I think the last ABC primetime series that I watched had to be Love Boat.  Well I've made it through two shows and I have to say I think Pushing Daisies has a chance of staying on my DVR list for the season.  It is a smart comedy with witty word plays, absolutely insane love triangles, and such an absurd premise that you can just watch and enjoy. 

ABC is spending what seems to be a lot of money on sets and props to make the whimsey feel like a feature film.  It reminds me a bit of Robin Williams' underappreciated "Toys".  I am concerned that they will continue to create more and more gimmicky ways for the leads to embrace without physical contact - but even that won't get old for atleast 10 episodes.   If you are a fan of sharp witted romantic comedy and suspension of disbelief you will probably enjoy Pushing Daisies.  Catch up online.

I have to give Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington high marks on the execution of TechCrunch40.  There were plenty of issues that have already been documented elsewhere on the net including lack of cell and wifi coverage, not enough time to see all the demos, and some less than stellar presentations so if you are looking for Jason bashing keep searching.  These things were minor.  Maybe I'm being too easy on the Conference, but my feeling is that the keynotes, the panels, and the views of the experts were worth the price of admission, and that being able to spend two days networking with the caliber of individuals who attended was icing on the cake.

So on to the title of this post.  Most of the time I was wedged in the middle of a long table with very dangerous water pitchers looming over expensive laptops. This made it impossible to get up to the microphone stand to ask a question. Twitter and icq were abuzz with mockery and childish non-sense.  Maybe I should do a piece about how twitter is making true professionals into teenage girls, wait Brian already did that.  Comedy, satire, and cynicism have their place, but when combined with the anonymity of web chat room it is nonconstructive, completely defeating the value that could be attained by having a chat room for serious questions during the panels.   

1) My name is Craig Wood, CTO of CrowdFusion - This question is for just about everybody who presented -- What is your business model? Seriously where  is the money going to come from.  I mean even if you believe that you have something so disruptive that FOX Interactive is going to have to buy you to shut you up tell me about it atleast it is something.  Yossi Vardi started to answer on behalf of one of the presentors explaining that all it takes to survive is traffic.  Let me ask a follow up.

2) Yossi Vardi, isn't there some traffic that cannot be monetized unless you have extreme google like scale?  Aren't there segments of traffic that contain risk such as copy write infringement  that negate the value of the traffic? 

3) My question is for the guy whose name and company I couldn't make out. My name is Craig Wood and I am an English speaking white male -- looks like there are a few people here with the same demographics.   Did you even consider getting someone to do your presentation that I could understand? It looks like you might have a good product, but I doubt we'll ever know.

4) A quick question for Marc Andreessen.  Can I sweep your floor for a couple weeks? Don't mind these little electronic surveillance items, I use the tapes to analyze my form with the broom.  No, No, the audio that's just for capturing one liners like "If you aim for the moon, you'd better hit it cause if you don't there is a lot of open space" and "Big companies are like Moby Dick if they roll over and show you their belly that's great, but if not you'll be out at sea a long time".

5) A question for all the cool things that I paid to come see, Where can I try that beta?  Looks like your site is closed -- oh, fill the form like those playing from home?  Really, if you are going to launch a private beta -- your testers are right in this audience.  If there is a Techcrunch 20 or 80 or whatever next year, attendees should be able to signup for private beta before the non-paying public.

There are about 200 questions I'd like to ask the Getting Funded and Exit Strategies Panels.  Seeing these groups on stage was inspirational on many levels.  I'll limit my questions to two.

6) How important is it to have a solid "legal framework" of Company Ownership,  NDAs, Employee Agreements, etc when taking an infant idea to an investor?  How is it different to Angel Investors vs. VCs?

7) What are the things that would keep an investor from endorsing in what looks like a great idea? This was discussed by the Getting Funded panel, but most of it had to do with the personality and passions of the Founders.  What about complicated ownership systems, overlaying companies, or IP questions?

I really had a great time in San Francisco, I want to thank Jason and Michael again for hosting it.  Unfortunately I didn't see very much of the City, but that leaves plenty of reasons to go back. 

I want to do a wrap up of some of the acolades that have been given to WikiRage from the blogging community, I'll focus on the US news.  I've already documented hitting the top of Digg and Del.icio.us. StumbleUpon has sent a tremendous amount of traffic.  Some of the things I read that having a feature in would stroke the ego of any Internet Technologist are Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, and Webware.  You can't call it a feature, but if Daring Fireball links to you it is pretty damn cool.  SearchEngineLand gave wikirage a level of credibility that branched out from the purely tech community.

More recently it looks like maybe wikirage is actually permeating pop culture with placement on Lifehacker and placements in Video programs Rocketboom and JetSetShow.  Oh yea, I'd hate to forget Mashup of the Day at Mashup Awards. I'm sure I'm forgetting some pretty good placements -- all in all it's been a lot of fun.

Sumant Mandal just gave my favorite quote of the the TechCrunch 40 conference so far.  On answering Jason Calacanis' question about why VCs cannot just say yes or no to an idea, Sumant said understand we are "balancing fear and greed".

Oh I do wish Douglas Adams was still around.  What would he think about the explosive growth of Wikipedia?  Would he weigh in on Wikipedia's Two Millionth Article?

I need to clear the air about a couple of the things I said in Why I no Longer Hate Wikipedia,  I was blatantly trying to provoke reaction and get people to give me their opinion on Wikirage.  I accomplished that, I've been given good feedback, I've interacted with very decent administrators, I've even been given a medal.  I haven't changed my mind about the powers that be being over anxious to delete articles.  Wikirage is getting prominent position on some search terms where people are desperately trying to find content that administrators have deleted.  For example there was an article on the 'List of Webkinz Pets' that was deleted on Sept 8th.  There is well thought out reasoning for the deletion. But once gone the public which built and nurtured that page has little to no recourse. 

While researching this I found that even the rules are a mutable as the content, it seems the administrators all have a different take on the access to the content.  As I am writing this article it appears that the page about wikirage, that someone (not me) wrote last week has just been deleted.  For now it is still available in Japanese. 

So back to my original statement, The wikipedia is an interesting social experiment   -- But I will not be contributing to a media where my contributions can be wiped out without warning or the ability to review.

Maybe you had to be an expatriot who lived in a British Crown Colony in Asia during the 80s to appreciate Alphaville's lyrics and tune that I was humming while trying to keep my servers running thanks to a prominent post in Yahoo! Japan about  wikirage.  It was fun to watch 100shiki.com (100 servers) break wikirage on Friday,.  Monday japan.internet.com picked up the 100shiki story, and then Yahoo! Japan referenced the JupiterMedia piece.  The indepent blog being gobbled up by the big online player, begin completely trumped by the grandaddy Yahoo!.  

It is common knowledge that the Japanese are enamoured with American culture, and where would you get a better read on what the cool kids are talking about than the wikipedia. If I had known the damage that could be inflicted on my web server by the Japanese AM news, I probably wouldn't have built the Japanese version of wikirage over the weekend.  I thought digg was a deluge of traffic, this spike dwarfed that nearly 10 fold.  Now if I could just get this silly song out of my head.

In college I had a cloned IBM PC that my father bought me as we were leaving Hong Kong.  This AT with a Turbo button would cruise at a whopping 10Mhz.  Other than typing papers for the Football players in my dorm, about the only other thing I did the PC while in college was attempt to write the Warrior System with Brian Alvey.  I didn't stay in Texas long enough for us to get very far on the Super Hero platform to end all platforms, but through random encounters and discussion over the last 20 years (many around pool tables) we've never lost the desire to work together on a killer computer framework. 

I've been outed, I will be joining Brian on his next big thing.  Since he stole a little of my thunder, I'll steal a little of his comic project is a cover.  The underlying structure, the framework, is being built as a flexible and powerful system with the ability to rapidly develop sites as far removed from each other as Comicmix and wikirage. 

August 30th, 2007 was a big day for me.  I came as close to my 15 minutes of fame today as any Internet code monkey could wish too.  Yes wikirage went to number 1 on both digg.com and del.icio.us.  The joy was a little short lived because the digg headliner put a major hurt on my DB server and caused me to scurry and slap together some rudimentary caching of the homepage.   I guess you haven't been digged until the flood of traffic cause you to rethink your scalability, Christoph explained to me that your first system crash due to traffic was a Badge of Honor to be talked of proudly.

I've had some good suggestions as to how to extend the services, and people are asking for APIs into the data that I'm gathering.   I'd love to keep working on the project but I need to get back to my day job and see if people continue to use the tool or if it was a flash in the pan.  

Also very exciting to me is that I got a Mashable write-up. If I'd been slash-dotted my life would be complete. Oh yeah, if you can't figure out why the phonetics are the way they are, why it is 'wick a ridge' not 'wicky rage',  I don't know how to explain it to you. I can't explain it to Carrie who knows me better than anyone wants or needs to.

Wikipedia continues to grow in popularity and scope.  My interactions with Wikipedia have been nothing but frustrating, I don't trust the content and simple additions I try to make like coworking (which should have a page) get removed for no known reason by undemocratic self important uberdweebs.  The attention that wiki scanner got in the past couple weeks made me aware firstly how naive everyday Internet users are and how wikipedia can serve as an fantastic way to study human nature and how the non-tech world interacts with Social powered media.

Everybody I've worked with in the last 12 months seems to have a new project their working on Alex Rudloff, Gavin Hall and Michael Rhing are working on something yet to be announced, Brian Alvey has Comicmix and a new art project,  Jason Calacanis thinks you'll love Mahalo Follow.  And now that the shameless link baiting is over let me announce Wikirage which I built over the weekend, a quick little Mashable with some exciting value add - taken from following the latest edits of Wikipedia.  Latest news quickly floats to the surface as events are updated and revised.   Check it out, give me your feedback.

UPDATE 2007-08-29: I've added an RSS Feed.  Let me know if there are different things you'd like to see in the feed.

UPDATE 2007-09-04: If you want to contact me directly, please email me at craig dot wood at NOSPAM gmail dot com.

Oh there is no way this can end badly.  Report your sh-t kicking, speed taking, truck driving neighbors downstairs, to the world.  Lower your own house value in the process Rotten Neighbor is everything Social Networking on the web is not, and it is about time, I'm tired of identifying my friends, I want to rat out my ENEMIES.

A while back I was investigating how safe is sushi and whether I code eat local caught fish as sushi.  Basically the safest way to have sushi is chill it to -4 degrees for 24 hours, and never eat Puffer Fish or most Asian fresh water fish.  Also don't eat any salmon in Bangkok.

BANGKOK, Thailand: Unscrupulous vendors in Thailand have been selling meat of the deadly puffer fish disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, a doctor said Thursday.      

My lawn is particularly beautiful this year, the northern tropics has lived up to it's name, rainfall has been frequent enough to make irrigation completely unnecessary.  I try to be very ecological when it comes to my lawn.  I seldom water, bloodmeal is the only fertilizer applied, and never an ounce of weed killer.   Looking over my lawn it is a beautiful patchwork of greens - deep greens of clover and Fescues, mid range hues of plantain and bright green crabgrass.  In the spring my entire yard blooms with elegant yellow pom-pom flowers on tall stems that spread their seeds far and wide when the wind blows.  My neighbors must love me.

Wednesday August 15th as was the tradition of Mr. Taylor, a party was thrown on the residence known as Taylor Island in Coecles Harbor, Shelter Island, NY.  This year was a Kettle Clambake and a benefit for the continuing efforts to restore the Cabin and grounds.  Carrie and I went with 100 others that seemed to be a very local turnout.  The food was tremendous and the setting - breathtaking. 

The island is connected to land by a small spit that is submerged at mid-tide and connects to the main land through Mashomack.  Most everyone arrived by boat, we skipped the water taxi and cruised out in the Grady .. I expected to park off the spit and walk onto the island, but the wind got the better of me and my boat (I need a transom anchor) and I ended up parking in the bay and being subject to the ferry after all.

Taylor's Island was deeded to the Town of Shelter Island in 1997 and has now been listed on the Historic Register in New York.  Check out my Taylor's Island Gallery for more photos.

Many people mistake the Chesapeake Bay for the only source of Blue Claw Crabs, this probably has something to do with Movies like As Good As it Gets, and the fact that 50% of the commercial catch is from there.  But they are very common on the entire East Coast.  In my quest to know everything about the Peconic Bay, I targeted blue claws pretty heavily in the last two months.  These babies are so delicious, I am hooked, and now that I've just perfected catching them in the back bays, they are moving out to deeper water.

Audrey and I spent hours in Dickerson Creek, her chasing hermit crabs, shrimp, and baby chubs in the tidal pools, me sinking up to my knees in the blackest mud you can imagine, I found 6 different species of crabs, muscles, razor clams, steamers, sand worms .. today I dug up a sand eel.   I'll miss trekking the muck with my net, even more I'll miss Carrie's crab cakes.  I guess we'll have to try steamer clams next, the fall Striper run is still months off.

View my Crabbing Gallery for pictures of Dickerson Creek and the Blue Claws.

When we think of Robots that could ruin our life,  my generation images Arnold Schwarzenegger with Dark sunglasses "I'll be back".  Older generations may imagine Robby from Forbidden Planet or even Maria from Metropolis.  The true danger to our current lifestyle is far less obvious, and hard to put a stylized face on. 

Being a computer programmer that broke into Internet programming by automating the submissions to search engines, I have a different view of the makeup of today's Robots.  The SPAM that fills your mailbox comes from Robots thousands of them scouring the web looking for your email, randoming attaching lists of common first and last names to popular email domains.  They are relentless -- they can't be bargained with! They can't be reasoned with! They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until your email address is dead!

I've automated my way out of caring out about SPAM, Google and Spamassassin do great jobs of keeping the garbage away, however it is costing us all millions of dollars in wasted bandwidth, and with ISPs thinking about how limit their bandwidth costs and prioritizing traffic it is something we should all care about.

The Robot that I fear the most is the Non-Human Phone Call.  There is no reason I should ever get a phone call from a machine.   I would start a lobby to have an optout of this just like opting out of non-solicited advertising, but the politicians would never let it go through, they are the worst offenders.  I just had my Cell phone shut off because of a payment mix up, and all my warnings were by automated voices that I refused to listen to.  Citizens it is time to take up arms, let start the Anti-Robot Revolution - Make Asimov Proud !