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Sunday, October 05, 2003 Blogs and Masses
Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar? : Making trouble today for a better tomorrow... : "Jay Rosen: There are no masses, there are just ways of seeing people as masses." Power Law of the Blog Curve
Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar? : Making trouble today for a better tomorrow... : "Kevin Marks: The net changes the power law of the media curve. If you look at relative popularity on the web, using something like Technorati, you get a power curve that goes all the way down gradually, to the bottom where you see pages that got just a single click. If you look at popularity in the 'real' world--best-selling books, or top music--the power curve drops like a stone from a very high level. That's because in order to get a book published, or a piece of music recorded, you have to convince somebody that you're going to sell a million copies. You end up in a zero-sum game, where people pour enormous resources into being number one, because number two is only half as good. The promise of the net is that the power of all those little links can outweigh the power of the top ten." US-Centric Nature of BloggerCon
Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar? : Making trouble today for a better tomorrow... : "Adam Curry: The discussion today has been very US-centric. We talk about big media as big US media--we talk about Iraq, and Washington politics. That's not what blogs in Europe are talking about." Saturday, October 04, 2003 Cashcow Topic
Guardian Unlimited | Online | Second sight: "Blogs, argue their proponents (and I would number among them) were supposed to be about honesty, informed opinions and publishing power to the people. But when a weblog entry on a cash cow topic promises a likelier Adsense click-through (some people are already shaping their blogs this way) and when bloggers believe the freedom to publish should equate with a cheque, blogs are no better than advertorials - which are at least identified as such in newspapers." Monday, September 22, 2003 BEWARE THE MICROSOFT EMAIL
Worm Wears A 'Patch' For Disguise (TechNews.com): "Disguised as an official e-mail from Microsoft, the file comes attached to a note asking the recipient to install a 'September 2003, cumulative patch' to protect against vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser and Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs. If installed, the program, known as Swen or Gibe.F, attempts to disable firewall and antivirus software, gather password information and replicate itself via e-mail, as well as the Kazaa peer-to-peer network and Internet Relay Chat instant-messaging." SLIM DUSTY - AN AUSTRALIAN ICON
kuro5hin.org || Slim Dusty dead at 76: "Slim Dusty, one of Australia's most well-loved country music icons, died yesterday in his home in Sydney, surrounded by his wife and children." The ATKINS STORM
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Official: Atkins diet can be deadly: "A spokeswoman for the Atkins company argued that research showed it was consumption of large amounts of carbohydrates with a high-glycemic index, such as white bread, white rice or white potatoes, which increased the risk of coronary heart disease. 'At all stages of Atkins, we encourage consumption of nutrient-dense foods including plenty of vegetables, with the introduction of fruits and wholegrains later in the programme as one approaches ideal weight,' she added." Information and Security - Information is Power
Curtailing online education in the name of homeland security: "With regard to online education and international students studying in the United States, the USA PATRIOT Act has created a situation that emphasizes security over academic freedom and the ability to provide educational opportunities to students through the World Wide Web. Given the many important roles that international students and scholars can play, from expanding research to promoting goodwill for the United States abroad, it seems short-sighted to limit the academic opportunities of international students who come to study in the United States. " Saturday, September 20, 2003 Reason Needed to Use The Net
BBC NEWS | Technology | Net 'worth little to many Brits': "Access to the internet is easier for most Britons, but many still need a reason to use it, says a study. Some 59% use the net regularly and only four per cent have no access to somewhere with web connection. 'While the battle for digital access is being won, we now face a struggle to convince everyone the net is worth using,' said Professor Richard Rose, of the Oxford Internet Institute." Dangers of Using Highly Popular Software
BBC NEWS | Technology | Virus poses as Microsoft update: "A Windows virus masquerading as a security update from Microsoft is spreading via e-mail, warn experts. The worm, dubbed Swen or Gibe, comes as an e-mail attachment and exploits a two-year-old hole in Internet Explorer." Do Jobs Get Shuffled Around?
Salon.com Technology | Welcome to the machine?: "Knowledge largely rests in human minds. Marxism has now been turned on its head: The means of production rests in the minds of individuals. Having abolished slavery, these individuals now own the means of production. The workplaces of the future will have invisible balance sheets for most of their capital, unless they somehow find a way to measure and include human capital.'" Monday, September 15, 2003 Related Searches at Google
Related Searches (Google Weblog): "Google is testing a new feature that suggests related searches (screenshot). The something different link apparently suggests a whole new batch of related searches." Switching to Windows?
Netcraft: Linux Switchers Not an Aberration: "And the Internet-usage-tracking organization notes that the number of Windows Server 2003 sites is continuing to grow, primarily as a result of upgrades from older versions of Windows. But defections from Linux to Windows 2003 also are continuing at a constant clip, according to Netcraft. 'Notably, the number of sites switching from Linux has proportionately kept pace since July when many commentators thought the 5% of sites switched to Windows 2003 from Linux was an aberration,' says Netcraft." A Lesson in Economics
Ming the Mechanic: Monkey Money: "One of the best demonstrations of economics I've gotten, I got from ... a monkey. It was a little monkey at City Walk by Universal Studios in L.A. It had its owner with it, who was playing an old-fashioned organ where you grind the handle and it plays a corny old tune. The monkey was dressed in a silly costume, and there was a sign presenting the simple business proposition: Get out a quarter and the monkey will come over and get it out of your hand. Get out a dollar bill and the monkey will not only come and get it, but he will also shake your hand. Which is all cute, and well worth a quarter or a dollar, just to see that the monkey knows how to get the money, and to feel that it actually shakes your hand. I got out a dollar. The monkey snapped it up, shook my hand, and moved on to other businesss. Not so much as a smile, but I still felt satisfied with the transaction. " Wednesday, September 10, 2003 Downside of Google
MediaGuardian.co.uk | City | Leader: Google the big engine: "And the downside? The biggest is that Google and others will worsen the digital divide by unintentionally expanding an underclass that does not have access to the treasure chest of instant knowledge that search engines offer. It could also start to misuse its own position by allowing monetary considerations to triumph over its current 'quality first' policy. This is quite likely if it becomes a public company - as is probable - and succumbs to Wall Street pressure to improve earnings every quarter. One way to avoid this would be to turn itself into a mutual company, a living monument to the founding principles of the internet. " Google Five
USATODAY.com - The search engine that could: "As Google prepares to celebrate its fifth anniversary Sept. 7, it's expanding beyond basic searches. Google now embraces comparison shopping, news, the personal online journals called Weblogs and even a service that blocks pesky pop-up ads. It answers 200 million search requests a day " Monday, September 08, 2003 Weblogs Facilitators of Mass Amateurisation
plasticbag.org | weblog | (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything...: "This flexibility of publishing creates a fluid and living form of self-representation, the 'homepage (as a place)' has become the 'weblog (as a person)' that can articulate a voice. And when there are a multiplicity of voices in space, then the possibility arises of conversations. And where there is conversation there is the sharing of information. And conversation about what? Well everything from music and movies and animation and medical information. Weblogs are becoming the bridge between the individual and the community in cyberspace - a place where one can self-publicise and self-describe but also learn, debate and engage in community. In other words, weblogs are not only a representative sample of mass amateurisation, they're becoming enmeshed in the very structures of information-retrival, community interaction and media distibution themselves. Weblogs are now facilitators of mass amateurisation. " Weblogs as amateurisation
plasticbag.org | weblog | (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything...: "But what both of these attempts to understand weblogging have in common is this sense of amateurisation. They both argue that weblogging software constitutes a radical simplification of previously complex tools. Updating a website on a daily basis is no longer an activity that only a trained professional (or a passionate hobbyist) can accomplish. It's now open to pretty much everyone, cost-free and practically effortlessly..." Make nothing from weblogging - Shirky
Shirky: Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing: "A lot of people in the weblog world are asking 'How can we make money doing this?' The answer is that most of us can't. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity. It's intuitively appealing to believe that by making the connection between writer and reader more direct, weblogs will improve the environment for direct payments as well, but the opposite is true. By removing the barriers to publishing, weblogs ensure that the few people who earn anything from their weblogs will make their money indirectly. " Make no money out of Weblogging
plasticbag.org | weblog | (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything...: "In his piece, he described the way in which weblogging simplifies the concept of 'Publishing' to the point that not only is it now so simple that anyone can do it, it's also so simple that there's no way of making money out of it. Publishing has come to the masses... This idea - of a form of publishing that's almost completely lacking in barriers and cost - is fundamental to an understanding of weblogging." |
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