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Saturday, June 29, 2002

Winer on the Dangerous Troika

Dave Winer on the dangerous liason between Hollywood, government, and the PC Industy.

Scripting News - Microsoft, DRM and operating systems.

[...]

People who installed XP thinking this wasn't something they needed to care about could wake up just about now and go get a copy of W2K and install it, and refuse to buy any new computers until this madness stops. Or welcome to the Gestapo of the Future -- the World Wide Thought Control Center, brought to you by Disney, Ashcroft and Gates. [Privacy Digest]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:39 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Cringley on Palladium

I, Cringely | The PulpitI Told You So - Alas, a Couple of Bob's Dire Predictions Have Come True .

[...] How long until only code signed by Microsoft will be allowed to run on the platform? It seems that Microsoft is trying to implement a system that will enable them, once and for all, to charge game console-like royalties to software developers. [...] [Privacy Digest]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:36 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

UAE Copyright Law

Interesting clause in this decree from Abu Dabi that allows anyone to petition the Copyright Ministry for reproduction rights once a work is three years old.

Authors to enjoy copyright protection. Gulf News Jun 29 2002 7:29PM ET [Moreover - IP and patents news]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:29 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Really, Really Stupid Copyright Trick

Silence is intellectual property. John Cage's 4'33", a lengthy silent track on one of his avant-garde albums, constitutes an original work for copyright purposes. This means that other composers who include silent tracks have made a derivative work from Cage's silence. Cage's representatives have served producer Mike Batt with a legal nastygram asserting that he infringed on Cage's copyright with his 60-second silent track on the latest Planets album.

As my mother said when I told her, 'which part of the silence are they claiming you nicked?'.

(via MeFi)

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:11 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

AmphetaDesk Integration

Radio seems to be a little persnickety about where images are located, and downright ornery about the syntax in img src tags. I have everything working properly on the Home Page, but I still don't have it right on all the category and support pages. I don't understand why.

Now AmphetaDesk users can subscribe to my RSS feed with a single click on the XML_Pill icon, the same way Radio users can suscribe by clinking on the XML_CoffeeCup. AmphetaDesk provides clear instructions on integrating AmphetaDesk into a site. I just did a cut-and-paste of the code into my Home Page template. Again, the syntax is persnickety -- especially the placement of / at the end of things. Radio couldn't seem to decide if the image path needed / in front of it or not.

I don't know Userland lingo or Frontier so this makes no sense to me. But I just looked for similar code examples, kept fiddling with it, and it finally worked. For the Home Page I did not put a / at the front of the image path.

But, like I said, the image isn't rendering on any of the other pages. That may be the problem.

It's the same with the Powells.com link. Everything works fine on the Home Page, but Category and support pages have a broken image link. I've submitted a query to the Userland Discussion group on this.

Haloo! Lawrence Lee responded already and pointed me to the radio.macro.imageref macro to solve this little instability. Thanks Lawrence!

It seems like the imageref macro may not work. I may have to point to the full path of the image on the Cloud site. A hard coded link will break when I transfer Radio to my own server because the path will change. Bummer. I don't like that but it will have to do.

Update: Doh! Somebody slap me...

The imageref macro generates the img src tag so there is no need to include it inside a tag. Thanks again to Lawrence for straightening me out.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:55 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Seek and Ye Shall Find -- PicoSearch

It was simple, painless, and quick (three of the finest words in the English language). Go to the web site, sign up for an account, point PicoSearch to the home page for your site, and let it build an index of your pages. That's it.

Once the index is built you get an e-mail with account info and you can go back to the PicoSearch site, login and administer your account. There are a variety of buttons and logos you can choose, and there are several macros you can choose to go on your site and enable your search.

I chose a simple query box. I copied the HTML text out of the window, pasted it into my Home Page template just above the calendarMacro, and Voila! I had a search engine for my pages. I had to go back to the template and enter a couple of break tags in the PicoSearch code to keep column with where I wanted it, but it was a snap. I had no problems with this one. If you don't mind having the PicoSearch logo on your site it's a no-brainer. Highly recommended.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:18 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

New Addition to the Home Page -- Blogroll

First I started working with Links for Blogroll, RSS and Subscriptions. This is a way to store a separate list (Radio outline .opml file) that contains all the links to blogs (or other sources) you want to list on your site. Radio has a macro that reads the list, converts the contents to HTML, and puts it on your page.

It's easier than hand coding the links and it's easier to update than a template. The other benefit is the macro adds a Link Header in your Home Page template that points to the OPML file, allowing others to quickly grab the entire list of your links and add them to their own. Now, I haven't actually used this yet, and I'm not sure I would. But Winer says the link enables new kinds of harvesters, crawlers, and directories. I trust him.

There is discussion about some technical stuff I don't completely understand here. And Jake Savin's directions didn't work just as described.

First, it didn't work at all to replace my <%navigatorLinks%> macro with the suggested BlogRoll macro. I could never get the Navigator Links to show up. I tried several times to to include the navigatorLinks macro into the BlogRoll files as instructed but it never worked. I finally left the navigatorLinks macro in and moved the blogroll macro to another location on the template.

When I did that it worked. I got a little confused by the delay between making a modification and seeing it on the page. Sometimes I had to go to the Radio app to Radio --> Publish --> Entire Site and wait a while to get everything updated properly. But eventually it did. And it looks much better.

You can format individual lines (nodes) in the outline using HTML commands so you can control font size and color, etc. And now I can easily add new sites, or recategorize old ones by just dragging them around in the Radio Outliner. Pretty cool.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:02 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Sound Approach to Copyright Protection

In Digital Pirates Beware (subscription required), Wade Roush discusses:

the latest digital fingerprinting technology to scan public computer networks for unauthorized copies of music files, still images, movies and software. And they can watch as those illicit files spread from hard drive to hard drive—whether or not the files bear the invisible digital “watermarks” often used to identify their original owners.

My take on this, subject to some verification, is that these technologies can prowl the public P2P networks looking for specific files, generate some unique ID info based on the file, then catalog any other instances of that same file it may find. This provides content creators with an important tool to understand how much of their work is being pirated, where it's originating, and where it is spreading. More importantly, it puts the burden of proof where it belongs -- on the copyright holder -- without forcing prior restraint on honest purchasers.

While Roush's article intimates that the fingerprinters can scan my hard drive I suspect this is true only to the extent that I participate in publicly accessible P2P networks. It's theoretically possible to get past my firewall, install software on my machine, bypass my ZoneAlarm Pro monitoring and sneak packets out to some nefarious agency, but not very damned likely.

It's rather more likely that these guys are doing nothing more than scanning a directory I have voluntarily opened to public query by logging it into LimeWire, KaZaA, or similar sharing software. They have every right to scan it and that's the beauty of this approach. P2P systems only work to the extent that you open yourself up by being a peer, and once you are a peer you have given implied consent to having your "shared" files scanned by anyone who is interested.

I like this idea. If you are trafficking in pirated software the copyright owners have as much right to shut down your P2P "storefront" as they do to shutter a street corner vendor selling stolen watches. This is the sort of enforcement that makes rampant pirating of stolen material unattractive to the average user, while leaving them free to use their own files as they see fit. It also leaves the P2P networks free of overwrought regulation and ill-conceived legislation, allowing for the development of innovative -- and legitimate -- uses.

As usual, free enterprise has devised a snappy solution to a thorny problem without steamrolling users, while the bureacrats and bumbling behemoths have seen it as just one more chance to roll out a stupid world domination strategy.

I'd be interested to hear if you think I'm off base on this one.

For more info on this stuff see:
BayTSP
Cyveillance
LoudEye
Relatable

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 7:36 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Details on TCPA/Palladium

TCPA / Palladium FAQ. [Privacy Digest]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 4:29 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

A Dangerous Troika -- Government, Publishers, and PC Industry

Lawrence Lessig first introduced us to this foul juxtaposition in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. And in this Reason Magazine interview about his newest book, The Future of Ideas, says, "In my first book I was quite pessimistic. It turns out I was not pessimistic enough."

The problem is more than just starting down a "slippery slope". The motives for each of the three parties are quite different and, individually, their initiatives could be modified or repealed to a tolerable level. But when fate and circumstance align the goverment with two of the strongest economic powers in our nation to push for massive control architectures we have little means of fighting back save extraordinary diligence, a stoic skepticism, and an outright refusal to buy products that attempt to control our lives.

The courts are supposed to watch the government, the govermnent should be providing some limited "general welfare" oversight on business, and business is supposed to be responsive to its customers. None of that seems to be happening right now. Houston, we have a problem...

Dave Winer at Scripting News found the tweney report for 2002-06-28: Broken trust.

Windows XP has some rudimentary self-protection technologies built in, but Palladium won't appear full-blown until the next major release of Windows in a couple of years. That's because Palladium depends on specialized chips being developed by Intel and AMD, which will handle the encryption and authentication. In the early stages, this will rely on a so-called "Fritz" chip (named after Sen. Fritz Hollings, the sponsor of a draconian digital rights bill), which verifies that your computer is running an approved combination of hardware and software -- before your computer even boots up. Once Fritz certifies the system, it can pass that certification along to third parties, such as Microsoft, Disney, Sony, or AOL/Time Warner. Later, "Fritz" capabilities will be built right into the central processor, making it next-to-impossible to intercept unencrypted data. Everything coming in and out of the CPU will be encrypted and digitally signed. [...] [Privacy Digest]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:23 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Common Failure in CRM and KM is Ignoring User

One of my "altruistic" ventures is serving as EVP of CRM Association, where I'm active in the business users SIG. A common concern on the minds of folks who have made major investments in CRM systems remains the problem of user adoption. I point this out because it is so similar to what is happening with KM systems, and the underlying cause is also the same -- IT-centric planning, budgeting, implementation, and management.

Until users are given priority in major IT initiatives, such projects will remain expensive and disappointing boondoggles. This article provides some interesting perspective on how the web services architecture can support user accomodation, and how important that will be in achieving long-term success in major CRM initiatives.

Web services though, won't solve the CRM conundrum. In order to turn the tide of CRM failures, "planning, governance, all things have to start with the user," Scott says. On the upside, Scott believes people are finally catching on to this new way of thinking about CRM, "and next year, there will be more successful deployments. Things are getting better, but it'll still be a couple of years before you really see the enterprise-wide, single view of the customer," he says.

CRM's Fatal Flaws. line56 Jun 29 2002 2:53AM ET [Moreover - CRM news]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:15 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Friday, June 28, 2002

Private RSS and User Authentication in Radio

Hooray! Further research on the Radio News Aggregator led me to this tasty tidbit -- Subscribing to private RSS feeds. This is a really simple fix for creating private RSS feeds for business, friends, or family.

I don't have any way to test it just yet as my weblog is hosted on the Radio Community Server. I think to use this I need to get my weblog sent to my own site where I can set htaccess and have Radio upstream approriately.

I'll keep digging around and see if the same technique will work with the third-party aggregators. So much to learn, so little time.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:24 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Teach Yourself RSS in 30 Minutes

I picked this up on TSL today and it's a fantastic one-pager on all the RSS basics. The power of RSS just doesn't come clear until you start to use it regularly. Then, POW! the light goes off in your head and you can't get enough. The more we know about RSS the better off we'll all be. Spread the word. Go read it. Now.

RSS Tutorial. Publish and Syndicate Your News to the Web "In this workshop you'll learn how to create, validate, syndicate, and view your own RSS news channel. The emphasis will be the practical application of RSS XML/RDF metadata for dynamically publishing...." [via Serious Instructional Technology ] Now this is an excellent resource! Put up by the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) folks in Utah , this one-page tutorial gives a brief overview of RSS, what it looks...

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 7:59 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Flexing Our Muscles.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 7:58 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Thursday, June 27, 2002

A Great Future in Radio

Although Dave Winer uses these terms repeatedly in his user notes, support pages and discussion postings, it just doesn't gel up front because Radio is sold as a weblog tool. And, for better or worse, weblogs, or blogs, are not considered a legitimate application by many folks.

That's really too bad. Blogging is still in its infancy and like most infant Internet apps is done mostly by either young, unprofessional consumers or anti-social hackers. That leads to lots of digi-sputum in the blogosphere. And that leads lots of folks to confuse the message with the medium -- writing off blogging, and blogging tools, as useless toys best left to the youthful and unemployed.

What a mistake! Nothing could be further from the truth. For now, you do have to show some perseverance to dig through the first layers of bloggo-crap and familiarize yourself with the largely undocumented, geek-toy tools. But once you get past that a whole new world opens before your eyes. This is incredible!

It doesn't become clear until you're well into the process of blogging and have, by default rather than conscious intent, created a full web site with multiple pages, categories, etc. One day you want to change the way individual items are rendered -- maybe you now want to separate them with a colored line, or add a little icon to denote where each item starts, or maybe you want to change the background of your pages, or maybe you want to add a Google search macro to each item.

In Radio you edit a template -- item template, page template, etc. -- and wait for a minute. Voila! every item on the site now reflects the new design or content or element. You cannot imagine the wave of cool that hits your brain when you realize this is happening, especially if you have ever struggled with updating a standard, static-page site. This is definitely A Good Thing.

Radio's News Aggregator, once you understand it, becomes your daily dashboard. It brings you news and ideas from around the world and lets you save, annotate, and republish with ease. The RSS feature in Radio is outstanding. Don't get hung up on the fact that it's a geeky XML thing. It works for everybody , but its true usefulness doesn't come clear until you use it for a while. Combined with the aggregator, it connects you to others in a way that no mail list or web page can. It can even bring you yourself -- though you just have to try it to understand what this means.

Everything you enter into Radio is cataloged, categorized, and saved with hyperlinks in a transparent, user-friendly way. The more you use it the more you begin to realize what it means to have a personal content management system. You can certainly think about where to put things, but you don't have to. Radio creates catalogs and searchable archives automatically.

I have also begun to see people using Radio for their entire site -- although its functionality is somewhat limited -- and I can easily see how it could cover 80 to 90 percent of personal and small professional users such as lawyers, consultants, and educators. Radio doesn't give complete freedom over page design, support e-commerce, or other database driven functions -- users needing that level of sophistication have to move up to the $899 Manila site management tool or another product. But Radio's easy-to-edit templates, built-in RSS generation, and core |Blogger| functionality make it an outstanding personal or small-business web site tool for all but the most demanding users.

Rather than competing solely with other Blog tools like Blogger.com, greymatter, and MovableType, Radio bridges the gap between blog tools and personal web site builders such as GlobalScape cuteSITE Builder (formerly TrellixWeb), or Macromedia's HomeSite. I've used both these programs and I like them a lot. It's been a couple of years since I used Trellix. At the time it was one of the first, and certainly the best, non-HTML web site tool around. I built some things that just weren't possible (probably still aren't) any other way. It's still a very nice product and current implementations are used by numerous ISPs and ASPs to provide user-friendly, web-based site builders.

I also use HomeSite regularly, and will continue to do so for special pages or more complex Radio posts (I'm writing this one in it). It has a spell checker and validates both tags and links -- something I can't do in Radio because my browser (Opera) doesn't support Radio's WYSIWIG editor. But I can see Radio becoming my primary interface to the web, news, and my own content.

Userland Radio is one Very Cool Tool. Once you get the feeling of making a single change and having it automagically parse through every relevant piece on your site you will never look at web site management the same way again. Once you start linking to the RSS feeds of the intelligent commentators and unique specialists in the blogosphere you'll never laugh at blogging again. And once you get hooked on Radio Userland you'll begin to resent the nature of static, information-free web sites.

Rick Klau, writing for the Law Library Resource Xchange (LLRX), said of Radio, "Radio is a fantastic application - it is, without exception, the best $40 I've ever spent on software." I have to agree. I have seen the future. It is Radio.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:15 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Note to Self -- Must get Radio Remote Access

The previous few posts, errors and all, have been submitted via the mail-to-weblog feature in Radio, since I am presently traveling and away from my desktop computer. This feature works quite well, as far as it goes. But that isn't far enough.

As you can see from the HTML coding error below, the inability to edit entries is a bugger. I have no intuitive insight into how remote access to Radio might work, and am quite concerned about security. All help appreciated.

In the mean time, I will have to be more diligent about proofing my e-mail submissions.

Update: I have returned home and corrected the HTML error. Thanks to Dan Rosenbaum I just might be on my way to some remote editing capability. Thanks Dan!

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:46 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

AmphetaDesk, FeedReader, and Personal RSS Aggregators

Jon Udell provides a more enlightened technical review of Personal RSS at Byte.com. But I've been experimenting with several personal aggregators and here's what I've found so far:

Radio Userland -- the built-in aggregator works well and has the distinct bonus of smoothly handling the posting of pertinent news items back to my own website. This is a nice feature, and will be even moreso when I can find (or develop) more industry-specific feeds for my interests. Radio's aggregator also allows the deletion of individual articles within a channel, and has display preferences for total number of items shown and auto-delete by age. These come in handy when you start to add a lot of different sources. Radio is available for Mac or Windoze.

FeedReader -- I've been using the pre-release version of FeedReader 2.0 and it is probably my favorite third-party aggregator. Its 3-frame interface is easy to manage, its mini-browser quite functional, and install is a snap. But it's only available for Windoze. And, like all the 3rd-party apps, I can't post directly to my website from FeedReader.

AmphetaDesk -- This is a new one I just tried and it's quite nice. AmphetaDesk runs directly in your web browser, making it quite familiar to anyone who's done some web surfing. Install is a breeze and it's available for multiple platforms. The whole thing is written in Pearl, so techies can modify to their heart's content. If you want to browse on several computers using the same app this is the one. The one feature it lacks is grouping. AmphetaDesk author Morbus Iff assures me grouping is on tap for the next version.

One I don't know how to do in any of the aggregators I've seen is user authentication. Allowing an aggregator to have simple userid and password login capability is critical to making private or confidential information, such as internal company postings, available. Hopefully, the vendors will add simple authentication support in the very near future.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:01 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Mimeo Gets More Cash from HP, Others

Mimeo's ExactPrint software has never received the market recognition it deserves, despite being a significant advantage in driving business to the company's Memphis, TN-based Automated Document Factory. The company has gone quiet over the last 12-18 months but appears to have remained stable and focused on ways to capture corporate print.

We can expect some aggressive marketing from them now that they have new funding. We may also see some greater push to color, given the HP tie-in. It is not unlikely that HP will continue to sponsor automated input systems -- like ExactPrint -- to drive HP Indigo presses. This could present a significant competitive advantage to Mimeo, and a strategic issue for competitors. Mimeo remains one of the "new generation" of demand-driven print companies that deserves careful attention.

[WhatTheyThink.com] June 27, 2002 -- provider based in New York, has secured $6.5 million in new funding from current investors including Hewlett-Packard. Since inception, the company has raised over $40 million.

Mimeo provides outsourced printing solutions for corporations. The company?s main technology is called ExactPrint software which print buyers use to automate their document production. Mimeo has a large print facility in Memphis and tight relations with FedEx. The company claims the relationship allows users to have finished documents delivered anywhere in North America within 24 hours.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:42 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
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