Thank you all for the sacrifice and work put into the Recovery Act. I’m very thankful for the millions of dollars that taxpayers across the USA are (or will be) paying to help improve the infrastructure, and especially the roads, here in eastern Massachusetts. Our commonwealth government is putting the money to work right now resurfacing plenty of roadways and repairing some of our elderly bridges – and they even have a nifty map showing you where your money is going.

I now can thank you every day, since there are some key stretches of Rt. 2 and a handful of roads in Belmont that had been pretty bad, which are now beautifully smooth and bump-free thanks to these extra-special Recovery projects. Although, I’m not sure if I should thank you, the taxpayers, or if I should really be thanking your children for their future contributions. I’d better thank some other of our descendants now too, I suppose, just to be sure it’s covered – thanks!

A big shout out to the town of Belmont, which just this week took the Recovery money to heart. I’ve been enjoying the super-smooth new curve of Blanchad Road, even with it’s new traffic calming devices. (Make that Blanchard – but one of the construction signs used to say “BLANCHAD RD UNDER CONSTRUCTION” for so long I kind of got used to it.) And parts of Park Ave and a few stretches near down town are much much better than they’ve been for years.

No, what I really have to hand it to Belmont is for going all out – right down to the dirt. Yes, about half of my drive through Belmont on the way home tonight was on dirt roads. All the way dirt – nice and dusty, with plenty of leftover gravel to jump up at the windshield, and big ruts to make for an interesting ride. I’ll be sure to remember to avoid driving in Belmont for the next week or so until they can bring some major routes back up to paved status. 8-(

I have an awesome new business idea. I came up with it while drinking DD with friends after eating Korean food at H Mart, so it must be good. But I have no worldly idea of how to actually find the right people to see if it would fly. Sigh.

Seriously – it’s amazing. OK, we were sitting around for a while and yakking it up, and maybe I’m a little out there, but I think it actually has potential for a new niche market someplace. Involves licensing management (in areas that understand licenses but aren’t usually managed like this), and usefully targeted advertising (yuck, I know, but hey, the “useful” applies to consumers and advertisers alike). Requires web presence much like dozens of other sites use, but fits a niche that’s simultaneously narrow and yet broad (depending on how you look at it).

The idea has nothing to do with what I do for a living or volunteering at the ASF. The question is, do I actually know anyone I trust who could evaluate it and might know the right place to sell it?

Or, as a friend and I call it, “The Caldor Mall”. This is an old joke, since there have been at least three other stores in that spot since then, and more years than I care to count.

Seriously – anyone else have fond memories of shopping at Caldor in the Middlesex Mall, or other local Caldors? It’s not as big a local name as Lechmere’s, perhaps, but the colorful logo was still a big sign in the region back when.

I’ve seen the variety of deadmalls.com and similar mall memories web boards talking vaugely about it, but very little actual data so far in Google. Seriously: there isn’t a picture anywhere on the web of that particular Caldor? Someone’s gotta have scanned in some old newspaper article about it or something! I’m surprised that some geek has actually setup a cheap mirror of the old caldor.com website(which I don’t remember), before it went under about a decade ago. The Wayback Machine also has some archived web pages, showing the caldor.com domain going from the real thing, through a couple of domain squatters, and then to nothing in recent years.

I was thinking of this as I’m making plans to have dinner with friends at one of the newest big retailers nearby, H Mart. You see, the only way I could explain how to get to H Mart was to say it was behind the Caldor Mall. Luckily, the person I was emailing that too actually understood me.

Ah, H Mart, I’m already excited to see your oodles of Korean and Asian groceries and food court – as evidenced by both local media coverage, and my friend @BigHeadDennis (Famed for assisting with an ocean rescue with his cell phone) who I think has mentioned at least three trips there already. Yum.

So – anyone have pictures of the Caldor at Middlesex Mall?

Kind of like: “you park on a driveway, but drive on a parkway”.

• Tazo tea bags – a very earthy crunchy brand – use tiny stapes to affix the paper tag to the bag, making it much more difficult to compost them. Most Twinings teas – another premium but very corporate brand – use nifty little string ties, meaning the whole bag & tie is compostable.
• The automatic sprinklers at a local business were on in the rain this morning. Not necessary; there was plenty of rain overnight.
• When I asked for slices of toast at a great local bakery/cafe this morning, the hostess mis-heard me and thought I wanted a whole loaf, sliced. Instead of complaining, I decided to make toast (they have a toaster for customer use). Yum, whole wheat sourdough.
• Arrow Street in Cambridge is one way, the wrong way (i.e., towards Bow Street – which it crosses, of course).
• Yesterday, while writing my blog post about Starbucks Via(tm), I was actually drinking tea. Tazo Awake, actually; I had to cut the tags with the staples off before tossing in the compost.

You know, “Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana.”

Have you tried Starbucks Via (TM) yet? It’s interesting – certainly far better than the average coffee, but still unlikely to be confused with a good brewed coffee from Peets or Starbucks.

Via, in case you haven’t seen, is tiny tiny packages of finely ground coffee and instant coffee; just add hot water and stir. Voila, instant… instant coffee that’s better than Maxwell House. You do end up with a tiny bit of smutz in the bottom of your cup; it seems that besides the marketing schtick their real innovation is combining instant dried coffee powder with microground fresh beans.

The outer packaging is very pretty, although sadly over-large for what it needs to do. The individual pouches are tiny! Very cute little pencil-thin packets for each individual cup.

Note that the Cambridgeside Galleria is selling the Via boxes for $1 off today, so if you are interested it’s a good time to stock up.

FTC DISCLAIMER:

Today I was given two free packets of Starbucks Via (TM) Colombian when purchasing a box of Italian Roast (at a discount). The counter staff asked if I’d tried the Columbian, and offered me a couple of extras with my box. No other agreement was made; the packets were freely given, not requested, and there was no expectation express or implied of any value in return. I have never before sought not received free or discounted Starbucks Via (TM) products in the past. This post is solely my own idea, and is not compensated by Starbucks, it’s affiliates, marketing companies, stockholders, or any other entity. This blog post was also physically posted while using a free Starbucks AT&T wifi connection. No Starbucks staff were consulted about this post, nor did anyone suggest this post to me. A preview of this post was not supplied to Starbucks legal, marketing, or other teams, nor indeed to anyone at all. No Google AdWords nor other internet advertising services were used nor will be used to profit me, my family, my employer, nor any other organization I am affiliated with in conjunction with this post. Astute readers should note that this disclaimer is neither complete, nor terribly useful.

In fact, the main reason I wrote this post is to have an excuse to write a DISCLAIMER to address the new FTC guidelines on bloggers and compensation. Feh. Yes, people should be responsible about affilations, but hey – the devil’s in the details, and heavy handed government rules about technology are difficult to get right.

Anyway, I like Peets better.

Not now, but rather… in a few years: what will today’s young children think of the real-time web we’ve posted them to? When they’re old enough to think through what it means. When they’re a teenager going through the awkward years. When they’re getting out of college, looking for a job. When they’re out on a date.

How will their experience be different, when all the world can watch exactly how they grew up?

Little Ryan Soroush Scoble – only a few days old now – will have a chance to live that life. One inside of the real-time web, right from the very beginning after his C-section entry into the world. His father, @scobleizer has publicly Tweeted, FriendFeed’, Posterous’d, flicrk’d, blogged, and a wide variety of other online tool’d the whole process. And I can only imagine he’ll continue the quest for good technology behind the real-time web as Ryan gets to grow up.

When do you think Ryan will figure out what the internet is, and be excited about all this cool stuff about him that he can see live, right now? (I guess 3 years old.) When do you think Ryan will realize that maybe it’s not so cool, and he wishes his dad hadn’t posted that video of him doing (insert embarassing pre-teen moment here)? (My bet is before 10.)

In some ways I had a similar early childhood, with a father who was a technology geek and a photographer. I remember baby pictures (of course), birthday and holiday pictures, and pictures of me every year the first day of school (every year), and sometimes the second day of school, and sometimes my haircut… But those were all private pictures; ones shared only with close family, and now, mostly lost somewhere in the maze of the basement. Heck, even today, even with my high-tech life and open source contributions, there’s still only a handful of pictures of me easily findable on the net. And videos, or stories about me on the net? Only the ones I choose to post, now that I’m an adult.

How will the continuing information revolution change our lives with this brand new and very personal sharing that easy blogs, flickr, and Facebook have given us? It’s an interesting question for adults, far beyond the simple “Dude, did you really mean to post that kegger on FB?”, but one that’s been discussed plenty. What I wonder is, how will it affect our children – those who aren’t aware enough to decide their fates now – what they’ll think about it later, when they realize what their parents did.