Ten Reasons Why

What does a guy have to do to get an invite into the beta?
Sigh. Anticipation blows.
UPDATE 11:29 AM: A big thank you to Anne Davis of EduBlog Insights for the Google Gmail invite!! You rock, Anne!!
UPDATE 07/17/04: Several people have posted comments here (which I have deleted) asking for a Gmail account. Sorry, but that’s a waste of time. I don’t have any to give out. You’re treading dangerously close to this. So comments are closed on this post.
If I do ever get the ability to grant other people Gmail accounts, I’ll offer them privately to friends first, and if I have more left over I’ll publicly offer them in a first-come, first-serve basis via this blog.
In the meantime, the way that I found to get a Gmail account was to (1) set up a blog (2) spend four years providing content that’s of at least some interest to a few people. That helps you (3) develop a regular readership which you can then (4) ask favors of, such as Gmail invitations.
Better get crackin’. You’re not getting any younger just beggin’ for accounts.

Other

Regarding the recent announcement that the Apple Safari browser in the next generation of MacOS X will include an RSS aggregator, Dave Winer notes:

Bryan Bell has notes from MacRumors about the RSS capabilities of Safari. Apparently you can search the contents of the feeds. This is something Steve Gillmor has been asking for, for ages. Feedster on the Desktop. Of course it can only search the feeds you’re subscribed to.

Geez, what contemporary aggregator doesn’t do this?!?
Oh, yeah. Radio. Duh.

Syndication & Aggregation

From an Associated Press report, :

At the zoo’s new Regenstein Center for African Apes, chimpanzees can touch a panel hidden from public view that will shoot harmless bursts of air at unsuspecting visitors.

Apparently people were annoying the apes too much, so the zoo gave the apes a way to annoy the people back.
Brilliant!

Other

So for many years (as my old buds on the FutureCulture mailing list will attest) I’ve moaned about the problems I have with bookmarks (aka “favorites” if you prefer Microsoft branding). Most importantly, I hated the fact that my bookmarks on my work machine were separate from my bookmarks on my home machine. Why isn’t this information hosted online so I can access it from anyplace.
I’ve tried various solutions over the years. Recently, a glimmer of hope came from a Mozilla Firefox extension, Bookmark Synchronizer which let me keep the bookmarks in sync between multiple machines.
But now I’m hooked on Furl, a free service. You stick a “Furl It!” bookmark in your browser toolbar, and click that when you want to archive a page. It pops up a window that lets you add the link, an excerpt you’ve highlighted, comments, and keywords to your Furl account. Links can be categorized (in multiple categories). Plus, Furl caches a copy of the page and indexes it, so the page and metadata are searchable. You can import/export your links in various browser bookmark formats or raw XML.
If that’s not enough, you can rate the pages you save & they’ve just built in a recommendation engine to suggest new pages, based on your ratings — found a gazillion neat pages and tools through that today. Also, Furl links are share-able. See mine. And you can subscribe via RSS to someone’s public Furl bookmarks.
Whew. That’s a lot of features.
The Furl It! bookmarklet has been giving Mozilla Firefox 0.8 some trouble, though. So far that’s been the only hiccup. Long term? We’ll see. Furl has no revenue model right now (though I expect Google Ads could generate them some money). In any event, if we’re lucky we’ll see a spate of Furl-like services arise.
Now pardon me while I go kick myself in the ass for not finding a way to implement this idea when I had it six or seven years ago.

Technology & Internet

300 Images From 1800 Sites: a beautiful little compendium of common website interface elements (e.g. arrows, mail icons, bullets, etc.). Link via boing boing.

Technology & Internet

The OpenTextBook link popped up on a few weblogs today, but none of them seemed to be the usual ed blog suspects, so here’s the link. Or, rather, the link’s a few words back.
Basically, they’re co-authoring a textbook online, using CVS (not the pharmacy) to check in the changes to the PDF manuscript. Appears to be a math textbook, but works like “algebra” frighten and confuse the English major in me, so I couldn’t read much.
I doubt the publishing giants are quaking in their boots, but it’s a valiant effort. They should’ve used a wiki though. Although common among developers, CVS is still fairly rarified for a mainstream educator or student. It pretty effectively limits the people who can contribute. On the other hand, Wikipedia, has turned into an amazing resource, primarily because of the low threshold to contribution.

Education

From Rolling Stone, comes this article, “Clear Channel Limits Live CDs:”

In the past few years, fans leaving some concerts have discovered a souvenir far better than a T-shirt: a live recording of the show they just attended. Bands including the Allman Brothers, moe. and Billy Idol have sold instant concert discs, and the Pixies and the Doors plan to launch similar programs this summer. The recording-and-burning company DiscLive estimated on April 12th that it would gross $500,000 selling live discs this spring alone.
But in a move expected to severely limit the industry, Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology’s inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows. The company, which is the biggest concert promoter in the world, says the patent covers its 130 venues along with every other venue in the country.

Gah! Clear Channel, not file-sharing, should be held responsible for declining audio CD sales because they’re radio division is almost singlehandedly responsible for the lack of diverse programming on commercial radio. This move by their concert promotion division only confirms my low opinion of them.

Intellectual Property

The New York Times documents one of those “Duh!” statements that never seems to make it into public policy in any meaningful fashion.
The article’s a few weeks old, but it’s not like it’s an idea that goes stale. That’s the point.

Education

Social Networking Services Meta List. It’s like portals or online stores in 1999. Looks like it’s time for a shakeout.

Technology & Internet