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Entries for April 2003
SixApart is taking it to Blogger
SixApart is taking it to Blogger. Hammersley @ Guardian UK
Announcing TypePad
Ben, Mena, and Anil announce TypePad:
TypePad is an upcoming hosted service providing powerful tools for creating full-featured weblogs. Built in response to the needs of webloggers, online diarists and writers, TypePad harnesses the power of Six Apart’s popular Movable Type personal publishing system into a turnkey service, suitable for beginners and experts alike.
Think of it with Blog*Spot, except with MT handling the content management bit. Drooooool….
Piracy is Progressive Taxation and Other Thoughts
Piracy is Progressive Taxation and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution. by Tim O’Reilly
Acting locally
I’m here at Etech and I’m experimenting with an event-oriented weblog. Participants at the conference using the WiFi network who visit www.kottke.org/index.html will get a special Etech page. The Etech page has quick conference links at the top, my current status so that people can find me if they wish, a little more space in the sidebar for the remaindered links, as well as some aesthetic tweaks. Folks not at the conference will still get the normal front page and can view the Etech page here. Now, how do I encorporate Confab into the mix?
Smarter, Simpler, Social: An introduction to online social software methodology
Smarter, Simpler, Social: An introduction to online social software methodology.
A little light reading: Matt Webb’s dense
A little light reading: Matt Webb’s dense roundup of last year’s Etech.
Download Mosaic 1.0 for the PC in celebration
Download Mosaic 1.0 for the PC in celebration of its 10th birthday.
Confab by Ludicorp
Building on one of last year’s conference darlings, Danny O’Brien’s Panopticion, Ludicorp is demoing Confab. Taking advantage of the formation of the transient geographic group interacting in both real and virtual spaces here at Etech,
Confab is an ad-hoc conversation space mapped to the conference facility’s floorplan which allows you to discuss and debate sessions live with other attendees, make contacts, send instant messages and create conversations to plan group meetings and activities.
A crude Matrix, if you will, for finding friends, not enslaving humanity to harvest their energy**.
** Although if you’re an introvert like myself, that’s what extroverts do…suck all the energy out of us for their own evil purposes.
Hardware hacking with Bunnie Huang, X-box hacker
Hardware hacking with Bunnie Huang, X-box hacker. Etech notes by Cory
Punditry cubed
There’s a panel about warblogging at Etech…featuring exactly zero actual warbloggers. Weblog pundits talking about warblog pundits talking about media pundits talking about the war? I’m getting dizzy…
No Man’s Land
No Man’s Land (metacritic) is a French film about the Bosnian War. Slight correction: it’s a comedy about the Bosnian War. The film reminded me a bit of Dr. Strangelove with the simultaneously serious & lighthearted treatments of a weighty subject. There was even a homage or two to Kubrick’s masterpiece. Highly recommended.
How to get the most out of conferences
Scott Berkun says that conferences are what you make of them:
I’ve seen many folks take conferences way too seriously. I find that I learn much better if I’m having fun, and enjoying the people I’m with. I can’t do that if I’m fixated on getting to every session on time, or not staying out too late, or trying to achieve any specific objective. If I’m relaxed and enjoying my time away from the office, I’m more open to new ideas and approaches for what to do when I get back. I believe strongly that this is the primary reason my employer is sending me: to learn. Therefore, it’s my job to figure out what kind of environment and state of mind I need to be in to best facilitate that objective.
No Man’s Land
No Man’s Land is a French film about the Bosnian War. Slight correction: it’s a comedy about the Bosnian War. The film reminded me a bit of Dr. Strangelove with the simultaneously serious & lighthearted treatments of a weighty subject. There was even a homage or two to Kubrick’s masterpiece. Highly recommended.
Google’s search results peg out at ~1000
Google’s search results peg out at ~1000. When did this happen?
Portal Wars II: When Search Engines Attack
I love the current escalation in the battle of the search engines. Since Google came out of nowhere a few years ago and ate all the other search engines for lunch, the response from that camp has been less than impressive. With their recent efforts, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves have finally figured out what it is that makes Google so successful (and Microsoft wants to take a stab at it too).
It’s the user experience, stupid.
Advances on the internet and the web are typically heralded as technology-driven. Robert Morris from IBM argued last year at Etech 2002 that — and I’m paraphrasing from memory here — most significant advances in software are actually advances in user experience, not in technology. Mosaic was not an advancement in technology over TBL’s original browser. Blogger is a highly-specialized FTP client. IM is IRC++ (or IRC for Dummies, depending on your POV). The advantages that these applications offered people were user experience-oriented, not technology-oriented.
Google’s success in the search space due to their focus on user experience has lent significant credibility to this way of thinking, so much so that their competitors are now scrambling to catch up on those terms. As someone who deals with user experience professionally, it’s great to see this happening.
Musicbot 2003, Avril Lavigne
Along the lines of Dave Eggers’ great rant about selling out, Jim Derogatis compares manufactured pop star Avril Lavigne with her less “phony” colleagues:
Midway through a sold-out show at the UIC Pavilion Saturday night, Avril Lavigne played a spirited cover of Green Day’s “Basketcase.”
A comparison between the two pop-punk acts is revealing.
According to the standards employed in the punk-rock underground and adopted by many critics, one of these acts is “real” and one is “phony.” But while the differences are interesting to note, in the end they don’t matter a bit.
The show that Lavigne performed here on her first wide-scale tour was as musically accomplished, emotionally rousing and satisfying overall as any I’ve seen by Green Day, Blink-182, Sum 41 or any of their “more authentic” pop-punk peers.
Ask Jeeves beefs up engine as competition
Ask Jeeves beefs up engine as competition in search space heats up.
Moo, off to Etech, moo
I’m off to SF for O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference on Tuesday. I’m going against the grain this year by taking my iBook along, “blogging” in “realtime”, and taking digital photos of people. If there’s a box, I am out of it. If you’re attending as well, stop by and say hello…I’ll be the guy with the iBook and digital camera.
Enigmo and more addicting games
Can’t write. Playing Enigmo. If you ever want to step outside again, don’t download this game. I went to bed last night with little water droplets cascading behind my eyelids. It’s only available for OS X, and it’s a variation of The Incredible Machine (basically the game version of this Honda commercial). I gotta go…sweet Lady E is calling my name….
(And, as usual, there’s always Collapse, Snood, mini-golf, and Bejeweled.)
A company called Firebird published a game in 1986 called Chimera
A company called Firebird published a game in 1986 called Chimera. Ha!
A night at the opera
Meg and I went to see La Traviata last night at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was a lot of fun. The music, singing, sets, and costumes were amazing…and people actually yell “Bravo!” while cheering.
The Opera House itself, however, leaves a lot to be desired. It was built in the 60s as part of Lincoln Center, a center for the arts that pillaged other parts of the city of their arts venues and plopped them all in a massive complex on the Upper West Side. What were architects and interior designers thinking back in the 60s? Everything is fine when the house lights are down and the stage is alive with color and song, but as soon as the lights go on, I feel as though I’m sitting in the opera house equivalent of a 60s suburban living room. No sense of grandeur, no awe, just a design that didn’t age well at all and a big spiky chandelier that looks like the spaceship that Jor-El stuffed Superman into just before Krypton exploded.
Saddam and Iraqi Information Minister villain action
Saddam and Iraqi Information Minister villain action figures (with pink dress).
Adding anti-metadata to your web site
Adding anti-metadata to your web site. I’ll refrain from making a dorky metadata/anti-metadata annihilation joke
Advertising in books
I just had a horrible, horrible thought. What if books had advertising in them? Not product placement in the story like “quoth the raven, eat at Burger King”, but real honest-to-goodness ads every three or four pages, just like in magazines. Publishers could print two versions of every title:
1. A normal version of the book at the current regular price; let’s say $36 for a hardcover.
2. A version with advertising that costs, oh, 50-75% less than the normal version. That same hardcover would cost $9-18. The ad version of the same book in paperback might go for only $4.50.
Supported by advertising, publically available texts like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, or Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels could be free. Free books!
Financial issues aside, I believe the world is a better place without advertising absolutely everywhere. But if advertising makes books more affordable — and in some cases absolutely free — and therefore accessible to more people, it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Socials & More