Joi Full ICANN

Joi Ito has written an interesting post about his time on the ICANN board and his views on the process.

"With all of it's tumultuous history and bumps and warts, ICANN, in my opinion, is the best way that we can manage names and numbers on the Internet and any new thing to try to do what it does would be less fair and probably wouldn't work."

Ito is known for doing great work for OSI and as a VC. He has served on boards of the Mozilla Foundation, Technorati, Socialtext, Creative Commons (current chairman), and Six Apart Japan. (See his Wikipedia entry if you want to be impressed.)

Hillary Hopes to Breathe Life Back into Work-Life Balance

I used to think creating work-life balance was a matter of just taking control over your own life. And to a certain extent, it is. But there are factors in our society as Americans that have really gotten out-of-control. In other countries, new mothers have an opportunity to take real time off to spend with their new babies. New fathers can spend a little time at home too. And without fear of losing their jobs or taking pay cuts for doing it. Here, that's hardly ever the case. After I became a parent, I realized work-life balance is actually very hard to come by here, especially in California where so many families need to have both parents working in order to just pay the mortgage.

Hillary Clinton, in a week of initiatives focused entirely on women, released a proposal to provide greater family leave options. The press release listed key components of the plan as creating a new State Family Leave Innovation Fund that will "expand paid leave across the country". She also proposes extending FMLA to 13 Million more Americans and requiring sick leave of at least 7 days a year. (How does this work with lame PTO programs that lump vacation and sick days all into one, I wonder?) She's promoting model workplaces and a federal telecommuting initiative (woo-hoo!), she has an affordable childcare component (no details here), and she's working to prevent discrimination, particularly in the case of pregnant women.

This week, Hillary Clinton has also spoken on a number of women's issues and for women's organizations. This is a key component of her campaign, of course, since she's the first viable woman candidate for president, but I personally believe it is much more than that. Having read a great deal about her now and having talked with and read stories about people who have known her well, it is clear to me that she has a deeply rooted commitment to women and families. This is a big part of why I support her candidacy.

It's not just about Hillary Clinton being pro-choice, a woman, a mother, or particularly vocal on key issues generally identifiable as women's issues like healthcare. Reading accounts from former staffers, she walks her talk. When she was First Lady, she allowed some of the people who worked for her to take long leaves for medical, pregnancy, post partum and childcare purposes, work flexible hours and in one rare case, bring a child to work.

If someone had told me all of that before I became a mother, perhaps I would have thought it was a weak policy or unprofessional. But now I realize how hard it really is to balance work and family in a way that is both satisfactory in allowing children to be properly nurtured and cared for while allowing parents to develop meaningful careers. Work-life balance is not some pie-in-the-sky idea that can only happen for the uber-wealthy or those who make major sacrifices. Look at Europe - it is possible. Hillary's plan is just a first, much needed major step.

I am lucky to be able to attend a lunch this Monday in California that will be hosted by former California State Senator Jackie Speier, a woman who has been a long-time champion of women and families. I won't go into too much detail here because I've blogged about this before, but Jackie Speier herself is admirable in many respects through all she's been through personally. I worked for her briefly before I had to go on bed rest in my pregnancy and she was so understanding; I never would've expected that, but she knew I made the right choice in resigning my post so I could make sure my pregnancy was sustainable and that my daughter would be born healthy. I think it's very fitting that she is hosting this event for Senator Clinton after a week of women's initiatives. It shows the real commitment that Hillary has to these new proposals and I have no doubt we will make tons of progress in this area if she becomes president.

...
Also posted at BlogHer.

Announcing Playborhood - A Site for Developing Neighborhood Communities Surrounding Play

I'm participating in a new project - Playborhood.com - just launched within the hour, where our goal is to reach out to people who seek better play-based communities and neighborhoods for their children. So many families now have structured play all the time and neighborhoods where they don't feel safe letting their kids just go out and play, we're lucky to find the rare place where they can (I did - I feel lucky anyway). So Playborhood aims to become a great community resource where parents can go to find the right neighborhood for them and engage others in that neighborhood in the process of creating a safe, inviting Playborhood. Please check out the site and send us feedback.

Here are two articles on the Playborhood site about why this issue is important: "Mike's Manifesto" and "What Kids Want Most In a House is Not in the House". Playborhood.com is already full of great resources for parents who want to be proactive and help their children grow up with the same opportunities for free play outside as we had when we were young.

Cows vs. Cars - Is McDonald's More Toxic for the Planet Than GM?

This is an article from late last year, but it was forwarded to me this week and really gives an interesting perspective on air pollution and the environment. Not that auto pollution isn't awful, but this article explains how livestock growth actually emits more greenhouse gas emissions. The solution? Consume less meat. I'm not saying go all-veggie necessarily. I've tried and failed. (I'll save that story for another time.) But reducing meat in the diet is generally considered healthier anyway, so why not give it a try for the sake of the environment?

Women and Flexible Work Options

I just wrote a long post on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog about the recent series of articles in The Mercury News by columnist Sue Hutchison, discussing various issues relating to work for today's parents. (It focuses on the moms, but to be fair, these issues relate to dads too.) I was quoted in two of the articles and I go on in my post to explain the reasons behind my quotes - there really are a lot of moms who want to work part-time and still be able to spend a significant amount of time with their children, and I think this is an important issue.

British Farce Spoofed for Googlers

Lauren Weinstein has produced a song, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major Googler" which is cute. It doesn't capture the entire essence of Google, of course, but it's amusing nonetheless. If you don't already get the theme, it's Gilbert & Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from The Pirates of Penzance. (If you're not familiar with G&S or that musical, it's a farce - the character introducing himself, proud of his role in the British Navy.) He dedicated it to all Google employees. I went to read the lyrics first, but it's much more fun to listen to the mp3.

I still remember when Google was just Larry and Sergey and a few other friends at Stanford, so I'll admit that the thought of people working there who have never even seen either of them is odd to me, but I'm sure it's the case these days. I don't know if it's actually true that they ask prospective employees to build working disk drives from lego sets as the song notes (pun intended), but if so, that would be Larry's influence. He had a printer he'd built out of legos when we were undergrads at UofM. And he was talking about the book scanner then. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that project. I know Google's getting more criticism these days as it grows larger, but I still think they are doing well sticking to their core mission considering their size. Enjoy the song.

Future Campaign Solutions Site is Up

Just a quick note - I finally got around to putting up a basic business web site so people can see what I actually do as a consultant for nonprofits and political organizations in terms of online strategy, communications, etc. Check it out at futurecampaigns.com. It still needs some tuning, but it's a start. I'll keep blogging here on related topics for now.

Mercury News on Mommy Wars

I was quoted last week in the San Jose Mercury News about the "mommy wars" hype and some follow-up to the discussion on the Merc blog via a series of articles by Sue Hutchison. I wrote a lot more about it than she printed, of course, but essentially my thoughts on the topic are that yes, we have more options than we've had in the past but we still have a long way to go.

Most jobs are full-time in the office and that's the only option. If you want anything other than that, you won't be considered for the position. I understand the employer's perspective, but at the same time, there needs to be a reality check. Jobs are going overseas to people in other countries - why not down the street to someone in his/her home? It's not like moms are the only ones who want more job flexibility - it's just that we have a more obvious reason that allows us to be clumped together into one category which may or may not fully describe who we are or what we want to do with our time.

Kudos to Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and author of The Mothernood Manifesto, for starting Moms Rising, an organization focused on getting this issue the attention it needs.

Interesting Nonprofit Concept - donorschoose.org

Crate & Barrel sent me a letter about a month ago saying that they wanted to thank me for being a customer and that they were doing a program where customers can select where a $25 donation will go. Thinking the site would be some portal to non profits, I checked it out and also of course figuring if I can get $25 sent to another worthy cause, great. donorschoose.org actually is a very specific site where they have accounts related to education and requests by educators to fund their specific projects. They don't always tell you where they are, but the options are quite extensive.

I chose the SF Bay Area because I have a sense of local issues here and then I selected arts & music - there were several options for different types of projects - technology based, reading based, by subject, region, etc. but that one interested me since the arts are so generally neglected in schools here. Finding thousands of proposals just for the arts, having a toddler at home who is very musical and going through the preschool selection process where I am seeking a school with a good music program that my daughter will love, I decided to search for 'preschool music' and the first one that came up said something about creating an environment for dance and music at a preschool and helping by purchasing a cd player and instruments for the classroom so I put my $25 gift card toward that.

You can fund the whole project yourself, of course, or add to the personal donations. What I didn't find out is what happens if these programs are only partly funded - do they get any money? do they get some money? do they go through another process? I'll check that out another time, but I wanted to mention it as an interesting way to be really specific about where your money goes rather than just having a blanket $25 donation going to the Red Cross and not knowing where that money will actually end up. I'm in favor of both kinds of systems, of course. Organizations need to manage their own funds in order to operate properly, but I think this is an interesting business model that provides a more local feel to contributing in the education space.

Help Save Berkeley Landmark Ice Rink!

If you're a figure skating fan, could you picture figure skating history without Kristi Yamaguchi, Brian Boitano, Rudy Galindo, and even Sonja Henie? Of course not, that's absurd! Well, the Berkeley Iceland (in Berkeley, CA) was home to all of these skaters at one time or another - some only on occasion but it has been around for 65 years. It's now closed - land to be sold to the highest bidder and demolished for whatever purposes they choose.

Berkeley Iceland is one of the largest, most beautiful rinks I've ever seen. Tucked in a hidden pocket close to campus, the rink spans Olympic size 200'x100' and includes grand stands for viewing hockey games and performances. The family who own it ran into financial troubles (rinks are expensive to maintain) after having some cooling equipment issues. So now a nonprofit group has banned together to Save Berkeley Iceland. Let's hope they can be as successful as saving Kepler's Bookstore here in Menlo Park has been so far.

Yes, there are rinks in Oakland, San Francisco and Dublin now that aren't too far away for skaters, but none of them is quite like this one. It truly is a historical building. This Thursday, a group meets in the City of Berkeley to determine whether the building can become an official landmark. Whether that has much bearing on its fate remains to be seen, but if you love figure skating, please consider helping Save Berkeley Iceland turn it into an environmentally sustainable rink that will last another 65+ years.

Lessons in Internet Culture on Tomorrow's "Good Morning America"

I was interviewed today as an expert on Internet culture for a segment on "Good Morning America" tomorrow morning about Internet defamation. The piece is related to the Washington Post article, "Harsh Words Die Hard on the Web" that broke today about law students who believe that derogatory misinformation online hurt their chances for jobs after law school. I'll blog more about this issue later after seeing the segment - there's a lot to be said about the dangers involved, especially for young people. I was told the video would most likely be online later in the day.

Online Account Nonsense

About once a week, I find myself creating a hand full of new accounts for various sites that I may or may not ever use again. And then there are the couple that expired or were purged that I have to renew. Of course also we can't forget the passwords that need to be changed - which I'll admit even as a security professional, I'm not as on top of as I should be.

Today, I decided to count all of the accounts I have for sites that I have to date. Not including client accounts or ISP/telephony - just things like containerstore.com and blogger.com - I have over 225. As someone who learned about e-commerce before it existed, I'm still mind-boggled by this. Who can keep track of these things in a secure, organized fashion without being overwhelmed?

Options?
a) Use a site that aggregates passwords that better be damn secure if you have any kind of financial or personal data in it
b) Save passwords in an insecure but easily accessible location
c) Use the same password for multiple accounts
d) Create fake email accounts that are really anonymous or have pseudonyms to use for as many as possible

These still each have their own problems. But what's the alternative? Don't read news online, don't conduct business transactions online, don't use your own identification for your searching? It's tiresome...

iPlane, iPlane!

In November, Apple announced partnerships with a number of airlines to provide iPod connectivity. The following day, Air France and KLM denied they were going to offer such service, saying it was only in initial discussions. Delta stuck with it and and now supposdly United and Continental have joined the iPod airmiles club.

Now, according to Budget Travel Online, all three airlines plan to install seat connections in planes by this summer. No more bad, censored movies with pilots cutting in to provide commentary on landmarks you've seen a hundred times over gritty, cheap headsets.

Or if you don't want to wait, depending on the type of plane you're on and its jacks, you can get the Monster iAirplay. It works with auto cigarette adaptors as well as airplane seat adaptors and has gold contacts for
higher quality.

More Women in Politics; Less in High-Tech

It's great that we have a woman as Speaker of the House and finally a financially viable woman candidate for President, but in another area that has always been male-dominated, technology, women are on the decline again, according to a silicon.com article by Steve Ranger (sounds like he should be a relative).

An organization called Intellect conducted research that shows women now fill 16% of tech jobs vs. 18% two years ago. Ouch. I really thought it was higher than that by now. Supposedly a lot of the attrition is at the executive and upper management level. I don't doubt that. Supposedly Intellect is working on an action plan to develop better industry practices that foster things women want like a more flexible workplace.

I'll admit it - I work for myself mostly because I've had a difficult time finding a flexible enough workplace to suit my needs. Some of it is because I've suffered from repetitive strain injuries (carpal tunnel, tendinitis, etc.), but now that I'm a parent, I have other needs that match those of many other women. And although I enjoy being self-employed and choosing clients myself, I can't help but wonder what other avenues my career might have taken had there been more flexible opportunities at larger organizations - in or out of high-tech.

Merger Mania

Chuck pointed out something absurd to me the other day - the local newspaper jobs page is now the (I kid you not) "San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com Yahoo! hotjobs Career Section".

Yeah, that's right. They merged 4 companies into one and everybody got top billing. Of course this is just down the street from the SBC PacBell park Giants Stadium in South Beach/Mission Bay by SOMA.

What happened to good, old fashioned monopolizers like AT&T gobbling up other companies and dropping their names the next day?

SOMA Twins To Tower Over San Francisco

Paul Boutin reported Friday that two buildings to meet the #3 in height in the US were proposed to the City of San Francisco. The Sears Tower and Empire State building would be the two taller structures. It's actually 5 buildings in total - "... two 1,200-foot towers, two 900-foot structures and a 600-foot companion."

Here's the Chronicle article about it. According to SFGate, the two towers will be 350 ft. taller than the Transamerica building. They are to be built at the corner of First and Mission. From my real estate research in the area, that's about as seismically stable as you can get in San Francisco - right at the base of Rincon Hill - solid rock as opposed to the sandfill you find a few blocks away in South Beach.

H-1B Visas & Skill Bill Abhored by Programmers

There's been some talk in computer programmer circles (blogs and Dave Farber's Interesting People list) about the possible passage of the SKIL Bill (Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership - S.2611, along with its companion, HR5744) and what it will do to the high-tech industry. And what amazes me is that it seems like there aren't any programmers in favor of this bill. Essentially the idea behind the bill is to gradually increase the number of available H-1b visas and continue with current loopholes that allow these workers to be paid below market wages.

The problems that have been recorded are: a) low pay means companies will seek out h-1b staff rather than pay local citizens fair market value, b) companies don't go to the trouble to get these people green cards because then they'll leave and go somewhere they can get higher wages, c) this is reducing the incentive for employers and legal residents to go out and become more skilled themselves so they can get jobs here, and d) the people who work here on the visas then return to their home countries and open up competitive enterprises.

Rather than coming across anti-globalization, suggestions have been positive in favor of more green cards to get skilled workers to come here and stay here rather than go back. I'm not sure how that affects people already here, but it does seem to me from what I've heard about companies in Silicon Valley and the immigration process that anyone who has a visa who wants to go through the citizenship process to actually become a citizen is having a more difficult time with it than necessary.

Aren't these the people we want to come here rather than the unskilled workers who sneak across the border and then work illegally without paying taxes, use medical services that we pay for, etc? This is not a rhetorical question - immigration is one of those sticky issues that I'm not well versed in, so I would like to hear other peoples' thoughts on this subject.

A Monopoly On Nerdiness?

So now another AARP aged Microsoft billionaire, Charles Simonyi, supposedly claims he "might be the first nerd in space". Hah. So now Microsoft is claiming a monopoly on nerdiness? Please.

First of all, if he were really that nerdy, he would've figured out a way to make Excel and Word more efficiently coded. Secondly, NASA really stands for "Nerds And Scientific Astronauts", i.e. they have sent nerds in space from the get go. Every shuttle mission has engineers and scientists. And those aren't nerds?

But since it sounds good, BBC covered it as did Slashdot and they're willing to let a few little facts slide I guess, and assume this guy will be the first official "nerd".

I remember learning at Space Camp that the shuttle main computers had a total of 64k between them back in the day. (They've since been upgraded - maybe they're up to 256 now.) That's pretty nerdy. I doubt those people ever left the computer buildings they worked in (back in the days of huge rooms being needed for one computer) but still, they should've at least gotten an honorary astronaut commendation.

I'll only say one thing - if I had billions, I'd spend the $90k or whatever it costs to buy a spot in a rocket from the Russians or on a Virgin Galactic flight in a heartbeat, so more power to him. I hope he has a blast. (Pun intended... it's late as I write this.)

No More Rocking The Vote, Just FIX It!

Gene Spafford, computer security expert and co-chair of the U.S. Association for Computing Machinery Public Policy Committee forwarded this article to USACM members (of which I'm one). It pinpoints a company, FixAVote.com, that supposedly offers "election outcome solutions". If you look closely at the site, it is really tough to tell if it's serious or a joke. Take a look - you'll see what I mean.

Avi Rubin and Ed Felten, two other USACM members known for their research on the security of electronic voting machines (see my post, Fixing E-Voting, from a few weeks ago) were interviewed for the Computer World article. Zogby recapped TechDirt's post on the site as well. For those knowledgeable about the issue and the security behind it, it was fairly clear it was a hoax, but it was done so deadpan that a little doubt was left.

Bruce Schneier, another computer security (crypto, for those of you who don't know) expert, a few days ago, confirmed on his site that it is a hoax but everyone I've seen writing about it agrees that it was very well done. It's one of those sites with boring corporate model photo clips (people just a little bit too beautiful, so that tipped me off that the site wasn't for real) and generic consultantspeak that makes you really confused about what they can actually do for you, but the best part is where they name the specific electronic voting machine makers, like Diebold, who they supposedly work with. Great joke.

It's Never Too Late To Hate Microsoft

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the Microsoft Office "updates" now take up more space than an entire hard drive did 15 years ago, and their product really hasn't improved?

I know this isn't new or news but I was installing the 57.3 MB update today that ostensibly repairs security holes and patches the kludgy mess of software that they've paid thousands of people to develop over the past several years and that they now charge upwards of $400 for (I got it free) and I recalled that my first hard drive was actually 40MB that I got in 1990. At the time, I was using a great word processor on the Amiga that had nearly all of the features that MSWord has now, and it took up slightly over 1MB of space.

I never understood how Microsoft turned all of their products into such beasts, I never understood their protection of the code or their lack of attention to security, and I still don't understand it. But I had let myself start to try and believe the company wasn't so evil because I have a good friend who works there (I've heard employees are treated well) and because of the Bill & Menlinda Gates Foundation's work around the world.

Then I heard a story the other night from a woman who knew Bill Gates and it made my stomach turn. So here I am again, with very little that's positive to say about Microsoft. Why do I use their software, you might ask? Just because it's the standard. And I suppose I'm somewhat masochistic. Or possibly because everybody needs something to complain about that's really not so important in the scheme of things and kludgy word processors fit that category.

NASA Launches VC for Mars Mission Prep

Here's something interesting I found on VentureBeat: Red Planet Capital, a $75Million venture capital fund fased at NASA Ames here in Mountain View, will be funding businesses that develop technology for space exploration.

In his post, "NASA Ames Research Center has vital role in future space exploration", Pete Worden (NASA Ames Director) writes about all of the new work that is happening local to the Bay Area including partnerships with Google, testing new heat shields for the shuttle replacement, Orion, and developing IT for health monitoring tools. He also notes that robotics and small satellite missions are something for the near future.

Red Planet Capital is a nonprofit organization originally based out of San Mateo. They have eight business areas of focus: "eight business sectors: information technology, communications, biomedical support, environmental systems, smart manufacturing, man-machine systems, energy, and advanced materials." They invest $3-$5 Million in most of their portfolio companies over the course of multiple rounds of funding, starting with sums of $250k. See also: NASA's press release from last month and of course redplanetcapital.com.

Bienvenue

Welcome to segmented. Since blogs typically include segments of news, ideas, thoughts and information, that's where I came up with the name. It also happens that s-e-g are my initials.

This isn't my first time blogging, but it's the first weblog I've created on my own, so it is an experiment of sorts. I was knee deep in the blogosphere when the hype began but didn't see the pull to start my own at the time - I knew the time commitment involved and wanted to wait for the right moment.

As to the content, I outlined this blog to focus on technology, politics, culture and arts but I will most certainly cover other topics. I designed my own degree program entitled "Technology & Society" where I studied technology policy, politics, economics and culture. My career, including BBS development, network consulting, computer security, web startups, Internet campaigns and online activism, has been centered around that. However, I wear many other hats - writer, parent, volunteer, world traveler, philanthropist, activist, musician, figure skater - but I prefer not to be defined by any particular role. These are all a part of who I am.

I may be able to hack a kernel, sing an aria and land an axel, but I can't make this blog successful without fresh ideas and participation from others. So I welcome your thoughts and comments as I embark on this new venture. Appreciez!