Also via apophenia--initial impressions of Yahoo 360:

360 will be invite-only but they are not seeding through employees, rather, they are seeding through active Yahoo users. This is actually very important because frankly, 360 isn't meant for people like me (or like you). It's meant for your average not-technically inclined individual who is scared of blogging but wants to share their thoughts, photos, and recommendations with their friends. Thus, before we all get into a blogizzy, it's important to remember the target.

The feature set that i saw included integrated YIM, a blogging tool, a recommendations engine (linked to local), photos (linked to Y photos, not Flickr) and a social network. It's all very integrated and emphasizes Yahoo products (although they were talking about connecting it with other products and they are doing some RSS stuff). Throughout all of this are heavy controls for privacy/publication, although it is all strict categorization schemes where you can make things available to groups (think: LJ).

Ben Brown writes about using Rendezvous and iChat to make virtual, on-the-fly connections at conferences:

Joshua and I posted a virtual message on a message board that did not exist physically, but was tied to a specific location. He responded, and was able to take advantage of his slightly better vantage point to record a notable experience. He transmitted a digital photo, first over a wire, then over the airwaves to me, where I transferred it over airwaves then wires to a server somewhere in New York. While the notable event was still occuring, two strangers collaborated to share the event with the world, and record it for posterity. It all took about three minutes.

We live in the future.

...via apophenia

Ben Hammersley says that the new competition for Google turns out to be Yahoo:

Google's Labs and API were held up as exemplars of a modern internet business, while Yahoo was seen as floundering in a sea of accountants, pop-up ads, and Britney Spears. But Yahoo has learned its lesson. Research.yahoo.com, launched last month, is the same idea as labs.google.com - a showcase for new and interesting projects - but it's better. Unlike Google, Yahoo publishes its papers, names its researchers and says what it is up to. One-nil to Yahoo.

Google's API was also a thing of beauty when it launched. For programmers, the ability to query Google from inside your own programs was immensely useful. And just as Amazon and eBay have done with their APIs, the Google API produced an ecosystem of applications and programming techniques that relied on, and fed, Google's success. It was unique.

But not now. Yahoo's own API is out, and it's better. It has more features, it's more complete, it's technically more elegant, and it's easier to use than Google's alternative. Two-nil to Yahoo.

...via BoingBoing

David Weinberger goes back and forth on the use of tags:

Forth: But, language changes through implicit evocations of meaning. There is no word dictator who declares "Thou shalt now replace the word 'idea' with 'meme.'" Nope, we hear the word, get a sense from context or from a bumbling, hand-waving definition from someone at a party, and we appropriate it. After a while, a dictionary notices and attempts to freeze and formalize the definition. Yet, tags are explicit. They take something as rich in meaning as a family photo and reduce it to a single word. That's a diminishment.

Back: Big freaking deal. Categorization diminishes. Everyone knows that. It's why we categorize: It reduces complexity to something manageable at least for the moment. But often categorization diminishes so that things in their richness can be found: Menus in restaurants categorize food so you can taste it in all its glory. And if people feel that the popular tags are not categorizing objects the way they want, they can build local folksonomies, using the tags accepted by their social group.

Forth: Not in the commercial world. Steve Papa at Endeca at the PCForum open discussion a few days ago pointed to eBay as an example: There are economic reasons to describe your items for sale using the most popular language. E.g., call it a "notebook," not a "laptop." Likewise, where there are economic or other reasons for people to use the popular tags, some folksonomies will dominate. This will undoubtedly drive some ambiguity out of our everyday language. For example, someone pointed out to me recently that CNN started out calling the tsunami a "tidal wave," but switched when everyone else was calling it a "tsunami." That sort of thing will happen faster and more regularly as folksonomies grow in more and more fields

...so says Tim Bray:

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.

Cory Doctorow reports on the Life Hacks presentation at O'Reilly's ETech conference:

HACKERS <HEART> PLAIN TEXT

Geeks store what they do in text and spurn big apps, using plain
text editors. Simplicity and speed, ease of search and
extraction, cut and paste. All you need in a filing system.

--

MY OTHER APP IS IN ~/BIN

If it wasn't plaintext, there's one app that they loved, like
mail, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. The rest was little glue scripts in
~/bin, secret scripts they are embarrassed about and don't share
with others, though it turns out that they're all really similar.

--

SUPER PROLIFIC GEEKS DO IT IN PUBLIC WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS AND
LIKE IT. OH YES.

(don't put this on your car)

Geeks get their credibility and prolificness out of sharing
everything -- put it in public and the public organizes it for
you. Put it on a Wiki and others will fix it.

This is just cool

Desktop wallpaper setup to make the screen(s) look transparent.

...via BoingBoing

In Wired, Bruce Sterling weighs in on folksonomies:

Folksonomy emerges from a combination of two inventions: (1) machines that can automate at least some of what it takes to classify information and (b) social software that makes users willing to do at least some of the work for nothing. You'll notice that 1 and b don't really go together. Folksonomy is like that. A pinch of free work and a peck of mechanical sorting will get you from 1 to b. Examples, which include the social bookmarking Web sites del.icio.us, furl.net, and jots.com, are proliferating.

The Flickr photo-sharing service harnesses the power of folksonomy to organize a mighty torrent of images flowing from the world's digital cameras, phones, and PDAs. The principle is simple: It's a drag to name or describe the zillions of private photographs you shoot each year, but that labor is a lot less onerous to people who like to surf snaps online.

Thus, Flickr breaks up the world into folksy categories that genuinely interest the online audience. In Flickrland, the world is composed of Architecture, Beaches, Cameraphones, Dogs, Europe, Friends, Graffiti, Honeymoons, and on and on. Nobody invented this scheme, and best of all, it's an ongoing, democratic process. It's a product of group interaction, like footpaths trampled across a virgin wilderness by a herd of bison.

A folksonomy is nearly useless for searching out specific, accurate information, but that's beside the point. It offers dirt-cheap, machine-assisted herd behavior; common wisdom squared; a stampede toward the water holes of semantics. There's room for scholarly smarts in this approach - for instance, you might invent a really cool term like folksonomy - but mostly, it's a new way to crowd-surf. It's as though you threw a kayak into a mosh pit and glided not just through Web pages but through labels, concepts, and ideas, too.

...via Get Real

Mobile PC has a great article (with pictures) outlining the evolution of mobile computing:

1975
IBM 5100 Portable Computer
The first computer with a built-in display, this 50-pound monster was swept under the rug after the PC came out in 1981.

1981
Osborne 1
Adam Osborne's labor of love was an overnight success ... and an overnight failure. Today it is remembered fondly as a pioneer in portability.

1982
GRiD Compass 1100
The first mobile computer with a folding screen, the GRiD Compass was a coveted survivor for more than a decade.

1982
Epson HX-20
The world's first "laptop," designed as a slate with no folding display.

A few months ago, one of our retiring specialists brought back twenty years' worth of luggable, portable, and laptop computers. Looking at the twenty-five plus pound original machines with their two 5.25" floppy drives, I'm guessing we shouldn't complain too much about carrying six and eight pound computers around.

The Washington Post talks about using blogs and wikis in the classroom:

Early e-mail lists, newsgroups and chat rooms were ephemeral, like a passing conversation, said Steve Jones, a communication professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Now computers and networks are fast enough that many people can share text, videos, sound and art and work on them together, he said, building a body of knowledge over time. Wikis, including interactive encyclopedia Wikipedia, have been around for several years but they're just on the cusp of becoming mainstream; as the technology improves, they're popping up in a few classrooms and offices, and people are finding all sorts of uses for them.

It's the plugged-in version of a long tradition in literature, said wiki user Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, an assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland. Hundreds of years ago people kept "commonplace books," in which they would write down poems, passages from books, and observations to share. Most people think of writing as solitary, he said -- "the lonely poet taking long walks in the woods, but there's another type of writing that's social and reactive."

...via elearningpost

Yahoo! is buying Flickr:

Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

Woohoo! What does this mean? It means that we'll no longer have to draw straws to see who gets paid, schedule conjugal visits between trips to the colo....wait! That's not what you want to know. This is what you want to know:

What is going to happen to Flickr?

Flickr will be continuing on the path it's on -- to Flickr 1.0 and beyond. We'll be working with a bunch of people that Totally Get Flickr and want to preserve the community and the flavor of what is here. We're going to grow and change, but we're in it for the long haul, with the same management and same team.

From HBS Working Knowledge, another article on E-mail Overload:

Before e-mail, senders shouldered the burden of mail. Writing, stamping, and mailing a letter was a lot of work. Plus, each new addressee meant more postage, so we thought hard about whom to send things to. (Is it worth spending thirty-two cents for Loren to read this letter? Nah….)

E-mail bludgeoned that system in no time. With free sending to an infinite number of people now a reality, every little thought and impulse becomes instant communication. Our most pathetic meanderings become deep thoughts that we happily blast to six dozen colleagues who surely can't wait. On the receiving end, we collect these gems of wisdom from the dozens around us. The result: Inbox overload.

Among the tips:

• Use subject lines that tell people something about the email
• Refer back to the original question when you provide an answer
• Make what you're asking clear and easy to pick out of the text
• Get out of the 'always-on' mode of checking email
• Delay your response (this slows the conversation to a manageable level when the conversation is important, but not urgent)

David Sifry talks about posting volume:

On average, Technorati is tracking about 500,000 posts per day, which is about 5.8 posts per second.

Column Two has an article on things to do with online staff directories:

• Include more than just phone numbers
• Provide an effective quick search
• Deliver a dynamic organisational chart
• Provide self-service capability
• Usability test the staff directory
• Ensure the staff directory can be printed
• Include all staff
• Provide extensive cross-linking

...via elearningpost

danah boyd has an interesting post on a cultural divide in IM:--those who see it primarily as a 'presence' tool and those who see it primarily as a communications tool:

I don't spend a lot of time conversing on IM, very little in fact. I simply do not have time. But, i am 10 million times more likely to converse with someone who is always-on than someone who just pops up for conversation. The reason is simple - collective signaling of conversational possibility. As an always-on'r, when someone pokes me to talk and i don't have time, i say sorry - can't talk or some equivalent (except in the case of my phone which might appear to be on while i'm doing something but isn't really). I expect the same from my fellow always-on'rs. So, when i'm in the mood to talk to people and they're in the mood to talk to me (or we're equally procrastinating), we come to a consensus and conversation happens.

Now, let's go back to the people who come online just to talk. The problem with this group is that they're unintentionally exerting power. They are declaring their free time by logging on and they're assuming that i am signaling the same thing. But i'm not. This is simply cultural cluelessness. But when they then get upset with me, that's the exertion of power. And this is what has prompted me to change IM accounts or block people in the past. Now, i'm just rude.

Articles I've read indicate that this is an important part of the difference in how teenagers, particularly Japanese teenagers use cell phones and the way the rest of us do--they use them, not necessarily for long conversations--but to 'touch' each other. Longer conversations are negotiated.

I've had people, when I didn't respond to them immediately by instant messenger, call me on the phone--this is the demand approach to communication--I want to talk right now and I demand that you talk to me. It's a stress-added communication style rather than a style that tries to respect both sides of the conversation and it eventually leads to people hiding their presence rather than putting themselves out there where they can interact with people in ways that might work for everyone.

David Sifry presents the State of the Blogosphere, 2005 starting with the growth of blogs. According to Technorati statistics:

• The blogosphere is doubling in size about every 5 months
• 35-40,000 new blogs are created every day. That's a new blog every 2.2 seconds.

He also adds, however:

There is a dark underbelly to these numbers, however: Part of the growth of new weblogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs - fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites. We have been battling the spam situation in a significant way for about 2 months - prior to January, spam wasn't much of an issue. All of these charts reflect Technorati's databases after spam blogs have been removed, and we feel that we've been able to capture and identify most of the spam out there, but one should note that there is definitely blog spam that we don't catch (tell us if you see spam in the index!). I'd estimate that we currently catch about 90% of spam and remove it from the index, and notify the blog hosting operators. Most of this fake blog spam comes from hosted services or from specific IP addresses. One of the results of the extremely productive Spam Squashing Summit of a few weeks ago is the increased collaboration between services in order to report and combat this spam. Right now, about 20% of the aggregate pings Technorati receives are from spam blogs, so you won't see that in these numbers - these statistics show only "cleaned" data.

The announcement:

Microsoft Corp. announced today that it will acquire Groove Networks Inc., a leading provider of collaboration software for the "virtual office." The deal unites two top innovators of technology that help geographically distributed workgroups be as productive as those that work in a single physical location. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

...via Get Real

The Shifted Librarian talks to her kids about Yahoo turning 10:

Brent: "So Yahoo is only 10 years old? I thought it was more like 20."
Jenny: "No, it's almost as old as you are." (Brent is nine years old.)
Brent: "Wow. So there was no Yahoo before I was born?"
Jenny: "That's right. Before you were born, there wasn't really an internet or the web or email. There was a very basic form for people in the military and at universities, but there were no web sites to visit and no web games to play."
Brent: "So Runescape didn't exist?"
Jenny: "Nope. You're older than Runescape."
Brent: "So computers were worthless ten years ago?"

SimonG has a post on blog comment spam:

So, there are lots of ways to stymie the spambots. Why, then, am I about to tell you my way? Wouldn’t it be better if I encouraged you to go off and come up with a technique of your own? Surely if everyone used a different method, it would be harder for the spammers to get round them all? That is true, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing. I want the spammers to get round my traps. When they do, I’ll add some more. It’s an arms race, and it’s in the interest of those of us who despise spam that the race moved forward as quickly as possible, because we’re guaranteed to win it. We have two big advantages over the spammers. 1) It’s very hard to write a program that can pass a Turing test, but very easy to make a Turing test; and 2) no matter how smart they get, it’s simply impossible to make spam comments indistinguishable from real comments because, when it comes right down to it, there is a difference. If there wasn’t, they wouldn’t be spam. It might be that when the difference becomes subtle enough, only advanced AI techniques are able to detect it, and perhaps if the arms race goes too quickly we’ll reach that point before such techniques exist, but I don’t think that will be a problem. My message to the spammers, then, is a simple one: Bring! It! On!

He then goes on to describe what he's been doing to defeat spammers, though he warns readers:

Let’s get down to the details. For those of you not of a technical bent, this would be a good time to go and put the kettle on. Alternatively, here are some pictures of kittens. In fact, unless you’re a codey type person with an unhealthy interest in HTML, I seriously advise you not to read on. Go and look at the kittens instead.

A public library on Long Island is using iPod Shuffles to loan out audio books:

Checking out a new iPod now applies to more than shopping trips or web browsing. This week the South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York, became one of the first public libraries in the country to loan out iPod shuffles.

For the past three weeks, the library ran a pilot program using the portable MP3 devices to store audio books downloaded from the Apple iTunes Music Store. They started with six shuffles, and now are up to a total of 10. Each device holds a single audio book.

There's much ongoing discussion on the new Google Toolbar Autolink feature. Cory Doctorow on Boingboing summarizes some of his reasons for thinking it's a good thing and points to other posts, both pro and con.