CrunchGear notes that our extending Philadelphia wireless network should soon be ready to go. I think that’s just awesome and I’m really happy with the extension of the network. Hopefully the folks in Philly feel the same way once they are able to use it.

Even though there have been quite a few recent articles talking about the struggles of Municipal Wireless, I honestly think there is an opportunity to do some amazing things based on location. Hopefully we’ll be able to start building those things.

One somewhat selfish note though, it would have been nice if the CrunchGear post would have at least mentioned EarthLink but that’s really neither here nor there.

Technorati Tags:
earthlink, municpal+wireless, philly

One of the aspects of my talk at XTech was the addition of contexts to our search queries and how that will be necessary as we move further into a world where always-on connections are the norm. One of those contexts is personalization and it’s very interesting how much Google seems to be pushing the personalization aspect of their new universal search.

Greg Linden gives a perfect overview of personalization and how it can change results:

But, the best answer for me is not necessarily the best answer for you. Especially in cases where there is ambiguity in intent and multiple possible verticals that might be relevant, the deciding factor could be what I have done in the past, my search and web history.

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search, greg+linden, personalization, searching+the+now, google

The folks over at Satisfaction have a great post looking into the Digg revolt from earlier in the week. Lots has been written about it and obviously more will continue.

I was thinking about starting a pool at work, having people bet on when a Product Manager is going to bring up the Digg situation as a reason why we shouldn’t try to anything with community involved. I’m sure it’s going to be soon.

At any rate, the key to the post was this: be completely transparent with users from the beginning. That’s how all of the angst could have been avoided. Keeping your users involved is so very important when building a site that depends on their continued use. Kevin Rose has a long history of doing it and it’s too bad he didn’t start with it this time.

Technorati Tags:
satisfaction, digg, digg+user+revolt, being+transparent

Cindy Li and Jason Garber have travelled across the country. Here’s the stream of data they generated with the help of Twitter, Flickr and blog posts. It’s really an impressive thing when simple data updates can be put together to form a last impression of a trip or event.

I know one of the latest rages is the concept of life streams where you combine all of your feeds into one in order to let everyone know what’s going on. I think that’s pretty cool overall but the idea of a limited time stream seems even better. You can keep the snapshot together of what you were thinking and doing, what you were thinking and who you were with. It could be a pretty cool service to allow people to create the short-term streams, something like the old idea of short-term blogs which sprung up for events or meetings.

Perhaps I’ll try and do something similar for my trip to Paris. I leave next Sunday. I should be updating Twitter, Flickr, hopefully this blog and whatever else I can do.

Technorati Tags:
xtech2007, lifestreams, ameriganzapalooza

Today, EarthLink announced Arlington, VA as the next city we’ll be setting up a Wi-Fi network for. I didn’t find out via the usual all-staff email, instead, I found out via Twitter, ELNK.

This is a pretty awesome thing and I can only hope the folks in corporate communications will use it effectively to help spread the word about the things we are doing.

I don’t know Peter Kim personally but I’m very sad he decided to cancel his EarthLink account. He was a customer for over twelve years, starting with Mindspring before it merged into EarthLink.

The reason he gave though is haunting me. Here’s two little snippets:

The main reason I finally closed it? Because after 12 years of being a monthly recurring payment for the company, I felt zero affinity for the Earthlink brand. Their communication to me was never more than a monthly email invoice and as a customer, I didn’t feel Comcastic or that I got more or that anything was really being delivered. Present value aside, I’ve spent over $3,000 in payments for dial-up. Maybe Earthlink didn’t want to bring this to my attention, as if the reason I was still subscribed was because I had forgotten about it.

and

So farewell, Earthlink/Mindspring. Your biggest fault was a bland brand that used to be something special.

I wish I had something to argue with him about but I don’t and to me, that’s really tough.

Over the weekend, Topix reinvented itself. The initial verdict from me is very positive, the home page is nice and clean, inviting you to input your zip code and get your local news. What’s really interesting to me though is the process by which Topix rebuilt itself.

Rich Skrenta, CEO of Topix, blogged about it Sunday. Without hesitation, I would love to work for/with someone like him. The fact he is transparent about it is just awesome to me. The content of the post though is even better. Looking at the strengths of your current product and building around them is smart and the right way to go. Doing so in six months is amazing especially when you already have a ‘successful’ product.

I’m sure there were plenty of folks who didn’t want to make any changes. I can hear their voices now, why mess with something that works? If you do this, you’ll turn off the existing users. We don’t have enough resources to make these changes. You can go on and on with excuses until you eventually either succumb to them or move beyond them and actually get things moving.

It is the ability to keep going in the face of your current situation, either positive or negative, that separates people and companies from one another. If you can’t keep moving forward (I couldn’t resist), then you will be passed by and become increasingly irrelevant and to me, that is a fate much worse than failure.

Technorati Tags:
rich+skrenta, topix, keep+moving+forward

Last night, I took the kids to see Meet the Robinson’s. I normally don’t find inspiration in the movies I see with the kids but this one was a bit different. The story itself is your normal hero’s journey and ends predictably well.

The part I really liked though was the theme of Keep Moving Forward. It was the mantra of the Robinson family. Don’t dwell in the past but move ahead with your ideas. Know that you will make mistakes but learn from them, don’t become bogged down with them. In other words, keep moving forward.

The movie ended with a quote from Walt Disney:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.


We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

I’m making this my new focus, both personally and professionally, the past is the past but you have to keep moving forward. We’ll see how it goes.

Paul Kedrosky gives the first mention of the Defrag conference that I’ve seen.

In the conference’s own words, here’s a description:

Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, “social” networking, collaboration and business intelligence. Defrag is not a version number. Rather it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.

For whatever reason, this description has intrigued me all day. I’ve had a tough time concentrating on my code while thinking about it. This enhancing of learning via new tools can be a very powerful thing and something which would move beyond whatever version number of the Web we are on.

Of course, there is a blog for the conference and I’ve already subscribed.

I’m hoping I can make it to the conference whether thru work or on my own.

It’s customary to create a Hello World! program whenever you start using a new language. I think the first post of a new blog is done in much the same spirit, making sure everything is set up correctly and ready to go.

So, ‘Hello World’