US Chief Technology Officer? I consider myself pretty plugged-in to current political chatter, but this Scoble post was the first I learned about a US CTO office being considered in an Obama Administration. Scoble went with Larry Lessig and threw out several other names. Lessig is a great choice, but as for those other names, I'm with Mark who commented, "Mark Andreessen? No. Dave Winer? Hell no. Joel Spolsky? OH HELL NO..." You get the idea. Two names offered by commenters that I really liked were Doc Searls and Cory Doctorow. Someone mentioned Scott Guthrie. ScottGu would be great at anything, but we .NET devs cannot lose Scott for ANY Greater Good, no way, no how. If word came that it was time for ScottGu to Ascend, I'd fight that, too.
Follow Woz, follow your heart. If there was a Top Ten List of Wisdom Bits for Geek Success, Wozniak's simple philosophy of "The rewards are in your head. The reward is invisible. It's what you like to do," from this Intel Developer Forum interview would be in the top 3. That's huge. The CNET article recorded several interesting quotes and is a quick read. Definitely worth checking out.
Second Best Obama Quote. McCain really stepped on it this time with the house thing, but it gave Obama the opportunity to deliver his second best quote of the campaign. "I guess if you think being rich means you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, it's not surprising you might think the economy is fundamentally strong." His best quote was in responding to Hillary on guns and his elitism with "She's running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, like she's Annie Oakley. Hillary Clinton is out there like she’s out in the duck blind every Sunday.” For an unfunny postscript to this bit on McCain being another W, Jack Cafferty's post for CNNPolitics.com lists simple comparisons that are hard to refute.
An actual conversation about Apple Quality. I'm not mentioning this TechCrunch "Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges" to dig at Apple, but of the 294 comments, it was amazing to me how so many people spoke without the usually religious fervor that usually inspires comments to a post like this. As Ed Bott posted, "I can’t remember the last time I saw so many real-world complaints concentrated in one place."
eBay needs to read these comments. I haven't visited eBay probably in two years, but I was nevertheless interested in this TechCrunch "eBay: The Doldrum Years" post. Great title. What was excellent about this post was not what TechCrunch provided, but what the 86 commenters provided. What incredible free Market Research for eBay if they were smart enough to use it! A few excerpts, "Craigslist is easier and more profitable." "eBay acquisitions mean greater complexity..." "Stop trying to compete with Amazon..." "Tick off your customers [in Ebay's case it is the SELLERS because the SELLERS pay all the FEES not the buyers] and shortly you will have to close shop because you will have destroyed your business..."
Godspeed with Geothermal, Google! I don't know how we went to Everyman Production with three TechCrunch posts tonight, but I had to send Google some love for investing $10 million into geothermal energy. This is the kind of bold investment initiative you want to hear about as we close in on the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.
Says she wants to use it on me now... I don't know why some song lyrics capture my attention during the coding day and others do not, but Seether's Driven Under always makes me listen up. Must be because each chorus ends, "She told me she had a gun, it sounded like she’d used it once before, oh man." With the final chorus ending the song, "She told me she had a gun, she says she wants to use it on me now…" Human interest tunes, I guess.