Origin of sneakers. The first rubber soled shoes called plimsolls were developed and manufactured in the United States in the late 1800s. In 1892, nine small rubber manufacturing companies consolidated to form the United States Rubber Company. In 1917, that company introduced the "Keds" brand of sneakers, the first mass-market version; Converse, founded in 1908, introduced their own version of sneakers in the same year. The generic name "sneaker" was coined by Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent, to emphasize that one could walk silently with rubber soles. Initially, a pair of Keds sold for 1-2 dollars.

Keds remained a big seller until the late 1960s, when sneakers got a face-lift from University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman [and business major Phil Knight], whose waffle-soled running shoe would form the foundation of Nike and trigger an explosion in the athletic shoe business. Knight and Bowerman formed a company in 1964 to market a lighter and more comfortable shoe designed by Bowerman. In 1968, this company became NIKE, Inc. -- named for the [ancient] Greek goddess of Victory. At first, Knight and Bowerman sold their shoes in person, at track meets across the Western US...

This foray into the history of sneakers was inspired by the 85th anniversary celebration of Forbes magazine (last November). On that occasion, Forbes listed 85 innovations covering the years 1917 to 2002, because innovation is the spark of capitalism. Starting with sneakers in 1917. [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

But where do PF Flyers come in? It looks like New Balance is bringing back the name. Now will I really be able to Run Faster and Jump Higher? Does it have the Action Wedge?  10:43:13 PM    

As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation. I've been debating whether or not this story was worth posting here. The NY Times has a short opinion piece weighing in on the recent debate over whether or not blogs have "too much power" in Google, which is something of a ridiculous debate when you really get to thinking about it. If Google isn't doing their job, and not providing people with what they want, then it just opens up an opportunity for someone else to provide a better search. Seems pretty straightforward to me. However, the more interesting part of this story are the responses to the NY Times article from folks like Doc Searls and Dave Winer, making a really good point: the popular press seems to be complaining that blogs are outweighing their own stories on certain topics. A large part of the problem, though, is the short-sighted view of the publishers of these press websites that hide their archives behind tollbooths. The simple fact: "If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web." Indeed. It's certainly up to those sites and their management over whether or not to open themselves up - but (like so many businesses these days) they seem to be going for short-term direct revenue, rather than realizing the long-term potential for (much greater) indirect revenue by opening up their archives. [Techdirt]

More discussion about the inability of major media to understand just what is going on. People will not find their articles unless they allow them to be indexed by Google. As with anything else, it does no good to have the best writers if no one reads them.  10:29:33 PM    

Is WiFi The Next Dot Com Bubble?. Here's some more WiFi backlash, as some are saying that WiFi is just another dot com bubble, with plenty of people pouring money into projects with little or no business models. I have mixed opinions on these stories - but the "dot com bubble" angle, might be at least somewhat accurate. There certainly are a lot of people investing in very questionable WiFi-based business models - many of which are clearly going to fail (some of which already have). However, just like the internet, that doesn't mean there isn't a really huge opportunity for those who get it right and really understand where to position themselves. The trick is not just believing in WiFi for the sake of WiFi, but understanding why and how it's really valuable, and determining how to be involved in making that aspect better, easier, cheaper or faster. There are going to be plenty of WiFi-related failures, and plenty of people will declare WiFi dead or overhyped - but users are going to keep on using it, and that's an opportunity. [Techdirt]

Bubbles start from opportunity. It is the hype that expands the bubble. But I do not think there are many people with enough irrational exuberance to blow this one up nearly as large as the internet bubble.  10:25:39 PM    

Rage.

Rage

Someone emailed this to me with the subject "That's why they call it windows".  Thanks to Guy K. Haas.  No idea where this came from originally.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

'Nough said.  10:15:06 PM    

Visualizing Flows In Social Networks. Then we started to work on bigger social spaces where people communicate in a circle: one speaks to another, and that one to another one, forming a social space called Carousel that is symmetric, but with no poles. Or you have what appears to be the same group of people, but there is one in the centre who is the chief gossip of the group, the one who starts all the conversations.

In technical terms this is still a network, but in social terms the social space is absolutely centrifugal. This is what we call the Petals.

In this combination, one expert, or head of the tribe, transfers all his music expertise to the others, so it is the same as we saw before, but this time with a pole; he's the head of the tribe, so the social space is asymmetric, and it is called the Crest.

Then we have many communities, each one with the mechanism we saw before: one starts to broadcast to the other one, and everybody broadcasts to everybody else, so we have an overlapping peer-to-peer broadcast and so on. And content is what holds everything together.

This is what we call the Infinite Star, a continuous space that connects infinite points. [Smart Mobs]

There are some really pretty gifs on this page and it includes some wonderful insight into social systems. I think that computing tools only increase the complexity of these systems, making them into something that can not be easily quantified.  12:06:06 AM