For the past few months, I’ve been part of a Newport Beach city committee looking at how to make the Balboa Boardwalk safer for the many different people who use it, ranging from those on bicycles, to pedestrians, to people using Segways and considering the habits of out-of-town tourists versus local [...]

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It’s not enough that sea lions sink boats in Newport Harbor. Now they’re apparently driving them. A sea lion recently tried to seize control of an Orange County Sheriff Harbor Patrol boat. Seriously. I saw the LA Times tweet a short write-up about how local TV station KTLA was going to do a story on this [...]

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It’s my first 4th Of July back in the United States for over a decade, and I’m really looking forward to it. But a Newport Beach Fourth Of July on the Balboa Peninsula is something special. There’s the bike parade, the huge crowds expected at the beach plus street closures, special party [...]

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US Appellate Court justice Richard Posner proposes doing something with copyright law that I can’t tell you about, if the law he proposes actually passed. I may have said too much already. I’d like to quote exactly what he said, the key part in bold, which was: Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials [...]

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United’s Rebate To Clear Members On Premier Line Not So Great

June 26, 2009

Keri Morgret of Strike Models tipped me to a United offer for Clear members. I guess United offers a airport security fast lane called Premier Line, and I thought it was pretty cool that they’re giving a rebate to Clear members on the purchase price. Especially as that price seemed to be $25 per year [...]

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Garlic For The Google Vampire

June 25, 2009

Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton has called Google a “vampire” that has a taste for sucking the blood out of newspapers. I’d do a long dissection of his mistaken analogy, but I’ve already done that before: Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It. Why do we continue to hear such tiresome rhetoric? [...]

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TSA Stays Silent As Its Registered Traveler Program Melts Down

June 23, 2009

It’s been a day since Clear closed, so I thought a fresh post on the aftermath is in order. Refunds? Forget it!  The data Clear has on you? To be destroyed. But your Clear card will still work. Where? With the two other “Registered Traveler” programs that serve all of three airports in total. Assuming [...]

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Clear Airport Security Program Closes Abruptly; Goodbye Flo, Too?

June 22, 2009

The Clear airport security program has abruptly closed. No warning, and no information beyond a sparse statement on the Clear web site. An email to members also went out about an hour ago with the same short statement on the site. Clear, or Fly Clear as it was sometimes known, allowed people to bypass regular security [...]

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iPhone 3.0 Upgrade Fail: “Unknown Error”

June 17, 2009

Finally, OS3 for the iPhone is out — and against my better judgment, I decided I wanted copy-and-paste now. So I did the iPhone 3.0 upgrade, and now my phone is dead. Like many others, I’m getting the dreaded “unknown error” message. And looking to Apple for guidance, I come away feeling frustrated. After my upgrade [...]

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No, Newspapers Don’t Need A License To Collude To Survive

June 9, 2009

At the end of May, I was enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon reading my paper, trying not to think about work, when I came across Tim Rutten’s column, “How the Obama administration can save newspapers.” And I sighed, because apparently newspapers need a license to collude to solve their “search engine” problem. If they can’t [...]

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