Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Better coffee for less

Slate nails it. I usually order a double short cappuchino. Try it. Much better coffee, much better deal. Everything from 'tall' through "venti" is a coffee-flavored hot milk bomb.

In Summer, order this.

For 'casting out loud

Doug Kaye explains the new Conversation Network. Perspective: IT Conversations is the network's flagship.

Lesson

Julie Leung: Why art is alive (discovery #2 in a series). I'm ready to write something new. To start a new page. To find a new role on the stage.

Yes

A friend from back home just asked, Wouldn't it be cool if all restaurants posted their menus on the web in XML?

Campsite

Mashup Camp. The unconference for the uncomputer. I mentioned it yesterday too, but it's been severely updated. And it's happening soon.

Because companies would rather reward themselves than award individuals

Says here the MacArthur Foundation

awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

Here is a list of past and current fellows.

After watching Apple and other companies leverage — usually without credit — the extraordinary creative work, mostly of individuals rather than of companies, to bring blogging, podcasting and RSS to the world, I think it's high time for the MacArthur folks to award some grants encouraging more of the same.

Hear it there first

Looking forward to being on RSSRay's inaugural eCommerce RSS Radio Show today at 10am Pacific. Of course the show will also be in the series' podcast archives.

[Later... 10:13am... on live now. Taking calls. Didn't catch the number, though... Okay, here we go... 1-888-327-0061. 1-858-678-8983 is the international number.]

Falling down the Oh Well

IM with one of the most committed Mac users I know:

well, I won't be getting a mac-intel laptop any time soon.

why?

no PCMCIA!

I'm typing this on my indispensible EVDO card right now

shit. didn't know that.

no way you're gonna pry that from me

bummer

yeah, they have a new standard, but it's not backward compatible

why apple would abandon something that almost every current laptop has, is crazy

That would be the same kind of EVDO device that Steve Gillmor was using yesterday at the Steve Jobs keynote, also making his PowerBook a wi-fi bridge to the Internet, enabling both of us to cover the whole thing, live.

[Later...] Tim Jarrett explains the issue.