Utah Open Source Planet

papalars via Flickr

This post on the death of advertising was my 4000th blog post on Technometria. Kind of snuck up on me. The mountain picture has nothing to do with blogging or anniversaries or milestones. I just liked it.

Tags: blogging milestones

Sorry for the back-to-back political posts. I try to keep politics to a minimum on this blog, but as the election heats up I find myself with more and more to say on the matter.

Over the weekend, a blogger asked Palin a hard question and got an evasive answer. The result was a widely circulated blog post detailing how Palin and McCain refused to answer the questions put to them.

Recently a blogger in Utah had a run in with Utah Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble and posted the encounter on her blog. I think she was surprised by the play it got and the reaction, but she writes well in a hip, snarky way and the story took off.

While some believe the media no longer asks the hard questions because it doesn't lead to good ratings, the truth is we've never been more empowered as citizens to affect campaigns, elections, and government operations. The voice that new media gives ordinary people is unprecedented and will have a noticeable affect on the election.

That puts more pressure on everyone to employ good filters and decide for themselves what matters and what doesn't. While this new media gives ordinary citizens a real voice, it can also be used to swiftboating a candidate with lies and half truths as long as they make for a compelling story. A good example is the deplorable bevy of chain letters going around the Internet about Obama's alleged radical Muslim connections.

Update: The pizza delivery girl, Anna Eagar, is now campaigning for Bramble's opponent.

Tags: politics blogging campaign08

Joseph Scott, developer at Automattic, posted that Wordpress.com has recently broken 4 million total blogs. He further mentions that it took just 4 months to go from 3 million to 4 million. Assuming the rate isn’t exponential, it will just be end of December when they hit 5 million blogs. What would be even more fascinating is to know how many self-hosted blogs on Wordpress are currently running. (This blog is a Wordpress MU install)

Wordpress seems to be no Facebook, but perhaps as projects like BuddyPress take off and people begin to virally create blogs and content with their friends it will get to that level. Where Wordpress still has left to compete is with microblogging sites like Twitter - perhaps, with the large user base that they currently have we could see this happen in the near future.

I mentioned earlier I was going to announce a big change this week. I’m “on the move“, as Jeremiah Owyang would put it. Today was my first day working full time at a new Silicon Valley startup with offices here in Utah, where I will be leading their Social Product strategy moving forward. I am phasing off my regular consulting, and moving to this new Entrepreneurial effort in helping them grow.

At the moment, I can’t reveal much more, other than the fact that we’re building the next era in Interactive Entertainment on the iPhone. The company I’m working with right now started out as a client of mine, and I liked their product so much I decided it would be worth helping them out full time. I believe fully that we are going to change much of the way you watch TV today. We will be launching most likely next week, and you can follow the Twitter account @MediaMyWay to catch our launch announcement and follow our updates (I’ll also point you there from my Twitter account when we launch - we’ll announce it there first!). Other Twitter accounts you can follow for updates and “clues” are @JustintheWhitt, @Romay, and our CEO, @BradPelo.

How will this affect the other stuff I do? In reality, not much is changing, other than what I do full time. I have received permission to keep SocialToo.com going part-time, as it has, unless it takes off. Expect some very cool things to come from SocialToo in the near future - we’re working on a completely new design and a really cool new feature that will be released in the next couple weeks.

As far as my blogging and book-writing is concerned, I see nothing changing, and I intend fully to continue blogging regular, unbiased articles that I feel inspire and educate. I will disclose where necessary if I feel my current employment has any influence in what I am writing. I still hope to continue writing in other capacities as well, as long as speak as I’m asked to do (I’m speaking in Dallas next week to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, in fact - come see me speak!).

So, keep watching the @MediaMyWay Twitter account, and you can also follow this blog and I’ll be sure you’re aware of the latest of our happenings (we’ll have a company blog here shortly, which I’ll let you know about). In the meantime I’ll keep posting regular, educational, and original content as I always have and always will. “Stay” Tuned!

The trouble with pizza girls (and everyone else these days) is that they blog.

I love the internet and its bountious opportunities for citizen journalism.  Ten years ago you would never have heard this story.

It all started with this post today. A supposed “employee ‘close to the deal’” told blogger, Zach Klein (who doesn’t seem to allow comments on his blog) that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History division had made an unsolicited bid to purchase Facebook. Nothing else - no other background, no other resources to confirm the deal. Soon after, ValleyWag, the first to the scene and first large blog to publish anything about it, was blogging rumors they are well known for spreading. Soon after, Venturebeat and the Industry Standard were blogging about it, quoting Brady Brim-DeForest, who ironically was claiming this as news, not a rumor at all - I’m unaware of where he got it, but his news broke after Valleywag’s. TheInquisitr, while I’m sure had no ill-intentions, even made fun of the manner with some very radical and somewhat inaccurate claims that I know have offended some members of the LDS Faith that read the blog. The blogosphere seems to be a mess today in regards to regard for religion, faith, and respect for one another’s belief. It appears the LDS Church has become the punch-line of the blogosphere’s Jokes and I’m getting really tired of it.

Now, let’s talk about rumors. The blogosphere is known for spreading rumors - I’ve hated them from the get-go, but let’s face it, it’s a part of many blogs out there, and it may not be going away any time soon. (I think I could do an entire post about rumors in and of itself) I expect an occasional rumor about Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo, or Facebook employees leaving the company because they are mad with Executives, or even a crazy one like the iPhone 2.0 coming with 2 cameras and iChat video support. Frankly, I never share those (well, rarely), but they are fun to read because, well, they’re funny. But rumors like an entire Faith buying a huge company like Facebook are ridiculous, unfounded, and frankly offensive to me that anyone would take such a rumor seriously when the Faith is my own. It’s a religion, people - tell me one reason a religious Faith would need a social network like Facebook to further its mission. Do you seriously believe any religion would be so stupid as to try this? People would leave Facebook in droves if that were to happen, and a network like Facebook has no good way of building up the members of the Faith itself. The claim is absolutely ridiculous, and I can’t believe established bloggers are taking this serious enough to share with others! There seems to be a serious lack of understanding between the blogosphere and the LDS Faith and I’d like to figure out a way to put an end to it.

Let’s go back to earlier this year. You may remember my “Shame on You TechCrunch” post I wrote awhile back, calling out the writers at CrunchGear for an extremely biased, and very misunderstood and inconsiderate interview of Penn Juliette, in which he claimed Mormons had “magic underwear” (as a Mormon, I affirm to you, that my underwear is not magic), and went on to encourage him as he talked about how easy religious women were, degrading women at the same time. While I still will not read CrunchGear because of that, I have lifted my boycott of TechCrunch (just because there is no way to avoid it - I also did not know Arrington at all at the time), but as you can see, there is a blatent misunderstanding of the LDS Faith in the blogosphere. CrunchGear still stands by their article and has refused to make any statement to the contrary.

Now, to give credit to those that have blogged about this today, Eric Eldon (of VentureBeat) does have a great point in that the LDS Church does actively invest in stock to retain and increase the value of its members donations through Tithing, and Facebook employees are selling stock. Like Louis Gray, I too give 10% of my wages in the form of Tithing to the Church, and I sincerely hope they invest it wisely and don’t just waste it away. I know their investments are wise though, and even the “widow’s mite” is considered and cared for. The Church itself never publishes these investments and it would be impossible to know if some are in Facebook or some are in Microsoft or some are in Google. They take these donations as sacred, and every effort is taken to maintain the sacredness of those donations. However, an outright acquisition of Facebook would be proposterous and completely out of line with the Church’s history.

Every one of these bloggers could have done a simple Tweet in fact, and quickly gotten a response from Mormons on how ridiculous the claims are. Or they could have shot Louis Gray, or me, or Matt Asay, or Phil Windley, or other Mormon bloggers an e-mail asking us if the claims were true. It took me about 5-10 minutes to send an e-mail to the LDS church and get a response back (which, btw, said the claims are not true and unfounded), and in fact, the LDS Church CIO is even on Twitter - an e-mail or even simple dm to him may have done the trick.

Now, I’m not necessarily trying to call out these specific bloggers, but rather point out the problem in general - I respect most of them in fact and really enjoy their regular blog posts. I’m just trying to make a shoutout to the blogosphere that we’re here if you have questions! Let’s start an open dialogue about the Mormon Faith - do you have questions? We’d really like to answer them before you assume and blog inaccuracies in the first place. Please, don’t hesitate to contact me, Louis Gray, or any other Mormon blogger if you have any hestitancy before posting an article. It’s time we put an end to this nonsense, once and for all.

There’s a new kid in town in the microblogging space, and no it’s not just “another microblogging site”. I talked to Brian Hendrickson, the lead developer behind OpenMicroblogger.org and its accompanying service OpenMicroblogger.com today and he may just have something to scare both Twitter, and Evan Prodromou of Identi.ca in their tracks. What’s amazing about it all is Brian has actually taken the OpenMicroBlogging protocol that Evan established and implemented the protocol in Brian’s own, non-laconica-based implementation of the protocol that would communicate with any other OpenMicroblogging protocol supported site, similar to the way I mentioned on LouisGray earlier. Yes, OpenMicroblogger.com and the accompanying open source software it is based on will talk to Identi.ca, and on a completely different code base. That means you can follow anyone on Identi.ca within the OpenMicroblogger.com service and vice-versa, and they were written from the ground up by two entirely different developers!

What’s even more amazing about this new platform is that while not a Wordpress implementation, Brian seems to have made the platform almost entirely compatible with the Wordpress plugin and theme API. So, basically, if you are a Wordpress developer, you can write your own extensions to the code, implement your own versions of the code, and write your own themes, all in the same way you do on Wordpress. Brian wrote the code from the ground up using a framework he built and calls “dbscript”, and it contains no Wordpress code whatsoever. He felt Wordpress was too bulky to handle a full Microblogging platform (do I smell a potential acquisition by Automattic?). In fact, adding in integration with the OpenMicroBlogging Protocol was as simple as just adding a simple PHP plugin to his dbscript implementaion. The look and feel of OpenMicroblogger.com, his own implementation of the codebase, is all just an implementation of the Wordpress Prologue theme that my friend Joseph Scott at Automattic wrote.

Brian tells me that while Laconi.ca’s codebase is very good technology (he had very good things to say about Identi.ca, Evan, and the Laconi.ca codebase, especially when compared to Twitter), the technology underneath OpenMicroblogger and DBScript is even stronger and more scalable. According to him, “dbscript is an advanced ‘Restful’ framework with sophisticated features that are not found in the Wordpress code base, it shares features with Ruby on Rails (ruby) and Django (python) — things like MVC, ActiveRecord, Routes, Content-Negotiation”. Because the underlying code is Restful, an API is almost inheritently provided for other developers to interact with your implementation of the code-base and write their own applications for it.

OpenMicroblogger and DBScript are based on an open source MIT license similar to the license Ruby is under. Brian says it took him just 8 weeks to write this advanced implementation, with other client projects going on at the same time and 2 kids, which shows how simple it is to implement the Openmicroblogging Protocol. It also shows his devotion to the work.

OpenMicroblogger.com, the service that shows off his code, has some really nice features (also available in the code) such as sharing links and pictures with friends - definitely a little more advanced than Identi.ca in that manner. He fully supports the OpenID standard (he actually wrote his own OpenID host using his framework!), and is very big on OAuth and other standards and open protocols so you can expect to see much more around that with the site.

This one simple and amazing example goes to show that we have only hit the tip of the iceberg here on microblogging technology. Now that a Protocol has been established, you will see more and more sites and developers write their own extensions of the protocol to implement their own creative microblogging solutions and layers. This very creative and innovative solution could just be a more advanced option than Laconi.ca to consider for Microbranded solutions in the future. Brian has taken “viral coding” to heart.

You can download the code, try out, learn more and help out the OpenMicroblogger.org project over at http://openmicroblogger.org. I’ve created an account at http://openmicroblogger.com/?jessestay, and you can actually just go there, follow me, and follow my OpenMicroBlogger.com updates right on Identi.ca! Or, you can go over and create an account for yourself.

UPDATE: Brian corrected me about it being more scalable than Laconi.ca (see the comments below) - according to him, “Actually Laconi.ca is the more robust code and is more scalable. dbscript is a meta-object framework and runs some extra queries to “learn” about the db schema — it is currently not very optimized for performance, but is geared towards being programmer-friendly.”

Last night I started teaching a new class for me:  Blogging 101.  I’m an avid blogger, and hoped that I could add some value to the blogging experience for those who are new to the idea.  

Now, many of you may be asking why someone would *need* to learn how to blog.  It’s a valid question for those who are familiar with the concept and ideas behind blogging in particular and Web 2.0 in general.  But for those who are not familiar with these concepts, it can be a bit harrowing and intimidating.  After all, what do you talk about?  

The class started well, with 7 registered students.  Everyone looked to blogging as a way to broadcast information to a large group, share experiences, share stories, practice writing, and one student was looking for a corporate application.  It was a great mix of people with different interests.  

We covered the following topics: 

Why Blog?  
I wanted people to think about why they were blogging, and what blogging meant to them.  So we talked about the definition of Blogging, who blogs, and the various uses blogging has seen since it’s inception.  I focused on the Experts (those who are sharing their knowledge for the benefit of others), the Corporate Blogger (those using their blog to hype products or to build a community around their products), and the Web Journal (those sharing their experiences in a public, very visible way).  

Setting Up Your Blog
Next we set up a blog.  I pointed out the different blogging servers out there that offer free blogs, and got everyone started on a Blogger blog.  Why Blogger?  Because it’s free and it’s simple to set up and maintain.  Everyone was aware of my bias to WordPress, as I frequently mentioned it, but I thought it was a good idea to have them start simple and work their way up. 

Personalize Your Blog
We then covered the dashboard, their user profile, and then the settings.  I wanted to be sure they knew where to set up moderated comments, and why.   I also showed them how to add additional plugins to the blog for features that they could implement in the near future.  Tonight we will cover a lot of those features in more detail.  

We then got started with blogging.  I had everyone post at least once, so that they could get the feel of blogging.  It was a great success, at least I think it was.  We will see how comfortable everyone gets tonight for the last class.  ^_^  I’m sure it will be fine.  

Tonight we will cover RSS feeds, search sites, tracking visits, micro-blogging, and if we have time, some additional plugins that are available for Twitter, Pownce, Last.FM, and GoodReads.

I've been using the mt-twitter plugin to automatically publish blog articles to Twitter. I find that I get more readers that way than RSS or my newsletter at this point. One problem is that you don't get any good stats that way. I've modified the mt-twitter plugin to use bit.ly now to solve that problem. With bit.ly you can click on the "info" link and get good stats about who clicked from where.

This is the code I added to the _update_twitter function:

 my $bitly = LWP::UserAgent->new;
 my $url_response = 
       $bitly->get("http://bit.ly/api?url=" . $obj->permalink);
 my $small_url;
 if($url_response->is_success) {
    $small_url = $url_response->content;
} else {
   $small_url = $obj->permalink;
}

Of course, you also have to change the line that creates the twitter message to use the new shortened URL ($small_url) instead of the permalink directly.

Tags: blogging perl movabletype

I taught at church today. I’m a member of the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints and I was called by my ecclesiastical leaders to be a teacher, once of month, to the Elders Quorum (men 18 years old and older who haven’t been called to be in the High Priests group yet).

This year we are teaching from a new book the Church has produced called Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith which contains lessons taken from the recorded writings, sermons, etc. of the first prophet and president of the LDS Church: Joseph Smith.

This book is fascinating to me because the way Smith taught is different in many ways from how later and more contemporary leaders taught and teach today. I think this is partly because he had a big job on his shoulders: to convince people to join his new church and that the beliefs the religion is based on are grounded in truth.

Today’s lesson was on missionary work and sharing the gospel with others. I started a group discussion with the class about why members are reluctant to share their gospel beliefs with others in their life who are either less active members of the church or non-members. Lots of people responded saying it just has become increasingly inappropriate in today’s society to share such personal, sacred things with people, that we’re supposed to just accept other people’s beliefs regardless of what they are.

This is in contrast to the way Joseph Smith behaved. He relished the opportunity to speak to people about his beliefs. He encouraged missionary work among all members. He explains at one point that Christ died so that people can be saved, but only if they have the opportunity to learn of the Plan Of Salvation. That’s where church members come in: Sharing the knowledge of the Plan Of Salvation with those who haven’t yet had that opportunity.

To close up the lesson, I read from Elder Russell M. Ballard’s talk in December 2007 in which he talks specifically about using New Media to Support the Work of the Church and encourages members to write about their religion, their beliefs in their blogs, to participate in online discussion forums social networking communities, to comment on online news stories that may misrepresent the beliefs of the LDS Church, etc.

Having not really written much of a religious nature on the Fozzolog, I thought I would give it a shot.

Goodbye Twitter and your buggy service. Goodbye Jaiku and your spammy bot. Goodbye Pownce and your 20 users. Hello Identi.ca and Free Software. Reasons for switching to Identi.ca for my microblogging service:

• The code powering the service is Free Software, licensed under the GNU Affero GPL.
• Create an account and login to the account using OpenID
• Stable (so far) Jabber support
• Utilizes the Open Service Definition

Wait a minute. Rehash that list. Free Software, OpenID, Jabber and an Open Network Service. Sense what I’m sensing? Identi.ca is all about openness and freedom\. Uh, yeah. Signed up, and ditched the other proprietary solutions. I would be surprised if RMS had issues with this service (actually, I probably wouldn’t be surprised, but you get my point).

However, Identi.ca is a bit wet behind the ears currently. Jabber interactivity with the bot is extremely limited. SMS is planned, but not currently implemented. Subscribing to other users is a bit of a pain currently. No search feature. Other shortcomings are listed as bugs and feature requests are welcomed.

You can subscribe to my posts at my page. Happy microblogging.

As long as we're on the subject of Technometria stats, here's the browser breakdown for last month on Technometria:

1. FireFox - 41.80%
2. Internet Explorer - 33.76%
3. Safari - 12.65%
4. Mozilla - 9.06%
5. Opera - 1.79%

Roughly two-thirds of the visitors to Technometria were using something other than Internet Explorer. Granted, this is a pretty geeky crowd.

Of the Firefox users, roughly 30% were using version 3. Of the IE users, roughly 40% were using version 6. Only four visitors the entire month were using IE 5.5. I had a few IE 8 visitors.

Tags: blogging browsers firefox

It's funny to me which stories and posts seem to take off and which don't. Sometimes when I'm writing a post I just know that it's going to get traction, but most of the time, it's hit or miss. Here's a list of the top ten posts on Technometria for June. Only two of them were written in June.

1. Fixing MacBook Pro Sleep Problems 8.74% of all downloads for the month
2. P2V: How To Make a Physical Linux Box Into a Virtual Machine 6.18%
3. Top Ten IT Conversations Shows for May 2008 4.35%
4. CIO vs. CT 4.23%
5. Free Mobile Calls to Anywhere in the World 3.76%
6. How to Start a Blog 2.37%
7. Welcoming Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood to IT Conversations! 2.36%
8. Dreams from My Father: My Attempts to Know Obama 1.46%
9. Broken Scroll Ball on Mighty Mouse 1.34%
10. Alan Kay: Is Computer Science an Oxymoron? 1.25%

The one that is the most amazing to me is the "free mobile calls" post. It's about how to use a family plan and an autodialer connected to Skype to get reduce mobile call bills. It's usually the number one hit on Google under free mobile calls, so it gets a lot of traffic. What waste of bandwidth. :-)

Tags: blogging

This Friday, I’m taking some time early in the morning, prior to work, to help a good friend of mine, Matt Reinbold with a conference which he’s put some serious effort, the Blogging for Business Conference.

While it seems something ahead of its time, much of what Matt is hoping to share is to help all kinds of business people understand what much of the open source community already knows.  A good image with your customers (aka community members) is of utmost importance.  The B4BConference looks to be intended to help business leaders understand this concept among other great tools of the trade.

Just think, Mr/Ms/Mrs business person, how cool would letting your customers know of a new product, service or when something has changed, almost instantaneously?  That’s what you can do with the a good blog post.  What you used to do by sending a press release or letters by mail/email, you can now do with another resource, the blog!

Either way, I am looking forward to helping out.  I’m also looking forward to sneaking into the former Lego directors presentation, and maybe the talk by Cydni Tetro of Next Page.

If you are interested in hearing about how to better improve your image, or just want to learn what benefits there are to blogging for your business, I’d take a minute and check out their site.

Cheers,

Herlo

Last week, my blog passed it's six year anniversary. My inaugural post (besides what amounted to a "hello world" test post) was on asset management. I didn't post again until the 10th of June. Like many bloggers I got off to a slow start. But June 2002 was a good month with a number of posts that indicate what was on my mind then.

People often ask me how to get their traffic up on their blog. Unfortunately, my experience was atypical. I started early and was one of the first CIOs to blog (I was the CIO for the State of Utah at the time). The attention that I got from that is part of what made blogging such a great experience for me early on and established habits that carry through to today.

In that time, I've posted 3374 times to this blog. If you consider that each year has about 250 work days, that works out to a little more than two posts per workday (2.24 to be exact). That's the real key, I think. Post consistently and write about things that interest you. Then whether anyone reads or not, you win because you'll be better informed by the activity.

Tags: technometria blogging

Clicking back over to my blog, I read some of the things that I had posted earlier. To be honest, reading those posts now scares me to a degree. Reading this, a year later, it is plainly obvious where I had no clue what so ever what I was talking about.

That's always a fun feeling. "Oh, hey, look at all of this stuff I wrote about a year and a half ago. It's... it is... so.. entirely wrong. And to think I took my time to write that, scanned it once for typos (missed many), and then attached my name to it by clicking the big 'Save' button."

I was sorely tempted to remove my existing content (content! ha!) and start over with this post, but that feeling quickly subsided when I remembered that no matter how hard I try, and no matter how little people may care, somewhere it was archived. Saved as organized bits on a disk somewhere in the world, indexed by multiple bots, and easily found by anyone looking for my name. Kinda creepy when you think about it.

The other reason that I quickly gave that up, is equally simple. Some of it, I actually like. I've outlined in the past in great detail things which I still believe, and a lot of my philosophies. Sure, the ratio of posts I like is still nearly three to one, but hey, I'll live with it.

After just over a year of not touching this blog, for reasons many, I think I'll be.. well, I don't want to say "back to blogging." There's too much cliche involved with that line. I can think of no quicker way to blog deletion than by announcing my triumphant return of posting random things that no one cares about on a website that no one subscribes to (let alone visits to post comments).

Except of course, for the bots (feed aggregators included).

But who knows what will happen!

I spent the morning converting my blog from Wordpress to Drupal. I figured that since I build all my sites using Drupal and I'm building a memetracker module for Drupal as part of Google Summer of Code, I should switch my personal website/blog to Drupal. Wordpress is a great blogging platform but I'm glad now to be on Drupal. Drupal isn't just a blogging platform like Wordpress but a full-powered CMS that's used to power large commercial websites like Popular Science and The Onion. I've felt a little constrained in what I could do on Wordpress.

I’ve written before how your blog can replace your resume but I enjoyed reading another blogger’s experience. I haven’t had the chance yet to send my blog url instead of a resume but I have been contacted about a job once directly because of what I’ve written here and elsewhere.

I hated updating my resume. It is such a brilliantly inefficient medium to communicate your value proposition.

Now when situations of resumes arise, I send the url for the blog. The longer it exists the more valuable it becomes as a alternative resume.

On blogs you can’t fake it (atleast not for a very long time) and it so perfectly reflects your intelligence, your character, your values, your smarts (or lack there of) and so on and so forth. You can “fake” the piece of paper, you can’t fake a blog.

Of course the flip side is also true. If you have a great blog you might not have to go look for a job. They’ll come find you. I am sure all the bloggers in our space get at least two job offers a week.

And here is perhaps the nicest benefit of having your own blog (and making sure your potential new employer has it and has sent it to the interview committee): They won’t ask you silly questions.

They have a good idea of who you actually are and smart interviewers just get to the point. And that is a good thing.

Read the whole thing.

I've written before how your blog can replace your resume but I enjoyed reading another blogger's experience. I haven't had the chance yet to send my blog url instead of a resume but I have been contacted about a job once directly because of what I've written here and elsewhere.

I hated updating my resume. It is such a brilliantly inefficient medium to communicate your value proposition.

Now when situations of resumes arise, I send the url for the blog. The longer it exists the more valuable it becomes as a alternative resume.

On blogs you can’t fake it (atleast not for a very long time) and it so perfectly reflects your intelligence, your character, your values, your smarts (or lack there of) and so on and so forth. You can “fake” the piece of paper, you can’t fake a blog.

Of course the flip side is also true. If you have a great blog you might not have to go look for a job. They’ll come find you. I am sure all the bloggers in our space get at least two job offers a week. :)

And here is perhaps the nicest benefit of having your own blog (and making sure your potential new employer has it and has sent it to the interview committee): They won’t ask you silly questions.

They have a good idea of who you actually are and smart interviewers just get to the point. And that is a good thing.

Read the whole thing.

I think I'm going to start doing "link posts" more often. I run into content I think I should write about here but then never have time to write a full-blown post. Onto the links.

Clay Shirky says Internet reduces needs for "experts" by lowering transaction costs

"Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts."

Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education

Lists 10 cultural trends which is pushing education towards a web2.0 model

A world without courses

Thought experiment how universities would work without actual courses. An interesting ideas. I've often wandered if courses are the best method for learning. I know I learn far more outside of class then inside the classroom.

Vygotsky's Social Development Theory -- more here

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

How to become great? Research suggests:

1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.

Thoughts, quotes, questions about how web2.0 is challenging traditional methods of education

Bandura Social Learning Theory

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.

Lave's Situated Learning Theory

Lave argues that learning as it normally occurs is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs (i.e., it is situated). This contrasts with most classroom learning activities which involve knowledge which is abstract and out of context. Social interaction is a critical component of situated learning -- learners become involved in a "community of practice" which embodies certain beliefs and behaviors to be acquired. As the beginner or newcomer moves from the periphery of this community to its center, they become more active and engaged within the culture and hence assume the role of expert or old-timer. Furthermore, situated learning is usually unintentional rather than deliberate. These ideas are what Lave & Wenger (1991) call the process of "legitimate peripheral participation."

Syllabus for Virtual community/social media class at Stanford -- Loads of links to great resources.

Learn the difference between states of order and unorder -- a birthday story

One of the most profound insights into management I've read. To manage states of unorder you make boundaries, create attractors, stabilize the patterns you desire and disrupt the patterns that threaten danger and harm. Read the story linked above then the full paper here

On average, averages are the exception not the rule

Worth linking to for the title alone. Explores some failures of statistics particularly social scientists ignorance of Zipth or the Power law

Why bother having a resume?

Seth Godin asks why bother having a resume. He says "I think if you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all. . . Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for... those jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

Ross Mayfield Shares Four Use Cases For Wikis

The four are:

1. collaborative intelligence
2. participatory knowledge base
3. flexible client collaboration
4. business social networks

How to think: Managing brain resources in an age of complexity

Great, great suggestions on how to think. Read the whole thing. One sample point:

Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Wikipatterns -- Design patterns for wikis -- Great resource

Case study of Enterprise2.0 implementation at Avenue A | Razorfish

Situated Software

Clay Shirky tells how open source software enables cheap creation of social software situated to needs of a specific community. He's ideas are partly what inspired my creation of the community site for the Information Systems major at the community site for the Information Systems major at BYU

The Psychology of human misjudgement

Psychology fascinates me -- particularly how we mess up. My hope is if I understand why my psychology causes me to mess up, I'll be able to compensate. This is a speech by Charlie Munger, a wise old sage of the business world. He lists 24 reasons why humans misjudge.

Where my traffic comes from

Popular blogger says more traffic now comes from "smart aggregators. As there is more and more good content being posted, people are starting to rely more on social filtering.

Safe String Theory for the Web -- Everything you ever wanted to know about handling strings on the web.

Willpower is like a muscle says research

New York Times article summarizes research that suggests your will power can be strengthened by exercising it, much as a muscle.

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

I love it when someone writes what I'm thinking about writing. Saves me time.

Paul Graham posted a new essay today entitled "Six Principles for Making New Things."
Here's the juicy bit:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Read the rest.

To add a few thoughts.
When I think of overlooked problems I think of a bell curve. Most people/companies/countries are average: thinking average thoughts and doing things in an average way. Their average thoughts/actions lead to average results. If you want exceptional results, you have to act and think in ways that are exceptional. Average=dead, the edge is where the action is at.

A friend of mine, Ali Akbar (@aliakbar), has made me aware of an interesting development going on with the domain he bought, googleappsengine.com (note the “s”). When he bought it, he approached me asking if I would be a blogger for the site, with intent to blog about Google App Engine news and announcements on the domain. He seemed quite excited about it, and, as a fan of Google App Engine, saw this as the perfect domain to write under since Google didn’t seem to be using it.

On Friday, without even time to set up the blog he was intending to create, Ali received the following very generic letter from Google (which he shared with me), asking him, in a very bullied fashion, without any offer to even make it right, to surrender the domain or face legal consequences:

Dear Sir/Madam:

Google is the owner of the well-known trademark and trade name GOOGLE, as well as the domain name GOOGLE.COM. As you are no doubt aware, GOOGLE is the trademark used to identify our award-winning search engine, located at www.google.com. Since its inception in 1997, the GOOGLE search engine has become one of the most highly recognized and widely used Internet search engines in the world. Google owns numerous trademark registrations and applications for its GOOGLE mark in countries around the world.

Google has used and actively promoted its GOOGLE mark for a number of years, and has invested considerable time and money establishing exclusive proprietary rights in the GOOGLE mark for a wide range of goods and services. As a result of its efforts, the GOOGLE mark has become a famous mark and a property right of incalculable value.

You have registered, without Google’s permission or authorization, the domain name googleappsengine.com (the ‘Domain Name’). The Domain Name is either confusingly similar to or incorporates the famous GOOGLE mark in its entirety, and, by its very composition, suggests Google’s sponsorship or endorsement of your website and correspondingly, your activities.

Your use of the Domain Name constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of Google’s trademark rights and unfair competition. Your use of the Domain Name is diluting use because it weakens the ability of the GOOGLE mark and domain name to identify a single source, namely Google. Further, your registration and use of the Domain Name misleads consumers into believing that some association exists between Google and you, which tarnishes the goodwill and reputation of Google’s services and trademarks. Moreover, your registration and use of the Domain Name is also actionable under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (’UDRP’). Under similar circumstances, Google has prevailed in numerous UDRP actions. These decisions are located online at www.icann.org/udrp/udrpdec.htm.

In view of your infringement of our rights, we must demand that you provide written assurances within 7 days that you will:

1. Immediately discontinue any and all use of the Domain Name;
2. Take immediate steps to transfer the Domain Name to Google;
3. Identify and agree to transfer to Google any other domain names registered by you that contain GOOGLE or are confusingly similar to the GOOGLE mark;
4. Immediately and permanently refrain from any use of the term GOOGLE or any variation thereof that is likely to cause confusion or dilution.

Sincerely,
The Google Trademark Team

What???!! “You have registered, without Google’s permission or authorization, the domain name googleappsengine.com (the ‘Domain Name’).” So wait - now I have to get Google’s permission before I get any name that even resembles the Google trademark?

I am astounded at the bullyish nature of this letter, and to assume that anyone that buys any name even resembling the Google trademark to be a violation against their trademark name. Google clearly hasn’t been very good at defending this in the past - just searching with their own search engine, I’m finding tons of examples of sites using the Google name in their own domain name (yes, I “Google’d” it):

googlefight.com
googlesystem.blogspot.com
googleguide.com
googlealert.com
googlerankings.com

The list just gets started from there…

Now, let me preface this with the fact that I am not a Lawyer, but I did learn this in Law class in college. The “Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy” which Google references can be found here, and in the document, it states:

c. How to Demonstrate Your Rights to and Legitimate Interests in the Domain Name in Responding to a Complaint. When you receive a complaint, you should refer to Paragraph 5 of the Rules of Procedure in determining how your response should be prepared. Any of the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be proved based on its evaluation of all evidence presented, shall demonstrate your rights or legitimate interests to the domain name for purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(ii):

  (i) before any notice to you of the dispute, your use of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services; or

  (ii) you (as an individual, business, or other organization) have been commonly known by the domain name, even if you have acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or

  (iii) you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.

Based on Ali’s approaches to me, there was no intention for commercial gain, nor to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue. I also have e-mail to prove his demonstrable preparations to use the domain in connection with a bona fide offering. Let me also add that my intention to blog for him was simply in my own support of the Google App Engine. I personally had nothing huge to gain from it other than possibly a little exposure from what could possibly be a good blog.

Let me also add that Trademark issue is a very different issue than the Copyright issue I mentioned before with the Mormon Church and Wikileaks. That issue was about Wikileaks knowingly stealing the content owned by the Mormon Church and using it for unintended purposes. This issue is simply about using the Google domain to further promote Google and its properties. Ali had intent to do such, and with my limited knowledge he should have every right to do so.

What if Facebook were to go after my other blog, FacebookAdvice, or even the book I co-wrote, “I’m on Facebook — Now What???“? What about my friend Nick O’Neill’s AllFacebook, or my other friend, Justin Smith’s InsideFacebook. What about my other blog, OpensocialNow? Does this mean I’m the next target to be bullied by Google?

Of course, GoogleAppsEngine.com isn’t my domain, and I don’t know what would make Ali feel better, but my suggestion to Google is to apologize to Ali for such a rude and inappropriate letter to what may be one of their biggest fans, and make right with him. How about, instead of threatening to take it away from him, offering him at least some swag and a little money for the domain? Come on Google - let’s not be evil here. I know you’re better than that.

As for Ali, last I heard he is not backing down. It’s a David vs. Goliath battle, but let’s hope Google can be a little better than Goliath in this case and just back down a little.

What do you think? Am I wrong on this issue? Is this just the same as the copyright issue I mentioned earlier? I’m very interested to hear your thoughts - this seems very unfair to me.

Photo courtesy http://mathmath-ecomm.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-is-useful-but-worried.html

Note that I’m not going to provide any links to the mentioned content here - you can go research yourself. Unlike Wikileaks, I respect others’ copyright.

One thing you may notice on this blog is that while I rarely pipe in with religious thoughts and my own personal religious beliefs (although I used to quite often), I will not hesitate to step in when a Social Media-related religious event occurs. An interesting Groundswell is happening today between the Headquarters of my Faith, and the controversial anonymous sharing site, Wikileaks. However, I don’t think it’s occurring in the way people think it is.

This morning on Slashdot you may have seen an article about the Mormon Church (or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints“, which is the Official name of the Church) sending a Cease and Desist to Wikileaks for posting links to a Copyrighted, yet old version (1999) of the Church’s “General Handbook of Instructions” for others to freely download.

I don’t understand why this is news. Having been in LDS Bishoprics before as a Clerk and Executive Secretary, I am very familiar with this manual. It is simply a guide for leaders of the Church to know how to council and guide members of the Church, and according to my understanding, NOT (fully) DOCTRINE. It is simply a Policy manual, and while Bishops and other Leaders of the church may follow its council, in the end they are left up to their own judgement (encouraged by the Church “to follow the promptings of the Spirit”) to decide how to handle matters in the Church. The Church considers the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Perl of Great Price to be the Official Doctrine of the Church.

The Mormon Church is simply requesting Wikileaks remove the content because it is their own IP, not Wikileaks, and they are removing it as they would any other Church-owned and copyrighted document. Wikileaks and other sites are also portraying the contents of the manual as though it is doctrine for the general membership of the Mormon church, when in reality it was only intended as a guide for Leaders in the first place. The Mormon church has to protect the dissemination of false information as well.

In Charlene Li’s and Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell, she starts out with an example that happened last year on Digg.com where a user shared a blog post about how the HD-DVD Encryption standard had been broken. AACS LA quickly sent a cease and desist to Digg.com and the Digg.com founders promptly removed the link. Before Digg knew it, their own users began to backlash against them, occupying the entire front page of Digg with copies of the HD DVD encryption algorithm. Digg had a Groundswell of its own between its own users and it knew it had to do something. What did they do? They listened to their users and put the link back up, stating they would go down fighting rather than ignore their users.

I think with the post on SlashDot this morning some people may be thinking (and some hoping) a similar Groundswell is going to occur with the Mormon Church. Those that think so will be pleasantly surprised - there’s a difference between a Groundswell of your own members and those outside of your membership talking about you. How do you handle a Groundswell of people outside of your customer-base/user-base/member-base? You get in the conversation!

I want to share with you a video from Elder Russell M. Ballard, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Quorum of 12 Apostles - religious or not, I’d like to encourage you to read this not just from a religious perspective, but also a business perspective and how you can disseminate correct information about your business:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is getting in the Groundswell through its own members. They encourage their members to blog, Twitter, get on Facebook, and clarify misconceptions. The Mormon Church will overcome this Groundswell (if you can even call it one) via its own membership, correcting misinformation Socially rather than through news releases and other means and letting the general media and blogosphere say what it believes. They have a Youtube channel here. They are on Twitter. They have a Facebook Page.

I encourage other churches and even businesses to take this response - there is a lot that can be applied from a religious, or even non-religious perspective from this. When you get your own followers of any business, brand, or religion to spread correct information about your brand it can overcome any misinformation spread about it.

Wikileaks is wrong in this case - they are sharing copyrighted information, not owned by themselves, and without the permission of the owner. The LDS Church isn’t going after them because the shared links are “secret”, but rather it is copyrighted material, and Wikileaks does not have permission to share it! As a book author and software developer I don’t want people using my content without my permission (which I’m generally pretty relaxed on in my personally owned content). Why would I want Wikileaks sharing the content I personally own on their site let alone others?

I’m thinking about starting a series on this blog of hot startups that I find interesting in Utah. I’d really like to show to the world the great startup scene that Utah has to offer - hopefully other bloggers in the area can pitch in and join in this effort as well. I am relatively new to Utah, and am just getting to know the scene out here, so please don’t take this the wrong way. My hope is that this is only because I’m new to the area - honestly, I only know of one or two established startups. I know of many that are “in the works”, but only a few have an actual business model with customers and revenue stream (or venture/private equity/angel funding to hopefully get to that revenue stream). I’m hoping I am just not “in the know”.

Do you have an up-and-coming startup you’d like me to feature? Do you know of any that stand out to you? I really am hoping those in Utah can step out of the woodwork and share via the comments (I monitor FriendFeed as well so you can also comment there) what you know. I hope to then pick out the best and try to get the word out about what you’re doing. Speak up, or forever hold your peace!

Matt Mullenweg, a fellow Houstonian and all around cool guy spoke to us today at Web 2.0 Expo about Wordpress’s present and future. Some features from the talk:

Wordpress has 2 main products, Akismet, and Wordpress.com. Akismet is solving many of the Spam problems Matt Cutts from Google talked about earlier, and Wordpress.com handles much of the “Software as a Service” suggestion Matt Cutts gave.

Wordpress.com has had a tremendous Growth. At their start, they had just 2 million uniques. This year, Wordpress.com is at 168 million unique visitors, all with only 20 employees.

Some featured Wordpress.com blogs that Matt Mullenweg likes:

• NY Times
• Flickr Blog
• Fail blog
• I can haz cheeseburger

99.999% of Wordpress.com blogs get less than 10k pages/day. They are all on a different model.

Matt had some great announcements. He mentioned that 40-45% of their traffic is going to permalink pages. Therefore they are introducing a new feature they call “(Possibly) Related Posts”. With this, Wordpress.com lists relevent links below each blog post, the first being links from your blog. Secondly, posts from the 300 million blogs hosted on Wordpress.com are displayed, then mainstream news sites are displayed - these are all opt-out. Matt mentioned they partnered and worked with the company Sphere to do this.

The coolest announcement of Matt’s was the announcement of a new theme called Monotone. Monotone automatically adapts its color scheme to the photos uploaded to to Wordpress. The idea is to adapt changes to the look and feel of your website based on what you’re doing, and every page changes as you move through the site - it was actually quite beautiful, and knowing that Matt is a very good Photographer I expect to see some cool things from that theme. I’m told Monotone will be released some time soon.

I think I’m going to start doing “link posts” more often. I run into content I think I should write about here but then never have time to write a full-blown post. Onto the links.

Clay Shirky says Internet reduces needs for “experts” by lowering transaction costs

“Experts the world over have been shocked to discover that they were consulted not as a direct result of their expertise, but often as a secondary effect — the apparatus of credentialing made finding experts easier than finding amateurs, even when the amateurs knew the same things as the experts.”

Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education

Lists 10 cultural trends which is pushing education towards a web2.0 model

A world without courses

Thought experiment how universities would work without actual courses. An interesting ideas. I’ve often wandered if courses are the best method for learning. I know I learn far more outside of class then inside the classroom.

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory — more here

Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

How to become great? Research suggests:

1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.

Thoughts, quotes, questions about how web2.0 is challenging traditional methods of education

Bandura Social Learning Theory

Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.

Lave’s Situated Learning Theory

Lave argues that learning as it normally occurs is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs (i.e., it is situated). This contrasts with most classroom learning activities which involve knowledge which is abstract and out of context. Social interaction is a critical component of situated learning — learners become involved in a “community of practice” which embodies certain beliefs and behaviors to be acquired. As the beginner or newcomer moves from the periphery of this community to its center, they become more active and engaged within the culture and hence assume the role of expert or old-timer. Furthermore, situated learning is usually unintentional rather than deliberate. These ideas are what Lave & Wenger (1991) call the process of “legitimate peripheral participation.”

Syllabus for Virtual community/social media class at Stanford — Loads of links to great resources.

Learn the difference between states of order and unorder — a birthday story

One of the most profound insights into management I’ve read. To manage states of unorder you make boundaries, create attractors, stabilize the patterns you desire and disrupt the patterns that threaten danger and harm. Read the story linked above then the full paper here

On average, averages are the exception not the rule

Worth linking to for the title alone. Explores some failures of statistics particularly social scientists ignorance of Zipth or the Power law

Why bother having a resume?

Seth Godin asks why bother having a resume. He says “I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all. . . Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

Ross Mayfield Shares Four Use Cases For Wikis

The four are:

1. collaborative intelligence
2. participatory knowledge base
3. flexible client collaboration
4. business social networks

How to think: Managing brain resources in an age of complexity

Great, great suggestions on how to think. Read the whole thing. One sample point:

Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Wikipatterns — Design patterns for wikis — Great resource

Case study of Enterprise2.0 implementation at Avenue A | Razorfish

Situated Software

Clay Shirky tells how open source software enables cheap creation of social software situated to needs of a specific community. He’s ideas are partly what inspired my creation of the community site for the Information Systems major at the community site for the Information Systems major at BYU

The Psychology of human misjudgement

Psychology fascinates me — particularly how we mess up. My hope is if I understand why my psychology causes me to mess up, I’ll be able to compensate. This is a speech by Charlie Munger, a wise old sage of the business world. He lists 24 reasons why humans misjudge.

Where my traffic comes from

Popular blogger says more traffic now comes from “smart aggregators. As there is more and more good content being posted, people are starting to rely more on social filtering.

Safe String Theory for the Web — Everything you ever wanted to know about handling strings on the web.

Willpower is like a muscle says research

New York Times article summarizes research that suggests your will power can be strengthened by exercising it, much as a muscle.

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

I just wanted to put out there how proud I am of my wife. She is an amazing woman! First, her work ethic is unparalleled. I do not know a single soul who works half-as-hard as she does. Second, she is an amazing elementary education teacher. She integrates technology into her classroom seamlessly, and has introduced her kids to blogs, wikis, DVDs and just about everything computer. Further, she spends time with the GIMP for all her photo editing, Firefox for her browsing, and iGoogle for her productivity. She even subscribes to RSS feeds!

Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. What I wanted to point out, is my wife is a blogger. I help set her blog up about 2 years ago, as she wanted to add it to her domain. It took a bit for her to really catch the blogging bug, but now she’s non-stop. She’s even edited the presentation HTML for her WordPress theme… without knowing HTML. Further, she gets her students involved by adding comments to her posts. She’s out setting the bar on teachers blogging, and joining the ranks of female bloggers everywhere. I think she’s worth subscribing to (she is my wife, after all. ) by adding her feed to your RSS reader.

Keri- I love you, and I’m so very proud of you!! Keep up the amazing work!

I love Steve Gillmor's writing and how he puts things together. Witness this on Twitter.

Tags: twitter blogging social+networking

I’m proud to announce a new website I’ve been working on.  You may have heard me Twitter about it a few times.  The site is called OpensocialNow!, and will be your source for OpenSocial News, Reviews, and info.  We’ll cover the Orkut launch, the Myspace launch, Hi5, and LinkedIn, as well as general things you can do with OpenSocial.  This is the first blog of its kind, and as OpenSocial launches in the next week or two I’m sure you’ll see many more like it.  It’s my hope that you’ll subscribe to the site via rss and make it your Official source for all things related to the popular social networking platform, OpenSocial.  You can read more about it right on the website here:

http://opensocialnow.com/2008/02/26/welcome-to-opensocialnow/

Oh, and stay tuned to OpensocialNow.com.  I have one more big announcement about a change in the OpenSocial launch coming up tonight!

I love it when someone writes what I’m thinking about writing. Saves me time.

Paul Graham posted a new essay today entitled “Six Principles for Making New Things.”
Here’s the juicy bit:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Read the rest.

To add a few thoughts.
When I think of overlooked problems I think of a bell curve. Most people/companies/countries are average: thinking average thoughts and doing things in an average way. Their average thoughts/actions lead to average results. If you want exceptional results, you have to act and think in ways that are exceptional. Average=dead, the edge is where the action is at.

Adding your IT Conversations profile to Action Streams (click to enlarge)

The mor