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Connectivity is dangerous. The fricative sounds of German wafting through the open windows of today’s hotel room reminded me of that fact, reminded me of a misadventure long past, a memory from a time when connectivity took a modem and a phone line. Sometimes it took the diligent and careful application of alligator clips. Hotel phones were, and still are, nothing but trouble.
That time, in that past hotel, things went south. I had tried to look innocent. I failed. “Monsieur!” said the hotel’s night manager as he pounded loudly on my door. “Monsieur, he repeated as I opened the door, “is there is a problem with your telephone, Mein Herr?”
The switch from French to German seemed ominous. Moreover, he looked ominous. He looked like he had spent his formative years on a diet of steroids and fondue, while bench pressing Tony Soprano. “Whoops,” I thought, “this can’t be good.” Articulate and ever ready with smooth repartee, I replied with a set of universally understood monosyllables. “Uh, err, ah, umm,” I said.
Gathering my wits about me, I continued: “Uh… nope, err… Nein. Ich bin… err.” At that I had exhausted what I remembered of my high-school German. All I could think of was “Ich bin ein Berliner.” That wouldn’t work. Wrong country, wrong era; moreover (urban legends about jelly donuts aside) I am no John Kennedy. Giving up, I continued in English, once again adopting my best Midwestern silly grin, “Can I have a late check-out?” I said. Continue reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses
A few days ago, a reader of this humble blog asked if I knew a way to embed “Skype Presence” in a SharePoint Web Part.
I didn’t. But, I was intrigued. (That’s a bad sign… as it usually means I’m going to stay up until the wee hours.)
It turns out to be pretty easy-breezy, with a few caveats. I’ll explain those below. It’s easy because lots of stuff today is “widgetized.” A few minutes on the Skype site turned up some Skype web-widgets—– basically HTML code one can embed on a blog or web page — that gave me what I needed: HTML that would display Skype “presence” by Skype name (what I call a SkypeID).
Realize, I’m no code slinger, but it looked to me that one could simply modify the HTML, adding in different Skype names, and then stack it up in a CEWP. So that’s what I did. Continue reading Skype Me, Dr. Memory!
I woke up when I heard the snap, crackle, pop. A tree had fallen in the woods and I had heard it. Whatever the philosophical implications, the actual effect was that my power went out.
“Damn,” I muttered, shaking off a sense of déjà vu. It was early morning, Sunday, December 23. The winds were howling — gusts to 90 mph, or so the weather channel had predicted the evening before. Trees were snapping and cracking like Rice Krispies. “Damn,” I muttered, shaking off a sense of déjà vu. The earlier the hour, the more limited my vocabulary. “Damn,” I muttered.
I glanced at the clock. Now on battery — having achieved true cosmic Zen harmony with its VCR brethren — it was happily flashing 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. “Damn,” I muttered, switching my gaze to my backup alarm clock. It read 7:30 am.
It’s was a Sunday, the day before Christmas Eve, and I was without electricity. I thought to myself: “now, you couldn’t pick a better day to challenge the fading infrastructure of a once-great industrial state.” I then told myself to shut-up and stop being so pedantic — fading infrastructure, indeed. “Damn.” Continue reading Blogging by Candlelight
I think it was Alan Kay who once said (and I’m paraphrasing here): the personal computer won’t really be personal until you can wear it on your T-shirt. I think of that quote every time I see an IPod commercial.
I find it phenomenal how much of what defines this connected age actually is actually pretty “personal.” I used to say that the internet revolution was all about having a “one-to-one personal conversation with hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people.” But, I’m not sure I really groked just what I meant, just how essentially personal much of this communications and information revolution really is.
Technology Gets Personal
The fact is many of today’s really revolutionary technologies, and all those related gizmos and gadgets, don’t easily lend themselves to the needs of an organization. They are personal; either they don’t scale, or they don’t scale well. They’re not designed to. They are designed for the individual, for the consumer market, not for the organization. Continue reading Adventures in Telephony — Scaling Skype
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