I really enjoy music and my musical tastes continue to evolve over time. What has evolved much faster then my taste in music is how we consume music.
I started collecting 45's as a kid and then moved onto LPs after my Grandfather convinced me that I would get much more of the artist if I bought the album instead of just the single. I collected my LPs and still have many of them today nicely boxed up waiting for a good enough reason to use them again on my Bang & Olufsen tangential tracking turntable that I also still have.
Soon the cassette joined the fray (we will skip the eight-track era, please) and new albums were immediately taped to capture the vinyl LP at its best (not before carefully cleaning it with the discwasher). Often the LPs were then sold at a $1 discount to new to finance new LPs and more taping. This freedom soon led to "mix tapes", the predecessor to today's playlists.
The CD era soon followed and the great "recollection" started as not only did I buy new music on CDs, but I also bought CDs of LPs and tapes I already had. This led to buying furniture to hold the CDs in their appropriate splendor. Today I have very nice built in bookcase filled with CDs that are really if ever used.
Digital music brought in many new options and recollection opportunities, but also introduced the concept of renting music (a much more efficient method then my buy, tape, sell process from the late 1970's). While the iPod folks rave (with good reason) about their musical experience (and my kids and I also have iPods), I really think the concept of renting music is the future.
They have been a number of musical rental ideas that have come and gone in my life including such services as Rhapsody. For now I have settled on Pandora, whose QuickMix feature allows me to create a "radio station" that plays only the artists I enjoy with just enough new artists to keep the evolution of my musical tastes going.
While I worry about Pandora's commercial model (I am actually a paying Pandora One member), their service offering is excellent, delivering every artist I have ever wanted via a user interface that works via the browser, desktop client and now my Blackberry. This versatility allows me to have my music even if I want to take it on the highway or most anywhere else.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Today's Whole House Intercom
When I was a kid, my Grandfather had a whole house intercom, which I always equated with having a "nice house". While the concept of whole house intercoms still exists today, there are far better ways to communicate between rooms and floors within a building.
This first started to become clear to me when people started to use e-mail to check on each others whereabouts. Saw this in the corporate world first, but it soon spread to the home and SMB worlds as soon as multiple PCs started to show up in these worlds. While e-mail works, it has no presence (i.e. is the person you are trying to reach actually sitting at the PC).
Next came Instant Messaging, which added the concept of presence to the communication channel so you knew if the person you were trying to reach was actually available. This is still viable today in PC-centric environments and where IM clients are available on mobile devices.
The latest way we see this happening is via texting aka Short Messaging System "SMS". While it lacks the presence of IM clients, the fact that text-centric folks carry their phones / texting devices with them everywhere (and I mean everywhere) allows you to assume the person you are trying to reach is available. In my own house my kids will text their parents and each other with such benign questions as "when is dinner?".
Of course using texting as a replacement for other modes of communication should only be done when your texting plan contains unlimited texting or your whole house intercom replacement will end up costing you more then a whole house intercom system :)
This first started to become clear to me when people started to use e-mail to check on each others whereabouts. Saw this in the corporate world first, but it soon spread to the home and SMB worlds as soon as multiple PCs started to show up in these worlds. While e-mail works, it has no presence (i.e. is the person you are trying to reach actually sitting at the PC).
Next came Instant Messaging, which added the concept of presence to the communication channel so you knew if the person you were trying to reach was actually available. This is still viable today in PC-centric environments and where IM clients are available on mobile devices.
The latest way we see this happening is via texting aka Short Messaging System "SMS". While it lacks the presence of IM clients, the fact that text-centric folks carry their phones / texting devices with them everywhere (and I mean everywhere) allows you to assume the person you are trying to reach is available. In my own house my kids will text their parents and each other with such benign questions as "when is dinner?".
Of course using texting as a replacement for other modes of communication should only be done when your texting plan contains unlimited texting or your whole house intercom replacement will end up costing you more then a whole house intercom system :)
Can I have a single phone number?
I recently signed up for Google's new voice service called Google Voice ("GV"). This universal phone number helps bring closer to reality the concept of having a single phone number that you can give to people and allow them to reach easily and under your terms. With Google Voice you can call or SMS or receive either with a single number.
The service allows you to setup rules and hierarchies in terms of what happens when the number is called depending on whom the call is from and what time of day it is, etc. For example you can have your GV number just ring your cell phone or have it sequentially call your home phone and then cell phone and then perhaps another number.
Having a universal phone number is liking owning your domain. You now control it no matter what happens to the underlying phone numbers and services. Even with number portability this is still a good thing.
The good news is as with almost all Google app, it is "free" so you can request you own invite and try it out on your own. Of course "free" is in the purely monetary sense only as Google will surely try and monetize this service in the future by scanning your calls and texts and serving up ads.
For now try it out and see it can make your life easier in connecting up with the folks you want to and screening out the folks you don't.
The service allows you to setup rules and hierarchies in terms of what happens when the number is called depending on whom the call is from and what time of day it is, etc. For example you can have your GV number just ring your cell phone or have it sequentially call your home phone and then cell phone and then perhaps another number.
Having a universal phone number is liking owning your domain. You now control it no matter what happens to the underlying phone numbers and services. Even with number portability this is still a good thing.
The good news is as with almost all Google app, it is "free" so you can request you own invite and try it out on your own. Of course "free" is in the purely monetary sense only as Google will surely try and monetize this service in the future by scanning your calls and texts and serving up ads.
For now try it out and see it can make your life easier in connecting up with the folks you want to and screening out the folks you don't.
Do we need another technology blog?
So the question is do we need another technology blog and of course the answer is we don't really need another technology blog.
So why have I started this one? Well it seems like people are always asking me technology questions and I am learning about new technology ideas so it seems very logical to create a blog to answer the questions I get asked and to share the new information I learn.
In my corporate life we created a company Wiki (using Jive Software's Clearspace product now called Jive SBS) to provide a central place where people could find information they were looking for and post information they knew. While the adoption rate is still not where it should be, the number of folks using the site at least for reference has improved significantly. It has also allowed me to share the many things I have learned about my companies products and the market space we operate in.
With this as background I am going to try to create this same sort of information repository for my friends, family and business folks I meet and work with outside of my corporate life.
So why have I started this one? Well it seems like people are always asking me technology questions and I am learning about new technology ideas so it seems very logical to create a blog to answer the questions I get asked and to share the new information I learn.
In my corporate life we created a company Wiki (using Jive Software's Clearspace product now called Jive SBS) to provide a central place where people could find information they were looking for and post information they knew. While the adoption rate is still not where it should be, the number of folks using the site at least for reference has improved significantly. It has also allowed me to share the many things I have learned about my companies products and the market space we operate in.
With this as background I am going to try to create this same sort of information repository for my friends, family and business folks I meet and work with outside of my corporate life.
Welcome
Welcome to the Technology Plumbing blog. First of all this blog is about putting technology to work for personal as well as small and medium business (SMB) use. The plumbing reference is simply about the fact that all technology requires "plumbing" to work. If done properly the plumbing is invisible and the value of the technology is apparent and usable to the end user.
We often think of all of the technology and how it keeps us connected. If we reduce this to its simplest level, it can be thought of as two tin cans connected via a piece of string. you can communicate between the 2 cans over the string and as technology improves the cans and the string the communication and connectivity just get better as do the "things" we can do with them.
In this blog I will discuss real-world uses of technology that allow you get things done in a more efficient, lower risk and perhaps even more fun manner.
Much of what I will write about will be based on personal experience in my life as a technologist, husband and father of 2; however I will also pass on ideas, comments and info on technology that others are writing about that make sense to pass-on to this audience. In the technology world we call this R&D or "rip off and deploy" .
We often think of all of the technology and how it keeps us connected. If we reduce this to its simplest level, it can be thought of as two tin cans connected via a piece of string. you can communicate between the 2 cans over the string and as technology improves the cans and the string the communication and connectivity just get better as do the "things" we can do with them.
In this blog I will discuss real-world uses of technology that allow you get things done in a more efficient, lower risk and perhaps even more fun manner.
Much of what I will write about will be based on personal experience in my life as a technologist, husband and father of 2; however I will also pass on ideas, comments and info on technology that others are writing about that make sense to pass-on to this audience. In the technology world we call this R&D or "rip off and deploy" .
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