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Friday, April 22, 2005
Now try complaining 
| | I got Cingular to add international service, which works fine, except when I try to call outside France in Europe. Doesn't work. Can call the U.S., though. |
| | Mary and Halley both added International service to their Cingular phones and... voila! get no service at all here. |
| | Paolo (who's here) says he's always amazed at how, in the U.S., cellular customers have relatively low expectations. |
Cluestream media
| | So I'm walking through the lobby of my hotel here in Paris when I spot the May 2 BusinessWeek, with Blogs on the cover in giant red type. The full title is, Blogs Will Change Your Business, with the subtitle Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later. Written by Stephen Baker and Heather Green. (The byline is where it belongs in the print edition, but all the way at the bottom in the online one.) |
| | There's probably not much in the piece most bloggers don't know, but it's worth reading for the writing, and for seeing what the biz corner of the MSM is grokking about the subject. |
| | The writing is killer. Dig: |
| | How big are blogs? Try Johannes Gutenberg out for size. His printing press, unveiled in 1440, sparked a publishing boom and an information revolution. Some say it led to the Protestant Reformation and Western democracy. Along the way, societies established the rights and rules of the game for the privileged few who could afford to buy printing presses and grind forests into paper. |
| | The printing press set the model for mass media. A lucky handful owns the publishing machinery and controls the information. Whether at newspapers or global manufacturing giants, they decide what the masses will learn. This elite still holds sway at most companies. You know them. They generally park in sheltered spaces, have longer rides on elevators, and avoid the cafeteria. They keep the secrets safe and coif the company's message. Then they distribute it -- usually on a need-to-know basis -- to customers, employees, investors, and the press. |
| | That's the world of mass media, and the blogs are turning it on its head. Set up a free account at Blogger or other blog services, and you see right away that the cost of publishing has fallen practically to zero. |
| | I love "coif the company's message." We can knock verbed nouns and adjectives, but Shakespeare loved them. Nor custom stale her infinite variety, for example. |
| | They also call Steve Rubel "an all-knowing Thumper in a forest of clueless Bambis." |
Wuef
| | Parisians love dogs (perhaps because les chiens seems so much nicer than the dogs), which is one reason I'm linking to this. |
Remembering the way it still is
| | Working back at the hotel here in Paris, getting caught up on some writing for Linux Journal while doing something I don't normally do (cuz if it's good, it's distracting): listen to the radio. But I can't tune away from Whole Wheat Radio's stream out of Talkeetna, Alaska, where it's about 3:30am (in the perpetual Spring dawn) right now. Currently playing: Elliot Smith. |
| | There's a lot to be said for podcasting (and I've said more than my share already); but live radio still has its charms. |
Shooting high
| | Got some remarkable shots on the way here, mostly of mountain spires protruding through the Greenland ice sheet. I remember once, on a 777 flying from London to San Francisco, the pilot came on the PA system and said that Greenland was the most spectacular landform he'd ever flown over, and that the view that particular day was unusually clear. |
| | Yesterday wasn't quite that nice. There were few breaks in the clouds, and the Sun was low (but not set, because it couldn't be, north of the Artic Circle, which we were at that point, by about four degrees). Worse, my seat was 26a, which was right at the back of the wing, so I could only shoot looking backwards. Worse still, the only window at my window seat was so far forward that I could barely see oiut of it. And the Sun was on the window too, which didn't help, either. Fortunately, the Nikon has a flip-out viewer, and I could get a few good shots. |
Arise and dine
| | I felt real smart and prepared by 1) owning a tri-band phone that works overseas as well as in the U.S., and 2) making sure international service was turned on before I left. |
| | So my alarm was a cell call that came in at 5:40am. Then the instant messages started pouring in on the laptop (which never did sleep). Tonight I'll remember to turn them both off. |
| | Although that may not help. A rooster is greeting the dawn somewhere out there. In deepest Paris. |
| | Looking forward to getting some hang time with Halley and Mary after they arrive today, then with friends old and new tomorrow and Monday at Les Blogs, which is featured in Wired today. (Tag:lesblogs. Watch for many pictures with the same tag on Monday.) |
| | So now I'm going to shower and head out for a fresh croissant, crepe, omelette or whatever. |
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