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Abate and switch
Newspapers got off on the wrong foot when they started publishing on the Web, by giving away what was valuable on the newsstand, and charging for last year’s fishwrap. That is, they gave away the news...
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Radio news (and vice versa) in DC and Baltimore
A few days ago RadioInk reported that WTOP, the all-news radio station in Washington, D.C., is now the top-billing station in the nation. Two surprising things there. One is that Washington is the #7...
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Won and done
Okay, my foursquare experiment is over. I won, briefly… … and, about 24 hours later (the second screenshot) I was back in the pack somewhere. So now I’m done playing the leaderboard game. I’d like to...
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So long, and thanks to the bird
Independent commercial alternative rock radio in Boston is heading to the grave. The Boston Phoenix‘ WFNX has been sold to Clear Channel, which — says the press release — will expand its “footprint” in...
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After Facebook fails
Making the rounds is The Facebook Fallacy, a killer essay by Michael Wolff in MIT Technology Review. The gist: At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time:...
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Bridges covered
My sister and I received a durable lesson in generosity in the summer of 1963, in the heart of Iowa. That was where our family’s 1957 Ford Country Sedan station wagon, towing our Nimrod pop-up camper...
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Checking in, 16.5 years later
I fired up Searls.com in early 1995, and began publishing on it immediately. A lot of that writing is at a subdomain called Reality 2.0. Here is one piece from that early list, which I put up just days...
View ArticleTable for two
The Web as we know it today was two years old in June 1997, when the page below went up. It lasted, according to Archive.org, until October 2010. When I ran across it back then, it blew my mind —...
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The only issue that matters
Geologists have an informal name for the history of human influence on the Earth. They call it the Anthropocene. It makes sense. We have been raiding the earth for its contents, and polluting its...
View ArticleAn open letter on patents, 12 years later
I’m on a list where the subject of patents is being discussed. While thinking about how I might contribute to the conversation, I remembered that I once cared a lot about the subject and wrote some...
View ArticleOld skool influential software
I came late to personal computing, which was born with the MITS Altair in 1975. The first PC I ever met — and wanted desperately, in an instant — was an Apple II, in 1977. It sold in one of the first...
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Following Nemo
6:42am — Flights are starting to land at JFK, I see by Flightaware. Not yet at LGA, EWR or the New England airports. More links: Airport delays Flight cancellations It’s getting light out, and the snow...
View ArticleWhy durable links matter
In How podcasting got its name, Dave nicely outlines the derivation of the terms podcast and podcasting. That last link goes to the Wikipedia page, because pretty much any other link I put in there has...
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How the Web is being body-snatched
Yesterday, when Anil Dash (@AnilDash) spoke about The Web We Lost at Harvard, I took notes in my little outliner, in a browser. They follow. The top outline level is slide titles, or main points. The...
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On cities and networks
I’m in Boston right now, and bummed that I can’t attend Start-up City: An Entrepreneurial Economy for Middle Class New York, which is happening today at New York Law School today. I learned about it...
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Some perspectives in time and space
First, time. Earth became habitable for primitive life forms some 3.X billion years ago. It will cease to be habitable in another 1 billion years or less, given the rate at which the Sun continues to...
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Rebuilding the future
In Bubkes, Stephen Lewis has lately been blogging with depth and insight on many topics — music, architecture, culture, infrastructure and events historic and current — in two cities with which he is...
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A good word for a good cause
@BlakeHunskicer has a kickstarter project, Fleeing the War at Home: An interactive documentary introducing the crisis in Syria through the personal histories and dreams of Syrian refugees, with a few...
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The Gospel According to ZZ Top
In mass this morning only two words the priest said during the homily stuck in my mind: it’s alright. Because they called ZZ Top to mind. Specifically, the song Legs. It begins, She’s got legs. She...
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Thoughts on privacy
In Here Is New York, E.B. White opens with this sentence: “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” Sixty-four years have...
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