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Michael’s menu response

In response to Amazon’s puzzling menu postings, here’s a tool that will let you look up whether a San Francisco restaurant that you’re browsing has any health violations on the books.

The world keeps getting smaller. parasitic: Goofing around with bookmarklets

Amazon now does restaurants

It’s not clear to me why, though. January 23, 2004

The difference between the web and email

So, if you’ve been listening to the radio or reading USA Today, you’ll know about the “Dean remixes.” You can find some here: MTV.com – News -Remixers Make Howard Dean’s Scream Funky And Danceable.

What’s fascinating is that a Google search at noon today found precisely NONE of them. This wasn’t a web phenomenon. It spread by email.

What’s the difference?

The web is about publishing something, something you can’t own and can’t really pass on. You can pass on the pointer, but not the thing.

The Dean remixes, like many viral things online, was passed from person to person, with no help from Yahoo or Google. When you “own” it (as much as you can own something digital) it makes it more visceral to share it.

Actually, he’s way more eloquent than Courtney Love

John Buckman talks about the music industry at: Why I created Magnatune Records

open source permission marketing

When people have limited data

They make brand assumptions based on stupid moves like this one: theWHIR’s ArticleCentral | AC View

I’m not a doctor and I don’t even play one on TV

But I’m the co-author of a major new article about organ transplants. You can read it at Newswise.

The post office doesn’t know…

How many stamps it sells every year.

They know how many they print, they have no idea how many they destroy.

Besides being a massive opportunity for fraud (hey buddy, wanna buy a stamp?) it is the worst form of wishful non-measurement. Sounds a lot like most websites. Fast Company | So, All Those Nifty Scanners Do What, Exactly?

My site…

A treasure trove of free, nearly free and quite expensive stuff: sethgodin.com has been down a lot lately. This is incredibly annoying, as you can imagine.

You know what I want? I’d like a hosting service that offers the following deal: if I get 100% uptime for a whole year, I pay an extra $2,000. BUT, they pay me $1,000 for any day in which the site is down for more than sixty seconds.

Would certainly keep them on their toes, no?

Anyway, my apologies for the hassle. The good news is that we have a plan. No need to send me your recommendations for hosting services.

One more example of how a sticky service is hard to change.

Turning Naming upside down

WORDLAB | The Free Business Naming and Branding Community is focused on undermining the, “here’s $100,000, please name our new bank” business. Some remarkable (and some wacky) ideas here.