Here is an interesting piece of video I stumbled on...

I was talking to one of the engineers at Vquence early last week. He has a PhD in data mining. He told me how concerned he is about the amount of available information 'out there'. As a result he declines to blog or to comment on anything on line. He is very careful to ensure that anything he does is absolutely untracable to him.

His view is that anything that anyone says on line remains in place forever and that anyone who puts the information out there is likely to be held accountable at some stage.

I said to him that I totally understand the concept. The problem is that if we all acted that way we would all become totally compliant to what we think authority wants us to do. Isn't that what East Germany was about?

In spite of the knowledge that there may be forces in governments or corporations or elsewhere that want to control the way we think, speak, act - it is entirely counterproductive to do what we think that they want us to do. We need to work toward the greater good. We can not afford to be paranoid about what "they" may think about what "we" say....

It certainly means that what we do should be able to withstand the "front page of the Telegraph" test. But it doesn't mean that we should resile from saying what we think.

Pandemonium is a book by Andrew Nikiforuk, a Canadian journalist....

This book should be read by anyone who read Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat". It details all the things that happen as a result of globalism that are 'off balance sheet' and which come back to bite us when we are not looking.

The sub-heading on the Australian paper-back is: "How Globalization And Trade Are Putting The World At Risk". (different to the original edition, and more apt).

When are we going to realize that the more we all participate in the rush to get richer, consume more, do more, the more we miss the subtext of what we are doing. Nikiforuk gets us back on track. Think about this: Every time a ship comes into port it blasts out its ballast tanks, refills them etc. The water that it takes on board as ballast is filled with micro-organisms and many not so micro. Taken half way round the world and instantiated into another ecosystem, away from the view of the customs and livestock inspectors these micro-organisms have already wreaked havoc on the busiest harbours - gutting local fish stocks and massively changing the environment.

A litany of problems emerge in this book. It takes into account factory farming of chickens and the reducing bio-diversity of the species as meat yields become the critical ingredient of farming. And as a result H5N1 emerges and finds a way to jump species. It details the history of experimentation into weaponising anthrax and other deadly pathogens and who is responsible.

And what you get at the end of it is a realization that should not be a surprise: It is impossible to fight the powers of greed and yet we must find a way. Markets work perfectly when there are perfect rules and people obey them perfectly. We live in a society where greed has been good a long time, and I suspect that for many people one of the o's got dropped along the way...

Tivo had a rocky start as a company. Great technology that not enough people used. But they're changing. Recognizing a world that wants to make entertainment and the Internet easier Tivo have pushed idea after idea that builds off fast broadband, wifi and the Tivo box. Personal photos, movies, podcasts, info, games etc etc.

Some things are still rough. Download from Amazon, view a movie and 24 hours later, the movie is deleted. Why? "Rights-holders demands" Tivo says. But wait. That's not the way people live. Two or three different in a house or family might watch at different times and different ways.

Tivo, moving fast some ways, needs to explain how the real world is today; if it is indeed "rights-holders". Then their push to make the technology consumer friendly and in tune with the times will really gain the traction it deserves.

Orica, the worlds biggest explosive company took an offer from private equity companies the other day. Shares leapt five dollars to 33 dollars Australian The company rejected the offer. Not enough.

Private equity gets slammed. But boy, is it relentlessly starting to clean up business and make it efficient. Orica has a conservative balance sheet, born out of almost failing a few years ago and a share price of four dollars in the early two thousands.

Private equity focused attention. Orica will have to buy another company, return capital, initiate a buyback or do something with the equity that have built up. Anything but sit on it.

Private equity has forced Coles to sell it self. Supermarkets in Australia will reap the rewards as prices come down from new competition. Myer was sold and is already doing much better.Coles management failed and private equity exposed this.

Private equity will have incredible excesses before this wave finishes; and there will be disaster; but overall consumers, the markets and companies will be better for what is now happening day in and day out.

Pulitzer prizes were handed out this week. The LA Times got one for an incredibly long and worthy investigation on the health of the Ocean. Conclusion. Problems. It was its 30 something prize. Delight all around in big media HQ.

Across town, and barely reported by the Times, the LA Weekly won one as well. Its first. There, food critic, Jonathan Gold, captured the criticism prize, ahead of two LA Times commentators, Christopher Knight and Mark Swed. Both reportedly having to pay for their own entry in Pulitzer because their paper, the LA Times, wouldn't.

But LA Weekly's capture tells you how fat and slow the LA Times has become. The Times prize came from two reporters and a photographer allocated for extended periods with lots of money to track done an important issue and then write it up in extremely long length.

It was the Times investing in winning a Pulitzer. But every day and every week Jonathan gold is out there reporting on LA. He captures the diversity of food in this post modern city.

Which matters more?

The win for both tells you the mindset of the people who run the mainstream papers. For the LA Times is a big investment, worthy topic, mega coverage, big marketing, equals big win. Bragging rights and hence disinclination to change.

Yet LA Times readership is falling ever day. Why?  Damn hard to find anything about the local scene in vast sections of this city in that paper, or on its website. Millions of people, huge parts of geography, big industries, go unreported or barely covered, or covered as if its Bosnia.  Hence the alternate paper that make money from sex workers, brothels, strip joints and music listing but has a cheeky charm and covers day to day, in and out, the action of the city, is making inroads and now, guess what, stealing Pulitzers from the big papers. And that's not even the net advances, which the Times barely comprehends.

It's like watching Alzheimer's strike. The decline and denial is staggering.

Twitter is the new rage. It's a mini-blog site that updates a distribution list by phone or IM automatically every time a one line (or so) entry is made. Kind of like texting on steroids. For general use it can be irritating. Like the push email technology of the mid-nineties which eventually clogged my email box to capacity with unread but worthy stuff.

Short messages arrive constantly telling you that someone is at lunch, at the airport or whatever.

But this can also be incredibly useful. Conferences need this. Political campaigns want to know where candidates are every moment. Groups working on joint projects can be updated as things happen. Sales and marketing forces could benefit from knowing that sales are happening across a territory/state/country/world.

It's a many to many conversation through a central focal point. An always on concept,  to a new degree and in a new way. This boom in ideas, web2.0, is producing fascinating new tools. Some useful. Some of limited use. Some of use we can't quite see fully yet. This is the latter.

Finally; is it cool because the name is cool? Who knows. But the popular geek imagination has been caught and a torrent of new concepts are being erected (global maps of the location of the latest twitterer) incredibly quickly.

Thism idea is here to stay. In some form
 

A year and half ago Yahoo bought del.icio.us. Some people have raved about it. Other, like me, thought it useful. This week it got exponetially better. Now, delicious can operate in tandem with Firefox.. Download the plug in and all your browser bookmarks become delicious tags. Now work becomes doublely useful.

Stuff once saved is accessible anywhere. And easy, very easy to tag from inside the browser on the desktop. Its the seamlessness that makes it so persuasive.  Exactly what we have been waiting for. One stop tagshop. Try it, you'll see why it so good.

eg I need media references for Vquence that have been saved and now want others to have; I go here. And tell other to. Easy.

Adelphia Cable got carved up when its founder whet to the slammer. Time Warner bought large parts of LA. They promised a lot. Today, on the phone, trying to resolve a bill, (naturally) we reached the bottom line. Theirs. A similar package to the previous one now seemed unexpectedly is now more expensive. Much.

"People with one tier and one premium package found us cheaper; Sir"

"But I have four premiums package ('the extreme') because the way you cut up the digital universe, I need to buy four tiers, to get the five or six channels I really want"

After an hour and a half; back, forward; discussion argument; case, counter case; money off here, overcharge there; it came down to this.

Being changed to Time Warner cost me at least 18 bucks more a month for an 138 dollars a month total. For television. On top there's a Tivo charge of 12 bucks a month or 150 smackers all up.  At least five dollars a day. Quite a lot, really.

It seems thebigness their promises was what it cost me. If nothing else, in my time and sanity.

After Vquence debuted  there was followup. Using such secret search engines as Google, Yahoo and whatever else, mentions were checked. There was one colorful blog, a husband and wife effort, a consulting company, a geek aware twosome, that mentioned Vquence positively.

One blog lead to another. His. He wrote about Linux. Computers. Tech stuff. Get the picture? So when this was released, Mr Blogger was dropped a friendly email with the release attached. Within hours the email came back.

"Where" he asked "did you get my name and address from?" It makes you wonder? The web and blogs are not private. When you put yourself out there surely you have to expect contact and feedback and followup. We do. Why didn't he?