9 More SXSW 2006 Selections

We Are All Silos

Another day, another MacLeod (the word I’m using to describe my heavy-handed, Hugh MacLeod-inspired imagery).

How many login/password combinations are you (or your browsers) remembering?

Aside from the security issues inherent in having multiple keys around the web, each login/pass is another barrier to adoption, integration, usability, and usefulness.

Customers are the silo, not publishers – application or otherwise.

Great conversation with J Wynia on this topic this morning. The point is, we all have the ability right now to hold, serve, and control our own data. Fifteen minutes into the future, we won’t be adding information to services – we’ll be pointing our own urls to them.

Trackbacks & tags, trackbacks & tags. This is where EdgeIO is pointing to the future. Aggregators and other services pulling in distinct tags, basically taking ownership of a word. While authors still own their original posts. The opposite of Technorati.

Death is My Exit Strategy

Maybe it was:

Bird Flu for the Birds

Perhaps I’d feel differently if Bird Flu was the only Big Bad the Big Media has thrown at us in the past 6 years. But it’s not.

Flood. Iraq. Terrorist Attack. Neighbors. Asteriods. First Graders. Blogs. (Maybe I’ll finish finding links later, maybe not.)

Call me cynical, but bird flu feels FUDdy. Especially when something like this comes through.

Jen read Flu. She says we’re due.

That may be. At minimum, the wrong people (everyone) are being told to prepare for something full of ‘ifs’, ‘whens’, and ‘maybes’.

“The H5N1 avian flu virus that has infected flocks on at least three continents and killed 91 people could be the virus that experts fear will mutate.”

(emphasis mine)

91 people have died on record from bird-to-human transmission. No human-to-human cases have been found.

The CDC conservatively estimates 20,000 people die each year from regular flu (the kind we have shots for).

More than 33,000 people have died due to military intervention in Iraq. The official death toll of the Sept. 11 disaster is 2,986.

I still remember the constant threat of MAD thrown at us growing up. I recognize that there were moments in the cold war where it came very close to occurring.

But. It. Didn’t. I think we’ve lost perspective.

Podcasts Can’t Help, Radio Can, But Often Doesn’t.

This weekend the Upper Midwest got dumped on. My hometown received 19″ of snow in a single day. Jen and I were driving home in it. It was awful. Bad.

During the drive, we had no idea if conditions were getting better or worse.

Just as Mark Ramsey restates, radio has the power to provide this type of service – persistently. Not on the infrequent occasion that it must.

They have a specific geographic reach. Like Steve Mays’ example for 3 hours this weekend, I was concerned with the weather conditions within that geographic region. Unfortunately, every station acted like the storm didn’t exist.

Podcasts can’t provide real-time, critical weather information. Broadcast radio can. Satellite radio might.

Amazing Race Season 9 – Episode 3

The hippies (BJ & Tyler) are playing better than anyone yet – in any season. They’re playfulness at the beginning of this episode – greeting everyone at the zip line by jumping on their cars – is what this is race is all about.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go to Russia.” – Lake

Seriously? We were just talking about how St. Petersburg is on our list of places to go.
Lake, I fear the worst of you is yet to come.

Roadblock – Who wants to take the plunge
Jen’s doing this one. Sure, she’ll mock me the entire way, but we gotta split these up. She sealed her fate with this commentary:

“It’s only 10 meters, I would dive. I wouldn’t do anything fancy, but I’d dive.”

Detour – Scrub or Scour
Scrub for us. On first glance, it sounds like we’d be more in control of our progress. I’m not a big fan of the random-box challenges. No skill, only patience required. Patience in the Amazing Race is on a short fuse.

Blah. Ending the episode without a pitstop. Feels so, empty.