The Snoop Next Door

The WSJ reported on Friday 12th January 2007 “Bad Parking, loud talking – no transgression is too trivial to document online.”

“Last Month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date.”

“Almost immediately, she started receiving ‘weird and creepy’ calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting ‘Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!’ her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor’s office were posted, along with the admonition, ‘next time, you might take your business outside.’ The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe.”

“It used to be the worst you could get for a petty wrong in public was a rude look. Now it’s not just brutal police officers, panty-free celebrities and wayward politicians who are being outed online. The most trivial missteps by ordinary folks are increasingly ripe for exposure as well. There is a proliferation of new sites dedicated to condemning offenses ranging from bad parking (Caughtya.org) and leering (HollaBackNYC.com) to littering (LitterButt.com) and general bad behavior (RudePeople.com). One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs. Capturing newspaper-stealing neighbors on video is also an emerging genre.”

It seems that anyone can be vigilante and strive to make their community a better place, although I disagree with snooping on calls to a doctor and I think a stern look would be far more appropriate then posting their private details on a blog.

Something ate my mail

Whilst we were in Florida, I sent a postcard home to the teddies who weren’t able to join us. I was a little upset when it arrived today because it looked as if something had taken a bite out of the corner. We were surprised that it arrived as part of the address has gone. The postcode was missing and only United was left of the country United Kingdom.

Red Planet

I was browsing through the Google Labs projects earlier today and came across a collaboration between NASA and Google, Google Mars. They have mapped the planet Mars similar to how they have mapped Earth. It is really neat; you can see where all spacecraft have landed or crashed, and read all the stories related to the red planet. I did wonder whether it is the precursor to setting up a colony on the planet and Google being the only website to have a map. 😉

http://www.google.com/mars/

Marisol Espinoza


I don’t normally do this but I think it’s great that my good friend MARISOL ESPINOZA has been nominated in an online poll for the Best Elected Official Staffer (in Los Angeles). You can vote for her even if you don’t live in L.A. The link is below.

Marisol is the sweetest, most friendly and genuine person I have ever met, and I have met a lot of different types of people in my world travels. 🙂 She travelled with us around the Mediterranean earlier in the year. The picture is of us in Savona, Italy. Even if she doesn’t win it would be great to see a lot of votes under her name! She deserves it!

Thank you!

http://www.polldaddy.com/poll.asp?p=15296