Brian Lebakken is blogging the Minnesota State Fair (here's an article in the Pioneer Press about it). He's planning on going every day and, from the looks of it, eating as much as he can while doing it, as every Fair-goer worth their salt should. (thx alex)
Lance Arthur examines living in San Francisco versus living in NYC and concludes in a highly dubious and hilarious outcome, that San Francisco is by far the better choice.
Katrina assistance
A reader inquires:
When the tsunami struck Asia last year, Amazon.com was quick to post a donation link on its front page. Don't you think they should do the same for the victims of Katrina? How about using that platform of yours to apply some leverage to Jeff and the crew to get a link up there?
Amazon's lack of a donation link was noted in our household this morning as well. How about it, Amazon? (thx scott)
In the meantime, you can donate directly to the Red Cross (the site seems a little slow right now, so be patient).
Update: Please stop emailing me about the tsunami/Katrina comparison thing. I don't wish to debate the relative scale of natural disasters or who deserves more attention and aid when bad stuff happens. Individuals and corporations alike need to determine who they wish to aid on their own terms. In the past, Amazon has been a place to go to give aid...it's the first place I thought of going when I heard of the escalating problems in the Gulf states (and I don't think I'm alone here) because if they had a donation mechanism, it would be a fast link and easy for people to donate. That Amazon has chosen to not to set up a donation mechanism in this case is their choice and I certainly don't fault them for it.
Update #2: InternetWeek is reporting that Amazon has decided not to add a donation mechanism to their site. (thx, julio)
Update #3: Amazon now has a donation link on the front page which goes to this donation page. (thx to several who wrote in, including those at Amazon.)
Dalas Verdugo was forced to resign from the Met for videoblogging on the job. (via zach)
Nifty "straight man" redesign of The Onion. Khoi Vinh of Behavior explains how the design was realized. (via waxy)
Near the end of his article entitled A War to Be Proud Of, Christopher Hitchens offers 10 reasons why the war in Iraq was successful. (via 3qd)
Info-rich presentation by Marc Rettig on designing for experience. Includes a case study on redesigning a library. (via pwtm)
Looking backward at the future
As technology plunges ever forward (or as we perceive it doing so), it's not often that we stop to take a look back at how people thought the future was going to unfold before them. Peter Edidin of the NY Times recently did so, reviewing prognostications about radio, films, and television. It's fun to read the ones where people thought the new technology was going to complete overtake and eliminate an older technology (which does happen, but not as often as people expect). Bruce Bliven on radio in 1922:
There will be only one orchestra left on earth, giving nightly worldwide concerts; when all universities will be combined into one super-institution, conducting courses by radio for students in Zanzibar, Kamchatka and Oskaloose; when, instead of newspapers, trained orators will dictate the news of the world day and night, and the bedtime story will be told every evening from Paris to the sleepy children of a weary world...
D. W. Griffith, the great filmmaker of the early era, had this to say of film in 1915:
The time will come, and in less than 10 years, when the children in the public schools will be taught practically everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again. Imagine a public library of the near future, for instance. There will be long rows of boxes of pillars, properly classified and indexed, of course. At each box a push button and before each box a seat. Suppose you wish to "read up" on a certain episode in Napoleon's life. Instead of consulting all the authorities, wading laboriously through a host of books, and ending bewildered, without a clear idea of exactly what did happen and confused at every point by conflicting opinions about what did happen, you will merely seat yourself at a properly adjusted window, in a scientifically prepared room, press the button, and actually see what happened.
But it's also fun to see when people got it right, more or less. In 1936, J.C. Furnas had this to say of television:
It is my hope, and I see no reason why it should not be realized, to be able to go to an ordinary movie theater when some great national event is taking place across the country and see on the screen the sharp image of the action reproduced - at the same instant it occurs. This waiting for the newsreels to come out is a bit tiresome for the 20th century. Some time later I hope to be able to take my inaugurals, prize fights and football games at home. I expect to do it satisfactorily and cheaply. Only under those conditions can a television get into my house.
Under that set of criteria, it probably took awhile for a TV set to enter the Furnas household, but by the time NBC started broadcasting sporting events in the mid-1940s, they probably had one.
Pan of the newish MoMA building in NYC. I like the new building, but I agree that there are too many people sometimes; they're certainly not having a problem with that $20 admission price. (via cdl)
Update: a rebuttal by Greg Allen.
Katrina Check-In is "place to connect people affected by Hurricane Katrina to those their loved ones". If you're out of danger or looking for someone in the affected area, you may want to check-in here.
Shakespeare put coded messages about Catholicism into his plays that, due to the "Protestant, Whig ascendancy", have not been decoded until now.
For my photography nerd friends: testing the accuracy of a SLR camera focusing system.
Short positive review of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (@ Amazon). Thumbed through it at the bookstore yesterday and it did look good...but I've got too many books in my queue already.
Dan Gillmor on Google's unnecessary arrogance. I believe some of what people call Google's arrogance isn't that at all, but they are still a deeply weird company.
Plastic recently considered the question of perfect albums, those where every song is great and you never want to skip over them. Philip compiled a list of the responses; Radiohead's OK Computer and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue came out on top.
Remaking the March of the Penguins
A few days ago, I reviewed March of the Penguins, a well-regarded documentary film that's doing quite well here in the US (despite being a well-regarded documentary film):
Like many sleeper hits, there's something quite unHollywood about it; it wasn't manufactured to push specific demographic buttons or market tested to within an inch of its life. It's handmade, crafted, and full of soul.
Turns out the film is not quite so unmanufactured as I thought. The original film (en français) features voiceovers for each of the main family characters (dad, mom, baby boy) and some French pop songs. The effect is quite cheesy at times, particularly during the singing of the love songs. I wish I had a video clip for you watch...I've seen bits and pieces of the French version and can vouch for Joe Leydon's take on the film:
Once he focuses on the primary couple, however, Jacquet uncorks the schmaltz while employing actors Romance Bohringer and Charles Berling to voice penguins murmuring sweet nothings to each other. It's easy to understand helmer's desire to personalize the birds with anthropomorphic affectation. But it's difficult not to laugh out loud as nuzzling penguins pledge their troth as each other's "soul mate."
After seeing the film at Sundance, an exec at Warner Bros. initated a change in the film to ready it for American viewers:
Warner Bros. president Mark Gill saw the film at Sundance, called writer-director Jordan Roberts and asked if something could be done to make it more appealing to American audiences. Jordan wrote a narration, performed by Morgan Freeman, and hired composer Alex Wurman to create a new score. The final result is showing in close to 2,000 theatres across America.
The narration by Morgan Freeman is not a close translation of the original French voiceovers and I think it's a better film that way (for a US audience, at least). It also explains the odd pacing of Freeman's narration at times. Anyway, as I said above, not quite the clear expression of artistic vision as I'd assumed.
Daniel Dennett on why intelligent design isn't science. "Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything."
In addition to books, you can check people out of the Malmo, Sweden library. The library "will let curious visitors check out living people for a 45-minute chat in a project meant to tear down prejudices about different religions, nationalities, or professions".
This NY Times article on the popularity of sudoku puzzles in US newspapers had me confused because it really didn't explain what the heck these puzzles were and I'd never seen one before. Luckily, Wikipedia to the rescue.Ben: a Flickr version of sudoku.
Photo slideshow of where Manhattanites find the beach amongst the skyscrapers and bustling streets of the city.
A review of Weeds, Showtime's new show about a mom selling pot in the suburbs. I've been watching it; it's good but I'm not absolutely loving it yet.
Short roundup of NYC hot dogs. My favorite is still Nathan's, although you can't beat Crif Dogs for ambiance (cocktail Ms. Pac-Man) and *wrapping a hot dog in bacon*. (via afb)
How the presiding monarch of the Minnesota State Fair, Princesss Kay of the Milky Way, is selected...ending with her coronation and her likeness carved into a giant block of butter.
Interesting idea about having specific end dates for online games, instead of them ending when they fail. As Alice notes, time constraints will likely make for some interesting gameplay, especially in the later stages of the game. (via rw)
Fun little quiz on eight grade math...can you pass? I got 9/10 (got tripped up on what I thought was a trick question but wasn't...erroneous! erroneous!).
Robert Cringely: Google may have peaked ("What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex?") and Microsoft may have more to worry about from Apple if they start distributing older versions of OSX (the Intel version) for free on iPods.
The NY Times takes Google to task for blacklisting Cnet over them publishing some publicly available information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. I wonder if there's a useful distinction to be made between implicitly available information and explicitly broadcast information?
Justin's looking for the largest inbox smoothly handled by Mail.app...the current high is 26,700 messages. Mine only has around 100 because I filter most messages into a variety of folders. Update: he's up to 43,000 283,686! (That's gotta be on a G5 with a ton of RAM...my Powerbook would melt under that kind of weight.)
Totalitarian Institutions That Would Have Been More Fitting for George Orwell's 1984, Considering How That Year Turned Out. "The Ministry of the Beef, and Where It Currently Is".
James Surowiecki, the New Yorker's resident economist, weighs in on the tipping debate. (Previously discussed here.)
Today's big story is Hurricane Katrina htting the Gulf Coast of the US around New Orleans and Biloxi. Boing Boing's got some pointers to accounts from that area. Be safe, everyone.
Greg reminded me that today is the 10th anniversary of the launch of Suck. I started reading a few weeks after it launched, but I do remember going back to read the first article that kicked it off. Here's a lengthy and comprehensive look at Suck's history.
To protect against wholesale theft of words (theft of words? I feel silly just writing that...), dictionaries insert fake words in their listings. The article says that the New Oxford American Dictionary's fake word showed up on dictionary.com, but as of today, it's gone.
Density is an important factor in thriving cities. "If not enough people want to shop or eat out, there won't be many good stores or restaurants. If the audience for music, theater, or art is small, these activities will not flourish. If the tax base is scanty, schools and municipal services will be substandard."
Witold Rybczynski on perimeter security around prominent public and government buildings. "The problem is that huge hunks of reinforced concrete in city streets are not only an eyesore and an impediment to movement, they're a blatant and unsightly expression of a siege mentality."
Lengthy examination of what makes people gay by the Boston Globe. "What makes the case of [identical twins] Patrick and Thomas so fascinating is that it calls into question both of the dominant theories in the long-running debate over what makes people gay: nature or nurture, genes or learned behavior."
Remaindered links format change
As some of you may have noticed, I changed the way I do my remaindered links a few weeks ago. Instead of a "headline" with a single link accompanied by some (optional) extra text:
"Does anyone devote as much energy to avoiding simple, sensible solutions as the modern graphic designer?"
Novelty is necessary to foster innovation, but is missing the mark so frequently worth the effort?
I switched to a short paragraph of text with one or more links:
Following the elimination of tipping at Per Se, an op-ed by Steven Shaw says tipping should be abolished in restaurants. (via tmn) Considering the statistics on tipping, perhaps he's right. For a less refined take, here's why Reservoir Dog Mr. Pink doesn't tip.
I'm really happy with the switch so far. Posting each entry takes a little longer (especially if there's more than one link per entry), but the format is a lot more flexible than the headline/link/text way. It allows me to explicitly follow up on previous posts (e.g. Remember this link I posted last week? Well, here's some more info on that...), make connections between what I'm posting and what I've read/seen/heard elsewhere previously, credit where I find links, and is generally more Web-like and weblog-like in style. That and I can still do the headline/link/text thing if I want.
It's a subtle change, but in a lot of ways it's a return for me to an older style of blogging: link-dense, off-the-cuff, linking for subtext and not reference (a practice pioneered by Suck). Not having to limit myself to one link (as with the old style of remaindered link) or feel like I need to write something of substance to justify a post with a title and it's own archive page (as with my main posts...it's kind of amazing how post titles and individual archives have made blog posts seem more like magazine or newspaper articles than, well, blog posts) has been great. There was a missing intermediate baby bear sort of post that was difficult for me to do easily and on a regular basis. With this switch, it's just right.
For those of you who read the remaindered links in a newsreader, you may not have even noticed the change. Depending on how your newsreader works and how you use it, you may not be seeing the extra links. I still have the URL pointing to whatever it is I'm primarily linking to rather than the permalink for the entry. I'm doing it that way now for backward compatibility, but I'm not sure how long that will continue...it makes less sense with this new format. I may even roll the remaindered links into the main RSS file...it would make a lot of sense (although I would still offer a separate RSS file for the r-links).
The bottom line is, if you're reading the remaindered links in a newsreader, you may be missing out. The relative simplicity of RSS/Atom (and the applications that utilize them) is often a strength, but it's not ideal for some methods of content display, which can be frustrating to those of us who revel in the flexibility of HTML in formatting content.
As always, questions, comments, and concerns are appreciated.
ID magazine has a brief update on what Josh Davis is up to. I heard about most of this stuff at a conference a few months ago...Davis is a great speaker and does interesting work.
flylittlebird is "an experiment in building collective wisdom from hundreds of undergraduate commencement speeches".
A small ocean microbe called Pelagibacter has the smallest genome of any self-sufficient organism with 1,354 genes. It also doesn't appear to have any extra DNA...no junk or redundant copies of genes.
Flickr set of glitch art created when digital satellite TV goes a little wonky.
News.com ruminates about Google building a collection of tools that serve as a replacement OS. Where have we heard that recently? You're welcome for the story idea and thanks for the non-link, guys...tech journalism at its finest. I hereby institute a policy of not linking to you for a year.
Michael via email: "please tell me you were kidding". Well, mostly yes, particularly about the no link policy thing (it's actually going to be two years).
Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.
Interview with Frans de Waal about his work with primate behavior and politics. "I call the human species the most bipolar ape, meaning that we go beyond chimps in our violence, which is systematic and often results in thousands of dead, and we go beyond the bonobo in our empathy and love for others, so that human altruism is truly remarkable."
Short article about Pixar on the 10th anniversary of Toy Story. Their work process takes a cue from improv comedy by opening up possibilities with "yes, and..." rather than "no, but..." Gladwell talks about this aspect of improv at length in Blink.
The Morning News interviews James Kunstler about our energy-scarce future. I think Robert could have just asked him one question and let him roll. Also fun...a Google ad at the bottom says "the myth of peak oil, read the truth!" Heh.
Pharyngula rips Deepak Chopra a new one regarding his skepticism of evolution. Skepticism is fantastic, but Chopra seems to be deeply engaged in an impressive display of uninformed hand-waving. Deep, put down your cup of invigorating tea and at least read a little about what evolution is so that next time, you actually sound like you know what you're being skeptical about.
Interview with Steven Heller, art director of the NY Times Book Review, among many other things. On the question of how he decides that design is good, he says, "if I like it, it's good."
Here's a fun Flickr set: objects that look like faces.
An alleged pervert on the NYC subway was caught by cameraphone and the picture was posted to Flickr. No word on an identification yet. (thx newley)
These are the people in my (Web) neighborhood
In reaction to some ads of questionable value being placed on some of O'Reilly's sites (response from Tim O'Reilly), Greg Yardley has written a thoughtful piece on selling PageRank called I am not responsible for making Google better:
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the other big search engine companies aren't public utilities - they're money-making, for-profit enterprises. It's time to stop thinking of search engines as a common resource to be nurtured, and start thinking of them as just another business to compete with or cooperate with as best suits your individual needs.
I love the idea that after more than 10 years of serious corporate interest in the Web that it's still up to all of us and our individual decisions. The search engines in particular are based on our collective action; they watch and record the trails left as we scatter the Web with our thoughts, commerce, conversations, and connections.
Me? I tend to think I need Google to be as good a search engine as it can be and if I can help in some small way, I'm going to. As corny as it sounds, I tend to think of the sites I frequent as my neighborhood. If the barista at Starbucks is sick for a day, I'm not going to jump behind the counter and start making lattes, but if there's a bit of litter on the stoop of the restaurant on the corner, I might stop to pick it up. Or if I see some punk slipping a candy bar into his pocket at the deli, I may alert the owner because, well, why should I be paying for that guy's free candy bar every time I stop in for a soda?
Sure those small actions help those particular businesses, but they also benefit the neighborhood as a whole and, more importantly, the neighborhood residents. If I were the owner of a business like O'Reilly Media, I'd be concerned about making Google or Yahoo less useful because that would make it harder for my employees and customers to find what they're looking for (including, perhaps, O'Reilly products and services). As Greg said, the Web is still largely what we make of it, so why not make it a good Web?
This is odd...you need a mobile phone to sign up for Gmail (or get an invite from a current user). Well, I guess that's not a whole lot more strange than needing an email address to sign up for an email account.
A US antropologist says that weaker toes found in human skeletons from 26,000-40,000 years ago indicates when humans started wearing sturdy shoes.
Steven Johnson reports on Dodgeball for Discover magazine and proceeds to riff on cities, Jane Jacobs, and the Long Tail. When considering the effects of the Long Tail, there's a different between being able to d/l music by an obscure band when you live in a rural area and having the opportunity of seeing that band in person with other likeminded folks. (via dens)
As if Metafilter wasn't blue enough, Matt Haughey officially joins the liberal media conspiracy with his first piece in the NY Times. Matt, why do you and your gadgets hate freedom?
Fun speculation on why golf is so popular with men: they evolved an attraction to hunting in natural environments that are a lot like golf courses.
When dealing with information sent to them on mobile devices like the Blackberry, people tend to not read anything that closely and seem to take the information less seriously. Like Matt and Foe, I've noticed this...but with blogs and (especially) newsreaders. Having 1000s of unread items to deal with per day would tend to diminish the value of individual blog posts, n'est pas? I wonder if this is partially what Gladwell is getting at with his upcoming NYer festival talk, The American Obsession with Precociousness, Learning quickly versus learning well...
The Six Feet Under site has obituaries for all of the (remaining) main characters on the show. (via this NPR interview with Alan Ball)
Chris Anderson argues that media companies, unable to push the piracy rate to 0%, should live with the benefits of "just enough piracy". I've heard that in the (distant) past, Adobe turned a blind eye to piracy of Photoshop because it was getting their product out into the market. Tim O'Reilly's related essay entitled Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution is worth a read as well.
Season four of Six Feet Under is now available on DVD. Watch as Nate and George and David and, well, everyone really, goes nuts.
The competitive Scrabble world is starting to see some top-notch players for whom English is not their native language. At he highest level of competition, "Scrabble's secret is that it's a math game: board geometry, strategic decision making, probability and chance." And sometimes it's better not knowing English so the player can focus solely on the memorization of patterns and gameplay. Interesting stuff.
Wanna go work for Thomas Keller? Per Se is using Craigslist to fill some server openings in the front of the house.
Fun speculation that the purpose of Google's big stock sale is to grease the skids for their entrance into the S&P 500. Lots of new people buy the stock of a company just added to the index and the stock sale would make that inventory available. (Or do they need money to buy Skype? Or are Google execs getting jittery about being in a bubble and want to cash in?)
Only three inches of eyebrow hair gets you a world record? I think most of my dad's eyebrow hair is at least that long and I could probably beat the record given a little growing time. And unibrow Josh Hartnett probably has a few long ones in that sucker as well.
An interesting bike rental scheme from Lyon, France: you pay by the hour with a credit card and the rack automatically checks your bike in and out (using sensors and whatnot) and rides under 30 minutes long are free. More information is available on the Velo Grand Lyon site.
If you love color palettes and people who love color palettes, you'll love COLOURlovers. Love love color colour love color love.
Astronomers have determined the precise location and time that Ansel Adams took a famous photograph of the moon in Yosemite National Park and are going to attempt to recreate the shot in September. The same forensic team has previously determined when Van Gogh painted "White House at Night".
This list of ten steps to building a successful Web 2.0 company is really quite insightful. #3 is a favorite: "Launch. Now. Tomorrow. Everyday."
Excellent little piece by Steven Johnson on the end of Six Feet Under: "I had a genuine feeling last night watching the finale that I was going to miss these people, which I can honestly say I've never had with a television show before." I'm still thinking about that last episode, three days later.
Long thoughtful response from Tim O'Reilly about the questionable advertising on some of O'Reilly Media's sites. Is selling your site's Page Rank to someone more or less legitimate than selling them your customers' attention? (via waxy)
Supernotes are high quality fake US dollars printed on the same printing presses that the US government uses to make money.
Back in April 2004, John Rhodes predicted that Google would do an IM client using Jabber. Tada!
Here's how to connect to Google's IM network with iChat or Adium. The audio works with iChat as well. Not as good as a Google Talk client for OS X, but I guess it'll have to do.
Download Squad has screenshots and a quick review of Google Talk, Google's new IM/VoIP app. Doesn't look Web-based, which is surprising to me. Looks Windows-only as well, which is lame, lame, lame. Update: the Google Talk site appears to be live and letting people d/l the app.
GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?
Before we get going, here are some alternate titles for this post, just to give you an idea of what I'm trying to get at before I actually, you know, get at it:
- You're probably wondering why Yahoo bought Konfabulator
- An update on Google Browser, GooOS and Google Desktop
- A platform that everyone can stand on and why Apple, Microsoft, and, yes, even Google will have to change their ways to be a part of it
- The next killer app: desktop Web servers
- Does the Mozilla Foundation have the vision to make Firefox the most important piece of software of this decade?
- Web 3.0
- Finally, the end of Microsoft's operating system dominance
Now that your hyperbole meter has pegged a few times, hopefully the rest of this will seem tame in comparison. (And apologies for the length...I got rolling and, oops, 2500 words. But many of them are small so...)
Way back in October 2004, this idea of how the Web as a platform might play out popped into my head, and I've been trying to motivate myself into writing it down ever since. Two recent events, Yahoo's purchase of Konfabulator and Google's release of a new beta version of Google Desktop have finally spurred me into action. But back to October. At the Web 2.0 conference, Stewart pulled me aside and said something like, "I think I know what Google is doing with Google Browser." From a subsequent post on his site:
I've had this post about Adam Bosworth, Alchemy and the Google browser sitting around for months now and it is driving me crazy, because I want all the credit for guessing this before it happens. So, for the record, if Google is making a browser, and if it is going to be successful, it will be because there is a sophisticated local caching framework included, and Google will provide the reference apps (replying to emails on Gmail or posting messages to Google groups while on the plane).
At the time, Adam Bosworth had been recently hired by Google for purposes unknown. In a blog post several months before he was hired, Bosworth mused about a "new browser":
In this entry, I'm going to discuss how I imagine a mobilized or web services browser handles changes and service requests when it isn't connected. This is really where the peddle hits the metal. If you just read data and never ever alter it or invoke related services (such as approving an expense report or booking a restaurant) then perhaps you might not need a new browser. Perhaps just caching pages offline would be sufficient if one added some metadata about what to cache. Jean Paoli has pointed out to me that this would be even more likely if rather than authoring your site using HTML, you authored it as XML "pages" laid out by the included XSLT stylesheets used to render it because then you could even use the browser to sort/filter the information offline. A very long time ago when I was still at Microsoft (1997) we built such a demo using XSLT and tricky use of Javascript to let the user do local client side sorting and filtering. But if you start actually trying to update trip reports, approve requests, reserve rooms, buy stocks, and so on, then you have Forms of some sort, running offline, at least some of the time, and code has to handle the inputs to the "Forms" and you have to think through how they are handled.
A couple weeks later, Google introduced the first iteration of their Desktop Search. To me, the least interesting thing about GDS was the search mechanism. Google finally had an application that installed on the desktop and, even better, it was a little Web server that could insert data from your local machine into pages you were browsing on google.com. That was a new experience: using a plain old Web browser to run applications locally and on the Web at the same time.
So this is my best guess as to how an "operating system" based on the Web (which I will refer to as "WebOS") will work. There are three main parts to the system:
- The Web browser (along with other browser-ish applications like Konfabulator) becomes the primary application interface through which the user views content, performs services, and manages data on their local machine and on the Web, often without even knowing the difference. Something like Firefox, Safari, or IE...ideally browser agnostic.
- Web applications of the sort we're all familiar with: Gmail, Flickr, and Bloglines, as well as other applications that are making the Web an ever richer environment for getting stuff done. (And ideally all Ajaxed up to provide an experience closer to that of traditional desktop apps.)
- A local Web server to handle the data delivery and content display from the local machine to the browser. This local server will likely be highly optimized for its task, but would be capable of running locally installed Web applications (e.g. a local copy of Gmail and all its associated data).
That's it. Aside from the browser and the Web server, applications will be written for the WebOS and won't be specific to Windows, OS X, or Linux. This is also completely feasible, I think, for organizations like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, or the Mozilla Foundation to make happen (more on this below).
Compared to "standalone" Web apps and desktop apps, applications developed for this hypothetical platform have some powerful advantages. Because they run in a Web browser, these applications are cross platform (assuming that whoever develops such a system develops the local Web server part of it for Windows, OS X, Linux, your mobile phone, etc.), just like Web apps such as Gmail, Basecamp, and Salesforce.com. You don't need to be on a specific machine with a specific OS...you just need a browser + local Web server to access your favorite data and apps.
For application developers, the main advantage is that instead of writing two or more programs for multiple platforms (one for the Web, one for Windows, etc.), they can write one app that will run on any machine with the WebOS using the same code base. Bloglines and NetNewsWire both do about the same thing and have radically different codebases (Bloglines uses HTML/JavaScript + some sort of backend programming/scripting language while NNW is a Cocoa app only for OS X), but a version of Bloglines developed for the above platform could utilize a single codebase.
You also get the advantages of locally run applications. You can use them when you're not connected to the Internet. There could be an icon in the Dock that fires up Gmail in your favorite browser. For applications using larger files like images, video, and audio, those files could be stored and manipulated locally instead of waiting for transfer over the Internet.
There are also disadvantages to WebOS applications, not the least of which[1] is that HTTP+JavaScript+XHTML+CSS+Flash is not as robust in providing functionality and user interaction as true desktop applications written in Cocoa or Visual Basic. But as Paul Graham points out, Web applications may be good enough[2]:
One thing that might deter you from writing Web-based applications is the lameness of Web pages as a UI. That is a problem, I admit. There were a few things we would have really liked to add to HTML and HTTP. What matters, though, is that Web pages are just good enough.
Web pages weren't designed to be a UI for applications, but they're just good enough. And for a significant number of users, software that you can use from any browser will be enough of a win in itself to outweigh any awkwardness in the UI. Maybe you can't write the best-looking spreadsheet using HTML, but you can write a spreadsheet that several people can use simultaneously from different locations without special client software, or that can incorporate live data feeds, or that can page you when certain conditions are triggered. More importantly, you can write new kinds of applications that don't even have names yet.
And how about these new kinds of applications? Here's how I would envision a few apps working on the WebOS:
- Gmail. While online, you read your mail at gmail.com, but it also caches your mail locally so when you disconnect, you can still read it. Then when you connect again, it sends any replies you wrote offline, just like Mail.app or Outlook does. Many people already use Gmail (or Yahoo Mail) as their only email client...imagine if it worked offline as well.
- A Web version of iTunes. Just like the desktop version of iTunes, except in the browser. Manages/plays audio files stored locally, with an option to back them up on the server (using .Mac or similar) as well. iTunes already utilizes information from the Internet so well (Web radio, podcasting iTMS, CDDB, etc.) that it's easy to imagine it as a Web app. (And why stop at audio...video would work equally as well.)
- Flickr. Manage image files locally and on Flickr's server in the browser. You could even do some rudimentary photo manipulation (brightness, contrast, red-eye correction, etc.) in the browser using JavaScript or even Flash. Prepare a bunch of photos for uploading to Flickr while on the plane ride home and they automatically sync when you next connect to the Internet.
- Newsreader. Read sites while offline (I bet this is #1 on any Bloglines user's wish list). Access your reading list from any computer with a browser (I bet this is #1 on any standalone newsreader user's wish list).
- File backup. A little WebOS app that helps you back up your files to Apple's .Mac service, your ISP, or someone like Google. You'll specify what you want backed up and when through the browser and the backup program will take care of the rest.
I'm looking at the rest of the most commonly used apps on my Powerbook and there's not too many of them that absolutely need to be standalone desktop applications. Text editor, IM[3], Word, Excel, FTP, iCal, address book...I could imagine versions of these running in a browser.
So who's going to build these WebOS applications? Hopefully anyone with XHTML/JavaScript/CSS skills, but that depends on how open the platform is. And that depends on whose platform it is. Right now, there are five organizations who are or could be moving in this direction:
- Google. If Google is not thinking in terms of the above, I will eat danah's furriest hat. They've already shifted the focus of Google Desktop with the addition of Sidebar and changing the name of the application (it used to be called Google Desktop Search...and the tagline changed from "Search your own computer" to the more general "Info when you want it, right on your desktop"). To do it properly, I think they need their own browser (with bundled Web server, of course) and they need to start writing their applications to work on OS X and Linux (Google is still a Windows company)[4]. Many of the moves they've made in the last two years have been to outflank Microsoft, and if they don't use Google Desktop's "insert local code into remote sites" trick to make whatever OS comes with people's computers increasingly irrelevant, they're stupid, stupid, stupid. Baby step: make Gmail readable offline.
- Yahoo. I'm pretty sure Yahoo is thinking in these terms as well. That's why they bought Konfabulator: desktop presence. And Yahoo has tons of content and apps that that would like to offer on a WebOS-like platform: mail, IM, news, Yahoo360, etc. Challenge for Yahoo: widgets aren't enough...many of these applications are going to need to run in Web browsers. Advantages: Yahoo seems to be more aggressive in opening up APIs than Google...chances are if Yahoo develops a WebOS platform, we'll all get to play.
- Microsoft. They're going to build a WebOS right into their operating system...it's likely that with Vista, you sometimes won't be able to tell when you're using desktop applications or when you're at msn.com. They'll never develop anything for OS X or for Linux (or for browsers other than IE), so its impact will be limited. (Well, limited to most of the personal computers in the world, but still.)
- Apple. Apple has all the makings of a WebOS system right now. They've got the browser, a Web server that's installed on every machine with OS X, Dashboard, iTMS, .Mac, Spotlight, etc. All they're missing is the applications (aside from the Dashboard widgets). But like Microsoft, it's unlikely that they'll write anything for Windows or Linux, although if OS X is going to run on cheapo Intel boxes, their market share may be heading in a positive direction soon.
- The Mozilla Foundation. This is the most unlikely option, but also the most interesting one. If Mozilla could leverage the rapidly increasing user base of Firefox and start bundling a small Web server with it, then you've got the beginnings of a WebOS that's open source and for which anyone, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and anyone with JavaScript chops, could write applications. To market it, they could refer to the whole shebang as a new kind of Web browser, something that sets it apart from IE, a true "next generation" browser capable of running applications no matter where you are or what computer (or portable device) you're using.
So yeah, that's the idea of the WebOS (as I see it developing) in a gigantic nutshell. The reality of it will probably be a lot messier and take a lot longer than most would like. If someone ends up doing it, it will probably not be as open as it could be and there will likely be competing Web platforms just as there are now competing search engines, portals, widget applications (Konfabulator, Dashboard, Google Desktop Sidebar), etc., but hopefully not. There's lots more to discuss, but I'm going to stop here before this post gets even more ridiculously long. My thanks if you even made this far.
[1] Actually, the biggest potential problems with all this are the massive security concerns (a Web browser that has access to data on your local hard drive?!!!??) and managing user expectations (desktop/web app hybrids will likely be very confusing for a lot of users). Significant worries to be sure, but I believe the advantages will motivate the folks developing the platform and the applications to work through these concerns.
[2] For more discussion of Web applications, check out Adam Rifkin's post on Weblications.
[3] Rumor has it that Google is releasing an IM client soon (more here). I'll be pretty surprised if it's not significantly Web-based. As Hotmail proved for email, there's no reason that IM has to happen in a desktop app (although the alerting is problematic).
[4] Maybe Google thinks they can't compete with Apple's current offerings (Spotlight, Dashboard, Safari, iPhoto) on their own platform, but that's not a good way of thinking about it. Support as many people as you can on as many different architectures as you can, that's the advantage of a Web-based OS. Microsoft certainly hasn't thought of Apple as a serious competitor in the OS space for a long time...until Web applications started coming of age recently, Microsoft's sole competitor has been Microsoft.
Amazon has very quietly added sex supplies (lubricants, vibrators, condoms, etc.) to their massive inventory.
As near as I can tell, Super Mario Bros will be 20 years old on 9/13/05. Happy! Mario 20th.
It's sad to see O'Reilly selling PageRank to all these mortgage and hotel sites that have thoroughly polluted Google with their bad results. Much of the onus is on Google to clean that stuff out, but as Rogers notes in the thread, "if you're going to sell sponsored links, you should take the time to make sure they are advertisers you'd want to be associated with". O'Reilly is the kind of company that people believe in (a rare thing in today's world), but this makes me believe in them a little less.
New design for A List Apart, the venerable Web design site, done with XHTML/CSS (of course) and Ruby on Rails. (via waxy)
xThink Calculator is a math calculation program that recognizes handwritten input from a Tablet PC (check out the screenshots). Pretty darn nifty and reminiscent of Denim, a tool for UI design. (thx nick)
Bob Moog, electronic music pioneer, died yesterday aged 71.
Klingon fairy tales, including "The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates" and "Mary Had a Little Lamb. It Was Delicious". These are best when you think of them as spoken by Worf from ST:TNG.
This is how we roll in the West Village: you may disturb the neighborhood with your Sex and the City tours but you're gonna pay for the privilege.
One of San Francisco's steepest streets will be closed later this month...for ski jumping. They're hauling in 200 tons of snow and a bunch of skiers. I'm sure this will be a much Flickred event.
Some poorly selling t-shirts. "#2 Grandpa".
Evolution shocker! The discovery of a dinosaur footprint on the wall of a contemporary Brooklyn school proves that the earth is less than 6000 years old (and, perhaps, that dinosaurs could walk vertically). No word on the Flying Spaghetti Monster's involvement.
Google introduces a new (beta) version of Google Desktop featuring Sidebar, their answer to Dashboard and Konfabulator. Here's more on Google's move from the Times, which also includes speculation on the possible release of an IM client this week.
The folks at Work magazine cooked up an Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to search for jobs at Indeed.com, thus fooling the boss into thinking you're working. Just another way in which kottke.org makes you less productive at work.
Six Feet Under finale
Just finished watching the final episode of Six Feet Under. Don't worry, there's no spoilers here in case you've got it TiVoed for later viewing. The show ended in a good way, I think, a sad happy ending true to the show's focus. Poignant, I think they call it. SFU always did poignancy rather well in a medium possessing little patience for it. Many people will probably disagree that it ended well, that it wasn't Six Feet Under enough for them, but it's difficult to do a "normal" show as a finale; that approach would have failed in a different way.
But what do I know? I've seen every single episode of the show, many of them twice, and at this point I'm not sure how much objectivity I have in talking about it. Somewhere along the way, Six Feet Under became a soap opera for me. In many ways, this is the viewer's goal in seeking out entertainment, to stop the analysis of everything and just let go and enjoy the experience. To relax. As some have argued, the show may have gone downhill after the first two seasons, but I don't regret not noticing those flaws and just enjoying the ride.
So long, Technorati
That's it. I've had it. No more Technorati. I've used the site for, what, a couple of years now to keep track of what people were saying about posts on kottke.org and searching blogs for keywords or current events. During that time, it's been down at least a quarter of the time (although it's been better recently), results are often unavailable for queries with large result sets (i.e. this is only going to become a bigger problem as time goes on), and most of the rest of the time it's slow as molasses.
When it does return results in a timely fashion for links to kottke.org, the results often include old links that I've seen before in the results set, sometimes from months ago. And that's to say nothing of the links Technorati doesn't even display. The "kottke.org" smart list in my newsreader picks up stuff that Technorati never seems to get, and that's only pulling results from the ~200 blogs I read, most of which are not what you'd call obscure. What good is keeping track of 14 million blogs if you're missing 200 well-known ones? (And trackbacks perform even better...this post got 159 trackbacks but only 93 sites linking to it on Technorati.)
Over the past few months, I've been comparing the results from PubSub to those of Technorati and PS is kicking ass. Technorati currently says that 19 sites have linked to me in the past 6 days (and at least four of those are old and/or repeats...one is from last September, fer chrissakes) while PubSub has returned 38 fresh, unrepeated results during that same time. (Not that PubSub is all roses and sunshine either...the overlap between the result sets is surprisingly small.)
While their search of the live web (the site's primary goal) has been desperately in need of a serious overhaul, Technorati has branched out into all sorts of PR-getting endeavors, including soundbiting the DNC on CNN, tags (careful, don't burn yourself on the hot buzzword), and all sorts of XML-ish stuff for developers. Which is all great, but get the fricking search working first! As Jason Fried says, better to build half a product than a half-assed product. I know it's a terrifically hard problem, but Figure. It. Out.
As for the acquisition rumors, I don't know who'd buy such a mess, but if someone does, I look forward to them improving it to a usable level. Pretty much everyone I talk to in the industry thinks the site sucks and we've just been waiting for it to get better because, well, it would have to at some point, wouldn't it? Well, I'm tired of waiting. Goodbye, Technorati...your url will darken the door of my browser no longer.
Update: For the short amount of time I've been using it, IceRocket's blog search seems to work quite well. Thanks to Kevin for pointing me in that direction.
Inspired by Kent Hovind's $250,000 prize for evidence of evolution, Boing Boing is offering a $250,000 prize to anyone providing "empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster". I'll throw another $250,000 into the pot.
Using your favorite Flickr photo, you can use this handy widget to make your very own magazine cover. I knocked up an issue of Hello, Cowboy! magazine featuring Tom Coates wearing a gigantic hat. Magazines have never been so much fun.
Short interview with Josh Davis. More of his work can be found at joshuadavis.com and once upon a forest.
I'm in luck because it would take more than 260 cans of Pepsi to ingest enough caffeine to kill me. How much of your favorite beverage can you drink before suffering death by caffeine?