When is content management not content management?
When is content management not content management? by Ian Moyse.
June 2001
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June 28, 2001
Microsoft's XP Hardware lockup
Why is it that we are forced into war with the corporations who provide the tools that we need to make a living? Why is this increasingly becoming not the exception, but the norm? Last week, it was Microsoft's Smart Tags; next it will be Windows XP's "product-activation technology."
June 27, 2001
Assimilating the Web
"[T]he carcasses of independent Web start-ups litter the landscape, the once-wild online free-for-all is rapidly devolving into a showdown between AOL and Microsoft. AOL controls the subscriber lists and a huge chunk of the content; Microsoft controls the consumer operating system and browser. Anarchy? No way -- this is a bipolar Cold War, waged with software standards and lawsuits and marketing blitzes." - Scott Rosenberg on Assimilating the Web
Data Over Powerlines?
From the Globe this morning: Your house is set to become a sprawling, and cheap, computer network... "Ninety technology companies — including Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. — are part of a group that announced a major breakthrough Tuesday in the years-long push to use power lines to transmit data. As early as October, consumers in Canada and the United States will be able to use any plug in their house to connect computers to each other and to the Web. No extra wiring will be required."
June 26, 2001
Nortel rumours
While waiting for the Bank Street bus this morning I ran into a friend who has a partner at Nortel, a big employer here in Ottawa, and perhaps the most important single company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. She told me that morale at the company is extremely low right now. A thousand people are being laid off next month just in Ottawa; my friend's partner has had his group cut by 80%. Rumours are circulating that Nortel doesn't have enough money to pay out severance packages, and that laid-off techies are simply abandoning morgaged houses in the west end.
June 23, 2001
A Blog of Note!
I'm quite proud that my tranquileye blog has been named a Blog of Note by the team at Blogger :-) Thanks folks!
Update: Blogger Pete Hopkins has a great entry at Blogger Buzz Concerning the Historie and Nature of Blogs of Note.
Take Me With You
He was 22, and he loved to travel. While sitting on top of a Land Rover in Afghanistan he wrote in his diary: "Someday, when I am rich, I am going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America." It took 27 years, but this month, Brad Newsham made his dream come true.
June 21, 2001
Taming the Data Tangle
Taming the Data Tangle by Mimi Rosenheim: "A major part of developing your intranet should be the plan you communicate to your stakeholders. You'll be asking them to change some of their habits to accommodate your new (and improved) site."
Nathan Shedroff's Experience Design
"While everything is, technically, an experience of some sort, there is something special to many experiences that make them worth discussing. In particular, the elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which makes them designable... These aren't always obvious and, surely, they aren't fool-proof, but it's important to realize that great experiences can be deliberate and based upon some principles that have been proven." more of Nathan Shedroff's Experience Design at WebReference.com ...
RetroMac
From Slashdot: "There's an article over at MacCentral about this years MacHack keynote where all the original creators of the Macintosh got together to talk about OS X and what they think about Steve Jobs. And if the early days of the Mac are too recent for you, Tom Owad writes to say that the Apple I Owners Club, founded in 1977 by Joe Torzewski, is back, along with the most extensive reference to the Apple I in existence. The site contains over 120 pages detailing the Apple I computer.
June 20, 2001
istockphoto.com
Writes Jeffrey Zeldman: "istockphoto.com does wonderful work and gives it away for free. What's the catch? There isn't one... I hope art directors and web designers everywhere will appreciate and use these beautiful images, to enrich their work, and to help spread the word that, on the web at least, beauty is not always for sale."
istockphoto.com
Download stock photos without paying, don't go to jail. Istockphotos.com seems to be offering free stock photography submitted by artists and photographers. And it's endorsed by Zeldman, even. But... what's to keep people from uploading Eyewire images and calling them their own, thereby illegally distributing them to thousands of people who'll use them on websites, magazines, etc. Istockphotos is legally covered, but what about the designer?
June 19, 2001
Have rumours of Navigator's death been exaggerated?
When last we heard, president of Netscape Jim Bankoff was saying that "six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company." Many took that statement, coupled with the lack of acceptance of Netscape 6, to mean that the Netscape browser was dead. But Wired.com is reporting today that rumours of Navigator's death have been exaggerated.
Macromedia Sitespring
Macromedia has something new, called Sitespring, a collaborative tool for building Web sites. It feels like it is still taking a long time for best practices in site creation and content management to find some manifestation in software tools, and that we are still years away from getting our ducks in a row. For example, no mention of WebDAV in the Sitespring white paper. Jeffrey Veen is part of the promo video.
Palm is fried
My Palm is fried, and the timing couldn't have been worse. I am still adjusting to the post-consulting, post-Internet boom world of limited cash flow.
A Michel Foucault Action Figure
"Keenly aware of the fluidity of social identities, this 6.5" Michel Foucault waves his baton in poststructuralist style at all challenges. Shrouded in a special removeable French cloak and with a built-in thoughtful head movement, this superb action figure is essential for both professional philosophers and junior postmodernists."
June 17, 2001
Some good news about Internet Explorer 6
Some good news about Internet Explorer 6? IE6, scheduled to be released in August, will be the first browser to support a new privacy standard called Platform Privacy Preferences, or P3P, which will allow surfers to automatically determine whether a Web site collects personally identifiable information and opt out of the data collection.
June 16, 2001
BOMB Magazine
BOMB Magazine: "Interviews between Artists, Writers, Musicians, Directors and Actors... To promote an understanding and appreciation of the arts through conversations about the arts, by the people who make the arts. Focusing on ideas rather than personalities, BOMB interviews delve into discussions of process and aesthetics, allowing for the emergence of complex and varied positions on artmaking and life. These interviews are primary documents of American cultural history."
June 15, 2001
netdiver
netdiver --> a new media culture_magazine + portal: "a new media portal and online culture magazine, with web+flash+graphic design news, links, resources and snapshot galleries about the new media community culture"
Balloonhat.com
Thanks to Talli Somekh of Musea for showing me this other side of globalization. For over three years, a balloon twister (who happens to be Talli's brother) and a photographer went around the world and made balloon hats for everyone they met, for free, and took pictures of them.
AnandTech
AnandTech, originally named Anand's Hardware Tech Page, was actually started up as a guide to upgrading your Socket-7 system to an AMD K6 based computer. Over the past five years it has grown into one of the most comprehensive independent Web sites devoted to PC hardware.
June 13, 2001
... police state of myopic, loud-mouthed idiots ...
Lance Arthur just insulted me. And he was nasty, too. He described Metafilter as, among other things, the follwing:
It's a police state of myopic, loud-mouthed idiots proclaiming themselves the cultural police while the rest of us sit back and laugh at them.
I like Metafilter more than the bulk of personal weblogs. It isn't perfect, and sometimes the discussions are vacuous or unpleasant, like the McVeigh thread yesterday. But what I learn from the site, and the entertainment I receive from it, makes up for this.
I don't think of Metafilter as an "online community." In fact, I believe that term to be an oxymoron. Metafilter is a discussion forum that people choose to visit and to contribute to. Like a lot of online situations, Metafilter allows people to do things socially that they would most likely not do in real life, and that includes yelling, baiting, and insulting. That shouldn't surprise anyone.
On the other hand, it seems easy to find webloggers who are insufferable, almost overbearing, egoists. They write like newspaper columnists, intent on kicking up shit and gaining notoriety, and believe traffic to their site means something.
Most of their sites are not interesting or useful. Among the better known, I probably check out Camworld weekly because he and I are both concerned about Web content management issues. I liked Lemon Yellow for different reasons. There are others sites I like -- Magnificent Melting Object, mikel.org, and Rebecca's pocket -- but don't visit very often. That's about it.
A few weblogs, especially among the so-called "a-list," are rather crass attempts at creating a brand of the personal. On top of being overwritten and over-designed, one gets the sense that the online identity is much more important to the author that what they do in the real world.
Back in the loop
I accepted a somewhat unexpected invitation to attend the National Campus and Community Radio Conference this week.
Since Caroline left the NCRA board I've been mostly out of the loop, so it was great to see so many old friends and colleagues: Tristis Ward, who took playwriting with Gillian McCain and me at Dalhousie in the mid-1980s; Magnus Thyvold, who used to work at the Victoria station before going to Simon Fraser, and who has finally gotten a license there; and Lori Guest, who worked with me as production coordinator at CFRU-FM Guelph many years ago, and who is now music coordinator there. I was proudest when Lori introduced me as someone who "brought democracy" to our radio station.
The leader of the federal NDP, Alexa McDonough, spoke at this year's community radio awards dinner. When I spoke with her afterwards and she said I looked familiar, I reminded here that I had been a page in the Nova Scotia Provincial Legislature in the early 1980s, when she had been the lone NDP, and the only woman, MLA.
I had been told, before her speech, that some of the conference delegates didn't think much of Alex, preferring someone more "radical" and outspoken. I was reminded of my time in the Legislature, watching those grey men try to shut Alexa up, day after day. The next year, after a provincial election, she appeared with two new NDP MLAs, laying the foundation for her party becoming a major political force in Nova Scotia.
Alexa has been in the trenches, fighting the good fight, since before her naysayers were born. I'll pick her over those part-time media radicals anytime.
June 12, 2001
I remember last year a local talk show host proposed torturing a gang of youths...
I remember last year a local talk show host proposed torturing a gang of youths who were accused of killing a local man and hiding his body. Supposedly the torture would have forced the kids to reveal where the body was.
I can understand why people in the year 2001 might propose this sort of thing. People do bad things, and we feel powerless. But criminal justice has a long, long history, and there are some very good reasons why we don't torture people, and why we have search warrants, rules of evidence, and an impartial judiciary.
When you give power to the state, especially the power to kill, there is always the risk that that power will be abused. If we imprison a man for a crime he didn't commit, when he is exonerated he can be released and an effort can be made to compensate him. When a man is executed for a crime he didn't commit, there is no compensation possible, and the state has committed a crime for which it cannot be punished.
In Canada, there have been several well-known cases of individuals convicted of murder who were subsequently found to be innocent, sometimes ten and twenty years after the fact. DNA testing is showing that numerous people in the United States who have been convicted of various crimes, including murder and rape, are innocent; the Criminal Justice section of Yahoo! Daily News is filled with stories of people wrongfully convicted.
I can't shed any tears for McVeigh. He did a horrible, horrible thing. But just because I have no sympathy for him doesn't mean that he has no rights as a human being, or that the state has a right to kill him, or anyone else.
When the state sanctions violence, even an execution, it creates a more violent society. Revenge and hatred become acceptable; we can embrace them, revel in them. As has been amply demonstrated by some of the comments in this thread, revenge becomes part of the social fabric of the country. Don't think for one moment that this isn't reflected in American politics, foreign policy, and history.
Great Parks/Great Cities
Do you have a favourite city park? Nominate it for the Great Parks/Great Cities Awards, to be presented this July in New York. And read about Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto; neighbors came together to help the city manage the park when they found out that the Parks Department had allotted no money for its upkeep.
June 11, 2001
It's verging on the sinister.
Bill Hare, climate policy director for Greenpeace International, comments on the Bush administrations global warming policy: "It's worse than odd. It's verging on the sinister."
Bud Welch
I oppose the death penalty absolutely, in all cases, because in all cases it is an act of revenge and hatred. The killing of Timothy McVeigh, who has halted all his appeals, will be an assisted suicide. It will also make him a martyr in the eyes of those who share his beliefs. We should not be surprised if one or more of his supporters tries to avenge our killing McVeigh. We should ask ourselves: How much killing and how much revenge are we prepared to live through?
Bud Welch lost his 23-year-old daughter, Julie Marie Welch, in the Oklahoma City bombing.
June 10, 2001
Swordfish
I went tonight with my old pal Greg to see Swordfish. My rather low expectations were met; this isn't much of a film. As always, it was difficult not to laugh at the scenes where Hugh Jackman's character does "hacking." Greg wondered afterward why it is that hacking has to be shown as some sort of magic, the dominance of technology by man that simply flows from the fingertips. Why can't they make a movie that shows it for what it is?
PHPDeveloper.org
PHPDeveloper.org: "Browsing around the web, we noticed that there was a lack of quality sites dedicated just to PHP. We wanted a site that took all of the web technology and looked at it though the eyes of a PHP developer and how it effects the PHP community. So, PHPDeveloper.org was born! Our goal is to provide you with up-to-the minute updates on PHP technology and to provide a repository of scripts that you can easily submit from your own programming, forums for user interaction and most importantly, tutoraials for all skill levels."
June 9, 2001
A bit more arts
Saturday night, and no excitement. Just email. Just the television. And some gelato. And that's okay.
But I have been pissed off that when my blog gets categorized, it is sometimes designated a "techie blog," or something similar. Cameron Barrett said "good technical commentary" or something. And you know, I can never take a compliment, so I'll try to do a bit more arts.
Brand Ben Brown Software
I'm very interested in Brand Ben Brown Software: "Multi-topic, user driven discussion forums let your audience post moronic messages that extend and damage your brand! Associate yourself with the sweaty, nervous finger tappings of the Web surfing masses."
Reblogger is an alternative to the very popular BlogVoices
Reblogger is an alternative to the very popular BlogVoices. It allows readers of Web Logs managed by Blogger to post comments on a post. Reblogger features a post counter, which indicates how many comments have been made on a certain post. This is a feature that used to be offered by BlogVoices but has been discontinued.
I am tempted to take bets on how long this will last before the bandwidth costs become too much.
Free content management systems
This article by Lowell Rapaport at Transform just scratches the surface of "free" content management systems.
Feed Magazine and Suck close
I do, occaisionally, visit FuckedCompany.com. I can't always turn away from the train crash, you see, but I have always maintained my secret dignity by telling myself that I didn't revel in the snide comments and distain, and I have always refused to make those easy, snippy, pseudo-annonymous comments on the messeges boards. And I would wonder, at every visit, if it was going to be the time when I read about the death of a Web site that I really cared about and depended on.
Today was that day, though I read about it on Metafilter instead; this time it was Feed Magazine and Suck.
Feed has been around for six years, and on the Web, that might as well be forever. I have read it on and off almost since it started, but it had only become a daily ritual in the past year or so. There was (is) amazing stuff at Feed, like the article about Clarence Ashley comparing "old-time" music and gangsta rap from March.
Suck was always, I thought, what Web media was about: contrary, topical, pretensious, biting... but most of all, new. I admit I became weary of the tone -- it reminded me of a particularly snarky friend from high school who ended up becoming a drug dealer -- but it was there, and a lot of people, I know, enjoyed it. I hope this isn't the end of their sarcastic story.
His Cancer
On Monday, my father had a biopsy for prostate cancer. His father, my grandfather, had died of it in the early-1970s while in his 50s, and my father has been vigilant, with regular prostate exams and having the level of his prostate specific antigen (PSA) checked. Last year, he told me, his PSA was a 3, but now it has climbed to 5, and this caused his doctor enough concern that he wanted to check the prostate for early signs of cancer. It may well be that the cause is benign prostatic hyperplasia: a non-cancerous growth within the prostate gland. We'll know in a couple of weeks.
Time to wake-up. I'm 36; I will talk to my doctor about my prostate when I see him next week. My father has been very, very committed to avoiding the things that caused his father ill health when he was still a relatively young man: my grandfather also had stoke in his 40s. My father, who just turned 60, is eating better than he ever has, and his weight is down below 190 these days, which for men of our frame is pretty good.
June 8, 2001
Smart Tags
Walter S. Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal writes:
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Smart Tags are something new and dangerous. They mean that the company that controls the Web browser is using that power to actually alter others' Web sites to its own advantage. Microsoft has a perfect right to sell services. But by using its dominant software to do so, it will be tilting the playing field and threatening editorial integrity.
June 3, 2001
Chris Ward
Perhaps Chris Ware is the most interesting graphic artist working today, yet he does sequential art. Not familiar with his stuff? Like ACME Novelty Library or Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth? Pick up today's New York Times Book Review; Ware illustrates a number of the reviews, and the illustrations form something of a narrative.
