Random

By chance, I hit the Internet Archive Wayback Machine today and noticed that The River actually has entries dating back as far as 1998.

I remember that design… the first after I actually learned how (somewhat) to use PhotoShop.

I’m so pleased Jason “Trickster” Chervokas has turned his sharp mind and excellent writing to the subject of media again. If only because I can link to it from this, my very neglected blog, and chime in with agreement. Of course, I’m not the only one linking. Fred has shared an applicable personal experience, as well.

I had a conversation the other day with a guy a bit younger than myself, who didn’t believe people (specifically young people, like college-aged and teen-aged) would pay for media. I think they will — maybe not those folks but their parents, for sure, if it’s priced reasonably — if they can access it on their terms. I find myself not buying from iTunes nowadays, when I used to do so fairly regularly, because the proprietary format doesn’t play on my TiVo. (BTW, I tried the Apple device, whose name I forget, to play iTunes songs on my stereo, and it sucks, at least for PC users.)

UPDATE: Tom has some thoughts, too.

Spotted near a Berkeley soccer field/skatepark — a silver Lexus SUV with California license plate “RSS”. Anyone we know? I know Dave Winer‘s recently moved to Berkeley, but does he drive a Lexus? (Sorry no photo. Cameraphone’s batteries were dead.)

UPDATE: Only on today’s Internet would I be able to actually determine that it’s definitely not Dave Winer’s car. How? Because he posted on Amyloo’s community car roll. (He used to drive a Lexus, but no more…)

Ever since I’ve been trying to download Google Earth (for 2 days), I’ve been informed it’s “temporarily” closed. Bummer.

Google Earth downloads temporarily delayed

Thanks for your interest in Google Earth, but we’re sorry we can’t offer you a download right now. As you know, Google Earth is in beta, and we’re still building out our ability to take on new users. We’re making good progress, and expect to be able to accept new downloads shortly, so we recommend you check back daily at earth.google.com. We hope to be able to welcome you and other new planet surfers soon.

Fred posts today on “the big Rolodex.” (Interesting how the brand name sticks around even when the products themselves don’t.)

Spent a bit of time recently myself (following Brad’s lead, actually) migrating things to Plaxo and trying to de-dupe an Outlook address book that’s been mangled by years of trying to synch with Palms, my phone’s Symbian OS, Yahoo! Mail, etc. It’s scary.

Anyway, Fred has some interesting thoughts, which echo my own, about the quality of contacts, the recency of contacts, etc. It’s been a really interesting experience to shift coasts recently and find that “local” contacts are now far away, and “distant” contacts are now right around the corner.

I’m headed to Los Angeles to talk e-mail marketing to a group of folks from AGI. Will be there this evening and tomorrow. Looking forward to discussing interactive marketing with folks with a lot of experience in direct. Change of scene will be good, too.