Because of this, I’ve spent the last 3 days moving out of my apartment. I’ve been largely offline with minimum interneting (as my gf would say) and it’s been kind of nice. Pretty much all of my work involves being online and starring at a screen and I think sometimes its good to close the laptop and get out and work…you know manual labor. I’ve spend much of my time last few days out working in the snow and something about working in the cold really makes me feel like a man. Can anyone relate?

*click on the pic to watch live

This afternoon I watch the BearHug Camp hosted by Steve Gillmor.  The event was focused on the progress of the micro-blogging space. One of the main topics of conversation was around live search of the Twitter data. Currently there is nothing that is “real time” and for political purposes among others this service is much desired.

Evan, Biz, and Alex from Twitter came just before lunch and they really took a lot of heat. Many of the comments online stated that it seemed that Steve set this group up to “gang” up on the Twitter crew. My perception is that this is probably true. The guys were put on the spot big time about how they will listen to the developer community going forward. Alex’s response was that his email is an open door for suggestions, comments, concerns (alex@twitter.com).

In attendance from my point of view (online) was Loic Lemeur (Seesmic), Leo Laporte (TwiT Army) who livestreamed the event, Dave Winer (Scripting.com), Ari Steinberg (Facebook), Kevin Marks (Google Open Social), Angus Logan (Microsoft), identi.ca guys, among a group of developers in their respective fields. There was a lot of talk around XMPP becoming just as common as HTTP so that the web can be much more LIVE!

My take-aways: This event was interesting but the stubbornness of Steve Gillmor and the politically motivated conversations took away from the event. The best part of the event that I enjoyed the most was the time that Evan, Biz, and Alex were there. The conversation although tough for them was the most focused that it had been all day. I see a huge push for the web to become more and more “live”. The web used to be static, now it’s updated, next it will be live!

“Viewfinder” is a novel method for users to spatially situate, or “find the pose,” of their photographs, and then to view these photographs, along with others, as perfectly aligned overlays in a 3D world model such as Google Earth. Our objective is to provide a straightforward procedure for geo-locating photos of any kind, and our approach is to engage a community of users for a certain amount of human help. We specify that a 10-year-old should be able to find the pose of a photo in less than a minute, and we are convinced that this goal is achievable. While we are not entirely there yet, we are getting closer. This is our progress report.

April 3, 2008

People wonder why they’re not performing well at work, Peter Berner, author of Career Moments would tell you, “You’re in the wrong job!” Somebody can do a job without actually doing anything, but nobody can do work without doing anything. If you find a career or work that you enjoy it can become your life and that is OK! Believe it or not you don’t actually have to hate your job.

So, forget trying to balance your work and your life. Let your work become a part of your life and something you enjoy. Enjoy your life. I guarantee that when you find work that becomes your life and that is enjoyable the rewards will be exponential. The largest of those rewards may even be financial rewards which can also improve other aspects of your life. All of a sudden when you begin to enjoy your work the need to balance is gone.

Follow-up post 4/2/08:

This is this weeks Career Moment from Peter Berner. I thought it applied well to the work life balance struggle that many people face.

GETTING THE JOB YOU LOVE
People think that finding a job you truly love requires a sort of divine revelation where one day the master plan for our career fulfillment is revealed to us. That rarely happens. No, for most of us the work of getting to a job that you love is a long, slow process of exploration, expectation, and inspiration. It requires that one listen to the urges and passions that call them to do certain types of things. It demands that we discover what gives us pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and purpose beyond the paycheck that meets our daily needs. Getting to the job you love is often more about the journey itself than the destination. As long as you are moving in the direction of your dreams you are on the right path. A life spent getting closer to what you love to do, even if you never get all the way there, will always beat a life of wondering what it would have been like to try.
Take great care of yourself- and your career! Peter Berner

This struggle also ties back to the motivation behind my other blog ActionsTalk. Often times I find myself discussing ideas, learning how to implement new ideas, and working to further develop those ideas but not as often do I find myself acting on those ideas. Maybe action is the significantly more important piece.

The example that comes most easily to mind is a web app. I always seem to have great ideas around new web solutions for all kinds of different life and business problems but I much less (almost never) find myself trying to develop (in the coding sense not the growth sense) these new ideas/applications. In this scenario I often question if I’m spending my time wisely. Just because I’ve read about hundreds of start-ups, tested hundreds of start-ups tools and apps, and could easily tell you all the do’s and the do not’s of starting a start up company doesn’t mean I’m any closer to starting one.

Paul Graham’s conclusion in the article was disturbing in that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand many of the how’s and what’s of the start-up process such as how to obtain funding, how do I choose a language and what are the capabilities of that language, and what are the most profitable idea industries. I haven’t spend as much of my time learning the languages, writing the code or actually “creating” anything. Paul’s contention is that you don’t need to know “business” to succeed in this process. You don’t need to know the process before you dive in. Well I’ve been spending much of my time on understanding and learning the process. If Paul is right, then that’s scary.

Maybe it’s time I stopped worrying about the start up industry. Maybe it is time that I pick up that PHP/MySQL book by my bed that’s practically unopened and begin to dive into the doing, the coding, the ever so important creation phase of this process. The learning will not stop it will just change. Now I believe the learning will be more applicable and a bit less theoretical.

Anyone who has gone through the process of transitioning from “reading about” to “doing”, I would love to hear your feedback on the experience and what conclusions you drew on Paul Graham’s theory.

The Nokia Research Center is working with the Cambriage Nanoscience Centre to develop nanoscience technologies that will bridge the latest and greatest in emerging technologies with the ability to benefit the end user. The idea behind this is (I know I say this a lot) absolutely market changing. This will change the word “product” forever. This technology allows the end user to combine many products in one. From watch, to clothing, to cell phone, to food tester, to health/bacteria scanner, and so on, this design/concept has the ability to do, it would seem, almost anything!

Here are some of the other many benefits of the technology:

• Newly-enabled flexible and transparent materials blend more seamlessly with the way we live
• Devices become self-cleaning and self-preserving
• Transparent electronics offering an entirely new aesthetic dimension
• Built-in solar absorption might charge a device, whilst batteries become smaller, longer lasting and faster to charge
• Integrated sensors might allow us to learn more about the environment around us, empowering us to make better choices

See some other pics.

This movie is a bit long but it will show (with drawings) some of the capabilities of these technology applied to products that will change the end-user (US!) ‘s life. This will truly blow you away…

click to play

I apologize for the feeling that ActionsTalk has been very Gizmodo’esk’ but I’ve recently been super excited about new technologies that I’ve been exposed to. Enjoy.

Reading is the only way to get enough experience in one life time.  A few months ago I read A Long Way Gone – memoirs of a boy soldier  by Ismael Beah and it is one of those books that really makes you thankful for the life you’ve had.  Whether you were raised in upper, middle, or lower class you probably had a better childhood that Ismael. He retells the stories of being separated from his family at the age of 9 and fleeing the attacks of rebels at the age of 12.  He fought for the government army and describes the experiences of being totally drugged and committing acts of violence that he never thought possible.  Eventually he was set free to a UNICEF rehab center and was put into contact with his uncle’s family.  He describes the process of re-entering society and trying to deal with the horrible memories of war.

A Long Way Gone  is a story of hope and encouragement. Ismael overcomes huge challenges and shows the journey to hell and back.  I highly recommend reading this book for a change of perspective on you upbringing. It will  make you feel lucky.