Donnerstag, 29. Mai 2003

HAL not IBM: Just saw an interesting interview on BBC World TV with Sir Arthur C Clarke. In the interview he debunked the theory that HAL had anything to do with IBM (because of the letters). "If I had realized - I would have changed the name". But we know different - don't we! I also didn't know that Tim Berners Lee calls Sir Arthur the Godfather of the Net - because of the story "Dial F for Frankenstein", published in Playboy magazine in 1963.

Stefano's Journey: Stefano is doing something interesting. Knowing him, Cocoon 3.0 will be sketched onto some piece of wood he finds along the way.

OSCOM blogs: Looks like the blogging has picked up today at OSCOM. Start here for some links.

Bliss'ness: A warm Summer evening here and I'm outside in the garden surfing and posting from my (new) garden chair. What more can you want?

Extending Referers: While looking at the referer log for this weblog I always think the google-related ones are pretty interesting. Wouldn't it be great if referers contained more information like the date and time the search was submitted. How about being able to see who searched? Not sure how you would do this (optional search field perhaps) - but it would certainly be interesting to see.

Weak links revisited: Frank wrote me a mail yesterday asking what I meant with Weak links. Here is a very simplistic description of how weak links work. Check my book list on the right for further reading. Every one of us belongs to one or more social clusters. The people we work with or the close friends we have make up these clusters. In general everyone in the cluster has strong links to every one else. Frank belongs to my cluster because I have strong links to him. But every one of us also has weak links to other clusters. So, let's say last year I met Erik Hatcher at OSCON. Since then I have had a weak link with him (the occasional mail or weblog cross-post). Erik belongs to his own cluster of friends and work-colleagues. The network theorists have found out that is actually the weak links that can be very important and in fact you should make sure you gather as many weak links as possible. Why? Let's look at an example. Say I was looking for someone to invest in my soon-to-founded open source service company (it's only an example) - if I contact people in my social cluster then chances are the "news" will only travel within that cluster and so I will only be able to reach a limited audience. In order to get the "news" to travel far and wide and reach as many people as possible, I need to send that information over a weak link (so in this example, I would perhaps send Erik an email) - so that it reaches other clusters I have no stong ties to. The information uses the weak link to jump clusters! Something else to think about is corporate marketing. If I only use the strong links (i.e. the customers I already have) then chances are they already know what I offer anyway - so the chances are slim that I will reach new markets that way. However if I find a weak link (perhaps via an affiliated company that has it's own customer base) I can reach other clusters of companies that are perhaps open to my offer. That's one of the reasons I write weblogs - in order to form more weak links. When I wrote about Lotus Notes as a weblog tool not so far back I got lots of feedback from the Notes community. A cluster of "people" I would not have been able to reach where it not for the weak-linking of weblogs. A rough-and-ready explanation - but enough to get the idea I hope.

He made it: Guido seems to have made it to OSCOM, although it looks as though Net access is not easy to get hold of.

Upbeat: You may have noticed that I've changed the byline of this weblog. I decided that the previous one was too "down". In "Pirates of Silicon Valley", Steve Jobs is quoted with the line "We're here to make a dent in the universe". Speaking of which, where can I get a pirate flag :-).

Father's day: It's a public holiday and Father's day here in Germany - so I'm home. Actually these sort of days have some funny effect on the kids and it makes them wake up and get up earlier than on school-days (when we have to drag them out of bed). So, my wish to be gently woken at 9am this morning, fizzled when - at around 6:30 am - the hordes awoke.