Rate of adoption: Next time you want to judge whether something is lame or not based on how many weeks it takes the entire world to jump onto it, consider this: The first .com domain was registered on March 15, 1985. It was two years and eight months later (November 30, 1987) before the 100th .com domain was registered.

Blog lite: Traveling today, but still linking (for those who follow this blog via RSS and may not see it, I have added a ‘rexblog linkblog’ to the right-hand column [rss]). I’ll also be posting here with a couple of Treo tests.

A parting shot: I’ve quit saying, “I won’t be blogging for a few days,” as every time I do, I end up posting from somewhere unanticipated. But I’m traveling through Tuesday and I have a bet with a family member over whether or not I can go without using my computer until tomorrow night [she's going to hide it -- but I haven't told her about the features of my Treo : )]. Before I sign off, I wanted to share this incredible photo. It was just luck on my part. Late yesterday, I picked a few tomatoes and put them in a white mixing bowl to carry them inside. I looked down and saw the color, light and shadows exactly like you see them. I snapped it with my small Cannon camera and have done nothing to retouch it. One thing I did not anticipate when I started my rookie gardening efforts: When you watch things grow from seeds to ripened produce, you can feel like a cannibal when you prepare a salad. [You get over it, however.]

Technorati Tags: garden

Happy birthday, Doc: Doc Searls turns 59 today.

Quote:

“I started blogging when I was 52, I just figured out. For whatever that’s worth.”

A couple of years ago, Jeff Jarvis used a few other bloggers and me as poster-children for “older bloggers.” At the time, it was just a few weeks after I’d turned 50, so I thought the reference was especially humorous. On a few occasions, I’ve seen Doc write or say: “Everything you know me for, I did after the age of 50.” I’m now the age Doc was when he started blogging — and his was the first blog I ever saw and was the reason I started this one — but as Doc obviously does, I feel there’s so much about life that makes me still feel like a kid in a candy store.

Side note: I just noticed that the Doc Searls entry in Wikipedia is a stub, which in wikipediaspeak, is, “an article that is too short to be genuinely useful, but not so short as to be useless.” I think his birthday would be a good day to add some useful information to it. (And for once, I’m not being sarcastic here — none of this, please): I’m suggesting legit, documented information from those who are aware of Doc’s accomplishments and role in chronicling and articulating the changing role of customers in a networked marketplace.

Bonus link: RSS feed that will track changes of Doc’s wikipedia entry. (Click on the “history” page of any wikipedia entry and in the left-hand column, you can find a link to its RSS feed.)

Technorati Tags: aarp, cluetrain, doc searls

Friday funnies - via bLaugh.com: What will Dave Winer do after he quits blogging? Or, as we ask around here, “What Will Dave Do?” WWDD? One prediction: It won’t involve moving to Nashville for a singing career ; ) .

Technorati Tags: bloggers, dave winer

The tail end of this week’s long-tail wagging: Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, now an official “best-selling author” of the book, The Long Tail, recaps a week of debate on the blogosphere over Lee Gomes’ Wall Street Journal column challenging some of, in Anderson’s words, “the margins of (his) thesis.” Chris was nice enough to point to my earlier posts (and here) that observed the advantage Chris enjoyed after the column appeared because he had a blog, while Lee was forced to respond to Chris’ rebuttal a day late, and then via e-mail on someone else’s weblog.

Quote:

The whole episode was an interesting and in many ways educational experience. The big lesson, as Rex Hammock points out, was the advantage of having a blog. The WSJ got the first word, but the conversation continued out here in the blogosphere, both in my comments and on other blogs thanks to the very classy decision of the WSJ editors to put a link to my response in a prominent box in Gomes’ story. Gomes, not having his own blog (by WSJ policy perhaps), was forced to respond by asking blogger Nick Carr to post an email from him the next morning, which was too little, too late.

However, the real bottomline to the story is this, according the Chris, “As the salvos flew yesterday I got news that my book, which is currently #10 on the WSJ non-fiction bestseller list, will move to #3 next week. Now I’m getting email from other authors asking if I can get Gomes to attack them, too.”

By the way, I don’t think the WSJ has a policy against a columnist having a weblog. While I can’t recall who, I know I’ve seen at least a couple blogs by columnists there. I searched for the two I thought had blogs, but it was not them — I’ll add to this post if I can recall them later.

[cartoon via: bLaugh.com]

Technorati Tags: long tail

You might as well ban oxygen as a means to rid the world of sexual predators: [I have voted to suspend my 'no political bogging rule in order to post the following rant.] Civics lesson alert, people. And before we all panic, let’s take a deep breath and learn what’s taking place. First the news: The U.S. House of Representatives, by a 410-15 vote, passed legislation that, according to a story on the Congressional Quarterly website, cq.com (a very expensive subscription site), “would require schools and public libraries that receive certain federal technology improvement grants to block minors from viewing pornography or using “social networking” Web sites at their facilities.” This vote is causing a major eruption on the tech blogosphere this morning — and, frankly, it should. In fact, I’ll add to that eruption.

First, an observation about the “politics” that are probably at work here. A vote of 410-15 means that the vast majority of the House parked all logic at the door — a majority of both Republicans and Democrats voted in favor of the bill. For example, my congressman, Jim Cooper, who is a Democrat (disclosure: Jim is a personal friend and I am an extremely loyal supporter, despite my ideological disagreement with him at times — like now), voted for this legislation. I don’t know why, as Jim usually doesn’t cave on these types of symbol over substance issues — I haven’t talked with him about it.

Despite the majority vote for the legislation, this looks like a “gotcha” piece of legislation designed to create a campaign sound-bite in the coming election. According to CQ, the bill was placed directly on the House calendar, bypassing the Energy and Commerce Committee, and was passed under suspension of the rules, which limits debate, bars amendments and requires a two-thirds majority for passage.

John Dingell, D-Mich., and ranking member of the committee, told CQ: “I can’t tell whether it’s a bunch of Republicans who are panicky about the next election or whether it is a situation in which everybody’s trying to rush to get out of town to go on an August vacation.”

Consider how difficult it would be to vote against this legislation: Can you imagine the campaign radio spot: “Sexual predators are stalking your children on line — and when given an opportunity to do something about it, Congressman Doe voted against protecting your children.” Frankly, faced with that prospect, I can’t believe the legislation got any “no” votes.

However, this is a classic example of how wonderful intentions (I fully believe protecting children from online sexual predators is a wonderful intention) can easily turn into really bad policy, legislation and regulations.

I hesitate to attempt to “break-down” the legislation and will admit that I am the last person I’d trust to interpret the intentions of lawmakers who held no hearings or debate on the specific bill, however, from this text of the bill, one can easily see that the legislation will, if passed by the Senate and signed into law by the President, “require recipients of ‘universal service support’ for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.” While language is included that clearly indicates the intention (and, and again, it’s a wonderful intention) is directed against sexual predators, the legislation instructs the FCC to define social networking websites and chat rooms with the following language:

In determining the definition of a social networking website, the Commission shall take into consideration the extent to which a website–

(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.’.

If that’s the definition of social-networking, then I believe the House of Representatives has just banned the entire Internet. Those five bullet points are not only Web 2.0, they’re Web 1.0 — they’re the Web. Let me say politely to lawmakers and academics and media producers and everyone else who thinks the Internet is about the display of static information on a computer screen — or the exchange of e-mail. YOU’RE NOT GETTING IT. If you ban access to the “social network” you ban access to the Internet. What’s revolutionary here is not that display of static content on computer terminals — it’s the interactivity of all of that information and the way in which people are connected in radical new ways by an incredibly disruptive force called a link.

Because of the link the Internet is a social network. That’s what all this tagging and bookmarking and blogging is about. Look at the simple “commercial entity” called StumbleUpon. (As I try to follow what is taking place in the social-media arena, I’ll sign up for anything.) I thought StumbleUpon was merely a bookmarking service until I experimented with it a few months and discovered it is a powerful social-networking platform to connect people who enjoy the same types of websites (and not, just websites, but specific pages on websites). My Stumbleupon page has all sorts of potential social-networking features that I don’t use but look how one can build relationships around something as simple as clicking a button on a browser that says, “I like this page.” (If you’re registered on the site, it will suggest others who like the same types of pages you like.) This is either really scary or really amazing — and probably both. However, it can’t be banned, nor should it. We need to use it responsibly and teach our children how to use it responsibly — (i.e., don’t think you’re anonymous when you click on websites you know you shouldn’t be visiting. And don’t believe people are who they pretend to be — online or in real-life.)

I wish lawmakers could protect children from sexual predators by banning their access to social-networks. Unfortunately, they might as well try solving the problem by banning sexual predators’ access to oxygen.

Technorati Tags: blogging, facebook, myspace, social networking

Remembering Dixie: Dave Winer asks, “Remember the the Dixie podcast experiment?” I do. Bad singing. Great experiment.

Quote de Mom: Floyd Landis flunked a drug test and an AP reporter was able to get his mother on the phone.

Quote:

“Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn’t blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but ‘if it’s something worse than that, then he doesn’t deserve to win. I didn’t talk to him since that hit the fan, but I’m keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are…I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I’m not going to jump to conclusions … It disappoints me.’”

All I can say is: What the that which hits the fan was he thinking?

Chasing ones long tail (or, why journalists should blog): Yesterday, I pointed out that a number-crunching debate (a slide-rule duel?) was going to erupt over the Lee Gomes Wall Street Journal piece critical of aspects of Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail. Because he blogs, Anderson was able to have a very civil rebuttal posted by the time most people were first reading the WSJ column online (what? you mean people can read it in print). As I predicted, the “coversation” surrounding the article shifted away from the walled-off environs of WSJ.com and onto Chris’s website and the blogosphere. The fascinating (sad?) sidebar to this is that when Lee Gomes responded to the blogosphere’s fisking of his column, it was via an e-mail to Nick Carr. (I guess he could have chosen John Dvorak.)

Bonus link: BusinessWeek journalist Steven Baker’s post from last Saturday has some thoughts on why journalists should blog.

Technorati Tags: long+tail

Backpack adds a calendar: My ego-RSS-feeds were pinging me earlier with this nice shout-out from Jason Fried, so I checked in with him and in an e-mail exchange, discovered that Backpack users will have something to cheer about later tonight. I was going to wait for some official announcement, but since it’s live already and you can even watch a screencast about it, here’s the rexblog’s first-ever Web 2.0 scoop: the Backpack calendar feature. Here’s a screenshot:

Update: Speaking of firsts, this weblog has received its first-ever credit from TechCrunch for a scoop. Note: I feel this is pretty much it when it comes to my Web 2.0 scoops. I can now retire and going back to posting about bluegrass music and my tomatoes.

Technorati Tags: backpack, web2.0

A long tail fisking with calculators: Good morning, number buffs. Today, we have some fun math smack down taking place between writers who can actually add and subtract. The Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes attempts to recalculate the numbers behind Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail. In near real-time, Chris (who obviously stayed up late last night) thoroughly responds to Gomes’ methodology. (In the blogosphere, some call this type of debate fisking.) Now, if Gomes had the ability on WSJ.com to continue responding to Anderson, and if the story was not behind a cost wall (I suspect that will change when the Journal sees bloggers pointing to it. later: they did), then we could really learn something. However, the WSJ story will remain static and all discussion of it by those who care will shift over to Chris’s blog.

Rexblog color commentary: While a section front (B-1) placement gives Gomes the early advantage, Anderson’s instant response that is polite and civil — and thoroughly calculated — is effective. As an author, you can’t appear to defensive — and Chris doesn’t — but you can’t hold back either. Because Chris blogged this book from its inception, through every chapter, and continues blogging it today, he has dozens of bloggers (along with academics and other experts who advised him) who have vetted his math along the way. In other words, he will not be the only person defending his methods and math today — although he will be the one who does so with the greatest civility. This will be a good case study for future authors to follow. Oh, yeah, and most importantly, Chris will sell more books.

Update: If you have any interest, you can follow the blogospheric discourse (I’m an optimist) on this topic at techmeme.

[If time permits, I'll add some more to this post later in the day]

Technorati Tags: long tail

Shamless self-promotion: Ramon Ray at Smallbiztechnology.com, who has been blogging on the topic of small business technology since before they were called blogs, has compiled a short list of folks in the “media” he thinks are leading the charge in making sure small business owners hear about what’s going on in the world of small business. He included me, which may come as a surprise to many who read this weblog who don’t know I also publish MyBusiness magazine on behalf of NFIB and that Hammock Publishing is the home of Smallbusiness.com. Thanks, Ramon.

Technorati Tags: hammock publishing, small busines, smallbiztechnology.com

My vegetables are blogging: Some bloggers post photos of their kids or pets. Over the past four months, I’ve been posting photos of my rookie attempts at growing vegetables. This week, the tomatoes are starting to fully ripen. Nashville food blog Fixin’ Super’s Laura Creekmore instructed me to not pick the tomatoes too early — and I’ve followed her recommendation. Planting and tending the little garden has been fun and after the initial effort, it has been something that only requires a few moments in the early morning or late afternoon. At some point, I’ll list numerous things I’ve learned from doing it. However, one of the funniest things I learned was that the run-away bushes I thought were okra are actually squash. (I could have referred back to this photo and known better.)