CogBlogged in ‘2004’

Pontification on the meteoric popularity of Flickr is a common past time– and it makes all the sense in the world of network hubs, preferential attachment, link fitness, etc (see Thinking About Links…). Flickr was hardly the first photoblog site (I danced a bit with fotolog and buzznet before flickr even hit the seen) but flickr’s design and myriad of uses have made it the Google of the bunch. Well earned. I was also thinking of some of the blog “memes” that have passed around, those ideas that spread virally across a social network (What’s a neme?). Recent examples include: * Your personality in 25 links (A-Z): What web sites pop in your browser for each letter of the alphabet? * 40 questions about 2004 : personal reflections (who has time to answer all of those?) * My Not So Greatest Playlist : create a party shuffle (random mix) from [...]

Thanks to some good feedback from suers, I’ve been able to make some needed corrections to our Feed2JS (RSS Feeds rendered via JavaScript). Like a Homer Simpson Doh! slap across the forehead, I realized that while I was faithfully adding to the main page’s history, it certainly could use an RSS Feed to publish news of its updates. Now it is there: http://feed2js.org/content/feed2js.xml But a story behind the story. I could have sat down and hand edited an XML file. I’ve done it before. But that is a pain, and getting the dates in the right format is a double pain. So my conniving scheme was to use MovableType as a cheap tool for posting new history links as well as auto generating the feed. It is a simple blog with no web site itself, and no archives- in fact it exists to publish 3 things- the content file used [...]

In addition to interesting initiatives such as WikiBooks to publish free content, comes this interesting announcement from the giant Internet Archive: International Libraries and the Internet Archive collaborate to build Open-Access Text Archives Today, a number of International libraries have committed to putting their digitized books in open-access archives, starting with one at the Internet Archive. This approach will ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage. Anyone with an Internet connection will have access to these collections and the growing set of tools to make use of them. In this way we are getting closer to the goal of Universal Access to All Knowledge. By working with libraries from 5 countries, and working to expand this number, we are bringing a broad range of materials to every interested individual. This growing commitment to open access through public archives marks a significant commitment to broad, public, and free access. [...]

Ahh, it is creeping up New Year, and the insightful pundits are rolling out the grand prognostications. Is their crystal ball really any sharper than yours or mine? Why? Here is mine: I predict that I will not be making any new year predictions. That’s it.

Looking for trends? You do not need pundits or experts, just keep your eyes open. I liked a saying I heard at the last EDUCAUSE meeting on the point where a technology reaches a wide range of acceptance- it appears as a consumer item, the “BestBuyification” of technology. I was doing some shopping at Costco (more provisions for week’s trip to our mountain cabin), so when I have the time like today, I went to see if they had any worthy audio CDs as the prices there are pretty low. Over the last few months, I’ve been noticing the shrinking of the audio CD aisle, from what was one time half the long aisle (maybe 80 feet) down to one section, maybe 10 feet. The selection stunk. A bunch of pop flaff and pretty much everything else where those mondo multi disc “Essentials”. I mean c’mon, can there really be [...]

People and journalists ;-) are writing about a blogging phenomena n Greensboro, North Carolina, which apparently is becoming a critical mass as maybe a hub in public engagement in blogging (reading, writing, commenting), Jay Rosen in Greensboro Newspaper Goes Open Source: A Follow Up: I am going to stay on the story of the Greensboro blogging culture that’s coming of age, and of the local newspaper, led by a maverick editor, that’s going open source on the rest of the press. I think it’s national news… It will be interesting to watch what happens now. My guess is the story will shortly be in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, NPR, Business Week or similar venue. But I could be wrong. Whether that happens or not, I have plenty to tell the core audience about. This post will be added to, in bits and pieces, so check back if you’re [...]

Readers know how affectionate and enamored I am of flickr but the feelings are just as gooey for ecto, the desktop blog editing tool for Mac OSX and Windows. In fact, it is one of the very few software titles out there that I shelled out some shareware $ for. Without a doubt, I would blog less and use less media if I was forced to use the web editing interfaces. I use ecto to edit about 8 different weblogs, mostly MovableType, but I have also successfully tested it for a Blogger hosted site. It has way too many features to gush on about, but the HTML shortcuts are a godsend, the previews save me from a large number of embarrassing typos (not all of them ;-), the new image and media uploading/attachingg by drag and drop in version 2 of ecto are just a gem and a half. And [...]

It has actually been several months since I read “Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means” (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi) but I keep coming back to it, scribbling in the margins, and finding it so insightful to thinking about links between people, places, and things on the net. It has everything to do with my oft pitched “Small Technologies Loosely Joined” ideas. I learned much about mathematicians I had never heard of mathematicians such as Paul Erdõs and Alfréd Rénya, and how the Kevin Baconized notions of “6 degrees of separation” are not only not so new as Hollywood, but only a piece of the network thinking so elegantly laid out by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked weaves some history of network theory with Barabosi’s own research group’s efforts at Notre Dame (he is a physicist), and is fascniating (a) because it used the internet itself to study netorks [...]

flickr foto Photo Radaravailable on my flickr I got a not so notice photo mailed to me form the city of Scottsdale. They took an unflattering photo of me doing 36 in a 25 mph zone. In ths modified scan, I am seething red at being caught by these machines designed to extract money from citizens Well, my portait arrived in the mail, courtesy of the photographers in the white vans marked “Scottsdale Police”– I got nabbed doing 11 over on a street where I know the photo radar hangs out, but my mind was wandering. I decided to scan the not so great image, and it appears that the photography is able to capture my mood at the moment, flaming red mad. Since this is public record, I am now getting mail (post box spam) from all kinds of scammers offering “get out of ticket” schemes and offering to [...]

In the last 2 hours I experienced a computer religious experience. I opened the box for my new G4 laptop, connected a firewire cable from it to my old laptop, and then watched in awe as the entire content, applications, and set up were transferred over. It was 100% smooth (so far). Details on how to do this I found at Mac OS X 10.3: Transferring data with Setup Assistant frequently asked questions (FAQ). I have never had an upgrade experience like that. I am a bit shaky, disoriented, hearing music, and seeing bright light… swimming towards it… cannot … type… any .. m………….