Odeo cofounder Noah Glass gravitated toward Jack Dorsey, whom Glass says was “one of the stars of the company.” Jack had an idea for a completely different product that revolved around “status”—what people were doing at a given time.

“I got the impression he was unhappy with what he was working on – a lot of cleanup work on Odeo.”

“He started talking to me about this idea of status and how he was really interested in status,” Glass says. “I was trying to figure out what it was he found compelling about it.”

“There was a moment when I was sitting with Jack and I said, ‘Oh, I do see how this could really come together to make something really compelling.’ We were sitting on Mission St. in the car in the rain. We were going out and I was dropping him off and having this conversation. It all fit together for me.”

One day in February 2006, Glass, Dorsey, and a German contract developer Florian Webber presented Jack’s idea to the rest of the company. It was a system where you could send a text to one number and it would be broadcasted out to all of your friends: Twttr.

The Internet, however, has allowed like minded absurdists with crazy ideas and stupid notions to get together and confirm each other ideas and notions as something other than inane drivel.  When that happens?  You get some really sick stuff.

That brings me to this collection of Facebook posts made in response to the horrific Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami.  I would post the picture, but the number of crazy ideas and stupid notions posted required a file so large that it wouldn’t fit on my blog.  So enjoy.

A great video featuring my adopted hometown of Austin, TX.  Places I recognize here:

1. South Congress- Great shops, restaurants, and ridiculously great food trailers.

2. Zilker Park-Home of Austin City Limits Festival and beautiful Spring days.

3. Barton Springs Pool- Where summer and high bacteria come together.

4. University of Texas- Hey, they have a tower and a Gutenberg Bible.  Beat that College Station.

5. 6th Street- (mostly)Cheap beer, cops with horses, and parents with strollers at 1AM.

6. Capital of Texas Highway- Beautiful part of town where the video culminates with sunset at the Pennybacker bridge over the Colorado River.

[hattip: BoingBoing]

[via: CollegeHumor]

[hattip: BoingBoing]

Context–She is upset over Rep. Cao(R-LA) voting for Obamacare, or Pelosicare, or Hitlercare, or whatever the Teabaggers call it these days.

I don’t agree with a public option at this time.  Make COBRA coverage available and realistic. End the insurance companies’ ability to limit coverage based on pre-existing conditions.  Allow insurance companies to compete state to state with one another.  These ideas I can support and these ideas would increase coverage while encouraging competition in the marketplace.  However, just telling the uninsured to just go the the ER is the status quo and is unsustainable as our population and the number of uninsured grow.

P.S.- I also thank your pirate hat.  GAAAARRHHH!!!!!

[hattip: Washington Independent]

We Found Waldo

I realize that the last 18 years have been tough for 1980′s hair bands. Grunge comes along to rape and pillage your careers. But this Internet thing comes around to let you link up with your few remaining fans. So you come up with this:

In 1996, this is a state of the art band website.  While most of the Internet universe is still making their way out of Gopher, CompuServe, and Prodigy, Whitesnake moves past the AOL universe into something that would even make the most accomplished HTML nerd on Geocities stand up and take attention.

Once again, however, Whitesnake is overtaken by the inertia of history. The Internet moves on…Geocities dies, AOL tries to destroy TimeWarner, the advent of Flash, Java, The Google, and Facebook. What is a over-the-hill rock band to do? Sure, they would’ve liked to invest money into a new website, however, the casinos and tractor pulls they’ve been playing sporadically over the past decade just don’t pay the bills like sold out arenas once did. They are touring with Judas Priest this summer. Perhaps Rob Halford can give the guys a loan to get their website at least into this century.