Month: March 2009

  • Twitter: Topical, Polemical and Short

    Pulitzer-prize winning historian Bernard Bailyn: Twitter is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and ‘high-brow’ than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the…

  • Eight Lessons Learned as a Brand on Twitter

    Back in January, we set up the official Blogger account on Twitter. We had a general idea of what we hoped to accomplish – better interaction with passionate users, quick communication of known issues, bug fixes, etc. – but this was not a long planned deliberate move by us. If anything, it was a bit…

  • Re-reading The Dark Tower

    On my way out the door to SXSW, I walked past the bookshelf in our bedroom and took The Dark Tower off the shelf. I originally read the entire Dark Tower series in 2005, effectively back-to-back-to-back, and adored them. I can’t really recall a Stephen King book I haven’t enjoyed, but a few stand out:…

  • Site design updates, take 2

    Took another crack at hacking my site’s template over the last few days, mainly to better understand what options are out there for Blogger users. I’d gotten pretty tired of the prior site’s design – too much padding between sections, very choppy presentation, and a general lack of consistency through the page. (Didn’t take long:…

  • Thoroughly enjoying SXSW

    I’d been invited to speak at a couple SXSW conferences but had conflicts each time. Ironically, I’m not speaking this year but given Blogger’s long history with SXSW, I was eager to come and see what the fuss was about. I’m glad I’m here. I’ve attended dozens of tech and industry conferences over the years,…

  • Heading to SXSW

    I leave for SXSW tomorrow, and will be there through Tuesday. While I really don’t like traveling over weekends without the family, Blogger has a long history at SXSW and I didn’t feel that I could miss this. We’re having a party with Google Reader Sunday night, so if you’re in the Austin area please…

  • Sir Walter Scott and APIs

    Oh! what a tangled web we weave… (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion) Earlier this week, a friend of mine’s father passed away from a sudden heart attack. He blogged about his father’s loss, and I did what I normally do when I see a post in Google Reader that I find noteworthy, interesting or worth coming…

  • Bowen is 2 for 2: Mike Quigley replaces Rahm Emanuel

    Forgive me a brief indulgence in some Illinois politics: there was a special election today in Rahm Emanuel’s old district. Twelve Democrats were running. Special elections are almost always hard to predict, and turnout will be low. Tonight, Cook County Board Member Mike Quigley won, and as Lynn Sweet notes, his campaign manager was Tom…

  • My first job: washing dishes at Chez Claude

    My first job was as a dish-washer at Chez Claude restaurant in Acton, Massachusetts. It was a family-owned French restaurant, and I wasn’t yet old enough to drive, so my parents had to drop me off at 4pm every Saturday and pick me up after we closed (usually around 11). I eventually graduated from washing…