Google reader “like” and the shared discovery process

I use my Google Reader shared items as my general repository for all things I find interesting, including using the “note in reader” feature to attach comments to web pages I visit (see also – memory management). This works particularly well in my iPhone Byline reader client.

I also use the “star” feature to tag items for later reading or processing. Some of those I get to, some I don’t.

I haven’t known what to make of “Like” however (emphases mine) ….

Official Google Reader Blog: Following, liking and people searching

… Have you ever wanted to tell an author or publisher that you appreciate an article they wrote? Or maybe you want to let your friend know that you enjoyed the blog post he shared with you. With a quick click of the mouse (or a swipe of the "L" key -- for the keyboard shortcut pros), you can "like" any item in Reader. All "likes" are public, so anyone reading an item you've "liked" in Reader can see that you're a fan. Checking out shared items for people who have "liked" the same items as you is a great way to discover other people with interests similar to your own….

Aha. Now I get it.

“Like” is necessarily public, whereas sharing has privacy restrictions (though I share with all). Part of being public is that “Like” is associated with user-tags; if you click on the “# Like” link you get a list of names (I did get a 404 not found when I clicked on that link for an item that had been shared, but it resolved anyway). The names link to show items the person “liked”; you can then choose, I suppose, to follow their “shared” item list.

It doesn’t work in Byline though – they haven’t added support for that marker. Still, I’ll check it out as a discovery mechanism when using the reader web app. The intersection between Shared and Like is a bit weird, but that’s kind of the rule with today’s social software. There are lots of conventions and intersections we haven’t figured out yet. As a general rule, I assume everything I do is completely public.

I like who Reader works, and I’m hoping for more interesting developments in the world of shared-mind discovery. Twitter on the other hand … (more about that in a post I’m plugging away at)

COBOL and the surprising longevity of enterprise software

In my industry, we might substitute MUMPS for COBOL …

Coding Horror: COBOL: Everywhere and Nowhere

… I'd like to talk to you about ducts. Wait a minute. Strike that. I meant COBOL. The Common Business Oriented Language is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary as the language that is everywhere and nowhere at once:

As a result, today COBOL is everywhere, yet is largely unheard of among the millions of people who interact with it on a daily basis. Its reach is so pervasive that it is almost unthinkable that the average person could go a day without it. Whether using an ATM, stopping at traffic lights or purchasing a product online, the vast majority of us will use COBOL in one form or another as part of our daily existence.

The statistics that surround COBOL attest to its huge influence upon the business world. There are over 220 billion lines of COBOL in existence, a figure which equates to around 80% of the world's actively used code. There are estimated to be over a million COBOL programmers in the world today…

I’m skeptical about those numbers, but even if we cut them in half that’s still a lot of code. The linked essay skirts the subject, but I suspect very little of this code is related to new projects – the vast majority must be from projects launched in the 1970s.

It’s not just COBOL. A friend of mine is nearing retirement still maintaining and extending an RPG app he started in the 1970s. His software runs a very successful privately held company.

The longevity of enterprise software, to me, is the interesting nub of this story. Successful enterprise software has a very long lifespan – on the scale of the lifespan of a publicly traded company. This software can outlast careers, much less employment at a single company. I wouldn’t be surprised, given virtualization technology, if today’s enterprise solutions end up with sixty year lifespans.

There are interesting implications for the way we organize businesses and business processes…

Breeding even smarter dogs

The studies are probably not terribly rigorous, but it wouldn't be surprising to learn that that dogs are smarter than we thought they were -- seems just about every animal is smarter than we thought ...

Dogs as Smart as 2-year-old Kids | LiveScience

... While dogs ranked with the 2-year-olds in language, they would trump a 3- or 4-year-old in basic arithmetic, Coren found. In terms of social smarts, our drooling furballs fare even better.

'The social life of dogs is much more complex, much more like human teenagers at that stage, interested in who is moving up in the pack and who is sleeping with who and that sort of thing,' Coren told LiveScience.

The hypothesis is that dogs are getting smarter fairly quickly, that over the course of a few hundred years we've substantially increased the IQ of certain breeds.

So what would happen if we really tried to breed a dog that was smarter and lived longer? Could we get them up to, say, four year olds? Pretty soon we're in "uplift territory".

At what point do smarter dogs get civil rights? Reminds me of my childhood attempt to develop a non-species specific theory of ethics ...

Search engine blind test: poor Yahoo

I tried the search engine blinded comparison test:

Which Search Engine Do You Choose In The Blind Test? - washingtonpost.com:

... Have you tried out this blind search tool yet? It provides results from Google, Yahoo and Bing in three columns but doesn't tell you which column is which search engine. You then tell it which one you think shows the best results, and you then see which answers are from which engines. I keep choosing Yahoo as the best results...

In my testing all the results were all pretty similar, but I also choose Yahoo. I think it was by chance, but I can believe Yahoo is better than it was. Bing was, as usual, the worst.

Poor Yahoo, finally somewhat competitive, but Microsoft is going to replace them with Bing.

The results are a bit misleading though. I'm a heavy user of Google Custom Search, both through Google Toolbar training and my hand crafted custom search set. Those results are much better, for me, than the blind search test results.

So Yahoo had caught up with the old Google, but Google's intelligent search optimization is a step beyond ...

Status five nanosols

Observations on an utterly unique event, occurring once only in all of space and time ...

Chronology

• 0.0000005% (5 nanosols) population 1 main sequence star lifespan (1 sol = 10^10 years)
• 400% average modern dog lifespan
• 140% historic human male lifespan
• 66% of productive lifespan (25 to 63 year)
• 54% of calculated life expectancy
• 600% lifespan of average american corporation [1]
• 200% lifespan of successful enterprise software [9]
• 250% of post-industrial civilization
• 22% of the anthropocene
• 1% of the information age
• 47% of the lifespan of the oil age [4]
• fifty times round the sun

Status (personal metrics)

• 55% total lifetime contribution [3]
• 95% wisdom (guesstimated) [2]
• 100% duties and obligations
• 100% lifetime satisfaction level (to date)
• 100% lifetime effectiveness [5]
• 100% lifetime income [6]
• 100% lifetime confidence
• 100% lifetime kindness [7]
• 30% lifetime arrogance
• 30% lifetime certainty
• 20% lifetime temper
• 100% lifetime baseball skills
• 90% lifetime hockey skills
• 50% lifetime bicycling performance
• 70% lifetime strength
• 50% lifetime hair

Minimalist lessons

• When swimming outdoors wear a swim shirt (see also).
• Schedule haircuts q4w.
• "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." (Dave Barry)
• Our next home will be wheelchair accessible
• When you're too old to drive you'll be too old to know you're too old to drive.
• Accident is far more common than intent.
• You only think it's about you.
• When you hear a confident expert, run away.
• People who are paid for a service are very unlikely to tell you their service is not working.
• Sometimes the crowd is right. Sometimes the crowd is wrong. I can't tell the difference, but I pay more attention to the crowd than I once did.
• Take pictures.
• If you're think you can't be fooled, you are a fool. If you think you can't be corrupted, you are corrupt.
• Obsolete things last a lot longer than I expect. (see also)
• There was another one, but I forgot it. [8]

Footnotes

[1] Guesstimate. The tiny number that survive into the S&P 500 have a 40-50 year life expectancy.

[2] Eventually the dementia starts to whack the experience.

[3] Meaning I'm ahead of what it cost to make me, but still producing.

[4] Started around the Model-T, ends around 1917 though cars will last a long time.

[5] Ability to get things done. This is all about skill compensating for raw power. (see also)

[6] Historic record. Could go to zero tomorrow.

[7] I think I have average empathy, but I really have to work at some aspects of being kind. I work at it more now than I did when I was an obnoxious new physician.

[8] More profound that it seems.

[9] Successful enterprise software is very long lived -- longer lived than the average corporation and comparable to human work lives. This is an interesting situation.

How to use bear spray

Helpful advice...

Nicholas Kristoff - How to Recharge Your Soul - NYTimes.com

... 10. In grizzly or polar bear territory, carry bear spray (which is a bit like mace). Frankly, the spray is unlikely to stop a 1,000-pound bear hurtling toward you, so experienced hikers respond to a menacing bear by using the spray in one of two ways. The first option is to spray yourself in the face, so you no longer care what the bear does to you. The second option is to spray your best friend beside you, and then run....

Google - please give me tasks that appear on my calendar

I get a lot of value from Google Calendar, but there's plenty of room for innovation. In particular there's something relatively easy Google could do that would significantly improve my life.

First though, a bit of background.

I used to manage my time and planning around tasks, using a Franklin Planner biased version of Getting Things Done. I did so much with tasks at work I wrote an Outlook tutorial on advanced task management.

Problem is, I was adding tasks faster than I could complete them - especially when I tried creating tasks rather than letting emails sit in my inbox. The task backlog was kind of crazy. Since entropy means I'm getting dumber every day in most every way I had to find a new edge.

My current business approach works better. It's something like this (my personal planning is similar, but it's coordinated with my wife and is a bit simpler):

• I use mind map software to do a 2-3 week planning cycle (Agile software devpt methodology taught me that).
• I put the "A" tasks on my calendar. They don't go to my task list, just the calendar. I schedule what it takes to do them, and I'm getting better at time bounding those tasks.
• I create very few "B" tasks -- these get dates but no calendar slots. They get completed opportunistically.
  
• I create "C" tasks that are categorized by context -- but lack dates. Example: If I'm near a store I check my shopping list. (Less common at work, but common at home. If it's work related and it's not critical/must do I just don't do it.)
  
• I do clear out my email inbox every day or two, mostly following GTD principles. I found I really have to do this, but I work hard to discourage email. How I reduce email use is a topic for another post, but among other things I follow the "two strikes" principle. If any email generates two send/receive cycles I create a meeting. Since most folks really dislike these meetings it encourages them to think hard before sending email. I also invest time and thought into email I write, crafting it to "kill" the response and save time on the back end. I think of business email like a serve in tennis - it should be impossible to return.

My newer approach is a significant improvement on my old methods. By combining these approaches with better use other people's brains I stay one step ahead of the reaper. Or so I dream.

Which brings me to where I want Google to help.

I really would like to have those appointments also be tasks. That way I could thread them to projects, use the completed task archive as a useful guide, and distribute tasks/projects across calendar slots. Gorilla Haven's DateBk did something like this on the old Palm Classic. You could create a kind of appointment (forget the type) that had a complete attribute and would jump forwards a day if not completed. It was close to what I want, but not close enough.

I want to have tasks that have optional one to many relationships to calendar slots.

From a task I can create a calendar appointment that links back to the task. From the calendar I can create an appointment that has a companion task with a link to the appointment. I also want to be able to add appointment links to an existing task.

From the appointment I want to be able to complete the appointment subtask, or the entire task.

Is that too much to ask?

OK, so maybe it's a bit extreme. I'd accept a simple 1:1 task to appointment link. Just throw me a bone Google! (See also - a prior, similar, plea on my tech blog)

Of course if Google gets that one done, I've another one they could look at next ...

Google Maps is seriously broken today

Google Maps is way broken.

It started a few weeks ago with our home address. When we entered it we got two results – one with the letter W for West (which is not part of our address). At first either of them worked, but tonight neither of them are recognized by Google.

For the first time in memory, our address can’t be found in Google. We live in a 90 yo urban residential neighborhood, so it’s not like there’s been a lot of change around here.

My next test was to find a route from Saint Paul to Montreal. Since our address doesn’t work any longer, we went from city to city. The preferred route was via Chicago, but the Canadian alternative was through Timmins Ontario – way up in the Shield! It was as though Google Maps had forgotten about the Trans Canada Highway.

Bing maps worked as expected. It found our home and had the usual routes from St. Paul to Montreal.

Wow. What the heck happened to Google? Some kind of covert Apple cyber-attack?

Aug 10, 2009: My house has one entry, and Google has rediscovered the Trans Canada. (Sorry Timmins). Don't you wish you know what was happening with this stuff?

How to deliver services badly

I think I've come up with a recipe that will guarantee bad services within an enterprise.

They key is to remove executives from direct use of a service or from direct contact with users. This is typically done by the use of admins (who are direct users for executives) and by an insulating layer of management.

This is hard to do when services are managed locally. In this case the service will report into someone who cannot easily attain isolation.

So, in practice, the delivery of a really bad services requires centralizing or outsourcing service delivery. This makes the essential executive isolation much easier to achieve.

The Belgian Atomium

The Geek Atlas recommends a visit to Belgium's Atomium. Bizarrely, the book couldn't include a photograph; Belgian copyright law doesn't allow any reproduction without paying a large fee (which goes to inheritors of someone involved in design and construction -- I guess they've fallen on hard times).

Odd country Belgium.

Instead the atlas refers us to the net, such as this Panoramio image.

According to the Atlas, you can travel through the structure to the globes (iron atoms); one is reserved for school children overnighters.

White House deep in the muck with drug makers

A former GOP representative, Billy Tauzin, has blown the cover on a back door deal between the Obama administration and big pharma. I wonder how big pharma feels about him going public – is he serving pharma or the GOP?

Whatever his motivations, this deal stinks. It’s Chicago politics. If Bush did something like this Dems like me would have been all over him. I don’t have the heart do to the deed myself, but I’ll look for a good right wing rant to link to. Emphases mine.

White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost - NYTimes.com

Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”

A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.

“The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”…

.. In an interview on Wednesday, Representative Raul M. Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who is co-chairman of the House progressive caucus, called Mr. Tauzin’s comments “disturbing.”

“We have all been focused on the debate in Congress, but perhaps the deal has already been cut,” Mr. Grijalva said. “That would put us in the untenable position of trying to scuttle it.”

He added: “It is a pivotal issue not just about health care. Are industry groups going to be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie and we just fight over the crust?”..

… But as the debate has heated up over the last two weeks, Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats have signaled that they value some of its industry enemies-turned-friends more than others. Drug makers have been elevated to a seat of honor at the negotiating table, while insurers have been pushed away…

… The drug industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also opposes a public insurance plan. But its lobbyists acknowledge privately that they have no intention of fighting it, in part because their agreement with the White House provides them other safeguards.

Mr. Tauzin said the administration had approached him to negotiate. “They wanted a big player to come in and set the bar for everybody else,” he said. He said the White House had directed him to negotiate with Senator Max Baucus, the business-friendly Montana Democrat who leads the Senate Finance Committee.

Mr. Tauzin said the White House had tracked the negotiations throughout, assenting to decisions to move away from ideas like the government negotiation of prices or the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. The $80 billion in savings would be over a 10-year period. “80 billion is the max, no more or less,” he said. “Adding other stuff changes the deal.”

After reaching an agreement with Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tauzin said, he met twice at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; Mr. Messina, his deputy; and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the aide overseeing the health care overhaul, to confirm the administration’s support for the terms.

“They blessed the deal,” Mr. Tauzin said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was not bound by any industry deals with the Senate or the White House.

But, Mr. Tauzin said, “as far we are concerned, that is a done deal.” He said, “It’s up to the White House and Senator Baucus to follow through.”

As for the administration’s recent break with the insurance industry, Mr. Tauzin said, “The insurers never made any deal.”

Tauzin is certainly plainspoken.

I wonder how Krugman and Reich are going to respond to this one.

Anyone know of a right wing rant attacking this corrupt deal that I can link to?

Update 8/9/09: Reich responds - this is bad for democracy.

Blogging about NYT journalists – now with an extra level of proofreading

This is not a first tier, second tier, or even third tier blog. It’s an Nth tier blog. Heck, I don’t even have AdWords!

This is a tiny readership (hi Emily) revenue-free all-but-invisible hobby blog with its own peculiar motivations. So when I write of NYT journalists David Pogue or John Markoff (or, of course, Krugman) I really don’t expect them to read the posts.

Wrong.

In the past week I’ve received corrections under both men’s names. I assume it was either them or an admin, but I tend to think it was them.

In one case I wrote of David Pogue’s “relationship to Apple” when I meant to write “association with Apple”. He politely objected, pointing out his work with Apple is no different than his work with other vendors. A few days previously I speculated that John Markoff had gotten some article information via Wikipedia (not a criticism, that’s where I got it), he said it came from an interview.

I don’t think either of these two journalists, both well respected in the geek community, are regular readers. I instead assume that the Times is reviewing blog posts linking to Times articles and flagging items that might merit correction. (Not for Krugman though – that would be a hopeless task.)

I’m impressed. It helps the Times manage its reputation. It’s certainly put me on my toes. I generally write quickly and hastily, but the next time I cite a NYT journalist I’ll be exceptionally attentive. It’s embarrassing to be corrected, even when it’s done so politely.

iPhone users are revolting

And we’re grumpy too.

Usually a PC World article with a title of “Apple Rots” would bring a deluge of flaming denials, but this article is current recommended 217 to 139.

I wonder if even Apple is starting to feel the heat …

As Apple Rots, iPhone Users Revolt - Business Center - PC World

Users are turning against the iPhone. Call it the summer of our discontent, but these hot, sticky months are proving an excellent time to not buy a smartphone. Apple and AT&T have only themselves to blame.

Now, we must wait for the two companies to learn their lessons and, just maybe, for a new iPhone carrier to emerge. If you are thinking about upgrading to a 3GS and can stand to wait, you might find a more attractive option in a few months, especially if the iPhone's downhill slide continues.

What is upsetting iPhone users?

App Store -- Do I really need to keep making the case that having Apple as the only vendor of iPhone apps is bad for customers? The rejection of Google Voice, potentially a killer app for smartphones, should prove that Apple doesn't care about its customers…

… The Apple monopolies must go.

Multitasking -- I did not expect multitasking to become a big deal so soon, but Google Latitude makes an excellent case for it..

AT&T -- I am not wild about Sprint advertising that I am paying $50-a-month too much because I am using an iPhone instead of a Palm Pre. I am not wild that Apple adds tethering to the iPhone but I don't get to use it. I am not wild that I am still waiting for the ability to attach pictures to SMS messages…

… The sense of smug superiority that we iPhone users have enjoyed has worn off. Now, instead of being the ones who've chosen, we're pawns in the games of AT&T and Apple. What used to be mere annoyances have become real pains. And the companies that ought to be our friends are the causes of our frustration…

So do really, really, annoyed geeks matter to Apple? I guess we’ll find out. The fact that Gruber’s recent attack on a dictionary app rejection prompted a response email from a senior Apple exec suggests they developing a bit of sensitivity. (Turns out Apple wasn’t entirely to blame in that one, but Schiller admitted they might have room for improvement).

The App Store monopoly isn’t working for us. We geeks want an alternative source for iPhone apps that’s outside of Apple and AT&T’s control. I’m willing to give Apple some more time on the multitasking if they can provide a location communication API and put Latitude back in the App Store.

I’m not ready to switch, but I am ready to wait some time before replacing my wife’s BB with an iPhone.

Pogue speaks out on the Apple/AT&T Google Voice ban

Phew. The longer David Pogue remained silent on the Battle of Google Voice, the more I wondered what the heck was going on. He’s criticized Apple in the past, so despite his long history of writing about Apple products longstanding relationship to the company I didn’t expect him to stay quiet.

Today he did speak. He didn’t add anything new, but he did make it clear that Apple/AT&T has few journalist or geek allies in its battle with Google (emphases mine) …

Is Google Voice a Threat to AT&T? – David Pogue - NYTimes.com

… AT&T/Apple's logic doesn't even make sense. If the object is to prevent you from making cheap international calls, then they would also have to block Skype and all the other apps (already available) that let you do so. If it's to prevent you from sending free text messages, then they should also block FreeMMS and other apps that already do that.

It's almost as though AT&T/Apple never really cared while the apps in question stayed where they belonged—under the radar. But once big-shot Google got involved… well, we can't have that, can we?...

... In short, what Apple and AT&T have accomplished with their heavy-handed, Soviet information-control style is not to bury these useful apps. Instead, Apple/AT&T have elevated them to martyr status—and, in effect, thrown down a worldwide challenge to programmers everywhere.

"Get around THIS," they're saying.

But guess what? It won't take long. They've put a rock in the river, but the water will just find a way around it.

Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.

What's Apple going to do now? Start blocking access to individual Web sites?...

Google can’t really do everything with the web app that they can do with a native app. There’s no getting around the dang startup and authentication delays with a web app – I’ve been using their current web app and it’s a bit of a pain (though GV Mobile was slow too – but that was fixable).

Otherwise, a pretty good commentary. The geek community is working overtime finding ingenious ways around Apple’s block – and that pressure is only going to grow.

Update: As an owner of several Pogue books on Apple products I assume he has an informal relationship with the company, but as he points out in comments he certainly doesn't have a formal relationship with them. I amended my introductory sentence to clarify that. I do think his words carry some weight with Apple.

News: Dowd says something novel

Dowd can be sometimes funny, often grating. It's unusual, however, for her to be insightful ...

Maureen Dowd - Let the Big Dog Run - NYTimes.com

... Bill Clinton will bring back valuable information about Kim’s mental and physical health. If we’d had that sort of information about the snubbed Saddam, we would have known that he was in his own spiral of doom, trying to bluff his neighbors, with no need for our shock and awe.

Hillary and President Obama look bigger when they share the stage with other talented players. And Barack and Bill may have finally started to put South Carolina behind them — without the need for a beer summit photo-op...

So will Bill come on board to push health care? Clearly Dowd's hinting as much. Might enrage the whackos even more, and the more they froth the better Obama looks.

The insightful comment though is about the intel on Kim. Imagine what someone as wicked smart and political as Clinton can figure out from some direct face time.