Binging Michael Jackson
June 28, 2009
I should spend a little more time with Bing, and I’m still trying to find details of the Michael Jackson show I believe I attended. Bing told me about the site Michael Jackson Live! Apparently it allows one to “Be the first to know Michael’s next move.”
Following the link took me to the registration page. The dates page is about future shows (rather than about the long-ago show in which I am interested). Apparently “VIP Packages are still available” even though show dates aren’t. I wonder what you have to give up to get one of those tickets…
Brits Investigate Politicians
June 24, 2009
It seems that some Members of (the UK) Parliament have been rather… irregular in their expense claims. In order to investigate the expense claims thoroughly, it is necessary to trawl through hundreds of thousands of documents.
The Guardian decided to crowdsource the trawling, by setting up a web site with copies of expense documents and an interface allowing visitors to classify each document. Michael Andersen at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab presented four crowdsourcing lessons, based on an interview with Simon Willison, who developed the web application.
Two of the lessons are psychological:
- your workers are unpaid, so make it fun
- attention is fickle, so launch immediately.
The other two are technical:
- speed is mandatory, so use a framework
- participation will come in one big burst, so have servers ready.
Note that the technical reasons follow on from “attention is fickle.” The framework was Django, and the servers were in the cloud, at Amazon’s EC2. Glyn Moody remarked that open source made this crowdsourcing project feasible. I’ll be more explicit (or perhaps more glib) and remark that this is an example of open source serving the cause of open government.
Is this an example of citizen journalism? It’s certainly an example of investigative journalism, with much of the investigation done by citizens.
Media: Praise for Paper
June 15, 2009
We the parents each took some reading matter along to Kids Fun Stop on Sunday morning. When we got there, we saw that they have wireless, and wondered if we should have brought computers.
While we were there, I read (some of) the New Yorker, which is the only magazine that arrives in our house by subscription. With a PC, I could have done the same reading online. For example, here is an interesting article on the question: Should creative writing be taught?
But I was better off with the magazine in paper form. It’s very portable (important when one is keeping kids in view), boots quickly, offers excellent print resolution, etc. Of course, this wasn’t the first time I’ve been struck by the advantages of paper, it won’t be the last, and many others make similar remarks.
I wouldn’t consider it worthy of remark were it not for the illustration that adorns the cover of the current issue. A space traveler sits among gadgety debris, happily absorbed in a book. So: praise for paper; and kudos for Daniel Clowes, the artist.
Screenprint by Scott Saw
June 5, 2009
Artist Scott Saw is getting into screenprinting. I’m tempted by Deep Space, a limited edition print on black acid-free paper.
The web is great for visual art. As a consumer, I get to “sample” a lot of it online. I hope that it’s great for the artists as well, since they can easily give out samples. But you can’t beat the real thing, preferably signed by the artist, for your wall.
Things That Aren’t (Just) Search
May 28, 2009
So, what isn’t (just) search? The last week or two has given us great insight into this question.
- Yahoo is not a search company. Good call by CEO Carol Bartz. I’m glad to see that the stock has gone up: I bought some a few months ago, on the basis that things couldn’t get much worse without provoking a takeover.
- Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. It’s “a computational knowledge engine,” and so can do some things better than Google or other search engines.
- Bing is, according to one of its URLs and to the video currently there, a decision engine. I agree with Erick at TechCrunch that Bing isn’t the best name. It makes me think of the singer, and of the song “I’m dreaming of a blue screen of death“.
For the record, I’m not a search engine either. I am married with children.
The Snail in the Cloud
May 21, 2009
I’ve used this photo before, because I find the Post Office boxes rather lovely, in a vintage sort of way. Little did I suspect at the time that the photo might become relevant to cloud computing.
But (as I read at GigaOM), Amazon Web Services is now going postal, since snail mail is sometimes faster than the internet. “Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, explains… that it would take up to 13 days to sling a terabyte of data across a 10 Mbps network… So Amazon is offering customers the chance to store their data on an external device, ship it via post, and Amazon will load it.”
The Geek According to Facebook Quiz
May 19, 2009
I’ve been taking too many Facebook quizzes of late. Much of the time, I’ve been following in the Facebooksteps of my usually-more-serious wife. I usually do better than her.
She was disgusted that she scored only 2/10 on the Geek Level quiz. I took it and got 7/10: studious. I rather like the sketch of the result.
Other quiz outcomes include my being Yale (among the Ivy League, strange since wife went to Yale and ended up as a “lesser ivy” on the quiz), being McCoy (among the characters from Star Trek classic, whereas my wife, the medic in the family, was some other crew member), and being the Dude (among cult movie characters). In the unlikely event that you want more, I’ll link to my Facebook profile.
Jill Sobule’s California Years
April 14, 2009
Jill Sobule’s fan-funded album, California Years, is out today. That’s true here is Boston, but not in California, where it’s not yet today, and hence California Years is still Jill’s next record.
The NPR show All Things Considered has a feature on Jill and the album, including a couple of tracks. You can also listen at Jill’s show and tell (sampler page at her main website).
Or you can watch a video of “San Francisco” right here. The video is actually at YouTube, where Jill has her own channel, with lots of interesting stuff (e.g. Jill teaching other musicians how to play her songs).
I know I’ll buy the album, but I’m not yet sure where from. It isn’t yet available from Jill’s site (or Amie Street or Lala). If I get really impatient, I’ll buy California Years from Amazon.
Jill’s album is yet another example of a music without a record label. That’s the way you have to do it if your labels keep dropping you or dropping dead.
Obama, Twitter, and Timing
March 25, 2009
“I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak,” claimed President Obama at a recent press conference. The claim has drawn a lot of coverage, including a Christian Science Monitor article focusing on the reaction on Twitter.
I had to laugh. It occurred to me that, of all media with which I’m familiar, Twitter is the one that has least to do with delaying speech until one knows what one is talking about.
Should I tweet this thought? It’s probably too late, by Twitter standards.
Lookybook Closes
March 20, 2009
I described Lookybook as a rather wonderful idea back in 2007. It was a means of test-driving picture books via the web. I still consider it a wonderful idea.
But Lookybook CEO Craig Frazier just sent out email with the sad news that “we have come to the last page in our adventure together.” That’s all I currently know. I’ll try to find out more…
