July 31, 2003
perl.com: Forget about boring and repetitive code
Interesting article on how to simplify that most boring part of all web programming: getting stuff from a database and showing it in a list.
One of the most boring programming tasks in the world has to be pulling data out of a database and displaying it on a web site. Yet it's also one of the most ubiquitous. Perl programmers being lazy, there are tools to help make boring programming tasks less painful, and two of these tools, Class::DBI and the Template Toolkit, create a whole which is far more drudgery-destroying than its parts.
The immediate benefits of all this are obvious:
- You don't have to mess about with HTML, since the very simplistic use of the Template Toolkit means that templates are comprehensible to competent web designers.
- You don't have to maintain classes full of copy-and-paste code, since the repetitive programming tasks like creating constructors and simple accessors are done for you.
Good piece on the backchannel phenomenon
Ross Mayfield writes about how blogging, chatting and audience interaction (also called "the backchannel") is changing conferences and trade shows.
Los of great links to related blog entries.
Conclusion:
This isn't the place for me to talk about commercial value for event organizers, but let me say this. There is no such thing as a closed system. Bloggers are coming to your conference. You can't throw up Walls. The energy can dissipate or enjoin with the event. Do what Tony did and give out blogger passes. Augment experiences. Create a greater and more open context for your event and the wind will blow at your back.
Ross Mayfield's Weblog | Trade Winds
Found through Many-To-Many.
July 30, 2003
Great fun. Until you pick the wrong address in your address book...
Don't read this if you are the sensitive type. Quote from Nerve.com article: "Lord but it is a good time to be a pervert." I guess that's true. Nerve.com has an excellent article about camera cell phones and erotica.
The marriage between digital cameras and cell phones indeed create a new way of communicating. Of course it will add new ideas, perversions and diversity to the world of erotica.
Here's you, trying on lingerie in the Cosa Bella department, snapping instant pics of various body-licking garments and sending them to his phone/email while he's at the office, a personal fashion show: Like this thong, love? Maybe this teddy? How about this lacy hip-hugger thing that you'll rip off my ass later tonight right before you fuck me silly because I'm getting you all hot and hard and hungry via this crazy luscious instant cellcam technology? God bless Nokia.
Get a video phone. Phone sex takes on a whole new dimension. Be your own porn flick director and directee at the same time, directing the "actor" on your tiny NEC 808 screen while taking directions yourself from that very same person...
Do you think the sly bastard marketing execs at Nokia or Ericsson or the rest realized what an erotic porn-ready firecracker gizmo they had on their hands? You're goddamn right they did.
It is as true as always. Nothing changes. Everything is new.
I guess a new thing is that people used to take pictures to remember stuff. Today we also take and send pictures to communicate.
Mymarkup.net -> Boing Boing -> Nerve.com - Can You See Me Now? by Mark Morford
July 26, 2003
Some points all column writers should keep in mind
Tom Coates published this list of good-to-know points for aspiring column writers over at plasticbag.org. Maybe I should send this to the local morning paper. ;)
Most of these points are also applicable on webloggers. Provided that they are trying to write for an audience that is. I especially like this one:
Let the bandwagon roll by. Even if every columnist in the land is commenting on the mother unjustly sent to prison or the teacher who handcuffed the child to a radiator, you don't have to jump aboard unless you have something to say that the others haven't already said.
All the columnists currently writing about EMU should keep this in mind:
Every columnist needs a good half dozen hobby horses. But do not ride them to death. Once you have sounded off again about, say, Euro Bureaucracy, leave the subject alone for at least six months...
July 25, 2003
In the future, we will all be on permanent vacation
Here is an intriguing question: what will the world (and the economy) look like when there simply aren't enough jobs to go around? When we have a 50% unemployment rate due to the fact that the majority of the workforce has been replaced by robots or automated kiosks?
Well, today the world economy is built around the fact that you get paid when you work, and that pay is spent to get food, housing, stuff, pleasure and entertainment.
So what happens when you don't work, or get fired? You don't get paid. At best, you get some sort of welfare until you find a new job. What then if there simply are no jobs around...
Marshall Brain has written an interesting essay, describing a world where the workforce mainly consists of robots. We will get there, it seems inevitable. The benefits are apparent:
If you think about it, robots are a very good thing. Human beings should not be driving trucks, flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets. These activities represent a massive waste of human potential. The question is: what will these tens of millions of people do to make a living when their tens of millions of jobs evaporate? What will happen to the economy when the unemployment rate reaches 30% or 40%?
Looking at it from the perspective of the employer, having staff that never argues, never complains, always do their job with the same efficiency... ...twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week for zero salary... Yeah, it is inevitable.
We better build those nanotechnology food collectors building food out of thin air that Joe Haldeman describes in his excellent Forever series so we can provide free food to those that can't find a job.
WiFi and Social Software changes conferences and lectures
Lately conferences and lecture halls have started to get wireless connections to the Internet. Of course conference goers and students will use that connection to surf the web, read their email and most interesting: do messaging amongst participants.
Some lecturers may find it annoying, people seeming to be more focused on their keyboards and screens than on the carefully prepared speech and powerpoint slides.
Sure, they can be, if the lecturer is boring. They can also be a whole lot more focused on the topic than is apparent, exchanging links and comments or perhaps blogging notes in real time as the lecture goes on.
WiFi and Social Software allows for a whole new way of having discussions amongst participants of a lecture while the lecture still is going on. And why not? After all, it is the topic of the speaker that is interesting, not the speaker. Don't get me wrong, the speaker is important but mostly in order to provide a topic and backdrop for learning and exchange of ideas.
People have been doing this for ages. It is called "whispering" or "passing notes"...
What's happening isn't new. It's just been transformed by the new tools at our disposal. Before the wifi-enabled backchannel started to emerge, there was still a backchannel. You sat next to people you knew, and whispered to them. "Did you hear that?" "Hey, doesn't that remind you of xxx?" "What did she say?"
Liz Lawley continues:
Is it ego-crushing to walk to the front of a crowded room, step up to the podium, and look out at a sea of faces all focused on the screens and keyboards rather than your carefully prepared remarks? You betcha. But as speakers (and teachers) we have to get over that. We have to learn that complete control over our audience is seldom possible. We have to accept that we can't always demand and receive the full attention of the room we're in. We have to find ways to let people--at conferences, or in classrooms--learn from each other as well as from us.
In another article in New York Times Cory Doctorow put it like this:
"We're just moving the corridor into the room and time-shifting it by 30 minutes," said Mr. Doctorow, who takes notes and posts them to his Weblog, or blog, during conferences, enabling people to follow the speaker and Mr. Doctorow's take on the speaker at the same time.
I wonder if the lecture halls at Halmstad University are wired.
July 24, 2003
Good to know about migrating MT to other servers
Liz Lawley is moving her blog to a new domain. In her two most recent posts she describes some problems that may occur when moving MT to a new server.
Haven't even thought of this, but there definitely is a problem with the permalinks generated by MT if you export all your posts at one server and then import them at another. Due to id:s in the database the numbering of posts will probably be different after the import.
I�ve dragged my heels on this because of the exact issues that Shelley raises regarding weblog portability. As a neophyte blogger, I naively chose the default individual archive templates in MT, which use an entry number that�s not hard-coded to the content. If I export the entries here and import them elsewhere, those ID numbers will change, making redirection extremely difficult. When I switch servers, I�ll switch to name-based individual archive pages (like what Joi uses). But before I can get to that point, I have a couple of things to figure out.
Switching to naming files using the title of the post sounds like a good idea. Perhaps something to think about. Will probably affect listings in search engines as well.
The Age of the Gargoyle is soon here
Ever since Staffan got his Sony Glasstron goggles back when we were working together in Florida I have had wet dreams of a pair of glasses connected to a wearable computer, augmenting reality with information. Since then Sony has discontinued the Glasstrons (they were way too bulky anyway, and you looked pretty weird wearing them...) but now new products are popping up.
I would love to have a tiny screen glued to my glasses, making it possible to read email, browse web pages, google, get messages (and of course really nerdy stuff like checking temperature, getting GPS coordinates, tying GPS coordinates to information making little post-it notes showing layered on top of stuff I watch telling me what they are and what people who have been at a place before thought of it... ;) and so on while strolling around.
Products for wearing a screen on your head has been bulky and clumsy gadgets, really only usable when sitting still like when flying or going by train to far off places. Great for connecting to your portable DVD player, crap for augmenting reality.
A few years ago I scoured the net for parts to create my own gargoyle style wearable computer, inspired by Steve Mann. Of course I never had the financial resources to put the things I found together, but finding the stuff needed was pretty easy. Expensive though, complicated to assemble, and would make you look almost as weird as Mr Mann.
The boring part is really the cords needed to connect the glasses and a handheld control to the PDA/computer and the power supply. Someone needs to fix that. Power over wireless anyone...?
Lately the work on producing actually wearable screens seems to have gone in the right direction. Wearable computers just came a bit closer. Exciting stuff, really, the kind of stuff that will change the way we see and experience the world. And if having cameras in cellphones surrounding you at all times is scary to some people, this should really make their skin crawl.
I found these through Gizmodo:
* FOXNews.com: Cyborg Chic Shades Create Specialized Vision * Eyetop - believe what you see * Frog Design - Motorola wearables concept
July 22, 2003
Browser Problems Caused by Photoshop 7 JPEG images
I have had problems with Internet Explorer suddenly not showing any images on web pages lately. This frequently happens when surfing Aftonbladet, and then the problem remains with all other web sites. As soon as I have emptied the cache and restarted the browser, the images reappear.
Very confusing. At first I thought it was because the cache might be full, as when stylesheets some times are not applied to a page (empty the cache and suddnely all works fine). In this case however, it seems to be becuase of a special JPEG format.
With PS 7, Adobe decided by default to embed XML-encoded "preview" data into JPEG files, using a feature of the JPEG format that permits embedding of arbitrarily-named "profiles". In theory, these files are valid according to the JPEG specifications. However they break many applications, including Quark and, significantly, various versions of Internet Explorer on various platforms.
Very annoying. Yet another reason to switch to Mozilla. More information is available on photo.net:
July 21, 2003
The spam crusader
It's a bird! No, a plane! It's... It's... ...bicycle repair man! No, not really. It's one man against the spam industry. I hope he succeeds.
In the United States and Europe, spam accounts for between 40% and 70% of all email traffic, depending on whom you ask. In January, America Online said it was blocking 1 billion emails a day from members' accounts; by May, that number had doubled. The most fervent antispam activists now predict that the world's email system will seize up within six months. Some organizations just won't have the server capacity to handle the onslaught, and our inboxes will be so packed as to be useless. Even more circumspect forecasters agree that small ISP and businesses may soon be overwhelmed.
Enter Andy Sernovitz:
He has cofounded the Inbox Defense Task Force, which will, he fully expects, throttle spam at the source. He believes that Internet marketers will pony up for an organization that, through investigative digging, harassment, and public education, helps force fraudulent bulk emailers out of business. Rather than trying to block spam after it has been sent, Sernovitz would make it unattractive to send spam in the first place. It is a simple idea, a powerful idea, and -- as of this April morning -- an unpopular idea that has gone mostly nowhere. The Inbox Defense Task Force consists of Sernovitz, former William Morris talent agent Jonathan Trumper, and a newly hired executive director, Joan Campbell, a veteran trade-association manager. The task force operates out of space lent by the company that bought Sernovitz's consulting firm. All told, the task force has collected just two checks from corporate members.
Real world problems of decentralized teams
CNET posted this article on the difficulties of working with people distributed all over the world. Language barriers, cultural differences, different time zones and expensive travel costs... ...amazing that people get any work done at all these days.
Add to that the problem with hard to use technology that strips away visual cues and real contact between people. Very difficult indeed.
Here's a management challenge: Run a 16-country, multilingual team that operates on both sides of the international date line, and make it capable of interpreting thousands of arcane and sometimes conflicting government regulations for product designers back home. And try doing it at a time when travel budgets are tighter than ever.
It's a common sight in many offices: groups of people huddled around a spiderlike Polycom speakerphone for a meeting with colleagues in any number of remote locations. Meeting via phone is often a useful tactic, but have you ever noticed the dynamics of those meetings? If the groups are uneven in size, members of the larger group tend to dominate the conversation and engage in side talk while someone else is speaking. Unable to see each other, people inadvertently interrupt and miss significant visual cues. Some members almost never speak, and by the end of some sessions it appears that there have been two meetings (or three or however many nodes make up the meeting) instead of just one.
Social networking next step for knowledge management?
Dave Pollard has written some very interesting articles explaining his view of the connection between social networking enablement and knowledge management.
In most organizations KM is epitomized by the corporate intranet, the extranet, community-of-practice tools, sales force automation tools, customer relationship management tools, data mining tools, decision support tools, databases purchased from outside vendors, and sometimes business research and analysis. In other words, it's certain specialized technologies and information processing roles, with a thin wrapper of 'knowledge creating' and 'knowledge-sharing' processes. Most of the organizations that have implemented KM bemoan their people's inability to find stuff, the lack of demonstrable productivity improvement, the complexity of the technology, and the absence of significant reusable 'best practice' content.
SOCIAL NETWORKING, SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
...the key technical elements of Social Networking Enablement (SNE) are business weblogs (the repositories of personal knowledge) and social software (the tools that connect people and mine their knowledge). Following is a high-level specification for commercial development of such software. In organizations with structured work processes (manufacturers, banks etc.) these elements would supplement centralized, filtered knowledge repositories of best practices, policies and methodologies etc. In organizations with primarily unstructured work processes (consultants, engineers etc.) these elements could largely supplant centralized, filtered knowledge repositories and the tools that access them.
July 19, 2003
Site defacement challenge, so?
According to attrition.org (and some of the major security companies) the site defacement challenge was a hoax. Even if it hadn't been, should anyone really have worried?
The article makes a good point: the problem with most site defacements is not the kids doing it. Is a site defacement really a "major security problem" at all?
Nearly anyone who provided alerts or commentary to the media on this item should have their heads examined, or at the very least question their ability to be a credible security professional if they really thought this was a "major" security concern. If a system administrator isn't peforming their duties on a daily basis - which includes keeping software patched and properly configured, monitoring log files, turning off un-necessary network services, and such - or if a CIO isn't enforcing strong IT management procedures, they have no business being employed in such a critical role for our large enterprises. Yet nobody's ever held accountable for poor system security and bad system administration practices - no CIO or system administrator's been fired or called to testify on why their site was compromised, or why they're being forced to use substandard, repeatedly exploitable software products that make it easy for anyone to cause mischief on the Net. Until these root problems are fixed (and "Trustworthy Computing" isn't necessarily the right answer) it's likely this situation will continue unabated.
If you don't know what the blinkenlights mean, stay away.
...quite obvious clues generally went unnoticed, since the story was a fantastic way to spice up an otherwise slow news week before the Independence Day holiday. Besides, Iraq is becoming embarassing, and nobody wants to talk about what's going on in Afghanistan right now, so why not spin up a spooky story about a potential Digital Armageddon?
July 17, 2003
Cameras as data collection devices
This I must read later. The site linked from Gizmodo seems down. Slashdotted? ;) But the original author seems to have very interesting things to say about the future of digital cameras.
I never really thought of it in this way (like with so many other objects that are "[everyday things http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385267746/104-7802387-1325515?vi=glance") but digital cameras don't have to be cameras.
A camera captures light. That is a historical fact, and something that has locked in our minds since the days of the first camera obscura. A digital camera however is a totally different device, a device that doesn't have to work like the human eye that the analog camera originally tried to mimick.
Cameras could record tempature. Or infrared energy. Or location with the help of GPS. Or signal from bluetooth devices or RFID tags. We could use our cameras to interpret barcodes. Or measure distance. (Rather...TELL us distance. Even film-based cameras used infrared and sonar signals to establish distance for focusing and exposure.) Right now, we've designed our cameras more or less to see like we see. Thanks to the incredible invention of pencil of light, we've also grown accustomed to cameras as visual recording devices. But whereas film-cameras have been designed to control the exposure of a recording medium to light in order to create a perceptable image, digital-cameras are data-recording devices merely optimized for recording data from light in order to mimic the experience of film-cameras, including the production of a perceptable image.
Can't wait for that site to come back online.
July 09, 2003
Par 1.52: paragraph formatting
This is a software for reformatting text paragraphs.
Par 1.52 is a package containing documentation and ANSI C source code for the filter par.
I wish all my applications where I receive (sometimes) quoted text or text with signatures and other weird and sloppy formatting would pipe the text through this. :)
Magnus Bodin provided the link.
Enkelriktat: Excellent text on how speed reading works
I have been doing this for some years, but reading in this way makes my eyes really tired. Speed reading compared to ordinary reading is to me like lying on a bed relaxing compared to lying on a bed with all your muscles tensed. Tiring.
The article also mentions that one of the big obstacles to learning how to speed read is fear of skipping important information or not understand what the text is saying. Totally recognise that in myself.
What I need is practice. Speed reading saves a lot of time (for people who read a lot that is ;).
From the article is a link to another page at Enkelriktat describing why speed reading is a good skill to have, and that all people benefit from it.
I am not so sure about the last part. My experience is that a lot of people don't read much after their school years. But I guess it can be connected; if you feel reading is a cumbersome and slow task that takes too much time it definitely is boring (like my relationship to golf). Learning how to read in a more efficient way when you are young would probably make reading a more fun and exciting experience.
Niklas at Enkelriktat sums speed reading up with these points:
- Prepare your reading by checking out the table of contents and flipping through the book, taking note of questions and items that you want to know more about when you are done. Set goals, in a way.
- Don't mouth the words in your head. It just takes unnecessary time. You don't need to "hear" the words to understand them.
- Avoid skipping back a few lines to reread things you think you missed.
- Use a visual guide such as your finger, a ruler or a pen. Follow the current line you are reading with it in a comfortable speed.
- Focus your eyes "softly", that is don't focus on every single word. Try to see whole parts of lines and sentences instead of individual words.
- Keep the book as far away from your eyes as possible to make it easier to avoid focusing on individual words.
One more thing: practice, practice, practice.
Speed reading is not for novels though. Finishing a good novel makes me sad. I want it to go on and on and on. No speed reading there.
PCStats: Introduction to home WiFi
Since I have such crappy coverage in my bed room, I prolly need to read this...
Abstract: This article will cover purchasing and setting up home wireless equipment, look at the available standards for wireless networking, and cover some basic security guidelines.
SAML: An overview and introduction
This is an introduction to SAML, clearing away some myths and misunderstandsings about the new Security Assertion Markup Language.
Combine it with the exploding weblog and RSS cloud and interesting things start to happen. Link found via Marc Canter.
As a newcomer, the new Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) specification is being compared to existing single-sign-on technology, authentication services, and directory services. SAML is the first of what will likely be many authentication protocols to leverage Web infrastructures, where XML data moves over HTTP protocols on TCP/IP networks. SAML was developed at the OASIS group as an XML-based framework for exchanging security information. SAML is different from other security approaches mostly due to its expression of security in the form of assertions about subjects. Other approaches use a central certificate authority to issue certificates that guarantee secure communication from one point to another within a network. With SAML, any point in the network can assert that it knows the identity of a user or piece of data. It is then up to the receiving application to accept if it trusts the assertion. Any SAML-compliant software can then assert its authentication of a user or data. This is important for the coming wave of business workflow Web service standards where secured data needs to move through several systems for a transaction to be completely processed.
July 08, 2003
RFID. Remember it. You will hear a lot about it.
This weird new acronym has been popping up all over my screen all day. Boing boing, Dan Gillmor, Tech News... First I didn't think nothing of it, I tried to follow Supernova, but when it showed up on IP and then on mymarkup.net I realised I probably should find out more.
RFID spells out Radio Frequency Identification and is briefly put a way of tagging objects with chips that transmit a unique signal identifying the object.
Invented in 1969 and patented in 1973, but only now becoming commercially and technologically viable, RFID tags are essentially microchips, the tinier the better. Some are only 1/3 of a millimeter across. These chips act as transponders (transmitters/responders), always listening for a radio signal sent by transceivers, or RFID readers. When a transponder receives a certain radio query, it responds by transmitting its unique ID code, perhaps a 128-bit number, back to the transceiver. Most RFID tags don't have batteries (How could they? They're 1/3 of a millimeter!). Instead, they are powered by the radio signal that wakes them up and requests an answer.
Always there, always "on". No moving parts, long lifespan.
Great for keeping track of products and parts in a supply chain, great for making sure all those containers are going in the right directions and truly helpful in tracking everything you buy, everything you carry with you and oh, yes, where you are spending your time during the day... And night.
Sounds ominous enough? Getting that Orwellian vibe yet? Good. You probably should. Especially since this seems to me to be one of those fascinating technologies that has some really appealing applications: Never again lose your keys. Marking your CDs? Don't bother, you can keep track of their RFIDs. Counting money in your wallet, nah, it reads out on the LCD display based on the RFIDs on the bills. Scared that your kid gets lost in the mall or perhaps even kidnapped? Nope, not without removing or destroying all those RFIDs on and perhaps even in his body first. Looks like it can do some seriously helpful work, those little chips.
Of course, you'd have to trade off all your privacy and all your anonymity unless some serious regulation is made in this to date pretty unregulated area. There are no laws saying that vendors need to diable RFIDs when they leave the store, so why should they. There isn't even a law requiring objects containing RFIDs to be labelled as such.
This is pwerful and scary stuff. Read the article in The Register for a great breakdown of the possibilities and risks. The article also explains the driving forces behind innovations like these (did you know that bar codes where invented over 50 years ago, but didn't catch on until more then 30 years after their invention).
Some links to follow up on regarding wiki background
Found these links mainly through Ecyrd's site. No time to read them all now.
Brief introduction at MSNBC:
At first a Wiki (named for �wiki wiki,� Hawaiian for quick) seemed to me to be like a metablog without the handy linear organization. But seeing it that way misses the point, which is collaboration.
Weblog central: WHAT�S A WIKI?
Some background material on the wiki phenomenon:
Lately there's been a spate of posts in the blog world about wikis. I've gathered up and made a first pass at organizing the ones I've encountered into what might be a reasonable order (based on my current level of ignorance).
Mc Gee's musings: Getting up to speed on wikis
Clay Shirky gives a practical example:
And the Great and the Good of the weblog syndication world are doing this work...in a wiki. There are lots of good reasons for using a wiki, of course, instead of a trackbacked weblog conversation. Though both weblogs and wikis support conversational patterns, weblogs are "conversation as published comments" while wikis are "conversation as shared editing." Weblogs tend towards polarized or divergent views, while wikis tend towards convergent ones, which is just what you want for a conversation around standards.
Web based database course
An interesting looking online training course on databases.
Looks worth checking out later. Good holiday reading perhaps? :)
Another type of network effect: the scary type
I can't decide which is more scary. The confirmation of our vulnerable high tech society through this dissertation or the naive reactions from various officials and CEOs upon learning about it.
This is no news to anyone who has been working in the IT, telco or electricity sector the past years: We live in a networked, interconnected and oh so vulnerable society where we depend on a lot of gadgets, cables and network nodes in order to lead this comfortable life.
Not everyone seems to be aware of this. In fact, reading samples from a recently finished (not yet published, if it ever will be) dissertation by an American grad student (Sean Gorman) mapping the American infrastructure geographically, government officials response was that it should simply be classified:
When Gorman and Schintler presented their findings to government officials, Mc Carthy recalled: "they said, 'Pssh, let's scarf this up and classify it.'"
Yeah, that probably rids us of the problem that a student mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.
He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. ... He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?"
Gorman compiled his interactive map using material he found in open sources on the Internet. None of it was classified.
"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. "The fiber-optic network is our country's nervous system." Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things. "You don't want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up," he said.
No, that's true. Especially considering that you most likely don't need a hedge clipper or even have to go near some of those important nervous-system nodes in order to cause them serious harm. Build your own HERF-cannon using ordinary hardware parts with a budget of $500.
Sean Gorman's problem is not however the implications of his dissertation. Like so many other grad students he worries about getting a job.
"Is this going to completely squash me?" he said, biting his fingernail. GMU has determined that he will publish only the most general aspects of his work. "Academics make their name as an expert in something. . . . If I can't talk about it, it's hard to get hired. It's hard to put 'classified' on your list of publications on your r�sum�."
True. But somehow I don't think Gorman will have a problem finding a job.
July 07, 2003
TV.nu: TV show reminders via SMS
The (very good I might add) TV listings site TV.nu just released a new service: reminders via SMS.
This is a great service for people like me with a very obvious disability when it comes to remembering when that great show is on, or when that excellent documentary that I just have to see airs.
Seems easy enough to use, readily accesible from the TV listings. But of course it costs you to be a bit senile. Free to join, but each reminder adds 3 SEK to your phone bill (I guess, they don't specify how you pay).
DEMO | Sms-p�minnelser @ tv.nu
Had an interesting related discussion on #joiito with a few guys from Finland (Hi samikki and Ecyrd!) about SMS services. Did you know that in Finland you not only buy bus fairs using your cell phone, you can also pay for your parking and even your speeding tickets (of which the amount somehow is tied to your income...)! Needs checking out. ;)
Salon.com: The Ted Nugent Essence of Life Gonzo Recipe
The ultimate alpha male, Ted Nugent, has published a book with favorite recipes...: "Kill It and Grill It" is the obvious title. This is a must have for my cook book collection.
Salon.com has a brief review. I guess there isn't much more to say. ;)
Choosing the best recipe from "Kill It and Grill It" is not an easy task. There is the "Bubble Bean Piranha � la Colorado Moose," dubbed the official "primo-extremo brew" of "Nugent Whackmaster Headquarters" since 1968. There is the Filetmaster's Fresh Fish Fry, said to be a favorite of Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, which comes with the advice, "consenting adults would do much better to dine nekkid."
Salon.com Life | The Ted Nugent Essence of Life Gonzo Recipe
tazaa.info: Un-tethered, elements of a wireless lifestyle
This guy threw a bunch of junk out of his bag, bought a smaller load of hardware and came up with a beautifully connected and always-on setup at a running cost equal to what he had before.
Nevertheless, I tried a little experiment - how to be wired always, and be not beholden to a Bell pipeline to the Internet. I have to say it proved to be much easier than I really realized - and much has to do with three current trends - the rise of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and of course the unrelenting march of Moore's Law.
Damn those quotes look good. :)
I wonder if this would be possible in Sweden. Need to check this out.
om malik | taaza.info | Un-tethered, elements of a wireless lifestyle
Health-news: Mobile phone use may improve men�s memory
I don't know about this one... According to a recent study men get better short-term memory when exposed to active cell phone. Women don't.
Sex-dependant energy fields?
It is a pretty small study, and I guess it sounds like it is paid for by the cell phone industry like Gizmodo says, but there is a rather ominous qouote at the end:
However, Dr Smythe added, �The fact that mobile phones exposure influences brain function in any way could possibly mean that cumulative EMF exposure might well result in damage.�
Health-News.co.uk: Mobile phone use may improve men�s memory
This post is also a test of my modified Kwiki formatting rules. Check out the neato block quote. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Erik.
Update: Well, apparently it wasn't as easy as I thought. The extendability of Kwiki doesn't reach MT, the plugin calls the unmodified CGI::Kwiki::Formatter only. So I had to modify that and rebuild the Kwiki installation. Which I did. Hopefully nothing else breaks. ;)
July 06, 2003
Reviews don't come much rougher than this
This is the roughest review I have ever read. I do agree that the songs I have heard from the last Madonna album aren't exactly the best she made (to me Like A Prayer tops the list and from there it was all down hill) but this is harsh. Really harsh. And fun.
By Mark Prindle in Citizine, found through Halley's Comment:
"...in all my years of reviewing - from the beginning of the 20th century clear through to the end of the 21st -- I never expected to come across an album with such a volatile mixture of uncreative melody, embarrassing production, and offensive, moronic lyricism that would physically bust through the bottom of my scale and force my wife to design a graphic for "ZERO." After all, how would one go about getting a ZERO on a scale of 1 to 10? Genius that she is, Madonna has figured it out!"
Citizine Reviews - Madonna "American Life" (Bad Raps & Rapping, Pointy Vogue Sex Book)
July 05, 2003
v-2: Whatever happened to serendipity?
This is the concluding speech (I think), by Adam Greenfield, at the 1imc: the 1st International moblogging conference.
Seems to have been an interesting conference indeed. See more links at the end of the post.
Adam Greenfield defines what to him is the defining aspects of moblogging: the intersection of people, place and information. Hey, make it 3P instead: People, Places, Postings. ;)
In his speech he talks about the future of moblogging, and how it can grow to a new way of getting information while travelling for instance.
He rounds up with a few words of warning: what happens when you have all the information you ever need and ask for in your palm, telling you beforehand what you will meet or find at a new place? Adventure is lost. Discovery disappears. Is that what we want?
Not really, is it? That won't make us feel very special when encountering new music or great clubs or cozy neighborhood pubs. The feeling of serendipity, I guess. ;)
(I love the tool in #joiito to look up words.)
We need to be careful, Adam says, not to ruin the feeling of seeing something for the very first time or finding something precious to you that you invested a lot of time and effort searching for.
v-2 Organisation | media culture | Whatever happened to serendipity?
Links to more info about the 1imc:
marginwalker.org - official site and blog
July 04, 2003
Ray Ozzie: Extreme Mobility
This a fascinating post on the future of mobility by Ray Ozzie. He describes how he sees different technology "spiral" together to create new ways of working, socializing and developing / offering services.
Lots of bits and pieces in here that are fascinating. Here is an example, clarifying something that has been nagging me for a while.
"Back in the mid 80's, a few of us began working on a product now known as Lotus Notes whose market requirements dictated a different model than those popular in that era - one with a form of mobility at its core. I'd refer to it as a 'synchronization & security first' style of systems design. A style in which you must first, come to terms with the fact that your application and its data are going to be distributed all over the place, and second, you must deal with these two key issues as a core aspect of the application's design and operation, as opposed to being an afterthought.
What do I mean by 'afterthought'? Well, let me ask the following simple question with regard to synchronization: How many copies of your Contacts do you have? Did your phone come with a 'sync cable' and a CD with a program that enables you to 'sync your contacts with your email program'? That's an afterthought. Somebody designed the phone's firmware, and then said 'OK, how do I get contacts into this thing?'
How could it be different if 'contact mobility' weren't an afterthought? Well, think about it: your phone is connected to a network. Why aren't your phone's contacts automatically synchronized through the 'cloud' with your PC, which is also ultimately connected to the same cloud? Why does your phone's display not automatically show your next appointment or meeting, being connected to that same 'cloud'? And so on."
That is so true. All our gadgets and toys are connectable, but they aren't truly connected. They exchange information, but they don't communicate. They can see eachother, provided we work the correct magic using cables, WiFi or radio waves, but they aren't really aware of eachother.
They are all solo artists, not a great band with you as the lead singer. As it should be.
Guradian: Picture messaging taking off
A writer in the Guardian, Sean Dodson, wrote this good piece on the emerging acceptance of camera phones and how people tend to use them in unexpected ways.
According to Mobile Data Association, quoted in the article, there is however less person to person communication going on than people sending pictures to themselves or friends using bluetooth / IR.
Could it be that people find it too hard to configure the MMS or GPRS functionality of their phones? Or don't see the reason why they should publish things they take on the web...? Like some other geeks I know? ;)
He also mentions the variety of novel and practical uses found for camera phones. Snapping photos of damaged goods, magazine covers, injuries, taxi drivers, criminals or suspicious individuals (that's a scary one). This is what happens when interesting technologies mix and become common place, people use them in ways previsously not thought of.
"'Although there was a lot of hype with the launch of things like Vodafone Live, the reality is only a small percentage of users have camera phones in the UK,' explains Ben Wood, a mobile phone analyst at Gartner. 'We regard photo messaging as a kind of disposable photography. It's sending a picture you probably would not have previously taken.'
I like the phrase "disposable photography". Very good label. Most pictures taken with camera phones probably never would have been taken with a regular camera or even an ordinary digital camera. It is the ease with which you pass the picture on to others or to oter equipment of yours that is the thing. Not just the fact that you always carry a camera with you.
"It's too early to tell how picture messaging is doing, but it is worth remembering that text messaging was first available in 1993 and it did not take off until 1998. The mobile internet was first available in 2000 and only now is it also beginning to take off. Unlike the pictures the phones take, there is no immediate answer."
July 03, 2003
When you are There, people see what you type you feel
Steven Johson wrote this article about There, a new chat / community environment going live later this year. I first heard about it over a year ago, but didn't think more of it since I didn't have a powerful computer enough to even sign up for beta testing...
Apparently Steven has had a preview of the There environment and an oppotunity to test the avatar facial expression engine that the people at There says is totally out of the ordinary.
According to Steven it is quite special.
The article made me think of Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, and how some of the characters in the book built their fame and fortune on programming true to life avatars. Are we going there now? IRC with facial expressions?
Interesting development. Communicating with voice, but hiding your true looks behind an avatar that you control with your hands... What everybody wants, right? Judging from how chatting on the Internet has developed over the years it must be chatter Nirvana.
David Weinberger: The Need for Leeway
We get through life by constantly cutting the people around us some slack. If we were to rigidly and strictly impose every rule and law we would all go mad.
David Weinberger has written a piece on the importance of leeway a while back. In a brief and to the point manner he explains how the digital world enables us to be very strict about rules we define and why that may not be a very good idea.
Being fair and just is not about treating everybody exactly the same way all the time.
Syndicated blog search: Searching the blogosphere
Found this via unstruct.org. Micah Alper has created a search service that can make a syndicated search through the blogs in your blogroll. Neat.
This is the stuff needed to make searching the blogosphere more efficient. Get code to paste your blogroll search interface from Micah Alpern's site.
"Until the semantic web arrives the best method we have to understand a users point of view is to examine the RSS feeds they subscribe to. I currently read RSS feeds from over 70 websites. This list of RSS feeds includes friends, publications, and domain expects; all people whose opinions I value. If Googling my weblog is like searching by backup brain, then searching all sites in my RSS news aggregator is like searching the brains of people I respect and find interesting."
Canesta keyboard: Making Jarre jealous
Now we're talking. Lase projected virtual keyboard. I want one for my phone.
Moblogging just got more fun.
"The Canesta Keyboard is the world's first projection keyboard capable of being fully integrated by OEMs into smart phones, cell phones, PDAs, or other mobile or wireless devices. When equipped with the Canesta Keyboard, the OEM device uses a tiny laser 'pattern projector' -- also developed by Canesta -- to project the image of a full-sized keyboard onto a convenient flat surface between the device and the user, such as a tabletop or the side of a briefcase."
Make them noisy and privacy is retained
Found through Gizomodo: an article about a Korean bill proposing that all camera phones should have to make a noisy "click" when snapping a picture.
Well, this is one way of making it harder for the dumbasses like those at mobileasses.com to snap candid pictures (argh... ...must... ...fight urge to... ...make Monty Python jokes...) of unsuspecting victims.
"Huh Un-na, a ruling Millennium Democratic Party member on the Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Telecommunications committee said that the party plans to submit a bill mandating that cameraphones be designed to emit a loud noise when photos are taken. The noise would alert people in public that their picture might have been taken. Huh said the bill would require that mobile handset manufacturers install the noisemaker in cell phones, in order to prevent what she called 'human rights infringements' and to prevent corporate espionage."
But does crippling our electronics, making them even more annoying than they already are even, solve any problems?
Gizmodo: "If someone wants to snap pictures surreptitiously there are plenty of others ways to go about it that don't require the use of a cameraphone. And why stop with cameraphones? Why not put make all digital cameras, or even small film cameras, emit a noise when their shutter is snapped? How about having tape recorders make a loud noise when the record button is pressed, so that people don't have to worry about being clandestinely recorded?"
Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea
YES! Quicksilver by Neal Stephensson
Finally. A new read from Neal Stephensson is coming.In this wonderfully inventive follow-up to his bestseller Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of breathtaking genius and discovery, men and women whose exploits defined an age known as the Baroque.
Dadadodo: Exterminate all rational thought
A software creating new sentences from old ones based on frequency of word occurrences in the original text.
Got to read this later.
"William S. Burroughs called this 'cut up theory'. His approach was to take a page of text, divide it into quadrants, rearrange the quadrants, and then read the page across the divisions. He wrote this way; writing, cutting up, shuffling, publishing the result. Collage and randomness applied to words. He saw this as a way of escaping from a prison that words create for us, locking us down into one way of thinking: an idea echoed in Orwell's '1984', where the purpose of NewSpeak was to make ThoughtCrime impossible by making it inexpressible: 'The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.''"
TheRegister: Wanadoo is caching your KaZaA
Here is an interesting business model. First you develop an excellent platform for P2P-filesharing and by offering it for free to the users make it successful enough to hog loads of bandwidth. In step 2 you develop a software for ISPs, providing them with a cache for the P2P-network, reducing server load and international bandwidth usage. Sell expensively. Great! I love their thinking!Of course, you would have to worry about RIAA lawyers come knocking on your door when they realise that your caching software actually stores illegal copies of music and movies, making it a whole lot faster and easier for people to get the latest copy of the HULK before it reaches the theaters in Sweden...
"Subscribers of Wanadoo Netherlands can download MP3s and videos twice as fast, thanks to a PeerCache set up by the company for users of KaZaA and other peer to peer networks."
Actually, this gets even more interesting. We all know what types of files flow in P2P-networks. Copyrighted music and movies, games and software.
Normally, nothing is stored centrally in a P2P-network to avoid the problem of storing illegal files in an easy to find (and shut down) location. What is a cache? Centrally stored (or perhaps more correct parts of?) files for users to share, bringing the already downloaded / uploaded megabytes closer to people requesting them again and again.
"PeerCache is highly controversial. Typically, files are only swapped between users; there is no central server for downloading. The KaZaA network merely points users to files contained on other PCs. For this reason The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last week changed legal tack, threatening to file lawsuits against thousands of individual file traders."
Should ISPs be allowed to cache content flowing in their networks in order to reduce traffic? Of course. Should they be allowed even if the contents in the cache are illegal copies of music and movies? Of course!
Anything else would be like having whatever authority responsible for the roads trying to stop cars containing fleeing bank robbers...
Don't walk and thumb type at the same time!
It just to be "don't run with scissors", now it's "don't walk and type"... Everywhere I turn today I see people thumb typing away on their cell phones. Sending SMS of course, text communicating in chunks of 150 characters.
It is apparent that cell phones have changed the way some segments of the population communicate and stay in touch. We haven't seen nothing yet though. Add mobile cameras and screens, always connected, in the mix and weird things start happening.
We need to define new ways of thinking when it comes to privacy and public places, what is ok and not. We will probably need new laws and regulations (at least media corporations will try to get them...), to control that privacy and the flow of imagery, copyright and ownership. Companies will have to redefine their business model...�
Last night Gibson wrote about how old business models can collapse when meeting new technology like the phenomenon linked below, people taking pictures of covers and images in not yet bought magazines and sending to friends.
"The unexamined aspect of the model, here, has been that you previously hadn't been able to show anyone an image in a magazine until you'd somehow physically acquired a copy of that magazine, and had left the retail environment with it."
"Digital shoplifting" the japanese book stores call it.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan's 'digital shoplifting' plague
Halley Suitt: How to become an alpha male
There's a fascinating expression in the English language: "alpha male". Being an "alpha male". Oh, to be The Alpha Male of the pack, that's what it is all about. Isn't it?Since I first saw Ted Nugent perform "Cat Scratch Fever" live on stage (on TV, how old do you think I am...) I knew who was the real alpha male. ;)
Jokes aside, the expression always fascinated me. Clearly some males and females have a quality that attracts the rest of us. Perhaps it is an alpha-gene. Perhaps they are just wise and nice. Perhaps the rest of us are shallow and like good looks. Who knows.
Halley Suitt wrote 18 posts on how to become an alpha male. I have only read the first three, but I am definitely going to read them all when I get home. They are really funny.
Cristina, watch out. ;)
Halley's Comment: How to become an Alpha Male in 18 lessons.
Found this through Joi Ito's blog, where he recently wrote an interesting post to Halley on how he grew up in a family of alpha females.
July 02, 2003
Joi Ito: Review of Science in Action
During a discussion on IRC about science and whether it is a method, tool, philosophy, belief system along other belief systems and so on Joi Ito dropped this link and recommended a book related to the subject.
"It approaches the process of the progress of science and the development of 'facts' from the human and social perspective. Latour starts out the book by chronicling the discovery of DNA and the development of the Eclipse MV/8000 computer. He shows how 'facts' are black boxes that become fact through a process of competition that involves building networks of references until people start to refer to your theory as a fact and use it to build their facts."
It seems an interesting read. Joi mentioned something in the channel on how labs and processes can be working wrong since they are modelled around something they want to prove. At least that is how I interpreted him. Like quantum physics. You choose what to study since you can't measure speed and position at the same time, so perhaps you get the result you are looking for...?
Scribbling.net: Help your local Google-bot
This is a good roundup of practical real world advice on how to make your site more accesible to Google's bots.
Getting a good ranking in Google is no rocket science. Nor is it an extreme sport for the webmasters more daring than others. It is simply a matter of learning what makes the Google-bot happy and adapting to it.
Like Gina at Scribbling.net excellently phrases it: "When authoring a web site, keep in mind that the Googlebot is software, which means it has a set of capabilities and limitations and algorithms it uses to index content." Learn the inner workings of Google-bot and you have come a long way baby.
Something I have been wondering about is just how often Google crawls a site. Using my small spider-trap at www.fortunes.nu I get email alerts every time a known search engine bot comes across Nookie's doorstep.
Google-bot comes visiting several times a day. Which is odd, considering that the front page of www.fortunes.nu changes very little from day to day.
Oh well. Read. Learn. Do.
"Every few days Scribbling.net is ripe with new content, just waiting and wanting to be indexed and searched. Scribbling.net trembles with anticipation for it's weekly-or-so Googlebot visit, and when the big G arrives, let me tell you, it's like a well-choreographed dance. The Googlebot and Scribbling.net have all the elements of a healthy relationship: love, trust, respect, honesty and understanding. It's beautiful, really. Your site can know this kind of bliss too."
July 01, 2003
NewsGator: RSS help Triple Point build a new information management solution
Found this through mymarkup.net. Very interesting read about spreading information internally using blogs, RSS feeds and Outlook.Employees blog instead of sending email to static lists of recipients. Systems generate reports and alerts in XML-based formats and RSS feeds. People watch and read stuff of interest to them using Outlook and NewsGator in some integrated fashion. This all adds up to information reaching most of the intended audience rapidly at the same time as it is stored centrally and permanently for all of the organisation to search when needed.
A whole lot better than information ending up in peoples individual mailboxes, where it is pretty darn hard to reuse later by new people in the organisation. Neat.
I especially like the part about people not really accepting any other solution requiring them to use another application than Outlook as reader.
Not that I am huge fan of Outlook per se (even if it is one of the better apps to come out of Redmond IMHO) but I have long had the opinion that people want one tool. Several sources of information, one reader aggregating it for them. People are lazy. Make it simple.
"Triple Point's information has traditionally been stored in individual mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook. But as the organization is growing, users are realizing that email is not necessarily the best communication mechanism for critical information which must be regularly updated, distributed, and archived. Corporate knowledge tied up in Outlook and Exchange is difficult to find, difficult to search, and generally not available to all users who need access to the information in a convenient way."
"Internal weblogs were created using Six Apart's Movable Type. Internal authors are accustomed to sending email, but now post certain information to their new weblog instead; when they do, a permanent, searchable record exists of the information. 'It's a delicate balance between email and weblogs,' says Allie, 'but we're getting better at it.'"
Sliiiiiiiiiiiinky - the world's longest Slinky??
Using the longest Slinky (yes, the metal spiral thingie that walks down stairs) to generate sound...
"Here are photos and a description of my long 21 metre (71 foot) Slinky. Richard James invented the Slinky in 1945, and his family still run James Industries, employing over a hundred people manufacturing Slinkies. On 12 November I spoke to Tom James, CEO of James Industries, and he told me he was unaware of any otherSlinkiesof this length."
Tom's Hardware: Building a home network
Interesting guide and howto for building your own home network. Describes wired as well as wireless considerations.
"Considering that the Internet has become a mainstream feature of our collective lifestyle in just a few short years, unless the home you are buying is fairly new it is likely that you are pretty much left to your own devices when it comes to networking."
Eggsactly.