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September 22, 2002
My e-pal Gilbert Cattoire has joined Annotis.com, an outfit that provides a toolbar for your mail client that lets you do all sorts of funky things to your HTML-based email, like add customized stamps, highlight text, annotate text and add sticky notes. The recipient doesn’t have to use Annotis to see what you’ve done, of course. It costs $25, and there’s a 30-day free trial. Only Outlook and Outlook Express users need apply at this time.
September 21, 2002
From Jonathan Arnold on a mailing list comes a rudely funny link: Taliban Reunited.
Dick Joltes, from the same list, recommends the latest in innovative services for today’s highly leveraged executives: Cadaver, Inc.
The FX cable channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch, plans to do an “American Idol” style show where the winner doesn’t get to perform live on the Regis show but does get to run for president, according to an AP article:
The cable channel announced on Friday the start of a series, “American Candidate,” designed to pick a TV-endorsed potential president.
“We think it’s a marriage of a tried-and-true concept, as shown by ‘American Idol,’ with a down-home political spin to it,” said Peter Liguori, FX president. “We are a nation where, quote-unquote, anybody can become president, and this is a concept that gives everyday folks a forum to express their point of view and have people respond to it.”
R.J. Cutler, the filmmaker who made “The War Room,” a documentary on the 1992 Clinton campaign, is producing the project with Jay Roach, director of the “Austin Powers” movies.
Just when you think it couldn’t get any fucking stranger.
September 20, 2002
From Euan Semple of The Obvious:
I don’t know about you but I for one have got so much from the hard
work of Mark Wood in putting together one of the best and most
rewarding blogs on the web. Mark is without access to a computer at the
moment. I reckon if even 100 people payed $5 each we could get him a
computer of his own. I’ve set up a PayPal account and a link from my
blog for donations. I will ensure that Mark gets all money donated.
You’ll find a PayPal button conveniently on The Obvious site.
I’ve captured from The Daily Show the clip of W struggling to say “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Notice the look of abject fear as he realizes that he’s going to muff it and it’s going to end up on the news, and on damn fool weblogs.
And so it has.
Higher res version of Windows Media file (wmv) (2.2MB) for broader band users
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Real Video (217K) if you have the Real Player
MPG (880KB) for dialup users
Higher-res MPG (1.3MB) for broadband users
QuickTime (MOV) (381K) Best clarity per bit. (Thanks, Kevin Marks.)
Josh Claybourn blogs that the article on a report I cited is just one of a zillion think tank white papers and doesn’t represent the Bush administration’s views.
I think he’s right that the article that cites the report imputes a close tie to the administration that may not be there. On the other hand, the new, official Bush Doctrine statement at the White House site reflects the ideas in that initial report all too closely.
Mitch Ratcliffe does a good job blogging about why the the Bush Doctrine is immoral, scary and impractical. Hey, I knew it was going to be bad, but I wasn’t expecting a trifecta!
Common Cause has a page where you can fax a message to your Congressional representatives.
Here’s what I faxed this morning to Sen. Kerry, Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Barney Frank:
Please do not make the historic mistake of giving the executive branch a free hand to start and prosecute a war against Iraq.
Especially not this executive and his oil administration.
Especially not this war that is opposed by almost the entire world, that is being “marketed” to us in a propagandistic way, that is ill-defined in its goals, and that would occur without exhausting all alternatives.
Please have the courage to oppose President Bush’s call to have a free hand in attacking Iraq.
[Thanks. Chip, for the link.]
InformationWeek’s “Secret CIO,” who writes under the pseudonym “Herbert W. Lovelace,” in the September 9 issue takes aim at enterprise blogging because it takes time away from real work, and if successful, it’s hugely distracting:
The last thing you want are uncontrolled and ever-expanding records of individual activities.
The column puts well what I expect the corporate response to blogging to be. I imagine talking with a CIO who straightens his rep tie and says:
“Let me see. You’re telling me that each of our 150,000 employees will have a weblog. And you say people typically spend a half hour a day writing and reading weblogs. So, you’re trying to sell me software that will drop my company’s productivity by 1/16th? Security, we’ve got an intruder!”
Here’s what I want to say to The Secret CIO:
Much of what you say is right, although you’re ignoring the benefits of discovering a handful of people who start writing incredibly useful blogs that are full of ideas and that crystallize unarticulated opinions and feelings. And you’re ignoring the ability of blogs to pull together groups and preserve much of their intellectual value. But maybe you’re right. Maybe giving every employee a blog isn’t the right way to get to these goals.
But even if you were 100% right, you’re missing the point. Don’t think shooting down the proposal from an enterprise blogging company shoots down blogs. We don’t need the proposal and we don’t need your permission — if we’re not allowed to blog in the corporate space, there’s still a might big Web out there. Blogging is happening whether you want it to or not. Your best employees are already setting up weblogs — and mailing lists, and discussion boards, and web pages — to talk about what matters to them, in their own voice.
Weblogs are a done deal. The question is whether there’s additional business value to be had by aggregating, mining (yech) and nurturing the blogging community that’s already created itself under your nose and under your radar.
September 19, 2002
The transcript of a chat I did at spirituality.com on the topic “The Spirituality of the Web’s Architecture” has been posted here.
That’s the title of an article in “The Integration Survival Guide,” the “Official Publication of Business Integration Conference Services.”
Oy veh! What were the titles they threw out? “Heil Integration”? “Integration: The Final Solution”? “Integration Macht Frei”?
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