I was recently reminiscing about my geeky childhood when I came across a memory about my first robot. I was overjoyed to get Verbot for Christmas one year, and tried desperately to make the dern thing follow my prepubescent voice commands. My only real solid memory is frustration at it not doing what I told it! But I do have vague recollections of getting it to pick up something and move around while clinging to it. Or maybe I’m just remember the commercial.

Oh Verbot, where are you now? Some landfill somewhere I imagine.

I’m here in Anchorage, AK, at the Alaska Society for Technology in Education conference. Times like these I’m reminded just how small our state is, even though physically it’s 3X larger than Texas.

With 54 school districts, about 150,000 students, and just under 9000 teachers we’re one of the smallest in the country. In attendance this week will be hundreds of admins, technologists, and teachers from across Alaska. Most of whom know each other.

Below is a Flickr photostream from ASTE. If you’re at the conference and want to contribute your pictures, email them to this address: cam67loaf+public@photos.flickr.com. Make sure to include the text “tags: aste” in the subject or body of the email somewhere.

The following recipe assumes you are familiar with and have accounts at more than one RSS (aka “web 2.0″) enabled website. Popular ones may include the likes of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Amazon, Blogspot, Delicious, Wordpress, Flickr, YouTube, and many more.

Purpose

A lifestream is essentially a single page where you aggregate all your online activity. Writings you make for your blog, pictures or videos you post, websites you bookmark, comments you make on articles: all can be brought to one handy webpage your audience can subscribe to.

Conceptual Overview

You consume, you create, you share.

Samples

• http://krynsky.com/lifestream/
• http://freeryan.com/lifestream/
• http://adactio.com/extras/stream/
• http://www.nicesoda.com/?page_id=1519
• http://www.yongfook.com/

Ingredients

The recipe outlined here is just one of the many different ways to build a lifestream.

• Web Browser: Firefox
  
• Essential Firefox add-on: ReadItLater
• Modern Email: Gmail
• RSS Reader: Google Reader
• Accounts at your favorite RSS-enabled websites
• Lifestream Account: FriendFeed
• Bookmarklets and Firefox add-ons for sharing content at your favorite sites: FaceBook, FriendFeed, Twitter, Delicious

Preparation

1) Create your Gmail account. This will also create your Google Reader account. Make sure to choose your username wisely: it could be yours for a long time! If you need help finding a good username, try searching Google for a username generator.

2) Add feeds from your favorite websites to Google Reader and organize them into folders.

3) Peruse headlines in Google Reader or posts from people in your networks, and use ReadItLater to mark items you want to read later.

4) Later, when you’re reading the items in your ReadItLater reading list, use your handy bookmarklets and browser add-ons to share worthy items with your various networks. Remember when you find interesting sites, if you want to get their future posts, add them to Reader. Also don’t forget to spend time every now and then looking for those hidden gems on the web (a note on finding things).

5) Go to FriendFeed and setup your account. Add all the websites you publish content to that you want to show up in your lifestream.

6) Your Lifestream will now exist at http://friendfeed.com/. Embed it in your blog, tag it onto your signature, or just let people stumble upon it.

For the last six years we’ve enjoyed enormous gains in technology: the iPod has revolutionized handhelds and cellphones; cloud computing and virtualization have enabled unlimited data/system portability; the Wii changed the way we interact with computer games; and websites that truly embody the promise of Web 2.0 are finally gaining stride and enabling people to network in ways never before possible.

But, with recession coming, belts are tightening. For many companies the first cutbacks will happen in R&D, especially if they already have a satisfied customer base. 

Have we reached a crescendo of technology progress on the eve of what could be the worst recession since the 1930s?

Lack of technology progress won’t just manifest in the form of lost jobs (300,000 so far this year), but an overall decrease of investment into new technologies. In the 4th quarter of 2007, equipment spending dropped only 4% compared to a 31% drop in venture capital investment.

One immediate example of this the new Mac Mini. Apple has production designs for it but is opting not to manufacture because “you wouldn’t buy one anyway“. 

Recession effects all parts of the economy. Some sectors may remain under enough demand to continue making sales, others will have to scale back. Or hibernate. For us bleeding edge technology nerds this means we could be looking at a mellow few years.

And for those of you feeling left behind by all this technology racing past: now’s your chance to catch up!

I think Web 2.0 is cool and here is why.

I use SmugMug for photo hosting. With unlimited storage I have almost our entire photo collection backed-up online. It’s also what lets me do the nifty slideshows you see on this site, and now hosts HD-quality video. Their product is great, but even more impressive is their company. I like them so much that I’ve subscribed to Don MacAskill’s blog (he’s their CEO), and am following him on Twitter.

As you may know, Twitter allows you to “follow” people and see whatever status updates, questions, or expressions they decided to post (aka “tweet”). It’s really great for maintaining a wide network of relationships.

I also like Facebook, mainly for maintaining more private, particular relationships with current and long lost friends. Facebook has a great social Photo application, but since all my pics are in SmugMug, I often don’t double-post them. Facebook has many third-party applications, a few of which import your SmugMug galleries. But they don’t let you select specific galleries, amongst other “non-ideals”.

So, one day I receive a tweet from Don (he has over a thousand followers, so every time he tweets they all get it):

I tweet back at him, because this is something that’s bothered me with all Facebook/SmugMug apps. I don’t hear anything back directly, since I’m sure he’s a very busy guy.

Weeks pass, and I get a few more tweets about how SmugMug is hiring for a “social programmer” position, someone who can write Facebook apps amongst other things. That’s great I think to myself, I’ve been wanting a good SmugMug app for Facebook. Then the job post appears on Don’s blog.

As I read the job description, I notice how he says their development is always triggered by client requests, and like a good blogger he includes backlinks to the things he references:

When I see the “tweets” link I’m curious to see who else tweeted him about the need for a SmugMug/Facebook app, so I click and lo and behold it’s the message I sent him:

Only in the Web 2.0 world is this kind of “interaction” possible.