March 2008
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Quote du jour
Cable is not a monopoly. You can choose from any cable company you want in America, just by moving your house. — Brad Templeton, at F2C Continue reading
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Ludwig, Herbert and Anne-Sophie at 3am
Before crashing in bed at 3am, I heard the last (third) movement of what may be my favorite piece of music: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. It was an amazing version, subtle and silky-smooth, yet highly emphatic. The phrasing verged on speech. Turns out it was Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert Von Karajan.… Continue reading
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Case in disappoint
After a delayed plane that got to Dulles around midnight, a car rental agency that took most of an hour to get me a car that worked, a long drive to D.C., and three tries at getting a hotel room with a door that would open (with an equal number os schleps up and down… Continue reading
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Keep state geodata open
The only reason to close state geography data is to protect a few existing monopoly businesses. Making that data available to the public is a good idea in any case. But the big pro-business reason is that it makes countless businesses possible. Remember the world without GPS? The world with it is better. For countless… Continue reading
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Getting airports and hotels out of the pay toilet business
I upload a lot of photos. It’s almost always an ordeal unless I’m at home or work. That’s because I get fast upload speeds in both places. At home I have a fiber connection to the Net with 20Mb symmetrical service — a rare and good thing. I don’t know the upstream speed at work,… Continue reading
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Attention WordPressers
Take it from somebody who lost at least one whole blog entirely from the consequences not upgrading WordPress: Upgrading your installation or patch is essential. So read this from Ian Kallen. Also what he added by IM yesterday: What’s happening is: spammers are taking over blogs, posting link farm links on them, obscuring their… Continue reading
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Journaling on journalism
Taking notes on the Media Re:public gathering here in Los Angeles. “Its not clear to me that one unit of increase in media equals one unit of increase in democracy” — Ernest Wilson, of the USC Annenberg School of Communications. Arianna Huffington: “Bloggers suffer from compulsive disclosure disorder, and journalists suffer from attention deficit disorder.”… Continue reading
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School of Journalism Marketing and Stuff
Back last Fall, when news came that the Medill School of Journalism was thinking about changing its name (and in fact had already dropped “of Journalism” from its website index page), I wrote a post saying, basically, that this was wrong as well as dumb. In fact, I thought it was so wrong, and so… Continue reading
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The Kurse of KFI
I just learned that KFI’s new tower went down while it was going up. This was the long-awaited replacement for the tower that was knocked down in 2004. Here’s what I wrote about it back then. It was delayed by local opposition to reconstruction, and the tower was a compromise design. (Here’s a story from… Continue reading
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Comms hell
Here at the Westin in Los Angeles, connectivity is pretty good — about a megabit in each direction. (For a fee, of course.) But the last two days, at the Hilton in Loma Linda and the University of Redlands, were terrible. I’m not sure if it was just because they blocked stuff (as was the… Continue reading
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BitTransmitters
More than a year ago I suggested to folks from Frontline that they put out their shows on BitTorrent, serving as the Alpha Seed. I’m pretty sure Dave Winer (at the same conference) said the same thing. Maybe I got the idea (like so many others) from Dave. I also remember thinking, if not saying,… Continue reading
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…you chew it well first.
Overheard lawyers talking: “It’s easier to pass the bar if …” Continue reading
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SOTWAWWLITB?
The word is TEOTWAWKI. Stands for The End Of The World As We Know It. Just heard it for the first time. Hmmm… How about SOTWAWWLITB? That’s for Start Of The World As We Would Like It To Be. Continue reading
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Cell companies vs. Internet
So I have this new laptop that won’t take my old EvDO card, which I long been using to get on the Net over Verizon’s system. It has it’s own phone number and account, but it treats the cell system as a big wi-fi network, effectively. I use it anywhere in I can’t get on… Continue reading
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Scaffolding the future
Had a long and deep conversation with Ryan Janssen last week, which he blogged here. I think it’s the first time that somebody has taken a biographical angle on understanding where I’m coming from on various topics, and it’s been interesting to continue the conversation with Ryan trough several copy edits on personal historical items.… Continue reading
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Appreciating aviation
Eight hours ago I was on the ground in Boston. Now I’m in a hotel room overlooking an intersection in San Bernardino. It took five hours flat to get from Boston to L.A., and the balance to pick up a rental car and laze my way back eastward to the hotel, to set myself up… Continue reading
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Betting on Free
I’m at Logan, moments from take-off for Los Angeles, so I won’t elaborate on Leveraging Free, my latest post at Linux Journal. Read and follow the links there for much more. See ya on the far coast… Continue reading
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Forrest on journalism
Forrest Sawyer gave a killer talk at The Future of Multi-Media Digital News & Cultural Networks, which was put on at UCSB last year by the Carsey-Wolf Center. I took part as well, on a panel that followed Forrest’s talk, speaking as a fellow with the Center for Information Technology and Society there. The pull-quote:… Continue reading
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Paleowebic
I’ve been trying lately to look up stuff online that happened before the Web. It’s like looking for fossils in atmosphere. And the paleowebic tools are pretty sucky. Take for example the San Jose Mercury News archive search. I happen to know there was a story in the business section of the paper in June… Continue reading