Big Fractal Tangle: Archive Index

I decided to do this a month ago tonight. I was getting a reckless drive home along Sanibel streets to the Sundial, just coming from a talk-filled dinner with a dozen or so DERI folk, worried I wouldn't have enough time to sleep and pack before returning to Pennsylvania the next morning, when I thought of it: Big Fractal Tangle would be the name of a blog. Earlier that day, we'd all seen the Tim Berners-Lee keynote speech at the end of the five-day ISWC 2003, during which he said the phrase as an aside while describing the Semantic Web....

A day before the conference started, I was sitting in the whirlpool at the Sundial reading Practical RDF by Shelley Powers with a highlighter. I was pretty focused on the book, so I didn't notice the four people that joined me in the whirlpool while I read. I looked up after a while and began being more friendly ... they were all Americans, and all on vacation. After we talked for a while, the man across from me asked, "What's the twenty second rundown on RDF." Apparently he had worked in IT before he retired, and geniunely wanted to know....

Many of the talks I had in Sanibel were about our current social problems: what they are, why they persist, what can be done. I loved having so many Europeans to talk with, since I find them to be more open, more personal, more informed about world events than many Americans, particularly in professional settings. It might seem odd to have a whole lotta philosophizing going on at a technical conference, but I was thrilled by it. As technologists, we have more power to change things than often we realize. With something as pervasive and as influential as the Semantic...

Borislov Popov wrote in response: "As all tools in the world, the Sem Web will be just a tool ... It will be employed by people, so the people are the ones to change; because the tools are just artificial limbs for us --- they fulfill our intentions ... They will help if our intention develops, as does the internet in some cases and radio'n tv in others." Well said, and history agrees with him. With each technological advance, there's always a few optimists like me shouting hope from the rooftops, who then later agree that their world-changing advance is...

Putting aside for a moment all this pie-in-the-sky, we-are-the-world stuff, let's switch to more immediate concerns. We were warned by our keynote at the conference against overhyping our efforts, and he's right. The more we reflect and rhapsodize about our vision, the more we'll tune out the press, and thereby the decision makers. Better to sneak up on them ... we should underpromise and overdeliver. But there's a bigger reason to shut up about it: I think in the short run the Semantic Web is more likely to fail than succeed. I went down to Sanibel to see if "it's...

Years ago, at my father's old ad agency, I took over in the accounting department after they'd let a woman go who'd been doing the books. For a month I struggled with her filing system, rummaging in the cabinets for ten minutes each time I wanted something. Bills from the same health insurance company would sometimes appear in "Insurance", and sometimes under the company's name, and sometimes under "Benefits." I finally gave up and took a week to completely reorganize everything. The ability to organize is a teachable skill, though it's often seen as a personality trait we've either got...

The idea for my company's current project began in January 1999 while I was trying to teach my mom, Rosemary, how to email photos taken with her new Kodak digital camera. The software that came with it was called PictureEasy, and was pretty easy. Of the two dozen photo programs I've used since, it was probably the best for her, but it still had some snags that tripped her up from time to time. Over the next few years, whenever we went to visit her in Bonita Springs, Florida (half an hour from Sanibel), I'd download a bunch of new...

"In the long run [people] hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high." (Thoreau) Mr. Shirky's article The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview is a real piece of work. I don't agree with any of it, but I'm still glad he wrote it. Nothing motivates me more than baseless partisan bluster, and while I know he's just muddying the waters to appear deep, I've decided to use his article, and him, to make a larger point. This is the promise of the Semantic Web -- it will improve all...

Given my entrepreneurial background, I was shocked at the open exchange of ideas in Sanibel. Most projects I've worked on have had non-disclosures. Most of my colleagues hold their cards close to the chest. My amazement reached its peak on the demos & posters night as I walked from station to station, hearing one breakthrough after the next. "This is way too easy," I thought. Given adequate funding, I could probably turn at least six of those projects into lucrative ventures. If you're doubtful, call me up. I'll rattle off the how and who, brainstorming market, branding, and sales potential....

In Shelley Power's "The Value of Human on a Humanless Web", she talks about the mom scenerio in the Scientific American article: "Mom needs therapy? Oh no! Well, we'll work together and make sure she's taken care of!" In this picture, I search for available plans in the area and then call the hospitals and I talk to the people to see if I can trust them to take care of mother; neither I nor [my sister] is so busy as to begrudge the time taken. " While I agree with most of her article, this part rang false for...

I read somewhere that in the early days of telephone, early adopters had a tough time selling the technology to city businesses. Back then, it was standard practice for executives to dictate messages to secretaries, who typed them up to be sent to the mail room, where they would then be rushed by bike messengers across town to the mail rooms of other businesses, which would then deliver them to the executives upstairs. When presented with the idea of a telephone, executives thought, "Why bother? We'd just be saving the bike messenger a trip, and they're cheaper than the telephone...

Imagine you're at a party with people you don't know and you walk into the following conversation (a terrific summary by Peter Van Dijck, btw). You listen politely, not wanting to interrupt, all the while wondering "Just what in the hell are you people talking about?" To a newcomer, we must seem like blind men describing an elephant, debating the semweb's essential nature from our differing vantage points, but rarely addressing the most basic questions: what is the Semantic Web and why should anyone care? If you're new, and you're nodding your head, hoping someone will put the pieces together...

(what follows is an imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro, billionaire founder of a fictious women's health club franchise, and Timothy Falconer, advocate for the Semantic Web) Angela: Hi Tim, it's Angela. Got a minute? Timothy: Hey Angela. Sure, what's up? Angela: This morning I was approached by a startup company that's looking to make and sell some computer software. They're convinced they're gonna make millions of course, and they need an angel investor, which is why they met with me. Their ideas sound pretty good, but you know me. I'm not the most computer literate person, which is why I'm...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro, billionaire founder of a fictious women's health club franchise, and Timothy Falconer, advocate for the Semantic Web) Angela: Okay, now that we've ordered lunch, tell me about the Semantic Web. What is it? Why should I invest in it? Timothy: Let's start with some definitions. There's basically two pieces to the Semantic Web puzzle: 1) annotating content with metadata, and 2) doing stuff with that metadata. Angela: I'm already lost. You sound like those guys from yesterday. Timothy: (smiling) I'll explain. By "content", I mean anything you can make with a computer or put...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, now sitting in her office in front of her computer) Angela: Yesterday at lunch you were telling me the world needs more metadata, and that metadata is a kind of one-off description of "real" data. What I don't understand is why this is new. Isn't just about everything we do with computers related to metadata? My friend Julie uses annotation in Word all the time. And isn't every form we fill out on the web like this? I type in "Angela Tesoro" in the "Name" field. Isn't "Name" meta to "Angela"?...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, sitting with a laptop at their local WiFi equipped bookshop) Angela: Since yesterday, I've been doing "page source" on a bunch of web pages like you showed me. Sure enough, lots of them have these meta keywords. I even gave some thought to our keywords and had our webmaster change them after looking at some competitor websites. Timothy: Meta keywords are just a small example of where we're headed with the Semantic Web. They're baby steps at best. To do better, we need to annotate stuff using shared metadata vocabularies. Angela:...

(continued imaginary conversation between Angela Tesoro and Timothy Falconer, now sitting in her board room with her financial advisors) Angela: Everyone, this is Tim Falconer. He's been helping me understand this Semantic Web stuff in the last few days. I'm now convinced there's a need for the technology, but I still haven't heard the most important part: will this make us money? Timothy: I'm convinced it can, particularly given the ideas in the prospectus you gave me. Your startup company essentially wants to create a worldwide technical talent search system, like Monster.com, only decentralized. I showed you FOAF yesterday so...

Even if you're not from Missouri, it's easy to say "Show me" when first told about the Semantic Web. Maybe we've all become skeptics in the wake of so much failed dot-com exhubarance. Maybe it's the way semweb advocates sometimes sound, describing it as this self-evident holy grail, forever in the future, but arriving any moment. Maybe it's the word "semantic", which to most people gets prefaced by "just", as in "let's drop this pointless argument, it's just semantics." Maybe our society loves to see successful people fail. Who better to take a dive than the founder of the last...

I've watched the blog phenomenom from afar these last three years, but really haven't staked my claim until now. Yeah, I got a company blog, which even was linked by Ev a few years back. I've got a personal blog, which I share with my wife, where I occassional get creative. I even posted my writing in the early days, before the Web had search engines. My Letter to Jack Kerouac had some readers, as did Gravity Notes and The Nine Principles, which have a few pre-Web predictions that are still coming true. But up till now, I haven't done...

Yesterday's post was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real concern of mine. I can say the right things, I can answer the naysayers, I can champion the grannies, but my words won't be worth much if no one reads them. So how's it going so far? Well, I launched with an email to 33 people, most of whom I met in Sanibel. I got a very nice mention in Shelley Power's blog. I've had a half-dozen supportive emails. Otherwise, no blog comments, or trackbacks, or website links as yet. The stats show that readership is slowly increasing. I'm getting...

He lives below the senseless stars and writes his meanings in them - Thomas Wolfe In Shelley's starlings post, she talks about the URI debate, and how some think we can sidestep the word "resource", since we've gotten this far without precisely considering it. Usually, while reading debates like this, I begin to feel like a kid with his hands to his ears, yelling, "na na na na na" to block out the sound. Thankfully I was a philosophy minor, which means I've developed a tolerance for this "what's in a name" nonsense. I once wrote a paper on Russell's...

Today I've been working on my company's updated business plan, outlining the features of our two new products, describing their competitive advantages in the current market. I went to Sanibel to determine if we should use Semantic Web technology. I came away with a "Yes" from a technical standpoint, but a "Maybe" from a business point of view. Much of my writing here, particularly the Angela Talk, is motivated by my current need to make the business case for the Semantic Web. I really do believe there's money to be made in this space. The tough part's describing how to...

Today I tried to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time: get my websites to validate as strict XHTML. Till today, I haven't rated it enough of a priority to take the time. Giving myself thirty minutes for the first site, I made it most of the way, but bailed because I couldn't get the layout to work easily in all browsers. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a standards conscious guy, and I believe strongly in refactoring. I'm always taking that extra five minutes (or thirty) to make things more readable, more flexible, and more...

I started this blog in response to the many terrific conversations I had while at ISWC in Sanibel, many of which centered around the social implications of the Semantic Web. On the last day, I talked with Dieter Wolf. After some time, he half-jokingly said in surprise, "You are an American, and you care about these things?" Yes, I do, and there's a lot of us, though you wouldn't know it by watching our television. Last week was an exception, though. There was an episode of ER that blew me away. Doctor Carter, one of the main characters, was treating...

My brother said once, "It's our responsibility to make history." Most of us make the kind of history that lives on in families and friends. We consider ourselves lucky if we make a big difference to small groups. Then there's the few who chase the big dreams to completion, who sidestep the naysayers, and remain true to the task: There's a lot I could say about this photo: the brothers, the beach, the stranger who snapped the shot, the ripples this moment would bring... Instead simply: December 17th 1903, 10:35am ET. Twelve seconds....

Okay, we've got RDF, we've got OWL, we've got Jena, we've got ontologies. Now what? What can we do with them? Let's take the semweb for a spin. In Sanibel, I did lots of brainstorming with folks. Seemed like most there were hunting elephants: big grants and big business. My focus was on a different market: the small and the many. Horizontal markets are harder to reach; you gotta really know marketing. It's not just board rooms you're pitching to... it's everyone. So what semweb products could succeed with the many? Well, there's my own company's products, which I'll talk...

In 2000, my wife and I wanted a new house. We drove all over, we talked with our realtor, we went to open houses, we looked online. Nothing felt right. We decided to write up our "top ten" lists of what we wanted most. My list led with "space" and "light" and "land". Hers included "jacuzzi" and "closets" and "great kitchen". We both wanted "fireplace." These lists became our informal search profile. Such profiles are the stock in trade for real estate agents, whether they're helping you buy or sell a house. The better a realtor can predict whether a...

The word "semantic" is one of those words people sort of understand, but not completely. Like "humility," it's a word that's hard to pin down. Most people don't really know what it means, which is ironic because it means meaning: "of or relating to meaning in language." So, are we trying to build a "web of meaning"? Well, here we run into a similiar problem: "meaning" has many meanings. We use it to show intent ("I mean to please") or purpose ("I was meant for this job") or significance ("you mean everything to me"). We also use it when connecting...

Today my company, Immuexa, formally begins "Project Realize", our own attempt to bring Semantic Web goodness to everyone. Our plan is to develop and market two software products that share the same purpose: helping people organize, explore, and share their digital memories. Tidepool™ (formerly Akimbo and Waveplace) is a desktop application that can be run on any computer. Storymill™ is a web application that's used through a web browser. Both do much the same thing -- they're similar but separate interfaces to the same shared functionality and codebase. Each product will play to the strengths of its interface. Tidepool, the...

Our lives are what we remember. Our culture, our society, our heritage: it's the knowledge we share that defines us. Memories and imaginings form the substance of our shared humanity. Preserving and publishing our memories, whether the story of our individual lives or the history of our neighborhoods, is a profound and necessary endeavor, for it brings us together as a people. Cherishing our shared heritage helps create and sustain real community, real meaningfulness, which many of us hunger for as an alternative to the soulless singularity of corporate branding and rubber stamp franchises that are slowly erasing the color...

Shelley writes: "She who dares [sing] now does not live to pass her exuberance and spirit on to her offsping, and each new generation becomes more silent in the face of adversity." She's referring to birds outside getting quiet when a hawk is in view, among other things. This made me think of ani difranco, an incredible talent who sings her truth regardless. Sometimes I worry for her safety, since clearly there's danger in this world. By telling the uncomfortable truths, we could be painting targets on our chests. My wife once got hate mail simply by choosing Bobby McFerrin's...

Tonight, while much of the world celebrates Christmas Eve, that magical time when we all remember "true meaning", spontaneously helping our neighbors like Scrooge after his big conversion, I'm reminded instead about the divisions between us, the physical and conceptual neighborhoods that make it possible for us to disregard each other easily. I guess it's no one's fault. Our brains are barraged with the demands of the day. We need to find shortcuts, remembered mnemonics, to help us sift through our choices so we know how to feel about stuff. Without intending it, we slip on our "us and them"...

My last week of postings have been mostly sauce with no meat, which means it's high time I quit with conjecture and start talking turkey. For those new to the Semantic Web, I'm sure you're saying, "How do I use this stuff?" I know how you feel. When I'm learning a new technology, I'm usually relieved when the writer stops talking around things and finally addresses the topic directly. So for my first "tangle yarn," I'll tackle RDF, the Resource Description Framework, since it's the technological foundation for the whole magilla. There's a lot written about RDF and friends. I'm...

In my last post, we learned that RDF is all about describing resources, and that resources are referenced with URIs. So how does it describe them? Let's start by looking at the source of this very page (View / Page Source). There's two snippets of RDF embedded in the HTML. The first helps tools like Movable Type create what are called "trackbacks", links to this post from other people's posts. Here's the RDF:  First,...

Now that you've seen some actual RDF, we can take a step back to put things in context. RDF is essentially a data model -- a way of describing data, or in this case, metadata. There's plenty of data models out there. The ones we're most familiar with are connected to programming languages and their functional flavors. Algol, Pascal, and C have their records and procedures. Prolog has statements and rules. Smalltalk, C++, and Java have objects and methods. SQL has tables and statements. At their core, each of these systems describe data in the same way: atomic data nuggets...

Last time I talked about "triples", which are the elementary nugget in RDF. What's a triple? Have a look: <rdf:Description rdf:about='http://bigfractaltangle.com' dc:title='Big Fractal Tangle' /> This triple is saying, "The resource 'http://bigfractaltangle.com' has the title 'Big Fractal Tangle." It's a single fact, expressed as an RDF statement, or triple. The three parts that make it a triple are: resource: http://bigfractaltangle.com predicate: dc:title object: Big Fractal Tangle Every RDF statement has a resource, a predicate, and an object. To see it another way, we can take the Grammar Rock approach: each sentence has a subject and a predicate. The subject is...

Why is RDF worth our time? My short answer is "because RDF is loose, but not too loose." RDF has enough order to do useful things, but doesn't require us to rewire the world first. If tech were tunes, RDF would be a jazz trio, not a Bach fugue. It lets players who hardly know each other improvise, yet it holds things together beautifully: the quintessential jam. In this way, RDF is much like the current Web. RDF shares many of the benefits that made the first Web a success. As Dave Beckett said, "RDF allows loose collaboration with little...

Finished the ten-hour HBO series, Band of Brothers tonight. I found it breathtaking, much like From the Earth to the Moon, also by Tom Hanks and HBO. Trust me, if you haven't watched these yet, you're missing out on some of the most engaging, exhilarating, and inspirational hours on film. Both tell the story of a hard-won triumph. Both detail the human effort, the very personal sacrifices and challenges that collectively contributed to the outcome. As each episode ended, as the credits and the theme music ran, I'd get goosebumps every time. With each hour, I felt a sense of...

The next year will be a big one, no doubt. In 2004, we'll probably hear the first mentions of "Semantic Web" on mainstream media. Somebody's gonna release that category-defining application that people can point to and say, "That's what I'm talking about! That's the Semantic Web!" Blogs will get even more of our mindshare, especially as we get closer to the American presidential election. I fully expect blog rates to soar, both readers and writers. I can't yet tell if something will shake the "power law" fix of the new blogarati class. If anything, it'll be due to mega-corp marketing...

Tonight I found myself wondering in Wegmans, an incredibly overstocked and expensive supermarket, waiting for my wife to finish shopping while I mulled over some design quandaries having to do with our current project. We're trying to match our existing object model with RDF, since we'd like to leverage as much of the power of RDF and related technologies as we can. Why build when you can borrow? Besides, we'd like to integrate with the world, both now and in the future. That's the point of standards, yes? So, here I am, using a supermarket as a development example. Two...

After reading Shelley's New Year's doubts, saddened there need ever be a question in her mind of her true effect, I remembered why I quit the Well: people can be cruel, and it hurts most when you're being real. Right now it seems clearer: Many of us have sorrows and fears that run through us, that define us. Humans are so wonderfully, so frustratingly, frail, that our hard edges & whiplash reactions often steal the show. But from a different perspective, it's easier to see the pain involved in hurting others. My father was a tyrant, who wielded his verbal...

A few days ago, I was chatting with someone about browser cookies. He wanted to know why this site collects them. I told him it was to help keep statistics, that without cookies there's no way to determine the true number of returning visitors. You see, many ISPs use rotating IP addresses, particularly when people log off, then log back on. Without cookies, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 1000 people who visit once (and never come back) and 200 people who visit five times. If the former, I'm wasting my time. If the latter, I'm doing...

Anyone who's made software for any length of time will be familiar with the perennial quandary: how do we uniquely identify human beings. First and last names are no good. Home addresses and phone numbers change all the time. People are reluctant to give out Social Security Numbers. This leaves the most unlikely candidate of all: email addresses. How did we arrive at email addresses as our universal identifer? Nearly every web account uses email addresses. PGP uses email addresses. Even FOAF uses email addresses (hashed or not) as the primary key. Seems odd that the thing about us that...

I'm not sure why, but I get along great with Irish and Scottish people. It sounds strange to say, especially having grown up in America where such distinctions are becoming as important as eye color. Much of America is its own kind of monotone, with regional flavor, but a shared sort of sameness. It may have something to do with my grandparents. Arthur Falconer, Sr, left Scotland with the Merchant Marines at age 15 and sailed the world till he settled in New York City, where he met Sally King, herself from Ireland. The fact that my grandparents sounded the...

I started a science fiction story back in 1986 about a small device called an "Immuexus", which was essentially a tablet computer with a semantic user interface. Instead of a mouse or touchpad, the user used a special pen that served three purposes: first, it was used as a pointer for the screen, much like a mouse; second, it could scan text (and OCR it) while reading a book, line-by-line; third, it had gyro-like sensors, so you could use it to navigate a 3D visualized space by tilting it forward and back, left and right. Back in 1986, this really...

To prep for my upcoming talk with Dan Brickley, father of FOAF, I figured I'd indulge myself in some wild and irreverant conjecture before hunkering down to a more concise and clear FOAF Tangle Yarn. Imagine someone casts a spell, and we all woke up tomorrow without fear of universal IDs. Let's say Dan bought the domain "humanity.org" and established a worldwide FOAF repository. To make this really wacky, let's say someone invented a cheap way to determine a unique hash ID from our personal genetic code. I can see it now: I walk into my local pharmacy, drop a...

Tonight I was negotiating fees with an illustrator for reproduction rights of our upcoming icons and title screens. She quoted numbers from the Graphic Artists Guild, which has the website address gag.org, which is kinda funny. My family business was an advertising agency, so I know how creative folk usually charge for logos, graphic design, and illustrations. They first size you up and try to determine how much money you're gonna make, then charge accordingly. As tonight's illustrator put it, it's not fair to her if she gets the same amount for a Times Square billboard illustration as for a...

While in Sanibel, in between sessions, I was pacing with my portable phone, handling a client crisis back home. Much of the crisis had to do with mismatched expectations. They'd say, "Why doesn't it do {that}? I need it to do {that}" I'd say, "I mentioned {that} in the design talks. You said you didn't want {that}." They'd say, "But of course we need {that}. This isn't what I wanted at all." Same old story. Software is a difficult thing to make, particularly when you're making it with people who aren't used to thinking about their needs abstractly. Seems like...

Probably the most used RDF schema, besides rdf and rdfs, is Dublin Core, a metadata standard established to describe documents. The first thing you should know about Dublin Core is that it has nothing to do with James Joyce or the city in Ireland. This Dublin is in Ohio, which is where some semweb pioneers met in March 1995 to establish the standard. The next thing you should know about Dubin Core is that it's simple and useful. How so? Well, Dublin Core is a set of fifteen essential things people want to know about a document: its title, its...

Of the various labels I could saddle myself with, "entrepreneur" rings true. This may seem like bragging, but it's really not. Entrepreneur means "one who assumes risk for a business venture." I know Inc magazine wants you to think entrepreneurs are the new breed of cowboy, that we're all on our way to being Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, always seeing past the industry buzz to the "new new thing". That's just a lot of journalistic hokey. Entrepreneurs are people who take a chance on an uncertain idea. They risk their time, their passion, and their money for something that...

What's in a name? Well, when you're selling something, quite a lot. A good product name can focus people on your core benefit. It can crystallize the characteristics that set you apart from your competitors. Names can be inspiring, inviting, intriguing. Most of all, they can make money, which is why trademarks are their own little turf war. Today we lost "Akimbo" as a product name. Turns out there's a startup in California that choose the name four months ago, headed by the co-founder of ReplayTV. We had a nice chat this evening. Very likable guy. While it's not clear...

Today after terrific talks with Dan Brickley and Libby Miller, I read up on the W3C to see just why Immuexa should consider joining. I found their Seven Points page, which I recommend you run off and read right now. Pretty good, yes? This is the kind of language I respond to: simple, direct, inspiring. The friendly drawings help too. I've been visiting the W3C site for years to read up on standards, but it wasn't until I read this page that I really grokked their purpose. If I were them, I'd take it a step further and make something...

Last night, I was driving around in a snowstorm, trying to think of a new name for our desktop product. The name game can drive you nuts. It's best to think of it as a game you play for fun, like Concentration or Password. There's a continuum of obviousness when it comes to naming products. Years ago, when trying to name an EDI engine that translates medical records between different databases, my manager insisted on "InfoServer" as a name. I had to go over his head, taking my name, "Rosetta", to his boss before they went with it. At worst,...

This morning, I woke up and looked out on a new landscape: What I love about snow is what I love about writing: the clean sheet of paper. There's that sense of fresh perspective, that anything is possible. The best software design starts the same way: without assumptions. Some call this "thinking outside the box." To me, even that phrase is too constrained. My view is that you've gotta think as if the box never existed, or put another way, do "zero mass design". Zero mass design starts without constraint. You begin with the impossible, then scale it back to...

I'm surprised more people don't use IRC. This might sound nuts to those of us that do, since we rightly think too many people already use IRC, but given the number of people that use the web, that use instant messenging, that read and write blogs, I'm surprised the number of IRC networks, channels, and users isn't much higher. Tonight I explored Search IRC, which is pretty useful resource. The numbers are fascinating. Over a million users, connected by 7000 servers, forming 600,000 channels on 1500 networks. Have a look at the network stats. Four IRC networks with 70,000+ users:...

I lived in Florida for a few years in my mid-twenties in a town called Bonita Springs, between Naples and Fort Myers, just south of Sanibel. It's where I started my first business in 1989, hoping to create something like the web. It's where I first faced the business world as an adult, where I took my first "slings and arrows", where I did a lot of growing up. After I left Florida for Pennsylvania, my parents moved to Bonita permanently. I went back to visit at least once a year for the next eleven years. A lot of life...

How often have you worked on projects where your company first re-evaluated its project infrastructure and development plan? "I think the task priorities should be Hairy, Ignorable, and Pointless." "We need to change our source-control system to MultiMegaMerge." "Let's create a worldwide distributed automatic build like Seti@Home, only more secure." Everyone's got their own opinions about project management, which is why there's so many products in this space, most of them homegrown. Around the time I decided to quit Lotus, they had an all-day, all-hands meeting at a local conference center to "discuss" our new development process. Sitting in the...

Blogs are abuzz with the most recent online nuisance: comment spamming. Someone figured out they can improve their website's Google rank by posting automated comments with their website's URL to popular blogs. Spammers hope that googlebot comes along and records their spam before the blog owner has time to manually remove their mess. It's working. Current solutions all have their problems: manual removal takes too much time, IP blacklists sometimes include "poison pills" (third-party web URLs that spammers include with their own), bayesian filters are too much of a moving target, automatic URL redirection breaks the back button. There are...

Blogging's only a few years old and we're already debating what's real blogging and what's just journaling. I know lots of people spend lots of time pouring themselves into their pages, but really now, isn't it a bit early to be discussing authenticity in the new medium? From where I sit, I see three kinds of blogging: smalltalk, writing, and listing. Lots of people do the listing thing: post a link, write "interesting...", and they're done. Plenty stick to smalltalk: writing about their day, telling us what they had for lunch, who stopped by, etc. Fewer have the discipline for...

Today's my birthday, which ordinarily doesn't mean much to me, but this year I've been dreading it. No, I don't mean the usual "I'm getting old" thing. Today I'm sad because of my memories of my last birthday, which was really sad. On my last birthday, I'd been home less than a week after a rough month in Florida, most of it unplanned. My mother was dying from cancer. She'd just been brought home by the hospice folks. Though she was still fighting with a risky chemo treatment, her prognosis was very bleak. Ever since I moved out of my...