Don’t say I didn’t tell you about this coming up… Clearly IE8 and Silverlight is a triple threat when looking towards adoption of RIA.

From The Register:

TechEd 2008 Bill Gates has announced the next betas of Internet Explorer 8 and Silverlight 2 while outlining plans from Microsoft on development services…

The second beta of Microsoft Silverlight cross-browser media player and development platform will be released by the end of this week under a Go Live license. 

A Go Live license lets developers use pre-release code in real-world applications, but without the safety net of Microsoft support.

The second beta had been promised for the second half of 2008, so it’s… early!

As for Bill Gates’ last day, this YouTube video is pretty good with some great celeb cameos.

FWIW, GoLive is pretty cool. I’ve been working on a review for some time updating us on Silverlight and GoLive. With all the hubbub going on for me we’ll see how that looks for later this week.

Related Articles:

Rich Internet Applications War Is Brewing

Adobe FLEX vs Microsoft Silverlight Part 1

More about Silverlight - Microsoft’s Flex / Flash Competitor

How to convert 60 million users to Silverlight quickly

My LMS / eLearning Disruptive Technology Concept

Halo 3, XBox and Technical Communication? (Part 5)

Microsoft Releases Silverlight, Extends Support to Linux

CharlesJeter.com Category: Rich Internet Applications

Kudos to MonkeyPi for linking to this: Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail

“Usually the first thing the police go for is the detainees’ cameras and cellular phones,” el-Hamalawy said. “I’m surprised they left James with his phone.”

I think this is one of those technology issues that repressive governments are just not going to be able to contain.

For some reason this year has been nostalgic for me. Martin Luther King Day I wrote about my family. Memorial Day I write about my other family. I write about my Navy family, and in particular, those who didn’t make it home.

They are my family, my fallen brothers and a sister. I will tell my children about them and they will live on in name and story and in our hearts.

This is off topic and an indulgence. I would be however, as Shakespeare put it regarding St. Crispen’s Day and the Battle of Agincourt, holding my manhood cheap would I not honor those who I know who have fallen with at least a nod today, nearly eighteen years later.

    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

From So Others May Live… My personal heroes

I’ve lost a few friends while in the service. There have been times that I didn’t know if I would make it myself - whatever scrape or close call occurred I made it out.

I recall five years ago I was at the gas pump at Costco here in San Diego and saw a helo patch and aircrew wings on the flight suit of the guy next to me.

I introduced myself, rattled off four names and he brightened when he recognized one. I told him that guy used to be my roommate off-base.

He stuck out his hand, saying, Good to meet you, Brother.

We all ran the seawall. We ran the obstacle course and the cross country course. We sweat together. We bled together. We learned our inner limits and then we pushed them farther than we thought possible.

In doing so, we grew up together and as such, we were brothers.

The first two fleet S-3 Viking AWs I ever met are both dead by violent means.

Both died outside the combat zone by violent means. One as the casualty of a robbery in progress, the other years later from self-inflicted wounds, perhaps from scars we all share.

Mongo, I wish I would have known the problems you had. When people wonder why I cry at the end of the movie Jarhead, it’s because I’m remembering you.

From So Others May Live | Personal Heroes Pt. 2

Today, Memorial Day 2008, I’m sitting here alone writing. The kids are with their mom. My friends have long left for barbeques. The television is off and has been all day.

Today for the first time in eighteen years, it’s about memorializing my friends who will never have kids, who will not see another barbeque or a beer. It’s also about realizing that I lost more friends in peacetime than some have in seven years of warfare.

My friends who died after living only a few years out of high school. They are my heroes.

As I’ve said before in the postscript of Bug’s Prayer and Core Values these are the types of people I want my boys to hear about when they ask what a hero is.

Rick Tafoya, I would have loved to learn snowboarding later that year. I had plenty of time before I transferred into my fleet squadron.

Joseph John Pycior, died at the Pentagon in room 1D457 on the morning of 9/11. Boats was less than four months from retirement.

I briefly met “Boats” at the ASWOC in San Diego between flights during a brief. I remember him because one of the other guys was teasing him about being a Boatswains Mate prior to becoming an AW, the score requirements for both jobs being diametrically opposed on the ASVAB test.

Brian Cerino, died in 1991 in the worst Naval air disaster. Cerino was the roommate of one of my closest friends, Duncan.

Berto “Pablo” Escobar and Billy Quinn, both in a helo accident just before I got out. I remember these guys, particularly Billy Quinn from my first cruise before they went to Japan with HS-14.

Robert “The General” Lee, whose death trapped underwater in a helo accident completely changed the design of emergency air bottles for the entire Navy and Marine Corps. Lee was in VS-41 with me as a student, but went back to the helo side of the base as an instructor.

All were brothers. I lost a sister as well.

Wendy Potter, a California girl who I knew only briefly. Wendy was the first all-AW pipeline West Coast student to become a Viking SENSO. Her S-3B Viking jet went down with all hands lost.

May they all rest in peace. We miss you. I will never forget you.

As if there wasn’t enough to worry about for parents with last year’s crisis of Chinese lead painted toys, now the ^7 recycling icon is considered a toxic symbol. 

If this isn’t a massive issue of Corporate Authenticity, I don’t know what is. All polycarbonate bottles and other containers are suspect to some degree because of something called bisphenol-A (BPA).

From The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags by the Environmental Working Group:

…researchers concerned with the evils of a common chemical known as bisphenol-A (BPA) suggest you should toss out these baby bottles along with any toys suspected of containing lead or dangerous magnets.

How toxic is BPA? Nobody really knows for sure.

In fact, it’s still debated as a scientific issue, however WalMart has pulled BPA baby bottles from the shelves.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that…

“[T]he possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development cannot be dismissed,” says this new draft report from the U.S. department of Health and Human Services.

Though the evidence isn’t entirely clear, it’s possible that exposure to the chemical during infancy could cause changes in prostate and mammary tissue that raise the risk of cancer later in life, the report suggests. The latest analysis goes beyond two others from last year, both of which concluded the chemical was safe in low doses.

I’m still researching this matter after a year and it’s almost inconclusive, yet safer to err on the side of caution.

BPA: A Call For Corporate Authenticity

I tend to side with this frustrated parent’s opinion:

What we want is actually quite simple. We want companies that produce products which come into contact with infants’ and toddlers’ mouths, and which are exposed to high heat due to washing and sterilization, to disclose the types of plastic they use in their products.

We want companies to inform consumers so that people like us don’t have to do their job for them. Labeling like this will only influence the choices of people who care. If people care, they should have a choice. If enough people care about materials that you’re afraid to label your products with the information, you’re using the wrong materials.

Listen up, chemical companies. We’re having a conversation. We’re trading information, we’re becoming organized.

And if what you’re doing is threatening our children’s safety, we’re coming to GET YOU.

Legally of course.

BPA Leaching: I’m feeling better

This week a senior FDA scientist recently told Congress that:

[A] large body of available evidence indicates that food contact materials containing BPA currently on the market are safe, and that exposure levels to BPA from these materials, including exposure to infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.

According to the EWG article called Tips to Avoid BPA Exposures, I am fortunate because for my three children we dodged the major bullets:

We never heated the formula and poured it into the bottles. All three kids had cold formula, and two of them had powdered formula not canned. My oldest son had non-canned Similac (at a tremendous cost let me tell you) and the younger two had powdered formula served cold.

We cooked mostly fresh foods, avoiding canned foods for the most part. According to the EWG site, most BPA is dispensed within canned foods, and only trace amounts through polycarb drinking containers.

We used stainless steel or sippy cups which weren’t polycarbonate. The parenting blog Z Recommends has a great article called the Sippy Cup Showdown which details this even further.

Moreover, all the kids enjoyed fresh fruits and vegetables much more frequently than canned vegetables or pastas (ravioli or spaghetti-o’s type) which, according to the EWG, had the highest levels of BPA leaching.

I’ve also been hand washing the BPA containers, mainly because it does a better job of removing milk and I can’t wait for the dishwasher, however I did push for sterilizing all the containers at least twice a month by washing them in the dishwasher.

From The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags | Environmental Working Group:

One of the reasons opinion is divided over the older child is the range of sensitivity to BPA that scientists have observed among individuals.

Fortunately, there are now a number of BPA-free bottles on retailers’
shelves. If you want to make a switch but your child will not tolerate
another type of nipple, Deardorff suggests that you can still manage to
lower the risk of BPA exposure in these ways:

1. Avoid heating the plastic bottle. This means steering clear of a
dishwasher, sterilizer, or microwave. The incidence of leaching is much more severe from heated than unheated plastic bottles. One alternative is to heat milk in a pan on top of the stove, let it cool, then pour it into the bottle.

2. Discard any cracked bottles. Leaching increased after a bottle had been washed more than 20 times, went through prolonged daily use, or became scratched, researchers noted.

3. Switch to safer brands. Bottles manufactured from BPA-free polypropylene are still on the market. Some of the brands include Medela, Born Free, and Adiri Natural Nurses. Also be sure to check the recycling labels since many No. 7 bottles contain BPA. By contrast, most No. 2, 4, and 5 plastic bottles are made of polyethylene or polypropylene.

DeNoon suggests you can avoid the BPA problem altogether if your baby will tolerate a switch from canned formula to a powdered product. He cites reports from a March 2007 study by The Environmental Working Group in which national laboratory tested 97 cans of food purchased in Atlanta, GA; Oakland, CA, and Clinton, CT.

Tests proved cans of chicken soup, baby formula, and ravioli had the highest BPA level. A full one third of the cans with infant formula had BPA levels 200 times the Government’s safe exposure level.

Deardorff also cites Ari Brown, co-author of the 2005 book “Baby 411″. Brown urges parents to simply avoid using any polycarbonate bottles until researchers know more about the impact of BPA.

As for your little one, you can replace all your plastic bottles for just $50.00 to $100.00.

Baby 411, Third Edition: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for Your Baby’s First Year by Denise Fields, Ari Brown Read more about this book…

Further Research:

The Z Report: A Directory of Bisphenol-A In Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

The Health Dangers Of Reusing Plastic Bottles And Bags | Environmental Working Group

Timeline: BPA from Invention to Phase-Out

Your BPA questions, answered 

Wall Street Journal: Health Blog

FDA: Bisphenol A in Plastic Bottles is Safe

Wal-Mart, Nalgene Move Away From Bisphenol A

Worries Grow Over Bisphenol A in Plastics

Consumer Product Safety RSS

US Consumer Product Safety Commission - Recent Child-Related Product Recalls

A great discussion has started over on MonkeyPi about the Sun Tech Writer who is suing regarding unfair work exemptions. I replied there but this is a far lengthier topic than the comments deserve.

Exempt Tech Writing: How To Not Get Sued

Personally, I tend to view this as a problem that needs a solution. Were I negotiating this matter I would bring up two specific issues which could have prevented this from occurring, or which could lessen the expectations of management.

First, one thing that Adobe does do right is that they allow telecommuting. This allows a 60 hour work week to be reasonably managed along with a busy life schedule because employees can manage their lives around the time they put in on their home systems.

Second, by having a workflow that allows input remotely without endless face to face meetings (the absolute largest waste of time I observed while working as a tech writer for a nameless military contractor) and proper collaboration, a lot of this time saved reflects working smarter, not harder.

Getting Granular about Exempt Status

I found the following definition of exempt status online:

EXEMPT means the job is NOT subject to payment for overtime hours worked. Employer policy may elect to compensate incumbents in these jobs for their overtime, but there are no restrictions on rates used or quantity of hours paid to incumbents in exempt jobs.

Overtime requirements apply to the JOB not the EMPLOYEE. It is the responsibility content of the job that determines if incumbent employees must be paid for the overtime they work.

There is a Highly Compensated Job exempt status but it only applies to Public-Sector Employees.

Legally, exempt employees are due overtime in California law if it can be proven that they regularly cannot complete their normal assigned tasks without working overtime. Two years ago a roommate of mine ended up winning a similar judgement simply by making a phone call to an attorney and having them contact the HR department where he was working.

What it takes to document your situation is at the very least, logging your hours worked along with the tasks you are assigned. Regardless of exempt/non-exempt status, in California the Overtime law states that you cannot be expected to be working for free, which is what regular overtime without pay is.

Summing up, legally Sun is responsible, at least to one employee. The judge’s court order has the attorneys searching for a second employee, a reasonable request given the frequency with which John Edwards-like trial lawyers tend to overuse the class action.

The lawyers will win one person’s case, that’s a given. A landmark ‘blow for Sun techcomms’ it may not be unless they find another employee to sign on the line.

Yet, as this attorney states on his blog in reference to the IT lawsuits:

In this situation, is it any wonder that, increasingly, some California companies are moving jobs across the border to work in other states where employees don’t have to be paid special overtime rates?

Just like the ridiculously high workers’ compensation rates hurt job creation in California several years ago, the overtime pay requirements are doing the same thing in the IT industry.

Below the fold are the boring legalese text from the California Labor site… You’ve been warned!

The California exemption that Sun can attempt to use is:

professional exemption 

A person employed in a professional capacity means any employee who meets all of the following requirements:

Who is licensed or certified by the State of California and is primarily engaged in the practice of one of the following recognized professions: law, medicine, dentistry, optometry, architecture, engineering, teaching, or accounting, or

Who is primarily engaged in an occupation commonly recognized as a learned or artistic profession. “Learned or artistic profession” means an employee who is primarily engaged in the performance of:

Work requiring knowledge of an advance type in a field or science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study, as distinguished from a general academic education and from an apprenticeship, and from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes, or work that is an essential part of or necessarily incident to any of the above work; or

Work that is original and creative in character in a recognized field of artistic endeavor (as opposed to work which can be produced by a person endowed with general manual or intellectual ability and training), and the result of which depends primarily on the invention, imagination, or talent of the employee or work that is an essential part of or necessarily incident to any of the above work; and

Whose work is predominantly intellectual and varied in character (as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical, or physical work) and is of such character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time.

Who customarily and regularly exercised discretion an independent judgment in the performance of duties set forth above.

Who earns a monthly salary equivalent to no less than two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment. Full-time employment means 40 hours per week as defined in Labor Code Section 515(c).

or this one (exempt only from IWC order 14)

Any employee who is engaged in work that is primarily intellectual, managerial, or creative, and which requires exercise of discretion and independent judgment, and for which the remuneration is not less than two times the monthly State minimum wage for full time employment

Regarding the requirement for the exemption to apply that the employee “customarily and regularly exercises discretion and independent judgment,” this phrase means the comparison and evaluation of possible courses of conduct and acting or making a decision after the various possibilities have been considered. The employee must have the authority or power to make an independent choice, free from immediate direction or supervision and with respect to matters of significance.

For the learned professions, an advanced academic degree (above the bachelor level) is a standard prerequisite.

For the artistic professions, work in a “recognized field of artistic endeavor” includes such fields as music, writing, the theater, and the plastic and graphic arts.

Questions may arise why the law which covers employees in the computer software field doesn’t allow for exemption. The exemptions don’t apply to technical writers. Even if you only write labels for the CDs.

Simply put:

employee in the computer software field

Except as provided below in paragraph 5, an employee in the computer software field who is paid on an hourly basis shall be exempt under the professional exemption, if all of the following apply:

1. The employee is primarily engaged in work that is intellectual or creative and requires the exercise of discretion and independent judgment.
2. The employee is primarily engaged in duties that consist of one or more of the following:
   • The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications.
   • The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to, user or system design specifications.
   • The documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to the design of software or hardware for computer operating systems.
3. The employee is highly skilled and is proficient in the theoretical and practical application of highly specialized information to computer systems analysis, programming, and software engineering. A job title shall not be determinative of the applicability of the exemption.
4. The employee’s hourly rate of pay is not less than $41.00 [the rate in effect on September 19, 2000]. The Division of Labor Statistics and Research shall adjust this pay rate on October 1 of each year to be effective on January 1 of the following year by an amount equal to the percentage increase in the California Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. Click here for adjusted rate information (pdf) (doc).
5. The exemption described above does not apply to an employee if any of the following apply:
   1. The employee is a trainee or employee in an entry-level position who is learning to become proficient in the theoretical and practical application of highly specialized information to computer systems analysis, programming, and software engineering.
   2. The employee is in a computer-related occupation but has not attained the level of skill and expertise necessary to work independently and without close supervision.
   3. The employee is engaged in the operation of computers or in the manufacture, repair, or maintenance of computer hardware and related equipment.
   4. The employee is an engineer, drafter, machinist, or other professional whose work is highly dependent upon or facilitated by the use of computers and computer software programs and who is skilled in computer-aided design software, including CAD/CAM, but who is not in a computer systems analysis or programming occupation.
   5. The employee is a writer engaged in writing material, including box labels, product descriptions, documentation, promotional material, setup and installation instructions, and other similar written information, either for print or for onscreen media or who writes or provides content material intended to be read by customers, subscribers, or visitors to computer-related media such as the World Wide Web or CD-ROMS.
   6. The employee is engaged in any of the activities set forth in nos. 1 through 4 above for the purpose of creating imagery for effect used in the motion picture, television, or theatrical industry.

I’m a little late for this… But early for next week.

Kicking off with this great post:

The goal of many of the Web 2.0 tools is to reduce the overhead. Think of it as a “flat tax” for interactions, in that many of the philosophies of Web 2.0 are around transparency and participation, in addition, everyone is equal.

If you look at MySpace, LinkedIn, Youtube or other social networks, there is no hierarchy and pretty much everyone is equal (yes there are administrators for such systems who have greater powers).

Who keeps the Internet going? No one really, there are some agreed upon standards so that one computer can talk to another, and information can be displayed in a common format, and that is about it.

By the way, my condolences for this writer’s situation; I was in similar circumstances just last year with my dad.

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning - This should be titled Web 2.0 Collaboration 101. Part of a six-week course set up in order to encourage exploration of the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the way we use information.

Top Three Web 2.0 Tools for Online Education - A quick roundup which would get just about anyone started in basic collaboration online.

(8) Online Collaboration Tools - New Technologies and Web Services

9 Principles for Implementation: The Big Shift - Check out the principles for managing change. I think this applies across the spectrum and isn’t only limited to traditional schools.

Ten Trends: Educating Children for Tomorrow’s World - Specifically, Trend 3: Social and Intellectual Capital will become the Primary Economic Value in Society.

Death, Taxes, and Collaboration

Great roundup of Rich Internet Application authoring technologies from Emerging Technologies - Application Development - RIA War Is Brewing

There’s a war brewing on the Web today–a war to decide how Web applications and content will be developed and how users will consume the content of the future Web.

But this isn’t the latest round in the browser wars. No, the war I’m talking about is over the RIA (rich Internet application), a type of Web application that can run independently of browsers, can run on any operating system and, in many ways, works like a traditional desktop application.

Of course, RIAs aren’t new. They can be traced back to earlier efforts such as Macromedia’s Shockwave, Java applets and the ubiquitous Flash format.

Analysis of RIA and Wireless Data

When I was in the wireless data game, one of the main questions that people were trying to answer back in 2000 and 2001 was, how do we earn revenue streams from the broadband wireless market we’re about to implement?

The hierarchy for web and internet usage at the time was:

1) email

2) search

Since email and search were text-based, attracting rich internet users across the bandwidth was difficult to make a business case for.

As Yoram Baltinester, NVTL’s Business Development guru stated in a meeting back then, people look towards their desktops for the rich experience for a lot of reasons. They didn’t look at their mobile devices for the same rich content, primarily due to battery life and the form factor of the screen size.

As the Apple iPhone has demonstrated, there’s a good platform for display. Slingbox and other content middleware distribution hardware shows that there’s a need for content to be pushed out.

RIA Content Delivery

What’s known as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) plays a part in this as well.

One blogpost, Full-length shows, even movies, growing on cellular challenges the validity of providing multiple content for multiple viewing platforms:

The question I have is, are we ready to take it to this level? It doesn’t change what’s required much on the CDN side. In fact, it probably increases our capacity since we’re dealing with smaller files of lower resolution. Now we have to maintain separate environments though for HD and mobile.

So this is a valid point. Are we ready? I think the overall answer remains can profit be made on this? Here we are eight years later, and it’s not really a significant portion of the market. You’re stuck with obtaining either rich, HD-ready content or low-resolution mobile deliverable content.

The cellular carriers have now developed the bandwidth, but everyone’s not so sold on the money to be made. And the bandwidth is sketchy at best for full capacity voice and data. I could care less what the marketing people say, there’s a point of saturation that nobody likes to talk about, where you’re not going to be able to keep a call because there’s too many bits dropping off.

That means wireless data is scalable only to a certain point. Let’s face it, providers don’t make more money putting up more towers. They make more money by cutting operating costs. Whether it’s in powering down the towers during offpeak hours or through chopping bandwidth hogs who have all you can eat accounts (like yours truly) they have to save time and bandwidth on the digital phone networks. Who gets priority reads like a conspiracy theory since that’s a tightly guarded secret.

XBox Live customers can download HD content relatively easily from their home network, but it’s currently trapped in the device.

Analysis of RIA and Technical Communication

TechComm is not always tailored for instruction, however breaking down the modules of a device or software program can make instructional content which could be repurposed.

I would think that dropping in a spinning 3D picture of a component might help identify it conceptually, however the time and expense of placing that picture in from scratch is prohibitive. 

eLearning - tremendous advantages with a native RIA developed application. Here are a couple related articles, mainly about the Silverlight entry into RIA:

How to convert 60 million users to Silverlight quickly

My LMS / eLearning Disruptive Technology Concept

Halo 3, XBox and Technical Communication? (Part 5)

Microsoft Releases Silverlight, Extends Support to Linux

Technical Writing - Adobe has added Acrobat 3D to their Technical Communication Suite for a reason; a picture is worth a thousand words, as long as the picture is understood well enough.

However, it’s not been enough to impress industry power users: Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite Panned By TechComm Bloggers 

I’m still searching for where exactly RIA will fit within the future of Technical Communication. Adobe’s had some product evangelists segue into Technical Communication being rich media, less written word, more universally understood documentation.

I’m not so sure I’m buying that though.

Are we really going to want our instructions in podcast or YouTube format?

From Starting a Conversation: The Art of Comment Fetching:

Everyone measures the success of their blog in different ways - but when it comes to measuring engagement, comments and trackbacks are what really count.

Today’s Blogging Irony

It’s funny that the Technical Communication blog of Adobe, the market leader in just about everything written, spoken, filmed, or distributed - Well, their blog hasn’t had a comment from a user in two and a half months.

Oh, it’s got 1407 links to it in Technorati… But no comments.

Then again, I could be a bit sour because my comments on Adobe’s TechComm blog the three times I’ve made them, were either held for nine months (until I posted an image of the question on my own blog during a heated debate) and then posted like they’d always been there, or in the case of my comments last month, simply ignored.

Not very engaging. Sort of like Adobe’s current TechComm Technical Support. But that subject is so 2007.

The Adobe Captivate blog OTOH, is hot. Silke Fleischer’s got it going on, and by the metrics mentioned above, she is clearly engaging her audience. Maybe that’s why I link to it on my page and not to the TechComm.adobe.whatever.com blog.

Then again, Captivate is a very engaging product while the rest of the TCS doesn’t really push my buttons…

My blog? Oh, let’s not even go there. Every other month or so I literally get too busy to post anything. So enjoy it while it lasts…

Is it safe to go back into the water? Another San Diego surfer is suspected to have been eaten… We’ll find out more from the autopsy, but this occurred up near Ventura. 

Dead surfer found off Santa Cruz Island identified

The Associated Press | Article Launched: 05/04/2008 11:07:16 AM PDT

SAN DIEGO—Authorities have found the body of a 43-year-old San Diego man who disappeared while surfing with friends off Santa Cruz Island.

John M. Wagner was found dead in the water about 20 miles south of Ventura Harbor on Friday, the Ventura County coroner’s office said.

While surfing a break on the island with friends, Wagner went underwater for unknown reasons about 5 p.m., according to a Coast Guard official. The island is part of the Channel Islands National Park, and it was park rangers who found his body.

The autopsy will be conducted in Santa Barbara County where the death occurred.

Wagner’s death comes six days after a shark killed triathelete David Martin off Solana Beach.

Monday’s Update: According to the LA Times today, more details show this is not a shark… however there was another shark attack down in Mexico this weekend.

Wagner’s death comes just four days after a shark killed a 24-year-old San Francisco surfer in Mexico and a week after a triathlete was killed by a shark in San Diego County. Adrian Ruiz bled to death after being bitten on the thigh April 28 while surfing off Troncones beach west of Alcapulco.

It’s not clear what species was involved in the attack but Mexico’s Navy and maritime authorities had spotted two great white sharks nearby during helicopter overflights.

Beachgoers were being warned about the sharks’ presence near the largely undeveloped oceanfront.

And then there’s this account regarding the Ruiz attack…

Shark kills American: A shark killed San Francisco surfer Adrian Ruiz, 24, at Troncones beach north of Ixtapa on Monday. Mexicans then began slaughtering sharks.

“It is outrageous that the Mexican government is hunting sharks to protect tourists, when the biggest threat to tourists in Mexico is the crime wave that has engulfed the country,” said Serge Dedina of Wildcoast/ Costasalvaje, based in Imperial Beach and Tijuana.

From what I recall from the 1990s and NT, SP3’s the charm it seems… From Foul Writers World | Windows XP Service Pack 3 goes GOLD:

Earlier today Microsoft confirmed that the source code has been released to manufacturers for testing and implementation.

It has been almost 4 years in the making, and Microsoft has taken their time to ensure that end users don’t have the same problems as the previous SP.

Testing for the SP has revealed a streamlined and greatly reduced install process. A big improvement on the install process comes in the form that the actual download package is a lot smaller than the previous SP and installation took a measly 15 minutes.

I’ll be checking it out this week. It’s supposed to have some cool security updates.

As I mentioned in a previous post, while I was at eHelp my offsite time was focused on researching Energy, Internet Communication Technology (ICT), and beginning in 2004, Agriculture as emerging sectors.

After working intensely with supporting the then-new RoboDemo community, I decided that eLearning and Blended Learning were killer apps which couldn’t be ignored.

So my grand NorCal plan evolved. Take active duty, soon to retire military vets and train them in a California industry - vineyard management. Vets2Vines was born. And now Ag is the new hot trend. Like I could have planned it any better.

Here I am, positioned with both Renewable Energy and 40 acres of prime, irrigation subsidized Northern California property. The agriculture boom is still on - MarketWatch

As oil flirts with $120 a barrel and corn shoots up over $6 a bushel, it’s clear that demand is real for both commodities, and yet there’s also a bit of froth in those prices as well. How much of it is speculation?

…I have been hearing for three years that corn price couldn’t possibly go any higher. I heard that argument at $2.50, $3, $4.50 and $5. Now here at $6.20, the same bearish absolutes are being spouted from all over the place and my indicators tell me that it’s simply not true.

How much is that in real dollars?

The average bushel to acre breakdown is 183:1. Math says this year will be $7.50 per bushel. That’s a little under $50k for the property. Only half to a quarter what winegrapes would bring.

Then again I don’t have to string all those wires and posts for the vines. And wait 4 years with stranded costs while the vines grow. And do forward contracting to lock in the client. Lowers risk if you make money year 1 instead of year 4. 

Ethanol is what’s got farmers all excited. And the market’s guaranteed.

It doesn’t have to come from corn, either.

Sugar is the New Oil

Sugar beets were Solano County’s prime source of cash crops twenty years ago. According to a recent National Geographic I read, Brazil’s ethanol comes primarily from sugar cane. Sugar beets, sugar cane… Jimmy Smits says it best: Sugar is the New Oil.

From the USDA:

The estimated ethanol production costs using sugarcane, sugar beets, raw sugar, and refined sugar as a feedstocks are more than twice the production cost of converting corn into ethanol.

While it is more profitable to produce ethanol from corn in the United States, the price of ethanol is determined by the price of gasoline and other factors, rather than the cost of producing ethanol from corn.

With recent spot market prices for ethanol near $4 per gallon, it is profitable to produce ethanol from sugarcane and sugar beets, raw sugar, and refined sugar.

Umm. So According to this article, with gas now at $4 a gallon we’re now able to produce ethanol at just about the same cost.

Well, technically the really really cost efficient way would be producing ethanol from molasses produced as a byproduct of the processing of the sugar beets, with HFCS being the other product.

If you build it… they will come…

I’ve already got people stopping by my place to ask me when they can build one just like it. Super simple, not a lot of framing, and near-zero energy footprint.

Funny how a little thing like renewable energy can get people jazzed up now that fuel is through the roof. 51% of our energy still comes from coal, but you know… California’s transmission grid is SuX0r.

I just realized, that as I was penning my Worst Day Ever post about how tough it is to be an entrepreneur (I hate that word)…

…That this little project of mine which has appreciating decently 5% year after year BEFORE the price of corn went through the roof.

Residential units are depreciated 20% in Solano County and here I sit, on a gold mine.

I just realized that all the pain and toil I’ve put into the past year is really really going to pay off. All I have to do is enjoy the view after I finish the next project.

Oh, and the cost of energy?

I’m pretty relaxed about that as well. The six windmills and interconnect I’m going to put in as a micro-wind farm has me kicking back on that matter as well.

Not to mention that my SIP constructed home is 60% more efficient than the best standard stick construction home.

Ask me about Hubbert’s Peak, and I’ll show you my (proven) concepts for hydrogen electrolysis from water. Oh yeah, electrolysis for free since the wind power is up.

“The fundamental question from today’s perspective is how to produce hydrogen,” said Andreas Schafer, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development.

Umm. Well, according to our calcs that great resource called WIND. D’oooh!

Hydrogen used how?

To run your turbocharged vehicle. Just like a NOX canister you can force H2 into your engine’s combustion cycle.

It gets you about 25% more fuel, according to several sources. More on that later. That’s what my brother’s working on. We’ll be selling them after we find a good manufacturer.

It’s nice to have options.

LB, this is for you… The clock started ticking when I SMS’d you so you realize how quickly someone can aggregate thoughts and collaborate with others.

I’m posting this real time to show an example of how quick and easy it is to update content. Below the fold, begin to realize how you can kill your email strings forever with a blog…

Web 2.0 The machine is using… us

Start with this… Best five minute summary around.

The single most important thing to remember is that once your content within XML is able to be repurposed virtually anywhere. 

Yes, watch the movie - it’s about four minutes long or so, and explains much better than my writing can.

After you’ve finished this, here are some of the best points from my last year’s research.

If a tech writer can, through the use of a simple devblog, keep everyone informed and stop the email forwarding that plagues software development, all will start off on the right foot.

Each of my clients has access 24/7 to the latest tasks accomplished. Change requests are posted as comments, which keeps everyone on their toes.

Using these techniques I’ve discovered makes things get done faster, better, and people save money. It’s a crazy concept, but I’m pushing collaboration and techniques to move us beyond stifling bureaucratic logjams found so often within corporations.

First

Read Company blogging 101, a simple guide to starting to blog without shooting yourself in the foot.

DevBlog Collaboration | Your Internal Process Holy Grail

Using these techniques I’ve discovered makes things get done faster, better, and people save money. It’s a crazy concept, but I’m pushing collaboration and techniques to move us beyond stifling bureaucratic logjams found so often within corporations.

With the expectation of your audience changing into a more interactive view, the Help Authoring you’re performing will start shifting towards a more nimble creation. I’m envisioning a Workflow Collaboration that will blend review of the documentation within a blog.

There’s a sweet spot between the user familiarity of an email and the openness and collaboration capabilities of a wiki; I tend to use a DevBlog instead. DevBlogs, or development-based blogging, has an adoption rate of about 60% of my client base and allow remote collaboration and concept review.

Second

From Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?:

Ann Gentle has a complementary article about corporate conversations which IMO, is a critical application for this tool.

Imagine the Technical Support staff having a Web 2.0 window into documentation, becoming empowered to review the docs as they are published and implement troubleshooting into a software workflow.

Here’s yet another great article from Just Write Click >> Technical writers and conversations:

I had an “ah ha” moment at SXSW Interactive, when one of the social media metrics panelists Rohit Bhargava said he sees three areas or channels for measurable conversations - Public Relations, Marketing (Sales), and Customer Support.

For me, those three categories crystallized this connection: where our role as tech pubs is strongest in an organization, that’s where we might start successful conversations.

… Tech support seems the best alignment for many companies, as Charles Jeter’s follow-up points out. Tech publications that drive down support costs are another area where value proof lies.

Ann, you’re on a great thread with the conversations bit. Getting corporate cultures to open up and use Web 2.0 smartly is critical to their success against their competition.

Third

From Web 2.0 - MadCap Feedback is the KISS principle at work…:

Of course the magic behind any server based help file all happens behind the scenes in the user statistics just like Adobe RoboHelp Server, you get to know what people are looking at so you can focus your resources on restructuring those hot spots.

Additionally, your engineering team knows where best to look at fixing the GUI issues they may be guessing at.

Fourth

Simple Instructions Work Best and Sell Products

Just an example of what a short video can do to inform and instruct. Embedded in a blog, it’s simply more hyperlinked content.

Props to Agent K

I just dropped Karsten Gerhardt off for his connecting rail to LAX. Karsten, one of the principals for 3si2 Corporation, is heading out on a client business tour of Europe. Back in the day, I called him K even before that Tommy Lee Jones character from Men In Black. K laughs a lot more than Jones’ character so it’s not exactly a fair comparison.

K reminded me that he’s never looked back at the salaried employee world or drawn a W2 since our launch back in 2001.

Memories of Startups

Karsten, Jim Nesbitt, and I started 3nW Corporation after NVTL’s dotbomb layoff cycle back seven years ago. The corporation’s founding date is April 20, a homage for Jim’s great Ultimate Frisbee counterculture sense of humor. You’d never think he used to work at the Pentagon for the Chief of Naval Operations.

K was the NVTL eCommerce guy, Jim was killer in NVTL’s Tech Support and pretty handy with HTML, and I came out of the NVTL Applications Engineering department. Also, I brought a deal with me and stepped up with the first potential field engineering contract. That didn’t take so we fell back to the wireless data consulting and positioned to market scientists and engineering skills to the open market. That was for CTIA 2001.

After our launch of 3nW Corporation as a wireless data consulting firm cratered because of very bad luck on 9/11, we were soon relying on individual fallback plans.

Exiled…

A few months later I went back to the trade of being a data plumber, as I called Technical Support, starting with eHelp in January 2002. No more globetrotting and stand-up training, no more great Vancouver BC seafood dinners with clients, nope, it was back to the trenches. 

Back in 2002 and 2003 while I worked at eHelp Corporation by day, and by night I was identifying the next Disruptive Technologies to work into our comeback strategy.

One we looked at was search engine technology. That one was Karsten’s contribution.

Search. I said it first…

Right before Google came up with their desktop search, we pitched it to them. Or at least, our sleazy sales guy pitched it to their lower tier less-than visionary acquisitions team. This was when their Google search appliance in a box style servers were selling for $25k a pop and flying out the doors.

While the desktop search was designed as a small demo, we also had a killer search server tool that did cartwheels with multiple byte character sets for languages.

Nobody understood the value proposition.

Karsten and Don Addiss, our former Vice President at Novatel Wireless, spun off into 3si2 and became a leading design firm with super tight coding while I kept on track with my other research.

They still offer the search engine.

Along with a lot of other very cool services to clients like the LA Clippers and Boeing.

Back to the drawing board | Research

I know people say that Flare has a steep learning curve but those first ninety days using RoboHelp I needed something to make my passion.

I was focused on Energy, Internet Communication Technology (ICT), and beginning in 2004, Agriculture as emerging sectors. Hey, those sites are still up there on 3nW - not updated for years. Go check them out, use the Wayback Machine.

I prettied up a lot of different content I was researching from the NREL and the United Nations and got used to RoboHelp’s myriad uses so I could support them.

My time at eHelp opened my eyes to a lot of Market Disruption in how corporations could do on-demand training and save thousands. ICT was and still is hot. eLearning is the best thing that could have come out of the ICT focus, and distributing education (for free) across the planet - well, while being a bit anti-capitalist, it’s one of the greatest achievements I’ve ever heard of.

What’s in store? To be continued…

Thursday was A Very Bad Day. This week has been tough as well. Unfortunately I’m having to become an expert in virtually every single thing I’m doing because the ‘experts’ who I hire are completely incompetent in business. Welcome to construction / construction financing / engineering in California. Flakes run the show.

In fact, I’m catching up on my blogging is because since this April Fools Day I’ve been on hiatus while ‘other people’ decide to pull the trigger on my next round of financing.

Whatever.

April Fools Day. What a day to get the final sign-off from the county office for the project.

All of my issues seemed to gain perspective when I watched this guy’s story and listened to the Rich Dad - Poor Dad series creator talk about the resilience it takes in order to make it when, first you’ve made colossal mistakes and second, when everyone around you is criticizing you.

So at least I’m better off than this guy. In a lot of ways, but mainly because I didn’t make the colossal mistakes.

If all I have to do is weather this current storm of boredom and the potential of financial death by attrition, that’s doable. Bring it on…

Saving us from ourselves…

And then there’s this… Bailout backlash - Apr. 23, 2008

“There’s a huge segment of the country saying, ‘We don’t want our money used for a bailout,’” said Brandon.

“A third of the American public rents,” Brandon pointed out. “They’re saying ‘I’ve been saving for a mortgage for years. I could have jumped in on a subprime loan too. Now I’m going to have to pay for a government bailout.”

I happen to be one of those renters who saw this market correction coming, and I’ve been trying to position myself properly for the opportunity.

No, I didn’t go into flipping homes. Although one of my contractor advisors is a guy who did have three or four homes he was in the middle of flipping when the music stopped and everybody grabbed a chair in the California housing bomb.

I wanted to keep on renting when everyone else was buying homes higher and higher. As Kiyosaki said in the clip, the concept of buying in a high market is looking to make money on the ‘bigger fool’. After all, if all your friends are talking about it at the cocktail parties, you’ve just gotta get into it, right?!? Meh.

Thinking of it as a sabbatical from my software, training, and wireless background I decided to work on my strategic side of business in early 2005.

It started with a family project.

Back in 2004 when gas was $2 a gallon, I was researching the soon to be sudden Hubbert’s Peak which we now seem to have slam-danced into. The best part of this construction was that it would be energy efficient, and be an example of a rural wind farm done under $10k.

Below the fold I’ve just got more to say, so don’t go there unless you just have to have the real scoop on how tough the past 18 months have been.

This past year I’ve had the opportunity to live out tough out a project which was entirely outside my field of expertise: building a home. Not only building a home, but building it 500 miles away from my base of operations in San Diego.

Our project in a nutshell - Blended Learning type training in vineyard management combined with a residency program which takes advantage of zero footprint energy efficiency designed into the buildings and wind energy in a zone 4 area. Did I mention the military base just five miles down the road?

For lack of explaining an 80 page business plan, I just call our use ‘rental’ which makes the appraisers and other money guys nod appreciatively.

This was a creative option for improving a 40 acre property gifted to my brother and I by our aunt. The gift had a stipulation: build a house for our father who, at the time was in his late 80s and still very much the Berkeley activist.

Anyone who’s read my About page knows that I had my time of it back in 2001. Getting laid off following an IPO that underdelivered, then having everything go south in the initial wireless data consulting concept when our launch was set for Sept. 11, 2001. Well, we all know what happened on that day in history. Too bad it was also the day CTIA was supposed to launch.

Resiliency. That’s my core value

For the past year I’ve had to deal with people overpromising, and under-delivering, if they deliver at all. In fact, construction is so full of flakes it’s amazing anything ever gets built.

Things started out tough and just got tougher. Property that didn’t just come to us gift-wrapped, we’ve had to do so many improvements for compliance that it just boggles the mind. I still have pictures of what it used to look like prior to 2005. 

Not to mention my dad passing away a year ago after a brutal time of it in the hospitals. Ever since then I can just eyeball any passing nurse and tell you whether they’ll be good at their jobs or not.

Three months before that both my mom’s parents passed away within six months of each other.

Three in one year. Three in nine months, actually.

Meanwhile… back at the ranch…

Property that somehow attracted the strangest and most unhinged Berkeley crowd who felt that somehow they owned it, and attempted not once but twice to put felony ex-cons as squatters onto it.

Confrontations with squatters in the dead of night, pouring rain in January, one with an ex-con with two pit bulls. My private investigation background came in handy. So did the Mossberg 590 I had thought to bring that dark and rainy night, not to mention 911 on speed dial. Nobody got hurt. That’s a win in my book. Well, that and nobody every came back out to squat on the land again. Trouble rides a fast horse.

Like having our subcontracted engineer pull the pin on his boss and catch us and ten other poor homeowners in the frag pattern of his ambitions. He’s on my list of evil people who need to get sued and have their licenses pulled. My complaint’s been filed already.

The rest of the stories. Even worse. They would chill the blood of anyone remotely interested in getting a construction loan. I’ll leave those for telling on long dark winter evenings over beer and wings.

After all of that, having the county approval process turn out to be the easiest part of the situation has been a pleasant surprise. That was no picnic either. Just everything else in comparison was a lot harder.

Lessons Learned

You will hate your contractor. This is something that every single source of information I could grasp about construction gave to me.

So I got creative. I didn’t hire one.

At least not full time. And you know what? Most of my problems and dilemmas wouldn’t have been helped one single bit by having that extra $50k spent on the profit of a contractor.

I’m not saying that I didn’t need advice, but hiring a contractor as an advisor is a lot cheaper.

And I don’t hate him. He’s actually a really great guy.

One last thing. The same basic tenet I try to pass on to my children is that mistakes are okay and even necessary, but not being honest about your mistakes is a sin. Mistakes - I’ve made a few. But the hardest mistakes I’ve had to deal with are the ones that were made by other people which I have had to clean up.

Continuing from eDMS Roshambo Part 4 | Feedback with the wiki versus the MadPak with Feedback Service.

Wikis clobber eDMS when it comes to collaboration. Wikis are great but getting the end result into a user manual format still requires an external tool.

Rock Paper Scissors (RoShamBo): Wiki vs the MadPak, Analyzer, and Feedback Service

There are strengths to not having a Wiki model introduced right away into a corporation. Dan Ortega mentions corporate policy holding back the anarchy, however it helps considerably when there is a gradual move towards the Wiki model. 

MadCap is halfway through the Wiki model already with just the MadPak. Add to that the Analyzer and Feedback Server/Service’s Web 2.0 features, you’ve got yourself a good step past Wiki as far as maintaining positive control over the content.

With Analyzer you’re looking at a Documentation Manager’s dream package.

I think the key element is… how much time would this all save each role a Technical Communicator has. Let alone the workflow’s editing search and correction time.

Cost - $1200 for the MadPak and $400/quarter for the Feedback Service ($1600/year) so you don’t even need to host a server and stress the IIS configuration. No pricing on Analyzer is yet available. I really should get some sort of Amazon Buy-now button for this stuff.

As far as the industry tools are currently set, MadCap Analyzer could save upwards of $50k - $80k a year in tech writer time and other software. That’s pretty hefty, although at the time I’m writing this MadCap hasn’t set a price for the Analyzer.

Note: Pricing for Analyzer is pretty cheap, as I edit this article I find that it’s only about $200 or so to upgrade.