b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
Recently
Scalable Vector Graphics Roadmap
ReaderWare and AllConsuming
Eric Benson on Life
Boxes and Arrows Book LIst
Now Living at a Printer Near You
Bye-Bye Hilary
Blogging for Business
Web Conferencing by Microsoft
Disrupting Book Business
JDF Development Tools
RIAA: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Judges
RSS and Big Media
Spycatcher
Free Mickey Mouse
Lessig Coverage
Why Feminism Disappeared
Print-on-Demand Guide
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Bob Frankston on Spectrum Policy
Bob Frankston's essays are always thoughtful and thought-provoking, providing a rational perspective on the intersection between public and private interests in communication technologies.
Does spectrum policy abridge speech?. Bob "Connectivity" Frankston's latest essay is up. In this, he asks the musical question: if spectrum allocation's inefficiency puts the airwaves into the hands of the moneyed few, does that constitute an abridgement of speech?
It's as if we were having a party and someone came into the room and told everyone to be quiet and gave out pieces of paper with a time and a place telling each person when and where they could talk. If there were a possibility young people would overhear you couldn't use certain words even if there were no other venues and even if you felt the language was appropriate for them.Put that way it seems outrageous. Yet if we communicate using radio waves instead of sound waves that is precisely what the FCC is doing.
Scalable Vector Graphics Roadmap
As an XML language for describing graphics, SVG is a potentially important standard in the future of print -- it is already supported in some Adobe applications. According to the SVG Roadmap the first draft of print specifications is scheduled for March 2003.
Draft Roadmap for SVG announced. The SVG Working Group has released the first public version of the SVG Roadmap. It's a draft which is missing details on some of the expected new work, but should give an indication of the general direction. Also, the Working Group has made a public version of their charter available for informative and historical purposes. [Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)]
Terry Frazier at 2:01 PM
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ReaderWare and AllConsuming
Can ReaderWare's personal library database be connected to AllConsuming and streamline the creation of large book collections? Can the link between the two be such that some additional value is added to the Readerware library?This is one of those ideas that pops up whenever the uninitiated look at something for the first time. I am only beginning to experiment with AllConsuming and and extensions like booktalk, and my grasp of the organizing principles and technology is limited. I've been using Readerware to catalog my personal library since the summer. I don't know if the connection is possible, or makes sense. But it immediately came to mind as a way to get large book collections entered into the AllConsuming system, and expand the possible ways the service could be used.
Eric Benson on Life
Eric Benson, of AllConsuming.net, ponders the meaning of life while stuck in a meeting -- happens to me all the time.
[...] I mean, this is my life, my one and only non-karmic, soul-searching, God-finding, art-making life according to current beliefs... at some point I'm going to have to accept that I've either reached my slot or will never find it, but one hopes that it would come with the reward of achievement and job satisfaction, and that I would not read articles titled What To Do With My Life [b] with any sort of empathy or envy for those who know. I guess I'm still young, by some standards. I feel old. I feel like I've wasted years, that I'm not moving quick enough, that I'm not risking enough or experiencing enough, that the cold grip of death is tangling its fingers with my own. [...]
Boxes and Arrows Book LIst
A lengthy list of recommended reads from the staff at B&A, mostly on information architecture and web design, but also includes books on writing, management, social science, marketing, sales, and careers. Each book gets a paragraph or two on why it's worth reading. Pretty good list. Thanks Paul.There are a few on here I've read, and a few I'd like to know more about. Now if I can figure out how to add those to an AllConsuming and booktalk list so I can watch what others are saying.
Boxes and Arrows Favorite books.I adore book lists, especially ones that are more like annotated bibliographies. The web design journal Boxes and Arrows published a wonderfully eclectic list of their favorite books for 2002.
[Paul Holbrook's Radio Weblog]
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Now Living at a Printer Near You
Wow, this really is Future of Print stuff...
Inkjets "print" living tissue. Inkjet printer technology doesn't get enough credit. From vendors who fill the reservoirs with edible inks and lay down photorealistic images on sheet-cakes to "Napster fabbers" who lay down successive layers of goop to make three-dimensional images, and let's not forget the doomed odorama startup that mixed perfumes in inkjet carts and vaporized them to create aroma-on-demand tech for PCs. Now, though, we have "tubes of living tissue" coming out of inkjets.
Many labs can now print arrays of DNA, proteins or even cells. But for tissue engineers, the big challenge is creating three-dimensional structures. Mironov became interested when Thomas Boland of Clemson University, also in South Carolina, told Mironov how he could print biomaterials using modified ink-jet printers.[Boing Boing Blog]
Bye-Bye Hilary
So long to the most hated woman in America -- Valenti may be next. Hilary Rosen (RIAA) and Jack Valenti (MPAA) have become lightening rods -- the personal faces that millions associate with the heavy-handed tactics and vitriol of the music and film industries. Not a good thing for industries that need millions of consumers to survive.
The days when lobbyists like Rosen and Valenti could play their games in relative obscurity have passed. You can no longer be a high profile lobbyist and not take the heat for behaving badly. Rosen and Valenti behave very badly. Ten years ago there was no Google, there were no weblogs, and there weren't millions of angry, connected consumers tracking a despised lobbyist's every move. Today their every word echoes for weeks around the globe.
Rosen's resignation doesn't change anything. It's a PR ploy for an industry that sees itself caught between two equally distasteful ends, and desperately needs the public to stop thinking they are the worst kind of thugs and unmitigated assholes.
[...] Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a leading advocate of consumer rights to copyright works, said it was too early to tell whether Rosen's departure would fundamentally change the industry's stance toward the Internet."I do not think that she has been a spiritual champion of the industry embracing the Internet as a distribution medium," Boucher said. "I think the industry clearly needs to do that. It's the only way that the industry has to compete with peer-to-peer" file-sharing services like Kazaa. [...]
It will be very interesting to see how the search for Rosen's replacement proceeds. I wonder how much competition there will be for her job?
Hilary Rosen resigns. Hilary Rosen has resigned from the RIAA, citing her desire to take care of her kids. I've heard rumors that she's been frustrated with the intransigence of her employers at the RIAA, their unwillingness to adapt to new circumstances -- certainly, that sounds more plausible to me than "I want to take care of my kids." (Thanks, Jeremy!) [Boing Boing Blog]
Blogging for Business
Weblog technology has many implications for the problem of improving visibility and communication within companies and between customers.
Blogging for Business.Kathleen Goodwin discusses the implications of weblogs as business tools [Meet the B-Blog]. The beauty of the weblog is that it is extremely cheap compared to any toher form of collaboration. But, does it have enough features to do the job? [MarketingFix]
The blogging in business meme is picking up. Here are the applications of blogging the article highlights:
<TBODY>
[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]</TBODY> B-blogs are highly strategic, here-to-stay desktop tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Think of the potential for your e-newsletter strategies:
- Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.
- You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.
- Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.
- The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls!
Web Conferencing by Microsoft
PlaceWare works, I watched a nice Geoffrey Moore presentation sponsored and delivered by them. What will happen when it gets hit with the vaunted Microsoft "(barely) good enough" philosophy? I remember how great the first Microsoft version of Visio was... NOT. At least some printer will be happy when an entire new wave of MSCE training materials will get sold. Whatever happened to that disaster called NetMeeting?
InternetNews.Com Microsoft to Acquire PlaceWare. ""We look at this as a long-term thing," Microsoft Information Worker Group lead program manager Dan Leach told internetnews.com. "We make big bets and long term bets... and this is one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Web conferencing becomes even more commonplace in the next five years."" [snowdeal.org | conflux]
Disrupting Book Business
AllConsuming and booktalk are encouraging experiments in social network development around books. There are important lessons here for every aspect of the book business.One particular thought is about Amazon, whose real value has been in their prowess with complex e-commerce systems, marketing, and connecting customers. Amazon's profitability as a retail sales company remains suspect, even after years of effort and hundreds of millions in expense. Now accessible web services like AllConsuming and booktalk could prove to be enormously disruptive to Amazon -- by developing a robust, non-commercial, community-based network around books -- that supplants the company's own customer community.
Which is more valuable -- tracking and managing data about books you have, want or love; or OneClick™ shopping? Developments like booktalk can potentially democratize one of the few remaining differentiators among major book retailers, putting even more pressure on already thin margins.
booktalk
[...] A fine web resource not only for humans, but as a software service too. In constructing allconsuming.net, Erik has deliberately left software hooks and information bait dangling from the site, ready for us to connect and consume. Moreover, he encourages us to do so, telling us to "Use [his] XML" and try out his SOAP interface.So I did.
While allconsuming.net can send you book reading recommendations (by email) based on what your friends are reading and commenting about, I thought it might be useful to be able to read any comments that were made on books that you had in your collection. "I've got book X. Let me know when someone says something about book X".
So I whipped up a little script, booktalk, which indeed uses allconsuming.net's hooks to build a new service. What booktalk does, crontabbed on an hourly basis, is to grab a user's currently reading and favourite books lists and then look at the hourly list of latest books mentioned. Any intersections are pushed onto the top of a list of items in an RSS file, which represents a sort of 'commentary alert' feed for that user and his books. [...] [DJ's Weblog]
JDF Development Tools
JDF is the emerging XML standard for open workflow and connectivity in the print industry. OAI's JDF Development Platform is the first third-party toolkit to become available, and it simplifies the complex JDF architecture through the use of visual programming tools.
Objective Advantage Releases Initial Version of the JDF Development PlatformObjective Advantage, Inc. has released the first version of its JDF Development Platform (JDP), a programming toolkit designed to help print industry software and equipment providers integrate Job Definition Format (JDF) and Job Messaging Format (JMF) capabilities into print workflow products. A demo version is available from Objective Advantage. [...] [WhatTheyThink]
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
RIAA: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Judges
No one can legitimately defend the wholesale pirating of copyrighted material, which makes it hard to oppose the RIAA in this particular case. The problem, as we all know, is that the moment it becomes clear the courts will uphold the RIAA's right to unrestricted subpeona -- anyone, anytime, anywhere, without proof -- that's exactly what they'll do.They will swamp the courts and ISPs with tens of thousands of requests to identify the user of every IP address they can record. It will be the most massive abuse of the legal system ever recorded, and will cost innocent citizens millions in aggravation, lost services, and access.
Thank you, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, for unleashing this scourge upon the earth.
Ruling A Blow To Online Music Pirates. CBS News Jan 21 2003 5:09PM ET[...] The judge said that controversial law, which was enacted to uphold copyrights online, permits music companies to force Internet providers to turn over the name of a suspected pirate upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office, without a judge's order. [...] [Moreover - IP and patents news]
RSS and Big Media
RSS explanation for the average web user -- an excellent complement to Mark Pilgrim's What Is RSS?.
RSS Redux. It's RSS day here at TSL! Well, I suppose every day is RSS day at TSL since I couldn't possibly maintain my site without it, but an article over at the American Press Institute is also singing its praises:The Next Front[ier] in the Disruption of Traditional Media[The Shifted Librarian]"RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication is a Web content syndication format. It's a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which means that each piece of data -- headline, byline and...
Spycatcher
Advanced computer monitoring system under development by military.
Spycatcher. How to Catch Spies Spying Your Computer
January 21, 2003[...] The system -- a prototype is likely to be ready for intensive testing this summer -- could provide a high-grade layer of protection for military installations and government agencies as well as banking or other commercial networks that require especially tight monitoring.
The software draws up regularly updated profiles by closely tracking over time how each person performs an array of routine tasks, such as opening files, sending e-mail or searching archives.
Designed to tell if someone has strayed into an unauthorized zone or is masquerading as an employee using a stolen password, the program keeps watch for even subtle deviations in behavior. [...] [<http://www.nytimes.com/">NYTimes] via [Cryptome]
Free Mickey Mouse
Another pro-public domain editorial, this time from the Washington Post. I have two questions:- Can we make copyright reform a campaign issue for 2004?
- Does anyone give legitimate answers to that silly demographic quiz the Post forces on you before letting you view a page?
And Free The Snow White 7!. Washington Post editorial entitled "Free Mickey Mouse," advocating "fix" of copyright system. [The Trademark Blog]
Lessig Coverage
We don't see too many pro-consumer pieces in the mainstream media regarding the issues of copyright, but this article in the Boston Herald takes the side of the public domain.
Capital Focus: Copyright idea emerges. Boston Herald Jan 20 2003 12:07PM ET[...] One way to restore some balance would be through renewal fees. It would let valued works remain copyrighted and provide a way to identify copyright holders.
Fees to renew patents are already required. But extending fee-for-renewal to copyrights will take a legislative champion, backed by public demand, to top Hollywood's certain opposition. [Moreover - IP and patents news]
Why Feminism Disappeared
Patrick is going to get himself in trouble, asking questions like this...
It's feminism's core moral idea: women are due the same rights and dignity as men. So what are the West's feminists doing to help their sisters under Islam?....
Print-on-Demand Guide
I'm not familiar with this guide, but the press release makes me think it's targeted to authors/small publishers seeking digital print services for books. I think it is a collection of pay-for-inclusion profiles of digital print service providers.NOTE: The term "print-on-demand" is broad, generic, and used to denote almost any form of digital print. By itself, the term has become almost useless as a descriptor of any particular service. I prefer the term digital print for describing the print technology, and demand-driven to describe a zero-inventory, post-sale manufacturing service.
Print-on-Demand Guide updated for the new year!. The premiere reference guide "A Basic Guide to Fee Based Print on Demand Publishing Services" has just been revised for the New Year. [PRWEB Jan 21, 2003][...] Featuring detailed information on over forty-five different print-on-demand companies, special inclusions from a spectrum of diverse POD companies, and an informative FAQ section, "A Basic Guide to Fee Based Print on Demand Publishing Services" is the one-stop shop for both new and experienced authors.
Over four hundred copies of the original version have been distributed since its July 2002 release, and this e-book, as well as the site on which it is based, "The Original POD Database", have been recommended by Writers Digest.com, Dan Poynter, and Danny Snow. Reviews by readers include comments such as; "An objective source for comparison", "What a great resource for the author", and "There is so much information in this book!". [...]
To learn more, contact the author at dehannabailee@hotmail.com, or visit her website at http://www.geocities.com/dehannabailee/ [PR Web]
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