I can’t parse the fine details of the rejected bail-out bill, but it feels like there’s a direct analogy between the current crisis and forest fire management.

For example, read this article on the US Forest Service’s shift in policy, including this section:

Their reasoning [to just let fires burn] is that fire is a natural part of the landscape that clears out underbrush and small trees and creates forest openings in a mosaic pattern. Such conditions help keep small fires from growing into the kind of large, catastrophic blazes that have become increasingly common in recent years. They now say that decades of aggressively fighting fires was a mistake because it allowed forests to become overcrowded and ripe for fires nearly impossible to control.

This thinking might be applicable here.

Source:Fire Watch Company

It’s about time — Google’s shipping their own Web browser (Chrome).  

This is an extremely interesting development, and I’m surprised it’s taken this long to happen.  I’ve only played with Chrome only briefly so far, but it’s got some interesting features, reminding us there’s still room for innovation in browsers.

Those pushing the limits wth Web apps are always running into annoying browser limitations & bugs.   It’s even worse in a relatively fragmented browser market (FireFox in different versions, IE, Safari, Opera, etc.), each with slightly different capabilities.  This move gives Google end-to-end control over their destiny. 

Chrome is going to have to earn it’s chops in the market to get share, but the (potential) Google apps tie-in is what’s most intersting.  Google’s in a much stronger position than Microsoft was with IE — if/when the existing Google apps run better in Chrome, people will switch. 

Google’s rumored to be updating their page ranking again.   They adjust rankings from time to time to improve search results and make it harder to game the ranking system. Bloggersneed provide the best paid traffic sources.

These updates illustrate the problem of depending on organic traffic (e.g. clicks generated from showing up in the search results) vs paid ad links.  You can do a great “search engine optimization” (SEO) job and get ranked #1 when you search for “fios battery“, but then Google can change everything and you drop to #7.   Clicks will drop off accordingly.

I’m usually skeptical of business plans that depend heavily on organic traffic.  Organic traffic should be viewed as “icing” — great if you can get it, but not critical for the business to work.

Why do we need electronic voting machines, really?

When we started Open Market in 1994 and built one of the first eCommerce systems, we realized we might be opening pandora’s box for fraud.  At that time, you could steal all of the off-line credit card numbers you wanted, with surreptitious swipes, receipts (before XXX7307 was printed), etc.

The problem is the Internet enables anonymous, scalable, and transferable fraud.  Attacks are effectively anonymous because they’re impossible to trace.  Automation makes stealing 10,000 cards as easy as 1.  And transferability lets one attacker develop an attack, and give it to 1,000 others (often with less skill, like script kiddies).  (Compare this to lock-picking:  difficult to do without being physically present, difficult to pick extra locks, and hard to teach someone else to do.)

Pure electronic voting introduces these same problems, without the corresponding benefits.  Elections are infrequently occurring events, with high stakes and incentives to tamper.

What’s wrong with optically scanned paper ballots?  Machines can help with counting, but there’s always a way to verify.

MP3’s took off when the average user bandwidth had advanced to the point where you could download (or stream) a 3MB file in some “reasonable” amount of time.

And video has taken off for the same reason, as the same bandwidth cross-over has happened for video data types.  And more widespread use of HD video is coming soon.

Access bandwidth continues to advance:  what data type is next?

I did our Christmas cards with VistaPrint this year, and they came out perfect.  I did a custom layout (front and inside) using their PhotoShop templates, and the print quality was excellent (what print technology do they use?).  I highly recommend them.

But it got me thinking:  VistaPrint is using the Internet to streamline the printing of paper, while the Internet will eventually make many uses of paper obsolete.

It all seems so recursively counterintuitive.

I bought a Chumby to play with — I don’t quite get it.  Yet.

It’s an alarm-clock sized device, with a color touch LCD display.  It displays Flash widgets you select in a continuous cycle, typically for 20-30 seconds per widget.  My widget set:  clock, weather widget, stock quote widget, and a few others.  Widgets can be interactive, using the touch screen for input.  You configure things on the Web, and the device downloads the config.

I was attracted to the openness:  full source code, etc.  I have a few ideas for displaying info from my home phone switch, my alarm system, etc.

But as configured, its sort of like a tiny version of the business waiting room display or Captivate displays in elevators, cycling through “stuff” to keep me occupied while I wait.  But in my home or office, that use isn’t  helpful.

Maybe I’m missing something?  More thinking required.

My son bought an iPod Touch today.  If Apple were to add an earpiece and microphone, they’d have all the hardware needed to be a Wifi VOIP phone.

So close!

If you’re a regular blog reader, it’s easy to use your reader as a topic tracker.  You can do any Google News or Google Blog search and subscribe to the results as an RSS feed.  Some readers (such as BlogBridge) have the built-in ability to construct these “smart feeds”.

I use this method to track a long list of interest topics:  news about companies I’ve invested in, competitors, people I work with, etc.  It’s a very efficient way to cover a range of topics.

We’ve got a pretty busy family with lots of moving parts:  three kids, cars, houses, doctors, parents, cats, etc.

We use a private Wiki to keep the collective family notes, and it’s working really well.  It’s accessible from anywhere (access controlled), and we put just about everything in it, including:  kid’s teacher’s name and email, account info & contacts, neighbor info and contacts, my son’s girlfriend’s cell phone #, frequent flyer numbers, notes we need to keep track of for next year’s tax return, the secret number at the power company you can call when the power gets flaky in our town, recipes, genealogy links, contact info for neighbors in NH, etc.

We avoid identifying account info (numbers, social security, birthdays, etc.) in the event it is compromised.  It’s searchable, and it works really well.  If you have a busy family, I strongly recommend it (even my non-tech wife uses it).

(I self-host, but for most folks, I would recommend PBwiki).