meta-roj

(i just had to do this before the dance takes it all away)

i think this is my first #1 position (not just page) for a one-word search in google:

polyphenyls

so, remember, buy my googlejuice

[this is going in the business model of the hour, simply because someone else should spend an hour on it]

years ago, i got involved (well, instigated) a preservation and urban renewal project that still, in a very mild form, ongoing. today, it’s basically a watchdog operation, and there isn’t much to watch. anyway, this effort brought me into a very interesting set of meetings and networks, with architects and historians and other very learned people. it also happened to coincide with a city-wide effort to establish a long-term city plan.

one of the keystones of this plan was a raze-and-redevelop operation in what used to be an urban shopping area. long since abandoned by shoppers, the large, beautiful, architected buildings (as compared to cinder-block boxes), stood largely vacant. the city’s plan for the area was to tear down a large number of these buildings and restore an existing theater into a “broadway quality” venue. i didn’t like this plan very much. at the time, i looked around at examples of successful urban redevelopment and saw that artists (in general) were the key.the classic example is greenwich village in new york – and it’s a pattern that repeats itself often: the area gets rundown and cheap, the artists move in, the place gets cool, the rents go up, and the artists are driven out because they can’t keep up with the new rent on their tiny apartment.

at the time, i made several comments about artists being the cockroaches of urbania – and i mean that in a positive sense. in that nothing can kill them. they move in to places where no one else will go.

so i suggested a plan where the few needs of the artists would be met through grant/incentive packages by the city, “in the zone” – 24-hour access to coffee, hardware and artist supply retail, groceries, and public gathering places. the reasoning was: provide these things, and the artists will fill your vacant buildings, do interesting things in them, make them cool, create a community, and over time (and yes, this will take time), the area will “revitalize” itself.

now, coming from the post-bubble perspective, perhaps geeks are the new artists – or artists are becoming more geeky. in any case, i want to add something to this formula: wireless, free internet access.

for the price of a couple coffee shops, a liquor license or two, and property-tax rebates for a few (and only a few!) retail operations willing to “take a chance” on the neighborhood, plus blanket coverage of the area with wireless internet, the geeks (and artists) will move in. post-bubble, a lot of amazingly skilled geeks are now living on artist salaries (that is, they make some money when they can, where they can), and the opportunity is just amazing – or at least i think so.

is anyone doing it? has any city or state government sprung for a few dozen access points?

today’s business model of the hour is inspired by a SOOPER SEEKRIT project.

i can’t say anything about the actual project, of course, but, the inspired business model works like this:

i have amazing googlejuice. it’s so amazing, it often amazes even me. lest there be any doubt, if you need info on gem stones (blue beryl) or weather data (rss weather feed and weather feeds) or donating hair (wigs for kids), heckling (hecklebot – now distributed and mobile!), contemporary literature (exquisite corpse robert irwin), drumming (maryland taiko), photography (linkholm studio), mac bugs (open firmware u), philosophy (neil peart religion), social software (friendster fake testimonials and dead blog), movie quotes (when was the last time you went wahoo), corporate secrets (formula for coke), pop psychology (hiding feelings quotes), and, of course, the music business (jam band blog), then i’m right up there on the front page. ok, that’s enough to make a point…

not quite as juicy, but i am also your source for information on foreign policy (wmd found – page 2 and global terrorism index world market research center – page 2), fine art (gunter blum – page 6), sports photography (sports shots – page 2), the concert ticket industry (the string cheese incident lawsuit – page 3), and domestic (united states) politics (support for the patriot act – page 7.)

of all these, the only one i understand is the wigs for kids link – since i’ve been doing that for years now, and that page has been around for a long time building juice. but, let’s not let a little lack of understanding prevent us from doing Great Things!

anyway, the point is that i should start selling comment space. you can rent my googlejuice. comment on an appropriate post in this blog, for the low, low price of… say, $25. and you can ride on my glorious coattails all the way to search engine nirvana.

again, i’m taking some liberties with the original concept of the “business model of the hour, ” but since i never actually POSTED the concept, you’ll never know the difference…

today’s installment is a movie pitch.

some of you will remember wizard of oz, that wonderfully midwestern all-melanin-deficient story of a girls’ adventures in oz… and some years later (almost 40!), the wiz came to the silver screen to broaden our perspective on the wonderful story of monetary policy. (monetary policy? i thought it was about a scarecrow!)

now, between these two films, another film was produced. it was called 2001: a space odyssey

anyway, flash-forward to the 21st century. it’s time to put some soul into 2001.

i propose re-making 2001 with a new, cool cast. and i propose isaac hayes as hal and george clinton as dave bowman. i think the rest of the cast will fall into place naturally after that.

you know you’re dying to hear george say “open the pod bay doors, hal” and isaac say “i’m sorry dave, i’m afraid i can’t do that.”

so, all you big hollywood-types that are cruising my blog – get your funk out, and let’s greenlight this.

as happens so often, this bmoth comes from a completely tangential comment in an interactive environment.

<GabeW> lots of folks have dean blogs
<rojisan> s/n/d
<rojisan> lots of folks have dead blogs

so, here’s the idea. the critical gap is the revenue stream, but that’s nothing new.

deadblogs.com – the pie/echo/atom-enabled place to move all your unwanted, abandoned and otherwise dead blog data. tired of your blog? changing software? whatever. feed your data to deadblogs.com, and it’s archived, forever, on “dead”icated low-speed servers for all the universe to link.

we can have people sponsor adopt-a-dead-blog events, so people don’t have to start from scratch, they can have a week, a month, or even years of “backstory” already done by someone else and just waiting for their new material.

it’s really sort of an expanding-the-commons thing, which is more of a social model than a business model, but… hey. there’s gotta be a revenue stream in here somewhere. you have an hour to find it.

update (2003.09.14 08:06): this has been around for a while (i shared it with akma a while ago – just now getting back to the blog with it), but… akma has found it. maybe. there’s still some issues over price points.

update (2003.09.14 08:26): the model is improving dramatically.

chris has rolled out the latest cool machine-readable syndicated data distribution widget, the rss weather feed.

now, this is all geeky and glorious in its own right, but what would the Business Model Of The Hour be without taking geeky things and turning them into crazy business schemes?

so, here’s the model for this hour. take this rss-weather feed and get everyone subscribed and using it. then slowly introduce minor errors – nobody will really notice, and nobody will blame the “syndicator” – after all, we all know that weather forcasts are.. well. imprecise.

then, you roll out the new subscription-fee-supported uberweatherfeed, which is more precise, because it blah blah… blahblahblah… blah. and thus, improves the accuracy of your individual weather feed. from there, you just back up the money truck…

this may stretch the business-model-of-the-hour concept a bit far, but…

today’s idea is to compile a list of products advertised in spam, matched them to their corporate parents, and created a “spam-free” shopping engine. i’m pretty sure there are “cruelty-free” engines out there, and “green” engines, and such, so this may already be done, but if it is, i couldn’t find it fast enough to write this.

ok, this isn’t so much a business model, but, it’s a good-neighbor thing.

i’ve noticed, and i’m sure many other people have noticed that my servers regularly get scanned for exploitable formmail scripts. now, there’s surely some educational value to all this hacking, but it’s a scripted tool, and it’s just not polite.

so, here’s the proposal, it comes in two parts.

part, the first: someone writes a bit of code to monitor the server logs, and watch for multiple attempts to “find” formmail from the same ip in a short period of time. this is pretty strong evidence of a “formmail scan” – and it has to come from an ip. take that ip, do a quick lookup on it, and there is likely to be a net administrator responsible for this ip. they might have an abuse-complaint address. compose a nice, polite (i can’t stress this enough, polite) message to the designated abuse-handler, and explain (maybe with a little paste from the log), that someone’s attempting to use your server without authorization, and would they please look into the matter. vet this bit of code in public, make sure it’s not overly stringent, and get it installed and running on a LOT of servers. this, of course will start a war with the formmail-exploit scripts as they try to avoid detection. that’s ok. here’s that educational value in the hacking again.

part, the second: the isps that get these complaints would like to handle them as quickly and efficiently as possible. so, install a filter that watches for these “automated abuse complaints” (and make sure they’re easy to identify, like, with a designated subject-leader), and “file them.” if several [hundred, thousand] complaints come in from different servers that are being scanned by this ip, then someone is behaving badly, and you can automatically shut them down for a day… a week.. whatever.

the net effect (heh. love that.) script-kiddie formmail exploit attempts get “voted off” the net until they modify their behavior.

this, of course, is extensible. it needs a schema. it needs more buzzwords. but, i like the idea of distributed behavior modification. what do you think?

i’ve been completely trumped on this one, but it’s such a great business model of the hour, i had to give it a nod:

Degrees of Viral Separation

so don park has decided to run with [part of] the SMGT cell phone. this is grand. amazing.

who’da thunk that something like this little blog and a little irc would actually accomplish something? wow.

but, and i do have to say this to keep the spirit of the Bisness Model Of The Hour, this concept of implementing the function without the buzzwords is just crazy. i’m telling you, don, you simply have to do it the hard way, otherwise, you won’t get your proper geek-respect.