I don’t get it

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Mar 112009

I consider myself a very knowledgeable person in relation to computers, software, Internet and basically everything that has a remote connection with those concepts. I am using a lot of web based services. I am using instant messengers, email, RSS readers, I am sharing photos using Picasa and Live Photos, I am using online storage and Google Docs but I am not able to get any value whatsoever from the social networks that I am part of. I am on LinkedIn, Facebook and a few others. I don’t have too many connections on any of the networks, but this is because I choose to be very selective.

I don’t see any value in being up-to-date with what everybody in my network is doing. I don’t see myself updating my status every few hours with what I am doing. It’s not in my nature to be that open. At the same time I am reading a lot about how cool is to be on LinkedIn, about how trendy is to use Twitter or how productive you can become by using an app that is available only on Facebook and I don’t see myself doing what all the “cool” people are doing it.

Because of all of the above, I am getting very annoyed some time and this is one of those moments. I do have a reasonable explanation  for the fact that I don’t get it, but for the moment I refuse to accept it :) .

Posted by Tudor at 5:03 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Azure vs AppEngine at first glance

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Oct 272008

Today, Microsoft launched Azure which is the Microsoft OS for the cloud. I am not going to enter into technical details or compare Azure with AppEngine or Amazon Web Services. Something else grabbed my attention. Continue reading »

Posted by Tudor at 9:24 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Organizing All My Information

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Oct 102008

Since 2004 I’ve saved a lot of information in different formats and systems:

  • I have 2482 pages saved in Scrapbook ( Firefox extension ), around 320 MB of HTML and photos
  • I have thousands of documents on my hard disk in doc, odt, pdf format
  • I have a monthly notebook on Google Notebook since April 2006. In each notebook I saved anywhere from 10 to 100 pages.
  • I subscribed to around 150 websites using Google Reader and I am labeling for future use around 15 to 20 items each day.
  • I have an Outlook PST of around 6 GB from which maybe 1 GB is very useful information and also I have a Gmail account with more than 2 GB of useful information.

My problem lately is how to create knowledge in an easy way from all this information overload. I’ve tried all sort of web based systems for organizing information, but no luck so far. And I know that search such as Google or Copernic desktop is not enough for creating knowledge.

I am dreaming of an intelligent agent who is capable to create short briefs based on my interests, to answer some basic questions by accessing all the info that I have, to analyze calendar data (ical format), to be location aware.  I know that this is what semantic web is all about it, but this web is still 1-2 years away, and I am sure that as long as I have non structured information is going to be impossible for the semantic web products to generate knowledge out of the information chaos.

It would be great if this kind of agent would run on a smart phone and be with me all the time.

On a side note the more I use Google Reader, Gmail and Google Notebook, the more I feel the need to get all my acquired data from their systems, but I didn’t find yet the right app that could that for me.

Posted by Tudor at 3:06 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,