Steve Hooker's Radio: kids, war, blogs, gadgets: A Welsh man in the wrong country, going home
January, 2002
Home:
All categoriesCybersaps:
Blogs style & effectPersonal:
Kids, neighboursWar blog:
WMD, al QaedaBlogFootball service:
Manila colonyMusic:
Rappers delightSpace:
Best religioneBay goods:
Going, going, gone
_____________
Not updated much:Broadband BritainBig Brother blog
Send 'spam free' 29 January 2002 
south Wales... Can you believe it? It's all green!
The Register: That 'Microsoft' RTFM page: "Our inboxes are filling with links to a rogue "How to RTFM" page posted supposedly on Microsoft's Web site.
But it's a hoax and as such not very funny. It's not a very clever hoax at that - although we can say that because we already know the trick."
Ah! Well, I got caught. Still funny though IMHO
New York Daily News: Women Learn Biz Whiz Tips: "
Wong, 60, a chiropractor in business for 15 years, said she wants to reshape her company image and market her business beyond its Chinese clientele."
"I learned that I should get my priorities in order," Wong said. "It was a reminder to change your attitude, your personality and your relationship."
That's a lot to change. Do they mean change your boyfriend? Americans -- strange breed.
|
CNN.com - Andersen CEO: Enron cost firm business: "Berardino insisted that it was a failure in Enron's business model, not its accounting practices, that torpedoed the company's stock and sent the energy trading company to seek bankruptcy court protections."
"Andersen hired a law firm to conduct interviews with the many Andersen employees involved with Enron, and Berardino said any wrongdoing would be punished." "With Enron in bankruptcy, shareholder lawsuits would likely target the company's auditor, Andersen, analysts said." |
 Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino tried to portray the accounting firm as a victim in the Enron scandal at a Chicago press conference Monday. |
They may have "85,000 honest, hard-working people at Andersen" but they're still in deep doo-doo.
28 January 2002
A breath of fresh air.
wine : New Zealand Wine News & Information: "News item (one of 4 for today):
February is the month that a young person's fancy turns to chocolate. And big red wines. At least, the purveyors of chocolate and wine would like you to think that when Valentine's Day rolls around"
Here's one for the lads! At last I've found another weblog on the subject of wine. This is also available as a feed that you can add to your website and your Radio news feeds, which can be sent via email for your blogging ease. And it's 'just' another Manila site.
New Zealand though? Who'd like to be context provider for this sector?
I was talking about this 18 months ago magazines are boring only once a month, if only they could have spread themselves more easily into the internet, to build their brand around the user experience of the internet. All that brand spreading going to waste.
Now, it's too late, it's time for the individual to bring their POV to product categories, well, several dozen individuals, some doing it for love, some doing it for money. Always arguing. Gossiping. Linking. Building reputation, building love, exploration.
If you own a wine shop in the UK, start a weblog now. Ask all your friends to do the same. Join the blogs up, adopt an excellent a UK based delivery service, probably using Tesco's, ask a small fee for the recommendation via the paypal account they needed to join the community, and work the 'net building your reputation, and knowledge. And send offers via mobile phone, at about rush hour, for on that on the way home feeling ";->". Thus, you don't even need to carry stock, though for that speciality wine and extra service, you can always do UK overnight delivery from your store.
Whatever, the trick will be in being the context provider, whether pay to join, or articles or wine lists by micro payment, selling tools and books, linking up suppliers with customers and taking a fee, there's lots to do in the wine world when you've built up reputation, knowledge, and brand. Once you've done that with your hobby, you've have people's attention, handy thing attention.
Suppose you could do the same thing with pizzas.
Take ages? About three months to build a local rep, brand and experience, a few ads in stuffy old printed mags, news paper specialist sections, and you're away UK-nationally. Thousands of channels will be controlled by you. Oh, you'll get competitors, and good job too! Think of all that traffic, all that discussion and debate, all under your roof. Each person could create as many channels as they liked. Red, white, bouquet, body, 1969...
Each page will have links to your world.
See also:
- The Standard: The Law of Recombinant Growth "Here's how it works: Every so often innovations come along that can be broken down into separate parts and recombined to create a host of new inventions."
- Release 1.0: Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices: "Under my gonzo marketing hat, I see this as an opportunity for companies to stop marketing altogether -- at least in the sense of marketing to and marketing at. Instead, personalization can be used to get genuinely personal, connecting members of these emergent micromarkets to each other. Do that, and -- shazzam! -- something different in kind results. People start talking, having conversations, telling stories."
- The Standard: Markets are Conversations.
"Are you talking with your customers or at them? The first markets were markets. Not bulls, bears or invisible hands. Not battlefields, targets or arenas. Not demographics, eyeballs or seats. Most of all, not consumers."
"Business-as-usual doesn't realise that Networked markets are not only smart markets; they're also equipped to get much smarter, much faster, than business-as-usual because it continues to conceptualize markets as distant abstractions ö battlefields, targets, demographics ö and the Net as simply another conduit down which companies can broadcast messages. But the Net isn't a conduit, a pipeline or another television channel. The Net invites your customers in to talk, to laugh with each other and to learn from each other." - First Monday: The COMsumer Manifesto: Empowering Communities of Consumers through the Internet "This article offers a disruptive antidote to the hierarchical, closed, supply-system, explicit, knowledge-driven, "We Know What You Want" data mine world where many customers feel powerless. This is a world well beyond 1999's Net Worth and 2000's The Cluetrain Manifesto. Infomediaries are not just trustworthy agents which sit between the vendor and the customer, and markets are not just conversations. In this new world, communities sense needs, desires, and wishes for the future and create new data markets"
27 January 2002
Keeping it simple: "Meanwhile Winer is using his Web log technology and community to broker deals with open-source IM (instant messaging) player Jabber and Web log competitor Blogger. When Blogger architect Evan Williams demonstrated the next version of Blogger Pro at a Web log user group meeting, Winer posted notes about the product features on Scripting News. Because Radio supports the Blogger API, the competitor in effect becomes an extension of the other product. Now that's Web service, a virtual Peace Corps."
Yeah, I'm beginning to see the disappearing trick. I can see so much now becoming so much easier for the average Joe. Radio's user interface is very neat, just needs to be set up and explained.
overstated: "weblogs provide the ability for people to discuss content on their own terms, and services such as allmusic, amazon, cdnow, imdb allow them to contextualize their discussion. By linking to cdnow, I allow people who read about music on my site the ability hear samples of that music. By linking to amazon, a reader is connected to a set of expert knowledge, and connections to topically similar media."
Ah, this is putting words into my mouth... The power of blogs and .rss feeds. At least this is how I found this. For a very long time I've not done much surfing. You know the: off you go opening lots of pages, finding one that fits and zooming down into the breaking white horse, linking to new page after new page of good stuff. I'm using news is free new channels, and blogging it straight to several blogs (each it's own .rss feed). Fun.
But, the above link, illustrates the ease at which people are building personal pages, linking to good stuff and generally building their life long knowledge. Imagine such for businesses, for tight communities or supply chains or sales teams. This is a great, open way to work, it can also be closed.
Imagine work being fun.
Via: radiouser: "Here's a set of mind-blowing images that go from way out in the universe to subatomic structure in Powers of Ten ."
: View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree...
Weird.
Microsoft: HOWTO: Read the Fucking Manual: "This article demonstrates how to read the fucking manual, as popularised by the RTFM directive."
After asking a truly pathetic question, you are instructed to RTFM.
This will probably be taken down very soon. I'll put a mirror of it here for posterity.
26 January 2002
Top 10 Predictions for the Consulting Services Market in 2002: "A major change IDC has identified for 2002 is a blurring the distinction between business and IT consulting services. One reason for this change is the increase in the size and complexity of the nature of IT projects. ãCompanies can no longer look at an ebusiness initiative as a sole effort. They need to be put in the context of the firmâs overall business issues, challenges, goals, and capabilities.""
25 January 2002
Been thinking about the 'project.' ANd I want to broaden the scope, and narrow the target area. Want to aim at businesses in general, possibly SMEs mainly.
Start setting up bi weekly seminars on various topics for businesses, £20 RSVP per seat, try and aim at 50 limit. $39 for the software at basic level plus £100 per Manila site. We make money on customisation, training and support.
- Keeping customers/suppliers informed, hourly
- developing reputation in competance
- home working, listening to the hum of an org
- disposable (project web) sites
Think of all those joined up supply chains with West Midlands metal bashers. Now that would be a community. Should be good gossip.
Over a year of this promotion in the West Mids, should build up quite a reputation for us, and mucho experience and market testing. Roll out through UK, then.
Of course, we all so do sector specific seminars:
- websites for biz consultants (good resellers)
- micro publishers
- door to door sales and SMS intranets
London braced for 'winter vomiting': "More on this Story
What the winter bug does to you
(23 Jan 2002)From Scotland to the South Coast, offices and schools have been left half empty as the vicious, airborne stomach infection - characterised by projectile vomiting and diarrhoea - has "cut like a knife through butter""
"The bug's official title is the Norwalk-like Virus, after the town in Ohio where it was first identified. "
Norwalk Virus Infection Facts: "How is Norwalk virus infection diagnosed?"
"Laboratory diagnosis is difficult. Diagnosis is often based on the combination of symptoms and the short time of illness."
So the speed of recovery is the thing. Well, Bradley was shitting mid last week, threw up at skool on Thursday, coughing and moany till Monday when he projectile vomited and been up and down the temperature from 40.4° on Tueday night and 37° in skool today. He goes up every 4-6 hours or so. Hot, pissed off. We force 5 or 10 mil of Calpol and half an hour again he's either asleep or wanting to play.
Did I say he can sing Bob the Builder now? He likes his tunes, does our Bradley.
24 January 2002
Content a Tough Sell in Europe - "Analysts at Jupiter Media Metrix, the Internet research company behind this latest study, said that in 2001 Europeans spent €590 million on content for their cell phones, almost twice the €252 million spent on desktops. The analysts estimate that by 2006, European consumers will spend €3.3 billion on cell-phone content, compared to €1.7 billion on home computers."
Here we go with those billion figures again. Personally, I don't do much commuting, I'm not a teenager, I hate predictive text. But I can blog from my phone -- though why, I don't know. But when the screen gets to be as good as my laptop (they can do millions of pixels per inch rather than the usual 72dpi of CRT screens), when they sort out the keyboard, when I can get a T1 connection both ways -- then I'll be interested. And all that is coming. Hell, most of it is already in Japan, right now.
New Scientist: Mobile Phones: Write here, write now:" The kids are going to love this. You walk up to the teacher's desk with a little practical joke in mind. Your mobile phone suddenly bleeps, and you hear a soft whisper in your ear: "MAJOR bad mood today-don't try anything." You think better of the prank and decide to avoid certain detention. All thanks to an invisible SMS message placed in the air above the teacher's desk."
Invisable Post-It notes in the air, or even graffitti? They've got my attention!
HBS Publishing: Turn Customer Input into Innovation - "What usually happens is this: Companies ask their customers what they want. Customers offer solutions in the form of products or services. Companies then deliver these tangibles, and customers just don't buy. The reason is simple -- customers aren't expert or informed enough to come up with solutions. That's what your R&D team is for. Rather, customers should be asked only for outcomes -- what they want a new product or service to do for them. The form the solutions take should be up to you, and you alone."
Another good book for me to read... Warning! Information overload. Warning! Information overload.
European Business Skills Training Defies Slowdown to Reach $13 Billion by 2006 - "Despite the temporary economic slowdown, the European business skills training market is rising at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.9% and will reach $13 billion in revenue in 2006, according to IDC research. By 2005, IDC estimates that over 27% of business skills training content will be provided via elearning, representing a CAGR of 108.2% over a five-year period."
I do love these grandiose billion figures. But for sure, the e-learning business is going to boom. You usually get, not just web pages but instant messaging tutors 'talking' you through things, so it more than interactive, it's immersive. One other good thing about it, the teacher can't throw the blackboard duster at you as my old Welsh Language teacher used to do to me.
Hi all,
As lead partners within the Regional Innovation Networks proposal I will keep you all posted with regard to any feedback I receive from Advantage West Midlands relating to the project.
I intend to discuss all the proposals informally with the Agency prior to submission, this should address any immediate issues which may require attention. I will then furnish you with a copy of your final proposal in order to check you are happy with the content before full submission to AWM.
In the mean time please feel free to contact me direct if you have any queries,
Kind Regards,
Tim
NewsIsFree: NewsIsFree: This site collects headlines from 2257 sources around the web and lets you manage them in new ways.
I promised someone I'd put a link here about where he could get news about computer security.
How to Upsell Business Services Clients with an Email Newsletter:
"Number 4. A seminar offer -- once a month Matrix Group holds a
luncheon seminar in their conference room on a different topic,
such as "How to create an email newsletter." Pineda chooses
topics based both on client suggestions, and on ways she can grow
and hold on to their accounts. For example, early this fall she
offered a seminar entitled, "Planning your next-year's Web
budget." "
"Again, although the seminars were developed as a sales tool, the
detailed descriptions in the newsletter make it clear seminars
are chock-full of useful content -- not sales pitches.
Notably the seminars are not free. Attendees pay a token fee
$15-25. This means attendees take the seminar a bit more
seriously and RSVPs are more likely to actually show.
"
Interesting. I'm going to start some seminars. Low cost content management, anyone?
23 January 2002
Liquidation.com Has Tested Almost Every Online Marketing Tactic -- Here's What Worked:
"Q: What's your experience been like with broadcast email
campaigns?"
"Haroon: Email marketing has been hugely successful. Overall
we've had our best acquisition through email."
"
Our strategy is to test a lot of things out, do small buys in
a lot of different things and then do major buys on the
winners. We tested lists from B2BNow, YesMail, Cahners,
PostMaster Direct, Thomas Register, etc."
The New Paradigm: Back to Basics - "So now we go back to basics. Market research is back in vogue.Today, a new company needs a well-defined message and a focusedapproach to a specific market segment. Market testing, beta productsand focus groups are now cool again."
"Features and Benefits are so... '60s. Who cares? We are on information overload. People have problems that need to be solved. Provide problem/solution scenarios for people to look at. If you define a problem your site visitor has, that person will spend more time on your site. Testimonials put some muscle behind your punch."
"Document case studies. Define the problem, then what you and/or your company did to solve the problem."
"People buy for three reasons; need, desire, and emotion. When developing a Web site, you need to know where you and your company are in this buying chain."
Business consultants. I met two tonight, briefly. They work for the Small Business Service and Business Link, a UK Governmental service. Their fees are at the bottom end of the scale.
I roughly and cack-handedly outlined to idea, culminating in contacts and crossovers between disciplines. But one said she knew all the consultants she wanted to know. The other mentioned a new service by the S.B.S., which is a database of consultants, including fees, telephone numbers, experience, specialities etc.
So I thought, one, that it's going to be very hard to sell the idea initially -- they're going to be against the idea of changing the way they've always worked; two, need to bring out those benefits to the front, and not bother about the structure (i.e. features).
- Keep up to date with cutting edge knowledge
- Build reputation and increase fees
- Network, and build contacts lists
And that's really it.
Steve Hooker is mobile blogging his way through a business schmooze. Keep watching he's maybe on to something with community blogs. [David Davies' Radio Weblog]
Not much mobile blogging Dr. David. I couldn't be bothered. I thought I could just as easily wait till I got home and blog in the piece and quiet and comfort of my own home. Anyway, I'm not much of a camper either. I can't really get the hand of predictive text either. I have to swap from predictive to non predictive, to caps find an apostrophe, then back to predictive. No, I can mobile blog, and I'm grateful for that, but I really couldn't be arsed to whip out the mobie and start working my thumb and index finger just to send a "I'm on the train' type message. Please keep checking this site though. Maybe, I'll breakdown or crash and be marooned, with the only way of contacting the outside world being mobie to blog... Watch out for my distress messages.
 | i'm here. So is Charlotte, an old friend. Not started yet. 50 people expected.
|
Amazon may spark new shipping war. The answer is still fuzzy, but rivals in the past have countered the e-tailer's moves. Jeff Bezos says the offer will be "expensive" in the short term. [CNET News.com]
Looks like smoke on the horizon.Bezos the Bastard, going for the kill.
Yahoo to put price on searches. The Web portal plans to unveil a pay-per-view search product Wednesday, the latest premium service aimed at offsetting its online advertising decline. [CNET News.com]
Amazin'
22 January 2002
New Scientist:
It's not love, affection or even blatant self-interest that binds human societies together - it's anger, according to Swiss researchers. They made the unsettling discovery while trying to fathom what makes people cooperate.
Now that's interesting. I was a little bit worried, about this for our blogging colony, we've all got to pull our weight, and watch out for the free loaders. When we spot them we punish, if necessary, of course we all do a bit of it, but if we could mark down a blog, even if it cost us a little, then maybe the fear of being branded a free loader keeps us cooperating?
Amazon.com Posts First-Ever Profit - Amazon.com, the pioneering Internet retailer that has symbolized for many the potential and the pitfalls of dot-com commerce, posted its first net profit ever in the fourth quarter, beating its own forecasts and Wall Street's expectations.
For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the world's largest Internet retailer said it earned $5 million, or 1 cent a share, compared with a net loss of $545 million, or $1.53 per share, in the year-ago period.
Well, well. It did it! Now the whole idea of selling something over the web, may as well go to Amazon. Why bother with anything else, and not just books. They are also selling:
Electronics
Toys & Games
Music
Health & Beauty
DVD
Software
Kitchen & Housewares
Tools & Hardware
Computers
Camera & Photo
In Theaters
Computer & Video Games
Baby & Baby Registry
Cell Phones & Service
Video
Magazine Subscriptions
Outdoor Living
Travel
Cars
Gifts & Gift Certificates
And the same report... - The report highlights the fact that there are very few European players actively investing in this area of SME finance, leaving it to banks and venture investors, and claims that one of the reasons for this is the lack of network economies in terms of shared knowledge and specialised support services for financiers.
Do they mean blogging colonies? I wonder if we'd dare to build a blogging colony for the likes of the Goldsmith's of this world?
Report recommends public sector sponsorship to support innovative SMEs - 22 Jan 2002: "A report prepared for the European Commission has examined the needs of European SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) with regard to access to finance, and recommended the introduction of public sector sponsorship to help close the venture gap as well as a greater role for the European Investment Fund."
Testing again, did I get my password right this time?
Testing to BIS, will it get there?
Right now Esme's dippping her beef and onion crisps into Ribena... She says it's "nice."
Kids! Who'd have them? Grrr. One the one hand you want to throttle them by the throat, saying in a zombie like voice, "no more Tweenies, no more Tweenies." OTH you want to kiss and hug them, particularly as Bradley isn't well again.
Puking during the night, coughing, he looks so bleary eyed, so out of it. We suspect a stomach bug, sure he'll get over it in a day or two.
another war?
test to warblog
just a steve test
Just a war test
once more, my friends, unto the breach
once again a test post everywhere
?????????????????
test1234567
testabcdefg
test this
19 January 2002
What kind of sandwich is that, Steve?
Peanut butter, banana and prawn cocktail crisps. I wish I could sleep. These midnight (4:18:33 am) snacks are getting ridiculous. I think I'll hit the Weetabix next.
Cup of tea and a fag. Kids'll have me up at 8:30am </sigh>
 | Do I ever move away from this friggin machine? Don't seem like it sometimes.
Anyway, how's you? Bored here except for work. Bradley and Esme come back
from skool knackered, and though Bradley's well behaved, Esme gets
'sensitive' We try to please... I think we do wrong, we should tell here her
position more, but she's blackmailing us because we don't like the screaming
involved in the battle of the wills that ensues.
|
| critique | |||
| 1. | noun | ||
| Synonyms | commentary, analysis, description, exegesis, explanation, narration, notes, review, treatise, voice-over | ||
| 2. | noun | ||
| Synonyms | criticism, analysis, appraisal, appreciation, assessment, comment, commentary, elucidation, evaluation, judgment, notice, review | ||
| 3. | noun | ||
| Synonyms | review, commentary, criticism, evaluation, judgment, notice, study |
Are new Power Macs on the way?. Faster versions of Apple Computer's Power Mac G4 desktop can't come soon enough, analysts and Mac resellers say.
Although gauging comparative performance is a tricky issue, Brookwood said that Apple appears to be losing ground--with the exception of programs that make heavy use of the G4's added instructions for multimedia tasks.
"For general-purpose computing," Brookwood said, "it's real tough to make up for a 2-to-1 clock-rate difference." Such computing doesn't use the multimedia instructions
[CNET News.com]
Source: CNET News.com; 18/01/02; 11:45:26 pm.77 At: 12:22:42 AM . .
Permalink Top Technorati
Other title(s) for this story:
18 January 2002
MacUser UK: speed-bumped Power Mac next week [MacNN] "Speed bumps are not expected to be large. US sources indicate the range will top out at with a dual 1GHz machine. Consequently, next week's roll out will be a low-profile affair."
My Life And Sex, Mostly My Sexlife : Diary. "...Very intense. She put her lips around my nipple and started teasing it. She would flick it with her tongue and bite it and suck on it. Once again very intense and viagric. As she trailed her tongue towards my cock she detoured at my groin. She..."
From sexblog News. Warning! Adult content Adult stuff there!
17 January 2002
Baby sitting tonight. A couple of hours entertaining the kids. Must get to bed early tonight, no playing with Radio till the late hours of the morning.
Been to see the Opthalmist with Esme. Her eye now it's been surgically straightened looks fine, but they think that her 3D vision needs improvement, and they need to work on that before she's 7 (she's 3 now).
So it's back to the patches -- for 3 hours a day. I hate the patches, which is partly why she hasn't worn them before. This time, and for 10 weeks, she will. I want the best for her, not the best for me.
Looking back, I've changed.
Where's that cup of tea? I'm a tea drinker from hell, I am, when I'm buzzin' busy. Excited? Yep!
Time for another cup of tea and another fag...
Quick cup of tea, and a fag. Calm down sir, take it easy. Relax.
Doh, so much to do. Gorra get some artwork in to the printers. Gorra get a proposal outline for the next big business plan finished by the end of the day. And I haven't even started it, just talked, and talked about it. It's going to be a whole new big colony of weblogs here in the UK. Government supported too.
Ah! Tony Blair. I've always said you're a nice man. Very nice man. Even if you don't know how to use a computer.
Joined up government, yes, joined up businesses, yes.
I shouldn't fall asleep on trains. It worries me. Was I dribbling, or grunting, or calling out the name of some woman? When I wake up and yawn, people look at me, like they know something, and expect an apology.
I've come back from a day trip to London, 2 ½ hours to get there, 4 ½ to get back. Arrived here at 20 past midnight. Missed my train, and they run every hour not ever half hour. Slept all the way to Birmingham. And had to wait around Wolverhampton with a dozen drunks for 40 minutes for the train. Cold, no cafe open, no vending machines working, not even the TV displays.
And I hate London. I hate young tramps sitting down next to me while I eat my burger, "Hello Sir, can I..." No!
All leaves me with a bad taste, makes me melancholy, flashbacks, of lonely times. Don't like it.
At the tube in Oxford Circus, packed platform, tube pulls in, full already, some get on, the platform attendant, a shaved headed, full beard biker, but 5 foot 6" tells everybody to stand away from the platform the trains pulling out, screams from down the end of the platform, Stop! Stop! Train moves 8 feet, more shouting, biker wanders down platform eyes wide, concerned but measured steps. I think maybe someone's dead, injured... I look over everybody's heads, but nobody else looks with me. They read their book, magazine, newspaper -- taking it all in their stride. I hate London. I hate what big cities have done to us.
Glad to be home. Family.
For all you PC users, this is a page you just got to read.
16 January 2002
| on 15/01/02 6:15 pm, Rogi at xxxx@rogis.nospam wrote:
>> "What a hero, flying in a propeller driven plane, to heroically from where > since the time that The Intrepid Blogger' started rabbiting on, I've been in > 7 planes, including one 737 Lisbon-->Azores and blogged from all of 'em. > Email, SMS, and Thuraya satellite phone. > > Stick that on yer blog and get the Intrepid One to smoke it mate. :-) Oh yeah! Ter-fuckin-riffic. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. Who's going to be the first to blog whilst shagging their bird then? Or, whilst mugging an old lady? Aeroplane Blogging as an art is pass?, huff, I'm completely bored with it </tousles hair>.
--
|
15 January 2002
::protocol7.2.0.beta2:: - Dave wrote yesterday about David Davies who blogs from his mobile using Radio. So I wrote a 20 line script that allows me to do the same, but without Radio... using the Blogger APIs... Simple enough.
Ha! You can say that now sir. Just as someone would say, crossing the Antarctic these days is 'simple enough.'
Internet Suffix for Individuals Starts - In addition, ``.museum'' began operating in November on a provisional basis, meaning assigned names may still change, and ``.coop'' for business cooperatives became active Jan. 9. A few thousand names have been requested under each. Debuting later this year are ``.aero'' for aviation and ``.pro'' for professionals
Now I fancy a dot pro, but dot name, or dot me dot uk -- nah!
Back to terra firma and to a more conventional style of blogging. What has the last 36 hours shown us? Well, for me, it's taken the blog beyond the conventional commentary and narrative and turned it into something more experiential. Sure, with mobile blogging and SMS you're limited in character count so 
brevity is more important that verbosity (unless you're lucky to have a 3rd gen phone like Al), but it's more immediate, in fact it *is* immediate. It doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, within reason, you can capture the moment. A kind of snapshot in text. For sure if I'd have waited until I got home to tell you about my trip it would have been a lot less personal.
This is definitely going to be totally irrelevant for the majority of people but I think that from now on we're no