Apr 17 2003
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Weblogs show the future advertising model of the web, ads need to be at the level of items not pages

Posted by | predictions | No Comments

Steve Hall points out that because links to individual postings often produce the traffic to weblogs, there needs to be an advertising system for weblogs adaptable to variable traffic to individual permalinked items. The notion of advertising at the ‘page’ level is meaningless for weblogs. I believe the permalink model will inevitably extend to all web publishing – a web page is a virtual rendering of one or more items, individual postings have self contained meaning and therefore value. To put it another way, the web is a web because of links. Links point to information elsewhere, and information exists within content, not pages. If there are no permalinks to individual pieces of content, then the advertising model of the web will never be able to fully take advantage of linking. Eventually everthing on the web will have a permalink. “Slate wrote an article about a post on Gawker that…

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Apr 16 2003
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The hypocrisy of the outcry at the looting of Iraqi museums

Posted by | crime | No Comments

An old work colleague told me a story of how he used to work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as a student in the 1950’s. Periodically they would throw stuff in the garbage that they didn’t feel was worth restoring. A restorer who had worked there all his life used to salvage these pieces and restore them, at home, in his spare time. When the restorer fell ill and, unusually, didn’t show up for work, his boss decided to visit him and check if he was OK. On entering the restorer’s house he found an Aladdin’s Cave of salvaged artifacts. The restorer was fired and his pension withdrawn. The restored artifacts were removed from his house, placed in a pile and burned. Curators are outraged by the loss of Iraqi antiquities, but unless they offer up some of their own collections they are hypocrites. Looting during war…

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Apr 15 2003
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Proposal for 1000ft skyscraper in London

Posted by | architecture | No Comments

Critics are complaining about a scheme for a Renzo Piano Tower: “London will become a high-rise city, with the dome of St Paul’s slowly reduced to a pimple.” Planners should be realistic and play the New York game of ‘air rights’, allow tall buidings and get something in return such as some green space. Telegraph | Arts

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Apr 14 2003
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Windows full-text search.

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

Anil suggests using a RAM disk as a solution to Windows’ shabby ‘find’. Well yes and no – sure you want to have your search index in RAM, accessing RAM is 1000 times faster than disk access, but the main problem with Windows is the lack of a decent searchable index in the first place. The Longhorn version of windows will have full text search built properly into the filesystem. By the time that Microsoft release this, XML databases, or even better, graph based databases may make their efforts appear to be already out of date. A filesystem index is a perfect application for a native XML database. anil dash – archives

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Apr 11 2003
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Apple, a ‘Universal’ media company

Posted by | technology | No Comments

Vivendi is in deep doo-doo and so it is perhaps prepared to sell Universal, the worlds biggest music company, for the same price as its annual earnings, five times less than what it originally paid for it. But if Vivendi is in immediate trouble, this is nothing compared to the bottomless manure pit that the music companies find themselves in longer term – they market and distribute music, and digital music can leverage cheap viral marketing and zero distribution cost. The opportunities for music companies of the future are great, they could leverage the opportunities of digital media to create lean operations with high profit margins, but these companies will be smaller and the existing record companies would rather fight than go with the flow. When you are in a quicksand-like substance you shouldn’t fight against it – so deeper into the shitpile they go. With digital media there are…

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Apr 11 2003
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Google Ogle

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

“Google argues that SafeSearch is designed to err on the side of caution.” Report criticizes Google’s porn filters | CNET News.com Er… so what? Imagine if it didn’t err on the side of caution. Any system such as this is either optimized for relevance or retrieval, and Google’s is optimized for relevance. The best solution to filtering is an editor/software hybrid. Editors cost money, so the only practical way of dealing with this is to have site owners become incentivized editors and submit to a growing list of sites which wish to be removed from a software determined blacklist.

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Apr 11 2003
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Infrapundits

Posted by | politics | No Comments

Andrew Sullivan, in an OpEd for the Washington Times (the paper that is owned by the Moonies): “On the day Kabul fell to Northern Alliance and American troops, the lefty journalist Nicholas von Hoffman predicted disaster and quagmire for the United States in Afghanistan. In von Hoffman’s honor, I instituted the von Hoffman awards for terrible predictions in wartime.” With news that the Taliban is operating again in Afghanistan, IPS reports: IRAQ-U.S.: Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan “WASHINGTON, Apr 7 (IPS) – As senior U.S. officials promise to rebuild and democratise Iraq, citizens of that country might wish to consider the fate of nearby Afghanistan.” With every twist and turn in this 24 hours a day real-time reported war comes a knee jerk ‘I told you so’. Armchair anarchists and suburban warriors would be well advised to wait a little before jumping to conclusions. There are enough eggs to smear the…

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Apr 10 2003
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Saddam’s dead…

Posted by | business | No Comments

…or at least his trademark is: “Word MarkSADDAMS Goods and Services(ABANDONED) IC 016. US 038. G & S: comic strips, comic books,and related cartoon characters Live/Dead Indicator DEAD”

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Apr 10 2003
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Operation Iraqi Freedom video game

Posted by | business | No Comments

It is a game and it’s not over. The Guardian points out that Sony has trademarked ‘Shock and Awe’ for a video game. A search shows that the phrase is also registered for a firework company and even an underpants manufacturer! Yet more ambulance chasing with the trademark on ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, also for a video game. “Word Mark OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer game software Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 78230280 Filing Date March 26, 2003 Filed ITU FILED AS ITU Owner (APPLICANT) Battlefront.com, Inc. CORPORATION MARYLAND 167Steadmans Landing Rd. Dover-Foxcroft MAINE 044263418 “ MediaGuardian.co.uk | Marketing & PR | Sony leads charge to cash in on Iraq

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Apr 10 2003
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Worst advertising campaign in history

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

Ouch: “In an exquisite example of unfortunate timing, as the SARS epidemic rages in the Pacific Rim, magazine advertisements placed by the Hong Kong Tourism Board promote the city as a vacation destination that ‘will take your breath away.’” Thanks Adam The Smoking Gun: Archive

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