The Inquisitr » change

One of the best pictures out of Iran

Steven Hodson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:55:00 +0000

They say that one picture is worth a thousand words. Well this picture is worth that and a lot more in my opinion.

There’s a tsunami coming to the web – Google Wave

Steven Hodson — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:36:34 +0000

After being involved with computers, software and the web for the better part of the last twenty years I have I guess in a lot of ways become rather jaded at all the pronouncement that come our way. This is going to change the web, that is going to change the web, superlatives are constantly being thrown around. In the end though most of these have really been nothing more than improvements upon what we already have been using.

That could very well change with Google Wave.

I don’t say this lightly but from everything that I have been reading (and trying hard to digest) for the last few hours I have a gut feeling that Google Wave could very well be one of those rare cusp moments when the way we do things really change. Not only will it change the way we do things but that change stands a very good chance of being persuasive because Google will be making Wave open sourced and with an open protocol. This means that literally anyone will be able to become a wave provider. The only thing I haven’t been able to clearly understand yet is if separate Waves will be able to communicate with each other, at this point I can only assume so given the open nature planned for Wave.

If you want a clearer understanding of what Wave will be able to do I recommend reading Tim O’Reilly’s post at the O’Reilly Radar blog as he breaks it down pretty good. the short form though is imagine combining your contacts, e-mail, IM, instant interaction, drag and drop browser interaction, the ability to playback a complete conversation and do this all in real time through your browser. As O’Reilly puts it

Let’s say I want to communicate with someone. I start a wave, just as I might start an email message. The recipient(s) see an incoming wave, just as they see an email today. Where the magic starts is with replies. In email, you have the choice of including no context, only a portion of the message you’re replying to, or the whole thing. In the first case, you need to go back to the original message for context; in the second, you have wasted copies going back and forth. Come into the middle of a long thread and you may be replying to a discussion that has already moved on or covered the point you want to express. But what if there were only one message, shared in the cloud? Now, your comment on the second paragraph is attached directly to that point in the conversation. There are no redundant copies of portions of the message, as replies are seen in context.

While it is still early days and much of Wave is still being worked on this is what your browser desktop could look like (courtesy of O’Reilly Radar)

In the video I watch with the team behind Wave they might not have wanted to admit that this is a Twitter killer, in fact they went to great lengths to say it was an addition to it, but if I was Twitter; and quite possibly FriendFeed, I would be very nervous at this point. Once Wave steps beyond the developer playground stage I believe we will see a major shift in how the Web is used.

From a bloggers point of view this could one of the best things that happens as from the beginning Wave is being built so that we can include a Wave as part of a post which means any conversation in that wave about the post can happen real-time. This is all a part of the incredibly rich API that is being built in the Wave platform. Again from Tim O’Reilly’s post

The API has been used to build a bunch of cool extensions: Bloggy, a blog client, lets you make a blog post as a wave. When people comment, they join the conversation. Spelly is a spell-checker that uses the entire corpus of the web as its dictionary. Linky is a link-recognition engine that is clever enough to recognize that the link you just entered is a YouTube video, or a link to a photo, and give you the option to embed the target of the link into the wave. There’s even a twitter client – you can tweet into and out of a wave! And of course, buggy, a bug-reporting tool that can also be a participant in a wave.

My one problem with this is that it is currently all browser based and I am not a believer of living and breathing in the browser. What I do hope is that because of this rich API, and hopefully developer environment Google wants to create around Wave, that this could also transform our desktops. that however remains to be seen but damn it almost makes me want to crack out me old developer tools.

Now I don’t know what the timetable is for this to actually become something that we can start using everyday (I’ve signed up for notifications of this) but I can tell you I haven’t felt this excited about something happening on the web as I am about this.

Could this really be the wave of our web future?

How To Survive Change

nicefishfilms.com — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:51:32 +0000

I run with some big dogs. Established writers, media mavericks, pop-culture mavens, political pundits, industry leaders and successful innovators are among those I call my “buddies.”

With a few exceptions, my friends are experiencing seismic shifts in their professional lives. Many of my close associates are going through re-alignments in their professional careers. Each call, email, instant message is a replay of the previous contact. Tales of downsizing, layoffs, funding woes and sudden change are now common among my circle of once mighty acquaintances.

I have no doubt that these individuals will rise again to lofty positions of influence and success. There is a common thread among these people. Extreme talent honed through hard work. They approach life with unfettered zeal and passion. They create solutions through smart thinking. No economic down-turn is without opportunities. I am confident that my friends will find or create those opportunities. What we choose to do during crisis defines our character. Depression doesn’t work. A new plan of attack is needed when searching for that next step in the professional experience.

Surviving change takes action, common sense and uncommon strength. Here are a few tips to make this transitional time less painful.

Read the rest of this post at NiceFishFilms.com

Editors note: this is the first of our new content syndication posts here at The Inquisitr. In agreeance with a number of sites, we’ll be syndicating parts of great posts from their sites here at The Inquisitr. Not every post, every day, but where we think what they have to say you’ll enjoy. We’d encourage you with these posts to click through to complete reading them, and we hope you enjoy the selection.

(image credit)

Obama: The morning after and some last thoughts

Steven Hodson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:47:25 +0000

Did you feel that wave that felt like it was enveloping the world last night?

In the giddy aftermath of Obama’s acceptance speech it felt like as hard as the road forward would be for the United States anything was possible for the first time in a very long time. Now in the light of a fall morning of November I thought it would be interesting to look at what some of the people I read on a regular basis had to say about last night, today and all those tomorrows ahead of us.

The interesting thing is that for all the excitement and reborn hope there was also the knowledge that this isn’t going to be easy. There was the understanding that for all the hope that Obama made us feel we know that there will be failures; or at least missteps, along the way. Hope tempered with realism – what an interesting concept.

Here are some of the more interesting; and heartfelt, thoughts about the Obama victory that I read this morning over coffee.

What a night! Thank you America for giving us something to believe in for the first time in so, so long. Cheers rose up all over the city of New York tonight and socres of people, like these people at Columbus Circle, ran outside to dance in the streets. My whole city – and my country – is smiling. And, even if it turns out to be only for tonight, it seems that, indeed, yes we can!

= B.L. Ochman

I’ve never stayed up late to watch an election. I’ve never donated to a campaign before. I’ve never shed tears of joy when our new president walked on stage for the first time.

All that changed tonight. Godspeed, President Obama.

- Brett Nordquist

I guess that’s why this was bigger for me than I thought it would be. Like everyone else, I am dying for a leader we can believe in and get in line behind and follow. We’ve got one now.

- Fred Wilson

We as a country seem to have regained our sanity.
We’ve put aside fear and cynicism and deceit and we’ve embraced hope and optimism and progress.
America is an amazing country, capable of amazing change.

- moby

I’ve always been a proud American, but today is a great day. Regardless of how the next four years go, it’s such an incredible step in the right direction for healing the ongoing race issues that have divided this country for so long. The month that I was born, riots littered the country, the Civil Rights Act was signed and Martin Luther King was put to rest.

It’s sad that it took 40 years, but it’s still an incredible day in America. It really is the first day in 40 years that this country has had a significant event that pushed racism into the gutter that it belongs. Regardless of what side of the aisle you’re from, it’s a great day to be an American.

- Douglas Karr

Yesterday was a historic day. We can all be proud as Americans. Today, we begin a new future. It’s time to come together. I am ready for a united United States.

- Michael Hyatt

What we witnessed last night and what we’re still feeling the aftershocks of this morning is, in a word, history.
An epochal groundswell that wiped away the old and ushered in the new.
A singular moment that, years from now, will be looked upon as the line that divided the past from the future.
Yesterday, “change” was merely a word; today, it’s something tangible — something you can feel in the air.

- Chez (Deus Ex Malcontent)

I was seriously impressed with what Obama had to say. He left no stone unturned and after he left the stage, I had this feeling of wanting to go out and kick some ass as an American to help get things back in order. Obama had one hell of a speech and it really messed with my emotions.

- Jeffro

Tonight, walking home from a movie, I heard loud cheering from houses along the streets. I peered in and saw the elections on TV, Obama posters on the windows, and knew he won. I made a quick detour to the business school here in Queen’s, and the student lounge was packed with people watching President Obama giving his victory speech. I heard from a friend that earlier in class, laptops all around her were monitoring the presidential ticker counter.

And all this happening in Canada, for a president not even theirs, in a demographic not usually associated with politics.

- Daryl Tay (Canada)

I felt his victory speech was amazing. Obama shows great leadership when he talked about similarities instead of differences. Hope instead of fear. He is not trying to divide but to unite. He will face some of the most difficult problems any president could face. A financial crisis, 8 years of war and neglect of the home country. But somehow he will manage to get the United States back on track, restoring hope to those that lost it during the Bush administration. The evidence is already there. Just look at how he won this election.

- Alexander van Elsas (Netherlands)

So did the United States change last night? Maybe it has but as much as we might like to believe this the fact is that nothing has changed yet. Yes Barak Obama won the election to become the next President of the United States but that doesn’t change the fact that homes are still being foreclosed on, Wall Street is still making us all seasick and men and women are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is true that hope for the American people has been reborn but the real impact of this election won’t hit the U.S.; and the world, until that day in January when Barack Obama puts his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold the American Constitution. That is when the totality of change will really make itself felt and I truly hope that the American people will be able to rise up to the momentous changes they can bring to both their own country and to the world with a leader like Obama.

That hope though is tempered with a realism of human nature and how deeply ingrain with the American psychy some things are. While you may have elected an African American to that high office you are also a country where children can be called n* lovers because they voted for Obama in a mock school vote. You are a country where religious intolerance is at an all time high and where doctors can be killed because of it.

I truly hope that Obama doesn’t become the JFK of our era because I don’t know if the American spirit could survive it now that it has hope. None of us can afford for that candle to be blown out again regardless of where we live.