Thanksgiving travel done right. We spent Thanksgiving visiting family in South Central Pennsylvania where I grew up. We normally make the drive from Vermont, around 9 hours. This year we took an AirTran flight from Burlington to BWI. An hour in the air and an hour in a rental to York County, PA. With God as my witness, I will never drive to the folks' house again.
Speaking of Turkeys. The Palin turkey pardon video is now legendary, of course. It's incredible to me that the Huffington article produced over 5000 (thousand) comments. I read several pages worth, mostly about Palin's cluelessness and the virtues of vegetarianism. Vintage comments were "The Burberry scarf and the Starbucks were BOTH purchased on Wasilla's Main Street at her favorite second-hand shop. So don't go callin' her elitist. Everyone in Alaska knows you can't wear Prada to the Slaught-tah. It's so five hunting seasons ago." And "Anyone else think this wasn't just some unfortunate oversight and that Palin was actually sending a Godfather-esque warning to her enemies and critics?" The funniest bit on this was from Jay Leno which I heard in the Sunday Funnies segment of last week's George Stephanopoulos podcast, "What people don't know is that after listening to Sarah Palin's voice a couple of minutes the turkeys said, 'Uh, kill us now.'" The joke is probably somewhere in the 5643 Huffington article comments, but no one tells it like Leno.
DotNetNuke and Community Server remain kissin' cousins. First Telligent gets 20 million from Intel Capital and now the DotNetNuke Corporation secures Series A financing from August Capital and Sierra Ventures. I don't know if that means DNN will now be able to scale or if a license will soon cost $20,000.
Seth on the Times and GM. Two excellent Seth Godin posts in this Everyman roundup. First his thoughts on how the New York Times could have taken a different path to avoid their current pain through leveraging their op-eds, permission asset-driven micro-sites, using its authority to influence as the NY Times Bestseller List had done in the past, and other good advice. In "What to do about Detroit," Seth advocates that the Big Three should be replaced by 500 new car companies, like there were 90 years ago when innovation flourished.
Good ideas and smart services will continue to prosper. Salesforce.com posted a 43 percent revenue jump for the third-quarter. You go, Salesforce.com!
The power of the Retweet. Excellent article from Jeremiah Owyang on how Tweeting--and Retweeting in particular--can spread information faster than any other technology. There's a link in the post on how to Retweet, which I honestly didn't know how to do. I still haven't locked-in on day-to-day Tweeting, but I do gain a lot from following. One whose Tweets I gain a lot from is Tim O'Reilly. He writes a great post on why he loves Twitter. Scan the bullet points for a quick overview. Best excerpt, "Like a lot of people, I tried out Twitter early on, but didn't stick to it. Most of the early twitter conversation was personal, and I didn't have time for it. I came back when I noticed that about 5000 people were following my non-existent updates, waiting for me to say something. With that many listeners, I thought I'd better oblige."
ReReillying. This excerpt from Tim O'Reilly's "Why I Love Twitter" post is worthy of its own Everyman bit. I've heard him mention this in podcasts before, but it's very profound. "What's different, of course, is that Twitter isn't just a protocol. It's also a database. And that's the old secret of Web 2.0, Data is the Intel Inside. That means that they can let go of controlling the interface. The more other people build on Twitter, the better their position becomes."
01-20-09. "01-20-09" bumper stickers remaining on Vermont cars after Obama takes office is a good thing, reminding us that we made it. We survived Bush. My Man Thomas Friedman in a NY Times Op-Ed suggests we should "convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day. Swear in Barack Obama right now — by choice — with the same haste we did — by necessity — with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One." NY Times columnist Gail Collins wrote a similarly themed Op-Ed piece. As for 01-21-09 (Lord willing) and beyond, there are lots of comparisons between Obama and JFK out there, but Eleanor Clift's "Could Obama Become the Next Reagan?" for Newsweek is an interesting study as well. I voted for Reagan. Twice. So I am on board with Eleanor!
My Country 'Tis Of Thee. Signing off with something beautiful. "My Country 'Tis Of Thee" is a beautiful song, no matter who sings it. Well, maybe not the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but most everyone else. Being Zune Pass-empowered I can stumble across and store beautiful music like David Crosby and Graham Nash's rendition of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" in a snap. Here's the full track on Last.FM. It isn't as good as the remastered version on Crosby's 2006 Voyage album, and an even more beautiful version of 'Tis of Thee is Michael Hedges' Holiday on "Watching My Life Go By." Last.FM has only a 30 second clip of Holiday, but for Zune Pass holders (wink!) here's the full track in Zune Marketplace. Okay, that's something beautiful. I can sign-off now.