Dr. Thomas Ho's blog @ Windows Live Spaces: Computers and Internet

Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Sun, 04 May 2008 00:31:36 GMT

I guess that I read Ballmer well.

I agree with him that Yahoo! shareholders are the big losers!

I can't wait to hear what Jerry Yang has to say! :-)

Link to Microsoft says proxy battle not worth it | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Link to Breaking: Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal (Updated) - TechCrunch

Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Sun, 04 May 2008 00:10:28 GMT

IF I were a Yahoo! shareholder, I think that I'd be upset! How about you?

I suppose that I give Steve Ballmer credit for walking away from a deal which probably was going to be a disaster. Microsoft had better have an alternative strategy to compete with Google!

Jerry Yang of Yahoo! is now going to be under a great deal of pressure to find a better deal because I'm worried that Yahoo! might not make it on its own! The problem is that I can't think of a better prospective partner than Microsoft. Can you?

Link to Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

Moblogging in Schools

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:04:00 GMT

Here's a good reason to allow kids to use their cellphones in school. We ought to encourage them to reflect on their learning experiences as they learn rather than to ask them to recall it later. This could also be a good case for devices such as the iPod Touch (IF your school has WiFi) rather than "unwieldy" laptops that have a much larger footprint.

Out with the Old...In with the New!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:17:50 GMT

As 2007 comes to an end and as 2008 beckons, I thought that it's "now or never" to reflect on the tech scene during 2007 and to look ahead on what 2008 MIGHT bring.

For me, 2007's tech scene was characterized by social networking and software as a service. I was "converted" to Facebook when the Facebook Platform launched in the spring, BUT I am much more bullish about the torrent of services that characterized the year. Most notable among these was Twitter, of course. Like the Facebook Platform, Twitter is notable because it is an "ecosystem" that cultivates innovation. I am so impressed by the wave of innovation that has propelled phenomena such as Twittervision as well as emerging services such as #hashtags and Hoosgot. I'm sure that 2008 will bring even more!

On a personal note, I have been trying to focus my personal blogging efforts on placeblogging as illustrated by the Indianapolis placeblog and my neighbor page at outside.in. I hope to do more in 2008 and to get others involved as well.

Where I really hope to get more involvement is our nascent Indy Christian Geeks which has the potential to accomplish much for Jesus in Indianapolis as well as to serve as a role model for similar groups that I hope to see emerge in other locales. Please join us if you share our vision!

For 2008, I'll have my eye on two areas where I expect to see a lot of energy: mobility and identity. To launch the new year with a "worthy" mobile device and data service, I just ordered a Sprint Mogul in order to get EVDO :-(got "tired" of "waiting" for T-Mobile)

I also am "kicking off" the new year with my digital identity "branded" by my i-name =thomas.ho so check out this blog by clicking on http://xri.net/=thomas.ho/+blog and look for other instances of my life online. In the meantime, you can find my "online identity" at http://DrThomasHo.info under my personal "brand" DrThomasHo.

Oh yeah, I "forgot" about attention so I guess that it didn't get my "attention" so it just shows how important the concept really will be as we deal with information overload.

So, you can see that 2008 looks to be even more exciting than 2007 as I continue to be amazed at the creativity and innovation that the Internet has fueled. Come along for the ride!

kwout | A brilliant way to quote

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 04:58:10 GMT

This is a very cool tool that allows you to capture part of any Web page as an image for posting to the Web. I can't figure out how to get the HTML of an image of this page here so I have posted it to my public Flickr photostream.

kwout | A brilliant way to quote

Facebook - is it worth $10 billion?

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:27:14 GMT

For the seller, anything is "worth" whatever the buyer is willing to pay for it! I'd rather see Microsoft (rather than Google) get a piece of Facebook and I think that it would be a "win-win" for both companies! Microsoft certainly has a proven track record and only time will tell whether Facebook develops much of a record, but it certainly will be FUN to watch! I'm "worred" about Yahoo! (aren't you?) especially since they have my photos on Flickr and I love some of their services such as del.icio.us so I'm hoping for the best for them although I have my doubts about Yahoo! Mash. On the other hand, I am very "fond" of Yahoo! Pipes which I'm using to "power" one of my lifestreams. Scoble is optimistic about Yahoo! so I hope that he's right!

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Facebook - is it worth $10 billion?

My personal (online) brand: DrThomasHo

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:11:30 GMT

I "took the plunge" several years ago myself so you can see the results at:

my online identity (I'll probably redirect http://DrThomasHo.com here as well)
my emerging online "name" (I STILL don't know HOW the Internet Address Book does this: I haven't been able to register http://ho.name because "ho" is a "reserved word" since the ICANN rules require a minimum of 3 characters in .name domain names so this alone is worth the registration fee although the accompanying email address and OpenID are nifty so I hope that IAB stays in business)

My ONLY regret is that I didn't register http://thomasho.com in 1994, BUT I do own http://ThomasHo.mobi and http://ThomasHo.info which MAY be more valuable in the long run! Oh well, I always rationalize by saying that DRthomasho.com is a more "pretentious" brand anyway so it was a blessing in disguise!

The Jeff Pulver Blog: It’s a Social Media World Outside…

» Google to take social networking to a new level | Googling Google | ZDNet.com

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:08:15 GMT

IF it's going to be as "easy" (using Google's upcoming API) to create services that mash up these exposed social networks, then I can't wait for November to get here so that the "fun" can begin (perhaps limited ONLY by our imagination!) I've been dreading winter after the wonderful summer (although it was HOT here in Indiana) I've had so the prospect of this fun will certainly make the winter pass much faster and keep me occupied if it's a "tough" winter.

» Google to take social networking to a new level | Googling Google | ZDNet.com

Windows Live Wire: Test drive the new Windows Live suite

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:21:20 GMT

Since I'm still blogging at Windows Live Spaces, I'm a big fan of Windows Live Writer so I just installed a new version of Writer.

I'm also going to try OneCare Family Safety for parental controls.

Windows Live Wire: Test drive the new Windows Live suite

The "dark side" of lifestreaming

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:24:06 GMT

As a fan of lifestreaming, I have been troubled by how much of myself that I reveal even though I doubt that anyone even cares! What I like about lifestreaming is the opportunity that it offers to share my interests so that prospective collaborators would become aware of those interests and so that I can find collaborators via their lifestreams. For example, I found this blog entry by using Twittersearch's new feature which enables you to search Twitter feeds by keyword. For example, here's the URL of the RSS feed for a search for the keyword "lifestream"

In other words, the power of RSS feeds and the ease of searching them are a powerful combination that produces a "double-edged sword" and it shouldn't take us long to find out whether the bad outweighs the good!

Who needs Carnivore when you have lifestreams | WinExtra

» I'm using ClaimID

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:02:49 GMT

I'm using ClaimID as my OpenID provider as well as for my "online identity" at http://DrThomasHo.info

» If ‘you’ build OpenID, will ‘they’ come? | Berlind’s Testbed | ZDNet.com

Wired but not Web 2.0? That's normal, study says | CNET News.com

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:12:21 GMT

Which type are YOU?

I'm a "mobile-oriented" omnivore although I certainly don't "fit" the demographic!

Wired but not Web 2.0? That's normal, study says | CNET News.com

Social Networks: mobile micro-blogging

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:44:58 GMT

If you were to monitor my lifestream, you would instantly recognize where my current interests lie as indicated by this and recent postings! This could go a long way toward encouraging collaboration and finding partners.

I'm going to try an experiment: I will TRY to remember to put an "M" at the beginning of any post made while I am mobile. I claim to be an advocate for mobility so let's see IF I "walk the talk" BUT I'm guessing that only about a quarter of my postings will be mobile.

Blah, Blah! Technology: Social Networks: mobile micro-blogging

Posting this blog to my Twitter feed

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:44:47 GMT

I set it up so that this blog's RSS feed will be sent to my Twitter feed so let's see IF this works? IF you see it on my Twitter feed, please leave a comment on this entry.

Three Twitter tricks with Twitterfeed | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:11:52 GMT

Here's Wired Magazine trying to "take the high road" on social networking, BUT I'm afraid that social networking isn't going to evolve in this direction. After all, look at instant messaging and you'll see that AIM is still "holding out" so I don't expect either Facebook or MySpace to give up their stranglehold.

I put my lifestream on Plaxo's Pulse, BUT I STILL haven't figured out how to see others' Pulse data except for my friend Scott Wilder. However, I haven't asked him yet what he did to enable me to see his data. He's told me that he can see mine so I'll have to check out what I did to make that happen.

Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up

| Lifestreaming on Facebook (FB)

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:41:37 GMT

I have taken a special interest in lifestreaming:

my "mashed up" lifestream on Profilactic

so I'd be very happy IF FB would let my data OUT OF FB!

| The Social Web | ZDNet.com

Plaxo's Pulse, an "open" social network?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:51:04 GMT

Over the weekend, I "got wind" of Pulse so I finally got around to setting it up because I'm always "on the lookout" for the "ultimate" DLA (Digital Life Aggregator) In their haste to launch, they haven't YET set up an RSS feed (WHY would anyone "forget" to do that?), but it does show great promise because of its ability to let YOU control WHO sees your DLA stream.

However, Scoble thinks that it's "too little, too late" and NOT AS COOL as Facebook so we'll just have to wait and see IF he's right about that!

Plaxo's Personal Card: Oh geez, not ANOTHER social network…

Wireless@SG

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:34:02 GMT

We've spent the entire afternoon on Orchard Road and as expected, we've had WiFi coverage from Wireless@SG.

It would be very nice IF one could wander all over downtown Indianapolis and do what I've been doing all afternoon: posting to this blog, posting photos to Flickr (drthomasho) & Radar.net (you can see my Radar channel on Facebook) , reading RSS feeds & checking email.

For those of you who are NOT reading this on my blog, it's at http://tomho.spaces.live.com

P.S. I tried to post this via email while strolling along Orchard Road, BUT Windows Live Spaces email posting feature MIGHT NOT be working anymore (I haven't used it in a long time!) so I'm posting this from my laptop at home.

Singapore - 6/10/2007

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 01:06:29 GMT

We went to church today at Glory Presbyterian (http://glorypresbyterian.net) where it was very moving to realize that we were praising the "same" Jesus that our friends at Faith Church on the other side of the world would be praising later that day! After lunch, I finally got my Singapore Telecom Mobile SIM for my cellular phone which enables FREE incoming calls! I also tried Wireless@SG by using one of the hundreds of FREE hotspots on the island...very robust so it was a very good day :-)

Recent additions to my home network

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:59:07 GMT

Here are a couple of "improvements" that I recently made to my home network:

D-Link 7DBI Omni-Directional Indoor Antenna 802.11 B/G Base which STILL has the REBATE available!

and

USRobotics Wireless MAXg Range Extender which I got from Woot.com

Remember my post of last April?

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 06:22:16 GMT

Here's another article that reinforces what I had to say:

Top 10 Reasons to Embrace the Rich Internet Application by ZDNet's Ryan Stewart -- In the past couple of months, we've gotten ever closer to high quality Rich Internet Application solutions. As the RIA becomes more and more of a reality, it's important to distinguish them from traditional web applications and figure out what benefits they provide. This is my list of 10 reasons you should be embracing the RIA whether you're working on the next great application from your garage or trying to convince your boss at a Fortune 500 company that RIAs are the way to go. There's something here for everyone.

Gen Con in Indianapolis: August 10-13

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:03:21 GMT

Gen Con is coming to Indianapolis later this week and eWireless is promoting its FREE hotspots so I put together this Windows Live Local collection for the Gen Con attendees so I hope that eWireless will find some way to promote it to the Gen Con attendees!

Quote

My Windows Live Local collection

OH MY...look what I just found! (I've really got to get this down!)

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 02:50:13 GMT

I've been meaning to blog about what I've been learning this semester and how profoundly I have been impressed by what I've learned. Well, I just found the "motivation" to express some of my thoughts.

It's fitting that I "found" my motivation at Windows Live because I have been impressed by Microsoft's willingness to explore Web-based services which threaten both the Windows "franchise" as well as the entire future of "shrink-wrapped" software on which Microsoft has built its empire! While at Windows Live, I discovered yet another new service in beta: Windows Live Academic. So, I tried a search on "Thomas I. M. Ho" and although I found "precious little" (I could say that it's because Windows Live Academic is indexing so little content but that's NOT the case. Instead, it's because I've published so little because I've been suffering from information overload because of the wealth of services that I've discovered.), I did "stumble" across something that I had written over TEN YEARS AGO (an "eternity in Internet time") that reminded me that it's time again to "take stock" of what's been going on in Web-based services just as I observed in electronic commerce over ten years ago.

I have mixed feelings about revealing this essay because I got just as many things wrong as I got right, but I'm not going to let that stop me from "sticking my neck out" AGAIN!

Aside from Windows Live, a look at the ELEVEN (YIKES...I've been trying to max it at 10!) tabs on my Firefox home page reveal how Web-based services have become woven into the fabric of my (online AND OFFline) life:

Yahoo! (I had begun to "standardize" on Yahoo! after I switched my ISP to AT&T Yahoo! last year, but don't be surprised IF I standardize on Windows Live instead especially since I also switched my mobile operating system to Windows Mobile from Palm OS last year as well. I MAY have more to say about AT&T Yahoo! later after their day-long outage yesterday.)
AirSet (I'm even beta testing AirSet Mobile on my T-Mobile MDA...I'm telling you this to emphasize how profoundly I have been affected by mobility as well ever since I got a WiFi-equipped iPAQ h6315 with Windows Mobile 2003, Phone Edition last year)
Bloglines (for "reading" my 436 RSS feeds...you can see why I put "reading" in quotes because no one can possibly read that many feeds!)
attensa (whose AttentionStream™ synchronization I am HOPING will help me to cope with the information overload created by my "buy in" to RSS)
Rojo (another Web-based RSS reader which I tried last year and which I will likely eliminate from my Firefox home page to keep my tabs to a maximum of ten)
del.icio.us (THANK GOODNESS that I haven't "figured out" digg and other services YET or I would be having even more trouble limiting the number of tabs on my Firefox home page!)
co.mments (I added this one most recently so I'm still trying to decide whether or not it's "worthy" to stay on my Firefox home page)
Epsilen (our "home grown" ePortfolio system from our CyberLab on which I am hoping to build my "professional presence" so you can check out the podcasts of my lectures IF you have a .edu address which would allow you to create an Epsilen account)
Backpack (which MIGHT be replaced by one of my Palm OS apps IF I ever get it migrated to my Windows Mobile MDA)
Communité (Interactive Intelligence's world-class unified messaging product which I helped IU's University Information Technology Services to test during its pilot before it was deployed at IUPUI & IU-Bloomington last fall)
Windows Live (Did I mean to save the "best for the last"? As I said earlier, you've got to give Microsoft credit for "taking the plunge" into services and I'm counting on Windows Mobile integration to "sell" me on adopting Windows Live on my handheld especially as well as whatever other device(s) on which I use Windows...dare I say "UMPC" or even MAC?)

Needless to say, I'm probably HIGHER on Web 2.0 (I'm NOT alone so it's no big deal) than I was on electronic commerce and I am intrigued by its implications especially for the CIT curriculum. At this time, I am particularly wondering about our programming curriculum as I've come to realize that many of these services were created by small (and probably widely distributed) teams using mashup techniques and technologies such as AJAX, Atlas, Live Clipboard, and others that I haven't even heard about YET (I hope that I DO eventually!)

I've also had a few other observation about Web 2.0 that lend some historical perspective to its evolution. Actually, Web 2.0 is the natural progression to Web 1.0 as "interesting" services were just starting to emerge when the "dot com bubble" burst. I'm particularly fond of ThirdVoice which I used in my course and because its "roots" were Singaporean (my "second" country because of my Singaporean wife Laura who I met while living and teaching in Singapore over 10 years ago when I was "prophetic" about electronic commerce) and Purdue since its Singaporean founder (I'm afraid that I've forgotten his name) got all of his degrees from PURDUE as I did. I always thought that it was a shame that ThirdVoice failed but I guess that it was "before its time" because Google had not yet taught us how to "monetize" services and Internet industry heavyweights like Yahoo! who acquire services like Flickr and del.icio.us had not yet created the "market" for the fascinating services who hope to be acquired. Furthermore, we now have a much more robust infrastructure for service creation with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Google Maps, and other services who have published their APIs to create an ecosystem in which all of this innovation can flourish! "Innovation" is another theme for the CIT curriculum, but that will have to wait for another blog entry at some other time.

SO, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? I have some ideas and at the same time, I have NO IDEA, but I am certainly looking forward to figuring it out! Can you help?

Talking about Parsons says Time Warner needs mobile assets - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 00:20:38 GMT

It was just a "matter of time" !

Quote

Parsons says Time Warner needs mobile assets - Financial Times - MSNBC.com
Skip

My "love/hate" relationship with technology

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 03:45:49 GMT

I've been meaning to tell you about my experience on Wednesday afternoon when I got home to find that my DSL connection was down. After a rather lengthy (and frustrating) trouble-shooting session with AT&T tech support, we determined that it was "probably" AT&T's "fault" so I waited until later in the evening when AT&T did indeed acknowledge that there was an outage that affected SOME Indianapolis subscribers shortly before they restored service anyway.

While I was waiting for AT&T to restore DSL service, I decided to try my iPAQ with T-Mobile's GPRS service which was also down...I was beginning to wonder IF there was something "going on" in Indy! T-Mobile's GSM voice service worked OK so I used these outages to get a respite from the Web which gave me some healthy perspective that I COULD "live" withOUT Internet access. I resolved that my car was more important to me than Internet access, but since my car is a Toyota Prius hybrid, I realized that I would be dependent on a lot of technology in my Prius as well.

I decided to watch a little TV and for some reason, one of my two ReplayTV DVRs (yeah, I know....MORE TECHNOLOGY!) rebooted and "hung" when it booted back up. I figured that since it couldn't get an Internet connection, it hung.

That's the "hate" side of my story so here's the "love" side.

When my ReplayTV rebooted, it was recording an episode of "E-Ring" so I didn't get the entire episode recorded. I finally got around to watching it tonight because my ReplayTV had recorded almost all of it so I decided to "take a chance" to find out if it was worth watching. When I got to the end, I decided that I wanted to see the rest of it so I went to Poopli.com to request the episode and SEVERAL people fulfilled my request within MINUTES. As I write this, I'm waiting for the episode to transfer.

In the meantime, I made a donation to Poopli because I've now used the service several times and was especially impressed by the responsiveness of the user community on this particular occasion. I even went to see if I had anything that could fulfill one of the pending requests, but unfortunately, I had already deleted last night's episode of "Law & Order" which someone was looking for. Like my Exchange account, I am always close to running out of space on my ReplayTVs. I do have some spare hard drives that I could use to upgrade my ReplayTVs, but I just can't seem to get around to doing it or getting someone to do it for me.