I’m amazed at the tie-in between entertainment and social networking. A recent episode of my favorite podcast (Standford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders) had a group of notable entrepreneurs talking about the future of social networking. Of course their thinking is aligned with their company direction as of course my thinking is greatly influenced by the current events in my life.

Being a new father to twins and often pondering the potential cost of education has guided my thoughts on this podcast. We desperately need a shift in the education paradigm; I’m not sure I’ll be able to offer a decent education for my children considering the current college trends. I imagine removing the walls of the learning institutions and replacing them with social networks. And as technology removes the language and distance barriers, social networking can be the driving force behind sharing knowledge – there are so many bright people all over the world.

I also thought about the Borg (Star Trek’s Next Generation version of a highly functional social network) and how a primary goal is to get smarter though collective thinking. Social networking can be used as the medium to add brainpower to solve problems. I would hope in the years to come that the focus of social networking is to share information allowing us all to get smarter.

I repeatedly see many examples of aspects of software making full 360° cycles over time. Recently surfacing is the command line interface and it is coming back. I’ve always been a fan of command line; it lends itself well to repetitive and programmatic practices and has excellent ability to maintain history and promote process improvement (if used correctly).

I’m often seen reverting to a Cygwin prompt (typically in an XTerm Window – another technology that has made a reappearance in the shape of AJAX) to get stuff done. Repeatable. Reusable. Reliable. Command line: It’s the new black. (The last sentence borrowed from the Information Week article).

I believe maintaining a philosophy of self-awareness and self-improvement not only significantly contributes to one’s quality of life but also greatly enhances work-product. Having one or more sources of advisors, mentors, and inspiration is a key ingredient.

One of the many benefits I’ve received through marriage to my lovely wife is the opportunity to form an intimate relationship with fabulous people I would most likely not have met otherwise. One such person is Oma – my wife’s grandmother who also is a valued source of inspiration.

Every time I talk with her (thank goodness for Skype and email as she lives in the Netherlands) I am truly amazed and inspired. She is a 96 year old woman who is more active and vibrant that I am at times. In spite of the recent challenges she has had recently, she has remained focused, determined, and passionate about achieving her goals and has been successful. Her powerful examples are truly inspiring and have given me hope: not in the sense that life can be rewarding and invigorating no matter what age, but what is possible to achieve in spite of certain limitations.

Oma is obviously limited by her age but her process works well. She defines the desire, contemplates the process, determines the ability based on current factors and executes successfully, with fallback plans and flexibility. She lives outside the city limits of Amsterdam but regularly goes into the city to attend exhibitions and generally partake of the city life. Today we chatted about her visit to a Turkish exhibit at an old cathedral on the Dam and then she was describing her plans to visit a Sotheby’s Modern Art Charity Auction. Recently (in terms of a few months) she was asked to be in a Dutch TV movie called “Oma and Her Scooter.” (BTW, she doesn’t need one nor any other walking device!)

Oma, you inspire me.

I’m surprised how little (if anything) I’ve heard about the iPhone being the catalyst for mobile viruses. You know the iPhone will get cheaper and with Cingular/AT&T subsidies, it may gain a very large “surface area” and that is what is attractive to virus writers: that and the notoriety of being the first (or one of) to unleash a mobile virus into the wild. Clamping down the OS will help protect (at least for a short while) the iPhone from the nefarious fate that will eventually be bestowed upon it.

Radical juxtaposition of concepts, isn’t it? Open source and ideas. Wow. Imagine…so many creative people without the means to realize their ideas and others lacking creativity but having deep pockets. Somehow everyone can win, right? Right. It’s time to look at the whole picture. There is a lot of brilliance out there; imagine sharing and combining those ideas. For the greater good. A network of creative thinking for the advancement of … everything. How can black boxes make life better but just for the select few? We need to open the box and invite everyone to participate. I’m adding a new category, “OSI” – Open Source Ideas. Anything posted there is open – open to be expanded upon, open to be utilized; I just ask for credit as the originator and all threads of the ideas contain the same credits.