Scoble took his family over to see Douglas Englebart today. He invented the computer mouse. At one point he brings out a box containing the very first mouse and shows it to them. Scoble took some photos with his smart phone.
This is a great story about one of those pinch yourself moments. Check it out.
Technorati Tags:
computers
BoingBoing reports that Coldplay’s new CD comes chock full of DRM restrictions that prevent the CD from being burned to a hard drive and “might” prevent it from being played in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players or computers.
The questions are:
1) Is this something done with the band’s knowledge and consent or is this just more RIAA madness?
2) What will the band’s reaction be now that the story is all over the net?
Sony learned some hard lessons lately about DRM and the unwillingness of customers to accept crippled product. Looks like DRM 201 is about to begin.
Technorati Tags:
drm, digital music
The Clarks and the Veldmans came over for a small New Years Eve party. We played some soccer and then the kids swam and watched a video while the moms played Rummikub and the dads watched football. It was a lot of fun, and once again made me appreciate the wonderful friends we have.
Today, the girls and I went to the post office to buy some stamps and then we picked up Raina and went to the Black Eyed Pea for black eyed peas.
Later, Cassidy and I played soccer and I achieved a milestone. I won my first game lifetime against Cassidy in a come from behind 10-9 victory. We played two more quick games and I won the first 1-0 and lost the second 0-1.
It’s been a fun day for all of us, and we have one more day to spend in the holiday frame of mind, as my office is closed tomorrow.
Happy New Year from the Newsome family!
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new years day
Scoble has a post today about a Yahoo survey which found that only 4% of internet users are using RSS.
I bet that’s about right since probably 80% of the users only use the internet for email and to check Yahoo for headline news and the weather. In fact, I bet the number of users over 40 who have even heard the term RSS would be measured in basis points, at best. I can tell you that none of my real-world friends knows a thing about RSS. I know because I’ve brought it up a couple of times to blank stares.
RSS is currently the domain of the content producers (newspapers, bloggers, etc.), the technorati (to coin a phrase) and the younger more tech-savvy generation. My kids have very little comprehension of live TV since they watch their 2 videos a day via TIVO- whenever they want. When most of us were kids, there wasn’t even cable TV. My kids have never lived in a world without email- Cassidy got an email from John Perry Barlow (writer of the song she was named after) when she was just days old. When I was a kid, we went to the post office to pick up our snail mail. Things that seemed like science fiction 15 years ago are parts of everyday life now.
The fact that RSS is not being used across the board is not the least bit surprising. But the kids born in 2006 and thereafter will never know a world without it. Reading your first RSS feed today is like getting that first email back in the early nineties. It’s novel, but it won’t be novel for long.
Time is the solution to the 4% problem.
Technorati Tags:
rss
I’ve been tiptoeing around this issue for a couple of months, trying to figure out how to approach it in a positive and diplomatic manner. I’m not sure it’s possible to be all that positive about such a difficult fact of life, but here goes.
It is virtually impossible to build a new blog in 2006. Here’s why I have reached that conclusion over the past year.
First, to have a successful blog, just like any other web site, you need readers. The difference (at least I thought it would be different) is that unlike Yahoo, MSN and Google, blogs are not supposed to be about making money. They are (I thought) supposed to be about having conversations and sharing perspectives and ideas. Sort of a natural evolution of the newsgroup or message board.
But the more I think about it, the less I believe that.
The very large majority of the most successful blogs out there have one of three things working in their favor.
1) They got there first and filled an empty space. I know exactly how that works, since getting there first was a major factor in the growth and success of ACCBoards.Com. Once you are there and fill the space, growth comes organically and it is a lot easier to maintain your position in the space.
2) They have a unique platform that almost guarantees them an audience. If you are the representative of a larger company, especially one that is a player in the blogosphere, your audience comes pre-packaged- from traffic from that company and other bloggers who want to link “upstream.” Granted, you have to deliver to keep and grow that audience, but a ready made group of users is a gigantic (and I believe necessary) advantage to growing a blog.
3) They get help from other established bloggers, either directly via a formal or informal network or because someone with a big audience throws a line to them via links and inter-blog conversations. This is the only way I can see a new, unaffiliated blogger actually growing a blog. Unfortunately, this probably has a lot to do with pre-existing relationships, making the chances of a truly independent blogger being thrown a rope very small.
If you don’t have one of those three things, I believe you are trying to push a heavy rock up a steep hill as far as developing and growing a new blog goes.
Let me be clear about one thing, however. A ready made audience doesn’t guarantee a successful blog. All of these A-Listers have to keep bringing good content to stay at the top. You can have a ready made audience and still not have a successful blog. But I no longer believe you can have a successful blog without a ready made audience.
Why? Because, unfortunately, the blogosphere is a closed system. There are too many people who believe they are going to get rich by writing a blog. Once you add the element of money into the equation, the element of competition soon follows. So you get the haves linking to one another (and largely only to one another) and ignoring (or at best tolerating) the have nots, in an effort to boost their status and, perhaps more importantly, protect their shares of the readership pie. Anyone who argues this isn’t true hasn’t spent much time surfing around the blogosphere.
Yes, there are exceptions. Scoble and JKOnTheRun being two that come to mind. Both seem to be really good guys and both seem to be doing the blog thing for reasons other than the prospect of a dollar. There are others, both A-Listers and not, who simply aren’t interested in adding any more voices to the conversation. Logically, that’s understandable when you look at it from the capitalistic/competitive perspective. But if you believe the blogosphere is or ought to be about conversation and not solely about making money and inflating egos, it’s not good for the blogosphere.
Stated another way, if Firefox, Flickr, and most of the blogging platforms are free, why are links and seats at the table guarded like Fort Knox gold?
Am I talking my position? Am I discouraged and perhaps a little bitter? Probably, I can’t deny that. But I believe I am right about this. And if I don’t write about something that affects me, I’m not writing from my experience- and no one should write from anything else.
So let me briefly dispense with my place in all of this and then move on with the conversation.
I believe my varied experience in programming, web site development, writing, teaching, music making and lawyering gives me a fairly unique perspective on the internet in general and the blogosphere in particular that should be as valued in the blogosphere as it seems to be in the real world (I make my living and give 20-30 speeches a year about one or more of these topics). So, yes, I do feel like stomping my feet and screaming when I can’t fully join the conversations out here. But this is not a problem that is specific to me- and the point I am making here is not about me.
It’s about the ability (or not) of new voices to find a place in the conversations at the virtual watercooler.
Unfortunately, like the real world, sometimes the blogosphere is about who you know as much as what you know.
A lot of bloggers just give up. I can totally relate to that. But I am a fixer and a builder by nature, so giving up isn’t appealing either.
I don’t know the answer, but I know it’s a problem.
Google Blogoscoped posted this list yesterday. I agree with most of it. Here’s my take on the ones I really care about.
1) Splitting Up Articles into Pages
This drives me nuts and will absolutely cause me to stop reading a site even faster that partial feeds will cause me to stop reading a feed. It’s not about pages loading faster, it’s about clicks and ad serving. I agree that this should stop.
2) Artistic Navigation
I don’t mind something artsy as long as I can find my way around. I am amazed at how many sites hide navigational links or dress them up too much. I want finding my way around a website to be like turning a page in a book, not like walking through a museum. If I want art, I’ll get it some place else.
I would add flash pages to this list as well. When I get to one of those flash front door pages, I immediately move along. I can’t tell you how much I disike flash-heavy sites.
3) Spam
Spam will be defeated by technology, not by morality or legislation. If we can put some spammers in jail, I’m all for it. But I rely on good filters to protect me from spam.
4) Writing to Low Bandwidth
I’m sorry the four people still on dial-up can’t efficiently use a web site, but the whole reason most people have high bandwith is for high bandwidth stuff. I agree that we can’t write web sites for dial-up any more.
5) Firefox Hubris
I’m not with them on this one. I was a huge Firefox doubter- until I used it. It’s not really Firefox that is so much better. It’s Firefox plus all the extensions and add-ons.
6) Tiny Fonts
I too am amazed at the sites that are virtually unreadable because of the tiny fonts. Lose them or lose readers.
The New York Times reports that the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued preliminary rejections of two wireless e-mail patents claimed by NTP, the holding company that has sued Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (generally referred to as RIM) over the patent claim.
NTP was incorporated to hold patents on technology developed by Tom Campana. NTP claims that Campana developed a wireless communications system for his pager company that he later patented, and that BlackBerry technology infringes upon that patent.
RIM argues that Campana’s wireless technology is different than that used with BlackBerries because it only allows users to read and print e-mail, as opposed to compose, reply to and forward emails.
This has been a battle that threatens the ability of BlackBerry addicts everywhere to read their emails over lunch and furiously thumb replies as if the future of the world was at stake. George A. Romero has reportedly optioned the rights to make a horror movie based on all the conversations the BlackBerry addicts would be forced to have during lunch should NTP prevail in its efforts to shut down BlackBerry networks.
Stay tuned for more as it develops.
Technorati Tags:
blackberry, rim
I’ve gotten a few suggestions as a result of my call for good blogs. Keep ’em coming.
One of them was a link to Tyner Blain, a consulting firm that focuses on requirements management and other IT matters.
They have a post about the Juicy Studio Readability Test, which I tried the other day, leading to a bunch of big words in this post. I needed to get my Flesch Reading Ease score out of the Dick and Jane level and into the suggested 60 to 70 range.
I like the Tyner Blain blog the way I like Doc Searls‘ blog- I don’t understand a lot of it, but there’s good writing by smart people there. So I read and learn.
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new blogs
And we’re not talking about the ten commandments either.
Tony Chung over at Tablet PC Blogs dumped his huge laptop in favor or a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC, and talks about how it has improved and organized his life.
He uses it to take notes in class, to read at a coffee shop, to organize his notes and other content, to make sketches- and it even takes dictation!
As I have found with my Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC, a tablet can do anything a regular laptop can do. And it can do it more places because it is lighter, easier to carry and has the ability to easily convert from regular laptop mode to slate mode.
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tablet pc
I made a secret promise to myself months ago that I would not use the phrase “Web 2.0” here because it sounded too much like “pre-owned cars.” Just another fancy sounding slogan created by marketers somewhere to entice people into believing it’s something more than it really is.
But Reuters has an article today that actually brought the whole Web 2.0 thing into focus for me. Rather than try to describe it (and thereby irritate me all over again), the article uses examples. Those examples are TypePad, Flickr and Del.icio.us. The article sums up Web 2.0 this way: “hosted online, relying heavily on users’ submissions, and frequently updated and tweaked by their owners.”
Anyone who reads this site knows that I think Flickr is the greatest thing going right now. I also use Del.icio.us daily. Add in some others like Technorati, Memeorandum and all the blogs I read and it becomes pretty apparent that pretty much my entire internet experience these days is all about Web 2.0.
It also becomes clear that Web 2.0 is a close cousin of the decentralization of media content that I am so interested in. The results of the process are more important than the name of the process, so I guess I better start looking at and thinking about this Web 2.0 business.
One of the issues with Web 2.0 is that people become dependent on remotely hosted services which, because of scale and other issues, occasionally (and sometime more often than that) have outages. When I can’t make a post here or see photos or find good content to read because my blogging platform, Flickr or Technorati is down or acting up, it really bugs me. Web 2.0 moves in real time, and the reliability of these services will be one of the major testing grounds for their success. Given all of the changes that have occurred over the past year or so that lead to the Web 2.0 movement and that have spurred its incredible growth, however, we users have to accept and understand (at least for a while and to a point) that outages and hiccups will accompany the growing pains. Del.icio.us’s frequent outages since it was bought by Yahoo are annoying now, but in order to be stable and scalable later, there have to be repairs and maintenance now. That’s the order of well managed things- both on the web and in the real world.
We’ve just begun the Web 2.0 movement and I am certain there are a lot more treats in store for us. But the price for enjoying this new technology is the bumps along the way. It seems to me that’s a pretty fair price.
Since I am so in favor of the concept behind Web 2.0, I guess I have to cowboy up (as I sometimes tell my kids) and use the dreaded word.
Just don’t make me call my large, ornate cabinet an armoire.
Newsome.Org 