Sputnik ships!. Orbit achieved.  Sputnik has come out with its first hardware product: The AP 120 wireless access point. It's an enterprise thingie with auto-configuration (plug one into your LAN, it figures out where to get control commands, puts up a dynamic firewall, and immediately becomes a smart but unobtrusive member of the corporate hive… Continue reading Sputnik ships!

Jabber & PingID.  Well, 15 months after starting PingID, I feel privileged to have the opportunity to connect my past with the future. In this phase of the Jabber/PingID relationship, we've integrated Ping's first product (SourceID – www.sourceid.org) into the Jabber's eXtensible Communications Platform (this integration is being demo'd this week at the RSA conference in SF).… Continue reading Jabber & PingID

Piles of documents. Some interesting speculation on Mac Rumors about Apple integrating a finder feature called Piles that creates a finder metaphor based on the physical act of viewing/sifting through a pile of documents on a desktop in meatspace. Here's a description from an earlier Tog article. Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed… Continue reading Piles of documents

City Scan: Connecticut's Civic Smart Mobs. In City Scan projects, citizens prioritize desired improvements to the physical environment of their community and gather information on how well government services deliver results. On city streets, residents (from age 14 through 70) collect data about neighborhood conditions (e.g graffiti, potholes) with handheld computers, custom-designed software, wireless modems,… Continue reading City Scan: Connecticut's Civic Smart Mobs

How do we win the peace in Iraq?  We need to help and not just with money.  It can also not only be self-help.  Where are the hordes of educational experts, health experts, (non-exploitive) business experts, agricultural experts, etc.. ready to enter Iraq after the war is over?  Why are we only willing to send… Continue reading John Robb's Radio Weblog

Dear MSN and Yahoo So, you want to beat Google, huh? Well, you have your work cut out for you. It's not impossible to get me to switch, though. I've switched search engines twice before. It might look hopeless right now. I do admit Google has a special place in my heart. When I reinstalled… Continue reading

Dear MSN and Yahoo

So, you want to beat Google, huh?

Well, you have your work cut out for you. It's not impossible to get me to switch, though. I've switched search engines twice before.

It might look hopeless right now. I do admit Google has a special place in my heart. When I reinstalled Windows XP on my main system yesterday, what was the first third-party app I loaded? That's right. The Google toolbar. It +is+ that important to my life.

The other day I started counting how many times in a day I use Google. I lost count at more than 50.

OK, some history of search engines and the Web (my wife says I need to make my point in fewer words, so I cut out a whole bunch of engines that simply didn't matter).

First, there was Yahoo. It was a directory kept by people. It was awesome. I went there and found cool stuff. One problem. Soon I started publishing. Soon I had the number one NetMeeting Web site

Criticism, how do you deal with it?.  Imagine if you're a CEO and your biggest customer comes in and says “your product is shitty and I'm switching to XYZ.” How do you respond? How do you save the relationship (or, at least your reputation, if the relationship is gone too far already?) Here's some tips… Continue reading Criticism, how do you deal with it?

WiMAX vs/+ WiFi.  From Broadband Intelligence:  WiMAX companies say the new standard, a metro area network (MAN) technology, is capable of providing up to 31 miles of linear service area range and eliminates the need to be in direct line of sight to the base station, a critical flaw undermining earlier efforts at fixed wireless… Continue reading WiMAX vs/+ WiFi

New Social Software Products. Social Software Making Progress The smaller the group, the more immediate value in the relationship. That's one notion behind an emerging phenomenon called “social software” [via Dan Gillmor's eJournal]   Dan's got some thoughts on the emerging category of “social software”, a phrase Clay Shirky has been promoting.  Another interesting company… Continue reading New Social Software Products

Daddy, Are We There Yet? A Discussion with Alan Kay. Much of what you do each day can be traced back to an idea that Alan Kay was working on many years ago. Work with a laptop computer? Kay was working on a notebook computer called the Dynabook 35 years ago. There weren't even desktop… Continue reading Daddy, Are We There Yet? A Discussion with Alan Kay