meta-roj

It’s taken a very, very long time for me to settle into a concise understanding of the times we live in 2026…. and it’s awful.

i’m sure any faithful readers know i’m no fan of walmart, so it’s probably going to come as a bit of a surprise that i’m going to write something positive about the company.

How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World? One. And You’re Looking At It. [fast company, 2006.09]

In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers–100 million in all–one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. It also aims to change its own reputation, to use swirls to make clear how seriously Wal-Mart takes its new positioning as an environmental activist.

go smiley. changing 100 million lightbulbs (and the associated savings in energy and carbon emissions) is probably the best anti-terror news i’ve heard all year.

the news item of note from the local space is that dickerson’s farm, which is the last working farm inside the dc beltway has been sold to a developer, with plans to build a strip mall.

something that really relates to a lot of what i’ve been doing while i’ve been so quiet here on the blog, so it’s worth a pointer: bud vase features.

i imagine i could tangent from this for days, but that would be a very bad thing to do. instead, i’ll just say that whether it’s a bud vase or a winamp skin, it’s about creating an experience.

wired has an interesting little piece on

Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart

It turns out that Wal-Mart, the world’s most profitable retailer, and Google, the virtual world’s most profitable search seller, have a lot more in common than you might think.

i’ve had a few things to say about the dark side of google… and i’ve had few things to say about walmart too. and that doesn’t even count the flood of walmart job applicants coming from google. i had a few clues, but i never put the pieces together…

now, i guess this means i should think about it. maybe.

nah, it’s easier to just buy a gallon of pickles.

valenti autographs betamax. no irony here, gentlemen. move along. nothing to see here. no. not even a strangler.

[via boingboing, of course]

it seems that the lab is going public… this could be interesting.

today was the first day of school in the district of columbia, and when the 900-or-so students of eastern high school showed up for class, they were turned away because the school schedule wasn’t ready. preparing a high school master schedule is a hellish adventure. this i know from first-hand experience.

washington dc has an “incoming superintendent of schools” (and the effort to track that guy down is really a whole story unto itself), so the acting superintendent got to do the duty – and, for what may be the first time in history, heads rolled in a public school system after a major screwup.

the principal of the school, the assistant superintendent of the high school division and someone from the it department were all canned within hours. not bad for the first day. by the end of the school year, maybe they can get rid of the rest of the dead weight in the system.

this is “yet another thing” i’ll need to come back and visit in some depth someday, but i think we’re watching the plateau of the modern olympic games.

this is a symptom.

i just don’t think it’s viable at this scale under these circumstances anymore. the revenue model is flawed, the production costs are extreme, and it seems to me that we’re real close to the break point.

back in april i wrote about google shooting for an e-billion dollar ipo. and i mentioned a number that i thought was nicer. reuters is now running the ipo story.

what magic number do reuters and the meta-roj blog have in common? $1.6 billion. (ok, technically, the ipo came in at $1.67 billion and i was shooting for $1.62 billion, but…. man. i’m just that good 🙂 ).

for more serious information on the google valuation, maybe here.