Wednesday, September 07, 2005

An amazing Netflix experience. Yesterday at 4PM, I dropped two movies in a mailbox in Berkeley. They were addressed to Netflix in Daytona Beach. This morning I got an email saying they had been received and this evening they mailed my next two movies, claiming they'd be here tomorrow. Wow. 

Boing Boing now has distracting graphic ads in its RSS feed. So far it's just making it hard to scan their blog posts, but if it starts interfering as I scan others, I'll unsub. It'll be the second feed I said goodbye to because of annoying item-level ads. It's Feedburner again. Why they don't give users a way to opt out of these ads is beyond me.  

Ed Cone points to a timeline of Katrina events. 

News.com: "Apple Computer on Wednesday rolled out a cell phone capable of playing music and accessing iTunes." 

They also announced a new iPod. 

Steve Domas: "I just couldn't take it and went down to N.O. today. And I'm very heartened. Uptown, Warehouse District, and CBD are dry." 

Scoble: "Steve Gillmor has this whole industry wrong." 

The problem with authority these days is that they love themselves more than those they serve. George Bush praises the bureaucrats, you're doing a great job Bob, so are you Mike. Keep up the good work Pete. But wait a minute. People are dying. Are they doing a great job too? I guess if we interviewed them they might not say that they're too busy right now to talk about who or what killed them. Maybe they wouldn't be so happy with the president, maybe they wouldn't find his excuses very convincing. Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans is an exception, maybe he wasn't always so, but he is now. Same with the Times-Picayune. Times of major need can shake foundations and change things and wake people up. Too bad these things don't change before the levees break. 

Hurricane Ophelia public advisory. The feed.  

Rogers Cadenhead: "I awoke this morning to 40 mph winds from an outer band of Tropical Storm Ophelia." 

All day yesterday I wondered if the world had finally come to its senses and denied Apple the huge unfair public relations advantage it has garnered by turning every secretive announcement into a rumor festival. I thought their announcement was yesterday. Maybe they're getting the same treatment of other technology companies, I wondered. I even went into an Apple store. And a Cingular store. No sign of anything new. Hmmm. Foolish me, I was off by one day. Hurricane or no, the rumor mill is churning. I refuse to get caught up in the foolishness. I refuse, I say. Then why am I pointing to a BBC article with speculation on what Apple's announcement might be? Arrrrrgh. 

Steve Gillmor: "What, you say, no word processor?" 

Oprah Winfrey: "This should not have happened."