Disqus - Latest Comments for awilensky

Re: Startup Weasel Words

awilensky — Thu, 29 May 2014 11:27:48 -0000

A Platform is a integrated architecture that allows other people to build on, while they use the features of the platform, with the customization of their code or some other attached module. Platforms are very real, not everything, true, is a platform. Mt example, Loren Data Corp, my client, ECGrid is a programmable EDI Network for B2B Communications, and supplier services, mailboxes, identity, stateful and stateless events, business document,storage, - ECGrid has an real API, 200 functions, that allow the entire VAN to be refactored - in other words, any developer with an IDE can take these 200 API functions, and create their own EDI network, route messages across the global mesh of interconnected VANs, create direct connections with As2, as a client, or a hub, and more. That is a platform , one can build on top of ECGrid.

Yeah, Platform is overused. THey are real, sometimes.

Re: Special Committee To Study Drug Addiction Treatment In Mass.

awilensky — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:24:19 -0000

The ideal ruse to move legitimate chronic pain patients into "benevolent" programs, for their own good - when the truth is, actually this law serves the expanding pressure of the States regulatory paw upon practitioners a patients that walk the straight and narrow - the detox and recovery industry is one of the most corrupt and greedy - these regulatory "reforms" will yet bolster the conspiracy to harm legitimate patients dealing with a lifetime of debilitating pain.

Re: Welcome to the Internet's new toll lane

awilensky — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 22:00:12 -0000

This is gonna be a mess.

Re: Hot-Rodding your Hub Motor

awilensky — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:13:27 -0000

There must be a way to upgrade the FETS in a Magic pie 3 with internal controller. I get an easy 22MPH with the 20" rear wheel - 48V hub and two 48V 10AH LifePO4 strapped. I sure would like to open the hub, which I did to replace a smoked controller (89 bucks, not bad), and upgrade to real healthy FETS...anyone know which FETS are pin compatible with the MP3 and will run at higher volts/ AMPs?

Re: What To Know About Massachusetts’ First-In-Nation Health Cost Law

awilensky — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 17:09:05 -0000

Mass Health, the commercial healthcare connector, and the whole state insurance machine have screwed me from the day I had my accident. Open Enrollment? My ass! effective disclosure of coverage? It's criminal how they obfuscate what plan covers what. pre-existing condition? They say it is covered, and then nail you to the wall/ Where the IG in all of this? Oh, yes, in the pocket of the insurers. The connector should be closed and its managers jailed.

Re: Alternatives to Google Reader? Don't Bother, You're Not Going Anywhere...

awilensky — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:56:48 -0000

Google has not only disabled the social features of Reader, but the new version is unusable! Its spread out with all kinds of ugly white space, whereas the old version was compact and fast.

Why, oh, why do they mess with my life? When will this end? The f0ed up the Gdocs list, they will do G-d knows what next. Frustrating.

Re: Is Your Email Address Preventing You From Getting the Job You Want?

awilensky — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:32:05 -0000

Insanity posing as advice. So, there is a hiring distinction in the cleavage points between gmail, hotmail, and AOL? Hmmm. ok.

My gmail account was granted rather early, I traded a @world.std.com addresses for my gmail address (abmadw@) Now, I am self employed, and I dont get screened by the hiring drones, but I am selected by clients every year or two, and one looked at my email and said. "what are you so mad about?", I had no idea what they were talking about - "Your email has the word 'mad' in it?" I now knew I had a quirky client on my hands so I explained, "My gmail account is my english and hebrew initials - abmadw - not the word "mad". How she picked that out.

But maybe it's time to get a real domain, after being in business as a freelancer for decades.

Re: iMessage, Skype, Google Voice, and the death of the phone number

awilensky — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 02:21:12 -0000

Tangentially, the EDI Communications sector has the same or worse problems with ID portability and the lack of secure inter-prover directory services. Not for lack of tech, oh no! Its a laggard mentality that thinks that directories and ID portability will send customers packing for the better competition, after all why evolve supply chain communications if all it will do is open an exit door? This of course ignores the corollary that what is good for the client is good for the industry. If all an EDI network can do is lock customers in with multi-year contracts, high rates, and threats, yes I can see why there has been a hostile attitude towards API's, directory services, and ID portability. Telco's are falling to upstarts, and it only took, 40 years? In our sector, the VAN, value added network (EDI transaction carrier / providers) are starting to look like "Value subtracted Networks". There is a lesson across the sectors here.

Re: Enough Is Enough

awilensky — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:45:18 -0000

Also, recall that the patent system as we know it today was based in the heyday of mechanical inventions, newly innovated electric devices and processes, and might have been valid for the paperclip or ball point pen, the original AC generators, or the telephone as originally conceived. Thee has to be some incentive to invent hardware and processes.

In the Information and web tech business, one attains better protection from authoritative market entry than from IP law.

Re: Enough Is Enough

awilensky — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:41:37 -0000

years ago, in 1990, I was consulting for the famous company that made jack Madden's chalk talk Telestrator. The company was interrand and the founder was a genius, Dr. Leonard Rifle.

Long story short, he had, among thousands of patents, one where there was a picture diagram of an instructor pointing at a "electronic blackboard" and the patent tittle was, "system for instructor led training with interactive system".

I asked him, "how you get that crap past the examiners?" His reply, "beats me!".

So I am with you there; and in the 1990's when video compression was all the rage, I knew the guys at picturetel, and one of the founders, Brian Hinman, said, "patents of compression algorithms are a blight on society, these formulas should be public domain, and the code should be copyrighted."

Right on Fred.

Re: SOAP is Not Dead - It's Undead, a Zombie in the Enterprise

awilensky — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:16:01 -0000

Anyone working in Eclipse or Visual studio, with the right client support in the IDE, can see SOAP function and Exception handlers act as local routines. Its like an import. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would have to set the record straight on simple issues like this. Any professional programmer or engineer will see this API: http://ecgridos.net get to work and get the job done. If you have a consumer web service where you are not sure of the business or revenue model, and are offering say....an API that returns GEO data with 12 verbs - then you have different problems like scalability, rather than the structural requirements of large systems underlying 100 API verbs, granting control over a commerce network sending and tracking EDI messages representing big dollar trade commitments.

There is room for true REST in use cases with fewer primitives at higher levels, for certain subsets of the ECGridOS based applications. Maybe you will not be operating an entire trading partner network, maybe you will be operating 3pl for a specialty subset of clients. In that case, you might want few post / get primitives or something that encapsulates a higher level of functions.

SOAP works fine for serious developers that need access to industrial strength network services. Get over it.

Re: SOAP is Not Dead - It's Undead, a Zombie in the Enterprise

awilensky — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:09:14 -0000

This is a ridiculous argument, and is completely divorced from real world examples. API's, like our ECGridOS EDI Network management API, have 100+ functions, and require a uniform calling and security structure. Its not a candidate for REST, although we are planning on support of a higher lever subset of Post / Get carrying JSON data.

This whole REST v. SOAP thing is good for editorializing, but does not address why SOAP is a better calling RMI in certain mission critical platforms, like EDI messaging and networks.

And the fact is, that when a programmer is on the job and has made up their mind to get the job done, SOAP v REST is the smaller issue compared to larger and more important issues that impinge on the success or failure of a project.

Re: Selecting the Right EDI Company

awilensky — Mon, 16 May 2011 16:20:02 -0000

Thank you for your kind mention of ECGridOS - currently the only EDI Communications API for managing large, multitenant hierarchical
virtual trading networks. We are pure communications solution especially designed for Service Providers and specialist EDI integration ventures that need to create their globally routed own EDI network, for themselves, or for their clients . Having access to all of the functions of an EDI network provider available as function calls is a breakthrough in the industry. There is no other technology like ECGridOS - so please, visit us sometime at ECGridOS.com

Thanks again.

Re: Skype Confirms: We're Coming to Xbox, Outlook, Windows Phone & More

awilensky — Tue, 10 May 2011 10:12:20 -0000

I do not see this as a good thing for having independent VOIP choices - and although Microsoft may not kill the company or destroy is value proposition outright, I am not encouraged. I depend on Skype, it is the center of my professional communications, and has literally re-made the way we work at our small but vibrant EDI network - delivering an ability to rapidly close deals, support clients, and just be tied in, has been aided by Skype.

It's my job to see the market, and prepare justifiable strategies for our API networking products. Stepping out side my vertical for once into the desktop collaboration and converged VOIP market, I would have to say the following:

Start looking for alternatives to Skype, think through your number policies, what features you need, etc. because, Microsoft has a better than even chance of making the service a bad bet, in one way or another, pricing, features, policies, that then do of enhancing the brand for the SME who need Skype of something very close, to conduct a fast, agile business at low cost.

There are alternatives. Google Voice - I am not comfortable with that either as a long term choice, and several other converged VOIP video clients and backends that can evolve. But I am going to go forward with the assumption that Microsoft will do to Skype what they have done to other ventures: Swallow, deconstruct, bloat, and miss-price

Re: The New Sales Page

awilensky — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:36:25 -0000

I think sometimes the funny,jokey, or flippant approach is counterproductive when marketing to professionals contracting for capital or mission critical services. I learned this the hard way.

http://ecgridos.com/edi-guy...

We keep it around as it has resulted in a kind of persistent brand memory.

Re: Microsoft Has Sold 350 Million Copies Of Windows 7

awilensky — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:41:56 -0000

Win7 works. It only took them 25 years to get there. The usability is marginally better, still not great. networking is marginally better, but not as a easy as OS X for my family. I support the whole clan - Macs, PC's, and I told them that XP was hereby deprecated, and to look up deprecated.

Re: Mark Suster Interviews The Gotham Gal

awilensky — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:18:55 -0000

Once of the greatest and most put-together women I have ever had the pleasure to read - a person with vision and insight. You married up, Fred. Will Joanne write a book?

Re: Linking your business with Blue Link Software

awilensky — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:00:50 -0000

How does Bluelink handle EDI Communications? Is it a plain FTP or VAN connections, As2, or might the company consider something more fundamental for EDI Communications as part of the SAAS offering?

Re: Paul Ceglia returns to haunt Zuckerberg, this time with more alleged email evidence

awilensky — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:59:03 -0000

The most amazing thing is the outright prima facie nature of the supporting evidence, which is not what I have come to expect in cases where an earlier, services oriented contract is tied to the equity in a later venture - its usually a much muddier deal. But, if the plaintiff goes to court with these documents as admitted evidence, that is a big deal. If these new revelatory docs and archives are whole cloth false, the attys and the plaintiff are in big trouble. If they are real, facebook will get a severe dilution and Zuch will be human again, bright, flawed, immoral in some things connected with money, and cut-throat. Entrepreneur beware when you make one off contracts.

Re: Paul Ceglia returns to haunt Zuckerberg, this time with more alleged email evidence

awilensky — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:47:07 -0000

Poor facebook, booo.

Re: E-Books: The New Frontier for Content Farms

awilensky — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 11:02:14 -0000

This little thread with Mr G. above reminds me of the misunderstandings that were "parodied" in "Citizen Kane", and other media commentaries where the role of the free press and publishing business was tied up with the political and mil / industrial commercial interests.

We now have a more subtle dynamic: We have the cost of publishing nearing zero, and the old orgs that financed high value reporting struggling to survive the changes. We have an advertising business model that has gone from 'all message, few channels", to "infinite channels, buried discovery", so that there was a joke about Adwords and the content farmer, and that the commentary on such needed a man to say here, "That was an April Fools joke", is a very funny and sad thing.

So, rather that have myself be the editorial guide to the advertiser's conundrum, I will let someone else explain to everyone why content farms and pay per click are heading for a big problem, possibly already having surpassed the "critical quotient of disgust" for the average PPC advertiser.

Re: E-Books: The New Frontier for Content Farms

awilensky — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:54:49 -0000

You must be one of those people to whom double entendre must be carefully
explained:

There IS a toxic relationship between pay / click and the farms. That's my
point, joke or no - get it? Or do I have to explain this too?

Re: E-Books: The New Frontier for Content Farms

awilensky — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:01:56 -0000

When we have the top banana of the Adwords division party on the Federated Media yacht (Named, "Adwords"), you just gotta know something is rotten in Mountainview. There is no shame.

Re: Tesla Sues BBC For Libel Claiming Top Gear Rigged Tests, BBC “will be vigorously defending”

awilensky — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:54:15 -0000

Makes Tesla look weak. Top Gear is almost a comedy show. People who want electrics, want them. I am buying a new electric scooter from http://www.currentmotor.com/ I know the limitations.

Re: Twitter and Webshots Veterans Launch New E-Mail API

awilensky — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:52:52 -0000

You can put ECGridOS in that category of infrastructure services, in our case, 90 API functions for embedding EDI messaging and trading partner management into servers, software, SAAS, and all manner of B2B hosted services.