WebMink

Kool-Aid and Secrets

Seems Scoble has not only drunk the Kool-Aid but he's trying to inject it into others too (although from the brief encounters I've had with Dare I know he'll resist manfully!).

Fortunately among the incredibly partisan postings there's still the odd gem, like the one on secrets. I'd add one more to Christopher Coulter's list of reasons not to keep secrets: market creation. When you're spawning a new kind of market idea (the Web for example) it usually seems to take someone somewhere to plant the meme-seeds and get the idea going - this is what I was referring to at Supernova when I quoted Paul Saffo. My comments caused a stir among some people, so more on that soon...

posted at 2:51 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Mamamusings moves, Robb no longer robbed

A day of online shifts it seems. Liz Lawley has moved Mamamusings to a new home, and wisely opted for mamamusings.net as the name. This was triggered by the John Robb Incident and the coining of Robb's Law (that anything you value should be hosted on your own domain - you do know John has moved, don't you...). I note from John that Userland has done the decent thing and re-instated John's permalinks - well done, Dave.

posted at 2:29 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Bosworth and Push

I note from Sean that Adam Bosworth of BEA now has a blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, Adam!

In his first substantive posting, Adam comments that the web is bad at offline operation and at push. In my opinion, the richest field for exploration comes not from the browser but from the aggregator. XML aggregators offer a close simulation of push (I get to read web log postings almost the instant they happen) and also allow reading offline.

That's as long as the full text is in there. Traditional publications and RSS purists seem to shy away from putting the full text of their postings in their XML feeds, but all that does is render them unread (at least it does here at the Minkery).

posted at 2:20 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Thursday, July 24

US proves UK Communications Bill wrong

Triggered by an unprecedent wave of public outcry, the bipartite consensus in the US House of Representatives to strike down the FCC's move towards further media consolidation is being heralded by wise voices in the USA, but it comes in the nick of time to act as a counter-example in the UK. As Jocelyn Hay of VLV notes, legislation is passing through Parliament to allow foreign ownership and consolidation of control of Brirish media:
These changes would allow British media companies, including ITV, to be bought by non-European owners, with the aim of attracting inward investment from the USA. They would also allow Channel 5 Television to be bought by any newspaper company, including News International, which already owns The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World, and is the major shareholder in the satellite broadcaster, BSkyB.
I gather that the justification is not least to 'follow the American example' where it is claimed the population benefits from the consolidated powerbase investing to maximise their audiences and profits.

So it will come as a shock to the British government to discover, as we were told by former FCC chairman Reed Hundt at Supernova a few weeks ago, that the only people who want more consolidation in the US media are located in Washington DC at the FCC itself. Please keep the action rolling over there in the US; it's not just you who will benefit, on this or the other right-wing-motivated policies of the current FCC.

posted at 4:01 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Strike One

Memo to US friends: I have a hunch that Senator John Kerry would not handle foreign policy any better than GWB. Read this (from The Guardian [via NewsTrolls]):
"The obligation of the United States government is to rapidly internationalize the effort in Iraq, get the target off of American troops, bring other people, particularly Muslim-speaking and Arab-speaking Muslim troops, into the region,'' Kerry said.
If you can't see the problem, BTW, you are probably part of it...

posted at 2:19 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Wednesday, July 23

DRM needs leeway, not tighter rules

You may (just) recall how, last October I felt David Weinberger's comments about leeway were right on the mark. Well, I think the balance Dan Gillmor is calling for needs this word too. What the MPAA's new 'Respect Copyrights' campaign ignores is the fact that rigid enforcement is treated as damage and worked around. What need is neither reckless abuse of the ability to copy nor heartless restriction of the ability to exercise fair-use rights.

What we need is leeway, not tightly defined rules. This is not to say that there's no place for legal definitions. Rather, to create room for leeway and the common-sense exercise of freedoms by normal people, legislation needs to include an area of imprecision bounded by a trusted independent authority. The pile of coins on the counter that says we're trusted customers - trusted, but verified.

posted at 7:22 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Divided by a common language

I just finished reading Jane Walmsley's 'Brit-Think, Ameri-Think', [UK|US] an impulse purchase in Waterstone's which appealed because it seemed to go beyond the usual dictionary of differences in english usage and instead claimed a humourous yet insightful glimpse of the psychological engine rooms of Britain and the USA. Superficially, it looked pretty amusing and offered the promise of insight from a Yank married to a Brit and broadcasting on the BBC.

Sadly, I'm disappointed. It's not bad, but the chapters are very short and the examples all seem to stop short of either real insight or real spleen-aching humour (or even humor). A strength as I said is that it's not just a list of word usage differences and tries had to look at the deeper cultural differences. But Jane is always skirting around a really insightful analysis of the deep truths about each nation and never quite makes it to the punch. For example, after 15 years of shuttling to and fro between the US and UK I still struggle with understanding the US education system, but the book doesn't even discuss the huge differences in philosophy and practice.

For myself, I have often espoused the view that America idolises 'freedom' and all its true weaknesses and strengths come from there, and that Britain is the slave of subjecthood which has led to endemic cynicicm. It has a reasonably deft touch and flashes of brilliance (I love the Jolliffe cartoons), but sadly, I didn't learn as much from this book as I'd hoped and it's not one I'll be readily recommending.

posted at 5:35 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Tuesday, July 22

Mac vs GNU/Linux

I've been explaining to people for a while now that the modern Mac, with OS X, is nothing like the systems it has replaced. It's as if Apple have discontinued the Mac and replaced it with a Unix system designed for ordinary people with a job to do. Well, a picture speaks a thousand words...

posted at 4:18 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |