Salutor

Geek Infancy

I remember well the heated debates between myself and my 7th-grade classmates as to the relative superiority of the Commodore 64 vs the Apple IIe (CNET article).

I was a Commodore 64 owner, complete with cassette-tape drive. And weren't all my debates then heated?

Up late on the radio

Having just returned from a week in the mountains I am staying up late tonight to do an interview on the David Lawrence show, a radio show based in LA carried on XM Radio. Never fear, it is also available by Podcast, although my appearance is not likely to be worth spending your pocket change to purchase. The topic will be a recent study of the most annoying Internet terms and I will be appearing as a spokesperson for the Blooker Prize. Cough, cough.

Heilemann profiles Jobs

This is strictly for geeks, but John Heilemann gives us a nice profile of Steve Jobs on the brink of the iPhone release, which could signify the next phase of the consumer electronics boom or end up as another skirmish site in the cell phone wars: The iPhone Inaugurates a Dangerous New Era for Apple Boss Steve Jobs -- New York Magazine

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Genealogy As Social Networking

Geni.com: Genealogy meets social networking meets wikis would be an even more apt description.

I just ran across Geni, a site that facilitates the gathering of family information using the  techniques honed by social media applications like MySpace, Friendster, and LinkedIn. It combines effective networking with a very, very powerful database and killer use of the programming language Ajax (that allows people to edit elements of websites by clicking on different parts of the screen). The genius of this site is that it is incredibly quick for a visitor to jot down what he does know about his family and to leave it until later for himself or other family members to fill in the details. Geni even skips the account creation step by automatically assigning a password as soon as a visitor begins editing. Editing is collaborative (my brother might correct the date I listed as my parents' anniversary) like a wiki. Within 24 hours of joining, I--and the small number of relatives whose emails I have handy--have populated over 60 family members with next to no real effort.

This company has a fair bit of buzz and while I have yet to poke around much in the clippings, see:

• Geni.com’s approach to social networking (Bambi Francisco)
• Different Approaches to the Semantic Web, by Tim O'Reilly
• $100 Million Valuation For Geni (TechCruch, March 5, 2007)

New Project: ChapelHillNeighbor.org

Still very much in the beta stage: ChapelHillNeighbor.org, a centralized resource for mailing lists and neighborhood links of interest to folks living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Wish me luck (or email if you'd like to help). Part of my goal here is to see how far I can get using only free Google Apps.

2007 New Yorker Conference to have a technology focus

This year's New Yorker Conference looks to have a technology focus, which is interesting to some of us. I can't imagine this will draw quite the crowds that previous New Yorker conferences have drawn, events that included pop culture celebrities like Steve Martin and Stephen King as well as the John Updike-types a New Yorker crowd might expect. This year's event, on the other hand, will include geek hero Craig Newmark.

But wait...

As I look more closely at this, it becomes clear to me that The New Yorker CONFERENCE is completely different from The New Yorker FESTIVAL, which does in fact include pop and literary celebrities.

Hmmm. Poor search engine optimization on the pages -- a natural complement to their rotten web marketing strategy to date -- make it a bit hard to tell without digging.

[Note that a blog called Art Fag City fails to share my excitement.]