notes
Wednesday, 15 January 2003the design process behind the BBC's homepageb
Intelligent design personalization at the BBC. Matt Jones (aka Black Belt Jones) has made available a PDF for "The Glass Wall" (7.8mb). It explains the design process behind the BBC's homepage. If you hadn't heard or hadn't clicked there in a while the website is able to adapt the current design based on a user's interaction with the site. I found a good explanation of the process that includes screenshots. From Jones' site:Until either my webhost or my bosses ask me to take it down, here is a document detailing the design process behind the BBC homepage. The research methods and synthesis they went through is pretty interesting, and hopefully some of the process, artifacts and outcomes documented might be useful for web design practitioners. I'll feedback any comments to the design team involved. [kuro5hin.org]
Today in history...
historische daten. "Wenige Tage nach der blutigen Niederschlagung des Januaraufstands verhafteten am 15. Januar 1919 in Berlin Freikorpssoldaten der Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division die untergetauchten Führer des Spartakusbunds, Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht. Sie verschleppten die beiden Köpfe der revolutionären Bewegung in das Hauptquartier des Freikorps im Hotel Eden und verhörten sie dort unter schweren Mißhandlungen. Anschließend erschossen sie Liebknecht im Tiergarten... [kellerkind bogenallee 11]RFID: radio frequency identification
via Jenny the Shifted Librarian
RFID on Your Radar.
Are Spy Chips Set to Go Commercial?
"The generic name for this technology is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.
You should become familiar with RFID technology because you'll be hearing much more about it soon. Retailers adore the concept, and CNET News.com's own Alorie Gilbert wrote last week about how Wal-Mart and the U.K.-based grocery chain Tesco are starting to install 'smart shelves' with networked RFID readers. In what will become the largest test of the technology, consumer goods giant Gillette recently said it would purchase 500 million RFID tags from Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif....
It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags, which typically include a 64-bit unique identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. KSW-Microtec, a German company, has invented washable RFID tags designed to be sewn into clothing. The European central bank is reportedly considering embedding RFID tags into banknotes by 2005.
That raises the disquieting possibility of being tracked though our personal possessions. Imagine: The Gap links your sweater's RFID tag with the credit card you used to buy it and recognizes you by name when you return. Grocery stores flash ads on wall-sized screens based on your spending patterns, just like in 'Minority Report.' Police gain a trendy method of constant, cradle-to-grave surveillance.
You can imagine nightmare legal scenarios that don't involve the cops. Future divorce cases could involve one party seeking a subpoena for RFID logs--to prove that a spouse was in a certain location at a certain time. Future burglars could canvass alleys with RFID detectors, looking for RFID tags on discarded packaging that indicates expensive electronic gear is nearby. In all of these scenarios, the ability to remain anonymous is eroded.
Don't get me wrong. RFID tags are, on the whole, a useful development and a compelling technology. They permit retailers to slim inventory levels and reduce theft, which one industry group estimates at $50 billion a year. With RFID tags providing economic efficiencies for businesses, consumers likely will end up with more choices and lower prices. Besides, wouldn't it be handy to grab a few items from store shelves and simply walk out, with the purchase automatically debited from your (hopefully secure) RFID'd credit card?
The privacy threat comes when RFID tags remain active once you leave a store. That's the scenario that should raise alarms--and currently the RFID industry seems to be giving mixed signals about whether the tags will be disabled or left enabled by default....
If you care about privacy, now's your chance to let the industry know how you feel. (And, no, I'm not calling for new laws or regulations.) Tell them that RFID tags are perfectly acceptable inside stores to track pallets and crates, but that if retailers wish to use them on consumer goods, they should follow four voluntary guidelines.
First, consumers should be notified--a notice on a checkout receipt would work--when RFID tags are present in what they're buying. Second, RFID tags should be disabled by default at the checkout counter. Third, RFID tags should be placed on the product's packaging instead of on the product when possible. Fourth, RFID tags should be readily visible and easily removable." [ZDNet]
As a consumer, RFID should be on your radar for how it will affect you personally. Librarians should be aware of these issues because new security systems will use RFID.
[The Shifted Librarian]Resonance FM
London's strangest radio station. Media: New radio station has shows which are broadcast in reverse and take their cues from supermarket announcements.
The Guardian discovers community radio - with a difference.
"There is a man on the radio who is playing a record backwards. When the disjointed lurches of sound come to an end, he makes his introduction to the track he has just played in a voice that sounds as if it was recorded backwards, placing the emphasis on all the wrong syllables. The man is Reverso Mondo, and absolutely everything about his show, Xollob Park, is the wrong way round. Repeats come earlier in the week than the original airings, and the first show ever broadcast was of course the last, when he said his goodbyes. It is all part of Resonance FM, the strangest radio station in Britain. "
Resonance FM programs include a singer who wanders up and down local supermarket aisles improvising to announcements made over the shop's PA system.
"One of the most interesting, and strangely charming shows on the station is Taking a Life for a Walk, on which musician Caroline Kraabel walks around the streets near her London home, pushing the pram containing her 18-month-old son Clement with one hand and holding a saxophone with the other. As she goes about her daily business - visiting the post office, taking Clement to the swings - she improvises with her environment on the sax, the resulting music being broadcast live from the mobile phone attached to her head. "We wanted to get a complicated satellite link-up that would have cost the same as a month's running of the station," says Baxter. "But in the end we had to make do with Caroline's Nokia."
Kraabel's idea for the show was born of necessity. Having a baby meant that she could no longer practise her instrument regularly, so she found a way of incorporating the daily demands of a mother with the discipline that a professional musician must dedicate to their craft. "Art is created out of finding solutions to everyday problems," says Kraabel, a long-term member of the LMC (the London Musician's Collective). "Clement is demanding, but he is quiet when we go out and he loves me playing, so it works well. What I play is quite simplistic because I can only use my left hand. Occasionally Clement sings as well, which is great, but mostly he falls asleep.""
Seb Paquet's survey - last call
Weblog & Wiki Survey: Last Call.I will pick up and start analyzing the data for my knowledge sharing survey a few days from now. I figured it would be a good idea to mention it for a last time while I'm enjoying the incoming flow from Scripting News. So here's the text of the original post:
As part of my research into knowledge sharing practices, I'm conducting an online survey on two Web tools that can be used for sharing knowledge, namely, weblogs and wikis.
You would do me an immense favour if you could go and fill in the short multiple-choice questionnaires that I have prepared. Here's the weblog survey, and here's the wiki survey. Answer them in either order. If you know nothing about one of the tools, go ahead anyway - you'll be done quite early on in the corresponding questionnaire.
Note that I'm not going to hoard that data - I will publish it online when I'm done collecting.
A heartfelt thanks to VeerChand Bothra for setting up and hosting this survey on the BlogStreet weblog neighborhood analyzer and search engine site.
And if you're even more in the spirit of giving, you could help spread the word, for instance by posting the following line to your own weblog:
Sébastien Paquet is doing a survey on the usefulness of weblogs and wikis for sharing knowledge.
[Seb's Open Research]
topic exchange - the real hyperlink
Introducing the Internet Topic Exchange.Phillip Pearson is in the process of creating the Internet Topic Exchange (http://topicexchange.com). This is a service that enables anyone to easily create blog channels like Lazyweb.org, Blogpopuli, and KMPings. Once a channel is set up, people can send links to their weblog posts to it using TrackBack or using a simple form. The resulting feeds can be read on the web and they are also available as RSS. To see what it looks like, have a look at the new "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" channel.
Matt Mower: "What Phil has done is to implement a very simple, elegant, solution along the path of the BlogPlex idea I've been working towards. With the Topic Exchange, it will be simple for users to cluster around topics simply by using them."
This is indeed, I believe, a good way to facilitate group-forming among bloggers. Hopefully, people will set up channels corresponding to interests close to their heart and will subscribe to them. As I have pointed out earlier, this is a sociality-driven way of building what has been called "shared categories", "shared topics", or "distributed metadata".
One way to see it is that this extends the notion of RSS feeds. An ordinary RSS feed is easy to listen to, but "hard" to speak into. Blogchannels correct the asymmetry by making it easy both ways. Phillip has also put up what he calls a vague history of the concept.