I’ve been concentrating on my music show and a couple of stealth video projects using Blip.tv which IMHO is far superior to YouTube. Anyway, don’t expect too much in the way of action around here for a while.
Should you wish to keep up with what I’m up to you can find me here, here, here, here and here.
That’s the message from ex-president Jimmy Carter who is urging American Demcocrats living abroad to register to vote at www.VoteFromAbroad.org.
Technorati tags: vote, elections, politics, democrats, midtermelections, abroad, votefromabroad, jimmycarter
I've come across a few people recently who told me they weren't happy. When I wondered to them 'why?' none of them could explain why. Although they shared one common desire. To be happy.
I have a theory that the so called 'pursuit of happiness' is one of the major causes of unhappiness. The desire to be happy will always outstrip any happiness one might obtain.
Bear with me on this analogy. Remember Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika? The plan was a gradual easing of the strictures of communism. But what happened? Give the people the tiniest glimpse of liberation and you can forget gradual. The entire collapse of communism followed on fast and there wasn't a thing the government could do about it. The people wanted all the freedom they could imagine and they were going to make damn sure they got it.
The same too with our society's expectations of happiness. Happiness is a right. But it isn't. It's a state of mind that you may or may not obtain to varying degrees. Many people who say they aren't happy actually are happy by any reasonable definition but just aren't floating on a particularly luxurious, High Definition, surround sound version of Cloud Nine.
The pursuit of happiness is like the pursuit of the ultimate high. You're never going to get there. Even if you do, you'll never get there again and you'll get depressed trying. Pursuit is the wrong motivation. It necessitates a hunt, a chase, a competition.
What about the welcoming or the appreciation of happiness. Most of the time it's right there in front of you. All you need to do is accept it and embrace it.
Tory leader in appreciation of popular music shock.
So Yahoo! have bought bought social bookmarking site del.icio.us only months after buying social photosharing site Flickr. What do these two sites have in common? Tagging. But what is tagging?
Idealistically is it the communal activity of unshackling information from the constraints of official gatekeepers of knowledge. Or more prosaically, the act of attaching descriptive words to photos and web pages.
Either way, tagging (or labelling as Google likes to call it) is a new way for us to label and organise our and others’ content on the web.
del.icio.us lets you bookmark interesting websites and add word tags as a way of describing them. Handy for finding them again. Also handy for others to do the same since your bookmarks are shared with other del.icio.us users.
The same is true of Flickr. A site where you upload your photos to share with friends, family or the public to which you add word tags to help you and others discover photos.
With this latest investment in social, bottom-up content organisation, Yahoo! is truly taking tagging mainstream. It won’t be long before it will be commonplace to be asked to search the web by ‘tag’ as well as ‘keyword’.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is used by websites to share and distribute their latest content. Imagine RSS as one-way email with no Spam.
RSS works slightly differently to email in that it only transfers content in one direction - from the website’s ‘feed’ to you the subscriber. To read information delivered via RSS you need what’s called an ‘aggregator’ or ‘feed reader’.
There are a number of these (see links below) some of which you download and run on your computer and some which are web-based, just as with email.
When you have your ‘feed reader’ running you then subscribe to the RSS ‘feeds’ from the websites you’re interested in and when the websites are updated the updates appear automatically in your feed reader.
It is an incredibly efficient and easy way to keep track of a large number of websites (usually news sites or weblogs) without having to physically browse to each and every website you want to follow.
Here are a few feed readers, also known as aggregators:
Web-based
Newsgator Online
Bloglines
Pluck
Rojo
Google Reader
Windows PC
Newsgator (for Outlook)
FeedDemon
Mac OSX
NetNewswire
The first thing I thought of when I read the news that Richard Branson was adding cable television and landline telecommunications to the Virgin stable was: “Hey, maybe NTL’s customer service might improve.”
While that might prove to be wishful thinking the wider implications are that Branson is trying to square up to Murdoch as each jockeys for position in the newly emerging media landscape. While Murdoch adds internet assets like MySpace and Easynet to his portfolio (and there’s the rumour of Vodafone filling the mobile space) Branson, by joining forces with NTL, is adding broadcast and cable distribution to his existing mobile and internet assets.
Both will then have control over huge amounts of content and the means of delivery over all available channels - cable/ satellite, broadband and mobile.
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It effectively allows two separate computer software programs to speak to each other.
Why do you need to know this? Because APIs are being used more and more to allow the software behind websites to work together. For instance Google made an API for their Maps web service available for anyone to build another web service using some of the Google Maps functionality. A good example is Community Walk’s English Football Grounds. This combines the database of English football grounds which Community Walk has with the visual interface of Google Maps to create a unique ‘mashup’ that is greater than sum of the two original websites.
There are some good examples of mashups using the Google Maps API at Google Maps Mania.
How did that happen? Time was when Microsoft could do nothing right and Google was the darling of the web. Even technophobes embraced Google with open arms for having the good sense to KISS (keep it simple stupid).
Lately however, Google has been getting up the noses of the web’s technorati by having the audacity to do ‘whatever the hell it feels like doing’. Like trying to scan every book that’s ever been printed. Do No Evil is Google’s mantra but while the old baddies Yahoo and Microsoft embrace the new enabling and sharing technology of RSS, Google seem intent on playing all alone in their own pen.
While still remaining king of the search hill for now Google must keep a keen eye on what’s happening all around them. While myriad companies large and small seem to ‘get’ the new paradigm shift on the web Google seems suprisingly myopic to the changes.
Excellent BBC program by Jonathan Miller articulating with ease the absurdity of religious belief. More please.
[Technorati tags: disbelief religion jonathanmiller bbc]
Designshack has some great examples of stylish web design. Go take a look or subscribe to their RSS feed here.
[Technorati tags: design designshack css]
The ever excellent Signal vs. Noise blog has a great introduction to the sixteenth century Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi.
Simplicity as a way of life is extremely appealing particularly in current climate of information overload.
Check out Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren.
Also, resurgence.org
[Technorati tags: simplicity wabi-sabi]
For the first time in nearly 20 years I went windsurfing. Oh wow, it’s amazing how you don’t know you’ve missed something until you experience it again. I really need to get my self kitted out again. You know something’s changed when the first thing you do when you look out of the window is see what strength and direction the wind is.
I need a Starboard. Soon.
[Technorati tag: windsurfing]
I dutifully bought today’s edition of the Guardian to see what they had come up with. Two or three years ago I might have been excited but these days a newspaper redesigning within a new format feels lot like Chris Locke’s mythical Titanic Deckchair Rearrangement Corporation.
In today’s climate a new look and new size might attract a few curious onlookers but it’s not going to change the trend behavior we are seeing where many people simply don’t read any kind of newspaper anymore let alone one which tries to shuffle their deckchairs around on a deck tilting at a 45 degree angle.
[Technorati tags: theguardian redesign format berliner]
Just when you thought you had the web down pat, it goes and reinvents itself again.
Wave goodbye to the web of sites and say hello to the web of services. It’s no accident that Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, del.icio.us and Blogger are among the most popular sites on the web. And what do they have in common? Virtually no content of their own. Their success is to take the content of others and allow users to control it. These sites and many others like them simply create a ’service’ around someone else’s content or data then step out of the way and let users do their thing. This trend has become known as Web 2.0. There is untold value to be found in this model and it’s called the Long Tail on which I will post soon.
[Technorati tags: web2.0 webservices webapplications]
I’m going on holiday tomorrow for two weeks. No phone. No email. No posting. No nothing. I think that’s what was originally meant by ‘escaping to the country’.
While I’m away don’t forget to let me have any laptop supplier/ manufacturer recommendations.
Sparkspring will be closed for roughly two weeks from August 17 until August 30. No phone. No email. No posting. No nothing. I think that’s what was originally meant by ‘escaping to the country’.
[Technorati tags: holiday]
I did and I regret it. I started a blog at Sparkspring back in 2002. It lasted about six months. I don’t fully recall why I stopped although I do remember visitors being confused. I was definitely telling the wrong people to go and visit.
Back then there was not as much buzz around blogs and sites like Technorati, and despite it feeling like the right thing to do (thanks Cluetrain) something was missing. Probably my own voice, which I didn’t give enough time to emerge.
So, if you’re starting out on a blog. Don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t look back.
[Technorati tags: blogging]
I need to buy a new PC laptop. Not a Mac but a PC. Don't ask me why, I just do. We can have a Mac versus PC debate in another post at a later date (mental note: Have a Mac versus PC debate).
OK, that said, I need your help in deciding what make. My initial, default thought was Dell, but then I recalled having many terrible times with Dell customer service. There's also a huge amount of dissatisfaction with Dell in the blogosphere (are you listening Dell?) so they're off my list.
I know what spec I need I'm just in a quandary over the manufacturer/ supplier.
Who would you recommend and why?
P.S. In case you didn't know I live in the UK.
[Technorati tags: help laptop pc new customerservice dell]
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