Periodicdesign

Well, here I sit, a few days before Thanksgiving and few weeks before the fat guy in the red suit comes, deciding why on God’s green Earth did I decide to jump jobs. The first thing that came to mind was, “What the hell are you thinking man, the holidays are coming up and you’re beginning a new position?! Do you not like your free time?!” I retort with, “Yes, I do like my free time, but career growth and fun projects take precedence.”

As of Friday, I accepted a new position with a small, yet growing company by the name of Siteworx. My new position will be much more rapid in growth and scale of work over my last job, and should offer a huge learning curve and many fun projects in the near and distant future. Making the jump was a difficult decision. My current position didn’t allow for much growth and the contract I was on, although fun, wasn’t always engaging. Mind you, I’m not complaining in the least bit because I met and worked with some great people while on the contract, I just thought it was time for a change.

With this change comes an adjustment of time management and multi-multi tasking abilities with my work habits. I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge and for things to come. I will be updating my about section and resume in the coming weeks to reflect the change in my career path in regards to title and position. My offer letter stated “Information Architect” but the title for the job description was “Information Architect/Project Manager.” I’m not sure which will effectively be my title, if either or both, but it will be something along those lines.

Wish me luck and keep your eyes peeled for updates. In the past, I know I’ve always said I would update everyone, but my projects didn’t really warrant an update. With what I’ve been told about this company, I look for many updates to come, at least after the launch of some projects I should be working on.

No, I’m not talking about a flock of birds, I’m talking about a browser and a rather nifty one at that. I stumbled across their home page the other day, although I can’t recall how I ended up there, and signed up for their announce list. Well, just last night, I received an announcement about an alpha/beta release for testing. I then proceeded to download both a copy for my home machine and one for my work machine. I have tinkered on both platforms with the browser and am very pleased with what I see so far.

As far as I can tell, this browser, for all intensive purposes, looks to give the major browsers like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, a run for their money. Of course, some of you may argue it’s just another browser and that market is already saturated with the aforementioned browsers as well as many others. To this I say, you are correct and Flock is dead, conversation over! Well, I’m not going to say that, because saying that would be down right ludicrous I tell you!

This thing is more than just a browser, it’s an interaction with the digital life around you. Thomas talks about the Personal InfoCloud and I think this browser moves in that direction. Flock brings what you want on the web, to you, without using web applications or scripting plug-ins for your current browser. This thing ties into your blog and your del.icio.us bookmarks, bringing a portion of your digital life to you. Now granted, it may not bring all of your digital life, but it is a start.

Browsers themselves have faced an unfortunate doom in the past few years. They are all on the same path of rendering valid mark-up being the basis of what a browser should do. On this level, I believe all browsers should be the same and I hope that in that aspect the browser wars are from over. Where browsers will take off is in the functionality and how they tie into the web and the data you want. As Thomas has already said:

In a “come to me web” this is very important.

The browser itself is rather slick in appearance and a rather usable interface to boot. I’m anxious to see what comes of this browser, as it is still in its early stages of development and testing. Will it die, or will this browser become something in the near future? Will this become as valid a browser as Firefox and IE or will it only be embraced by the blog and geek communities? Time will tell I guess.

A friend and colleague of mine, Thomas Vander Wal, made the New York Times today in an article titled, “’Folksonomy’ Carries Classifieds Beyond SWF and ‘For Sale’,” which is quite an interesting read. Thomas was my boss when I worked at FHWA in 2003 and 2004. He has since moved on (October 6th, 2005) from INDUS and FHWA to start his own consultancy, InfoCloud Solutions, which, from my understanding, is still in the process of final business paperwork.

Thomas focuses on all things information based and how users relate to their digital life around them in the form of their “Personal InfoCloud.” More on this subject can be read about on Thomas’s “Personal InfoCloud” site, and on his personal/professional site under “Off the Top” which is a place of frequent thoughts, ideas and musings.

Thomas coined the term “Folksonomy” in late 2003 when it first appeared in del.icio.us, a social bookmarks manager. His work has raised eyebrows in the technology community and has put people, mainly developers in the beginning, on a new path of thinking and how individuals truly use, not just web, but the information that surrounds their lives. Thomas has spoken at several conferences on this subject including Webvisions 2005, BayCHI and MIT, just to name a few.

Well, I haven’t posted in nearly a month. I was starting to pick up my postings, but time always gets the better of me. I figured I would go ahead and just run a dump of the past few weeks with highlights of the weekend.

To begin, school has been super hectic so far. I just finished the halfway point with my final Bachelor’s class at NVCC. Yeah, it’s English 251 (World Literature), but it’s still a lot of reading and writing. I could currently give anyone a dissertation and/or rundown of the likenesses of civilization and the wilderness with considerations on the adverse affects of both on mankind and how such romanticism in the realm of the wilderness effects writings of the time. I could also feed you all cubes of Tofu until you vomit. Each would be equally engaging I’m sure. To date, my grade in the class is a 100%, which is great considering that during college I was a slacker when it came to my general study courses. I was always attentive and received high marks in my major courses (of course, who doesn’t), but my GPA in those pesky mundane courses such as English, Math, Social Sciences and the like, always seemed to be uninteresting to me. I was a huge fan of Sociology and History, but outside of those courses, the east side of Shepherd University’s campus was very unappealing. Other than that, I was granted an extension and only have five papers (250 word minimum) and two exams to complete, and then freedom! I look forward to partying hard upon the completion of my undergraduate degree. Then it is on to more appealing things such as a graduate program somewhere. I’m still deciding on all of that.

Speaking of graduate programs, I met some nice folks from the University of Baltimore, while attending User Experience Week at the end of August. Kevin and Larry are both U of B individuals, just on different levels. Kevin is the Webmaster for their web site and Larry is currently enrolled in their Master’s of Science in Interaction Design and Information Architecture program. I have been weighing my opportunities in the professional world and wondering what, if any, steps I should take next. I have had a move to California in my mind for the past six months or so and as feasible as it may sound, a move to California may have to take a back seat with the potential of scholastic improvement. There is much to ponder on this front as this fall unfolds. My current focus is to finish my Bachelor’s, party hard for a few weekends and then start focusing on my next moves some time in late November.

The new house is coming along nicely. We are unpacked for the most part and settled in. My only complaint to date is that although the house is always clean, we may have to setup a chore list. Things are getting done, but individuals are slacking from time to time. My roommate Helen is contemplating moving to Orlando, Florida. She has an offer with her current employer to have all expenses paid and move to the land of oranges to take on a new marketing position. There isn’t much worry on the end of the household in regards to our financial situation if she would move. Upon taking the position, rent would be covered by her employer for the remainder of the lease. Although this puts me a little at ease, I’m not sure how well Keegan will handle this situation if she leaves. He and I have been having many talks in the past few days and I’ve been trying to give him some constructive criticism and advice on the events that may unfold. I’m not a shrink by any means, but I don’t want my friends to think a situation is as bad as it seems. Sometimes what may seem bad is actually a blessing in disguise. As far as the situation is concerned, I’ll go more into detail as events unfold in the coming month(s).

Travel plans for the fall are as follows:

• 9/30 - 10/2 (Tentative): Flying to Charleston, West Virginia to see an old college friend, Tara.
• 10/20 - 10/23 (Tentative): Flying to Chicago, Illinois with my roommate Keegan to visit friends and family.
• 10/29: Driving to Shepherdstown, West Virginia with Keegan for Shepherd University‘s Homecoming.
• 11/9-11/13 (Tentative): Drive/ride with Katie across the country. I will be helping her move to California.

Travel plans have been placed in tentative mode for the time being. I just unloaded my UAW-GM 500 NASCAR tickets last night to some friends. Since my parents and I aren’t on speaking terms right now, it seemed like the best solution for the current situation. Since canceling those plans, I’ve been scurrying trying to plan other things to do.

Outside of all that, I’ve just been enjoying life and this past weekend was no exception. Saturday I road my bike to Frederick, Maryland for my friend Meredith’s house warming party, which was a blast by the way and then Sunday afternoon, Kyle and I road the bike’s up to see Meredith and Mike for a little lounge time/post house warming chat. While we were out shopping, Kyle and I ran into my old co-worker Brian and his friend Will. It was good seeing Brian again. We talked a little about music (I was shopping for some new Trance – by the way Brian, awesome box set!), work and the usual. Life was good on both ends, which was good to hear.

That’s all I really have for now. I’ll have some other dumps over the next few days to write about. Ta ta for now!

I’m not the first to post about this, but one of many who have and will. I love how Google announces all of their new and cool tools so secretly. It’s almost like they don’t care. They just kind of toss a nifty tool out here and there with the comment, “Here you go; give this a try.” The same is true, to some extend, with their new tool, Google Earth. Now this isn’t new to some, as many geeks and techies know, Google Earth game from the software application Keyhole, which Google purchased and was strictly selling as a retail version for some time. Now they have split the product into a few different versions: Google Earth, Google Earth Plus, Google Earth Pro, and Google Earth Enterprise. All of these versions have the same basic features such as building rendering, typography, places of interests, roads, etc. The difference is scalability and added features such as faster streaming of imagery and database integration features.

I captured some screen shots of various places I have been, lived and would like to go. I downloaded the application a couple of days ago, so I’m still tinkering with it. It’s more or less, hit or miss when it comes to downloading. They only allow downloads at certain times. Just keep your eyes peeled, or if you’d like, for close friends, I have a copy on my machine that I can toss your way (10 MB). I decided to open the application, pick a few points of interest and then let it stream for an hour or so while it built some of the 3D modeling and typographic features of certain areas. I still have not caught on to how the application streams, what it streams and what, if anything, it stores, but it’s pretty efficient.

I really think Google is doing things right and pushing technology in a direction that it has not moved in for some time. Just think about it, five years ago, we were excited about rollovers, Flash intros, MP3’s and Pentium III chips running at 500 MHz. Now we can take our entire music library with us on a device the size of a deck of cards (with high resolution digital cameras coming in at the same size); desktop computers with dual core chips allowing for, theoretically, four processors in a home computer; mapping the globe and visiting anywhere in the world without leaving your seat; and many more services I can’t even begin to name. I use to say, “What will the next five years hold?” Now I ask, “What will the next month or this year hold?”