vanderwal.net

The NY Times writes about methods to protect our laptops from theft. (I saw more laptops this past week to make it seem like it was a revolution, not to mention approximately 80% of the laptops were Apple).

This may be the first reason not to own a BMW. The first car that is easy to steal, crash, and have to dial the manufactuer if you change a part all in one. Thanks Microsoft now the everybody can be l33t. [hat tip Cam]

A note about choosing the new phone. I enjoyed my Motorola Startac flip phone for the last two and a half years, but the battery life was killing me and the keys, well had some minor issues. I really wanted a phone that would vibrate (I hate hearing other people's phone ring, so I want my phone to have the ability to be courteous). I also wanted a hands free phone for the car, so speakerphone was a need (some folks only seem to call when I am in the car and the headset is problematic at times when the cord wraps around the gear shift, particularly when shifting to 5th and your headset is ripped right off your noggin). I am interested in text messaging so friends can send quick notes to say when they are leaving work, etc. I also wanted a phone that would easily fit in my pants pocket (this feature is in no way tied to the vibrate function). These desires quickly narrowed down my choices. I am very happy with the size and weight, as it is not a great amount bigger than the Startac. It does give me web capability, which is good for testing wireless page builds (more on that in a future post) and the bizarre ability to plug in an FM stereo adapter so listen to the radio using the phone. I was very impressed with the Verizon sales guy as he was very helpful and knew their products and capabilities quite well.

Can I tell you how ready for sleep I am? This week included the approach of an ISO audit at work, end of the month usual stuff, tons of paperwork for work and home, spending time with my wonderful parents that were in town (although they stayed in a private club/hotel that lost them when I was trying to meet them for dinner), realized I could not find my running shoes I liked (hello Adidas for home delivery), figured out that the ASIS IA Summit is largely on a weekend that I have not away and close by in Baltimore (hello I am now going), finally got tired of my cell phone and its poor battery life and my non-national call plan for that phone that put me back more than $300 while stuck in SF around Sept. 11 (vavoom a new phone and a national plan, which includes e-mail, text messaging, and Web and a much longer battery life), and allergy season beginning. I also realized I leave for Austin a week from tomorrow.

The Beeb discusses payment from mobile phones a reality and the affect this has on the marketplace. Once again the Beeb looks at many, if not all, sides of an issue. The money in the mobile adds a new payment system for merchants to track. The mobile is targeted at small charges that would be too small for credit cards, but ironically most people pay their mobile bills with credit cards.

Information Week provides a glimpe of the 'New Way to Work'.

How to shoot your users in the foot, a guide from HandSpring. In the technology world the continually seems to be a lack of marketing understanding. Handspring has had a strong loyal user base, many made up from Palm users that upgraded when Palm stalled its progress. Palm has since come back on track. I have been thinking that Palm would be my next handheld again. At the core of the HandSpring old and new is the Palm OS, but is why I bought the HandSpring a while back and there was more memory and modules that could extend memory and provide a solid backup on the road.

Content management is back at the forefront of every aspect of my digital life again. Content management revolves around keeping information current, accurate, and reusable (there are many more elements, but these cut to the core of many issues). Maintaining Websites and providing information resources on the broader Internet have revolved around static Web pages or information stored in MS Word, PDF files, etc. Content management has been a painful task of keeping this information current and accurate across all these various input and output platforms. This brings us to content management systems (CMS).

As I pointed to earlier, there are good resources for getting and understanding CMS and how our roles change when we implement a CMS. Important to understanding is the separation of content (data and information), from the presentation (layout and style), and from the application (PDF, Web page, MS Word document, etc.). This requires an input mechanism, usually a form that captures the information and places it in is data/information store, which may be a database, XML document, or a combination of these. This also provides for a workflow process that involved proofing and editing the information along with versioning the information.

Key to the CMS is separation of content, which means there needs to be a way to be a method of keeping links aside from the input flow. Mark Baker provides a great article, What Does Your Content Management System Call This Guy about how to handle links. Links are an element that separates the CMS-lite tools (Blogger, Movable Type, etc.) from more robust CMS (other elements of difference are more expansive workflow, metadata capturing, and content type handling (images, PDF, etc. and their related metadata needs)). Links in many older systems, often used for newspaper and magazine publications (New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle) placed their links outside of the body of the article. The external linking provided an easy method of providing link management that helps ensure there are no broken links (if an external site changes the location (URL) it there really should only be one place that we have to modify that link, searching every page looking for links to replace). The method in the Baker article outlines how many current systems provide this same service, which is similar to Wiki Wiki's approach. The Baker outlined method also will benefit greatly from all of the Information Architecture work you have done to capture classifications of information and metadata types (IA is a needed and required part of nearly every development process).

What this gets us is content that we can easily output to a Web site in HTML/XHTML in a template that meets all accessibility requirements, ensures quality assurance has been performed, and provides a consistent presentation of information. The same information can be output in a more simple presentation template for handheld devices (AvantGo for example) or WML for WAP. The same information can be provided in an XML document, such as RSS, which provides others access to information more easily. The same information can be output to a template that is stored in PDF that is then sent to a printer to output in a newsletter or the PDF distributed for the users to print out on their own. The technologies for information presentation are ever changing and CMS allows us to easily keep up with these changes and output the information in the "latest and greatest", while still being able to provide information to those using older technologies.

MIT's Tech Review queries about mobile text messaging in the U.S. as much of the rest of the world uses it much more than Americans. I was very impressed with the mobile services in Europe last year and now really would like to have text messaging for my work. The frequency that text messaging works on is far better than mobile phones for penetrating walls and for being stable in emergencies (this may be attributed to its lack of use).

IBM DeveloperWorks has an indepth focus on wearable computers. This intrigues me to some degree (okay alot). I am also intrigued with the changes for the user to make information application more useable in “this environment”.

The Beeb takes a look at the future of mobile phones. The glimpse of the future comes from the Isle of Man.

Lucas Gonze points out Caching Trust in his O'Reilly weblog. The idea is rather intriguing in that if you find a set of data that is has not been validated, a substitute for a copy of the data is stored locally so you may verify the data. The author of the document pointed to in Gonze' log is, M. Satyanarayanan of CMU, who spends his time working on mobile computing and file sharing research and experiments (like Coda (with its associated papers and Odyssey).

The BBC reports that Intel is running field studies on mobile device use in London. The research is an ethnogrphic study of interactive use. The article states, "'One of the things that makes a successful technology is a technology that supports experiences that people want to have,' explained Ms Genevieve Bell, senior researcher and design ethnographer at Intel." This is nice news, but slightly more impressive is the general media's explainations of the study, (you go Beeb!!).

Wireless Week discusses location based services, which are seeming to be making in roads. One of the nice items in this article is the inclusion of voice in the new Kivera release. Having the ability to talk to your dashboard and return directions or nearest gas station or ATM would be a seriously great tool.