The Electronic Standard Book Numbering database has launched. It lets publishers get a unique ID for each copy of e-content. That makes it very different from ISBNs that provide a unique ID for each edition. So, Bantam would have an ISBN for a new paperback edition of Hamlet, and if they sold it in electronic format, each “copy” could have its own ESBN. It’s all part of the attempt to impose the restrictions of the physical on the digital, enforcing scarcity where there is none.

The site gives no information about who is behind it, which turns out to be Chris Matthieu who calls it a “concept site.” Peter Morville, from whom I heard about ESBN, points in an email to the “Medium Neutral ISSN” as a similar effort, albeit one with some standards bodies and industries groups behind it. [Tags: esbn isbn libraries books EverythingIsMiscellaneous peterMorville]

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The Google Pack of free software consists of packages I’ve either already installed or already uninstalled. It’s way more boring than what we’re used to from Google. But ZDnet UK has an interesting take on it:

It’s an upgrade channel, a path straight to your desktop. Microsoft has one with Windows Update; Google wants the same. Expect this to develop rapidly, with many more options such as Open Office — too big, too many implications for the first release — and plenty of pre-installs on new computers.

So long as Google doesn’t do what Microsoft does with its automatic upgrade facility: After installing a critical update, it sometimes reboots your machine without asking you. (It’s a settable default but it’s set to default the wrong way.) [Tags: google googlePack microsoft]

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Doug Kaye, founder of IT Conversations, has launched his new project, The Conversations Network, “a non-profit online publisher of recordings of spoken-word events.” IT Conversations is now officially one “channel” of The Conversations Network, which is transparent to users, so don’t worry. Doug will add more channels, and encourages people to submit high-quality recordings of spoken-word events.

I’m on its board of directors, so I’m totally not unbiased, but I’m on the board because I’ve been excited about this idea since Doug first broached it. [Tags: itconversations podcast dougKaye conversationnetwork media]

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I’ve just started reading After Method by John Law, a defense of messiness in the social sciences. I’m a couple of chapters in and really liking it. [Tags: metaphysics socialScience johnLaw afterMethod EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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Just in case you were looking for the most complete scholarly explanation of where the Darling family, of Clarissa Knows It All, lives.

Personally, I think they live next door to the Simpsons. [Thanks to Leah Weinberger for the link.] [Tags: trivia clarissa tv]

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Planned Parenthood is blogging the Alito hearings, although it’s almost 3 pm, the hearings started at noon, and so far they haven’t posted anything. I want my instant blogratification! Plus they’re moderating comments.

Loosen up Planned Parenthood! [Tags: alito blogs plannedParenthood]

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The Boston Globe obituary of Stanely Tupper of Maine recounts his years in Congress as one of the most principled of liberal Republicans, his vote for the Voting Rghts Act and the Medicare Act, his refusal to support Barry Goldwater or the first Bush president, his law practice, his co-authorship of a book on US-Canada relations, his years as a lawyer and his continued involvement in politics. I hadn’t known of him before reading the obituary, but I came away impressed.

But what struck me most is this quote from his wife towards the end of the article:

But the most fun he ever had on the job, Mr. Tupper told his wife, was when he was a border patrolman in Texas and Maine. ”He was 21, they gave him a Stetson, a horse, and a badge, and no other job ever quite measured up to that,” his widow said.

A Stetson, a horse, and a badge: An American peak experience.

[Tags: america stanleyTupper obituaries]

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After poking around at Thomas Vander Wal’s site and writings (1 2) and at Wikipedia, it turns out that I think I’m wrong about what “folksonomy” means. (And, yes, I’ve poked around both before.)

Thomas seems to call a folksonomy any set of uncontrolled tags (no prior taxonomy, no controlled vocabulary) done by individuals and posted in public. Thomas likes the term especially if the taggers are supplying tags that make sense to them as individuals, rather than suggesting ones they think will work socially. I assume that means that he thinks that if (oddly) there were absolutely no shared tags at Delicious.com, it’d still count it as a folksonomy.

I had been thinking that a folksonomy is one way order emerges from such set of tags: Some are more popular than others. In fact (I’d thought), if you really want a folksonomy to develop, you give people some feedback about how others are tagging the same or similar objects. (Thomas has a useful distinction between broad and narrow folksonomies that applies here.) That feedback causes further crystallization around particular terms. There are other, non-folksonomic ways order may emerge, including using heuristics to cluster tags.

The difference is this: 1) Any site that enables free tagging is necessarily a folksonomy. or 2. A folksonomy is a way of developing a bottom-up taxonomy from the tags being generated at such a site.

If a folksonomy is #1 not #2, then we need a name for #2. And I have the perfect name for it: A folksonomy. :)

By the way, you can see the difference between the two in the Wikipedia article on folksonomy. It equates “folksonomy” with tagging. In the section of the article that presents problems with folksonomy, the criticisms are criticisms of tagging. For example, the first problem cited is that folksonomies “encourage idiosyncratic tagging…” But by what I thought was the definition, folksonomies actually help solve the problem of overly-idiosyncratic tagging. I was on the verge of “correcting” the Wikipedia article when I realized my definition was off. [Tags: taxonomy EverythingIsMiscellaneous folksonomy thomasVanderWal tagging]

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Do you have a Pelouze mechanical postal scale at home that has a display that looks like this?

Note that mine is marked Pelouze Model X2.

If you click here, you’ll get a pretty large jpg (100K) you can cut out and tape over your old scale to update it for the new postal rates taking effect on Monday. Each strip should be exactly 4″ when you print it out.

Note: Since this required me adding in increments or $0.24, it is undoubtedly error-riddled. If so, could you please let me know so I can fix it? Thanks. [Tags: postalrates stamps]

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Rebecca blogs about a joint declaration formulated by Article 19 and the UN suggesting standards of behavior in order to preserve Internet openness. Very cool. [Tags: internet rebeccaMackinnon article19 unitedNations]

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