Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Paul Kapustka has been showing me snippets of the latest Pulver project — the VONosphere – over the last few weeks.  This site aggregates content from blogs, VON Magazine, Pulvermedia Podcasting Network, and Jeff’s personal blog.

Reading most aggregator sites is a bit like drinking from a firehose.  So far, VONosphere isn’t.  Rather, it seems to be exercising some editorial control to pick and choose stories of interest. 

Blogrolled.

Four years ago today, I wrote my first blog postings using Radio from Userland Software.  There were a bunch of other crazy canucks at the time writing, mostly, about politics.  I was between jobs, and wondered what the blogging thing was all about… turned into a bit of an obsession, I’m afraid.  On that day, I wrote about my experiences using Radio, stock option reform, global warming, and rising bank card fraud in Canada.  Unfortunately, many of the sources I pointed to have since succumbed to link rot. 

This really must be seen. I haven’t laughed so hard in a while.

I’ve got a couple of graduations to attend over the next few days. It’s the season, you know.

Anyway, at the moment I am sitting in the ceremony for Rideau Valley Middle School, where they’re calling the graduates to the stage. Being mathematically minded, I’ve noted that the classes are numbered 8-1, 8-2, 8-4, 8-6, and 8-8. It’s not a geometric sequence, nor is it a fibonacci sequence. What’s the algorithm to generate this sequence?

Don Dodge writes about a recent panel he participated in with Ajit Nazare of Kleiner Perkins.  Nazare outlined his 7 rules for startups:

KP’s 7 rules for start-ups

• Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
• Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
• Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
• Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
• Personalized user experience - customizable
• Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
• Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.

I find the context awareness point very intriguing.  Wish that I’d been there to hear the panel.  Naturally, I believe that context awareness is a critical element of producing truly useful software, and true context awareness is difficult to achieve in all cases.  Take presence, for instance.  Most implementations require you to set a specific presence status.  Some can anticipate some kinds of presence (”oh… there’s been no typing for a while… you’re probably away from the PC”).  None can automatically set all presence settings based on context.  Perhaps that’s too much to ask, as well.  Who knows?