Deciding, like Ingrid announced a few days ago, to focus on creating a collaborative writing/editing/publishing/announcing system was a natural for us. And, it was one that was staring us in the face almost from the beginning. Ingrid, our intern Jonathan and I are all writers. Between us we’ve written or edited just about anything you can imagine. I’ve also published quite a few things including a number of books. So, as we looked at things to test out with our technology, we kept creating things that are related to writing, editing and publishing. A story about 42 mice One concrete version of that was launching Nootcards.com last week in a very private alpha. But, we’ve been working on more than Nootcards. We’ve also created a prototype of part of our collaborative writing/editing/publishing/announcing system. It’s handling the publication of four books: a novel, a collection of poems and stories, a non-fiction book and a dictionary. The last is a Bible dictionary. It’s combines five existing out-of-copyright dictionaries into one master dictionary. For us, it was interesting, because it was if five different people contributed over 8,000 short articles. Some of those “authors” were writing on the same topic. And the whole thing needed to be assembled so that all of the pieces on one topic were brought together. We published it today. You can order it for Kindle (including the ability to get a sample for free). This baby prints We set it up as a print book at the same … Continue reading 42 mice: doing what I love →

My kids go to a new school. Like all things new and shiny, there are rough spots. For instance, communications are very, shall we say, ad hoc. It’s a constant flood of information. And it’s a big unmanageable mess. We did help them set up a school-wide Google Calendar. They handed off updates to another volunteer. A data-entry volunteer is nice (and big props to all them including the ones are at our kid’s school). But, that volunteer isn’t the one who set a deadline, scheduled a skating party or organized the fundraiser. My daughter’s class had their biggest project of the year (a science project) due this week. Well, the school calendar actually showed the wrong date. Oops. The volunteer enters a lot of events and the volunteer doesn’t own most of those events so it’s easy to end up a calendar that isn’t accurate or up-to-date. Aka: the calendar no one uses. The people who own something need to drive the communications about it. They’re the ones who are supposed to care. They need to have the authority and responsibility to get the word out. Ever year, the school releases a parent phone book. They wait for all the parents to send in their latest info, turn in the I want-to/don’t-want-to be included form and then someone slowly enters all the information. This year, it just arrived; two-thirds of the year is gone. I’ve learned that sending out birthday invitations for my daughter’s December birthday is very hit … Continue reading Flooded by Office Nails →

I’m beginning to feel like a journalist rather than someone who designs websites and creates apps that run on mobile devices. I guess that’s the cost of touching the SOPA can of worms. Of course, if I was a journalist, I talk about these things the minute they happen. Instead I wait a week to let the dust settle. On February 15th, JotForm.com went down without warning. When the company called their hosting company (GoDaddy), they were told that their site had been taken down as part of an ongoing investigation and referred to the requesting agent at the Secret Service. There was no court action, no one told JotForm they were being taken offline and JotForm’s business, for all intents and purposes, was closed. It was as if a Secret Service agent could close every McDonalds in the country… and the owners of McDonalds only found out when they started getting calls from customers asking why can’t my kid get a happy meal?… and the owners could only say what do you mean? We never close! JotForm does something different than McDonalds. They let people easily create custom forms. Need a simple way to survey people or want to do a registration form for a one-off event? JotForm might just be able to help you. They’re good enough at it, that host over 2,000,000 forms for two hundred thousands individuals and businesses. Interested in finding music or movies (legal or otherwise)? Nope, they can’t help you. Interested in child … Continue reading Taking Down 200,000 Customers →

SOPA and Protect IP are dead. For the moment. But, they won’t stay dead. Understanding the problems that are driving such legislation and how significant they are is a key part of deciding how to view the next round of legislation. My experience has been that much of the general coverage on the issues, while getting better, gloss over critical details. A few weeks ago, MegaUpload, a service that allowed people to store files on the internet (and was frequently used to share illegal copies of music, movies and software) was shutdown. Unfortunately, all the service’s legitimate business and individual users lost all their files in the process. And the echoes of the Internet Blackout’s concerns about businesses being shutdown because of activity beyond their direct control (e.g. their users and the content posted on sites they link to) are just a little uncomfortable. Back in August, Google reached a $500M settlement for “knowingly allowing Canadian pharmacies to advertise prescription drugs to U.S. residents.” Clearly, there’s still a lot of money to be made via the internet. And often it doesn’t hurt your cash flow (at least shot term) to turn a blind eye to the ethics and legality of your customer’s activities. And just as clearly, as both examples above point out, existing legal mechanisms address at least part of the problem. In the aftermath of the Internet Blackout, the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by Cary H. Sherman, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association … Continue reading SOPA Dead or Not II →

It’s been a month since the public in the US told the US Congress to kill SOPA (and its companion legislation, Protect IP). One major organizing site had 10M petition signature and 8M attempted phone calls to congress. Several others sites also reported petition signatures in the 7 figures. Several news outlets covered the meltdown in the phone lines into congress. That 8M attempted calls only counts those who looked up a congressional phone number through that one site but still translates into each Congressional office receiving a call every two seconds. That’s a mind boggling level of opposition. Members of Congress are, if nothing else, conscious of their re-election prospects if they try to oppose widespread public opposition to legislation. The reaction was so widespread that the President came out against the legislation, major Congressional supporters switched positions, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) delayed votes on the legislation and Congress finally tabled the whole thing. A number of analysts (both of technology news and in the general news media) noted that Activism seems to have entered a new world. A movement that can melt down the Congressional Switchboards or bring down the Libyan government can now coallesce and succeed in months without a charismatic leader or centralized control. That Twitter, Facebook are now key tools in change was picked up across the media. What may be more noteworthy is not the tools themselves but what people have realized is possible. We seem to enter a … Continue reading SOPA Dead or Not →

At eDao, we have never taken an official stand on any political issue. People come to us because we help them communicate and run their companies better. And, politics doesn’t normally enter into that. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation —the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA)— that could fatally damage the free and open Internet, impose harmful regulations on American business and damage the US economy. eDao has joined Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla (Firefox), Reddit and over 7,000 other websites in the largest online protest in history for one reason: to raise awareness of the issue. Please use the links below to learn about the legislation and let Congress know how you stand. If you’re outside the US, one of the links below will allow you to petition the US State Department. Learn Video: PROTECT IP / SOPA Act Breaks the Internet Wikipedia: SOPA and PIPA – Learn more In-Depth Analysis at EFF Act WordPress protests the act (includes email forms to contact the US Congress and Petition the US State Department) SOPA Strike: how to join the strike and email congress form Google: Take Action   Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Technology is a place of many revolutions. Right now, one of the big ones is mobile. If you set the way back machine to 2006, some business people sent emails from their phones. Some people texted and almost no one used a phone to go to websites. Now, people do it all from their phones and a lot of people are buying tablets. The catch about technology revolutions is that you only realize how big they are when they’re done. Saying people go to websites on their phones doesn’t really capture it. Saying mobile is King begins to catch it. Saying that good web designers will design for phones and tablets first begins to get it. Saying ignoring mobile shuts out half your audience begins to get it. Yes half. Half now. For about a quarter of a century, the majority of computers out there were PC’s running Windows. A while back a lot of people switched to laptops. But, they kept using Windows. That’s the blue in the chart. Correction: that’s the blue area that’s vaporizing on the right side of the chart. The point at which the blue started dropping like a rock? The introduction of the iPhone. A little while later, Android phones were introduced. Not too long after that Windows market share went into free fall. Tablets like the iPad haven’t helped the Windows situation any. In terms of numbers, 352.8 million PCs (according to Gartner estimates) were sold worldwide last year. Next year that number … Continue reading Mobile is King: iOS and Android dethrone Microsoft →

Most of the computer world is based upon inventions and choices between 1964 and 1978: the mouse, networking, UNIX, the C programming language, personal computers, the floppy drive, the spreadsheet, the word-processor and the SQL database. When people think computers, they think of a mouse, being networked (via the internet), thumb drives (the successor to the floppy), spreadsheets and word processors. When people are online (websites, email, twitter and so on), what makes it happen is usually written on languages that are descendants of C, store stuff in SQL databasess and so on. That’s grown to the point where there were more things on the Internet than people on the planet in 2008 (http://gigaom.com/2011/07/17/the-internet-of-things-infographic/). But, the 1960’s and 1970’s when all these fundamental bits and pieces were developed was very different. The Internet began in the US as a DARPA project. In 1970, DARPA achieved a major milestone: they built a network with four computers. Four. In 1982, as that era ended, Tron, was a landmark movie, with one of the first extensive uses of computer animation. The marketing team made serious hay with the fact that rendering was done, in part, on a leased Cray 1 supercomputer. Today’s phones are more powerful than the best computer in the world when Tron was made. Many Americans have a phone like that, a tablet, a laptop and maybe something hooked up to the TV to watch movies or play games over the internet; as many devices as existed on the largest … Continue reading When things change they don’t have to stay the same →

It’s the holiday season. It’s time for something having nothing to do with work. While I’m working, I enjoy listening to music. Some things hold up and some don’t. Here are somethings that have held up for me. And by hold up, I usually mean at least months. While I’ll give some basic hints as to their style, that’s generally where they start. First, some things you can find in the magic YouTube box: The Emergent Order – Fear the Boom and Bust (Dead White Economists Rap). Got a nod from a big name hip hop star before her handlers drug her away. Zenga Zenga (Dance remix of a Qaddafi speech). My 9 year old daughter fell in love with this about 15 seconds into it. I’m known to loop the thing. And then some full albums Josh Garrels – Love & Ware & The Sea in Between – I backed into Christianity Today’s article giving this the album of the year. They termed Josh ‘Weird Folk’. Hmmm… Christianity Today complimenting something by calling it ‘Weird Folk’. My ears perked up. When I hit ‘free download’, I grabbed it. Unlike most free downloads, this was a keeper. Zip over to http://joshgarrels.com and download it. Just do it. Only have time to download or read the rest of this list? Do the download. Rodrigo Y Gabriela – 11:11 (Dueling/cooperating spanish guitars). Their previous albums are good with originals and covers of rock standards but nothing to write home about. On this … Continue reading A Late Christmas Present and a Happy New Year →

I’ve been avoiding blogging again. I was almost asleep when the avoidance problem solved itself with a massive bang! Someone hit our Volkswagen and shoved it 112 feet into the next intersection and took off.  The police said the driver wasn’t hard to find. Their car left a trail of leaked fluids. It went down the street, turned at the next light, kept going until it got to a Taurus abandoned at an underpass. The wheels were trashed. I only thought cars didn’t move with trashed wheels! Especially front wheel drive ones. Presumably the air bags deployed. It’s hard to see with an air bag in front of you. Don’t cars have some magic turn off the go juice switch attached to those things? Casualities: two cars, no people. How am I sure the other driver probably wasn’t seriously hurt? The Police found her drunk at a Burger King. Fries with that? Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook