"Belle de Jour" an alleged anonymous prostitute blogger, is now allegedly outed as Brooke Magnanti, a scientist. I'd believe she's the writer, but I don't buy the story.
I'm going out on a limb here. All the initial punditry I see is of the type What Does This All Mean? I wish there [...]
Compare:
A recent _Wired_ Twitter article, quoting Twitter's CEO:
Do you understand how money flows to the Internet? When you know that Twitter is a vehicle for directing information and traffic to large audiences, you realize theres obviously a huge business.
Because today at Web 2.0 we announced that working with those [...]
A few months ago, Charles Arthur had a column The long tail of blogging is dying ("The popularity of blogging seems to be fading as people turn to the easier aspects of social media: status updates and tweeting")
People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation [...]
As part of what I call The Sign Of The Bubble, I've been interested in what happened to a venture capital fund which wanted to invest $100 million dollars based on "RSS" (syndication feed) businesses, started by two people at Harvard's Berkman Center. It raises many issues that I shouldn't elaborate on in a public' [...]
The "WikiFur" community has finished its escape from being digital sharecroppers on the electronic plantation, err, part of wikifarm company Wikia, Inc. Remember, that's the startup co-founded by Jimmy Wales to, in the words of one article (they said it, not me!), "take the success -- and, indeed, the underlying philosophy -- of Wikipedia," [...]
[I've been on blog-vacation, but I think I can say something interesting on this item]
One of several mysteries to me has been why the Internet Archive's opposition to the Google Books Settlement has recently been getting so much attention from professional law/policy types. Don't misunderstand my point regarding that attention, I'm all for it. But,' [...]
Linkblogging from the Distant Dorsal
1) Tom Slee - "Googling Barbie Again". He said it, not me:
"[Law Intellectual BigHead] made a big deal of the Google search results for Barbie in his book ... where he claimed that, whereas other search engines gave you only sales-related Barbie sites in the" [...]
[Original reporting! Not an echo!]
Oh, how far the mighty imagined Google-fighter ("killer" was overhype) has fallen. The late, only slightly lamented, Wikia Search project (Wikipedia-style search) shut down months ago. The URL was redirected to another site of Wikia Inc, a question-and-answers wiki. But there was at least a paragraph on the front page [...]
A few days ago, the radio program "On The Media" ran a segment on the David Rohde kidnapping and Wikipeda's suppression of information: "The Silent Treatment"
Consider this statement:
JIMMY WALES: No, it's not one that we had encountered in quite this way before, but because The New York Times [...]
"The
moral quandary of involving Wikipedia in online 'censorship'"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"The suppression of news about a reporter's disappearance saw the New York Times and Wikipedia work together but raises issues about control of information"
Note this title was written by an editor. I didn't suggest a title of my own. It's not really' [...]
There's a quote attributed to Henry Kissinger about the Iran-Iraq war, where he said, "the ultimate American interest in the war [is] that both should lose.". I feel that way about the conflict with Cybersitter censorware company versus China's "Green Dam" censorware.
I've sat out the whole "Green Dam" China censorware story. There's many prominent [...]
A long time ago, I wrote about Michael Jackson's nose. This was an attempted debunking of extensive echoes that his nose had been butchered from surgery. The nonsense arose from what was just a bad photographic angle of some pieces of tape on his face.
For quite a while, that post was the [...]
"Far too often, new media serves up popularity without accuracy"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"Check your serving of online news for factual accuracy before you give it a taste"
I sadly suspect I'm going to get grief for that title, it was done by an editor. It'll likely set off people's bloggers-versus-journalists reflex. In my [...]
[Original reporting! Not an echo!]
A UK tabloid story has set off a round of uncritical echoing of a ludicrous claim:
It is the world's smallest, portable microwave and can be powered via a link to the USB port on a laptop computer.
The turquoise device - called the Beanzawave - has been created [...]
"New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets", a blog post at Harvard Business, has some results which are sweet vindication of my recent _Guardian_ Twitter column.
They said it, not me:
"This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network."
The article [...]
"Do commercial pressures outweigh artistic ideals at Wikipedia?"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"When do commercial pressures affect ideals? Testing that proposition was an unexpected result of the 'Wikipedia Art' project"
I didn't suggest a title for this one, and the title they used is fine by me. Someone might be pedantic and note it really' [...]
In a final coda to the sad saga of Wikia Search (the overhyped Wikipedia-model user-generated free labor search startup, which crashed and burned into being a Yahoo front-end before imploding completely), the site http://search.wikia.com/ now leads to nothing but Wikia's copycat wiki answers site. There's a little section on the homepage there:
Wikia [...]
I'll get around to "Wolfing Alfalfa" sometime, but I actually might do more real-world good today with my tiny audience of readers by discussing search expert Danny Sullivan's recent post, prompted by recent Google/newspapers issues:
"Dammit, I'm A Journalist, Not A Blogger: Time For Online Journalists To Unite?"
I want online journalists to get [...]
The Wikimedia Foundation Form 990 for their 2008 fiscal year has been posted now. See also their FAQ for details on what's been redacted and why. For people unfamiliar with this, a "form 990" is an IRS disclosure form required for charities. And it's often full of interesting financial information. Definitely worth [...]
"Twitter: sucker's game that boosts elite"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"People aren't being connected by the 'real-time messaging service', they're being bundled up and sold"
My working title was "Twitter Bitter, or Why I Am Not A Happy Twit". But frankly, the one they used is better.
I suspect some people are going to miss the [...]
Yes, I have a Twitter account (Seth Finkelstein). But today's hot item Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth is a good hook to write a post on why I'm not playing that lottery game again.
"But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks'" [...]
Echoes: EFF - Wikipedia Threatens Artists for Fair Use
Can a noncommercial critical website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not.
[Snip description]
Yep, they used the term "wikipedia" in their domain name."Wikipedia" is a trademark owned by [...]
"Shutdown of Wikia Search proves empty rhetoric of collaboration"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"The shutdown of Wikia Search - an attempt to apply Wikipedia-style ideas to create an open source, commercial search engine - came as no surprise to informed observers"
I didn't suggest a title, leaving to the editors what they wanted to emphasize, and' [...]
Echo: Larry Sanger - "An open letter to Jimmy Wales" (updates), about Jimmy Wales denying him credit as Wikipedia co-Founder:
I recently read the "Hot Press" interview with you. The lies and distortions it contains are, for me, the last straw, especially after this came to light, in which you [...]
Wikia Search dead, says CNET:
Wikia is announcing on Tuesday that it is closing the Wikia Search product. The service was intended to be a user-generated search engine, through which users could influence the rankings of results for all other users.
The Wikia Search project is set to be shut down Tuesday.
Corroborated by a [...]
Google's surveillance is taking us further down the road to hell
Google recently took another step along the path of surveillance as a service, launching what it called "interest-based advertising", and which everyone else calls "behavioural targeting".
I had suggested a title of "Google's interest-based advertising and surveillance as a service", as [...]
Ada Lovelace Day, "Bringing women in technology to the fore", is an "international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.". This is belated, but here's a short participation post.
I'll pick Shelley Powers, who is living proof that the A-list is far less of a meritocracy than it tells itself, and' [...]
Vipul Naik wrote a blog post "Wikipedia criticism, and why it fails to matter" (and follow-up) where he discussed many critics of Wikipedia, and raised a question:
Does criticism of Wikipedia serve any purpose (constructive or destructive) other than being an excuse to fill journal columns and blog space (I might note that the [...]
"In the end, it's actually about money"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"One of the perennial debates about Wikipedia is 'inclusionism' v 'deletionism', which revolves around what topics should be covered."
The title isn't mine, but it does capture the ideas. I do hope people grasp that the "money" part is meant to be a multilayered' [...]
I noticed a big spike in traffic to my Al Gore "Internet" page recently, and was puzzled as to the cause. It turned out to have been from a WWTBAM question:
Roger used his final three lifelines to get to the $250,000. The question was "Al Gores famous and oft-ridiculed quote "I took the initiative [...]
I recently noted the Wikia Search using Yahoo operational change, speculating:
"And one wouldn't want people who go to
Wikia Search currently to think the results are proof of anything
other than that Yahoo has a program to allow others to use its search
system. It would be pretty easy to get a'" [...]
Wikia Search, the project to buy Jimmy Wales a jet, I mean, have a Wikipedia-like search engine (i.e. unpaid labor does the work), changed over at some point from using their own back-end to using Yahoo! BOSS (Build your Own Search Service). While not a secret, it's been difficult to find information about' [...]
"What's in a name? Everything, when you're talking wiki value"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"A question of confusion has no simple answer, as shown by an argument over the names of wiki-based sites dedicated to providing answers to questions"
I didn't pick the title, but it's OK. I didn't even make a suggestion. I would' [...]
"Google should learn the difference between
real sex and spam"
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"If humans argue so much about distinguishing between erotica and pornography, imagine the difficulty search algorithms have"
I can live with the title, but I suggested per above "Real Sex And The Google Search" - the idea was to make a pun [...]
When I wrote Roger McNamee, "Elevation Partners", and Don't Think Small on Wikipedia, I said:
It's not about the minor Google-juice that the commercial digital-sharecropping startup company "Wikia Inc." gets from the nonprofit mothership Wikipedia (and that trick doesn't even seem to work anyway). ... It's not about trying to [...]
Walt Crawford has a "Discursive Glossary" as the latest Cites & Insights edition, starting "A was for AAC", which gives a good idea of why it's of interest (AAC == "Advanced Audio Coding, the form of lossy compression used by Apple iTunes"). He disclaims the previous edition "was a [...]
Revisiting and updating what has gone before:
0) Looking back at e.g., 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, be aware that I tend to repeat myself in frustration, and try to address the reasons for that.
[Still failing here :-(]
1) Stop arguing with marketers about "conversation". It wastes my time, and it annoys the flack. It's [...]
There's a Wikipedia fundraising message which is drawing a bit of critical comment for the implicit self-promotion it contains. The efforts to remove Larry Sanger from history as a Wikipedia co-Founder are an ongoing matter. Worse, it plays into Wikipedia's weakness in that what's widely reported in the press tends to be taken as [...]
Sting in the Scorpions tale is the exposure of Wiki's weakness
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"Anyone who needs to use an old album cover to make a Wikipedia sexual controversy is not trying very hard"
[I didn't pick the title, though I like it for the wordplay - I would have been more pragmatic myself [...]
The Pew Research Center has released Future of the Internet III: How Experts See It
A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major technology advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, [...]
Wikinews (a separate project from Wikipedia): British ISPs restrict access to Wikipedia amid child pornography allegations
The Register: Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover
Someone else can do the pundit argument that the general material is horrible, but does it justify censorship? It's not for me, and nobody cares anyway [...]
Bennett Haselton, in a Slashdot article today (thanks)
(My own favorite blog that nobody's ever heard of is Seth Finkelstein's InfoThought, which is usually logical and insightful and is only about 25% of the time about how "nobody ever reads this blog, so what's the point". His Guardian columns are also good and [...]
Why you should be concerned about Google Flu Trends
The search engine has unwittingly hung a big sign on itself advertising services for government surveillance
The title's fine, though when I submitted it I proposed "Google Flu And Monitoring Health". I was aiming for a deliberate ambiguity in the phrase "monitoring health" [...]
Echo: The big business of net censorship - "Clamping down on free speech on the internet has been a lucrative enterprise for software manufacturers" - Jo Glanville
We know as much as we do because of the great research of organisations such as the OpenNet Initiative and because of the brave detective [...]
[Below is a guest post from Daniel Brandt, who gives his experiences and speculations below. His views are of course his own and not necessarily my own, but I do believe them worth hearing]
There is definitely some sort of filtering going on in Google's rankings for certain keywords. It took 18 months [...]
A few things that have not been echoed widely, and deserve more notice (not that I can change it much, but here's something ...)
Tony Comstock - Taking the Real Sex out of [Real Sex] Searches. (Is the googlebot erotophobic?)
"But last July I noticed that although the word [real] is #5 [...]
Google's copyright war will have open access advocates up in arms
.. on the copyright issues surrounding Google's digitising of books
There's some value in enemy-of-my-enemy opposition, where the interests of an advertising near-monopoly are a counterweight to a content cartel. But battles between behemoth businesses should not be mistaken for friendship [...]
As I've said before, normally I don't write about pure politics, since if my influence on Internet freedom is marginal, my influence on the electoral process isn't even a speck on the page. And while this election doesn't look close, you never know. I suspect my readership skews liberal and intellectual, but I probably [...]
["Life Trumps Blogging", but some collected notes]
1) The obligatory pontification about the Google Book Search settlement, a topic on which all Google interested pundits must write about, will appear in my next Guardian column, in a few days.
2) Briefly noted: The Economist Innovation Awards and Summit
Business Process: Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia [...]
I was thinking of taking the DMCA off the blog description, as it's been a while since I wrote about it. But today is a veritable DMCA-fest due to the ten year anniversary. For old times sake:
EFF: Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the DMCA
Extensive report of chilling effects (I'm mentioned :-))
Wired [...]
A few days ago, the tech-gossip blog "Valleywag" published an item that the digital-sharecropping ad-farm, err, excuse me, "communities" wiki site company "Wikia" had laid off 30% of its staff. Recall, Wikia is the company Jimmy Wales started to, in words of one article (not by me!), "take the success -- and, indeed, [...]
One of the concepts I've tried to advocate (pretty much futilely) against the web evangelists who blather on about the buzzword "disintermediation", is that they are talking nonsense. My counter-buzzphrasing is, "There is re-intermediation". That is new centralization (new gatekeepers), new centers of power.
Nick Carr is now making this point better heard in [...]
Please, Sir Tim Berners Lee: try
investigating how corporations rule the net
[www.guardian.co.uk]
"Seth Finkelstein on Tim Berners-Lee who raises the issue of separating truth from fiction on the internet"
[Note: I didn't pick that title - my own suggested title was 'Tim Berners-Lee takes on "The Net of a Million Lies"']
Here I [...]
