root/trunk/ProjectFortress/demos/blogs1000.out

 I can't help myself. I have to keep this discussion about blogging
 going.  Is blogging just the end result of someone's input into a
 Content Management System. Of course it is. So what. You could point a
 URL to a daily post in a discussion forum. It would have far better
 interactivity than a blog, and would be just as easy to post as often
 as the author would like. Does that make the output purely a forum post
 ? Or for those old school among us, putting up a page on a website
 could be a blog, a column, a report, whatever. The manner of how you
 post something to the web is not even worth discussing. A blog is a
 blog is a blog.  If you blog, regardless of what software you use, you
 are a blogger and what you produce is a blog. If you want to call
 yourself a columnist, so be it. If you are a reporter in a 1 page
 internet only publication, yes you are.  From there, only one question
 comes up. Why. Why ? Why do you do what you do. Is it because: You get
 paid to do it ?  Because you want to promote something or to promote
 yourself ?  Because you want to start a discussion ?  Because you want
 to communicate with customers, fans or ??  Because its a way to say
 whats on your mind ?  Because you want to make money from it ?  I'm
 sure there are other reasons to communicate on the web. What software
 you use, even whether you use video, text and/or pictures, really
 doesn't matter.  What matters is why you do what you do.  For most of
 us, we start on the furthest reaches of the long tail of all content.
 To make money from whatever it is we produce is not only difficult, its
 near impossible. To get off the long tail is near impossible as well.
 Only a few will ever find their way to a point of generating enough
 consumers of our content to have any choice in whether we monetize or
 influence a material number of people. Others of us will still be in
 the long tail, but have influence in a small verticial segment
 important only to those who already know us, or come to know us. Its
 possible to be a big player in a small pool, and get paid for it,
 still reside on the long tail.  The hope by all on the longtail is that
 the "quality" of the publication will garner enough consumers to move
 them off.  Like the artist whose art is better, the band or musician
 whose music is better, the producer, director or actor whose video is
 better. Everyone hopes that quality of content is the final arbiter of
 attraction and success.  The worst part of it all is that when you are
 on the long tail, it takes a lot of money or luck to get off and
 99.99pct , never get off. Which is exactly the definition of the
 longtail.  Thats for individuals.  For corporations who publish on the
 web (as opposed to aggregate 3rd party content), again, regardless of
 what content management software they use, or what they call
 themselves, the longtail is death.  If you are a blogger, and you work
 for a major media company, you are born with a silver spoon in your
 mouth. You are granted a platform with traffic. Thats the good news.
 The bad news is that you also have ratings. If you can't hold your
 traffic or build upon it, you better hope you generate sufficient value
 in other places, or your days of publishing on the web may be numbered.
 For those of you who haven't noticed, paid bloggers do come and go from
 media websites if they don't produce. But wait, there is worse news.
 The media companies that have traffic foundations and can dual purpose
 people so that they can publish off line and online come with their own
 set of problems. They are paddling as fast as they can to retain their
 offline businesses. Newspapers, to continue to use them as an example,
 are pushing as hard as they can to sell papers and retain advertisers.
 For those who think that a newspaper is just like a newsletter, you
 have never been a paperboy.  To try to maximize online traffic and
 resultant revenue, newspapers turned to blogging. Saul Hansell of the
 NYTimes commented that blogs are used uniquely and thoughtfully by
 NYTimes reporters to communicate new information and create discussion.
 That's great.  It's a way for the paper to drive readers to their
 website, keep them as readers and hopefully add more readers. It's
 using whatever content management system they use to give more value to
 readers. Wonderful.  Unfortunately for them, they are now in the same
 old grind that they are in with the newspaper business. Their articles,
 I mean blogs, vs everyone elses' blogs. They hope that readers believe
 that their content is better and that brings them back. They hope like
 the new TV show following the hit, that they can retain audience.   An
 approach which puts them on the exact same content treadmill   as even
 the smallest blogger. . For some on the NYTimes website, as with any
 and every other newspaper website, they will manage to stand out from
 the crowd. The majority will not. They will bump their way down to
 where everyone else is. Such is the nature of the content business. No
 matter what anyone at the NY Times thinks.
  That is the endgame I see for newspapers that publish complimentary
  content on their website. You can call it blogging. You can even call
  it something else. The point I didnt make clear enough in my previous
  post, is that it has to be something else.  No matter the quality of
  the writer, its just another stab at an audience in a medium where
  there are no barriers to entry. Its just one more example of the
  newspaper business following everyone else onto the web and doing
  exactly what everyone else is doing, but expecting they will be better
  because they are "The big paper".  Thats a huge mistake.
 Call me crazy, as many out there have, but I would have made every
 effort to be different in a way that leverages brains, technology and
 size. I would have sat down and tried to figure out the answer to the
 question "What leverages our strengths and pre empts every blogger out
 there so that people perceive blogging as the low end and our
 presentation as the future of the medium" You wouldn't have to get it
 right out of the gate, but you could send a message that you are
 striving for more and those with "merely a content management system
 for blogs" will not be able to do what you do.  This is the bias that
 comes from 25 years in the technology business. A feature that anyone
 can add is not a sustainable differentiation. Since you can easily add
 it anytime, like everyone else, instead, always look for what can set
 you apart and pre empt the competition Or you can following the pack.
 The longtail is there waiting for those who do Permalink | Email
 this | Linking Blogs | Comments
There was a lot of discussion about my previous posts here and here. My
point is that the internet is a stable platform. Its a utility. Its
evolved to the point where you can count on it and develop applications
for it without much fear that its going to change.  What confirms my
point is that with all the talk of a possible or existing recession, not
a single mention is ever made about how increases in productivity from
technology will pull us through. That is counter to the recessions of
the past 25 years. Whether it was the early 80s, the 90's or even the
post bubble , economists and others pointed to technology as a catalyst
to productivity that would help pull us out of our economic doldrums.
When there were boomtimes , as we saw from about 91 to 2000, technology
was given the lions' share of the credit.   So where are the claims of
further productivity enhancements from technology ? They are no where
that I can find.  In fact, we can start to make arguments to the
contrary. That technology and in particular social network and video
sites can be a hindrance to productivity in the workplace.   Further
arguments can be made that the MSFT YHOO potential merger is further
evidence that the technology industry is maturing.  It is what it
is.Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
 Sometimes we come across Reader-related things that are interesting
 enough that we'd like to post about them on our blog, but at the same
 time too small to base
a whole post around. Enough of these tidbits have piled up to build a
whole meal, so we thought we'd just share them with you, one link at a
time.

Video Appetizers

 Reader is centered around subscribing to feeds, but it's not always
 easy to explain to others what feeds are, who makes them, and why you'd
 want to subscribe to them. Worse yet, sometimes they're "feeds" and
 sometimes they're "RSS" -- and what is this "Atom" thing anyway? This
 RSS in Plain English video does a good job of explaining all that, in a
 very unique style.

 Also on the topic of videos, Chris made a short clip showing all the
 places he's used his offline Reader. If you or anyone you know would
 like to know just why you'd Google Gears-enable an application, this
 showcases it pretty well:



 For a more in-depth discussion of Gears and Reader, you can watch Aaron
 Boodman's presentation from Google Developer Day.

Embedding Entrées

 Many folks like our gadget, but sometimes wish even more of Reader's
 features could be accessed from within iGoogle. With Michael Bolin's
 Your
Page Here gadget, you can embed all of Reader (or any other page, for
that matter) as its own tab within your iGoogle page.

 For all you Facebook users, Mario Romero has created a Reader
 application that allows you to embed your shared items into Facebook
 profile. It's a bit finick-y (you have to type in your 20-digit Reader
 ID), but it shows how open platforms (Reader's and Facebook's) can be
 used together without needing permission from either party.

Fun Desserts

 We've posted
before about add-ons that others have made for Reader, but they've
generally been of a functional nature (like notifiers and browser
buttons). The Google Reader Theme that Jon Hicks made is entirely unlike
that in that it doesn't add any functionality, it just makes Reader look
very different (some might say Mac-like). A fresh face for Reader can be
a lot of fun, and we were happy to see just how seamless Jon managed to
make it.

 Finally, if Reader is just too serious for you and you'd like to view
 your feeds through a lolcat perspective, Ian McKellar's LOL Feeds may
 be the thing for you.  There's been a lot of discussion this weekend
 about the subscriber counts that have recently appeared in Reader's
 search results. Leaderboards have been drawn up, numbers are being
 compared and in some cases there's confusion as to how these numbers
 compare with other subscriber metrics. Additionally, we've made changes
 (some as recently as today) as to how counts are being calculated. This
 is probably going to be pretty boring unless you're a feed publisher,
 but we thought it would be best to explain things a bit. Here are the
 various numbers you may come across, and what they all mean:


Google subscriber counts: These numbers include subscribers across all
Google services, including Reader, iGoogle, and Orkut.  You can see them
in Reader's feed search results (pictured below) and the Google
Webmaster Tools. Additionally, our crawler reports them to the publisher
each time we fetch the feed. Reader's feed search was recently showing
stale and incomplete data, but as of today (October 15) the numbers
should be the same everywhere.



 FeedBurner numbers: If  you use FeedBurner to manage and track your
 feed, you will see a subscriber count there that is attributed to
 "Google Feedfetcher." This number is a sum of all the feeds that you
 have redirecting to your FeedBurner feed URL. So if
 http://www.example.com/atom.xml has 3 subscribers,
 http://www.example.com/rss.xml has 7 subscribers and
 http://feeds.feedburner.com/Example (where you redirect the other two
 feeds now) has 12 subscribers, then you will see 3 + 7 + 12 = 22
 subscribers reported in the FeedBurner interface.

 What this all means if you're a feed publisher is that if you're
 interested in getting the most comprehensive overview of your
 subscribers, you should be using a service like FeedBurner or Google
 Webmaster Tools. On the other hand, if you're a Reader user, we hope
 you take advantage of the numbers that we now show next to search
 results, so that you can pick the most appropriate feed to subscribe
 to.  It’s exactly three months to the day since I had my heart attack.
 What has followed has been a life-altering experience, forcing me to
 learn some hard lessons about life, myself and of course being a
 first-time entrepreneur.

 I have had to institute numerous behavioral changes over the past 90
 days. But what I found was that some of my worst and most deep-seated
 habits were among the easiest to overcome — smoking, for example, as
 well eating a meat-rich diet and avoiding exercise. It’s the little
 things that have proved to be a challenge.

 Simplification Through Elimination

 I was reading a review of the Macbook Air over on Macworld when I
 realized that the machine and post-recovery me have a lot in common. I
 have to be very careful as to how I use my mental and physical
 resources, for there is a high risk of relapse. Similarly, the Macbook
 Air comes with miniscule amount of storage space, so one needs to be
 careful about how to use it. The machine’s battery power limitations
 remind me of how much time I have to devote to work on a daily basis.

 It has been hard to use the Macbook Air as my primary computer, just as
 it’s been hard to change all those pesky “little things.” Indeed, the
 Macbook Air is an acquired taste. It’s also an apt reflection of an
 effective “simplification through elimination” strategy.

 Three months on, I am looking to eliminate a number of things from
 life: excessive public appearances, too much travel and many, many RSS
 feeds. I am going to cut down the effort I spend on certain projects
 and focus on making the most of what we have at hand. Stay tuned for
 more details.

 Empower To Power Up

 One of the upsides to my health setback was that I discovered the
 amazing abilities of my team. When faced with adversity, each one of
 them picked up whatever they felt comfortable with and ran with it.
 From editorial to sales to the company and everything in between — the
 team executed on our strategy. Batteries Om not included.

 I think one of the biggest problems I had as a first-time entrepreneur
 was an inability to let go; I was always second-guessing every decision
 not made by myself and was obsessed with minutiae. Three months on,
 having seen the Giga Gang at work, I realized what a mistake that was.
 You empower people, and in turn they power you to do good things. Now I
 am finding more time to focus on writing, reporting and spending time
 on projects like our upcoming conference, Structure 08.

 Anyway folks, thanks for reading — and please don’t forget to get your
 cardiac check-up. Many of us in Silicon Valley refuse to acknowledge
 that we live a high-stress existence and are prone to all sorts of
 problems that stem from an 18-hour-a-day, non-stop lifestyle. Cardiac
 disease is one of the deadliest silent killers of the modern age, and I
 urge you to learn from my mistakes. (More information on this @ the
 American Heart Association web site.) Please let me know if you want me
 to post information about symptoms of heart disease and other
 heart-related problems. And if you need help, I am just an email away.




 With the clock ticking on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s tenure, his
 special friends in the phone business are asking him to give them the
 moon, the stars and the sun: In other words, a cable TV version of
 number portability.

Verizon today asked the Federal Communications Commission to require the
cable industry to make it as easy for consumers to choose a new video
provider as it already is for them to switch voice providers. The
process to switch video providers is more cumbersome for consumers…Cable
incumbents do not accept disconnect orders from the new provider;
instead, they require the customer to contact them directly to cancel
service after choosing a new video provider and to return equipment.
(press release)

 Verizon’s arguments and press release may seem consumer-friendly, but
 one has to take all of it with a barrel of salt. Now, as you well know,
 I am no fan of cable companies — who apparently want to watch what you
 are doing inside your living room — but it’s hard to believe Verizon.

 Even despite all the legal and other hassles, the satellite guys have
 been competing with cable companies for video customers — and they
 didn’t need a sugar daddy (aka the FCC) to help them out. Verizon
 should learn to compete in the open market.

 Must I remind you that Verizon is the same company that rips out copper
 cables in favor of its own fiber, thereby taking away your ability to
 switch your broadband or voice service to another provider? Verizon
 itself delayed the switching of “broadband” service when customers
 wanted to buy DSL from another company, thus driving many of them out
 of business. In fact, incumbent phone companies indulge in such delays
 even now.

 I think both incumbents — the cable and phone operators — are waging a
 war of words, and none of them, including the newly “open” Verizon,
 have consumers’ best interests in mind.

 The P2P arguments, open networks, and now video portability all seem to
 be part of a calculated image makeover for Verizon. But as my
 granddaddy used to say: Just because you paint stripes on a donkey, it
 doesn’t make it a zebra.




 I was having breakfast this morning with Salil Deshpande from Bay
 Partners.  Salil and I were talking about assessing company progress
 and how best to measure that progress.  Salil invests in super
 early-stage deals and has his companies report to him on their progress
 on a frequent basis.  He said that he had one CEO who would report on
 his progress in such florid language that eventually Salil had to
 forbid his use of adjectives in his progress reports.  Salil said that
 he didn't want to hear that things were going great.  He wanted to hear
 precisely how things were going.

 I nearly jumped out of my seat.  Salil had articulated one of my
 biggest pet peeves when it comes to company pitches (and board meetings
 for that matter).  I hate adjectives.  I don't want to hear that one of
 the company founders is a "fantastic sales exec."  I want to hear that
 she was Presidents Club the last twelve years running.  I don't want to
 hear that the product is "revolutionary and paradigm-shifting."  I want
 to hear about the specific features of the product that are
 differentiated and how.  I don't want to hear that the company has
 "massive market traction."  I want to see a graph of progressive
 quarterly sales and a giant sales pipeline.

 Adjectives are not convincing.  Facts are convincing.  I may not agree
 with the conclusions a company draws from those facts.  But I will at
 least be in a position to appropriately assess those conclusions.
 Whereas adjectives are all about conclusions without the underlying
 facts.  As an entrepreneur, you are far better off having me determine
 that your market is "massive," your founders are "brilliant," and your
 product is "elegant," than to tell me that your company has "an elegant
 solution serving a massive market designed by brilliant founders."  So
 reread your pitch and remove all of the adjectives.  It will go
 massively, monumentally, gargantuanly. colossally better that way.



            This appears not to be a joke: the Quantum Sleeper is a bed
            that hermetically seals itself as you sleep to protect you
            from "Bio-Chemical terrorist attack," "natural disaster,"
            "kidnappers/stalkers" (only those who don't possess a
            forklift, surely) and affords "Bulletproof 'Saferoom'
            protection."



1.25" Polycarbonate Bulletproof Plating/Shielding
        Bio-Chemical Filtered Ventilation Rebreather Control Panel Mode
        Selection (i.e., Basic System Ops., Intruder Setting, Energy
        Status, Lock Down, etc.) Cover & Door Actuators w/ Emergency
        Release One way see through head cover (reflective mirror on 2
        sides and front) Safety Features (Proximity Sensor, O2 Sensor,
        Smoke Det., Motion Det. Ect,) Emergency Communication system
        (Cellular, Short-wave Radio, CB ect.) Audio Amplifier (Amplify
        sound from out side unit)


Air/Water Tight Sealing
        External Override Key Pad & Remote Control Battery Backup Power
        Toiletry system


Ect!

Link

(via Warren Ellis)

See also: Creepy bed doubles a safe room









            The Telegraph reports that 70 students from the Queen
            Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria, were joined by
            over 100 other youths to celebrate an end of term party by
            "having unprotected sex in a village square."

Alison Hughes, the deputy head of the Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby
Lonsdale, Cumbria, was so concerned that she detailed the "catalogue of
disasters" in a two-page letter to parents, warning them about the
sexual activity, violent behaviour and alleged drug abuse that took
place.

 She wrote: "We have had to help a disturbingly high number of girls
 through the aftermath of having unprotected sex that evening, most of
 whom have told us they were too drunk to be in control of themselves.
 The risks are real. Assume the worst."

 Neil Taplin, the landlord of the nearby George and Dragon pub, said
 that youths had urinated against his wall and sworn at him when he
 refused to sell them cigarettes. "They were a law to themselves," he
 said. "It was upsetting for people in the village. We are all quite
 close and look out for each other."

 A resident involved in the clean-up said that she saw evidence of drug
 use, blood stains and broken glass and said that a newly fitted sink
 had been smashed.

 Link (Via Arbroath)








Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an
autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life.  Here's our latest
winner.  Reader CK uses neat automation trick when there's heavy-duty
copy and pasting to be done: I have one very simple AutoHotkey script
which I use when I need to do some massive copying and pasting work,
which simplifies the task into just one keystroke: Win+C. With this
script, I run Notepad (or any program to paste the content into), browse
through some web sites, select text or pictures, and hit Win+C to
capture the contentmdashwithout leaving my browser.  The script switches
to the destination program (Notepad or otherwise), pastes the
information, and returns me to my browser automatically.  Check out the
video for how it works.  It's good for transferring bits of data between
two programs like compiling a list of email addresses. It's also
customizablemdashinstead of entering a new line, it can move on to the
next cell in the spreadsheet.

 For you AutoHotkey scripters, here's the source of CK's script:

#c:: Send, {CTRLDOWN}c{CTRLUP}{ALTDOWN}{TAB}{ALTUP} sleep, 300 Send,
{CTRLDOWN}v{CTRLUP}{ENTER}{ALTDOWN}{TAB}{ALTUP} return


To try our the compiled executable yourself, download it here.  To learn
more about writing your own Windows programs with AutoHotkey, see Adam's
feature on how to turn any action into a keyboard shortcut with
AutoHotkey.

 Congrats, CK!  You've just earned yourself an autographed copy of
 Upgrade Your Life.

 There's still time to win one of the last five books that are left;
 here's how.






 Social mapping service Loopt will soon be available on select Verizon
 Wireless phones.  Starting next month, certain Verizon wireless users
 will be able to find friends in a location-based manner, share
 information and status updates with each other.  Loopt also has
 geo-tagging photo options.  As the Loopt service supports AIM buddies,
 Verizon users with Loopt on their phones will be able to connect and
 share with their AOL friends as well.  While a number of social-mapping
 services have emerged in the past year or so, this particular
 partnership between Verizon and Loopt allows Verizon to provide
 additional social capabilities directly through its own wireless
 network, between Verizon users as well as Loopt friends.  As mobile
 devices enable more social interaction and wireless providers become
 more competitive in their social incentives for retaining customers
 (think top 5 friends to call free, across networks), incorporating such
 social features will attract a younger demographic for mobile use,
 which is typically the user base that utilizes such peripheral mobile
 phone services.  ShareThis






 BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy is closing its doors.  After years of
 court battles against copyright holders and lots of money poured into
 its legal defense, TorrentSpy has decided to shut down its service,
 according to The Register.  That’s one point for the MPAA.  TorrentSpy
 lost a major court case to the MPAA last December, when TorrentSpy was
 found guilty of destroying evidence, making it impossible to hold a
 fair trial, and raked up a $30,000 fine.  The whole situation, which
 had dragged on for several months and even led TorrentSpy to block US
 IP addresses in an effort to avoid legal incrimination for providing
 the torrent-tracking service in the states, has aided in the
 anti-torrent movement gaining additional leverage in the larger war
 between copyright holders and torrents.  TorrentSpy founder Justin
 Bunnell, however, has stated that the loss of the court battle doesn’t
 have anything to do with the company’s decision to close down its
 service.  Bunnell posted the following statement on TorrentSpy:
     We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or
     agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and
     thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.  The
     legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests,
     and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile.
     We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars,
     defending the rights of our users and ourselves.  Ultimately the
     court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our
     privacy policy, traditional court rules, and international law;
     therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of
     privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.

    It was a wild ride,
     The TorrentSpy Team
 As the US and our legal system has been the primary reason for
 TorrentSpy’s demise, The Register has gone on to point out that the
 blocking of US IP addresses unfortunately resulted in a loss of
 traction and advertising dollars for the TorrentSpy service.
 Additionally, TorrentSpy’s legal loss may in fact give even more reason
 for torrents to be targeted in other countries as well.  ShareThis





 Here at the Westin in Los Angeles, connectivity is pretty good — about
 a megabit in each direction. (For a fee, of course.) But the last two
 days, at the Hilton in Loma Linda and the University of Redlands, were
 terrible. I’m not sure if it was just because they blocked stuff (as
 was the case with Redlands), or because the system was bad (as was the
 case with the Hilton), but I’ve come to the conclusion that two things
 cause these kinds of problems in general. One is charging for something
 that ought to be free. The other is subtracting value from something
 that doesn’t need it and only pisses off users.  In the long run it
 makes as much sense for hotels to charge for Internet as it does to
 charge for television. (Yes, they used to do that too. There were
 coin-operated TVs.) Or for using the toilet. But it’s a business
 because they know they need Internet service now, and because doing it
 themselves is too complicated. So they hire these outside outfits to do
 it for them. (In the case of the Hilton it was iBahn.) And too many of
 them just don’t do a good job.  Yet we saw in Loma Linda how easy it is
 to bring fiber to homes, and for anybody to hook by fiber to anybody.
 The cabling and conduit are progressing upwards in convenience and
 downward in price, to a point where it will be as easy to put in fiber
 as it is to install a drip irrigation system. What makes the Interent
 complicated is that it comes to most places as a secondary service to
 telephony and television. Yet it doesn’t have to be, and in the long
 run it won’t be.

 Back last Fall, when news came that the Medill School of Journalism was
 thinking about changing its name (and in fact had already dropped “of
 Journalism” from its website index page), I wrote a post saying,
 basically, that this was wrong as well as dumb. In fact, I thought it
 was so wrong, and so lacking in support, that it would die on the vine.
 Well, apparently not. Eric Zorn reports in the Chicago Tribune that the
 idea is not only alive, but wrong as ever. Names “reportedly under
 consideration” (by a secretive committee) include “The Medill School of
 —



 


Journalism Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications
Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications News Media and
Integrated Marketing Communications Audience and Consumer Information
Media Arts and Sciences Information and Influence



 In The Future of News, Steve Boriss writes,



  More than most, I am sympathetic to scrapping the word “journalism,”
which has come to be associated with a failing model that only its
practitioners still believe delivers objective, verified truths. But do
we really want to combine news gathering with sales and entertainment
disciplines like marketing, media, and persuasion? And, isn’t the public
tired of journalism insisting it is providing pure “information,” and in
fact showing increased interest in a more helpful and stimulating
combination of fact and opinion?





  The right answer must be too simple for j-school eggheads — the
“Medill School of News.” By news, I mean “new information about a
subject of common interest that is shared within a community.”
Everything from as small as news of family and friends, which is now
being served by Facebook and MySpace, to as large as news of our
universe. Not just news of government, but also news of the private
sector, our neighborhoods, our vocations, and our avocations. The public
no longer believes in “journalism.” But renaming it “news” is a change
they can believe in.


 I almost like “School of News”. And I agree that it’s wacky to combine
 news (or journalism, or both) with “entertainment disciplines” (though
 I wouldn’t cal them that. I even agree that “the public no longer
 believes…” but I’m not sure it’s journalism that they doubt.  As it
 happens I’m sitting in the Annenberg School for Communication, where
 Media Re:public is about to begin. On the wall of the vast lobby are
 six big flat-screen TVs, four in the middle with news channels, one on
 the right with ESPN and one on the left with CNN. Sound comes from the
 last two. Nobody is watching. Yet at our table we can’t ignore the CNN
 one, which is blabbing behind our heads, which are turned away. For
 most of the last hour CNN has been obsessing on the murder of a Rutgers
 student in front of her toddler son. I’ve heard “stabbed multiple
 times” so many times that my inner Mona Shaw wants to take a hammer to
 the screen. I can’t find the story on the CNN.com index page, but maybe
 I’m not looking hard enough. In any case, I’m sure that what they’re
 pushing out the tube is news yet not journalism.  And I think I’d
 rather have Medill teach the latter. No matter what they call the
 place.

 There is a new version 07 of the Tabulator
out.   This is the generic data browser which lets you do useful things
with your RDF data the moment it's on the web.

It works by exploring the web of relationship between things, loading
more data from the web as you go.  Then, if you find a pattern of
information you are interested in, it will search for all occurrences of
that pattern and display them in tables, maps, calendars, and so on.


In the same session, you can explore, say, some geocoded photos taken
from on a  trip with a GPS,

and then separately explore where in the world the tabulator developers
are based.


Then, you can project both datasets onto the same map.


Or onto the same calendar, for data with a time component.  This shows
the cross-domain power of the semantic web.


This means you can correlate data from completely different domains.
Think of all the different mash-ups people have made for putting things
like friends houses, photos, or coffee shops on the web.  Each a
different mash-up for a different data source.


For data in RDF (or any XML with a GRDDL profile), though, then you
don't have to program anything.  You can just explore it and map it. And
you can map many different data sources at the same time.

Oh, and for developers, the core of the tabulator is an open source RDF
library with a complete tested RDF/XML parser, a store which smushes on
owl:sameAs and owl:[Inverse]FunctionalProperty, and web crawling query
engine supporting basic SPARQL. Enjoy.


        Just prior to jetting off to Austin last week, I started playing
        around with a mobile version of this site. While a personal blog
        is hardly a site that really needs one (unlike, say, an app with
        a proven mobile user-base like Twitter), I wanted to see what
        would be involved in re-factoring this design into something
        more fitting for a mobile environment.






 The first step was to create a mobile style sheet. For this I
 duplicated the CSS file I've already built for large screens, and
 started stripping out the style that doesn't work so well on a smaller
 screen. The layout was simplified into a more linear single column, and
 some elements were re-done to provide a larger target area for a
 maximum Fitts factor, and background images were dropped wherever
 possible to cut down on bandwidth demands. I tried building something
 that would work well on more mobile devices than just the iPhone, but
 given that it's my testing device, it works best on that platform for
 now.

 And while I was at it, I thought hey, why not do a TV style sheet too?
 I've got a Wii, it's got a great browser, and a low-res TV screen could
 benefit from the same kind of special attention given a mobile device.
 So I built one of those as well, doing things like increasing font
 size, increasing border widths, and stretching images to double their
 original size.

 But here's the thing about media-specific style sheets: the browser in
 question has to support them. Mobile Safari grabs all screen media
 style sheets, and ignores the handheld media type entirely. So despite
 good intentions, my efforts were wasted on it. And that's what led me
 down the road of user agent sniffing...

 Okay, let's get this out of the way up front: user agent sniffing
 sucks. Devices like the Wii and the iPhone have incredibly capable
 browsers that can render these sites the same as any desktop browser,
 so it's reasonable to assume users will want to do so from time to
 time. (And I suspect that's why Mobile Safari uses screen in the first
 place.) Forcing a specific version sucks... if done improperly. But
 when used well, and not mandatory for the user, I think it's not
 entirely evil. And it leads to other potential improvements beyond what
 CSS can provide, like selective content serving.

 The way to sensibly handle sniffing seemed to lie in providing an out:
 the mobile and TV versions of the site both have a special header on
 every page that provides a "regular site" toggle link. Any time someone
 wants to switch back to the regular site, the link is right there in
 front of them. And all versions now have toggle links in the footer to
 switch between different media types; given that I've seen this on
 multiple mobile sites, it feels like the site's footer is resolving
 into a standard place for where these type of switches ultimately
 belong.

 To make all this work, I had to bust out the PHP. I'll preface this by
 saying I'm hardly a proficient coder, so there are bound to be ways to
 optimize what I'm showing below. I started with a pair of arrays: a
 list of mobile browser user agent strings, and a second list of TV
 browsers. The latter is a bit light at the moment, due to my lack of
 knowledge of what sort of browsers are available for use on TVs. (And
 that underscores why having a media toggle is useful: if the browser in
 question isn't flagged by the sniff, the user can manually invoke the
 TV version.)


// ========================== // media check

// array of mobile devices $userAgentsMobile = array (
  "Blackberry", "Blazer", "Handspring", "iPhone", "iPod", "Kyocera",
  "LG", "Motorola", "Nokia", "Palm", "PlayStation Portable", "Samsung",
  "Smartphone", "SonyEricsson", "Symbian", "WAP", "Windows CE",
);

// array of tv devices $userAgentsTv = array (
  "Nintendo Wii", "Playstation 3", "WebTV"
);

 Arrays in place, the next step was building a few functions to do
 things like comparing these arrays with the user's actual user agent
 string, and setting cookies to make these media types persist. More on
 the latter in a second.

// this function takes two arguments: an array of user // agents, and a
specific user agent.  // it will then try to see if the specific user
agent exists // within the array. If so, it will return true, otherwise
// it returns false.  function checkMediaType($uaList, $uaKnown) {
        // check user agent string against array // return true if
        found, or false if not found if(in_array($uaKnown, $uaList)) {
                return true;
        } else {
                return false;
        }
} // this function takes one argument: a string value that // specifies
a media profile. It will then set a cookie in // the user's browser. It
returns the media profile value, // to be used as a variable later in
the page function selectMedia($media) {
  setcookie ('media', $media, time()+31536000, '/'); return $media;
}

 With those functions in place, the code below ended up being the core
 of my script. In the first major if statement, I'm checking to see
 whether a cookie is set; the cookie exists to avoid parsing the user
 agent arrays every single time the site is loaded. I doubt I'm saving
 that much time if any, given my currently very simple arrays. But I can
 see them growing over time, so it seems to make sense that this value
 should persist on the user's end once the user agent has been
 determined.

 But if no cookie is found, then I'm doing the actual sniffing. I check
 the user agent string against both the mobile and TV arrays, and then
 act on them if they match one or the other. If neither matches, I
 default to the screen version of the site.

// show standard screen version by default $mediaVersion = "screen";

// toggle media version if cookie is set if (isset($_COOKIE["media"])) {
  if ($_COOKIE["media"] == "mobile") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("mobile");
  } elseif ($_COOKIE["media"] == "tv") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("tv");
  } elseif ($_COOKIE["media"] == "screen") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("screen");
  }
} else {
  // if no cookie found, sniff media type then set cookie
  $knownUserAgent = false;

  // compare the device arrays against the // client's user agent
  $mediaTypeMobile =
    checkMediaType($userAgentsMobile, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
  $mediaTypeTV =
    checkMediaType($userAgentsTv, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

  // if media version is found, set a media type cookie // otherwise
  flag this browser as screen to save // time on future loads if
  ($mediaTypeMobile) {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("mobile");
  } elseif ($mediaTypeTV) {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("tv");
  } else {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("screen");
  }
}

 And then the last step is checking to see whether any of the media
 toggle links have been selected. If a user is viewing the mobile site
 and wants to switch over to the regular site, I need to re-set the
 cookie so their new preference persists. This is all done through
 simple query strings; the HTTP GET variable being checked for (media)
 can be invoked simply by adding ?media=mobile to the end of a URL or
 link.

// override media version and set a new cookie // if they have selected
a "show {media} site" link if ($_GET["media"]) {
  if ($_GET["media"] == "mobile") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("mobile");
  } elseif ($_GET["media"] == "tv") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("tv");
  } elseif ($_GET["media"] == "screen") {
    $mediaVersion = selectMedia("screen");
  }
}

 Now that the cookie exists and the $mediaVersion variable has a value,
 I'm all set. Anywhere in the rest of my site, I can use a simple if
 statement to filter out the specific media version I'm targetting, and
 selectively show or hide content for it. This is how I'm hiding my
 header photo from the mobile version, for example (simplified for
 clarity):

<?php
  // don't serve this up if we're talking mobile if ($mediaVersion ==
  "screen" || $mediaVersion == "tv")  {
?>
  <div id="header-photo"> <img src="/i/photos/<?php
    echo $currentPhoto["largephoto"]?>" width="505" height="243"
    alt="<?php echo $currentPhoto["description"]?>" />
  </div>
<?php
  }
?>

 I put together the entire set of functions and a couple of small
 demonstrations of selective content into a file you can grab. (live
 demo)

 And to finish, a couple of highlights from the alternate media versions
 of this site. The mobile version goes small by stripping out images
 where appropriate to save on download times; the header photo is gone,
 avatars on comment pages are gone, and most of the decorative PNGs have
 been removed or converted to CSS border properties. While the TV
 version goes big by doubling font size, increasing border widths,
 stretching the header image to fill the entire horizontal screen width,
 doubles avatar sizes, and using a higher-resolution version of the
 site's logo.

 Quick caveat: I've only had the opportunity to test the alternate media
 styles on a limited range of devices, and likely won't any time soon.
 Device testing is too hard if you don't already have access to a wide
 range of devices. I tried stripping out some of the more complex CSS
 tricks like overflow clearing and absolute positioning, so even my Treo
 doesn't make a horrible mess out of the site, but no guarantees.

 And the bonus question: why am I serving up the media versions with
 media profiles set to all? Simple reason: clicking through and viewing
 the TV-only version on a computer was seriously ugly, because it
 ignored the style sheet. As it should. But people will click through
 anyway, so that was problematic. Simple fix: media="all"

 Updated to include iPod Touch.  Updated PHP for minor optimizations in
 response to comments.



 Last weekend, I went for a drive with my wife up the Hudson River.
 Well, she was driving.  I was playing with the new Dash Express GPS
 navigation system.  The Dash is not perfect, but it holds a lot of
 promise.  (See CrunchGear’s review).  It was able to pinpoint a
 hard-to-find home on a country road.  And it let me toggle between a
 2-D and 3-D view, bleating out in a computerized female voice when the
 next turn was coming up.  I had to mute that because the voice was
 driving my wife crazy.  In fact, she found the whole screen pretty
 distracting, so I had to turn it away from her.  But my three-year-old
 son in the back seat couldn’t get enough of it.  He kept yelling at me
 to move my hand whenever I was blocking his view of the blue car on the
 screen that somehow went exactly wherever we did.  Although, he did
 point out that our real car is green.  (Can’t those Dash folks get
 anything right?) The Dash is a GPS unit that can communicate back to
 the Internet using cellular data networks or WiFi (it contains three
 chips: GPS,WiFi, and GPRS).  You can’t browse the Web, but you can use
 the touch screen to search Yahoo Local for nearby gas stations,
 restaurants, airports, and any other place that might be listed.  One
 of my favorite features: it can tell you the price of gas at each
 station nearby so you can price shop without wasting gas driving
 around.  The Dash even found a chocolate shop for us when the one that
 had been recommended to us was closed.  Once you find a place you want
 to go to, you just hit “route” and it gets you there.  It picks what it
 thinks are the two or three most direct routes. And it even shows you
 the traffic on those routes based on historical patterns, sensors, and,
 if available, traffic data from other Dash drivers.  You also can
 program the Dash from the Web and create GPS mashups.  For instance,
 you can mark your own addresses on a map, find places on Yahoo local,
 or tap into any GeoRSS feed (or make your own) and send it to the GPS
 unit in your car.  I’d love to be able to access the Web with a browser
 as well, or at least get regular RSS feeds, but the temptation to check
 those things while driving might be too great (which is why that is not
 a feature).  The best thing about the Dash is that it connects you to
 other Dash drivers to give you traffic intelligence.   Because each
 Dash unit is sending back data about its speed and location, once a
 critical mass of a few hundred or a thousand drivers get a Dash in the
 city where you live, you will arguably have the best live traffic
 information available.  At last that is the theory.  Early adopters
 will have to wait for that critical mass to build up before they can
 test it out.  One request:  For people living in big cities with street
 parking, knowing when a nearby Dash driver just vacated a spot would be
 a killer feature for future versions of the software.  Okay, I actually
 have some more requests.  An opt-in messaging system with other Dash
 drivers would be awesome.  If handled correctly, could be very helpful
 and create a strong sense of community among Dash drivers.  (No plans
 for that either, but I think it is a good idea).  Here is where the
 Dash needs some help.  If it picks the correct route, you are fine.
 But if you know a better one, you cannot tell it which way you want to
 go.  You can only pick a destination and hope that it doesn’t lead you
 astray.  I noticed that it tends to favor major highways, even if they
 are 20 miles out of your way.  All you can do is keep driving, and
 eventually it will pick a new route based on your GPS coordinates.
 Something as simple as being able to move the line of the suggested
 route with your finger, like you can on Google Maps with a cursor,
 would fix that problem.  Another gripe: you cannot do multi-point
 routing from the GPS unit itself.  You must enter a new destination
 each time you get into the car.  (Although, you can create a map of
 destinations on the Web and send them to your unit as saved
 destinations).  A final major flaw with the digital map in the Dash is
 that as you are driving along a strange highway, it doesn’t show you
 what cities you are passing.  That is how I mentally keep track of
 where I am when I am driving long distances.  On that ride along the
 Hudson, I found myself repeatedly referring to our old, beat-up, road
 atlas to get my bearings. The thing that kills me is that the Dash knew
 exactly what cities we were passing, it just wouldn’t show me.  These
 are all minor quibbles.  I am particularly excited about the the fact
 that the device’s capabilities will grow over time, especially the
 ability to see live traffic information and to download customized
 lists of destinations and geographically-relevant feeds.  The Dash goes
 on sale starting now at Amazon for $399, plus a monthly fee of $10 (the
 first three months are free).



CrunchBase Information


Dash

Information provided by CrunchBase


 Crunch Network:  CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and
 hardware.





 Google Israel is sporting an all black theme today, in support of Earth
 Hour’s efforts to raise awareness around energy conservation. From the
 page telling confused Israeli’s what’s going on: Google users in Israel
 will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.co.il
 homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy
 conservation effort called Earth Hour.  On Thursday, March 27, 2008,
 Earth Hour invites people in Israel to turn off their lights for one
 hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm.  Given our company’s commitment to
 environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the
 Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help
 spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global
 event.  Google has a long history of caring about all things green.  Of
 course, this begs the question as to whether or not Google should
 change their site permanently to black to save display power (see
 blackle). Google looked into it, and said the opposite is true:
 “displaying black may actually increase energy usage.” I won’t even
 bring up the irony that Google, according to the study they cited, is
 actually increasing energy usage in Israel by having a black home page.
 The point is, people, they care.  Update: Earth Hour in San Francsico
 (and everywhere else except Israel) is March 29 at 8 pm. It’s important
 that everyone turn off their lights then. We’ll need that extra power
 if Google goes black here in the U.S., too.  Crunch Network:
 MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.







 Chris Pirillo has announced a new, large scale open source CMS project
 that aims to “de-geekify” website tools (announcement video above).
 The project will be built on the open source Drupal framework: “For the
 geeks: Drupal has so much power in its core, and enough fantastic
 community-contributed modules, that I think it’s time to assemble an
 Install Profile, complete with beautiful (accessible, microformat’ed,
 high quality) themes, pre-set Views for any Web community to either
 install on their own or have hosted at any given Web host that supports
 Drupal with optimizations. The benefits to you should be more than
 obvious….And I don’t mean just the framework for the community