Now that everyone's keen to the blogs (everyone being big M media people), the next wave of articles are beginning to appear. The Washington Post jumps in with, Making Blogs More Than Just What's for Dinner and provides a good look at ways in which businesses can use weblogs. Also there are some quotes from me.

Five or so months ago, Darin from darinsan.com emailed asking if I'd do a little "11 Questions" interview with him. I said, "sure" and then let the message sink to the bottom of my inbox (and by "bottom" I mean it was about 1500 emails above the darkest depths of my inbox, where those scary fish — with horrible teeth and hangy things in front of their eyes — live and use bioluminescence to highlight messages that have been there since 9/13/01). Over the weekend, I finally responded and Darin, who inhabits a higher karmic email plane than I, promptly posted my inane replies.

From my friend David at MediaRights comes a great part-time internship opportunity in Manhattan. I was a judge for their Media That Matters film festival and had the privilege of interacting with the great group that is MediaRights. If you apply, tell 'em megnut sent you. Description follows:

MediaRights.org is looking for two good technology interns. We can offer a desk, great co-workers, and lots of strong networking opportunities. MediaRights.org helps filmmakers, activists, librarians and educators create and use social issue documentaries for social change. We also produce a yearly film festival (http://mediathatmattersfest.org/) that streams on-line, is screened across the country and is available on DVD for free (http://mediathatmattersfest.org/dvd). At the end of the month, we're launching a new Web site dedicated to youth media distribution (http://ymdi.org).

Continue reading “An exciting intern opportunity in NYC” →

Here's an incredible deal from CompUSA reported on dealmac: buy a Mac for $999 or more and have no payments or interest until 2005! Available only at retail stores, according to the link, and arranged through a CompUSA credit card. Still, if you can be responsible about your money and pay the thing off before payments start in March 2005, not only do you get it interest-free, you don't even have to pay for it for more than a year! Baby needs a new pair of 12" PowerBook G4! Well, just one will do. If the 12" came with the 1GHz processor like the 15", I wouldn't even be able to type this post because I'd be on the train uptown to CompUSA this second!

Maciej closed out the month of August with two great posts about NASA and the loss of Columbia: Physics 2, Business Administration 0 and Things I Have Learned About Foam From the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report. From the former (which leads off with a must-read quote from the Columbia Accident Investigation Report),

Engineers are trained to ask "what could possibly go wrong?". Managers are, too, but they use the phrase with a completely different intonation.

It made me chuckle when I read it, and then I realized the horror of such a flippant question when lives are at stake. Go read Maciej, and not just for this, but because everything he writes is really very good, and his linguistical flourishes impress me to no end.

I usually keep quiet during the myriad technology debates that flood certain web circles, preferring to just do my coding and building of things. So when I do dig into some technology or other — often way after all the geeks have argued and hashed to death some obscure techie implementation tidbit — I'm shocked to discover just how messed up it is. This week's struggle lies with OPML. I like to think OPML stands for Other People's Markup Language, and I try to be down with that, but in reality it stands for Outline Processor Markup Language and it's a format many weblog-related tools (such as blogrolling.com and various RSS news readers) have implemented to make it easy for you to import and export a list of your favorite weblogs. Sounds like a pretty good idea, if only it were actually standard.

Unfortunately OPML has a DTD that says you can extend OPML anyway you want (which is crazy talk to me, a DTD you can change? What's the point?), meaning you can add more elements, or more attributes to your elements. So when someone (me) tries to implement something with various OPML outputs, you (again me) realize that one tool outputs an attribute "url" while another outputs "htmlUrl" and a third "htmlurl" — all to signify the same thing! Sure, some RegEx can clean this up, but weren't we trying to avoid all that with XML in the first place? Argh! I just want to be able to develop something and have a strong contact defined. Is that too much to ask? No "extends XYZ," no "I changed this" just "this is how you express X" and that's it. Maybe if the format you're using requires you to change it to represent your data, you're not using the right format in the first place.

Which makes me realize that I think some of the problems we've had in the weblog community around formats like RSS and OPML might stem from the fact that we use them in manners for which they weren't designed. But that seems like a topic for another day's rant.

Matt Hamer writes in with more coherent thoughts on this issue:

The DTD (at least this one:
http://static.userland.com/gems/radiodiscuss/opmlDtd.txt) *with no
modifications* does not allow you to add extra attributes. A document
with undefined attributes would not validate against this DTD. I don't
want to spend time reading the full spec right now, but based on the
comment in the DTD, I assume the spec prose says that you can add any
attribute that you want to. The DTD makes it easy to add your own
attributes to the outline element, but you must define them by adding
them to the OtherAttributes ENTITY. If you do this, you are really
working with a different DTD.

The real problem is not with the DTD, or really even with the spec that
says, "add your own attributes." The problem seems to be that people
are adding information that you (and other people) find useful in *non
standard* ways. If 'url' or 'htmlURL' or whatever is valuable
information, a standard attribute should be added to the DTD.

I got an email from Tripod today reminding me about their Blog Builder, which apparently is the coolest way to share your summer fun! But for me the best part is the post script:

P.S. "Whatever the reason for the Blog phenomenon, it's not going to go away anytime soon," says tech pundit John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine. So take your place at the forefront of Internet culture — sign up now and see what the fuss is all about!

I have been wondering what all this Blog fuss is about for quite a while now…

In which this week gets off to the most craptacular start because the used-to-think-it-was-OK-but-now-think-it's-HORRID project management software I've been using deleted my entire project plan. Yes. The whole thing. All 117 items scheduled between now and the end of the month, wonderfully assigned, beautifully estimated, and all in some stage of % complete. If it weren't for this two-week old print-out on my desk, all would be beyond lost. All still feels lost. I can't face the prospect of re-entering hours of work. And who, I ask you, develops a use case in which the user says, "Yes, I know my trial is running out, please delete all my data."? And worse, a use case in which the user never even has to confirm her intention to delete her entire project database, and somehow is able to do this magic delete without ever seeing any dialog asking if she wants to delete the stupid database in the first place!

There's a good article in Wired News today, Data Dump Required Before Flights, about the revised CAPPS II program. Basically the plan is the get more personal information (address, phone, date of birth) from passengers and match it to various databases, including credit reporting services, to ensure a person is who she says she is. Now I'm not particularly comfortable with that idea to begin with, and then when I read this quote — from an anonymous Transportation Security Administration official — I was even more annoyed.

"The new provisions are narrowly focused to violent fugitives," said the official. "It's there to protect passengers from sitting next to an ax murderer."

What kind of bogus scare tactic is that? An ax murderer on an airplane? First of all, he wouldn't even have the ax, you can't bring an ax through security! Second, I don't recall hearing about a single ax murder onboard a commercial flight, ever. Those things always happen at girls' camps in the woods, or at remote snow-bound mountain cabins. What we really should fear are nail-clipper murderers, because I hear they're letting you take those things in your carry-on again.

Meg: "Whoa. The Homeland Security Department's chosen Microsoft as its 'preferred supplier' for desktop and server software!"

Mark: "That doesn't sound too good."

Meg: (reading from article) "Microsoft will provide the standard e-mail software for the entire department."

Mark: "So one I LOVE YOU virus and that's the end of Homeland Security."