BREAKING SURF
| New Tool Parses Blogosphere Influence |
| A Yosemite Valley Railroad Retrospective |
| New Restaurants in Old Guises |
| Keep an Eye on Marine Weather |
| Where the Sidewalk Bends |
| The Art of Anatomy |
| Composite Portraits |
| Unlisted Song Tracks |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Rejection Letter Collection |
| The Blog of Themed Lists |
| The Rap Dictionary |
| Amy and Her Dates |
| Press Releases You Can Use |
| Miniature Books |
| Self-Publishing |
| A Mariner IV Engineer Reminisces |
| Really Close Looks at Living Stuff |
| Really Close Looks at Non-Living Stuff, Mostly |
| Sound Editing: Audacity 1.2.0 |
| Perl 6, Exegesis 7 |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
NASA scientists aren't sure whether bedrock beneath the Martian Meridiani Planum was soaked in a sea or by groundwater, but they have announced they are sure that the bedrock they looked at was once very wet. The Opportunity rover was aptly named; that it landed in a crater with exposed bedrock was an unplanned, unexpected opportunity, but it has led to the Mars rover missions' shining moment thus far. The proof is indirect but compelling. The rock Opportunity analyzed is infused with soluble salt crystals and that can only happen in water. NASA has the announcement, which was covered by CNN, and Space.com looks at the science to come.NASA: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20040302a.html
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/02/mars.findings/index.html
Space.com: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/opportunity_next_040304.html
Internet over Power Lines Goes Live
In theory, broadband Internet access over power lines, called BPL, is a good idea. Now it is in practice, too. Cinergy, a Midwest power company, has teamed with Current Communications to market the first-ever such offering. Power lines are ubiquitous - they go everywhere already, unlike cable, especially in less wealthy districts and countries. Phone lines also go everywhere, but DSL is generally slower than cable and is limited by a user's distance to a phone switch. BPL sweeps away the disadvantages of cable and DSL and, in a welcome advantage, offers an upload speed as fast as its download speed. Speed starts at 1 Mbps, about the top download-only speed you're going to get through a cable modem. Cinergy is offering the 1-Mbps service for $30 a month, at first only to a small subset of Cincinnati, and plans to offer higher speeds as well. Look for this technology to spread like wildfire. The Cincinnati Enquirer has more.Cinergy: http://www.cinergy.com/News/default_corporate_news.asp?news_id=420
Enquirer: http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/03/02/biz_biz1acin.html
Newest Halloween Memo Fingers Microsoft-SCO Connection
Eric Raymond and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) are famous for promoting open-source software, but they are usually entertaining when they release a new Halloween memo. These are documents aimed squarely at Microsoft. Sometimes they are fictitious, but the best are real memos from behind the Microsoft - or some Microsoft partner's - curtain. Halloween X, the latest, is an e-mail to the SCO Group and discusses SCO's ongoing and laughable copyright campaign against Linux. It reveals much, but most significant is that had SCO not received $100 million in various Microsoft payments, it would be $30 million in debt. That's Raymond's analysis, at least. eWeek reports that SCO admits the e-mail is genuine, but says the writer got his facts wrong. Read it, and the eWeek special report on the whole SCO fiasco, and decide.OSI: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween10.html
eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1738,1252499,00.asp
Diebold Voting Machine Critic Avi Rubin Serves as Election Judge
Avi Rubin is one of the co-authors of last year's report about the security vulnerabilities in all those Diebold computerized voting machines being used in elections around the US. One of the criticisms that's been leveled against him is that he does not really understand the election process. Rubin decided to counter the criticism by volunteering to be an election judge - one of the people who set up and run the polling places in the US. This is his account of the experience. He notes that having been through this, he's less worried about some security threats and more worried about others. As for American polling places, they're apparently mostly run by dedicated old people.http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html
A Survey of Online Content Creators
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released a new round of findings, which indicate that 44% of Americans have contributed content to the Internet. That figure is not as impressive as it first seems. Most of the activity consists of posting photos to someone else's Web sites. Only 13% of American netsurfers maintain their own Web site. Pew divides content contributors into three categories. Power creators are the young techies at home on the Net. Nearly all bloggers fall into this category, and its members tend to look to the Net for job or real estate searches. Older creators are Net-savvy folks who average 58 years old. A third have a Web site and they like genealogy. A third group, the content omnivore, looks like a catch-all category for non-hip, non-filesharing frequent Net users.http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=113
Military physicians are remarkable. Just take a look at the incredibly informative site PBS developed to accompany the Nova documentary, "Life and Death in the War Zone." Although the special focuses on the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, the site makes clear just how much has changed since 20th-century conflicts. Medicine saves more soldiers from dying with new techniques and a greater ability to transport wounded soldiers to sophisticated medical and rehabilitation facilities. While the mission of US field hospitals obviously includes patching up US soldiers, what, if anything, can the medical staff offer to the Iraqi civilians and insurgents who wind up at the hospital? This site has some revealing discussions with practitioners as well as some disturbing images of young men seriously injured. If nothing else, it will alert you to the awesome price the US is paying in Iraq.
http://www.pbs.org/nova/combatdocs/
The least surprising stock market event of 2004 will be when Google announces that it is going public - unless, of course, it doesn't. Google's impending IPO will seem a throwback to a lost era, the dotcom boom. As this Wired article hints, Google's IPO may even herald the start of a new boom. The Google IPO is only covering old ground, so old lessons will apply. Suddenly wealthy Google employees will have to heed the warnings from the past, but it's impossible to expect no changes in behavior. Still, they have to make sure that they keep the wheels of their Ferraris on the road, metaphorically and literally. Beyond the initial piece on the IPO, Wired has a collection of shorter articles on Google tech, culture, and social impact. It runs 13 pages in all, so block some time.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html
On Dogster, Everyone Knows You're a Dog
Social networking for dogs sounds like a joke, doesn't it? Well, it's a month-old joke to the tune of 8,000 members. That's nearly 32,000 legs (allowing for the odd unfortunate). Dogster did start as kind of a silly project, the brainchild of Ted Rheingold. He created the site on a lark, as a take-off on the ever faddish Friendster, and has been stunned by its popularity. Owners from all over the world are inserting pictures of their pooch and finding eligible neighborhood playmates for their furry loved ones. Rheingold is now taking ads from pet-friendly companies to help pay the bandwidth bills, but given the site's popularity, the odds are that he's going to be able to do much more than that. And yes, Catster is in the works. The San Francisco Chronicle has quotes from gushing pet owners.Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/01/BAGEP5B7MK1.DTL
Dogster: http://www.dogster.com/
How to Get Your E-Mail Ignored
Ever send an e-mail asking for tech support or other help, only to have it ignored? Some researchers can tell you why. Two trends stand out. First, the more people you send an e-mail to, the less chance you have of getting help. Each of the multiple recipients thinks that another will provide the help, and shrugs off the responsibility of supplying it. Second, personalized e-mail works much better than impersonal messages. A suspected third trend is that females obtain help better than males, but this was not thoroughly tested. You can read an interview with Greg Barron, one of the study's authors, at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. That page also has a sidebar link to an abstract of the upcoming publication.http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3947&t=technology
Creative Commons Moving Image Contest Winners
Creative Commons (CC) is a group formed by Larry Lessig and others in response to the current intellectual property regime. It tries to balance private rights with public good, sort of an open-source movement for creative invention. Its goal is to maintain the public domain in which artists and others can freely borrow, with acknowledgement, from each other. It's not easy to explain, and to make this intellectual vision more articulate, last year CC held the CC Moving Image Contest. Contestants produced short films that would clarify CC's mission. CC's Web site is hosting the winners online. All are engaging and delightful - and you can even dance to Mix Tape. All of them emphasize what CC is all about, that free access to the past is essential for future creativity. As the winning video makes clear (he chose the G5, by the way), you can't go anywhere without the past.Contest: http://creativecommons.org/contest/
Winners: http://creativecommons.org/getcontent/features/movingimagecontest/
BitTorrent Downloads All the Rage
Slate offers a concise and well linked discussion of BitTorrent, the file-sharing network that's growing faster than you can say "gigabyte". The reasons behind the phenomenon are many: it's easy to use; it integrates with your browser; and it can be extremely fast. It can also be extremely slow. Bram Cohen, the software's designer, built it to send and receive files - think movies and TV shows - with a minimum of bandwith. He has received kudos for his free, open-source solution to the problem of large-file transfers, and the fact that he's opposed to pirating only adds to his reputation. If you've ever tried to download a copy of Linux, for example, the speed difference between a Kazaa download and a BitTorrent stream will suck your breath away. Keep in mind that BitTorrent includes mandatory uploading when you download. By the way, Star Wars fans, there's a link to the original films - not the altered ones that recently came out on DVD. The Slate piece also has links to BitTorrent itself.http://slate.msn.com/id/2096316/
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl boob flash is slowly fading from the cultural radar, but its echo lingers on. After the initial exposure, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received thousands of letters from people who were shocked - shocked, they said! - that a breast showed up at a football game. The Smoking Gun obtained 1,570 of those letters (total cost: $249.90 from the FCC) and presents them to the Net in all their outraged glory. Notably, the FCC received no letters of complaint the night of the game. It was only several days later, as conservative organizations started organizing a crusade, that some 200,000 letters and e-mails poured in from all those people who were watching the Super Bowl with their church group. The Smoking Gun has some pro-boob letters as well.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jjfcc1.html
Book-Sales Analysis Reveals Divided Country
A network map of sales of politically oriented books shows a continuing political divide in the US. By comparing associated sales of books, Valdis Krebs built a map of inter-book relationships that clearly illustrates a duopoly. Each cluster contains extensive internal linkage that demonstrates extreme polarity - what Krebs calls "a focus on hate, instead of debate." It bodes ill for the upcoming battle for the presidency. One really cool addition is the link to research that describes an advanced method of sifting through the Web. Most search engines work on keywords, and the results can yield thousands of pages. This method, by contrast, employs an algorithm that analyzes the linkage of pages, yielding a much more finely honed set of links when the input query is not sharply defined. This technique seems perfectly suited for Web-based analysis of sociological trends.http://www.orgnet.com/divided.html
Odd Toys Coming Soon to a Store near You
The thing about the NY Toy Fair that has always bothered us is that it is not open to the public, so we never get to see what might become the latest, hottest gifts. UnderGroundOnline site takes some of the sting out of the fair's exclusiveness with a descriptive report of the ten strangest toys to be found on display. Blade Racers, an illuminated race track in which the vehicles travel in transparent tubes, strikes us as a possible winner. Others, such as the snowman-making molds, make us doubt the wisdom of toy marketers, but what do we know? The Japanese dolls are just... - um, different.http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/features/toyfair/top10strangest/default.asp
ONLINE CULTURE
New Tool Parses Blogosphere Influence
Hewlett-Packard (HP) serves up an abstract of a paper on the dynamics of the blogosphere and its influence on social structure. Researchers have developed a way to rank blogs in terms of influence and have produced an algorithm called iRank to do that. iRank lets users track the spread of information across the Web from the blog movers and shakers to the hoi polloi. HP offers a demonstration called the Blog Epidemic Analyzer. It sounds pretty innocuous, but automated methods that will enable assembly of a comprehensive user profile by monitoring and analyzing every aspect of interaction in the digital milieu may be on the horizon. Web pages, e-mail, other documents - all can be analyzed to reflect the relative expertise and interest of the user. It will remain all perfectly anonymous, of course....Abstract: http://www.hpl.hp.com/shl/papers/blogs/index.html
Blog Epidemic Analyzer: http://www-idl.hpl.hp.com/blogstuff/index.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
A Yosemite Valley Railroad Retrospective
History and railroading come together in this extensive look at the Yosemite Valley Railroad, which existed for about 45 years. The railroad afforded California vacationers a relaxing ride and beautiful scenery from the town of Merced to El Portal, the gateway to Yosemite National Park. In addition to passengers, the railway delivered a significant amount of freight. Passenger traffic dropped after the Roaring '20s, and the freight business dropped off over the subsequent couple of decades, and that spelled the end of the railway. This site's Then and Now section of side-by-side photos is an attention-getter - so much change in so little time. Railroading enthusiasts will love the graphics depicting the restoration of Observation No. 330, as well as the virtual tour of the multilevel HO-scale model of the former railway. Artists could do themselves a favor by stopping here, as well, as the scenes appear vibrantly realistic. To say that the author of this site has done his homework is a clear understatement.http://www.yosemitevalleyrr.com/
One day, your favorite franchise restaurant closes. Then, another restaurant springs up in its place, using the same signature architecture. This phenomenon inspired Not Fooling Anybody (NFA), "a chronicle of bad conversions and storefronts past," which focuses on convenience stores and eateries. When available, the webmaster provides a photo of the original design in the lower right corner. Cosmic metacoolness would be achieved should NFA steal the site design and information architecture of Pirated Sites, which does for Web site design what NFA does for franchise architecture. That way, NFA visitors could sort the info by both new restaurant name and the former resident whose style was plagiarized.
Not Fooling Anybody: http://www.notfoolinganybody.com/
Pirated Sites: http://www.pirated-sites.com/
Any keen sailor or even those who simply live near a coast should check out this comprehensive site. You can get the weather for any area of ocean around the world and, more importantly, you get details that won't appear on a non-maritime report such as the height of waves and water temperatures. If you're about to head out onto the wide blue ocean, weather information is vital, and this is a great place to get it. Most of the data is provided in user-friendly charts for details like wind speed and direction. You can even view the current weather satellite image for the area of sea you are curious about. You can take a particular region of the waters off Great Britain and Ireland, for example, and read the actual reports as they come in from the remote weather stations. This is a must for any addict of the radio shipping news.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/sail.htm
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
You'd think one of the coolest jobs in the world would be drawing black holes and bits of outer space we're only imagining as of yet. Kurt Wenner left his job with NASA, however, to use his art to investigate the space inside his head. He does trompe l'oeil-esque street painting, the technical name for which is anamorphism. To see what we're ogling at, check Wenner's Gallery of Work link. Pedestrians must do a doubletake at his work as they maneuver to avoid falling into a fountain or a hole in the Earth. Wenner has produced works for the Pope, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution, among other prestigious clientele.http://www.kurtwenner.com/
Explore human anatomy through this online exhibit from the US National Library of Medicine. Dream Anatomy lets you discover how perceptions of the body have changed dramatically over the centuries from speculative fantasy to undeniable reality. Delve into the history of how the medical world and society in general perceived the human body through the various topics discussed, which include Body Part as Body Art, Monumental Books, and Dreaming the Industrial Body. The site hosts medical drawings that date as far back as the 1500s; check out the Gallery page. In conjunction with the Dream Anatomy exhibit, visitors can also view winners of an art contest for children who were asked what the body looks like under the skin. Finally, educators and scholars will appreciate the Learning Station, an online educational resource that offers lesson plans, online activities, and links to other online exhibits.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/
How will you look 20, 30, 40 years from now? You might get an unsettling inkling when you ponder the composite portraits by Brooklyn-based photographer Bobby Neel Adams. The highlight of his online portfolio is Age-Maps, a page with six portraits that exemplify his technique of combining a childhood photo and an adult photo of the same person to produce a half-and-half portrait. "In this fusion," Adams states, "a jump-of-time is established at the tear." It's clever, artificial, and a little nightmarish all at once. Adams takes his technique one step further on his Couples page, which mixes sexes instead of ages. You probably wouldn't want Adams to get his hands on pictures of you. We certainly aren't about to send him ours. We're all 26 and intend to stay 26, thank you. Before you visit, be aware that the site could use some tending to. The home page threw up a Javascript error message in Internet Explorer 6.0 that prevented us from viewing it in that browser (Safari and Mozilla work - presumably Netscape Navigator does, too), and the link to the Ghosts page is broken. Do his dead want to remain dead?
http://www.bobbyneeladams.com/
Most of us have heard of Easter eggs in computer software, but they were pre-dated by Easter eggs on music albums. Also known as ghost tracks or hidden songs, these songs exist on albums but are not listed on the album sleeve or jacket. They are purely a little something extra from the artist to the listener. This site has a simple aim: to collect and list all such tracks. Each listing names the artist, the album, the hidden song title, and any special information such as what the song is about or how to access it. Marilyn Manson is a serial offender and so are SuperFurryAnimals, but the idea started much farther in the past of rock-and-roll as the Beatles included an orchestral version of the "James Bond Theme" on the American versions of their Help! album. Now there's a piece of trivia for true fans. We wonder if the Clash's "Train in Vain (Stand by Me)" is the most popular of these hidden songs.
http://www.hiddensongs.com/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Femme Digitale
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Karlssonwilker Inc.'s Tellmewhy: The First 24 Months of a New York Design Company
Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryhhttp://rejectioncollection.com/
Systematically organized information is hellishly boring when our livelihood or our education depends on it. Nothing could be duller than an inventory of sales figures, a list of client contacts, or a table of irregular verbs. When the information is utterly pointless, trivial, and inconsequential, however, it becomes a source of joy. Vitamin Q is the blog of Scottish poet and puzzle designer Roddy Lumsden and it is full of some of the least useful information you could ever hope to learn. Well, perhaps that's a little harsh - after all, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that you will need to know how to say "bisexual praying mantis" in Manx, or reel off the seven films in which Zsa Zsa Gabor plays herself. Or perhaps knowing that in 2002 a Brazilian woman's life was saved by her silicon implants when she was shot in the chest may be of use. Then again maybe not, but you are no worse off for knowing it.
http://vitaminq.blogspot.com/
The Rap Dictionary has been in the making since 1992, when the meanings of street slang from rap and hip-hop were discussed on the alt.rap newsgroup. In 1999, it acquired its current domain and today you can not only visit the dictionary, which gives an alphabetized listing of rap's slang and its meanings, but also browse the listings of all the major rap artists. The dope, fly, hustler pimps at NSD don't need no Rap Dictionary 'cos we playas for real, but we hope you and your posse enjoy it.
http://www.rapdict.org/
Amy is a penniless writer who has come up with the novel idea of dating 50 guys, recording the experiences, and turning the sequence into a book and Web site. Amy would prefer George Clooney to sweep her off her feet, but at least she's playing the field while she is waiting for him. She began in October 2003 and she has been on 38 dates so far. Some have been dates from Hell but most are normal guys who don't even know that she is writing about them. She refuses to ask a guy out herself but is securing dates through nearly all other avenues, even being fixed up by friends who depressingly describe their fixee as "lonely and desperate". Not surprisingly, Amy is a "Sex and The City" fan who still hasn't found what she is looking for. This site should give hope to anybody on the singles scene: you're not alone.
http://www.datingamy.com/index.htm
Press releases can be dull. Pity the editor who has to wade every day through piles of letters or screens of marketing jabber about obscure products or the latest surveys of whatever. PR Bop is a blog that cuts through mountains of spin and spam by highlighting recent press releases that are relevant to a majority of people. Many of the cited releases deal with oddities of science, pop culture, or everyday life. Oddity may be the chief criterion for inclusion. Here and there you'll find an italicized barb or other editorial remark, but like the site itself, these are anonymous. The archives are full of clever grabbers such as "Buy a Software Company, Get Patty Duke's House" and "Up Next: A Reality Show Set In A Funeral Home". If you work in a large office, your marketing department may get a kick out of such lively stuff.
http://www.prbop.com/
Next time you want a little something to read, rethink your phrasing. The Lilly Library at Indiana University has a lot of little somethings to read; it houses over 16,000 miniature volumes, which it defines as smaller than three inches in height. The library's online exhibition has a number of photos, which would be more impressive were there perspective in each of the shots, or at least a scale to indicate the size at which all the photos were taken. Nevertheless, it's still an interesting read when you have a little spare time.
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/miniatures/
A welcome addition to the repertoire of sites available to aspiring authors, Go Publish Yourself provides information on the basics of self-publishing. Visitors can browse through a wealth of articles by industry experts that discuss such topics as "Idea Tithing", "Raise Your Writing that Extra Notch", and "How to Become a Successful Self-Publisher". Also check out useful tips on copyright, print-on-demand publishing, and ISBNs. While this site does provide many useful tips and resources, it exists to sell additional information, usually the other materials written by the author of the article. Despite the underlying commercial nature of this site, there is a lot of good advice for aspiring authors to draw from. If nothing else, this site will provide a great starting point for those looking to self-publish their work.
http://www.go-publish-yourself.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
A Mariner IV Engineer Reminisces
Mariner IV was Earth's first mission to Mars, and it was wildly successful. This site, by a Mariner IV engineer, provides illustrated background on the mission. With the twin rovers ambling around on opposite sides of the planet today, an historical overview seems especially timely, and this is a great place to grab that overview. Brief but generally well written, sprinkled with historic photos, the account succeeds in its mission of capturing a sample of the hope, the trauma, and activity behind the scenes during this first contact with a planet in the outer solar system.http://home.earthlink.net/~nbrass1/mariner/miv.htm
Really Close Looks at Living Stuff
Tourists go to Hawaii for the beaches, mountains, and rain forests. Hawaiian researchers like Tina Carvalho sometimes prefer to turn their attention to features you seldom or never notice. Her MicroAngela Electron Microscope Image Gallery will almost make you wish you had your own electron microscope to reveal the otherworldly features of ants, flies, and other common insects. Your backyard probably has more miniature freaks than a traveling circus. If bedbugs give you the creeps, you might prefer the photos of red blood cells, mixed bacteria, or shower mold. Haven't you always wanted to hang their pictures on your wall? Still, we suggest you refrain from telling your next date you enjoy looking at spiders, roaches and the like, unless he or she is an entomologist with a sense of humor or - and this is hard to imagine - a more arresting microscopic gallery.http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/bemf/microangela/index.html
Really Close Looks at Non-Living Stuff, Mostly
Loes Modderman hooks a camera with a filter up to her microscope, then photographs magnified images of subjects such as vitamin C, sand, and bubbles. Her results are images that look like abstract paintings or even glaciers, forests, and sunsets. Modderman relies on polarization to shed color on the images, and it certainly does. Don't miss the sand section, which explains visually why sand really hurts if you leave a little bit in your shoe after leaving the beach.http://www.scienceart.nl/
SOFTWARE
Audacity is a major open-source project geared at producing a professional-quality, cross-platform, sound-editing application. This release, available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, is a major upgrade with a large number of changes and enhancements to areas like editing features, the user interface, and sound effects generation. Read the release notes for details, and if you're seriously into sound editing, give this program a try.http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Damian Conway continues his detailed examination of the upcoming Perl 6 rewrite. In this chapter, he writes about formatting various reports. Perl 6 will retire the
format keyword and
introduce the far more flexible form function. If you
can't wait until Perl 6 is released to use all this programming
goodness, you may wish to download the Perl6::Form module from CPAN.
It's of great interest to people who sling a lot of text around in
Perl for a living.
Exegesis 7: http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/02/27/exegesis7.html
CPAN: http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Perl6-Form-0.03/