So in the last week, I've completely changed my telephonic lifestyle. First thing, I bought a new phone.
I researched for quite a while which phone to buy. The z520a one had everything I wanted, save one: I prefer candybar-style phones to flip-phones. However, I couldn't find a candybar that offered all of the other features I wanted, and it seems like everyone else in the universe gets along just fine with these flip-phones, so I finally decided to give it a try.
And for once, my indecision and obsessive-compusive need to over-research worked out in my favour. The first time I thought about buying the phone, Cingular was offering it for about $100. A month later, when I considered it a second time, it had dropped was $60. Last week when I actually decided to buy, Cingular was offering it for free!
Of course, it wasn't actually free, because I had to switch my phone service from Sprint to Cingular. I know lots of people that hate Sprint, but I never really had any problems with them. The big issue is that their phones are lame and they didn't offer anything that had the combination of features I wanted. But switching providers meant paying off the stupid, extortionate, evil contract-termination fee. My Aussie friends are constantly amazed that Americans put up with this crap from our phone companies. Apparently no one else in the world has to sign up for crazy two-year contracts or pay $150 just to switch carriers. Go, USA!
To benefit from open, you’ve got to be open, believe open, see open, live open, want open.
Chris Messina posts about The Economist's article on Open Source. I, like Chris, have a generally good impression of the Economist's reporting, conservative though it may be. And they do get some facts right about the community. But they clearly fail to grok the whole picture.
But I particularlly liked Chris' quote at the top, because as great as the benefits of open source code are I'm convinced that we can multiply them hugely by opening up as people, as developers and as companies.
I saw V for Vendetta last night and I loved it. At several points the movie had me grinning from ear to ear. I highly recommend it.
The film was originally scheduled to be released on November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, but the summer bombings in London convinced the studio to move the release days back. Which, given that the movie features both a hero who blows up government buildings and the suggestion that the government is in fact responsible for terrorist attacks, may have been the right decision. Still, it would have been cool had they been able to release on the original date.
I had also read that author Alan Moore had disassociated himself from the project. After seeing the movie I found this baffling, as the film did a terrific job and seemed to hold to Moore's uncompromisingly anti-government themes. A little research turned up this story, in which Moore says that he wanted nothing to do with the picture from the very beginning. So his disassociation was not a result by the film, but by his interaction with the people making the film. Honestly, Moore comes off like kind of a jerk in this episode. (Although watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on screen would be enough to make anyone gun-shy.)
More interesting is this analysis, from an Alan Moore fansite which claims:
Probably the biggest change from comic to movie is thematic, the central dichotomy of Fascism vs. Anarchy, one presented as the only alternative to the other. A challenging political-philosophical point to make, it's reflected in V's devil-may-care attitude to the consequences of his actions, being an end in themselves. The movie rejects this theme, positing Fascism vs. Democracy, a much simpler and easily resolvable dilemma. Indeed, that the two aren't contradictory, defeats that central thematic point.
I haven't read the comic (it's on order from Amazon) but this seems like perhaps a legitimate complaint. However, we don't really need a movie about anarchy right now. We need a movie about the gradual giving-over of our freedoms and the dangers of allowing fear to guide our political process. And though the film is certainly heavy-handed, it does a tremendous job of making visualizing those dangers. I hope I don't sound like a paranoid nutjob when I say that it seems frightenly relevant in the current political situation. I'm glad that they made the movie they did, even if it diverges from the original. I'm glad that more people are able to see this story. And I hope that ultimately Mr. Moore is happy with the final product. I certainly was.
When your newly launched company's product tour includes the phrase "Let's get raging drunk," you have just won my business.
At breakfast, no less. You, sir, are fucking cool.
Actually, I really like the idea of this service. I've been waiting for someone to better the ridiculously bad evite interface for years. My main feature request is that they allow me to fully customize the invite pages (hopefully with CSS) so that I can make my invites match my site.
evite could have owned this market if they had focused on features and interface rather than cramming more ads down my throat. I've been itching to the opportunity to ditch them, and I think I just found it.
My main question is how this is going to fit with Upcoming.org, et al. They're really solving different problems, but I can see places where they will overlap.
When last we heard from Wikisphere, they had just raised $5.25mm but continued to develop in almost-stealth mode. Ross said they were going to be consumer focused. Jeffrey had heard that it was going to be industry-focused.
Well, today they pulled the curtain back on their newly branded service, Wetpaint. (Link via SiliconBeat.) I do like the name and the logo: I think the metaphor works pretty well.
It's a hosted-community site offering the basic wiki features in a customizable skin. Wetpaint makes the bold move of offering only wysiwyg editing — no markup-mode at all. There's a strange little floating editor box with controls in it and a typical javascripty content area. Of course, this choice means that Safari users can't edit at all.
The business model is apparently contextual advertising. They currently have eleven employees and are apparently hiring like mad.
This is a pretty crowded market already. But Wetpaint has raised enough money to outspend the other community-focused hosts and to be competitive with the enterprise-focused hosts. The real question is whether or not there are enough consumer-level users to make this business model work.
Just a quick note to say that I had a killer time at Adaptive Path's 5th Birthday party last night. (See it on flickr.) Unfortunately, I arrived to late to take advantage of the Taco Truck. Nearly ruined my night. But I rallied, and made the best of it by filling all that empty space in my stomach with beer. Silver linings, people.
I also made it upstairs to the party-within-a-party in the RubyRed offices. And I finally got to meet my nemesis, the shadowy figure who has dogged me since my arrival in this city: the other Jonathan. Disappointingly, he turned out to be a really nice guy. And he was rocking a seriously cool suit. I can't hate anyone with fashion like that. So now I need a new nemesis. Any volunteers?
So I went to my first San Francisco concert on Thrusday night: Nada Surf and Rogue Wave at The Fillmore. It was a great show. I've enjoyed Rogue Wave's latest record (Descend Like Vultures) lately; I would have rated it three/five stars on the Jonathan Nolen Scale. But their performance was a notch better than that, even. The band, who are from Oakland, seemed stoked to be playing at the Fillmore. And they really gave it their all.
Nada Surf put on an equally good show, running through all of my favourite songs from their record, throwing in a cover of "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" and mercifully avoiding their gimicky one hit wonder, "Popular."
All in all, I thought that Rogue Wave slightly exceeded their on-album performance while Nada Surf didn't quite live up to it. Rogue Wave just had more energy and took some more interesting pathways. Lots of harmony vocals that don't really come through on the record popped out to to me. Nada Surf, on the other hand, sounded rougher and more straightforward than they do on their albums.
I'm now trying to figure out my schedule for Noise Pop. They've got a great lineup this year and I'm really looking forward to it. Anyone have suggestions?
Atlassian is hosting a little get together at our offices next Tuesday night, February 28th. The first goal it to meet with outside developers and do some hacking around our upcoming Plugin Competition. But we'd also like to get to know some more of the folks in SF. So if you're in the neighborhood and want to meet some of the Atlassian team, check out our office and see what it is we do, feel free to stop by. Well have the essentials: pizza, beer and wifi. We're happy to help out coding plugins or show you around the our software. The more the merrier.
Well, according to the helpful elves at FedEx, my brand new, unexpectedly upgraded, MacBook Pro is sitting on the tarmac in Shanghai right now.
Jonathan Nolen 