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You can use the feeds in this mix as the basis for a new mix - create a new mix from this mix.
Verizon's New Global Smartphone Aims for the Ozone [New Window]
Tired of worrying about whether or not your cell phone will work when traveling abroad? Verizon understands where you're coming from and, with HTC, are planning on bringing a true global handset ... Sony Next to Release an iPhone Killer [New Window]
We often talk about attempts to dethrone the immensely popular iPhone and it looks like consumer electronics giant Sony is about to take a stab at it next. Sony has released word that it is consider... isift [New Window]
isift at first blush looks like another digg clone. the web application allows you to submit an article that will be reviewed by all and will be elevated, based on popularity, to the main page. from a look at the tag cloud, they're just ... just what were we thinking? [New Window]
here's a little taste of what goes on behind the scenes when we decide to give a blogger the reigns not only to a client's blog but to the actual product as well ... rss in internet explorer 7 [New Window]
dwight silverman previews rss reading in internet explorer 7. flickr tops 100m photos [New Window]
flickr this morning passed 100 million photos, according to sweedish super sleuth hans kullin. technorati tags: flickr, photos. Sub DiggerPlus: A Cool Look Into What Your Friends are Digging [New Window]
DiggDigg's Recommendation Engine was one of the biggest announcements in the history of the company, and yet it just never did it for me. Yes, I sometimes like. Shooting at Arlington Apple Store [News Video] [New Window]
A somewhat distressing tech story today: a female employee at the Arlington Apple Store was shot in the shoulder this morning by a man who rang the doorbell at. YouTube Doubles Max File Size on Uploads to 2GB [New Window]
Back in September of last year, YouTube increased the maximum size of video uploads tenfold, from 100MB to 1GB. In the past 24 hours, it appears that they've. Michael Jackson Dies: Twitter Tributes Now 30% of Tweets [New Window]
The death of one of the world's greatest pop stars is having a global impact, but social media brings into sharp focus the scale of the world's shock and. RunPee: iPhone App Tells Moviegoers When it's Safe to Pee [New Window]
runpeeiphone It's a rare find: an iPhone app that's both useful and hilarious. RunPee, an existing website that launched its iPhone app today, checks both those boxes. Here's the idea: you're watching a movie in the theater and need to ... Michael Jackson's Death Spurs Ugly Fake Stories About the Demise ... [New Window]
Understandably, the Internet is on overdrive right now as the world learns of the passing of Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, the music icon's death is also. Marshall Kirkpatrick's Site About How to Use the New Internet ... [New Window]
Marshall Kirkpatrick - consultant in new social media for research, marketing and more. US govt deal making is a race to the bottom [New Window]
Its been painful to watch our democrat led govt turn into a free money feeding frenzy. Todays nytimes reports that in order to pass the climate change bill lawmakers doled out billions in gifts to each other and special interests from ... Wells Fargo Gives California July 10 Drop-Dead Date [New Window]
Wells Fargo Gives California July 10 Drop-Dead Date. By Paul Kedrosky Friday, July 3, 2009 . Nice to have a firm date for when California must have a budget and stop shopping IOUs. Here is Wells Fargo from a release yesterday: ... Readings [New Window]
There is some good stuff in the current issue of Foreign Policy: Thing again about Asias inevitable rise (Source); The end of finance is the end of macho (Source); The 2009 Failed States Index (Source); The collapse of the Baltic ... QOTD: Sampling the Future [New Window]
QOTD: Sampling the Future. By Paul Kedrosky Friday, July 3, 2009 . The following innocuous sampling theory comment from Andy Gelman set me thinking in a bunch of dimensions today. The question had to with how to handle statistical ... When is a Failure Not a Failure? When It's an Iraq Oil Auction [New Window]
When is a Failure Not a Failure? When It's an Iraq Oil Auction. By Paul Kedrosky Friday, July 3, 2009 . The failed Iraq oilfield auctions this week have become a litmus test for Iraq, for oil analysts and for the ever-nervous global ... Happy Canada Day [New Window]
On a personal note, Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends and family. Farmworkers: Go to New York City, Young Man [New Window]
Farmworkers: Go to New York City, Young Man. By Paul Kedrosky Friday, July 3, 2009 . I've been messing about with this tool that tries to compare supply and demand for various jobs by geography throughout the U.S. You have to be ... Economic Imbalances, 101 [New Window]
Great (wonkish) post by Brad Setser up putting US economic imbalances in historical context, as well as explaining, in graphical form, the latest twists and turns. Highly worth reading. More here. Thoughts on Online Marketing - John Battelle's Searchblog [New Window]
Many folks have asked me when CM Summit videos would be posted, several are up now. They include the opener, above, in which I give a short overview of the state of online marketing from my perspective - start at about 6 mins in if you ... A Wish List for Facebook Search [New Window]
(This post was swallowed whole by my Ecto software, stay tuned...) Google v. Facebook? What We Learn from Twitter. - John Battelle's ... [New Window]
June 22, 2009. By John Battelle. Last week I wrote a post in which I opined a bit about Facebook search. In it I wrote: Facebook is way more than its newsfeed, and its search play is key to proving that value, and extending it. ... When Value Is Created, Let It Be Curated At Scale [New Window]
Facebook's opening up even more, as CNet reports. Facebook has posted an update to its "Publisher" settings - basically, the instrumentation to your status updates - that makes it possible to broadcast the value you create in the social ... #iranelection [New Window]
Its hard to not get caught up in the drama unfolding in Iran, especially given the prominent role that technology is playing in these events technology from right here in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, a smattering of revolt around the ... Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to Include Video Uploading for 3GS Owners [New Window]
July 3rd, 2009. We've heard a lot of people say the iPhone's built-in support for YouTube video uploading is going to make a huge impact on the number of people posting videos online. That number could grow even more now that Facebook's ... StreamAPI is Another New Video Streaming Service Integrated with ... [New Window]
July 2nd, 2009. Live streaming on Facebook is now more affordable for smal businesses and individuals thanks to StreamAPI, a new product from live-streaming company Stickam. StreamAPI is built around Facebook's Live Stream widget, ... Yelp Integrates Facebook Connect, Online Reviews Becoming ... [New Window]
July 3rd, 2009. The local review-sharing site Yelp has added Facebook Connect to allow users to easily share local business reviews with their friends on Facebook. Yelp allows anyone to submit a review for any local business, ... Facebook attire chaque jour 700 000 nouveaux utilisateurs [New Window]
Toute l'actualit de Facebook pour les dveloppeurs et les acteurs du marketing. Accueil La Bible du Marketing sur Facebook Contactez-nous A Propos Publicit RSS S'abonner par email ... Thanks To Our Sponsors [New Window]
July 3rd, 2009. Inside Facebook extends a big thank you to our fantastic sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Facebook. Check them out below! zemblylogo Zembly is a powerful new application development environment ... More on Throwing Sheep | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon [New Window]
Changing Communities inside the Media Gap - Google Docs From page 16 of this awesome presentation by Paul Jones. The idea of Throwing Sheep has been tickling my brain for the last few weeks now. Everywhere I turn around, I notice that ... Thanks to this Months Sponsors June 2009 [New Window]
I'd like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn't be regular posts here. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. CrazyEgg. Assorted targeted spam [New Window]
You can run, but you can't hide. Here are a few of the latest things I've seen, in no particular order. On a PHPBB-style chat board which I sometimes frequent, there was a thread about do-it-yourself television repair, dormant for over ... CITP Announces 2009-10 Visitors [New Window]
Today, I'm pleased to announce CITP's visitors for the upcoming academic year. Deven R. Desai, Visiting Fellow: Deven is an Associate Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and a permanent blogger at Concurring Opinions ... Christine: Pocket Protectors Never Looked So Good: Women Who Tech [New Window]
I just wanted to share news of what may be the largest, longest online conference call ever: the Women Who Tech telesummit on May 12th, 2009. Conference organizers have put together an agenda that includes: Launching Your Own Startup ... Christine: Testing in the Clouds at Under the Radar [New Window]
The mission critical - but decidedly unsexy - need for application testing is the latest part of the developer ecosystem to move into the cloud. At today's Under the Radar conference, Rafe Needleman moderated VC panel pitching from a ... Christine: If Sigmund Freud and Gautama Buddha Ran Marketing: Six ... [New Window]
Mark Rovner and Katya Andresen shared an unusual take on online outreach at today's Nonprofit Technology Conference: what can Freud and Buddha teach us about marketing communications? Together, Rovner and Andresen came up with these six ... Christine: First Round Entrepreneur Outreach at Stanford and SXSW [New Window]
Just a quick note to get the word out on two upcoming outreach sessions that I'm participating in...it's a blast to get out and talk to shiny new entrepreneurs. Feel free to get the word out to those that would find these events useful: ... Christine: Startups Woo Coders with Cloud-Based Development ... [New Window]
Rafe Needleman continued his developers-in-the-cloud theme at the Microsoft campus this afternoon, with an Under the Radar judging panel that includes First Round Capital's very own Rob Hayes. Here are the presenters, roughly in my ... Christine: Great Unconference Sessions at FreeTech (ETech) Today [New Window]
Feeling poor since you tightened your startup's belt last quarter? There's a GREAT set of free, community-scheduled sessions for today's FreeTech unconference at ETech 2009, being held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Christine: Lane Becker's Therapy for the Under-employed at SXSW [New Window]
What are you going to do with yourself, now that the economy has collapsed? Lane Becker, co-founder of creative commercial endeavors like Get Satisfaction and Adaptive Path, brought together a team of survivors to discuss the issue at ... Christine: DEMO: the Queen is gone, long live the King [New Window]
The news is spreading today on Chris Shipley's departure from the IDG DEMO conference. Count me in as someone with great admiration for Chris' work on and off the DEMO stage - she brings intelligence, class, and thoughtful analysis to ... Christine: First Round Capital Office Hours Comes to...Our Office [New Window]
Yes, it's true - for the first time, First Round Capital Office Hours will actually be held in our offices. Our San Francisco doors are open and entrepreneurs are welcome to drop on by for a few minutes of conversation. Christine: Girls Gone Geeky - and Getting Funded [New Window]
I'm glad to be supporting TWO upcoming events designed for women entrepreneurs. If you're a woman entrepreneur in Silicon Valley - or would like to encourage one - then read on, forward this information, and register. Comment on Why Paris Hilton Is Famous (Or Understanding Value In A ... [New Window]
Why Paris Hilton Is Famous (Or Understanding Value In A Post-Madonna World) article about how being a platform (ie: someone who freely links out) makes it easier to become an authority. [...] The need for and risks of government transparency [New Window]
At yesterdays Personal Democracy Forum where I was in the unfortunate position of speaking inbetween two of my favorite geniuses, danah boyd and David Weinberger I sang the obvious hymn to the choir, arguing that government in a ... A map to where? BuzzMachine [New Window]
Politics makes. A map to where? The UK's Independent has attempted to map the discussion about the future of newspapers. I'm not sure I get the benefit of the form, but give it a whirl: This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, ... Google on Google [New Window]
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, I got up to a mic to ask Eric Schmidt a question. No, it wasnt, what would Google do? I wanted his reaction to a notion Ive talked about here that has crystallized since I wrote the book: that we are ... Eric Schmidt on the new world [New Window]
Heres video from the Aspen Ideas Festival responding to my question about what follows the industrial age. Its much better than my limited report on it below: More of Kai Ryssdals very good interview with Schmidt here. China blinks [New Window]
I said in What Would Google Do? and argued the point in a talk at Google in Washington that Google and other technology companies have more influence than they know and should use it in protecting free speech and pressuring ... Politics makes. BuzzMachine [New Window]
Politics makes. When she pushed her dangerous agenda to change copyright law through Congress to protect her industry, company, and job, Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz got all huffy with me when I suggested that she should ... First, kill the lawyers before they kill the news [New Window]
Following the frighteningly dangerous thinking of Judge Richard Posner proposing rewriting copyright law to outlaw linking to and summarizing (aka talking about) news stories now we have two more lemming lawyers following him off ... How Twitter and Facebook Now Compete with Google [New Window]
Last year I wrote a blog post entitled If the news is important it will find me. The point was that we all live in so many social networks, that someone will send us an update if something in the world happens that we would be ... The Google Youtube Conundrum [New Window]
You have a video that you want to post on the web. It may be just for you. It could be for friends. It could be for family. It could be for a company or a political campaign. It could a video that you want seen by as many people as ... An Apology to Kenyon Martins Mom [New Window]
It started as a smart ass comment that I know that no one heard. How do I know, because there was a reporter right there next to me, as well as other people who saw the whole thing and didnt hear a word of it. ... Success & Motivation 2009 [New Window]
This is the year of WTF. Yep, What the F&&&. It doesnt matter what got you to the point of saying it. Maybe you got fired/layed off. Maybe your company went out of business. Maybe you quit because you couldnt take it any longer. ... HDNet and MMA = Happy Customers [New Window]
if you dont follow Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), you could not possibly understand how loyal and rabid fans of the sport are. When people talk about fans that take supporting their favorites to extremes they usually use Nascar fans as ... Success & Motivation [New Window]
Success and Motivation, Part 1. Apr 23rd 2004 9:37AM. Success and Motivation. I did it too. I drove by big houses and would wonder who lived there. What did they do for a living? How did they make their money? ... How to Fix Wall Street Madoffs Law [New Window]
First there are the innovators. Then there are the imitators. Then there are the idiots. Its starts off with I have a great idea that makes money. Then someone says Thats a great idea, only XYZ is doing it. They made a ton of money. ... Who Cares What People Write ? [New Window]
In this day and age of blogs, aggregation sites, personal recommendation sites, link publishing, twitter and more, its not unusual to get a news alert email, or to wake up and google a person, place or thing and find hundreds of ... Ben Casnocha: The Blog: The Keys to Life: Running and Reading [New Window]
Will Smith, one of my favorite actors and rappers, tells the audience at the 2005 Kid's Choice Awards that the keys to life are running and reading. The two minute YouTube clip is embedded below. Running because when you run... Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Cater to Your Inner-Completionist [New Window]
Today while making lunch I realized that when I cut my sandwich into two halves it tastes better overall than when I eat it in one piece. Why? When I eat two halves of one sandwich, it feels like I... What Worked: Pre-Algebra Seminar Edition [New Window]
Three out of my five Pre-Algebra Seminar kids passed their main math class this trimester. That means two failed. Not a great record. This trimester I hope to do better. I feel like I have a much better idea what to do and yet I feel ... A List Apart: Articles: Indexing the WebIt's Not Just Google's ... [New Window]
by Lyle Mullican. Published in: Server Side |. Discuss this article . Indexing the WebIt's Not Just Google's Business. Interface responsiveness is one of many details web developers must consider in their quest to deliver a good user ... Impeach Obama [New Window]
By Alex Constantine The President of the United States is GW Bush in black drag. Day after day, liberal commentators wake up and say so. When a Bush regime war crime or CIA atrocity is raised publicly, we can't look at it. ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: Sarah Palin Resignation Celebration [New Window]
"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. ... As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this ... Nietzsche and the Nazis: Redeeming the Record [New Window]
Posted on June 25th, 2009 by Warren Throckmorton in All News, Germany News, Op-ed, Religious News. In his new book, Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian response to the gay agenda, author Scott Lively repeats his claim that the rise of ... Micro Persuasion: Yahoo Testing Blogs and RSS Search [New Window]
Shhh, don't tell anyone but you can find Yahoo's new blog and RSS search tool here. Click screen grabs at left. They're testing it out. (UPDATE: Yahoo pulled down the site Danny Sullivan says. Here's the biggest image of the... fold looks promising [New Window]
fold is a web 2.0 start page that looks promising. the site aims to "consolidate most of the tools and information you need every day into a single web page." hopefully this is more than just another rss start page. ... Survey Says: Social Networks Should Push the Envelope With Ads [New Window]
Recently, we explored why FacebookFacebook and other social networks are still serving such poorly targeted ads in light of all of the data they have about. Marketing Programs Manager, Social Media Job, LogMeIn, Inc ... [New Window]
Marketing Programs Manager The Marketing Programs Manager will manage a wide variety of marketing communications programs with a special focus on social media and campaigns to LogMeIn's existing user base. ... Venture Capitalists are Best Kept at a Distance [New Window]
Venture Capitalists are Best Kept at a Distance. By Paul Kedrosky Thursday, July 2, 2009 . There is amusing (in an admittedly academic sense) new paper out seemingly showing that venture capitalists obtain a significant portion of ... Bing Starts to Get Real (Time) - John Battelle's Searchblog [New Window]
July 1, 2009. By John Battelle. gore bing twitter.png I've been complaining that nearly no search engines surface real time data (for now, that's Twitter, but Facebook is coming soon enough, and there will be tons more). ... Profile of Google Lobbyist... - John Battelle's Searchblog [New Window]
June 29, 2009. By John Battelle ...in the NYT today. Google has begun this public-relations offensive because it is in the midst of a treacherous rite of passage for powerful technology companies regulators are intensely scrutinizing ... It May Be Free, But It's Sure As Hell Underwritten - John ... [New Window]
June 30, 2009. By John Battelle. wired ads free.png There's quite a wonderful authorial kerfuffle happening between Chris Anderson, whose recent book "Free" has been the target both of plagiarism charges (from Wikipedia, of all places, ... Juxtaposition Fun - John Battelle's Searchblog [New Window]
Comments. Craig - web traffic guy says: # June 30, 2009 7:47 PM. nope... Google is to info what globalization is to manufacturing. The great leveler. Amanda Sanguinet says: # June 30, 2009 9:27 PM. This is fun John, thanks for sharing. ... Protect the Abusers By Punishing the Rule Following Majority ... [New Window]
There's a lot of this going around this year. An FDA panel's recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers. Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success | Venture Chronicles [New Window]
I'd go with that assessment. Connect has made identity/authentication so much easier for third party app providers and at the same time has struck a serious. FarmVille is Already the 8th Most Popular Game on Facebook [New Window]
July 2nd, 2009. top25. Each month, it seems like there are a few surprises in store on the Facebook gaming charts. Back at the start of June, we saw a number of new titles appear within the Top 25. One in particular, Farm Town, ... Flutteerr Shows What Developers Can Do With the Open Stream API [New Window]
July 2nd, 2009. A couple of months ago, Facebook released the Open Stream API, a new set of Facebook Platform APIs that enable developers to access and publish to the Facebook stream from anywhere. Since then, we've seen a number of ... Regional Networks Soon to be Deprecated in Platform APIs [New Window]
July 2nd, 2009. facebook platform developers. As Inside Facebook reported last month, Facebook is in the process of migrating away from regional networks on the site (they were only ever used by 50% of users anyway, and created some ... Facebook sigue imparable [New Window]
Monitoreando Facebook y su Plataforma para los Desarrolladores y los Profesionales del Mercadeo. Inicio La Biblia del Mercadeo en Facebook Sobre Inside Facebook Contctenos Regstrese ... Facebook Now Growing by Over 700000 Users a Day, and New ... [New Window]
July 2nd, 2009. fblogosmall It's been just under 90 days since Facebook announced it has crossed the 200 million active user mark. Today, that number is somewhere around 240 million, perhaps even close to 250 million. ... short rant [New Window]
I did not work hard to slowly, but organically build my influence in order to use it to boost peoples ranks in silly contests, to hock bad ideas or to retweet stuff I dont care about! I really hate the stuff that comes out of an ... Leadership Blogging, It's All About Leading [New Window]
The following post is a counterpoint to the Outspoken Media post titled "Would I Recognize Your Blog In A Dark Alley", and exists to offer an alternative path to land of unicorns and rainbows. First off there's nothing wrong with ... Twitter As Real Time Search? Very Awesome. [New Window]
Last morsel of a half baked thought: I know you know, but I wanted to write this down any way. Twitter as a search for real time events is absolutely unparalleled. For events that are happening right now as in the past few minutes, ... No Degree for Obama: An Embarrassment to University [New Window]
In explaining why Arizona State University (my employer) wont award President Obama an honorary degree when he speaks at next months commencement, a university spokeswoman told the Associated Press: Its our practice to recognize an ... Comment on Why Paris Hilton Is Famous (Or Understanding Value In A ... [New Window]
[...] I think the author gives her too much credit, his outlook on her is both refreshing and inspiring. Why Paris Hilton Is [...] Comment on How The World Really Works (Or Success Tips For The ... [New Window]
http://chartreuse.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/how-the-world-really-works-success-tips-for-the-young-and-stupid/ Can anyone tell me how the story (of the girl, the road trip, the job and the wisdom) are connected to the comments below..and ... Comment on Fat Asian Girls, The Importance Of Being The Dumbest ... [New Window]
Young Teen Lesbians Okay, okay, you say, so what? So what if the guy is a real phony? His work makes people happy. My take, after seeing this work again and again, not his work BUT the famous folks in his work or the ... MJ OD BuzzMachine [New Window]
MJ OD. When Michael Jackson died, I wondered how quickly the conversation about him would fade online and how long it would persist on TV news. Well, it didn't take long to see the divergence: TV thinks we're still buzzing about MJ. ... A List Apart: Articles: Findings from the Web Design Survey, 2008 [New Window]
by ALA Staff. Published in: Community, Industry, State of the Web, Business |. Discuss this article The Survey, 2008. If we, the people who make websites, want the world to know who we are and what we do, it's up to each of us to ... A List Apart: Articles: The Wisdom of Community [New Window]
It's one of the most important concepts on the web todayperhaps the most important for social mediabut it's one of the least understood. When James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds in 2004, he explored the stock market and other ... A List Apart: Articles: Burnout [New Window]
Web professionals are often expected to be always onalways working, absorbing information, and honing new skills. Unless our work and personal lives are carefully balanced, however, the physical and mental effects of an "always on" ... A List Apart: Articles: Managing Werewolves [New Window]
If I move a muscle, I'm dead. Jane, who I'm pretty sure is a Werewolf, is jumping from one player to the next, testing will and looking for weakness. She's looking for a sign of guilt or discomfort and it's not just her. ... A List Apart: Articles: Creating Intrinsic Ratios for Video [New Window]
Did you ever want to resize a video on the fly, scaling it as you would an image? Using intrinsic ratios for video, you can. This technique allows browsers to determine video dimensions based on the width of their containing block. ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: Police to Question Jackson's Doctor ... [New Window]
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and LIZ ROBBINS NY Times June 28, 2009. LOS ANGELES With mystery still enshrouding the death of Michael Jackson and the results of toxicology reports weeks away, the Los Angeles police department scheduled an ... Apple Updates its Software While the Government Rethinks Law [New Window]
Apple today officially released the iPhone OS 3.0 software, updating 45 software patches to address rare security vulnerabilities in its popular iPhone and iPod Touch mobile devices. The company sai... T-Mobile's New Android Phone Coming Soon [New Window]
T-Mobile's got an ace up their sleeve in the ongoing struggle to dethroning the Apple iPhone coming out this August. Calling it the myTouch 3G, its new Google Android equipped phone is a more equ... Motorola Karma Has Texting in Mind [New Window]
AT&T and Motorola are working on a device with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard aimed at consumers looking to use their phones to send text messages and access social networking sites like Facebook. ... Find It at Megashopper [New Window]
zoovroo Looking for a Palm Pre? There's a good chance you can find it on megashopper. Whatever kind of electronic device (or peripheral for it) you may be looking for or considering, there'... T-Mobile Aims High with the Dash 3G [New Window]
T-Mobile has apparently stood-by and watched RIM and Apple dominate the market long enough. The company has announced its plans to enter the hotly contested smartphone scene with their Dash 3G, which... Nokia Announces Successor to the E71 Smartphone [New Window]
Nokia has answered the question on the minds of business users all around the globe today by announced its E72- an updated version of its top-selling E71 business phone. The company says that the E7... So Long Blogging, Hello Lifestreaming! (Please Update Your RSS ... [New Window]
After talking to a bunch of folks and thinking about it I have decided after all to direct all of my online publishing energies to one hub, The Steve Rubel Lifestream, plus several spokes, eg the social networks and platforms where I ... Michael Jackson Tribute Song Exceeds 100000 Plays [New Window]
A tribute song to Michael Jackson featuring The Game, Chris Brown, Diddy, Usher, Mario Winans, Boyz2Men and other leading artists has resulted in an. Zynga customer support - catching up [New Window]
I'm happy to report that zynga is now handling all cs tix within 72 hrs. Our team has worked hard to keep up with the growth in our game userbase. Zynga now has nearly 200 cs reps across 3 continents responding to our customers. ... Debt, Class Warfare and Entrepreneurship [New Window]
Debt, Class Warfare and Entrepreneurship. By Paul Kedrosky Wednesday, July 1, 2009 . There is an uneasy relationship among debt, democracy and capitalism, as a new FT column ably makes clear. Here are some excerpts, starting with why ... Steven Chu on Energy Research: Very Nervous Times [New Window]
Steven Chu on Energy Research: Very Nervous Times. By Paul Kedrosky Wednesday, July 1, 2009 . White House Energy point man Steven Chu's talk at MIT is worth watching. He rightly calls this very nervous times in the world of energy ... And a NYT Profile of Aardvark.. - John Battelle's Searchblog [New Window]
June 29, 2009. By John Battelle ..which I've been talking about for some time...from the piece: Having humans, not software, supply the advice is important. Max Ventilla, who formerly was at Google and is now Aardvark's chief executive, ... What Went Wrong With Joost? | Venture Chronicles [New Window]
Om very succinctly yet thoroughly lays out what has led to the demise of Joost. One point that I disagree with my good friend Om on is that a white label. The (il)Logic of Krugman [New Window]
Paul Krugman echoes President Obamas rhetorical attack on critics of government run healthcare (and thats pretty much what happens when the Federal government determines what care you are eligible for) as an example of the brilliant ... Tyrannosaurus Debt | Venture Chronicles [New Window]
Categories. Blogs Clean Tech Companies Enterprise 2.0 Enterprise Software Entrepreneurship Innovation Interesting Stuff Irregulars Management Marketing media NewsGator NewsGatorWidgets Off Topic Open Source ... US Objects to China's Mandatory Green Dam Censorware [New Window]
Yesterday, the US Commerce Secretary and Trade Representative sent a letter to China's government, objecting to China's order, effective July 1, to require that all new PCs sold in China have preinstalled the Green Dam Youth Escort ... Michael Jackson Spike on Twitter [New Window]
Check out this Twitter spike around the time that Michael Jackson died courtesy of our internal Spinn3r stats: Apparently, Im not the only person who noticed this: As the news of Michael Jacksons fate unfolded, sites around the Web ... Facebook Taking Another Step Toward Being Open [New Window]
This is good news. Facebook now has public status updates. Were eager to have more Facebook content in Spinn3r (and personally Ima big advocate of the open web). Facebook has just announced that its now testing a new version of the ... Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: Why do Fast Followers often beat ... [New Window]
Innovation drives our industry, attracts the best talent, attracts VC money, and wins fame for its leaders. Innovation leaders burst onto the scene, win early market leadership, but sometimes can't sustain the pace. The King of Twitter [New Window]
Reporters have been calling today looking into the importance of Twitter and social media in the two big stories of the month: Iran and Michael Jackson. Have we come to a next step stage in social medias impact on news? Maybe. ... Help us help hyperlocal news [New Window]
For CUNYs New Business Models for News Project, we would be very grateful if local blogs and sites filled out a survey to give us data in our analysis and modeling of the economics of hyperlocal news. The survey is here. ... Speaking at Refresh Boston tonight about designing in a recession [New Window]
Having recently returned from An Event Apart Boston, I have lots of new design ideas to think about and explore. But one idea kept rearing its ugly head in conversation after conversation I had there: the economy. ... 2 Quick Hits On Sports Media and The Stock Market blog maverick [New Window]
Jun 19th 2009 10:36AM. 1. Has anyone noticed that its impossible to trust a single word uttered about coaching changes, the draft, trades and even celebration parties these days ? Bloggers, sports websites and even the print media have ... Free vs Freely Distributed blog maverick [New Window]
Jun 30th 2009 7:21PM. With the publication of Chris Anderson's new book Free, the discussion about the role of free, today and in the future has expanded. Articles from Malcom Gladwell in New Yorker, and Seth Godin discuss the various ... Priestly Believed in Randomness and Side Projects [New Window]
Joseph Priestly, the 18th century theologian, philosopher, and inventor, embraced three concepts I've written about at length: He exposed himself to randomness: try more stuff than the next guy; law of large numbers; insight at the ... Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Book Review and Essay: Create Your Own ... [New Window]
I have ~4000 word essay up at the American Enterprise Institute reviewing Tyler Cowen's new book Create Your Own Economy and presenting my perspective on the ongoing debates around internet information culture, whether we are more ... Links from Around the Web [New Window]
Much original, exciting content will grace this blog in the month of July. Meanwhile, for those of you who do not follow my delicious tags, I must dump upon you some favorite links: Your job description, via Eric Reis: "Every person in ... Ignorance is a Precious Resource [New Window]
The value of what you don't know: Little attention has been paid to ignorance as a precious resource. Unlike knowledge, which is infinitely reusable, ignorance is a one-shot deal: Once it has been displaced by knowledge, it can be hard ... links for 2008-10-28 [New Window]
Algebra II Test Overview | Achieve.org. With links to released items from exams. (tags: math tests assessment exams problems resources algebra2) Celebrity version of Friday thoughts.. [New Window]
Celebrity deaths: OK, they come in threes, I concede. I do not mourn Micheal Jackson. His brilliance died decades ago. In addition, death does not add value to life, unless it is a death of honor and/or sacrifice. ... Build a better mousetrap [New Window]
There are two ways to start a new business and have a chance at success: First, you could come up with a revolutionary idea that no one else is doing. This is the typical dream.the billion dollar invention, etc. ... Lessons from Billy Mays [New Window]
Here is his sons twitter announcing it. And a twitpic of him the night before, celebrating a good Conan appearence with his family. So I got to thinking.isnt it weird that a commercial salesmans death is even a news event, ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: Prince: Symbol of Sexual Liberation ... [New Window]
By Robert Paul Reyes newsblaze.com "God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.' " Who uttered this crazy quotation in response to a question ... Olympic Committee Hires Ari Fleisher as Communications Consultant [New Window]
By Brian Gomez Boston Herald/June 1, 2009 The next time the US Olympic Committee wants to improve its image or needs to deal with a crisis, it will have a former White House press secretary helping call the shots. ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: The Next Pandemic? Get Vaccinated Now!!! [New Window]
April 4, 2012: " ... The patented 12GB anti-viral "vaccine" is available from HP-Baxter Pharmaceuticals in the Silicon Valley, a biological research firm sustained largely by CIA and WHO contracts - and a lab that has been ... 2007 - "Bush Sanctions 'Black Ops' against Iran" [New Window]
Also see: "American Hand in Iran," by Trish Schuh Bush Sanctions 'Black Ops' against Iran By Tim Shipman www.telegraph.co.uk 27 May 2007 Iran was sold defective parts on the black market President George W Bush has given the CIA ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: Tapes Reveal Nixon Pro Mixed-Race ... [New Window]
Excuse my eye-rolling, but even in Nixon's prime the Republican soul beneath the self-serving rhetoric festered in ignorance - and it was apparent to an entire counter-culture. But the wilfully-blind wingnut majority actually attributed ... run, don't walk [New Window]
jonathan harris, one of the most brilliant designer/thinkers around has just launched an awesome new project -- Sputnik Observatory....
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:13:55 -0500 Nokia Hopes Cell Phones will No Longer Require Chargers [New Window]
Quick- what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of charging your cell phone? If you said a cord, an electrical outlet or even a docking station, you may want to read on. Nokia re... Motorola Rival Coming to Verizon [New Window]
Texters on the Verizon network have reason to celebrate in the form of the Rival from Motorola. Designed specifically for the challenges of texting, the Rival features a 2.2-inch screen and a backlit... Im Starting a Podcast With Dave Winer Tonight [New Window]
RSS and blogging forefather Dave Winer has asked me to co-host a weekly podcast with him and were starting the first live episode in just a few minutes! Im very excited about it, as Ive long enjoyed Daves other podcasts. ... A Look Behind the Curtain at Techmeme [New Window]
In late 2005 former Intel developer Gabe Rivera launched what is now TechMeme, a powerful semi-automated meme tracker that discovers the hottest conversations in the tech blogosphere every 5 minutes. Its an incredible resource and ... Add One Line To Your Blog or Twitter Could Become Your Primary ... [New Window]
OpenID community leader Scott Kveton noticed this morning that his Twitter profile page is now the #1 search result in Google for his last name, not his blog. This is something TechCrunch reported on earlier this month, but people are ... My 500th Headline on Techmeme [New Window]
Pride is rarely something appropriate to show in public, but tonight in particular and here on my personal blog - I think its ok. Yesterday I wrote a blog post that became the 500th story Ive written over the last 3 years to be ... Click This Button To See Into A Twitter Users Soul [New Window]
Twitter isnt just a short messaging service - itsa major communication platform that can be sliced and diced for all kinds of competitive and market intelligence research. And news writing. And who nows what else. ... Responses to an Email Interview [New Window]
Im speaking to a Mensa gathering this Spring about the internet and was just sent some interview questions for the local chapters newsletter. Pretty strange, huh? After I took the time to reply to the questions, I thought Id take a ... Web 3.0 snippets - I [New Window]
We have entered the third business plan of the web. Web 1.0 was about aggregating online audiences. The currency was eye balls measured in page views. This business was banner ads and ecommerce. Web 2.0 was the search economy which ... Web 3 - the whole world will be a game [New Window]
All web services will eventually look and feel like games. Users will gravitate to the 'funnest' ecommerce or other sites. Game mex will be the most valuable skillset for web content and commerce. Iphone app to help me interview [New Window]
Why isn't there an app that tells me question types for various positions and then let's me benchmark answers in relative and absolute terms? It could propose simple to hard verbal math problems for engineers and biz people to test ... Fw: My Supreme Court nominee [New Window]
Obama is using brilliant web marketing post campaign to keep taking his msg direct to the people. Feels like the days of web based democracy are getting closer by the email. Love this. Go obama! ... Who's managing our money? [New Window]
The govt running gm is like wolves tending the sheep herd. Great npr piece on all the ways congressmen are interfering with gm mgt's efforts to reduce costs. Dealing with with game hackers [New Window]
Zynga has taken some massive actions this week to protect our users from in game hackers. if you feel you have been wrongly banned from our games go to our customer support and they will verify your account status. ... Yahoo! Answers launches Suggested Questions Engine [New Window]
Late last week Yahoo! Answers got way more awesome! The team launched a new feature that is so much more than just a feature but an evolutionary step for Yahoos Q&A service. For some of the Answers users - the ones who have shown their ... Search isnt Search, Stefan Weitz [New Window]
Im really glad and happy about being able to announce that Stefan Weitz, Director of Life Search from Redmond will be speaking at the SMX Munich, Germany on the 22nd of April this year. It will be a great opportunity for us at ... Stockholm Syndrome - 53% of users expect to be disappointed but ... [New Window]
The two facts that did stick in my head the most were that 65% to 80% of all people were happy with their search engine. Quite a difficult situation when you want to get into a market like that. And fact number two was that 53% of all ... Bing TV ad - start ur engine [New Window]
this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype. Bing TV ad - start ur engine The Birth of the Internet - National Science Foundation [New Window]
historyinet The Birth of the Internet - National Science Foundation. Just saw this featured on TV. The National Science Foundation has launched a site about the Birth and history of the internet. The coverage called the internet the 2nd ... Facebook targeted ads [New Window]
Pretty good targeting. Ads shown on a Yahoo! eployees Facebook profile page. this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype. Facebook targeted ads. Video Interview: Stefan Weitz talks about the future of Search [New Window]
When Stefan was here last week he did give a couple of interviews. One was recorded on video linked below. Click on the questions to see the videos: Why shouldnt people be happy with their search results? Which search engine changes ... Video: Guy Kawasaki SES New York Keynote - Twitter As A Tool [New Window]
this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype. Video: Guy Kawasaki SES New York Keynote - Twitter As A Tool. Being a guest @ Webmasterradio.fm Live Search [New Window]
Yesterday I had the pleasure to be the guest at this weeks Webmasters on The Roof show on webmasterradio.fm. The show that is co-hosted by Marcus Tandler (aka. Mediadonis) and Ralf Gtz (aka. Fridaynite) two of Germanys most ... Worth Noting: Search By Voice on Google Maps/Android [New Window]
This is another step in what I've been calling the conversational interface... Finally succumbed to Twitter [New Window]
I've gotten a few emails asking if I twittered... ok, now I do. You can find me @jennrice. I resisted for a while because I knew that I'd spend all day on Twitter if I started (same reason I don't have a TV). I was right. Strategic CSR in Hospitality [New Window]
Just wrote a new post on Building the Ethical Reputation: Strategic CSR in Hospitality on my business blog... it includes an Opportunity Audit comparing initiatives for Fairmont Hotels, Marriott and IHG and mapping how well they support ... Five strategies for building your ethical brand [New Window]
There's been a lot of discussion about elevating corporate responsibility to become a strategic driver of your business. Most companies would like to benefit from their ethical efforts in the form of increased customer attraction and ... Don't cut CSR spending; reallocate to build your brand [New Window]
As consumer expectations rise and trust in corporations decline, the need for ethical business practices is greater than ever. Yet in a recession, companies seeking to cut costs will likely postpone important CSR initiatives or cut ... Off topic: Deadpan humor [New Window]
Just discovered this really funny site called Deadpan Inc. If you need a work break and have earphones, check it out. In addition to today's episode called Irony, I laughed at New Mexico and Narcoleptic Police Dispatcher. ... Lessons in responsibility [New Window]
Ok, Ima bit late to the game, but I just stumbled upon Liberty Mutuals The Responsibility Project that was launched last year. The discovery led me to investigate whether its focus on responsibility was rhetoric or real. ... If you own brand reputation, you need to be @ SB09 [New Window]
I'm looking forward to attending Sustainable Brands '09 on May 31 in Monterrey CA. This conference sits at the intersection of brands and ethical business, an area that is essential for marketers but can dominated by CSR departments in ... Proving values-based business is the most fruitful [New Window]
I was recently interviewed for Gennefer Snowfield's Philanthropy In 5 series at TriplePundit.com on the subject of values-based business and aligning philanthropy with strategy. You can read my responses on my business blog. Three types of meetings [New Window]
Great summary of the different types of meetings from Rands in Repose: Alignment meetings sound like this: Its red, are we all in agreement its red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks its blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons ... "First car I've considered crashing into a tree" [New Window]
This has to be the funniest and -- sadly for Honda -- worst review I have ever seen in print. It's a review of Honda's new Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid. And the sound is worse. The Hondas petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, ... Blogging Has Been Light [New Window]
For no particular reason, I just havent felt compelled to write in spite of finding a bunch of really interesting nuggets in the daily news. I think my writers block is passing todays post is a compilation of the small items that ... Media Strategy 3.0 [New Window]
Really interesting summation of how media has evolved rapidly into the digital distribution age and what the current generation capabilities and shortcomings portend for the next generation. This third stage is about the balance between ... Lonnie Johnson, Inventor [New Window]
I love interviews with inventors, itsa rare window into the mind of someone who just things differently than the rest of us. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with the inventor of the Super Soaker, but there was one response that ... But Where is the Ability to Throw Sheep in this Plan? [New Window]
Sheep Tossing. During an internal meeting the other day, my team was discussing the implementation of some of the ideas we have around blending the social with the professional to really help small businesses meet their needs. ... short rant [New Window]
{start rant} I did not work hard to slowly, but organically build my influence in order to use it to boost peoples ranks in silly contests, to hock bad ideas or to retweet stuff I dont care about! {/end rant} ... Whuffie Math [New Window]
Little professor handheld calculator. So many businesses and industries are struggling with basic math. So let me ask you, because I know you will know: Which is greater, 0 or 500? I know, duh, right? Of course. ... Happy to be Miserable [New Window]
Grimace Rock on Flickr. Ive been told from various sources almost all of my life that people are merely searching for happiness. That is why, when I read a quote from a 72 year old study on happiness in The Atlantic this month, ... Why Im Leaving (My Heart in) San Francisco [New Window]
Bay Bridge. Gawd, this is an amazing city. I remember that feeling I had when I first moved hereit was pure excitement. Between the colourfulness of the city, the geekiness and freakiness of its residents and the complete essence of ... Not NiceNecessary [New Window]
View more Microsoft Word documents from Tara Hunt. SoI showed this wee slideshow to open up our panel at 140 | The Twitter Conference today (great conference, btw) to demonstrate the essence of what I think is the reason that Twitter ... SMX Advanced 2009 Wrap Up [New Window]
Last week I attended SMX Advanced in Seattle and thought Id share my thoughts about it. Whats the single most important thing I got from SMX Advanced, simply put there is no substitute for face time you get with someone at a ... SMX Advanced Pagerank Sculpting and Javascript Linking [New Window]
Probably the biggest kerfuffle at SMX advanced this past week was Googles reversal on how they crawl javascript links, and how they are handling pagerank scuplting. First lets look at the javascript linking issue, I agree with Danny ... The Big Fat RSS Lie [New Window]
Post image for The Big Fat RSS Lie. Anytime a social media consultant starts talking to prospective clients and they bring up blogging, they talk about how RSS can be used to help them directly connect with their customers the truth ... How to Invalidate Wikipedia Articles [New Window]
Post image for How to Invalidate Wikipedia Articles. Recently Google announced they are experimenting with including Wikipedia in Google News. Personally Im not a fan of Wikipedia, so I think this is the perfect opportunity to share ... How to Practice Kamikaze SEO [New Window]
Post image for How to Practice Kamikaze SEO. One of the key aspects of any SEO strategy is knowing the risks of the tactics you use. As those tactics approach or break Googles guidelines the more likely they to get you penalized or ... Does Your Publishing Schedule Match Your Readers Habits [New Window]
In old days newspapers and magazine figured out there where optimal times for publishing certain types of stories, example Tuesday was traditionally Science Times Tuesday. As old world publishers transitioned to online publishers ... How Google Profiles SEOs [New Window]
At SMX one of the more contentious subjects was the debate over Googles Android Phone giveaway, and demonstration that they are in practice profiling SEOs. Lets back the clock up and review the facts: ... Can You Get a Website Indexed with No Links and XML Sitemaps? [New Window]
This weekend I was doing a little housekeeping on some of my domains and hosting accounts and decided to test and see if it was possible to get a website indexed using XML Sitemaps and no external links. Thoughts on Google Microblog Search [New Window]
It looks like Google might be launching a microblog search engine: Google prepares to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services like Twitter. Since its very easy to post updates and the posts are ... Facebook Pages are Just Blogs [New Window]
The new Facebook Pages are really just blogs. Unfortunately, not very good ones. First. Its totally possible that a given page/blog doesnt have permalinks. If itsa note then it has a permalink. If itsa link then it does not have ... Twitter #Iranelection Memetracker [New Window]
I threw this together in a couple hours tonight. The mainstream news is pretty pathetic at handling this story so I just figured Twitter would be covering it correctly. News is sorted by time and by rank. ... Leaders in Real Time Search [New Window]
Venturebeat has a great piece on Real Time Search out right now covering a hot new trend. Real-time search engines have proliferated over the last month, with a series of launches from start-ups like Topsy, almost.at and Scoopler. ... Please Adopt an Endangered Snow Leopard [New Window]
Perhaps youve been reading all the news today about Apples new Snow Leopard release. What you didnt see mentioned is that the Snow Leopard is an endangered species. Along with the Bengal Tigers and most of the big cats. ... Blogfa.com (Iranian Blog Network) Down Due to Iranian Protests and ... [New Window]
If youve been paying attention to the news, there are massive protests and riots all over Tehran following the recent (potentially corrupt) election. The phones have been cut off and you cant make calls into Tehran. ... Microformats Birthday Bash [New Window]
Microformats are four years old now and will have a birthday party this friday to celebrate. Some of us from the Spinn3r team will be there as well. Unfortunately, due to a timing error, our Spin3nr 3.0 launch dinner is that night so I ... Spinn3r 3.1 Now with Twitter Support and Social Media Ranking [New Window]
Spinn3r 3.1 just went live today and were announcing two new features. Twitter Firehose Support. Spinn3r listens to a new Twitter firehose API which is a sample of the full Twitter feed. All Twitter content is classified with a new ... Better Question: Would a Social Media Revolt Matter If Nothing ... [New Window]
Ben Parr asks Why Social Media Revolts Take Place, and goes through the usual places (crib notes: they do something that seriously cheeses its users, obviously visible in hindsight). I think the better question is what would have ... WolframAlpha == The Webs Calculator [New Window]
Much like everyone else, I had a quick peek at WolframAlpha over this past weekend. My initial impressions? With its applied use of the Mathematica engine to the Webs content and user queries, but needing a human element to gather and ... Has Paid Posting Finally Matured? And Is Ted Murphy a Genius or What? [New Window]
Its hard to know if Paid Posting (or sponsored posting) has matured, but its a sure sign when someone like Chris Brogan starts doing it, even if its on a secondary blog. I was going to write a big thing about this, but its been covered ... How Many Geeks Are Even Trying Bing? [New Window]
I think one of the great advantages that Google has isnt just the strength of its search technology, or the bottom-line deliciousness of adwords / adsense. Its really the thought leadership of what Search and even, probably The ... Security Updates-a-Plenty [New Window]
So DJI is back. Sort of. After browsing teh interwebs about securing Wordpress installations I found a good tutorial over here: http://www.guvnr.com/web/blogging/10-tips-to-make-wordpress-hack-proof/ ... Twitter Changing The Way We Live? What Do Your Kids Think About That? [New Window]
I get Twitter. I like Twitter (although I dont really use Twitter all that much). And theres no denying how its been taken up by the mainstream media now. And the techno-sphere loves to talk about Twitter almost as much as well, ... How These Six Words Could Energize Friendfeed on the Mainstream Media [New Window]
Well, who knows if it really would but I think one of the biggest inflections in Twitters popularity over the past 6-12 months has been the mainstream medias push, and obvious love affair with socia media. ... On The So-Called Gold Rush For Facebook Vanity URLs [New Window]
According to Bloomberg, about 3 million vanity URLs have been snagged over the weekend: Facebook Inc., the worlds largest social-networking site, said more than 3 million members registered user names by yesterday morning after it ... Hacked Again. [New Window]
So, I was jazzed to write something new yesterday the topic of which, I cant even recall now when I realize that the blog had been hacked again. Yes, I am guilty of not upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress (was running 2.5) ... Hip Hop Promotion [New Window]
Im sure youre completely confused as to why my blog has a post titled Hip Hop Promotion but I assure you there is at least tangential relevancy. An old friend of mine, Nick Norris, has plunged himself head first into the world of ... My Phoenix SEO Company Gets a Facelift [New Window]
Ive owned this Phoenix SEO company since 2001, but let it go stale because I spent years as a corporate SEO. Well, Im no longer somebody elses executive. Im my own boss now. So it makes sense that I knock the dust off of my old site ... Itsa PUPPY-OFF! [New Window]
SnoopBloggyBlog is known for copying everything awesome that I do. So when I went out and got a cute puppy, its no surprise Jon felt he had to follow suit. But Jon is under the false impression that his puppy is CUTER than mine. ... Getting Links from Easy Keyphrases, Average Keyphrases, and ... [New Window]
My first question posted in the Ask an SEO series here at ThinkBait comes from Joe Whyte. Joe is a well known SEO, with plenty of friends in the industry. His question was just a poll he was sending around to numerous SEO people on ... Running a Mini-Call Center From My Living Room [New Window]
This is intense. The feel of a new start up is exciting. A good friend of mine is taking calls, literally from my living room. Im spending quite a bit of my own money to advertise a new product. Im rolling the dice. ... The Ultimate SEO Marriage - Ill Do the Honors [New Window]
Imagine a marriage between cShel and Daver. High atop the Sears Tower, the place is packed with friends, family, and SEO Superstars. They are broadcasting live on uStream and hundreds of people are watching online. ... Style Over Substance - Your BS is Working [New Window]
Ive been noticing a disturbing phenomenon in client SEO land. Now, Im not going to call out any Phoenix SEO companies specifically, but if youre reading this, you probably know who you are. Some of the people in the industry that I ... DoFollow, You Follow? [New Window]
Lets just get to the point. Nofollow is lame. It takes value out of participating on other peoples sites. It gives people, sites, and companies the ability to revoke value for their communities at a whim. If you are building value in ... true/false smart/dumb and a few maybes (Or always be wary of big ... [New Window]
Digg getting into the toolbar business: Smart. Rihanna going back to Chris Brown: Dumb. Adam Corrolla taking his show online: Smart. Andrew Barons analysis of why TV Studios will die : Smart. Moneys diminishing returns : True ... and also be wary of small men with big ideas. [New Window]
People dont know whats going to happen next. My readers are not sure. Could I embarrass them? Maybe. Could I inspire them? Maybe. They dont know. Thats very important, because when you become a comfortable, reliable friend, ... New Service: Interface Evaluation (Usability Audit) [New Window]
Description of Service. Our interface evaluation is a fast, economical way to get concrete design recommendations for improving your web application. We start by talking with you about your business priorities and how design makes (or ... Designing for Sign Up (video & slides) [New Window]
I realized the other day I hadnt posted about my Designing for Sign Up talk from my trip to Webstock back in February (amazing conference, btw). Well, the Webstockers have gotten the video up, and here it isenjoy! ... Designing with Psychology in Mind (AEA slide deck) [New Window]
Ive just returned from speaking at An Event Apart Boston at which I gave a talk called Designing with Psychology in Mind. The event was top notch (as you may have heard) and Im extremely honored to be among the distinguished speakers. ... Avatars in Emails Increase Response Rate up to 20% for Rypple [New Window]
Just wanted to share a stat gleaned from a client, Rypple. Rypple makes a innovative enterprise service based on personal feedback. The core of the service is an idea taken from highly productive people: they tend to constantly ask for ... Writing Microcopy [New Window]
The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing. UIE Payment Information. I remember the first time I realized how much even the smallest copy can matter in an interface. It was on an e-commerce project at UIE ... Behavior First, Design Second [New Window]
Not a day goes by without someone I follow on Twitter complaining that others are too focused on growing their follower numbers. Just yesterday someone who I know to be a very calm person went on a verbal rampage complaining about ... Usage Lifecycle: What are your users exit points? [New Window]
Exit points are the critical points at which you lose valued users. Are you keeping track of yours? Andrew Chen, who writes the blog Futuristic Play, has a nice post explaining exit points, those point in which people decide to leave ... Buffet Makes It Official: Even Goldman Sachs is Junk [New Window]
Lots of press this afternoon on Warren Buffet's investment in Goldman Sachs. For $5BN it looks like he will receive $5BN face value in perpetual preferred with a 10% coupon callable at 110, plus 5 year warrants on another $5BN worth of ... 2008 Public Internet M&A: Year In Review [New Window]
2008 will not be remembered as the "Year of the Deal" in the Internet sector. In fact, it is a year virtually all companies and investment bankers would prefer to forget. There were a grand total of 9 public Internet companies acquired ... Who Will Be The Biggest Loser: 1999 VC Funds or 2006 PE Funds? [New Window]
1999 vintage Venture Capital funds are infamous for being some of the worst performing private investment funds of recent memory with the average 1999 Venture Capital fund returning only about $0.95 on the dollar through 6/30/08. ... 2008 Internet IPOs: Year in Review [New Window]
This is going to be an easy review. That's because 2008 will likely go down as the first year in the modern "web" era of the Internet that there wasn't a single Internet related IPO in the major US stock markets. ... Madoff Madness: Seven Things You Might Not Know [New Window]
When I was a Wall Street analyst I got to know Bernie Madoff by reputation because I covered the whole online/electronic trading industry and Madoff was a big actor in that space due to his market making operations and his constant ... 2008 Software IPOs: Year in Review [New Window]
While the Software sector did not fare as poorly as the Internet sector when it comes to IPOs in 2008, it did not do much better. In fact it did just 1 better; as in 1 IPO for all of 2008. This is obviously the smallest # of Software ... 2008 Software Stocks: An Oveview Plus The 10 Best and 10 Worst [New Window]
While software stocks got hammered in 2008, they basically declined "in line" with the rest of the market as the total software market cap was down 40.9% which is just about equal to the NASDAQ's 40.5% decline and just slightly worse ... 2008 Software M&A: Year in Review [New Window]
Unlike the Internet M&A space, the public software company M&A market was actually fairly robust in 2008 with 33 deals worth over $40BN closing. That's actually up from 2007 when 28 deals worth $18.5BN closed. ... 2008 Internet Stocks: Year In Review Plus 10 Best and 10 Worst Stocks [New Window]
Internet stocks outperformed the market in 2008, albeit in the wrong direction. Overall, the internet sector declined -52.2% during 2008 vs. the NASDAQ's -40.5% decline and the S&P 500's -38.5% decline. Out of 128 year-end stocks in the ... links for 2008-10-30 [New Window]
NOVA | Hunting the Hidden Dimension | Watch the Program | PBS. NOVA episode on fractals. (tags: fractals math towatch television). Oct. 29, 1675: Leibniz Sums It All Up. On Leibniz's creation of the integral sign and the simultaneous ... School Culture: Sestina or Sonnet? [New Window]
I work at one of those charter schools where culture is paramount (think KIPP). This extends to expectations for teachers. We produce lesson plans that are reviewed every two weeks. We follow specific assessment procedures. ... Propped for entryhopefully again [New Window]
This kicked in, after Fridays meaningless prop-up, which led me into this trade.which was sweet (now, I still have a small position in FTK, which got killed today, so dont think Im batting a thousand here haha). So, now what? ... Yuor bairn deonst crae aubot sepllnig [New Window]
It is a mtater of fcat taht wehn you raed, you pertty mcuh get erevyhitng you need from jsut the frist and lsat letter of ecah wrod on the pgae. Tihs is povren by the fact you can raed this qicukly. Sometimes details arent nearly as ... 7 traders Im following VERY closely on mytrade [New Window]
Here are some people who Im really watching closely as they share their real trades on mytrade: Randolph: A great nose for the markets. Shares trades and commentary constantly, with emphasis on understanding the role of the VIX in ... Wheelhouse Investing [New Window]
Investing, especially privately, is very differnet from trading (which is more of a sport or game than anything). When you invest, you are adding value to a company by providing it with the capital it needs to execute its plan. ... Todays tape is CLOSE to meaningless [New Window]
If I may be so bold as to point out that today is triple-witching Friday. For home gamers, thats the day when a bunch of rich corporations rape option buyers of all varieties via seemingly dumb, but ultimately wise, purchases of S&P ... Recognize what trading REALLY is (and then dominate it) [New Window]
Trading: In and out of ownership in companies in a matter of days or even minutes. You really are adding no value to anything. In essence, youre just trying to take money from someone else.in a legal, honorable and honest manner. ... Learn from Iranian protest failure [New Window]
The Iranian election protests will fail. The current regime will remain in power, and become more powerful in the end. Two things make me think this: 1) The Iranian people do not have the right to own guns. ... Job Openings... [New Window]
We currently have two job openings with Emurse. Link contains the details. Also, Satcom Direct (a company here in Satellite Beach, FL) is hiring for a .Net Software Engineer position. Satcom specializes in satellite communications for ... Emurse.com Activity... [New Window]
Lots of stuff going on with Emurse.com lately, in case you missed it. We're looking to hire a few bloggers to take on topics in the career space. Let me know if you're interested :) Oh, and.. I wrote a new post on the plane this past ... Jack Kemp Dies... [New Window]
Want to know why people loved Jack Kemp? Watch this video around the 3 minute mark. Kemp, a McCain supporter, basically tells Hannity off when Hannity won't let go over the Rev. Wright issue. There was a time in the not so distant past ... STS-125 Pictures... [New Window]
Kathryn and I were very fortunate to be guests of our congressman to the STS-125 launch. Took these with my d80 from the OSB2 observation deck :) More. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments. New Twitterholic Functionality... [New Window]
So Gavin actually wrote this a while ago now, but it's just been sitting to the side collecting enough data to be interesting. We're now ranking people based on hash tag usage/associations. It's a little less straight forward than the ... Peter Schiff at Authors@Google... [New Window]
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments. Emurse.com Updates... [New Window]
Andy Fraley was hired as our lead UI designer. I'm extremely excited to be working with Andy again. We both worked on the Netscape.com re-launch a few years back and I've enjoyed following his career ever since. ... Snow Crash in Wood [New Window]
At my high school one of the requirements to graduate was that you had to carve a 12 x 12 x 1 wood panel that is displayed in the hallways of the school after you graduated. (Yes, I attended one of those private schools you see in ... Retire This Analogy [New Window]
Marco quoted the following paragraph from an article on MacUser. The article bemoans users expectations that web services and software be free. See the quote: Despite the recent advent of ad-supported programs, people have been paying ... Ripped From Todays Headlines [New Window]
Georgia accused Russia of a coordinated CYBER-TERRORISM attack today little did Georgia know, Gmail was down for all countries, not just them. Ba-dum Ching! The Watchmen [New Window]
When I have a point of view about something in pop culture that can easily be summed up in 140 characters, I like searching for it on search.twitter.com to see how original or unoriginal my point of view is relative to other internet ... Copywriter (part time) Job, Carroll Enterprises, Inc. - Mashable Jobs [New Window]
Copywriter (part time) Responsibilities: Write and edit copy for online marketing communications including but not limited to business letters, web site content, sales letters, email and direct marketing campaigns. ... Standardized Power Chargers | Venture Chronicles [New Window]
This is a great idea, I would love to see a standard sized device charger (doesn't have to be limited to mobile phones) adopted by hardware manufacturers much. links for 2008-10-27 [New Window]
International IDEA | Turnout in the world - country by country performance. (tags: voting data election). Greg Mankiw's Blog: My Personal Work Incentives. "Obama's proposed tax hikes reduce my incentive to work by 62 percent compared to ... Wish You Were Here [New Window]
I can so relate to Sarah Cannons lament: Absent. Im beginning to hate the word. I dont care why youre not here, I just wish you were. Though I have only 13 students right now 8 in calculus and 5 in pre-algebra seminar I still ... Alex Constantine's Blacklist: Sun Myung Moon and Jerry Falwell [New Window]
New Book Reveals Jerry Falwell's Finances Contributed by Cary McMullen http://blogs.theledger.com/default.asp?item=2391129. June 18, 2009. In the June 16 edition of The Christian Century, retired Presbyterian pastor John Killinger ... please discuss [New Window]
In an as yet unpublished manuscript, historian Marshall Poe writes: "A book is a machine for focusing attention; the Internet is machine for diffusing it." I can see how he gets there, particularly if it's a P-book rather than an...
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:14:58 -0500 Bing is Live now - in the open [New Window]
Live was going to be bing and now bing is live. Go check it out! Bing.com. this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype. Bing is Live now - in the open My Testimony on Behavioral Advertising: Post-Mortem [New Window]
On Thursday I testified at a House hearing about online behavioral advertising. (I also submitted written testimony.) The hearing started at 10:00am, gaveled to order by Congressman Rush, chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, ... Bing gets real-time search with OneRiot [New Window]
The real-time web is heating-up. Angel investor Ron Conway told Mike Arrington at TechCrunch that he will invest in 40 to 50 companies focused on real-time data in the next 18 months. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, podcasts, and news sites ... This Week In Startups QA [New Window]
TWIST This Week In Startups is a weekly webcast hosted by Jason Calacanis that takes questions from startups, and discusses news events of the day. Jason asked me to be a guest on the show link to the video. The questions were great ... Newspapers lose $9.6B in print ads, but gain $3.1B in online ads [New Window]
Newspaper%20classified%20ads%20revenue Newspapers have been hit by a perfect storm; classified ads devastated by Monster.com and craigslist, and an economic recession that has reduced all forms of advertising. ... Bing ityou will be impressed, Steve Wozniak was! [New Window]
bing Microsoft today announced Bing, a new search engine to help people find information and make decisions. Microsoft calls Bing a Decision Engine rather than a search engine. It is designed to help make better decisions in four key ... Can newspapers be saved? from themselves? [New Window]
Newspapers are in deep trouble. You dont read much about it, perhaps because newspapers arent keen to report on their own demise. The Boston Globe, my local newspaper, lost $50M last year and is projected to lose $85M this year. ... How to get funding from VCs and Angels [New Window]
Last week I talked with a young first time entrepreneur looking for funding. He didnt know where to start. I pointed him to Microsoft StartupZone where there is LOTS of great information from Guy Kawasaki, Brad Feld, Paul Graham, ... Boston startup events [New Window]
Boston has a vibrant startup community with lots of events to connect with VCs, Angels, and other startups. Here are several events for the coming weeks. Xsite:2009 The Recovery Starts Here June 24, 8:00AM Organized by Xconomy. ... Rajeev Motwani professor, angel investor, good guy, has passed [New Window]
015 Rajeev Motwani died suddenly Friday June 5th at the age of 47, from apparent drowning. Rajeev was a professor at Stanford and an angel investor in PayPal and Google among others. He was well known in Silicon Valley, always willing ... Bing the right information to make decisions [New Window]
Bing is Microsofts new search decision engine that gives you the right information to make the right decisions. Bing TV ads (hat tip to Peter Kafka) hit the air today, the first of many. The ad is really good, upbeat, ... Best Reference Check Strategy Ever [New Window]
In an excerpt from his book Hiring Smart, Pierre Mornell reveals the best reference check strategy I've heard of. It's fast and tip toes around the liability issues: ask a person's references to call you back if the person was ... Four Personality Types and Romance [New Window]
In her latest piece in the Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh writes with customary brio about her infidelity and the subsequent dissolution of her marriage. Along the way she talks about the romantic compatibility of four basic personality ... Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Appealing to the Classiness Aspiration of ... [New Window]
The Mexican beer Dos Equis has very popular TV ads running right now called "The Most Interesting Man in the World." Watch the 30 second ad here (viewed 800k times on YouTube!) or see the embed below. The announcer boasts... Algebra Journal: Bouncing Balls Exploration [New Window]
Another great lesson from the NCTM Illuminations site: Bouncing Tennis Balls, to explore finding a line of best fit. Instead I used it to reteach finding the slope-intercept form of an equation for a line when you have two points that ... *Smacks Forehead* Part I [New Window]
Sometimes I read something that is so boneheaded that I literally smack my forehead. It happens frequently enough, that Im going to start a series of posts on the subject. Ill tag them all with the tag smacksforehead if you want to ... Best-Worst Movies [New Window]
The terrible reviews across the board for The Love Guru made me wonder where it ranks on the list of the worst rated movies of all time. I decided to use Metacritic to find out. Heresa list of the all-time low scores for movies on ... App Store is a Solution to The Penny Gap [New Window]
Greg Yardley recently published the following breakdown of Apples iPhone App Store applications listed at various pricing tiers. His insight was that free was no longer the most popular application price. Instead, $0.99 was the most ... Anne Truitt Zelenka Algebra I Activity: Bungee Barbie [New Window]
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics* has a great website full of lessons and online activities for teaching math. I used their Barbie Bungee lesson plan for pre-algebra seminar today and I thought it went pretty well. ... What I've Been Reading [New Window]
Recent reading: 1. The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Strategies that Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker. De Becker is a legend in the field of security and violence prevention. Hollywood stars hire him to assess threats. ... RIP: a remix manifesto [New Window]
Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor has created an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture. The entire film can be downloaded from here....
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:36:30 -0500 Why I Dont Need a Facebook Vanity URL [New Window]
Facebook announced the imminent availability of vanity URLs today, meaning I could soon become facebook.com/marshallk or some variation. Chris Messinas take on this is a must-read. Or Ill just give you the short version: ... When Populism Strikes... [New Window]
Public outcry over Wall Street bonuses and antics has hit what seems to be an all-time high. Looking backwards, there seems to be other times in our country where Wall St. was demonized, but probably not like this. ... Gavin and I in the Sentinel... [New Window]
Article about Twitterholic.com Probably a good thing they went with a more natural photo than the posed ones they took. Not sure specifically what we're laughing about, but mainly the 'shoot' consisted of Gavin and I repeatedly asking ... Soup Metrics | ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon [New Window]
Have a Chicken Soup and Smile. Last night while on a panel at the Social Media Club gathering, I went on a bit of a rant about soup. Soup? Yes. Soup. Soup Metrics, as coined by John Hagel (Net Gain/Net Worth) after our panel here: ... Dumped: The Survival Guide [New Window]
Saddest Yard Sale on Flickr. I know that I dont usually give dating advice on my blog, but I thought Id put this out there since its been ultimately helpful for me. Being broken up with - especially when you are still really into the ... Audio Comments Complete the Loop [New Window]
Niall Kennedy says that Odeo has added a new feature that enables users to leave comments for podcasters. Anyone with a Flash player can send an audio message to a podcaster who registers with Odeo. This is where a lot of the technology ... blogging's impact on search position quantified [New Window]
search engine watch has an article about search's impact on pr and reputation management. blogs are featured at the end of the piece. however, one statistic really jumped out at me. according to converseon's study of the top 20 search ... study: 47% of ceos say blogs useful for pr [New Window]
wow. this is big news. nearly half of ceos (47%) surveyed by pr week and burson marsteller rate blogs high as external audience communication tools. that's a big endorsement! additional nuggets... * the majority of them remain skeptical ... How to Create Sub-Groups to Maximize Your Online Effectiveness [New Window]
Over at ReadWriteWeb, where I spend most of my time, we write mostly news and analysis but some how-to type posts. Below youll find one of my favorite how-to posts Ive written lately, originally titled Groups: The Secret Weapon of ... Resources for Community Managers [New Window]
Im excited to announce that I just published ReadWriteWebs first premium report for businesses, the RWW Guide to Online Community Management. Itsa 75 page PDF filled with the best advice weve curated and written about and a ... Mark Pincus Blog: Follow me at www.twitter.com/markpinc [New Window]
Recent. Follow me at www.twitter.com/markpinc Web 3.0 snippets - I Fw: My Supreme Court nominee Follow me on twitter One happy user! Iphone games can fill our nooks and crannies of useless minutes Yo supports sf spca ... Zynga players [New Window]
Zynga has recently banned many players across its games for bad actions like chip hacking and selling. If you believe you have been unfairly banned pls email chris hinton, chrish@zynga.com with a link to your profile. ... analog hole bill requires open and public discussion of secret ... [New Window]
today i want to return to the sensenbrenner-conyers analog hole bill, which would impose a secret law a requirement that all devices that accept analog video inputs must implement a secret technical specification for something called ... report: many apps misconfigure security settings [New Window]
my fellow princeton computer scientists sudhakar govindavajhala and andrew appel released an eye-opening report this week on access control problems in several popular applications. in the old days, operating systems had simple access ... predictions for 2006 [New Window]
each january, i have offered predictions for the upcoming year. this year, alex and i put our heads together to come up with a single list of predictions. having doubled the number of bloggers making predictions, we seem to have doubled ... 2005 predictions scorecard [New Window]
last january, i offered predictions for 2005. its time now to review those predictions, to see how i did. (1) drm technology, especially on pcs, will be seen increasingly as a security and privacy risk to end users. ... Dear Govt... [New Window]
You cannot fix problems by throwing money at them. It's a little lesson the private sector learned years ago. GM auditors raise doubts on automaker's viability Of course their viability is awful. They're an awful company. ... Decision Making [New Window]
There is an over-emphasis on the individual when it comes to responsibility and rationality in decision making. I rarely agree with David Brooks, but I found this paragraph in his op-ed today to hit the nail on the head: ... cd drm: attacks on installation [New Window]
alex and i are working on an academic paper, lessons from the sony cd drm episode, which will analyze several not-yet-discussed aspects of the xcp and mediamax cd copy protection technologies, and will try to put the sony cd episode ... analog hole bill would impose a secret law [New Window]
if youve been reading here lately, you know that im no fan of the sensenbrenner/conyers analog hole bill. the bill would require almost all analog video devices to implement two technologies called cgms-a and veil. ... Why the larger text? - Bokardo [New Window]
December 19th, 2008. Why the larger text? by Joshua Porter | 11 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/872. Several folks have noticed I'm using a larger font size on bokardo nowhere's why. In short, the text is easier to read now. ... A List Apart: Articles: Brighter Horizons for Web Education [New Window]
Our young medium is still ironing out a few kinksperhaps the biggest of which is the way budding web professionals are being educated. Schools that teach web design struggle to keep pace with our industry, and those just starting their ... A List Apart: Articles: The Elegance of Imperfection [New Window]
Everything I know about the elegance of imperfection, I learned from the white porcelain plate I bought in Kyoto. What's so special about this plate? Before it was fired, it was perfectly round, but the artist intentionally roughed up ... A List Apart: Articles: Return of the Mobile Stylesheet [New Window]
The past couple of years have seen numerous new web-capable mobile devices arise, including Apple's iPhone and its Safari browser, the creation of Google's Android platform and Webkit-based browser, the rise of so called full web ... A List Apart: Articles: Coaching a Community [New Window]
We've all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities ... King Obama [New Window]
We have a president who thinks he is king. What's worse is that he appears to be right, until things get so bad that the citizens will rise up against him. For all of the fraud and stupidity that has...
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:15:42 -0500 Burnham's Beat: Keith Benjamin, You Will Be Missed [New Window]
Fannie Mae Is Saved! It's Shareholders ... Not So Much. | Main | Buffet Makes It Official: Even Goldman Sachs is Junk . 07/30/2008. Keith Benjamin, You Will Be Missed. For the past few years I've had the pleasure of having Keith ... Why I like 37signals Design Decision Posts - Bokardo [New Window]
January 7th, 2009. Why I like 37signals Design Decision Posts. by Joshua Porter | 16 Comments | shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/902. I really like the design decisions blog posts at 37signals. A recent example: Design Decisions: Saying ... Professional Superhero [New Window]
A real gem found here: What's more, I think I know his secret identity!
Tue, 9 Jun 2009 07:43:15 -0500 Comment on being jesus (Or TechCrunch, Instablogs and Me) by ... [New Window]
[...] is being made of the ending part of his post about creating a Dream Team of bloggers and using them in order to take apart his [...] Comment on The Art Of Heresy (Or How To Thrive Under The ... [New Window]
The Art Of Heresy (Or How To Thrive Under The Benevolent Rulership Of King Gabe Rivera) :: chartreuse a pictorial guide to why this is the age of individualized, timeless guide only as can be done by chartreuse [...] Comment on Nancy Grace And The Importance Of Battlestar Galactica ... [New Window]
Nancy is a hero to other child-batterers like herself. No wonder Nancy cannot be alone with either of those twin-tots. Perhaps Nancy should explain to viewers why she cannot be alone with them and why her husband is not the father of ... Comment on [Hot Chick Weekend] 9.0 out of 10 (Or the value of ... [New Window]
Great article, I found yours on accident. I just thought I would let you know that you can make money now for your articles. At SayItAloud you can post your articles like you already do, but you can get better exposure and make some ... Green Shoots [New Window]
Good thing we passed Obama's stimulus plan, he says it's working very well: (BTW the Treasury used 8.9% unemployment as it's "worst case scenario" number for all of 2009 in those bank stress tests. Glad we have experts on the...
Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:05:07 -0500 fabulously cool: iFixit's teardown platform [New Window]
This is fabulously cool: iFixit has built a teardown platform. I've used the site many times to take apart Mac's I've needed to fix. But those instructions were iFixit prepared. They've now enabled anyone to build a teardown ("the act or process of disassembling") spec for any product. The site offers the structure and advice for building great teardowns. It then hosts and supports feedback. It is a fantastic example of a "hybrid," as REMIX defines the term -- and all submissions are CC-BY-NC-SA.
Thu, 4 Jun 2009 11:57:48 -0500 if:book london announces Fictional Stimulus [New Window]
this is cross-posted from Bookfutures, the blog of Chris Meade, the director of IF:Book London IF:BOOK ANNOUNCES ITS FIRST FICTIONAL STIMULUS At last an end to those bored bookgroup blues! You love books but are interested if sceptical about what...
Tue, 2 Jun 2009 21:54:14 -0500 Trying to think a bit outside the box or at least change my conception of the box [New Window]
There's endless talk these days about ebook readers, Kindle and all its e-ink cousins, and future tablets from Apple and other phone makers. There's nothing wrong with the fact that these devices are all designed to emulate the experience of...
Tue, 2 Jun 2009 03:02:52 -0500 On "socialism": round II [New Window]
There's an interesting resistance (see the comments) to my resistance to Kevin Kelly's description of (what others call) Web 2.0 as "socialism." That resistance (to my resistance) convinces me my point hasn't been made. Confidence about my "ignorance" about political philosophy notwithstanding (and don't tell my political philosophy tutor from Cambridge where I spent three years studying the stuff), my point is not that it is impossible to understand "socialism" as Kelly describes it. (Obviously, if a missile can be a "peacekeeper," anything can be anything). It is not even that never in the history of "socialism" have people so understood it (there have of course been plenty of voluntary communities that have called themselves "socialist"). Instead, my argument against Kelly was about responsibility in language: How would the words, or label, he used be understood. Not after, as I said, reading "a 3,500 word essay that redefines the term." Rather, how would it be understood by a culture that increasingly has the attention span of 140 characters? In my view, the answer to that question is absolutely clear: "Socialist" would be associated with the dominant, modern vision of "socialism" which has, at its core, coercion. And as the Internet that Kelly and I celebrate doesn't have "coercion" at its core, I maintain, it is not "socialist."In reading the reactions to my argument, however, I realize that in using the term "coercion" I was committing the same error that I was accusing Kelly of making. People associate the word "coercion" with Abu Ghraib or Stalin. And certainly, the "coercion" of socialism isn't necessarily (or even often) that. That's fair. By "coercion" I meant simply law -- that "socialism" is a system enforced by law, and enforced contrary to the way individuals would freely choose autonomously to associate. Again, I'm for that kind of coercion in lots of contexts. I'm for income redistribution (to some degree); I want better public schools, I want to force you to vaccinate your childeren, etc. So I didn't mean anything necessarily negative by the term "coercion." I meant something analytical: That Wikipedia, if it coerces, coerces differently from how 95% (of Americans) at least understand the term "socialism." Again, if you doubt that, think about American critics of "socialism": None of them are complaining about people voluntarily choosing to associate however they choose to associate (except of course if they are gay). They are complaining about people being forced to associate in ways they don't choose to associate. There's nothing inconsistent with someone being a Right Wing (and anti-socialist) Republican yet working at a church soup kitchen every other Saturday. Those spheres are separate in the American mind. Because they are separate, one can choose to be a Wikipedian and see no inconsistency in voting for Ronald Reagan. (But aren't the "freely chosen obligations" often enforced (i.e., in my terms, "coerced") by the state? Of course they are -- as the Legal Realists and most recently Critical Legal Studies Movement worked very hard to remind us. But they had to work so hard because they were working against a very solid assumption about the sense of the term "coercion." They wanted to change it. But they at least acknowledged there was something there to change.)So my argument against Kelly is that it is wrong to use a term (in the context of a Wired essay at least; a philosophy seminar would invoke a completely different set of ethics) that would be so completely misunderstood. We choose our words. We don't choose our meaning. But if you're still not convinced, then here's a hypothetical that makes the same point. (And note, I'm being REALLY careful here -- this is ONLY a hypothetical): Imagine someone said Barack Obama's economic policies were "fascist." But by that the person didn't mean the Fascism of the later German Nazi Party. He didn't mean, that is, the racism that came to define the term. Instead, he meant the Fascism of the early National Socialist Party, or of their equivalent in Italy, or England, or the earliest of FDR's administration. My point is that however accurate it would be to describe the current "Czar" filled administrations with the centralizing and corporatist politics of the early 1930s, it would be unethical to call it "fascist." The term has been marked, just as the name "Adolf" has been marked, and in mixed, attention deprived contexts, it is wrong to ignore that marking. Secondly, and finally: Even if it weren't, Kelly's description would be wrong. Even if there were a useable concept (as opposed to a possible concept) of "voluntary socialism," it would be wrong to describe what most think of as Web 2.0 as "socialist." That again because of the part Kelly ignores. Sure, there's a "sharing economy" as I describe in REMIX. That economy fits well with the Kibbutz or Wikipedia. And if you want to call that "socialist," fine. But the "hybrid" economy is not that economy. The Facebooks and Twitters and Flickrs and Yelps! are not entities engaged in a global urge to hug. They are companies that promise investors a huge return from their very risky investment. To do that, of course, they need to behave differently from the dominant mode of, say, Hollywood lawyers. But if they behave like Gandhi, they're not going to succeed at their mission -- which is (however much "change the world" or "don't be evil" is in the plan) to make money. Those people are not "socialists" (except in the corrupted sense that defines the term in many places today). Those people are members of a hybrid economy. What Tim calls "Web 2.0." And while I can well understand that someone would feel "torture," as Kelly puts it, using that term (I don't feel it, but who am I dictate to Kelly), the fear of that torture doesn't justify this violation of the ethics of language. The freedom of Wikipedia et al., is threatened enough. We don't need to throw the baggage of "socialism" into the bargain.
Mon, 1 Jun 2009 01:50:37 -0500 Leverage from Boutique Hosted Services [New Window]
I continue to ponder the implications of people with rare skillsets who are capable of making huge operational impacts on companies. Skillsets like a combination of business knowledge and predictive analytics, of which I've recently become enthralled. One of the...
Sun, 31 May 2009 08:18:43 -0500 Is China the next money machine? [New Window]
By far the biggest question facing the global economy is where the money supply will come from going forward. Money is debt, and money is really only created when consumer debt is created. Government debt simply shuffles existing debt around....
Sun, 31 May 2009 07:32:44 -0500 Anne Truitt Zelenka Calculus BC Activity: Polar Pictionary [New Window]
Right before winter break my Calc BC class did a short unit on parametric and polar equations. They did fine on the parametric stuff but thinking in polar coordinates doesn't come naturally, and they stumbled on sketching polar curves ... Anne Truitt Zelenka What's happening [New Window]
With my blog? The delicious link posting stopped working so I turned it off. I've been busy teaching and preparing to teach and recovering from teaching so I haven't had time to write anything. I want to write I'd like to blog about ... Et tu, KK? (aka, No, Kevin, this is not "socialism") [New Window]
As I wrote last week, I threw away a week I didn't have penning an "insanely long" review (as I described it), of Mark Helprin's insanely sloppy "Digital Barbarism." The part of that book that really got me going was the incessant Red-baiting -- the suggestion that the movement of which I am a part is a kind of warmed over Marxism from the 1960s. That part always gets me going because it betrays a kind of mushiness in thinking that I should have thought a decade of writing by scores of advocates would have driven away. As I wrote about Helprin: It is in this extreme of Red-baiting that one can see the mushiness of Helprin's brain: Let's say he were attacking a bunch of scholars who believed copyright should be as robust as the Framers of our Constitution had it. That was a regime that secured copyrights only to those who registered their work. And not just any work, but only "maps, charts, book or books" (music, for example, was excluded). Imagine the term of the protection was again just as the Framers made it -- 14 years, renewable by the author, if living, for another 14 years (but again, only if he registered the renewal). And imagine finally that the rights granted were forfeit if the author failed to deposit the copyrighted work with the government, or if he failed to mark the work with the appropriate sign. Such a reform would certainly be radical. It is wildly more radical than anything any of the scholars Helprin attacks would recommend.But here's the question: would one who so recommended be a "collectivist"? Were our Framers "collectivists"? Obviously not. Because the consequence of a limited copyright is not that the collective gets to control who does what. The consequence of a limited copyright is that the work is in the public domain, and anyone has the liberty to do anything he or she wants with the work. The state or the "collective" is not privileged over the individual. The individual is privileged over the state or "collective." And so strong is that privilege in America that a Court of Appeals in Colorado recently held that the government can't remove work from the public domain unless it satisfies a strict First Amendment test first.The kind words of some in response to the review made me think perhaps the week wasn't completely wasted. But then as I got settled into a 13 hour flight to Australia, I read this piece by Kevin Kelly, "The New Socialism." Words have meaning. We don't get to choose their meaning. If you call something "X" people will hear the equation. They won't read the fine-print which says ("By X, I mean really not-X). Kelly says:When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism.That statement is flatly wrong. It is completely unreasonable to call that "socialism" -- at least when the behavior described is purely voluntary. It's like saying "Because Stalin set up a competition between different collective farms, it's not unreasonable to call that free market capitalism." Both statements are wrong because they point to a feature that is common, and ignore the feature that is distinctive. At the core of socialism is coercion (justified or not is a separate question). At the core of the behavior Kelly celebrates is freedom. Kelly's argument is like so many today that has implicitly embraced the view that free market, libertarian sorts believe that the only thing in the world is competition, or people working to non-common goals. It is the idea that we are free only if we are antagonistic, and that free market theorists have been working to create a world where individuals struggle against, not with. A world that aspires to dog-eat-dog as its central value.But that conception of capitalism/free-market/libertarianism has no basis in fact. And so as I ranted in my head about Kelly's confusion, I was enormously happy to have the chance to hear an economist at the conference I was attending at Canberra present a paper that (unintentionally) completely destroys Kelly's thesis.Nicholas Gruen is an economist with the consulting group, Lateral Economics. His paper (PDF) (blog entry) was titled "Adam Smith 2.0: Emergent Public Goods, Intellectual Property and the Rhetoric of Remix." And he introduced the paper by remarking a fact that I had missed -- this year is the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's first (and last) published book, A Theory of Moral Sentiments (alas, the second edition). (Last because he finished his 6th edition of the book responding to the terrors of the French revolution just before he died in 1790). What the modern misunderstanding of markets forgets about Smith is that his aim was as much to understand the provision of public goods as it was to understand the role of the market. Indeed, you could only understand the role of the market against a background of public goods (including civil society), and one critically important question is how a society produces those public goods. Unlike statists of later years, Smith was fascinated by emergent public goods -- goods that were public goods (since nonrival and nonexcludable, as economists later would formalize the concept), but that were created not by any central actor like the state, but by the mutual and voluntary actions of individuals. Language is the simplest example -- language is a quintessentially public good, but no central coordinator is necessary to produce language. But Smith was eager to describe a wide range of emergent public goods that set the preconditions to a well functioning market. Obviously, in this focus on civil society, Smith is not alone -- even among the heros to libertarian/capitalist/free marketeers. In this respect, Hayek continues the tradition Smith began. He too was deeply sensitive to the health of civil society, and recognized how civil society was produced by "masses of people who own the means of production [and] work toward a common goal and share their products in common, [people who] contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge." But Hayek too was not "socialist."The thing that Smith was pointing to (and Hayek too), is not "socialism." It is not reasonably called socialism. Because "socialism" is the thing Smith was attacking in the 6th edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Socialism is using the power of the state to force a result that otherwise would not have been chosen voluntarily by the people. As Gruen quotes Smith: The man of system. . . is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. . . . He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.Coercive government action is -- IMHO -- a necessary condition of something being "socialism." It isn't sufficient -- there is plenty of coercive governmental action that doesn't qualify as socialism, like raising taxes to fund national defense, or to pay the police. But if you're calling something "socialist," then a requirement for using that term correctly -- meaning in the way it is understood at least by people who don't take the time to read a 3,500 word essay that redefines the term -- is to be able to point to the coercive state action that produces the thing you're talking about. I'm not an opponent to all things plausibly called "socialist" (though as I'll argue in a moment, our political culture could do well to avoid the most prominent examples of socialism that Washington has produced over the past 8 years). A graduated income tax could properly be called "socialist," because it is coerced, though I'm in favor of it. Forcing polluters to internalize the cost of their pollution (carbon as well as others) is not, in my view, properly called "socialist," even though it is the product of coercive state action. There are many examples in the middle of course -- schools, parks, public highways. But all of the examples of proper "socialism" begin with pointing to coercion by the state. A conservative Baptist church is not "socialist" when it voluntarily collects money to give to the poor, even though the result is similar to the result of a "socialist" plan to redistribute money from the rich to the poor.On this account, none of the things that Kelly (and I) celebrate about the Internet are "socialist." No one forces Wikipedia editors to build a free encyclopedia. No one sends to the Gulag (Helprin's book notwithstanding) photographers who don't use CC licenses to share their photographs in Flickr. Scientists who share their research freely within the Public Library of Science are not necessarily friends of Che. They may be. But their freely sharing their knowledge is not a certain signal of leftist leanings. All this would have been obvious to Kelly if he had included in his list of purportedly "socialist" organizations the Christian Right. Say what you want about the politics of the Christian Right (and don't get me started), one can't say they are "socialists." But likewise, whatever you think about organized religion (and again, don't get me started), one can't deny that it represents "masses of people who own the means of production work[ing] toward a common goal and share[ing] their products in common, [] contribut[ing] labor without wages and enjoy[ing] the fruits free of charge." Yet it would be patently "unreasonable" to call the Baptist Church "socialism."Likewise might this have been obvious if Kelly had focused on other writing about the stuff he and I celebrates, that emphasizes more than Benkler, for example, the commercial or business dimension to this phenomenon. Half of REMIX is about what Kelly calls the "hybrid," but my point is about the hybrid as a business strategy. So too with the fantastic book, Wikinomics. Again, the focus of that book is on how a sharing economy gets leveraged by a commercial economy to benefit both. In no instance is that leveraging coercion. In no way, therefore, is it "socialism."Now of course Kelly works hard in his essay to disassociate the term "socialism" from lots of "cultural baggage" (as he puts it; victims of the Gulag may have a different way of describing that): As he writes:The type of communism with which Gates hoped to tar the creators of Linux was born in an era of enforced borders, centralized communications, and top-heavy industrial processes. Those constraints gave rise to a type of collective ownership that replaced the brilliant chaos of a free market with scientific five-year plans devised by an all-powerful politburo. This political operating system failed, to put it mildly. However, unlike those older strains of red-flag socialism, the new socialism runs over a borderless Internet, through a tightly integrated global economy. It is designed to heighten individual autonomy and thwart centralization. It is decentralization extreme. Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods.And of course, these distinctions are right and true. But what is not true is that something is "socialism" because "technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions." Tim O'Reilly gave us a good enough word for such technologies -- Web 2.0. And if that term is too geeky, then how about "civil society"? Or the extraordinary words of Smith from 250 years ago. I launch this rant against a friend not to betray a Stallman-like-tic. I think think some fuzzy language is productive. I don't insist on precision at every linguistic turn.But sloppiness here has serious political consequences. When a founder of the movement which we all now celebrate calls this movement "socialist," that plays right in the hand of those would attack everything this movement has built. Again, see Helprin. Or Andrew Keen. It is a fact that in America the term "socialism" is a smear. I'm not defending that fact. I wouldn't give up defending programs merely because they could be so smeared. But I do think that now is not the time to engage in a playful redefinition of a term that has such a distinctive and clear sense. Whatever "socialism" could have become, had it not been hijacked by revolutions in the east, what it is in the minds of 95% of America is not what Wikipedia is. And indeed, when I look around at the real socialism of the past decade, I am almost Declan-esque in my revulsion towards it: America has plenty of "socialism." The most recent versions we should all be very skeptical of. This is the general practice of socializing risk, and privatizing benefits. I'd be happy to join the "anti-socialist" movement if we could agree to end that perversion first. But that deal notwithstanding, I will never agree to call what millions have voluntarily created on the Net "socialism." That term insults the creators, and confuses the rest.
Thu, 28 May 2009 20:57:50 -0500 GSC: Senator Ben Nelson is angry (second in a series) [New Window]
Change Congress launched its second "good souls corruption" attack today, this time against Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. (Two Dems in a row; we'll be more balanced next time.) The attack has excited an hysterical response from the Senator's office. Read about the charge (here) and the response (below), and then please sign our petition to Senator Nelson. At the beginning of May, Senator Nelson was reported to have said that including a "public option" (giving Americans a choice to opt into a public system) in a national health care proposal was a "deal breaker," and that he would "form a coalition of like-minded centrists opposed to the creation of a public plan, as a counterweight to Democrats pushing for it."On May 7, our friends at Public Campaign produced a report that showed that Senator Nelson has received more than "$2 million from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office."These two facts together expose Senator Nelson to the charge of "Good Souls corruption" -- legal, even ethical acts that reasonably lead the public to wonder whether it is the merits or the money that is driving this Senator's decision.Senator Nelson responded immediately to the attack by issuing the following press release. [Bracketed annotations are courtesy of me, not the Senator's staff.]NELSON: NEBRASKANS BEWARE OF MISLEADING FUNDRAISING GIMMICKMay 28, 2009 - The office of Nebraska's Senator Ben Nelson today warned Nebraskans not to fall for a misleading fundraising gimmick by a special interest group called Change Congress. The group has issued a press release concerning Senator Nelson and said it was sending mailers to Nebraskans.Senator Nelson's spokesman Jake Thompson issued this statement:"There's no doubt Senator Nelson understands the insurance industry's important role providing health care for millions of Americans. After all, he's been an insurance executive [The ever effective, "I'm a former insurance exec!" defense], an insurance industry regulator, a governor who created a children's health insurance program, and today he represents Nebraska, arguably the insurance capital of the world. [And no doubt the insurance industry fundraising capital of the world.]But let's look at this group closely. They claim, 'Ben Nelson said he may not support Obama's plan.' Can they send us a copy of the plan? [Maybe not, but we can certainly send you again to the report indicating he opposed a key element of the President's plan] No, because President Obama hasn't offered a specific plan yet. Next, they ask if people are ready to change Congress and 'take on special interests' and 'only donate to politicians who prove they are willing to do that.' Then, they promote an election law proposal they're lobbying for.So, let's get this straight: These people are endorsing something they haven't seen [No idea what this means: We're endorsing a bill introduced by Senators Durbin and Specter. We've seen this bill.], criticizing Senator Nelson for something he hasn't done [Interesting. Where is the press release denying the reports from the beginning of May?] and using health care as a fundraising gimmick [A "fundraising gimmick"? If he means we're fundraising around this issue, that's false. If he means our strike is a "gimmick," then what's he so upset about?] --to lobby for unrelated special interest legislation. ["UNRELATED"!?!! Are you kidding me? One can define corruption as unrelated to the objects corrupted, but that doesn't make it so.] These people have a political agenda that has nothing remotely [We have an agenda. It is to create a Congress where legislation is on the merits -- not, as it is today, guided by the implicit threat of large campaign contributors.] to do with helping Nebraskans get and keep affordable, high quality health care. Their effort is silly, sad and sophomoric. [Unlike this sort of name calling.]Nebraskans are far too smart to fall for just another special interest group grabbing a hot issue and misrepresenting both the president [Um, where did we misrepresent the President?] and Senator Nelson [And where was Senator Nelson's letter to Ryan Grimm complaining he had misrepresented him -- before we raised this issue?] to raise money to lobby Congress [And where is our effort to raise money to lobby Congress -- we've asked people to STOP giving money to Congress.]"Here are some facts about Senator Nelson and health care:During his presidential campaign and recently President Obama has said Americans who like their private insurance will get to keep it, or have the option to join another plan.Ben Nelson agrees and he's eager to see more details from the president, and he wants to make sure that the 85 percent of Nebraskans who have insurance today will continue to have the option of staying with their existing plans.Senator Nelson believes that all Americans should receive health insurance and agrees with President Obama that those who currently have health insurance should be assured that it won't be taken away from them.Senator Nelson is spending much of the congressional break in Nebraska this week meeting with Nebraskans, listening to them discuss health care and reform ideas. He's listening to patients, providers, employers and others. He looks forward to hearing from many more Nebraskans on ways to strengthen, broaden and provide stability in America's health care system." [But please notice, Senator Nelson has not indicated that he supports a central idea in Obama's plan -- that Nebraskans will also have the freedom to choose a public option if (and imagine this) the private options are too costly.]As I said, this is only the second in a series. (The first was Representative Conyers.) We will continue to call out members of both parties -- and again, I promise, a Republican is coming soon -- who make it too easy for Americans to believe (as 88% in my district believe) that money buys results in Congress. Congress could change this problem tomorrow -- by enacting the Trustworthy Government Now Act (aka, the "Fair Elections Now Act"). And of course Members can avoid the charge of "good souls corruption" by co-sponsoring that bill now. But meanwhile, we'll be working hard to make more enemies, by making the status quo very uncomfortable. Nice was for the 90s. CHANGE was the promise for today.Tell Ben Nelson to (be)come clean. Join our Donor Strike -- promising not to support any candidate who doesn't co-sponsor the Trustworthy Government Now Act. And finally, celebrate this good news just in: Senator Nelson now indicates that he has changed his view, and is now "open" to the public option. Bravo, Senator. Now about the system of funding that makes people wonder?
Thu, 28 May 2009 18:38:40 -0500 RIP! in Minneapolis -- May 28. [New Window]
From the latest RIP!: A Remix Manifesto screening: Sound Unseen in Minneapolis screens RIP!DateMay 28, 2009Time8:00 PMVenueThe TRYLON screening roomLocation2820 E 33rd St, Minneapolis, MN, 55406Event TypeOpen to the PublicTicket Price$5Venue Capacity60 (Small venue, buying tix in advance recommended!)Event Websitehttp://soundunseen.comIn RiP: A Remix Manifesto, web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.The film's central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? "About as edgy and fascinating a glimpse you'll get of one of the more pressing issues of our Internet Age." .....Montreal Gazette.
Wed, 27 May 2009 14:07:42 -0500 A Decade Since Andy Groves Warning to Newspaper Industry [New Window]
In two weeks itll be 10 years since Andy Groves on-stage conversation at an annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in which he warned the industry of its impending financial meltdown. He wasnt the first to warn, ... More Cowardly Journalism [New Window]
The Washington Post does an excellent story on torture during the Bush administration but, in the cowardly way that the paper has done all along, refuses to use the word torture forthrightly. It is not harsh interrogation methods, ... Location, Location [New Window]
Combining mobility, time and location is becoming one of the most valuable techniques of media creation. Last week, some students and I did a small experiment that demonstrates how easy this is to do, and suggests all kinds of ... NY Times Pundit to Critic: Fuck You [New Window]
Its hard surprising when someone fires back at a harsh critic of his or her employers competence and/or ethics. But when that someone is superstar New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, and the return fire takes the form, ... Google Chrome [New Window]
Google launched a browser: Chrome. I downloaded and it and took it for a spin this afternoon. Here are my first impressions. HolyCrapItIsFast! Seriously, it starts up fast, tabs open and close fast, browsing is snappier and more ... Extraordinary Skill Sets [New Window]
I've really been enjoying my recent study of predictive analytics and data mining. It's provoked me to think about the nature of value, how much of it there is lying around waiting to be uncovered, and what it takes to...
Mon, 25 May 2009 16:36:21 -0500 The Solipsist and the Internet (a review of Helprin's Digital Barbarism) [New Window]
Exactly two years ago today, the New York Times published an op-ed about copyright by a novelist. The piece caused something of a digital riot. As we learn now from his book, Digital Barbarism (HarperCollins 2009) (note: if you buy from that link, Creative Commons gets the referral fee), Mark Helprin was at the time completely ignorant about the hornet's nest he was about to kick. For him, the op-ed was a professional rapprochement with the New York Times, a chance to make things right once again (though why they were then wrong is a story left mysteriously (and thankfully) out of the book). (Read the rest of this insanely long review in the extended entry. You can download a better formatted PDF here.)
Wed, 20 May 2009 11:04:21 -0500 The Kindle experience: this must be a nightmare [New Window]
So I buy a Kindle book for my Kindle 2. It downloads to my machine. I open up the book -- it has no relation (except the relation of "not") to the book I ordered. Three emails, 4 days later, Amazon has still not responded to the problem. I wonder how they begin to discover/fix such a problem.
Tue, 19 May 2009 03:21:05 -0500 Remix Culture: (They say) Fair Use is Your Friend [New Window]
The great folks at American University have a great video about "fair use" and remix.
Tue, 19 May 2009 03:17:47 -0500 GreenWorldApps: Easier ways to Clear Up Your Carbon [New Window]
I still think lots about how to make obvious the obvious responsibility we all have to clean up your carbon. GreenWorldApps is developing a suite of web apps to make that easier.
Tue, 19 May 2009 03:14:06 -0500 Jefferson's remix of Augustine's insight [New Window]
The world of American copyright scholars is very familiar with the poetic passage of Jefferson's, written in a letter: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.Thomas Jefferson letter to Isaac Mcpherson, August 13, 1813, reprinted in H. A. Washington, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson 1790-1826, vol. 6 (Washington, D. C: Taylor & Maury, 1854), 180-81; quoted in Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas, 383 U. S. 1, 8-9n.2 (1966).David Ellerman writes to point to an earlier version of the same point, this one penned by Augustine. As Augustine wrote: The words I am uttering penetrate your senses, so that every hearer holds them, yet withholds them from no other. Not held, the words could not inform. Withheld, no other could share them. Though my talk is, admittedly, broken up into words and syllables, yet you do not take in this portion or that, as when picking at your food. All of you hear all of it, though each takes all individually. I have no worry that, by giving all to one, the others are deprived. I hope, instead, that everyone will consume everything; so that, denying no other ear or mind, you take all to yourselves, yet leave all to all others. But for individual failures of memory, everyone who came to hear what I say can take it all off, each on one's separate way. Augustine Sermon; quoted in Scan Globally, Reinvent Locally: Knowledge Infrastructure and the Localization of Knowledge." In: Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank: The Rebel Within. Chang, Ha-Joon (Ed.),London: Anthem, 2001, pp. 194-219, quoting Wills, Garry 1999. Saint Augustine. New York: Viking, p. 145.Ellerman is a researcher who had worked for Stiglitz at the World Bank. Thanks to him, Augustine is the new Jefferson.
Tue, 19 May 2009 03:11:00 -0500 Reporting from the Future [New Window]
Um, that should really be Reporting ON the Future, but I thought this title was cooler :) Anyway, what was the last thing you got really technically geeked out about? (I'd really actually like to know, if you feel like...
Mon, 18 May 2009 05:00:00 -0500 law school created monopolies [New Window]
To get into law school, most require you take the LSAT. That test is administered by LSAC, a nonprofit corporation established to administer the tests. But to get copies of the old tests to prepare for the exam, a student has got to purchase the tests through a test prep company -- a company that sells test preparation courses. According to Steve Schwartz of the LSAT Blog, LSAC receives $194 for each student who receives a full set of the exams. As Schwartz puts it, "[w]hen LSAC has prep companies do the printing, that $194 is pure profit, baby." LSAC simply provides the PDFs.This isn't an ordinary topic in this space. But then again, teaching law students is my profession. And it would seem a nonprofit would be keen to find a better way to make access easier. As Schwartz suggests, the exams should be free, or at least, following iTunes, $.99. Read about it here.
Sat, 16 May 2009 05:26:39 -0500 Financial Industrys Unbelievable Greed [New Window]
From the Wall Street Journal, heres another reason Im planning to cancel my current credit cards (which I pay every month in any event) and do business with institutions that choose not to screw their customers: ... Harvard Berkman Center Talk Next Tuesday [New Window]
Ill be speaking next Tuesday at lunchtime at the Berkman Center. Topic (and link for RSVP): Mediactive: Why media consumers, not just creators, need to be active users. John Wilke, RIP [New Window]
Sad news: The Wall Street Journals John Wilke has died at age 54. John Wilke worked at the Journal for two decades, and did some of the best reporting on how business and politics merge in unhealthy ways. ... video TOSs compared [New Window]
Markus Weiland has compiled an interesting comparison of the different terms of service for video hosting sites. You can read the report here.
Wed, 13 May 2009 05:47:45 -0500 Noah Wardrup-Fruin sums up his experience with open peer review [New Window]
Noah Wardrup-Fruin has a book coming out from MIT Press this summer -- Expressive Processing. Together with Doug Sery, his editor at MIT and Ben Vershbow a former colleague at the Institute, Noah used CommentPress to conduct an open peer...
Wed, 13 May 2009 01:27:30 -0500 What About the Readers? [New Window]
Several folks I know and admire are seeking to intervene in a settlement between the Authors Guild and Google, a deal that has many unfortunate aspects including the way it treats orphaned works that is, works still protected by ... Speaking Next Month at Where 2.0 [New Window]
Ill be speaking at the Where 2.0 conference next month in San Jose, about journalists are using, and can use, location-related products and services. The talk is called Where Does Journalism Go? You can get a 25 percent discount by ... Open Video Conference [New Window]
New York, June 19-20, sponsored by the ISP at Yale Law School, and others.
Mon, 11 May 2009 16:34:17 -0500 Ask an SEO - Wasting Pagerank on Noindex Pages [New Window]
Heresa great question for the Ask an SEO series by Matt Inertia. Matt writes: Hi Chris,. I have a question for you which Ive been trying to figure out for a few months. If I disallow a page in robots.txt that I dont want (or need) ... The Canadian SEO Prize Package! [New Window]
Melanie Nathan (follow her on Twitter @MelanieNathan) recently had a kick ass little contest to get people to participate in her brand new blog, which worked like a charm. Just check out all those comments. She LITERALLY just launched ... London Meetings [New Window]
Im going to London for Seedcamp and am interested in meeting other members of the web tech community there. If youve been following this blog from the UK and are interested in chatting (or want to make an intro to someone I should ... The Presence of Print [New Window]
About two years ago, Dan Visel ended a thoughtful post on the New York Public Library's newly-installed Espresso Book Machine by proposing: "There's a discussion here that needs to happen." In light of the second version of the Espresso Book...
Thu, 7 May 2009 14:47:23 -0500 a list of honor [New Window]
In my work to push citizen funded elections (the hybrid between public funding (which is citizen funds) and small-donor contributions (citizen funding)), I have been astonished and deeply depressed by the number of very rich souls who in theory should support this change, but who resist it because, as I sense, they don't want to give up their own access to power.These large Democratic Party contributors are different. They all signed a letter demanding the existing system be scrapped, and that citizen funded elections replace it. Bravo. Reform begins at home. Naomi AberlyGrant AbertElaine AttiasAmb. Elizabeth BagleySmith BagleyRobert BowditchWilliam BudingerJames Kimo CampbellPeter CopenRosemary FaulknerRon FeldmanChristopher FindlaterMurray GalinsonJames GollinLee HalprinFrancis W. HatchArnold HiattJohn HuntingGreg Jobin-LeedsJohn S. JohnsonWayne JordanCraig KaplanMichael KieschnickSteve KirschArthur D. LipsonHenry LordAnna Hawken McKayRob McKaySally MinardAlan PatricofSusan PatricofDoug PhelpsSteve PhillipsDrummond PikeRachel PritzkerAbby RockefellerCharles RodgersMarsha RosenbaumManny RouvelasVin RyanDeborah SagnerGuy T. SapersteinDick SennSteve SilbersteinAlison SmithWilliam SoskinMartin StevensonPat StrykerEllen SusmanSteve SusmanMargery TabankinKate VillersPhilippe VillersScott WallaceGeorge WallersteinMarc WeissAl YatesJoe Zimlich
Wed, 6 May 2009 09:56:28 -0500 from the enough-about-you department [New Window]
So a bit sheepishly (as I'm in this film and really fat) (and I mean fat, not phat), let me push a favorite film by Brett Gaylor, RIP: A Remix Manifesto. The film is fantastic. Gillis (aka, GirlTalk) is amazing. And the technical execution (of course, the substance was a given for me) is extraordinary. If nothing else, remix the film (which you can at Brett's OpenSourceCinema). You can go to a screening, or host a screening, or buy a copy of this (CC-BY-NC) film on iTunes ($9.99), or pay whatever price you want at B-Side, or if you get it through the darknet, donate whatever you can to the company that made the film.This is a rare filmmaker who practices what his film preaches. It is also a rare filmmaker who takes the time (and this took years) to understand a story well. Listen, and spread the word. Read more in this great Wired piece. And thank you, Brett.
Mon, 4 May 2009 13:40:12 -0500 Betting on Twitter [New Window]
This is kind of funny. You can now bet real money on who will acquire Twitter in 2009. I tend to agree that this will happen, and in fact one of my predictions for 2009 was that Twitter would be...
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:23:03 -0500 Obama the one-term president [New Window]
Great read from Bloomberg: Why doesnt the Obama administration force insolvent banks and insurance companies to come clean about their losses first? Its the why thats so vexing. The who, what, when, and how are mere details, by comparison. More...
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:07:26 -0500 How To Look Really Smart [New Window]
Learn to use Google, well. Seriously. It amazes me that I still run into people ALL THE TIME who don't know how to use Google well. And when I say well, I mean REALLY WELL. Like, in real time. Maybe...
Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:48:56 -0500 Gamers Anonymous [New Window]
I am not a gamer. I do not consider myself a gaming enthusiast, I do not belong to any kind of "gaming community" and I have not kept my finger on the proverbial pulse of interactive entertainment since my monthly...
Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:50:49 -0500 notes from around the web [New Window]
On April 26 in Los Angeles, haudenschildGarage presents a performance entitled The Last Book, an "attempt to resurrect the medieval illuminated manuscript through the invocation of our current alchemy, the new technologies, to conjure a future as the past in...
Wed, 1 Apr 2009 16:54:39 -0500 oulipo in new york [New Window]
The most prominent members of the Oulipo are making a rare descent upon New York this week; there are readings at the New School tonight and in Pierogi in Williamsburg on April 3rd. (A complete schedule of events can be...
Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:16:25 -0500 design and dasein: heidegger against the birkerts argument [New Window]
Here and elsewhere in the blogosphere, much ink has been spilled -- or rather, many pixels generated -- regarding Sven Birkerts's "Resisting the Kindle," which contends that the e-reader's rise augurs ill for our ability to contextualize information. The argument...
Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:18:07 -0500 extraordinary book sculpture [New Window]
Brian Dettmer creates these extraordinary sculptures by amalgamating, modifying and mutating books. Looking at these images of the physical matter of books, remixed into sculptures, I'm reminded of the process that texts are increasingly going through once digitized: amalgamated, remixed,...
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:11:28 -0500 will the real iPod for reading stand up now please? [New Window]
OK, so first of all: this isn't an article about whether or not ebooks are a good thing. But I was thinking this morning about the now hackneyed idea that we're moments away from an 'iPod moment for ebooks', and...
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:00:43 -0500 sven birkerts on the kindle [New Window]
The Atlantic just posted a short piece by Sven Birkerts, Resisting the Kindle, voicing his concerns over what is being lost when reading moves from page to screen. The challenge is to take the kernel of truth in what Birkerts...
Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:30:46 -0600 wednesday miscellany [New Window]
Arc90 has released Readability, a bookmark that strips away most of the cruft that generally surrounds text on the Web to focus on the main text column. It doesn't work on every website, of course, but it does point out...
Wed, 4 Mar 2009 09:27:57 -0600 why is text on screens so ugly? [New Window]
There have been a raft of reviews of the new Kindle and the various iPhone reading applications lately. In general, reviewers are more positive about the experience of reading from a screen than they have been in the past. However,...
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:09:49 -0600 briefly noted: iphones & o'reilly [New Window]
Ars Technica has a review of an interesting-sounding iPhone application called Papers, designed to make it easy to carry around a library of scientific papers on your iPhone. It works with a desktop app also called Papers; it also interfaces...
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:31:30 -0600 briefly noted [New Window]
In Mute, Tony D. Sampson reviews FLOSS+ART and Software Studies: A Lexicon, two books on software studies and digital art. At the Poetry Foundation, Stephanie Strickland a manifesto for e-poetry, which nicely defines how e-poetry might differ from traditional poetry....
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:22:04 -0600 announcement: itin film on sunday [New Window]
Alex Itin, the Institute's artist-in-residence, currently has a show up in Frost Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If you're around this Sunday afternoon, he's screening his films and giving an artist's talk. I'm not sure exactly what he'll be up to –...
Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:41:17 -0600 wikipedia before wikipedia [New Window]
I've been reading Tom McArthur's Worlds of Reference: lexicography, learning and language from the clay tablet to the computer, a history of dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference materials published in 1986. The last section, titled "Tomorrow's World" is interesting in hindsight:...
Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:50:32 -0600 Using the back and forth of a wikipedia article to get closer to the truth [New Window]
When Jaron Lanier disparaged the Wikipedia in his 2006 essay on "the hazards of the new online collectivism" I wrote an impassioned defense including our oft-mentioned point that the most interesting thing about wikipedia articles, especially controversial ones is not...
Fri, 6 Feb 2009 06:43:43 -0600 judging a book by its contents [New Window]
There's a post at the Harper Studio blog about Stephen King's recent denigration of Stephenie Meyer's talents as a writer. Meyer is, of course, the author of the Twilight books, a chaste vampire saga. The post asks: Can a book...
Thu, 5 Feb 2009 13:34:51 -0600 on john updike [New Window]
If:book certainly isn't an obvious venue for a John Updike remembrance. In 2006, his "The End of Authorship" vehemently misconstrued the ideals of digital publishing. At remix culture, he bristled; at collaborative reading, he balked; at the notion of books...
Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:42:04 -0600 a defense of the webcomics business model [New Window]
Syndicated comics artists who are seeing their livelihood disappear as the newspapers their work appears in shrink from sight, are starting to look with more interest at the world of online webcomics. Unfortunately, they seem to misunderstand what they see...
Mon, 2 Feb 2009 09:06:11 -0600 correspondences [New Window]
One of the most attractive books I picked up last year was a copy of Ben Greenman's Correspondences, a collection of short stories published by Hotel St. George Press. Strictly speaking, you could argue that Correspondences isn't a book: a...
Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:37:34 -0600 Can Books and the Web Play Well Together? [New Window]
The Internet, coupled with the bad economic times, has the media industry in a flurry; Institutional newspaper papers are failing regularly, magazines are reconsidering everything, and reports showing that people are just not reading - or at least not the...
Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:04:13 -0600 a step forward for creative commons [New Window]
Peter Brantley points out what's now at http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/: Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. Except...
Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:24:06 -0600 media commons returns! [New Window]
After an autumn spent retooling, MediaCommons has returned in new and better form. Check out the blog for details. Over at the much improved In Media Res it's sports week. Congratulations to editors Kathleen FitzPatrick and Avi Santo for a...
Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:09:32 -0600 bookcamp [New Window]
Embarrassingly belated report on bookcamp (I've taken this long just to follow up on conversations). It was a delightfully un-stuffy unconference exploring bookish and net-ish tech-ish things, last Saturday, at the new Hub space in Kings Cross. I listened to...
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:21:35 -0600 social networking in reverse [New Window]
A quick note to point out LittleSis, an "involuntary Facebook of powerful Americans," a project of the Public Accountability Initiative funded by the Sunlight Foundation. It's something like a networked telephone book of the rich and powerful: LittleSis aggregates publicly...
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:24:35 -0600 the economics of video games [New Window]
We don't talk about games here as much as we have in the past, but this John Lanchester essay is worth a look on your way to the New Year. One paragraph stands out to me, a brief consideration of...
Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:10:35 -0600 a book is a place . . . [New Window]
The institute got a fantastic xmas gift last week -- the seven women reading The Golden Notebook together said they are now having such a good time discussing the book in the margin they've decided to keep the conversation going...
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:03:49 -0600 an interview with helen dewitt [New Window]
Helen DeWitt is a novelist who lives in Berlin. Her first novel, The Last Samurai, was published in 2002 to not inconsiderable acclaim, though it suffered, in this country at least, from having the same title as a Tom Cruise...
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:07:19 -0600 volumes [New Window]
The end of the year is heaving into view with its ineluctable retrospective urge. Trying to put together some semblance of a list of things that I liked this year, I came back to two books from the past year...
Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:52:51 -0600 What We Talk About When We Talk About Movies [New Window]
Wyatt Mason, the keenly observant Harper's literary critic, blogged last week about the difficulties inherent to film criticism. "[B]ecause film is a waterfall of particulars," he believes, a movie review "is the hardest place to get any serious critical footing."...
Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:24:43 -0600 Golden Notebook Update: Even More Marginalia [New Window]
A screen is an extremely limited amount of space. We knew when we started The Golden Notebook Project that we could only fit about seven readers comfortably within the margins of the book. However, we are not interested solely...
Mon, 8 Dec 2008 11:51:56 -0600 Variations on a theme [New Window]
I spent a day last week at MASS MoCA, touring Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective. (It was finally profiled in the New York Times this morning, and NPR reported it yesterday.) The exhibit takes up an entire building, wall...
Fri, 5 Dec 2008 09:04:19 -0600 of music & metadata [New Window]
How valuable is metadata? Metadata was the buzzword of choice in the blogosphere back when if:book was started, somewhere between when everyone was talking about everything in terms of XML and when the hype moved on to social networking. You...
Thu, 4 Dec 2008 15:00:16 -0600 Presenting the Unpublishable [New Window]
Kenneth Goldsmith has launched a bold, full-throttle investigation into the nature of unpublishability over at Ubu. Introducing Publishing the Unpublishable, Goldsmith asks, "What constitutes an unpublishable work?" Authors sent in works that otherwise would have remained untouched, festering at...
Thu, 4 Dec 2008 12:05:10 -0600 nycip indie & small press book fair [New Window]
Almost forgot about this: if you're around New York this Sunday (December 7th), I'll be on a panel at the New York Center for Independent Publishing's Indie & Small Press Book Fair. The panel, at 2 p.m., is called "The...
Thu, 4 Dec 2008 09:05:30 -0600 While we were out: a publishing news recap [New Window]
Uh-oh. While if:book slept, the publishing industry was cast into a tumult from which it's unlikely to soon recover. Having weathered an increasingly turbulent economic downturn, the industry's already rickety business models look all the more enervated. The headlines are...
Tue, 2 Dec 2008 15:35:00 -0600 American Social History Project brainstorming [New Window]
(Thanks for your patience - the blog is back!) On Friday November 21st, we met with the American Social History Project and several historians to discuss the possibilities for collaborative learning in history. Attendees included Josh Brown, Steve Brier, Pennee...
Tue, 2 Dec 2008 07:29:59 -0600 if:book on the way back [New Window]
Something was going wrong somewhere in the Institute's archipelago of websites and NYU summarily turned off our server. We're slowly coming back to life - bear with us, we should have a lot of interesting things up here soon. Meanwhile,...
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:05:39 -0600 The Golden Notebook Project is LIVE [New Window]
The Golden Notebook Project is LIVE. If you want to read along with a print version, here are links to both the US and UK versions from Amazon....
Thu, 6 Nov 2008 02:56:42 -0600 On the Virtues of Preexisting Material: A Manifesto, By Rick Prelinger [New Window]
We asked Rick Prelinger for permission to cross-post this provocative piece which originally appeared in Absent Magazine 1. Why add to the population of orphaned works? 2. Don't presume that new work improves on old 3. Honor our ancestors by...
Wed, 5 Nov 2008 06:29:33 -0600 Instant fix [New Window]
Image inspired by Shepard Fairey. In case you prefer to get your news online, here are a variety of ways to follow the election coverage. Predictably, Twitter is following every second of the election. If you're into Twitter, maybe...
Tue, 4 Nov 2008 15:17:13 -0600 an invitation [New Window]
We've got a small NEH grant to hold a couple of brainstorming sessions. the overarching goal of the sessions is to come up with a conceptual framework for learning spaces which combine the rich media attributes of the cd-rom era...
Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:36:11 -0600 the indeterminate dvd [New Window]
On a clear day, Guy Maddin might be my favorite living film maker. He's not to everyone's taste (The Heart of the World, complete on YouTube, is a good litmus test), and I won't attempt to convert the unbelievers. But...
Sun, 2 Nov 2008 17:31:00 -0600 art and technology, 1971 [New Window]
A quite note to point out that LACMA has announced that they've posted the long out-of-print catalogue for their 1971 Art and Technology show online in its entirety in both web and PDF format. It's worth looking at: Maurice Tuchman...
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:08:58 -0500 Lauren Klein and The Turk [New Window]
An engraving of The Turk from Karl Gottlieb von Windisch's Inanimate Reason, published in 1784. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. We had Lauren Klein, a graduate student from CUNY, over to lunch this afternoon. One of the pleasures of such...
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:13:32 -0500 Sophie demo movies now available [New Window]
In addition to the demo books themselves, we've posted several movies demonstrating the capabilities of Sophie 1.0. At about a minute each, these clips provide a cursory glance at a variety of our books, complete with hopefully unobtrusive narration by...
Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:34:03 -0500 a leap into the post-industrial [New Window]
I've just returned from a quick trip to India: with my brain yet furry from jetlag, I've yet to come to any understanding of what I experienced there, should such be possible. But while in Delhi, I picked up an...
Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:09:15 -0500 Greenblatt on human agency and New Historicism [New Window]
Image via Queen's University. Here is a little bit about the MIT communications forum on October 14, with respondent David Thorburn, moderator Diana Henderson, and lecturer Stephen Greenblatt. Greenblatt is the Cogen University Professor of Humanities at Harvard. He...
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:06:56 -0500 nine curiosities from the beeman cookbook collection [New Window]
This Sophie book showcases several interesting, rare, or otherwise odd cookbooks from the collection of Kimberly Beeman. You can download it here (.zip, 60Mb). Make sure that you have Sophie or Sophie Reader installed. The title page, including a video...
Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:50:27 -0500 the five drafts of the gettysburg address: a sophie book [New Window]
Contrary to popular lore, Lincoln did not write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. Though given short notice that he was to speak at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, he had enough time to write...
Thu, 9 Oct 2008 09:15:44 -0500 meanwhile . . . . [New Window]
My colleagues at the Institute and i are busy making some interesting things with Sophie 1.0. We're going to start posting them on a new institute website devoted to Sophie 1.0. [They will also be available on the OpenSophie site]...
Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:31:44 -0500 and the first document is . . . . [New Window]
An Experiment in Visualization: Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speeches from Truman through Obama and McCain. In addition to the wordle.net visualizations in which the size of the word is proportionate to the number of times it is used, we've also included...
Mon, 6 Oct 2008 13:40:40 -0500 Mellon announces a $1.25 million grant for Sophie 2.0 [New Window]
Last week the Mellon Foundation announced a $1.25 million grant to the University of Southern California for a java-based version of Sophie, which will be known as Sophie 2.0. In addition to improving on Sophie 1.0 in various ways, Sophie...
Mon, 6 Oct 2008 01:25:31 -0500 How do you want to read? [New Window]
(Photo of Tom Stoppard's book case, made by T. Anthony, via The New York Times.) For the sake of travel and convenience, sure, even a Kindle is better than toting a book shelf with you on an airplane. But...
Thu, 2 Oct 2008 17:25:02 -0500 The Golden Notebook Project - Readers Announced [New Window]
Beginning November 10th, seven women will begin a public conversation in the margins of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The text of the novel and the readers' conversation will be in a nifty new format designed by Apt Studios in...
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:52:16 -0500 Putting the "book" back in Facebook [New Window]
With October just around the corner, American universities and high schools are gearing up for homecoming celebrations, those unabashed nostalgia fests. There's just one problem: the yearbook, one of nostalgia's favorite vessels, is obsolete. This summer, the Economist reported on...
Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:37:59 -0500 looking for lit in all the wrong places [New Window]
Just came upon a Guardian piece looking at the underwhelming quality of 'e-lit'. In my comment on the discussion I found myself reviewing a number of themes that have recurred in my if:book research over the last couple of years:...
Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:41:49 -0500 this is a world of imagination & digitisation [New Window]
On Thursday October 9th, National Poetry Day in the UK, 2008 if:book london is launching an exciting experiment in reading and writing, supported by Arts Council England. Over the next six months I will be working with artist and web...
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:31:44 -0500 Sarah Palin, Crowdsourced [New Window]
Views of Wikipedia are decidedly mixed in academia, though perhaps trending slowly from mostly negative to grudgingly positive. But regardless of your view of Wikipedia - ?or your political persuasion - ?you can?t help but be impressed with the activity...
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:14:53 -0500 Synthesizing art, literature, and Halloween costumes [New Window]
Natura Morta, Giorgio Morandi, 1956 (via The Met) There is little or nothing new in the world. What matters is the new and different position in which an artist finds himself seeing and considering the things of so-called nature...
Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:41:00 -0500 wordia - new definitions of literacy? [New Window]
This morning, I went to Samuel Johnson's house (now a museum dedicated to 18th-century London) in the old City of London. Today is (or would have been) Samuel Johnson's birthday; the occasion was the launch of Wordia, a new startup...
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:05:42 -0500 History is written by the readers [New Window]
Pardon me for plagiarizing Churchill, but the victors aren't the only ones writing history these days. At the Institute, we're re-imagining the American History Project's "Who Built America?", hoping to re-imagine the sort of information in this CD-ROM from 1991,...
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:18:56 -0500 Unearthing a Multimedia Time Capsule [New Window]
Microsoft Multimedia Schubert was published fifteen years ago, in 1993. Developed by the Voyager Company, the program was one of many in an early "Microsoft Multimedia Catalog." It allows users to engage in a close reading of Schubert's Trout Quintet,...
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:39:24 -0500 children's books and control [New Window]
There's a surprisingly intriguing exchange in a recent Bookworm program, where Michael Silverblatt interviews Françoise Mouly about her new line of children's books, a spinoff of the Little Lit books she's been putting out with Art Spiegelman. Not surprisingly, Mouly...
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:26:49 -0500 a reading room [New Window]
Alex Itin, the Institute's artist-in-not-quite-residence, is having an opening soon. He says: I will be filling four walls with a floor to ceiling installation of images extruded over the last several years for the Art Blog: IT IN Place: http://www.futureofthebook.org/itinplace/...
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:46:55 -0500 recognitions [New Window]
I came home from my first year at college, reeling from culture shock unrecognized until much later, to a job at the local natural history museum. I was in charge of their live reptile exhibit, a perennial summer attraction in...
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:44:22 -0500 a unified field theory of publishing in the networked era [New Window]
The following is a set of notes, written over several months, in an attempt to weave together a number of ideas that have emerged in the course of the institute's work. I'm hoping for a lot of feedback. If there's...
Thu, 4 Sep 2008 11:29:15 -0500 McLuhan analyzes the presidential debates of 1976 [New Window]
One of our terrific summer interns, Rick Williamson, just sent a link to this 1976 TV interview of Marshall McLuhan in which he skewers the presidential debates for being completely the wrong form for the medium of television. It's interesting...
Thu, 4 Sep 2008 10:19:15 -0500 Remediating Orwell's Diaries [New Window]
The Orwell Prize has recently unfurled their project to post George Orwell's personal diaries online, in blog form, and in real time, seventy years after each entry was originally written. Why they've elected the blog format and the seventy-year anniversary...
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:45:17 -0500 "I heard words and words full of holes." [New Window]
I thought that Terry Teachout made an unfortunate omission in his recent column, "Hearing is Believing: The Vanished Glories of Spoken-Word Recordings." After glimpsing into BBC's giant vault of sound recordings, Teachout bemoans the inaccessibility of most spoken-word albums: Why...
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:01:05 -0500 twittering from the past [New Window]
A couple of weeks ago, Sebastian Mary posted about experiments with sending out literature via Twitter. She found herself disappointed that DailyLit was neither "abridging the text savagely for hyper-truncated delivery, or else delivering the unabridged text 140 characters at...
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:18:21 -0500 Emily Dickinson in Sophie [New Window]
Emily Dickinson's poems weren't published during her lifetime- it was only after her death that her sister found Emily's manuscripts, tucked at the bottom of a trunk, and decided to publish them. In the translation from manuscript to printed page,...
Wed, 6 Aug 2008 18:23:19 -0500 do you remember the first time? [New Window]
Siva Vaidhyanathan, the Institute's fellow, is busy writing a book about Google, to be titled The Googlization of Everything. He's working in public, and right now, he's interested in hearing stories about how people – that means you! – began to use...
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:20:50 -0500 kerfluffle at britannica.com [New Window]
I got a note from someone at Britannica online telling me about a discussion prompted by Clay Shirky's riposte to Nicolas Carr's Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The conversation on the Britannica site, and the related posts on...
Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:07:44 -0500 now you can judge a virtual book by its cover too [New Window]
Zoomii, a new virtual bookstore that uses Amazon's prices and fulfilment, provides a nifty 'browse' interface that lets the viewer zoom in and out of 21,000 'books' - read cover thumbnails - arranged on 'shelves' according to category. It's the...
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:36:05 -0500 dailylit experiments with public reading via twitter [New Window]
I made a passing mention of email-me-chunks-of-book-to-read service DailyLitin my recent-ish post on writing less. Though I've not tried it, it's been picking up some press lately as a way to get your reading done via the network. The latest...
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:15:53 -0500 lulu for magazines? [New Window]
A new project by HP Labs aims to make print-on-demand magazine publishing available to everyone. MagCloud uses a similar model toLulu for books, or Moo for stickers and cards: upload your digital content here and we'll deal with fulfillment....
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:05:38 -0500 if:book review 3 - privacy and net neutrality [New Window]
My last review post covered the debates around digitization of public domain archives, especially with reference to Google. Key to these debates are questions of access: who gets how much, what to, how is this controlled, and who by? And...
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:50:21 -0500 new ways with words [New Window]
I'm delighted to announce that we've received a grant of £93,000 from the Esmee Fairbairn Trust to help us "explore how new media can be used to generate active reading, creative writing and fresh enthusiasm for literature amongst young people"....
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:43:24 -0500 the long tale: another book metadata app [New Window]
More fun with book metadata. Hot on the heels of Bkkeepr comes Booklert, an app that lets you keep track of the Amazon rank of your (or anyone else's) book. Writer, thinker and social media maven Russell Davies speculated that...
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:00:39 -0500 The Golden Notebook -? readers wanted [New Window]
if:book readers may remember my excited post from last October when Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize. I had coincidentally re-read The Golden Notebook over the summer and when I realized that none of my younger colleagues had read it,...
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:50:39 -0500 google, digitization and archives: despatches from if:book [New Window]
In discussing with other Institute folks how to go about reviewing four year's worth of blog posts, I've felt torn at times. Should I cherry-pick 'thinky' posts that discuss a particular topic in depth, or draw out narratives from strings...
Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:35:05 -0500 we're on our way back [New Window]
The period of extreme introspection is winding down. As you've seen over the last few days Sebastian Mary has embarked on a review of if:book's first four years. This will unfold over the next few weeks and will prepare the...
Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:17:08 -0500 fantasy author's site hosts fan-created wiki encyclopedia [New Window]
In marked contrast to J K Rowling, whose battles against the publication of a fan-created Potter encyclopedia we've covered here, fantasy author Naomi Novik's website hosts a wiki in which fans of her writing help to co-create an encyclopedic guide...
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:55:41 -0500 virtual pop-up book in papervision [New Window]
Ecodazoo is a beautifully-animated if slightly inscrutable site created in Papervision, a real-time 3D engine for Flash. Scrolling around the page takes you to a series of animated 'pop-up books' that tell vaguely eco-educational stories. It's pretty, even if...
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:56:01 -0500 fifth avenue apartment encoded with puzzles by architect [New Window]
I was beginning to research an article about ARG genres when I came across this interesting tidbit. Without telling the client, an architect renovating an Upper East Side apartment included secret panels, puzzles, poems and artworks that - when they...
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:26:26 -0500 printable mini-books revisit eighteenth-century pamphleteers [New Window]
London-based creative studio and social think-tank Proboscis has put impressive effort into thinking through the incarnations and reincarnations of written material between printed and digitized forms. Diffusion, one of Proboscis' recent-ish ventures, is a technology that lays out short texts...
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:17:44 -0500 if:book review 1: game culture [New Window]
I've chosen 'game culture' as the theme for this first review post, for all that many of these posts could just as easily be tagged another handful of ways. But games have always hovered at the fringes of debates about...
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:35:28 -0500 if:book review update [New Window]
Whew. I expected my review of the if:book archive to take me a few days, and selecting/commenting on posts to be a quick job requiring at most a handful of posts. Wrong. It took me a week of digging to...
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:14:07 -0500 bkkeepr [New Window]
Popping out of review and archiving mode for a quick mention of bkkeepr, a new project recently out of stealth mode. Based around Twitter and ISBN data, it creates a timeline of who's reading what. The feed provides intriguing browsing,...
Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:20:25 -0500 the doctor the salon [New Window]
Well, I don't want to give away much about what was a blindingly brilliant episode of Doctor Who, but suffice to say the library survived, though the whole collection had been backed up on the biggest mainframe in the universe....
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:30:21 -0500 if:book london... tomorrow the stars [New Window]
We've now launched a website for if:book london, the British iteration of the Institute, at http://www.futureofthebook.org.uk, and that links both to this blog and one which will focus on UK activities and in particular our work with the literature sector...
Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:10:04 -0500 if:janus [New Window]
It's been pretty quiet on the blog for the last few weeks. This is partly because there's a lot of work going on backstage. But it's also symptomatic of the fact that the research, writing and blogging element of the...
Mon, 2 Jun 2008 22:23:53 -0500 Place Holder #2 [New Window]
sorry for the extended absence from these pages. we've been wonderfully busy at the first Sophie workshop (at USC) this week. news of that and much else next week....
Fri, 30 May 2008 13:51:35 -0500 placeholder [New Window]
We're taking ben's leaving as an opportunity to think about the institute's mission and the role of if:book within that context. and most importantly we're trying to figure out the best way to involve the readers of if:book in this...
Wed, 7 May 2008 11:08:57 -0500 looking at libraries [New Window]
A few weeks back though the auspices of TED, I paid a visit to a private library. The owner doesn't want publicity, and I won't reveal details, but it was a staggeringly beautiful (if idiosyncratic) collection, and I can't imagine...
Tue, 6 May 2008 16:18:00 -0500 a Sophie workshop -- spread the word [New Window]
Two weeks ago the Instittue for Multimedia Literacy (IML) at USC held a ceremony for the first graduating class of students with honors in multimedia scholarship. two of the students wrote their theses in Sophie. Based on their experience, Holly...
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:42:35 -0500 fail again fail better have fun [New Window]
A new research paper by Bruce Mason and Sue Thomas on A Million Penguins, the controversial wiki novel created last year by Penguin Books makes fascinating reading. It includes amongst other delights an analysis of the activities of the contributor...
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:20:56 -0500 Sophie vs. Powerpoint and Keynote [New Window]
Longtime visitors to if:book have heard about Sophie, the reading/writing environment we've been working on since the inception of the institute in 2004. Version 1.0 of Sophie was quietly released last month. We'll make a number of Sophie-related posts over...
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:12:38 -0500 stories and places [New Window]
I found this new site, 217babel.com set up by Brighton based journalist and writer William Shaw, to be a nice example of an online fiction that actually gets you reading rather than admiring it awhile and then glazing over or...
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:55:01 -0500 floing again [New Window]
"While businesses based on the sale of paper may or may not be in crisis, those of us with a wider responsibility for ensuring our literary culture thrives have wonderful new tools with which to encourage participation and communication. The...
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:43:32 -0500 tomorrow and tomorrow [New Window]
The future has only been a topic of interest for a relatively short while. For most of time the future was likely to be pretty much like the past except we'd be dead then and replaced by replica offspring -...
Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:34:10 -0500 interface culture [New Window]
Omnisio, a new Y Combinator startup, lets people grab clips from the Web and mash them up. Users can integrate video with slide presentations, and enable time-sensitive commenting in little popup bubbles layered on the video. MediaCommons was founded partly...
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:43:01 -0500 a new blog format avoids the tyranny of chronology [New Window]
Sebastian Mary and i were talking last week about the need to re-conceive the format of if:book so that interesting posts which initiate lively discussions don't get pushed to the bottom. a few days later i met with Rene Daalder...
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:10:36 -0500 a return to orality [New Window]
I've been making my way through Robert Bringhurst's The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, which came out a couple years ago in Canada, but which is now getting an American release from Counterpoint. Bringhurst is probably best known...
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:14:12 -0500 changes [New Window]
You've probably noticed that things have been relatively quiet around here lately. I haven't been on vacation or anything like that. Rather I've been figuring out the future, not of the book, but of me. After much personal consideration, and...
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:37:16 -0500 illumination [New Window]
Kyle Bean, student at the University of Brighton sent me this nice example of his work. More hybrid books on his site http://kylebean.co.uk...
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:04:56 -0500 a la recherche [New Window]
I was on the underground making my way to the London Book Fair yesterday, hoping to stand out from the crowds of frantic publishers jostling there by carrying over my shoulder the fabulously pretentious "Proust Society of America" book bag...
Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:43:01 -0500 old school [New Window]
J.K. Rowling went to court today to try to stop someone from publishing a lexicon of Harry Potter characters. She says she wants to do it herself, but even if that gave her the right to stop others from doing...
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:51:22 -0500 daydreaming about a better textbook [New Window]
Wouldn't it be great if textbooks were published online with dynamic comment fields so that students like Matthew LaClair could raise these sorts of issues directly in the margin of the book. imagine what a terrific conversation might unfold and...
Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:39:35 -0500 thinking about tex [New Window]
Chances are that unless you're a mathematician or a physicist you don't know anything about TeX. TeX is a computerized typesetting system begun in the late 1970s; since the 1980s, it's been the standard way in which papers in the...
Fri, 4 Apr 2008 14:36:11 -0500 where minds meet: new architectures for the study of history and music [New Window]
This is the narrative text for an NEH Digital Humanities Start-UP grant we just applied for. Narrative With the advent of the cd-rom in the late 80s, a few pioneering humanities scholars began to develop a new vocabulary for multi-layered,...
Thu, 3 Apr 2008 22:49:26 -0500 writing grants [New Window]
Hence the quiet around here....
Thu, 3 Apr 2008 09:26:03 -0500 e-reads i-Wash [New Window]
The announcement this morning of the launch in the UK of a new waterproof laptop looks like another nail in the coffin of the traditional paper book, as the new device at last makes it possible to read a downloaded...
Tue, 1 Apr 2008 02:33:17 -0500 on writing less [New Window]
"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." Pascal, Lettres provinciales, 16, Dec.14,1656. I used to co-edit Pick Me Up, a cult London digital newsletter. After some years perfecting...
Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:52:32 -0500 against reading [New Window]
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that...
Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:50:47 -0500 the big book of TED [New Window]
At TED 2008, visual cartographers David Sibbet and Kevin Richards produced over 700 spontaneous sketches of the keynote presenters' ideas, using Autodesk visualization tools. These sketches have now been turned into The BIGVIZ, a downloadable 200-page interactive ebook. Parts...
Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:46:42 -0500 this is a game. no really, it is [New Window]
This morning, I received an envelope through the post. It contained two chapters of a pulp murder mystery, along with an invitation to a private gathering with the same title as the booklets: Looking For Headless. The gathering will...
Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:26:28 -0500 from work to text [New Window]
I spent the weekend before last at the Center for Book Arts as part of their Fine Press Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers. There I was taught to set type; not, perhaps, exactly what you'd expect from someone writing for...
Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:06:03 -0500 major news: IFB and NYU libraries to collaborate [New Window]
A couple of weeks ago, I alluded to a new institutional partnership that's been in the works for some time. Well I'm thrilled to officially announce that the we are joining forces with the NYU Division of Libraries! From Carol...
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:46:47 -0500 a serious shot at screen reading [New Window]
Another new online magazine: Triple Canopy (noted by Ed Park). Unlike Issue and Rosa B. this isn't a design magazine – although the content is very interesting – but like them, it's a serious attempt to construct a new kind of magazine...
Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:11:41 -0500 first of penguin's interactive fictions up [New Window]
Ben posted a few weeks back about an intriguing new interactive project in the pipeline from Penguin. WeTellStories, produced for Penguin by ARG studio SixToStart is now out in the open. Comprising six stories based on Penguin Classics, released one...
Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:04:04 -0500 expressive processing: post-game analysis begins [New Window]
So Noah's just wrapped up the blog peer review of his manuscript in progress, and is currently debating whether to post the final, unfinished chapter. He's also just received the blind peer reviews from MIT Press and is in the...
Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:27:25 -0500 so when are you going to retire?: a book in process about age, work and identity [New Window]
I want to give a shout out to a wonderful new project by a dear friend of ours. So When Are You Going to Retire? is -? or will be, or is in the process of becoming -? a...
Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:18:40 -0500 issue magazine [New Window]
Hot on the heels of Rosa B. (mentioned last week) comes Issue Magazine, another new web-based publication looking at the changing world of publishing and design. Issue #0, edited by Alexandre Leray and Stéphanie Vilayphiou, is undergoing a slow rollout...
Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:27:23 -0500 hmmm. . . . please discuss [New Window]
The following quote was in AP story i read in MIT's Technology Review this morning about Microsoft licensing Adobe's mobile Flash and PDF software. "Flash content is the most prolific content on the web today; it is the way people...
Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:57:37 -0500 step inside the books: new york event this friday (3/21) [New Window]
If you're in the New York area, don't miss this. Friday, March 21, 2008, 7-9pm - ?New York, NY - ?125 Maiden Lane, 2nd Floor. FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY: Step inside three books, drink free beer and wine, and experience...
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:31:15 -0500 googlization of everything now has print publisher [New Window]
In case you missed the news last week, Siva has locked up a deal with the University of California Press to publish the North American print edition of The Googlization of Everything. It's due out late summer, 2009. Profile will...
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:36:10 -0500 in search of jenny everywhere [New Window]
It's mainly the literary world that assumes fictional work to be best when the creation of only one person. Most TV shows, movies, games and comics are created by teams. But though creativity here is not bound by the Romantic...
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:12:18 -0500 friday projections [New Window]
It's all go on the digital publishing scene in the UK with Penguin launching their first ARG next week - go to www.wetellstories.co.uk for more details, and various big companies plotting experiments. Meanwhile this week Gail Rebuck, chief executive of...
Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:40:50 -0500 trade-offs [New Window]
Alex Itin just cross-posted a wonderful new piece on his blog, and Vimeo. I watched it on Vimeo and was struck by the terrific back and forth discussion between Alex and the people who are looking at his work. It's...
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:13:09 -0500 google books API [New Window]
Good news. Google has finally released an API (?) for Google Book Search: Web developers can use the Books Viewability API to quickly find out a book's viewability on Google Book Search and, in an automated fashion, embed a link...
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:03:44 -0500 rosa b. [New Window]
A quick note to point out Rosa B, a new online publication in French and English from the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux and the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts. Their first issue, online now, is about contemporary publishing...
Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:48:11 -0500 more compelling than choice [New Window]
The first two major ARGs to play out, The Beast and ilovebees, surprised their creators: the collective intelligence of thousands of players was taking down in hours puzzles that the puppetmasters had expected the community to wrestle with for days....
Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:09:04 -0500 migrating eastward [New Window]
Buckle your seatbelts, we may be experiencing a bit of turbulence. We're in the process of migrating our server from Los Angeles, where for the past three and a half years it has resided, at the University of Southern California,...
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:23:59 -0500 friday musings on the literary [New Window]
Faber chief executive Stephen Page's article in yesterday's Guardian outlines some straightforward ways of taking advantage of social media, on-demand business models and so on in the interests of sustaining Faber into the 21st century. Push out content that brings...
Fri, 7 Mar 2008 16:07:00 -0600 nicholson baker on the charms of wikipedia [New Window]
I finally got around to reading Nicholson Baker's essay in the New York Review of Books, "The Charms of Wikipedia," and it's... charming. Baker has a flair for idiosyncratic detail, which makes him a particularly perceptive and entertaining guide through...
Fri, 7 Mar 2008 01:43:34 -0600 critical perspectives on web 2.0 [New Window]
First Monday has a new special issue out devoted to unpacking the politics, economics and ethics of Web 2.0. Looks like lots of interesting stuff. From the preface by Michael Zimmer: Web 2.0 represents a blurring of the boundaries between...
Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:13:43 -0600 flight paths 2.0 [New Window]
Back in December we announced the launch of Flight Paths, a "networked novel" that is currently being written by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph with feedback and contributions from readers. At that point, the Web presence for the project was...
Wed, 5 Mar 2008 00:10:13 -0600 hypertextopia [New Window]
We were recently alerted, via Grand Text Auto, to a new hypertext fiction environment on the Web called Hypertextopia: Hypertextopia is a space where you can read and write stories for the internet. On the surface, it looks like a...
Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:57:41 -0600 fight path [New Window]
"Writers of the world arise! It's time to throw off the shackles of traditional publishing contracts and face a brand new digital future with a brand new set of priorities." So starts an article on the Guardian 'Comment Is Free'...
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:47:22 -0600 student designer envisions a more credible kindle [New Window]
Engagdet points to an award winning Australian student design for an e-book reader that combines the gesture-based "multi-touch" interface of the iPhone with the e-ink display of the Kindle. LIVRE design concept -? Nedzad Mujcinovic, Monash University "Interaction happens via...
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:02:17 -0600 channel 4 goes cross-platform [New Window]
On the subject of major traditional media entities and cross-platform experimentation. Over in London last night Chris and I went to the launch event for Bow Street Runner, an online game launched by UK TV broadcaster Channel 4 to coincide...
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:29:03 -0600 penguin of forking paths [New Window]
Following on last year's wiki novel, Penguin will soon launch another digital fiction experiment, this time focused on nonlinear storytelling. From Jeremy Ettinghausen on the Penguin blog: ...in a few weeks Penguin will be embarking on an experiment in storytelling...
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:55:00 -0600 art of compression: barry yourgrau's keitai fictions [New Window]
The Millions has an interesting interview with the South African-born, New York-resident writer Barry Yourgrau, who recently published a collection of "keitai" (cell phone) fiction in Japan. Known for bite-sized surrealist fables (as here), the hyper-compression of the cell phone...
Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:33:39 -0600 he do the police in different voices [New Window]
In a sense, Graham Rawle's novel Woman's World, just out in the United States from Counterpoint, is made for the internet. It's the sort of thing that you expect to see on Digg or Reddit: artist spends several years cutting...
Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:08:16 -0600 borders self-publishing and the idea of vanity [New Window]
Borders, in partnership with Lulu.com, has launched a comprehensive personal publishing platform, enabling anyone to design and publish their own (print) book and have it distributed throughout the Borders physical and online retail chain. Beyond the basic self-publishing tools, authors...
Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:16:08 -0600 "naked in the 'nonopticon'" [New Window]
If you haven't already, check out Siva Vaidhyanathan's excellent Chronicle of Higher Ed piece on privacy and surveillance: a review of several new books treating various aspects of the topic, but a great all-around thought piece. A taste: Certainly the...
Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:52:41 -0600 conversation, revision, trust... [New Window]
A thought-provoking "meta-post" from Noah Wardrip-Fruin on Grand Text Auto reflecting on the blog-based review of his new book manuscript four chapters (and weeks) into the process. Really interesting stuff, so I'm quoting at length: This week, when I was...
Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:07:54 -0600 e-read all about it [New Window]
An article in Publishing News this week suggests that UK publishers are bracing themselves for the arrival on these shores of the Kindle or a rival to it soon. Much discussion of e-royalties is going on; HarperCollins and Random House...
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:14:33 -0600 danah boyd's closed journal boycott [New Window]
I meant to blog this earlier but it's still quite relevant, especially in light of other recent activity on the open access front. Last week, Danah Boyd announced that henceforth she would only publish in open access journals and urged...
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:46:35 -0600 harvard faculty votes overwhelmingly for open access [New Window]
The Harvard Crimson: The motion, which passed easily at yesterday's Faculty meeting, grants Harvard a non-exclusive copyright over all articles produced by any current Faculty member, allowing for the creation of an online repository that would be "available to other...
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:28:49 -0600 harvard faculty cast vote on open access [New Window]
The U.S. presidential primaries in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. are not the only votes to watch today. The New York Times reports that arts and sciences faculty at Harvard are weighing in today on a proposed measure that would make...
Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:45:26 -0600 a brief history of book [New Window]
In the Institute's London office we've been talking about how to get across the message that the book has been through permanent change throughout its history, to knock on the head the simplistic argument of good old page v bad...
Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:57:38 -0600 at o'reilly [New Window]
Over the next couple of days I'll be filling up my brain at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference -? taking place, conveniently, here in New York. I'm giving a talk today called Books as Conversations, and participating...
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:36:26 -0600 harpercollins offers free ebooks [New Window]
The New York Times: In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food...
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:20:23 -0600 digital livings [New Window]
Alongside our research for Arts Council England, I'm also looking at how how new media writers earn their livings and make their way in the world. The Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University is...
Fri, 8 Feb 2008 09:09:41 -0600 book machine [New Window]
Philip M. Parker, a professor at Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France, has written 85,000 books and counting. He's like a machine. In fact, he has a machine that writes them for him. The Guardian has more....
Thu, 7 Feb 2008 17:34:37 -0600 biblical interweave [New Window]
The image below shows every cross-references in the Bible. Definitely more the eye candy variety of information visualization, but I thought it was pretty. Chris Harrison, the creator, explains: "Different colors are used for various arc lengths, creating a rainbow...
Wed, 6 Feb 2008 12:52:13 -0600 robert frost's digital disciple [New Window]
Via Ron Silliman, an interesting profile of Edmund Skellings, poet laureate of Florida since 1980 and newly appointed professor of humanities at Florida Tech. A New Englander, Skellings started off as a poet in the Robert Frost mould, and even...
Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:58:01 -0600 developing books in networked communities: a conversation with don waters [New Window]
Two weeks ago, when the blog-based peer review of Noah Wardrip-Fruin's Expressive Processing began on Grand Text Auto, Bob sent a note about the project to Don Waters, the program officer for scholarly communications at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation...
Mon, 4 Feb 2008 01:22:44 -0600 "books are social vectors" [New Window]
Some choice quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin's terrific new Harper's essay, "Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading" (unfortunately behind pay wall): Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even...
Fri, 1 Feb 2008 15:48:12 -0600 the id of writing [New Window]
The intensely homoerotic Buffy and Faith storyline in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was developed partly as a direct response to fanfic writers' interpretations of the show in this light As an undergraduate I read English Language and Literature at...
Fri, 1 Feb 2008 09:15:32 -0600 future boy [New Window]
The picture is of a Futurizer, based on the kinds of contraption I built as a child from cardboard, balsa wood and string which allowed me to communicate with other planets and centuries. It was reconstructed by a group...
Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:48:35 -0600 expressive processing meta [New Window]
To mark the posting of the final chunk of chapter 1 of the Expressive Processing manuscript on Grand Text Auto, Noah has kicked off what will hopefully be a revealing meta-discussion to run alongside the blog-based peer review experiment. The...
Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:20:30 -0600 amazon reviewer no. 7 and the ambiguities of web 2.0 [New Window]
Slate takes a look at Grady Harp, Amazon's no. 7-ranked book reviewer, and finds the amateur-driven literary culture there to be a much grayer area than expected: Absent the institutional standards that govern (however notionally) professional journalists, Web 2.0 stakes...
Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:21:43 -0600 ace research news in the uk [New Window]
The Institute for the Future of the Book has been appointed by Arts Council England to undertake research into digital developments in literature. This is exciting news for us, not least because it marks the official launch of our London...
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:13:54 -0600 freedom of expression -? free nyc screening jan. 31 [New Window]
If you're in the New York City region, this is worth checking out (features Institute fellow Siva Vaidhyanathan): From Free Culture @ NYU: In 1998, university professor Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression" - ?a startling comment on...
Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:33:13 -0600 expressive processing: an experiment in blog-based peer review [New Window]
An exciting new experiment begins today, one which ties together many of the threads begun in our earlier "networked book" projects, from Without Gods to Gamer Theory to CommentPress. It involves a community, a manuscript, and an open peer review...
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:30:55 -0600 watch wikipedia happen [New Window]
Markers move around the map registering Wikipedia edits in close to real time. Weirdly compelling....
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:59:47 -0600 new commentpress version available: plays well with latest wordpress! [New Window]
We've finally squashed the bug that made CommentPress incompatible with the latest version of WordPress (2.3), so anyone out there with a CP installation can finally go ahead and upgrade: CommentPress 1.4.1 » Other than the compatibility fix, 1.4.1 is...
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:53:12 -0600 london calling [New Window]
Thurs 13 Mar @ Bishopsgate Institute BOOK FUTURES: Scott Pack (thefridayproject.co.uk) + Chris Meade (futureofthebook.org) + John Lenehan + Shirley Dent (Chair) What does the future hold for reading, writing and publishing? When we all go digital, what will be...
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:14:57 -0600 literature electrique [New Window]
I've been meaning to post something for a while about The Reprover, or Le Reprobateur, a hugely impressive work of digital fiction by Franois Coulon, Paris-based digital writer. It includes excellent cartoons, live video of the main character and a...
Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:23:55 -0600 read this [New Window]
An interesting experiment on Vimeo. See what's going on? Via IT IN place....
Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:27:41 -0600 emergency books [New Window]
In the course of looking for something else entirely, I just stumbled upon Emergency Books. It's a (slightly dormant) side project of Litromagazine, a freesheet that publishes and distributes short fiction outside London Underground stations. Emergency Books are, very simply,...
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:18:40 -0600 nominate the best tech writing of 2007 [New Window]
digitalculturebooks, a collaborative imprint of the University of Michigan press and library, publishes an annual anthology of the year's best technology writing. The nominating process is open to the public and they're giving people until January 31st to suggest exemplary...
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:44:50 -0600 orson whales in high def [New Window]
Alex Itin has posted a new "print" of his mind-blowing Moby-Dick animation, "Orson Whales," on Vimeo, which now offers gorgeous high definition streaming. Click the image below....
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:01:56 -0600 youtube purges: fair use tested [New Window]
Last week there was a wave of takedowns on YouTube of copyright-infringing material -? mostly clips from television and movies. MediaCommons, the nascent media studies network we help to run, felt this rather acutely. In Media Res, an area of...
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:18:00 -0600 poem for no one [New Window]
Just came across something lovely. Video for "Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)" by the now disbanded Grandaddy from their great album The Sophtware Slump (2000). Jed is a character who weaves in and out of the album, a forlorn humanoid...
Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:08:45 -0600 no longer separated by a common language [New Window]
LibraryThing now interfaces with the British Library and loads of other UK sources: The BL is a catch in more than one way. It's huge, of course. But, unlike some other sources, BL data isn't normally available to the public....
Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:06:27 -0600 reading between the lines? [New Window]
The NEA claims it wishes to "initiate a serious discussion" over the findings of its latest report, but the public statements from representatives of the Endowment have had a terse or caustic tone, such as in Sunil Iyengar's reply to...
Wed, 9 Jan 2008 11:13:46 -0600 the year of reading dangerously [New Window]
2008 is going well so far for the Institute in London - I was invited to 10 Downing Street this morning for the launch of the National Year of Reading which takes place in 2008, as one of a small...
Tue, 8 Jan 2008 17:48:25 -0600 NEA reading debate round 2: an exchange between sunil iyengar and nancy kaplan [New Window]
Last week I received an email from Sunil Iyengar of the National Endownment for the Arts responding to Nancy Kaplan's critique (published here on if:book) of the NEA's handling of literacy data in its report "To Read or Not to...
Tue, 8 Jan 2008 17:39:16 -0600 the year of the author [New Window]
Natalie Merchant, one of my favorite artists, was featured in The New York Times today. She is back after a long hiatus, but if you want to hear her new songs you better stand in line for a ticket to...
Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:16:15 -0600 the future of the sustainable book [New Window]
On New Year's Eve, I got lost in Yonkers trying to take my son's gently-used toys to the Salvation Army. The Yonkers store was the only one I could find willing to take them. The guy on the phone hesitated,...
Wed, 2 Jan 2008 21:59:28 -0600 coming soon to a laptop near you [New Window]
What makes me think 2008 will be a big year for the future of the book? Last night in London we went to see the movie of The Golden Compass adapted from the excellent Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. Imagine...
Wed, 2 Jan 2008 02:22:58 -0600 quiet [New Window]
We're all spending some time away from our computers so things will be pretty quiet round here till after new year's. Happy holidays, everyone. Btw, if:book just turned 3!...
Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:25:17 -0600 anatomy of a debate [New Window]
The New York Times continues to do quality interactive work online. Take a look at this recent feature that allows you to delve through video and transcript from the final Democratic presidential candidate debate in Iowa (Dec. 13, '07). It...
Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:16:48 -0600 if all the sky was paper [New Window]
Perhaps the only blog featuring a tag cloud in which 'Assistant Post Mistress' looms large, The Travelling Bookbinder in Antarctica somehow seems suitable festive reading for the online book lover. Book artist and travelling bookbinder, Rachel Hazell, is currently working...
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:23:38 -0600 a few rough notes on knols [New Window]
Think you've got an authoritative take on a subject? Write up an article, or "knol," and see how the Web judgeth. If it's any good, you might even make a buck. Google's new encyclopedia will go head to head with...
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:06:09 -0600 bothered about blogging etc [New Window]
I've never liked seeing movies in groups. After two hours immersed in a fictional world I dread that moment when you emerge blinking into the light and instantly have to give your verdict. Personally I want time to mull, and...
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:16:10 -0600 textual montage: the documentary biography [New Window]
There's something about the work of Herman Melville that brings out the unexpected in his readers. Example can be drawn almost at random. Call Me Ishmael, the poet Charles Olson's lyrical little book on Moby-Dick, is as much a meditation...
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:07:01 -0600 a safe haven for fan culture [New Window]
The Organization for Transformative Works is a new "nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms." Interestingly, the OTW defines...
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:23:14 -0600 ghost story [New Window]
02138, a magazine aimed at Harvard alumni, has a great article about the widespread practice among professors of using low-wage student labor to research and even write their books. ...in any number of academic offices at Harvard, the relationship between...
Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:55:29 -0600 ...and cinematic photographs [New Window]
To make a trifecta of film posts for the day, I'll point out Jonathan Harris's The Whale Hunt. Properly speaking, this isn't a film at all; rather, it's a sequence of 3,214 photographs which Jonathan Harris took over a week's...
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:53:12 -0600
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