September 2009
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Whose Side(wiki) Are You On?
What are we to make of Sidewiki? Is it, as Phil Windley says, a way to build the purpose-centric Web? Or is it, as Mike Arrington suggests, the latest way to “deface” websites? The arguments here were foreshadowed in the architecture of the Web itself, the essence of which has been lost to history —… Continue reading
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Getting quakes straight
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has an excellent Earthquake Center for all the earthquakes in the world, which is very handy at a time when many are happening at once, followed in some cases by tsunamis that cross seas to strike coastlines minutes to hours later. For example, this list of earthquakes of magnitude… Continue reading
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It was a little tougher 214,000,000 years ago
Above is the best (or the widest) shot I could get of Lake Manicouagan, which is the largest visible impact crater on Earth. Only three (or maybe four) are larger and none are visible. The Manicouagan impact event happened about 214 million years ago, give or take. That was 14 million years before the end… Continue reading
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On value and valuation
Over in Fast Company, Tim Beyers nicely threads quotable pearls from Cluetrain‘s four authors, including yours truly, in Twitter’s Investors Missed the Cluetrain – Here’s Why. The context of the story is continued investment in Twitter at a reported $1 billion valuation of the company. (Fast indeed.) Now that the piece is up, I thought… Continue reading
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Calling all Customers
VRM East Coast Workshop 2009 is coming up soon — on 12-13 October, at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. It’s hosted by the Berkman Center and ProjectVRM at the Center. As with earlier VRM workshops, it’s a free unconference, organized on the open space model. Participants choose the topics, move those topics forward in… Continue reading
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As in days of yore
I blog by grace of something I hardly expected to find: a free open wi-fi hot spot in London. Way back in (it says 1969, but it was actually) 2002, I had a ball discovering many free wi-fi hot spots in London, got to make many new friends, and enjoy, for a brief shining year… Continue reading
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Chaining links
First, links to a pair of pieces I wrote — one new, one old, both for Linux Journal. The former is Linux and Plethorization, a short piece I put up today, and which contains a little usage experiment that will play out over time. The latter is The New Vernacular, dated (no fooling) April 1,… Continue reading
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Excellence vs. B of A
The Excellent Adventure is the name of the blog. Its subhead is The tale of TeamHudson, as they discover that all they need is a tall ship…. Its About page says, In July of 2006, Laureen and Jason were startled to discover that despite all the various hopes, dreams, and aspirations of their youth,… Continue reading
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Can’t make hard boiled soft
That’s my take-away from Fawn Germer in It’s the Cynicism That’ll Kill You. The encompassing lines: So many of my former colleagues who are forced to transition and re-invent actually expected to report for newspapers until the final days of their careers. Change of this magnitude was so unexpected that most are shell-shocked and… Continue reading
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Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge fly-by
The shot above, made on Sunday out the window of a plane on approach to Las Vegas, comes three and a half years after this shot, which I took from the ground at Hoover Dam. Here’s a whole set of the fly-by. Not much of the dam shows. The Colorado River gorge is easier to… Continue reading
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Vroom with a view
I’m not there, in that shot above. That was in Denver, en route from Santa Barbara to Boston last Monday. Now I’m at a different airport — O’Hare in Chicago — en route from Boston to Las Vegas. Still, I thought it as a nice shot in a pretty set. So there ya go. Continue reading
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Good broadcasting sports
I like sports, and I enjoy sports talk radio. That’s one reason I have five car radio buttons set on stations carrying games or sports talk: four on AM (WRKO/680, WEEI/850, WAMG/890, WZZN/1510) and one on FM (WBZ-FM/98.5). The other is that sports talk is about 50% advertising, so I like to punch around. But… Continue reading
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Primary needs for political tools
For years I’ve been watching my old pal Britt Blaser work to improve the means by which citizens manage their elected politicians, and otherwise improve governance in our democracy. Now comes Diane Francis, veteran columnist for the National Post in Canada (but yes, she’s an American), summarizing the good that should come from Britt’s latest:… Continue reading
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Same date, new sphere
On 9/11/2001 I had already been blogging for nearly two years. It’s interesting to see what I wrote this day, back then. Since my blog then was not on local time, my first four posts were actually the last from the day before. My first 9/11 post was this one. A declaration of peace was… Continue reading
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Fire from above
Above is a picture of the Station Fire, taken from the plane I was riding from Santa Barbara to Denver on Monday afternoon. I believe the water body at the bottom is the San Gabriel Reservoir. It lies in the midst of the San Gabriel Mountains, most of which are in the Angeles National Forest,… Continue reading
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Shaking and baking
My postings last week on the Station Fire (below) brought an invitation from Dave to contribute something along the same lines for InBerkeley. I did, and the title is The Next Berkeley Fire. Since fire is one of the two big dangers of living in this corner of paradise, I visited the subject of earthquakes… Continue reading
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Saving Stony Ridge Observatory
Above is the latest (as of this morning) MODIS satellite map (on Google Earth) of Station Fire spottings in the Angeles National Forest north of the Los Angeles basin. Near the center I’ve marked the Stony Ridge Observatory. While less familiar than the famous Mt. Wilson Observatory (and little known outside its own circles), Stony… Continue reading
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Hey United! Drop the opt-out pitches.
United Airlines, for which I am a 1K (>100,000 miles per year) flyer, and which I fly so close to exclusively that I’m almost too familiar with their methods, has in the last year added a number of opt-out inconveniences to booking and check-in systems. Here is one for bonus miles that shows up both… Continue reading
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Naming disasters
Why do mainstream broadcasters keep calling that big fire north of Los Angeles “the so-called Station Fire?” You never hear “so-called Hurricane Bill” or “so-called Hurricane Erika”. Why is that? The main reason is that hurricanes have a much better naming convention. The surnames of hurricanes are first names of humans. The first names of… Continue reading