Once Upon A Time, We Had A Future To Believe In - 2018

 

Once Upon A Time, We Had A Future To Believe In

I found myself humming the 1970 song by David Crosby, “Almost Cut My Hair”. The first half of the song goes like this:

“Almost cut my hair
Happened just the other day
It’s getting’ kind of long
I could’ve said it was in my way
But I didn’t and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it, to someone, yeah
Must be because I had the flu this Christmas
And I’m not feeling up to par
And increases my paranoia
Like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car…”

Before the conclusion, Crosby elects to go south and enjoy some “sunny southern weather”. Birth, death, birth, death. In a succession of previous lives, we have all experienced that endless cycle. We raped, murdered, made war... and occasionally, made love. How many times did we burn at the stake? If you are forced to decide, always take drowning over death by fire. Neither is quick, but the human body takes to cooling more easily than burning.

Times have changed. If we choose, we are now more conscious of life and our place within it. Even in this lifetime, we have seen so much and come so far. Do you remember when personal computers displayed words, but no pictures? I remember first reading in the glossy pages of Time Magazine about the world-wide-web, now known as the internet. It was largely a free offering until July 5, 1994, when Jeff Bezos founded the now ubiquitous Amazon.com. Many complained that Bezos had ruined the free nature of the internet by charging money for books. In the early days of Amazon, Bezos picked, packed and shipped physical books from his home garage. I say “physical books” because in recent years, half of all adult books sold arrived in digital format. In 2017, according to Time.com, Jeff Bezos became the wealthiest person in the world. If you are into making money, Bezos accomplished that feat in only twenty-three years.

Also in 1994, the Mosaic Netscape Navigator 1.0 appeared in a beta version, free to all non-commercial users. Before that, some school systems, universities and other non-profit entities had created their own text-only internet browsers. In those early days of internet access, most websites were textual documents created with raw Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). With the advent of the Netscape Navigator browser, web masters quickly created both text and graphical versions of their websites.

Displaying graphics on the personal computers of the day was problematic. For most users, “broadband” was a fantasy. Computer displays were mostly converted TV monitors. The most common method of connection was via a dial-up telephone modulate/demodulate (modem) device. Older users will remember a series of squeaks and squawks that coincided with an internet connection attempt on a telephone modem.

Also around that time, America Online (later AOL) offered dial-up services to anyone with a modem. For $19.99 each month, you could use a proprietary browser to access exclusive content provided by that company. For years, America Online attempted to be a complete alternative to the internet, providing news and information across a broad spectrum of interests. Soon, however, other internet providers, such as EarthLink undercut America Online, while bundling the Netscape Navigator for equal or less money.

By the late 1990s, a few of us who lived within a mile or two of a telephone switching office began to access the web via a “digital subscriber line”, or DSL. Unlike dial-up, DSL utilized a carrier frequency on a standard phone line. In addition, its newer style modem allowed simultaneous use of both voice and data on the same telephone line. As such, it was “always on” and ready for connection via Netscape. Years later, cable TV companies figured out how to carry both a television signal and data on the same line. Again, a specialized modem was required.

With the burgeoning success of Netscape, Bill Gates of Microsoft realized that personal computers might access more than his Microsoft Office software applications. After failing to collude with Netscape to divide up the internet browser business, Gates initiated one of the boldest and most underhanded takeover attempts in history. At Gates' direction, Microsoft cobbled together their own Internet Explorer (IE) browser. By 1995, Microsoft began including IE as a free addition to its Windows operating system. Simultaneously, Microsoft initiated a viral “whisper campaign”, claiming that anyone who had signed up for Netscape Navigator would soon be charged a fee by Netscape for the use of its browser. As IE ascended, Netscape tanked, becoming a marginal player, and later failing altogether.

Ironically, when Google released its now ubiquitous Chrome browser in 2008, its software core derived from Firefox, which in turn derived from the 1998 public release of the Netscape Navigator source code. Today, Chrome is a complete operating system rivaling Microsoft Windows. Ironically, Internet Explorer is now a discontinued product, surviving like a zombie in older Microsoft Windows computers. Google has since degenerated to the point where in 2015 it strayed into autonomously driving vehicles, including the Google Pop Car, a prototype railroad safety vehicle. Google is now seen largely as a service name, owned by Alphabet. This brings me around to my thesis, which is “Nothing is permanent. Like electronic devices and computer applications, we all are born and die, often within a brief time period”.

At last count, I own almost 200 internet Universal Resource Locator (URLs). After ten years of collecting, curating and publishing blog articles and websites, I ask myself if there will be enough time to write and publish them all. If I died tomorrow, or if the person who operates my internet servers died tomorrow, the deprecation of my online data would begin. Within a year or two, all the contracts would end and most all of my internet presence would disappear. All of my internet personas, including Moab Jim, Durango Jim, Taos Jim, Yuma Jim, Reno Jim, Marina Jim, Kauai Jim and Fiji Jim would reenter the public domain, destined for recycling.

As hard as it might be for a current day teenager to believe, until 2007 there was no iPhone or any other “smart phone”. Even in 2009, the iPhone 3G internet browser was slower than a dial-up modem circa 1994. Now, you can buy the “all new” Amazon Alexa personal home spy for $79.99. If you do, Alexa will sit quietly in your domicile and listen to your questions, comments and mad rants all day long. Already, you can buy supplies (ex. toilet paper) based on how often you have ordered in the past. “Oh”, I remarked recently, “The toilet paper arrived just before I had to utilize my corn cob collection”. How nice. I then imagined saying, “Oh, it arrived two weeks after I died and every month thereafter, until my PayPal account was drained”. How many of your dearly departed friends or family remain as friends on Facebook or LinkedIn?

The clash of the titans in our world is not on a cinematic screen in a theater near you. The real clash is between Old Energy power mongers and us, the lovers of freedom. Over twenty years after the advent of the popular internet, Old Energy federal agencies continue to remove scientific data from every federal government website. In a blow to "net neutrality", the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to allow corporate internet providers to throttle-down competitors’ websites. Old Energy politicians use computer analytics to gerrymander congressional seats for a permanent “conservative” majority.

In short, Old Energy uses computer power to find every loophole and rig every system they can. At any time, the United States federal government could declare a state of emergency and censor or cut public access to internet data, as Iran recently did. When the pressure on the current regime became too great, all internet access in Iran disappeared for approximately thirty minutes. Who is to say a similar outage could not happen anywhere?

For $52 billion, the Walt Disney Company will soon buy the majority of 21st Century Fox assets. I remember when they were “20th Century Fox”. As usual, press releases from both companies tell us that the transaction is "good for consumers". Prior to the 2016 presidential campaign, Comcast NBCUniversal promoted a New York Real Estate developer as a celebrity television star. In keeping with their “Universal” moniker, that failed land developer soon attained almost “universal” name recognition.

The NBC television network broadcast that developer’s first twenty-five presidential campaign rallies live, uncut and uninterrupted by commercials. After helping to elect him as president, the same corporation realized that the man was attacking NBC and other mainstream media outlets as purveyors of “fake news”. Realizing that their own corporate power could erode or disappear, they quickly dedicated their MSNBC cable network and their NBC Saturday Night Live (SNL) television broadcast to un-electing the same man in 2020. In the name of Old Energy and profits, "Hollywood" had turned against the very man who they had shamelessly promoted during the campaign.

The changes in media and entertainment over the past two decades are too myriad to chronicle here. A few of the highlights not previously mention include the rise and fall of Google, the introduction of “fair and balanced news” on Fox Television and the rise of Netflix and Amazon as media and entertainment giants. As late as 2007, MySpace.com had eight-times as many users as Facebook. Does anyone remember Yahoo, which positioned itself as the “web portal” of choice for young people, entrepreneurs and sports fans? Now for some good news. In separate press releases, Netflix and Amazon announced plans to create over 100 feature-length movies each year, much of it streaming exclusively on their respective “web platforms”.

While at home today, I checked the screen on my Samsung Galaxy 8 "smart" phone. When I touched the YouTube icon, it immediately connected to my 65", curved-screen Samsung “smart” TV. Somewhat enamored of seeing YouTube on the large screen, I watched a video of an old locomotive crash, staged for the movies around 1930. I went on to watch the 2011 tsunami hitting beach houses in Japan. To me, the scene looked similar to Malibu, or perhaps Montecito, California. When the waves hit, they splashed three or four times the height of the two-story houses. Then the video cut off, just before the houses disappeared into the rubble. “Is that real?” I asked.

For the original Blade Runner movie in 1982, Ridley Scott (of Thelma & Louise fame) created print advertisements that supposedly covered entire buildings. His building wrap-ads were part of a future that no one expected to materialize. By 1993, Pepsi Co. deployed the first transit bus wrap. Soon thereafter, someone developed the full building wrap-ad.

Even today, we can discern the fakery from reality... most of the time. If we so choose, we are both conscious and free. As Pete Townsend wrote for the Who in their song, “Going Mobile”:

“I don’t care about pollution
I’m an air-conditioned gypsy
That’s my solution
Watch the police and the taxman miss me!
I’m mobile!”

Email James McGillis

By James McGillis at 03:42 PM | Personal Articles | Comments (0) | Link

Brightsource and Bechtel Missed the Opportunity for Co-generation at Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Station - 2014

 

Brightsource and Bechtel Missed the Opportunity for Co-generation at Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Station

Less than two years ago, I wrote about the rush to industrialize the Mojave Desert with ever-larger solar thermal arrays. The most notable example was Brightsource Energy’s mega-solar plant in California’s Ivanpah Valley, near Primm, Nevada. Together, the three Brightsource units at Ivanpah obliterated 3,500 acres of fragile desert habitat, replacing it with 170,000 motorized, articulating mirrors and three massive receiving towers.

On September 24, 2012, Brightsource confirmed that it had synchronized their Unit 1 station with the existing electrical power grid. Although a photo on their website shows most, if not all of the Unit 1 mirrors in operation, no one other than the plants operators knows how many of the articulating mirrors pointed at the receiving tower during synchronization.

While testing prior to synchronization, operators focused many of the Unit 1 mirrors to either side of the receiving tower. Photos taken during the test procedures show an ominous “solar flux” to either side of the receiving tower. As additional heat for steam generation was required, operators quickly moved standby mirrors to focus directly on the receiving tower. Although it amounted to a “proof-of-concept” connection, in the months that have followed, Brightsource has yet to announce repetition of the synchronization process.

Since the Ivanpah project represents a quantum leap in solar thermal power generation, no one knows if it will work as planned. Will plant operators be able to point all 170,000 panels at the three receiving towers on any given day? Will the intensity of the reflected solar flux destroy the steam generators at the top of each tower? If Brightsource knows the answer to these questions, they are not talking. Their press releases featured platitudinous and self-congratulatory rhetoric about their first synchronization, but little else about testing protocols and procedures.

Maybe the Ivanpah mega-solar plant will succeed and maybe it will fail, but one mega-mistake is obvious. When Bechtel Corporation planned the facilities for Brightsource, they omitted any onsite thermal storage capability. If the plant ever works, it will produce power only when the sun is shining. When questioned, Brightsource said that they needed to get “several” plants working without onsite thermal storage prior adding that complexity to future projects. In other words, the technology is not yet ready to do it right.

As we know, the electrical grid is a complex and vulnerable infrastructure. Adding or subtracting too much power too quickly can cause cascading shutdowns of the adjacent grid. If Brightsource and Bechtel can simultaneously synchronize all three units with the grid, the lack of onsite thermal storage will limit electrical power production. If liquid-sodium thermal storage was present at Ivanpah, it could help balance and augment power generation at the site. With onsite thermal storage, co-generation could begin prior to sunrise and the mirrors could come online as the thermal storage dissipated. That would allow for a smooth ramp up of power entering the electrical grid. Without co-generation from onsite thermal storage, operators must bring each unit slowly up to power. Once operators achieve that elusive synchronization with the electrical grid, they can then focus additional mirrors on the receiving towers. At some point during the day, one would hope that all 170,000 mirrors would focus on the towers.

In the late afternoon, operators would refocus more mirrors away from the receiving towers. By sunset, the towers would go dark, steam generation would cease and the process of disconnecting each of the three units from the power grid would commence. The following morning, each unit would go through the delicate process of reheating and synchronization with the grid. The situation almost guarantees that the massive plant will rarely achieve maximum power output and will spend much of its time ramping up and ramping back down.

No one has said what would happen if a desert thunderstorm were to move rapidly over the solar array. What effect would so rapid a withdrawal of power do to power generation and synchronization to the electrical grid? What effect would a downpour have on the superheated receiving towers? If storms were in the forecast, the plant would have to operate at lower power, in anticipation of possible weather related shutdowns.

Like an old-fashioned steam locomotive, contemporary steam generators are more efficient and last longer when they operate continuously. Unlike a diesel electric locomotive, which can be brought up to operating temperature quite quickly, the firebox of a steam locomotive is kept hot until it is taken out of operation for maintenance or repair. Restarting these ancient “steam generators” is a time consuming and delicate process. Likewise, daily thermal cycling of the super-heated steam generators at Ivanpah guarantees premature wear and increased operating costs.

In their haste to design and build the largest solar thermal energy station ever, Brightsource and Bechtel have made two potentially fatal errors. First was the aforementioned lack of onsite thermal storage and co-generation. Second was their use of single-sided mirrors for focusing sunlight on to the receiving towers. Had Bechtel taken a little more time in designing the systems, they could have designed the 170,000 articulating mirrors to flip over, thus exposing passive solar electrical panels affixed to their undersides.

If they had utilized this scheme, the majority of panels could start each day in passive solar mode, generating sufficient electrical energy to synchronize with the grid. Upon achieving synchronization, operators could begin flipping panels so that their mirrored sides would focus on a receiving tower. As sundown or a thunderstorm approached, operators could begin flipping panels from reflecting mode to passive reception mode, thus smoothing the ramping down of electrical generation and eventual disconnection from the grid.

The key to this plan is to switch quickly from solar reflecting mode to solar receiving mode. Before state and federal regulators approve construction of any additional solar thermal plants in our fragile desert environment, they should require both thermal storage and passive solar additions as part of any new plant construction.

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By James McGillis at 05:42 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Brightsource Energy Industrializes the Mojave Desert - 2012

 

Brightsource Energy Industrializes the Mojave Desert

Recently, I traveled through the Mojave Desert on Interstate I-15 North. At Ivanpah Valley, California, I saw construction cranes building three colossal steel towers. Brightsource Energy, Bechtel and Google had recently commandeered 3500 acres of BLM-administered federal lands there. Prior to that, Buffalo Bill’s and Whiskey Pete’s casinos in nearby Primm, Nevada were the largest local developments.

Buffalo Bill and Whiskey Pete proved that even in the middle of nowhere, travelers would stop for food, fuel and gambling. Likewise, Brightsource Energy proved that “clean energy”, financed by a thirty-percent grant and a full federal loan guarantee, is a surefire investment. Therefore, we now witness the permanent destruction of desert tortoise, kit fox and big horned sheep habitat totaling 3500 acres.

The solar electric generating technology behind the Ivanpah project is yet unproven. There is a Brightsource pilot project in Israel’s Negev Desert, but its power output is only 1.5 megawatts (MW). According to Brightsource, Ivanpah will produce 392 MW. Only in the mega-solar industry could a company inflate its pilot technology 260 times. I cannot predict that Brightsource Energy’s solar thermal technology will fail, but where is the proof that it will work?

Forgotten in all of this is the bankruptcy of our previous “solar savior”, Solyndra, LLC. If nothing else, Solyndra shows how quickly “clean energy” economics can change. Even so, we now sanction Brightsource to build unproven solar infrastructure, largely at public expense. Even before Ivanpah goes online in 2013, Brightsource has plans for larger projects at Hidden Hills, Coalinga and Rio Mesa, California.

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By James McGillis at 09:50 AM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Yahoo, AOL & Hotmail Heading for the Dustbin of History - 2012

 

Yahoo, AOL & Hotmail Heading for the Dustbin of History

In November 2007, I wrote about the shift in internet traffic away from Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL/Netscape. For its part, Microsoft would not end its takeover bidding for Yahoo until May 2008. By then, both companies had begun their inexorable slide from internet ubiquity and dominance. For its part, Netscape became obsolete and unsupported by AOL, its parent company since 1999. Now spun off, AOL continues to flounder.

Beginning in 1995, Microsoft made history by giving away its Internet Explorer 1.0 (IE) browser. During its existence, Netscape received scant revenue from its users. Even so, dirty tricksters sent email chain letters warning that Netscape would soon dun every user $50. Almost immediately, Netscape’s market share dove, while Microsoft's rose just as quickly.

Hotmail rode on one of the earliest internet email platforms. Still, it was better than Netscape’s and thus Microsoft’s 1997 purchase of Hotmail drew email users away from Netscape. Although spam emails were already a problem in the late 1990s, no one knew that spam would someday represent between fifty and ninety percent of all emails sent. Microsoft/Hotmail and Yahoo’s revamped Rocketmail left both giants with technically crude email platforms. As we learned with the MS DOS operating system, the original architecture often determines the limits of change within a program.

During the past fifteen years, first Netscape, then Microsoft and Yahoo took turns dominating internet search and internet email. By building on their market power, Microsoft at one time owned the largest share of both search and email. Today, none of our featured companies dominates either internet search or email. That honor went instead to a next generation internet start-up known as Google.

Not until 2006, did Twitter’s first Tweet chirp on the internet. In early 2007, when Twitter became a separate company, MySpace owned over eighty percent of the social media market. Although gaining fast, Facebook had yet to go beyond a ten percent market share. At MySpace, each user controlled the content on one HTML page. Whatever MySpace gained in simplicity, it lost in flexibility. After old-media dinosaur News Corp. purchased MySpace in 2005, they stifled change. After its 2011 spin off, MySpace users still control content on only a single webpage.

With its later launch date, Facebook drew on technology similar to Microsoft's “active server pages”, or ASP. Each Facebook user’s home page displays a host of interactive elements. Facebook’s network effect and ubiquity make it all that some users have time for on the internet. Ironically, Facebook achieved what AOL first attempted, which was to encompass and dominate the internet experience of its many users.

What shall be the future of our internet giants, both old and new? Will the masses still follow the tweets and rants of celebrities and fools? Will we still “friend” each other on Facebook or “+” each other on Google+? Texting is here to stay, but it lacks email’s ability to persuade in a longer form. As long as people can write, they will want to ramble on in a textural format.

Spammers have hijacked every AOL or Yahoo email user that I know. Recently, my Hotmail address was hacked and used by spammers. Despite several attempts to reclaim my Hotmail address, Microsoft could not verify me. In that process, Microsoft lost one more internet email customer. For reasons similar to the rise of Facebook and Google, the old internet giants will slip further. The underlying architecture of AOL mail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail will sink further into a quicksand made of spam.

When you access your Yahoo mail or Hotmail, the content display relies heavily on Java script. The demise of AOL and Yahoo mail will come from their over-reliance on that Java script. If you have any doubt, access your Yahoo email via a slow modem. There you will see one element at a time dished to you by the email servers. Relying on executable commands, “robot.txt” or “bots” have learned to exploit vulnerabilities within script-based email systems.

I do not blame every internet problem on the Russians, but every day half a dozen Russian websites crawl this blog, utilizing Java script-bots. With compact Java code, their bots seek out security gaps, including login locations and procedures. Once found, a high-speed computer might be employed to crack a login/password system. If the robot hackers can “crack” my website or your email password in five minutes or less, it is worth the time spent. Usually, you can retrieve your identity, but not before the indignity of spamming everyone in your online address book.

Each time AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail loses another email user to the spammers, they lose a customer forever. Whether Google will still be around one hundred years from now, I cannot say. Still, my Gmail user friends never have to offer apologies because their email addresses were hacked. As with Facebook’s advantage over MySpace, when Google designed Gmail for its 2004 introduction, it had the benefit of the learning curve. Although I cannot say how Google did it, their Gmail system seems impervious to script-based password hacks.

When comment-spammer Good-Finance Blog invaded my website, I spent hours getting rid of nefarious phishing comments and links. Finally, I installed an “include file” at the very top of my website code. Through manual entry, my “top_inc” include-file now blocks a long list of spammers’ Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Before gaining access to my website, comment spammers now receive a redirect to the FBI website.

While AOL, Hotmail/Live and Yahoo email users often receive more spam than legitimate email, Google has changed the rules for that game. At the top of their Gmail server code, Google installed their own version of a “top_inc” include-file. To be sure, some spam still gets through the Gmail system, but not for long. As quickly as Gmail’s many users report spam messages, Google denies access from the offending server. If the spammers deploy a wider range of IP addresses, Google can refuse email from a given country or region.

No company is perfect, Google included. Their lapses in user privacy policies are well known. If any company will still serve up email to its future clients, I bet it will be Google. AOL and Yahoo will remain niche players only for the near-term. Ultimately, hackers will end their former status as internet search and email giants. Recently, as Yahoo News gleefully reported, AOL announced that its once vaunted patent library is for sale to the highest bidder. A stance like that does not inspire confidence in the future of AOL.

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By James McGillis at 09:34 PM | Technology | Comments (0) | Link

Translate this website from English into any one of twenty-nine languages now - 2008

Translate this website from English into any one of twenty-nine languages now.

 

 

Our website, JamesMcGillis.com announces instantaneous translation into any one of twenty-eight international languages, plus a “text only” version.

 

Languages include Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalong, “Text Only, English” and Turkish.

 

Admittedly, there are large populations not represented here.  For instance, 575 million people speak Hindi or Bengali as their primary language.  Only the lack of an adequate web-based English-to-Bengali (or Hindi) translator prevents their inclusion.  Still, the languages represented at https://jamesmcgillis.com cover 3.5 billion (or 51%) of a current worldwide population of 6.8 billion souls.

 

In order to try our translator, simply click on the flag that represents one of the languages listed above.  Within a few seconds, you will notice a “redirect” of your browser to the selected translation website.  Moments later, you will see the current webpage rendered in your selected language.

 

With some browsers, you may click from language to language, but with others, you may have to select the “Back Button” on your browser to reload the original English language version, from which you can then access any other language flag.

 

If you are a native speaker of any listed language, this should make our website easier to read.  If you are a language student, you now have an interesting way to compare the meaning of any particular word or phrase in another language.

 

Please keep in mind that all such translations are only as good as their vocabulary and syntax editors can make them.  In checking several of the different languages, we found that the common internet vocabulary word “link” translated as “golf course” in several languages.  Although we try to write in simple and direct language, we are sure that bilingual individuals will find some interesting or humorous translations.

 

If you try our language translator, we would love to hear from you about your experience.  To do so, simply click on the “Comments” link at the bottom of this post or the “Email” link you will find there, as well.

 

Author's Note: After I published this article, "Google Translate" made my custom translator obsolete. Now you may translate any article on this website from English to any other popular language. To do so, simply click on the "Select a Language" drop-down menu at the top of this page. Then, select a language and start reading this website in the language of your choice.

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There Must be a Bunch of Yahoos Running That Company - 2007

There Must be a Bunch of Yahoos Running That Company.

 

Do you remember not so long ago (around the turn of the last century) when Web Portals were all the rage? Starting mostly as web browsers in the mid-1990s, an all-out fight developed among old media companies to capture a “sticky space” on the internet.  Newbies to the Web needed a place to call “Home”, and for awhile, portals seemed to be that place.

 

As the Web matured Netscape became a part of America Online, the Walt Disney Company bought Go.com, and Excite and @Home became a part of AT&T.  Lycos, another early entrant sold out to Network Solutions.  Other portals started out as web directories (Yahoo!) or search engines (Excite, Lycos, AltaVista, Infoseek, and Hotbot).

  

There was a rush to expand services to portal users, including free email, customization features for news, weather and sports, chatrooms and instant messaging.  All of these features were designed to make users stay longer, thus exposing them to more paid advertising.

 

The portal craze, with "old media" companies racing to outbid each other for Internet properties, flamed out in 2000 and 2001. Disney pulled the plug on Go.com, Excite went bankrupt and its remains were sold to iWon.com.  Yahoo and MSN remained successful portals until the simplicity of Google’s interface and its unmatched page-loading speed took millions of users away, apparently for good.

 

With all of that history and Yahoo! looking more and more like an old media company, which just happens to do business on the Web, I was not surprised to read an LA Times article this week that quoted Jerry Yang, Yahoo! CEO as having a vision that “Yahoo become the home page of choice by connecting computer users to what they care about”.  From his office in Santa Monica, California, Senior VP, Scott Moore, who made his name at Yahoo! overseeing news, sports and finance (speaking of old media information) will now also get a crack at entertainment, including games and video.

 

Currently, Yahoo! Has a My Yahoo! Beta available, but when I tried it, a bog box popped up with a swirly thing that said “Loading”.  I am sad to say that it never fully loaded and I never got to customize my own page.  Contrast this with iGoogle, which allows a limited portal offering, but loads in seconds and is customized and ready to go in 30 seconds.  Good luck to Yahoo and their attempt to “turn back time”.  It didn’t work for Cher and it hasn’t worked for the military planners of our world, who are always planning to “fight the last war”.

 

While researching this article, I did have fun visiting old portal sites.  When I got to Excite and jiggled it enough to cough up My Excite from before the dot-com meltdown, I was thrilled to see my old stock list still there.  The only problem was that half the stocks I had invested in back then are no longer in business today.  Yahoo is still there, but will it still be an independent corporation when I go back to My Stocks in another seven years?

 

Although Excite itself is not much more than a feeder site for iWon’s ridiculous “money giveaway site”, it has some great features.  In less than five minutes I had My Excite customized to show “My” Weather (in three different cities), “My” Sunrise/Sunset, “My” Tides (in Santa Monica Bay), “My” Moon (Phase/Rise/Set), “My” (beleaguered) Stocks and “My” Columnists.  Wow! Or should I say, “Yahoo!?”  That information was so “sticky”; I bookmarked it and plan to go back often.

 

Google maintains that their “motivation isn’t to provide sticky services”.  Isn’t it great when “old energy” (Yahoo!) challenges “new energy” (Google).  Gee, I wonder who is going to win this one. 

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By James McGillis at 12:17 PM | Technology | Comments (0) | Link

Taking a Look at the Internet "Way Back Machine" - 2007

Being back at home in Simi Valley has brought on a few changes in our business direction. With the success of this blog and our new eBook, WindSong, we felt challenged to look back at our original business website MedITsearch.com and to make some changes there, as well. That site, which is our primary business site and executive recruiting “flagship”, had received only minimal changes since its launch in 2004. By today’s standards, it had the tired look of a template-based and home-built website.

 

Still, if you go to www.google.com and put in the words “MedIT Search”, we come up “number one, with a bullet”. Perhaps it is the fact that our site has been around for a while or perhaps its key words and content are relevant to the executive recruiting business. Either way, we decided to reinvent both our business selves and that website, with eCommerce in mind.

 

Working with Nick Savalas on this site, we have learned a lot about eCommerce, website building and the selling of eBooks online. We plan to put that knowledge to work with our candidates in the executive recruiting business. Over the years, we have learned that each candidate needs:

• A dynamite résumé and the ability to create targeted cover letters for each job application.
• Coaching on the art of interviewing, both by telephone and in person.
• A comprehensive, self-directed job search plan.

Not ironically, those are the themes of our first three eBooks for job seekers. It will take a couple of weeks to get the whole project together, but we would be interested in what you like and don’t like about our new website, as it is being built. 

 

Another fun activity that Nick tipped us towards is looking into “The Way-Back Machine” and seeing what our favorite websites looked like in earlier days. If you go to www.archive.org, and insert the name of your favorite website, a spreadsheet will pop up, including links to various archived copies of that website. 

 

I was amazed to find that there were more than two dozen versions of the old MedIT Search website saved somewhere on banks of web servers. Once again, this proves that it is better to be circumspect than reckless when posting to the Web. One may think that their words have rapidly disappeared from existence, but short of a neutron bomb taking out all existing digital storage, our web postings will likely live on for a long, long time.

We appreciate your comments.  To contact us via email, simply click on our signature.

Email James McGillis