Software, Technology, Business & Life

I was looking for a years-old appointment and realized I’ve been using a PDA for ten years now. My data goes back to 1997. (I think I’m on my fourth PDA, but I’ve lost count.)

It was a strange realization on a few levels.

It was pretty cool seeing appointments from ten years ago. What was I doing then? What was I working on? Who was I hanging with?

It was strange suddenly looking into my life ten years ago.

It was strange, too, seeing things that I have no idea today what they were (or meant).

Guy Kawasaki, web entrepreneur:

During the dot-com bubble, you needed $5 million to do stupid ideas. Now you can do stupid ideas for 12 grand.

Doing some exploratory work for a VoIP application, I bought this nifty LinkSYS VoIP adapter. But I find that adapter only knows how to find Vonage. The firmware is programmed that way. Easy for Vonage customers, useless to us.

But it seemed to be a reasonable business decision for LinkSys. Sign on with a big player.

Or is it? Vonage recently lost a lawsuit from Verizon, so their future is uncertain.

That makes all these boxes useless. (Or will someone find a creative way to redeem them?)

I threw away a bunch of old software today.

I threw away the CD-ROMs but kept the (plain) sleeves. Ironic, that.

Reminds me of a story I heard: Post-World War II Germany’s hyper-inflation, where someone stole a wheelbarrow full of cash. They stole the wheelbarrow, but dumped the cash.

I’d say this software’s hyper-deflation is about equivalent. (Not to make light of that country’s hardship.)

Software has a life.