Would it be news? 

I wonder if it would make news if The New Yorker article by Sy Hersh was the most pointed to page on the web.

Random evening pre-walk nonsense 

When John Furrier started Podtech I told him to open a permanent blogger's space with great production facilities South of Market in San Francisco near Moscone. The press room for SF tech bloggers (professional press would be welcome too). He did a strange rendition of the idea, not at all what I had in mind at CES, called Bloghaus. I mention it now, because Loic is doing almost exactly what I asked Furrier for. His place isn't close to Moscone, it's in Potrero Hill, not close enough to BART into the city to visit. But there is parking, and what Loic lacks in location he makes up in charm. There's much more to his story, I hope to get some stock, so I guess I should disclaim that up front.

Sy Hersh's New Yorker article on America's plans for war in Iran. Scary shit. Must read.

The Older link is back in Twitter, along with a surprise, the UI has been spruced up and made to work in Firefox. We are reluctant to complain about Twitter, so it's very nice when they fix problems we never complained about. I'm having lunch next Tuesday in NYC with Fred Wilson, and plan to talk a bit about Twitter then. Fred is the VC with the arrows in his back. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

The playoffs have started. The Mets are resting. I get work done when the Mets aren't in post-season play. The old silver lining thing. Wait till next year!

Communication is vital when there's an outage 

This morning a key element of the Twitter user interface went missing, the "older" link at the bottom of every page. Without it, it's as if there was no past. Unless you're glued to Twitter around the clock, or follow very few people, you're going to miss some of what's happening. I like to keep up with it all. There was lots of speculation about where it went, and whether the disappearance was temporary or permanent.

At some point during the morning, a post appeared on the Twitter weblog explaining: "This is not a permanent change." Okay. That's good news. I was seriously thinking about what life would be like without Twitter, and didn't like the feeling. Now I know at some point the link is coming back, and the functionality behind it (also missing temporarily) and I can relax.

While you're deep in the server logs, and trying to figure out what's going wrong, it's hard to remember that there are people out there wondering what's going on. Over time, the frustration builds, but right now the Twitter community is still in its Happy To Use Something New phase, so everyone took it in stride and with good humor.

Suggestion: There's this perfect space on every user's page where they can communicate with the users. Make it easy for the staff to quickly post a note there, perhaps saying nothing more more that "we're working on it" -- to help keep the users in the loop.

Introducing Loic's new company