Doc Surfs, Finds Serfs

The other day Doc was inspired by Robert Scoble to do a little ego surfing on Google, and he found a sponsored link pointing him to the carSerfs Hall of Heros. Reading this post of his began a chain tickle reaction for me, that went something like this:

1. Cool that a business is marketing itself on the Web in part by acknowledging the greatness that is Doc.


2. [Scanning just the first few names on the list] My, he is in nice company.


3. Holy doubletakes, Batman, so am I!


4. "And who cares if you're reading about the life and interests of a lawyer." Heh. "[S]he's the high-tech, Erma Bombeck." Heh heh.


5. Nice company indeed!


6. Including the only other carSerfs heroine to date, Shoshana Zuboff, who I also think is brilliant.


7. Hey, lookee there, she's now got a regular column with Fast Company. Wonder if she's blogging for them? Doesn't look like it.


8. Wow, those carSerfs guys get Gonzo Marketing, in so many ways. But wouldn't it be nice to see a name/names associated with the posts on their weblog?


9. Speaking of the greatness that is Doc, the baby has been slumbering nearly two hours in the sling Doc recommended when we flew back from Boston last year.


10. The Support Economy in action: "She nailed our thinking behind carSerfs and the kind of support we think people want." "Welcome to the Dr. Sears Virtual Office Visits."


11. I simply could not have survived the last 14 weeks without the sling and The Baby Book, and I have Doc to thank. Must remember to do so in a big squishy way in person. (Though there's so much less of him to squish.) Must remember to buy The Successful Child.


12. It's a little late, but since we're on the topic of Doc, and Doc inspired the prize t-shirt, I'm pleased to announce that Frank Paynter won the "guess the baby" contest, since he postulated Tyler would be a boy, early, and a featherweight. (Those were the days!) Frank, it's on its way, I know you can't wait.

So yeah, that about covers it. [Update]: Except for one thing, don't miss Doc on CBS Sunday Morning tomorrow. Here's the related article — Digital Democracy — and Doc's quote about the Dean campaign blog:

Up until the Howard Dean campaign, we thought of a web log as a changing site that's a journal that an individual publishes. And now, all of a sudden, it's this place where hundreds, or even thousands, of people can add comments. And the people who are adding the comments are busy looking at each other's comments.

Head Breakfast

Some choice morsels:

John Battelle, in today's L.A. Times, on Yahoo's paid inclusion plans:

As for Jahosky's complaint that small firms will find it harder to stand out among big businesses, that just means search engines are growing to resemble more traditional forms of media, said John Battelle, who co-founded Wired magazine and now runs the site Searchblog.

"At the end of the day," he said, "those with more money to spend on getting their message out get their message out louder."

Also in today's L.A. Times, SCO's CEO packs heat:

Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO Group Inc., says he sometimes carries a gun because his enemies are out to kill him.

Dennis Kennedy's forthcoming issue of IP Memes (out next Monday) includes a reference to an adaptation from Larry Lessig's forthcoming book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (shipping March 25). It appears in the current issue of Legal Affairs magazine, and deconstructs his oral argument in Eldred:

That was a correct answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The right answer was to say that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any number of briefs had been written about it. Kennedy wanted to hear it. And here was where Don Ayer's advice should have mattered. This was a softball; my answer was a swing and a miss.

Finally, Genie Tyburski pointed earlier this week to a promising looking new resource:

(3 Mar) Yale Lillian Goldman Law Library recently launched a free beta site for U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. According to site documentation, the library selects cases for inclusion "based on a ranking developed from citation data in historical and constitutional texts." In other words, if one of 15 authorities (see list at the site) cites to a case, the library will add the records and briefs to this archive.

In addition to browsing the archive, you can search it by U.S. Reports citation, author, type of document, date or keyword. However, in testing the search feature this morning, only the citation field yielded results.

Paging Tech Support

Does anyone know why the "My Recent Image Code" for TextAmerica is no longer displaying the most recent images from my Carry-On Baggage moblog?

You know you're a mommy when...

• You've panicked at least once about crumbs burrowing deep into your child's ear canal while you're eating and breasfeeding. (See also Heather Armstrong's bagel incident, 2/22/04.)


• You routinely use "Mylicon" as a verb: "For God's sake, Mylicon him!"