November 2008
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Because I don’t have to do SEO! Yay!
This makes me glad I don’t have advertising on this blog. Continue reading
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Collateral damage?
Ever notice how many car ads you see on the evening news? On sports broadcasts? (Between the ones for beer and “erectile dysfunction” relief — nice promotional symbiosis there.) How much of that is Detroit money? How much of that money will go away, whether or not Detroit gets bailed out? And will Asian and… Continue reading
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Why “roam” on T-Mobile in the U.S.?
This is @#$% insane. I’m at the Lufthansa lounge in Boston’s Logan Airport, where T-Mobile provides wi-fi service, just like it provides wi-fi service in countless other places around the U.S., including (near as I can tell) most airports and airport lounges. The “welcome” page looks normal. I try to login. It doesn’t work. Then… Continue reading
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Quote du jour
Yochai Benkler: Spectrum is not a resource. It is an engineering assumption. True. Continue reading
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Talking VRM in Cambridge & Amsterdam
This afternoon at 4:30 I’ll be talking (though not alone… it’s a discussion, not a lecture) at the Ethos Roundtable in Cambridge (the new one with Harvard and MIT, born in 1630-something; not the older one The topic will be The Intention Economy: What happens when free customers prove more valuable than captive ones. Are… Continue reading
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Blowing up radio. In a good way.
If you’re interested in music, or in radio — especially if you’re interested in both — listen (or watch) in on Tim Westergren’s talk, going on right now. Tim founded Pandora, and is its Chief Strategist. My notes… “We want to fix radio. And we want to fix it globally. And do it for musicians… Continue reading
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Santa Barbara Fire
Just learned there’s a fire in Santa Barbara. Our house is not in the evacuation area (that’s Cold Springs, and some surrounding sections in Montecito and SB C ), but we’re still concerned. I’m taking public notes, before I head down there. (I’m in the Bay Area.) I’m listening to KNX/1070 from Los Angeles right… Continue reading
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Frontiers of Value Subtraction
Terry Heaton calls Keystream‘s SmartAds “the dumbest idea I’ve heard in years”. What’s “smart” about SmartAds is that they appear in “blank” spaces in online videos. Those blue skies over the ocean? The wide green fairway of a golf course? The wall beside your sweetheart’s smile? Slap an ad in there. Same idea as billboards… Continue reading
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Whetlands
These are a few among the many salt ponds that ring the south end of San Francisco Bay. Once considered and agricultural innovation and an economic boom, the practice of “reclaiming” wild wetlands for industrial purposes is now considered ecologically awful by environmentalists, especially here on the West Coast of the U.S., which has precious… Continue reading
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Getting past telecom
While unscrewing bad Internet policy probably isn’t top priority for the Administration-in-Waiting, it’s pretty high up there for me, and for quite a few other ‘Net obsessives out there. In fact, I heard through the grapevine that the Obama transition team was looking for some Big Input to the Internet policy mill, due today. A… Continue reading
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Just stinking out loud
A few minutes ago I got off the phone with a friend headed into a bullshit meeting he didn’t want to attend, where he planned to listen and say as little as possible, because there was, basically, nothing to say. Still, wondering what to say if asked to offer something, I recommended, “I’m just a… Continue reading
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The madness of man
(This post began as a response to this comment by Julian Bond, in response to this post about Mad Men. When it got too long I decided to move it here.) Smoking and drinking were standard back then. “Widespread” doesn’t cover it. They were nearly universal. It’s easy to forget that Industry won WWII, and… Continue reading
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Civilized discourse in the age of Mad Men
Dave Barry: I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world’s most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents… Continue reading
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Infinite play
Video Is Dominating Internet Traffic, Pushing Prices Up says the headline of a piece by Saul Hansell in the New York Times. Its first three subheads say, File sharing has been usurped by legitimate video services, The very heaviest users drive up network costs and Unlimited data plans may have a limited life. This is… Continue reading
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Yes in deed
Phil Windley: no battle plan survives contact with the enemy & no campaign survives contact with governing Good point. In the next two months the Obama transition team needs to separate the campaign chaff from the governance wheat, the pandering from the policy. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. Continue reading
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Speaking Truth to Palaver
The Onion: Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress. An excerpt: Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the… Continue reading
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The Leader
It finally occurs to me to turn on the TV. I’ve been listening to NPR and CNN on the laptop, with the htoel room’s flat screen blank in the corner. BBC Channel 3 is following the man we call #barackobama to the stage in Chicago. Now Obama is speaking. We are and always will be… Continue reading