Garrick van Buren – Page 148 – About time. And product. And being more deliberate.

Low Hanging Snark

“An inexperienced picker would pick the low-hanging fruit first” – Albert Pell quoted in Fast Company

In the instances where I’ve heard the phrase ‘low-hanging fruit’ the above is true. Rarely does picking the easy stuff solve anything than checking something off a list. The real important, long-term actions take the commitment of getting a ladder.

Or making the tree shorter.

The Problems with School Choice

Seems to me, programs that encourage parents to send their kids to schools outside of their immediate neighborhood is a bad idea in a number of ways:

Gives parents no incentive to improve their schools or neighborhoods.
Makes bad schools worse by reducing their resources.
Redirects education dollars into fuel tanks to bus kids further away and back.
Increases the strain and demand on “good” schools, making them less good.

Disclaimer:
My kid isn’t school age yet, the schools in my neighborhood are pretty good.

LATER:
There’s a parallel in here with immigration. Until Mexico is a place worth staying at, borders will continue to be jumped. This only helps the bus drivers.

Food Industry Admits HFCS isn’t Natural

The best news I’ve heard in a while – High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t ‘all natural’. The
Center for Science in the Public Interest sued Kraft and Cadbury Schweppes until they agreed.

2008 Presidential Candidates as Tech Gadgets

For being really attractive, an expected move forward, and making it fun to improve ourselves
John Edwards = Nintendo Wii
For being a really good solution with enthusiastic support, but never quite feels right
Dennis Kucinich = RIM Blackberry
For showing us what we all know the future looks like but still making us wonder if now is the time
Barak Obama = Apple iPhone
For being expected and reliable
Hillary Clinton = Tivo

LATER
Keep the comparisons are rolling into the comments…Al Gore = Ubuntu = awesome.

Awake in 5

Just got word that Jon Steinhorst‘s latest short film, Awake, is up at 3to1Studios.com.

It’s a great looking, if emotionally tough, 5-minute piece.

You may remember Jon from our podcast conversations.

Rick Requests Relevance

“…I want to be able to expand a feed (or a folder) and filter the items in the reader window by tag/category…it would be really cool to be able to drill down just to the stuff that was highest value, regardless of the publisher.” – Rick Klau

Relevance Still Different than Timely

“Unlike email, every article is not necessarily something you should read, or even look at.” – Dave Winer

This is why I keep my RSS feeds and my email separate.

Putting the Digital Video ‘in’ Digital Video Recorder

Back in December 2005 I wrote:

“Now, despite the TiVo being a Linux box and hooked up to my network – I can’t easily send video to it. To be clear – I don’t want to get video off it – I want to put video on it. Easily. As easily as setting up a Season Pass.”

This morning, I read this from Mark Cuban:

“Can ~~user generated content~~ be uploaded to cable or satellite companies and then delivered as regular TV to be played back from a settop box or DVR.” – Mark Cuban

It’s nice to see these ideas gaining traction with those more familiar with delivering video than I am.

It Only Makes Sense if You Only Sell Ads

“Except for one thing. There’s no ringtone for sale. Just like there were no bathrobes a couple weeks ago. Or Dundee statues before that. Or Timberlake boxes. Or Timberlake box song ringtones” – Doodledee

Heck, TikiBar TV understands this:

“Rather than charging a micropayment for your show, sell fans a nice fancy mug!” – Dave Slusher

BitPass Bites the Dust.

Just received and email from Bitpass.com saying they are no longer:

Dear Valued Bitpass Merchant

We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our control, we are discontinuing our operations…”

“On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and we will begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder”

Kinda sad, I remember Scott McCloud was using BitPass to sell access to his online comics.

As of this writing, BitPass.com has yet to reflect this development.