this is sippey.com

I’m not about to quit my day job, but I must admit that doing today’s Skypecast with Chris Anderson (in case you haven’t heard, he’s written this pretty popular book) was a ton of fun.  We had about 50 people on the call, and I think juggling the questions from the participants with my own list of layups insightful, probing questions worked out pretty well. Of course, Chris will probably never speak to me again, and the folks on the call were probably hoping for a more “head of the tail” type host…

Update:  you can listen to the whole thing here.

There are bound to be comparisons between this fall’s 30 Rock (Tina Fey’s new show) and Studio 60 (the one from Aaron Sorkin), since they’re both set backstage at a show that looks a lot like SNL.  But leave it to Sorkin to beat everyone to the punch at the press junket:

“I’m going to take Tina’s idea and add twice as many words to it.”

Tim Goodman’s blog post is worth a clickthrough to read about Sorkin & Co’s self-deprecating humor re. drug abuse…

Since Gillmor (Steve, not Dan) announced that he’s shuttering InfoRouter, I’ve been inundated with IMs and emails from friends worrying about the future of his archetypal Web 2.0 requirements doc for the Attention Operating System.

Don’t worry, folks.  I’ve archived it here in PDF form, just in case.  The future – your future, our future -- is secure.

One of the best parts of Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail is the section on the Sears Roebuck catalog and the way it changed shopping, especially for rural America.  Couldn’t find any originals for sale on eBay, but there have been plenty of reproductions published; you can buy a repro of the 1897 catalog from Amazon for a mere $13.62.  It’s worth it if you’re at all a student of catalog copy; those writers knew how to sell.

Just because you can blog your email doesn’t mean you should.  (And yes, I know the story’s not over yet.  But c’mon, you honestly think it will end up offering a different moral?)

I can’t stand the comments and the posts are only moderately interesting, but what’s still entertaining about Slashdot (after all these years) are the departments.  As in the story about Kenneth Lay’s death coming from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-sarbox dept.  So please, won’t someone construct me a custom feed that mashes the title of the item and the department it comes from into one long title for quick and easy LiveBookmarks or Google Toolbar scanning?  Heck, their feed already has the custom namespace you'd need; it almost transforms itself.\[1\]

[1] Dear God (a separate entity from the Lazyweb, to be sure), please shoot me.  I made an XSLT joke.  In a post about Slashdot.

Maxell is bringing back the “blown away” guy – the classic image of the guy in the chair. All the details in this Times story, including details about the original photo shoot.

“Layers of hairspray held the model’s hair in wind-blown position and some strands were tied to the ceiling” with fine fishing line, the article reported. The fishing line was also used on the lamp shade and cord in the photograph, to make it seem as if they, too, were being buffeted by the force of the music.

Ahh, Madison Avenue.  Next up – the Gorilla in the cage with the Samsonite luggage.  Or has that one already been resurrected?