Marc's Voice

As a young man I began smoking reefer, being too young to be a Hippie and eventually figuring out that I was too old to be a Yuppie. Instead I became a Me generation software entrepreneur who tried to change the world – in my own way. It was from my father and grandfather’s idealism, my mother’s community activism and the spirit of creativity that I based my life upon.

For 44 years – that creativity has been driven by reefer.

This is the first 420 day that Marijuana is legal somewhere in America. I’ve been going to Amsterdam since 1975 (the same year Steve Jobs and Dan Kottke went to India) so this is truly a momentous day. Congrats to the States of Colorado and Washington and congrats to the various Marijuana Industrialists, Howard Rosenthal, NORML and the others – who helped get us to this day.

Once legal marijuana research and investment starts to increase, I think we’ll see a whole lotta benefits to legalization besides tax dollars – but cash is a great place to start. Cash is what created this prohibition in the first place and hemp will now become a major legal plant for medicinal herbs, rope, clothing, food and lord knows – what else (can you spell “massage oil?” Cellulose?)

At 4:20 this afternoon people in Denver and Seattle will take to the streets.

We’ve only just begun.

No longer do we have to hide under the bridges – to enjoy a smoke.

Photo credit = Dave Winer, Grey Area – Amsterdam 1998

BTW that’s a chunk of Hash…… Afghani is memory serves me well.

Third week of April 2013 blogging

marc — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:03:53 +0000

Dave Winer’s new company – Little Picture – has released Fargo – a web based outliner. I’ll cover this more – in a separate blog post.

Google picks up the steam – buys Utopia from the city of Provo, Utah. Not sure how many of oyu have been tracking this evolution of gigabit networking (call you say “Digitale Trieste?”) _ but for me – Project Utopia in Provo, UT was one of the FIRST muni broadband plays – ever! Now it’ll be Google third city. Indeed they’ll have to spend some money ‘upgrading’ – as they sure as hell haven’t been running pieces of glass into people’s homes in Provo, but hey I bet the backend and middle level stuff is just FINE. Thank you Google – and as the “perfect storm moment” slips away from Kansas City – I just wanna say “I told you so……………” KC moved WAY TOO SLOW! And is STILL moving too slow! But needless to say – I’m prejudiced in my thinking…………

Wanna know what happens when your video and record make #1? You shoot your NEXT video on 6 Continents, hire helicopters and sky divers. the NEXT Macklemore hit is out.

Citibank eliminated their entire digital marketing team and made EVERYONE become digitally savvy! AWESOME!

theCivicCommons is no more – Dan Moulthrop is now the CEO of the City Club – congrats to Dan

edTech bubble – VCs are swarming like Lemmings – again

Upgrade able hardware as Nirvana – for cars

Brad Feld awards free rent – for a year – to Handprint!

Tales from the trenches from my old friend – Ty Roberts

Why are International conferences – so bad?

Samsung S4 camera looks awesome – watch out Apple!

Attracting more Immigrants to Northeast Ohio - good luck with that!

Intel is buying Mashery – congrats to Scott Rafer – on an exit!

Guggenheim Digital on the march – with Ross Levinsohn at the helm

Will theater owners tolerate ‘premium on-demand’ launches – narrowing the gap between theatrical and digital releases?

The current state of “launching apps/games” = $$$$$

Zya has now taken $27M in VC – all PRE-launch!

Tastebuds – music based dating service

Both our girls are in Girl Scouts (our youngest is “just” a Brownie) – now it looks like they can earn badges for videogame programming! As Macklemore says “this is fucking AWESOME!”

Aviary Photo Editor 2.0 looks great! Complete re-write!

Fertilizer plant exploding – 60-70 people dead – all on viral video “Dad – please lets get out of here!”

Acoustic guitar “add-on”

Supercell rising

beautiful freelancer working spaces

Evernote hardware? One could only speculate!

Citia, DoSomething, 7Digital+QNX,

Tax Day blogging

marc — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:45:20 +0000

God bless this country. Who wants to bet on who did the terrorist bombing in Boston? Right wing whackos or Islamic Jihadists? My money is on the former. Afterall – it is Tax Day – and they want their representation – and gun laws – but no Jews, Women or anybody who doesn’t look like them.

18 new fiberhoods in Kansas City

Momentum for legalized marijuana continues – everybody likes the tax dollars

Local Democracy and the Digital City – in KC

Greetings from China – says the Cleveland Business Delegation

Songza is all about curated playlists

Sony ups the ante with a 2Gbps network

Congrats to the Exploratorium – on their new digs

BufferBox, Sorted, CodeNow,