I haven’t got a family member for a little under 1700 geographic miles (my folks in Texas), in fact, my brother is a solid 6500 miles away (in Dubai) from my little roost in North Freeport. Although seeing one another in person on a regular basis isn’t very feasible, that doesn’t stop my family from having some great face-to-face contact every couple of days through Skype. Like most disruptive technologies Skype is free of charge and quite revolutionary. With a decent internet connection, a cheapo web cam (or a fancy built in iSight), and the free Skype client, you can speak and see friends, family, and/or business contacts from all over the world!

At first try, Skype seems a little strange. I remember the first time my folks sat on my desk and spoke to me face-to-face. It was almost disorienting! The strangest part being after we “hung up”. I almost expected to see them down my driveway. After about 40 uses or so with about a dozen people, it’s become a very innate method of communicating. I prefer it over the telephone in most cases.

Using Skype with different flyte crew members seems to be quite useful too. Even though they are just a few steps away in most cases, it’s nice to be able to give somebody a jingle for a quick face-to-face, or drop them a text in Skype‘s slick IM agent.

Whether they’re .0001 miles or 6500 miles away, Skype is hugely useful and will likely evolve in ways nobody can imagine today – just as txt messaging grew from a technology to accommodate the deaf into the preferred language of youth.

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I’ve been reading Dan Pink‘s “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future“. It paints a fascinating and very convincing case that we are on the brink of the next age; the Conceptual Age. Where this country’s Industrial Age was built on the hard-working American work ethic, and the white collar intellect (left brain functionality) fueled the Information Age, the Conceptual Age will be very much based on western society’s fantastic ability to conceive design or, as the title suggests, use our right brain.

The book is a great read, but highly untraditional as much of it is in the form of a workbook with assigned tasks to help strengthen the “six essential aptitudes” of a strong right brain – Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. I’d explain what I’ve learned about each, but it’s probably best you go buy the book.

Because of the untraditional approach of the book, I’ve spent nearly 2 months with it and am only about half way through. It’s a little awkward telling people about the book I’ve been “reading” for the last couple of months, they must think”man, that guy is one SLOW reader!”

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It’s not a new topic, in fact it’s at least a couple of years old (according to conflicting reports on the topic), but Drawball still strikes me as something that is ahead of its time. Drawball is fairly straight forward – it’s a huge digital circle which users can draw/write/scribble on with digital ink. The ink is rationed out in small amounts after a user completes a simple puzzle. Much of the murkiness that surrounds the history of Drawball is due to the retaliatory nature of the international canvas. Even the Wikipedia entry has been vandalized to the point of collapse under the weight of controversy. For sometime a huge South Korean flag adorned the upper region of the ball – the efforts of countless dedicated souls who put an enormous amount of time (and digital ink) into the icon. The flag was turned into a Pepsi logo by vandals and is nearly undecipherable today behind all the layers of graffiti.

In essence, Drawball is a living artistic expression of people all over the world. It’s arguably the largest collective canvas the world has ever seen, and from what I can tell, still fairly obscure. Check it out if you get a chance. The Hall of Fame is especially fascinating.

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(From the desk of a photo-nut) The Library of Congress has recently started digitally archiving and uploading thousands of brilliantly-detailed images from their collection onto Flickr. The images offer a crisp glimpse into early to mid 20th century America, and cover a number of topics, mainly the war machine and the vibrancy of American industry. Don’t tell my boss, but when I’m not working on 120+ different websites, I will often drift into a digital daydream on Flickr, recharging my batteries with countless user-added images (10,444 of which are mine, forever preserved and wherever I want them). If you haven’t Flickr-surfed before, a good place to start is the Flickr World Map.

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Gloria

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It’s 2008! 2008!!! For some reason my sense of time seems to revolve around the year 1996; a formative year for an awkward 16 year old recent import from Canada. 1996 found me using the internet for the first time (and not just gawking over the shoulder of my friend a couple of years before, scouring the “Information Superhighway” for Kings Quest tips). It was about the time AOL started sending out “550 Hours Free” discs, and when the general public began dipping a collective toe into the digital abyss. I remember being fascinated by the still-operational Chathouse site where I could find hundreds and hundreds of conversations taking place across the globe. I recall finding so many of my favorite tunes recreated in MIDI format FOR FREE!! The age was ripe with a sense of endless possibility. Patience was abundant with the infant internet, as evidenced by a users willingness to sit through 45-120 seconds of the most annoying sound in the world while their 28k modems connected them to a dreadfully slow page where butterflies would chase their mouse around the screen.

12 years of technological leaps and bounds later, it’s difficult to get really excited about anything “new”. A handful of hens teeth that stand out: Google Earth, YouTube, SecondLife, and of course the “OMG! LOL!” that came with connecting with the long lost through social networking platforms like facebook and MySpace, but to be totally honest, I’m not as impressed with “the future” as I thought I would be. I do not own a Lightsaber, I have never rode a Hoverboard (although I did ride the next best thing last summer in Chicago), and my calander has no spaceflights scheduled.

This whole “future” thing would seem like a bit of a farce had it not been for a little device “Designed by Apple in California” that found itself in my palm this past December 22nd. The Apple iPhone is the single most impressive piece of technology I have ever owned. Not a day goes by when I don’t think or say aloud “damn it feels good to be an iPhone owner”. It’s been over a month and the device hasn’t shown a sign of what I call “The Trampoline Effect” – where you beg your parents for like half your childhood to buy a trampoline (like the one your cousins have) and when they finally break down and cough up the the $250 to buy one you bounce on the thing like an ape for two solid weeks until you are so thoroughly unimpressed by the possibilies of the big aluminum and vinyl mess in the backyard that you stop using it.

The iPhone has me so giddy after 33 days that I can’t imagine I’ll even buy a Lightsaber when they finally come out.

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