December 2002
Best blogs
Fimoculous — always a good read — produces his list of the best weblogs of 2002.
Ken Layne rediscovers online
Ken Layne is working on a print media project; it’s given him a new appreciation of the simplicity of online media.
Gawker
Posting will be light for the next few days, so go to Gawker if you want holiday reading.
Naughty bits
If you just want the naughty bits of Gawker, without all the pseudo-news about Tina Brown, just click here: Gawker - Urges.
Havel
Add to the list of muscular liberals: Vaclav Havel. David Remnick eulogizes the departing Czech president. Which does beg the question: why are European liberals — Havel in the Czech Republic, Blair in the UK, and Fischer in Germany, for instance — so much more impressive than their American counterparts? John Kerry, you say. Give me a break. Leaving the castle [New Yorker]
Web alerts
Anyone know of good software providing web alerts? I remember Netmind and Spyonit, which sent email alerts when specified pages changed. Both services no longer function. Is there an alternative? I’d pay, really.
Blogs and money
Glenn Reynolds reviews the year in blogs, mentioning both Gizmodo and Gawker.What’s clear is that the professionalization of journalism — a trend underway for most of the 20th Century — is now in full reverse gear, and the term “correspondent” may go back to its original meaning of “one who corresponds” rather than “high-paid face with good...
Dreamhost hosting
A warning: don’t use Dreamhost for anything other than the most disposable of web sites. The service was recommended by the Movable Type guys, because it supports MT installations. The price is good, and the control panel interface more or less usable. But there’s a major downside: periodic interruptions, with the hosted site going down for a few minutes; and poor customer service....
Hikikomori
Some context, hikikomori is a condition, common among Japanese adolescents, which causes them to withdraw from the outside world. Reminder to self: irony is often misunderstood.Dear Mr Nick Denton,
This is Teddy Ng, reporter of The Standard, an English newspaper based in Hong Kong. I am writing a story about Hikikomori. I found in your website that you said you had went through Hikikomori as an...
Inktomi offloaded to Yahoo
How the mighty are fallen. For a while, it seemed Inktomi was the ultimate internet infrastructure company. Remember when that was fashionable? For about six months after e-commerce and internet media tanked. Inktomi sold its enterprise search business to Verity; presumably Yahoo will get rid of Inktomi’s digital distribution business, which competes with Akamai. The main value of Inktomi to...
Harshing on Metafilter
For unintended humor, there’s nothing better than Metafilter. MeFites are about as funny as the guy at the party who just doesn’t get the joke, and makes everyone else laugh even more. They’re apparently entirely incapable of recognizing irony, detecting a spoof, or realizing that they’re taking their Metafilter life far too seriously. I have a sick fantasy: lock up the...
Vlog
Jeff Jarvis is blogging in video.
First, but equal
Damn. Gawker rises to the top of Blogdex, but shares the podium with three other items. Blogdex Gawker inbound links
Gawker perks
There have to be some. Not like Gawker is going to make anyone rich any time soon. But at least our editorial staff — um, Elizabeth, I mean — has got a date out of the deal. Now there’s a business model: dinner with the Gawker editorial team, for a contribution to the Amazon tipjar. Elizabeth Spiers
Board language
I know board meetings are confidential, and all, but you’ve just got to hear these new examples of corpospeak. · remediating the sales force · unperforming elements
Gawker is live from Manhattan
Gawker is now live. We’ll do a proper launch in the New Year, but you can view the site at the permanent URL: http://www.gawker.com
What is it? A Manhattan weblog magazine edited by Elizabeth Spiers, designed by Jason Kottke and published by Nick Denton. It is a live review of city news, and by news we mean, among other things, urban dating rituals, no-ropes social climbing, Condé...
New Downtown plans
Nearly there
Live at midday Eastern Time, a weblog for radical Manhattanists: Gawker.
You are my friend
The funniest link in a while. Change the URL to personalize the message. You are my friend Nick Denton!
Dreamhost
Has anyone had any experience with Dreamhost? This site, Gawker and Gizmodo are all hosted there. The Movable Type guys recommended the service, and the interface is convenient, the price good. However, you get what you pay for, it appears. The sites go down, for short periods of time; by the time we report the problem, they’re up again, and Dreamhost deny there was ever a problem. Sometimes...
Gawker
One more day before it goes live: Gawker. Here are some pre-release reviews… Lockhart Steele Jeff Jarvis
Total information awareness
Want to test out your total information awareness skills. Try searching for John Poindexter’s home phone and address. (He’s the head of the Pentagon’s database project.) It doesn’t take much. Poindexter [SF Weekly]
Friendster
Move over Ryze. Friendster is a web-based social network application, and it’s slick. Enter a quick profile, add friends, connect with friends of friends. This service has been a long time coming. SixDegrees had great promise, but poor implementation. Friendster may be the one. My profile’s below. You may need to enter a beta code to join: use coke. Friendster
Gawker
Not much posting recently, nor is the rate likely to increase much. I’ve been spending my time on a new site, Gawker, which will go live later this week. Gawker
Google
Steven Levy, on the search engine that changed the world. At last week’s conference, Sergey Brin was asked whether he was aware that people were altering their behavior to fit Google. He seemed flummoxed. It happens: the headline links on this site contain the words most likely to be used by Google searchers. Form following Google function. The World According to Google [Newsweek]
Blogs and the real world
John Podhoretz subscribes to the theory — increasingly becoming received wisdom — that weblogs kept the Trent Lott controversy alive. It’s hard to prove the connection, but the very idea, that weblogs are influencing the wider political debate, will probably be self-fulfiling. The internet’s first scalp [John Podhoretz]
Internet hype, again
Scott Rosenberg worries that the venture capitalists will spoil web services, Wi-Fi and weblogs, just as they distorted the first phase of the internet. A strange notion, in these capital-starved times but, yes, an idea can suffer from too much funding, too soon. Life on the edge [Salon]
Memigo
An interesting news filter, similar to now-defunct NewsSeer. Memigo tracks clicks, and recommends items based upon selections by people like you. In theory. Joshua Schachter from Memepool was also talking about something like this. Memigo NewsSeer Memepool
Atkinsing geeks
The Atkins index, at Kevin Werbach’s Supernova conference: on a table of eight, including famous dieters Doc Searls and Cory Doctorow, only two desserts. And a new expression, from Doctorow, who claims he’s more alert since going Atkins, if that’s possible. When he finishes a meal, he no longer goes into starch coma.
PNH recommends
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, with a list of smart blogs.
San Francisco reclaimed
San Francisco’s depression isn’t as noticeable as you’d think. The freeways are still busy; the center of the city was overrun by homeless people during the boom, so that’s not an indicator; and the city’s streets have always been disconcertingly empty. But Mission was briefly buzzy, as restaurants like Foreign Cinema and Bruno’s encroached into the formerly...
Idiosyncratic Google
I’ve remarked before that Google News is interesting, technically, but not compelling as an editorial product. It takes a universe of bland news stories and, by counting the most ubiquitous items, picks the out the blandest common denominator. Cory Doctorow, always one to mint a phrase, says the web is missing an idiosyncratic Google. nickdenton.org: Why Google’s news algorithm gets it...
British blogs
Gblogs, a list of British weblogs, has closed down. But Ben Hammersley has recovered the basic list. For the moment, it’s reasonaly fresh. Recovered Gblogs List
Blogdex multiplies
Suddenly, a bunch of Blogdex clones, all claiming to be the latest and greatest in weblog indexing. Technorati lets you track inbound links, and indexes from a list of recently updated sites. So that gives it recency, which is a valuable advance. But I can’t for the life of me see the advance represented by Popdex. Both the name and the design are rip-offs of Blogdex. With the profusion of...
Panoramas
You’ll need Quicktime to view these full-immersion panoramas. Check out the view from the base of Mount Whitney. panoramas.dk
Trading on Iraq
Slate’s Saddameter rates the chance of invasion at 61%. Now, if only one could trade on the outcome. Companies such as IG Index allow sophisticated betting on elections and other events, and trading in those bets once they’ve been made. Imagine if the pundits — webloggers included — could put their money where their ever-flapping mouths are. The odds of war [Slate]
The Bush market
Put your money where your mouth is. Betting on the 2004 US presidential election.
Manhattan maps
The Wi-Fi survey of Manhattan has inspired the Metafilter folks to document other New York maps. Metafilter
Shorting the housing market
Now here’s an investment idea for the down market. For the average person in the US and UK, much of his or her wealth is tied up in a house. That breaks portfolio theory, which advises a diversification of investments. But government tax treatment of property ownership warps decisionmaking. Here’s one way to get the balance right, and keep the tax benefits of property ownership: spread...
Incredible shrinking pundits
Along with the geeky erudition, there’s another topic of conversation at Kevin Werbach’s Supernova event: the Atkins diet. Doc Searls is looking slim. Cory Doctorow carries a bag of exotic Italian sausages, in case he gets a protein craving. When asked whether he’s exercising too, he’s outraged. Both claim to be down more than 30 pounds. If my digital camera still had power...
Weblog media
What are we up to? Putting together a series of weblog media businesses. The more ambitious is a news filtering system, about which more below. That project launches later in 2003. In the meantime, we’re launching a series of niche media sites, powered by weblog publishing software.The first are Gizmodo and Gawker, two sites covering categories too small to warrant dedicated print...
Mob rule
All the geek idealists are still so enthusiastic about the democratization of media, and the distribution of power to individuals. Howard Rheingold, who has just published a book called Smart Mobs, opens the Supernova conference. David Weinberger injects a note of caution. What about the danger of majority tyranny?
Internet in Cuba
Does anyone know whether StarBand — a two-way satellite internet service covering North America — would work in Cuba? No reason why not, and I don’t see how StarBand could tell whether the user was in Miami or Havana. StarBand
Unhappy Europeans
Unhappy Europeans are less so, according to the Global Attitudes survey. In news that will be welcomed by the many Americans concerned at the state of the continent, all major European countries showed a marked improvement in personal satisfaction. France of all places, went from 36% happy in 1991 to 57% in 2002.
This despite lingering unemployment, the stifling of entrepreneurial energy,...
Snow bunnies
All this snow is making New Yorkers, um, hot. Casual encounters [Craigslist]
Snow
This one is for Rebecca, who is away in Chicago, and missing the snow. [All via Fotolog] Writing in the snow White-on-white Pink car
Blogger gifts
An inspired list, from Jeff Jarvis: blog-themed gifts. It does make one questionable assumption, that bloggers have money. Jeff Jarvis
Cityblogs
John Hiler has some interesting event picks in his new local site. I would have liked to go to the Simon Schama talk yesterday, for instance. But the discussion about online local coverage seems to have missed two excellent existing properties: Flavorpill and Daily Candy.
Full disclosure: I do have an interest in online local, of which more later. However, Jeff Jarvis is right: restaurants and...
Transatlantic tensions, cont.
The American Prospect and Matthew Yglesias weigh in on anti-Europeanism. Which is a mouthful, by the way. Can we agree on a catchier term, like Europhobia? However, I have no idea how to redub — let me take a breath before I say it — anti-Americanism. Any ideas? Tapped Yglesias
Transatlantic tensions, cont.
Quite a bit of correspondence generated by the recent transatlantic blog salvos. Well, not really transatlantic. All the best Euros are over here. Glenn Reynolds suggested that the US should devastate Europe by promoting immigration; it’s already happened. It’s the US substitute for domestic public education; let the Euros pay for all that decent high-school education, and just lure...