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Printer Fingerprinting

News came out a while ago that many of our laser printers were embedding “fingerprints” that allowed folks who knew how (like, say, the feds) to trace a printed page back to the day and time it was printed, and the serial number of the printer. Or, at least that was the theory, until the […] » about 200 words

PHP5’s SimpleXML Now Passes CDATA Content

I didn’t hear big announcement of it, but [deep in the docs][1] (? PHP 5.1.0) you’ll find a note about [additional Libxml parameters][2]. In there you’ll learn about “LIBXML_NOCDATA,” and it works like this:

simplexml_load_string($xmlraw, ‘SimpleXMLElement’, LIBXML_NOCDATA);


Without that option (and with all previous versions of PHP/SimpleXML), SimpleXML just ignores any < ![CDATA[...]]> ‘escaped’ content, such as you’ll find in most every blog feed.



 [1]: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.simplexml-load-string.php
 [2]: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.libxml.php#libxml.constants "additional Libxml parameters"

Email Is For Old People

I happened to stumble back onto the Pew Internet Report on teens and technology from July 2005 that report that told us “87% of [US children] between the ages of 12 and 17 are online.” But the part I’d missed before regarded how these teens were using communication technology: Email, once the cutting edge “killer […] » about 400 words

Macs vs. PCs

Vista delayed The delay is the latest problem for the software giant’s flagship operating system. Microsoft had originally slated the software for release in late 2005, but pushed back its target date to summer 2006 and dropped several planned features to try to guarantee delivery. The company attributed the delay to the extra time needed […] » about 300 words

DNS Problems

Things went whacky with Dotster‘s hosted DNS services last night. Though the problem now appears to be fixed on their end (and I’ve actually move elsewhere in my attempts to get back online), it could be a while before the bad data is flushed from caches around the world.

In the meantime, let me mention that Ryan shared with me a useful tool I’d not seen before: DNSReport.

Identity Management In Social Spaces

(note: the following is cross-posted at Identity Future.) Being that good software — the social software that’s nearly synonymous with Web 2.0 — is stuff that gets you laid, where does that leave IdM? Danah Boyd might not have been thinking about it in exactly those terms, but her approach is uniquely social-centered. She proposes […] » about 400 words

Big Iron Won’t Win Wars Anymore

Technology changes things, sure. The question is, how do you recognize the early signs of change before they become catastrophic? I spend most of my days working on that question in academia, but what about our armed forces? Noah Shachtman regularly covers that issue in DefenseTech:

Like a lot of other sage observers, Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla isn’t nuts about the idea of spending a ton on Cold War-style weapons systems when we’re supposed to be fighting terrorists and insurgents. But Arquilla is one of the first military analysts I’ve heard say that “the Pentagon’s big platforms [aren’t] merely the wrong weapon systems to fight present and future wars, but [are] actually likely to bring defeat.”

The superiority of aircraft made huge battleships a liability just before World War II. The climax of Top Gun pretty much centered on the vulnerability of our all our ships — including aircraft carriers — to missile attack (BTW, those Exocet missiles now sport ranges as high as 180km). But these are just a few examples of the general problem. Of course, the Navy isn’t the only force with big, Cold-War iron. There’s more, including some good quotes at DefenseTech.

More bsuite Hacking

Update: bugfix release b2v6 available. Some conversations with Chow Kah Soon, who’s site is full of diversions from work , finally convinced encouraged me to solve some small problems that were giving him big trouble. Chow Kah Soon is in the lucky, but rare, position of having over 20,000 unique daily visitors to his site, […] » about 400 words

Don’t Think You Use Web 2.0? Think Again

It can be hard for library folk to imagine that the web development world might be as divided about the meaning and value of “Web 2.0” as the library world is about “Library 2.0,” but we/they are. Take Jeffrey Zeldman’s anti-Web 2.0, anti-AJAX post, for instance. Zeldman’s a smart guy, and he’s not entirely off-base, […] » about 400 words

Richard Sambrook Talks Citizen Journalism

I’m not sure what to think of Richard Sambrook appearing to struggle to find a place for traditional journalism in the age of the internet, but the story’s worth a read.

David Weinberger […] talked about the crisis in US journalism with failing trust in the big news organisations. He pointed out that Google now provided a news service with just an algorithm where there used to be a newsroom of dozens of people — and suggested algorithms were probably more reliable than journalists anyway! So if information is commodotised, and the public can tell their own stories, what’s the role for the journalist? I came up with three things — verification (testing rumour and clearing fog), explanation (context and background) and analysis (a Google search won’t provide judgement). And journalists still have the resources to go places and uncover things that might otherwise remain hidden. Citizens can do all of those things, but not consistently, and with even less accountability than the media.

Go Get Yer Podcast On

<a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/alesis-firewire-and-usb-podcasting-kits-163761.php" title="Alesis FireWire and USB Podcasting Kits - Gizmodo">Gizmodo pointed out</a> these <a href="http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=99" title="Alesis :: USB Podcasting Kit">USB</a> and <a href="http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=100" title="Alesis :: FireWire Podcasting Kit">FireWire podcasting kits</a> from Alesis. The package gets you a (hopefully not sucky) microphone with desktop stand, headphones, a carrying case, podcast production software, Cubase LE recording and editing software, and a digital mixer that plugs directly into the computer via USB or FireWire (duh). The US$400 <a href="http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=37">USB version</a> does two channels of 16bit/44.1 KHz audio while the US$600 <a href="http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=40">FireWire model</a> cranks eight channels of 24bit/48KHz sound. » about 100 words

IdM Takes Lessons From the Microformats Crowd

A tip from <a href="http://blog.ryaneby.com/">Ryan</a> sent me <a href="http://identityfuture.com/story/idm-microformats-microid/">looking</a> at <a href="http://microid.org/">MicroID</a>: <blockquote>a new Identity layer to the web and <a href="http://microformats.org/">Microformats</a> that allows anyone to simply claim verifiable ownership over their own pages and content hosted anywhere.</blockquote> The idea is to hash a user's email address (or other identifier) with the name of the site it will be published on, giving a string that can be inserted -- in true Microformats style -- as an element of the html on the site. » about 400 words

…And A Mechanical Turk To Rule Them All

Paul Bausch has concerns about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk:

I can imagine a world where my computer can organize my time in front of the screen better than I can. In fact, I bet [Amazon’s Mechanical Turk] will eventually gather data about how many [Human Intelligence Tasks] someone can perform at peak accuracy in a 10 hour period. Once my HIT-level is known, the computer could divide all of my work into a series of decisions. Instead of lunging about from task to task, getting distracted by blogs, following paths that end up leading nowhere, the computer could have everything planned out for me. (It could even throw in a distraction or two if that actually increased my HIT performance.) If I could be more efficient and get more accomplished by turning decisions about how I work over to my computer, I’d be foolish not to.

Foolish not to, but who wants to work at the behest of a computer? And that’s Paul’s complaint.

Involvement, Inclusion, Collaboration

<a href="http://worcester.typepad.com/pc4media" title="peter caputa">Peter Caputa</a> dropped a comment on <a href="http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/03/02/utr-zvents/" title="UTR - Zvents">Jeff Nolan</a>'s post about <a href="http://www.zvents.com/" title="Zvents - Main Page">Zvents</a>. The discussion was about how online event/calendar aggregators did business in a world where everything is rather thinly distributed. Part of the problem is answering how do you get people to contribute content -- post their events -- to a site that has little traffic, and how do you build traffic without content? The suggestion is that you have editorial staff scouring for content to build the database until reader contributions can catch up, and that's where Peter comes in, suggesting that content and traffic aren't where the value and excitement are: it's the opportunity to involve fans in the event planning and marketing process. » about 300 words

Business Marketing Babble Makes Me Laugh

Found on Jeff Nolan’s blog:

Competitive Intelligence: “a large fuzzy animal may be a bear.”

Marketing: “SAP can help you understand your fuzzy animals. With over 30 years in the fuzzy animal industry, we know if you are looking at a bear, a guy in a coat, or a large dog.”

Communications: “In today’s world of increasing challenges, It’s obvious fuzzy animals are what our customers care about.”

Sales: “Who cares what it is. Let’s kill it and eat it.”

Tomorrow In Human Computer Interaction

My Dutch skills are weak to non-existant, and without a Google translator for MacArena.be, I’m pretty much stuck with staring at the above video and contemplating the short description provided:

A movie about the technology which Apple has recently patented. It is not a movie made by Apple but by some researchers.

Fortunately, this is an area where video is much more illustrative than words.

I sometimes get accused of blue sky thinking when I speak of the role of technology in our lives, but while I go on about how access to huge volumes of instantly searchable information is changing us, this video shows a rather near future where we can manipulate it ways that seemed like science fiction just the other day.

Props to for pointing this out to me.

Facial Recognitition Spytech Goes Social

<a href="http://troyb.net/">Troy</a> expressed both great amusement and trepidation in his message alerting me to <a href="http://www.riya.com/">Riya</a>, a new photo sharing site: <blockquote>I don't know whether to say cool, or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E33W1W/ref=maisonbisson-20/">zool</a>.</blockquote> <a href="http://www.riya.com/learnMore">The tour</a> explains that you upload photos, Riya identifies faces in your photos, then asks you to name them (or correct its guesses!). Then you get all your friends to join up and we can all search for everybody by people, location, and time. So say "hi" to <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_0&acct=&scope=99 ">Andrejs</a> and <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_1003&acct=&scope=99">Nora</a>. » about 400 words

Gates Harshes Poor, Tells Them To Buy Windows

| What's sadder than people in <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Burundi&ll=-3.373056,29.918886&spn=11.190832,27.663574&t=h">Burundi</a> earning an average of <a href="http://www.finfacts.com/biz10/globalworldincomepercapita.htm">only $90 a year</a>? It might be <a href="http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10432/" title="Bill G Just Wants To Be Cool">Bill Gates</a>' criticism of MIT's efforts to bring affordable, networked computers to the poorest countries of the world in hopes of improving education (and communication and healthcare and more). The challenge is enormous: the technology needs to be durable, require low-power (and be easily rechargeable), as easy to use as an egg timer, have networking in a land without infrastructure, and be cheap, cheap, cheap. Yet somehow, the MIT folks have <a href="http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10996/" title="$100 Laptop Details « MaisonBisson.com">figured it out</a>, and the project -- known to most of us as the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050929-5362.html">$100 laptop project</a> -- seems to be on its way to success. It's the sort of thing that you'd figure <a href="http://www.fdncenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=115100029">a philanthropic guy</a> like Bill Gates would be on top of. But alas, he seems not to understand. <a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/gates-has-harsh-words-for-100-computer-project-161011.php" title="Gates Has Harsh Words for $100 Computer Project - Gizmodo">Gizmodo</a>, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060316-6394.html" title="Gates loves the poor (but Windows more?)">ArsTechnica</a>, <a href="http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4486" title="TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home » Open your wallet, Bill, and atone for those clueless remarks against the $100 MIT laptop project">TeleRead</a>, and others are all reporting the world's richest man went critical over the MIT project. » about 500 words

Can Actors Sell Their Digital Clones?

| <a href="http://web.media.mit.edu/~wex/">Alan Wexelblat</a> in <a href="http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2006/03/15/what_right_in_digital_actors.php">Copyfight poses a question</a> from a reader about the future of entertainment: <blockquote>what rights do you purchase/license/contract for in creating such a reproduction of a real person? Rights to the “likeness?” Performance rights? Do either of these cover things the actor never physically did or said? Is there an exclusivity clause? There are clearly some issues around the ownership of a character, if that character has appeared before (e.g. Connery's Bond) but usually the character rights reside with the studio. But if you want the Connery Bond instead of a generic James Bond you also have to incude Connery in the deal, as well as whatever studio or estate has the Bond character rights.</blockquote> » about 300 words

Native To Web & The Future Of Web Apps

Yahoo's Tom Coats was of seven star speakers at <a href="http://www.carsonworkshops.com/">Carson Workshops</a>' <a href="http://www.carsonworkshops.com/summit/">Future of Web Apps Summit</a> last month. As usual, <a href="http://blog.ryaneby.com/">Ryan Eby</a> was pretty quick to point out <a href="http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/02/my_future_of_web_apps_slides.shtml">his slides</a> to me, mostly by way of pointing out <a href="http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006323.html" title="Tom's Future of Web Apps, Translated for Product Managers (by Jeremy Zawodny)">Jeremy Zawodny's translation</a> of them. » about 500 words

Our Connected Students

Just when you thought I was done talking about how the internet really does touch everything, Lichen posts some details from the most recent University of New Hampshire Res Life student survey and it gets me going again. In order, the top three activities are:

  • socializing (15.8 hours/week)
     
  • studying, excluding in-class time (12.5 hours/week)
     
  • instant messaging, (9.3 hours/week)

Lichen also points out that IM activity was reported separately from “personal internet use,” which got an additional 8.4 hours/week.

The survey doesn’t appear to be online, so I can’t tell how many other computer-related activities are reported or how activities like “studying” may (or may not) also include computer use.

This Is What Social Software Can Do

The <a href="http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/03/this_is_what_fl.html" title="FlickrBlog">FlickrBlog</a> reports this message from <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/yeimaya/">Gale</a>: <blockquote>People have been submitting good humpback whale fluke shots to a group called <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/humpbackflukes">Humpback whale flukes</a>. I volunteer at <a href="http://www.coa.edu/alliedwhale">Allied Whale</a> which holds the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog and I was able to make a very exciting match with one of the whales that was posted on the group by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/25212853@N00/88329014/in/pool-humpbackflukes/">GeorgeK</a>. George saw this whale in Newfoundland in the summer of 2005. It <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/25212853@N00/88329014/#comment72057594077150312">matched with</a> HWC#2943 in the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catolog ..... this whale was seen only once before in March 1984!!! on Silver Bank (the breeding grounds North of the Dominican Republic). This is what flickr has the power to do.</blockquote> » about 300 words

bsuite Feature: User Contributed Tags

Ross Singer gets the prize for submitting the first reader contributed tag, the latest feature in bsuite.

There are arguments about whether user-contributed tags are useful or even valid, or whether they should be stored in my site or aggregated at places like del.ici.ous. But who’s to worry about such questions? Who’s to worry when you can put together the work already done to support author’s tags with WordPress’s pretty good comment system and get user contributed tag support with just a few extra lines of code? Who’s to worry when we can try it and see what comes of it?

It’s all managed using the same tools we use to approve, moderate, and edit comments, which also means the spam filtering that works for comments works for contributed tags too. And because bsuite is already part of WPopac, that means it gains the new tagging features too (well, it will soon).

User Experience Map

I was this close to posting soldierant‘s Gobbledy Gook map, but, well… I guess I wanted to make a point with his user experience map, done in collaboration with the smart folks at Experience Dynamics. Take a careful look at the role of your competitors and a user’s expectations and goals. Yeah, we’ve all got […] » about 100 words