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December 21, 2001
Just a little thing, but type “drivers” into the search box at Epson, and you get the following screen in return:
Look at the bottom of the navigation box on the left hand side. Look at the results of the search engine. Repeat.
Ack! I actually skipped a day blogging. But it couldn’t be helped. I was on the road, making the rounds of local venture capitalists, helping to get a start-up funded by saying all the right things … you know, the things VC’s love to hear:
”
Your own contributions would be, of course, appreciated.
December 19, 2001
Gary Stock points us to Poynter.org where we can read this memo:
Panama City (FL) News Herald chief copy editor Ray Glenn’s memo re war coverage
Oct. 31, 2001
“…Per Hal’s order, DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian
casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. [Note: “Hal” is News
Herald executive editor Hal Foster.] Our sister paper in Fort Walton
Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening
e-mails and the like.Also per Hal’s order, DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian
casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned
further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down
the civilian casualties, DO IT. The only exception is if the U.S. hits
an orphanage, school or similar facility and kills scores or hundreds of
children. See me if there are any special situations…”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it happens.
If you check one of the weblog directories, you’ll see the ol’ 80:20 rule at work…except on the Web, that becomes the 80,000,000:20 rule. There are a heck of a lot of weblogs out there, but a random sampling of them shows that while they are sociologically interesting – the things that people care about! the way people write and think! wow! – only a handful are of enough appeal to get me back for a second visit. This doesn’t mean they’re not appealing to anyone or that they’re self-obsessed ramblings as some critics of weblogs have said. It just means that on the Web, everyone is famous to 15 people.
If weblogs shouldn’t be measured by mass market, broadcast standards according to which success is directly proportional to the number of readers (excuse me, I mean “eyeballs”), it’d be interesting to know the shape of weblog success. Is anyone – Ev? Dave? – keeping track of numbers such as:
What would these numbers tell us? Maybe nothing. They’re just numbers. Weblogging is going to roll along no matter what the numbers say. But why should the broadcasters be the only ones who know – or at least assert they know – the numeric shape of their market? (Ok, I’ll tell you why: because it’s easier to extrapolate to a mass market than it is to count the ripples made by rain on a pond.)
Covering My Ass: I recognize that it’s quite likely that there’s a prominent page that has all of these stats plus many more. I fully expect the response: “Yo, dude, haven’t you ever been to www.scriptingnews.com/weblogstats/answersyourdumbfuckingquestions.html?” My defense: I’ve made a career out of being ignorant in public.
If you’re running Windows XP and have a digital display, you can tune your ClearType implementation at a nifty Web site Microsoft provides. In fact, on this page you can check and uncheck a box to toggle ClearType and watch the text on the page go from crummy to spiffy in real time.
ClearType is Microsoft’s version of a technology sort-of invented by Apple that takes advantage of the fact that a single pixel on an LCD screen is in fact composed of a red, green and blue sub-pixel. By turning on the sub-pixels selectively, text can be smoothed out (“anti-aliased”). (Adobe also has a version of this technology, called CoolType.) It does make a difference.
(Here’s something I wrote about ClearType a while ago if you want more info. And here’s a Seybold Report on the topic too.)
December 18, 2001
Bill Seitz looks at the similarity of the default backgrounds of the Sharp Actius laptop and Windows XP and asks:
I think the scarier question is why both of them look so much like the
“set” of the Teletubbies
You heard it hear first: Windows XP is gay. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
The Web returns our voice. That to me is the heart of the Web’s appeal and its importance. Weblogs are a perfect example of this: we get to write about what we want in the way that we want, without permission, without having to get a publisher to risk investing in us, without having to go through weeks of extensive rewriting and self-censorship. We can sound like who we are. We can even play with sounding like who we’d like to be or who we’re afraid we might really be or who we are in our culture’s nightmares. (Rageboy take note! :)
Ok, fine. But why is this a return of voice? When did we ever have it in the first place? And it’s not just voice that feels like a return. The sense of connection also seems, at least to me, like something that we once had and now have again. But of course that’s absurd. We’ve never been so connected to so many people in so many places.
The past of voice and connection is not a real past. It’s a mythic past. Origin myths and myths of golden ages have power because they express a longing for a part of our continuing nature. The Web’s gift of voice and connection feels like a reawakened memory because voice and connection have always been at the heart of who we are.
December 17, 2001
A web acquaintance (we really need a word for this relationship!) has asked me to send around a notice for a project he’s working on. Sounds like an appropriate bloggino. So, here goes:
…Professor Arthur B. Shostak at Drexel University, is completing a book that would really benefit from your input. It will discuss the impact of memorable scenes from movies on our lives. Thus far nearly 500 people in over 12 countries have participated.
What scene from a movie (or several such scenes from different movies) do you regard as really consequential in your life? A scene(s) that you cite when you want to make an important point. A scene(s) that altered your view of things. Or taught you something you value deeply. Or scared you forever. Or that you treasure for its humane quality. Its deep-reaching humor. Or its unique perspective. Please share your scene(s) – in your own words, at ANY length (the longer the better).
1) Title of the film:
2) What year did you see the film?
3) How old were you?4) What was/were the impact(s) of the scene? Why?
5) And, what are your thoughts/feelings now about it?
Finally, Professor Shostak would appreciate some bio data:
1) Age
2) Gender
3) Race/Ethnicity
4) Religion
5) Last year of schooling completed (or highest degree earned)
6)Occupation
7) How would you characterize your movie-going?: VERY causal ? Casual? Serious (read and are guided by movie reviews)?
8) About how many movies do you see in a month? (on TV, home rentals, and movie theater combined)Please e-mail this form to [email protected]
Bill Clinton gave a hell of a speech the other day in which he makes the case for lifting up the world. It sounds some of the themes in Tom Friedman‘s recent column and, if I may be so immodest, in my Generation Alpha fantasy … except Bill’s is far better than either of these efforts.
Read it and try to picture this coming out of Chimpie’s mouth. (Pardon me. He deserves our respect as president. Make that “President Chimpie.”)
While we’re on the topic, I highly recommend Jeffrey Toobin’s book, A Vast Conspiracy. Toobin is a mainstream author – The New Yorker, network commentator – who convincingly makes the case that Clinton was brought down for unremarkable sins by an organized effort that began in Arkansas. He’s also a very readable author. (His OJ book, The Run of His Life, was also a great “read.”)
(Thanks to Gary Turner for pointing out the Clinton speech.)
December 16, 2001
Let’s see. I post a glowing bloggino (a small blog entry) about some software brewing over at SpamSubtract. Doc clicks on the link and his Linux-loving heart goes cold when he he reads the first sentence of their survey: “What kind of connection does your Windows PC have to the Internet?” So, the lead guy there (hey, lead guy, am I allowed to use your name?) writes to Doc, makes the Windows-only-ness of it more explicit and less assumed, and posts a brief, frank and unsurprising explanation. I like the explanation if only because it’s written by a real person in real language without bullshit. So, I check back at the SpamSubtract homepage to see how it’s been modified and notice some unrelated language in tiny print at the bottom of the page:
“We are not associated with “SPAM” ©; we’ve never eaten their fine luncheon meats and we certainly don’t want to suggest that you need to subtract them. We think they are cool guys, or, at least their lawyers seem reasonably cool, well, at least as far as lawyers go.”
So, I follow the link to the SPAM company’s statement about the use of the word “spam” in the email sense. And it’s more than “reasonably cool.” It’s very cool. Not only are they not assholes about asserting their sole right to those four letters, they actually talk to us like human beings. It’s clear, reasonable, friendly, helpful. And, in case you’ve forgotten the difference between how normal people talk and what lawyers sound like, they provide a link to their legal and copyright information.
Two company sites (SpamSubtract and SPAM) in two minutes, and both of them sound like human beings. Is the world going insane???
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