I can't even begin to explain how many times I've gone on a business trip or a meetup group only to forget my business cards. Randomly, my boss began attaching his contact information in a QR code within his email signature. At first I thought it was kind of a lame conversation starter until the lightbulb went off in my head. What if my iPhone wallpaper was a QR code with my info on it?

Without further adieu, my brand spanking new (21st century) business card.

 

Lost in the whirlwind of launches over the past few days including the iPhone 4, its new operating system iOS4, Salesforce Chatter and Google Voice; a small gaming company's public launch got lost in the mix from the tech blogosphere.  Atmosphir is more than a game, it's a platform for gamers to customize virtually everything including their characters and new levels.  Once a user has created a new level, that user can share the level with the entire community.

It's truly unique gameplay and shows promise that the game won't stale over time.  In comparison, Zelda has 16 titles while Mario has god knows.  What if these two classics allowed you to extend the game, or allowed users to create a bundle of levels that could be brought together to create new stories so the game would never end?  The game manufacturers, like I would expect Atmosphir is doing, could simply enable new features of game play while maintaining the service.

This brings up an interesting thought; What's the point of building something that isn't inclusive of a platform or at least contains a fully open API to build on top of?  Creating software today that doesn't allow strangers the ability to tinker seems like a road to failure.  I can't think of a company that is creating cutting edge stuff that isn't working on a platform.  Yahoo! has BOSS(Build your Own Search Service), Salesforce has Force.com, Microsoft has Azure, Amazon has AWS and Pervasive (the company I work for) is even getting into IaaS or Integration as a Service with our DataCloud2 platform.

It doesn't stop there, smaller companies are also jumping on the bandwagon to extend their niche.  The hottest thing in mobile right now is location, but developers don't have to worry about curating their own location data or features; Simple Geo, Geo API and Location Labs all have platforms with location data and services ready for consumption.  Further proof is what some companies are calling Font as a Service or FaaS.  Fontdeck and Typekit allow web designers access to an encyclopedia of fonts via web services which should help push the adoption of HTML5 and CSS3 further faster.

Here's a video overview of Atmosphir

I often help prospects fix something here or there with an implementation before they buy my software.  When I do, I use a tool called GoToAssist to remote into their system to see and fix issues quickly.  I launch the application which instructs me to tell someone to go to www.fastsupport.com and give them a nine-digit support code.  This is what the customer sees:

The first few times I was asked "What do I put for Customer Name?"  I'd immediately respond with their name wondering how someone found it so difficult to place their name in the box.  After two months of using the product I no longer think the issue lies with the user as this question has been asked all but one time I've used this service.  The field name should say "Your Name" then possibly display a grayed out example "Doug Johnson" in the field itself.

This goes back to my post about "Overcoming the Learning Curve" and why you need to try and understand your customers better so you can support them better.  Don't always assume that you can predict what someone will think or how they will use something.

I used a mobile boarding pass (shown) for the first time today and it was a reminder of the learning curve. My mom is always timid with technology and claims that she "isn't good with technology." My experience today serves as proof that it's not being "good with technology" but rather "brave with technology."

When I checked in for my flight last night I saw a new option for a mobile boarding pass. "About time" I thought and eagerly chose that option, how many others would have done the same vs saying "I don't know how that works so I'm going to go with the standard option." When I got to the TSA agent and showed her my phone, she pointed to some free standing piece of machinery. I took my phone and began to flash the below barcode to various areas on the device that I figured might have been a barcode reader(I was way off). The TSA agent got frustrated with me and started barking orders at me until I got it right.

Needless to say I looked pretty stupid for a bit, but now it's done and I know how to use it. It serves as a reminder to me that I need to always try the cutting edge stuff to stay an early adopter and not be complacent with what I'm used to. I invite others, including my mother to do the same.

One way or another I came upon an article about Twitter via a blog I had never been to before.  Scripting.com is written by an 80's software developer and gives insight into tech subjects from that point of view. As I began to explore his other articles, I found one titled "Microsoft rejection letter, 1987" which piqued my interest.

I learned that Dave had created a piece of desktop presentation software called MORE in the mid 80's that was quite successful as well as very popular to its loyal fanboys.  So successful that Bill Gates offered to purchase the software in 1987 to add to his upcoming office suite but instead deciding to go with a competitor's product which was called PowerPoint.  

Think about that.  Think about what kind of household name PowerPoint is to all of us.  PowerPoint is to presentations as Google is to search.  If a different decision had been made a little over 20 years ago, you could be giving a MORE presentation tomorrow.

But I haven't gotten to the interesting part yet...the real fascinating part to geeks like me is the Rules dialog box from MORE pictured here

This dialog box allows the user to create a 'blueprint' that your presentation must live by.  With it you could tell MORE that all headlines needed to be blue with a bold font size of 14pt.  Or that all bullet points should be indented exactly a half an inch from the relative text it was bulleted from.

Who cares?

Every single person that has designed every single page you have viewed on the internet for the last decade, that's who.  For those who don't know, web pages are broken into two pieces.  HTML(HyperText Markup Language) and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) or content and presentation.  CSS like MORE's Rules dialog box allows web designers to create a blueprint just like an architect will define how the raw materials (whether words or wood) shall be constructed together.  So without CSS, every page you viewed would look like this

The difference is that MORE came out about twelve years before CSS was released in 1998.  Talk about being before your time....

Though perhaps it was this added complexity that made PowerPoint attractive to the brass at Microsoft.  Today, 24 years after MORE was released and 12 years after CSS, most internet users would probably stare blankly at you if you asked them why CSS is important or worse how to write it.  

I StumbledUpon an article about immortal jellyfish and immediately thought about Bruce Sterling's "Visionary in Residence".  He has some short stories (all wacky science fiction of course) about "bio-punks" who make upgrades to their (and their pet's) bodies in a Johnny Mnemonic sort of way.  But, instead of simply being able to store data in your head like Johnny they had some pretty useful alterations.  For example, one of the guys had a pet hog who could eat something, then analyze the ingredients of what was eaten and send the analysis to the owner's handheld.

All this makes me wonder when we will see people experiment with their bodies in this manner.  When will we see a company that specializes in wiring your brain directly to the internet to bypass a computer terminal altogether?  When will there be a separation between human purists and biotech modified humans, and which group will be alienated?

You might think that modifications that drastic are too far out there for anyone to even think about.  Try telling that to this guy, this guy or Kevin Warwick.

I'd like to think we could tap into a plant's ability to capture energy through photosynthesis or a horse's ability to mature into adulthood more quickly coupled with an implant to make all of human knowledge a natural instinct to skip the arduous 20-year schooling process.