|
 |
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 |
Taking Our Lives Online.
People with Personal Websites
"According to a December 2002 survey of 501 adults in the US, conducted by the University of Maryland and Rockbridge Associates, 21% of US consumers have their own personal website, or have a family member with his/her own site. Additionally, 13% say they own or a family member owns a domain name or web address for a hobby or personal interest....
The study determined that 77% of US adults connect to the internet through a regular phone line while 20% are making high-speed connections. Of the broadband subscribers, 12% use a cable modem and 8% are using digital subscriber line (DSL). This is also the recently-publicized study which revealed that US employees with net access at both home and work spend an average of 5.9 hours per week at home online for work purposes and an average of 3.7 hours per week online at work for personal interests." [eMarketer Daily]
That's a pretty small sample, but if the statistics hold up when scaled, it would show that people are truly creating their own content, rather than just sitting back and letting the internet become a one-way (corporate) medium. And 77% of them are publishing via a dial-up connection, so they don't need broadband to do it. I have to think that blogs will only increase those numbers, as will photoblogging for families.
Of course, they may also be getting domain names in order to maintain a stable email address. Will Cox pointed me to a notice that Comcast will maintain AT&T Broadband email accounts through 2004 because so many customers complained about having to change their address yet again. I'm glad they're listening, a nice change in this industry. [The Shifted Librarian]
9:10:42 PM 
|
|
Ergonomics of Reading. I do not pay nearly enough attention to proper ergonomics when reading, maybe because if I get too comfortable I go to sleep. With as much reading as we need to do in knowledge worker roles, it only makes sense to understand the physical factors involved and how to use them to get the most from our reading experience. The article from Ergoboy covers lighting, bookstands, and chairs with links to their products in each area.
Ergonomics of reading. Ergonomics of reading is not the same as haptics of comprehension...read about factors involved before opening the book. [future of the book news] [b.cognosco]
9:08:02 PM
|
|
The original name for the WWW, was.
The original proposal of the WWW, HTMLized, by Tim Berners-Lee
The original proposal of the WWW, HTMLized, by Tim Berners-Lee
This document was an attempt to persuade CERN management that a global hypertext system was in CERN's interests. Note that the only name I had for it at this time was "Mesh" -- I decided on "World Wide Web" when writing the code in 1990. [via Karl] [A Frog in the Valley.]
[Audioblog/Mobileblogging News]
 While Tim was dreaming up and programming the WWW, we were helping to build a world enabled by multimedia. 1989 was the year we started licensing our system software, selling big numbers and getting recognition everywhere. Miles and I were flying to Japan allot, I was giving speeches and in general - the multimedia industry was being born. At least that's what we thought was going on.
In retrospect - we were simply raising the bar on functionality and enabling all sorts of OTHER new kinds of functionality, commerce and communication. Lots of people made lots of money - yet most people feel that the CD ROM era was a bust. But one could argue that without multimedia, there never would have been the WWW.
Interesting side note - I'm Chapter 17 and Tim is Chapter 18 in a book entitled: Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality. Joi's brother-in-law Scott Fisher - is Chapter 22 [Marc's Voice]
9:05:58 PM
|
|
Support a Library
"Scott who runs lights.com has a page outlining which libraries have affiliate programs so that you can donate to your library when you buy books online. Also noted is a list of which bookstores have affiliate programs to begin with, it's not all Amazon.com." [librarian.net]
This will be an excellent resource for libraries interested in this type of program because Peter will be expanding this resource into a full how-to:
"Check out our guide for libraries on how to make money on the Internet with affiliate programs. We've just posted our first set of reviews, news and recommendations.
Book mark the site because we'll be adding content on:
- how to set up your own store,
- how you can integrate links to bookstores via MARC tags in OPAC records,
- links to comparison shopping engines,
- and cover other affiliate programs."
Peter also notes that the University of Calgary has an online eBookstore. It will be interesting to see how this fares!
"eBooks are a portable, versatile, and interactive new technology with the potential to dramatically improve learning. We carry a growing number of eBook titles in the Microsoft Reader, Palm Reader, and Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader formats."
[The Shifted Librarian]
I like the which libraries have affiliate programs since I've often Amazoned books I first started reading at the library. I wouldn't have a problem giving them a little kick back for allowing me to puruse the book for free.
8:54:10 PM
|
|
If You Prefer to Get Your RSS in Your Email Inbox.....
The Shaman RSS Automailer
"Once you sign up, you'll be able to choose from the hundreds of news feeds currently available, and have the latest additions sent to your inbox. These news feeds are from quality news and information sites like CNN, Slashdot, and Webmonkey.
Now you'll be the first one to know about that new article on Slashdot, or that movie review, or that stock tip. You'll get the latest updates from your chosen sites, every hour*. Staying current has never been so easy." [via The FuzzyBlog!] [The Shifted Librarian]
8:49:43 PM
|
|
Bayesian and Latent Semantic analyses demystified. Very good, cogent explanation of Bayesian and Latent Semantic analysis techniques, which are means whereby a computer is asked to "understand" a document so that it can be automatically classified. Both techniques are being widely hailed as the great code hope of spam-filtering.
Latent semantic analysis (or indexing) is an application of what's called principal components analysis (PCA), or factors analysis, to the domain of information organization. In the basic version, you form a big 2-D matrix with documents (e-mails for instance) along one axis and terms (word, phrases) along the other, and fill in the entries with a 0 when the term doesn't occur in the document, and with a 1 (or count) when it does. Then you take the resulting monstrous matrix and grind it up with an algorithm that finds covariance patterns. That's to say, the associations of words "latent' in the document base you feed in are going to be found. Shovel in several weeks worth of news stories and it's going to be obvious that 'Saddam' and 'Iraq' are highly correlated, or 'Tiger' and 'golf'. The method actually kicks out a transformation matrix into which you can feed the terms observed in a particular document, and get out a score for that document in terms of "warness" or "golfness" - those are principal components, or factors. You compute and save as many factors as you want - presumably less than the number of original terms. (Apologies to any wandering mathematicians for the gross simplications.) Link Discuss (via JOHO the Blog) [Boing Boing Blog]
8:41:09 PM
|
|
Internet gets its own telephone country-code. The International Telecommunications Union has allocated an entire country-code to Internet VoIP services, creating a virtual, global Internet "country." Pulver.com has already announced a service that uses the Internet country-code for VoIP numbers, so that calls from and to Internetland are not considered long-distance.
* A FWD member who is a father living in Berlin calls his son, a FWD member, in Hong Kong. Both the father and the son use their home SIP phones and "the call" is routed soley over the Internet. Both father and son can talk for as long as they like! Free! Any time, any day!
* Save on purchasing more phone lines for your sons and/or daughters. Setup FWD in their rooms, dorm rooms, your basement (if they talk too loud) and inform their friends' parents about FWD too. Everyone will be happy. The parents for the incredible savings and your kids because now they can talk all day long without hearing you complain to them. Everyone who lives in a broadband home should consider signing up for FWD! Link Internet gets its own telephone country-code (via Interesting People) [Boing Boing Blog]
8:38:42 PM
|
|
MusicBrainz kicks azz, needs Macs. Robert Kaye has re-launched his MusicBrainz service today. MusicBrainz is set of Free Software tools that are used to fingerprint audio tracks in MP3, WAV, Ogg and other formats, and to create unique identifiers for songs.
What this means is that the MusicBrainz tools can sample a piece of an audiofile, create an "acousitic fingerprint" of the song, and then check with the MusicBrainz server to see if it knows about the song yet. If it does, your music-player will automagically fetch the artist, album, track title and other info (as well as reviews, ratings by people you trust, playlists that include the song...). If it doesn't, you can enter the track info yourself and submit it to the MusicBrainz database so that the next person who comes along will get the info.
This is a lot like GraceNote's proprietary CDDB service -- which is how iTunes and other players figure out which CD you have in the drive -- but it's way, way better. Organizationally, MusicBrainz is setting itself up as a nonprofit, so there'll be none of CDDB's expensive and restrictive licensing terms for people who want to make players that use the service.
But it's also technologically far superior. CDDB can only recognize CDs. But as music is increasingly distributed online without any CD package, CDDB is getting less and less useful (plus, CDDB is riddled with errors and has a really bad API, so it's hard to build sophisticated services that rely on it). MusicBrainz works off of acoustic fingerprints, which are granular to the level of a single track, recognizably at different sample rates, and work across different file-formats.
It gets better. Because each fingerprint is unique, it means that two people can unambiguously discuss the same track. I can send you a playlist from my computer and your computer can play the songs I'm suggesting, even if you've given them different filename, have them stored in different formats, or have added different metadata about them.
This is also an extremely sweet basis for building collaborative filters atop of. If your computer and my computer can say with confidence that two tracks are the same, we have the basis for collaboratively filtering our collections and finding stuff that we should be listening to -- even if we don't know it yet.
There's only one catch: none of this stuff runs under OS X -- yet. Which is a goddamned shame, but Robert's broke, and he needs Apple hardware to play with in order to get this stuff ported over to MacOS. This is seriously cool stuff, and all the kids're gonna want it. Let's hope someone out there knows someone at Apple who can intervene on Robert's behalf and get him a loaner so that the Rest of Us aren't left out in the cold.
The answer to this lies in the MusicBrainz community -- the community is comprised of individual contributors who work hard to enter and correct the data in the system. The MusicBrainz server software also enforces a peer review system, under which users must review and approve changes made by other users. The peer review system combined with the motivation, expertise and pride of its contributors will ensure that the data in MusicBrainz will be comprehensive and reasonably correct.
Only reasonably correct? No one can guarantee that all the data in a database is correct. Not even the commercial companies that provide metadata services can give this assurance. The MusicBrainz community will respond to problems found in the database and fix mistakes faster than any commercial company with paid contributors can, since the MusicBrainz community is global and is never closed for business. Furthermore, the community is more supportive of MusicBrainz than of other commercial services due to its open nature. Link Discuss (Thanks, Robert!) [Boing Boing Blog]
8:31:51 PM
|
|
Cyborglogging. Resistance is futile...
Forget Moblogging - Try Cyborglogging!. Cyborg Logs and Collective Stream of (De)Consciousness Capture for Producing Attribution-free Informatic Content Such as Cyborglogs by Steve Mann
"Various forms of apparatus for a new kind of wiki or blog (weblog) are described. In particular, ways of bringing together a collective deconsciousness are presented. The systems works with CyborgLogs (cyborglogs or "glogs") from a community of portable computer users, or it can also be used with a mixture of portable (handheld or wearable), mobile (automotive, boat, van, or utility vehicle), or base-station (home, office, public space, etc.) systems. The system enables a community to exist without conscious thought or effort on the part of the individual participants. Because of the participants' ability to constantly experience the world through the apparatus, the apparatus can behave as a true extension of the participants' mind and body, giving rise to a new kind of collective experience. In other embodiments, the system may operate without the need for participants to bear any kind of technological prosthesis....
This article pertains to a collaborative communications system that may have components installed on or within a user's body (portable), on or in a vehicle (mobile), or on or in an environment (building or fixed structure) where users may exist." [First Monday] [The Shifted Librarian ...you will be glogged. [The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty]
8:26:18 PM
|
|
Fuel cells to power future laptops to keep Wi-Fi flowing: Intel Capital and others have invested in Neah, a company that plans to make fuel cell-based batteries with stable, less hot reactions than competitors that could have three times the longevity of today's laptop battery. My iBook's 4+ ampere hour (AH) battery, which I gather is about 50+ watt hours (WH) (watts over 12.8 volts equals amps), gives me about three to four hours of carefully husbanded use or two hours of playing a DVD with the screen brightness up. I've tested an external NCharge battery from Valence weighing just over three pounds which has 10 AH or 128 WH and costs about $300. This NCharge battery uses conventional technology; the fuel-cell battery would fit in an existing drive bay while ostensibly reducing weight as well (though that's not spelled out). [via Dana Blankenhorn] [80211b News]
8:22:30 PM
|
|
New Energy Device?. I believe that sooner or later we'll be switching over to totally different energy production devices. Not burning old dinosaurs, but rather drawing a charge from the quantum field, or something along those lines. And there has been no lack of people who seemed to have invented over-unity devices. But either somebody managed to buy off or murder ALL of them, or they didn't really work when put under scrutiny. So it is with some caution that I pass on news about 'free' energy devices. But Stephen Greer of the Disclosure Project has his head screwed on fairly well, and even though he likes being the center of attention, what he presents is normally very solid. A while back he set up a company, Space Energy Access Systems, for the purpose of locating and marketing such devices. And he believes he has something now. See transcript of an interview.
"It's not very big at all. I picked it up - you can pick it up with one hand. Took it out actually on a sidewalk. This device gathered, very passively, less than one watt of power from the environment - I won't say how it was done, I'm not allowed to at this point - and the machine started up. It generated hundreds of watts of power in usable form. We hooked this up ourselves, so there was no mystery about it. We even selected the things to hook up to this thing. It ran a 300-watt light bulb, a 100-watt light bulb, a stereo and an oscillating fan with an electric motor, all at the same time with literally no artificial manmade input of power."
I hope it stands up to further scrutiny. Getting rid of the oil economy would change everything. [Ming the Mechanic]
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Carl Sagan said that I belive.
5:26:36 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
|
|
|
