Image via Wikipedia

Still, that microscopy has some value to me. I look at my people as my people. They’re like my family. And what does it matter if it’s a family of one, or two, or twelve? Does it have more or less value?

They’re not a family though, not really. What’s the adage? You can pick your friends, but you’re stuck with your family. Actually, they’re my tribe. People move in and out of the tribe. It’s that way in a internet-connected, globalized world of free assocation. And free association, while it may undermine traditional ties, etc., also offers more opportunity for freedom and justice. At least I think so. So I don’t mind, that people come and go. I don’t want slaves, or people bound to me by caste, and I don’t want to be bound to them, except by feelings of honor and dignity and loyalty.

I met with an old friend last night, and we talked about our old crew. A bunch of young men who could remember a lot of good times together, causing a ruckus, but who aren’t really seeing much of each other anymore. Some of us moved on and made families that took us away, some went to school or pursued careers, others dived into a world of continual amusement. We agreed that we missed it, the good times, our escapades - we were like the Lords of Flatbush - but we also don’t want to stop moving and try to manufacture something that implies we can’t grow any more. If growing means the groups falls apart, then it’s not our tribe. Not really. However sad or painful that may be.

I miss those friends, but I have a mission to carry out, and I’m willing to do it alone if need be. Thing is, I find the relationships with people I employ much more resilient, and often there’s more depth. In truth, you can’t really compare relationships, not if you’re being honest. But I suppose, taken from an aerial view, I still think that a relationship based on exchange of value for value, is the most just, equitable, rational relationship one can have.

One of the reasons I work for myself, and hire others, is that I waited indefinitely for someone like that to come along and hire me, and they never showed up. I was stood up by the culture of work, and I had to remake it, in the form of my own microcosm, so I could breathe free air, and let the emotion of love, the attitude of peace, and the conviction of honor stream forth from the place in me that longs to create and make something. A friend once said that we can either make our lives a sword to attack the evils of the world, and lose our identities in that process, or else begin with ourselves, and create the world as it ought to be, and moving outward from ourselves, include those who want to be freely involved.

I’ve practiced a little tyrrany in my life. I’m a religious person, and religious people become either tyrants, or libertines, or peacemakers. It’s hard being a peacemaker, when you are sure you’re right. It takes time to learn to move beyond tyrrany - it’s too easy for the young chiefs to cry out for sturm and drang, to go on the warpath, to straighten everyone out and keep all the “honor” for oneself. In fact, it was my business that taught me a lot about a tribe founded on justice and peace. People don’t understand - when they mourn the fact that I work on weekends - they don’t get it that I’m just being with my tribe, my people, that it’s good. It’s good work. It’s like being home.

It’s not a community, in the sense that it’s founded on proximity, culture, and so on - it’s something new - it’s something that operates on intangible principles - on virtues. It’s a community of virtue. It’s an atmosphere of taking people in and defending and protecting them, and honoring them for what they contribute to the tribe. A bit like being the silverback gorilla in the forest primeval. I don’t pretend to teach others any pristine truths. I’m just describing something - a kind of place I’ve found.

Of course I tremble at the thought of not being able to keep it together, of not being successful in business. Not mainly because I have to pay my bills. But because, I have to be the grandfather, the patriarch, whose mind generates the basis of income, so the tribe can be sustained. I have to provide the central idea, and do my work to ensure that the harvest comes in. Because I love the tribe. The tribe is one of the reasons I live and flourish emotionally. I belong to it, perhaps far more than it belongs to me. I don’t “own” the business in the traditional sense. And the people don’t just “work for” me. That’s all just paperwork. We are glued together by trading good for good, consistently. And anyone with any experience in that knows that it’s at its best when it’s a trade based on honor. Fools grasp at money without meaning. The business is one of the most meaningful bases of relationships I’ve ever had. I crave my business more than I crave rest. The pull of these relationships is even stronger than what is so often called friendship. Less than family, more than “friend”. I won’t pretend I don’t have personal goals, but I also find the business is a kind of end in itself, because it’s a nursery for meaning - the goal that all humans pursue, even if they run off of cliffs trying to deny it.

Happy to be wrong, that is. The other day I said Google didn’t know how to do “to do” lists properly. They don’t. But that’s beside the point - it seems google has figured out  that I don’t yet know how to do “to do” lists. In the same way, I used to think documents were slow-moving, local objects that you protect on a hard drive, and now I think they’re collaborative ‘events’ that you share on the internet - that expand, connect and relate, because of that. I was telling Google that to do lists are like emails to yourself. Google already has it figured out. I don’t know if they realize it, but their new PIM turns e-mails back into “to do” lists. If it’s not an action item, folks, honestly, in the world of work, what is it? Someone said that when you make books, write to do lists, not “notes”, otherwise you’re reading the wrong books. Why would it be different for e-mail?

Google recently added two glorious features to gmail - the best app in the world (we don’t capitalize it around here - it’s your OS in the future). By far, the best new feature is multiple inboxes (it’s in your settings) and a close second is the ultra-fast “move to” dropdown. The inboxes change the meaning of the application, turning it into a book of work, and the “move to” feature is like a rotary sander vs. a wood block - with the one you have a business - the other is just good enough for a quick job.

I spent a good chunk of time cleaning up my giant inbox, before I found these. I had about 270 messages, and I just was never going to find out what I’d forgotten to do on page 3. So I started backwards, processing, doing, eliminating… I made it to about 170 messages, when I got really tired of it and went fiddling w. my gmail settings.

Within a few minutes, I had several inboxes on one page. I didn’t even know how to do it right - I just named them, and it automatically used the names to categorize messages, so I instantly saw my schema - the picture, at a glance, of what I’m doing and care about right now. I was floored. But it works particularly well when you base each inbox on a label. So I started cleaning up my labels. I got it from about 40+ labels to about 10. The 10 that matter to me, now. Consolidate, consolidate - that’s the rule. Don’t have a label called “information”. Is it information for its own sake? If so, it’s the wrong information. What are you going to *do* with it? Assign it a purpose or an action.

In cleaning up labels, I discovered the instant “move to” function. Holy wow! That wasn’t there, before! Put these things together, and within a few minutes - yes, minutes! - I had separate inboxes for Clients, Contractors, Business Partners, Accounting, and yes… To Do. Ta Da!. It was so good that I added some GTD by creating To Do Right Away and To Do Eventually. Google, I need room for one more inbox. Hell, just give me 10. Paired with making decisions right away, as to whether something will get further attention, this is an effective time-management tool. It’s a life-management tool - after all, just categorizing something based on an action represents a decision.

My gmail is now a PIM (personal information manager). Combined with my sidebars showing my calendar items, google docs, and chat, it’s about 10 times the app it was just a little while ago. It’s gmail raised to an exponent. Needs twitter integration tho. Google, just go ahead and buy them! You know you want to. Yes, Twitter, it’ll hurt a bit, but it’ll hurt so good. Put my Twitter and my Facebook wall in there, Google, and you’ve got an even bigger winner.

I nearly said “woman”. Google, if you were a woman, I’d… Anyway, it’s fantastic. For those of you that think I’m gushing, needlessly, look, technology has given me arms and legs. I was a mere mortal before technology, and now I’m batman. I walk by and kick sand in the face of small tasks. Google has given me a toolbelt fit for a superhero. Thank you, Google. I’ll use it all. Including my Google Notebook - you can have my Notebook when you pry it from my… on second thought, you can’t have it, even then!

By the way, I’m a Firefox fanatic. And I’ve got Flock, now. Flock rocks. But fastest browser? Google Chrome. Just launched all three and I was typing this before the others opened. Googlepress? Hmm.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Flock: Explore the Social Web Browser (technology.johnsamuel.in)
• Flock Ditching Firefox, Moving To Google Chrome (tsurch.com)
• Report: Google Chrome ‘coming out of beta’ (news.cnet.com)
• Google Chrome Not Cool Enough For Google Docs, Facebook (If You’re Browsing Incognito) (techcrunch.com)
• Still Using IE? Just Try These: (webbugnet.wordpress.com)
• Tip of the Day: Gmail emails have permanent URLs. Bookmark them! (ouriel.typepad.com)
• Finally: Gmail Lets You Multi-Select Attachments (mashable.com)
• Is Gmail’s New “Send & Archive” Feature the Secret to a Clean Inbox? (mashable.com)
• Gmail Adds a Task Manager Feature, Sort of (rotorblog.com)

You’ve seen them - the blog articles that are just fluff with a sales pitch. “You too can make millions. Buy my system, and get started today!” Or it’s like a book, but it doesn’t ever tell you what to do with this knowledge. I’m always telling my clients to blog, but how to write effectively for a business blog - well, that’s not always obvious.

Sometimes, the slice of life is the best way to get a point across. As an internet marketing consultant, I do a bit of consulting not only for my clients, but for writers of marketing copy. This slice is what I told a writer I employ:

1. A good intro is light but sharp, like a good appetizer: We all know an intro is fluff - in blog posts, most people use it just to be sure they’re on the right topic. That’s what it’s for, but if it’s too  long, drawn out, and elaborate, they’ll think it’s going to be all garnish and no meal, like so much empty marketing or spam, and they’ll quit reading. Make it “punchy fluff“. Don’t say “can be more difficult than anticipated” - say “can be rough”. Punchy fluff is like social niceties - we want the please and thank you but usually don’t need “I greet you with great gratitude, and humbly beg your pardon”. Punchy fluff - instead of “No one can disagree that recent sales comparables are the most important part.” - go with “Recent sales are all-important.” Writers talk about using the “active voice” and being concise - for the rest of us - just don’t put them to sleep at the beginning of the movie.

2. What comes after the intro has to be red meat. A lot of writers I’ve hired can’t deliver the meat - it’s all fluff.  Dig down a bit. Go for the details, but don’t show off your knowledge with scholarly details. Knowledge that can’t be acted on is bad marketing. You want blog posts designed to get the client in the door (or on the phone), but give them a way to initiate that conversation with information and their own questions. Pure fluff won’t do that. With business blogging, we’re not publishing for the sake of publishing articles - it’s not a magazine (except when it is) - but you also can’t sell anything unless you give something away - so it’s got to be real information, not just all another way to pitch. Most marketing people don’t get that.

3. The conclusion is an action item. Here’s where you sell it or blow it. The adage for English majors is restate what you’ve stated. That’s great for an informative essay. For marketing copy, the goal is to prompt action, a specific action and one fallback action (always give them a choice), but without it being cheesy like “So call or log on now for the best mortgage options…” You need just one summary sentence in this kind of writing, and then you need to get intimate with the audience a bit, and say something like:

“Get your broker involved in making the decision. I’m available, if you’d like to come in for a consult - call first to make sure I’m not out closing for someone just then. Or call me on the cell to make an appointment, so we can put the big questions to rest and get some numbers on paper for you.”

Adding Woot: Give away solid, valuable information and advice - don’t try to sell absolutely everything - the internet has changed our expectations - you have to give us something for free - fairly consistently. But with that contribution, include a prompt to action (”get your broker involved“), be intimate but not pushy (”I’m available“), provide a choice of on how to proceed “come in for a consult or call for an appointment“.  What you’re really selling, to someone reading your blog, is added value.

Look, most of us are products of adequate or perhaps even good English educations - but those didn’t (not when we were in school) make us effective marketers or bloggers. I was a magazine editor for a number of years before becoming a marketing consultant. I’ve been published a bit (pseudonymously), and I’ve written quite a bit of copy - more than the collective output of some small schools. Political writing, marketing, or fiction - in my experience you tell people they’re getting on a ride, you make the ride worth the admission (worth their time), and then you ask them to connect with you or think or act differently - perhaps even change the world but, at least, to take the next logical step. Write that way, and you can blog your business, your life, or whatever else you’re doing.

Now, yes, go write something. Update your blog, you lazy crumb! (just kidding). But not about writing something - that’s required. That’s right, go now.

My Filofax is back! I confess, I’d let it sort of decline. Partly when I got really busy and started spending 18 instead of 16 hours online - and partly because I fell in love with my netbook and cloud computing. Still am - deeply - but they just don’t do it all for me yet.

So, all right, I go for simplicity, when it come to “to do” lists. I make lots and lots and lots of them. And I usually use .txt files made in notepad. In fact, so much am I dedicated to this that, when I use Linux, I usually install and run notepad.exe under Wine. Yes, that’s the extreme. It doesn’t stop there. I used to use mininote.exe - a tab-based notepad, so I could have more lists open at once. Before that, if you visited my house, you’d notice in all kinds of niches, and all over the dining room table, that I had piles and piles and piles of post-it notes, box covers, grocery sack fragments, and completely penned-over business cards… I could go on.

Back to .txt files. I probably have 20 or 30 in a “mess” folder of my hard drive that had just gotten so old that I tossed them into folders to be sorted through some day when I stop thinking of new things. There are probably an additional 40-100 or more that aren’t called “to do” or “immediately” and those could be anywhere in my drives. Yes, they’re backed up. Then there are all the ones I have online. Yes, there are more, and more and more. I have them in e-mail. I have them in google’s new Tasks feature. I have them in google notebook, and google docs.

[For you purists, I’m sorry, but I’ve given up capitalizing google. When it comes to the web, that would be like capitalizing the word “reality”.]

Anyway, yes there are more. There are to do lists in still other e-mail accounts, and other various online venues. There are to do lists under every screenname I have. Then there are all of the paper to-do lists that still exist from back when I wasn’t paperless. I’ve scanned all those, and they’re stored on hard drive space. The ones that aren’t in bound editions.

Yes, I’m amazing in my capacity to think of things to do. And, before anyone starts, I do quite a lot of them. More than anyone I know. And I’ve tried every online and electronic “to do” widget or environment that I can think of. But it comes down to this:

• It’s not with me while I’m driving.
• It’s not there the second I step out of the shower.
• It’s not instant, always on, with me in any setting, etc.

Netbooks are getting there. They’re the closest thing. But it’s still not fast enough, yet. It’s coming. The always-on device that’s as thin as e-paper (like a film negative) with billions of cells of resolution and becomes keyboard, screen, and mouse, all as one thin-as-2D surface with embedded storage and wirelessly connected to the cloud, where all its applications reside - it’s coming. No fan, no heat, waterproof, and a vein-like fiber battery that charges from human touch or any ordinary light source. Don’t believe me? See me in 20 years. I’ll be writing a blog post with it, on it, and about it - I’m old-fashioned like that. And mine will be the one that tucks into my Filofax, along w. the other ring-hole-punched paper in there. Now that’s a netbook!

So, thinking ahead, I’m also thinking back. What has been there for me, when even my lightening-fast, low power, ultra-portable, super-mobile netbook hasn’t been. My Filo. You see, technology is not about gadgetry, or what something can do - it’s about processes, and the meaning of things. It’s about the underlying ethos of work, human thought, and collaboration with creation that lets us extend ourselves not for the sake of extending ourselves, but so that we can see and image greater things. Gadgets are failed experiments at helping us get there. Tools - now, tools are the glorious machines that transform a Bruce Wayne into a Batman. They make us scale building, and fly between rooftops.

I don’t mind playing with gadgets. But when it comes to work, this work, the work of my life, I want tools. So, for now, the netbook is going to be paired with the Filofax (they’re roughly the same size), and I’ll just bundle them with some kind of ingenious quick-release strap. A gigolo strap for my technologies, so they can whip out their power at any moment. But I’m going to stop trying to cram the Filo into the Netbook, until it really makes sense to do so.

This helps a lot. The Filo is a ToDo list organizer for me. That’s all it is. Screw the calendars and the currency converters. Lined paper. Simple lined paper. Or graph - my father taught me a fondness for graph. It’s about purpose. The conceptual problem with every other todo list system I’ve tried, is that it’s embedded in some other kind of functionality, whether it be the machine itself or some other application. Gmail shows the most promise as the ubiquitous core-application (Google gets this fact - the core is a collaboration platform - while Microsoft still thinks the core is an Operating System [brief pause for us to collectively roll our eyes]) but even Google still can’t conceive of the right kind of todo app and how to make it really effective by pairing it inside gmail. I wish they’d hire me to conceptualize and test that. I could tell them a thing or two about todo lists and integrating them with gmail (best application in the history of applications). I wish google would understand that todo lists are, properly, closest to e-mail than anything else. A todo is an e-mail to yourself. Google hasn’t figured out how to interface that, though they’re half way there with the way they’re archiving threaded chats. Google, call me. Let’s talk.

Anyway, the Filofax. It’s now my single to-do organizer. I confess, it’ll be a real challenge while I figure out what goes in Filo, and what in notepad (e.g. links). I wish technology would hurry up. I know, some of you are wanting to scream “Blackberry”. No. Just, no. I’m sure it’s great for the occasional scribble. When it comes to the kind of volume I can churn out - someone who can send 40 e-mails in a few short minutes - those little gadgets just can’t keep up.

FILOFAX Mini Lyndhurst Organizer Black Leather US $3.50 (2 Bids) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 8:16:40 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

filofax/lot planners organizers office supplies US $0.01 (0 Bid) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 16:57:36 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

FILOFAX CLASSIC PERSONAL ORGANISER - CAMEL US $18.45 (2 Bids) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 18:12:56 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

685149 FILOFAX REFILLS A5 WEEK TO VIEW W/APPTS 2009 US $10.90 Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 19:16:44 PDT Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

Internet was through a cardbus card. And boy, this thing was a dream come true.

I went to one of those colleges that gave you kiddie desks - you know, the kind you used to see in high school? And my Aero fit right on it. In fact, at 7.5 x 10.25 x 1.7″ (4.2lbs), it’s just smaller (not thinner) and only a pound heavier than the EEE PC 1000 at 7.5 x 10.5 x 1.1″ (2.9lbs), which is the biggest of the netbooks that deserves to be called a netbook.

Best note-taker I ever had. I did my B.A. on that computer. I wrote all my papers and essays on it, took it to every class, and could type faster than the instructor could talk. The thing had the best built-in trackball I’ve ever seen, so navigation was lightening-fast. Spin the ball, and you were all the way across the screen. I loved it. Simply loved it. So much so that I bought another one about 2-years ago, before the netbooks exploded on the market, intending to replace the hard drive and use it just like I did back then.

After all, I didn’t just take it to school, I took it to all my favorite coffee shops. That and satchels full of books. I’d pile them up, boot up, and write more words in one sitting than perhaps at any other time. If I needed to eat, I’d take it to diners, pull out an orange extension cord, and a light socket adapter, and connect right to the light over the table.

What I learned back then is that portability is everything. The conversations with friends, the poetry written in cafes, the notes on books, the papers and never-ending coffee… that little treat was before the days of wifi, but it was great for exactly the same reasons, and in exactly the same ways, as the new netbooks. And when I’d get home, I’d plugin and do research on the newly emerging world wide web.

I’ve had an EEE PC 900a (predecessor to the 901) for a while now, and I absolutely love it. It goes anywhere. I love that thing so much, I take it to bed (literally). And so, naturally, the wife took it over. It’s the tiniest of the netbooks, and the size is perfect. I love it for that, too. I’ve taken it on planes, next to larger books. I’ve walked down the street with it. I’ve balanced it on a foot and done blog entry. Love it.

And that’s why I almost bought the 901. I need my own now, and the 901 has a 6-cell battery, so you get more than 7hrs of battery life. But I thought and thought and thought all weekend, and finally decided on the 1000. For about $85 more, it’s just slightly larger (though thinner) than my Aero. And I know I’ll love it for all the same reasons.

I went with the EEE PC 1000 (not 1000 H, HA, or HE) - I like solid state - no hard drives. The 1000 has an 8gig master drive and 32 gig additional drive, webcam, bluetooth, and 6-cell battery. Of course, it has the standard 1gb ram and 1.6ghz atom processor. I’m upgrading the ram to 2gb.

I didn’t go with the Aspire, because it has a 3-cell battery, and the fan runs all the time, whereas the EEE PC fan runs when it needs to. I didn’t go with the Wind or the Lenovo, because you can’t get them without hard drives. I didn’t go with the Dell or the HP, because they’re Dell and HP, and I’m somewhat principled about it, besides the fact that I think their products are inferior, and they nickel and dime you to death on their web sites, and include non-functioning or semi-functioning slots, antennas, etc. I basically don’t like them. Asus’ EEE PC however, started the current revolution (e.g. Dell and HP have taken a queue from Asus’ naming convention with their ‘copies’ - or counterfeits, if you like).

But I’m not here to beat up the copy cats. In the end, I’m sharing a moment of pure joy, as I contemplate a much newer and more enhanced netbook of the size (10″) I’ve always loved, and which is perfect if you’re a big man like me, and don’t like your wrists touching while you type. Again, the 901 is great, I love it, and I’ll use the wife’s 900A whenever I can get my hands on it, but I know I’ll type faster on the 1000.

What’s this got to do with work? Well, it’s all about work, actually. Real work - not the philosophy of work. When I lean over and say to a colleague, “you really need to stop flying so much, and start Skyping more”, it’s somewhere between an intervention and a technology review, but it’s really just plain practical.

Yes, this isn’t really a review, and no it isn’t really much more than a “Yeah, sonny, I was there first, and loved it then and still love it now, and hey, I’m getting a new one!” The internet, and technology have done so much for me, though, that frankly I don’t care what it sounds like - I’m happy about it. So there. I think back on the productivity I had with my Aero, and I look at the productivity my netbook offers now, unobtrusively on a nightstand, or as the smallest thing in my briefcase, and I am just so glad that the days of bloat in between are finally over.

Shifting to truly portable (flexible) cloud computing is like being fat for years, and suddenly being thin again. It’s like going to bed tired and worn out and waking up virile and 25 (well, some of us are still just as virile, but now we can control the direction).

So lastly, for those of you who loved the little Aero, and many still do - there’s still a following, I’ve held and used the EEE PC 1000 (tried out the 1000H in a store, just to be sure), and I have to tell you, it feels like the same fit. Not just for nostalgia, but for the sheer practicality that, paired with cloud computing, the Contura Aero (and other subnotebooks) brought to us. I’ve sat with the 900A in coffee shops, used it on plane tray tables (with room just for the 1000 - no larger), and rested it on my steering wheel (not while moving), and when my 1000 gets here, it’s going where I go. We’re back, baby!

Oh, and I’m not feeling that superior. I still do have a suitcase computer or six.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Asus introduces Eee PC with 9.5-hour battery life (infoworld.com)
• What the New Day-long Use Asus Netbook Still Lacks (cloudave.com)
• What’s the Best Netbook for the Price Right Now? (jkontherun.com)
• ASUS Eee PC ‘Shell’ ultra-thin netbook launching in April? (engadget.com)
• The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time (wired.com)
• ASUS’ Eee PC 901 with 20GB SSD and 6-cell battery now just $268 (engadget.com)
• ASUS Eee PC ‘Shell’ (dayofumpc.blogspot.com)
• Asus Eee PC 901 Go Gets 7-hour Battery (ubergizmo.com)

COMPAQ CONTURA AERO 8MB MEMORY UPGRADE P/N 190597-001 US $23.99 Auction Ends: Tuesday Aug-11-2009 9:22:46 PDT Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

Compaq Contura Aero RAM Upgrade for 4/25, 4/33 4MB NEW US $9.99 Auction Ends: Tuesday Aug-11-2009 19:02:17 PDT Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

Compaq Contura Aero RAM Upgrade for 4/25, 4/33 4MB NEW US $9.99 Auction Ends: Tuesday Aug-11-2009 19:03:50 PDT Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

Now if someone would just trade me one for one, books for e-books, they’d have a library.

I confess, looking at Kindle2, that it’s very Star Trek Next Generation, and that’s part of the appeal. A lot of us grew up frustrated at the slow pace at which technology was being rolled out - perhaps because tech companies gobbled up other tech companies rather than focused on R&D, and so much creativity targeted a quick sale. Be that as it may, the Tricorder (remember that?) represented the future. The multi-functional portable computer that gave us information on what we needed when we needed it. Well, that was the original Star Trek. Then STNG had those great portable book-pads - those proto-Kindles that let Picard read the Epic of Gilgamesh anywhere on the ship. Paper books are great. I love books. But I love access to books more. More than books, I love being able to read what I want, where I want, when I want.

I’m already getting ready to buy my 2nd netbook (today). And yes, it sure trumps a Kindle, any day. But I can see a purpose for getting away from the e-mail, the open web, and all that, and simply reading.

Already, I find I’m more interested in getting a paperback and ‘consuming’ it, than owning a hardback and loving the spine and the cover and the fact that it’s sturdier and represents the old tradition of lifetime book acquisition, appropriate to fixed estates, low mobility, and the bequeathing of a literary inheritance. I used to have time for both consuming and owning. Now, there’s no time, and I place a premium on space, effective storage, convenience, portability, etc. And frankly, the preservervation that used to make me love hardbacks, now in fact makes me interested in ebooks. I don’t want to read them on my office desktop with three monitors. I want them in my hand at the coffee shop. I want an electronic book. A Kindle.  A Star Trek book. And once it’s in digital format, you can be in the year 2120 and get a perfect copy of something from the 3500 BC.

Frankly, just the cost of moving books, the overhead of boxing them correctly, storing them in the right temperature, etc. means that I have to make a choice between being highly mobile in life or being surrounded by my library. I’ve made the choice. So now, it’s just a question of how to conduct the transition.

What will be really neat is making all new annotations in my ebooks. I wonder if the Kindles support that yet. I want to be able to take an e-pen and write in the margins and have it saved.

Anyway, got an ebook you want to trade for the real thing?

!!!NEW!!! AMAZON KINDLE 2 (NEVER USED) BRAND NEW!!! US $296.00 (13 Bids) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 3:34:45 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

NEW Amazon Kindle 2!! Never used, in original box! US $280.00 (4 Bids) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 14:43:27 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

I really don’t like the writing style. It’s always either too precious, too patronizing, or just too slow and laborious, if not pained and redundant. The fake ethnic accents the narrator chooses on the CDs aren’t the author’s fault, perhaps, but they get old - especially when they’re badly done, or the speaker forgets and lapses back into American standard. Finally, the Americanism that permeates work often seems incongruous with the globalism as it’s being discussed, accepted, and even touted. This leaves the impression, on the one hand, that our primary focus should be our own nation and, on the other, that only the author’s version of internationalism and openness is truly intelligent. In short, it’s infuriating where not a bit insulting.

All that said, it’s worth it. I’d buy it again, and I’ll probably listen to it repeatedly.

The changes to the world that the author outlines are just too significant, and the points he makes about the changes just too important to care nearly so much who is saying them, or why, or how he manages to get them accross. If this were a blurry PDF, a warped, static-burdened record, or a barely audible reading in a dark room by Phyllis Diller (or Richard Simmons, if you’re not that old), it would still be worth it.

I’ve never been much for current affairs books, or analysis of the news. But Friedman’s book goes way beyond that. I won’t even begin to try to explain it here - you can google it for yourself, and I doubt I can say more about the theme, thesis, or its significance than you’ll find in Wikipedia. What I can say is that, if you’re interested in the future, in entrepreneurship, in education, in your children, or in politics, you owe it to yourself to get through some chapters. I’m in chapter 9, which I think is about half way through this massive tome and, while I’ve occasionally been tempted to stop, thinking, “I’ve got it I’ve got it. Enough already.”, I’ve not been disappointed by sticking it out.

Have you ever had a friend that annoyed the hell out of your, by being windy, slow to make a point, slightly condescending, and not a little repetitive? All my friends are saying, “hell yes”, right now. But have you had a friend like that who also made points that changed your life, painted the world in ways you hadn’t seen it before, and ultimately challenged you to live differently, more thoughtfully, with more attention? Those sames friends of mine would just as quickly say, “hail yes!” Well that’s what I get from Thomas Friendman. I forgive his faults, not just because I share them, but because he pays off, and keeps paying, and it’s worth it.

And Thomas likes to ask “where were you when you first realized the world was flat?” Well, in fairness, I should say I realized it while listening to his book in the car. But actually, I was in South Korea, when it developed the 40x CD-ROM. And I began to see how, with its video game development (e.g. Tribes), it’s superior miniaturization that made the US cell phone industry seem quaint, and it being the most wired country on earth, with 57% percent of its people on broadband, while people in my own country were almost universally stuck on dialup - I began to see how the future would shape up abit differently than most of the people I knew suspected.

Well, Friedman’s observations are far more significant, and he’s shown me how much I wasn’t paying attention to, and how much analysis was right there in front of me, and I missed it. I’m willing to sit at his feet, for that - and also because, if he’s right, and I believe he is, mostly, I’ll need very much to know what he knows.

The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman NEW CD Audio book US $2.99 (0 Bid) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 8:11:37 PDT Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item

"The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman - Like new! US $0.99 (0 Bid) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 12:48:02 PDT Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

THE WORLD IS FLAT Thomas L Friedman New Unabrid CD US $14.99 (0 Bid) Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 20:06:39 PDT Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-.. US $14.98 Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 21:01:37 PDT Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief Histo US $19.98 Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-18-2009 23:20:53 PDT Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

• Web-based: you want to access it from anywhere and not have it be dependent on your own hardware. Besides, you’re not lugging around a 20-pound laptop are you? You’ve been good, and upgraded to a netbook that really does travel. Anyway, the whole basis of collaboration is not documents lost on some ’shared drive’ but documents and workspace in the cloud - hanging out there where you can assign them to any and all.
• No learning curve: Even if you’re tech-savvy, you want to spend your time collaborating, not teaching people to use your funky interface. It has to be very simple in organization, with a transparent, intuitive interface.
• Free-form with fast, flexible queries: Do you want to spend your time fitting your information into someone else’s schema, or do you want it to take your data quickly, make it categorizable, searchable, and just work?
• Effectively scalable: I’m thinking at least 20 users. You may not need that much. Now. But once you start sharing documents and, more importantly, sharing workspace, you find all kinds of uses over time. It also needs to support separate folder structures or other separate areas (for SMEs/Teams/Projects/Topics).
• Secure: You must be able to add an ’s’ to the http:// (https://) and have it run in SSL secure mode. You are accessing your G-mail that way, right? https://gmail.com
• Low cost: free wouldn’t hurt, but at least it needs to be free for low-volume users.

Some Broad Options:

• Hosted shared space (e.g. google sites)
• Hosted shared documents (e.g. google docs)
• Hosted wiki-based environment (like BrainKeeper)
• Hosted forum (like Wet Paint)
• Hosted blog atmosphere or CMS (like Joomla or Drupal)

We’ve ruled out Access (office database)-based approaches and installable software, for exactly the reasons we led with - it’s just not modern cooking.

Enough has been written about blogs and forums, though perhaps not as collaborative spaces - there’s a lot to be explored there, in terms of their potential functionality. The wiki is the perennial collaborative space that will always be around, I think - and lots of work has been done on the wiki phenomenon. Google Docs, well, it’s pretty straightforward, since back when Writely was one of the best contenders for online word processing. If you’re still cooking documents on a hard drive - why? So they can get fragged, glitched, or require backups?

That leaves shared space. And again, here, there’s PHPProjekt and others that either enforce a more rigid structure or require customization to get around that. We want something that works out of the box.

So far, I’ve found two in the sterling, awesome, workable category: Google Sites and Evernote. Both of these meet all our criteria, and have fast, fast searching and content editing. Very fast searching.

Evernote is almost entirely free-form, with a notebook and tag structure if you like. In this ballpark, Google Notebook, has been, frankly, outstanding, except now Google has stopped development on it, essentially yielding the ground to Evernote. I really, really just won’t let go of my Google Notebook, tho. They may not be offering new ones for much longer, but they’re keeping the existing ones around and, as long as they do, I’m in. It has made my life so much easier. I wouldn’t be right without it. That said, Evernote is a damned good product, and has some neat features not found in Google Notebook. I will be using it as well.

Google Sites offers more structure, but still allows a lot of freedom, and is, frankly, more robust as a collaborative space. It’s folder-based, though I wouldn’t be surprised if google made it tag-driven instead. Really, it depends on what you need. I intend to collaborate with both.

With some creativity and either Google Sites or Evernote, you can create a really impressive professional environment to show clients, as well.