Happy New Year! Let the learning begin

To my faithful readers I just want to say: Happy New Year! And if you're a first time reader: Welcome, and Happy New Year to you too, and to your friends and family, and to the whole wide world. Let's make this the year we crank it up to 11, all across the board.

But Stephen, it's February already! Yes, I know, and there's a reason for that: I've been busy. And if you have ever worked for a software startup, like Google when it was in a garage, or The Facebook when it was in a dorm room, you'll know how it goes. There are days, even weeks, when it's all-hands-on-deck and the work is closer to 7x24 than 9-5. Well, January was a bit like that at Monetate, the rapidly expanding SaaS marketing company for which I am Evangelist and possibly Senior Writer (some might say senior writer, just because I do a lot of the writing and I'm the oldest person in the company--although that doesn't stop me tweeting and Facebooking my blog posts into major traffic drivers for the company website).

Anyway back to the happy part of the New Year thing. I actually think 2011 has a lot of potential to be a better year than 2010, although some of that sentiment arises from the fact there was a lot not to like about 2010, from the earthquake in Haiti to the BP oil spill, and many other natural and man-made disasters in between. On the other hand, we humans learned a lot of new things in 2010 that could help us understand the world a little better in 2011. Like how to rescue people from a mile below the ground. And the fact that homo sapiens has more genetic cousins than we previously thought (welcome Denisovans).

Speaking of genetics, and me, I embarked on a voyage of self-discovery in 2010 that should reveal some interesting facts in 2011. As I described in my December 20th post last year, I have submitted a DNA sample to 23andMe, the company that is pioneering direct-to-consumer genetic tests. Any day now I should be getting the results, which include medical and genealogical data.

I plan to share some of that information, and the experience of getting that information, here on the blog. (If it turns out I am a carrier for hemochromatosis I will be writing about that over on Celtic Curse.) So call it an experiment in transparency, or an exploration of the boundaries of personal privacy, I think it's a useful way to help others think about this aspect of themselves and their society.

As some of you know, I have written a lot about privacy in the past, including a book and a bunch of articles, lectures, and so on. I recognized a long time ago that some people, myself included, are comfortable sharing quite a lot of information about themselves, but others are not. So one's own feeling about privacy cannot be the basis for privacy policies; a fundamental principle of privacy must be respect for the privacy concerns of people less comfortable with sharing information than oneself.

By sharing my gene test results I am not saying we should all hang out our genes in public. My decision to share parts of my genetic profile is a personal one, but hopefully one that will prove helpful to others.

2011 could be a very interesting year!

Furst Last Thing: Paris, spies, women, and an education, what more could you want?

What's the secret to surviving the long dark nights of Winter? I'm not sure I know the answer; they seem to be getting harder to survive, but I'm fairly certain good fiction has a role to play. So I thought I would share what I've been reading lately: the Alan Furst Night Soldier novels. And I'm loving every precious minute. I am up to Blood of Victory which is #7 of 11. Here's the current list:

1. Night Soldiers (1988)
2. Dark Star (1991)
3. The Polish Officer (1995)
4. The World at Night (1996)
5. Red Gold (1999)
6. Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
7. Blood of Victory (2003)
8. Dark Voyage (2004)
9. The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
10. The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
11. Spies of the Balkans (2010)

Of course, I'm hoping that #12 appears before I finish reading Spies of the Balkans. Bear in mind that these days I only allow myself fiction reading when on vacation and last thing at night (the rest of my reading is centered around my day job plus figuring a way out from under all the crushing financial pressures--so fiction reading time is tight and no, there is no vacation).

Which is why I can so heartily recommend Alan Furst's novels: they are as dependable as heck. Okay, so dependable may not be the first word that comes to mind when you think of great fiction. But to me, dependability is critical. I don't want to be lying there on the warm sandy beach of incoming slumber and get jerked out of my reverie by the cold splash of a clumsy sentence, the rude slap of an awkward description, a broken turn of phrase or shard of erroneous data that breaks my reverie.

Now, I'm all in favor in plot twists or the abrupt presentation of uncomfortable realities, just don't make me have to scratch my head figuring out what you're on about. Furst's genius is to unfold his complex tales of anguish and espionage, amour and zeitgeist, without tying the reader in knots. And given the miliuex of these novels this is no mean feat. For a start, they are not set in English speaking countries. Heck, many of the countries in which they are set don't even exist these days; and as the novels unfold we sometimes learn, or are reminded, why these places are no more.

Although I am a big believer in the instructive power of history, historical fiction has never been my favorite genre, possibly because so few writers get it right. I don't think you can get it more right than Furst. And write now he's the last thing I read before I fall asleep.

FCC Eyes Reducing Barriers to Broadband Buildout

FCC Eyes Reducing Barriers to Broadband Buildout:

"Can't come soon enough for the narrowband wastelands and rural notspots."

The case for rural broadband used to be about the enormous benefits it can bring to rural communities. Now it is as much about halting the decline of those communities. The country as a whole is driven increasingly by broadband. Today, when a community lacks access to broadband it is outside mainstream America. Not only that, lack of broadband is pushing communities toward a downward spiral in property values from which it will be increasingly difficult for them to recover.

Herefordshire "aspires" to receive medieval boost to broadband

Genius idea: steeple-net wireless from church to church. Like silo-net in US. Wonder if any rural villages in US are trying this.

BBC News - Herefordshire to receive medieval boost to broadband

UK village installs own high speed broadband

Happy New Year!

In 2011 this could be the way to go for many small towns in America. Sounds like they put a DSL enabling switch in the village (getting a fiber feed from British Telecomm) and then were able to serve the local community with DSL.

BBC News - Rutland village installs own high speed broadband.

Bear in mind that English villages tend to be more densely packed than rural towns in America, but still worth investigating since the phone wiring is already in place.

Ross Noble: Ad Lib Improv Standup as Art

UK comedian Ross Noble demonstrates his amazing ability to create hilarious content out of thin air. Truly a gift. And a great way to cheer up your day.

Twitter's New Interface Still Has Issues (API Pop-Up Box Asks Me to Log In)

So, if I was running a social media service like Twitter, one which faces stiff competition, I would place a priority on fixing bugs. After all, if there are other places where people can share what is going on in their lives without bugs, people will tend to share there instead. Which is why it makes no sense to me that Twitter has had a known bug in its new web interface for about a year now.

This bug randomly pops up a dialog box asking for User Name and Password. If that wasn't bad enough, the box seizes focus and suddenly appears over the top of another browser window, which is annoying to say the least. However, that's not quite as annoying as the statement on the Twitter site saying "We are still in the preliminary stage of identifying the causes of this problem."

Great! Six months or more of complaints and you're still in the preliminary stage of finding out what the problem is? What other company gets to treat its customers like this? As a CISSP the headline statement that "Your account is not being phished/compromised" is particularly worrying. I mean a. How do you know? b. What a great scam. Here's how a bad actor intent on stealing user names and passwords could proceed: Create a phishing box that looks like the one that Twitter claims is not a scam. People Google the problem and get assurance from Twitter that this is not a scam, and the scam cheerfully carries on.

For about 15 minutes some 15 days ago I thought the bug was fixed, but n-o-o-o it came back, and it is ugly. It makes the new interface impossible for me to use in Firefox. I'm not going to switch browsers just to use the new interface. It should work in Firefox, which has more users than Twitter. So I am still using the old version of Twitter, which is not a huge inconvenience, but now Twitter has started telling me "You’re using an older version of Twitter that won’t be around for much longer." 

Great! Who would have thought this was a good business plan: Introduce a new version, discover and document bugs, fail to fix them, then make people use the new version. Just in case you think this is me being dumb or curmudgeonly, check out this page where Twitter cheerfully documents the bug as though it was of little concern, and more than 100 people describe their frustration with this ongoing problem.

I was going to supply my own comment but Twitter was over capacity last time I tried. IMHO this is not a sustainable business model, unless the point is to drive Twitter traffic to other interfaces or other social media services such as Facebook (which has never told me it is over capacity and has, despite an awkward interface, relatively few bugs).