Sensemaking 1.  Here’s an important question for all of us: How do you make sense of something that’s big and complicated?  Say… something like why your users aren’t passionate about your product? For the past several years I’ve been thinking a great deal about sensemaking—that is, the processes people go through when trying to “make [...]

Matt: MT MySQL Grid. Anatomy of MySQL on the GRID. “A number of these users came running to (mt) Media Temple with the promise that their applications, despite all of their deficiencies, would be accepted and not turned off. These users are radically different, by orders of magnitude, from anything we had previously analyzed or [...]

Dougal Campbell: Hopping on the OpenID Bandwagon. I've added OpenID authentication here, thanks to the excellent WordPress OpenID Plugin from VerseLogic. If you already have an OpenID identity, you can now use it when commenting here, and your name will be flagged with an icon to signify that your identity was confirmed. If you don't [...]

I'm not sure….  I'm not sure how many people saw it. But the big catch in Scott Pelley's interview with President Bush last night, in my mind at least, was the new rationale for the invasion of Iraq: to defend against future hypothetical scenarios. Asked whether the invasion has made the Middle East more unstable, [...]

MLK Day 2007: Holiday Musings.  MLK quote for the day: Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over [...]

Spamonomics 101. By Allison Randal The biggest thing I've wondered about spam is: Why do the spammers even bother? They spend an enormous amount of effort, time, and (I expect) money to deliver huge quantities of mail to my inbox, which I then spend an enormous amount of effort, time, and (for some people) money [...]

Pretty strong stuff…. Pretty strong stuff for a straight news lead (from McClatchy): President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq. But certainly [...]

I have not…. I have not been satisfied with Democratic efforts to link our adventure in Iraq to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and to setbacks in our overall counterterrorism strategy. Perhaps this somber assessment will help focus Democrats: Henry Crumpton, the outgoing State Department terror coordinator . . . [and] ex-CIA operative . . [...]

Military Is Expanding Its Intelligence Role in U.S.. The Pentagon has used a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the U.S. By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI. [NYT > Home Page]

Ignite Realtime Blog: Parking Lot Presence. About a month ago Thiago flew from his home in Brazil to Portland for an in-person visit with the rest of the team here at Jive. When Matt and I went out to the airport to pick him up we noticed long lines of fancy new vehicle presence sensors [...]