Goto http://readnowmag.ulitzer.com

I've been trying to get a grip on organizing things. No, not personal things; my place will remain a catastrophic mess until I'm no longer around to ignore it.

But I'm getting all the NOW Magazine stuff better-organized. The plan is to treat this blog as, well, a blog. You know none of us can really define a "true blog," but we know one when we see it. My hope is that you'll see this one frequently.

I have several very nice interviews backed into my editing queue. I am working on getting them published real soon now. They will be published at the NOW Magazine site:

http://readnowmag.ulitzer.com

The domain at this site is a CMS environment that lets me post my stories easily and which gets fairly good google-search traction. Ads will show up there per the CMS owners' sales efforts. I have nothing to do with it.

I'll publish future NOW Magazine Thought Leadership features there as well. Plans now call for a new print edition of NOW to come out in Q2 2010.

So here's the hierarchy:

Unfocused, short, asinine thoughts: www.twitter.com/strukhoff

Slightly focused, middle-length, self-important rants: www.readnowmag.blogspot.com

Focused, sharp, tremendous interviews/features: http://readnowmag.ulitzer.com

Happy reading!

Real Conferences Are Much Better Than Virtual

Saw the latest puffpiece on why virtual conferences are so cool in today's SF Chronicle. The story had a cute lead and everything.

http://bit.ly/4wzxLv

The topic doesn't merit a true rant, but I'll only say that whenever things hit the fan, you'll read numerous articles about telecommuting, teleconferences, and virtual conferences.

We're social animals. Yet we like to get away from the office now and then.

Telecommuting coops people up in their homes. They forget to dress nice, they get lazy, and they soon despair of missing all the gossip, nice printers, and fast networks they get in their offices.

Teleconferencing is slow torture. Sure, it beats the dreaded conference call if the signal is good, but most teleconferences are either log-rolling exercises or a way around a company being too cheap to either hire US employees or put them on a plane so they can meet their colleagues face to face.

Virtual conferences, as the Chronicle article mentioned, can be great add-ons to real conferences. They do provide value for those years that a company doesn't want to fork out millions for a real conference. But they have always been, and will always be, a stopgap measure. When the good economic times return, the good times return as well. Viva Las Vegas!

Flying Asiana to Asia

Long-time travelers to Asia learn to master the travel options to that region, because it's a long haul, it can be an expensive one, and Asian travel oftens means landing in a crowded steambath. The energy levels in Asian cities can be enervating as well, so you need to have your A-game with you when you land.

I've had a good experience with Asiana Airlines on a few recent trips. This is South Korea's other major airline, and it's rated as one of the very few "five-star airlines" in the world (see www.airlinequality.com).

I'll give it 4.5 stars, I guess. I don't get to travel Singapore Airlines business class like the Thom Friedmans of the world, so I can't compare my experience with those who've raved about Singapore for years. I have traveled on Cathay Pacific (in economy), and found it to be the most pleasant experience one can have for 12+ hours in a metal tube.

Back to Asiana. Nice legroom, personal entertainment systems (although the "city info" is laughable), a neutral-colored color scheme that (no kidding) helps me sleep, and efficient service make it a nice experience.

Nice, but not overwhelmingly so. Remember, Koreans are hardly the shrinking violets of the Asian world, so don't expect anyone to grovel for you in the way flight attendants are depicted in ads for many Asian airlines.

Korean culture is very direct, like that of the US. So, think United Airlines, but without the overt, deliberate nastiness that's invariably found in the happy employees of the Friendly Skies.

If you're connecting to Southeast Asia, it may seem you've wasted time flying past Tokyo for an hour to reach Seoul, only to track back on your connecting flight. But the schedules out of Narita can have longer connecting times, and this airport can have delays that one rarely sees at the spacious new Incheon airport in Korea.

You get hearty Korean food on these flights as well--much less strange to the US palate than anything you might encounter from a Japanese airline, and much less bad than the crap United et al still like to serve to the unfortunates trapped on their planes.

And here's the fun thing. One of the routes I take has a 12-hour layover on the return to the US. I do this because Asiana's fares are often several hundred dollars less than that of its competitors. But if you call the airline beforehand, you'll get a very nice hotel room for the day, free of charge, so you can sleep and not be a total waste upon arrival back home. Alternatively, you can take a city tour, which I've been told is a lot of fun. For me, I take the room and the sleep every time! Be sure to call ahead, because you won't get this without a reservation.

Asiana is part of the Star Alliance. Most flights receive 70% mileage credit on United, but if you just go ahead and join Asiana, you'll get upgraded into the frequent-flyer hierarchy much more quickly.

In the Philippines, the Heat is Always On

(This is the first of a series of articles about the Philippines, what it's like to be there, its political scene, and its potential as a global outsourcing destination and technology innovator. I start with the most obvious thing a Westerner notices upon arrival there: the heat.)

Arrival at Benigno Aquino International Airport in Manila has always gone smoothly for me. Despite Westerners’ fears of the Asian masses—and there will be 100 million people residing within the Philippines’ 100,000 or so square miles by the end of 2013—the reality is that international travel is a true luxury here. Not many locals can afford it.

The zoos one finds at SFO and most airports in North America and Western Europe are not in evidence in Asia. In the past year, I’ve been struck by the sheer emptiness of the ultra-modern, massive glass edifices in Beijing, Shanghai, even Seoul, as well as at the slightly less grand International Terminal here in Manila.

Immigration and customs moves quickly. The Philippines is inclined to let us rich Americans into their country; the main concern seems to be that I’m aware that I’ll need to come up with a few hundred pesos should I wish to overstay my initial 21-day visa.

Absent here in Manila are the insulting slow pace, the skeptical, even paranoid eyes, and the hectoring tone one finds when returning through US immigration. This country has a real, ongoing terror problem in many of its provinces, a problem that is taken seriously and often addressed severely. But there is no spillover paranoia toward me, the aging white guy from the US, there to visit friends and further destroy his health with spaghetti for breakfast, fried foods for lunch and dinner, and halo halo for dessert.

The heat is apparent the instant I step off the plane and into the jetway. It returns, full-force, as I stroll through the exit doors and into the night air. The heat is such an apparent, omnipresent feature of the Philippines that to complain about it is to belabor it. I’ll throw out some statistics about it, make a few observations about it, then try to move on before I put you to sleep.

Manila’s climate can be compared to Miami’s. Same rough statistical range—highs in the 80s, lows in the 70s most of the year. It rises into the 90s frequently. The temperatures would be higher were it not for the humidity, and It is oppressively humid here almost every day—dewpoints in the 73-77 range for those of you who enjoy knowing this stuff. Frequent rains during a defined wet season with numerous typhoons, then a very slight cooling around Christmas.

They name their typhoons there, just as tropical storms are named in the Americas. The distinction made in the Americas between the terms “tropical storm” and “hurricane”—the latter being used when sustained winds exceed 75 miles per hour—is not made here. Justly so, because any typhoon is capable of wreaking enormous damage on the fragile infrastructure found anywhere outside of Manila and the other cities, flooding can be catastrophic anywhere, and landslides are a feared threat during any storm.

Very few people have air-conditioning (or “aircon” as they call it here) outside of the central city. Very few people want it. It is amusing to watch people who are among the toughest on the planet go into convulsions if the aircon at the local Jollibee or internet café is cranked too high. (It’s much less amsuing to see the medieval housing in which so many of these same people live, a topic I’ll cover in more detail later. )

The lack of aircon presents a major problem for me, as it does for most “Kano” (the shortened form of Americano that is applied to all white folks. Kano British, Kano Australian, Kano German, and Kano Dutch are among the specific indicators you’ll hear.)

Very few Kano are silly enough to try to live without aircon, because the heat is not only remorseless, but exacerbated by pollution from squadrons of the famous Jeepneys, fleets of two-stroke “trikes” (dirt bikes hooked up to tinny, covered sidecars designed perfectly for those in the 4-10 to 5-4 height range), innumerable trash fires, and pervasive slash-and-burn agriculture.

I am reasonably sure that DDT or reasonable facsimiles are also in widespread use. The eco-commitment in the Philippines reminds me of my late 50s-early 60s childhood in rural, Midwestern America. Even the young people here in the Philippines are plagued with a frequent hacking cough that comes from way down deep.

The locals walk around in this heat all day without apparent effect. There’s a certain unhurried, loose amble that I’ve learned to copy, which allows you to move efficiently through the angry sun and soupy air at a reasonable speed. Try to propel yourself with the hurried, aggressive, no-nonsense gait of the typical American city, and you’ll find yourself completely gassed and very unhappy within three minutes.

They crowd onto the Jeepneys (actually called “Jeeps” and pronounced “Jips”) with less than no room to spare. A low-ceilinged vehicle with facing bench seats that would hold about 10 people in the US, the Jeep in the Philippines provides transportation for at least 18, and if there is luggage worked into any remaining space in the aisle, so be it. The trike is ideal for one passenger, and three people (with one riding sidesaddle behind the homicidal driver) typically ride it.

Books have been written and academic careers made on the topic of the Western concept of personal space vs. the Asian concept of communitarian space. I have nothing new to add here. My unschooled, non-academic observation is to say only that if you don’t like to be crowded continuously, if you quickly grow weary of “nonconsenual rubbing” (in Paul Theroux’s phrase), then you don’t want to live as most people do in the Philippines. Additionally, if you suffer in the summertime heat of, say, Washington, DC or Orlando, then you will suffer here.

My biggest problem with the heat occurs at night. No break. No breeze. Humidity simply increases as the ambient temperature drops to the swelteringly high dewpoint. Then, at about 4am, a little relief. I am often awake at that hour, and when in the Philippines I feel a slight cooling around that time. I feel as if I’m breathing more air than water for the first time in a day.

An hour later, the comically numerous and obstreperous roosters announce the sun, the dogs start in, and the hot, damp cloth of Philippine humidity is once again wrapped around my forehead, neck, and body.

OSCON: Dead Venue, Good Conversations

"I liked it better in Portland," said one OSCON attendee to another during Thursday's lunch. This comment summed up the feeling of OSCON 2009 at the San Jose Convention Center. Nice people, wrong venue.

Portland's progressive reputation and its status as the North American home of open-source deity Linus Torvalds made it the perfect place for this modest event. The cavernous, sterile confines of the largest convention center in sterile Silicon Valley brought the excitement surrounding OSCON down several notches.

But in the spirit of hating the sin and not the sinner, it can be reported that there is still a lot of personality and dynamism in the world of open-source software. Open Source is experiencing stimulating times during this global recession, the most exciting period since the great tech meltdown of 2000-2004.

As IT budgets once again go under siege, the concept of "free" software--or at least much cheaper software without vendor lock-in--becomes very appealing to organizations of all sizes throughout the world.

This time, Open Source doesn't have to go through that pesky validation process it faced years ago. Linux is well-established, even conquering many segments of enterprise IT. The Firefox browser is the most popular--if not yet the most used--in the world. The great proprietary behemoths Microsoft, Sun, and Intel were all out inf force at OSCON screaming as to how open they really are if you just give them a chance to prove it.

And conversations I had with folks from companies such as Bluenog, WSO2, SourceForge, and Revolution Computing demonstrated that there are many serious businesspeople out there who are using this moment to "innovate and invest" in the words of one of them to secure a solidly defensible position when the economy recovers. WSO2 also presented on the mission-criticality of security and governance, and why it's time companies imbue it at design-time.

The New Symbian has a new story--trying to expand paltry market share in the US while maintaining hegemony in the rest of the world--and had the best booth, with glorious yellow beanbags providing a comfortable respite from walking the floor and enduring hard chairs during long sessions.

The political dimension of Open Source Software will never abate entirely. Certainly about half of the booth space here was occupied by the good folks who truly believe in your freedom, in the greater good of the Open-Source movement, and in not trying to make too much money. But the practical dimension seems to co-exist peacefully these days.

The compelling ideas of flexibility and ownership through forking, of community-driven standards, of staying out of the clutches of the monopolists in the crowd, and of using software that works and doesn't bleed you to death have penetrated into corporate consciousness to the degree that it must have seemed like a good idea to hold this event in the Heart of Silicon Valley. Too bad the Heart of Open Source in North America is still in Portland, Oregon.

Google Takes on Microsoft Windows

http://bit.ly/VTbJ0

Who knows if Google can transform its strengths in handling megatraffic into the ability to develop a mega-OS?

Google today is primarily an IT company. Yes, it is quite annoying that this public company won't publicly discuss where it keeps its servers, let alone give a hint to the secret sauce that powers them.

The fact remains that the company has achieved astonishing technical competence in developing and managing a hive intelligence that will be the subject of historical analysis centuries from now.

The question is whether it can turn its expertise outward and deliver an application (eg, OS) strong enough to knock Redmond off of its perch.

Few tears will be shed (outside of Microsoft, that is) should this occur. Older-generation folks such as myself have simply spent too many years putting up with buggy versions of DOS, then Windows, then being subjected to the innumerable and large problems that the virus-magnet Internet Explorer has caused.

Microsoft has been almost willfully careless over the decades with its arrogantly casual treatment of the problems its OS and browser have caused, in my opinion.

Its strikingly hubristic, monopolistic practices were oh-so-close to being consigned to the dustbin of history, before judge Thomas Penfield Jackson indiscretely bragged about what a badass he was in adjudicating Microsoft, thereby calling into question his judgement and neutering his verdict.

Comparing Microsoft execs to "stubborn mules," Jackson demonstrated that even a very smart person can be a real dumbass.

A younger generation doesn't seem to have this emnity toward Redmond. With their first experience being a well-oiled Windows XP, and with many of them enamored by the XBox, the Vista fiasco seems to be the aberration rather than the norm to them.

Yes, they've encountered the XBox's red ring of death (the child of the blue screen of death), but simply trade their units in when this happens. Microsoft, to them, is a good consumer electronics company, and Bill Gates is just another old rich guy.

So, maybe any rant I have against Microsoft reveals a mentality that's been passed by, sort of like those old guys of my youth who used to piss and moan about FDR.

The historical record does reveal Roosevelt's arrogance--trying to pack the Supreme Court, running for endless terms as President, initiating an age of massive government intervention while overstating its results and taking too much credit himself, serving until he was so enfeebled that he did the world untold damage by his weak Yalta performance.

His still-new memorial in Washington DC betrays the grandiosity of the man, in stark contrast to the classic, powerful elegance of the other presidential memorials. Yet Roosevelt continues to be considered one of the country's great presidents, the guy on whose watch the government established a safety net for its citizens, The Great Depression ended, and World War II turned decisively into what would be total victory for the good guys.

The historical record is already treating Bill Gates et al in similar fashion. Bill is seen today as a great technological visionary, his company as the single most important in the history of computing, and his philanthropy as the modern-day equivalent to Andrew Carnegie.

Yet the company made its wealth in a fashion I consider to be nefarious. It had no concept of homegrown innovation or of treating its customers (whether vendors like Compaq and Dell or users like you and me) with any sort of consideration or respect.

So if a day of reckoning does come for Redmond, I would expect to see very little sentimentality over its fate. Reminds me of when airlines started to fail. After decades of providing uniformly hidebound, crappy service, no one cried when we lost such previous American icons as Eastern Airlines, PanAm, and TWA. No one would have cried if the same had happened to United.

General Motors is experiencing the same situation today. Had the company decided, let's say in the 1970s, to manufacture well-built cars and tried to address what has proven to be a chronic cycle of oil shocks, then maybe there would've been some customer loyalty that would've kept the company from its recent embarrassments and failure.

On a smaller scale, the Comdex trade show perished a few years ago, after many years of abusing its exhibitors and attendees. Many people mourned the passing of their annual November bacchanal in Las Vegas; no one mourned the passing of the Comdex brand itself.

As I said, there is an entire generation of people who do not share my views and history will continue to be kind to Microsoft, I think.

So I should rant no more. But deep down inside, I think it would be cool to see Google just kick Microsoft's butt right out to the curb.