Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Core curriculum
Interesting talk by Thomas Barnett at PopTech. The latter link goes to the blog, which is chock full of interesting stuff. The guy is hard to pin down on an old left-right political map. In fact, he's trying to re-make that map.
Unfiltered
Effern at The Vision Thing says I'm pushing an agenda. An excerpt:
I think the more deeper point, and again, I will stand under the same light of scrutiny, is that what Doc Searls is pushing for is relevance. His engine for this appears to be Cluetrain, which if I understand Doc correctly, contains more prognostication than the entire works of Nostradamus and Jeanne Dixon, combined. So he exhorts "blogging", and "Linux", and "Open source", and "free markets" (exhale crack smoke). Basically, whatever makes people do the bobblehead thing, and more importantly, associate Doc's name with them. Yes, I'm harsh. Just freely voicing my opinion without doing it through "the filter".
On the other head, Jimbob likes it.
Bonus link: apennyfor on branding. I left a comment there.
Giving good masthead
I've been wanting to replace the pic up there at the top of my blog, which is now five years younger than I am. Meanwhile, Ken Coar finds a peculiar resemblance to a certain historic figure.
Back when he was famous, a lot of people said I looked like this guy.
More Bloggercon fodder
Ed Cone presents an interesting and unusual real-world use case for business blogging: Michael's DRMY Blog. Michael Dougherty is the Chairman and CEO of Kindermusik and Do-Re-Me & You! It's turning me into a better leader... I'm trying to improve customer loyalty and stickiness, and it helps when they find I’m trustworthy and real. The blog is the medium that works.
I'll add it to the list of topics we might want to visit in the Making Money session at Bloggercon.
Two degrees
I knew, when I heard about the crash of the Hendrick Motorsports plane, that it was likely I knew people who knew at least one of the ten who died. After all, I lived in North Carolina for nearly twenty years, and still have lots of friends and relatives there. So it turns out Ed Cone's the one. Among the dead was Jeff Turner, with whom I worked last summer on an article about the Hendrick team's use of technology. The place I visited was a happy, proud, close-knit shop. What a terrible blow for them all.
Perhaps not oddly, Ed's one of the North Carolina friends I've met since moving away — through blogging, of course.
I feel so used
Ahhhh. That explains it: Mary Hodder has figured out why a link to the rexblog is blogrolled on the earlier referenced new weblog, Monolo's Shoe Blog. Rex says, that Monolo blogger is one super fantastic (and funny) in-link strategist for pinging the referral-log-obsessed folks on Doc Searls' blogroll. For kicks, watch what happens in the coming days to the Technorati in-bound links numbers for the weblog: At this posting (10/25/04, 12:10 eastern) Technorati reports 12 links from 12 sources for the blog.
Errorism
Mitch Ratcliffe on the lost weapons of less-than-mass destruction: How big a blunder? How about 950 bombs, 19,000 dead and 95,000 wounded.
That is a screw-up of massive proportion. What possible excuse is there for this material being unprotected, for not dropping a huge special forces team in during the invasion to lock this down, since the IAEA told the Administration it was there about before the war?
Shifting the point
John C. Dvorak says Podcasting: Not Ready for Prime Time. Hm. I think of podcasting as an antidote to the whole idea of "prime time."
As usual, John isn't bashing the idea as much as it may seem. In fact, for me the takeaway quote is this one: The idea is excellent.
Full loon
We have a total lunar eclipse coming up tomorrow, visible over six continents. We'll miss most of it here in the West (I'm in Denver). But the whole thing will be visibe in most of North America and Europe, plus all of South America. Australia and the Far East are SOL.
Bonus fact, from SpaceWeather.com (which regretably still has no obvious way to link to the current page URL):
Sprawling sunspot 687 grew impressively during the weekend. It is now nearly 10 times wider than Earth and poses a threat for strong M-class solar flares.
They go on to give advice for seeing sunspots, which indeed are visible, if you're watching at sunset and there's enough dimming matter in the atmosphere (as we saw last year).