meJoe.com

Google now searches videos on the Web.

Following Yahoo’s move, Google Video (http://video.google.com/) allows users to search the closed caption text of a video. More info from this San Francisco Chronicle story.

Ludwig Wittgenstein to be exact.

“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Pew trust gives us the results of a little survey they did of industry and academic experts about the future of the Internet.

Some quick items from the survey:

1. A broad-ranging survey of technology leaders, scholars, industry officials, and interested members of the public finds that most experts expect attacks on the network infrastructure in the coming decade. Some argue that serious assaults on the internet infrastructure will become a regular part of life.
2. The internet will be more deeply integrated in our physical environments and high-speed connections will proliferate – with mixed results.
3. In the emerging era of the blog, experts believe the internet will bring yet more dramatic change to the news and publishing worlds. They predict the least amount of change to religion.
4. Experts are both in awe and in frustration about the state of the internet. They celebrate search technology, peer-to-peer networks, and blogs; they bemoan institutions that have been slow to change.

There are some great charts about the levels of change in education, business, families and more coming up in the future.

Check it out at http://www.pewtrusts.org/pdf/PIP_Future_of_Internet.pdf.

SCT has surprised me. They have some great employees and an innovative work environment.

Getting some SCT Pipeline portal administration training this week. I’ve been revamping my Unix skills while learning a new product-Luminis Portal. In general I’ve been impressed by the app. It’s robust and fast, though a bit complicated. Most impressive on this trip though is SCT’s facilities and people.

In case you don’t know, SCT provides software products for the education sector, specifically universities. Apparently it’s been around for at least 10 years servicing schools of all sizes. UTSA uses it for managing courses (WEBCT), registration and records (BANNER) and now Portal and CMS (Luminis).

The Salt Lake City office isn’t the headquarters, but they have a large presence of at least 50 employees. The office is located in a large shopping-business-residential complex that is in downtown Salt Lake City, easily accessible via the train. The offices are hip. Warm yellows are accented with deep reds and darker blues. Everything is new (probably as of the 2002 Olympics) and the floor plan is open.

Smiling faces greet you at every corner from secretaries to programmers. Business casual is in uniform though a few deviants break any drabbery. Everyone is professional.

SCT loses my Duchenne smile on diversity. Business casual is expected, but almost everyone wears a blue dress shirt with khaki pants. Everyone has the same hair and skin. Most measure just under 6 feet tall. There are few women. In SCT’s favor, Utah isn’t exactly the melting pot of America, so blame the job applicant pool. Of course, the key executives are likely to pick people like themselves.