b.cognosco

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Saturday, July 20, 2002

LinkBack to List Referrers Locally -- More Ways to Weave the Blog

Linkback Referrers.

I spotted Stephen Downes Referral System via www.davidwatson.org.

Very cool little script. I have added it to my templates here on high context. It will display the referrers to each individual page. So if you link to anything on this site your page will be listed on the sidebar as people follow the link.

One small bug I've discovered with Mozilla is that a local referral within the same site creates an unexpected value for document.location in the javascript code. No problems in IE so it must just be Mozilla. [High Context]

Gaining Parity with e-Mail

What if being non-communicative weren't an option?

This Fortune article on Esther Dyson was cited on a private mailing list. It's interesting to see where she is placing bets:

A big challenge for managers will be encouraging employees to share information instead of hoarding it. Dyson has made investments in several companies that help employees communicate with one another continuously and effectively, especially by e-mail. One, called Tacit Knowledge Systems, has software that (with user permission) reads and categorizes e-mail sent within an organization. Anyone needing information about a topic can turn to Tacit to find an expert and forward a request to get in touch. Another company, Parity, has a so-called "commitment-management tool" that lets the sender specify the action an e-mail requires. The software helps the recipient meet deadlines--like responding to a customer by tomorrow afternoon.

I think I can see the handwriting on the wall. Groupware has failed forever because people by and large don't want to communicate continuously and effectively. Opting out of that flow may cease to be an option. If so, jumping on the weblog bandwagon for internal corporate communication looks like the offense that is the best defense. If your flow is a corporate asset that's going to be managed anyway, wouldn't you rather control it yourself? [Jon's Radio]

Readerware -- Fan-freaking-tastic!

Now excuse me, I have to go scrounge on e-Bay for CueCat.

Readerware - personal library app.

How About a Personal Library App. Maybe it's just me, but I never saw any way Amazon was going to be profitable until they took over the e-Commerce and web operations for Borders. [Blunt Force Trauma]

Terry is looking for a program that will let him build and maintain a database of his personal library using the data available from Amazon and elsewhere on the web. It already exists and it's called Readerware. I now have over 3,000 books catalogued using it. It also supports CD and video libraries. Recommended. Less than $100.

Recycling Does Not Improve Government

Sometimes I just want to opt out...

Thanks (I think) to Dan Rosenbaum for this one.

Fool Me Once, Shame on Me. Fool Me Twice.....

Semi's gonna have a ball with this one.

There's a new director of the Pentagon's new Information Awareness Office, part of the DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. (It was DARPA's organizational predecessor that gave the world the Internet. But I digress...) This new director is one John M. Poindexter.

Yes, that John Poindexter. Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor. The one who was convicted in the Iran-Contra affair. Remember? He sold weapons (illegally) to Iran, and used the cash to (also illegally) fund the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua. Ollie North's buddy. It was in all the papers.

Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying documents. The convictions were overturned; Poindexter had been given immunity before Congress (after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights). His testimony, though public and nationally broadcast, was inadmissible, courts said.

So here he comes sliming his way back into public service, this time running an office that is supposed to:

"create a new intelligence infrastructure to allow ... agencies to share information and collaborate effectively, and new information technology aimed at exposing terrorists and their activities and support systems.... The key to fighting terrorism is information.  Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment to determine the most probable current or future scenario."

To me, this sounds a lot like what the NSA is supposed to be doing. If you read the IOS's page closely -- and there's no way to read it casually -- it looks like IOS is developing ways to massage and pass around raw data that the NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office and all that crew develops.

Which is not a bad thing. And it's surely a comedown for a past National Security Advisor to have an office that's probably deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, far from corridors of power. And it speaks well of the man that he still wants to be in public service.

But still. John Poindexter should be in jail, not in the Pentagon. He waged a private war that was contrary to the policy of the government he swore to serve. He should not be pulling a government paycheck -- much less with a high security clearance. Here's a ton of links about Poindexter and Iran-Contra. Thanks to bOing-bOing for the original link. [Over the Edge]

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This Page was last updated: 2/9/2003; 11:17:17 AM