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Friday, May 10, 2002 |
"ST8 PL8S (State Plates) is a simple program [for Palms] to pass the time away while tooling across the USA. The object is to watch for license plates from different states. Once found, select the state and mark it found. You'll learn a couple of interesting facts about the state along the way." [VersionTracker]
Excellent! More reading fun with the kids on road trips. And I don't just mean "kids" in the traditional sense. Brent and Kailee will get a kick out of this if I put it on my old Palm III and let them have at it (especially if I include Diddlebug in the deal), but "big kids" Andy and Kate can also partake in the fun on our frequent adventures to Springfield! Best part - it's free!
11:52:39 PM Permanent link here
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May 3:
"Hi. I made $3 working for Google yesterday and resisted the impulse to answer many other terrible questions with simply the word 'no.' Removing the option of an actual reference interview from the answering process turns many questions into a 'guess which number I'm thinking of' exercise where the researcher says 'um... 4?' 'no' '6?' 'no' '19?' 'no. you're really bad at this aren't you?' "
May 7:
"Hi. I managed to get an answer of mine 'removed' from Google Answers. The question was this 'Can you fore see the future and tell me if the company my employer has made an offer to acquire will go through?' I tried to make the best of it and indicate that while we couldn't foresee the future, we had many reference materials to use, none of which would help to answer this completely fact-lacking question, and could we please have more information. The answer was found to 'contain material that falls outside our editorial guidelines' and thus was stricken. Meanwhile, other answers I've given have been given low ratings primarily due to -- in my opinion -- the question asker requesting something that may not be possible and IS not possible for a $4 fee. Google Answers has no appeals policy if question askers are being unreasonable. Incidentally, if I don't manage to make more than $25 at this Google Answering, I will not be paid until the end of the year, those are their terms."
May 10:
"Hi. I have hit the $100 mark at Google Answers. I made $4 telling someone a joke they had never heard before." [librarian.net]
Emphasis is all mine, because I'm debating if this is funny or pathetic (Google Answers, not Jessamyn!). People, just contact your local library! Pretty soon, you'll be able to call my home library and talk to a really funny guy. I can't be less cryptic than that at the moment, but more on this in the near future.
11:30:41 PM Permanent link here
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"So many Web readers frequented sites such as Feed, Word, Suck and Salon for news and commentary that when they downsized or closed, everybody noticed. Hip and immediate though they were, those sites were still basically magazines, with paid contributors writing regular articles in a more-or-less distinctive editorial voice....
But, in fact, another kind of intellectual-content site has survived, one that makes much fuller use of the Web's unique structure. And the new model is flourishing.
The Web has always attracted a sizable minority of literate dissenters, interested in more than Limp Bizkit MP3s and streaming video-porn clips. While institutionally supported sites such as Slate (Microsoft), the Atlantic Online (Atlantic Monthly), and Brookings.org (Brooking Institution) remain important stopovers, they more and more feel peripheral to the main attractions.
Instead of self-contained essays, the Web's new intellectual hothouses offer diverse networks of opinion, and active participation. Reader power is where the Web really comes into its own.
Plastic, Slashdot and Metafilter are three sites where users determine both the news and the spin. Users, including loyal bands of regulars, post links to articles found elsewhere on the Web, write subjective introductions and invite commentary. Discussions range from New York police brutality to the antics of rap-metal behemoth Kid Rock, with sources from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to Annette Funicello fan sites.
As Neil Morton of Shift magazine recently wrote on-line, 'With the Net, now we go and find the news; the news doesn't get selected for us by editors and writers. We go out and discuss various viewpoints on political events in threads and discussion boards rather than having them dictated to us by op-ed pages with their own agenda....'
The Internet, [David] Weinberger says, 'is unleashing our natural desire to find other people interested in the same things as we are, our group-forming tendencies. The Internet has long passed the point of being a gigantic on-line library where we can track down content that matters to us. [It] is a conversation....'
But if you can handle the pace, the rewards are well worth it." [The Globe and Mail, via this particular weblog...]
Emphasis above is mine. If you look closely, you'll see that the glue holding these ideas together is news aggregation, whether its done manually on collaborative sites like Slashdot and MetaFilter, or through RSS news aggregators. I just realized that I'm subscribed to 136 news feeds, which is about 100 more sites than I was trying to monitor on my own in what could only be described as a "haphazard" fashion pre-Radio. In fact, the flow and conversation we're seeing with blogs wouldn't be so dramatic if it wasn't for news aggregators because it wouldn't be possible.
While these are indeed conversations that we are actively seeking, they're built on the shifted reality of aggregators. Aggregators are the ultimate in "information shifting" because there are two filters that narrowcast the amount of information that comes to you. The first is the subscription itself, e.g. I don't have to manually visit 136 sites every day, something I could never realistically do. The second is the aggregation in one place, specifically a web page because email would be too overwhelming. I've shifted 136 sites to where I want to receive information of my choosing. That is the ultimate in "reader power."
11:10:14 PM Permanent link here
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"Searching Google for "accessibility statement" brings up a lot of .gov sites, which makes sense, since federal government sites are the ones affected by Section 508. Most of these statements are the same (we comply with Section 508, or we're at least working on it ), but there are some good examples of accessibility statements out there:
- National Center for Accessible Media, home of the multimedia tool MAGPie.
- dyslexic.com, about designing for learning disabilities.
- Then there's the accessibility statement of the City of Des Moines, which says
This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater, Netscape 6.0 or greater or Opera 6.0 . Not... quite... getting the concept... are we? Oh well. (In their defense, the site does appear to be usable in Lynx.)"
[dive into mark]
10:35:23 PM Permanent link here
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"In his book Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud argues that digital media may be the best - and perhaps last - hope for comics to find a larger public. McCloud imagines a world where independent comic artists sell their product directly to the consumer without confronting any middle men or gatekeepers, where more diverse comics content can find audiences well beyond the hardcore comics readers who rule the local comic shops, and where the formal vocabulary of comics can expand, freed from the limitations of the printed page."
Let's take this a step further, shall we? Utilize libraries to distribute comic books via the web. Add these digital comics to the online catalog and allow readers to read them from home. Kind of like e-books, but skip the big publishing companies. Have cooperatives pool their money and buy and organize massive amounts for a county collection. See Comic Books for Young Adults for a discussion on comic books in libraries." [Library Stuff]
Go Steven, go Steven! He totally nails how libraries can actually help the indie industry. For example, libraries could circulate music by local bands. Local authors almost always give copies of their works to their local library. Comic book distribution is another great idea. The BigCos are trying to bypass us with their digital content and work only with end users, but it's a flawed premise. Libraries can introduce patrons to their materials and increase their profits in the end. This is even more true for the entertainment industry flying under the BigCo radar.
In many ways, libraries are already the center of most communities, and not just in the context of information. My home Library serves as a park district, community center, and meeting place because our newly incorporated village doesn't provide any of these services and there's never been an infrastructure to support them until now. So the Library just stepped in and has filled that role for years.
In Phoenix, the central library hosts rap sessions for teens on Friday afternoons. The kids step up to the mic and rap and sing and when I was there, they were giving away free CDs. Combine that with our existing programming, archiving, and information dissemination functions and we could easily become a center for circulating and preserving local entertainment media. The library could have a local musician collection, a local author collection, a local artist collection, and so on. Most of us already collect the history, but we're not keeping or circulating this type of current content. With the right kind of resources, we could even digitze what is not already in an electronic format and circulate it via our catalogs.
5:57:46 PM Permanent link here
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"Students from Likeisha Kelly’s class stood in a line and introduced themselves.
After each name was called, the students named their 'job.'
Photographer, sales manager, editor, reporter — all jobs at a newspaper.
For the past five weeks, the group of E.P. Todd Elementary School third-graders has been learning about how a newspaper works as part of the Junior Achievement program....
Board members were given slips of paper to create short newspaper articles and accompanying artwork.
Articles were affixed to a newspaper poster in their proper places — the sports section, the entertainment section and so forth." [GoUpstate.com News Headlines]
This is a great idea, but what would have been even more interesting would have been to let the kids blog their experiences and create a faux newspaper edition via collaborative blogging. Radio's WYSIWYG environment makes it easy enough for this type of use, and the new multi-author environment would allow them to post short stories, with separate categories for each "section." The kid that did the weather predictions could have blogged them on a regular basis and even noted his overall accuracy. And of course, it's perfect for editorials!
I think blogging has great potential in education settings because it doesn't require copious amounts of time, it's informal, and it can be reactive or proactive, while at the same time pushing the kids to think about grammar, narrative, and spelling.
Addendum: Steven notes "fwiw, http://radio.weblogs.com/0103438/ is a fifth-grader's blog."
" 'Is a stopped clock not still right 2 times a day?' (I'll be up all night with that one too.)"
5:17:04 PM Permanent link here
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"Several winners of the NTK 'Remix Michael 'Pirates! Pirates! Pirates!' Greene's Grammy Speech' contest. These are awesome MP3s, and the fact that Greene has since been forced to slink away from the RIAA in shame for inappropriate sexual conduct gives it extra schadenfreude deliciousness. Link, Link, Link, Link, Link Discuss (via NTK)" [bOing bOing]
3:14:41 PM Permanent link here
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"More than a week before the movie's release, unauthorized copies of the next STAR WARS episode have hit the Internet!
"One bootleg version of ATTACK OF THE CLONES appears to have been made at a private showing of the film, using a tripod-mounted digital camcorder pointed at the screen," the LOS ANGELES TIMES reports in fresh editions. "Another evidently employed a more sophisticated version of the same technique."
The early release of CLONES is just the latest example of how bootlegs of blockbuster movies appear online long before they are available in video stores--in some cases even before they hit the theaters.
SPIDER-MAN appeared on the net a day before its official premiere." [Drudge Report]
I can't believe I'm linking to Drudge, but this was too good to pass up. How on earth will Hollywood justify harming consumer rights when their own ranks are the ones disseminating these files? Maybe the CBDTPA should also outlaw private showings.
8:46:54 AM Permanent link here
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"Let the countdown commence! The two 'Matrix' sequels won't arrive until 2003, but don't fret: ET has the exclusive world premiere of not only 'The Matrix Reloaded' teaser trailer, but 'The Matrix Revolutions' teaser, too -- all coming next Wednesday night!...
'We are trying to do some crazy things out here,' offers Keanu. 'The kung-fu sequences are more sophisticated and more challenging than the first film. Some of the wire work [allows me to] do back flips and cartwheels all in one shot.'
'It's pushed me to my limits. Before it was like, 'Can you do two kicks?' and now it's like, 'Can you do three kicks, but with a jumping backspin hook-kick?' So it's like you have learned to walk -- now can you fly....'
Filming of the two sequels is expected to wrap in Sydney this August, and 'The Matrix Reloaded' is due for release in summer 2003. 'The Matrix Revolutions,' is due just months later in November 2003....
Don't forget to watch ET Wednesday night for the exclusive world premiere of both teaser trailers!" [ET Online]
That would be Wednesday, May 15! If you go to the site now, you can watch video interviews with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.
8:38:02 AM Permanent link here
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"Aphex Twin, who has been described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music," appears to have sneaked the digital image of a devilish face into at least one of his songs.
The spooky image of a creature with a diabolical grin has been accidentally discovered on Aphex Twin's Windowlicker EP, a 1999 hit.
The sinister face is revealed when the song is played on a computer through special software that visualizes sound waves.
Just like the backward messages on vinyl LPs, the face is secretly encoded in the actual sound waves of the music. It isn't a separate file on the CD. The image is the aural equivalent of steganography: the practice of hiding secret messages and watermarks in images....
But it appears Chaos Machine was a bit too quick off the mark. The song does indeed contain the image of a face, but not a demonic one. It's Aphex Twin himself -- or Richard James, as he's known to his parents.
The real image was discovered by a 19-year-old named Jarmo Niinisalo, who tweaked the settings in his spectrographic software to reveal James' grinning fizzog. The procedure is described on Niinisalo's website.
Niinisalo also discovered three more pattern-like images embedded in songs on the Windowlicker EP. None of them is sinister." [Wired News]
7:42:33 AM Permanent link here
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"Friday is a Java front-end for viewing news aggregation sites and site syndication feeds on mobile devices, like phones and PDAs. Friday supports the Syndic8 news aggregation site. In the near future, it will support others, such as Meerkat and NewsIsFree." [via Content Syndication with XML and RSS]
This is pretty big news to my mind, because it's the next piece of the puzzle for shifting RSS news aggregators to make them portable. In the future, when we're bathed in always-on, wireless access to the internet, we'll use our customized aggregators to deliver the information that we've personally knighted to be aggregator-worthy.
Maybe you'll see a full-blown aggregator on your OQO, but maybe you view a subset of feeds that you've tagged as high priority and those appear on your phone because you need to see updated information as it comes in. Maybe it's your organization's intranet feed, your customers' feeds, your local newspaper's headlines, or just your daughter's blog. It's your aggregator, so you choose what's important. But portability (both mobility and interoperability) makes that happen.
1:16:41 AM Permanent link here
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" 'We haven't issued forecasts for the industry in two years, because the market's going nowhere,' said David Card, an analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix. 'E-books were a dumb idea. I am very negative on this market.'
Still, there is another side to this story, that makes the whole matter read a little bit like a mystery novel. Rather than swallowing their losses and moving on, the companies like Adobe Systems and Microsoft that make e-book software are standing firmly behind the business, insisting growth rates are strong and getting stronger....
A few other signs of encouragement: AOL Time Warner, which recently abandoned its own e-book publishing effort, has entered a partnership with an outside e-book publisher. And when former Nixon White House counsel John Dean decided to go public with his new theory on the identity of deep-throat, he opted for an e-book format. Dean plans to publish an e-book called 'The Deep Throat Brief' in June on the Salon.com Web site.
It is this ability in the Internet to reach large volumes of readers that makes e-book backers so confident in the format's eventual success. Nicholas Bogaty, director of the Open eBook Forum, which helps promote e-books, says the industry still has a way to go on developing consistent standards and more user-friendly technology....
But the mystery remains. Where are all these e-books that people are supposedly buying?" [USA Today, via Library Stuff]
At least some of them are libraries buying Rocketbook and netLibrary titles.
1:04:57 AM Permanent link here
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"Today, Lori Bell and I gave presentations on handheld use in libraries at the Suburban Library System's Technology Summit. Also, presenting was Darrell Walery, Director of Technology, Consolidated HS District 230. From him, we learned that there is a product called Webtarget that allows users to use their infrared port to connect to the Internet. The Webtarget product is manufacturer by TriBeam Wireless Access, a local company (Arlington Heights, IL)." [The Handheld Librarian]
I thought Thursday's Tech Summit went pretty well, and I was particularly interested to hear about Darrell's project. One thing in particular that I wanted to note was something he said about ebooks. I was surprised that the schools aren't using them as part of their Palm project, but Darrell said that this might change. He noted that while the teachers repeatedly say that PDA screens are too small for reading, he's never had a student say this.
When Lori was talking about her PDA project, she noted that some of the students found it easier to read ebooks than print books because of the lack of pagination. It seems that because they couldn't see how much of the book was left, it made the reading go faster and they weren't dreading how much of the book was still left to read.
12:54:55 AM Permanent link here
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"Clearly, this is no corporate automaton serving up market-tested demographic bait. It is a 1953 recording of a legendary Memphis disc jockey, Dewey Phillips — one of nearly 1,000 radio recordings, or airchecks, to be found at www.reelradio.com.
The Reel Top 40 Radio Repository, as the site is billed, is a trove of vintage recordings — most in the Real Audio 3.0 format — celebrating the golden age of Top 40 radio, which roughly spans the years 1955 to 1975. The recordings reach across time and space, providing broadcast segments, some as long as an hour, complete with jingles, commercials, newscasts, occasional vintage pop hits and hyperspeed patter....
Despite its vast inventory, which is updated with two new airchecks every Sunday, the Reel Top 40 Repository is strictly a grass-roots affair, overseen by one man: Richard Irwin, a former journeyman disc jockey ("Uncle Ricky") who now writes software for Captus Networks, a company in Sacramento that designs security software for Internet companies." [NY Times: Technology]
I know what my Dad will be listening to on Friday!
12:45:20 AM Permanent link here
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"We would like to take this opportunity to present our own revised version of this bill, which we've dubbed the SSSCA 2002. As you will see, this bill is a much better vehicle for protecting the children of starving artists, musicians, and programmers and making the world a better place....
1. WHEREAS Congress finds that the vast majority of Internet users and entertainment consumers are thieves, pirates, miscreants, Communists, hackers, and anarchists, and that musicians, artists, writers, authors, directors, actors, programmers and executives are suffering undue harm as a result, we hereby enact the Secure Software Systems for the Children Act of 2002 to declare war against copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secret violations throughout the world.
2. WHEREAS Congress finds that libraries, public and private, represent a serious loophole by which consumers can access copyrighted works at no charge, we hereby prohibit all libraries from receiving any Federal money or assistance whatsoever. Moreover, all foreign aid shall be indefinitely withheld from those nations harboring copyright terrorists in the form of taxpayer-supported librarians....
5. WHEREAS Congress finds that the term for copyrights, trademarks, and patents is too short for authors to effectively squeeze every last ounce of money out of them, we hereby extend the term of all copyrights, trademarks, and patents to last until the year 500000 A.D. Moreover, the law that prohibits Federal agencies from copyrighting their products is hereby repealed....
8. WHEREAS Congress finds that a highly educated citizenry is less likely to enjoy the low-quality material currently produced by the content industry, thus reducing the profit and tax revenue generated by Hollywood, we hereby prohibit any public or private school from holding back underperforming students, and require that said students be pushed through the system regardless of their reading or cognitive ability or lack thereof. Henceforth, no pro-reading or literacy program shall receive Federal funding in any form whatsoever....
14. WHEREAS Congress finds that the public will wholeheartedly support any legislation that claims to be "for the children", we hereby decree that a court, at its discretion, may require copyright violators to pay a fine that will go into a trust fund to be used to help support the starving children of low-income artists and musicians harmed by intellectual property theft." [Humorix, via LibraryPlanet.com]
Just as funny are Librarians Change Stance, Support SSSCA, Congress Copyrights Copyright Law, and Book Publishers Unveil Anti-Copying Devices.
"US Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-Mickey Mouse) has proposed an amendment to the SSSCA which would provide $250 million in Federal grants to help retrain former librarians for other careers that benefit instead of hurt society, such as participating in the government's new 'War On Piracy' campaign."
12:38:56 AM Permanent link here
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"Fresh from its transition to an electronic filing system, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is embarking upon a controversial plan to dispose of an estimated 135 million documents - literally tons of paper - chronicling more than 200 years of innovation.
In a vast research library in Crystal City, Arlington, the PTO maintains countless stacks of patents and trademarks - roughly 27 million in all - some from inventions and ideas dating back as far as 1790.
Now that the agency has scanned the papers into its publicly searchable electronic database, it's looking for a new curator for the aging records.
'We envision them going to another government agency, or to any nonprofit that wants them,' USPTO spokesperson Brigid Quinn said.
Faced with more than 6,000 patent and trademark applications each week, the agency is moving to an electronic document system to reduce costs and to tackle a backlog of filings.
Currently, just over 30 percent of trademark applications are filed electronically, though the agency will require e-filing for all trademarks by 2004. The PTO is also considering a similar mandate for patent applications.
The documents in question are duplicates of the original patents and trademarks, which are typically given to grantees. The PTO makes four to five copies of all patent and trademark documents, and each is cross-referenced and filed according to industry to ease the workload of patent examiners....
'The PTO will be making a grave error by eliminating paper files,' Lowe said. 'Without that redundancy, a lot of prior filings are going to be missed.'
In addition, hundreds of researchers hired by local law and research firms could lose their jobs as a result of the shift, Lowe said....
Both Weir and Lowe say the PTO's wants to clear out the pillars of paper mainly to make room for desks and office equipment needed for the 700 patent examiners hired this year. The agency plans to hire another 950 examiners in 2003 - provided Congress approves the Bush administration's latest budget request." [Newsbytes]
12:20:55 AM Permanent link here
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"Welcome to Radio-Locator, the most comprehensive radio station search engine on the internet. We have links to over 10,000 radio station web pages and over 2500 audio streams from radio stations in the U.S. and around the world." [via Memo To Myself]
10,000 reasons you should visit SaveInternetRadio.org and make your voice heard before May 21.
12:12:09 AM Permanent link here
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"Radio's RSS writer is now user-extensible. The RSS writer in Radio is now officially user-extensible. 'Before generating the RSS, we check user.radio.callbacks.writeRssFile,' Dave writes today. Excellent. This will open the floodgates for all sorts of useful metadata experimentation. We'll see Radio UserLand sites emitting RSS 1.0, and others extending RSS .9x. It's not the format that matters to me, it's the experimentation. ... [Jon's Radio]
This is brilliant news. Ordinary Radio users like me can now experiment with tagging topical categories of posts related to 'official' court filings (such as opinions), court rules, and FAQs. Enabling an end user to sort, filter or interpret by topical content.
One Small Example: A lawyer in New Orleans, is watching the progress of asbestos mass litigation in the courts of Louisiana, becomes aware that very similar issues involving medical monitoring and asbestos mass litigation are pending before the West Virginia Supreme Court. If the WV court has an XML feed for recent opinions (which we do), the lawyer in New Orleans could subscribe to that feed and watch for orders and opinions regarding asbestos mass litigation. Understandably, however, the lawyer in New Orleans may not want to read all of the posts about another jurisdiction's opinions - only those concerning limited issues. With this new feature, the lawyer in New Orleans can target the request, saving bandwidth and precious screen time." [Rory Perry's Radio Weblog]
I don't pretend to understand exactly what all of this means, but I can tell this is a Martha Stewart Good Thing. In fact, I suspect this may somehow solve my RSS truncation issue, but I'll have to wait for more informed minds to weigh in on this one.
What I do see as the bigger issue is that this provides a path for further news aggregator development in Radio. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what it means for RSS news aggregation in general, but I believe quite strongly that some form of aggregation will become part of our everyday information lives in the future, so I welcome any and all roads that lead to that day.
12:01:47 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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