May 2005

Michael Feldman wrote an extensive blog post about his impressions attending yesterday’s Wi-Fi Summit.

Always willing to speak up on subjects he knows little or nothing about, the Dowbrigade asked for, and received, one of the circulating microphones. Our question: “My name is Dowbrigade and I am a Blogger. I am not a MIT graduate, and do not understand a lot of the technology you have been discussing.” (We always like to start our with a self-depreciating comment, to engender sympathy and lower expectations. We neglected to mention that we had graduated from that other Cambridge univeristy). “However, I do understand a little bit about economics. You are talking about offering free wireless internet access to a million people who live or work in the city of Boston, but today powerful companies like Verison and ATT are making millions or billions of dollars selling that same service to the same market. Plus, if free wireless internet is available in Boston people and businesses are going to start using it to make VoIP phone calls, and stop paying the phone companies. Isn’t it unrealistic to think that these companies are going to leave all of those millions of dollars on the table? Do you really think that they are just going to go away?”

I am finally (f-i-n-a-l-l-y) moving sooz.com from Movable Type to WordPress. Please excuse the clutter and plain design while I get things moved around, updated, etcetera.

Here’s a screenshot (click the image for a larger image in a popup) for Steve Garfield who was curious about how to send email from his Mac’s mail.app program when he’s away from his home or work network. It came up when we were talking at the Museum of Science earlier today after the Boston Wi-Fi Summit. This may not work with all email hosting providers or networks. I’ve got DreamHost for my web and email hosting.

Speaking of the Museum of Science, they opened up their internal Wi-Fi network for the summit today. Wouldn’t it be great if it was always open or at least in the lobby and outside?

If you read sooz.com via an RSS newsreader I recommend updating to my FeedBurner powered feed so that you also receive alerts to new flickr photos and del.icio.us bookmarks. The RSS feed that Movable Type outputs still works but you won’t see the alerts about new photos and links.

On May 19th the City of Boston is hosting the Boston Wi-Fi Summit, beginning with remarks from Mayor Menino and culminating in two panel discussions on the ways that the city, businesses, local institutions, and community groups can help to bring high-speed Internet to people throughout the city.

They’ve sent out an open invitation to anyone interested in this discussion to RSVP and come to the Summit, which is next Thursday at 8:45AM at the Museum of Science. It’s open to the public and you do not have to be a Boston resident to attend. There is no fee.

More information and RSVP here:

http://www.bostonwag.org/summit.html

(BostonWAG is an organization for Wireless Advocacy in Boston that I’ve co-founded.)

Eugene Mirman is a funny guy. Here’s further proof. You have to listen to the “Anti Gay Phone Call I” and “Anti Gay Phone Call II” MP3s.

The story: I received several telemarketing calls from a phone company that wanted me to switch to them. That’s not weird. What is? The reason to switch. They are the only phone company that doesn’t support gay marriage, along with various other things. These are real, for those wondering.

paparazzi

Originally uploaded by Rosie O’Donnell.

I’ve been having an oddly fun time seeing Rosie O’Donnell’s camera phone photos appear on my flickr contacts page. It’s an interesting glimpse into a famous person’s world. For example, this is a photo she took of photographers taking photos of her. Rosie (are we on a first name basis yet?) also has photos of her kids, wife, day-to-day life, events, etc. Are there any other famous people using flickr?

A friend of a friend just got a job working for Event Me in New York City.

For event attendees:

Event Me’s free service informs more than 34,000 subscribers about unique professional, cultural, and fun events in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. More cities coming soon.

For event organizers:

To promote events, simply describe your event and desired audience to us. We will then select those subscribers who are most interested in your event and, upon your approval, email them with your invitation. Learn more.

Our promotion fee depends on the number of people being invited and the kind of event. Typically, it breaks down to 3 to 12 cents per email. Of course, you can always adjust the targeting criteria and increase or decrease the list size in order to make our service match your budget and promotional needs.

I checked out one of their sample event invitations that they send out on behalf of event organizers/promoters and it seems like a pretty basic web page with no ticketing or RSVP functionality — just a link to the event’s website. Maybe they should conspire with WhizSpark as a sort of reseller/add-on service for event organizers/promoters who want the sort of event planning tools WhizSpark is working on?

Earlier this week Shimon Rura and I hosted the second Genius Workshop dinner along with about 30 people who joined us. The idea is to bring tech innovators, creators and thinkers together in a room for dinner to conspire about individual projects and enjoy a good meal. Two people mentioned that we should have a more formal networking structure because they are serious about their business and focused on getting things done. Good for them, eh? The thing is, I think that most anyone you talk to can be of interest to you if you are open to the possibility. My event style for things I host is ideally a combination of networking and community. Many networking events will prepare a spreadsheet of participants’ contact information and backgrounds for everyone to review prior to the event so that you can determine who is worthy of your time. Whenever I’m presented with something like that I try to find at least a few people on the list who have absolutely nothing to do with what I am working on or interested in. You just never know. Susan Mernit and I had a related conversation about this during the Mobile Media Conference last weekend in LA and she concurred that she likes to throw in some randomness when inviting people to events. I’m glad I’m not alone!

It’s amazing what you can do with technology these days. Michael shares an example over on BunkoSquad.com.