Hm. I didn’t realise that Google now had de facto ownership of the term “weblogger”. While trying to play with the new version of Google Groups this afternoon, I was confronted by this infuriating error message:
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So years ago I did a journalism course and one of the early lessons in news reporting was just an exercise in trying to collectively define news. It was a pretty heavily-directed effort, and I think it had to be, because like many other things that we’re so used to in our everyday lives, it’s weirdly difficult to explain to people. Anyway, I’m cleaning up my flat and I find the definition that we came up with on a piece of notepaper, and I’m looking at it and I’m thinking: “This is actually quite interesting – and possibly quite useful for people who are setting up subject-based weblogs”. So here it is:
“New information of significance, interest or relevance which affects the lives or interests of a particular group of readers / listeners / viewers”
It’s not perfect by any means, but it gives you some places to start when you’re thinking about what to write. Know your audience, make sure you’re giving them information, and make sure that the information is actually going to matter to them. It’s not exactly revelatory information, but I figured someone out there might find it useful. And now I’ve transcribed it onto the net, it means that I can throw away the piece of paper!
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Links for 2004-12-05
- I’ve been playing with and installing MediaWiki And I have to confess – I’m pretty bloody impressed. One of the easiest installations I’ve ever done for a wiki and very powerful and flexible. This might be the core of a future project
- SXSW Interactive Festival Does anyone know how they source people, papers and panels for the SXSW Interactive festival? Let me know if so…
- Mr Jones on Tony Stark on ETech “The line up for 2005’s Etech has been posted, and so far it seems like the same people talking about the same pet subjects. Not many ‘genuine outbreaks of the future’ so far.” Plus, I’m a Beatle. Which is nice.
- Captcha as distributed handwriting recognition systems “Distributed CPU cycles are worthless unless you’re SETI or Pixar. Distributed brain cycles… now that’s a much more intriguing proposition.”
- Tiny hats on Innocent Bottles made by real grannies! ” As we speak, lots of nice grannies at Extra Care and Age Concern centres around the UK are knitting us mini bobble hats for our smoothies. For each bottle sold in EAT outlets across the UK, innocent and EAT will donate 50p to Age Concern”
- The weblog of Miss K, transgendered z-list celebrity Not only beautiful, well-constructed, web native and elegant – but also bloody interesting. It’s probably cos I’m a poof, but I find this way more interesting than Belle de Jour…
- Vaughn pulls out of these new weblog award things because he doesn’t like the company Like much of what’s been happening online, I’ve completely missed the ‘2004 weblog awards’ (no relation to the Bloggies). I think this one emerged from the mostly right-wing ex-warblogger politico community/ecosystem…
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Now available: Mr Webb's Mind Hacks!
My work colleague and R&D partner has a book out (with Tom Stafford)! It’s called Mind Hacks and it’s from O’Reilly in their Hacks series. So when you’ve finished fiddling with your Tivo or with Google’s API, now you can take that spare screwdriver and start mucking around with that most interesting pieces of squishyware in the world: your brain.
The book is about how your mind works and is put together, but it’s not one of those long boring books where you just have to nod sagely and stroke your beard. Instead, this is more of a things-to-make-and-do of cognitive neuroscience. It’s full of experiments, tricks and tips designed to expose how your vision, motor skills, attention, cognition and subliminally perceptual systems work. Moreover the hacks have entertaining and non-threatening names like Why people don’t work like elevator buttons (PDF) and Why can’t you tickle yourself? (PDF). The only annoying thing about the book is that it would be really ideal as a Christmas gift for Mr Webb, except he had to scupper my plans by being one of the people who wrote it. Bastard.
I think I was lucky enough to be around when the idea for the book first emerged a few years ago at a social software summit in Finland organised by Clay Shirky. At the time I think there was general agreement that it was a bloody good idea, but I don’t know how many of us actually expected to see it in print. Of course in order for it to make it to print, Mr Webb had to part-time abandon me in the bowels of the BBC to ponce off and have fun inside The British Library. He has been much missed (not that he’s coming back or anything), but I think it’s been worth it. There’s a weblog to accompany the book at mindhacks.com.
Anyway, it’s in my best interests to bask in the reflected glory of my chum, so I’m going to ask all of you to go and buy a copy immediately and recommend it to all of your friends – particularly those you think could do with some help keeping their brains ticking over. And I expect to see some pictures of you lazy bastards performing impromptu neurosurgery on each other by the end of the year!
- Buy the book from Amazon.co.uk
- Buy the book from Amazon.com
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Links for 2004-12-04
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Every two months or so I lose the URL for this and want to find it again. Two players who have never met try to guess words to describe a picture. If they match they get points, and the image gains useful metadata… Awesome stuff…(categories: distributed folksonomy fun game games identification image internet metadata photography play socialsoftware tag tagging tags web)
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Links for 2004-12-03
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“Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer”
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“Sissy is a pejorative term for boys who appear effeminate – typical for a society that considers the separation of male and female identified characteristics more important than the separation of church and state…”
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Links for 2004-12-02
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Concept in a nutshell: buy drinks with hats, give money to charity, wear tiny hat, get someone to take a photo, look dumb, get dumped by your partner, embrace the fundamental pain of existence. You know, for kids!
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“Discrimination is being blamed for high rates of mental health problems amongst gay men and lesbians, a study suggests. A survey of 1,285 homosexual and bisexual men and women found just under a third had attempted suicide.”(categories: anxiety discrimination gay harrassment health homosexual mentalhealth politics prejudice suicide)
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Not terribly thrilling this one, but always useful for quick reference when you need to protect some admin interface or back-end that’s lying around the place.
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Links for 2004-12-01
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If you’re willing to help, email julia.rooke@bbc.co.uk and tell her what your favourite radio show is, why you’re so obsessed about it or radio in general, what the show means to you, and your phone number in case they want to get back to you.
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Links for 2004-11-30
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Penny Arcade’s one-shot cartoon illustrates the totally obvious social dynamics of anonymous misbehaviour online and the clear need for someone to generate mechanisms to compensate for it…
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The Radio 2-isation of Top of the Pops continues apace – and I quote: The new programme will combine with archive show TOTP2, mixing new music with footage of classic bands. The corporation said the new show “aims to appeal to a diverse audience”
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Links for 2004-11-29
- Rufus Wainwright’s Gay Messiah “He will fall from the stars – Studio 54 – and appear on the sand of Fire Island’s shore. Better pray for your sins, Better pray for your sins, ‘cuz the gay messiah’s coming…”