11:20PM Pacific: Happy to report no snow in Berkeley.  

A social networking site with a fantastic business model. 

Rex Hammock: "These phones are not intended for consumers, they're intended for cult members." Yes. 

Can't you hear me knockin? 

If I had one wish, it would be that everyone who reads this blog would listen to the talk I gave to the NPR people last Thursday (MP3, torrent).

Things here will make a lot more sense, imho, with the podcast as background. It lays a foundation that we will build on. I was thinking of ways I could trick people into listening to it. I thought maybe I could put a secret word near the end of the cast, and then require people to enter the secret word before they could gain entry to Scripting News after a certain date. Then I thought it would be better to just post the request, respectfully, here on the blog itself, and skip the tricks.

Please, sometime in the next few days, set aside an hour or so to listen to the talk.

With much gratitude, Dave

What if Yahoo bought UserLand? 

In late 2003, early 2004 we had talks with Yahoo about them acquiring UserLand.

The idea was that Yahoo would get into the weblog hosting business, along with customizable River of News aggregators.

Had we done the deal, it seems Yahoo might today compete with News Corp's MySpace.

Google Reader would still be playing catch-up.

Sure, our software was designed to run on the desktop, but the design would have easily ported to a Yahoo-scale centralized app.

And we would have given Blogger a run for the money.

Wish we had done the deal!

Busted flat in Baton Rouge 

Today's a travel day, I have a late afternoon flight from Logan to SFO, but when I woke this morning and checked the news I learned that a blizzard was moving in to NYC and JetBlue, anticipating another fiasco, cancelled most of their flights. In Cambridge, light flurries, nothing to worry about, but over the next hour I started to panic as the snow got heavier and heavier.

Turning on the local news they're whipping up a panic, school closings, encouraging people to stay home. Oh man I've been snowed-in in Boston before and please please, no way do I want to do that again. It's a miserable way to spend a few days. Being snowed-in is okay when you live there, but staying in a hotel, living off room service, that's no way to pass the time.

Movie: Cambridge snowy Monday.

Luckily, they were overhyping the snow, NY is getting the worst of it (though it's still snowing like a mofo here). Logan is reporting minor delays. So I'll head out to the airport after breakfast and see if I can get an earlier flight. I can't wait to get back to Berkeley where it's warm and it doesn't snow.

I want my MTV 

Just gotta say the Oscars got it right this year.

All the movies nominated for Best Picture were at least good, a few were great, but they picked the right one to honor with the top prize. Last year, I was shaking my head, this year, I'm nodding.

When I saw The Departed for the first time, I wrote that it might be the best movie ever made. I've now seen it four times, there's still little treasures to discover. I don't think it's the best movie ever made, but it's pretty damned close, and Scorcese has made another great movie that's stood the test of time, Goodfellas, so now everyting's all square.

Next item on the to-do list, let's get Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame (and the U.S. out of Iraq).