Ken Schafer

O'Reilly Network's article "What We're

O'Reilly Network's article "What We're Doing When We Blog" by Meg Hourihan is a great overview of what makes Weblogging different from having a personal home page. I appreciate people who are getting back to "deep thoughts" about what we are doing online. It seemed over the last few years that new ideas and analysis of them had fallen out of fashion.

My guess is this will be a heavily linked to article (I found the article via Davenet)

A great article on ClickZ

A great article on ClickZ by Vin Crosbie called AOL Time Warner: It's a New Media, Baby hits the nail on the head. The Internet is different than other media, primarily because it allows people to communicate with others and explore niche interests.

Most big media companies miss this entirely.

iVillage is doing the right

iVillage is doing the right thing.

Pop Go Those Blasted Pop-Up Ads, iVillage Decrees says the New York Times.

It's good to see one of the original niche content sites setting a positive trend and formally moving away from pop-up ads:

Now, iVillage, a network of Web sites for women, says it is heeding its readers' complaints and plans to eliminate most pop-up advertising by Sept. 30 on all its sites.

IVillage said a survey of its readers in March indicated that "92.5 percent of iVillage women found pop-up advertising to be the most frustrating feature of the Web."

It seems that more and more these days, publishers' desperation to make an ad dollar is turning them into carney hucksters, using any tactic they can to foist whatever product they have on an unsuspecting public.

Hopefully other publishers will follow iVillage and we will see the emergence of more contextual, likeable advertising online.

Ooh, it's 1998 again! I

Ooh, it's 1998 again!

I thought I'd taken a ride in the way-back machine when I read this InternetNews article (Miller Launches Branded Calendar)

Here's a quote:

"Miller Brewing Company is extending its brand to a free online entertainment calendar that it's hoping will become a central part of consumers' social outings.

... the Miller Time Network online calendar offers local information on music, bars, clubs, sports, food and movies. The calendar also lets users download local maps, buy tickets for events or send invitations to friends."

I'm not saying it's a bad idea - it just seems that the appetite for these funky branded apps has decreased considerably. Hope it works for them so I can brush of my "misheard lyrics" site business plan.

Fascinating article in the New

Fascinating article in the New York Times on the increasing elusiveness of privacy in a world that continues to move online.

Here's a quote:

These days, people are seeing their privacy punctured in intimate ways as their personal, professional and online identities become transparent to one another. Twenty-somethings are going to search engines to check out people they meet at parties. Neighbors are profiling neighbors. Amateur genealogists are researching distant family members. Workers are screening co-workers.

In other words, it is becoming more difficult to keep one's past hidden, or even to reinvent oneself in the American tradition. "The net result is going to be a return to the village, where everyone knew everyone else," said David Brin, author of a book called "The Transparent Society" (Perseus, 1998). "The anonymity of urban life will be seen as a temporary and rather weird thing."

For you "data junkies", After

For you "data junkies", After the Dot-Bomb might be worth a look.

Here is the abstract on the indepth article that follows:

In the excitement of the "dot-com" rush of the 1990's, many Web sites were developed that provided information retrieval capabilities poorly or sub-optimally. Suggestions are made for improvements in the design of Web information retrieval in seven areas. Classifications, ontologies, indexing vocabularies, statistical properties of databases (including the Bradford Distribution), and staff indexing support systems are all discussed.

Is Internet Radio Dying? Unfortunately

Is Internet Radio Dying?

Unfortunately it may be. For a look at the whole mess, check out this Knowledge@Wharton article.

This Wired article offers some

This Wired article offers some good advice for getting people to respond to your e-mail requests - don't cc, but rather send the message to one person.

The problem seems to come from people a) overwhelmed by their inbox and to do lists, and b) a feeling that "someone else will deal with it".

Once stated this is pretty obvious, but I still receive (and send) messages to groups of associates expecting individual action.

Lesson learned.

"It was a dark and

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest results were announced yesterday.

Watch you mouth! At least

Watch you mouth! At least if you want to make sure your e-mails get to the intended recipients.

Strom has an article about the perils of on-the-server spam filtering to the free flow of conversation. Note that they couldn't even spell out the word "viagra" in full in this article that originally went out by e-mail because the message would likely have been filtered out of many inboxes.

By the way, the entire

By the way, the entire redesigned site is less than 200K! I know some homepages that are larger than that. Here's to less.

I should have been outside

I should have been outside enjoying the sunshine today, but inspiration hit and an entirely redesigned website is the result. Enjoy.