ClimatePrediction.net. via TeledyN: You know how everyone complains about the weather but no one seems to do anything about it? Well, soon, very soon, you can: climateprediction.net is preparing a SETI@Home style screensaver P2P grid-computing... [Channel 'social_software'] 
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Independent days. The ever eloquent John Gruber discusses the nature and advantages of independent websites in a longish column that's worth savoring and bookmarking. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report] 
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The Map Room. Finally... something good has come from a newsfilter post! In a trackback to a recent post on something-or-other (aren't they all the same?) I discovered a gem of a site dedicated to maps.[MetaFilter] 
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Vox Populi: Web Services From the Grassroots. In Rich Salz's latest column, he examines the effort to redefine simply site syndication, claiming that it's already technically superior to RSS 2.0. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
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Blog Easy. Yet another weblog hoster [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
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RSS Subscriptions Harmonizer. Dave Winer's RSS subscriptions harmonizer is an outstanding idea. I hope it sees some rapid support. As anyone who's ever played around with different aggregators knows, there is a considerable investment of time in getting all your subscriptions loaded and organized -- even if there is an import wizard. A harmonizing web service will be a major boon to RSS usage across both business and personal arenas.

Now, can we do it without the tech community turning it into a goat rodeo?

subs harmonizer. I've been tracking Dave's work on his subscriptions harmonizer. I haven't delved into all the details yet, but It seems to me this is the perfect tool for weblogs in a place of business.

If a group of people within a company synchronize their RSS subscriptions with a harmonizer, a single weblog page can be generated on the fly that represents the interests of the entire group. Powerful mojo. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

[b.cognosco] 
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Jeremy Helms converted his logo to ASCII. Cool!

[The Scobleizer Weblog] 
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The Emerging Sixth Estate.
Blogging News
An emerging sixth estate in Global governance and influence is arising - the blogosphere. In this article I argue the case for the blgosophere being an emerging sixth estate rather than being an extension of the fourth estate - mass media. Some of you are perhaps sniggering and questioning "Blogs a power? Those personal journals that contain personal thoughts, journals about looking after kids, and personal biased crap?" Yes, these personal journals are becoming a real influence in global governance. [Elwyn Jenkins: MicrodocHeadlines] 
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Xanadu: stately, unpleasant, dumb. Clay Shirky in the Echo Project wiki's "project motivation" discussion:

Almost nothing of what [Ted] Nelson imagined has come to pass. He was wrong about transclusion, wrong about stateful conversations, wrong about how to handle unique IDs, and almost everything that [Tim] Berners-Lee did right -- limited semantics in the application protocol; made it stateless; and created the 404 error, living embodiment of worse is better and savior of scale -- violated Nelson's bankrupt vision. Xanadu was the wrong answer, REST (Representational State Transfer) is the right one. If you thought that all that was wrong with RSS 1.0 is that RDF didn't make it confusing enough, attach the twin boat-anchors of OWL and the Semantic Web to Echo and see what happens.

[Workbench] 
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All hail the mighty wiki gods. The wiki model of collaborative authoring is amazing -- I kept hearing about these things for months, but I refused to believe it would be possible to author documents in an environment where anyone with a Web browser can make changes.

To get one look at how they work, watch the Echo Project wiki's OPML page progress from this to this to this in under 24 hours, with each change documented, identified by user or IP address, and reversible. [Workbench] 
1:18:11 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Revolution in Iran.

A revolution is in the making in Iran tonight organized by young Iranians fighting for freedom.  Tommorrow, July 9th, is going to be a date to remember in Iranian history, hopefully start of the path to freedom.

• Tommorrow...
• This just in from Iran...

Tommorrow, we'll find out if those ellipses are blood drops for young Iranians and tear drops for rest of the world.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
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If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it - OR - I'm OK, You're OK

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change links to Joel Spolsky's month ago article on why he doesn't like the VC model. I missed commenting on it the first time, so here's my second chance:

First, if you look past some of the cant ("secretive world of VC"; "classic VC myopia"), we actually agree on a lot. Joel believes that VC is a bad fit for many software companies. I have suggested that many businesses don't fit the VC model, and specifically mentioned software businesses that don't have an organic need for a lot of capital as one class. I also describe a version of the 'make the deal bigger by throwing money at it' syndrome that Joel decries. Sometimes you can create barriers by aggressive spending; often you're just burning cash. A fund will have a 'VC crisis', if that is the only kind of deal it's doing.

Which gets on to another point of partial agreement. Joel points out that VCs are largely organized to say 'no' efficiently. Right on. I've made the same point here before. What Joel calls myopic just looks like smart business from this end, though his numbers are a bit off. It seems not to have occured to him that what we're doing may in fact be designed, in part, to reject the kind of companies that he thinks shouldn't take venture capital anyway. At least our scoresheet has several items that try to diagnose low capitalization, cash flow oriented, long or no exit companies.

Where Joel's likely off base is in some of his numbers. His counter to the aggressive growth scenario is this:

A	Probability of Success	80%
B	How rich I would get	$100,000,000
C	Expected Return (A x B)	$80,000,000

Now assuming Joel thinks he'll own the whole company under this model, and it's worth 2x revenues when he finally liquidates (or that's the present value of the profit stream), then he's suggesting that there are number of minimum $50m revenue opportunities going begging for products. Let me suggest that unless the company in question has some extremely high entry barriers, like strong IP or market segment lock in, that it will shortly have more competitors than flies on sh**, and may not have enough marketing budget to avoid a market share game. Now there are undoubtedly many fine product opportunities out there, which will support companies that make both customers and producers happy, but this is an unrealistic picture of the upside of internally funded growth.

Blog authoring tools are a good example of this effect in operation. I have no reason to believe that CityDesk is anything but a fine product, since Den Beste is not an easy reviewer. However, it's already obviously locked into a market share game with MoveableType, blogger, Radio, and soon AOL and all of your favorite software vendors and service providers. This is typical in a category where the organic barrier to entry is low, and the first mover doesn't manage to 'kill the category'. If Dave had the largest role in defining the category, he certainly hasn't managed - or perhaps wanted - to dominate it. And as for inherent barrier: Come on. I don't care how many TLA defined feeds and outputs you hang onto it. At the end of the day, a blogging system is a light weight database with a presentation layer and perhaps some authoring policy. How many man-years is that really, even if you're foolish enough to build from the ground up? Here's my bet that blogging will end up being a feature that accretes onto existing products and services in the middle to long run, though good fun and hopefully some cash flow and profits will be had along the way. If that's where Joel is really getting, I'm there already.

(The title of this post, BTW, is to be read in the voice of Edward Everett Horton.) [Due Diligence] 
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Mitch Ratcliffe on media consumption: "We own our attention, but we contribute to a rich fabric of stuff--some content, some conversation, some conflagration and flame-fest. And, amazingly, we have a voice as large as any media company..." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
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Rise of the blogs:
It's a strange form of legitimacy - perhaps even a coming of age - when a group of internet users are important enough to get their own version of Google. [The Sydney Morning Herald via Six Apart] 
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Andrew Sullivan, in criticizing Ann Coulter: "In the ever-competitive marketplace of political ideas - in a world of blogs and talk radio and cable news - it's increasingly hard to stand out." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
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Blogs als Tools. Schöne PPT-Präsentation zu Blogs und dem Einsatz als Web-Tools, in diesem Fall geht es um Buch(Lese)-Zirkel. Das PPT-File ... [thomas n. burg | randgänge] 
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Howard Dean: Weblogs und Wahlkampf. Tatsächlich beachtliche Geschichte. Dean nutzt Web-Publishing und das Internet Potential des  Group-forming . :: Unbe... [thomas n. burg | randgänge] 
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Auto-remixing Gnutella. NAG is an automated remixer for audio-tracks from Gnutellanet.

N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is interactive software art for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP which turns the process of searching for and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic musical collage. Type in one or more search keywords, and N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software then downloads MP3 files which match the search keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in real time based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.

Link

Discuss

(via Kottke) [Boing Boing Blog] 
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Google and decentralization. Here are my impressionistic notes from Craig "Director of Technology, Google" Silverstein's talk at Supernova.

We love decentralization at Google, but making that work in a big company is hard.We focus via our mission statement: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Makes sure everyone understands what's important."Do things that matter" -- a test to make sure what what we do is important. "Relentless focus on the user" -- makes sure that we're doing the right thing (i.e., no banners)

Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 
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Wacky eBay auctions: Buy Elvis Presley's tooth and hair. Current high bid for this undead starfucker auction: US $150,323.00. Link to auction, Discuss (thanks Scott) [Boing Boing Blog] 
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AOL Shows Blogging Tools; What About MSN?. AOL is demoing its forthcoming blogging tools to a chosen few. What will AOL's move mean to Microsoft? Redmond has yet to announce plans to add blogging tools to its MSN platform. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley] 
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WebStatistics. WebStatistics [0xDECAFBAD] 
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Quick links.

• Teal Sunglasses: Dear Dave...
• XPath

[0xDECAFBAD] 
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BarnRaising:
My latest analogy for good community spirit. Everyone getting together to help one person out with only the expectation that, if the tables were turned, the beneficiary would do the same for anyone else. -- SunirShah [MeatballWiki] 
5:33:00 AM      comment []   trackback []  



WikiLog: an attempt to synthesize the best aspects of WikiWikis and WebLogs. 
5:27:35 AM      comment []   trackback []  



d2r: why (not)echo is important - part 2 [0xDECAFBAD] 
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WeblogWithWiki. WeblogWithWiki [0xDECAFBAD] 
5:17:48 AM      comment []   trackback []  



vicarious travel - photography and narratives. Photos by Martin - a gem of a site for vicarious travelers, it features wonderful, charming photos and fascinating stories from a guy who quit his job three years ago to travel the world. He credits global photojournalist Steve McCurry as an influence. I am such a fan of these photo travel narratives, professional and amateur alike - has anyone else discivered some special favorites? [MetaFilter] 
5:10:25 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Pirates - Image and History Links. Avast, ye scurvy dogs! It's the pirate image archive! Here there be dozens of period prints of privateers! Highlights include monk riding, pirates forcing a man to drink to excess, and, of course, a fine selection of actual pirates. Craving more rich pirate booty? Visit The Pirate's Hold, The Pirates Site and, a personal favorite, The Pirates of the Spanish Main. Yar! [MetaFilter] 
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Indigo Arts. Indigo Arts. Folk art from Africa, Asia, and the Americas - barbershop signs, Hindu gods, vodou, Cuban art and more. [MetaFilter] 
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tessellating animation [MetaFilter] 
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Photoblog your life. Sept. 11, 2003: Photoblog your life

"I've been thinking about September 11th. I've been thinking about the United States response - The Patriot Act. Invading Afganastan & Iraq. Death. Fear. Oppression.

It seems to me that this is NOT the America I want the world to know. So I propose a blogwide Photoblog your Life day on September 11th. Take your camera with you. Take pictures. Show the world your life. Show the world your daily delights. Show the world that we choose life, happiness and freedom."

[via Big Pink Cookie] [MetaFilter] 
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Syndicating Whuffie 
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The Million Monkey Meme. Concevons un million de singes à frapper au hasard sur les touches d'une machine à écrire ... A short history of the Million Monkey Meme, 1913-1996. [MetaFilter] 
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Value-Added RSS Feeds.

Gary Lawrence Murphy reached a similar conclusion as I have: emergence of value-added RSS feeds.  Checkout the second half of his "Echos of RSS" post.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
4:09:04 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Cataclysm in UserLand.

Ground is shaking in UserLand.  John Robb's abrupt departure and blog disappearance smells bad.  Dave is hinting at a bigger change that should be "net-net good news for Manila and Radio users and for the weblog community."  While going open source is a possibility, "We weren't ready to announce, John surprised us" seems to point to a buyout.  My list of suspects with recent news about AOL's entry into BlogLand are:

• Yahoo
• Adobe
• Symantec
• Macromedia

Intriguing drama unfolding...

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
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USA: Privacy in the library? (Christian Science Monitor) [STOP1984] 
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How Google Works. There are many sites out there they can tell you how Google works. They will give you pointers and tips and facts and opinions and all of these will supposedly help you climb up the search ladder of fame. Well... [Artima Web Buzz] 
3:03:18 AM      comment []   trackback []