Interactive TV proves disappointing
Guardian story.

Well of course it is. TV isn’t an interactive medium, stupid. Meanwhile, Kingston Communications — the subject of the story — is here.

Tim O’Reilly: “William Gibson said ‘The future is here, it’s just not widely distributed.’ The shape of things to come is already implicit in a thousand small clues. Then, in a sudden shift of mindset, it becomes obvious to everyone.”

Underpinnings of Creative Commons

The project’s initial goal is to provide an easy method by which creators can indicate, in a machine-readable format, how others may use their intellectual works. The project uses JavaScript, Perl, HTML, and XML to create a web-based application for generating metadata, associated with digital works in a machine-readable format. The metadata corresponds to innovative and flexible licenses designed to help creators of intellectual works share their work with the public on generous terms. Search engines, file sharing applications, digital rights management tools, and other emerging technologies recognize the terms on which those works may be used. [More…]

What a Good Idea Department

Fed up with those three-line URLs generated by content management systems? Well, here’s an ingenious solution: MakeAShorterLink — which enables you to generate a short URL which points to an incomprehensible one. Why didn’t I think of that?

Virtual teamwork is harder than it looks. Tell me something new
FT report.

“When technologies such as e-mail and videoconferencing first began to enable communications between groups of people in different locations, many senior managers rubbed their hands with glee: project teams would be able to work virtually as easily as they could face to face, saving money on airfares and promoting the global nature of the company’s operations.

It has not proved that easy. And as managers of virtual teams struggle to build loyalty, resolve conflicts and prevent turf wars – issues that arise when people are in the same office but that are magnified when they work remotely – they are turning to business schools for advice….”.

Jakob Neilsen on paying attention to what users actually do
From his latest newsletter.

“About half of the users now access the Internet from more than one location. Despite the implications of this for service design, many systems assume that users remain bound to a single computer.”

I used to be one of those vagrants. But since I got an iBook, I just take it with me and access the Net from it wherever I happen to be.

My Observer column about epiphanies in Cyberspace is here.

Hollywood’s control freakery

When I tell people about the Hollings Bill and then say that it’s only the tip of the copyright thuggery iceberg, they look at me as if I’m crazy. But Cory Doctorow’s chilling account of the studios’ long-term ambitions makes even my blood run cold.

Nathan M talks sense about fundamental research
From that Tech Review interview.

“NM: Basic science is the fundamental well from which all this stuff is watered. Ironically, basic science is being given increasingly short shrift. DARPA [the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] funding for computer science is probably the single most successful government program in the history of governments — it led to this entire revolution in computing. Yet most Silicon Valley companies that are the beneficiary of that don’t invest in fundamental research. Then you get the ludicrous thing of people in Congress saying they want more relevant research. No, you should have less relevant research.

I’ve done extensive modeling of all of this. If you’re a company that lives hand to mouth, don’t do research, okay. You don’t need me to tell you that. If you’re a company that has steady cash flows, then you should work at whatever level you can afford. So if you’re a company that intends to be around 20 years from now, like a Microsoft, you are losing money if you don’t do research. It is an incredibly profitable investment only open to a limited club — the people who can afford to take a long-term view. And that’s an industrial research context. At the government level, you really should swing for the fences.

You could make a case that research funding really won the Cold War, because it was those economic things that stoked the economy. As soon as the Soviets went from being our enemies to being potentially our friends, [people said,] now let’s stop giving lots of money to science. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Fundamental science has been the best investment the government’s ever made.”

Amen.

Thomas Friedman talking sense about the latest security nonsense from Dubya & Co
“NYT” op-ed piece.

May 22, 2002

Cool It! By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Ah, excuse me, but could we all just calm down here?

What started as a story about how the Bush team handled unspecific warnings about possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. before 9/11 has now prompted the Bushies not only to defend themselves from charges of irresponsibility — which they are entitled to do — but to go on a Chicken Little warnings binge that another attack is imminent, inevitable and around the corner, but we can’t tell you when, where or how.

Look, in the wake of 9/11, I would never rule out any kind of attack. That would be foolhardy. But I’m no more interested in indicting the Bush team for failing to respond to an unspecific warning about a possible terrorist attack before 9/11 than I’m interested in having the vice president and F.B.I. director warn us about the certainty of an unspecified attack sometime in the future…