More Signal, Less Noise
Sunday, October 02, 2005
|
NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 11, Issue 36 Sunday, October 02, 2005
|
NETSURFER LINKS
 BREAKING SURF
|
|
BREAKING SURF Hurricane Rita, and a Blogger Star Is Born Not to make light of it, but in the end Hurricane Rita didn't do as much damage as experts had originally feared. Sparing Galveston and Houston a direct hit, the storm came ashore at the Texas-Louisiana border early Saturday morning as a Category 3 hurricane. Still, after forcing the evacuation of millions of people, the storm drenched large swaths of Louisiana and Texas with rain, sparked fires, and left substantial wind damage. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) and a blog from the Houston Chronicle provide a pretty good picture of what went on in the build-up and aftermath. Now it's a question of cleaning up, fighting fires, restoring power, and repairing and restarting refineries. Meanwhile in the Atlantic other storms are brewing, waiting their turn to become nasty and damaging. While the two Gulf Coast hurricanes have certainly changed lives, they have not always done so destructively. Lindsay Beyerstein relates in her Majikthise blog how she's evolved in the last month from copywriter to danger-zone stringer.NHC: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ Houston Chronicle: http://blogs.chron.com/rita/ Majikthise: http://majikthise.typepad.com/ The Giant Squid Scientific Paper The photo capture of a giant squid in the wild has been all over the news this week, but few of the write-ups bother to link to the actual scientific report of the sighting in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (for "biology"). Unlike those other so-called news sites, we don't mess around. (The link may be flaky due to the navigation scheme in effect. If it doesn't work, click to Proceedings: Biological Sciences, then on FirstCite Early Online Publishing, and scroll down to "First-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild". Click on Full Text if you have to.) A team of Japanese scientists snapped the images - stop-motion photography, in fact - of the giant Architeuthis in Northern Pacific waters a year ago but only recently published the six images that have been so widely reproduced. It's a pity that the squid severed a tentacle in ending the encounter with the bait, but at least the flesh yielded some useful DNA samples. Much as we'd like to, no, we won't make any lame calamari jokes.http://tinyurl.com/d328k Not many lists include such an eclectic mix as pharmacist, fisherman, neuroscientist, symphony conductor, and sculptor. These folks have in common a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship. The MacArthur Fellows program has selected 25 people this year to receive what are popularly called "genius awards". The annual award, which comes with no-strings-attached funding of $500,000 over five years, values creativity, originality, and potential. The MacArthur Foundation doles out cash in the hope that the unfettered funds will liberate recipients to boost whatever it is they do now or to tackle new ideas. The awards are unique in the wide range of creativity that they recognize coupled with the hands-off financial support. The foundation has been doing this since 1981 and has awarded over 700 fellowships in that time. The Web site gives a bio and picture of each of this year's winners behind the 2005 MacArthur Fellows Overview link. http://www.macfound.org/programs/fel/announce.htm The Forbes 400 Richest Americans Forbes Magazine has released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans. Before you ask, Google's Sergey Brin is #16 and Larry Page is #32. Atop the list is, of course, Bill Gates, and five of the top ten belong to the Walton (Wal-Mart) clan. But have some sympathy - these folks might be feeling a bit of a pinch. The Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index climbed by 4% this year. In addition to the list, Forbes has the usual collection of features about individuals on the list, their businesses, and their lifestyles. For example, one article surveys billionaire homes, which range from the expected palatial mansions to surprisingly downscale digs. You can also check out the results of a reader poll for best dressed billionaires, this year split into European and American branches. On this side of the pond, Ralph Lauren (25%) just beats out Oprah Winfrey (22%) in the readers' sartorial estimation.http://www.forbes.com/400richest/ Gen. William Sherman said "War is hell." Today, he might claim "War is porn." Online Journalism Review (OJR) discusses an amateur porn site that provides free access to soldiers who can prove they serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some soldiers sent in as their proof pedestrian photos of Baghdad or Kabul, but others posted some of the most disturbing images of bodies torn asunder by modern weaponry. Although the article's focus is on the mixing of porn and war, a forum at the amateur porn site in question now hosts discussions of the conflicts as well as the typical porn fare. Be warned: if you click through the links in the OJR article, you will see images that are graphic in ways that words can barely convey. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050920glaser/ Mobulas are cousins of the manta ray, also winged creatures of the sea. In this remarkable piece, Paul and Michael Albert document their experiences with mobula in the Sea of Cortez. The pictures alone are worth a visit - it's hard to believe how high a mobula can soar in the air unless you see it - but the accompanying story isn't all about beauty and wonder. Fishermen are coming close to hunting mobula and mantas too heavily, and unscrupulous shrimpers trawl for their shrimp and kill everything in their wake. It's a sad story, but it's remarkable how these creatures serve as an early warning system about the state of the oceans. http://www.malbertphoto.com/mobulas1.html If Burning Man doesn't mean anything to you, you don't pay attention to NSD. The festival consists of lots of people doing zany, creative things for other participants to enjoy for free over a week in the Nevada desert. Oh, and they burn a huge effigy or two. If Burning Man is an old friend you somehow missed this year, Marc Merlin's account, pics, and video will make you miss it even more. To those not yet in the know, Merlin's pages will bring the experience with all its crazy counterculture creativity, not to mention the beer and other stuff. This year, over 35,000 people took part and Merlin shows many of them in action. How do 1,388 images and 57 videos sound? Like a few hours of pleasure, we say, even if maybe it is a bit too groovy and way out to be your cup of tea. http://marc.merlins.org/perso/bm/2005/ How Accurate Are Blog Statistics? Gathering blog statistics is a popular pastime in the blogosphere, and as the number of bloggers has grown over the last couple of years, their importance to, for example, advertisers has grown apace. But just how accurate are blog statistics? Carl Bialik, who writes the popular Numbers Guy column for the Wall Street Journal, takes an in-depth look at the collection and accuracy of weblog statistics. Even coming up with a seemingly simple rough estimate of the total number of blogs is apparently not that easy - estimates range from 10 million to 60 million. Bialik briefly looks at where posts-per-day statistics come from and dissects readership numbers and impact based on surveys from Pew and blog rankings.http://tinyurl.com/djfdz Bloggers continue to gather fame and admiration in the press, for the most part, and Reporters Without Borders is here to help bloggers in countries that lack freedom of the press do their thing without getting arrested. The organization offers a PDF handbook that covers essentials such as how to bypass censorship and how to keep your online identity secret even when the government really, really wants to know who you are. Setting up a blog is child's play, but the tricky bits are establishing street cred and using the venue efficiently. What do the best blogs have that yours doesn't? Poke through this handbook and find out. Don't be surprised by what you find - you didn't really think your e-mail is private, did you? http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542 Organized Effort to Poison BitTorrent Files? The Slyck site holds that it has uncovered a deliberate campaign to spread corrupt files of movies and TV shows on BitTorrent networks. Slyck reveals how in recent weeks people have deliberately released corrupt torrents that stall after the user downloads some 97% of the file. Deliberately corrupt or, for that matter, virus-infected files are nothing new on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, but this appears to be an organized effort, possibly a test of the movie studios' new strategy of attack on P2P file sharing. The BitTorrent community has reacted swiftly to the situation by blacklisting the sources of the torrents, beginning what will surely become a game of whack-a-mole between the torrent-tracking sites and the originators of corrupt torrents. The original post on Slyck Forums and the ensuing discussion thread provides details about the evolving situation.http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14410 Publishers Sue to Stop Google Print, Google Responds The Authors Guild and other groups, like the Association of American Publishers, have raised a stink over Google's plan to scan materials from several large libraries into its Google Print database. The complaints cry foul over perceived infringement of copyright, but Google appears to have neatly side-stepped this issue with a promise to skip titles that a publisher requests not be scanned. Nonetheless, the Authors Guild has filed a class-action lawsuit against the search giant in a New York court. Google Blog makes clear that it intends to function as an electronic card-catalog, which they argue actually expands the market for books, rather than adversely impacting it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) applies the four traditional factors of fair use and concludes that Google will likely prevail, and links to an independent analysis by intellectual-property lawyer Jonathan Band.Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html EFF: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003992.php The American Memory Project has recently released an online collection of Civil War-era maps created by Maj. Jedediah Hotchkiss, a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. Confederate leaders Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson used the maps to plan their campaigns and battles. Of particular historical interest is a detailed map of the Shenandoah Valley that Jackson used. The maps are part of Hotchkiss's set of notebooks. The collection also includes works he created after the Civil War, which illustrate topographic and economic features of the southern states. The American Memory Project presents the maps along with two historical essays. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/maps/hotchkiss/ Microsoft continues to chase Google in the online advertising game, this time with the launch of an equivalent to Google's advertising engine, Google AdWords. Microsoft's MSN adCenter allows you to place ads based on audience profiling whereas Google AdWords (currently) limits users to only keyword-based ads. For example, MSN adCenter can correlate IP addresses and postal codes to let you target ads at certain geographic regions. At the moment, the service is still in testing and you can only sign up by invitation. According to a CNET story that has a few more details, Microsoft is running a full-blown test of MSN adCenter in Singapore. Webmaster World offers user reviews and discussion. MSN adCenter: https://adcenter.msn.com/Default.aspx CNET: http://beta.news.com.com/2100-1011_3-5881650.html Webmaster World: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum97/607.htm Is Apple really making any money on the $200 wonder it calls the iPod nano? iSuppli addresses the question with a deconstruction of one of the 2-GB models. According to its analysis, Apple spends a bit more than $98 to construct the unit. Add in a small amount for marketing - although these things tend to market themselves - and distribution, and it looks as though Apple earns in the neighborhood of 45% profit on each unit. A similar breakdown indicates that Apple only makes around 44% profit on the Mac Mini, before marketing and distribution costs, so something needs to take up the slack. The iPod does it for them. The bottom line, though, is that if a product doesn't bring Apple at least 20% gross margin, it's not going to get Steve Jobs's OK. BusinessWeek covers iSuppli's experimentation. iSuppli: http://www.isuppli.com/ BusinessWeek: http://businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2005/tc20050921_4557.htm Social software is really expanding. Millions of Games (MOG) is like a Del.icio.us for games. If that doesn't make any sense to you, you probably aren't using social software. Del.icio.us lets you list your favorite sites and tag or identify them so that others can benefit from your surfing. MOG is similar, except that it works for small online games; you tag or identify a game and others can see that you enjoy it. If they like a game, they can tag it as well. In theory, the truly popular games will emerge from the cloud of tagging data. It is much easier to do than to discuss.... http://www.millionsofgames.com/ ONLINE CULTURE Models for the goth soft-core porn site Suicide Girls are unhappy with the company behind the pierced-nipple empire. The Suicide Girls transcends the overcrowded world of online cheesecake with more than its usually artistic photos of naked goth girls. The site also earned a reputation as a place that respected girl power. The recent resignation of some 30 disaffected models has battered that reputation, though the company is vigorously defending itself against charges that it treats the women poorly and underpays them. Wired has a write-up, and many colorful naked girl links - which is, frankly, the main reason we uncover this story for you (we're nothing if not honest).Suicide Girls: http://suicidegirls.com/ Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69006,00.html When people rate Web sites, ease of navigation always lands near the top of criteria lists. Since site designers always make choices, knowledge of the best technique in a particular case can be a hit or miss proposition. Fidelity Investments in Boston assigned a team of usability pros and Web designers to redesign its Web site. Before doing so, the team organized a study to compare six major navigation schemes. They presented their results in a paper delivered at a usability conference. While their conclusions and final choices are not universally applicable, the methodology and particular results will help all Web designers. The team chose well. The Fidelity Investments site is easy to navigate, and that's the point. http://www.eastonmass.net/tullis/WebsiteNavigation/WebsiteNavigationPaper.htm
SURFING SITES Pierrick Calvez's Flash creation, Days in a Day, experiments with the concept of non-linear online narrative, and visitors to his site watch a story that is simultaneously composed and decomposed on the screen. A visitor doesn't simply watch, though. Visitors are also integral to the creation of the story, which relies on mouse position, brightness, and contrast. A visitor can solve puzzles that convey different messages. Calvez himself calls his work "graphic novel(tie)s", which aptly conveys both the serious playfulness of the piece and the postmodern ennui in which it is steeped.http://www.1h05.com/diad/ Eugene Mirman is a comedian, and this is his site. You'll want to move quickly past the less than Marvelous Crooning Child and get into the good stuff - like the Show & Tell section, which offers great audio and video downloads. Check out the "Anti Gay Phone Company" recordings, which contain conversations with a phone company that mention, among other things, how MCI runs a child-pornography ring out of Montreal. If you need more, the Video section awaits. Pack a light snack, crack open a can of Fresca, and plan to stick around. You, too, can help to shatter the "gay shadow government". If you feel strongly. http://www.eugenemirman.com/ Cocktail search engine Droogle is definitely a tool with its heart in the right place. Aside from providing a searchable database of some 25,000 drinks, Droogle features a cool Liquor Cabinet tool that allows you to match the ingredients (including some weird items such as Nestle's Quik) you have lying around to the cocktails they may potentially make up. It could be that no one is watching the content of this site; consequently, some basic mistakes pop up. No matter what James Bond says, a martini should be stirred, yet the first available recipe has it shaken. The site offers a Groups section that is unhelpfully overrun with online-poker spam. This is a great idea that needs some serious kinks worked out, although it is still in beta testing. With better editing, Droogle could be a real asset for bartenders and serious cocktail aficionados. Unless Google takes it down. http://www.droogle.ca/ The Christopher Walken for President 2008 campaign is off and running with a spiffy Web site. At the site, you can read a bit of biography, some brief statements regarding his proposed political platfom, and the press release that announces his candidacy. There's even a Walken 2008 campaign newsletter available through e-mail. If you're tired of holding your nose and voting against the more distasteful of two candidates, this is potentially your best hope. Only one teeny problem: it's a hoax. See the Urban Legends Reference Pages (ULRP). Christopher Walken for President 2008: http://www.walken2008.com/index.html ULRP: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/walken.asp Not sure about the difference between a staff sergeant and a first sergeant? Ever wonder what you have to do to win a Silver Star? Anyone doing online research on the American military should certainly end up here at Grunt, a cornucopia of information concerning the US armed forces. You ably fill any gaps in your knowledge of military equipment, ranks and insignia, awards and etiquette, etc. We especially liked the Cadences section, although the image collection and the handy dictionary of military terms also caught our eye. If you're considering a career in the military, the collection of articles on how to cope with boot camp could be extremely useful, if not encouraging. If you're already serving in the actives or the reserves, Grunt offers a forum for blowing off steam and getting your questions answered. Even Grunt webmasters have to make a living, and the site is definitely the place to go if you are itching to buy military gear, media, and other stuff. http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/ Those of you considering taking up the thrill-seeking sport of BASE Jumping - free-fall skydiving from a Building, Antenna, Span, or Earth - owe it to yourselves and your families to first consult the World BASE Fatality List. Compiled by former US Marine and expert parachutist Nick Di Giovanni, this chronologically arranged catalogue of BASE fatal mishaps is offered as an educational tool, as well as a memorial to the fallen. The somewhat dry descriptions of the accidents don't quite overcome the sense of what must have been horrific results. This should be required reading for anyone who has watched BASE jumping on TV and thought how simple it looks. To be fair, jumpers have successfully completed some tens of thousands of BASE jumps since the sport began - the 90 fatalities listed here would seem to indicate that, statistically, the sport isn't as dangerous as one would suppose. http://hometown.aol.com/base194/myhomepage/base_fatality_list Despite our best efforts, we cannot find a single confirmation that Babies with Beards is a hoax, and we did find plenty of sites that seem to be taking this site seriously. One look at the neatly groomed goatees on these rugrats, however, and you know this can't be real. Most of the pictures are so badly Photoshopped that you'd have to take some leave of common sense to think this is real. That said, peruse the site's message board to find a sample of articles from the mainstream press that seem to miss the joke. And if you Google the site, you'll be stunned - we hope - to find out how many sites point to Babies with Beards as some kind of weird repository of secret hirsute toddler information. Posting on the forum has tailed off this past summer. Maybe the whole bearded baby craze has started to die off. http://www.secretlair.com/babieswithbeards/ Bootleg Toys is a huge collection of knock-off toys unmatched by any other site that features a huge collection of knock-off toys. The site owner ("My real name isn't Joe") started his hobby the same way many collectors seem to - he went to a swap meet and bought some bootleg toys - i.e. fake knock-offs. One thing led to another, and Joe has decided to share his collection with the world. These are all the bad toys you've ever seen in dollar stores or at swap meets. Some are so bad, you wonder what market they aim at (other than not-Joe). You won't want to miss the Disgusting Stuff page. There's just one entry there, a handheld game called Laden vs. USA that looks like a game in which you steer aircraft into skyscrapers. From the insurgent response in Iraq, it's a good bet this sold better than the Titanic-Bot featured on the Transformers page. http://www.bootlegactionfigures.com/ Malls of America (not to be confused with the Mall of America) pays tribute to the shopping mall of yesteryear, of the '60s and '70s, when both enclosing a mall and building it away from a city center were unique concepts for conspicuous consumerism. The site, a blog in fact, is filled with photos and postcards of yellowing fountains and interiors flush with foliage and brickwork, as if the illusion of the outdoor shopping experience were to be maintained for indoor consumers at all cost. Malls of America gratefully accepts image contributions from visitors. If you enjoy the site, scrounge through your old photo boxes and toss some its way. http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/ People have been building homes out of earth probably ever since we stopped living in caves. For one thing, there's never a shortage of building materials and these structures tend to be snug and cozy. Betty Bee shares her wisdom and experience in the construction of houses made of cob, an earth and straw mixture as old as the pyramids, if not older, in her Cob Builders Handbook. In addition to dealing with the design and construction of these environmentally-friendly structures, Bee also has practical suggestions on site selection, drainage, the installation of electrical wiring, and other often neglected items. Cob construction is very much a hands-on business and Bee makes it sound like a lot of fun. Before you start gathering your mud and straw, be aware that the author has left the sections on doors, windows, and roofs offline, so if you actually want to shelter yourself from the elements, you'll have to order her book. Still, what she offers freely is a tempting introduction, if you're so inclined. http://www.weblife.org/cob/index.html Podcast Reviews and Highlights With more than 7,100 podcasts and nearly 140,000 episodes, Podcast Alley is bound to have something you'll enjoy. In keeping with the Internet's strange parallel evolution with CB radio, podcasting started out as a nifty idea, quickly grew into an obsession that everyone had to get in on even (and especially) if they had nothing to say, and soon developed into a din so loud, folks went looking for a way to filter out all of the talk that they had no interest in. Podcast Alley wants to become your filter, and to fill that need, it offers folks a place to submit podcasts so that other folks can listen and rate them. Additionally, Podcast Alley serves as a clearinghouse for all things podcastian: tutorials; software; and more.http://www.podcastalley.com/ The Bubble Burst looks at some 60 people, shows, or groups that soared to popularity, only to wallow in obscurity in recent years. The site is based in the UK and has a distinctively British flavor. None of the listees had too long a run as the apple of the public's eye, but many remain household names. The site briefly recounts the claim to fame of each, then explores where they are now and what they're doing. It's more or less accurate, but some entries need updating. The info on Henry Winkler, for example, doesn't mention his work in "Arrested Development", never mind his new TV series. Some of the chosen at this site, like Winkler, have remained active in low-grade fame while others have fallen completely off the public radar. When's the last time you heard someone mention Samantha Fox? The site also has some games and quizzes to challenge your memory. http://www.thebubbleburst.co.uk/index.php FLOTSAM & JETSAM Online dictionaries often provide audio clips of word pronunciations. Dictionaraoke is a large compilation of songs in which series of these pronunciation clips are matched to MIDI music to produce unusual renditions of popular songs. "Blinded Me with Science" sounds exactly the same.http://www.dictionaraoke.org/ Numerous comic artists provided the artwork on toilet seats at San Francisco's Isotope club. The fact that the medium is Sharpie on toilet seat is no impediment to enjoying their beauty. http://www.flickr.com/photos/16756280@N00/sets/789737/@N00/sets/789737/ Brushed Metal, Anthropomorphized Apple chose to abandon its brushed-metal theme for the look of the new iTunes 5.0. Here's how John Gruber imagines Brushed Metal reacted to the rejection.http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/anthropomorphized Husband Hill is a Martian height scaled by the Spirit rover 14 months into its mission. This panoramic photo from NASA makes it seem as if you're there. http://tinyurl.com/8dgh4 Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Game This Flash diversion builds on the Flying Spaghetti Monster phenomenon. You guide the Flying Spaghetti Monster and convert people into pirates with his noodly appendage, while avoiding black-clad school board members. Silly, but fun.http://www.venganza.org/games/index_large.htm It's "Lego" not "Legos"! So There! When you visit Legos.com, Lego's lawyers throw a fit. Visitors are greeted with a petulant trademark notice and redirected to the official Lego site. The notice informs the ignorant that the correct term is "Lego bricks" and not "Legos", no matter what you call them yourself.http://www.legos.com/ The annual Burning Man festival has come and gone for 2005. Flickr has an entire cluster dedicated to photos from Burning Man, many of them quite beautiful. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/burningman/clusters/ Pretty Pictures of Utter Disasters Worth 1000 asked people to test their image-manipulation skills by creating images of disasters. Here are some frequently amusing submissions.http://tinyurl.com/bj8kg There's so much of it flying about these days, this little product is likely to be useful. See Harry Frankfurt's book, "On Bullshit", for a good treatment of the subject. "On Bullshit": Bullshit Detector: http://www.wiseass.org/bullshit.html http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691122946/netsurferdigest SOFTWARE First Release Candidate of MySQL 5.0 It's not even out of late beta testing but the release of MySQL 5.0 is big news in technical circles. The open-source database is wildly popular as a back end to countless Web sites and other projects despite several quirks which earn the disdain of professional database jockeys. MySQL 5.0 addresses many of the criticisms that have been piled on MySQL over the years. The new version adds hardcore features such as ANSI SQL standard compliance, views, stored procedures, and more. By all accounts, the beta is stable; it already powers many applications without problems. To shake out any last-minute bugs, the MySQL team is offering iPod nanos "to those who deliver the most valuable feedback". The announcement links to a detailed list of what's new in MySQL 5.0.http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_959.html |
| CONTACT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION | |
| ||||
| CREDITS | |
| ||||
Speak for England
War Reporting for Cowards
Web Site Measurement Hacks
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1951-1952 (Hardcover)