Surfing today, and found something lighten my day, Make it Funny. Take a minute and lighten your’s.
Blog
Dublin in my future
Looks like Dublin is in my future, it’s a good thing that I only have to venture into the barest fringes, Dublin 12. Far enough out to be near the country, and near enough to test the waters of modern mass transit in the form of Luas. We will see if that coupled with the potential, and unrealized hourly high-speed trains to Cork will keep me sane while still exploiting Dublin work economics.
I hope my fellow Cork Bloggers do not disown me. And on that front, I will continue to blog during my weekends home in the Peoples Republic of Cork
The truth the press fails to publish
When the press complain about bloggers, they always claim that bloggers do no research, and fail to verify their information before publishing. In recent Pew research 58% of bloggers do, research. Witness the alternative, that ‘professional’ journalist do research, and verify their data, then do not publish the truth, to support corrupt politicians. New York Times’ Eavesdropping Story Wasn’t The Only One Squashed For Bush During 2004 Campaign
Make’s you wonder who to trust, bloggers who publish information when they find it, or professional journalist who suppress the truth for political gain?
Not a very hard decision, is it!
Blog stats and Irish internet access.
I have been noticing in my blog stats that the number of hits from ‘Irish’ sites, and ‘American’ sites is roughly the same. The interesting point is when they switch places. The Irish stats increase starting on Monday and pass the american ones, until friday when they get passed by the americans through the weekend. As I suspect most of the Irish readers only have internet access from places of work. Either that or the Irish have more fun in the real world on the weekends. 😉
Irish Labor party
I’ve had to add a category to my links, as, to my amazement a Labor Party politician has actually read and commented on one of my posts. So now I have ‘Irish Politicians’ as a category, and Seamus Ryan the first on the list.
I also did a perusal around his blog site, and that of many other Labor Party members blogs, and I’m impressed with the style they have standardized on, very nice.
Here’s hoping they help throw out Fianna Fáil at the next election.
Participating, a democratizing activity in blog space
This article The Hype
vs. Reality vs. What People Value: Emerging Collaborative News Models and
the Future of News . Brought up some interesting ideas when blog space becomes a democratizing element in politics, traditional party politics loose power and control of the discussion. It’s no wonder that blogs have resulted in much consternation of the reigning Irish political party.
On the other hand, is it no wonder that the most practical defense of the status quo in Irish (and worldwide) politics is to prevent broadband adoption. Less talk, less action translates to less access to Blogs, and the Internet for information and dialog means less pressure to adopt radical ideas in the political arena, like working for the public good, instead of against it.
A radical idea like participation is a political poison pill.
No Blogs, no participation.
Irish Politics, and blogger voices
Damien Mulley has managed to fire up a discussion on Irish Politics. Here; Labour consider inviting bloggers to the Ard Fheis. Oh how terribly nice of them! and here Irish Bloggers will not influence the election and while I think he really is concerned, I think he is doing a bit of tongue in cheeky just to stir things up a bit.
Fundamentally the question is how do you connect with politicians that want nothing more than to be completely removed from public opinion. It’s no wonder that they are having such a hard time taking bloggers seriously. They don’t want to talk to any individual let alone one who will publish the conversation on the internet five minutes after the last pint is gone.
I have never seen a government this far removed from public scrutiny, and who prefer to remain out of reach of any freedom of information requests. I doubt 2 people in 10 know how the current politicians got into office let alone the process on how they got elected. And the politicians are happy with that situation. Completely!
Why disturb the status quo?
Maybe the Irish deserve better? (that includes me now)
Meta Data and search engine response
I have been observing internet search engine behavior lately and I’m beginning to believe that certain types of meta data in the HTML may elevate various web-pages to the top of search results. I haven’t found anything conclusive, but many of the top news sites include interesting meta tags, and I’ve noticed these meta types absence in similar output from Blog sites. I have often suspected that it would be relatively simple to control search results and hence elevate opinions on the internet by such manipulation.
I’m am not referring to the massive meta tags use in many pornographic sites that include anything, and everything so as to be included into any search results, but specific tag types and names. I’ll have to do more research, but in the mean time, I’ve made some attempts to include similar meta data in some of my blog output. I’ll keep you posted.
Search Engine results are rubbish
I’ve come to the conclusion that Technorati, Feedster, Google, Altavista and Yahoo provide guaranteed rubbish as far as content search. I recently re-ran some simple searches and they returned absolutely zero useful links. Search for products, and you get a wealth of information.
So a question for the internet, is there a good content search engine?
Digitized life and the human mind
Often when we talk about digitizing something we make reference to how accurate that becomes. We assume that qualifying and abstracting our analogy world with an arbitrary numeric precision that we have encapsulated reality in a reproducible and consistent manner not previously available in an imprecise world. We talk about digital cameras and CD music as if they are the hight of accuracy when they are merely an imprecise abstraction reduced to digital form. We can have all the Mega-pixels in 24, 36, 48 bit depths cameras in the world and still only capture a poor semblance of our world. The compromises we make to the almost good enough CD quality sound to the crude compressed noise of MP3 has affected extensively how we think about everyday life. We make decisions every day in a binary this or that product, my way or your way. However we are forever forgetting the initial compromise of our digital choices. There is a world of values between one and zero, and there is a world of difference between “the perfect product” and one that’s “almost the right product” The world of the tailors custom made suit and the cobblers hand made shoe have been lost to digital one size fits all product mentality.
This applies to the world of software where vendors of CRM and ERP claim to have the definitive answer to everyones problem. The customize in custom is no longer available. When doing business with anyone, is the same for everyone, what happens to delineation of value. A CRM is the same for every business, and forces it to conform it operations to the design of the CRM. It no longer provides a custom solution for a business to provide a custom experience to the customer.
One of the missed opportunities of the internet bubble’s collapse, and a missing aspect of the Web 2.x, is the ability to provide an entirely customized experience to the customer. To even provide a customized product to customer specs. This was in some aspects part of the success of DELL in the computer world. But it has not provided, as full an experience, as could have been provided.
This is part and parcel connected to the compromise we make in a digital choice. No tailored answers, no personalized perfect solutions. Dell and the CRM vendor, are in the business of narrowing the selections and reducing the choices to a qualifiable numeric.
Just like the digitized stair-steps of an analog wave of music, something is missing in-between, we are loosing unique for digital normal. And while many can live with CD’s there is that niche still holding out for their vinyl, and there are still tailors.
The tailors do not strive to be millionaires, they are making a living, providing custom solutions.
Web 2.x should be about custom solutions.
The Future is how you see it.
I did not graduate from the university with a Computer Science degree, I graduated with a degree in Future Studies. I only got into Computers (as a minor in college) because I was passionate about them, and they were easy. It has also earned me a fair salary over the years. so when I see articles containing “Futurist” I am intrigued, as in this article, which has a universal applicability to such things as Web 2.0, iPods and other technology, economic and social issues.
Twelve Things Journalists Need To Know to be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters
Can we all say “Common Sense”?
A favorite, particularly good for Web 2.0:
…any futurist who tells you that something is inevitable probably has something to sell
Flocking
I have been trying out Flock. And while it’s very pretty, and actually very functional. On my old iMac (800Mhz, 512GB flat-panel) it’s to say the least, Glacial. Smooth, but Glacial.
Update: I have tried it out on my iBook (500Mhz G3) and the performance is almost the same as on the faster iMac platform.
Donncha Thinks differently Flocking Fast
Do Bloggers have a Gene?
A good article about Gene’s and That Wild Streak? Maybe It Runs in the Family. So the argument about Nature vs Nurture is back in the news.
The real question is something more important, is it genetics or the ‘self fulfilling prophecy’! If people Believe they are predisposed to some action, or behavior they will act on that belief whether or not there really is a gene for that social behavior. What if I believe I’m predisposed to mass murder, or worse yet, that I am genetically destined to Blog?
What about freedom of choice? Does that also go by the wayside?
Web 3.0â„¢, and push clarity
I have been hearing all kinds of talk about web 2.0 being ‘push’ technology. But it’s not. And for the sake of clarity, Blogging and Web 2/3.0 is not PUSH! Back in the old Web 1.0 day’s you could do the same thing as web 2.0 except that with the old HTML pages the ‘posting’ date was available as a file creation date, and there were plenty of tools around to check for ‘refreshed’ html pages. Which is more or less what RSS and Atom do, check for refreshes of posts.
Web 2.0 is not Push!.
Blog Post Frequency
A very interesting article on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
I have often wondered if the content I generate on my blog get’s retrieved over time. That the posts I make are still available over time, that I don’t become irrelevant. Irreverent, Yes! Irrelevant no!
If this Web 2.0 becomes Web 3.0â„¢ then the fabulous and meaningful things I say should be available to posterity.