Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Friday “After The Thunder” Chatfest

Don’t expect much from me today. What a thunder storm. Like the 1812 Symphony without the orchestra: boom, blam, whammo. What with the many mouths a wailing, not a lot of sleep. I almost wrote “flat chest” up there. One more week in August and therefore in summer. Summer really ends around here in October compared to the Maritimes but you know what I mean:

  • Update #2: A neato series of photos from the collection of a new technology museaum in the UK with photos of things like a lump of concrete from 1899 and early 1900s analogue computers including one called “the totalisator” which is my new nickname for me.
  • Update: Brendan Carney, subject of last fall’s overly wrought series on the SU football team, made the pros.
  • Nice to see the scoffing one dimensional right wing bloggers were wrong – again – as the police did infiltrate the wacko protest group at the summit. Darcey’s comment makers display an interesting learning curve but Darcey’s own response is gold:

    Wouldn’t it be crazy if they were undercover protesters pretending to be police officers pretending to be protesters? That would be the ultimate…Or wouldn’t it be weird…if they were police who wanted to be involved in the protest? Maybe their overwhelming zeal was too much for some of the more moderate protesters on the line. This is a good story.

    Cheeky monkey. Far more entertaining that the scoffing one dimensional left wing bloggers

  • What started as a funny idea for naming a sport team seems to end up in a grade seven locker room.
  • If you ever worry about your own beer intake or, conversely, consider it boring check out Ron’s series of posts of drinking his way thought Germany’s Franconia region. Plenty of gems like this:

    Andy met someone he recognised. It turned out to be Dan Shelton and his wife. He was making a documentary about Bamberg or something. I wasn’t concentrating that much on the conversation. I was in my beer zone. Feeling the warm glow of contentment that comes after a morning’s drinking. Very tall. I can remember that. Dan Shelton’s very tall. And annoyingly skinny for someone who works with beer.

  • Amy Winehouse update. I sent portland a copy. Let’s see what happens.
  • The Australian government has been tidying up wikipedia, too.

That is it. Not caffeine in the brain yet.

Group Projects: What Will Happen To The Giant Leek Contests?

I know I go on but all this digital stuff is a bit depressing. Just look at these British stats:

The average Briton now spends 50 hours per week on the phone, using the net, watching TV or listening to the radio. However, the mix of how much time is spent on each one has changed radically over the last few years. Daily mobile phone use is up 58% on 2002 and, over the same period, net use has grown 158%. By contrast Britons spend far less time watching TV, listening to the radio or chatting on a fixed line phone.

But what else are they not doing? Talking to people face to face? Playing games? Planting giant vegetables? With the collapse of content in favour of Web 2.0 flashing lights and curved edges, it is getting harder and harder to see any societal shifts or any new generation as empowering so much as distracting and that reminds me of one thing – the fall of Rome. Sure you can compare the fall of Rome to just about anything but that does not mean I can’t pull out the old chestnut for present purposes. So a few questions:

  • What new non-digital activity have you taken on to balance your life…or even to unbalance it?
  • What non-digitalness would you like to take on if you have the resources or the guts?
  • What would you rather compare to the fall of Rome?

There you go. Pure brilliance once again in the seven minutes before I have to rush out the door.

Blogging Convention With Low Ambitions

I noticed this brief article at the NYT about a blogging convention and thought that was a little weird. Blogging conventions sorta died in 2004-2005 not long after they started. But at least this one has some admission in its own blog that things are different in a post entitled “Is Blogging Dead?”:

Not according to Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void. In two recent posts “Why We’re All Blogging Less”, and “Blogging Isn’t Dead It’s Just a Subset of Something Much Larger and More Important.”

More important??? The hobby of the masses is a direct extension of pen-pal-ing that President Eisenhower encouraged the people of the world to take up in his inaugeral speech of 1953. What could be more important.

The funniest thing about that post is the thing that is supposedly “more important” is content-less web stuff like Twitter and Facebook. Apparently the revolution is truly here and all the pages are blank after all. Ever get the feeling that Web 3.0 will all be about masking household odors?

The NuGovernment Loves Wikiality

You know, it is a great idea to set up something that sounds like an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It just has to turn out to be the best source of truth going. And Canadians are sooooo trustworthy. Dudly Do-right picked up a Canadian Federal government wage, right? Just like the people doing this:

A website that tracks the origins of millions of edits to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, shows that computers inside federal government offices are responsible for more than 11,000 changes to articles, including some significant edits of entries about parliamentarians. WikiScanner, a website launched on Monday by a U.S. graduate student, shows that changes to articles originated from computers inside a variety of government offices, such as the House of Commons, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Environment Canada and the Auditor-General of Canada. The site, however, does not reveal the identity of the individual who made the edits.

Thankfully, it is not just Canadians who are shuffling the cards mid-game. The same report shows that the CIA is involved and it even “purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.”

Excellent.

Why Does Convergence Fail?

…or is it just an attempt to cross-breed whales and goldfish? This article about NBC’s 600 million blown in trying to converge something with something else is illustrative:

Most embarrassing, an effort to increase traffic by introducing a syndicated television program, “iVillage Live,” resulted in a month-to-month drop in visitors to the iVillage Web site. Introduced last December, “iVillage Live,” carried on NBC-owned stations in 10 cities, was seen as a failure on its own, suffering from low ratings, poor production quality and a certain nagging cloying quality. It ceased production in June, but is still running in repeats and will return, after a full makeover, next month.

Running repeats. Excellent plan.

It reminded me for some reason that may not be exactly clear in my mind of the movie 24 Hour Party People that was on over the weekend about the rise and fall of mid-80s Manchester rave scene that spawned Happy Mondays and the use of ecstasy. Effectively paid for by New Order through flipping their record sales to subsidize the money pit of everything else, the movie notes how the entire time was a financial flop due to the failure of the clubs to control the actual money flow. Ravers bought drugs not beer. A bubble economy except for the pushers.

What they may have in common is the acceptance of the insistence that a concept is viable supporting external investment of money and other resources, including public interest.

As a general concept that may be useful and something that explains many things. David recently wrote a good comment here about to the effect that (because I can’t find it at the moe) through blogging he has come to the conclusion that people understand their own beliefs very poorly. Maybe this is the human condition, however, and that all things are bubbles to some degree as we thrive on hope and expectation more than knowledge.

We Am Doooooomed!!!

Who knew?

The humble office printer can damage lungs in much the same way as smoke particles from cigarettes, according to a team of Australian scientists. An investigation of a range of models showed that almost a third emit potentially dangerous levels of toner into the air.

Quick – who wants to start a think tank and fund raising group dedicated to stamping out computer printers. While there are many in, say, the global warming anti-Suzuki set who will say this is nonsense, I am convinced that this is both a real threat and quite funny.

Friday Linkfest For The End Of July

Just like that it’s gone – the thing you wait for all year. No one waits for August. That is like waiting for the weekend to come so you can sit on Sunday afternoon thinking about the workweek to come.

  • Big Toe Update: really – big toe.
  • Update: Ben points out why Hillary is very likely going to be the next President – the responsibility gene.
  • I don’t know if this should make me cry or make me laugh.
  • How to make pals? Hit them up for money:

    Another Conservative official who was approached said in political parties, “these things normally should not have to be asked for.” The official said he already contributes to the party and the request has exacerbated uncomfortable relations between the PMO and some ministerial offices.

    What is it about these guys that they seek out and destroy goodwill wherever they go.

  • Rob shares in interesting warning. As you know, Rob is much more keen on the new digital order but I appreciate how he is learning about it before our eyes:

    It’s almost impossible to buy music with no frame of reference. There were no hits, no recommendations, no “if you like x, you’ll like y”. I realized that the time it would take to decide if I liked an album was probably worth more than the $3 it would cost to buy one–in other words, not even worth it for “free.” Musicians, bloggers, writers–if you’re toiling in the long tail, getting stuck at zero is now a real possibility. Being just like the other guys but trying harder is less of an effective strategy than ever before.

    Yes, the long tail has plenty of room at zero. They didn’t mention that bit. Without authority nothing is authoritative. Without guidance we are unguided. How do you do that in the million person village? I am not saying not to do it. Nick is quite right about the importance of doing. But how does one do when the only venues come with sidewalks? Does it matter?

  • Truly, the Kitty of Dis.
  • Patty Smith is playing “Because the Night” live on CBS’s The Early Show, given seven seconds in passing during a promo introduction for the eight am news. A part of me just died.

That is it. Maybe more later. Off to the office on a nice sunny day.

…And Mom Told Me To Come Home For The Weekend

Law suits can be fun and none moreso that over claims that someone who has become wealthy based on an idea or a widget or some such thing stole that thing. The Facebook claims, however, take it to a new level of corporate intrigue:

In September 2004, the ConnectU trio filed a claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea and dragged out their site’s launch so he could complete Facebook first. He was not paid, they said, but was a full member of their team and would have reaped any future rewards. Facebook countersued, charging ConnectU with defamation. Zuckerberg has said ConnectU asked him to do about six hours of work, and any delays were because he got bogged down by his studies.

I wonder if the counterclaim also mentions that Zuckerman, the Facebook wiz kid, was also bogged down with teen angst over being the geek who never gets the chicks and that that kept him from being of any use at the time. Should be easy enough to prove one way or another, however, as even if there is no theft in an idea, there is if the copyrighted code of another was lifted without colour of right. But can “a team” hold that copoyright?

Corporate Hand Puppets

The thing I find strange about this is not that it happens but that it doesn’t happen all the time…or that we do not recognize it happening:

…John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market…used a fictional identity on the Yahoo message boards for nearly eight years to assail competition and promote his supermarket chain’s stock, according to documents released last week by the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Mackey used the online handle “Rahodeb” (an anagram of his wife’s name, Deborah). In one Internet posting sure to enter the annals of chief-executive vanity, Mr. Mackey wrote as Rahodeb, “I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!” With all a chief executive has to do, the 14-hour days spent barking orders, digesting reports, motivating employees and courting Wall Street, why would they spend their time sparring with anonymous critics online? And what makes them think they won’t be revealed?

It is hard to say that is is not more common than is thought. Is it so different compared to me running a contest over at the beer blog sponsored by a brewery that sends trinkets or a blog that speaks on a political or public topic that gains the blogger access to people and events that he would never have otherwise? How is it that this is not manipulation? And do we care (and not in the Amiel sense of “care”) whether folks as insubstantial and sub-vermin (to borrow and Amielism) as bloggers are in a pocket of one size or another?

Finally, An Honest Web 2.0 Commentary

What is it about the internet that brings out the prophets and the blind? There is some much that is so hard to swallow that you are amazed by the smallest acknowledgment of how things really are:

Social networks are enjoying their moment of ubiquity right now. A couple of years ago, it seemed the inevitable way of the future that every man, woman, and child would have their own blog. Later, we were all to be podcasting. But time wore on, and it became evident that not everyone was meant to blog, and, as it turned out, that almost nobody was meant to podcast.

Podcasting was sort of odd, wasn’t it.