25 most recent entries:
Beginner to Beginner: Splitting strings into arrays in Javascript (Nov 29 2008 18:52 GMT)
I mentioned to my nephew Joel Weinberger, a CS grad student at UC Berkeley, that I wished the Javascript "split" method took multiple delimiters, and within minutes, he wrote one for me. If you know what I'm talking about, you can click here to get a zip file with the ...
James Boyle on the public domain (Nov 29 2008 15:38 GMT)
James Boyle's new book, The Public Domain, is an entertaining, insightful, seminal work. It's available now for sale, reading on line for free, or downloading for free. You thus have zero excuses not to read it. And you'll be glad you did. A book this important shouldn't be so delightful.
Oliver Stone: Advancing the art of film (Nov 29 2008 15:21 GMT)
Amazon's own review of the director's cut of Oliver Stone's Alexander (the worst major movie ever?) includes the following note: In Stone's final cut, epic battles remain chaotic (although Alexander's strategy is somewhat easier to follow, with on-screen titles indicating left, right, and center during his army's greatest maneuvers)... Yes, those are ...
Black Friday (Nov 28 2008 20:13 GMT)
Last night, my family and my brother's family went to the outlet stores in Clinton CT at midnight when they opened. Or, let me be precise: At midnight we were waiting in the line of traffic sprawling out from the parking lot. We got one of the last spaces, and ...
Twitter and market conversations (Nov 28 2008 12:37 GMT)
Bob Walsh at Avangate posts about two companies using Twitter to talk with customers. Zappos is a particularly fun example. (Via Graeme Thickins.)[Tags: twitter marketing market_conversations cluetrain zappos ]
LibraryThing vs. Library of Congress (Nov 27 2008 13:58 GMT)
Vincent Sterken has posted his master's thesis, which examines LibraryThing.com to understand the dynamics and utility of social tagging. It begins with an exceptionally clear backgrounder on tagging and taxonomies, and then moves to a fascinating exploration of LibraryThing's folksonomy, including a comparison of how LibraryThing's community and the Library ...
Control doesn?t scale (Nov 27 2008 13:05 GMT)
I sometimes put up a Powerpoint (well, Keynote) slide that says "Control doesn't scale."The assumption that large projects only succeed if they're centrally controls led and managed turns out to have been true because we limited the scope of what we we considered realistic. You can build a Britannica ...
Twittering reality (Nov 27 2008 05:15 GMT)
At search.twitter.com, the query "near:mumbai within:15mi" will bring you a remarkable stream.
Thanking whom? (Nov 26 2008 15:56 GMT)
Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite national holiday. Family, food, gratitude...what's not to like? Just as the meal is slightly more complicated for those of us who don't eat meat, the holiday is a little more gnarly for those who don't believe in G-d. We agnostics and atheists have all ...
Googling for tanks in China (Nov 25 2008 23:33 GMT)
Here's an odd thing. I was sure that when Google China first started cleansing its results, a search for "tiananmen" at Google Images did not return the famous photo of the man standing in front of the line of tanks, or other photos of the Tiananmen demonstrations. Today it does. Even odder, ...
Chinese won?t let blogger travel (Nov 24 2008 14:08 GMT)
Rebecca MacKinnon reports that the Chinese government has refused to let citizen journalist blogger Zhou Shuguang (known as Zola) travel outside the country. This is not the first time he's faced the Chinese authorities. This time, he twittered it as it was happening. Rebecca posts: "I just communicated with ...
SNL: Review of Links (Nov 23 2008 16:53 GMT)
Saturday Night Live, which I have been watching since its first Saturday night, is the finest Tivo show around: Unwatchable live, but often excellent if watched with a fast forward button. And now that SNL is posting many of its segments online, I thought I'd save you those precious fast-forward ...
Google SeachWiki?s surprising missteps (Nov 23 2008 16:09 GMT)
If you log into your Google account when searching (you can tell if you're logged in by seeing if it puts your login name at the top of the page), Google has enhanced its results page with new features. The features are slightly useful (and largely mirror Wikia Search), but ...
Eve Online and the future of e-democracy (Nov 22 2008 21:19 GMT)
An article in PC Gamer is titled: "Birth of a Nation: Does Eve Online's Budding Democracy Represent the First Virtual Sovereign State?" Well, no, because the Council of Stellar Management that as elected by gamers does not have any real authority. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating case of governance...
Obama in the West Wing (Nov 22 2008 21:11 GMT)
Watching the YouTube of Obama's weekly talk, in which he promises a huge stimulus package focused on rebuilding our schools, fixing our infrastructure, and investing in alternative energies, I had a sense of emotional deja vu ... I had had that feeling before. It's just so rational and obvious that ...
Our strange new home (Nov 22 2008 17:30 GMT)
I've published a new issue of my free newsletter Our strange new home: A talk to the people in the Chinese government designing ways to use the Net to deliver government services. Has the Internet been saved?: Obama's appointments to head the FCC transition team fill me with joy. The main article ...
I can haz bailout? (Nov 21 2008 22:45 GMT)
LOLfed ? all the economic news you want, now in LOLcat.[Tags: economics lolcat humor ]
Ripped, from the headlines (Nov 21 2008 15:04 GMT)
From today's Boston Globe, about Framingham, MA: For five weeks, butcher-quality cuts of red meat - it appears to be beef - have been appearing regularly beneath a tree in the historic Town Centre Common It's be fun to see this ripped-from-the-headlines taken up by, say, Monk and Dexter.
Internet not the child-devouring swamp many adults fear (Nov 20 2008 14:01 GMT)
A three-year research project, headed by Mimi Ito, involving 28 researchers and 800 subjects, and sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, finds that the stereotypical idea of the Internet as a soul-devouring, anti-social wasteland for our kids is just plain wrong. If you suspected otherwise, now you know you were right. The ...
Daily (Intermittent) Open-Ended Puzzle: Monty Python headlines (Nov 20 2008 13:57 GMT)
Monty Python has announced that it's making all many of its works available for free on YouTube. Yay! What is the best Python-referencing headline for a post announcing this? "A hovercraft full of reels"? "Not pining for the fee(ords)"?
Emily Dickinson on the semantic brain (Oct 27 2008 16:55 GMT)
Chris Daly read my over-worked, under-thought article on bits and atoms, and sent me this poem by Emily Dickinson: Part One: LifeCXXVITHE BRAIN is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,The one the other will include With ease, and you beside. The brain is deeper than the sea,For, ...
Obama?s grandmother is younger than McCain?s mother (Oct 21 2008 21:13 GMT)
85 versus 95. And we all wish them both well.[Tags: obama mccain politics ]
New issue of my (free) newsletter: JOHO, Oct 18, 2008 (Oct 21 2008 19:35 GMT)
Contents Exiting info: As we exit the Information Age, we can begin to see how our idea of information has shaped our view of who we are. The future from 1978: What a 1978 anthology predicts about the future of the computer tells us a lot about the remarkable turn matters have taken. A software ...
Stop me before I spam more (Oct 21 2008 13:09 GMT)
I just received about 100 bounced messages indicating that I have apparently spammed much of the world with a message in which I state I am a lonely Russian woman who just can't wait to meet you. This isn't the first time my email address has been abused this way. ...
Why, I remember Obama when he was a young lad of 43 (Oct 21 2008 12:59 GMT)
I was thumbing through some photos a couple of days ago and came across IMG0127.jpg, which turned out to be a photo I took at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I was there as one of the 30 or so bloggers who had been given credentials. The DNC did it ...
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