Dr. Bishop caught Phil Gyford (’00) on CBC’s Spark program on Sunday, Apr 14. Phil was being interviewed about data longevity and ephemerality, that some data does not stay on the web as long as people might think. One way that data disappears is when large corporations, like Google or Yahoo, purchase sites that are supported by user-content. These are called ‘aqui-hires’ in which the purchaser is more interested in hiring the staff than in using the technology or the content. The focus for this segment was Posterous, a free blogging site that included something like 9 million blogs. Turns out that Phil has been monitoring this phenomenon on his website called Our Incredible Journey. He got the name from the traditional sign-off by the website going away, thanking people for participating in “our incredible journey.” Phil has been monitoring trends for a long-time. He was a sort of ϋber scanner when he was in the program. Dr. Bishop remembers the night that Phil told the class about a new service called Napster, a full six-months before it hit the news media.
