ME and Ophelia

DANNY O'BRIEN'S
Brilliant blog discussion pit

Last month I was pleased to discover that Danny O'Brien has a weblog. I've always enjoyed reading Danny's technology column, ever since it started (seems like ages ago) in the Doors section of The Sunday Times.

Featuring the latest on personal computing and the Internet, the Sunday Times published Doors in a stand alone booklet and magazine format until it was incorporated into their weekly TV guide magazine. Recently, it was moved onto a double page spread in the News Review section but I preferred it in the handy TV guide where it was easy to refer back to during the week.

Danny's weblog is called Oblomovka. In his latest post, life hacks, he invites his readers to stick their suggestions down in "this here discussion pit" and provides a link to a discussion space which he has set up through QuickTopic, a free web forum.

Last night, I spent an hour playing around with QuickTopic and, so far, think it's simply brilliant.
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QUICKTOPIC
Your preposterously easy instant discussion space

QuickTopic is a free bulletin board (message board) and collaborative document review groupware.

"For any one-topic group discussion, you can use the QuickTopic free bulletin boards instead of just email. Your messages will be in a private central place, and each of your friends can opt to participate by email or just use the web forum. That's because QuickTopic's super-easy single-topic web bulletin boards are also fully email-enabled: you can get and post messages via email. Use it on your web site too. Over 200,000 served."

Tonight, I shall read up on the most frequently asked questions about QuickTopic, together with Upgrade to QuickTopic Pro - QuickTopic bulletin.
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THE STRENGTH OF WEAK TIES AND THE HUMAN NODE
It's not so much who you know, but who you vaguely know

Joi Ito recently blogged about Jeff Howe's post in Wired entitled "the connectors, the hypernetworked nodes who secretly run the world".

Some of us bloggers noted a glaring omission from Jeff's list: THE EUROPE NODE. Why no European Node? Where's our European Node? We must have a European Node!

Here's Jeff Howe's list of names and descriptions, to which I have added links. Apologies for not finding a better link, except for this by Jeff Howe, for Martin Garbus (wonder why he is an entertainment node and not a law node?).

THE TECH NODE
Clay Shirky: Consultant, writer, and adjunct professor at NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program.

THE MUSIC NODE
Ted Cohen: Senior VP for digital development at EMI and a liaison between the file-sharing and music communities.

THE GAMING NODE
Seamus Blackley: Co-creator of the Xbox and its chief evangelist both inside and outside Microsoft. Blackley, 35, left last year to start a game development company, Capital Entertainment Group. He writes an influential column for UK gaming mag Develop.

THE FINANCE NODE
Nancy Peretsman: Partner at Allen & Co., Herb Allen's media and technology investment bank.

THE SCIENCE NODE
Jan Witkowski: Director of the Banbury Center, a biotech confab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in New York.

THE VALLEY NODE
Linda Stone: Former Microsoft ambassador: currently advises the power elite and consults for Segway's Dean Kamen.

THE ENTERTAINMENT NODE
Martin Garbus: Longtime First Amendment lawyer: defended Emmanuel Goldstein, aka Eric Corley, in the DeCSS DVD copy protection trials.

THE TOKYO NODE
Joichi Ito: Runs a $40.6 million VC firm, Neoteny, from his hometown of Inba, Japan; best known for his must-read blog, Joi Ito's Web.