Mygazines.com is an interesting idea. Currently in beta, it’s designed to let anyone upload any magazine or magazine article, and then share the content, using the familiar elements of content-based social networking sites (or, more accurately, the social networking elements of content-based sites).

The site unfortunately has little information about itself, so I don’t know what they think they’re going to do about the obvious copyright issues. The existing content includes the magazines’ ads, so maybe the site hopes publishers will see some benefit in being scanned ‘n’ read. (As an example, here’s a link to the complete contents of the current issue of The New Yorker.)

While the tool for reading is pretty slick, the process of posting to enable said slickness seems pretty onerous.

I’m interested to see what becomes of it… [Tags: copyright magazines publishing media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Be the first to comment »

We often buy “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” despite its awful name and soul-withering chemical composition. Even the product’s faux-entertaining site refers to it as a “nutritious blend of oils.” Mmm. But, I like it, so shut up.

In fact, we just bought the “light” version of it, which is therefore some sort of simulacrum of the original. I can’t figure out whether its name should therefore be:

1. “I Can’t Believe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”

2. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Not Butter”

or

3. _______________________ (fill in the blank)

[Tags: puzzle ]

16 Comments »

I find I’m not watching The Daily Show nearly as much as I used to, I think because Bush has dropped out of the scene so much that I don’t need the emotional release Jon Stewart was providing for me.

I bet I wouldn’t be as fanatically devoted to The West Wing now if it were still on.

The Bush Departure: Taking the comedy, leaving the tragedy.

[Tags: jon_stewart daily_show bush ]

4 Comments »

This was passed along by Jacob Kramer-Duffield, a summer intern at the Berkman Center, for no reason other than that its a summer Friday.

Tags: bunnies pancakes

5 Comments »

Here are David “End to End” Reed’s comments to Congress on Net neutrality. They were apparently well-received.

Be the first to comment »

I am an admirer of Marco’s. His new project is trying to explain what’s important and real about the Internet. Its page is here,. It’s in Italian, but I am confident in recommending it without having read it. (I’m still on the road, and only have 3 minutes left on the free hotel wifi before its 15 mins are up.)

Be the first to comment »

Spending an interesting day in Milan in conversation about whether Web-based social networking sites/services are going to continue to shape our expections about SNSes (and sociality), or whether the ubiquity of mobiles will wag this dog. The social roles of SNS on the two platforms are so different. One creates my presence, the other announces my temporality.

(Hint: Don’t try blogging on ytour blackberry on a bus.)

8 Comments »

Not only that, I am famous for being unknown.

This video is just weird, and pretty funny, although being the butt of the joke undoubtedly affects my judgment. That is, being skewered skews…

Apparently, I’ve been punked ut good.. Good one!

Be the first to comment »

I’m in Milan for an afternoon, and then in Madrid for some part of a day, and then home. Blogging may be lighter than usual.

I’ve been in Milan several times before. Every time I see it, it seems like a different city. I’m not sure if it’s seasonal, because of the accidents of the parts of town I see, or one of the great pleasures of a failing memory. But, my, what a beautiful city it was this afternoon! [Tags: travel milan ]

2 Comments »

Before paper, what did the wings of moths look like?

[Tags: puzzle ]

3 Comments »

My friend Hanan Cohen in Israel reports that because of the pettiness of the prime minister’s fraud, he’s now known as LOLmert.

[Tags: israel olmert ]

1 Comment »

Tim Spalding, founder of the estimable LibraryThing, is calling on us all to create an open shelves classification project to replace Dewey and his pals. LibraryThing is a brilliant implementation of a what a library built on a social network of readers can be, so I’m excited about Tim’s new idea.

[Tags: library taxonomies tim_spalding librarything everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Be the first to comment »

Im reading Julian Warners “From Writing to Computers,” published in 1994. In a wonderful chapter he looks at the senses in which the Western tradition thought documents contained or were intelligent — written documents “appear to understand what they are saying,” Plato says. Warner looks carefully at Platos Phaedrus, a seminal text for those concerned with the transition from oral to written cultures. Thats the one where Plato worries that the onset of written documents will ruin human memory: Those who acquire the skill of writing “will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources.”

Plato has another complaint: Writings cant respond to questions: “writing involves a similar disadvantage to painting. The productions of paintings look like living beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn silence.” Ive taken these quotes from Plato from Warner pp. 58-59.

Makes you wonder what Plato would have made of chat, IM, and SMS.

Tags: plato julian_warner chat sms im

2 Comments »

:”Wall-e” is such an amazing movie that it left me unsatisfied.

It’s totally enjoyable. The graphic realism is phenomenal. The creativity of the details is staggering. The directorial vision is superb. The editing is one confusing scene short of perfect.

But “Wall-e” is yet another damn kids story. Oh, adults will completely enjoy it. Scene for scene, it carries you through. You care about the characters and each segment has plenty for everyone. But ultimately the story is predictable, simple, and safe for the kiddies.

At this point in Pixar’s amazing career, it’s proven it can do anything. It can imbue a trash compactor with personality and zip it across a world subject to any rules Pixar imagines. Pixar has the technical skill to show us anything it can imagine. It has the movie-making craft to tell a story with a thousand moving parts.

Now it’s time to stop playing it safe and to and make some art. Now it’s time to stop dazzling us with what it can do, and to do it.

IMO.

[Tags: pixar movies wall-e animation entertainment reviews ]

7 Comments »

I’d like to throw a hat into Obama’s VP ring: Elizabeth Edwards.

She is so right for an administration that is promising fundamental change in the politics of governing. Edwards hears past differences to what is shared. She hears past anger to what is worth defending. She hears past fear to what is worth cherishing. If — as a defining phrase of Obama’s puts it — we are the ones we are waiting for, Elizabeth Edwards models who we need to become if we are to enable change to happen.

And is there a better model of the hope Obama stands for? With Elizabeth Edwards, no one can confuse hope with mere wishful thinking or weakness. Edwards faces her mortality with clarity, and seems strengthened by it. I’m sure she hopes that she will survive for many, many years. But she seems to embody a larger type of hope as well: The notion that our future doesn’t have to be like our present. That every moment is an opportunity to move that future closer to us. That we bring that future closer by relentlessly finding what is best in those we encounter. That we can change our world by giving in to our urge to connect with others, our urge to be better people than we are.

There are obvious negatives to an Edwards vice-presidency. She is not ready to step into the presidency if, G-d forbid, something should happen to Obama. True. We would have to rely on the machinery of the administration to carry us forward. And, of course, she has untreatable, fatal cancer. John Edwards could be prevailed upon to be, in effect, her co-VP.

She has political strengths. She’s a woman, a southerner, a speaker who connects with her audience, a military brat. Those strengths could help.

But most of all, Elizabeth Edwards is hope walking on two legs. [Tags: politics elizabeth_edwards obama vp ]

2 Comments »

I am not as unhappy with the FISA bill as many of my friends are. But this bill needs to be challenged in court. For one thing — as others have pointed out — that the president told you to do something illegal doesn’t excuse you from it, if only because presidents don’t have the power to order you to do anything.

EFF is asking for donations for a court challenge. EFF’s budget is a dry cough in a thin hanky compared to the economic forces it’s fighting. Is it worth a few dollars to you to get this bill tested?

Tags: wiretapping fisa eff

1 Comment »

LATER THAT DAY: I took Wray Cummings’ advice in the comments below, which worked. So, now all the examples of uncentered HR statements in this post are in fact examples of centered HR statements, which makes the post rather mysterious. Imagine, if you will, then, that all of the little horizontal rules are left-justified. And, thanks, Wray!

I know I’m going to be embarrassed about this, but for months, if not for years, I’ve been unable to bend the simple <hr> element to my will. I can adjust its length, but I can’t get the little !@#$% to center itself.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to make it work:

<hr width=’100pt’ >:

<hr width=’100pt’ align=center />:

<hr width=’100pt’ align=’center’ />:

<hr width=’100pt’ style=’text-align:center’ />:

None of these work in Firefox or Safari. I have not intentionally redefined hr in any of my many CSS style sheets, but wouldn’t the local, inline setting take precedence anyway?

What incredibly obvious, embarrassing thing am I missing? Go ahead, make me look bad. And I’ll thank you for it. [Tags: html hr ]

13 Comments »

PC Mag has a step-by-step for putting the spring back into your Mac if it’s gotten sluggish under the weight of all the crap you’ve loaded onto it. Basically, it’s a guide to saving all your important data before reinstalling OS X.

(Note to PC users: Don’t gloat. 1. PC Mag recommends you do this every two years, not every every 6 months, as I was doing with Windows. 2. This is to restore snappiness, not to rescue a broken, lumbering hulk. 3. It is way, way easier than reinstalling Windows and all your apps.)

I am disappointed and actually a little hurt that Google’s new virtual world app, Lively, only works on Windows. On the other hand, that it requires Vista I find slightly ridiculous. I run Vista on a high-end PC, and it’s a sign of my dissatisfaction that I do a double-take when I here a software company has written code specifically for it.

[Tags: mac macintosh google lively ]

4 Comments »

The Velveteen Rabbi is in Jerusalem, shopping in the Mechana Yehuda market.

[Tags: velveteen_rabbi jerusalem travel_writing ]

1 Comment »

Nick Sly has taxonomized the month’s best posts on “biodiversity, taxonomy, and systematics.” Some great stuff in it.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy biodiversity nick_sly ]

Be the first to comment »

Zogby is now publishing an interactive map of the US showing what its polling predicts as the electoral outcome in the fall election. Click on a state to get a brief, snappy explanation…except for Massachusetts, which isn’t clickable, possibly because what explanation do you need for it being a blue state beyond the fact that it’s Massachusetts?

[Tags: zogby polls politics massachusetts ]

3 Comments »

Here’s McCain’s new ad:

I think this is a losing tactic for McCain. Of course, as an Obama supporter, I’m biased. But the do-er vs. hoper idea only works if the hopeful candidate has no actual policies to offer. Then the hoper looks like a vacuous dreamer. But, over the course of the campaign, we’re going to hear lots and lots about the specifics of Obama’s platform. In fact, we’ve been getting the details for months now. For example, because McCain focused on economics this week, we’ve gotten a spate of articles comparing the two candidates’ policies. You may agree or disagree with Obama on this topic, but you can’t say he’s less detailed than McCain is.

In short, you can’t do a “Where’s the beef?” campaign when your opponent is serving up as many patties as you are. [Tags: politics mccain obama ]

One further thought: Is the generational culture war really going to work here? Obama - born in 1961 -was 7 years old during the Summer of Love.

2 Comments »

PC Mag has a bunch of Google tips. Some are familiar, but some were new to me. E.g., I didn’t know Google could give us transit directions.

[Tags: google ]

2 Comments »

Personal Democracy Forum has put together an anthology of essays on “rebooting democracy” in the age of the Net. It’s available in full on the Web (in tiny, gray type, as if they don’t want you to read it), or as PDFs, or you can pay for a printed copy.

There’s lots of good stuff in there, including a heavy representation from Berkman fellows, alumni, and friends. (Then there’s also a piece by me, defending echo chambers.) [Tags: berkman politics democracy echo_chambers ]

1 Comment »

Archon Fung, at Harvard’s Kennedy School, is proposing that we crowd source the fairness of the upcoming presidential election at MyFairElection.com. You can watch a 7 minute video presentation or read a brief paper.

[Tags: archon_fung myfairelection elections politics democracy fraud ]

Be the first to comment »

Great reflective post about the Global Voices Summit from Rebecca MacKinnon…

[Tags: berkman gv globalvoices rebecca_mackinnon ]

Be the first to comment »

Bloomberg reports that Mattel’s market cap, “helped by rising sales of Matchbox and Hot Wheels toy cars,” is now larger than GM’s. [Tags: mattel gm toys cars business economics ]

2 Comments »

As Bill Gates moves on from Microsoft, let us not forget one of his lesser-sung skills:

[Tags: bill_gates ]

1 Comment »

I am a crotchety old man about graffiti. 99.9% of them — and, as usual, all my statistics have been authenticated by having been made up — impose an adolescent narcissism. But I also think: (a) I don’t really understand the cultural positioning behind it, (b) some of it is public, rebellious art, and (c) it’s not like the commercial exploitation of public space is so great.

So, the documentary Bomb-It looks very interesting. (The initial trailer is meatier than the new one.) (Thanks to RageBoy for the link, for this follow-up, and for posting the beautiful poster.)

[Tags: graffiti bomb-it art ]

4 Comments »

The Declaration is obviously a remarkable document, part philosophy, part legal document, part performative, part a moral accounting, part beautiful rhetoric. It’s good reading, although I do tend to skip the long middle that lists the particular complaints and justifications.

Here are some resources:

Text
Wikipedia
US Archives
Facsimile
With annotations of our failure to live up to it
Lightly annotated to show draft changes
Martin Luther King’s Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese Declaration of Independence

[Tags: july4 declaration_of_independence ]

Be the first to comment »

Tim Bray blogs about the head of ISO pooh-poohing the concerns about the way that Microsoft’s OOXML document format was strong-armed through his organization.

[Tags: standards odf ooxml tim_bray microsoft ]

Be the first to comment »

Nicholas Kristof has a terrific column today about how the donation of a goat to a family in Uganda ultimately led to one of the children, Beatrice, earning a degree from Connecticut College, and beginning a path of service for her community. It’s a wonderful story, the point of which is what Jeffrey Sachs calls the “Beatrice Theorem” of development economics: “small inputs can lead to large outcomes.”

Well, yes, of course. In fact, small changes have determined the success or failure of us all. And I have no misgivings whatsoever about this past Channukah having given our children certificates announcing that Oxfam had given goats in their name. Yes, I am a goat-giver, and proud of it.

But…

…I’ve noticed in business writing in particular the frequency of what we can call the Fallacy of Examples (a type of Fallacy of Hasty Generalization). You read some story about a successful CEO as if we should learn from his (yes, usually it’s a him) example. But we are struck by examples frequently because they’re exceptional. As exceptions, examples are the last thing you want to learn from.

Not always, though. Sometimes examples are typical. That’s different. The trick is determining which are which.

An even when you can, you’re still not done. Is Beatrice and her goat an exception? Yes. That’s why her story is so inspiring. As an exception, it may be exactly what we should not be emulating. After all, if she’d won the lottery, we wouldn’t think that giving lottery tickets to the poor is a sensible approach to the problem of world poverty. But, even though Beatrice is an exception, the typical effect of donated goats (and other such small-ish gifts) may be quite good.

That’s why the Fallacy of Examples is a fallacy. Reasoning from examples doesn’t always lead to false conclusions. The reasoning just isn’t enough to tell you what the valid conclusions are.

And in the absence of valid conclusions, here’s Kristof’s list of ways to donate goats or their equivalents. And here’s Oxfam’s program. And, because it’s the Internet, here’s samizdata’s warning that goats cause poverty. [Tags: philanthropy nicholas_kristof beatrice goats ]

Ethanz brilliantly contextualizes this post. Thanks, Ethan!

9 Comments »

http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html

Yikes.

Anti-yikes

[Tags: cell_phones mobiles pop_corn brain_cells ]

4 Comments »

I’m enjoying my Amazon Kindle ebook reader, albeit while accidentally pressing the “next page” button as often as everyone else (did they beta test this thing all on the thumbless?), and whining about the rest of the annoyances about which you should not even get me started. Nevertheless, it works fine for pleasure reading and I like carrying a whole bunch of books among which I can switch rapidly. And despite its ugly DRM heart, you can upload books from the Net in PRC, MOBI, or text formats.

But, when it comes to books I read for research, it’s about as effective as it would be as a boat anchor.

First, the note-taking and highlighting are jokes.

Second, it (usefully) lets you repaginate on the fly, but (annoyingly) doesn’t know the original page numbering. How am I supposed to cite a page in a reference? It should let us ask nicely about which physical page the current text came from.

Third, there’s no bibliographic tool.

Obviously, Kindle was not designed for researchers. I understand that, and I would have made the same marketing decision. But for Kindle 2.0, it’d just take some software. (Well, and a change to the Kindle book format to capture the original page numbers.)

There’s a bunch of skeptical Kindle links here.

[Tags: ]

3 Comments »

Zachary McCune, who is at the Berkman Center, became an “ambassador” for One Web Day. To rev up for it, he did an anthropological study on himself by going without the Net for one day. He’s blogged his odyssey.

As an example, here’s what Zack wrote at 12:22:

I decide it’s high time I got my daily intake of news. I imagine my fingers crawling over the keyboard to open up nytimes.com, wired.com, boingboing.net, and boston.com in different tabs. I imagine opening up facebook to “friend” Barack Obama. Does he (or one of his nameless intern/aides) check out your profile before he friends you? I will need to wait to find out.

I remember that I am going to interview the “Plain White T’s” tomorrow. I note that I would be wikipediaing “plain white t’s” at about this time.

I realize that every time I use wikipedia, I end up clicking through to an average of three other articles. So for every wikipedia entry I don’t read today, I am actually not reading four wikipedia articles.

A single tear falls down my cheek.

And at 1:20, amidst all the urges to google this or click on that, he has a quieter moment:

I begin to realize that the internet shapes my sense of self, in that I may be directed by ads, emails, stumbles, or traditional hyperlinks, but I am still an arbiter of what I consume.

The internet suddenly seems to not be a space I inhabit but rather a (re)structuring of my self as a sort of data flaneur.

Oh, just read the whole thing yourself! It’s wonderful.

[Tags: berkman zachary_mccune onewebday ]

3 Comments »

From gigbert (via Paul English (email)):

looking for a monkey who can bang on my keyboard to try to find the one random sequence of characters that is not yet taken as a domain name

The gig offers $100.

[Tags: humor monkey dns ]

Be the first to comment »

A thoughtful overview of the Global Voices Summit from Evgeny Morozov. Also, see Joi Ito.

[Tags: global_voices ]

Be the first to comment »