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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
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 Wednesday, May 23, 2007
started 5/23/2007; 3:52:30 AM - last post 5/23/2007; 3:52:30 AM
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Doc Searls - Wednesday, May 23, 2007 
5/23/2007; 7:52:30 AM (reads: 5502, responses: 0)
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Knights in shining pixels 
| | $5 million is being split. |
| | The next round of applications starts July 1, 2007. |
So what else is old?
| | I don't know what it is, but the same thing happened in the late nineties before the bubble burst. Lots of startups got funded that made no sense but people got excited anyway. A unique, beautiful and well executed idea was not a story worth talking about until that first round of big, eye-popping capital. People become more anxious, and more likely to snap at someone in anger or jealousy. Rumor mongering spikes, and a crucial balance is lost. It's no longer about beautiful products and genius developers. It¹s about the money and the status, and hot PR chicks and marketing departments. |
| | Lots of interesting comments, too. |
| | To me the most amazing thing about the Web 1.0 bubble (the late '90s one) was that doomed startups continued to get piles of money for several quarters after the bursting started in early 2000. I can't find the source right now (maybe one of ya'll can help), but as I recall the peak dollar flow from VCs into Silicon Valley happened in q2 of 2000, when it was clear that a crash was underway. |
| | Anyhow, I enjoy respite from all that stuff, here in Santa Barbara, in Cambridge and other relatively less reality-distorted regions. |
| | By the way, VRM is a beautiful story worth telling, but I wouldn't want to see VC money around it for awhile. Mostly because the story has barely started. And it's not a vendor-side "solution". In fact, it seeks to solve the problem of too many vendors solving customer "management" problems poorly and from just the supply side of the marketplace. |
Refund fun
| | I like the idea behind yapta: quietly tracking trip prices and getting refunds for overpriced airfares you've already booked, after the prices come down. Unfortunately, it needs a browser and is only available for IE6-7 on Windows. Firefox is "coming soon". Thanks to Elsa Wenzel for the tip. |
| | Almost speaking of which, it would be cool if elderfolk could also get compensated for being tortured by airports. |
Quote du jour
| | Rex Hammock: I feel a bit relieved that Henry Luce didn¹t live to see the day when the magazine company he started was described as "a multi-media content company reaching consumers on every platform." |
Flight Schooling
| | One of my regrets every year is not making Esther's Flight School conference, since aviation is one of my passions. It's one reason I'm one of the most active passengers you'll find on a plane going anywhere. (This year Flight School is the same time as Supernova, which I'm involved in.) |
| | I love how, as the plane crosses Hudson Bay, one can detect the approach of land by the increasingly brown areas on and between the ice floes, which have been made dirty by dust-bearing winds prevailing from the west. That picture on the left above, which looks like it could be the cross-section of rock or tissue under a microscope, is a miles-wide section of the Hudson Bay surface. |
| | I also enjoyed shooting San Gorgonio Mountain, which is the highest in Southern California, at 11,502 feet. Nearby San Jacinto Mountain is second-tallest at just over 10,000 feet. Off to the west in the San Gabriel Mountains is Old San Antonio, or Mt. Baldy, the #3 peak in Socal, also breaking the 10,000 foot mark. I put up a photoset of Baldy as well. All but one of the shots are in the Mt. Baldy ski area, two years ago when it actually snowed. The weather was not so obliging this year. One shot shows how steeply Baldy looms over the Los Angeles Basin. Mounts Baldy, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto are chief among the peaks on the ridges the frame the Los Angeles basin and the Inland Empire of San Bernardino-Riverside. These are also like vast walls of a bowl holding smog in place when the air gets stale. When the haze clears, the mountains loom like alps, which in a way they are. By the way, the San Gorgonio set starts here, with a shot of mountains that Google Earth declines to identify (and a massive landslide from 17-20 thousand years ago, also not identified). As I said here, Google Earth is great at labeling flats, canyons and valleys, but many mountain names either aren't there or require the hands of a safecracker to find (by manipulating height and angle of view). |
| | Tomorrow or in the next few days The Kid and I will fill in some of the details on many of these pictures — schooling in geography, if not flight. Meanwhile, feel free to do the same. (I've had some amazing help with England and Scotland already.) |
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