Thursday, December 14, 2006

Valleywag's nine best business moves of 2006. Heh. 

Om Malik eulogizes Al Shugart. Amen brother! 

Classic rambly rant from Monsieur Marquis de Canter.  

Scoble: "Google is delivering the Web goods and is taking over more and more of my life." 

Bruce Schneier: "Passwords are getting better." 

Doc Searls: "Henrietta's is for politics and media what Bucks Woodside is for venture capital." 

Aaron Swartz: "Google hires programmers straight out of college and tempts them with all the benefits of college life." 

An apology sent to all This I Believe essayists. Good move. I think it may have been Romenesko getting in the loop that caused them to take this more seriously.  

Dale O'Gorman asks the power question: "Why can't we be both the vendor and the customer?" Exactly. Master this concept and you've mastered commerce for the 21st century.  

Geek News: "No hard questions for Bill Gates?" My guess is that Bill Gates still likes hard questions, but the rest of Microsoft doesn't.  

Paolo, who was at Le Web 3, says it was a mixed experience, neither wholly positive or negative.  

Coming out ahead 

I woke up this morning with a desire to heal all the wounds of the world, to settle the war in Iraq, help the Republicans and Democrats get along, and help Mike Arrington make peace with Jeff, Rafat and Sam Sethi.

But first, on healing the wounds of the world.

I had lunch yesterday with Lance Knobel, a longtime friend, blogger, and by a very lucky coincidence, fellow Berkeleyite. Things like that happen in Berkeley, friends who used to live on another continent show up here. Berkeley, therefore, borrows cultural elements from all over the world because it's so international, and yet, it's a very small place, where everyone seems to know everyone else (or getting that way for me, since I am a new arrival myself).

Before Lance came over, Sylvia showed up with a NY Times article she wanted me to read, and her accomplished friend Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org. Joan is busy but she still wants to decorate my house. Passionately. One of the reasons I love my house so much is that passionate and intelligent women want to decorate it. Me, I like colors and scenery, that's how my mind works. And wires. I really like wires. No joke, that.

Anyway, Joan is thinking about the same things I am thinking about, in her own context. Get this -- she's co-hosting a conference on mothering issues, in Charleston, SC, women from the Christian Coalition! Wow. That's so cool. I'll get you some pointers in a bit.

Now back to Arrington. I can't help it, I love the guy. I see recent events as an awkward statement on his part that he needs friends, and needs help. I would never turn down something like that, because long before he became an Internet superstar, he was very supportive and helpful and encouraging, so I know he has it in him, and I want to help that part of who he is come back to the surface.

I wrote a bunch more about this in response to a post he made yesterday, one that I'm ashamed to say a friend of mine wrote. Let's just say he was having a Bad Hair Day, and move on from there. (Of course there's the matter of a guy who got fired, he can't move on quite so easily, and I'd like to see that have a happy ending too.)

I don't think Dave Jacobs will mind me saying that, when he was terribly sick two years ago, waiting for a kidney transplant (the word "waiting" itself a cruel joke on the process) there was a time or two his anger got directed to places it didn't belong. I remember saying that I don't care how mean you are, I'm still your friend, nothing is going to change that. I understand how frustrating life can be sometimes, and know that if I stand with someone and offer my strength in a moment of weakness, there's a chance they'll survive and we'll get to an even better place. We recently celebrated the two year anniversary of Dave's new life, and I gotta say it was easily worth any small pain I had to endure. Easily, easily.

So it's easy to move on from where we're at. Arrington is a good guy going through some tough times. Shit happens. My guess is that Jarvis feels the same, and maybe the three of us should get together for a dinner sometime soon, we're long overdue for an Old Farts Genius Network meeting.