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The micropayments debate
For as long as the Web has been around people have talked about the possibility of a "micropayments" system to support small-time creators of content. Clay Shirky wrote a persuasive essay a couple of years ago laying out why such schemes have generally failed. More recently, Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud put a new comic online and charged users 25 cents to read it using a new system called BitPass (I wrote in July about my experience with this, which was positive).
Shirky updated his critique in a new article, and now McCloud has fired back with this detailed and thoughtful defense of the BitPass approach.
Both of these guys are smart; I thought I agreed with Shirky while I was reading his analysis, but then McCloud won me over. I think he's right to feel that it's way too early to be certain that micropayments are a dead end; we have only begun to experiment. (Salon's "DayPass" system of offering one-day access to premium content after users view a fancy ad could be thought of as an alternative micropayment approach.) Both pieces are worth your time if you're at all interested in the subject.
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Faux Windows patch
There's a grotesque new virus out there masquerading as a Microsoft Windows software patch. When I received it in my own email it took one look at it and laughed. But it's easy to see where less careful (or jaded) eyes might be fooled. Here's a screenshot. Here are the gory details. Be warned: Microsoft isn't sending out operating system patches as attachments in email! Just as Ebay isn't really asking you to update your account info. Caveat e-mail-ptor.
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The road goes ever on
My enthusiasm for Tolkien's world took root at an early age when I fell in love with the map of Middle-Earth. So this bit of spoofery made me smile. Why, if only the Fellowship had had the aid of an online trip planner, they'd never have gotten trapped in Moria! (OK, before you LotR fanatics correct me, yes, I know Moria wasn't on the original trip route, etc. etc. Just a joke.)
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