Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Pictures: Flagstaff to Albuquerque to Amarillo. 

Dare Obasanjo: "I want less formats not more." Same here. 

Just went for a walk in Amarillo. A couple of observations. Everywhere you go there are God Bless America signs. Also, everywhere you go, the town smells of cow manure. Seriously. It really does. Here's what I say. God Bless Amarillo. 

Heard an interview on the radio today with a country music star whose name I didn't catch. Here's the deal on Iraq from their point of view. The bastards attacked the US. Let's fuck em. Hard. We're Americans, we don't put up with that kind of shit. Get out of our way mofo, this is Texas. I wish it had been two-way cause I would have said that I was surprised they were so territorial about NYC. I thought you guys hated east coast liberals. Why don't you wait until the attack Texas before getting so damned angry. And by the way, you didn't get Osama, you fucking pussies. 

5:30PM Central: Arrived safely in Amarillo, TX. 

Zack Rosen's advice for news orgs in the age of citizen journalism.  

See also: How to Make Money on the Internet v2.0.  

Things are really starting to fall into place. I may understand why people seem to write me out of the stories of mine they rewrite. Mitch Kapor says we're all spending our careers implementing Dave Winer's ideas. That's nice but I always implement my ideas first, and sometimes it takes an amazingly long time for the cloners to clone them, and they usually don't get it right, and that includes Mitch. I kinda wish he'd work with me, rather than keep trying to take over my ideas. But it's nice now that he's giving me credit, he didn't used to. Anyway, talking with Adam yesterday I remarked that people seem to like getting ideas from him, but they don't like getting them from me. Then I talked with Scoble at length, and he said something similar about himself, that he works hard to be liked, and that I don't. The weird thing is that Scoble is just beginning to get the taste of people not liking him, but any good editor will tell you something's wrong if you're a reporter and everyone likes you. And if we're citizen journalists, I guess we have to get used to this. Anyway, it's really hard to get motivated to deliver more innovative shit, knowing that it's going to be just as hard the 53rd time to get people to suspend their disbelief as it was the 1st. It's not surprising that Fortune skipped our contribution. I'm constantly written out of the story of my creative life. Should I continue? Why? This is one of the things I'm thinking about while driving. 

BTW, I love Adam and Scoble like brothers. 

One more BTW, I think I figured out where the silent parts of my podcasts come from. I think if I uninstall Replay Radio, they'll go away. If I get the time I'll try it tonight. 

Postscript: Uninstalling Replay Radio did the trick. I did a ten minute audio test and it worked. No breaks. If you're interested in escort services in Amarillo, this is a must-listen! 

12:15PM: Innovation. I bought a 62-day subscription for wifi at TA truck stops. They have a good connect, and enough stops so I can check my mail at lunchtime, and also get some food and more caffeine. I'm actually getting good at this. Anyway, I'm in Santa Rosa, NM, the eastern side of the state, almost in the Texas panhandle. Rolling desert.  

Not in the blogging groove today. Everything's okay. The desert is as beautiful as ever. Next stop, Texas, then Oklahoma. 

Three things 

Actually it turns out I do have a few things on my mind.

First, the scale of the human tragedy of the tsunami. An interview on CNN with a young rock climber from Hawaii, vacationing in Thailand, talks about how only a few of her colleagues died. In normal times, the few that died would be the story. Many of the people they interview are shaking and crying, many hours after the tragedy. It's the rare thing, a real story involving human beings.

Second, think about the billions we're spending on Iraq, and for what? The Republicans who defend the war say Iraqis were suffering under Saddam, okay, this is a lot of suffering and unlike the Iraqi suffering, this has a solution, money spent here will rebuild and there won't be "insurgents" to tear down the repairs and kill our people as they try to help.

Third, and I know there's no chance of this making a difference, maybe the Iraqis could put down their guns, stop beheading people, stop blowing things up, elect a damned government, and let us leave so we can have a future and so we can help when other tragedies happen. I'm sorry we invaded, and I'm sorry we re-elected the monster that invaded you. Now we have to go. It's just a feeling I have. The problems of the Iraqis seem so small when compared to the problems of Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia. The problem in Iraq is in their minds. Can't they solve it? We sure can't.

Thanks 

Thanks to Ed Cone for remembering that the app that made the Scoble Revolution possible wasn't developed at Microsoft, and wasn't honored by PC Magazine either. Seems we could learn something about how new software ideas enter the culture, and maybe it won't matter what Fortune or PC Mag thinks. That's what I'm hoping for.

It's amazing to me that the Fortune authors weren't curious to know how this culture entered Microsoft. They only got part of the story. Reading the article you'd think it was Bill Gates's idea. I suppose he gets the credt for letting it happen. But he wasn't the innovator. If I were a reader of their mag I might wonder who was and how it happened.