I’ve been using Thunderbird for a while now. I’m a Windows user on my laptop. I wish I could use Suse (as I have in the past) or Ubuntu (as I have in the past), but it’s hard to dogfood when you’re using Linux, and Linux support on laptops, in my experience, isn’t the greatest; especially when you have newer hardware. Anyway, Mozilla Thunderbird is wonderful. Use it. Outlook is a piece of shit. I was using Outlook 2003 until last July when, right before OSCON, my laptop hard drive failed on me. I was so fed up with it and how hard it is to backup I gave it up (again). Now I feel forced to use Outlook again because I don’t have a calendaring solution and synching addresses with my blackberry is just too damn hard. Without my calendar in my hand, I tend to miss appointments. For my final justification I really need to dogfood our own software and we have an Outlook plugin.

Iamporting/exporting in Outlook is a joke. How anyone on the Outlook team thinks they should release software that is (intentionally undoubtedly) that shitty on something so fundamental should be fired. No, being fired isn’t good enough, they should be…I don’t know…publically flogged or something. I’m not even going to bother outlining all the ways that Outlook is a piece of shit. It would take me too long. Let me say the following: with a Core 2 Duo and 2 Gigs of RAM no application should drag your laptop to a grounding halt. With Outlook running I get out of system resources errors! It takes me an hour to export only 5 months of email and 30-45 minutes to import it. Thunderbird stores your emails on the file system and not in some bullshit proprietary file, backing it up is as simple as synchronizing that folder with your NAS. Thunderbird has useful junk mail filters. Outlook doesn’t. Thunderbird can actually handle IMAP elegantly Outlook does not.

Like I said Outlook is shit. As soon as I went back to Outlook 2003 I get this problem where it will not retain my network password for my email account (POP3). I scoured the Internet for a fix including Microsoft’s useless knoledge base. The only thing I found was this fix that required deleting a registry entry. It didn’t help at all. So, I tried installing Outlook 2007 on the off chance this would resolve the issue. It didn’t. Now I have Outlook 2007, which is even a bigger, crappier, resource hog than Outlook 2003, but this one has big obnoxious shiny bubbly buttons! W00T! Ridiculous…I want Evolution and the ability to synch! If Mozilla could provide the ability to synch Thunderbird and Sunbird I would be in heaven. I researched this as well, all to no avail. I can’t be alone in this camp. There has to be a sizable minority of Outlook users out there who only use it for synching with their Treos or Blackberries.

Tara and I again held a garage sale yesterday. We've got a lot to unload before we move. We're losing at least a third of our square footage in the move from our current home to a condo in downtown San Diego (which we still haven't found). People are grabbing our crap at a steal compared to what we spent on it. Yesterday we sent off a sleeper sofa, loveseat, coffee table, and two end tables for $400. It should be painful considering what we spent for this stuff, but I think it's cathartic more than anything else. Stuff. Who the hell needs stuff. I suppose it's useful when you have a little one, but Americans just have too damn much stuff. Sell it all!

I am so full. I just devoured a ton of sushi and tempura veggies. We've made sushi a New Year's Eve tradition in the last few years. This year it was especially gooood. I don't know what I did different, but it was especially good tonight. I started cooking at 4pm and didn't get done until 7:30pm. I took some breaks though to see Ashby. I used red snapper, salmon, yellow fin tuna, and marlin. The best was my spicy tuna and spicy marlin rolls, which I made with rooster sauce. Goood…

   

Earlier today we went to the Walker Art Center. I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned 60+% of modern art is just complete crap. I'm not saying it isn't art, I'm just saying I think it's crap. My opinion, obviously. I saw one piece today that took up an entire room. There were posters everywhere, fabrics and clothes strewn all over the floor, garbage and crap everywhere. This was a big room. It was not pretty. I understand art is about evoking emotion, but I find it difficult to appreciate something that absolutely disgusts me and provides me with no introspection beyond: dirt bad. This room was as if a schizophrenic had lived there for years. It reminded me of the schizophrenics and bipolars I've known in the past. Oddly enough they were artists too. I didn't particularly care for their work either. But the art-elite always did. I guess occasionally they would create a piece I could dig, but in general it looked like it was crap a schizo or manic threw together in a weekend. Funny, this is exactly what it was. Perhaps I'm just not sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate it. I did really like this one piece in which the entire room was constructed to be a cave-like labyrinth made out of packing tape and plywood. It was huge and pretty crazy. There were also books wired as bombs throughout the exhibit, soda cans, trash, mannequins, brick walls, and other objects. The book-bombs were, I'm assuming, explosive ideas and the entire piece was about representing the artist's mind. I think. It was creepy. It was cool. Very original. I liked it. I wish I could have taken pictures of some of the pieces we saw at the Walker, but we were quickly informed we were not to take photos in the museum. 

I think Ashby had a good time. I don't think there are many (almost) one year old children that could spend 1.5 hours in a museum of modern art and not make a nuisance of themselves. Ashby was cool as a cucumber and seemed to enjoy the place.

Enough blogging, I'm going to go back to drinking my shaum-pag-ny and stress about all the crap I need to get done for our next release at work…

• Walker Photo Set
• Sushi Photo Set

Christmas was a tad somber this year. Our impending move to San Diego has definitely put a damper on the season for the Boone family. It has been difficult for Tara and her family. Brenda came down to Shoreview for a few days with Tara, Ashby, and I. Then on Christmas day we all drove up to the North Shore of Lake Superior (just north of Duluth) and spent the day at the Boone's house. Ashby made out like a bandit of course. She woke up an hour early Christmas morning as if she knew what was going on. The first few gifts we opened with here were a bit confusing for her. She got the hang of it pretty quickly though and finally was simply bored with all the 'stuff' she was having to unwrap. She is really enjoying the musical table Brenda got her. Julie and Paul bought her a beautiful pink dress, which we've already used in a photo shoot (photos to follow). Grandma Roe sent her many many gifts. She especially appreciates the plastic farm animals. I'm sure I'm forgetting gifts sent to her by others, but this is all I can recollect right now. I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season.

• Photo set

One of the countless things I need to get done before moving out of Minnesota is to build a deck onto my house. Mike Vath, an old buddy, has been kind enough to lead me in this endeavor as I've never built a deck before. As you'll notice in the photos we just got our first snow. We got probably about 60% of it done last weekend in the pleasantly warm (no I'm not being sarcastic–this is MN) 45 degree weather. We hope to complete it this weekend, but I hear we're likely getting more snow. I'm pretty pissed that this bloody deck is going to be significantly nicer than the one this house had when we bought it, which was promptly tore off when water damage caused by improper installation of the deck was discovered a month after we moved in. I'm pissed it's going to be so nice because in the year and half we've lived in this house I've never been able to enjoy the deck! And now there is going to be a kick ass one and I'm moving.

The specs on the deck are 10'x12'. We've built the frame, mounted it to the house, mounted the stringers in the frame, and have mounted them to the deck feet. All we have left to do is square it off, lay the decking, build a railing and mount the stairs, et Voila! It's been an educational experience. Without Mike, God only knows what I would have built out there. I had a completely different idea about how I was going to build the thing. It would have been baaaad. "Mike do you have one of those liquid-bubbly-thingies?"

Well, the deck is still not done; although, as you’ll see in the photos below it’s come a long way. We haven’t gotten any snow since Dec 21, which is just plain bizarre for Minnesota. However, we’ve had rain. Rain! Rain in December? Crazy. As you can see, all I have left is the railing. I had hoped to get it done this weekend, but we’re expecting more rain.

 

Minnesota's Children Museum is cool. We checked it out earlier this week. The museum is designed for children from 6 months to 10 years. Ashby had fun and she's not quite a year old. I can see it being a blast for kids in 2-6 range. They have a bunch of cool interactive exhibits. There was a mock town where kids could dress up as police, fire, or postal workers (among other things). And a mini-grocery store they could go shopping in. Also there was a really cool play factory they could work. As you can see below I had some fun with the giant bubbles. Apparently they rotate exhibits based on the season, etc; so, the museum likely doesn't go stale very quickly.

• Photo Set

Tara and I flew out to San Diego for a long weekend in search of a new place to live. As previously mentioned here we're moving back to my homeland. Ashby stayed with her MeMa (Brenda). Other folks from work  flew out as well, these included: Roy, Pete, his significant other Marianne, Corey, and his significant other Pam.

Tara and I spent all day Friday and Saturday checking out different condos downtown. We looked at around 15 condos. I liked one on Banker's Hill that was a block away from Balboa Park and a couple blocks from Hillcrest. It was really nice, but Tara didn't feel as comfortable in the neighborhood because the foot traffic was limited. When you are smack downtown you have people everywhere and the throngs give you a sense of safety that you don't have when there is not a lot of foot traffic, which was the case with Banker's Hill. Unfortunately we didn't find a place. However the wonderful people at City Center Properties are helping us find a place (to rent) remotely. They've been very helpful and I recommend them highly.

 Anyway, I'm favoring Little Italy. Tara likes the Gaslamp, and Marina districts. I don't think we're going to find anything we can actually live in and afford in the Marina district though. And to be honest I think the district is a little too sterile, even though you're easily within walking distance of everything else. Gaslamp is cool, but nothing beats Little Italy. I didn't see a single corporate restaurant. It is, by my estimation, the most authentic of the communities we've looked at. Also, I've been told it has the active community association.

I'm really looking forward to living near Henry and Glenda. Henry and I have known each other since kindergarten. Back in June at Tom's wedding I swore that we would live near each other again in the next two years. Turns out I was right. 

     

At any rate, Tara and I have lucked out and found, who appears to be, a very qualified renter for our home in Minnesota. Our realtor introduced us to a fellow who happens to be an M.D. who is moving from Virginia to Minnesota. He'll be moving into our home Feb 1. So, we'll be back in the homeland in just over a month. We have so much to do! I'm half way through building a new deck on the house, which was..uhh…cold and have had countless other household tasks to get us ready for the move. We have so much left to do. It's daunting.

• Photo set

I presented at the Minnesota Government Information Technology Symposium today. Jeese that's a long name. I promised that I would post my presentation and supporting materials online for everyone and I have done so at OpenGarden here. If your read the OpenGarden post the rest of this is useless to you because it's almost entirely a repost from OpenGarden.

It was nice to be back at this event. I spoke last year on general use of open source applications. In my talk last year I talked about open source CMSes, blogs, and wikis. This year it seems the attendance has almost doubled. My session was well over twice the size, which by Mark's count was well over 200 people. Last year I took a quick poll of the audience and I did the same this year. This is, in no way, scientific; in fact, I doubt I even worded the questions the same and I surely did not count all the hands, but the results were very dramatically different and very interesting.

• How many feel like they understand open source?
  • 2005: more than half
  • 2006: looked like 100%
• How many of you are scared of open source?
  • 2005: maybe 15% (really guessing here, I barely remember)
  • 2006: one dude who looked like he was scared of me
• How many do not know what a wiki is?
  • 2005: approx 60%
  • 2006: 3 people out almost 250 people

Astounding really. Another interesting poll I took was this:

• How many of you are using Sharepoint in your departments?
  • Probably 30-40 people raised their hands
• Now, how many of you are really, and I mean actively, using Sharepoint? Not just those of you who have it deployed.
  • I think there was maybe two people hands up.

I thought that was funny. 🙂

Anyhow, this conference is cool. The audience is great and well educated and the event seems to be growing. The facilities were ridiculous though. It is held at the RiverCentre. There was no open WiFi and the facilities wanted a couple hundred dollars just for an access code to their WiFi! That's insane! I've never heard of such a thing. Aaahh….Min-eee-sooo-tah…

I presented at the TIES conference earlier today. I promised the audience that I would post my PPT and supporting research here.

• My PPT in PDF format
• ZDnet: Understanding Wikis (very basic, but may be helpful to some)
• Wikis–a Rapidly Growing Phenomenon in the German-Speaking School Community

As I discussed in the presentation, feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. As stated I'm very passionate about education and will gladly provide whatever assistance I can.

As previously mentioned here, I was in Boston last week at the Gilbane Content Management conference. The turn out for the conference was strong with more than 1,200 people in attendance. However, the timing for me was bad because Tara and Ashby both were sick and Ashby’s final X-ray for her hip dysplasia was on Thursday. I missed the last day of the conference in order to make it back for Ashby’s doctor appointment. The flight was about 30 minutes late; so, by the time I made it there Ashby and Tara had already gotten her X-rays, but we had to go back in for another couple shots because the first were obliqued. Good news is: everything looks great with my little tree frog. Her hips have a 30 degree alpha angles and the femoral ball is deep in the acetabular. Dr. Quanbeck, our orthopedist, gave us some recommendations on doctors in San Diego. I thought it was odd she actually knew, from memory, several doctors in San Diego. Perhaps not. Guess how many medical doctors there are in the United States. Guess…ok it’s only ~350,000. Seems like there should be a lot more with approximately 296 million people living in the US.

So, Gilbane. That was fun.
We won the crown of best wiki at the Wiki Idol contest. More on this in a moment. Also, I was on a panel with several executives and founders from other wiki companies. The panel was tasked with discussing wikis as they are today and where they’re heading tomorrow; at least, I think that’s what it was supposed to be about. Some of the panelists presented dense and lengthy Powerpoint slide decks that were more focused on their company. I had expected that Ross Mayfield was going to be there. He is one of the founders of Socialtext (competitor) that some allege is a pioneer in the use of wikis in enterprise/business. Some also allege his company is open source. I always find people who are self-proclaimed experts or pioneers on software, but don’t write code…well…amusing. Why is it that these same people always seem to be prolific bloggers? I guess this makes them an expert. Perhaps it makes them open source too. I should start blogging on nuclear physics, I use electricity from nuclear power plants–I’m an expert, nay a pioneer! Perhaps I could get a job at the energy department.

Anyhow, Ross didn’t show. Instead it was their VP of Professional Services (Matt I think) who presented. I squirmed as he cited his company as being ‘best of breed’ and ‘open source’. There are wiki companies out there that, in my experience (and opinion) give people a poor opinion of the technology because their product is just crude. On the topic of open source…well…you may recall what I wrote previously on this topic here. You may now understand who I was referring to when I stated: "Moreover, I personally find it offensive when companies slap open source contributors and companies in the face by claiming the title of open source while, in some cases, selling (distributing) for years while not releasing their source code or providing any transparency and then when they finally do release their source they create a non-OSI approved license." Perhaps by using open source components they are open source? A side of me regrets not calling drawing attention to the lack of accuracy on this fellow’s statements, but I was concerned that most in the audience would have no idea what I was talking about anyway; so, I let it lie.   

I met some really great people from competing companies that were on the wiki panel with me, Cindy from Customer Vision, Jon from Atlassian (met again), Ani from eTouch and others. Cindy is just wonderful. Her company has been around longer (doing wikis in business/enterprise) than any other that I know of. I was disappointed that Mike from Atlassian wasn’t there. He is a riot. We first met at Office 2.0, man that guy has a great sense of humor. Jon, his sales or marketing dude, was there in his stead and he seems alright for being a sales/marketing/whatever dude. However, the other guy who presented with Jon during wiki-idol (explained below) seemed like a bit of a lackey though. I know he got very uncomfortable whenever I got around his pod on the exhibit floor (not Jon the lackey looking fellow) as if I was going to steal away his prospects or something. I wish I could remember his name–large balding fellow.  

The highlight of the Gilbane conference was the Wiki Idol contest. It was setup such that each competing wiki company would be introduced by a fellow who would ask a couple questions about what the presenters’ names were, where they were from, etc. Then the demo would start and each company was allotted six minutes. At the end of the six minutes three judges essentially attacked the demo, presenting style, product, etc. Finally, the audience voted for their top two favorite wikis. I have no idea how many people voted of the 1,200 in attendance at the conference, but I can say the audience was overflowing into the main exhibition hall and people were jockeying for a view of the presentations. When the votes were tallied MindTouch’s Wiki won best wiki!!

I was surprised with how folks have devd their wiki applications. They’ve definitely taken a decidedly structured/complex CMS-like tack. In some other cases we saw again how some companies are attempting to replace desktop applications with web based ones, which–big surprise–blew up in their face when they demoed and lost connectivity. I’ve made my opinion clear on this tack previously. In general it was clear that these applications were intended to be replacements to other applications rather than embracing and extending existing applications in way that makes them significantly better.
We stood out during Wiki Idol and the executive panel for several reasons. The main reason is that I spoke (really for the first time at length publicly) about how I see wikis. Wikis are an aggregation and integration framework. They can, and should, be used to provide a simple and usable interface to more complex applications. In a way, this would make wikis a high level middleware that non-technical people can interact with directly that can then be used as glue for more technically complex applications and data stores. This solves the data silo problem for applications like ERP, CMS, KM, home-brewed Intranets, etc, SaaS applications like your CRM, web services, files servers, databases, email, AND proprietary file formats like: Visio, MS Project, whatever. In this world users will publish content (actively or passively) to the wiki, edit it, permute the data to suit whatever the needs are and extract it to whatever application is most suitable. I suppose this makes wikis a kind of application and knowledge XML based substrate. In order to achieve this the wiki has to, at the very least:

1. Adhere to open standards
2. Have a service oriented architecture
3. Be open source 

Yes, wikis are wonderful for creating and editing webpages, simple information sharing, etc, but they can, and will be, so much more. This seems obvious yet I’ve not heard anyone talk about this. For a taste of what I’m talking about, take a look at my presentation at DemoFall or glance at the fancy graphic I have embedded below. We’ve not yet seen the end of the beginning for this wiki thing.