September 2007
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The message isn’t medium
Okay, so Bob sold out. But he sold out for me. All is forgiven. — Sheila Lennon Continue reading
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OneWebDay
David Isenberg observes that OneWebDay and Yom Kippur coincide this year, making OWD “the second oldest Important World-Wide Observation”. David Weinberger urges us to “go celebrate the Web while we still have one that’s distinguishable from cable TV”. I wrote my celebration here, where I explain (among probably too many other things) where my nickname… Continue reading
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Bubble 2.0
In 1999, “portals” were all the rage and advertising was going to pay for everything. In 2007, “social networks” are all the rage and advertising is paying for everything. Almost. Thought: We have the same problem with Facebook today that we’ve had with broadcast media for the duration: their customers are their advertisers, not their… Continue reading
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What would your hosting service do?
R.G. Ratcliffe in the Houston Chronicle: Suit against blogger tests limits of speech, privacy; Such lawsuits on the rise as blogs proliferate. It begins, Friday, September 21, 2007 Paris, Texas, population 26,490, may be an unlikely Internet frontier. But a defamation lawsuit filed by the local hospital against an anonymous blogger is testing… Continue reading
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Y not
From Kaliya: I am working on a great new event this fall. It is for women who work in technology called She’s Geeky. It is October 22-23 in Mountain View CA. I would encourage you all to let women you know in tech know about the event. Continue reading
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Great cheap-outs
The best table radio I’ve heard in years is the Cambridge Soundworks 705. It’s solid and friendly-looking, with an old-fashioned round dial and a nice soft feel to the reduction gears inside its knob. (All three of its knobs feel good, actually.) Sound on AM as well as FM is outstanding, especially considering its small… Continue reading
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Advice du jour
Keep America Strong. Ask A Young Person To Become A Ham. — Susan Crawford Continue reading
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Digging the Nokia N800
So Dave is getting a Nokia N800. That totally rocks. Can’t wait to see what he does with it. To help get him (or anybody) started, check out the review Jim Thompson and I wrote for Linux Journal. It’s not as slick as an iPhone, but it’s open and ready to do, well, pretty much… Continue reading
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Where vs. Why
In Why Facebook went west, Scott Kirsner suggests that Facebook‘s decision to relocate to Silicon Valley “either highlights Boston’s deficiencies as a greenhouse for a new generation of Web start-ups, or illustrates the incredible magnetism of Silicon Valley – or a bit of both.” Short answer: It’s the magnetism of Silicon Valley, period. True, if… Continue reading
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One Life Day
I got a jump on OneWebDay with an autobiographical post at Linux Journal. In the spirit of (in this case, unintentionally) disclosive autobiography, I posted it yesterday in the mistaken belief that yesterday was actually OneWebDay, and not just the day on which the Berkman Center devoted its customary Luncheon to OneWebDay. So, rather than… Continue reading
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Earth to Newspapers: Abandon Fort Business.
I just got this email from The New York Times: Dear TimesSelect Subscriber, We are ending TimesSelect, effective today. The Times’s Op-Ed and news columns are now available to everyone free of charge, along with Times File and News Tracker. In addition, The New York Times online Archive is now free back to 1987 for… Continue reading
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Can marketing be conversational?
Not long after Cluetrain came out, Jakob Nielsen floored me by pointing out something that should have been obvious but proved easy to miss: that the authors “defected” from marketing and took sides with markets against it. When we wrote we are not seat s or eyeballs or end users or consumers, and our reach… Continue reading
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NYTimes discovers the Paywall doesn’t pay
In the phone business they call it a “minutes mentality”. For the newspaper business Jeff Jarvis cals it a “circulation mentality”. But the sad fact is that it’s a margin mentality that says you should charge for everything that’s chargable. Years ago Craig Burton told me the smartest thing you can do in business is… Continue reading
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By grace of Starbucks
I’m back home in the U.S., getting online in the wee hours over a wi-fi access point that’s my wife’s laptop, which is on the Net at the moment using a Verizon EvDO card. The connection is highly asymmetrical (fast-enough downsteam, slow-as-dialup upstream), but it’s serving as our home connction until Verizon FiOS (fiber optic)… Continue reading
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Rainbow sky
On the trip over here to London last Sunday evening, I shot a set of 24 photos over about a minute and a half while our United 777 ascended through a layer of cirrus clouds at around 25,000 feet, give or take. The sunlight passing through the clouds, which at this altitude were comprised of… Continue reading
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More blog, less roll
With apologies to those whose juice (or whatever) may be reduced by it, I’ve deep-sixed the blogroll. As a move this was long overdue. The ‘roll on my old blog had grown longer than Dumbledore’s beard, and was just as antique. When I moved the blog over here I carried along mixed feelings about having… Continue reading
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Fear the baby
This is the funniest ad I’ve seen in awhile. Sent by my new grandson’s dad. Continue reading
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Bloggership
CollegeScholarship.org is offering $10,000 for student blogging, and up to $5,000 in other categories, some of them involving blogging as well. Continue reading
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Declaration of Independents
Bill of Necessities is my latest at the ProjectVRM blog. It’s about A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, of which I approve. Continue reading
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Ignore the dust
Just updated my Technorati Profile. (That’s one way to do it, by including a link like that.) Been doing some other housekeeping around here too. Not that you have to notice. Continue reading