My Blog
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| Word1 |
| Dictionary.com Word of the Day A new word is presented every day with its definition and example sentences from actual published works. phantasmagoria: Dictionary.com Word of the Day phantasmagoria: a shifting series or succession of things seen or imagined. Presented By: |
| Word2 |
| Word of the Day Word of the Day is a free service of TheFreeDictionary.com prissy DEFINITION: (adjective) Excessively or affectedly prim and proper. SYNONYMS: priggish, prudish, square-toed, straight-laced, tight-laced, victorian, puritanical, prim. USAGE: A free-spirited party girl, I am the complete opposite of my prissy and well-mannered sister. Discuss stifle DEFINITION: (verb) To keep in or hold back. SYNONYMS: muffle, repress, strangle, smother. USAGE: And then the cry which he had tried so hard to stifle broke from his lips. succor DEFINITION: (noun) Assistance in time of distress. SYNONYMS: ministration, relief. USAGE: The dying man's eyes were all the time riveted on the door, through which he hoped succor would arrive. |
| Computer World News |
| Latest from Computerworld Selecting an Open Source Operating System There's a large selection of free and open source (FOSS) operating systems available these days, and choosing the right one for any given circumstance can be quite a challenge. This article is intended to help you pick the best operating system for your needs and experience level. Although this article is geared primarily toward those who have little to no experience with FOSS operating systems, we've included some pointers for more savvy open source users – say, those who use a FOSS operating system at home and would like to deploy one on the job. Gateway NV7915u: More Brawn Than Brains I'm getting too old and lazy these days to travel much farther than to my desk, couch, or bed. The good news is that Gateway seems to have made the $649 NV7915u laptop just for people like me. Industry jargon calls such models desktop replacements, but "luggable" is a better word for an overstuffed and oversize notebook PC. In this class of laptops, you generally get a larger screen and keyboard, and just enough portability that you can lug your computer around the house. And if you must, you can squeeze the machine into a large bag and take it to the office or on vacation. Desktop-replacement laptops are supposed to be no-compromise portables, but after dragging the NV7915u around with me for a couple of weeks, I found that it makes a few trade-offs. Court reaffirms i4i's patent win against Microsoft The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has once again upheld a jury's verdict that Microsoft willfully infringed on patents awarded to i4i. Chambers: How I'll make Cisco into IT's biggest player Cisco's CEO lays out his road map for expanding the networking giant's presence across the tech industry Pennsylvania fires CISO over RSA talk Pennsylvania's chief information security officer, Robert Maley, has been fired, apparently for talking publicly at the RSA security conference last week about a recent incident involving the Commonwealths online driving exam scheduling system. After takedown, botnet-linked ISP Troyak resurfaces Last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller called the fight against hackers "the cyber equivalent of cat-and-mouse." On Wednesday security experts trying to take down the Zeus botnet got a taste of what he meant. T-Mobile explains BlackBerry outage, says it's fixed T-Mobile USA issued an explanation for the BlackBerry data outage affecting some nationwide users Monday and Tuesday, saying it related only to Wi-Fi and not T-Mobiles network, directly contradicting what some users reported. N.Y. health insurers to offer virtual doc visits BlueCross BlueShield announced that it is offering virtual physician visits to members and employers in New York who want to connect to doctors via videoconferencing or text messaging. SaaS ERP Has Buzz, But Who Are the Real Players? An Aberdeen Group report lists the nine SaaS vendors that offer actual ERP software and services -- not just a bunch of cloudy marketing hype. CA to buy Nimsoft in $350M deal CA said Wednesday it has signed a deal to buy IT performance monitoring vendor Nimsoft for $350 million. More News... View more news and analysis from Computerworld.com |
| The Register |
| The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Patent attack hits Apple, RIM, AT&T, Moto... Texas troll two-step Apple, Research in Motion, and a gaggle of other deep-pocket firms have been slapped with a wide-ranging patent infringment suit by an obscure Texas firm.? Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work Feds likely to oppose Google mobile ad deal, says report Sworn declarations on AdMob The US Federal Trade Commission is likely to oppose Google's acquisition of mobile ad outfit AdMob after requesting sworn declarations from Google competitors and advertisers, according to a report citing people with knowledge of the matter.? Offloading malware protection to the cloud CA eats Nimsoft cloud watcher Acquisition binge continues Systems software seller CA is shelling out $350m in cash to buy Nimsoft, an outfit that makes monitoring tools for managed service providers - aka cloud providers.? Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work Swedes serve up flicks with KVM Cisco blades, minus VMware and EMC Everybody is talking up the idea of integrated stacks these days, but some customers just won't listen. They think they can just pick and choose any technology they want, like in the old days.? Offloading malware protection to the cloud Mozilla open source license set for facelift 10-year-old shows her age Mozilla is updating its open source license after more than 10 years of use.? The power of collaboration within unified communications Zeus botnets suffer mighty blow after ISP taken offline One quarter of C&C channels vanish At least a quarter of the command and control servers linked to Zeus-related botnets have suddenly gone quiet, continuing a recent trend of takedowns hitting some of the world's most nefarious cyber operations.? The power of collaboration within unified communications Intel's redemos six-core Gulftown Gamers watch and wait Intel has given developers another peek at its upcoming Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor.? The power of collaboration within unified communications Citrix tunes XenApp for Windows Server R2 App-V virtual embrace Citrix has unveiled XenApp 6 after re-architecting the product from the ground up to take full advantage of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2.? Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work Google boss says something will happen in China 'soon' Seven weeks and counting Google CEO Eric Schmidt has reiterated that the company is currently in negotiations with the Chinese government over its future in the country - despite the Chinese government's claims to the contrary - and he expects some sort of development "soon."? Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work Google flips switch on mobile YouTube banner ads Phone vid traffic up '160%' Google is now serving ads on the mobile incarnation of YouTube.? Offloading malware protection to the cloud |
| The Info World |
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| Slash Dot |
| Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters The Future of Wind Power May Be Underground Hugh Pickens writes "When the wind is blowing, it is usually the cheapest peaking power available. However utilities need consistent always-on power from large, cheap coal and nuclear power plants that are the backbone of the electric grid. Wired reports that operators are looking at Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) using abandoned mines and sandstones of the Midwest to store compressed-air. This converts the intermittent motions of the air into a steady power source by using it to run air compressors to pump air into an underground cave where it's stored under pressure. The first CAES plant in the United States actually went online in McIntosh, Alabama in 1991 where engineers created a geological pocket 900 feet long and up to 238 feet wide in a dome by pumping water into it to dissolve the rock salt. When the (briny) water was pumped back out, the salt resealed itself and they had an air-tight container."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Phone Allows Bosses To Snoop On Staff tad001 writes "The Japanese phone giant KDDI has developed a way to track users movements in fine detail. It works by analyzing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets. Activities such as walking, climbing stairs, or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say. The company plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, foremen, and employment agencies."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former TSA Analyst Charged With Computer Tampering angry tapir writes "A Transportation Security Administration analyst has been indicted with tampering with databases used by the TSA to identify possible terrorists who may be trying to fly in the US. If convicted, he faces 10 years in prison."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Mythical Man-Month" Supposedly Busted By MIT Startup An anonymous reader writes "We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done and quadrupling its productivity."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Zeus Botnet Dealt a Blow As ISPs Troyak, Group 3 Knocked Out itwbennett writes "Niney of the 249 Zeus command-and-control servers were knocked offline overnight when two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were taken offline. Whoever was behind the takedown 'just decided to knock out a large area of cybercrime, and this was probably one of the easiest ways to do it,' said Kevin Stevens, a researcher with SecureWorks. As with the McColo takedown of just over a year ago, Troyak's upstream providers seem to have knocked it off the Internet, Cisco said in a statement. 'The ISP was "De-peered,"' Cisco said. 'Troyak's upstream network providers effectively pulled the plug on Troyak's router, refusing to transmit its traffic.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OnLive Remote Gaming Service Launches In June adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Opens Apps Marketplace snydeq writes "Google has launched the Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications. The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites, and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap, and Zoho. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard, and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Digitizing and Geocoding Old Maps? alobar72 writes "I have quite a few old maps (several hundreds; 100+ years old, some are already damaged – so time is not on my side). What I want to do is to digitize them and to apply geo-coordinates to them so I can use them as overlays for openstreetmap data or such. Obviously I cannot put those maps onto my €80 scanner and go. Some of them are really large (1.5m x 1.5m roughly, I believe) and they need to be treated with great care because the paper is partly damaged. So firstly I need a method or service provider that can do the digitizing without damaging them. Secondly I need a hint what the best method is to apply geo coordinates to those maps then. The maps are old and landscape and places have changed, it maybe difficult to identify exact spots. So: are there any experiences or tips I could use?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Protein ... and Now Fat ral writes "The human tongue can taste more than sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein. Researchers have added fat to that list. Dr. Russell Keast, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, told Slashfood, 'This makes logical sense. We have sweet to identify carbohydrate/sugars, and umami to identify protein/amino acids, so we could expect a taste to identify the other macronutrient: fat.' In the Deakin study, which appears in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, Dr. Keast and his team gave a group of 33 people fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Lost Film That Accompanied Empire Strikes Back An anonymous reader writes "'Alien' and 'Star Wars' art director Roger Christian was given £25,000 by George Lucas in 1979 to make a 25-minute medieval B-feature called 'Black Angel.' This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico making 'Lucky Lady.' 'Black Angel' made a huge impression, not least because it shared the dark tone of 'Empire Strikes Back.' John Boorman showed it to the crew of 'Excalibur' as a template for how he wanted his film to look, and 'Black Angel' went on to influence films such as 'Dragonslayer' and 'Legend' throughout the 1980s and beyond. But it has not been seen by anyone since 'Empire' finished its theatrical run. Two weeks ago Roger Christian unearthed a print of a film that was thought lost forever, and in this interview he talks about 'Black Angel,' and provides the only picture from the film that has ever hit the Internet." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenSSH 5.4 Released HipToday writes "As posted on the OpenBSD Journal, OpenSSH 5.4 has been released: 'Some highlights of this release are the disabling of protocol 1 by default, certificate authentication, a new "netcat mode," many changes on the sftp front (both client and server) and a collection of assorted bugfixes. The new release can already be found on a large number of mirrors and of course on www.openssh.com.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon 1-Click Patent Survives Almost Unscathed Zordak writes "Amazon's infamous '1-click' patent has been in reexamination at the USPTO for almost four years. Patently-O now reports that 'the USPTO confirmed the patentability of original claims 6-10 and amended claims 1-5 and 11-26. The approved-of amendment adds the seeming trivial limitation that the one-click system operates as part of a 'shopping cart model.' Thus, to infringe the new version of the patent, an eCommerce retailer must use a shopping cart model (presumably non-1-click) alongside of the 1-click version. Because most retail eCommerce sites still use the shopping cart model, the added limitation appears to have no practical impact on the patent scope.'" Also covered at TechFlash.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
6 Smartphone Keyboards Compared Barence writes "A debate that crops up time and again is whether it's better to have a dedicated keyboard on your smartphone or whether an on-screen keyboard with text correction is adequate. Some phones with screen-based keyboards have started to provide tactile feedback, either using an ultra-quick spin of their vibration alert or, like the BlackBerry Storm2, using clever piezo-electric technology to simulate the feel of a button press. But which system works best? PC Pro's Paul Ockendon gathered six of the most popular handsets around and put them through a timed typing test to see which proved quickest and most typo-free."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Man Threatened Spam Attack In $200,000 Extortion Plot 52-year-old Anthony Digati was arrested for trying to extort $200,000 from an insurance firm by threatening to spam them with six million emails unless they paid up. Digati said he would use a spam service and his amazing talents as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable" and presumably unfriend everyone. He added that the price would increase to $3 million if they failed to pay up by Monday, according to federal authorities.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Code Bubbles — Rethinking the IDE's User Interface kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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| New York Technology |
| NYT > Technology Driven to Distraction: Distracted Driving in Ambulances and Police Cruisers Despite efforts to get drivers to stop texting, police officers and paramedics use an array of dashboard gadgets. Tricks to Keep Your Device’s Battery Going and Going Smartphone and laptop batteries may seem like cruel masters when they threaten to lose power, but you have more control than you may think. A Futures Site Coming to Bet on Movie Ticket Sales A virtual futures exchange is being assembled to allow people to bet money on a film?s box office success. The Mouse That Roared: Turning to the Internet to Catch a Favorite TV Show With new devices making it easy to stream Internet content to a television, more people are watching cable shows for free. Advertising: Like Texting, but With Video Companies like American Greetings are moving beyond texting by offering services that send video messages to cellphones. Battery Ventures Raises a Fresh $750 Million Battery Ventures' new, $750 million fund is the latest sign of a revival in Silicon Valley. TV May Be the New Google Reader Play's Best Venue Google announced a new feature of its Google Reader Web site on Wednesday called Google Reader Play. The updated application offers a simple, personalized view of Web content. What We're Reading: What You're Reading Our daily roundup of technology tidbits features Google's new service to show you what the Web is reading, the employment boom for hackers and a couple of trips down memory lane. Tech Talk Podcast This week's podcast includes the changing fortunes of Pandora, the Internet radio site and an exploration of geek style. TV Providers Seek New Federal Rules on Retransmission Rights With a petition to the F.C.C. and a letter to Congressional leaders, cable and satellite providers said the current rules were “broken and in need of repair.? Demand for Lithium Is Poised to Take Off As awareness spreads that lithium is an ingredient for hybrid cars, a hunt is under way for sources of the metal. In Illinois, Scores Apply to Run as No. 2 on Democratic Ticket After scandal forced the nominee for lieutenant governor out, Democrats in Illinois are letting citizens apply online to run. For the Afflicted, a Little Black Box to Jog Failing Memory Researchers have tested the Sensecam, which contains a digital camera and an accelerometer, as an aid to people with Alzheimer?s disease and other memory disorders. Using Computing Might, Google Improves Translation Tool The company’s network pushes the limits of translation technology and has become a favored source for millions. France Télécom Needs 'Radical Change' After Suicides, Report Says France Télécom has already stopped several practices identified as being particularly disruptive, like forcing employees to change jobs and closing work sites. |
| Yahoo Technology |
| Yahoo! News: Technology News Technology News Sony unveils new motion contoller to slow Nintendo (AP) AP - Sony has a new message for Nintendo Wii gamers: Come join us. Palm Inc. teeters in crowded smart phone market (AP) AP - Last year, Palm thought it had all the pieces for a turnaround in the market it pioneered: A new CEO known for making the iPod a household name, a sleek new smart phone called the Pre and fresh, intuitive operating software. Global agency reconsiders `.xxx' for porn sites (AP) AP - A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers. Huge 'botnet' amputated, but criminals reconnect (AP) AP - The sudden takedown of an Internet provider thought to be helping spread one of the most promiscuous pieces of malicious software out there appears to have cut off criminals from potentially millions of personal computers under their control. OnLive game streaming service to start in June (AP) AP - In an industry first, a new gaming service will start allowing people to "stream" popular high-end games such as "Assassin's Creed II" over the Internet in June, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online. MySpace outlines makeover after exec shake up (AP) AP - Long ago lapped by Facebook in popularity and with fast-growing Twitter on its tail, MySpace is planning a series of updates over the next months that will link its users' posts to the other social networking sites more easily and carve out its niche as an entertainment hub more clearly. MySpace upping ante in online social games (AFP) AFP - MySpace began courting videogame developers as it moved to capitalize on the booming popularity of playing games online at social networks. Census campaign targets tech-savvy Hispanic youth (AP) AP - Groups pushing for robust Hispanic participation in the 2010 census announced a new campaign Thursday that aims to reach the hard-to-count demographic through its smart-phone-toting youngsters. Unlocked RIM BlackBerry 8800 Smartphone (PC World) PC World - Newegg.com has an unlocked RIM BlackBerry 8800 for $159.99 with $2.99 standard shipping. The sturdy smartphone is 4.5 by 2.6 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4.7 ounces. It doesn't have a camera, but it does feature music and video players and a 2.5-inch, 320-by-240-resolution display. Though it's not one of the newest smartphones, we noted in our review that it's a great e-mail device (it can support up to ten accounts) and features built-in GPS functionality and Bluetooth support. It does not have Wi-Fi. Panasonic Sets the 3D HDTV Bar At Best Buy (PC World) PC World - A scrum of reporters pressed against Brad and Ashley as they shuffled up to the counter at a Best Buy store in Manhattan. Cameras flashed and elbows flew. Was it the end of Brangelina? Some new reality show? New racing videogames set to rev up sales (Reuters) Reuters - Blatant disregard for oncoming traffic and speed limits will get you into serious trouble on the road, but drivers seeking similar thrills can indulge in a fleet of new racing video games due out soon. Apple iPod Shuffle 4 GB (PC World) PC World - Spring break is just around the corner, so what better companion to take on your swimsuit workouts than an Apple iPod Shuffle? Amazon has the 4GB 3rd Generation Silver iPod Shuffle for $55.99 with free shipping. The 3rd Generation iPod Shuffle features a sexy design, voice navigation (unlike previous iPod Shuffles, this Shuffle will tell you what playlists and tracks are on your device), and headphones with a built-in remote. Motorola, Microsoft in deal to put Bing on phones (Reuters) Reuters - Motorola Inc has reached a deal with Microsoft Corp that will put Bing search and mapping services on its phones that use Google's Android operating system. MySpace Revamps for Revival (PC World) PC World - As Google takes on the social networking world with Buzz, and Facebook and Twitter bring out location-sharing ala Foursquare, does anybody remember the social networking site that started it all? MySpace has had a tough year -- with employee cuts and CEO resignations -- but the company's new co-presidents are seeking to turn the site around with a new look, a new mantra ("Discover and be discovered"), and believers. Intego releases VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection (Macworld.com) Macworld.com - The perils of malware and viruses are everywhere, and Mac users shouldn’t be complacent, especially if they’re also running Windows via Boot Camp or other virtualization software. To those ends, Intego has released VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection, which offers all the features of its X6 product for both Mac and Windows operating systems running on your machine. |
| News.com |
| CNET News.com Tech news and business reports by CNET News. Focused oninformation technology, core topics include computers, hardware, software,networking, and Internet media.. LGBT researcher calls for action to combat cyberbullying (podcast) The co-author of a study on cyberbullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth says more than half of LGBT youth had experienced cyberbulling within the past 30 days. Intel debuts six-core gaming chip Chipmaker introduces its first desktop chip packing that many processing cores for gaming boxes. Report: Time for next stage of sustainable business Activist investor group urges companies to track their use of energy and resources as closely as it does its hiring and cash flow. Sony announces Playstation Move Sony unveils their first motion controller for the Playstation 3. GDC 2010: Scaling the summits of gameplay roundup This week's Game Developers Conference brings together designers, programmers, publishers, and others for the latest from the world of video play. |
| Wired News |
| Wired Top Stories Top Stories Minister of Truth: Meet Britain's Top Data Cop The U.K. Statistics Authority's Richard Alldritt is an expert in how governments fudge the numbers. He and his math-police squad are rooting out the truth, whether it's to reveal the real gender pay gap or the actual rate of knife crime.
March 11, 1985: ConnNet Lets the Public Jack In, X.25 Style A Connecticut telephone company starts the first local, public packet-switching network. It paves the way for the always-on internet access we know today.
Classic Videogames Mutate in 'Game Over' Art Show Street Fighter gets bendy. Ms. Pac-Man hops a tandem bike. And plenty of other classic characters get similarly strange treatments in Giant Robot's videogame-inspired exhibit.
Classmates.com's Facebook Mimicking Prompts Privacy Suit Angry users sue Classmates.com after it decides to make previously private data public, just as Facebook did in December. Will its defense be, "I learned it from watching you, Zuck?"
Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side' Eclipses Concept Album Classics With its heady mix of heavy themes and technology, The Dark Side of the Moon remains the best concept album ever, even 37 years after its release. Plus: 10 more concept albums in Dark Side's shadow that deserve a slice of the spotlight.
'Galactica: Sabotage' Creator Discusses Her Brilliant Beastie Boys Sci-Fi Mashup A YouTube artist whips up a precise, shot-for-shot re-creation of Spike Jonze's amazing music video using clips from the late, great Battlestar Galactica.
European Parliament Rips Global IP Accord European Parliament is coming out in opposition to a U.S.-backed intellectual property treaty accord, and is demanding the treaty's secret text become public.
Google Launches Web Store for Cloud-Based Apps App stores aren't just for mobile phones anymore. Google has launched a store that lets Google Apps customers add third-party browser-based apps to their existing stack of Google's productivity tools.
Apple Beware: Dell (With A Little Help From Amazon and Google) is Taking on i... The formidable triumvirate of Amazon, Dell, and Google is apparently poised to give iTunes the first serious run for its money just as the iPad is about to take Apple?s downloadable media megastore where no computer has gone before.
Google's Schmidt: China Negotiations Should End 'Soon' Google is actively negotiating with China over web censorship according to CEO Eric Schmidt.
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| Scripting News |
| Scripting News Dave Winer's weblog, started in April 1997, bootstrapped the blogging revolution. Location-based content I can't figure out how the new location-based Twitter works. Firefox can't figure out where I am. No surprise, My 13-inch MacBook Pro doesn't have GPS. Is there some place I can click on a map to say This Is Where I Am? Not at all obvious. Other people say they see it. Not on my machine. Anyway, that doesn't mean we can't have fun with location stuff. On Twitter, I posted a link to a Google Map asking if this was the location of the Fillmore East. I got back an answer that it was close, but the supermarket next door is where the Fillmore was. I tweeted back that I had read somewhere that that was where the Ratner's was, next to the Fillmore, and if you go in there you can even see a giant R on the floor. Ratner's was a great Jewish dairy restaurant. Until I read the article (can't remember where it was) I only knew about the now-gone Ratner's on Delancey St. I once took a blonde shiksa VP-Marketing from California to Ratner's on Delancey, and the waiter yelled at me for bringing such a fine woman to such a lousy neighborhood. That was before it all got gentrified and yuppified. Both Ratner's are gone now. Anyway, the same guy dug up a picture of the old Fillmore just before a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. My theory was correct. It's the site of the bank. I went to the Fillmore a few times. The most memorable concert was a Grateful Dead show with a surprise toward the end. A bunch of dirty hippies with long hair and beards come out and jam with the Dead. The music sounds weirdly familiar but hard to place. They were being deliberately misleading. Then all of a sudden a rock and roll standard -- Good Vibrations. It was the all-new dope-smoking Beach Boys! Oh man those were the days. I also saw the Incredible String Band there. Ten Years After. We're getting ready to do an East Village blog for the NY Times. Going down memory lane is my way of getting ready. PS: I read about Ratner's on Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, an intriguing blog with lots of great stories about the ever-changing and not-always-for-the-best New York Shitty. RSS enclosures from 2004 and 2005 I was doing some research for a blog post and came across this folder of RSS enclosures from late 2004 and early-mid 2005. These were the months when podcasting was beginning to take root. I was doing Morning Coffee Notes. Adam Curry was doing Daily Source Code. Together, we were doing the Trade Secrets podcast. Dave Slusher, Steve Gillmor, IT Conversations, Dawn and Drew, Tony Kahn at WGBH, Engadget. It occurred to me that this slice of early podcasting might be worth preserving, so turned it into a torrent and have uploaded it http://static.scripting.com/misc/earlyPodcasts.torrent If you have questions or comments, you can post them here. PS: Another reason I like it is this is a non-infringing use of BitTorrent. We need more of those to protect this excellent distributed technology. Please fix WordPress for podcast feeds Jay and I use WordPress to do the http://rebootnews.com/ site. It's a mixed bag. On the pro side, we both know how to use WordPress, and because Jay writes the show notes and I do the tech stuff, it's a good tool to put between us. But WordPress doesn't do podcast feeds well. And that's being generous. Here's how the UI works currently. You edit your post and link to an MP3 or a movie or an AVI or some other media object. The first one that WP encounters as it parses your text, it will supposedly turn into an enclosure. If you happen to link to two MP3s but the second is the enclosure, you're out of luck. And for some reason if you store the MP3 on Amazon S3, as we do, it usually doesn't even find the enclosure. But this is variable. Today they've hacked up our link to point to some server on wordpress.com, totally without our permission. What a mess. And even so there's no enclosure in our feed for this week's show (which btw I think is one of our best, one I hope everyone listens to). For the last three episodes of our podcast, it's failed to add an enclosure element to the feed. As a result none of our listeners get the podcast on time, and it always takes some fussing by the WordPress tech people to get it working, and for all I know a bunch of people never hear the podcast. I suppose it depends on whether or not the client sees an item as read if the guid doesn't change but all of a sudden the item has an enclosure. Imho a proper podcast client would just watch the guid, and therefore would miss the enclosure. Regardless, it's simply unacceptable that WordPress work this way and that Automattic doesn't do something to fix it. This is how we did it in Radio 8, in 2002, eight years ago. Here's a screen shot. Click the screen shot for the full effect. See the red arrow pointing to the box called Enclosure? That's where you paste the link to the enclosure. Anyone no matter how technical they are not, could be taught to do that correctly. We never had the problem WordPress is having. Granted a lot fewer people did podcasts then than now. Maybe. I'd argue that the way WordPress works now is killing the art of podcasting because it's so unpredictable and it's virtually got the market cornered. Regardless, I'm a paying customer, and I'd like to continue to use WordPress, but eventually I'm going to have to switch because it's killing our product. Please Matt and company, fix this! PS: I wish Wordpress.com was more hackable, if there was a way for me to patch our feed I could fix this without their help. Alas it's not something I can fix myself and I don't have any interest in running my own installation or fussing around with PHP etc. A nice boost for rssCloud It's been a while since we could announce new major support for rssCloud, but today is one of those big days we'll remember for a long time. Status.net has now enabled rssCloud support in the RSS 2.0 feeds for all its users. This means that identi.ca, the server operated by status.net, has the feature, as well as all other sites they operate. I assume it will be baked into a subsequent open source release (status.net is GPL software). What does this mean? Well, when I post an update to my account on identi.ca, any cloud-aware aggregator will receive an update notification. River2, the aggregator I've built for Frontier (it runs in the OPML Editor) has support for rssCloud. For a demo here's a screen shot of an update I posted to identi.ca. Note the time of the update. I immediately refreshed the home page of my River2 server, and there's the update. Elapsed time ==> 12 seconds. That's what real time means. This is my feed. A source screen shot shows the <cloud> element. It's also a holy grail for the idea of a distributed loosely-coupled network of Twitter-like services, linked together in real time using RSS. (What a mouthful!) It's very elegant and lightweight and it works today. 18 interesting firsts I stumbled across this very interesting list of 18 firsts on the Internet. It's a good way to look at things. You could argue who invented what first, and you often get nowhere that way, because "invention" is such a poorly understood concept. Everyone's work builds on other people's. The guy who invented the car used a lot of other people's work to create something with four wheels and an engine. Did it have to have a steering wheel to be a car? We could argue about that, and that would change who the inventor was. It may be more useful to say who had the first car. Who drove it, and where did they go? And on the Internet, there's no doubt, for example that Tim Berners-Lee had the first website. Unless someone else says they did. (Haven't heard anyone say that, btw.) I was glad to get credit for creating the first podcast. Who wrote the first blog post? They give credit for that to Justin Hall (and mis-spell his name). I wrote in the About page for weblogs.com that the first blog was also the first website. TBL's info.cern.ch was a reverse-chronologic list of new websites. That's how central to the web I think blogs are. But if that wasn't the first blog, let's see Hall's first post, and decide if that really was the first one. Who had the first feed? That's going to be an interesting debate for sure. I can show you mine, it was first published on December 15, 1997. But what makes something a feed? Can you have a feed with no aggregator? Is it the aggregator that makes something a feed? If so, we'll have to figure out who wrote the first aggregator and when, and what feed(s) it read. One of the criteria for being "first" is, imho -- Did your work lead to other people imitating you? That test says whether or not your work commercialized or popularized the concept. The implies "hitting the spot" where being the only one seems, somehow, less significant. That's one argument against Hall as the first blogger, but in favor of TBL. As far as I know there were no bloggers that formed a community in the aftermath of his Links from the Underground. Pretty sure the first blogging community, in the sense that we think of blogging today, was formed around Scripting News. Most blogs today can trace their roots back to Scripting News, if you go back far enough. I suppose some communities are disjoint. Did LiveJournal spawn out of a blog that spawned out of something that came from Scripting? I have no idea. But I do know that most of the early bloggers were readers of this site, and many participated in the discussion group here. There was a website that traced the lineage, called BlogTree, and it verified that the root of the tree was Scripting News. This is something I'm proud of, I think justifiably. One of the reasons I'm proud of it is that blogging was created without the lock-in you see in systems like Twitter, Facebook and though they'll argue for sure, Buzz. Even Posterous, Tumblr and Wordpress.com don't give you easy ways off their servers. Blogging started without the concept of a single server, so there was no place to get off of. The whole point was to be as distributed as the web itself, to give people independence, to let billions of websites bloom. This is such an obvious feature of blogs that people don't usually see it. But it's there, and it's hugely important. There are a lot of very vocal people who work to remove credit rather than give it. I'm sure some of them will comment here. As long as their comments are respectful they will stand. Promising competition Several interesting half-developments in the competitive landscape from non-dominant tech entities. I believe in supporting the second and third tier companies and startups, when they offer alternatives to the BigCo's. I like the little guys because they have an incentive to listen to and please users, without the strategy taxes almost always imposed by the big guys. First, there is Mark Fletcher's SnapGroups. It's basically a threaded discussion group with a modern browser-based UI. It's perhaps a framework that something like FriendFeed can develop from, although it's just a framework. There are no feeds in either direction -- you can't subscribe to feeds from within SnapGroups, and it doesn't generate feeds, so I can't subscribe to stuff from SnapGroups in other RSS-aware environments. But it does look nice, and Mark is the author of Bloglines, so we know he understands feeds. These days, you can't even get into the game without basic feed support. I'd of course also like to see him support rssCloud so the connections in and out can be real-time. Second, I just got an email from Zach Copley at Status.Net saying their software, which is an open source Twitter workalike, now supports rssCloud. That is very welcome news. I tested it with River2, and while the initial handshake worked, I'm not getting the realtime updates. I expect we'll figure out the glitch quickly and then we'll have another realtime connection. What can we do with it? We'll have to explore that. Meanwhile, it's nice to have a reason to get reacquainted with Identi.ca, which is the mother ship of Status.Net. And thanks to Zach for sticking with it. Finally, Marshall Kirkpatrick, who writes for ReadWriteWeb, says the big players in his market, TechCrunch, Mashable, AllThingsDigital, don't pick up stories once RWW has covered them. This gives vendors an incentive to give exclusives to the big pubs, assuming they want coverage from them. Vendors who buy that are making a mistake. The news will find the people who need to know it, more now than ever. Pick a reporter who you think will understand your product and give them enough time. That's one approach, if you think you can get the attention. Otherwise, just write your own blog post, and send the links around to all the reporters, and hope they find it interesting. I know this isn't the standard advice, but the gatekeepers figure you need them a lot more than they need you, and act accordingly. It's hard to get insightful reporting from them, and I think the readers have figured that out. All pubs should follow this simple rule: write up whatever you find interesting, whenever you discover it, no matter who has already written it. Anyone who plays it differently will eventually pay a penalty. And these days "eventually" is a lot sooner than it used to be. Remember: "People come back to places that send them away." Great photo of Jobs at Oscars Zadi Diaz got this great picture of Steve Jobs on the red carpet at the Oscars last night. Click the thumb above for the full effect. This week's RBTN This week's Rebooting The News podcast, recorded in the studio at NYU, was particularly good. It starts off a little slowly, but picks up speed. http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot10Mar08.mp3 Best Picture 2009? Tomorrow night they announce the winners of the Academy Awards, and for the first time in a long time, I don't really think there is a movie up to being called Best Picture. The only one I haven't seen is Precious. So it might be the exception. Of all the nominated pictures I have seen, if I had to choose one, I'd go for Up In The Air. Great acting, interesting plot, well done all around. Second choice: An Education. Each of the others has something to recommend it, but none of them put enough of the pieces together to qualify as a Best Picture. Curious what other people think. Jeff Jarvis and BloggerCon I just watched the live webcast of two friends, Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis, give talks at TEDxNYED. They both did well. At the end of Jeff's talk he told a story about about a big moment in our friendship. Of course he tells it from his point of view. I'm sure they'll release a video of the talk so you can hear it. This is the story from my point of view. I am an evangelist. I think I see how things are going, then I want to show other people, so we can get there faster. Sometimes if I have to, to get the idea going, I write some software, or create a format. That was my role in blogging, RSS and podcasting. And the unconference format that Jeff was describing in his talk. I wrote that format up here a few days ago, because we're doing it again at NYU, but that piece was just an edit of a document that I wrote before the first BloggerCon. I sent links to all the discussion leaders. I talked with each of them before the conference. I knew the idea would be hard to get, because we all had a lifetime of training that said that conferences were mostly one-way affairs. I wanted to try something different, a conference where there were no speakers, no panels, no audience. I wanted the good stuff, the hallway conversations, to be drawn back into the formal conference. Even though we prepared, and knew the format worked (we were running the Berkman Thursday meetings with it) most of the discussion leaders didn't get it at first. When I walked into the room where Jarvis was preparing to lead a discussion at BloggerCon, I saw that he had put a set of chairs in front of the room, and people were sitting in the chairs. It was an awkward fit, there wasn't enough room in front, but despite all the preparation, there was the old format trying to boot up! So I asked the people sitting in the chairs to rejoin the rest of the people in the classroom. Then I said to Jarvis, "This is your panel..." -- and I opened my arms to embrace the whole room. From this point our stories are in total agreement. God you could almost see the light bulb go on over Jarvis's head. Immediately he started leading the discussion, and to this day he is one of the best practitioners of BloggerCon format, and is evangelizing it too. This blog post is an instance of the philosophy that says that everyone's point of view is valid and should be heard. In the old world, the speaker's version would be the only one to get out there. Or the professor's or the reporter's. But in the new world, each of us have a platform to tell our story. That same principle can be applied to conferences, and if it's done well, and Jarvis does it well, with spectacular results. |
| Userland News |
| Tomalak's Realm Daily links to strategic Web design news from Lawrence Lee (no title) Useit.Com: The Power of Defaults. Users rely on defaults in many other areas of user interface design. For example, they rarely utilize fancy customization features, making it important to optimize the default user experience, since that's what most users stick to. |