blog --> graphic novel

very slick -- this guy has done some pretty crazy work pulling images and text from blog posts and doing text analysis to string them together in a graphic-novel-esque format:

follow the LINK

is it just me

or do all the new gawker blogs have really annoying graphics... hope the other ones stay the same...

jalopik

kotaku

screenhead

damn you nick denton, you blog mogul, you.

typekey test

hey - can someone with a registered typekey account pls. try and comment on my inter-web log? I think I got the s fixed, but time (and someone trying this out) will only tell...

trying something new

I was talking with Tripp yesterday about the blog and decided that those of us who are online all the time spend too much time in this space basically just blogging like we were an editor for reblog or something.

Actually, there are a number of people on our site who don't do this, and their posts are typically most interesting, I suppose. Link dumping is not something I'm particularly fond of, and I'm not sure exactly why I've sort of regressed to doing it -- probably lack of energry to write things consistenly in this space. links are much easier, but less engaging.

I say all this with the caveat: linking to projects relevent to personal or related research is definitely still important, but it needs to be contextualized with a description -- how does this relate to my / our projects or research?

So my goal is to no longer have any post that is simply a blockquote followed by a link.

laist

new (at least to me) L.A. Blog from the folks that brought you the gothamist

http://www.laist.com/

Continuous Interface Blog

http://www.polarfront.org

mozilla rich-text buttons

just added some additional blog functionality for us non-IE users (should be more of us after the homeland security folks publicity brought the hammer down on microsoft). Those using mozilla can now markup your entries via the MT web interface. This works under safari as well, except a little differently (ok, a little worse). just added some additional blog functionality for us non-IE users (should be more of us after the homeland security folks publicity brought the hammer down on microsoft). Those using mozilla can now markup your entries via the MT web interface. This sort of works under safari as well, except a little differently (ok, a little worse). Anyway, this should be working on IE since it uses browser detection, but pls. ie folks email me with problems if you have them. code for this was
here via Scott Fisher

new spread

did some minor improvements (?) on my blog today. clearly, there was not much going on...a) messed with the stylesheets to allow room for some more content. b) designed a new banner (please, at least mouseover it). c) fed in an rss feed of my other hauntedcastle blog (using a leonard recommended reader. ok then...

new banner | stylesheet

my new banner and stylesheet combo look like the cover of a : NEU album.

weblogs as radical journalism

gift economy indeed. thanks for the link Cory Doctorow

a nicely thought out piece about the role of weblogs in the world of journalism.
Link.

good writing

mind you, I am a nascent blogger. i have stuck my entire head into it, but that still leaves me playing catch-up. i've got the uni-case down, but the more i delve into the world, the more i realize that my position in the blogsphere will forever be one without a view from the front. just check me out on technorati - hardly someone to raise a fuss over; not a hub, and only a spoke by default. but as a wade through this world, i am constantly compelled, engaged, overwhelmed, perplexed. i want to be a part of it. i want those links. or maybe i don't really care. maybe i shouldn't want a part of it. it is a question of quality, maybe. blogs have a wonderful ability to bring people together. there are lively conversations between blogs that are completely lacking in mainstream media, and these conversatons - especially in the tech arena from which they were forged - have established themselves as a useful and formidable information layer (and will only continue to do so).

But what blogs lack is a writerly quality. they are, for the most part, written rather egregiously; hastily scribed and as devoid of depth as they are awash with hyperlinks. This, in many cases, is not the fault of the author (necessarily). The medium itself is frenetically paced. It thrives on the flow of information, and therefore cannot be burdened with deliberate style or calculated organization. This is instant publishing. I have switched from unicase, because I've been thinking more carefully - but in most cases, and I exaggerate, there is neither the time nor desire to search for the shift key. We are all prone. Certainly, the desire to get these thoughts 'out there' has superseded my own knowledge of the conventions of expository writing, and for that matter, an eye towards well formed sentences. Everyone knows that italics are a clear cut sign of bad writing...Now where am I going with this?

Certainly most blogs - and I'm careful to qualify that statement - lack a skillful pen, er. keystroke. Does this matter? Is this only the business of literature and traditional media? Perhaps. But as blogging becomes more ubiqutous, more mainstream, the majority of it will only become only more careless, and will with all probabilty, begin informing mainstream media. If I visit the New York Times online in 10 years, will it just hyperlink out to various blogs -- a super hub?. Will editors just become info-surfers?

I'm not sure how we begin addressing these potential problems - if they are indeed even problems. Sites like MetaWeb merge blogging culture with traditional literature, and Smart Mobs is the perfect companion to Howard Rheingold's Book, extending it in a sophisticated way that would be impossible within the context of traditional media. Such sites - and many blogs and blog portals - lead to conversations that are unparalled in conventional mainstream media. But as they begin to proliferate into the mainstream, will skillful, adept and calculated writing become a second-class citizen, will it take on the circumscribed role that I'll perpetually occupy in the blogsphere?

Hmm. that went on a little longer than expected. And that only means that the piece, if I can call it that, probably needs some serious retooling and rethinking. Complete revision is probably in the cards. But there is no wastebasket nearby, and I'm planning on finishing this train-wreck, this moderately pretentious and potentially misinformed thought / ramble / car crash and clicking submit. Instant publishing.

imblog rss feeds

quick note: I implemented some rss feeds over at my site. Any suggestions for a better rss reader? It's also completely possible to use standard MT tags to grab info about recent posts locally to our server, but not outside feeds.

impact of weblogs on political coverage

There is a good wealth of information about this subject linked from this site. The debate is *raging* about the role that weblogs should play in the coverage of significant national events. In other words, what is the future / role of blogs in serious news coverage. I think many people have gotten the impression that weblogs are a trivial enterprise - an association best attributed to the personal /diary nature of many blogs. I think that what many don't see, is the possibility of amateur journalism to alter the publishing landscape. The Berkman center for Internet and Society at Harvard is pursuing just such a line of thought - offering a free blog to anyone with a harvard.edu email address. The goal is to inspire a discourse that breaks free of the current media environment - one based on consolidation and therefore a lack of freedom of expression - and informs the upcoming New Hampshire primary and subsequently, the next presidental campaign. A member of the Berkman group, Dave Winer (an unfortunate name), has this to say about the project:

Citizen bloggers covering the candidates for U.S. president. Everyone who hears the concept says Hmm, that might work. More than anything, I want the U.S. presidential election of 2004 to be a real election, to mean something. I wonder if many other citizens feel the same way?

With New Hampshire so close to Cambridge, the technology so ripe and the candidates so willing, it seems we may actually be able to route around the professional press and make something real happen this election cycle.

The rest is Here.

moblogging | consolidation

Manywhere Software (I need to get a new phone)
Newbay Moblogging Software - a website for every mobile phone. Intriguing idea, if you get beyond the marketing / PR sound of it. The idea with these is to make blogging as easy as sending an email to yourself that has multimedia attachments - the systems (the first is free, the second is a pay service) parse the data from the email, make the text of the email into the "post" and the other media elements are simply attached to the post. If moblogging is able to maintain it's velocity, not only will the "personal web page" be redefined and more content oriented, the proliferation of this information and media will force us to devise systems that filter out what we don't want, and easily access that which we do. This is where the idea of the semantic web comes into play. Being able to find information in a way that is mapped to a more semantic / schematic cognitive process.

How will these semantics be defined / controlled? How will these moblogs be controlled? The corporate world is certainly interested. What does corporate control of these systems and networks mean? Ask Lawrence Lessig. The consolidation of this information under major corporate umbrellas is certainly scary. The Future of Music Coalition has an interesting article about how FCC radio deregulation resulted in a consolidation of radio stations that ended up being highly detrimental to musicians. TV network consolidation has also been steadily occuring over the last decade. As this graph indicates, there may be 500+ channels, but they are still all controlled by the usual suspects.

audblog

LISTENLAB unveils audblog™. audblog™ is a new service which offers audio-posting capability to the blogging community. audblog™ enables the blogging community to easily post audio blogs from any phone at any time using their current blogging tool. Using this new audblog™ service, the blogger can immediately post to the internet his or her fleeting ideas and real-time experiences as they happen. Or alternatively, posts can be created in the comfort of the blogger’s home or office and posted to the internet at any time.

This is an interesting idea. I think that there are some problems with it, but I was interested by the possibilty for creating "sound" posts. I'm imagining posting the sound of a busy intersection in nyc or a river in idaho.