b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Bill Campbell to Leave Atlanta
Mainstream RSS
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Radio and liveTopics
Freakin' Cold in Atlanta
Bob Frankston on Spectrum Policy
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
Friday, January 24, 2003
Odd Google Searches
Checking the referer logs for odd Google searches that lead here.- corn huskers lotion ratings
- aunt polly's nude movies
- printable superbowl boxes 2003
- Paige Davis pr0n
Google's propensity to snatch keywords from all over the page and conatentate them without regard to proximity leads to some poor search results.
Graphic Arts Trends
TrendWatch Graphic Arts has released a new study profiling major trends and business statistics in the graphic arts. Among the key findings:- Digital color print is up. Traditional offset print is down -- 38% of design and production firms say their digital color printing jobs are increasing. The same number (38%) say that their traditional offset printing jobs are decreasing
- Number of printing establishments is down -- The number of small commercial and quick printing establishments hit a high point in 1990 at 37,352 U.S. establishments. That number has been declining ever since
- Cross-media is up -- 42 percent of graphic design firms surveyed reported cross-media as being strategic keys to the success of their business.
The report is available for $1,595 from TrendWatch.
Terry Frazier at 9:26 PM
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Bill Campbell to Leave Atlanta
Good riddance to Bill "Where's my bribe?" Campbell, Atlanta's former mayor and the chap who is most responsible for bringing the city to the brink of bankruptcy, while making millions for his buddies. Campbell, still under Federal investigation for corruption in a probe that has seen many of his closest aids plead guilty, is going to begin practicing . . . . . . . law! What a surprise!Campbell will join Florida lawyer Willie Gary, best known for his personal fleet of planes, including a 737 with a multi-million-dollar interior. Campbell was a perennial supporter of professional political clown and global embarrassment Cynthia McKinney. With luck he'll find McKinney a clerkship down there in Palm Beach.
Bill Campbell to join Florida law firm. AccessAtlanta Jan 24 2003 5:22PM ET[...] Campbell will become a partner in the law firm of Willie Gary, one of the most successful African-American litigators in the country, based in Stuart, north of West Palm Beach. Campbell will join the firm on Feb. 3 and will officially become a partner when he passes Florida's bar exam, said Frank Schaeffer, a spokesman for Gary. [...] [Moreover - Atlanta news]
Mainstream RSS
If you don't know what RSS is, how it works, why it matters; or you just think RSS isn't for you -- think again. RSS may ultimately be one of the most important technologies to arise from the swirling chaos of XML and web services. J.D. Lasica has a great introduction and overview at Online Journalism Review. Required reading for anyone who loves news, efficiency, and getting to the point.
News that comes to you? - I've subtly hinted several times that I thought this was actually possible. Who knew that there were already people who are doing it? Well there are, and J.D. Lasica has tracked them down and has the full story.Later: I've now read JD's article closely enough to know that I need to print it out and read it all even more closely. His article has everything that you need to know about News Readers or News Aggregators, and includes opinions from people who use them extensively. [Ernie the Attorney]
PDF for Lawyers
Ernie strives for the less paper (not paperless) office. Note Ernie's use of Radio to create a blog channel, by using Radio's Categories to route content off to another server and domain -- essentially creating a separate web site.Announcing PDF for Lawyers - it is with great hope and little fanfare that I announce my new project: PDF for Lawyers. Right before the blog affliction took me I had been planning to write a book for lawyers on using PDF files. I never was able to write the book (too much blogging no doubt). Well, now that I understand how to use Radio better I have figured out how to host this at a different site and use Radio to post to it. So, that's it. If you are a lawyer interested in using Acrobat to make your office less paperful (going paperless is a dream) then tune in, drop comments, send me emails with tips and let's all learn more about using Adobe Acrobat. Oh, and of course it has an XML/RSS feed. [Ernie the Attorney]
Radio and liveTopics
For the past few days I have been working with Matt Mower to implement liveTopics and convert this weblog from category-based to topic-based organization. If you are not familiar with liveTopics, it is Matt's Radio Tool for adding metadata to weblogs, and I think it's an important and useful addition to the knowledge sharing space.Radio's Category structure replicates HTML data for every Category. This is very useful for creating "blog channels" -- that is, sending weblog content to different servers, web sites, etc. It is less useful for local, topical aggregation because the content gets replicated as HTML data for every topic and takes up a lot of space.
Matt's product, liveTopics, creates a metadata structure within the weblog that fully supports Radio's Categories and lets you take best advantage of them. At the same time, it creates a topical organization with metadata. liveTopics is being designed to support XML Topic Maps and Phillip Pearson's Internet Topic Exchange.
Using liveTopics you can specify one or more "topics" for any given post. For example: if today you have Categories for Health, BioTech, Wireless, RSS, and Music, Radio will create a page in each Category for any post assigned to them. With liveTopics you assign the post to topic names (likely similar or equal to your Category names) route the post only to your Home page. liveTopics takes care of building a Table of Contents and search structure based on the topics. Very cool. Very efficient.
This leaves the Category structure free to be used for channels -- routing content off to private or special purpose sites -- and makes it easier to find content on any given topic. liveTopics is a another tool that belongs in the Radio power user's toolkit.
Freakin' Cold in Atlanta
Ok all you Chicago badboys, I know we southerners can't take the permafrost, but it's freakin' cold here. 10 degrees F with a wind chill of -2F. Arghhhhh.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]
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