Get Envenomed!

...' promise to check it out after I get some much needed sleep... nighty night! ...er, at 6am it's more like nighty day!

 
5:58:43 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Blogs breed western corruption [Ars Techinca] 
5:40:14 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Hiawatha Bray: "There's plenty of juice left in the blogging boom." [Scripting News] 
5:32:33 AM      comment []   trackback []  



More MoFotoblogging in the news.

Wired and The Guardian both have articles on the intersection between fotologs and camera-enabled mobile phones.  Wired looks at blogging activism with an eye on the G8 summit.

The Guardian uses 20six as a jumping off point on the history of moblogging and a quick review of many of the tools and sites that support mobile fotologging. They also look a bit at the economics:

Many-to-many has a bit about the uproad at fotolog now that they've been cursed with success and need to pass their growing bandwidth and storage costs back to their users.  Many of their users will be unable to do anything about the changes, but those with technical chops can install their own mobloging software, or move their stuff elsewhere.  Why would I use T-mobile's hiptop.com, which claims full intellectual property for anything users post, when they can use 20six.com,  blogger's mobloging product that is in development or something like eachday.net?

[Corante: Amateur Hour] 
5:24:23 AM      comment []   trackback []  



The People's Mesh Manifesto.

Marc Canter has written a detail history of multimedia through his early developer/artist eyes, ending with a call to arms for what he calls the "People's Mesh"

Everything we need has been invented, now it's time to get it all to work together

One of the most exciting evolutions I see coming is how the technical and social standards established within the blogosphere will spread around the world.... [Corante: Amateur Hour]

 
5:15:49 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Welcome to itopik.com...
So tonight we are under way with the itopik blog/rss topic/subject directory. We will add the subtopics as we go based on what user's suggest as well as what places like Google, Yahoo, etc. are using as topic categories.
Everybody has a slightly different take on organization and taxonomy of course.

Next we'll add the link over to itown.com from the add_me page so that you can add your URL & RSS (Newsfeed) by area if you like.

There remains the discussion of how many topiks should someone register...unlimited or limited? I've thought maybe three, but curious to feedback.

Granted it is humble, but it is a start. Circulate the word if you would, and we'll add the links to the writing that you're doing... by topik and by town... after all, it's about what you're writing! [Harvey Kirkpatrick: itopik.com News] 
4:43:50 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Europe proposes right-of-reply. A European policy group is proposing that those who are criticised on the Internet should have a right to reply in the same space where the criticism appeared -- IOW, bloggers would have to give time on their blogs to the people they flame. I've always presumed that there was no legal interest in ensuring that people don't feel sad -- but rather, preventing real harm (which can be addressed through courts, should such harm be proposed).

The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization...

* "The reply should be made publicly available in a prominent place for a period of time (that) is at least equal to the period of time during which the contested information was publicly available, but, in any case, no less than for 24 hours."

* Hyperlinking to a reply is acceptable. "It may be considered sufficient to publish (the reply) or make available a link to it" from the spot of the original mention.

* "So long as the contested information is available online, the reply should be attached to it, for example through a clearly visible link."

* Long replies are fine. "There should be flexibility regarding the length of the reply, since there are (fewer) capacity limits for content than (there are) in off-line media."

Link

Discuss

(via Lawmeme) [Boing Boing Blog] 
4:42:07 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Celebrate permalinks. Tom Coates has posted a very, very good essay on permalinks and what they mean.

It may seem like a trivial piece of functionality now, but it was effectively the device that turned weblogs from an ease-of-publishing phenomenon into a conversational mess of overlapping communities. For the first time it became relatively easy to gesture directly at a highly specific post on someone else's site and talk about it. Discussion emerged. Chat emerged. And - as a result - friendships emerged or became more entrenched. The permalink was the first - and most successful - attempt to build bridges between weblogs. It existed way before Trackback and I think it's been more fundamental to our development as a culture than comments... Not only that, it added history to weblogs as well - before you'd link to a site's front page if you wanted to reference something they were talking about - that link would become worthless within days, but that didn't matter because your own content was equally disposable. The creation of the permalink built-in memory - links that worked and remained consistent over time, conversations that could be archived and retraced later. The permalink stopped all weblog conversations being like that guy in Memento...

Link

Discuss

(via Dan Gillmor) [Boing Boing Blog] 
4:40:52 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Vipul Kashyap and emergent semantics.

Vipul Kashyap's home page says "I am a Fellow at the National Library of Medicine in the Medical Informatics Training Program. I am currently working on issues relating the Semantic Web and Medical Ontologies."

The part I found most interesting is at the end:

Some other areas which I am working on are Emergent Semantics which is based on the hypothesis, that semantics on the Semantic Web are more likely to "emerge" from various types of information available and interactions between participants as opposed to top down formal specifications. Towards this end I am taking a close look at statistical clustering and NLP techniques. Also of interest are techniques from cultural anthropology, such as consensus analysis and social networks.

Vipul is presenting a poster at WWW2003, so I might be able to meet him soon.

[Seb's Open Research] 
3:52:38 AM      comment []   trackback []  



BlogMatcher: A kick-ass automated blog matchmaking service.

While I don't think it renders my own handrolled matchmaking offer completely irrelevant, Ryo Chijiiwa's BlogMatcher (found via Langemarks Cafe) is by far the best link correlator I've seen yet. The three closest matches to my blog that it turns up are Seblogging, Ming the Mechanic, and Puzzlepieces, and I think it's actually a very fine selection for someone with my interests. The rest of the top suggestions are also pretty good.

The FAQ is quite informative, as well. Similar earlier "related blogs" services include the BlogStreet neighborhood (which offers a cool visualization app as well), and Mark Pilgrim's New Door application, which no longer seems to work.

[Seb's Open Research] 
3:41:16 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Is the MTTB (mean time to Blogdex) computable?.

Interestingly, BlogMatcher's link cosmos shows that the word about it has been out for two weeks already, but it didn't start seriously ripping through the blogosphere until just two days ago. Assuming one knows that a particular meme is bound to explode at some point, is the "fuse length" predictable, say, from social network connectivity data?

Note that a kind of Heisenberg uncertainty principle is at work here: if you reference a specific test case publicly, you're certain to influence its diffusion process.

[Update] Ryo writes that he set up a referer feedback loop a couple days ago, which might have triggered it all.

[Seb's Open Research] 
3:40:26 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Achtung Baby! Heads Up!

Blogmatcher.com
New Door
SimilarLists

 
3:34:41 AM      comment []   trackback []  



PlaNetwork Conference: Networking a Sustainable Future.

I just got this in my inbox and thought it might interest readers of this blog.

Join Hazel Henderson, Douglas Engelbart, Joan Blades, Jeff Gates, Leif Utne and others at this exciting gathering of innovators from the world of IT,
environmental advocates, peace and social justice activists, independent media pioneers, and many others exploring how social networks, information technologies and the Internet can play a key role in accelerating positive global change. June 6-8 at the Presidio in San Francisco, CA. Special non-profit, activist and student rate: $95 for three days. Register now online at: http://www.planetwork.net

[Seb's Open Research] 
3:25:41 AM      comment []   trackback []  



More blogstats. Michael has just appended links to Weblogs.com: Seeing the Curve (on the blogosphere's growth rate across time) and to Hot Weblog Crawling Action (stats by tool and language) to the Weblogs by the Numbers page. Both worth a look. [Seb's Open Research] 
3:24:03 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Mary Harrsch: RSS -- The Next Killer App for Education. [Scripting News] [Not So Obvious] 
3:23:09 AM      comment []   trackback []  



P2P RSS Channels:

The Tornado client for the Open Content Network [open-content.net] has support for P2P download channels based on RSS.

Basically, you click on a link which will subscribe the peer to the channel, and the peer will automatically download/pre-cache any new items that are added to the RSS feed.

You simply have to create an RSS feed and create a link that converts that feed into a channel that is subscribable via the Open Content Network.

Here's an example of a movie trailer RSS feed here [onionnetworks.com] linked it into the Open Content Network here. [onionnetworks.com]

[gleaned from Slashdot] [Not So Obvious] 
3:20:47 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Ridiculously easy group-forming via k-collector.

Communal topics and super-blogs. Matt on k-collector and shared topics: "If you click a topic name on my weblog now you don't get a local page but, instead, the dynamic k-collector page for that topic.  At the moment this is an aggregation of all the posts about that topic from anyone subscribing to the cloud." [Curiouser and curiouser!]

I hope to find time soon to compare this to the Internet Topic Exchange and investigate interoperability in both directions. More than ever do I believe that there is promise in loose community formation among bloggers. Many ingredients are there that weren't around only six months ago: more developers, many more bloggers (meaning more diversity and overlap of interests at the same time), and new complementary technology, such as the shiny new Technorati API.

Now, this is nothing more than educated guesswork, but I have a feeling that, say, a year from now, many of my favorite sources will not be personal blogs, but rather topical feeds that have been duly post-processed in some way by the collective intelligence of my microblogosphere.

While it makes me kind of sad to entertain the thought of progressively abandoning per-person subscriptions, I'm afraid I won't be able to keep up with all of those tremendously interesting new voices without the help of more sophisticated personal relevance filters.

[Seb's Open Research] 
2:46:40 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Will social software encourage polarization?.

A good post and a fascinating discussion over on Don Park's blog on the potential adverse effects of social software, starting from his observation of how the Internet affected people in his home country:

Korea is emerging as one of the most advanced Internet nation in the world.  Young Koreans, in particular, live and breath Internet, each belonging to large number of online communities.  One would expect them to be well informed and objective, yet they are not.  Their views are warped and often radical.  While all the world's information is at their fingertip, they consume information subjectively and produce misinformation biased by their views.  Adding highly effective social software to this is frightening to me.

[...] In a sense, social clusters form gravity wells which has its own local physical laws and is difficult to escape from.  Social softwares make it easier to create and grow such clusters.

Bill Kearney offers a counter-argument that I find cogent:

The fact that groups can form more rapidly will do more to devalue the ability of any one group or cult of personality. Yes, for those ununsed to the process it will be a terrifyingly vast expanse of rapidly changing groupings. Hang on, it's going to be a fun ride.

I guess the question could be summarized as "Does social software help people turn inwards or outwards?". (Personally, I don't think it can be answered without taking the context of use into account.)

[Corante: Social Software] [Seb's Open Research] 
2:45:41 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Distributed collective tweaking. Headmap: Declaration of Interdependence. A view of the future of the Internet and how it will impact the way we'll go about our business. Far-reaching, yet plausible if you ask me. (via Ming) [Seb's Open Research] 
2:44:32 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Are you an isoblogger?.

Blogging thoughts and philosophies is a neat rant that proposes a taxonomy of bloggers according to their linking behaviors. (via Stuart)

 

[Seb's Open Research] 
2:42:50 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Wiki of all wikis.

WorldWideWiki: OneBigWiki. I didn't know there were that many public wikis. (And some are missing from the list - I should try to add them when I find time.)

[Seb's Open Research] 
2:42:16 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Marc Canter: The New Paradigm of Tools 
12:24:08 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Microsoft Bloggers Under the Corporate Microscope. On Tuesday, Microsoft corporate is sponsoring a panel on the topic of Microsoft corporate blogging. Could some kind of official Microsoft policy on blogging be in the offing? Stay tuned. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley] 
12:20:06 AM      comment []   trackback []