Ten years ago I was working at a large networking equipment company (not Cisco) and the big push of late 1998 and early 1999 was to help companies, or Enterprises since that term was just gaining popularity, build their intranets to “enhance employee communication.” Part way through ’99, and in between the bouts of orgasmic glee our executives had shoveling in mountains of cash fueled by the threat of the Y2K bug, someone in the organization decided that the company should put its money where its mouth was and build up our own shining example of an intranet. The VP in charge asked someone who worked for him if he knew anyone who could “write webpages” and since that guy was my friend and partner in our new web venture (Hike New Hampshire — still on the web a decade later at http://www.hike-nh.com) I eventually got the job. So in mid ’99 I was anointed with the title of Web Content Manager, and set about coming to the realization that I was doomed to fail because the position had been envisioned by management to simultaneously grow the company’s intra- and internet presence AND make sure that nothing objectionable was ever said (hence the “Manager”).

The Cluetrain Manifesto - 10 Years Old

It took about 90 days for the reality to set in that I was doomed, and for a while I felt alone. The Marketing Department refused to relinquish any control of any external pages, and other managers wanted thoroughly defined approval hierarchies for any internal content. So my title probably should have been Web Approval Queue Manager but that wouldn’t have sounded too “webby.” But then I ran across something on the web that gave me hope — posted at http://www.cluetrain.com was a manifesto — 95 theses — that truly captured everything I was thinking at the time. And there it was — a decade ago — all laid out for us. The rise of blogs and Twitter and Facebook. All wrapped into the central premise that people want to communicate in ways meaningful to them and the internet and all of it’s technologies can enable that kind of instant, global conversation. The 95 theses are important, but the initial dozen rocked my world:

Markets are conversations.

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

Ten years and a career-change later, my dog-eared copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto (yes I bought the book — I may have read it online, but the people around me who didn’t get it needed something on paper; and this was long before laptops were ubiquitous and truly portable to enable electronic reading) still sits on my desk.

So what got me thinking about this? It was more discussion about Participatory Medicine. It occurred to me that one could substitute the word “doctor” for “executive” and “hospital” for “corporation” and “patient” for “market” and we’re really talking about the same thing. The Internet is facilitating all kinds of new conversations about health and connecting patients in ways that disrupt the traditional medical hierarchy and one-way feed of information from provider to patient. But what really concerns me is that although there has been some corporate progress (think CEO blogs and Twitter), not a lot has really changed with a lot of companies in the last 10 years.

While this doesn’t bode well for rapid progress in Participatory Medicine, perhaps people’s natural inclination for remaining deeply and passionately engaged in their healthcare, compared to their engagement level for electronic devices, might drive this process faster.

In any event … here we are ten years on and the concepts in Cluetrain remain relevant. I’m happy that I was there in the beginning and that I am finding myself in the middle of this second round.

I was thinking back to my post about the installation of my whole house generator (which remains very popular) and I realized that I said my installer was good, but never gave a lot of detail about how I knew. So here’s a list of things you should look for.

1. They show up on time. If an installer makes an appointment, they should keep it or have a damn good excuse why they miss it. Like a death of an immediate family member or a car wreck good. Missing appointments is the sign of either an over-extended contractor or an amateur that can’t schedule or run a business. This is especially true for the Sales call. Hell, that’s the time when they’re trying to convince you how good and reliable they are, so if they blow this, run away.
2. 

   Mike Holmes

   They aren’t immediately available. As Mike Holmes, Canadian contractor, TV Host,  and advocate for good contracting says, “Pros are busy.” Good contractors are always in demand, even in a down economy. Because there are always people and companies with enough money to do a job, and in a tight economy they want every dollar spent wisely, so they keep good pros busy. If your contractor quotes you and says they can start the next day, be very concerned.
3. They seem knowledgeable. You know a bullshitter when you hear one. A good contractor not only has opinions but can give reasons for them. Why do they prefer one brand over another? What makes one company’s product superior? Why do they sell the brands they do?
4. You receive a detailed itemized quote. A one-line price isn’t acceptable. This job is too small for a full, formal contract, so the quote will serve as the document of record for the work to be performed and the price. And it should spell it out in detail. Like how the site is to be prepped — with gravel? Concrete pad? What will they do for a transfer switch? Will they rewire existing circuits? How will the cables be run? The more detail the better.
5. They will pull permits. Ask the question clearly — “Will you pull necessary permits?” If the answer is other than, “Yes,” walk away. The only exception is if you are fortunate enough to live in one of the few very rural unincorporated and/or unzoned townships left in the US (like I did growing up — as far as I know there is still a “farmstead” zoning exemption in Sterling Township, PA for landowners with over 50 acres of land). Good contractors don’t fear inspectors. (Note, the generator installer might ask for the gas company to handle the plumbing permits for the gas line — but again, the gas company should have NO problem with this.)
6. They will show you the permits. It’s one thing to say you’ll pull the permits. It’s another thing entirely to do it. Ask to see them before work starts.
7. The install looks durable and professional. Look — this is your home, your comfort, and your safety we’re talking about. A backup generator is asked to do a terrible job. Basically, to sit neglected and unused in the elements until some calamity happens, and then run reliably and flawlessly for potentially days or weeks without stopping, poisoning your family, blowing up your delicate electronics, or burning your house down. And the only way the generator will be ready to turn on when it’s ten degrees out after sitting through five years of rain is if all the connections are sealed well, if the gas is plumbed correctly, and the system is maintained. Look to make sure that all the cables run outside are in sealed conduit, that the generator is on a stable platform, that the plumbing is secure and supported, and the inside wiring is clean and neat.
8. They clean up. After they’re done installing a generator your house should look like it did before they started. Only with a generator.

And it’s awesome!

This is just a quick post to confirm what a number of people already know — the 3volution ROM for the Dash 3G is solid. I’ve used and abused the phone for 3 weeks now and it is still fast, clean, and stable. The only bug I’ve found so far is that the Fn key doesn’t work in the Skyfire browser, if you’ve clicked a link in an e-mail to launch it. It works fine if you start the browser on its own. Weird.

But otherwise I can say that Windows Mobile 6.5 looks and performs great. The other day I realized that as I was walking to work, I was running Pandora, connected to my bluetooth headphones, Google Maps was running with Latitude turned on, I had Nimbuzz and GV Dialer running in the background, and I was sending and receiving e-mail on an Exchange account and a Google Apps account. And the phone didn’t even slow down when I switched screens. I am impressed. Together, the Dash 3G and the 3volution ROM are a fantastic pair.

GPS Satellite

After more than a month of struggling with the slow GPS lock on the Dash 3G I may have found something that speeds up the lock times a little. Using a freeware program called GPS Test (freeware from a British company called Chartcross), the onboard GPS seems to use a much more efficient search algorithm and finds a lock faster. Still not as fast as my OnCourse bluetooth GPS, but in a few tests much faster than the built-in GPS by itself.

I’ve found that starting GPS Test and letting it find the satellites, and then switching to Google Maps or another application works fairly well. I’ll keep trying this and we’ll see if it really makes the system more usable.

Review of Black & Decker Power Monitor

Black & Decker Power Monitor (Display Unit)

If you are thinking about (or already have) a whole house generator, one of the things you want to know is how much power various things in your house use. So, to properly size the generator you’ll need you will want to monitor the usage of various critical appliances and circuits. But how?

There are really three ways: hire a pro, measure individual appliances and circuits, or buy a whole-house monitor. Prior to my generator installation I used the single curcuit method (with a clamp-on multi/ammeter and a plug I built myself). But now, thanks to a great 2009 Father’s Day gift, I have an always-on meter to do the whole house load for me.

Meter Background

There are really two types of homeowner meters for sale: inductive and optical. Both do the same job, thought I haven’t seen any accuracy comparisons between the two technologies. As always, each technology has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

Inductive Meters

Inductive meters consist of a sending unit that reads the current drawn through your circuit panel via inductive clamps. The most common version of this type of meter is the TED (The Energy Detective). These types of meters have several advantages over the optical kind. Mainly, inductive meters can measure a single circuit, a single sub-panel, or the whole house and, they work while the generator is running. They’re also installed inside the circuit panel and protected from teh elements. The TED also has interesting features, like holding the daily peak usage in memory so you can really see what the peak loads were over a span of time to size your generator correctly. One drawback is that you must open up your circuit panel to install this type of device, which scares a lot of people.

Optical Meters

Sending Unit Attached to Meter

Optical meters have a sensor that attaches to your mechanical electric meter (on the outside, no need to open it). This sensor tracks the movement of the spinning wheel inside most electric meters and calculates usage based on that. The primary advantage of this type of system is that you don’t need to open your panel to install it, and they tend to be less expensive than inductive sensors. The disadvantage is that they can only measure the whole house, and they only work on utility power. So when the generator is running you wont have a real-time readout. They also have a sending unit installed outside in the elements on the electric meter and there is a real concern that a $100 device just won’t hold up. In fact, mine came out of the box with a leaky sending unit and I needed a warranty replacement from Black & Decker.

The Black & Decker power meter is really a re-branded meter from a company called Blue Line Innovations (http://www.bluelineinnovations.com/) and sold through various retailers. In fact, it’s an older model, because Blue Line apparently released a new version in May 2009 that adds a daily peak usage memory that mine doesn’t have. So the Blue Line site is a good place for information about the meter — better than the Black & Decker site. But nonetheless, it gets the job done for just over $100 from Amazon.com.

Setup

Rating:  

Setup wasn’t that hard. The manual is very thorough and it walks you through the calibration without too much fuss. Installing the sending unit wasn’t that hard either, though this can vary depending on meter type. In my case (a 30 year-old meter) it was as simple as tightening a large hose clamp around the meter glass and aligning the sensor arm.

You will need an electric bill because the meter calculates cost based on power used and it therefore needs to know cost information. This shouldn’t be too hard to find on most bills. There are four or five steps needed to calibrate the meter depending on how your electric rates work. But once done the receiver can give you an idea of how much your use costs. It even has a function that will predict your monthly cost depending on the usage patterns it has tracked.

Performance

Rating:  

Once I got mine installed and calibrated, it seemed to perform fine. The receiver captured and held a signal about 30 feet away, through several walls. But even with a really old meter, which tends to get fogged a bit during high humidity, the sensor keeps reading the values and gives me a realistic (I can’t really judge the accuracy) picture of usage. It definitely changes values when my electric stove or dryer turn on, and it also cycles in time with my electric oven when the heating element comes on and off. So I have every reason t believe that the display is reasonably accurate.

Breakdown and Replacement

Rating:  

However, one problem became apparent soon after installation: the sending unit simply stopped working one day. We had a very wet summer this year and when the sensor stopped sending one day the first thing I thought of was that it had leaked water. Sure enough, when I opened the battery compartment, which also houses the main circuit board, several drops of water leaked out. I took the sensor inside and let it dry for a couple of days and it came back to life. So I reinstalled it, tightening the cover extra tight in the hope that it was a leaky silicone gasket letting the water in. It wasn’t, and the sensor failed again during the next rain storm.

I called the 800 number on the front of the instructions and had some confusion navigating the menu (it announced itself for DeWalt tools, not B & D). But eventually I got to an operator and gave her the product number. Clearly this line handles all the B & D products from power tools to coffee makers, and there was no way that an operator would have any idea about the product I was describing. But she was polite and indicated that if they authorized a repair I would hear via a return phone call in a couple of days. Well, I didn’t. But abour a week later I received an envelope that had a B & D shipping label inside, with absolutely no instructions whatsoever. So I assumed that they wanted me to send this thing for repair, which pissed me off, since I really wanted a replacement and didn’t want to wait 6 weeks for a repair to be done.

But then, another week later, a UPS truck stopped one afternoon with a box and inside was a complete new unit! And again, no instructions about what to do with the old one. So at this point, I have two units, with one working sending unit. And as soon as B & D tells me whether to actually ship the old one back, I will.

Overall Impression

Overall:  

Basically, now that the quality problem has been solved, I am happy with this meter. It was easy to install, reasonably sensitive, the receiver works at a good distance, and I have every reason to believe that it is reasonably accurate. Given the initial failure that I had, I do worry about the longevity of the sending unit while it’s exposed to the weather. And I would prefer a unit that would work while my generator is running to help me monitor the load. But as a gift for around $100, I really can’t complain.

Black and Decker tech support was very confusing, but in the end it served its purpose and got the job done. I received a replacement unit and everything works.

Interference

The instruction manual warns that the meter could suffer interference from certain other wireless devices. In my case that appears to me the rain gauge for my Oregon Scientific Wireless Weather Station. So even after I received the replacement unit, the display seems to go to zero whenever it rains. But unlike before when the sending unit was leaking, the display comes right back soon after the rain stops. Since the other parts of the weather station (the anemometer, thermometer, and barometer) work all the time, I assume that it is the rain gauge transmitting that interferes with the display. I’ll keep an eye on this, but I’m 99% sure that it the problem.

Since I’m always looking for feedback, I just implemented a post rating/voting plugin. Please — even if you don’t want to leave comments, click a star or vote thumbs up or down. Thanks!

This is a simple weeknight recipe that I adapted from one I saw in Cooks Illustrated a couple of years ago. I like it because it’s pretty much done in 1 single skillet and a bowl or two.

Ingredients:

• 6 – 8 extra large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1/2 C panko breadcrumbs(I actually mix 2/3 panko and 1/3 traditional just because I like it that way )
• 1/2 stick butter (will be used in 1 Tablespoon slices)
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1/4 C Marsala wine or cooking sherry (or even leftover white wine will work)
• 2 t all-purpose flour
• 1 t sugar
• Juice of 1 large lemon (or a splash of concentrate)
• red pepper flakes
• Salt, pepper, and dried herbs, and other seasoning  to taste (I like Old Bay)

Preparation:

1. Thoroughly dry shrimp with paper towels. Toss in a bowl with a pinch of salt, pepper, and 1 t sugar. (You can also add other seasonings here — I usually add a pinch or two of Old Bay and some dried herbs). Set aside.
2. Heat skillet over medium heat and add 1T of butter. Allow to heat until foaming stops.
3. Add breadcrumbs and stir until lightly browned. You can also add seasoning at this point to taste — I often add a pinch or two of Old Bay, along with some herbs and black pepper. When crumbs are lightly brown, set aside.
4. Wipe out skillet and place back on medium low heat. Add 1 – 2 T olive oil and allow to heat.
5. Place shrimp in pan and allow to cook on one side until just browning — maybe 2 to 3 minutes.
6. Remove shrimp and set aside.
7. Wipe pan and return to heat.
8. Add 2 T butter
9. Add red pepper flake to taste (skip if you don’t like spicy — I use a full teaspoon, but I like heat).
10. When butter stops foaming, add garlic and saute for a minute or so.
11. Add Marsala wine or sherry and lemon juice. Whisk together in pan.
12. After another minute or two, sprinkle in flour and keep whisking until thickened (another minute or so).
13. Finally whisk in the final 2 T butter.
14. Return shrimp to pan and shake to coat. I usually flip the shrimp so the uncooked side is down, but this is optional.
15. Cover pan and allow shrimp to cook until pink and cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes.

Serve the shrimp and sauce over whatever you want — rice, pasta, something from a box that’s quick. Top with the crunchy breadcrumbs. Yummy.

It’s hard to know how many MBTA commuters on the Framingham-Worcester line signed up for Clever Commute when it was first launched in Boston. But I think the service could definitely give better information — or at least faster information — when something goes wrong than the MBTA notification system. So I’m challenging myself to actually post when things go wrong for the next 6 months, to see if others pick up on it.

Here’s a case in point:

On 9/10/2009 the P529 6:15pm Worcester train was 12 minutes late arriving in South Station. It didn’t get in until 6:27pm. And then boarding took another 13 minutes, so it left for Back Bay at 6:30pm. During that time, I was able to quickly send three updates on what was happening. How many did the MBTA system send? Zero. Her’s the proof from my mobile inbox:

Clever Commute Beats the MBTA Notification System

The three messages I sent were received back in my inbox at 6:08pm, 6:23pm, and 6:32pm.

So if you were standing on the Back Bay platform wondering what was going on — if you used Clever Commute you would have known. And so would anyone waiting at your station to pick you up.

Let’s see if we can make this work for the next 6 months … Please join and give it a try. Just click the picture above.

Lawsuits ... We need Lawsuits ...

ePatient Dave made a blog post yesterday looking for ideas about a talk he is going to give on patients having unimpeded access to their medical records in a forum on Participatory Medicine. It got me thinking enough to add some comments.

For those of you not following the idea, Participatory Medicine is the concept that the relationship between a patient and their providers should be more of a collaboration on health and treatment than a one-way pipe of doctors telling patients what to do — the patient should participate in treatment options as much as the doctor does. This is probably over-simplified, but the concept is certainly new enough to scare a lot of the medical establishment. The underlying principles are that, in an information-enabled age, patients and patient-communities are often able to digest and process important information about their conditions faster than the medical establishment, and therefore, these educated medical consumers should play a co-equal role in directing their own care. The movement is best embodied in places like Dave’s blog as well as e-Patients.net. One of the planks of the platform is that patients should have access to their records at any time, in order to have all the basic information they need to make sound decisions.

Participatory medicine is an idea that I would say I am interested in, more than I am a passionate advocate for. Probably because I’ve been pretty healthy so far in my life and really don’t have a medical record to speak of that I’ve ever tried to access. But Dave’s call for questions did get me thinking.

The concepts surrounding Participatory Medicine are complex: is medical information available to the average patient reliable? Is the average patient capable of separating the quackery from the valuable? Are patient communities really good at distilling information, or do they perpetuate rumor and innuendo?

The one on my mind (and Dave’s too) is this: in a medical record, who owns the information? Clearly the information is about the patient — so the easy answer is to say that the patient “owns,” or is at least entitled to access this data. But I can’t really think of a precedent for this line of thought in society. For example, a biography may be the life story of a particular person, but upon completion, the rights to that story are given to the author, not the subject. Why is this? Because a biography is more than a collection of facts; it includes analysis and structure that are the creation — the intellectual property — of the author. I have to think that the same is true of a medical record. Sure, the record contains biometric and physiologic data from the patient but, particularly in long relationships and complex cases, it also contains diagnoses and theories and notes. Things that are the creation of the provider (and the institution). And I am therefore willing to concede that the providers creating these records should have some say in what happens to them.

The dilemma I’ve just laid out could be solved simply by defining what is and what isn’t a “medical record.” And going forward, I think this will happen. Data and facts (tests, observations, etc.) will be part of the “record” and made available to the patient while thoughts and speculation and internal conversations will become part of an internal archive that providers will keep to themselves. But the future isn’t the problem — Dave and the Participatory Medicine advocates are more concerned with the current medical record than they are with the future one. And the current record isn’t so well defined.

The question then becomes, why are providers and institutions so reluctant to open this archive to patients on demand. And the conclusion I drew was fear. Fear of many things in fact:

• Fear that patients won’t properly understand what was written and why.
• Fear that the record will reveal mistakes made in the past.
• Fear that patients will see all the details about what their insurance company was charged and ask “what is all this?”
• Fear that proprietary procedures will be revealed.

I don’t believe that malpractice lawsuits are a significant contributor to medical costs (an opinion shared by others including parts of the medical insurance industry itself and some prominent economists). But I do believe that institutions would rather avoid them. And I believe that there is a deep-rooted fear among individual providers and institutions that releasing historical health records would create an entirely new industry of “medical record trolls” combing through page after page looking for any possible error that could result in a lawsuit.

So my thought is that there needs to be some sort of protection in place before we will really see providers opening the archives. And I wonder if some sort of indemnification is warranted for the sake of opening the archives. Sort of a legal waiver guaranteeing that people won’t release the records to the Trolls. I think that if there were some sort of standard format for these agreements, we’d see institutions opening up the archives more quickly. And I think that this protection is a small price to pay for the benefit of really seeing one’s history.

It’s been one day since I flashed my phone with a “cooked” (custom) ROM that I found on XDA-Developers. And so far I have no regrets.

3volution Homescreen

ROM chef “ookba” did an excellent job on this package, including some very clean and tasteful themes for the phone. I normally find most phone themes so cluttered and distracting that the first thing I do is set the background to a simple, plain black. But the default “Islands” wallpaper on this ROM is actually so nice I want to keep it. And it passed the ultimate test … my wife saw it and said that she’d like to flash to this ROM just for the look of it. And, perhaps greatest of all, as you can see in the homescreen picture to the right, there are some decent colored battery, signal, and other icons baked right in! I don’t have to spend another day with those shitty white icons that ship with the default Windows Mobile ROMs.

Once installed, it only took me about an hour to reinstall all my software and get my mail accounts set back up. I have to say, using an Exchange server at work for my primary contacts manager is a blessing, as is Google Apps’ support of IMAP4. Long gone are the days of losing mail that was saved to your handheld. It takes only 5 minutes to completely rebuild my mailboxes from the server. Add to that my Google Apps Calendar for personal use and my Exchange calendar, and my life is back under control within 15 minutes of wiping my phone.

Cool Tools

Windows Mobile 6.5 added some nice features, and chef ookba made sure that critical system things were accessible. Like putting Internet Connection Sharing right on the main app list (it works — one of the first things I checked). He has also added several tools to allow easy management of the look of the ROM as well as several useful 3rd party apps that you would normally need to add separately to a default WinMo installation. Eight of them are shown on this capture of the Tools menu. Especially nice is the implementation of the “Titanium” homescreen architecture, which really advances the look and feel of the phone light years beyond the standard Windows Mobile homescreen and well beyond even the sliding panels in WinMo 6.5.

So, the bottom line after 1 day – the phone works perfectly after flashing, the ROM looks and works well, and I am very happy I took the plunge. More information as I dig deeper into the ROM and use it for daily work.