Mixing Technology and Music - Oh Yeah!

Have to share this successful mixing of music and technology, two of my favorites. Not only is Zoe Keating an excellent musician, but by marrying her music to her technology background she has given herself a full time musical career with total control of her music (i.e. no middlemen). Hats off to Press:Here for showcasing her.

Unfortunately, the Press:Here embedding code is not working, so here is a link to the video

The Language of Language

My younger daughter is a language nerd, but not a technology geek. She is good user of technology and enjoys the many things technology provides for her each day.

I am a technology geek, but not a language nerd. I try to be a good user of the English language, the only one I know, but I often "fail" at it, at least in her eyes.

So how do a language nerd and a technology geek communicate, when she speaks 4 languages and I speak in TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)?

Well today I saw a story about the "International Take on @" (on the blog of Technology Plumbing Favorite Xobni). This story discusses how the various languages and cultures of the world describe the @ sign, that ubiquitous symbol between a users email name and the email domain they are part of. Finally something we can talk about, linguistically. :)

While we are on the topic of language, here are some of my favorite TLAs. These are not your standard technology terms, but my never ending attempt to describe the ideas and concepts that float into my head in an attempt to explain how information and technology really work.

R&D - Rip off and Deploy - This is not meant in bad or evil way, but with today's technology it is silly to keep reinventing the wheel, when you can download the rim and spokes and mash them into the size wheel you need to do the job. BTW: My use of "R&D" is really R&D as it is one of those terms that I have borrowed from others.

EaE - Extend and Embrace - I wrote about this one a few days ago and described it as the ability to do things outside of your normal world by not worrying about how it fits in or how to control it. Make it work and figure out how to make it part of your world later.

SME - SME - A "subject matter expert" in Synthesis, Morphing and Extending. In other words a person who can take other's ideas and products and make them better at doing both what they were designed for as well as taking them in directions not envisioned by their creator.

APU - Absorb, Process, Utilize - When we all live on a river of information with so much information coming at us all the time, it is a way to to deal with this flow. Absorb as much as you can, process / filter the information and then put it to use in your job, your life or just winning the next Scholastic Bowl competition.

There are many more TLAs I like and use (some would say too often), but I will save them for another day. Please share your favorite common and not so common TLAs with the Technology Plumbing community by commenting on this blog entry.

Technology Tuesday Thoughts

It is Tuesday night and there are too many thoughts flowing through my head to just focus on one topic for today's blog post, so instead we bring you Technology Tuesday Thoughts.

• Technology and music were made to go together. As soon as I heard that Rodrigo Y Gabriela had released their new CD 11:11, I had to have it. So a quick download from Amazon it became part of my iTunes library thanks to Amazon's MP3 downloader. Amazon sells the CD for $7.99, $2 less then iTunes does (go figure). Have to mention that the CD is amazing!

• Mashable has a nice report, including video, on a new speaker technology that allows the speakers to be embedded in the monitor, computer, whatever. The video sounds OK, but need to "hear" more about this before we can know for sure. Currently they are stereo only, but I am sure they will figure out surround sound soon enough.

• TechCrunch reports that Google's Picasa desktop client is adding facial recognition geo-tagging to it desktop app. Picasa is a Technology Plumbing Favorite so I look forward to trying out this new functionality.

• TweetDeck is great tool (and a Technology Plumbing Favorite) that continues to add features, now if they could just add support for Yammer (with multiple account support, please!) it would be perfect.

• For the green geek in your family, you need to check out the Perpetually Rotating Solar Globe. It combines a floating, rotating globe that uses solar power allowing you to see a truly wireless world.
  

Extend and Embrace

One of my favorite expressions is "Extend and Embrace", which should not be confused with the old Microsoft expression "Embrace, extend and extinguish" (which is meant to eliminate the competition).

The need for Extend and Embrace (EaE) is that organizations get stuck in doing what they have always done. Combined with the increasing emphasis on structure and controls makes it very difficult to do anything new and different. The result is usually that you get very good, efficient and controlled at doing the same things; however more nimble competitors start doing new things (sometimes disruptive things) that allow them take your clients and gain market share.

Sometimes it is not the obvious competitor, that causes issues as the market you are serving gets disrupted from things from adjacent segments or even crossing between the consumer and business markets come into play (or vice versa).

So this is where EaE comes in as a way to combat these risks. As a business or an organization you need to look at new things and new ways of doing things. In doing this you need to ignore the fact that they don't fit your existing processes, frameworks, whatever. The key is to find ways to break the mold allowing you to extend your business. Once these extension ideas start to bear fruit there will be time to embrace them with your processes and controls and bring them into what will now be an extended fold.

It should be noted that sometimes new ideas won't work. Don't be afraid to be honest with yourself and abandon the ones that are not working. Learn from these failures so the next idea will work better.

Following this EaE philosophy will allow you keep current with your competitors where ever there may be.

Tell us about you EaE successes so others can follow the EaE path.