The New Roach Clip

Some notes from getting Rails configured with NetBeans and Mac OS X Tiger (10.4).  These were areas where I got stumped for a bit.

Profits uber alles.  This is lame -- 14 oz of stem, 6 oz of heads -- what's going on Cal-Organic?!    That's 60% of the the product in what is typically considered "waste".  Of course, I cut, steam and eat the stems, but when folks buy broccoli, are they buying stems or the heads?  At least they show similar broccoli on their website.  Whole Foods isn't doing much to help their Whole Paycheck image when they sell product like this.

Well, it's been ages since I blogged about wine -- well, since I blogged.  Travel, family, work, all that fun stuff has gotten in the way!  (Aside, if only Vox had blogging client support, and twitter didn't get my blogging urges out).  In any event, I've been curious about Tocai Friulano ever since I watched Gary's Episode 471.  So, here goes.  I picked up a couple of these recently, and already drank one (which was pretty awesome -- good mouthfeel, but also enough acidity to make it work with food).  I'm trying the 2006 Latisana Tocai Friulano -- produced by Anselmi Giuseppe e Luigi.  (Note: as of 2007 vintage, Tocai has been dropped from the name. Hat tip to Gary's episode!)

I don't know why this email is getting so much attention.  Well, the best reason I've heard is simply that if BillG was concerned that much about user experience, why isn't MSFT perfect 5 years later.

It's a fair criticism, but not particularly.  There are many products that have been released since then from MSFT that have obviously invested heavily in UX.  Live Writer, OneNote, PopFly, Office Ribbon, Office Communicator, Live Mesh are some of these examples.

The article claiming that the BillG email is a "rant" is silly.  I hate to say it, but I've gotten emails just like that one from people who care about product usability: prospects, customers, C-levels, and I've even written similar notes -- though probably with a more neutral tone.  Frankly, I sometimes even seek that kind of email out.  In the middle of development cycles, you get wrapped up in shipping software, and get used to the idiosyncrasies that get introduced during development.  Shipping prototypes out to customers or screenshots early in the development cycles can help alleviate getting emails like this from the big boss after you've shipped.

Wow, I watched almost all of the premiere POV episode called Traces of the Trade last night.  I'd recommend it to anyone.  This documentary is about the De Wolf family of Rhode Island, and interviews the contemporary ancestors of this family during their self-exploration about their deep involvement in the slave trade.  Many of these ancestors had never even known that they were decendants of slave traders.  Wow.  How hard harsh is that?!

Recently, there's been much ado about McCain not "getting" the internets.  Well, I bet he doesn't.  And, that's a biiiig problem.  (BTW, I try not to hit up the politics much on my blog, but this one matters, IMHO.) 

The reality is that, like him or not, Tom Friedman is pretty dead on with "The World is Flat".  We no longer live in a world that has traditional economics, where borders matter.  The abundance of bandwidth is making the world an hyper-competitive marketplace. 

Anyway, there is an intuitive sense of how a networked world that, let's say, younger candidates "get" & will have positive impacts on public policy.  We'll see how older candidates do as a result.

Now that reddit has open sourced their platform, I'm wondering what contributed to their success or relative lack thereof.  Looking at the contributing factors for Digg's success, the primary one that stands out is that they were able to harness the network effect.  Arguably, the network effect can typically be attributable to a first mover advantage.  So, I'm going to do some live research here, and see what I can determine.

First, I'm going to check out archive.org to see who's website was actually first!

Okay, so, it looks like digg was around on Dec 9, 2004.  Reddit's first archive.org entry is July 8, 2002.  Looks like Reddit was actually first!

Next, let's see if I can figure out whether the "digg this" button contributed as a marketing & network-effect mechanism.  I *think* I might be able to determine this from when they introduced a platform API.  Digg Tools was introduced in December of 2006, oh wait, "Add Digg to your Site" was available in August 2006, but that actually turns out to be adding Digg news to your own site.  So looks like between mid-year 2005 and beginning of 2006 in late 2006, they added the digg button syndication feature.

Reddit appears to have launched their button on Oct 23 2006.

Hmm, so Reddit appears to have buttons first, but only by a month or so.

How about a blog as an influencer?

Digg: Feb 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.digg.com

Reddit: October 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.reddit.com

Does it all just come down to Digg being a cooler name?

Now that reddit has open sourced their platform, I'm wondering what contributed to their success or relative lack thereof.  Looking at the contributing factors for Digg's success, the primary one that stands out is that they were able to harness the network effect.  Arguably, the network effect can typically be attributable to a first mover advantage.  So, I'm going to do some live research here, and see what I can determine.

First, I'm going to check out archive.org to see who's website was actually first!

Okay, so, it looks like digg was around on Dec 9, 2004.  Reddit's first archive.org entry is July 8, 2002.  Looks like Reddit was actually first!

Next, let's see if I can figure out whether the "digg this" button contributed as a marketing & network-effect mechanism.  I *think* I might be able to determine this from when they introduced a platform API.  Digg Tools was introduced in December of 2006, oh wait, "Add Digg to your Site" was available in August 2006, but that actually turns out to be adding Digg news to your own site.  So looks like between mid-year 2005 and beginning of 2006 in late 2006, they added the digg button syndication feature.

Reddit appears to have launched their button on Oct 23 2006.

Hmm, so Reddit appears to have buttons first, but only by a month or so.

How about a blog as an influencer?

Digg: Feb 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.digg.com

Reddit: October 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.reddit.com

Now that reddit has open sourced their platform, I'm wondering what contributed to their success or relative lack thereof.  Looking at the contributing factors for Digg's success, the primary one that stands out is that they were able to harness the network effect.  Arguably, the network effect can typically be attributable to a first mover advantage.  So, I'm going to do some live research here, and see what I can determine.

First, I'm going to check out archive.org to see who's website was actually first!

Okay, so, it looks like digg was around on Dec 9, 2004.  Reddit's first archive.org entry is July 8, 2002.  Looks like Reddit was actually first!

Next, let's see if I can figure out whether the "digg this" button contributed as a marketing & network-effect mechanism.  I *think* I might be able to determine this from when they introduced a platform API.  Digg Tools was introduced in December of 2006, oh wait, "Add Digg to your Site" was available in August 2006, but that actually turns out to be adding Digg news to your own site.  So looks like between mid-year 2005 and beginning of 2006 in late 2006, they added the digg button syndication feature.

Reddit appears to have launched their button on Oct 23 2006.

Hmm, so Reddit appears to have buttons first, but only by a month or so.

How about a blog as an influencer?

Digg: Feb 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.digg.com

Reddit: October 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.reddit.com

It's unfortunate that there are many among us who poo-poo Twitter, Seesmic, etc as the "echo-chamber".  I think this is a new version of anti-intellectualism that -- for some unknown reason -- has not left American discourse.  The main utility of these new forms of debate is really to allow a more free-form intellectual debate among our citizenry -- but wait, this is actually not limited to American borders -- rather, this is a global phenomenon.  The "echo-chamber," of course, is Silicon Valley but not in reality, only metaphorically.  It's those techno-geeks, with time and bandwidth to spare, that endlessly debate.  The reality, however, is that we live in societies that are constantly on-the-go, disconnected, and distracted.  These services help us talk asynchronously by compressing the debate into consumable chunks of time.