Month: October 2006

I thoroughly enjoyed Bag Men, by Mark Costello. I finished this novel a few weeks ago, after picking it up this summer from a family bookshelf. I’m not sure whom I have to thank for putting it on that shelf, but I’m grateful.

At its core, the story is framed by a murder investigation, but mid-1960s Boston pops with Costello’s mix of religion, class, and (then) current events, like the criminalization of LSD. The writing is darker than, say, Dick Francis, but the vocabulary is similarly terse. Spare, even.

I’ll have to pick up Big If, his more well-known novel. Apparently Bag Men was published originallyunder a pseudonym, in 1997. His success with Big If brought Bag Men back in paperback under his own name.

On Monday, OpenDNS launched PhishTank, a community anti-phishing site with a free, open API for getting the data everywhere it might help. The response was gratifying. Skim the 51 mentions (and counting) so far. Thanks to the still-impressive distribution of the Associated Press, a single article made it to many, many more outlets than I tagged at del.icio.us.

There’s still a lot to do, but seven days in, there are almost 2,000 submissions to the site.

PhishTank is a complement to our core business, with no revenue expected from the free community site. But the investment we’ve made (mostly time, some money) is certain to be repaid in (a) better data for OpenDNS (and the rest of the Internet) and (b) broader awareness of OpenDNS.

Also — and this makes me pretty happy — it’s almost addictive to take action against phishers. The interface and design makes it practically fun to do a good deed. One of the goals was to think of verifying phishes as a game. It’s not Doom, of course, but the right design goal certainly helped us start off on the right foot.

And the discarded taglines that are “floaters,” dead to the world were worth sharing.

While out a few weeks ago, we noticed a restaurant in the neighborhood we had never seen before. Last night, we ate at Abacus, a small “California Chinese cuisine” place. Probably seats just over 30 when full, but with kids you eat early, so no problems getting a table even on Saturday night. Not a breakthrough meal, but good food, and within walking distance. This is one more reason to live in a city, especially a city like San Francisco.

Of course, in an entirely different way, Fleet Week airshows are a welcome annual event, too.