Publishing

Permission to Speak Freely on RSS

After a few webloggers objected to his practice of reproducing their entries in full on his link site, Robert Scoble tied himself into an interesting knot, claiming that RSS is a format that only exists for software to reuse and remix, thus justifying his actions: RSS is a community syndication system. If you don't like your content being reused in weird, dangerous, wacky ways DO NOT PUT YOUR CONTENT INTO RSS!!! Hint: RSS isn't for humans. It's for syndication and resyndication systems to use. ... (read more)

2005/03/24

A visitor to the Drudge Retort remembers Andre Norton, the science fiction author who died Thursday at age 93: I was an indifferent and sullen youth, prone to acting out at school occasionally, and as a result, was sent to the library as a kind of holding cell/punishment. One day, bored out of my mind, I reached back and grabbed the first book that my hand fell upon and started reading. It was Ms. Norton's Witch World. My love of reading started with that book, which led me to Bradbury, ... (read more)

2005/03/21

Tina Brown compared bloggers to the East German secret police in Sunday's Washington Post: We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out -- and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. We're always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with ... (read more)

2005/03/21

The Too-Much-Information Superhighway

Just like my brother said he would he texted Wensday night begging... I mean really pleading just for a chance to be with me again... It took everything in me not to break shake and open my legs and heart to him again. People who think that weblogging is dominated by octogenarian white male computer geeks like me should spend some time trolling Feedster for weblog posts about cities in their area. I use the site's RSS search results to keep up with events in North Florida, wading through a ... (read more)

2005/03/20

May Diverse Be With You

The ongoing debate over weblogger diversity leaves me wishing there were better tools to find new voices making their way up the long tail. I'm too lazy to find them on my own (with the exception of new bloggers in Jacksonville and St. Augustine), so I link to the same people often -- mostly the crowd of plugged-in web technologists who I have read for years. They are admittedly a largely white and male group, but I assuage my liberal guilt by linking often to Bill Lazar, who as you may not ... (read more)

2005/03/18

Church of the Risen Elvis

Because Atlanta courtroom killer Brian Nichols was read parts of The Purpose-Driven Life by his last hostage, CNN is republishing an interview the book's author did last November on Larry King Live. The book sounds like 336 pages of merciless flogging, based on the simplistic platitudes that the author, Rev. Rick Warren, inflicts on King ("The middle letter of pride is I, and the middle letter of sin is I"). The middle letter of tripe is I, too, reverend. But I'm linking to call attention to ... (read more)

2005/03/15

Mark Pilgrim Monkeys Around

Mark Pilgrim's half-year search for a hobby that doesn't involve electricity appears to have been as fruitless as O.J. Simpson's hunt for the "real killers." Pilgrim, who's being Michael Corleoned back into blogging on IBM's new PHP weblog, has recently released a script for GreaseMonkey, the Firefox plug-in for editing web content a la autolink. The script removes everything but links on sites published by Robert Scoble. Pilgrim also has released a new open source beloved butler that does to ... (read more)

2005/03/14

By using a custom style that makes nofollow links blink lime, Phil Ringnalda can see how sites are using the attribute: I'm surprised by how little use of rel="nofollow" I'm seeing (in blinking lime) on non-blog, non-wiki sites. It seemed like such an obvious tool to use, to micro-manage how you transfer PageRank within your site and to other people. One of these days, I'm going to sue Phil for usurping the color I've chosen for my links and monkeying around with my content to make it more ... (read more)

2005/03/13

I Blog For Short

New York Times: On the Web log, or blog, he chronicles his daily life, his small victories, his disappointments, his liberal views on politics and the health of his pets. Washington Post: Mosteller's supervisors and co-workers at the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun were well aware of her Weblog, or blog. ABC News (Australia): The lanky, sandy-haired writer composes a frequently updated Internet journal -- weblog, or blog for short ... Maine Today: Hands-on science experiments, creating an online ... (read more)

2005/03/10

Eric Goldman has expanded his thoughts on whether Google Toolbar violates copyright law: I'd be delighted to be wrong on the legal question. But we have to answer the positive question based on the law today, not as we wish it were. ... (read more)

2005/03/08

Read More Entries