Steve Gillmor’s GestureLab

There’s a moment on this John Lennon Starbucks compilation Remember where the studio chatter after a breakdown reveals this phrase — wry, tabloid theatrical, perfect. Ringo cops to it, and Lennon gracefully refocuses. Another moment a decade later, Just Starting Over, and a middle eight that McCartney must surely have recognized as equal to the best of their collaboration. And again at the Grammies of all places, when The Police returned in extraordinary power.

It’s tempting to write musicians off as self-absorbed children frozen in the moment, blessed with an out-of-body talent that transcends responsibility and whatever passes for empathy in this crazy world. But it doesn’t matter; they’re not kidding themselves, it turns out, and meet the same fates we all do, every day of their lives too.

That said, it’s just too fucking bad I can’t remember my Yahoo user ID so I can log on to Pipes or any of this other “cool” stuff that Yahoo is doing. You say you want a revolution, well you can just count me out (in) only if you can remember one of the thousand IDs I’ve logged on to Yahoo with over the years of ignoring all their cool apps. Let me say it again: one of the uncountable and unretainable number of IDs and passwords since the dawn of Internet time. Yahoo mail? Nope. Yahoo Photos? Nope. Flickr? Maybe if I’ve luckily avoided the transition to Yahoo IDs. Doesn’t matter, because I don’t post to Flickr either because I don’t want to risk finding out I don’t know my Yahoo ID.

It’s not Bradley Horowitz’s fault really, although I’ve mentioned it to every one of his product managers over the last X years and it never gets fixed. “Why not go back into the vaults to my first Yahoo ID, which probably is registered when I was atInfoWorld or eWEEK or maybe even InformationWeek Labs and no longer have the email to change the password.” What are the chances that my ID is not the first one on the stack. Gillmor didn’t used to be so ubiquitous — it was just Dan and me on the Net. Now of course there’s the idiot Republican congressman with his own slick new blog andGillmor the dog spamming my vanity feed. But can we get some action from Yahoo Central? No, and it’s a shame because Bradley and team are doing (I hear) some neat stuff.

However, neat stuff is not enough to move the needle for me (and I suspect you) these days. Remember the 20th Century when software was sold in boxes? Where are we today? Not just no boxes, but no software either. I’m trying to remember how Starting Over goes without going out to the car to retrieve the CD. It’s not the song, or the bridge, anymore: it’s the landgrab that the bridge makes, and the delicious fact that you are held captive by the song never returning there again. Solution: play the song again. This morning in the silence of a Sunday I could hear it. Now for the life of me I can’t pull the trigger. And I’m actually happy with that. The software is important only in that I know it exists, not in how it works.

Google Reader is proving dominant (who knew) as it releases self-perpetuating gesture data. I hesitate to look at the Trends page, as I’ve been so busy I have hardly touched the J key as Scoble would put it. If it wasn’t for Robert’s linkblog, I’d just U-2 it over TechMeme and head back to the Blackberry. Thank God for Marc Canter; at least he’s still excited by something. Of course I check in at Scripting News, glad that it’s still working and yet ever mystified that Dave pulled the plug on OPML dev when he did. Hugh MacLeod seems to be adjusting his meds quite nicely in the past few days; I’m understanding less and getting more for it. Calacanis is a study in distilled megalomania. If The Police can reform so can Arrington.

So, questions:

• Who did the strings on Walls and Bridges?
• What is my favorite TV show (Studio 60 wold be the right answer if it had a remote chance of survival)?
• Which is the more disruptive from a business perspective: a large decaf McDonalds coffee with 6 creams or a Venti Decaf Latte?
• Who was the most arrogant of the three at The Police Rehearsal press event (careful this is a trick question)?
• How many times is the word “fucking” used in Working Class Hero? Not allowed to go to the car to get the CD.
• Did John Lennon think he was better in The Beatles or on his own?
• Is podcasting dead?

And the answers:

• Nobody
• Nothing
• Neither
• Nobody
• Twice
• No
• What went wrong

Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 9:31 pm.
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