Monday, April 22, 2002

Filter Tobacco "Filter Tobacco is a FREE software product designed to act as a gatekeeper. It protects children from tobacco marketing on the Internet by blocking access to websites that rate themselves (using the Internet Content Rating Association's system) as promoting use of tobacco products or are judged by the developers of Filter Tobacco as promoting the use of tobacco, especially those sites that sell tobacco products. Filter Tobacco does not seek to remove these sites, or to censor their content. It is a tool to empower parents, helping them to make informed judgments as to whether their child should be exposed to websites that market tobacco or promote the use of tobacco products.... Filter Tobacco is a PICS-compliant template. With Filter Tobacco, parents can customize the tobacco-related filtering categories that they wish to allow and block. Filter Tobacco can be used in conjunction with Microsoft's Internet Explorer or ICRAfilter, the free filtering engine provided by the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA). ICRAfilter is a powerful, highly-configurable filtering program that enables parents to control access to material they deem offensive or potentially harmful to their children. A unique feature of ICRAfilter is that it was specifically designed to allow third parties to create specialized filters for specific interests. Filter Tobacco is one of the first templates to be designed for this system." Courtesy of Ernest Miller and Raul Ruiz. 11:58:31 PM  Permanent link here

Why Ebooks Suck… Even Though They Don’t Have To "Note the two different players Jenny mentions: Gemstar and publishers. I happen to know that it wasn’t Gemstar running the show here. It was the publishers. (By the way, if you get the impression from this blog that I am not terribly impressed with the savvy and vision of the typical large publisher—you are absolutely right.) Gemstar cut the knees out from under web-page downloaders because publishers told them to. Security/DRM issues. Competition. That kind of thing. And the folks who would have stood up to the publishers, who had the vision, mostly left when Gemstar took over NuvoMedia and SoftBook.... Of course it was bloody suicidal for Gemstar. Some of them (the few holdovers, in my personal experience) even knew it. But the fundamental mistaken assumption here is that Gemstar’s customers were book buyers and book readers. Nope. Until the fabled “critical mass” of content appeared, Gemstar believed it had to woo publishers, not readers. Readers (thought publishers and Gemstar alike) would follow content like sheep. Who controls content? Not readers. Publishers. Publishers." [Caveat Lector] Dorothea pushes back on my most recent ebooks rant and asks me to specify which consumers I was referring to when I said they wouldn't invest in a dedicated, proprietary device. My answer is - me. I'm a gadget freak, but I don't own any dedicated ebook readers. And I don't plan to in the near future, either. Oh, and my grandmother, who's at the opposite end of the spectrum. We make up the ends of the mass market. Ebook readers don't work well for either one of us. I agree that specific applications work for niche markets (my home library's board president is blind, and he's very vocal about the market he represents), but I hate to see proprietary formats in that environment, too. And yes, it would be great to see Audible use Ogg Vorbis, not just for practical reasons, but to set an example. 11:49:04 PM  Permanent link here

Radio Wishlist - Translate outbound RSS files with GoogleAPI "I have some readers from Portugal, Spain, and Germany. I can tell because they use Google's machine translation feature to browse my site. With the advent of the Google API, is it possible to have translated versions of each rss.xml file on my Radio site? rss.xml en_esRss.xml (too_from syntax) en_deRss.xml Do rss files have a place to set language encoding? This might be a tool or a pref. Settings: googleAPI login categories to translate source language, by category destination languages, by category text of translation credit/caveat, to be included in rss file headers. Google's suggested translations of the site/category title and description, with user override. Will I use up my quota of GoogleAPI hits? No. Each time I post, thereby updating the rss in each category, I use up one of my 1000 daily google searches. Let's say 100 posts a day, to 10 categories each? We're probably good to go. English is rapidly becoming the largest minority language on the net. Helping blogspace and klogspace bridge those gaps adds big value. Is this hard to do?" [a klog apart] In my previous post, I forgot to mention this idea of Phil's. I hope someone answers, "Can we build it? Yes we can!" 11:18:20 PM  Permanent link here

Phil does wonderfully amazing things over at a klog apart... things I wish I could pass off here as my own ideas. First off, he's displaying above each post the categories to which it belongs. I was thinking of doing this using Radio's shortcuts, but Phil has another way of doing it. He kindly shared it with me, although I haven't had time to play with it. Now, however, I notice that he's gone and added Daypop searches filtered by keyword at the top of each category, including synonyms for the category subject. He's also got the pre-configured Google translation links in the right-hand column. Damn he's good! All things I want to implement, all things I don't have time to implement right now. All good evolutionary steps for usability in blogs. 10:32:46 PM  Permanent link here

If Bertelsmann Wed Napster, It Could Sue Itself, and More "By pursuing a possible deal to buy the music-trading service Napster, the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann is opening the unusual possibility that it may be financing an antitrust investigation against itself. The deal to buy Napster is being promoted by Bertelsmann's chief executive, Thomas Middelhoff, who told a German newspaper this month that he was willing to pay $15 million to $30 million, in addition to the $85 million that his company has already lent Napster over the last few years. He said he believed a for-pay version of Napster could still become the Internet's most successful service. At the same time, BMG Records, a division of Bertelsmann, has joined four other record labels in pursuing a lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement. That suit succeeded in knocking the service off the Internet last July. Napster, in turn, has said the case against it should be thrown out because the record companies had engaged in antitrust activities, joining to thwart competition to their own Internet music services. A judge has given Napster permission to gather evidence from the record companies for its claims.... Eric Scheirer, an independent music industry analyst, said it was unlikely that Bertelsmann would buy Napster for the express purpose of closing the antitrust investigation by Napster's defense team. But Mr. Scheirer also said that it was also unlikely that the company would continue to finance Napster's legal defense. "It makes no sense to be investigating itself," he said. Rather, Mr. Scheirer said, the probable outcome is that the sides will settle in "rapid order" because neither Bertelsmann nor its fellow record labels want to see Napster's investigation proceed." [NY Times: Technology] If only. I think either way Bertelsmann is out of luck unless they offer users portability of files, which I don't see happening. Especially if the other labels settle with them. 10:04:45 PM  Permanent link here

Currently Subscribed To, the Sequel "We've done a bit more tweaking to Jon's currently subscribed to, and think that we've got it pretty much where we want it. Find the tweaked-up script here . Here's what we've changed: Just a little bit of the table formatting.  Obviously, you are free to tinker with that as much as you please. More important: we noticed that occasionally our subs() script would get hosed by the addition of a new channel.  All of a sudden, our macro would fail, and we'd get a bizarre error message: "Can't evaluate the expression because the name 'channeltitle' hasn't been defined." Turns out that the error was a genuine one -- but in the RSS feed, not in the script.  We haven't kept careful track of RSS version numbers, and don't know the schema well enough to get haughty about it, but apparently some people are putting feeds out there that don't include the channeltitle element.  Solution: just wrap the code that addresses the channeltitle element in an if that makes sure channeltitle is defined." [The Boulder Inquisition] If you've looked on the right at all, you've noticed that I've had this error message on my site for quite some time now. I'll have to give this one a shot to see if it fixes the problem. 6:52:32 PM  Permanent link here

I look at the main page for Vista, and I feel utterly overwhelmed, melting into indecision for where to start. Obviously it does a lot: Context based Communication Community driven Information Sharing Secure Communication with Digital ID support Information Aggregation, Personalization and Publishing from different sources with Event Notification using channels Integration of desktop applications with the Internet and web services world Integration of Communities with Context driven Communication Easy Development of web services clients In addition to: Vista is a Universal WebServices Client that supports Channels for Information and Content via XML/HTTP/SOAP/XML-RPC. Vista supports Digital IDs with Message Encryption. Vista is the World's first Cross Conferencing client across AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and IRC messaging services. Vista lets you develop your own custom web service clients that can be deployed on the Vista platform using your current skill sets. Vista treats you as the owner of your data and supports standard security mechanisms like PKI, SSL, Blowfish, etc. Vista allows you to customize it by adding and removing channels/features. Vista supports normal IM features like Message History and File Transfer. Vista allows you to send SMS messages and publish to Web Blogs. Vista lets you play or develop games/add-ons like Chess with your buddies. No Banner Ads and No Spyware modules in Vista. In English, this means that "you can chat and also play games like Chess with them... you can chat with your buddies, on different messaging systems, in a single window... you can pick from over 100 news sources... Vista users can see your Digital Certificates, which verifies your identity... and Vista allows users to automate the blog publishing process." It looks like a free download, and they even let corporate users co-brand the software. Drawbacks include a Windows-only implementation and what looks to me like a daunting interface. There are some interesting ideas here, so when I have more time maybe I'll play around with it. [found via Bryce's Radio Experiments] 6:32:32 PM  Permanent link here

What Are Urban Tribes? "The 13 million “never-marrieds” between 25 and 39 (of which I am one) are a demographic puzzlement. Most of what is known about us is what we’re not doing.Besides not getting married, we’re not staying in our jobs for long, not finding community among our neighbors, not joining our parent’s civic or political organizations, and not going to church all that often. So the question becomes this: If we’re spending a decade or longer after college not devoted to a family, skipping from job to job, and unwilling to don our fathers’ fezzes, what are we doing with this expanse of time and the energy of our relative youth? The popular slacker literature of the early and mid-90s concluded that we were doing a lot of moping – that is doing nothing, selfishly. I doubt it. I think all the assumptions about this demographic group are only glosses for the fact that when we don’t understand some change in society we tend to assume that everything we hold dear is about to go down the toilet. I have another theory. I believe that in all the belly aching about recent generations avoiding of marriage, we have overlooked the social structure by which our puzzling behavior can be understood. What no one has yet explained is that while we identify ourselves as singles on surveys, we do not live our lives alone. We are primates after all and we require not only constant interaction with other humans but also a social structure that satisfies our need for membership in a group. To fill the growing gap of time we spend in between families, we have created a new type of community. I call these groups Urban Tribes.... While the genesis of the groups might be anything (college friendships, job acquaintances, the shared avocation), Urban Tribes evolve beyond their original focus and become the very center of our lives. In cities, where those of us between families often live alone and change jobs every couple of years, it is our Urban Tribe that provides the place where we celebrate our successes, mark the passage of time with rituals, create rules of behavior and feel protected by membership in a well-defined group. They are our secret for making the hustle of city life emotionally manageable. Single life in the city is no longer a phase that need be concluded quickly. With little fanfare, we’ve added a developmental stage to adulthood that comes before marriage – the tribe years. The working title of my book is Urban Tribes of the "Never Marrieds" Secrets of Community from an Unlikely Source. I have a year to write it starting fall of 2001. To make it interesting and true I need your help. If what I described above sounds something like your life I’m hoping you’ll take some time to describe your group, either by answering some of these survey questions or by sending me an e-mail with stories of your tribe. Any e-mail addresses or contact information will be passed on to no one. The information you give me will be used as material for my book and this website." [Ethan Watters, via peterme] Don't forget to read the comments on Peter's post! 4:19:58 PM  Permanent link here

NYT Random Login Generator "Paste the address of a New York Times article, then click "Register and Go!" This is why I love the Internet. We all know everybody lies on registration forms anyway; this just automates the process. (And by "everyone", I mean 26.2% of Internet users in 1996, 51.4% in 1998, and you can extrapolate from there. And even if you didn't lie the first time, you sure as heck did after you got that new laptop, or changed jobs, or had a major hard drive crash, or whatever.)" [diveintomark] 2:51:24 PM  Permanent link here

WebWord has some fine new articles, including one about The Voyeur Web. "You might not believe me, but I know what other people are thinking. I can't read minds of course but I can observe people. I know where they are going, what they are searching for, what they email other people, and what they link to. I'm not joking. By the end of this article you will be a mind reader too. You won't know why they are doing what they are doing, but at least you'll be able to watch their behavior. You'll know what they are doing.... I am not saying that I spy on people. Instead, I am saying that several web tools are mature enough that anyone with a little effort can understand the collective web." John then goes on to highlight sites such as Yahoo Most Emailed Content, Yahoo Buzz Index, Google Zeitgeist, and other tools that I've already mentioned in the past. I would add to the 25 Most E-mailed Articles from the New York Times. It's too bad they don't provide an RSS feed for that service, because I would add it to my aggregator lickety-split. Another missed opportunity, especially since the NYT is already partnering with Radio (yeah, I know it's not open to everyone, but it would be a start). Sure, I could try to scrape it with Stapler or RssDistiller, but I'm starting to feel like I'll be creating feeds for half of the freaking web at this rate. It would help if at least the big-time publishers realized that they would be providing a valuable service if they created the channels themselves. 1:35:08 PM  Permanent link here

This Phone Knows Where You Are ... and How to Help "Carrying a mobile phone with you for emergencies is a smart idea. If you run into trouble you can call for help. But what happens if you run into trouble - and for whatever reason you don’t know where you are, or where to call for help? There’s a new cellular phone being marketed that might be able to help. Co-workers here at MSNBC are always interested to know what I’m testing — but at no time in recent memory did any one particular item generate so much interest. I’m talking about the Magnavox MobilePal + GPS phone marketed by Remote MDX, Inc. Everyone marveled at the phone saying they knew someone for whom this would be the perfect gift. The idea behind the phone is simple. It’s a cellular phone that can pinpoint your location if you need assistance — and can do so at the push of one red button. As a matter of fact there is no dial - just the aforementioned red button emblazoned with the word CALL. When you push the red button the phone automatically calls the Secure Alert help desk — where a live personal assistant is there to help you anytime you need, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.... The Magnavox flip-phone itself is pretty nifty too. First of all it’s been made to run on four AAA batteries. No rechargeable cells or cords to lug around or worry about. In my testing, the batteries lasted for months and months in the standby state. The company says the batteries will last up to a year in that mode. The phone operates on the U.S. cellular phone network. That means you’re likely to find a cell nearly everywhere you go.... The phone automatically turns into a speakerphone so you don’t have to hold it to your head. I told her I was testing the phone and asked if she could tell me where I was standing. She asked me to hold, and about 90 seconds later came back on the line and told me my address and what she would have done for me if this had been a real emergency.... The MobilePal + GPS handset is currently selling for $199 — not an outrageous price for a specialized item such as this. I think the monthly service fees are actually quite reasonable for what is offered." [MSNBC] Although the movement has already started, we'll see a lot more location-based devices and services hit the market this year. Good - more focused information that you want and even need. Bad - major privacy issues. At least you can turn this phone off. 9:09:20 AM  Permanent link here

E-Books: An Idea Whose Time Hasn't Come "So far, demand for reading the texts of books on computer screens has been tepid at best, and last week the International eBook Award Foundation discontinued the awards and suspended its activities. "It has become increasingly difficult to raise the necessary funding," Alberto Vitale, the foundation's chairman, said in a statement. That is, Microsoft stopped paying. The awards are not the only casualty in the electronic book world. Hand-held reading devices made by Thomson Multimedia with software from Gemstar—TV Guide International Inc. have disappeared from stores. Thomson does not plan to make any more because of low sales. "Are they dead? No," said Lauren Snyder, a Gemstar spokeswoman. She said some company might make new versions with Gemstar. Mr. Brass has not declared defeat either. On Friday, Microsoft announced that it was creating the International eBook Association. Mr. Brass said the association would also give awards, albeit smaller ones, but would focus on regulatory and technological issues." [NY Times: Technology] I would argue that the time has come for audio ebooks and even ebooks on PDAs, but dedicated devices should have been roundly trounced and were. Just like users are not flocking to Pressplay and other online services that don't offer what they want, Gemstar, its predecessor, and its rivals just don't understand the power of standards and ease-of-delivery. Consumers aren't going to invest their time and money in a device that can only read one specific type of content with few choices available in that format. When Gemstar decided to stop letting their customers (the few folks that did actually plunk down money for their devices) download web pages and documents onto their devices, I knew the game was over. It was a clear illustration of their lack of vision and mis-reading of the market, and it failed miserably. The ebook content industry is choking itself because of a lack of standards and available titles, which is exactly what we're seeing with digital music online from the record labels. Publishers should wake up to the fact that they are killing off their most potentially lucrative digital markets for fear of success. 7:53:34 AM  Permanent link here

More Devilish Details on CARP: It appears CARP of the Library of Congress (LOC) have been hit with a substancial number of Comment Letters on the issue.  The LOC has taken the time to publish a representative number of them on their website. However you should be aware that the Reply Comments period will be open until Friday, April 26, 2002. So your input is still needed. Be sure to follow the rules on how the LOC wants to receive this material. It appears CARP is beginning to get the message, that the reporting necessary to meet CARP's requirements are illegal (existing privacy laws, esp. with minors,) difficult, expensive report without expensive software and impossible to comply because of legal and logical reasons.  (I will try to write more on this later in the week.) The LOC has decided to have a Public Roundtable Meeting regarding the reporting systems proposed by CARP, on Friday, May 10, 2002, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. at LM620 (Dining Room A), James Madison Memorial Building, First and Independence Avenue, SE, Washington DC. Requests to participate or attend must be made by e-mail to 114roundtable@loc.gov or by fax to (202) 252-3423 by May 6, 2002. (DO NOT MAIL.) Be sure to read the Notice and Record filing from the Federal Register here, in order to completely comply with the rules before requesting admission. For those who can not attend, The International Webcasting Association will provide a webcast of the full proceedings of the Public Roundtable to be held May 10, 2002. The webcast will also be available live and on demand in both Windows Media and RealPlayer at TVWorldwide.com Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting that RIAA "Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently dropped its request to the U.S. Copyright Office that webcasters be required to submit detailed records of user information." Well that's a refreshing change. It appears Hilary Rosen of RIAA is finally getting the message that the small and non-profit webcaster can not afford the cost of reporting. However my reading is showing that RIAA got the opportunity to nail the Non-Commerical Low  Power FM stations by objecting to these stations being apart of CARP proceedings in this letter of objection. This isn't over yet folks. If you haven't written do so this week.  Also check with saveinternetradio.org for more information. [Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour] If you need an example of a great editorial to use when writing to LOC, you could quote a few lines from Last-minute Plea to Save Inernet Radio by Pete Guttenberg. make sure your voice is heard! 7:38:49 AM  Permanent link here

Buzz says I need to go to PopTech, and I wholeheartedly agree. The program sounds fascinating, plus I've never been to Camden, N.J. M.E. (doh!), and Ernie and Scoble are going. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), I won't be able to attend it this year because I've been invited to speak at the NetSpeed conference in Calgary, which takes place October 24-26, and I'm thinking of submitting a presentation for Internet Librarian, which is November 4-6. Either way, I'll be going to IL, and my boss is already nervous about me being gone during those times, so I'll have to try for PopTech next year.  :- 12:28:54 AM  Permanent link here

Wow - I'm having an automated conversation with Mark and I didn't even know it! Google seems to, though. Here's what Mark has to say: "Jenny Levine set up a Google box for sites related to hers. I don't know how Google's "related" ranking works, but I'm #7 on hers, and she's #1 on mine. And I know that people are coming to my site through her Google box, because she's showing up in my new "Being read by" auto-blogroll list on my home page. And according to her referrers, people are also going to her site from my auto-blogroll. In other words, two people who have never intentionally linked to each other are each generating traffic for the other. (I am aware that explicitly linking to her now will skew these results.) [to which Jenny says that maybe now the results will be equally skewed and will offset each other!] I became friends with Joe Gregorio after accidentally discovering that he lived in Apex, and with Sam Ruby after he accidentally discovered that I did. Jenny and I may end up becoming friends simply because Google thought we should. Oh, and pretty soon we won't have to post anything at all, we'll all just auto-generate our weblogs and spend the rest of the weekend outside. (Disclaimer: I am already outside. I have wireless.)" So howdy to my new friend Mark! Hmmm... Google as friend finder? Some day, maybe it will even have a pagerank for matchmacking! I wonder if they've thought as a business model yet. Really makes you wonder what you could do with their API.... 12:12:11 AM  Permanent link here

Bret Fausett was the first to help me solve the parameters of a Googlebox question, and you can see his answer for yourself on the Radio Discussion Group. Dave Seidel also provided the answer via a comment, so my eternal thanks to both gentleman! So you can now see two different boxes on the right for those sites that Google thinks are related to mine. The results are quite interesting. Now if I could just figure out how to modify the macro itself so that I can change the title of the Googlebox, but that will have to wait for another day. 12:01:33 AM  Permanent link here