Shall we have a bloggers meetup in NYC next week? 

Note, the password on the wiki is hotpasta. 

The San Francisco Chronicle tries to write about the Silicon Valley Asshole Society, a late-80s early-90s phenomenon. Its name was chosen so as to make it impossible for press people to write about it. I think Marc Canter was kicked out because we knew it would piss him off. And everyone said they were the founder of the society. That was the nature of the group. BTW, I was the actual founder, along with Stewart Alsop and Guy Kawaksaki.  

Mary Hodder recommends a conference on DRM in March in Berkeley. Reviewing the schedule, it seems there's plenty of discussion and advocacy of DRM but not much dissent. Imho there's no DRM in our future. It's like discussing OpenDoc and OLE in the years the web was gaining traction. Podcasting and RSS point the way for media in the age of the Internet. BTW, I'm pretty sure Mary would agree. 

The President wants to send more troops to Iraq. Almost no one else thinks this makes sense. Will civil disobedience follow? 

Five things you didn't know about me 

I've finally been tagged, by Maryam Scoble, who I saw on Sunday at the lasagna dinner. So here they are, five things that you didn't know about me.

1. The women in my family are beautiful and powerful. My mother has a PhD and she doesn't take any shit. Her mission is to get all the buses in NYC to turn off their engines when idling, and she's winning. She played a role in integrating the schools in the neighborhood I grew up in. Her picture was once on the front page of the NY Times walking my little brother to school in Corona, which is a black neighborhood adjacent to Jackson Heights, the neighborhood we lived in. One of her cousins was the famous 40s box office bombshell and geek, Hedy Lamarr.

2. My brother lives in Los Altos and has three kids, and is married to the VP-marketing of Filmloop.

3. My iPod has every song recorded by Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello and the Beatles.

4. Some people think that one of the reasons I kept this blog going is because I am in a fight with Mike Arrington, but this is not true. I like Mike, he's helped me many times, he's intensely loyal, under a lot of stress, and I absolutely do not hold anything like a grudge with him. I never want to fight with Mike, but I don't always agree with him.

5. I might write a book. I have to learn how to write an outline and a proposal, and then after that comes the task of writing the book itself. I already have an agent, and there are publishers that are excited about it.

Now I have to tag five other people.

Amyloo, Doc Searls, John Palfrey, Keith Teare, Mike Arrington.

Two notes about TV shows 

My parents were here for the lasagna dinner on Sunday and for breakfast on Monday. My dad, as usual, is full of stories. Apparently he's been watching Dr. Phil, because he quotes him all the time. "What were you thinking?" is the punchline of many of his tales. It's often a good question.

For no special reason, I want to say that Deal or No Deal has become my favorite TV show. Ever since Howie Mandel made an appearance on Studio 60, I've been tuning in whenever I can. It's a very nice show. A little math and a lot of spunk.

The last post on the Google API 

We were excited when the Google API came online, we waited for them to come up with a licensing plan that would allow developers to build Internet-scale applications using the API. Today, the wait is over, and it's not good news.

Google is deprecating the API, which means, for now, they will continue to implement their side of it, but they won't be issuing new keys, and presumably we should not wait for a business plan. This leaves the door open to others -- my recommendation would be to support the API as-is so that developers who have built on it can just change the name of the server and their software works. Google blinked in search. Who would have thought such an opportunity would present itself. Seems a perfect opening for Amazon or Yahoo.

Postscript: The discussion here has taken an interesting turn.