March 2009
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A call for IIW participation
The Internet Identity Workshop , aka IIW, started as the Identity Gang way back in ’05, and has since grown (thanks more to Kaliya and Phil than to yours truly) to become a fixture event in the calendars of many developers and other folks supportive of development work toward working user-driven identity systems. (These today… Continue reading
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Looking over St. Louis
Got these shots of St. Louis and the convergence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers while flying to Austin by way of Chicago two Fridays ago. You can see the Gateway Arch, right of center, Busch Stadium, the Edward Jones Dome, the City Museum, and lots of barge traffic on the river. I actually didn’t… Continue reading
2008_03_13, aerial, bos-ord-aus, Busch Stadium, Canon Powershot 850is, City Museum, eads, Eads Bridge, Edward Jones Dome, Gateway Arch, Illinois, infrastructure, Martin Luther King Bridge, mississippi, Mississippi River, Missouri River, Photography, Poplar Street Bridge, St. Louis, ual, united, united arilines, windowseat, windowshot -
Can journals live on subscriptions?
Some do. My long-time favorite magazine is The Sun. I bought one of the first issues Sy Safransky sold on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, in 1974, and found myself writing regularly for the magazine for several years after that, watching it improve with every issue. Back near the turn of the 80s, Sy and… Continue reading
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After the advertising bubble bursts
Thesis #74 of The Cluetrain Manifesto says, “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We wrote that in 1999, when everybody thought that advertising was going to be THE model for businesses on the Internet. The crash came less than a year later. Then the next bubble came, and this time everybody thought (surprise!)… Continue reading
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Sounds of place
We were driving somewhere the other day when the kid asked if he could play around with the iPhone for awhile. Among the podcasts I subscribe to is The Best of YouTube — although, as with most of the too-many podcasts I subscribe to, I hardly ever watch it. I wasn’t paying much attention to… Continue reading
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Fasting and foods
I haven’t eaten today, and it’s well past noon. I spent much of the last couple hours enjoying a long Skype call with Stephen Lewis, who is currently in Turkey, and whose latest post dilates deliciously on an old Mimas Foods bag — “a relic of a turning point in the economic and social history… Continue reading
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A capella wonderful
Whatever else you’re doing, tune right now to WERS. If you’re not in Boston, here’s the online stream. The show is All Acapella, and it’s freaking amazing. There is so much outstanding a capella music being made right now, by college students alone. Stevie Wonder’s “As” is playing now, sung by the Stanford University Everyday… Continue reading
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Collateral casualties from blog spam bomb
I just deleted a heap of blog spam comments. I think I may have hit one or two legit ones in the process. If so, forgive and try again. Continue reading
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An open response to OMNI hotels
Just got a survey from OMNI hotels, inquiring about my stay there during SXSW in Austin earlier this week. Here’s what I wrote under “Please provide more details on the missing amenity in your guest room. “: The wi-fi signal strength went up and down, and most of the time was unusable. Twice I… Continue reading
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There is no try, cont’d
Props to Joe Andrieu for pointing out the Cult of Done, for which I am constitutionally disqualified, but wish I were not. Why? Because I: 1) Bite off more than I can eschew, 2) Keep more balls on the floor than anybody I know, and 3) Plan for my epitaph to read “He was almost… Continue reading
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Information Age dawn still breaking
It’s fun to fact-check a futurist when plenty of future has already gone by. Here’s some of what Alvin Toffler wrote thirty years ago in The Third Wave: Humanity faces a quantum leap forward. It faces the deepest social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time. Without clearly recognizing it, we are engaging in buiding… Continue reading
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Igo 2 Oggi
Deep in the nerve center of Harvard University, in the building called Holyoke that overlooks Harvard Square, is a corridor which in some ways resembles a public marketplace. There’s a pharmacy, a book store, a Harvard schwag shop, and windows through racks of pastries into the Au bon Pain next door. In the middle of… Continue reading
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Service failure inversion
SXSW this year is the first big conference I’ve ever attended where the wi-fi is not only solid, but fast. I’ve meaured a steady 20Mb upstream and down, over and over. HUGE high five to Hugh Forrest and the crew for making that happen. At the same time, this is the first conference I’ve ever… Continue reading
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Much is technically wrong
Twitter says “Something is technically wrong”. The hotel wi-fi is up and down. Mostly down. My Sprint data card gets squat from this hotel. AT&T is borderline useless at #sxsw, probably because 90% of the attendees have iPhones. My wife is headed off to Europe in the morning, and I’m trying to get her going… Continue reading
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As seen off TV
Check out this video. I make a damn fool of myself about halfway into the thing. Continue reading
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Sums of differences
Here at SXSW there are two conferences happening on the same floors: Interactive and Film. Interactive is mostly computing geeks. Film is mostly film geeks. The main visual difference: tatoos and laptops. In the film crowd there is a high tatoo/laptop ratio. In the interactive crowd, there is a high laptop/tatoo ratio — lthough many… Continue reading
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A well-hacked planet at work
Ran straight into Wes Felter at #sxsw yesterday right after he sent me an email I hadn’t seen yet suggesting we sit and talk. Which we promptly did. Very productive conversation. Wes will also have cool ideas to share at the FSF Libre Planet 2009 Conference this coming weekend at Harvard’s Science Center. I’ll be… Continue reading
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Naturally good
Had a great breakfast with Rex at the Bouldin Creek Coffee House and Café in Austin this morning. It’s about 1.5 miles from downtown on South 1st. Found it on Yelp. Great little place. I had two vegetarian egg variant tacos. One was a veggie chorizo thing (I forget the details), and it was outstanding.… Continue reading
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Quote du jour
Clay Shirky in Newsxpapers and Thinking the Unthinkable: …what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. Great essay. Required re-reading. Continue reading