email delivery Read Weblogsky via email:itinerary EFF-Austin Cyberdawg Social, November 2003. Austin: Wireless Future, ongoing project / meetings; conference (March 12-16) SXSW Interactive, Austin (March 12-16) Polycot Polycot helps organizations determine how to build and use effective web technologies to solve problems, build loyalty, share knowledge, and organize projects. For more information, email consult at weblogsky.com, or check out the Polycot Consulting web site. projects CEO, Polycot Consulting. Polycot is a network services company: network consulting, installation and administration, as well as web solutions (architecture and development). Member of the blog team at Another World (worldchanging.com) Co-Founder of the Austin Wireless City Project Manager of the Wireless Future Project for IC² Institute Associated with Rheingold and Associates, Online Social Networking Moderator and co-administrator at the Dean Issues Forum Writer of various interviews, reviews, essays, and articles. President of EFF-Austin Member, Board of Directors, Austin Freenet Local advisor for South by Southwest Interactive Steering Committee Member and Webmaster, Austin Clean Energy Initiative Member of the blog team for Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs weblog. Cohost of The WELL's Inkwell.vue, discussions and interviews. Webmaestro for Viridian Design Co-instigator of Austin Bloggers Member of Mindjack's Board of Advisors. links worth traveling weblogsky archives Email jonl at weblogsky.com
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Friday, November 28, 2003
Jeff in Mexico My partner Jeff is in Mexico for a couple of weeks. Caught him in IM last night, where he sent me a pointer to his image gallery for the trip. You can count on Jeff to shoot everything in sight. He's in the mountains between San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City, visiting S.O. Irma's family. These images were uploaded via dialup, which shows the kind of dedication that makes Jeff such a great network wrangler. Buy Nothing Day? Our nutty friends at Adbusters want you to buy nothing today, but we know better, of course. And while you're busy buying nothing, check out this cool new book at the Taschen site: Japanese Graphics Now! (BTW I wasn't going shopping today, but I might hit the mall just to be contrarian...) Wednesday, November 26, 2003 Australian scientists announce good news at last on global warming Australian scientists report that methane levels are dropping, though they're not sure why. Atkins dieters will have an idea, thought. [Link] Monday, November 24, 2003 Alex Steffen on the Tech Bloom Post-boom a whole new way of working emerges: working for the love of it, giving stuff away. (Thanks, Cory!) [Link] The conventional wisdom, during the Tech Boom, was that what drove innovation was the lure of giant piles of cash. That idea now rubs shoulders with the Berlin Wall. What makes creative people tingle are interesting problems, the chance to impress their friends and caffeine. Freed from the pursuit of paper millions, geeks are doing what geeks, by nature, really want to be doing: making cool stuff. Friday, November 21, 2003 Crimes Against Nature Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the Bush Administration's environmental record... essential reading: George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats. The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.Continued at RollingStone.com Thursday, November 20, 2003 Another Red Herring? Red Herring has an interesting piece about social networks as software business. Some of the players are attracting venture capital, but some VCs see social networks as the making of another bubble, which, I suppose, means shiny, empty, and ready to burst at any moment. The question seems to be whether there's a business model for social network sites, which build followings by attracting, not just individuals, but the networks of friends and colleagues they tend to bring with them. The sites offer various ways for members to find each other, interact, and potentially have productive association that extend relationships, whether in business, romance, or just friendship. The Internet, which is a scale-free network, tends to support the formation of scale-free social networks. Using the Internet over many years, I know I've come to perceive networks everywhere more readily, evolving a world-view that focuses on links, connections, nodes, and hubs. In the Scientific American article linked above, the authors demonstrate that scale-free networks are pervasive, so the various business entities forming around social networks are finding ways to facilitate what's inherent and capture profits from the resulting numbers. I've joined five of the social network sites, and I visit four of them fairly regularly. Though the broad premise behind each site is the same, each is a little different in its approach and functionalities. Since I'm kind of a mad networker, I know a lot of people, and each site has a different combination of people I know. There are a handful of people I communicate via Tribe.net, for instance, and I do enough business networking via Ryze to justify a gold membership. I assume that people will use many such sites in many ways, and those of us who do communications consulting already suggest ways to leverage network effects within organizations using social as well as software affects. There's also political potential in social networks. The Howard Dean campaign has set up its own social network site, called Deanlink. Meanwhile, come people just don't get it: Ms. Lee (sic?) of Forrester Research says her main concern with social networking sites is their ability to retain users. “Unless I am actively looking for a job or date, I have no reason to go there” she says. However, there’s more chance that people would return to the major portals if they had their own social networking services. “Portals like MSN, AOL, or Yahoo are part of my daily habit,” she says.This is like saying the only reason you'd meet people and hang out is to advance your career or your sex life. The Forrester analyst misses the part where you do social discovery and interaction for the joy of it. (Which reminds me, my colleague Honoria and I are putting together a panel for SXSW Interactive on The Aesthetics of Social Networking. (Thanks to Ross for the pointer !) Wednesday, November 19, 2003 CSS Weirdness If you're seeing my weblog via Safari and certain other browsers, you probably noticed weird spacing in the right and left columns. I knew about it but ran validators etc. and couldn't find the problem... which shows how dumb you can be when you choose not to think. The problem was not obvious in the code, it was a line height attribute in the stylesheet. Why I put it there in the first place is anybody's guess, but in the process of mucking with it, I removed the nested tables, too, and the site actually looks better for all that. And Safari users won't be grossed out at this point. The moral here, as ever, is to keep it simple. NOVA: Magnetic Storm If the possibility of global climate change isn't enough to give you the willies, how about global magnetic polar reversal? (Thanks, Terry!) [Link] |
interviews Interview with David Weinberger for SXSW Interactive Conference's Tech Report Discussion with Bruce Sterling at The WELL, January 3 - 17, 2003. Jon L. interview for South by Southwest Interactive conference's Tech Report. Jon L. interviewed by Adam Powell (5/13/2002) jonl interviewed by R. U. Sirius (A version of this interview appeared in The Austin Chronicle) Conversation with Bruce Sterling at the WELL's Inkwell.vue Forum Interview with R.U. Sirius at CTHEORY interview conducted by Yoshihiro Kaneda in conjunction with the publication in Japan, in the book CyberRevolution, the essay "Inforeal." interview with Allucquere Rosanne Stone. No Stone Untenured: May '98 Interview with Sandy Stone Bruce Sterling interview for bOING bOING #9 The Tedium is the Message, Assholes: Interview (for AltX) with R.U. Sirius and St. Jude Don't Believe the Hype (Austin Digerati Roundtable published January 28) Why We Listen to What They Say: Interview with Doug Rushkoff Interviews with Projecting the 21st Century: An Interview with Gary Chapman Information Junkie, an interview with Reva Basch (Researching Online for Dummies) Wired to Virtual Reality: Interview with Howard Rheingold Interview with Carla Sinclair, author of Signal to Noise Making Movies on Cyber Location: an interview with director Doug Block (Austin Chronicle, February 1998) Untangling the Web: interview with Gene Crick of MAIN and Sue Beckwith of Austin Freenet reviews Review of Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish, in Whole Earth Magazine. review in HotWired of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Cyber Top Ten for 1997 (Austin Chronicle, December 1997) essays
What Happened to the Cyber Revolution? A Few Points about Online Activism in the March '99 issue of the UK journal Cybersociology ZapSpace, published as A Fistful of DOS in the Australian magazine 21C The Cyborganic Path from the April '97 issue of CMC Magazine Essay: Are We a Nation? We Are Devo in The Ethical Spectacle. articles Little Nemo in Slumberland (bOING bOING, February 1998) Technopolitics, a 1997 essay on cyberactivism originally appearing in the Australian magazine 21C. Your 15 Minutes Are Up, Mr. Gates!1998 Top Nine List from the Austin Chronicle! Dungeons and Draggin's: a look at the Ultima Online phenomenon "We Do Cool Things": a profile of Austin's George Sanger, aka The Fatman, and Team Fat The Opera Ain't Over 'til the Cyber Lady Sings: Honoria in Ciberspazio (Austin Chronicle, November 1997) Shout Spamalam! The Austin Spam Suit Who Are You? Who Owns You? A consideration of Amazon's privacy policy. Amicus Brief filed with Supreme Court regarding the "Communications Decency Act" 11.25.96 Freewheelin' in Austin 1.7.97 Cyberdawgs and CyberRights: EFF-Austin 2.25.97 VR in 3Space: Brian Park 1.28.97 Going Native in Cyberspace: Bob Anderson 3.25.97 A Parisian Spring in Austin: Joseph Rowe and Catherine Braslavsky 4.22.97 On a Rock and Roll Firetruck: Shawn Phillips |