ANA B2B Committee Presentation on Blogs

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Steve Rubel and I just got done giving a presentation to the ANA about blogs in the B2B space. I was telling the participants about moblogging and how you can post pictures right from your mobile device. So here's a pic I took during the meeting and I'm now posting from my Treo in the cab.

Thanks to the ANA and Steve for inviting me, the group for the warm reception, and Lenn Pryor and Robert Scoble for walking us through Microsoft's Channel 9.





Atlas Shotputted

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So I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged. You might be asking yourself, "Why would anyone read a book that size more than once?"

Lately, I've been reminded of one of the central themes of the book - Rand's assertion that collectivism sucks. If you read the book, you'll remember the following quote:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Lately, I see quite a few things going on in my life, both personal and professional, that I'm doing that benefit other folks more than they benefit me. In short, I've found myself in more than one situation where I'm living for the sake of another. Worse still, I'm getting next to nothing out of these situations myself.

To get things on the right track, I need to remedy these situations so I can concentrate on my own happiness. And since I'm already making sweeping changes to my lifestyle, now is the time. So I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged for inspiration.

Scanners Rule

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Just for shits and giggles yesterday, I popped into Radio Shack and bought a police scanner. While I was working yesterday, I plugged in some earphones and listened to three frequencies that the NYPD uses for crowd control. It was total chaos for a while, with lots of chatter and activity about protestors, re-routing traffic and all sorts of other stuff.

Last night, I took the 12:37 AM train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma after W's speech. Even as the train cruised out to Long Island, I could hear the cops back in the city coordinating the removal and placement of barricades and allocating personnel to different areas to keep crowds under control. One thing I noticed was that cops tended to ask one another to call them on their cell phones if they had to discuss things in detail, so the fact that I didn't hear much about the processing of protestors who had been arrested was probably due to cops having private conversations with their wireless phones.

Just after 1 AM, the dispatcher broadcast a pre-recorded message from the police commissioner congratulating officers on a job well done. Afterward, the dispatcher had to shout down several officers for making "inappropriate transmissions" on the channels as they hooted and hollered.

All for $99 at Radio Shack, although I bet you could get scanners cheaper online...