Here Here! You Go, Tom!

Am I going to feel like an idiot if I show up at this affair? It looms as a distinct possibility. Then again, why not simply claim my space as a been-around-the-bend elder who knows that, in the blogosphere at least, words trump technology and always will, no matter how exotic the evolution of the tech stuff.

that's right my godson! You claim your deserved place, and give David a hug for me too, because, if you can believe it, and we've talked enough to not believe it ourselves, we've never met. I hope you do go and enjoy yourself. Let us know how it turns out!

O brave and funny woman...

...whom i adore:

No I'm not going to link to the scene where Steve and the editor of PC Magazine suck and make up. Instead, maybe you want to meditate alongside me: does business have to be disgusting, to work?

----> fuckifiknow.

***

I Want One! Or, clicking thru my sponsors.

Don't they make this stuff for grownups?
No I am SERIOUS. I want to be swaddled.
Do you get it? SWADDLED!

A panel like this...

I mean, at a web2.o event, you can't touch this.

death of a talisman

when he's not busy writing joint statements, he's rebooting in what looks to be one of the most fascinating talks of the town. interested in the human condition? bootbootreboot.

runningoutoftoiletpapertoday.com

That George sent me a link to this circuits column about the High Possibilities of Web 2DotOh and I have to say, I was nearly all a flutter with excitement. The author imagined the possibilities of Web 2DotOh and thought up a website that would tell us who's sick with what so we could use good hygiene and Stay Healthy (problem being, this idea would only show which INTERNET users are sick, and everyone knows we're a sickly bunch with too little Vitamin K, but don't let that get you down):

When my kids come down with various horrible flu variations, and it gets bad enough to see a doctor, we often hear from the pediatrician: “Oh, yes, it’s going around. You’ll have vomiting for two days, and then you’ll get better.”

Well, gosh darn it, why couldn’t someone have told us? If so much is known about a certain bug, then it would help a lot — both with life planning and with managing emotions — if you knew a little bit about what was in store for you.

Somebody should come up, then, with a Web 2.0 site where people could report what they’re catching and what you can expect from it. You could see a map of your region and watch the red cloud or the blue cloud spread closer and closer to your neighborhood, the better to step up your hand washings. As you lay in bed, miserable, you’d know that at least you had only 24 hours to go. Or whatever.

The Web did what you would expect -- IT ACTED LIKE A COMMUNITY-CAMP-SOCIALNETWORK AND IT ANSWERED! OH GLORIOUS WEB! OH SO MANY PEOPLE WITH TIME ON THEIR HANDS AND AN EYE ON THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS AND OVER-THE-COUNTER SUDAFED! YES VIRGINIA, there actually IS such a site!

It is called whoissick.org. There you can track post nasal drip in YOUR TOWN! Right Now, 24x7, from any Internet browser -- cough/sore throat (as if they're the same), headaches, fever and more. You sick? ME TOO!

And I'm sure mobile is coming soon.

I can sleep tonight, let me tell you.

This got Me In the Spirit, and I sent George back some ideas of my own as I began imagining the Possibilities of the social web:

CART4YOUYOULAZSHIT.COM - A social site where grocery store shoppers enter the last location of the cart they used so geeks with PDAs can pull in and park next to the nearest empty cart that is closest to the store's entrance! Hey, CALLING WHOLE FOODS - w00t!!

EATMYGASNOW.COM - A social site where participants monitor their farts and the farts of others AGAINST where they have eaten out so that the social web can determine which eateries serve the gassiest foods! t00t!!

RUNNINGOUTOFTOILETPAPERTODAY.COM - A social site where we track how much toilet paper we use, and who is running out of toilet paper, and then perhaps we can determine who is wasteful and send trainers out to teach "new techniques" in ass wiping! Hat Tip to George for the domain! h00t!!

Apparently George is on board for site development as he sent me some of his preliminary social research:

"Your search - runningoutoftoiletpapertoday.com - did not match any documents."

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

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Razer Sharp on Blog Sisters

Helen Razer has been on Blog Sisters as long as I can remember. Like a lot of the posting members there--yours truly included--she doesn't post there all that often, but when she does, woooohooo it's ALWAYS wonderful and cool and day-changing. It's what blogging used to be before it was coopted by U.S.ian Web2.o zealots with few chops and even fewer clues.

Wonderful writing case-in-point -- today's Blank Paris, in which Ms. Razer explores the Meaning of Life and Love in a pixel-driven collage of absurd current day rating mechanisms--from Paris Hilton to trans fatty acids.

I give you the start here. You'll have to go read the rest.

In every life, about a handful of Truly Significant moments are collected. These, unless you’re easily given to joy upon opening stationery catalogues eating spaghetti, polishing brassware et al, are wrung from events broadly agreed to be drenched in emotion. Births, deaths, marriages and all their variants and relatives from illness to ignited love provide the stuff of big moments.

You will recognise these moments for their potency. Within these instants, some sort of emotional coin is dropped. A new mechanism is activated and, slowly then suddenly, your insides creak and you’re changed for good.

When you care to peruse your album of rare and remarkable moments, you will almost certainly find these were built in the immediate company of life, death and affection. You may also find that this record is slim. This, truly, is the way it should be. A life too well-punctuated by high drama and joy is a life drained of meaning. Unless, of course, you’re Namoi Campbell.

I suspect that I’m quite fortunate to have collected a few such moments for display and ready reference. My internal emotional directory contains a select hit list at the top of which is an “I Love You” closely followed by an “It’s completely operable”.

Occasionally, however, I find myself eager for the inclusion of new moments.
Like a brooding tween hepped up on a dissatisfying diet of Emo and trans fats, I find myself idly hoping for bad-ass, life changing emotional action.

...

What's in a Name? SEO!

In the era of search-engine-optimized names, I inherited one -- my own -- that came pre-optimized back in 1962, when there was only one Jeneane Dimino spelled my way, and again in 1986, when there became only one Jeneane Sessum, spelled my way. And back then, there was no Google.

So what's my secret? First, a 9-year-old sister who was learning that "the first vowel talks and the second vowel walks" in school (hence the "ea") when I was born, followed by a husband with Island, French, and Native American heritage that makes for an unusual-in-america (without an "s" on the end please) surname.

Sometimes luck can beat Google.

[[bonus link -- searching on my maiden name brought me to this from my 1978 high school musical chorus appearance in Godspell. And what a great musical it was!]]

...

the net begins to realize the net is just the net after all

Renee has an interesting post where she chronicles a mini-test, or not so mini really, to see just how many people in her life who are not in her online life are actually online at all. She found not many. She also lists a lot of activities that she will not move from the desktop to the ether -- email being an important one.

Now Renee makes a living, last I knew, working with Internet companies. So I found her post particularly interesting and can relate to feeling in 2007 what I did not feel in 2001, and that is: 1) too old for this medium, 2) too deep for this medium, 3) tired of this medium, 4) uninspired by this medium, albeit I am still somewhat hopeful that art and humor and joy and sorrow can rise above the unbearable noise of of tech-biz-as-usual-white-men-conferring-once-again-and all-is-right-with-the-world-god-bless-America-that-matters-amen.

I like the reality check of this post, because Renee rubs elbows with a lot of influencers who could use a dose of WTF, which she gives:

Last year, I went to a flickr party and was the oldest person in the room. I attended the event with a 27 year old girlfriend who is a lawyer in the Valley. She dragged along three lawyer friends from LA, all roughly her age and none of them had even heard of flickr.

"Everyone is using Twitter," I'm told. I don't get it and won't. It's not that I'm not open to trying something new - it doesn't solve a problem for me that is need of fixing, nor does it improve my life. Nor do I even think its cool. As for useful? Perhaps at a three or four day conference in a foreign city for all of those three or four days.

It took my immediate family six years to find my blog. And I'm not exactly low profile. So I can completely relate to Renee's take on who is NOT online the way we are online. And she mentions the specific fetish of all things web in the Valley. Ah yes, the Valley--who's writing the book on the Cult of the Valley and the Religion of Social Media? I want to help. Or at least pre-order it.

In that the reality of many, not to mention the economy of many, can be shaped by the hyperbole of a few, the Valley is a shining example of how New Religion works. It is an example of how powerful cult mind control can be. Extending its tentacles across the global Internet -- with quite literally around-the-planet reach--it's a whole new ball of wax, one the leading cult debunkers have yet to touch from what I can tell. The Valley's webcult has the potential to be a global Waco in the making. It's just waiting for its Koresh. Or maybe he's distributed this time around.

Or maybe I'm getting all worked up over nothing. Leave off the Silicon Valley element if you wish (though I don't think you should), and read Renee's take from a strictly business perspective to get a glimpse of where the rest of the world is in adopting This New Social World Order, and Renee's warning that not everybody knows what you know.

The marketer in me sees opportunity. The parent in me sees trepidation. The artist in me sees an aardvark on a cell phone. Whatever that means.

Keep in mind, Renee is also at OnHollywood, while I am only OnTheCouch, so that could account for her deep dive on the topic and my sort of abstract take.

...