The entire world does not need a real time Web for all of its information needs; getting information in a reasonable time is sufficient to meet many needs (although it may not satisfy all wants).

There are people who would greatly benefit from a real-time Web, including:

• columnists, journalists, pundits
• analysts who track trends and news in any field
• other professionals who depend on timely information as a part of their business

A real time Web supplements text messaging, phone calls, radio, television, and face to face meetings.

Most people don’t need real time information, although they probably want it.  We don’t need to know about Michael Jackson, the bubble boy, or Tiger Woods in real time (unless you’re a member of  one of the three groups that I mention above).  We don’t need to know the results of the latest Apple press conference or trade show in real time (again, unless you belong to one of the groups mentioned above).  Weather, disaster, emergency or governmental news are a different story if they give us information that we DO need to know in an instant.

There is a role for a real-time Web, but we don’t need to pump everything through it.  A lot of information can be relayed using a reasonable time Web, which technologies like RSS can handle just fine if we can wait extra minutes (or hours, to be fair) to receive information.

Therefore, RSS (Really Simply Syndication)  is not dead.  Not even close.  It’s a useful tool.  Prioritizing information needs and delivery speed is the key to determine an adequate mechanism for delivery.

Just for fun, I’m going to write down a few thoughts about modern technology (mainly focusing on Web 2.0).  I’m really curious to see if you agree or disagree.  Let’s see what you have to say in the comments section, OK?

1. YouTube has become the video archive and de facto digital history of the human race and pop culture.
2. Text messaging will become obsolete in five years when someone creates a mobile Web application that does the same thing for no extra cost (today, it all depends on how you use Twitter, I guess).
3. Mobile computing will not replace either notebook or desktop PCs – too many people like the larger keyboards.
4. Paper books will not disappear unless there is a massive environmental or economic crisis that massively curtails the availability of paper.  In fact, paper books will stay at current sales levels, or even grow, indefinitely.
5. In ten years, it will be common for people to use some kind of mobile computing device to scan each other and do all kinds of things based on the data they receive from these scans.  For example, when two people meet and scan each other, applications on these devices might give them enough information to decide that they really don’t want to talk to each other.  So they won’t.
6. It will be 20 years before electronic voting will be permitted for a US Presidential election.
7. A key challenging for adopting microblogging within large corporations is that these corps will want to make it secure and only available to employees.  The problem, then, is that it may be hard to make a case to exploit it within these companies as there are already a number of similar technologies that do just about the same thing.
8. Within ten years, the US and Canada will adopt widespread electronic payments by using a smartphone or mobile computing devices to make the transaction.  But no sooner:  too many parties have an interest in maintaining the status quo.
9. As more and more companies are seeing their employees become more outwardly focused (i.e. looking more and more at what is happening outside of the company instead of what’s happening within the company), departments like sales, marketing, and customer service will either see themselves becoming more and more focused on more complex aspects of their work.  However, they could also turn into consultants to other parts of the business on how to better integrate their functions into the rest of the business.
10. The next big technology/paradigm shift will involve widespread implants or attached devices to help us use technology either by thought, muscle movements, or by voice.

What do you think?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.  Feel free to tell me if I’m full of crap!

For most of the past five years there were two major Web browser options if you were a PC user:  Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.  Firefox stole a lot of market share from Microsoft, despite having IE bundled with Windows, by providing a new product with new bells and whistles, tons of configurability, and a bona-fide alternative to the Microsoft machine.

Firefox became a popular choice, especially among the more savvy users of the Windows-based PC.  I’ve been using it almost exclusively for the past couple of years and I’ve enjoyed using it instead of Explorer.  But lately…  Firefox has been annoying me.  It uses a bunch of memory, for one thing.  The other thing is that more often than not, Firefox doesn’t close properly.  So then I have to go into Windows Task Manager and shut down the Firefox process.  It happens way too often.

Meanwhile, about a year ago Google released their own browser called Chrome.  I never used to see any great advantage in using Chrome, mainly because I had all of my bookmarks in Firefox, etc.  At the same time, Chrome promised to be simpler, easier on memory, more stable, etc.  However, there never seemed to be any compelling reason to change.

I think I’m finally ready to give Chrome a serious try.   Tonight I had to reboot my PC (again) due to Firefox problems.  Enough is enough.  I’m now on a Firefox diet and I’m going to stick to using Google Chrome for the next month.

Onward.

If you aren’t passionate about something, does that mean that you are dead, brain dead, or otherwise insignificant?

Of course not, because you’re likely passionate about something else. You won’t be passionate about everything in your life because some things are painful, boring, or just generally suck.

However, the term passionate has been discussed in great detail by a number of different people. One of the more lively discussions about passionates/early adopters occurred at Mashable.com during the past 24 hours, although the comments section tended to revolve around an exchange of opinions between the author (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins) and one of the commentators (Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble). However you regard the exchanges in the comments section, I do think that Mark brought up a good point that it’s worthwhile to look at the value of applications (or anything, really) to non-passionates (i.e. the folks who just want a tool to get a job done, like the way that I personally view most machinery, tools, etc.)

I think it’s perfectly fine to be an enthusiast, or maven, for that matter, because this kind of person helps usher change into our world. Much of that change is beneficial or will be at some future point.

On the other hand, if someone is extolling the virtues of something that I don’t care that much about… it’s kind of a lost cause, isn’t it? The nice thing about the Web, however, is that it’s pretty easy to ignore stuff that you don’t want to read or hear about. As Marvin the Paranoid Android once said:

Don’t try to engage my enthusiasm — I haven’t got one.

Not about everything.

However, at the same time, many of us don’t like to be told what to do, what to think, or that we are too limited to understand something. We can be pretty sensitive to that kind of talk and I think this is what likely upset Steven Hobson yesterday in his post about Scoble’s opinion on who would be interested in the new Mozilla Ubiquity product that’s being worked on at the Mozilla Labs.

The following quote is a comment that I left at Steven Hobson’s WinExtra blog about his concerns:

Steven, I like and admire your work; same is true for Robert Scoble. His post may have a slightly elitist tone, but to me his words would be similar to any maven who is raving about something that appeals to a small audience, whether it’s:

-wine
-sporting goods
-automobiles
-camera equipment
-designer clothing
-power tools
-gourmet cookware

There’s going to be mass-market versions of these products AND high-end stuff for passionates (or enthusiasts, or whatever else you want to call them). It doesn’t particularly bother me if a lot of that stuff is outside my price range, skill set, and interest level. I don’t need a $3,000 digital camera and if someone told me that it wasn’t for me, especially someone who WAS a maven, I’d probably take that at face value as long as they didn’t imply that I was stupid or inferior for working at a different level. Did Robert mean to imply that? Who knows? And, even if he did, big deal. We all know our own skills, knowledge, and sense of self-worth and it doesn’t matter if someone happens to reach a bigger audience to make their opinion heard. If people are willing to follow someone’s preachings without getting the facts themselves, then buyer beware. Meanwhile, you make your own decisions about what’s right for you.

For what it’s worth, based on what I just read, I think that Robert’s right, at least in the earliest stages: Ubiquity’s functionality isn’t for non-passionates because a lot of people won’t have the necessary frame of reference to use it. This is also true for something as deceptively simple as Twitter. For some reason this talk of Ubiquity makes me wonder if this is how developers and enthusiasts sounded when they first started tinkering with technologies like OLE. Or HTML. Or TCP/IP. Or RSS.

On the flip side: if I understand the plans for Ubiquity and similar products, we’ll ALL be using it in 5 – 10 years, although it will be in the form of tools that are easier to use.

At any rate, I think many of us know better than to read too much into what Robert writes. It’s quite possible that he’ll trash this technology within six months anyway OR he’ll love it even more. He is who he is.

Now, another point of clarification: my Twitter/FriendFeed conversation streams did address the tendency for a number of bloggers (myself included, on occasion) to write about the same topic almost in unison. I get a little frustrated, especially of late, because I don’t feel that there’s anything else that I can add to those conversations. Maybe there isn’t anything more to be said. But, you know, this is how groups of passionates work. They (we) talk about the same topics over and over because we love them and we are pleased when we uncover some nuance that we can share with other people. That’s perfectly fine!

You know, maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe we all need to remember that we’re multi-dimensional beings with many different talents and interests. One might be a non-passionate about technology while being a passionate about hockey, NASCAR, fishing, chess, or…. well, fill in the blanks. And that’s OK, as long as we acknowledge that we have the right to varying levels of interest about the things we love, like, tolerate, or hate.

Anyway, that’s enough for my first-ever WinExtra guest post.

Yes, a little joke at the end.

I’m one of the people who doesn’t take offense to the use of passionate vs. non-passionate, because mentally I exchange the word passionate for enthusiast and it means the same to me. I think I made my point of view clear in the comments above. However, to Steven’s perspective, I don’t like it when people try to engage my enthusiasm when I’m not receptive or when they try to shut it down without understanding me first.

I debated writing this because it’s already old news in the blogosphere, but what the hell.  You’re never too old to climb back into the echo chamber for a few minutes.

I don’t normally dig into the tech mainstream in this blog, but Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch article on his woes with Apple devices and services does catch my attention for the following reasons:

1. It’s a pretty high profile complaint about Apple.

2. I am quite surprised about the number of failures that he lists in his blog post.

I have very little experience with Apple’s products, although I know a number of people who absolutely love them.

For my part, I’ve never found a compelling reason to switch from the Microsoft world to Apple, mainly because my work environment is 100% Microsoft and I’m very comfortable with that.

It does concern me that Mike is using his personal experience as the yardstick to base a significant part of his opinion. However, he isn’t alone in expressing these opinions.

For my part, I’ll be curious to see if Apple reacts publicly to Mike’s article. My gut says no, but we’ll see.

Is it better to maximize every single second of your life, filling it with activity, or is it better to occasionally to do things in a less structured manner where you achieve big things? And does today’s technology, which brings more efficiency tools than we can possibly conceive, really lead us to achieve great things?

Two key terms that I learned while studying for my business degree were efficiency and effectiveness.

Efficiency is a measurement of your results in relation to the work and materials your use to get your results.

Getting the same results with less work and materials normally equates to an increase in efficiency. There’s a heck of a lot of interest out there in efficiency.

Image by sara.atkins

Effectiveness is a measurement of how successful you are in achieving your goals: did your hard work lead to the desired result.

Does your work, your use of time, and use of materials lead you to accomplish your goal? If so, then you are effective in accomplishing that goal.

There are plenty of rewards for being effective.

Image by jonrawlinson

Which is better – efficiency or effectiveness?

I’d far rather be effective than efficient. I’d rather know that my efforts, however imbalanced, were accomplishing what needed to be accomplished, rather than maximizing the output of every single activity.

A lot of software/Web applications seem to be focusing on efficiency: doing more with less.

But are they making us more effective? Can they?

What do you think?

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