Kyle Libra

This story about a nine year old student shaming her school into action through blogging is amazing. From the article:

Martha Payne had some sad-ass lunches at her school in Scotland — unsatisfying food that sometimes had more hair than vegetables. So the 9-year-old decided to start a blog with photos and vital statistics about her meals.

I love this story so much. It’s a testament to the democratizing power of the internet, which is something regular readers know that I feel very strongly about.

On Mad Men, Roger Sterling took LSD. I’m all about expanding my mind, but LSD definitely isn’t happening (especially when I read about stuff like Operation Midnight Climax). Then I read this BetaBeat story about lucid dreaming. From the BetaBeat article:

Lucid dreaming refers to the act of being conscious while in a dream state—you’re in the dream, but you know it. With practice, proponents say, you can harness that awareness to manipulate your surroundings. Think Inception without the corporate espionage, or Neo’s trips to the Matrix after he downed the blue pill.

Even after re-reading the article, I can’t help but ask if this is real. I’m a really skeptical person, on the other hand I want to think there is something to this.

I’ve definitely had experiences where I feel like I’m skirting the line between sleeping and consciousness. Any former roommates can probably attest that the majority of these experiences have involved me waking up and then thinking I’m still in some sort of dream. I often wake up really, really disoriented and confused about where I am (especially when I wake up while it’s dark outside). I think this is the exact opposite of lucid dreaming, but it gives me hope.

What do you all think? Is this for real? Anyone want to try it?

There is a raging debate among everyone in the tech scene, from pundits to programmers. Are we in the midst of a giant bubble. Here are two really good takes.

• The State of Startups (No, It’s Not A Bubble) – From Henry Blodget, Business Insider CEO
• Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Why We’re Definitely in a Bubble – Rick Webb, Beta Beat Columnist

My take? Beginning of boom times, only time will tell if it turns into a bubble. It could easily go bad if people suddenly start making really bad decisions. Initial news of the Facebook IPO being under subscribed is probably a good sign for there not being a bubble. What do you think?

I love everything about this video. It’s always good to be pushing yourself and doing new, exciting things.

“Life is either daring adventure or northing at all.” – Helen Keller

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” – Hunter S. Thompson

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough” – Mae West

“Above all, try something.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

“I never worry about the future, it comes soon enough.” -Albert Einstein

“One who makes no mistakes, makes nothing at all.” -Giacomo Casanova

“Do one thing everyday that scares you.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

“In the end it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” -Abraham Lincoln

“If I’d followed all the rules, I’d never have gotten anywhere.” -Marilyn Monroe

“Action expresses priorities.” – Gandhi

Check out the video here.

Short answer: absolutely not. But Paul Miller, writing for The Verge, plans to do just that.

I just don’t see how this is even feasible. How is a technology journalist going to go without the Internet? I can see how it will allow him to be really impartial about the topics he covers, but is his impartiality going to border on becoming out of touch?

At one point I remember reading an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where he claimed he did not have internet access at his apartment. His reasoning was that when he went home he wanted to unplug completely and be able to relax away from work. I understand his mentality and have been recently wondering if I could do the same. I don’t really think it would be possible for me to pull off.

What do you think? Could you go an entire year without internet?

I’ve been having some interesting discussions with a client about this very question. Is there any money in publishing free content online? Like any good burning question, this has resulted in some good longform reading.

• The Newspaper That Almost Seized the Future
• A Transparent Attempt to Explain the Economics Behind Running a Pop-Culture Website and the Need to Run Intrusive Advertising
• Six degrees of aggregation

If you’re at all interested in this subject, I suggest reading the above articles. Personally I find thinking about the different economic models along to be fascinating.

Without getting into too much detail, the answer is certainly yes. The caveat is that it definitely isn’t easy money. A lot of people assume that this means the opposite must be true, but evidence says otherwise. So what’s the solution? How is there money to make in publishing free content? Very creative business models. Hopefully in the coming months I’ll have one to show off to everyone.

Early today Nick Denton rolled out Gawker’s new commenting system after a few weeks (or maybe just one week, I’m not completely sure) of completely disabling commenting on the site. It’s a great blend of allowing people to use existing social media credentials to comment or to comment anonymously. They have come up with the idea of “burner” accounts. Need to say something, but don’t want it tied to you? Great, use a burner account. This whole thing is then moderated by users.

It’s great to see someone embracing the idea that people want to hide behind a curtain of anonymity, a key component of what makes the internet fun. It will be interesting to watch this play out.

Serious question. I’m notoriously bad about making consistent updates on this blog (except for February where I posted 27/28 days). On my tumblr on the other hand I post all the time. Over the past fourteen months I’ve posted over 800 times, which comes out to 1.9 posts per day. I bring this up because this a question I’m faced with a lot. What makes people come back to a web site. Traditional thought would say consistently updating content, but blog vs. tumblr is proving that wrong for me. Maybe because original content (blog) vs. reposted content (tumblr) is far more important? I’m not sure.

Update: blog gets about 2x traffic than my tumblr for the curious

There is a long running inside joke among my friends about “your internet?!?!?!” Some background – in college we had notoriously bad internet. It was slow and constantly just went out. One day I called the help line to report that our internet was down (yet again). The head of the IT department answered. I said, “I’m on the 4th floor of Davis and my internet is out.” To which he responded, “your internet?” and promptly hung up on me. Instant meme among those of us enduring his reign of tyranny.

Fast forward a few years later. Rumors (hopefully unfounded) coming out of Iran say that the country is considering shutting down the internet. How can a country allow it’s citizens access (albeit restricted) to something like the internet only to shut it down. Sounds like asking for another Arab spring if you ask me. The messed up part of all of this is that all I can picture in my head is some random kid calling up Ahmadinejad* and hearing laughter followed by “your internet?” and then being hung up on.

*random side story – I had a professor in college who randomly put spelling this guy’s name on a quiz after telling us spelling wasn’t important.