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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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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.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
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.
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Daily Blah for... Friday, October 24, 2003
There's a There There (in There)
You lucky people. Instead of making you pay for all my old articles once the week-long free period is up, I'm going to simply cut and paste them for you. So as an appetizer, here's my brief piece from last Monday's issue on the virtual world known as There:
There's Life in There
This virtual world is not just a game
By CHRIS TAYLOR
Have you ever lost touch with old friends who left town? Sure, you could call or email them — but that can feel like a poor substitute for actually being with them. What you need is some kind of virtual world where you can just hang out in one another's company.
That's the idea behind a new online service called There, which launches next week for Windows PCs ($50 a year at there.com). Think of it as a 3-D chat room: your onscreen characters talk as you type, with speech balloons coming out of their heads. They blink, breathe and nod when you type yes. Start throwing in actions like winking, yawning, gasping, even burping — and what you've got is conversation that looks like a cartoon yet feels uncannily real.
Plenty of activities are available — dune-buggy racing, dog training, jet packing — but don't confuse There with a video game. Nobody's keeping score. It's more like a massive playdate. Everything from the cute Toy Story — style graphics to the clothing stores where characters can dress up in the latest fashions (provided courtesy of Levi's and Nike) is designed to give you something to chat about.
It works. Tens of thousands signed up for prelaunch testing, even though There had space for only 2,000 at first. Will it keep working? That's for you and your friends to find out.
From the Oct. 27, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
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