Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and new media innovator. His 1999 book, Practical Internet Groupware, helped lay the foundation for what we now call social software. Udell was formerly a software developer at Lotus, BYTE Magazine’s executive editor and Web maven, and an independent consultant.
A hands-on thinker, Udell’s analysis of industry trends has always been informed by his own ongoing experiments with software, information architecture, and new media.
From 2002 to 2006 he was InfoWorld’s lead analyst, author of the weekly
Strategic Developer column, and blogger-in-chief. During his InfoWorld tenure he also produced a series of screencasts and an audio show that continues as Interviews with Innovators on the Conversations Network.
In January 2007, Udell joined Microsoft as a writer, speaker, and producer of another series of interviews: Perspectives. This show features projects in which Microsoft works with partners — universities, governments, NGOs — to develop new and socially impactful uses of its technology portfolio.
He is currently working on the elmcity project, a service running on Microsoft’s Azure platform that enables curators to aggregate and syndicate calendar information for their communities.
December 10, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Jon,
Wanting to subscribe to your new blog, I noticed the RSS URL:
feed://http//blog.jonudell.net/feed/
It doesn’t validate in my feed reader of choice (http://www.rssfwd.com) or on http://validator.w3.org/feed.
Better: http://blog.jonudell.net/feed/
Looking forward to reading more,
Alan Seiden
December 11, 2006 at 9:58 am
The actual RSS URL is, in fact, http://blog.jonudell.net/feed/, with the feed: prefix being a not-entirely-standard way to achieve one-click subscription.
Now that you mention it, I’d probably rather publish the feed address without the prefix.
May 5, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Love your work – your seminal article in Byte on Windows 95 is a classic.
However, your recent change in layout with the new fonts makes your blog almost unreadable for me. Your previous layout was great – not only readable but a touch whinsical as well!
New font is too small, line-spacing is ridiculously small. Very claustrophobic feel. The anti-thesis of your previously very approachable blog.
Cheers,
- Paul
May 5, 2008 at 9:43 pm
You know, I’m feeling the same way about the font size. I guess I’ll re-up my expired WordPress CSS privilege and fix that. Thanks for reminding me.
Silly, though, isn’t it, that after all these years there’s no common straightforward way to deal with site-specific preferences on the client.
May 16, 2008 at 4:20 pm
As one of the originator of the term “screencast” I thought you’d be amused by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxDxLAjkO8
July 15, 2008 at 8:11 am
Hi Susan,
The pro’s for a geothermal system w/deep well are following as far as I see it:
Well proven technology
Automatic operation
The disadvatage is high investment cost and you are tied up to the price of electricity. This price will , in my opinion, follow the price for oil, gas and coal.
If we are talking about a sentralized pellet boiler in the basement or outside to heat many radiators and providing hot water for other utilities, then the pro’s are:
- Pellet boilers are similar technology to oil or gas furnaces, you can use the exisiting radiators etc.
- Pellets are fairly cheap and they will probably be cheaper in the long run compared to other alternatives.
- It’s more environmentally friendly than geothermal systems if these operate on electricity made from coal or oil.
The disadvantage is that you need to follow up the boiler and clean out the burner head etc. on a regular basis. It does’nt take any longer than to wash some clothes.
You can check out pellets.info, a Swedish pellets forum. On pellets.info/viewforum.php?f=39
you can find pictures of different solutions.
regards (matene dot com) Norway
August 6, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Apropos of your tagline: “strategies for internet citizens” is a wordpress site I launched, http://www.capitalistcredo.com that includes the Capitalist Bill of Rights and a way for bloggers to Sign / Filibuster. Having read your site for a while, I think you’ll like it. -Brendan
August 25, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Jon,
Please send me an email. I have some questions about next steps proceeding from support for the following:
http://blog.nola.com/guesteditorials/2008/08/data_online_could_jumpstart_ac.html
September 10, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Jon
I commented on your recent entry on adding popup to videos. I’d like to hear what you think of our technology. (http://www.overcastmedia.com)
Thanks,
Bing
September 22, 2008 at 1:41 am
Hey Jon,
I was hoping to get a review on your site of a web-based music product we’re releasing shortly. Is there a good way to get in touch with you about this?
Cheers,
-Jared @ OneLlama
November 17, 2008 at 12:07 am
[...] John Udell manipulates DoE information to answer where America gets its oil from (props Phil Windley). [...]
December 19, 2008 at 10:26 am
John – I’d like to get in contact with you to learn more about your speaking and how we can work together in 2009.
January 29, 2009 at 9:18 am
[...] John Udell – the daddy of screencasting – gives a great breakdown of the screencasting genre in his article – “what is screencasting“. He also provides some very cool ideas as to variations on the typical step-by-step app capture format [...]
February 27, 2009 at 3:17 pm
John,
I am Dir. of UxD at DraftFCB, working on the U.S. Census Project. I would like to talk to you about the project and how we can get people who have a stake in the use and availability of public data involved. We are the Agency of Record for the effort charged with raising awareness and support for participation in the 2010 Census.
Let me know how best to converse on this. Thanks
Chris Gierlich
April 6, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Hello, Jon. Thank you for your blog, which I find extremely informative and useful. At our school, we are seeking a way to publish Exchange mailbox calendar information in a more useful format than OWA. For example, we are setting up school buses as resources (mailboxes), but need to aggregate multiple buses into a single calendar view.
Why can’t I find existing products or open-source projects that do this using MS Web Services for Exchange 2007? We could try to dive into this ourselves, but we don’t have a lot of programming expertise (or time).
I recall a small script you wrote about a year ago that pulled calendar information from Exchange. Did more come of that project?
Thank you for your thoughts on this question.
Richard
April 6, 2009 at 12:19 pm
> I recall a small script you wrote about
> year ago that pulled calendar information
> from Exchange.
Yes. See:
http://blog.jonudell.net/2008/06/11/exchange2ical-available-on-codeplex/
http://www.codeplex.com/exchange2ical
> Did more come of that project?
Not yet but I’d love to work with your school on putting that to use. Please do get in touch and let’s give it a try.
April 6, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Re: Your wealth of materials at Infoworld.
Am I missing something obvious, or did you get “disappeared” at Infoworld.
-thanks/mike
April 10, 2009 at 10:16 pm
> Am I missing something obvious, or did you
> get “disappeared” at Infoworld.
I left InfoWorld and joined Microsoft in January 2007.
April 17, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I realize you are no longer at Infoworld, but all your blog entries over there are gone, including those you yourself referenced as recently as two months ago. Why would they remove old content? A lot of it is of lasting value. Can you work with the Infoworld folks to get the content restored? It’s a pet peeve of mine when resources move or disappear and, knowing your passion for information architecture, I figure you can’t be too happy about this either. Looks like no one at Infoworld has ever read your blog…
- A concerned fellow information architect
April 17, 2009 at 5:58 pm
> Can you work with the Infoworld folks to
> get the content restored?
I’m told the archive will be resurrected, with its former namespace intact, within a few days.
Fingers crossed…
May 5, 2009 at 5:28 pm
It looks like the content has not yet been restored. I’m looking for the screencast on the wikipedia entry for the Heavy Metal Umlaut. Is it available anywhere else?
May 5, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I put a copy of that here:
http://jonudell.net/umlaut.swf
April 29, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Jon – Looks like InfoWorld redesigned and your Strategic Developer posts are gone. Are they available somewhere else?
I found podcasts at beemp3.com, at least the one I was looking for which was the open gov discussion with the folks from DC.
I hope we haven’t lost your writings!
May 5, 2009 at 9:22 pm
> I hope we haven’t lost your writings!
That’s nice to hear!
An update: http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/05/05/status-of-my-infoworld-archive/
May 8, 2009 at 3:30 am
[...] access log, more than what I already have with the excellent Webalizer. Inspired (as ever) by Jon Udell’s “ongoing fascination with Delicious as a user-programmable database“, I decided [...]
May 27, 2009 at 8:38 am
[...] journalist to join its ranks. Jon Udell was named as an option and it turns out now that indeed he is working for Microsoft right now. In January 2007, Udell joined Microsoft as a writer, speaker, and producer of another series of [...]
May 28, 2009 at 4:31 am
[...] John Udell – the daddy of screencasting – gives a great breakdown of the screencasting genre in his article – “what is screencasting“. He also provides some very cool ideas as to variations on the typical step-by-step app capture format [...]
July 9, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Dear John,
I was wondering if you might be interested in doing some cross-promotion with iHollywoodForum.com for our upcoming 7th Annual Digital Media Summit on July 29 in Los Angeles. The event features some of the top executives in Hollywood and digital media: Disney Interactive Media Group President Steve Wadsworth, Sony Pictures CTO Mitch Singer, Mass Animation CEO Yaer Landau, Boxee CEO Avner Rone and many more. As a cross- promoter you would receive free tickets to the event and all the benefits of a media partner, which include your logo appearing on our website and company e-mails, a promotional table at the event, and a copy of the attendee list. In addition, we can provide you with a percentage of all ticket sales that happen as a direct result of promotion on your website, and discount tickets for select members chosen at your discretion.
Let me know if you have any questions or require any additional information. We’d love to have you on board! And feel free to check out http://www.ihollywoodforum.com/digitalmediasummit/index.html for more details.
Sincerely,
Matt Shore
July 14, 2009 at 2:40 pm
[...] John Udell – the daddy of screencasting – gives a great breakdown of the screencasting genre in his article – “what is screencasting“. He also provides some very cool ideas as to variations on the typical step-by-step app capture format [...]
August 6, 2009 at 7:08 am
Jon,
I found a wealth of blog fodder on Zed Shaw’s (author of Mongrel HTTP server) website (www.zedshaw.com) — I did a search and couldn’t find any of your entries that referenced him. I think you’ll find some good stuff on there. :)
~Victor
September 17, 2009 at 6:43 am
[...] a parallel front re. my chronicles, I've periodically had conversations with Jon Udell, who has always provided a coherent sounding board and reconciliation framework for my world views [...]
October 22, 2009 at 4:24 pm
At first sight one is puzzled, because the threshold to be overcome seems to be the same in both cases. ,
October 22, 2009 at 6:25 pm
F&F both have substantial portfolios of loans. ,
November 10, 2009 at 1:09 pm
[...] Jon Udell has created a fascinating database of work from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), [...]