confused of calcutta

a blog about information

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Entries from December 2006

It’s that time of year

December 31st, 2006 · 10 Comments · Four pillars , Social software, Uncategorized

It’s been an eventful year for me, what with changing jobs in March, changing firms in October, nearly moving house and then not, and finally having a heart attack a few weeks ago.
It’s been an eventful year for me, what with starting this blog in late February, and really feeling part of a small but [...]

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More on Line Rider and on “wasting time”

December 30th, 2006 · 1 Comment · Four pillars

Some of you were smitten by Line Rider, enough to bother to comment on my post :-)
You may find the wikipedia entry for Line Rider of some interest.
And if that doesn’t ring your bell, maybe this video will…..

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Learning from my children: Take a look at Line Rider

December 28th, 2006 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

My son Isaac showed me this site: It’s called Line Rider.
Take a look at it, play with it and see what you think. What it says is what it is. A tool that lets you draw lines, and then “play” what you’ve drawn; you get to watch while some squiggly creature “rides” the “line” that [...]

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Musing about identity and related concepts, via the 5 Things meme

December 27th, 2006 · 11 Comments · Four pillars

Quite a few people tagged me, but I felt it was reasonable to try the 5 Things thing out just once. And, amongst others, I tagged Ron Silliman. And Ron chose Jordan Davis as one of his 5.
Jordan has this to say, exercising his right by declining to pass the 5 Things on:
….forgive me for [...]

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Seeing what’s happening in the music space… darkly?

December 27th, 2006 · 1 Comment · Four pillars

When I write about search or syndication in the context of enterprise systems, I claim to have a modicum of knowledge.
I make no such claim about the music business.
Perhaps I should. In a strange way. I will probably learn more about information by telling myself I know as much about information as I do [...]

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Serge A Storms

December 27th, 2006 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

I really enjoy a good “caper story” as made famous by Donald E Westlake’s Dortmunder series. In fact I like a healthy dose of comedy in everything I read; and where it isn’t there (as in much management and technical writing) I work on the assumption the comedy is subtler. Works for me. You should [...]

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More on Four Pillars and Enterprise Software

December 27th, 2006 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the commonest question anyone ever asked me about Four Pillars was “What will it look like?” And  I answered “Like Netvibes“.
Today I’d like to explore this further, try and articulate my arguments more precisely. But before I do that, time for some disclosure:

I have NO shares [...]

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Thinking about Four Pillars and enterprise software

December 25th, 2006 · 7 Comments · Four pillars

It’s been maybe eighteen months since I first put pen to paper on the Syndication/Search/Fulfilment/Collaboration model for enterprise software, and I’ve learnt a lot since then. Some of you were at the workshop at the bank in early December 2005, when I shared what I was thinking with participants; it just doesn’t seem like it [...]

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The role of the reviewer in an age of collaborative filtering: another one in the eye for tradition

December 24th, 2006 · 6 Comments · Four pillars

This post was sparked off by a recent comment made by Stephen Smoliar, which I reproduce here:
Massively parallel reading may work for entertainment, but I find I need to focus when I get to the heavy stuff. Otherwise, I just come away with a superficial feel; and, if THAT is what I want, then I [...]

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of books and myths

December 24th, 2006 · 3 Comments · Four pillars

Kerry Buckley came up with a wonderful piece of apocrypha when commenting on a recent post of mine. I reproduce the entire comment here:

….During the run-up to their launch, the schedule slipped significantly, and the CEO (overall a great guy) made the classic engineering management mistake of adding many more developers to the late project [...]

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