Weighs and Pages

From the online bio of Cory Doctorow.

I believe that we live in an era where anything that can be expressed as bits will be. I believe that bits exist to be copied.

From Why Things Matter: a Manifesto on Networked Objects- Cohabitating with Pigeons, Arphids, and Aibos in the Internet of Things. Via BoingBoing.

This paper by Julian Bleecker describes a world that is connected beyond the scope of RFID and other network sensors. Julian writes about a world where everyday objects known as Blogjects, blog. Off site link to PDF.

Firms are able to create personalized experiences in an online world that are much more powerful than in an offline marketplace. For example, Amazon's "customers who bought this also bought" feature or my favorite, Emusic's "let your neighbor's guide you" functionality. But none of this is new, however, just more sophisticated.

This promotional video is about Taiwan and how it is a source of innovation across several industries like IT, consumer products and biotech. Features cameo by Gates. Via Jessie

From the MIT Media Laboratory:

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization, has named Khaled Hassounah as their new Director for the Middle East and Africa.

My first job out of college was a Webmaster for a military service academy in Annaplis, MD. This was back in 1998 before Webmasters were known as Developers. I read everything I could get my hands on. I read books by Lynda Weinman, religiously checked Web Pages that Suck everyday for the latest sucker, and could recite Webmonkey's Anatomy of a Redesign on command.

Seems like municipal Wi-Fi is on everyone's mind. In this article from the Washington Post, Arshad Mohammed, discusses the District's tentative plans for providing wireless access to the city and its low income areas.

From Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Professor Koleman Strumpf lectures on "The Effect of File Sharing on the Sale of Entertainment Products: The Case of Recorded Music and Movies"

View the webcast of this lecture.

Interesting comments by Strumpf at 30:00 regarding Itunes as the music industry cannibalizing their physical album sales. Strumpf suggests that Itunes is not the success that it is played out to be in the media.

I attended a lecture tonight given by Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Web. The lecture was hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute.

Via Joho, a conversation between David Weinberger and Mario Sixtus on Networked Markets.

At 5:15 Weinberger gets right to the heart of the Clue Train. This lasts all the way to 7:30 where the conversation heads into other areas like public relations, power relations, blogging, and knowledge authorities. At 12:00, Weinberger applies his principles to the Dean Campaign and its Web log.

The remainder of the interview is focused on privacy and the value of being able to have anonymous transactions online.

Listen here or download the MP3
Note: The questions are dubbed in German. Weinberger's answers are in English.

I use the Wikipedia several times a week. If I need to quickly determine proteomics from genomics, after seeing a lecture by Tim Berners-Lee, I know where to go.

I know that it may have some inaccuracies as they exist in invoices, weather forecasts, menus, accounting practices, newspapers, and take off and landing times. Life is largely inaccurate and we plan for it. We read things twice, use accountants, carry umbrellas, and leave early for work even when there isn't supposed to be any traffic.

The Wikipedia is uniquely human in that it isn't always perfect, but often just enough to get the essence of something. Sometimes the gist is all we have time for. Glossy magazine covers are perfect, but at the same time, they are largely incomplete and leave us wanting much more.

It is also something much greater than just a Web site where anyone can edit pages. It is more like a testament of our society and its diversity. Where else can you find a living record of the Funnel Cake, Corn Dog, or even Marmite?

[Caution: Marmite is an acquired taste]

It isn't the Wikipedia that is inaccurate. We are.

Just a follow up to my post on Wikipedia from yesterday. This is another audio shot from Weinberger as he examines the authority of Wikipedia at the Berkman Center.

Weinberger offers 5 marks of authority (signals of trust) within Wikipedia entries.

1. The size of the topic. For example, the JFK assasination.
2. The editing history. More edits make something more accurate.
3. The discussion surrounding the entry. All articles have the ability for a forum-like discussion.
4. The meta data of an article. For example, this article needs cleanup or it is in dispute. This is currently the case with the JFK article.
5. The voice, tone, and content as additional metadata for the article.

I have always liked how Weinberger uses history in order to illustrate his arguments. In the discussion, he tied the history of the authority-of-knowledge to those with conviction, an unwillingness to compromise, and often times the loudest voice. What is ironic in this sense, is that being unwilling to negotiate in a Wikipedia entry, is not a sign of authority at all and is just the opposite. The knowledge in the Wikipedia is what makes it through the discussion and comes out the other side.

Listen or download.

If you give a lot of presentations for your job or for school, you might want to build them using the W3C's Slidy instead of Power Point. All you need is a browser and the slides are advanced using the keyboard.

It helps if you know some some basic XHTML markup and CSS, but you don't necessarily have to. Just view the source and you should be able to figure out how things were put together.

The slides are lightweight, accessible, and you won't have to worry about whether or not the machine you are using has Power Point installed.

From the SXSW's most recent festival and conference, the Future of Darknets.

This was a one hour discussion led by JD Lasica, Exec Dir of Ourmedia with panelists from the MPAA, Flickr, BayTSP, Outhink, Ourmedia, and the Freenet Project. The purpose of the session was to discuss darknets, or private subnetworks that are out of sight from the larger Internet.

Listen or download the session in MP3.

Additional video content from the session is available via Blogumentary.

Christopher Lydon, in his Radio Open Source, discusses domestic Hip Hop in the first of two episodes focused on this style of music. The first episode is titled Race and Class: Hip-Hop.

Listen or download

From the Economist, Net Dreams, an article from March 16, discussing Big Media's rush to digitize their offerings and make them available on the Web.

The most obvious opportunity is to put the content they already own on new platforms. Media companies can charge people directly, or sell ads around it. In October last year Disney took the big step of allowing two of its hit dramas—“Lost” and “Desperate Housewives”—to be downloaded from Apple's iTunes download service on to iPods for $1.99 an episode

This will undoubtedly place more emphasis on issues like copyright, DRM, and the interoperability of content across players. For example, if I download "Lost" from Itunes, can I share it across multiple devices? The French think so.

From Danah Boyd's talk at Oreilly's Etech. Danah discusses the confluence of global ICT and local culture and the resulting Glocalization that ensues.

She emphasizes that while our networks are global, we still operate within our own cultural context. This makes designing social software difficult as diversity doesn't always promote neighborly relations. Danah suggests, among other things, that firms hire design ethnographers who can sort out the cultural practices of people who will be using their applications.

I think this is a smart idea as it will be difficult for a design shop in San Francisco or New York to manage and understand the social interactions of people who might be from Serbia, Kosovo, the Middle East, or even Northern Ireland. Not only are these interactions occurring between the firm and members from other countries, but between the minglings of the members themselves and this is what Danah is talking about.

She discusses culture and how to build it, online communities, and why social groups form. Other areas of her talk included embedded observation and its problems and limitations. She winds up with additional thoughts on language and balancing issues with economic implications. Her last section addresses how to design social software so that it is sensitive to Glocalization.

Note: This entry is prompted by a post from Fred Wilson, Blogger and VC from the Big Apple.

Nielson's most current Alertbox is out, Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First

Rather than offering a unified intranet portal, one big company's intranet had inconsistent design and used different systems to manage different areas. As employees moved around the intranet, the navigation options and structural appearance changed. Parts of the intranet looked outdated compared to newer sections, which made users doubt the accuracy of the older pages' information. Again, this is a credibility problem -- trust is not just an e-commerce issue.

Comment:
If Nielson is referring to Big Company as a Multinational, one principal scenario is at play.

1. The intranet was managed by headquarters. As the firm grew and moved into different countries, additional business units created their own Intranet systems purely for information survival. Headquarters may have gotten bogged down with Webmaster requests or an inventive employee simply created the information that they needed. This probably started with a phone list.

In an attempt for integration, all of these systems were hooked together, and hence the reason why some areas were outdated and had different navigation schemes.

Solution: A redesign that allows for scale, and template-based content management for uniformity. Pages are easily created by business units or departments, and the design (including the UI) runs throughout the entire system.

This all looks good on paper, but what if the firm makes it a practice of acquiring new businesses like Cisco did in the 1990's? Content management across multiple businesses clearly becomes an issue. While I don't think it is necessary for new businesses to lose their autonomy for purposes of information management, some degree of uniformity is important.

The issue is where does the uniformity exist? Some firms may want their newly acquired businesses to remain as independent units for strategic reasons. For example, McDonalds owns Chipotle but you won't find a Golden Arches overlooking that restaurant.

So while they are distinct on the outside, what about the inside? How does strategic distinction effect the information needs of, and more importantly, the knowledge flows of Multinationals?

Via Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwith, the World Information Access Project has published a new study on the state of the International digital divide.

tag: digital divide

From Global Voices, a post by Erik Hersman on how to tag your blog entries for use with Technorati. I'd like to build on that post based on some recent experiences with the service.

I have been using Technorati for several months. While my posts were always included in their search results, I was unable to have them appear in their index of tagged entries. After several exchanges with their support team (they were very helpful), my posts are now included in the main index.

Based on my conversations with support, I was able to determine that the RSS feed is an integral part of how the post gets indexed. Once I moved my tags out of the footer and into the body of the post, they were picked up in my
Atom feed. After I pinged Technorati, the posts appeared within a few minutes.

Tags: Global Voices Atom Technorati

From the Flickr Blog, Stewart Butterfield describes Flickr's vision as being the eyes of the world.

Based on experience, I would have to say that not only is this an honest vision, but it is one that will always remain just out of reach.

The perfect kind.

Its users continue to show others new and interesting things even in old places.

Tags: flickr

Via Stan Liebowitz, a radio program from the BBC on the history of the QWERTY keyboard.

Listen or download

Tags: QWERTY BBC

Via Change This, Cory Doctorow discusses the shortcomings of DRM to a team at Microsoft.

in PDF

tag: DRM

Via Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Arti Rai explores the role of law, open source, and whether or not open source software advances social welfare.

Link to rm file

Tag: open source