Webmonkey(s) à finally got themselves a blog

I’ve loved these rascals since I first started reading them via Hotwired in 1996.  Seems like the dawn of man – a lot of water under the bridge since 1996.

The weekly Webmonkey newsletter kept me on top of internet development tools (nevermind that I’m not a coding geek) even after Wired went the Conde way and Hotwired became a poor distant relation with a third eye in its forehead.  Now this gang of weasels has a blog (finally!). 

Lo and behold, they’re doing Tripod Blog Builder (Lycos…hmmm…).  I’m hoping this new site is sanitized only because they’re still figuring out the blog thing and not the scripting thing; perhaps Webmonkeys figure putting too many bells and whistles on the blog will reduce traffic to the Webmonkey site.

This should be fun to watch; wonder how long it'll last?

5:11:12 PM    comment []

From Blogs to e-Zines: Letter to Salon Blogging Community – Follow-up

Rob at Emphasis Added posed a question to the Salon Blog Community; be sure to check it out under 19-FEB-03 entry at http://www.emphasisadded.com (sorry Rob, the link directly to the post doesn’t seem to work).

Note the comments under that particular post; I’ve made a suggestion regarding the use of a Forum concept to address our needs.  Note the sketchy example in post below, intended to give you some idea how my suggestion would work (I know, it’s not pretty, but I think you’ll get the idea.  The software I’ve proposed is located at www.forums.snitz.com; if you know of another, better solution, feel free to suggest it.  I have a little experience with Snitz, hence my suggestion.)

While my suggestion doesn’t exactly make for an “e-zine” with editor and a pretty front page, it does provide solutions for couple of holes here in the Slogoshere.  It gets us a lot closer to e-zine status until the right kind of e-zine format becomes available.

1)       Salon Blog directory with overview for each blog does not exist – readers have to open stuff on a hit-or-miss basis since there’s no directory to help them find content that suits their tastes or needs.  New blogs flounder until “discovered” by others who know how to find them.

2)       Must be self-administered – administration must be distributed equitably (and we all know there’s not going to be a lot of $$ in the Salon bucket for this kind of thing).  Any one Slogger who takes on administration for all cuts into their own blogging time.  Why not make this task distributed, with each Slogger assuming responsibility for their own Forum entry.

3)       Must be self-edited – There is an e-zine in existence, virtualoccoquan.com, run by Mark Hoback.  This takes a hell of a lot of uncompensated time (which those of us featured highly appreciate).  But the growth rate of Salon Blogs means at some point the Sloggers will have to take on some of this effort themselves, until a subsidized e-zine format develops and becomes available.  A self-edited format also allows each and every participating Slogger equal air time, no editor tossing work to a circular file based on their own criteria.

4)       Solution must be low to no-cost – Freeware/shareware Forum software can provide solutions without inordinate cost.

There are at least a couple of barriers that need to be addressed:

1)       Hosting – where would this Salon Blogs Directory/Forum be housed?

2)       Cost – how much for hosting/bandwidth and how do we distribute this cost?

3)       Volume – are there issues with having more than 15,000 possible page reads per day at this Directory/Forum?

4)       Community Criteria – are all newbies welcome, or only those that have plunked down their money to Salon/Userland?  What other criteria might there be?

5)       Community Standards and Practices – what do they look like?

Are there any other holes we should look to fill while we’re at it?  Are there any additional barriers you can identify?

I’m looking forward to your feedback.  We’re on the verge of something big, something that could be a lot of fun.

1:04:47 PM    comment []

Mungo Man’s age changes the evolutionary TripTik

If you get the chance to either watch Journey of Man or read the book, please do so.  Spencer Wells is an engaging and articulate geneticist, the kind of guy who could very well be the next Carl Sagan of the science world.  Wells tracks the genes of man around the world from point of origin in Africa to the New World, documenting through genetic markers the progress of man’s evolution and dispersion.

The recent redating of Mungo Man remains in Australia may provide further substantiation of Wells’ “triptik” following the gene trail.  It may close a gap or shift a gap in the gene trail back to Asia.  According to the article (link above), there is a 40,000 year gap in the gene trail between Africa and Australia; the redating may close this gap by half, and may also suggest that our “incubation” in Asia was much longer than previously proposed.

I’m not hazarding a guess on any other implications this redating may pose; I hope that we hear from Wells soon on this matter.

12:08:57 PM    comment []

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

The little guy was home again yesterday with another stomach virus. 

After a number of years working in information systems in infrastructure support, I can attest there is nothing quite like being “paged out” on business emergencies to get one’s adrenaline pumping.  This still pales in comparison to the urgency of the parental page a child can issue at 2 am; such a page can cause a parent to levitate and fly towards the child, eyes yet unopened and consciousness not fully engaged, in only heartbeats of elapsed time.

How does it work, too, that a father can be awake and not hear the same urgent page, and a slumbering mother can?  Hmm.

It’s a mystery.

8:21:06 AM    comment []