Saturday, February 19, 2000

MSNBC: Bush wins South Carolina primary. "With South Carolina behind them, McCain and Bush will dash off to Michigan, the biggest contest of the primary season so far with 58 delegates at stake."

2/4/00: How to Make Money on the Internet. "US President Bill Clinton gave a great speech at Davos on Saturday at noon. The multiple tracks of Davos merged into one. Clinton, who had little sleep in the previous three days looked tired, with big bags under his eyes. He spoke softly, but his message was powerful."

Davos Newbies: Clinton's final answer. "So we need these networks. And you are in an unbelievably unique position. So my one wish for you -- you might think I'd say China or this or that and the other; it's nothing specific -- develop a shared vision. When good people, with great energy, have shared vision, all the rest works out."

Frontier users who want to use Manila Express to add content to a site behind a firewall, or who don't want to use UserLand's server to update their site, will want to grab ManilaExpress.root.

Susan Kitchens goes cloud watching.

Weblogger.Com does commercial Manila website hosting, template design and custom development.

ZDNet: How to hire a Web site designer.

Weblogs.Com: The flow formula for banner ads. "Until today our method of choosing an ad to display was uniform, the script picks a random number and uses that number to index into a table of ads. Every ad was just as likely to appear as every other ad."

Scripting.Com rose several ranks on the Beebo Weblog Ratings this week. There are 4 Manila sites in the top 50. Hint: if you get one of these sites to point to you, you'll rise on the list.

I started coding up my own Beebo-style page just to see how their selection of logs affects the rankings, and came up with very different numbers, using the 471 sites registered at Weblogs.Com. I'm going to put the results on a web page tomorrow.

Hey Zeldman has a weblog.

Wired: Just Say Nokia. "In the northern skunk works called Finland, the 21st century is in beta: It's a call-anytime, roam-anywhere, use-any-protocol kännykkä world."

Me and Jason Levine. "Now, in my family, which I suspect is a lot like Jason's, it was the worst thing in the world to change your mind. Once someone caught you doing it, everything you ever said was totally invalidated. So you fought like hell when someone said you changed your mind."

NY Times: Sony Web Site Mobbed as Playstation Fever Strikes.

Eric S. Raymond: An Interview with Tim O'Reilly.

Marc Canter: "There's a big difference between the way things are supposed to be and the way they really are. If you don't have your media on a local drive - then it ain't gonna load in time. There's no such thing as networked based 'multimedia'. Streaming media is *not* video."

Let's do an experiment. Which of these virtually identical pages loads faster? Exodus or Conxion. Register your response here.

A bunch of email. Whoa Dave, Did you endorse McCain? No.

Emailing with Denise Caruso I said "The last time there was a choice it was Nixon vs McGovern. I didn't like Jimmy Carter, but if he were running now I would support him. The next president will be the child of a politician. How to win? Force the other guy to take a stand and never take one yourself. No choices."

Redherring.com: Microsoft is losing its grip. "While Ms. Roizen agrees with colleagues that the playing field has changed, she says, 'That doesn't mean that Microsoft is marginalized. They're still an incredible force in the Internet economy.'"

Brig there's a lot to say about this. No one actually gets hurt by what someone else says about them. The hurt is self-induced. These are just little ones and zeros on a magnetic surface being transmitted by EMF or something like that. There's no actual matter being moved here. No real danger.

BTW, speaking as a designer, which you'd have to go look at my software, dating back to the early 80s to judge, one thing you always want is feedback, esp from people who know how to give it. Powazek is a weblog newbie, clearly. Struggling to understand the rules of this medium. That's good. Maybe he'll teach us something. Maybe he already has. Weblogs are different from document oriented websites he's worked on in the past. I've heard him speak about how he does Fray. It's a very different thing.

BTW, the rules aren't about manners. Every medium has its limits. Every art has strong opinion, and strong response.

Required reading for anyone who wants to grok weblogs.