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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Steve Heil
To Macworld, then, to re-immerse myself in Steve Jobs' patented reality distortion field. Understand this: I am a huge Apple fan. I am typing this on a titanium G4 Powerbook as we speak. And I admire Jobs, though more as a businessman than a human being. But his State-of-the-Mac keynote, it occured to me today, reminds me of nothing so much as Nuremburg. There are the two towering, brilliant Apple icons attached to the imperial purple curtains. The adoring masses, carefully whipped into a frenzy of faith (cue lots of seemingly spontaneous "yeah!"s and "that's right!"s). The feeling of simply being right, of having better ideas than the big nasty (Windows) world out there, of being amongst friends. And the strong, noble-looking leader, a perfect stage manager who starts out quietly and carefully, slowly introducing new and polished items of worship, each one looking better than the last, until I'm on my feet cheering and stomping with the rest of them. Steve ... heil! Steve ... heil!
What else can I say? The new laptops are gorgeous. The keyboard that senses when it is dark and automatically lights up is a (key)stroke of genius. The new browser, Safari, is God's (and Google's) gift to Apple; if you own a Mac, you should download it this second. It doesn't work with Blogger, alas, but then Blogger is not very Mac friendly all-round. (Are you reading this, Ev? Where's the e-z link button? The spellchecker? Don't make me go use my PC ...)
All in all, Macworld is still the most enjoyable trade show my job makes me visit. Shame that I had to go home in order to book my CES trip this afternoon; I missed yet another chat with Jobs (sorry, Steve) -- and more importantly, I missed his old compadre Steve Wozniak dropping the bombshell that he hasn't converted to the uber-system, OS X, even as Jobs declared the transition to X "basically over." That's right, Woz still uses OS 9. I'm sure the two Steves have a lot to talk about.
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