Just before traveling to India a few months ago, my iPhone was stolen from the dinner table at a winemaker dinner at Merryvale Winery in St. Helena.  (Probably the wait staff conspired with my stupidity when I left it on the table for a last dance.)  It was a Saturday night and I was leaving for India and Malaysia on Monday morning and didn't have time to replace it before going.

So, I had a two week holiday from the cell phone.  I highly recommend it.

What you quickly realize when you don't have a cell phone is how much and how frequently other people use the cell phone.  It seems when people are not talking on it they are texting, reading emails or browsing the web.  Especially in developing economies where the cell phone is the computer.  You also realize how many people quickly jump on their cell phone as soon as the flight attendant says its ok to do so.  Everyone eagerly powers up and immediately checks what's happened in flight.  As if to communicate to all those around their self importance.  What it probably commununicates more is our addiction to immediacy and the tyranny of the urgent.

I've sinced replaced my iPhone with a Nokia E71 - so I'm back in to the self-important addictive behaviors as well - but highly recommend a cell phone holiday.  Try it for a week or day.  You'll be amazed as I was as to how much of the world and the people around you are missed while engaged with your device. 

It was a déjà vu moment in the Hartley household this morning as I learned about the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

My wife worked at Peoplesoft when Oracle acquired it. That acquisition, as you may recall, was very acrimonious and lasted for a ridiculously extended period. Despite all of that acrimony, Oracle treated the Peoplesoft employees incredibly well. As I recall, everyone at Peoplesoft had an offer for their new job or a severance package within the first week the acquisition closed.

Oracle acquiring Sun is not going to be acrimonious. It's done and agreed to with shareholder and regulatory review being the remaining barriers to completion. I expect, based on my personal experience and the fact that Oracle has had even more experience with acquisitions since, that the integration of Sun into Oracle will go even more smoothly than Peoplesoft.

The other thing I observed that came from the Peoplesoft acquisition was an unleashing of innovation and a spawning of new companies. Some companies, like Workday, were spawned to compete with Oracle. Others like Knowledge Infusion were created to provide professional services to Peoplesoft customers. Other companies in similar fields benefited as former "Peoplesofties" were hired into their ranks.

Sun's acquisition was not acrimonious, but there have been rumors of our acquisition for weeks now that have created uncertainty and doubt among our customers. Now that uncertainty can be laid to rest. The press announcements, analyst calls and other press stories make it clear that Oracle is buying Sun and plans to retain and grow in key product areas. It also makes clear that there will be fewer job losses with Oracle buying Sun than another hardware company that may have overlapping product lines. This is not only good news for our employees but also the economy as a whole.

It's terrific news for our customers and our partners too, who we all feel strong loyalty to as well. Many of the Sun employees have been selling to Educational institutional for years. We love that we help our customers run their organizations more effectively but equally we feel that we're helping do important things for society as a whole, with the improvements in education and research that technology brings. Recently we've also been expanding into healthcare as well. Healthcare, like education, is an important business opportunity - but you can't help to feel you are contributing in a significant way to the improvement of the quality of life or lifespan of society. Government typically addresses the challenges that the private sector cannot solve or at which they can make a profit. By definition, government challenges are then the greatest to solve. The people on my team love the customers and challenges they face and feel pride in helping solve these problems.

The Hartley household had a déjà vu moment this morning. The good news for my kids is that they know that these things don't necessarily have a bad ending. I think our employees, customers and partners will see that too.

This arrived at my home last night and saw one of those little notice cards that our local governments send out every so often.  Normally, I throw them away without reading them - but not yesterday.  

I live near Livermore California which bills itself as the California's first wine area.  (obviously feeling overshadowed by the more famous Napa Valley).  Livermore is also the location of the famous (or infamous depending on your political views) Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs.  So, you'd think that a city with all that brain power could answer the "Topic of Discussion" question without spending two hours on the topic.

The answer is:  "A place that makes wine."

If you are thinking about buying a Kindle, don't and here's why.

I'm a gadget geek and I bought the Kindle 1 as soon as it came out.  I liked the idea of a wireless device using Linux and Java.  I liked the search feature so I could search for words across all my content.  I liked that I could have a bunch of books when I travel without the weight.

What I didn't figure out in advance was the economics (or lack thereof) and the technology lock-in.  

My Kindle 1 broke yesterday 1 month after the 1 year warranty expired.  Amazon has no repair service like Nintendo DS does.   If it doesn't work after a hard reset you are out of luck.  I was given the option to buy a Kindle 2 at full price or a Kindle 1 for $180.

This is when I figured out that the economics didn't add up (or added up too much to justify.)  I purchased $210 worth of Kindle books in the 1 year and 1 month I had it.  I thought I had saved a bunch on the book purchases (more on that deception in a minute).  I calculated that if I had purchased real books instead it would have cost a $237.  Wait a minute, I only saved $27?  How could that be when every time you buy a Kindle book it shows you the savings and it always seems to be about 50% off?  Now the deception: they are comparing the savings to the list price of the real book not the  Amazon discounted price of the books. So, instead of comparing it to the Amazon price they are comparing to list.  Thus the savings of only $27.  The other thing I noticed was Kindle doesn't charge sales tax or shipping.  (Why no sales tax seems odd when the physical book has sales tax -- seems the State of California is missing some revenue here.)  But assuming I paid sales tax and shipping on all the real books instead, which are not charged on the Kindle, that would raise my real book purchases to $340.  (Assuming I only purchased one book at a time and didn't earn free shipping by combining orders.)

So I "saved" $130 but the device itself cost me $399 plus tax - so where's the savings?  

Here's the final straw.  The content is closed and locked to the device.  With the physical books I'd still have the book and I could have shared the books with my wife or friends.  I could have sold them on Craigslist or eBay.  Not with Kindle books. In order to keep reading the books I paid $210 for - I have to buy the device.  (The fact that I can now read them on an iPhone makes it somewhat better but why do I have to buy a iPhone?)

I thought the content was in a .pdf format so that I could read it on my computer.  I thought this because you can download .pdf documents to your Kindle so I assumed the format of all the docs were .pdf.  I also thought this because there's an option when you purchase Kindle content via the web rather than using the Kindle's wireless connection to download to your computer.  So I thought that meant you could read it on your computer.  No, this PC download feature is there so that you can download it to your Kindle in the event you are out of wireless range.

So learn from my mistake.  Unless Amazon (or Sony or any of the readers) opens up their formats so that you can read them on any device you want to, don't buy it.  Unless they get the economics right, don't buy it.  There's no .MP3 format standard for digital books like there is for music so it looks like it's lock-in wherever you turn.

The publishers are the ones who have given us the anti-competitive copyright laws we have in the U.S. today. So it's no wonder as they attempt to move into the digital world they continue to create these kinds of uneconomic offers.  (Watch  Larry Lessig's latest speech on this topic.)

Shame on Amazon for taking open source Linux and Java and creating a closed source lock-in.  If they do this with the Kindle, I can only imagine what they will do with their (your)  cloud.

"To build a better world we need to replace the patchworks of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today deliver success with a society that provides opportunities for all. The world could be so much richer than the world we have settled for today." P268 Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

I prefer to read non-fiction to fiction. It drives my wife and kids nuts because they are all voracious readers of fiction. When I approach a book though, I view it as a dialogue not a monologue. I don't accept everything the writer states as gospel just because it's written in a book. I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book called Outliers. I had enjoyed reading his previous books The Tipping Point and Blink. To a great extent, this book should not be read who prefer fiction especially the Hollywood, mythic Horatio Algers stances of rags to riches. It could just as easily be called "Success: Mythbusters".

As I wrote previously, I decided to pay the annual subscription fee to use Plaxo to maintain my contact database and calendar online.  I tried to use Google calendar but it wouldn't import my legacy calendar and there was no one I could call at Google's cloud to help me.  It's free. It's beta.  They have millions of customers, so I figured I shouldn't put my calendar somewhere that I can't get help when I need it.

One of the "benefits" of paying for Plaxo compared to its free service is "Premium Service."  This means I'm supposed to be able to call a live human whenever I need it.  I've used it a couple of times and they were able to help me out one of the times.  Today though, I can't access my Plaxo account because I've had too many login attempts.  The problem is, I can't get the tech support line unless I'm logged in.  So all I can do is send an email and see if they get back to me.  In the meantime, I can only hope I don't miss too many meetings since I don't have calendar access.

The consumer price of  "cloud computing"  is enticing - but what's the price when the services don't work?  Do you or can you get support when you need it?  These support issues need to part of the cloud solution if it's going to work long term.

I'm on vacation this week.  Unfortunately its not the totally disconnected in the middle of Zimbabwe or Galapagos Islands kind of vacation.  I'm in Lake Tahoe in a place that has wireless internet access that facilitates my low will power to be totally "off the grid."  The good news is I've been able to catch up on reading the newspapers and I came across this story that I liked.  With politicians, its often difficult to get a sense of who they are privately.  Perhaps its the voyeur in us, but we love it when open mic incidents happens so we can catch them as they really are. 

So I'll take this story from ABC for what it was -- two political leaders talking about the challenges of finding thinking time. 

I think its a problem we all face:  Making time to think in this ever connected i.e. interrupted world we live in.

Microphone Picks Up Private Conversation Between Obama and British Leader on Need for Vacations and 'Thinking' Time

July 26, 2008 8:40 AM

  At British Parliament today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, met with Tory Leader David Cameron.

Seemingly unaware of an enormous fuzzy boom mike held by ABC News' Eric Kerchner, the two chatted casually -- and privately.

"You should be on the beach," Cameron told Obama. "You need a break. Well, you need to be able to keep your head together."

"You've got to refresh yourself," agreed Obama.

"Do you have a break at all?" asked Cameron.

"I have not," said Obama. "I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who -- not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process --  said that, should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you're doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be -- "

"These guys just chalk your diary up," said Cameron, referring to a packed schedule.

"Right," Obama said. "In 15 minute increments …"

"We call it the dentist's waiting room," Cameron said. "You have to scrap that because you've got to have time."

"And, well, and you start making mistakes," Obama said, "or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel-- "

"Your feeling," interrupted Cameron. "And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions."

"That's exactly right," Obama said. "And the truth is that we've got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know ten times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you."

 

 

The US has its challenges right now and its human nature to become complacent about things you take for granted -- like freedom.  As I enjoy my "Independence Day" BBQs and fireworks, its nice to know that all we have to complain about is the price of gas and not 1000% inflation rate. We may have mortgage problems and declining real estate values but we haven't had to resort to barter.  Maybe we should rename this 4th of July holiday to Thanksgiving instead.

This will be my last post about Zimbabwe for awhile. The charade that Mugabe called an election is over, and the tyrant remains. I heard a good story on NPR this week that gives some historical context for the situation. The report warns that like a cornered animal, Mugabe will attack, and the ordinary people of Zimbabwe will be the likely victims.

Here's the latest update from my friend in Zimbabwe.

Date: June 27, 2008
Subject: Hello
One may ask, why go to the polling station when you will spoil the votes? The answer is simple. Remember I did say some landlords were now evicting the tenants that were MDC supporters, thus if one did not go to vote the landlords who are Zanu-PF will just tell you "Go." Thus the tenants wanted to just have the ink on their fingers to prove that they voted, or else they risked being told to go and stay at the MDC houses.

Accommodation is a problem here. The landlords charge in U.S. dollars or Pula, the Botswana currency, as they use that for shopping. The fun one was where the landlord would give the tenants a list of the groceries that they want bought for them from Botswana. In this case, you go to Botswana to buy the groceries and pay duty for the goods at the border, then use one's money to pay for the transport. When you get home, you give the groceries to the landlord. Then you know the rent has been paid. One might think it is cheaper to buy groceries instead of paying in hard cash. Alas, it is not true, as they would want to buy sometimes more [groceries] than what you would pay for the rent.

When it started, it sounded like a joke, but it has spread out now. The reason is simple. The Zimbabwean dollar is valueless. The Governor is printing Zim papers that are being used as legal tender. At present the highest note is 50 billion. I cannot give my kids money to go to school as I would need up to 20 billion per day for the child to use at school. That is today. Tomorrow it would be 2 times that figure and 4 times in 2 weeks. So now we give them something to eat rather than the money.

I remember when I was a school-going kid my parents used to give me 5 cents. That was enough for one week. I used 1 cent per day. Nowadays the money printed recently becomes useless in a week's time. It is now a common scenario to see 10 million notes on the ground and nobody would pick them up to buy something. let alone keep as mementos, as they are useless. 

I was disappointed when I heard that Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the presidential race in Zimbabwe. So I was surprised to receive an email update from my friend there titled "Sigh of Relief." Anyway, Tsvangirai's withdrawal may save lives in the short term, but may not in the long term, given the economic and food bankruptcy facing Zimbabwe.

Date: June 24, 2008
Subject: Sigh of Relief
Yesterday morning, most people in Zim were not shocked to hear on the news that Morgen is no longer contesting in 27 June elections. It was long overdue to hear such news. Most opposition supporters have fled their constituences were they were supposed to vote from. The good news is that UN, SADC, the observers have all backed Morgen for doing what most people wanted him to do.Today a friend of mine that I worked with a long time ago, who until today was staying in the rural areas, was forced together with his family, his father and mother and his own children, to flee their homestead because they were on the list to be tortured or I leave that to your imagination. His mother was unlucky, she was caught. He said most people that are opposition fled their homes for fear of being caught and face music. Thus when I saw him he was going to the police to report that his mother has been abducted. This was reporting the case to his victimers as the police are part and parcel to the system. Now it`s a case of if you can't beat them, join them.

Just yesterday they were giving T-shirts of Zanu-PF [Robert Mugabe's party]. People just got them so that it would look like they are interested in Zanu. There are posters from the airport to the Zim Border very big one that even if you do not like you will see Mugabe with his first (now known as the first of fury), sound like some title of a kung-fu character in the movies. While other people are saying that it is ok that Morgen has stopped contesting, Zanu is saying they will be going on with the campaigning and that the elections will go on with or without the opposition as well as the election observers. The big question is what next?...

I vacationed in Zimbabwe a number of years ago and became friends with the people we visited. Recently, I've been receiving updates from them about events in their country. Their messages paint a picture of a place crying for change and a leader willing to do almost anything to keep change from happening. I took the title for this blog post, "Whispers in the Deep," from one of these emails because it communicates the kind of terror that the Zimbabweans are experiencing.  These were personal emails to a small group of people.  The writer did not intend them to become blog entries.  As such, they really don't have a political agenda per se except to let friends now how friends are doing.  It confirms to me that the political terrorism that Mugabe and his party continue exert on their political opponents is real.

I wonder what I can do to help. Like many people, I sometimes feel powerless to bring about change in my own country, much less in a faraway place. In the U.S., it's hard even to get news about some of those places. (This is one reason I like Global Voices Online so much. It taps into the blogosphere around the world, even places where the press can't afford to put staff—which will increasingly be the case given economics.) I have discovered a couple of websites through GVO.  Sokwanele.com maps the terrorism cases that have been reported -- 1429 in all as of today.  I made a donation to Zimbabwe Benefit Foundation in the UK.  The Catholic church was very active in Zimbabwe in distributing humanitarian aid so that may be another place to make contributions.

So I'm sharing this series of emails I've received from my friends in Zimbabwe. I've removed identifying information to protect the writers. I've edited very little because I wanted preserve my friends' voices while getting their meaning across. Any hyperlinks are mine as well.

Date: April 20, 2008
Subject: [none]
I hope you did not think that the war had just began as I was put on a forced writing leave. For the past 2 days I did not have the chance to write due to a forceful Internet sabotage. It was down as Mr M
[Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe] wanted to make sure that we stayed home and listened to his speech. I cannot believe it he has the audacity of telling the Zimbabweans the way he likes. In his speech he said there was never never ever going to be another government, maybe he should have added that over his dead body will another government rule Zimbabwe. But history has it that even Ian Smith, may his soul rest in peace, once said that. Kamuzu
Banda in Malawi thought he was

[Read More]

I just finished a small home remodel that gives me a dedicated office (a "lair" as one of my friends called it -- a small lair.)  As I was moving in, I discovered a quote book that I kept while in college.  In it is a parable called "The man who sold hot dogs."  I don't know who wrote it but it certainly applies to the unusual economic times we're in.

There was a man who lived by the side of the road and sold hot dogs.

He was hard of hearing so he had no radio.

He had trouble with his eyes so he read no newspapers.

But he sold good hot dogs.

He put up signs on the highway telling how good they were.

He stood on the side of the road and cried: "Buy a hot dog, Mister?"

And people bought.

He increased his meat and bun orders.

He bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade.

he finally got his son home from college to help him out.

But then something happened. 

His son said, "Father, haven't you been listening to the radio?

Haven't you been reading the newspapers?

There's a big depression.

The European situation is terrible.

The domestic situation is worse." 

Whereupon the father thought, "Well, my son's been to college, he reads the papers and he listens to the radio, and he ought to know."

So the father cut down on his meat and bun orders, took down his advertising signs, and no longer bothered to stand out on the highway to sell his hot dogs.

And his hot dog sales fell almost overnight.

"You're right, son," the father said to the boy.

"We certainly are in the middle of a great depression."

Since I've lived my entire voting life in California, I've grown quite used to not having my vote matter in the selection of my party's candidate for President. California's primary used to be in June of each presidential election year, but by June, voters in the other states had already selected the nominee.

This year was different.  California moved its primary to February 5, and for the first time,  my vote counted.  As evidence of this, I received my first piece a mail a few weeks ago from the Obama campaign asking for my vote (and not just my money.)  The ironic thing is that in every other race where my vote didn't matter I had a firm opinion about who to vote for.  This week—when my vote mattered—I was undecided until the end.  I reminded myself of the Devo song "Freedom of choice":

Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want.

Perhaps it's should be the theme song for Democratic Party voters who can't seem to make up their collective minds as Obama wins one state, and then Clinton wins the next.

It may seem like a stretch, but this Devo theme song could also apply to many organizations as they consider their future use of open source technology.  In the 2007 Campus Computing Survey, Kenneth Green comments on the "affirmative ambivalence" of U.S. universities as they consider Open Source applications. No one likes to be locked into a single vendor (freedom FROM choice), but they're ambivalent about moving toward freedom OF choice.

By the way, if my 9- and 13-year-old kids are any indicator, Obama has the youth vote locked up.  My third grader said they held a vote in his class of 17. Obama won with 14, Hilary 3 and McCain 0.

My oldest son is 12 and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He was diagnosed with that and a couple of other learning disabilities when he was in kindergarten. The great news is that through special education resources at our local public school, he's been able to overcome his disabilities, with the exception of some fine-motor skills such handwriting (or in his case, the lack thereof).

Where we live, “middle school” runs from the sixth grade to the eighth. Given that our son had not only handwriting challenges but the everyday challenges that most 10-and-11 year-olds face in getting themselves organized, we jumped at the chance to put him in our middle school's “Laptop Program” when he matriculated. The school forced us to buy an overpriced laptop from a specific company that sells overpriced products to schools, but we had high hopes that the program itself would create an organizational paradise in the Hartley home and overcome my son's handwriting issues.

Paradise was never found.

The laptop program was poorly thought out. Although every teacher had to maintain a Web site that documented nightly homework requirements, each teacher had a different way of doing this. There was no consistency whatsoever. Some teachers had too much homework and expected us to understand the intricacies of their specific class Web site. Others barely updated their sites. Even though the laptop forced upon us included a calendar tool as part of its software package, the school didn't use it. So instead of students subscribing to each class calendar and then getting a single aggregated view of the calendar on their laptops, we had to search six different Web sites every night to see what homework was required. To add insult to injury, none of the software tools used by the school's laptop program really required the particular overpriced laptop that we'd been required to buy. All of the software was Web-based. In other words, we could have accessed it via any laptop running any operating system.

This is not a rant about the school. What I learned in working with the teachers is that they have no time or support to manage all of this technology. They work incredibly long hours in the classroom, so any work they do on the computer has to happen after hours. They assign too much homework, and don't understand how to turn a computer into a learning tool, but that's a subject for a future blog entry.

The point is that the laptop didn't deliver on Paradise. Sure, it was expensive and booted up and ran programs and accessed email and the Internet. The problem was that we, as parents, had placed too much hope on a single tool. A laptop doesn't teach—teachers do. Learning how to use a word processor is not learning how to write. Nor is learning how to create a PowerPoint presentation is not learning how to present or to think or to persuade. In fact, as a tool, a television with compelling content can probably teach more than a computer with access to the Internet and an office automation suite.

This is why I'm so supportive of Curriki.org. Curriki is an online environment that's about sharing curriculum created by teachers and other teaching professionals. It's free. It's global. It's a community of educators helping other educators with high-quality teaching resources that may or may not be delivered by computers, but that will focus on the purpose of education: learning topics, rather than learning tools. Current offerings on Curriki range from lesson plans, assessments and media clips to complete textbooks, all available at no cost. Anyone can join Curriki. In fact, Curriki and the AARP are collaborating to encourage retired educators who are subject matter experts to share their curriculum, review content curricula, and help train teachers. The focus is the content.

When he was in seventh grade, we moved our son to a school that had smaller classes. His entire seventh grade class is now 22 students. They do not allow the use of laptops in the classroom. Despite that, we've noticed no adverse impact on my son's academic performance. The lack of computers is, however, forcing him to improve his handwriting skills.

My son's story is far from over. We'll see how it develops, but the one thing we've learned so far is this: The tool is not the teacher.