The Plan

First, I had to find a plan. I know that it is really just a big wooden box, but I still wanted to find a plan that had some thought behind it. I found a suitable one at Sunset.com.

This plan includes steps for installing bird netting and a mesh lining to thwart aerial invasions and subterranian attacks. I don’t plan on planting any crops of interest to our avian friends and I am pretty sure that we do not have any gophers or moles so I decided to omit these features. I suspect that the pests that will cause the largest problem will be bugs.

The Materials

I opted for cedar for the construction because:

1. it smells nice;
2. it weathers well;
3. it is naturally insect resistant; and
4. unlike some construction lumber, it has not been treated with pesticide(s).

I purchased the cedar at the local building centre. Here’s what I got for about $150 (no, cedar is not cheap):

• 6 x 8′ 4×6 cedar boards
• 1 x 8′ 4×4 cedar post (the plan calls for a 6′ post but they only had 8′ posts)
• a box of 2 1/2″ construction screws (you only need 32)

The Site

The first step was to find a suitable location. Since my backyard is small and already dominated by the kids’ playset, this was a simple task. It will go in the back corner of the yard. Hopefully passers-by will not help themselves to a handful of herbs.

Power Tools

Cutting the wood to the correct dimensions was simple. All I had to do was cut two of the 4X6 boards in half and cut 4 16 inch lengths from the 4×4 post. This took a whopping 5 minutes. It took longer to find the circular saw than to make the cuts.

Assembly

I probably should have assembled the bed on the nice flat floor in the garage but instead I did it on the lawn and it turned out just fine. To the eye it looks perfect. To the measuring tape, it is a wee bit off. I don’t think the tomatoes and chillies will mind if the garden bed is not entirely up to Norm Abram’s specifications. I fastened the pieces using 2 1/2 inch construction screws.

Excavation

This garden bed has the posts protruding a few inches below the bottom of the bed. It is intended that the posts rest in four holes in the ground to provide some lateral stability. Sounds simple enough: just dig four holes in the right position, drop the posts in and I am done. Nope. The chosen site is not level. Some excavation was required.

I first removed all the sod. Using my spade, I cut into the grass along the perimeter of the bed and also made three evenly spaced lengthwise cuts. Then, I proceeded tear up the four strips using good old fasioned elbow grease. This part was time consuming and back breaking. Removing sod without the proper tools is not easy.

After I removed the sod, I had to strategically remove soil to create a level surface for the bed. You will need a carpenter’s level to get this right. This was an iterative process of removing some soil, then dropping the bed in place and checking for level.

Soil

A triple mix was recommended by a friend on Twitter. So we called up a local garden center and ordered one of those gigantic bags of soil. The web site claimed “delivery in a snap” but we had to wait 2 days for it to arrive.

When it arrived, the driver was able to place the bag right next to the bed. He even offered to drop it right in the bed so we could then simply slice open the bag and let it all pour out. There was about a fifth of the bag left after filling the bed, so it was a good thing we didn’t put the bag in the bed.

Planting

In the spring, we had started a few plants in pots on the front porch. From seed we planted:

• oregano
• basil
• sage
• thyme
• chives
• peas

We also bought four tiny tomato plants (about 3″) and put them in pots. For some reason the oregano and thyme did not germinate, so we picked up some already growning plants from the dregs at the garden center for a buck each (which was cheaper than the seed packs I purchased in the spring). All of these plants were quickly transplanted to the bed and, two days later, all seem to be doing fine.

We still plan to plant some carrots and potatoes in the remaining space.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has proposed the Twitter will become an Internet Utility. What does it mean to be an Internet utility? To me, it means that Twitter - and other microblogging services - have joined the list of general tools (email, web sites, blogs, wikis, forums, and instant messaging) that exist on the Internet.

Microblogging fills a gap

But isn’t microblogging like sending a short email to all your friends or starting a blog? I don’t think so. I think microblogging fills a gap.

If we consider each of the aforementioned core Internet technologies in terms of how content is created and consumed, we can see how microblogging fills this gap. Each technology fills a different niche with respect to how many people are involved in the reading and writing of that technology’s content. For example, an email is written by one person and intended for one or a small number of known recipients, whereas a Wiki article is written by potentially countless people and intended to be read by anyone with access to the Internet. To illustrate, look at how this chart plots various technologies based the number readers and authors.

Microblogging fills the space for content that is created by one person and intended for just a few (usually) known people. Note: the dragon represents the space where content created by many people is read by very few - perhaps this is the eventual destination of mainstream print media.

But wait, there’s more to this than just the number of readers and authors.  It is easy, mostly one-way, and can create a sense of social self-awareness.

Its easy

What’s the difference between a blog and a microblog? Writing a blog post requires you to do hard things like like planning, researching, drafting, revising, and proofreading to make your point. A microblog post is just very short note. You simply jot down what you are doing or what you want to share with your followers. The Internet it littered with abandoned blogs with one or two posts. This is because maintaining a blog is real work. Microblogging is not. It is more like water cooler conversations or the trenchant observations you toss over the cube wall to your co-workers.

Its mostly one way

When you receive an email from a friend I think there is still an unwritten rule that you need to reply. This may be a holdover from the heady days of letter writing (you know, with a pen and paper). Microblogging is mostly meant for broadcasting to all your followers. Even if you are posing a question on Twitter, a reply from someone should not be expected.

Proprioception

Proprioception is a term that describes the sense of one’s physical self. Its the sense that, among other things, informs you where your limbs are at any given time. Try this. Close your eyes and ask yourself where your right hand is. Chances are you will know that it is resting on your desk holding your mouse. How did you know that? That’s proprioception.

Clive Thompson wrote an excellent piece about Twitter in Wired magazine a year ago. In the article, he coined the term social proprioception which refers to a group’s sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination. In a nutshell, the article claims that a single tweet has little value. It is the stream of tweets from your friends that gradually build up over time and causes “an almost telepathic awareness” of your friends. Spooky, but cool.

Microblogging in the Enterprise

The facilitation of efficient communication across a large organization is very difficult and is a primary factor that determines an organization’s success. Intra-organizational communication was once performed with the memo. Today it is done with things like the company-wide email and maybe even an internal forum. More recently, some companies have been experimenting with social technologies like internal blogs however, I submit that these techniques still tend to be highly formal and therefore have the tendency to cause employee eye-rolling.

I propose that a complimentary internal twitter-like service would provide a medium for backchannel communication among an organization’s employees.

I think the benefits described above would be realized as follows.

Easiness - it does not take much time to jot down what your are doing or how you feel about what is going on in your department. Participation would not have a large impact on employee productivity. Examples:

“having trouble rebuilding an index.. again!”

“slow morning… only 4 support calls today”

“totally jazzed about meeting with customers all next week.”

One way - You don’t need to respond to other people’s microblog posts. An internal microblogging service would not just be yet another ever growing inbox of unread items. If you don’t look at your microblog stream from the people you follow, it does not matter. Unlike your email inbox, there is no need for anxiety if you ignore your company’s microblog for a few days.

Proprioception - This is the biggie. Microblogging could have the effect of giving an organization a better sense of itself. Imagine IT being able to monitor the backchannel chatter in the finance department. Perhaps just from monitoring the posts, IT may discover an easily correctable issue that makes the finance department’s job easier. Another example might be sales staff discovering interesting projects going on in development and could then provide input about customers that would pay for the result of that project. The examples are endless.

Important note: Most Twitter posts are readable by any anonymous person on the Internet. For an internal microblogging service to work it would have to be similarly wide open. That is, anyone in the organization should be able to read any other microblog post. It is the antithesis of the principle of least privilege.

I’d like to postulate the following:

Microblogging fosters friendship.
Friendship fosters trust.
Trust fosters collaboration.
Collaboration fosters innovation.

Just as Twitter has filled a gap on the public Internet, an internal twitter-like service would provide similar benefits to an enterprise and would lead to greater innovation due enhanced collaboration, trust, and friendships.

OK, so who’s going to build it?

Let’s have a look at these predictions and see if any have been realized. But first, watch this compilation of the TV spots narrated by man’s man Tom Selleck and his moustache.

Borrowing a book from thousands of miles away

I don’t hear about people electronically borrowing books from libraries, but I do see sites like Scribd and devices like the Kindle gaining popularity. Scribd is a free service that allows you to upload any document and make it available for anyone to download or read online in their web browser. The Kindle is an electronic book reader from Amazon. With a Kindle, you can purchase and download books over a free wireless network made available by Amazon.

Achieved? Kinda.

Cross the country without stopping for directions

Navigation systems can be found for less than $200 at your local big box electronics store. Similar functionality is also becoming a common feature of cell phones. As my wife will attest, I have the worst sense of direction. I don’t disagree. A friend of mine likes to sarcastically call me “The Atlas”. Indeed, I would be lost without the GPS navigator on my Blackberry.

Achieved? Yes.

Send someone a fax from the beach

Faxes? Who sends faxes anymore? In hindsight, I think this prediction had more to do with the availability of network enabled mobile computing devices. Without question, this has been achieved - I am writing this post on my Blackberry at my kids’ ice skating lessons.

Achieved? yes.

Buying concert tickets from a cash machine.

One night in 1984, my mullet and I camped out at the Burlington Mall so I could be at the front of the line for Ronnie James Dio tickets. Ironically, it was the “Last in Line” tour. If only there was a bank machine that sold concert tickets, I could have done something more productive with my time - like sleeping.

I don’t think this was ever specifically invented, but certainly, waiting in lines for hours with no guarantee of getting a ticket are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Services like TicketMaster, allow you to purchase your tickets over the Internet but also charge usury “convenience” fees. Also, most modern movie theatre chains offer online ticket purchasing and/or provide automated ticket sales kiosks. Achieved? Sorta.

Tuck your baby in from a phone booth

I think what they were hinting at here were video phones. Desktop video phones are not very common, but cell phones equipped with video cameras are gaining popularity. The coolest example of what you can do with your video phone is to stream live to the Internet using Qik.com. You can go there and randomly watch what people are recording and chat with them during the live feed. For an example of how Qik can be used, check out the tech industry interviews broadcast by Robert Scoble.

Achieved? More or less.

Open doors with the sound of your voice

I think they were predicting the ubiquitous voice activated computer. You know, like the one on Star Trek TNG or the one Tony Stark used to help him build the Iron Man suit? Personally, I can’t imagine voice-activated computing becoming popular. Can you imagine how noisy your office would be if everyone was talking to their computers? However, if Microsoft’s Sync takes off, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be integrated into home computers and home automation systems. I think we still need to wait and see if this kind of thing becomes generally adopted.

Achieved? Wait and see.

Carry you medical history in your wallet

Google has recently released Google Health. It is a free service for organizing and storing all your health records. The key feature is the ability to share your medical history with your health professionals. I think this is better than keeping your medical history in your wallet. Stuff in your wallet is more easily lost than something hosted at Google. Of course, there is a trade off here. You put some privacy at risk in return for the efficient and timely access to your health records.

Achieved. Almost.

Attend a meeting in your bare feet

This is similar to the section on Tucking in your baby. Its about being there without being there. Teleconferencing systems do exist. I’ve used a couple. They’re neat, but I’m not sure they added much value when I used them. Nothing beats being face-to-face with people in a room.

Cutting edge - and really creepy - research into new humanlike presence techniques is being done by Hiroshi Ishiguro at Kyoto University. He is studying the suitability of using a tele-operated androids, or geminoids, to project your presence across the globe. His first application of the geminoid technology was to give lectures to his undregrad students. The Gemnoid sat before the students and was remotely operated by Ishiguo - via the Internet - from his home. Watch a geminoid demo on YouTube.

Achieved? Yes.

Watch the movie you wanted to, the minute you wanted to.

On-demand movies have been around for a while now. However, cable companies are now finding competition from companies like Apple and Netflix. You can now rent movies from Apple and watch them  using iTunes, iPod, or AppleTV. Netflix has recently announced the upcoming availability of a set-top box that let’s you rent movies for immediate viewing on your TV.

Achieved? Totally.

Learn special things, from far away places

The Internet has made this possible in spades. The full range of media is now available on the Internet. Text, audio, video and images are are easily accessible without specialized knowledge or equipment. My favourite example of someone using the Internet to its fullest is Joseph Kimojino. Joseph is the head of tourism and anti-animal harassment for the Mara Conservancy in Kenya. He is using wide array of Internet technology to teach people in far away places about the plight of wild animals on the preserve. He uses Twitter for microbloging, posts pictures on Flickr, posts videos on Vimeo, and ties it all together on a blog. Oh, and you can even make a donation from the blog. I urge you to check it out.

Achieved? Yes.

To Sum Up…

It seems most of what we saw in those commercials has been realized in some way. But what was missed? What could not have been predicted?

Most of the technologies depicted in the ads show people accessing professionally published information (e.g. books, movies, medical records, and mapping information). It doesn’t show people creating information. Why isn’t there a prediction of someone composing a best selling novel on a cell phone?

Perhaps there was no way to predict how normal folks, like you and me, would be contributing to the mass of freely available information. In 1993, could anyone have predicted how something like Wikipedia could become so indispensible or that the bloggers would have newspapers scrambling for ways to stay relevant? If you know of such a prediction, please let me know.

If AT&T were making thise commercials today, I wonder how they would look? Perhaps that is another blog post.

The same is true for Blackberry. I love my Blackberry. I love using it. I love that it is Canadian. I love that it is from Waterloo. It royally sucks that I can’t use it to its fullest potential without paying several hundred dollars a month. Sometimes when I snap a good photo with my Curve’s camera, I feel slight anxiety about whether I should email it directly from the device because I might go over my data limit. Its like deciding not to go on a long car trip because you might exceed the allowable mileage defined in your lease. Waiting until I get home to transfer data from my state-of-the-art wireless device over a USB connection is bogus.

How is this going to change? Someone new needs to get into the wireless carrier game in Canada and shake up the oligopoly. I don’t know if there is anything other than desire preventing this, but I would love to see someone like RIM be a new disruptive player and offer a flat $30/month for unlimited data. Of course getting people to switch carriers can be a trick since many contracts contain the poison pill of requiring you to payout the remainder (or portion of the remainder) of your service plan if you cancel. So, a truly disruptive move by a new (or existing player) would have to include a strategy to ease this pain. Maybe something like swallowing all or some of the cancellation penalty?

I haven’t run any numbers so I have no idea if this is viable but I am certain that people hate the big fees in Canada because they know it is extraordinarily cheaper in other countries. There is a big pain out there. Big pain means big opportunity. But in this case, you need BIG money (RIM money?) to get in the game.

All this got me thinking more about what exactly makes a good user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). What are the commonalities in the UI/UX of some very successful products? The first two that come to mind are the iPod Touch and the Wii Remote.

iPod Touch

The iPod Touch let’s people use familiar gestures for flipping though CD covers and photos. To me, it is reminiscent of flipping through a real stack of CDs or collection of LPs in a milk crate.

Wii Remote

The Wii remote allows users to perform familiar movements to control objects on the screen. For example, in Wii Sports Baseball, you don’t press a strange combination of buttons to cause the player on the screen to swing the bat - you swing the remote exactly like you would swing a real baseball bat.

I think the common idea here is that each of these products allow the user to behave like… well… humans. Our hands didn’t evolve to hold an Xbox controller, use a mouse, or type on a keyboard. Our hands a really good at holding, throwing, touching, hitting, pointing, and squeezing. I think the UI/UX of the iPod and the Wii remote are so compelling because they are modeled on how naturally use our bodies to manipulate real world objects.

This probably isn’t that big of a revelation, but I think technology has finally reached a state where this kind of interaction can be effectively realized in electronic products. Apple tried years ago with the Newton where the interface was a metaphor for pen and paper. However, it failed because the handwriting recognition just wasn’t good enough. We are now seeing very cool advances in touch screens and similar technologies like Microsoft Surface.

I think (hope) more of these button-free approaches will be taken with more electronic devices. How about this… imagine a TV remote that uses Wii-like functionality: twisting the remote to the left or right controls volume and flicking the remote up and down controls the channel. That would be neat.

What I did like was MobileMe. Now this is cool. It is a service that keeps your email, calendar, and contacts synchronized. They refer to it as Exchange for the rest of us. You can see a video about it here. You can even use Outlook and map your MobileMe photo gallery as a drive in Windows. Very spiffy.

I predict we will see Google’s answer to MobileMe soon. Imagine a full integration between Google Apps (GMail, GTalk, Google Docs, GCal) and your Android powered phone. That would rock.

Now, I am a Blackberry user and a big fan. I have been waiting for something like this that integrates with my Blackberry for quite some time. Sure, RIM has Blackberry Unite, but it seems clunky and outdated compared with MobileMe. If Apple releases a phone with a tactile qwerty keyboard, I think RIM’s consumer market play is in trouble. The lack of a keyboard with buttons is the only negative thing I have heard about iPhone.

Users are being trained to expect a complete solution, not just a cool standalone device. I might need to switch to iPhone once they are available in Canada.

Some examples of tweeting are:

“I am eating a delicious sandwich”

“Watching an excellent presentation on pickle bending”

“Wondering why I am still awake”

“Arrested”

Twitter has become remarkable popular. According to twitdir.com there are more than 1.7 users on Twitter. Usage of Twitter doubled in March during the SXSW festival in Texas. There are growing pains though. Since the SXSW conference, outages have been frequent. It seems the guys at Twitter just didn’t count on the level of traffic they are getting. In fact, Twitter has been very candid about its shortcomings and the on-the-fly re-architecture that is happening.

Sure, some people are pretty peeved about Twitter’s problems. But there seems to be an army true supporters. For example, last week one of Twitter’s database servers went down and is was reported at the Twitter Blog. Rather than the “you guys suck” comments you would expect, there was “Get well soon” messages written to the database. I know.

Twitter has managed to accomplish something that companies pay millions to advertising firms for - they have a product that people have connected with on a very emotional level. They have customer loyalty. They have a strong brand. How did this happen? Is this because of something special that Twitter did or is it just because Twitter happened to be the first to win at the micro-blogging game? Perhaps it was a bit of both.

I think the kernal of truth that has come out of Twitter’s short life is that people love setting their status. I’ll explore micro-blogging in a future post.