Everything that comes out of Dossy, from the strange to the banal.
Mena Trott (of SixApart fame) writes about kitchen drawers filled with candy at the SixApart office. Talk about a cost-effective employee perk as well as a clever recruitment ploy! I mean, what geek wouldn’t want to work for a company that gives you free candy?
I hope SixApart’s medical benefits includes a really kick-ass dental plan to go along with the candy, though.
This week’s Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers #14 was done by Danny Klein. If you’re interested in finding new blogger voices from New Jersey, it’s a good way to find them! Here’s the snippet about my submission this week:
You really can buy just about anything through Amazon.com, as Dossy finds.
Click the logo below to see the upcoming carnival schedule or to submit your own link.
(Yes, this blog entry’s title is a nod to this quote.)
While I couldn’t help but point out earlier this year that the famous e-tailer Amazon.com sold items such as anal douche (I mean, how can you resist? It’s anal douche! Everyone loves anal douche, right?), it seems Susan Mernit just found out, too. To be fair, Amazon.com now has an entire section devoted to Sex & Sensuality products
Well, in browsing around, I decided to check out what condoms they had, because that’s always good for a laugh (thanks, Joe Grossberg). What caught me by surprise was this:
What condom product in the world could possibly cost over $500? Turns out, it’s what you’d expect: condoms, in bulk. I mean, to the tune of a case of 5,000 Okamoto Fe+Male condoms — yikes! Exactly who does Amazon.com expect will order this? By my back-of-the-napkin math, if you used three condoms a day, every day, it’d take you almost five (5!) years to deplete your condom supply. I wonder how far out the expiration date is on these things.
I realize my seemingly outrageous conspiracy theory about September 11th isn’t very popular, but as time goes on, I think more and more facts will become known that support it. Craig Newmark (of Craigslist fame) blogs about a NY Times article, 9/11 Group Says White House Has Not Provided Files. As Craig points out, what do they have to hide? I can’t wait to find out …
Jeff Jarvis, a fellow TWX shareholder, links to a NY Times article about the possibility of Carl Icahn looking to push Time Warner forward.
I’m really starting to like Carl Icahn. I’m sitting on a +45% gain on my ANX shares after his recent buy of 12.3% in the company. If he can move the TWX stock to $27 by 2007, I’d really appreciate it.
(Full disclosure for people who haven’t been paying close attention.)
<#joiito> <Dossy> You are all witness, tonight I am dubbing the Blogosphere the Splinternet.
[#joiito] <jetx> i actually like nimoy’s hobbit song
[#joiito] * NickDouglas shudders quiveringly and tom-swiftly under the adverbs jetx skillfully, swiftly, purple-prosishly slung
<#joiito> <Dossy> Splinternet(R)(tm).
<#joiito> <Dossy> thank you.
[#joiito] <NickDouglas> splinternet!
[#joiito] <NickDouglas> that ROCKS
[#joiito] <adamhill> he also channels beat poetry – “Common People” with Ben Folds Five
[#joiito] <NickDouglas> dossy++
[#joiito] <seraph_> Dossy: “You are all witnesses. Tonight I dub the Blogosphere the Splinternet.”
[#joiito] <NickDouglas> adamhill: bet poetry?
<#joiito> seraph: Thank you for notarizing that statement. :)
[#joiito] * jeanniecool sighs and wishes NickD were ten years older.
[#joiito] <seraph_> :)
[12:19AM] Signoff: skadz (“Leaving”)
<#joiito> <Dossy> Of course, this IRC channel isn’t being logged anywhere, is it.
It has been, now. :-)
UPDATE: My friend, Rich DiMartino, pointed out that there wasn’t enough context to explain the relevance of this chat log and why I’m using the name “splinternet” — so, let me clarify: With the rise of user-friendly personal web publishing software packages, we will continue to see the increase of “many small islands of content” — effectively, the splintering of the Internet from big thick sites into many tiny little sites, or splinters. I think the analogy is especially apropos because splinters get under your skin and cause irritation and discomfort.
While AOL hasn’t been the dot-com darling lately with its sagging stock price, it hasn’t been complacently riding a downward spiral like many doom-sayers like to claim.
Mark Jen (of “fired by Google for blogging” fame) blogs about AOL being a possible dark horse. Maybe his working for Plaxo (a contact management service and more) and their recent partnership with AOL has given him a reason to take a closer look at AOL than everyone else, and it’s great to see what he’s found: AOL making serious strides in their product offerings, both for paid AOL members and for the web audience at large. On the things Mark found alone lead him to suggest that AOL might be a giant sleeper, just waiting for the opportunity to cut loose and take the lead in the latest phase of the Internet. Let me pick up where Mark left off …
The AOL of yesteryear helped create the Internet phenomenon we know of today by helping millions of people overcome the technical difficulties of getting online and offering nearly ubiquitous dial-up capability for its members and bundling easy-to-use software that offered a rich and vibrant online experience while everyone else was trying to figure out how to standardize around HTML and create web browsers. AOL was a company focused on building a community — an online community — by getting people online, giving them the tools to communicate with each other, and that’s made the world a better place, in my opinion. AOL spent the better part of the last 20 years achieving this, and it was definitely no small task.
The AOL of today is again tackling the hard problems: how to bring the best online experience to everyone, not just paying AOL members, keeping people’s always-on connections and constantly-connected computers safe and secure, and protecting children while they explore this new online world. It’s never easy being the pioneer in a space, and undoubtedly in five years when other companies follow AOL’s lead and do a better job having learned from AOL’s mistakes, AOL’s continued existance will be called into question again. But, one thing is certain: AOL will be spending the next 20 years working towards these new accomplishments.
Today’s doom-sayers will flip a complete 180 wanting to sound enlightened by saying that they knew AOL would succeed all along, and there will be new doom-sayers who will proclaim that the beginning of the end of AOL is imminent. But, in the end, we know who really gets it and who doesn’t.
UPDATE: Looks like Russell Beattie gets it, too.
As an aspect of my loneliness caused by a lack of meatspace geek friends, I’m always on the look-out for people with serious interests in technology and new media in New Jersey. As part of this search, I found the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers, a weekly summary of blog entries by Jersey bloggers or about Jersey, submitted for posting.
In the latest posting, Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers Eleven, there’s a link to Jeff Jarvis‘s recent entry about how he’s finally cancelling his AOL subscription after some 12 years of benig a member. While I couldn’t find anything that definitively confirms that Jeff’s in Jersey, I’m assuming he must be if the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers linked to him. Of course, I sent Jeff an email yesterday asking if he’d confirm, but I haven’t gotten back a response yet: perfectly expected, considering how busy he is and how he has no idea who I am.
I’m looking forward to finding new bloggers through the Carnival and maybe even get to become friends with a few of them. If you know of any Jersey bloggers, either point me at their sites in a comment or email me. Thanks.
I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I’m crawling on your shore.I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.[…]
Last night, Jeff Mach helped me understand what these lyrics truly mean to me. If I were to sing these quoted lyrics to you, Jeff, it would express how I feel right now and what I learned last night.
Jeff, your friendship is priceless to me. Thank you for teaching me about what I wouldn’t understand. Thank you for making the lightness louder and being the shore when I need it. Thank you for being you.
In the beginning of this month I wrote about AOL launching the latest version of their Video Search product. In the beginning of this week, I wrote about Nielsen/Netratings showing AOL Search trending up, and MSN Search trending down. Yesterday, Reuters ran an article that echoes what I said at the beginning of the week in an article titled “AOL, AskJeeves search growth outpace leaders.” Quoting from that article:
Between the first and second quarters of this year, the number of searches made on AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc. (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Ask Jeeves grew 15 percent and 16 percent respectively, according to a Nielsen/Netratings study released on Thursday.
By comparison, the number of searches on Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) grew 6 percent and 9 percent respectively over the same period. The number of searches on Microsoft’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) MSN fell 4 percent.
The article goes on to make clear that AOL is in no way a threat to the search market leader, Google, but it does show that AOL is making real progress in moving itself forward in the Internet space. These kinds of positive reports, along with announcements from Time Warner, paying a $0.05/share quarterly dividend, may help restore investor confidence that AOL is both a company and a brand that will continue to improve over time.
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