Alston Grove

Japan is a nation infected with gadgets, so is it surprising that even the toilets are high-tech? Companies like Matsushita, Inax, and Toto are competing to win the toilet culture war. (The Toto link is to the US version of the company.) Users of the Matshushita toilet can program it to pre-heat or cool a bathroom and set the temperature of its water jet spray. Electrodes in the seat measure the body-fat ratio of the user. The Inax toilet uses an infrared sensor to light up and open the seat while playing a soundtrack like chirping birds or wind chimes. Toto’s toilet features a heated seat and a retractable spoon that measures the user’s urine sugar levels. What’s next on the horizon? Talking toilets with voice recognition slated in two years. Devices that measure weight, fat, blood pressure, and urine components, then report the data over the Internet to doctors for monitoring a person’s well being. Geez, my toilet isn’t even a pressure flusher.

There’s an article at Open Magazine about Openexchange server from SuSE. It’s groupware to compete with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. Openexchange is a web-based application that uses Apache, Tomcat, Postfix, Cyrus IMAP, SpamAssassin, OpenLDAP, and PostgreSQL. Dang, I had this idea! It seems everyone is packaging Open Source Software as a commercial package nowadays. The idea is simple: core OSS components are solid, but lack packaged integration and a polished interface. I’m not happy with the way SuSE implemented this however …
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How much longer can proprietary software survive in the face of defacto standards that are based on open source?
I was playing with Jetspeed from Apache Jakarta last night. It’s a portal framework that aggregates content from RSS feeds and lets you write portlets. It lets the user pick which portlets to display and where on the screen, similar to staple portal sites like Yahoo and Netscape.

Another project that I find interesting is the Open For Business project, that addresses framework issues for security, catalog, orders, accounting, workflow, and marketing. They build heavily on the shoulders of other open source projects. With Jetspeed and Open For Business together, why would you deploy an expensive product like BEA Portal? BEA already abandoned their webflows in favor of Struts. Will the next move be to Portal Structure Markup Language (PSML) and Jetspeed?

My dentist talks a lot, but he’s very interesting to listen to. I guess he learns to do all the talking because his patients always have their mouths stuck open. I just had my check-up, and he was talking about the software problems he has in his office. It was a real life example of how niche software is where the cash is for small business ….
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We need more people like Marc Fleury and Miguel de Icaza. Both have an energy and aptitude for inspiring and galvanizing people. These guys are destined to accomplish big things. How do we create that drive in ourselves and control our destiny?
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