Halfway to hex: Anniversary gifts for geeks
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July 28th, 2008 by Alex
Today marks the eighth anniversary of our other founding partnership: our marriage. July 29th, 2000 was the Big Day not only for the two of us, but also for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
We know that popular opinion lays the blame for the Brad-Jen breakup at the feet of a certain Ms. Jolie, but we recognize a completely different kind of relationship pressure. With all the press coverage of their marriage, did you ever see them pictured with matching his 'n hers PowerBooks?
We don't want our own marriage to fall victim to the specter of insufficient technology. And yet the traditional roster of anniversary gifts is still geared towards the analog lifestyle.
To celebrate our half-hex anniversary, we're proud to present a new, geek-friendly set of recommended anniversary gifts. Do note that the recommended 8th anniversary gift is a nice, fresh web link...hint, hint.
| Year | Traditional | Geek | Notes |
| 1 | Paper | Manuals, documentation | Electronic documentation is just as appropriate as paper manuals. |
| 2 | Cotton | Tech conference and tech culture T-shirts | 100% cotton and size-appropriate, please, if you want to create passionate users. |
| 3 | Leather | Protective cases, luggage | Before you buy that leather laptop case, make sure your geek isn't a vegan. |
| 4 | Fruit, Flowers, Linen, Silk | Apple product | To a true geek, there is no fruit besides Apple. |
| 5 | Wood | Fonts, input devices | Early typewriters were made from wood. |
| 6 | Sugar, Iron | Red Bull, energy snacks | Sugar, in its geek-preferred form. |
| 7 | Wool, Copper | Circuit boards, hardware upgrades | Circuit boards use copper circuits. |
| 8 | Bronze, Pottery | Web links | Bronze is used for bells, i.e. a way of drawing people's attention. |
| 9 | Pottery, Willow | Data storage | For holding things -- the modern equivalent to willow baskets. |
| 10 | Tin, aluminum | Enclosures, CPUs | CPU enclosures are often made from aluminum. |
| 11 | Steel | RAM, memory | RAM chips are typically held in a computer by steel clips. Think of this as the digital equivalent of a wedding photo album. |
| 12 | Silk, Linen | Security devices and software | Silk is made by worms. Security software protects against computer worms. |
| 13 | Lace | Portable electronics devices | Microchips, like lace, used to rely on women with good eyesight to do the manufacturing (both have since automated). Assembly of small products still relies on fine motor work by women. |
| 14 | Ivory | Electronic instruments, speakers | Piano keys were originally made from ivory. |
| 15 | Crystal | LCDs | Liquid CRYSTAL displays. Get it? |
| 20 | China | GPS | Ceramics are part of the miniature antennas used in GPS devices. |
| 25 | Silver | Digital photography equipment, image capture | Silver used in early photo processing. |
| 30 | Pearl | Smart phones | Like the Blackberry Pearl. |
| 35 | Coral, Jade | Linux boxes | The Linux OS, like coral, is made up of thousands of individual contributions that are nonetheless "commonly perceived to be a single organism". |
| 40 | Ruby | Web applications | Preferably applications written in Ruby on Rails. |
| 45 | Sapphire | Laptop computers | Laptop screens use LEDs; some LEDs use a sapphire-like crystal as part of the manufacturing process. |
| 50 | Gold | MP3 players | Gold is used in semiconductors; radios were one of the earlier applications of semiconductors. |
| 55 | Emerald | Code, custom software | As created on the Emerald Isle. |
| 60 | Diamond | Pre-release alpha technologies | Synthetic diamonds are projected as a future material for superconductors, capable of withstanding great heat. |
Best practices for non-profits using web 2.0
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September 28th, 2007 by Alex
Just how much should you fear the Social Signal vendetta of the week� Not that much, it turns out: no sooner had I written my tirade against LinkedIn Answers than I spent the evening answering them. The key to my change-of-heart? The discovery of a groundbreaking technology known as cutting and pasting. Sure, I'd rather have pulled my LinkedIn Answer with the miracle of RSS, but this is a decent plan B.
So, without further ado, here is my answer of the day, in response to the following question from Seth Rosen:
Here's my response:Which nonprofits are using Web 2.0 technology in an innovative way to listen and talk with their clients and constituents and further their missions?
A lot has been written about Web 2.0, or the social web, to communicate and share information. Have you seen nonprofits do this effectively? How are they using the power of the web to spread information and have virtual conversations with their supporters?
We work with a wide range of non-profit and change-oriented for-profit organizations who are using the web to deliver their message, but more crucially, to engage audiences in a conversation. Some of the best practices we note:
- Focus your site on a particular goal or conversation, rather than a general mandate. For example, the UN Foundation has had a dazzling success with its Nothing But Nets site, which focuses specifically on providing malaria nets to kids in the developing world.
- Invite your community to make contributions other than money. Non-profits often experience "donor fatigue" because so much of their public interactions hinge on asking for money. The web is a great place to ask for other kinds of contributions -- whether that means connecting people directly with people who need their expertise or services (as in Nabuur) or asking them to share their personal experiences (as with the March of Dimes' Share your Story project).
- Play nicely with other non-profit (and for-profit) organizations. The web is just that: a web of interconnections. Succeeding in an internetworked environment means working effectively with others, colllaborating, and interacting -- it's not just about getting your own message out there. So being a good 2.0 non-profit means engaging with conversations and ideas on other blogs. Change Everything, a project of the Vancity credit union, is in the middle of a contest that will award $1,000 to a non-profit organization -- and the contest has fuelled a great deal of interest and awareness of non-profit activities in British Columbia.
- Don't feel that web 2.0 means building your own online community. In fact, it's a lot easier to ease into the web 2.0 culture by making effective use of existing web tools -- whether that means fostering internal collaboration by choosing a common del.icio.us tag to use when storing your favorite web sites, or creating an iGoogle page that lets you constantly see the latest news in your key issue areas, or creating a photo-based petition on Flickr (check out the Oxfam example). Or try setting up a Facebook group -- we attracted 1300 people to a Flickr group within 3 weeks of launch. Once you're comfortable with the idea of web 2.0, you can starting thinking about whether it makes sense to build some community features into your own site.
- Be gentle with yourself, and your colleagues. It's a big challenge for most non-profits to shift from message delivery to conversation, or from approaching your members as donors to seeing them as content contributors. For organizations that have been all about the message, and have approached that for decades from a paradigm of message control and careful rollout, it is a genuine (and at times frightening) adventure to bring your audience into the conversation in public, and before you've got everybody lined up to stay "on message". Be patient with colleagues who need to get comfortable with this new approach.
- Stay current with how other non-profits are using web 2.0, and learn from their experiences. A great way of doing that is to track the "nptech" tag on del.ici.ous, where people from all across the nonprofit sector share the latest resources on nonprofit technology activities; it's a great place to find blog posts or tech developments to comment on. And Compumentor's NetSquared project is dedicated to helping non-profits make the most of web 2.0.
.bed
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June 29th, 2005 by Alex
Our headboard needs an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. We always come up with the best domain names as we’re falling asleep, and forget them by the morning.
No godaddy jokes, please.
My 10 sites
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June 27th, 2005 by Alex
As promised, I’m picking 10 sites for my bookmark bar; in fact they’re pretty much there already. Here’s what I’m going to try to live off of for the next week, with no search and no typing addresses into the address bar:
- My blog’s admin page
- My del.icio.us page
- My Bloglines page (with links to all my blog and news sources)
- My web banking login
- My Yahoo groups page
- My spurls
- MyTelus
- The admin page for You’re It
- Omidyar
- MacFixit
I can already tell this is going to be annoying, despite the fact that I can reach about 98% of my web destinations via the first 3 links in my list alone. I suspect that the value of this exercise is going to turn out to be the discipline it imposes on my bookmarking. While I tend to use del.icio.us a lot for things that I want to read, I tend not to bookmark sites that I actually want to use — like my bank, my local movie info (via MyTelus), and Omidyar. This week may push me into bookmarking more sites and learning how to use my bookmarks more effectively.
Tag my desktop — please
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April 1st, 2005 by Alex
And the tagging obsession continues. Thanks to Travis Smith for pointing me towards Larry Borsato’s comments on why we don’t tag our desktop. His post is a response to Kevin Briody’s call to tag your desktop. Kevin asks:
Why cant we tag documents? And file shares? And intranet sites? Then tag communications: emails, Messenger contacts, and address book contacts?
Borsato thinks he has the answer:
The reason desktop search is so useful and necessary is because it helps us find the stuff we lost. Any usable system will required both the ability to categorize, and the ability to search across categories. The folders we are already comfortable with address all of Kevin’s requirements. They can aggregate documents, contacts, other folders, and links or shortcuts to other information.
But Larry is missing the three laws of tagging that make it not just desirable, but indispensable to the future of the desktop:
- Choices suck.
I’m often working on documents or files that belong in more than one place in the haphazard taxonomy that is my computer. I save a file to whichever folder seems to make sense at the time, but that’s no guarantee I’ll be able to guess that location when I go looking. (What can I say? I am mysterious and enigmatic, even to myself). And since today’s long filenames still impose some choices about what words to include or leave out of a filename, you can’t count on search to bail you out. With tags, you don’t have to make those tough choices…just slap on all the keywords you think you might ever need. - Flat is better than pointy.
The beauty of tagging is that it’s a totally flat system…no nested folders or hierarchical categories to worry about. Folder-based desktops, on the other hand, are very very pointy, digging deep into the bowels of your hard drive and spiking up here and there as top-level folders. And like any pointy thing, they require a lot of pruning. I for one am sick of continually pruning my desktop folders back into some kind of coherent order. - Many is better than one.
And if it isn’t enough that tagging can save you from your own leaky memory and desktop disarray, think about what it can do when combined with the rest of the big world. Anyone who has checked out a Technorati tag page has discovered the joys of converged tagging. Just imagine being able to combine all the junk roaming around your desktop with all the related material on del.icio.us, furl, flickr et al.
In fact, why stop at the desktop? I want a labelmaker that will generate text/UPC tags so I can tag objects around them house and retrieve them using our in-home laser-guided Universal Locator System. Oh wait…that’s the future. Why isn’t it here yet?
Today’s bookmarks
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March 8th, 2005 by Alex
I’m trying a new tool that automatically adds my latest bookmarks to this blog via del.icio.us. (I’m user Alexandra Samuel.) I actually manage my bookmarks with Spurl, a terrific social bookmark system that integrates nicely with del.icio.us but has a more user-friendly interface.
- LazyWeb:
Here’s a neat tool for fans of online collaboration and spontaneous problem-solving: the Lazy Web, a place to post all your wishes and requests, in the hope that some benevolent web surfer will stumble along to offer a solution.
Visualizing change
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February 28th, 2005 by Alex
Friends Ben Banky and Linda Rae pointed me to a web site with amazing panoramas of Vancouver’s changing urban landscape, 1978 to 2003. It’s a terrific example of how somewhat abstract issues like urban planning can be given an immediate and apprehensible visual meaning.
It’s also a great example of the wealth of resources that can be used to enhance public consultation — if they’re effectively deployed. This set of images could be a great tool for stimulating public discussion of the city’s plans. And implicitly, that’s the goal: after all, they were put online by the city’s planning department. But all that’s offered as a feedback mechanism is an e-mail address at the bottom of the page — without any questions or context for giving feedback.
I’d love to see a resource like this one harnessed to a more concerted consultation effort. It could be a great catalyst for debate and discussion on the city’s future.
Technological leapfrogging
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January 17th, 2005 by Alex
I have a story in today’s Toronto Star on Leapfrogging the Technology Gap. The story looks at
communities or even whole countries in the developing world that are using information and communication technologies to leapfrog directly from being an agricultural to an information economy. It’s a phenomenon that combines technology high and low in innovative ways, and is generating not only economic benefits but a new world of educational, social and political opportunities.
It’s accompanied by a second story, Tsunami a setback for e-Sri Lanka, which looks at Sri Lanka’s aspirations for technological leapfrogging in light of last month’s Indian Ocean disaster.
Web-based project management
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December 16th, 2004 by Alex
As part of my ongoing love-in with 43 Things, I looked into its development environment, something called Ruby on Rails. Ruby is a programming language that claims to be easy for even a new programmer to learn. Rails is a web application framework for Ruby; it sounds like it may make the process of developing web applications much faster and more efficient.
I gather than Ruby on Rails was developed simultaneously and symbiotically with Basecamp, a very intriguing web-based project management tool. It looks like a very usable, economic tool for managing internal communications, project timelines, and task allocation and completion.
43 Things
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December 16th, 2004 by Alex
My new favourite web site is something called 43 Things, which I discovered through Nancy White’s blog.
You can’t find out what 43 Things is if you don’ t have an account, and you can’t get an account without an invitation. No wonder I just HAD to get in. Happily Nancy White invited me to join her in exploring how 43 Things can be a social change tool. If you want to join the exploration, ask me for an invitation.
The art and science of bookmarks
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December 10th, 2004 by Alex
Like anyone whose work not only uses the Internet, but actually concerns the Internet itself, I am really dependent on bookmark management to keep track of my work and resources. As a Mac user I’ve recently returned to using URL Manager Pro, a client-side tool that does a very nice job of organizing bookmarks in a flexible, accessible, annotateable form. While that addresses my own bookmark management needs, it doesn’t provide a way of sharing my bookmarks with colleagues and collaborators.
For that job, I’m exploring a new tool: del.icio.us, which bills itself as a social bookmarks manager. Andy Budd has a nice explanation of its virtues.
Part of the appeal of the social bookmarking idea is that it’s not just a productivity app; it actually has some value added for those of us working in the field of online collaboration and cooperation. Social bookmarking is still relatively new, so I’ve yet to hear of anyone using it as a civic engagement or collaboration tool. But it won’t be long.
Business gift story in today’s Toronto Star
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December 6th, 2004 by Alex
Today’s Toronto Star has my story on the best business technology gifts for this holiday season.