October 2007

I’m not only missing Red Sox celebrations in Boston, but also Halloween in both New England and our other home in Santa Barbara. Every year there we’ve enjoyed the annual Halloween Journey at the Waldorf School. Still, we have memories. And photos. Here’s one photo from the last year’s Journey, with linkage to the whole set:

Been following the Alum Rock #earthquake via Twitter. Not surprisingly, the USGS (United States Geological Survey) front page has no news about it, even on its newsroom page, where the most recent item is a promo for a podcast recorded Monday. But the USGS in fact has lots of stuff.

Here’s a map showing all the quakes, including this one, in the last hour/day and week:

Here’s the same data and graphics on a map of faults in the Bay Area.

Here’s the report for this earthquake, with lots of links to other pages, including shaking intensity maps.

ABAG, the Association of Bay Area Governments, has long had very helpful maps showing what earthquakes could do to you, where you live, depending on where the quake is located. I haven’t looked at it in years, but just did and found it is “best viewed with Internet Explorer”. Feh. The “static maps” work better anyway. Here’s one that shows what an earthquake on the North Hayward Fault can do to Oakland and Berkeley:

There’s much more I could point to, but it’s 4:49am here in London, where I need to give a talk in several hours that will upstage everything else until afterwards. Hope everybody’s okay.

One of the more odd and fun facts about the way the Web works is that the graphics (or whatever) you use on your web page can be running live from somewhere else.

So, say somebody runs a graphic image off your server in their web page? What are the possibilities? That is, for you?

Here’s one.

We picked a great time to move to Boston: just as all the major sports teams — in an awesome sports town — are peaking, big time.

And I picked the worst time to be gone for two weeks. First I miss the whole final game while flying to London. (While The Kid misses it riding on a train.) Then I miss today’s parade downtown, and all the rest of the celebrating, which is always fun to be around.

There could not be less coverage here. I gotta get it all on the Web.

Anyway, the most remarkable thing to me about the Red Sox victory is that they’ve gone from being among the most cursed of baseball franchises to one of the most blessed: not a dynasty, but a well-run machine where winning is the norm. You know, kinda like the Yankees used to be.

Craig Smith: The road to the Academy Awards now goes through Santa Barbara.

Dana Blankenhorn: Dump the Silo Model. His gist (quoted in the long because by shortening it I risk leaving out his full thrust and the importance of it.

Good place to start. The key, in making the political as well as the business arguments, is to show how regarding the bits as free (as in freedom, not as in beer, by the way) will be good for the larger economy, including the carriers who will be asked (or told) to leave money on the table.

We need to show the benefits to incumbency that are not those of monopolists. What are those? If we can’t answer that question, we won’t be able to sell it.

Made it to München. Munich. It’s kinda fun to dust off what little Deutch remains, forty years after I finished taking three years of it in high school, including the first year twice, then gave most of it back when I was done.

Beautiful airport, München. Wish it was clear enough to see the Alps, but a wispy mist lays across the landscape, so there’s not much to see beyond parking garages and triangular plane tails slicing through the fog.

I’m getting by wi-fi, “roaming” with T-Mobile, an international company to which I pay $20-something per month for unlimited usage. Here I’m paying an extra 18¢/minute.

Yet this is the effing Internet, no? It’s not like I’m dialing “long distance”. There is no distance any more, except in physical space, and the space being charged for here isn’t physical.

Anyway, paying on top of paying too much for something for which the first cost rounds to free is a bit of a pisser.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not really free. And I don’t begrudge T-Mobile making money charging for wi-fi. I just think it sucks to have to “roam” when there are no additional real costs to providing the service, other than the billing system itself.

Here’s what T-Mobile needs to know: This kinda shit makes customers hate you.

Okay, gotta get on the next plane and fly to London. I’m just hubbing through here.

So I’m sitting on the floor near Gate 8 in Terminal 1 at JFK, propped like a doll against a pole between a trash can and the only power outlet in the whole concourse, near as I can tell.* People wear strange looks when they walk over to dump something down the hole next to my head.

It’s par for this afternoon’s course, here at JFK, where I’ve become acquainted with how little even United’s high-privilege flyers mean to Lufthansa, the United Star Alliance “partner” I’m flying tonight to London via Munich.

First, it’s not possible to select a seat, or even express a seat preference, until you get to the airport. So I got here early. My assigned seat was a middle one, 37F, a middle seat in the middle of the back of an Airbus 330 Vers. A (333). The qualifying stuff (version A, 333) are from SeatGuru.com and SeatExpert.com, which I’m comparing now.

I asked the agent if an upgrade was possible. Only with United miles or certificates, she said. I usually use the latter, of which I have plenty; but they’re all electronic. United hasn’t issued printed certificates for years. But the agent said I’d need the physical certificates. So, how about a window seat in economy, then. There was one: 46A, in the back row. Okay, I said, and took it. Then she asked me if I had bags to check. I said “one”. Then I asked it two carry-ons were allowed. “No”, she said. “Just one”. So I spent a minute moving electronics, laptop batteries and breakables from my carry-on bag of extras into my laptop bag. (Later, somebody told me that the rule is “One carry-on and one briefcase”. I really don’t know, still.)

Then there was the lounge gauntlet. As a lifetime United Red Carpet Club member, and as a United 1K (>100,000 miles/year) flyer, and a Star Alliance Gold member (it says on both my cards), I should be able to get into the Lufthansa lounge. But when I walked in, the person behind the counter looked at my two cards as if I had handed her a couple of dirty dishes and asked if I was a “million mile member”. I’m not, as far as I know, but said “I don’t know”. After chewing on that response mentally for a short while, she said “Okay”, and let me in.

There wasn’t a power outlet in the whole place except at a few desks in one corner. Worse, the club was on the near side of Security and packed with people. So I bailed, went through security, and found my way to this spot on the floor.

I just checked with SeatGuru and SeatExpert, which showed the below (SeatGuru first), for 46A:

Looks to me like SeatGuru wins that one. But we’ll see about the seat.

See ya in the Old Countries.

* [Later, just before boarding…] I just noticed that Samsung has kindly corrected the power outlet problem by locating poles at points along the concourse, including this one in the middle of dining area. Not much better — I’m kneeling at this one, while all the nearby tables are full — but I felt I needed to issue a factual correction.

[Later again, now on board the plane, in 46A…] A few kind words for Lufthansa, now that I’m on board. First, they have clean, unblemished windows, which is HUGE for a window-sitter (and ‘shooter) like me. Their toilets are much nicer, and less beat up, than those on most United planes I’ve flown. And their seats are nicer, with much more sensible trays and pockets — and a cupholder, which makes complete sense. Okay, gotta go now…

Sitting at Britt’s place (on his birthday, no less… happy birthday, dude!), talking with Tom Stites, who just said — approximately, but this is close enough — that VRM is about “rehumanizing” business. I love that. Because it’s about equipping individuals, rather than just businesses. For the good of both. But the “—ization happens by, and for, and from, the humans. Not by, for and from businesses. It’s about the point of origin, the departure point for the vector. Humanization. I like that.

The Universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take.

Earth, and the Solar System, are 4.6 billion years old, pretty much.

That means our planet has been around for a little over a third of the history of the Universe.

The Sun is a Population I star: one with high metal content, formed from matter cast off by exploding Type III (oldest) and Type II (second oldest) stars.

The Sun is about half way through its life as a star, and will become a planetary nebula in about 6.5 billion years, and a white dwarf in about 9.5 billion years, more or less. At the end of that time, the Sun will have lasted well over half the age of the Universe.

The oldest rocks in the scene above were deposited in the Pennsylvanian epoch, which lasted from .325 to .299 billion years ago.

Researching all the above (on Wikipedia, of course) followed the utterance of the headline above by Yours Truly to The Kid over breakfast at the excellent Sarabeth’s Kitchen, on Madison near 92nd.

Sarabeth’s has been around for more than a third of the age of myself, and more than twice the age of The Kid.

Better hurry over.

[Later…] Two bonus quotes, courtesy of The Kid:

Taking a train to New York, shortly (and briefly). Then it’s London, Denver (for Defrag), London and back. Two weeks, total. Expect light blogging.

Mike Taht pulls the pants off a CNN talking-head feature, and asks, Whatever happened to the ideal of journalism being: to report the news? When did actors get equal time against their interviewees?

Deborah Tannen unpacked the Them vs. Them mentality of mainstream “journalism” almost ten years ago in The Argument Culture. For the likes of CNN, it’s cheap & easy shooting. Always has been, always will be.

By the way, Ron Paul (favored by Mike and many other independent bloggers) will continue getting ignored and dismissed by mainstream media. That’s because his campaign doesn’t fit their templated story, which is about Republicans vs. Democrats, Left vs. Right, Leaders vs. Leaders. Paul may belong to the Republican party, but he’s really a Libertarian. That makes him a third party wolf in GOP wool, and we all know what roles third parties play in the national election script: losers and spoilers. What he says and stands for doesn’t matter. The real question for the mainstreamers is, “Will he hurt the frontrunner?”

Depressing.

What does the Microsoft “partnership” with Facebook mean for users? I just posted that question, and angles toward some answers, over at Linux Journal. In part the post also addresses Jeremiah Owyang’s post, How Microsoft got their Passport afterall. Jeremiah’s right to worry about What Microsoft is Up To here. He also has a good question about what the Microsoft-Facebook partnership means for Google.

I believe, however, that the solutions that matter most aren’t going to come from big companies. They’ll come from independent developers working at companies large and small — including Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Also from users themselves, who now play roles as producers as well as consumers. (In fact, much of the open source movement is about the demand side supplying itself — “scratching one’s own itch” and all that.)

That’s why I conclude my post with an invitation for Facebook developers to attend the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View on December 3-5. The IIW workshops — going on since early 2005 — are among the most productive I’ve ever been to. Great work comes out of them, every time. And we’re going to need it now, becaused we’re sharing enormous amounts of personal and social information online through Facebook and other “social networks”. What’s done with that data should be our concern, and not just the concern of those who make or spend money “targeting” us with better message rifles.

Over at Linux Journal, I just posted Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois. It begins,

The subject is equally geeky, wonky and important. You might wanna check it out.

As with yesterday’s map, this is a .jpg I put together from this .pdf at the San Diego County Emergency Homepage. Click on it to see it in full size. Other sandiegofire maps are at taoe.org, map.sdsu.edu. and SignOnSanDiego.com.

Here’s the latest Ranch Fire map.

And, speaking of the demand side supplying, dig Network News in a Box: a free grassroots news collection/distribution tool in response to breaking news events.

Consolidated #sandiegofire Twitter Tweets.

The Red Sox are up 12-1 in the bottom of the 5th, an inning that’s lasted half an hour, with runners advancing nearly every at-bat. Eight out of nine starters have at least one run. Two out right now, bases loaded.

The reliever just walked a guy home. 13-1.

Reminds me of a story from Ball Four, the classic book by Jim Bouton. Jim was a former fastballer who lost his stuff, but came back after learning how to throw a knuckle-ball. He was pitching for the late Seattle Pilots in a losing game. The manager, Joe Schultz, came out to the mound. Jim said Joe Schultz was the perfect name for a baseball manager, and the guy had the perfect manner as well. Ever wonder what managers tell pitchers out there on the mound? In this case it was something like, “Hey, kid. Whaddaya say ya throw ‘em some low smoke, we’ll go across the street and pound some Budweiser.”

It’s one of those times for the Rockies.

[Later…] Thanks to Glenn for the corrections (including the quote).

Dave:

Exactly. Here’s another nugget:

It’s not so much a power shift from supply to demand, but the increased ability of everybody to supply (not “generate”) products, opinions, ideas, whatever. This is much bigger than Silicon Valley, or anybody into Big Supply, can imagine. Even after living on the Net all these years.

I know there are exceptions. But the rules stand.

1) Ignore traffic rules. They are advisory and not binding, unless a cop wants to get technical.

2) Drive in the middle. You need to keep your options open. If a rare dotted line actually marks a boundary between lanes, straddle it.

3) Don’t look for street signs. They aren’t there. Only side streets have signs. And only some of those.

4) Be ready to dodge pedestrians. They don’t look and are dumb as geese, crossing anywhere they feel like it, in complete oblivity to danger.

5) Block intersections. Otherwise the cross traffic won’t stop for you.

6) Pull in front of moving traffic. There are no breaks. You have to make them for yourself.

7) Don’t signal. You might give something away.

8] Park anywhere. There aren’t enough spaces anyway.

9) Don’t expect road names to make sense. The “Mystic Valley Parkway”, for example, appears and disappears in many places all across Boston. And not just in Halloween season.

10) Expect construction delays and detours. It sometimes happens that all bridges and tunnels in Boston are closed at once, with no signage hinting toward alternatives.

1) Cross any street, anywhere, any time. Your species was here first. The fast metal things just have to adapt.

2) Don’t look left or right. Stay with your purpose. You’re here to cross the road. Nothing else matters.

3) Ignore pedestrian traffic signals. The little white walking guy and the red hand are displayed at random and have no relationship to the signals for cars.

4) Follow the others. The bold and fearless pedestrians near you can show the way. Cross with them, but downstream a bit. If they misjudge, they get hit first.

5) Be preoccupied. Use your phone, study the pavement, lose yourself in thought. You have a life. Watching traffic isn’t part of it.

Northwestern’s Medilll School of Journalism has long been in the first rank of J-schools, right up there with Columbia, Missouri, Berkeley, Texas, Michigan… In fact, Google puts Medill right behind those, in that order, in a search for “School of Journalism”.

Yet here’s Medill committee to explore suggestions for new name, in The Daily Northwestern.

It begins,

The piece goes on to quote a number of students on the matter, and closes the piece with the only source that makes complete sense:

Back in the middle of the piece, there’s this:

Let’s hope the trustees listen to Ms. Davis.

Meanwhile, “School of Journalism” has already been dropped from the Medill home page. It’s just MEDILL now. The About Page says,

I’m sure they teach well and do good work. But Journalism and “Integrated Marketing Communications” — a buzzphrase if there ever was one — should, at most, have squat to do with each other. Here’s what Medill says about the latter at its page:

Well, the one upside I see here is that maybe I could talk to some of these people about VRM, and how “relationship management” should go two ways and not just one. But I’m sure, if we have that conversation, it won’t be anywhere near the subject of Journalism.

Terry Heaton has similar thoughts on the matter.

Lanna Action for Burma, a new Thai blog, is running a Panty Power Campaign against the government next door, in Burma. I’m not making this up. Here’s what it says:

SPDC is the State Police and Development Council, which rules Burma, brutally.

The pointer comes from a friend in Thailand who says this thing is serious — or about as serious as things like this can be. Except there is nothing else like this. But I’m not there and have no idea.

Meanwhile, Violet Cho of The Irrawaddy writes this in “Panties for Peace” Campaign Wins Wide Support:

The “Panties for Peace” campaign aimed at Burma’s military regime is gaining momentum, with the establishment of a committee to drum up support in Thailand.

The campaign began on October 16, with women throughout the world sending packages to Burmese embassies containing panties. Burma’s superstitious generals, particularly junta chief Than Shwe, believe that contact with any item of women’s wear deprives them of their power.

“Panties for Peace” campaigns have sprung up in Australia, Europe, Singapore—and now Thailand, where a Lanna Action for Burma committee has been formed in Chiang Mai to support the feminine protest.

Ying Tzarm, a co-founder of Lanna Action for Burma, told The Irrawaddy that the campaign was aimed at undermining the superstitious beliefs of the military regime.

Liz Hilton, a supporter of the Lanna Action for Burma and a member of the Empower foundation, said that by sending underwear to the men of Burma’s overseas embassies women would be delivering a strong message to the regime.

Beats going to war, seems to me.

I have a paranoid but helpful habit when I travel: When I get out of a taxi, I always memorize the number of the cab, just in case. For example, right now I see two cabs off to my right, lined up at Mt. Auburn Street at JFK in downtown Cambridge, where I’m sitting on a park bench in front of Peet’s Coffee. One is Cambridge 119, the other is Cambridge 129.

I usually remember the cab number for only a minute or so at best, but I figure that gives me enough time to make a call if I suddenly remember I left something on the seat. (Yes, this is a Know Thyself lesson.) Now I’m going to do the same with buses.

Because a few minutes ago, soon as I got off the #77 bus at Chauncy Street, I knew I had left my wallet on the seat, under some cast-off newspapers. In an instant, the whole sequence of events replayed in my mind: How had just walked out of the bakery with a fresh cappuchino and picked up a free paper. How the bus pulled up almost immediatly, so I had to hurry to pull my Charlie Card out of my wallet while stuffing the paper under my arm and holding my coffee while getting on the bus. How I stuck my wallet in my mouth like a beagle chomping a stick while I held the coffee in one hand and used my other hand to press the Charlie card onto the card reader, and doing that while the bus lurched forward. How I felt good about keeping my balance while working my way back to the seats behind the rear door. How I set down my wallet on the aisle seat, moved some newspapers off the window seat and onto my wallet, then set the coffee down on the papers before setting my bag at my feet, all while sitting down at the window seat and starting to read a sports story in the newspaper and taking my first gulp of coffee.

Now the wallet was on the bus, and I was on the sidewalk, breathing the fumes of the departing 77bus.

So I did the only sensible thing: I ran after the bus. Stops are frequent on Mass Ave, so maybe I had a chance of catching this one. I began to gain as the bus approached the stop at Cambridge Common, but the bus had the light and zoomed right through the intersection. Then it did the worst thing: it leapfrogged another 77 bus way down near Church Street, turned left to burrow into the ground under Harvard Square, and went out of sight.

Then I spotted two other busses approaching Mass Ave on my side of Cambridge Common, so I ran up to the first one and jumped on as the driver let off a passenger. Between gasps I told him what had happened and asked him what I should do.

“Stand behind the yellow line,” he said. “It’s safer.”

I moved back.

“Did you see the number of the bus?”

“It was a 77 bus.”

“No, the number on the bus. Every bus has a number.”

“Nope.”

“Was the driver a white guy or a black guy?”

“White, I think.”

“Okay. Hang on.”

He drove the bus down the ramp and past the stop under Harvard Square, to emerge on the far side, facing a series of busses queued up across the intersection, ready to start their routes.

“See? Two 77 busses in the back there. I think the second one is yours.”

I jumped out, ran across the intersection, and knocked on the door of the first 77 bus. The guy let me in. I told him what happened, and he waved toward the back. I looked. Sure enough it wasn’t the right bus.

So I got off through the back door and went to the bus the other driver said would be mine. The driver, who was white, said “Yes, I remember you. Check back there.”

I did. The pile of papers was right where I left it, with my wallet under them. The driver was impressed.

“Wow”, he said. “It was really there.”

“I knew it was”, I said, and re-told my part of the brief saga.

“Glad it worked out for ya. Doesn’t always happen.” he said. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” I said, and got off the bus. It was #4109.

The map above is a .jpg I put together from this large .pdf at a link off the San Diego County Emergency page. It’s from 6pm today, Pacific time. I like this one because it gets down nearly to the street level, and answers specific questions in the minds of millions of people who either live there, or know people who live there (as do we, for example).

Other excellent sandiegofire maps are at taoe.org and map.sdsu.edu. Some are more recent than the one above.

The Ranch Fire also continues to grow. This map shows its perimeters. And this aerial photo, taken in January 2006, shows that same area, still covered with vegetation, now mostly burned off:

Paul Watson: Software may let you have 3000 friends but your brain doesn’t.

A few years ago, when Orkut was new and hot, Rael Dornfest demonstrated the standare social software friend-confirmation protocol by walking up to people, pushing his face into theirs and saying “YOU ARE MY FRIEND! YES OR NO!” Nailed it, that.

10 Useful Secrets the Major Airlines Don’t Want You to Know, from TravelHacker, via Britt Blaser, whom I’ve never properly thanked for all those nice things he said on my birthday. (That’s a hint to myself to come back at Britt with the same in a few days.)

I’m just dumping notes here, as they come in (and I can get out from meetings and stuff).

KPBS is, commendably, staying on top of the fire situation, with a number of live streams. For yours, check this page here. Unfortunately, it all seems to be Windows Media. I can’t make it work on Linux (or even the Windows media stuff on a Mac), but your listenage may vary. (Could be they have .mp3 or other streams and I’m missing it.)

KPBS has a volunteer page.

Question: Have there been bigger evacuations than this one in California? Ever? I suppose Katrina and some of the coastal Florida and Texas hurricanes pushed more away from homes, but I’m not sure.

rimoftheworld.net is updating on the San Bernardino Mountain fires. Can’t get on it right now, but it’s there.

Unrelated, but we have turkeys in Boston.

Sheila Lennon on Paul McNamara on Jim Forbes’ Fireblogging. Many links and stories at all three of those.

BloggersBlog has lots of sandiegofire links.

Sandiegofire twits: viss, hannabananna, numist, nateritter.

Fire map.

San Diego County Emergency page. It has maps in .pdf form.

Here’s the problem. For me, anyway.

I believe the Net is an open place. Same with the Web.

I also believe private walled gardens on the Web are fine things. Nothing wrong with them.

My problem is when the former starts looking and acting like the latter. And that’s why I’m already tired of Facebook. The “friend request” list (top item to the left there) is one I’ve whittled down from a much higher number. If I could gang-whittle them, I might be more interested, but the routine still involves declining to check off which of many different ways I met somebody (”both owned the same dog”, “set up by a mutual ex-boss” or whatever), and other time-sucks. Not to mention that the site takes many seconds to load, or to bring up email, or whatever. At least for me.

The big challenge for Facebook, as it has been for AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and everybody else who ever ran a walled garden, is to make their “platform” something that sits on the Net and the Web, not something that substitutes for it. Facebook’s mail, for example, is a substitute. If there’s a way I could get Facebook mail with my IMAP or POP client, I’d rather do that. (Can you, by the way? I doubt it, but I dunno.)

Anyway, lif’e’s too short, and this list of stuff is too long. If you’re waiting for me to respond to a poke or an invitation,or a burp or any of that other stuff, don’t hold your breath. Or take offense. I’ve got, forgive me, better things to do.

Inciweb, the wildfire Incident Information System is following four California fires:

Grass Valley is northwest of Lake Arrowhead. Inciweb reports 113 structures lost and 1500 threatened. Slide is west of Green Valley Lake. So far 25 homes are burned and 400 are threatened. Road closures include all highways west of Big Bear Dam: 138, 18 and 330. Ranch is west of the Grapevine (I-5) and near Castaic. Here’s a fire perimiter map: a 41,000-acre oval surrounding Piru Lake. Former fires in the region (including, to the west, the Day Fire of last year) are expected to make containment easier that would otherwise be the case. So far 14 boats have been lost. The fire includes the Buckweed and Magic fires, which are converging with this one.

I’m guessing that Inciweb is not covering the San Diego fires because they don’t involve national forest land. But I’m not sure.

Meanwhile, where are the perimiter maps for the San Diego fires? What we need most are clear indications of which neighborhoods, which streets, which towns, are threatened or already lost. If any of ya’ll have that info, post it in the comments below. Thanks.

[Later…] My sister just turned me on to the latest from In the twinkling of an eye, the blog of Serge Rey, professor and chair of the Geography Department at San Diego State University. Here’s one of his latest fire maps. And another. Also these. Scroll down. Many maps there. Scary.

Serge also weighed in here, while I was posting the above. Got that last link from his comment.

That headline occurred to me as I was reading Jay Rosen’s Formula for Online News Success at MediaShift Idea Lab (via Ben Tesch), right after following the latest from Nate Ritter on the San Diego fire situation (tag: sandiegofire), including his Twitter feed, which demonstrates Twitter as a kind of live news router. (As do Chris Messina’s Twitter hashtags.) The Union-Tribune is now also flowing news at sosdfireblog.blogspot.com. Found that via Nate, along with Cat Dirt Sez, another San Diego fire blogger. Also Brian Auer. And Califorinia Fire Followers Set Twitter Ablaze, by Michael Calore..

And thus the Live Web emerges.

[Later…] 4:32am PDST: This post shows up on a Google Blogsearch search for sandiegofire (sorted either by date or by relevance), but not yet on Technorati or on Google (where the top/lucky result is the http://s.technorati.com/sandiegofire).

[Later again…] Here’s the right Technorati search, to include all authority levels. (My blog doesn’t have high authority, at least not yet. And my search default was set for high authority when I did the search the first time, above. So my post in fact was indexed quickly and I just missed it the first time.)

Pulling the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown in Burba (here’s the .pdf) has just been released by the Open Net Initiative, and the most important story it tells is about how the story is told. The summary:

Read the whole thing.

Live.com used to have a great map search that yielded very nice 3-d images of the landscape — much better than what you’d get with Google Maps. Worked on every browser I tried.

Alas, this now appears to be a Windows-only thing. Now if I click on 3D, I get “Virtual Earth 3D is not supported for your browser. For a list of supported browsers, see Help.” Near as I can tell from Help, Virtual Earth 3D is a Windows Thing, so I’m SOL, along with the growing number of other folks who don’t use Windows.

Anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about my aunt. We were at her house in Maine over the weekend. She has a Windows PC. When we tried getting a 3D map going at Live.com on her machine, we were led to a very long install process that ended with a message saying it wouldn’t work without something having to do with hardware accelleration. So we gave up.

But afterwards her PC ran slower, and now insists on trying to run Live Search, no matter what, when she runs Internet Explorer. My aunt would like help in making it go away. I’m not there, but I figure there are some Windows experts among ya’ll who can post suggestions in the comments below. Thanks.

Thirty-four crocodiles.

More than 100 times faster than WiFi? suggests that chips transmitting wirelessly in the 60GHz spectrum, where waves are milimeters long, would be a practical replacement for Wi-Fi, or other forms of wireless transmission.

I think the advantages here are high, but over very short-ranges — feet or yards — given the relatively low penetrating power of radio waves at frequencies that high. But… I dunno. My RF understanding grew up on waves ranging in lengths from towers to tonsils. Could be this new stuff has a lot more promise than I’m ready to guess.

I’ve been looking for news about the Malibu Fire. Inciweb has nothing (though it does cover the Ranch Fire in the Ventura County back country, which has grown past 29,000 acres and looks kind of ominous, though hardly as sexy as one that drives celebrities into the sea). Technorati has 408 results as of this morning (6:18am, Pacific, 9:18am Eastern), including a pretty big pile of videos. About half are more than a hundred days (or hundreds of days) old. Some of the personal videos are hysterical and/or lame beyond endurance. Why post them at all?

What I want to know right now, for example, is whether the “Malibu castle” that we heard burned down (over the radio last night) is the landmark that overlooks the Malibu town center. I see here, on a YouTube’d Fox News report, that indeed it is. Or was. This video report is helpful too, from KCBS/2. S

With its ability to toggle between date and relevance searches, Google Blogsearch gets us to this post about this post from 1pm yesterday, of a Channel 2 TV report. More recent is a Google Earth blog post that points to a CNN report from 1:45am Eastern, this morning. Most of the blog reports go to TV reports, such as this one from KNBC/4. Or this one from KCBS/2.

Technorati defaults to date search, and also lets you filter by “authority”, and that helps some, but probably filters out some good stuff too. (My old blog had high authority. This new one had none at first, but is doing a little better now. Not sure it would make the cut for that last search. We’ll see, I guess.)

If there’s any solid citizen journalism on this fire, I haven’t been able to find much of it — beyond the latest on blogging.la and in LA Observed. From what I can tell right now, your best first source is a Google News search. But I’m just one guy. Maybe one or more of the rest of ya’ll can show otherwise. Hope so.

Meanwhile, the fires will keep coming. They always do. So will the earthquakes and other disasters of our own and nature’s making. The Better Ways of gathering news, getting it out, and finding it in a hurry — you know, fast enough to save lives — have not yet been invented. The parts may be here, but the wholes are not. In fact, the holes are a helluva lot bigger.

Prediction: when the hole gets filled, a river will run through it. Many, in fact.

[Later..] Good comment here. Scott Rosenberg also runs with the river-running-through-it theme.

Driving through the Maine countryside today, I realized suddenly that it was time for Hal Crowther to weigh in on Something Important again. Hal used to do this weekly back when we were both several decades younger and living in North Carolina. I’m long gone, but Hal’s still there, putting out essays no less interesting but far less often.

Sure enough, my email tonight includes a note from a fellow ex-Carolinian, now living in Bangkok, pointing to Hal’s latest, Stop the presses: The future of the newspaper—without the paper. As usual, it’s strong coffee:

Even if you don’t agree, read on. It’s killer writing. They don’t get any better. Dig:

Then he turns around and hits blogs too:

Worse, he quotes Andrew Keen. But I’m willing to let that go, because Crowther does the job Keen botched. That job was to challenge, and not merely to deride. Sez Hal,

Well, crap was king in most newsrooms long before Don Henley wrote and sang Dirty Laundry. Really, is Rupert Murdoch any better or worse than William Randolph Hearst? But Hal’s right about every business model he trashes here. Including the one thanks to which countless bloggers have become no less obsessed with eyeballs than any other “journal” — traditional or otherwise — that lives mostly to serve ego and advertising. More importantly, he’s right that we haven’t found the business model that makes a living, and not just a cause, for full-time truth-hunters.

Difference is, I’m an optimist. One thing I want out of VRM is jobs for journalists, all working directly for the readers who comprise the market for truth — and not just for the advertising money that always threatened to currupt journalism, whether or not it succeeded.

In fact, it was for this very purpose that I applied for a Knight News Challenge grant, just a few hours under the wire last week. We’ll see how that goes (I’ve heard nothing, and can’t tell if the online application even went through), but I do want to get us there.

Too back you can’t resign a game in baseball the way you can in chess. Because that would be the merciful way to end to Game 7 of the ALCS. (Why don’t they call it the “penant race” any more?). The Sox are up 11-2 at the bottom of the 8th. They’re at home and the crowd is going nuts right now, right after Kevin Youkilis cracks a two-run homer off a giant Coke bottle high over the outfield. That was a homer you knew was coming, just like you did with J.D. Drew’s grand slam yesterday. It was Destiny. Only worse: for Cleveland, outscored 30-5 after going up 3 games to 1 in the series. Down but not out, the Sox began pounding the crap out of the ball. It didn’t even matter that some of their pitching sucked. They had the bats, and they were using them.

But will they beat the Rockies, which are on the hottest baseball streak in years?

I say, Sox in Six.

[Later…] Three great catches to end the game in the top of the 9th. Boston is heaven. The Sox are going to the Mountains. And the Mountains are coming to Boston. Should be a rocking series.

John Scalzi: …so much of the advice boils down, essentially, to this: “become a starfucker for more popular bloggers.” Lots of great quotable shit. I like this:

Much more good reading there. Via Kevin Marks.

At Chris Pirillo’s blog, John Blue asks, What does “innovation” really mean and what can I do to become “more innovative”? I have an idea but what do I do next? How do I find innovative people? How can my company be more innovative?

In the comments I reply,

This is unfair and wrong to folks like John, who do a lot of creative thinking about innovation. I’m just tired of hearing the word beaten like a drum.

John Quimby asks, Why is Newspaper 2.0 still Newspaper 0.2? His bottom lines:

Anybody up for doing an sbnewsriver on the South Coast? Datum: We did one once for the Day Fire, now well over a year ago. We should have had one for the Zaca Fire.

Land rush time: I just ran a whois for sbnewsriver.com. It isn’t taken. Neither is sbriver.com.

Enjoyed last night’s Bloggerdinnerbostonoct07. I brought my camera, but only took one picture, which isn’t even worth posting. That’s because it was too crowded for the lens I was using, at the places where I was standing; and also because the conversation was more important anyway.

It was interesting to come to an East Coast gathering where I knew maybe one in twenty people. (Though more than that knew me.) In the Bay Area, the ratio is usually reversed. Anyway, met a bunch of great new folks.

Boston to Earth: lots happening here.

Much more from Jeremiah, who turned me on to the event, and who points to all the pix tagged bloggerdinnerbostonoct07 too.

Here’s the problem with most news: it isn’t. It’s olds. It happened hours ago, or last night, or yesterday, or last month, or before whenever the deadline was in the news organization’s current “news cycle”. It’s not now.

Unless, of course, it’s been fed out through syndication and picked up by a news reader or feed search engine (e.g. Google Blogsearch or Technorati) that’s paying attention to how long ago something got posted.

Note that feeding is not cycling. Rivers don’t flow in circles.

News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It’s what’s happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened.

But what happened — news as olds — is how we’ve understood news for as long as we’ve had newspapers. The happening kind of news came along with radio, and then television. Then we called it “live”. Still, even on the nightly news, what’s live is talking heads and reports from the field. The rest is finished stuff.

There’s a difference here, a distinction to be made: one as stark and important as the distinction between now and then, or life and death. It’s a distinction between what’s live and what’s not.

This distinction is what will have us soon talking about the life of newspapers, rather than the death of them.

Because it’s not enough to be “online” or to have a “presence” on the Web.

To be truly alive, truly new, truly part of the life of its readers, a newspaper needs to be on the live web and not just the static one. It needs to flow news, and not just post it.

It needs to flow rivers of news, or newsrivers.

A year from now every newspaper will have a newsriver — if not many of them. Most papers will copy other papers, of course. But one paper will start the trend, take the lead, and break the ice that’s damned up their purpose in static sites and tombed archives.

One of them will see that there’s a Live Web as well as a static one. And that the Live Frontier is where the action is, and will be.

I’m betting they’ll follow the New York Times, just like they always do.

If that happens the Times will, as it has done before, follow Dave Winer, who has been showing them how with NYTimesriver for years.

As usual, Dave has been taking the Times, and all of journalism, to school. (Not that they want to go, but he’s taking them anyway.) His latest post is A new view of NY Times news, and it’s a great demonstration of open source development out here in the everyday world. The dude isn’t just talking about the cheap-as-water billion-dollar idea that will save the industry’s ass. He’s actually doing the work of making it happen. He’s thinking out loud and demonstrating his thinking, right where everybody can see it and put it to use.

I was just wondering if the term “river” has even come up at the ONA (Online News Association) conference in Toronto this week. Let’s see…

A search for ona and toronto on Technorati brings up 29 results. When I add river or newsriver the results go to zero in each case. When I search for ona and toronto on Google Blogsearch, I find 3,215 results, which narrow down to 440 (all spam blogs, or splogs) when I add river, and zero when I substitute newsriver.

Let’s see what they say a year from now at the next ONA. I’m betting that newsriver will be one of the top topics at the show.

To Andria Krewson at Global Vue for the kudos. Good stuff there, btw. Also at Andria’s other blog.

Just got turned on to SeatExpert.com, which competes with SeatGuru.com, a service I use all the time. Both are exceptionally helpful for choosing seats on airplanes. Always keep one or both open when you choose seats on your booked flights.

Not long ago I had to change flight plans while in the United Red Carpet Club at SFO. The person behind the counter was helpful, but couldn’t answer questions such as “Which window seats are missing windows on this 757?”. So I pulled out my laptop, brought up SeatGuru.com, checked out the United 757-200 page and found out that windows are missing on rows 11 and 12. When I showed the site to the person behind the counter, she was amazed, and gratified that people other than United (with huge help from customers, actually) were filling in the airline’s blanks. Now I see that SeatExpert covers the same bases. With more detail in some cases. The competition should make both better.

Kevin Marks: In the Blogosphere, like Lake Woebegon, everyone really is above average.

China is reportedly blocking and redirecting queries of Google Blogsearch, Yahoo and other search sites, all to its own Baidu site. While one can see this in political or economic terms, it’s much deeper and sadder than that.

There has long been a trend toward seeing the Net as a plumbing system for “content” all owned and filled public and private entities that can be muscled into selectively valving whatever flows through it — and not as a worldwide “place” with a nature beyond containment by countries or companies. That’s what it was designed to be, but in reality it’s not.

Can we protect the Net as something non-national? I doubt it. It’s been two years since I wrote Saving the Net, and not much has been done. Today in most countries* the Net has little or no legal standing as something other than a “medium” (pipes, that is, like the cable TV and telephone lines that “carry” it into our homes and businesses) for pumping “content”. Worse, lobbying forces anchored in the “pipes & content” conceptual system are more than formidable, especially here in the U.S.

I see little cause for optimism here, beyond whatever spine the search engines and other large sites can muster when doing business with countries like China — and others who share China’s belief that censorship (for whatever reason) is a Good Thing.

* Maybe some of the rest of ya’ll have details here. Bring ‘em on.

Stuart Henshall asks, Are Many Blogging? He suggests one reason some may be blogging less is that “You are no longer on Doc’s blogroll”. ouch.

Anyway, I’m blogging more today, because … I don’t know. Just a lot of spillover from other work, mostly. On the whole, however, I’m blogging less. I think that’s because I’m working more on various projects. I’m also spread around more. See here, here and (again soon, maybe) here.

James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti. Thanks to Jim Thompson for the lead.

Every family has a black sheep. That’s what Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said after discovering that Lynne Cheney revealed that Barack and Dick are 8th cousins.

From TechRepublican:

On the Q side, the TechPresident folks have just launched 10Questions.com, with help from the The New York Times Editorial Board, MSNBC and a total of 40 sponsors. Fun to see that the first video question was posted by my old pal Ruby Sinreich. :

On the answer side, here are the editors:

Meanwhile, I can’t resist pointing to the Onion News Network (ONN) video story, Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters. Hard to believe it’s not true. Maybe 10Questions can turn that around.