Archive - Jun 2009
June 30th
Bernie and Me
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/30/2009 - 09:21This morning, I turned off the radio’s morning news program as I drove my daughter to summer camp. I’ve heard enough about Bernie Madoff. It was time to talk with my daughter. Off to the left a man was mowing part of the town golf course. The town bought the golf course earlier this year when it went into bankruptcy and has been doing a great job of bringing it back to life. I, too, have suffered economic hardships over the past couple years, but today, the sun was shining and Fiona was ready for camp.
This year, Fiona is attending the Woodbridge Recreation Department’s summer camp. It takes place at the local elementary school. The little island at the beginning of the school’s driveway was festooned with beach balls and a man sitting in a beach chair waving at each incoming camper. Brightly colored traffic cones provided a path for me to follow to another traffic island where Fiona jumped out of the car and was met by a camp counselor. “What group are you in?” she asked.
Fiona promptly replied, “Pumpkins” and the counselor whisked Fiona off to her group as I drove back home. We are now living in a small rented house in Woodbridge. Life has been hard for me. Years ago, I worked full time on Wall Street and that took its toll. Later today, I will go to the doctor to make sure that the current batch of medications is keeping my blood pressure in check. I will get some writing done, a little bit of consulting, and I’ll look out my office window at the trees, the rock outcropping and the wind chimes. I’ll take a break to pick up Fiona from camp, and we’ll both do chores to keep our home life in order.
Perhaps I should be working harder to get back the large Wall Street salaries I had years ago. I could work long hours, be miserable all the time, but my daughters could do more than just go to a municipal summer camp. On the other hand, the specter of Bernie Madoff looms, reminding us all of many great lessons in life. So many people lost so much investing with Madoff. It is a reminder not to store up our treasure on earth where thieves break in and steal. Madoff himself is a reminder. Would he have run his great scheme if he had thought that it would end him up with 150 year prison sentence; forever staining his name? I suspect many people bend the rules as much as they think they can get away with in their lust for worldly goods.
Today, I watched my daughter gleefully go off to join her group at the town summer camp. I don’t have $2.5 million of ill earned wealth left over after a scandal the way Ruth Madoff does. She can keep her $2.5 million as she watches her husband head off to jail. I’ll be much happier skipping spending $2.50 for a fancy cup of coffee on my way home from seeing my daughter off to camp.
June 29th
Blogger’s Notebook
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 20:35Each day, I get hundreds of emails and even more messages on various social networks. Sometimes they are from friends highlighting one new site or another. Others are from public relations professionals hoping that I’ll write something nice about their latest clients. Sometimes there are blog posts that catch my attention that should be highlighted.
I flag them in my email client. I add them to a wiki that I use for tracking interesting topics. I send emails to various people and wait for replies. Many never make it to a full blog post, but some should be highlighted whether or not they will ultimately end up as a full blog post. With that, I want to provide another glimpse into my blogger’s notebook.
Google Adwords
Mar Matthias Darin, whom I first stumbled across via EntreCard has a blog post up about Google being sued for overcharging AdWords customers. Actually, this was a lawsuit from back in 2005 which received class action status and was ruled on earlier this month. I may have also gotten an email about this, but my adwords advertising has been so small it probably isn’t worth the first class postage to join in the settlement.
This Moment
My brother invited me to join him on ThisMoment.com. It is a site to ‘save and share life’s moments’. I tried to join, but was told that it only works for Firefox 3 or IE 8. I’m running Windows NT with Firefox 2 on my primary computer. It is a very old computer that just isn’t worth upgrading, and every once in a while, I run into issues like this. I signed up on my laptop without a problem, and it sent an email to my main computer for verification. I couldn’t even verify my email address with Firefox 2. It did have a link to continue without upgrading. This link did not work. I fired off a comment, and received a prompt reply. The link appears to be working now and I was told that my email address was properly verified. I’ll explore this a bit more later.
MaYoMo
Another interesting site that I received an email about was MaYoMo, Map Your Movements. It is aimed at citizen journalists and there should be news coming soon about it. I’ve sent an email asking for follow up about it, but haven’t received comments yet. Initially, it seemed very slow and kludgy for me, but they look interesting.
Mornflake
An old friend of mine in Britain sent me an email about his blog post about Mornflake’s Video Competition Mornflake is using a site called uVizz. That’s another site worth checking out, although I probably won’t make a Mornflake video unless someone sends me a box of their cereal from the U.K.
BurstMedia
Jarvis Coffin, CEO of BurstMedia. Mr. Coffin wrote a blog post about how Advertising must feel the human condition. It was in response to my blog post, Numerati, Creatives, and the Human Condition. He did a good job of taking the ball I was running with, and carrying it a little further down the field. I’ve been meaning to pick up that thread and talk more about his comments, but just haven’t gotten a chance to yet.
Ruth Madoff and Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations
Today, I received a brief email from Lauren Bishop of 5W Public Relations highlighting Ronn Torossian’s comments about Ruth Madoff’s Statement. Lars Toomre, with whom I’ve done a lot of financial services work, wrote a blog post about Ruth Madoff back in March. It seems to fit nicely with what Ms. Bishop has written about Mr. Torossian’s comments, and perhaps I’ll find some time to follow up on this a little later.
Group Psychology of Twitter
The other day, I received a fascinating email from Peter Howie who writes the Moreno Collegium Blog. It explored the nature of how groups behave and related it to discussions in Twitter. I really want to find a chance to explore this a bit further. I’ve also started to explore the streaming API for Twitter, especially as it relates to efforts to connect Twitter to various Complex Event Processing systems like Streambase.
SIFMA
Personally, I found the discussions about CEP and Twitter one of the more interesting topics at this year’s SIFMA conference. I have a lot to say about the SIFMA show on several topics. This remains on my blogger’s notebook, and it isn’t likely to be very friendly to the organizers at SIFMA. The folks listed above understand how the world is changing and it seems like the folks at SIFMA don’t.
There are plenty of other stories that I’m following, but this highlights a few of them. So, tell me, what do you find interesting? Is there something I should have on my radar that I don’t yet?
June 28th
Andy Madadian - Stand by me
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 10:33#iranelection
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7th Tir, Health Care and the Citizens Election Program
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/28/2009 - 09:03#iranelection #gr88 #neda - Today is the 7th Tir in Iran. It is a day of remembering the death of Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, who was killed on this day in 1981. Today, there will be a demonstration at Tehran’s Ghoba mosque to honor Ayatollah Beheshti. At least that is ostensibly who the demonstration will be honoring, but many people there may be honoring Neda Agha-Soltan, the martyr of the new 2009 demonstrations in Iran.
The violence against the people in Iran is a stark reminder of how difficult it is to wrest power from incumbents. It can also serve as a warning to those supporting new leaders fighting to come into power. It reminds me of the line from the SDS in the sixties, “We will become like you” and it makes me think about the great quote from Animal Farm, “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Perhaps this is the message of the current leadership in Iran. “All Islamic Laws are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Yet the protests in Iran are not just some drama that we are watching online. They can tell us a little bit about what is going on in our own country. On June 24th, Common Cause issued a report, Legislating Under the Influence. It notes that Major health care interests have spent $1.4 million per day this year lobbying Congress. Where is that money coming from? It is coming from the premiums that you and I pay. While this is much less graphic than the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, it brings to mind the lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s song Pretty Boy Floyd,
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
It isn’t just in the national dialog that we see incumbents fighting to hold on to their power. Rep. Corky Mazurek, D-Wolcott introduced an amendment to the budget bill on Friday that would have eliminated the Citizens Election Fund claiming that the money could be spent in much better ways.
Others were quick to observe that Rep. Mazurek narrowly won re-election after fighting off a challenge from a candidate that would not have been able to run if it weren’t for the Citizens Election Fund. Personally, I would much rather have our campaigns sponsored by the citizens of your state than by the major health care interests, and others with a vested interest in holding on to power which is perhaps not all that different from the interest of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
June 27th
Turning Fifty
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/27/2009 - 13:17On July 9th, I will turn fifty years old and it is a big deal for me. My forties were rough and I’m hoping that my fifties will be better. I never really had a big birthday bash, and although my wife is struggling with physical difficulties, she is organizing a fiftieth birthday bash for me. Sometime around my fiftieth birthday, I will send my 5,000th tweet.
Perhaps a bigger thing for me is that I grew up loving the writing of Hermann Hesse. I’m told that Hesse once said you should never read anything he wrote before he was fifty and you should only read it after you turn fifty. I’ve always thought of turning fifty as a special point in literary production and I’ve wondered what turns my writing will take after July.
I was brought up in a very frugal family, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. Our financial difficulties over the past few years have further caused me to hold back on dreams of gadgets I would like and so birthday magic often seemed to elude me.
