This well written post was not what I needed to read this morning, but I recommend it nonetheless.  Mornings are for solutions, not problems.

Update #1: Shelly finished the four part series article on permalinks.  They are rather verbose and poetic so I haven't read rest of the series yet.  Anyway, they are here.

I just got my invitation to BloggerCon 2003, hosted by amazing "Dave".  Although I can't make it to the conference due to previous engagements, here are some juicy bits about the conference to entice you to go:

• Time is October 4.  Place is Harvard Law School.

• It's a one-day Saturday conference, with an all-day open house on Sunday for impromptu meetings and discussions about anything you want to talk about.

• This is a user's conference. Technology is important, but at this conference the people who make the products are here to listen, to learn how people use the software, and to learn how we can improve it. This guarantees that something will actually get done here. It's an important role-reversal.

• Presenters include Glenn Reynolds, Joshua Marshall, Doc Searls, Scott Rosenberg, Adam Curry, Elizabeth Spiers, Jim Moore, Susan Mernit and more. Moderators: Lance Knobel, Ed Cone, Christopher Lydon and myself. And new discoveries, people we hadn't heard about until we set out to find the most interesting and eclectic blogs and bloggers.

• We're going to talk about how weblogs are used in politics, business, journalism, the law, medicine, engineering and education.

• We're going to have a lively discussion including Web Energy and lots of philosophy, great art and technology and lots of ideas.

• Our local host committee of Boston-based bloggers includes Cluetrain author David Weinberger, InfoWorld's Jon Udell, author Halley Suitt, MIT's Andrew Grumet and Tracey Adams, Harvard librarian Jessica Baumgart and Larry Bouthillier from Harvard Business School. They're here to make sure you find what you're looking for at Harvard and in the Boston area. If you have ideas for speakers, or people we should invite, please let any of us know, including the local hosts.

• Anyway, it's time to say that seating is very limited, so if you want to come, please sign up right away. The cost for this incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience is a mere $500, and if you're a student (please provide a photocopy of your ID) it's only $250. Harvard affiliates also qualify for the discount (Harvard ID, or harvard.edu mail address). We're using the money (where needed) to get the talent in and out of the city, and to put on a few great parties so we can all mingle, share ideas, and learn a lot.

You can reserve your space, right now, at this URL:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/apps/bloggercon

Looks like it's going to be a great party of a conference.

I have been thinking about changing my career.  Software consulting is not exactly hopping these days and, while I am able to make a living, there is no bright future to look forward to.  So I am considering following options:

1. Startup – pick an idea and raise it like a child.
2. Software Investing – build software for startups in return for equity.
3. Idea Investing – provide ideas to companies in return for equity and/or percentage of revenue generated from the idea.

#1 is the most difficult for me because I am practically drowning in ideas everyday, each one as alluring as supermodels.

I have done #2 before, made money on one out of three.  Not a bad odd and I get to play around more often than #1.

#3 is what interests me the most at the moment.  Companies often stagnate and can't think outside the box.  There is no big opportunities in teaching people how to think differently, but companies can use great ideas.

So I spend a few days with company executives, analyze their business, and come up with ideas and solutions.  If I don't come up with anything they find valuable, it's a wash for me and cost the client no more than my travel expenses.  If I do, equity, royalty, or consulting fee follows.  It is a long term investment in my part, investing ideas instead of capital.

If nothing works, I can get a job as an evangelist. <g>

One interesting use of mobphones, programmable cellphones a equipped with digital camera, is faxing.  Just snap a picture of a document and enter a FAX phone number.  Voila, a fax is sent!  I have no idea if anyone has done this already, but it makes perfect sense.

Ideas are like Lego blocks.  The hard part is distilling composite ideas into their component blocks.  Rest is not only easy, but fun.

I am happy to see that my 'hand-blogging' post rattled some of you.  It was particularly amusing to see suggestions about mixing the idea with character recognition software or smart-pen.  Such variations of the idea are not what I had in mind.  Besides, they are old ideas indistinguishable from digital-ink/tablet ideas.  The primary focus of my post to show that it is people that matters the most, not the technology.

Most people on this planet knows nothing about blogging.  I doubt if more than 5% of Internet users know what blogging is.  Stepping back even further, Internet users are only a small portions of the world population.  If the world population was a pancake, Internet users are the top crust and bloggers are just a small tip of it.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how technology affects rest of the pancake.  I think about how blogging may be a tool for survival rather than a tool for mere communication.  From this perspective, character recognition software or Bluetooth-pen loose all meaning.  Even typing makes no sense.  Guess how many people in the world know how to type.  Only the top crust.

When I think of mobphone, I am thinking about a dirt cheap rugged device the size of a pager and only a few buttons.  Even voice phone calls are optional in such a device.  Such a device can be configured at a local store to point to a specific blog which is created when the buyer purchases it.

A person, lets say Mrs. Wong, walks into the store, choose how many categories she wants, pays $20, and receives the mobphone with category overlay, a URL printed out on a sticky paper.  Mrs. Wong goes back to her street cart and sticks the URL on the side.

Each morning, Mrs. Wong writes out prices and stuff on a blackboard, points the mobphone at it, and clicks the 'pricelist' button.  Each button serves as a form of cheap metadata.  Next she points the mobphone at her goods, lets say fresh fish, and clicks the 'fish' button.  That's it.  Mrs. Wong can look at her blog once in a while when she returns to the store to pay monthly due to keep the moblogging service going.

Mrs. Wong's customers can jot down or tear out a tearsheet to get Mrs. Wong's blog URL when they pass by her cart.  Each afternoon, they can see Mrs. Wong's goods and prices before deciding to make the trip down the street.

A similar 'down to earth' blogging can be done with FAX machines.  A blog is mapped to a phone number and a post is made by faxing a page.  Call it Fax-blogging.

When you really think about it, all this is obvious.  Unfortunately, it is not obvious until it hits you on the nose hard enough.  I hope many people get nosebleed from this and the previous post. <g>

I turned it on just now.  With my fingers crossed, I am posting this pointless post just to update the front page.  Silly me.

From a New York Times article via Dave:

Tobias von Schönebeck, a tour guide, shook his head when he heard about how the phenomenon was traced back to Macy's. "This is just the sort of thing that happens when you forbid New York to smoke."

Heh.