Not Worried About Oil

For the past year my partner Erika has been driving a standard 2002 VW Golf on "biodiesel." It burns cleaner than gasoline (or diesel), emits fewer greenhouse gasses, and most importantly it does not come from the middle east, Venezuala, an alaskan wildlife refuge or offshore drilling rigs in California, Florida, and the Gulf. It comes from good old American soy beans.

Our government and media are doing a lousy job. We are constantly being scared by reports that oil reserves are running well behind consumption. This is an ECONOMIC problem, and NOT a science or natural resource problem. It is an economic problem for two reasons -- (a) we have an enormous infrastructure of gas burning products that would have to be converted to diesel and (b) the scale of production of biodiesel is, today, insufficient to get the some economies that gasoline production enjoys and thus the price per gallon of biodiesel is higher.

But during the recent price spike, the price of gasoline started to come close to the $3.50 per gallon price that we have been paying for biodiesel. And since most diesel engines get better gas mileage (20-40% according to Edmunds) than gasoline engines, the per mile price for most consumers would still be lower today.

So why all of the worry about the price of oil? With a concerted push by government and industry, we could start getting consumers and businesses to purchase diesel vehicles, and begin investing in biofuel manufacturing and distribution infrastructure. Over the next decade, as our national vehicle base naturally turns over, we would, as a nation, become increasingly less dependent upon foreign oil and eventually less dependent on oil altogether.

There are about 150 million passenger vehicles on the roads in North America today, and about 8 million new ones are purchased each year. This doesn't include figures for commercial vehicles which adds another 100 million vehicles, and another 6 million new vehicles purchased each year. Thus out of 250 million vehicles on the roads, we could be replacing 14 million, or 6% per year with biodiesel burning alternatives every year.

Gasoline accounts 2/3 of America's oil use according to the Department of Energy and represents 95% of our transportation energy use. For every 5 million biodiesel vehicles sold, we could reduce our dependence on oil for transportation by 2% and our overall dependence on oil by 1 1/3%. Add subsidies and incentive programs and the pace at which this conversion occurs could be significantly accelerated.

Biodiesel is no longer a strange topic to be left to hippies. It is a mainstream product, running in mainstream production vehicles. Adoption of biodiesel is an important step (although not the only one) in breaking the world's dependence on cheap oil to fuel our economies. I would rather see us burning hydrogen, but the technology and infrastructure for biodiesel is HERE TODAY.

My next car will be diesel. BIOdiesel.

Hurts Golf more than Wie

The disqualification of Michelle Wie this past Sunday has been widely reported as being bad news for Wie... but in my opinion this is much worse for the game of Golf.

According to reports, she dropped her ball about one foot too close to the hole, after a bad lie. Even the Sports Illustrated reporter who reported the infraction stated that he felt she had been "hasty" rather than feeling that she had in any way intended to "cheat."

If she had understood that the drop was closer to the hole, she should have added 2 strokes to her score (giving her 76 instead of 74). Her disqualification was for signing her score card without these two strokes.

Disqualify? Why not just add the two strokes, and re-determine the rankings based on her new score of 76? If all are in agreement that she did not intentionally cheat, that this was merely an error, why punish her in this way?

In my opinion, Professional Golf comes off as ridiculous in this dispute. After playing for days, to disqualify a player for a misjudgement that all would regard as difficult to be sure about, makes Golf look like a game for accountants, not for athletes. No offense to accountants intended.

DARPA Grand Challenge

It looks as if the MDV sponsored Stanford Racing Team will win the DARPA Gran Challenge -- a desert race sponsored by the Defense Department to help develop autonomous vehicles. The Stanford vehicle finished the 132 mile course in 7 1/2 hours. Here is some terrific footage of the unmanned vehicles rolling by...

No winner has been declared yet because there are still two vehicles on the course. Start times were staggered, so there is a chance that one of these vehicles will still complete the race in a shorter time...

UPDATE: Stanford declared the winner, with a race time of 6 hours, 53 minutes. Dan posted a comment complaining that the video isn't "terrific" -- hey folks, remember these are driverless cars!

Fuel Cell Bus

Driving down to San Hill Road yesterday in my gas guzzling (25.6 mpg average) automobile, I saw an interesting freight item loaded on the back of a flat bed truck. An AC Transit bus emblazoned with the words ZERO EMISSIONS across the top. A handwritten note in the windshield read "FC Bus #3, Deliver to Oakland, CA." Today I found an article that appears on the "Fuel Cell Works" website, describing this amazing bus:

"When we integrate hybrid-electric components with fuel cell power, we get a vehicle that is quiet, fuel-efficient, and zero-emission," said Dave Mazaika, President and CEO of ISE. "We’ve taken this bus up to 70 miles per hour on the freeway, and in our testing phase, we have achieved twice the energy efficiency of diesel."

Here's a modest proposal -- when the current administration in Washington talks, as they did this morning, about "diversifying" away from the current high level of dependence upon the Gulf, instead of thinking about offshore wells on the California coast perhaps we should be working harder on developing a hydrogen economy.

United Airlines is Evil

Wow. Just tried to log onto the United Mileage Plus membership site and received the following error:

We're sorry, but we're currently unable to provide access to the My Mileage Plus web site without a valid e-mail address in your online profile. In addition, you must have opted in to the category of Mileage Plus Communications within your profile e-mail selections.

That's right. You have to agree to be spammed by United if you want to access the Mileage Plus website. This has to be a new low.

Of course, maybe it is an error - part of their site not working properly... Here is a link to the "validation error" page...

United Airlines is Doomed...

Dear United Airlines, have you noticed that your customer prevention department is the only part of the company that seems to be operating at maximum efficiency? First of all, I think you should probably test your website on something other than Internet Explorer. At least I hope it works on IE! On Firefox, trying to navigate to different sections often results in an error that I have never seen before -- "Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page."

Since your website doesn't work, I tried calling your 800 number. Well that was a mistake. You have a new "voice recognition" front end -- which is *ok* if your caller wants to do something simple. But you don't make it easy to get to a live operator. Of course, when I finally did get to a live operator, the person had (a) a very bad phone connection and (b) a very thick Indian accent and (c) DIDN'T HAVE ANY CLUE ABOUT HOW TO DO ANYTHING RELATED TO UNITED.

As a result I am a very frustrated and unhappy customer. I can't imagine that other people calling are having any better experience. Customer service on a budget is not impossible! CALL JET BLUE. They have it figured out. Even Southwest is a good experience. On the other hand, just go out of business already.

Silicon Valley Traffic

Traffic in Silicon Valley has been my barometer for the economy since the early 1990s. When times are good, the freeways on the Peninsula back up with commuters headed from San Francisco down to tech jobs stretching from Redwood Shores to Cupertino... During the bubble the traffic on 101 and 280 (and even 880) through Silicon Valley became horrific.

This morning, for the first time since 2000, headed southbound on 280 through Woodside, there was a backup... no accident, just tons of cars headed South to consumer Internet jobs... Now all we need as a final indicator is for every billboard on 101 to be purchased by a dot com...

Party like its 1999: Bubble 2.0

The phrase "Bubble 2.0" is taking off at an incredible pace in the blogosphere. Accotding to a Google Search there are already over 70,000 references to the exact phrase "Bubble 2.0." Here is a typical one from Fred Wilson at Flat Iron Investments in New York City. Fred writes in part:

You went to a great party, had too good of a time, woke up with a terrible hangover, and promised yourself you wouldn't do that again.

Then the people who threw the party invite you to the next one.

What do you do? Go, of course.

I was at a dinner on Thursday night where the subject came up, and the number one question was, is it 1997? 98? or 99? In other words, how long will this bubble cycle go? With the recent IPO of WebMD (up 26% on their opening day) and others, I'd say 1998. The conditions are similar -- significant macroeconomic issues clouded the horizon (Russian currency collapse, the collapse of long term capital management, the asian economic crises...) and yet, in late 1998 with the IPO of TheGlobe.com an incredible bubble market was launched.

I think we are more likely in early 1998 -- broadbased market speculation in Internet issues is still a little ways off. Also this cycle will be different in a number of ways -- with a number of solid existing large Internet companies, more startups will be acquired rather than go public. Secondly, again because of those existing companies, there are comparables out there that will help value the market. On the other hand, the Internet has grown enormously in the past 7 years -- significantly more people are online, they are using the Internet for more things and for more time, their connections are faster...

I think the key trend to watch is the way in which Internet companies begin to invade rich media (radio, TV, film) industries. If the last decade was largely about how the Internet transformed the print industry, the next decade will be about rich digital content and transforming those industries. I suppose I should include voice and the telecommunications industry in that as well.

It should prove to be an exciting time once again

Failing the Turing Test

One man's online quest to pass the turing test...

That's It!

I was sad to learn this morning that today is my last day with Orb Networks. It has been a fun ride since January trying to make this company a success. I will miss working with the team at Orb, but I wish them all the best of luck bringing this truly incredible technology to market.

Now on to a new challenge!

WVoIP It Is!

Longtime readers of this blog may remember my ranting a little over a year ago about the new acronym for Voice over IP on WiFi networks... Om Malik's "V oWLAN". One suggestion that no one made back then, but is really the most reasonable is WVoIP -- for Wireless VoIP... Along comes a new conference called WVoIP ("...it's on the way, and it's poised to transform the landscape..."). I'm not sure what all the fuss is about anyway. I've been using Skype from my WiFi connected laptop all during the last year... But at least we have a reasonable acronym now.

2 New Downloads from Orb Networks

VoiceMail for Skype (V4S) and a photo screensaver -- demonstrating the power of the Orb API... http://www.orb.com/download

V4S, the Skype download, is quite clever -- install on the same computer you run Orb and Skype on. When you receive a call that you cannot answer, V4S picks up the call for you, plays your greeting, and records the incoming caller's message. This audio file is then stored in a special folder accessible via Orb and you can set the program to notify you of a new call... so you are out running errands and an SMS message beeps on your phone alerting you of a new voicemail. You can then launch your mobile browser, go to Orb, and listen to your Skype voicemail on your handset!

The photo screensaver also shows off how powerful Orb is for moving your personal media around. Install the screensaver on any Windows machine and you can access a shared folder from your home Orb machine. Here is how I use this feature -- grandma always wants to see the latest photos of her granddaughter. I gave her the screensaver and now I can update the photos (just by adding them to the shared folder on my home machine) and they auto-magically show up on my mother's screen!

Get both of these new downloads from http://www.orb.com/download

Orb as Platform

Today marks an important day in the history of Orb Networks. Today we expose to 3rd party developers the platform that Orb is based upon. I wrote about it on my Orb Blog.

There is a new thing happening on the web today. Companies that are promoting specific application functionality are finding that users are taking that functionality and doing entirely new and unexpected things... Google maps is a great example. Flickr is another. To a lesser extent, Paypal and others have provided at least minimal interfaces to a portion of what their products can do. All of these APIs mean that a developer can much more rapidly build interesting web applications that have robust functionality built right in.

But Orb takes this one step further. One of the developer's challenges is still having to host an application somewhere on the Internet to make it accessible to users. Orb makes the user's own home machine into the server. So a developer can build an application and deploy it directly to the consumer -- then Orb makes that application web-accessible from any device.

In the first phase the API is all about personal access to content or applications. But in the second phase (later this year) we will also start exposing a collaborative framework... developers will be able to leverage all of the functionality of orb to build mobile collaborative applications and deploy them to the marketplace through P2P infrastucture. This is what Web 2.0 is all about.

$200 Billion toward a hydrogen economy

As the total cost of the Iraq war approaches $200 Billion, it is sobering to think about what else this money might have purchases for the US.

For example, with about 200,000 gas stations around the US, this is $1 million per gas station. Wouldn't that have been enough to install hydrogen refueling equipment at every gas station in the country? Now that BMW and others have announced cars that can run on hydrogen or gas aren't we just waiting for the production and distribution infrastructure? $200 billion could have solved that problem.

Pot vs. Crack

Maybe it will turn out to be true. Maybe, as the Feds allege, the folks running medicinal pot facilities in San Francisco were really fronts for organized crime.

But on the other hand it might just be an excuse for the Feds to spend time arresting 61-year-old Iris Lai Hung Tam, of San Bruno, who is likely to put up a lot less of a fight then gun-toting gang members in Richmond.

The government is focused on cracking down on aging hippies with terminal diseases trying to smoke pot in the privacy of their own homes while drive by shootings and drug related gang activity have made Richmond one of the most dangerous cities in the country.

2005 SDForum Visionary Awards

As some may recall, I posted an entry last year after attending the 2004 SDForum Visionary Awards. Last year I was very impressed with the event, the awardees, and the speeches.

Last night I attended the 2005 version of this annual event which was again hosted by Heidi Roizen at her Atherton home. While the party was just as nice, and the hostess just as gracious, I have to say that I was dissapointed by the awardees and by their speeches.

Last year awards were given to four individuals who truly oversaw the creation of each of their respective companies. John Chambers of Cisco, Craig Barret of Intel, Scott Cook of Intuit and even Marc Benioff of Salesforce are all amazing entrepreneurs well deserving of the SDForum Visionary award.

While this year's honorees were all interesting valley players, only Carol Bartz of Autodesk could really claim to have built her company and even Carol joined Autodesk after it was a public company and already had $285 million in revenue. On an inflation adjusted basis that is almost $400 million in today's dollars. With $1.2 billion in revenue this year, that means that Carol merely tripled her company's revenue in 13 years. Nothing compared to the growth of Cisco, Intel, and Intuit.

And the other winners? Bill Draper (a venture capitalist), Carly Fiorina, and Ray Ozzie. Of these three, perhaps you could say that Ray Ozzie is deserving of the award -- certainly he is a visionary, although of a technology rather than entrepreneurial variety.

But the more dissapointing aspect of this year's awards was the speeched themselves. Sure, it was funny to hear Scott McNeally's story about firing Sun's VP of Marketing just to keep Carol Bartz from quitting. It was hilarious to have the very carefully worded introduction of Carly Fiorina by legal eagle Larry Sonsini. But nowhere this year did we hear the rousing call to action from the Silicon Valley community to be bigger than ourselves -- to focus on the world's problems not just on our techology and profits.

I left last year's event feeling inspired and wanting to do more for my country and my fellow man. I left this year's event feeling full of good food and interesting ideas -- but far from inspired.

Air travel SUCKS

So I flew out from California to Kansas today -- meeting with Sprint tomorrow and Thursday (Orb Networks' latest partner) -- and I am reminded of how truly terrible air travel has become. Flew on United from San Francisco to Denver, and then switched planes to fly from Denver to Kansas. All they fed us was peanuts -- 6 hours of travel and all we got was peanuts.

But the funniest/saddest moment was when I got up to see what kind of magazines they had on board. Nothing. I said to the flight attendent "kind of slim on the magazines today!" She replied with a bitter tone, "we are BANKRUPT you know."

OK, so its been awhile since I have done any business travel. But this is crazy. Why are business travellers putting up with this?

As a side note, its GREAT to be able to write in my blog that I am out in Kansas meeting with our partner Sprint. Back when I worked for Borland (public company) I could never write in my blog where I actually was and who I was actually meeting with. SEC regulation FD and all that...

Cokie Roberts on Ted Koppel

I was listening to the radio last night (the actual radio, not Orb Media...) and NPR had a program from the World Affairs Council where they interviewed Cokie Roberts. She is an interesting person, having had a long career at NPR in addition to her ABC career. But I found it especially interesting to hear her talk about Ted Koppel's decision to leave Nightline -- because of the attitude she displayed about how the broadcast industry thinks.

She said "I don't know what the networks have decided to do with the time slot," speaking of the likelihood that Nightline would be cancelled. When asked what viewers who enjoy programs like Nightline can do, she said something about how "we now have minute by minute polls that show that people click away when a TV program covers issues outside the US..."

This is the fundamental problem with the broadcast industry. Because it has to think in terms of "time slots" it worries about how to build the biggest (and/or most valuable) audience in any given slot. Thus if you can get a bigger audience share for mud wrestling, international news goes out the window.

I believe that we are on the cusp though of a monumental change in media. Just as the print media has been radically transformed over the past decade by the Internet, the broadcast industry wil be transformed over the next one. Web news sites and blogs have been the dominant forces changing print media. It will be interesting to see whether Orb Networks (where I work) will provide the model for the change in the broadcast industry.

But whatever the vehicle is, I believe that consumers will make a fundamental shift in their viewing pattern -- from asking "which channel should I watch" to asking "which SHOW should I watch" and that they will increasingly want to watch that show when, where, and how they want. While it may mean that more people watch mud wrestling (because it will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) it also means that those of us interested in international news will have access to thoughtful programs on the subject.

And this will be a boon to producers of content because they will have access to an audience of faithful viewers who can be counted and analyzed and monetized independent of a "time slot" in a broadcast schedule.

A new renaissance for "broadcast" media is upon us.

Om Follow Up

Om posted a nice item on his blog titled Orb dials-up Sprint and with this we are back in communication. It seems that he wasn't getting my emails for some reason. We have agreed to get together soon to update him on Orb Networks, which I am looking forward to as there are a number of things to talk about....

5 million local telephone customers being marketed to by Sprint for one, not just the 500,000 DSL customers. And our distribution agreement with ADS, also announced today... and some interesting upcoming announcements.

I also agree with Om's observation about place-shifting becoming an important technology for a lot of different kinds of players -- cable companies, CE companies, content companies... but will they all have the right mix of technologies and services? In addition to the market traction that Orb is getting, we have an interesting take on what the media portal of the future will look like... not necessarily a vision that is absolutely unique -- but rare in that it is grounded by what customers actually want, not by entrenched business interests.

DRM and Exotic Inefficiencies

Very interesting reading over on Curt Van Inwegen's blog on DRM and Exotic Inefficiences, a term Curt picked up from Moneyball. Here is a short excerpt from Curt's post

After a long business trip across the country this week ruminating on some of the discussions Orb Networks is having with various partner prospects, my laptop ran out of batteries and frankly I just needed a book to read on the way home. Without thinking about any correlation to Orb, I picked up Moneyball, a fantastic book by Michael Lewis, where I came across the term “exotic inefficiencies.” The essence of the book is how the Oakland A’s, one of the “poorest” teams in baseball manage to win so many games in contrast to the rest of the league, who have sky-high payrolls and, so it is assumed, the best players. But against the prevailing wisdom, the A’s keep winning.

As I got deeper into the book, the similarities to Orb and our own conversations with both technology and content distribution partners was stunning...

More on Curt's blog...

Sprint and Orb

I finally get a chance to shoot back at Om Malik who has some reason to promote Avvenu and wrote about the two of us recently.

In his article, Om states that Avvenu is "a polar opposite" of Orb Networks in that Avvenu is partnering with big companies, and Orb is not. Well, today we announced our partnership with Sprint so that should change the way that Om thinks about us... of course he hasn't responded to my emails and hasn't agreed to talk to us -- though he has met with the Avvenu team... ?? (CORRECTION -- OM Just Answered my email...)

LA - Why do people live there

Just got back from a vacation to Joshua Tree with the family. The desert was wonderful. Still some spring flowers blooming, nice cool days to hike... But we flew in and out of LA which was a mistake. The traffic, the smog, the craziness... The kids loved going to the entertainment museum and walk of stars (we stopped for one night in LA) but for the adults it was a huge chore. Its hard to understand why people put up with that traffic every day! I guess they get used to it, just as I have gotten used to our milder (but still bad) traffic in the bay area. But the smog?? Perhaps it was just a bad day or two when we were going out and coming back in... but LA is looking more and more like Mexico City. You can hardly see anything anymore -- you don't notice the tall buildings in downtown or the mountains until you are right on top of them. Why don't people who live there do something about this?

Ted is 39

Today is my birthday. Today around 8:00 PM (the time I was born) I will begin my 40th year on this planet. 40 years. That's the longest assignment I've ever taken! But this planet seems to be OK in most regards, so I don't mind sticking around for another enlistment term...

I told my daughter (now 1 1/2) this morning that it was my birthday and that I was now 39. I said "Can you imagine being that old? 39?" She said "yeah." Ahh youth. Of course she often says "yeah or nah" seemingly at random... so who knows what she thought I asked her.

Yesterday at dinner time I asked if she wanted some Indian food, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be really spicy, she said "yeah." I said, do you want it to be so hot it burns the roof of your mouth off, she said "yeah." I think she trusts me too much.

Every year on my birthday I try to think about resolutions for the year ahead. Birthday resolutions ARE "new year's resolution" -- MY new year... Last year my resolutions included spending more time with my family, writing more, and continuing to lose weight and get in shape. I am happy to say I have achieved all three goals. Now I have to think about what I can do this coming year...

New Orb Blog

Rather than continue to fill this blog with Orb related news, we will now return to our regular scheduled programming, and direct you to the new OrbCasting blog for news about Orb by a range of folks from the company...

Orb International

One week ago we announced that Orb Media would be free and it has been a tremendous week of activity for us. Tomorrow we announce that Orb is available internationally! Most of the great Orb features will work everywhere in the world -- streaming video, streaming audio, photos. The only thing that is still US-centric is live TV -- because we have to license the TV guide in each country and it takes us awhile to find someone to license the data to us and then to integrate it into the user interface... But in the meantime everything else works, whether you are in Singapore, Baghdad, Rome, or anywhere else...

And tomorrow we will unveil our first foreign language UI -- mon.orb.com gives you the entire Orb interface in French! Any user can go to this URL instead of my.orb.com and see their personal media world with a French accent. Japanese is next, later in April...

There are a lot more exciting changes ahead to support the international flavor. For example, we are working to expand the Internet TV and Radio listings sections to include content from all over the world. So I can't wait to hear from all of you outside the U.S. that are trying Orb.

Orb is FREE

As of today, Orb is free.

Our philosophy is simple -- if you own it, either because you created it or because you have already paid for it, then you should be able to enjoy it anywhere, anytime, on any device. Orb makes it possible.

When we announced Orb at CES, we told the world that it would cost $9.95 per month. We were worried about the bandwidth requirements on our servers to host the service, the support requirements for our users, and we were unsure of the revenue models beyond subscription.

Today, many thousands of users later, I am happy to say that we have put all of these fears to rest and can now offer the core Orb service for free.

Yes, there will be advertising in the future -- but we know that this must be done the google way -- advertising that is unobtrusive and adds value without inhibiting the core use of the service. And more importantly there will be content subscriptions coming soon -- all kinds of new content that you can purchase through Orb...

But even if you never click on an advertisement and never purchase content, our core philosophy will guarantee you free access to your own TV, your own videos, your own audio, and your own photos... anytime, anyplace, any device.

Save Biodiesel in Berkeley

I have just emailed mayor Tom Bates and I urge you to do so as well. The City of Berkeley is considering abandoning its leadership in utilizing 100% biofuel for its fleet of diesel vehicles. Here is the call to action from Berkeley's Ecology Center:



The Ecology Center, Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, and BioFuel Oasis urge you to email and/or call the Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and tell him that the city should continue to run their vehicles on 100% biodiesel (B100).

The City of Berkeley has been running it's vehicles on 100% biodiesel (B100) for 1-2 years. They have recently switched to B20 (20% biodiesel, 80% diesel). There was an article in the Daily Planet that blamed it on the quality of fuel they were getting. On closer examination, we believe that it's not the quality of the fuel, but that the city hasn't always done the proper maintenance on their storage tanks and on their vehicles to run biodiesel. Plus, a key proponent of biodiesel in the Public Works Dept. retired, so there is not the support there to take the precautions and maintenance around running an alternative fuel (biodiesel is probably the easiest alternative fuel compared to CNG, electric, etc.).

The Ecology Center recycling trucks and the City of Berkeley vehicles have pioneered the use of 100% biodiesel (B100) and have won awards for it. The rest of the country looks to them for advice and the lead. We need to keep them on B100, the only petroleum-free, renewable vehicle fuel, so others will continue to follow.

Please email and/or call the mayor of Berkeley and your councilperson. Include your address if you live in Berkeley.

Mayor Tom Bates
mayor@ci.berkeley.ca.us
(510) 981-7100

Thank you for your help!

Here's some points from the Ecology Center about how using biodiesel fuel benefits all of us:

o Using biodiesel in place of petroleum diesel helps prevent
asthma. Studies have shown that emissions from petroleum diesel are
among the leading contributors to asthma. Children living along
transit lines, such as the I-80 corridor, experience increased rates
of asthma and respiratory illness. The City's heavy trucks use main
arteries, such as Sacramento St, San Pablo Avenue, University, and
Gilman. The effects of exhaust have a disproportionate effect on
lower income neighborhoods where asthma rates are highest.

o A report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council
showed that a child riding inside of a diesel school bus may be
exposed to as much as 4 times the level of toxic diesel exhaust as
someone standing or riding beside it. Our kids deserve cleaner air.
Let's keep our buses running on clean burning biodiesel. (For the
full report, go to
http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/schoolbus/sbusinx.asp .)

o Recently, the City of Berkeley passed a resolution to endorse
the Kyoto protocol and to do its part to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Because it's made from renewable plant sources, biodiesel fuel
reduces greenhouse-causing gases like no other fuel. Let's continue
to be a model for other cities to follow.

o Biodiesel contains 80-90% fewer carcinogens than are found in
petroleum diesel, and virtually eliminates sulfur emissions that
contribute to acid rain.

o Domestic biodiesel reduces U.S. dependence on highly
polluting oil products, environmentally destructive oil drilling, and
wars and interventions involving the world oil market.

o In 2004, the EPA recognized the City of Berkeley for
Outstanding Environmental Achievement for its adoption of biodiesel.
It's important that Berkeley continue this award winning program.

BioFuel Oasis
A Worker-Owned Cooperative
2465 4th St
Berkeley, CA 94710
510 665 5509
www.biofueloasis.com

Orb Update

Step one launched today -- a brand new user interface experience for Orb users. Beautiful, functional... a huge improvement... Of course you can only see it if yuo go and load Orb on your home machine (running windows XP) from the Orb website. More majore changes to Orb coming soon!! :-)

Orb absorbing all free time...

Is Orb a blackhole? Scientists and Ted's family members are seeking answers as the Orb continues to suck up everything in it's path...

Now YOU do it

It was nice to be recognized yesterday by Jerry Brown for helping him get started on his blog. But it is more important to recognize a truth in this that Margaret Meade put so well:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

I am just an ordinary citizen. I didn't know Jerry Brown before I emailed him back in December. But a little persistence on my part, and a willingness to listen on his part has launched a grand new experiment -- the mayor of a large American city, creating a direct channel for communication with the networked electorate. Politics and Government can be changed, for the better.

Now its your turn. Pick a local or statewide politician in your area. Contact him or her and do what I did -- say, I'm just a local citizen that happens to be a part of your electorate, and I think you should have a blog. Create more transparency in government. Connect with us as voters and citizens and let us know who you really are and what you believe. Don't be a press release, be a person.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown commented to interviewers Matier and Ross:

"As an old talk-show host, I've had some experience in unrehearsed dialogue," said Brown, who hosted a daily program on the Pacifica network in the 1990s. Blogging, he said, is "the logical next step."

As with talk-shows, blogs can be insipid and boring at their worst but insightful and even profound at their best. But the most important thing about both is that they remove all of the middlemen -- the PR handlers, the aides and advisors, and the journalists and editors. These mediums provide an opportunity for the true voice of the individual to be heard clearly. As with the advent of television, this new kind of access to elected officials and candidates will have a tremendous impact on how we think about politics and politicians. Instead of reducing the race to a competition on how witty, attractive, or smooth a candidate might be, hopefully blogging politicians will help surface real issues, opinions, biases, and attitudes. And hopefully it will get us all more involved in our democracy.

Jerry Brown: Blogger

So I finally had an opportunity to meet with Jerry Brown and I really liked him. He was very personable and interested in getting better connected with the electorate. One immediate offshoot -- Jerry is now blogging which I think is great. He has also asked for a set of recommendation to improve his web site.

As we talked about the Internet and the web I gave Jerry the standard pitch about Cluetrain and pushed an idea that Doc Searls and I had discussed -- the networked electorate. Jerry got it and wants to explore how he could get both elected and appointed officials in Oakland blogging. Now that would be cool.

Orb for XP Beta

A new version of the Orb software which is specifically designed to work on XP is now available from the Orb website. If you already have downloaded the Media Center version onto an XP it should automatically update to the new version. Let me know if you don't get prompted with an update message! And if you have been holding off on trying out Orb because you didn't have a Media Center -- now is the time to jump in! If you don't have a tuner card in your PC the only thing you cannot do is watch live TV -- you can still watch recorded video, listen to music, and view your photos. And we support a growing list of TV tuner cards if you want to upgrade your PC.

Looking forward to hearing from you when you've give it a whirl...

Carly Please Listen

Carly:

HP just lost a $10,000 sale from me. I tried to order from you, I really did. I tried four times. I needed three high-end media center PCs for the company I work for, Orb. But your direct to consumer web and phone ordering service is fundamentally broken. So I am buying from Dell instead.

First I tried to order from your website. You wouldn't let me. I went through a lot of effort to configure the systems exactly the way I wanted them and then when I went to "check-out" of your online store a message informed my that the purchase could not be completed online and that I had to call your 800 number.

So I called. My first disappointment was that there was no visibility from the folks at the 800 number into the order I had just created online. That makes sense though, your online system never even gave me a chance to enter my personal information before rejecting my order. But it was a disappointment.

So I went through the entire process again, over the phone. Your inbound telesales people are very nice, by the way. But they have no power in your system as I was to learn...

Having configured the entire system, the order taker pushed enter and got a message that the purchase had not been approved by my credit card company. This is strange, I thought, I have no balance and a $35,000 credit line. It must be that there is a fraud alert on my card. Perhaps I could call the credit card company, clear the fraud alert, and have HP put the charge through again? Sorry, said the telesales person, you'll have to start the entire order over again when you call back...

OK, well let me charge this to a different card then! Sorry, we still have to start the order over again from the beginning... So I was frustrated, but I did want to purchase from you, so I went through the entire configuration process again. This time I used my platinum American Express. This time we received a different message at the end:

Thank you for your recent order with hpshopping.com. We review all orders according to industry standard practices. We randomly select orders for further review for quality purpose and to ensure the integrity of our order processing system. You will receive an email message containing your order status by the end of the business day.

While this was frustrating, I knew that this was not a fradulent order, so I felt confident that the order would be processed by you. Imagine my surprise later that afternoon when I received a second message informing me that you could not process my order! In the meantime I had called my credit card company (the first one) and discovered that indeed there was a security hold on my card. It was released and they assured me that if you put the order through again, that it would clear. So I called you up again, went through the entire order again and... once again was declined by your company. I asked to speak with a supervisor but was told that none were available (it was, by that time, 10:12 EST so I guess they had all gone home).

This time I called the credit card company very frustrated with them (they operate 24 hours a day by the way) and asked them to explain what had happened. Apparently your system is designed to send a $1 charge through when the order is first created, to "test" the card. Then, when the order is complete, the full charge is sent through. Your service (despite being a telesales operation) is identified on these transactions as an Internet transaction (and thus high fraud risk). This rapid series of transactions - the test and then the full amount - trigger my bank's fraud algorithm and have a security hold placed on the card. A simple phone call to the bank can then release the hold and allow the transaction to go through... but of course your system doesn't allow the transaction to be processed a second time.

Here are some suggestions:

If you are going to run a telesales group, have it work with banks differently -- perhaps you are saving money having these transactions processed through the same mechanism as your online service, but you must be losing more than just me as a customer by doing this...

Give your telesales staff more power! They should be able to keep an order open, process different cards against the same order, rerun a card after a security block has been cleared... while they were very nice, they couldn't do anything for me that I couldn't do for myself on a website (oh, if your website had been working and let me place the order in the first place...)

Tell your supervisors that they need to stay around as long as there are still customers on the phones.

Oh, and one last thing. Dell turns out to have a more powerful computer for less money and a bigger flat panel display as a free add-on to my order... so you aren't even competitive on price.

wishing you and HP shareholders the best,

ZCoil is 'z best...

It may surprise some of you who have known me for a long time to learn that I have become an avid runner. 5-6 miles 2-3 times a week has helped me lose and keep pounds off. But last year I suffered an ilio-tibial band injury... very painful. I couldn't walk without pain for days and for months I had trouble running. Since recovery I have been very cautious about not running on pavement and not running for too long.

Then I heard about ZCoil Shoes.

OK, they look strange. And the look may be enough to stop you from trying them. BUT, if you can get past the look you will be amazed by the ride. I can run again for long distances with no pain. The spring built into the heel absorbs most of the shock of impact. I even like to wear them when I go for a walk in the morning with my daughter -- it is a half mile downhill to the Peet's Coffee and I can really feel the difference when I am wearing my ZCoils.

If you enjoy running but experience knee, hip, or back pain -- give the ZCoil a try. I continue to be amazed after almost a month.

Famous for 15 Seconds

Its funny how things you do early in your life follow you around as you grow older and more mature. Bill Clinton didn't enhale. I didn't play D&D... ok not all of the time... But someone has tracked me down anyway and written this mini-biography of me as an RPG author for work I did 20 years ago on the first supplement to Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role playing game. Strange that anyone cares!

Speaking at Mobile Monday

Please come to the February 7th meeting of Mobile Monday -- details here -- where I will be speaking about Orb Networks and providing a demonstration.

Orb Networks

Things have been quiet lately around the blog as I have been working on starting a new job, which I am happy to announce today: EVP of Operations for Orb Networks. You may recognize the Orb Networks name from their launch at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- they were one of the show leaders, winning countless awards for their breakthrough media streaming technology.

I'll be writing more about Orb in the weeks and months to come here on my Blog. Here is the brief writeup that Orb provides about themselves:

About Orb Networks, Inc.
Orb Networks delivers powerful mobile services for the fast growing wireless industry. Orb Networks is the first developer of streaming media software and services giving people spontaneous access to digital home media -- any kind, at any time, from any location in the world. The groundbreaking Orb Architecture allows users to access music, live television, videos, photos and other digital content from any device that can connect to the Internet, such as a cell phone, PDA, or notebook. Orb Networks develops, licenses and markets its services in partnership with leading content providers/creators, wireless carriers, electronic distributors and consumer electronic companies. As an active participant in the issues affecting digital media, Orb Networks is a member of both the Digital Media Association (DiMA) and the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). Orb Networks is a privately held company located in Union City, Calif. For more information about Orb Networks, please visit http://www.orb.com.

If you have XP on your home computer, you have no excuse not to try Orb today -- 2 months free to try the software if you signup before the end of the month (that's just one more week...) Ignore the fact that it says you need a media center and give it a try. Without the Media Center you won't be able to watch TV, but your videos, photos, and MP3s will all be available. And I can't wait to hear back from you about what you like, don't like, and want us to fix.

Wikipedia

I have just contributed to the world's knowledge!

I have used the Wikipedia on a number of occasions but have never felt an urge to edit anything. But I broke the ice this morning and edited the entry for By the Pricking of my Thumbs.

I was working on a column (for VoIP Magazine) and had an inspiration to title the column "Something Wicked This Way Comes." I knew the line was from Shakespeare but couldn't remember the context. I checked the Wikipedia which had a great entry on the subject and it reminded me that the line is from Macbeth. The whole line reads

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

It is uttered by a witch as Macbeth enters. But reading this entry made me wonder what "by the pricking of my thumbs" meant. Wikipedia had a link to this other phrase and I happily clicked on it (continuing to procrastinate from writing the column... as I am continuing to do...)

But horrors! The Wikipedia entry merely mentioned some Agatha Christie novel! I still wanted to know what the phrase meant, so I went to Google and ended up reading a couple of different sites to uncover the etymology. But then it struck me -- I should go back and update the Wikipedia so that the next person doesn't have to repeat my search!

The only scary part of this was how easy it was to update the article. I didn't have to register, there was no review process, no waiting period... How is it that the Wikipedia has not been attacked by spammers, by people with a grudge, or on a mission from god?

OK, now I should really stop procrastinating and finish that column...

Meeting Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown's people responded and I will be meeting with the mayor the week of the 17th. I plan on giving him a presentation on using the Internet as a way to create a dialog with voters in California. It's time to go beyond what the Dean campaign did and really use all of the community building tools to support a political campaign. I hope Jerry is up to the challenge.

Oryx and Crake

I have just finished reading Margaret Atwood's excellent book Oryx and Crake, what the New Yorker called "Towering and intrepid....Atwood does Orwell one better." I have to agree. I was much more scared about the future of our planet and human life after reading this book than I was after reading Huxley's' Brave New World or Orwell's 1984. The other book I might lump into this list is Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos which bears a stronger similarity to Atwood's book than the other two. In both Atwood's and Vonnegut's future world the human race is wiped out.

Vonnegut's book, however, left me feeling angry when I read it 20 years ago. I should reread it today and see if my reaction is different. Atwood's book scared me. Sure, we all know that we are destroying the environment, that there are too many of us, that modern biotech is breeding all sorts of strange new creatures. But Atwood paints a realistic picture of where that could all take us in the not-too-distant future. And a description of the sudden collapse of civilization that is chilling.

I highly recommend reading this book. In addition to being an important set of ideas about where the human race may be headed, it is also beautifully written. And to the person who recommended that I read this book -- thanks a lot, I'll get you back :-)

Jerry Brown

I have been meaning to post a follow-up here on my attempt to contact Jerry Brown. We did finally connect on the phone for a brief call. His answers to my questions weren't entirely satisfactory, but he was driving and I was driving so the connection was bad and our time was limited. I spent some time thinking about things over the holidays, though, and sent him this email yesterday:

Jerry:

Hope you had a good new year.

I have been thinking about our conversation and I have two suggestions.

(1) I think your strongest argument for the attorney general position is to talk from your recent two terms as Mayor of Oakland. Talk about being tough on crime and dealing with the problems of California's cities. Talk about how you think that the State can do more for our cities and that, having seen up close what cities need, you want to serve as California's attorney general to help get that help to local governments. Get your political consultants to research this approach anyway and see how it does with target voters. It seems to me that running on your time as mayor is much more pertinent than your time as governor and that local issues will appeal much more to voters than ethereal issues such as civil rights. Sorry. You'll get me and other people that are your natural supporters behind you on the Ashcroft-is-evil messaging but that won't help you with the broader base.

(2) You need to grab the high ground with the Internet. Put a working group together to give you a list of suggestions - I volunteer to serve and to help you get people on board to help. The Internet is NOT an electronic pamphlet. The Internet is a communications medium. Use it to communicate with your voters. There are a bunch of great tools out there -- Blogs, Wikis, discussion group tools like ezBoard -- reinvent yourself using the Internet to reach out to your constituency. Voters have Internet access.

Start now. Don't call me back. Email me back.

best,

Ted Shelton

I'll let you know if/when he replies!

IP Inferno Seeking Sponsorship

Throughout most of 2004 I have been posting thoughts about the IP industry (VoIP, wireless, mobility, networking, etc) to a blog I call IP Inferno. After having been named as one of Jeff Pulver's Top VoIP Bloggers of 2004 I have been thinking about how I will take IP Inferno to the next level. The answer that I have come up with is to add additional bloggers and begin promotion of the site. To do this requires money, so I have started a search for a sponsor for IP Inferno. If you know someone at an appropriate company, please send them my way! Sponsorships proposals can be sent to me at tshelton@ipinferno.com

How Governments Can Help

I will never be a pure libertarian. Smaller government, sure. Maybe smarter government instead of less government though. Too often corporate powers need to be checked by a strong counter-balance. The latest for me is a run in with Allstate Insurance.

I have been an Allstate customer for over a decade (gosh, its a lot longer than that... but I'd date myself). I have a lot of policies with them -- home, auto, etc. And I have never had a claim. So I am part of their profit portfolio.

One of the policies I have with Allstate covers my vacation home -- a 1200 foot dwelling in the Sierra foothills. Its just a little get away for the family in the summer and a base camp for ski trips in the winter.

Last year there was a brush fire down the road from my house. Within a few months I received a letter from Allstate cancelling my policy. The reason stated was that they were "unable to locate the insured property." Now, this is not off in the boondocks. My street address is a major state highway. There are four houses other than mine on the same driveway off of the highway.

So I just assumed the inspector was incompetent and called my agent to arrange an inspection. I gave them directions to one of my neighbor's houses, who had agreed to be present when the inspector came (he lives there year round). The inspector came, filed his report and I got a call from my agent. Apparently Allstate's policy was to require 100 feet of brush clearance around dwellings. Still no policy.

Now the county requires 30 feet, the same as the mandatory setback from a property line. If my house had been built closer to the property line, I would not have been able to comply with this requirement. Fortunately, however, I had the space and more brush clearance is always a good idea in the foothills. So I agreed to pay to have this work down, Allstate inspected, and my policy was reinstated.


1 Year Later

This year I received a cancellation notice from Allstate again. The reason stated? They claimed again that they could not find the property. Twice seemed a little much for incompetence, especially since they had found the house and inspected in order to inform me of the need for additional clearance and to confirm that the clearance had been done. But I called my agent again and made arrangements for a new inspection.

Imagine my surprise when the inspection report came back stating that I had only 50 feet of clearance and that 200 feet are required. This time I decided to fight.

First I tried to work through my Allstate office. How could this inspector have gotten this so wrong? Don't you have the report from last year showing 100 feet of clearance? And why has the minimum clearance changed? I pointed out to my agent that I was beginning to feel like Allstate just didn't want to insure my building.

Around and around in circles I went with Allstate and finally got the cut and dry answer -- there is nothing we can do for you unless you clear 200 feet around your structure.

So I complained to the California State Insurance Office.

Guess what? Allstate now informs me that it was "all just a big mistake." And my policy has been reinstated. The investigator from Allstate informs me that the drawings the inspector made were misinterpreted and that they agree that there is 100 feet of clearance around the house. And she tells me that the information that I needed 200 feet of clearance "was just wrong."

I would not have gotten this issue resolved had it not been for a government office standing as an ally of the consumer. Too often large powerful entities take advantage of their size to mistreat small entities - smaller businesses or individuals. Government should be a resource to help counterbalance these interactions and put the smaller entity on a more equal footing. For that, I am happy to be sending my tax dollars to Washington and Sacramento.

Brown is a Phone Person

I wish there was an easy way to take a phone message off of the TMobile voice mail system as an electronic file -- if there was, I would post the message I received Friday morning from Jerry Brown:

Hi Ted, this is Jerry Brown. Could you call me? My number is 510...

Its just fun to hear Jerry's voice on my cell phone. Of course trying to use the phone as a medium for the two of us to connect is very... last century :-) As Mayor of Oakland he is busy. And I have a few things I need to do every day as well. So accidentally finding each other on the other end of a telephone line has a low probability of success.

I did call back -- today as I was out of town with my family this weekend. The phone number he left has a woman's voice on the answering machine "Hi, you've reached the Brown for Attorney General..." That was at 10:00 AM so I guess they don't have regular office hours yet. I dutifully left my phone number but I also encouraged Jerry to send email...

Update on Brown for Attorney...

Well, its been a couple of days and there has been no response from Mayor Jerry Brown. So I decided to try calling the phone number on his fundraising letter... He had ended his letter with "Feel free to contact me directly at (phone number) or (email address) and I had sent my letter to his email address first... But some people are really phone people so I thought I'd just call him for a quick chat.

Imagine my surprise when a company called VentureSpark answered the phone. I guess Jerry has hired these folks to handle his media relations. I spoke to a nice woman at VentureSpark who assured me that the Mayor does read his email but offered to make sure he saw the letter if I would send it again and copy her. I did and received a quick note back:

I will be sure the Mayor sees this. Thanks for your feedback.

I hope the Mayor decides to reply once he reads the letter...

Brown For Attorney General

Ex-California governor Jerry Brown is running for attorney general in 2006. Today I received a letter in the mail, a form letter solicitation from his campaign, asking for a contribution to his election fund. The fundraising letter ended with the sentence "Feel free to contact me directly..." and offered an email address, so I sent the following:

Jerry:

Thank you for the recent letter soliciting a donation for your campaign. I am considering a contribution but have a few thoughts and questions that I hope you will take the time to consider.

Free advice is often worth what you pay for it, and I will be the first to admit that I don't know anything about politics or political campaigning. But as a financially successful registered Democrat in the middle of my wealth producing years, I suspect that I am the kind of person you would like to appeal to as a supporter. So perhaps you will find these thoughts useful in your bid to become California's next Attorney General.

First, and foremost, I am struggling to understand why you want the job. Your letter mentions the erosion of our civil liberties and points out that "our former U.S. attorney general declared whole classes of people outside the protection of the law." So I can infer that you feel that there is an important role to play, and opportunity for you to contribute, in protecting California's citizens from the perils of a federal government that seems to be infringing upon our civil liberties. But you never come out and make this statement clearly. In fact, your letter starts out that "...the job of attorney general is viewed as the most important post in California..." This leaves me wondering if you want this office in order to be important, not because you have a mission to serve the people of our state.

Civil rights is an issue very important to me and well worth the attention of our electorate. A clear statement from you that this is a reason for you to run for office at this time would help quiet cynics that see your run for this office as purely political -- merely another stepping stone in your "reincarnation" as Jonathan Curiel put it in his 4th of July article. I'd also like to understand what a state attorney general CAN do to protect our state's citizens from federal legislation and enforcement. Perhaps you can be more specific about what you intend to do.

Secondly, I'd like to believe that you are in touch with the world of 2004 (or 2006 for that matter). I wonder, for example, why you mention Earl Warren in your letter? Earl Warren passed away thirty years ago in 1974. I was 8 years old at the time, so I can't say I have any personal memories of the man. I appreciate that you are pointing out two great figures in our history who served both as attorney general and as governor of California (albeit in the opposite order to the one you propose for yourself). But how many people do you expect to know this? Or even know who Earl Warren was? Is this a sign that you are out of touch? Perhaps we should all know who Earl Warren is, but unfortunately most voters don't even know the name of the CURRENT chief justice...

On the subject of showing that you are in touch, one thing that you need to do much more effectively is use the Internet to communicate with voters. In fact, I'd like to believe that, as attorney general, you will make the Internet a much more important part of the way California government serves our citizens. It was nice to see that you had created a website, but it looks like more of a slapped-together place-holder than an effective communication tool. As one example of something you ought to fix right away: the latest article that your staff posted, "Mayor: Revisit Retrofit," used the same page template as the previous article, "The woman in Jerry Brown's life." Besides the template being unattractive, the page name "Woman in Jerry's Life," wasn't changed in the new article. The page name is used by PC browsers as the headline appearing at the top of the web browser window, announcing what the content of the page is supposed to be about. Thus the article "Mayor:Revisit Retrofit" article also appears to be about the "Woman in Jerry's Life"...

But this is a minor point, merely emphasizing the sloppiness of the site. More important is that the site is an empty monument rather than a living, breathing contribution to the dialog you could be having with California's voters. The front page is consumed with a set of links to old articles, none of which are particularly complimentary to you. The letter below is merely a duplicate of the same form letter that you mailed to me. The photos emphasize an image of you over 30 years out of date. The site does not offer a call to action, does not explain why you want this job, does not explore how the events of the last several years as mayor of Oakland may have contributed to your vision for California or for the role of attorney general, and most importantly -- does not create a dialog with me as a voter and potential financial supporter.

I enjoyed hearing you speak, on October 19th, at the Silicon Forum regarding the work you have done as Mayor of Oakland. I was impressed with the difference in the man from the myth -- the well-grounded, serious citizen interested in improving the community I and my family live in... as opposed to the image far too commonly associated with you based on your history as governor. I was, however, disappointed in the answer to my question -- you might recall that I asked as you were leaving whether there was a part of your administration focused on long term planning -- that is, what does Oakland look like in 10 years? Or in 20 years? Your short response was something along the lines of "it is hard enough to think about the Oakland of tomorrow..."

I want to elect, and support, politicians that are in step with the world of today and are ready to build the world of tomorrow -- and make it a better place for my three children. Prove to me that you are such a person and you will have my support.

best,

Edward (Ted) Shelton



p.s. let's start with a simple one -- do you read and reply to your own email or have it printed out by an assistant?

2000 Year Old Man

In 1982 Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks classic comedy skit The 2000 Year Old Man was made into an animated made-for-TV movie. I remember watching it and laughing as Reiner, posing as an interviewer, chatted with Brooks, the 2000 year old man. Reiner asks Brooks about the people he has known over the years:

Joan of Arc? "Know her? I went with her!" Robin Hood? "Lovely Man. Ran around the forest. Took from everybody and kept it. But he had a good press agent." Jesus? "A quiet lad, used to come into the store with these twelve other guys. Never bought anything. Asked me for some water once."

Now Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge suggests that we might all live that long... though he doesn't promise we'll be as funny as Brooks.

de Grey stats that he believes that "...the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already," suggesting that the rapid advances currently being made in his field could have a real impact on those alive today. de Grey claims to have "...a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular deamage that happen to us over time," and that "since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of damage."

Boy won't that throw a wrinkle into plans to reform social security. "Yep, I retired at 62 and have been drawing social security benefits for the past 900 years!" And our overpopulation problems are liable to get a lot worse as well...

But all kidding aside, I wonder if the biggest problem with this whole scheme is that only the very rich are likely to be able to afford to live for thousands of years. Imagine my great-great-great-great grandchildren still having to hear about Warren Buffet's investing ideas. Live, from Warren himself.

This could create the greatest "haves" and "have-nots" problem that the human race has ever seen. Already the rich tend to live longer than the poor, but thousands of years longer? If de Grey is right, and this is a real possibility, I predict that the very wealthy will actually evolve to become a quite different species from the rest of humanity. One's entire perspective on the world is likely to shift radically when one has hundreds of years of experience and when one can look forward to a future of hundreds of years of life. Now there is a generation gap.

Blogging Resources

I was just visiting with a friend, Ed Dua of QuadCarver, and talking about how to use blogs in a business. I started doing a little tutorial on blogging and then started showering him with different tools that I use for my blogs and to keep up on others blogs... When I got back home I realized that I had given him too much information too fast :-) So I wrote an email listing all of the things I had told him about. Then I realized that others might benefit as well from such a list... so here it is:

That Buzznet photo thing:

http://www.buzznet.com


Basic blogging tool:

http://www.blogger.com


The "better" blogging tool:

http://www.typepad.com


The FEED set up tool:

http://www.feedburner.com


The PING site to let everyone know when your blog is updated

http://pingomatic.com/


The Feed reader:

http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/


Places to go to search blogs:

http://www.technorati.com

http://www.bloglines.com

http://www.feedster.com


How to PROMOTE your blog:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Berkeley Blogger Dinner

Thanks!! Especially to Mary Hodder for organizing tonight's blogger dinner. But Mary, we should do this more often, so I am counting on you to organize... But the excuse was good, Doc Searls being in town. It was great to catch up with Doc who in addition to being an icon of blogging is a truly great human being and a friend. Doc was in town to visit and speak at the Berkeley class that Mary blogs, Language of Politics taught by the incredible George Lakoff who I remember reading when I was in College...

It was also good to see Marc Brown of Buzznet fame who also captured some great photos of the evening.

Met a few people for the first time including Jeff Clavier who is one of the few people on the planet (so far) to have a LinkedIn Case Study written about him because he knows so many people... and Renee Blodgett who has recently moved to the west coast from Boston and with whom I had a long conversation about mixing personal stuff and business in the same blog... by the way this is the post that Renee is most proud of on her blog.... And finally (but not least) JD Lasica who seems to know everyone and who is working on a very cool project called ourmedia which I will let you explore on your own.

Sorry to all of you who attended the dinner (20 or 30) who I didn't collect cards from and thus failed to get mentioned...

UPDATE: The link for finding out about ourmedia, until the official site launch is HERE

Target : Entertainment : Marijuana

Note to Target -- don't provide product listings without any additional meta-data! For starters, how about what kind of a product is it anyway? Movie? Music? Book? Or controlled substance? Thanks to Steve Rubel for this pointer to Inside Google's link to Target selling Marijuana...

The Amazon version of Target's online store already has 8 customer reviews...

Yo, this be the most dopest chit I've ever had. I got this book from my peeps just the other dizzle. After I learned how to roll one phat doob, I got so wasted I was flyin like handi-man. Then I got the munchies and ate the book. Now I need another. (five stars)

But at least the Amazon entry had a little more information on the product... Perhaps this really is a book published in 1993 for young adults?

Indeed: Marijuana by Sandra Lee Smith

Given that Amazon reports that the Shipping Weight for this product is 12 ounces, the Target price of $25.25 was a little hard to believe... and the Amazon "used" price of $8.95 was downright worrisome. Used pot?

Ohio Controversy

Thanks to Ed Felten for pointing out this article in the Boston Phoenix by David Bernstein. Entitled Questioning Ohio: No controversy this time? Think again. Mr. Bernstein has some scary statistics about the voting in Ohio --

Of Ohio’s 88 counties, 20 suffered a significant reduction — shutting at least 20 percent (or at least 30) of their precincts. Most of those counties have Republicans serving as Board of Elections director, including the four biggest: Cuyahoga, Montgomery, Summit, and Lucas.

Those 20 counties went heavily to Gore in 2000, 53 to 42 percent. The other 68 counties, which underwent little-to-no precinct consolidation, went exactly the opposite way in 2000: 53 to 42 percent to Bush.

In the 68 counties that kept their precinct count at or near 2000 levels, Kerry benefited more than Bush from the high turnout, getting 24 percent more votes than Gore did in 2000, while Bush increased his vote total by only 17 percent.

But in the 20 squeezed counties, the opposite happened. Bush increased his vote total by 22 percent, and Kerry won just 19 percent more than Gore in 2000.

The entire article is worth reading.

NY Times Op-Ed "The Bush Revolution"

I should be nicer to the New York Times. Nicholas D. Kristof, writing for the Op-Ed page had a very worthwhile article today entitled The Bush Revolution. It covers much of the same ideas that I tried to address in my post yesterday but he so much more concisely puts the matter:

The central question of President Bush's second term is this: Will he shaft his Christian-right supporters, since he doesn't need them any more, and try to secure his legacy with moderate policies that might unite the country? Or, with no re-election to worry about, will he pursue revolutionary changes on the right? To me, it looks increasingly like the latter.

The piece is also worth reading for his predictions on various international issues during the second Bush term and ends with the frightening "litmus test" for deciding to leave the country -- "A litmus test of foreign policy prospects will be whether John Bolton, a genial raptor among the doves at State, is promoted to be its deputy secretary. For liberals who have been wavering on whether to move to New Zealand, that would be a sign to head for the airport."

Christian Theocracy

For me, the most worrying aspect of the recent Presidential election is the idea that Karl Rove's four million evangelical Christians (Pat Buchanan on the subject) missing from the 2000 election came out to vote in 2004, helped Bush win the election, and now will have a greater voice in our country's politics and policies. Before Dan points out that the four million may be a myth let me quickly point out that it is more important that the Bush Presidency believes that evangelical Christians made the difference in this election than whether or not they actually did make the difference.

I was raised to believe in an America that is tolerant of differences in religious, social, and cultural belief and practice. I was raised to believe that "tolerance" means "embrace diversity" not "put up with differences." And as a result I have friends that are from every religion (or none) and from many cultural backgrounds and who have made many different choices in their social behaviors.

MSNBC reports that the "electorate (is) deeply divided...", citing exit polls that show that "moral values" became a critical issue for voters in reelecting President Bush -- "...white evangelicals — a crucial voting bloc for the president — represented about a fifth of all voters. Their top issue was moral values." The Arizona Daily Star reports that:

"Moral values" is a catchphrase for conservative, religious voters who oppose abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage, said Steven Waldman, editor and CEO of BeliefNet, a multifaith Web site for religious and spiritual issues.

The problem I have with this definition of the issue is that it inaccurately places the locus of the voter's interest on the values instead of on a desire to IMPOSE those values on the rest of the nation's citizens. Many people, on both sides of the election, hold the same beliefs on these three issues. John Kerry expressed his personal belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and his personal belief that abortion is immoral. But he did so while saying that it was not the job of government to impose the personal religious beliefs of a President on the citizens of the nation. So when we talk about Bush winning on "moral values" we should be clear -- he won based on an electorate determined to impose their moral values onto others.

I heard Pat Buchanan on the radio a few weeks ago (on NPR - archive here) making the seemingly reasonable suggestion that local electorates should be able to make decisions on behalf of themselves when it comes to public resources -- for example, if a local school district wants to have prayer in their schools, why shouldn't there be a democratic process to decide? Why not let the citizens of that district simply vote on the matter?

One of the other things that I was raised to believe about our democracy is that there is an important balance that must be struck in protecting minorities. The problem with allowing a majority vote to provide the only guidepost for our civic decisions is the risk of a "tyranny of democracy" in which a majority imposes its views on a minority.

While still a vast majority, the percentage of Americans calling themselves Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2001 (American Religious Identification Survey at The Graduate Center, City University of New York) Almost 1/4 of our population is Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnositic, atheist (or one of a handful of others). This trend is expected to continue. Another interesting statistic from this study,

"In 1990, ninety percent of the adult population identified with one or another religion group. In 2001, such identification has dropped to eighty-one percent."

"No religion" is a staggering 13.1% of the total US adult population - staggering because it is the second largest category. Evangelical Christians might look at these statistics and see 27 million people that used to be Christians that could be brought back into the fold. And voting for public money to be spent on Christian schools might help with that agenda...

But should a democracy impose the will of the majority on that 13% of its citizens who chose to be "areligious" (no religion but not agnostic or atheist) much less on the 11% that are Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Wiccan... ?? How can a great nation like ours decide on belief-based issue like gay marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, prayer in school based on one groups beliefs?

The right has often cited that the phrase "separation of church and state" cannot be found in the constitution. Instead it is contained in a letter by Thomas Jefferson. But perhaps it is time in this great nation to suggest a 28th Constitutional Amendment, certainly more important to the nation's well being than the 27th in which we formally introduce these words and protect the minorities of our country now and in the future from the imposition of the majority's views. After all, in the future Christians may become the minority.

Third Term

While we are likely to hear many arguments from the right about why we should elect George W. Bush to a third term as President of the United States, I thought I would jump in early with an argument from the democratic side of the aisle on why we should modify the Constitution to allow him to run a third time. Don't think it is reasonable to talk about changing the US Constitution to allow a person to run for President? Tell Governer Arnold...

The partisan Fox News ran a survey this past summer that declares "Most Oppose Allowing President Third Term." The survey spoke of opposition to Clinton being allowed to run against Bush and was largely the kind of negative hit piece on liberal political candidates that we have come to love Fox News for... But there it is, the idea of a 3rd term for a President being floated publically.

And the Republican arguments for electing Bush to a third term will come, at least from the extreme right. We will hear that we should "stick with our wartime president" and that we need to keep up the fight on terrorism, and that his reforms of the tax code and social security are not yet complete...

But here is an argument for the left to consider. The problem with second terms is that the President is now a lame duck. He no longer need consider public opinion as he will not face the voters in 2008. So when will he feel the need to compromise? Or even sound like he is reaching out to all of the voters?

If we allow Bush to run for a third term in office, on the other hand, he will have a motivation to appear in front of voters, talk to reporters, provide some transparency on advisory panels for proposed energy or environmental bills... in short have some measure of accountability to the American people.

Of course, if re-elected, the same argument might be made again -- allow Bush to run for a fourth term in office... Given the possibility of President Bush for life perhaps we should be supporting a constitutional change to allow Schwarzenegger to run for President in '08 instead...

If this Election was Stolen

If this election was stolen, the mechanisms were primarily two simple activities - (1) suppression of democratic votes through inefficient polling operations with insufficient voting machines causing hours long waits at the polls and (2) the misalignment of touch screens so that votes for John Kerry would actually register as votes for George Bush. More on this second item in a moment. It is striking that the exit polls called for a Kerry win by over 3%, as even Fox News reports:

By midnight, Bush was declared the winner in Florida, though throughout the day the state had been predicted a winner for Kerry. Similar predictions in Ohio were also found to be wrong as the state was put in Bush's column.

Miami-Dade county, for example, reported 45.7% of the vote for George Bush. Does this match exit polls in the county? Or even the distribution of expected voters?

Regarding the allegation of incorrect alignment of voting machine functionality, again Fox News reports:

Twenty-one touch-screen voting machines in Broward County were replaced because of technical problems, said Gisela Salas, the county's deputy supervisor of elections. At least one of the machines had shown votes cast for the wrong candidates.

This article replaces an earlier one (now unavailable) on Fox which explained the problem -- it was impossible to select John Kerry on the touch screen -- every attempt made selected George Bush instead. This was only discovered when some (24 individual and separate reports) voters checked their own results at the end of the session with the voting machine and noticed that George had been selected instead of John. One voter made 14 attempts to change the vote to John Kerry before calling over a poll worker to report the malfunction. Ultimately the poll worker had to use the eraser end of a pencil to carefully select the small area of the touch screen that was active for registering a vote for John Kerry. In Broward county the vote was reported as 34.5% for Bush.

Bush would need 190,000 more votes in Florida to have won the election there - that is, 190,000 votes taken from the Bush column and added to the Kerry column. This is just 3% of the total votes cast. In just Broward and Miami-Dade counties, 561,731 votes were totalled for George Bush -- so the swing would amount to just one-third of votes that George reportedly received in those two counties.

Obviously I am NOT alleging that this election was stolen. Just pointing out how it could have been done. It is unfortunate that we have allowed a voting system to be put in place in this country where such possibilities exist.

Who turned off the Ads?

Is it just me? Or is it a concerted attack on the advertising infrastructure that feeds Internet Capitalism? I have been catching up on news and strangely every page I pull up, the ad servers (typically third party companies) are down... So I get the page but no ad content! For Wired its the server view.atdmt.com that is not responding and for techdirt its ads.adsonar.com. NetworkingPipeline's ads from the server pbid.pro-market.net seem to be failing as well as from the venerable ad.doubleclick.net...

Surely I am not the only one to have noticed?

Jerry Brown at Silicon Forum

Jerry Brown at Silicon Forum,
originally uploaded by Ted Shelton.

It was quite interesting to hear Jerry Brown sounding quite conservative as he spoke about the work he has done to turn around Oakland, CA today at the Silicon Forum's monthly luncheon. Afterwards I asked him what the Mayor's office is doing to plan for the future given that California expects the population of the state to double by 2050. Nothing, he said. No one is thinking about the future, we are too busy solving today's problems... Seems like that is where today's problems come from.

Visual Thesaurus

I don't know how I ever lived without the Visual Thesaurus. Go use it (there is a demo mode) and you'll be instantly hooked as well. Type in a word and there is a visual constellation of related terms surrounding your word. Click on any of those other words and it becomes the center of the conceptual map, with new terms growing around it. Is this the first application of Ray Kurzweil's visual "mind mapping" tools? Or was it independently developed? Check out The Brain for an open ended version of the visual thesaurus, into which you can pour your own conceptual relationships...

Am I terribly rude?

A reader of my blog wrote in response to my previous post regarding George Bush and his religiousity:

That comment is really below you. I have been reading you since your early days of blogging, but that was terribly rude.

As I do not intent rudeness, let me respond. First, I repeated the report in the New Republic because I was genuinely amazed at the allegation. By the way, I came across the article in The Week a terrific summary of news from the right, left, middle, and international press.

What was amazing to me is that the Bush campaign has made an enormous effort to get evangelical Christians to the voting booth in support of his presidency. Aside from Bush's own religious convictions or his commitment to a particular congregation, it would seem like a relatively easy thing to attend church every Sunday when regular church goers are a key part of your constituency. I found it remarkable that he hasn't bothered to do this.

Perhaps my ironic rhetorical question "...does Bush really believe in God after all?" was the portion of my post that this reader found rude. I could have perhaps found a better way to pose this question, but I think the question is valid and important -- and frankly applicable to both candidates. How much is the religious positioning of the candidates a genuine reflection of their own views and how much of it is just packaging for the voters? Religion has clearly been a crucial litmus test for a candidates. Will this always be the case? In past elections, service in the military might have been a test, or drug use (the lack of drug use)... will each of these fall over time? Are we becoming cynical about these pillars of our society? Especially when these pillars become merely planks in a candidate's packaging.

Bush Doesn't Go To Church

It seems unbelievable. The President who constantly speaks of his religious convictions doesn't belong to a congregation and rarely goes to church. In her article Empty Pew (subscription) Amy Sullivan of The New Republic writes:

Bush's supporters say "it's bad form" to point this out, arguing that you don't have to go to church to be religious... They also say that it's logistically difficult for a President to attend church. But that didn't stop Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, who were regular Sunday worshippers during their presidencies."

I guess the big question is, does Bush really believe in God after all? Or is this just part of the packaging that has been used to sell him to the Christian right?

How to Throw the Election

Ed Felten, of the incredibly interesting and useful blog called Freedom to Tinker provides details on how Diebold has completely screwed up the electronic voting machines that will be used both here in California and in a number of states across the country.

Want to vote more than once? Here are instructions posted on Wednesday

Want to shut down the voting booth? Here are instructions posted yesterday

In both cases, a $50 smart card programming kit will give you the power to disrupt our national elections. Don't think it will happen?

Indymedia Update

In an Indymedia press release, the alternative media outlet reports that "on Wednesday, October 13th, Indymedia's seized hardware was mysteriously returned in the same way it disappeared -- without any information provided as to who took it or why, and on whose orders."

While Indymedia itself is on the political fringe, serious mainstream jornalism organizations are questioning the seizure of Indymedia's servers. The online website journalism.co.uk reports that

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is lobbying MPs to find out why the FBI ordered the UK government to confiscate web servers belonging to independent news network Indymedia. The seizure, which happened last week, brought down 21 of the group's regional sites including the UK, Brasil and Poland.

The article goes on to repeat a number of interesting allegations that Indymedia has made about why the FBI might be trying to disrupt their operations. One issue was the previously reported photos of Swiss undercover police said to be posted on one of Indymedia's web sites. Given that the FBI has confirmed that they were acting on behalf of Switzerland, this seems to be the most likely explanation. Other issues raised were more machiavellian. From the article:

The IFJ has stated that the seizure may also be related to information published by Indymedia San Francisco that claimed to reveal problems with electronic voting systems scheduled to be used in next month's Presidential election. The manufacturers, Diebold Election Systems, applied to the Californian courts to have the documents removed but Indymedia successfully opposed the application.

Indymedia's news is produced by volunteer political activists and campaigners around the world and the network's strong anti-corporate agenda has been highly critical of the invasion of Iraq.

In August 2004, IndyMedia claimed that the FBI and US Secret Service had been trying to disrupt the relationship with its hosting provider Calyx Internet Access.

The FBI had issued a subpoena for log information and contact details that would identify anyone who had posted a list of delegates attending the Republican National Convention.

Hopefully the professional journalism associations will continue to apply pressure to the UK and US governments for an explanation of how the FBI could have used the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), (an agreement that allows countries to co-ordinate investigations into international terrorism, money laundering and kidnapping) to seize this media company's publishing and distribution apparatus.

US Government Shuts Down Independent Media?

BBC News is reporting today that a US court order has forced a UK based ISP to turn over servers owned by an "alternative media network known as Indymedia: in this article: US seizes independent media sites.

PC Pro writes

Last week, the FBI obtained a court order involving Rackspace, demanding that the company hand over two Indymedia web servers. Rackspace, which provides hosting services for more that 20 Indymedia sites at its London facility was forced to comply and hand over the requested servers, effectively removing those sites from the Internet.

The full article is available here: Feds seize Indymedia servers in London

I don't know who the heck Indymedia is, but the EFF is already involved, offering legal assistance to Indymedia. Could it be true that our government is shutting down legitimate discourse? According to the PC Pro article "In August the US government attempted to subpoena server logs from the organisation's ISP in the US and the Netherlands before the Republican convention." Perhaps the government thinks that readers of these publications are terrorists?

The Register offers one possible explanation in their article on the matter, Feds seize Indymedia servers.

While Indymedia is not exactly sure what prompted the action, the group does have one strong idea. A French Indymedia site last month posted photos of what it believed to be undercover Swiss police officers photographing protesters at a French event. Indymedia received a request from the FBI to pull those photos down, as they "revealed personal information" about the undercover police, said Indymedia press officer Hep Sano.

According to more information in this story, "Indymedia (AKA Independent Media Center) was set up in 1999 to provide grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests in Seattle." While these opinions may not be popular amongst the majority of US citizens, doesn't our constitution protect these people's right to free speech? Are we witnessing the beginning of a new era of censorship? Is this being done in the name of the "War on Terrorism?" So far, the American authorities have failed to comment. Hopefully tomorrow will bring clarification of the crime that Indymedia is accused of committing.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" -- Thomas Jefferson