All entries for May 2004

Wallop

Writing about web page http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rick/10-29pdc03.asp

Wallop is Microsofts latest blog technology that will tie in with MSN Messanger and focus on relationships between bloggers, improving on the Friendster idea.

The link I am writing about will send you to a keynote speech by Rick Rashid, featuring Microsoft social computing group researcher Lili Cheng. It's quite long, so you best do a page search for "Lili Cheng".

I also found two articles on Wired and Microsoft-Watch .

Quite interesting, have a nosey…

: 23 May 2004 02:08 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why the exclusivity?

Writing about web page http://www.sdpacheco.de/wp-blog/archives/2004/05/17/university-of-warwick-blogs/

I have just published and subsequently deleted a test post that was meant to test the pingback and trackback facility to external blogs.

While at least trackback works internally, neither do with external blogs, neither inbound nor outbound.

I find that's a shame as it seperates the Warwick blogs from those in the rest of the world and thus goes against what the blog community is all about.

: 17 May 2004 21:01 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Embrace blogs

Follow-up to Speaker's Corner from Shared Psychosis

Kieran was right about my post being tongue-in-cheek. So what if blogs mean the americanisation of the soul? It's an aspect of the soul I would not mind being American…

Why else am I here, blogging?

: 17 May 2004 19:39 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Speaker's Corner

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

Hugh says: "unfree: is the blog the americanisation of the soul? discuss."

What are you saying? That the blog frees or shackles the soul? Your post's title is "unfree", yet America is supposed to be the symbol of personal freedom.

OK, so the blog is American in origin, starting from NCSA'S What's New and Dave Winer's Scripting News , the longest running blog on the net. But what else could be said is American about it?

The Fast-Food nation has a culture whose mantra is instant gratification. You can easily buy, eat watch anything, anytime. Similarly the blog has given anyone the power to easily publish anything, anytime. As the former trivialises shopping and food, the latter degrades the quality of content. It is no longer edited, it is published as soon as it is written. Jon Garfunkel for example does not maintain a blog, he says: it's edited.

Another characteristic of America could be said to be it's arrogance and vanity. They are so self-important that they think they can boss everyone around on the world stage and expect their standards to be universal. Similarly, bloggers could be said to be arrogant in the sense that they think anyone would actually be intersested in what they have to say. I mean who in the wider world cares if I got up at noon today, or that my exam went well?

As we become bloggers, is our soul assimilated into the American culture? Even if what we blog is wholly unamerican, does the very act of blogging betray us?

Whether a blogger has any of the characteristics outlined above depends, I feel, on the person and not on the way he chooses to express himself. I do not want to miss reading the opinions of respected people in their fields, like Joel Spolsky .

At the end of the day is not the blog just an electronic version of the British institution Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park?

: 17 May 2004 18:58 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Fact?

Dan Brown is on to a winner here. IF The DaVinci Code is taken to be a work of fiction all around. The first page is misleading: taking any of the historical and art historical background used in this book for real is absurd.

The plot itself could not be more suspenseful, a sure page-turner. The nagging question "What historical nonsense will Brown come up next?" only adds to that.

As long as the reader remains critical, this book can do no harm and is sheer fun!

: 17 May 2004 16:35 |  Tags: Reviews |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem