Software Soapbox

Charlie Wilson RIP

via Yahoo! News.

"As the world now knows, his efforts and exploits helped repel an invader, liberate a people, and bring the Cold War to a close. After the Soviets left, Charlie kept fighting for the Afghan people and warned against abandoning that traumatized country to its fate — a warning we should have heeded then, and should remember today,"

J.D. Salinger RIP

via Yahoo! News.

In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home.

RIP Miep Gies

via Yahoo! News.

Miep Gies, who helped the teenage diarist's family hide from the Nazis, has died. She was 100. The Miep Gies Web site said the woman who rescued Anne Frank's diary after the family was arrested in 1944, died after a short illness Monday.

Busy Week! Obama and Lotusphere!

In December and early January I was in Asia, and no matter where we were, even in little backwater villages, when locals heard we were from the USA, EVERYONE had the same response:

USA!  OBAMA! 

Looking forward to the next 8 years.  It's much more fun than looking back.

Interesting well-researched international perspective on the inauguration here.

Other than that, Many of my colleagues and friends are at Lotusphere, and again, I am not.

RIP, A&B Sound

I have many fond memories of the A&B Sound store in Vancouver on Seymour.  It was usually my first stop in Vancouver when I visited, and prices and selection were always amazing, especially the jazz and world music sections hidden upstairs.  With the new market for music, it's not surprising that it's gone, but it will be missed!

Retail icon A&B Sound out of business — quietly.

The quiet end of what was once Western Canada's largest music retailer had been anticipated since mid-August, when the company closed its landmark Seymour Street store. At its height, A&B had 21 locations; when it went under, it was down to three.

Lotusphere is this week!

Good to see Lotusphere going strong again!

Sandra Marcus is dancing in front of me!  Is this a conference or a party?!?!

A-List bloggers discover that they (too) can be erased!

Good lesson to learn, I guess.  Just not sure why it took them so long.

Anyone remember Scoble's buddy Dave Winer shutting down Weblogs.com in 2004?  3000 Blogs shut down in seconds.  That was a good lesson on what can happen to your data when you rely too much on a free service.  Anyone besides me see some irony here?

We deal with stuff like this in my job all the time.  Even worse is the Web 2.0 data future.  When you silo data like this, how do you tell different versions of the same data from different places collected at different times apart?  How can you keep them in sync when it serves the needs of the Web 2.0 companies to keep each site from communicating? 

My kindaboss Jeff Jonas has a good post on this and a good solution - data tethering.  Not sure it would ever work with Web 2.0, where data is intentionally insulated and you can get erased for trying to keep data in sync between sites.

The bottom line: when you trust your data to the care of a third party, read up on what you can and can't do with the data you share, and prepare for unintended consequences....

Catching up on the blogs...

Wow, it's easy to get out of the habit of not posting to your blog.....After staying offline on vacation and getting a new gig at IBM, I just haven't had the time....

I'm still getting plenty of hits, though....I posted something a while back on the iPhone dissected, which I titled Applegeek Porn.  Since then my hits are way up...mostly for guys looking for porn for the iphone (and being disappointed by my post, I'm sure...).  I assume it's guys, anyway....seems to be a thriving market there!

Anyone who sent email to brianbenz.com: please resend....

A few weeks ago, while I was on vacation, spammers abused my brianbenz.com domain, and I received about 8000 "undeliverable email" messages in my brianbenz.com inbox. 

I didn't have time to sort through the mess for real messages, so if you sent me something in the last 3-4 weeks and had no response, that's why......I've had to delete all the messages, so please resend.

Back! Dodged Hurricane Dean, made it home....

No, Hurricane Dean didn't hit Aruba though it looked like it could last Wednesday.....Instead, it threw a curve ball to the right over Jamaica, St Lucia, Antigua and a few others, then left again after Aruba, back on the track it was on Wednesday, into the Yucatan.....We got off easy.  All we got was lots of rain and a sudden pestilence of flies (dormant bug eggs that sat waiting for big rains in the relatively arid Aruban landscape came to life all at once...). And some pretty rough seas.  The resort beaches were closed and Orangestad sidewalks were flooded.  Luckily we were staying far from both places, in Malmok....And it was fun flying over the hurricane back to Miami on Sunday - just a little rough!

Pics and Videos to come - watch this spot!