b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
Recently
Bertelsmann Looking to Sell Online Units
Revisiting K-Log Intelligence From John Robb
CAFE Support
RSS and E-mail is not Either/Or
Weekend Copyright Humor From the Register
RSS Quick Summary
Shared Briefing Books -- The Consultant's Secret Weapon
nextPreviousDayLinkMacros
commentOnThisPageMacro
Chalked
Radio Wish List -- Publish a Category
Highest Rates of Piracy Sweepstakes
Radio -- A Bandwidth Hog?
Klogging in Chicago
The 'I's Have It
Share More, Get More
User-Friendly Web Services -- Making them Accessible
F'edCompany Gets Screwed
ImageX Files First Suit to Test Patent Strategy
ImageX Files First Suit to Test Patent Strategy
Sunday, September 1, 2002
FT Confirms Bertelsmann Report
Bertelsmann said to be pulling out of both on-line books and music.
AWAY FROM INTERNET: Bertelsmann to drop online books and music; German media group signals U-turn in strategy. Financial Times via Drudge Report Sep 1 2002 6:32PM ET[...] The German group is understood to be in talks with several online companies, including Amazon, the US-based internet retailer, over the sale of its Bol.com books business and its BeMusic subsidiary. Bankers have valued Bol.com and BeMusic, both part of Bertelsmann's DirectGroup division, at 2.1bn and 120m respectively.
Under the plans, Bertelsmann is also expected to withhold further funding from Napster, the controversial online music business accused of flouting copyright rules. [...] [
Source: Moreover - Book publishing news]
Bertelsmann Looking to Sell Online Units
Bertelsmann is reportedly looking to sell its on-line book sales units -- BOL and BN.com Call me clairvoyant. Amazon already runs on-line operations for Borders Group [NYSE: BGP]. Taking over e-commerce ops for yet another retailer wouldn't require much in additional investment, but I'm not sure how they'd handle actual warehousing and distribution for BOL. Expect Barnes & Noble to buy back BN.com.
Bertelsmann in talks with Amazon to sell internet bookseller BOL - report. Ananova Sep 1 2002 12:14PM ETBertelsmann AG is in talks with Amazon.com Inc to sell its loss-making internet bookseller BOL, manager magazine reported in its online edition, without citing sources.
It said Bertelsmann also wants to put its US internet bookseller Barnesandnoble.com up for sale, which it owns along with high street bookseller Barnes & Noble.
The decision comes as Bertelsmann has grown tired of the persistent losses at BOL, which amounted to 30 million euro last year, the magazine said.
BOL is the market leader in the Netherlands and Scandinavia and the number two in Germany.
Bertelsmann declined to comment.
© AFX News
[
Source: Moreover - Book publishing news]
Revisiting K-Log Intelligence From John Robb
Here are three compelling K-Log posts that John has republished recently. A common complaint from new weblog users is how information fades away into the archives, never to be heard from again.This is more a process problem than a technology problem. One good answer is what John exhibits here -- continue to mine those older posts and bring them to the fore for new readers. Also, you'll note that the text of the posts are actually in the Yahoo! Groups: K-Log discussion group. A second method John uses is to put key info into several formats and link between them, leaving a trail of virtual bread crumbs to lead users from one vehicle to another.
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Mapping the Corporate Knowledge Network
Organizational Network Analysis[ONA] is a software supported methodology that reveals the real workings of an organization. I call this the corporate knowledge network. K-Logs (Knowledge Management Weblogs like Radio) let you map a corporation's knowledge network. How? Through the following:[...] Consultants and K-Logs
One thing I have been tracking is the interest of consultants in K Logging. I was a consultant/analyst when I was at Forrester (they charged me out by the hour at $1,250). If I had known about K-Logs, it would have been very easy for me to offer clients a company-specific knowledge stream (for $10 k a month as a retainer). There would have been at least 4-10 clients that would have opted for this, and it would have made my job a lot easier (it also would have added 10-20% to the revenue of my research practice while keeping me in touch with client's needs).[...] K-Logs vs. Discussion Groups
Here is my thinking on the differences between K- Logs and discussion groups. I have been talking to lots of people recently about the state of their discussion groups. To a person they have told me that they weren't what they expected, and some have said they have been a disaster. I am fairly sure that anyone that been exposed to an advanced K-Log system (with categories, RSS subscriptions, and community functionality) would never opt for discussion groups alone.[...]
Source: John Robb's Radio Weblog]
CAFE Support
New icon on the left -- Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression. I don't know how I missed this, but thanks to Jenny Levine at TSL for having the icon on her site. This is well worth supporting in any way we can.
Saturday, August 31, 2002
RSS and E-mail is not Either/Or
Ok, I'm going out on a limb here, but Jerry Michalski complains that Radio doesn't have a mail list feature, yet his weblog doesn't have an RSS feed -- at least I couldn't find it.
[...]First, Weblogs offer only one distribution model: People have to come read your blog at its Web address. Why can't people read each entry as it is posted, if they would like to, as they can with e-mailed newsletters? It is somehow strange that Dave Winer's Radio Userland Weblogging software doesn't allow its users to do what Dave does every day with Scripting News, which is post to his broadcast list and his Weblog. (You can syndicate Weblogs with Radio and use XML for other nifty features, but it's not a mailing list.)This weakness isn't that hard to fix. I've been an advisor to Pyra (the company behind Blogger) for some time, and Ev -- surviving considerable nagging from me -- has added a post-to-e-mail feature in Blogger Pro. Excellent.
In fact, I'm creating two lists for this one Weblog. The first list, Sociate, is a broadcast list for people who want to see new items quickly, but don't want the e-mail traffic of a discussion list; the second, Sociate-Talk, includes all the outbound posts of the first list, but is meant for people interested in the discussion. [...][Sociate]
He clearly knows about RSS, as he mentions weblog syndication, but he doesn't seem to understand RSS. (Yes, yes. For Pete's sake, I know I have no business telling Jerry Michalski what he does and doesn't understand.)
Jerry's right that Radio needs an e-mail list option. But he's got the reason wrong. I'd also like an e-mail option. Just because I prefer RSS doesn't lower the vast number of people who still use e-mail as their primary comm channel. There is no reason to force them into a new channel if they aren't ready. You don't get user adoption through force. Adding e-mail support is simply a matter of enabling as many readers as possible. This is especially important if weblogs are going to be widely used in corporate settings.
But Jerry really needs to get on the syndication bandwagon. Weblogs do not have a single distribution model. The syndication feature is one of the strongest attributes. I prefer to get my regular notices via RSS. I get them every hour, and that's close enough to as they happen for me. It's a different channel, but it fits perfectly within the mode of his "broadcast list". More importantly, by getting his posts in my Aggregator, I can scan them with other sources of info that are not limited to e-mail. That's what I want. RSS may not have reached the Tipping Point yet, but I'm sure I'm not alone.
So I've taken matters into my own hands. Jerry, here's your RSS feed. It's crude. I did it with Mark Paschal's Stapler, but I'm about as skilled as a three-year-old with a chainsaw -- and just about as dangerous. I could learn Swahili in less time than it would take me to learn regular expressions. But it's a start. You take it from here.
Update: Roland Tanglao writes:
Jerry Michalski' - There more to blogging than Radio and Blogger: Manila will send emails and bulletins!.-Radio gets all the press! People forget that Manila is very powerful. Manila wil post each entry as it is posted to an email list (or any email addresses you specify) and its bulletin feature allows you to send email to every member who wishes to receive the email once a day or as often as you wish. [...] [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
I should also mention Conversant, another Frontier-based product that supports numerous I/O options.
Weekend Copyright Humor From the Register
A little copyright shenanigans to start off the Labor Day weekend.
Prudes sue for right to edit rented flicks. Movie directors not amusedA couple of prudes in Denver are suing for the right to distribute rental flicks with all the good parts removed. Apparently, one of the plaintiffs has some gimmick involving a modified remote control whereby viewers can select between the original and bowdlerized editions, according to a Reuters report. [...] [The Register]
RSS Quick Summary
A table listing the different flavors of RSS 0.9x and their attributes. Courtesy of Sam Ruby. Found via Tanglao via Scripting News.Shared Briefing Books -- The Consultant's Secret Weapon
Such a cool thing Jerry Michalski has come up with -- community-run industry briefing books.This post from Doc points to Jerry's weblog, Sociate. One of Jerry's reviews many years ago turned me on to TheBrain. I still use TheBrain a little bit every day, but had unfortunately lost track of Jerry. He's a broad thinker and an accessible writer. His take on briefing books is just one more sample of his outstanding ideas.
Pro-industrial rethinking
Jerry has a good idea that perfectly brings blogs and wikis together: industrial briefing books. Think of them as open source aggregated knowledge around every business subject you can name. (For those who don't know, wikis are joint web publications by any number of interested authors.) [Doc Searls Weblog]
This is a great complement to the knowledge sharing facet of weblogs. So many industries could benefit from this. I can see starting one for my own industry (printing and publishing) and its many segments. So much basic industry knowledge is locked up in consulting reports and government statistics that it's of almost no use to the industry in general. This just got added to the upper section of my To-do list.
Among other things on his weblog, Jerry also talks about supplemental technologies for weblogs -- things like how to effectively link wikis (I never really got wikis, but the Briefing Book idea helps give helps.)
Note: Reposting a story from Doc's weblog is a pain. I don't know what he's doing, but all the tables, named links, and geegaws are for the birds.
nextPreviousDayLinkMacros
This feature has been needed for a while, like the default Next/Previous links in Trellix sites. I wonder if we can get something that creates those site maps the way Trellix did?
Radio UserLand : New macros: radio.macros.previousDayLink and nextDayLink. Don't know how i missed this one! It would be cool to have a theme that's kept up to date with all the latest cool Userland features. Then I could just switch to that theme!
<quote>
Today we released two macros which make it easy to create links to navigate through your archives: radio.macros.previousDayLink links to the previous day's archive page, and radio.macros.nextDayLink links to the next day's archive page.
</quote> [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
commentOnThisPageMacro
Radio UserLand : New macro: radio.macros.commentOnThisPage. Another cool feature, thanks!<quote>
The commentOnThisPage macro lets you add the comments feature to stories, or indeed to any page in your Radio site, whereas previously readers could only post comments in response to weblog posts.
</quote> [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
Chalked
This is my new blogchalk:<small>United States, Georgia, Atlanta, Conyers, English, Terry, Male, 41-45.</small> :)
Radio Wish List -- Publish a Category
I'd like an option to publish all the pages from a single Category in the Radio app. As I develop a more complicated web structure I've begun using Categories for mini-websites -- for clients, interest groups, etc. -- and I often want to change something in just that Category. Today I have to republish the entire site to get a change to replicate throughout a Category, and as my site has grown that's become increasingly time consuming. The ability to publish Categories separately would really enhance Radio's use as a Desktop website management tool.Later: Lawrence Lee pointed me to this script by Mark Paschal. It's not a great answer to the problem, but it is at least a way to get it done.
Highest Rates of Piracy Sweepstakes
This could be like sports, the leader seems to change with every press conference. Last week EMI said it was Germany with the highest rates of CD Piracy. This week they claim it's Greece. These guys are making more trips than the Harlem Globetrotters, spewing their skewed statistics to anyone who will listen. Maybe I should start keeping a running tally of who the current leader is in the RIAA's "Highest Rates of Piracy" sweepstakes.
Music piracy a major problem. eKathimerini.com Aug 30 2002 8:44PM ET[...] The president of recording company EMI International, Alain Levy, complained at a press conference in Athens yesterday that Greece has the highest rate of CD piracy in Western Europe. And singer Vassilis Papaconstantinou accused the Greek police of ignoring the problem. [...] [Moreover - IP and patents news]
Radio -- A Bandwidth Hog?
I already had the "download new and updated Themes each hour" option turned off, as I can't see that the themes change that often. You can use this page. It does say new and updated themes. I wonder why it grabs the whole lot?
I had YATT running to trace some SOAP stuff, and noticed a bunch of stuff Radio was pulling down, turns out it downloads all the themes every hour, that's 900k of themes every hour, ouch. You can turn it off, but the only options seem to be off or every hour. Given the ammount of HTTP stuff that Radio does, I really wish it used etags and last-modified where possible. [Simon Fell]
BTW, I've been using Simon's little MSWord macro and PocketSOAP to post directly from MSWord. There are a couple of little glitches -- related more to Word than anything SOAPish, but it's nice for longer stories and essays.
Update: Simon Fell reports Userland has already fixed this. Such service!
Klogging in Chicago
I'll be in Chicago for a conference in early October and I'm very interested in meeting knowledge-focused webloggers in the area. I'm thinking of something like David Gurteen's Knowledge Cafe, an informal meeting for food, a beer or two, and interesting conversations. We can pick a location later. If you're interested let me know.Friday, August 30, 2002
The 'I's Have It
Of course you should write your weblog in first person, everyone but Bob Dole should do it. After all, I'm reading your weblog. I expect you to speak. People offended by a weblog written in the first person writing are either pompous jackasses or wearing their underwear too tight.
I seem to be breaking a cardinal rule of starting a lot of sentences and paragraph with the word I and using the I-word frequently throughout my posts. [...][...]The publisher of <cite>Coffeehouse</cite> made us rewrite the introduction and interstitial material because it was written all in first person (singular and plural). The backlash against memoirs and first-person nonfiction writing of all kinds (such as the {fray}) generally criticizes the I speaking as self-involved or solipsistic.
Comes with the territory, I say. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Share More, Get More
Knowledge isn't like money, when you give it away you don't have less. Ron Lusk points us to a wiki page on knowledge sharing started by Denham Grey. Denham is out there, often on the way, far, celestial event horizon of knowledge management, but he comes up with some excellent stuff. This page is a great resource with case studies, strategy papers, essays and fruitful links on every aspect of knowledge sharing.
KnowledgeSharing. Wanted to bring this page (last updated a few days ago) back to mind for all of us.Asking WIIIFM before you share defeats the objective, you are starting off on the wrong foot. In the same vein, asking you to enter a password protected space with the aim of sharing should send up the warning signals. If your CEO comes back from a KM conference and sets up Lotus Notes with complex access privileges you should question if they have really got the message. Is giving in the knowledge economy just being naive? How about the groupware vendor that sells tools, but sponsors no work on understanding collaboration, group processes or conducts no ethnographic research? Do you believe they have collaboration at heart or are they just selling more software?[Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]
User-Friendly Web Services -- Making them Accessible
Riff on the Digital Dashboard. I don't usually quote a post in its entirety, but John Robb's riff on making Web Services easily accessible through Radio Shortcuts is good and needs to be read in full.I've been looking at how RSS and weblogs can be used to make operational systems more accessible, and therefore more useful. The idea of preloading sets of shortcuts for simple web services could give tech averse users an easy way to get job-critical info and make their life easier. I like it.
Note to Radio users. If you haven't started using shortcuts yet, give it a try. It is really powerful feature. With Radio running go to this page. This page allows you to create shortcuts to pictures, bookmarks, files, stories, etc that you can name and include in your daily posts. To include a shortcut, just type the name into the editing area and put it in double quotes ("...."). For example, I did this with a bomb graphic that I use for mindbombs. When I type bomb in double quotes I get this:Shortcuts should be used for things you use a lot and couldn't be bothered to remember or type in the link. Here is one for Dave: Dave Winer
Note to developers. This is even more powerful if the shortcut is connected to a Web service like stock quotes, sports scores, supply data, etc. So if I was working in a company and wanted to point out that we were short on the supply of Ethernet cards, it would be a very powerful thing to be able to type in "Ethernet Cards" and get the most recent supply stats that I could annotate with a request to purchase more and add to my K-log.
It would also be a great way to build a digital dashboard in a way that was natural for users. A preloaded set of shortcuts that connect to Web services would allow me to populate and edit my digital dashboard in a very simple way. All I would need to do is type in the item I want to watch in double quotes (selecting them from a prefabed list). When I want to remove it, I just delete the word.
As long as I am riffing on this, I would think that this would also be a simple way to add business logic to a digital dashboard. A simple process that would send me an alert via IM or e-mail on a drop of supplies below a certain level could be built into a tool on Radio. To select the item to watch, I would type the name of the item in double quotes into the form. Radio would get the data from a Web service, process it against my business rule, and send me an alert when it dropped below a certain level. How easy is that? It would also be easy to post the alerts to a category specific weblog for general consumption automatically.
It all starts with a very simple step DIY web services. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
F'edCompany Gets Screwed
Roundup of the week's hottest copyright and patent action. So many battles, so little time.
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RIAA gets hacked
Ford screws with F**kedCompany
Apple Computer is not your friend
ZD opens your wallet, and theirs
Microsoft opens up, a little
and more...
The week in review: Copyright fights. CNET Aug 30 2002 2:58PM ET [Moreover - IP and patents news]
ImageX Files First Suit to Test Patent Strategy
The fine folks at ImageX have filed their first test suit to try and establish a legal precedent for their patents. Selecting the financially strapped iPrint as the first target seems an irrational choice if the goal is to prove lost revenues and recoup damages.As noted before, this company appears to be developing the foundation for a series of law suits against industry players, and is carefully building a base of both commercial and legal precendent by targeting smaller players.
ImageX Files Lawsuit Against iPrint for Patent InfringementKIRKLAND, Wash., Aug. 29 -- ImageX (R), Inc., the leading provider of online solutions for distributing, managing and producing sales and marketing materials, today announced that it has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against iPrint Technologies, Inc. for infringement of U.S. Patent number 6,429,947, which covers technology that automates the prepress process. ImageX also has filed a preliminary injunction motion requesting an expedited hearing, citing that iPrint should be prohibited from continuing its use of its online print technology.
"We are taking this action after informing iPrint on multiple occasions that its product is likely infringing of our patents and after receiving no response from iPrint," said Rich Begert, president and CEO. "ImageX has made a significant investment in developing cutting-edge technology that is revolutionizing the print industry. We intend to take all necessary steps to ensure that this investment is fully protected and its full market value is realized. We believe we will prevail on the merits if compelled to litigate this action in court." [WhatTheyThink?]
With luck, ImageX will not get a pass on this suit. Although it's unlikely, let's hope that iPrint forces the issue and places ImageX in court where a thorough analysis of their patented technology can take place.
ImageX Files First Suit to Test Patent Strategy
The fine folks at ImageX have filed their first test suit to try and establish a legal precedent for their patents. Selecting the financially strapped iPrint as the first target seems an irrational choice if the goal is to prove lost revenues and recoup damages.As noted before, this company appears to be developing the foundation for a series of law suits against industry players, and is carefully building a base of both commercial and legal precendent by targeting smaller players.
ImageX Files Lawsuit Against iPrint for Patent InfringementKIRKLAND, Wash., Aug. 29 -- ImageX (R), Inc., the leading provider of online solutions for distributing, managing and producing sales and marketing materials, today announced that it has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against iPrint Technologies, Inc. for infringement of U.S. Patent number 6,429,947, which covers technology that automates the prepress process. ImageX also has filed a preliminary injunction motion requesting an expedited hearing, citing that iPrint should be prohibited from continuing its use of its online print technology.
"We are taking this action after informing iPrint on multiple occasions that its product is likely infringing of our patents and after receiving no response from iPrint," said Rich Begert, president and CEO. "ImageX has made a significant investment in developing cutting-edge technology that is revolutionizing the print industry. We intend to take all necessary steps to ensure that this investment is fully protected and its full market value is realized. We believe we will prevail on the merits if compelled to litigate this action in court." [WhatTheyThink?]
With luck, ImageX will not get a pass on this suit. Although it's unlikely, let's hope that iPrint forces the issue and places ImageX in court where a thorough analysis of their patented technology can take place.
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