Blog

A bit of a history lesson for identity systems: the 1958 introduction of the credit card, at least a quick review of said event. This article mentions gives credit to “Joseph Nocera’s excellent book, “A Piece of the Action.”” — I’ll have to add that to my list at some point.

OK, it was one minute long, but at least now I can say I’ve been on one. Stepping on, you have to relax… it rocked back and forth as I tried to compensate, rather than letting the Segway do the work. After those initial seconds, it was stable, and while I didn’t go more than 30 feet in any direction, I got a flavor for it. Fun toy. Still hard to imagine forking over big $$$ for one, but I was as curious as the next person. The occasion? The author of the book on the building of the Segway, Code Name Ginger, came by the office on his book tour, and a representative of the publisher brought his own personal Segway HT. The publisher rep noted that you have to be prepared to talk to people if you own one — everyone wants to know more (and try it). I shared the enthusiasm, but I still can’t imagine the purchase.

I enjoy Steve Outing’s coverage of the online media space. I’ve been a reader of the online-news mailing list for ~10 years (yes, it’s been around that long). E-Media Tidbits, the group blog at Poynter.org he started, is a useful resource. All that as a preface for the fact that I found this Editor & Publisher column one big endorsement for Tacoda, an ad-targeting solution. Useful info, but aren’t there are other vendors in the space to get some feedback? Quite a headline and deck, too:

Targeting Technology Should Boost Online Ads
Salvation for Web Publishers Just Around the Corner

Steve, isn’t ‘salvation’ a bit much to promise?

Found out today that Mark Johnson is blogging (via Vin). This post starts with Hunter S. Thompson, and moves on to the ROI of blogging.

Most people seemed to agree that if you have even one reader coming to your blog then you have achieved ROI. (snip) is not new technology, and the likelihood for an innovative business model cropping up from it is fairly remote, but blogging makes content king again, and that is a good thing.

Just because… http://www.bigdig.com/

More things I’ve found worthy of bookmarking in the hopes of reading them in the future.

• Attention Scope, from May 26, 2003. Microsoft research on handling notification
• Vin Crosbie’s weblog, where the RSS feed isn’t currently working. I’ve met Vin twice, and read lots of his posts to online-news over the years. He’s fantastic about providing facts and figures. He does tend to stay ‘on message’ about delivery to the point of redundance, but it is his biz.
• Actual academic research on fonts, as in Times and Verdana and so on. Which is easiest to read, and which is preferred. Not one and the same. [link from Tim Bray originally]
• “The schedule is not the project.” (visual joke)
• Talk by Will Wright, of Sims fame, from PC Forum. Quite long. I’ve skimmed only.
• Unofficial transcript of Dave Winer’s talk at Weblog Business Strategies conference
• How do you count subscribers to your RSS feed? Tim Bray post, and it will matter over time, as a business issue.
• February, 1999, column of AskTog (Bruce Tognazzi), about Fitt’s Law
• Slashdot book review of “Managing Enterprise Content“
• Jon Udell on user agents for his RSS file, where he sees high use of newsreader applications (of course) AND Mozilla
• On the bursty evolution of blogspace, an IBM research paper presented at the WWW12 conference in Budapest in 2003. Probably too academic for me, but the title caught my eye all the same.
• Where Newspaper Stories Go When They Die = Tim Bray reminding the web that there is a reason why newspapers charge for their web archives… they make money doing it offline. Until that money goes away…

Title of a Phil Wolff comment on Doc Searls’ weblog. Amen! (and, as noted earlier, I haven’t yet joined the TiVo cult)

My sister Isabel likes tiny books, but this small? In Gold Ink on a Chip, the World’s Tiniest Book is a NYTimes article about this eraser-sized version of the New Testament.

They chose 24-karat gold because it not only resists oxidation but looks pretty, even under a microscope.

Riigggghhhhttt.

Just got back. Glad I saw it in the theater, but very glad I didn’t rush. Lots of action, some portentous hints, but lacked the consistency of the first one. Wonder if the November film, Matrix Revolution, will climb back to the heights of the first one.

An old friend asked for help from several rowing friends in defining ‘swing’ for non-rowers. For rowers, swing is a sensation that occurs (rarely) when the crew feels like it’s going faster than ever, while working less. My friend wanted to explain the feeling in a speech to a bunch of engineers at Intel (team-building exercise? motivational speech?). Here was what I came up with:

Swing is…
Physical evidence that everyone in the boat is REALLY thinking about the exact same thing at the exact same moment. Not a single distraction is crossing anyone’s mind… no “when is this piece going to end?,” no “did I remember to tape that show?,” no “I haven’t talked to my father in a while,” no “I’m hungry,” nothing. No stray thoughts.

Physical embodiment of unity of purpose.

The reason you lose it is because it’s so startling to feel that the swing itself is a distraction. Someone, or everyone, starts thinking about how good it feels and isn’t this amazing and “I could go all day like this” — rather than everyone single-mindedly thinking about the same thing, which is what produced the swing in the first place.

It feels like you’re doing it right. Finally, fleetingly, after months of thousands (millions?) of strokes, and untold exhortations from the coach to each/all of you, the collective crew figured it out. Knowing you _can_ do it right makes it frustrating at times that it’s so hard to do right.

I’m sure every discipline and sport has its own analog, but the required teamwork to achieve this state in rowing is particularly inspiring. I’ve had endorphin rushes in individual athletic endeavors, but never the calm physical communion of a well-rowed boat. All this from someone who hasn’t rowed competitively in five years, and not even recreationally more than three times in that period. Some things both stick with you and (maybe) earn greater respect with distance.