Experimenting with Microformats (in previous post)

0.2

Funny and informative

Mar 31, 2006 by anonymous website Slate

★★★★☆ Slate's editors and writers understand that they shouldn't take themselves too seriously. So the always-entertaining site gives you everything from toaster reviews (they like the DeLonghi) to smart political analysis from John Dickerson.

Sometimes it pays to Ask

Google is not the be all and end all of search. After a frustrating look through the NCAA site and Nytimes.com, I asked Google and Ask, "When is the Final Four?"

Google gave me garbage. Ask gave me the answer.

April 4 Update: OK, so maybe "garbage" is too strong a word for Google's results. Top result was the official NCAA site. Amazingly, that site didn't display the schedule information on its home page and, at least when I checked last week, there was no obvious link to the schedule information for the men's Final Four. But of course, that's the NCAA's bad, not Google's. Still, you can't argue with the fact that Ask beat Google on this one worse than Florida whopped UCLA last night.

Save the CoCo Times!? Anyone?

I worked at the Contra Costa Times for several years until 2002. What passion there was on the part of reporters was routinely beaten down by managers who ran the place more like an insurance office (then Executive Editor, now Publisher John Armstrong could talk for hours about revenue and circulation, but rarely if ever broached the topic of news), and by a never-ending round of buy-outs that drained once vibrant bureaus, sapped morale and had everyone wondering where they'd be working next week, month, year.

Not surprisingly, the community noticed the disarray every time they picked up the paper. So they picked it up less and less.

So I'm not surprised that, in the wake of McClatchy's announcement that they'll unload a dozen Knight Ridder papers, including the Times, there are campaigns to Save the Mercury News, Save the Pioneer Press, and Save the Monterey County Herald, but, alas, no evidence of a collective will to Save the Contra Costa Times.

Office ain't Dead Yet

Michael Arrington suggests AjaxWrite can be an Office killer. I'm skeptical. Sure, most people are buying the whole Office cow when all they want is the Word milk. But in pointing to Om's headscratching over a business model, Mike says,

"If people start using this as an alternative to Word, money can easily be made on advertising around the site, with a premium paid version."

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice fast little app without all the Word bloat. But I'll tell you, I can't ever see wanting to put up with ads when I'm in true writing mode. While reading/writing/surfing the Web. Fine. But if I'm working on the Great American Novel (and, of course, I am) I don't want the distraction. A premium version? Maybe. But I didn't buy office for my Dell and I still got WordPerfect with it. It may be very 80s, but it works fine for me.

I also have my doubts when he says,

"Will things like AjaxWrite have an impact on Microsoft’s Office revenues over time? Yeah, it must. Even so, Bill Gates says that he just doesn’t understand our infatuation with thin client versions of Word. That may be true, but at some point I expect Microsoft to come out with ad supported versions of their own clients…they’ll just wait, of course, until they have to. And Google has pushed the envelope with its recent acquisition of Writely."

I'm not that impressed with Google's history of handling acquisitions. Blogger's nice, but Microsoft was the Johnny-come-lately here and Spaces is booming. Picassa is nice, but not a category killer by any means. Keyhole had great results. Dodgeball hasn't really scaled to Google-type numbers, or has it? Orkut's useless. I'm not saying its Writely purchase won't keep the Office team up nights, but the track record is too patchy to assume the magic of Google search will rub off on this latest purchase.

I Want My Two Dollars Receipt!

In my (not so) friendly neighborhood Starbucks this morning, I had an experience that took me back. I was reminded of a time when I was a kid and the paper boy came to the door to collect. The tab is $6 or something and my dad hands the kid a $10 bill. As the kid's sticking the bills in his pocket and turning away, he asks, "do you want your change?"

My father does his best 'these kids today' face and denies the kid any kind of tip while informing him that he should rethink the "tip yourself" approach.

Well, the surly woman in the green apron didn't quite go that far, but she did ask, "Do you want your receipt?" If corporate chains are good for anything it's handing down rules banning their people from saying these kinds of things.

You are a person, not a gas pump that asks, "receipt: yes/no"

How about this? It's my receipt. Give it to me. If I don't want it, I'll let you know. And don't make it seem like my saying yes is a chore.

Bad week for Microsoft.

And it's only Thursday.

The Return of the Human

Interesting post from Jason at 37 Signals. I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing interesting, since the tension between human/computer decisions is at the heart of the project I'm working on. In broad terms, it's a product recommendation tool. I'm not at liberty to say more right now. Soon, hopefully. But everything that's out there now, from Amazon on down to niche verticals pretty much makes recommendations based on computer algorithms, human editors, or some combination of the two. What works best in which circumstances?

Well, with Amazon patenting its suggestion/recommendation tools and the more strident members of the "blogs will set you free" crowd insisting that everything you need to know is already out there in the brains of bloggers and commenters and all you need is a good search engine to find/aggregate it, it's nice to know that some companies are rediscovering the value of human judgment.

On a very-much-related note this week, Google, the quintessential "computer brain," launched its finance site which, in addition to lots of computer code, will employ...yup, editors. John Battelle notes the change in direction for the company:

"Google Finance will have a Groups section where stocks are discussed with paid moderators - that's editors to you and me. And that's a shift, a shift that is worth noting."

Indeed. Editors get a bad wrap because the simplistic view of them pits them against the whole notion of the collective wisdom of the social web. "I don't need an editor to tell me what to think," is a legitimate but oversimplified statement. When editors do that in a one-way "Word of God" manor, they provide no real value and shouldn't be trusted. Newspapers, at least the bad ones (and, no, that's not all of them) are partly to blame.

A good editor does indeed create and in turn rely on the trust of the community. They listen. They facilitate. They save you time and effort from going through stuff that doesn't interest you. Doesn't mean it's junk. Doesn't mean it's not of value to someone else (hence the need to get away from one-size-fits-all news). It just means that for that particular community, the editor included, it's peripheral or indeed counterproductive to the core mission, be it learning about how your local school district works or how a stock is doing or how a piece of software can help you run your business.

The social web has opened up lots of wonderful opportunities for people everywhere to create and share stuff and express themselves online, but it's not sacrilege to note that a lot of it is not of any interest to most of us and can get in the way of our work and play. In fact, that's the beauty of the social web. Most people don't care about any particular piece of information. But as long as even just a few do, that's enough for a community to develop and thrive.

As Jason says, it's about "trimming those weeds before they ruin the lawn."

This is very cool...

Artist Seyed Alavi's aerial view of a stretch of the Sacremento River woven into a carpet at the Sacremento airport. (via Boing Boing).

And the Winner of the First LSoP Commenter Award is...

Fred Wilson! Wow. The first person to leave a comment on this humble blog (and very possibly the last) is a guy I really respect, Fred Wilson. I appreciate that he's a VC, the consumate capitalist, and yet he's not afraid to talk politics now and then. Of course I say that because I tend to agree with him.

He also spent part of his childhood on West Point, a place for which I have an affinity considering that when I covered the post for the local daily it was the only time on the job that I didn't want to bang my head against the wall from boredom.

Anyway, his firm, Union Square Ventures, walks the Web 2.0 walk, turning the firm's site into a blog and investing in cool companies (they backed del.icio.us and recently invested in Feedburner), and Fred uses his popular blog as a lab for all forms of social media (podcasts, Flickr, del.icio.us bookmarks, etc.). Plus, he's got good taste in music.

So it's kind of unfortunate that his historic comment was in response to the one post where I was a bit critical of him. He was kind of enough to concede that his comment was over the top (we all indulge in hyperbole now and then), but that he really hates spammers. So do I, by the way. A lot.

Anyway, after a few months of this, I was wondering if anyone would read this let alone bother to comment. It was and still is getting to the point where I may have to follow in Dave Winer's path and shut this baby down: "My work here is done never really started."

I got excited a few months ago when I got shout outs from both Tara Hunt and Doc Searls. Alas, no traffic spike or invitation to join the A-list followed.

Speaking of which, I should mention that I've commented on and linked to plenty of other blogs and it's ONLY the A-LIST FOLKS who've RESPONDED. So let's tone down the snark. That gave me some all the proof I needed as to why these folks are read as much as they are.

Anyway, thanks Fred.

Have You No Shame, Music Biz? (a Pollyanna question, I know)

The counter of my local Barnes & Noble has a jar of 99-cent CD openers.

Years back when I worked at a newspaper in California, we had one of those sucky themed series that reliably fills space in papers everywhere. This one was called "What bugs you?" The most popular answer was, "your newspaper," but we couln't print that so I moved on and wrote a piece about the second most popular answer: CD wrappers.

Overpay for a CD and then pay some more to open it? Gee, I guess it's not just sucky music and the Internets that's causing CD sales to drop.

Please Tell Me You're Joking

I tend to agree with Fred Wilson on issues of tech, politics, and music. But here's where we part ways. A little perspective, please. Fred says:

"I hate spam in all of its forms and the people who engage in it are in the same category as murderers and rapists in my book."

Micro...Soft?

John Battelle says break up Microsoft:

"Microsoft is a middle aged company struggling to figure out how to dance with the teenagers, and its body simply can't keep up with its intentions, no matter how correct they may be."

What Part of "discontinued" don't you Understand?

Cnet says: "RIP: last respects to these discontinued MP3 players" but then under each of the departed goes on to say, "e-mail me when this product is available."

"These Dells are Great for Porno" (At Least He's Being Honest)

I wonder what the business blog guys like Steve Rubel and Scoble (talk about a "Naked Conversation") would think of this Dell product evangelist?

Hello Washington DC!

Mark Pincus also says, in a post on his old boss and presidential hopeful Mark Warner:

How cool would it be to see a fuck washington campaign funded by a small group of billionaires and millions of ants?! Hell yes. Politics could get fun.

Fred chimes in for the "billionaires":

I'll join Mark (not sure which Mark) if there is a "fuck you" campaign for President in 2008.

Count me in as one of the "ants."

Read the Fine Print

Mark Pincus says of lala: "...it sounds like i can rip all my cd's and then send them in to lala and get a whole new batch sent back..."

It sounds that way, and I'm sure that's how will people will use it, but as I noted here and here, lala doesn't quite see it that way.

I love me some tacos. This pair of tasty treats is composed of meat, lettuce, tomato and Post-It Notes. Thank you Mighty Girl!

(P.S. I've requested a burrito for the next course)

The "Most dangerous" place I've ever lived

So the USGS has a new map of the Hayward Fault, billed as the "most dangerous" in the Bay Area which, given the amount of seismic activity and the population density in the East Bay, probably makes it one of the "most dangerous" in the world.

I used lived for years in the Montclair section of Oakland, up in the hills off Highway 13 which pretty much traces the fault through that stretch of the East Bay. For all the planning and talk of quake preparedness kits, the only way to live in the Bay Area and appreciate how wonderful it is is to pretty much forget that the place sits atop some pretty shakey ground. The weather helps a lot in that regard.

Thule Kayak Racks
Thule Kayak Racks, $175

Get ready for spring kayak season.

One set of Thule racks with one set of kayak stackers. Holds two kayaks.

Bought new, these were used for a one week kayak trip after which the rented kayak was returned, and the racks taken off the car and never used again. Near perfect condition. They were used on a Subaru Forester, but will fit other cars with factory rails and the SR kit can be swapped out for a new one to adapt to most others (at a cost of $20 max).

Check out this page if you need to know more: http://www.thuleracks.com/thule/product.asp?dept_id=2&sku=440

Whole system bought new for $275. Asking $175.

This is in the Poughkeepsie, NY area. Willing to ship at buyer’s expense. Shouldn't be more than $10-12 to do so. Interested? Questions? Let me know in the comments section below.

UPDATE: OK. This is a test to see if edgeio works. For the first time, craigslist failed me. I haven't found a buyer for these great racks. So I posted the ad on my blog. No one reads t, but the idea is that edgeio will find the listing (I even used their line of code to tag it) and make it searchable on their site. Well, I posted it yesterday and as of this morning, it still wasn't showing up. Next, I went to the edeio site and entered the blog url. I checked off which post I wanted listed and it immediately turned up in a search for "Thule racks." But....it must assume that the first dollar amount it sees is the price. In this case, $20 refers to the cost of a sixing add-on. Anyone who sees Thule Racks for $20 and excitedly clicks over to see that's not the case is gonna feel they've been tricked. So I'm putting $175 in the headline and hoping that works. Will update if I get any responses.

More Music Madness

Regarding the previous post, it looks like the Mighty Michael Arrington of TechCrunch concurs. He wrotes:

While I’m all for the revenue sharing with artists, pleeeease, lala, get over yourself and drop the condescending, do-the-right-thing-as-defined-by-the-RIAA messaging.

Agreed.

On a related note, Ben Laurie writes about being fooled into buying the new Beth Orton (above) CD from Amazon only to find that its DRM won't let it be played on a computer though there was no warning to this effect.

commented there that I had sticker shock when looking at the same disk at Barnes & Noble this afternoon. $19.99! I haven't bought a CD in years. No wonder. (via Doc Searls)

La La...huh?

La La, a new site that facilitates CD-swapping launched in closed beta. CD sales are only going to decline as digital music sales increase, so while this may be a cool niche it hardly seems like a growth market.

Still, I can some potential value as a user. They will share 20% of CD revenue with artists, which is nice, but I had to laugh when I saw this from Bill Nguyen:

I ask you to do your part by doing the right thing: remove songs from your iPod or PC if you've agreed to send the CD to another member.

Huh? How does a band benefit from me sending off a CD if, in doing so, I'm wiping them from my playlists and essentially saying that I never want to listen to that album again? If I'm a musician, I want someone to keep my music and send off the disc for someone else to hear. Do I risk forfeiting the sale of a new disc to the secondary market? Sure, but I'd rather have people on both ends of the transaction continuing to listen to my music.

In this scenario, you've got a music community made up largely of people who are dumping music they don't like rather than sharing stuff they love. Seems like the wrong dynamic.

M&Ms have nothing to fear
Tried those new Kissables. They're too sweet in that synthetic- sweetner-that-leaves-a-nasty-aftertaste-on-the-back-of-your-throat kind of way. I indulge in candy way too rarely to waste my time and calories on bad stuff. I do like Kisses. But the appeal of them is that they're just straight chocolate and, in having to unwrap each one individually, you don't eat too many. These things you're inclined to scarf down. Not good. I'm sticking with the tried and true M&Ms. Their best attribute? Like Canada Dry giner ale used to say of itself, they're "not too sweet!"

If Rick Perry, a Republican governor from Texas with very nice hair, can't get what he needs from a Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush White House, what hope is there really for the rest of us?