Thursday, December 29, 2005

Wave high

Turns out I shot Frank Payter's place. Note Frank's note on the photo.

Rules from the road

Val Landi explains why it's hard to get even a highly praised book published.

Hope he succeeds.

Another roadblock for sploggers to route around

Lots of bloggers are linking to this Inside Adwords post as a sign that Google is doing some helpful stuff to prevent the gaming of AdWords and AdSense. Quality Score, quality-based minimum bids and landing page are all involved.

For sight

Tristan Louis has an interesting list of predictions for 2006. David Weinberger: Top Tens, plus pointage to Ethan Zuckerman's BlogAfrica 2005 Quiz (relying on chance, I got 3/10 right). Rex Sorgatz. Provisioning. Also, Jim McGee on Paul Saffo's rules for forecasting.

Steve wonder

My old pal Stephen Lewis has updated Bubkes, his blog which is anything but.

Unlike yours truly, Steve is a professional photographer, among too many other vocations (and avocations) to mention. He's also one of the smartest, funniest and most knowlegeable people I know: a man for whom polymath seems an understatement.

Keep on Doug'n

Doug Kaye explains some new unbusines-model changes at IT Conversations:

As I've described in nearly every public presentation and interview in the past six months, we're closing down the Tip Jar and replacing it with a public-radio style paid membership to support the growth of our new non-profit network. (NB: Membership will NOT be a requirement for access to our audio.) It's a risky transition, but one we have to make in order to move to the next phase of listener-supported audio on the 'Net.

This is an extremely Good Move. I've believed for years that the best "with" (in addition to "because") model for making money on the Net, especially for amateurs and nonprofits, is the public broadcasting one. One additional piece of advice for everybody using this model: make it as easy as possible for customers (don't just think of them as 'donors' or 'supporters') to pay for the goods.

This is where public radio and television fall down terribly, and why they remain so dependent on fund-raising marathons that interrupt programming for weeks at a time, and subtract enormous value from the very offerings they ask people to pay for. Most public station home pages (KQED's for example) are chock full of promotional crap (and even Flash animations). Feh.

Maybe, as he so often does (without even trying, it seems), Doug can take the lead here. Time for the rest of the public broadcasting community to follow its best veteran iconoclast.

The Geek Electronics Unconference

This is so freaking cool.

The BubbleShare folks have set up a CES 2006 Wiki to help folks find affordable accommodations in Las Vegas during next week's CES show. Among other things.

Speaking of which, there will be a CESCamp of nightly post-conference meetups.

In other words, a counter-unconference for the most conference-y of all conferences.

I so want to hack CES, and the whole freaking consumer electronics industry. Damn! Let's rock!

Big thanks to Jeneane Sessum for the pointer.

By the way, for the last several years I've reported on CES for Linux Journal. Related articles are here, here, here and here, here, here, here and here.

Negative bonus link points go to CES itself, for having, as Jeneane points out, an loud annoying Flash intro on its home page. If you want to know why so many people hate Flash, click on that link.

Advice to Macromedia: track down the party responsible for that thing, and tell them to stop it.

The edge of days

Here's another one. Sunset last night was actually more of a Southern and Eastern affair than a Western one.

Perhaps mercifully, we slept through sunrise this morning. Looks like it was too hazy to see anyway.

Bonus link: Rex on the calendar view, which I didn't know about until now, either.

It's moving to see the calendar for Septermber 2001, with this series of our friend Susan Camusi on a boat trip out of Santa Barbara, then see this series of Susan, posted on June 26, 2005, which ends with another trip on the same boat, to scatter her ashes.