Doc Searls Weblog

Just trying to make stuff happen

February 2011

  • Cast locally, stream globally

    Here’s a great idea for local TV news departments: start streaming, 24/7/365, on the Net. You don’t need to have first-rate stuff, and it doesn’t all have to be live. Loop fifteen minutes of news, weather and sports to start. Bring in local placeblog and social media volunteers. Whatever it takes: you figure it out.… Continue reading

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  • The necessity of inventions

    Over on Facebook, @DonThorson and friends have been pondering the provenance of Invention is the mother of necessity. Writes Don, “… heard that once from Doc Searls – I think its an original. Seems more true everyday. (think facebook, smartphones, the internet, computers).” So I responded, Back in the ’80s, I had a half-serious list of… Continue reading

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  • Bring on The Live Web

    I first heard about the “World Live Web” when my son Allen dropped the phrase casually in conversation, back in 2003. His case was simple: the Web we had then was underdeveloped and inadequate. Specifically, it was static. Yes, it changed over time, but not in a real-time way. For example, we could search in… Continue reading

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  • Open Cardspace opportunity

    Just learned from Craig Burton that  Microsoft has killed off Windows Cardspace. Here’s the report from Mary Jo Foley. Here’s the Twitter search. Plenty of pointage to follow there. Here are Mike Jones’ reflections on the matter. I don’t have time to get my thoughts together on this right now, but here’s my brief take… Continue reading

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  • Here comes a plasma bullet

    SpaceWeather.com says we’re overdue for a plasma bullet from the Sun. In Saturday issue (at that last link) they have a movie of a plasma blast coming out of sunspot 1147, on the eastern (left) edge of our nearest star. Yesterday they reported this: SOLAR FLARE: Sunspot 1158 has just unleashed the strongest solar flare… Continue reading

  • Maybe the kids are alright

    I’ve been fairly quiet on the developments in Egypt, preferring to let others do the blogging, especially when they know far more than I do. (Ethan Zuckerman, for example.) But I’ve been involved in many conversations, because it’s damned interesting, what’s going on. One of those conversations is with my sister Jan, by email. She’s… Continue reading

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  • Accidental Lessons: Reflections on the Challenger Tragedy

    [This piece was written for Triangle Business (in Raleigh, North Carolina ) and published twenty-five years ago, on February 10, 1986. Since it might be worth re-visiting some of the points I made, as well as the event itself, I decided to dust off the piece and put up here. Except for a few spelling… Continue reading

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  • Northeastern lights

    As you can tell, if you read the small print in this StrikeStar map, we’re being hit by lightning (and therefore thunder) here in the Boston area, right now. After nothing but snow, over and over, for a month and a half, we get a day of rain with a Summer encore. Very strange. Continue reading

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  • Quiller Quote

    I’m reading Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, by Matt Taibbi, and loving every page of it. The prose is over-the-top in the manner of Hunter S. Thompson, without the drugged persona. Every page has at least one quote-worthy line, but the one that made me yell “Wow!”… Continue reading