Life
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Losing Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz died yesterday, a suicide at 26. I always felt a kinship with Aaron, in part because we were living demographic bookends. At many of the events we both attended, at least early on, he was the youngest person there, and I was the oldest. When I first met him, he was fourteen years… Continue reading
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A new window of the sole
“I see,” we say, when we mean “I understand.” To make something “clear” is to make it vivid and unmistakable to the mind’s eye. There are no limits to the ways sight serves as metaphor for many good and necessary things in life. The importance of vision, even for the sightless (who still use language),… Continue reading
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The costs of celebrity
On the way back from a concert in Brooklyn yesterday we shared the subway with a well-known filmmaker. He’s one of those people who look ordinary enough to blend in with the rest of us, which is lucky for him. Still, he’s not anonymous. We know his name. We’ve seen his movies. We also did… Continue reading
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Remembering Peter Sklar, placeblogging pioneer
This is a hard one to write. Peter Sklar, the founder, editor and chief-everything of Edhat, Santa Barbara’s original onine daily, has died. Peter was the Steve Jobs of placeblogging. Like Steve, he was an original genius and nobody’s fool. He could be prickly and sarcastic, and he did things his way. He was also a… Continue reading
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The kontroversial kittehs of Rome
Strays Amid Rome Set Off a Culture Clash says The New York Times. On one side, archaeologists who wish to save ruins from occupation by cats. On the other side, the cats’ lovers, including tourists who marvel more at the abundance of serene kittehs, lounging atop walls and columns than at the historic site itself: … Continue reading
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Riding out the storm
7:30am Tuesday morning: I can tell the storm is over by tuning in to the Weather Channel and finding it back to the normally heavy load of ads, program promotions and breathless sensationalism. So I’ll turn ya’ll back over to your irregularly scheduled programs. Rock on. 11:14pm The Weather Channel just said 4.1 million homes… Continue reading
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An evening above Toronto
Thanks to my hosts with the Conference Board of Canada, I got some excellent quality time in Toronto this week, including drinks and dinner, respectively, at the Horizons bar and the rotating 360 restaurant at the 1500-foot level of the CN Tower. Of course, being the aerial photography freak that I am, I took a… Continue reading
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The final demographic
I worked in retailing, wholesaling, journalism and radio when I was 18-24. I co-founded an advertising agency when I was 25-34. Among the things I studied while working in that age bracket were Nielsen and Arbitron ratings for radio and TV. Everything those companies had to say was fractioned into age brackets. The radio station… Continue reading
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Speed shopping
Yesterday my 15-year-old son and I made brief stop at the Micro Center in Cambridge, looking at what it might take (and cost) to build a Linux/Windows desktop computer from the ground up—something that had been an interest of his for the last couple of years. (Mine too, actually.) The answer, price-wise (at least there),… Continue reading
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A definition of good men
I won’t go into details, because it’s a private matter for the people involved. But the story is about a good woman and her loving husband and sons, all good men in the full meaning of that term. A few minutes ago I was thinking in the shower about what “good men” actually meant. This… Continue reading
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Table for two
The Web as we know it today was two years old in June 1997, when the page below went up. It lasted, according to Archive.org, until October 2010. When I ran across it back then, it blew my mind — especially the passage I have boldfaced in the long paragraph near the end. The Internet… Continue reading
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Why we have Silicon Valley
My son remembers what I say better than I do. One example is this: I uttered it in some context while wheezing my way up a slope somewhere in the Great Blue Hill Reservation. Except it wasn’t there. Also I didn’t say that. Exactly. Or alone. He tells me it came up while we were… Continue reading
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Helping one who helped our selves
Michael O’Connor Clarke is one of the world’s truly great guys. Besides being smart, funny, caring, hard-working, a good husband and father — and pretty much all the other positive stuff you could pack into a bio, Michael was one of the first people to not only dig The Cluetrain Manifesto, but to grok it… Continue reading
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Bridges covered
My sister and I received a durable lesson in generosity in the summer of 1963, in the heart of Iowa. That was where our family’s 1957 Ford Country Sedan station wagon, towing our Nimrod pop-up camper trailer, broke down. It was on a Sunday morning in late June, heading south from Des Moines on I-35… Continue reading
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Missing Elinor Ostrom
Through my work over the years I have often been directed to the worlds of Elinor Ostrom, and toward speaking to her in person. Alas, the latter choice is now off the table. She died yesterday, at 78, of pancreatic cancer. On Monday evening, in the Q&A during my talk, I was asked about the… Continue reading
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After Facebook fails
Making the rounds is The Facebook Fallacy, a killer essay by Michael Wolff in MIT Technology Review. The gist: At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium… Continue reading
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Aerial map mashing
Thanks to Jeff Warren (also here) of GrassRootsMapping and Public Laboratory, I now know — and am highly turned on by — the possibilities of mapping in the wild. That is, mapping by the 99.xxx+% of us who are not in the mapping business, and are in the best multiple positions to map the world(s)… Continue reading
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No 2 SOPA
Today I’m in solidarity with Web publishers everywhere joining the fight against new laws that are bad for business — and everything else — on the Internet. I made my case in If you hate big government, fight SOPA. A vigorous dialog followed in the comments under that. Here’s the opening paragraph: Nobody who opposes… Continue reading
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Remembering Judith
I got to know Judith Burton when she was still Judith Clarke and Senior VP Corporate Marketing for Novell, in 1987. Novell had just bought a company called CXI, which had been a client of Hodskins Simone & Searls, the Palo Alto advertising agency in which I was a partner. By that time HS&S had… Continue reading
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Remembering Ray
Ray Simone, my good friend and long-time business partner, died this morning. He was 63 years old. He is survived by his wife Gillian, his daughter Christina, and many good friends for whom he remains an inspiration and a delight. Ray was one of the most creative people I have ever known. Though we originally… Continue reading