To serve you better, this site now has a mirror.

Colin McKay (who I've just added to the BlogRoll, right) adds another useful term to bloggers glossary.

A friend of mine has suggested the word "bloink" as a common term for a link, clumsily dropped into an online conversation, pointing to your own blog. As in: "Can you believe that? I asked where I could find that article and he bloinked me!"

Guilty.

One of the things we squeezed in between wedding prep (and recovery) while in Ireland, was a visit to catch up with our good friends Gail and Aidan (who own the wonderful "Jenny Vander" store, recently relocated to Dublin's Drury Street) and their beautiful children, Zak, Sally and Mardi.

Gail and Aidan live in Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare - just down the road and across the Kildare/Wicklow border from Valleymount, where Leona grew up.

In the family-owned land behind Gail and Aidan's fabulous home, they've just finished shooting some of the main scenes from "King Arthur" starring Clive Owen, set for release some time in 2004.

Aidan took us down to the set for a look around with the kids and we took some shots. These don't quite capture the scale of the thing - the set is huge. Cool stuff.

Playing with the new full text search feature on Amazon. Very cool thing to do - they've made it possible to search inside the full content of every book in their catalogue.*

This is a jaw-droppingly good idea. Thanks, Jeff and team. Good work.

While futzing around with the search logic and trying a number of simple queries, I bumped into an interesting dead end. It's a dynamic page, so I don't think a direct link to it here will work, alas. The interesting part was that, other than the fairly standard 404 text ("Looking for something? We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site"), the page also prominently features this cute character:



The image file is "kailey-kitty.gif".

Is Kailey the kitty? Or is this Kailey's kitty? And if so, who's Kailey? And why is her kitty sitting on this 404 page?

*[Update: OK, so maybe it's not every book in the catalogue - I guess that would be a little OTT. But there's 120,000 books indexed so far and more to come. Still cool.]

*[Update 2: The image has disappeared now. Shame - it was seriously cute.]

Here's what appears to be the first print magazine devoted to blogs and bloggers - presumably only available in Japan, in Japanese.



(via Jeff Jarvis, via Kotaro Yamagishi)

And BTW - before anyone starts hammering on me for the non-PC title of this post, I'd like to point out that 'broggers.jpg' is the name of the source image on Kotaro's blog. So nyah.

I love the way the illustrator depicts bloggers as some kind of mighty morphin' media rangers. Always wanted to be an action hero.

Infoworld's Tom Yager offers a fine example of what it's like to be a tech journalist on the receiving end of one of those dreadful, meaningless pitches from clueless PR types.

In this one, you get to role-play the part of the tech scribe. Your mission: to decipher this PR gobbledegook and come up with a suitable response (hopefully something a little more constructive than 'sod off you useless flack'). Link courtesy of Tom Murphy's PR Opinions blog

Reminds me of a similar rant from a couple of years ago by the splendid Greg Michetti in the Edmonton Sun, and Adam Cunningham's follow up, blogged here.

Gary Turner, genius Scot blogger and tech sales/marketing supremo, has just been promoted again -- making it 4 times in 2.5 years.

As he says: "When I started this blog I was in the middle to lower ranks in our company. Now I'm the boss, numero uno, the big cheese."

You see? You see? This is what blogging is all about - start a blog now, and one day you too could have a job like mine.

Oh.

Good point.

*cough*

Feeding our 10 month old, Ruairi, last night.

He'd been cranky in the high chair - still a little out of sorts from jet lag and those bottom incisors cutting through. So I had him snuggled in on my lap, spooning the rich pea soup into him as he rested his tiny arm across my shoulder.

After a few eager mouthfuls, he started to slow down -- unusual for Ruairi, who normally has a mighty appetite.

Tired and grizzly, clearly - as I lifted the spoon towards his mouth he turned his head to one side, away from the soup. I lowered my arm, talking softly to him as he rubbed his little eyes, then raised the spoon to try again. This time his head turned the other way, looking up at me.

I moved my arm back, saying "No? No more soup?", then tried one more time moving the spoon back in front of his eyes and pointing it towards his mouth.

He looked at me, looked at the spoon, then moved his head slowly side to side - instinctively getting his mouth out of line of the approaching food.

As I lowered my arm once more, dropping the spoon back into the still mostly full bowl, he looked back up to me and repeated the just-learned gesture, shaking his lovely blond head from side to side again. No, Daddy. No soup.

Is this how gesture evolves? This instinctive "no" shaking was no mimicry - no copied pre-verbal sign, as far as I can tell. I don't think it's something Leona or I have deliberately or inadvertently taught him - just his own way of showing that his mouth no longer wants to line up with the spoon, thanks very much.

It seems to make sense that this would be an entirely spontaneous unlearned gesture - the natural opposite of the nod that accompanies the action of leaning his head forward and chomping down on the spoon when he does want more. But I'm sure Desmond Morris and others would surely disagree - would argue that this is more nurture than nature. That Ruairi's use of the head shaking "no" gesture is a product of cultural inheritance and learned behaviour.

I don't know. Whatever it is - I just know that it's very endearing. And if I want to think my son is some kind of natural genius, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Because he is, you know. Of course he is.

Two links, of primary interest only to me and, perhaps, the fifteen people to whom I'm famous. One of these is just odd; the second is wonderfully encouraging and ego-polishing.

First the odd one: I've just come across a curious reference to a random comment I made about a month ago, quoted as an example of blog linking in a Swedish academic paper from Umeå University. In fact, the citation points to something I said in an email message, later quoted by David Weinberger on his main blog. The links don't get much more tangential than that one.

The paper, "A Brief Overview of the Linguistic Attributes of the Blogosphere" (PDF), is an engaging read for anyone interested in the evolving sociolinguistics of blogging.

The second link is to Martin Roell's new project - the splendidly altruistic JobBlog. This is the realisation of something I believe Martin has been noodling for some time - an idea he was good enough to share with me a few weeks ago. Perhaps Martin's original explanation to me is the quickest and best way to describe what this new blog is about:

"I want to sent up a Blog with entries about people I know that are
looking for a job. (Actually, it's not so important that it's a blog,
I will just use Blog-technology because it's simple and because
using the word will create more buzz than an ordinary website.) It
occured to me that many of my friends and acquaintances were looking
for a job and I thought: "Well, I have a blog with more that 1000
readers everyday who mostly work in business and trust my advice, so
why not make something out of that?"

It's a great idea, thanks Martin. I'm afraid my German is only just good enough to be able to figure out that one of the first listings on the JobBlog is about me. But thanks to Google Translations I can tell that Martin's comments are also extraordinarily flattering (although I'm sure the phrase "therefore I seize myself here briefly" has suffered somewhat in translation - I mean, we're friends, but we're not that friendly ;-)

Thank you, Martin. That's a very kind thing you've just done - not just for me, but for all the people you're going to be listing. Smart idea. Neatly executed.

Hope you're still having fun in Ireland. Give us a call when you get back.

We love you.

...in one piece. Mostly.

Got back late Sunday after 12 hours traveling with the three kids and our twelve pieces of luggage. Oof.

Ireland was as beautiful and welcoming as she always is. Just a fantastic 10 days of storing up memories and catching up with all the family and old friends we see so rarely.

Now back into figuring out how, where, and whether to reinstall myself.

Catching up on a quick zip through the blogroll this afternoon, one of the first things I notice is the dreadful news that the remarkable Rageboy is in an even more parlous state than we are. We're not at the point of having the phone cut off just yet, TG.

This is just crazy. One of the finest, most unusual minds of our generation is struggling to scrape together enough loose change for a pack of smokes, while elsewhere infinitely less talented people are being paid inconceivably large sums for dreaming up sludge like "Joe Millionaire".


Euan Semple has set up a "Save Rageboy" PayPal fund if you want to send cash to Chris Locke. Give whatever you can (if you can) and spread the love.

Meanwhile, the ever resourceful Gary Turner is selling the limited edition Save Rageboy 2004 Calendar, plus t-shirts, and the classic Rageboy Commemorative Thong. All proceeds, of course, to the Save Rageboy fund.

A worthy cause. Give now. Give all you can. Give often. For all that he's given.

Freshly rebranded, it's now time to shutter the blog for a little while, as we head off to see family and friends in Ireland for a week or so.

You can probably imagine how much we all need this.

Nice big family hoolie to go to (Yay! Cathal and Mandy - see you really soon!), plus many pints of the best Guinness in Ireland waiting in Leo's to be drunk.

To be drunk. Yes. Doubt anyone will begrudge me that. Just hope one of my friends stays sober long enough to put me up to bed when I start singing.

I doubt I'll be getting online much in the next week and a bit, if at all. In the meantime, here's a couple of other somethings to keep you occupied while I'm away.

See you in a week and a few. Be nice to each other.

(BTW #1 - if you've sent me email in the last week and I haven't responded yet, I'm not being rude - honest. Well, yes - I suppose I am, but it's not intentional. Since I got uninstalled, I've been absolutely showered with email and messages of support. Thank you all very, very much. And there's also been a lot of other life stuff to get organized before we go. You've simply no idea how much work being unemployed can be. I promise I will get on top of email when I get back. Promise).

(BTW #2 - the alarm's on, the neigbours are checking the house every day, and there's an entire tank of huge, ferocious sea monkeys guarding the place. Plus we sold all the good stuff on eBay already. And the stereo's knackered, so don't even bother. And no - it's not an original. Do you really think we could afford to have an original of that hanging in the spare bedroom? Bugger off. Go on - the people at No. 23 have a home theatre system and leave their credit cards lying around on the counter. Thanks).

Now that we've had our little "strategic realignment", I feel this blog should have a brand makeover - for the short term, at least.

A couple of days ago I described the transition I've just experienced as being "uninstalled".

A few people seem to like the term, and I do too. So I think that I'm going to temporarily rechristen this ole blog.

Not many people ever seem to get the usual title anyway - they just think I'm some kind of hyper-honest narcissist. Which, of course, I am - but that's hardly the point. If I can't be a narcissist on my own darn blog, then I'll just have to keep my WebTorch set on black.

So. I'm tearing down the "I Love Me, vol. I" title line, for now - and pasting up the brand new title pro tem. We'll ask the new title elect to stand in for the old one, until such time as I secure gainful employment once again, at which point I will lovingly reinstate the carefully cleaned and restored old palindrome.

Uninstalled be it.

Regardless of how you personally feel about, Dave Winer (I'm kind of on the fence), you have to admit that RageBoy has just set a fiendishly clever and quite splendidly nasty little trap over here (caution: NSFW - but then, what the heck is these days?).

In Chris's own words: "...OK, now here's how the game works. Simply place the exact string "that asshole, Dave Winer" somewhere on your blog. The quotes and comma are optional. Then wait. Google will eventually find all such references, and as they are added to the global index, the new search button I've provided near the top of the right column (see it over there?) will serve as a day-to-day measure of Dave's fast-growing popular appeal..."

There's tail-eating, diabolical cleverness in his vitriol.

Just imagine you were on the receiving end of something like this? How could you possibly resist the urge to check your own stats at least once every couple of days?

Which means, if you're anything like me, you'd be searching on "that asshole [your name here]" every couple of days, watching the numbers tick up, as the steam billowing out your ears grows hotter and denser day by day.

Evil, but delicious.

I really don't know what to say about this.

Wow, crikey, and also streuth!

This is the second time in a just over a week I've been rendered completely mute. The first was last Tuesday, when I was "strategically realigned" out of my big fancy SVP job.

And now Jeneane's knocked the gab out of me again. But this time it feels soooooo much warmer.

Thanks, Sis. We love you.

Dubya has an "official blog".

I promise, I am not making this up. Click the link to see for yourself.

Question is, does George actually know he has a blog? Hands up all those of you who think Dubya has actually posted a single entry since the blog went up a few days ago...

I know, I know - I'm poking fun at this almost for the sake of it. But, c'mon - I mean, you just have to, don't you?

One thing that tweaks me about this is the idea of an "official blog". That seems just wrong somehow. The two thoughts simply don't sit well next to each other.

"Official" sounds all tied up with appropriate authority, formality, staying on message, having every word sanitized, tuned and buffed by the "official" spin sensei before it's allowed to posted.

Strikes me as a concept in conflict with the nature of a blog.

Maybe it should be re-christened the "Officious Blog"...?

If this was one of those Moveable Type or Blogware blogs with categories and stuff, I think I'd have to file this under: "Don't know what it is, but I like it".

David Weinberger had an entertaining post a couple of days ago with a few examples of clueless corporate behaviour in the general area of measurement.

Pure Dilbert-quality examples:

"A CEO insisted that we send out weekly press releases because our competitor did. We achieved that goal, but now the press thought both companies were both bozos...A marketing VP was satisfied with our PR efforts because we were getting the designated number of column inches per quarter. That the coverage was exceptionally dull didn't matter to him."

Talking to Jeneane earlier today, and comparing notes, we realised we have just so many examples of this kind of stuff we could probably fill a book.

Of course, there's some recent injuries that are still a little too raw to scratch, but here's one of my favourite all-time classic tales of corporate cluelessness, worthy of a little cathartic blogging.

Once upon a time, a young guy (not entirely unlike me) was working as El Grande Marketing Poobah at a big software company. For many years, this company had been running a wildly successful annual user conference that was little short of a week-long love-in for their staff, clients and partners.

This thing was big. It had been running for nearly ten years, going from strength to strength - to the point that when this chap came in to run marketing it was drawing around 2,500 attendees - most of whom paid up to $1,000 (plus hotel and airfare) to attend.

They'd book out the Orlando World Center Marriott hotel for the whole week - bracketing either side of the 4-day event. Every room, every meeting room, every ballroom. And that's a bigass hotel.

They'd shovel food, booze, and freebies into the attendees. In addition to a packed conference program and exhibition floor, every night there was some kind of organized main event, with numerous spin off parties for particular interest groups (the European user group, the premier partners, &c.). One big bottomless trough.

On the middle night of the gig, they'd bus all the attendees off to Universal Studios or something similar for the night - there'd be drinks carts, hot/cold buffets, and barbecues everywhere you looked.

This was the 90s, of course - such excesses were almost de rigeur for a big tech firm. But here's the kicker: they managed to run this darn thing so that it was practically break even.

No kidding - they sold sponsorships for everything. Plus partners paid to exhibit, or advertise in areas of the hotel. And the vast majority of attendees paid, as I said.

In the last year our hero ran the event, he had a total budget of around $1.6 million. They made $1.5 million. (If you want to know how, btw, I can give you the name of the event management company they used - the best in the business).

Net $100,000 to bring 2,500 people to a hotel in Florida for a week - feed, juice, and entertain them until they were fit to pop.

But that's not the best bit.

The immediate and lasting impact on customer, employee, and investor satisfaction and goodwill was tangible. Sales went up. Complaints and issues were addressed. Feedback in to product management was direct, positive, and actionable.

It helped them build a better company.

The employees benefited; and the partners, customers, and investors too. Thirty-eight percent of their annual revenue came from long term contracts with the top ten percent of the client base - the people who would come back to this event year after year to find more reasons to hand over their money.

All was well in their world - as evidenced by the 47 percent market share they enjoyed in their core market.

Then the company got acquired.

A couple of months after the acquisition closed, they were deep into the final stages of planning for that year's event. It was slated to be the biggest and most important ever - now with the combined client bases and product portfolios of the merged companies.

Everything was locked and loaded, pretty much ready to go. Most of the sponsorships and exhibition spaces were already sold; registrations were climbing steadily. The content was still in flux, as they tried to cram as much of the good stuff from the combined companies into one event, but everything else was in great shape.

And then - six weeks before opening night - the CEO of the acquiring company decided they should cancel.

[pause to let that one sink in]

Six weeks - and they should cancel.

They were getting ready to squooge the main products of the two companies into a brand new offering as part of an overall "strategic realignment" (*ack*), and the CEO felt that the event was going to be "targeted at the wrong audience".

The hotel was already booked - had been for a year. And the party catering, the promotional materials, the keynote speaker, the schwag...

And they cancelled.

Patty Seybold was booked to be the opening keynote speaker. At the time, Patty was one of the most influential voices in this company's market - she was riding high on the recent release of her book customers.com.

And they burned her. Oh, excuse me: they strategically realigned.

At this point, the young marketing VP had not had too many real screaming face-to-face rows with a boss in his career. He's a non-confrontational type by nature. But as you can imagine, he had one back then. He lost.

So he spent two straight days on the phone - call after call after back-to-back call. He tried to make sure he reached every single one of the partners and main customers who had already booked and, in some cases, paid big money for flights or accomodation.

They had partners who came every year - people who'd built their entire companies on the back of the main product set of this software firm - adding specialist skills and functionality to create their own successful after market businesses. Some of these guys took the smart route and booked holiday homes in Florida months in advance - to house their entire sales staff at less than the Marriott rates. Holiday homes they couldn't cancel - and non-refundable special rate air tickets, booked the year before.

Two days of phone calls, burning relationships and personal reputation all along the way - selling the company line as best he could, trying to keep people on side one way or another. Trying not to blow the quarter (or the year) for his friends in the sales team.

One firm he dealt with had spent almost a year in R&D, building a really cool add-on for the software company's flagship product. They were set to launch this add-on at the conference. Their advertising, the brochures - everything was already done. Even their "show special" flyers, designed to echo the theme of the conference program. All toast.

The marketing guy finished his two days of phone calls, and several more weeks of damage control, then he left the company (and that entire industry) two months later.

He tried, but sometimes cluelessness just metastasizes and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.

And the CEO? Well I guess he lived happily ever after. This is real life, after all...

"Chase brave employment with a naked sword
Throughout the world."

-- George Herbert (1593–1633) in "The Church Porch"

For anyone interested, I've posted an up-to-date bio here. This is the "gizza job" version, as opposed to the "gotta blog" version.

I've put this up as a regular blog post - with comments and all - in hope that some of my blog-allies might stop by and drop a message or even a little testimonial into the comments box. And if you happen to come across any really cool jobs that you think might fit, please point the relevant HR folk at this page.

(Ignore the time stamp, btw - just a quick and dirty way of popping the page up there without having to do fiddly stuff on the server.)

Ta.

Just ordered my copy of this:



Goody, goody....can't wait.

Frank Paynter posts a splendid list of Bush/Cheney '04 bumper stickers.

Personal favourites:

Bush/Cheney '04: This time, elect us!

Bush/Cheney '04: Making the world a better place, one country at a time.

Bush/Cheney '04: Because the truth just isn't good enough.

Need to clear up a couple of things about my recent employment outage. I've said this in email for those who've asked, but think I should address the points here too, just in case.

First - we're not going to starve. Not yet, anyway. Huge and sincere thanks to all who've been in touch with offers of support and assistance - all very, very much appreciated. The flood of email and phone calls in the last three days has been simply terrific. Thank you.

For the record: I have been offered a half-decent severance package, so we're not going to be completely flattened in the short term, thank God. Of course, if I don't find a new gig in the relatively near future, you might still find me in the Bloor subway with a penny whistle. But at least we have a little time to sit back and figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Second - you might think it's a subtle distinction, but please don't say I got 'fired'. Firing implies, to me at least, some cause. There was no cause in this - 'my position was eliminated' (whatever the stinking hell that means).

As I was originally hired to build and run a Technology Practice, from scratch -- perhaps the most accurate description is that I've just been uninstalled.

It was a fairly clean uninstall too, but I kind of like the idea that I may have left a number of deeply-seated registry entries in place, that will continue to influence the behaviour of those I've left behind for the conceivable future :-)

Kind of wishing I was in Cambridge this w/end, partying with all the leading lights of blogdom at the first annual BloggerCon.

So many people I like and admire in one room, but just no way I could have made it down, alas.

Sitting in the IRC channel right now (#bloggerCon at irc.freenode.net), following some of the discussion happening at the periphery - but it's kind of like catching the odd wisp of what sounds like the coolest conversation you've never heard, drifting over the fence from a garden party you couldn't get to...

If you're there, have a blast - and blog lots so we can all participate by proxy.

Off with the kids to the Kingston Road Fall Festival this afternoon - which promises to be even more fun. Packed La Belle Saucisse off on a clothes shopping expedition - just me, Charlie, Lily & Ruairi all day. My kind of Saturday.

It could happen.

I'm overdue a comment on this (been kinda busy ;-) but I'm nonetheless thrilled to be pointing, late, to Howard Dean's "Principles for an Internet Policy"

For anyone who really cares about the evolution and future of the Net, this is truly stirring stuff. Not so much even for what it says - as much of it has been said before - but more because it is being said, and said now, by a strong candidate for the U.S. presidency. That's almost astonishing.

He hasn't 'fessed to it, but I'm sure my all-time favourite former competitor and smartest living American David Weinberger's hands are all over it. We know he's been involved with the Dean campaign as "Senior Internet Advisor", so it's not a stretch to imagine him ghosting this piece.

It certainly reads like classic Weinberger - right from the first sentence, with its conscious use of the "conversation" thought. (OK, I know "conversation" might be considered more a Doc-ism than a David-ism, and the Principles' references to "empowerment of human voice" sound like RageBoy, but you get the point).

In fact, the delta between Dean's Principles and Doc and David's "World of Ends" (WoE) is so slight as to be almost unmeasureable.

Dean's 1st Principle says: "No one owns the Internet" -- the first of WoEs' Three virtues of the Internet says: "No one owns it".

Dean's 5th Principle says: "The Internet is a democracy of voices, not primarily a broadcast medium" -- the opening of WoE pokes fun at the "Repetitive Mistake Syndrome" that leads some to keep thinking that "...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages."

And the parallels go on and on. Both pieces are smart, informed, insightful, and just plain darn right.

That's a good thing.

Want another thing that makes this so cool? We're watching the federal policies of a potential future government of the world's most powerful nation being shaped by some of the world's alpha bloggers. Feel it.

What it is to be underemployed. Actually had quite a lot to do today, but thought: "I haven't seen any daytime TV in years", so what the heck.

I've never even watched Oprah before.

And you know what?

I don't think I'll ever watch it again.

Well.

This is... interesting.

I find my self suddenly and unaccountably unemployed.

As part of a strategic realignment, I was let go by my erstwhile employer at the end of day yesterday. Not quite sure why, to be honest.

Also not at all sure what I'll end up doing now. We're off to see the family in Ireland next Thursday, so I think I'll be using the next week or so to figure out what the next step should be.

Meanwhile, this house needs work to get it ready for winter, and it will be fun to spend some more time with the family for a while. Oh, and I'll get to blog rather more than I've been able to of late - been rather too busy at work, you see. But now I appear to have a few...um...windows in my schedule. Great big bloomin' french doors, in fact.

Now I really know how Jeneane feels.