3 posts from March 2008

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Stand back or I will zune you.

Mar 27, 2008
2 comments

Twitter Roundup!

Mar 21, 2008
9 comments

A lot of my friends cross-post archives of their Twitter updates onto their various blogs. And then others (usually quietly) grumble: "Aw, I want them to write real posts! Why are they just dumping their tweets into their blog -- they're the only one who wants to read them!"

Which, of course, answers its own question. People archive their tweets into their own blogs to give them a sense of permanence. We do it for ourselves. Which is not to say that I'm going to start dumping my tweets in here. Instead, I'll give you a narrated guide to my last several tweets, manually posted here, not copied by machines.

you people joining color teams know you're just setting yourselves up for @zefrank to make you feel really bad about race in america, right?

about 18 hours ago from twitterrific

That last one seemed obvious to me. Ze's been encouraging people to arbitrarily pick color-themed teams for a purpose that he's been vague about. One extremely-thinly-veiled racial allegory, coming up! But apparently a lot of people got annoyed by me saying this, with a few "Red team rules, dude -- you suck!" messages coming back. We deal with race pretty well! :)

One of my favorite bloggers ever is back at it: http://dollarshort.org/ "roots and growth and all that stuff" :) not a bad design, either about 21 hours agofrom twitterrific

Mena said I had to write this or I'd be fired! Just kidding. I'm really enjoying the new Dollarshort, and it's all done with basic templates in TypePad! Wow.

@davewiner you do have an extraordinarily disproportionate influence in tech and media -- you're saying that blogging isn't powerful? about 23 hoursago from twitterrific in reply to davewiner

Dave was carrying on a not-particularly fruitful debate about race in America, starting with the probably-correct basis that we're all racists. Unfortunately, he was trying to provoke people into a thoughtful discussion with inflammatory responses. I felt the technique was overshadowing the goal, and by the time he was saying that nobody important listens to him, I wanted to reply with a gentle correction, which to his credit he took very well.

the thing you need to understand is that fisking doesn't make you right. it does usually make you a dick, though. and it's bad writing. 10:42 AM March 20, 2008 from twitterrific

Inspired by nobody in particular, except the fact that I see people (men) who rather obviously think of themselves as Good Writers resorting to the lowest kind of rhetorical devices to "win" arguments while actually persuading nobody. Kids, it's all been done before. You can make any article look flawed by fisking it, but it doesn't mean you have any goddamn sense, and it decreases the odds you actually persuaded anyone of anything.

wow, 30 mins before a presentation to a few hundred people, and i just came *thisclose* to taking the nighttime version of my cold medicine. 06:30 AM March 20, 2008 from twitterrific

True story! This kind of thing is especially fraught for me because I'm a total lightweight -- since I don't drink or really take any drugs except caffeine, cold medicine hits me like a freight train, with slurred speech and all that kind of stuff. It would have left quite an impression. In the end, I ended up giving a pretty good presentation, though.

actual email msg i just got: "#Merge1#, I'm writing today with some exciting news that will enable you to promote your blog or podcast..." 11:36 PM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific

A few people let me know they'd gotten similar messages, too. I actually know the people behind the company that sent this out, and I do understand it was just a simple technical mistake. But I have a real fatigue in dealing with messages that are both disrespectful to me personally (omitting my name) and professionally (beginning with the assumption that I know nothing about blogging). I'm just saying.

Inadvertently genius headline: http://tinyurl.com/2wnmwx 08:21 PM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific

Before they corrected it, CNET's story said the widget company was worth four hundred dollars, not four hundred million. Funny because it's true!

Anybody have a favorite VPS webhost? Or strong feelings about VPS hosting in general? 06:43 PM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific

Some interesting responses. If i get a consensus, I'll post it, but a lot of people are interested in VPS, and this highlights to me (again) that so much of what seems like rational thought processes affecting tech adoption is actually the result of social behaviors. We think we pick web hosts because of feature lists, but we pick them because of our friends.

Neighborhood radios reveal that the reggaeton-autotune effect hybridization is complete. Me gusta! 06:22 PM March 19, 2008 from web

A neighborhood pizza joint was playing some truly awesome music that sounded like it was completely from the future. No humans were harmed, or likely even involved, in the creation of these recordings.

does Gloria Estefan have other Sound Machines in other cities? how have the Sound Machines dealt with DRM? 03:46 PM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific

A coworker momentarily brain-slipped "Gloria Estefan" for "Gwen Stefani" (funny it doesn't happen more, with the similar syllables), and I took it from there.

@rafeco watching my friends use EDGE takes me back to the anticipation of watching images load on a V.34 modem. it's not a warm memory. 01:52 PM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific in reply to rafeco

The compromises of using an iPhone may well be a fair trade for its experience, but the way that iPhone users apologize for it baffles me. I admit there are parts of all my devices that are great, and parts that suck. The only challenge here was figuring out which old-school modem reference would most warm the hearts of my nerdy friends in nostalgic recollection.

Oh hey, I made ThinkGeek: http://www.thinkgeek.com/ts... (i get no royalties on the shirts) 09:31 AM March 19, 2008 from twitterrific

I should have patented LOLcats instead of just writing about them. Everyone's getting rich but me! Oh cruel world.

aches, chills, coughing fits... i'm in total denial about being ill. Not Sick! NOT SICK! 10:49 AM March 18, 2008 from twitterrific

This method of faith-based illness protection works as well as every other faith-based initiative.

negaTED

Mar 1, 2008
12 comments

Sarah points out the unabashedly exclusionary tendencies of the TED conference over on the BusinessWeek site, and I think I've had that conversation with many people many times before, including former (and present) TED attendees. It is what it is, and it doesn't bother me; In fact, I kind of am shocked that not only does it not bother me, I'm not really interested in attending. I guess being able to just watch the videos and grok the ideas is good enough for me. This is especially true since a significant percentage of people who "attend" TED are watching the videos from another room at the venue, or from Aspen, and seeing a demo of a Microsoft app on a video screen in Aspen with a bunch of millionaires sounds to me like the kind of thing I'd pay not to do. YouTube FTW!

But. Back to the reason I was gonna post. Sarah says:

There's just something about TED that's exceedingly smug, and it's particularly troubling given the conference's proximity to, and enthusiastic support from, normally egalitarian Silicon Valley. California's tech haven is a meritocracy where what matters most is smarts and hard work, not pedigree, ethnicity, where you went to school, or what club you get into—or so it is most of the year.

Ho-lee-shit is that false. It's just not true. Is Google's incredibly egalitarian ethic the reason that an overwhelming number of the people who work there went to Stanford? Is the Valley's blind eye to ethnicity the inspiration for "Thank God you're white!"? I respect Sarah, but I think perhaps the reason she's let down by TED and I'm not is because she believed that idealistic view of Silicon Valley and I never have.

Here's a simple test: When I say "Monterey" or "Aspen", who do you picture? And I say this as an incredibly privileged person, someone who has access to more resources, and more people, than 99% of anyone who's ever lived. I'm a good networker -- if I want access to a creative person or expert or even a celebrity, I can usually figure out how to make a connection. I'm also someone who's lived in one of the poorest parts of the entire world, not as a visitor admiring the noble savages, but as a relative visiting family. Today, I also get to live the life of the carbon bigfoot, attending events of all sorts all over the country and the world. I am at an extreme end of the continuum of privilege, and yet even I am not in the tier of people who are made to feel welcome in communities like Monterey or Aspen. Choosing those locations alone is a signal.

And, as Sarah said in her story, I say this as someone who respects and even admires many of the people associated with TED. I also say this as someone who is an unabashed advocate of creating private events with exclusive invitation lists -- I think there's nothing wrong with saying "these are my friends/associates, and I want to hang out with them."

What I believe more than that, though, is that monoculture will be the death of innovation in the technology world if it is allowed to remain the default social and cultural behavior. TED purports to represent technology, entertainment and design. It does not trouble me that their view of who should create, support, and have access to these three areas is so short-sighted -- I'll still get access to the cutting-edge of all of these areas, and gain an advantage by reaching ideas they won't. But it should trouble the people who organize the event that they've limited their scope and eliminated some large degree of serendipity.