iMind - by Jim Phelps

Fri - May 20, 2005

del.icio.us

I hope all of you have discovered del.icio.us . It is a great "social bookmark manager". I just had an interesting thing happen with del.icio.us. I was adding some urls (on faceted navigation) when I thought I should add a tag to those entries. I went to my del.icio.us bookmarks to edit them then saw some bookmarks I had thrown into del.icio.us during the Internet2 Member Meeting. I had completely forgotten about these bookmarks. I wonder how many bookmarks are lost inside of my bookmark menu that I just don't remember adding.

It is good to have a second brain sometimes.

Fri - May 13, 2005

Haven't blogged here for quite a while

I've been busy with my work blog, setting a blog for my boss and demonstrating the integration work that I did for my work blog. That has kept me very busy. I was also traveling to Arlington VA for the Spring Member meeting of Internet2.

Tue - April 5, 2005

My work blog - tagging and folksonomy

I haven't been posting here much. Most of my time has been spent on writing code for my work blog I.T. Architect in Academia. I run that blog on WordPress and I must say that I am very impressed with the WordPress engine. There a lots of plugins and templates and activity around the code.

Sun - March 27, 2005

Setting up a work blog

I've been spending a fair amount of time recently setting up a new blog for my work writings. You can see it here: I.T. Architect in Academia. Though soon I will probably move it up one level in the directory to http://arch.doit.wisc.edu/jim/

Wed - November 17, 2004

Piloting Policy and Process

In my job, I deal with re-architecting the enterprise computing environment. We end up reshaping both the technological landscape - working on issues of interoperability between systems, integration, identification of users, authentication and authorization - and on the policy and process landscape - working on issues like "who should be involved", "how does the decision get made" and "what are the roles of the various people and teams in the project".

Sat - July 3, 2004

Peer to Peer file sharing - Microsoft and the EFF - on the same page

I recently read two papers that discuss peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, "pirating of software and music and stuff" and the fact that DRM will never work. One work was by Cory Doctorow and one was by a group of MicroSerfs. Amazingly, they agree with each other on the basic premise. DRM won't work.

Sun - June 13, 2004

Thinking about Design this Weekend

I spent a lot of time thinking about design - design in the big open sense of design. This started when I heard an interview of Harvey Molotch on Whad'ya Know on Saturday (here is the RAM file - the interview starts at the 6 minute mark). He is the author of the book Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are. This was followed by some reading some of Douglas Bowman's writings on his site Stop Design . His article called "The Cost of Page Rank " discusses the impact of having your web site improperly highly ranked in a search engine. Bowman's portfolio contains some of the most useful and interesting web sites that I use regularly: Blogger, Wired News, Lycos, Web Monkey and HotBot. I remember reading his article "Sliding Doors of CSS " when it first came out and being amazed at the elegance and simplicity but the thoroughness of his work. Here is a person who can make clean and crisp CSS code which handles the oddities of IE5 on Mac.

Fri - September 26, 2003

iChat AV - The Answer is.... it worked!

We had a conference today to talk about technology in higher ed. Keith, my boss, was in Japan for a different conference though he needed to be present here for our conference. iChat AV came to the rescue.

Wed - September 24, 2003

iChat AV in the Enterprise

My boss is in Japan for a conference. He needs to be present for a presentation this Friday. We hope to bridge the Pacific Ocean with iChat AV.

Mon - September 15, 2003

Collaboration in a tool-rich environment

Collaboration can be defined as: (1) Working together to produce a common outcome, (2) to work together, especially in a joint intellectual process.

This definition can be broken down into a few core values for collaboration. The words "Working together" and "joint intellectual process" imply Communication, Sharing and Process. "To produce" implies Development and Publication.

The core values of collaboration are: Communication, Sharing, Development, Publication and Process.

Wed - August 20, 2003

Tasks - Cool PHP and MySQL based Task Manager tool

I'm always looking for cool collaboration tools - things that will streamline the IT Architects' communication and planning process.

Wed - August 6, 2003

Speaking of bad design - Target Stores also blew it.

Have you noticed how hard it is to distinguish between the Entrance and Exit doors at Target stores?

Tue - August 5, 2003

iTrip's Blinking Lights - Why Griffin Technology blew the design

I just got a new iTrip for my iPod (love the iPod, like the iTrip). The iTrip is a little FM transmitter for your iPod that lets you broadcast your songs to your car stereo. You can tune the iTrip to various frequencies using your iPod. Learning to use the iTrip reminded me of two basic design lessons - (1) follow what others have done especially standards both formal and informal and (2) behave the way that the user expects.

I thought the iTrip was broken until I Read The Fine Manual as they say. Griffin blew the basic tenets of good design with their blinking blue LED.

Fri - July 11, 2003

Four Aspects of Project Communication

I've been thinking about successful project management. Not from the timeline and budget aspect though what I'm thinking about helps to assure success in that way too, but from a "what are the fundamentals that you need to establish early on if you are going to be successful" way. I've come up with four things: (1) Language, (2) Vocabulary, (3) Process and (4) Methodology.

Thu - July 10, 2003

XML and Google - Automatically Search for Top 10 related items

Jon Udell has a Google side bar in his blog . This sidebar lists Google's top ten hits based on a set of key words. This is pretty cool especially if it is interactive based on a Key Word store inside of metadata in the blog entry. If that is the case, then this could be a very cool tool for navigating the document stores of an enterprise.