That got your attention, right? Actually I am in a place called “The Palace” – a hotel on New Montgomery Street that I always think of as “the Sheraton Commander” (but am not sure that’s right either.) I won’t be here for long so good luck trying to find the physical instantiation of me today. Two of my favorite bloggers (and people I adore – both working with and just simply as people) have excellent posts up today that are worth reading. I’ll start with Dick Costolo’s post titled Have a Company Voice. Dick is so completely right – I was at a board meeting yesterday and while talking about launch and roll out strategy, I wish I could have simply passed around a copy of this post (jh – hint.)

Every now and then I read a book that is so delicious that I savor it. Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was one of those books. I finished it over the weekend on a run through the mountains. A number of folks have recommended The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It’s up next. At least two of the people who recommended The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay told me they couldn’t get through The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. This perplexed me. As I read through the Amazon and Shelfari reviews of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, I realized the disconnect. While I read 99.9% of the books, I listened to The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on my iPod over the course of a month while running. I’ve been trying to find the right books to listed to while I go for my long runs (I often run naked – with no headphones) and I’ve only found a few that I really enjoyed. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was one of them.

If you aren’t at Defrag but want to follow along at home, there are two solid summaries up on the web. Jeff Nolan (NewsGator): Live From Defrag! Dan Farber (ZDNet): Defragging identity, disclosures, and vendor relationship management There is also now a ClosedPrivate Facebook group. Don’t bother joining. When I left for home at 8:30 Eric Norlin was nursing a beer at the bar.

Debbie Weil grabbed me at the New New Internet show and made me answer a question about blogging. Even though it is only 60 seconds long, I did manage to get the word “shit” into the interview. “… likable, rumpled and forthright” indeed.

I’ve often said in the past that I’m not a conference guy so I recognize the irony of me helping organize a conference. Eric Norlin did all the work and as we head into the home stretch of day one of Defrag, I’m blown away. The quality of the attendees is stunning and the panels and side discussions are fascinating. David Weinberger took us on a romp through his mind, Alex Iskold (AdaptiveBlue) discussed structured attention, Greg Reinacker (NewsGator) covered RSS in the enterprise, and Michael Barrett (Paypal’s CISO) told us why we are totally screwed.

On the way up the elevator this morning to the Defrag conference, Alex Iskold of Adaptive Blue and I were talking about Open Social. Or rather – we were whining about it. I anticipated that a lot of the conversation at Defray would be about the enterprise (and I was correct) – Alex suggested that the current rush to get v0.1 of stuff out wasn’t helpful in a broader context.

Whenever Amy tries to explain fashion to me, she says something like “orange is the new pink.” I’m not color blind, but I never really understand this – partly because I don’t really like pink (or fashion.) Ok, ok – I get the metaphor. I love the word “synchronization.” Early Lotus Notes users (and database geeks) will prefer “replication” which I did until I saw Blade Runner for the first time. So – synchronization – or sync (not “synch”) is my preferred word. The construct is the same.

Here’s the start of the conversation: Nerd 1: “Man – those Facebook ads really suck. They are completely irrelevant. And – well – embarrassing (e.g. almost porn.)” I can’t imagine that they ever get clicked on (except the porn.)” Nerd 2: “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all CPM based so all that matters right now are page views.” Nerd 3: (also co-founder of a generation one search engine): “Yeah – that worked really well the last time around – until the economy went south. Then – CPM rates became asymptotic with zero.”

A few weeks ago MIT refreshed its OpenCourseWare project. This project – in which MIT shares curriculum, lecture notes, exams, and other material from over 1700 projects – is amazing. The project was launched in 2002 by computer science professor Hal Abelson with 32 courses. I took 6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs from Abelson in 1984. You can take it also – including working through the online version of the textbook!