"In the Ramada Inn, across I-10 from Ikea, dozens of young sales agents spill out of vans and head for the first-floor conference room. They're in their late teens and early twenties, tired from a long day of selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door, but excited about the money they think they're going to get....It works like this: Agents knocking on doors turn their sales receipts in to their managers, who send them off to clearinghouses. A clearinghouse submits the subscription orders to the publishers, who then mail out the magazines. The clearinghouses choose which traveling sales crew companies to work with; the heads of those companies usually have their managers do the hiring. This arrangement allows the publishers, clearinghouses and road crew company heads to pretend they have nothing to do with the kids pushing the publishers' product." - bob via Bookmarklet
This will be a photograph in the top 10 of many future lists. - Andrew Baron
Explanation: "In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day celebrations. On the far right, lightning from a thunderstorm flashed in the distance. Near the image center, though, seen through clouds, was the most unusual sight of all: Comet McNaught. The photogenic comet was so bright that it even remained visible though the din of Earthly flashes. Comet McNaught has now returned to the outer Solar System and is now only visible with a large telescope. The above image is actually a three photograph panorama digitally processed to reduce red reflections from the exploding firework." - Andrew Baron
Wow, 153 people 'liked this" so far and almost 30 comments. - Andrew Baron
Absolutely incredible shot! Then again some of the best shots on the web come from NASA, National Geographic, Discovery and, of course, Hawk :) - Charlie Anzman
Not to be too cynical but that shot seems to good to be true -- I wonder if there is more processing going on than the text seems to admit. - Brian Sullivan
I'm going to side with Brian here. What is right: Comet McNaught was that bright in WA (I use to live there), but I checked my attempted pics, they predate this by over a week. I'm sure the comet was only that bright for less than a week. Second, the main Australia Day fireworks occur in Perth City...which isn't near a beach . Maybe it's Leighton Beach with Fremantle to the left...but it doesn't seem right. I did check the weather records though, there was a storm that night, and it's in the right direction - Duncan Riley
I do hope it is real though...and I forgot how wonderful the environment there is - Duncan Riley
Duncan, last year both Fremantle and I believe Hillarys held their own fireworks for Australia Day. I myself was trying to guess the location this morning. Being a regular on Leighton beach though it doesn't look familiar so I was thinking it may have been taken to the north of Hillarys. It also made me very nostalgic for Perth :) - Penny
At 302 likes, the #1 most liked post of all time on FriendFeed. Antti Kemppainen Photography - Here's Antti's original picture http://jkemppainen.com/antti/i... Antti's e-mail is kemppaisantti@gmail.com, and you can scroll through Antti's other photos. - Mitchell Tsai
Just to be clear, this is Kevin's kitten, and not mine. I am not a crazy cat lady. - Ana
And by 'Kevin's kitten' she means kitten that Rachel and I are fostering. Maddie (and Rocky) will be up for adoption at the Palo Alto Animal Services in a week or two. They're both amazingly cute and well behaved. - Kevin Fox
I can has... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww... - l0ckergn0me
You might want to double check Ana - you just may have caught crazy-cat-ladyitis when Janine and I crashed the FriendFeed sanctuary on Monday - the wifey is definetly a crazy cat lady virus carrier!! - Steve Craft
so cute. is the cat going to be at the next happy hour? - Charles Hudson
Sadly no Charles. I thought about bringing them to the last one, but Maddie doesn't do so well with big crowds. She was loving Ana though... and Ana, one cat does not a crazy cat lady make. Just think about it. ;) Both kittens were so tired after their FriendFeed outing they both feel asleep when we got home. Rock is currently asleep on my foot, its too cute! - Rachel L Fisher
just like to point out that I was working on a magazine called 'The World Wide Web Newsletter' at this point - never slow off the mark, me - Ivan Pope via twhirl
In 1991 the WWW looked like it would never take off. The IMG tag played a huge part in its success. - Bruce Lewis
In 1993, the amount of HTTP traffic on NSFnet finally passed the amount of WAIS traffic, but Gopher was still king of the net. - Denton Gentry
Tim Berners-Lee gets involved in the thread too, suggesting the alternative of using the <a> tag but with a special "embed" relation. - Philipp Lenssen
Really interesting snapshot of the early web. - Richard Bradshaw
In a later suggestion, Tim hopes for the tag to be called <embed> or <include> to be more general in terms of media types. Marc Andreesen's reply to Tim: "We're not prepared to support INCLUDE/EMBED at this point; it raises a
number of nasty issues that are quite separate from the idea of
inlined images." - Philipp Lenssen
From the article: “There are fundamental public health problems, like hand washing with soap, that remain killers only because we can’t figure out how to change people’s habits,” Dr. Curtis said. “We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically.” - Ginger Makela via Bookmarklet
On the one hand, this is a wonderful story about how getting people to wash their hands can save lives. But the more I read it, the more I reflected on the fact that a lot of the things we do on a daily basis may possibly be contrived by the marketing and media that bombard us daily. Re-read the article: it's actually spooky to to think that there are growing armies of well-trained people devising ways to "form habits" in YOUR mind. Disclaimer: I work in advertising, so the irony here is not lost on me. - .LAG
"“For a long time, the public health community was distrustful of industry, because many felt these companies were trying to sell products that made people’s lives less healthy, by encouraging them to smoke, or to eat unhealthy foods, or by selling expensive products people didn’t really need,” Dr. Curtis said. “But those tactics also allow us to save lives. If we want to really help the world, we need every tool we can get.”" - Clare Dibble
Washing hands is very important in preventing disease and illness, but this article adds to a very destructive habit - believing and acting upon what private corporations and their advertisements tell you because they say it is a good thing. You can use a tool but the manufacturer of the tool doesn't have to be involved. I agree with some of the criticism. These corporations aren't in it for the public good, but are in it for the R&D benefits that they ultimately hope leads to greater profit. - Frank Davis
Thanks for the wishes... @peter, not sure the idea matters as long as you pick a big and interesting space. We are kicking around a couple right now but no matter what we pick, I am sure there is someone somewhere already doing it :)) I think the devil is all in the details and execution... esp. when it comes to consumer start-ups. - Bindu Reddy
sure you still get great feedback from the friendfeed crowd. see my post on the greeting cards idea; great quality feedback and fast! - peter
Good luck!!! Very curious to see what you come up with. I am sure you got the better desk :) - Deepak
Good luck and look forward to future updates of a life in the day of a start up :) - Sally Church
The law of unintended consequences in action. - Tudor Bosman
That's an awesome story, but it doesn't make any sense that Grenada would then try the same 'own goal' tactic. If they succeed, they lose. If they don't succeed, they still have an even chance of winning. The only logic for their behavior would be spite: wanting to lose in order to make sure the opponent can't advance either. - Kevin Fox
The only way Barbados would qualify for the final is if they won by at least a 2 goal difference. Grenada would qualify if they won, tied, or lost by a 1 goal difference. So Grenada attacked their own goal to bring the score to 3-2 and ensure that they lose by only 1 goal. - Tudor Bosman
Ahh. The excerpt didn't make it clear that it was an either-or. The Snopes page goes into more detail. Now it makes sense. - Kevin Fox
filed under "one brave mofo!" Maybe Bush should experience waterboarding so he can prove it is not torture? - Jason Calacanis via Bookmarklet
@Jason Calacanis - agreed, I'd love to see the press conference after he was waterboarded to see his composure. "It was no big deal, like a massage. I set an appointment for another one next week!" - Damien Franco
That's an excellent piece. It is also a strong reminder of the importance of good writers putting themselves out there and relaying the experience to the rest of us. - Thomas Brox Røst
He didn't last long at all. I doubt anyone the military was doing this to would be so kindly set upon the board and have the directions for their torture explained to them so nicely either. - Yolanda
Did they leave those things up on the poles? I guess so, there is no compelling reason to take them down and no salvage value to speak of. - Denton Gentry
I had one of those. Downloaded betas of Windows 95 several times on one. - Robert Scoble
I had one for my Newton MessagePad. Never used it that much. Did think a lot about apps that I could build for them. - scott anderson
Metricom made no provisions for taking their equipment down when they secured the mounting rights for their network. Thus, when they went belly up, there was no budget to yank their old equipment. Cities around the country learned their lesson. Now, pretty much every pole attachment agreement you encounter will include a "Metricom/Ricochet" clause that requires the radio removal to be ensured by a bond. - Sacca
Memories... I remember when they first started... - Mitchell Tsai
I still have my old Ricochet modem. There was talk among city services types here in SF that it might come back as a utility - since the city now owned all the equipment. Fortunately they figured out that municipal wifi is smarter. Still hope it happens. - Hillary Hartley
back then you'd tell people "wireless internet, it's the future!" and they'd just look at you funny. - Karim
I had a repeater on my roof and got free service. - Jay Tannenbaum
96kbps and all the Hamster Dance you could stand. Thems were the days. - Leo Laporte
Brings back memories of my dual twisted pair 56kbps ISDN lines from USWest. Circa 1997 - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Leo, I believe it's spelt "Hampster Dance" :-D - Karim
Leo: 96kbps? On my Ricochet I was happy to get something close to 19kbps. Usually I only got 12. - Robert Scoble
I remember driving to work with my laptop on the passenger side, sending IRC messages saying "I'm chatting in the car!!!" while at stop signs. Probably one of the dumber things I've done, but I was in awe of such a cool device :) - Patrick Lightbody
cradlepoint + verizon 3G evdo card = personal mobile wifi cloud. very powerful. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Still have my Ricochet USB modem! Ah, the memories. :) (I have a Sprint card now) - Erica Douglass
Scoble: The second version of their service, which they had rolled out to limited service areas by the time they died, had a theoretical bandwidth of up to 128kbps or something like that. - ⓞnor
I had Ricochet service back in ~2000-2001. I used it on my laptop as well as my pocket PC. It was great at the time, and I was so disappointed when they went belly up. I was getting 200-300 kbps download speeds, which was pretty good at the time. I drove from Foster City to San Jose once with my pocket PC connected the whole time just to prove I could... - Jeff P. Henderson
Ricochet is why I never connected to the internet on a dial-up modem. When I was young, I only had internet access at work or school, where we had a fast connection. Later, I had internet access with a cable modem. In between, when everyone else used dial-up, I used Ricochet. - Amit Patel
This technology should be reused rather than taken down. However, I'm sure there's lots of legal stuff that needs to be cleared before that happens... - Franklin Naval
I loved Ricochet service, but the lesson I learned from Metricom failure was much more valuable. I got an access to a certain insider report proving Metricom will never reach profitability for one simple reason - Ricochet network would collapse before the number of users could make it profitable. Sure thing, one would use this insider info to profit by shorting the stock, right? Of course the stock eventually reached zero. The only problem was that on it's way from $40 to zero it touched $200. He-he. - Eugene
The best part was the little beeps it made when it connected. - Jay Tannenbaum
I think I still have my Ricochet modem somewhere. And I still have the T-shirt & baseball cap. - Tim Chemacki
Directuer, this is part of urban warfare and survival tactics training. Maybe this kid got his hands /idea from the some army guy or he just did it for kicks :)- - Peter Dawson
Somehow, I'm reminded of this joke: What does a redneck say before he dies? "Hey y'all watch this!" - Hutch Carpenter
this is fantastic - long live This Guy so my pyro bend can continue vicariously through his efforts (realizing, of course, that he may already be dead) - Nate
diy + do-not-try-this-at-home = hero - Pete Delucchi
