The Nexus of 2024

Author: jon

  • New theme: “Lorelei Bliss 2.0”

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    by Lisa Kazo of Lorelei Web Design.  Usually, when I think of Lorelei, my head spins all around; then again, I do like the three-column layout and color scheme, so it’s worth a try.  Comments welcome.

  • Two articles on Obama and one on Hillary from the Atlantic

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    There were a couple of interesting articles about this year’s presidential election in this month’s Atlantic. Andrew Sullivan suggests in Goodbye to all that that Obama’s real significance is that “unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all…

  • Notes from underground, chapter n

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    I went out last night to see Anthony Pappa at Scott Carelli’s Satellite, “bringing you the best underground DJs in the middle of the week for 5 years.”  I always feel so lucky when I get to see somebody of his caliber in such a small venue, and the crowd was great, very diverse, there…

  • How to use categories and tags? (meta)

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    I’m thinking through how to use categories and tags on this blog … I know I won’t get it completely right the first time so it’s worth starting from the beginning tracking the different experiments I do.  Usefully, WordPress allows multiple categories as well as multiple tags, so one way of thinking about this is…

  • How’d *that* one get through QA?

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    Last year, Microsoft set up a Windows Live Messenger bot to let kids talk with Santa: great fun for kids, a good way to increase readership — and of course a potential wealth of information to mine to better target ads, both for the kids and their parents. Talk about win/win! They reactivated it this…

  • Facebook introduces better opt-out, apologizes for “Beacon”

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    Well, it’s a start: in response to what’s getting characterized as a firestorm of criticism, and Monday’s disclosure that the tracking extends to third-party sites (including IP addresses of people who haven’t even signed up for Facebook), they’ve now followed up last week’s shift to more of an opt-in model with the introduction of a…

  • So it’s not just me …

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    In an interesting study recently published in the Journal of Applies Psychology and summarized in British Pscyhological Society’s Research Digest: Male and female employees who said they had witnessed either the sexual harassment of female staff, or uncivil, rude or condescending behaviour towards them, tended to report lower psychological well-being and job satisfaction. In turn,…

  • Hi, Mom!

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    We’re heading back to visit my Mom in Folly Beach, South Carolina, for a couple of days, so I won’t be online much. Please try to keep the web running in my absence. jon

  • “The Facebook betrayal – users revolt over advertising sell-out”

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    Nice article in by Susie Mesure and Ian Griggs in the Independent on Sunday on responses to Facebook’s new “social advertising” direction from users and consumer advocates.  The contrast betweeen the 35,000 people in “My photos are MINE! NOT Facebook’s! Change the Terms and Conditions” and less than 600 “fans” of Coke is a nice…

  • “A bit sad”, a bit surreal … and a very good thread on Mini

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    Mini does a great job of simultaneously conveying the disappointment I heard from a lot of people about how my Microsoft career ended, as well as the surreality of my multi-cameo at the company meeting, which we were laughing about at my goodbye parties. An excerpt: A lot of Microsofties interested in changing Microsoft’s internal…

  • “Liminal states”

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    I’ve been looking around for the right title for the blog.  The initial working title was “Transitions (for the time being)” — “Transitions” being the closest word I had come up with so far, and completely in sync with my mindset as I was setting things up here, but probably not the title I’d want…

  • Not to sound like a cliche or anything …

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    … but I woke up this morning thinking today really is the first day of the rest of my life!” After which point I went back to sleep, and didn’t get out of bed until close to noon — I mean, might as well get the rest of my life off to a nice relaxing…

  • Happy Hallowe’en!

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    Our plans for the day got slightly scrambled because the “do not track” list proposal from a coalition of nine privacy and civil liberties groups (including PrivacyActivism) got a chunk of media attention today (New York Times, Ryan Singel on Threat Level with a very good article, a lame discussion on Slashdot but still it’s…

  • Welcome!

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    Come then, I pray, grant me surcease from sorrow, Drive away care, I beseech thee, O goddess Fulfil for me what I yearn to accomplish, Be thou my ally. Just a temporary post for now … I’ll launch for real in the next few weeks. jon