Thursday, October 10, 2002

Google News -- too good to be free?. Google VP says his company is considering charging for its News service. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] I might consider paying a reasonable annual fee.  On the other hand, I've been spending so much of my surf time in Radio's aggregator, I might not. 11:44:12 PM

Understanding Comics: the lecture series. Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud will give a five-part visual lecture series at UMaine Hutchinson. Student will write stories, make comics out of them, and finish them up online in collaboration with Scott! If I had one iota of visual-artistic talent and five days of vacation, I'd so be there. Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!) [Boing Boing Blog] 11:40:43 PM

Wireless around the world: In Japanese, Dave Gross writes, wireless is called musen. Sean (melting eskimo) notes that in Chinese hanyu pinyin, wireless is written as wú xiàn. [80211b News] 11:38:10 PM

Ant colonies and grassroots Wi-Fi: W. David Stephenson talks about the emergent behavior of grassroots Wi-Fi networks as they expand in size and utility. Emergent behavior is a powerful concept because it states that complexity without centralized organization can result in order not chaos, sophistication instead of a breakdown. Sort of the opposite of the rules of capitalism as practiced in the United States and elsewhere. I see emergent behavior all the time at isbn.nu, a book price comparison service I run. The several programs, including CGI scripts, daemons, and cron jobs have an interesting dance that I sometimes seem to have little involvement with. Like watching locusts eat a corn field, or dragonflies mate. [80211b News] 11:37:12 PM

Anonymous. "Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working." [Quotes of the Day] 11:32:51 PM

DMOZ on aggregators. Check out the news readers category on DMOZ. I wonder why Radio UserLand isn't listed. If anyone can shed some light on this please let me know. Thanks. It's even worse. Look at the taxonomy for that category, it's under RDF, under Libraries. There are so many things wrong with DMOZ (it's even worse with Yahoo), they all trace back to one thing, unlike the Web, the directories don't admit competition. Once someone owns a category it's theirs until they give it up. To cure the problem every section should have at least three editors to be sure you don't have political outages. And the name of the editor should be public information. And it should be possible to organize the data in different ways so you don't end up with an important category like news aggregators deeply buried in a niche. Libraries are important, but news is for more than libraries. [Scripting News] I've observed this sort of behavior since the dawn of time on the Internet.  It's the same with source code on some freeware projects, it's the same with FAQ lists.  Some schmuck, or collection of schmucks, takes on the job for whatever reason, and they greedy and selfish.  Then they get bored or busy or whatever, start doing a sh*t job of it (assuming they ever did a good one), but refuse to pass the torch to anyone else, even when asked.  It's just plain stupid.  It's also annoying. As far as the "open directory" is concerned, if the names of the editors are exposed, and not just anyone can contribute to a category, then it isn't truely open. I'll take Dave's idea to the next level.  Not only should their names be attached, but real contact information should be included as well, so those who use the directory can flood them with complaints when they screw up.  That should help motivate them to do the right thing. 11:21:42 PM

Borders and T-Mobile to put hot spots in 400 stores by early 2003: T-Mobile and Borders Books announced today that T-Mobile would create hot spots in 400 Borders store by early next year. This begs several questions: Starbucks is the exclusive national partner for cafes for Barnes and Noble -- did B and N blink?; do we really need a hot spot in tiny cafes with small tables attached to a bookstore? (that begs a lot of questions); and, why can't Borders and T-Mobile actually post a press release on their respective sites when at least two media outlets have the information? Alan Reiter beats me to the link, once again, and offers a variety of analysis on the topic. [80211b News] 11:01:46 PM

Now This Idea I Like!. Doc Searls says: "Alan Graham has a perfect idea: "Let's send a book to each Representative — glued shut! They can't open it because we already read it. The iconic representation is simple...and most people would think that glueing a book shut after reading it would be absurd, but that is just what we need. The only way to define the absurd...is with more of the same. Let's send thousands of books, glued shut...along with a letter that clearly explains our point." The only question remaining is which book? [The Shifted Librarian] How about Steal This Book? Better still: Understanding the Constitution.   11:00:17 PM

T-Mobile: More Hotspots, More Wireless [PDABuzz.com] It looks like T-Mobile is about to expand the Hotspot service to 400 Borders locations.  I don't go to Starbucks that often, but I spend a bit of time in Borders.  I've been thinking about trying out this service, despite the price.  Soon may be the time. Serendipitously, the Borders store near my job has a T-Mobile store next door. 10:48:42 PM

Verizon encourages open WiFi. Verizon DSL customers can buy wireless gateways with their home Internet service, and provide free tech support for the wireless sharing, because "most people say they want this." Amazing to see a big biz that plans to give its customers what they want. AT&T Broadband has a similar service, but weirdly enough, their Acceptable Use Policy forbids you from using it: (ix) resell the Service or otherwise make available to anyone outside the Premises the ability to use the Service (i.e. Wi-Fi, or other methods of networking). The Service is for recreational, residential, personal use only and Customer agrees not to use the Service for operation as an Internet Service Provider or for any other business purpose Verizon's Terms of Service are ambiguous on the subject: A. You may not resell the Service, use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute resale (commercial or non-commercial), as determined solely by Verizon Online. When I asked the press-contact on the press release for the service whether this forbade war-chalking your network, she didn't have an answer. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 10:39:38 PM

Scenes from a twisters convention. Pictures from a balloon sculpture get together. (Beware of the vile balloon porn in one of the pictures.) Link Discuss (via waxy.org) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:18:28 PM

Mobile Junkies Reshaping Society?. Futurist Howard Rheingold's vision has 'smart mobs' changing the world order. His new book is a rambling but intriguing treatise on the subject. Also: An audio interview with the author. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News] More covereage of Rheingold's new book.  Available next Tuesday? 10:02:06 AM

Probably. The End of Palm?. "The upcoming line of inexpensive color Pocket PCs are going to shake up Palm OS market.... Palm is due to announce the Tungsten T later this month. Supposedly it is a 175MHz, 16MB device with 'classic' Graffiti area and an SD slot. It might include Bluetooth and will probably sell for $499. With those specs it is dead in the womb. Pocket PCs have been Good Enough for a while, and next month's PPC devices will be cheap enough. If Palm and their licensees fail to produce competitive products in the $200-$400 range, Palm is dead. Growth at the low-end won't help Palm if those users have nothing in the mid-range to upgrade to." [Bryce's Radio Experiments] Unfortunately, I think Bryce is right and that Palm isn't going to weather the storm. I've said for a couple of years now that they needed to offer a color, wireless PDA, and that was when the Palm VII was a leader. With the recent surge in 802.11b and Bluetooth, that type of wireless access is a natural fit for a PDA, and Palm has officially missed the boat. If it's true that the new iPaq Pocket PC will offer both WiFi and Bluetooth, all your bases will belong to them. They won't rule the land per se, but it will be too late for Palm to catch up unless they can offer substantial price cuts, which I doubt they can afford to do. [The Shifted Librarian] I certainly hope this is not the case.  For one thing, I own some Palm stock, which I picked up automagically by having 3Com stock when they were spun-off.  I should have dumped it when it hit US$100 on IPO day. If Palm were to go south, what would happen to PalmOS?  Would Handspring pick it up, perhaps?  It's actually a nice OS for a handheld device, slim, efficient, and relatively stabile.  WinCE is prettier, though. I haven't decided if I need color or not on a handheld device.  It might be nice for graphics, but I rarely use graphics stuff on my Palm III.  PIM-stuff is inherently text-oriented.  I'm not sure that looking at text is significantly better on a color screen (in black-and-white), than it is on a grey screen.  Anti-aliased text would be nice, but at the low-resolution of a palm-sized device, is that feasible? I for one and inspired by Palm's move in to the lower price range.  For one, I believe it will open up a much larger base of potential customers.  At US$99, the thing is about the same price-point as the old Casio palm-top PDA's, but it's much more extensible.  There's also another possibility for increased sales: Old Palm owners who need to replace their units, but want to see what the next couple of years will do to the wireless device market before spending US$500 on something else.  I've been running my Palm III for almost five years now.  It's on its last legs, and my new laptop has no serial or IR ports, so synching would be problematic.  I don't want to buy a Treo or Sidekick just yet until I see what the second generation devices will be like, and maybe not until Cingular finally deploys GSM/GPRS services in the Atlanta market.  I don't want to change my mobile number.  I'm considering the Zire as an interim solution.  At US$99, the price point is finally where it needs to be for a device that really needs to be replaced or upgraded every couple of years.  It's also low enough to be on the shopping list for gifts this year. 9:02:14 AM