Friday, December 26, 2003

Word brings out bad design, Lester says. Andy Lester, on the O'Reilly Network: "The curse of designing with Microsoft Word." Hey, I agree with that! I see all sorts of things done on computers and cringe at their design. Most people simply don't know 1) how to design a decent document and 2) How to use Microsoft Word. [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Open Source Tablet PC Notetaking app. Dang, the good links just keep coming in. Here's an open source Tablet PC notetaking application being developed right before your eyes. [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Security Certificate Problems pointed out on Microsoft Monitor. Microsoft Monitor has a ton of great blogs I have to catch up on. Here's an example: Happy New Year! Your digital certificate expired. "With IE now part of Windows and Microsoft so red hot on improving security, more browser updates should be the standard, not less." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Washington Post says Companies nowhere to be found. Washington Post: "While other customers help, the companies hide." The article gets several things wrong. For one, hundreds, if not thousands, of Microsoft's employees hang out in the newsgroups. For two, it takes some cheap shots at Apple. I didn't notice that Apple's stores were shuttered when I walked past yesterday. If you have a problem, you can always walk into one of those. Also, it ignores all the employees who weblog frequently (yes, I work at Microsoft, and yes, I help lots of people with their tech support problems, if I can). The one thing the article did get right is we have the best customers in the world. You can see them here: PDC Bloggers Longhorn Blogs .NET Weblogs DotNet Junkies SQLJunkies SQL Team Geeks with Blogs ActiveHead's .NET Blogs Do you know any other Microsoft-oriented communities to add to the list? Update: add Academic Longhorn Blogs to the list. Update2: add Office Zealot to the list. [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Phillip has a camera -- everywhere. Phillip Torrone is doing interesting things with a camera. In one series he asks (and answers) "what would it look like taking one picture every 30 minutes, every hour, for 24 hours, seven days a week, for three weeks, no matter what? [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Shipping Software Inside Microsoft is Hard. Rob Mensching, who works at Microsoft, writes about shipping software that was developed inside Microsoft: "Sadly, Microsoft is a gigantic legal target and from what I've seen a lot of time is spent trying to avoid stepping on anybody's toes (getting sued sucks!). I know this is contrary to a lot of popular belief but there are lots of people at Microsoft that just want to make the world a better place." [The Scobleizer Weblog]

Utne chooses Howard Rheingold's 'Smart Mobs' for Award. Roland Piquepaille says: "This is the end of the year and so it is time to give awards for 2003. And Utne Magazine just picked Smart Mobs, the collective blog led by Howard Rheingold for this year's Utne Independent Press Award for best online cultural coverage. This overview tells you why this award is deserved, what are smart mobs, and why you should become a smartmobber in 2004. It also includes a little-known picture of Howard *working* in his *office*. Link [Boing Boing Blog]

John Shirley has a weblog. One of my favorite authors, John Shirley, has a blog. John is the original cyberpunk writer. If William Gibson is Johnny Rotten, John Shirley is Richard Hell. Here's what Gibson says in his forward to Shirley's 1980 novel City Come A-Walkin': John Shirley was cyberpunk's patient zero, first locus of the virus, certifiably virulent. A Carrier. City Come A-Walkin' is evidence of that and more. (I was somewhat chagrined, rereading it recently, to see just how much of my own early work takes off from this one novel.) Shirley made the plastic-covered Sears sofa that was the main body of seventies sf recede wonderfully. Discovering his fiction was like hearing Patti Smith's Horses for the first time: the archetypal form passionately re-inhabited by a debauched yet strangely virginal practitioner, one whose very ability to do this at all was constantly thrown into question by the demands of what was in effect a shamanistic act. There is a similar ragged-ass derring-do, the sense of the artist burning to speak in tongues. They invoke their particular (and often overlapping, and indeed she was one of his) gods and plunge out of downscale teenage bedrooms, brandishing shards of imagery as peculiarly-shaped as prison shivs. John's new blog is well worth reading! Link [Boing Boing Blog]

Barlow joins the blogosphere. Barlow on No Degrees of Separation.

Ars Electronica, which is always on the cutting edge of expression using new technologies and has created a new category called "Digital Communities". I will be on the jury with Howard Rheingold, Jane Metcalfe and several other people I'm looking forward to meeting. Among the projects, phenomena and fields of activity subsumed under the heading Digital Communities are: social software eDemocracy, eGovernment, eGovernance emergent democracy collective weblogs, social networking systems filtering and reputation systems social self-support groups learning and knowledge communities computer supported collaborative processes gaming communities digital neighborhoods, community networks free net initiatives, wireless LAN projects digital cities, urban development projects citizen involvement initiatives, citizen conferences telecenters Prizes  Total: 40,000 Euro 2 Golden Nicas 10,000 Euro each 4 Awards of Distinction 5,000 Euro each Up to 14 Honorary Mentions Please see the web page for more details, but I look forward to seeing your submissions. [Joi Ito's Web] [Marc's Voice]

Utne chooses Howard Rheingold's 'Smart Mobs' for Award. Roland Piquepaille says: "This is the end of the year and so it is time to give awards for 2003. And Utne Magazine just picked Smart Mobs, the collective blog led by Howard Rheingold for this year's Utne Independent Press Award for best online cultural coverage. This overview tells you why this award is deserved, what are smart mobs, and why you should become a smartmobber in 2004. It also includes a little-known picture of Howard *working* in his *office*. Link [Boing Boing Blog]