Manhattan Calling

Our world is falling apart at the seams but I take solace in the fact that in a mere 6 years there will be full cell service in the stations of the NYC subway, as announced today.

I wonder how the MTA will mess this up though. It only took 5 years to come up with the plan and then another 2 years to debate it. I take it there might be 45 minute delays getting calls through on Monday mornings because of there being "a red signal in front of us" or "due to an earlier incident" of which we will never be told the truth. Either that or they will decide to charge an auxiliary fare for those passengers carrying cell phones and then hike the fair each year claiming they need more money to maintain the stations now that the radiation from the cell spots is corroding the tracks. You know it will be something crazy. They can't do anything right. Ever. Period.

Cursed Missed Opportunities

Zimbra just got bought out by Yahoo. For $350 million. We could have had them for like 10 million back in the day, but no one listens to Jack.

What I hate the most about this is that it is clearly in response to Google and obviously a tremendous waste of some pretty good software. It had so much potential, its really heartbreaking. The motivations for the acquisition is really what hearts the most man--it's just a parry. I wonder what the future of the Open Source edition looks like now? I'm sure as Yahoo tries to enterprise it up and all it will slowly but surely start sucking exponentially.

Goodnight and Go

This is not my weekly update as promised, but two comments that I have to fire off real quick. First, yes, I finally got Facebook. I hate these social networking sites so damned much, but they are sure as hell a ton of fun. Why did I finally cave? Mainly its because I wanted to do some application stuff and you need an account for that, but otherwise, I don't know, I guess it is better than myspace and I guess I owe it to Mark anyway. So it's been cool finding friends on there that I haven't seen in like a decade and all the college buddies and all that. I'm a friendly person, so this works out well. Find me and add me if you feel the need to validate our acquaintance/friendship/relationship.

Second, regarding Chris' post about my comments regarding the car, when you're going 120 it only feels like 40. When you get up in the 150 range, it starts to feel like 50. God knows I would never do something so stupid as to take a picture while driving at any speed greater than 50! If you don't believe me about that though, I can pick you up on my way down from Nashua and you can experience this phenomenon first hand. All you need to do is make sure to get Boston PD to close off a stretch of highway for us. Alternatively, I can just run people over.

Finally, today is Jono Bacon's birthday. Now I know that those guys get a lot of crap from us sometimes, but in the realm of community builders and people bringer-togethers, Jono is a legend. Let's all wish him a great year and all the desires of his heart! Happy Birthday man.

A real weekly update coming tomorrow, since there is a lot of action going on today.

So Much to Say

Another summer has come and gone and the world is still spinning, silently but surely. That's kind of odd, I went away for a weeks and was almost certain that the earth would stand still. ;) Anyway, Jack is back, more relaxed, more committed than ever, more vigilant and now with a ruthless new machine, of which I will post pictures when it gets off the boat; and there is tons that needs doing. I'll post up an agenda later this week. and then updates on those tasks as they occur.

I've also made a commitment to myself to post at least one entry a week from now on until the foreseeable future. The reasons are twofold, first and foremost I would like to start keeping a decent record of my own comings an goings on in a public, searchable fashion. Second, I already do a ton of writing and most of it is kept privately in various journals and I want to start digitizing all that and so I might as well start posting the new stuff up here. And I think in the near future there will be a good reason for me to start blogging more often.

For now, the one thing I really need to focus on is my foundation which I chartered right before I left for Europe. I'll explain it a bit more detail in a later post, but the gist of the mission is to promote the use and re-mixing of free/open technology, open content, art and education to enrich the lives of people around the world and to help animate the creative spirit which is present within each and every single person. It's a new social revolution! That sounds like a lot of do-gooder fluff really for now, but believe me I already have two projects, working with awesome people, some quite famous, which are close to kickoff which will give the foundation some real perspective.

I've done a write up on what I hope the foundation will be able to accomplish and I need to post that up at some point, when I feel it is sufficiently edited. Also, I've been writing a really awesome essay entitled "Crash" which talks about my new general philosophy on life and works in my experiences as a member of the Open Source community for more than 10 years now. I'll post pieces of that as well periodically, but I am going to hold on on posting the whole rough draft for now, until the very famous person who I hope will edit it gets back to me. It might take a while, but DAMN, its a good story, I can't believe I wrote it.

That's it for now. I'm hungry and tired and I have a nice grilled mushroom with my name on it.