According their the blog post, It’s a browser-based operating system built on top of a Linux kernal. It will be different than their mobile OS, Android, but will probably have some overlapping technologies. The initial target machine is a netbook, but Google says that it will be powerful enough to power your desktop workstation.

Does this spell the end of Microsoft and Apple? No way. But it definitely changes the game. Google is a late-comer to the operating system game and Microsoft and Apple have made significant investments in their technology (some with more success than others. *cough* Vista.). Apple and Microsoft will have to respond somehow to this move by Google. Will we see web-based operating systems from either Apple or Microsoft? Or will they dismiss this as irrelevant? Apple has repeatedly shied away from the netbook market. Seems to me this could force their hand.

One thing that I can’t get around is how is a web-based operating system, where every application lives “in the cloud”, will be able to handle resource intensive applications. It seems like this coincides with the broad movement to JavaScript based frameworks like Cappuccino. The combination of a framework like Cappuccino and a web-based OS will definitely give users a new and different experience. Time will only tell if it will be a rich enough experience to eliminate the machine-specific OS.

It seems that there is a shift taking place in the creative workforce.  I think that people are starting to see the negative effects of a life whose gravitational pull is a paycheck and promotions.  Even for those of us who are extremely passionate about what we do, there is beginning to be a rising backlash against the workaholic lifestyle.  Bryan and I wanted to use this opportunity to facilitate a conversation with our peers.  The result was a great session where we were blessed to hear different ideas about where people currently stood on the topic. What qualified as work? Did we consider attending the conference work? Some did and some didn’t.

One idea that really struck me was the effect that a person’s station in life has in altering/determining what good work/life balance is. I understand that one’s station in life effects the balance in their life, and in some ways I totally agree. I was totally willing to work a ton and have very little personal time when I wasn’t married.  Yet, my willingness does not answer the question, “Is that approach to work sustainable under any circumstances?”. I don’t think it is. I don’t think overworking is sustainable, even if you’re single, have no friends or family. The concept is more about personal health rather than relational health. Of course your relationships will suffer if you don’t attend to them. But your personal health will suffer as well if you don’t pay attention to that.

I know that when I was working all the time, I didn’t take time to exercise at all. The most exercise I would get in a given day was walking from my apartment to my car, then to the office, then the “reverse commute” on the way home. That was pretty much it.  I had a membership to Lifetime Fitness, a 24 hour gym that I regularly drove by, yet, I never went because I was too worn down from my work day.  I just wanted to get home.

Two years ago my wife and I decided that we wanted our life to look different.  The way that I know so plainly that my previous overworked lifestyle was detrimental to my personal health is that when we moved from the suburbs to the city and ditched our car, I started to lose weight. I didn’t eat any differently. I wasn’t actively pursuing exercise, I was just more active.  I made time to be more active and that improved my health. It wasn’t only my physical health that was affected. My relational health suffered because I was working a lot.

I didn’t want to admit that if I worked 12 hour days six days a week, I would not have a close intimate relationship with my wife. But I expected to. I think that I should have that close relationship with my wife no matter what. It’s important to me. But the truth is, if it is important to me, I need to invest in it. I wouldn’t expect to know what was going on my industry if I wasn’t willing to spend time to learn about. That sound logic is often thrown out the window when it comes to our personal lives. I am totally willing to invest in learning a new programming language, or reading blogs and articles to stay up to date with the tech industry. I invest in it. But investing in relationships and people take more time, and attention than learning a new language. People interact with you, Objective-C doesn’t (not yet anyway).

Through Bryan’s and my discussion and the subsequent discussions that developed throughout the evening I was struck that the key to this work/life balance is boundaries. I think this is a very scary concept to our 21st century American selves. It flies in the face of everything we stand for as Americans. We don’t like boundaries in our lives. We want to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. We deserve to have it all. We work hard, we pay our taxes. We want it all at little or no cost.

Some people have the desire to have boundaries in their life but are ill-equipped to do the hard work of implementing those boundaries. Leif Hansen did a session about the Portals and the intersection of the online and offline world. In it he mentioned a few tools that he uses to give himself boundaries. He mentioned RescueTime to track how you spend your time on your computer. It has revealed a lot about where I get sidetracked. Some folks also mentioned some tools to lock you out of your computer at certain intervals. All of this technology to help us set boundaries.

Ryan Carson from Carsonified recently did an interview at floobe.com where he is asked if “any company can do a 4 day working week?” To which Ryan replied, “You bet. It just takes a hell of a lot of determination and a specific decision to focus on quality of life instead of revenue.” I thought that was a great answer. It really embodied what I think a sustainable work/life balance really is.

Now as I manage my business, I can see both sides of this discussion. When I have my business hat on, I see that I need to know how much time I spend on each part of a given project. I need it not only for bookkeeping reasons but also for solidifying my process of estimation. The more information I have about how long something similar has taken in the past, the better I’m going to know long it will take in the future.

When I am in development or design mode, I feel like all of that bookkeeping gets in the way of my creative process. I have my head down and in the flow of that project. There are plenty of distractions already that take my time and attention away from doing the work. I feel like keeping my timesheet is just another one of those distractions.

Can’t we all just get along? Unfortunately, probably not. I see the value in recording my time, sheerly because I have to deal with the ramifications of not. As a rule, the people who don’t like to get out of their flow to record their time do not have to deal with the business implications of not doing them. If you don’t have a hand in budgeting, bookkeeping/accounting, resource planning or project estimating, you most likely won’t see the value of timesheets. And on the flipside, if you don’t have parts of your job that depend on the creative process, you won’t truly understand getting into that creative flow that is required to do your best work.

I think our only hope is to trust the people we work with. If you’re on the creative side, trust that timesheets are important (they still may be lame and annoying). If you’re on the bookkeeping/accounting side of things, a healthy respect for the creative process would go a long way to show the creative folks in your workplace that you may not understand, but you do care.

I think part of the draw is that it’s a slick technological solution to keep in touch with folks. But I think on top of that, the permalink of each Twitter, and the searchability/findability of Twitter is super cool. I think that allows people to find people who are talking about the things they care about. They can then follow them and get engaged in the conversation.

I learned of the recent terror attacks in India on Twitter. Awareness of the attacks was not only spread via Twitter, information was also shared by those who were on the ground in Mumbai. Twitter has also been used by journalists and activists in areas of the world that do not have the same freedoms that we have with regard to expression. Clay Shirky discusses activists in Egypt that use Twitter to document human rights violations in his book, “Here Comes Everybody“.

For all of these reasons, I find myself really getting into Twitter, and really seeing the value of it as a personal expression medium, but also a way to be ambiantly aware of what is going on in other people’s lives. It doesn’t take the place of actual conversation. It never will. But it is a cool way to maintain awareness with others.

This is what the web community needs more of, profitable companies making sure to not forget about what got them to profitability, people. Cynics might say that this is to just position themselves as customer-friendly or self-promotion, but I believe that the way Ryan and Gill have set up their company, this is how they treat their employees, their customers and everyone they come into contact with.

I didn’t go to FOWA in London, but from the videos I’ve seen online and the chatter I’ve heard it was a super conference. Thanks Ryan and Carsonified for staying approachable and human. It’s a good reminder.

I think there is someone out to get me at Twitter. All is well again in the Twitter-verse. Phew. I was starting to sweat it. I wasn’t able to know what my peeps were up to at this exact moment. Now that my day is back on track… I should get back to work.

***

Twitter, just as I get done singing your praises you have to go and crap out. Now when I hit http://www.twitter.com I get a dialogue box that says:

A username and password are being requested by http://twitter.com. The site says: “Production-Staging Access – Employees Only”

I hope that Twitter isn’t being brought in-house to only Twitter employees. It seems like that would be bad for business. I bet someone pushed out some code that they weren’t supposed. I’d bet that it’ll be back up shortly… or maybe it will be a while. Or maybe they indeed decide to bring it in house.

The big thing is to engage with other people. Probably people or companies that you care about. “Following” just any fool probably won’t be of much value, but find a few people to follow that you know, and that inspire you and the conversations will just start. It’s almost like magic.

I think the tools are also really important in the adoption of Twitter. If I didn’t have Twitterific I probably wouldn’t engage as much. I have it on my iPhone and on my desktop. I hoped it wouldn’t be a distraction on my desktop, and it hasn’t been. At least not any more of a distraction than RSS or Email.

So if you’re on the fence about Twitter I’d say dive in and see if it’s appealing. But if you do, do it right. Follow people, and get some tools to help you engage.

Like  the folks at 37signals, our goal is not to cram 40+ hours into fewer days, rather the opposite. Cram less hours into less days. Or in other words… work less. It’s not that we dislike what we do, we love it, and we’d like to keep it that way. As I’ve kept my head down in my work, I’ve missed a lot.

I’ve found it hard to be as creative as I’d like when we are always at the end of our rope. When executing client projects is the only stimulus I get, I don’t get the perspective that a book can give me, or the stew time for the ideas that have that incubation time in my head, but don’t get the attention necessary to fully hatch. The result is half-baked ideas seeing the light of day. It’s a disservice to myself and to our clients.

Organizations don’t hire us to just write code or make pretty pictures; they hire us for our ideas. Our creativity. Our insight. Those things die if they are not properly cared for. Working 4 days a week allows us to get the work that we need to get done done. Not working 3 days a week allows us to rest, be inspired, sit with ideas, experience life, sit with our families.

We may experience fallout from this. We may lose clients. People may not want to hire us because they think not being around on Friday is a deal-breaker. I understand that. That is a chance we’re willing to take.

Are you looking for a competitive 20 team rotisserie league? Email me for more info.

*** UPDATE***

I’m not sure when it launched but as I was poking around my fantasy football team I found a link to an iPhone interface. It seems like it works for baseball as well. Here’s the link for baseball (http://m.espn.go.com/mlb/fantasy/). Enjoy!

A few facts:

• I have an iPhone
• I am an avid player of fantasy sports (mostly football and baseball, but I’ve been known to dabble in others)
• I’m not the only person in the world who fits into both of the above categories

Why then, does ESPN or Yahoo! or CBS or any other fantasy sports provider have an interface specifically for mobile devices (specifically iPhone)? It seems to me to be a no-brainer. Not only could you sell specific advertising for that version of the site, you’d definitely increase your page views.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make this happen independent of one of the above mentioned services rolling out a new mobile interface mid-season (because I know that’s not going to happen). I can’t think of a way. I know that iPhone interfaces aren’t that difficult to put together. I put together a dashboard for Overrated-Underrated in about 3 hours, so I’m pretty sure that a huge multi-national media company could scrounge up enough time and resources to make this happen.

I can’t make any guarantees, but the first service to provide iPhone accessibility will have a leg up for all of my future fantasy sports needs.