Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Washington Post: "Maynor said the two have found at least two similar flaws in device drivers for wireless cards either designed for or embedded in machines running the Windows OS. Still, the presenters said they ultimately decided to run the demo against a Mac due to what Maynor called the 'Mac user base aura of smugness on security.'" 

Alive in Baghdad, a site that features Iraqi videobloggers, was profiled on Rocketboom today. 

Jason Calacanis on the pre-conference at Wikimania: "No venture capitalists, no headhunters, no PR people, and most importantly no CEOs!" 

New directory: PR and marketing podcasts. 

Today's NY forecast: "Mostly sunny this morning. Then partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon. Hazy. Hot and humid with highs around 103." 

Yahoo has a corporate weblog. Subscribed.  

Frank Paynter on the men at BlogHer. Someday I hope we'll just be able to laugh without wondering if it's politically correct. 

I drove to the airport today, thinking I'd get there faster than I would with BART (I was running a little late). Nope. Even with very modest traffic on the Bay Bridge, it took 1.5 hours from my front door to the American Airlines terminal, compared with 1 hour via BART. And BART is much cheaper, and less stressful. I hate to sound like an ad for public transit, I was actually surprised by the result. Regardless, I made my flight, had an aisle seat, with power, so I was well entertained and comfortable.  

But I traded cool west coast weather for suffocating heat and humidity. It was 95 at 11:30PM when I got in. This is really going to be a taxing trip.  

Steve Rubel, a NYer trying to survive the heat, has word of podcasts from Metro Transit.  

Still basking in the glow 

If you want to get an idea what it was like at BlogHer, read Maryam Scoble's blog. (You have to scroll up after clicking on the links, MSN's permalinks take you to the comments, not the post.)

The bashing I've gotten on the web has done nothing to dim the glow of the conference. I'm wondering how much of a letdown Wikimania will be this weekend. I really want all my conferences, from now on, to be 97 percent women and 3 percent men.

Okay, Maryam (who's like family to me) says men don't notice the small touches, the clothes women wear, the paint on their faces and finger and toe nails. And I suppose that's true, somewhat.

But why did evolution make the women the flamboyant gender of our species? Aren't men more visual than women? I was talking about that on Sunday with Ponzi, when she and the Scobles and Paulls came over to look at my new house in Berkeley. Why are women so good at dressing up, and men care how their dates look; and women (think they) overlook the looks, and focus on other qualities. We got started talking about this because Ponzi suggested a date for me with someone I don't find attractive, even though she's smart and clever, and laughs at my jokes. What makes someone attractive, either gender, is pretty much a mystery.

Maryam thinks we don't notice how they dress up, but I don't know about that. Put me in a room with 700 women, and I really did think about the massive amounts of makeup that were consumed that morning, and how different that was from any other conference I'd been to. Of course maybe that's what Maryam is saying. Maybe there's some other way of looking at it? (Extreme example, yes, I see the irony.)

I said to Ponzi that I'm 75 percent gentleman and 25 percent Neanderthal. I think she was hoping I'd be 100 percent of her ideal a man, but I'm sorry, I still live in a cave, can't help it, it's in the genes.

It was a very sweet event, because women can be very sweet. I say that the same way women who like men tune into our sweetness. But the environment, now that we've returned to the web, has become bitter. Reacting to one of my posts, an angry man says that my attitudes are a throwback to something old, if so, I pity the young men, who don't see the love and beauty in women, or are afraid to talk about it. I wouldn't have said these things at the conference, because I don't yet trust the women not to bash when they get scared. And nothing scares people more than a man saying what he sees, even if what he sees is beauty and love.

I did speak once, and afterward a woman (one of the discussion leaders) said that I was expressing my female passion. I said "that sounds like a compliment." She said it was. But inside I wondered why she thought that, does she think men don't have passion? Does she understand that, while she was expressing a compliment, she was also putting down my gender? Would she have understood if I had said something negative about her gender, for example, if a woman was being analytic or solving a problem, that it was her maleness that was speaking? Hard to imagine that conversation taking place in 2006. This may be what makes Frank Paynter tremble.

I'm going to continue to believe that the bitter angry people are the outliers, and I'm going to stick with the love, and look for it in others. See the put-downs, and ageist and sexist attacks as people who are uncomfortable with males being happy or in love with females. I'm going to listen when my heart wells up thinking about all those courageous and beautiful women bloggers, who want something more than the cave, and the men who let women give us that.

At BloggerCon I said I wanted to speak about gender issues, and I don't think our BlogHer guests understood. To them, men always get to speak, about whatever we want. It's only natural to see the barriers that are in your way, the barriers that are in other people's way are invisible.

BlogHer was a demo of barrier-less discourse, for women. I think. And that men were welcomed, and that the women were glad we were there, was a surprise, and an unqualified good thing. But I can tell you that we're not all the way there yet. Maybe next time have a session at BlogHer with a panel of men on stage, and women in the audience. Just one out of the 20 panels. You might have a very hard time finding men who are willing to do it (not sure I would). But if you could, we might have our eyes opened, even further.

Bottom-line: We still have a ways to go before everyone is free to say what they see.

Via email from Jamie Parks 

Hi, my name is Jamie Parks, we are digital friends thru flickr. Right now it is Tuesday Aug 1st, 10:47pm Texas time. My girlfriend and I are about to start driving North for Harvard Law School to attend Wikimania.

But check this out, I just found out about wikimania thru ScriptingNews like yesterday. So I went to the wikimania-wiki to learn more about it and then saw that the registration period was closed.

I e-mailed the wikimania dudes but never heard back. Is there any way my girl and I can still get into this thing or are we out of luck this year?? I still plan on roadtripping either way. Let me know something if you got the time.