Wednesday, 30 October 2002
the aoling of blogspace
So I'm talking with one of my colleagues about blogs, and explaining how only twice in my life have I had this sense that a technology was about to become really important. We're both reminiscing about the early days of post-BITNET e-mail, and the first wave of web sites (remember O'Reilly's Network Navigator?). And then the conversation turns to "what happened to all that promise"? I remind him of the day the AOL floodgates opened and usenet and e-mail were never the same. What's going to be the effect on blogging when/if the exponential curve takes its sharp turn upwards? This LA Times article suggests some possibilities. Looks like "reaching critical mass" is becoming synonymous with "succumbing to the great unwashed masses."
more like this: big ideas | on blogging
I want this apron.
Family members reading this, take note: I really would like one of these aprons for christmas or hanukkah!
I found it when following a link from Geek Culture's "how to make a mac-o'-lantern". I have a feeling it's a lot harder to make one of these than they make it sound, but it would be great fun to have a super-scary Steve Ballmer pumpkin on our porch tomorrow night...
the art of definitions
Doc Searls pointed me to Dave Winer's definition of SOAP:
It's a simple way to call procedures running on other machines, on other OSes, written in other languages, using different economic systems, without being forced to pay a tax to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sun or the W3C.Wish we could all do such a good job of explaining complex technologies in straightforward terms!
blog sightings
More evidence that we're on the cusp. E-mail today from a colleague on the academic senate--pointing me to a blog entry from a professor at UPenn. I didn't much like it (anyone who loves Andrew Sullivan is somewhat suspect in my book...). But the fact that I got the message at all was interesting. First time I've gotten mail from someone at RIT specifically mentioning (and explaining the context of) a blog post. I hear the not-so-distant rumble of change.
Of course, my failure to link here to the post in question raises an issue that Tom Coates has been discussing lately, having to do with "the power of the incoming link." Interesting stuff.
books-n-blogs
Wow. Just discovered All Consuming, an amazing site that tracks what books are being mentioned in blogs. Started out looking at the page for Smart Mobs, because it mentioned me mentioning the book. (Getting confused yet? Wait, it gets better.) Decided to follow the link on that page that promised more information about my site. This was the one that made my head spin. Somehow they'd (a) found my blog (which has only been up for about a week), (b) extracted the title of every book I mentioned (not all of which linked to "obvious" sites like Amazon), and (c) created a list of what it called "Google Friends". It was that last one I found most remarkable, since it included my business site, my family site, my 8-year-old son's site, and even Little Feat's site (my husband is tight with the band). I don't know if I love the knowledge management/data mining that this represents, or if I'm terrified by it.
