Publishing

The Heritage Foundation has declared that I am a tech-elite busybody for criticizing the Google Toolbar: This week's busybody pushback is the same sort of reaction we've seen in response to every half-innovative feature that Google's offered in recent years, from its Adwords advertising program to advertising-supported Gmail. Oddly enough, the tech elite still seem to respect the company's technological prowess and innovation. They're wary, however, that Google intends to profit from these ... (read more)

2005/03/08

The First Blogger Died in 1794

The patron saint of weblogging is Harbottle Dorr, a little-known figure from early America who was writing a hyperlinked daily journal on current events two centuries before the technology existed: On January 7, 1765, in the middle of the Stamp Act controversy, Boston shopkeeper Harbottle Dorr took the current issue of the Boston Evening-Post and commented on its contents in the margins. Every week thereafter, he collected one or both of the Evening-Post or the Boston Gazette, (sometimes adding ... (read more)

2005/03/08

Java Has Me Outnumbered

I spent this afternoon working on several hundred mostly minor edits for the next printing of Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days, Fourth Edition. There was one major change: The javac compiler defaults to support for new features such as generics, autoboxing, and the data structure-crawling for loop. The default was originally to turn these off unless the -source 1.5 command-line option was employed. It's no longer necessary, though you can use -source 1.4 to turn off the new features and ... (read more)

2005/03/07

Here's how James Bennett summarizes the Google Toolbar controversy on Kuro5hin: While Winer et al. have been attacking AutoLink, a number of people have been calmly debunking their arguments, often in amusing ways. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which side he's on? Bennett, a veritable eddy of calm in angry seas, believes that anyone opposed to the autolink feature hates his users and Google isn't doing this to make money. ... (read more)

2005/03/07

My favorite panelist on BetterBadNews has a message for Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Get off of my couch! ... I look over my shoulder and I see Larry and Sergey looking at my blog. They are editing something on my blog. They are overriding my link on the word "goose" and substituting their own link to a site where I can buy a cookbook I already have, because I wrote it. But I prefer to sell it directly from my blog to help pay for my poultry podcasts. So they sit there, Larry and Sergey, on my ... (read more)

2005/03/07

Eric Goldman, a Marquette Law professor who was formerly the Epinions.com general counsel, weighs in on the Google Toolbar: From a legal standpoint, AutoLink looks questionable. The tool modifies publisher's web pages by adding hypertext links without the publisher's consent. While this modification isn't a huge change, I could still see some (many?) courts treating them as unauthorized derivative works. Honestly, it seems like a fairly routine copyright infringement. ... (read more)

2005/03/05

ESPN.Com and other Web sites published by the Walt Disney Internet Group have terms of use. The Restrictions on Use of Materials section appears to forbid users from running remix software like the Google Toolbar on their sites (emphasis mine): No material from any WDIG Site or any Internet site owned, operated, licensed, or controlled by us may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the materials on ... (read more)

2005/03/05

The Too-Much-Information Age

I'm extremely grateful that weblogs were not around when I was the caught in the perfect storm of raging hormones, youthful inexperience, and clumsy romantic yearning. In 1986 I spent an entire semester obsessed with a red-haired nape perched inches in front of me in a cramped history class at Richland Junior College. I quietly plotted for months, finally asking the nape's owner for a study date in a nauseous mumble, and she shot me down before I got all of the words out. Given a worldwide ... (read more)

2005/03/05

My Content-Altering Experience

Brian Carnell writes: Its amazing how quickly so many web publishers have turned into RIAA/MPAA-wannabes, locking down their wares and complaining about the users who dare to remix or modify content in their browser in ways that the user finds helpful. I don't think it's that amazing, given the natural desire to preserve the integrity of your work or (cue horror music) decide who profits from it. Even the most remix-friendly Web publishers, those who have adopted a Creative Commons license, ... (read more)

2005/03/05

Et Tu, Rafe Colburn?

Rafe Colburn has an interesting confession regarding the Web nerd cage match we're having over Google Toolbar and other content-manipulation tools: I have a Firefox extension installed called Adblock. All it does is prevent the browser from downloading resources containing the patterns that I specify. I installed it for one reason, to keep my browser from downloading any content from BlogAds. I make money with BlogAds on two sites, so I could write an impassioned essay about how Colburn is ... (read more)

2005/02/24

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