Imagine posts and comments flowing from blogs to wikis like the way streams feed into lakes.  Got the picture yet?  Now think of a blog category as a wiki page.  The picture changes so that the blog becomes a mountain and categories become the streams running down the side of the mountain in all directions toward wikis into which streams from other mountains also feed into.

The resulting picture you have in your mind is the 10,000 feet view of how I think blogs and wikis should be connected.

Update #1: Here are some decorations to complete above picture:

• rain is the news that bombard us daily
• rocks that form the mountains are our experiences
• volcanic eruptions are our rants
• flash floods are sudden spikes of activitiy
• clouds are news generators like North Korea or Saddam Hussein

Silly, but I like to garnish mental images.

Tim Oren adds a VC perspective to my Subsidized Wi-Fi AP idea.  He wrote:

[…] the average usage per Starbucks site is three sessions per day. […] No one in any of those models is yet profitable, meaning that a subsidy is just a way of going further into the red.

The AP price is a factor in the initial setup of a public hotspot, but labor costs of the install likely equal or exceed it, unless the location owner is technically sophisticated. On an ongoing basis, the costs will be dominated by maintenance (truck rolls), but even more by backhaul costs.

His conclusion is:

subsidies are a weapon for carriers to buy market share in a period of fast growth. Lacking this growth, and a confidence that new sites will be profitable, a subsidy model isn't likely.

I agree that profitability is a problem.  While reading Tim's post, I thought of the vending machine business.  Where and how a vending machine is placed is similar to the problem of where and how a W-Fi AP gets installed.  No single business model will work in all situations.  Some store owners run their own vending machines, some even pay out of pocket to have them installed, some shares profit.

Thinking of the vending machine business leads naturally to the idea of vending-machines with built-in Wi-Fi AP.  Vending machines are placed where people are.  Power is needed so AP has power.  Connectivity is desirable for real-time inventory, so some aggressive players might opt for pulling DSL lines to vending machines instead of using radios.  It's a stretch, of course.

Most blogs have a calendar for navigation but not for much else.  I was thinking how nice it would be to enrich it automatically with other information like birthdays of people on blogroll, anniversaries, schedule of conferences I am planning to attend, etc.

Size of the calendar will have to get a little bigger, but mouse-over sensitive date specific details can be displayed in an area immediately below the calendar.  FOAF and iCal/vCal formats can be useful here.  Calendars are also amazing yet under-utilized advertising medium IMHO.

Thanks to Dave for reminding me about my blog anniversary.

Don Park's weblog is one year old today. Here's his hello world post. Thanks Don, it's been a very interesting year.

Yes, it has been a very interesting years.  In a way, it was like mining.  Just walk up to a mountain (blogosphere) and start digging, discovering and following new ore veins every day, encountering a few rocks and toxic gas occasionally, running into and befriending an army of fellow miners.

I enjoyed it so much that I think blogging is in my blood stream now.

Bloggers are Mutants!

Hmm.  Dave is either experimenting with invisible permalinks or got a bug somewhere.

I was thinking about Sputnik yesterday because I talked with Dave Sifry, CTO of Sputnik, on #joiito.  I started wondering how one might raise sales of Wi-Fi access points like Sputnik AP 120 exponentially.  Weird thought for an engineer, but I have an entrepreneur's mind at the core so it's not too strange for me to wonder about the business side.

The idea of subsidized Wi-Fi is not new, but I think the idea of AP hardware vendors doing the subsidizing has some appeal.  What if Sputnik sold these devices at a fraction of the cost for joining a global commercial Wi-Fi service network?  This is how it might work:

1. Bob, a store owner, buys Sputnik at 1/4 of the price, plugs it in at his store, and use the installation software to register the AP with Sputnik Network.
   • The AP is configured so that only Sputnik Network members can use it. 
   • Administration, security, and account management is all handled by Sputnik Network.
2. James, a Wi-Fi user, subscribes to World-wide Sputnik Network service for $10 per month, enabling him to use any Sputnik Network AP around the world.
   • Sputnik client software running on his laptop automatically handles authentication with each AP.
3. AP usage is metered so Bob might receive a check each month if his AP gets a lot of traffic.

It makes no sense to require Wi-Fi users and stores to deal with the hassle of paying for access or keeping track of users.  Building a membership-based Wi-Fi Network seems too problematic without the leverage of subsidized AP hardware and the absolute control it brings.  Urgh.  I better stop here before I get to T-shirts and jingles.