SMS

From TidBITS’ Adam Engst:

October 10, 2007 by Michael Boyle

I’m eating a hearty meal of crow (roasted, with garlic and rosemary) today, since I’m here to tell you how interesting and downright useful I’ve found Twitter to be since being turned onto it properly at the C4 conference in August. My initial reaction to Twitter was that it was utterly inane…

I think a lot of people were misled by the early talk of Twitter that was focused on whether or not it was useful. That was likely the wrong question, the wrong focus. In fact it is (sometimes) useful, but more importantly, it’s (almost always) fun.

The Register

December 19, 2001 by Michael Boyle

The Register

: Women fail safe text test. “Three out of five mobile users have sent [SMS] messages they regret when they sober up. And women are worse offenders than men.”

Naomi Klein

September 15, 2001 by Michael Boyle

: Game Over: The End of Video Game Wars.

When I was in undergrad I published my first and only paper in a journal. It wasn’t actually much of a paper, and I never followed up on the subject very seriously, but it resonates a bit now.

The paper was about the rise of trade unionism in the First World War in Germany and the UK. The story is often forgotten, but it’s important. The British Union movement staunchly resisted the war effort, and in particular resisted giving in blindly to the government’s demands due to “wartime considerations”. They fought tooth and nail for concessions in working hours, in pay rates, and most importantly for recognition by the state.

Britain still won the war (with lots of help from others of course), and not in spite of the Unions, because the criticisms they brought to the table improved the conditions of people in general, which led to greater success and support in general for the war effort.

There’s a lesson in this for us, today. Important parts of societies can be critical of their government and strive for improvement while not dooming the whole effort. Societies can be improved during crisis periods, and such improvement doesn’t always mean blindly following along, necessarily.

The price of freedom, it is said, is eternal vigilance. That applies equally, always, inwards as well as outwards. The external foe is not the only threat.

I just sent this email

March 9, 2001 by Michael Boyle

Hola,

A (late) “official” announcement about the next Montreal Weblog keepers get together! This is more or less the first anniversary of the night that Ed Bilodeau, David Petite, Aaron Cope, Heather Champ and myself got together, so it’s worthy of recognition.

And we do that with beer.

So the plan is this: meet on Sunday at 2pm at News Cafe, which is on St-Laurent at (I think it’s) Guilbault – at the corner of the tiny sidestreet between Bifteck and des Pins. It’s on the West side of the street and there’s food and coffee and stuff there. At a later time it is rather likely that we’ll move elsewhere for a quiet (or not so quiet) Sunday afternoon beer.

Please pass this along to anyone else (she or he should keep a weblog or other personal website) you feel should have been included in this email. And, on the day, if you have to get in touch with me, you can sms my phone through mikel.org and I’ll call you back.