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July 30, 2002
Loaded Front for Maxim Ralph FHM, Esquire
An update of an earlier story:
I think that for a long time, the conventional wisdom
was that Time Inc. would never do a magazine like Maxim
because we didn't think the advertising would be there.
There was just a perception that young men didn't read and
didn't spend money, and it turns out that they do both.
-- Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc.
Posted by dc at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2002
Blogathon
Less annoying than Public Television pledge drives,
it's Blogathon (not now or ever an Olympic ).
Posted by dc at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)
wired: militainment -- tired: Infotainment
New word: militainment
Orgiastic television coverage of militant s across the globe.
Example [npr.org]
NPR National Political Correspondent Mara Liasson reports that
President Bush says he's considering an precedent-setting
invasion of Iraq to knock out Saddam Hussein. But there's
little argument in the halls of Congress over a march on
Baghdad, ...
Posted by dc at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)
paying for commuting
Meanwhile, we continue to subsidize those who drive. Experts reckon that
drivers pay only a quarter of the real cost of operating a vehicle; the
remaining costs--things like congestion, sprawl, road maintenance and
pollution--are paid for by society as a whole. Illinois gives drivers a
particularly good deal; our vehicle taxes and registration fees are nearly
30 percent lower than the national average.
as reported in The Chicago Tribune.
Now really, who pays more for congestion: somebody stuck in the middle of it,
wasting their time, or an average member of society as a whole.
Posted by dc at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)
Get on the bus ?
The SF Bay region's clean air plan will remain on hold until at least
October, when a panel of federal judges will consider its validity,
the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
The decision throws into limbo the summer highway construction season
and is a clear victory for environmentalists, as it means the court
finds enough merit in their case to warrant a stay. Without an air
plan, federal cash cannot flow to new transportation projects.
This is a huge ruling that says the MTC must start following the
law. Federal dollars cannot be used to make air quality worse.
-- David Schonbrunn, director of Transportation Solutions Defense and
Education Fund.
Posted by dc at 10:46 AM | Comments (7)
July 24, 2002
Opera blur
Opera is a good browser. But scrolling can be a blur.
Posted by dc at 09:29 PM | Comments (3)
July 20, 2002
The day the music died.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who oversees the U.S. Copyright Office,
set the royalty standards last month, provoking cries of protest from small
Internet radio stations that say the fees will force them to
pull the plug on webcasts.
Posted by dc at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2002
error messages
Error messages should point the user at the most likely source of
trouble, not the place where the trouble was discovered.
Posted by dc at 08:38 PM | Comments (2)
July 14, 2002
Post Partem
Tim Salam posted a good summary of project post partem reviews
(erroneously called post mortems when used for projects which did not die).
Posted by dc at 04:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Movable Type
Moveable Type has added a couple of interesting features.
One of those is Trackback which tracks links to specific posts/pages
from outside sources.
Entry-to-entry communication: for each post you write, you can allow
others to receive ping notices when it's updated. Or, you can track specific
posts on other sites for updates, and recieve notices when they are.
Category-to-category communication: you can set up your categories to
allow ping notices, which means that whenever you post an item in, say, your
"Information Architecture" category, you can automatically announce this to
other people/blogs. Also, you can expose any of your categories to other
blogs so that a post somewhere else is announced to one of your categories.
(Password-protection is available for this system as well)
That means that if I use the category name "Information Architecture" and
you use "IA - Resources and Stuff", that our posts, comments, and categories
can still create permanent links to each other automagically, even if our
category names change.
Some additional examples of use scenarios have been posted.
Posted by dc at 04:13 PM | Comments (8)
Wanted: write your own help
I'd like an environment where users write their own help system from
within the software their using.
Form each element a help button with no content or minimal content
in it (asking programmers to create the help button is easy, geting
them to create the content isn't). Clicking on help would popup a
window withthe help text for that form field editable right there.
Then, when testing the system internally, have someone go through
the entire system and write nice help messages. Even better, leave
the editing messages in, and the users themselves may add help
messages. Basically, add-a-note functionality.
My worked well too when dealing with error and other messages.
Posted by dc at 04:07 PM | Comments (1)
M$
It's annoying that government docs are distributed via
Microsoft PowerPoint files, thus requiring citizens to buy
Microsoft products in order to participate in democracy.
[1] unix strings works amazingly well to read .DOC files
[2] Try free viewers for MS Windows (yes, a Gates tax),
but you don't need to buy and keep updating MS Office.
[3] would you prefer .PDF files ? I keep asking for plain text,
but generally people (not just MTC and VTA) are too stupid
to be able to copy and paste plain text into a text document.
Posted by dc at 01:43 PM | Comments (2)
Adverts
According to Todd Gitlin, there are eight strategies we use to
navigate the ceaseless flood of media.
The Fan develops a visceral, emotional attachment to certain
genres or celebrities. This attachment requires a choice
(I'll pay attention to New Wave and ignore folk music),
and it leads to membership in a community of connoisseurs,
or believers.
Where the fan works by affirmation, the Content Critic works
by aversion. He is on the lookout for all the crappy songs
and biased news, all the ways in which the media fail politically
and aesthetically. If the content of the media could somehow
be improved, the world would too.
The Paranoid believes that They are programming Us.
Television (the usual culprit) is an addiction, a hypnotic agent.
If we are at a loss, drifting or suffering, it must be because
They – the Government, the Liberal Media, the Media Monopoly,
the Zionist Occupation Government – are pushing the buttons.
Though it is extreme, paranoia is a warped version of
legitimate fear.
The Exhibitionist glories in media exposure – the cast of
MTV's The Real World, the painted spectators holding NBC signs
at sports s, those who broadcast their intimate lives
via 24/7 webcam. Commanding the attention of spectators,
the exhibitionist achieves some exemption from the anonymity
of the torrent, some power apparently without risk. But
because this power is risk-free, it is trivial.
The Ironist knows that media are nothing but weightless
contrivances, so she surfs with ease and without commitment,
amused and amused to be amused. She can enjoy the spectacle
on two levels – as a faux-naïve fan (who always liked the smile
of that faded star) and as a knowing insider (who knows that
the faded star started touring again because she was broke).
The media have adopted, or co-opted, the ironist's style, with
the glorification of kitsch and ads that wink knowingly while
they continue their pitch.
The Culture Jammer, like the critic, believes that images are
power. The difference is that he will directly attack those
images, defacing or refacing them. In order to redistribute
power he's an active transmitter rather than a passive receiver.
Whether he's hacking into a corporate site or unfurling
anti-consumer banners in the Mall of America, offense
has become the jammer's defense.
Because the media are politically pacifying, life-throttling,
mind-sapping, even physically damaging, the Abolitionist
refuses to accept their existence as a good argument for
their continued existence. Only one valid question about
the media torrent remains: How do you launch the revolution
to dry it up?
The Secessionist knows that media steal our time, and
therefore our lives and human capacities. Because the media
are beyond reform, she does not bother to displace, jam,
supplement, or critique them. She rations television, planning
one day to get rid of it, and abstains from cell phones and
e-mail whenever possible. She knows how the media can
seduce if you let your guard down.
Read more in
Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds
Overwhelms Our Lives, by Todd Gitlin. (Metropolitan Books, 2002).
Gitlin is a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University.
Posted by dc at 09:06 AM | Comments (18)
Sunday Papers
Catching up with leisure reading, I see MJK has a another
new columnist gig; the Boston Globe reflects on who leads
civil rights campaigns nowdays.
Thursday's Wall Street Journal had a long article on the first page
How FBI's Antiquated Filing System Hinders Fight on Terrorism.
The last paragrapg offered an interesting tidbit:
The bureau's case-numbering system, for example, dates back to the
days of J. Edgar Hoover, who worked at the Library of Congress before
joining the FBI in 1921 and imposed a kind of Dewey Decimal System on
the bureau for classifying criminal acts. The system, which is issued to
each FBI agent in a little blue or yellow booklet, still includes offenses
related to Prohibition, white slavery and sedition.
Is this is all disinformation, is the FBI is just trying to get money from
the Congress, is this is just pre-emptive blame deflection ?
Posted by dc at 08:29 AM | Comments (3)
July 12, 2002
War chalking
None dare call it modemspotting.
A set of easy-to-draw symbols to identify the nearby presence of wireless
networks for laptop and palmtop users.
Matt Jones, a London-based information architect and designer, posted the
idea on his Weblog, and it stimulated online discussions and even a Web
address devoted to the cause: www.warchalking.org.
An initial set of symbols was offered for users to mark (and describe)
networks they had found, and for network operators, free or for a fee,
to advertise accessibility. In the spirit of Internet time, baroque
renditions by site visitors quickly transformed Mr. Jones's simple symbols
into three-dimensional locators with other details.
War chalking derives from "war driving," a pastime of discovering wireless
networks using widely available data-sniffing software that identifies
open and restricted wireless nodes in homes and businesses. (War
driving, in turn, comes from war dialing, modem-era hacker attempts
to dial number after number to find modems.) [nyt.com]
Posted by dc at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2002
Cars, anybody ?
Learn to let go the steering wheel.
Posted by dc at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
Fishes
Look at the fish swimming here and there. Such is
the pleasure that fish enjoy! -- Lao Tzu
Posted by dc at 06:30 PM | Comments (1)
July 08, 2002
MINI logo
Compare Steak and Shake's logo to MINI's logo.
Posted by dc at 05:31 PM | Comments (9)
July 07, 2002
Golden Gate
The original increase from $2 to $3 was supposed to
be temporary. Now we find that temporary means
'until we have to increase it again'.
-- David Kamm of Mill Valley, on the toll increase
from $3 to $5 on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Lament: no consideration of congestion pricing in this latest toll debate.
Posted by dc at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)