Monday November 21, 2005

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Picked up my copy of Cradle to Cradle/Rethinking the Way We Make Things this weekend at the nearby library. The first few pages are exactly what I'm looking for; I'm not a big fan of incremental thinking, and neither are the authors.

(Don't get me wrong -- I work for a large company, and incremental changes are often the only option for gaining traction. It's just that you never know where you're headed until you've defined that BHAG-level, ideal-state vision and can work towards that endpoint.)

That doesn't mean we're hopeless dreamers, either, but ya gotta believe in something. William McDonough and Michael Braungart have given me just enough to whet my appetite with an overview that includes chapters like "This Book is Not a Tree," "Why Being Less Bad is No Good" and "Waste Equals Food." Sounds kinda simplistic at first, until you dig in a little and understand that, for example, the book was created with synthetic paper that doesn't just cut down on tree consumption, but rather can be broken down and circulated infinitely in industrial cycles..."made and remade as paper or other products."

Sure, okay, but now the skeptic in me wonders: a) exactly how these guys can make this claim...how doable is this, really; and b) what it costs, from an energy-infrastructure perspective to do this...because if it's not nearly as cheap as trees are for books, then it's not relevant to business (frustrating as that fact may be).

So perhaps I'll be sharing a little with you, book-report style, as I move along. For now, I'm happy to join the writers for this ride, given that I just don't see enough people asking the tough question, which usually goes a little something like this: "if we hadn't been doing it this way all along, how would we go about solving this problem/designing this product/changing this process?"

On a related note, let's perhaps it's time to rethink the relationship between work and place.

I'm proud to be a part of a company that isn't merely rethinking energy consumption, but is living it with programs like Sun's Open Work program, which I live every day. Briefly, two years ago we moved from Sun HQ and San Francisco up to Portland; I now work from the home office; we ditched one car; I spend (an estimated) four seconds commuting; and I see far more of my family than I would if I were stuck in traffic for two hours a day, so on and so forth. I'd tell you more if Mary hadn't already done such a great job preaching this gospel and if the EPA hadn't said so on their own. But the point is Sun is one of the best companies on earth to work for in so many ways, and it's changed my life for the better. I'm grateful and proud.

( Nov 21 2005, 01:50:55 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

"The best high school arts program in the US"

The New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts is scheduled to get the axe as part of the frustrating ongoing saga that is/was/will be Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

NOCCA's role in developing and promoting the arts is legendary -- I'd kill to have a place like this for my kids. Unfortunately New Orleanians may not have a chance to keep the flame alive, which is especially sad considering the role of NOCCA in a city that's struggling to reestablish its identity.

McSweeney's has more on this place they call "the best high school arts program in the US," and has a few simple suggestions on how you can help.

( Nov 21 2005, 01:09:23 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Monday November 14, 2005

The good and bad from a break on Maui.

I just returned from a few days in Maui. It wasn't nearly long enough, but it was good enough to transform me from employee into citizen (okay, tourist, actually). Yep -- I didn't think about work once, and it's been a long time since I've allowed that to happen.

(After all, when you can work from anywhere, and I do, then you start that slippery slide that begins with a little Treo-mail-check in the airport, then moves on to a three-day-work-play trip to a relative's city, and finally you reach a point where the lines are blurry beyond all that is good and true.)

Point is, the reset button has been pressed and my snorkel mask has been defogged -- something we all need now and then but so seldom take care of.

Enough banter. Here's the beef: top themes from a very touristy four-night trip to Maui's West Coast, where we spent most our time:

The good:
1. Maui Downhill. 38 miles from mountain to beach, via bike. Breathtaking.
2. Mama's Fish House. Our first non-resort meal turned out to be our best.
3. Snorkeling at Black Rock, Ka'anapali Beach. World-class snorkeling, just few steps from our place. Not bad for this beginner.


The bad:
1. Westin Maui's oh-so-thick, persistent push for timeshares, which started the moment we arrived and didn't end until we left. Peeps: if I'm paying you an arm and a leg to stay at your hotel, give me at least 24 hours to enjoy it before you ask me for my other arm and leg.
2. Westin Maui's oh-so-thin walls. Funny, the sign outside didn't say Holiday Inn. I coulda sworn...ah nevermind.
3. Theme music. Why is it that nine out of ten restaurants want to remind you that you're in Maui by playing (usually cruddy) island music? I'd think the wind in the palms and the lapping of the waves would do the trick. Then again, often this music would come from speakers that were actually embedded within a palm tree, so it's clear I'm way off base here. Apparently I'm getting old.

One more link: we stopped in at the Sea House at the Napili Kai yesterday for an afternoon drink, but stayed for a couple hours later than we expected. It's one of the last places in Maui to have been built directly on the water. I dunno if it was the slowww pace, the lack of background music (see above ;-) or the potent fancy blue cocktails, but I look forward to visiting there again.

That's it for now. Drop me a line when you're ready to go, and I'll happily tag along. Maybe I'll even bring my laptop.

( Nov 14 2005, 05:24:06 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Wednesday November 02, 2005

Funny newsletter from Dreamhost

This, good friends, deserves the word-of-mouth attention that I'm giving it. It's the newsletter from Dreamhost, the hosting firm I use for non-work stuff. And it's everything but your boilerplate, soulless blast that most coporations send out. Enjoy.

To: "noel franus"
From: "DreamHost October Newslettery"
Subject: DreamHost Newsletter v7.10
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 18:48:28 -0800 (PST)

0. Introduction.
1. Close Your Own Account!
2. User Creation/Deletion/Changes Happen Fast!
3. Sarged!
4. New Charities!
5. DHSOTM

########################################################################
0. Introduction.

BOO! Yet another frightening edition of this, the October 2005 DreamHost newsletter, for your candy-eating enjoyment begins now!

You know what's weird? Ever since I graduated from college I don't remember ever having a single trick or treater at ONE of the five houses I've lived in. I don't know if it's just the neighborhoods I've been living in, the "trick or treaters not welcome" sign, the foul smell or what, but nary a ghost and goblin has darkened my doorstep since the late 90s.

Every year it's the same old thing, 5 pounds of candy wasting in a bowl October 31st turns into 10 pounds of fat rolling on my waist November 1st. But THIS YEAR would be different! I was determined to get trick or treaters at my door by hook or by crook! This newsletter depended on it.

My first step, right at 5pm, was to don my Michael Jackson costume. Because, when it comes to thrilling the kiddies, ain't nothing more killer than Thriller!

But, by 5:10pm I was still waiting for my first bite. Apparently the children were less than Thriller-ed... and I was starting to get desperate. What was wrong? Why no customers? And then it hit me! It had to be that my candy selection (dum dums and cheese whiz) wasn't up to snuff. I knew exactly what to do to spice it up.. I quickly hit up the closest ATM and zipped back to my house.. and by 5:24 I had a big sign up on the sidewalk that read:

'Attention Trick or Treaters!
Special, tonight only:
I pay $20 per kid!!
-- "Michael Jackson"
(P.S. I'm desperate!)'

Now I *knew* I'd have a line of adorable little costumed creatures at my door within ten minutes that stretched clear around the block!

But by 5:32 I was getting nervous again.. STILL no candy (or crisp Jacksons) had made their way from my fun bucket into the joyful little goody bags I saw bounding everywhere ELSE on the block. Was I more of a "dum dum" than the suckers I was trying to give away? More of a sucker than my dum dums? What did the other houses on my street have that I didn't?! How could they get group after group of happy kiddies while I listened to nothing but loop after endless loop of "Darkness crawls across the land, the midnight hour is close at hand, creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize y'alls neighborhood."?

And then it hit me! Again! All the houses getting trick or treaters on our street were decorated in some sort of selection of scary seasonal scenery. And my house was as boring and mundane as always! Perhaps there is was an unwritten rule nobody ever bothered to teach me? Decorated house == trick or treaters welcome? Boring house == stay far from? Maybe kids actually put weight into that classic line, "The scarier the landing, the greater the candy-ing!"

I definitely had to scarify my house, and I had to do it fast! But how?! It was too late to head over to my local party supply store and I couldn't really borrow any scary stuff from any neighbors. They're still not speaking to me after Tuesday's pumpkin cannon incident.

And then it hit me! Ouch! I dashed to the back yard and headed straight to my barbed wire cage where I kept my Dobermans "S***head" and "Iron Balls McGinty"! I took them around front and tied them up right on my porch, then placed the candy bowl about three inches in front of the furthest spot they could reach when straining all the way on their leashes. HA! There's NOTHING scarier than that...

I can't wait to see how many trick or treaters I get NOW!

########################################################################
1. Close Your Own Account!

After that huuuuuge and completely irrelevant introduction, I'm sure right now a lot of you are thinking "What's the quickest way to close my account?" Not to mention, "No amount of great web hosting at affordable prices is worth this kind of torture on a monthly basis."

(Well... you know, you don't *have* to close your entire account to stop getting this newsletter... just scroll down to the bottom of this email for instructions on unsubscribing. If you DO still want to close your account with us though, WE don't want to know about it! It's just too depressing.)

Which is WHY we've now made it possible for you to close your own account directly from the control panel with no interaction from us! You just go to:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts

Then click the "close account" link, and follow the instructions from there! Easy as pie! No tricks nor treats involved at all.

Now, hurry right over there and please do not use this feature ever!

########################################################################
2. User Creation/Deletion/Changes Happen Fast!

For those of you who didn't just go and close your account with us, here are some other new features we've added which will have close to zero effect on your day-to-day site and email operations.

Now when you make, destroy, or change any server users (including email accounts) the changes happen much faster! What used to take sometimes as long as an hour or two should now always happen within a few minutes!

This isn't really a new _feature_ per se, more like an incremental _improvement_ of an old feature, but in case the introduction didn't clue you in, this month's newsletter pickin's are pretty sparse!

########################################################################
3. Sarged!

Speaking of which, we finally finished "Sargifying" all our shared web hosting servers this month! "Sarge" is the newest version of the Debian Linux operating system we run, and it was a pretty big project to upgrade our hundreds of servers in a way that minimized each individual server's downtime.

Now that that's out of our hair we've got plenty of time to work on the kind of things that will make the November newsletter introduction shorter... actual new features!

########################################################################
4. New Charities!

Well, as it turned out, I wasn't able to give out ANY Halloween candy last night. But it's not a total charity-loss for me though, because today is time again to switch our DreamHost Charities at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.charity

The last two months we had the Red Cross Hurricane Katrina relief and the open source blogging software "WordPress". Overall we got 34 donations to WordPress for a total of $489.89 which we then matched for a total of $978.78.. and we got 261 donations for a total of $20,992.10 for the Red Cross; the most we've ever gotten for any cause ever by an order of magnitude!

We matched that and donated a total of $41,984.20 to the cause.. ($30,000 of which we already sent back in September) way to go Charitable DreamHost Customers!

And, now's your chance to donate to two new charities for the next two new months. They are Habitat for Humanity and the FreeBSD foundation.. one builds free homes and the other free bsds.

########################################################################
5. DHSOTM

Uh oh, I'm down to the last section of the newsletter and I still haven't written anything funny. Too late now I guess. Or is it...?

FART!

Ha ha ha hah ahhahah ha! I did it! The newsletter is another uproarious comedy success! Somehow, month after month, one way or another, I keep managing to pull it out. It's absolutely amazing! What else is absolutely amazing? Somehow, for the first time in I think two full months, a completely flash-driven site has won our DreamHost Site of the Month contest:

http://www.zephyrsyndicate.com/

Is a "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"-esque site for a group of Chicagoans who apparently do nifty artsy stuff as their business. Check everything out, except for maybe the animation videos which are HUGE files and may very well break the Internets if you click on them.

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Is where to go to submit your OWN fart site under the harsh light of peer review in a vain attempt to reach the pleasing glow of being featured last in some future hilarious installment of this very DreamHost newsletter!

########################################################################
10-15 pounds heavier,
Josh!

P.S. Thought I forgot?

https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

is the place to go to unsubscribe from this newsletter without also closing your entire hosting account!

( Nov 02 2005, 09:38:56 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Tuesday October 25, 2005

San Francisco. In Jell-o.

...includes fog factor and the Bay Bridge.

( Oct 25 2005, 08:31:19 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday October 21, 2005

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Career Version

Mark Hurst @ Good Experience knows what it takes to get you promoted: just a little face time with your customers. And your boss. I couldn't agree more.

( Oct 21 2005, 10:06:34 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday October 19, 2005

Pop!Tech 2005

Pop!Tech 2005 starts today, October 20. Though I couldn't make it there, fortunately the entire event is being streamed free, and viewers can participate online: send questions and comments for speakers to live@poptech.org.

Additional highlights (culled from the Z+Blog):

This year's theme: "Grand Challenges" -- addressing issues like the cataloging of the world's true genetic diversity; transforming our approach to development and disaster relief; exploring the future of desktop fabrication; speculating about the future impact of China; inventing the world's first completely synthetic organism; and dozens of others.

Also meet Jesse Sullivan, the first bionic man...or take a guided tour of Saturn with the chief imaging scientist of the Cassini missions.

More: PopTech is partnering with the United Nations and Sun Microsystems to bring 12 young pan-African technology and development thought leaders to the conference as "Participation Age Fellows." The day *after* the conference (Sunday, October 23), we'll be convening (and filming) a roundtable discussion with the Fellows on the future of Africa and the role of technology within it.

( Oct 19 2005, 09:31:37 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday October 06, 2005

Jumping on the Ning Train

Damn, this sounds interesting.

"Welcome to the Ning Playground Beta. Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications. Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people."

If only I were an actual developer. Skill, feh. I signed up for it anyway...

( Oct 06 2005, 08:27:42 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Friday September 30, 2005

OpenCourseWare Finder

As heard over at MonkeyFilter:

Take University Courses for free over the Web. Type in your subject. Check out the courses available. Now you to can study cognitive robotics at MIT, pathophysicology of infectious diseases at Tufts, or causal and statistical reasonaing at Carnegie-Mellon. Or how about some artsier stuff?

Not a bad way for blowing a few hours on a weekend, is it?

(Pardon the recently fluffy posts. It's just an indication of life out of balance. Which is just fine every now and then.)

( Sep 30 2005, 04:31:57 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday September 29, 2005

Darwin awards for Marketing

Sadly, there are no Darwin Awards for Marketing. But if there were, Dell might qualify for the first round. Enjoy.

( Sep 29 2005, 12:26:41 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Tuesday September 20, 2005

Twelve days away

You miss me. Go on, say it. If you won't, then I will. (I see I already did.) Great! Welcome back. Glad to have you, ye of the interesting and interested.

Okay, on with the show. Let's recap: a tumultous few weeks thinking about New Orleans (too many painful facets, still unresolved, but a tad more upbeat if you can't tell); a fascinating conference in Keystone, Colorado for ThinkAbout (hosted by Pine & Gilmore, the Experience Economy gurus and featuring Tom Peters [TP event slides here]); Mom and Dad come to town for ten days starting tonight; and there's the Sun Brand Summit down in Santa Clara on Thursday.

Oh, and yes, there's work. That thing we do.

Nonetheless, my brain runneth over. Plenty to discuss here in the next few days, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, link it up:

Semapedia: Place-marking via cellphone. (Yes, it's technology you already own.)
THR: The Future of Entertainment. (One word: Participate.)
Mark Hurst: How to Start Customer Research. (Hint: it doesn't involve surveys.)

Talk with you soon, kids.

( Sep 20 2005, 02:15:20 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday September 08, 2005

Don't just sit there. Save the world.

Okay all you brilliant developers, programmers, creatives, designers, and the like -- here's your chance to participate in something far bigger than any specific product or package of solutions ever could. This is your chance to help eliminate the digital divide...it's the very first face-to-face meeting for Recovery 2.0.

The aim, again, is to bring together smart people trying to do good things so we can do them better, not to create any giant organization and bureacracy (we already have FEMA and we know how well that’s working…).

The brainstorming begins October 6 in San Francisco. Spread the word. Hope you can make it.

( Sep 08 2005, 05:41:01 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

82nd Airbone Surprises NOLA ISP

I'm growing weary of the New Orleans links. I'm frustrated, sad, raging and tired, yet there's little I can say that isn't already being said out there. However, this story is certainly worth passing on:

Intercosmos/DirectNIC, that ISP whose team stuck it out in New Orleans' Central Business District (already mentioned here), was given a surprise visit yesterday by the 82nd Airborne.

I asked them to sweep the building for us. And they did. All 27 floors of it with no elevators.

What a nightmare. Thanks to Sun's Mike Belch for the pointer.

( Sep 08 2005, 09:48:23 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday September 07, 2005

Rethinking relief

Jeff Jarvis is asking the BHAG questions that need to be asked: how do we rethink relief? What are we capable of? Apparently much more than what's out there.

Let’s be honest: The web, too, was not fully prepared for the disaster of Katrina. If we’d truly learned the lessons of the tsunami and even 9/11, there was more we could have done to be ready to help.

I would like to see us convene a meeting to bring together the best of the web — software, hardware, infrastructure, media, money — to start to gather around needs and solutions. Maybe these should be a series of Meetups. Or why not convene a session around Web 2.0?

...Someone...looked at this as one big system, impossible to build. I said that’s 1.0 thinking. This is about people doing what they do in a distributed way but just trying to get them to swarm together around standards, links, ideas, and so on. That’s 2.0.

( Sep 07 2005, 04:17:24 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Tuesday September 06, 2005

Front-page landscape, midday September 6

Here's a look at the front pages of a scattering of sites, ranging from the New Orleans Times Picayune to the national media outlets to FEMA and the White House. It's interesting to see the subtle differences in how each outlet communicates the latest.

( Sep 06 2005, 12:36:26 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]