Blogwalking

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Towards a toolkit for smartmobs. Geoblogging/swarming/referring-mining and other little mindbombs in this post:

“A strange little idea I had on the way home today: Movable Type on a Sharp Zaurus equipped with wireless ethernet? Or maybe Bloxsom if/when it has static publishing? Just use rsync to publish whenever the thing finds itself on a network, wireless or otherwise. Maybe that happens while you’re out Warwalking – better yet, maybe that wireless network detector you cobbled together autoblogs what it finds while in your pocket.

But, beyond that, I wonder what else having your blog in your pocket might give you?”

» 0xDecafbad: Zauri, BlogWalking, Smart Mobs and other oddities [thanks, Marko!]

Secret properties

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The design principles and evolutionary forces that begat the net, in 10 bullet points from Scott Bradner, as reported by Dan Gillmor:

“How did technologists, government officials and a host of other early players turn something with no obvious business model into a system that has become so intrinsic to the new century? A series of decisions proved critical — choices that helped turn data transport into a commodity business and put the power in users’ hands, not in the centralized telecommunications companies’ controlling grasp.”

These designed-in qualities that respond and unpack under environmental pressure are what Matt Webb calls “Secret Properties”. Learning to design them in is the challenge of social software.

» Siliconvalley.com: 10 choices that were critical to the Net’s success [via tomalak]

Feed me, Auntie.

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Those marvellous people at BBC News have public-beta’d some RSS feeds for us all to enjoy:

BBC News Frontpage Index
http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/front_page/rss091.xml
BBC News Technology Index
http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/technology/rss091.xml
BBC News UK Index
http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/uk/rss091.xml
BBC News World Index
http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/world/rss091.xml

Rebrand ‘Broadband’

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Bill Thompson’s set something off again:

“I have to end with a whinge – as a technical pedant, I’m annoyed at the use of the word broadband for what is really just a moderately fast, always on connection, but I can live with it.

It does not mean fast, but when the marketing droids at the telecoms companies were looking for a word to describe alternatives to dialup connection, it was the unlucky victim and is now a ruined word.

I think this is a shame, and wish we had a better word for a fairly fast, always-on connection. Any suggestions? “

Here’s the thing. Bill’s “former audience” have come up with a great suggestion for rebranding broadband.

Scroll down the bottom of the story, and 8 posts there’s a suggestion by “Daniel, UK”. He suggests that we no longer refer to “broadband” but instead…

“Permanet”

I love that. It describes what’s best about having an always-on connection – being permanently connected to your friends, your community, your favourite sources of information and the potential of the internet; and swipes away the marketing-notion that it’s all about having fat-content pushed at you.

I’m not buying broadband – I want my Permanet!

Thank you “Daniel, UK” whoever you are!

» BBC News: Riding the internet’s fast lane

FOAFing about.

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DJ Adams posts a nice little statrer-kit of FOAF links. FOAF stands for ‘Friend Of A Friend’ and amongst other things, enables the encoding of social relationships on the web:

“Good grief. Anyway, this exploration is certainly opening more doors than it’s closing. Actually, that’s not quite right. It’s showing me new doors that I choose to go through. This one had FOAF written on it in shiny brass letters.”

» DJ’s Weblog: “From REST to URIs, the Semantic Web, RDF, and FOAF”

Sustainable computing

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How green is your laptop? A thread on the awesome Barbelith Underground about sustainable computing musing about more viridian design alternatives has emerged:

“Machines are constructed to obsolescence – especially computers. That’s about as environmentally friendly as disposable batteries and plastic bags. It’s a lunacy.

So where are the computers built to last? The boxes made of something other than plastic, where modular components can be inserted, discarded, or added on as new levels of power become available?”

I have a very beautiful sliver of titanium, silicon, polycarbonate etc. on my desk that is the result of some fairly intensive and wasteful wittling down from enormous lumps of ore and rock.

At Doors6, John Thackara questioned precisely this myth that computing technology was ‘lightweight’ by asking the audience to imagine the ‘ecological rucksack’ that his powerbook actually represented – the raw materials discarded in order to manufacture the objects that power what we perceive to be lightweight, modern and immaterial. He paced the stage describing the 50ft by 50ft by 50ft cube of material that had to be winnowed down into the A4-sized plastic clam of his powerbook. Very powerful mental image.

» Barbelith Underground >> Laboratory >> Sustainable computers?

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N.B. Doors7 earlybird registration closes tommorrow. I just registered. Andrew Otwell has posted an eloquent description of why it’s such a great event. I;d only add that, at the time of going to my first Doors I was left baffled and unmoved by a lot of it, and thought I may have wasted my money… only to find themes and ideas from the event percolating up through my thoughts and into my work for the rest of the year…