Sox Fan For President

As it turns out, Barack Obama is a White Sox fan. We're hoping he can overcome anti-ChiSox bigotry to become the highest ranking Pale Hose fan in American History.

Want proof of his support? Check this out:



You gotta love it!

Video Stars

Fully equipped with a face made for radio, I'm not really a video kind of guy. Nevertheless, I've recently done a couple of video related projects.

First, I moderated a Webcast for bMighty.com. It's about Mobility For Small and Midsize Companies. You will have to register -- feel free to say you own a company with 75 employees.

Second, I worked with my son Grant to create some cool -- if tech-y -- videos posted on a new site CMP built for Microsoft. The site is WeWantToKnow.net and you you'll need to scroll down the video playlist on the right. Our Genius Children, New Ways To Play Old Games, and Windows-as-Mac are all videos I shot of Grant.

bMighty.com Is Live!

Well, it's time to bMighty! The project I've been working on non-stop for the past few months has finally gone live. You can see it at bMighty.com. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

There's even a blog there, where I'm actually blogging. Here's a link to my section. It's the next best thing to blogging here at The Freditor.

The difference is, they pay me!

Coming Soon: bMighty.com

OK, it's no longer a secret, so let me tell you 'bout my new project, due to launch later this summer.

It's called bMighty.com: IT Power for small and mid-sized business. Part of CMP's TechWeb Network, it's all about presenting technology solutions for small and mid-sized companies.

Right now all that's there is a sign up field for our email newsletters and our cool new logo:




If you're interested, go ahead and enter your email address and we'll keep you up do date on what we're doing.

In the meantime, just remember to bMIGHTY!

The Freditor Takes A Break

Sad to say, but I've got to put this blog on hiatus. It's been really fun doing it, but I've taken a new position back at CMP, and for the time being I'm likely to be waaayyy too busy to give this thing the attention it deserves.

When my new project is ready to go, I'll be linking to it from here, but in the meantime you can check out Small Biz Resource.

Thanks for reading, and stay in touch!

Radio Shack = The End Of Retail?

These days, it seems like the humorists are smarter than the analysts. Beyond The Daily Show's nightly truth-telling, The Onion has a unique ability to continually cut to the heart of the matter.

This time, they nail the odd and utter uselessness of Radio Shack. But this brilliant slice of satire does more than skewer radio shack. It accurately implies the increasing irrelevance of many brick-and-mortar retail chains in the age of the Internet.

As The Onion puts it:

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

You could say something similar about The Gap, Best Buy, Macy's, and just about any big retail chain. I mean, unless it's groceries you need right away, a unique personalized boutique, or some fancy-pants "shopping experience," actual stores increasingly feel like an over-priced, under-inventoried backwater.

Insurance Technology Is No Accident

I got rear-ended on the freeway last week.

Don't worry, no one seems to be hurt. But my rear bumper got messed up, and the guy who hit me messed up his car's grill pretty well.

The other thing that struck me, though, is that the technology of insurance accident reporting doesn't seem to have changed much over the years. The other motorist had a digital camera, and took pictures of the damage, but it's unclear what will come of that.

And when I called my insurance broker, everything had to be handled by phone or fax. No email. No online forms. It all seemed like a recipe for extra work and unnecessary mistakes, all leading to higher premiums.

I asked the nice lady at the claims center about it, and she sighed and said they were hoping to begin using email soon, but the that the insurance company was worried about privacy issues.

That's a valid concern, but one that many other industries with similar issues -- financial services, for example -- seem to have solved.

It's not an area I hope to have lot of real-world experience with, but I have to admit I was quite annoyed that I couldn't deal with things online. If I ever gather the willpower to switch insurance companies, online access will certainly be a factor in my choices.

Not EVERYONE Has A Web Site

Seems like practically everyone has a Web site these. I mean, I have one, for Pete's sake. And if a real site or a blog is too much work, there's always MySpace, and Linked In, and Facebook and all that.

But according to McNewspaper, only about half of small businesses have their own sites.

I'm guessing that's a lower percentage than for 11-year-olds.

The Keys To Voicemail Jail

This isn't new, but it's still useful.

Go here for instructions on how to short-circuit the phonemail systems at the popular telecommunications carriers.


For Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile, and Sprint, follow these simple scripts to save messages, skip messages, check your minutes, and get credits for dropped calls without going through the endless menus.

Good luck!

The Boom Is Back. The Bust Must Be Coming.

When I read about this new site, my immediate reaction was that I had stepped into a time warp and it was suddenly 1998 all over again.

DoMyStuff.com is all too reminiscent of those valet and butler service dot.coms from back in the day. They all went belly-up, of course, but there were all the rage at the time.

In keeping with the Boom 2.0 zeitgeist, there is a twist. DoMyStuff is primarily an auction site, where "employers" post jobs they need done, and workers (individuals or companies) bid to perform them for a particular price. Unlike on a true auction site, though, DoMyStuff employers can choose any bid they like.

According to Jaqui Cheng at Ars Technica, there's not that much to choose from yet. And according to The Freditor, this is a key warning sign for Bust 2.0. If you start seeing sock puppets, sell everything and run for the hills.

Techno-Grieving: Helpful, But Also Creepy?

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, there's been lots written about how people are coming together online to remember and to grieve. Student leaders meeting in online chat rooms to plan responses. MySpace and Facebook tributes.

I can't deny the value of doing that, especially for people personally affected but separated by distance. And there's lots of discussion that after the first killings, warnings should have been sent by mobile text message as well as email.

But I also wonder if technology is really the best way to deal with this kind of tragedy. If you knew the people involved, and you're close enough to get together in person, that's obviously more supportive. And clearly there's been a lot of that going on. I suppose online remembrances could help supplement that.

But, if you're not there, and if you didn't know the people involved, then to a certain extent this becomes a media event, not a personal one. The wall-to-wall TV coverage and online frenzy could take on a bit of a voyeuristic tone, of people using technology to bring themselves closer to an emotional maelstrom that they're not actually connected to.

I'm just not sure exactly how I feel about that. Is that honoring the loss, or exploiting it?

The 3 Laws Of "Roombotics"

A few days ago I posted a piece on Reworking The 3 Laws Of Robotics For Killer Machines. I thought it was pretty funny that the military was bumping into Isaac Asimov's science fiction.

Well, leave it to The Onion for a different take on the 3 laws. Its version for Roomba vacuum-cleaning bots reads:

1. The device "must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up."
2. Roomba "must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law."
3. Roomba must "protect its own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law."

I think Isaac Asimov would appreciate it. I certainly do.

Twitter: What Is It And Why Should I Care?

OK, The Freditor is offically behind the curve on Twitter. But I don't think I care.

You've probably been reading about this new "mini-blog" service that lets you follow members' "microposts" in real time. It's often updated via mobile phone rather than from a computer, so it's very much in the moment. But the short post length limit means that you can't expect great literature, just a quick heads up.

Anyway, I was having trouble figuring it out - the FAQs on the site aren't much help - but stumbled across this pathetic but informative video from some well-known geeks. For a more straightforward explanation, here's AP's review.

Now that I know what Twitter is, all I need is a reason to care.

Reworking The 3 Laws Of Robotics For Killer Machines

You remember Isaac Asimov's classic Three Laws Of Robotics, right:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Well that kind of simpering do-goodism won't do for today's military bots. So The Register reports that John S Canning, an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, has come up with his own robotic rules of engagement.

Basically, it comes down to “Let machines target other machines, and let men target men.” But of course, he doesn't worry too much about "collateral damage."

Oh well, it's a brave new world.

Organic HDTV

Throw out your treasured 50-inch Plasma screen. Ditch your 1080p LCD marvel. In a couple years you're going to replace them with a swarm of fireflies.

Well, not exactly, but pretty darn close.

Accroding to Antone Gonsalves at InformationWeek, Sony is on schedule to ship an 11-inch OLED TV set this year in Japan. OLED, or organic light emitting diodes, create images using technology similar to fireflies, requiring no "backlight, color filters or polarizer" and could eventually be cheaper to produce than today's technologies.

Not at first of course, but I still think it's really cool. But hey, the technology is already in use in smaller devices like cell phones and MP3 players.