The Definition of a Great Blog, Example #1

Kudos to Jack for this endorsement from Dennis Kennedy. Jack used to post great comments on my blog and drop me an email from time to time. I kept twisting his arm to start his own blog, which he finally did about a year ago. Now we all benefit from his insights.

The Definition of a Great Blog, Example #1

I am such a fan of Jack Vinson’s blog, Knowledge Jolt with Jack, which covers knowledge management and work practices.

Here’s how good it is.

Jack writes a post called Annual Ammonia Symposium. Not only do I look at it, but I read it, think about how it might have application to me, and now I am blogging about it.

For me, Knowledge Jolt with Jack is a blog that matters. Jack has earned my confidence and trust with his consistently excellent posts and now I’m ready to follow his interests wherever they lead. That’s a pretty damn good blog.

Today’s example: The Information Snowflake and Snowballs.

History of the Automatic Teller

The ATM is one of the now ubiquitous technologies that make up the backstory of our digital lives. If you want to grasp where things are today and where they are likely to go, one excellent way to start is to invest some time and effort in understanding how this backstory fits together.

History of the Automatic Teller. XopherMV writes “The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. ‘Golly, all the teller does is cash checks, take deposits, answer questions like “What’s my balance?” and transfer money between accounts,’ recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. ‘Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!’ And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel’s parent company, that’s exactly what he and his engineers did. Read more about the story of the ATM.” [Slashdot:]

New O’Reilly magazine: Make

While I have no time for it, sign me up anyway.

New O’Reilly magazine: Make. Make magazine coverToday, at OSCON in Portland, Dale Dougherty and I announced a new O’Reilly magazine called Make. It’ll be a quarterly, full-color magazine filled with fun projects and hardware hacks involving technology. (Dale is the editor and publisher, and I’m the editor-in-chief. Thanks to BB’s own John Battelle for getting me involved!)

Make will have 5-minute tips you can use to improve your gadgets, networks, and computers, as well as much longer projects that might take several days (or weeks) to complete. The first issue is coming out in January. If you’re interested, visit the web site and sign up for the newsletter. I’ll also be running the Make blog on that page. I hope that a lot of BB readers become Make contributors, too. Please send me your ideas for hacks, tips, tricks, workarounds, neat things to build, useful tools, etc. Link [Boing Boing]

Adams on Murphy

The corollary here is that the harder something is to get at or repair, the more likely that it will fail at an inopportune moment.

Adams on Murphy. Adams on Murphy —

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”
— Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001), Mostly Harmless

(From Quotes of the Day – The Quotations Page.) [Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Blog]

Dvorak on disruptive technology

John Dvorak has just discovered Clay Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma and figures it’s a good excuse for a rant. Like many who’ve used it as a launching pad for their own purposes, there isn’t a lot of evidence that Dvorak has bothered to read the book. Here’s Dvorak’s conclusion:

The concept of disruptive technology is not the only daft idea floating around to be lapped up obediently by the business community. There are others. But the way these dingbat bromides go unchallenged makes you wonder whether anyone can think independently anymore

Including Dvorak I suppose.

But then he isn’t really interested in advancing the dialog, just in getting us to read and link to his columns. Traditional media at its best.

I still think the Innovator’s Dilemma and its companion The Innovator’s Solution are easily among the best business books written in the past 10 years. But you do have to read them and then think about what they say. Sorry about that.

The Myth of Disruptive Technology. People love a good, unified explanation for the ways things are. [PC Magazine: the Official John C. Dvorak RSS Feed]

Mind Mapping for Results

Looks interesting. I’ve been a long-time proponent of mindmaps and a user of MindManager for a while now. I’ve downloaded the trial version. We’ll see where it leads.

Mind Mapping for Results.
I’ve just finished the second of two delightful and informative web-conference calls with Nick Duffill of Gyronix. Nick and his associate have developed ResultManager – a powerful add-in to MindManager that allows it to be used as a visual project management tool. I must admit that I had initially looked at ResultManager as just a great collection support tool; however…
[Eric Mack On-Line]

Denham on Anywhere – Anytime knowledge??

Once again, Denham is spot on in his analysis. This is another instance of where organizations engage in magical thinking in lieu of the real thinking needed to tackle how to improve the way they support and leverage knowledge work.

Anywhere – Anytime knowledge??. Many organizations have pinned their hopes on delivery of knowledge anywhere, anytime, just-in-time. Time to share some thoughts: In many ways, this latent desire parallels the technology vs. people schism in KM. Almost all the talk and writings are about… [Knowledge-at-work]

Wolfram explained

I confess that Wolfram’s New Kind of Science has been gathering dust on one of my shelves. But it continues to intrigue me. Here’s some material courtesy of David Weinberger that may help when I do get around to finally reading it.

Wolfram explained. I just came across a Forbes article by Michael S. Malone, dated 11.27.00, called “God, Stephen Wolfram and Everything Else.” It’s a good, non-technical introduction to Wolfram. Nicely done. Critics of Wolfram won’t find much to like in it, and I still think Ray Kurzweil’s piece is the best analysis/intro I’ve read, but Malone puts Wolfram into a useful perspective…. [Joho the Blog]

From the tarmac at Logan airport

Now here’s a first for me. I’m sitting on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan airport in a United 737. Chicago is on a groundstop and we won’t hear anything new for awhile. They’ve let us turn on laptops, cellphones, etc while we wait.

Turns out I have connectivity via wi-fi somewhere over in the D terminal off to my right. I figured I had to post something just because I could. Ain’t technology grand?