Month: February 2011

In search of a safe place to drink. It seems at times that life presents us with opportunities. Sometimes these opportunities are constrictive and lock us into where we are. Sometimes these opportunities are uplifting and help us become what we want to be. They are there, these opportunities. They lurk at times in our dreams, awakening us to the potential in front of us. Sometimes they are in the shadows laughing behind our backs as we tumble and fall. It is part of being human that we strive for new opportunities and dreams.

Sometimes these opportunities lock us into the world around us in a way that doesn’t make us comfortable. As if there was an ether that binds us to where we are. That ether can have positive and negative energies and those energies wall around us creating a distance and separation from where we are.

I wonder at times about that energy. It contains so much of what we see and do, but so little of who we are. Can we be contained in that vial of energy that flows around us? Are we limited by the energy or even defined by that energy? Or are we more? I would vote personally that we are more than the positive or negative energy that binds us in place. That we can rise above where we are to achieve greater things than allowed by the energy that binds us. We can be free as long as we assimilate the energy and bind it to things that are transient within us. Bound by energy within us to moments beyond the energy that binds us to the day and hour. It is an extension of where we are as humans and an extension of each of us as a person. Achieving the energy that frees us rather than living within the energy that binds us.

Looking to the day, rather than today.

.doc

The cage within my smile

Posted on February 5, 2011 by scottoandersen

I live beneath

the light of a nuanced star

filtered

and quiet

I wonder amidst the ruins

and wonder

what mighty king fell?

as Shelley said

bound by sand to a base of clay

the might fall.

the nuanced light

slips under the door

and sliding around me,

slowly pulls me outside

asked not

but offered

a glass of cherry red wine

made from grapes

nuanced grapes perhaps

the glass offered

I withdraw my hand

but the glass is forced

“drink” a voice disembodied says

“drink”

sipping I find it

not to be wine

but Dr. Pepper

and cold it flows around me

filling me with nuanced sunlight

and quiet whispers

buzzing

I feel the sand beneath my feet

I feel the heat within the sand

I feel the un upon my face

but the cage remains.

.doc

Device Convergence, Harmony or discord?

Posted on February 4, 2011 by scottoandersen

I struggle to consolidate devices (hence my tome “The Syncverse.”) It comes from a conversation I had a long time ago with a fellow technologist who talked about the value of a Swiss army knife. One device that does everything but really does nothing well. I’ve thought about that for a long time, and of course end up with a number of devices to do specific tasks. Some of it is that I end up getting a lot of devices so it doesn’t cost me anything. The other side of this is of course the concept of what I am trying to do.

In the Syncverse essays I walked through the esoteric reasons for building the Syncverse. The high minded, high brow concepts that I felt conveyed the overall value of both my dream and my message. But within the concept of bringing all my media together is the expanding concept of what I need from devices. Devices that converge technologies have an issue. Do you give up functionality in one area, or both areas. It is hard to cram essential things into a single device. But that gap of functionality is decreasing. I’ve had a police/fire/weather scanner for years.

Now I can have that on my Windows Phone 7 device. Not just programmed for the location I am in, but programmed as a real emergency device, using my location to find the local streams for me. That makes that device more useful than the traditional scanner I now have sitting on my dresser in the bedroom. Yes the hardware scanner is better because in the long run I can use it to cover more things. But the new converged device makes a difference. It actually provides a service (localization) that the other device doesn’t have today.

As the Swiss Army knife view of convergence deceases (and we have more functionality in the new converged device then we did in the old device) it leads me to think about technologies that benefit from this new model. The more people that can use something, the faster innovation of that “functionality” is.

Solution	Improved?	Notes
Police and Fire Scanners	yes improved more portable and location based	huge improvement – now the reception quality of the cellular device becomes more critical
Radio	from HD and Satellite to streaming radio has come a long way –	Radio with no tuner – amazing! Now you don’t need an antenna, just a connection to the internet
GPS	the smaller they get the more features they seem to have	You can now have GPS systems that connect to SPOT, have Satellite images and weather

There are of course a number of things that don’t do as well converged. The thing that intrigues me is the new combinations that are coming out. Escort has a new device that is both a 3d GPS and a Radar detector for you car. A combination of two things you wouldn’t normally see, but highly effective and a great value solution.

There in lies the mystery here. What are the new value solutions that we could consider?

.doc

To connect, to be connected, to be connecting

Posted on February 3, 2011 by scottoandersen

The gift of technology:

From my pc I can see items that are smaller then the head of a pin and items that are billions of miles away. I can connect to my weather station and tell you what the local trends are for weather. I can connect to the MSN Telescope and see the universe even further than my little 70mm telescope can see. I can tell atomic time, and the weather in Bagdad. I can see images of my own house from space (and for that matter yours if I know who you are.) I can stream video from across the world, or from my sling player up stairs.

For years people have called that being connected.

I am working to change that. I am the point of connection. Without the relevance of the starting point, connection means nothing. Without the connector, the connection is simply wires hanging and dangling uselessly talking about what was and what used to be.

I am the point of connection.

You are the point of connection. I spent six months working through the components of my new book, The Syncverse on this blog. I started with a simple idea of connecting me to all the devices and media I own. I moved passed that pretty quickly into a broader social movement.

Assuming then that a human being is the nexus of this connection process, why is that different than being “connected?”

First off it is simply a semantic thing. I prefer the language of “point of connection” versus the broader “being connected.” I believe connection is something people choose or don’t choose, so as the point of connection they can open or close the channels to the connection, as a choice.

This then allows the point of connection to determine both the type of connection and the depth of the connection.

To be truly connected you have to be able to control the connection. As the point you can control what you connect to.

Its like connectivity is a circuit. Once you close the circuit (with the point of connection) it works.

Enough babbling for today.

.doc

I suspect now, it represents the past tense of communicate

Posted on February 2, 2011 by scottoandersen

Do you hear me?

My voice small pitched against

a giant speaker spewing out today’s music

todays’ groove

can you hear me?

The light flickers and the shadows grow

filling the room

flowing under the door

filling the world around them

can you hear me?

It is

it was

my tongue stumbles over speed bumps

and forgets right turns

can you make it home turning

only left I ask…

can you hear me?

stumbling to the door

moving the now think shadows

substantial as they were real now

moving them

parting them like some amorphous mass

hard

and soft

Can you hear me?

I push the shadows away

but I can no longer see the speakers

I can hear the sounds

but they are mostly footsteps

fading away…

.doc

Snow days, snow days the kids are home to bug me days

Posted on February 1, 2011 by scottoandersen