titling

so how do you get the titles to show up? the title bar is up there, and the title you type in shows up in edit mode. but I must need to do something else? Hmmm.

I assume there's a Blogger template tag for the title that needs to be added to the template for this blog.

Jeneane has generously transposed to HTML and hosted one of my works, here

Wow Kevin! Much to look at and cogitate upon. Give me a couple of days.

It is true that the problem (or challenge) of networks is not new, and nor has it changed substantially in its essence.

It only appears that way to some people who haven't been paying attention, and have been distracted from the real problem by the decrease of their captive revenue flows. These (the captive revenue flows) were, in themselves, only an artefact of monopoly not of technology that happened to be shackled to the service of that monopoly.

As the Internet has shown, a technologically superior and egalitarian model is not only possible but highly to be desired by those who do not make their living from the perpetuation of monopoly.

I have written, in the course of my professional employment over the last decade, mountains of papers on this issue, but so far I have seemed to myself to be "the voice of one, crying in the wilderness."

What a breath of sweet fresh cool air Mr Isenberg's work was. Without the net it is highly unlikely I would ever have heard of it or him, or others like you who are as I am, determined to wrestle with this problem until it submits to rational enquiry.

Viva la Revolution! Viva la Internet! Viva la Blog!

Stupid networks and clueful radio

Denver, I posted a link to Isenbergs paper and several other good ones on the same topic on my own blog. Interesting convergences of ideas.

Also, I was listening to 'This American Life' today, and they were promoting the pledge drive in a very Gonzo, voice-driven way, interviewing someone about how pledge drives were like children begging for allowances. I vote for them as he most clueful radio show.

AND NOW, for another offer. FREE mug to the best design of our gonzo engaged logo for merchandise. I anted up the $35 hosting fee. I think that means I can sell gonzoengaged shirts. Unless the team poo poos it, since it's the team that makes this thing hum. If the dough pours in, I'm willing to put excess it in a kitty for charity or something creative I know the team will come up with at such time that we're rolling in dough. A trip for all of us? A cruise in the bahamas? Hey, it could happen.

Anyway, in addition to a graphic, maybe we should have gonzoengaged.blogspot.com - join the conversation (has that been used? I honestly am out of ideas today). Anyway, something meaningful that will bring more members maybe?

Awe, hell. Just throwing some ideas out there. Let me know what you think. I'm a little manic depressive lately. Can you tell?

so how do you get the titles to show up? the title bar is up there, and the title you type in shows up in edit mode. but I must need to do something else? Hmmm.

CONTEST NEARS END: Helen Razer is miles ahead in the "design a logo for Jeneane's allied blog" contest. Yes, well, she's the only one who's taken the bait too. Helen's gonna get a mug out of this one day and you'll all be sorry--unless you get your micrographx, corel, or other graphic engines humming. Don't miss out. Fame, fortune--or maybe just a mug--awaits you. (p.s., Helen, can you make me a version with dark blue type for merchandise and to match my "allied" blog color(s)? jpegs appreciated. I know, I know, I'm incredibly demanding. We ideologically circumspect types are.)

So, how's everyone liking the new features? Denver, you still looking for your missing post? Doc Searls' blog probably ate it. :-)

Shoot, I just entered a post and it went away... zippp. Gone. The post said something about how spellchecker works like a chump, ummm chimp... that is champ, and how I wanta use my upgraded version to demo a prototype of some "collaborative work space" for a customer. Then I hit the post button and away it went, into a bit bucket somewhere. Now I'll admit to fooling with the current/future/drafts tabs while composing, so somewhere someone may think he's writing the Googlesberg Address and actually have my insights there instead... well, he's bettah off. Anybody check the library of congress to see if my errant post ended up as the declaration of independence? How does the wayback machine work Sherman?

Blogger Pro--New Features (ready now!):

Spellchecking. If your embarrassing typos have skyrocketed since we had to take spellchecking out of the free version (because it stopped being free for us), don't fret. It's back in Pro and without ads. (Note: Windows only for the moment.)

Title Fields. An optional title field is available in the posting form, as well as in the template. Save formatting time if you like to give your posts headlines.

Image Posting. Easily upload and post photos (and any other type of file) from within the Blogger editing interface. (Not yet available for Blog*Spot blogs.)

Post to the Future (or the Past). Adjust the time a post is published, so you can move items around on your blog—or even post to the future.

Draft Posts. Ever have a thought you don't have time to complete at the moment? Just mark the post as a "draft." It won't be published and will be there for you to come back and finish later.

BlogSend. Broadcast your blog via email. Let readers subscribe to get your thoughts in their inbox on a daily basis, or by post, via your own one- or two-way mailing list. Increase reach, readership, and feedback.

Post Templates. If you routinely include similar text or HTML in your posts, create a Post Template and save loads of tedious typing time.

Secure Logins. For higher security, your password is encrypted via SSL whenever you sign into Blogger Pro.

Better Internationalization. Ninety-two languages/locales are now available for the date formatting (and now, most of them are even done correctly!). Plus, a ton of new timezones (I think we have them all now).

--enjoy ya'll!

Team, I just upgraded to "blogger pro." I'm not totally sure what it means to us at this Blog, except that we should have the latest and greatest features--that and the $35 less in my pocket. I think it's time to start selling GonzoEngaged t-shirts to cover the cost of blogging, huh?

Anyone else savvy with blogger pro yet?

Yep, agree emphatically. I take it you've read The Rise of The Stupid Network, by David Isenberg, and hence your use of the term?

No-one knows what will be useful is another great argument for a stupid network.
Personally I believe that 3G and even DSL will be eclipsed by grassroots 802.11 buildout, but linking access points with fibre is still worth doing.
Peter Cochrane (former CTO for BT UK) wrote a fascinating paper (PDF version here) on why telcos won't get it right, that basically comes to the same conclusion.

Kevin: Great point. I agree with the statements on these assumptions, but it kind of reminded me of some time I'd spent in a working group looking at Internet2 possibilities. There was a lot of general agreement that "the telcos" couldn't see the benefits of I2, just as it took them years to realise the value of the net the first time around. But my response was to remind them that the telcos are just a business like any other. Where they can see income they'll invest a proportionate amount, but where they can't see it they won't make the investment. There's nothing mysterious or particularly backward about this, other than perhaps their lack of vision.

But given the sharp decline in the whole telco industy over the last 18 months it is a brave person at any telco that asks their bosses to punt on something as (to them) speculative as I2.

OTOH, I'm not sure that I agree that telco engineers are deliberately assuming that point source broadcasts will drive the networks of the future. I've recently been working in this very field, in fact my last task was to design a complete telco architecture for our national carrier, and our reigning assumption was that we would never be able to predict where the traffic would be originating nor where it would be terminating (except in very gross terms, a la CBD's, core services nodes, major corporates, etc). Even where we felt certain that the bulk of traffic would be addressed we built in large variability over the whole net to account for rising unpredictability in the future.

One example we used was Weta Studios, the production house owned by Peter Jackson, and makers of The Lord Of The Rings series. This studio is situated in a suburban house in a non-commercial area of Wellington (New Zealand) and during the production process has been transferring gigabytes of footage in and out to a number of other locations. There is little, if any, precedent in the historic growth numbers for anything of this sort. And once the movies are made - who knows? The traffic may disappear, never to reappear at that node. There are real economic implications for a telco that invests too much in such situations and can never recoup that investment, let alone make a profit from it.

I don't know about every telco engineer, but rest assured that the clued up ones are well aware that the linear growth patterns of a voice only PSTN are no longer any use in designing the networks of tomorrow.

The key problem is that no-one, but no-one, knows what will be useful.

One suggestion I'd make is to look at the growth of blogs and try to put together some useful numbers on users, traffic volumes, life-cycle of a blog (life expectancy might be useful to know?) so that a telco could make some judgement about how much these sorts of uses might impact them in the near future.

I could imagine a situation where a telco that owns an ISP would see some benefit in offering cheap (or even free, as with usenet) Blog services to their customers, to raise the value of the overall service bundle. Having done so, and having seen some advantages in terms of increased customer numbers, higher network utilisation, decreased churn(which might be very important to them with increasing competition!), etc, they would be more inclined to build such assumptions into their architecture and design processes.

Holy Crap--I LOVE IT! So, now I'm promising, I'll put ANY AND ALL allied graphics on my blog with links to their creators or the blog of their choice. How cool is Helen's logo for me!!! And you get an A+ for turnaround time. So, where do you want your georgeous graphic to link to, Ms. Razer?

Thank you SOOO much.

As I deem you to be the ideologically circumspect vehicle of choice for blog readers, jeneane, I thought perhaps

oh yes, and as an added incentive (for what that's worth), I'll stick the image on my blog and link to the winner of this exciting "make a logo for jeneane" contest. Did I not mention it was a contest? Oh. Yes. And I'll even throw in a free mug if I end up sticking it on something like that. Okay, now it's a frickin' contest!

Post your entries here, or email them to me at ewriter@bellsouth.net.

Hurry, contest ends... um... february something. 6th I think. Maybe 3rd. Yes, let's say 3rd. Unless I don't get any. Then I'll extend it.

sure.

thanks.

Tom, you educate me beyond belief. I'm so glad you are here! Now, for a favor. Anyone good with graphics out there who will make me a little logo for my "allied" blog? I mean, all it has to say is... i don't know... the name, a tagline, and the url... here's some ideas:

allied.
the answer is in the blog
allied.blogspot.com

or

allied.
bloggings of a madwoman
allied.blogspot.com

or

allied.
united we blog
allied.blogspot.com

Anyone? I kind of like the 'united we blog' because it goes with allied and kind of pokes fun at the 'current state of affairs.' I want to put a logo on my blog (like this funky one I somehow assembled here for RGE outa RB's book cover, but not so sophomoric), but I ain't no graphics wiz. Also, I'd love to make t-shirts like Gary Blogsticker Turner. But alas, I'm imageless.

Friends? Readers? Gods of the Mac?

Thank you for this diversion.

This week's (02.04.02) New Yorker has a story about Matthew Johnson, this insane Mississippi record company guy. He's been attempting to record and sell the music of bunch of old bluesmen. The story, called "White Man at the Door," by Jay McInerney, offers this reminiscence of Johnson's first encounter with R.L. Burnside:

“I remember the day I met R.L.,” Johnson says…”We were driving in his car. He was drunk. Every damn light on his dashboard was on, red lights flashing everywhere. There were cows on the road, and he was driving with one hand. He’s definitely, like, nihilistic - in a friendly way. He loves when things go wrong. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods – he just loves ‘em.”

The sound he's trying to capture and sell:

Johnson is trying to illustrate the evolution of the authentic anarchic howl – from Charley Patton to Eminem. He seems to be looking for the anti-Whitmanesque strain of the American voice – the naysayers, the verbal bomb throwers, the primal screamers. His heroes are the anti-heroes: Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike Turner, Keith Richards, Axl Rose, Cobain, Eminem, plus the blue-collar heroes Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock. Genre be damned – in his mind, these are the true descendants of the lonely, libidinous, and eternally damned Robert Johnson, the true kin of Burnside and Ford.

Accused of ignorance, exploitation, and even bad taste, Johnson was unfazed: “I’ve been trying to sell out for years. I just never knew how before.”<br>

David Reed said in 2000: Collaborative creative spaces. With broadband networks we are reaching the point where "pickup" creation is possible - where a group of people can create and work in a "shared workspace" that lets them communicate and interact in a rich environment where each participant can observe and use the work of others, just as if they were in the same physical space. Yet the architects who would make the network intelligent are structuring the network as if the dominant rich media communications will be fixed bandwidth, isochronous streams, either broadcast from a central "television station" or point-to-point between a pair of end users. These isochronous streams are implicitly (by the design of the network's "smart" architecture) granted privileges that less isochronous streams are denied - priority for network resources. There are no mechanisms being proposed in these architectures to allow new applications that may be more "important" squeeze out isochronous traffic. Is it really the case that tight timing requirements of packets in a voice stream means that those packets' delivery should always take precedence over events with loose short-term timing, but vast societal impact? That is what these network engineers take for granted.

I think he's onto something again, and lots of other smart network engineers agree with him. How about some Gonzo support for these ideas - Any suggestions?

Gotcha b!x. And emphatically agree. Seems they urgently require the services of Marek J and the rest of the TDCRC.

but I think you've somehow sidestepped the purpose of such comparisons.

Actually, no. I was dismissing the purposes as irrelevant to anything truly useful. I understand that it's important to the corporation owners of these channels, and their shareholders, to see these figures. But if these figures represent a fight over an increasingly small share of the potential market for news and opinion -- as more and more people tune out from the bullshit and the claptrap -- what's actually important to note (but is ignored as a presumptively-unimportant matter when such figures are reported) is that the figures are actually irrelevant, the fight is irrelevant, and the companies and shareholders are trying desperately to live in a world where these ratings reflect anything of true importance.

You're right b!x but I suspect that this isn't what they're used for.

I suspect that these figures are being used:
1) by the company to add to their allure to potential shareholders
2) by potential shareholders/brokers/etc to judge the allure of the companies shares

That is why, I suspect, they are measured against their *direct* competitors, rather than all other media types.

I mean, how would *you* react to an item that said: CNN had 647,000 viewers while Google had 2,928,844,236 hits - last month. ??

What would that mean to you, when you're trying to decide which cable company to invest in? Or even which industry? Would those numbers alone be of any use whatsoever?

I'm not decrying the substance of your point, I do think that the net has had and will have a vast influence on these matters, and the losses of telcos trying to become content providers are legendary and frighteningly large, but I think you've somehow sidestepped the purpose of such comparisons.

Hang on a sec b!X, you are comparing the average viewers for a program to the total monthly vistors to an entire domain.

Why is it that everywhere I bring this up, people ignore my "not entirely fair or direct comparison" disclaimer, which I have been careful to always palce near the top? People really don't need to re-state back to me what I've already disclaimed.

The point is that X hundred thousand people watching a news network is nowhere near the X millions making use of online media, regardless of what the specific uses are. And so the cable news figures are entirely useless as a basis for determining anything actually useful or repsentative about news media use.

Hang on a sec b!X, you are comparing the average viewers for a program to the total monthly vistors to an entire domain. You're out by a big factor here. Which is not to say that either figure means anything useful. I see this bizarre mentality all the time as people cite dubious 'reach' figures for QT and WM, and say far fewer people have QT than WM, ignoring the fact that far more people have either than will ever visit the site they are making, and that they don't have to rely on these very fuzzy estimates, as they can conduct a complete census fo their own site vistors anyway.

Jonas is badly wrong, and should be sent some reading matter, like this and this.

Or maybe he should just be left to lose his shirt on making content that he controls, which no-one wants to watch.

Someone on a mailing list I'm part of posted from viewership stats for the cable new channels:

During January, Fox averaged 656,000 viewers while CNN had 596,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. MSNBC had 296,000 viewers. In Nielsen's cable measurements, a month ends on its last Sunday. In prime-time, Fox averaged 1.1 million viewers, CNN was at 921,000 and MSNBC had 358,000. Fox beat CNN during two months last year in prime-time, but by smaller margins. And it has never won in Nielsen's 24-hour average.

And all I could think of was how miniscule a portion of the pie these channels are fighting over. Okay, it's neither an entirely fair or direct statistic comparison, but look at the "audience" stats for online media. We're talking tens of millions, and the news networks are fighting in the arena of hundreds of thousands. Who cares?

In the list convo it was asserted how stupid all these people were for watching FOX over CNN. But demographic and ratings stats are all so specialized and insular that they have almost no relation whatsoever to any greater -- and therefore actually meaningful -- context. Maybe half of those watching morons on FOX (or CNN) are screaming "You stupid fucking IDIOTS!" at their televisions, in which case they aren't stupid viewers at all. Who knows. Which is my point.

These cable news numbers of miniscule by comparison to the Internet. And they don't mean anything to anyone except those concerned with the fight over an ever-shrinking audience, leaving the vast majority of viewers/users/audience/consumers/citizens to on their own merry ways elsewhere.

It's all so damnable irrelevant, but it gets reported as important.

So who put the RANT in my coffee this morning?

To slightly digress into the realm of corporate control over channel and content, see this NY Times story (encountered via Ditherati) in which the chairman of IDT has this to say:

"Sure I want to be the biggest telecom company in the world, but it's just a commodity," Mr. Jonas said. "I want to be able to form opinion. By controlling the pipe, you can eventually get control of the content."

Lest anyone continues to believe that such people aren't attempting to take control intentionally rather than just as some byproduct of conducting business.

KayPro II, 1982. I got so fascinated by it that I ended up teaching myself assembler and becoming a columnist for the KayPro user's magazine on the machine's inner workings ... the first step in a career built on writing on topics about which I am completely unqualified. First site: www.evident.com, 1994.

BTW, I blogged this morning about whether you can trust commercial voice, with a reference to GM and a link to this blog.

First Computer: Commodore PET. First program sold in 1979 to this chap from Kalle Infotec, to help him sell this exciting new concept called the Fax machine.

First got online in 1985 at Cambridge, and got linked using GROGGS and of course MUD and for multiplayer networked action games, Bolo.

First Usenet post Jan 1st 1994.

First website probably in 1996ish, though I'd put togther an offline HyperText system incorporating images, video, sound and text markup for a group of Veterinarians in 1992.

First computer - started messing around on friends C-64's in 1984 (back in grade 4) - type in all day only to see a bouncing ball - hard to believe that GEOS could run on that thing (btw, our world would be a better place if Geos had become the standard instead of Windows on PC's). First computer I owned was a Tandy Color Computer, the only cool thing about it was that it has Q-Bert. I wish I had a Timex Sinclair but oh well....

First webpage - sometime in 1994 while connecting online via my AT and 9600 bps modem via a shell account via GeoCities. On further inspection, it was normal then but hasn't aged well. It got me addicted.

First computer: Xerox 860 in 1982, followed by a Mac 128, signed on the inside by Jobs and crew, which my business partner later donated to the public school system before I could SCREAM!

First date of connection: PAN Network, 1988, at a price of $79 a month for access to this now-prehistoric worked-some-of-the-time text-based musician's exchange. They are still around, but have obviously adopted a different business model and an only slightly better graphical approach.

Built first web site: Feb of 1996. www.systecinc.com (long dead, still living courtesy of the way back machine). It stood toe to toe in its day, and on futher inspection, it still ain't bad.

For us people who have been online for a long time, I think it was sites like GeoCities that got a lot of us going

Egads. That must make people like me who were putting stuff online when there was only gopher and a line-mode web browser ancient.

I. Am. Not. Old. At. 32.