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December 21, 2004
Chris Anderson has signed with Hyperion (Random House in the UK) to do a book about The Long Tail, and has started a blog devoted to it. (The long tail is the social effect of the Web apart from the hit-heavy, glamorous side of it.)
December 20, 2004
BlogExplosion is designed to boost traffic to your site by funneling members there according to how many members’ sites you visit. I’ve been playing with it for the opposite reason: It randomly shows me blogs I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise.
In their latest newsletter to members, they list the following feature enhancement:
List blogs by country
The directory got an update so that you can now list blogs by country too. This makes it much easier to locate those blogs from the same region as you.
Ack! Isn’t this feature more valuable as a way of finding blogs that aren’t from the same region? That’s really what I’m looking for.
The front page of the Boston Globe has a good article on podcasting by Peter J. Howe, a staff writer — they didn’t farm this out to one of their (excellent) tech writers. Peter writes:
If Internet-based weblogs turned everyone into a potential newspaper columnist, and digital cameras let them become photojournalists, podcasting is promising to let everyone with a microphone and a computer become a radio commentator.
After the fold, he gets to what the effect podcasting will have on broadcasting: With the ability to mix home-grown creations with an increasing choice of mainstream offerings, we’ll get program allegiance, not channel allegiance.
[Note: The Globe link will break in a day or two.]
December 16, 2004
From a Bilnkx press release:
blinkx is the first search engine to make such TV programs fully searchable on demand. Because blinkx captures and indexes the entire video stream directly from the television, consumers can get straight to the exact clip they want. blinkx TV can be accessed at http://www.blinkx.tv/
Blinkx says it “captures and indexes video streams across news, sports and entertainment programming from 22 channels, including Fox News, ESPN and Biography.”
I haven’t had a chance to try it, and I’m in the air all day (= 24 hours from takeoff till final landing) today…
December 12, 2004
You may notice some new names in my blogroll to the left and a new gif next to some of them. The gif is supposed to be a backwards B and a forwards B with a bridge beteen them, standing for BridgeBloggers. During the planning of this weekend’s Global Voices track at the Berkman Internet and Democracy conference, that was a working name for bloggers who are using their blogs to build bridges to other cultures and lands. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to stamp some of those names with the ugly gif I designed myself this morning.
Yes, all blogs are bridges in one sense or another, although I like Hoder‘s three metaphors: Windows, bridges and cafes. I’ve put the BB gif next to blogs that are consciously trying to build bridges and who were at yesterday’s event. I’m open to discussion of the criterion. (I also don’t have a good list of attendees yet.)
Meanwhile, a Global Voices blog has started up to discuss spreading blogs to give voice to the least heard parts of the world … and ears so those voices can be heard.
December 10, 2004
JZ is giving a talk in his masterful way. I can’t convey the humor and the graphics, but the basics of the idea are (sort of):
With a platform, you can’t predict what people will do with it. that’s what we got when PC’s met the network. That enables tremendous freedom for people to innovate. He calls it “the generative Internet.”
But innovation disrupts. Entrepreneurs who succeed at the platform (e.g., Microsoft) then want to close it off.
Now general purpose PC is giving way to devices that do something addictively well but not open to third party apps — Tivo, Blackberries, XBox.
The insecurity of the Internet will not stand. That’s why we’re seeing gated communities within the network. And the warning from XP that says that an app isn’t certified will expand so that your computer (especially if it’s your business’ or the library’s) simply won’t run “insecure” apps. And won’t we require licensing of sw developers so they can’t produce apps that destroy entire industries?
The Net’s getting closed, JZ says. We’ll see a comeback of the “appliance” model: closed tech. The young nerd’s need to tinker with stuff is under siege.
In the hopeful future, there’s a unified Internet and the freedom to tinker. It’s not just neutral in the middle but the endpoints are free also. (He points out how much damage you could do if you hacked the Microsoft auto-update server.)
It’s about the experts vs. the amateurs, Jonathan concludes.
As you type, the Google Suggests beta suggests completions based on how many hits there are for each possible fulfillment.
At PA it suggests “Paris Hilton” and at PAM it suggests “Pamela Anderson,” so clearly the technology works.
Here’s the script that makes it work. I think.
December 8, 2004
He doesn’t call it that, but his column in InfoWorld, “Bootstrapping the Semantic Web” makes a fascinating point. At a site that aggregates info about people
… I show up as executive editor of Byte Magazine and contributor to Linux Magazine. And while those were once accurate descriptions of me, I have never been a member of Blue Titan’s board of advisors, and I am not the inventor of RSS.
…
Semantic-Web naysayers think people and organizations can’t be bothered to assert machine-readable facts about themselves. And, today, that is undoubtedly true. But when others assert facts about you — as they increasingly will — the tide could begin to turn. Individual acts of self-defense may ultimately combine to bootstrap the semantic Web.
Just a reminder: Tonight, David “End-to-End” Reed is the guest speaker at the discussion series I’m leading…and you’re invited.
December 7, 2004
Good news! David P. Reed is going to be the guest speaker at the series I’m leading at the Berkman Center on Wednesday. This is from the blurb for the event:
The Social Effect of Architecture
David Reed is a co-author of the
seminal paper on the “End-to-End”
architecture of the Net, the creator of what’s now called Reed’s Law
that locates the value of the Internet in its ability to enable groups to form, and is a leading proponent of Open
Spectrum research. Series host David Weinberger
will interview Dr. Reed about what effect the technical architure of the Internet has on its social uses, leaving plenty of time for open
discussion. Note: This will not be a technical session and is likely to range over the many topics Dr. Reed studies.
It’s open to the public, so come on by, tomorrow (Wed.) 6-7:15pm at the Berkman Center at the Baker House, 1587 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge. Here’s a campus map. Pizza is served.
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