Google at the conventions
Sarah Lai Stirland has a nice piece has a good piece over at Wired about what we’re going to be doing in Denver and in St. Paul at the Democratic and Republican conventions. I’ve been working on plans for the Democratic convention for months, and it’s hard to believe we’re just a few days away. One of the things we’re working hard on is making it possible for those who can’t be at the conventions to follow along online; I’ll post later in the week some links to gadgets and URLs that’ll get you started.
McCain and the Cross
Keep an eye on this: Andrew (and others) are poking around McCain’s cross anecdote, and so far can find no reference to it (not in a prior retelling of McCain’s Christmases in captivity, not anywhere before 1999 when it appeared in Faith of My Fathers).
If this has legs — that is to say, if McCain lied about an apparently transformative experience in captivity and exploited others’ faith in an attempt to curry favor with the Evangelical community — it would be a profoundly stupid move. Hillary’s comments about sniper fire in Bosnia were dumb, but ultimately harmless — they just showed her trying to maximize political gain by showing how tough she was under fire (literally, in that case).
My first reaction when I heard the story retold on Saturday night was that it was a great story, and I was puzzled about never having heard it before. Seems like the kind of thing that should have been indelibly connected to his public life as a candidate — and perhaps I’d just missed it (admittedly, I don’t follow him as closely as I follow Barack). But something here doesn’t add up. (As I’m writing this, Andrew finds further evidence it’s not McCain’s story — he first told it as if it happened to someone else.)
If he’s lying about this, it makes it extremely hard for him to use his captivity as a proxy for his character, faith and duty to country. Which is why it would be so dumb to embellish… but he’d hardly be the first politician to fall victim to that trap.
Time will tell…
Update: Andrew’s most recent post on this more or less puts this story to bed:
Day said “the only friendly thing the [guards] ever did was hit me on the leg instead of on the head.” But, according to Day, McCain wouldn’t condemn them all, telling the other men of the occasional act of decency he’d witnessed from his captors. Day says McCain told him how one of those guards had “made a cross with his foot and wiped it out.”
Could it be… Hillary?
Like everyone else, I’ve wasted a ton of cycles wondering who Barack’s VP choice would be. For a long time, I’ve thought Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer — governor in a red state, fluent in Arabic, farmer, lived in Saudi Arabia for years — was a great off-the-radar pick. But picking him — or Tim Kaine, Kathryn Sebelius, or Tom Vilsack — would likely result in a loud, nation-wide “Who?”
And that’s not what Barack needs. Other front-runners bring as many negatives (Biden’s loose lips, Gephardt’s boring, Richardson’s got some Clinton problems of his own, etc.) as they do support, and what support they do bring is lukewarm among your average voter. (Is there really a Biden groundswell coming? I doubt it.)
What’s the most dramatic, news-worthy, guaranteed-to-bring-votes VP nominee Barack could name?
Much as it pains me to say, I think there’s just one name who fills the bill.
Hillary.
Not really sure how I feel about that — but the more I’ve thought about it over the weekend, the more it feels possible. And just a week ago I told a friend I’d be stunned if she were the pick… now I’m not so sure.
Blog? What blog?
Even I will acknowledge the irony of being the guy who has proclaimed — for years — that anyone who says they don’t have time to blog is lying, lazy, or both. So what’s my excuse? My last post was over a month ago. I don’t think I’ve ever gone that long between blog posts since starting this blog nearly seven years ago.
Let’s see. For starters, I’m still making a fair number of comments in two places: my Google Reader shared items (the Notes feature is the killer feature I’d been waiting for) and Twitter. And for the smattering of other content I create (Flickr, in particular) you can always get the aggregated, auto-updated list of stuff over at FriendFeed.
But the lack of blog posts is a combination of factors: the ease with which I can dash off a quick comment on Twitter or in Google Reader means that I have less need to compose more fully-formed thoughts on the blog. I tend not to write too much about Google-specific matters, and I’m not all that interested in breathlessly covering the latest tech news. On the politics front, my strong support of Barack doesn’t translate into a need to pontificate on why I support him – I think anyone who’s read more than a few posts here has a pretty good sense of why I support him and would have a hard time supporting Sen. McCain.
And, of course, there’s the easy cop-out: I’ve been busy.
Quick update on what I’ve been up to, for any who care: I recently took over as the content lead for Google Product Search (formerly known as Froogle). We are a lean team within the content partnerships group responsible for ensuring that PS has all of the merchants and product listings included, and that the product team has all the info they need to continue to innovate. It’s a great challenge, I love the team, and I’m really enjoying ramping up on something entirely different.
In addition, I’ve been working for months on our partnership with the Democratic Convention. (We’re an “official provider” to both the Democratic Convention and the Republican Convention.) That means I’ll be in Denver (working, I promise!) ensuring that a variety of Google products are used to help make the convention more interactive and inclusive. I’m stunned that I get to indulge my habit (politics) while “working” — to say I’m lucky would be an understatement.
I’ll be sure to have a number of updates once I get to Denver, and will be posting photos to Flickr and Picasa. Stay tuned!
How Twitter and Google Earth Saved the 4th of July
When I say “saved 4th of July”, I really mean, “saved me from disappointing my children.” Which, as any parent would readily understand, means exactly the same thing.
We live in a new development in San Ramon (Windemere), and we didn’t move in until late July last year. Since my daughter needs to be in bed by 7 or so, having the whole family out to see the fireworks around 9:30 wasn’t really an option. I knew San Ramon had a pretty big fireworks show, but I had no idea whether we’d be able to see the fireworks from our house. As the bird flies, they’d be just 4 miles away or so… but between us and the launch site were at least two ridges.
It occurred to me that Google Earth might be able to solve this dilemma. I got the location of the fireworks (Bollinger and Alcosta), and navigated there in Google Earth. Just one problem: how tall do fireworks detonate?
I tried a couple Google searches, but the obvious attempts resulted in lots of fireworks regulations for home use, ads for fireworks, etc… not what I was looking for. So I asked my Twitter followers. Within a few minutes, I had replies from Sean, Julio and John. (John’s clearly a better Google searcher than I am. Please don’t tell anyone at work.) I love Twitter.
So, back to Google Earth. I added a polygon with an elevation of 300m at that location:
End result was a nice tall rectangle right at that spot:
For the last step, I needed to go to my house in Google Earth, enable terrain mode, and then look in the direction of the fireworks to see if I could see the polygon:
Sure enough, it looked like I’d be able to see the fireworks! (For those wondering: the satellite images of our new development are a couple years old.) Sure, they were a couple miles away, and maybe one out of four blasts happened behind the ridgeline… but the bottom line was that the boys got to see their fireworks, and Becca got to sleep (saving us all from 5th of July “fireworks” during the day).
Yep, I’m a nerd.
McCainonomics - I’m going to be RICH
I know candidates tend to say the darndest things on the campaign trail (can you say cling? I knew you could!), but John “doesn’t really understand economics“ McCain’s latest foray into fiscal conservatism is a doozie. Kicking off his Last Economist Standing week, he explained how he’d balance the budget in his first term:
The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.
More on this incredible policy announcement here and here.
Let me try and figure this out: after the Bush administration maxed out the country’s credit cards, President McCain would win the war (w00t!) quickly, and use the debt we’re not incurring (in McCainonomics, this is called “savings”) to balance the budget.
Now, I went to law school because there was no math involved. But is that really how it works? Because, if so, I’d like to make an announcement: effective tomorrow, Wednesday, July 9, I am leaving Google and will be purchasing Yahoo. Not shares of Yahoo, but Yahoo. How could I possibly afford to to buy Yahoo when Microsoft couldn’t? Glad you asked: the savings from not buying Google will more than cover my purchase price.
Next up? Microsoft. (Which I’ll pay for by not buying IBM, of course.)
See how easy this is? McCain’s a genius.
You need to read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother
A couple weeks back, my friend Mike Marusin from Naperville updated Twitter that Cory Doctorow would be appearing at Andersen’s Bookstore in my old hometown, Naperville, IL, for a book signing. He’d just published Little Brother, and I was jealous that Mike got to meet Cory. I’ve long been an admirer of Cory’s, and a few days later I stopped by Cory’s site to check it out.
Imagine my shock to find that I could download all of Cory’s books and short stories for free, pre-formatted for ebook readers. That meant I was able to grab a copy and throw it on my Kindle… which I did, but was in the middle of reading White House Ghosts (yes, I’m a junkie) so I forgot about it. I had some time on Sunday afternoon, so I pulled out the Kindle and started Little Brother. I finished it last night, and it was spectacular.
I’ve seen other reviews peg it as a young adult novel, which I think is a load of crap. It’s a good story, pure and simple. That its protagonist happens to be a 17 year-old is immaterial, I think, to the target audience. Anyone who wants to know more about the technology shaping our society should read the book – and Cory does a great job of explaining complex issues (cryptography, hacking, open source software, tunneling, to name a few) in ways that non-techies will be able to appreciate. (I’ve seen a couple reviews knock him for these explications, suggesting it drags the narrative down… I disagree. If you’ve ever hung out with an obsessive, talented geek who is spectacularly good at this stuff, you’ll know they can spend hours explaining what they’re working on. The only difference with Cory is that his explanations often make sense to the uninitiated.)
The book is a fast read, and it’s a great ride. Cory nails the technology, the politics are spot on, and the implications about our growing surveillance society are laid out in an uncomfortable progression that you’ll want to give thought to. I told Robin last night that if I’d read this book as a teenager, it would have changed my life: Marcus (the main character) is a remarkable kid, and I have no doubt that I would have aspired to his blend of political commitment and technical mastery.
If you spend any time thinking about politics and technology (and if you don’t, what in God’s name are you doing hanging out at this blog?!), you’ll want to get yourself a copy of Little Brother.
A postscript: as I noted, Cory gives his books away for free. He’s also a full-time author, leading some to wonder why the hell he encourages people to download his books for free. From his intro:
For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies — in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you’ve got to figure that most of the people who “like science fiction” (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don’t really buy books. I’m more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who’s in the tent bought a ticket to be there.Ebooks are verbs, not nouns. You copy them, it’s in their nature. And many of those copies have a destination, a person they’re intended for, a hand-wrought transfer from one person to another, embodying a personal recommendation between two people who trust each other enough to share bits. That’s the kind of thing that authors (should) dream of, the proverbial sealing of the deal. By making my books available for free pass-along, I make it easy for people who love them to help other people love them.
Now here’s a particularly cool twist: Cory points out that many readers, after enjoying the free ebook, ask him if they can send him some money. He doesn’t want that – to do would be to encourage people to bypass his publisher, which he doesn’t want. Instead, he keeps a list running of librarians who need copies, and he invites readers to contribute copies to those schools/libraries.
I just bought four and had Amazon send them on their way… now 3 schools and 1 public library will have a copy of a book I think is critical for younger kids to read, and hopefully be inspired by. How cool is that?
I’ll repeat what I said four years ago: Cory Doctorow is a genius.
Helping my 6 year-old learn to read
Long-time readers of this blog may remember the less-than-smooth toddler years my son Robby enjoyed. There were the febrile seizures (now outgrown, thankfully), the strabismus in his left eye requiring eye surgery in both eyes, and the speech and developmental delays that were thankfully diagnosed early (and for which he received regular speech and physical therapy). Compared to the more extreme situations many parents have faced, we considered ourselves quite lucky – and having recently completed kindergarten here in San Ramon, we’re quite proud of his progress. (Particularly on the speech: he was briefly in speech therapy here, only to be told after a month or so that he was sufficiently progressed that he no longer needed ongoing therapy.)
Every child is different, and the fact that his older brother was reading fluently by the middle of kindergarten was not in and of itself troubling. But we knew that entering first grade without reading comfortably would make first grade more stressful for him – so this morning I set out to see if I could find a good computer-based aide to help him read. (Tutoring was going to be tricky – we have a lengthy trip back east next month that’ll have the kids out of town for almost a month – so that seemed to be a non-starter.)
I quickly found two web-based solutions – ClickN KIDS and Starfall. The former was a sponsored link at Google in my early queries; the latter showed up in a couple blog posts I found from teachers talking about various in-class tools they used.
ClickN KIDS is $60 for one student, but it gave us a couple sample lessons, which I let Robby try. The interface was quite straightforward – it’s a Flash-based app, which means that we can do the lessons from anywhere we have a browser. (Given next month’s trip, this was a huge plus over installed software, which I’d have to install on multiple computers.) It acts as more of a self-guided program – which I like not because I don’t want to help Robby, but because I want him to learn to use the computer without me (or his oh-so-helpful brother!) guiding him along. We read to Robby quite a bit, and I wanted this to be something he could do on his own and feel a sense of accomplishment with.
Starfall, it turns out, was what Ricky used in his kindergarten. It’s free, but seems to work best in a teacher-led (or parent-led) environment. Early interactions were good – Robby enjoyed the stories and did well at the tests. We may refer to it occasionally as additional material, but ultimately I chose to sign up for ClickN KIDS instead.
What sold me on ClickN KIDS were a couple things: the lesson-based interface gives Robby discrete tasks to accomplish, and each one focuses on progressively more advanced phonics, sight words and letter combinations (the program goes from K-3rd grade levels). And it gives me a comprehensive report to show how he’s doing individually and compared against all users on the system, along with indications for each lesson of particular words or sounds that he struggled with.
He’s already done 3 lessons today – and he loves it. I’ll report back after we’ve been at it for a couple weeks to see how much progress he’s made – but I’m pretty optimistic so far.
BTW – if you’re interested, you can get $10 off the sign-up (and they’ll give me $5 too, for what that’s worth) if you use my e-mail address (rick@rklau.com) as your promotion code.
Anyone else have recommendations for computer-based reading programs? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.
Illinois campaigns: stop spamming me
I’ve lost count of the number of campaigns who’ve added me to their mailing list in the last year, but it’s hitting a crescendo and I’ve grown tired of the countless e-mails I’ve sent asking to be taken off of their lists. Only one of the campaigns so far is using a real e-mail distribution service (like Constant Contact, for instance) – every other one just sends a blast e-mail with no indication of how to be removed.
The first few I ignored, recognizing that as a former party chair in the state I was bound to be on some lists. But by winter I’d grown mildly curious: where were these guys getting my address? I’d keep making it clear I didn’t live in Illinois, I’d keep asking to be removed, and sometimes they’d acknowledge receipt (not often) and remove me. Too often my e-mail went unanswered, and I’d get the next randomly-timed e-mail blast from them, repeating the cycle.
If this were one or two campaigns I’d let it slide. But it’s growing – I estimate at least half of the Congressional races in Illinois have added me to their list. Where are they getting my name from? My blog is linked to from Rich Miller’s influential CapitolFaxBlog.com site – and they are apparently spamming everyone on that list. (Three of the campaigns have admitted this is where they got my name from; no clue if the others are following suit, but it sure fits the pattern.)
This raises a couple thoughts: first, these guys shouldn’t be spamming everyone on someone’s blogroll. Reach out. Offer to introduce the candidate, host a bloggers conference call, or forward some info that appears related to something that I care about. Impersonal spam is bad. Blank e-mails with Word docs attached (Press Releases!) are worse. I understand that they’re under pressure, everyone’s talking about Barack’s success online and translating that to “I gots to get me some blog action” but good God: is it really so much to ask to put 10-15 minutes worth of time into thinking this through?
When I left Illinois I was cautiously optimistic about where things were headed. The Democratic Party in DuPage County is stronger than it was when I left; Bowen ran a great race for Bill Foster in the 14th and won Denny Hastert‘s old seat. That tall guy with the funny name’s running a pretty good operation out of Chicago. But if the stream of spam in my inbox is any indication, the state of online campaigning at the Congressional level in Illinois is stuck circa 1998.
Here’s some free advice, guys. Talk to your constituents. If you have some bloggers in your district (chances are you do), engage them. Meet them for coffee. Call them. Invite their feedback on what the candidate should be doing. (Bonus tip: Listen to what they say! Their ears are often closer to the ground than yours.) If you’re doing something noteworthy online, take time to explain how it’s worthy of attention. (Second bonus tip: attaching Word docs to your e-mail is a near guarantee that no matter how innovative you think your online efforts are, they aren’t. No, really.) Don’t add people to a distribution list without giving them an option of being removed. Don’t send an e-mail without including a way to automatically remove themselves from the distribution. (Yeah, yeah: you’re a non-profit and CAN-SPAM doesn’t apply to you. But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly annoying. And I’m pretty sure the “Getting Elected for Dummies” book doesn’t have a chapter about how annoying voters leads to earning their vote.)
And please, please, please. Take me off your list. I’m not naming names this time. Can’t promise I won’t be so aggravated that I’ll resist the urge a second time.
Wii Fit is a hit in the Klau house
Thanks to Naperville buddy Mike Marusin, we’re the proud owners of a new Wii Fit. We hooked it up last night, and I have to say: big win. The yoga is surprisingly effective – this coming from a guy who would never even imagine trying yoga. (I guess if they could find a way to make tofu blink I’d consider eating it. But that’s another matter.)
We’ve loved the Wii since we got it 18 months ago. And I’m amazed at how effectively they’ve catered to the various family interests: the 6 and 8 year olds are huge fans of Lego StarWars (both the Game Cube and Wii versions); I love Guitar Hero III and Wii Sports, and now Robin has her very own favorite. (Though I confess that the competitive instincts in me make me want to one-up Robin, leading to some pretty hysterical competitive yoga scenarios. Which I think isn’t reallyt he point of yoga. But I could be wrong.)
Kids haven’t had a go at the Wii Fit yet, but will probably get set up on it once school’s out this week.
BTW, saw Fred Wilson’s positive comments about Zemanta and decided to give it a look. If I understand what’s going on, it’s evaluating my post in real time, auto-tagging posts based on a textual analysis of what I’m writing (see the tags associated with the post), and giving me a gallery of images, blog links and contextual links (to Wikipedia, Amazon, IMDB, etc.) to enhance the post. Early impression: whoa.
