So this is it. The end of the first decade of the new millenium -- which isn't really new anymore, is it? What do we even call this last decade? We called the 80s the 80s, and the 90s the 90s. But is this the 0s? The 00s? Given what the last ten years have been like, what with the economy, terrorist attacks, and the mortgage crisis, I tend to think of the last ten years as the Uh-Ohs.
We're done. Ten years have gone by since we all worried about Y2K and we're still not driving flying cars.
What has ten years of tech bought us? Are there colonies on the moon? Can we "beam" from New York to San Francisco in seconds? Have we cured cancer?
Nope. Instead we got Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Seriously, that's what we got out of ten years. We've learned we can be inane 140 characters at a time. Special.
Craigslist and Google have teamed up to kill newspapers. Bloggers are bashing magazines. And e-books are causing print publishers to both lose revenue and hair.
So, yeah, we got the iPhone. We've learned that Apple can be petty, capricious, and completely non-responsive in all new ways. Yay?
Computers are cheaper, which is nice. You can buy a low-end desktop or netbook for under $300. But Windows and Mac users are still bitching at each other, Linux is still not the top dog, and while Firefox and Google's Chrome are nice browsers, they just don't seem like they contain a full decade's worth of innovation.
Ten years also brought us a huge increase in computer and network threats. Viruses have morphed into rootkits, DDoS attacks, and 'bot nets. Every time you turn on your computer, you put your financial identity at risk. We thought spam was a problem at the turn of the century, but now it's become a complete and total hassle, with many messages carrying nasty payloads.
Well, bummer, right? Not entirely.
If anything, the Uh-Oh's have been a decade of incremental improvement. The Internet has solidified its hold on society, which is both a good and bad thing. But there still aren't flying cars and we still aren't wearing silver suits (which is probably a blessing).
While the last ten years haven't resulted in any super sci-fi wonders, we have managed to link more members of our society together online. We have managed to get Internet speeds up to a point where it's possible for family members across the world to see and talk to each other.
We've managed to tap the power of crowds in amazing ways, creating wonders like Wikipedia. Then there's Twitter, which almost single-handedly saved Iran -- and probably would have, had Michael Jackson not died right in the middle of the mess.
What about the next ten years? What will we see in 2020? Personally, I'm still hoping for flying cars.
If it's going to be good, it's up to us. We have all these amazing toys. We have the technology. We can be better, stronger, faster. Let's make the next ten years the best darn ten years, ever! Happy New Year!
For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.
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Many users appear to be running 8x and above on machines with limited memory. 1Gig.... Needless to say Notes is performing slowly for them and they don't like it. These users do not know about basic mode. Something in the software should check the memory and if it's determined to be low enough to effect performance - maybe anything under 2 gigs, then there should be at least an information screen advising about basic mode.
Better yet may be to give them a screen that would set the client to launch in Basic mode. Maybe have it changeable via a preference. Not many users will be savvy enough to add an ini setting or modify the icon with a switch.
Given IBM & Linked IN are already working together, why not develop the capability to pull datra from linked-in into my Personal Address Book. Having the latest photo, e-mail address, and phone number on hand in my PAB would be a big help. If the status update and even profile data was also downloaded I may take notice a little more.
Multiple clicks and views to find your idea, then edit it. When commiting the update, the idea author is reverted to the main or default All Ideas view. Logically, it appears that the author should be returned to where they started.
Example: You click through My Profile -> My Ideas -> scroll down to an idea and need to make a change. You click to open, then Edit...wait for the screen change and enter edit mode...make the change, then Update Idea. After that, one should be returned to where they started--in this case, their profile idea list.
Instead, the program tosses them back to the full list. If you want to continue perusing your list, you need to click and dig again. A tad irksome, with all due respect.
This should also return the author to the respecitve location whether accessing their idea from the main All Ideas view, or from a targeted IdeaSpace.
When deleting repeating calendar entries in Notes 8.5.x Catalan language client, you receive the error "Type mismatch in method CoerStrToNum: STRING found DOUBLE expected".
It is best practice to upgrade to Domino 8.5.1 where these features are available through the mail policy settings document (see the link below to "Improving interoperability for users of calendars in e-mail applications other than Notes"). However, if your organization is still using Domino 8.5, ...