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Friday, August 20, 2004 |
Cooper Interaction Design: Well-designed products. A common affliction plaguing many of us interaction designers is the propensity to complain and kvetch about every piece of software on our computers, cell-phones and cars. And it's true--there is a lot of bad software out there. To offset this sometimes irritating tendency to critique and redesign everything we see, I'd like to offer a selection of software that I consider to be truly well-designed. [Tomalak's Realm]
11:12:51 PM 
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About Olympic Bloggers and Olympic competitors who blog.
Maybe the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wants to refuse blogging, moblogging and videoblogging live from Athens Olympic Games like smartmobber Vanilla Gorilla has reported but the truth is that IOC still refuses to see the facts:
- OlympicBloggers.com agregates newsfeeds from bloggers around the world and from Athens who write about The Olympic Games. This agregation is also available via Wap and iMode that makes it available via phonecams and PDA worldwide.
- 2 competitors in Athens now blog live from Athens:
1) Scott Golblatt (US team swimmer) who clearly refuses IOC point of view in a recent post:
"An explanation? Not quite good enough for me:
The IOC's rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists -- and that the interests of broadcast rightsholders and accredited media come first.
I state again, do we not have first amendment rights to tell our fans what we are living and seeing? It is the Olympics. A moment, I believe, that should be shared with the world."
2) French team kayakist and ex-World Champion Babak Amir-Tahmasseb has just started to blog from Athens Olympic Village a few minutes ago...
All of this gathering of points of views in Olympics blogging is smartmobbing!
(Via mediaTIC blog) [Smart Mobs]
11:12:44 PM
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Financial Times: The Apple of forbidden knowledge. "Apple was saying (and apparently believed) that Real had broken into something different from my iPod or your iPod. They had broken into the idea of an iPod. (I imagine a small, Platonic white rectangle, presumably imbued with the spirit of Steve Jobs.)" [Hack the Planet]
7:47:13 AM
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ALA OITP Is Blogging and RSSing!.
Copyright Advisory Network
"Welcome to the Copyright Advisory Network, a service provided by the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP). Are you a librarian with copyright problems? Ask them here, and get answers from our team of copyright experts!" [via Free Range Librarian]
I do believe this is ALA's first official blog, and since it's running on PHPNuke, there's even an RSS feed! Can the rest of the ALA site be far behind?
That's a rhetorical question, but call me an optimist.
[The Shifted Librarian]
7:40:44 AM
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P2P Services in the Clear. In a major setback for the music and movie industries, a federal appeals court upholds a lower court's decision in the infamous Grokster case, ruling peer-to-peer services Morpheus and Grokster are not liable for the copyright infringement of their users. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]
Also, from the NYT:
File-Sharing Sites Found Not Liable for Infringement. A court ruled that the distributors of software used by millions of people to exchange music files over the Internet cannot be held liable for aiding copyright infringement. By By MATT RICHTEL.
7:40:23 AM
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NY Times: "Among Google's 2300 employees there are now an estimated 1000 millionaires." [Scripting News]
7:40:04 AM
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More precise info on RNC smartmobbing plans/claims.
In a previous smartmobs post , the reference to "gunpowder" tactics being used to stop trains and subways is more likely a hoax.
There are lots of reports of this on "conservative" oriented websites, but there is no actual evidence that anyone planned this so far.
The report is that law enforcement officials have allegedly received messages that suggest activists:
"Go to a rifle, pistol or skeet shooting range, spend an hour shooting to saturate clothing with the smell of gunpowder, go directly to a New Jersey Transit, LIRR or MTA subway train headed for Penn Station"
In reality, it appears most of the activist smart mob activity is centered around trying to keep activists safe and organized. There is evidence that some "direct action"style groups are planning to target hotels and places that delegates are staying and to directly confront GOP delegates and "war profiteers".
Some activists groups also have been reported using anonymous emailed info that is actually fed to them from hotel and service employees through a hotline of sorts (see also "what we know" from RNC not Welcome)
This antiwar.com story explains:
(quoted from original source Inter Press Service)
"...all protesters do not match the mainstream media's description of anarchists and other marginalized people who do not represent everyday Americans."
It is a "broad coalition of people coming together- from across generations, across racial and ethnic lines, across class backgrounds even, to say that, 'OK, we have an opportunity to make a statement ... people inside are making policies; we outside are the ones who have to live with those policies, and look at what those policies have done."
This seems to sum up well the reality of who and 'what' the majority of protesters are.
Ultimately, it seems that the "smart mob" tactics become a kind of 'arms race' between activists, counter-activists, and law enforcement, that escalates and escalates.
The other larger danger is the possibility behind the hysteria that can be bred by equating even the most radical protestors with "terrorists", and then applying anti-terror laws that scrap constitutional rights to them. Then, the other danger that I fear is that this will open the door further for anyone who practices dissent in any way to be seen as supporting "terrorism". [Smart Mobs]
7:28:39 AM
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Joel:
 My second book has finally been published!
The official title is Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, but you can call it Joel+37 or Joel, The Book.
It's meant to be a "best of" the website, in other words, there's not a heck of a lot of new material. Gary Cornell and I chose what we thought were the most timeless 45 articles (362 pages) from the Joel on Software archive, and I spent some time cleaning it up and adding occasional postscripts for the book version. Besides the fact that you can read it in the bath, the biggest advantage of the book is that when you throw it at your colleague's head after a very frustrating argument about whether to throw away all your code and start over from scratch, it makes more of an impact than a URL. So buy several copies and keep them handy for winning arguments at work. We tried to keep the price low (it's under $17 today at Amazon).
(The first book was User Interface Design for Programmers, still in print).
For some reason there are already four reviews of this book up at Amazon.com which don't make any sense; they look like reviews of an Oracle book I'd like to read. If you like the material you've read on this site, I'd sure appreciate if you could write a little review on Amazon and drown out the comments there about somebody else's book. [Joel on Software]
7:28:39 AM
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