Overflow

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Throughout my adult life, I have been thinking up various applications for technology.  I can remember sitting in a bar called Peabody’s in Binghamton NY discussing the possibility of inventing vending machines that would be placed in college dorms to dispense soft-serve ice cream cones.

That concept never really took off, but that kind of thought process has remained a constant for me.

Most of the ideas lose some steam and fade away, but some developments actually take root and turn into something functional.  Presently, I’m not considering turning my attention to bringing something else to life, it’s more like I am making a wish list and expecting today’s great innovators to come along and meet my demands.

I am thinking about my IPhone and the amazing applications that are being developed.  There is a great two part series rundown of IPhone applications at Todd Crawford’s blog called Todd Talks.  I recommend looking over his advice and choosing the most appropriate applications for your needs.

The application that I want to see developed for my IPhone corresponds with my growing frustration whenever visiting medical treatment facilities.  There is great debate about letting a company like Google store your personal medical records, prescriptions, allergies and all pertinent information in their vast databases for access via ubiquitous web applications.  This certainly raises serious concerns over patient privacy and many health care industry regulations would have to be amended to prevent unlawful searches.

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I was sitting in the rocking chair during the Labor Day holiday contemplating the future for my young daughters … no, not the rocking chair in the grandpa kind of way, but the rocking chair as the only thing that is helping soothe little Lily at the moment!

Reviewing the conversation during the past week with Sam Harrelson and others regarding the significance of Identi.ca and other microblogging formats, I couldn’t help but wonder about the very long term.  I can see how federated communication platforms will be applied in the near term but I started wondering about the scenario when my daughters are teenagers and will not want good ole’ Dad subscribing to their posts.

There are numerous accounts in the media demonstrating that among the current 100 million users of Facebook, friending between parents and children takes place, for good or bad depending on your point of view.  Compartmentalizing through the Privacy Controls is probably the best approach to keeping some things away from helicopter parents on Facebook.

But, that’s not really the point that I was pondering.  I’m more interested in the whole closed universe versus open platforms.  If Twitter survives as the dominant micro-blogging platform and it remains THE place to be .. how are fathers schooled in Social Media practices and daughters Twittering their friends about the best parties supposed to exist on the same platform?



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WOW, we live in an amazing time in the development of internet tools .. and communication in general. I can’t wait to implement these game changing, community systems that are right now in the early stages of development.

I’ve detailed the enormous potential of using Twitter in brand building, and was very disappointed when the Track functionality was shelved (for business or technical reasons we don’t know) earlier this summer. However, while we were all lamenting the discontinuance of service, the Gillmor Gang podcast of July 21 included guests Evan Prodromou of Identica and Loic Le Meur of Seesmic/Thwirl. I listened to the discussion led by Steve Gillmor about federated communication via microblogging services such as Identica, and it immediately peaked my interest! I set up my account that day.

They discussed many exciting aspects of Identica including the fact that tracking would be available with the platform, plus many more features that would be built by the open source community itself … however, the most powerful element they discussed was the distribution of the Laconica platform (Identica is built on it) to a wide variety of entities.  Evan can envision the ability to add micro-blogging to a community as simply as installing a Wordpress blog is today.

I can envision so many businesses and organizations that would be able to take advantage of this kind of power. Evan’s objective is to get micro-blogging to the level of ubiquity as email is today. Keep in mind that email used to be a silo’d communication tool where you could only send messages to others within your same provider. Did you have a Compuserve or a Prodigy account?  We need to get away from the silo’d limitations of our current micro-blogging platforms.



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