Thursday, March 12, 2009

Nuevo Blog sobre Internet en Argentina



Para facilitar compartir los avances en el proyecto de reconstruir la historia de Internet en Argentina, hoy inicio un nuevo blog dedicado exclusivamente a este tema.


El blog está abierto a comentarios y va a ser uno de los canales de distribución para algunas de las historias, imágenes e información que vayan surgiendo de este esfuerzo.
El URL del nuevo blog es: http://blog.internet-argentina.net/

Desde ya muchas gracias a quienes poco a poco se van sumando a este esfuerzo y queda abierta la invitación a aquellos que quieran contribuir con sus anécdotas, opiniones, sugerencias y críticas.


Atentos Saludos
Pete

Monday, March 2, 2009

Deja Vu


Tratando de retornar al pasado, resulta interesante la experiencia de reencontrarme con viejas memorias e imágenes de aquellos días en los que frenéticamente buscábamos la forma de conectar Argentina a Internet y que no fuera para el beneficio de unos pocos.

En el proceso de reorganizar viejos archivos, volver a leer después de tantos años, cientos de mensajes de correo electrónico, propuestas y proyectos que lograron concretarse y otros que solamente quedaron en papel, recordar viejas conversaciones y porque no discusiones sobre como seguir adelante pese a la falta de recursos, comienzo a sentir que quizás en nuestra mente maravillosamente se preservan todos esos “bits” a los que uno no está acostumbrado o entrenado para recuperar con facilidad.

Que fantástico sería si los muchachos de Google inventaran algo que permitiera hacer un búsqueda en ese vasto repositorio de conocimientos y experiencias que tenemos bajo el cuero cabelludo, que en mi caso ya queda poco y no ayuda para evitar que se evaporen los recuerdos.

Mientras leo esas reliquias de la experiencia que me tocó vivir, me transporto y pierdo la noción del tiempo, a medida que esos recuerdos retornan al presente ya se me hace cotidiano sentir la sensación de “déjà vu”, que pese a convertir mi bocho en una licuadora termina resultando una sensación placentera al recordar viejos amigos y anécdotas que difícilmente alguna vez vayan a parar a /dev/null.

Por otro lado con la objetividad que ahora proveen el tiempo y la distancia, comienzo a asombrarme y a admirar lo que tras el trabajo conjunto, muchas veces sin alguna coordinación o plan maestro se logró concretar.

El trabajo de recompilar esas memorias y poco a poco registrarlas en un texto escrito, a veces resulta un poco extenuante, pero tengo que agradecer sinceramente a un viejo amigo, Eduardo Suarez de la Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, que no solo me esta dando una mano con recuperar y recomponer una gran cantidad de material sobre la historia de redes en Argentina, si no también que me “hace la pata” casi en forma cotidiana en extensas charlas nocturnas, altas horas de la madrugada para Eduardo, donde de la conversación se estimula el search engine natural y las piezas de un complejo rompecabezas empiezan a tomar su lugar.

Gracias Edu, nos "vemos" en la noche :-)

Jorge aka pete

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Historia de Internet en Argentina

Hace rato largo que varios amigos y viejos colegas me sugieren que me ponga escribir sobre la formidable experiencia en la que tuve el privilegio de formar parte allá por mediado de los años 80, en los que un grupo de geeks to be contribuímos con los primeros pasos para que Internet se convirtiera realidad en Argentina.

Si bien suelo ser bastante "verborragico", el escribir no es una de mis mejores cualidades, pero creo que sí es realmente importante el aprovechar estas herramientas con las que contamos hoy en día para preservar un poco de nuestra historia y transmitir la experiencia a otras generaciones.

Obviamente lo que logre escribir va a ser un relato de como me tocó vivir esta experienca desde el punto de vista personal y no la "historia oficial". Fuimos muchos los que contribuímos a esta experiencia que también se extiende al resto de Latino América y el Caribe, y solo con la participación de los principales actores sería posible lograr reuinir esta información, un esfuerzo que mi viejo amigo José Soriano viene tratando de impulsar desde hace tiempo.

A veces el mayor obstáculo que encuentro es que tengo que escarbar en mi memoria para sacar a flote viejos recuerdos y buscar que documentos, fotografías y otras piezas de colección sobrevivieron varias mudanzas.

Pero pese a todo, y en particular gracias a mis largas conversaciones nocturnas via chat con un viejo colega de la Universidad de La Plata, Eduardo Suarez, muchos recuerdos estan reflotando en mi memoria y ya retomé la rutina de ponerme a escribir cotidianamente sobre esta experienca.

No tengo la menor idea de cual vaya a ser el resultado final, inicialmente voy a comenzar a publicar poco a poco lo que vaya logrando terminar en pequeños capítulos en una sección de mi website personal, y a medida que avance aparecerán otros capítulos.

Como siempre digo a varios amigos, correcciones, adiciones, sugerencias y crítica constructiva son bien recibidos. Quejas a otra parte ...

Aquí va entonces a modo de anticipo la primer versión de la página de introducción


Introducción

Ya se han cumplido más de veinte años desde que un grupo de entusiastas dábamos los primeros pasos que culminaron con la incorporación de Argentina a Internet.

Realmente poco o casi nada se ha escrito o hecho público sobre esta experiencia formidable desde un punto de vista histórico.

Desde mediados de los años ochenta, y por más de diez años, antes de partir hacia el norte, tuve el privilegio y la oportunidad de estar involucrado con el incipiente desarrollo de Internet en Argentina.

Estas páginas no las escribo con el objetivo de obtener algún tipo de reconocimiento a nivel personal. Siempre trato de evitar el tema cuando otras personas se refieren a mí como uno de los padres de Internet en Argentina. Realmente el esfuerzo colectivo de un gran número de personas y una secuencia particular de eventos en los que tuve el privilegio de formar parte, fueron los que dieron pie a la incorporación de Argentina en Internet.

Aparte de quizás contribuir a preservar un poco de nuestra historia, en realidad estas páginas son en reconocimiento a quienes contribuyeron para que Internet en Argentina se convirtiera en realidad.

Esta historia tiene muchas caras y muchas voces, y estoy seguro, como siempre ha sucedido en el pasado, la misma va a generar algunas controversias (después de todo tenemos sangre latina, no?), pero voy a poner mi mejor esfuerzo para representar los hechos en forma objetiva pero desde un punto de vista personal.

La historia cubre el periodo desde mediados de los años ochenta hasta mediados de los noventa cuando comenzaron a aparecer los mayores proveedores comerciales de servicios de Internet permitiendo el acceso a todos (bueno … casi todos :-) ).

Dado que ya ha pasado suficiente tiempo desde aquellos días, y que actualmente no estoy asociado con ninguna de las instituciones que formaron parte de esta experiencia, (algunas de las cuales ya no existen), para hacer la historia más completa e interesante, por primera vez voy a incluir comentarios e información que no creo que hasta ahora se haya hecho pública, sobre el trabajo detrás de bambalinas para que ciertos eventos se concretaran.

Es importante también tener en cuenta el contexto en el cual se desarrollaban estos eventos, como la situación política del País, la infraestructura y regulaciones de los servicios de telecomunicación disponibles en ese momento, y la disponibilidad de recursos.

Sin duda, con el pasar del tiempo mi memoria haya perdido algunos bits de información (aparte de mi cabellera) y seguro me olvide de mencionar nombres y eventos, así que desde ya mis más sinceras disculpas.


Correcciones, adiciones y crítica constructiva son bienvenidas para quienes quieran aportar a esta historia.

De más esta decir que todos los comentarios y opiniones son propios, y no representan en principio la posición oficial de las organizaciones en las que estuve involucrado o de aquellos con quienes tuve el privilegio de
estar asociado.

Jorge Amodio alias "pete"

Back on writing ...

Well, back on feeding Google's dominance of on-line content :-), I wish they had the ability to develop a tool to give me more time to get more done from my never ending ToDo list.

Well I had to admit that many of their tools have increased my productivity and facilitated generating and posting content on-line.

I've been quite busy for a while trying to get multiple projects done.

Unfortunately I'm out of the Microchip PIC32 Design Challenge but at least got some nice prizes and an honorable mention for my design. It was a very interesting experience and a good opportunity to learn new tricks and meet other folks with common interests.

But IMHO the voting process got a little bit skewed and somehow the challenge became more sort of popularity than a design contest. Anyway, on one hand I feel some relief since I can continue to complete my design but now without ties to the rules of the contest.


I've been helping my beautiful wife to get the first version of her jewelry website up and running, she is creating amazing and unique artistic jewelry pieces. Her work with Precious Metal Clay has already been published in the 2008 PMC Guild Annual book, and she is getting fantastic comments and feedback on her Flickr Photostream.

It seems that I'm catching up with Web 2.0, or is it catching up with me ? :-)

I'm sort of reorganizing my on-line presence. I was able today to change this personal blog to blog.amodio.biz, it was jamodio-brainpad.blogspot.com before. I didn't notice that there are many more options now connect things here and there, and I've lost count of how many profiles I have out there and need to be updated, but at least this one was a quick and very smooth process. My kudos to the Google folks for making it so much easier.

On the "Social Networking" side, while I still keep LikedIn sorta as professional personal profile and as a contact management resource, I've been spending a lot of time (may be too much) playing with Facebook.

I had my account for a while but initially didn't have much interest or took the time to search for old friends. In the past few weeks I was able to reconnect with many friends and old colleagues, so far it's being a nice a experience remembering old tales and things we did together, and after many years share pictures and see each other kids.

Being an expat for more than twelve years now, I've a constant demand from family members and close friends to keep feeding them with images, so I resorted to another great tool from Google and uploaded some pictures to my Picasa Web Albums.

I've been using Picasa since it's beta version to organize pictures on my computer at home, some of the latest features are very useful, and getting some pictures on-line is quite easy now.

One thing I'm still behind, is to keep this blog up to date, perhaps I took the wrong approach when I created it trying to make it too formal and structured, so I'll try something different now and adopt the habit to start writing some thoughts, ideas, comments and experiences more often.

Cheers
Jorge

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The never ending list ...

Well, after a long while seems that I found the time and inspiration to get back to the blog editor.

After the years I'm starting to realize that I'm and I always been a hyperactive and multitasking kind of person.

My To Do list is allways full and many times I put more stuff there faster than I take it out, pushing some lower priority things down to the bottom.

I wanted to be more active in the blog community but that's one of the things that actually got constantly pushed down on the list to leave space for other higher priority projects.

The fact that I'm posting this entry does not mean that I finally got to the bottom of the list, I just moved up the priority for blogging and finished few projects that were demanding time, and that I'll give it a try to start blogging what I am up to in a more regular basis.

One project that I had on the list for a long time was my
personal website. While I've been always involved with the internet and developed some sites, my forte is not website design and much less now that the technology enables much more creative and artistic sites. I just go for some basic layout and mostly content.

The site is a work on progress and will still be for some time since I'm collecting all pictures, documents and memories that I'll gradually add to the site as part of my biography.

Another project I consider almost finished is
my personal electronics lab. Thanks to eBay and the fact that other people's junk may become your own treasure, and that in my past I made a living fixing junk, I now have basically everything I wanted for the lab.

As you will see from the pictures most of the instruments are old and actually obsolete but they work for what I do and the cost was insignificant compared with the actual costs of some of them today.

One major entry on the list is to finish writing the
history about the first steps for Argentina into the Internet that I mentioned before. I'm not sure yet when I'll get it done but I'm expecting to receive some additional material from Argentina very soon and I'm spending time writing every day. Since I'll host all the information on my website now that the overall structure is done I'll probably start moving faster.

There are other things like some projects related to
LJCV Electronics and getting some old HP Series 80 back to work, but I'll post about them on separate entires.

I guess I can now add one more done mark to my list.

Take care
Jorge

Monday, March 19, 2007

Lets Save The Planet


Well it seems that after a long time and a great effort from different organizations around the world our leaders (well not all of them) are starting to get the point that Global Climate Change is not a conspiracy theory written by scientists and environmentalists.

There is some hope that we will finally see some real progress soon.

What do you can do ?

First of all become active in your local community, contact your local representatives and tell them your concerns and the need for a real and serious global agreement.

Add your signature at NextGenerationEarth, you will be sending a powerful message to politicians and business leaders around the globe that climate change is a battle for our common future.

And second, SAVE ENERGY !! and if you wish start an "Energy diet"

My wife believe I'm a freak when I hover around the house turning off lights that are not necessary, I'm not going to deny that I freak out every month when we get the electricity bill but on the other hand I've been always convinced that we normally waste a lot of energy, and you don't need to drive in the Vegas strip to realize that.

I recently started to replace many of the old incandescent lamps by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), these lamps can save more than 40-70% and while they may be more expensive than the incandescent they are getting cheaper every day and will not only help you reduce your electricity bill, they last longer, and you will be contributing to reduce overall energy consumption.

Check some of the facts at 18seconds.org, you will find interesting to learn that if every home in the US replaces one incandescent lamp by a CFL, the effect on greenhouse gases would be equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road.

It's our planet and it's our responsibility to take care of it.

Our kids and their future generations deserve it

Cheers

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Online Collaboration

If you have read some of my previous posts you already know that I’ve been around in the ‘net for a long time. In those old days we didn't have such a vast collection of services and tools, the most advanced service we had for a real time conversation was writing to somebody’s else terminal or the Unix talk utility.

But I’ve been always convinced since then that the internet technologies (that’s the name of one of the companies I founded many years ago) were a very important factor to enable and facilitate collaboration and teamwork.

Since early January and part of February I spent a considerable amount of time participating in the online Vanishing Point Game.


This game was commissioned by Microsoft as part of their launch campaign for Windows Vista, and it was developed and run by the company 42 Entertainment.

The game consisted in a set of four puzzle boxes (one for each week), each box contained a dozen puzzles and was opened at the start of each week and a fictional character named "Loki" (the “Enigma Director”) guided us through the game history line and providing clues.

Singapore Besides the clues embedded in the actual puzzles and the ones provided by “Loki”, additional clues were provided with real world events around the world, starting with a spectacular light show in the dancing waters of the Bellagio Casino Hotel fountain in Las Vegas, skywriting in Sydney and other US cities, impressive digital projections over the façade of landmark buildings in Canada, Singapore, Germany, England and the US.

The grand prize ? A suborbital flight to the edge of earth’s atmosphere aboard the Rocketplane vehicle.

Besides the attractive prizes (which I won none), and the challenge to solve the puzzles, my real interest was to experience first hand the actual state of the art of online collaboration in a complete different context, not work related, completely unknown people of different ages and background around the world.

I’ve been always involved in discussion groups via e-mail lists, such as NANOG, IETF, technology forums, etc. In this particular instance after some searching I joined the Neowin.net community where I found some interesting information exchange related to the game.

Over 80,000 registered to play the game, hundreds if not thousands were participating in forums such as Neowin, or unfiction.com, real time chats on IRC, etc.


Since the early Internet days we had some sort of implicit and self imposed net etiquette, that if you recently had a chance to participate in some IRC chat rooms seems to have been completely lost.

To my surprise and enjoyment, the experience I had with the Neowinians was in all terms excellent, while the forum has moderators there was no need for them to get involved, a great exchange of information an ideas with a sharp focus to solve the puzzles and have fun playing the game was a constant.


I’ve not seen one message with obscene content or inappropriate language and the level of collaboration, also including exchanging information with the unfiction folks, was tremendous. The puzzles that were supposed to be solved in a week time frame got solved in just a couple of hours.

And it was really fun to be part of that (well what do you expect, I’m a geek!!), at one time we had one Neowinian from the UK streaming audio with great music and live comments about what was going on in the game.

After the game was over we had a chance to join a webcast conference with the Rocketplane folks and learn more about their pioneer work in developing commercial human space travel. Few days later another webcast with the 42 Entertainment folks about their experience and challenges putting the game and events together.

My prize ? I got to join a great new online community with interesting and talented people that openly exchange ideas, experience and information about Information Technology and other matters, and a great demonstration that online collaboration is still alive and a powerful way to get great things done (open source somebody ?) .

Cheers