It’s been a while since I used Seesmic, the video twitter site (or, as I think it would like to think of itself, the YouTube Made Easy and Instantaneous site, or possibly the YouTube Meets Social Networking site). Here’s one I did last night:

ChopsticksFrom a Beijing hotel room

Seesmic does indeed make it incredibly easy to record and post videos. And I sort of like the idea of occasionally recording a thought on video and posting it on my blog. Seesmic lets you copy and paste the code into your blog. But as the above makes clear, it makes a little thought look like a full-size video. I could, of course, just embed a link to the video at Seesmic. But I like embedding the video itself. I’d like a way to indicate that the video is of a quick, little thought. So, maybe doing it halfsize would work:

ChopsticksFrom a Beijing hotel room

(My connection right now sucks, so I can’t tell if that worked. Sorry.) Other ideas about how to present a video that is really just a quick thought? How could Seesmic help lower expectations? [Tags: seesmic ]

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This video pretends to be from YouTube’s origins in 1985. Cute.

[Tags: youtube humor ]

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Cofounder of the Berkman Center and legendary law school teacher Charlie Nesson is taking on the RIAA…

[Tags: berkman RIAA copyright copyleft RIAA charlie_nesson ]

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Happy Halloween.

[Tags: halloween racism ]

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This site has a tracker that tracks all the electoral college tracking polls. Each row represents a different tracker.

We can only hope that there are several of these sites, so we can track the trackers tracking the trackers.

[Tags: politics polls meta everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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[Tags: obama politics robo-calls mccain ]

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Google has reached a settlement agreement in the lawsuit brought by publishers who were afraid that awareness of the existence of the publishers’ books might leak out onto the Internet. (Non-biased translation: Google has settled with the publishers suing over its books.google.com book search service.)

As far as I can tell from Google’s plain-English explanation (which, overall, is exceptionally clear), the default for out-of-print books that are still under copyright will be that they are available through Google Book Search. You’ll be able to not only see snippets (as now) but will be able to purchase them, with the money being distributed through a new, independent, book rights registry. In addition, libraries and universities will be able to purchase site licenses for all the books Google’s scanned.

For books currently in print and under copyright, it sounds like not much has changed. Google says publishers can “turn on” the purchase and preview options. Couldn’t they before?

Once this settlement is agreed on, we will have what sounds like a reasonable program for working within the bounds of copyright. Much will depend, of course, on what the pricing is.

Now we have to work on fixing copyright so that it serves its original purpose — providing an incentive sufficient to bring authors to write — rather than being used to create an artificial scarcity to serve the economic interests of an industry entrenched in a ditch carved into paper.

[Tags: books google copyright copyleft kindle ]

Wendy Seltzer worries that Google will now become iTunes for books …

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A Canadian court has decided that linking to a defamatory page is not itself an act of defamation. It does leave admit exceptions, such as repeating the content of the defamatory passage or linking the phrase “The truth about Wayne Crookes is found here.”

The chilling effect if the court had decided otherwise would have been positively arctic.

[Tags: law canada hyperlinks defamation wayne_crookes ]

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Jose Antonio Vargas has an interesting article in the Washington Post about watching global blogs watch the US election. He focuses on Voices without Votes, an offshoot of Global Voices. Why, did you know that six local candidates in Brazil added “Obama” to their names?

[Tags: politics globalvoices blogs ]

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The NY Times breaks the news that a bunch of large companies and rights organizations are proposing a global code of conduct to help protect online free speech and privacy. (The Berkman has been involved in this.)

[Tags: free_speech privacy berkman ]

Rebeca MacKinnon has an excellent post on this.

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I built up on my nerve and successfully used the old-fashioned elevator at the hotel I’m at in Frankfurt. It’s a continuous, and continuously-moving, loop of open cubicles, large enough for two skinny people, or one American. No waiting, no doors. You step in as an empty compartment approaches and hop out as it moves past your floor.

The clerk assures me that there have been no injuries, although it seems easy to hurt yourself: mis-time your exit and you will be part way between the elevator and the floor as the elevator moves on. I’m surprised the lobby isn’t littered with severed arms and torsos split cleanly in two.

On the other hand, I only got in once the clerk assured me that if I panicked and was unable to force myself to hop out, it doesn’t turn the compartments upside down at the top of the loop.

Damn thrilled-crazed Europeans!

[Tags: elevators europe human_vegematics ]

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Just a reminder: MyFairElection.com is asking people to sign up to report on the conditions they find at their local polling place so that the site can create a “weather map” of electoral fairness.

[Tags: elections democracy crowdsourcing e-democracy ]

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Chris Daly read my over-worked, under-thought article on bits and atoms, and sent me this poem by Emily Dickinson:

Part One: Life

CXXVI

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

[Tags: poetry emily_dickinson brains ]

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John Kelly at Shifting the Debate has posted a diagram of the 100 most blogged political videos, showing their distribution across the party chasm. Bruce Ettlinger, of the Berkman’s Internet & Democracy project blogs about it, calling out some particular vids.

[Tags: politics videos ]

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I’m about to begin a 4-city, 3-country, 7-day around the world trip, from Germany to China to Vancouver, arriving home on the morning of Election Day. And you know what I’d really like to find? A printable statement that explains in Chinese that I am a vegetarian, that I don’t eat any animals, including fish or shellfish, or anything made with animals (including fish juice in sauce, animal juice in soup, etc.). Any one have a quick pointer before I leave in a couple of hours?

[Tags: vegetarian ]

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Leslie Madsen Brooks at BlogHer writes about museums using Twitter. It’s a whole lotta links and a whole lotta love, including a link to Beth Kanter’s interview with MuseumTweets (= Amy Fox).

[Tags: museums twitter lesley_madsen_brooks beth_kanter amy_fox everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Remember this “wassup” ad? Here’s the update. BoingBoing says it’s the same cast.

[Tags: politics obama humor ]

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Stanford’s posted a great collection of cigarette ads designed to hide the fact that sooner or later you’ll be coughing up blood. (Thanks to Tim Hiltabiddle for the link.)

[Tags: advertising cigarettes propaganda stanford ]

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Adolf Hitler Is A Meme

Yeah, it’s Hitler. Yeah, it’s funny. Yeah, those things aren’t supposed to go together. But I think this is a terrific piece. Brilliant, even.

Now let the pre-emptive defense begin [SPOILERS AHEAD]: Would the Internets have brought down Hitler? Nah. But that’s the overstatement that makes this video provocative and funny. And the statements revealed by the overstatement I think are true: The Internet is able to trivialize everything, for better and for worse. E.g., The connected culture of the Internet makes it harder to take demagogues (or at least a certain style of demagogue) seriously.

Or, as Barry Goldwater once didn’t say: Trivializing the self-aggrandizing is no vice, although aggrandizing the trivial is not much of a virtue.

FWIW, I can’t find a way to take the reference to “6 million views,” with its obvious call to the 6 million members of my family who were murdered, that isn’t disturbing.

[Tags: hitler internet_culture lolcats satire banality_of_evil evil_of_banality ]

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Mass TLC has honored a bunch of people, two of whom I know and respect to the nth-est degree: Paul English of Kayak and Paul Graham, the essayist and mentor. (Both worked at Interleaf in the late ’80s or early ’90s.) Congrats! (I’m sure the other honorees are equally honorable.)

[Tags: paul_english paul_graham mass_tlc ]

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I recently had to reinstall Puzzle Quest on my Mac, and it took me way longer than it should to find where it stashes saved games. So, to save you the trouble:

Puzzle Quest in porting from Windows seems to have taken the shortcut of replicating on the Mac the Windows folder structure. So, you’ll find the saved games here:

/Users/{your_username}/Library/Preferences/Puzzle Quest Preferences/p_drive/My Documents/Puzzle Quest/Saves

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Volunteer programmers, designers and activists across the country will coordinate in online chat rooms and at real-world coding parties on Friday to build Twitter Vote Report, a groundbreaking web election monitoring system to fight voter suppression and disruption efforts. Anyone with a Twitter.com account will be able to use their cell phones or computers to send a message notifying voters, election monitors, and the media of problems around the country. A web map will display incidents in real-time.

For more info about how you can help, here. And if you want to help out on Friday’s code jam, go here. [Tags: politics elections twitter e-democracy everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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From the FreeCulture movement has emerged the Open University Campaign based on the new Wheeler Declaration:

An open university is one in which

1. The research the university produces is open access.
2. The course materials are open educational resources.
3. The university embraces free software and open standards.
4. If the university holds patents, it readily licenses them for free software, essential medicines, and the public good.
5. The university network reflects the open nature of the internet.

where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty, administration.

As we used to say: Right on.

[Tags: free_culture open_access open_courseware open_university university education ]

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85 versus 95. And we all wish them both well.

[Tags: obama mccain politics ]

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[Tags: infohist history_of_information information joho ]

Last Thursday, I had a discussion with Charlie Nesson and Aaron Shaw at the Berkman Center about the first article in this issue. You can see some clips of the conversation here:

1
2 [Note: In this I misspeak and say info is noise; I meant to say that noise is info. I just noticed my error. Oops.]
3
4
5

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I just received about 100 bounced messages indicating that I have apparently spammed much of the world with a message in which I state I am a lonely Russian woman who just can’t wait to meet you.

This isn’t the first time my email address has been abused this way. Is there anything I can do about it?

[Tags: spam spoofing ]

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I was thumbing through some photos a couple of days ago and came across IMG0127.jpg, which turned out to be a photo I took at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I was there as one of the 30 or so bloggers who had been given credentials. The DNC did it up right for us, including a breakfast meeting, in front of which they trotted dignitaries, including Howard Dean and the skinny, promising Senator-to-be. All I remember was that he was shy, charming, and seemed as unsure as we were of what to make of a room full of bloggers with press credentials, all being recorded by mainstream journalists who had been confined behind a railing at the back of the room.

(Click for larger version)

Meanwhile, my friend Tim Hiltabiddle has posted at Facebook a gallery of beautiful photos he took of Obama in New Hampshire last week. Gorgeous.

[Tags: obama politics dnc2005 ]

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This 6.5 min video from DailyKos edits together Colin Powell’s argument in favor of Obama with brief supporting clips from the McCain campaign:

Send it to the fence-sitter in your family. (Here’s a link straight to the video. Ans Mike Wendell, in the comments, recommends this one, without the intercuts.)

[Tags: obama colin_powell mccain politics ]

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Click on an issue listed at Ask Obama Now and you’ll see a video clip of Obama addressing it, along with a build of bullet points on the side – useful if you’re not sure where he stands on the issues that matter to you.

[Tags: politics e-politics obama ]

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In July, I blogged an idea for a system that would make it much easier to do quick an dirty edits of podcasts. The basic idea was that the software would convert the speech to text and then let you edit the text, using the revised text (with hidden time-codes) to cut and paste the original recording. I thought it was a good idea.

So did Ryan Shaw and Dan Perkel … three years ago. I just got an email from Ryan (responding to my talking about this idea in the issue of my newsletter I just sent out) saying that he and Dan put together a prototype for a class at Berkeley. He points us to a brief description, some slides, and a prototype that he says is “probably broken.” The description describes a different, and interesting, facet of the project, but, Ryan writes in his email, “Edits to a transcription text in a browser-based editor were translated into edits to an underlying audio SMIL file, playable in RealPlayer.”

[Tags: audio podcasts ]

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Las Vegas Hilton in-room phone answering system interaction:

“Press U for user options.”
[You press U (= numeral 8)]
“User Options: Press X to exit user options.”

The war in Iraq? Sartre’s idea of bourgeois freedom? How I feel when I run into someone whose name I can’t remember who asks me, “Remember me?”?

[Tags: user_interface_design ]

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Suppose that you had a comedy sketch show that made fun of a particular vice presidential candidate particularly effectively. Suppose the person doing the imitations, as well as the staff in general, really really really (excuse me, rully, rully, rully) dislikes the VP candidate. Suppose they think of her as a demagogue. Suppose they felt obliged to honor the candidate’s request to be on the show, but didn’t want to let her use the show to gain sympathy. It’d be awkward.

Or, as they say: Live! From New York! It’s Saturdaaaay Night!

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Berk Breathed is interviewed in Salon about the upcoming end of his comic strip. Too bad. It had a certain ferocity.

[Tags: opus comics ]

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I thought this was a pretty charming video from the Boston Globe.

Getting that close to a potential president — Dem or Rep — is pretty thrilling. I still remember the day I shook Bobby Kennedy’s hand as he campaigned through a town near where I lived in 1967.[Tags: politics obama new_hampshire ]

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Sarah Palin is not a joke. So, suppose we TiVo users were to skip past her time on SNL this Saturday. Any chance TiVo would notice and publicize it, just as they made public that the moments of Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction were the most re-viewed seconds of the Superbowl that year?

Yes, I think this may be the worst idea I’ve ever blogged.[Tags: snl tivo sarah_palin politics ]

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Font humor video.

[Tags: fonts humor ]

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A happy day! I voted for Obama! Right next to the slightly scary, life-size cardboard cut-out my daughter gave me!

Happy, happy day!!

PS: I tagged the photos “ivotedforobama” at flickr. [Tags: obama ivotedforobama ]

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This is some ad:

And here’s McCain trivializing women’s health, and equating consideration of women’s health with extremism:

[Tags: politics womens_rights abortion choice mccain obama palin rape ]

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For months now, with perfect consistency, after four or five songs, Pandora goes dead when I listen at home using my RCN broadband connection. The music stops and the play button, which says the music is playing, does nothing. Other streaming media sources work fine — I can watch entire debates live on CNN. I’m getting the same Pandora behavior even after a complete reinstall of OS X.

How suspicious should I be? And is there any way to tell, other than asking other RCN customers if they’re having the same problem? Am I now officially a tin-hat-wearing, paranoid Net neutrality person?

[Tags: rcn pandora net_neutrality ]

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[Tags: obama politics mccain ]

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