Seeing Upcoming.org fold into the Yahoo empire raises mixed emotions. I’m happy to see social, open events be given attention by one of the major players – and the Upcoming.org team seemed like great folk when I last interacted with them a few years ago. Early on they were amenable to serving events in iCal format so they could be consumed by clients such as eventSherpa (our product at Semaview).

On the other hand, it saddens me that we were unable to maintain momentum with eventSherpa – and that our early work didn’t live on to help the social, open, syndicated events movement.

Shelley Powers blogged a great post yesterday about her love of coding. It certainly reminded me of my own love of software creation – that exhilaration of turning an idea into a product or service.

When I think back to my childhood, I can see that I became addicted to that feeling very early in life. Shortly after receiving our first Atari computer – complete with tape drive – my brother and I used to create technology gadgets of the future out of paper, boxes and tape. From television watches to portable laptop printers – our juvenile creative output wasn’t too far off from what I see now everyday.

A few years later we’d spend hours each day typing in programs written in Basic, found in the latest issue of Nibble. In fact, I remember writing code in the back of my parent’s station wagon using paper and pen while on family vacation. I’d meticulously keep track of line numbers – waiting to get home so I could try running my latest ‘choose your own adventure’ game or home brew word processor.

I gained early exposure to the many phases of software development – tears fell when I once lost an entire essay in grade 7 because I chose to use my own word processor rather than the one that came with our Apple IIc. Turns out I had a bug with the save function – didn’t this thing pass QA? ;>

Today, as I’ve moved from one role to another in the software industry – one thing has certainly remained consistent – I love to build software, and I truly do love to create. Thanks to Shelley – today I’ve been once again reminded of the joy that comes with saying ‘I did this’.

I can’t say how much I enjoyed David St. Lawrence’s piece about working. He refers to it as ‘An unconventional guide to surviving corporate life.’, but I think the scope reaches far beyond that. For those of you who still believe that you’ll be retiring with the company you currently work for, look around at the new reality.

David states in the piece that he’s worked for over 25 companies during his career. While at first somewhat shocking, it is true that most of my friends and colleagues are on track for similar if not greater numbers. For most it is self driven, individuals looking for more challenge, pay or responsibility. They don’t need to work for so many different companies, but rather choose to.

The article at 149 pages isn’t a quick read, and even though there are some statements that I find exhibit over-the-top pessimism

Human Resources, contrary to your expectations, is not your friend. HR is there to protect the company and its executives against employees like you.

overall I am putting this article into my personal ‘must read’ collection.

ChangeThis, has quickly become one of my favorite sites for inspiration. A collection of manifestos submitted by people with ideas that inspire action, the site last week featured a manifesto by Craig of craiglist.

I’ve often wondered why software review sites like download.com do not offer screencasts of the various products they are reviewing. After all, in many cases the software producer is paying to have their software reviewed in a timely fashion (or ever at all). When I’ve paid $500 to get listed and reviewed, I’d often hoped for something more than a simple 4 X out of 5. If someone else doesn’t start to provide better consumer focused software reviews I might have to take on the task myself. Other than for reviews, screencasts are also starting to appear more frequently in blogs, Web help sites and instructional aides. Personally, my first screencast was created using RoboDemo which has since been aquired and rebranded by Macromedia. Now named Captivate, the product makes the creation of screencasts fast and easy. Instead of walking prospects through the same product demo over and over, I can create a screen recording complete with audio in about the same time it would take to deliver two such demos. Other tools do exist, and I’m going to try some of the alternatives in the near future. Screencasts are an effective method for communicating software-related behaviors and processes over the Web. Any company that is onboarding project members mid project would appreciate a library of screencasts to facilitate new staff in getting up to speed from a functional perspective. In this sense, many screencasts can be considered lightwieght CBT (Computer Based Training) modules.

Maria Schneider won a Grammy after releasing her album through the Web.

Forget local cable television, forget university radio. If you are looking to ‘make it big’ as an entertainer in the coming years, do it via the Web. The costs associated with streaming audio or video are no longer prohibitive, even for the new artist.

Flickr Graph is an application that explores the social relationships inside flickr.com.

I had been wanting to build a similar flash-based graph visualizer ever since building a FOAF social network visualizer on top of Touchgraph a few years ago. Although I love what Alex Shapiro has done with Touchgraph, and appreciate him sharing the source code so that I could provide the FOAF demo, I always wanted to see a flash based version in similar style. Marcos Weskamp delivers a stunning implementation with his Flickr Graph.

And what makes it all possible? Flickr’s REST style Web services of course.

Andy flew into Toronto Friday night for a 24 hour meeting marathon. As we discussed a number of topics, it became clear that we are both mind map fanatics. I have been using MindManager software for years, mapping everything from project objectives and milestones to upcoming presentations and papers. Chuck Frey hits on some of the ways I’ve been using mind maps in managing projects.

I find that mind maps are an effective project tool for a number of reasons. First, they assist me in generating and clarifying ideas, plans and execution steps. After re-working my mind maps personally, they are also perfect for communicating quickly and efficiently to team members and most importantly clients. In a time of constant information overload, boiling things down to easily consumable key points is a necessity.

The excellent MindManager software allows you to print and share a map, or export your thoughts as a Word or Powerpoint presentation. I have found the powerpoint presentation output to be good, if not excellent, and easily massaged into presentation ready quality.