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I have tremendous respect for him for this whole thing – maintaining his life, and working at such a high level for such a long period of time. Hopefully it’ll change how people think about people who are HIV positive…
Links for 2005-01-29
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Sings music from a stock set of phrases, responds emotionally to touch and can be plugged into an iPod – at which point it will dance
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“A number of web pioneers have been overlooked again this year, notably Dave Winer, with Tom Coates from Plastic Bag and Derek Powazek lining up as favourites for the Lifetime Achievement Awards.”
Bloggie, bloggie, bloggie, bloggie etc.
It’s Bloggie Nomination time again and I’m up for two awards this year – Best UK / Irish weblog and – gulp – lifetime achievement. And of course, typically, as soon as lots of people start linking to my site I can’t think of anything whatsoever to say – total stage-fright. Given how slack I’ve been on my site this year, and how little I feel that I’ve managed to contribute to the ongoing debates and discussions around the web, I have to say I’m surprised by the nominations. But it’s a nice feeling anyway. Thanks guys.
I’d like to say thank you to all the drunk people who nominated me in the first place. And to all the care-in-the-community folk they found to do the first-round judging – you guys are the best! Now all I need to do is to hope that the entire community of webloggers neglects to take their lithium before they vote. And with sublime confidence that this is precisely what will happen, I say to my design inspiration and creative motivator Derek Powazek and to my arch Gaybolian nemesis Ernie – bring it on!
But it’s not all good news. Neither Ernie nor I are up for the gay weblogger award this year. Other notable absences include Sparky, Bravo and Simon. So now the torch must pass to How to Learn Swedish, SistersTalk, Tranniefesto, Troubled Diva and Hot Toddy’s Toaster Oven. It’s up to you guys now to keep up the tradition of bitchy ironic gay gang-fighting that we’ve established over the last four years. It’s always been the most fun award to contest, even when the nominees aren’t strictly gay.
So basically, I actually really like the Bloggies. I may as well just say it out loud. I mean, it’s clear that there’s a bit of a self-involved culture thing going on and yeah a block of the same people get nominated every year – but it doesn’t take itself too seriously, the weblogs are interesting and often beautiful, and most importantly it’s a set of awards that have emerged from within the culture of webloggers itself. It’s not been imposed from outside, it’s not about the weblog nation dancing for the ‘real people’ and it’s not being judged by the criteria of another medium. I think it’s cool. And Nikolai always makes the site look so nice. So in the spirit of discovery and investigation, here are my top new finds and nods to the classics that I’ve come across from flicking through some of the nominees:
- Boudist
Up for best New Zealand / Australian weblog – beautiful design, enthusiastically written. Also currently suffering from stage-fright. - Weblog Wannabe
Up for best Asian Weblog and Lifetime achievement, Firda’s been there since almost the beginning and her site gets more and more beautiful as time passes. - Noodlepie
Also up for Best Asian Weblog – and currently featuring some incredibly evocative pictures of a seafood street-stall. Mmm. Cockles. - Benn loxo du taccu
Interesting audioblog from West Africa references an expansive range of music. - Near Near Future
An awesomely insightful and cutting-edge glimpse into emerging and pervasive technologies that’s up for the Best European Weblog award. Must win! - Hick’s Design
A beautiful site that’s in the Best British and Irish Weblog category with me. - Going Underground
Fascinating – if unattractive – weblog about the London Underground that everyone based around London should be reading. - Siteway Weekly
Up for best non-weblog content of a weblog site, featureing beautiful and classic design structures meshed with awesome illustrative work. - Tasting Menu
Slightly inelegantly designed, but rich and thorough insight into the experience and tasting of food. - The Food Section
Well assembled and thorough food news and restaurant review weblog.
PS. Vote for me!
Links for 2005-01-28
- Teen Bear – Awesome idea for new American gay magazine
Although I’m slightly horrified by the idea that someone with about six chest hairs might be considered wild and manly. Ho hum.
Links for 2005-01-27
- The new BBC RadioPlayer, now with many many more hours of broadcasting each week, has now launched…
Interestingly integrated with audio/visual stuff provided by News, Weather and Sport - 2005 Oscar nominees
Lots of films I’ve not been able to see yet, and more nominations for the entertaining and engaging “Aviator” than for anything else…
Links for 2005-01-26
An edited-down video of the Apple keynote when they introduced the MacintoshThere’s a list of links that work over at kottke.org
Wow. I was stunned by how emotionally affected I was by watching this. Please don’t laugh at me. It’s pretty moving..
Links for 2005-01-25
- Awesomely terrible / awesomely brilliant Flickr song (mp3)
“I love my Flickr friends, I’m addicted to their images and photostreams, I love my Flickr friends, They’ve crawled under my skin and into my dreams” - Anatomy for beginners
Channel 4 TV series in which a human corpse is dissected in front of a camera. Gross more because of the way it is handled – bluntly, like a butcher – than because of the subject matter itself…
Links for 2005-01-24
- The terribly named, but incredibly elegant tadalist from 37 signals – “Simple, sharable to-do lists. It’s just what you need and nothing you don’t…”
The thing about 37 signals is that they not only do good consulting, but they also make beautiful things for their own sake. That’s a company ethos that I can understand… - An event on journalism and weblogging that apparently had a bit about webloggers codes of ethics
I talked to a few people about this stuff a year or so again. I might get around to doing something around it again. I hope they define something that applies to all webloggers though, not just the minority that aspire to journalistic practice… - Human Rights Watch takes US to task for damaging the worldwide fight for human rights
“Governments facing human rights pressure from the United States now find it easy to turn the tables,” said Mr Roth. “Washington can’t very well uphold principles that it violates itself.” - A discussion of the political effects of the Photoshopped “Creative Commons” responses to Bill Gates comparing Creative Commons to Communism…
“The bad guys’ basic strategy is to portray themselves as defending the status quo while in fact effecting a revolutionary change. When you, their opponents, allow yourself to be defined as the alien, you‚Äôre doing exactly what they want you to do, and - US military pondered love not war – more on the US Government’s attempts to find a compound to make enemy soldiers shag one another
It occurs to me that the Ancient Greeks thought that almost romantic friendships made soldier more, not less, effective. Perhaps after the initial shock and traumatic discussions with parents, this might make an enemy army stronger! - BBC news article on peer-to-peer networks and how they’re being adopted as an effective distribution mechanism by mainstream media companies
“The BBC has already decided to embrace the technology. It aims to offer most of its own programmes for download this year and it will use P2P technology to distribute them.” - Heather Champ and Derek Powazek release the first issue of JPG magazine. Awesome.
“JPG Magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. It’s about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. It’s for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work…” - Paramount people deny that Enterprise is going to be cancelled before the end of Season Four
“As to whether or not we’ll be back for Season 5,” Coto continued, “that’s always been up in the air. We’ll see what the future brings.” - Matt Jones proposes using Tufte-esque sparklines to expose editing histories on Wikipedia
The assumption being that a clued-up individual would be able to make determinations about the data based upon how controversial or active its editing history appears to have been… - Andrew Parker’s presentation on the true shape of P2P usage on the net
Among other things, reflects the enormous explosion of people using BitTorrent and demonstrates that the vast amount of traffic on the net is P2P (and not web) related - New York Times editorial on how cultures avoid collapse by managing environmental pressures
I remember being stunned driving through America and seeing landscapes being ripped apart at an enomrous rate. The consensus at the time seemed to be just that there was “plenty more where that came from”… - Party Ben’s mash-ups download page contains some real musical gems
I can particularly recommend Hot Hot Bowie’s “Let’s Dance With Me” and Beyoncaville’s “Crazy In Japan”. The latter is rapidly rising through my iTunes ‘most played’ playlist - Nominate your favourite Flash movies of the year to the Flash Film Festival
I think this is probably a bit serious to give Magical Trevor the accolades it deserves, but it could be fun nonetheless… - @media 2005 on Web Standards and Accessibility to be held in London in June
“It’s the web design event of the year. The @media 2005 conference brings together the biggest names from around the world to talk about the hottest topics in web design – web standards and accessibility.” - 10 Things We Learned About Blogs in 2004
I wonder how long it will take people to stop thinking of weblogs as publishing, and start thinking about them being people interacting to diminish the role of publishing - Star Wars craft made out of Lego
God I would have killed for that Millennium Falcon when I was a kid. I’d watch TV shows with cars and space-ships in them and immediately go home and make them in Lego
Links for 2005-01-23
- Bill Gates plots a Windows future
BBC News interview with Bill Gates in which he talks about home entertainment appliances and the digital hub - Nokia brings ‘Visual Radio’ to mobile phones
Weird one this. Visual supplements to radio are generally considered to be used for enhanced information provision. But often the rights owners don’t want you broadcasting song information… - Danah on academia and wikipedia
“Wikipedia is exceptionally valuable to read about multiple sides to a story, particularly in historical contexts, but i don’t trust alternative histories any more than i trust privileged ones.” - A stunning and beautifully exotic story of an alien moon
“Liquid methane rain feeds river channels, lakes, streams, and springs on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, images from the Huygens probe show…”
Links for 2005-01-22
- Wanted – thirty Chinamen and a Zeppelin…
And if you want to know why, you’ll have to follow the link. - BoingBoing releases five years of posts for people to download and muck around with, and cites me as an inspiration. Aw……
“To celebrate our first half-decade as a blog, we’ve put together a single html file containing 17,000+ posts (every post as of yesterday mid-day) in Movable Type export format.” - Awesome graphing analysis of BoingBoing reveals a surprising obsession with the BBC…
I love this little browsable app – it gives a real perspective on what the Boingers are interested in. Also it’s more evidence that Cory either has too much energy or not enough to do…