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Old Technology Lessons

by Andrew McCaskey
The death of radio has been forecast at least four times during the past ninety years – and each time it has been able to reinvent itself as a news and entertainment medium. Even in spite of it’s current state of decay in a Clear-Channel dominated world, the Public Radio segment is alive and well and as the demographic of the Baby Boomers tracks into retirement, radio is well positioned ( along with Podcasting – a form of time shifted / location shifted radio) to fill news and entertainment needs well into the future.

The New York TImes reported the same phenomenon in movies and mainframes.

It’s sort of encouraging – the fact that after a brief period of orientation and adjustment, the old tech can evolve to meet consumer needs. Not necessarily will evolve, but can. And the fact that it is possible is what means the most.

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Sleepless Nation and the Four Day Week

by Andrew McCaskey
The experiments being run at 37 Signals with the four day work week merges well with the Sleep Deprived nation study from CDC.

I’ve found that – podcasting aside – there are more hours of work that go into the telecommute job than in regular office work. You first have to define work as tasks that, all things being equal, you would probably not spend your time on .

The four day week corresponds to the four days that you are working 12 or 14 hours – and generating the sleep deprivation that makes it essential to take the Friday off to have a life. It’s just a shift in the excess that could have been distributed over five days of more or less sane activity, balanced between work, family, personal time and community.

It’s going to be interesting to see how their experiment turns out.

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Minor Changes

by Andrew McCaskey
In response to some listener requests – today marks the first day of a change in numbering scheme on episodes.

The SDR numbering scheme on episodes (SDRyear-month-date) is being changed from the actual production date – when I am recording the material – to the intended air date, which is normally the following morning Eastern US Time (GMT -5).

The first episode of March seemed like a good time to make the change, so that I can remember when it happened. That will mean that this program episode, which should hit the servers and RSS feed sometime Sunday night March 2nd for the morning commute on Monday March 3 in most parts of the world will be dated for that day, rather than the night that it is prepared.

That way, the Monday – Friday schedule will track with the calendar days M-F.

I imagine that on the ordered list of issues you are tracking by importance today, this is going to require a lot of zeros. And a leading decimal.

Thanks !

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The FON Wifi Network

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HD-DVD Format Wars: Round Two

by Andrew McCaskey

Tonight’s item on the underlying strength of the HD-DVD format is certainly interesting to those of us who were able to get in on the Toshiba A1 special at Walmart a few weeks ago. At $99, it was an opportunity to get a matching unit in the house to go along with the new flatscreen TV – mostly to keep peace in the family and insure that the new family room got completed.

I’ve said all along (since I live here in the middlest of middle America) that, much as we would like to pride ourselves on technical acumen, that the largest market share is going to track with the most affordable option, and the easiest to understand.

Half of the flat screen TV’s you see in public places are running SD or some sort of wide screen stretch of a 4/3 image. Do you think that they are proud of their “HD” TV ? You bet they are. And that 42″ is pretty sorry compared with the 60″ down at Sam’s Club.

When it comes time to get the some extras to go along with the HD-TV there is one thing that this buyer is certain of: He wants an HD DVD player to go with his HD TV flatscreen. And he sure doesn’t have a Blu-Ray TV and won’t need a Blu Ray DVD.

Besides that, the player and a bunch of movies are less than what he plans to have at the house for snacks for his buddies, come Superbowl.

Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . .

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Identity 2.0 Keynote Presentation

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Spammers Giving Up

The reports from Google, Yahoo and Hotmail are encouraging – that the improved filtering is having some effect on the amount of spam that is getting through to end user inboxes.

Google indicated that once an offending email is tagged as spam, within a few minutes it will be pulled from their email service. It’s obviously not good for their business model if there is not some dwell time on a given message that might give some clue to the appropriate advertisement that should be served up as well.

The most interesting comment, though, was the notion that random spam will be replaced by spam that you have willingly signed up for. I am noting, especially in my business email – that a lot of the excess traffic comes from two sources: email newsletters or courtesy emails from vendors, trade associations, professional societies, and the like are part one.

Part 2 is the internal spam that affects almost every organization, as part of the CYA “documentation” of meetings, decisions, releases, fund raisers, and “painting the parking lot today ” info that gets sent out the worldwide distributions.

You can filter some – but no filter is going to get the second type. Ever.

Click to view videos submitted or recommended by other SDR podcast listeners. . .

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