Those of us who have been around the block have seen the computer industry go through at least four complete full circles. First it was 8 bit, then 16bit, then graphical, then the internet, and now, we're on yet another circle: connected devices. Stuff like smart phones and iPads.

Some things are fun to watch over and over. But watching sofware comapnies build the next killer app and then get steamrolled by the OS vendor is not a good movie to watch again and again. Between Twitter and Apple's recent actions, well, let's just say the movie starts again in about 10 minutes.

Smaller Indiana

I haven't been posting as much over at Smaller Indiana as I usually do... so today I figured I'd browse through and say hi. Much to my surprise, most of the front page conversations had just a few (1-5) comments. A year ago, you would see 14-16 comments on just about anything. There have been a couple of huge policy changes, and I'm curious if any of them are the cause of the apparent fall-off in engagement:

Ok, I'm not real happy with Plaxo to begin with since their little incident in December where they lost a good number of groups, including the Linking Indiana group.  Originally Plaxo was supposed to be a way to keep your addresses up to date in Outlook... the basic idea was:

1. Upload your contacts.
2. Plaxo would let your contacts update their info.
3. Outlook would sync in the updates.

When they made the jump to becoming a social networks, it kind of worked.  Now I could connect with people and share... contact info, which was pretty useful most of the time... except for the spam... most of which involved stock tips and MLM business opportunities.   Then they added a bunch of new lifestream features and broke groups in the process. They also proved:

I thought I'd take a minute to rant about why Indianapolis Big Bang isn't going to happen.  There's a story I'd really, really like to tell and a few fingers I would like to point.

I'm not going to.  Instead, I'm going to leave it with:

Mr. Matt Pivec - a Professor of Jazz Studies at Butler University is a visionary.