January 14, 2006
Unfortunate URLs
Brian Millar has suggested yet another URL that changes its meaning depending on where you mentally divide the words:
(More here…)
[Tags: humor brianMillar]
Speaker info
Atom Feed
Indigo RageBoy
Chris Locke writes about “Indigo Children,” a meme reported on by the New York Times. The Indigo idea sounds like it pushes a whole bunch of buttons all at once — New Age, angels, the paranormal, child-worship, ADD. If it had some anti-child-porn hysteria about it, it’d be perfect. As one of the people in the NYT article says, this is basically the same social world view as Harry Potter’s muggles v. wizards set up.
Anyway, it is a great example of what Chris has been talking about over at Mystic Bourgeoisie, America’s Toughest to Spell weblog. [Tags: chrisLocke rageboy indigoChildren]
January 13, 2006
Movable Type error message
Jay Allen at Movable Type told me why I was getting this error message when I tried to post this afternoon:
Can’t locate XML/RSS/LP.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
> /path/to/my/MT/install/plugins/spamlookup/lib
> /path/to/my/MT/install/extlib lib
> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.5
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
> /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.4/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.2/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.4
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.3 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.2
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.1 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl .) at
> /path/to/my/MT/install/plugins/mt-rssfeed.pl line 107
Jay says the last line tells you which of your Movable Type plugins has gone south. In my case, it was mt-rssfeed. All you have to do to solve the problem is go to the plug-ins configuration panel and disable the plugin. Or re-install the plug-in.
Clay’s course
Clay’s course
The syllabus for Clay’s course on “Social Facts” wants to make me turn my baseball cap backwards and re-enrol as an undergrad. Sounds fantastic. [Tags: clayShirky]
Bush urges diplomatic solution to Iran standoff
= Bush looks at his wristwatch, wondering what’s keeping the Israelis. [Tags: iran israel georgeBush politics]
Rosenfeld and Mernit’s new ventures
Susan Mernit has moved to Yahoo Personal, which is excellent news for Yahoo. And since she’s now blogging about the personals space, it’s good news for all of us, too.
And Louis Rosenfeld, doyen of Information Architecture (damn! I just looked up doyen and it means “senior member,” which Lou chronologically is not, but I’ve always wanted to use the word so I’m going to even though it’s wrong — yeah I’m a little cranky this morning) has launched Rosenfeld Media, “a publishing house dedicated to developing short, practical, and useful books on user experience design.” Lou is, unsurprisingly, embracing the conversational properties of the Internet and trying to break through the Cardboard Wall. (I just made up Cardboard Wall. It means that which separates authors from readers. On the other hand, I was wrong about what “doyen” means, too.) (Disclosure: I am on Rosenfeld Media’s board of advisors. I accepted because I like what Lou is doing.) [Tags: susanMernit yahoo personals louisRosenfeld rosenfeldMedia ux doyen]
January 12, 2006
Social filtering of news: Request for help
For the book I’m writing, I’d like to find examples of sites/services that aggregate and filter news and posts by using your social network as a filter. That is, you can tell the service (implicitly or explicitly) that it should use what your friends find interesting as a guide to guessing what you’ll find interesting. A site like Digg.com isn’t a good example because it doesn’t let me specify some particular people as having interests that should weigh more heavily than the overall community’s interests. (Digg is an excellent example of something else, though :)
Thanks very much, and no matter how obvious the source, please don’t assume I’ve heard of it. [Tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous media]
Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: everythingIsMiscellaneous • media
ESBN – background
I blogged briefly yesterday about ESBN, a way of branding individual copies of digital content (an idea that doesn’t make me all that happy because it plays into the hands of copyright totalitarians). There’s not a lot on the ESBN site about who’s behind it, so I sent a letter to the info address and received the following helpful explanation from Chris Matthieu, presented verbatim (although I added the links because it was a pure text msg):
|
I am the founder of ESBN.ORG. Some of my previous start-ups include: GetVocal.com, MayWeHelp.com, and PizzaOnline.com. While trying to determine which format of an e-book to purchase online, my wife (Beth) came up with a brilliant idea to combine or compile an e-book and a reader on a memory stick that could be attached to your keychain. She called this idea a BookFob (http:// www.esbn.org/bookfob/). Being a developer, I built this application for her to market. To ensure that no one could copy this e-book and freely distribute copies on the Internet, I needed to create a unique identifier that could be associated with the serial number of the memory stick to “lock” the media to the memory stick. The e-book is basically non-functional without the specific memory stick that the unique id is coded to run. BookFob’s unique id turned out to be the ESBN. After further research, I determined this problem was not unique to BookFob. ISBN seems to handle this problem well in the brick and mortar world but it does not work in the online world where you need unique ids for each copy of the digital media rather than one for only the title. The ESBN.ORG site was designed to be the next generation ISBN.ORG solution. After the site was built, word seemed to spread quickly about the potential uses for ESBNs. These additional uses now include copyright registration, digital ownership assignment and reassignment, and even digital media encryption keys. We are currently working with Writely and ZohoWriter to embed ESBN functionality into their online word processing solutions. We have FireFox Extensions and Widgets/Gadgets also in the works. For more information on ESBNs, please direct your browser to http:// www.esbn.org/esbn/faqs.asp. |
[Tags: books isbn esbn chrisMatthieu drm libraries]
January 11, 2006
Open Neuros
I don’t know nothin’ about Neuros products, but I like their open source approach, including a wiki and a feisty public stance against legislation that would hobble video recording equipment because Hollywood doesn’t want us to record what we want. [Tags: drm digitalRights neuros marketing]
Institutionalized: The book
A few weeks ago, I got a promotional copy of a novel in the mail. Institutionalized is written by “Fred Smith & Joe Schmoe,” whom I suspect are pseudonyms. (Since the book is copyrighted by Noel Guinane and Cassandra Helm, I’m pretty sure I’m right about that.) I enjoyed it despite itself, and I’m not entirely sure why.
The book tells about ten weeks in the life of Institutionalized Industries, a global plastics manufacturer. It’s a rough ten weeks, starting with the egomaniacal CEO hiring a maverick VP of Sales pretty much on a whim. The vp is as close as the book gets to having a good guy, or at least someone who isn’t a lunatic. The company undergoes crises caused by the depravity of the management team. It’s quite entertaining.
But it’s entertaining despite the fact that the satire is way too broad for my taste. For example, remember that egomaniacal CEO? His name is Bill Oge. The maverick sales vp? His last name is Kirevam. Yes, almost all the main characters’ names are their distinguishing trait spelled backwards. And the characterizations are about as subtle as The Lockhorns. Their worst traits are endlessly put before us: One of them chews pencils like a beaver, the CEO has a Napoleon complex, etc.
So, this should be at best a mixed review. But the truth is that I really enjoyed it despite what I just said. Although I didn’t care about any of the characters, I enjoyed watching them and their company fall apart. And it parodies typical office communications — the weekly pep talk, the self-serving memo, and yes, even blogs — with glee.
Here’s the Amazon link if you want to see for yourself. (This is a book that would really benefit from having a chapter or two posted on the Web.) [Tags: books Institutionalized satire]
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