong. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu stylists, as well as Shaolin Wushu & Capoeira meistre's, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet.
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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

And you thought that Google was an advertising company, or a search engine? Behind the scenes, Google is really a massive storage provide and number cruncher, storing 10's of gigabytes of data for each of 100's of thousands or millions of individual e-mail account holders, crunching 10's of petabytes (1 petabyte equals 1000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes) of internet pages, mapping pictures and blog posts on a daily basis...and developing in-house talent to manage, program and scale the monstrously large enterprise. Note: I don't use the term monstrous to imply monstrosity, but rather to suggest the huge scale of this computing undertaking. Tim Finin reports on UMBC's equity Research Group's site that Google fellows Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat have posted an ACM paper about the MapReduce programming that they've helped develop for Google to handle the Petabytes of data being crunched by Google's computers daily. The MapReduce programming models are a way for programmers to handle huge dataset's on cluster computer systems, which utilized large numbers of similar computers to compute information in parallel, store data in parallel storage and distribute computing needs across hundreds or thousands of computers. Note that while this amount of data processing may seem overwhelming and totally out of touch with the needs of the normal computer-user...this type of power will soon be in the hands of consumers as PC computing power increases, our world-wide interaction with other's digital photo and video content increases, and our ability to navigate virtual and real worlds through the eyes of computers increase. All this power, parallelization, distribution and storage will be needed to manage our daily stream of information.

Today is the day we've been waiting for since January of 2007 - Steve Job's keynote speech at MacWorld 2008. Stay tuned to your favorite rumor site, such as engadget.com, macnn.com or macrumors.com (and many others) for live minute-by-minute coverage...or stream Mr. Job's keynote direct from Apple's website after the event. Note that as Apple improves the way we interact with the real world by helping us capture it digitally in image, video, song and blog, our compute needs and data storage needs increase exponentially.

Tech Question:

How do you organize information? The Book.
Moving beyond the single or collective data processing capabilities of the human brain, humans turned to physical records of information too tedious to retain in memory, such as the number and type of livestock in a herd, the number and capacities of jugs of wine, olive oil or grain in the communal store-rooms or the epic stories & ideas been produced by store-teller's, prophets, seers and scientists.

When people began learning to mark down information, perhaps originally making dots or lines on stones, pieces of wood or in mud tablets, then began to realize that if a system of organization of these markings was developed, they wouldn't have to remember everything in their minds, freeing them up to do more interesting things than just remembering all the boring details. They could turn to arts, sciences, sports, skilled trades, romance and dining...and even develop ruling and religious classes of people. All of these activities can generally only come about if the tedious information is catalogued in some way, although certainly many people for many thousands of years had trained themselves and others to become human data storage devices, learning to catalog, file and search information in mental structures.

The main problem with brain-held information, though, is that it goes away when the person dies, and if not all information from that person has been committed to somebody else's memory, then the original information is lost. Hence the need for written records: information continuity. Once written records were devised, languages had to be adapted for longevity and recording materials had to be adapted for survival through generations of librarians, readers and subsequent writers.

I've discussed books in previous podcasts, so I won't go over them again. Next we'll talk about ways in which 20th century humans have moved beyond storing information in books.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Oh my gosh, no sooner did I post that book reviewer Dawn Papuga had posted a recent book review of Sebastian Faulks' Engleby on her lyriquetragedy.blogspot.com book-review blog, she posted yet another review...this time of the stage adaptation of Disney's The Lion King. Ms. Papuga states that while the set's, costumes and characterizations were excellently implemented, the stage implementation of the crucial character-developments of the story itself left something to be desired - check out her blog post at http://lyriquetragedy.blogspot.com to see just how she analyses this important modern story of a young person's coming-of-age challenges. In the end, Ms. Papuga is absolutely correct in her estimations that obsessive viewing of the animated film version of the story by millions of young people should allow for inclusion of the more adult themes in the story in the stage version, rather than removing them due to a young stage audience.

That's 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"

- Google Crunches Petabytes daily;
- How Do You Organize Information? The Book.
- Dawn Papuga & the Stage Representation of Scar.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 78: Minute Tech 63 Show Transcript

2008-01-14T06:58:00.000-05:00

63 - How do you organize information? The Brain.

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 63 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday January 14th, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- An Einstein Ring is Not a Berliner;
- First in a Series: How Do You Organize Information? The Brain.
- Recent Posts by Three Prolific Bloggers.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet - 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

This is not a CES report...but rather from the American Astronomical Society, where a team of astronomers have found a double Einstein Ring, an astronomical phenomena based on the effect of gravitational lensing predicted by Albert Einstein in 1912. Einstein's idea of sources of extreme gravitational attraction, such as a galaxy, a massive star or a black hole, bending the light of more distant stellar objects was identified by him in 1912...though 24 years later in 1936 he suggested that humanity would never have the resolving capability to see such an effect. Now, due to very high power telescope-based cameras, such as that employed by the Hubble Space Telescope, hundreds of examples of gravitational lensing have been observed, including this most recent instance of a double Einstein ring. A double Einstein ring is a lensing of two distant stellar objects by a single closer object - in this case, astronomers have determined that the foreground galaxy producing the light-bending spectacle is some 3 billion light years distant from Earth, the inner ring is a galaxy some 6 billion light-years distant, and the outer ring is from a galaxy 11 billion light years distant. This is an enormously unusual finding...and makes one think about observers in those two more distant galaxies observing our Milky Way galaxy similarly lensed by the intervening objects.
http://presscue.com/node/38728
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_ring

Separately, and closer to home, David Biello of sciam.com reports that certain Acacia trees in the East African savanna's prefer to have animals foraging on them, and flourish more readily with the foraging incursions. Trees protected by an electrified fence have less foragers ravaging the trees, which one might assume would let the tree survive better...but these trees actually then harbor a different type of ant. The ant species inhabiting a tree seem to make a difference, as does the foraging: the ant species on the foraged acacias are attracted by the sweet tasting sap produced by the foraged trees...and in turn help to protect the trees from too much foraging by swarming over the foraging animals, acting as bodyguards to the trees. Without the foraging, however, the sap is not produced, and the protective ants aren't as likely to house themselves there, leaving room for a different type of ant that interacts with bark-boring beetles, contributing to slowly killing the trees. Stress in a biosystem, it appears, continues to produce life-giving results.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=of-ants-elephants-and-acacias

Tech Question:

How do you organize information? In this new series of explorations, I'm seeking to review and find ways that we all organize information. I'm embarking on a new information-intense career move, and I'll need all the help I can procure for managing disparate types of information so that I can service clients better with an ability to support older systems, help troubleshoot newer systems, and help to identify ways in which their situations can be improved. In order to do that, I seek to find ways of organizing information for myself, so that I can enjoy the process rather be overwhelmed by it.

The primary tool for organizing information has for millions of years been the human brain. We store information in brain-based repositories, calling up all sorts of informational bits from our memory matrix with all sorts of methods. Our brains are running our extraordinarily complex bodies while we learn to speak, spell, perform arithmetic, visualize, plan and implement. For many thousands of years the humans that have excelled have learned to utilize their brains for information storage, calculation, interaction and complex planning. Only relatively recently have human begun to rely upon tools for storing information outside of their brains. From the times that humans learned to paint in caves and scratch markings in stones, we've been involved in a race with information storage degradation, our ability to remember crucial bits of information and time.

Outside of the human brain, the single most powerful information storage device has been group storage, in which human's share information in such a way that information is spread throughout a populace, across many generations, allowing for that information to survive from one time period to another, from one fall to the following spring, through one dry season to the next, from one time of wellness to the next, and from one human life to the following.

Humans store information in groups, culturally, through stories, songs, instrumental music and instructional methods. Stories and songs allow for cultural, religious and practical details to be passed from one generation to another. Instrumental music helps to pass information and teach complex thought processes. And instructional methods help to teach others how to do practical things, from relining a packed dirt house floor & re-roofing the thatched roof to catching a rabbit or devising protections from marauding wildlife. These instructional methods are different from stories and songs in that they convey more immediate, more "practical" information, but they may overlap with the stories and songs in the ways in which they're transmitted, depending on the ingenuity of the teachers or instructional leaders.

Next, we'll touch on the initial ways in which humans have sought to store information outside of brains and collective consciousness.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

With the closing of the Consumer Electronics Show and the near-term opening of the MacWorld event, blogs and news sites have been on fire with rumor-mongering, relating to what new technologies Apple, Inc. has to reveal to us. Meanwhile, business and social media bloggers are moving along with their own agenda's, their own ideas, their own social directions.

Just to review a couple recent postings:
- Chris Brogan on his eponymously named blog is doing a series on the "Five Starter Moves" for using audio and video within the enterprise; (www.chrisbrogan.com)
- Jeremiah Owyang details his 10 suggestions for startups that are targeting enterprise businesses; (www.web-strategist.com)
- Book reviewer Dawn Papuga reviews Sebastian Faulks' Engleby on her lyriquetragedy.blogspot.com book-review blog.

That's 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"

- An Einstein Ring is Not a Berliner;
- First in a Series: How Do You Organize Information? The Brain.
- Recent Posts by Three Prolific Bloggers.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 77: Minute Tech 62 Show Transcript

2008-01-10T07:13:00.000-05:00

62 - What is Tatting?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 62 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday, January 10th, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Trading CES for MacWorld;
- Minute Tech Guest Carol Burrows on What is Tatting?
- Career Anchors - Discovery Your Real Values.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet - 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has been the hot topic this past week, with the MacWorld conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center following hot on its heels next week. Apple, Inc. is the focus of both.

Much to the chagrin of the PC world, the electronics world has been lit on fire by competition with Apple's iPhone, Apple's purported Touch tablet, Apple's purported Flash notebook PC, and the very real release this week of Apple's 8-core Mac Pro and Xserve computer systems.

And how is this affecting Apple's stock price? It should be sending it through the roof once again...but recessionary thoughts and geopolitical fears are gripping the markets, so Apple's hot air balloon will take a bit of time to rise through the morass.

Robert Brodie, posting on CNBC's Rapid Recall online column, with an article titled "Trading the Technorati", says that the market declines of Apple, Google and Research in Motion are occurring "during a time that's typically strong for tech." Brodie suggested staying away from Tech...but suggests that Corning is a potential buy, as they will be producing the glass for all those 103-, 108- and 150-inch plasma displays, the last of which was just released by Panasonic.

Tech Question: What is Tatting?

Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows, on "What is Tatting?" , takes us on a tour of a world she's infinitely familiar with. Do you have a world you're infinitely familiar with? Please send me a note at minutetech@gmail.com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

In every surf through the web I come across many streams. Check out "dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com" for Kevin Hoffman's blog posts on Windows and Mac programming. I came across this when linking to his post about the Apple Developers Connection, an org for learning to program in Cocoa and Objective-C for the Leopard and iPhone platforms.

Every moment, it seems, that I'm away from podcasting or blogging, I'm thinking, thinking, thinking of ideas, concepts & implementations. I want to create, create, create...but only so much time in the day exists for reading, surfing, thinking, creating, interacting with your kids/family/peers, working, commuting, editing, perusing, considering, and, of course, consuming and eliminating.

I'm changing "jobs" shortly...and this whole spirit of change grips me like a vise-grip:

- why change,
- how to change,
- is change a static thing or a continual thing,
- how can I change,
- how can you change

One cannot begin to contain all the energies swirling...but one can reach out to help others. A recent e-mail to a colleague, about ways that he could engender his own career change involved the following thought process.

"[A friend] asked me to return a wine book...and I mentioned that I have lots
of books [through which I'd have to search for it]...so many, in fact, that some I've never seen before. I just
now came across a book called "Career Anchors - Discovering Your Real
Values", by Edgar H. Schein. It's a very interesting study (from MIT)
on how to identify the strengths in what you like to do within
organizations, and how to move forward once you've identified these
things.

Here's a thought: you seem to have a huge "lifestyle" orientation.
Consider developing guides to the Ohio Valley for those people who do
recreational boating and/or who ride ATV's. Such guides could
initially involve having a website with a blog and/or wiki, and could
include maps and social networking themes (linking, photos, videos,
etc.)...since people who get outdoors like to network socially! This
could be "huge", if you consider pursuing it.

Just developing this sort of thing, whether "for the public good" or
for profit, will get you noticed in ways you cannot possibly
predict...I guarantee it!"

This e-mail message follows a lament by a colleague about how job changes by others seem to be leaving him in a static situation. My desire is to change this perception of his about his situation - the possibilities really are endless, one just must think outside the proverbial box.

Would you agree?

That's 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"

- Trading CES for MacWorld;
- Minute Tech Guest Carol Burrows on What is Tatting?
- Career Anchors - Discovery Your Real Values.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 76: Minute Tech 61 Show Transcript

2008-01-02T07:18:00.000-05:00

61 - What is Knitting?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 61 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Axiotron Releases the Modbook Tablet Mac;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Knitting?"
- and, My Single New Year's Resolution.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet - 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Not since the time that Gene Roddenberry showed us Jean Luc Picard brandishing a small tablet computing device in his Captain's Ready Room onboard the Starship Enterprise has a tablet device been so eagerly awaited and sought after. Aside from Apple's purported (or reported) movie download service, which is expected to be announced at MacWorld 2008 in a few weeks, fans are eagerly seeking either the expected Mac tablet and/or the expected Flash-RAM based Macbook computer. Either would be an excellent addition to Apple's lineup...and the two may be combined in one product.

Leading up to this, however, website MyiTablet.com reports that manufacturer Axiotron is planning on demoing their "Modbook", which is a rebuilt Macbook Pro with a Wacomscreen digitizer to create a workable tablet. At $2290, this platform is design for the graphics professional who will work on his or her artwork directly onscreen. The Modbook was released for purchased as of December 31st, 2007 within the US and Canadian markets. Interestingly, the Modbook adds a built-in GPS device to the standard Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro platform.
MyiTablet.com's story

Tech Question: What is Knitting?

Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows, on "What is Knitting?" , takes us on a tour of a world she's infinitely familiar with. Do you have a world you're infinitely familiar with? drop me a line at minutetech@gmail.com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

For the new year I will be embarking upon a wonderful journey of learning and self-discovery as I take on more fully the world of web-design and social media. Follow me as I try to sip from the fire-hose of information provided by web peers such as Justin Kownacki, Anna Farmery, Jeremiah Owyang, Dawn Papuga, Chris Brogan, Christopher S. Penn, Karen O'Brien, Laura Athavale, a.k.a., Pistachio, my wife Jenn, Abu Noaman and so many more. My sole New Year's Resolution is simply to produce 300+ more podcasts.

Can I do this? Can I keep up the pace? Can I learn to streamline the workflow? Can I work with you and others to continually learn, continually improve, and continually seek to be humble in the face of the infinite? Stick around and see. :-)

That's 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"

- Axiotron Releases the Modbook Tablet Mac;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Knitting?"
- and, My Single New Year's Resolution.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 75: Minute Tech 60 Show Transcript

2008-01-01T09:20:00.000-05:00

60 - Greetings and Salutations to 2008

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 60 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- iJustine, iPod, iRentals and iStocks;
- 2008: The Year of Health, Wealth, Religion and Work;
- Learning to Tune the iWeb RSS Settings.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by these sponsors:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet - 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

dbtechno.com reports the following out of New Delhi: "The tiny iPod media device has slowly led to the demise of many of the music stores and venues across the United States. Many people feel that the lessening of music stores can be traced to the ability to download and record music on the portable iPod devices. But will the same thing happen to movie rental stores?"
Interestingly, dbtechno chose a picture of Pittsburgh-native Justine Ezarik holding her iPhone - she has become the unofficial spokeswoman for all things Macintosh...and now all things iPhone, so it's quite fitting that dbtechno would use her picture.
dbtechno on iPod

Related to dbtechno's question about movie rental stores, of course, is the news that News Corp's 20th Century Fox is entering a movie-download-rental agreement with Apple, just as Wal-Mart is exiting the movie-download-rental market. First, I ask you, what hope did Wal-Mart have in the business? Secondly, what hope have Blockbuster or Netflix now that Apple is jumping into the fray, with their AppleTV already in many homes? This by the way, could be the year that AppleTV gains some respect.

Jim Ritter, Health Reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, reports on a University of Chicago study that suggests that those of us who are sleep deprived run the risk of diabetes as someone who is not sleep-deprived but has 20-30 pounds more body weight than we do. Ritter reports that two primary risks for diabetes are obesity and aging; that getting more "slow-wave" sleep is better, and that young people tend to get 80-100 minutes of slow-wave sleep, while the late-middle-aged get often not more than 20 minutes of slow-wave sleep, which is the most beneficial for the body.
Jim Ritter, Chicago Sun-Times

And finally, one stock tip for 2008: Apple, Inc. That's all I'll say. Whether you're short or long is your decision, but read this Fool.com article on why Apple. Fool on Apple

Tech Question: Greetings and Salutations for 2008

Now why would I say that 2008 is to be the year of Health, Wealth, Religion and Work? I just think that these four areas cover many of our thoughts, hopes and plans for the future. As any new year begins, people list things. Here is a list of methods for Setting Goals, from Christoper S. Penn's Financial Aid Podcast, #704:

Setting Goals for the New Year + Originally part of the goma-kan, a Tendai Buddhist ritual + Figure out your goals - specific, measurable, with deadlines + Write them down + Figure out what external resources you will need to achieve your goal or goals + Determine what external factors will stand in your way + How will you get around them? + Figure out what internal resources you will need to achieve your goal or goals + Determine what internal factors will stand in your way + How will you get around them? + From your goals and meditations, create a timeline and plan to achieve your goals + Find a way to create a task that helps you achieve your goal every day and execute it without fail + Measure frequently and allow for slippage + Learn more about this ritual’s origins from master instructor Stephen K. Hayes
Financial Aid Podcast

Shel Isreal, blogger at GlobalNeighborhoods.net and co-author with Robert Scoble of "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers", penned these New Years resolutions. I'm repeating his resolutions, as I just have one...and feel that I fit quite neatly within his resolution #3:  1. Be more humble than anyone else. Be less competitive.  2. Blog more. Consult less. Screw the mortgage. 3. Suffer fools. Usually you can learn something if you listen anyhow.  4. Know when it's my turn to shut up and listen.  5. Go to Tweet-enders to cure this $#@&*& addiction.  6. Do more video, lot's more. 7. Spend an entire week with family at Tahoe, connecting twice daily maximum.   8. Remember departed friends & remember life is for a limited time only. Exercise. Smell roses Spoil grandkids.  9. Let communities define themselves. That's where the crowd wisdom comes in. 10 Rejoice. For George Bush will leave office shortly after the next New Year.
Global Neighborhoods

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Check out Jeff Pulver's Social Media Sunrise messages on Seesmic - on the dawning of this new year, he has cheerful things to say, against the backdrop of beautiful Miami skies. Jeff Pulver's Sunrise message

Just a couple of items about MInute Tech podcast:
I noticed at a friends house yesterday, that when you hit the subscribe button on the Minute Tech blog, iTunes only pulls down the most recent five episodes. Thinking this to be an RSS setting, I perused Apple's iWeb support pages, and found that you can have a max of 50 postings in the iWeb RSS, so followed the directions for altering that in iWeb. If you're so inclined (as the mp3's are on the blog site), delete your iTunes listing for MInute Tech and resubscribe after this show - you should see the most recent 50 shows. I suppose a custom RSS service would allow for more than 50...

That friend, Danny Sleator, has his own podcast - a recording of an actual public affairs radio-show - and blog at www.leftout.info. Danny has a much simpler workflow than do I - he actually hand-edits his xml RSS feed. In watching and communicating with others, we learn new ideas, new techniques.

Check out Danny's efforts at Left Out: Independent, Reality-Based Radio

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"

- iJustine, iPod, iRentals and iStocks;
- 2008: The Year of Health, Wealth, Religion and Work;
- Learning to Tune the iWeb RSS Settings.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 74: Minute Tech 59 Show Transcript

2007-12-31T08:13:00.000-05:00

59 - What is Embroidery?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 59 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 31st, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- The 40-year Mortgage and Will Smith's Quote Malfunction
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Embroidery?"
- Embroidery Books for Suggested Further Reading.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by these three advertisements:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with Pittsburgh-native Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet - 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

"If you've been running out of storage space for all those photo's and videos on your home or work computer, here's a last-minute shopping tip, consider getting a Drobo USB storage system. With the ability to use 4 drives for up to 3.6 TB's of storage this system works well as a network-attached device when hooked up to a wireless hub like an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS). The Drobo is the perfect companion to your constantly expanding PC files. Go to http://drobo.com/drobolator/ to see how much disk storage you can get from any arrangement of drives.

There are still a few days left to get a $25 discount at Drobostore.com. Through December 31 just use the code REFJENL for your instant rebate of $25 off the manufacturer's price."

Tech News:

Selena Maranjian, reporting in the Home Buying column for Fool.com, tells us that bank/mortgage companies such as Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and Bank of America have been offering 40-year mortgages lately, as a way to provide lower payments to purchasers of America's higher-priced homes. While these loans seem great for home-buyers, and may really help to spread the risk for mortgage CDO holders, Ms. Maranjian warns that due to the higher interest rates, the savings aren't really greater for the home buyer due to more years of paying interest instead of principle - a better way to go might be to re-finance with another ARM...just beware of those stiff conversion/refinance penalty fees!
http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/home/2007/12/28/40-years-is-a-bad-way-to-spell-relief.aspx

The Scotland on Sunday column on news.scotsman.com yesterday profiles Will Smith's awesome attitude toward work and life. Although he had a recent quote malfunction relating to a certain megalo-maniacal former dictator, his moderately austere upbringing has molded him into a working machine who still has time for his kids (involves them in the film-making process) and spouse. His most interesting quote actually relates to the whole world, and could bring us all paradoxically closer - at a certain level in Hollywood, everyone is the same color: green.
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Prince-of-all-he-surveys.3628215.jp

Tech Question: What is Embroidery?

Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows, on "What is Embroidery?" , takes us on a tour of a world she's infinitely familiar with. Do you have a world you're infinitely familiar with? drop me a line at minutetech@gmail.com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Well, okay, this is the second instance that this segment is "book news"...but books were the original form of podcasting and blogging. The books related to embroidery, which Carol spend so much time on, are "Florentine Embroidery", by Barbara Snook, (c) 1967, "The Art of Oriental Embroidery-History, Aesthetics, and Techniques", by Young Y. Chung, (c) 1979, and "Art of the Embroiderer", by Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, translated and annotated by Nikki Scheuer. You should be able to find these books if you scour your local collection of used book stores - I love used - or "previously ownded"- book stores - they're great places to be, to browse, to support, to satiate your book addiction. :-)

Happy December 31st, 2007...and we'll talk to you next year!

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 40-year Mortgage and Will Smith's Quote Malfunction
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Embroidery?"
- Embroidery Books for Suggested Further Reading.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 73: Minute Tech 58 Show Transcript

2007-12-27T07:54:00.000-05:00

58 - What is Crochet?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 58 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday, December 27th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- On-Star Down, Egypt's Intellectual Property, and Mars Flows;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Crochet?"
- Books about Ancient and Modern People.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you by these three advertisements:

Learn tai chi and qi gong with master-teacher Larry Tolbert. Having studied with Chen, Yang and Wu masters himself, sifu Larry Moves with the motion of the planet.
"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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

"If you've been running out of storage space for all those photo's and videos on your home or work computer, here's a last-minute shopping tip, consider getting a Drobo USB storage system. With the ability to use 4 drives for up to 3.6 TB's of storage this system works well as a network-attached device when hooked up to a wireless hub like an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS). The Drobo is the perfect companion to your constantly expanding PC files. Go to http://drobo.com/drobolator/ to see how much disk storage you can get from any arrangement of drives.

There are still a few days left to get a $25 discount at Drobostore.com. Through December 31 just use the code REFJENL for your instant rebate of $25 off the manufacturer's price."

Tech News:

On-Star's analog communications network will no longer function after February 18th, 2008. For some On-Star equipped cars produced as recently as 2005 the On-Star digital network is neither available nor can be upgraded to. Please make a resolution to check with your automobile dealer about this, if you have continued to subscribe to On-Star services.

On Earth, if you're planning on building a Sphinx at the end of your driveway or a Pyramid on your family's funerary plot, you may need to pass that decision by the Egyptian government. Egypt's Supreme Council of the Antiquities is copyrighting the images of the Sphinx and the great Pyramids at Giza, enabling Egypt to collect royalties (so to speak) from anyone copying any of it's museum pieces or historic monuments. This stems in part from an Egyptian newspaper in Luxor suggesting that Las Vegas' Luxor hotel pay part of it's proceeds to the central Egyptian city of Luxor, which maintains the Valley of the Kings. I wonder which country invented the wheel?

And finally, on Mars it appears that ice in the form of glaciers is forming or has formed in several areas of the polar regions. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has imaged several regions which appear to show flowing, rippling glacial ice, with white peaks of ice. Of course, you know what speculation this'll lead to? Where there's ice, there may be residual microbial life, and where there's microbial life...well, I suppose the Earth becomes even less the center of the universe. :-)

Tech Question: What is Crochet?

Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows, on "What is Crochet?" , takes us on a tour of a world she's infinitely familiar with. Do you have a world you're infinitely familiar with? drop me a line at minutetech@gmail.com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Have you picked up any good books this holiday season? If you cannot find any around your house or apartment/flat, here are two books to look for at your local used or new bookstore for a good read.

The first is something of an antique, having first been published in 1915 with reprints in 1933 and 1943: "Countryman's Edition of Morey's Ancient Peoples", by William C. Morey and Irving N. Countryman. This interesting exploration of humanities past is full of inaccuracies in light of all the new scientific discoveries of the past 50 years....but also full of very good information and insights - it is a pleasure to read through and see some of the old pictures. The book covers pre-historic peoples up through the fall of the Roman empire. My favorite references are to translation aides, such as the Rosetta Stone, which gave a path to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the Behistun Rock, which gave a first peek into translations of ancient Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions.

The second is William J. O'Neil's "24 Essential Lessons for Investment Success." Published in 2000 by the founder of business newspaper Investor's Business Daily (IBD), "24" is a great step-by-step guide to investing in a stock market. Although geared toward the American stock market, the ideas in this book can be applied to any stock market. And, although intended as a guide to be use along with the IBD daily, the book stands very well on it's own. From "What every investor should know going in"to "Sell rules every investor should master", O'Neil covers the gamut of important ideas that anyone considering or intending to make his or her money earn more than just a passbook savings account should learn and breath...

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"

- On-Star Down, Egypt's Intellectual Property, and Mars Flows;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Crochet?"
- Books about Ancient and Modern People.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 72: Minute Tech 57 Show Transcript

2007-12-26T08:22:00.000-05:00

57 - What is Needle-craft?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 57 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday thru Wednesday, December 24th thru 26th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Moon & Mars Dance While the Ursids Shower;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Needle-craft?"
- Facebook, Tabloids and Baboons - "Baboon Metaphysics".

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

"If you've been running out of storage space for all those photo's and videos on your home or work computer, here's a last-minute shopping tip, consider getting a Drobo USB storage system. With the ability to use 4 drives for up to 3.6 TB's of storage this system works well as a network-attached device when hooked up to a wireless hub like an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS). The Drobo is the perfect companion to your constantly expanding PC files. Go to http://drobo.com/drobolator/ to see how much disk storage you can get from any arrangement of drives.

There are still a few days left to get a $25 discount at Drobostore.com. Through December 31 just use the code REFJENL for your instant rebate of $25 off the manufacturer's price."

Tech News:

The Times of India reports that the moon, you know, the moon...that bright nightime companion to the Earth? Yes that's the one...the moon will be riding higher in it's wobbly orbit of the Earth, or higher above the Earth's equator, than it has in 16 years...or will for another 16 years. This means that the moon, street-lamp-like, will be riding nearly overhead, for those of us looking up in the Northern hemisphere, though perhaps at its lowest point in the northern sky for those in the Southern Hemisphere. Oh! and look. It has it's own companion. Mars is riding alongside the moon, and is in it's position of opposition, meaning that it's nearly directly in line with the moon, the Earth and our beloved Sun.

Yubanet.com reprints an article from Spaceweather.com, which notes how close Earth moon was to Mars on the night of December 23rd. At moonrise, the two were less than two degrees apart...very close, and this closeness made the moon in it's fullness very spectacular. Riding high with the moon and mars, though nearly totally obscured by the bright companions, were the twins and the great hunter, Gemini and Orion, respectively. On Christmas Eve, however, the two were separately by a quarter of the night sky.

Also in the heavens the last few nights was the ending of the Ursid meteor shower. Named for Ursa Minor, the "Little Dipper", the constellation out of which the meteors appear to come, this particular meteor show runs from December 17th through the 25th, with peak showers on the 22nd and 23rd. This meteor show prepares us for the appearance of comet 8P/Tuttle, which should be visible January 1st and 2nd.

http://meteorshowersonline.com/showers/ursids.html

Tech Question: What is Needle-craft?

Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows, on "What is Needle-craft?" , takes us on a tour of a world she's infinitely familiar with. Do you have a world you're infinitely familiar with? drop me a line at minutetech@gmail.com.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Anna Farmery interviews Andrew Kaplan on show number 132; Andrew discusses using Facebook for connecting, marketing, advertising; discusses Beacon as an opt-in rather than opt-out service; difference between groups and pages. Andrew blogs via "Facebookenthusiast.blogspot.com".

CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks' Bob Macdonald speaks with Dr. Dorothy Cheney about the book by her and her husband, Robert Seyforth, "Baboon Metaphysics". Have you wondered about the interest of humans on those tabloid magazines in grocery store check-out aisles? Humans come by that interest in the lives of others...well...naturally. Check out www.cbc.ca/quirks for more info about this podcast/radio show.

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"

- Moon & Mars Dance While the Ursids Shower;
- Minute Tech guest Carol Burrows on "What is Needle-craft?"
- Facebook, Tabloids and Baboons - "Baboon Metaphysics".

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 71: Minute Tech 56 Show Transcript

2007-12-23T08:45:00.000-05:00

56 - Are Videos the Best Communications Medium?

Good day to you all, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 56 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, December 22nd and 23rd, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- The Sun is Coming Back and LED is Beginning to Shine;
- Are Videos the Best Communications Medium?
- Lawrence Lessig describes the Remix Generation.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

A new sponsor is the drobo:
"If you've been running out of storage space for all those photo's and videos on your home or work computer, here's a last-minute shopping tip, consider getting a Drobo USB storage system. With the ability to use 4 drives for up to 3.5 TB's of storage this system works well as a network-attached device when hooked up to a wireless hub like an Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS). The Drobo is the perfect companion to your constantly expanding PC files.

There are still a few days left to get a $25 discount at Drobostore.com. Through December 31 just use the code REFJENL for your instant rebate of $25 off the manufacturer's price."

Tech News:

Yesterday was the winter solstice! At 1:08 am of December 22nd, 2007, winter began for the Earth's Northern Hemisphere and Summer began for Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Surfers Village Global Surfing News provides us with the following question and answer about the Winter solstice and Christmas:

"So why is the solstice on December 21st and Christmas held on December 25th?
The New Testament specified no date for the birth of Jesus, so about 366 C.E., the Roman empire state church selected December 25th--the Roman calendar's Solstice--which was already a traditional "God's Birthday" across the empire for the many religions it contained. Having Jesus born on the Solstice also lent him credibility. It helped convert pagans to Christianity, since the new god was a version of their old god (Mithris, Saturn, Mordoc, Horus, Sol, Apollo, Osiris, etc .) Of course, this similarity to other gods of light and eternal life is truer than most Christians realize."
It's Winter Solstice today - the World's Greatest Holiday
LED lighting - where are we going with it? If you look in your local lighting store, you'll see that LED replacements for incandescent or compact fluorescents just aren't there. Christopher Palmieri reports for BusinessWeek that Laura Peak of Osram Sylvania has developed an LED products that OS calls the DOT-it, which is a small round set of three LED bulbs designed with a sticky strip on back for putting anywhere you need bright accessible lighting: in your car, your closet, your boat or your attic storage closet. The magic of LED is that the equivalent set of LED's to a 60-Watt incandescent bulb draws only 2-4 watts of juice...but the LED's are currently too costly due to the higher cost of producing them. As manufacturing and design costs come down, LED's will make more sense. As Peach says, "The price of LEDs is cut in half every eighteen months," she says. "In two years, we'll be there."
Check out LEDLights.com to see just how costly these lighting alternatives can be...but also to see the descriptions. If I could light my house with 2.5 watts per fixture, that'd be totally awesome. Next I'll be looking at NanoSolar's technology for my roof.
Also, go to Gardeners.com to see a good display of indoor and outdoor battery-operated and solar LED lighting.

Tech Question: Are Videos the Best Communications Medium?

As I said in a previous show, when I think the word podcast, I think of an audio-only show which I listen to on my iPod Shuffle. But, when Alex Lindsay of Pixelcorps.com talks about podcasts, he's talking strictly about video. The group at Pixelcorps.com has struck on the fact that producing video with today's camera and software technology is very easy, and with a little bit of training one can produce near-professional quality programming....which is exactly what Pixelcorps.com is training its staff and membership to do. Sure, you can watch television to see how NBC or Fox puts together shows, using their astronomical budgets....or you can go to OnNetworks.com or Revision3.com to see some of Pixelcorps.com's shows. These are extremely high-quality digital video episodic shows, all coming to you via the internet onto your computer.

Video, or moving pictures, can tell very big stories, as we've seen in film since Charlie Chaplin hung from a clock tower to the time that Anakin Skywalker had his unfortunate fight with his teacher Obi Wan down by the molten lava. Do you think that Mr. Chaplin actually hung from a clock tower? Do you think that the molten lava was really hot?

The word video implies moving pictures distributed via digital tape, television or computer, and in fact, wikipedia describes video as "the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion. " This, therefore is different from the original idea of capturing and processing images on a continuous strand of film in a film camera, which was the origin of the cinema film industry between the 1880's and the 1920's. But whether it was continuously hand-cranked film or modern digital images recorded to Flash RAM memory sticks, moving pictures still need to be doctored frame by frame to render special effects, to fool the viewing public into believing that a clock tower is hundreds of feet up, that giant ants are really giant, and that hot lava is really having an effect on that Jedi-gone-bad.

Where will video take us next? Is Video really the best communications medium, even with the ability to recreate special effects superbly on your PC or Mac? Or is there a better communications medium?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Yesterday, I downloaded video of Lawrence Lessig's presentation at Northeastern University Free Culture Forum, in which he talks about the freedom of writing and creating by remixing the work of others. Lessig shows a series of remixed media/video stories, retellings of various stories using remixed video and audio.

Paraphrasing Lessig:
"Anybody with a 1500 dollar computer can write in this way, changing what the television networks or newspapers spit out to us, that is becoming not the NYT democracy but the blog democracy....not the few speaking to the many but increasingly peer-to-peer, this is changing what writing is, it's writing for the 21st century, it's the same activity that has gone on since the time that pencils were first spread to the people..."

You can find these video's referenced at the bottom of the Wikipedia article about Lessig, by searching in iTunes for "Lessig" (Lessig1 and Lessig2 show up as the first two listings), or by clicking this link in the Minute Tech podcast Show Transcript.

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 Sun is Coming Back and LED is Beginning to Shine;
- Are Videos the Best Communications Medium?
- Lawrence Lessig describes the Remix Generation.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 70: Minute Tech 55 Show Transcript

2007-12-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

55 - Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?

Good day to you all, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 55 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday & Friday, December 20th and 21st, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- New Zealand quakes, ThinkSecret crumbles & DoubleClick is Gobbled;
- Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?
- Anna Farmery asks Mark Sanborn to describe confidence.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Show note: I've been dealing with a slight cold this week, and it'll be really evident today as it's settling in my throat. Vitamin C has been my cold-fighting diet additive for this bout - may each of you make it successfully through your respective ailments, too, this holiday season. :-) Due to the two-day delay on this 'cast, you may note that this news is somewhat dated...but perhaps you don't troll the same news feeds as I.

Tech News:

On a different part of the ring of fire from the Aleutian islands, an earth temblor has rocked part of New Zealand. The Associated Press reports that a magnitude 6.8 earthquake centered some 40 km below the surface of the Hikurangi undersea trench shook all of mainland New Zealand, causing much structural damage in Wellington, though with no immediate reports of injuries.

Seth Sutel, writing for the AP, reports that Apple, Inc. settled an industrial secrets-disseminating lawsuit with ThinkSecret.com owner Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shutdown of the popular Apple rumor site. Having started the site in 1998 at the age of 13, Ciarelli is okay with the amicable settlement reached, saying that he'll now be able to focus more on his studies at Harvard.

Finally, CNBC reports that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given the green light to Google's acquisition of internet advertisement company DoubleClick. Named for the action used by a computer user to open a program on a Windows PC, DoubleClick has been the target of a Google purchase bid. The FTC is reported to have said that "We have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition." Google competitors such as Yahoo! and Amazon would probably differ with that declaration.

Tech Question: Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?

In the last few shows I've discussed other "bests" for a communications medium, or a method by which one person communicates with another. The human voice has been with us for millions of years; text in some form has been around for 15 or 20,000 years; audio, which we know as a mechanically recorded or electronically amplified form of the human voice, has been around for 100+ years. What about pictures?

Well, in my definition of text, I included pictures as used by story tellers to help describe a narrative, such as hunters killing the animals to be used for the evening meal and for creating sleeping blankets and tent walls. But a picture is generally used to describe something that the picture directly depicts, unlike textual pictures which can take on meanings beyond their artistic rendering. In the same sense that Helen of Troy's face launched a thousand ships, a picture can take the place of a thousand words...hence the similar saying "a picture is worth a thousand words"; a textual picture, on the other hand, is designed to be used as a character in a string of like pictures to construct an alphabetic language.

In this sense, wherein a picture can depict thousands of words, rather than being one symbol in a string to compose a word, a picture could be considered a far better communications medium than text...except for two things: it's not adaptable beyond it's usual 2D depiction, and it's only useful for those who can see it - that is, our vision-impaired brothers and sisters would have a hard time getting information from a 2D picture. But, for those of us able to use our eyes as light-gathering, shape-defining devices, pictures can communicate tons of information.

Take, for example, a picture of a flower in a vase: the picture itself will convey many meanings.
- Is it a photograph? If so, can you tell what photographic process the photographer may have used? Remember, printing a digital print on color printer is still a rendering process for a photograph...we've just made it more pedestrian, more plebeian through our everyday use of technology.
- Is it a painting? If so, of what artistic style?
- Of what form is the vase? is it representative of the artists era, or no?
- Of what form is the flower? Dried? Living? From a cactus or from an orchid?
- In what setting is the flower and vase? Is it a still life of just the flower and vase, or is it in a room or setting relevant to the painter, or relative to the idea that the painter is attempting to depict? For example, is the room a 16th century monestary, or a 24th century room on the Starship Enterprise? Either setting suggest oodles of related information, far beyond the existence of the flower in the vase.

Are Pictures, therefore, the Best Communications Method?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

I was going to wax podcastific on one of Gregory Galant's recent Venture Voice interviews...but the interview by Anna Farmery on her Engaging Brand podcast #130 with Mark Sanborn sticks way too deeply in the mud of my mind. Mark is the author of several books including the "Fred Factor" and "You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader"...and has made a name for himself in public speaking...which shines right through in Anna's interview. One interesting comment he makes about Anna is that she is skilled at looking at a subject and discerning the right questions to ask to draw out an interviewee, suggesting that soft skills like this are the unsung qualities of a leader, rather than the technical skills of building product or cracking a proverbial whip. Both Mark and Anna agree that in organizations we too often don't invite leaders to lead, but just manage. One of the qualities that can help you learn to lead is to recognize and point out to colleagues qualities about their personalities or work habits that shine, although the person may take that quality for granted. It's recognizing these qualities in others and then bringing these qualities to bear on a business situation that marks a person who can lead rather than manage, who can coach rather than brow-beat, who can direct rather than micro-manage.

In this interview about "confidence", Sanborn states that "confidence is competence coupled with certainty" - he explains this with a word picture about skiing down an expert mountain slope, wherein coupled with certainty that you'll make it to the bottom intact, you'd better have the competence to keep yourself upright on your ski's. Please listen to this podcast to learn more about how Sanborn speaks, and how well Anna interacts with him.

...

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"

- New Zealand quakes, ThinkSecret crumbles & DoubleClick is Gobbled;
- Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?
- Anna Farmery asks Mark Sanborn to describe confidence.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 69: Minute Tech 54 Show Transcript

2007-12-19T07:34:00.000-05:00

54 - Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 54 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- The iPhone Tsunami;
- Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?
- Jon Morrow guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's Careerist.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

So that's how we're gonna reach 10 million iPhones in '08! You didn't think, as I'm sure I did, that the prediction meant just US sales, did you???

Daniel Del'Re posts for the TheStreet.com that Apple is shooting for an iPhone launch in Japan as it's first stop in an Asian Apple tour. Being the world's third largest economy, Japan is already a very large consumer of Apple products, so the island nation makes for an ideal place to go. Coupled with the fact that Asians are far ahead of the rest of us in the use of wireless devices in lieu of desktop PC's, Japan could be a very good proving ground for the viability of the iPhone in a heavily saturated wireless market.

Stepping back to news from the backyard, Pittsburgh start-up Panasas, Inc. has announced that, along with the University of Nebraska's new Holland Computing Center upgrading it's 1150 node cluster computer from a top-500 supercomputer to a top-20 system containing 60 Teraflops of processing capacity, Panasas' ActiveStor Parallel Storage will be added to the cluster. Panasas' system, which eliminates network bottlenecks imposed on clusters by standard NAS and SAN storage arrays by allowing for parallel access to it's own storage, will work in conjunction with systems integration from Dell, Inc., Cisco and Force10 Networks.
Finally, this just in: Japan's Meteorological Agency has announced a Tsunami alert for Hawaii due to a 7.3-magnitude earthquake centered in Alaska's Aleutian islands. The JMA said that the quake's focus was some 40 km below the seabed, and occurred at 9:30 am GMT.

Tech Question: Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?

What do you think of when you hear the word "audio"? Do you think of that awful sound blasting from your kid's radio? Do you think of the mini-cassettes that you record on at the office? Do you think just of sound that can be heard?

When I think of audio, I think of the political loudspeakers on tops of cars, driving through the streets in Back to the Future, of Charles Winchester listening to opera phonographs in M*A*S*H, of 8-Track tapes sitting nestled under car seats, and of all the podcasts I listen to on my iPod Shuffle. In short, recorded sound.

Is recorded sound the best communications medium?

But of course, radio is audio - and radio is generally live audio being played out in thousands of radio stations world-wide. Television has an audio component, and television is being played live in thousands of broadcast stations worldwide...though increasingly, like podcasts, pre-recorded video is overtaking the airwaves, the cable, the internet.

But, remember, audio, unless it's music, is accessible only to those who know the language being spoken. Music, sans words, is accessible to all...who can hear...and music with words is accessible to all who can hear...and more accessible to those who understand the particular dialect.

Of what use is audio to the hearing-impaired. Do you have friends who're hearing impaired? What communications medium do they prefer?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

I'm working up a review of recent listening's to some of Anna Farmery's Engaging Brand podcasts. In the meantime, a blog link journey led me to Jon Morrow, a twenty-something guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's blog. In his laments about having worked too hard in college to get straight A's, he references Guy Kawasaki's blog post about Hindsight...in which GK suggests, among other things, that college kids oughta spend more time on their parents dime getting more out of the college experience than just hitting the books.

What is the right blend? As an adult who didn't apply himself hard enough in college, I think that as much schooling as soon as possible is the right choice...but here're folks who got lots of schooling and are lamenting the fact. What's the right mix?

Jon Morrow, guesting on Penelope Trunk's blog: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/12/04/twentysomething-why-i-regret-getting-straight-as-in-college/

Guy Kawasaki's blog on Hindsight: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/hindsights.html

Jon Morrow, on his own blog: http://www.onmoneymaking.com/

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 iPhone Tsunami;
- Is Audio the Best Communications Medium?
- Jon Morrow guest-writing on Penelope Trunk's Careerist.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 68: Minute Tech 53 Show Transcript

2007-12-18T06:49:00.000-05:00

53 - Is Text the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 53 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- A Galaxy Gets Cooked, FireWire Heats Up, & Late Night Warms Up;
- Is Text the Best Communications Medium?
- What's a Ninja Crayon, and what's in a Logo?

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post reports from various scientific groups that scientists have identified a huge jet of stellar matter streaking out from a super-massive black hole (which is a gravitationally collapsed star, as originally predicted by Albert Einstein) and colliding with a neighboring galaxy. Speculation by scientists is that this jet of matter will cause devastating effects to any habitable or inhabited planets in star systems in the affected galaxy. Such a jets effect on earth would be to strip away the ozone and magnetosphere, both which help protect life on earth from harmful radiation emanated by Earths stellar companion, the sun.

On a slightly different scale, Jonny Evans of Macworld UK reports that the 1394 Trade Association is expecting to ratify by February '08 a new specification for FireWire, or IEEE-1394 data transfer, which will boost existing FireWire 800 equipment from 800Mb/s to 3.2Gb/s, without a need to modify or otherwise update the existing hardware. Note that this is referring to bits...divide by eight to get the MB/s transfer speed. Travis Hudson, posting on PCWorlds blog, states that this bump up will help FireWire compete with the new USB 3.0 data transfer standard, which according to wikipedia's article on USB, is rated at 4.8 Gb/s.

And on different tangent, but related to the news about Letterman working with the WGA, Richard Huff of the NY Daily News reports that Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien are looking to return to the late night airwaves without the WGA, but with their existing production staff intact. Apparently, comedy "bits and sketches" require the input of WGA writers, so It'll be interesting to see the late night shows without such features. Can they operate without the WGA?

Tech Question: Is Text the Best Communications Medium?

By text I mean the written word...and the written word, or symbol which when written on a surface means something beyond the context of the picture itself, has been around for 10 or 20 thousand years. Think back to the cave paintings, of the warriors chasing the various forms of wildlife with spears raised or flying through the air. Those pictures tell a story, a story which is later recounted, though in different form for different cultures, on the walls of egyptian tombs, on the clay tablets of the fertile crescent and on the bamboo boards of the far east.

Writing, whether it takes the form of pictures, of hieroglyphs, of pictographs or stick figures, means something beyond the artistic quality of their rendering...but the reader has to learn carefully the context of those words as they pertain to a particular culture before proper meaning can be understood.

The same characters can be used to represent different languages: the Roman alphabet, or Latin alphabet, for example, is the most widely used character set in the world today. In addition to the base 21 characters originated in the 7th Century BC, as the Romans adapted the Cumae version of the Greek alphabet - the Romans added the letters G & Y. In the ensuing 2,700 years, the Latin alphabet has spread to all major civilizations, in competition with the Greek & Cyrillic, Arabic, Brahmic and Chinese character sets.

So, with text so widespread, is it the best communication method? We see it today on automobiles, road signs, newspapers, books, websites, magazines, musical scores, billboards, animations, video games, food containers, buildings, water towers, our clothing and our skin, the last in the form of body art. But, again, text is culture specific - ya gotta know the local dialect to know what the words are saying, and you have to know how to read them in context. So, I repeat, is Text the Best Communications Medium?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Have you heard of Ninja Crayon? Check it out here A link is in the Show Transcript.

There are many Ninja Crayon's on the web - it's a popular handle for the artistic types who like black outfits. This one was suggested to me by an acquaintance on the Pixelcorps forum as a place he could put the logo for Minute Tech....If I had one.

So, what's in a logo? That's my next crusade, simultaneous with updating the blog interface. :-)

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"

- A Galaxy Gets Cooked, FireWire Heats Up, & Late Night Warms Up;
- Is Text the Best Communications Medium?
- What's a Ninja Crayon, and what's in a Logo?

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 67: Minute Tech 52 Show Transcript

2007-12-17T07:18:00.000-05:00

52 - Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 52 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 17th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Twitter Takes a Break, & Pew Spews Percentages;
- Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?
- Minute Tech Blog Seeks Redesign.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Twitter, the popular short-form blogging community tool which allows posts of a 140-character maximum per post and encourages people to set up "friends"communities of like-minded (or not) individuals, took a breather earlier this morning by taking the system down for a few hours to do maintenance of some sort. This maintenance is a follow-on to a Saturday evening maintenance which apparently didn't take the system off line at all. Even so, frequent twitterers were nervous about both downtimes, as the following comment testifies to:
Twitter user G-Man posts the following as a comment on Twitter's blog:
By the updated comment I'm presuming you mean twitter will be back about 3am PST. So about 1 hour from now.
Arggg, I never thought I'd miss twitter so much.
With users such as G-Man being so concerned about such a service, I think it's time Twitter considered some monetization possibilities....
In separate news, Ellen Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found the following interesting stats:
36% have searched the web for lost friends, 9% have checked out dating partners online, and 60% are not worried about the amount of info that exists online about them; 47% have searched for themselves and 53% have looked up an acquaintance. As for the social networking crowd, 61% say that their profiles are open to anyone, and 38% say that they restrict profile access to friends only.
Ms Lee ends with the following: "In light of recent recommendations that job hunters not post photographs or personal information that could hurt their chances with employers, 11 percent said they have searched online for someone they were about to hire or work with."

Tech Question: Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?

The communications medium of choice since the dawn of time, or since homo sapiens have been interacting, has been the human voice. Long have men wooed women, parents taught their children, intellectuals argued the finer points of existence, story-tellers told tall tales, leaders cajoled their followers, followers adored or grumbled about their leaders and children played with their sticks and stones to emulate the actions of their parents, all with the power of vocalized sounds and words.

The oldest written texts come originally from spoken, or oral, traditions. Homer's Illiad and Odyssey are examples of poems which originated as spoken, or sung, verses crafted by story tellers in a particular method to allow for memorization of the basic facts and on-the-spot recitation of the narratives. These two stories are probably compilations of various stories heard by Homer and/or his predecessors about the Trojan War, the actions of the Trojans and Achaians (the Greeks) and the hero Odysseus...and of course common knowledge of the pantheistic deities that so colorfully inhabited the pre-judeo-christian mindset. Homer and his poems are from about the 8th century B.C....and the Trojan War seems to have taken place some 3-500 years earlier, around 1100-1300 B.C.

The writings of Plato are based upon the spoken "dialogues" of his teacher Socrates. The famous, or infamous, if you're worried about Socrates' ability to corrupt the minds of your young people, Socratic Dialogues were verbal discussions which Socrates developed to work through specific thought problems. These arguments and discussions were only written down later by his student Plato.

To this day, we look for primary information sources from religious, political, business and cultural leaders who speak directly to us - through speeches, sermons, discussions and story-telling. Is the human voice the best communications medium?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

When next you see the Minute Tech blogger web page, you'll see that the colors have changed, but the format looks the same. I'm beginning a long-term project to augment the page beyond it's plain-looking interface. I'm checking with friends about their suggestions, and even Twittered on the subject to see if people have suggestions of other Blogger users who may have done interesting things with their blogger interfaces - Blogger is Google's free online blogging platform, with about two dozen modifiable templates for UI design.

The blogs of the two friend I've asked are Lyrique Tragedy and The Mac Muse.

Check them out, and let me know if you have suggestions.

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"

- Twitter Takes a Break, & Pew Spews Percentages;
- Is Your Voice the Best Communications Medium?
- Minute Tech Blog Seeks Redesign.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 66: Minute Tech 51 Show Transcript

2007-12-16T08:06:00.000-05:00

51 - What's the Best Communications Medium?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 51 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, December 15th and 16th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- David Letterman seeks relief;
- What's the Best Communications Medium?
- Recent Shows of VentureVoice and The Engaging Brand.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Bill Carter and Michael Cieply report via the New York Times today that David Letterman is seeking a deal with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) that would allow his show, and his show alone, to get off the tarmac and start flying again. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on Comedy Central is seeking the same sort of deal. Apparently the East and West portions of the WGA are encouraging individual employers to deal with it, directly, rather than the big conglomerate studios who have always in the past dominated these negotiations...the like of GE, News Corp, Walt Disney and others. This could be interesting...

LiveScience.com reports on some very interesting stories:

Via the SciTech pages of FoxNews.com comes the story about how a thin spot in the Earth's crust may be allowing a hotspot of magma from Earth's mantle to heat the underside of Greenland's ice-sheets. If this interpretation of data collected is accurate, it could point to other non-human reasons for melting of the ice in Northern Latitudes.

From LiveScience.com's website, one interesting story is about some surprising finds pointing to advanced levels of glass-making skills present in Egyptian society about the time of Tutankhamun's predecessor, Akhenaten...around 1350 BC. Previously, glass found in the Nile valley civilizations was thought to have been produced elsewhere, but archaeologists recent rebuilt a 3000-year-old kiln that could have been used to produce glass. The archaeologist then fired the kiln and produced a credible glass ingot from local sand.

Tech Question: What's the Best Communications Medium?

Pittsburgh's local members of the online film-making and educational guild Pixelcorps.com had their December meeting yesterday at the Carnegie Science Center. The presentation given by Alex Lindsay, a founder of Pixelcorps, was an overview of the "podcast" film-making that Pixelcorps is involved in.

Interesting, when I think "podcast" I think of the simple form of audio presentation that you're listening to now. But wait. What are you watching on that little iPod Nano?

So, while it's relatively easy for me to produce this show, it may not be the best way to get information across to the masses. Think of the difference between television and radio. Which do you think provides better information? Right - television...which is why it has created such huge global industry.

Therefore Pixelcorps.com is building a corps of global technology workers who can provide expertise for writing, producing, crafting and distributing podcast video.

There are blossoming online "networks" of programming, i.e., episodic content that is pre-recorded for entertainment and education. In addition to their various audio and video podcast shows, Pixelcorps has produced the following shows:

- "PixelPerfect" on Revision3.com
- "Food Science" and "Cocktails on the Fly" on www.onnetworks.com;

So, our topics this week will be focused on the Question stated above, What's the Best Communications Medium.

Many, many people are thinking quickly and hard about how to take advantage of the coming need for communication content....are you among them?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Gregory Galant is back with an new "Venture Voice" interview, this time with Tom Perkins, of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital company. Perkins has published his autobiography, or memoir, "Valley Boy: the Education of Tom Perkins". Galant takes us, with his questions of Perkins, the book and Perkins life in general, on a very interesting trip through a fascinating slice of technology, business and Silicon Valley.

VV Show #47: http://www.venturevoice.com/

Two of Anna Farmery's most recent shows, #'s 128 and 129 of The Engaging Brand were next on my iPod Shuffle yesterday morning. The interview podcasts were, respectively, "Lessons form Non Profit for Business" and "Sound as Part of Your Brand Strategy". Once again, I've gotta listen to these again...

In 128, Anna interviews Beth Kanter, of social media blog beth.typepad.com about some of the amazing things that non-profits do for new media...to get the word out. The important thing here: nonprofits focus on getting to your emotions...whereas for-profits may focus too much of winning you over via the finance of a proposal. Much we can learn from that!

In 129, the brains of Ronna Porter and Micheal Spencer of Sound-strategies.co.uk talk about how sound can be used as part of your branding strategy. "Are you tuned in to sound" - this is the first thing you see on their website - sound...and these days the infrequent absence of sound...is around us everyday, every way. How can you use sound most effectively in your branding? Can you think of jingles or simple sounds that reverberate through your consciousness. An example was the sound associated with Churchill's V for Victory...this simple set of sounds was echo'd by Japanese school children...and yet we primarily think of the V!

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 Letterman seeks relief;
- What's the Best Communications Medium?
- Recent Shows of VentureVoice and The Engaging Brand.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 65: Minute Tech 50 Show Transcript

2007-12-14T06:46:00.000-05:00

50 - Mourning - What are Burial Customs?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 50 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, December 14th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Mars Rovers and Orbiters find white;
- Mourning - What are Burial Customs?
- and, the Mac Blogs, & how do you brand a podcast?

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

A note for today - you may have noticed that there was no podcast yesterday, Thursday the 13th. My morning routine was altered somewhat, which jiggered my routine for the day. How do you build flexibility into your schedule, when everything must be done? :-) The delay allowed our writers to happily flesh out the notes for this mornings show.

Tech News:

Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang, Social Computing analyst at Forrester Research, attended a breakfast roundtable at Oracle's headquarters in Silicon Valley focusing on China and Social Media. One of Jeremiah's many Twitter postings mentioned that the " Population of [the] US is 303,585,850 (census.gov)[whereas]Tencent's registered members are 715,300,000". Tencent is an internet services provider in China.

In Offplanet news, the automatons exploring Mars on behalf of mankind have unearthed (...er...unmars'd?) traces of white on the surface. Spirit and it's twin rover Opportunity have both found significant traces of a mineral called silica, which is a primary ingredient in the terrestrial production of window glass. In natural environments, silica is a distillate that comes from minerals through which water has run or steamed. Running water could be due to melting ice or precipitating moisture; steamed water could be due to volcanic activity. Either type points to the presence of once-abundant sources of water on mars. The Rover Spirit found water inadvertently by dragging a defective wheel through the soil...and then turning to inspected the upturned soil...and it saw the white silica.

Separately, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has brought out more information, through photography, about spidery veins of white that appears during Martian summer at the both poles - scientists reviewing the MRO's findings have speculated that the white is from frosty carbon dioxide snow falling from geysers of carbon dioxide jetting up from fissures in frozen CO2, activated by sun-induced melting of winter CO2 ice.

Tech Question:

Mourning - What are Burial Customs?

The most prevalent example of burial customs in the modern world are the extensive artistic and scientific reviews of the ancient Egyptian burial customs. The pyramids on the Giza plateau and other areas of the middle east are remnants of tombs built by ancient peoples in observance of their various beliefs about death and new life after death. We've seen the mummified remains of monarchical rulers, priests, and cats; we've seen buried ships, furniture and clothing sealed in vaults, either to commemorate the passing of the deceased or to provide tools to the deceased to use on whatever journey they'd embarked upon.

In modern times, we similarly entomb our dead, though perhaps not to the same extent. We have embalming and multilayer caskets; we have subterranean vaults and above-ground mausoleums; we have urns for ashes and stele, or tombstones with writing on them, for marking the place of burial. Wikipedia suggests that burial customs have been part of our society for some 200,000 years, from the time of the human diaspora from Africa, when our ancestors spread out from Africa to other parts of the world. Now, tombs and graves can be found in all inhabited parts of the world.

Qui Gon Jin and Darth Vader were both cremated, echoing traditions in India and Japan, as well as a growing trend in the west for cremation. After cremation, a small jar is all that remains, which is far smaller & easier to store than a heavy, large casket. I think we're beginning to see that the vessel in which our loved ones lived and died is merely a vessel, that their spirit lives on in our memories, in our lives, in our actions and in our hearts.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

The Mac blogs.
After hearing countless references to Daring Fireball and the Macalope, I finally decided to link over to those blogs. Now, awhile back Jeff Pulver twittered a question as to who preferred push and who preferred pull....meaning, do you prefer to go get your news, or do you want it to come to you, aggregated in a news reader? I prefer to go get it...which is why I mentioned myself as "roadkill" per John Wall's explanation of the three levels of news reader users. I like to surf news.google.com and finance.yahoo.com to find my news, and stumbling across blog posts is just part of that scenery.

So, its interesting now to see that the Macalope writes just like the way he talks on MacBreak Weekly and to see the interesting way that John Gruber's Daring Fireball breaks up each post into little snippets of links and commentary. I'm going to borrow the list of blog links from Tom Krazit's "One More Thing" blog page - see if there are Mac blogs you haven't seen yet.

What's in a name?
I'm currently using the title "Minute Tech podcast" for this daily creation about the broader meanings of technology; John Wall uses "the M Show" for his weekly ramble through news and marketing tidbits; Adam Wolf uses BizTech podcast for his short 3-minute review of various technologies and methods for small businesses; John Foster appropriately uses "Beer School" for his period show about types and methods of beer-making.

Is Minute Tech a good name? I modified the name of a previous podcast performed by me and Dawn Papuga call Minute Lit...and while that could easily have been call Hour Lit, we liked the name because of the way it sounded. I similarly like Minute Tech. Granted it's not a minute in duration, and it may not cover what the general populace considers technology...but I reserve the right to describe a broader definition. An appropriate logo and branding strategy would be good, too.

But, more to the point, a suggestion has been made that perhaps another name would be more appropriate. How about Minute Ramble? You might think that I ramble a bit, moving fluidly, or abruptly, from topic to topic. How about "Daily Digest"? One of my favorite podcast jingles is from Greg Demetrick's 365tao.net, where he intones "Digital Dharma Delivered Daily". What do you think?

Drop me a line - I need mail! :-)

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"

- Mars Rovers and Orbiters find white;
- Mourning - What are Burial Customs?
- and, how do you brand a podcast?

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 64: Minute Tech 49 Show Transcript

2007-12-12T13:11:00.000-05:00

49 - Mourning - What is the Obituary?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 49 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Laser Etch that Holiday Gift;
- Mourning: What is the Obituary?
- Bre Pettis provides interstitial music.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

The holiday gift-giving season is very fast approaching. Assuming you've already shopped, have you thought about how to adorn that gift? Are you going to just wrap it and present it to the giftee .... or will you get it laser-etched? That's right, laser etched. One of the new technologies to come out simultaneous with products that have firm metal casing is laser etching, which can be used to put something as simple as a persons' name or something as complex as a realistic photo of the Starship Enterprise on the casing of a laptop computer, MP3 player or some other device which can fit within the confines of the laser-etching machine. Check out adafruit.com or etchamac.com for more information on this wacky, but fun, service. There's also a youtube video titled "Leah Culver Laser Etches Her Macbook Pro".

Agam Shah of the IDG New Service reports through InfoWorld that The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, recently recognized the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 personal computer with a meeting of the minds between notables Steve Wozniak and Jack Tramiel, former chairman of Commodore International. Three newsworthy items is that Apple tried selling Commodore on the idea of selling the Apple II computer, which Commodore declined in favor of it's Commodore 64 computer, that the 64 initially sold for $599, which price was subsequently reduced to $199, and that Microsoft's Bill Gates tried suggesting $3 per machine for Microsoft Basic...but eventually accepted Tramiel's offer of a $25,000 flat fee.

Tech Question:

Mourning - What is the Obituary?

An obituary is a written description of a deceased person's life activities, generally designed to be published in a newspaper posthumously. This biographical description differs from the standard "death notice" in that it describes the primary and secondary activities that the decedent was known for during life. The death notice, similar to what I posted in the two previous episodes about Anne Macmillan Landefeld and Barbara Ann Huey Schilling, will just be an announcement of the death, survivors and very pertinent details about the procedures surrounding the funeral and family arrangements.

Wikipedia relates that obituaries are often written ahead of the decedent's death, specifically if the person is well known. The New York Times acknowledged in 2006 that it has some 1200 pre-written obituaries on hand. One item it ensures is to identify the submitter of an obituary - accidental or prank-related premature submissions of obituaries can evoke claims that "news of my demise are greatly exaggerated".

How would you write your obituary, or that of a famous person? Would they differ enormously? My spouse suggested "She died" would suffice...but will her loved ones want much more? Did your mother or father do nothing throughout their lives, or did they do great things for people, help with many ventures, raise great kids, walk a million miles for their respective causes? Everyone did something great - don't be afraid to sing praises of the deceased - this is, perhaps, the last chance to let people know what they did, unless biographies and other tomes are already extant about the person's life. Don't let "she was just a housewife" or "he just shined people's shoes" stop you from writing a glowing obituary - that person who died mattered to somebody - exclaim to the reading public why that person mattered.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Bre Pettis, creator of the I Make Things series of video casts, to be found at IMakeThings.com and BrePettis.com, has released to the artist public a series of audio snippets from his films, so that others can use them in their own films or podcasts. I've made use, interstitially, of three snippets for transition music in the Minute Tech podcast. One of the things I gleaned from listening to The M Show, Marketing Over Coffee and Financial Aid Podcast is the use of specific themes music snippets for the artificial spaces between show elements.

How do you feel about interstitial music? Do you like what I've used?

One note about this podcast: as I publish a transcript every show to the phyllostachys.blogspot.com blog, if I say something that you don't understanding, please link on over to the transcript to see if I was just slurring the word, or if the pronunciation is different than you've heard before. BTW, the word "phyllostachys" relates to a family of bamboo - the phyllostachys group has a groove in the culm on alternating sides as you run up a culm, feeling between the internodes.

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"

- Laser Etch that Holiday Gift;
- Mourning: What is the Obituary?
- Bre Pettis provides interstitial music.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis

phyllostachys 63: Minute Tech 48 show transcript

2007-12-11T07:26:00.000-05:00

48 - Mourning: What Are Your Customs?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 48 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Le Web launches Social Media in France
- Mourning: What Are Your Customs?
- and, Chris Brogan suggests paper cut-outs to educate.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Special Note for this morning: on the same day that my mother passed away, as I learned the next day, the mother of a good friend died. Please remember Barbara Ann Huey Schilling, wife of Fritz and mother of Tom, Anne, Jonathan and Kathryn. Simply sad that two awesome mothers should pass on the same day....but happiness prevails.

Tech News:

The French new media conference, Le Web, has launched in a Paris Suburb. Entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, founder of web San Francisco start-up Seesmic, is co-hosting Le Web 3.0 Tuesday and Wednesday of this week with his wife, Geraldine. While intended to be a Web 2.0 conference, I've seen it described on Twitter as a tradeshow hosting 1800 people in three buildings - but that doesn't detract from it's importance as a communications tool for the European community: the issues in our modern society are many - the Internet and the excitement surrounding it's use must not obscure the issues, but rather make it easier to discuss and resolve them.

So, while reading yesterday's WSJ this morning, I was shocked and interested to see an article about Larry Bell and his Michigan Brewery, Bell's Brewery. At Thanksgiving in Cleveland, while shopping at a Wild Oats grocery store in Beachwood, I found a six-pack of Bell's Expedition Stout. The fact that I found this at a popular grocery store is a testament in part to what this WSJ article references...that small breweries are increasingly attempting to find distribution paths around the entanglement of the 1933 Prohibition laws that primarily restrict breweries to sell through distributors. Here in Pennsylvania, although the regulations are slowly giving way to reality, we still have to primarily purchase beer in cases of 24 cans or bottles at specific distributors stores, versus the relatively liberal policies of Ohio or West Virginia, where beer and liquor can be had at any (or most) grocery stores and convenience marts. Hopefully Pennsylvania will soon see the light - I'd love to see specialty beers like Bell's selling in the local Giant Eagle.

Tech Question:

Mourning: What are your customs?

Wikipedia has a decent overview of the primary global mourning customs, those for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, the world's primary religions. From what to wear, how many days/months are appropriate for mourning, whether to wail or not to wail, if you can perform religious duties or not during the period of mourning, whether you can re-marry or not within a particular time, what colors of dress are appropriate and how to handle the national flag.

Interestingly, in my immediate family cremation is the standard, and this is the standard for one of the worlds most populous nations, where space for burial is perhaps not quite as abundant as it is in the US. Also, apparently my mother liked the 23rd Psalm, which begins (and this was a psalm which I remember memorizing as a youth):

The Lord is my shepherd, I shal not want.
He maketh me to rest in grene pasture, & leadeth me by the stil waters.

Do you know what your customs are...or do you learn them as you go when a death occurs. I suspect that this is the case for most of us, as death customs are not an everyday subject of discussion....unless you happen to be an Egyptologist. But think about it - what are your customs? What do you feel comfortable with?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Chris Brogan, podcamp co-founder and social media, at his self-named blog talks about new ways to introduce people to social media. For those of us not familiar with them, and I count myself in that group, Chris points us to educational video's by an organization called Common Craft. The outfit describes various concepts such as "Understanding blogs", "Understanding RSS" and "Social Media" using what they call "Paperworks" - essentially paper cut-outs animated through the video medium to illustrate somewhat complex or arcane ideas, in a way an average Josephine or Alex could understand.

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"

- Le Web launches Social Media in France
- Mourning: What Are Your Customs?
- and, Chris Brogan suggests paper cut-outs to educate

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 62: Minute Tech 47 show transcript

2007-12-10T07:19:00.000-05:00

47 - Mourning: Are you being Creative?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 47 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 10th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Atlantis grounded until January
- Mourning: Are you being Creative?
- Early adopters, Google Reader and roadkill.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Special Note for this morning: my mother Anne Macmillan Landefeld, died this past Saturday, December 8th, at 10:20 pm, so this weeks podcast question will be focused on mourning and the various facets of mourning in human society. It's important to move on, but it's also important to remember.

Tech News:

Priyanka Joshi, reporting from New Delhi under the by-line GIZMOGEEK, published in www.business-standard.com, describes a brief exchange of questions and answers with Ajay Adiseshann, managing director and founder, PayMate. One question and answer goes like this:

Q: Describe a wacky application you have fun experimenting with.

A: The entire suite of i-applications on my Apple Macbook Pro, including iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD and Garage Band, to name a few, can keep me engaged for hours. Moreover, the level of integration between these is so seamless that you sometime wonder why others just don’t get it.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?leftnm=lmnu9&subLeft=&autono=306890&tab=r

The American Space Shuttle Atlantis' flight to the International Space Station has been delayed until January due to conflict with flight paths from the North Pole. It seems that Santa and his band of merry elves have been doing too many test flights, more so than usual in advance of global warming, and have asked NASA to hold off until after the busy holiday package-delivery season. NASA has agreed, and chose to put out the news that a fuel sensor problem is to blame.

On the market front, as Apple continues it's orbital maneuvers, here are a couple of small fry to consider: Riverbed Technologies and Blue Coat Systems. Go to finance dot yahoo dot com for more information.

Tech Question:

Mourning: Are you being creative?

About one and a half months before dying, my mother asked me something which I didn't expect to hear from her, something which she'd never asked me before. She asked if I was doing something creative.

As a point of fact, I was just starting this podcast, so I was able to answer in the affirmative, although she wasn't quite sure what I, in my usual effusiveness, was talking about.

Are you doing something creative? Something your mother could look at with pride, knowing that her kids are working hard to get their minds wrapped around something other than the mundane? Think about it. Let me know what you're doing.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

On Marketing over Coffee this past week, John Wall and Christopher Penn were discussing Google Reader. John was stating that he has three classifications of people: Those who use Google Reader for managing the blogs they follow, those who use an earlier technology, having read blogs far longer than the normal netizen ....and those who are effectively roadkill, who haven't the foggiest idea what Google Reader is, and perhaps don't use a reader at all.

Okay, then. Using that definition, I'm roadkill. :-) I don't use a reader for reading blogs via their RSS feeds...which is probably why I'm short on my understanding of the whole RSS thing. I prefer to find blogs as they come across my path, rather than following the ongoing writings of 300 individual bloggers.

Is this silly? What do you think? How do you follow blogs?

I'm considering changing the name of this podcast - some listeners feel that "minute tech" isn't accurate...that "minute ramble" is more to the point. What do you think? We may structure a contest out of this.

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"

- Atlantis grounded until January
- Mourning: Are you being Creative?
- Early adopters, Google Reader and roadkill.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 61: Minute Tech 46 show notes

2007-12-06T20:15:00.000-05:00

46 - What is Sledding?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 46 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, December 7th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Morgan Stanley, Atlantis and the Evil Empire;
- What is Sledding?
- and, Seeking Stylistic Cues from FAP and BizTech.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

1st, I'm only going to say this once...today: invest for the future. No matter what your income level, get a day job, whether volunteer or for pay, and start saving whatever you can for some point in the future.

2nd, assuming you're along the road in investing for the future, I only have two hot stock tips: Apple, Inc and Morgan Stanley. Apple is at it's 52-week high, but could be considered cheap; Morgan Stanley is at it's 52-week low, and is in a painfully situated industry...but Morgan Stanley is well situated for the future.

Well, yesterday I reported that Space Shuttle Atlantis was headed into Earth orbit...and but for a faulty fuel sensor, it would have. While filling tanks with the more than 500,000 gallons (2.2 million litres) of cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen that the shuttle uses for it's 8.5 minute boost into orbit, a fuel sensor problem cropped up, causing the flight to be scrubbed and rescheduled for lift-off on Saturday, Dec. 8th.

The Evil Empire seeks redress on the loss of it's Death Star. Well, okay, I mean the other Evil Empire...the one associated with Bill Gatus of Borg. According to a story by Paul McDougall of InformationWeek, and I quote:

"Microsoft has asked the designers of a low-cost Linux laptop intended for children in developing nations to redesign the system so it can accommodate its Windows XP operating system."

"In a move sure to provoke controversy, Microsoft wants the designers of the XO laptop, available through a non-profit initiative called One Laptop Per Child, to add a port through which the storage capacity required by Windows XP can be added to the system."

"The XO currently runs on a Red Hat Linux operating system. Making the laptop compatible with XP would give students in poor countries access to "tens of thousands of existing educational applications written for Windows," said James Utzschneider, a Microsoft general manager, in a blog post Wednesday. "

End of quote.

Oh, phew! I thought for a minute there, Microsoft was seeking to wrest control away from that upstart Linux. But, no, they really are a big microsoftie and seek to give the poor kids of the world access to oodles of educational bloatware.

Tech Question:

Okay, now we get to the heart of the matter. What is Sledding?

Perhaps you think this question was covered in the previous show's question of what is Tobogganing...and perhaps we put the cart before the horse on that one. Quite simply, sledding is the act of using some technologically advanced tool, like a flat piece of wood or an animal hide, to speed one's descent down any snow-covered hillside.

An interesting excerpt from wikipedia on the subject says that "Modern sledding began in St Moritz during the early 1870s when British visitors with more time than activities began to experiment and play around with boys delivery sleds ... for recreation at the dawn of winter resorting in winter climes."

Are they kidding? Modern sledding began when homo sapiens boys noticed that the bear furs being used by neanderthal boys had much better ride characteristics than the deer hides that they'd stolen from their own parent's cave. The homo sapiens boys begged and pleaded with their dads to get similar furs, which of course would be far warmer for mother (the maternally supported sales pitch) and would be far easier to catch than a deer (the paternally supported sales pitch). After being artfully convinced, the homo sapiens dads realized that just taking the bear skins was easier still, which they did just after they convinced the neanderthal dads that a big herd of wooly mammoth elephants had just passed north of the valley, headed into the woods. The neanderthal families were not heard from again...and the homo sapiens boys scored awesome snow-riding furs!

Also, although implied by all the cool sledding implements you can pick up at your local superstore, or watch the use of in the Winter Olympics, these examples by no means prohibit the use of ingenuity to get one from the top of a snow covered hill to the bottom, while avoiding rocks, trees and other sledders. Many a sledder has found that simply flopping on his or her back may provide and excellent alternative to sliding on their feet, or if they can steal a plastic tray from the school cafeteria, awesome times will be had by all.

Safety equipment is certainly recommended when sledding. I recommend helmets, gloves and scarves for children and thermos' of hot cocoa, coffee or apple cider for the parents. Any other equipment is strictly optional. :-)

Podcasting - Blogging News:

So, I mentioned yesterday that I listen to my own podcasts, using them as a memory repository, so see what I was thinking in the past, or how meagerly I may have introduced a story which now screams to be told in more detail. Well, I'm also listening to my past podcasts for stylistic reasons:

What is it about the content or method of presentation that grabs me or makes me yawn?
How could improve either delivery or production to make the show better for the listener?
And, how can I improve things such that I'm expanding my own skills and techniques?

These are the three primary questions running through my mind as I listen to my shows. These are now also the questions I ask as I listen to the shows of others.

Two examples of shows I'm listening to for stylistic cues: Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid podcast and Adam Wolf's BizTech podcast. Chris, who is the CTO of the Student Loan Network in Boston, MA, has produced 684 daily podcasts about the ins and out of student financial aid in specific and finance, technology & marketing in general - FAP's shows average about 12 minutes; Adam, as the owner of Cellcon Consulting in New York City, has produced 26 weekly BizTech podcasts - BizTech shows run about 3 minutes, 15 seconds.

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"

- Morgan Stanley, Atlantis and the Evil Empire;
- What is Sledding?
- and, Seeking Stylistic Cues from FAP and BizTech.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 60: Minute Tech 45 show notes

2007-12-06T06:56:00.000-05:00

45 - What is Tobogganing?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 45 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday, December 6th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Intel's Penryn and ESA's Columbus make debuts;
- What is Tobogganing?
- Listening to my earlier shows...for enjoyment.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Intel's Penryn Chip, which has entered production at Intel's Chandler, Arizona fab facility, may make it's debut at the Consumer Electronics Show and/or MacWorld in upcoming January 2008. Writers and bloggers have been speculating for months that the next device to make it out of Santa Job's Cupertino workshop will be a subnotebook with solid-state Flash RAM drive, meaning no spinning disk, allowing for immediate boot up of the notebook computer. That could be cool...though my notebook is immediate bootup now: Apple has the sleep mode which works extremely well - I seldom actually shut the machine down. The subnotebook rumors, by the way, include thoughts about a potential iTouch device, which, similar to the iTouch iPod and iPhone, but larger, would be a true Star Trek-like handheld computing device.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Steve Jobs was inducted into the California Hall of Fame last night by Gov Schwarzenegger last night, along with 12 other "visionaries and trailblazers". There's a web cast of the induction event in Sacramento, at a link here in the show notes: http://www.gov.ca.gov/multimedia . Interestingly, Jobs shares the spotlight with such luminaries as Elizabeth Taylor, Tiger Woods, Milton Berle and Dr. Jonas Salk. Hmmm, I though that Pittsburgh claimed Jonas Salk? I guess ya gotta glom onto famous names wherever and whenever you can.

Finally, as reported in an earlier show, Space Shuttle Atlantis is lifting off later today to deliver a science experiments module from the European Space Agency. The 11-day mission will allow astronauts to attach the module & deliver French astronaut Leopold Eyharts, who will inaugurate experiments on the Christopher Columbus module. The ESA's module was originally slated for a 2003 launch, which was long delayed by the re-entry disintegration of the Columbia space shuttle. In 2008, an ESA robotic spacecraft is set to dock with the ISS, as well as two Japanese modules, which will be delivered by space shuttle flights.

Tech Question:

What is toboganning? Interestingly, wikipedia's entry focuses on sled & sleigh variants which my mental image does not show as toboggan's. In my childhood memories, a toboggan was 100% the wooden or plastic sled which curls up in front, allowing for multiple people to sit together for a nearly uncontrollable ride down a snow hillside. In fact, as wikipedia does describe, the toboggan would be wooden slats fastened together, perhaps 10 or 12 2-inch slats, with a steam-bent front, curled in a J-shape, with a rope fastened to the front to allow both for basic steering, but primarily for pulling the Toboggan back up the hill. In Cleveland, where I grew up, we'd go to Shaker Height's Thornton Park, which had the highest sledding hill in the immediate vicinity. Very awesome, very icy, very steep, very cold, very fun.

I suppose this type of device for developing break-neck speed down a snowy slope might fall into the sledda-non-grata category for safety-conscious parents...but it sure is a vastly fun experience for all involved.

According to wikipedia, the Olympic bobsled is a type of Toboggan...but I'd think that it is more akin to a dog sled or horse-drawn sleigh, in that it has four rails under the body, allowing for traction on snowy or icy terrain...which in the case of the bobsled is an artificial course set up for the purpose of producing a harrowing race against the clock. My palms sweat at the mere thought of hurtling down such a course....though it is in essence a very controlled experience. :-)

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Do you remember the admonitions to Killashandra Ree, in Anne McCaffrey's Crystalsinger to record memories, as the very long life of a crystalsinger causes memories of past life to fade quickly? My podcasts are seeming to be a great way to record not only past tech news, but also how I thought about those things, interpretted them and put them into words. I've been enjoying going back and listening to my past Minute Tech podcast shows, which I've burned to CD for easy listening anywhere, partially to see what I didn't talk about in great enough depth and partially to see how I may not have had the right information, so that I can elaborate in another show. For instance, I mentioned Asberger's (sp?) syndrome, as referenced on the Infinite Mind radio show...I need to elaborate on that, since I gave absolutely no information on that particular podcast.

This is a great reason to blog, podcast or vidcast. Current generations complain that previous generations did not document their lives, giving the younger ones a sense of history, of where they came from, of what their forebears thought about the world. Now with these forms of expression they'll be inundated, for good or ill, with these vast amounts of artistic output. How will they catalog it all...how will it all be assimilated by future generations?

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"

- Intel's Penryn and ESA's Columbus make debuts;
- What is Tobogganing?
- Listening to my earlier shows...for enjoyment.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 59: Minute Tech 44 show notes

2007-12-05T07:16:00.000-05:00

44 - What is Ice Skating?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 44 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Oil is up, Oil is Down, Imus is up, Apple is Down;
- What is Ice Skating?
- Toyboxcar Leads Me to Scribd.com.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Oil goes up, oil goes down. Very cyclical. Very Tao.

Bloomberg reports this morning that the spot price of crude oil is on it's way down again due to evidence that OPEC is stepping up production to avoid....for our sake, not theirs...continuation of $100 per bbl, and also in part due to the slight lessening of tensions over Iran. Why Iran, you may well ask? It seems that a US Intelligence report suggests that Iran's current ability to produce "the bomb" is not as near as originally feared. This seems a long way off from the turmoil surrounding the Valerie Plume episode of US Intelligence.

As of Tuesday morning in London, crude was trading down at $88.74 dollars per bbl, nearly 10 percent off the high close of $99.29 reached on November 21st.

In other news, "Chimps exhibit superior memory, Outshining Humans"...and "Don Imus Steps Gingerly on the Air". You may draw your own conclusions from that juxtaposition, provided inadvertantly by news.google.com.

Also, in Minute Tech 43 I mentioned that Apple is on the rise insofar as market share goes...but the stock sure tanked on Monday. Why is that - it could be many factors: a new patent-infringement lawsuit brought against Apple and AT&T for the "visual voicemail", regarding two patents from 10 years ago; the fact that NBC has officially pulled video programming from Apple's iTunes marketplace, since Apple wouldn't allow them to raise prices; or because, as Fast Company is quoted as saying in a ZDnet article, Apple is a hermetically sealed company in an increasingly interoperable world.

Tech Question:

What is ice Skating?

Wikipedia has a fine article on this. Suffice it to say that ice skating is the act of sliding along on a smooth surface of frozen H20 with rails of a hard substance strapped to the bottom of your feet, either for the purpose of hitting a little black pancake with a stick, of leaping with a partner in twists and turns, of sliding at breakneck speed around a tight racecourse, or for touring up a frozen river in search of adventure.

wikipedia lists five types of ice skates: Figure, Hockey, Bandy, Racing and Touring. The principle differences between hockey and figure skates is the serrated toe "pick" on the front of figure skates, to allow for certain jumps, spins and stopping maneuvers, and the uppers: hockey skates typically have hard plastic & leather uppers for stiffness, whereas figure skates are primarily leather, which still provides significant support.

Touring and Speed skating skates have blades longer than hockey or figure skating - touring skates may be designed to be attached to the bottom of the shoe or boot, and some speed skates have hinge attachements for the boot.

Bandy skates generally have a shorter boot, not covering the ankle, and wikipedia says that the bandy skate is designed to reduce injury to other players. Bandy is essentially field hockey on ice, with a curved-end stick and a bandy ball, as opposed to a hockey puck.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

On gmail this morning I got a notification that "toyboxcars" is following me on Twitter. Who? What? Following the link provided in the e-mail, I come across the Twitter home page of somebody following 201 people, with 6 followers and 0 posts. Why am I going to follow somebody who's not starting out with contributions, but just lurking? Toyboxcars, if you're listening, I'll follow when you've started contributing to the twitter-verse.

Toyboxcars did have one interesting item: he or she had a link to a page on a web site I'd never heard of: www.scribd.com. Scribd, with two primary slogans of "Publish yourself online" and "Scribd is for Writers" appears to be a site for publishing documents of various formats that you want others to read. The three big buttons on the first page are basically:

1 - Upload document - we accept all major formats - free unlimited storage!
2 - Share with the world: (a) Publish to a wide audience, (b) Get feedback from Scribd's community, and (c) Embed your docs anywhere on the web;
3 - Explore our Library: eBooks, Schoolwork, Sheet Music, Legal Docs, photos, Presentations, Zines, Poetry, etc.

Hey, this could be interesting. Looks like lots of abuse via spam, but also some useful stuff - a search on "wu style", ostensibly searching for anything on wu style tai chi, yields a long listing, including a PDF of Bartlby.com's The Sayings of Confucius...with selectable text. I'll finish with this except - I was able to highlight in the PDf, but not copy/past... remember to check out www.scribd.com:

The name Confucius is the latinized form of the Chinese characters, K'ung Foo-tsze, meaning, "The master, K'ung." The bearer of this name was born of an ancient and distinguished family in the district of Tsow, in the present province of Shen-tung, China, B.C. 551.

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"

- Oil is up, Oil is Down, Imus is up, Apple is Down;
- What is Ice Skating?
- Toyboxcar Leads Me to Scribd.com.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 58: Minute Tech 43 show notes

2007-12-03T15:17:00.000-05:00

43 - What are Winter Sports?

Good afternoon, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 43 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Monday, December 3rd, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Snow, Hadrosaurs and Apple all on the rise;
- What are Winter Sports?
- HangBoarding may be in my future.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

What we experienced as rain Sunday in Pittsburgh, thank goodness, was experienced as a bunch of snow in the northeast. Parts of New York State had six inches of the white stuff, while New Jersey was getting some three inches.

Out in North Dakota, I don't know about the above ground weather, but scientists are just releasing information that below ground the weather is quite, uh, preserving. Dakota, as the unearthed hadrosaur has been named, is a dinosaur body that was first found as a body...with skin and musculature preserved in the fossilized state rather than just the skeleton. Scientists speculate that the ground in North Dakota at the time somehow converted the whole body to minerals before bacteria could eat away at the corpse. Wow...just thinking the word "corpse" with a dinosaur fossil....makes you look quickly behind you to make sure you're not being watched.... :-)
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071203_dakota.htm

Meanwhile, back in present day, we have a new milestone - Apple, according to Net Applications, is up to a high of 6.6% market share, and the safari web browser is up to 5.14%. Both these measurements are based on computers that have accessed many websites, rather than the number of units sold that other companies use for tabulation. Check out www.netapplications.com, or any of the mac rumor sites such as Mac Daily News, MacRumors or ThinkSecret for more complete reporting.

Tech Question:

Winter Sports: Skating, hockey, figure, tour & speed; Sledding; Skiing, both cross country & downhill, and related sports; Taboganning; Hang-boarding; curling...what else is there?

Obviously, winter sports encompass that set of sports that are unique to the winter, that is that they are not, or can not, generally, be performed during the summer. With the advent of modern cooling systems, ice skating has become a year-round sport, whether you're in Calgary or Miami. With various forms of astroturf combined with treadmills, or cross-country ski's with wheels, you can nearly ski year round. And of course the wheeled versions of skates & snowboards have been around for decades in the form of rollerskates, inline skates and skateboards.

This past weekend I took my son to a sixth skating lesson at a local ice rink. While it was like pulling teeth to get him on the ice, I couldn't wait. Although I skated quite a bit, and played hockey, as a youth, I haven't skated before this year in probably 25 years. Now, I did pick up on inline roller blading several years ago while living in San Francisco, which whetted my thirst for this type of movement...but ice really is quite different. On ice you have much more freedom than on wheels on pavement. Ice-skating backwards, if you can manage it both mentally and physically, is rather effortless....doing so on roller-blades is more suicidal.

After skating for about 1 and a half hours on Saturday...about an hour past my son's endurance...I realized that I got more than just movement out of the experience...but some exercise as well. My primary exercise these days is commuting in my car, so you can imagine that some atypical exercise form might be welcome. Later in the evening, I went straight to Youtube, and glommed onto videos of how to do various things on the ice, including types of "extreme" skating.

In the next few podcasts I'll focus on some of the technical details of winter sports...if you're listening in the Northern Hemisphere...or at least in the northern reaches, you'll notice outside that this is the right season for this focus. Hang on!

Podcasting - Blogging News:

So, speaking of blog journeys, as I did in MT number 42, I took a couple more yesterday and this morning. From Facebook, I followed link to the blog of an old friend, Charles Buchwald, at http://buchwald.ca/. Charles is a designer for HangBoard Snoflight, Inc. HangBoard makes a most interesting device - as it's name implies, it appears to be a snowboard on you hang from a harness, somewhat akin to a hangglider harness, and swing side to side to move the board left and right. If you go to www.hangboard.ca, you'll see links to a few Youtube video demonstrations.

Personally, with all the societal opposition to sledding these days...and I guess I refer to my inlaws' desire not to allow my son to sled due to the potential hazards...I'm hot to try this device. It looks very cool to be racing down a mountain on a futuristic flexible flyer, which looks to have quite a bit of control and maneuverability in the hands of the "pilot".

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"

- Snow, hadrosaurs and Apple all on the rise;
- What are Winter Sports?
- HangBoarding may be in my future.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 57: Minute Tech 42 show notes

2007-12-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

42 - Why Do I Like This Book?

Good Morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 42 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday and Sunday, December 1st and 2nd , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- iClone meets iPhone, and Columbus bumps the AMS;
- Why Do I Like This Book?
- 37Roses.com leads to a web journey.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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.

Happy Birthday, Larry! Enjoy the book "Light on Yoga" by B.K.S. Iyengar. :-)

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-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Tech News:

Now that's an interesting name for a weekend column: Scotland on Sunday, from Scotsman.com. Murdo MacLeod from Scotland on Sunday reports that a Chinese electronics firm has developed an iPhone clone, complete with touchscreen. The expectation from the article, titled "All-in-one 'iClone' from China defies Apple to call its lawyers", is that Apple will find some way to sue the Chinese company, and the article quotes US technology writer Ed Finegold as writing "Forget the iPhone - give me an iClone."

But remember folks, this is the issue that most are forgetting when they think a competitor has a chance at becoming the new king of the iPod or iPhone castle: it's not the device, it's the service. In a word, iTunes. Media delivery. That's Apple's not-so-secret ingredient.

In space news, the European Space Agency's Columbus module for the International Space Station is set to be launched later this week on STS-122, Space Shuttle Atlantis. The Columbus module will be attached to the new Harmony module, which was delivered to the ISS during the previous shuttle mission. Relatedly, an article by Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post describes how NASA has decided to deliver this module rather than another module called the AMS, or Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The Columbus module is set up to "allow scientists to conduct long-term biological, fluid and materials science research in weightless conditions, " while the AMS is an automated device which would detect cosmic rays outside of earth's atmosphere, aiding scientists in the study of dark matter and antimatter. The ESA has built both modules and would like to see both sent aboard the Space Shuttle on separate missions, but NASA has decided to stop Shuttle flights as of 2010, and the AMS is not schedule to be on any of the 10 remaining flights.

Tech Question:

Why do I like this book? I'm holding here in my hand a book. Okay, I'm really typing, and the book sits next to me. This book is Light on Yoga, by B.K.S. Iyengar. I have not yet read this book, even though I bought it probably 10 years ago. It along with thousands of other books are helping hold my house down. Why? Because I like books.

Devices & services like the Amazon Kindle, the Sony eReader before it, and Audible's audio books, have begun to cast a pall over the longevity of the bound book. What is the likely span that we'll still have bound books? Will they merely be a legacy product that we provide to those without access to digitized information?

While I have not fully read this book about yoga, I have read sections of it, and it's 544 pages comprise a vast overview of yoga...which I've thus far failed to introduce into my life. Therefore I'm giving the book to my Tai Chi teacher in the hopes that he'll review the contents and incorporate some of this into our lessons - he has an intense ability to review martial arts, philosophy and various related books and incorporate bits and pieces into his lessons and lectures.

That is the value of a bound book. I can buy it. I can peruse it. I can give it to someone more inclined to use it as it was intended to be used. Can you do that with a Kindle book? Can you do that with an Audible recording? Can you do that with an iTunes song or video? No, you cannot. And that is the continuing value of bound, paper books, at least for those of us fool enough to pick them up whenever, wherever we see them. :-)

Podcasting - Blogging News:

Blog reading is interesting in part because the ideas can lead to informational journeys across the web. Yesterday, I was reading a post by Jennie Roth, on her 37roses.com blog, which I mentioned as part of episode 41's review of the TechBurgh video podcast. This post was about the man who, along with co-host Kaylynn, is the producer of the TechBurgh podcast, Andy Quayle. Andy is from the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish sea, between Scotland and Northern Ireland. He is therefore "manx", which is the description for people from Man...and the blog post is therefore titled "andythemanx"...perhaps a playful play on "andy the man"?

Anyways, the blog links to a YouTube video that Andy suggests, that's a longish video about the Isle of Man, targeted toward tourists, businesses and potential emigres. Having watched the lions share of the video, my interest was merely piqued, so I trudged on over to wikipedia dot org and read first the article on "manx", and second the article on "Isle of Man". Fascinating information about a subject that I had absolutely no previous knowledge. Did you know that the northern portion of Man is primarily flat...north of the 621 meter mountain Snaefell...having been covered by glaciers that spread out from Scotland during the last ice age? And Interestingly, the Church of England diocese is called the "Diocese of Sodor and Man". Sodor....where have I heard that name? Thomas the Tank Engine? :-)

Go to a blog today and begin your own journey...it will be the first of many.

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"

- iClone meets iPhone, and Columbus bumps the AMS;
- Why Do I Like This Book?
- 37Roses.com leads to a web journey.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 56: Minute Tech 41 show notes

2007-12-01T09:25:00.000-05:00

41 - What is a Call Center?

Good afternoon, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 41 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Friday, November 30th , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- E*Trade and Morgan Stanley suffer Subprime issues;
- Why use a Call Center?
- TechBurgh, Pittsburgh's tech video podcast.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am 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:

In the ongoing subprime mortgage saga, which has affected banks which have sold the mortgages as well as hedge funds and other investment vehicles which have purchased the securitized mortgages, now the investment houses which helped build and distribute the securitized debt instruments are feeling the pinch. Last week, E*Trade Financial Corporation announced that they had some 3 B in subprime exposure...and this week Citadel Investment Group, a hedge fund with lots of E*Trade equity already, stepped up to buy that 3B portfolio for some 800 Million, as well as a 1.75 million cash infusion for E*Trade in exchange for a 20% holding in E*Trade and 10-yr 12.5% notes. Separately, veteran investment house Morgan Stanley, with 3.7B in exposure which is to be written down against it's books in the fourth quarter, has chosen to remove current co-presidents Zoe Cruz and Robert Scully. CEO John Mack has now finally removed a last vestige of his predecessor's team: Zoe Crus was a lieutenant to former MS CEO Phil Purcell, who was ousted back in 2005.

Just to give a size comparison between E*Trade and Morgan Stanley:
ETFC - 2.1B s, 1.9B c, 21B d, 420 m sh
Morgan Stanley - 40B s, 930B c, 640B d, 1 B sh

Tech Question:

The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "Why Use a Call Center?".

What is a call center? If you've ever called a catalog merchandizer such as Cold Water Creek, Lands End or Victorias Secret, you've probably experienced a call center, where a specialized phone system puts your call into a hold queue designed to route your call to the next available operator. In these instances, a roomful of men and women are standing by in a 24x7 shift rotation awaiting to service the calls that come in to place orders, determine the status of a purchase or delivery, or lodge a complaint.

Similarly, if you have an organization that uses technology, and you are the technology support department, people will be calling you left and right to let you know that their keyboard doesn't work after pouring Sprite into it, or that MS Word has stopped spellchecking as the client hovers over the salesperson's shoulder, or that the printer has stopped printing. At some point, these calls get overwhelming for people to handle on a willy-nilly basis, and a team of specialized people must be created to field these calls, weed out the over-the-phone solutions from the on-site repairs, and make some sense of the number of calls coming in.

In show number 40 we reviewed how to track those calls that are coming in - today, I just want to touch on the fact that telephone systems are available that will help to not only manage the inbound calls, but also to provide additional information to callers. As much as we all want to talk to a human, you must admit that ATM's have made banking world's easier. In the same sense, menu's on phone systems can both help resolve some issues, provide information to callers and help log information about the caller as they're waiting for a customer support representative. My favorite example of this is a bank or brokerage house, where you provide your name, your government registration number, in America that's the Social Security Number, and details about your problem...all of this is handled by the voice analysis software that's part of the phone system.

One piece of software you might have never heard of, but which you may hear of more in the future is Asterisk. Asterisk is an Open Source telephone management software system. Go to www.asterisknow.org for more information and a free download of their software. With this type of system, you can use essentially a PC to manage inbound calls for which even 5 years ago you'd pay $100,000 to a telephone provider for a PBX, or private branch exchange. Interestingly, at digium.com, the commercial side of Asterisk has been implemented in a simple VOIP appliance, which can be purchased for as little as 1,900 dollars.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

On TechBurgh, Kaylynn and Andy interview many interesting tech people on this Pittsburgh video podcast. In episode 15, the two hosts discusses Lifecasting with veteran lifecaster Lisa Batey of New York. What is lifecasting? Why, using video to show much of your life to others. Why would you do that? Watch the show! ...and by the way, Lisa calls it a "live cast".

On episode 16, Kaylynn interviews Jennie Roth about her 37roses.com blog and blogging in general. Jennie tries to post almost every day about things Pittsburgh, Hockey and parts of her life in general. She's a member of the Pgh Women's blog community. Jennie says: "don't be afraid"about blogging. "Don't thrive on feedback."

Jennie doesn't track those who connect to her blog. Is this a good thing? I think you have to review what your goals are before you criticize...but tracking hits can be educational if you don't go overboard. :-)

Shoot on over to Techburgh.tv for the blog and most recent show, and over to techburgh.blip.tv for all 16 episodes. Kaylynn and Andy like to have prize give aways...is that for every show? Cool!

Lisa Batey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Batey & NekomimiLisa.com

blog of Jennie Roth http://www.37roses.com/

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"

- E*Trade and Morgan Stanley suffer Subprime issues;
- Why use a Call Center?
- TechBurgh, Pittsburgh's tech video podcast.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

phyllostachys 55: Minute Tech 40 show notes

2007-11-29T13:02:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 54 - Minute Tech 39 show notes

2007-11-28T08:24:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 53: Minute Tech 38 show notes

2007-11-26T06:53:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 52: Minute Tech 37 show notes

2007-11-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 51: Minute Tech 36 show notes

2007-11-22T07:36:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 50: Minute Tech 35 show notes

2007-11-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 49: Minute Tech 34 show notes

2007-11-19T08:13:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 48: Minute Tech 33 show notes

2007-11-18T08:37:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 47: Minute Tech 32 show notes

2007-11-16T08:08:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 46: Minute Tech 31 show notes

2007-11-15T07:03:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachy 45: Minute Tech 30 - Empathize

2007-11-14T07:11:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 44: Minute Tech 29 - Emulate

2007-11-13T06:50:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 43: Minute Tech 28 show notes

2007-11-12T08:13:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.26: Minute Tech 026

2007-11-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.27: Minute Tech 027

2007-11-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.25: Minute Tech 025

2007-11-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.4: Minute Tech 004

2007-11-08T06:12:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.3: Minute Tech 003

2007-11-08T06:08:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.2: Minute Tech 002

2007-11-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

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.

phyllostachys 42.1 - Minute Tech 001 show notes

2007-11-07T06:19:00.000-05:00

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

Phyllostachys 41: Minute Tech podcast

2007-10-13T07:40:00.000-04:00

When creating a daily podcast, do you really shoot for 7 days a week or 5? I haven't decided yet. But, I do like talking about all sorts of technology: current news, the elements of technology, answering people's questions, and reviewing blogging and podcasting.

Check out the Minute Tech podcast.

..phyllostachys.

Phyllostachys 40: 24HCM2 Interview with Joe DeFerrari

2007-10-05T15:23:00.000-04:00

One of the 24 Hour Creative Marathon's sponsors is an interesting organization called Unicorn Mountain. Unicorn Mountain's creator, Joe DeFerrari was present for and active in the 24 hour marathon. Logos.Blip.TV talks with Joe about his artwork, the marathon, Unicorn Mountain and Pittsburgh.

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Phyllostachys 39 - Rachel Sager @ the 24 Hour Creative Marathon

2007-10-04T07:10:00.000-04:00

24 Hour Creative Marathon: some come to create, some come to sustain themselves on caffeine for 24 hours, some come as organizers and others come to creatively document what the others are doing. Rachel Sager had attended the first 24 hour Creative Marathon earlier in 2007, and came to the second to push along the creative impulse - a constant challenge for all of us.

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Phyllostachys 38 - 24hcm2 Interview with Kelly Andreson

2007-10-02T07:16:00.000-04:00

Logos.blip.tv's first brush with Kelly was as the instigator of artistic creation by Mike and John...but Kelly's intensely focused painting of surrealistic & slightly macabre scenes captures the videographers camera...and imagination.

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..phyllostachys.

Phyllostachys 37 - Mike Woycheck & John Carman at the Creative Marathon

2007-09-29T14:10:00.000-04:00

Mike and John came to the Creative Marathon to provide support and assistance...never suspecting that they'd be "encouraged" to by creative. Well, encouraged they were, and create they did. Although they expect that art dealers from Coruscant will swoop down and pay thousands of Republic credits for their respective works of art...they also were just having fun putting hands into messy, messy paint! :-)

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Phyllostachys 36 - Creative Marathon Interview with Michael Fulk

2007-09-29T12:04:00.000-04:00

Michael Fulk is working on ideas for the Creative Marathon - some of us enter the room full of inspiration, and some, like both Michael and me, must work at drawing inspiration out of the energy flowing through the room. Michael is a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh; he currently macro-blogs from blog.mfulk.com and micro-blogs as minkar.

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Phyllostachys 35 - Creative Marathon Interview with Josh Sager

2007-09-29T10:15:00.000-04:00

Sitting at the 2nd 24 Hour Creative Marathon's registration desk, coaxing the likeness of a robot out of a gessoed canvas with his paints, Josh Sager is able to greet guests, drink Burn soda, talk with artists and converse with his muses all at the same time. With multitasking like that, you'd think even an artist would wilt by the wee hours of the morning...but Josh was still going strong:

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..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys 34 - Creative Marathon

2007-09-29T09:03:00.000-04:00

The 2nd 24 Hour Creative Marathon is upon us, and the artists are in full swing. They've come, they've seen, and they either painted, drew, blogged, twittered, video'd or...slept in preparation for the upcoming daylight, during which they'll each perform according to their artiste muses.

After a long work day yesterday, I picked up my wife near her place of work, at midnight, Friday, Sept 28th, and we drove on over to Bellevue, PA's Creative Treehouse. My goal for the evening was to talk with the artists and entice a few to allow me to interview them on-camera. This morning's first video is an overview of the scenes from last night and of the various people with whom I spoke. There, amidst the cacophony of music playing & people talking in a large, open room...several people slept in preparation for the final leg of the Creative Marathon.

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..phyllostachys.

phyllostachys thirty-one: DJ G of The G SPOD

2007-09-09T08:03:00.000-04:00

This interview is the twelfth in a series of short interviews by Alex Landefeld of fellow attendee's and presenters at PCPGH2. DJ G is the host and co-producer of Pittsburgh's G Spod podcast: "dj G brings you the real queer folks from Liberty Ave and beyond." With co-producer John Carman, DJ G is also a sponsor of Podcamp Pittsburgh 2.

PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 (PCPGH2) is was a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for people who create, enjoy or are interested in learning more about blogs, vlogs, audio podcasts, web video, content networks and new media monetization.

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phyllostachys thirty: Podcamp Pittsburgh 2 Interview Retrospective

2007-09-06T08:41:00.001-04:00

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phyllostachys twenty-nine: Norman Huelsman

2007-09-05T08:14:00.000-04:00

This interview is the eleventh in a series of short interviews by Alex Landefeld of fellow attendee's and presenters at PCPGH2. Norman, along with Justin Kownacki, Jia Ji and others, was a co-organizer of Podcamp Pittsburgh 2, and Bootcamp Pittsburgh in April, 2007, both of which were held at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

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phyllostachys twenty-eight: Chris Thorn

2007-09-03T09:20:00.000-04:00

PodCamp Pittsburgh 2 (PCPGH2) is was a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for people who create, enjoy or are interested in learning more about blogs, vlogs, audio podcasts, web video, content networks and new media monetization.

This interview is the tenth in a series of short interviews by Alex Landefeld of fellow attendee's and presenters at PCPGH2. Chris is a local Pittsburgh podcaster: he and his friends Dave and Rob podcast weekly a news-of-the-world show titled "That's Good to Know" -- with minor focuses on the comics and podcasting industries. Chris can be found posting, under the aegis of That's Good to Know, at his Blogger and MySpace pages:

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