Category: Uncategorized

So, I’m participating in several trackback metablogs, and will probably help make some more.
Would love to be able to have a bookmarklet menu of trackback URLs to select from and paste into my MT blog entry screen.
The problem is, this crosses sites (the trackback URL, and my blog), so it violates a Javascript principle. Can anyone think of a way to hack this?

HP analyzed email data to trace the real lines of influence in the organization, as reported in this Natureasks: “will people risk getting laid off if their email usage patterns indicate they not as important as they think they are?”
No, people will risk getting laid off if their email patterns indicate that they are MORE important than the organization thinks they are.
Think about departments where the person who’s important on the real org chart is junior, or female, or the administrative assistant, or a nurse?
Even when an organization discovers the real org chart — the organization still might not be able to cope with the difference between what’s nominally going on and what’s really going on.
This is dangerous knowledge.

In a recent Discover article, Steven Johnson writes about the work of Valdis Krebs, and Judith Donath, researchers and consultants who use social network analysis to map the groups that really get stuff done:

In his classic novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done

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Excellent Joel Spolsky article about the design decisions to build the Fog Creek tech support forum.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html
He talks about small touches designed to improve the conversation and the social space:
* a simple design to eliminate impediments to posting. “That’s why there’s no registration and there are literally no features, so there’s nothing to learn.”
* no feature to “email replies to post” — that kills discussion, since users never check back
* no branching, since branching makes discussions confusing
* topics listed based on time of original post– drives a life cycle for conversations
* need to scroll through all the posts before you respond –means users are more likely to respond in context
* no “preview mode” — means users are more likely to be careful before posting
* “reply” doesn’t quote previous post — reduces redundancy
* human moderation — need to remove troublemakers, much less socially and technical complicated than Slashdot

Joi Ito convened a “happening” today — a conference call to discuss the emergent behavior of weblogs and how they could impact democracy.
Today, weblogs are limited as vehicles of political expression. People say their piece. Others comment. Maybe the mainstream media picks up on an otherwise ignored story (“Trent Lott”).
But it’s just talk. There’s no link between talk and action.
We need to add those links.
* People who meet through reading and commenting on blogs should have easier ways to make stronger ties. At a distance, through conference calls and synchronous chats, and in person, with face-to-face meeting.
* The LazyWeb is already spawning realworld collaborative projects like Austin Bloggers and the Blogmapping project. It should be easy to go from a brainstorming session to a persistent workspace.
* MoveOn makes it easy to read about a political topic, and then, with one click, make a donation or write a letter. This works for a centralized organization like MoveOn — these tools should be available for emergent groups in blogspace too.

In a TV age, most of us have forgotten how to organize. The religious right meets in churches every Sunday, and organizes political activity from there.
The rest of us have little or no common space to get together. We’ve forgotten how to influence society outside our living rooms and workplaces. We’ve given up, since the political conversation is mean-spirited shouting, and the system is owned by the rich and powerful.
While the world lurches toward what might turn into WW3, we’re drugged and sleeping.
It would be great to use blogging and other online tools to help us wake up and do something about it.

A week or so ago I dropped and broke the glass carafe of my Model 170 Krups 4-cup coffee-maker.
The coffeemaker is somewhere between 5 and 10 years old. The part isn’t even listed on the Krups website any more.
A company called Culinary Parts Unlimited has the carafe in stock. Arrived today.

The US Senate voted to block the Total Information Awareness program!
The Senate accepted the Wyden amendment to the omnibus spending bill. The amendment requires the administration to report on the impact of the TIA on privacy, and requires Congress to vote again about whether to appropriate money for TIA.
The next step is to make sure the amendment is included in the compromise bill that will reconcile the Senate and House spending bills.
So read up at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and call your Congressperson.
Democracy works when we use it!

by Ben Hammersley

Dave Winer has proposed You Know Me to enable threaded cross-weblog conversation by means of a central server that identifies users.
The need is real — it would be very handy to be able to aggregate conversations across weblogs. But that approach seems like centralization and ID overkill.
* Usenet doesn’t require unique IDs to thread discussions — just a unique ID for the discussion thread and a time stamp on the entry
* Threaded cross-blog conversation is valuable enough that it shouldn’t depend on a single server or service.

David Weinberger has written an excellent explanation of Open Spectrum, a policy and technology approach that would give every American the same access to the public airways as broadcasters do today.