This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
Recently Niall Kennedy wrote about cafes in his weblog. Following the historical example of Lloyd's of London (he names Christie's and Sotheby's), Niall suggests that cafes could be a "hub of activity" for startup businesses and tech-savvy people. He endorses advanced tech infrastructure in the cafes themselves, and suggests some intriguing add-ons: private rooms, memberships with extra tech privileges, digital bulletin boards for patrons, and more.
If you don't know already, Niall is Community Manager (the guy in charge of forging people-to-people links with the outside world) of Technorati, a major pioneer in blogosphere-related networking in cyberspace. (If you haven't seen Technorati's site yet, try clicking in this or this to see what they have to say about this weblog, Jonathan's Coffeeblog.)
I started this weblog because I liked to hang out in cafes, where I felt inspired to write short pieces that seemed perfect for blogging. This led to an increased interest in coffee itself as a cash crop and cultural phenomenon and to the whole range of cyberschmoozing, including becoming a Flickr paparazzo. To me, Niall's ideas about cafes as a business-generating environment, which are solidly based on historical precedent in Europe, seem to ring true and to bode well for coming decades of the 21st Century. I see this as having especially great potential for many Muslim countries, which already have a tradition of commerce and coffee culture, and are rapidly joining the blogosphere. Thanks, Niall, and I'll keep my eyes open for further developments of these ideas.
Every page now has Seesmic/Disqus video commenting. Scroll to the bottom to see or post video comments. To read a text-only version of Jonathan's Coffeeblog on your iPhone or other mobile phone, click here. Or to see the graphics with less text, click here.
