plasticbag.org

I’m in the middle of writing a much longer post on the subject, but in the meantime I thought I’d just point people towards Odeo which launched yesterday. If you’re interested in podcasting in any way but have found it intimidating up until this point, then I can heartily recommend Odeo – if only because (unlike iTunes) it has lots of nice web-like affordances, like being able to link through to feeds (or shows) directly like: IT Conversations, Radio Free SubPop, SETI podcast and many others. There is, of course, already a whole bunch of BBC stuff listed on the service – most of which you can find via the tag bbc. It’s a shame that the ‘create’ functionality isn’t in place at this stage, because that bloody rocks, but in the meantime I’d still check it out…

• Why would you need Search Engine Optimisers when Google has a whole page on what you should do? Google’s information for Webmasters page pretty much contains all the basic stuff that you need to make your site work well in search engines. Stick with that. Fire SEOs.
• A place where it rains, but not on you “A circular room made of iron clad in green leaves. It is raining inside the room, excpet where you’re standing. No matter where you go in the rain, it will stop falling right above your head”
• Special keycases that only let people who are excited about driving get access to the keys Uses galvanic skin response sensors. Which rocks. Except it’s for the Vauxhall Astra, which makes you wonder if anyone will ever get to drive the thing..
• A step-by-step guide to charisma “Scientists claim to have found the secret to that magical quality, charisma, and they say it can be learnt. But before you enrol for classes, don’t think it will get you the job of your dreams.”
• The BBC Listen Live is now available on the Apple Dashboard downloads site Remember, this is the only official BBC widget – and we need your feedback to make it better…
• Andrew Otwell’s thoughts on Dashboard mirror a lot of the things that I’ve been thinking about (and talking about to Adam Greenfield) It’s a perfect environment for prototyping ambient informational devices around the home – like the orb that we were playing with a while back…
• Delivr Digital Postcards Built using the Flickr API, you can send any of the creative commons licensed photos to your friend as a postcard
• Harold Rheingold’s visualisation of technologies of cooperation I don’t feel I’ve been able to interrogate this enough yet to present an opinion on it, even though it’s been available for weeks…
• New Scientist on “Entering a dark age of innovation” Seems like a pretty stupid and unfocused argument – lots more people in the world but we’re not producing as many discrete units of innovation per person as we once did… Is that it?
• About Google Video “Our mission is to organise the world’s information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day”
• The Madonna Code – Searching for the perfect music recommendation system (including an awesome one that correlates music with cultural traits) “Thus, we can see that a high-energy vocal style correlates with the presence of dairy in a society’s diet; a high degree of rhythmic blending between vocalists signals a high degree of social solidarity;”
• Podcasting Juice – a Japanese podcasting portal It’s more interesting to me because of the beautiful Aqua-style effects than for the functionality. I must steal it.
• Are Brits the world’s worst lovers? It seems a little unfair to be honest. Just a little. Well, maybe not. Well okay then.

The week that never ends keeps on giving – first Live8, then the Olympics, then the explosions in London and now Birmingham City Centre is being evacuated. It’s difficult to tell whether or not this is just over-cautious behaviour or if something specific is happening. It sounds a bit like a couple of packages have been found and some theatres have been evacuated from the centre. According to the guy on TV they’re sending in a robot to look at the packages. As before I’m going to recommend people check the news if they’re nervous about what’s going on. At the moment no news network seems to think it’s urgent enough to reschedule their weather or sports bulletins, so that might help keep it in perspective.

• Fox News Live comments ‘impartially’ on the situation in London (48 minutes is the bit you should be looking at) “That these people are, If necessary, prepared to spill Arab blood in addition to the blood of regular — of nonarab people living in London. “
• “The Controversy Over Foie Gras – Does a Duck Have a Soul?” The major question is where’s the balance point between deriving human pleasure and inflicting pain on animals. As far as I’m concerned, there is a point at which inflicting pain for pleasure rather than necessity is sadistic and should be stopped.
• Blast from the past: “Did I miss something? Okay the bicicycle story that Barbelith, Megnut and Kottke have all blogged… what is this?” “I must have missed some inner circle of childhood memory bonding”
• Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock? The Onion’s in re-run territory, but what does it matter if they’re all as good as this classic from the site…
• Wage Slaves – people are being paid sweatshop wages to farm MMORPGs for corporations Webb told me about this about a year ago. Terra Nova talk about it a lot too. Fascinatingly weird, the whole thing…
• ]Ben Hammersley on the BBC’s Creative Archive project “So the question is, why are the creative industries in the UK allowed to take public money, without fulfilling the obligation to deliver publicly accessible value? Why is this even an option? We have paid for it, now let us use it.”
• The luffa – also spelt loofah or loofa – is a subtropical vine which can be harvested and stripped back to make a bath or kitchen sponge They do not grow underwater as you may have expected. Fool.
• TagCloud – an automated tool for deriving folksonomic classifications from RSS feeds “Essentially, TagCloud searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds.”

This has been the second major terrorist attack on a major international city that I’ve felt I should write about on my site over the last five and a bit years. It’s also the second that has left me speechless and unsure how to react. Last time I tried desperately to find ways to be useful, but it was still difficult to know what you could say or do that wouldn’t just be redundant. At the time I thought it was because it was a time for New Yorkers to talk, and that the rest of us were really just there to be supportive or whatever. But now there’s been an attack on London – the city in which I live – and I still don’t know what to say. It feels sordid to wallow or revel in the attacks, melodramatic and self-important to talk about how shocking it was and strangely self-involved to talk about your personal experience of it. Unfortunately, even though it’s difficult to know what you can say about what’s happened, as time passes you get more and more conscious that it’s worse to say nothing. Something has happened. People have died. We need to acknowledge it.

Which is I think why the stoicism of the British webloggers has felt so right to me – the attitude is clear and simple. We’re not going to dwell, we’re not going to indulge in an orgy of introspection and outpourings of grief. We’re not going to perform our emotions on stage for everyone around us. We’re going to stand by the victims and their families quietly. We’re going to make it absolutely clear once and for all that this is a city that has been burned to the ground, ravaged by Plague and bombed to hell and will not be moved by these terrorists. And then we’re going to get on with our lives. As normal. Full Stop. The London News Review said it first and best. I stand with them.

And that’s all I’ve got. I have no more to react to. No more to say. Other than to say how impressed I’ve been with Londonist and the other weblogs that have been actively covering the whole thing. And while I’ve got the opportunity, I’d also like to say how awesome it’s been to see an out-gay Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Brian Paddick, playing such a significant role in reassuring the British public. That made me feel better about London than pretty much anything else.

“As I was walking home this evening, a little girl was riding her bike in the middle of the street. She still had the training wheels on as she wobbled and struggled to peddle. It reminded me of when I was little and how badly I wanted a bicycle but couldn’t get one. My parents wouldn’t let me have a bike until I was 12; my mom was too afraid I’d hurt myself. I’d pass the bike section in the store and just look, having given up asking my parents about it long ago. I eventually did get one after much pleading and begging. Amazingly, getting my driver’s license at 16 and the subsequent borrowing of the family car passed without incident.”

• Jobs offers support to dad of teen killed over iPod Apple CEO offers condolences ‘from his heart’ to family of teen killed last week over iPod.
• London tube bombing on Flickr Apparently this is a picture from within one of the carriages (or leaving one of the carriages underground)
• The “Light Play” Sunlight Table traps light in fibre-optic threads and uses it to create pinpricks of light in a table top… “By doing so, it encourages a dialogue between work and nature and re-establishes a connection with the outside world”
• Blogs respond to London blasts “News of the suspected terror attacks across central London has quickly spread across the net as people try to get information about the chaos. “
• War of the fire ants -†the extraordinary reproductive habits where “Males pit their genes against females by chucking DNA out of eggs.” “The result is that both the males and females have their own, independent gene pools, leading some to speculate whether each gender ought to be technically classified as its own species. “
• Wikipedia article on the London bombings “On 7 July 2005, beginning at 08:49, during the height of morning rush hour, a series of four explosions struck London’s transport system.”
• Google Employee Blogs A list of weblogs by people who work for Google – a good number of people then. I wonder what their policy on weblog stuff is (if they have one)
• The Guardian is to change its size to a ‘Berliner’ format halfway between broadsheet and tabloid… Clearing out the tabs brings this story about the Guardian’s proposed change in size that I first heard about at a typography event last year…
• Software patent bill thrown out which is bloody good news “European politicians have thrown out a controversial bill that could have led to software being patented.”
• Robot Wisdom on the Street – a weird and disturbing article about what happened to Jorn Barger “Coined the term ‘weblog,’ never made a dime.”