March 2005

Happiness can always be found in projects that use a favorite word such as “conspire.” Pete Caputa mentioned our conspirations. The people I share office space with and I have a newish website in the works for our space: The Conspiratory.

When I use the word (and variations of) conspire, I like the second definition that’s noted at dictionary.com since (of course) none of my conspiring activities are illegal or wrongful. ;)

1. To plan together secretly to commit an illegal or wrongful act or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
2. To join or act together; combine: “Semisweet chocolate, cocoa powder, espresso, Cognac, and vanilla all conspire to intensify [the cake's] flavor” (Sally Schneider)

A few months ago Patrick McCormick (former CIO of Somerville), Michael Oh and I helped start up BostonWAG, a wireless advocacy group for Boston.

The group’s mission:

• Advocate for public access to the Internet via open wireless networks. BostonWAG believes that open wireless networks can strengthen communities, foster economic development, minimize the digital divide, and improve the quality of life in today’s information age.
• To educate the public, policy makers, and the media about the value of Internet access via open wireless. BostonWAG provides practical, detailed information on the best practices of open wireless networks in order to inform community conversations, media coverage, planning, and project development.
• To inspire people to embrace open wireless networks to benefit individuals and communities. BostonWAG leverages creative communication, lively discourse, and fun events to spark interest in wireless computing with the premise that only widespread adoption and useful applications will maximize the value of open wireless networks and make them ubiquitous.

We’ve been using the WiFi Meetups to get the group organized and bring a bit of life to the WiFi Meetup that wasn’t really used much before August 2004. We attended a “Wifi Taskforce” at Boston City Hall this afternoon hosted by Councillor John Tobin Jr. His plan if all continues to go well is to host a series of of taskforce meetings, conduct a study about community WiFi in Boston (funded by the Boston Foundation) and then host a WiFi Summit in Boston with Mayor Menino’s office. I’m optimistic. It’s nice to see an open dialogue and planning instead of jumping on the “WiFi City” hype bandwagon.

Steve Garfield is doing some great work with Tobin on the councillor’s website.

Photo: Patrick McCormick, City Councillor John Tobin Jr., Michael Oh

tags: bostonWAG, community wifi

Thinking about life before Basecamp is a lot like trying to think about life before the internet itself. I use my Basecamp site for my clients, project planning for my own projects/websites, etc. I recently set up a project area for business collaborations with Peter Caputa at WhizSpark and to also offer feedback about their premium event planning platform and tools that are under development. It seems to be working out really well. I set up a category that I drop ideas and questions into that come up when I’m using WhizSparks’ tools. It’s easy to lose track of things in email. Since everything is on the web, there’s an excellent archive to look back on.

tags:Basecamp, project management

Jess Barron, a coworker in 1999 at Wild, Wild Web (and a high school classmate of Michael’s — it’s a small, random world!), sent me an email this morning about Yahoo’s 10th Anniversary. She’s part of the team at Yahoo! who put together a “netrospective” of their first decade on the web called “10 Years, 100 Moments of the Web.” Yahoo! is giving away free ice cream today at Baskin Robbin’s around the U.S.

Jess also wrote on her website (no permalink for the entry, alas) about her own 10-year anniversary working and writing on the web.

The past 10 years working on the web have kept me experiencing a continuous deja vu. Anyone who has been a web writer, editor or producer since 1995 or 1996 certainly must feel somewhat akin to Bill Murray’s character in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day.” For instance, when reading this Christian Science monitor article about Yahoo!’s new media plans in Santa Monica last week, I was struck by the initial thrill about these exciting plans and these exciting times, but a few moments later I had a strong sense of deja vu. Hadn’t I already lived in this exciting time? Hadn’t I already heard *these* exciting plans? Ah yes, I had. Reading this article brought me back to the spring of 2000, when I worked at Scour.com in Beverly Hills and we had partners like AtomFilms and iFilm and Stephen Spielberg’s Dreamworks-backed pop.com was set to launch with an offering of Internet-only programming. This time (five years later) we have seen that the world (well, the U.S. at least) is finally ready for consuming entertainment content on their computers. This time, I am convinced that this stuff can actually be successful. My conviction is so strong that I am leaving San Francisco to move down to Los Angeles again to give it another try.

I received an email today from the customer service department at boston.com in response to my second email I sent to them about the lack of links in Adam Gaffin’s new column about weblogs. Eventually, I hope they do the right thing. My guess is that boston.com itself might be clueful regarding the merits of linking; but they have to deal with the old school newspaper who is possibly less clueful. The response I received today makes it sound like web publishing is magic.

Susan,

I am sorry for misunderstanding your comments.

Articles that appear in the Boston Globe are automatically published online. The web address was not copied and pasted onto the online version of the article; it was in the printed version as well.

Your request to have the Universal Hub link active has been forwarded to our editorial team for consideration.

Kind regards,
Ashley
Customer Support
Boston.com

Related entries:
Dear boston.com: Where Are the Links?
Dear boston.com? Where Are the Links? Part II

One of these days I’d like to set up a mini recording/podcast studio so that I can record live shows of Exploit Boston! Radio, my streaming internet radio station (to offer up via podcast), conduct interviews with Boston bands, etc. I did college radio ten years ago and I’ve been broadcasting an internet radio station off and on since 1999; but I’m entirely clueless about what sort of equipment I need to set up a mini studio to use with my iBook. Something that’s reasonably portable would be ideal. If you have tips as far as mixing boards, microphones, software, etc. — I’d enjoy hearing from you.

I set up a tag at del.icio.us called macpodcast to collect helpful tidbits.