Thompson in? 

I'd sooner vote for Martin Balsam.

Later: What was I talking about? I'm not even sure I know who Martin Balsam is! (Was?) I meant Martin Sheen. Time to look into some of those brain vitamins, I think. I'm going to be the wackiest old lady ever.

Mainly on the plain 

Not sure what to think of Microsoft's new Surface thing. But it does seem quite innovative for Microsoft, doesn't it?

Ender Wiggin's family had something like that as a breakfast table.

Getting local 

Wired's Epicenter blog today mentions FatDoor, which purveys social networking at the neighborhood level. *

It reminded me to mention something I imagined on the train yesterday. I think it might work better for a commuter train than it would for a longer-distance train.

- Riders connect to the internet with some kind of shared EVDO -- or maybe it's just a special for-the-train intranet.

- Interactive apps play a social director role in real time. One application might be those questionnaires that teenagers like to pass around, but you get to see the results right away for everybody on the train. It includes demographic details so you can do crosstabs to see how riders in your age group or people from your suburb answered the question "Who do you like among the Democratic candidates?" or "Did you eat in or out last night? What did you have?"

- It could be all anonymous, or you could make parts of it scary and real. Like "Raise your hand if you're hungry." Then, suggest meeting at a breakfast joint at the end of the line. Some components could be sponsored by downtown businesses.

- You could have open chat, and make a game of guessing who's who.

- Or it could all be very serious and civic-minded. A political candidate or party could set it up for a whole campaign season on one train for probably the cost of two 30-second spots in a major TV market.

Don't you hate it when the ads overpower the copy? 

Look at the Wired item about FatDoor. All those big ads take prominence over the story. It's the kind of subliminal thing that makes me not want to visit the page and stay safety in my feed reader. Too bad for the advertisers when a commercial website's zeal to please their sponsors has the opposite effect.

But I'm not 

If I were younger, more ambitious, thinner, and more confident, I'd apply to pitch my specialized news aggregator site idea at Techcrunch20. I wonder how far developed beyond screenshots you'd need to go for a concept to qualify as a demo.

Swivel feeds 

Kent's posted his second group of blogs to discover and gave me and the other nominated slackers a poke. OK here are mine:

Anne Zelenka: Blog | Feed
Anne edits Web Worker Daily, and posts more opinion and personal stuff to this personal blog, Anne 2.1. Two of the many things I enjoy about Anne are: she's a thoughful writer; and she's a real techie. So many blogs by women about online stuff are written by marketing types.

Nothing wrong with marketing folks, of course; I used to be one myself. That's where women get steered, and where we steer ourselves. :-(   But when you don't know how to look under the hood, see what's doing on, and play with and change stuff it necessarily renders your commentary about technology more shallow.

Hilary Talbot: Blog | Feed
Hil is a longtime (like 11-year!) online friend. Her Spirits Dancing blog is mostly about visual arts. She's a talented illustrator, sculptor and puppet and prop maker, so when she's taken by something, it's an informed judgment. She has the best developed sense of whimsy I've ever encountered.

Les Orchard: Blog | Feed
Les, a fellow Michigander (they call it Michiganian now, but I ignore that), moved West to work for Yahoo last year. He just recently restarted blogging, mostly stream of consciousness, whatever comes into his head, but he's a published book author so sometimes he can't help but compose something and it's always worth listening to.

David Rothman: Blog | Feed
The Teleread blog is the source if you're interested in e-books. David is passionate and opinionated about them, and follows everything for you.