Links for 02-28-2008

• Dartlog: Jeffrey Hart on the First Time he Saw Buckley


• PlagiarismToday - » 10 Basics About Copyright Everyone Needs to Know - Good, concise rundown on some copyright basics.


• The Semantic Web’s biggest problem - - mathewingram.com/work - Also, at least some talk about the Semantic Web posits lots of labor intensive metadata creation up-front for (hopeful) value down the road. That's not how the Web has evolved to date.

Links for 02-27-2008

• An Online Collection of Visualized Networks - ReadWriteWeb - I'm seeing a lot of interest in visualization these days. There's a lot of complex data to process.


• Amazon Web Services Blog: Orglex: Using AWS to Build Semantic Web Ontologies - These "ontologies" (essentially mapping relationships) are focused on several specific professional domains (which is where this sort of formal mechanism makes most sense).


• The Despair Inc. Blog » Your Own Printed DIY Demotivator Posters - Print your own demotivators!


• Beware of Freeconomics - ReadWriteWeb - A counterpoint worth reading. A related thought is that various cross-subsidies work far less well in a world where more and more things are "unbundled" (to use Nick Carr's term).


• Technology Review: Between Friends - Some social graphs visualization from Tech Review.


• China Eats Crow Over Faked Photo Of Rare Antelope - WSJ.com - Widely reprinted photo was a fake.


• Shark tour leader was warned of danger, diver says - CNN.com - You don't say: "The leader of a shark tour whose customer was mauled to death Saturday was warned that his practice of allowing people to swim close to hungry sharks could lead to tragedy, a colleague said."


• Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Apple: More On New Macs, Higher Margins, Weak iPods and iPhones; Where Has Steve Jobs Been Flying? - That's some air travel bill: "The company spent $550,000 on Steve’s airplane expenses in the quarter, which she says is 3x the average over the prior six quarters."


• Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business - On the other hand, some things that people find useful but aren't willing to pay for may just go away.

Links for 02-23-2008

• Microsoft runs its datacenters on ‘Autopilot’ | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com - A look at the technologies used by Microsoft for Live. It is an interesting question what Microsoft does if they acquire Yahoo in this area.


• Barney Alliances and the Downfall of HD DVD | Epicenter from Wired.com - I'm not especially convinced it was a factor here (MSFT did have an HD-DVD drive for the Xbox)), but the point that "partnerships" and endorsements consisting solely of press release-ware aren't worth much is worth noting.


• To DNG, or not to DNG ... - Inside Lightroom - I've switched to using DNG myself in Lightroom; I like keeping all the metadata together in one file rather than using XMP sidecards. Just less potential for separation down the road--although, yes, replicating global metadata changes get more painful.


• Mpix.com Online Digital Imaging Service - Order digital photo prints online from professional imaging lab - Matt at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips (and a number of commenters) recommend these guys. Prices have really come down for ordering larger prints.


• SF Signal: FINALISTS: 2007 Nebula Awards - Many of the shorter pieces are available online.

Links for 02-22-2008

• tecosystems » Linux vs OpenSolaris…Again: The Q&A - I pretty much concur with all of Stephen's points.


• Schneier on Security: Cold Boot Attacks Against Disk Encryption - " it is very difficult to secure data when the attacker has physical control of the machine the data is stored on."


• Will Social Bookmarking Pay Dividends with Search Result Augmentation? - ReadWriteWeb - "the researchers at Stanford outlined a number of ways in which social bookmarking sites could be used to theoretically improve search engines, if not yet on a grand scale."


• Multitouch and Minority Report - O'Reilly Radar - We've been in an input device rut for a while now. Multitouch would seem to be at least one path forward.


• Hacking NetFlix : Do You Suffer From Netflix Burnout? - Interesting (true) comment: "I think Netflix puts pressure on some personality types (or people who are cheap like me) to feel like they are getting the most value out of the service. When I go through a lull watching movies, I cancel my account."


• Poll: Which is better, Aperture or Lightroom? | Underexposed - CNET News.com - "I don't like switching back and forth between editing and tagging." I agree. This is a similar issue to what I have with Office 2007. Let me customize and I could stay with a single set of controls 95% of the time.


• Ink: Tesla Slept Here: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker - "“Everything that can be invented has been invented”—an 1899 statement attributed to a U.S. patent commissioner (which, if not apocryphal, might rival “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended” as the Least Accurate Remark Ever Uttered by a Senior Government Official."


• Sorry Mike, Digg is NOT a User-Generated Content Site | CenterNetworks - Old I know :-) FWIW, I look at digg and its ilk as recommenders/filters. Or, to be more precise, as a crowd-based version of same. Comments on digg are the lowest level of blather. It makes slashdot look erudite.


• Linkin Park To Participate In Upcoming New York Apple Event - Mac Forums - Off-topic/Love comment "I'm so avant garde I hate every band ever. I only listen to acts that play in their own garages. As soon as they get a pub gig I reject them as lyrical sell-outs and move on. I also post about it on the internet."


• Nature revealed at World Photographic Awards - Telegraph - Some great shots here.


• Kleptography - Don Ellis - Richard Franiec's Components - More Canon G9 accessories.


• Lensmateonline - Canon PowerShot G9/G7 - Various accessories.


• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Andrea Jung is making my life a living hell - A particularly good one.


• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Crowd control at eBay - Great post looking at the breakdown of bottoms-up regulation system over time.


• The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Sun's new focus? Storage. No, Java. No, MySQL. No, Linux. No, supercomputers. - Funny. Mean. But funny.

Links for 02-13-2008

• How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook -- Facebook -- InformationWeek - This isn't particularly new but it's very perceptive.


• apophenia: just because we can, doesn't mean we should - "Being socially exposed is AOK when you hold a lot of privilege, when people cannot hold meaningful power over you, or when you can route around such efforts. Such is the life of most of the tech geeks living in Silicon Valley."


• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers | Graphics | Smashing Magazine - "desktop wallpapers related to typography, art, technology, photography and abstract themes."


• PlagiarismToday - » My Disappointment With Creative Commons - This mirrors a lot of my own thinking on the topic.


• Study: 6% of People Online Contribute 50% of Display Ad Clicks - ReadWriteWeb - "Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000,"


• Writers Strike Over and Still No Web Profits in Sight! | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD - "That there is precious little money being made online by anyone does not seem to have mattered, as the struggle metastasized into a symbolic battle over all the wrenching changes that digital technologies have made on the industry..."


• PicLens Brings Cover Flow-style Photo Viewing to the Web - ReadWriteWeb - Looks interesting.


• Presentation Zen: Deep or wide? You decide. - I've been listening to some MIT Open Course Ware lectures recently. The professor's approach there seems to be to deep dive into a few topics in lecture and leave the rest for independent reading or "recitation" sections with TAs.


• Wi-Fi Networking News: Starbucks Switches to AT&T, the Next Day - A lot more detail and background about the AT&T-Starbucks deal. I see this coming in very handy when I'm traveling.


• Digital Camera Batteries Chargers Memory Cards Readers - I need some new/extra Lithium-ion camera batteries. This outfit seems to be highly recommended on photo.net. (My impression of Canon brand is they're about 4x price and nothing great.)


• Exclusive Lifehacker Download: DVD Rip Automates One-Click DVD Ripping - The comments collectively give a pretty good overview of what's available for ripping DVDs these days.


• VirtualBox_architecture - VirtualBox - A good detailed overview of the VirtualBox architecture.

Links for 02-11-2008

• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Does Microsoft need consumers? Yes. - As he often is, Nick is spot on: "But the importance of the consumer market to Microsoft goes well beyond money. There is no bright line between the use of Office in businesses and the use of Office in homes and schools. "


• Cool Tool: Big Green Egg - Looks like an awesome smoker.


• Complex Diagrams » Generation of Complex Diagrams: How to Make Lasagna Instead of Spaghetti - Always interested in new ways of presenting complex data. I haven't checked this out yet.


• Microsoft will pay high price for failing to learn history lessons | Media | The Observer - via Matt Asay. Check out the second paragraph--it's too good to quote only partially here.


• Starbucks ditches T-Mobile for AT&T | The Social - CNET News.com - This is welcome and exciting news.


• James Governor’s Monkchips » Note To Furl: should you be more del.ici.ous? - It's striking how little has changed. This post was written 4!! years ago.


• Subtraction: Charityware - The problem is that OLPC was never setup for end user sales. So the consequences of being pressured into it (for both financial and community pressure reasons) aren't especially surprising.


• Tiinker is the Anti-Digg - ReadWriteWeb - Something else to check out.


• Web 3.0: Is It About Personalization? - ReadWriteWeb - I'm starting to spend some time getting my arms around where the web is evolving to.


• apophenia: a google horror story: what happens when you are disappeared - I've read similar stories with respect to Flickr. This is another face of the data transportability issue in addition to the security one.


• Printing photos onto canvas- Photo on canvas poster printing equipment: Photogonia.com - I've seen some photos output like this. Quite impressive. Don't know about this specific vendor.


• The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb - Not all the alternatives are that comparable to the proprietary packages but this list offers up a lot of things to check out--especially if you just need something lightweight.


• The Economics of Online Backup - Inside Lightroom - A good look at the costs of backing up online in the context of photos. Bottom line: it's not especially cheap. I've tried it but for the ~200GB I'd need, the extra security isn't worth it.


• PhotoKeywords | Microstock Diaries - I'm very bad about metadata. Wonder if this would help?


• Wired News from the Past - The history of the AP.


• Reuters CEO sees "semantic web" in its future - Definitions remain fuzzy here but some interesting trends popping up above the noise.


• tecosystems » Where’s the Network? - SOG's views on this largely mirror mine. If you believe we'll have five "computers" (rather than 100s or 1000s), I'm not sure premium "arms merchant" is where you want to be.


• YouTube - Pachelbel Rant - Very funny. A friend sent this to me after I mentioned I sometimes use a "mix tape" of Canon in D variants as background for writing.

Links for 02-07-2008

• YouTube - You Suck at Photoshop #1 - This series is pretty funny and even instructive.


• Linux.com :: A GPL requirement could have a chilling effect on derivative distros - Downstream distros apparently need to make all source available--not just for changed packages. As I noted previously, such a requirement could raise issues for anyone providing access to GPLd binaries.


• Linux.com :: The Free Software hardliner, the corporation, and the shotgun wedding - I don't agree with everything here but there are a lot of good points--for example, with respect to plug-in architectures.


• Marginal Revolution: Is Grand Central Station still a focal point? - For some reason, I find this fascinating. Time of day aside, for Cambridge MA there's also an obvious focal point (leaving aside MIT bias--in which case it would be the 77 Mass Ave steps)--the front of the Harvard Coop or Out of Town News across the street.