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Wednesday, August 22, 2001
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 Wednesday, August 22, 2001
started 8/22/2001; 6:55:21 AM - last post 8/22/2001; 7:24:01 PM
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Doc Searls - Wednesday, August 22, 2001 
8/22/2001; 10:55:21 AM (reads: 5101, responses: 1)
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Hearing is disbelieving 
| | Monkeyphonecall.com is a SM2C (simulated monkey to consumer) new media business specializing in monkey phone call solutions for its customers. |
@Death's door
| | The report added, "The company had close to $1 billion in debt and net losses of $346.3 million in the latest quarter." That's after reporting yesterday that the company "only had $183 million in cash and short-term investments as of June 30. It burned $152 million in the first half of 2001, meaning it'll easily run dry before year's end." |
| | As the "number one Broadband provider," they also have 3.7 million customers, one of which is me. Our house is wired to the Net through Cox@Home. According to the first report, Cox customers might be SOL if Excite@Home service goes down, because "Some cable firms, including Cox, can't offer competing services, such as AOL Time Warner's Road Runner, until pacts with Excite At Home expire at year's end." |
| | We're too far from a switch to get Verizon's DSL. Since Covad has been headed south for some time, there doesn't seem to be much hope for another form of DSL. Sprint ION gets good reviews, but Sprint can't even put cell phone coverage into Santa Barbara (amazing but true). |
| | And I'm writing this from my office and its T-1, which I have for just a few more days. |
Kinda puts Now in perspective
| | I love flying over The West. The flight from Denver took us across Moab and the Canyonlands, right over the juncture of the Green and Colorado rivers, then south of Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion Canyons, Lake Mead and Las Vegas, and finally the Mojave Desert, a perfect view up the San Andreas Fault, Castaic Lake (which replaced the failed St. Francis dam), the Grapevine, then Ojai and on into Santa Barbara. While everybody else slept and ate, I enjoyed the spectacle. |
| | For the first time since starting to study the geology, I could see from the sky how the bright orange rocks of Bryce Canyon were newer and probably layered on top of those of Capitol Reef, Zion and Canyonlands; and how the Grand Canyon (visible out the windows across the aisle on the left side of the plane) layers were older still. I could almost start to see — or imagine — what geologists call "the picture." It made me higher than I was already. |
Adventures with Architeuthis
| | "You're sidetracking, Doc," Craig just said. |
| | "No, I'm shitting on Sony." |
| | See, I'm trying to find the driver that'll let us dump pictures off Craig's Sony camera into my Titanium. Craig thinks it's hopeless in the limited time we have here at the airport over a dial-up line. I'm hopeful. Without cause, of course. That's why I'm looking around the Web for the links you'll find in the paragraphs that follow. |
| | "If you want to know what it's like to work with a company, go to their Web site," Craig said. "You get a pretty good idea." |
| | If that's so, working with Sony must be a bureacratic nightmare. Given Eric Norlin's description of most corprate Web sites as "tentacles," I'm given to thinking of working with Sony as wrestling with a giant squid. |
| | And yet it won't stop me from buying one of their digital cameras. Even though I know that, say, Epson, makes it much easier to find drivers for any product they sell. |
Bloggin' high
| | So now Craig and I are sitting here at the United Airlines Red carpet club at Denver International Airport, debriefing each other on the last couple days at Jabbercon, which he and Dave (we just discovered) have already documented very well. It was a trip in more ways than few. |
| | Some of the best fun was sitting in a cluster (Craig, Dave, me, James Barry and several other guys who came and went) in one part of the room, using our blogs to pass notes to each other like wise-ass kids in the back of 8th grade English class. Except we were actually learning something. Mostly, anyway. |
| | Very nice flattery from Dave on my presentation at Jabbercon (which I'll put up at Searls.com when I get some bandwidth — Jabber.com's site too). I'll back-blognose Dave by saying that my memory of "Just say Yes" is that the line was entirely his. A great approach too: the best way to practice what we preach about inclusion. |
The way it oughta be sung
| | Craig's report from Jabbercon has me convinced that I need to get a digital camera. I had planned to get one along with the Titanium but balked at spending the money. But there's a benefit: with a lot of nice big pictures, maybe I don't need to write as much. |
| | My only regret from the show was missing Craig's song. Turns out the dude can sing, too. He got huge applause, which was all I caught. |
Schedule cramps
| | In a few minutes Craig and I will be heading out of Keystone for the drive to Denver. I should be back in Santa Barbara in the early afternoon. Then I have to write up the conference and a bunch of other stuff. Then tomorrow I'm in San Jose for an all-day meeting. Then we have lots of other stuff happening up to LinuxWorld Expo in San Jose next week. So the blogging might get a bit thin for the next few daze. |
discuss
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Craig Jensen - @home chapter whatever
8/22/2001; 11:24:01 PM (reads: 482, responses: 0)
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You could always move to Austin. The dsl coverage here is pretty good and there is at least one independent isp left (jump.net) that will set up a home user with multiple ip addresses.
There is even an hdsl option, from jump.net, that uses two twisted pairs and delivers T1 speed for $299/month.
I keep reading these horror stories about sevice bureaus going under and I guess I'm lucky.
Hope you can figure out an alternative to, ugh, dial-up.
Craig Jensen
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