The Dodge Retort

I don’t know about you, but I do not lay awake nights thinking about Facebook’s Terms of Use. I applaud their efforts announced yesterday to democratize the formulation of users rights, but  Facebook Terms of Use do not make my list of top 50 concerns not that I’ve ever done one. Let’s just say it is not top of mind.

I follow one simple rule: don’t put anything up there you don’t want the public to see. I put a lot on Facebook given I am journalist, i.e. one who makes living by communicating and explaining things to people. So I’m pretty thicked-skinned to  negative feedback or an occasional threat.  Comes with the territory as they say.

But let’s face it: we’re human so someone putting up that picture of you drunk or smoking weed is not only possible, but probable if you’re under 30. Right, Mark Phelps? In those cases, you just work hard to remove the incriminating evidence. One with college age kids knows this well.

The principles are a good thing, indeed, and the voting is a stroke of marketing genius. Facebook engenders loyalty by allowing every registered user to vote on principles and proposed Statement of Responsibilities.  It will also indicate how many other than the biggest Facebook privacy zealots really care about this. After all, there’s 180 million Facebook users. What if only 100,000 vote? Then Facebook will have the freedom to exert more control.

BTW, voting was opened Feb. 25, but I cannot find where you can do that. From the way it read, it sounded like they might have meant March 25 after all the feedback is in.

I’ve read through the principles and they are well-thought out with minimal legalese. In fact, there many more rules for application developers and advertisers than Joe Sixpack user. For users, Facebook gives up its license to your content when you delete your acccount (who, BTW, deletes their Facebook account these days?). They stress “transparency and democratization” of the process of policy formulation. They are being a lot nicer and more considerate than they have to be, but in the process are buying a substantial amount of good will.

And as I said, even as a very active Facebook user, I do not lay awake nights thinking about the issue.  Maybe I should glad others do.

Here’s what bugs me. My twitter tweets and blog posts both automatically post to  Facebook. There seems like plenty of apps to make this happen.  So FB and Twitter are wehre most of the comments happen. My years of journalism and obnoxious nature gave the me the ability to provoke comment, but rather than wrack it up on my blog, they appear in third party venues not owned by me.

I could cut and paste them all into the blog, but that’s a bother.  It should happen automatically. I’m looking for a WordPress.com widget that feeds FB comments and Tweets directly into my blog. Anyone know of one…or two?

HP has joined the ranks of netbook makers offering hardware discounts if customers sign up for two years of broadband activation. It knocks $1oo off its $449 HP Mini 1000 Mobile Broadband Series in exchange for what amounts to a $1,440 commitment for 24 months of broadband.

HP’s deal pales in comparison to Dell’s which lops $350 off its $444 Inspiron Mini 9 for largely the same deal.

These deals appear seductive and apply the razor blade/cell model to netbooks – give away the hardware and sell the service. But mobile broadband is damned expensive at $60 a month. It’ll also be interesting to see if generous hardware rebates will creep up into notebooks.

I had  company-provided Sprint mobile broadband at my last job and while reliable, it was slow…much slower than Wifi and cabled Internet. It worked well at home in New England,  but  not outside the country.

The netbook revolution just got more interesting with huge discounts for customers signing up for two years of 3G broadband from the likes of AT&T.

For example, signing up for two years of AT&T LapTop Connect earns you a $350 mail-in rebate on the Dell Mini 9 normally priced at $449. With only 8 Gb of solid state storage, the unit is overpriced compared to similar models, but it’s one of the few with a built-in cellular modem. Radio Shack and AT&T have teamed up to offer with a similar deal with the Acer Aspire.

At $60 a month for two years, $1,440 for 3G more than makes up for the discounts of the netbooks. And I’ve used 3G and once you get it, giving it up is often not an option.

The weak link in these deals, quite frankly, are the netbooks. The tech press and analyst firms which forecast sales ranging between 25-35 million units in 2009 have fallen in love with them. But the keyboards are still cramped and the displays are too small to stably hold an image. The other problem is the high expense of 3G — $60 a month is a lot (it’s the same for Verizon Mobile Broadband, but AT&T has gotten the jump in the netbook market).

Computerworld posted a story today that asked an intriging question: are netbooks the cell phones of the future? HP, according to the story, which makes the best netbook I’ve had the chance to test is also rumored to be considering a 3G bundle

Consider that I was using Gmail video chat to converse last night with my son who is studying in Europe and you see how the phoning part falls into place. I didn’t use a cell phone or a land line phone to make that call. I used my small computer whose role in calling is only going to increase.

No, you can’t carry a netbook around in the your pants pocket and it would be hard to answer one walking down the street or, perish the thought, driving. Assuming unrestricted mobility, size remains a drawback. Still, a netbook has much more functionality and versatility than a cell phone. And the cost of a high end Smartphone and netbooks are colliding in the same price band.

In fact, the Blackberry Storm at Verizon with a two-year service contract is twice the cost of the discounted netbooks. Think about it: besides reliabilty, the major advantage enjoyed by cell phones are look, feel and size.

Collapse-ible netbook anyone?

I was so optimistic when Barack was sworn in and I am still am, but he needs to tone down brutal frankness thing. We don’t need to hear every other day that we have yet to hit bottom. Coupled with Hillary’s trip to China to bolster Asian confidence in U.S. treasuries that only reminded us how indebted we are, Obama’s gloom has soured the markets in a big way.

No one is asking for a sugar coating — you know, the flying is safe lecture after a disastrous crash. Word is we’ll get a sober but hopeful message tonight. That sounds about right.

But we do want hopeful signs. Hey, Ford just won some key concessions from auto workers. Bill Ford and Alan Mulally are taking 30 per cent pay cuts. Mortgage rates are low. No president has ever accomplished so much in so little time. The skiing has never been better in New England.

We need positive signs, even small signs that stimulus is yielding results and that the mortgage rescue program is turning the tide on toxic loans. Once the tide starts to turn, momentum will build and we’ll pull out of this swoon. My take is no one other than a cool and fiercely-bright Obama  is the guy who can pull this off. So with that, please respond to my poll:

[polldaddy poll=1400177]

John and Laura with their Mac, laughing at me.

The people in this picture are laughing at me. While I  struggle using an underpowered netbook running XP, they happily work on their MacBooks (a Pro on the right). They’re in hysterics. They’ve both offered their Macs to me as I use a netbook with a mere 4 GB of storage. Why were preemies ever built released without decent storage?

That may or may not be my problem, but the images on netbooks jump randomly around as they seem to be adjusting to small 10 inch screens. They  just ate hot tamales.  The fonts blow up to 440 per cent and then crash back to earth at 10 percent. The screen goes black.

Is there something  need to turn off? Turn on? I’m a PC guy, but can’t live this way. Damn happy MacSters.

That's Chris on the right with his two Hedja relatives.

Son Chris remarkable adventure in the Czech Republic just gets better and better, this time with the discovery of relatives in a hamlet of 600 two and half hours from Prague. He tells it better than I ever could so here’s the  report he filed upon his return to Charles University where he is spending the semester.

Start Here

I’ll send a more detailed account of events to you all sometime this weekend, but I wanted to let you know that I met living relatives of ours in Bozejov, a town of about 600 in southern Bohemia, today. Without really knowing how to get there, I took a bus to a neighboring town, Humpolec, and then found a connection to Bozejov. I showed up with absolutely no idea where to go, went into a supermarket and asked in Czech where the town hall was. They pointed to a building and foolishly thinking the entire building was the townhall, I walked up to the top floor, opened a door, and accidentally walked into someone’s apartment. They directed me to the actual town office (a floor beneath).

I asked the town officers if they had any documents, which they didn’t, but when I told them that Vaclav Hejda was my great, great, great grandfather, they called every Hejda in town and arranged for me to meet with them. They also gave me lots of documents on the history of Bozejov (mostly in Czech unfortunately) and a very lovely postcard. I first met with a family of 3. They were in their mid-50s and had a son who was about to turn 20, nearly the same age as Katie. I’m almost positive these people were our relatives and that Wayne visited them some years ago. I believe this because the man (and his son) were both carpenters or woodworkers of some sort, as Wayne had reported to me in an earlier email. The son was the 4th generation of woodworker. The man and the son (the actual Hejdas) spoke nothing but Czech. The wife spoke very little English, but was fluent in German, so we mostly talked in that (my German was shockingly sufficient).

They lived in a modest, but nice, apartment nearby the town square, as Wayne also reported in his previous email. They seemed to be of decent means, but in conversation the wife told me the region, Vysočina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyso%C4%8Dina_Region), was traditionally relatively poor with little industry or factories.

They are all strong Catholics and seemed a tad disappointed that my mother had left the flock. I made it up to them by telling them her sister and her family were still Catholic and also that I go to the oldest Catholic university in the US and live in one of the most Catholic states.

They served me coffee and some chocolate and showed up photo albums, an incomplete family tree, and tried to piece together how we were related. They then took me the cemetery to see a couple Hejda graves.

After this I went to the apartment of an 86 year old lady, who wasn’t a blood Hejda but was married to one. I don’t think we’re related to this Hejda, but she was very fun to talk to. She insisted on serving me vodka and red wine and kept pushing it on me everytime I finished a glass, so I was a bit tipsy by the end. She had unbelieve stories about living under the First Czech Republic under President Masaryk (who is adored here) and Edward Benes. She talked about how her studies were interrupted by the nazis and how the Communist era felt like 40 wasted years of life. She was married twice (the second one was the Hejda) and had kids living in Poland, London, and Prague. She was half Siberian and talked about how much she loved Russian literature. When I showed her the Dostoevsky novel I’d brought with me for the bus (Demons), she was ecstatic and we spent a while talking about Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. She also recommended a few other Russian novelists to me.

After this the first family picked me up and drove me to a neighboring town Pelhřimov, the major town in the area with a population of about 16k. They were extremely friendly and packed a dinner for me for the bus ride home with a sandwhich, some fruit and some chocolates.

They want me to come visit again and I’m certainly going to try. I’m going to be so busy traveling over the next few weeks (Stockholm, Vienna and Munich all in a row), that I won’t be able to get out there until late March or early April at the earliest. They also would like to meet my parents when they come to visit in May, which we might be able to arrange.

I’ll send out a more detailed account in a couple days when I send out one of my update emails (Becky and Megan, I can add you to the list of people who get this and also send you the last 2, if you’d like), but this was a truly amazing experience. I’ve travelled all over this continent and seen plenty of amazing things, but its interesting how an unremarkable village in the middle of nowhere can prove just as fascinating. I’ll send some pictures along with the email in a couple days.

Love,

Chris

For the first time in a month, I failed to produce a daily post yesterday so I’ll try top make up for it now with a status report on my activities. What’s unique about this post is that I am banging it out on a a netbook (Lenovo IdeaPad S10).

Damn, these keys are small especially after a couple of Coronas although the words flow more easily. Anyhow, I am Hilton Head for the week on a little R&R. It’s ironic that since I left my fulltime job Jan. 26 as editor-in-chief of Design News, I have taken zero time off and that includes weekends. Guess I like to do what I do and am a slave to my blog- but I’ve never had more fun even with all economic uncertainty. Nor have I learned so much.

Anyhow, I plan t o finish some netbook reviews (HP Mini, Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and Asus Eee PC 1000)  and post to my blog before I begin a fulltime four-month gig March 2.  I can talk more about that when I start a week from tomorrow.

Speaking of netbooks, the March issue of Wired magazine has a pretty good article on them. I am not certain they are hot product Wired proclaims – 12% of the notebook market this year and 7% last year. They will get more powerful, prices will continue falling, but the keyboards have to improve dramatically.

Anyhow, stay tuned for my real world reviews where rather than plunk them down on a lab bench and slap a meter on them, I use them for a while and report back.  I hope you find value in that.

Later.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is still having a difficult time getting off the ground and this time the brake control system is to blame, according to a small story in yesterday’s Seattle Times. The story says the brakes have to redesigned because Boeing change the requirements and there is a dispute over who will pay for it the new development work. Crane Aerospace is building the brake control system.

The plane is already about two years behind schedule and the first one is slated to fly in the second quarter.  A second cancellation was reported yesterday bringing the total to 33, but the bulging order book still stands at 878.

The Dodge Retort (TDR), my eclectic blog, celebrated its third anniversary on Tuesday. That’s third as in three weeks.  You know, Internet time.

This isn’t my first blog. I have done several others working for an employer and learned about a tenth as much in a year as I have in three weeks. That being on your own heightens your creativity and motivation is an understatement.

It’s noteworthy that on Tuesday, TDR enjoyed its best day in page views – 535. That might not sound like much, but starting 21 days ago at zero puts it is perspective. One colleague remarked that page views just satisfies my “vanity.” Perhaps. Page views by themselves aren’t the point, but building an audience and following is.

With this good start, I am confident I can build a substantial following. What’s satisfying are my efforts being rewarded with traffic growth. Best of all, I learn something new every day, sometimes every hour.

Am I making money? Of course not: this is a blog (I do make money from freelance writing, however). But sooner rather than later, someone will write the playbook on blogs making money.  I suspect joining an ad or affiliate marketing network (there’s about 60 of them)  is a bit like putting solar panels on your house and selling electricity back to the power company. On the sunniest day, you might make three bucks. And at my nascent traffic levels, I might make a penny or two. As Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons points out, he made a whopping hundred dollars on the day his Fake Steve Jobs blog hit 500,000 page views.

Former Ziff Davis colleague Joe Panettieri at Ninelinesmediainc.com which launched in January, 2008 may have it right. He and his partner are making money with three focused-technology blogs which they sell themselves. In others words, they’ve created a their own self-funded media company complete with blogs, events and newsletters.  That is the path Joe recommends and he seems to be making a go of it even though Nine Lives launched into the teeth of a recession. After all, publishing empires Ziff Davis, CMP and CNet were started in recessions, he points out.

BTW, it was  Nine Lives’ Workswithu.com blog about Ubuntu Linux web site that drove all that traffic Tuesday to a TDR netbook post.

What’s next for my blog?

I have bought 300Gb of hosting space and will move to WordPress.org which allows plug-ins (WordPress.com which I currently use does not). In other words, my blog, er web site actually, will become more robust. I will be able to add  scripts and choose among the 4,200 and counting applications for WordPress.

I’ll report back again after my sixth anniversary – sixth week, that is.