Alec Saunders SquawkBox

It's Easter, and I won't make any attempt to hide the fact that I was brought up and am a practicing (albeit infrequently) Christian. 

Easter is the celebration in the Christian mythos where Jesus dies and is resurrected in order to absolve us all from the Sins we have committed in our lives.  It's an opportunity to repent for the evils we've done, and to invite our neighbours and friends to share in our lives.

Whether you believe the Christian biblical narration or not, Easter is a holiday which reminds us to treat our neighbors well — as we would wish to be treated ourselves.  It's a holiday which encourages us to reach out to others and help them to live the lives which they have wanted to lead, or are capable of leading.  It's a holiday which reminds us all that we can make mistakes and still live as fulfilled human beings.  

Happy "find yourself and be what you're capable of" day.  Happy "recognize, understand and address the wrongs you have committed". Christian or not, it's only through the recognition that we are human that we are able to transcend the petty behaviors that we are all susceptible to. 

Happy Easter. 

We had a very lively discussion today on the SquawkBox.

Is twittering during a conference session considered rude? Will it put panel attendees and moderators more on their toes? We got a very lively discussion about the value of Twitter during live events and whether it's rude. But now conferences are putting their Twitter feeds up on the big screen for everyone to see. Maybe that will make them less rude, but still keep the panelists accountable for their actions on stage. Like a information ticker on CNN, it adds another dimension of content for the show.

The discussion of Twitter dovetailed us nicely into a discussion about conferences in general. We've all been to them and we've all spoken at them and there was lots of advice on what makes a good session. Effective use or no use of PowerPoint (see DEMO) and truly being a passionate speaker (see TED).

I think we got completely exhausted by the third topic, Hulu. Will it be a force in the online video viewing space? Patrick Kearney of Participant Productions who has experience launching video enabled sites had the greatest in the trenches experience to speak about Hulu and the competition.

Listen to the lively discussion.

 

 Squawk Box March 14 [33:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This morning Sheryl Breuker and Ken Camp co-hosted our call with Fonolo (Pr.: PHONE-uh-low) CEO Shai Berger.

Shai will be demonstrating Fonolo later today at the eComm2008 conference under way this week at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.. Fonolo also announced a private beta program today and forecasted a commercial launch later this year.More information is available at www.fonolo.com. The press release is available at http://comunicano.typepad.com/bam/2008/03/fonolo-announce.html.

On a lighter note, the call ended by sending happy birthday wishes to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

 

 Squawk Box KCSB [24:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A couple of weeks ago we went as a family to see The Golden Compass.  Afterward, I was mystified by the fuss that the Catholic League in the United States has made about the movie.  The movie is a harmless children's fantasy, with a young girl named Lyra as the protagonist.  I enjoyed it, and couldn't see anything sacreligious about it at all.  My children, who had read the book, were disappointed.  The book, they said, was better. So I read it, then the Subtle Knife, and yesterday I finished the final book in the trilogy, the Amber Spyglass.

In Pullman's alternate universe, a world where people's souls (their daemons) are manifested as animal companions, the Catholic Church has run amock.  Ruthless, controlling and dictatorial, it is working on a weapon that can be used to control people by suppressing creativity and individual thought by means of separating their daemons from their selves.  Lyra has a special purpose and a gift, which isn't be revealed until the end of the third story, that will save the universes and thwart this ambition. 

This is no light story, however.  Throughout all three novels, Lyra confronts difficult truths, moral choices, and tragedy.  She questions authority and learns to think for herself; finds and loses love; befriends angels, witches, kings and queens; fights horrific creatures; crosses multiple universes to meet people like herself but different as well; and crosses over to the world of the dead to release their souls from purgatory to eternal happiness.

The books are well written.  Pullman has a talent for descriptive prose, dialog, and a fertile imagination. With echoes of Paradise Lost, Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, the Wizard of Oz, the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations, these are children's fantasy as it was written 100 years ago by Nesbitt, Lewis, and Tolkien.

The Catholic League's attempts to suppress this movie and these books is particularly ironic. Pullman may profess to be atheist, but the books he has written are profoundly human and religious with their themes of truth, sacrifice, love, tolerance, hope, peace and joy. 

This holiday, take a child to see the Golden Compass.  Then buy the books, read and discuss them together. Whatever your faith, you will be entertained, thrilled, and moved.

Among the legions of legitimate domain holders on the internet are a band of squatters that make a living from holding corporate trademarks hostage.  These folks look to snatch the identities of companies by registering domain names that use or mimic that corporations trademarks.  Then they ransom these names back to the owner of that identity, sometimes for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. 

That's what we thought had happened last week when we discovered that someone had claimed iotum.mobi.  Because the domain was anonymously registered, Howard asked the .mobi registrar to send email to the owner, which they did.  Shortly after, he got a reply.

The owner, it turns out, was a "wannabe geek" (in his own words) named Kevin Billingsly.  An Indiana steel worker, he also runs several small businesses on the side, including a PC repair business and a promotional products company called ePowerServe, LLC that does embroidery, screen printing, vinyl prints, and other kinds of graphic arts products.  Kevin had a vision for a mobile search engine — a small lightweight application which would be the single place for people to search from mobile devices.  He thought iotum might be a good name for such an engine, and registered it… in October.

He could have held us hostage.  He could have forced us to jump through hoops with the registrar, in hopes that the registrar might agree that we did, in fact, own the iotum name.  He could have done a lot of things to make life difficult.  Instead, he simply asked where he should transfer the name, and by way of explanation added that he didn't think he had any right to it given how long we had been in business.  What an incredible act of honesty, integrity and generosity! 

From the team at iotum: Thank you, Kevin Billingsly.  And if we need any graphics work done, we'll be sure to give you a call.