The Epicenter

I just got a rather odd e-mail inviting me to a gather in London for Monocle Magazine to discuss smarter travel with travlers from around the world. 

Dopplr and Monocle magazine invite you to the first "Where Next?" community event during London Design Week.

It's an informal early evening gathering at Monocle's head office to discuss the coming world of smarter travel, with fellow travellers from around the world.

Tuesday, September 16th at 5.30-7.30pm at Monocle
20 Boston Place, Marylebone
London NW1 6ER

The odd thing is that this was invite was done in partnership with Dopplr which, according to its own About page, is supposed to let me "...share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleague".  The odd thing is that I'm not going to be in London on September 16th, nor have I been there yet this year, nor have I any plans to go there anytime soon.

Is it just me or shouldn't Dopplr have known this and simply not invited me? Seems odd that a service whose claim to fame was connecting people intelligently would leverage itself when sending out invitations to events that are about connecting people intelligently. 

I don't know, maybe its just me.

Sorry, but you just have to take the one minute and 12 seconds it will consume from your life to watch this.  I really don't know if its real or staged, my vote is staged...but either way, its hilarious in an "OUCH, Thats gotta hurt!" sort of way.

Just found a trailer for the new Disney flick, WALL-E . Check it out, it looks quite clever.

Friends...lend me your eyes for a moment. While no one would argue that a technology blogger like Scoble, or myself for that matter, knows much about preparing for recessions, any more then we know what causes them in the first place. Be that as it may, Scoble has a pretty good post on how to prepare for one..some of the tips are personal and some are professional. In either case, my favorite is #17. It's the post the keeps on giving.

Not sure if anyone has heard of this widget-esque thing called AlertThingy. Its nothing terrible innovative to be clear...its more or less an RSS reader specifically for your Friendfeed. That said, the main feature that I found pretty compelling is that it allows you to inject links, comments, etc.. directly into YOUR feed as well as respond to threaded conversations taking place on Twitter, YouTube, someones blog who your are following on Friendfeed, etc...

So it looks like I may have jumped the gun on the switch to GrandCentral. Since we just moved, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to give out the new GrandCentral number without having to irritate people with YET ANOTHER phone number change. Well, it looks like I jumped the gun.

GrandCentral Blog

I wanted to write a quick note to all the GC users and apologize for the service interruption this morning. We had a power issue at our current colo facility and it knocked us off line for a few hours. Unfortunately I've been up in the mountains with the family this weekend and had no cell/internet coverage so couldn't respond earlier. I did want to let you know that we were able to restore the service by noon today and are working extremely diligently to make sure this won't occur in the future. We'll do a better job keeping you informed in the future, not only about service related issues but also about upcoming features, soliciting your feedback, and generally making sure that you, the GC user, is well informed as to what's going on with the service. Thanks for your patience with us and we'll continue to work to make the service better by the day. - Craig Walker

Someone please explain to me how GrandCentral / Google let this happen? Aren't these idiots colocated with Google at this point!??! Evidently not. Given that we've heard squat out of GC since the acquisition, me wonders if Google is having second thoughts. Hmmmmmm.....

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I don't even know what to say.  I'm stunned to hear that Marc has passed.  While I didn't know him personally (we never met in person), Marc and I were co-bloggers on the Microsoft Weblog at Weblogs, Inc. and IM'd /' e-mailed from time to time on various things related to our professional interests. He was a sounding board.

He was always very warm and very friendly. Knowing that, I can only imagine the loss that his family and close friends are feeling. 

My heartfelt condolences.

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