April 26, 2004
Approaching critical mass
RobH points us to this interesting survey of the different ways that people now connect to the interenet. Broadband is surging, but 56K is still very common.
I'd like to know if any significant portion on the 56K people connect with an auto-dialup, router-based local net.
April 24, 2004
Quicksilver
I'm re-reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I want to do this before starting the new, part two, The Confusion.
As I expected, Quicksilver is reading much easier second time around. There are so many characters, and locations, and events -- many referred to by multiple names -- that the first time was pretty confusing.
I'm still only getting started, but already I've understood things that just zoomed by me the first time.
April 23, 2004
A whole lot of bits
According to a UC Berkeley study, the world produced approximately 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. That's roughly the equivalent of half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress's print collection. Where does it all go? Mostly on hard disks like the one inside your computer.
Not a pretty sight.
Here are three different ways gray goo might kill you, in ascending order of probability...
[Via KurzweilAI.net]
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Portugeuse?
It's kinda cool to be pointed to by a site that's not in English.
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Here we go again.
Forgent Networks has filed suit against 31 companies claiming that they own the core of the technology that makes jpeg image files possible.
Forgent Networks, quoted by Yahoo! MacCentral:
"Essentially, [our patent] is the mathematical algorithm that JPEG uses to do the compression of data," Michael Noonan, Forgent Director of Investor Relations, told MacCentral. "So while we can't claim all the steps in JPEG and certainly do not, our technology is an integral part of that process."
A Random Walk
RandomPixel is an interesting project that has been a long time in the making. The idea was to "release" disposable cameras into the world, let people pass them around and take pics. When the camera is full it can be dropped in the mail and it will find its way home.
I always thought this was kinda cool, but the added commentary, puzzling out where the pics were taken, is an unexpected and pleasant surprise.
Personal TV
Russell Beattie writes about a gadget that lets you record TV onto a memory card which you can then put into a cellphone and watch the video on-the-go. Cool.
BTW, Beattie has been on my reading list for a long time, but because he has always focussed on arcane (to me anyway) portable devices, I've had him on an infrequent rotation. But reading him today, there's a lot of good stuff there.
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April 21, 2004
Broadband internet connectivity reaching singularity?
Dwayne Fatherree , CIO Today:
With a home-based Internet audience now available, developers and content providers need to start looking to take a more active role in providing fresh material....
The Pew Internet Project released a survey last week to support that observation. In the last year, between March 2003 and February 2004, broadband Internet access in American homes jumped 60 percent. That means that 39 percent of all American Internet users, or 1 in 4 Americans, has a high-speed modem in their home.
BloggerCon Final Words
I didn't attend the first BloggerCon. I was out of town, and I wanted to attend, but it didn't work out. All the reports afterward were that it was a great event.
So I was really looking forward to BCII and it didn't disappoint.
Pound for pound it was the best conference I've ever attended. I've been to bigger, longer events, but none that concentrated so much good stuff into such a compact period.
In separate posts here I've summarized the sessions I attended and added my comments.
I want to thank Dave W, and his little band of helpers who made the day such a valuable success.
Finally, here are a handful of random comments that didn't fit in any of the other posts:
Readers/viewers of any media have expectations. These expectations come from what they already know about the source. They expect a certain kind of news from the New York Times, something else from the Boston Herald, something else from the National Enquirer, Drudge, Josh Marshall, a personal blog, etc.
There's no black and white division between trust and no-trust. It's all varying levels. Blogs will continue to gain readers who value them, as the readers learn what to expect, and the blogs continue to deliver on that expectation. That's trust.
And finally, he said that the next BloggerCon would be on the west coast... "i've asked stanford... or maybe berkley..."
April 20, 2004
My BloggerCon II blogroll
Notable people who I met or saw at BloggerCon and are probably blogging about the conference.
Steve Garfield
Rob Sama
John Pezaris
Andrew Grumet
Lisa Williams
Jeff Jarvis
Jay Rosen
Ole Eichhorn
Michael Femia
Rebecca McKinnon
Dave Winer
The Accordion Guy
Christopher Lydon
Rick Heller
Sooz
Ross Rader
John Perry Barlow
David Weinberger
BloggerCon -- Session: "Blogging as a Business" Notes
BloggerCon II -- Session led by Jeff Jarvis.
All the sessions I attended at BC2 were excellent. Any one of them I would be happy to attend for another hour. But this session on "making money with your blog" was, to me, the best of the day. It was filled with practical advice and many people who are making it work.
This session also drew the largest crowd of the four I attended. Every spare spot in the room had attendees perched. Standing in the aisles and doorway too.
My main takeaway is that there are many ways to make money from a website, but it will take a lot of work to succeed.
There are many services running now to help with selling ads. Although advertising is currently the best bet for making money, there are many other "products" that can come out of a blog, and many of these have potential to grow over time.
Some people are already bringing in thousands of dollars a month on their sites.
At the end of the session, the group was surveyed about the most important "tools" that could be created, in the near future, to support blogs trying to make money. The top two things, which each got equal support, were "better audience/reader stats" and "form a trade organization".
Rather than post my raw notes, I direct you to the group notes which were created collaboratively before the con started, during the actual session, and have probably been added to since it ended. My notes were mostly just a subset of all the ideas and referals listed here.
Jeff Jarvis' BlogBusiness wiki.
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BloggerCon -- Session: "Personal TV networks" Notes
BloggerCon II -- Session led by Ole Eichhorn.
I had planned attend the Nick Denton session, but when he cancelled I reconsidered. Steve G's videoblogging was causeing some buzz among attendees, so even though video is not my primary field, this seemed like it would be interesting. It was.
People want help sorting through all the video choices, and the consensus is that web-based video will inevitably increase the number of choices.
There was a difference of opinion as to whether "regular people" wanted to create video for the web, but agreement that the tools to simplify the workflow to posting were lacking.
There was discussion about how to, or whether to even try to, protect your creative work. Change/progress is needed here.
And a way to collect payment for video was discussed. Subscription, payperview, micropayments, etc. No consensus here.
What follows are my pretty raw notes that I made while sitting in the session.
(These notes aren't an attempt to transcribe the session. They are just the things that I thought interesting enought to write down. Also, quotes aren't verbatim, but are paraphrasing. Items not specifically attributed, are anonymous.)
Ole Eichhorn: "what would you like for personal tv?"
A channel that only contains the tv I want to watch
One that finds the oddball shows that I might like
microsoft guy: tivo has limited supply of programs...
iFilm is an existing source of good stuff
Making good video is hard, not many people can do it.
Like with reg journalism, there may be video journalists who want an alt channel for their stuff.
Most people don't want to make their own video
Dave Winer: People DO want to make their own video
To make something that is good is REALLY hard.
Dave Winer: What is def of good
MIT library lady: How do you deal with authenticity issues?
Steve Garfield: I took the accordian guy, and I'll put it on my videoblog
blogging sundance: we did quick videos. then 10-20K people a day visiting for these things.
lots of kids doing stuff with home video. an example: school wouldn't post student campaign videos, the kids went home, re-edited, posted on net, went back to school handed out flyers with url
star wars kid video, brilliant
Dave Winer: It doesn't have to be broadcast quality. it can have value to small audiences, and also to future audiences.
you never know what will be popular. something that might seem limited audience could takeoff.... bit torrent is important there
blog as filter of video material
instead of trying to defeat copyright extension, we must encourage creators to release things under things like cc.
BBC is doing this.
question to steveg: how do you feel if someone repurposes your work? It would be ok as long as he credited me, and didn't use my bandwidth.
what happens when people pirate your bandwidth?
blogvideo and blogaudio site... ability to excerpt from realvideo/audio
it would be good if the tools supported putting media onto site... eg drag and drop
real world experiment: a gang of blogger in sf who are going to group blog a giants baseball game
that will be a mess... giants have a contract with their tv partners... but they created their own problem by putting in free wifi...
we're gonna sell subs to online training videos
microconsent micropayment system
me: predicting 5 years out is too far. try one year, that's challenging enough.
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Bloggercon -- Lunch
Good lunch conversation at Cambridge Commons with Steve Garfield, Rob Sama, and John Pezaris
BloggerCon -- Session: "Infrastructure" Notes
BloggerCon II -- Session led by Andrew Grumet.
There are not as many notes from this session, that's not a sign of its relative quality. It was good, interesting session.
By far the geekiest audience of the day. We talked about blog creation workflow, audience analysis, adding video to blogs, spam fighting, a just a little about future technologies and support.
What follows are my pretty raw notes that I made while sitting in the session.
(These notes aren't an attempt to transcribe the session. They are just the things that I thought interesting enought to write down. Also, quotes aren't verbatim, but are paraphrasing. Items not specifically attributed, are anonymous.)
Andrew Grumet: When I first read scripting.com it was overwhelming, I ran away... but I read slashdot... and I discovered aggregators...
feeds.scripting.com->rss aggregator
Andrew showed his "live log" page
technorati and bloglines citations
LOTS of robots and spiders!!!
I told about my experience analyzing log files...
Apt Assoc Guy: I'm interested in the relationship... I'd like to see who and how many come back... offender.blogspot.com...
Many site hits are movable type exploit attempts
One guys says he periodically goes back and turns off comments for a group of old posts...
robots file... weblogs.com, technorati, etc, use this to know what sites to crawl
showed nytimes robots file as an eg.
"google obeys robots.txt so it defeats spammers"
Typing in a word from a image authentication scheme is patented
timekey authentication???
cmsreview.com content management systems has list of 60 blog systems
"let me just loop it once..." Jim Moore
drag and drop of graphics in blog author tool would be great
Steve Garfield talks about his videoblogging workflow... "reality news by citizen journalists"... [jim moore makes "that's cool" noises.] Steve may eventually write up this workflow...
Josh Ain wants an aggregator that he can use from diff computers but remembers where he left off.
You can share newsgator lists without using ng.
rss won't validate an object tag???
scalable vector graphics...
someone says he hates calendar based archives
April 17, 2004
BloggerCon -- Session: "What is Journalism" Notes
BloggerCon II -- Session led by Jay Rosen.
My reactions and takeaways: What I got from this session is that bloggers used to be loners working without restraint, and pro journalists used to be part of a collaborative, restrictive system. And each is moving toward the other.
Some bloggers are embracing a more structured form, and old-school journalists are experimenting with the freedom and directness of blogging.
Many people spoke of the "trust" that journalist got from their parent pub, but I see this more as "reputation" or an "expectation" from the readers, that is not as prevalent in blogging. Although some bloggers have established themselves to have as much "trust" as most conventional pubs.
The journalists mostly said that they didn't miss the editors, but they did miss the editing. They valued the collaboration of working with an editor, but not the arbitrary restrictions.
What follows are my pretty raw notes that I made while sitting in the session.
(These notes aren't an attempt to transcribe the session. They are just the things that I thought interesting enought to write down. Also, quotes aren't verbatim, but are paraphrasing. Items not specifically attributed, are anonymous.)
Jay Rosen: There are two tribes, bloggers and journalists. merging, competing, partnering.
Christoper Lydon: We blog for the same reason we bomb bagdad, because we can.
The session if very full. I didn't count but I estimate there to be about 70 seated and another 15 standing or sitting in ailes.
A consistent theme: blogs give people, pros and civilians, a direct channel to readers.
It's a medium of expression
Writing is a way of caring about your world
Blogging/journalism can be a distributed act, eg trent lott it wasn't a single site that "broke" that story, but many that pieced the story together.
Journalism is a lens that helps the "map of reality" be more or less useful... blogging is an additional tool in that process.
Blogs don't challenge journalist's, they challenge editors [sound of assent in the audience]
Joshua Farber, high school teacher: Students want to avoid the media mechanism, and want to be involved in their world... opportunity to feel like they are actively involved... in the way the world is made clear...
Rosen: Yes, there is a desire to participate.
The publishing part of being a journalist is now a non issue...
Journalism focus is on the selection of info...
Journalism is a set of practices, framed by standards... sourcing is important... selection, framed by ethics and sourced, etc...
Jay Rosen poses a question: What happens when journalist's start to blog?
You no longer have a seal of approval from an established publication...
The sensibility of an editor is missing in the blog world... editors aren't the people who keep you from doing god's work... when you start blogging, the feedback of your audience becomes your editor.
Jeff Jarvis: blogging has made me an asshole... I can no longer tolerate editors... I just say screw it I'll put it in the blog... the feedback from your audience... it changes your relationship to the world.
When you're blogging, it's an ongoing process, it's not finished, you can revise.
You have built-in trust when your a oldstyle journalist...
Steve Silber: You have freedom of topic... I can write about things I can't in my journalist role... opinion stuff too.
With freedom comes risks... liability not shared
Debbie Gallant: It can give you a wider audience... I used to have a New Jersey audience, but now it extends to canada... it extends my brand.
Gillmor?: columnist becoming bloggers is almost seamless... chief advantage is conversation with readers... capturing info when your readers know more than you do.
Rebecca McKinnon: It took me awhile to allow my personlity to come through... also to depart from conventional practices, eg the whole procees, including failures can be part of the story. She told about how a letter from the N Korea government denying her access, could be part of the story in blogs, but would never get into an old-school story.
Rosen: credibility... brand... borrow the brand... with blog you start from zero every day.
Independent bloggers risk being sued from far away... old-school share risk
Westport CT local news site: shied away from calling itself a blog... has more credibility from not calling it a blog... I edit it just like I did as pro journalist... when I did do a commentary I got lots of compaints about partisanship... blog implies opinionated...
Henry, blogads: I bet the commentary increased traffic... people are hungry for commentary...
Micah Sifry: readers are hungry for filters they can trust... overwhelmed by info... most interested is finding these filters... a person who blogs about something they know about or something they've glommed onto.
Weinberger: filters are good, but I'd rather use an aggregator, to see a wide range of items
Scott Brodeur: Used to (as an old-school journalist) get trickles of feedback (in crayon) but now I get more, its a dialogue and that's good
Has anyone been sued? "errors of ommision" insurance?
Robert Cox of : The National Debate recalled how the NY Times tried to sue him for his site. They came to their senses quickly. The experience didn't cost him anyting since 6 law firms offered to help pro-bono.
??: Blogging could inadvertantly expose my sources... people will comb through past blog items and possibly see patterns... make it hard for me to get new sources...
Mary Potter, technorati & cal berkeley: From user's perspective blogs pull back a curtain... makes relationshop more honest... more transparent
Rosen: What do we want to see happen?
Christopher Lydon: I.F. Stone, the only sertifiable genius journalist I've met -- and believe me it's not a genius field [rk nodding] -- he was a blogger without a blog. He did it all... but he was a genius, but we're not all geniuses... but the costs for us are way down... we need to work really hard toward that objective.
Rosen: many of the things that used to define journalism don't any more... new things now... journalism is being stripped down... the possibilties that I.F. Stone wanted are open to all of us... journalism slowly coming undone... journalism isn't gonna be the same. Blogging will teach people how to be interacting citizens...
BloggerCon II Wrap Up
Back from a good day at BloggerCon, the mini conference for bloggers and blogging. I sat in on four really good sessions. I'll be posting my notes and take-aways from each session, and miscelaneous conference notes later tonight and tomorrow morning.
On the whole though, I learned some useful things, heard some interesting ideas, and met some new and old blogging friends.
April 16, 2004
BloggerConII
Heading out tomorrow to spend the day at BloggerCon II, the mini conference at Harvard about blog and blogging.
I missed the first edition last fall cause of a Prescott Park event, and it a lot of good stuff happened there.
It's a somewhat abbreviated schedule, but there's some good stuff there. Right now, these are the sessions I'm planning on attending.
I'll blog each of these, posting throughout the day.
Should be a fun and interesting day.
It's real stuff to somebody
This guy is one of the folks who have made a business of buying and selling the objects and properties created in the popular multi-user game worlds. He seems to be doing OK with it.
Since last summer, Dibbell has boldly proclaimed on his blog that on April 15, 2004, he would "truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods, and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer."
A good experience with an artificial intelligence, sort of.
All in all, it's a five minute call, and entirely pleasant, conversational, and effective. The only thing odd about it was the fact that was talking to a computer the entire time. You could tell from listening that I was talking to a machine, of course, though the conversation was perfectly fluid, with no strange pauses or requests for me to say something again. But I suspect if you read a transcript of the exchange you'd have no way of telling that there weren't two humans on the line..