Google's New Open Source Blog

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I've Been Banned - by Volvo

Apparently:

When I was at Volvo IT (my former employee until 2000) for a meeting today, it became sadly clear that Volvo IT have entered further down the path of radical ignorance. I’ve heard about their strange firewall filters before stopping people from visiting web pages containing the phrases “IP telephony”, “sex” and “”games”. Apparently the filters have broadened and now they seems to have added phrases like “social software” as well.

I couldn’t resist asking if I could do a quick test for a number of web-sites I read or write. Here are 4 examples of sites that was blocked.

* http://brintam.blogspot.com/ (my personal photo blog in Swedish - maybe not that strange that it is blocked)
* http://www.weconverse.com (Richard Gatarskis web/blog where he discusses e g social media in companies and society)
* http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/ (Thinker and author John Robbs blog)
* http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/ (Glyn Moody’s blog where he writes about and explores e g open source)

Subversive stuff, this blogging.

Die, TinyURL, Die!

A couple of years ago, I wrote about TinyURLs, noting:

they are a great idea: too many Internet addresses have become long snaking strings of apparently random text. But the solution - to replace this with a unique but shorter URL beginning http://tinyurl.com commits the sin of obscuring the address, an essential component of the open Web.

Well, I don't want to say "I told you so", but "I told you so":

The link shortening and redirection service TinyURL went down apparently for hours last night, rendering countless links broken across the web. Complaints have been particularly loud on Twitter, where long links are automatically turned to TinyURLs and complaining is easy to do, but the service is widely used in emails and web pages as well. The site claims to service 1.6 billion hits each month.

That post worries about having a single point of failure for the Web; that's certainly valid, but for me the malaise is deeper. Even if there were hundreds of TinyURL-like services, it wouldn't solve the problem that they subvert the open nature of the Web.

Far better for the Web to wean itself off TinyURL now and get back to proper addressing. Interestingly, blogging URLs often do that, with nicely descriptive URLs that let you form a rough idea of what you're going to view before you get there.

Carmen, the Blog

Further proof, if any were needed, that blogs have entered the mainstream:

When the curtain falls on the final performance of English National Opera’s Carmen on Friday it will also end a groundbreaking experiment in connecting artists with their audience.

The production, staged by the film director Sally Potter, has been a commercial hit but was mauled by the critics, who called it “woefully tedious”, “an ugly, misbegotten aberration” and “a suicide note to the Arts Council”.

However, through a series of blogs written by members of the cast and crew, including Potter, the ENO believes it defused some of the power of the reviews by reaching out to the paying public.

W(h)ither Blogging?

Here's a thoughtful post:

Somehow it seemed that blogging just isn't that hot anymore. The feeling has been exacerbated by the latest slow down in news. My feeds just do not update that often these days. Can it be that the digestion phase applies to blogs just as it applies to startups? In this post we'll investigate whether the blogosphere is going through a digestion phase.

I find this particularly interesting because my impression is exactly the reverse: I find more and more interesting stuff in my feeds. Not only that, but I find this humble little blog is also attracting more attention, particularly among the PR crowd. I've noticed a distinct change in attitude among the latter - unspoken, but clearly there - from regarding blogs as vaguely interesting but not very influential, to seeing them as just as important as traditional media.

I'd go further: the blogs seem to be taking over. At a time when more and more (dead-tree) newspapers and magazines are closing down, or going purely online, and when more and more online titles are starting to run bloggers as part of the mix, it seems to me that the barycentre of digital publishing is mostly certainly moving deep into the heart of the blogosphere.

Of course, the acid test will be during the next downturn, but I'm optimistic. Unlike the publishing excesses of dotcom 1.0, where magazines blossomed with the manic marketing of no-hoper startups, only to wilt themselves when that, er, fertiliser dried up, blogs are predicated on lean and mean. The only ones that will suffer seriously are those that are beginning to bloat towards the condition of traditional, inefficient publications. No names, no packdrill.

Letting Floggers Go Hang

This seems pretty unexceptionable, if a little hard to police consistently:

Under laws due to come into force at the beginning of next year, but likely to be delayed until April for the UK, companies posing as consumers on fake blogs, providing fake testimonies on consumer rating websites such as TripAdvisor, or writing fake book reviews on Amazon risk criminal or civil liability.

What's interesting is that blogging and its attendant problem of fake blogging - aka flogging - is considered important enough to warrant pan-European legislation of this kind. Gosh, we must be doing something right.

Blogging in Italy: Not La DolceVita

I love Italy - wonderful people, wonderful scenery, wonderful art, wonderful food, wonderful wine - well, you get the picture; but I do sometimes wonder about the politicians:

The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.

...

the Levi-Prodi law obliges anyone who has a website or a blog to get a publishing company and to have a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director.

99% would close down.

The lucky 1% still surviving on the Internet according to the Levi-Prodi law would have to respond in the case of the lack of control on defamatory content in accordance with articles 57 and 57 bis of the penal code. Basically almost sure to be in prison.

Cazzarola!

Update: A blogospheric firestorm seems to have brought the Italian government - some of it, at least - to its senses. Dio sia ringraziato.

Is Apache About to Get Scalped?

Certainly looks like it:

Apache loses 2.8% share this month, partly through the strong growth at the major blogging systems, and partly due to 2.5 million domains on Apache expiring at trouble-free.net. Apache has around a 10% market share advantage over IIS now, which is the smallest gap between the two since IIS was launched in 1996.

The only consolation is that Apache's job is done: it has the shown the way. Today, if necessary, we can live without Apache as an example of how Microsoft can be beaten in a market, because the total open source story is now so strong.

I'm Back....

...be very afraid.

The Right Way to Write Online

A great piece by Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen called "Write articles, not blog postings." It's extremely long and detailed - including Monte Carlo simulations - which in a sense is a proof of its own thesis: that experts are better off writing long, detailed features than joining in the mosh pit of the blogosphere.

I don't disagree with analysis, although personally I use blogging in quite a different way - part notebook, part marketing.

Also, am I the only person who finds it slightly ironic that Nielsen's own Web site looks, well, you know, ever-so slightly clunky?

This is My 2000th Post

Apparently. Just thought I'd mention it.

iPlayer Frothing at the Mouth

I've done my fair share of apoplectic frothing over the disgrace that is the BBC iPlayer, but here's a further helping, courtesy of the Guardian Technology blog.

Movable Type Moves to Open Source

Good news for the world of blogging - and beyond:

Moveable Type 4.0 is the first major release of Movable Type since MT 3.0 in 2004 and comes complete with a market disrupting announcement: SixApart will open source Movable Type before the end of the third quarter.

There's already a website for the imminent open source community, too:

Movable Type Open Source, or MTOS, is the open source project that will consist of a GPL-licensed version of Movable Type 4.0, to be released in Q3 2007, and resources for the already large community of Movable Type developers, hosted at www.movabletype.org/opensource.

Der CEO Spricht

I find Jonathan Schwartz's blog fascinating. Not so much for what it says - even though that is often, as here, thoughtful and well written, as for the fact that the CEO of a huge company that is being turned around in front of our eyes thinks that it is worth doing, and at such length.

My fascination sometimes feels of the kind provoked by watching enormously large structures head slowly but inexorably towards each other. Not that I want to be negative, you understand.

The Blog is the New Resume

Pretty much . (Via ContentBlogger.)

We Forbid You to Mention This Post

Well, this is going to work, isn't it?

Malaysia's traditional media has been ordered not to mention, quote or pursue stories exposed by bloggers and online news sites, which are emerging as a powerful new media force.

A security ministry circular dated March 13 told top editors of a dozen mainstream newspapers and five television stations that they must not "give any consideration whatsoever" to anti-government material posted online.

Ironically the circular, issued by the ministry's secretary general, was first exposed by the independent online magazine Malaysiakini.com on Saturday.

Further proof of the power - and importance - of blogs, especially in countries with a supine press. Come to think of it, they're also pretty important in countries with even a mostly-supine press - as in, everywhere. (Via Smart Mobs.)

Lifelogging

I've touched on the subject of lifelogging - recording every moment of your waking day - before, but this feature is by far the best exploration of the subject I've come across.

What's fascinating is that it draws together so many apparently disparate threads: openness, privacy, security, search technologies, storage, memories, blogging, online videos, virtual worlds, etc. etc. (Via 3pointD.com.)

Enter the WeblogMatrix

For fans of matrices, here's another one: Weblogmatrix, which compares the main blogging platforms. (Via Quoi9.)

Blogging Becomes Compulsorier

I think it's a great idea to force journos to roll up their sleeves and interact with their readers; but this may be taking it a little too far:

CNET is mandating that its blogging journalists respond to all reader comments and questions, according to a report in The Guardian. Further, they are also expected to get involved in every debate that "has legs." (Hat tip to Cyberjournalist)

Also, there is a teeny-weeny irony here, in that the Guardian's flagship blog, Comment is Free, rarely sees the posters (many of whom or journos) responding even minimally to comments (with a few honourable exceptions.)

Sock Mobs

An interesting post from Douglas Rushkoff:

There's a relatively new phenomenon occurring online these days - an illusion of populist group hostilitiy I've come to call "Sock Mobs," after the "sock puppets" people use to feign multiple identities in online conversations. It works like this:

An anonymous poster picks a fight with his presumed enemy. Whether or not that enemy responds, a number of other posters appear to chime in - agreeing to whatever the accusation might be. "This guy is a commie." "This doctor is a quack." "This guy wants Israel to be abolished." "This professor is corrupting college students." The accusation comes along with twisted supporting evidence. Every once in a while, an underinformed but real person agrees with the accusations; after all, it appears from the posts that this enemy of all things good and proper really might be a threat. All this makes it look like there's a lot of upset people.

(Via Smart Mobs.)