|
| Tuesday, September 20, 2005 |
 |
From those wonderful folks who brought you the DMCA 
Fi'ing high
Reality kills
Goo-Fi?
| | LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Online search leader Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is preparing to launch its own wireless Internet service, Google WiFi, according to several pages found on the company's Web site on Tuesday. |
| | The page was http://wifi.google.com/faq.html, but it's gone now. Try and you'll be redirected to the index page. From the FAQ, while it was still visible: "The program can currently be downloaded at certain Google WiFi locations in the San Francisco Bay Area." (Please tell me it's not Windows-only. [Later... Yep, it is. But that's Secure Access... not clear where that ends and other Wi-Fi services begin.]) |
| | Other poop here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (with excerpts, such as One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor.), here (with a screen shot!), here (more screen shots), here and (of course) here. |
| | Tag: goofi. (No offense intended. It's just too good a pun to resist.) |
The answer is 3D
| | Before I read today's Edhat, I had no idea there was a chronologic to the alphanumerics of California license plates. Well, maybe I had an idea, but I never bothered to see what The Deal was. Now I know: |
| | License plates being issued today have a 5 as the first character followed by a three-letter combination starting with the letter P. There are a few exceptions. We found a list of banned license plate letters on the web. Apparently, PEW, PIG, PIS, POT, POW, PST, PUD, PUS, and PYS will not be issued. Evidently, attempts to legalize POT have not been successful. And for those environmentalists among us, DDT has also been banned. |
| | So, with 5P being the latest and greatest thing, plates starting with 3¹s and 4¹s identify you to the world as the owner of an older car. There was no Employee Discount Special Offer when you bought. And, if your plate starts with a 2, you probably didn¹t use the Internet to find out the dealer¹s price. A plate starting with a 1 means that you probably, well to speak bluntly, are not a regular at the Biltmore. Of course there are many 1¹s driving around Hope Ranch with UCSB A-lot stickers, but those are just people with different priorities. |
| | So, you're wondering... With what number and letter does the old Subaru's plate start? |
true as love
| | i have a book agent. yes me, dorkwad. and even though i dont have any published books, like officially published books, i have an agent. for some reason shes the only person who believes and understands the disclaimer "nothing in here is true" so she has not only been trying to pimp me out on some secret projects but she doesnt believe that i have a new job. |
| | Well, I have Tony's How to Blog here (also the title of this post here), and it looks and reads like a Real Book to me. I was just looking for a quote I marked yesterday while I was reading it, but I can't find it. |
| | when in doubt write things that those in the technorati top 100 couldn't ever. |
| | That line wasn't in the original blog, which was leveraged for the book. Never mind why (other than that Technorati barely existed when Tony wrote the original post). nothing in here is true, Tony disclaims. |
| | What's not to like about a man who loves his mom (definately one of the first black female computer programmers ever) and mike royko (the greatest newspaper columnist ever). |
| | Tony gets my vote for the best blogger ever. If not the best speller. |
Why we need more CEBs
Alarm
| | It's raining, which hasn't happened since March. There's also lighting and thunder, which hasn't happened since the Pleistocene. |
| | I just spent half an hour covering outdoor furniture or hauling it inside. It's now 5am. |
| | Oh well. I had work to do anyway. |
The continuing death of Marketing as Usual
| | I have never heard anybody question the fundamental basis of Maslow's argument (at least, in its ad agency 'Intellectual Lite' form; I've never read any Maslow, but then probably neither have you). Maslow's hierarchy assumes that you have to have fulfilled the criteria of each need before you can move on to the next. |
| | It is like a frequent-flyer scheme for life: 'I'm sorry, madam. This is the lounge for esteemed people. The lounge for people who've only found acceptance is down the hall. If you see the people trying to make fire, you've gone too far.' It's a vision of society ratcheting itself up need by need towards Nirvana. It's neat, and like all neat ways of measuring human behaviour, it's attractive to marketers. |
| | And like all neat ways of measuring human behaviour, it just doesn't work. |
| | In agency meetings everybody nods when you invoke Maslow. Of course, people who have Amex black cards, S class Mercedes and great job titles are actually yearning for spiritual fulfilment. So it follows that marketing should minister to those needs, as these people have vast amounts of money and a great hole in their souls. |
| | In my experience, people who have comfort, safety and self-esteem mainly want more of the same, but better. Platinum card holders don't want to find themselves. They want a Plutonium card. If you drive a Mercedes kitted out in hand-tooled hide, you really just hanker after a car with more leather. Leather windows, maybe. Or a leather engine. |
| | Brian's new company is Brand Tacticians. His newest book (or the one to which he has most freshly contributed) is Pick Me. (Without the cover art, I imagine a nose.) |
Sights and seeing
| | My father left home when I was eight. Amongst the things he left behind was a World War II era twin-lens Kodak reflex camera (a poorly-made copy of a German Rolleicord) and a beautiful black Weston light meter with a velvet-lined, hard-leather case. The Kodak took 620 roll film, an odd format in which few types of film were available. Not that this mattered; when I took to wandering the streets of lower Manhattan with the camera at age thirteen I did not have money with which to buy or process film. Instead, I discovered two joys even more fundamental to photography than prints or negatives: Peering through the light shaft of the Kodak to view the world as projected onto the camera's dim 2 1/4 inch square matte-glass focusing screen, and watching the skittish needle of the Weston suddenly jump as it reacted to the luminescence of buildings, objects, and faces. |
| | Deep sights and insights here. Read the whole thing. |
Speak no evil
| | While it¹s all fine the blogsphere gets worked up and the points being made are totally valid, there are a couple of things that might be kept in mind. |
| | 1. Nobody cares. I care. Jeff cares. Doc cares, Winer cares and, well, you might care. We¹re all nobody. Most people using the product don¹t care, the wall street kids don¹t care, etc, etc. In grand scheme of things, we don¹t matter. |
| | 2. The way this will likely change is if the speakers refuse to do this. If Scoble, Fallows, Diller, Gladwell, etc, all said thanks, homey don¹t play that, it would probably get fixed pretty quick. |
| | The real challenge for Doc, Jeff, Dave, and others is to beat on the Speakers, not Google. Google can set any rules they want if people will play. It only happens because the speakers let it. |
| | If you get the big shots to say no thanks, watch how fast it changes and it becomes blog city. |
| | Lesson for you? Don¹t get all worked up about NDAs, the press and secrets. Really. Love your customers, exceed expectation,s and let the other guy live in paranoia. |
| | Is there a darling/honeymoon/pariah meeter? I think somebody should do a chart over time of various big time companies. I think if you did this chart, you will find Google setting the record for going from darling of the industry to monopolistic evil empire faster then most. Can¹t wait to watch the movie of Eric throwing a chair. |
| | [Later...] I got an email from a contact inside Google explaining that this is a customer meeting to which speakers are invited — and that some of the speakers happen to be journalists. In any case, it's not a "conference." I suggested that somebody from the company needs to explain |
Like he said, and the other guys didn't say, exactly. Something like that.
One explanation
| | in conversation, i ask few questions and give short answers. i wonder if blogging has become a sort of conversational crutch for me. by blogging about something, i don¹t have to talk about it. |
| | or maybe by blogging about something, i figure out a good answer for the questions that nobody needs to ask because they¹ve already read the answer. |
Not Governor Blanco?
| | Rex Hammock: I'd like to be on record as the first to blame Mayor Nagin and President Bush for any damages that may be caused by Rita. |
discuss
Copyright 2008 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
