A publication sampler (with a bias
toward the recent)A publication sampler (with a bias
toward the recent)Transform Music and musicians SOHO reviews Older technology pieces Coming soon
A 2005 on-line piece originally meant for the print version of Locus but redirected to Locus Online when I pushed the deadline too hard: "Surprised by Stross," an appreciation of UK science fiction writer Charles Stross.
Transform"Small Government Agencies Solve Big Problems," April 1999. State and local government case studies: social services, vital records, transit authority.
"GPU Taps the Power of Paperless Communications," July 1999. Utilities-industry case study: image and document management for accounting and SAP.
"How to Beat (or Join) the WWW.COMs," IDS Reseller Supplement, September 1999. Competing with internet direct-sellers of imaging and document management technology.
"Public Information, Private-sector Approaches," January 2000. State and local government case studies: using the Web to distribute public-records information.
"Two Federal Agencies Put Images on the Internet," March 2000. Federal-government case studies: personnel records and Canadian Land Directorate documents on-line.
"Quick Answers, Quick Access," July 2000. Banking case studies: check images, report management, lock-box services.
"A Look Behind Virtual Banking," December 2000. Case studies of two Web-based banks and the infrastructure company behind many others.
"Put ERP into Overdrive," March 2001. Adding document and content management to back-office Enterprise Resource Planning systems.
"Automating B2B Supply Chains," May 2001. Connecting suppliers, manufacturers, and customers, back-office to back-office.
"A Closer Look at Portals and EAI" and "Tales of Two Portals," July 2001. Combining the power of corporate portals with back-office enterprise application integration (EAI).
"Taxonomies Put Content in Context," December 2001. Beyond the keyword search: getting a handle on content with the help of applications that can "read" and categorize documents.
"Collaboration: 5 Lessons in Supply Chain Management," May 2002. Building collaborative systems that work even in a cautious economic environment.
"Your CEO Wants to Know ... Will Your Records Strategy Pass the Test?", May 2003. New Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC regulations and their effect on electronic record-keeping.
Music
and musicians
Starting in January 1997, the Acoustic Guitar site now posts the short Hit List reviews from each issue in the Back Issues section. Links to those that have been posted (from December 1996 onward) are here.
"Piping Up," Acoustic Guitar, November/December 1992. Guitar arrangements of three Northumbrian bagpipe tunes.
"Pat Donohue: Good Chops, Good Taste, Good Times," Fingerstyle Guitar #4 (1994). Artist interview/profile.
"Celtic Guitar CDs," Acoustic Guitar, May/June 1994. New releases by Altan, Robin Bullock, Cherish the Ladies, Zan MacLeod, Ellen Niehouse, and David Surette.
"Keeping Aloha Alive," Acoustic Guitar, May/June 1995. Feature on Hawaiian slack key guitar and the kernel for the book-in-process Aloha Guitar.
"The Martin Book," Acoustic Guitar, September 1995. Review.
"A. G. Letter: From Chicago," Acoustic Guitar, January 1996. A weekend at a vintage guitar show.
"Slack-Key CDs," Acoustic Guitar, February 1996. Reviews of six new Dancing Cat recordings.
"A.G. Letter: From Guitar Camp,"Acoustic Guitar, April 1996. A week at the National Summer Guitar Workshop with Leo Kottke, Adrian Legg, Martin Simpson, and others.
"Guitar Camp," Fingerstyle Guitar, May-June 1996. "Support culture" for guitarists--workshops, associations, newsletters.
"Guitar Histories," Acoustic Guitar, August 1996. A review of books about Guild, Larson, and Washburn guitars.
"The Essential CD Collection," folk section, Acoustic Guitar, September 1996. My contribution to a collection of 10-best lists with something to offend everyone. (And see my own 10-best list of acoustic jazz CDs.)
"Instructional CD-ROMs," Acoustic Guitar, February 1997. Reveiws of Classic Rock Guitar, Vol. 1, Guitar Magic, and HyperGuitar.
"Chasing the Dragon," Acoustic Guitar, May 1997. Profile of Twin Cities guitar wizard Tim Sparks, with one of his compositions.
"Celtic Guitar CDs," Acoustic Guitar, June 1997. Reviews of four new releases by Steve Baughman, Jon Hicks, John Sherman, and David Surette.
"James Olson," Acoustic Guitar, August 1997. Profile of Twin Cities luthier James Olson.
"Slack Key Instruction," Acoustic Guitar, September 1997. Reviews of books and videos by Keola Beamer, Ray Kane, and Ozzie Kotani.
"Celtic Guitar CDs," Acoustic Guitar, January 1998. New releases by William Coulter, Franco Morone, Gayla Drake Paul, and Ken Perlman.
"Irish Blues," Acoustic Guitar, February 1998. Profile of Denver-based blues player Mary Flower.
"Jazz Instruction Videos," Acoustic Guitar, March 1998. Multi-tape video lessons from Larry Coryell and Pat Donohue.
"Acoustic Eclectic," Acoustic Guitar, June 1998. Profile of jazz-folk-blues-world beat guitarist Dean Magraw.
"Walk On J.J. Cale's Walk," Acoustic Guitar, May 1999. Solo department: transcription and how-to for Franco Morone tune, with brief profile of this Italian fingerstyle whiz.
"Swingin' Strings," Acoustic Guitar, April 1999. Reviews of new Hot-Club-style CDs.
"Keillor's Kingdom," Acoustic Guitar, May 1999. Feature on the music and musicians of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion."
"Reef Rebel," Acoustic Guitar, November 1999. Profile of slack key master Dennis Kamakahi.
"One Guitar, No Borders," Acoustic Guitar, December 1999. Interview with Leo Kottke. [And my first AG cover story!]
"Letter from Chetfest," Acoustic Guitar, December 1999. The Chet Atkins Appreciation Society's 1999 annual celebration of Mister Guitar and fingerpicking in general.
"Keola's Ki Ho'alu," Acoustic Guitar, March 2000. Reviews of Keola Beamer's instructional books.
"Moe `Uhane (Dream Slack Key)," Acoustic Guitar, May 2000. Off the Record department: profile of Sonny Chillingworth, with transcription and how-to for lead slack key tune from "Sonny Solo."
"X-Rey Vision," Acoustic Guitar, November 2000. Profile of blues-swing-songster Del Rey.
"Frankie and Johnny," Acoustic Guitar, June 2001. Off the Record department: Guy Van Duser-Billy Novick version of the classic tune, with some conversation with Guy about how he arranges his guitar parts.
"Island Talk Story," Acoustic Guitar, June 2003. On the Web department: Where to find Hawaiian music on-line.
"Shop Around: Choosing an online store to sell your CDs," Acoustic Guitar, October 2003. On the Web department.
SOHO (small
office/home office) technology reviews"The Fax Masters," Home Office Computing, Feb. 1995. Reviews of PC fax software.
"More for Less (Space and Cost)," Home Office Computing, April 1995. Roundup review of several multifunction fax-printer-scanner products.
"Please Feed Me!" Home Office Computing, Aug. 1995. Roundup revew of four page-feed scanners.
"Reasonable Facsimile," Home Office Computing, Feb. 1996. Roundup reviews of fax machines.
"Hot Copier, Cool Price," Home Office Computing, Mar. 1996. Review of the Xerox 5113.
"Paperless Office, Round Two," Home Office Computing, May 1996. Review of PaperMaster 2.0 software.
"That's Scantastic!" Home Office Computing, July 1996. Roundup review of eight desktop scanners. (And that's not my title, honest.)
"Copy This," Home Office Computing, Jan. 1997. Buyer's Guide to five small-ofice copiers.
"Lightweight, Heavy Power," Home Office Computing, April1997. Review of the H-P OmniBook 800CT subnotebook computer.
"The Fax Stands Alone," Home Office Computing, July1997. Reviews of six plain-paper fax machines.
Older
technology pieces for the trades
"Tomorrow's Broadband Technologies," Systems Integration, March 1991. Overview of T3 and SONET standards for wide-area networking.
"POS distributors: Crucial to VARs in retail automation," Vertical Application Reseller, May 1993. The role of specialist distributors in the point-of-sale field.
"Selling the Tape Library." Reseller Management, July 1995. The growing appeal of the automated tape library in network backup.
"The World of Enhanced IDE," Advertising supplement to Reseller Management, May 1995. Evolution of the EIDE standard.
"The Coming of RAIT," Reseller Management, September 1995. Tape-array subsystems and other network backup products.
"Cracking the Help Desk Market," Reseller Management,, May 1996. Finding a space for VARs in a direct-sales-dominated market.
"HSM," Reseller Management, July 1966. State-of-the-market feature on hierarchical storage management.
"Putting Sales-Force Automation to Work," Reseller Management, August 1966. Navigating the middle tier of a complex and crowded market category.
"Fast Forward Your Tape Sales," Reseller Management, November 1996. Coping with the multiplicity of backup tape formats.
"Radio-Frequency LANs: Beyond the Vertical Sale." Reseller Management, April 1997. Improved standards and lower prices bring RF networking to new markets.
"Pull Out New Profits from Next-Generation Databases," Reseller Management, January 1998. New features and capabilities, especially expanded data types and Internet connections.
"Take Advantage of Document Management's Net Gains," Reseller Management, March 1998. Yet another application area comes under the spell of the Web.
"Storage Management Tames the Information Torrent," Reseller Management, June 1998. Beyond backup/restore--and whatever happened to HSM? The last published RM story before the plug was pulled by the bean-counters at the Post-Newsweek Business Information group. A nice piece on accounting software meant for the August issue got killed.