Planet Search

Did you think the Katrina story was going away? I don’t think so. Amazing stuff.

Google has thrown its bid in the ring, along with ten other companies, to build out SF’s WiFi infrastructure—this in response to the city requesting submissions. The twist here is that Google is offering to do it for free, and to keep the resulting service free to users. The cost of the build-out, perhaps a few tens of millions of dollars, would be an ATM withdrawal for Google, and the white-knight factor would be huge. The contract award is not a gimme; the mayor’s office said the decision would be made within weeks.

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Yeah, at the conference there were speeches and press briefings and so on, but the main thing was all the good stuff there to be learned, some of which is related here. Plus a rare live photo of a slashdotting experience from the inside. [Update: They fixed the video.]...

It’s funny, that’s all. Everywhere you go in Kapor-Capodistria, the beer is Zlatorog. We were sitting around and I did a little survey around the table and, sure enough, Anglophones, to a one, think that name is funny. The rest of the Eurotypes looked puzzled. I put on a melodrama-narrator’s voice and said “The Vogon generalissimo Zlatorog extruded a slimy appendage and curled it around our heroine’s shuddering curves...” but that didn’t seem to help. I have a picture of Zlatorog and Danese Cooper, itinerant Open Source Diva...

I am generally pessimistic before each trip, expecting the worst. But it’s not always like that. Item: In Prague the public transit system is efficient, easy to understand, and cheap; I paid 500Kč, more or less $25, to taxi from the airport to town, and 20Kč, more or less $1, for the train/tram ride back, which was a little slower but stress-free. And there are more good-looking women on trams. Item: On the way from Prague to Ljubljana, Czech Airlines gave me the best airline lunch I’ve had in years; a tasty cold-cuts plate with some cheeses you’ve never heard of and an unbelievably-fresh salad. Item: Pretty well all the beer in Prague is excellent. Item: In Slovenia, plan to drive if you get the chance. The highways (at least the airport-Ljubljana-Koper sequence) are outstanding, better than most Canadian roads, and while they’re toll roads the tolls are low, the mountains you drive through are lovely, and finally (if I understood the signage correctly) it’s autobahn style, as in no speed limit; my poor little Opel made alarming sounds on uphill turns at 160kph as I cackled maniacally. Also the signs are easy to read, I never had to look at my laborious Mapquest printouts. Item: Koper-Capodistria is way cool, worth a whole ongoing fragment. Item: Slovenians seem unreasonably nice, generally. Item: Slovenia is unreasonably cheap; it just can’t last, among other things it’s too close to Italy. Item: The Slovenian “Tolar” runs about 200 to the dollar; it’s soon to be replaced by the € I imagine; but anyhow, when you take money out of a bank machine and look at your remaining balance, you feel like Bill Gates. Item: I got to Ljubljana airport sometime between 6 and 7AM with breathing time before the flight, so I got an apfelstrudel & coffee at the smoky stand-up bar in the harsh pre-dawn airport light. It was a revelation, the filling eye-wateringly tart and the pastry fluffy yet chewy, with cinnamon and other complex accents. Then Adria (Slovenian airways) gave me a damn fine cheese sandwich on fresh-baked bread on the way to Frankfurt.

I am generally pessimistic before each trip, expecting the worst; even so, some parts turn out worse than you expect. Item: The Hilton in Prague is insanely, criminally, stupidly overpriced for what it is. Among their many sins were the $4 local phone calls and the gold-plated Internet service, up and down like a yo-yo. Never again. Item: Taxi drivers in Prague are generally crooks it seems; take the train. Item: The food in Prague is wildly variable, I had the worst schnitzel I’ve ever encountered, at least you can wash it down with good beer. Item: Either we had bad luck or Slovenian red wine is Not Ready For Prime time; not just bad, but heroically bad. The people are nice and the beer is good so I’m sure they’ll do better. [Update: Andrew Brown writes to say there are excellent red wines from Western Slovenia.] Item: It makes me nervous when you’re checking out and you pull out your credit card and the hotel offers you a big discount for cash. Item: The Hotel Silvester, near Ljubljana airport, is decent enough and cheap but you might want to avoid Friday nights; there was a wedding or birthday or something in the bar underneath my room; the medley of Slovenian folk-songs and Deep Purple hits went on till 2AM. Then they all stomped in unison for a while—like, minutes—before they broke up and had loud beery conversations in the hallway outside my room. Mystified, I was going to go downstairs to investigate the stomping but then maybe it was a secret Slovenian fertility rite and foreigners who see it Must Be Killed. Item: WiFi in Frankfurt airport is exclusively by T-Mobil which should be OK because I have an account but they demand to know who your home provider is and then want $0.18/minute roaming, no that’s not a misprint; are they mad? Item: Frankfurt airport is less tolerable every time I go there. Its saving grace is decently idiosyncratic stores; but I gather they’re about to fix that by filling it up with The Body Shop, Starbucks, and friends, so it’ll be exactly like everywhere else, shopping-wise. It is full of smoke, everywhere, always. Earth to Germany: Pervasive public smoke is no longer considered acceptable among civilized people. There is nothing good to eat after you go through security. The washrooms are smoky, grubby and sized for midgets. I will take extreme measures to avoid going back. But that probably won’t do any good.

Via SF Chronicle and SEOBook.

Google Inc. has offered to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet access at no cost to the city, placing a marquee name behind Mayor Gavin Newsom's effort to get all residents online whether they are at home, in a park or in a cafe.

The offer by the popular Mountain View search engine was one of more than a dozen competing bids received by the city before its deadline Friday. Officials will review the submissions and decide which, if any, of the candidates gets the green light to build the so called Wi-Fi service, which would be free or inexpensive for users.

Yesterday I once again drove down to Google, but this time it wasn't to do a set of interviews for the book, it was to read from the book to perhaps the most demanding audience I've ever encountered - a room full of Googlers, nearly 200 in all.

I was a bit nervous. While I think the book is fair, and clearly acknowledges the importance and power of Google, it also has more than its fair share of reporting on the negative aspects of the company's astonishing rise - from privacy concerns to allegations of arrogance and self dealing. Would I be booed off the campus?

It didn't help my anxiety to see a gaggle of folks in the audience who also were in the book or helped me in one way or another - from Louis Monier and Peter Norvig to Raymond Nasr, Steve Langdon, and Eric Case.

But my concern was overblown. I had a great time, and I think the folks in attendance did too. I read selections from the early years, as well as my riff on the future of Google. And the questions, man, the questions were challenging and very, very thoughtful. They ranged from "if we build the Google Grid, and succeed, what do we do then?" (answer - I have no idea!) to "What would you do if you were running Google?" (answer: buy a video asset and set it free, more on that soon). Another good question: "What might make Google fail?" I wrote about that in the book - two things - one is lack of direction - when you encourage thousands of folks to dream and provide them the chance to execute on those dreams, a company can lose focus. And the other is simply managing growth - the company is hiring more than ten folks a day.

At the end, Eric Schmidt came up and said hello, and we chatted about the book and my visit. I signed a lot of books, and I asked each person who came up what division they worked in and how long they'd been there. The average time of duty? About six months. A very young, very fast growing company indeed.

I am very thankful to Karen Wickre for inviting me down. It was the highlight of the book tour so far. Of course, week after next I am going to Microsoft and Amazon. That should be interesting as well!

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