Morgan Wilson: technology

ahh - trying a different aggregator has helped alleviate my information overload

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 03:41:19 GMT

Switching to TypePad will also involve getting a stand alone news aggregator. For the past week I've been experimenting with NetNewsWire, a fine Mac only product. I've been very impressed. Before I used to think that needing a new aggregator was a drawback to switching from Radio, but now I think it's a positive reason to try something else. I love its Post to Weblog feature - which replicates the one thing about the Radio aggregator which I really liked. More interesting, I find that the three-pane design makes it easier to get through all of my subscriptions. If I'm in the mood to see what's been on at one particular blog first, I can do this. If none of a blog's titles appeal to me, I can mark them as "all read" with one click and effectively ignore them. All this is much easier than needing to wade through all the entries of all my subscriptions. And I can arrange my subscriptions alphabetically or in theme-based clusters, rather than just by time (although I understand why some bloggers would prefer this). There are some blogs which I would like to check everyday, while others can wait a week or so - it depends on the quality and quantity of the words, as well as my mood. Anyway, here's something from the blog by NetNewsWire's makers:

Wired News: [base "]Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload. Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.[per thou]

Interesting article. I think I was slightly misquoted about sales of NetNewsWire. The [base "]five figures[per thou] part refers to the number of users of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite: the number of users is at least a five figure number. Just wanted to clear that up: not a big deal, really. [Ranchero]

a correction about AOL Journals - it's only useless for some people

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:01:04 GMT

Thanks to feedback from Jason Lefkowitz of theAnt's Eye View, I can tell you that AOL Journals will work with if you use IE 6 for Windows to create or edit posts. Using IE 6 will give you a built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor which will allow you to both link and have titles. So that's the good news. I thought that the way to get the most out of AOL features was to use its browser (the one based on IE), but I guess AOL 8.0 for Windows must be based on an older version of IE, because it had no WYSIWYG editor. Maybe AOL Journals will work properly in the upcoming AOL 9 for Windows. But the bad news is that yesterday's comments are still very true for Mac users. There is no equivalent of IE 6 for the Mac. The Mac AOL browser is based on Netscape / Gecko. I wonder why AOL would let Mac users use AOL Journals, knowing that it won't work properly for them? I suspect they never really thought about it.

By the way, you can read Jason's review of AOL Journals here.

should I stay with Salon blogs or switch to TypePad?

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 06:06:06 GMT

I find it quite amusing and ironic that less than two weeks after I promised myself that I wouldn't switch this blog to MovableType, I am feeling very drawn towards switching to MovableType's TypePad. Of course, I did give a proviso to this undertaking - "unless Movable Type became idiot-proof." While no blogging software is truly idiot-proof, except possibly AOL Journals (see this amusing piece about them), TypePad seems way more user-friendly than standard MovableType and a lot easier to work with than Radio Userland.

So I'm seriously considering defecting to TypePad. So here are my pros and cons about switching to TypePad -

Pros:
- I don't really like the Radio Userland software that much. Although it's easy enough to start a bare bones blog with it, it isn't very user-friendly IMHO. I find it difficult to understand for customizing and think that the documentation is poor - especially when compared with TypePad.
- I haven't really been following the flame wars associated with Dave Winer. But what I've heard makes me feel uneasy about the future of Radio. I worry that Radio Userland is isolating itself in the blogosphere.
- TypePad is web-based, so it's very easy to update from anywhere. No more being tied to the one computer!
- TypePad offers more gadgets for blogs - which are really easy to implement. This goes back to one of my complaints with Radio - yes, you can do a lot with it, but a lot of it is quite difficult and arcane to configure.
- I like TypePad's photo album feature
Cons (and there are quite a few):
- It's more expensive than Radio. I'm interested in the intermediate $8.95/month option.
- I'd also need to get a separate news aggregator (maybe this isn't all bad), which I may need to pay extra for if I want a good one.
- I think that initially, my readership would plummet. (but is this really an issue?)
- I would leave the Salon blog community, which I like a lot. I would get onto the Salon blog webring, but that wouldn't be the same. The issue is, if Salon blogs is on a sinking ship (Radio), do I show solidarity and stay until things get worse, or do I just seize what seems to be a good opportunity at this moment?
- It's not as if TypePad is the only option for me, either. Maybe Blogger Pro will get better under the ownership of Google. Maybe I should support fine Mac only software such as iBlog. And don't forget AOL - for which I'm already paying for. Nobody will probably take an AOL blog seriously, but it might offer a way of communicating with a wider audience.

Well there's no rush to do any of this. I'll give myself a least a week before I do anything rash.

ads with air guitarists and the idea / expression of the idea dichotomy

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 06:44:32 GMT

Ads Ape Apple's Air Guitarists. Upstart BuyMusic.com is doing more than just offering a music service that mimics iTunes. Its commercials are strikingly similar to Apple's ads, too. Flattery? Perhaps, but it also could be a lawsuit in the making. By Danit Lidor. [Wired News] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

"The fair-use doctrine does provide a defense to copyright- and trademark-infringement claims," Crowther said. "The critical issue will be whether the BuyMusic.com is a parody of the Apple ads."
"When the second work just borrows from the first work to get attention or to avoid having to develop something new or fresh and does not make fun of the original work [sigma] it is not a parody and may not have protection," Crowther said.
Parody or not, a copyright-infringement suit wouldn't necessarily be an open-and-shut case. "The dichotomy between 'ideas' and 'expression' is hard to get across," said Blaney Harper, an intellectual property attorney at Jones Day.
"Showing average people air guitaring their way through a song against a white background" is not enough to show BuyMusic is copying Apple's expression, he said.

I haven't seen these ads, but I admit that they would really annoy me. It would seem that BuyMusic is stealing numerous ideas of Apple. But this happens all the time - in business, in art and science. Stealing an idea (unless it's patented) is different from violating intellectual property rights. This is a really good thing - even if it is infuriating to see BuyMusic use this legal point to peddle its lame Windows knock-off of the iTunes Music Store. It's corny, but the law is meant to be blind, (if people stay within its bounds) it protects the good and the bad, the creative and the exploiters. To change the law to stop the "bad" BuyMusic would be opening the possibility of flooding more of the "good" public domain under a torrent of copyright claims. It could shut down or severely damage the blogosphere. The idea / expression of idea dichtomy is being undermined enough already by contract law, without this happening. So what can be done? Protest this protected form of idea theft in non-legal ways. Try to shame BuyMusic into changing its behaviour.

Music (legally downloaded from iTunes): Moby, 18, I'm not worried at all

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 ...

tinkering with AOL Journals

Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:54:24 GMT

The first AOL journal (blog) I've seen.

Via Hylton Joliffe I've clicked through to an AOL Journal called sound & fury. The branding at the top (below the generic AOL nav) reads "AOL Journals: Your Thoughts. Your Blog."

I was hoping I could find my way from that blog to other AOL blogs but there doesn't seem to be any central jumping-off point (or blogroll/sidebar, for that matter).

[Radio Free Blogistan]

I was playing around with AOL Journals yesterday. My attempt was very experimental & silly so I'm not going to link to it. As I expected, it was very easy to set up - there are various templates for choosing how the Journal looks and how functions it has. Updating is also easy - you just send an instant message to the AOL Journal bot. This means that you can use all the formatting that you can use in an instant message, which is quite a lot. But I also a discovered a bug with this. If I add an entry with AIM and then want to edit that entry in AOL to give it a title or information about my mood or the music I'm listening (like LiveJournal), then most of the formatting goes away. If I initially created the entry in AOL, then there's no option to use anything but plain-text - and no HTML tags for bolding, italicizing, changing colours or fonts. This isn't an issue, so long as they fix that bug about editing entries created with AIM - or allow you to give the title, mood and music in the instant message. Hopefully they'll fix this by the time it's officially released.

An AOL Journal does provide an RSS feed, but not any news aggregator functions. Because of this, I think that AOL Journals is more equivalent to LiveJournal (albeit not as good!) than software like Radio Userland or Blogger. And I agree that AOL needs to provide a way of locating other AOL Journals.

wondering about big media biases (with a postscript about left & right tactics)

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:18:41 GMT

I wrote earlier about the unlikely story of how I first experimented with AOL. I’m surprised to say that I still use it from time to time – on a plan which gives me a very small number of dialup access hours. The reason is that now my iBook doesn’t seem to work well with any other dialup ISP. I would be tempted to think that this is something that AOL did to my computer, except that I remember that this problem predated the first time that I used AOL. It’s probably a hardware problem – but because most of the time I use a broadband connection without any problems on my iBook – I’m reluctant to send it in if it’s not really urgent.

My first use of AOL coincided with the beginning of the Iraq war. At the time I noticed a real pro-war bias in the way the war news was reported. It’s interesting to see how this has changed lately.

Last week, they reprinted Salon’s article about John Mellencamp and patriotism.

Am I paranoid to wonder if AOL Time Warner decided to pander to the government’s dogs of war in the lead up to the execrable FCC decision about media ownership, to show the Republicans in power that big media could be supportive of their interests? And that now the FCC rules have been released, AOL Time Warner can be a little more centrist (definitely not left-wing).

Postscript: Along with the Salon article, AOL had one of their ubiquitous polls. The question was along the lines of “Who is more patriotic? – a) the Left, b) the Right, c) Neither – each side is patriotic but they have different opinions.” My recollection of the result was that almost 50% answered “C” for neither, 40% answered “B” for the Right and a measly 10% chose “A” for the Left.

I chose the Neither answer – because I do think that many of the Right-wingers genuinely care for their country, even if their methods or goals are misguided. My reading of this poll – and be assured that I don’t put too much stock in its results – is that people on the left are more reasonable and are mature enough to admit that the other side might sometimes have a point, or at least a legitimate concern. Whereas people on the right (I choose not to call them Conservatives because they a radical agenda of tearing up long-standing social supports and threatening civil liberties) are more fanatical – and refuse to see any good in their opponents or flaws in themselves. I know, it’s kind of petty to be fighting over the high moral ground but it’s still legitimate point. What do you do against an opponent who refuses to play fairly? Do you to stick to your principles and lose (praying that someday the wrongs will be righted) – or adopt their rough-handed tactics in the hope of beating them at their own game?

Safari, Opera and Explorer

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:09:17 GMT

It’s a chicken or the egg type question – did Safari come about because Microsoft was not working on new versions of IE for Mac, or did Microsoft stop working on IE for Mac because Apple started competing with Safari?

When Safari first came out, I was annoyed. First of all, it had that tiresome brushed metal interface (although I’ve since found out that this can be removed with Metalifizer). Secondly, it made me concerned the other Mac browsers, such as Opera, OmniWeb and Camino wouldn’t be able to compete. Although I like all the software which Apple throws in with its computers, I want there to be a viable market for third party software developers for the Mac.

I’ve since come to like Safari. I think that it’s arguably the best free browser for any operating system. It’s very fast – both to load and for browsing. It has tabs and it renders pages very nicely.

Overall, I still prefer Opera 6 for Mac for the following reasons.
I already paid for it, so might as well get my money’s worth
I really, really like some of Opera’s time-saving shortcuts: how you can use the “z” and “x” keys as backwards & forwards buttons; how you select the location bar by just pressing F8 (in this way, it’s much better than Safari, which makes you drag over the whole URL or press Command-L); how bookmarks can be given brief nicknames which retrieve the bookmarked site when entered into the location bar; full screen browsing is easily turned on or off with F11.

Opera’s not without its problem. It takes more time to load than Safari – which I can forgive because Safari’s got an innate advantage in this area. The most two severe problems are that less pages seem work in Opera than Safari and that it is more prone to crash than Safari. These are major problems, and if they continue to get worse, I will reluctantly have to switch to Safari.

Safari and internet banking sites

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 14:04:00 GMT

Macintouch has had some interesting postings concerning the fall out from Microsoft’s decision to discontinue developing IE for Mac. There is concern because some sites, notably online brokerages internet banking sites, only work with IE. People are worried that if IE for Mac atrophies, Mac users will be shut out of many sites because so many lazy web developers design only for IE.

I think that there is a little bit of panic occurring with this issue. There are already sites which only work well with IE 6.x for Windows, not IE 5.2 for Mac. By the way, my credit union’s internet banking and online bill paying works well with just about any web browser. If the big, mean banks and brokerage firms are being troglodytes about only supporting IE, I say that Mac users should take their business elsewhere – especially to credit unions which have lower fees and are usually more responsive to their customers.

Now that Microsoft has won the first browser war, it has little incentive to develop IE for any platform. So their announcement about discontinuing upgrading IE 5.2 for Mac comes at the same time that IE 6.x for Windows also goes onto the back-burner, at least until Longhorn is developed.

my thoughts about designing web pages for users of different browsers

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:55:59 GMT

If you don’t use Internet Explorer for Windows, you are on the margins of the internet. It’s kind of like being a non-American in our unipolar world. The mighty behemoth, IE does what it likes. Standards be damned, its practices are the de facto standards which matter.

I’m in charge of a web site and know first-hand how tedious it is develop a site which works tolerably well for almost all browsers, without being intolerably bland. I recently had a discussion/argument with a respected colleague about this issue. He said that there are so many different permutations of browsers, that getting our sites to work for all of them is an exercise in futility which leads to the dreaded Lowest Common Denominator. For me, this is not an all or nothing matter. I try to support what I subjectively think are the main types of people on the web – and the browsers they often choose.

There’s Mr and Ms Average – people who use IE for Windows, 5.x and 6.x – the browser that everyone uses when they don’t have a choice (or exercise choice) in what browser they use. Needless to say, it’s got to work very well for this browser. I admit, some people might consciously choose this solid but boring browser. For me, I only use this browser when none of the others works or I might to use some third-party software which only works with IE – such as the Google toolbar.

You have to acknowledge the technical laggards of the world – people using IE and especially Netscape 4.x. I’m not saying that a site has to work well for these people, but see how the home page looks and hope that the site is functional. Sometimes minor tweaks in the code will improve performance in these oldies without mucking things up for everyone else. If that’s not possible, use a script to redirect them to a text-only of your home page. This text-only version could also benefit the visually impaired who are using a text-only browser.

You also can’t ignore people who are bravely (or stupidly, depending on your point of view) using non-Microsoft software – namely Mac and/or Linux users. I don’t know where the market share statistics come from, but I work in education and see a lot of Macs around and talk to a lot of people who are passionate about Macs. So even if you are a hard-nosed Windows-head, you don’t want to needlessly piss these persistent people off, because they can be vocal in their criticism. If nothing else, make sure that the site works in IE 5.2 or Safari. If you don’t have access to a Mac, send the URL to a friend, acquaintance or relative who has a Mac and ask for feedback. The same goes for Linux, make sure that it works for at least one Linux browser, especially if you know that Linux people will be using your site.

Another small but influential group are the geeks who may be using alternative browsers such as Mozilla or Opera. They may very well be your peers. They are also the people who often look at web pages critically. You don’t want them to be sending you emails saying that your web site isn’t working for them.

At the other extreme are the AOL users. Although Windows AOL is based on IE, it is not identical. AOL for Mac OS X is based on Netscape 7 for OS X. Although testing maybe difficult for AOL, if you become aware of a problem, try to find out what it is and how it might be fixed. Because there are still a lot of people using AOL as their browser.

All this sounds like a lot of extra work, but the only significant task is to get out of the “IE 6.x for Windows or bust” mindset. Because once you start testing your website on a few different browsers, you’ll get a feel for what works and what doesn’t work on the other browsers.

These are only suggestions for the minimum. Because I am a Mac head, I’m going to make sure that my web sites don’t work well for just one current Mac browser, but for as many as possible.

my flirtation with EverCrack

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 05:07:06 GMT

So things have been kind of busy at work. Then I am embarrassed to mention that EverQuest has just been released for the Mac and that I have wasted many an hour on that game. I have decided that although EverQuest has some good points, it is diabolically designed to be the biggest addictive timesink, even more so than Lineage. Furthermore, although I like all the different class/race combinations which EverQuest offers, this makes for some very specialized characters which can’t function well outside of a group. And although group adventuring can be fun – especially when it’s only with Mac users – it seems that finding a good group which plays at an appropriate time (in terms of hour of the day/night as well as duration) is very challenging. So having sampled it, I won’t be planning EverQuest. I will continue to play Lineage in moderation.

Music: Liz Phair, Liz Phair, Little Digger

random silliness - Strong Bad emails on Homestar Runner

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 05:20:08 GMT

Today I was doing some systems librarian stuff - basically updating some people's privileges in the library system. I was reminded of Strong Bad's privileges email. Homestar Runner is the weirdest site. Some of the Strong Bad emails are hilarious. There are some silly games, which I'm not really into - although there's something about Trogdor which appeals to me. This is a twisted retro-style game where you are a dragon who is supposed on stomp on hapless peasants. Squash enough serfs and you get to burninate the entire village! There are some short cartoons - the King of Town special edition being my favourite. Watch the normal version first, then listen to Strong Bad's commentary.

confessions of a Mac user who doesn't hate Microsoft + rant against brushed metal interfaces

Tue, 20 May 2003 04:38:23 GMT

Maybe before I nervously start, I should say something about my Mac head credentials. Most of my computers have been Apples: starting with an Apple ][, a Mac classic, a colour Mac classic, and a PowerPC - an awful mid-1990s lemon which turned me off Apple for a few years. All was forgiven with OS X.

I'm fortunate that I work at a place which allows me to bring in my iBook for my work. I can do 95% of my work on the iBook. I hardly ever need to turn on that noisy boring beige fan in a box that's disguised as a computer :)

Mac users often feel like an oppressed minority, united by their stubborn resistance to the Wintel Borg. This is where I encounter difficulties. Although I'd never willingly buy the Windows operating system, I don't hate all things Microsoft. It's like being a very lonely minority within a minority. I'm not here to defend M$'s business practices, just to state the fact that sometimes they make decent software, including their software for the Mac.

It's ironic that what's brought me to this point has been my move away from my Windows PC at work. One of the whole reasons for this transition is that I loathe the GroupWise email and personal information management (PIM) software that my university uses. I wanted to combine all of my stuff under the one roof - and the one thing that worked for me was MS Entourage - their Mac equivalent to Outlook. I felt very guilty about this. I so wanted to rely on iCal, iSynch and Apple's Mail programme like the rest of the Mac faithful. I wasted many an hour trying to find the proper solution, but I missed synchable notes and the symplicity of categories - the elegance of having multiple calendars was wasted on me.

Since I've already sold my soul to Bill Gates, I might as well admit this: now that MSN for OS X has been released, I've decided that this works better for me than the traditionally more-Mac-friendly Earthlink. Sure it has added a few training wheels to get the AOLers, but I can ignore those. In true Microsoft style, the MSN email intregrates very nicely with Entourage - although not the address book or calendar, which is quite annoying.

Something that MSN for OS X does - as well as AOL for OS X - is look very nice in the Mac's new operating system. I recently read an opinion - but cannot remember where so I cannot credit it - wondering why Apple made such an elegant and visually appealing operating system only to ignore it in all the software they produce for it. This is the beginning of my rant against brushed metal. It was a novelty in iTunes, but now it's also in iPhoto, iCal, iSync and now Safari!! Maybe it appeals to Steve Jobs' sparse aesthetics, but I think it looks cold & unfriendly. Microsoft did much a better job with its Office X suite and MSN browser.

And so I'm torn between feeling unworthy to use my Mac - and reveling in my blasphemy.

my first impressions of iBlog: Mac-only blogging software with a news aggregator

Tue, 20 May 2003 03:02:47 GMT

Ever since I first heard about iBlog a few months ago, I've been wanting to take a look at it and write down my impressions. iBlog is Mac-only blogging software. It's built for OS X and sports the increasingly ubiquitous brushed metal interface. Because things have been kind of busy for me lately, I wasn't able to take a very detailed look at iBlog. I was half-afraid that the more I looked at it, the more likely I'd decide to dump my Salon/Radio blog for iBlog.

I was very impressed. iBlog also has a built-in news aggregator. What struck me the most is how easy to understand the iBlog software is. I took a quick look at the various files that it created in my Mac's library and I could actually understand how it worked. I'm sure that this simplicity would make it that much easier to customize a blog. As much as I like the Radio Userland software, it's taken me a long time to understand how it works, and I've been blogging with it since last August. But on the other hand, iBlog is like Movable Type in that you need your own server to publish your blog on. But this could be a .Mac account, which is becoming an almost essential subscription for Mac users.

Maybe it's because I'm a librarian, but I really liked the category feature in iBlog. It made assigning and organizing categories to be very easy. iBlog also generates an RSS feed - which is essential for blogging software, I think.

I do have two negative things to say about iBlog. The first thing is that although I like its news aggregator, it provides no simple one-click method of posting items from the news aggregator to the blog. Radio Userland does this - and I thought that was the whole point of having blogging software integrated with a news reader. It is very likely that this omission will be fixed in future releases of iBlog, so this is not a huge problem.

My other concern is more of a social rather than a technological issue, but it's real and is the major reason why I don't switch to iBlog tonight. It's that iBlog is so relatively new and has not yet established a community of users. I've talked about blogging communities before (see Digression2). Although I think one's blogging software is a very loose and less significant community, it does count for something. Maybe it's also because most of the time I feel quite at home in the Salon blog community.

Anyway, I'll finish by recommending iBlog to anyone starting a new blog on a Mac (OS 10.2). Because it's on a Mac and the software is very Mac-like, you won't waste as much time figuring out the technology and can spend more time being creative.

why I'm not interested in audio blogging

Fri, 09 May 2003 14:22:31 GMT

NPR Highlights Audioblogging.

Audio Blogs: Online Diarists Sound Off

"In the 18th century, people recorded the mundane details of life in diaries. Today, bloggers -- or Web loggers -- share their most intimate thoughts and opinions with the entire world on the Internet. The online journals, known as "blogs," are increasingly popular. And while they've been dominated by text and photos, they're now also going in a new direction, using audio as well.

NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on "audio blogs" -- online audio diaries that can make anyone's life a serial drama. New technology allows them to be updated via a simple phone call....

Moorehead predicts that once the novelty of audio blogging subsides, it will become just another tool in a blogger's repertoire.

Since audio blogs are relatively new, they don't yet cover the range of their written equivalents. But some people are already using audio in creative ways. A site called The Quiet American provides audio travelogues submitted by people around in a feature called 'one-minute vacations.' " [NPR, via weblogged News]

I agree with Will that this article is already behind the curve by not even noting moblogging ...[The Shifted Librarian]

I heard that segment too. Basically I'm not interested in audio blogging because of the following reasons. I would umm and ahh too much - unless I had written down everything that I was going to say, which would make me wonder what was the point of audio blogging. Yes, I would be providing my readers with the novelty of hearing my voice with its weird/cute blend of accent. But that novelty couldn't justify how stressful I would find the whole thing to be.

the FBI would have a field day snooping in Amazon.com's customer profiles

Tue, 06 May 2003 18:57:17 GMT

Recommendation Systems in 2003. Recommendation Systems in 2003
Source: The New York Times
"Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial"
Lisa Guernsey takes a look at recommendation systems being used by Amazon and others. Interesting reading. You'll also learned what happened to the Firefly technology after it was purchased by Microsoft. [The ResourceShelf]

I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but I've found some of Amazon's recommendations to be quite spot on. Admittedly, this has required me to be proactive and remove the anomalies from my purchasing history. It also helped to tell them which things I already have and how much I like them. The question for me is whether it's worth it, considering how much personal information I'm entrusting to Amazon. Because I don't really trust them not to share it without my permission, And then there's the spectre of the PATRIOT Act. The information in library borrowing records is nothing compared to some of the goodies which might be contained in Amazon's customer profiles. These would surely be "business records" for the purposes of the Act. So why do I continue playing Amazon's recommendations game, knowing of the risks to my privacy? A part of me thinks that the damage is already done, so what does that it matter. Also, I'm too interested in this technology to be able to ignore it.

the iTunes Music Store is what I've been waiting for, mostly

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:30:17 GMT

Louis Louis.

Forbes' Arik Hesseldahl ("Apple Tunes Up"):

[A]fter a short tryout and a tad of obligatory skepticism, we can honestly say we're impressed. The iTunes Music Store, an online music download service that is integrated into Apple's iTunes 4 digital jukebox software, is enormously easy to use and dangerously addictive.

On the user-friendliness front, I can observationally add it was far easier for my Dad to set himself up than it can be for him to edit a Word document. He was thrilled to find plenty of Louis Prima.

[Bag and Baggage]

I must confess that for all my criticisms of the RIAA and its attempts to stifle technologies which do not fit into its outdated business model, I have never used Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster or any other file trading services. There are a few reasons. Lack of bandwidth for one (not an issue now thanks to my new EarthLink dsl connection at home). Also I have vague fears of viruses or adware that might hijack or embed itself in my computer. Finally, although I oppose the RIAA's rhetoric that brands all online music consumers as thieves, my own moral compass has cautioned patience, to wait until there is a legal and safe alternative.

Well, I'm glad that I'm a Mac user and that some very cool software is available for us (and that the Windows world will have to wait for months for an alternative! *gloat*). Maybe it's because I've never looked at the other services that I'm so impressed with the iTunes Music Store. It's a fabulous time-waster for one thing. I spent at least an hour browsing through their catalogue, just listening to the free 30 second streaming samples which they provide for each song. Some of these are daggy songs from my childhood & teens which I haven't heard for years, which I'd never think of buying - although at 99 cents a song, I guess that I could. It is dangerously easy to buy music on iTunes. Once you've given them a credit card number, it's all "one-click" purchasing. Before I knew it I had bought 5 songs. I am yet to test the features of transferring the purchased songs to other computers (up to 2 others) or burning the songs to a CD (up to 10 times), so I can't comment on how the DRM works in practice. The catalog is extensive enough to keep me busy & poor. It does have gaps in its content. For example, I noticed that a few prominent artists are missing (the Beatles & Madonna). Also, most of the catalog is mainstream in that the artists are somehow connected with a major record label. There's no reason why local and more independent artists (such as Australian alternative bands) couldn't appear on iTunes - or is there? Finally, the coverage is often incomplete for the artists which are on the catalog. For example, the only Crowded House albums on the catalogue are Woodface and the self-titled album. Also, not necessarily all the songs in an album will be on the catalogue - such as only 2 songs of Crowded House's self-titled album are included. None of this is very surprising or intimidating - as a law librarian, I'm very used to dealing "selected coverage" issues with electronic journals. Just because the library supposedly has access to an electronic version of a journal - it doesn't mean that the particular article which I'm looking for will be covered.

You can find music by browsing through their catalogue or using their search engine. The search engine works well, especially if you're looking for something specific. One drawback with browsing is that you might not have the same definitions of "alternative", "pop" and "rock" as iTunes' catalogers. On the other hand, browsing gives you the chance to serenditously find music which you've long forgotten about.

On the whole, I am very impressed with the iTunes Music Store. It's easy, legal and cheap - at least in my opinion. Most importantly, it seems to work. I'm sure that as it gets more established, it will improve in coverage and other functionality.

By the way, there is a very interesting article about this in Salon - to read it you need to subscribe or watch an ad to get a daily pass.

my unlikely adventures in AOL

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 05:16:29 GMT

I’m the last person whom I’d ever think of as an AOL user. I’ve never really had a strong opinion about it, but AOL has never really appealed to me. It must be all I’ve heard about it being the dumbed-down internet on training wheels, that is expensive yet full of spam.

I’ve been bombarded with their CDs, and have always ignored them, thinking that I’d never try AOL and that it’s such a waste of resources to be distributing all those CDs. Well, maybe there’s some truth to that axiom of marketing about repetition, because I did end up trying AOL.

The circumstances were pretty exceptional. I was catsitting for some friends. I wanted to connect to the web with my iBook. I was using Qwest/MSN dsl, which gave me a certain amount of free dial-up access for this type of situation. The trouble was that their dial-up only worked if I used Mac OS 9.2 (apparently this will change when MSN for OS X comes out shortly). Basically I use OS X for everything now, and did not want to be working in the old operating system.

That’s when I decided to retrieve one of those AOL CDs from the garbage bin – literally! I knew that they had a relatively new version for OS X and thought that I’d try it. Besides, I was a little curious to find out what their gated internet world was like. Maybe there was something good about it and it was only snobbery that made me shun it. At any rate, this experiment wouldn’t cost me anything if I cancelled the subscription in time.

The installation went very smoothly and easily. No complaints there. AOL for Mac OS X has a very visually attractive interface. The animated browser icon looks very cool and liquid-like.

I’m a member of a number of different web “communities.” By communities, I mean spaces where you can discuss particular topics and hook-up with people with similar interests/views/experiences. LiveJournal is the first web community which I became involved with. There’s a bewildering number of communities, from librarians to shy people (guess what – nobody says all that much in it!) to all sorts of fan communities. Recently I also joined the Well, one of the oldest internet communities, which predates the web. I did this mainly to support to support Salon, which I do not want to see fold. The Well is a gated community which is centred on on-going discussions of various topics – from libraries again to TV shows such as Buffy to discussions on etiquette, not to mention the ubiquitous discussions on Iraq and other common events. Even blogs are a kind of community – generally way more open and diffuse and less organized than the others I’ve mentioned. But often certain bloggers pay attention to other bloggers, forming a certain loose-knit community. Then are more deliberate attempts to establish blog communities, such as the blawg web ring or the Salon blogs community, both of which I belong to.

I mention all this because I think that the main thing that AOL offers are some gated virtual communities. Because AOL has such a large user base, there is a very wide-range of topics and common interests. For example, there isn’t just one Buffy/Angel message board, there are active ongoing discussions about each of the regular characters in the two shows!

One thing that makes AOL stand-out is that they make it very easy to become involved in real-time online chats. For example, there are three different chat rooms about the Buffyverse. Of course, it is possible to do all this outside of AOL, but here I admit that it is much easier in AOL. This is one part of the internet which in my mind, needs a bit of simplification.

This assumes that one likes chat rooms, and I’m not sure if I do… In fairness, chat rooms are just a different medium which I’m not used to. Blogs and web discussion boards are hardly paragons of thoughtful, considered conversation, but they are when compared with chat rooms. Chat rooms more closely emulate a real discussion. They’re much faster and spontaneous. There can be a number of different threads of conversation operating simultaneously. Maybe if I were better at multi-tasking, I’d get more out of chat rooms.

Of course, AOL is meant to be more than just chat rooms, message boards and online communities. There’s all the “content” available – thanks to its troubled merger with Time Warner. I have to say that none of it really impressed me. Maybe one reason might be that Mac users can’t use the AOL Radio feature. But none of AOL’s other content struck me as any better than anything I could find very easily on the free web. But I guess that AOL’s content is simply there – it’s not even a matter of finding it.

AOL’s biggest short-coming is its rampant spam. With my previous email accounts (with the exception of hotmail), I was only spammed after I started making my email address available to the outside world – by buying things or filling out forms etc. With AOL, I started getting spammed almost immediately. Worse than that, when I was in chat rooms, I would get spam instant messages, which are even more annoying. I realize that because AOL is the biggest ISP, it’s also the biggest target for spam. I know that it has developed spam control features which I could probably use more effectively. Still, it’s off-putting to be receiving nasty sexual spam within an hour of initially signing onto AOL.

Because I had such low expectations of AOL, I ended being slightly impressed. Is it worth the extra money? If you just need internet access, definitely not. If you want the whole AOL experience, especially the chat rooms and other community features, possibly. Other online communities can also cost money, and if they don’t cost money, they may be more difficult to use or require more work.

my silly little obituary for bookmarks

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 02:10:04 GMT

When I first started browsing the web, I was infatuated with bookmarks. Bookmarks were always bookmarks then, never "favorites", because Netscape was the only show in town - unless you counted Mosaic. This was when Microsoft was still in denial about what the web was about.

It was so difficult to find anything on the web in those days. All the search engines seemed inadequate in major ways. So the trick was to dilligently bookmark anything you came across which could possibly be of use, because you never knew if you'd be able to find it again.

I was such a nerd (and still am) that a good set of bookmarks seemed almost like a little treasure. Sometimes to be shared, sometimes hoarded, always valued.

Things are different now. The only bookmarks that I care for are the ones that go along the top of the browser. I would only bookmark a small number of sites that I use a lot - which have URLs which are difficult to remember.

None of these would be other blogs, because I keep track of those in my news aggregator. I generally don't bother with blogs that don't have RSS feeds. It's just too much extra work. I know that I miss out on the some good stuff because of this, but there are only so many hours in a day.

There's nothing more annoying than accumulating so many bookmarks that it takes longer to find a site in your list of bookmarks than it would to look it up on a search engine.

One part of the problem is that I frequently use at least three different computers. My home computer, my main work computer and the reference desk computer. I know that there are services for storing your bookmarks on the web, but they seem kind of clunky.

Maintaining bookmarks is annoying. They get outdated so easily. It's the nature of the web. The whole idea/metaphor of web bookmarks is wrong. To compare a web page to a fixed page of a book that can be marked does not match what the web is really about. Imagine a tornado inside a library. Books and pieces of paper are flying everything. Sometimes new things enter the swirling maelstrom, sometimes things leave it, but things are always changing.

It is in the nature of URLs to change - except for the ones so stable that they could easily be remembered anyway.

I guess another reason why I no longer rely on bookmarks is because I blog. If I find something interesting on the web, I'll blog it. I know that the link will go out of date, but I trust to be able to find it again. Because of the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and Google, I know that my act of blogging a site will help keep it on Google's radar.

Konfabulator - something added to my must-try list

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:18:15 GMT

Konfabulator is here, Konfabulator is here!!! - Konfabulator is a Macintosh program-thing that works in OSX and was created by some Sun engineers. It's javascript, and it works with XML. If you have a Mac with OSX then go to the site now. HURRY!. You can try it for free, and then it's $25. Konfabulator lets you create desktop widgets, which can do anything you want (i.e. have a little clock, or calender, or news). The site already has a bunch of free widgets that you can download and try out.

Leo Laporte of TechTV says these widgets are like what Active Desktop was supposed to be for Windows, "except this works." Konfabulator uses quartz technology (which is built into OSX, which allows the widget to be semi-transparent, or to fade out and other really slick looking stuff).

Oh did I mention that it uses XML and can do news feeds? Let's see, what could that mean? I wonder how long it will take before someone creates a widget for news feeds? Not long, because it is apparently pretty easy to write the widgets, even if you aren't a programmer. Goddammit. I need a Macintosh!

[Ernie the Attorney]

backing up a Radio blog

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:05:22 GMT

Radio: How to backup and restore your weblog. [Scripting News] [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

Legal Mac

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 06:02:30 GMT

Finding US Code sections quickly with your Macintosh - Larry Stanton of Legal Mac blog has created an AppleScript that allows a user to input the title and section of the United States Code, then, after clicking the "Display" button, the default browser opens to a Web page with the requested statute displayed. It is available for download. Great job, Larry! [Ernie the Attorney]

article on news readers

Tue, 28 Jan 2003 01:03:50 GMT

News Crawling vs. Aggregating - After reading J.D. Lasica's very interesting article on news readers I decided to try out NewzCrawler. I'm just getting started so I can't really say if I'll like it more than the Radio News Aggregator, but one thing I like a lot so far is the ability to organize feeds into topic folders. This allows me to put all of the legal stuff together. Also I can delete specific entries within categories. Overall the interface seems much more user-friendly, but I'll have to see how it actually performs. [Ernie the Attorney]

ignore this post

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 04:53:06 GMT

OK, that does it. I'm fed up with Radio Userland's news aggregator and will no longer be using it. When it works it is great. As I mentioned in my article on news aggregators, it is very convenient to just be able to plug an item from the news aggregator to my blog. But it keeps on chewing up articles! I read something & think - "hmm, that looks interesting, I might read or blog that, but not now." Then a day or two later I want to return to it and it's totally gone - even if I didn't mark it for deletion. [I just realized that this is an option that you can turn off - although they strongly recommend against doing this. I'm going to try it anyway, I'm usually pretty good about deleting what I'm not interested in. So you can ignore the rest of this posting]

I think that I'll either use NetNewsWire Lite or AmphetaDesk instead. It'll mean more formatting work on this blog, but at least I won't be wasting time trying to refind those articles which disappeared from my aggregator. As an aside, over the next week I'll be testing the cool-looking OS X searching agent called SmartDog.