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Thursday, April 04, 2002 |
Managing Einsteins:Leading High-Tech Workers in the Digital Age
"In many workplaces, especially high-tech ones, managers and those they manage are operating on parallel tracks, with different sets of motivations, expectations and rewards. How to keep tech workers happy, given that they likely don't want the same things as their bosses, and certainly would choose different ways to achieve them? The long-suffering Jim Richards submitted this review of Managing Einsteins, a book which attempts to inject some sanity into the situation by clueing managers in on what it is their programmers and other tech workers might actually want in a workplace. Read on for his review." [Slashdot]
From the review itself:
"The mains themes throughout the book are:
- Managers should be honest with their workers about the company's successes and failures
- The point of management is to guide and suggest not to be autocratic (the metaphor of herding cats was used to illustrate this)
- Let the Einsteins have freedom in work environment (location - there is a whole chapter on telecommuting, hours and style)
- Einsteins are project-focused, not job-focused
- They value training and education highly
- They require a stimulating and fun work place."
Reading the review reminded me of Bruce Tulgan's Managing Generation X: How to Bring Out the Best in Young Talent. Many of the principles outlined between the two of them provide a roadmap for how to keep me happy and working at my best. I imagine a lot of the folks in libraries who have become the "techie" by default would appreciate these themes, too.
11:55:23 PM Permanent link here
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AOL Buddies Up to Increase IM Wingspan
"Alexandria, Va.-based PresenceWorks will use its 'presence technology' to embed AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) capabilities into Web sites. For example, putting the technology on Monster.com, a job search Web site, would allow job seekers to chat with potential employers who could leave their AIM contact information on the site. Shoppers on eBay, meanwhile, could interact with sellers, and the list of e-mail senders in a Microsoft Outlook in-box could be turned into one long "buddy list."
Currently, someone using IM technology must compile addresses to form a buddy list, which shows whether people are offline or online and available to chat. With the new embedded technology, people can contact scores of strangers using instant messaging. PresenceWorks' software embeds "presence information"--signals that show when someone is online--into the directories and databases driving Web sites and consumer Web directories.
'Presence is the key to making AIM use ubiquitous,' said Raul Mujica, vice president of AOL's AIM division." [CNET News.com]
A couple of points here.
- Will Trillian continue to work in this context? I'm curious to know because I use it extensively now. It's Wonderful with a big W. It's what IM should be - interoperable! (Note: IM = Instant Messaging)
- Instant messaging is how a lot of kids communicate today. Remember "The Telephone Song" scene in Bye Bye Birdie? A remake would do it on IM using abbreviations. If your library isn't starting to learn how to message, you'd better start. If you want to practice, AIM me. But start learning how it works and what it's like. Practice an IM reference interview with a colleague. Get used to reading half-sentences written without capital letters or punctuation. I know you're cringing at that thought, but actually you get used to it pretty quickly. Even when your undergraduate degree was journalism.
- I wonder how much the Presence technology will cost? Can anyone tell me how much LSSI costs?
11:45:32 PM Permanent link here
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Vintage Tourist Poster Stamps
 "The USPS is issuing these great retro tourist-poster stamps, one for each state, tomorrow (wish they'd do a matching line of luggage-stickers!). The USPS site is down as of this writing, but here's a mirror of the sheet." [bOing bOing]
This is totally cool! I used to collect stamps when I was a kid, in part because my family traveled a lot. I'd like to pass my collection on to Kailee, so maybe I'll re-start collecting with this set.
11:30:29 PM Permanent link here
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"Code-named Mercury, the upgrade will add features to the company's Windows Media digital rights management software that sits on handhelds, MP3 players and similar gadgets. The company has had a version of the software available for portable devices since 1999, but that version has had fewer features than technology Microsoft produces for PCs.
The move is an attempt to ease the fears of record companies and other content providers who worry that anti-piracy locks used to protect online content will break down on portable devices, which don't have the processing power or software support of a computer....
Most devices lack critical features found on a computer, such as a system clock. The absence of those features makes it difficult to instruct a song to expire after a given date, or set a number of times that a song can be played once it has been transferred to the device.
As a result, most of the big subscription services, such as MusicNet, Pressplay or Listen.com's Rhapsody, prevent their subscribers from moving music onto portable devices. Rioport, which already has technology for protecting content on devices, has won a few licenses from record companies to offer music for MP3 players. Analysts say the portability problem must be solved before the subscription services can become mainstream....
In related news, Liquid Audio said Thursday that it won a patent on its own technology for anti-copying technology aimed at portable devices." [CNET News.com]
Remind me again why we need legislation for this?
11:25:21 PM Permanent link here
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Geographic Profiling
"Threering.net currently has a rather interesting system (written, yuck, in ASP), that does its best to figure out your geographical location and then adds you as a dot on a map of the world. It seems to work pretty well, gave me a 74% chance of being in Edinburgh, which is just 40 or 50 miles from me. More interesting than the site itself however are the implications- I'm reminded of the infamous French case where Yahoo was banned from allowing French people to buy Nazi memorabilia on its auction sites.
As the politicians and moral-majoritarians become more and more familiar with the internet, that sort of filtering is bound to be called for more and more, and it seems that the technology to profile geographically is advanced enough to actually do the job, albeit imperfectly." [kuro5hin.org]
It nailed my location. Try it yourself and see how it does.
11:19:34 PM Permanent link here
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"Jack Valenti was recently interviewed by John Borland for ZDNet News (Terrorized by file swappers). As a public service, LawMeme annotates Jack's answers:
But there's only one thing to do, and that is for all the parties--content companies, technology companies and consumer-electronics companies--to sit down and figure out how to give consumers a legitimate alternative to stealing. [In January 2001, Valenti was saying that movie studios would be online in six months (link). In April 2001, he said it would be four to six months (link). By the way, if Hollywood could invent its own secure distribution mechanisms ... why does Silicon Valley have to be forced to make these technologies? Since it is apparent that Hollywood has not come forward with such a device, might it be because it is not very easy to do?]. If you put movies on the Internet in legitimate services, at fair prices, it will entice consumers. [True. Where are the movies? We were promised them months ago.]
That's why I think we need to do this now. In order to avoid a crisis, we need to start now, immediately. [What crisis? Movies had a record year last year, following a record year before that. Production costs are dropping significantly and negative costs (the cost to make copies of a movie and ship to theaters) is also dropping and may eventually disappear. What is the real crisis? The fact that marketing costs increased nearly 10% (link). What does inexpensive distribution threaten? The marketing department. Which is what this is really all about.]" [Lawmeme]
11:16:14 PM Permanent link here
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From The Peanut Gallery :-)
1790
1831
1909
1962
1965
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1974
1976
1998
"What stimulated the flurry of activity since 1962?"
11:10:52 PM Permanent link here
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Web-based Information on Judges
"Trial lawyers know how important judges are to their cases, and that's why the first thing they ask about a case (usually even before the facts) is "who's the judge?" I've often thought that someone should create a website with information about judges, and where lawyers can post comments (ideally, anonymously) about the judges before whom they practice. I guess, ideally, it would be a state-by-state thing.
I mentioned this to my friend Buzz (attorney, and purveyor of ActiveWords) and he sent me this link for a site that someone is putting together for judges in Utah. I wonder if there is anything like this going on elsewhere? Maybe some of us lawyer-bloggers can pick up the slack." [Ernie the Attorney]
Another great example of enhancing the legal system via online tools
11:03:28 PM Permanent link here
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"Denise Howell's site (another lawyer-blogger) tipped me off to a young artist named Thomas Pacheco. He is seven and hopes to continue painting for a long time, but you know how it is. Often the most talented artists pass away too soon . That may be true for Thomas, although we hope not. He is waging a difficult battle with cancer. At least check out his site, and his art too if you can..." [Ernie the Attorney]
9:59:25 PM Permanent link here
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"7. Librarians: A Keystone Species
In this chapter, we recount our anthropological studies of reference librarians, some of our favorite people. We discuss the hidden work they do, and we show how they are a "keystone species" in many of today's information ecologies. We feel librarians are more needed than ever as the volume and diversity of information on the Internet grows."
The above is from a book called Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart by Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki L. O'Day, courtesy of Steven Vore. I'll be adding it to The Shifted Reading List, too. It's just waiting for an intrepid blogger: The Keystone Librarian.
9:19:49 PM Permanent link here
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Law Is Free
"After following the initial progress of the Radio community, I've come to believe that this type of web publishing will have a widespread and drastic effect on the development of the law. By changing the way court opinions are published, I believe the law itself can be transformed in the same way that web publishing has transformed software and news content....
An increasing number of excellent practicing WV attorneys have told me recently that they are cancelling their subscriptions to commercial electronic legal publishers. Why? Two reasons. First, because all the content is already available, and searchable, directly from the source itself, right on the Web, from the day the decisions are released. What's more, a service I started last year delivers short topical summaries of all opinions filed via e-mail. This simple idea has real power to attorneys, who have repeatedly praised this service.
The point -- law is free. So now that courts have the power to deliver content themselves, why aren't they doing it? Well many are at least posting decision on their respective Web sites. And there are movements afoot to create common markup standards for court decisions. But why not take the next step? My guess is that the right technological answer hasn't been available yet. But with the advent of XML-RPC, SOAP, and DIY Web Services, I think the landscape is changing radically. Here's what I believe would change the law itself radically: Make the points of law in court decisions available as a "feed" on a macro scale -- attorneys and interested members of the public could subscribe to various topical channels of a "legal" aggregator, made up of original source contributors (courts), and open source-webloggian-legal commentators. Nothing like this is really happening now, as far as I know. (Free legal publishing sites like Findlaw simply re-post the static content made available from the various states.) That's the germ of the idea. And what I want to do with it is use Radio to create a legal feed, then see where these ideas go." [Rory Perry]
I have to say... lawyers are really running with this blogging thing. I've learned more about the law during the last couple of months than I have in years. I'm very impressed with Rory's idea - he's shifting legal information. He's even using Radio on the West Virginia's Office of the Clerk site. Ernest and Rory would be quite the dynamic duo.
Hey Bruce - got blog?
9:11:00 PM Permanent link here
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"A Japanese electronics company has developed drinking glasses which signal when they are almost empty so that table staff know when to bring a refill.
A microchip and a coil in the base of each glass interact with a coating on the surface of the vessel to work out how full it is and then signal this information to a base station....
A code in the chip identifies each individual glass and could be used to signal to mobile devices carried by table staff or a central display behind a bar." [BBC News, via Slashdot]
For Bruce, Andy, and Kate because the Slashdot headline is "Beer Stein Goes Hi Tech."
3:55:33 PM Permanent link here
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"The changing television scene, the advent of the VCR and a shift in kids' tastes have altered the way children watch cartoons. Instead of anticipating Saturday mornings, kids today can tune in to a variety of cable channels that provide animated fare virtually all day long.
"I would tend to agree that the death of the Saturday morning cartoon is at hand," animated-program producer Bill Schultz said in a telephone interview.
"With the Internet, video games, toys, afterschool and weekend activities, it's a huge challenge to get kids to actually watch broadcast television," said Janice Aguilar-Herrero, a spokeswoman for Warner Brothers Networks....
"What's dying is the institution of Saturday mornings, not cartoons for kids, which are more vigorous than ever, just spread all over the dial and at all times during the week," Burke said. "The only thing kids today have lost is the central unifying ritual of getting up at 6 a.m., getting sugary cereals, getting totally hyper and watching the same programs 50 million other kids are watching.' " [MetaFilter]
This is a topic dear to my heart, especially now because Kailee is old enough to have some interest in watching Schoolhouse Rock. We still have lots of cartoon time at my house, and we like to watch them together. We like Samurai Jack, The Proud Family, Spongebob Squarepants, The Powerpuff Girls, and Dexter's Laboratory among others. It's still a ritual, but for us it takes place as down-time before the kids go to bed rather than early Saturday morning.
The whole "shared experiences" thread in the MeFi comments does worry me for the kids. How do you have mass experience if there isn't a mass market anymore?
1:19:14 PM Permanent link here
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Ernest deconstructs law student Romano's defense of the CIPA in A Worthwhile Web Regulation - Not! and tackles his misguided legal arguments far better than I could have in my layperson's assessment.
"Romano does claim that the Supreme Court got it wrong in Reno v. ACLU, "the Supreme Court [is] drawing the wrong analogy. Online content is much more like information in the broadcast media." However, the Court's argument was that, unlike television and radio, "the receipt of information on the Internet requires a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial. A child requires some sophistication and some ability to read to retrieve material and thereby to use the Internet unattended." It is not clear to me how Romano's claim that there is a lot of porn on the Internet refutes the Supreme Court's holding."
He makes a good point about V-chips and the voluntary ratings broadcast television use, which are off by default. And when it comes down to it, there's no law saying kids have to use the internet at the library. It's their (or their parent's) choice.
If your response to that comment is that parents can't control what their kids do at the library, why and how would you expect librarians to fill that role if you can't even do it?
12:43:43 PM Permanent link here
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"The world's first lip-reading mobile is being developed by researchers at Japanese cellphone maker NTT DoCoMo.
Although still some way off, the phone should put an end to users having to shout down their handsets, even in noisy environments. All they have to do is mouth their words silently, and the phone will convert them to speech or text.
DoCoMo's early prototype works out which words are being said by using a contact sensor near the phone's mouthpiece to detect tiny electrical signals sent by muscles around the user's mouth. The signals are then converted into spoken words by a speech synthesiser, or into text for a text message or email.
DoCoMo reckons that avoiding the need to tap out emails on a tiny keypad could be a significant bonus when future 3G networks arrive.
Engineers are still developing the lip-reading software for the project. They say a test model can now recognise vowels with what they call an acceptable error rate, and are now working on the tougher task of recognising consonants. Lip-reading accuracy, they say, could also be boosted using the tiny cameras that will be common on 3G phones." [New Scientist, via Dave Farber's Interesting-People mailing list]
9:47:08 AM Permanent link here
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A Worthwhile Web Regulation
"Today final arguments will be made in a federal trial in Philadelphia challenging the constitutionality of the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000. The law would deny federal funding to any school or library that fails to install software on its computers to block Web sites containing pornographic material.
Civil libertarians oppose these restrictions, but they are no more a threat to free speech than current regulations on television and radio....
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has led an eclectic group of libraries, readers and Web site owners as plaintiffs in all three suits, argues that content on the Internet is like content in newspapers or magazines, which receive greater First Amendment protection.
Unfortunately, the plaintiffs, along with the Supreme Court, are drawing the wrong analogy. Online content is much more like information in the broadcast media, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 can be regulated because of the "pervasive" nature of broadcasting....
Of course regulating speech is tricky business. And even the law's defenders must concede that arbitrary and vague lines can divide indecent from tolerable material. But that hasn't stopped legitimate regulations on other electronic media. Adult material, for instance, must be kept to late-night broadcasts." [NY Times Op/Ed]
Except that "community standards" are constantly evolving, and what is permissible in prime time TV has certainly changed during the last decade. And "late-night broadcasts" on the East coast are not "prime-time broadcasts" on the West coast. If a library installs filters and community standards change, the library has no access to the filter lists and can't scale the tolerance level of the software. It's a moving target, and it's next to impossible to define the moment when something formerly taboo becomes acceptable. In fact, as web sites continue to proliferate, the chances of filtering software becoming even more restrictive increases while our culture heads in the opposite direction.
And never mind late-night TV. Just look at how much daytime soap operas have changed. If the government had forced TV manufacturers to embed filtering technology in televisions, you'd have to unblock soaps every day because what they show now is very different from what they showed 30 years ago. In fact, Passions would have been blocked a long time ago because of that spooky demon kid, and filtering companies probably would have blocked TeleTubbies by default.
But you don't hear pro-filtering groups calling on Congress to install filters for all television channels, 24/7. That's because monitoring what your kids watch is a known parental responsibility. Most parents do the best they can, but they know that the minute the kids go over to the neighbors, there's nothing you can do about what they might end up seeing. We can't control the billboards kids see during the bus ride to school, we can't control which magazine covers can be seen at Borders, and we can't control which issues a kid can see at a comic book store.
This is why you can't single out libraries as the place for filtering. It will work about as well as it does with print ads for cigarettes and alcohol. Unless of course you're going to stop kids from looking at any magazine that might potentially have an Absolut Vodka ad in it. The truth is that it just can't be done, as scary a thought as that is for parents (speaking first-hand here).
But this only applies to libraries that take federal money, not all PCs so it's okay, right? Wrong. Look at David Ewick at the Rochester Public Library. He's perfectly willing to use CIPA as camouflage to decide what his adult patrons can and can't see. And he still won't be able to control everything that kids see online.
The really scary part of this op/ed piece is that it's by a law student. Let's get him to represent the RIAA and MPAA because he'll be a sitting duck in a courtroom.
Special thanks to Ernest for pointing out this link!
9:09:04 AM Permanent link here
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"Vin Crosbie -- he of the Dick Tracy watch -- goes so far as to predict that Web publishing will be subsumed by a third wave of electronic publishing. (The first wave, lasting from the 1980s to the early '90s, was the era of proprietary online services, chiefly Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. The second wave began in 1993, when news organizations slowly started appearing on the Web.)
And what will make up this killer third wave? "Pervasive portable media," says Crosbie, a media consultant in Greenwich, Conn. "The Web will become the lesser online medium for commercial publications beginning in the second half of this decade...." [Online Journalism Review]
Pay close attention to this article, because it again highlights how similar libraries and newspapers are. Both traffic in information, and both need to "shift" to where their audience consumes it. I'm quoting heavily from this article, but it mirrors my own thinking perfectly.
"The revolution will arrive courtesy of outside forces. Technology companies like Samsung, Sony, Compaq, Palm and Nokia are taking the lead in developing the next generation of electronic media that will blast onto the scene in the coming years. Their research suggests that people would prefer to tote around just one or two devices rather than a single-function cell phone, palm device, laptop, Walkman, MP3 player and e-book. Not coincidentally, multifunction devices also offer the broadest opportunity for revenue....
Crosbie says the manufacturers will continue to add new communication and entertainment features with an eye toward producing a grand single device for all media that will have a larger screen than today's PDA (personal digital assistant) but remain small enough to slip into your pocket. The timeline for that? Christmas 2005."
That Christmas, Kailee will be eleven and Brent will be ten. It's amazing to think about what kind of impact such a device will on them at that early an age.
"Fidler, a veteran of 34 years in the newspaper industry, says he attended a recent conference at which participants were asked whether newspapers would continue to reach a majority of their subscribers through newsprint 20 years from now. Fidler was the only one who thought digital content would displace newsprint in the majority of subscribers' homes.
'From talking with students, but also with readers in their 30s and 40s, it's surprising how many are giving up their print subscriptions and relying on the Web and other digital formats to get their news and information," he says. 'Newspapers will need to invest in new ways of thinking if they're to remain relevant in people's lives....'
The same holds true for libraries, especially public libraries.
"Sabina Shnapek, a consultant in San Bruno, Calif., who frequently travels abroad, also sees opportunities for media companies in the emerging wireless landscape. 'Consumers want to be able to access on their wireless devices the same things they get anywhere else, only customized to their preferences and geared to their location. That means huge opportunities for media companies that know their target audience.'
"I can see the day, not too far off, when I can access my favorite news shows, like NPR's 'Morning Edition' or 'All Things Considered,' on my handheld on demand, on my schedule," Golvin says from his mobile phone. "And I would be willing to pay a subscription for that."
Sound familiar? Somebody print out a copy of this article and mail it to the entertainment industry!
"The online news industry (not the Web news industry) needs to get ready. We need to take a look at news and information with a new set of eyes, with a mindset not tethered to print or traditional PCs. It's time to reimagine media.
Vin Crosbie, the news consultant, sees a large role for personalization. 'Younger people aren't reading newspapers at all,' he says. 'One reason is that they're flocking to Web sites like Yahoo, Amazon and Google that allow them to get their specific information needs met rather than generalized, generic stuff about the local teams. Media content that marries mobility to individualization will satisfy the new breed of information consumer.'
Yelvington of Morris Digital Works sees some dazzling opportunities in the mobile market for media companies. 'Think about what you can do with a classified database for yard sales that was geocoded properly,' he says. 'A little mapping and routing software and a handheld, and suddenly it can tell you where you are, where to go next, how to get there -- the possibilities are really exciting.' "
The NetGens are going to have a huge impact on information delivery as they grow up. It's good to see more people sounding the wake up call for the news industry. Libraries need to start focusing on "the new breed of inofrmation consumer, too." That's my wake up call to you.
Special thanks to Marylaine for sending me this link!
7:38:06 AM Permanent link here
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Librarian: Filters Are Fab
"The Fulton County Public Library in Rochester, Indiana, not only cordons off sexually explicit material, but also bans websites that its filtering vendor has dubbed illegal or tasteless -- or that relate to hacking, dating or real-time chat.
David Ewick, the library's director, testified Wednesday that he has no problem shielding adult and minor patrons from material that's entirely legal and unlikely to offend anyone. 'Personals and dating, it's just one of those things,' Ewick said. 'It's in some of the newspapers we carry. We didn't think it was necessary (to carry on the Internet).'
Playboy magazine may sport well-researched articles about politics and culture, but it would be inappropriate for a library patron to read it in the building, said Ewick, who is also a member of the Rochester City Council. When an ALA attorney asked if the library would unblock Playboy.com for a patron at a public terminal, Ewick said he would not.
(For the record, the 'Large Natural Breasts,' er, hobbyist site is also verboten in Rochester libraries, though hate speech sites are now allowed.)...
Rochester uses Websense as its filterware of choice, and an ALA expert witness reported that Websense blocked 2,188 sites incorrectly." [Wired News]
Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. I'm embarassed for myself and David Ewick and librarians everywhere. The point of the law should be to let Mr. Ewick allow the software vendor to control what his patrons see if that's appropriate for his community. It shouldn't be a blanket generalization for every community, though.
I always find the bias against sex but not violence frustrating, especially as a parent. Not that I want my kids seeing everything in the world, but the idea that violence is less destructive to a child than sex is absurd. If I lived in Rochester, I'd be upset that Mr. Ewick is the one who gets to decide that Playboy won't be unblocked for me as taxpaying adult, but the KKK's site will. Plus, if someone was defacing his newspapers by cutting out the personals and classifieds each day, I think he'd probably call this person to the attention of the local authorities.
From the questions they were asking, it sounds like the judges are concerned about these same issues, too. Closing arguments are scheduled for later this morning.
7:02:46 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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