Disclaimer:This is just a first pass. Structure, content, and heck, the whole darn thing are subject to change without notice. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Warning: Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!

I think it's time to try something different. I've been watching the deployment of wikis and the work Anders Fagerjord is doing over at Surftrail with interest. The chronological format is too artificial and too constraining; it's a throwback to paper formats. In fact, the entire concept of blogs as journals, while perhaps a valid form, increasingly feels like a straightjacket to me.

Weblogs are evolutionary - what started as simple HTML pages of annotated links where early web surfers shared their observations concerning the new and cool sites of the nascent web have become a primary means of online personal publishing. This evolutionary heritage seems to me to be self-limiting. There is a very definite model that's emerged that defines how we blog. This model eschews many of the possibilities inherent in hypertextual writing, primarily in the name of familiarity and expediency. Worse, this model has become firmly entrenched in the architecture of commercial weblog tools, making it more and more difficult to do things differently.

Blogs have become the PowerPoint of the Web.

Which isn't to say that blogs aren't good, or that there's anything inherently wrong with the model - at least as a model of personal online publishing. There's a great deal of good to be said for this infant revolution in personal online publishing, and despite the regular muttering of my cynical side to the contrary, I suspect it is, and will, change the world.

It just isn't a good model for me anymore.

I have a really great tool in Tinderbox, and I'm not using it to the fullest, at least for blogging. My publishing system gets in the way of writing, and so I don't write as much as I could. I've waffled from day one over wether to post short, pithy observations or to be an essayist. All of that, combined, makes it just too damn hard. It isn't fun anymore.

So, it's time to move to greener pastures. Erehwon Notebook is on permanent hiatus. I will be back, probably sooner rather than later - just not here, and not in this format. I'm seriously thinking about doing something along the lines of what Anders has done - a more wikish, "true" hypertext approach interests me a great deal.

Until then, adios amoebas! I'll be seeing you soon...

So it's Friday afternoon and I have a little time to kill before heading out to preview a home and put up some Open House signs, and I'm in a Panera. That's a few bucks Starbucks could have had from me that they gave up to their biggest local competitor.

I'm guessing it's been almost twenty years since I sat at a bar nursing a beer by myself. It seems a very "salesman" thing to do. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

This will be my first ApplePickers meeting. This meeting is a bit unusual, in that we're going to be in a theater screening a film festival of iMovie-made movies. Probably not the best setting in which to meet my fellow Indianapolis-area Apple aficionados, but it could still be pretty cool.

On the other hand, sitting in a very cool Irish bar listing to the Chieftains while bartender John feeds me Harp isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon.

I can't for the life of me imagine why this is a surprise to people. There is NO possibility of sustainable constraints on email - a fundamentally unaccountable medium. Are we surprised when we can't do productive work in an uncontrollable medium? Are we going to whine and look for legal relief when in fact it is our own complacency that keeps us from embracing (or demanding) effective solutions for information workers?

Well, that's all well and good there Ray, but I can't help but notice that your software is still tied inextricably to the monoculture OS, and isn't the least bit cross-platform. I guess that's a big part of what you mean by "sustainable constraints," huh?

E-mail, for all its warts, works on any OS you'd care to name. It's also simple. It's based on standards, so anyone can implement an e-mail client or server. Because the protocols are well known and freely available, those server and client implementations can be as simple or feature rich as the user cares to select. Further, the thirty year legacy you scoff at ensures that communications I had years ago are still accessible to me - something I really doubt will be the case with information stored in any Groove database I might happen to use - because once Groove is gone, those databases might as well be smoke.

I've tried Groove; in fact I tried to implement Groove to support a geographically dispersed and highly mobile group managing the start-up of a highly sophisticated e-commerce venture. The group was made up of highly experienced computer users as well as relatively inexperienced people, of retirement age individuals and young turks right out of business school. A substantial portion of them were either current or former Notes users.

They took one look at Groove, said, "hmm, looks interesting," and went right on using e-mail to coordinate their activities.

Ray, you and a bunch of the other talking heads can continue ranting about the "death of e-mail" all you want. Just don't be surprised when the rest of us happen to notice that every one of these rants ends up proposing some technology that you and your colleagues have some vested interest in promoting. I suspect e-mail will be around a long time after your companies are nothing but a memory.

To provide data about the user, SenSay uses motion sensors (accelerometers), a microphone, a heat-flux sensor (to measure the heat coming from the user's body) and galvanic skin-response sensors. These sensors are housed in a light, stretchy wireless armband. A GPS device helps to determine the user's position, both outdoors and inside a building.

See also The sentient office is coming, Project Oxygen, and Project Oxygen's New Wind. Human-centric computing, based on input from a network of personal sensors. If you have the right phone and a Bluetooth-equipped Mac, you can play with the first generation of this sort of stuff using tools like Salling Clicker or Romeo.

Google Inc. is playing with the idea that with online as well as offline real estate what really matters is location, location, location. The company's Labs division unveiled a test version of a new search by location service Monday, allowing users to query for stores and services that are close to home.

To help users find more geographically-specific information on the Web, the new service analyzes Web page content for clues about location, like business addresses, Google said in a posting about the new service on its site.

The more search ties into the physical world the happier I'll be. I've become so used to using search engines to find stuff online that I find it frustrating when I'm looking for something in physical space and don't have a decent "search interface."

For example, I'll prefer Borders over Barnes & Noble bookstores mainly because Borders places search terminals around the store while B&N makes me go ask someone. I pay extra for digital cable mostly for the program guide - even though that's a pretty poorly constructed interface.

Hopefully, Google can extend its expertise into location search effectively. I've tried other location-based search services, like Vindigo, and they've all been less than effective. Either the data isn't there, or the interface stinks, or both. I suspect Google's major challenge will be in collecting the location data and keeping it current, a task far more daunting than indexing web pages.

You see, over a year ago when we were chosing a mortgage for our new home, we used LendingTree.com to pick a mortgage lender. It seemed the oh-so-very-modern way to go about it - have multiple lenders "compete" for our business via a web site, be able to fill out all the forms online, etc. QuickenLoans won our business. At first, things went very well...

Our realtor warned us, but hey, I'm a techie, right? Surely a hip, Internet-enabled, up-on-ecommerce lender would be better suited to our needs than some local old fogey mired-in-paper lender, right? So it seemed, right up to the closing table.

At closing, it turned out the loan wasn't funded yet. It turned out that the underwriter and the salesperson hadn't communicated well, and the new loan was contingent on the sale of our existing home, when in fact it wasn't supposed to. That caused problems with the swing loan. The salesperson was suddenly on vacation or something, and could be found to speak with the underwriter and straighten things out. Within a matter of minutes a moderately complex home purchase deal that had taken the better part of 90 days to set up was falling down around our ears.

With a lot of shouting into cell phones, the deal was salvaged, but QuickenLoan's reputation was shot as far as I was concerned. That alone, however, wouldn't have been enough to convince me to abandon Quicken altogether.

QuickenLoans of course sold our loan right away, as expected. Six months later, we refinanced to take advantage of the ever-dropping interest rates. Despite the fact that QuickenLoans held our mortgage for all of around five minutes, though, they still managed to sell our contact information to every bottom-feeding mortgage broker and easy credit outfit on the freakin' planet. So, a year later, we're still getting crap not only from QuickenLoans, but from fifty other companies that think we're still with QuickenLoans and want us to refi through them or take a home equity loan with them or buy cheap overseas brides through them.

That's the reason I won't use Quicken anymore. Sure, it could be claimed that Quicken and QuickenLoans are different companies - and on paper, they are. But the ownership, way up there at the top of the Quicken Empire org chart pyramid, is ultimately the same. And those people are scum.

Whether you agree with me or not, take my word as an increasingly experienced real estate professional on the local versus Internet mortgage thing. You're really getting involved in a crap shoot if you don't use a local mortgage lender - preferably a mortgage banker rather than a mortgage broker. I'm hearing stories about loans that aren't being funded for as long as thirty days after closing - can you imagine, sitting there with all your worldly goods in a moving van, having sold your house, and then being told you can't move in for a month because the mortgage lender doesn't have any money?! When it comes to mortgages, you don't want high-tech whiz and glitter. You want to be able to get in the car and drive across town to someone whose neck you can put your hands around.

Initially, WiFi performance with the new machine was sub-optimal. No WiFi signal in the master bedroom, no signal in the breakfast area. Both are somewhat critical to me, as I often use the computer upstairs or at the breakfast table. I put the lack of performance together with my expectations, and came up with a case of serious AE disgruntlement. I definitely wasn't getting the performance I'd seen with the iBook and standard AirPort card.

As always, one should beware one's prejudices. It turns out that a simple bit of optimization was in order. By following the procedure in this TechNote I've been able to optimize my signal considerably, such that I can now access the base station from everywhere in the house.

It would appear that AE cards need a stronger signal, and/or that the antenna in the AlBook isn't as effective as that of the iBook. However, neither issue seems to be fatal, at least in my case, provided a modicum of troubleshooting is applied. I'll report more after I've had a few more days to determine how things are working.

I've been lusting after a new 'book for awhile, and talking about how I wanted to upgrade before year-end. I certainly wasn't expecting this, though!

I love this machine! OS X on this G4 is a completely different experience than it is on the G3 600Mhz iBook. I really liked my iBook; it's been a trusted companion for 20 months, and never once let me down. The AlBook simply screams, though. It's clearly more well engineered, too, and feels to be nearly the same weight as the iBook.

I'm luxuriating in all the new screen real estate. Computing on the new machine feels like moving into a roomy new home. Applications open fast, are far more responsive, and it's so much easier to have more open on the same screen.

It was also incredibly nice to be able to port my stuff over to the new machine from the iBook. Plug in a Firewire cable to connect the two 'books, boot the iBook into target disk mode, and start copying files. In about 30 minutes my entire environment from the iBook was cloned over to the PowerBook.

I intend to spend a good bit of time today putting the new 'book through its paces (read:playing). I'm really looking forward to using my new "external brain."

Thanks, family!

Updated 9/20/2003 6:49 PM. I'm 39 today, not 38. I don't even know how old I am...