Monthly Archives: October 2005

The blogging revolution

Posted on by

Well, well. A Guardian/ICM poll brings some unexpected news…

The extent of the personal publishing revolution has been revealed by a Guardian/ICM poll showing that a third of all young people online have launched their own blog or website. Millions of young people who have grown up with the internet and mobile phones are no longer content with the one-way traffic of traditional media and are publishing and aggregating their own content, according to the exclusive survey of those aged between 14 and 21…

The Guardian has a leader on the implications of this phenomenon.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley claims that 27% of US internet users read Blogs.

CNET is claiming that there are “more than 14 million” blogs in existence and another 80,000 being created each day. It has now compiled the usual fatuous list of the ‘Top 100’ Blogs. Sigh.

More: From a report of a presentation by Dave Sifri of Technorati…

Technorati is tracking 18.9 million weblogs, and seeing a doubling in these numbers every five months.

70,000 new weblogs are created every day; about one every second. 55% of those bloggers appear to still be active 3 months later. About 8% of those blogs are spam.

Looking at use, Technorati are seeing over 1,000,000 blog posts every day, with clear spikes around newsworthy events.

High profile blogs like Boing Boing and Gizmodo have similar levels of attention to mainstream media sites such as Reuters and the BBC. Traditional media companies are now beginning to integrate blog content into their offerings, with the Washington Post and others announcing their entry into this space today.

The use of tagging in blog posts is increasing, with almost a third of posts today including at least one tag.

En passant… it’s funny how these numbers never quite match up. CNET has “more than 14 million” Blogs, with 80,000 being created every day, while Technorati is monitoring “18.9 million” and seeing a mere 70,000 new ones a day. Hmmm….

Blawgs, aka lawyers’ blogs

Posted on by

Interesting piece in the New York Times. Quote:

A survey conducted by Blogads.com, which administers online advertising on blog sites, and completed voluntarily by 30,000 blog visitors last spring, found that 5.1 percent of the people reading the blogs were lawyers or judges, putting that group fourth behind computer professionals, students and retirees. The survey also found that of the 6,232 people who said they also kept their own blogs, 6.1 percent said they were in the legal profession, putting lawyers fourth again, behind the 17.5 percent who said they were in the field of education, 15.1 percent in computer software and 6.4 percent in media, said Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads. He conceded that the survey was hardly scientific, but argued that at least it undermined the popular image of the blogosphere as dominated by antsy teenagers and programmers in their pajamas, tapping away at keyboards all night.

Copyright thugs seek to break up family

Posted on by

From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

The heavy armor of the music industry’s legal department continues to clank forward, but a few people are starting to stand up in front of the tanks. One is Candy Chan, sued for alleged copyright infringement by a batch of record companies. The subject of the investigation actually was Chan’s then 13-year-old daughter, Brittany, aka “Spicybrnweyedgirl.” According to a p2pnet report, when Chan refused to settle on behalf of her daughter, the record companies regrouped and now want to go after the teenager directly — but first they want the court to push Mom aside and appoint a legal guardian in this matter.

Pump and Dump report

Posted on by

Fascinating site revealing what would have happened to your money if you’d followed those share tips that come in spam email messages. I don’t have to tell you the outcome, do I?

I thought that I would realize temporary windfalls on all penny stocks, but then see big losses. Instead almost ALL of those stocks I added went up a few cents max, then dropped like flies the next day. So much for short term gains.

Official: most recordings not available

Posted on by

From a fascinating report by the US Council on Library and Information resources. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings finds that most U.S. historical sound recordings have become virtually inaccessible—available neither commercially nor in the public domain. According to the report, the rights to 84 percent of historically significant recordings made in the United States between 1890 and 1964 are still owned by someone and are therefore protected by law. For most pre-1972 recordings, protection comes in the form of state, not federal, law until 2067. Because recordings cannot be copied and distributed without permission of their rights holders, the only legal way to obtain a CD of a pre-1972 recording is through a reissue. Yet the study found that rights holders have reissued—or allowed others to reissue—on CD only 14 percent of the pre-1965 recordings they control. Thus, most historically important sound recordings are available for hearing only through private collectors or at research libraries that collect our audio heritage and have the equipment to play obsolete, often-frail recordings.

And the significance of this? Simple: it provides evidence for the claim that the current ‘strong’ copyright regime keeps a large proportion of creative works inaccessible.

Something’s up

Posted on by

Sun Microsystems has announced a link-up with Google.

What’s going to come from this?

Nobody knows — yet. But here’s a quote from the Blog maintained by Sun’s President, Jonathan Schwartz:

Or finally, as I did last week at a keynote, ask the audience which they’d rather give up – their browser, or all the rest of their desktop apps. (Unanimously, they’d all give up the latter without a blink.) All these trends show a slowing upgrade appetite calling into question the power of traditional distribution. In stark contrast to the value of volume, community and participation.

Now, I have been nothing if not tediously repetitive in stating my belief that volume begets value – best demonstrated by the rise of the free software movement (whose volume is derived from its price, its value from innovation, in all forms). The cost of reaching customers, traditionally the most expensive part of building a business, has largely been eliminated – resulting in massive, global participation. Value’s literally everywhere the network travels, on every device it touches (and it’s subsidizing some very interesting ideas.)

But value is returning to the desktop applications, and not simply through Windows Vista. But in the form of applications that are network service platforms. From the obvious, to music sharing clients and development tools, there’s a resurgence of interest in resident software that executes on your desktop, yet connects to network services. Without a browser. Like Skype. Or QNext. Or Google Earth. And Java? OpenOffice and StarOffice?

If I were a betting man, I’d bet the world was about to change. And that what just happened in Massachusetts, when a state government made what was to me a very rational statement – we will pick an open standard to protect the right of our citizens to access data and services; we will then buy from vendors that support standards – will be a shot heard ’round the world.

What will they produce? Here’s John Paczkowski’s guess:

If Sun and Google do uncrate an office productivity solution — say a Sun Ray ultra-thin client optimized to run “Google Office” — that shot will definitely be heard up in Redmond, along with a lot of expletives and an anguished scream or two. Because if anyone can shift personal computing out of Microsoft’s domain and into the open, it’s Google.

Interesting times. Watch this space.

On this day…

Posted on by

… in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and in doing so set in motion a chain of events which eventually led to the Internet (because it spurred the US government into setting up ARPA). See here and here for the gory details. Sputnik weighed 184 pounds. It was 23 inches in diameter and was made from steel.

I was 11 at the time, living in Kerry, and I remember the day vividly. I spent the evening glued to the radio listening to recordings of the satellite’s strange, disembodied beeps from the Jodrell Bank radio observatory and from amateur radio operators. (Later, we learned that the Russian designers originally wanted the device to broadcast a message in morse code, but weight limitations precluded all but the most elementary oscillator.) The signal continued until the transmitter batteries ran out on October 26.

I also remember feeling frustrated by cloud cover which prevented us from scanning the night sky.

Babies and restaurants

Posted on by

A re-run of a lovely Dave Barry column…

If you’re a new parent, there will come a time when either you or your spouse will say these words:

”Let’s take the baby to a restaurant!”

Now, to a normal, sane person, this statement is absurd. It’s like saying: ”Let’s take a moose to the opera!”

But neither you nor your spouse will see anything inappropriate about the idea of taking your baby to a restaurant. This is because, as new parents, you are experiencing a magical period of wonder, joy and possibility that has made you really stupid.

You are not alone: All new parents undergo a sharp drop in intelligence. It’s nature’s way of enabling them to form an emotional bond with a tiny human who relates with other humans exclusively by spitting up on them. Even very smart parents are affected, as we see from these two quotations:

Albert Einstein Shortly Before The Birth Of His Son: ”To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”

Albert Einstein Shortly After The Birth Of His Son: ”Daddy’s gonna EAT THESE WIDDLE TOES!”

Lots more where that came from. Go to it.