David Duey

Software, Entrepreneurship and Other Stuff

Communicating with the Collective

With each new cell phone my wife purchases, she becomes more and more Borg-like.  She's deeply integrated with her phone to the point that I'm not certain she could live without one for any length of time (although she claims she'd never have an implant).

With her latest cell phone purchase, and the resulting Tweet that she sent, I had a realization; Twitter is the communication medium of the Borg.  It all suddenly made sense.  I've read a number of articles and blog entries attempting to explain the allure of Twitter.  I no longer believe any of it; I can clearly see that Twitter addiction is ingrained in the genetics of those who will be the ancestors of the Borg.  Those short messages bursting through the collective aren't just addictive, they're a primal instinct of a new life form.  Twitter is the communication channel of the collective.

Finally, it all makes sense.



Posted by David Duey on January 20, 2009 in The Future | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Borg, twitter

Auto-Homing Data

Last week I’d had a little bit of an epiphany while reading one of Brad Feld’s posts.  I made the following comment to his post:

When I read your paragraph about legacy data, I started thinking about your Glue theme and the bad Terminator (T-1000) in the movie Terminator 2. When the bad Terminator was torn apart, its various pieces would return to collective (for lack of a better description). Wouldn't it be cool if your data could automagically find its way home?

Since then, the possibility of auto-homing data has been rolling around in my head.  The basic idea is to have your data return home to a central repository regardless of the original entry point for the data. 

For example, I typed the comment above into Brad Feld’s blog, but I would like to have a copy of the comment along with the comment’s context (date, blog etc.) for my own personal data store.  Currently, Brad Feld has my data; I can copy it and paste it into a document or a database, but I have to do that myself, there’s nothing that will do it for me.

With auto-homing data, I want my data to automatically find my data store and incorporate itself into the collective.  This may seem a little strange at first, but in many ways it’s similar to email.  With email, content is created and sent to an address; the content did not have to be created at a specific place or within a specific application, it just has to be sent to the correct address.

I think we have all of the technologies we need to make auto-homing data happen.  Something as simple as an html tag or a microformat could be used to demarcate data for auto-homing.  We have the transport protocols, POP, XMPP and other standards to help move data around.  Almost all data storage systems (i.e. databases) can interact with XML and JSON formatted data.  And, there’s a ping service, Gnip Central, that could be used to notify a system that new and updated auto-homing data is available.

Of course, there are a number of obstacles to overcome such as walled gardens and data spam (yep!), but I think those obstacles could be overcome.  I think it’ll happen; I think I’ll see the day when my data will automagically appear in the collective and I want to be a part of making that happen.

Posted by David Duey on September 29, 2008 in Ideas, Implicit Web, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Auto-Homing Data, Defrag, Glue, Glue Theme, Implicit Web, Web 2.0

Eighth Anniversary

My wife just posted a blog entry about our eighth wedding anniversary.  There's really not much I can add to her post except that the past eight years have been the best and most woderful years of my life because of Heather.  I'm hoping for many more.

I love you Heather!

Posted by David Duey on August 08, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

My Social Experiment

A guy who sits near me has a computer that we've been using for test purposes.  I added some speakers to the computer and I've remoted into the computer so I can play sounds on the test computer from where I'm sitting.  The first sound I tried was a mosquito, but I think the sound quality was poor; he complained about static coming from the speakers.  Oh well.

Next, I'm going to try farting sounds.  I think he's one of those inadvertent farters that just lets one loose if it's available.  I'll have to see if I can get him to question himself (or check his pants).  He's away right now, so I'll have to update the post with the results after he returns. 

I should've been a social scientist.

UPDATE:  It didn't go well; I should've expected as much.  My cube-dwelling pal just said, "This computer is farting."  I did a poor job of setting things up.  I'm a failure as a social scientist. 

I'll make some changes and try again one day.  First, I need better speakers and better sound overall.  Sound quality is important; it has to sound real.  Next, I'll hide the speakers and test to make sure it's hard to determine where the sound is coming from.  Lastly, I'll use annoying insect sounds rather than noisy body functions. 

I've come to the conclusion that people who emit a constant array of gross sounds have some self awareness, and thus, they can determine that the sounds are external to themselves.  (Maybe the experiment wasn't a failure; I determined that farty people can be self aware.)

It's just like a startup: morph and try again.

Posted by David Duey on August 07, 2008 in Other | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: fart, farts, pesky cube mates, social experiment

Graphic Complexity

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

Posted by David Duey on July 28, 2008 in Other | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

One of Many

One of many great Randy Pausch quotes...

Be prepared: "luck" is where preparation meets opportunity.

Posted by David Duey on July 25, 2008 in Other | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Smells Like Glue

Trying to do a deep dive into Gnip and Mashery. 

Posted by David Duey on July 24, 2008 in Ideas | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: glue, gnip

The Trouble With Ideas

I recently read Ben Casnocha’s blog entry about entrepreneurial judgment where Ben quotes Marc Andreessen:

In my view, entrepreneurial judgment is the ability to tell the difference between a situation that's not working but persistence and iteration will ultimately prove it out, versus a situation that's not working and additional effort is a destructive waste of time and radical change is necessary.
I don't believe there are any good rules for being able to tell the difference between the two. Which is one of the main reasons starting a company is so hard.

I haven’t been able to get that quote out of my head.

Ideas as Time Wasters
I generally don’t have any problem coming up with business ideas.  Most of the ideas completely suck and I understand that.  And, I understand that the value of most ideas (mine or otherwise) is about negative zero; regardless there’s usually a germ of a potential business in many ideas.  Granted, the ideas would have to be refined and rethought, but most of my ideas usually aren’t good enough for me to spend my time refining and rethinking.

Recently, though, I’ve had a dearth of ideas.  I’ve tried to figure out why I used to fart ideas like I fart chili, but the farting has suddenly stopped.  I think it’s because I’ve finally come to realize how much effort and time all of those ideas have usurped from my task laden days.  I’ve finally begun to realize that my approach to finding a “good idea” just doesn’t work well. 

A lot of people would recommend taking action on a somewhat good idea and go forth and morph.  I like that approach, and the “take some action” approach has a lot of merit, but taking action and morphing can yield a big failure.  And, the problem isn’t failure in and of itself; the problem is the resources (time and money) that failure extracts. 

So what’s the problem?
One problem I have with simply choosing an idea to work on without doing any research or leg work and is that, at least for me, going forth does not equate to going off excitedly.  In other words I need to believe in the idea.  I need to believe there is, or will be a customer base for the idea.  I need to believe the idea will be profitable.  I have to believe in the idea in order to move forward with the idea.

Often I’ll have a bunch of ideas circulating in my head; I’m willing to kill some (or all) off, but I’m unwilling to latch onto any particular idea.  Why?  Because I’m unwilling to fall in love with an idea and waste my time and resources only to discover that it won’t pan-out in the end.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that realizes itself before any real action is applied.   (Maybe it should be called “the bootstrapper’s dilemma.”)

And that’s the problem I’ve had with ideas lately.  I’m no longer confident that I can tell which, if any, are worth pursuit.  I don’t think it’s an issue of over-thinking or over-evaluation; I think it’s a simple issue of not really knowing or understanding how to properly evaluate a good idea. 

What’s the solution?
Well, I actually don’t know what the solution is, but I’m going to try something different for a change.  I think I’m going to do exactly what Eric Marcoullier did or what Paul Berbarian is doing (Paul Berbarian is fresh off of a failure and is looking for his next business idea); create a list of good ideas, get feedback, and then select one and go for it; really go for it – nothing half-assed.  Just do it.

Posted by David Duey on July 23, 2008 in Entrepreneurship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: entrepreneurship, ideas

RSS in 3D

Microsoft has an intersting #D RSS reader here.  I believe it requires the .Net framework 3.0 or higher and IE7.  It's not practical for daily use, but it is pretty and it has some intereseting features.

Posted by David Duey on June 19, 2008 in Other | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: 3D RSS reader, RSS reader

I'm an Mnisiac

Mnisio is such a simple idea; it combines a slideshow (PowerPoint or Slideshare) with video so that you can view slides whilde a spearker talks.  Very nice.

One of my favorite presentations is David Heinemer Hansson of 37 Signals.  If you're into startups, it's well worth a watch.

Posted by David Duey on May 14, 2008 in Entrepreneurship | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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