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Blogs as Disruptive Tech

In Blogs as Disruptive Tech, WebCrimson looks at the fuzzy space where blogging software leaves off and content management systems begin. In his view, the transition we are seeing is akin to IBM having the mainframe market ripped out from underneath it by the PC explosion. CMSs frequently sell in the $10k – $500k range. Blogging packages tend to cost around $35, if not free. But there’s a parsec of difference between the categories, right? … or is there?

Than again, there’s the dullest blog in the world.

Music: Melt-Banana :: Disposable Weathercock
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Real-Time Blacklists, QuickTime Bug, Code Mode

Just after hitting Post in Kung-Log on that last entry, remembered that Movable Type is all perl. But wait – I’m building the latest perl in CPAN in the background right now. Amazing — it worked fine — you can apparently use the perl interpreter even while building it. Or you can if you’re lucky. It would probably be as easy to jack yourself up bad if not careful.

Didn’t set out to upgrade perl – just installing SpamAssassin, it found a bunch of dependencies it needed, and before I knew it perl 5.8 was on its way in. Not sure I need SpamAssasin anyway – set up CommuniGate to work with some real-time blacklists earlier today and am impressed – spam dropped by around 75% immediately.

On the downside, RBL systems reject suspected spam outright – you never get to have a look to check for false positives. On the other hand, SpamAssassin and other filters just add a spam tag to the msg header, so you can do whatever client filtering you want. That’s great, but I’ve already got solid client-side tagging via Entourage. It may be useful for future birdhouse customers.

Getting archived QuickTime video ready for async webcasting yesterday and edited dead air from the start of a bunch of files with hint tracks (extra data tracks necessary to work with a streaming server). When accessed via rtsp://, Safari blew up – total crash. Oh, wait, so did IE/Mac. Oh, wait, so did IE/Win. Oh, wait, so did QT Player when accessing the rtsp:// stream directly. I had discovered a super-fatal bug — and the only fix was to delete hint tracks and regenerate them from scratch. For a week’s worth of video. Lovely way to spend a day. Lesson: If you edit QT files with hint tracks, don’t put them on a streaming server until you replace the hint track. Reported to Apple.

This semester I’m splitting the PHP/MySQL class with another team. I taught three weeks of PHP in code mode, they’re doing three weeks working with same in Dreamweaver. Today was the start of the Dreamweaver segment and afterwards I asked the class whether they preferred working in code mode or in Dreamweaver. Pleasantly shocked to hear them say they preferred working in code (remember these are journalism and SIMs students).

Music: King Crimson :: Easy Money
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Raven

Since when did I get too busy to buy CDs? This sucks. When this next deadline comes and goes (final stretch now!) I’m going to buy some music:

Lou Reed : The Raven
White Stripes : Elephant
Conor : Bright Eyes

Forget what else it was that I wanted, but I know I want it. Sheesh. At an Oscar party last week realized I hadn’t seen a single one of the movies up for an award, and now realize I haven’t purchased an album in months. Life inside out. But somehow have no regrets – coming home to Miles every day is a joy I can’t describe, leaving him in the a.m. gets harder every day (as he grows steadily less infant and more toddler).

“Raven” includes collaborations with Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, and Ornette Coleman. He calls it the culmination of everything that’s come before in his career. Should be a trip. Is it true that Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were married once?

Music: Mikis Theodorakis :: Andante
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SquirrelMail

Just set up SquirrelMail on top of Communigate’s IMAP server, now birdhouse mail users have their option of POP, IMAP, or web mail. PHP-based, very fast. Even works with multiple vhost domains, no special config necessary. Communigate is an incredibly powerful mail server – the more I dig into its options the more I’m impressed. But the UI they provide for web mail is an abomination unto the senses – the squirrel fixes that.

Music: Aimee Mann :: Aimee Mann – Jimmy Hoffa Jokes
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I Used To Believe

What kind of beautiful messed up whack did you believe when you were small? I submitted this:

Because my grandfather spoke very quietly and very gravelly, I came to believe that we were born with a limited supply of speech and that if we used it all up we’d become mute at the ends of our lives. I began trying to conserve words as though they were a limited resource.

Music: Mable John :: Same Time Same Place
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RSS Demo

Met with a guy from IST who wanted to know about ways I’ve been deploying RSS feeds out of various J-School project sites. He’s been writing an RSS parser/aggregator in JSP. We agreed to do a collaborative presentation for webnet (the unfortunately named collective of UC Berkeley webmasters, who meet to compare notes on working with limited resources, compare redesign projects, share technology, etc.) Should happen sometime in the next few months.

Music: Shooglenifty :: Hoptsoi
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Core Value Proposition

Check the QuickTime at this site promoting their flagship product, an adjustable desk. “How shall we communicate the core value proposition of our product?” I know, we’ll do multimedia!”

Desk goes up, desk goes down. Desk goes up, desk goes down.

Heartening to know that some semblance of 1950s marketing sensibility has survived the MTV generation unscathed.

Music: Sledge, Percy :: i’ve been loving you to long
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Pink Is Evil

So much to say about the “Connecting with the Wired Generation” conference that I don’t have time to post… suffice to say I’ve got a whole new perspective on the level of technology saturation that is going to be part of Miles’ life – far beyond what even I had imagined (e.g. cell phone penetration among 1st graders in Finland is now 100%!)

During the final panel, when all the young kids (9 1/2 to 17) were on stage, I asked their impressions of 2 Cool To Be Real, wanting to find out whether they could see through the beef industry smokescreen. First reaction from the girls: “Anything pink is evil.” Second reaction: “If it’s called “2 cool” or “Be real” you know it can’t be cool, because it wouldn’t say it if it were. Probably made by some 60 yr old guy or something.” In other words, teenage girls have excellent bullshit detectors. The latter response made me think of Fox News: “Fair and Balanced” and O’Reilly’s “No Spin Zone” — if it was really fair and balanced would they feel the need to declare it? If O’Reilly didn’t spin, would he be spinning the image of his own show in the tagline?

Glad to have both conferences, and all of the webcasting that came with, finished. A week of 12-14 hour days and Saturday too. A day of rest at last today — dim sum in the morning with friends, errands mid-day, afternoon to Strawberry Canyon for first poolside day of the new Spring, and Miles’ first experience in a swimming pool (pix TK).

Music: Dead Kennedys :: California Uber Alles
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Connecting with the Wired Generation

Just how disconnected are mid-career adults from kids who grew up with the Internet in their back pocket? The UC Berkeley Grad School of Journalism is hosting a full-day conference to explore issues related to the new digital childhood. As a public service, the entire event will be webcast live. Keynote Friday night, panels all day Saturday. Archives will go online sometime next week.

Note: The terrible lighting situation is unfortunately outside of our (webcasters) control.

Later… joker three seats down decided to help himself to our electricity. Pulling and tugging the power cord, accidentally disconnected our FireWire archiving drive, which disrupted the broadcast and cut off 10 viewers. Argh. My fault for situating equipment where that could happen…

Later later… “that joker” turned out to be one Justin Hall (once of “Justin’s Links from the Underground” fame).

Later… router dropped out and pulled connectivity out from under us. Back up now.

Later… conference over! Will mellow for one day, work for a couple days, then take some time off to finish the MacWorld piece. Tempted to blog notes on the conference overall, but exhausted.

xian was there today, but barely got to visit with him. Another day.