Backdoor Tech          

Your daily helping of technology

Thursday, May 29, 2003

 

Using Groove for International Cooperation

Groove Case Study - Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism: "Groove has immediately benefited the CICTE Secretariat working group by increasing staff productivity, reducing its number of meetings, strengthening the security of its information, and allowing it to work together effectively without IT assistance." I can't claim any credit for this pilot project because the CICTE folks chanced onto Groove by themselves, even though I had been using it for 2 years in beta. We provided a little advice and the network support, but the beauty of the whole thing is that ITD did not have to intervene at all. The power was in the hands of the users. We're try to get more initiatives moving with Groove and then maybe leverage that into a more institutional approach.

I have used Groove a lot over the past year. I have it installed on three computers -- my OAS workstation, my home computer and my laptop. That means that I can easily sync files among the three computers. When I was doing research for papers and projects, I'd stash my findings and notes in Groove. I could never get my classmates really interested in it, in part, because we were already making extensive use of AIM for collaboration.

The most compelling aspects is that Groove is a really well-thought out application that can be up and running in 15 minutes with the user in control or you can customize it, add "plugins" or build on top of it. Ray Ozzie really showed that Lotus Notes was not just a fluke. He knows how to make software that is flexible and productive. News.com's Dan Farber explains why Ozzie has so much vision in It's time to rebuild the Internet: "As Ozzie professes, his goal is not to gain competitive advantage in delivering specific technology, but to integrate that technology--no matter its source--to solve specific customer problems."

Saturday, May 24, 2003

 

Blogs and Google Stir Up Ranking Envy

Guardian (UK) Storm in a teacup: The row over whether webloggers are distorting Google search results: "Weblogs, by their nature (simple web pages with content that often relies, for context and richness, on numerous links, updated regularly) are bound to attract the attention of Google - a search that works partly by freshness, party by analysing page structure (the simpler the better) and mainly by looking at the links within those pages." Google and weblogs are the two spearheads of change on the Internet this century so there's bound to be issues about their role.

Friday, May 23, 2003

 

Verizon keeps me as a customer

I switched my local and long-distance phone service over to Verizon because of a flat-rate $49.95 a month plan that has been making the rounds in Maryland. Even though I'm not a big fan of Verizon, I am price-sensitive. The New York Times caught on to this trend too: Phone Companies See Their Future in Flat-Rate Plans:

"Most calls now travel most of their journey over fiber optic lines that connect the whole country. A company's expense in routing a call depends very little on the distance the call travels, but largely on whether a call needs to travel across lines owned by other phone companies and the access fees charged for that use. In most cases, calling a friend across the country now costs your phone company about as much as calling your next-door neighbor."

I will keep my Vonage account for at least a few more months. It's a question of eating your own dog food, IT-wise.

Thursday, May 22, 2003

 

Where Ethernet is headed

According to eWeek, Ethernet Still Going Strong after 30 years of its inception inside the head of Bob Metcalfe. The piece gives a nice overview of Ethernet's development and future. Also, 30 years of Ethernet gains in which News.com interviews Metcalfe. Of course, today Metcalfe has nothing to do with Ethernet since he works for a venture capital firm.

 

Computer Science Degrees No Longer Hot on Campuses

This New York Times' article Computing's Lost Allure says that computer science is no longer attracting as many students during the boom. "According to the Taulbee Survey, enrollment in computer science departments nearly doubled between 1995 and 2000. So great was the demand for programmers that many students enjoyed the luxury of not even having to prepare a résumé." Now enrollment is down between 20 and 45 percent. Of course, those students who stay in IT are genuinely interested, not just fishing for a quick hire, stock options and fame that used to be associated with the dot com boom.

Steve Versace mentioned to me last week that the university system is produce 20 times more lawyers than engineers so there are deeper problems than just fads about majors and careers.

Sunday, May 18, 2003

 

Graduation

Michael Smith gets his diplomaIt's finally official. I walked at the Comcast Center in College Park with 1800 other togaed participants. We had to show up early on a cold, soggy, dismal day. It took ages for all the graduates to walk past the podium. The whole ceremony lasted three hours, maybe a little more -- pure torture.

The other XMIT colleagues who walked with me were: Chris Beccles, Abdull Elnatour (who drove down from New Jersey), Paul Fagan, Garie Fordyce, Andrew Johnson, Kevin Loftis, Victor Rodriguez, Myron Rowles, Eric Speight, Jim Tippett. I could fully appreciate why the others did not want to give up a full morning of their free time to be at the mercy of university ritual. I saw only two of our professors, Stella Porto and Don Goff.

The actual ritual was quick and ephemeral. We walked over to stage to wait for our turn. We each carried our hood (golden yellow for a Master of Science) draped over our left arm. I suddenly realized that a cohort of professors were standing to one side, standing guard on the stairs. I was pulled over by Don Goff who put the hood over my head and tipped me off that by putting a small noose around one of my short buttons so that the hood did not strangle me. He then told me that once I got my diploma, I should take a picture and put it up on this website. I then handed my card to an attendant who passed it on. My name was read out and I walked to the podium to receive my diploma. Task accomplished.

Well, I've spent most of the day pulling together my photos, optimizing them and putting up a new page. I had forgotten how much time it takes to post material on the web. I also am refocusing this XMIT section so that I can get away from the course track.

 

Time to Celebrate

Michael Smith gets his diploma The UMUC threw a party for the Class of 2003, both undergraduates and graduates (that's me) on May 15. It was at the Adelphi headquarters. Not all of my classmates showed up, but those that did were eager to catch up on what we've been doing with our spare time now that classes are over for most. Victory Rodriguez and his significant other, Maria Pratts, showed up even though he is ones taking the CIO module so they're still cramming the books. Jim Tippett, Paul Fagan and his wife appeared early. Andrew Johnson showed up towards the end. The evening was hampered by stormy weather that tied up the Beltway. Donna Kulla told me that she wanted to go but got a late exit from work and then got discouraged by the rain and traffic.

In the picture, Victor (Puerto Rican), Maria (a Peruvian nurse), and Jane Golderberg (the XMIT coordinator) are teased by a jester that UMUC brought in to enliven the environment, given academicians' tendency to take things seriously. We were all decked with beads, as if we were participating in Mardi Gras, instead of a graduation.

The professors present were: Stella Porto, Roger Jaffe, Don Goff, and Steve Versace. Steve is back from a serious illness that took him out of circulation for several months. He's now teaching one of the modules in the CIO course. His students tell me that he is maybe even more demanding than in our project management module. Sal Monaco, the director of the Executive Program, also made an appearance.

By the way, all graduates are auotmatically members of the UMUC Alumni Association. There are a number of benefits and services that my classmates should check out.

More photographs from the graduation reception are now posted on a new pictures page.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

 

When MS Project Is Overkill

I added a link to Safari Software for its MasterList-XL product, an Excel 2000-based task management system for when MS Project is overkill. It's on the Project Management page. I found the link in a Lockergnome newsletter. I have not had an opportunity to try it out. A Professional version will be coming out soon and it will talk to Outlook.

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

 

Info Hyperactivity

While I was studying, I noticed a personal habit that had an impact on my research papers -- I would be searching the Web and the UMUC online library for information and would get totally consumed with the activity, not just for the subject matter of my paper, but also for the inquiry tangents that always crop up. These could be an author or book that I had always been interested in, a deep vein of information on another topic that I was following, a deadlink that I wanted to see if it had changed locations, resulting in a wider search than necessary. You become something like a hyperactive child running around, making noise, but unable to do your homework -- literally.

In the beginning of research, this is fine, but when you're in the final draft and you need to confirm a quote or a citation, you can detract from keeping on schedule. When you're tired, you want to be distracted.

What to do? Convert your most important online resources to hard copy so that you don't have to go back on the Internet unless absolutely necessary. Having a paper copy means that you can focus on it more narrowly. It might be a good idea to do writing offline, perhaps, on a laptop so that the temptation is removed.

This is also an issue at work where the Web and e-mail are constantly popping up in my consciousness to lure me on another excursion through cyberspace.

Sunday, May 04, 2003

 

Tech Quandry

I spent yesterday looking at my website and the new tech section, reviewing my collection of links, and exploring a few of my favorite websites. I am overwhelmed by the number of directions that I could go, now that I have been freed from my studies. I could spend weeks looking at the new directions that web development has gone since I last focused on it. Just following the links in Jeffrey Zeldman's weblog. Cascading style sheets, Javascript, new books, and other themes could all takes me late into my evenings.

I could clean out the garbage in my website and make it more accessible and web standard-compiliant. I could concentrate on content on the Peru side after 18 months of neglect. For that matter, the most popular part of my personal site are the Peruvian poetry translations and my own poetry (actually, my Haiku poems). I have lots of photos and illustratiions that I could put up. La Esquina del Movimiento weblog has been on low-maintenance for a long time.

I could concentrate on getting some more clients for my hosting and web development service. I could continue to build up the technology side beyond just my XMIT courseware. I still have to figure out how I will translate my work at the OAS into a presence here.

Lots of options, and still only 24 hours in a day. So what's new.


Where We're Coming From

In October 2001, I was a member of a group of 17 IT professionals that took their first tentative steps together towards a graduate degree in information technology. Over this period, we learned together, we griped together and we ate stirred-fried vegetales together for lunch until fast food started looking good. Our classes took place at the Shady Grove campus of the Maryland University System.

In April 2003, we finished our course work and we graduated on May 17. But our professional journey does not end with that ceremony. This site is meant to be a landmark for the classmates who shared 18 months. I also intend to use this site as a learning area. It's part of my mental makeup to register things on the Web as part of my continuing learning process. After all, the technologies that we studied are in constant evolution and flux.

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