Google AdSense, your blogs & the EFF. Lawrence Lessig asked us all in his OSCON 2002 speech, "What have we done?" The new Google AdSense campaign has made a lot of ripples throughout the blogging world. Let me make a proposal. If you feel so inclined to ad GoogleAds to your personal or hobby weblog why not send the cash to the Electronic Frontier Foundation [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs] 
7:30:39 PM      comment []   trackback []  



My conversation with Mr. Safe. Mr. Safe: Hey, I've been reading about that RSS thing you were telling me about. It was mentioned recently in the New York Times, and also the Wall Street Journal. I'm thinking maybe it's a safe choice after all. ... [Jon's Radio]

If you ask me (as an outside observer), this piece says it all. Right on the button, John.

 
6:50:41 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Google AdSense:. Aaron Swartz describes a new Google program in which you place some HTML on your site which causes your readers' browser to request ads from Google. Google, having analyzed your site, sends ads it thinks are particularly relevant to your content. In return for letting Google do this on your site, you get paid 50 cents every time one of your readers clicks on an ad. If you have a weblog or other website and are curious as to what ads Google would think are relevant to your content, Swartz has a gadget on his site that will tell you.

Swartz says that he made $100 from the program in one day and argues that this system might make small 'labor of love' weblogs viable. Nota bene: I won't be implementing this system. This labor of love is a freebie for you. [Follow Me Here...] 
3:10:32 PM      comment []   trackback []  



"Google Weblog": Try Before You Sell: Want to see what ads AdSense thinks are relevant to your page? Just enter its URL: [Daypop Top 40] 
3:04:49 PM      comment []   trackback []  



More gifts; if you share, you learn.

Dropping Names, or, Who said that?.

Lilia Efimova picks up on something I too had read over at David Buchan's Thought?Horizon referring to a wonderful metafor Jim McGee used:

There's an old story that I've heard described as a Russion proverb. It says that if each one of us takes care of sweeping the sidewalk in front of our own home, we won't need streetsweepers. It's worth thinking about how that might apply to the world of knowledge work, both on the level of being an individual knowledge worker yourself and on the level of helping make the other knowledge workers that surround you more effective.

As Lilia is Russian, and the mention of a Russian proverb triggers her curiousity, she starts a search for the story and comes up with Tolstoy as a source. (An act Jim McGee appreciates as a gift, which is a beautiful posting in itself)

In the comment section Jay Cross offers that he's pretty sure it's something Goethe wrote.

My first thought on reading the story was "that could be something written by Vondel", one of the icons of Dutch literature. Sweeping the sidewalk in front of your house is a picture that reminds of the Golden Era which Simon Schama has written so eloquently and amusingly about in his "Embarassment of Riches". It sounds so cliche-fittingly Dutch, you know, it just has to be by Vondel.

Now how come we try and attribute things that apparently have a familiar ring to it to icons of our cultural background or context? Is it to reinforce the importance of what we're saying with names that carry authority? Or is it laziness, "let's attribute it to someone who might have written anything, saves me the time to look it up". Or even to get away with talking in clichés?

And do we bloggers do the same? If there is anything that pops up in your mind on the way we experience internet, do you think "ah, I probably read that over at David Weinberger's"? Are the A-listers our icons of blogospheric culture, whom we can attribute the stuff to we don't want to fact-check too closely ourselves, but do want people to listen to? Are we building up the reputation of A-listers, to be able to off-load all that general stuff, so we can forget about it ourselves, as Gary L. Murphy suggested recently (and which is backed I think by how Daniel C. Dennett views the evolution of our minds)?

So who did write that story about sweeping the sidewalk in front of your house?

Tolstoy?	Vondel?	Goethe?

Will the real author please stand up? I bet it is indeed Tolstoy, I trust Lilia on her word. Or is that just my way of escaping fact-checking it myself?

[Ton's Interdependent Thoughts]

A continuation of a little snowball I started rolling a few weeks back. Courtesy of Ton I learn still more new and interesting things about the little proverb I had picked up along the way.

This little blog-thread illustrates a couple of important points. First it's a prime counter-example to offer to those who say knowledge management can't work because people won't share. Ton. David, Lilia, and I have never met face to face but they've become new colleagues in my worldwide network of people I trust. Sharing begets sharing. It only takes a few seeds planted to start the sharing. If you happen to be in an organization that has no one willing to take this kind of small risk, you've got deeper problems than I want to deal with.

I suspect that the real reason behind people raising the sharing myth is not organizational resistance. It's fear of looking stupid; not in front of your peers, but in front of whoever taught your English class back in primary school. That gets to the second point this exchange illustrates. I didn't worry about whether I had everything right when I posted the story that got this all started. I made the point I wanted to make and I fessed up to my ignorance at the same time. What I got in return for that tiny bit of risk was the opportunity to learn some neat new stuff and a couple of more strands linking me into the web that links people together. Seems like an awful big return for a tiny little risk.

[McGee's Musings] 
2:44:26 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Blog Post Analysis [BlogStreet] 
12:38:03 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Artima Creates Buzz
People are using RSS more and more to guide them to interesting HTML pages. Because readers are changing the way they relate to websites, website owners need to change they way they relate to their readers. Find out how one website, Artima.com, has attempted to catch and ride the RSS wave. And if you have a weblog, find out how you can "Join the Buzz." [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs] 
12:32:46 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Blog voices settling the wilderness of politics.

Lance Knobel has posted a very interesting piece at the BloggerCon 2003 Weblog about Tom Watson, blogging MP. A sample:

Why did Tom start his weblog? "I wanted to develop new forms of political participation, particularly with communities that weren't really that involved in politics," he says. Tom says that when he started he had a "vanity website: a big photo of me, with details of my surgery [constituency office] hours". He quickly recognised that he needed something different.

He'd never even heard of weblogs, but Tom did some searching on the Web for something that would satisfy his needs. "I wanted to convey information very quickly and do it myself. I wanted to be relevant." He found weblogs.

"For me, it was a huge risk," he says. "I've taken a few hits in diary columns and most of the people in Parliament just don't get it. But the community I was talking to knew what I was on about and understand." Tom spends an average of one hour a day on his weblog, which he admits is "a big commitment for an MP".

Although he didn't start his weblog for either his constituents or the media, both are beginning to take an interest. A few of Tom's postings have developed into news stories in the national press, and he says some of his constituents now read the site.

However, it isn't about electoral advantage. "If I get half a dozen additional votes at the next election because of my blog, I'll be surprised," he says. "It's not a campaign tool. It's a political ideas tool."

For the first time I'm starting to believe we are reaching the implementation stage of Cluetrain in politics: The point where voice and authenticity matter more than any campaign strategy. When serving finally means more than campaigning. When sharing ideas in a place where they grow and change matters more than calculated, and usually intransigent, positions.

I like it.

[The Doc Searls Weblog] 
12:31:22 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Blogstreet Takes Content Management to a New Level.
Blogger News
The basic unit on which Google and most every search engine is based is the "webpage". Commonly this is a single HTML unit that is deemed to be similar to every other webpage. Weblogs on the other hand are different; the basic unit of a weblog is a microdocument normally called a "post". Microdoc News adds to the blogosphere story which is already taking shape on the web that started with the Blogstreet "Blog Post Analysis". Blogstreet have taken content management to a new level. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
12:29:16 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Blog Counting and Bloggership.
Blogger News
Phil Wolff at Blogcount tells us there are 3 million blogs worldwide. So far, BlogCensus has found only 480k of them while Technorati has now crawled 402k of them. What does this mean? Have BlogCount, BlogCensus and Technorati found the same ones and if so, are they really blogs? [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
12:28:17 AM      comment []   trackback []