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 []  



Gates and Security. An anonymous reader writes "Orwell was wrong about Big Brother! Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday ... ...[Slashdot] 
6:49:46 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 []  



When They Talk Tech, DC Listens. What do politicians know about technology? For the most part, only what their advisers tell them -- which explains the growing influence of science and tech whizzes in Washington. Meet four of the heaviest hitters. From Wired magazine. [Wired News] 
3:09:30 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Hacker How-To Good Summer Reading. Stealing the Network is an entertaining hacking manual that purports to get inside the minds of hackers, explaining how they think. It's a good read, but it may infuriate some security types. A review by Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 
3:08:30 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 []  



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 []  



Searching for Commentary on Cluetrain Manifesto.
InfoSeeker News
Yesterday I watched an expert complete a search in Google for commentary of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Analyzing behaviors of experts can be both instructive and provide interesting avenues to explore personally when participating in similar activities. The expert I worked with in this example spends eight hours a day searching for information for other people, usually creating reports based on what she finds online, and which the reports are usually heavily annotated with plenty of good quality links for the client to follow-up interesting leads her/himself. Explore with me this expert's activity to see what you can gain and implement in your searching. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
12:30:10 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Amazon Hacks For Fun and Money. An anonymous reader writes "There's a new BusinessWeek article looking at some of the cool hacks coming out of Amazon's open API and XML feed policy. Some ... [Slashdot] 
2:06:05 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Transparent Web Caching Patented. John Public writes "BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, ... [Slashdot] 
2:01:15 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Andrew Odlyzko: The unsolvable privacy problem and its implications for security technologies. [Hack the Planet] 
1:59:41 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Mit Distributed Computing gegen Webzensur [heise online news] 
1:58:06 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Pulling Up by Their Sandal Straps. Ecosandals.com, an online retailer of sandals made in Kenya, is managing to survive the dot-com shakeout -- and is bringing hope to Kenya's poor. The Internet may change the world yet. Jennifer Friedlin reports from Nairobi. [Wired News] 
1:55:25 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Chinese Work Around Net Blocking. Although painfully aware of the state's Internet censorship, most Chinese are less concerned with the political and more concerned with the practical, whether it's Google or pornography. Hector Mackenzie reports from Beijing. [Wired News] 
1:55:07 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Google Toolbar 2.0. Google Toolbar 2.0 I can't live without my Google toolbar for IE on the PC (Safari's built-in Google-search, while less functional, takes care of me on the Mac). This new version of the Google toolbar features popup blocking, autofill, and a "blog this" button. What other browser toolbars/gizmos make life easier for Joe Websurfer? [MetaFilter] 
1:53:23 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Affinity starts a new hosting service with integrated weblog capabilities. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
1:48:17 PM      comment []   trackback []  



'Metallica rethinks the Internet': (MSNBC article) [CULT OF THE DEAD COW] 
1:41:17 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Fixing RSS's public-relations problem. Yesterday I spoke with two acquaintances, both of whom have decades-long track records in the high-tech biz, and neither of whom has ever used an RSS newsreader. When I mentioned RSS as an alternative to mailing lists, both said the same thing: "But I don't have time to visit 30 different websites in order to find things out." Of course, that is exactly the problem that RSS solves. And has been solving, for me, since 1999. ... [Jon's Radio] 
7:15:22 PM      comment []   trackback []  



News.Com: "Microsoft's path to expand the Windows empire is leading directly to search king Google." [Scripting News] 
7:02:32 PM      comment []   trackback []  



William Gibson: "In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner." [Scripting News] 
7:01:19 PM      comment []   trackback []  



AdSense previewer. Aaron Swartz has ginned up a Google AdSense previewer. Enter the URL of your page and it will give you a sample of the kinds of Google Ads you'd get if you put them on that page.

Link

Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 
4:18:05 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Feed Money Fast.

Tim is on a roll today.  His "MakeMoneyFast" post (actually the title is "$$$$!"), he writes about his experiment with Google's new AdSense program.  He made almost $16 in two days.  Cool.  AdSense reveals what Google is thinking with its Blogger.com acquisition.

Only problem is that popularity of RSS feed usage is on the upswing and will eventually lead to majority of blog news being consumed via news aggregators.  This means Google will have to get into the news aggregator business (?) eventually.  Sure, they can do this with from the server side, but to cover all the bases, Google will need a client-side aggregator as well.

[Don Park's Blog] 
3:51:54 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Rethinking the Application of Trackback. via Big Damn Heroes (Tech): I love Trackback... the Trotts hit a home run when they came up with it. But as we've discussed in the past, the current implementations leave much to be desired. There's little understanding of what TB is, debates over acceptable use, and concerns abo... [Channel 'trackback'] 
2:29:47 AM      comment []   trackback []  



radiolovers. radiolovers ~ listen to OLD TIME RADIO shows for free, online. [MetaFilter] 
1:54:11 AM      comment []   trackback []  



It's all for charidee.... Mitch Kapor reckons that by 2029 no computer - or "machine intelligence" - will have passed the Turing Test. If he's right, the EFF wins $20,000 on a bet.

In the well designed and conceptualised Dave Winer, Esther Dyson, Vint Cerf and Ted Danson!
All predictions here; All bets here

- discussions so far here.

Any Mefites willing to stake their rep on cherished beliefs? What do you want to publicly predict will - or will not - happen, and by when? [MetaFilter] 
1:49:52 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Jim McGee: "Sites that provide no RSS feed essentially don't exist for me." [Scripting News] 
1:33:43 AM      comment []   trackback []  



DaveNet: BBC Archive, Weblogs and RSS. [Scripting News] 
1:19:30 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Chris Lydon: "In the booming energy of blog world, we are glimpsing the fulfillment of an Emersonian vision: this democracy of outspoken individuals." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
11:45:03 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Esther Dyson, a few weeks ago: "As a new blogger, I am learning that the only way to do it is to do it regularly..." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
11:43:21 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Road Map. Road map from here on out? I'm going to pick a topic at a time from the wiki and explore it in depth on my weblog. ... [Sam Ruby] 
1:10:49 PM      comment []   trackback []  



We can blog it!. "we can blog it" Franz Schmidbauer: Die Zulässigkeit des Linkens aus urheberrechtlicher und wettbewerbsrechtlicher Sicht. »Der Hyperlink an sich tangiert als bloßer automatisierter URL-Aufruf weder das Wettbewerbs- noch das Urheberrecht.« [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
12:41:01 PM      comment []   trackback []  



WatchBlog Statistics. Since launching WatchBlog a little over a week ago, I've been waching the referral logs and closely monitoring the statistics. When I built the site I knew that the idea would be well-received but I underestimated the amount of traffic... [CamWorld: Thinking Outside the Box] 
10:58:42 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Innovative Uses for a Computer Classroom?. flard asks: "I will be teaching a Freshman English class at a medium sized public university, in a computer classroom for next semester. Every student has their own machine with an internet connection. I am thinking about using a weblog for them to post their work and critique each other. Do you guys have any other cool ideas on what to do and what NOT to do?" ... [Slashdot] 
2:17:24 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Best Offer: Amazon Software Tech. Jeff Bezos wants his company to offer mini-Amazons to companies needing a successful Web commerce tool. The technology that runs the popular shopping site may be its most valuable product offering. [Wired News] 
2:16:04 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Mark Carey: "If GlobeAlive could combine efforts with Blog community sites, it could gain the users, and broader scope required for it to take off." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
2:10:00 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Marc Canter: "Technorati is quickly becoming the Google of the blogosphere... If you ain't in Technorati, you ain't in the blogosphere." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
1:20:41 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Iraqi Moblogging. Salam moblogs. (More moblogging replacing/enhancing journalism) [MetaFilter] 
11:46:02 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Log Format Roadmap 
11:40:45 PM      comment []   trackback []  



"The Corporate Blog Is Catching On" [Daypop Top 40] 
10:25:46 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Kevin McCullough: "While limousine liberals are trying to get a 24 hour news network funded... conservatives are on to the next cultural wave: weblogs." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
10:19:07 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Tiny Sites Aren't Small Potatoes. xtrucial writes "Jakob Nielsen of usability fame has a new article up about the perhaps-unexpected power of tiny websites: 'Considering that the Web as a whole ... [Slashdot] 
10:18:09 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Blogging in Brazil

BBC reporter Paulo Cabral is travelling along Brazil's São Francisco river, following in the footsteps of Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton.

Each week day, for two weeks, Paulo will be posting a diary entry on the web, and responding to a selection of your e-mails.

[BBC News World Edition] 
1:59:02 PM      comment []   trackback []  



In correction of an earlier post about advertising on weblogs:

Martin Röll confronts a comment spammer on his blog! [Das E-Business Weblog]

The irony of his post actually had me there for a while (until Martin himself enlightened me)

Alright! 
1:17:01 PM      comment []   trackback []  



BlogShares goes live [bradchoate.com Sideblog] 
1:03:14 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Google: Not In My Blog [bradchoate.com Sideblog] 
1:00:13 PM      comment []   trackback []  

Lose, you losing loser who loses!. The biggest losers in the Blogosphere. Metafilter does not do the discussion of weight very well. However, I'd like to introduce you to a group of online folk who have found a way to help each other in losing weight. Meet mtpolitics. He had a moment of body based angst. Da Goddess had an idea. And so a project was born. (Have a care for the pipe, 'cause it ain't real big.) The blogs of the people involved in this contest might offer a unique diversion as well. [MetaFilter] 
10:06:42 PM      comment []   trackback []  



The translucent veil.

As we shift to an economy based on access to networked services more than on ownership of goods, translucency will be harder to achieve. Identity, after all, is a condition of access to such services. Even so, when customer data need not necessarily be personalized, translucency is a powerful technique that can meet your requirements, satisfy your customers, and keep the feds happy too. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

When I challenged Peter to nail down the practical uses and limits of translucency, he responded with an analysis of how Amazon might apply it. He concludes that it would be practical for Amazon to avoid storing a lot of data, and notes that the problem is really more in our heads than in our databases: ... [Jon's Radio] 
9:52:40 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Tim Bray raves about the potential of RSS: "We're potentially sitting on a rocket ship. But there are obstacles..." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
1:17:56 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Curiosity is bliss: Behind Google. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
1:08:12 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Java and the Web Community. Sun is doing interesting things with its java.net site, including "community" functions such as weblogs and even Wikis. It's the... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 
1:05:54 AM      comment []   trackback []  



nesting instincts. Joe has an interesting post about nesting in RSS. I like the idea, although as Dare points out, something of a bandwidth issue. On the bandwidth front, it seem inevitable that eventually each RSS item will get its own file URI, and the channel will just contain a list of pointers (with timestamps) so that new entries can be pulled down without having to refetch the 14 before it that haven't changed. [Simon Fell] 
1:05:01 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Weblogs and Threaded Messaging. Discussion on the future of weblog comments, the migration to discussion forums, and the merger between the two. Issues to consider:

• the competitive nature of public discussion forums
• the need to promote active reflection
• the usefulness of bridging private, semi-private, and public discourse

JournURL. JournURL: More BBS/Blog Fusion. Another entry in the fusion of the BBS and Blog patterns, JournURL, an attempt to create a CCMS (that'd be Community Content Management System to you and me.) The focus here is improving on the model of simple comments for supporting real discussions in weblogs: "Robust threaded and linear discussion that encourages extended conversations and debate. No simplistic comment system here, folks. No anonymous spam."

JournURL recently launched a way to use its comments system from 3rd party blogging tools: [b.cognosco]

 
1:03:49 AM      comment []   trackback []  

If the only tool you have is a hammer....

A Day In My Life, By Bill Gates. (SOURCE:Scobleizer Radio Weblog)-PREDICTION: Within 10 years, the centre of most knowledge workers (including Bill Gates) will be a blog type application. NOT email. <quote> I'd say that of my time sitting in my office, that is, time outside of meetings, which is a couple of hours, two-thirds of that is sitting in E-mail. E-mail is really my primary application, because that's where I'm getting notifications of new things, that's where I'm stirring up trouble by sending mail out to lots of different groups. So it's a fundamental application. And I think that's probably true for most knowledge workers, that the E-mail is the one they sit in the most. Inside those E-mails they get spreadsheets, they get Word documents, they get PowerPoints, so they navigate out to those things, but the center is E-mail. </quote> [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Roland catches the real point of this interview with Gates. The interview provides some interesting raw data on the day-to-day work practices of our economy's quintessential knowledge worker. Email is the tool he has for communications so it is the tool that he uses. It is worth seeing how Gates thinks through how to get leverage from the tools that he has available. We all need to exercise that kind of thought about how to use our knowledge tools -- blogs and aggregators included.

[McGee's Musings] 
8:06:47 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Google says 'no' to Googling [Ars Technica] 
8:04:40 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Group Voice.

Lots of good blog posts these days on the differences of wikis and weblogs.  Of course, since they are all blog posts a clear consensus is never reached.  A good way of explaining the differences between the two tools, as wikis drive current state consensus.

[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging] 
7:55:30 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Halley Suitt on the history of blogs, the rebirth of story-telling, 9-11, corporate fraud, the empowerment of women through blogs, and much, much more: "Weblogs work the way women work, they invite conversation and interaction in order to solve problems. They are not designed with women in mind, but they are all about cooperation, conversation and transparency." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
6:59:51 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Mark Glaser: One-Man Blogs Prove There Is Money to Be Made by Online Journals 
6:47:06 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Information as Product. From a technical point of view, the idea that information is somehow a product (and therefore should be distributed and taxed like one) is completely ridiculous. Here's why. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs] 
4:01:01 AM      comment []   trackback []  



RSS Reading via Email. I have tried more RSS readers, than you have had hot dinners. I have finally settled to have something that integrates with my email. Each blog has a folder and posts are filtered into the correct folder. Bob Lee wrote fetchrss to help with this endeavour, and recently released it via the new java.net portal. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service: O'Reilly Network Weblogs] 
3:58:03 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Schranken der Informationsfreiheit im Internet [heise online news] 
3:55:29 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Exploring XML and RSS in Flash. In this article we will examine the XML processing capabilities of Macromedia Flash, and create an RSS "movie" along the lines of the wildly popular RSS applet. By Michael Classen. 0602 [WebReference News] 
3:54:38 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Rafat Ali, in an article on one-man blog ventures, on the demands of nanomedia and the 14-16 hour days he puts in pointing to articles from other sources: "Link, link, link, link... I can link everybody to death." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
2:41:52 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Anne Holland: "Wahoo! The average amount a Blogwriter makes by selling ads via BlogAds has gone up from $30 to $50 month, with the really red hot sites pulling $750 monthly." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
2:39:57 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Web services visionary. [Sam Ruby] 
1:46:12 AM      comment []   trackback []  



RSS-Search Merges with Feedster. [Scripting News] 
12:03:16 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Dynamically Creating PDFs in a Web Application. HTML isn't the be-all, end-all of web applications. Sometimes you need something a little more precise. Sean C. Sullivan recently found himself generating PDFs from his web application with iText. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
5:47:56 PM      comment []   trackback []  



PlanetMath: Math for the people, by the people. [the inimitable Schockwellenreiter] 
3:23:01 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Iran and its 10,000 Salam Paxes [BuzzMachine] 
3:55:10 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Kudos to Oliver Wrede for his Newsposter: a consistent source of compelling reading (some German required). Thank you. Danke schön. 
3:48:38 AM      comment []   trackback []  



RSS: News That Comes to You [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
3:11:11 AM      comment []   trackback []  



The Good, The Bad, and the Blogly 
2:53:02 AM      comment []   trackback []  



iTunes: Death of Record Companies.

Check out this short Business 2.0 piece showing how each dollar collected per song is divided up.  Artists get 12 cents out of a dollar.  The music download service (i.e. Apple) gets 40 cents.  That leaves 48 cents up for grab as music download industry emerges, expands, and consolidates while the real world music distribution business shrinks.  I expect record companies will start to dwindle during the expansion phase as they start losing artists to the music download industry.  There will still be middlemen, but record companies will be left with peddling only oldies.

[Don Park's Blog] 
2:43:19 AM      comment []   trackback []  



"Blog your Music" online/offline event in France. BoingBoing pal Jean-Luc in Paris writes:

We have launched a collaborative event for June 21st, "Music Day" in France and other countries. On that day, every blogger (wherever he lives) can do on his blog a post or more about music in general and must link to another blog that participates in "Blogue Ta Musique" (blogging your music). Every blogger can participate (it's free of course !) by sending me a message with the URL of his blog at mediatic@netcourrier.com . We include it in the blogroll of "blogue ta musique" blog here. And on June 31st, Blog Ta Musique and mediatic will mention hour per hour each new music message.

More than 30 french speaking bloggers will participate. Some examples will be interesting : Kill Me Again will create a song for this day and will post it on his blog, Philippe Allard will cover the Music Day in Brussels by moblogging, and on a Wiki page here Christophe Ducamp will create a collaborative page about Joe Strummer.

"Blogue Ta Musique" is an initiative from me and the french free solution for blogging.

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 
2:40:40 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Top of the Blog, Ma!.

The headline is a semi-obscure reference to the movie White Heat, with James Cagney at his bad-guy best.

Anyway, it's what Panoramas.dk/ brings to mind with Blogging Mt. Everest:

How 2 links at Kottke and The Presurfer growed to 840 links and 200.000 visitors in 24 days.

[The Doc Searls Weblog] 
1:03:33 AM      comment []   trackback []  

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 []  

Java.net Weblogs.

Weblogs are important part of Java.net although one needs to stroll around a bit to find them.  I usually go here to find new articles.  Here are two articles worthy of mention this week:

In Whats up with the JavaSound team?, Jonathan Simon discovers that entire JavaSound team split a while back and now there is just one hardworking guy wearing many hats.

This is ridiculous on a number of levels! How does Sun expect to put out a decent product with a single guy responsible for all of JavaSound? Also, the code was poorly designed to begin with, and Florian can't even really change it! So whats left is a really buggy, poorly designed library that is on every Java enabled PC!

Michael Champion, an old compadre from XML-DEV, answers the question "When does SOAP add value over simple HTTP+XML?" and concludes with:

It's just as "wrong" to blindly reject SOAP as to blindly accept. it.

Right on, Michael.

[Don Park's Blog] 
1:29:35 AM      comment []   trackback []  



News.Com: Why Europe still doesn't get the Internet. 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. [Tomalak's Realm] 
1:25:24 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Java.net Weblogs.

Weblogs are important part of Java.net although one needs to stroll around a bit to find them.  I usually go here to find new articles.  Here are two articles worthy of mention this week:

In Whats up with the JavaSound team?, Jonathan Simon discovers that entire JavaSound team split a while back and now there is just one hardworking guy wearing many hats.

This is ridiculous on a number of levels! How does Sun expect to put out a decent product with a single guy responsible for all of JavaSound? Also, the code was poorly designed to begin with, and Florian can't even really change it! So whats left is a really buggy, poorly designed library that is on every Java enabled PC!

Michael Champion, an old compadre from XML-DEV, answers the question "When does SOAP add value over simple HTTP+XML?" and concludes with:

It's just as "wrong" to blindly reject SOAP as to blindly accept. it.

Right on, Michael.

[Don Park's Blog] 
1:24:55 AM      comment []   trackback []  

UserLand: The next weblogging buyout?. Roland Tanglao writes in a comment to Workbench, "Too bad UserLand doesn't seem to have the money to hire one developer for each platform (Frontier, Manila and Radio) and the right number of support people, because if they did there's no way MovableType or anybody else could keep up with them."

After Google bought Pyra and Moveable Type's developers secured venture financing, UserLand Software is the last chance for an outside company to buy their way into overnight credibility in weblog publishing.

Lately, I've been expecting to fire up Scripting News and learn that Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple purchased the company as part of an aggressive push to get into the space. Microsoft certainly has at least one employee who knows what UserLand has to offer. [Workbench] 
10:25:01 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Europe To Force Right of Reply On Internet Communication. [Slashdot] 
9:28:33 PM      comment []   trackback []  



The Internet and Chinese Ravers [Ars Technica] 
9:26:45 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Who What When 
8:32:41 PM      comment []   trackback []  



The Post-it Note Story Told by Art Fry 
7:50:40 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Conspiracy theory. Dave Winer puts the death of IE5/Mac into context, concluding it took Bill Gates ten years to erase the web as a threat. The timing of recent events bears out Dave's thesis, at least as far as Microsoft's INTENTIONS are concerned. A blow by blow analysis of who did and said what when. Were standards-oriented Microsoft developers dupes? Did the company tolerate their actions because implementing standards pacified the developer community? What happens next? Do consumers have a choice? [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report] 
7:42:28 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Worth your time. Truly engaging websites. Beautiful redesigns. CSS mini-tabs. Great reads on the use of weblogs for marketing and PR; design basics, from fonts and color to white space and alignment; how fonts really work in Mac OS X. Desktop backgrounds. Swedish pop bands. And so much more. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report] 
7:40:32 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Apple's Net-Sharing Smarts Overcome Apple's WiFi Woes. So a bunch of us sit down in a WiFi-equipped conference room to talk about software, community and other such... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 
7:39:23 PM      comment []   trackback []  



DaveNet: NY Times Archive, Weblogs and RSS. [Scripting News] 
6:47:15 PM      comment []   trackback []  



JournURL: More BBS/Blog Fusion. »Another entry in the fusion of the BBS and Blog patterns, JournURL, an attempt to create a CCMS (that'd be Community Content Management System to you and me.) The focus here is improving on the model of simple comments for supporting real discussions in weblogs: "Robust threaded and linear discussion that encourages extended conversations and debate. No simplistic comment system here, folks. No anonymous spam."«

As I've said in the past, blog comment systems generally suck. They're fine for "me too" responses and the occasional one-liner, but they quickly show their limitations when put to the task of managing large, intense discussions. ... Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on what is probably the most robust, blog-friendly discussion app anywhere, and all of those people out there using Movable Type and similar apps can't take advantage of it. ... I've decided to see what I can do to make this thing more useful to people using "foreign" blogging apps. Enter ping2talk. ...

[Corante: Social Software] [owrede_log] 
6:46:34 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Ambient Devices.

Via Alison Lewis and Howard Rheingold comes news of an intriguing device called Ambient Orb.

It is a wireless device that "slowly transitions between thousands of colors to show changes in the weather, the health of your stock portfolio, or if your boss or friend is on instant messenger." [Don Park's Blog]

 
5:48:32 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Ambient Security.

Writing about ambient devices and reading about Gartner Group's recommendation against investing in intrusion detection systems (IDS), I thought this might be a good time to talk about ambient security: protection that weaves into your daily life without being obtrusive. [Don Park's Blog]

 
5:45:56 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Hands-on Henna. The Reverend Bunny's Secret Henna Diary. Sssh! Don't tell anyone, but this is a fascinating site featuring tips and tricks, and a nice gallery of images annotated by background information, image sources, history, and interesting anecdotes.

You can also find free patterns here, both traditional and non-traditional. [MetaFilter] 
3:43:33 AM      comment []   trackback []  



RVW specs. Alf Eaton has announced the RVW Specs.

RVW is intended to allow machine-readable reviews to be integrated into an RSS feed, thus allowing reviews to be automatically compiled from distributed sources.

He's also using "ENT" to describe the type of subject under review. Exellent! [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog] 
3:40:16 AM      comment []   trackback []  

WatchBlog [Camworld] 
4:31:21 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Permalinks and Why They Matter. Tom Coates: On Permalinks and Paradigms... There are some things that become so ubiquitous and familiar to us - so... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 
4:02:35 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Adam Kalsey has unveiled Simpletracks, a web interface for those without Trackback but still want to ping a Trackback URL. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
3:26:53 PM      comment []   trackback []  



LiveJournal Supports Blogger API. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
3:25:28 PM      comment []   trackback []  

zBlogger.com A new free weblog service [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
12:41:58 AM      comment []   trackback []  



The Semantic Blog. (»That's the Semantic Web dilemma in a nutshell. Where's the sweet spot? How can we marry spontaneity and structure? Recent trends in blogspace, plus emerging XML-savvy databases suggest a way forward.«)

Structured Writing, Structured Search. [Der Schockwellenreiter]

 
12:38:06 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Mark Pilgrim trained the attack platypus.

Well, it sure screwed my feed reading until I managed to kill it in the Radio ODB... FSCK that, it's enough for me to ditch his feed. [thx to Rogers Cadenhead for the info]

It's not that one doesn't appreciate attention being drawn to security issues but, let's face it, posting a detailed alert, possibly with a link to an example of the exploit where the curious could choose to see for themselves, would have been much more commendable. 
1:16:51 AM      comment []   trackback []  

Turn on, tune in, log on. Need proof that computers were once a part of the counterculture? Check out this Creative Computing ad from 1976 drawn by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, part of an online reprint of Best of Creative Computing Volume 1. From the text:

Creative Computing is the last outspoken bastion of TRUTH in America today. Read it and you shall be free! Contained within these pages are glimpses of mind-blowing REALITY as it REALLY is!

Two examples of reality as it really is: Hunt the Wumpus by Gregory Yob and ASCII art of Mister Spock. [Workbench] 
5:37:30 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Paul Boutin: Wi-Fi for Dummies. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
1:42:34 PM      comment []   trackback []  



RSS buzzing at Yahoo. Yahoo has added several RSS feeds for its Buzz Index, a feature that tracks the most popular current search terms overall and for several entertainment categories. [Workbench] 
1:38:49 PM      comment []   trackback []  



BusinessWeek on Blogs: The Wild World of "Open-Source Media". [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
1:17:51 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Watch java.net. Sun is doing something big with java.net.  If Sun is a hornet's nest, they have peeled back much of the skin around the nest with java.net, exposing a wild variety of interesting activities that invite the Java developer community at large to join them through a mixture of weblogs, wiki, directories, repositories, and pseudo-magazines.

End result is, well, confusing.  But, it is an enjoyable kind of confusion, not unlike being dropped into a new city being built.  If it was a city, I would say the city center is the Java Today page.  Drop in and check it out.  Unless I misread between the lines, I think there is a new bold attitude at work here. [Don Park's Blog]

 
12:46:52 PM      comment []   trackback []