My father died when I was only five years old, and that was the moment when I learned a cruel lesson that tomorrow, in fact, might not be another day.
The tech industry - and, more specifically, Silicon Valley - continues to stumble forward in earnest about how few women are represented in its top ranks of management and on its boards.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy, except - due to her rejection of Apollo's affections - nobody would ever believe her warnings.
With giant sites like Facebook and MySpace becoming as generic as Yahoo and AOL of old, more and more sites will be looking for an edge by drilling down deeply to serve a highly targeted audience.
Here's the thing: I fell impossibly in love with the Internet from the minute I saw it in action in the early 1990s. From that moment on, I have studied it, analyzed it, reported on it, and, mostly, have not been without it as a part of my daily life since.
The fact of the matter is that the true hits of AOL have always been its easy-to-use services, such as AIM, email, and Buddy Lists.
Dr. Louis Bush Swisher died from the complications of a brain aneurysm that burst without warning one sunny Sunday morning less than 40 years ago.
One of my favorite vacation memories was the Thai foot massage and Internet access salons in Bangkok, followed up by my testing cellphone coverage while wading in Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod.
As I have said many times - I like Facebook. I think it is well built and run. It's cool. I think it is, in its next-step way, even visionary.
I have found, writing a blog, that being non-opaque is necessary. You pretty much have to say what you know in much more firm terms or risk that the legions who always know more than you do will tell the story better.
Equipped with two cell phones - one for work and another for home - I like to think of myself as a kind of 21st-century digital pioneer, ready to network, fax, page, e-mail and - oh, yes - talk at will.
As I have seen with a lot of companies I have covered, acquisition interest can be a heady experience, and not always in a good way.
As anyone who has covered the company for any length of time knows, Yahoo's record on major decision-making has been akin to a hippie commune - a lot of wrangling internally in a culture where everyone seems to have a voice and a reticence to push the button to launch.
Having a baby had always seemed the easiest and most natural thing to do, and I had never felt - even in my most furtive days of coming out - that being gay would mean I could not become a mother.
Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads - I just write it.
I love all my scoop children. But consistency and persistence is really my aim.
While a lot of what is on Facebook is a better amalgam of what AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, and other Web pioneers introduced long ago, with a nice dash of connection and really identified community, this kind of thing is not a new idea.
BoomTown has long been a big fan of Martha Stewart.
Despite my so-so-experience with the iPhone, I do love its touchscreen technology, a feature I miss with my standard-issue BlackBerry.
I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading.
