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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Check it out.  You'll see some familiar faces, including folks like Tom Howe. 

Here's the BBQ.

And here are the rotten parts I removed.  The flavour bars were so rusted that pieces had fallen into the drip pan below, and were collecting grease which causes fires.  Notice that the parts of the burners that were inside the kettle are rusted (although still pretty solid!), while the parts on the outside are like new — shiny shiny shiny!  They're nice solid pieces of stainless steel, but the traces of moisture in liquid propane cause the burners to eventually rust.

And here are the shiny new burners installed, plus new stainless flavour bars, and and stainless grills.  I decided to try the stainless bars rather than the porcelain coated, at the recommendation of the folks at Capital BBQ. 

And all put back together. 

Alec is done with rebuilding BBQ. New burners, flavor bars, grills, and a (relatively) thorough cleaning. Now VERY VERY dirty. 2:39pm

Total time — 3:00 hours.  After reassembly, it worked like new again. It's capable of heating to inferno temperatures for searing steaks, and also the gentlest of slow cooking temperatures.  Total cost to refurbish was in the neighborhood of $400 — half the price of a new Weber — and my perfectly good old barbeque hasn't been prematurely consigned to the landfill.

The toughest part about the whole job was cleaning and cleanup.  The shower was a welcome relief, but even so a day later I've still got dirt ground into my skin and fingernails. 

Frankly I'm a little ashamed that I haven't spoken up earlier.  Instead of defending my friend Jeneane two weeks ago, I stayed on the sidelines.  I didn't want to get mixed up in the fight, and I still don't, really.

Some pretty horrible things were said about Kathy Sierra, including things Kathy took as death threats. Misogyny is a terrible thing.  So a lot of people rallied to her support, and condemned the folks named in her posting.  It became the virtual equivalent of a lynch mob. 

Mobs are cruel.  Mobs are irrational. Mobs rarely stop to consider the facts.

What's clear now is that the accusations made may be incorrect.  Accounts appear to have been hacked, and the malice perpetrated by anonymous hackers. 

In the aftermath, Kathy and one of the people accused, Chris Locke, went on television, and published joint statements. Tim O'Reilly proposed a bloggers code of conduct. Kathy posted again, this time about her non-blogging future, and hundreds more people wrote to support her. 

While you can't and shouldn't minimize the hurt Kathy encountered, people forget that she wasn't the only one damaged. At one point Jeneane measured the Google search count of her name associated with the phrase "death threats" at over 11,000.

What disturbs me the most is simply this — amidst the handwringing and navel gazing, people seem to have forgotten that the simplicity and accountability of a mea culpe might be the most effective and human thing to do.  Instead of blogger codes of conduct, how about beginning with the simple civility of an apology to those who were wrongly accused?