Month: May 2005

AOL knows how, occasionally, to make some waves in the press. Pointing out that Americans are hooked on email, with some statistics, got picked up all over the place. Addicted to e-mail? You’re not alone is the News.com summary of the survey results. I come down on the “need e-mail” portion of each one of these questions. Having a Treo connected to work e-mail only accentuates my tendencies in this direction.

I’m still a big fan of owning your own words, one of the oldest ideas in electronic forums. So I’m not sure why lowering the final friction point in tagging — that of identity — is truly an advance. I agee that volume is necessary to help the more useful properties of tags emerge, but standalone tagging just puts in one tradeoff for another. Sure to swell the data sets available, and maybe size alone will make tags more broadly interesting. I think Scott Rafer has been paying more attention than I have, so I’m willing to be proven wrong. After all, it’s more interesting when first instincts are wrong, whatever Malcolm Gladwell “blinks.” [Via Tagsonomy, via Many 2 Many]

“So for all the talk of citizen journalists, another need is citizen editors — the people who filter data and turn it into information.” [Chuq Von Ruspach]

I don’t read my own blog that often, so I don’t always notice that the posts I’m making here on the desktop aren’t making it to the website automagically. Usually, quitting and restarting Radio Userland will do the trick.

Or maybe editing and re-publishing this time will do the trick.

That phrase in its entirety isn’t worth repeating, but the sentiment lives on. Except that you can replace the word “opinions” with “social bookmarking services” and continue on your merry way.

While reading What’s Wrong with Commas, Anyway?, I learned about another one, Simpy.com. Of course, I already know about Spurl, Furl, del.icio.us, del.irio.us, connotea, and dozens more if I actually wanted to find them. (Linking is left as an exercise for the reader.) Only one I’m using is del.icio.us, despite its RSI-inducing URL. Yikes. I hope most of these are just hobby sites… otherwise, one might imagine that it’s 1999 all over again, and we’re watching features pretend to be businesses. Somewhere amidst all the tech hype that’s simmering, but not yet boiling over, is there more substance? Or am I just (foolishly) captive to my dozen years of building online services in thinking that earning some time and attention from a meaningful number of people is a bit harder than copying someone else’s idea?

I’m not against copying. The great ones go one step further, after all. It’s just harder to tell a story if it’s not your own. At least, it is for me… maybe I need to get over that. I’ve been thinking a bit more about what a product or service’s story must be to stand out in a crowd. Blame Seth Godin. I need story-telling help.

I rarely listen to music, but Dave Brubeck just makes me smile. I have only a few albums, and only one ripped to iTunes, The Great Concerts. Maybe it’s lowest common denominator jazz, but sure sounds like the highest form of sound to me.

It’s been so long since I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that I felt little concern about seeing the movie this evening. I wasn’t worried that it “wouldn’t be true to the book” or anything purist like that because I could remember only the barest outline of events… and, having seen the movie, even that outline was sketchy. That said, if you hadn’t read the books at all, I would have to imagine that this is one of the oddest movies ever. Vaguely Python-esque, but not so obviously funny. The movie does make me want to re-read the book, though, to try and grasp why Douglas Adams captured the imagination of so many. I know I enjoyed reading it, and I did continue on to finish at least one or two more of the series.

The animations in the “Guide” in the film are faithfully reproduced on the website. Now that I think of it, I wonder if the ones used in the movie were created in Flash first.

Last week we enjoyed a mid-week night out to see The Interpreter. I really liked this film. I won’t try and put too much into that, but there you are. One ridiculous point, from the film’s website (Flash, everyone’s favorite):

The Interpreter is the first movie to be granted the honor of being able to film within the United Nations’ Headquarters, marking yet another significant moment in the U.N.’s unique history. [emphasis added]

Ummmm… folks? When they write the history of the U.N., the first movie isn’t going to make more than the footnotes, and it shouldn’t even make those. Still worth a watch, though nothing that can’t wait for DVD in the subject matter.

Bernard Cornwell notes that the action Sharpe’s Enemy is entirely fictional. Not bad. I don’t mind a bit of license taken in the name of entertainment when it comes off well. My only lingering quibble is that Obadiah Hakeswill dies his second death in this book. I preferred the death by snake from Sharpe’s Fortress to the firing squad funeral in this book, written 15 years before Fortress.

One fun typographical note broke through to make me laugh and share it. On page 88 of the library copy I read, Cornwell’s original sentence: “Sharpe was placatory, yet all of them knew that less men deserted from the Rifles than from other Regiments.” Do you see the error? An earlier reader did, and jotted (in pencil) the word “fewer” above “less.” Must have irked the reader quite a bit, because he or she did it at least once more.

Now for another break from Sharpe before I finish the headlong rush to Waterloo.

Sharpe’s Sword gives our hero the chance to cuckold a Spaniard married to a French spy. Oh, and Wellington wins the battle of Salamanca in 1812.

I realized why these novels are reading faster and faster. Bernard Cornwell uses stock paragraphs (pages?) to describe certain things in each book. Of course, there is little reason to come up with new ways to describe the same gun or military manuever or the like. Cornwell clearly assumes nothing, which is disappointing only because this is the thirteenth book in the series, chronologically, and the third in order of writing. If you’ve gotten this far, you know all about the seven-barrelled gun that Sergeant Harper carries. I know I gloss over those words without a thought in my head. And yet I still enjoy these books. Onwards!