"CELL DEATH 2010"
Great article by Steve Baker and Eduardo Sciammarella over at AlwaysOn. I'm actually advising Eduardo on his new company, whose product is a very cool directory & social networking interface for mobile devices. I'm write more about this later.
Cell Death 2010
Good-bye, mobile phones; hello, mobile web!
Take a good look at your cellphone: Remember what it looks like and what it does (or doesn't do), because in a few years both it and the system that supports it will be dead and gone.
"But wait," you say. "We only just got here! We're just now getting 3G, W-CDMA, EVDO, and high-resolution QVGA screens and cameras, multimedia messaging, and all this other cool stuff!"
Sorry, that relic of the twisted-pair landline age became history the minute Google decided to unwire San Francisco. To understand why, you need look no further than the word itself: phone, which as we all know comes from the Greek phonos, for voice. It indicates that the primary focus of the cellphone, the network, and the phone companies that provide that network is voice. Accordingly, they charge for voice calls. However, the real network isn't about voice; it's about the services, transactions, data, and facilities people are willing to pay for. Voice comes as a free extra—hell, even video calls come as a free extra.
For service providers, this is a revolutionary concept—and one that will force an entirely new business model on them. For consumers, however, it's nothing more than the natural evolution of the way they've already been communicating. To them, the transition will appear seamless. They won't care where or how they get their network connection as long as it's fast, reliable, everywhere, and free. Ubiquitous unlicensed broadband will ensure that, and more. It will put an end to the "walled garden" approach favored by many telecoms and transform the entire "off deck" services industry. Once the user switches from a provider-controlled network to one based on ubiquitous broadband (UB) that's connected to the unregulated and free World Wild Web, the floodgates aren't just opened, they're blown away.
Where It Starts
All it takes to start that revolution is one device—a handheld network device, something very like the Palm TX, Sony PSP, or Nokia 770—with a Bluetooth headset. (After all, what use is a QVGA screen on a handset that's pressed up against your sweaty ear?) With VoIP, a web interface, and a broadband-wired world, the cellphone is a museum piece. Get ready for the ODMs in Asia to churn out hundreds of millions of low-cost devices. Pop in a WiFi CF card, and you're ready to roll. Did someone say dumb pipe? (full article)
Junto Boyz
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
|Tuesday, November 29, 2005
"OUR TROOPS MUST STAY" BY JOE LIEBERMAN
Whatever political party you're a part of or not a part of, you have to respect or even love Senator Lieberman because he speaks the truth in his heart and mind. He doesn't care about staying with the party line nor is he afraid of offending his political donors. He analyzes the situation, makes an assessment, and tells it like it is. Elected officials from both sides of the aisle can learn from him... of course, you have to be willing to die an early political death :), but wouldn't it be great if all of them had such principles?
Our Troops Must Stay
America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.
BY JOE LIEBERMAN
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.
There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.
In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.
None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.
The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.
Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.
Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.
The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.
These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too.
I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."
Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.
Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.
|
Whatever political party you're a part of or not a part of, you have to respect or even love Senator Lieberman because he speaks the truth in his heart and mind. He doesn't care about staying with the party line nor is he afraid of offending his political donors. He analyzes the situation, makes an assessment, and tells it like it is. Elected officials from both sides of the aisle can learn from him... of course, you have to be willing to die an early political death :), but wouldn't it be great if all of them had such principles?
Our Troops Must Stay
America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.
BY JOE LIEBERMAN
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.
There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.
Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.
In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.
None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.
The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.
Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.
The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.
Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.
The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.
These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too.
I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."
Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.
Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.
IRAQ INFORMATION GAP... HOW THE TROOPS SEE IT
Good piece presented by AOL (various polls included), and a great article by The Christian Science Monitor's Mark Sappenfield:
The Iraq Story: How Troops See It
BROOK PARK, OHIO (Nov. 27) – Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict - candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.
Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies. Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.
Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress.
"We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there." (full article)
|
Good piece presented by AOL (various polls included), and a great article by The Christian Science Monitor's Mark Sappenfield:
The Iraq Story: How Troops See It
BROOK PARK, OHIO (Nov. 27) – Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict - candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.
Yet the Iraq of Corporal Mayer's memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies. Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.
Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress.
"We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there." (full article)
EVAN WILLIAMS'S TEN RULES FOR WEB STARTUPS
Good post by Evan, co-founder of Pyra Labs (Blogger) and Odeo. Actually, this goes well with David Beisel's "Seven Questions Employees Should Ask Before Joining a Startup."
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Good post by Evan, co-founder of Pyra Labs (Blogger) and Odeo. Actually, this goes well with David Beisel's "Seven Questions Employees Should Ask Before Joining a Startup."
UPDATE ON KOREA'S PRIVATE EQUITY INDUSTRY
News from a few days ago. I've been a bit out of the loop in Seoul, so I didn't know that Michael Kim already left The Carlyle Group. The newsclip also mentions Christine's former boss, Dr. Byeon, who we will be meeting with in the coming weeks. From Thomson's Asian Private Equity News:
Woori Finance Holdings Co., the holding company of Korea's Woori Bank, is set to close the country's second-largest buyout fund, Woori Private Equity Fund, by the end of November. APEN readers will recall that Woori Bank set up an earlier fund of $190 million in December 2004, but that fund was closed after charges of accounting fraud emerged based on its local investments. It was one of the more public failures of Korean government-encouraged efforts to create a domestic private equity funds industry in this country.
The bank says it is in talks with more than 20 local and foreign investors to raise $680 million. If successful the newly launched buyout fund will be smaller than former Carlyle Executive's Michael Kim's $1 billion MBK Associates, but will exceed the $490 million Vogo Investment fund set up in April by Byeon Yang-ho, a former Ministry of Finance executive, and the $400 million fund set up by H&Q Asia Pacific, Wise Assets and Hyundai Securities.
|
News from a few days ago. I've been a bit out of the loop in Seoul, so I didn't know that Michael Kim already left The Carlyle Group. The newsclip also mentions Christine's former boss, Dr. Byeon, who we will be meeting with in the coming weeks. From Thomson's Asian Private Equity News:
Woori Finance Holdings Co., the holding company of Korea's Woori Bank, is set to close the country's second-largest buyout fund, Woori Private Equity Fund, by the end of November. APEN readers will recall that Woori Bank set up an earlier fund of $190 million in December 2004, but that fund was closed after charges of accounting fraud emerged based on its local investments. It was one of the more public failures of Korean government-encouraged efforts to create a domestic private equity funds industry in this country.
The bank says it is in talks with more than 20 local and foreign investors to raise $680 million. If successful the newly launched buyout fund will be smaller than former Carlyle Executive's Michael Kim's $1 billion MBK Associates, but will exceed the $490 million Vogo Investment fund set up in April by Byeon Yang-ho, a former Ministry of Finance executive, and the $400 million fund set up by H&Q Asia Pacific, Wise Assets and Hyundai Securities.
Monday, November 28, 2005
PLEDGE DRIVE... MENTOR TWO PEOPLE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD!
Lucy Hooberman's project to create a mentoring program targeted towards developing countries stemmed from this past year's TED. This is what she is asking from you:
"I will mentor a minimum of two people in the developing world in the area of my skills base and expertise (media, communications, broadcasting , democratic media building, participatory media, community video). I will do this for free for a minimum of six months (in my free time). The mentoring will be in person or via email/skype and the mentoring connections will be established by a website and database that I am willing to take responsibility for creating but only if 250 other people will mentor a minimum of two people in their skills."
SIGN UP HERE!
Deadline to sign up by: 15th January 2006
124 people have signed up, 126 more needed
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Lucy Hooberman's project to create a mentoring program targeted towards developing countries stemmed from this past year's TED. This is what she is asking from you:
"I will mentor a minimum of two people in the developing world in the area of my skills base and expertise (media, communications, broadcasting , democratic media building, participatory media, community video). I will do this for free for a minimum of six months (in my free time). The mentoring will be in person or via email/skype and the mentoring connections will be established by a website and database that I am willing to take responsibility for creating but only if 250 other people will mentor a minimum of two people in their skills."
SIGN UP HERE!
Deadline to sign up by: 15th January 2006
124 people have signed up, 126 more needed
"BLOGS FINALLY GET BUSINESS SAVVY"
Business 2.0's Greg Lindsay has a decent overview of various business models popping up in the blogosphere, and he gives a plug for Tony and AlwaysOn:
Blogs finally get business savvy
Flurry of big deals in recent weeks provide many new ways for Web logs to turn a profit.
November 23, 2005
It can't be said anymore that blogging isn't a business. The problem now may be that blogging has too many business models to choose from.
Andrew Sullivan kicked things off by announcing he would soon decamp with his proto-blog to Time.com. That was followed in short order by the launch of Open Source Media, then the confusion over whether Gawker Media had finally sold out, in this case to Yahoo!, or had merely licensed some of its best known bloggers in exchange for a healthy dose of traffic.
After all the press releases had hit the wires, the usual suspects chimed in: Former Advance Newspapers' Internet chief and New York Times consultant Jeff Jarvis railed that Time.com doesn't get it; Media news site PaidContent.org heard from Yahoo's news and finance chief Scott Moore; and Jason Calacanis, who cashed out last month to AOL, wholeheartedly agreed with Moore. Still with us?
Buried under the flurry of comments and back-scratching were easily a half-dozen different business models, including one that may turn out to be one of the biggest opportunities of all -- although it went virtually unnoticed by the mutual admiration society because it involves print.
But let's recap before we get ahead of ourselves.
Based on all the possibilities, blogging business model options include:
Selling out to and joining mainstream media.
This is what Andrew Sullivan did. Although "selling out" in this instance means handing over the technical headaches of operating his site to Time.com while retaining editorial control and accepting a regular paycheck.
.....
To an extent, Yahoo has done just that with Gawker's syndication (and about a billion other sources). But why stop at recombining them within another Web site? Why not a magazine? Or any other medium that advertisers are willing to pay for?
As it happens, that's exactly what Tony Perkins has done with Always On, where the repurposed punditry of his techie members has spawned a 100,000-circulation quarterly magazine aimed at an audience that missed reading it the first time.
Last week's final announcement, the one that was lost in the flurry, was Perkins' admission and boast that Always On will reach $2 million in sales this year, with a profit margin of 25 percent. The magazine is still an appendage of the site ("advertisers get more real estate, and it's a cross-promotional tool") but Perkins hopes to double sales and boost his margins next year with a 50-50 split between events and advertising. And he's willing to sell 50 percent of his company to do it. (full article)
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Business 2.0's Greg Lindsay has a decent overview of various business models popping up in the blogosphere, and he gives a plug for Tony and AlwaysOn:
Blogs finally get business savvy
Flurry of big deals in recent weeks provide many new ways for Web logs to turn a profit.
November 23, 2005
It can't be said anymore that blogging isn't a business. The problem now may be that blogging has too many business models to choose from.
Andrew Sullivan kicked things off by announcing he would soon decamp with his proto-blog to Time.com. That was followed in short order by the launch of Open Source Media, then the confusion over whether Gawker Media had finally sold out, in this case to Yahoo!, or had merely licensed some of its best known bloggers in exchange for a healthy dose of traffic.
After all the press releases had hit the wires, the usual suspects chimed in: Former Advance Newspapers' Internet chief and New York Times consultant Jeff Jarvis railed that Time.com doesn't get it; Media news site PaidContent.org heard from Yahoo's news and finance chief Scott Moore; and Jason Calacanis, who cashed out last month to AOL, wholeheartedly agreed with Moore. Still with us?
Buried under the flurry of comments and back-scratching were easily a half-dozen different business models, including one that may turn out to be one of the biggest opportunities of all -- although it went virtually unnoticed by the mutual admiration society because it involves print.
But let's recap before we get ahead of ourselves.
Based on all the possibilities, blogging business model options include:
Selling out to and joining mainstream media.
This is what Andrew Sullivan did. Although "selling out" in this instance means handing over the technical headaches of operating his site to Time.com while retaining editorial control and accepting a regular paycheck.
.....
To an extent, Yahoo has done just that with Gawker's syndication (and about a billion other sources). But why stop at recombining them within another Web site? Why not a magazine? Or any other medium that advertisers are willing to pay for?
As it happens, that's exactly what Tony Perkins has done with Always On, where the repurposed punditry of his techie members has spawned a 100,000-circulation quarterly magazine aimed at an audience that missed reading it the first time.
Last week's final announcement, the one that was lost in the flurry, was Perkins' admission and boast that Always On will reach $2 million in sales this year, with a profit margin of 25 percent. The magazine is still an appendage of the site ("advertisers get more real estate, and it's a cross-promotional tool") but Perkins hopes to double sales and boost his margins next year with a 50-50 split between events and advertising. And he's willing to sell 50 percent of his company to do it. (full article)
XOOGLERS... EX-GOOGLERS BLOG
HatTip to Frank Gruber. Randomly came across Frank's post about Doug Edwards', Google's former Director of Consumer Marketing and Brand Management, new blog. Not sure if Doug and other former Googlers will keep it interesting, so I'll just watch and wait.
Frank's blog seems interesting especially since he's in Chicago and works for the Tribune Company, which is where I summered during grad school, so I'll have to check it out some more.
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HatTip to Frank Gruber. Randomly came across Frank's post about Doug Edwards', Google's former Director of Consumer Marketing and Brand Management, new blog. Not sure if Doug and other former Googlers will keep it interesting, so I'll just watch and wait.
Frank's blog seems interesting especially since he's in Chicago and works for the Tribune Company, which is where I summered during grad school, so I'll have to check it out some more.
NOT FRIDAY BUT HERE ARE SOME THINGS TO READ DURING A BREAK
HatTip to Liz. Personally, I like the fourth one down the best.
WOMAN'S PERFECT BREAKFAST
She's sitting at the table with her gourmet coffee.
Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box.
Her daughter is on the cover of Business Week.
Her boyfriend is on the cover of Playgirl.
And her husband is on the back of the milk carton.
WOMEN'S REVENGE
"Cash, check or charge?" I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase.
As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
"So, do you always carry your TV remote?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."
UNDERSTANDING WOMEN (A MAN'S PERSPECTIVE)
I know I'm not going to understand women. I'll never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root, and still be afraid of a spider.
MARRIAGE SEMINAR
While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know each other's likes and dislikes."
He addressed the man, "Can you name your wife's favorite flower?"
Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's Pillsbury, isn't it?
CIGARETTES AND TAMPONS
A man walks into a pharmacy and wanders up & down the aisles. The sales girl notices him and asks him if she can help him. He answers that he is looking for a box of tampons for his wife. She directs him down the correct aisle. A few minutes later, he deposits a huge bag of cotton balls and a ball of string on the counter.
She says, confused, "Sir, I thought you were looking for some tampons for your wife?
He answers, "You see, it's like this, yesterday, I sent my wife to the store to get me a carton of cigarettes, and she came back with a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers; cause it's sooo-ooo--oo-ooo much cheaper. So, I figure if I have to roll my own .......... so does she.
WORDS
A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day... 30,000 to a man's 15,000. The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men... The husband then turned to his wife and asked, "What?"
CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
"The wife responded, "Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
WHO DOES WHAT
A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning. The wife said, "You should do it because you get up first, and then we don't have to wait as long to get our coffee.
The husband said, "You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee."
Wife replies, "No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."
Husband replies, "I can't believe that, show me."
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says .......... "HEBREWS"
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HatTip to Liz. Personally, I like the fourth one down the best.
WOMAN'S PERFECT BREAKFAST
She's sitting at the table with her gourmet coffee.
Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box.
Her daughter is on the cover of Business Week.
Her boyfriend is on the cover of Playgirl.
And her husband is on the back of the milk carton.
WOMEN'S REVENGE
"Cash, check or charge?" I asked, after folding items the woman wished to purchase.
As she fumbled for her wallet, I noticed a remote control for a television set in her purse.
"So, do you always carry your TV remote?" I asked.
"No," she replied, "but my husband refused to come shopping with me, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally."
UNDERSTANDING WOMEN (A MAN'S PERSPECTIVE)
I know I'm not going to understand women. I'll never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root, and still be afraid of a spider.
MARRIAGE SEMINAR
While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know each other's likes and dislikes."
He addressed the man, "Can you name your wife's favorite flower?"
Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's Pillsbury, isn't it?
CIGARETTES AND TAMPONS
A man walks into a pharmacy and wanders up & down the aisles. The sales girl notices him and asks him if she can help him. He answers that he is looking for a box of tampons for his wife. She directs him down the correct aisle. A few minutes later, he deposits a huge bag of cotton balls and a ball of string on the counter.
She says, confused, "Sir, I thought you were looking for some tampons for your wife?
He answers, "You see, it's like this, yesterday, I sent my wife to the store to get me a carton of cigarettes, and she came back with a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers; cause it's sooo-ooo--oo-ooo much cheaper. So, I figure if I have to roll my own .......... so does she.
WORDS
A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day... 30,000 to a man's 15,000. The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men... The husband then turned to his wife and asked, "What?"
CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
"The wife responded, "Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
WHO DOES WHAT
A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning. The wife said, "You should do it because you get up first, and then we don't have to wait as long to get our coffee.
The husband said, "You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee."
Wife replies, "No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."
Husband replies, "I can't believe that, show me."
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says .......... "HEBREWS"
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Merck to cut 7,000 jobs, slash costs; shares fall"
"Supreme Court to hear eBay patent appeal"
"BP to Boost Spending On Alternative Energy"
"EU warned on 'secret CIA jails'"
"China official HIV count rises 50 pct in past year"
"Saddam trial hears first witness"
"Ads soon searchable with TiVo"
"Dutch tech firm wants to rid the Web of the .com"
"Bush to Press for New Immigration Plan"
"Rep. Cunningham to Plead Guilty"
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"Merck to cut 7,000 jobs, slash costs; shares fall"
"Supreme Court to hear eBay patent appeal"
"BP to Boost Spending On Alternative Energy"
"EU warned on 'secret CIA jails'"
"China official HIV count rises 50 pct in past year"
"Saddam trial hears first witness"
"Ads soon searchable with TiVo"
"Dutch tech firm wants to rid the Web of the .com"
"Bush to Press for New Immigration Plan"
"Rep. Cunningham to Plead Guilty"
JOHNATHAN EDWARDS ONLINE
Very cool project by The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University if you're interested in the great preachers and theologians of American history. I came across this while reading Christine's alumni magazine:
After 50 years of work, the 26 print volumes of the papers of Puritan theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards are nearly complete. Now the editors of Yale's Jonathan Edwards Center have an ambitious new project: to put every scrap of Edward's writing online in a searchable database. The first fruits of their efforts can be seen on the center's website.
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Very cool project by The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University if you're interested in the great preachers and theologians of American history. I came across this while reading Christine's alumni magazine:
After 50 years of work, the 26 print volumes of the papers of Puritan theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards are nearly complete. Now the editors of Yale's Jonathan Edwards Center have an ambitious new project: to put every scrap of Edward's writing online in a searchable database. The first fruits of their efforts can be seen on the center's website.
CATCHING UP... OLD NEWS IS SOMETIMES GOOD NEWS
Getting backlogged on some articles and posts of interest, so I'm going to just list them below. Sometimes you just can't read about everything even if you try. I didn't even know about Germany electing its first female Chancellor until yesterday. Anyway, this is definitely one of the benefits of the blogosphere since frontpage news can stay in the forefront for days and weeks, and that you can share it with others.
"From Seattle to Busan: The Flashpoints of Modern Protest"
"Is Friendster up for sale?"
"Is digg the new Slashdot?"
"Behind TiVo's play for iPod, PSP"
"Cisco, Scientific-Atlanta Close Deal"
"Woodward Says His Plame Source Not Libby"
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Getting backlogged on some articles and posts of interest, so I'm going to just list them below. Sometimes you just can't read about everything even if you try. I didn't even know about Germany electing its first female Chancellor until yesterday. Anyway, this is definitely one of the benefits of the blogosphere since frontpage news can stay in the forefront for days and weeks, and that you can share it with others.
"From Seattle to Busan: The Flashpoints of Modern Protest"
"Is Friendster up for sale?"
"Is digg the new Slashdot?"
"Behind TiVo's play for iPod, PSP"
"Cisco, Scientific-Atlanta Close Deal"
"Woodward Says His Plame Source Not Libby"
"HOW BROADCAST TELEVSION WILL SURVIVE IN AN ON-DEMAND WORLD"
Jason Boog has an interesting piece over at Ziff-Davis's Publish.com, which is also of interest to me since I never knew about Publish.com until I read Jason's article.
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Jason Boog has an interesting piece over at Ziff-Davis's Publish.com, which is also of interest to me since I never knew about Publish.com until I read Jason's article.
"MASAYOSHI SON PLANS GLOBAL ROLLOUT OF HIS VIDEO SERVICE TV BANK"
Son's TV Bank is looking beyond Japan. I haven't seen the service, so I can't really comment yet. My friends might do a deal with them, so definitely revisit TV Bank here in the coming months. Rafat has a few words on this:
Softbank, the Japanese broadband giant, is planning a global rollout of its online video service TV Bank, paidContent.org has learned. The service, which launched in beta in Japan last month, will roll out there commercially in March next year, and will have phased rollouts in other countries over the next year.
The company is serious enough that Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Softbank, has himself been traveling and meeting CEO of major media companies around the world. He was in Taiwan and India last week, and met with media companies there, according a source familiar with the discussions. Softbank already has signed up companies in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and India, and is in negotiations in Europe and Latin America.
In U.S., his content acquisition and technology lieutenants have been hovering around for a year now, and have talked to Comcast and Viacom, among others, though no specific deal has been signed. The source said that Softbank is in "advanced negotiations" with the major companies here in U.S.
In Japan, the TV Bank streaming service is free (ad-supported) and that's believed to be the model for other rollouts. VOD services may be charged for in the future.
Softbank is keen on using its expertise developed with Yahoo BB, Japan's second biggest broadband service, along with the adjoining video service, to market the platform to other media companies around the world. In the U.S., it has had serious talks with Comcast for the cable giant to adopt Softbank's platform.
The idea is to create a global syndicated hub of video, though some media executives I spoke to are skeptical about Softbank's chances on making this online service a success in the U.S where it will be competing against all the big portals as well as other homegrown services. Plus, even though Softbank's service is IP-based, it is not as open as the others, and definitely not self-service friendly, from what I know.
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Son's TV Bank is looking beyond Japan. I haven't seen the service, so I can't really comment yet. My friends might do a deal with them, so definitely revisit TV Bank here in the coming months. Rafat has a few words on this:
Softbank, the Japanese broadband giant, is planning a global rollout of its online video service TV Bank, paidContent.org has learned. The service, which launched in beta in Japan last month, will roll out there commercially in March next year, and will have phased rollouts in other countries over the next year.
The company is serious enough that Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Softbank, has himself been traveling and meeting CEO of major media companies around the world. He was in Taiwan and India last week, and met with media companies there, according a source familiar with the discussions. Softbank already has signed up companies in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and India, and is in negotiations in Europe and Latin America.
In U.S., his content acquisition and technology lieutenants have been hovering around for a year now, and have talked to Comcast and Viacom, among others, though no specific deal has been signed. The source said that Softbank is in "advanced negotiations" with the major companies here in U.S.
In Japan, the TV Bank streaming service is free (ad-supported) and that's believed to be the model for other rollouts. VOD services may be charged for in the future.
Softbank is keen on using its expertise developed with Yahoo BB, Japan's second biggest broadband service, along with the adjoining video service, to market the platform to other media companies around the world. In the U.S., it has had serious talks with Comcast for the cable giant to adopt Softbank's platform.
The idea is to create a global syndicated hub of video, though some media executives I spoke to are skeptical about Softbank's chances on making this online service a success in the U.S where it will be competing against all the big portals as well as other homegrown services. Plus, even though Softbank's service is IP-based, it is not as open as the others, and definitely not self-service friendly, from what I know.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
THANKSGIVING WORDS
Two Houses Converged
by Jill Carattini
As little girls in our Sunday dresses, we would crawl into the car anticipating the musical commute. Each Sunday we would sing that this was the day the LORD had made, crooning that we would rejoice and be glad in it. We were going to God's house and preparing our hearts along the way. Inherent in the day was an eager sense that it belonged to someone else, and none of us wanted to miss it.
Today as we gather around tables and family, many of us will again not want to miss the ambiance of the day. Inherent in the holiday is a call that bids us to stop and remember that there are blessings to acknowledge and days to rejoice and be glad in. In the spirit of thanksgiving, God's house seems to converge on our own, powerfully reminding us that there is one from whom all blessings flow. Today, like Sundays to a child anticipating God's presence, we see his touch on our lives, his ownership of the day, his presence in this moment, because we are looking for it.
The perspective of gratitude seems to invite sight in places we may be otherwise missing. American author and clergyman Henry van Dyke once wrote: "There are a hundred touches of kindness that come to us every day to tell us that we are not orphans or outcasts upon the earth. Every trace of order, every gleam of beauty, every provision of bounty in the natural world, is an evidence that it is God's house." There are times when we may notice beauty but do not see the splendor of all we are beholding. There are other days when we wholly overlook intricate masterpieces. We miss the glimpses of design around us; we fail to see the truth of his words at work, the touch of his hand through another, the reminder of his presence in the sun. We can so easily go through a day unaware of how near we were to God Himself.
A poem penned by Augustine utters the lament of a soul who has realized that God is there, but that it was he himself who was not. Writes Augustine, "Too late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new, too late have I loved You! You were within me but I was outside myself, and I sought You there! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of things You have made. You were with me, and I was not with You." His words remind us of all that we miss when we fail to taste and see in thankful awareness.
Like the disciples on the mount who fell on their faces as Jesus became "like the sun" and "as white as light," it seems God brings us again to that place where we are awed by his glory, his provision or mercy—his fearful existence. And like the disciples, like Moses and Job and Isaiah, we are reminded that we are in the presence of God in all his glory, and that whether we are aware of it or not He is always near. His glory is declared day after day; the work of his hands is proclaimed night after night.
The great house of God is like "a treasure hidden in a field," taught Jesus. The kingdom of God is among us. Today, it is in the tradition of Thanksgiving that we notice again the treasures of his nearness. Tomorrow, may it be similar.
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Two Houses Converged
by Jill Carattini
As little girls in our Sunday dresses, we would crawl into the car anticipating the musical commute. Each Sunday we would sing that this was the day the LORD had made, crooning that we would rejoice and be glad in it. We were going to God's house and preparing our hearts along the way. Inherent in the day was an eager sense that it belonged to someone else, and none of us wanted to miss it.
Today as we gather around tables and family, many of us will again not want to miss the ambiance of the day. Inherent in the holiday is a call that bids us to stop and remember that there are blessings to acknowledge and days to rejoice and be glad in. In the spirit of thanksgiving, God's house seems to converge on our own, powerfully reminding us that there is one from whom all blessings flow. Today, like Sundays to a child anticipating God's presence, we see his touch on our lives, his ownership of the day, his presence in this moment, because we are looking for it.
The perspective of gratitude seems to invite sight in places we may be otherwise missing. American author and clergyman Henry van Dyke once wrote: "There are a hundred touches of kindness that come to us every day to tell us that we are not orphans or outcasts upon the earth. Every trace of order, every gleam of beauty, every provision of bounty in the natural world, is an evidence that it is God's house." There are times when we may notice beauty but do not see the splendor of all we are beholding. There are other days when we wholly overlook intricate masterpieces. We miss the glimpses of design around us; we fail to see the truth of his words at work, the touch of his hand through another, the reminder of his presence in the sun. We can so easily go through a day unaware of how near we were to God Himself.
A poem penned by Augustine utters the lament of a soul who has realized that God is there, but that it was he himself who was not. Writes Augustine, "Too late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new, too late have I loved You! You were within me but I was outside myself, and I sought You there! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of things You have made. You were with me, and I was not with You." His words remind us of all that we miss when we fail to taste and see in thankful awareness.
Like the disciples on the mount who fell on their faces as Jesus became "like the sun" and "as white as light," it seems God brings us again to that place where we are awed by his glory, his provision or mercy—his fearful existence. And like the disciples, like Moses and Job and Isaiah, we are reminded that we are in the presence of God in all his glory, and that whether we are aware of it or not He is always near. His glory is declared day after day; the work of his hands is proclaimed night after night.
The great house of God is like "a treasure hidden in a field," taught Jesus. The kingdom of God is among us. Today, it is in the tradition of Thanksgiving that we notice again the treasures of his nearness. Tomorrow, may it be similar.
"WHAT MYSPACE MEANS FOR MARKETERS"
Definitely sites like MySpace are changing the landscape of online advertising:
Rupert Murdoch was quoted last week in "The Hollywood Reporter" as saying "In a sense, we say we've got 30 million portals." If you've spent any time playing around with News Corp.'s MySpace social networking site, you know the remark is accurate.
A shoddy palace of amateur content, the site is built entirely on personality and personalization. Buttons, MP3s and viral videos are easily cut and pasted from profile to profile and wrapped around a CGM core of photos, blogs and music.
It's vast and growing fast, boasting 37 million registered users and ranking third in pageviews among all domains, according to comScore. It now pulls in four million new members a month. (full article)
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Definitely sites like MySpace are changing the landscape of online advertising:
Rupert Murdoch was quoted last week in "The Hollywood Reporter" as saying "In a sense, we say we've got 30 million portals." If you've spent any time playing around with News Corp.'s MySpace social networking site, you know the remark is accurate.
A shoddy palace of amateur content, the site is built entirely on personality and personalization. Buttons, MP3s and viral videos are easily cut and pasted from profile to profile and wrapped around a CGM core of photos, blogs and music.
It's vast and growing fast, boasting 37 million registered users and ranking third in pageviews among all domains, according to comScore. It now pulls in four million new members a month. (full article)
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
OH WHERE OH WHERE IS MY DREAM WEB 2.0 PRODUCT
Michael Arrington has a good post on "Companies I’d like to Profile (but don’t exist)" and Richard MacManus has a good follow up with "Web 2.0 Products We Need (But Which Don't Exist Yet)."
1. Better and Cheaper Online File Storage
2. Blog/website Email Lists
3. Portable Reputations
4. Tailored Local Offers (via RSS)
5. Facebook, in other countries
6. Free Music
7. Open Source Yellow Pages
8. Podcast Transcriptions
9. Decentralized Review Aggregation
10. Build Something Cool with SSE (Microsoft's new RSS extensions)
I have to think about what to add to Michael and Richard's list... maybe I'll think about it on the flight to Chicago today. Have a great Thanksgiving for those in the U.S.!
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Michael Arrington has a good post on "Companies I’d like to Profile (but don’t exist)" and Richard MacManus has a good follow up with "Web 2.0 Products We Need (But Which Don't Exist Yet)."
1. Better and Cheaper Online File Storage
2. Blog/website Email Lists
3. Portable Reputations
4. Tailored Local Offers (via RSS)
5. Facebook, in other countries
6. Free Music
7. Open Source Yellow Pages
8. Podcast Transcriptions
9. Decentralized Review Aggregation
10. Build Something Cool with SSE (Microsoft's new RSS extensions)
I have to think about what to add to Michael and Richard's list... maybe I'll think about it on the flight to Chicago today. Have a great Thanksgiving for those in the U.S.!
SINGAPOREANS PREDOMINANT IN TECHNORATI?... GAMING THE SYSTEM IS NOT THAT HARD
If you check out Technorati right now (8:50am pst), you'll see "Daphne Teo" as the top search this hour and "Dawn Yang" as #7. So there is buzz in the Singaporean blogosphere on how influential and "predominant" Singaporean bloggers are over Technorati. Are they like the Brazilians that took over Orkut? Or the Filipinos that populated Friendster?
My guess that this is far from reality. How many of you have been part of a Google-bomb? It takes a bit of coordination to become the top search item on Google for a while. How much easier can it be on Technorati? Of course it's a lot easier.
So when a small group of people start blogging about the same thing, it's pretty easy to reach the top search items on Technorati. I think the buzz is a bit overblown, but it's always fun to chatter about such topics.
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If you check out Technorati right now (8:50am pst), you'll see "Daphne Teo" as the top search this hour and "Dawn Yang" as #7. So there is buzz in the Singaporean blogosphere on how influential and "predominant" Singaporean bloggers are over Technorati. Are they like the Brazilians that took over Orkut? Or the Filipinos that populated Friendster?
My guess that this is far from reality. How many of you have been part of a Google-bomb? It takes a bit of coordination to become the top search item on Google for a while. How much easier can it be on Technorati? Of course it's a lot easier.
So when a small group of people start blogging about the same thing, it's pretty easy to reach the top search items on Technorati. I think the buzz is a bit overblown, but it's always fun to chatter about such topics.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
SENATOR JOE BIDEN PUSHES FOR VISA WAIVER FOR KOREA
This is a good gesture towards South Korea, anda good thing for some of my friends in Seoul. Also a potential plus for the U.S. economy with all those Apkoojung wives (wealthy district) coming here for a week or so to shop like crazy :)
U.S. Senator Joseph Biden urged the George W. Bush administration on Monday (Nov. 21) to include South Korea in the U.S. visa waiver program and reopen a consulate in Korea's second largest city of Busan.
Biden (Democrat-Delaware), a ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, issued a press release welcoming Bush's taking interest in including Korea in the visa waiver program.
"South Korea is a strong ally, and we should ensure that South Korean visitors in our country enjoy the same privileges shared by the citizens of 27 other responsible nations, including Japan," he said in the release.
He also called on the Bush administration to reopen the consulate in Busan which was closed in 1996, noting that China, which already operates a consulate in the largest port city of South Korea, plans to open another consulate in South Korea.
The visa problem has been one of the major issues between Seoul and Washington in the past several years as South Korea saw an increasing number of people traveling to the U.S. for various purposes such as business and education. (full article)
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This is a good gesture towards South Korea, anda good thing for some of my friends in Seoul. Also a potential plus for the U.S. economy with all those Apkoojung wives (wealthy district) coming here for a week or so to shop like crazy :)
U.S. Senator Joseph Biden urged the George W. Bush administration on Monday (Nov. 21) to include South Korea in the U.S. visa waiver program and reopen a consulate in Korea's second largest city of Busan.
Biden (Democrat-Delaware), a ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, issued a press release welcoming Bush's taking interest in including Korea in the visa waiver program.
"South Korea is a strong ally, and we should ensure that South Korean visitors in our country enjoy the same privileges shared by the citizens of 27 other responsible nations, including Japan," he said in the release.
He also called on the Bush administration to reopen the consulate in Busan which was closed in 1996, noting that China, which already operates a consulate in the largest port city of South Korea, plans to open another consulate in South Korea.
The visa problem has been one of the major issues between Seoul and Washington in the past several years as South Korea saw an increasing number of people traveling to the U.S. for various purposes such as business and education. (full article)
BRIGHTCOVE RAISES $16.2 MILLION FROM DILLER, ALLEN & CO, AOL
Brightcove closes a nice round with some great investors:
Brightcove, an Internet television start-up that helps programmers syndicate shows across the Web and collect money from it, plans to announce on Tuesday that it has attracted new high-profile investors, including America Online and InterActiveCorp, and a distribution pact with AOL.
Analysts said the deal for the company, which has generated Google-like buzz even before its service becomes officially available next year, could inch it closer to breaking "TV's exclusive lock" on how viewers watch TV, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff said.
Brightcove has developed Web tools to get video distributed on any number of sites and collect fees or ad revenue.
The company's founder, Jeremy Allaire, known for making Macromedia's Flash software one of the most popular formats to view video online, has attracted Time Warner's AOL, InterActiveCorp, Allen Bank and Trust, and Hearst, which plan to invest $16.2 million in the company.
Barry Diller, the chief executive of InterActiveCorp, will join Brightcove's board of directors, Allaire said in an interview.
Bernoff said the year-old start-up's attraction underscores several trends sweeping through the Internet and media landscape: a drive by media companies and individuals to put more shows on the Web; consumers hungering for more videos and home videos online; and the booming advertising interest to support it. (full article)
MORE from SiliconBeat and Rafat.
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Brightcove closes a nice round with some great investors:
Brightcove, an Internet television start-up that helps programmers syndicate shows across the Web and collect money from it, plans to announce on Tuesday that it has attracted new high-profile investors, including America Online and InterActiveCorp, and a distribution pact with AOL.
Analysts said the deal for the company, which has generated Google-like buzz even before its service becomes officially available next year, could inch it closer to breaking "TV's exclusive lock" on how viewers watch TV, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff said.
Brightcove has developed Web tools to get video distributed on any number of sites and collect fees or ad revenue.
The company's founder, Jeremy Allaire, known for making Macromedia's Flash software one of the most popular formats to view video online, has attracted Time Warner's AOL, InterActiveCorp, Allen Bank and Trust, and Hearst, which plan to invest $16.2 million in the company.
Barry Diller, the chief executive of InterActiveCorp, will join Brightcove's board of directors, Allaire said in an interview.
Bernoff said the year-old start-up's attraction underscores several trends sweeping through the Internet and media landscape: a drive by media companies and individuals to put more shows on the Web; consumers hungering for more videos and home videos online; and the booming advertising interest to support it. (full article)
MORE from SiliconBeat and Rafat.
Monday, November 21, 2005
RUSSELL BEATTIE'S U.S. MOBILE CHRISTMAS 2005... REVIEW OF 2005
Russell has a good post on his thoughts on what happened in the U.S. mobile market for 2005 and what to look for in 2005. Here is an outline of his main points:
-Black and white phones are almost gone.
-There Too Many Phone Models Right Now!
-3G is Half Here.
-Mobile Video is Here! (And Then Some)
-Mobile Music is NOT Here.
-Motorola dominates the U.S. market.
-The Flip is Still King.
-WTF Are the Smart Phones!??!
-Still no WiFi Phones. (full post)
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Russell has a good post on his thoughts on what happened in the U.S. mobile market for 2005 and what to look for in 2005. Here is an outline of his main points:
-Black and white phones are almost gone.
-There Too Many Phone Models Right Now!
-3G is Half Here.
-Mobile Video is Here! (And Then Some)
-Mobile Music is NOT Here.
-Motorola dominates the U.S. market.
-The Flip is Still King.
-WTF Are the Smart Phones!??!
-Still no WiFi Phones. (full post)
WIDERTHAN FILES FOR IPO ON NASDAQ
I remember back in 2000 when I first heard about an ATKearney project advising SKTelecom. This project led to the creation of WiderThan, which is now filing for an IPO, but their business is a one-trick pony. A vast majority of their revenue comes from its incestuous relationship with SKT. It is a huge pony, but how much growth is there with WiderThan's business? I know they are working to expand beyond Korea, but how successful will it be? More from Rafat:
Mobile Content Company WiderThan Files For IPO, As Expected [by rafat] : As we wrote about first in June, WiderThan, the Korean mobile content company (it pioneered ringbacks in Korea and has been expanding in U.S. and other countries), has filed for an IPO on Nasdaq...WiderThan is a subsidiary/affiliate of Korean wireless giant SK Telecom.
The company plans to offer 6 million American Depositary Shares, with an estimated price of $14 to $16 each..out of those the company will offer 4 million and shareholders will offer 2 million. JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers are the underwriters...the stock will trade under the symbol "WTHN"... (more at MocoNews.net)
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I remember back in 2000 when I first heard about an ATKearney project advising SKTelecom. This project led to the creation of WiderThan, which is now filing for an IPO, but their business is a one-trick pony. A vast majority of their revenue comes from its incestuous relationship with SKT. It is a huge pony, but how much growth is there with WiderThan's business? I know they are working to expand beyond Korea, but how successful will it be? More from Rafat:
Mobile Content Company WiderThan Files For IPO, As Expected [by rafat] : As we wrote about first in June, WiderThan, the Korean mobile content company (it pioneered ringbacks in Korea and has been expanding in U.S. and other countries), has filed for an IPO on Nasdaq...WiderThan is a subsidiary/affiliate of Korean wireless giant SK Telecom.
The company plans to offer 6 million American Depositary Shares, with an estimated price of $14 to $16 each..out of those the company will offer 4 million and shareholders will offer 2 million. JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers are the underwriters...the stock will trade under the symbol "WTHN"... (more at MocoNews.net)
DIGGOT.US... DIGG, SLASHDOT, DEL.ICIO.US
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington points us to Diggot.us, which is another news//blog/feed aggregator. It's nice like the other fifty within the space. Definitely a future article here waiting to be written at my AlwaysOn column.
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TechCrunch's Michael Arrington points us to Diggot.us, which is another news//blog/feed aggregator. It's nice like the other fifty within the space. Definitely a future article here waiting to be written at my AlwaysOn column.
Friday, November 18, 2005
"BUSH SEEKS TO MEND FENCES ON ASIA TOUR"
Article from The Boston Globe on Bush's tour of Asia. The NY Times has an article on the North Korea situation, "U.S. and Seoul Share a Goal but Not a Strategy on North Korea."
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Article from The Boston Globe on Bush's tour of Asia. The NY Times has an article on the North Korea situation, "U.S. and Seoul Share a Goal but Not a Strategy on North Korea."
Thursday, November 17, 2005
AOL WEBCASTING OLD TV SHOWS... VERY COOL
In rare form, I'm going to praise AOL. The move to webcast TV classic is a strong move by the 'old yeller' of the Internet. It's smart to continue their focus on delivering unique content, such as their successful broadcast of the Live8 concerts, especially since they have access to all the libraries under Time Warner.
America Online is bringing classic TV to the Internet. AOL announced Monday a joint venture with corporate partner Warner Bros. to webcast 300 episodes a month of 100 classic TV series.
The shows include blasts from the past such as Growing Pains, F Troop, Babylon V and Welcome Back, Kotter. They will be shown free, on demand, with four 15-second commercials per episode on AOL.com in the USA.
With the new In2TV feature, AOL and Warner Bros. are seeking to find a home for shows that have ended syndication and cable runs. (full article)
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In rare form, I'm going to praise AOL. The move to webcast TV classic is a strong move by the 'old yeller' of the Internet. It's smart to continue their focus on delivering unique content, such as their successful broadcast of the Live8 concerts, especially since they have access to all the libraries under Time Warner.
America Online is bringing classic TV to the Internet. AOL announced Monday a joint venture with corporate partner Warner Bros. to webcast 300 episodes a month of 100 classic TV series.
The shows include blasts from the past such as Growing Pains, F Troop, Babylon V and Welcome Back, Kotter. They will be shown free, on demand, with four 15-second commercials per episode on AOL.com in the USA.
With the new In2TV feature, AOL and Warner Bros. are seeking to find a home for shows that have ended syndication and cable runs. (full article)
GOOGLE WANTS TO BE A PORTAL? OF COURSE
Erick Schonfeld poses the question on whether "Google Secretly Want to Become A Portal?" Of course. I called it back in March 2005 right after they launched the initial version of their personalized news service. It hasn't been a secret for a while, and it's been called out by some others besides me.
Google likes to portray itself as the anti-portal. It's goal is to send people away from Google as fast as possible so that they can find what they are looking for. But if you pull together all of its point-products outside of search (e-mail, IM, Blogger, maps, etc.) it seems that it has portal-like aspirations. As the matrix at right (compiled by Tristan Louis) shows, the only things Google is missing from being a full-blown portal are an online calendar, auctions, and Internet access (and those are all probably coming soon in one form or another). (full post)
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Erick Schonfeld poses the question on whether "Google Secretly Want to Become A Portal?" Of course. I called it back in March 2005 right after they launched the initial version of their personalized news service. It hasn't been a secret for a while, and it's been called out by some others besides me.
Google likes to portray itself as the anti-portal. It's goal is to send people away from Google as fast as possible so that they can find what they are looking for. But if you pull together all of its point-products outside of search (e-mail, IM, Blogger, maps, etc.) it seems that it has portal-like aspirations. As the matrix at right (compiled by Tristan Louis) shows, the only things Google is missing from being a full-blown portal are an online calendar, auctions, and Internet access (and those are all probably coming soon in one form or another). (full post)
PETER DRUCKER... OBI-WAN KENOBI OF MANAGEMENT
Definitely late on this, but I still have to pay my respects to Peter Drucker who past away last week. Business 2.0's Erick Schonfeld has a good post and old interview here. Knowledge@Wharton has some good words here. Economist has their special report here with a great quote:
"I had read Peter Drucker," Karl Rove once told the Atlantic Monthly, "but I'd never seen Drucker until I saw Bush in action."
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Definitely late on this, but I still have to pay my respects to Peter Drucker who past away last week. Business 2.0's Erick Schonfeld has a good post and old interview here. Knowledge@Wharton has some good words here. Economist has their special report here with a great quote:
"I had read Peter Drucker," Karl Rove once told the Atlantic Monthly, "but I'd never seen Drucker until I saw Bush in action."
BAMBI LOVES TONY?... WELL, AT LEAST GOINGON
I'm just amusing myself playing around with the title of this post, especially since the name "Bambi" is in it. Maybe this post will get a surge in traffic from people searching for porn :)
Anyway, MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco writes on Tony's media company, AlwaysOn, and provides a plug for GoingOn Networks. Hooya! (No, there is nothing going on between Bambi and Tony)
Blogcentric media
Commentary: AlwaysOn a model for new media
By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
More power to the bloggers.
Gawker Media -- a blog network known for popular weblogs, such as Wonkette, Gizmodo, Defamer and Lifehacker -- just inked a distribution deal with Yahoo News.
It's the latest deal by Yahoo to build up its blog portfolio, and it underscores Yahoo's blog focus. For about a month, Yahoo News has been testing the incorporation of blogs into its news searches. By the Yahoo News search box, it says: "All News & Blogs."
.....
GoingOn platform
To meet projections, Perkins needs to get distribution. AlwaysOn has 50,000 subscribers and a tiny audience base of 250,000 unique monthly visitors. To do this, Perkins plans to start GoingOn by the start of next year. GoingOn is essentially a blog network in a box that Perkins plans to sell to corporate and media companies, like Time Warner's CNN.com, that want their own blog and social network.
ThinkEquity, whose founder Michael Moe is one of AlwaysOn's contributing bloggers, and Audi, are two companies Perkins is currently speaking with to become the initial GoingOn corporate customers.
To the individual, Perkins says he'll be offering the GoingOn platform for $49 a month. As a blogger myself, I'd find this interesting and useful because I could create my own blog network where others could also post blogs. I can't do that with my current service.
Of course, GoingOn is a big project. Why not just sell out to a big media company that wants to incorporate blog and social network elements, I asked Perkins.
His response: "We are open to selling up to 50% of the company in the near term to an interested media partner who could help us substantially grow our global brand presence." (full article)
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I'm just amusing myself playing around with the title of this post, especially since the name "Bambi" is in it. Maybe this post will get a surge in traffic from people searching for porn :)
Anyway, MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco writes on Tony's media company, AlwaysOn, and provides a plug for GoingOn Networks. Hooya! (No, there is nothing going on between Bambi and Tony)
Blogcentric media
Commentary: AlwaysOn a model for new media
By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
More power to the bloggers.
Gawker Media -- a blog network known for popular weblogs, such as Wonkette, Gizmodo, Defamer and Lifehacker -- just inked a distribution deal with Yahoo News.
It's the latest deal by Yahoo to build up its blog portfolio, and it underscores Yahoo's blog focus. For about a month, Yahoo News has been testing the incorporation of blogs into its news searches. By the Yahoo News search box, it says: "All News & Blogs."
.....
GoingOn platform
To meet projections, Perkins needs to get distribution. AlwaysOn has 50,000 subscribers and a tiny audience base of 250,000 unique monthly visitors. To do this, Perkins plans to start GoingOn by the start of next year. GoingOn is essentially a blog network in a box that Perkins plans to sell to corporate and media companies, like Time Warner's CNN.com, that want their own blog and social network.
ThinkEquity, whose founder Michael Moe is one of AlwaysOn's contributing bloggers, and Audi, are two companies Perkins is currently speaking with to become the initial GoingOn corporate customers.
To the individual, Perkins says he'll be offering the GoingOn platform for $49 a month. As a blogger myself, I'd find this interesting and useful because I could create my own blog network where others could also post blogs. I can't do that with my current service.
Of course, GoingOn is a big project. Why not just sell out to a big media company that wants to incorporate blog and social network elements, I asked Perkins.
His response: "We are open to selling up to 50% of the company in the near term to an interested media partner who could help us substantially grow our global brand presence." (full article)
GOOGLE BUYING RIYA?
Tech blogs are buzzing about Riya possibly getting bought out by Google. TechCrunch has the best summary and links to other posts. Oddly enough TechCrunch is hosting Riya's launch party this Friday, which I'm attending.
This is the type of acquisition I expected Google to make versus Yahoo!. Riya has a face recognition technology that allows to you search through photos for specific people. A bit more advanced than a calendar system, so something Google would have an interest in buying rather than building on their own.
Rumors are flying this morning that Riya (a killer photo facial recognition startup) has been or is being acquired by Google in the $40 million range. See Om Malik, Niall Kennedy and Paul Kedrosky.
Even though everyone is blogging about it, this is nothing more than a rumor at this point. It is a rumor, however, that has been confirmed to me by employees of companies that were also apparently in the hunt for Riya but dropped out after the price became too rich.
These rumors will certainly make Riya’s launch party at my house tomorrow night even more interesting. (full post)
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Tech blogs are buzzing about Riya possibly getting bought out by Google. TechCrunch has the best summary and links to other posts. Oddly enough TechCrunch is hosting Riya's launch party this Friday, which I'm attending.
This is the type of acquisition I expected Google to make versus Yahoo!. Riya has a face recognition technology that allows to you search through photos for specific people. A bit more advanced than a calendar system, so something Google would have an interest in buying rather than building on their own.
Rumors are flying this morning that Riya (a killer photo facial recognition startup) has been or is being acquired by Google in the $40 million range. See Om Malik, Niall Kennedy and Paul Kedrosky.
Even though everyone is blogging about it, this is nothing more than a rumor at this point. It is a rumor, however, that has been confirmed to me by employees of companies that were also apparently in the hunt for Riya but dropped out after the price became too rich.
These rumors will certainly make Riya’s launch party at my house tomorrow night even more interesting. (full post)
FUNDING MISTAKES THAT YOU SHOULD AVOID
Decent article from The Wall Street Journal's StartupJournal on funding mistakes that entrepreneurs encounter. The main points are:
- Not raising enough capital
- Risking everything you own
- Borrowing from friends and family
- Failing to keep good records
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Decent article from The Wall Street Journal's StartupJournal on funding mistakes that entrepreneurs encounter. The main points are:
- Not raising enough capital
- Risking everything you own
- Borrowing from friends and family
- Failing to keep good records
PARENTS LEFT SAN FRANCISCO
I haven't blogged much the past couple days since my parents were in town for several days. They just took off this morning back to Chicago. Now Christine and I can get back to our normal hectic schedule instead of the craziness when parents are in town :) Christine and I were so tired yesterday that we went to sleep several hours before our regular time.
It was good to have them visit though and they love Christine. I think they believe she puts some order into my swashbuckling ways.
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I haven't blogged much the past couple days since my parents were in town for several days. They just took off this morning back to Chicago. Now Christine and I can get back to our normal hectic schedule instead of the craziness when parents are in town :) Christine and I were so tired yesterday that we went to sleep several hours before our regular time.
It was good to have them visit though and they love Christine. I think they believe she puts some order into my swashbuckling ways.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
"TAKING BACK THE WEB"... 'TAGGING' ADDING THE HUMAN ELEMENT
CNet has a good series and report on "Taking Back The Web" and describes it as "New generation, technologies return Net to social roots." The third piece in a five part series:
'Tagging' gives Web a human meaning
If you've been to a technology event recently, especially one with a high concentration of digerati, you may have seen someone stand up and tell everyone what the event's Flickr tag is.
It may sound like another language, and in a way it is: Flickr is a popular photo-sharing service that allows anyone to view most of the more than 50 million member-submitted images it hosts. Tags, meanwhile, are the searchable keywords the individuals can assign to either their own images or to those of nearly anyone else that say something about the information--the defining characteristic of Flickr and a growing number of other online services.
"In Flickr, tags worked because they were fundamentally social," said Stewart Butterfield, Flickr's co-founder. "By agreeing on a tag in advance, users could collectively curate collections of photos in a dead simple way. Now we see people announcing at events, 'The tag for this is baychi05' and stuff like that."
The idea behind tagging may be irresistibly simple, but its ramifications are enormous and complex. For more than a decade, the primary way to categorize and find information on the Internet was through the automated algorithms of search engines, a process at once laborious and highly imprecise. Tagging has quickly gained popularity because it allows human beings to bring intuitive organization to what otherwise would be largely anonymous entries in an endless sea of data. (full article)
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CNet has a good series and report on "Taking Back The Web" and describes it as "New generation, technologies return Net to social roots." The third piece in a five part series:
'Tagging' gives Web a human meaning
If you've been to a technology event recently, especially one with a high concentration of digerati, you may have seen someone stand up and tell everyone what the event's Flickr tag is.
It may sound like another language, and in a way it is: Flickr is a popular photo-sharing service that allows anyone to view most of the more than 50 million member-submitted images it hosts. Tags, meanwhile, are the searchable keywords the individuals can assign to either their own images or to those of nearly anyone else that say something about the information--the defining characteristic of Flickr and a growing number of other online services.
"In Flickr, tags worked because they were fundamentally social," said Stewart Butterfield, Flickr's co-founder. "By agreeing on a tag in advance, users could collectively curate collections of photos in a dead simple way. Now we see people announcing at events, 'The tag for this is baychi05' and stuff like that."
The idea behind tagging may be irresistibly simple, but its ramifications are enormous and complex. For more than a decade, the primary way to categorize and find information on the Internet was through the automated algorithms of search engines, a process at once laborious and highly imprecise. Tagging has quickly gained popularity because it allows human beings to bring intuitive organization to what otherwise would be largely anonymous entries in an endless sea of data. (full article)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
THE WEB SMART 50
BusinessWeek's Special Report in their magazine this week...
The Web Smart 50
The Net is wriggling into the nooks and crannies of businesses across the world. Here, a glimpse at the future (full article and slide show)
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BusinessWeek's Special Report in their magazine this week...
The Web Smart 50
The Net is wriggling into the nooks and crannies of businesses across the world. Here, a glimpse at the future (full article and slide show)
Monday, November 14, 2005
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Fans mob Schwarzenegger in China"
"America's 5 Best Governors"
"Rice confirms Gaza border deal"
"Sun debuts a new chip for servers"
"Microsoft Launches Search for Businesses"
"Shareholder Pressure Leads Knight Ridder to Announce Sale"
"Documents Reveal Alito's Abortion View"
"U.S. Drug Czar Launches Anti-Meth TV Ads"
Oldies To Catch Up On:
"Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show"
"Political bloggers jailed, detained"
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"Fans mob Schwarzenegger in China"
"America's 5 Best Governors"
"Rice confirms Gaza border deal"
"Sun debuts a new chip for servers"
"Microsoft Launches Search for Businesses"
"Shareholder Pressure Leads Knight Ridder to Announce Sale"
"Documents Reveal Alito's Abortion View"
"U.S. Drug Czar Launches Anti-Meth TV Ads"
Oldies To Catch Up On:
"Web 2.0 Cracks Start to Show"
"Political bloggers jailed, detained"
INTIFADA IN FRANCE
HatTip to Sam. Great editorial in the New York Sun. It's a bit old, but definitely worth posting here. I guess my vision of France in the future might not be far off. Anyway, this op-ed is spot on... right on... going on... :)
If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world's attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence.
Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."
How the times have changed. Muslims in Paris's suburbs are out shooting at police and firefighters, burning cars and buildings, and throwing rocks at commuter trains. Even children are out on the streets - it was reported that a 10-year-old was arrested. The trigger for the riots was the electrocution of two teenagers last Thursday, which the rioters say came following a police chase, a charge the police deny. But even if the charge by the rioters is true, that the police are culpable in the deaths of the two youths, the fact that such an incident would spark a riot is a sign of something deeper at work - no doubt France's failure to integrate its immigrant Muslim community. (full op-ed)
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HatTip to Sam. Great editorial in the New York Sun. It's a bit old, but definitely worth posting here. I guess my vision of France in the future might not be far off. Anyway, this op-ed is spot on... right on... going on... :)
If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world's attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence.
Back in the 1990s, the French sneered at America for the Los Angeles riots. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1992: "the consensus of French pundits is that something on the scale of the Los Angeles riots could not happen here, mainly because France is a more humane, less racist place with a much stronger commitment to social welfare programs." President Mitterrand, the Washington Post reported in 1992, blamed the riots on the "conservative society" that Presidents Reagan and Bush had created and said France is different because it "is the country where the level of social protection is the highest in the world."
How the times have changed. Muslims in Paris's suburbs are out shooting at police and firefighters, burning cars and buildings, and throwing rocks at commuter trains. Even children are out on the streets - it was reported that a 10-year-old was arrested. The trigger for the riots was the electrocution of two teenagers last Thursday, which the rioters say came following a police chase, a charge the police deny. But even if the charge by the rioters is true, that the police are culpable in the deaths of the two youths, the fact that such an incident would spark a riot is a sign of something deeper at work - no doubt France's failure to integrate its immigrant Muslim community. (full op-ed)
CONGRESSMAN HYDE DEMANDS N. KOREA REVEAL INFO ON S. KOREAN AND JAPANESE ABDUCTEES
Pressure from U.S. Congress on North Korean's psychotic behavior. Both sides of the aisle on hot on the human rights issues related to North Korea. Of course the left in South Korea mistakenly interpret these actions as a meddling of "domestic affairs" by the U.S. instead of recognizing it as a call for humanity and the general welfare of fellow human beings.
The irascible chairman of the U.S. House Committee on International Relations wrote to North Korea's UN mission early this month to demand that the Stalinist country reveal the whereabouts of South Korean and Japanese abductees. Henry Hyde sent the letter to the North’s UN Ambassador Park Gil-yon on Nov.4.
The activist website Free North Korea Broadcasting on Monday said Hyde slammed Pyongyang for keeping silent on the whereabouts of the Rev. Kim Dong-shik, who was kidnapped by the North. Hyde also urged the North to clarify the fate of Japanese abductees including Megumi Yokota, whose dubious remains Pyongyang sent to Japan to prove its claim that she died.
The congressman said he read that the North Korean government acknowledged that at least 23 South Korean prisoners of war, citizens captured during the Korean War and abductees were still alive in the North, pointing out that the actual number is known to be much higher. (full article)
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Pressure from U.S. Congress on North Korean's psychotic behavior. Both sides of the aisle on hot on the human rights issues related to North Korea. Of course the left in South Korea mistakenly interpret these actions as a meddling of "domestic affairs" by the U.S. instead of recognizing it as a call for humanity and the general welfare of fellow human beings.
The irascible chairman of the U.S. House Committee on International Relations wrote to North Korea's UN mission early this month to demand that the Stalinist country reveal the whereabouts of South Korean and Japanese abductees. Henry Hyde sent the letter to the North’s UN Ambassador Park Gil-yon on Nov.4.
The activist website Free North Korea Broadcasting on Monday said Hyde slammed Pyongyang for keeping silent on the whereabouts of the Rev. Kim Dong-shik, who was kidnapped by the North. Hyde also urged the North to clarify the fate of Japanese abductees including Megumi Yokota, whose dubious remains Pyongyang sent to Japan to prove its claim that she died.
The congressman said he read that the North Korean government acknowledged that at least 23 South Korean prisoners of war, citizens captured during the Korean War and abductees were still alive in the North, pointing out that the actual number is known to be much higher. (full article)
PAJAMAS MEDIA LAUNCHING
I got invited to the Pajamas Media launch event in NYC on November 16th, but couldn't make it due to scheduling conflicts. I wish I could be there this Wednesday since it looks to be a great event with many cool people. Here's a slice:
Presentations
Countdown To Launch
Pajamas Media co-founders Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson will unveil a new online destination for citizen journalism.
Gonzo To Blogs: Who Is A Journalist in 2005?
Join industry experts for a discussion that will explore the intersection of journalism and blogging—and the definition, practice, and potential of journalism today and beyond:
David Corn, blogger, columnist, and Washington D.C. editor for The Nation
Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company,” and
nationally syndicated columnist
John Podhoretz, New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor
Claudia Rosett, prize-winning journalist who pursued the “Oil for food” story via the Wall Street Journal
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I got invited to the Pajamas Media launch event in NYC on November 16th, but couldn't make it due to scheduling conflicts. I wish I could be there this Wednesday since it looks to be a great event with many cool people. Here's a slice:
Presentations
Countdown To Launch
Pajamas Media co-founders Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson will unveil a new online destination for citizen journalism.
Gonzo To Blogs: Who Is A Journalist in 2005?
Join industry experts for a discussion that will explore the intersection of journalism and blogging—and the definition, practice, and potential of journalism today and beyond:
David Corn, blogger, columnist, and Washington D.C. editor for The Nation
Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company,” and
nationally syndicated columnist
John Podhoretz, New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor
Claudia Rosett, prize-winning journalist who pursued the “Oil for food” story via the Wall Street Journal
GOOGLE LAUNCHES GOOGLE ANALYTICS... IT'S FREE
Pretty cool. I was wondering what they were going to do with Urchin.
Google has renamed its Urchin web analytics unit to be -- yep -- Google Analytics (as Gary predicted), in a move that follows with similar rebranding such as Keyhole being renamed Google Earth. And just like with Keyhole and Google's Picasa photo software, Google is turning Google Analytics into a free product.
The On Demand product is free for anyone. If you don't have an AdWords account, you're limited to five million page views per month (which is a lot). Need more? Make a $5 one time deposit, open an AdWords account, and you're set with unlimited page views.
The software based product remains fee-based. Google said that might change, but there were no immediate plans at the moment.
Google also said a number of new dashboards for different types of customers -- webmasters, advertisers and so on -- are being introduced to spotlight key metrics. (full post)
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Pretty cool. I was wondering what they were going to do with Urchin.
Google has renamed its Urchin web analytics unit to be -- yep -- Google Analytics (as Gary predicted), in a move that follows with similar rebranding such as Keyhole being renamed Google Earth. And just like with Keyhole and Google's Picasa photo software, Google is turning Google Analytics into a free product.
The On Demand product is free for anyone. If you don't have an AdWords account, you're limited to five million page views per month (which is a lot). Need more? Make a $5 one time deposit, open an AdWords account, and you're set with unlimited page views.
The software based product remains fee-based. Google said that might change, but there were no immediate plans at the moment.
Google also said a number of new dashboards for different types of customers -- webmasters, advertisers and so on -- are being introduced to spotlight key metrics. (full post)
ANDREW SULLIVAN'S BLOG MOVING TO TIME.COM
This is pretty big news for the blogosphere and media. From Instapundit:
ANDREW SULLIVAN IS TAKING THE BOEING: According to a press release I got from Time: "TIME contributor and essayist Andrew Sullivan will begin posting his blog, The Daily Dish, on TIME.com starting in January 2006, TIME managing editor Jim Kelly announced today. . . . Sullivan will continue writing his blog throughout the week, just as he does today, only it will be posted on TIME.com. He will maintain full control over the content of his blog."
Seems like a good model.
One blogger is a good start. Now how about 39,999 more? Andrew's post on this move here.
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This is pretty big news for the blogosphere and media. From Instapundit:
ANDREW SULLIVAN IS TAKING THE BOEING: According to a press release I got from Time: "TIME contributor and essayist Andrew Sullivan will begin posting his blog, The Daily Dish, on TIME.com starting in January 2006, TIME managing editor Jim Kelly announced today. . . . Sullivan will continue writing his blog throughout the week, just as he does today, only it will be posted on TIME.com. He will maintain full control over the content of his blog."
Seems like a good model.
One blogger is a good start. Now how about 39,999 more? Andrew's post on this move here.
KLEINER SHUFFLE
Not much meat here, but I like the title. Scott Sassa joins the board of Digital Chocolate.
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Not much meat here, but I like the title. Scott Sassa joins the board of Digital Chocolate.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS GOES ONLINE
Very cool that D&D is going to an online version. I was a D&D fanatic in my late grade school and junior high school years. It consumed entire weekends to the displeasure of my parents. I might have to try this version out to the displeasure of my wife.
When Turbine Games releases "Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach" early next year, executives there are hoping the new creation can reach the untold millions who played and loved the original, paper-based role-playing game.
Turbine's game developers say D&D Online is designed to stay as true as possible to the paper-based version and offers a reasonable online alternative to the more than 4.6 million people still playing D&D just in the United States. The game--in which players create imaginary characters and adventure through fantasy forests, castles and other environs--has been around for more than three decades. (full article)
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Very cool that D&D is going to an online version. I was a D&D fanatic in my late grade school and junior high school years. It consumed entire weekends to the displeasure of my parents. I might have to try this version out to the displeasure of my wife.
When Turbine Games releases "Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach" early next year, executives there are hoping the new creation can reach the untold millions who played and loved the original, paper-based role-playing game.
Turbine's game developers say D&D Online is designed to stay as true as possible to the paper-based version and offers a reasonable online alternative to the more than 4.6 million people still playing D&D just in the United States. The game--in which players create imaginary characters and adventure through fantasy forests, castles and other environs--has been around for more than three decades. (full article)
"WHO IS LYING ABOUT IRAQ?"
Great op-ed by Norman Podhoretz in The Wall Street Journal.
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.
What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.
The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
This entire scenario of purported deceit was given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war." (full op-ed)
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Great op-ed by Norman Podhoretz in The Wall Street Journal.
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.
What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.
The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
This entire scenario of purported deceit was given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Mr. Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war." (full op-ed)
Friday, November 11, 2005
GATES EMAIL AND OZZIE MEMO ON ONLINE SOFTWARE SERVICES... SALESFORCE.COM MARC BENIOFF SOUNDS OFF
I read CNet's article on the Gates email yesterday, but my friend, Jeff, sent me a link to the original text here.
Now Marc Benioff sounds off with a bang. It's funny timing because Tony and I were meeting with a few hours before his email to his company. Anyway, here it is:
From: Marc Benioff
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:58 PM
To: All Salesforce.com
Subject: The Business Web
Today, I woke up to read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal how Microsoft is reorganizing to take on companies like Google and Salesforce.com--building a new generation of products called Microsoft Live.
And just last week, Bill Gates gave a speech about the end of software that could have been a page out of our play book. His rhetoric sounding as it was he who was picketing software companies and calling for "The End of Software"--our mantra since 1999.
The speech was an amazing bracket to his famous Tidal Wave speech on December 7, 1995 about how Microsoft would own the Internet. But over this 10 year span, what has Microsoft done for business on the Web besides cloning a slow browser? The answer: nothing.
For example, Microsoft says one day that customers in our industry should upgrade from Microsoft CRM 1.2 to Microsoft CRM 3.0 (they lost 2.0 on the way), and, unfortunately, the two versions are not compatible with each other--customizations will not upgrade, they have different user interfaces, and they require lots of different Microsoft software. It's an old Microsoft game that ends in failure for customers, but generates their mafiaesque upgrade revenues.
The next day, Microsoft has a new version called "Live." It's the new on demand offering that will not be compatible with the current product line. So, perhaps they should rename their entire Microsoft software product line, Microsoft Dead. It's the analog to Microsoft Live, the new on demand offering that does even exist.
What is going on? This is a time of seismic shifts in our industry. The internet is disintermediating the status quo, and old models of software cost and complexity are being replaced with new models of affordability and ease of use. (full article)
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I read CNet's article on the Gates email yesterday, but my friend, Jeff, sent me a link to the original text here.
Now Marc Benioff sounds off with a bang. It's funny timing because Tony and I were meeting with a few hours before his email to his company. Anyway, here it is:
From: Marc Benioff
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:58 PM
To: All Salesforce.com
Subject: The Business Web
Today, I woke up to read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal how Microsoft is reorganizing to take on companies like Google and Salesforce.com--building a new generation of products called Microsoft Live.
And just last week, Bill Gates gave a speech about the end of software that could have been a page out of our play book. His rhetoric sounding as it was he who was picketing software companies and calling for "The End of Software"--our mantra since 1999.
The speech was an amazing bracket to his famous Tidal Wave speech on December 7, 1995 about how Microsoft would own the Internet. But over this 10 year span, what has Microsoft done for business on the Web besides cloning a slow browser? The answer: nothing.
For example, Microsoft says one day that customers in our industry should upgrade from Microsoft CRM 1.2 to Microsoft CRM 3.0 (they lost 2.0 on the way), and, unfortunately, the two versions are not compatible with each other--customizations will not upgrade, they have different user interfaces, and they require lots of different Microsoft software. It's an old Microsoft game that ends in failure for customers, but generates their mafiaesque upgrade revenues.
The next day, Microsoft has a new version called "Live." It's the new on demand offering that will not be compatible with the current product line. So, perhaps they should rename their entire Microsoft software product line, Microsoft Dead. It's the analog to Microsoft Live, the new on demand offering that does even exist.
What is going on? This is a time of seismic shifts in our industry. The internet is disintermediating the status quo, and old models of software cost and complexity are being replaced with new models of affordability and ease of use. (full article)
Thursday, November 10, 2005
YEAH FRIENDSTER IS ANNOYING
Earlier this week I got a couple emails from friends replying to "my email" about an invite to Friendster. Hmmm... I never sent out an invite to them and Friendster never notified me about this effort on my behalf. First, one of them was already in my Friendster network. Second, one of them didn't want to participate in these social networks.
What Friendster did is not cool. Obviously, in the first situation, Friendster sent the invite to another email that my friend used and which I invited him through over two years ago. I know that they are desparate to try to get people back into their network and to increase their numbers, but this is not the way to do it. More from CNet:
Friendster recently sent a mass e-mail to try to make new friends for its social network. Instead, it made some enemies.
The one-time hot spot dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago. The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company.
The e-mails, which went out during the last two weeks, show just how tough the competition is getting for Friendster as it battles growing online giant MySpace.com.
Some of the vocal Web community responded by calling the mass e-mailing spam.
"I could think of about 10 different ways for Friendster to improve itself, but spamming those who didn't care to join in the first place isn't one of them," said Adam Finley. (full article)
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Earlier this week I got a couple emails from friends replying to "my email" about an invite to Friendster. Hmmm... I never sent out an invite to them and Friendster never notified me about this effort on my behalf. First, one of them was already in my Friendster network. Second, one of them didn't want to participate in these social networks.
What Friendster did is not cool. Obviously, in the first situation, Friendster sent the invite to another email that my friend used and which I invited him through over two years ago. I know that they are desparate to try to get people back into their network and to increase their numbers, but this is not the way to do it. More from CNet:
Friendster recently sent a mass e-mail to try to make new friends for its social network. Instead, it made some enemies.
The one-time hot spot dug deep into its network to pull out the e-mail addresses of people who didn't initially respond to friends' invites to join the online social network a year or more ago. The e-mails implied they were coming from a friend when, in fact, they were being sent by the company.
The e-mails, which went out during the last two weeks, show just how tough the competition is getting for Friendster as it battles growing online giant MySpace.com.
Some of the vocal Web community responded by calling the mass e-mailing spam.
"I could think of about 10 different ways for Friendster to improve itself, but spamming those who didn't care to join in the first place isn't one of them," said Adam Finley. (full article)
IBM MOVING IN ON INTELLISEEK, UMBRIA, CYMFONY
Interesting move by IBM. They are definitely one of the larger players in IT that is riding the wave from the blogosphere. Their "Public Image Monitoring Solution" is a solution that competes with Intelliseek, Umbria, Cymfony, and few others that play within this space. This definitely puts some heat on the other players since IBM can leverage its established customer base and huge salesforce that sells its various software and hardware solutions.
IBM said it is developing an application to analyze how discussions on blogs and other Web sites are affecting a given corporation's image.
The computing giant on Monday described a service, called the Public Image Monitoring Solution, that searches through reams of blogs, news stories and other material to distill useful information for companies.
IBM is testing the application with its partners and the Morgan Stanley financial services firm. The new service would draw on IBM's text analytics and search software, WebSphere Information Integration OmniFind Edition.
IBM originally developed OmniFind to index and search information that resides within corporate networks. But it found that some customers were keen on learning what outsiders were saying on the Web about a given corporation, said Marc Andrews, IBM's director of strategy and business development for unstructured information.
"Organizations are struggling to understand what people are saying about them in public," said Andrews. "That ends up having an impact on opinion and buying decisions."
Andrews on Monday demonstrated a prototype where a marketing department of an automotive firm could search through blogs, news stories and newsgroups to gauge consumer feelings. (full article)
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Interesting move by IBM. They are definitely one of the larger players in IT that is riding the wave from the blogosphere. Their "Public Image Monitoring Solution" is a solution that competes with Intelliseek, Umbria, Cymfony, and few others that play within this space. This definitely puts some heat on the other players since IBM can leverage its established customer base and huge salesforce that sells its various software and hardware solutions.
IBM said it is developing an application to analyze how discussions on blogs and other Web sites are affecting a given corporation's image.
The computing giant on Monday described a service, called the Public Image Monitoring Solution, that searches through reams of blogs, news stories and other material to distill useful information for companies.
IBM is testing the application with its partners and the Morgan Stanley financial services firm. The new service would draw on IBM's text analytics and search software, WebSphere Information Integration OmniFind Edition.
IBM originally developed OmniFind to index and search information that resides within corporate networks. But it found that some customers were keen on learning what outsiders were saying on the Web about a given corporation, said Marc Andrews, IBM's director of strategy and business development for unstructured information.
"Organizations are struggling to understand what people are saying about them in public," said Andrews. "That ends up having an impact on opinion and buying decisions."
Andrews on Monday demonstrated a prototype where a marketing department of an automotive firm could search through blogs, news stories and newsgroups to gauge consumer feelings. (full article)
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
NORTH KOREAN HUMAN RIGHTS SEMINAR AT STANFORD... IMMATURITY OF HAN AND SOME KOREANS
Last night I attended a speaker event at Stanford which was hosted by a student group called NK Focus. Young O. Kim, who is District Representative to Congressman Ed Royce and also serves as his Director of Asian Community Affairs, spoke on her experiences on The Hill and abroad as an advocate of North Korean Human Rights. She is also the wife of Charles Kim, executive director of the KAC (Korean American Coalition).
Ms. Kim was a decent speaker, but had a few great anecdotes. One that was disturbing to me was how a radio program in South Korea called 'Free North Korea' has been harassed by pro-North Korea groups where the staff had to move several times within a handful of months. One incident, which led Ms. Kim to visit Seoul, was when the police used forced on the 'Free North Korea' radio staffers but they were the ones calling for help against a mob. The irony is that these staffers are North Korean refugees who have a passion to free North Korean from the rule of Kim Jong Il. So if these people have a passion for North Korean and its true freedom, who are the idiots that want them to stop the information flow that leads to people seeking freedom beyond North Korea's borders? I hope at the least they are North Koreans. Possibly spies from North Korea or brainwashed students by North Korean spies. If they are simply South Koreans thinking they are doing a good thing, they must be some of the stupidest people in the world.
During the Q&A session, Ms. Kim was challenged by a native Korean on issue of the growing anti-American sentiment in South Korea and the recent call for the removal of General Douglas MacArthur's memorial statue. To provide some background, there is a small movement for its removal and part of the extreme left in South Korea that are calling MacArthur a war criminal and accusing him of killing innocent citizens, which is ridiculous. Some even blame him for the divided nation, which is even more retarded because he was the one that wanted to invade China and actually took some initial steps but President Truman ordered him back. MacArthur pushed and this led to Truman firing him for insubordination.
Anyway, this person was reminding us of the secret pact the U.S. forged with Japan during the Chosun Dynasty that favored Japan's interests over Korea's. He was basically stating how these past events showed that the U.S. wasn't an ally to be trusted. PLEASE. GET OVER IT. Many of these events that the IDIOTIC LEFT in Korea rally on were before 54,000 U.S. bled for South Korea's freedom. Before South Korea benefitted from military contracts, technology transfer, and favored trading status that were the basic elements of its current economic success.
The man's griping during the seminar reminded me of a conversation my mother had with my friend (I posted this a while back, but couldn't find it right now). He was getting his graduate degree in Korean literature at Seoul National and was expounding upon the beauty of "Han," which doesn't have an English equivalent. The basic concept is a long sadness reflected by past trauma or a certain bitterness which stems from a broken heart or lengthy period of suffering. In a simple manner, this concept of Han mirrors Korea history since it has been a nation that was constantly invaded and stepped upon for over 5,000 years.
My mother started softly into the discussion with my friend, and then dropped the hammer, "Dear, once you really think about it you'll understand that Han is basically an immature way for Koreans to deal with their emotions..."
She went on with this discussion and soon after that day he ended his program at Seoul National. A few weeks later, he moved to NYC and eventually earned a role on a major broadway show.
So the man in the seminar reminded me of this situation and how some Koreans simply cannot move on and deal with the past in a mature manner. GET OVER IT. South Korea stands as the 11th largest economy in the world, and it should behave as such. South Korea's positioning is a lot different than during the days of the Chosun Dynasty or even a couple decades ago, so people over there have to truly realize their standing in the world. They have to stop making South Korea act like a 4 old year child and grow up. It cannot take steps backward and dwell on the past like some loser who constantly repeats his mistakes in his head or never forgives a friend over a minor spat. SO FOR THOSE IN KOREA READING THIS AND IF YOU HATE THE U.S., GET OVER IT. This is an alliance that South Korea needs more for its future than the U.S. needs it. It is a beneficial partnership that many Koreans have forgotten or where arrogance has blinded them. Open your eyes.
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Last night I attended a speaker event at Stanford which was hosted by a student group called NK Focus. Young O. Kim, who is District Representative to Congressman Ed Royce and also serves as his Director of Asian Community Affairs, spoke on her experiences on The Hill and abroad as an advocate of North Korean Human Rights. She is also the wife of Charles Kim, executive director of the KAC (Korean American Coalition).
Ms. Kim was a decent speaker, but had a few great anecdotes. One that was disturbing to me was how a radio program in South Korea called 'Free North Korea' has been harassed by pro-North Korea groups where the staff had to move several times within a handful of months. One incident, which led Ms. Kim to visit Seoul, was when the police used forced on the 'Free North Korea' radio staffers but they were the ones calling for help against a mob. The irony is that these staffers are North Korean refugees who have a passion to free North Korean from the rule of Kim Jong Il. So if these people have a passion for North Korean and its true freedom, who are the idiots that want them to stop the information flow that leads to people seeking freedom beyond North Korea's borders? I hope at the least they are North Koreans. Possibly spies from North Korea or brainwashed students by North Korean spies. If they are simply South Koreans thinking they are doing a good thing, they must be some of the stupidest people in the world.
During the Q&A session, Ms. Kim was challenged by a native Korean on issue of the growing anti-American sentiment in South Korea and the recent call for the removal of General Douglas MacArthur's memorial statue. To provide some background, there is a small movement for its removal and part of the extreme left in South Korea that are calling MacArthur a war criminal and accusing him of killing innocent citizens, which is ridiculous. Some even blame him for the divided nation, which is even more retarded because he was the one that wanted to invade China and actually took some initial steps but President Truman ordered him back. MacArthur pushed and this led to Truman firing him for insubordination.
Anyway, this person was reminding us of the secret pact the U.S. forged with Japan during the Chosun Dynasty that favored Japan's interests over Korea's. He was basically stating how these past events showed that the U.S. wasn't an ally to be trusted. PLEASE. GET OVER IT. Many of these events that the IDIOTIC LEFT in Korea rally on were before 54,000 U.S. bled for South Korea's freedom. Before South Korea benefitted from military contracts, technology transfer, and favored trading status that were the basic elements of its current economic success.
The man's griping during the seminar reminded me of a conversation my mother had with my friend (I posted this a while back, but couldn't find it right now). He was getting his graduate degree in Korean literature at Seoul National and was expounding upon the beauty of "Han," which doesn't have an English equivalent. The basic concept is a long sadness reflected by past trauma or a certain bitterness which stems from a broken heart or lengthy period of suffering. In a simple manner, this concept of Han mirrors Korea history since it has been a nation that was constantly invaded and stepped upon for over 5,000 years.
My mother started softly into the discussion with my friend, and then dropped the hammer, "Dear, once you really think about it you'll understand that Han is basically an immature way for Koreans to deal with their emotions..."
She went on with this discussion and soon after that day he ended his program at Seoul National. A few weeks later, he moved to NYC and eventually earned a role on a major broadway show.
So the man in the seminar reminded me of this situation and how some Koreans simply cannot move on and deal with the past in a mature manner. GET OVER IT. South Korea stands as the 11th largest economy in the world, and it should behave as such. South Korea's positioning is a lot different than during the days of the Chosun Dynasty or even a couple decades ago, so people over there have to truly realize their standing in the world. They have to stop making South Korea act like a 4 old year child and grow up. It cannot take steps backward and dwell on the past like some loser who constantly repeats his mistakes in his head or never forgives a friend over a minor spat. SO FOR THOSE IN KOREA READING THIS AND IF YOU HATE THE U.S., GET OVER IT. This is an alliance that South Korea needs more for its future than the U.S. needs it. It is a beneficial partnership that many Koreans have forgotten or where arrogance has blinded them. Open your eyes.
STEVE FORBES INTERVIEW BY JOHN FURRIER... "ATTACK OF THE BLOGS" ISSUE
John is definitely on a roll. He is kicking ass and taking all names with his new venture, Podtech.net. He just did a great interview with Steve Forbes, which is titled at AlwaysOn as "The Flat Tax in a Flat World."
This interview is timely because this week's cover story on Forbes is "Attack of The Blogs," which has created a storm throughout all corners of the blogosphere. The writer, Daniel Lyons, really did a crappy, sensationalist job. He took the furthest outlier examples and prominently displayed them along with a cover that states, "They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there anyway to fight back?" Please.
John has some links to responses on this issue at his post, or you can just check these out... by Steve Rubel, Shel Israel, Xeni Jardin, and Dave Taylor has different viewpoint than most as he calls the article "surprisingly accurate."
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John is definitely on a roll. He is kicking ass and taking all names with his new venture, Podtech.net. He just did a great interview with Steve Forbes, which is titled at AlwaysOn as "The Flat Tax in a Flat World."
This interview is timely because this week's cover story on Forbes is "Attack of The Blogs," which has created a storm throughout all corners of the blogosphere. The writer, Daniel Lyons, really did a crappy, sensationalist job. He took the furthest outlier examples and prominently displayed them along with a cover that states, "They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there anyway to fight back?" Please.
John has some links to responses on this issue at his post, or you can just check these out... by Steve Rubel, Shel Israel, Xeni Jardin, and Dave Taylor has different viewpoint than most as he calls the article "surprisingly accurate."
ELECTION ROUNDUP... BLOOMBERG EASILY WINS AND DEMS TAKE TWO GOVERNORSHIPS
Well, I didn't expect Virginia or New Jersey to become Republican-led states, but it still sucks. Schwarzenegger's ballot measures all lost, which is a loss for all the citizen of California, but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I can expect a call from my friend, JB, who will be yapping away, especially since his wife heads communications for one of the labor unions in California.
Democrats won two big governorships Tuesday, with Tim Kaine defeating Republican Jerry Kilgore in Virginia and Sen. Jon Corzine easily beating businessman Doug Forrester in New Jersey.
Kaine, Virginia's lieutenant governor, had fashioned his campaign around the theme of continuing the state's economic growth, which he said was fostered by incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, a man with 2008 presidential ambitions.
The victory was buoyant news for Warner, who campaigned far and wide across the state for the 47-year-old Kaine. (full article)
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Well, I didn't expect Virginia or New Jersey to become Republican-led states, but it still sucks. Schwarzenegger's ballot measures all lost, which is a loss for all the citizen of California, but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I can expect a call from my friend, JB, who will be yapping away, especially since his wife heads communications for one of the labor unions in California.
Democrats won two big governorships Tuesday, with Tim Kaine defeating Republican Jerry Kilgore in Virginia and Sen. Jon Corzine easily beating businessman Doug Forrester in New Jersey.
Kaine, Virginia's lieutenant governor, had fashioned his campaign around the theme of continuing the state's economic growth, which he said was fostered by incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, a man with 2008 presidential ambitions.
The victory was buoyant news for Warner, who campaigned far and wide across the state for the 47-year-old Kaine. (full article)
KOREAN AMERICAN MAYOR of EDISON, NJ... JUN CHOI
Congratulations to Jun! He won the Edison, NJ mayoral race by gathering 50.5% of the vote (only a 270 vote margin). Definitely a nail-biter. As I wrote before, Jun was at SIPA with me, so even if he's a Democrat I had to plug for him because I've known him to be a great person and very capable professional. Digital Chosun has more here.
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Congratulations to Jun! He won the Edison, NJ mayoral race by gathering 50.5% of the vote (only a 270 vote margin). Definitely a nail-biter. As I wrote before, Jun was at SIPA with me, so even if he's a Democrat I had to plug for him because I've known him to be a great person and very capable professional. Digital Chosun has more here.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"17 Terror Suspects Arrested in Australia"
"South Korean president ready to meet Koizumi"
"Yahoo, TiVo Join to Blend TV, Web Services"
"Grokster to Shut Down Downloading Service"
"Startup Brightcove Taps Web Video Pro"
"Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture'"
"Should Bush Fire Rove?"
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"17 Terror Suspects Arrested in Australia"
"South Korean president ready to meet Koizumi"
"Yahoo, TiVo Join to Blend TV, Web Services"
"Grokster to Shut Down Downloading Service"
"Startup Brightcove Taps Web Video Pro"
"Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture'"
"Should Bush Fire Rove?"
Monday, November 07, 2005
JIMMY MASSEY... ANTI-WAR FRAUD, BOTTOM-FEEDER, LOSER
This is a definite must-read article. Between Joe Wilson and Jimmy Massey, it's clear to me that Massey is lower on the scum scale. This man goes around and lies about his experiences as a soldier in Iraq. How he and others went around and killed innocent Iraqi civilians. His book is called "Kill, Kill, Kill."
Jim Massey is seriously stupid. Did he think that he could go around and spread his lies without anyone checking on his statements? That no one like Ron Harris, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, would also be present during his tour of duty? Unbelievably idiotic and desparate. What desparate souls our media driven society can create. What a sad life.
Michelle Malkin has some great commentary and a summary of links here. Also she has posted the transcript from CNN's interview with Ron Harris:
Former Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey has published a book in France called, "Kill Kill Kill." It accuses U.S. soldiers of atrocities in Iraq, including the killing of civilian men, women, and children.
Our next guest says Massey is lying and he can prove it. Joining us now is "St. Louis Post" dispatch writer Ron Harris. He was embedded with Jimmy Massey's unit in Iraq. Welcome, Ron.
RON HARRIS, "ST. LOUIS POST": Thank you. COSTELLO: You know, if this guy is lying, that's just vile. Because he's saying some vile things about our men and women over in Iraq.
HARRIS: Yes, that's very true. I mean, he is claiming that marines intentionally killed civilians, that he intentionally killed civilians. And at times, he claims that they intentionally killed civilians based on orders from the superiors. And the fact is, it just isn't true.
[CAROL] COSTELLO: OK, let's get to specifics now. He claimed, as you said, that Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters and were sometimes ordered by higher-ups to do that. How can you disprove that?
HARRIS: Well, two or three things. Number one, I was there in Iraq when -- I was in Baghdad when we initially pulled in. I was with Massey's unit. I was embedded with the unit, as were three other -- four other journalists, actually. And we went to that prison and I was there the next morning.
And not only did I not see any protesters, nobody saw any protesters. And not for weeks. Because during that time, it was a very, very dangerous period. It was basically four kinds of Iraqis. There were Iraqis who were happy to see the marines. There were Iraqis who were shooting at the marines and me, too, and the other journalists. There were Iraqis who were looting and that was probably what we saw most of. And there were finally Iraqis staying at home because they were afraid.
COSTELLO: Yes, but Ron, if there was completely untrue, I mean, this guy has made it into pretty big publications like "Vanity Fair." He's written a book that's bee published in France.
HARRIS: Oh, it's been published everywhere. Nobody -- in not one publication or not one broadcast, is there any corroboration. It's just Jimmy Massey's story. Nobody ever called a journalists who were covering him. Nobody ever interviewed the marines, which I did all of. Nobody ever checked his story. They don't even have another source that says on background or another source who didn't want to be quoted. It's just Jimmy Massey's story.
COSTELLO: Well, let's face it -- let's say these stories were true. Would the marines -- wouldn't be forthcoming about that. Oh, yes, we killed innocent Iraqi people. They're not going to admit that.
HARRIS: No, no, no. That's not true. In fact, the marines, we were there embedded with the marines. And the marines did shoot innocent civilians. And we covered that. In fact, covered that -- the photographer with me, Andrew Cartero (ph) shot pictures of innocent civilians who had been accidentally shot by the Marine Corps. We wrote stories and Andy took photographs of a British television crew that was shot and killed by the Marine Corps on the second day of the war.
COSTELLO: Well, Ron, let's go to some of those photos. We have one photo that this photographer took, and it shows two women who are bloody. You say this further disproves Jimmy Massey's story. In what way?
HARRIS: In that case, Jimmy Massey claimed that a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head. That was the particular shooting incident. In fact, there were civilian shot in that car by Marines. Nobody died.
Andrew Cartero, again, the photographer for "The Post Dispatch," took those photographs. And as you can see in those pictures, there are people there. Nobody died. I talked to the medic who treated them. And I traveled with him for more than a month, Petty Officer Justin Poviance (ph). He told me nobody died in that incident.
COSTELLO: Well, let's go to one other picture, and this is really gruesome. So I' going to warn people to turn away if you want to see it. But this a tractor trailer. Jimmy Massey says it was filled with women, children and men. What do you say?
HARRIS: We were there. Those are photographs by Andrew Katraro. I saw it. Michael Phillips from "Wall Street Journal" saw it. Robbie Nesbit (ph) from Associated Press saw it. Those were men on a military base who had been killed by U.S. artillery, but there were no women or children in those tractor trailers. Those tractor trailer were used as sort of a makeshift morgue. They were refrigerated trucks, and they had been killed by American bombing. Initially the military thought that they had been killed by Saddam Hussein. They thought maybe it was a war crime.
COSTELLO: OK, I have to ask you this before I have to let you go.
HARRIS: OK.
COSTELLO: Why would this staff sergeant, Jimmy Massey, lie about these things, and say such terrible things about his own comrades?
HARRIS: Well, one of the things that has happened -- number one, Jimmy Massey, I don't know why, but I can just speculate a couple of things. Number one, Jimmy Massey was honorably discharged for post- traumatic stress syndrome. The second thing, Jimmy Massey has profited off of this. He does have a book. He has a Web site in which he sells his story on a CD for a hundred dollars. I think it's called jimmymassey.com. So it's been profitable for Jimmy Massey to keep telling this lie.
COSTELLO: Ron Harris from the "St. Louis Post Dispatch," thank you for joining us this morning.
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This is a definite must-read article. Between Joe Wilson and Jimmy Massey, it's clear to me that Massey is lower on the scum scale. This man goes around and lies about his experiences as a soldier in Iraq. How he and others went around and killed innocent Iraqi civilians. His book is called "Kill, Kill, Kill."
Jim Massey is seriously stupid. Did he think that he could go around and spread his lies without anyone checking on his statements? That no one like Ron Harris, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, would also be present during his tour of duty? Unbelievably idiotic and desparate. What desparate souls our media driven society can create. What a sad life.
Michelle Malkin has some great commentary and a summary of links here. Also she has posted the transcript from CNN's interview with Ron Harris:
Former Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey has published a book in France called, "Kill Kill Kill." It accuses U.S. soldiers of atrocities in Iraq, including the killing of civilian men, women, and children.
Our next guest says Massey is lying and he can prove it. Joining us now is "St. Louis Post" dispatch writer Ron Harris. He was embedded with Jimmy Massey's unit in Iraq. Welcome, Ron.
RON HARRIS, "ST. LOUIS POST": Thank you. COSTELLO: You know, if this guy is lying, that's just vile. Because he's saying some vile things about our men and women over in Iraq.
HARRIS: Yes, that's very true. I mean, he is claiming that marines intentionally killed civilians, that he intentionally killed civilians. And at times, he claims that they intentionally killed civilians based on orders from the superiors. And the fact is, it just isn't true.
[CAROL] COSTELLO: OK, let's get to specifics now. He claimed, as you said, that Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters and were sometimes ordered by higher-ups to do that. How can you disprove that?
HARRIS: Well, two or three things. Number one, I was there in Iraq when -- I was in Baghdad when we initially pulled in. I was with Massey's unit. I was embedded with the unit, as were three other -- four other journalists, actually. And we went to that prison and I was there the next morning.
And not only did I not see any protesters, nobody saw any protesters. And not for weeks. Because during that time, it was a very, very dangerous period. It was basically four kinds of Iraqis. There were Iraqis who were happy to see the marines. There were Iraqis who were shooting at the marines and me, too, and the other journalists. There were Iraqis who were looting and that was probably what we saw most of. And there were finally Iraqis staying at home because they were afraid.
COSTELLO: Yes, but Ron, if there was completely untrue, I mean, this guy has made it into pretty big publications like "Vanity Fair." He's written a book that's bee published in France.
HARRIS: Oh, it's been published everywhere. Nobody -- in not one publication or not one broadcast, is there any corroboration. It's just Jimmy Massey's story. Nobody ever called a journalists who were covering him. Nobody ever interviewed the marines, which I did all of. Nobody ever checked his story. They don't even have another source that says on background or another source who didn't want to be quoted. It's just Jimmy Massey's story.
COSTELLO: Well, let's face it -- let's say these stories were true. Would the marines -- wouldn't be forthcoming about that. Oh, yes, we killed innocent Iraqi people. They're not going to admit that.
HARRIS: No, no, no. That's not true. In fact, the marines, we were there embedded with the marines. And the marines did shoot innocent civilians. And we covered that. In fact, covered that -- the photographer with me, Andrew Cartero (ph) shot pictures of innocent civilians who had been accidentally shot by the Marine Corps. We wrote stories and Andy took photographs of a British television crew that was shot and killed by the Marine Corps on the second day of the war.
COSTELLO: Well, Ron, let's go to some of those photos. We have one photo that this photographer took, and it shows two women who are bloody. You say this further disproves Jimmy Massey's story. In what way?
HARRIS: In that case, Jimmy Massey claimed that a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head. That was the particular shooting incident. In fact, there were civilian shot in that car by Marines. Nobody died.
Andrew Cartero, again, the photographer for "The Post Dispatch," took those photographs. And as you can see in those pictures, there are people there. Nobody died. I talked to the medic who treated them. And I traveled with him for more than a month, Petty Officer Justin Poviance (ph). He told me nobody died in that incident.
COSTELLO: Well, let's go to one other picture, and this is really gruesome. So I' going to warn people to turn away if you want to see it. But this a tractor trailer. Jimmy Massey says it was filled with women, children and men. What do you say?
HARRIS: We were there. Those are photographs by Andrew Katraro. I saw it. Michael Phillips from "Wall Street Journal" saw it. Robbie Nesbit (ph) from Associated Press saw it. Those were men on a military base who had been killed by U.S. artillery, but there were no women or children in those tractor trailers. Those tractor trailer were used as sort of a makeshift morgue. They were refrigerated trucks, and they had been killed by American bombing. Initially the military thought that they had been killed by Saddam Hussein. They thought maybe it was a war crime.
COSTELLO: OK, I have to ask you this before I have to let you go.
HARRIS: OK.
COSTELLO: Why would this staff sergeant, Jimmy Massey, lie about these things, and say such terrible things about his own comrades?
HARRIS: Well, one of the things that has happened -- number one, Jimmy Massey, I don't know why, but I can just speculate a couple of things. Number one, Jimmy Massey was honorably discharged for post- traumatic stress syndrome. The second thing, Jimmy Massey has profited off of this. He does have a book. He has a Web site in which he sells his story on a CD for a hundred dollars. I think it's called jimmymassey.com. So it's been profitable for Jimmy Massey to keep telling this lie.
COSTELLO: Ron Harris from the "St. Louis Post Dispatch," thank you for joining us this morning.
JOSEPH A. WILSON IV: THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Great article over at The American Thinker by James Lewis. Bold implications on France's involvement and influence in the whole Plame-Wilson affair, and a must read for those interested.
There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man,Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.
.....
Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson’s bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.
The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to “investigate,” while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides – to make him an instant “expert witness” on Saddam’s dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wife Valerie to propose him? Without that trip, Joseph C. Wilson had no special claim to any expertise about Saddam’s weapons. It was Valerie Plame who was the CIA WMD expert, but it was Wilson who became the front man.
Notice that the modus operandi for the Wilson trip was much the same as for the Niger forgery: a classic con game. Find a sucker, tell him what he wants to hear, and use that credulous embrance by the mark to destroy your enemy. In the first case the sucker was Colin Powell. In the second case it was the New York Times Op-Ed page. In both cases the enemy to be shafted was George W. Bush and the administration. This is how disinformation is supposed to work.
.....
Today Wilson claims to be a business agent for "African mining companies." But Niger’s mines are owned by a French consortium, which operates cheek-by-jowl with the Quai d’Orsay. Niger itself is a semi-colony of France. No uranium sales go on there without the full knowledge and consent of the French government. Valerie Plame was quoted in a CIA memo as saying that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts)..." Lots of French contacts, indeed.
Wilson exploded into public view, and spent two years barnstorming around the country, giving outraged speeches to publicize the idea that he had found the smoking gun to prove Bush had lied. Moveon.org and their friends were happy to believe him. (full post)
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Great article over at The American Thinker by James Lewis. Bold implications on France's involvement and influence in the whole Plame-Wilson affair, and a must read for those interested.
There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man,Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually, he works at times for Italian military intelligence. The truth about the French connection came out when Martino confessed in court that the French had given him the forged document to peddle to various intelligence agencies. The Italians and French have had a furious war of words ever since then about who was responsible for the forgery.
.....
Enter our hero, Joseph C. Wilson, from stage left. The French forgery about Niger led straight to Wilson’s bogus trip to Africa. Wilson supposedly went there to find out the truth for the CIA. But every government involved already knew the truth about the bogus document, because it showed incorrect names of Niger officials. A single telephone call to Niger would have established that fact.
The reason why Wilson had to travel to Niger in person to “investigate,” while drinking mint tea with his uranium mining friends, was to establish his bona fides – to make him an instant “expert witness” on Saddam’s dealings with Niger. Did French intelligence urge Wilson to make his trip and enlist his wife Valerie to propose him? Without that trip, Joseph C. Wilson had no special claim to any expertise about Saddam’s weapons. It was Valerie Plame who was the CIA WMD expert, but it was Wilson who became the front man.
Notice that the modus operandi for the Wilson trip was much the same as for the Niger forgery: a classic con game. Find a sucker, tell him what he wants to hear, and use that credulous embrance by the mark to destroy your enemy. In the first case the sucker was Colin Powell. In the second case it was the New York Times Op-Ed page. In both cases the enemy to be shafted was George W. Bush and the administration. This is how disinformation is supposed to work.
.....
Today Wilson claims to be a business agent for "African mining companies." But Niger’s mines are owned by a French consortium, which operates cheek-by-jowl with the Quai d’Orsay. Niger itself is a semi-colony of France. No uranium sales go on there without the full knowledge and consent of the French government. Valerie Plame was quoted in a CIA memo as saying that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts)..." Lots of French contacts, indeed.
Wilson exploded into public view, and spent two years barnstorming around the country, giving outraged speeches to publicize the idea that he had found the smoking gun to prove Bush had lied. Moveon.org and their friends were happy to believe him. (full post)
CONGRESSMAN FOSSELLA WELCOMES NEW KOREAN AMBASSADOR
Tak-Sik Lee comes in to replace Ambassador Seok Hyun Hong after a "slush fund" scandal forced him to resign. Anyway, the follow is an offical welcome to Ambassador Lee:
Representative Vito Fossella, the co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Korea, has welcomed the new South Korean ambassador in remarks published in the Congressional Record.
In his remarks, which appear in the November 3, 2005, edition of the Congressional Record, Congressman Fossella notes that Ambassador Tae-Sik Lee's "diplomatic credentials and legacy are entrenched in a life-long devotion to promoting, enlarging and broadening South Korea's stature and prominence at home and around the globe. He most recently served as vice foreign minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, MOFAT. His other notable diplomatic assignments include ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ambassador to Israel and deputy executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, KEDO." (full article)
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Tak-Sik Lee comes in to replace Ambassador Seok Hyun Hong after a "slush fund" scandal forced him to resign. Anyway, the follow is an offical welcome to Ambassador Lee:
Representative Vito Fossella, the co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Korea, has welcomed the new South Korean ambassador in remarks published in the Congressional Record.
In his remarks, which appear in the November 3, 2005, edition of the Congressional Record, Congressman Fossella notes that Ambassador Tae-Sik Lee's "diplomatic credentials and legacy are entrenched in a life-long devotion to promoting, enlarging and broadening South Korea's stature and prominence at home and around the globe. He most recently served as vice foreign minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, MOFAT. His other notable diplomatic assignments include ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ambassador to Israel and deputy executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, KEDO." (full article)
"OPEN SOURCE, OPEN WALLET"
Alright! GoingOn is an open source company... well, quasi-open source.
Open-source business models are booming in the software industry, a rapid rise that has some experts wondering if it's a bubble that will burst.
Venture capital firms are pouring more money into start-ups that adhere to open-source practices, such as giving away technology for free. That rush could result in an investment bubble, similar to that seen in the early days of the Web, several industry executives cautioned at the Open Source Business Conference last week.
For an open-source business to work well, a start-up needs a number of attributes that a closed-source software company doesn't, executives said.
In particular, they have to combine their pursuit of profit with active involvement in a vibrant "community" of open-source users, some of whom are not paying customers. Not all open-source companies are hitting the right balance between commerce and community, analysts and executives said. (full article)
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Alright! GoingOn is an open source company... well, quasi-open source.
Open-source business models are booming in the software industry, a rapid rise that has some experts wondering if it's a bubble that will burst.
Venture capital firms are pouring more money into start-ups that adhere to open-source practices, such as giving away technology for free. That rush could result in an investment bubble, similar to that seen in the early days of the Web, several industry executives cautioned at the Open Source Business Conference last week.
For an open-source business to work well, a start-up needs a number of attributes that a closed-source software company doesn't, executives said.
In particular, they have to combine their pursuit of profit with active involvement in a vibrant "community" of open-source users, some of whom are not paying customers. Not all open-source companies are hitting the right balance between commerce and community, analysts and executives said. (full article)
OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL UPDATE... INDIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER FIRED
The scandal keeps getting wider and higher up the totem pole. In some odd way, I'm glad this scandal broke loose and that it is affecting many governments throughout the world. It sends a clear message to all the crooked officials, or would-be crooks, that they should think twice before putting themselves before their duties to their nation and moral responsibilities, or some actions from their past will come back and bite their ass... hard.
India's foreign minister, Natwar Singh, was fired Monday amid charges that he reaped illegal profits from the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, as the ruling Congress Party sought to contain a burgeoning political crisis over the scandal.
Singh, 74, and the Congress Party were named as beneficiaries of illegal oil deals in a report last month by a U.N. panel investigating abuses in the program, which permitted the government of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use the proceeds for food and other humanitarian goods
The panel, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, accused more than 2,400 businesses and individuals around the world of paying nearly $1.8 billion in kickbacks to secure deals under the program. (full article)
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The scandal keeps getting wider and higher up the totem pole. In some odd way, I'm glad this scandal broke loose and that it is affecting many governments throughout the world. It sends a clear message to all the crooked officials, or would-be crooks, that they should think twice before putting themselves before their duties to their nation and moral responsibilities, or some actions from their past will come back and bite their ass... hard.
India's foreign minister, Natwar Singh, was fired Monday amid charges that he reaped illegal profits from the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq, as the ruling Congress Party sought to contain a burgeoning political crisis over the scandal.
Singh, 74, and the Congress Party were named as beneficiaries of illegal oil deals in a report last month by a U.N. panel investigating abuses in the program, which permitted the government of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use the proceeds for food and other humanitarian goods
The panel, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, accused more than 2,400 businesses and individuals around the world of paying nearly $1.8 billion in kickbacks to secure deals under the program. (full article)
Sunday, November 06, 2005
NORTH KOREA'S GHETTO DIPLOMACY... HIGH NOON ON THE HILL
I came across this in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway section:
Divided hallway
An unexpected face-to-face encounter -- in the hallowed halls of Congress, no less -- turned downright ugly when North Korea's deputy chief to the United Nations, Ambassador Han Song-ryol, purportedly threatened the life of a North Korean defector, Kim Seung-min, director of Free North Korea Radio.
Our story begins last Thursday, when Republican Reps. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey and Jim Leach of Iowa, the respective chairmen of the subcommittees on global human rights and Asia and the Pacific, were preparing to hear testimony from Mr. Kim and North Korean defectors Cha Kyeong-sook and Ma Soon-hee, both women.
Also in attendance was Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation that sponsored and arranged for the defectors' testimony. She tells Inside the Beltway that never, in their wildest dreams, did the trio of defectors expect to confront the enemy, who ironically was being feted at a congressional luncheon just across the hall hosted by Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, and attended by some 20 members of Congress.
.....
So, she continues, "The three North Korean defectors and I went into the room," where Mr. Kim held up a sign in Korean that read: "The Road to Peace on the Korean Peninsula is the Expulsion of [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il."
"Kim then said these same words to Ambassador Han as he was walking across the room," Mrs. Scholte says, at which time she adds "Han then threatened Kim with, 'Do you want to die ... ?'?" (full article)
I thought this was hilarious. Translating the last phrase into Korean is the equivalent of a Congressman saying, "Wat me ta cap you ass wit a rusty nine?" Seriously ghetto, or serious hillbilly action... however you want to view this, the North Korean Ambassador needs to go to diplomacy summer school. Maybe him and the Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can take the class together.
One Free Korea has more here, which is a blog I just came across.
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I came across this in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway section:
Divided hallway
An unexpected face-to-face encounter -- in the hallowed halls of Congress, no less -- turned downright ugly when North Korea's deputy chief to the United Nations, Ambassador Han Song-ryol, purportedly threatened the life of a North Korean defector, Kim Seung-min, director of Free North Korea Radio.
Our story begins last Thursday, when Republican Reps. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey and Jim Leach of Iowa, the respective chairmen of the subcommittees on global human rights and Asia and the Pacific, were preparing to hear testimony from Mr. Kim and North Korean defectors Cha Kyeong-sook and Ma Soon-hee, both women.
Also in attendance was Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation that sponsored and arranged for the defectors' testimony. She tells Inside the Beltway that never, in their wildest dreams, did the trio of defectors expect to confront the enemy, who ironically was being feted at a congressional luncheon just across the hall hosted by Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican, and attended by some 20 members of Congress.
.....
So, she continues, "The three North Korean defectors and I went into the room," where Mr. Kim held up a sign in Korean that read: "The Road to Peace on the Korean Peninsula is the Expulsion of [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il."
"Kim then said these same words to Ambassador Han as he was walking across the room," Mrs. Scholte says, at which time she adds "Han then threatened Kim with, 'Do you want to die ... ?'?" (full article)
I thought this was hilarious. Translating the last phrase into Korean is the equivalent of a Congressman saying, "Wat me ta cap you ass wit a rusty nine?" Seriously ghetto, or serious hillbilly action... however you want to view this, the North Korean Ambassador needs to go to diplomacy summer school. Maybe him and the Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can take the class together.
One Free Korea has more here, which is a blog I just came across.
RANDOM NEWS QUICKLIST
"Excited and wary, investors look at China"
"News Corp. may form Net company"
"Just Googling it is striking fear into companies"
"Chirac Vows Arrests and Trials in Riots"
"Koreas Hold Reunions for Divided Families"
"Pakistan quake victims need heating as snow forecast"
"Gas drops 23 cents per gallon"
"Refco receives five bids for assets"
"Oracle's Maffei to Leave for `Terrific' Opportunity"
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"Excited and wary, investors look at China"
"News Corp. may form Net company"
"Just Googling it is striking fear into companies"
"Chirac Vows Arrests and Trials in Riots"
"Koreas Hold Reunions for Divided Families"
"Pakistan quake victims need heating as snow forecast"
"Gas drops 23 cents per gallon"
"Refco receives five bids for assets"
"Oracle's Maffei to Leave for `Terrific' Opportunity"
Friday, November 04, 2005
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, REAGANITES!
Ronald Reagan was a great president who changed our daily lives through his solid domestic policies and the future of world politics and philosophy by bringing down the walls of the U.S.S.R. Beyond the person, his era and administration changed the way people conducted themselves in the White House and in running political campaigns. Check out James Pinkerton's piece:
Can you imagine the Dow Jones Industrial Average at, say, 3000? Can you visualize inflation and interests in double digits? And per capita income maybe two-thirds of what it is now? It's not so difficult to see those things in your mind's eye -- provided you can also visualize the American people re-electing the 39th president, Jimmy Carter.
Instead, 25 years ago today, on November 4, 1980, the voters in 44 states chose Ronald Reagan. So this day, like any happy anniversary, is worth celebrating. But in addition, we should remember that while Reagan demonstrated the importance of optimism, another conservative immortal, Barry Goldwater, offered us a sterner injunction: There are no final victories. And so on this day, and on all days henceforth, we must recommit ourselves to the maintenance, and the furtherance, of the Reaganaut agenda -- because if we don't, we could lose it all.
I was lucky enough to work for Reagan in that '80 presidential campaign -- I even got to shake his hand a couple of times. I can remember cheering his speeches, as he said, "America is not a setting sun, but is a rising sun, whose best days are ahead of it." But although I was an enthusiastic Reaganite, I will admit to having a few quiet doubts about the Gipper being so chipper. After all, for most of the American elite, the "stagflation" of the 70s was viewed not as a decade-long dip in the economy, but instead as the new and permanently lower plateau of economic performance. (full article )
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Ronald Reagan was a great president who changed our daily lives through his solid domestic policies and the future of world politics and philosophy by bringing down the walls of the U.S.S.R. Beyond the person, his era and administration changed the way people conducted themselves in the White House and in running political campaigns. Check out James Pinkerton's piece:
Can you imagine the Dow Jones Industrial Average at, say, 3000? Can you visualize inflation and interests in double digits? And per capita income maybe two-thirds of what it is now? It's not so difficult to see those things in your mind's eye -- provided you can also visualize the American people re-electing the 39th president, Jimmy Carter.
Instead, 25 years ago today, on November 4, 1980, the voters in 44 states chose Ronald Reagan. So this day, like any happy anniversary, is worth celebrating. But in addition, we should remember that while Reagan demonstrated the importance of optimism, another conservative immortal, Barry Goldwater, offered us a sterner injunction: There are no final victories. And so on this day, and on all days henceforth, we must recommit ourselves to the maintenance, and the furtherance, of the Reaganaut agenda -- because if we don't, we could lose it all.
I was lucky enough to work for Reagan in that '80 presidential campaign -- I even got to shake his hand a couple of times. I can remember cheering his speeches, as he said, "America is not a setting sun, but is a rising sun, whose best days are ahead of it." But although I was an enthusiastic Reaganite, I will admit to having a few quiet doubts about the Gipper being so chipper. After all, for most of the American elite, the "stagflation" of the 70s was viewed not as a decade-long dip in the economy, but instead as the new and permanently lower plateau of economic performance. (full article )
JOSEPH WILSON... LIAR, LUNATIC, AND IDIOT
Great links and comment over at Power Line, and a good op-ed from Max Boot:
'SCOOTER" LIBBY'S indictment was not exactly good news for the White House, but it could have been a lot worse. Feverish speculation had been building that Karl Rove would soon be "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs," as Valerie Plame's bombastic hubby, Joe Wilson, had hoped. Or even that Dick Cheney would have to resign.
But with his investigation all but over, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime in some circumstances to disclose the names of undercover CIA operatives. Among other problems, Plame doesn't seem to fit the act's definition of a "covert agent" — someone who "has within the last five years served outside the United States." By 2003, Plame had apparently been working in Langley, Va., for at least six years, which means that, mystery of mysteries, the vice president's chief of staff was indicted for covering up something that wasn't a crime.
.....
Much more egregious were the ways in which Wilson misrepresented his findings. In his famous New York Times Op-Ed article (July 6, 2003), Wilson gave the impression that his eight-day jaunt proved that Iraq was not trying to acquire uranium in Africa. Therefore, when administration officials nevertheless cited concerns about Hussein's nuclear ambitions, Wilson claimed that they had "twisted" evidence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The Senate Intelligence Committee was not kind to this claim either.
The panel's report found that, far from discrediting the Iraq-Niger uranium link, Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation. Beyond that, he had not supplied new information. According to the panel, intelligence analysts "did not think" that his findings "clarified the story on the reported Iraq-Niger uranium deal." In other words, Wilson had hardly exposed as fraudulent the "16 words" included in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government, in its own post-invasion review of intelligence, found that this claim was "well founded." (full article)
Joseph "Weasel" Wilson
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Great links and comment over at Power Line, and a good op-ed from Max Boot:
'SCOOTER" LIBBY'S indictment was not exactly good news for the White House, but it could have been a lot worse. Feverish speculation had been building that Karl Rove would soon be "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs," as Valerie Plame's bombastic hubby, Joe Wilson, had hoped. Or even that Dick Cheney would have to resign.
But with his investigation all but over, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has found no criminal conspiracy and no violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime in some circumstances to disclose the names of undercover CIA operatives. Among other problems, Plame doesn't seem to fit the act's definition of a "covert agent" — someone who "has within the last five years served outside the United States." By 2003, Plame had apparently been working in Langley, Va., for at least six years, which means that, mystery of mysteries, the vice president's chief of staff was indicted for covering up something that wasn't a crime.
.....
Much more egregious were the ways in which Wilson misrepresented his findings. In his famous New York Times Op-Ed article (July 6, 2003), Wilson gave the impression that his eight-day jaunt proved that Iraq was not trying to acquire uranium in Africa. Therefore, when administration officials nevertheless cited concerns about Hussein's nuclear ambitions, Wilson claimed that they had "twisted" evidence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The Senate Intelligence Committee was not kind to this claim either.
The panel's report found that, far from discrediting the Iraq-Niger uranium link, Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation. Beyond that, he had not supplied new information. According to the panel, intelligence analysts "did not think" that his findings "clarified the story on the reported Iraq-Niger uranium deal." In other words, Wilson had hardly exposed as fraudulent the "16 words" included in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government, in its own post-invasion review of intelligence, found that this claim was "well founded." (full article)
Joseph "Weasel" Wilson
REVVER... SKYPE INVESTORS BACK ANOTHER P2P PLAY
Revver is an interesting startup that just got funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
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Revver is an interesting startup that just got funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
MICROSOFT LIVE ERA
Yeah, I'm behind on a bunch of tech posts in my bookmarks. This announcement is a few days old, but just in case for your non-techies:
Kicking off what he called the "live era" of software, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday that the company plans to launch new Internet-based complements to its core products.
Gates said Microsoft is working on two products, "Windows Live" and "Office Live," that create opportunities for the company to sell online subscriptions and advertising. Both are targeted at smaller businesses and consumers.
The products won't replace the company's ubiquitous operating system or productivity suite, and people don't need to have that software loaded to tap into the Web versions. "They are not required to use Windows or Office," Gates said at a press event here. (full article)
Russell Beattie has a good analysis on this, "Microsoft’s Live: Monopoly 4.0"
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimes in here, "Office Live Will Be A Huge Productivity Tool"
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Yeah, I'm behind on a bunch of tech posts in my bookmarks. This announcement is a few days old, but just in case for your non-techies:
Kicking off what he called the "live era" of software, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday that the company plans to launch new Internet-based complements to its core products.
Gates said Microsoft is working on two products, "Windows Live" and "Office Live," that create opportunities for the company to sell online subscriptions and advertising. Both are targeted at smaller businesses and consumers.
The products won't replace the company's ubiquitous operating system or productivity suite, and people don't need to have that software loaded to tap into the Web versions. "They are not required to use Windows or Office," Gates said at a press event here. (full article)
Russell Beattie has a good analysis on this, "Microsoft’s Live: Monopoly 4.0"
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington chimes in here, "Office Live Will Be A Huge Productivity Tool"
WEB 2.0 COMPANIES HAVE TO BE FLIPPED TO AVOID FLOPPING
Old post by Jeff Clavier I forgot to put, "Innovation 2.0: Why Web 2.0 companies might have to flip to avoid being flopped."
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Old post by Jeff Clavier I forgot to put, "Innovation 2.0: Why Web 2.0 companies might have to flip to avoid being flopped."
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
2084... FINALLY GOT MY COLUMN GOINGIN AGAIN
I don't believe it's been over two months since I wrote something for AlwaysOn. Work has just occupied my time and mindshare. This week's article has been sitting on my desktop unfinished for at least six weeks. Horrible.
Below is the link to my article and I decided just for fun to post my first draft of the article.
2084
With apologies to Mr. Orwell, the future looks a bit different than that depicted in the pages of his seminal volume.
In the aftermath of the July London bombings, the first photos to come out of that tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary to appear came from blogs. Like many in the blogosphere, I expected this. Then I had an epiphany.
In imagining our society years from now—when technology is ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices have proliferated, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities are commonplace, and information inundation is complete—I realized that George Orwell's vision of 1984 will never truly come to be. Decades from now, even the idea of a totalitarian state will appear utterly ridiculous. Why? Because the innovations and technological advances that will emerge over the next decade will not only improve our quality of life but actually change human behavior and alter the fundamental structures of our societies. (full article)
FIRST DRAFT:
A few months ago, during the time of the London bombings, the first photos to come out that horrible tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary that people read came from blogs, and like many of those in the blogosphere I expected this. Then I had an epiphany. I imagined our society years from now as technology becomes ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices proliferate, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities become commonplace, and people become inundated with more and more information, I realized the world presented in Orwell’s 1984 will never come to be. It won’t even be a remote possibility much less an alternative reality writers can dream up because the idea of a totalitarian state decades from now would become so utterly ridiculous.
The innovation and technological advances over the next decade will not only improve the quality of life for humankind, but change human behavior and the fundamental structures of our societies. Even now, the youth of our society regard email as less useful tool than our generation, make a significant amount of their friends online, and embrace technology instead of fearing it. The weight of innovation that was born a decade past and a decade forward is changing the basic wiring of humans and creating a more transparent world. Of course technology is not a solution or a cure to societal ills and injustices, but a tool that can be applied for the improvement of human communication and living standards across the globe. What is unique about today’s innovations is that they are creating greater connectivity on our earth, crossing numerous borders, and increasing the bonds between people who would have never interacted with each other.
The potential for controlling, paranoid, overbearing governments in “1984” will be crushed by the weight of the collective consciousness that is being formed today. I am not stating that we will become more like-minded in the future, but I do envision issues that are of importance to the general population will be effectively decided or influence by the mediums that are developing today. The oppression by a few to the many will no longer be possible, but will this also mean that the general population will decide upon public policy issues affecting the future well-being of all its citizens? Maybe. This is a scary proposition for some, including myself, but who really knows the mechanisms that will develop in the political arena that complements these techno-societal advancements.
The ostensible information overload that is growing has led people in the past to believe our future will become like the future presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by strict laws and rules of science. To a lesser extent, I believe this vision of our future is doom. As information and knowledge continues to flood our lives, we will continue to build the technology that helps us sort through this chaos and our minds will develop to accept a world of terabytes instead of kilobytes. Even children today are beginning to absorb an extraordinary amount of information and multi-task far better than their parents.
I assume when most of you take a pause and contemplate on the significance of the changes occurring around us, we are able to recognize that these are times that people will look back on as ground-breaking, life-changing, or revolutionary.
With respect to George Orwell, the following is my Sunday afternoon attempt to paint a view of 2084…
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. No longer a victim of traffic since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago, the rain was more pleasant for him now. The air roads, which are only designated for public transportation vehicles, have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert’s colleague, briskly walks up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this Irvine to Westwood 20 minute commute in the thick of rush hour traffic. What ya say, Jimmy?"
"Herb, I almost love it as much as when the I-pools were created."
I-pools were “Intelligence pools” that were vast electronic repositories of shared information and knowledge that people contributed to while acting as a virtual marketplace. The original predecessor of the I-pools were archaic, Internet-based areas of collaboration called wiki-pools. But these never satisfied the quality standards most people desired since the viruses of inefficiency, such as trolls, ego-maniacs, and unskilled contributors, rendered most of these wiki-pools useless beyond simple information gathering. After decades of mediocrity, they created smartbots that comb through these knowledge-pools and tried to correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. Now its progress to its current state as I-pools were there is almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. Also these I-pools have become more than repositories of knowledge, but marketplaces of collaboration. Articles are developed, movie scripts are made, and businesses launched through these virtual workplaces.
"Yeah, remember twenty years ago when we just started out? Journalists were just as underpaid and unappreciated almost as much as school teachers. The pie is bigger for everyone and the top talent finally gets paid well."
"Hahaha. Are you calling yourself a ‘top talent’?"
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp, Pajamas Media, and The New York Times last month. One was read by 2 million in 87 countries."
"Ok. Ok. There you go again with your numbers. Probably the worse thing about journalism today is that it’s become so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Jealous? Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts, and you know I have a following. I would rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many," Jimmy stated with a smirk.
"True. (Laughs) Hey, did you check out Google’s new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through ‘crosscheck’ and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple were great sources to quote and one was excellent to integrate. What was coolio was that with a click I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transfer his fee, and it was done."
"Wow. They make really make life easier for us creatives. Hey, the AeroBus is finally here."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and fall into the deep seats of the vehicle. Immediately Herbert inserts a square-shaped device into the arm of the bus seat, which activates a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you’re headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That’s like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency there trying to develop their manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm… that effort seems about forty years too late for France. The majority of that country has become cheap, unskilled labor since they missed out on growth years of the information age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it’s interesting because it also has become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the 'anti-search movements' of the 2030’s."
"Coolio. Just don’t send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don’t need irrelevant junk in my bin."
"Don’t worry, Jimmy, I’ve known you for over forty years now since we first met on FaceBook in second grade, so I wasn’t going to send it to you."
[tags: 1984, george orwell, google, facebook, wikis, wikipedia, pajamas media, future, technology]
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I don't believe it's been over two months since I wrote something for AlwaysOn. Work has just occupied my time and mindshare. This week's article has been sitting on my desktop unfinished for at least six weeks. Horrible.
Below is the link to my article and I decided just for fun to post my first draft of the article.
2084
With apologies to Mr. Orwell, the future looks a bit different than that depicted in the pages of his seminal volume.
In the aftermath of the July London bombings, the first photos to come out of that tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary to appear came from blogs. Like many in the blogosphere, I expected this. Then I had an epiphany.
In imagining our society years from now—when technology is ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices have proliferated, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities are commonplace, and information inundation is complete—I realized that George Orwell's vision of 1984 will never truly come to be. Decades from now, even the idea of a totalitarian state will appear utterly ridiculous. Why? Because the innovations and technological advances that will emerge over the next decade will not only improve our quality of life but actually change human behavior and alter the fundamental structures of our societies. (full article)
FIRST DRAFT:
A few months ago, during the time of the London bombings, the first photos to come out that horrible tragedy were from camera phones, and the first commentary that people read came from blogs, and like many of those in the blogosphere I expected this. Then I had an epiphany. I imagined our society years from now as technology becomes ubiquitous worldwide, mobile devices proliferate, cameras are posted everywhere, online identities become commonplace, and people become inundated with more and more information, I realized the world presented in Orwell’s 1984 will never come to be. It won’t even be a remote possibility much less an alternative reality writers can dream up because the idea of a totalitarian state decades from now would become so utterly ridiculous.
The innovation and technological advances over the next decade will not only improve the quality of life for humankind, but change human behavior and the fundamental structures of our societies. Even now, the youth of our society regard email as less useful tool than our generation, make a significant amount of their friends online, and embrace technology instead of fearing it. The weight of innovation that was born a decade past and a decade forward is changing the basic wiring of humans and creating a more transparent world. Of course technology is not a solution or a cure to societal ills and injustices, but a tool that can be applied for the improvement of human communication and living standards across the globe. What is unique about today’s innovations is that they are creating greater connectivity on our earth, crossing numerous borders, and increasing the bonds between people who would have never interacted with each other.
The potential for controlling, paranoid, overbearing governments in “1984” will be crushed by the weight of the collective consciousness that is being formed today. I am not stating that we will become more like-minded in the future, but I do envision issues that are of importance to the general population will be effectively decided or influence by the mediums that are developing today. The oppression by a few to the many will no longer be possible, but will this also mean that the general population will decide upon public policy issues affecting the future well-being of all its citizens? Maybe. This is a scary proposition for some, including myself, but who really knows the mechanisms that will develop in the political arena that complements these techno-societal advancements.
The ostensible information overload that is growing has led people in the past to believe our future will become like the future presented in "Gattaca," a stale advanced civilization dictated by strict laws and rules of science. To a lesser extent, I believe this vision of our future is doom. As information and knowledge continues to flood our lives, we will continue to build the technology that helps us sort through this chaos and our minds will develop to accept a world of terabytes instead of kilobytes. Even children today are beginning to absorb an extraordinary amount of information and multi-task far better than their parents.
I assume when most of you take a pause and contemplate on the significance of the changes occurring around us, we are able to recognize that these are times that people will look back on as ground-breaking, life-changing, or revolutionary.
With respect to George Orwell, the following is my Sunday afternoon attempt to paint a view of 2084…
Herbert Walker stood in the pouring black rain of Los Angeles tapping his latex shoes while waiting for the AeroBus to arrive. No longer a victim of traffic since the National Public Air Road Bill was signed into law a decade ago, the rain was more pleasant for him now. The air roads, which are only designated for public transportation vehicles, have greatly reduced traffic, air pollution, and the number of ground vehicle users. Jimmy Jun, Herbert’s colleague, briskly walks up the AeroBus platform.
"Love this Irvine to Westwood 20 minute commute in the thick of rush hour traffic. What ya say, Jimmy?"
"Herb, I almost love it as much as when the I-pools were created."
I-pools were “Intelligence pools” that were vast electronic repositories of shared information and knowledge that people contributed to while acting as a virtual marketplace. The original predecessor of the I-pools were archaic, Internet-based areas of collaboration called wiki-pools. But these never satisfied the quality standards most people desired since the viruses of inefficiency, such as trolls, ego-maniacs, and unskilled contributors, rendered most of these wiki-pools useless beyond simple information gathering. After decades of mediocrity, they created smartbots that comb through these knowledge-pools and tried to correct false information, poor structures, and unintelligible contributions. Now its progress to its current state as I-pools were there is almost complete trust in their accuracy and depth. Also these I-pools have become more than repositories of knowledge, but marketplaces of collaboration. Articles are developed, movie scripts are made, and businesses launched through these virtual workplaces.
"Yeah, remember twenty years ago when we just started out? Journalists were just as underpaid and unappreciated almost as much as school teachers. The pie is bigger for everyone and the top talent finally gets paid well."
"Hahaha. Are you calling yourself a ‘top talent’?"
"Well, six of my articles did get picked by News Corp, Pajamas Media, and The New York Times last month. One was read by 2 million in 87 countries."
"Ok. Ok. There you go again with your numbers. Probably the worse thing about journalism today is that it’s become so numbers-driven."
"Jealous?"
"Jealous? Hell, no. I write for my niche of military defense analysts, and you know I have a following. I would rather be deeply loved by a few than glanced over by many," Jimmy stated with a smirk.
"True. (Laughs) Hey, did you check out Google’s new relevancy crosscheck program?"
"Yeah, pretty cool. I actually tested it out last night when I was posting my thoughts up on my cloudpad. After I completed my first few paragraphs, I ran it through ‘crosscheck’ and it came up with six articles or references I could use. A couple were great sources to quote and one was excellent to integrate. What was coolio was that with a click I was connected to the author of the piece I wanted to integrate, got his permission, transfer his fee, and it was done."
"Wow. They make really make life easier for us creatives. Hey, the AeroBus is finally here."
Herbert and Jimmy step into the AeroBus and fall into the deep seats of the vehicle. Immediately Herbert inserts a square-shaped device into the arm of the bus seat, which activates a retinal scan from the seat in front of them.
"Yeah, I forgot to charge my MobileLife last night, so I need a quick boost," Herbert tells Jimmy.
"But you’re headed to the office?"
"No. I have a couple interviews on Virtu-Call. One is with some guy in France and I have to take a picture of him for this article on the outcast lifestyle of people there."
"Really? A Frenchman with Virtu-Call? That’s like a Neanderthal with a laser gun."
"Well, he works for a government agency there trying to develop their manufacturing workforce into information workers."
"Hmmm… that effort seems about forty years too late for France. The majority of that country has become cheap, unskilled labor since they missed out on growth years of the information age. Only Vivendi is a relevant player in the world economy."
"Yeah, but it’s interesting because it also has become a haven for the small segment of Luddites that still exist from the 'anti-search movements' of the 2030’s."
"Coolio. Just don’t send me a copy. I already have 10 books and about 100 articles I want to read this week in my sleep, so I don’t need irrelevant junk in my bin."
"Don’t worry, Jimmy, I’ve known you for over forty years now since we first met on FaceBook in second grade, so I wasn’t going to send it to you."
[tags: 1984, george orwell, google, facebook, wikis, wikipedia, pajamas media, future, technology]
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
SPEAK WITH ME... CONTROLLING YOUR CAR BY VOICE
Ajay Juneja's company, Speak With Me, is nicely profiled in TechCrunch. Since I worked at a speech technology company, I wasn't as impressed as Michael from TechCrunch or Robert Scoble was when I experienced the demo a couple months ago. The command and response activities are pretty straight-forward. Some of the more advanced functionality is based on educating the system. At HeyAnita, for demo purposes, we set it up where we could say to our voice-activated information service, "I want to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago on May 11, 2000 and come back on May 14, 2000." Lots of information and lots of commands, which impressed people, but in the real world this would probably have a verification rate of 50%-60%. The demo and our team learned how to interact with each other, so it was almost 100%. For voice recognition services, you want at least 95%.
What Ajay's technology does well is the ability to identify syntax and to provide multiple commands to his system. The system has learned how to recognize the hundreds of songs he put into his system. His demo for searching and playing various songs in his system is what I was impressed by. Also I was impressed that he has taken it into the chipset, so eventually he can expand his product beyond cars to mobile devices and phones. Anyway, it is a great product and application he's built.
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Ajay Juneja's company, Speak With Me, is nicely profiled in TechCrunch. Since I worked at a speech technology company, I wasn't as impressed as Michael from TechCrunch or Robert Scoble was when I experienced the demo a couple months ago. The command and response activities are pretty straight-forward. Some of the more advanced functionality is based on educating the system. At HeyAnita, for demo purposes, we set it up where we could say to our voice-activated information service, "I want to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago on May 11, 2000 and come back on May 14, 2000." Lots of information and lots of commands, which impressed people, but in the real world this would probably have a verification rate of 50%-60%. The demo and our team learned how to interact with each other, so it was almost 100%. For voice recognition services, you want at least 95%.
What Ajay's technology does well is the ability to identify syntax and to provide multiple commands to his system. The system has learned how to recognize the hundreds of songs he put into his system. His demo for searching and playing various songs in his system is what I was impressed by. Also I was impressed that he has taken it into the chipset, so eventually he can expand his product beyond cars to mobile devices and phones. Anyway, it is a great product and application he's built.
HALLOWEEN IN MADTOWN
Those crazies that visit my old college campus every Halloween are getting crazier. I remember a couple Halloweens during my college days when the partying on State Street was fun but tame. No random fights or broken storefronts since police clamped down on the violence. Now it seems the craziness is back again.
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Those crazies that visit my old college campus every Halloween are getting crazier. I remember a couple Halloweens during my college days when the partying on State Street was fun but tame. No random fights or broken storefronts since police clamped down on the violence. Now it seems the craziness is back again.
25% OF NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS SUFFER FROM POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Not a surprise. Obviously, these victims of the North Korean regime need more care and support long after they defect.
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Not a surprise. Obviously, these victims of the North Korean regime need more care and support long after they defect.
"DON'T FEED NORTH KOREA'S DEPENDENCY"
Great article by Stephen Linton, who is a family friend. I'm not sure if I agree with his subtle point at the end about "Korea would be much less of a headache for everyone if North and South were more dependent on each other — even if it meant being less dependent on everybody else."
Too many variables to discuss here... or I'm too lazy right now. A brief point is that dependency can be good, but as this leads to reunification it really is important on how it occurs and who is influencing whom. In the wildest scenario, if reunification occurs and North Korea has more influence on South Korea (i.e. Communism spreads south) than it's a bad thing and I would not be support of such a process. Anyway, Linton is first a humanitarian rather than a policy-maker, so his interests are different than others. Here is his op-ed:
LONG KNOWN for surprises, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea — better known as North Korea — again shocked the international humanitarian aid community when it announced recently that it wouldn't accept any more emergency food aid.
This edict was accompanied by a request that the U.N. World Food Program, which has been shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of food to North Korea, shift to "development aid" and withdraw the food monitors charged with making sure food goes to those who really need it.
Actually, no one should have been surprised. After all, this is the 10th year since the international community responded to Pyongyang's call for help with one of the largest emergency aid programs in history. From the beginning, North Koreans made it clear that international aid was welcome, but only until they were able to do without it. Numbers have a particular significance in Korean culture, and anything that lasts over 10 years has the odor of permanency.
Apparently, North Korea has decided that it's time for a change. And I agree.
First, contrary to the claim that more than 6 million North Koreans might starve if international aid dries up, there is no food emergency in North Korea today. For two years after the 1995 floods that triggered the famine, countless displaced persons wandered the countryside in a desperate search for something to eat. Some went to China, precipitating the international community's belated interest in North Korean refugees. Most border traffic today is about trade, not hunger. (full article)
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Great article by Stephen Linton, who is a family friend. I'm not sure if I agree with his subtle point at the end about "Korea would be much less of a headache for everyone if North and South were more dependent on each other — even if it meant being less dependent on everybody else."
Too many variables to discuss here... or I'm too lazy right now. A brief point is that dependency can be good, but as this leads to reunification it really is important on how it occurs and who is influencing whom. In the wildest scenario, if reunification occurs and North Korea has more influence on South Korea (i.e. Communism spreads south) than it's a bad thing and I would not be support of such a process. Anyway, Linton is first a humanitarian rather than a policy-maker, so his interests are different than others. Here is his op-ed:
LONG KNOWN for surprises, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea — better known as North Korea — again shocked the international humanitarian aid community when it announced recently that it wouldn't accept any more emergency food aid.
This edict was accompanied by a request that the U.N. World Food Program, which has been shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of food to North Korea, shift to "development aid" and withdraw the food monitors charged with making sure food goes to those who really need it.
Actually, no one should have been surprised. After all, this is the 10th year since the international community responded to Pyongyang's call for help with one of the largest emergency aid programs in history. From the beginning, North Koreans made it clear that international aid was welcome, but only until they were able to do without it. Numbers have a particular significance in Korean culture, and anything that lasts over 10 years has the odor of permanency.
Apparently, North Korea has decided that it's time for a change. And I agree.
First, contrary to the claim that more than 6 million North Koreans might starve if international aid dries up, there is no food emergency in North Korea today. For two years after the 1995 floods that triggered the famine, countless displaced persons wandered the countryside in a desperate search for something to eat. Some went to China, precipitating the international community's belated interest in North Korean refugees. Most border traffic today is about trade, not hunger. (full article)
Business & Technology, Politics, and Random Posts from the Left, Right, and Elsewhere
Place of Birth: Seoul, Korea
Hometown: Northbrook, IL USA
Lived in: Seoul, Chicago (Villa Park & Northbrook), Madison, WI, Springfield, IL, St. Louis, New York City, Chicago (Glenview), Seoul, San Francisco
Also blogs at: AlwaysOn, Coro Blog, SportsBlog
More on Bernard or Blogger profile or GoingOn profile or Linkedin profile
Max Yow
Homeland: Canada
Sports: combative sports, sports you play with a ball, sports with no swimming, sports you can play while drinking and smoking (pool, darts, bowling, video games).
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Tech
bill joy's apocalyptic vision, determinism, and commonality with stephen hawking
(07/22/2005)
google economy => blogosphere
(01/25/2005)
power of the long tail
(12/14/2004)
protectionist china... will chinese or u.s. companies lose out?
(3/15/2004)
skype... p2p telephony & a very cool company
(2/13/2004)
poor george glider is right
(2/9/2004)
it's not the deficit stupid!... tech is the primary driver for growth
(12/02/2003)
immature venture capital industry in asia (9/29/2003)
boom time memories... masayoshi son was the man
(7/1/2003)
Politics
south korea's recent idiotic policies against foreign direct investment
(09/09/2005)
my first op-ed
(11/30/2004)
100,000 protest against Bush for... what?
(11/23/2003)
Society
generalizations of east asians
(5/16/2004)
sports is the great equalizer and unifer
(4/20/2004)
defining wisdom... age is the lesser factor
(10/18/2003)
living together before marriage
(8/25/2003)
friendships, relationships, people in life... (7/7/2003)
sugar mommas
(6/13/2003)
need for laws and enforcement
(4/10/2003)
old shaq issue
(4/2/2003)
Religion
creationism & christmas
(12/23/2004)
the passion of the christ... misunderstood
(2/20/2004)
christian's view of homosexuality
(1/13/2004)
is man determined or free?
(8/18/2003)
destructive christianity
(5/3/2003)
Others
"Blah Blah Bernard Blah Blah" Changing to "Junto Boyz"... A New Direction
(4/20/2004)
art of asking questions
(9/18/2003)
ode to bacon
(8/13/2003)
big guys... eating stories iv
(7/27/2003)
big guys... eating stories i
(4/2/2003)
cnn
cnet
businessweek
economist
forbes
fortune
fast company
pe week wire
the deal
ecommerce times
ne asia online
pacific epoch
eweek
release 1.0
technology review
techweb
zdnet news
the american spectator
drudge report
foreign policy
frontpage
harvard political review
mother jones
national review
the new republic
the weekly standard
il conservative politics
the atlantic
the hill
roll call
george f. will
asianweek
financeasia
korea herald
the onion
cox & forkum cartoons
garage technology ventures
growthink research
entrepreneur.com
entrepreneur america
venture economics
venture reporter
vfinance.com
yahoo! small business
nationmaster
thomas, legislative info
american enterprise institute
brookings institute
carnegie endowment
cato institute
center for american progress
center for strategic & int'l studies
heritage foundation
hudson institute
national center for policy analysis
progress & freedom foundation
progressive policy institute
rand corporation
reason public policy institute
urban institute
columbia institute for tele-info
international justice mission
charles barkley's outrageous career
liquid generation
wikipedia
"You cannot go on explaining away things over forever or you will find that you have explained even explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through things forever because the whole point of seeing through something is to see something else through it." - C.S Lewis
December 11, 2005
"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876
December 4, 2005
"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." - Marie Curie
November 27, 2005
"One cannot step into the same river twice." - Heratidus
November 20, 2005
"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment." - Robert Maynard Hutchins
November 13, 2005
"We are moving away from the old idea of leadership -- leadership has less to do (now) with heroism. We don’t look for... unblemished omnipotent heroes, but leaders who are complex, dependent, changeable... We do not need one dominant authority structure telling all our inner voices to shut up..." - Walter Truett Anderson
November 6, 2005
"To know oneself is to know one’s [country]. It is also... paradoxically a form of exile from that world... to know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility, and that virtue is not conspicuous in any national character." - Flannery O’Connor
October 30, 2005
"Men content themselves with the same words as other people use, as if the very sound necessarily carried the same meaning." - John Locke
October 23, 2005
"In order to thrive in a world of change and chaos, we will need to accept 'chaos' as an essential process by which natural systems, including organizations, renew and revitalize themselves." - Margaret Wheatley
October 16, 2004
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." - Robert Louis Stevenson
October 9, 2004
"We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in the idle fancy that we already know - or that it is of no use seeking to know what we do not know." - Plato
October 2, 2004
"Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions." - Oliver W. Holmes
September 25, 2004
"What you learn intellectually lies in the shallow pools among the wrinkles of your brain. What you learn through the skin of experience sinks deep into your roots." - Hank Taft
September 18, 2004
"In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him." - C.S. Lewis
September 11, 2004
"A society is judged by how it treats its least desirable people." - Anonymous
September 4, 2004
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations." - George Bernard Shaw
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