The New Water Cooler

I believe that Twitter and other social media have replaced the traditional water cooler as a place to meet and converse.
First, the water cooler has disappeared from the office environment. Second, workers have disappeared from the office landscape. They work from home, coffee shops, telecommute, etc. Technology has also eliminated the need to leave your desk when you are in the office. Except for food and health breaks there isn't a need to leave your cubicle (I've heard they are working on this). The new office is virtual and mobile. This leaves little opportunity for social interaction in the workplace and people seek this in varying degrees.
Try viewing your social media streams during office hours and see if there are a lot of water cooler type conversations. I find this particularly true in the small office and independent consultant arena. The topics tend to be the weather, what I did this weekend, did you hear, my kids, the latest celebrity death, etc.
By the way, I will be posting to this blog on Sunday mornings during the summer. Somehow I have the urge to do other things besides laze around the house on Saturday mornings.

Facebook, An Escape or Not?

I've missed my Saturday morning deadline two weeks in a row, good thing it's not print. It will be a short post today, Father's Day you know.

A casual observation I'd like to share. The more mundane a Facebook status is, the more comments you'll receive. My wife Ruth and I have discussed this several times. Write about your husband's sudden attraction to gardening you get nine comments. Write about transparency in government and get two comments.

Is it because Facebook is an escape and you'd rather ignore the pressing issues and concentrate on the lighter fare? Or perhaps commenting on the serious topics will cause a series of pro and con responses that you'd rather not have to keep up with. Whatever the reason, you just know what will bring a response and what won't. There are very few surprises.

What has been your experience? Please comment. Oh wait, maybe this is too deep.

Will Google Become the New Microsoft? Part Deux

This is a rerun of my 8/27/2005 blog post titled "Will Google Become the New Microsoft?"

Original post with some editing:

I have seen many posts on Google as an operating system recently. Is this where we're headed? Will the infatuation with Google change if it takes over as king of the software world? Will there be an anti-Google sentiment. I'd love to have a single point of reference for all my information, remember Bill Gates' "Information at your Fingertips", but I get nervous about any one company possessing it all.

Watch the video Epic 2014. It is a great, eight minute video on where we've been and some fiction on where the authors feel we might be headed. Remember this was from 2005.

Supporting posts:
Om Malik's post, Google the Ultimate Deflator.
Jason Kottke's post, GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?.
One more story, Google OS by 2010 on osnews.

Google, it's not your father's search engine. What do you think?

Google = search engine. Yes, but since 2005 we have come to rely on it for so much more. YouTube, Google Docs, iGoogle, Google Maps, Picasa and the list goes on. The Google Browser predicted in 2005, it's here and called Chrome. They just announced Google Wave, which is reported to be the solution to the social media nightmare of managing multiple feeds. Is it the EPIC product mentioned in the video?

The fictional struggle between newspapers and the web is today's reality, see AP lawsuit.

I will rerun this post in 2013 and compare the predictions to reality. By the way, you won't be able to read it in a blog since the written word will be dead and everything will be on video. I'll post it from my iPhone 7G using the MyTV application.

Nothing to Report Today

No rambling today, tomorrow is another day. It was a week filled with information from three users groups and a Friday that thought it was Monday. Today was eight hours of training in WPF. Not a typo :). A Microsoft acronym for Windows Presentation Foundation. They had to throw in MVVM and XAML (Pronounced zamal).

Now do you understand why I have nothing to ramble about? Wait, I am rambling. Look for the real post on Sunday morning.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

This past week I actually enjoyed helping my mom with her garden. The fact that it is only 10 x 10 had something to do with it. The other reason is she enjoys nurturing it and watching it grow which warms my heart.

My other garden is my children. The Girl is interning with me two days a week. Right now she's working on Twitter backgrounds with more graphics related tasks to come. It is a joy to share knowledge with her and learn something myself. The Boy and I will be constructing a Rock Band gizmo today. It brightened my day to learn about his project. I get to dig my collection of jacks, cables and circuit boards out of the basement and share my soldering skills with him.

Finally, my bride, the two kids and their significant others had the opportunity to share a nice dinner at Al's Cafe on a beautiful evening topped off with their famous chocolate malts. It does not get any better than this.

Sometimes the simple things in life are the most rewarding.