Susan Mernit's Blog

News.com story that Judy's Book has received a patent both for the concept of Social Search and that term in particular.
Question in the comments: "I'm curious about whether you have gone after HappyHours.Com for billing themselves as "the Internet's Only Social Search Engine" as far back as 1999."
Hmmn...

Update: Okay, sorry--it's a trademark not a patent...

"I think there is a huge appetite for people to be able to publish easily to the web. I think there is a question in my mind as to whether or not blogs as they exist today are in fact that medium. I think they come today with a lot of conventions: You need to publish every day, you can?t retract or revise things, you have to publish another post. There?s a lot of religion around blogs that makes it not a great tool for, say, someone like my mother, who?d love to publish things on the web? I think there is a huge opportunity for blogs to broaden their perspective in the way they view some of their conventions and make themselves a lot more palatable for the public at large. "
--Google VP Marissa Meyer, speaking at Burda Digital Lifestyles Day

(Via Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine)

Topix's Rich Skrenta's got an outstanding post on citizen journalism, alogrithmic news, and media going on--a must read.
Some snippets:
"The quality of journalistic output today is, for the most part really really good. In fact it's too good. The product costs a huge amount to bring to market, and what the Internet enables is a an alternative product built for zero, and providing a different value proposition. Citizen journalism is going to be more Citizens and less Journalism. "
and
"Creating a local news page for every town in the US provided us with a set of local audiences for thousands of towns... towns where people who use AOL and have never heard of Web 2.0 live. These people want to tell their stories too. You don't need to know what a blog is to want to tell your story online, and you don't need a journalist to tell you how either, it turns out.
We've been astonished at many of the posts we've had. There is much of the normal chatter you'd find on message board comments (which we think is just great), but there are also many first-person accounts of news events from across the country. More than we expected, frankly. In places like Valley Center, CA, Hickory, NC, Redford, MI, Hillborough, NC, Lake Butler, FL, Hershey, PA, and Livermore, CA. Some of these reports are very raw and heart-wrenching. But we're glad we were able to offer a place for these conversations to occur. "

Susan sez: Rich is a ground-breaker, and this is something important to watch.,and participate in.

"...the tech industry is trying to be the new media industry, and very few people in the tech industry understand what?s really happening to the economics of media... (snip)
...What the user needs is help allocating a finite amount of attention. And the solution needs to be personal ? perfectly tailored to each user?s needs. The user needs a personal killer app...(snip)...
In a world of infinite choice, who will be the new ?trusted sources? that Paul refers to? Can the notion of trusted media brands survive the chaos?"
--Scott Karp, Publishing 2.0, There is a bubble in media

Susan says: The talk about attention, personal media and new tools is dead on--but we're making BIG assumptions about how users will change--and how long will it take for the remix generation to move to the center--that's the question that can drive the economics of the market--plot the curve correctly and you win.

Scott Beale's got a picture of The Slanket--a blanket with sleeves meant for couch potato pleasures. (Via jasonspage). The fact I want one means I have become a TOTAL nerd.

So I went to Napa this weekend with three friends to get mud baths and taste wine.
Last weekend, I had a party for my birthday.
Blogging has been slow because, well, I've been focusing on other things going on--the new
job, the social celebrations, the friends and family thing, the divorce papers getting signed.
But that doesn't mean blogging is going to slow down big time--
As my schedule gets organized, I plan to start blogging more regularly again both here and at the new Sex and Relationships channel I'm co-editing for BlogHer--a fitting topic for someone who's both redefining her personal life and working at Yahoo Personals--so check out both sites for more posts, more frequently, starting middle of this week.
Yes, I'm going to continue writing about digital media, web 2.0 and all that emerging tech mash up stuff--but I'm also going to use the BlogHer space to expand a bit on some other topics, particularly original voices, women--and men--writing about discovery and challenge in their lives.

"...just a year ago most of the people at that table were celebrities to me - people who I knew through their writing but never really thought I'd 'know'. They are my friends now, they include me in their conversations and occasionally ask for my advice. It's thrilling, and I still feel a bit overwhelmed by it. It's like, when are they going to find out I'm a total nobody and stop talking to me?"

--Mike Arrington, friend and now super hot blogger in a long post about tech, life and tech.

Is Kevin Burton right and Yahoo is buying Digg?
If yes, that's going to pile Y's social media shopping cart pretty high. Kevin says, if yes "Yahoo is going to own Web 2.0."
Digg says no, not the focus, but that's what they usually say, right?
(Note: The discussion of this on digg is priceless.)

"As of June 2005, an estimated 33.2 million people between the ages of 50 and 64, were online just in the U.S. alone. It's not surprising to find divorced and widowed seniors are also turning to online relationship sites to find love and companionship." Duane Dahl, Founder/Chief Executive Officer of PerfectMatch.com

MediaPost: Sisterwoman's social network will go after the iVillage crowd. " "Sisterwoman is a hybrid of MySpace and iVillage because it's for women, but it completely centers around their social circles and the content they create," says founder Allie Savarino.

Fun with Facebook: Noah interviews founder Dustin M. , who left Harvard to build the biz.

So this is day #3 of my new job at Yahoo.
It says something about the culture of the company that the halls are--literally--filled with candy--Red Vines, chocolates, gum, etc--it's everywhere.
Niceness also seems a part of the culture--there's an emphasis on grace and courtsey that reminds me of my kid's Montessori school--but hey, I'll take it.

On a day where the blogosphere was filled with discussions of search, Yahoo and Google, the attitude of Y! folks I talked with was that the press got it wrong--and that Yahoo was going to work it all out very nicely, thank you very much.

Yes, it's day 3 and I am still psyched. And now that I'm getting down to work and meeting the team, I'm valuing the chance to focus.

Just announced: Gemstar-TV Guide's created a product team to build--what else--products--for the brands. The press release says "The mandate of the group will be to enhance existing product plans at the company and to develop new products and services to further Gemstar-TV Guide's strategy to be the leader in television guidance across multiple media platforms. The group's particular focus will be on product innovation for digital platforms and on integrating the company's technology resources across businesses."

Susan says: It's always interesting to see a media company that wants to own their own software product development--The Grid would be the core platform in this case, one would imagine, but also the ability to deliver content cross platform to mobile, etc.--The release says a goal is to "maximize our technology resources across all of the company's platforms" so one would think substantial capitol investment lies ahead.

"As an entrepreneur, let's just say I wasn't in my element. The relentless focus on a single, limited project for long periods of time, combined with the inevitable compromises inherent in for-profit decision-making, turned out not to be my best skills. For almost 25 years I'd thrived on the constant deadlines and competition of journalism. So I assumed I'd easily handle the pressures of trying to create a business from scratch while also keeping my reporting and writing skills intact and helping other people join in. In reality, I was unprepared for what proved to be an entirely different kind of pressure, and didn't handle it nearly as well as I'd expected. I allowed myself to get distracted, moreover, by matters that were not directly relevant to the project. "

--Dan Gillmor Letter to the Bayosphere, explaining on his blog why he shifted focus to The Center for Citizen Media, a non-profit affiliated with two universities--Dan's honesty is a great demonstration of the transparency he teaches.

Okay, it's happened--after a day of orientation, I am an official Yahoo!
Best part-- I'm beginning to get down to work.

"My career has been a public one in journalism. You can find my biography and much of what I stand for on the Internet. You can ask anyone who worked with me in Minnesota and at Newhouse News Service what kind of journalist I am. I have spent my life working for rational reporting and passionate and reasonable opinion.
So is it the relative anonymity of the Internet that emboldens e-mailers to conduct a public stoning? Is this the increasing political polarization of our country? I don't know."
--Deborah Howell, Washington Post ombudsman and long-time journalist, writing about the public furor about a recent column on Jack Abramoff.

There's a spate of recent posts decrying Urban Outfitters and accusing the chain of stealing t-shirt small designers. Indies Johnny Cupcakes and Maddapollam both have said the chain is selling shirts that look amazingly similar to their products--coincidence--or conspiracy?
As a fan of the small indie sites that web ecommerce---and social networks--have empowered (think threadless, among others), I hate the idea big guys poach off the small ones and don't get caught-Have no idea whether the accusations are true, but they seem to have had this issue crop up more than twice.

Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor have some good talk on the Washington Post decision to take comments off post.blog in response to a flood re Deborah Howell's recent writing--Dan succinctly says: "Comments are definitely worth having, even when they cause problems. Listening and responding are as important in tomorrow's journalism as speaking."
Jay talks with WaPo exec ed Jim Brady and says "I also understand why Brady did what he did. If washingtonpost.com lets stand extreme charges aimed to maximize rage at Howell, and some of the charges contain ugly personal insults, then Brady's position becomes impossible if the staff of the Washington Post objects, and demands to know:
--Why are we giving Post.com space to people who wish for our destruction and call for our heads?
--Jim, it's not like there are't other spaces online where that can and will be said robustly.
--Does transparency really mean making room for: death to the Washington Post, and down with their ombudsman too? "

Jim Brady weighs in with a sensible comment I like: "As a site, we've decided there have to be limits on the language people can use. I'm getting a lot of e-mail saying, essentially, that I need to accept the fact that profanity and name-calling are part of the web DNA. That may be true for the Web as a whole, though I hope not, but I don't run the Web as a whole, I run washingtonpost.com, and on our site, we get to make the rules. Readers can reject those rules, and post elsewhere. That's their right. There are plenty of blogs that will allow commenters to say whatever they want; we're just not going to be one of those."

Susan sez: I think this is just great on Jim's part--he does get to make the rules, and there is always another diner down the block if people don't like'em.

Mike Arrington's got a post on Ning, the groovy mash up too, that does a great job of explaining why it's grooviness has faded a bit--His post is a roadmap for what the group could improve to make the service stronger.
Some Arrington points:
1) You have to know PHP, or at least HTML, to build anything unique on Ning.
Susan sez: Agreed--if this is a smart consumer toy, that's asking too much--and yet, a *real* developer might not want to use Ning.

2) The APIs are custom; there is no support for key web service APIs.
Susan sez: Yep, isn't open standards and interoperable APIs part of the point here?

3) Since everything has to be hosted at Ning, mashups are tethered.
Susan sez: Maybe Mike wishes Ning were more of a mashup library, with some Ruby-like tools that folks like me could dig into. Hmmn, that might be cool.

Mike's got more--worth a read.

In the Midnight Hour
Funky Broadway
Mustang Sally
Land of 1,000 Dances
634-5789

RIP, Wilson, thank you for all those great songs.

"Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about."
--Jim Brady, Executive Editor of Washingtonpost.com, explaining why the paper was closing down comments on the blog of Deborah Howell, ombudsman

Susan sez: The NYTimes lead on this story reads "Paper Decides to Close Blog, Citing Vitriol," which is NOT the case, the blog is publishing away--but comments have to be emailed. Check this stuff, folks!

PS I admire the way Jim and the Post are handling this.

NY Post and Portland Business Journal: Since coffee dates are standard starters for web daters, Yahoo Personals has teamed with Starbucks to create an online dating guide and site with a $10 coffee card promotion if you're a new user and you sign up. (Yes, this is the team I am joining this Monday.)

Starbucks Survey: Are you at all surprised to find out a recent Starbucks commissioned survey reports that more than 50 % of all web daters like to meet the first-time prospect for coffee?

Red Herring: Background-check start up Verified Person has raised $12 million from Sevin Rosen Fund and Rho Capital Partners, bringing the war chest to $14MM. Their service: aggregate personal data from across the web into a single, secure database that corporations, dating sites, etc. can use. (Susan sez: Is this scraped web data that may or may not be accurate, or do they vet it? One hopes.)

Adam Green says that the registration list for Mashup Camp is now full.
Bring on the APIs.

Executive Director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society John Palfrey has a post today about whether the way his independent venture, Ten Top Sources, sources and then publishes content from blogger's RSS feeds is a) legal and b) appropriate.

Palfrey describes the selection process: " As the editor compiles the site, the editor sends out an e-mail to the person who appears to be responsible for the site, or, sometimes, posts a comment to say that the site has been chosen. The site renders a list of those sites offering the feeds as direct links to the page. The site also subscribes to those feeds and renders them all together on a single page. It is this latter activity that I take to be the concern."

He goes on to say " The issue raised here is whether it is a copyright violation to render these syndicated feeds in this way. As a matter of copyright law, I contend that it is not. The strong form of the pro-copyright argument runs like this: the creator of the RSS feed retains, automatically, all copyrights in the content in the feed and retains all rights in its republication, use as a derivative work, and so forth."

And "If you want people to run your feed in private aggregators, but not in public aggregators that are for-profit, to re-offer your content just as you've offered it, and to attribute authorship to you, why not add to your feed a BY-NC-SA license? "

Om Malik's said TTS is almost splog, republishing content w/o permission, and Mike Rundle's written that the site steals content--and traffic--viz "Top Ten Sources takes all your information from your RSS feed, republishes it on their site, and then uses it to build traffic."

What's interesting here, what I want to talk about, is how this desire to bundle and aggregate feeds into a new product is not unique to TTS. The blogosphere is full of companies that want to find ways to package feeds and either distribute them more efficiently to publishers, or companies that want to package feeds and distribute them to consumers. Either way, the revenue potential of attaching targeted ads to readers of themed content is another way to make the CPMs jump, we all get that.

But it seems to be what Palfrey has not yet addressed--which makes sense considering this company is so new--is that many of the players entering into the bundled space recognize they have to give more back to their creative sources than just a little traffic or a thank you.

Without some share in the revenue, it's not right to make $$ from anything more than a headline and a digest, unless the blogger has specifically given permission for a great depth to be published off site.

This is no different, in truth, than the third-party distribution deals we used to do with the portals when I worked in magazineland--we'd give AOL, or whomever, a limited set of digital assets to run on their site in exchange for links back; if they wanted more content to run on their site, the deal changed.

Why would committed bloggers want anything different?

IMHO, Palfrey and company will come to recognize that truth and find ways to accommodate it as they work to maintain the good will of the community; other entrepreneurs are exploring ways to back in rewards, incentives and revenue based on performance of the blogs they gain permission to bundle and redistribute.

Mobile Dating is almost here says The Asbury Park Press--they're from Jersey, what do they know? The *new* mobile sites are Webdate, Zogo, Dodgeball, SMSGenie. The writer says "How would it feel to be single as the two people you're sitting between on the bus send mating calls to each other over their cell phones? What would it be like to go to the bathroom during a date only to have your date meet someone better looking on her cell phone while you're gone?"
On this one, draw your own conclusions.

Face on body launches--new software makes it easy to paste your face on, yep, a different body when you place those ads with photos.
Susan sez: Couldn't they give it a better name, like Face Maker, Face Genie or Body Double?

USA Today: "U.S. consumers spent $245.2 million on online personals and dating services in the first half of 2005, up 7.6% from a year earlier, according to the Online Publishers Association."

So VNU, Dutch owner of Nielsen Media Research is investing in Intelliseek and Intelliseek is merging with BuzzMetrics.The goal: A new consolidated product to "measure and understand word-of-mouth behavior and influence. "Jonathan Carson will be CEO, Mike Nazarro will be President, and Pete Blackshaw CMO and the company will be based in NY, with offices continuing in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Israel.
According to the press release, the two firms have the following clients: Canon, Comcast, Ford, General Motors, HBO, Kraft, Microsoft, Nokia, P&G, Showtime, Sony, Target and Toyota, 14 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies and over eight television networks.
The investors must be kvelling...

"As a web engineer, I have an alternative view for your consideration: Web 2.0 is just a stupid term for a lot of really cool, stuff:
1) Artists overcoming the distribution cartels that have had them in leg irons for decades.
2) Full connectivity; I like being able to monitor my kids on video from my web phone, programming my Tivo at home from work, grabbing files off my PC at home from anywhere, watching that latest DVD release the day it comes out - downloaded from Netflix, surfing the web on my TV while I watch it, and talking to my friends in the UK and Finland on Skype after it's over, for free.
3) AJAX (another stupid name for Rich Internet Applications) will transform business and personal interaction with the web.
4) RSS is part of this too; I like to set up intelligent agents that program my radio listening on satellite radio (using its metadata feature) to listen to at work, email me with alerts when there is a good deal on an outdoor pingpong table on Craigslist, sell my old computers for me and bid on the new one (snipe it the last 15 seconds) on Ebay, all programmable from my phone while I'm eating lunch outdoors.
--Jeff Papineau, commenting on Halley Suitt's blog (note--these comments have been edited for length)

"I have dwelled in, or near, or at least been somewhat associated with, some of the most hallowed halls of journalism.
Now, on the other hand, I dwell in the journalistic equivalent of a roadhouse, a neighborhood newsblog, where I stand behind the counter, a dirty dishtowel over my shoulder, barking at the rowdies in the corner to keep it down, serving up mugs of draught and occasionally pulling up my skirts to show a little ankle.
We call this saloon Baristanet of Bloomfield Ave. or Baristanet. It is one of the growing number of neighborhood news sites, unconnected to any established newspapers, that serve up local news in a blog format."
--Former NYTimes writer and Baristanet queen Debra Galant, writing at Jay Rosen's PressThink

"Contrasting group forums with blogging is a good example in which to make the distinction between group- and individual-oriented social tools. In group forums, members of a closed group can post threads and comment on them. It is a closed model. When individuals blog in the open web, trackbacks and comments allow discussions to take place that are -- in many cases -- logically equivalent to forums, but since each individual blogger decides where to turn their focus, and what other blogs to comment on, bloggers are members of many groups at the same time. More importantly, the structure of blogging supports that model directly. In a group forum, you are a member of that one group, and not a member of any others: the fact that you may be a member of other groups is not explicitly supported.
...The groups are there, but latent, implicit in the gestural relationships of crosslinking, tags, comments, and blogrolls. "

--Stowe Boyd, Message, writing on how the distributed web drives a shift from groupware to what he calls soloware.

VC Bill Burnham's got a meaty post about the distributed web and how listings and other forms of content are becoming commoditized because the premium service walled gardens can't monopolize all the data and therefore the business models change as the data goes off. Some of the kickers Burnham suggests to be on the alert for:

Content Availability: "If a Walled Garden is charging to distribute or provide access to data that can now be easily aggregated from "self published" web sites, it is in an increasingly tenuous position."

Index Affinity: "The more willing a data owner is to make their data available for indexing, the more tenuous the walled garden's business. "

Process Simplicity: "... if a garden has a highly simplistic process where it simply displays aggregated information, it is highly vulnerable to search led attacks."

Most vulnerable to attach under this metric--all listings sites, of course, but Burnham says personals are (still) a little more defensible: "Online dating sites, such as Match.com, seem relatively safe from the Google?s of the world in the near term thanks to the lack of index-able content and the need for discretion. The real threat to the online dating sites is coming from the social networking sites which should seize a large piece of the dating market from the current walled gardens over time."

• Friend and former colleague Gary Kebbel's gone from AOL and Ed Week to Program Officer at the Knight Foundation-- this means a move to Miami as well. Good luck!
• Mercer Management Consulting's Marta Wührle's moved from consulting for Hachette to running their new media group, the first senior person in that job in at least 3 years, I think.
• Halley Suitt's has some great news she'll announce in the next week or so, but it's not too early to say yee-ha!
• Susie Wyshak's Superviva--a life list/life management site--is live and in beta.
• Scott Rosenberg is back at Salon.
• Time Inc editor Mark Golin's creating an online mag that's going to be vulgar, disgusting and offensive--is that just the thing for the younger male market? Hmmn. (Via NYMag)
• Blogger Betsey Devine is going to work at start up Ookles.com . The feedster crowd reunited.

Well, there are some interesting new blogs out there already--here's what I've come across--if you are reading other new blogs that focus on digital media, social media, identity & reputation, tagging and/or the distributed web, online dating, mobile computing, mobile media, please share links here---I will highlight suggestions in a later post.
Ground rules: Blog has been started in the last 30 days and fits above topics--and it's good--that criteria matters the most.

Okay, the current short list:

• Modern Mediasphere--Linda Zimmer's take on 2.0 as the jargonati might say.
• Message--Stowe Boyd's new blog--it's just started and it's already fascinating and about--yes!--2.0
• MediaShift--PBS is launching a new blog about--what else--Web 2.0--by Mark Glaser, one of my favorite journalists.
• MIT's Adverlab--a blog on advertising, media and technology that Jeff Jarvis just blurbed.
• Blogophile: CBS News's Melissa MacNamara covers blog chatter--this one is going to have to get waay better to keep spot on my list--or change its name to Blogaphobic. (Via Dube)
• JD Lasica's got a brand new vlog called RealPeopleNetwork--worth a look.

Chris Alden says that SF-based social newsreader Rojo is hiring, and he's looking for someone to work on the front end who is proficient in AJAX. Are you the one? Chris's link is here--he'd like to find someone really good, of course--to work FT in the Bay area...the job includes integrating some cool tools/aplets into the current product.

(Disclaimer: I am an advisor to this company.)

According to both Viviane and Clayton H, a significant--if small-- number of sex and erotica blogs posted on blogspot/blogger have recently been hacked. Seems like someone--or a few folks--have found ways to steal passwords, and....
Discussion of how to protect your blog and improve security is happening at stopinternetcensorship.blogspot.com--the tips from this small community seem useful for everyone looking to safeguard their data.
More on this from Figleaf.

" I had spent my teenage years plotting my escape from a family life so carefully, cautiously choreographed I could barely breathe. Suddenly it appeared that I was not the only one who had been dying to get out; my father had actually beaten me to it. It was something we had in common.'
--Caroline Miller, writing in the NY Times on revelations about her dad's life

Noah Kagan announces a new Facebook feature: social timelines. Apparently, this is a visual graph of who you know and when you added them that also lets you annotate when you met them, etc.--but Noah's link doesn't work. In theory "After you add your Friend Details you can now see who all your co-workers were in 1995 or all your past relationships."

"JT first approached Cooper, by phone/email, at the beginning what would become the Sarah manuscript. Emily worshiped Dennis, a superfan. I'm sure Dennis would have been kind to Emily if he had been introduced to her as a reader, but his reactions were deeper this time. It wasn't 'Emily' who reached out to him; it was JT, the ghost of George Miles crossed with Oliver Twist."
And:
"Slash fiction is an under-publicized revolution in female eroticism. It's no wonder that Emily's writings didn't get "spotted" as Slash; the genre isn't on bookstore shelves. The stereotype that women are incapable of entertaining nasty, brutal boy thoughts in their heads is just the kind of bunk you will find in women's magazines and chick-lit fiction, ad nauseum."

--Susie Bright writes a masterful--and compelling--deconstruction of how Emily Albert cooked up the troubled teen author --and how her act fits into Slashfiction and women's history of writing alt stories in male personas.

Ohmynews: Head editor Jean K Min on journalism as a conversation. "Many young Koreans who were already sharing their thoughts on the Internet found that it made infinitely more sense to write for a news media with a strong national brand and formidable presence in the news market than scribble their anger in a puny blog."

Stanford: The Reuters Digital Vision fellowship is taking 2006-2007 applications--this is a good program with a social justice squew.

Current TV's launched a guide to shooting digital video for them--plus case studies (see BoingBoing)--Is anyone else amused their *citizen journalist* poster boy is Sean Penn? Scary.

TechCrunch expands to Mobil Crunch: Arrington's crushing the rest of us. Congrats--a (tech) media empire is a borning.

Also--the NEW: Mark Sigal's launched Vsocial, a video sharing community, my friend David Coleman is blogging about collaborative tools, and you must check out mashup camp if you're an API geek.

Okay, the first of an occasional series of social media/personals/online dating notes, these from round the web:

• Breakup world: January's the trash dump for relationships couples abandon once they've survive the holidays.
• Merc: So Doctor Phil's gonna give dating advice right on Match.com for $12.99 a month; I'd like to see him face off with AOL's Star Jones, whose advice is both cheap and free (ouch).
• BizWeek: harmony's got a new CEO--So does CE) equal IPO--or M&A (the new CEO worked at Overture, now Yahoo Search Marketingg--so the writer seems to think so.)
• Match.com's Chemistry.com is now live, but Corante's David Evans is not impressed.

What's striking about the online personals category, imho, is how "me to" it is--and how distinct it seems from the myspace and facebooks of the world. After all, prospective dates are listings, aka transactions, a currency traded like apartments listings or help wanted, and yet the data contained in most matches is so poor--social networks go one better in some ways, but dating's not a direct focus of most social networks, not directly--not like in the the very focused personals.

Hmmn....interesting.

So my Yahoo news has travelled fast and I've been getting all sorts of notes and congrats from friends, colleagues and former co-workers.
One friend asked if I'd blog less; Given what a struggle it's been to blog over the past month, the answer would be no.

"One thing I'm doing in a deliberate way is passing good energy down the generations, to younger people, whenever I can. You can buy love, it turns out. I do it whenever I can."
--Dave Winer, writing about recent life-lessons

So, the JT LeRoy literary romance is unravelling, with the latest dish being that a SF local played the author in his public appearances. Susie Bright and Violet Blue have great posts about being duped--and outraged--by this mummery--

Bright writes:"...if you?re an author, an editor, a publisher? or worse, a friend? to someone who bullshit you up one side and down the other, it?s not cute. It?s not irrelevant. It?s a cruel con, straight up, and the whole writers? community suffered for it.

Welcome to the first meeting of JT Anonymous. I published JT. I defended him in public, performed for him, responded to every editorial and hook-me-up request. I took Twilight Zone phone calls and tendered his frightening tantrums. "

Violet Blue says: "It's weird, and it really pisses me off. Not as a writer. *As a survivor.* I lived the very real horrors of my childhood to get where I am now -- alive, articulate. I didn't fuck anyone over to get my book deals, and I certainly didn't exploit very real experiences (like of myself and my friends) to get my books published. I certainly never had the elite privilege of celebrity benefactors. I had a mother who was a drug addict, a compulsive liar, who gave and received regular beatings. She was raped in a room next to me when I was ten; I saw her have a knife held to her throat, I saw her get beaten by boyfriends I had to call "daddy" more times than I can count. She beat me with a belt; she inhaled cocaine like a vaccum and dealt it like a pro; she dumped me off every chance she got with strangers for weekends and sometimes weeks at a time..."

Both have longer entries worth a read. Oh, and JT- I think alotta folks have an idea what you might do with one of those raccoon penis bones you sell..

As Rafat Ali reported earlier today, I am joining Yahoo as Senior Director, Product, for the Personals team, starting January 23rd.
I'm excited by the opportunity to focus on one product, energized by both the team and the general Yahoo ethos (and campus-wide talent), and delighted to be working 7 miles from home--a huge change from my usual cross-country commute.
I've had some good opportunities in the past few months, but I've always thought working for Yahoo would be a good fit, and Personals seems like a wonderful spot for someone obsessed both with transactional sites and with social media(that would be me.)

5ive will continue under the leadership of my business partner, Steven Madoff; we'll be updating the site to include some of the behind the scenes players of the past few months.

More on this as life unfolds!

"Rethink newspapers. Give every journalist a blog. Journalists blog their features, columns, their hobbies, daft stories about the journey to work, photos of their cat, wotever - anything and everything they're interested in. They tag their work. Section editors receive tagged submissions via an RSS like function. They edit for word count, spelling etc., they wiki through articles with the journalist and/or other editors and anyone else for that matter before forwarding final copy to the printing press/online portal. While printing presses, as we know them, remain with us.

All finished copy runs with a link to the journalist's blog. An important new part of the journalist's job will involve them making their notes, raw copy, interview transcripts, MP3's, pictures etc. available and open for comments on their blog. Discussion of any given story can take place in the main body of the newspaper/newspaper blog, again using a comments-esque feature. Discussion is likely to spill over onto the journalist's own blog."
--Graham Holliday, Stillbop and Noodlepie blogger and freelance journalist

Hugh MacLeod knows the big lies:

• I don't consider myself an A-Lister
• I don't care about traffic
• I started blogging back in 1999
• My blog has no commercial agenda
• I only have advertising on my blog as an experiment

More here--LOL

Yippee! The news is that Lucas Gonze , Webjay founder, is going to work for Yahoo Music! Fellow Bardian, ex-Brooklynite, rojo alum Gonze has long lingered in my top 20 people I like but have never met list--and webjay is a fav site, so this was great news, broken by Kevin Burton.

Am I the only person whose reaction to the news that Star Jones Reynolds was to be the new AOL.com Love coach was laughter?

Says Star: "As the new AOL Love Coach, I plan to provide women with advice, both entertaining and informative, that aims to answer the question, 'Is Your Life As Good As It Gets? All women want to move their love-life from boring to brilliant and from sorry to Shining. How do I know what works...because baby, I've been there...done that and bought a tee shirt! Trust me, finding real love is not a destination; it is a journey."

Susan sez: Yeah, I'd like to buy the tee shirt, too--only not from you, my friend...is it possible to react to this announcement (and this woeful quote) with anything but eye-rolling and fugly snark?

Update: Star's part of a bevvy of AOL coaches--a nice idea--but she seems like an, uh, interesting choice.

PCGamer UK: Korea's gaming culture--and why you should care that "regularly playing online sessions the Blizzard games, such as Diablo II, Starcraft, or Warcraft III is more common amongst Koreans than owning a PlayStation." (Via bubblegum generation)
Tristan Louis: Portals and video--T's list of what the bigcos have to offer--and how much it costs.
WAP Review: All about mobile browsing. (Via Rubel)
NYC Blog mag Black Table is ending--and you can come to the party! (Via Mediabistro)
Bloggingclass.com: Bay area bloggers will teach you how to post (Via Lasica)
Editor's Weblog: How to classify citizen journalists (Via Steve Outing)
2006 Bloggies: Nominate favorites here.
Xooglers: Ron's kicked out of the ads group.

Roland's got his own list of resolutions for personal tech changes in 2006--they include:

• Get a video iPod second model when it comes out in June or sooner (i want wide screen, buying 2nd gen Apple stuff is always better if you can wait that long)
• Do a weekly video blog in a format that works well on iPod Video
• Create enhanced podcasts for documentation and fun
• Create three 1 minute movies about Vancouver
• Dive into Jabber and XMPP since 2006 is the year of XMPP

How about you all? Any one else want to share?

Sorry for the quiet.
I've been in NYC working with clients and am spending the weekend, at least most of it--with my old friends Betsy and Mike, who live in Asbury Park, NJ now.
I haven't been here for a year--and it's so good to reconnect.
Last year at this time I was facing some difficult personal changes and came down here to cry; this year has been a time of real growth and, yes, happiness.
Here's to 2006, Betsy and Mike, and the hope we'll see more of each other in the next 12 months (and you'll come visit me in California, hint, hint.)

There's been some surprise among friends of mine this past week that O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony conference, which runs Jan. 24-26 in the Bay area, has no--and that means zero--female speakers on the line-up. As in not even one of the moderators is female.
One friend of mine said "If Tim OReilly had the chance, he'd place women on the speaking roster--but they probably sold all the sponsorships so the companies picked the line up and they all chose men."
Another friend said, "No, there are only three media sponsors, so it's not that they *sold* the slots..."
And a third friend said "But even the media sponsors...well, do they think it's cool there are only male speakers? Probably not."
Susan sez: There is only one possible conclusion--there are NO intelligent women qualified to speak at this new conference. They've some how become extinct. Xeni Jardin, Anita Wilhelm, Gano Haines, Karen Marcelo--the dinosaurs have snuck out of the ice age and eaten them and these silly male geeks are just too dumb to find other women to speak at their campfire, oops, I meant conference.

Via Dan Gillmor, the initial Board of Advisors for the Center for Citizen Media:

• Merrill Brown
• Richard Edelman
• Charles Eisendrath, director, Knight-Wallace Fellows
• James Fallows
• Michael Goff
• Paul Grabowicz
• Joi Ito
• Rebecca MacKinnon
• Susan Mernit
• Allen Morgan
• Craig Newmark
• Steve Outing
• Glenn Reynolds,
• Jay Rosen
• Orville Schell
• Hilary Schneider
• Clay Shirky
• Lisa Stone
• Jimmy Wales

Dan, I hope this group can help you make this vision a force for good.

"Newspapers are being decimated by unbundlers. These are the first generation Internet services (Yahoo, Ebay, Google) who unbundled content from advertising, and unbundled them both from physical delivery. Search has been the killer application--the cheeseburger.
However, the Web's pressure for unbundling is relentless. Witness skyrocketing tiny companies like Goowy that do nothing more that allow you to use best-of-breed web portal services without being tied to any one portal. If I can now re-package search by using an API from the open market, portal-based search is no longer the cheeseburger. It is just dead meat.
Portal strategies are antithetical to a Web Services Economy. The pressure to deconstruct is relentless. The center cannot hold. Just as newpapers are the new mainframes, Web portals are the new newspapers. "
--Peter Rip, leapfrog ventures blog

To hell with industry predictions, I am going to write about the one subject I can truly influence--myself. Therefore, this post is going to be about the personal resolutions I am making about my own use of technology tools in the coming year:
1) Get an iPod and go all digital
Yeah, I owned an iPod--and I gave it to my kid. This time, around, I want a video iPod and I want to move all my music over to digital--and figure out a media storage solution that works as well.
2) Upgrade my phone and add a decent video camera to it--with clogging and podcast components.
3) Start podcasting weekly-- a friend had a great idea--I still want to do it.
4) Move my blog to a new domain and get off blogspot. Aanyone need explanations on that?
5) Upgrade from my friend's digital camera to my own--and buy flickr pro--got it for my client, need to add my own access.
6) Tag more. I think tagging is amazing, but I avoid doing it. Change that a bit.
7) Get a decent new computer--or a cheap back up machine.
8) Do more new tools beta testing on a weekly basis--using that back-up machine I wanna establish.
9) Learn more--a lot more--about extreme programming--as I got more and more into product development this is a critical area to build competency.
10) Keep having fun with technology--it's gotta be both enjoyable and useful--and it can be.
11) Turn off my land line phone for good--between the VOIP options and the cell, the $$ I am paying is a waste.
12) Buy a big TV. Yeah, I don't watch it, but it's time to upgrade from 19 inches, doncha think?
13) Card scanning or something--figure out something to do with all those business cards that are stacked in bowls around my office. I do want to talk to some of these folks again.

How about you all? What are your personal tech resolutions for 2006?