prod & ponder

You know you’re coming up to a big accident when you see news copters flying overhead, and there were two of them hovering above this one. Along with a handful of cars, two large tractor trailers–one of them a fuel tanker–were involved. Traffic was backed up for miles, and I had plenty of time to snap this shot while creeping by.

Considering the vehicles involved, I’d guess that a lot of folks got very lucky. There weren’t any seriously mangled cars or medical teams in the area, and these officers seemed in pretty good spirits.

I’m teaching negotiation theory and practice in class this week, and inevitably some questions about hostage negotiations comes up. We don’t go down that road very far–think Getting to Yes, not Attica prison riot–but here’s an interesting tidbit…

Remember Ashley Smith, the woman who, by dishing out spiritual insights, persuaded courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her as a hostage? Well apparently there was one other negotiation tactic involved: dishing out some of her methamphetamine stash.

(But on that Attica bit, and just for the record, if you’re going to send a police force in to retake a prison, don’t send in the same group of guards who were attacked and humiliated by the initial uprising. That’s not some deep insight from the field of conflict analysis and resolution; it’s just common sense.)

p.s. I’ve been taking my camera around with me again, so new photos are on the way.

For your Monday amusement, ponder this Guardian story: Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina.

Initially I didn’t think the protests this weekend were going to be very significant. A lot of fun for those involved, with some great musical acts and speakers, but ultimately not a broad-reaching, persuasive political act. But with Bush’s satisfaction rating so low in the wake of the Katrina debacle, there might be a window for the events to have some meaningful nudge on already shifting public opinion.

Unfortunately, most media outlets (including the indy/alternative/left ones) have been going back to the habit of heavily framing the story of protest around a law and order theme. In this case, will DC police comply with the new restrictions on their behavior? Will protestors refrain from property destruction. Blah, blah, blah. If the protests are going to have an effect that stretches out beyond those in attendance, folks need to get away from the story of police-line (or not) tensions and focus on the reasons that bring protestors there in the first place.

Is it just me, or is there something just not right about a big “Live Bait” sign at the Companions pet store? If nothing else, I’m positive that a sign for live bait should never be written in such a fancy script.

I ran across this on my way to the DCist Birthday Party. More photos from it below.

Site of the party (and a fine bar)

Rob, DCist’s Editor (who also runs Goodspeed Update)

It was a good time at the ipod jukebox night.

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but my ‘lil ipod was up when I shot the photo (the little red arrow is pointing to prod & ponder). My set list (there’s a 12 minute limit):
1. Camper Van Beethoven’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men”
2. They Might Be Giants’ “Ana Ng”
3. Squeeze’s “Goodbye Girl”

Sure I felt rather old and unhip, but I ran into some great fellow bloggers and heard some good and new (to me) music. From flickr I’ve also discovered that my lingering love for They Might Be Giants is shared by others.

I’ve finally come up with a name for my ipod nano: “Lucky” There’s a long story that goes with it, but we’ve already established that poker stories can get dull hella fast. I will say that I finally snapped my slump of making it to final tables at the local pub poker tournaments but not winning, and I did it twice in a row.

I think it speaks to good design when a product tends to get named by the people who own it, and most folks I know, even those that bristle at anthropomophising things, have named their ipods.

More on the ipod front:
* Jack Evans (DC Councilmember from Ward 2) has his own podcast.

* Tonight is ipod jukebox night at Saint Ex. I’m going to try to make it, assuming the flickr meetup at Wonderland, which is also tonight, wraps up at a reasonable hour.

Dear XM Radio, I’m not sure if your aware of this, but since you’re a local company, and I dig you, I just wanted to be sure you had your eyes on the ball: it’s not terrestrial radio you should be worried about, it’s podcasting. And here’s the bad news: right now your situation is looking a lot like AOL in its just-before-it-all-went-to-hell years.

Like AOL, you actually have two core services: providing media and providing a pathway to that media. AOL found out that there are at least two deep problems with going for that combinations of core services.

1. You get slammed by more focused companies on both ends. There’s a honeymoon period as consumers first enter the market and appreciate the simplicity of an all-in-one media solution, but inevitably more focused companies provide better options. Better ISP’s emerged. Better online content providers emerged. AOL was left being the best at neither and has since been floundering around and acting as if mergers & aquisitions alone could constitute a core business practice.

2. Both of your core business competencies can be thrown out by a disruption on either side of things. Consumers who turned to better ISP’s weren’t going to go out of their way to get AOL content. And consumers who fell in love with non-AOL internet content weren’t going to stomach any AOL inability or hassle in getting that content. To add to the problem, there’s a short-term strategic incentive to tightly bundle distribution and content–make small barriers and hassles to going outside the “happy family fold”–which adds to the volatility that a failure on either end of the business model takes down the whole ship.

And so here we have XM looking a lot like AOL circa 1980s. It’s a pretty darn good media distribution channel, and it’s a pretty darn good content provider, but it’s not great at either and that’s going to be a great big problem.

Moreover, it looks like podcasting, internet media distribution in general, is poised to do to XM what broadband did to AOL with its prolonged focus on dial-up access. AOL tried to whitewash over the problem that its distribution channel was getting distrupted by just pumping money and publicity into the content side of things, and sat providers are doing the same in response to net distribution, with big money content deals like Howard Stern and sports coverage exclusives. It’s a losing battle.

About the only remaining competitive advantage to sat radio distribution is the important feature of real-time content provision on the go, but we’re looking at the prospect of ubiquitous wireless broadband access in the not-too-distant future, so that’s going out the window soon enough.

So, umm, frankly XM you’re kind of screwed. Those expensive satellites you put up, well start thinking of selling off the communication bandwidth while it’s still valuable. If you want to at least make the five year mark feeling healthy, release a MyFi 2 in the next year with mp3 capabilities that are well integraded with the radio content (no clumsy stiching on of mp3 capabilities that doesn’t seasmlessly link to the radio content). Get the XM TiVo+iPod wunder-radio released soon and then start using the gobs of money you’ll get to retool the company by selling the satellites and rethinking how you make a radio network work–if such a thing can–in an age of internet media distribution.

XM radio execs, don’t feel too bad about the situation. Just think of all the national and local television networks that are going to be facing the same dilemma soon enough. Pull off the transition without loosing everything and you can at least charge them gobs of money in business consulting fees to help them navigate the same calamity.

Yes, so getting hit by a mac truck is not actually the rockstar fun you might expect. And what you really don’t want going through your head just about 30 seconds before that happens is, “hey, I think I finally got over my flu from hell, my awol course textbooks should have finally arrived today… the semester is finally starting to turn around.”

But then there are cool new electronic gadgets to give you some solace and perspective that there is good, or at least good industrial design, in the world. Following the “electronic toy shopping as therapy” plan I stopped by the local Apple store on my way home from the accident and picked up one of the new iPod Nanos. It’s my first ipod, and so far I’m totally digging it.

In the photo I’m playing a fitting song for having gotten nailed by a large truck and walking away entirely unharmed: Poi Dog Pondering’s “Thanksgiving” from The Best of Poi Dog, the Austin Years album.

By the way, I can confirm that the ipod nano does mighty well at the poker table. I brought it out with me to a poker tournament in Chantilly on Saturday and won. It was one of the pub poker league tournaments, so no cash payout, but I’m still pretty darn happy with the win. I’ve made the final table several times at these things, but this was my first win. It was a fairly epic showdown between me and the #2 player. Usually the first tournament is over well before the second is scheduled to begin, but he and I were still playing heads up poker a good hour into the second tournament. He also was a bit of a weasel and far less clever than he seemed to think he was, so the good tunes were a welcome distraction.