E-mail tips from Tim Bray

Been too busy to keep up with my RSS feeds (gasp!), so just found this useful set of e-mail tips from Tim Bray:

In the last few weeks I've upgraded my email environment here and there, and I thought it would be worth passing on hints in the areas of mail-sending service and security.

Read the rest here.

LinkedIn.com

In my weekly InfoWorld column, I write about my experience using LinkedIn.com, yet another example of social networking software -- think Friendster for business. I see the potential in such a service, though I'm waiting to receive measurable value from it (and in fairness, it's only been a few weeks).

I'm actually starting to run into an interesting social networking problem -- if you're using multiple services (e.g. Friendster, Tribe.net, LinkedIn), how do you find the time to manage your different profiles, let alone the separate webs of relationships?

(Jon Udell has also written about LinkedIn, focusing on the fuzzy nature of personal relationships that isn't represented very well in the LinkedIn environment.)

RSS: Make it go away

Pito Salas wrote in response to my request for input on the RSS Winterfest panel I'm doing with Robert Scoble tomorrow. The subject of his e-mail caught my eye: "I want RSS to disappear." (Me, too.)

Pito expands on his subject line in a weblog posting:

Speaking strictly as a user, what I care about are RSS applications. I care about reading, scanning, writing, absorbing, learning from, contributing, and sharing. So what I want from RSS is to disappear into the plumbing, and in every way possible enable and encourage great applications to be designed and built.

I completely agree. Discussion of RSS in isolation is boring, boring, boring, though I certainly recognize (and already experience) the massive potential of RSS within applications. In any case, look for more discussion of those applications in the RSS Winterfest discussion tomorrow. Hope to see you there.

Gaming and the future of IT

Tom Rolfes, and IT manager for the State of Nebraska writes a fascinating e-mail about the real IT experience his son and his high-school age peers gain with online gaming (in response to my recent column:)

I work as an I.T. manager for the State and was formerly a jr/sr high science and technology teacher for many years. There is no greater motivation than the 'desire to know' or authentic learning among young people. 'Desire to know' includes wanting to join one of the fastest growing online communities of interactive, online gaming. They seek out the knowledge to enable and disable ports, have learned the difference between 802.11b and 802.11g (time for you to upgrade your home network, by the way), and can fearlessly and readily go in and configure wireless and wired routers with little or no instruction.

My original column focused on online gaming as an interesting set of technologies to watch, but perhaps a more interesting aspect is how a phenomenon like online gaming is creating a whole new generation of IP-savvy kids with real-world experience. I'm looking forward to hiring some very seasoned network admins in a few years.

Adventures in video games

In this week's InfoWorld column, I write about my "discovery" of online gaming: Online gaming systems such as Xbox Live provide an extremely rich collaboration environment that CTOs should be watching closely.

The first time you hear someone somewhere else in the world yelling at you live in an online game from the speakers in your living room TV. . . well, it's one of those moments like your first cell phone call or your first e-mail.

More Bluetooth howto

Responding to my Bluetooth column, Glenn Fleishman sent me an e-mail suggesting a book he co-authored (The Wireless Networking Starter Kit (2nd Edition)) as another reference for tackling Bluetooth configuration issues, noting that the book:

. . . has illustrated step-by-step instructions on pairing OS X with a Bluetooth phone, among other things. (We have a really detailed chapter on getting Wi-Fi and Palm OS *and* Windows Mobile 2003 to work together.

Glenn knows wireless, so I'm sure the book is quite useful. You can buy it as a regular book or PDF (or even a much less expensive PDF if you already own the book -- a nice touch.)

RSS Winterfest: Enterprise RSS Applications

I'm participating on a panel at the RSS Winterfest with Robert Scoble of Microsoft on Thursday from 9:30-10:25am PT. (The event is all online and the sign-up is free.)

The title of the panel is "Enterprise Applications for Weblogs and Content Syndication Technologies." The description provided for the discussion is:

A look at commercial applications, the effects Microsoft will have on the market, and what decision makers should be thinking about when deciding to integrate Weblogs and content syndication technologies into the enterprise.

With the description out of the way, what would you like to hear us discuss? In the spirit of the topics, this will ultimately be a conversation, with a more formal 15 minute Q&A session at the end of the initial 45-minute discussion:

We will have a live wiki with an RSS feed where people can post, network, etc. We will aggregate Weblogs to post what people are saying about what is presented, what the speakers are discussing and what people are commenting about in the wiki or on the RSS-User group list. [from the RSS Winterfest site]

Drop me an e-mail with your thoughts (or better, post on your own weblog and I'll link back to you).

Bluetooth dialup howto

I've gotten a number of e-mails asking how specifically I setup my Bluetooth phone to dial up under OS X. I'm an AT&T Wireless customer and I use a Sony Ericsson T616, so these instructions are specific to that environment. Kevin Railsback in our IT group sent me these instructions via e-mail back in December, and I can't seem to find a link to these instructions on the web, so I'm posting them in their entirety (and preformatted so I won't have to pretty them up with HTML).

I used these instructions to get my setup working under Panther and using the built-in Bluetooth adapter in my PowerBook, so these instructions didn't apply 100% to my environment but still helped me get things working.

GPRS Set Up Information


GPRS Instructions for connecting your Apple Mac OS X Series 

and the Sony Ericsson T616 using the D-Link Bluetooth USB Adaptor 

DBT-120.

Prerequisites

This configuration requires Mac OS X 10.2 or higher and the D-Link 

DWB-120 USB Bluetooth Adapter, which can be purchased directly from 

Apple at http://www.apple.com.  No extra software is needed as the 

Bluetooth adapter is supported natively within Mac OS X 10.2.

Setting up the handset

1.    On the handset, press the joystick to get to the icon main menu.

2.    Scroll to Connect and press Select.

3.    Scroll to Bluetooth and press Select.

4.    Scroll to Turn On and press Select.

5.    Scroll to Options and press Select.

6.    Scroll to Visibility and press Select.

7.    Scroll to Show Phone and press Select.

Pairing the devices

1.    Open the Bluetooth icon in System Preferences.

2.    Click the Discoverable option in the Settings tab and click the 

Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar option.

3.    Click the Paired Devices tab and then click the New button.  The 

Bluetooth software will now try to locate the device.

4.    Wait until the scan is finished in the Pair window, then select 

the handset and clickPair. 

5.    The handset will prompt for the option to Add to linked devices?. 

Press the Yesbutton to continue.

6.    Enter a password on the computer when prompted. This can be any 

four-digit number. (The same number will be entered on the handset when 

you are prompted to do so.)

7.    Once pairing is completed, a dialog box appears on the computer 

with options for using the handset. Select Internet Access from the 

list of options and click OK.

8.    The handset is now successfully paired with the computer and 

ready for you to configure the GPRS connection.



Setting up the connection

1.    In System Preferences, click the Network icon.

2.    In the Location: drop-down menu, select New Location… to create a 

new profile. 

3.    When prompted for a name, type AT&T GPRS and click OK. 

4.    In the Show: drop-down menu select USB Bluetooth Modem Adaptor.

5.    Click the TCP/IP tab and select Using PPP in the Configure: 

drop-down menu.

6.    Click the PPP tab and type *99***1# in the Telephone Number: 

field.  Leave theAccount Name: and Password: fields blank.

7.    Click the PPP Options button.

8.    Uncheck Send PPP Echo Packets, then click OK.

9.    Click the Bluetooth Modem tab. 

10.   Select Ericsson Infrared in the Modem: drop down menu. 

11.   Un-tick Enable error correction and compression in modem and the 

Wait for dial tone options. 

12.   Tick both the Show Bluetooth status in menu bar and Show modem 

status in menu bar options. 

13.   Click Apply Now to apply the changes.

14.   Click Quit System Preferences from the System Preferences menu to 

exit.

 

Making the connection

1.    Click the Modem status icon on the top right corner of the menu 

bar and clickConnect to establish the connection.

2.    The Modem status icon will display a time stamp and notify you 

that the connection has been established.

You will now be connected to the AT&T Wireless GPRS service.

"Bluetooth to the rescue" feedback

As it sometimes happens when you write for an intelligent audience, the moments of elation you express in your writing can sometimes be challenged by reader comments. My "Bluetooth to the Rescue" column was one of those times.

Jim Howe wrote (good-naturedly):

[O]f course, Chad, had the woman in your latest article about "Bluetooth to the Rescue" not trusted her life and all its comings and goings to the internet, and had, instead, written down the name of the rental agency on a piece of low-tech paper, and kept it with her low-tech itinerary, there would have been no need for Bluetooth to do any rescuing.

One of the biggest challenges (and dilemmas) we face as technologists these days is how to make technology really work for us and our clients, rather than the other way around.

I can understand what Jim is saying, but when I think a little harder, I'm still on the side of technology in this case. Let's consider the little piece of paper that Jim suggests (and yes, paper has worked for many years now, no doubt) and let's consider a busy mother with a toddler rushing out of the house to get to the airport. The rental car at the other end of the trip is important, but in the heat of the traveling moment, many things end up ahead of that. Paper would have worked in this case, but little pieces of paper get left on countertops, in cars, etc. What do you do when you are 3,000 miles from home and there is a little piece of paper sitting on a countertop in your house? Your options are limited. Find someone with a key to your house (not easy) and hope that you remember where you left the little piece of paper (even less easy -- there are no URLs in the physical world, mind you.) We call this a "single point of failure" in IT.

If that same information is on the Internet, your options expand. Nielsen/Netratings reported last week (PDF) that 49.5 million home Internet users now connect via broadband, with nearly 70 million connecting via "narrowband" (mostly traditional phone lines). Call a friend and have them login to your e-mail -- it's likely you know someone based on these kinds of numbers (that is, if you're not lucky enough to meet a CTO with a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone and laptop in the airport). Maybe you're lucky enough to land in an airport with an Internet kiosk. Maybe you can cajole an airport employee to let you borrow a broadband connection for a few minutes. The Internet is so ubiquitous now that having information on the Internet is not a bad bet -- it worked for the woman I ran into, albeit under slightly unusual circumstances.

Yes, finding an Internet connection can be frustrating and carrying paper around is never a bad idea, but technology can still jump in and save you when the tedious business of being a human gets in the way of remembering to grab that little piece of paper as you rush out the door.

Offline posting with Movable Type

Paul Beard points out that there is a piece of software for OS X (which I'm using most of the time) called ecto that will handle the offline posting capabilities I thought I was losing in my Radio->MT migration. Thanks, Paul -- I'll give it a try.

Up on Movable Type

It was a slog, but I finally migrated all my weblog content into Movable Type. It wasn't that difficult, actually, just one of those things that is challenging when you mix in all the usual office interruptions. Bill Kearney's Radio.exporter was invaluable. The big pain was getting all the file paths where I wanted them -- this article on future-proofing URLs in Movable Type was a big help.

My RSS feed is still in the same place. I imported all of my Radio posts into Movable Type, it appears that my links still work. If time allows, I'll assemble all the scribbles I made in the process into something coherent so anyone else contemplating such a switch won't go through the same pain.

In the end, I simply wanted a publishing tool that would allow me to post from any of the three computers I use regularly. I'll lose the offline seamlessness of Radio, but I'm rarely offline when I want to post anyway.

In any case, let me know if you see anything unusual. All in all, I think everything worked.

Bluetooth to the rescue

This week's column ("Bluetooth to the rescue") needs little introduction other than this sentence in the middle of the piece that had me wonderfully wedged between the perfect problem and the perfect solution:

Everything was in place for my finest CTO moment ever.

If not my finest moment ever, definitely one of the most serendipitous and all-around pleasant.

(After saying I was going to migrate to Movable Type last November, I'm really doing it today.  If you see any bumps in the road, let me know.)

IT and courage

My current InfoWorld column deals with an important but rarely discussed topic in IT:  courage.  The inspiration for the column was an essay by Ivan Sutherland of Sun called "Technology and Courage."  In the essay, Sutherland defines courage as follows:

Courage is what it takes to overcome fear. Fear is an emotion appropriate to perceived risk. Thus, to exhibit courage one must both perceive a risk and proceed in spite of it. Suppose a child has fallen through the ice on a lake and could be saved if reached. A person who walks out on the ice believing it to be very thick requires no courage because he perceives no risk, even though others may think him courageous. A person who correctly perceives that the ice is thin and stays off it likewise exhibits no courage; rather we call his action prudent or cowardly, depending on whether or not the ice is, in fact, too thin for safety. Courage is required only of a person who proceeds to rescue the child in full knowledge that the ice is thin.

Read the rest of the column here.