Thursday, July 31, 2003The Redtail Canyon Geo-Community combines weblogging with an atlas, photo albums, search engine, and travel guide.
The site, created by developers David and Yuko Knight in Tokyo, encourages the publication of weblog entries tied to a particular geographic location by GPS coordinates, such as this item on Aral Sea destruction. Entries can be viewed by navigating maps like this U.S. East Coast view, which become satellite images as you click empty spots to zoom in.
Here's a nice shot of the Castillo De San Marcos in Saint Augustine. [Workbench]
6:49:20 PM
comment [] trackback [] Documenting blogger behavior
A pretentious and presumptuous attempt to document what bloggers have learned, without any formal instruction, to do every day...And then a description of what's needed to make blogs a medium for real conversation."
Do read the whole thing - it's worth it. [Seb's Open Research]
6:44:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] Chris Lydon interviews Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds
[Scripting News]
6:19:33 PM
comment [] trackback [] Secrets of Breakout Blogs
by Dave Pollard [The Scobleizer Weblog]
2:11:19 PM
comment [] trackback [] Das Blog
A tool that Clemens Vasters is working on... [The Scobleizer Weblog]
2:09:07 PM
comment [] trackback [] The International Telecommunications Union has a weblog.
[John Robb's Weblog]
1:49:47 PM
comment [] trackback [] There is no cheap metadata
In his series of articles on search, Tim Bray explores the value of metadata but also its cost - noting that "There is no cheap metadata." [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs]
3:08:42 AM
comment [] trackback [] Onfocus - Amazon RSS feeds
"Several people have mentioned that it would be nice to show the newest products in the Amazon RSS feeds rather than the top-selling products. There's a quick hack to make this happen." [Scripting News]
2:35:59 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wednesday, July 30, 2003[0xDECAFBAD]
3:26:14 PM
comment [] trackback [] Ethnic clustering in blogging communities This report by Hat Nim Choi studied and compared the LiveJournal and Xanga web... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]
2:53:39 PM
comment [] trackback [] Globally positioned blogging
Roland Piquepaille summarizes a TechRepublic article on the merging of GPS systems and the web. Suppose you're standing somewhere in the middle of a foreign city with a couple of friends. Everyone's getting hungry and you had better find a good place to eat. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to instantly look up, say, all restaurant reviews within a 1000-feet radius of where you are? And then intersect the results with your personal web of trust to increase your confidence in the info?
[Seb's Open Research]
2:40:43 AM
comment [] trackback [] Aggregator agendas
Tom Coates, in suggesting it's time to "balkanise our aggregators": "Blogdex, Daypop, Popdex, Technorati and the like are no longer simple reflectors of a community's activities - they are also one of our community's best mechanisms for news discovery... Unfortunately it also means that the country with the most weblogs sets the international community's agenda." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
1:56:25 AM
comment [] trackback [] An interview with Jeffrey Veen
Digital Web Magazine: There are amazing things happening on the Web, and, interestingly enough, most businesses couldn't imagine living without it. We're spending an increasing amount of our time at Adaptive Path trying to understand the value of a quality user experience. [Tomalak's Realm]
1:28:18 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tuesday, July 29, 20032:48:17 PM
comment [] trackback [] No bones about it
the kid in the orange shirt has no bones. [Windows Media, 3.7mb] [MetaFilter]
2:41:10 PM
comment [] trackback [] Zilstra's Multilingual Blog Chataqua
While this Heavenly City is on pilgrimage on earth, it calls out all peoples and so collects a society of aliens, speaking all languages. [Blogalization Community]
1:53:56 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Blog Change Bot [Ted Leung on the air]
1:51:54 PM
comment [] trackback [] BlogAds
Henry Copeland on the news that Time Out New York has placed ads on New York-based blogs Blogads represents: "This is our first metro-specific order. Expect lots more..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
1:46:30 PM
comment [] trackback [] .Text (a new blogtool)
The .NET Weblogs are going crazy over a new blog tool from Scott W named .Text. Awesome!
[The Scobleizer Weblog]
1:33:09 PM
comment [] trackback [] Weblog Network
A portion of the revenue model for the Weblog Network will be a tie into web service APIs from Amazon and others (depending on revenue share optimization). [John Robb: The Weblog Network]
1:22:41 PM
comment [] trackback [] Monday, July 28, 2003A [BBC] collection of your visions for the year 2020.
4:30:43 AM
comment [] trackback [] The World Votes
"464 days from now, U.S. citizens will elect their new President. The outcome of these elections directly influences the lives of citizens around the world. In an effort to establish global democracy, theworldvotes.org gives people all around the world a voice in the forthcoming U.S. Presidential Election." [Blogalization Community]
2:02:34 AM
comment [] trackback [] Bovine Freedom
Cows with Guns is the most hilarious Shockwave animation I've seen for a long time. Found this gem somewhere in the usual linkfilter chaos. [The Cartoonist]
1:57:29 AM
comment [] trackback [] Big Brother.. is tracking you [Telepolis News]
1:18:24 AM
comment [] trackback [] Galileo Galilei
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
[Quotes of the Day]1:08:22 AM
comment [] trackback [] Being homeless
Margaret McCabe Elenko in an article in the Boston Globe on a homeless woman's blogging : "I find it interesting that she makes the time almost every day to update the journal. You start to realize everyone has a story behind them."
[Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:57:01 AM
comment [] trackback [] Sunday, July 27, 2003Amazon.com Syndicated Content is delivered in RSS format. RSS is a standard format (in XML) for delivering content that changes on a regular basis. Content is delivered in small chunks, generally a synopsis, preview, or headline. Selected categories, subcategories and search results in Amazon.com stores now have RSS feeds associated with them, delivering a headline-view of the top 10 bestsellers in that category or set of search results.
This is very cool, though the feeds a little hard to find at first. Don’t look for the orange XML or RSS buttons – use RSS autodiscovery to find the feed associated with a search. (In other words, the URL will be in a link tag in the header of a search results page.)
And though I don’t really want to stir up trouble, I find it strange that Amazon uses RSS v0.91, and that they link to Netscape (an all but defunct entity) and not a spec hosted by UserLand or Harvard.
Anyway, at least they‘re providing feeds in some format! [0xDECAFBAD]11:47:41 PM
comment [] trackback [] Net trend
RSS 2.0 is now the #1 return on Google again for the keyterm RSS. Two weeks ago it wasn't even in the system. What happened? [John Robb's Weblog]
6:47:36 PM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, July 26, 2003Streaming MP3 interview with David Sifry, creator of Technorati.
[Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
3:47:10 PM
comment [] trackback [] Zen and The Art of Nano Publishing..
Time is an illusion. You and I think we have a year, or a month, or a day in which to accomplish something. Yet, is it not a fact that you never have a day! All you have is a moment, this moment, and this moment. There is nothing more than a moment you have that we call now. The present moment is all you ever have. In a similar vein of thought, we must also see that software is an illusion. Microsoft create nice packages, and print books and print pretty shiny patterns on CD disks and we are told we are purchasing sofware - a thing. Really, software is an illusion. It does not really exist. [Microdoc News] 9:00:16 AM
comment [] trackback [] Krishnamurti
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
[Quotes of the Day]8:59:13 AM
comment [] trackback [] What Blog Tools Build Better Google-indexed Blogs?..
Numbers of people have sought my advice on which blogging tool to use. Quite frankly, I did not really know what to tell them. I have been a Radio Userland for more than a year and I had always had good success in getting my Radio Userland site indexed in Google.
[Microdoc News]
8:36:21 AM
comment [] trackback [] Organizing Your Digital Detritus:. From John Robb's Weblog, I'm learning a little — enough to scratch my head about whether this is interesting at all — about this new class of apps that promise, as Robb describes it, to "provide a PC-based organizational system for all the digital data a person accumulates during a lifetime... (to) make sense of the gobs of information we are going to store in our 1 Tb computers in 2006..." There's MyLifeBits, for PCs, which is from Microsoft and which Robb suggests will be seriously flawed by being inflexible and monolithic. DevonThink, so far only for OSX, is a "freeform database with a browser interface that organizes your local data by similarity" and looks pretty interesting to him. And then there's Dashboard, about which all the recent buzz is about.
I'll surely investigate this phenomenon further, but for now I'm dubious about their usefulness to me. Maybe I need to get the terabyte hard drive first or progress further along the continuum to benign senescent forgetfulness (in which case a terabyte-range handheld PC will be more useful to me than a desktop, of course). Robb suggests these will be great for webloggers but I suspect he doesn't mean my style of weblogging.
As Robb asks, "what do we call this category of software" anyway? And, other than the amount of their muscle, how is it different from the heavily-indexed freeform databases (like Ask Sam) or the index-based PC explorers (like Lotus Magellan) I've made use of in my remote past? Here are Dashboard's stabs at answers to both of those questions:
The dashboard is a piece of software which performs a continous, automatic search of your personal information space to show you things in your life that are related to whatever you happen to be doing with your computer at the time.Part of my hesitancy is about that "friendly way". I'd be relieved if I didn't find it intrusive and annoying, even if my machine's performance didn't take a hit. I sound like the computerist version of a luddite, I realize, but I'm reminded of that old Twilight Zone episode in which the aliens arrive promising all sorts of boons to humanity. At the end, just as the world's leaders are about to place their fate entirely in the hands of the aliens, our hero runs up breathlessly to announce that he has just finished translating the aliens' handbook, To Serve Man. "It's a cookbook!!" he stammers. [Follow Me Here...]While you read email, browse the web, write a document, or talk to your friends on IM, dashboard does its best to proactively find objects that are relevant to your current activity, and to display them in a friendly way.
We call the dashboard an "association engine."
7:34:16 AM
comment [] trackback [] Savings
Here's the TLC (Technorati link cosmos) for Saving the Net. Impressive.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
7:27:33 AM
comment [] trackback [] Evan deconstructs a "Google is being spammed by weblogs" example. [John Robb's Weblog]
7:22:32 AM
comment [] trackback [] Web Zen: Graffitti Zen. (1) banksy
(2) vandal squad
(3) wooster collective
(4) laussanne
(5) stencil revolution
(6) guerilla parenting
(plus, a bonus link from me to you: my favorite tag, above left).
web zen home, web zen store, Discuss (Thanks, Frank) [Boing Boing Blog]
7:21:04 AM
comment [] trackback [] Chris Pirillo... "Gnomedex is gonna be the most blogged conference... ever." [The Scobleizer Weblog]
7:13:59 AM
comment [] trackback [] GeoPing [Daypop Top 40]
7:00:09 AM
comment [] trackback [] Read On.
I was about to address this post to anyone visiting from today's ABA Journal eReport article on lawyer blogs, then remembered that eReport articles supply no hyperlinks...
No matter, if you went to the extra effort of finding Bag and Baggage through a search engine (or if you followed an inbound link from a Web page that by definition would have somewhat less on the eBall than a bona fide eReport), and are curious to read what people much smarter than I have to say about relationships between the Web, organizations, individuals, and society, then by all means please visit, buy, and/or sign up for:
- World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else
- Cluetrain, the Manifesto
- Cluetrain, the Book
- Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
- Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
- Up2Speed
- Up2Speed's Business Weblogs—The Big List, and the weblogs there referenced
- BloggingWorks
- John Lawlor
- And just to wake you up and blow your mind, the first interview since May '02 with the "gentle person with a piercing vision" and Cluetrain co-author who started me down this rosy path, including the outline for his book-in-process, and more allusions and illusions—literary, psychosocial, philosophical and I'm leaving some out—than you can shake a Dali at.
- [Update] Bad on me for initially omitting Robert Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto too.
6:57:11 AM
comment [] trackback [] Things They've Learned: Why bother figuring out universal truths for yourself when someone else has already done it for you. Find out how a neurotic comedian, a sausage magnate, a genome decoder, and the world's most famous nuclear power plant safety inspector distill life's truths into twenty or so insightful and humorous statements. [MetaFilter]
6:32:07 AM
comment [] trackback [] Scott Rosenberg: "The only thing I could reasonably predict, going into this project, was how thoroughly unpredictable the range of bloggers and blogging would be." [Scripting News]
4:55:00 AM
comment [] trackback [] Amazon is offering an RSS interface. Not sure how to find all the feeds. They have an example feed for top-selling DVDs. [Scripting News]
4:51:32 AM
comment [] trackback [] Crimson: Harvard to House Blog Standards. [Scripting News]
4:48:52 AM
comment [] trackback [] The coming wonderworld - Technorati: Christopher Lydon in introducing his interview with Dave Sifry: "Technorati is for me the simplest clearest sketch we have of the coming wonderworld..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
2:25:42 AM
comment [] trackback [] Stacy Cowley on Blogathon: "This year, 545 participants have enlisted, with US$56,000 pledged so far. At 6 a.m. Pacific time Saturday, they'll embark upon 24 hours of blogging..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:46:38 AM
comment [] trackback [] Clare Booth Luce. "Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there." [Quotes of the Day]
12:37:16 AM
comment [] trackback [] Friday, July 25, 200311:47:30 PM
comment [] trackback [] douglas adams mp3 audio archive ... "The Douglas Adams media archive is presented here by the wi2600.org groups for your enjoyment. This allso is to serve as a tribute to Mr. Adams's great, but suddely shortened career. Those who have not heard his voice and those who know it well will both enjoy having this material available. We will miss him!" [MetaFilter]
4:51:23 AM
comment [] trackback [] Semantic Blogalization. Blogalization turns up in Hewlett-Packard's Semantic Blogging Demonstrator. [Blogalization Community]
4:47:14 AM
comment [] trackback [] Cringely Proposes a Music Sharing Alternative. WEFUNK writes "The I, Cringely 'Pulpit' column at PBS presents an interesting idea for a new business model to take on the RIAA. He suggests that a publicly ... [Slashdot]
4:38:57 AM
comment [] trackback [] You think it's moving but it's not..
You think it's moving but it's not. [MetaFilter]
2:44:41 AM
comment [] trackback [] Bubble, bubble, who's got my bubble?. And you thought real bubble wrap was fun this digital bubble wrap never runs out and is 17% more awesometacular! Manic mode turns that fun knob way up past 11. Hot damn. [MetaFilter]
2:42:54 AM
comment [] trackback [] Buzz narrowly escapes his 15 minutes of fame. Today's NY Times story on back channels at conferences has provoked lots of interesting commentary around the web today. One tidbit to pass along. The story includes the archetypal conference blogging story of the impact of Doc Searls and Dan Gillmor sharing a link from Both "forwarded by a reader in Florida." If you want the story behind the story, go check out Buzz Bruggeman's blog buzzmodo. Buzz was that "reader in Florida" and he describes his near 15 minutes of fame. [McGee's Musings]
2:05:49 AM
comment [] trackback [] Netomat .."introduces two-way personal multimedia communication."
netomat is XML and Java based and built upon open formats, standards and protocols, more technical users can author directly in nml, our powerful and intuitive new XML dialect.
[thanks to the druids over at Industrial Technology & Witchcraft]
1:46:37 AM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, July 24, 200311:40:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] "SlashDoc"
11:38:36 PM
comment [] trackback [] google advanced news search. Give Google's Advanced News Search a go if you haven't tried it yet.... [tingilinde]
1:13:30 PM
comment [] trackback [] "Saving the Net". The editor of LinuxJournal, Doc Searls, has a very interesting article about how regulation in the telecommunications and broadcast industries is leaking its way into the Internet. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs]
5:46:34 AM
comment [] trackback [] Happiness is a new RSS application from Wired News. [Scripting News]
5:42:54 AM
comment [] trackback [] When Oliver Willis talks the blogosphere listens. Oliver makes the mainstream media! [MetaFilter]
5:35:47 AM
comment [] trackback [] George Siemens does a lot of work on his weblog, but still writes/points to interesting things:
- The Whole Picture of Elearning (check this one because visual is much better than words describes "the whole picture")
- Edubloggers list
- Computer Programs for Social Network Analysis
- Data Mining Email to Discover Social Networks and Communities of Practice
5:30:10 AM
comment [] trackback [] Nanotech newsletter goes blog. Josh Wolfe, who edits a Forbes newsletter on nanotech, has started a blog where you can read over his shoulder as he pieces together his editions.
Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
4:54:17 AM comment [] trackback []
My Radio Trackback Test Message in a packet ... tried pinging this post, but no luck - now trying this one
Wait... both did in fact work - albeit with a script error here and there - auto-discover has got to be a tough nut to crack.
1:14:04 AM comment [] trackback []
Wednesday, July 23, 200311:52:14 PM
comment [] trackback [] Homage to Blogalonia. George Orwell's wartime columns have much in common with today's blogs: They were often trivial and idiosyncratic, but bore within them the seeds of something greater. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
1:00:46 PM
comment [] trackback [] Jim Coudal: "We have not built a web site in the last year for a client that in some way did not incorporate blogging technology." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
2:42:59 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tuesday, July 22, 200311:33:54 PM
comment [] trackback [] "A lot of what we do in blogging is more like prophesy about what is going to be, than commentary on what is right now [~] at least for some of us." [The Doc Searls Weblog]
9:57:20 PM
comment [] trackback [] Thoughts on micro-content, metadata and trends. My investors, my readers and a variety of other people keep trying to get me to explain what I'm interested and why I'm interested in it. Here's a first shot at this. Thanks to Steph, Kevin Marks and others on #joiito for a first pass edit. I've put it on the wiki as well so we can continue to work on this. [Joi Ito's Web Lite]
9:48:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] Jonathan Peterson: "The same tools and technologies that are empowering Amateur content creation are also empowering the next generation of entrepeneurs." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
8:09:33 PM
comment [] trackback [] More on weblogs in business.
Thomas Burg points to B- Blogs Listing (see also for I-Blog Discussion List) and BloggingWorks Workshops. Business blogs world is speeding up. [Mathemagenic]
6:29:38 PM comment [] trackback []
The Sharer of Secrets - Anonymous Blogging
The Village Voice had a very nice long piece on anonymous blogging that hangs on the story of Hasidic Rebel using an anonymous blogging tool called Invisiblog. Invisiblog uses GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network which allow blogging without any need to divulge identity.
"Political activists, independent journalists, whistleblowersâo[per thou]anyone who is prevented from publishing by repressive laws or threats of violence" can benefit from covert-blogging software, writes Charles Farley of Invisiblog. Indeed, over the past year, online diarists in Cuba, Iran, and Tunisia have been jailed for publishing. Like these writers, Yeedel and several other Hasidic bloggers have put their lifestyle, if not their lives, on the line with their contentious chronicles.
Interestingly much of the writing on invisiblog blogs is much more about emotions and feelings than politics or revolution. It feels stragely like evesdropping on a phychiatric session instead of listening to a bullhorn-wielding, masked anarchist.
[By way of BoingBoing]
[Corante: Amateur Hour]5:57:05 PM
comment [] trackback [] Beginner's guide to trackback. Old news to most here, but with even Radio Userland now implementing the technology, trackback has the potential to be another kind of spam, with gratuitous self-links popping up all over the place. When everyone can blog, will the Blogosphere be the next victim of Usenet's neverending September? Whether providing "community support" or "publishing tool", how long before popular bloggers are forced to implement Bayesian trackback filters? [MetaFilter]
5:44:58 PM
comment [] trackback [] Assessing 'The Mac Factor'. To keep tabs on one of Microsoft's key adversaries/partners, we've amassed all our Mac-related news and commentaries in a single spot. Check out the Microsoft Watch 'The Mac Factor' page. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
5:29:03 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Feed Icon.
I replaced the 
icon used for RSS feed with 
from Bryan Bell. Thanks to Brian for creating this wonderful icon! I did shrink the image down a bit so it can line up with the coffee mug icon. I hope you like it. Now only if there was a bigger icon for Mail. I want a red tomato with a mail stuck in it. BTW, you are welcome to my shrunk version of the icon.
5:24:53 PM
comment [] trackback [] When Bloggers Meet.
It is trouble when bloggers meet. It's like a convention for spinsters. Uh, can I blog that? Blah blah, oh, don't blog about this stuff. Hey, I am getting a headache!
So I propose some rules for bloggers and non-bloggers. If you are not a blogger and you are talking to a blogger, make it clear what is off-the-record. If you are a blogger and you are talking to another blogger, everything is off-the-record unless you say it is on-the-record. Why? Because the blogger whose blab you are gonna blog about could have blogged about it himself when and if he wants to.
[Don Park's Daily Habit]5:19:12 PM
comment [] trackback [] If I could be Steve for a day..... Don't take this too seriously, okay? But since Guy and I were talking about stuff, and it turned into a little chat about blueskying future technologies... [Teal Sunglasses]
5:15:17 PM
comment [] trackback [] »Blogs are the democratisation of publishing«. BBC: A blog for everyone. »You know a web trend has reached a high pitch of popularity when AOL starts including it in its basic software. But can blogs be truly mainstream?« [Der Schockwellenreiter]
5:06:19 PM
comment [] trackback [] Martin Rölls tägliche kostenlose Consulting-Lektion. Heute: Link or Die. Rat für Weblogplattform-Betreiber. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
5:03:29 PM
comment [] trackback [] InfoWorld: Debate over RSS. [John Robb's Weblog]
4:47:23 PM
comment [] trackback [] Monday, July 21, 2003This is the mark of the people who don't approve of Bush's plan to control the world, who don't want countries 'liberated' without UN backing, who can't stand anymore neo-con bravado shoved down their throats.
This is the mark of the people who want the Kyoto Protocol for the environment, who want the International Criminal Court for greater justice, who want a world where all nations, including the U.S.A., are free of weapons of mass destruction, and who pledge to take their country back.
![[Image 'http://www.adbusters.org/home/images/2003_07_04/unbrand.gif' cannot be displayed]](http://www.adbusters.org/home/images/2003_07_04/unbrand.gif "xxx")
Take the pledge and spread the meme." Adbusters [Follow Me Here...]
12:32:10 AM comment [] trackback []
Sunday, July 20, 20038:58:09 AM
comment [] trackback [] Scott Johnson: "Feedster now understands CC syntax." [Scripting News]
2:40:24 AM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, July 19, 20034:04:25 AM
comment [] trackback [] SecurityFocus' Scott Granneman: "Blogs: Another Tool in the Security Pro's Toolkit." [The Scobleizer Weblog]
3:37:20 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wired News: Blogging for Bucks [Daypop Top 40]
3:14:31 AM
comment [] trackback [] Top-notch newly discovered blogs.
A few great blogs have emerged in recent months, and I didn't get around to introducing them on Seb's Open Research. Here they are.
- Paul Resnick's Sabbatical Musings - First rate thinking about reputation systems, online economics, and social capital. Examples: these two posts on Global Organizing of Local Activity
- Richard Soderberg's Floating Atoll - Nuggets of wisdom on social software. Example: Lawmobs.
- Eugene Eric Kim's EEK Speaks - Enlightened discourse on collaboration processes and tools. Examples: this post on the possible link between synchronous communication and motivation (an a-ha moment for me), and Whining in Private.
- Dave Pollard's How to Save the World - mindful, visionary musings on the interaction between social nets and knowledge management, and the experience of being human. Example: Well, every friggin' post over there is worth reading. Just pick one at random.
2:52:20 AM
comment [] trackback [] Blinkenlights @ Chaos Communication Camp 2003. cavac writes "From 07.-10. August, we from the Chaos Computer Club have another Chaos Communication Camp. Please be sure to visit us at the BlinkenArea, a ... [Slashdot]
12:35:16 AM
comment [] trackback [] We'll never be able to say that we never saw it coming... Eyes in the Skies. Southeast Airlines has plans to install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of its planes to record the faces and activities of its passengers at all times. Furthermore, the charter airline will store the digitized video for up to 10 years. And it may use face recognition software to match faces to names and personal records. [MetaFilter]
12:11:22 AM
comment [] trackback [] Friday, July 18, 2003
As someone who has been working on a new RSS 2.0 spec at SSF-DEV, I'm glad to see it moving to a community development model. There are a lot of implementors and users who are eager to participate, as evidenced by the 39 people who have joined SSF-DEV in the last month. [Workbench]
11:57:27 PM comment [] trackback []
David Galbraith on Technorati's new feature: "Over the longer term, this is perhaps as ground breaking as what weblogs have done for web publishing and ultimately will leverage the weblog model to its full potential..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
11:49:25 PM comment [] trackback []
CultureBlogging.
The Arts Journal has launched a group of blogs (About Last Night - Terry Teachout on Arts in New York City, Artful Manager - Andrew Taylor on the business of art & culture, and Seeing Things - Todi Tobias on dance) by seeking out some of their favorite culture writers and getting them set up to blog. One of the biggest complaints about the blogosphere is the quality of content that is beging created. While creating a blog surely isn't rocket science, it is far from simple for someone who is a complete computer-phobe.
We're all aware of the tendency of technology periodicals to launch blogs and the quality of their work has had a great effect on the timeliness and interactivity of their work. At the same time traditional news media has had a tendency to shut down blogging by their journalists in some kind of un-enlightened intellectual property crackdown. But there is a huge world of opinion and knowledge that is under-represented at best in the blogosphere. AOL will be bringing blogs to the masses, this eternal September will be mitigated by Google, technorati and other gestaltic tools to some extent, but who is bringing interesting voices into the conversation.
Dave Winer is blog-enabling Harvard and it seems that some sort of coordination of efforts might help various blogophiles connect with voices that are currently under-represented and help get them running. With all the chirpiness over various techy blog standards, this is something that everyone who wants to see blogs matter shold be able to get behind.
How might we organize efforts to broaden the culture of the blogosphere - dicuss
[Corante: Amateur Hour]12:18:44 PM
comment [] trackback [] Online Expert: More Newspaper Blogs, Please. Michelle Nicolosi of the Online Journalism Review says mroe reporters should do blogs. "Working on them should be optional --... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
12:11:38 PM
comment [] trackback [] Hugh Hewitt on newspapers : "[They] refuse to read the map that is in front of their noses. âo[oe] The wise editor would instead allow the battle of the blogs to throw up champions and then ink them to multiyear commentary deals." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
11:04:05 AM
comment [] trackback [] HasidicRebel. The Hasidic Rebel. A blogger from inside the Hasidic community provides some insight into a lifestyle few are familiar with. [MetaFilter]
10:59:38 AM
comment [] trackback [] Dear Mr. President:. The White House has a new system for email from the public. Dashing off a rant, a rave or a question to president@whitehouse.gov won't cut it anymore. Now it takes a maze of forms and clicks and filters. The first question: is this a supportive message or a differing opinion? Then you have to pick your topic from various menu lists. And list a name and address and email. And reply to an automated message making sure it's really your email. White House tech guy tells the NYTimes: "When it comes to a Web site, it's a bit like a movie. Some will say it's a tour de force; some will say it fell flat." Fun Fact: all emails are saved and must be publicly disclosed in 12 years. [MetaFilter]
10:57:52 AM
comment [] trackback [] HELP!blog. From the creators of itown, itopik, and iteople, the HELP!blog is a “simple way to connect people who have a need with people who can give some help.” [ranchero.com]
10:52:28 AM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, July 17, 20032:53:22 AM
comment [] trackback [] Blogging the Blogathon.
Blogathon 2003
'During the Blogathon, people update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. For this, they collect sponsorships. Pledges can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake.' Even if you just want to enjoy the spectacle, mark your calendar for July 26th. Everything starts at 6:00am Pacific Time.Also noteworthy is the fact that several of the participating bloggers are earning money for Book Aid International, which works to provide books, training and support to public libraries in Africa." [Libraryman]
A few people have asked if I am going to participate in this year's Blogathon, but I won't be able to because I'll be on vacation far, far away from any internet connection. I encourage others to join, though. We need a list of library bloggers we can sponsor, so leave a comment if you know of any.
[The Shifted Librarian]2:05:14 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, says that the architecture of blogs conforms to the way we organize things and that email clients will follow blogs' lead: "Imagine keeping e-mail a bit more like a blog. Then suddenly, you've got instant messaging qualities and e-mail qualities happening at the same time." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
1:21:48 AM
comment [] trackback [] 126 and counting. Welcome to my readers from Macau. You are from the 126th nation or territory this website reached in 2003 so... (30 words, 2 comment(s).) [hebig.org/blog]
12:00:44 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wednesday, July 16, 2003A call for bloggers in The Netherlands! I have been thinking with Lilia Efimova and Ton Zijlstra about getting bloggers together during the holidays and get to meet the people behind the blogs...we're thinking about doing something fun and informal, perhaps a picknick, on a Saturday?[Mathemagenic]
Who is in? Go to the comments field of this entry and let us know who you are, where you live and what period would best suit you. If you cannot attend, syndicate this entry to your blog or email your blogofriends.
Of course, it's going to a be a Dutch treat! And: you don't have to actually have a blog to come. It's going to be fun!
11:50:16 PM
comment [] trackback [] A Wordplay Blog. Here's a group blog with a twist.
Form a sentence from the acronym of the last word found on the latest post. Quirky, funny, nasty, silly, serious, whatever your post may be, the words are yours. Every correct entry gives you 1 point(via Side Salad) Permalink Created Wed, 16 Jul 2003 [The J-Walk Blog]
11:12:22 PM
comment [] trackback [] Information foraging and weblogs as snack-bars.
Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster by Jakob Nielsen
A bit of definition:
Information foraging is the most important concept to emerge from Human-Computer Interaction research since 1993. Developed at the Palo Alto Research Center (previously Xerox PARC) by Stuart Card, Peter Pirolli, and colleagues, information foraging uses the analogy of wild animals gathering food to analyze how humans collect information online.
[Read the middle yourself] and then:
The patch-leaving model thus predicts that visits will become ever shorter. Google and always-on connections have changed the most fruitful design strategy to one with three components:Next to the fact that it's a useful theory for my work, it also calls for some parallels with blogging:
- Support short visits; be a snack
- Encourage users to return; use mechanisms such as newsletters as a reminder
- Emphasize search engine visibility and other ways of increasing frequent visits by addressing users' immediate needs
- Weblogs are rather snack-bars then restaurants: you can come often, find something to eat and leave fast. They are even better: snacks are changing (there is always something new), but the cook is the same, so you can easily get a feeling of cooking style and quality.
- Weblogs use RSS feeds to notify you when something tasty is served (and you can even try it without going there).
- Google loves blogs and brings readers directly to snack they want.
From this perspective the only problem with blog-snack-bar is that once you are there you can hardly find anything beyond the front raw of snacks :)
I also wonder when Jakob Nielsen will write a bit more about weblogs (because there are only 4 pages with this word now and because his Alertbox was a role-model for me when I started my weblog).
[Mathemagenic]7:28:40 PM
comment [] trackback [] Cultural Assumptions in the Wiki World. The grandfather of all wikis on the terms of intercultural conversation. [Blogalization Community]
7:24:13 PM
comment [] trackback [] Chad Dickerson, in raving about blogs: "The flow of RSS content into my newsreader each day has become as important to my personal information flow as e-mail." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
6:44:34 PM
comment [] trackback [] Between bloggers and their employers (2).
From notes of the Voxpolitics event on blogs and politics (I have no idea what it was, you can start digging in from here) [via Cindy Lemcke-Hoong], about Stephen Pollard, "first major journalist in the country to be running a weblog":
And he's not writing for free - people respond to his comments and inspire him to write pieces for which he gets paid.
This simple phrase gets the value of blogging for free - it inspires you to come up with other pieces (with more insight/analysis/depth/structure) to get paid for.
For me it would also draw a border for copyrights: I'd like to "own" my blog (to give it away under Creative Commons) even if it is related to my work, while my company owns more elaborate products (e.g. papers) that can be inspired by it (of course when a company pays me to work on these products :).
In fact I don't like to get paid to blog, because I want the freedom of doing it and I want to own the content. I'm also addicted to blogging enough to think that I would not be happy if I couldn't do it. And I have scary phrases in my contract to worry about these issues :(
[Related: What Does European Law Say About Blog Ownership? (thanks to Martin Roell), Between bloggers and their employers, Bloggers Gain Libel Protection, BlogTalk: who owns narrated experiences?]
[Mathemagenic]6:43:40 PM
comment [] trackback [] One billion ends added.
Miles Yao has translated World of Ends to Chinese. Here it is.
Thanks, Miles!
[The Doc Searls Weblog]6:29:13 PM
comment [] trackback [] Random Numbers Key to Encryption. How two math geeks with a lava lamp and a webcam are about to unleash chaos on the Internet. Tom McNichol from Wired magazine reports. [Wired News]
12:40:03 PM
comment [] trackback [] Steve Gillmor: "Nothing sways me from the notion that RSS is a transcendent technology." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
4:06:02 AM
comment [] trackback [] Portuguese Parliament to government officials: start blogging. BoingBoing pal Jean-Luc from Paris says:
Xeni, I don't know if you've already heard about this, but a new law was just unanimously passed in Portugal by deputies (Projecto Deliberacao number 10/IX) which provides all deputies the option of having their own website or blog (the word weblog is mentioned in the law!). The deputies' blogs will be hosted on the Portuguese Parliament's webserver. The original piece of news, blogged in Portuguese, is here, from July 07, and and I wrote about it here in French.I don't read Portuguese *or* French all that well, and I couldn't locate the law on the Portuguese government's website -- but if any readers have access to English language versions of the news, or care to provide a translation, please post in the Discuss forum! Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
3:42:00 AM
comment [] trackback [] Auch die Münchner Blogger haben jetzt einen Plan. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
3:10:48 AM
comment [] trackback [] FeedsterAds.
Advertising on Feedster
Fully self service, powered by paypal. Should be easy enough to use but if you have problems, let me know.
Interesting. Advertising has certainly been extremely kind to Google. Good look to Scott & company they've certainly put the effort in.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]2:46:55 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tuesday, July 15, 2003Business market, particularly the small business market, is where most of the action and the money will be in the future, not personal blogs. Benefits of blogging technologies, such as ease of update, content syndication, moblogging, audblogging, fotologging, and social networking, will allow small business owners to explode into the web like never before and propell blogging into a day-to-day necessity for survival.
For proper perspective, think about how little hole-in-the-wall stores so common in Asia might use blogging technologies to improve their business. Then scale it up and expand across the globe across language boundaries.
[Don Park's Daily Habit]2:26:55 PM
comment [] trackback [] horsemen ride. Drifiting towards war - "I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous." - Fmr Defense Secretary William Perry [MetaFilter]
2:05:51 PM
comment [] trackback [] About.com reviews RSS News Aggregators. If you've been wondering what RSS is, or what a news aggregator is, this is a good place to start. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
2:01:32 PM
comment [] trackback [] Steve Gillmor: "Back to watching Scoble narrowly escape being fired..." [The Scobleizer Weblog]
1:52:49 PM
comment [] trackback [] Phil Wolff, in predicting the syndicated blogosphere will reach 300 million feeds over the next three years: "I assume AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Terra will turn on blogging tools in the next 18 months, and 10% of the online community (70 million people) become bloggers." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
1:47:50 PM
comment [] trackback [] Stuart Henshall: "Corporate Blogging is just the edge of a revolution that will harness the collective intelligence of organizations in new ways." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
1:47:23 PM
comment [] trackback [] "Not A Dollarshort: AOL Journals" [Daypop Top 40]
1:44:54 PM
comment [] trackback [] Non-profit blogs.
Nice story in Wired News by Katie Dean on the Advocacy Project's use of weblogs to support non-profit activities. They are empowering Interns with blogs to tell stories of their field work.
One of the challenges for a non-profit engaged in educational and technical aid is communicating the problem and how they are solving it in a way that resonates. These very human stories of the experiences impassioned volunteers could only come out directly.
[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging]...Weblogs are an excellent tool for nonprofit organizations, according to Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes Web publishing tools for groups.
"Weblogs are the cheapest way for an individual or organization to communicate," he says. "It's a more natural, human voice than what someone could generate with a press release."
Mayfield says blogs can also help nonprofits keep their donor base and supporters updated. Plus, "there's a wide body of fairly influential and growing body of (weblog) readers that pay attention on a regular basis."
3:46:35 AM
comment [] trackback [] AOL to Introduce Moblogging, Too!.
'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions
"Whatever you call them, the idea is a Web page that people can update frequently with commentary and links to material they find interesting online. Blog software automates posting the commentary, images and links.
AOL will give members three ways to update their blogs -- through an online template with blank boxes for text input, through AOL's instant-messaging system or by telephone. The phone option will be available only to subscribers to the extra-cost "AOL by Phone" service, who will be able to leave voice messages that will be posted as MP3 sound files.
To publish via instant messaging, AOL members will send a text message to an IM software 'bot' -- or automated script -- that will post the message to the user's blog. The IM posting will work only with AOL's internal messaging system, not its free AOL Instant Messenger program. Robinson said this would be a quicker way to publish than navigating to a Web page to type into a form: 'You might have a fleeting thought you want to capture, and you don't want to take the extra few seconds to go and open up the publishing interface.' " [The Washington Post]
More details about AOL's upcoming integration of blogging software into the company's software. I still think this is going to be big, as will the RSS trail that follows. I didn't realize that they are going to integrate pictures, but of course they are because it makes perfect sense. Mo' moblogging down the road.
That idea has me quite intrigued because I've been following Aaron Schmidt's photoblog of pictures sent from his cell phone. It's fascinating to watch his daily life through it. I like that I can see Aaron's friends (none of whom I know), his cute puppy, and snapshots of the places he goes, so I can't imagine how much more enticing it would be to find feeds of photos and blog posts in my aggregator daily. And audio files posted by phone? You mean I could hear my niece in my aggregator? I am so there!
[The Shifted Librarian]3:38:28 AM
comment [] trackback [] Karl-Friedrich Lenz: What Does European Law Say About Blog Ownership?. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
2:11:39 AM
comment [] trackback [] Google Tricks & Tips - Stuff you Bloggers need to know. Steve Covell has a good post on how to use Google to search just blogs, or just law blogs. Inspired by his love of Google (and his specific recommendation) I have purchased Google Hacks, which contains a wealth of information on how use Google productively. [Ernie the Attorney]
1:56:46 AM
comment [] trackback [] Glocalization and Virtual Social Networks. via Blogalization: Glocalization: That's when Asterix takes over for Ronald McDonald but the mystery meat remains the same. Implications for networked individualism and social software design. ... [Channel 'social_software']
1:32:43 AM
comment [] trackback [] Parliament goes wireless for bloggers' summit... [Channel 'social_software']
1:13:13 AM
comment [] trackback [] Announcing The Blog Cooperative. via Web Dawn - Rebirth of the Social Marketplace: I launched a new site today, The Blog Cooperative (www.BlogCoop.com). The idea was inspired by my previous post about liquid democracy in business and by an email conversation with Seyed Razavi, creator of BlogShares. Other inspirations and ideas are from... [Channel 'social_software']
1:06:06 AM
comment [] trackback [] Kathleen Parker: Blogs breaking logjam of journalism [Daypop Top 40]
12:49:39 AM
comment [] trackback [] Terry Teachout on the launch of ArtsJournal's new blogs [Be sure to check them out - they just launched today]: "Here I am, finally. I've been talking about starting an arts blog for the past couple of years, but I never got up the nerve to do the dirty work... So when artsjournal.com kindly offered to do it for me, it took me about three seconds to say yes." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:47:16 AM
comment [] trackback [] Monday, July 14, 200311:58:25 PM
comment [] trackback [] Tom Matrullo: "Bloggging can give us access to portions of what lies beyond what we believe we already know... It's the possibility of Keats' snailhorn sensibility, probing with finesse, what the juggernauts of media crush before they convey." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
11:57:08 PM
comment [] trackback [] Jason Kottke: "Movable Type is the new way to do absolutely everything, BTW.... It checks my vision, does root canals, makes my travel plans, transports me back in time, and balances my checkbook. Even expensive hookers are a thing of the past with Movable Type..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
11:56:26 PM
comment [] trackback [] Adam Greenfield in his wrap-up on the moblogging conference held in Tokyo recently: "I know in my bones that the act of self-publishing material from mobile to devices to a shared global network, and retrieving similarly user-generated material, is going to be one of the defining cultural features of the next few years." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
11:55:30 PM
comment [] trackback [] DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe. D4C5CE writes "The number of European countries enacting their ignorance of the sad experiences from Four Years under the DMCA has just risen to 5, as the ... [Slashdot]
11:27:09 PM
comment [] trackback [] Bloggers take on politicians. Bloggers are going to parliament to encourage more MPs to share their interest and passions on the web. [BBC News | Technology | World Edition]
7:51:29 PM
comment [] trackback [] MacWorld: Put Weblogs to Work. Low-Cost Tools Let You Publish Professional and Personal Sites Instantly. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
6:26:03 PM
comment [] trackback [] Sunday, July 13, 2003
(via Oblomovka) [Boing Boing Blog]
3:53:28 AM comment [] trackback []
Blogs will fade away.
I woke up yesterday with these thought.
Blogs will fade away within two years. What we know now as blogs will not be recognized by web users of tommorrow. Website technologies and blogging technologies are on a converging path and will soon be indistinguishable from one another.
RSS will also disappear in favor of subscriptions. People will take it for granted that webpages can be subscribed to. Web browsers will be changed to support single-click webpage subscription. No mess, no fuss. Throw in client-side highlighting of changes as well. No RSS, no Echo, just subscriptions.
[Don Park's Daily Habit]3:36:41 AM
comment [] trackback [] New pages for gzip and user agent id reports. I've taken my reports on Aggregators that support gzip and Aggregators that don't implement RFC 2616, Sec 3.8 product tokens and broken them out into separate pages, so the people won't have to go trawling through the blog to find them. [Ted Leung on the air]
3:13:18 AM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, July 12, 2003In his forward to the recent Reporters Without Borders report on the state of internet censorship, Vint Cerf, widely regarded as the "father of the Internet," calls for web users to exercise their critical thinking skills when accessing online information. (SearchEngineWatch) [STOP1984]
5:48:07 AM
comment [] trackback [] Iran Joins China in Blocking Blogs. Hoder: July 9 Unrest, Updates. Confirmed reports are saying that akunews (prominent student news website) and major blogging services websites... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
5:41:30 AM
comment [] trackback [] Another Funny Google Search Result. Anthony Cox created nifty bit of modern mythology by gaming Google to turn up a hilarious "I'm Feeling Lucky" result... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
5:38:18 AM
comment [] trackback [] Rheingold Preaches Mob-Logging. drjparker writes "Howard Rheingold author of Smart Mobs and The Virtual Community among other works has an article in the Online Journalism Review in which he ... [Slashdot]
5:34:45 AM
comment [] trackback [] Cringely On Electronic Tapping. sckienle writes "Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one, has an editorial discussing electronic wire-tapping and the Big Brother concerns. There isn't any new ... [Slashdot]
5:33:39 AM
comment [] trackback [] Psychedelia from yesterday and today. Bob Masse's Rock Posters ~ Thirty-five years of poster art by one of North America's premier poster artists. [MetaFilter]
5:22:02 AM
comment [] trackback [] Salon: From June 10, 1999; Can history survive Silicon Valley? [Tomalak's Realm]
4:57:39 AM
comment [] trackback [] Ultra-liberal feed parser.
This is an ultra-liberal feed parser, suitable for reading RSS and Pie feeds as produced by weblogs, news sites, wikis, and many other types of sites.
4:34:06 AM
comment [] trackback [] On the vine
I'm opening the doors today on a new project -- something I'm doing on the side, not affiliated with Salon -- called Storyvine. It's a themed blog, focusing on digital storytelling -- the description is "the digital storytelling grapevine." Here's the mission statement: "I've got two goals for this blog: First, by providing timely news and links I hope to provide a useful service to the existing community that has formed around the idea of digital storytelling over the last decade or so, since the first Digital Storytelling Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado, in 1995. Second, I hope to help people who are curious about this phenomenon get a clearer handle on what it is, and where to find out more."
I intend to update it as regularly as there's news, information, links or thoughts that are of interest to the people who are interested in this subject. Come visit. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]
4:28:16 AM comment [] trackback []
Aggregators a go-go.
Aggregator Traffic Stats. Inspired by hebig's post on the subject, I ran the user agent numbers for my RSS feeds (last 30 ...... [LaughingMeme]
There is some question about what the stats actually mean (unique IP's vs. requests) but it was interesting just to see how many aggregator agents there are now. NetNewsWire still appears to be the firm favourite.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]4:10:47 AM
comment [] trackback [] Friday, July 11, 2003Part 1: On Mens Hairpieces and Web Design [Daypop Top 40]
4:03:37 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Mythical Quest , an old exhibition at the British Library. 'Throughout the world, tales have always been told of heroes and heroines embarking on perilous quests in search of lost loved ones, the secret of immortality, earthly paradise or simply great riches. Many of these stories have elements in common, such as clashes with monsters, battles with the elements, interventions by the gods and tests of moral character, mental cunning and physical strength. These tales have been expressed in songs, literature, art and dance for thousands of years, and are still being reinterpreted today in books, comic strips, interactive games and adventure films.'
More British Library exhibits here, from early Indian photography to the secret life of maps.
Examples of mythical quests :- Monkey: Journey to the West (another version here, not to mention the TV series); the Ramayana (and the Ramakian, the Thai version); Cupid and Psyche at the Classics Pages (subject of a previous thread); the Holy Grail (more at the Catholic Enyclopaedia); the journey of Alexander the Great; Pilgrim's Progress and John Bunyan; the world of Dante and a map of Hell. [MetaFilter]
4:00:00 PM
comment [] trackback [] "Winds of Change.NET: July 9 Carnival of the Liberties" [Daypop Top 40]
3:43:54 PM
comment [] trackback [] "blogosphere.us" [Daypop Top 40]
3:40:08 PM
comment [] trackback [] Outsider Blogs Paint Bosnian Life. Interns working in Bosnia are using their blog journals to call attention to Bosnian families with stories of everyday experiences. The interns are with Bosfam, an advocacy organization supporting displaced Bosnian women and refugees. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
2:25:16 PM
comment [] trackback [] Shared transcripts for the masses.
Blogs in the Workplace.
An NY Times article on weblogs in business that somehow missed Socialtext ;-(
..."People are starting to use Web logs to archive data that would have otherwise been lost," Mr. Tang said. He noted that much of the company's internal communications had been via instant messaging [~] and was lost as soon as the correspondents closed their chat windows. Now, though, employees are starting to post transcripts of relevant discussions on the Web logs, he said.
"It's not just making life more convenient," Mr. Tang said, "but actually giving us something new we didn't have before."
[via Scripting News]
This would seem to support the argument for IM-to-blog as a useful publishing metaphor. Although I wonder how well it can be made to work in practice: I can think of few IM conversations that I would want to appear on a blog unedited. Perhaps there is a middle-step.
An interesting approach to this, for me, would be the idea of a shared transcript editor. Roughly what I have in mind is a 3rd participant in the conversation (a bot of some kind) which records what is said. When the conversation is over it sends (via IM) both participants a link to a shared transcript editing page. Once the participants have agreed the final transcript it then blogs it to both their weblogs.
Of course all of this sounds like it would work much more seamlessly as a Groove application.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]12:43:49 AM
comment [] trackback [] Needle in a Haystack.
Haystack. Haystack, the universal information client. Errr, help. This is looking very much like what I need, but wrapping it up in a client side only app is not going to work. Mind you, after five years of writing web apps, I can honestly understand why they went with a client side app. Writing web apps is a PITA. Anyways, I must read the papers, the docs, and download this sucker. [Brett Morgan's
Insanity WeblogZilla]
This looks interesting.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]12:41:24 AM
comment [] trackback [] iteople.com. iteople.com is a brand-new “directory for organizing blogs by people.” It’s a companion to itown.com and itopik.com. [ranchero.com]
12:32:29 AM
comment [] trackback [] Switcherooting.
Ubergeek's latest: Hairy Blogger and the Flying Matrix.
I want to see a "Swith to Blogging" to match Ubergeek's "Switch to Linux", "Switch to Mac" and "IntelliToast".
Bonus link: My interview with Ubergeek at Linux Journal.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]12:30:56 AM
comment [] trackback [] Justin Hall, in reporting on the First International Moblogging Conference held in Tokyo the other day: "All the fun of posting pictures from phones is a polite rehearsal for the incredible social upheaval that moblogging could bring or join." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:23:51 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wrappers, injectors, and writing tools.
I gather that this way of representing my RSS feed is ready to declare victory over this way. Wake me up when it's over. At the end of the day, any XML metadata wrapper around the content of our blog entries will do the job, and it's trivial to transform one flavor of wrapper to another. If there were no legacy to consider, it'd be a toss-up as to which I'd prefer. Since there is a legacy, I'd rather preserve it, but that's a complicated matter about which too much has been said, and I'm only one of many voices.
... [Jon's Radio] 12:19:26 AM
comment [] trackback [] Feed validator. There's a new RSS validator in town. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
12:11:02 AM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, July 10, 200311:57:31 PM
comment [] trackback [] Weblogging is merging with...?. Phil Wolf comments on my earlier note about the number of technologies one can cope with predictions about merging between e-mail and blogging clients. As usual, it worth reading as a whole, so just a short teaser:
A prediction:The vendors who dominate messaging will shape blogging. AOL and Microsoft have fat clients, web clients, and chat clients. Watch them:
- Bring blogging into their messaging family.
- Absorb blogging user and group digital IDs into their identity mechanisms.
- Offer faceted blogs (everyone sees just what they're intended to see and not what they don't want to see) using digital ID. You're not part of their ID world? No facets.
- Push blogging into all their customer touch points (voice, SMS/iMode, handhelds, desktop software, etc.)
- Fold blogging community servers (the Technoratis and Popdexes) into email and search servers.
- Offer tools for good citizenship (i.e. censorship, filtering) via community servers.
I'm not recommending this, mind you. I just have a hard time imagining a sustainable alternative scenario.
See also Corante: Social software - More on merging IM and Blogging
[Mathemagenic]11:55:02 PM
comment [] trackback [] Quick links.
- unScripted @ macscripter.net
- OpenSymphony Wiki :: WebWork CookBook
- OpenSymphony - WebWork Documentation
- JavaScript 1.3 Client Reference
- Bookmarklets - Navigation tools
- rc3.org | Wrong in so many ways
- tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog: Into the ether...
1:53:55 PM
comment [] trackback [] Westminster blogger hits the spot. Labour MP Tom Watson becomes an internet hit after urging young people to "cut it with the bling bling". [BBC News | Technology | World Edition]
1:34:20 PM
comment [] trackback [] "hamburg.blogplan.de" [Daypop Top 40]
1:30:26 PM
comment [] trackback [] TrackBack for Radio. You've got ping . Third-party TrackBack in Radio . markpasc.org Matt Mower's Python TrackBack server for Radio (and ACLs i... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]
1:27:19 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Dark Side of the Rainbow. The Synchronicity Archives includes the well known synchronization of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with a viewing of The Wizard of Oz, as well as other entertaining combinations. Has anyone tried Led Zeppelin and Lord of the Rings ? [MetaFilter]
1:20:19 PM
comment [] trackback [] Simon Phipps' response, as reported by David Weinberger, to Dan Gillmor's question "What are the unitended consequences of weblogging?": "I know everything bad Dave Winer has ever said about anyone." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
4:53:33 AM
comment [] trackback [] The Guardian cites the generic blogger as one of the 100 most influential voices in media in the UK: "Underestimate their power at your peril. Just ask former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines... Expect more scalps to follow." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
4:51:44 AM
comment [] trackback [] Bowman reshapes Path. Next time some ill informed person declares that clean, structural XHTML markup and CSS layout are of no use to a "real" designer, show that fool Doug Bowman’s sensitive, nuanced, and altogether pleasing redesign of the Adaptive Path website, which launched last night. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
4:41:06 AM
comment [] trackback [] Ye Olde OS Poll: observations [Ars Technica]
4:18:47 AM
comment [] trackback [] How to Use Feedster's Trusted Search Feature. This post is dedicated to Ross Mayfield from Social Text. Ross was talking to me last night about Micah Alpern's "Trusted Search" concept which has actually been in Feedster for some time but is not widely used.
The idea here is that I don't want to search everything in Feedster but just the blogs I read i.e. the ones I search. This relies on you having an OPML file of the blogs that you read. This is produced by some but not all news aggregators. For example Radio produces one that is always stored in the location /blog/gems/mySubscriptions.opml. Feedster has the ability to read your opml file from any URL and then use to restrict your search.
Here's how to do this:
- Go to Feedster's Advanced Search page
- In the OPML field add the url to your OPML. Here's the url to Ross' OPML: http://radio.weblogs.com/0114726/gems/mySubscriptions.opml
- In the Search field add what you want to find (use wiki for example).
- Here's the result (305 results).
- If you didn't use the OPML then here's the result (5,000+ hits)
4:15:25 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wednesday, July 09, 2003A quick and dirty implementation in php that parses a basic RSS feed and turns it into a basic necho one. This is just a toy for your enjoyment but here it is: RSS2necho implementation. If you want to point it to your own feed, just include the feed after the rss2necho/ part of the url and you're done. It's very rough and if you want a copy of source (largely a lift of someone else's code (attibution is in the php comments) revised for my own purpose), drop me a note....[The TNL.net weblog]
10:19:50 PM
comment [] trackback [] Independent days. The ever eloquent John Gruber discusses the nature and advantages of independent websites in a longish column that's worth savoring and bookmarking. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
6:01:25 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Map Room. Finally... something good has come from a newsfilter post! In a trackback to a recent post on something-or-other (aren't they all the same?) I discovered a gem of a site dedicated to maps.[MetaFilter]
5:57:00 PM
comment [] trackback [] TypePad is a go. My TypePad weblog is live and thanks to design help from Mena, it "feels" like this blog, but is light and clean. Let me know what you think. I'm considering making TypePad my main blog. I'll cross post for awhile, but lets keep the comments on this blog so I can keep them in one place until I do the final export. [Joi Ito's Web Lite]
3:56:21 PM
comment [] trackback [] Vox Populi: Web Services From the Grassroots. In Rich Salz's latest column, he examines the effort to redefine simply site syndication, claiming that it's already technically superior to RSS 2.0. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
2:12:58 PM
comment [] trackback [] Blog Easy. Yet another weblog hoster [Der Schockwellenreiter]
2:10:11 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Subscriptions Harmonizer. Dave Winer's RSS subscriptions harmonizer is an outstanding idea. I hope it sees some rapid support. As anyone who's ever played around with different aggregators knows, there is a considerable investment of time in getting all your subscriptions loaded and organized -- even if there is an import wizard. A harmonizing web service will be a major boon to RSS usage across both business and personal arenas.
Now, can we do it without the tech community turning it into a goat rodeo?
subs harmonizer. I've been tracking Dave's work on his subscriptions harmonizer. I haven't delved into all the details yet, but It seems to me this is the perfect tool for weblogs in a place of business.[b.cognosco]If a group of people within a company synchronize their RSS subscriptions with a harmonizer, a single weblog page can be generated on the fly that represents the interests of the entire group. Powerful mojo. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
1:59:24 PM
comment [] trackback [] Five Key Questions About Business Blogs. E-mail marketing outfit MarketingProfs.com has published an article on business blogging geared to the e-mail marketer. Little new here to those who are well-versed in the blogoshpere, but it is an interesting look into the minds of those who have, until now, relied on e-newsletters and other e-communications as their primary communications vehicles.
[...] Put it this way: scarcely 10 years ago you might have asked, [base "]Will email replace the phone, fax and postal mail as the preferred means of business communication?[per thou] Of course, we exclaim in hindsight.[b.cognosco]So might it go with blogs. [More...]
1:56:22 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Emerging Sixth Estate.
Blogging News
An emerging sixth estate in Global governance and influence is arising - the blogosphere. In this article I argue the case for the blgosophere being an emerging sixth estate rather than being an extension of the fourth estate - mass media. Some of you are perhaps sniggering and questioning "Blogs a power? Those personal journals that contain personal thoughts, journals about looking after kids, and personal biased crap?" Yes, these personal journals are becoming a real influence in global governance. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines]
1:27:52 PM
comment [] trackback [] 10,000 reasons to read Adam Curry. Adam Curry has revealed an interesting investment he made in UserLand 18 months ago: He paid $10,000 for his weblog to be included in Radio's default RSS subscriptions. Now he thinks the Echo Project's work is undoing his canny marketing:
I will again invest $10k in aggregator default placements this year, but I will spread it around, to all developers who adhere to RSS2.0. Include (N)echo and you're out of luck.
I don't understand his concern. If an aggregator can read a format, so can its users. Radio could dump RSS 2.0 for another format overnight and Curry would still get what he paid for: a built-in audience of aggregator users.
This deal is likely to take some heat because it was never disclosed to Radio users that Curry bought his way onto the list. Though I'm surprised to learn this, Web browsers have been selling positions in their default bookmarks for years. [Workbench]
1:16:22 PM comment [] trackback []
Revolution in Iran.
A revolution is in the making in Iran tonight organized by young Iranians fighting for freedom. Tommorrow, July 9th, is going to be a date to remember in Iranian history, hopefully start of the path to freedom.
Tommorrow, we'll find out if those ellipses are blood drops for young Iranians and tear drops for rest of the world.
[Don Park's Daily Habit]1:05:47 PM
comment [] trackback [] Welcome, AOL. Seriously.
The imminent arrival of AOL and its users in the blogosphere has now been widely noted. Being late to the party due to blowing off for the long weekend, I'll just toss in a few observations from my past in the online services world:
Clay Shirky's post highlights the likelihood that AOL's implementation will lean toward the community, rather than light weight publishing, side of blogging. This makes sense for a couple of reasons:
Historically, what was originally QuantumLink and later America Online grew by attracting underserved, dispersed communities such as gays and seniors, and connecting them online. While this may have been deleted from the official genesis legend, these genes may still lurk in the DNA of the big media company of today.
Pragmatically, a community approach is more likely to create switching costs for AOL's blog users. Start with the hassle of moving a tightly knit group to another service. Consider what other features might be enabled if the users are all authenticated within the AOL network. Higher switching costs translate directly to lower churn numbers for AOL subscribers, which is becoming more important to the company as the market for Internet access and aggregation saturates.
One point of marketing dissonance appears in Jeff Jarvis' otherwise excellent discussion of the AOL entry:
But AOL -- and every other online business -- also has a strategic challenge to make sure that they stay ahead of where weblogs are headed.Wrongo. AOL's subscribers are now mid- to late-adopters. AOL is now a market follower, not leader. Evidence, from Shirky:
For example, they are calling the product "Journal," as only 18% of their audience recognizes the word weblog.
The wider blogosphere will work out the nuances of the medium. AOL will copy what fits their business model and market. [Due Diligence]
12:53:58 PM comment [] trackback []
Vernon Chee shares, in a USA Today piece on blogs, an anecdote about how his mother began tuning in to his blog and called him to say, "Your entries just brought back a lot of memories âo[per thou] a lot of good memories, some bad memories. I'm learning a lot more about you than what I knew before." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:51:52 PM comment [] trackback []
Mitch Ratcliffe on media consumption: "We own our attention, but we contribute to a rich fabric of stuff--some content, some conversation, some conflagration and flame-fest. And, amazingly, we have a voice as large as any media company..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
12:50:49 PM comment [] trackback []
Rise of the blogs:
It's a strange form of legitimacy - perhaps even a coming of age - when a group of internet users are important enough to get their own version of Google. [The Sydney Morning Herald via Six Apart]
12:46:14 PM comment [] trackback []
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Before posting an entry in his personal weblog, Robert Scoble always pauses and considers how he would justify its contents to three people: his boss, his wife and Steve Ballmer." What about me? [Scripting News]
6:23:32 AM comment [] trackback []
"TypePad" [Daypop Top 40]
6:15:58 AM comment [] trackback []
Andrew Sullivan, in criticizing Ann Coulter: "In the ever-competitive marketplace of political ideas - in a world of blogs and talk radio and cable news - it's increasingly hard to stand out." [Corante: Corante on Blogging]
6:14:22 AM comment [] trackback []
Blogs als Tools. Schöne PPT-Präsentation zu Blogs und dem Einsatz als Web-Tools, in diesem Fall geht es um Buch(Lese)-Zirkel. Das PPT-File ... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]
6:10:16 AM comment [] trackback []
Blogs und Unternehmenskommunikation.. Motiviert durch die Plage des internen Unternehmens-Spam etc. hab ich dieses Modell (Weblogs als E-Mail-Backup bzw. Ersatz... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]
6:09:16 AM comment [] trackback []
Howard Dean: Weblogs und Wahlkampf. Tatsächlich beachtliche Geschichte. Dean nutzt Web-Publishing und das Internet Potential des Group-forming . :: Unbe... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]
6:08:23 AM comment [] trackback []
Buttonmania [Der Schockwellenreiter]
6:05:20 AM comment [] trackback []
Language Barriers in BlogLand.
Phil Wolff's blog have many interesting posts about blog related stats. Did you know there are 100,000 polish blogs of which 62% are by women? How about those 12,000 Iranian blogs?
Best find on my first visit today was the reference to great post by Maciej Ceglowski on measuring how high the language barriers are in BlogLand backed up with numbers provided by his crawlers. Posts like that deserves wider distribution that what he got. Pass it on. To entice you, here is the lure:
[Don Park's Daily Habit]"links tend not to cross language boundaries. If you look at all the outgoing links from English language blogs, only about 1.75% point to a non-English weblog. In the reverse direction, however, the figure is much higher. A full 7% of links from non-English-language weblogs point to an English site." - Maciej Ceglowski
6:01:59 AM
comment [] trackback [] Dear Abby tackles blogging issues.
Too funny! [megnut]
5:57:21 AM comment [] trackback []
AOL Shows Blogging Tools; What About MSN?. AOL is demoing its forthcoming blogging tools to a chosen few. What will AOL's move mean to Microsoft? Redmond has yet to announce plans to add blogging tools to its MSN platform. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
5:51:55 AM comment [] trackback []
WebStatistics. WebStatistics [0xDECAFBAD]
5:42:33 AM comment [] trackback []
Quick links.
5:41:16 AM
comment [