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Thursday, June 27, 2002 |
Adam Curry would like Teoma to compete with Google - not yet Adam.
Adam Curry says:
A word about developers and successful products on the Internet. Yesterday was the last day that my wife's company LaPaay was located in the same building as one of our other investments; CapCave. Both companies are growing rapidly and we needed to ensure everyone has enough breathing room, so we decided to move LaPaay to the ground floor of our other building on the canal, about 7 minutes walk from the 'old place'. I really hadn't given the move too much thought, especially since it's so close by.
Boy, did I underestimated the human aspect of this move.
There's about 25 developers, geeks and nerds at CapCave, and these guys have been living under the same roof with the most gorgeous girls and boys for 2 years. You can only imagine how sad they were to seee the LaPaayers go! They even shot and edited a video of all the geeks saying goodbye, too raunchy and personal for the blog, but very touching.
There you have it. Geeks have feelings.
And once you realize this, the more you will benefit from your rocket-science-relationship(s) That's exactly what LaPaay had apparently realized long ago, because this video tape was full of stuff like "just holler if the printer's busted again" and "anytime you need your mailing database purged, just shoot me a call".
Don't we all dream of such support?! This what Dave is talking about when he suggests taking a programmer to lunch once in a while. Show some normal human compassion, get over external appearances. There's a beautiful human hiding behind those glasses and pocket protector!
Companies can also benefit from the geek forces. Especially companies that sell technology, software, services or hardware. Send some love to developers. You won't regret it. Same bunch of geeks answered my question from yesterday about Teoma. Immediate response: "awesome! technically better than google!"
Now, which search engine do you think the developer is going to be thinking of the most? Teoma or Google, who have opened their geekishly named 'API" so the nerds of the world can 'tinker around', in the process learning about google's technology and often improving it along the way.
Google became the defacto search engines because geeks coined it 'da bomb' in companies everywhere, just like altavista before it. In fact, wasn't this whole innernet thang just us geeks 10 years ago?!
Perhaps a long windup, but I really want Teoma to have a chance to shine. I'm a shareholder and hope management and the board are listening. Even Steve Ballmer knows it: Developers!! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
Well, Adam, if you really want Teoma to have a chance to shine, let me give you some advice. Tell them to make their submit a site process as brain-dead simple as google's. Google gets it. Period. End of discussion. That's why they're #1. When I went to submit my site on Teoma, it's like going through some porn site indocrination with windows popping up all over the place and redirects to a third-party that wants me to PAY THEM to put my site on Teoma. That's bullshit and it's exactly the reason why Teoma will remain an also-ran as long as they don't get it. You might want to tell them to read Jakob Nielsen.
Finally, Teoma's usefulness as a search engine is directly related to the size of their crawled cache. If they understood that, they'd have already rolled out the red carpet on their submit a site. Unfortunately, Phd's get the hard part but they often overlook the simple stuff. [www.davidwatson.org]
12:50:50 PM 
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Magnetic wood blocks mobile phone signals. Theatres and restaurants could use the new wood to stop people using their cellphones without resorting to signal jammers [New Scientist]
First of all, it's not magnetic wood, it's a sandwich of wood and a ferrite substrate. Thank's for teasing me there folks. But what is cool about this is the fact that it can be used to block cell phone signals, allowing a builder to make a signal free zone without installing the illegal signal jammers.
Possible uses mentioned in the article: Theaters, restaurants, residential for limiting access to different networks in a confined area.
My thoughts: Homespun Faraday cages for privacy and for those who don't like the idea of being bombarded with differing wavelengths. Appliance garage for a microwave oven. To minimize intereference when shooting a movie in digital (I seem to recall that Lucas had to make a studio stage into a massive faraday cage as there was a lot of interference form outside sources while he was shooting his latest film.) Sheathe a home in the material to minimize RF intereference from outside devices. [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]
12:48:51 PM
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Transmeta gadgets and paradigm shift gear grinding. Transmeta threw a great party last night at the Rockefeller center. Lots of nifty Crusoe-based gadgets were on display, including the OQO Ultra-Personal Computer. It wants to be a universal engine that powers your desktop, detaches and docks into a notebook, or stands alone as a somewhat portly PDA. Everybody wanted one, including me -- and I'm not known for gadget lust. ... [Jon's Radio]
12:44:11 PM
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Preserving The Past For The Future.
World's Oldest Photo Analyzed
"The image acknowledged as the world’s first photograph — taken by a French inventor in 1826 — has passed its first full-scale analysis with flying colors and is now awaiting an airtight case that will keep it safe for centuries to come, scientists said Wednesday.
The faint 8-inch by 6.5-inch (20-cm by 16.5-cm) image of the French countryside, captured by Joseph Nicephore Niepce on a thin pewter plate, has been undergoing a high-tech check-up by scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute in a joint project with French photo conservationists....
Using X-rays, multi-spectral imaging and infra-red spectrometers, the scientists sought to unlock the mysterious chemical processes by which the image was made....
On completion of their experiments, the image will return to its home at Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin and go back on display in 2003." [MSNBC, via Slashdot]
I'd post the picture, but I'm afraid of copyright violations (is the photo copyrighted?), although you can see it on MSNBC's site. Besides just being cool, this story highlights the problems faced by preservationists. How much of the content that was on 5-1/4" floppies has been preserved? Not that anyone saw it as a serious format for historical preservation, but anything contained solely on those disks is probably gone. The more you lock something up in one format - especially one that is encrypted and proprietary (yeah, I'm looking your way, Mr. Entertainment Industry) - the less of a chance there is that it will be around in ten years, let alone 50 or centuries. [The Shifted Librarian]
12:26:01 PM
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Darwin Devolves.
Librarians at the Gate
"E-books are killing the happy marriage of libraries and publishers. Libraries can now lend the same book to thousands of readers simultaneously. Publishers say it’s not fair. What’s the answer?
For the past 100 years, publishers and public libraries have had a cordial, if complicated, relationship. Publishers like libraries because libraries buy books. But then, of course, the libraries allow anyone with a library card to read the books, reducing the likelihood that cardholders will become book buyers. It’s a tradeoff that publishers have been happy with, largely because of the mathematical limitations of library lending. That is, libraries lend one book to one reader for several days, so over the course of a year, even the most popular books might be read by fewer than 50 people.
Now, however, technology has fouled the waters in the form of e-books, which make it possible for a library to lend a single book at one time to, say, everyone in Manhattan. Big publishers, most of whom live in Manhattan, are no longer happy with their relationship with libraries. And they are particularly unhappy with e-publishers....
Now, while Random House is contemplating more legal action, RosettaBooks is selling more than 100 titles in e-book form on its website, www.rosettabooks.com. The e-books can be bought individually by consumers for $8.99, or—and this is the scary part—they can be bought by libraries, to whom RosettaBooks offers unlimited access to classics for as little as $200 a year. Those library, in turn, can offer that e-book for download from its website to as many readers as can fit in the pipeline. That can be a very large number. The University of Virginia, for example, which has the country’s largest collection of digitized books, claims that 5.8 million e-books have been downloaded by users in more than 100 countries.
Until a few months ago, most libraries with e-book databanks have been considerate of publishers’ preferences, and have issued e-books to one reader at a time....
Unless some long-established business models change, library lending to multiple readers could clobber big book publishers, who have been hurting for years." [Darwin Magazine]
Can someone please explain to me why all of a sudden the media has chosen this exact moment to note that digital files can be circulated to more than one patron at a time? This is not new(s). Then please find me a single example of a library doing this, on its own, with copyrighted material. netLibrary, eBrary, Books24x7, Audible, etc. are companies, NOT LIBRARIANS, and these companies impose strict restrictions on simultaneous use. With each one, libraries can let more than one person at a time use a file ONLY IF THEY PAY FOR SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS.
In other words, libraries have to buy multiple copies of digital files if they want to circulate multiple copies of digital files. It's no different than in the print world, thanks to the companies behind these services. I challenge you to find a single library that is circulating copyrighted content to more than one patron at a time without paying for the privilege of doing so.
And by the way, the 5.8 million ebooks downloaded from the University of Virginia - they're all public domain works at their Electronic Text Center, not titles from the library's catalog. It's disappointing to see Darwin fanning the flames of a fire that doesn't need to exist. The author would have had no foundation for this article if he'd bothered to even talk to a librarian.
Shame on him and shame on Darwin for publishing this. [The Shifted Librarian]
12:25:01 PM
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'You are not to reference the Constitution ... '.
Judge Robert L. Patterson (reported by Vin Suprynowicz)
You are not to reference the Constitution in these proceedings. You will not address it in voir dire, you will not address it in your opening remarks, you will not ask any questions about the Constitution when you summon your witnesses, and you will not talk about the Constitution when you give your closing arguments. [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog]
7:43:42 AM
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Every Montage Tells Another Story. Ever since the dawn of photography, people have manipulated images. But digital media has transformed the art of montage into a brand-new genre. By Kendra Mayfield. [Wired News]
7:42:58 AM
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Making Those Games Sound Right. At George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, sound creators -- known as Foley artists -- spend their days stomping on floors, clanking metal and listening. The goal: Make those video games sound better. By Brad King. [Wired News]
7:42:32 AM
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Talk about wealth!. As introduction to a new essay by wiseman Daniel Quinn, Reason Wilken writes: For generations we have embraced the notion that industrial civilization evolved naturally from hunter-gatherer societies, when in reality it was a distinct split that began with the dawn of the Agricultural Age. Hunter-gatherer societies have not been entirely replaced by industrial civilization, and there a number existing today. Despite this fact, our cultural attitude has created a stigma surrounding smaller self-sustaining societies like these. Non-industrial people are “uncivilized”, “primitive” and “ignorant” no matter how organized or self-sufficient they are. Gradually, our culture is beginning to realize that we are flawed in some ways and we cannot sustain our current drain on natural resources indefinitely. But even if it were widely accepted that industrial culture has a finite lifespan (which is quickly running out), it is unlikely that we would all be capable of adopting a simpler style of life. Even if the life of the earth were at stake (as it might soon be), it is still not plausible to believe that we would make the switch. The very philosophy underlying industrial culture runs contrary to hunter-gatherer principles. (06/26/02) [Synergic Earth News]
7:39:40 AM
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Thoughts About Beer. "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." ... "If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose." ... "Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."... "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." (06/26/02) [Synergic Earth News]
7:39:05 AM
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Alternaporn: The New New Thing. Nice Wired News story about the rise of alterna-porn, medium-core erotica starring punk/goth/raver women. These sites are small, cheap, non-exploitative, profitable and a (comparatively) huge hit with women. The models look like real (pierced, tattooed) people, and members visit as much for the chat and the model-blogs as for the photos. I was at a party at Richard Kadrey's place a couple months back and a bunch of the Suicide Girls models were there; they seemed like pretty sharp technology-fetishists, indie filmmakers, photographers, writers. Link Discuss [bOing bOing]
7:36:56 AM
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Revenge of the Nerds.
Revenge of the Nerds
SellsBrothers: Don Box Object vs. XML. - I really don't know what to make of Box. He used to jump up and down espousing the Love of COM and now he's pimpin XML the same way. Wonder whats next. I'm not saying COM isn't Love or XML can't be the a lot of things to a lot of people. I just wonder about Box sometimes. Extreme convictions are an odd thing - especially after they change. [The Wagner Blog]
I think there is a pattern to this evolution. It's not randomly switching horses mid-stream, and it's not just Don Box. It's the evolution of the industry.
"If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp. Python copies even features that many Lisp hackers consider to be mistakes. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958" -Paul Graham [Patrick Logan's Radio Weblog]
7:35:40 AM
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Glue, Gaia, Voyager: Graham Glass.
Glue, Gaia, Voyager: Graham Glass
Glue, Gaia, and the services grid. Graham Glass, the wizard behind The Mind Electric, is "100% sure" that grid computing is the future. To prepare for it he's building Gaia... [Jon's Radio]
"As every user of Glue knows, Graham is more than a brilliant software engineer. He has an even rarer talent for simplicity."
I'll agree fully, and add that he's got a long track record with systems like Voyager, etc.
Glue is nothing short of excellent and Gaia should be too. [Patrick Logan's Radio Weblog]
7:34:22 AM
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Lawmaker: Let studios hack P2P nets. A California congressman is preparing a bill that would protect copyright owners, allowing them to use high-tech techniques to stop file traders. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
These tactics include:
- interdiction, in which a copyright owner floods a file swapper with false requests so that downloads can't get through;
- redirection, in which a file swapper might be pointed to a site that doesn't actually have the files they're looking for;
- and spoofing, in which a corrupt or otherwise undesirable file masquerades as a song, movie or other file that people are seeking.
Great, so the first two screw with ALL internet traffic, and the first acts as a ping flood/DOS attack, which I'm sure the ISP's are thrilled with the thought of dealing with.
This is an insane, batshit (yes, I said BATSHIT) solution to the issue, which is not so much a problem, as a new way of doing business that Hollywood has yet to adopt. imagine if they put out lo-fi versions of their stuff, for free, and you got bonus material when you bought the CD/DVD. I've got two copies of some stuff on DVD because I'm a sucker for collectors editions. At the same time, I refuse to buy a DVD that is $20.00 if it DOESN'T have something extra on it, as I see it as a waste of my time (and hard earned cash) if I'm not getting something extra (which they likely have produced well in advance of the release) in the mix. [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]
7:32:27 AM
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Searchenginewatch.com has done another piece on Teoma vs Google, so I gave Teoma a whirl. Not bad. clean interface and meaningful results. I'm definitely going to try it out for a while. Something else caught my eye. Teoma is apparently an Ask Jeeves property. I've been holding ASK stock at $1 for years now, after the initial sell-off at $150/share. I actually sold all stock I owned, barring ASK and AAPL (Apple computers) 'cause I believe in them as companies. Could lightning strike twice? What do you think of Teoma? [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
7:27:56 AM
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A word about developers and successful products on the Internet. Yesterday was the last day that my wife's company LaPaay was located in the same building as one of our other investments; CapCave. Both companies are growing rapidly and we needed to ensure everyone has enough breathing room, so we decided to move LaPaay to the ground floor of our other building on the canal, about 7 minutes walk from the 'old place'. I really hadn't given the move too much thought, especially since it's so close by.
Boy, did I underestimated the human aspect of this move.
There's about 25 developers, geeks and nerds at CapCave, and these guys have been living under the same roof with the most gorgeous girls and boys for 2 years. You can only imagine how sad they were to seee the LaPaayers go! They even shot and edited a video of all the geeks saying goodbye, too raunchy and personal for the blog, but very touching.
There you have it. Geeks have feelings.
And once you realize this, the more you will benefit from your rocket-science-relationship(s) That's exactly what LaPaay had apparently realized long ago, because this video tape was full of stuff like "just holler if the printer's busted again" and "anytime you need your mailing database purged, just shoot me a call".
Don't we all dream of such support?! This what Dave is talking about when he suggests taking a programmer to lunch once in a while. Show some normal human compassion, get over external appearances. There's a beautiful human hiding behind those glasses and pocket protector!
Companies can also benefit from the geek forces. Especially companies that sell technology, software, services or hardware. Send some love to developers. You won't regret it. Same bunch of geeks answered my question from yesterday about Teoma. Immediate response: "awesome! technically better than google!"
Now, which search engine do you think the developer is going to be thinking of the most? Teoma or Google, who have opened their geekishly named 'API" so the nerds of the world can 'tinker around', in the process learning about google's technology and often improving it along the way.
Google became the defacto search engines because geeks coined it 'da bomb' in companies everywhere, just like altavista before it. In fact, wasn't this whole innernet thang just us geeks 10 years ago?!
Perhaps a long windup, but I really want Teoma to have a chance to shine. I'm a shareholder and hope management and the board are listening. Even Steve Ballmer knows it: Developers!! [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
7:20:36 AM
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Find random thoughts of strangers in blogs "...they are a fine measure of what we've become: people who think their warped relationships, car trouble and mental illnesses are of interest to a vast audience." [GlennLog]
Talk about random thoughts - what an attitude! And the statement's probably based on reading one blog (if any). [jenett.radio]
7:18:52 AM
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The View From Tehran. This Thomas Friedman column is too good to pass up. You have to love the irony of being Iran right now. [rc3.org]
7:17:37 AM
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More on the Pledge. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh is all over the Ninth Circuit ruling today that held the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional due to the "under God" bit. I find the arguments that removing this phrase from the pledge will lead us down a slippery slope that requires us to banish various important parts of our cultural history to be interesting, and perhaps persuasive. As all the stories point out, the "under God" thing was added to the pledge in 1954 at the behst of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic organization). I don't have a problem with it being sent out of town on a rail. On the other hand, I don't think we ought to expunge things that are important parts of our history, like the words of the Star Spangled Banner or the text of the Declaration of Independence. I agree with the dissenting judge's idea that there's such a thing as "ceremonial Deism," but I don't think that the "under God" phrase falls under that category. If things in 1954 were anything like they are today, there was a political agenda behind the Knights of Columbus campaign, not unlike the stupid movements to tack up copies of the Ten Commandments all over the place. On the other hand, many other invocations of a supreme being are really are there to add gravity and solemnity to whatever they're included in. [rc3.org]
7:14:44 AM
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"Handheld Games For Grownups".
The Wireless Arcade
"They don't have fancy 3-D graphics, but video games for handheld devices stand poised to capture a huge U.S. market. Why? Because we all have to wait.
It’s game time....
Inside the conference room, a standing-room-only crowd has assembled for the “Wireless Game Summit,” a marathon exploration of the first new gaming platform in three decades....
Wireless games are played on Internet-enabled portable devices such as personal digital assistants and, particularly, cell phones. Though most of us are now familiar with the idea of getting driving directions or surfing the Web on a cell phone, the real killer app of wireless devices is games. Primitive-looking wireless games have already gained enormous popularity overseas. And bolstered by new software tools that allow game creators to deliver robust, colorful images, and by the emergence of third-generation, or 3G, cellular networks, wireless games may be on the verge of commercial success. The New York-based market research firm Datamonitor projects that by 2005, 80 percent of all wireless users in the United States and Western Europe—200 million people—will at least occasionally play games on their handhelds. In that period, the wireless-games market will zoom from less than $1 million per year to $6 billion, if the rosier estimates are to be believed.
Everybody waits: for school to let out, for planes to arrive, for dentists to see us. To the wireless-gaming industry, these unoccupied interludes in an average day are opportunities—minutes waiting to be killed with their creations. 'There are plenty of time-saving applications,' says Paul Goode, entertainment platforms group manager for Motorola. 'We’re working on the time-wasting ones.' " [Technology Review]
Remember - no one thought solitaire would be one of the most popular apps on a PC. Wireless gaming will be huge - mark my words. [The Shifted Librarian]
7:10:43 AM
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DHTML Hierarchical Menus, v4.3. To pop or not to pop: that is the question. User suggestions once again find their way into our latest release of HierMenus, which now features the ability to delay the appearance of child menus by a user-defined interval. By Peter Belesis. 0626 [WebReference News]
7:02:16 AM
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NYT: Appeals Court Declares Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional.
"A federal appeals court in California declared today, in what will surely not be the last word on the issue, that the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag is unconstitutional because of the words 'under God' that Congress inserted in 1954... "Late this afternoon, the Senate passed a resolution expressing its disapproval of the Ninth Circuit action. There was no dissent, and Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic majority leader, urged his colleagues to convene at 9:30 a.m. Thursday to recite the pledge. About 100 members of the House, led by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, recited the pledge on the east steps of the Capitol this afternoon." They're talking about the decision over on Slashdot. [Jake's Radio 'Blog]
7:00:57 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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Snowcrash -- the Swedish design firm -- is chock full o' super-leet Swedish design. It's like Ikea for people with an unlimited budget. 
