Tuesday, November 30th, 2004
Del.icio.us linklog
If you’re following this site closely you might have noticed that i’ve made some changes to the linklog, consolidating distinct entries into one post per day. This somewhat collides with my belief in treating linklog entries as first class citizens among other posts, but was necessary for my transition to a del.icio.us-based linklog. Yeah, i’ve finally fallen in love with del.icio.us, took me long enough anyway.
I’m using Marc Nozell’s script with a few changes to better suite my needs. If you wanna roll your own, check out the del.icio.us api docs.
It might have been smarter to abandon the linklog around here altogether and start over from scratch with del.icio.us as my sole linkmanager, but this cross-posting solution should make a possible future transition a little more smooth. Perhaps i should also consider moving my moblog to something flickr-based.
Only links tagged with linklog will be crossposted to this site, so if you’re interested in every single link i bookmark, you can find them all here.
Saturday, November 27th, 2004
Mac Text-Editors
With subethaedit’s recent update to version 2.1.1 they introduced a new “feature” to display a nag-background in inactive windows of unregistered copies, vastly annoying if you work in several windows at the same time. Usually i wouldn’t mind paying for quality software, but they explicitly mention that it’s free for non-commercial use. Besides that it’s not really that great if you don’t need its collaborative features, so i decided to give smultron a spin and i’m fairly impressed so far.
Just when i was done with my first coding in smultron i turned my attention to my feedreader, and guess what, Sven-S. Porst just posted how to change/get rid of the nag-background. I think i’m gonna stick with smultron anyway.
Thursday, November 25th, 2004
Information as a service, not a product
My last post about the demise of newspapers got me thinking about the struggles of media companies to transition their businesses into cyberspace. It’s obvious that information is increasingly moving away from physical media (paper, vinyl, magnetic tapes, optical discs, you name it) to an intangible space allowing for cheap, easy, unrestricted distribution of perfect, lossless copies, which is a very, very good thing in my book.
In the old days you made money in media through distribution, not so much creation. With the barrier to distributing content rapidly approaching zero there’s not much money to be made with that. So if you’re a media company, what’s the next logical step - establishing oneself as some sort of service provider, or slowly die by letting the producer cut out the middleman and distribute directly, or something completely different?
Wednesday, November 24th, 2004
Demise of the dead-tree press?
Interesting article by Adam L. Penenberg @Wired, “Newspapers Should Really Worry” (via Dave Winer):
Imagine what higher-ups at the Post must have thought when focus-group participants declared they wouldn’t accept a Washington Post subscription even if it were free. The main reason (and I’m not making this up): They didn’t like the idea of old newspapers piling up in their houses.
I’ve never read newspapers because i find them a cumbersome, flawed medium for information dissemination. They try to deliver comprehensive, timely news coverage but i find them slow, limited in scope and inherently biased. They all have their editorial policies and firm political standpoint in order to appeal to a large homogenous readership, so you’d have to read at least three to get even close to a more or less objective representation of events. Newspapers kept their place during the rise of radio and television due to their asynchronous nature which makes them a better fit for consumption on your daily commute or in cafes, but with more and more ever-better connected portable devices for up-to-the-minute info-access everywhere i can’t but see the demise of the dead-tree press. These days i prefer reading press agencies for news and weblogs for opinions.
This is imho largely due to the fact that newspapers only offered a solution to a problem based on technological compromise and with online access serving the need for news coverage far better the medium has eclipsed. I still find tremendous value in the printed word. I like reading hardcopy books (though i’m not opposed to ebooks either) for several reasons: They are cheap and easy to come by (isn’t it ridiculous that it’s easier to buy books on paper than to buy them digitally?) and offer better legibility. Besides that there’s gratification in having this physical representation of the time spent reading a book and the joy, knowledge or insight gathered through it resting in your bookshelf. I also enjoy magazines, but only those that embrace the medium they rely on. The fundamental building block of a book or magazine is not the word but the page. Words are mere information, consume them in whichever way you like. A story doesn’t lose it’s value because you read it on paper, in your browser or have it read to you on your ipod. A beautifully typeset and laid-out article placed carefully in context of other articles is bound to the pages it’s printed on, the magazine it belongs into.
With newspapers being all about delivering timely news coverage and with their short production cycles there’re few qualities to leverage based on the paper medium. There’s still great value in the expertise, methods and practices employed by editorial offices and these won’t go away anytime soon, just don’t expect dead-tree papers sticking around too much longer.
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004
I’m not dead
I’ve been learning for an exam for the last two weeks and have been basically offline. My info-deprived self now returns to an aggregator with about 1000 unread items and 100 temp-bookmarks. Hopefully this entry will get me into blogging mood again.
Thursday, November 11th, 2004
24 miniseries for your vodafone mobile
I’ll have to break my exam-imposed blogging confinement for this: exclusive 24 miniseries for vodafone via Tom Hume. I loved the first season and enjoyed the second season of the original tv series. This could be one of the best suited tv-series for mobile device adaptation delivered in small installments. Makes me almost regret that i’m not a vodafone customer.
Sunday, November 7th, 2004
del.icio.us muffin recipes
A few months ago i signed up for del.icio.us but never used it because my needs for public bookmark sharing were already well served by my own linklog on this site.
Just today i found the perfect use of del.icio.us: collaborative throw-away bookmarking. This site has slowly developed from my personal scratchpad to something more public-facing and i’m reluctant to throw everything on here. It became more of an open archive than a personal dumping ground. Besides that, my linklog doesn’t accomodate collaborative bookmark gathering half as well as del.icio.us does.
I’m currently looking for delicious muffin recipes for a nice day of baking with a dear friend, so i figured i should check out the muffin tag on del.icio.us which didn’t return any useful links (a great example of systemic bias not just in wikipedia, but more likely any kind of collaborative service). So i decided to hijack the previously nonexistent muffin+recipe tag group with palatable muffin recipes and if you feel like sharing your favorite muffin recipe ever, do me a favor and post it to del.icio.us with the “muffin” and “recipe” tags.
Friday, November 5th, 2004
Ubicomp and LBS stuff
Lots of interesting things in the general area of ubiquitous-computing / location-based services piling up in my link backlog so i figured i could post them before they become stale:
- All watched over by machines of loving grace - Adam Greenfield for boxes and arrows writes about challenges and guidelines for user experience designers involved in ubiquitous-computing. He also summarized his keypoints on his weblog.
- Privacy Notes: Geofencing and Guidelines for LBS Developers - guidelines for designers and developers of location-based services with a strong focus on privacy issues. (via mobile technology weblog)
- virtual journal club: “Connected Mobile Devices UI” - “Every Friday I pick a paper from the ACM Digital Library that is found by the search term “UI connected mobile devices”, and write a brief discussion of it. Why? Because it makes me actually read them.” (via Tom Hume)
- Smart fabrics make for enhanced living - new scientist writes about the previously mentioned byob project which still amazes me.
- Liminal Devices Group - some interesting projects there.
- Look at your walls - (inter)active walls & wallpapers.
- Location-based mobile phone games - Paul Baron has updated and reorganized his list of location-based games.
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004
The power of the web
I’m watching pre-election coverage on austrian public television and they just aired a bunch of internet-created political clips, including the “this land is your land” animation. They are also talking a lot about the influence of the internet. Makes me believe in the power of the web.
They also mentioned moveon.org in their coverage and reiterated that moveon is primarily soros-funded which quite annoyed me and reminded me of
[...] MoveOn is now seldom mentioned in the press without a prominent reference to Soros.
from this wired 12.09 article.
Incidentally i find it quite fascinating that on the one hand i want filtering or classification to autofilter any bush/kerry/vote/election-posts, on the other hand i find most of them surprisingly fascinating.
UPDATE: They just mentioned “bloggers”. later… they’ve prominently cited slate as a source of reporting.
Monday, November 1st, 2004
ToDo, in London
I’m finding more and more reasons for a trip to london recently:
- Marc Newson exhibition at the design museum, allegedly featuring his talby mobile phone and nike zvezdochka designs. (via josh rubin)
- Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties at the barbican art gallery. (via groovisual diary)
- Dover Street Market by comme des garcons. There was a nice article about the store in the nyt recently. (via i-D)
- Muji Stores
- Apple Store Regent Street, perhaps the most pressing reason. I should try to get there for the grand opening on nov 20th.