Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I have a terrible problem.  It's suddenly become much harder for me to quickly scan my RSS feeds the way I used to, because suddenly there's a lot more good stuff.  The reason for that is the new illumio 2.0 beta. 

illumio is a tool that makes it easier to stay informed and connected with RSS feeds, websites, social networks and communities of interest by using your observed behaviour to help manage information.  So, for instance, it can:

• scan through the hundreds of feeds I subscribe to, and surface the postings that might be of interest to me.
• help me find information I need by directing requests I create to only those people in my social network who might actually be able to help. 
• help me find people I need to connect with by identifying people in my social network who might be able to facilitate an introduction. 

illumio is a downloadable application.  Running on your PC, it scans your email, address book, and documents folders to learn what you think is important.  Then it matches incoming information requests, RSS feeds, and so on against its observations of your behaviour, and surfaces the items it thinks you might be most interested in for you to act upon. 

You can add RSS feeds to illumio and have it prioritize information based on that criteria.  You can join a group where individuals with like interests can add RSS feeds, and still have illumio prioritize that information based on what it has observed about you.  You can also send a request for information to a group, or to other individuals that illumio has identified who might have related interests to a group. 

If a request is sent to a group where you are a participant, illumio will use the same filtering criteria to determine whether to present that request to you.  You don't get innundated with requests. Even better, as a requestor you don't have to stop to think about whether or not you're sending so many requests that you might be accused of spamming.  Only those who can help you actually see the requests. 

In a departure from social networking applications like LinkedIn, illumio accomplishes all of this while preserving anonymity and privacy.  Since the information collection and management happens on the desktop, illumio doesn't need to store any of your information in the network.

Even though it's beta software, it's very very good.  Some of the features I would like to see added:

• Allow me to upload my address book rather than inviting people one at a time.  There are a lot of people I would like to invite to illumio.  It's too hard right now.
• Give me more choices for tweaking the filtering criteria. It works well, but I'd like to be able to make finer grained adjustments.
• I work on multiple computers.  Send me an email notification when the computer doing illumio processing receives a new response to a request. 

illumio is showing me more interesting and relevant material every day.  It takes the work out of looking at the hundreds of RSS feeds I subscribe to, and lets me read the material that's interesting, useful and important for me to see.  Give it try by visiting www.illumio.com.

Compute surfaces of various kinds have been experimented with for many years now.  A few years back, for instance, Microsoft was demoing a projection system that would allow you to interact with the surface of a kitchen counter.  Features included measurement and recipes for food preparation. 

Today's announcement of the Surface Computer by Microsoft, however, takes the demos way beyond what has been shown previously. The various ways that physical objects can interact with the surface, as well as the gestural interface, are really mind-bending.  Microsoft is positioning the product for commercial applications because of price (in excess of $10,000 initially), but what about gaming, educational and media applications?  What about small versions of the surface compute platform mounted vertically as interactive picture frames and displays?  What about social networking applications built into the surface computer (think bars and clubs…)?

Another (much smaller) player who might be thinking about compute surfaces is the team at BumpTop.  Their approach of blending physics with the desktop might add a very nice touch of realism to Microsoft's surface computer.

What we see today is just the beginning. 

 It was a near full moon tonight, so after a quick dip in the pool I grabbed my tripod and camera and shot a few pictures of the moon with my long lens.  On the automatic settings on the D50, it just produced an overexposed white disc, but after stopping the camera down 5 (!) I managed to capture some detail.  This photograph is a cropped image taken with a 300mm lens at full extension.

Jajah has scored again, this time adding Deutsche Telekom as an investor and customer.  IDC analyst Will Stofega sees Deutsche Telekom's move as a strategic way to gain access to innovative new technologies, saying:

"At the end of the day these upstarts aren't going to go out and build new networks," he said. "Meanwhile, the telcos need help from companies like Jajah on the innovation side."

It's intriguing to contrast Deutsche Telekom's move to incorporate services from Jajah, with Orange's service offerings including VoIP on WiFi.  Two different approaches, perhaps trying to solve two different albeit similar problems.  It seems Jajah is also looking at VoWiFi solutions, however.  Check out this blog entry from last week showing Jajah on the T-Mobile Wing.

Infoworld published a piece this morning about how the economics of offshoring to India are becoming less enticing than they used to be.  Particularly interesting were Riya CEO Munjal Shah's comments.

Offshoring to India has been a good choice for Silicon Valley companies for years, because Silicon Valley wages have always been exceedingly high.  But outside the Valley, that choice has been much less compelling.  We certainly looked hard at Indian development teams a while ago, but the economics for a Canadian company to offshore really don't make sense.  Wages in Ottawa are already just 70% of Silicon Valley, because the cost of living here is dramatically lower.  With the generous tax incentives offered by the Government, net wages are in the range of 50% of the Valley.  So why outsource?

And in fact, there's a burgeoning "near-sourcing" industry in the Ottawa Valley as local companies market themselves as price competitive with South East Asia, but in the same time zone.