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by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

May 24, 2002 • Last week's weblog

Blogging power to the people: "In response to my question, "Is it too much to ask for a globally wireless box, a sleek, $200 laptop designed for communication via satellite? No spreadsheets, no heavy crunching, not much giggery, just a browser, email and publishing software," Tom Poe of Reno, Nev., writes,

"Hi: Be careful what you ask for!!

"You just asked for what the Hollywood folks are seeking to create. A world in which we will be restricted to "devices" for each task. A device for email, for browsing, for something far less than publishing as you or I envision, for voice, for video, for viewing, not interacting in the "producer" fashion. As Cory Doctorow so beautifully put it, http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html#000113

"Hollywood is going to change our world, at your expense, my expense, technology's expense? possibly. But, you know, the technology industry doesn't care, because either way, they make lots of money. I hope you read his wonderful report."
Thanks,
Tom Poe
Reno, NV
http://www.studioforrecording.org/
http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/
http://renotahoe.pm.org/

Hi, Tom,

I like your free recording studio idea a lot. I just sent the link to a friend here (Sean Sands of Rattlehead Records) who's recording bands live, and has lots of ideas for what the record label of the future will be. I'll be reporting some of them soon, but here's their site: http://www.rattlehead.com/

And thanks for the note. I have read Cory's essay, and it's a caution worth heeding, but I hope that the $200 blogbox idea will be co-opted by the good guys. (We already have portable mp3 players and cell phones, devices restricted to certain tasks. If cell phones merged with a blogbox that let me blog from anywhere in the world for one low monthly fee, I'd bite.)

My deeper interest in the $200 blogbox stems from a longstanding, unabashed populism --> about this technology.

About 7 years ago, I was writing something like, "Learn to use this technology or be relegated to the second tier of the future, a mere shopper, your interactivity restricted to uploading your credit card number." But many people won't learn it. If vast numbers of people are to have a voice, many will need easier, cheaper, "anywhere hardware."

For a relatively small amount of money, you could distribute $200 blogboxes on a neighborhood level in a pilot project: If the original seed money offered one to each household, and taught one family member, could other family members learn from them?

I'd love to see a browser interface with simple buttons: "Open new blog item," "Save URL," "Select text," "Copy text to blog," "Link to this page." On the blog screen: "Check spelling," "Save," "Publish item," etc. Once you found a need for something else, there'd be a medium-level interface with more options. (This would be analogous to discovering that the right mouse button offers a context menu.)

What would the neighborhood blog have in it? The mom-and-pop sushi joint on the corner would probably take email takeout orders. There'd probably be complaints about loud lawn mowers and people whose grass is too long, and the lyrics to Harper Valley PTA come to mind.

But sooner or later, there'd be a barbecue, and people would meet the neighbors who call themselves GrassGuy and MrsTom and KewlDude, and become part of each other's lives. (That simplified interface would make people part of the conversation and get them to the barbecue, where they could easily upgrade, buy a used PC from someone they now know who's upgrading further.) The councilman would come, and the neighbors would ever after blog his ears off. Ah here I go again....

I know there are multimillionaire bloggers out there. Would they sponsor such a prototype, and an experiment in using it?

Thanks for sparking this rant, Tom!
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Realtime blogging: The image of the entire audience at a conference blogging away thrills Dave Winer (Scripting.com) "...People in the audience, with laptops, checking email, sending and receiving instant messages, and lately, posting publicly to their weblogs." and horrifies Shelley Powers (Burningbird): "... laptops allow us to record so much more quickly that people attempt to capture more and more of the presentation, to the point where they never look up. They never participate in the conversation that marks the two-way interaction of a good presentation."

Dori Smith, posting at Backup Brain, calls it blogsturbation.

An image arises of tourists who photograph everything but experience little of what they record. They collect the present, rather than create it.

Does everybody in the room need to blog the presentation? Suppose you get one good court-reporter-turned-blogger to transcribe and simultaneously upload the speeches, so bloggers can reflect and respond rather than record? Reporters use tape recorders, but transcribing voice has always been a drag.
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One more time: Mozilla.org announces... "Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 3 has been released,
our last planned candidate before we release Mozilla 1.0." (That's planned for June 12.)
Release Notes (Note: Don't use the same profile for Netscape 7 and Mozilla, if you're trying both.They'll collide.)

Great name: Ye Olde Phart writes a nice minimalist blog that's one of my daily stops.

The Toaster: It's an art installation in Buenos Aires, an image of a toaster made of 2500 pieces of toast.

They dare not call it language: Listen to these cats' meows and see if you know what they want. (In aiff and wav formats.)

Big Bird to wed Cookie Monster. Both work at Sesame Place in Pa.

Gimmick, but still "CDs for less": Salon reports, "At FightCloud.com, the price is right. Scalfani sells CDs for free. That is, if you don't count the $4.95 "shipping" charge. Of course, that would be a mistake. Buried in the shipping charge is the secret ingredient: a modest profit. Less costs of $2.31, the company nets $2.64 on each 'free'disc, half of which goes to the artist."

A beautiful mind: Kartoo (flash version) (html version) is a graphical search engine whose results are short on words. There is also a text version, however.

Book Crossing by state: Where the books are. Only one in Rhode Island? C'mon, book-loving folks, let's spread 'em around.

May 23, 2002

Letters from Larry: Larry Novick, former ink-stained wretch and longtime feature of the Providence scene, became an expatriate this week. Larry, a native of New Bedford, Mass., and his wife, Victoria, moved Saturday to Mindelo (photos), on the Cape Verde island of Sao Vicente, 375 miles off the coast of West Africa, where Victoria was born.

Victoria is a cousin of Cesaria Evora [audio clip of Petit Pays, review, another bio], and, a few years ago, Larry invited us to his Providence home to meet the 'Barefoot Diva' who sings at sell-out concerts in her bare feet. Cesaria can also be seen playing a blues singer in the film Testamento, shot on location in Mindelo.

We'd often joked that none of us will be able to afford retirement in the States, that staking out a quiet third-world country is our only hope. Larry's doing it. He and Victoria packed their life into a container that won't arrive for a month, and sold off the rest.

Larry, a veteran of the lobster shift (or maybe he just liked the phrase) at the New Bedford Standard Times and, later, a manager with the Providence Housing Authority, is going to keep us informed about life after the leap, our man on the retirement frontier. Here's his first message:

All well. Weather, of course, is fine. Great to see old friends and meet new ones e.g. Pablo, a 52 year old Argentian of German extraction, living large on his 55 ft. schooner. KNOWS ALL, REVEALS NOTHING. A S. korean destroyer in port and down town is like Providence In The ´40´s. Drunken sailors, happy hookers, handsome man want niki-nik.
ECONOMIC WINDFALL. strolling musicians of dubious talent. serenade girl 10 dollah, she give you good love.
KEYBOARD IN internet cafe Eurostyle. Caplock in wrong place.
CONTAINER SHIP DUE June 10. jazzfest in August
PASS THIS ON as typing is slow.

LOVE TO ALL lARRY AND vICTORIA.
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It's about predators: I don't usually have much interest in what interests Andrew Sullivan, but I checked him out after Doc Searls pointedly asked, "What do you call a blogger who doesn't link?" -- which led to a reader coining the term "bloghole." It all refers to Sullivan being ungenerous in his linking to other bloggers, to which Sullivan responded. This was silly, but I ran across something Sullivan said that I do want to comment on: From an item headlined THE ABUSE OF MINORS - GIRLS: "What I want to know is why there isn't a debate about banning straight teachers from coaching opposite-sex students."

Coaches aren't the issue: Predators are. I have strong memories of childhood, way back, and I remember recognizing a strange, scary, furtive, metallic vibe I had no name for when I was alone with a certain few adults. It was a strong signal to get out of there. The keyword is "scary."
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Net radio's savior (so far): Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights. That link takes you to a photo and a contact address, if you want to thank her for rejecting the recommendation by the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) that would have set royalty fees at 14/100 of a cent per performance, a price tag denounced by Webcasters as prohibitive.
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Circulation: Book Crossing was featured on NPR (audio, synopsis) last week. It's a cool idea, a useful variation on a message in a bottle: "Someone who wants to share a book registers it on the Web site, prints out a label and puts it in the book. The book is then placed (members call it "released") in some public place, and the winds of fate take over. Theoretically, whoever finds the book will go to the site and record where they found it, and what they thought of it. Then they'll pass it on."
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Shameless plug: Recipes for a Rhode Island Summer gathers dozens of recipes from 20 years of Providence Journal food sections. Lobsters, clams, shrimp and more, the bounty of living on Narragansett Bay.
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Why? "From MozillaZine: Netscape today unveiled Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1, the first beta of its successor to Netscape 6. The preview is based on the recent Mozilla 1.0 RC2 build and features most of the enhancements that have been added to Mozilla since Netscape 6.2 was released, including tabbed browsing, print preview, the ability to save complete web pages, email return receipts, message labels and S/MIME support."

I have a question: Except for NS7 being a 30 meg download while Mozilla is less than 10 megs, is this merely a choice of features? Why would I use NS rather than Mozlla for ordinary browsing and email?
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Found: Free journalism Dictionary

Day 3: Gerbera daisy by day, one of three versions of Present by David Claerbout, should last a week on my desktop.

May 21, 2002

Net Radio stays alive: Copyright Office Rejects CARP Ruling: "In a brief note posted on its Web site, the Librarian of Congress rejected the recommendation by the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) that would have set royalty fees at 14/100 of a cent per performance, a price tag denounced by Webcasters as prohibitive. Tuesday's landmark decision is a massive win for the Webcasting community, which spent the last few months in a bitter campaign to have the CARP ruling thrown out."

RAIN (Radio and Internet Newsletter) plans updates throughout the day; there's an analysis below the screenshot of the decision.

The 50 Greatest Bands of All Time: Spin's countdown goes... Beatles, Ramones, Led Zep, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Nirvana ...

Five Thousand Ways to Earn a Living via Robot Wisdom, whose author, Jorn Barger, finds amazing things. His Weblog resources FAQ remains a classic.

Day 1; Gerbera daisy by day, one of three versions of Present by David Claerbout, should last a week on my desktop.

Digital art day: What is the voice of the nonverbal brain?
Be patient: Loading QuickTime files at some of these sites may take a minute.

• Present: Grow a flower on your desktop. "Belgian artist David Claerbout offers the viewer a choice of three flowers -- a pink amaryllis, a yellow gerbera or a red rose -- to download and install on a computer... The flower begins in a full, glorious bloom and progresses to full decay." I downloaded the gerbera, which was orange against a black background in a small square window on my desktop last night. This morning, it was backlit against the bright sunny day. I'm curious how this will turn out....

• Superbad.com -- like a can opener for your right brain. A playful use of the medium that makes art where so many put words.
  

• the aesthetics + computation group at MIT: "At the mit media laboratory aesthetics + computation group we work toward the design of advanced system architectures and thought processes to enable the creation of (as yet) unimaginable forms and spaces "
  

• Whitney Biennial 2002 Net Art Selection The show ends May 26.

• The first annual ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show will take place on Saturday, May 25 from noon to 6 p.m. at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. "As in a human talent show, there are no hard limits on what counts as robotic talent; robots that play musical instruments, paint, dance, create and recite dramatic poetry or do stand up comedy routines are some just some of the intriguing possibilities."
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New Google searches to play with: There's a glossary, voice search, "sets" and keyboard shortcuts. "Sets" didn't work too well -- it lacks human cultural context. I happened to be editing a Memorial Day advance on another screen, and plugged in "Memorial Day, geranium, barbecue." No way. Add beach, subtract geranium, and I got a bunch of other holidays plus pool, tennis, restaurant and fishing.

It was perfect when I plugged in 1,2,3, though, counting all the way to 15 for me.
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May 20, 2002

Help Build the Web of Knowledge: "Altruistic programmers and word-nerds with an urge to connect the historical dots are needed to help build a website that will blend the best of old and new technology. "Knowledge Web" is the pet project of James Burke, an Oxford-educated historian whose fascination with technology resulted in Connections, a television series that explored the strange links between technological breakthroughs and historical events." You can find out more and volunteer here.

Background: Voices from the Smithsonian Associates has a free hour-long RealAudio recording of Burke explaining "how the Internet now brings countless new connections to light."
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Vegetable intelligence: How do plants know up from down? Yes, it's about gravity, but are the messengers the flowing protoplasms or the drifting starch grains? NASA will grow flax aboard the space shuttle launching in July to find out.

New Scientist: Probability of alien life rises "According to a new statistical analysis based on how quickly life got going on Earth, life will start on at least a third of Earth-like planets within a billion years of them developing suitable conditions. And with recent discoveries that planets are common around Sun-like stars, there's probably no shortage of prospective homes."

Hot pink naked chickens: "Avigdor Cahaner, from Israel's Hebrew University, has crossbred a small, bare-skinned bird with a regular boiler chicken ... to develop succulent, low fat poultry that is environmentally friendly." They're featherless, lower in fat, and best suited to hot countries. Photo here. via metafilter

Revenge of the trapped: At AirlineMeals.net: Photograph your meal aloft and share your food. The Air Lithuania tray looks interesting. (Airlines can upload, too.)

Mozilla release party: No official release date yet for the free, open-source Mozilla browser, now in public beta testing, but this party flyer announces a June 12 bash. Satellite parties are shaping up around the world, and the event will be webcast. (We'll get to see what these West Coast geeks really look like.) I'm using the latest Mozilla now, Mozilla 1.0 Release Candidate 2, and it's far more stable than the Netscape 4.7 it replaces for me.
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Collage: "An image database containing 20,000 works from the Guildhall Library and Guildhall Art Gallery London." via prolific.org

More blogs worth checking out:
• Skywave : Billing itself as "Doc Searls & friends on the end of radio as usual."
• The Magnificent Melting Object by Joe Foster (aka "mrs. Butterwurst"): Smart offbeat links -- such as an interview with Ed Sanders, writer and Fug, The Gnostic Society library, The Book of Repulsive Women, by Djuna Barnes (at Amazing Women) -- as well as interesting photos and illustrations.
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The Web as wire service:
-- Paid content comes to Kazaa
-- China says it is planning to establish a base on the Moon to exploit its mineral resources in 2010.
-- $2.50 Per Story: A Dumb Price. Poynter Institute's Steve Outing on NYT stories for sale on Yahoo!

Quotes:
-- "As a service, as a phenomenon, Napster would have been so much stronger, if it had never been a business, if its developers had made a true P2P architecture, dispensing with central computers, if it had built a robust anonymizer. But they smelled the money, they bought the VC pitch, and they wanted to be rich. Nothing wrong with that: but piracy and above-board capitalism are difficult to square." -- The Register

-- "We sued the tobacco companies. One day we will sue the media industry. For half a century worth of lies and violence that they've showered upon us. For what they've done to human dignity. For how they became the story, instead of just the people reporting on it. Imagine terrorism without the media -- it wouldn't be half as effective." -- Peter Rutten, San Francisco
via scripting.com

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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com