/dev/null/kevin

What do I do when I'm not blogging?  Working on this:

xVM stands for The Intersection of Virtualization and Management, if you were wondering.  You'd think it would be written V ∩ M, but no.  It's xVM.  Don't argue!   You obviously don't have an advanced marketing degree with emphasis on set theory.  Also, "x" is still cool, and retro.  "x" is the new "i".

What doesn't a guy wandering alone in a canyon have to do with xVM?  Got me.  But before he's washed away by flash flood waters he can remotely manage his entire data center with just a few clicks!  It's also so easy to use that his replacement will have no trouble learning how to use it.

Anyway, I work on the management side of things, so you know whom to blame congratulate later.

Perhaps you've heard that the One Laptop Per Child group is being sued by a "Nigerian entrepreneur" because he claims they stole a keyboard design he invented.

What, is the 419 scam business slowing down?

Here's what he claims:

Is he saying he invented the AltGraph key?  This key rarely found on US keyboards...

Except for every Sun Microsystems keyboard!!

Here is the Nigerian layout of the OLPC laptop:

And here is (part) of a Sun Type 5 keyboard (Photo courtesy Wikimedia.com):

So, if he really is claiming adding two shift keys is his invention, I submit this as evidence that he's full of it.

More evidence that he's full of it?  Here's a link to what the "stolen" keyboard looks like.  Compare it to the OLPC keyboard and you'll see that's they're not even similar.

Here's another take on the story.
 

Yahoo announced a new Facebook module for users.  I tried it and it's not quite for prime time.

I see two problems.

1. Fixed-width - C'mon guys.  Did you only test with one word updates?  That's a lot of wasted screen space.
   
2. Double "is" - Facebook users hated the is so much that Facebook caved and made it optional.  Now Yahoo adds an extra one?  Way to go, Skippy!

I'm sure these will may get fixed, but someone skimped on the QA.

Update: It's a little better now, but not much.  Plus, why do I need to know what I am doing?

I tried to warn people last year, but apparently, no one listened.  Cyber Monday is fake.  It's not real.  It's just a made up event to try to promote sales.

The term Cyber Monday is only two years old.  It's supposed to be the biggest online shopping day of the year, but in those two years it hasn't been.  The media, once again, perpetuates a story without verifying it.  More lazy reporters.

For the record, Black Friday is also not the biggest shopping day of the year either, but at least it is an real big with (theoretically) big sales.  Much of it is "bait and switch" but there are some savings, if you don't find your own time valuable and don't mind getting trampled or waiting in ridiculously long checkout lines.

tinyurl.com is down today and it's wreaking havoc on services like Twitter and other's who leverage it.

Here's good article from Steve Rubel that I found while searching for the cause the outage.  Not surprisingly, he also used the term "single point of failure" to describe the situation.
 

My product, xVM, is getting some press.  Give my boss some love and read his blog.

A hot topic of the day (and yesterday) was this article entitled The Death of Email.  Likewise, this follow-up story.

Summary: Teens and tweens don't use email, so it will die.

I think they said the same thing about regular snail mail when email became popular.  It's still here, and so will email be.

That's not to say email's usage won't decline.  It will.  Just like postage mail usage has declined.  But there is a still a need for postage mail and there will always be a need for email.

The reason kids don't use email is because they don't need it.  They also don't need a filing cabinet to hold their tax returns, house deeds and insurance policies.  But they will.

Kids also don't need (although they do want) a drivers license.  What do filing cabinets and drivers licenses have to do with email?  They provide what email does online:

• Identity
• Archiving

These two features are what email provides and what kids don't need, yet.  What the kids don't need from email is communication.  They've got that covered.  But when they start to need a confirmed identity and safe storage of important information they are going to find that SMS and IM don't cut it.

Now, it's just as likely that something new will come along to replace email in terms of identity and storage.  There are already things like openID and numerous online file storage systems, but none yet that combine them like email does.  Something like Facebook, or one of the coming Open Social sites, could probably write something like this.  But Facebook still requires an email address to sign up! 

I looked into replacing email as the primary means of communicating with my hockey team, but we're either all too old, or it's just too soon.  Probably both.

So, email won't die.  It will just become the "right tool for the right job" as other communication tools become more mainstream.  If humans ever colonize space (hey, we're talking about the future!) then "what's old is new again" will occur and email (space email!) will likely be used to send messages across the long distances where instant communication isn't possible.  And future historians will look back at this blog and recognize me as the genius that I am.

I found this in my "save for later" folder:  It's the solar powered mouse.

Is there a big market for this?  Do a lot of people need a wireless mouse - outside?  It's not like you can just use it all day and then leave it outside - at night - to recharge.  You would actually need to use this outside to get any benefit.  Also, wouldn't your hand cover the solar panel?  Maybe this is just for people with desks by windows that face the equator.

But this leads to a bigger question:

Why use wireless mice at all?

I've seen plenty of people sit at their laptop, plug in a wireless mouse dongle into the USB port, and the use their wireless mouse all of three inches away from it.  To me this just seems like extra trouble for no gain.  You need to keep the mouse recharged (solar or not) and now you have two things to lose instead of just one.

I travel with a simple mouse with a retractable cord.  It's small, works, and doesn't need batteries of any kind.  Mine also has cool LEDs to make it flash colors.  I got mine on sale for $5, but even at the full retail price of $25 it's still cheaper than any wireless mouse out there.

Yes, I can see a need for a wireless device if you give presentations and like to be away from the laptop.  I'm not talking to you.  But I'm pretty sure you're not giving your presentations outside in the sun.

Today's Scoble lament really hit home with me.  Riding the web 2.0 social networking wave is harder for a 40+ year old than a 20-something college student.

When I went to college in the 80s I could email my dad.  That was pretty much it besides other students.  Today, I've got the whole extended family using email (even grandma).  They also read my blog about my daughter, but they don't use RSS feeds.  I use the blogdrive.com service because it can be configured to send email to people when I post.  Otherwise, they'd never know to check.  Web 2.0 is about interaction but the family doesn't get that part.  They don't leave comments on the blog.  I might get an email from my mom that she liked the latest blog and pictures, but that's about it.  Twitter, Facebook, etc., are all foreign words to them.

Last night I spent part of the night explaining what Twitter was to my wife, and that I'm not having an affair with Veronica Belmont because I subscribe to her twitter feed.  She's a work in progress, my wife.  I finally got her to enable her IM client more regularly so that's helped to cut down on the one-sentence emails

I also captain a hockey team and our roster averages about 39 years old.  I use email and evite to coordinate the team.  I was looking to use some other Web 2.0 tools but after an impromptu survey I found that my team was as ignorant as my family when it came to new technology.  Besides email, the next "best" tool people used was IM, but only about 25% of the team.  Again, no one used Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and the like.  Many of these guys work in high tech, too.

The same can be said for my college friends.  I still see many of them when I play in my band.  Email and Yahoo Groups are enough for them.  Most of my social networking friends are from Sun and the blogger community.  That's not a bad thing, but it would be nice to be able to tell an inside joke every once in a while.

So, am I just ahead of my time?  Will my family and friends catch up like they did with email?  Or am I just an old man playing with kids' toys?

I'm off this week, so you'll have to find another source of useless, sarcastic information.

While I'm gone, consider the following topics:

• The practicality of a wireless/bluetooth mouse.  Unless your Media Center PC is in the closet, do you really need it?
  
• Is Molly Wood just a bit of a posuer?  I like her, but she doesn't always know what she's talking about.
• How come NeoOffice, a free product, costs money for early access?
• Is High Def really better?  Pores, makeup smudges and dandruff don't really add much.  Check out these Star Wars images.
  

Talk amongst yourselves.

How come Robert's Scoble's icult photos, people with iPhones, are all taken with a Nokia N95?

Do people still go to concerts?  If they do they can do away with the old school lighter for those cliche hand-waving moments.  Just point your cell phone to http://rocklighter.com and display this image of a flame.

Update [09/06/2007]: I found this great picture from Penny Arcade's PAX Expo.  Those are Nintendo DSs (dual-screens).

Everyone is talking about the Oxford philosopher who thinks there is a good chance we are living in a computer simulation.  I find this type of talk boring because it's an old idea that has been discussed to death.  Yet, people still insist on talking/writing/blogging about it like it's a new idea.  The idea of universes within universes has been around for a while.  The topic usually first comes up when a teenager takes his first hit off a bong.  Dude, we could be living in some other dude's fingernail! 

So, I went looking for the oldest reference to this idea.  Here is the opening stanza from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence.

I'm not sure when he wrote that poem, but Blake died in 1827, so before then.  Can anyone find an older reference?

If you're going to spam my flickr comments just to get me to click on your link, it's best to use different comments each time.  Several of my photos were given this "compliment":

Wow great photo. What a special moment.

What were they hawking?  Toilet paper.

I don't want to see that special moment.

While checking to see if this review of the Bratz movie was still up (it's not), I noticed that Yahoo! Movies was telling me that "You'll probably like this movie."  Really?  What did I ever do to give you that idea?

Since I don't like being told what I should like, I exercised my web-2.0-given rights and gave the movie an "F" rating.  Yahoo didn't care and still told me that I would like this movie.  Note: While I haven't seen this movie I'm pretty sure I would hate it.

 What up, Yahoo?  I pretty sure I won't be using your recommendations any time soon.