Pasta is a tool developed by Maciej Cegłowski to paste text in del.icio.us. It is extremely useful for keeping track of notes jotted down quickly or of stray links associated only through a random idea.
In case you do not know, del.ico.us is a web based social bookmarking application. (Similar to flickr). It is winning new converts every day.
Del.ico.us was developed by Joshua Schachter. (Joshua Schachter and Maciej Cegłowski had also co-developed LOAF)
I had been wasting an enormous amount of time on del.icio.us for the last couple of months. It is both an obvious and a blindingly brilliant idea! Very addictive ...
This post from July 2004 by Clay Shirky (via Manageability) mentions a whole bunch of applications that started with the same basic idea. But looking at the Internet landscape now, it is obvious that del.ico.us won hands down.
Peter Merholz in this article called Metadata for the masses provides a terrific context for a conversation on this subject. Peter's weblog is a good place for tracking conversations on this subject (or what he calls 'ethnoclassification').
I had been struggling with the idea of a personal schema for quite some time now. This, kind of ties into that.
If true, it is a scandalous story. I don't usually read user agreements anymore. Most people I know don't either. But the idea that those agreements may not even be available to you for reading is scary. I hope it gets some traction in the media. (Via Dan Gillmor).
Gillmor has lately become a big champion for the mainstreamization (my contribution to the English language) of RSS. He linked to a story by Steve Outing which suggested that RSS can be a good alternative to e-mail for getting newsletters to subscribers:
I strongly encourage all my readers to play around with RSS (ie those who are not already using an RSS reader). I am currently using the beta version of a product called FeedDemon. It is incredibly easy to set up and use. By far the best RSS solution that I have seen so far. The product is available for trial download and is expected to be priced ( I read at $29 at a review site) when it is launched. But there are plenty of other very good RSS readers available for free downloads. The problem is not so much of finding one, but that of choosing one from the many that are available. I had used one that I was not particularly happy with for a while and have been looking around for a better choice. There simply are too many choices.
If you are a serious news consumer and / or surf a lot, you are going to have to get used to RSS. A few good places to look for information on RSS are Syndic8 and lockergnome. Mark Pilgrim has been an RSS evangelist for the last few years and has an extensive archive on his weblog on the subject.
I would not have been able to keep up with all the weblogs and news outlets that I want to keep up with, if it were not for RSS.
Talking of weblogs. Tanya Rabourn recently posted two very useful stories on facet mapping. In the first post, she explained how she implemented facet maps for her site. In the second, she provided links to two new MT plugins that would achieve the same end. I am not exactly knowledgeable about the MT internals and am yet to digest the information on those pages. But the idea of facet mapping is intuitive and it ties into my troubles with categorization. I was also intrigued to read about the reference to Dr. Ranganathan:
For Ranganathan, the problem with the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems is that they used indexing terms that had to be thought out before the object being described could fit into the system. With the explosion of new information early in the 20th Century, the enumerative, or pre-planned, systems could not keep up. Ranganathan's solution was the development of facets. This idea came to him while watching someone use an erector set (Garfield, 1984)
Rather than creating a slot to insert the object into, one starts with the object and then collects and arranges all the relevant pieces on the fly. This allows for greater flexibility and a high degree of specificity
Anil Dash hinted (while linking to Tanya's post) that MT is planning to roll out something similar to facetmapping on MovableType Pro.
An interesting summary in Financial Times about the changing IT industry landscape.
This analysis of Netflix's DVD Allocation System looks very interesting for all sorts of reasons.
I am kind of interested in inventory control, allocation strategies and their efficacies in addressing sudden peaks in demand. If you know of any links, I would appreciate hearing about them.
Metafilter Remixed: I no longer have the bandwidth to follow mefi. This (assuming that it works) is a very welcome addition (via LinkMachinego)
Happy new year every body.
Also, happy twentieth anniversary to Internet!
Kiruba has posted an interview with Mark Frauenfelder in his weblog. Frauenfelder was one of the original Wired employees who went on to become the editor of Wired.com. And of course he is the founder of BointBoing.net.
Like most other guys who were working on the internet sector in the nineties, I was a huge fan of Wired. I used to buy three month old issues of Wired magazine in Fountainhead (one of my favourite bookstores in Bangalore) at obscene prices and read them cover to cover. I was obsessed enough to dig up and buy the first issue of Wired when I reached California. Wired caught the hopes and the aspirations of a generation that was dreaming of changing the technology landscape and people like Fraudenfelder, Steven Johnson, Carl Steadman et al were the standard bearers.
Kiruba also has interviews with Erik Bensen of Amazon and Paul Bausch in his site. I hope these interviews become a regular feature of his weblog.
Understanding web typography is an excellent resource for gaining an understanding on the subject. (via Anil)
Robert Danielson has listed, what are in his opinion, the 27 most Important works in web navigation (via Pixelcharmer). Many of these are available online.
I think Steven Johnson's Interface culture is in the same category.
Dan Gillmor blogged bradner's thoughts on the subject.
There is an interesting lawsuit going on that would test the limits of the 'tresspass to chattel' law. (details here). Unlike EFF, I do think that Intel should have the right to legal recourse to stop Mr. Hamidi from sending those e-mails. But I don't think the application of 'tresspass of chattel' laws here is a hot idea. That statute is already being badly misused. I would try to find some better links later. 'Red Herring' has a good story on the subject on its print edition.
I was talking the other day with a colleague about job satisfaction. He used to work in a very large and established company. He was miserable. There was way too much bureaucracy, work was uninspiring and his boss was a highly political creature. Finally he left. He joined a valley start ups. From $55,000 that he was making in his previous job, his salary jumped to $105,000 within two years. Job content was great. He felt glorious. A year later, he got laid off. For the next 9-10 months he didn't have a job. His savings got wiped out. He sold his car. He lost his confidence. He seriously considered trying to get into financial services in an entry level capacity (he did his MBA in finance and systems). His family reminded him that this would never have happened if he had stuck it out in his previous job. He has finally landed a job in a very large corporation. He now says that all he wants in life now is stability. He would never again trade stability for job excitement. He is also very clear in his mind that he joined an internet company not for the money, but because he was so incredibly unhappy in his previous job.
I think most of us who drifted into the Internet sector went in looking for cool stuff to do, not so much for money. Money happened to some. But the great majority of footsoldiers in the web technology space never made lots of money. They were in it for the ride. And it was a great ride. But looking back, we didn't substantially change the way things happen. The internet boom did manage to shake up the traditional mainstream fortune 2000 companies and made them substantially receptive to new technology (at least for a while!). But as I sit here and look at the corporate landscape in North America, I don't see any paradigm change that the web has wraught. The promises of web based collaboration, marketplaces and transactions et al remain largely unrealized.
Peter Martin, a deputy editor in Financial Times died last week of cancer. FT (which has a great web edition by the way) reprinted his reflections on the bubble years. It is very well written.
John Gilmore's little interview in Salon about the machinations inside ICANN has created quite a stir. Dave Farber posted the article in his 'Interesting People' mailing list and Declan Mccullagh posted it in Politech. Now ICANN lawyer Joe Sims has sent a response which can be read here.
Gilmore is one of the original cyberpunks. There is some highly educated paranoia in that interiew. If you can ignore that, he raised some good points. There is also some corroboration here of his comments about the pressures that were brought on John Postel (one of the seminal figures of Internet):
"From your editor and from Jon's friend and thesis advisor. It is unreasonable for someone with independent means like Gilmore to say "Jon didn't have the spine..." His University, his organization ISI made noattempt to help him. What was said to him was a threat to end his career (which he loved) and no one with the resources and connections (both of which USC and ISI had) defended him. Jon had no resources except his love for the net.".
I would still like to believe that his accusations against Vint Cerf are untrue.
Dan Gillmor is weblogging his classnotes from the Internet law course that he is taking in Harvard Law school. It is an interesting read.
Now that he has gotten a large number of people in the blogworld to adopt auto RSS discovery links on their weblogs, Mark Pilgrim is doing a series of stories on why we should make websites more accessible. This is a worthwhile cause and he is making his point very effectively. I suspect that my weblog is a long way from being accessible.But over the next few weeks, I would like to make changes bit by bit so that this becomes accessible to people with disabilities.
Craig versus Hollywood.
Newmark versus Turner
My good wishes to Craig and Newmark.
(via A.wholelottanothing)
I would expand on this and my own conflicting opinions on Intellectual property when I get some more time
Heard an unbelievable rumour the other day. Apparently Microsoft is thinking of making .Net available on Apple (on OS X / Free BSD). It seems that the BSD crowd feels vaguely resentful towards the Linux crowd for having better marketed essentially the same value proposition that they have had for much longer. Making .Net available on BSD will apparently undercut both the SunOne initiative (which right now is so much hot air and the iPlanet product line) and the Linux bandwagon. And of course it will give .Net a broader platform. I still think that it is an implausible scenario. But then the guy who shared this little tidbit is very well clued into Microsoft's thinking. Who knows?
Simson Garfinkel wrote an interesting column on Spamassassin. I have been using it for one of my e-mail accounts and have had good experience with it, though it tags incorrectly all the e-mails that I forward myself from my hotmail accounts. Need to figure that out.
Check out Lomobar's gallery. It presents photographs is a very unusual fashion. But it doesn't jar and the quality of photographs is quite high i.e. if you like the slight distortions that lomo gives. (via Mood-Indigo.net)
I have just been very busy at work for the past one week or so. Hence the prolonged silence. I hope to start weblogging regularly again from this week.
PDN's Photo Annual 2002 showcases the nominated photgraphers. It is a treasure trove of interesting photographs and photography websites. You ought to check it out while it is online.
I need to read the Session Notes from O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
Yahoo has quietly been pushing Inktomi as the preferred search partner for their enterprise products. I think it's a matter of time before they dump Google as their search partner for the Yahoo portal. But google has already landed AOL. If they lose Yahoo now, it probably wont hurt as much.
While on the subject of search - I have started using Teoma as a complement to google. It seems to be a nice tool.
It looks like, yet another domain, Succaland, has been hijacked by Ultimate Search. This is in a long line of domain name abuses by some operators. Let me quote from a comment in that thread:
"It sounds like Ultimate Search is one of just a number of companies that are using autoamted scripts to query the known domain database (whois) and any time their results show that a domain is free for registration it automatically goes through the registration process. Another company notorious for this is called Mailbank, which owns thousands and thousands of domains. However, since succaland.com was not set to expire until June 1, something obviously went wrong and Ultimate Search was able to register the domain thorugh their automated process. Outright domain stealing has been known to happen. Look up the history of sex.com and you'll find an interesting story involving deceit, lawsuits, etc. I think the best course of action for those of us who still control our domains is to transfer them from registrars who have proven their security/process is lax (i.e., NetSol) and park them with registrars who have a better process for handling domain registrations and changes. You can also go ahead and pay for multiple year's worth of domain registration fees."
Since I have recently registered my own domain, I obviously pay a lot more attention to domain name hijacks than I earlier did. I would write a longer thread on it later. Meanwhile, this is a good document to read if you are interested in finding out why such system failures occur.
Good reads on revenue streams for new media:
-Essay on how to make community sites viable by Derek Powazek. (via Microcontent News )
Online News Revenue Models by Steve Outing (via Netmarketing )
More people need to start talking about how to build revenue streams for web based communities or content site. But both these articles left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. I would try to sort through my thoughts and post what I think about the subject in a later post.
If you are bored, check out Rachel James's photography . Some pretty cool stuff there. I have forgotten which site sent me there originally. Time to get back to work ....
I am not sure which one is worse. The pop up advertisements or the junk mails. I have no complaint about the pop up ads that I get when I go to any site where I am accessing free content (i.e most sites). Its their right to subject me atrocious advertisements and my privilage to take my eyeballs elsewhere. What really really pisses me off is spywares like Cydoor that installed itself in my machine either without permission or through subterfuge. My browser slowed down quite a bit over the last few weeks. After I ran
The other set of online parasites that bugs the hell out of me are the spammers. Today's Silicon Valley.com has a terrific report on spamming. It was shocking to find out that otherwise respectable organizations have been turning a blind eye to spammers under the guise of affiliate marketing. It was also a revealation that people actually buy stuff through junk e-mailers.
The best quote goes to Scelson, a noted spammer (that sounds so weird!), who is quoted as saying:
``Lots of people say what I do is unethical. What do ethics have to do with it? It's all about the law, what you can and cannot do. People say pornography is unethical, but Playboy has a pretty good business.'' (via GMSV).
I also used to be bugged about idiotic e-mail forwards in my mailbox. Specially the chain mails! Anil Dash has a great rant against e-mail forwards on his weblog. Its a great read. But thankfully I get few forwards these days and mostly through people I know well and who know what I would enjoy reading.
Update: It seems that te spam filters aren't terribly effective either.
We caught the most awesome sunset on 280 on the way to San Francisco last evening. The sky took so many different hues ... the colors permeating the clouds hanging low, drifting over the lush green mountains of South Bay....the whole drive seemed almost magical.
One of the good things about moving to South Bay has been nearness of the beaches and the mountains of Santa Cruz. My feet have been itching to go out and hike. But life has been crowded of late. Organizing and priorititizing my life is proving to be a lot more difficult than it seemed it would be! I loved a stray comment on mefi that captured the conflicts:
"Every choice has a concomitant cost. The simple fact is, no one - man or woman - can have it all. No one gets it all. Every choice involved the sacrifice of all other possible options. You can have a successful career; you can have a fullfilling family life; but you are almost guaranteed to fail if you expect to have full measures of both.That's hard to accept, especially when we are bombarded with messages that tell us we can have it all. But we can't. Make smart decisions based on good information. Do what you think is right for you. But don't kid yourself. Self-delusion is the quickest path to disappointment ever invented." C'est vrai! .
On a different note: anyone who is still using Network Solutions should read about the Hoopla domain name hijack. That is just the latest outrage. Matt Haughey has a bigger rant on his weblog. The mefi thread on the subject lists a fair number of good domain name registers. I think people need to start voting with their wallets.
I attended this panell discussion on Internet security yesterday. By far, the most interesting thing about the panell was Dave Del Torto of CryptoRights Foundation. He is among the handful of guys out there who are trying to develop tools that may protect activists online. Dave has a brilliant mind, is incredibly knowledgable about security and loves talking about it. He also has, as he describes it a 'highly educated paranoia' about the potential abuse of technology. All these make him a great talker. I haven't had so much fun listening to someone for a while.
He pointed me to 'Your 802.11 network has no clothes'. If you are interested in the emerging wireless standards and worry about security, this is essential reading.
(About his website ..umm..well..he said its going to get better soon).
'New Architect' (what used to be called 'Web Technique) has a good overview of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology in their current issue. For good or for worse, DRM is here to stay and we may as well familiarize ourselves with the technology. The standards in the Rights Expressions languages seem to have a long way to go. XrML, being pushed by ContentGuard (a Microsoft venture) is best positioned (of course!) and apparently the most matured of the lot. The other biggies are also backing XMCL - a competitive move by RealNetworks.
Also check out the XHTML Guidelines from NYPL (via A list apart).
The symbiotic relationship between Google and the weblogging community is interesting.
Google of course is the default search engine for most people on the net. 'I googled it' crops up in online communications increasingly frequently. In the weblogging community all tidbits about Google gets devoured with avid attention. There was Dan Gillmore's over the top comment about how Google would make domain names reduntant and plasticbag's rejoinder to it. Both made it to daypop and Blogdex. The recent Googlewhacking phenomenon is another example. The pros and cons of the Google Programming Contest got analyzed both in slashdot and Metafilter.
Now it seems that Google reciprocates the compliment. Mathew Haughey (of Metafilter) decided to take on Critical path when they made an unsolicited telemarketing call on his phone no that they have looked up from the 'WhoIs' database clearly marked as personal. He posted a critical note about it on his site. He also urged everyone to link to his post. Matt has a large following. The MEME worked like magic. Within a matter of days his 'Critical IP sucks' page outranked the 'Critical path' corporation on Google Searches. The ethical aspects of this were discussed on a MetaTalk thread recently.
What makes me curious is what yardsticks google really uses to determine site ranking? What makes the weblogs exert so much influence in google search results? (Not that I am unhappy about it). Two things that we already know:
Pageranking: Simply put, every page has one vote. "Its PageRank is essentially a measure of its vote; it can split that vote between one link or two links or many more, but its overall voting power will always be the same". So when these thousands of weblogs start pointing to a single link, that link's rank on a google search result start shooting up.
Frequency of updation: Google apparently loves frequently updated sites and there are references to it on the net. I don't really know how it works. But obviously Weblogs get updated a lot more often than most other types of sites (except probably media sites).
I have been scouring the net hunting for whitepapers, case studies on Google. So far, I have found 'The Anatomy of a Search Engine', (probably the most often accessed research paper on the Stanford University site) and this pdf document that explains pageranking concepts in a layman's language. Haven't found anything else worth noting yet.
I started hanging around Metafilter last December. I think its one of the best out there.
There has been a lot of naval gazing at Metafilter lately - fueled mainly by two high profile exits and some recent spats. Nothing terribly uncommon in an online community. I still think Mefi is a great place to hang around - both for the quality of links and for the quality of comments (sometimes). Threads tend to get derailed when the hot button issues come up (Bush, Clinton, Arab/Israel, Abortion, etc.). At times, I have lost my cool too :(.
The reality is - if you keep membership open, the personality of any community would keep evolving. Internet evolved from being nerdcentral to what it is today. From what I hear, initially left leaning, erudite, creative types used to hang around Mefi. Over time, as the buzz spread, more people from elsewhere joined up bringing with them their own biases, beliefs and attitudes. Not everyone thinks that the changes have been for the better.
It is not unlike the Bay area where old timers keep complaining that the fast paced urbanization is drowning out the culture of the local communities. The only way to prevent it is to stop newcomers from moving in. I think closed societies eventually stagnate. Successive generations of immigrants' and their drive to make it in the new world has fueled innovation in USA. Eventually, most communities get assimilated by the second or third generation.
Trouble with online communities is that instead of melting into the cultural potpourri, they tend to self-explode after a certain time. Many become very clich?d. Some communities have chosen light moderation as the price to be paid to ensure that a certain quality and civility gets maintained (e.g. Plastic, Slashdot etc.). I kind of enjoy the spontaneity, the relative anarchy in Metafilter. Whether that can be maintained, only time can tell. I enjoy hanging around Mefi. But I would be careful about what I post there. e.g. I ran into this really funny page today: '26 Rules for being a good Republican' (via Medley). I almost posted it without thinking. But then I realized that it might not be considered funny by all and may cause trouble.
One community that I had been thinking about a lot in this context is Magnum. Magnum was supposed to be a meritocracy of equals, an agency run solely by photographers rather than by executives. Over the last so many years, Magnum has produced some of the best, humane, iconic photographs in the world. I read this book (Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History) last year. It brought to life some of the all time greats of photography. But it also showed at close quarters the ugliness and viciousness that lies just below the surface in Magnum. I guess that as you grow bigger and more successful, it becomes kind of difficult to retain harmony. If anything, the impact of the written word and the immediacy of the web can make it only more difficult. I hope that Mefi retains the charm and the stimulation that originally attracted me there. I think the majority of people who go there share my optimism and feelings.
Google seems to have taken a strong stance against Pop-up Ads. It also links to a freeware application that would remove pop-up programs from your machine (ie if any has gotten in via Audio galaxy et al). Via Blogdex.
Also check out Top 11 Bootlegs of 2001. (ie if you haven't already!)
Rediscovered Carl Steadman last night. I knew of him earlier when suck.com was cool. I remember thinking WOW! after I had read his profile in Wired (it used to be available in Bangalore bookstores 2 months after publication and was obscenely expensive for a magazine). I remember wanting to come to the valley very badly and thinking its all gonna pass me by.
I had forgotten all about that excitement of working, of feeling that I am part of something new, great and revolutionary. Then last night I was reading 'When Automatic's Teller Ran Dry', and it brought back the forgotten and sullied dreams of yester years. And then I read Carl's 99secrets- a sad, beautiful, haunting nothing that is possible only on the web and it somehow, in a lopsided, weird way made me feel better about life.
Dan Gilmour's remarks on Google and how its going to obviate the needs of domain name did not seem very impressive to me. That was why I was surprised at the inordinate amount of publicity that those remarks received. Finally, here are some remarks in the 16.1.02's post (its a British site!)of plasticbag.org that explores the logical inconsistencies of that argument.
I went there via Kottke. I think kottke's is one of the best placeholders for weblogs out there. In the absence of a really good portal for weblogs, the best way that one can explore new weblogs is through referrals. Since he gets a lot of press, I suspect people are always sending links to him. I dont mean to say that those he highlights are the best out there. But going through his links is a good way to get to find some of the very good ones. I think lightningfield.com provides the same serice for - what I can only call - photologs.
Pong!
Another video game. Not a good idea to open it in office (via GMSV).
fyuze : An interesting concept for a weblog portal. There isn't a lot of content yet, but it will be a cool tool to use if a lot of people sign up and add sites.
Great Style Guide in Economist. Never noticed it before.
A slightly technical link:
TheServerSide.com - The State of The J2EE Application Server Market: History, important trends and predictions. Its a little outdated, but still quite relevant if you want a bird's eye view of what is happening in that space.
Among things that appear to have changed since the article has been written
- I am told that HP/Bluestone 8.0 is an awesome product, a huge improvement on the previous version AND open source to boot (though if the unlikely-to-happen marriage between HP and Compaq does happen, this product might be gone with the wind. I dont have much faith in Compaq's commitment to Java)
-IBM's Websphere is apparently playing catch up with BEA. A lot of bluechip clients are looking a lot more seriously at Websphere. IBM is also - cleverly branding their entire middlware product line (including MQSeries) Websphere. This would not only rub off some of the much deserved brand equity of those products onto Websphere -the application server, it may also allow them to claim a market share in advertisements that may not necessarily be that of application servers. That's a huge perceptual advantage. Between IBM and BEA, they may just redefine the application server /middleware space. Anyway, they are getting ready for a battle royale.
-iPlanet is trying to ride a 'Web services' wave. They certainly have a strong product line (Disclosure: My current employer is an iPlanet partner).
-Jboss - the freeware (?) product appears to be creating quite a buzz.
This post is probably very different in content from the others on this page. But I have committed myself to functional reading for the holidays. So, over the next fews days there would probably be more stuff in this vain.
I have been looking for a primer of Cyberspace law for some time. I stumbled into
'CyberSpace Law Lessons' while browsing this evening. Its written by very well respected people in the industry and appears to be good.
'Is Ripping a Crime?' is an account of firsthand experience with Universal Music's new copy protection technology. Its rather Funny.
At the risk of being considered a neanderthal, let me say I believe that the music companies should continue have a right to incorporate rights protection in their CDs. However, they are such complete buffoons about adapting to new technology and are so hamhanded about trying to protect their oligopoly, that I hate to admit that they have the moral right to do as they please with their property. I think Partick is being a smartalek, but it is because of smartaleks like him that the music industry is being forced willy nilly to adapt themselves to change.