West Fork Fire

June 29, 2013 in Photography, Places, problems, Science, Travel, weather | 1 comment

West Fork Fire

On my way back to New York from Sydney on Wednesday, while flying east over the San Juan National Forest and the Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado, I shot what at first I though was a controlled burn, but later realized was the West Fork Fire. I knew it was a big one when I watched the smoke fan out to the east, starting with the San Luis Valley, where some of it pooled over the Great Sand Dunes National Park, and against the Sagre de Cristo Mountains. (Here are pictures of those in clearer conditions.)

But it went far beyond there, coloring the skies over Kansas and beyond. (More when I put up the rest of the photos from the trip.) Here is a story on the fire’s visibility from space. And here’s a link to a search for “West Fork Fire”.

2013_06_26 Link Pile

June 26, 2013 in Links | 2 comments

3 lessons for newsrooms from UsVsTh3m and The Guardian’s Firestorm project. By Craig Silverman in Poynter.

FCC Announces Application Window for New Low PowerFM Stations. By Cody Duncan in Future of Music Coalition. Fact sheet.

What’s the ‘Internet of Everything’ worth? $613 billion, Cisco reckons: In 2013, Cisco calculates that companies could produce $613 billion of mostly incremental profit by harnessing the growing networked world of people and things. By Dan Farber in CNet

Tech companies fret over loss of consumers’ trust after NSA revelations, byJennifer Martinez in The Hill‘s Hillicon Valley blog.

Data models for the Internet of Things. By Michael Koster.

Why Pandora bought an FM radio station. By Deborah Newman in The Hill.

On the surveillance thing

On advertising and marketing

Watch air traffic vs. weather via FlightAware at:

2013_06_24 Link Pile

June 26, 2013 in Uncategorized | Permalink

How to value personal data, by Ctrl-Shift

World Economic Forum Sharing Economy Position Paper, at Collaborative Consumption

Attention Economy vs. Intention Economy, a diagram by Robert Bashor. Also part of The system dynamics of an intention economy.

How does GHCQ’s Internet surveillance work? by Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball in The Guardian.

Aviation vs. Weather

June 26, 2013 in Aviation, infrastructure, Places, weather | 3 comments

flightawaremapYesterday we were in Melbourne. Then we flew to Sydney, got some sleep, and caught flights to Auckland, Los Angeles and Newark.

Except, we’re not in Newark. A storm there delayed things, and we’re on the ground getting re-fueled at Dulles, near D.C. This kind of thing happens with aviation and weather. That planes fly at all is a kind of miracle. That flying has become as mundane as bus travel — and far safer — would also be miraculous if it weren’t so routine. Except for times like this.

See the line of red dots over there on the right? Those are the airports with delays caused by storms that were beautiful to watch as our eastbound United 757 flew past them to the south. I got some pictures, but they aren’t very good.

Now, here on the ground, I’m watching Flightaware and Intellicast to see what’s up with aviation and weather. Flightaware is an amazing site. If you have any interest in aviation, or just need to know what’s currently screwed up with air travel, it’s the best of its breed. Intellicast has great maps, which project into the future while also running through the recent past. Right now I see by Flightaware’s map below that flights are getting in and out of Newark as the current storm (the green blotch) passes.

I also see by Intellicast that the line of storms I observed south of the Great Lakes and across Pennsylvania will arrive in New York in a few hours. So our window of opportunity isn’t large there.

It would be nice if Intellicast has links to maps, but they don’t, or I’d link to the one for New York. The good thing about Intellicast is that it is somewhat less crufty with promotional jive than Weather.com and some other weather sites.

Another passenger is grumbling about United’s flight operations. “Worst in the business,” he says. I don’t agree. After well over a million miles with United, I have no evidence that their flight operations is anything other than fine. And, given the size of the fleet they manage, that’s a compliment.

And hey, while I’d love to be in New York now, I’d rather be safe than any of the many kinds of sorry I can imagine.

Postscript: We got to Newark eventually, and then took another few hours to await a bus and a delayed subway before arriving at our place around 7:30am. This was close to 40 hours after departing Sydney. Got a little sleep, and now we’re ready to go again. 🙂

Opposites distract

June 23, 2013 in Aviation, Fun, Science, Strange stuff, Travel | 9 comments

Just discovered by Antipodr that Bermuda and Perth are antipodes: located at the exact other ends of the Earth from each other.

I’m in Melbourne, Australia, which is the antipode of a spot on the h of North Atlantic Ocean on Antipodr’s map. By the end of tomorrow I’ll be back in New York, a couple thousand miles west of there, after flying most of the way around the world on four different planes and three different airlines. New York’s antipode is a spot not far southwest of Australia — maybe about as far from the coast as Brisbane is from Sydney, as you can see from the upside-down image of North America on the amazing map around which this text wraps.

The map is from Wikimedia Commons, and illustrates perfectly how little land is antipodal from other land. The sum, in fact, is just 4%. As Wikipedia currently puts it, “The largest antipodal land masses are the Malay Archipelago, antipodal to the Amazon Basin and adjoining Andean ranges; east China and Mongolia, antipodal to Chile and Argentina; and Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, antipodal to East Antarctica.”

Click on the map three times and you’ll find yourself at a large version of the map that lets you discover these other antipodes:

Those last three are the sum of U.S. antipodes, at least for the lower forty-eight. Most of Hawaii is antipodal to Botswana, while the northern edge of Alaska is antipodal to an edge of Antarctica. Same with the most northern parts of Canada.

So that’s a little fun in the early hours before my last day of meetings here. It’s been a fun trip.

A question on parting: Have the link piles been useful or interesting? They’ve been all I’ve posted on this trip, because it’s easy and I sometimes feel like sharing what I’m reading. But I’ve had just one piece of feedback so far, and it was negative. So, if you care, lemme know.

2013_06_20 link pile

June 20, 2013 in Uncategorized | Permalink

The Deteriorata, which parodies The Desiderata, much as The Gluetrain Manifesto parodied The Cluetrain Manifesto. My fave line from another parody, perhaps by the same guy, of the “Markets are conversations” line: “Markets are money.”

QR codes aren’t dead yet. By yours truly in Harvard Business Review.

I’ll also be keynoting an upcoming iAB thing, on 15 July in New York.

Enjoying listening to 2MCR here in North Sydney.

Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders, by James Risen and Nick Wingfield in The New York Times.

Most online users don’t care about privacy – Aussies even more so, by Graeme Phillipson in ITWire.

Amdocs Survey: Consumers Will Share Personal Data… at a Price. Source: Amdocs press release.

It’s over: All private data is public: Enough about the NSA — any hacker worthy of the name can snatch your ‘private’ data. Either stop entrusting it to anyone or chill out. By Roger A. Grimes in InfoWorld.

Associated Press: Sources Won’t Talk Anymore. By DSWright in Firedog Lake.

Now anyone can buy the NSA’s database tech. By Derek Harris in Gigaom. Stars Sqrrl.

Wireless Internet 101 Fact Sheet. By Lisa Gonzalez of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

2013_06_18 Link Pile

June 18, 2013 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Quote of the Day: There is no way to build a mirror world without a network of decentralized cooperating agents. — Phil Windley

My keynote talk at KuppingerCole‘s EIC conference in May. (Registration required.)

American Customer Satisfaction Index

Google’s Loon Project Puts Balloon Technology in Spotlight: Future stratospheric systems could change how the world goes online, by Brian Handwerk in National Geographic.

Gartner trends for 2013. Lots of VRooMy and Personal Cloud related stuff in there.

Why the FISA Court Is Not What It Used To Be, by Nina Totenberg on NPR.

Bank robbery suspect wants NSA phone records for his defense, by Paula McMahon in the Sun Sentinel

The influence of spies has become too much. It’s time politicians said no, by John le Carré in The Guardian

I fear the chilling effect of NSA surveillance on the open internet, by Jeff Jarvis in The Guardian

Why The Tech Industry Should Be Furious About NSA’s Over Surveillance, in TechDirt. Also Rep. Grayson: Let Me Tell The NSA: There Is No Threat To Our Nation When I Call My Mother and Former NSA Whistleblower Bill Binney: The NSA Is Making Itself Dysfunctional With Too Much Data.

Biden in 2006 schools Obama in 2013 over NSA spying program, by the EFF.

President Obama orders government spectrum to be opened for wireless broadband, by Carl Franzen in The Verge

The Internet’s Fractured Foundations, by Martin Geddes.

The NSA Versus the Global Internet: How Online Surveillance Could Impact Internet Governance, by Allan Friedman of Brookings

2013_06_17 Link Pile

June 17, 2013 in Links | 1 comment

Edward Snowden Q&A with readers at The Guardian. An amazing and historic moment happening, right now.

Surveillance blowback, by Bruce Schneier

Body scanner ruling could squelch NSA domestic spying: Electronic Privacy Information Center organizes request by leading technologists to halt National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance. They’re trying a novel argument from a 2011 lawsuit. By Declan McCullagh

New Zealand weather radar. Watching this currently, in fear or hope for snow in Queenstown later this week.

Internet interruption, in XKCD. Roll over the fourth frame.

The Two Centers of Unaccountable Power in America, and Their Consequences, by Robert Reich

“Let it be Done” An Alternative Narrative for Building what America Needs, by Devin Smith in New Economic Perspectives.

An NSA big graph experiment (.pdf), by Paul Burkhardt, Chris Waring, U.S. National Security Agency

Moyers & Company: Big Brother’s Prying Eyes. Bill interviews Larry Lessig.

Police are now using driver’s license photos in the US to identify suspects in criminal cases, by Nick Summers in The Next Web

Google’s Internet balloons, in Wired.

NYT Introspects on Snowden, by Dave Winer. Also by Dave: The Quiet War in Tech.

2013_06_16 link pile

June 15, 2013 in Links | Permalink

NPR on the NSA’s giant data farm.

E-Commerce’s Future Is in Creating ‘Swift Guanxi,’ or Personal and Social Rapport, in Science Daily. Good one, especially for providing VRM context. It begins,

Despite the reputation of online marketplaces being distant and impersonal, through social technologies such as instant messaging, they can create the sense of personal and social relationships between buyers and sellers, termed “swift guanxi” in China, to facilitate loyalty, interactivity and repeat transactions, according to new research by Temple University Fox School of Business Professor Paul A. Pavlou.

Three researchers — in addition to Pavlou, Tilburg University’s Carol Xiaojuan Ou and Robert M. Davison of the City University of Hong Kong — studied data from TaoBao, China’s leading online marketplace, to examine the efficacy of using computer-mediated-communication (CMC) technology to build guanxi and turn impersonal one-time shoppers into loyal and committed long-term customers through personal rapport.

Guanxi is a Chinese concept “broadly defined as a close and pervasive interpersonal relationship” and “based on high-quality social interactions and the reciprocal exchange of mutual benefits,” Ou, Pavlou and Davison wrote.

The Collaborative Economy. A report by Altimiter.

Bummed to hear both Doc Rivers and Kevin Garnett may be traded to the Clippers. Shit, maybe Paul Pierce too.

Weather sucks right now here in New Zealand. Oh well. I’ll be working indoors anyway.

2013_06_14 link pile

June 14, 2013 in Uncategorized | Permalink

Where TIME Lost the Plot on Snowden and Spying

Guardian pieces

There’s more than one tech, by Dave Winer

… and now I’m off to .nz & .au, where it’s already tomorrow.

« Older entries § Newer entries »