everwas

a blog by Ian Kennedy

Month: January 2005

  • Commuting Choices

    At long last our offices are now up in San Francisco so I am no longer taking the automobile down the freeway to work each day. Now the choices of how to get to the office abound:

    1. The bus can take me from Alameda to the Transbay bus terminal. There is a stop about five blocks from my house for the morning and the return lets me off just three blocks from home. On the San Francisco end, it’s a good 15 minute walk to the office through a dreary (in the rain at least) fringes of the warehouse district. There are three different bus routes to choose from, including a fancy coach-like bus (The “OX” Express) that has cushy seats and nice lighting.

    Cost? $3/each way, $100/month if you buy a monthly pass.

    Pros? Can drop Tyler off at school on the way to the bus stop if we motivate early enough. It’ll be nice to walk with him to school each morning when the weather gets better.

    Cons? The folks that ride the bus seem a bit ground down – usually clutching crumpled up and slightly damp newspapers. With fogged up glasses and overstuffed shoulder bags, these are the worker bees.

    2. There are two ferries, one from the West End of the Island and the other over in Harbor Bay. I’ve only taken the Harbor Bay but it certainly is a treat. A 15-minute bike ride along a bike trail (no traffic lights, beautiful views of the bay) takes you to the ferry dock where boats leave on the half-hour. The riders are definitely the movers and shakers, overheard conversations are of family vacations in the tropics and visits to ivy league alumni events.

    Cost? Pricy at $5.50/each way, includes a “gasoline surcharge”, $150 if you buy a monthly pass.

    Pros? If you absolutely must ignore the views, they have wireless. They sell coffee in the morning and beers at the bar for the ride home.

    Cons? There’s a sign up for an emergency email list which indicates to me that this service is not totally reliable. At $150/month you’re talking about a $1800/year commitment.

    3. I could still take a car to work and most likely will on days when I have to drive somewhere later in the day. It’s a real grind but do-able if you go either *real* early or after 9 am. Trouble with going after 9 am is that all the good city parking spots are gone so you end up paying for it on the other end. Going home is a drag too b/c of the traffic on the bridge, bring good music for the radio!

    Cost? $3 going into the city on the tolls or you can go free in the carpool lane if you pick up 2 riders on the way over. Parking is the kicker – some places advertise an “early bird special” of $8/day but you need to get there fast. Usually it’s more like $10 – $15.

  • Movable Type Hosting Partner page

    For those of you who subscribe to this site via RSS (and for the benefit of the crawlers of the world), just letting you know that we now have a page where you can view the approved Movable Type Hosting Partners, find out more information about each one, and, if you’re a hosting company, apply to become a hosting partner.

    For those of you reading this site, take a look at the big ol’ tile on the left!

  • Frequent Flier Miles as Currency

    According to a story in The Guardian, The Economist reports that if you added up the value of all the frequent flier miles outstanding, they would add up to $700 billion, surpassing the value of any other floating currency in the world.

    Who hasn’t thought that there should be a free market in Frequent Flier Points? Heck, why stop there, there should be an open market to trade my Safeway sandwich points (the cashier reminds me cheerily every time, “Mr. Kennedy, you’re only five sandwiches away from a free lunch!!”).

    Now that stock market quotes have become more or less commoditized, Reuters could set their sites on this new market (they should before eBay, PayPal, or American Express lock up this market). Matching deals between the family that just relocated from New Jersey with too many Continental Airlines miles with someone with enough Hawaiian Air miles for the family trip to the Islands may not be as lucrative as feeding quotes for the Bank of Japan but the new economy is all about making up for thin margins with scale.

    They’re already trading online gaming currencies – it’s only a matter of time before you can trade your Second Life dollars in for a meatspace trip to Disneyland.

    Once this stuff becomes legal tender, I can’t wait to pay my first tax bill in Chuck-E-Cheese tokens!

  • Scoble’s Business Blog Book

    Microsoft Blogger, Robert Scoble, and seasoned PR pro, Shel Israel, are working on a new book about business blogging, The Red Couch. From their proposal to the publisher:

    The Red Couch explains the why and how of blogging to business people.
    Using recent case studies throughout its 250-300 pages, it will
    demystify this disruptive technology and explaining why it is more
    efficient, credible and effective than traditional business
    communications tools and explains why it is likely to change or destroy
    the usual marketing mix of ads, PR, websites and collateral materials.

    What’s even cooler is that the writing of the book is going to take place on a blog so we can expect lots of interactive conversations to take place on the blog. They’re currently drafting the Table of Contents and are asking for input.

  • Harley-Davidson, Japanese Engine?

    I took my father in law out to visit a motorcycle distributor where he was hoping to get a distributor for the high end wheels made by Dymag, a company he owns. While it’s always interesting to step into a new industry and learn a bit about it, one of the more juicy bits of gossip that I learned was the nasty rumor that the Harley-Davidson is not really as American-built as some would like to believe. Not only are the wheels on most models made by an overseas company called “Inky” but the buyer we met also assured us that if you look carefully on the engines, you’ll see that they’re made in Japan!

    He couldn’t remember which Japanese company makes the Harley engines which is a shame. According to him, all the engines are shipped to the US where they are assembled along with all the other parts which are sourced overseas. Makes me wonder if it’s all done under cover of darkness by a secret guild of factory workers sworn to secrecy.

    If this is indeed true, it would be quite a scandal for the company that, when faced with cheaper imports from Japan, unsuccessfully tried to trademark the unique sound of their V-Twin engine.

  • Buzz Marketing with Blogs

    I haven’t had a chance to skim this yet but it should be of interest to anyone thinking of adding blogs to their marketing campaign. I hope there’s a section that says there is no quick any easy way to launch a popular blog – it really comes down to having a site that is well-written, truthful to your motives, and speaks to the reader in a way that keeps ’em coming back.

    Written by Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios self-described website designers ("Web sites. We make those."), you can order the book from Amazon here.

    Update: Ah but of course there’s a blog associated with the book, due out in March.

  • Six Apart & Live Journal

    The internet has been on fire the past few days here at Six Apart sales with the announcement that we are acquiring Live Journal. I’ll be the lazy meta man and link to our very own Jay Allen who’s done a great job of pulling together the “must reads” on the topic.

    I will continue to plug Movable Type and TypePad as the best publishing tools for the corporate market because these products are best suited to achieve most business objectives that I hear about.

    Continue to contact me if you’re interested in:

    • Purchasing a custom license of Movable Type for a large number of seats
    • Hosting Movable Type as an ISP or Hosting partner

    Do not contact me for Live Journal partnership opportunities. Our intention is to do no more than touch it up a bit; smooth the edges & nothing more.

    LiveJournal is going to be a separate brand from the Six Apart products much like there are Mercurys and Mustangs in the Ford family. Six Apart makes publishing tools that can be used to broadcast a message out to the world at large, Live Journal makes a collaboration & communication tool best used to keep members of a group in touch with one another. Weblogs & Live Journal are as different in application as email and IM – yes, they both communicate in the broadest sense but if you use both, they difference in use morphs the “culture” built up around them.

    If anyone appreciates that, we do.

    The funny thing is, you can have a weblog and a LiveJournal. The fact that some of the funniest and smartest people I know have both only reaffirms that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to one sort of publishing/communication mode.

    – Mena’s Corner
  • Class of ’84 Update

    Class of ’84 Update

    Dear Middlesex School Class of ’84,

    Last time around, a fair amount of people wrote in but only a few took advantage of the “comment” link below this post to put their updates online. According to a recent report out by the folks over at Pew, some 12% of Americans have posted comments on weblogs so I’m looking forward to seeing a few more of you jumping in and posting your news in the comments section below.

  • Credit History

    So I’m almost done updating my addresses on all the various magazines, credit cards, frequent flier accounts, and other sundry organizations that like to mail me things from time to time.  Today I called Citibank and in the process of updating my address am given the gentle pitch to take advantage of their service which monitors my credit report.

    Blah, blah, blah – free trial for 30 days – blah, blah, blah – will send you a notification anytime a new account is opened in your name – blah, blah, blah. I keep saying very politely to the lady obviously reading from a script that I was not interested. Curious to see what type of sales style she would use, I asked her an innocent question about the pricing. WHAM – she’s on the hunt and won’t take no for an answer. I’m immediately in the section of the script where if you don’t take advantage of this offer now, your credit history, identity, and family name are in danger of being hijacked by the dark side. Act NOW sir! I implore you!

    I finally fended her off but as I hung up (no more please, no, really, I just wanted to give you my new address so I could continue using your card when I need it, that’s it, really, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!) I thought – that’s rich – the same people that I am relying on to protect my credit history and warn me about credit card abuse and all that fun stuff are now trying to sell me a service to monitor this stuff.

    Kind of like a policeman coming to your door to sell you an alarm system.