MSquared is a mini-conference in SF in late September, put on by Influx Strategic Consulting. I’m serious about the mini aspect – between 8am and 12:50pm there are 7 presenters (including Chris Anderson and Howard Rheingold), Q&As and a coffee break. Anderson presents for 20 minutes. Rheingold for 30. Yeesh.

Given that the aim is obviously to promote Influx’s brains (and services), one might wonder what it costs. That information is nowhere to be found. The registration page simply asks for contact information. Submitting that, however, takes to you a page where you are asked to pay $185.00. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, but how hard is it to put that information upfront so people can decide to register or not? It might be nice to be a little clearer that this is happening in San Francisco, specifically.

Update: They’ve fixed the price thing; it’s right up front now. Thanks!

The event might be fun, however, we’ll be on vacation (well-deserved I might add; it’s been a few years).

Two films to consider:
2046 is a fascinatingly visual film (nice collage of stills here.) with an unconventional narrative flow that is unique and yet almost soothingly familiar. Topic? Uhh, storytelling, memory, love, relationships.

Me You and Everyone We Know deals with (among many other things) the beauty (or the art) in the ordinary and the everyday – finding what is beautiful and fascinating in what is ordinary, and taking simple steps to make the ordinary beautiful and fascinating.

Both are complex and rich films which I am not trying to review or summarize here. Merely recommend. Reviews of 2046 and Reviews of MYaEWK

Nice Fast Company Now piece on (according to P&G) what design requires in order to change business cultures:
. a senior management champion
. to live in the business units
. to be integrated early in the process
. a voice
. measurement of the bottom-line impact

You can’t look forward without looking backwards. LukeW writes about Web2.0 – a buzzword that some will be sick of already while others have certainly never heard before. Luke’s soundbites are likely only to confuse those outside the geekstream, but I’ll say that to me it refers to (and maybe this is obvious) the next era or (ulp) paradigm shift in dot-com companies. I suspect this meme is connected to the story about Silicon Valley being “back” (in terms of VC money, IPOs, new companies, jobs, and just general dot-com-type excitement).

An important and timely companion to thinking ahead is to look at where we’ve been. Kevin Kelly, writing in Wired, looks back at 10 years of the Internet in We Are The Web. Elsewhere in that issue is an excellent timeline that ironically doesn’t seem to be available online.

Michael Surtees blogs I Love My Chair, a coffee table book-to-be with individually submitted images of people’s chairs and stories of those chairs. It’s a project by user research firm Sense Worldwide who like to create artifacts or events that reflect the culture they are detecting (see NoWax, their take on iPod-DJing).

I thought the Drudge Report was some sort of new vanguard of journalism. Isn’t the ability to craft sentences or edit copy some part of the practice of journalism? I’ve honestly never seen any of the Drudge Report stuff, so I was shocked to see this sentence appear in a recent article about a “controversial” new Stones song that takes aim at Bush/Rice.

“It is direct,” Mick Jagger says with a laugh to fresh editions of NEWSWEEK.

Is English not the first language to speak of that would be chosen by Mr. Drudge in is articulatedness of words?

Here’s a low point in our culture for personal accountability

Two of the jurors who voted to acquit singer Michael Jackson of child molestation and other charges say they regret their decisions.

Jurors Ray Hultman and Eleanor Cook, who both have pending book deals, planned to appear Monday night on the new MSNBC show ‘Rita Cosby: Live and Direct.’

In a preview shown Monday on NBC’s ‘Today,’ Cosby asked Cook if the other jurors will be angry with her.

‘They can be as angry as they want to. They ought to be ashamed. They’re the ones that let a pedophile go,’ responded Cook, 79.

Hultman, 62, told Cosby he was upset with the way other jurors approached the case: ‘The thing that really got me the most was the fact that people just wouldn’t take those blinders off long enough to really look at all the evidence that was there.’

So we gave these people responsibility to pass judgment based on evidence, and render a verdict. They did so, and now some are blaming the others for the result? I’m sure there was tension and discomfort and hostility (we’ve all seen 12 Angry Men, right?) and more, but if Cook believes that Jackson is a pedophile, why is she blaming the others for letting him go? Looks like she let him go!

Now that is disgusting!

Two interesting stories about fruit!

Popular Science offers an interesting history of the banana. Although we think of banana as an atomic concept (i.e., we don’t think of varieties as we do with tomatoes or apples), the banana that consumers eat – the Cavendish – is the only banana there is. But in fact, there are many varieties, most not viable for growing/shipping/storing/eating. Way back when, the Big Mike was the banana available in grocery stores, but was effectively wiped out by fungus. It tasted different.

That alone is a bit mind-blowing for me – if I summon up the banana flavor in my brain, it feels like a universal constant. But 40 years ago, that constant was different! Wild. I’d love to taste one.

The story relates the efforts to prevent a similar fate befalling the Cavendish, and focuses more on challenges in the development of the Cavendish’s successor.

The Washington Post relates how growers of Red Delicious apples have selected for other attributes (hardiness and color) more than taste, and have turned one of the most popular apples into an also-ran. Some intersting insights into the production and distribution methods. Growing up, I certainly remember that most fruits had a season and you couldn’t get some things at different points in the year. The implication here is that consumers have a more consistent supply of produce, but that methods for storage preservation (i.e., Red Delicious apples can sit for months after harvest, in order to create a supply for after the season ends) may also lead to a decline in quality.

Step into a world of luxury with the Herbeau Creations Dagobert Throne Toilet

. Take your bathroom back a few years with this pull chain antique style toilet that perfectly accents a clawfoot bathtub in your vintage bathroom. The toilet comes with an ashtray, candle holder, and hand painted toilet bowl and plaque.

PRODUCT FEATURES
– Solid ash throne with 3 layers of polyurethane coating
– Pull chain flush with bell, ashtray in arm, and candle included
– “Le Bon Roi Dagobert” plays when lid is raised – a song about a king who arrived at the minister’s council with his trousers on backwards
– Hand-painted toilet bowl and plaque

Base Price – $9,799.00

I think my fave is the ashtray. Just that extra touch of class.

So much for fact checking. A review from the SF Chron

CD REVIEWS: “In a time of austerity in the music business, ‘Weird Tales of the Ramones‘ is a behemoth, containing 85 songs on three CDs and every single video the band filmed from 1981 to their retirement in 1996. In this unsentimental but nonetheless fascinating document of rock endurance, fans visually and audibly experience the Ramones in their sullen glory, all deadpan pasty faces, ripped skin-tight jeans and off-the-rack leather jackets. They go from snarling through three-minute blasts of rage and irony on songs like ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,’ ‘Cretin Hop’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ to having most of their raw edges rubbed down as they become the benign cartoonish elder punk statesmen of their later years, wading through a myriad of age-related songs like ‘When I Was Young,’ Tom Waits’ far too revealing ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’ and the painfully brilliant ‘I Want To Live,’ from Joey Ramone’s posthumously released solo album. This is a fascinating but hardly weird tale, unless you consider it weird how undervalued these pre-eminent architects of the American punk juggernaut were during their lifetime.

— Jaan Uhelszki.

But I Want To Live isn’t from Don’t Worry About Me (the above-referenced posthumous Joey album), it’s from 1987’s Halfway to Sanity (and it seems to be called I Wanna Live, in fact).

How hard would it be to get that right? I haven’t seen the new box set, but don’t you imagine it includes liner notes that indicate where the songs were from?

Lame.