The Social Web

In a TechCruch interview lately, angel investor Ron Conway said

The Web is more social. We share a lot more about ourselves, and our lives, online than we did yesterday. We will likely share more about ourselves tomorrow. I am communicating with my sister in Japan, my cousin in China, and my Mom’s first cousin in El Paso about my lunatic brother who lives in Chicago. All in one Facebook post. I didn’t have that reach in 2007. I’m consoling a childhood friend whom I have not seen in 25 years as he suffers through cancer treatments. I could not have done all this in 2007.

I disagree. Facebook opened to the general public in 2006. Friendster and MySpace both launched in 2003. GeoCities offered free soapboxes in 1995 and was a huge success. By 1997 over 1 million look-at-me users made GeoCities the 5th most popular site on the net.

Even in 1981 on Usenet your lunatic brother could publicly pontificate about The Muppet Show, a decade before the WWW existed! What's so novel about "MyTwitFaceCitySter" other than the web itself is now just more pervasive? In the next decade some other service will connect 10x more people than Facebook does today and noobs will marvel yet again.

Amazing Hockey Goals

Game 7 last night between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pheonix Coyotes was a boring blowout except for this one amazing goal by Vernon Fiddler. In a faceoff against Pavel Daytsuk, just to the right of Howard, Fiddler manages to smack the puck right into the net before even a second ticks off the clock.

Frantz Genealogy

In the United States, the Frantz family name began with emigrants from Germany who settled near Leechburg, Pennsylvania.  For more information see William Frantz at the Westmoreland County Pennsylvania Genealogy Project.

Pictures from Business Week

While stumbling around the 'net, I found this picture of myself on Business Week's website. It is labeled William Frantz and associated with my comments about the iPhone 3G. Obviously its an old story and the picture is even older. This was taken in 2003 on St. Martin. I was standing in front of a flag autographed by Dennis Conner, owner of the Stars and Strips racing yacht.

iMac Display Freeze

I have a 2006 iMac 20" Core Duo with the ATI Radeon X1600 GPU.  Like so many others, my GPU has started crashing when it gets warm and the problem is becoming progressively worse.  The machine is now basically unusable which is a real shame because other than the display freezing, it's still a perfectly good iMac.

Russian Gear

While attending the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, I found out what all the fashionable fans will be wearing to Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia for the 2014 games.

Shall Will Should Must May

SHALL WILL SHOULD MUST MAY

You see these terms in software requirements documents all the time. There is even an RFC that defines them. Unfortunately, RFC 9119 is poor practical advice.