I’m one of those guys who almost never actually hears the lyrics to the music that’s playing constantly. Then somebody covers the song in a beautiful-but-ridiculous way, and I finally clue to them. Example: Tori Amos’ cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Now I hear Alanis’ interpretation of The Black Eyed Peas My Humps, and […] » about 400 words
Two fairly old papers on the economics of open source. The news recently has been that open source allows companies to bring in better, more innovative talent and saves marketing costs, but these papers are interesting nonetheless. The Simple Economics of Open Source: The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe […] » about 300 words
This story in MIT Technology Review scares me. Instead of letting all computers within the network communicate freely, Ethane is designed so that communication privileges within the network have to be explicitly set; that way, only those activities deemed safe are permitted. “With hindsight, it’s a very obvious thing to do,” McKeown says. No matter […] » about 600 words
Greenstemstudios is selling a sweet-looking 1980 Vespa with sidecar. In gleaming Cinder Red and House of Kolar Black, riding on white wall Continentals, “the scooter gets 60 to 70 miles to the gallon and can easily maintain 60 mph even with the sidecar attached.” The starting price is $3,750. I’m plenty happy with my scooter, […] » about 100 words
Following Steve Jobs’ ant-DRM post, people began to wonder if Apple was just pointing fingers or really willing to distribute DRM-free music via their online store. Yesterday we learned the answer. Apple and EMI announced yesterday they would offer DRM-free 256bit AAC premium downloads, priced at $1.29 each. Apple, DRM, DRM-free, EMI, ITMS, digital restrictions […] » about 100 words
With plenty of moving help from Zack, Matt, Cliff, Justin, Jon, Will, and Karen, Bisson Tower went from empty to full quickly enough that we all had plenty of time to sit around and enjoy the lunch Sandee cooked up, then retire to the roof with cocktails. The cats were traumatized by it all, but […] » about 100 words
Interesting, a LAMP solution that promises “the next generation of genealogy sitebuilding.” it does pretty charts and pages, and as any web app should, makes it easy to edit or add information.
But it also makes me wonder if there’s an XFN attribute to indicate parent/child relationships. Could our work on network identity and social software solve this?
Those looking for this year’s April Fools gags should look at the office pranking from last week (pictured above). This blog will henceforth be very serious. Not. April Fools, not joke, prank, site news » about 100 words
Among the pop-culture viral videos I apparently missed is Matt Harding‘s dancing. I had to turn to Wikipedia for an explanation:
Harding was known for a particular dance, and while videotaping each other in Vietnam, his traveling companion suggested he add the dance. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. Later, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him center frame, with the background music “Sweet Lullaby.”
The video was passed around by e-mail and eventually became “viral”, with his server getting 20,000 or more hits a day as it was discovered, generally country by country due to language barriers, before the launch of major video upload sites.
Bill Gurstelle thought the exploding balloons were as funny as I did, and now I understand why: the contributing editor of Make magazine knows his way around improvised munitions.
He also knows YouTube videos of oppressed geeks getting back at The Man with potato guns is a good marketing ploy for his audience. Whoosh Boom Splat appears to be his latest book. Amazon doesn’t let me look inside, but how can you go wrong with projects like these?
MetroNaps started business in 2004 with a boutique in NYC’s Empire State Building, selling 20 minute naps for $14 bucks. The company has slowly been opening franchises around the world, but MetroNaps co-founder Arshad Chowdhury says overwhelming interest from office folks who wanted to install the pods on-site as an employee perk. So the company […] » about 200 words
ProgrammableWeb pointed out an InformationWeek story that claimed 28% of Amazon’s sales in early 2005 were attributable to Amazon affiliates. And C|net claims Amazon now has 180,000 AWS developers (up from the 140,000 Amazon was claiming about a year ago).
(Note: not every Amazon affiliate/associate is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) developer, but Amazon hasn’t shared more specific numbers.)
These slides, from Amazon’s AWS developer relations team explain a lot about what AWS is.
When Ken, Zach, Dan, and Dee all went off to a conference without Matt, Al, Cliff, Tim, Laurianne, and me (but especially Matt), they had to assume something would happen in their absence. Something. And it did. To each one of them in turn. 1,100 square feet of tinfoil covered everything in Ken’s office. 5,300 […] » about 200 words
The conversation on Code4Lib about OpenID reminded me to finish a draft I’d started at Identity Future on the topic. The short of it is that Marc Canter says that single sign-on is good, but “we need the attribute exchange to make this thing really take off.” Then all the skeptics will realize that the […] » about 200 words
I learned the literal meaning of “karaoke” early last year.
Newley Purnell pointed me at this astronomy picture of the day by Antti Kemppainen: Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town. On January 26, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky light up with delights near and far. Nearby, fireworks exploded as part of Australia Day […] » about 200 words
Thumbelina is smaller than a decent dog. So small, in fact, that the Guinness folks — no, not those Guinness folks — recognize her as the smallest. From Boing Boing: Thumbelina is the world’s smallest horse. She weighs 60lb and is five years old. She was born on a ranch that specializes in breeding miniature […] » about 200 words
Uploaded from before the days when Flickr would keep the original size photos, this is one of my favorite, most spring-y shots. And with weather like we’re having here now — 57° in northern New Hampshire! — it’s very appropriate. Daffodil, flowers, photoblog, spring, warm weather, Daffodils, Daffy, Daffy » about 100 words
For a long time I was a big fan of Dantz Retrospect Backup. For while I was so committed that I would do an incremental backup of my laptop and most every other computer in my house every day, but I’ve been using it one way or another since 1999 or 2000 or so. All […] » about 300 words
Bob Gaskins, a former Berkeley Ph.D. student, conceived PowerPoint originally as an easy-to-use presentation program. He hired a software developer, Dennis Austin, in 1984 to build a prototype program that they called “Presenter,” later changing the name to PowerPoint for trademark reasons. PowerPoint 1.0 was released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh platform; later that […] » about 200 words
The New York Times last week announced that it’s giving away TimesSelect to students and faculty that hold a .edu email address. TimesSelect, of course, is the paid access site that debuted in January 2006 to a confused and critical web. Editor and Publisher repeated the Times’ claim that they’re doing this for the good […] » about 200 words
Karen found this spider in the snow yesterday when she wasn’t running for the camera. Will spied several more, all moving laboriously over the crystalline landscape. None of us had ever seen spiders on snow before, but it’s likely we’d never looked. discovery, snow, spider, winter » about 100 words
Meg was never shy about asking me what rock I was found under when I stunned her with my complete ignorance of major pop culture touchstones, so I put my mind to it and after significant remedial work I thought I’d caught up. But, no.
I’d not seen this video and only discovered it when Blyberg pointed at it as an icon of network-enabled pop culture.
The Candy Mountain video has been circulating for almost a year now and it’s a prime example of how network effects are allowing society to disseminate, in this case, popular culture, and ultimately the bulk of information deemed “important” by our fellow citizens
Indeed, my 17 year old nephew laughed when he learned I’d not seen it, lording it over me in the sort of superior way teenagers do when they discover they’ve just won a game on a walk.
Update Matty thinks he’s all that because he posted the video in January. My nephew would still laugh at him, though, as he claims he saw it a year ago.
In my favorite action photo since Will cut a woody, Karen hit the snow with fury. Karen Ladd, action, blur, motion, snow shoes, snow winter, Warren, hike, hiking » about 100 words
As usual, beatnikside had to tell me what I missed: Lebowski Fest. It looks like everybody was there. The Dude Jeffrey Lebowski, Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos, Walter Sobchak, Maude Lebowski, Bunny Lebowski, the rich Jeffrey Lebowski with no legs, and his lacky Brandt. And don’t forget Jesus Quintana or Treehorn’s Thugs. And certainly don’t forget […] » about 100 words