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Here’s what Mark Fletcher, the CEO of Bloglines has to say about being acquired. Basically he says the same thing everyone says when they get acquired: the acquiring company loves our product, we’ll be getting more resources than ever, nothing will change for the worse. I think everyone whose company gets acquired believes that, and they’re almost never right. Jim Lanzone, an Ask Jeeves exec, explains how the merger went down as well. I honestly wish these guys the best. I hope Mark Fletcher made a boatload of money, and I hope that Bloglines keeps getting better. I’m just not optimistic. ...

I badly want to jump onto the bash Google bandwagon with all of the other contrarians, but I just can’t seem to do it. Today I heard that Google had launched a mapping service, and I thought to myself, how much better could Google Maps be than Yahoo Maps, or MapQuest, or any of the other mapping services out there? Well, it turns out that Google Maps is much, much better than any mapping service I’ve ever used. The number one hook is draggable maps. You can find an address and seamlessly drag your way to your destination without any obvious trips back to the Web server. I was ready to declare this the most innovative and clever use of Flash I’d ever seen until I viewed the source code for the page and started ripping it apart. Because it’s not Flash, it’s just HTML. It’s the most byzantine and complex HTML you’ve ever seen, but it’s HTML (and JavaScript, naturally). Once again, Google proves that the barrier between Web applications and desktop applications is fuzzier than you’d imagine, at least if you have the coding chops. The little touches are worth mentioning as well. Google has done some image processing on the maps to make the anti-aliased and pleasant to look at. The way locations are marked on the map and highlighted is impressive as well. And if you really want to be blown away, try the Print button. Unlike most sites, you aren’t taken to a stripped down page, instead your browser’s Print dialog just pops up. Out comes a printer friendly version of the map you’re currently looking at, all thanks to the miracle of CSS. If you’re serious about creating user interfaces using a Web browser, I’d recommend that you polish your résumé and get hired at Google, the stuff they’re doing right now is light years ahead of everyone else I can think of. First with Gmail, and now with Google Maps, it’s like Google is taking stuff you see in the most wild, showy demos and turning it into Web applications used by millions of people. I’m floored. ...

Doctors Without Borders lists the top 10 underreported humanitarian crises of 2004.

So I read that Ask Jeeves is acquiring Bloglines. Looks like I’ll be finding some other aggregator …

On the subject of my previous post, one of the risks of excess or misplaced pride is the rise of nationalism.

Last week I read a David Gelertner profile of Benjamin Disraeli in the Weekly Standard that brought up the point that conservatives are driven by pride whereas leftists are driven by shame. He makes the point that American liberals are more like conservatives in that they tend to focus on pride rather than shame (unlike Marxists), but I’m not sure that’s true. I think that I, and most liberals I know, are much more likely to be driven by shame in their political thinking than they are by pride. Asked to name 10 things about America I’m ashamed of, I could dash them off in less than 60 seconds. Asked to name 10 things about America I’m proud of would take a bit longer, I think, and indeed the list would almost certainly include qualifiers. I don’t need to explain the dangers of pride to anyone of a liberal persuasion. But I do think there are dangers in excess shame as well, mainly in the sense that if your view is that everything we do is wrong or insufficient, you tend to lose credibility. Progress has been made, and many things are better than they once were, and it’s OK to feel proud about that. What I find particularly interesting is that I don’t feel like I hold myself to the same standards that I hold my country, or the human race. I’m generally forgiving of my own mistakes, and indeed do not look back on my past and feel shame or self loathing. I haven’t drawn any real conclusions yet, I just found the article to be food for thought. And I do think that this shame/pride divide may be the biggest reason why liberals have a hard time communicating with conservatives. ...

Did you know that only 1% of US bankruptcies are brought on by credit card debt? On the other hand, half are due to medical bills. Via Rebecca Blood.

Looks like Gmail is going to be open to the public soon. I hear that lots of people have been given 50 invitations to hand out, and that seems to be reflected in the fact that currently there are 21,000 invitations available from the Gmail invitation spooler.

William Saletan has written the one recap of the State of the Union that you need to read.

If you liked my sardonic little list of things I remember about Iraq, you’ll love Eliot Weinberger’s What I Heard About Iraq, which is much longer and consists entirely of direct quotations.