13 June 2002

Spend Most of the Time in the Wild The Search-Engine Getaway. The Internet can be a vast brochure for anyone planning a hiking expedition or fishing trip. The trick is figuring out how to spend more time in the wild than on the Web. [New York Times: Technology]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Winer on Journo Blogs DUBLIN, Ireland -- For the sixth week running, Dave Winer's news aggregator gives me more info per page than Online in The Guardian. I'm addicted to the weblog community, but I don't think they spel the end of newspapers. I like Winer's idea about giving Radio to journalists. He would also give Radio to readers. Then he would encourage the journos to link to readers and believes this would generate really interesting news. We're going to give this a bash with the Open Mailing List. Here's another Winerism: Charge local businesses to place their weblogs on your network. Winer consider this as advertising turned around. "No more interstitials and ads that interfere. News drives interest. Minds, not eyeballs. Real issues not puffery. New products that meet people's needs and wants."   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Tasty Kit from Smart Bridges SmartBridges introduces a sub-$400 customer-premises outdoor generic Wi-Fi bridge: we'll be hearing a lot about this device as it meets virtually all of the needs of wireless ISPs as they attempt to inexpensively serve their customers from a few hundred feet to tens of miles away. It's a device intended to be placed at a customer's location (CPE or customer premises equipment), and it's ruggedized for outdoor performance in sub-zero to supra-100 temperatures at claimed distances of up to 21 miles line-of-sight. [80211b News]   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Google Zeitgeist DUBLIN, Ireland -- Walking in Arthouse in Temple Bar and you wonder what interests twentysomethings today. I wonder if the late-Goth dressed in the open air of the Arthouse coffee bar are interested in the same things that intrigue the rest of the worl. One way to find out is to check out the Google Zeitgeist page which identifies subjects, people and languages that are gaining most in popularity, based on how many Google users search on specific terms. Then compare these results to the opinions of the Arthouse crowd. I think there would be marked distinctions. This week, Google's top three search terms are "world cup," "miss universe" and Oxana Fedorova, the Russian beauty recently crowned Miss Universe 2002. Meanwhile, fading fast are Eurovision, David Blaine and Natalie Portman.   [Comment on Shoptalk]

Mind Games and OODA Loops DUBLIN, Ireland -- Sitting in Molloy's Pub in Christchurch and having a coffee with some red-eyed Java programmers, we talked about fighter pilots and competitive strategy. A quarter-century ago, fighter pilot and strategist John R. Boyd talked about the OODA Loop, where OODA stood for "observation, orientation, decision, and action. Long used in the armed services, Boyd's philosophy is rooted in the idea of beating your competitor by destroying his frame of reference, and making him fight the battle without realizing that the terrain has changed on him. One Boyd admirer says, "In Boyd's notion of conflict, the target is always your opponent's mind," by making rapid moves to disrupt his orientation. This works in the combative business arena.     [Comment on Shoptalk]

Web Services Will Dominate e-Commerce DUBLIN, Ireland -- While visiting the offices of Zenark Ltd in Christchurch, I conclusively form the opinion that Web services is an important trend shaping the future of e-commerce. Web services, like those designed by Zenark, offer modular open-standard software built on XML -- software that enables development of modular projects that do not require the services of a legion of custom programmers to connect nonstandard systems. Most companies should discover they can get more bang for the buck now that cheaper software and cheaper hardware options exist, allowing organisations to spend far more for e-business applications than before.     [Comment on Shoptalk]

Learning Will Dominate Next-Generation Management Systems SANTRY, County Dublin -- Several of us are talking about technologies that give businesses a competitive edge. Many Irish companies have recognised the need to position themselves as high up as possible on the knowledge economy ladder. These companies know they need a Learning Management System (LMS) that provides an integrated, scalable learning technology platform capable of managing all organizational processes and activities. Employees use their LMS to channel knowledge into ideas and use those ideas to create business competencies. Forward-looking managers will use an LMS to serve as the infrastructure or framework used to track, support, manage and measure all learning and training systems, whether they are computer-based training (CBT), web-based training (WBT), document-based training (DBT), instructor-led training (ILT), or blended training methods (BTM).   [Comment on Shoptalk]