Morgan Wilson: mere mentions

curious about TypePad

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 07:03:26 GMT

MT Pro vs. TypePad. One thing I was expecting TypePad to have that I am surprised it does not is the ability to FTP... [LibraryPlanet.com]

a Tasmanian blog! (I feel homesick now)

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:55:58 GMT

PLACE-ORIENTED BLOGS.

You may have noticed that I (sometimes unfairly) group blogs in my blogroll into artistic, business/scientific, environmental, news, and political categories, with Salon blogs listed separately because...well, because they're my community. Recently I've discovered another type of blog that is primarily geographical in nature. These have been self-styled as 'place-oriented blogs' or 'blogs of place'. Although most of us write from time to time about what's happening in our physical community, place-oriented bloggers write almost exclusively about the history, geography, and current events (often with photos) of their community.

They're actually very entertaining (and sometimes educational) to read. Here are some of the best of the breed I've found:

London and the North - London & Yorkshire, UK
Faultline / Creek Running North - California
Lifescapes - Texas
Bowen Island Journal - British Columbia
Laughing Knees - Japan
Life at the Edge - Tasmania (whence the photo above)
Ecotone - A wiki with more Bloggers of Place, and more about them

Some of our Salon bloggers write more about their physical location than others, especially those living outside the country as ex-pats. What do you think -- is your blog a 'blog of place' or do you just write about home when there's nothing more urgent to write about? Is this a legitimate new genre of blog? I have occasionally posted about my home on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, but not with any geographic thoroughness. Should I write more about place?

[How to Save the World]

another one year anniversary - Salon blogs

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:37:41 GMT

Scott Rosenberg reflects on one year of Salon blogs. I appreciate his candour.

Movable Type introduces TypePad

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:27:30 GMT

New Blogging Service Rolls Out.. If you want to set up your own blog you might want to check out TypePad (which is from the well-established folks at Movable Type). A shining example of the power of this new blog tool is the PVR Blog, which is a great resource for information on devices like TiVo and ReplayTV and digital recording devices in general.

There are 3 levels of service for TypePad, the lowest priced one is $5.00 a month, which includes hosting and a bunch of features (i.e. the ability to publish picture albums etc). Worth checking out.

[Ernie the Attorney]

Hmm, looks very interesting ...

metaphor watch: exploded content

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 04:01:23 GMT

firstmonday on eldred. ... In my view, reclaiming it would make it relevant. Exploding the content within the public domain in a context where it can be built upon and spread (ie, now, with the internet) will make people see again why the public domain is important. And if they see that, then they will again defend it. ... [Lessig Blog]

interesting post from a LiveJournal about library cataloguing today

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 03:22:25 GMT

In the old days, Pre MARC [Machine Readable Cataloguing], it was common to have almost as many catalogers as reference people. Books arrived. You hoped for a LC-Card number in the back and if that happened, you ordered cards from the Library of Congress. Eventually most of them came.

If the book was new, you knew you had to come up with your own cataloging ...

Catalogers are a fraction of the numbers that Reference types are.

Do you still need to catalog some things originally? Sure. Is it a substantial fraction of what you buy? hardly. I know of one university with graduate programs that hits over 95% on OCLC. What gets reviewed gets bought. What gets bought gets cataloged. ...

I hire catalogers. It's hard. ... I train every new hire. I do more training than cataloging these days. and at the same time, I can't tell prospective students that they'll be able to find work cataloging when they graduate. Medium sized libraries with one cataloger are common. It's like waiting for a tenant to die so you can have their apartment in New York. [librarian50]

looking forward to Moreover's forthcoming blog database

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 04:31:14 GMT

So THAT'S what they've been doing.... News service Moreover has been spending a lot of time lately concentrating on the corporate market, and its free news service has suffered as a result. Now comes word that Moreover plans to roll out a database of over 17,000 weblogs, indexing more than 1,000 entries each day. [Inter Alia]

jurymandering and pliant juries

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 15:38:51 GMT

Do lawyers want smart jurors?. Walter Olson suggests that smart lawyers often pick less intelligent jurors for a good reason. [via Cyberspaces] [Ernie the Attorney]

I'm both of these, as well as being an accidental blogger

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:06:54 GMT

Accidents Do Happen.

If you're not an Accidental Systems Librarian, perhaps you're an Accidental Webmaster. I'm sure one of your many hats is accidental.... [via beSpacific]

[The Shifted Librarian]

now that Buffy's over, I'm looking forward to Ripper

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:01:45 GMT

Glad to play Librarian. Anthony Steward Head says he is blessed to continue to be associated with his role as Giles, Librarian and Mentor... [LibraryPlanet.com]

contact your Representatives and Senators about the Public Domain Enhancement Act

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 12:54:29 GMT

reclaiming the public domain. We have launched a petition to build support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don't, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years. The Act would do a great deal to reclaim a public domain. This proposal has received a great deal of support. It is now facing some important lobbyists' opposition. We need a public way to begin to demonstrate who the lobbyists don't speak for. This is the first step. If you are an ally in at least this cause, please sign the petition. Please blog it, please email it, please spam it, please buy billboards about it -- please do whatever you can. And most importantly, please help us explain its importance. There is a chance to do something significant here. But it will take a clearer, simpler voice than mine. [Lessig Blog]

not all is insane in the world: Fox is being investigated for biased war coverage in Britain

Wed, 14 May 2003 05:32:42 GMT

Fox News facing investigation in Britian. Fox News is facing an investigation in Britian for providing biased coverage during the war.The Fox News Channel could be forced off the air in Britain if an investigation currently under way by the watchdog Independent Television Commission determines that... [different strings]

procrastination is inevitable, so why can't it be about political and philosophical matters?

Tue, 06 May 2003 18:32:58 GMT

Getting High. Larry Solum really really really doesn't want you (that is, judicial clerks or law students) to read his most recent post. Apparently we're too immature, we don't have enough time, and we should be doing other things than worry about high and low politics. God forbid we lowly little students worry about such silly things like what makes a justice... [a mad tea-party]

here's hoping that Rick Santorum gets the Trent Lott treatment

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 04:18:25 GMT

More Republicans oppose Santorum's remarks. More Republicans have joined the call for Senator Rick Santorum to apologize for his recent remarks. The group, Republican Unity Coalition, includes former president Gerald Ford and Mary Cheney, the daughter of current Vice President Dick Cheney. They describe themselves... [different strings]

"why I blog" - my thoughts on this are forthcoming

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 03:55:57 GMT

PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT: WHY I BLOG.

One of the great challenges in knowledge sharing, and in asynchronous communication, is to provide your audience with enough context to understand where your message 'comes from' -- what mental models, preconceptions, hidden agendas, historical baggage and motivations filter and taint what you say. Conveying this context makes it easier for the recipient of your message to internalize what you're saying more accurately and fully. It can also prevent misconceptions that lead to argument or disparagement of your point of view. For that reason, I thought it might be helpful to let you know not only who I am (in the sidebar About the Author ), but also why I blog -- what motivates me, on top of a heavy business workload, to spend at least 25 hours a week reading blogs and other resources, and writing my own blog posts. So here goes:

I do this for three equally important (to me) reasons:

Improve My Writing Skills: I love writing, and always wanted to make a living at it. By reading a lot on many topics, and practicing incessantly, I hope to learn to:

write powerful, persuasive essays (like this one of Toby's) that stake out radical positions without sounding strident,
write humour (like Dave Barry ), once I figure out what makes humorous writing funny,
write clear, motivating, informative and actionable business essays,
incorporate these 39 steps from Frederick Barthelme in my fiction writing, and
broaden my eclectic intellectual reach so I have more knowledge to draw on in my writing (the way Mark Woods can).

Institute Weblogs in Business: As Chief Knowledge Officer of a large professional services company, I've been grappling with two major cultural obstacles to knowledge sharing - employees' reluctance to contribute their knowledge, and the absence of context sufficient to make knowledge that is contributed easy to assess, internalize and re-use. I think employee weblogs might solve both problems.
Environmental Activism: Although the title of this blog is ironic, I am a hopeless idealist and really would like to make the world a better place. I'm about ten years from retirement, and plan then to dedicate my life full-time to environmental activism. I'm dissatisfied with existing environmental activist programs, which seem to me rear-guard, ineffectual, naive, inadequate, and often too little, too late to have major, lasting impact. I'm equally dissatisfied with the lack of coherent and actionable blueprints for environmental action, and I'm hoping that by blogging environmental manifestos like How to Save the World and The Third Way, SETI-like, I will be able to find like minds with whom I can work to drive a powerful, effective, broad-based environmental movement.

For those that have read my posts before, is this helpful? Should we make it part of the blogger culture that each of us provide some context for our writing with both a bio and a 'why I blog' summary?

[How to Save the World]

a few more helpful bloggy links

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:22:58 GMT

Some links on weblogs taking over:

Weblogs At Harvard Law
Hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/

News Aggregator: This page lists the most recent stories from news feeds that the Managing Editor of the site has subscribed to. Each hour the news aggregator scans subscribed feeds for new stories, which are displayed on this page from newest to oldest.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/aggregator/

The Feed Room has a list of a variety of RSS feeds on a number of topics
http://www.feedroom.com/rssmain.jsp

The Penn State Portal Project
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/new_users.html
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/index.html
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/tools/index.html
https://portal.psu.edu/

Dave's immediate to-do list (development, over time, in public, for the blogs.law.harvard.edu project)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/stories/storyReader$132

Some sites are moving to weblogs as the backbone of the whole Web site:

Kern County Superintendent of Schools main website is a Manila weblog.
http://www.kern.org/
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/03/26#When:2:43:58PM

http://www.bryanbell.com/2003/03/26
This completes the transition to Manila[dot accent] we started 2 years ago. The homepage was last on the list, because we decided to do it back to front. We converted every department in the organizations and nearly all of our client schools. I must have trained 300 people on how to manage their Manila[dot accent] site.

Web Logs as Web Site
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2003/03/19#a533

Ms. Leake's Classroom News
Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary School - Portland, Oregon
http://buckman.pps.k12.or.us/classrooms/leake/

Butlerville Elementary
A Nice Place to Be
http://manila.cet.middlebury.edu/butlerville/

School Blog or Not
Should Bryant Elementary implement its new web presence using Web log tools?
http://schoolblogdebate.blogspot.com/

Regular usergroup sessions
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/03/23#When:1:15:07PM

What are weblogs?
http://www.weblogs.com/about

Understanding weblogs (The Tweney Report)
http://www.tweney.com/writing.php?display22

A vision for the Web at Webster (me): "let a thousand weblogs bloom."
http://xraynet.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$435 [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

blogging as an act of defiance: "I'm tired of being resigned to accepting a country that is governed by warmongers, religious extremists, and corporate lapdogs."

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:11:53 GMT

'I don't know all of the answers but I refuse to be quiet anymore'.

I think Rebecca at Suddenly Routine has one of the best explainations yet for having started a blog - and I have a feeling that, at it's root, its not that different than the reasons many bloggers took the plunge.

[different strings]

copy-protected CDs designed to have a lower sound quality when played on a computer

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:03:15 GMT

Copy-control CD complaint:Qld businessman complains to ACCC about EMI's copy-control discs, by SamVarghese, Sydney Morning Herald.

The complaint by Tom Dullemond, who runs a small company in Gladstone that sells software for writers, is based on the fact that these discs, when played on Windows and Apple PCs, do not produce the high quality CD sound one might expect from what looks like a music CD.

Dullemond, who has like many others had his email bounced when writing to EMI, said the discs stated (in tiny print) that they would only play on audio CD players and the Windows/Apple operating systems.

Due to this, complaints from people who were unable to play these discs in PC CD-Roms or any CD-drive that strictly adheres to the redbook specs for CDs (audio-CD players can play copy-control discs because they are more error-prone; DVD drives or other high-precision CD drives will most likely not play the new discs) could not be followed up, Dullemond said.

My complaint, however, stemmed from the fact (confirmed by EMI) that CC (copy-control) discs when played in Windows and Apple PCs do not play the high quality CD sound one might expect from what looks like a music CD. They play back a low bitrate compressed .WMV file in a proprietary software audio player, he said.

Dullemond, who lodged his complaint in early March, said he received a call from the ACCC soon after.

The ACCC lady who spoke to me conceded that not disclosing this information to consumers (I had to do some serious internet digging and EMI tooth-pulling to find this out) could be pursued by the ACCC. After all, a consumer is told the CD they buy can't be copied - they're not told that the CD plays back low quality sound on computer systems.

The ACCC refused to confirm that any complaint had been lodged.

[A blog doesn't need a clever name]

Liking Law.com in blue

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 03:53:44 GMT

A New Look for Law.com. It seems Law.com got tired of all the blacks and browns, and has settled on a soothing blue as its new theme. Check it out. [Inter Alia]

Best of all, it doesn't have the same clip art graphic used by Lexis and Liberty Check Printers - to name two - in ads run in 2001.

librarians and re-intermediation

Sat, 05 Apr 2003 20:38:05 GMT

WHY COMPLEX INTRANETS DON'T WORK AND 'LIBRARIANS' DO: RE-INTERMEDIATION.

Part of the job of a Chief Knowledge Officer is to understand the knowledgeculture, the collective knowledge behaviours, of the organization you work for. A phenomenon I have observed over the past decade is that such behaviours tend to evolve as the employees learn more, and as the tools available for learning and research become more complex.

In the typical company, roughly 20% of employees have a 'self-service' knowledge culture. They do their own research using both the intranet and the public Internet, and do their own analysis of what that research tells them. At the other end of the spectrum, another 20% (generally older, more senior employees) have what I call an 'intermediated' knowledge culture. They assign subordinates to do both the research (the accessing and distilling of relevant knowledge) and the analysis (interpretation and reporting of its meaning) for them. The remaining 60% fall in between, usually preferring a librarian, subordinate or administrative assistant to do the research, but putting their own spin on the results and packaging it themselves.

When people join a company right out of university, they usually eagerly join the 'self-service' knowledge user constituency. The people retiring tend to be 'intermediated' knowledge users. These two trends comprise the phenomenon called dis-intermediation. You would expect therefore that, over time, the curve above would shift to the left. However, what I've observed is that as young employees move up the ranks, and the opportunity-cost of their time increases, they move quite quickly to the middle category and ultimately, if they trust their subordinates, to the 'intermediated' category. As a result of this tendency, which I call re-intermediation, there is a remarkable equilibrium of knowledge behaviours in most companies.

In the decade since their invention, intranets have generally become much more sophisticated, with the addition of advanced search tools, portals, community-of-practice spaces and collaboration tools. Much of this sophistication has been added at the behest of 'self-service' knowledge users. But as they become 'intermediated' users, we have observed that the administrative staff assigned to do research find some of these tools too complex. This leads to two unexpected results: disuse of some of the more powerful intranet tools, and an acceleration of the rate at which the less tech-savvy new employees(overwhelmed by the complexity of the intranet) move to the middle category.

Aggravating the situation, while the ability of employees to leverage knowledge leads to an increase in revenue per employee, it also prompts a reduction in proportionate intake of new recruits, and hence a reduction in the company[base ']s leverage (the ratio of junior to senior employees). And, in an effort to monetize the value of this leverage, many firms reduce the administrative/professional staff ratio, expecting that self-service productivity tools should enable professionals to get by with fewer administrative assistants.

Can you see what this is does to the overall dynamic of the knowledge culture? The scarce but overworked administrative assistants can quickly learn the power of the more complex intranet tools, but because they are not professionals themselves, nor directly involved in the task that the research is wanted for, lack the context to be able to make effective use of some of these tools: Like the librarians of old, they know what knowledge is wanted but not why. At the same time, the few new recruits see an incredible opportunity to become indispensible knowledge gurus in the organization, and clamour for even more sophisticated and complex tools to improve their productivity. But then, as they quickly advance, they shift to the middle category and leave the burden of basic research to others.

And that isn't the end of it. The middle-category and 'intermediated' knowledge users now start to become dissatisfied with the quality of the research they are receiving from overworked, context-deprived assistants. These dissatisfied users try to reassume responsibility for their own research, but often find the tools, with which they are no longer familiar, too complex to do so.

A solution to this is to re-intermediate: employ full-time specialized researchers with sufficient business knowledge to understand the context of user requests. They can quickly become 'power' users of the complex intranet tools they have at their disposal.

But this isn't the 'self-service' model that many businesses had expected would result from the knowledge economy. It's actually remarkably similar to the old intermediated knowledge model of hard-copy libraries staffed by generalist librarians. Under such a model, relatively few intermediaries become the prime users of the intranet (just as they were the prime users of the hard-copy libraries). Even with some dissatisfied senior employees re-learning how to do their own research, the ranks of the 'self-service' intranet users are unlikely to exceed the 20% level of the heyday a decade ago. To some extent, knowledge culture has come full-circle.

It's an interesting dynamic, and one that will undoubtedly continue to change, and challenge the ingenuity of intranet designers and managers for years to come.

[How to Save the World]

it's good to see "do more with less" being challenged, but this is a very risky game for a library

Tue, 11 Mar 2003 06:33:10 GMT

Hawai'i state librarian under fire from state Senators who cut her budget yet bristle at her cutting library hours. [ thanks brandon ]

[librarian.net]

Moseley et al vs. Secret Catalogue: have trademarks reached their high-water mark?

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 22:55:16 GMT

Supreme Court curbs trademarks' reach. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave a suprise legal boost to Americans who own Internet domains that criticize corporations or use their trademarks. [CNET News.com] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

Read the pdf version of the opinion from the US Supreme Court web site.

google should have jumped on this years ago - because the horse is well out of the barn now

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 02:43:13 GMT

Google is Sending C&D Letters About Saying "To Google". Google apparently sent out a cease and desist letter for trademark violation to wordspy for using the verb, to Google. The lawyer for Google asks wordspy to, "help us to protect our brand by deleting the definition of "google" found at wordspy.com or revising it to take into account the trademark status of Google." Wordspy chose the later, with this addition: "(Note that Google[dot accent] is a trademark identifying the search technology and services of Google... [bIPlog]

Patriot 2: this isn't really happening, is it?

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 02:04:20 GMT

Patriot II.

In Deliver Us from Ashcroft (in The Washington Times), Nat Hentoff begins with "Attorney General John Ashcroft, with support from President Bush, has increasingly forgotten that the Constitution is ours [~] not just his." He continues

one of the most damaging abuses [in Patriot II] is found in Section 201. According to this section, a federal court decision can be overturned, mandating that the government reveal the identities of those persons it has detained in the investigation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The new bill states that "the government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations of terrorism until ... the initiation of criminal charges," no matter how long that might take...If passed, this would become the first time in American history that secret arrests would be specifically permitted under the American rule of law.

I haven't written about Patriot II yet, not out of a lack of interest, but due to a sense of weariness with all of the things happening to Americans after September 11th. I heard a lot of negative commentary about President Bush last week in London, and I remember telling someone that Bush wasn't the real threat--the real threat is Ashcroft. At least, Ashcroft is doing more harm to Americans and "the American way," however that might be understood. I'm trying to fight my inertia, and so I'm posting this in the hopes that it motivates me.

As a side note, a draft version (dated January 9, 2003) of the Act in .pdf format is available from the Center for Public Integrity. Be forwarned, though--it is a 12 MB download. CPI also has a list of related documents.

[klyjen.blog]

blogging etiquette - long items in news aggregators

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:29:44 GMT

RSS Etiquette Questions.

Long RSS Items

"Are long RSS items rude? More and more people are reading inside of news readers and not bothering to go to the blogs themselves. (My logs show this.) Should we put full text of the blog entry in the RSS feed, even if it's long? It will surely slow your refresh rate. Has anyone written a style guide for RSS feeds? It's a moving target, but I would be interested to hear about how readers and writers are designing their RSS feeds. Obviously, the people who are reading this in their RSS readers are going to have to get up off their butts and click on my blog to comment... ;-)" [Joi Ito's Web]

Joi Ito is asking about RSS ettiquette, just as I was last year. Luckily, Brent Ashley rode in on a horse and saved the day. I agree with the folks commenting on Joi's site - offer both!

[The Shifted Librarian]