yahoo

Excellent rundown of what the scenarios are for a Yahoo/Microsoft. I’m not as expert at understanding financial issues as some others, but I feel like this made me smarter—If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo by Marc Andreessen.

I often see job opportunities for working at Yahoo—contracting positions at various facilities in California—including some that would be realistic choices for me. These formerly excited me with their promise. I have to say the prospect of working for Microsoft has never excited me, while working at Yahoo has. I’m not sure if this is rational.

I will say that what I have experienced of employees of both companies at various events over the last ten years tell me Yahoos tend to be happier than Microsofties. But my sample size is not that large.

Vernacular speech is pretty crazy stuff. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” is a metaphor for embracing something fully, often unthinkingly. This metaphor has its roots in either psychedelic drugs or mass religious suicide. Take your pick.

Anyway, with that, I’ll cop to two new social-software, web two-point-oh oddnesses. The first is Yahoo! Mash, YASN. I’m not sure what to make of it, I try all this stuff and this one seems not to have much for it. It’s another reminder that I still have been unable to regain my proper nickname (artlung) with Yahoo. I put in a false birthday lo those many years ago and there’s no way to recover the account. Contacts with Y! over the years have been fruitless.

Oh, I’m not talking about Mash. Yeah, well, there was not much to do, no offense to my pal Lilia who both introduced me to my current wife and invited me to Mash. If you want to connect with me, go ahead, the address is http://mash.yahoo.com/websandiego—let’s hope, for Yahoo’s sake, that it’s more successful than Yahoo 360. It appears that Mash requires Yahoo registration at this point, so don’t complain to me if the links above don’t work. :-)

MyBlogLog was purchased by Yahoo about a year ago. It purports to build up a community passively as people visit your site, and entice them to do so actively as well. I’m ambivalent about this idea. As I was saying the other day to some other bloggers, I initially set up my site with no comments by active choice because dammit, it’s my site, not yours. Get your own site! Of course, I changed course on that when in 2004 I moved from Blogger to WordPress as my blogging platform. I’ve not regretted allowing comments. Fun fact, Sassy was my first commenter.

Feel free to “friend” me on MyBlogLog or join the ArtLung community. What is the benefit of doing either of those things? Uh, I don’t know. I’m a poor salesman. Maybe you can carp about the lack of longer blog posts, or more emotional writing that I used to do? Hmm… maybe this is not such a hot idea.

(And yes, I can see the irony plain as day that just the other day I was carping about Ryze as a social network, meanwhile I’m joining these—maybe I have a problem).

Smartest Thing Written on Yahoo and China
Personally I disagree with Yahoo, and IDC. Personally I find China’s ability to combine censorship, oppression and capitalism as frightening as Al Qaeda. But let’s not be blind to realities here. And it seems that the Post’s coverage is willfully blind to them.

China means profits. Participating in the Chinese “opportunity” means colluding with the Tienanmien murderers. It’s a price capitalism willingly plays. That’s the reality.
     »read the whole note, in context, in the IP archives

David McLean of evolt.org got something I wrote onto Yahoo! Canada’s Quotation of the day—today.

“So how do those who would protest get smart? They need to organize in such a way that they can beat the police, and the media, at their own game.

Every protester in my mind needs a video camera, and an online journal. Eyes wide open, direct to the world – Media savvy. Documenting abuses by the police in realtime. I truly believe, all evidence to the contrary, that the truth will out. This is my manifesto – for those with real causes (that is, causes worth fighting for) media-savvy, nonviolent, hyper-protest.

Think: McLuhan meets Gandhi.”

I don’t write much about activism, but I believe in justice, and in the ability of people to subvert the status quo by avoiding complacency, and being smarter. We have so many tools available to us, we should use them. If we don’t use them for ourselves, they’ll end up being used on us.