xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
There goes the neighbourhood. I grew up working with usenet, all 8000 newsgroups, back when there were only 8k. I hear that there are over 30k of them now: Are Usenet fans vulnerable to copyright lawsuits? | CNET News.com “In a new series of lawsuits, Hollywood studios for the first time are targeting companies that provide access to Usenet newsgroups.”
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
Slashdot | Google vs. eBay/PayPal: “That’s Unpossible! writes “Google has today made a small announcement on their blog which could shake up the landscape of buying things online : they are going to start allowing certain parties to sell items through Google Base, which people can buy using credit cards linked to their Google Account. According to another blog post, Google already accepts payments in this fashion for Google Video, Google Earth, Google Store, etc. How long until Google Base is directly competing with eBay? The framework is now in place.”"
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
Slashdot | Google to Digitize National Archives Footage:
Anil Kandangath writes “Google today announced their pilot program to digitize the entire video content of the National Archives and make it globally accessible for free on Google Video. The history of the world should be universally accessible and this is definitely a great step towards making sure that our history is not lost, and that everyone has equal and easy access towards such information. Google has provided some sample videos from the National Archives, such as the 1969 moon landing.
This is really interesting in light of what google planned to do with searching books (see http://www.mazar.ca/category/library-issues/ for a discussion of the issues). It is far wiser and in the end more useful to make all the public content easily available in a digitized form then to mess with publishers… as a start. It is strange. Google is SO big now that they can consider taking on impossible projects, libraries are political organizations–not to say that that’s bad, but that this is a fact–who must respond to the local needs of their constituents. Google has another agenda.
What also strikes me as interesting is that google does not have, and does not appear to be trying to create, a monopoly. They don’t need it. The more competition out there the more content there is for them to.
I have no strong opinion about googles “do no evil” policy. The issue with blocking content as it relates to china is a bit of a joke. The US government puts limits on searching and access for reasons of national security; every company doing work out side the US have to follow rules on sharing and access to information through various export licensing agreements and the like. The US government could easily require companies working over-seas to conform to the same legal requirements as they have at home. Perhaps that would prohibit american search engine companies from working in China. And chinese companies would fill in the gap. It doesn’t look like there’s much of a choice.
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
On Business Week: The Future of the Blog: “Six Apart’s Mena Trott helped start the stampede by co-designing user-friendly software. But she thinks the blogging trend is only just beginning.” Duh! I thought that that’s what blogging already IS doing. [found via slashdot]
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
On a Roll: Children’s Paper Chair - Gizmodo
Here’s a chair from Charlotte Friis Design Studio that’s made out of drawing paper rolled up like a pair of toilet rolls, and as a child uses paper, it’s scrolled from the back roll to the front one on which the child sits. As the child uses more paper, the chair gets taller and taller, conceivably getting larger as the little tyke grows taller.
If you’re familiar with the propensity of the wee ones to draw for hours on end—sometimes in places where they shouldn’t—you’ll realize how much they’ll like something like this. There’s about 1500 feet of paper in that roll, enough to be changed twice a week for five years. Pricing or availability was not mentioned.
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
So, we go to the olympics. The women’s teams kick butt and get like 65% of the metals. The mayor of vancouver straps the olympic flag to his wheelchair and goes for a tour around the olympic stadium in Torino. And then the closing event includes a skidoo, icefishing drill. Sort of all makes sense if you live here. Eh?
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
Barry asked me to contribute to this a long time ago, but never said what it was for. He’s always up to ‘no good’.
Updating Cyber Times: It’s Time to Bring Our Culture Into Cyberspace
I like to listen to classic rock on the radio: the good stuff from the 19150s through the 1970s (i.e., Bill Haley, Rock Around the Clock through The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers). One day, Elvis’ Return to Sender: Address Unknown came on. It jarred me: who sends letter mail anymore? It also resonated, because an email had just come bouncing back, marked “User Unknown”. The juxtaposition flashed an “A Ha” at me, leading me to realize how much our technology and social relations have changed subtly in the past 30 years.
So I decided to translate song titles into contemporary cyber times. Movie and TV titles –– and other snippets of – started flashing at me, and these joined the list. Most are modern updatings. However, some are just for fun, as in 409/419 and Godzilla/Mozilla.
In one situation, this diversion has turned out to be useful. When Jennifer Kayahara and I were stuck for an opening to our forthcoming Journal of Computer Mediated Communication paper (“Searching for Leisure High and Low”), I thought of the refrain to The Coasters’ Searchin’ to represent traditional pre-Internet search behavior.
xposted: From the Lemmingworks.
From Catspaw’s Guide to the Inevitably Insane: “There’s your multidisciplinary thought of the day…” and something to think about when teaching essay writing to Firsties.
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