Entries tagged “links”

There have been a lot of great conversations around and about some of my recent posts; Here are some highlights.

My post about Google's Microsoft Moment seems to have really struck a nerve. First amongst the responses, from my perspective, is prominent Googler Matt Cutts' "Why Googlers should read Anil Dash's post. The open-mindedness and willingness to take constructive criticism that Matt shares with a number of his colleagues at Google (I'd also highlight Karen Wickre, who helps lead Google's efforts in blogging and on Twitter) are going to be the factor that decides whether or not Google falls prey to the dangers outlined in that essay. Matt concludes his comments with a simple, and inspiring exhortation:

Googlers, ask yourself how you can help make another one of those moments where you’re proud to work at Google. I think those moments are a great way to keep from becoming just another large company. And if Googlers are open to posts like Anil Dash’s, the web is tell us tons of things it wants us to do, or how to do them better.

Some other notable conversations around these ideas popped up as well:

• The presciently-named (but independent) Google Operating System blog offers up Google's Changing Corporate Culture.
• Ex-Googler, current FriendFeeder and all-around good guy Kevin Fox takes issue with some of my points in Google's Apple Moment. Kevin raises the point that a lot of Googlers did: It's okay for Google to have two different operating systems because they serve two different markets. I don't disagree — I did ask in my original essay "If the keyboard works with my fingers instead of my thumbs, I should use Chrome OS and not Android?" and folks at Google have already responded to me privately with, in effect, "Actually, that might not be such a bad way to put it..." My point, though, was not that it doesn't make good technical sense to have these systems. Rather, that sort of roadmap complexity makes it hard for casual outside observers to believe that their needs are being put ahead of the company's platform ambitions. I'll chalk up the lack of clarity there to my own poor editing and the fact that John Gruber highlighted that bit on Daring Fireball, which may have put more focus on what was a relatively minor point.
• I loved, and totally agree with, Mini-Microsoft's Microsoft Has Turned The Corner. This makes explicit what was part of the subtext of my essay: Even Microsoft doesn't do this kind of shifty crap anymore, if they can help it. And to their credit, Microsoft since Ray Ozzie's ascension has also seemed to regain their ambition and clarity around creating innovative products. I'm not sure if that's correlation or causation, but it's good to see regardless, and this is a post well worth reading in full.
• One of my favorite bloggers, Mike Masnick of TechDirt, asks Has Google Reached The Perception Tipping Point? The post consists of the single word "Yes." Okay, not really, but it's still thoughtfully argued and especially highlights Google's recent track record in the area of intellectual property and DRM, which is TechDirt's strongest suit.
• Finally, a couple more mentions in bigger media: BusinessWeek's Rob Hof offers up a critical look at Google's strategy, which is a welcome change from most mainstream press that tend to slavishly puff up any pronouncement of this scale that comes out of the tech industry. Similarly, Alex Pham at the LA Times puts the Chrome OS story in the context of Microsoft's Office 2010 announcement today. Matt Asay has an even more skeptical take over at CNET. And finally I thought MG Siegler's brief post about the back-and-forth between me and Matt Cutts offered up a nice perspective on the perils and potential of this inflection point in Google's evolution.

Here's a two-fer: Chris Anderson's CNN Commentary on Google, Microsoft, and Free. Chris ruminates on whether the tech giants' habit of entering new markets with free products funded by the obscene margin they make in their primary lines of business is going to face legal scrutiny in the future. Recommended if you liked either Google's Microsoft Moment or Free Criticism, Science After Data and Airport Books.

Reason mag's Tim Cavanaugh had an amusing riff that referenced that post of mine from the other day: Resolved: The New York Times Should Be Staffed By Volunteers, Like Meals On Wheels. I thought it was a fun read, at least.

And if you're seeking out even more comment on these topics, Silicon Alley Insider has a pretty fun thread in response to my Free Criticism post, along with a slightly more inane one in response to last month's post about The Future of Facebook Usernames.

Finally, some stuff that's actually related to my day job:

• Tony Dearing at AnnArbor.com has a really smart take on a conversation we had about what that site is doing to make a real community-focused local news website. I think the current AnnArbor.com team has the best chance at success of any of the dozens of similar efforts I've seen over the past several years.
• In a similar vein, Ken Edwards has a detailed look at what it's taken to build the new BG Views community at Bowling Green State University. It's always fun to watch a project like that from afar and get to see a new community take off.

Thanks to everyone for great comments on my previous posts, and even more for the inspiring conversations that have happened around these topics. And a specialy thanks to the many of you who've shared links to these pieces on Twitter: @padmasree, @timoreilly were instrumental in kicking off the broader conversation around the recent Google post, and it was really gratifying to see @wilw find a quote in my Free Criticism essay that really seems to have struck a nerve.

Put these in your browser, and shake well.

• Facebook apps are not a long tail. So says Chris Anderson, who oughtta know. The tougher question is: Since the recent changes to app distribution on Facebook's platform, will there ever be another popular new application on Facebook again. Or is the era of hit F8 apps over already?
• Prince is Rolling Stone's most underrated guitarist. The article's got a great shot of Prince's most ridiculously entertaining affectation of recent years: His habit of throwing his guitar away in faux-disgust at the end of his solos. His poor guitar tech Takumi is gonna take one of these spiky symbol-shaped guitars to the head one of these days while trying to make the catch.
• I loved Ian Rogers' post about digital music, "Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses". Choice quote: "Back in 1999 ... We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we’d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, 'What’s MP3?' or 'Um, no.' Instead they commenced suing Napster." Working in music promo online back then, I got to see those reactions first hand, and I guess I was equally naive.
• Rafe points to Jeff Atwood's great post about copyright and YouTube. I have the opposite conclusion than these guys: If YouTube has created something fantastic, and it required copyright violation to do so, then copyright law should be changed to make it legal. Laws are ours, people -- they're not carved on stone tablets.
• The PlayStation 3 is a complete failure for casual gaming. That's not news, but it's never been articulated as well. Especially damning is that even the fanboys can only dispute minor facts, not the fundamental conclusion.

Did I say two three’s a trend? I forgot to mention the guy who started it all, both this month and in the last century, too: Michael Sippey’s blogging again, for reals this time. The design is better than yours and there’s even some thinking behind it.

• Andre Torrez: “My little experiment in tossing links out of the main blog didn’t work out so hot. I like linking things, but I don’t like the lazy feeling of stuff just showing up here at some point in the day.”
• Rafe Colburn: “I still haven’t struck the balance I’d like between posting links and posting longer features here… So now my new idea is to post a wrapup of what I’m finding here every day or two in a more narrative form. This is the first attempt.”

Three’s a trend, too.

I've found some interesting articles around the web recently that mention me or my blog, and while I don't try to be comprehensive in linking to everything that mentions my name, I thought these were compelling enough on their own to be worth reading.

• Ross Mayfield's Twitter Tips the Tuna. I think the title is an unfortunately awkward parallel to "jumping the shark", but the title is the only part of the piece that's off -- the rest is really great. Ross has already done a few posts about Twitter's popularity and I'm glad to see someone who knows what he's talking about become the go-to guy for quotes on a new web technology. Ross' post references my own Consider Twitter.

• Jason Calacanis, More proof that there is no A-list. Inexplicably, I'm on there mentioned as an A-list blogger. The whole "A-list" meme was tired back in 2000, but now it's kind of sweetly anachronistic to even talk about it. For what it's worth, my blog is far less popular than it was at its zenith of readership, and the blogosphere is far more crowded. So I don't know how useful I am as a data point, except to note that yes, I was "a low-level webmonkey at the Village Voice" before my current job, and that, yes the barriers to entry are lower than some people imagine them to be. Four years ago, when my blog was still relatively popular, I wrote Beyond Power Laws. The post reminds me that I used to be a snob about LiveJournal before I started using it and loving it, but it also featured some tips on how to make your blog popular:

* Consider having started your site in 1998 or 1999
* Know a whole lot of people and consider becoming real-life friends with people who have popular sites or are involved in the media
* Get on TV and in newspapers as frequently as possible to promote your site, because those really help drive traffic
* Make sure to insist that you are smart and attractive if you can't actually demonstrate those traits through your site

• Jeremiah Owyang has a list of Asian technology speakers. It's an interesting effort, but I've seen people over the definition of "female" on lists of female technology speakers -- I don't envy the task of defining who belongs to the diaspora of the largest continent on Earth.

• And saving the goofiest for last, Blog Spring in Wired: "Look! There’s Anil Dash of dashes.com". Here I am!

If you were interested in How Matt Haughey beat Google with Ask MetaFilter, you might enjoy some more information about the site.

• The Chicago Tribune's Steve Johnson offered an astute look at Google Answers, as well as a nice plug for Ask MetaFilter, last week. The site requires an exasperating login, but the good news is you can also find the piece without a registration Hypertext blog. (Yay, it's a TypePad blog!)

A more enticing Ask is Ask MetaFilter (ask.metafilter.com), which also poses questions to a user community. The longstanding site is highly entertaining reading because it gets metaphysical, although the drawback is that it'll cost you $5 to join the MetaFilter community.

While Yahoo Answers is more about facts, Ask MetaFilter, in its best moments, is about feelings, opinions, theories of life. A recent, not atypical question: "Did you marry someone despite misgivings and have it actually work?"

• One trope that's rapidly gaining currency among lazy resourceful young professional bloggers is to collect Ask MetaFilter answers about a topic of interest. MediaBistro collects writing advice; LifeHacker collects, well, life hacks.

• Last week, NPR's Five for Friday gave some love to the site, too.

The best answers on Metafilter are those that provide an Aha! moment -- like the obscure book you remember from childhood, only you can't recall the title. Someone will know. And when you want to find the best (used book store/pancake joint/park) anywhere in the world, chances are that one of Metafilter's thousands of members will tell you exactly where to go. So if "Five for Friday" didn’t give you the right mix of ideas for weekend fun, go ahead, ask Metafilter. We won’t be insulted. And we may even give you the answer.

• If you want to see what other prominent Q&A sites look like, look no further than Amazon's Askville (Yay, another TypePad blog!) and Yahoo! Answers. There are some great things about both sites, but neither really holds my attention, at least so far.

• And then the absolutely funniest Ask MetaFilter-related link: MetaFilter spinoff site MetaChat's hysterical conversation about the worst, most blatantly trolling Ask MeFi questions possible. They're offensive, insulting, intellectually dishonest, and wonderful. Even better, after being discussed on MetaFilter, an enterprising site member actually submitted some of the ridiculous questions to Yahoo Answers. Hilarity ensues!

How long can a normal, healthy 8 week old kitten survive inside an adult python? URGENT?

I am fairly certain that the python did not chew much. I also do not want to damage the python much.... what is the best strategy for rescuing the kitten?

The answers are a lot better than the questions.

• So maybe Gracenote (formerly CDDB) isn't evil after all? I love anything that challenges the conventional wisdom, especially when someone's gotten a bad rap. Good reporting, Eliot Van Buskirk! I'd been accepting the received wisdom about this company for years, apparently unfairly. Do we have a tech equivalent term for "urban legend"?

• There's pubic hair dye now. So you've got that going for you. One color is called "Brown Betty", which I thought was a type of baked good.

• Microsoft and Yahoo endorse Google's sitemaps format for describing your website. I love when there's this kind of informal collaboration, as in the underrated nofollow initiative, as well as my long-time favorite robots.txt.

• That Sitemaps.org site should probably have a sitemap at some point.

• S.R. Sidarth in the Washington Post: "I am macaca".

Allen's actions that day stood out because they were not representative of how I was treated while traveling around the state. Everywhere I went, though I was identifiably working on behalf of Allen's opponent, people treated me with dignity, respect and kindness. I cannot recall one event where food was served and I was not invited to join in the meal. In southwest Virginia, hospitality toward me was at a high point.

I don't mean to belabor the macaca point, and the story is much more nuanced than it seems, but I hope all the slobbering politicians, regardless of political persuasion, take away a simple lesson from this: If you fuck with Indians in America, you will lose control of both houses of Congress.

• George H.W. Bush thinks one of the causes of political incivility is bloggers. He's right.

• I'm going to be on Cranky Geeks again. Seems to me the show's gotten a lot better since their blog switched to Movable Type. And I get to talk about the Wii and Vox, two of my favorite toys! Hooray.

• In case you missed it, you should watch the "I got a brown Zune" movie at the end of my last post. It's the finest film you'll see all year, or your money back. You'll also find yourself saying to yourself, "I got a brown Zune!" over and over.

• I really liked the Jay-Z ad for HP until I'd read the Slate piece about the campaign:

Though they were just as expensive to create as the TV ads, HP opted not to buy television time for these spots. According to Roman, this was the plan from the outset. HP decided that Web ads have become radically more effective of late, and thus that it's worth it to spend money on high production values.

I feel so manipulated! Eh, fuck it. I like the ads anyway. Three dimensional stadium rendering!

...and you put links in your browser, and that's what makes the web work.

• Last October, Reason published an interesting look at bloggers' overreactions and even downright misrepresentations of an attack at the University of Oklahoma.

• Michael Fitzgerald has a nice piece in CIO about starting a business blog. I'm in there, briefly, but it's worth reading anyway.

• Prince is going to play halftime at the next Superbowl. Farkers (surprisingly!) rejoice.

• FAQs and Walkthroughs for New Super Mario Bros. I've got three stars, I've done Challenge Mode... now I'm just wandering around looking for things to do.

• Data structures as culture. I love this stuff: "Microsoft emphasizes tree problems because their culture puts a high value on the kind of mental gymnastics often necessary to solve such problems, while Apple emphasizes hashtables because its aesthetically-oriented culture prizes their combination of zen-like simplicity and seemingly impossible speed."

• The Chicago Tribune published a list of the 50 best magazines a while ago. I love magazines, so I have nothing but objections to this list, but I'd say that Baseline is a glaring omission.

• Are The Oaktree and The Bird the same dance? Could be! If only Morris had someone to hold up a mirror to his dancing, so he could judge.

When I'm not able to be a good blogger myself, I rely on the kindness of others. Let's see what's out there!

Snarkout, one of the finest blogs on the web, has got some profound musings on technology, permanence, extinction, and language, all things that have been weighing on my mind lately. I'd like to point you to Kevin Kelly's thoughts, which form the jumping-off point for Steve's post and were wonderfully articulated, but the Times does not want that information to be archived forever. I am not sure if that's irony. But hey, there's audio. Those audio formats never become obsolete.

Hey, wait, permanence? Archiving of digital formats? Openness? You might have missed Mark Pilgrim's post, which pretends at first to be about Apple and data loss (he's right about those parts) but then veers into preparing for future archaeology. I think Mark's got his priorities wrong on some of this stuff, but I appreciate having a zealot on the side of good.

You need to have someone hold an extreme position to get even moderate change. The hard part about being an advocate for the extreme position is that people like to make fun. My feeling is that it's a pretty good sign if you stand for something strongly enough that people can mock you for it. Take a look at the guy sitting next to you -- do you know what he stands for?

I know what Mike stands for, cynicism with a soft, sweet heart. Mike takes a bold pro-sports stance, refuting the "all geeks hate sports" myth with a combination of righteous indignation and a little bit of history.

Oh hey, speaking of myths and facts, Steven Johnson seeks out the facts with an intellectual honesty that Lou Dobbs wouldn't recognize if it stole his job. I'm just proud of my valuable contribution to the discourse. I told you we boys like to leave comments.

And then, best for last, Bad Acts. I spend a lot of time doing public speaking; So far I've managed to create a PowerPoint presentation featuring Dr. Phil, a pair of handcuffs, an American flag, cliché kitty, the Enron logo, the phrase "OMG WTF" in 72-point font, a line graph in which both the X and Y axes are completely unlabeled, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus. It should be pretty easy to work in a game of Assassin. I love my job. And I wish everybody on the web wrote as well as Skot does.