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January 21, 2006
Useful tools: Endnote
David Weinberger asks for a new tool for taking notes over at Joho. I wrote a lengthy comment, here as a post and a plug for a really useful tool.
I have used the bibliographic database Endnote for 13 years, after starting out with another bibliographic database I no longer remember the name of. I take most of my notes in it. It installs with a link to Word, formats bibliographies, and lets you enter notes, including links to websites and locally stored PDF versions of articles. There are competing products around, but I think Endnote has the biggest market share. There are also open source versions being developed, such as Firefox Scholar.
Endnote is not open source and it is beginning to show some signs of limitations because it is a client-side application only, but I am happy with it. I would have liked to see a more flexible user interface, automatic links to Amazon.com or Google Booksearch, but it does have facilities for importing stuff from online databases, though I for one have never bothered to learn them (I only put in articles and books I read, so entering the bibliographic information is not that onerous.) Endnote is a better reference database than PIM, so a lot of functionality (cross-referencing between notes, for instance) is missing, though intelligent keywording can probably get around that. An excellent feature is the large community of users who have developed many "styles" for academic journals. This means that you can write an article, then format it afterwards into the style the journal wants.
I have more than 2000 books and articles, with notes, in my Endnote database, representing about 18 years of reading and taking notes (such as for this book). This is, to put it mildly, quite a resource for me - and I back it up religiously.
Recommended with the the usual caveats - it is not a web 2.0 product, but it has worked very nicely for me.
Posted by Espen at 10:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 20, 2006
Wolfram at MIT
More good videos from MIT: Stephen Wolfram speaks on his widely discussed and sublimely idiosyncratic tome A new kind of science. Exciting stuff, though I am still only halfway through and need to think carefully about what I hear - the transition from understanding snowflakes as modelled by cellular automata to more abstract examples takes some thinking.
Update two days later: This really is a great video, best absorbed in small increments. The book is fascinating, first from the viewpoint of "Wow!, how could someone spend 10 years of his time doing only this?" (aside from being CEO of a company), but a lot gets answered in the video - Stephen Wolfram is no crank, for one thing, and does not claim to have found the answer to anything. Only a new and very interesting branch of something between formal mathematics and computer (or, at least, computational) science. Makes me want to get Mathematica and start playing with patterns...
The flip side, of course, you can see from reading the reviews at Amazon, which alter between five stars and one, the latter claiming he is taking credit for lots of papers and ideas that others have produced before him. It seems to me that the five stars are by people who are relatively new to the subject, and the ones are by people who have studied some of it - meaning that in a sense, Stephen Wolfram may be the Bill Gates of computational science - not the one to come up with the idea, but certainly the one that managed to pull off the instantiation that made the difference. I guess history will be the judge. I for one found this fun - and until the chips fall down, enjoy the ride...
Side note: My wife, who does knitting and quilting, found the book fascinating because of the many interesting patterns it describes. Which got me thinking about whether it is possible to reprogram a knitting machine to do cellular automata.
Posted by Espen at 10:46 AM | TrackBack
January 19, 2006
hackoff.com on order
Tom Evslin still maintains that he will sign all pre-ordered copies of hackoff.com - so now I have ordered it. Still fun to read in installments, though. I especially like the use of links, graphics and other web paraphernalia in the book - and it is beginning to shape up as a real crime novel (now at chapter 14.4.)Posted by Espen at 9:08 PM | TrackBack
Computer science oldies
<nerd warning = on> Nerd alert! Nerd alert!
Here is the list I chose in ACM's voting over favorite computer science classic:
- Classics in Software Engineering Yourdon, E.
- Common Lisp Steele, G.
- The Elements of Programming Style Kernighan, B. W. and Plauger, P. J.
- Estimating software costs Jones, T. C.
- First draft of a report on the EDVAC Newmann, J. v.
- Human Problem Solving Newell, A.
- Mindstorms Papert, S.
- Operating Systems Madnick, S. E. and Donovan, J. J.
- Perceptrons (Minsky, I suppose)
- The REXX language: a practical approach to programming Cowlishaw, M. F.
- SIMULA 67 common base language, (Norwegian Computing Center. Publication) Dahl, O.
- Sketchpad Sutherland, I. E.
- Smalltalk-80: bits of history, words of advice G. Krasner, Ed.
- Smalltalk-80: the interactive programming environment Goldberg, A.
- Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation Goldberg, A. and Robson, D.
- Software creativity Glass, R. L.
- Software psychology Shneiderman, B.
- Structured Programming Dahl, O. J.
- Systems Programming Donovan, J. J.
- Understanding Natural Language Winograd, T.
The rules for candidates are pretty peculiar - the book has to be out of print, for example. One book I missed was Winograd, T. and F. Flores (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition, but perhaps it is still in print. I would also have liked to see Eames, C. and R. Eames (1990). A Computer Perspective, though that is more of a computer history book. Not to mention a book I know is out of print, namely Montgomery Phister's (1979) Data Processing Technology and Economics, a great overview of everything you could wish for of economic and technical data on computers from 1955 to 1978, published by Digital.
It seems I will have to confess to a certain managerial bent, as well as shameless promotion of OO and Norwegians....
</nerd warning=off>
Ahhh, that felt good. My sincere apologies....
PS: Also Sethi, R. (1989). Programming Languages; Concepts and Constructs. The dragon book. Sorry about that.
Posted by Espen at 8:08 PM | TrackBack
January 18, 2006
Searching and finding - hard to get into
I am currently reading two books on what can only be described as Web 2.0: John Batelle's The Search and Peter Morville's Ambient Findability. I don't know why (maybe just my own overdosing on reading after starting my sabbatical), but I am finding both hard to get into.
The Search is better written - it is a mix of a corporate biography and a discussion of how search capability changes society. The language is tight - though sometimes cute, as in the phrase "the database of intentions" about Google clickstreams and archived query terms - and there is a thread (roughly chronological) through the book that allows most people who have been online for a while to nod and agree on almost any page. John Batelle has an excellent blog and plenty of scars from the dot-com boom and bust (I always liked Industry Standard and wrote a column for the Norwegian version, Business Standard, for a few years, so I am very favorably disposed), and his competence as a writer shows. The book reads like a long Wired report, but better structured, marginally below average in use of buzzwords and John has the right industry connections to pull it off.
Ambient Findability looks at search from the other side of the coin - how do you make yourself findable in a world where search, rather than categorization, is the preferred user interface? For one thing, you have to make your whole web site findable, make it accessible and meaningful from all entry points. Morville fills the book up with drawings and pictures on almost every page, comes off as a widely read person, but I am still looking for a thorough expansion of the central message - or at least some decent and deep speculation on personal and organizational consequences. It is more a book popularizing information science than a book that wants to tell a story, and it shows.
While both books are well worth the read if you are relatively new to the Internet, I was a little disappointed in the lack of new ideas - they are clever, but once you accept that the marginal cost of processing, storage and communciations bandwidth approaches zero, the conclusions kind of give themselves. Perhaps I am tired - actually, I am - perhaps I am unfairly critical after having treated myself to The Blank Slate, The World is Flat and Collapse, but these books, while both worthwhile, have failed to "wow" me.
Apologies. I will make a more determined re-entry once I wake up.
Posted by Espen at 6:47 PM | TrackBack
January 17, 2006
And the wall came down
I am putting together material for a discussion of Tom Friedman's "flatteners", including the fall of the Berlin wall, and found this excellent personal account, by Andreas Ramos, of what happened. I didn't get to see this myself, but my parents went to Berlin for New Year's 1989 and told stories of thousands of people - some in suit and tie - chipping down the wall by hand. And I remember a German systems developer we had working for us, who sat all day by the radio with tears streaming down his cheeks.
What a day, what a moment.
Posted by Espen at 9:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 16, 2006
Free us from the European version...
Mike over at Techdirt makes the point that it is time European politicians stop talking about creating the European version of MIT or Google or whatever and instead start to think about making the next version of something. Hard not to agree. Then again, the label "European" is mostly stuck on projects to make them fundable by the EU - not because they are European in any specific sense aside from name.
Posted by Espen at 11:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 11, 2006
A severe case of rhythmia
This young man, Tony Royster jr., is simply amazing. I found it very hard to sit still here.Posted by Espen at 11:26 AM | TrackBack
January 7, 2006
When the good technology loses
The following is a very quick translation of an op-ed I wrote for Aftenposten, Norway's largest serious newspaper. The occasion is that Clayton Christensen is coming to speak here on January 24, and I am emceeing the event. The argument shouldn't be news to anyone (I hope), but the examples may be. The companies are all Norwegian, so forgive me if you don't get the reference (Norsk Data, for instance, was a minicomputer company much like Prime, Digital or Data General, and lost out to PCs much like they did.)When the Good Technology Loses
Espen Andersen, January 2006
(published in Aftenposten)
What does the videoconferencing company Tandberg, the telecommunications provider Telenor and the record company EMI have in common? They all face new competitors who make products worse than their own, products their best customers don’t want, and which they couldn’t make money on if they started making them. And these new competitors may threaten their future existence.
Tandberg might be the best example of the three at this point: The company makes excellent products for all kinds of video conferences, with large and bright screens, reliable connections and advanced features. The company has an international sales organization and invests heavily in continued development of their technology. I have used their products for years myself, to do cross-Atlantic teaching, and it works admirably well.
Half a year ago, I tried some new technology: A free program downloaded from the Internet, and a little ball camera with a microphone to connect to my laptop. It didn’t work as well as Tandberg’s equipment – the picture was choppy and slow, and the sound had skips and occasionally echoes. But it worked well enough for a personal conference. The price was not thousands of dollars, as with Tandberg’s equipment, but about $80. I bought this new equipment not from a helpful sales person with specific knowledge, but in a plastic package from a self-service shelf. In a supermarket.
To Tandberg, these new competitors aren’t even worth the name. They make awful technology compared to Tandberg’s. Tandberg’s best customers – international companies who see videoconferencing as an alternative to expensive and time-consuming air travel – does not want this cheap and bad technology. To them, the quality of the videoconference experience itself – not the fact that it is possible – is what matters. And should Tandberg decide to go for the new technology, they would make less money, even if they capture a dominant market share.
To Tandberg, the choice seems simple: Give the customers what they want, make excellent products, and serve a profitable and still growing market. But Tandberg’s stock price has fallen lately, and the CEO has been changed. The Chairman of the Board rejects questions about the new competition, saying that there will still be a market for trucks even though everyone can by a moped. And so far, he has been right.
Technology marches on, however. Internet gets faster, the small digital cameras better, computers more powerful, and software easier to use and with more functionality. In a year, the supermarket cameras will be at least twice as good, and videoconferencing on the home computer sharper and faster. If Tandberg continues like before, they will respond to this competition by creating even better products for their best customers – and gradually start losing their not so attractive customers to cheaper, inferior technology. The company risks marginalization because they make good products for good customers and make good money. They risk losing not despite, but because they do things right.
Tandberg is not alone in having this challenge. Telenor is challenged by IP telephony, EMI and other record companies by music distribution on the Internet. Newspapers are beginning to notice that debates, news distribution and eventually ad revenues are migrating to Internet’s blog aggregators and discussion forums. And Norwegian banks have for a number of years been challenged by the Internet bank Skandiabanken, whose prices are lower than traditional banks, but who has no physical facilities – and, in some dimensions, worse service.
The description of this process – the theory of ”disruptive innovations”, i.e, innovations that makes a company’s current business model irrelevant – is created by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. The Economist has characterized this theory as one of the few really good ideas to come out of the nineties. Since Christensen (who will be speaking in Oslo on January 24, 2006) published his seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997, he has continued researching how this phenomenon comes up – and how companies should react to it. His excellent research and powerful theories have turned him into a guru both to academics and practitioners, and have deeply influenced strategy for both for those companies threatened by and threatening with new, disruptive technology.
So, what should a company such as Tandberg do? One alternative is to continue as before, betting that a small but very quality-conscious customer segment will remain. That was the strategy of the minicomputer company Norsk Data, and that company is not around any more. The company can try to keep the new technology out by trying to create barriers to entry, such as collaboration with competitors and lobbying politicians for protection. This is what the record companies do – and what the publishing industry soon will be doing. It works for a while, until the protection is seen as against society’s interests and removed.
Another alternative is to create a subsidiary that pursues the new technology – in other words, to out-compete oneself before someone else does. This seems to be the strategy of the telephone companies: Telenor is now offering ”broadband telephony,” for instance. It can be a great strategy, but may run into internal obstacles because knowledge, processes and, not least, values argue against it. Which product- or market manager would want to pursue less good customers with worse products? Just as Norwegian banks, who overprice their Internet services, trust their customers to change banks slowly, and hope that Skandiabanken will not be able to upgrade its net services and then encroach on their more profitable segments.
A fourth alternative, perhaps the one with the most likelihood of success in Tandberg’s case, is to move the company’s main activity to other parts of the value chain. Clayton Christensen uses a sports metaphor here, and talks about trying to get not to where the ball is, but where it will be. When a product or service is good enough, customers will focus on price and responsiveness rather than functionality, and production moves to the lowest cost provider. Product profitability remains only where there is still room for performance or functional improvement. Instead of making video conferencing products, Tandberg can move closer to the customer, and start to arrange video conferences. Or they can move backwards, concentrating on creating technology – better compression algorithms, for instance – which can be licensed or sold to those that continue to make the products.
If a company wants to survive a disruptive innovation, it must be able to tolerate a short-term decrease in profits and market share to create the foundation for long-term profitability. This requires strong management who are not forced to manage solely to quarterly results. Management also needs to convince or force the company’s producers – be they technologists, journalists, or bankers – to make products or services that can meet the new competitors on their own turf, even though the products may not be as good, in the traditional sense. When the new way of doing things becomes as good as the old way, all the customers will move over. At that point, the company better be there as well.
Nothing is as practical as good theory. The best technology rarely wins, but thanks to Clayton Christensen and his theories we know a little more about why. What remains to be seen is to what extent companies (such as Tandberg and Telenor) and industries (such as the record companies, the publishers and the newspapers) can turn the theories’ prescriptions into practice.
Posted by Espen at 9:00 AM | TrackBack
January 6, 2006
Finally, a set of predictions I like
Predictions is dime-a-dozen these days - Ed Felten offers up a set of predictions I really like. So rather than create my own, I will endorse this list and be done with it....
PS: My favorite: The return of push technology. Just the thing for my cellphone, content someone thinks I might like....