Want crime reports for your neighborhood? Got ‘em. Want restaurant inspection reports? Got ‘em. Want reviews of local establishments on Yelp? Got ‘em. They compile standard news outlets, public records, other local sites, and even geo-tagged Flickr photos.

Go to the site, type in your street address, and then spend the next hour (or more) browsing the different pieces of information available. This is seriously interesting. I think in the long run it’ll be as influential as craigslist.

(I have no affiliation with EveryBlock, I just figure that everyone has an interest in what’s happening in their neighborhood, and this looks like a compelling way to find out.)

I take this as another sign that the first true machine intelligence will emerge in the Googleplex.

In any event, your best bet for getting actual news of what’s going on in America will be from NPR or the international edition of the “BBC”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/.

1. “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.” — Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold promises to deliver Ohio to George Bush in the 2004 election
2. How To Steal an Election With Diebold Voting Machines — Security researchers demonstrate just how easy it is to rig an election run on Diebold machines. Like those rushed into use in Ohio in 2004.

Thinking “no, it couldn’t possibly have happened, they’re not criminals, just stupid.” Yeah. Right.

Hmmm, I guess this wasn’t entirely without comment. ;-)

Video Shows Bush Warned before Katrina Hit
The Associated Press, March 1 2006

No wonder the administration doesn’t want to “play the blame game.”:http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2005/09/meet_the_fucker.html

1. Search Livetorrents.com for the Global Frequency pilot TV episode. (When you find it, it might look something like this.) Download the torrent, and watch the show.
2. Read some comments of the show’s writer/producer. You can read the front page of his weblog or just some of the most relevant posts:
   1. GF wow
   2. It’s a ‘Global’ Frequency Now…
   3. One Last GF Question…
3. Await further instructions on this and other channels.

   ---

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An interesting, creative, and very persuasive use of the tool that Google created, and an illustration of how ease-of-use can change the game. Looking at satellite imagery before was either hard, expensive, or both. No longer. Anyone can do it, easily and for free, entirely on a whim. I predict similar “essays” will have a significant impact on political conversations around the US in the next two years.

Today I found a tool by Paul Rademacher that takes it one better, and showed how data from craigslist.org could be combined with the Google Maps API to create a very useful, interactive tool for shopping for rental apartments and real estate.

This is quite a step beyond using now-easily-accessible map pictures to illustrate a point; it combines data from two unrelated sources, and uses the power of Google Maps APIs to build an entirely new tool, something that Google may not have envisioned when they created Google Maps. No deals, no cross-licensing, no bizdev guys schmoozing endlessly — just one guy with an idea quickly hacking out some clever code to create something genuinely useful. This is how Google is attacking Microsoft, and in the long run it will probably work.

Of course, the power of Google Maps can be taken too far. I’m a little concerned about “abuses like this”:http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001238.html.

It’s one thing to suppress protected speech; if Apple was suing to make the guy stop writing about how much he hates Steve’s black turtlenecks, or something else that was a matter of opinion or public fact, that would be one thing. But Think Secret is publishing commercial trade secrets, or at least trying to, and that runs into other laws besides the First Amendment.

Now, the court may eventually find in favor of Think Secret. And that would be OK. But it’s a complicated issue that deserves debate and deliberation, and the courts are the right place for that. So I’m not at all feeling like Apple is out of line for initiating the lawsuit.

But in my own, more personal battles with spam I’ve been more successful at holding back the tide. My stats for 2004:

Filtered Mail
36278 Good Messages
72239 Spam Messages (67%)
197 Spam Messages Per Day

SpamSieve Accuracy
135 False Positives
451 False Negatives (77%)
99.5% Correct

Nearly seventy five thousand spam messages came at me, but thanks to SpamSieve a mere 451 made it into my Inbox. That’s less than two spams a day. Simply amazing.

Even more amazing is that the second half of 2004 was far better than the average for the entire year, meaning that while the rest of the internet went to hell, my own situation actually improved as the year went on:

Filtered Mail
15729 Good Messages
32650 Spam Messages (67%)
176 Spam Messages Per Day

SpamSieve Accuracy
53 False Positives
181 False Negatives (77%)
99.5% Correct

I would attribute this improvement primarily to the new filters I added to my oldest, most spammed email address, and the deactivation of a few temporary addresses I created.

Interestingly and unfortunately, the spam volume seems to have begun to go up again in 2005, as so far I’ve averaged 199 spam messages a day this year. I’ve expired a few more highly targeted addresses, though, in hopes of beating some of it back. Time will tell…

There’s been some coverage of the issue on weblogs and in more mainstream media

• Fired for Blogging
• Clueless Newbie: Friendster
• Why we owe Troutgirl our thanks
• Friendster fires developer for blog [CNET]

Frankly, I wasn’t using my Friendster account anyway; my LinkedIn account is more useful, and my Orkut account is more interesting. Friendter was trapped in-between being useful and being fun, which meant it was pretty useless. So cancelling my account to send a (tiny) message seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

After all, I have this blog, and someday I might be working 9-5 again…

We just had a shooting on our block, directly across the street from our house. Both Rochelle and I were already awake, me at the computer, she in bed reading. Six to eight shots, at first I thought it was firecrackers. And then it was done. Well, the shooting part. The drama afterwards is still going on, an hour later.

Our neighbor, who is a bartender, had just come home and was out walking his dog. He was 10 feet from the guy who got shot. One other victim looked only lightly hurt, probably he was just in the way. But the other guy…dunno if he’s going to make it. Even across the street, we could see his bleeding…

I suppose we’ll hear more about it tomorrow. Rochelle commented that maybe this was a sign that we should go to the Mayor’s District 5 town meeting that is tonight (since it’s early Thursday as I write this)…

The reason is the supposedly inhumane treatment of the ducks who are the source of foie gras (which is duck or goose liver, specially fattened). Actress Bea Arthur called foie gras production “a nightmarish industry.”

Please.

Let’s face the facts. Meat production in the United States is a nightmarish industry. Go visit a cattle production facility one of these days, that’ll show you inhumane. Or pork, or chicken. Or read Fast Food Nation, that’ll turn you into a vegetarian, at least for a while. The factory-style production methods used to produce enough meat to put into supermarkets across the US would make most people vomit if they saw them first-hand.

Foie gras production is no worse than any other form of meat production, and — by the very nature of how the ducks are fattened up, and the product that is desired — it’s actually better than most. That’s one of the reasons foie gras is expensive, you actually have to treat the animal pretty well.

People like Bea Arthur, who want to pass legislation outlawing sale or production of foie gras, are one of three things. I suspect that most of them are just plain ignorant or stupid. Then there are the hypocrites, who think that foie gras production is somehow different, worse, than the rest of the meat industry. “I eat meat, but foie gras is inhumane.” Bullshit. It’s all or nothing.

Then there are the Radical Vegetarians, for whom this is the thin tip of the wedge. First they’ll get foie gras banned. Then veal. Then it’s on to hamburgers and bacon.

OK, maybe I’m kidding about the Radical Vegetarians…

First of all, Google is very up front and direct about how Gmail works, what information they will have about you, and how they plan to use it. If you do not like the way Gmail works, you don’t have to sign up for it. Gmail is entirely opt-in (indeed, it’s currently hard to get the opportunity to opt in).

Why a state senator feels the need to “protect” people from something they don’t have to sign up for is beyond me. More proof that politicians are publicity hounds first, uninformed technophobes second, and advocates for genuine public good dead last.

Some of us, dammit, want Gmail to do what it does: scan your e-mail to improve the quality and relevancy of ads served. Log on to Yahoo!‘s or Hotmail’s web mail systems, and tell me you actually like the horrible Atkins and dating services ads they are serving up. Tell me that’s better than targeted ads that might actually be useful.

(Before you scoff about ads that are useful, read why I like Google’s ads. I’ve bought things from the ads placed on Google searches.)

The other response to these so-called privacy advocates is more technical. The concern is that Gmail will be scanning all incoming and outgoing e-mail. Well, so do all of the other web-based e-mail services. For that matter, so do most ISPs and corporations. They are scanning for viruses, worms, and spam, but they are scanning all your e-mail already.

As usual, Tim O’Reilly has the most sane and forward-looking take on the whole issue. For my part, I’m happy to make the deal with Google, relevant ads for a great web mail service (and it is noticeably better than Yahoo!‘s e-mail service, which I’ve used extensively for many years). My only real concern is, how do I get my archived e-mail (all 250,000 messages) into it?

We wanted to switch for a variety of reasons:

1. My phone (using AT&T’s GSM service) works well everywhere except in our house. According to the research I did, for a variety of reasons Verizon has the best coverage in the Bay Area and nationwide.
2. Rochelle’s old (and free) “stick-style” phone keeps dialing me from her purse. A new clamshell design should fix that.
3. Rochelle’s plan was killing us when she overflowed her minutes or roamed, which happened every other month.
4. Our old plans were old, and not getting us the features or minutes that were available today.
5. Rochelle’s company switched their preferred wireless provider to Verizon, and Verizon was offering killer discounts on plans and new phones.
6. OK, we admit it, we just wanted to get polyphonic ringtones.

I did almost a week of research, inputting our old bills into a spreadsheet to review our historical usage patterns, comparing different carriers’ available service plans, learning more about mobile phone technologies (e.g., TDMA vs. CDMA, 800MHz vs. 1900MHz, etc.), finding the right phone, finding software for the right phone that would connect it with my Mac, etc.

In the end, Verizon having an arrangement with Gap, plus the ringing endorsements and explanations of technical superiority, made it impossible not to go with Verizon. Picking phones was a little harder, but after narrowing the options to three phones and Googling around for reviews and other info, it became clear that the LG VX4400 was the way to go for us. I’ll write more about our phone selection in another post.

Once the decisions were made, Verizon’s corporate rep made it incredibly easy to place the order and get the ball rolling. During the order process he was very careful to caution us that, because of the very early nature of number portability, it could take between 2 hours and a week for our numbers to completely transfer from our old carrier.

It turned out that AT&T wasn’t happy with our decision to switch, and our phones were deactivated immediately after they were notified we were transferring to Verizon. Since this was a few days before we got our new phones, let alone activated them and the number transfer, it seemed a little harsh, but making do without mobile phones for a couple days wasn’t a big deal.

In the end, the number transfers were anti-climactic. When the phones arrived I charged them for a few hours, and then followed the two-step procedure to activate them. Instead of it taking 2 hours or a week, the phones immediately came up with our old numbers. Yay Verizon!

So far we’re pretty happy with the new service and phones. I still don’t get perfect reception in the house, especially not in the computer room, but the phone is definitely usable in what is apparently a very tough environment for mobile service. After hours of “dicking around” (Rochelle’s term for it) with BitPim, the phone sync software, I managed to get our contacts copied from my computer to my phone, along with a bunch of custom ringtones and wallpapers.

Those poly ringtones make it all worthwhile.

Rochelle’s seltzer came from Seltzer Sisters, a local small business that provided home and commercial delivery of seltzer all over the Bay Area. Rochelle had been a customer of theirs almost since she moved to San Francisco 15 years ago.

Today we learned that after being in business for 20 years, Seltzer Sisters has ceased operations, due in large part to the wildly escalating costs associated with workers’ comp. insurance.

I don’t know who’s to blame for the horrible workers’ comp. situation, but it’s clear it’s killing businesses I care about. Here’s hoping that the new governor of California, whom I didn’t vote for, can fix it, and that Seltzer Sisters can find a way to make a comeback.

To Craig and the rest of the crew at Seltzer Sisters, we wish you the very best of luck. We will miss you terribly.

Update: They’re back, and as good as ever.