Over the past four years, I've spent a lot of my time advising CTOs on how to manage their careers both in this column and on my Weblog. In my very first column, I outlined what I think it means to be a CTO, and since then I've walked you through my day-to-day trials and tribulations, hoping that reading about my successes and failures would be instructive -- maybe even entertaining.

This week, I'm going to broach a topic that's among the most important to any CTO's career: how to exit your current job gracefully when an irresistible opportunity comes along.

As with all my columns, I'm writing this one from experience. After my final column next week, I'll be leaving InfoWorld to accept a new position at Yahoo, hanging up the CTO hat I've worn for the past seven years in favor of something completely different (see my blog for more details on the new gig)

As of the end of this week, I hang up my InfoWorld CTO hat and take a little time off before joining Yahoo! Search, working in the new Technology Development Group led by Bradley Horowitz. I hesitate to describe exactly what I'll be doing since this is such a fast-moving space and I haven't started yet, but I will quote Jeremy Zawodny (one of my new colleagues and someone whose work and voice I have long admired) to give you a hint:

Among other things, we'll be working with Marc's team [more on Marc Davis here. -CD] and many others to investigate, evangelize, prototype, hack, and generally encourage the development and use of new technology and ideas.

With the news out of the way, it's been such a fun ride at InfoWorld that I had trouble shrinking the experience into a final 600-word column, which is why I appreciate InfoWorld letting me stretch my parting material out over two. I was also able to collaborate with the editorial team here to help develop a replacement column that I will definitely be reading (more on that in my final column that runs online a week from today, and the following Monday in print).

In parting, I have to offer a sincere "thank you" to everyone at InfoWorld and IDG for being great to work with over the past four and a half years, especially the Technology staff. I am very proud of the IT team I built at InfoWorld and fully expect them to keep everything running smoothly in my absence. When people asked me how I managed to run IT and keep up a demanding writing schedule, they clearly weren't aware of my secret IT weapons: Derek Butcher, Kevin Railsback, Chris Lin, Wade Grubbs, and Baldwin Louie. Thanks, guys!

I also have to thank the community of InfoWorld readers who have made the public-facing part of my job a blast. It would be a privilege to know just a handful of you, but I was lucky enough to get to know many of you and made some lifelong friends in the process. I'd like to give a special thanks to the CTOs who always carved out time to give me advice and help me do both my writing and IT job better. I sincerely appreciate it.

Look for my final column next week, of course, but this will be my blog farewell. I'll be continuing my blogging elsewhere (with very little enterprise IT content, though -- you still need to visit InfoWorld for that).

See you around the web!]]> http://weblog.infoworld.com/dickerson/003656.html Misc Chad Dickerson 2005-08-02T06:30:00-08:00 http://weblog.infoworld.com/dickerson/003652.html patent around RSS advertising. Then I saw this post pop into my Technorati watchlist. These words definitely caught my attention:

Now that I look at it again, the patent application WAS filed Dec. 31, 2003 but what then does that say for the obvious at InfoWorld where they talk about their experimenting with RSS advertising beginning more than 6 months before Google?

Now, we definitely knew we were onto something new back then, so I posted about it immediately, even following up recently on the two-year anniversary of our jump into RSS advertising.

Anyway, I find this particular patent very strange considering what we had been doing at InfoWorld when it was filed. Here's the abstract from the Google patent ("Embedding advertisements in syndicated content" authored by Nelson Minar) -- as Mark noted on his blog, file this under "Things that make you go hmmmmmm. . . ":

Incorporating targeted ads into information in a syndicated, e.g., RSS, presentation format in an automated manner is described. Syndicated material e.g., corresponding to a news feed, search results or web logs, are combined with the output of an automated ad server. An automated ad server is used to provide keyword or content based targeted ads. The ads are incorporated directly into a syndicated feed, e.g., with individual ads becoming items within a particular channel of the feed. The resulting syndicated feed including targeted ads is supplied to the end user, e.g., as a set of search results or as a requested web log. Embedding of targeted ads into syndicated feeds and/or user response to the embedded ads is be tracked in an automated manner for billing. The automated targeting and insertion process allows ads to be kept current and timely while the original feed may be considerably older.

On the advertising front (see pointers to earlier discussion here about ads for NewsGator), we are trying out a new way of advertising using an auction-based system (similar to Google) called Industry Brains. We're already using Industry Brains on our site (see "InfoWorld Marketplace" at the bottom of our homepage, for example), but it will work in our RSS feeds like this: Advertisers currently bid on links in our News section. The top bidder will receive ad placement in our Top News RSS feed for the first feed of the day (i.e. not every time the feed is updated). The ad link and copy will appear in the description of an entry after the editorial content and indicated by "ADVERTISEMENT" text. As I said in our early trials of RSS-based advertising, we're experimenting and look forward to your feedback, either via e-mail or in your own weblog.

Backpack is not just a piece of web-based software. It has the makings of a movement with its spirited manifesto and gushing adherents ("I want to marry it," says one user on the manifesto page). This is not a criticism -- just the opposite. Getting people excited about software is a lost art, and this kind of loving devotion is what all software developers should be shooting for.

Backpack organizes your life in terms of pages, which they describe this way: A page is a collection of any combination of text, to-do lists, images, or files. Some ideas for pages include "My trip to Paris" or "Furniture I eventually want to buy" or "Things I want to do this summer" or "My favorite quotes" or "Ideas for the bathroom renovation" or "People we need to interview for the job.". For me, the mix of structured and unstructured information in Backpack more closely mirrors the makeup of my own cluttered human brain than anything I've used -- at least so far. Like many of you, I tend to get hot and bothered about new technologies (note to self: remember your brief Groove obsession!), so to some degree, I need to wait and see how things look a month from now.

That being said, this one feels right already. I think in terms of things, not functions, which has made my past efforts of getting organized a little frustrating. Think about how Palm OS is designed, for example. If you want to make a to-do list, you can use the Tasks app. If you want to make some free-form notes, you use Memos. Everything is in its own silo based on what app it will fit into, not on how you need to reference the information in context. In Backpack, I just create a page around a particular thing I'm working on, which I did recently when I was hosting a 4th of July barbeque. I made a shopping list on my "4th of July barbeque" page using the List function and used the Notes function to enter recipes. The interface leverages the AJAX approach nicely, making entering information easy and fast.

The clincher for me, though, was Backpack Mobile, a stripped-down web interface that leaves the AJAX behind but works really well on the web browser on my Treo. I like keeping all of my information centrally stored online, and I'm ok with depending on a solid GPRS connection to get to that information, despite the obvious risks. When I went shopping for my barbeque recently, I used Backpack Mobile to check items off my list and reference the recipes I had loaded. I didn't have to do any hot synching with my Treo when I got home after shopping to update my PC (I am the type of guy who hot syncs less often than he should). In the mobile age, this is what "cross-platform" really means -- think beyond the "does it work on a Mac?" discussion (though it should, of course), because it's got to work on a mobile device to really be useful.

Backpack is simple, but is loaded with features and capabilities like their API (a very nice touch) and e-mail/mobile reminders. It's probably not for everybody, but I'm liking it.

What about the historical past? I'm not talking about the past in blogging terms (which would be yesterday, or at worst, last week). We're all building up mounds of historical records of contemporary events through blogging and other forms of personal publishing, but how can we use the web to create stronger and more illuminating connections to the past? How do we learn the slow lessons of history in a world where we're only thinking about the last seven minutes? I think stumbled upon one way -- this is a little lengthy, so bear with me as I explain.

One of my favorite things to do is go mountain biking in the Berkeley and Oakland hills, particularly in Tilden Regional Park and Wildcat Canyon. I usually pack my camera and when I'm lucky, I capture some interesting photos (like this one -- it surprises people who don't live here that in such a populated place as the Bay Area, I bike regularly among herds of cows).

Last August, I wrote about an interesting discovery on my personal web site:

Over the past few years, I've become intimately familiar with the mountain bike trails of Tilden and Wildcat Canyon Regional Parks, two vast open spaces in the Berkeley hills. I had always found one area particularly curious: in the middle of one cow pasture, a couple of majestic palm trees sprout seemingly from nowhere near the Belgum Trail (others have noticed and photographed this curiosity). When you reach the end of the Belgum Trail, a paved road to nowhere appears -- it looks like a road that was used for car traffic at some point, but there are no signs of it now. This area, situated on the far west side of Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, always had an unusual feel whenever I rode through it -- the otherwordly palm tree, the road to nowhere. It's strange to feel such a strong sense of place when you are crossing no obvious boundaries into anywhere. On a recent mountain bike trip, I discovered that I had been missing something in my earlier trips -- I was in fact crossing into something. This area with the weird vibe had been the site of a sanitarium in the early 1900s -- the Grande Vista Sanitarium, sometimes referred to as the "Belgum Sanitarium," after the Dr. Belgum who ran the hospital. Somehow, I had missed a small information kiosk in my earlier visits that explained the story. When I returned from my trip, Google searches didn't turn up much information about the old sanitarium, so I used the photos I took of the kiosk to reconstruct the story of the Belgum Sanitarium here for online posterity.

The sanitarium itself is long gone, but the foundation is still there along with the driveway and orchards that remain beautiful even in their slow decline. I posted the text I had transcribed from my photos to my web site: a narrative, a short history, and the text of a contemporary brochure about the sanitarium. As time passed, I noticed that a Google search for "belgum sanitarium" or "grande vista sanitarium" began turning up my page as the #1 result. In a very short time, I had become the online authority for the mysterious old sanitarium ruins I had only discovered a scant year earlier -- and my logs started filling up with other people searching for information on the Belgum Sanitarium. I was pleased to provide the online information that I was unable to find when I first encountered the place just last year.

My experience as the online authority for the Grande Vista Sanitarium grew more compelling within the past few weeks. I recently traded e-mail with Chris Anderson when I wrote about the Long Tail, and Chris realized from my personal web site that we both shared a mutual appreciation for Tilden and Wildcat Canyon parks, the site of the ruins of the old sanitarium. When I wrote back to Chris just over a week ago, I said:

I get a surprising amount of traffic to those pages from people searching Google for 'belgum sanitarium.' I feel satisfied that I've done my duty as an online citizen historian by bringing something from the pre-Internet physical world into the Google index. I'm hoping someone will eventually e-mail me with an interesting story or anecdote about the place so I can add it to the historical record I'm creating. I'm almost *expecting* it.

Last night, I got this e-mail:

In one of your pages (http://www.chaddickerson.com/misc/belgum/history.html), you mention Dr. Tewksbury, his daughter Eugenia and her second husband, William Mintzer, as part of the story of Belgum Asylum. � Do you have additional information on them or know where I can get it? Dr. Tewksbury's wife, Emily, was my 2nd great-grandaunt, and I am trying to reach her descendants. [name withheld until I ask the person if it's ok to post it here. -CD]

Cool! This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for. Earlier this week, I had noticed referrals from Google containing searches for Dr. Tewskbury (who built the mansion that eventually housed the sanitarium) and William Mintzer, so I felt like something was up. While plenty of attention has been paid to leveraging citizens media to promote conversation about contemporary events, I think we neglect history too often in the right-now adrenaline rush of the present. When we measure the importance of something by where it sits (or not) in an online search index, we miss out on, well, everything that is not in an online search index, which is the majority of recorded human history, as my experience suggests. Until I made a deliberate effort to inject the long-forgotten story of the sanitarium into the online sphere, it essentially did not exist and the sense of enchantment I felt visiting the old place was lost on everyone except those who stumbled upon it. I'm glad I took the time to record it, and helping this gentleman connect to his past, even in a small way, will be its own reward. I'm hoping other people will use their digital cameras not just to take standard photos, but to take close-up photos of documents as I did, and transcribe them for online posterity when the historical record doesn't exist online. I'm certain this is happening already, but I'm hoping that by posting this, even more people will be inspired to be citizen historians, annotating the past as aggressively as they annotate the present as citizen journalists. It might not provide the transient thrill of being Slashdotted, or showing up in Scoble's linkblog, but it's probably a deeper satisfaction.

So what now with the gentleman searching for his descendants? Of course, I'll write back to him to see how I can help with his search (the domain for his e-mail is registered in Miami, so I think I'm closer to the action), but I'm going to do one more thing to complete the picture (literally). When I last visited the site of the sanitarium ruins, I had my camera, but I had recently lost my GPS, so I couldn't record the latitude/longitude coordinates of the place (being remote and abandoned except for a stray cow or two, it has no street address). I'm planning to go back there next weekend (a new GPS is on its way via Amazon) to get the coordinates, then I'm going to use that information to whip something up with one or both of the map APIs released last week (Google, Yahoo). I'm wondering what that strange and majestic palm tree looks like from a satellite. . . . and maybe I will be able to give someone a visual sense of the stunningly beautiful hills where his 2nd great-grandaunt Emily lived so long ago.

It didn't take long for me to realize that since you can import RSS feeds into My Web 2.0 (very nice, Yahoo folks), and del.icio.us generates an RSS feed of my stuff, then I could just import my del.icio.us RSS feed into My Web 2.0 to get a head start. Not only did this approach work, all my del.icio.us tags were carried over in the transition. I like the way Yahoo makes new technologies simple for regular folks, but also takes care of the geeks who walk among us.

For serious multi-tasking grillers, the Remote-Check offers remote administration at its best. Of all the IT solutions I have recommended and implemented over the course of my career, this one ranks very highly on the pride list. At the very least, giving one of these to your neighbors is a nice way to distract them and make them forget they were about to ask you about their latest spyware infection or Wi-Fi issue.

I guess I'll try again in the morning.

Update: 8:30am PT: Still having "technical difficulties." I tried at 6am also.
Update: 7:15pm PT: Finally got it through! (after failing all day) We'll see if/when it shows up in the directory.

By the way, the headline and "dek" (what we call the subheadline in the biz) is an incredibly strained reference to the Clash's London Calling:

Headline: Open source calling
Dek: The clash between open source and proprietary telephony solutions has arrived

That's just one small attempt to redeem myself for referencing Motley Crue's "Too Fast for Love" in a column a while back.

In the meantime, I could at least point you to some other audio, right?

Mark Chernesky (Web Development Director at CNN.com and one of my former colleagues) forwarded me links to a couple of the Syndicate sessions he recorded with his iRiver. Mark says of his recording technique:

One thing to note on the audio quality on all the podcasts from the conference, they were recorded nearly as low tech as you can get. An iRiver iFP-899 sitting on the table in the middle of a large conference room using the internal mic. No external mic, no headphones to check audio quality, no changing settings. Simply turn power on, hit record.

Here are the sessions Mark grabbed (and thanks to the IDG World Expo folks for encouraging this!):

• Beyond Words: Media RSS and Podcasting featuring David Berlind (ZDNET), Mike Dunn (Hearst Interactive Media), Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo!), and David Payne (CNN.com) (I moderated -- some notes here)
• Doc Searls' Closing Remarks

So, if you're caught up in RSS fever (and who isn't at this point?), you might be thinking, "Where did this talk of Active Desktop come from? What does that have to do with anything?" I'll point you to this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, "How to Configure the Active Desktop," particularly this bit:

You can use the Active Desktop to make your desktop act like your own personal Web page. You can display pieces of your favorite Web sites directly on your desktop and keep them up-to-date automatically. You can easily customize the Active Desktop at any time.

Sound familiar? My preferred aggregator (Bloglines) says this when I load up my home page: Create a personal Bloglines page loaded with the freshest news about the things you love. Hmmm. . . automatic updating, easy customization, displaying the latest news on your desktop, big Microsoft initiatives. . .

Now to the technical part, which I voiced in March 2004 in the context of my Active Desktop experience back in '97 (except I was writing about RSS scaling issues):

Another interesting technical aside -- as our RSS requests have grown quickly, we have noticed increased server loads at the top of the hour as aggregators "wake up" to pull feeds. Not a huge problem for us right now, but the surge has roughly the same characteristics as a distributed DoS attack and could eventually present trouble for really huge web sites unless aggregators become a bit smarter. I was working at CNN.com when IE4 and its Active Desktop with various CDF "channels" was released, and boy was it active. CNN.com and CNNSI.com were default channels in the new browser. All the newly-downloaded IE4 clients absolutely pounded our servers with requests for CDF files. It was a big pain, and I wish I could remember how we dealt with it.

Actually, I do remember how we dealt with it -- we assumed the fetal position and prayed for the barrage to stop. OK, I'm kidding (sort of). Our operations staff at CNN was beyond incredible and included people like Sam Gassel, who probably knows as much about scaling as anyone in the world. I recall a visiting vendor comparing the CNN ops team to Israeli tank commandos -- these guys were the best, and I still feel honored to this day for having worked with them. When we had problems, those problems were very real and very big -- and this Active Desktop problem was a doozy.

We were being absolutely slammed as more people downloaded the IE4 browser (I believe Active Desktop was enabled by default), so we set up a test machine with IE4 installed and monitored its outbound HTTP requests. Although no user was actually sitting at the machine, we discovered that it was making thousands of requests to fetch content that it had (supposedly) already cached, and it was pre-fetching entire web pages to feed the hungry
Active Desktop (hmmmm, Google Web Accelerator, anyone?) As I recall, Microsoft was very slow to respond to our pleas for help to the point of being almost disdainful when we finally had a conference call with a team over there to air our concerns. I can't remember exactly how the situation was resolved, but I didn't leave with a good taste for Microsoft.

That was eight years ago, of course, so I'm glad to see that Longhorn Team RSS has a blog with open comments. Even if there were problems like we experienced back then, I think it would be impossible for Microsoft to hide from them anyway (not in a Scoble world anyway). Also, scaling to handle RSS traffic seems to be better understood now -- look here to see how we dealt with some minor scaling issues here at InfoWorld last year (as described by our IT manager Kevin Railsback).

I'm guessing that the Longhorn RSS reader will be a lot gentler than the old Active Desktop driven by CDF -- but if it ends up roughing up a few sites along the way, don't think that something like that hasn't happened before.