Monday, March 25, 2002

[diveintomark] Secure remote Radio administration. Paul Victor Novarese details how to run Radio remotely, securely, and links to how to strip signatures from mail-to-weblog posts and how to mail-to-weblog to specific categories (warning: involves regular expressions, not for the faint of heart). Excellent. Now for some responses: It's true that you can set up your own weblog somewhere else (other than radio.weblogs.com) and still use Radio as a client. This will work with any system that supports the Blogger API, including Movable Type. But if all you want is a blogging client, you're better off with Free Software offerings like BlogBuddy. On BlogSpot and Weblogger, you get an actual subdomain (yourblog.blogspot.com), but in Radio you only get radio.weblogs.com/yourID/. This locks out all third-party services which work by domain, including Google Free Search (to add a search box to your weblog). It also means people can't manually search your site in Google using the "search terms site:yourblog.domain.com" syntax. This is a major design flaw, especially given the lack of any search mechanism in Radio. 8:49:07 PM

[bOing bOing] Nerd squillionaire sporting betsThe Long Bets foun .... Nerd squillionaire sporting bets The Long Bets foundation is the nerd squillionaire version of those Around-the-World-In-80-Days gentlemen's agreements. When one nerd squillionaire makes some hubristic prediction about the future, another nerd squillionaire can call her/him on it and challenge her/him to a friendly wager of $1000 or more. Bets are even-odds, must have binary outcomes (no partial wins), and involve some event that takes place at least two years in the future, and bettors must write reasoned essays explaining their premise. Proceeds go to the winner's charity of choice. Here at PC Forum, anyone who asserts any futuristic thing will likely be challenged to put down a gee on it. 1. A computer - or "machine intelligence" - will pass the Turing Test by 2029. Ray Kurzweil vs. Mitchell Kapor ($20,000) 2. In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site. Dave Winer vs. Martin Nisenholtz ($2,000) 3. A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010. Jim Griffin vs. Gordon Bell ($2,000) 4. By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes. Craig Mundie vs. Eric Schmidt ($2,000) 5. By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect. Esther Dyson vs. Bill Campbell ($10,000) 6. By 2010, more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed on demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks. Jason Epstein vs. Vint Cerf ($2,000) 7. The universe will eventually stop expanding. Danny Hillis vs. Nathan Myhrvold ($2,000)LinkDiscuss posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:49 6:04:10 PM

[bOing bOing] The Danger Hiptop kicks AZZJust saw a demo of the .... The Danger Hiptop kicks AZZ Just saw a demo of the Danger HipTop and I am SPAZZING OUT. Jesus Christ, this is the coolest goddamned phone/PDA/cam/email/SMS/thing in the entire universe. I have a technology boner that could cut glass. The site doesn't do it justice. You need to see it.LinkDiscuss posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:59 6:01:19 PM

[CNET News.com] Wooing away Java developers. Microsoft's John Montgomery is out to persuade developers to embrace .Net. But the task promises to be a chore in light of recent legal wrangling between Microsoft and archrival Sun. 1:48:01 PM

[Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] 2.56 Tb/s Transmission Record 11:41:14 AM

[Daypop Top 40] "The Social Life of Paper" 11:00:34 AM

[John Robb's Radio Weblog] Michael Fraase writes "When Elephants Dance" about the battle over copyrights.  10:44:39 AM

[John Robb's Radio Weblog] Hmm.  What is my attention saturation point in terms of media usage and how would that relate to an all-you-can-eat media system?  Let's try a fun thought experiment (this is an incredible waste of time, but what the hell).  Say I live alone (and not with 5 other people).  Let's also assume I am at the saturation point in regards to watching, reading, etc. and if the all the content in the world were free, my behavior wouldn't change one iota. Here is what I consume in an average month: I watch 10 movies a month. I watch 8 hours of TV a week or 32 hours a month. I read 50 content related web pages a day or 1,500 pages a month. I read 1 book per month. I read 2 magazines per month (I get all the rest of my news/magazine fix online) I listen to 30 songs a week or 120 a month. I don't read newspapers offline anymore. OK, so I might not be the average consumer but here is what I pay per month to enjoy this:  $40 a month for Netflix, $20 a month for cable, $3 a month for magazines, $40 a month for DSL, and ~$7 a month for a paperback book.  A total of $110 a month. Let's assume there was a service that provided and metered all content, including registered web sites.   It costs $100 a month and lets me consume as much as I want.  If I paid $100 a month for this full featured online content system (that included TV and Internet sites) and $40 a month for connectivity, here is some wild speculation on how it could be paid out to artists and authors. $2 a view for each movie.  $20 total. $0.10 a view for each TV program with commercials.    ~$3 total. $2 for the book (online delivery only, I print it out locally).  $1 for each magazine.  $2 total (online delivery only, I print it out locally). $0.05 a song.  $6 total.  $0.01 for each web page.  $15 That is a total of $48.  The distributor of this service would generate a whopping $52 a month from a household like mine.  If I included the rest of my family in this picture the pay-out would change (it would probably put us near the high-end of normal consumption curve too).  Including my family, my household's consumption would double the number of movies watched, triple the number of TV programs, add one book, one magazine, double the number of songs, and add 500 web pages to the monthly total.  The pay-out under this scenario would be $88.  Still a profit of $12 for the distributor.  The best part of a system like this is that unkown artists and authors could get paid if they register with the system (add an MP3, an MPEG-4 movie, or a weblog).  Soaking up eyeballs is the same no matter who does it.  Of course, my weblog would only be worth $6-$7 a day right now if it was registered under this system.  But hell, that is a lot better than $0 and would be more than enough to pay my household's content subscriptions and my connectivity -- and still leave enough for me to buy coffee from Dunkin' Dounuts every morning.  This was fun.  Thanks for reading. 10:24:58 AM

[John Robb's Radio Weblog] I like this global shortcut the best:  (click it)    It's also nice to have my own short cut:  10:16:24 AM

[New York Times: Technology] Assessing the State of Dot-Com Start-Ups. Two new studies suggest that more carnage lies ahead for dot-com start-ups, but also report some encouraging news. 9:59:03 AM

[New York Times: Technology] Online Surpasses Catalog at J. Crew. For the first time, J. Crew's Web sales eclipsed its catalog sales in February. 9:30:31 AM

[The Register] Registry hack turns XP Pro into server, vice versa. Update of old NT gag unleashed 9:13:25 AM

[Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] Ximian Connector 1.0 Available 9:11:42 AM

[Sam Ruby's Radio Weblog] What the H*ck Are Web Services? A few businesses have already started using Web services technology, and seeing it in action is probably the easiest way to understand what all the buzz is about. That is, unless you really enjoy PowerPoint presentations. [application-servers.com]  Includes a quote from SOAPBuilder Tony Hong! 9:09:35 AM

[Scripting News] Saturday: "There isn't really much fun in web services unless you're a programmer who likes to play in different environments, or likes to work with other programmers who work in different environments, or thinks the Internet is cool, even if he or she can't totally explain why. Web services are plumbing, and therefore to most non-programmers, off-topic."  9:00:08 AM