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Sunday, January 18, 2004 |
SSI (PDF report). Jeffrey Record hits the mark again: Bounding the Global War on Terrorism.
...the global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indescriminate and ambitious, and according that its parameters should be readjusted to conform to concrete US interests and the limits of American power. [John Robb's Weblog] 
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Moving pictures.
I wanted to demonstrate the SpamBayes plug-in for the school, and I realized I ought to try the screen-capture feature of the free Windows Media Encoder 9. The results were stunning. I set up a new session, pointed it at Outlook's main window, and began encoding. Then I talked through a demonstration of SpamBayes' configuration manager, its Delete and Recover toolbar buttons, and my techniques for integrating SpamBayes with Outlook's filtering and foldering. Along the way I pointed with the cursor to items of interest, opened and closed dialog boxes, and drove the Outlook interface as I normally do.
The resulting six-minute video had the same format as my Outlook window, which happened to be about 750-by-620. The file came in at just under 3MB. I FTP'd it to my Website and, because I'd chosen the progressive-download option, playback was immediate. It was also perfectly readable and audible. Elapsed time from the moment I thought of trying this to the end of playback: about 25 minutes. Next time it'll take 10. Why don't more people do this? Because it wasn't this easy before. Now, it is. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] I wanted to post that video here, but I'm afraid I can't because it reveals too much of the contents of my inbox. However, I'll definitely be using this technique in the future. One killer application, if you sit in on a lot of WebEx demos as I do, is the ability to record them, play them back, and publish excerpts from them. ... [Jon's Radio]
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What Cory doesn't like about social software. Cards for 500 of my closest friends....
 Hugh aka gapingvoid, one of my favorite online cartoonists, let me pick a cartoon and sent me 500 business cards with my contact info on once side, and this image on the other. After getting a stack of 500 cards that say, "You are the most important person in my Life" I realized the irony and realized that maybe I chose the wrong phrase. ;-p
I do think his idea of cartoons on business cards is a cool idea.
 So what I need is a bunch of different cards ranging from "You are the most important person in my Life" to "Talk to the hand." Then I can choose which cards to give to people. This would be the intentional physical version of what Cory doesn't like about social software.
Of course, I would only give "Talk to the hand" to someone as a joke... really.
[Joi Ito's Web]
Any famous sci-fi writer who likes "malefactors, parasites, freeriders and inefficiency" is OK by me.
I just keep wondering "when will Joi stop talking to his hand?" [Marc's Voice]
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Congrats ot Bill Appleton.
Start-up DreamFactory conjures up new tools. The upstart introduces its first commercial product for building graphical user interfaces based on XML and Web services standards. [CNET News.com - Front Door]
Hey! Congrats to Bill Appleton for getting some press! We used Bill's 'Dreamfactory' tool to build our prototype 'MyMagicCarpetRide' - two years ago. now Bill has deals with Salesforce.com and Grand Central Communications.
One thing Martin Lamonica - the writer of the article forgot - is that Laszlo Systems also creates "software for building so-called rich clients, or graphically rich desktop software that relies on XML and Web services."
We (Broadband Mechanics) - spent several years trying to build a 'rich-media platform'. We finally just ran out of money. But Laszlo got it right. Oh - and Bill Appleton's Dreamfactory - also got it right - too. :-) [Marc's Voice]
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Tim O'Reilly's 2004 wishlist. Tim O'Reilly has posted a wishlist for 2004, including one wish-by-proxy from Rael Dornfest:
Rael Dornfest, author of Google Hacks and the mobilewhack weblog adds: "I'd like to see consumer mobile devices--palmtops, hiptops, and handsets--scriptable. It was scripting that drove the Web, taking it from a static online catalogue of content to an operating system. Gaining simpler programmatic access to the contacts, calendars, and other assorted user-data; bluetooth, messaging, image capture and minipulation on the phone will open up the mobile to the people prototyping the next generation of applications." I agree completely with Rael. Scripting opens up development to users, letting them show vendors where they want the technology to go, filling in the gaps between the vendor's paid offerings. It's an incredibly important part of the open source landscape, and one that doesn't get enough attention. As Hassan Schroeder, Sun's first webmaster, once said, "Perl is the duct tape of the Internet." Where's the duct tape for my cell phone? Link (via Seb) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Beautiful art museum in Graz, stupid websites for same.  The arts museum in Graz, Austria, is a really cool-looking building. Unfortunately, all the websites for it focus on breaking usbaility in order to prevent deep-linking or to present some kind of Flash-based, non-bookmarkable "user experience." So go look at the press photos, but ignore all the incredibly stupid copyright warnings that are apparently intended to scare off people who might actually take an interest in the site, and just check out the building itself. Link (Thanks, Machaus!)
[Boing Boing Blog]
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Instant-on Linux distro boots in 10 seconds. LinDVD is a stripped-down Linux distro designed to boot in 10 seconds or less, for use in consumer-electronics-style devices, like DVD players. It's designed for dual-booting with modern Windows flavors, so that you can choose to boot your PC as an entertainment console (fast) or as a workstation (slow).
InterVideo developed the InstantOn technology in collaboration with Intel, IBM and Sony. Its system lets LinDVD and Windows coexist in the same computer, running on a Pentium 4 processor and a minimum of 128 megabytes of RAM. When the "on" button is pressed, the software loads in less than10 seconds, giving all but instant access to TV, CDs or DVD movies.
MP3s, photos and videos filed by Windows will also be accessible in this mode. But if the user wants to do some work, they use a remote control to switch off the LinDVD software and the PC re-boots to run Windows. Link (via Gizmodo) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Tech/art pioneer Billy Kluver, RIP. Former Bell Labs engineer Billy Kluver, the co-founder with Robert Raushchenberg of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) in 1966, died on Sunday of cancer. E.A.T facillitated collaborations between avant-garde artists and creative scientists, leading to a groundbreaking performance series called Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering. The patron saint of tech-art, Kluver worked with the likes of John Cage, Andy Warhol, and Jean Tinguely (whose self-destroying machines later inspired Survival Research Laboratories).
"In the twentieth century efficient means of spreading technical information have developed and now the emphasis is on the individual's relationship to the environment. This is a change in attitude away from concern for the object--its engineering, operation, and function, and toward aesthetics--human motivation and involvement, pleasure, interest, excitement." --Billy Kluver, 1971 Link to an article about Kluver
Link to NY Times obituary (free reg. required) [Boing Boing Blog]
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Wanted: CMS with blog like simplicity for page oriented websites not post oriented websites. Sounds like a market and business opportunity. Based on my experience and reading the 61 comments so far, nothing out there has blog like simplicity, emits good standard based HTML and is page based rather than post based like blog systems. Or to be a contrarian, what's wrong with a post based system?
[SOURCE: mezzoblue]
QUOTE
Wanted: recommendations for a proven, but simple open source CMS that's web-standards friendly.
The ideal candidate will work with LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL [or PostgreSQL in this case] /PHP). Function-wise, it should just be bare-bones, and usable through a browser. It will allow editing of multiple chunks of content that can be chained into a single page, although the chunks themselves will probably be pretty simple (a few headers and paragraphs, the odd list, nothing much more). At the same time, I'd like it to auto-generate things like site-wide nav and breadcrumbs and the like. No problem scripting those, as long as they're in some way possible. Free as in beer is a luxury, but not necessary.
Yeah, this is sounding like Movable Type. And in a way, that's more or less what I'm looking for. I'd like something that's page-oriented instead of post-oriented however, and although Matt's how-to would get me what I need, MT just feels like the wrong tool for the job. Zope is total overkill. I'm sure there are a plethora of others out there, but I'm interested in hearing about actual experience working with one.
And of course if it generates tags out of the box, don't even bother mentioning it...
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Outsourcing the Process of Creating DVDs of Library Content?.
CustomFlix DVD Distribution on Demand
"While I frequently talk about creating DVDs from family movies, there are certainly plenty of potentially commercial projects that need to go beyond the home computer and into a distribution pipeline. While burning DVDs from your PC is an option, this also means taking responsibility for fulfillment and all the headaches associated with shipping physical goods. Mastering houses can produce large print runs of your DVD content, but then a risk of being stuck with hundreds of extra copies is introduced. For a small fee, someone else can take on the fulfillment headache for you and keep the inventory levels down to a minimum. CustomFlix is that someone else. For a $49 setup fee, plus a per sale fee, CustomFlix manages distribution, provides online trailers of your DVD, prints artwork on the packaging and allows you to focus on all the details of content creation." [Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle]
I wanted to highlight this service in case there are libraries that could make use of it either as a fundraising tool or simply for cost-recovery to create video media for local history information, digitization projects, and the like. Could be interesting, especially if you don't have the resources to do this yourself. [The Shifted Librarian]
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Senators Getting RSS!.
Senate Begins RSS Rollout
"Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is the first Senator with a RSS news feed for press releases on his official site. Feeds for other senators will soon follow according to Jason Blum in Enterprise Systems Support of the office of the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms. Plans call for what Blum refers to as 'RSS relay agents.' These are local customized feeds for hometown constituents for NOAA weather alerts and state news." [RSS in Government]
Biden's feed is here. This is really thrilling news, and maybe it will even prompt legislators to post more substantial news more often to their sites!
In addition, if your library runs a community or news site, don't forget that you'll be able to re-post these feeds on that site. After all, they can't be copyrighted or licensed since they're funded by taxpayer money and they come from our government, right? (At least for the moment....) [The Shifted Librarian]
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A credit card sized cell phone? Wow. Makes you think that if they get rid of the buttons and screen you could slip it into your wallet, pocket, or purse and forget about it. All the control would be in your headset using voice controls (like Wildfire's breakthrough voice interface).
 [John Robb's Weblog]
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Bottom-Up Rules!.
Top down monolithic solutions and diktats don't work (or work very rarely) today! Ross nails it again! Applies to all service and product development as well as developing software. And it goes without saying that blogs and wikis are a great way of encouraging and nurturing the bottom up organization.
[SOURCE Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
QUOTE
It's not just that the Internet created the opportunity for the bottom-up phenomenon to emerge. We are compelled by the necessity of our times to work together, be open to change and to continually tinker with simple solutions that work. Because of the degree of connection we are beginning to acheive, these changes may be more persistent and the emergent impact may be greater than we realize.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Dynamic categories. A while back I stopped assigning the items I post here to categories. It wasn't because I couldn't be bothered to do the categorization. Quite the contrary, I'm really interested in achieving that result, and more than willing to put some effort into it. But, although I'm generally a huge proponent of the publishing technique I call static serving of dynamically-generated pages, it increasingly seemed like the wrong way to deal with categories. ... [Jon's Radio]
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New "everyday neuroscience" book from author of Emergence. Steven Johnson, the guy who wrote the brilliant Emergence (a book whose lyrical description of emergent phenomena in ant-colonies inspired both my forthcoming novella Human Readable and the ants that crawl over Appeals Court, the sequel Charlie Stross and I wrote to Jury Service, which will be published as a fix-up novel by Argosy in just a couple weeks), has a new book out: Mind Wide Open: Your Brain And The Neuroscience Of Everyday Life, which he describes as:
...an attempt to look systematically at the question of what brain science can tell you about yourself as an individual. There are a number of great books that ask questions like: How did the brain evolve? Or: how does the brain work? This book asks a related, but more intimate question: how does your brain work? In what ways can science shed light on your own personality traits, emotional habits, mental blindspots or strengths? In the book I've set myself up as a kind of guinea pig for this experiment: I take a number of tests that evaluate different cognitive faculties; I do a number of explorations with neurofeedback; I help design a series of fMRI experiments on my own head. I also have conversations with some of the world's leading brain scientists, who function as guides through this amazing inner landscape. Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Microsoft Expands C# With Xen. Preview: The hot new language from Microsoft Research offers native XML and database support (in addition to the powerful punch of .Net) and possibly ushers in a new generation of programming languages. [Extremetech]
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New Google lookups. Aaron Swartz points out several useful Google lookups:
Area Codes, e.g. 650, bring up maps.
UPC codes, e.g. 073333531084 or 036000250015, bring up some information about the product.
Flight numbers, e.g. usair 50, provide links to flight tracking
Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, e.g. JH4NA1157MT001832, link to a CARFAX report on what kind of car and its status.
U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers link to package status Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Barlow on Spalding Gray: "Is he finally swimming to Cambodia?". John Perry Barlow, a friend of missing monologist Spalding Gray, writes:
I try to imagine him actually attempting a swim to Cambodia. I see him swan-diving from the rail of the Staten Island Ferry late Saturday night when he disappeared, rounding Sandy Hook by dawn, and turning south for Cape Horn. He'd be well past the mouth of the Delaware by now, strong swimmer that he is. What a great monologue this is going to make. Or not. Spalding inhabits a magical reality where such feats might actually be possible, but there is something about the current state of New York Harbor that seems adamantly unfit for human survival. In my less magical reality, it's easier to see him beneath all that black water.
Still, it seems premature to write one of those eulogies that I all too often compose for my closest friends. Part of me thinks I should be out there looking for him rather than writing this. Perhaps, I think, he just went out on one of his famous walks, walks that I shared for many droll miles. Perhaps he was hit by a cab and is lying comatose and unidentified in one of this perilous island's anonymous hospitals. He left his wallet and ID at his loft and would thus have been taken for another homeless drifter, as he frequently was. He could be holed up somewhere, waiting for his mood to pass. But he hates (or hated) to be alone. Neither seems likely, but where there's no proof, there remains hope, however unrealistic. What is grief without finality? A terrible confusion and an opportunity to celebrate what one might still have. Link [Boing Boing Blog]
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Why Three Heads Are Better Than One (How to Create a Know-It-All Company).
Yet another Knowledge Management article that doesn't mention blogs. Up with blogs, down with Knowledge Management! In 2004, I wouldn't trust any KM program that doesn't include blogs. Blogs are the best way to tell stories and share tacit knowledge.
[SOURCE:CIO.com - Knowledge Management]
QUOTE
Even in the best of times, it's a battle to convince employees to participate in knowledge management programs. But in tough times, the tendency is for employees to horde what they know. Here's how some companies convinced individuals to share best practices.
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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Ooooh oooh Matt Mower has a great idea for making Radio's upstreaming work better. I never got around to this when I was working on it. It should work well. I'm not ready to be a guinea pig for it yet, but will be soon. Thanks for diggin in there Matt. [Scripting News]
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This makes 9/11 sound like the Reichstag fire:
In one of the ACLU's examples of mistreatment, retired steelworker Bill Neel, 66, was handcuffed in western Pennsylvania after refusing police orders to take his sign to the designated "free speech zone," a baseball field a mile from the president. Neel's sign declared, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."
First Amendment Zones??? Where do we live?? [John Robb's Weblog]
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VDMXX.
There are all sorts of amazing, real-tiem video processing, creation and manipulation programs out there nowadays.
One of them is called VDMXX. [Marc's Voice]
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NS. LinDVD for instant on PCs. Actually, a very stable and fast-to-boot media "mode" for my laptop and desktop PCs would be great. I would use it. Looks like we may see it on Sony and IBM PCs (if they are smart).
BTW: LinDVD would be great as tablet PC enhancement. A true PMP (personal media player) with a large screen. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Rubin's deficit report (PDF). Basically, it projects that on our current course we will go bankrupt around ~2040. At that point debt payments accelerate beyond our ability to pay them. Much of the spending identified in the report is locked in. What is troubling is that these projections don't take into account potential crisis situations (like 9/11, Iraq, financial shocks, etc.) that can radically increase short term deficits. Of course, this probably won't happen. Don't bet against America. Unfortunately, the current fiscal mess is going to make the clean-up much harder. Deficits do matter. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Don Park has the same addiction I have to vivid historical fiction. I would add that there are SF series that are nearly as good (like Moorcock's Elric series and Zelazny's Amber). Moorcock is expensive, Zelazny isn't. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Wikipedia is getting so good its scary. A true resource. Very cool to watch it go from 0 to light speed in 2 short years. Suggestion for Google: dump the dmoz open directory project (which is branded by Google as the Google Web Directory) and replace it with Wikipedia.
The relationship between Google and dmoz is really strange for a company about to go public at ~$14 b +. Google has been very slow to update the directory and AOL/TW doesn't look like it is putting any resources into it.
So far, Wikipedia has been able to raise only a small amount in donations. Pretty poor. If it was a commercial venture, it would be on the way to a huge payout as soon as the portals begin to recognize its value (and this will happen, it really is great). Say the value of Wikipedia was worth $200 m (not unthinkable given its value and the traffic it could command with the right placement). With ~194,000 articles written, that would value the effort at ~$1,000 a page. At $20 m, that's still $100 a page.
NOTE: one thing it shouldn't do is allow Google or some other portal to license its content for free (or anything less than a $20 m a year donation) and put ads on it. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Learing about K-collector. K-Collector @ Wonder Widgets, Inc..
We have recently launched a new K-Collector demo site. This is intended to show prospective customers how K-Collector might look (& be used) in their company. The W4 portal is interesting but too eclectic to really get an idea of how K-Collector is intended to work.
The site in question is for our imaginary company Wonder Widgets, Inc. who are purveyors of fine Java and .NET components. We had a bit of fun making up lots of posts ...it's how I imagine soap opera are written... we've already had one person leave the company!
So, if you've wondered what K-Collector is really all about, please drop me a line and I will organise a short (10-20 mins) demo for you. I'm happy to do this as I need the practice :-) [Curiouser and curiouser!] [Marc's Voice]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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These photoos of human-made toxic disasters -- mining tailings, tire-piles, oil refineries, etc -- capture the beauty of industrial horror. 
