Initial Remarks on Bob X. Cringely Article

Yesterday I had lunch with Bob X. Cringely. This morning I woke up and found that he wrote about web logs and Reger.com technology in his column this week.

It's early in the AM but I wanted to make some initial observations on the article:

1) First off... wow! I'm elated! This is my first press for Reger.com. To date all the signups have been by word of mouth.

2) joereger.com is my personal web log... it's powered by Reger.com, the core technology discussed by Bob.

3) Bob poses the question "Is the point of a web log to record ideas or to publish them?" This is excellent and, for me, gets to the heart of the matter. I draw about 50% of my value from web logs based on publishing and 50% based on just looking back at my own life. For me it goes back to the movie "Titanic" in the last scene where the old lady has a bunch of pictures lined up on her dresser. These pictures review the exciting and full life that she's lived. That's what a web log should do... it should allow you to look back on your life. It should be a "personal nostalgia sparker," generating memories and thoughts from the past. It won't replace your memory... it'll supplement it. More on that here and here.

4) Bob says: "Joe hopes to pioneer what essentially comes down to personal data mining." Yep. Check out the charts and graphs that come with a personal sex log or a personal running log. These are the beginning. Currently you can create and save thousands of charts and graphs to slice and dice your own data. It's a start and more features like calendaring and visualization are coming soon.

5) The thing that told me Bob really "got it" was when he said "Imagine if your web log chirped up one day suggesting out of the blue that..." This is key. If we track personal data we give computer algorithms the ability to enhance our own lives. Computers are great at finding very-hard-to-find relationships in data because they can work via brute force. For example, CD retailers find that people who buy Mozart like The Cult. If they were just looking at the data themselves they'd never find that relationship. But a computer can rip through the data and uncover it. Same thing for personal data. Imagine if your computer said "hey, did you know that you run 15% faster two days after eating a pasta meal and then following it with a steak within 16 hours?" That's powerful. And it's already being done on smaller scales. My Polar heart rate monitor, for example, looks for something called overtraining which is an athlete's syndrome where the body starts to break down after too much training. It's detected via a complex relationship between heart rate, exertion and time.

6) Bullet point 5) is also scary. Personal data must be protected. To this end Reger.com technology must keep people in absolute control of their personal data. They can password-protect it, move it, defend it.

7) Bob mentions the concept of "Regerizing" technology. Again, exactly what I'm looking to do. Cell phones, cameras, video racorders, heart rate monitors. A recent issue of Wired mentioned that Intel has a corporate vision of putting sensors into everything... including bandaids. This personal data needs to flow into some repository... some tool where it can become valuable as part of the whole... the Gestalt, if you will. Now, this is where I need the most help. I don't know how to reach out to the makers of the devices. I've been spending time contacting researchers... but they don't think about the commercialization of their devices. And I've been spending time contacting business thinkers who aren't generally interested in tweaking their products. Where are the visionaries who can affect change in their product?

8) The key value to a company... the reason they'd "Regerize" a treadmill, scale, watch or car... is to turn a one-time product sale into a recurring revenue stream. When people sign up for their private label web log they pay to upgrade, which sends money to us and also back to the company who manufactured the device. HP basically gives away printers to sell toner... scale companies can make money on web logs to enhance their business models.

9) Bob says "But most peoples thoughts aren't really worth sharing." He's comparing the value props of web logging. I've been preaching (and here) for a while that a successful web log shouldn't only be determined by inbound traffic. I'd eppend Bob's comment to say "But while most peoples thoughts aren't really worth sharing, they're all worth keeping for future review."

10) Another key concept in Reger.com is to "open the archive." Most web logs value the home page at, oh, 98% and the archives at 2%. I put it at 50/50. I love looking back at my life. So I created a number of ways to make old entries more visible on users' web sites. Related Links automatically searches old entries for ones that are relevant. Whenever I get done reading something I've written I'm presented with five other things I've written. I get to see my own views develop over time. On This Day... a feature Dave Winer's been doing for a long time... shows me what I was doing exactly one, two, three... any number of years ago. Search. Calendar view. They open the archive too.

Well, those are my top ten thoughts about the article. Lots of work to do to make Reger.com better. Go sign up and tell me what you think!

Thanks for the article Bob!

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