« April 2002 | Main | June 2002 »
"The [World Trade Center] towers were symbols of 'the midcentury arrogance of architects,' says architect David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. 'What they did to lower Manhattan was an act of vandalism just as complete as Sept. 11.'" Quoted in Time magazine of all places.
"Has RSS run out of steam? Quite the opposite. There's more action than ever, but it's shifted into a decentralized mode. That's just what the RSS network needed to do in order to truly operate at Internet scale." Jon Udell, Personal RSS Aggregators at BYTE.com.
Blogosphere -- the emerging Media Ecosystem, John Hiler: "Were Bloggers parasites feasting off their Journalist hosts? Or were Bloggers creating a new form of grassroots journalism, one that threatened the extinction of Journalism as we know it?"
It is appropriate at this point, having spent countless fragments of my valuable time getting the excellent Movable Type working on my site, to now consider scrapping it all for another approach. Actually, I've been interested in the marriage of the weblog and the wiki for quite some time, but had never come across a site that was doing it successfully until yesterday revisiting Erik Benson's Mockerybird.
Writes Erik: "I got tired of writing in chronological order, where all content just falls off the edge of the page and is lost forever. I want to write about things, and about writing in general, and I want to be able to do it in a way that I can easily reference something I've thought and written about before."
Wiki is one of those interesting ideas which, admittedly, I have always been under-whelmed by in execution. The big idea of the technology is allowing the very easy creation of links and Web pages; in many Wiki systems, simply adding a word with a capital letter in the middle (called CamelCase), like TranquilEye, would turn it into a link to a new Web page. One can therefore quite easily create a hypertext encyclopedia of sorts.
My thoughts about tranquileye lately, beyond the usual voice inside that asks "what in the hell are you doing here," has been dealing with my blog archives, and somehow sorting various information chunks about webmaking and new media into something. Wiki might be the way to go, but I've had a lot of trouble in the past getting anything wiki-like to actually work in my Dreamhost account. Erik?
"It was 1931 that we last reported on television, and our readers must be
wondering how things are shaping up. Not any too good." The New Yorker reports on the state of television, 1936.
What does it mean when someone hands you a video tape and says that they want it on a CD-ROM? Would you think it is supposed to me part of a multimedia disk, perhaps created in Macromedia Director or Flash MX? Or would you assume that they wanted a VideoCD?
"In an era of cheap, portable computers and universal connectivity, the image of two people working over the same keyboard seems about as quaint as an RCA vacuum tube. For a growing number of programmers, however, it's the latest thing: 'pair programming,' a cornerstone tactic in an emerging grass-roots software development methodology sweeping the industry." Sam Williams at Salon.com on extreme programming.
"You might be writing about the latest Apple gadget or you might be writing about tensions in the Middle East - and if it's topical you're probably not going to be the only one. But how do you (and how can you help your readers) find out about the other discussions going on around the net? ... Metalinker takes a very simple approach - every time you put a link into your website, metalinker uses javascript to add a link to the page on blogdex that lists other people talking who have mentioned that link. And so with just a couple of mouse-clicks people reading your site can read a webful of opinion and debate..."
It's working too well right now, but what the heck.
What I didn't buy at the Glebe garage sale.
"When the MPAA complains that it is losing billions to piracy, my first reaction is, so what? ... Corporate multinationals, wielding unchecked power, terrify me far more than kids with video cameras." Alex Cox in The Guardian.
Anne Galloway's Purse Lip Square Jaw: "i am told that when i get annoyed during an argument, i purse my lips and set my jaw squarely. since i tend to be at my best during passionate moments, i proudly claim the title."
MovableBlog is blog about the MovableType Personal Publishing System.
"The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is an aid to explorers of the liminal territory between familiarity and chaos. An interactive Java applet, the Machine invites you to evolve the letterforms of a personalized 'alien alphabet': the possible writing system of your own imaginary civilization."
Underground: Tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier. "Underground uncovers the previously hidden story behind hackers from 8LGM, The Realm, the publishers of International Subversive and other linked Internet hacking groups. These elite hackers were the cream of the international computer underground and broke into tens of thousands of computers, belonging to some of the world's most prestigious institutions including Citibank, the Pentagon, NATO, the FT 100, NASA, Lockheed-Martin, Deutsche Telekom and Australian Telecom."
"We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there's too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out... We should stop trusting them right this second." Trust Us, We're Experts:
How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.
I'm going to add subterrane.com to my exit list of should-read blogs as soon as I can get my act together enough to do that. Soon. Here's what I'm missing:
While flipping keys from one chain to the other, I realized that I did not lose the key to my gun case as I had thought... Yes, I am a gun owner. I don't happen to be a bullet owner, but if anyone tries to break into my house, they'd best be prepared to be clubbed to death while I find my keys to open the gun case, assemble the gun and pistol whip them.
It's things like this that make me regret ever having told JD about Metafilter.
I can’t get the Norah Jones CD out of my head. I can’t stop humming whispering singing those songs.
It's not a great feeling to wake up every morning certain that someone else is living the life you were supposed to have.
OrigamiBoulder.com: "Origami, is Japanese art of folding paper. Boulder is round rock. Origami Boulder is wadded up paper! You understand now, dumbo? Then hurry up and buy wadded paper! You see picture at top of site don't you?" Yes, funny.
"We have done more than 100 surveys and reports since late 2000 and this survey has the most overwhelming, and negative, response to a company or technology we have ever seen." A survey by investment and research firm ChangeWave of its clients who are current and former subscribers of America Online showed that 40% of respondents were dissatisfied with the service.
More neat Google: Google Labs "showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time."
What kept me awake Saturday night was a story on CNN.com suggesting that Western intelligence had picked up a higher than usual level of terrorist "chatter," indicating that another attack similar to September 11th was in the works. But my fear is tinged with cynicism, as after a week of increasing concern over the government's inability to connect the dots prior to the last year's attacks, the time was right for an unnamed source to leak a story like that. It continued on Sunday, with vice president Cheney doing the morning political talk show rounds, suggesting that another attack was "almost certain," and then yesterday FBI director Robert Mueller indicating that there was going to be another attack and there isn't anything they can do to stop it. I find it odd that in order to deflect criticism around their handling of pre-September 11th information, the administration and intelligence community tell us that the money and trust we give them isn't going to be enough.
And low and behold:
AP reported today that "a top White House aide said last week's criticism prompted a two-pronged political response: Bush accused Democrats of playing politics with the issue as his advisers reminded voters that America is still a target." Insert Michael Moore-style rant here.
"Overcoming Depression is the world's first self-educative computer program for understanding, dealing with, and preventing depression using a unique dialogue mode that allows you to express yourself freely in your own words and that responds in meaningful every language characteristic of a therapeutic context... The program consists of a text mode interwoven with a dialogue mode. The text mode is instructional and cognitive-educative in intent... The dialogue mode represents a new technology that allows a program to participate in therapeutically directed conversations by interpreting and responding appropriately to everyday language."
"If you are frustrated by the time it takes to tap out text messages on your mobile phone, help could soon be at hand... A US company has redesigned the traditional 12-number keypad to give every letter and number its own key." From BBC.co.uk.
"'Knowledge Web' is the pet project of James Burke, an Oxford-educated historian whose fascination with technology resulted in Connections, a television series that explored the strange links between technological breakthroughs and historical events... Knowledge Web (K-Web) is intended to be the visual and virtual extension of almost three decades of Burke's attempts to show how all knowledge is somehow connected to all other knowledge." Michelle Delio at Wired.com.
America's film critic Roger Ebert has suggested that movie fans create their own DVD commentary tracks and post them to the Web in MP3 format. And there's already a site that collects them: DVD Tracks.
Let's test the Google search capabalities of Moveable Type:
"><$MTGoogleSearchResult property="title"$>
One of the great questions of mind science is the locus for consciousness in the brain, so far undiscovered. Professor Johnjoe McFadden of the University of Surrey has suggested that consciousness is in fact the electromagnetic field created by the firing of neurons. The field can encouraging some neurons to fire and others to not. This influence, McFadden suggests, "is the physical manifestation of our conscious will."
John Newman of anti-state.com predicts The Mother of All Battles when the US invades Iraq: "Judging by the uglier-than-usual rhetoric being spewed by the Bush Administration, it seems Americans have finally acknowledged what was already clear – America will invade Iraq, and probably soon. Complacent folk that they are, average American citizens are assuming another quick blitzkrieg victory is in order. Not only is this view hopelessly shortsighted, it may yet lead to the ultimate downfall of American imperialism." [Air Strip One]
Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated last week, but his labeling by the press as a right-wing extremist may be too simplistic. Writes Folkert Jensma, editor in chief of NRC Handelsblad: "Mr. Fortuyn's views were a curious mixture of right, center and left. Most famously, he said the Netherlands was "full up" and should not accept any more immigrants. Yet he favored the reform of the country's social-service bureaucracy and electoral system, and he was a vocal champion of women's rights. He was also a strong supporter of Israel."
Bert Hickman has set up a ten inch diameter Tesla coil powered from two neon sign transformers in his screened-in (but unheated) porch, along with a device that produces magnetic fields strong enough to shrink coins. One of the byproducts of the coin-shrinking: an eight inch ball of plasma.
These are frightening times, aren't they? Actor John Malkovich told an audience at the Cambridge Union that he wants to shoot reporter Robert Fisk.
I love you - computer_virus_hacker_culture: "For the first time in Germany the department digitalcraft of mak.frankfurt arranges an interdisciplinary exhibition regarding computer viruses. In a society of communication and information the dealing with computer viruses belongs to every day digital life. The exhibition creates a tensed connection from computer viruses as a factor of economic threat to an element that gives momentum to art." May 23rd to till June 13th 2002.
"Free Radio Linux is an online and on-air radio station. The sound transmission consists of a computerized reading of the code used to create the operating system, Linux."
The Story of "Nadine" -- A Tale of Mailing Lists: "This is an account of what happened after an Internet user accidentally gave a wrong email address when she visited a web page and signed up for a sweepstakes. It is a story about how Internet email lists can go horribly wrong."
A new flag for Europe. Really.
"Commentators have already drawn many lessons from the Enron case. One that I have yet to hear mentioned is that human beings are not as good at destroying things as we think we are. Oh, we talk a good game. One of the first verbs I was taught in Latin class was "devastare," "to lay waste," because it was needed to describe so much of Roman foreign policy... There is no denying that human beings have laid waste to a great many things in the course of time: cities, species, vast amounts of cultural heritage. What seems more remarkable, though, is how often attempts at destruction go awry." Cullen Murphy in The Atlantic's "Delete, Baby, Delete" says we're not quite as good at destruction as we think we are
"When I take [an] aerial view, it's my chief concern: to show the imprints or the scars man has left on the Earth... Man is very, very little on this earth. Flying over the globe, one soon realiuses we don't account for much. We're part of the landscape, even if, nowadays, we have the ability to imprint our mark upon it." Yann Arthus-Bertrand photographs The Earth from Above.
"UTOPIA is playful and deceitful - because it pretends to be more innocent, more simple, and more light than it actually is. At first glance it can be taken for something made for children - or for adults whose references are not Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Rem Koolhaas, and Philip Stark, but text messaging, gnuttela, retro Atari graphics, and nettime. This is the new generation that emerged in the 1990s. In contrast to visual and media artists of the 1960s-1980s, whose main target was media - ads, cinema, television - the new generation does not waste its energy on media critique. Instead of bashing commercial media environment, it creates its own: Web sites, mixes, software tools, furniture, clothes, digital video, Flash / Shockwave animations and interactives." [from GENERATION FLASH]
"Computer technology was supposed to replace paper. But that hasn't happened. Every country in the Western world uses more paper today, on a per-capita basis, than it did ten years ago... This is generally taken as evidence of how hard it is to eradicate old, wasteful habits and of how stubbornly resistant we are to the efficiencies offered by computerization. A number of cognitive psychologists and ergonomics experts, however, don't agree. Paper has persisted, they argue, for very good reasons: when it comes to performing certain kinds of cognitive tasks, paper has many advantages over computers." Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, on The Social Life of Paper.
Today is a Day of Silence for Internet audio services, a protest against unusually high copyright fees being suggested by the U.S. Copyright Office-appointed Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. For various forms of broadcasting, copyright fees are typically calculated based on a percentage of station revenue or expenses; the proposed fees are flat rates based on number of listeners and number of songs. Internet-only webcasters, like tranquileye.com, would pay .14¢ per song per listener (that's 14/100¢), while commercial radio station simulcasts will be .07¢ per song for and non-commercial radio simulcasts .02¢ per song.
It seems like a small amount, but it will add up quickly. As an example, tranquileye.radio.1 broadcasts only about 700 streams a month, with each stream containing roughly five songs; that's 3500 songs in total, for a proposed royalty cost of USD$4.90. Not that much, but the royalty is retroactive to the beginning of my streaming in January 2001, so I would potentially owe USD$78.40 for sixteen months, exclusive of the current monthly fee I pay for bandwidth, which is USD$14.95.
The impact on Internet broadcasts of all types is proportional; many college stations have already shut down their streams, trying to avoid accumulating any further royalty charges.
What would be a reasonable royalty? That is a tough question to answer, because there appear to be no viable business models around Internet-only broadcasting. Certainly, percentage of gross revenue for commercial operations would be the best fit right now, and for non-commercial, a small flat fee.
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin (1903-1977
Copyright © 1993-2006 John Harris Stevenson. This Web site's content is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved.
Powered by Movable Type 3.33 and hosted by Dreamhost.
ISSN #1496-9351.
