Monday, December 06, 2004

Don't forget there's a party in Cambridge on Saturday. 

You can send me a voice message by calling 206-338-3143 

John Palfrey: "Over 400 people have registered to attend the Internet & Society conference." 

Watching the news tonight, the obvious conclusion: invading Iraq was the most insane thing this country has ever done. Meanwhile the press still call the opposition an "insurgency" but it's looking more like a civil war. The election was our last chance to get out of this with our pride intact. Now we have a failed president, still spinning a disaster, trying to preserve some kind of legacy. Americans are still dying, we're going deeper into debt, and Iraq is sinking further into chaos. We worked against this President's re-election for a reason, and that reason hasn't gone away. 

On Thursday, I'll be in Cambridge, where it's snowing. 

On Christmas Day last year I did what you might call a podcast with my parents. I tripped over this looking for a picture of snow to remind me of what it looks like.  

John Battelle: "Or am I missing something?" Perhaps. Human beings who work for Google decide which sites are included in Google News. It's not the bias of the people who wrote the software that drives GN as much as the bias of the sites they consider important. The search engine doesn't need human help to figure out which sites are authoritative, why does GN? In any case their claim that GN is solely algorithmic is simply not true.  

I've written about this countless times in the last couple of years. 

Steve Gillmor is opening the Gillmor Gang up to comments before they record their weekly episode. Here's an example, soliciting comments on the 20th anniversary of Iris Associates, the company that created Lotus Notes. If you have something to say about that, post on Steve's weblog.  

Mary Jo reports that Jeopardy king Ken Jennings will be a spokesmodel for Microsoft. Now that they're into blogging, maybe Microsoft could have a word with Sony about Kottke. Just a thought. 

Adam Curry: "I'm getting happier." 

Wired: "Not all web surfers think spyware is a problem." 

Jeremy Zawodny, who works at Yahoo, discusses how their centralized directory works.  

I've gotten a couple of emails asking what the Inkernet is. It's what Dawn Miceli says at the end of every Dawn & Drew podcast. Kind of dumb, but it's catchy. I caught Adam saying it a couple of days ago. Then I found myself saying it. So what the heck, right? I also got an email from a Republican, a little on the abusive side. To the Republicans, I preach bending over backwards to try to understand why you're so pissed off. But that doesn't mean we turned into a bunch of pussies. We're Gun-totin Liberals!