Friday, November 8, 2002

Supernova 2002will be held December 9-10, 2002 in Palo Alto, CA. Supernova is a new conference exploring the distributed future. With the bursting of the Internet bubble, businesses, end-users, investors, and technology vendors face a bewildering array of challenges. Yet a common theme runs through the fundamental questions facing software, communications, and media. That theme is decentralization. 5:59:43 AM

instant messaging, virtual collaboration A second, further-out development involves AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft using their IM products as Trojan horses to become virtual business communication centers. Why stop with chat when you could have users swapping documents and working on projects in real time? In that sense, the IM products become less about messaging and more about virtual collaboration. Instant Messaging Goes Corporate IM finally gets down to business. A look at the short- and long-term ramifications. By Eric Hellweg, Business 2.0, November 06, 2002 5:56:14 AM

This commercial disguised as a commentary article has an arresting line: "And so the organization of your digital information reflects the shape of your life, not the shape of a 1940's Steelcase file cabinet. Storage space and computing power are dirt cheap; our task isn't to 'use them efficiently,' it's to 'squander them creatively.'" Forget the Files and the Folders: Let Your Screen Reflect Life By David Gelernter, NYTimes, Nov 7, 2002 Now about that line "operating systems are lapsing into senile irrelevance," let's see, that's saying something like, "this auto is so revolutionary it'll make the use of an engine positively antique." If we're talking telepathy or teleporting, tell me more about the breakthrough. 5:53:20 AM