August 2014
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A visit to the old ‘hood
A couple weeks ago I took a walk around the historic neighborhood in Fort Lee where my extended family had a home — 2063 Hoyt Avenue — from the turn of the last century into the 1950s. It’s where my parents lived when I was born, and where my aunt and grandmother sat for my sister and… Continue reading
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Rediscovering Junkie John, Tim Dawe, and Penrod after 40 years
I used to have an open reel tape of a song I recorded off some New York FM station in 1970 or so. I didn’t know the artist or the title. It was half-talked, half-sung, about a loser in Greenwich Village, “Junkie John,” coming down in a fleabag hotel. And it was very haunting, which… Continue reading
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What’s Neutral about the Net
I posted this to a list I’m on, where a long thread on Net Neutrality was running out of steam: Since we seem to have reached a pause in this discussion, I would like to suggest that there are emergent properties of the Internet that are not reducible to its mechanisms, and it is respect for… Continue reading
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Link pile
Closing some tabs here…. Tech Libby Clark in Linux.com: Cars should be open source hardware Darren Etherington in Techcrunch: Estimote Wants To Pioneer ‘Nearables’ With New Stickers Beacon Hardware Barry Levine in VB: Uber opens up its API – and creates a new platform Privacy and all that Tim Walsh of SAP in LinkedIn: Big Data —… Continue reading
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AM radio declared dead by BMW and Disney
The BMW i3 may be the first new car to come without AM radio since cars starting coming with radios, way back in the 1930s. Meanwhile, Disney is unloading a big pile of AM stations carrying Radio Disney, a program service for kids focused mostly on “teen idols.” In Disney’s Devastating Signal About Radio, Eric Rhoads of… Continue reading
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Fun with distance
I’m listening to WGBH on 93.7 from Boston on my kitchen radio, on the low floor of an apartment building in Manhattan, thanks to an atmospheric condition called tropospheric bending, or “tropo” for short. Here’s my section of the current map of tropo at work right now: The same map shows bigger “ducts” running… Continue reading
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Remembering Robin
I only met Robin Williams once, at a trade show, back in ’03 or so. I was walking across the floor when I ran into my old friend Tom Rielly. Tom grabbed my arm and said, “Come here. I want you to meet somebody.” He pulled me though a small crowd to the guy in… Continue reading
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What do sites need from social login buttons?
Not want. Need. If a site has one of these… … what is the least information they need from the user? Seems to me that “social” login buttons like these are meant for the convenience of the user. But too often liberties are taken with them. For example, here is what one company says in its… Continue reading
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Radio and the Web, 2001
Since my old blog (still running, amazingly, on an old server somewhere within Verisign) will some day be Snow on the Water, and conversation about radio has commenced below that post, I decided to re-post March 21, 2001. Here goes… Blast from the past Tune in here right now to catch Larry Lujack on KNEW,… Continue reading
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Snow on the Water
I’ve been intrigued by Fotopedia since it showed up in ’09, especially since I do a shitload of travel photography. But I never posted anything there, because I was afraid it would die. And now, says here, it will. In seven days. The reason: As of August 10, 2014, Fotopedia.com will close and our iOS… Continue reading