Just when I wanna try AdWords, I get this: " AdWords will be offline for 4 hours beginning immediately." Damn!

petervandijck’s blog - hey, Wordpress does blog hosting now! They're sending out invites.

socialight launches. It's a mobile location aware app, I did some user testing for them earlier this year. Check it out. Basically, it lets you annotate your environment with photos, text and such, and then your friends can pick up those annotations later.

What it's not

I'm working on version 2 of Mefeedia, my personal crazy project. In about a month plus some, it'll go live. And:

• It's not Web 2.0. What happened with web 1.0? Or the plain web? Is anyone getting excited about that anymore?
• It's not the Flickr for video. Clearly, Flickr will be the Flickr for video.
• It's not 'an amazing new way to'. OK, so it is the best place to find indie video. But it's not that amazing. Jeezes.

Thought I'd get that out of the way.

Findability and folksonomies

I am blogging some stuff from the iainstitute mailing list, whose archive is currently not public, which is kinda ironic for an organization that focuses on findability.

Anyways. PeterMorville (link) (with a new book on findability) and ThomasVanderWal (link) (who coined the term folksonomy) sparring over folksonomies:

Thomas, refering to an article Peter wrote:

"I really like most of the article. I agree with the Wikipedia section, but have more scepticism as the *folksonomy* entry is nearly always wrong these days with the definition and examples it gives.

I do start running into problems with your article in the folksonomy area. I agree that early on the Technorati folks coopted the folksonomy term, but they have shied away from its use of late as they realize it is not what it is doing with their tagging effort.

What Technorati is doing is what Cory Doctorow labelled Metacrap.

Technorati tagging is a gory mess, it adds little value, it captures a variety of tagging (and decidedly non-tagging -- commercial weblog tools have their categories counted as tags by Technorati) practices with various points of view and gumbles them up. It could even be worse than Metacrap. I have talked with them a fair amount about how to approach fixing it and time will show if they have an interest.

It seems you have had blinders on with the folksonomy tools since the IA Summit in Montreal Peter. As the serendipity tools like http://del.icio.us have been growing up into fairly decent findability tools as their corpus of materials grows. The creator of del.icio.us has left his day job and has been focussing on the tool as a full-time job and has five other developers now making the product better. They built their own search engine which has just gone live and is permitting their corpus, which is based on their contributors' point of view, to be used more easily.

Having just returned from Europe from the Euro IA Summit, I had a lot of discussions with people there about folksonomy. Many wished I had presented on that subject or were writing a book on the subject (hmm...). There is a problem in Europe and with the rest of the world
that folksonomies help resolve, it is a cross-cultural tool. It easily leverages the language of those tagging from one culture and uses the object being tagged as a pivot to find other cultures vocabulary for similar objects. Folksonomies are quite a popular tool in non-parochial Amerian eyes. They help greatly with findability.

The key piece is that the folksonomy tools are broad folksonomies so people can pivot.

[...]

Peter answers:

I'm glad you enjoyed (most of) the authority article, and I appreciate your thoughtful response. I do think folksonomies as an experimental subject are very interesting, and I don't dispute that tagging can improve findability and refindability. I'm just not sure that most people most of the time will find it worth the investment in the long-run. I forced myself to try del.icio.us before the IA summit panel so I'd have something useful to say about it. I haven't used it since. In any case, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on some (but not all) of these issues.

Thomas:

You really should try del.icio.us again, particularly since most of what you stated is has not been the case for many months and you are a voice of authority. You should also try Yahoo's My Web. Yes, they do take a little time, but the pay off is quite grand.

[...]

Peter:

When I get a chance, I will revisit del.icio.us and explore Yahoo's My Web.
Then I will be much better prepared to criticize them :-) In the meantime, I
will maintain my skepticism, based purely on my problem with the following
proposition:

"Yes, they do take a little time, but the pay off is quite grand."

Google Desktop takes no time and the refindability payoff is arguably much
better.

The case against findability.

Things should be easy to find - an information architect could agree with that.

The recent problems surrounding Google maps sound, from a distance, silly. That crazy Indian president! What is he talking about?

But culture is a funny thing. At the IA retreat a few weeks ago I showed a screenshot of the levis website. Totally offensive to me (from Belgium), none of the attendees noticed a particular problem. The thing with culture is, what makes 1 person from 1 culture angry, won't mean a thing to someone from another culture.

I wrote about the Maori a while ago. A really important concept in Maori culture is “tapuâ€?. It means that certain knowledge shouldn't be shown to just anyone.

I guess I'm trying to say: this idea that information should be freely available is a cultural one. And it's not always necessarily (this is painful to say) right.

This is a real wheelchair ad!

Colours In Motion Spazz_G Everyday Wheelchair: "Have you been dreaming of that unique custom wheelchair that would not cost you an arm and a leg?"

Unbelievable.

alarm:clock: Peter Rip Lets It Rip: "So where are we not investing? In companies that are only focusing on the social/collaborative aspects of the Web (for example "collaboration-assisted search engines"), There will certainly be some big successful companies, but it is hard to have an informed opinion about which of the many will have a sustainable advantage. We are in the prediction business and we don't know how to predict those markets."

Apple put Steve Jobs' speech online. Apple - QuickTime - Apple Special Event - October 2005

"It's great, it's fantastic, it's fantastic, it's fantastic."

And: "It's great!"

People keep talking about what a great presenter Steve Jobs is, but he pisses me off. He's got charisma, but the "great fantastic" bit, god, that's just... amazing! Fantastic!

Selection readers

Yes! That's me!

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Saddle Up to the MiniBar: "We also know there are "selection readers" out there. (I'm one of them.) Selection readers are just what they sound like: people who select text in a document as they read it. Maybe it's a kind of nervous habit. For me, I think I do it to kind of help me keep my place in the document."

Compelling experiences

How to make money with digital lifestyle aggregators - Part I :: AO: "So personalization and customization find their destiny intermixed with Integration and Aggregation. The only way to produce compelling enough experiences is by integrating a wide range of built-in constructs, combining that with agregated web servcies and content and topping it all off with unprecedented levels of control and customization. In one product or service."

MarcCanter is so full of bullshit. Or, he just writes really badly. "Compelling experiences"? Spending too much time with the suits Marc? And get a spell checker.

And then: "branded memes and viral uptake". No, not just bad writing, he's lost. Bye Marc. See you later.

Yeah, I'm in that mood again.

Refactoring or starting from scratch?

For the next version of Mefeedia, I got 2 great developers. That's important for what follows.

I coded Mefeedia in PHP, in a weekend, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. A lot of projects start that way.

Over the past year, I've been spending months and months of real time developing the site. The architecture and the code aren't bad. It's kinda scalable.

I was talking to my devs, and they said: "Why not use Rails". It's the new hot thing. And i'm sure it's got lots of advantages. But I also know the power of refactoring, and that's the way I really wanted to go.

In the end I decided to go with Rails. Throw away all that code. And we didn't have a lot of technical discussions about the pro's and cons of both approaches. I made up my mind when one developer said: "I've been dreaming of a chance to work with Rails."

Happy developers are productive developers. And that's all there's to it.

The video ipod versus the psp for videoblogging

What's the difference between the video ipod and the PSP, related to videoblogging? What I'm interested in is this: how does this help spread the voices of millions of people through video, taking back a medium (video) that has been owned by Big Media for pretty much ever.

The basic difference seems to be that Apple opens up their platform, while Sony closes it. It is almost impossible to get your video on a Sony. It is trivially easy to get it on your video ipod. Just install iTunes and it's there.

Sony makes its money of the sales of games (a bigger industry than movies, remember?) and movies. Although I don't know how many people actually buy movies for PSP's, here in NYC in Harlem PSP's are everywhere, but people rip DVDs using a bunch of softwares. Supposedly Sony looses $$ on the sales of the PSP, which makes sense, because it is superpowerful: amazing games, wireless internet, and all that for the same price of the ipod? They have to loose money on that.

Meanwhile Apple makes money off the hardware. The music sales don't make a lot of money, and I don't expect the video sales to do this either. It's all about selling ipods. Which are (really) technically fairly simplistic devices. There are a lot of better portable video players out there already, but Apple wins by providing the complete package: device, UI and content via iTunes. Easy.

So for people with a real voice, videomakers, vloggers and bloggers, the ipod will be their biggest audience for a while. The PSP has a much better screen, and is technically much better suited to playing video, but the platform is so closed that you basically need to make a deal with Sony to get your video on there in an easy way.

Videoblogging

iPod video with vlogger movies in itunes

iTunes 6 seems pretty vlogger friendly: I already had a bunch of subscriptions to videobloggers in iTunes 5. iTunes 6 adds a new section "videos", and it imports all the videos from video podcasts. They even have their own category, next to "Movies", "Music videos" and "TV shows". That's great news.

Here's a screenshot of iTunes' video section, showing video podcasts that I already had in my iTunes imported:

(promo) Again, if you want to find some good video podcasts or videoblogs as we call them to fill up your iTunes, check out Mefeedia.com, the best place to find indie videos.

the new video ipod creates a hungry market for short videos

Endgadget's first impressions of the video ipod: "What it needs most are more shows!"

Exactly. I've been waiting for this. Apple just created a huge market of people hungry for short videos. In 320x240 format. What's gonna happen when you unwrap your new shiny video ipod? You're gonna listen music. And watch some videos. Millions of people will do this.

After a few weeks, they'll get bored of watching the same old commercial, big media stuff on their devices, and start looking for free, interesting short videos. You'll discover someone somewhere is making video you just have to watch. And it will be dead easy to subscribe, letting your ipod filling up with video goodness. You'll find yourself watching Big Media less and less. Times millions of people. This is another step towards what we've been talking about: Big Media will no longer be the only media. Your favourite TV show might be someone you know. I'm excited.

Video ipod - indie video producers rejoice!

Apple is releasing a video ipod. This is great news for videobloggers and other indie video producers: demand for short videos will surge. Most vloggers have been producing content in 320x240 anyway, so it will fit the new ipod screen perfectly. Gotta get one now.

30G up to 75 hours of video, $299. 60G up to 150 hours video, $399. Shipping in one week. (Endgadget)

Of course, Jobs made some good deals with BigMedia: you can buy TV shows from the iTunes Music Store - Desperate Housewives, Lost and more shows from ABC and Disney. Five shows will be available to watch on iPod or computer: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Nightstalker, The Suite Life and some other Disney thang. $1.99 an episode.

The pricing is right. 2$ for commercial content.

But the idea is problematic if you believe in indie video. Apple will clearly do what they did with podcasting, and provide mostly Big Media content, with popular indie media mixed in. But where is the long tail of video? Where can I find the very specific stuff I'm interested in.

OK, that was a retoric question. Mefeedia is the best place to find long tail video.

Unfortunately the site is down right now, in the middle of a move to a dedicated server. I guess my timing was a bit off on this one.

(via Rodrigo)

Authority

Authority
"But then, authority was appropriated by the Technorati mob, where it swiftly lost definition in a tangled tag soup of popularity, power, trust, credibility, and relevance. These words were tossed around indiscriminately in a Bacchanalian festival of semantic anarchy."

Don't try to take on PeterMorville with metaphors, or he'll bust your chops (kick your ass) like he did with David Weinberger's Tree and Leave metaphor. Here's another great one:

"Fortunately, before the tag clouds could totally eclipse the sun, a new entity emerged as a source of authority and illumination."

Tag clouds that eclipse the sun! There's a metaphor that really expresses how the library science crowd feels! And he goes on:

"Though folksonomy was born on an information architecture list, it was quickly hijacked by the Technorati."

Go Peter! He's single-handedly (the rest of the IA community isn't doing much) taking back pride for information architects around the world.

Read the article. It goes on like this. Great stuff.

(Oh, and yeah, web 2.0 and all that!)

PCWorld.com - Gadget Freak: 'Must-See TV' Hits the Web? Finding Great Online Video: "As with regular old TV, the challenge is to find stuff worth viewing."

Yahoo! Search blog: Es Tu, Français? Yahoo is expaning its (frankly) groundbreaking work in I18N search.

At the IA retreat

I'm at the IA retreat in NY, and it's great. A few things I've learnt so far:

• Nobody in the US knows the British TV show "Allo Allo".
• Making wireframes is too slow. But then again, wireframes are the perfect inperfect tool. A boundary object.
• Our tools are getting old: can't easily spec Ajaxy apps, portals, ...
• We need affordable methods (says Olga, and I believe her)
• When God said 'Name these animals', Adam (from the biblical story) got the first IA job (and God was the first client).
• "Tagging" can't really be translated very well into Spanish.
• "Usability" in Swedish is a real word (not a neologism like in English): Anvandbarhet" (sorry, no crazy Swedish accents).

And a lot more, so many more blogposts to come. This year, everything is being recorded as well, and podcasts will be available.

Wired News: Tips From Top Taggers.

When taggers start to share best practices you know this whole folksonomy thing is starting to work. I was waiting for this!

iPod video

Damn speculation! The iPod video buzz is going crazy - supposedly Apple will come out with a video iPod in a week or two. And I just got my PSP today.

What will this mean for videobloggers? A lot of demand for short video content. Go to Mefeedia.com to find the most complete directory of videoblogs. A lot of cool stuff out there, and I'm working hard on the new version of Mefeedia to make it easier to find stuff. Which will be needed, because if Apple follows its approach of promoting commercial video content in its directory (trailers, short movies, ...), like it did with audio, then iTunes won't be the best place to find independent video. Mefeedia will.

So let's not speculate about whether Apple will release the iPod video - they will. No way they'll leave this market to Sony. And the "when" question is kinda boring. It might be within weeks. I'd bet on it, seeing that Christmas is coming soon and all. But whatever.

The bigger question, and the bigger revolution I think, is what will we be watching on that video iPod (or PSP or any other killer device that might come along). Will it be "repurposed" tv content? I hate that word to start with. And sure, the Simpsons are funny on any device. But if that's all we do I'd be dissapointed.

Steve Jobs will undoubtedly have pulled the iPod trick and made deals with lots of BigCo video providers. So expect Pixar content, lots of tv stuff, all that jazz. Boooring!

I hope that we'll start to watch independent video. Movies made by you, me and your grandmother. I mean the creative, funny, boring, niche stuff people are starting to create and put online by the thousands. I hope that your favourite show (no longer a "TV show") could be someone you know. The long tail of video.

What will you be watching on your brand-new iPod video? I'll be looking out for videoblogs myself.

Comments opened up again!

I have upgraded my Wordpress install to the latest and greatest, and installed some funky-looking comment spam killers, which means that finally the comments are open again for all to enjoy. Comments will show up immediately again, instead of waiting for days or weeks for my moderation. Enjoy! (And try to leave one here.)

When your subversion host goes down

I've started to use Subversion for versioning, together with the excellent TortoiseSVN client, and I am hosting my SVN repository with CVSdude.com. I was just about to get pretty giddy about how cool this versioning really is when working together with other coders, but this morning they're down. What a dependency!

What do you use? What do you do when your repository host goes down?

Amazon.com: Books: Ambient Findability: Peter's book is out, go get it while it's hot.

I noticed that Amazon changed the shape of their book page: they finally got rid of those side navs that nobody cares about. Page shape is one of my "things", the default for many designers is to do a top and sidebar, and then use that on every single page of the website, whether it makes sense or not.

But different types of pages need different overall shapes, going as far as even getting rid of the global nav if needed. It makes the site much more focused and usable. Here's 1 example: the instant archive page at mefeedia. It chucks the whole global nav altogether, and that's not always a bad thing. I still have to test that particular one, by the way :)

BBC NEWS | Health | Words 'can change what we smell': "labelling an unpleasant smell with a more appealing name can improve its aroma."

Who said labels didn't matter? Eh? Who was that? Stand up you crazy fool!

If I ws in London I'd be heading here: World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures

This is too cool - a Photoshop clone stamp brush for real life!

Watch movie 2.4 min 25.1 MB
(Original post, via The Last Minute)

For everyone who commented - your comments should now be approved. i just deleted 1000s of spam comments. I hate that shit. PHP and MySQL are loosing the plot?. The IA's should program has some good comments too. I have to fix this comment spam problem...

PHP and MySQL are loosing the plot?

MySQL 5.0 release candidate is out with goodies such as stored procedures and such.

Goodies?

Mysql is trying to emulate Oracle. I see the same thing happening with PHP. It's is trying more and more to emulate JAVA et all and trying to get acceptance in the "enterprise". Zend's site is all about the "enterprise". And that's all wrong!

Meanwhile, things like Ruby on Rails are stealing PHP's lead in easy and fast web development. I heard a talk by a Google engineer trying to convince a MySQL crowd that they shouldn't try to emulate Oracle, they should try to shoot higher than that and become the next web OS database. I don't think the MySQL guys got it. That's always the problem with a lot of open source software - they emulate leaders - they don't lead themselves. Open office is the same - sure, they copy Microsoft Office. But MS Office is much more usable than OO - always a generation or two ahead. At least last time I checked (a few months ago).

Anyway, back to PHP-MySQL. The dynamic duo. Are they loosing the plot by trying to be "enterprise" friendly, instead of focussing on fast and cheerful web2.0-style development? I worry. Discuss.

looking for Firefox extension hacker

I need to find someone who can hack together a small firefox extension for a (very cool I think myself) project I'm doing.

I haven't been able to find out where to find someone. Email to peter van dijck at google's email system (you can piece this email address together, right? No spaces.) I can pay you some $$, not too much. I'm a big believer in browser-based stuff, and I want to start playing with some ideas I have for Mefeedia. This is something you should be able to put together in a weekend or two...

remote teams

I always assumed that "communication problems" with remote teams were mostly about culture and the difficulty of explaining stuff when you're not standing next to someone. But I'm learning it's also simply about the electricity going down or your phone battery running out.

Videoblogs go mainstream in Hollywood

I saw this ad today - notice the link to the director's videoblog.

All the cool directors are making videoblogs. Peter Jackson makes videos about the production of King Kong, the Blue Tights network is a videoblog by the one and only Superman. I couldn't find the ad again after making the screenshot though, and no Google love for David Rodenberg's videoblog. It's probably behind a Flash wall or something.

I stumbled accross SteveKrug's Don't make me think, second edition in a bookstore the other day, an it's still brilliant. One of the few must-have books on web design. A true classic. Buy one for everyone in your team, including your boss.

The ability to roll out cool stuff efficiently

I am trying to grow my ability to roll out cool stuff quickly.

If you're developing projects for yourself, that's the number one thing you need. The 37sig guys have a lot of good ideas for that. Joelonsoftware has a lot of good ideas. What I like about them is that they are not afraid to go against "common wisdom" in software development. 37sig doesn't do specs. That's scary. And so on.

But I'm finding that there are many ways to do software development. Here's one: I am working with a team in India. No idea if this is going to work - I've worked with overseas teams before and I'm well aware of the risks. I'll report back later - can you roll out cool stuff fast working with a team in India, or will you get bogged down in communications/spec problems and misunderstandings? We'll find out.

Anyway, back to this post. I spent this week working on my ability to roll out cool stuff fast. I'm working with a team, so I needed CVS. That's installed now. I was getting painful wrists from all the typing, so I bought a computer desk today that is ergonomically better than the table I was working on. Check. I've set up my local development environment - http://mefeedia.peter. Working fine. I learnt to work with PHPDocumentor. No idea how much that'll help my ability to roll out cool stuff fast - I'll report back on that too.

What else? I have gathered the names and tels of a bunch of people willing to do usability tests. And I've set up a way to do remote testing. So I'll start doing that too. Test the competition. Test my designs. I'm gonna do half a day of testing every week we develop. Will report back.

I'm off now. I'm gonna hang a bunch of stuff on the wall. So I can roll out cool stuff faster.

(Other stuff I'm trying is: Backpack, IM, mailing lists, ...)

83 Degrees | web2.0 software. For god's sake! How 2.0 Cool Site Compliant can you get? I'm getting so sick of tags, ajax, numbers in domain names and all that superficial shit companies pull (me included) to come across as web 2.0. Jeeses.

Simon Willison is working for Yahoo!. They're really hiring some good people there, waw.

peterme.com: Final Thoughts - AIGA Boston: "Form-makers, while valuable, are being passed by those who are attempting to use design to serve more strategic ends. And these form-makers, it is clear, have no idea."

I hope IA's can escape becoming commoditized. The good thing is that what we do (play with categories is as good a definition as any) is inherently strategic, because categories are so powerful. If only IA's would realize the power they hold.

I also do feel that usability people have let themselves fall into the same trap. I know this isn't fair to a lot of people who are doing good work, but as a profession they don't seem to have advanced much beyond just fixing existing problems.

Joho the Blog: Yahoo vs. Google: Who's the Chinese government's very best buddy?: "But someone in Yahoo got a list of search terms the Chinese want blocked. They looked down the list and saw "Tiananmen Massacre," "Dalai Lama," "Falun Gong," and maybe "democracy." "Yup," this person thought, "Our product can do that. No problemo." Thus Yahoo wrote into its code the repressive values of the Chinese government."

When values get embedded in infrastructure (as they often are), they become almost invisible and hard to catch.

Mefeedia in Businessweek's Best of the Web

I'm quite honored to be listed (for Mefeedia.com, my video project) together with sites like Wikipedia, Flickr and the likes in an article by Businessweek in the Editors picks for the Best of the Web.

Businessweek has a special: It's A Whole New Web: "And this time, it's Your Web. No longer content to be merely viewers and consumers, people increasingly are taking an active part in creating their online lives.
[...]
At many new Web sites and services, the creative energy of countless souls virtually crackles off the screen. They're cobbling together their own services from customizable Web sites and Lego-style pieces of Web software."

Indeed. And this is where it gets interesting: "Media and entertainment companies, which have profited by becoming gatekeepers, sit right in the crosshairs of Web do-it-yourselfers."

There are some amazing sites I hadn't heard of. "An average of 6.2 million photos are uploaded to Cyworld each day". Holy shit. That's what happens when cellphones really kick in.

Innovation keeps coming out of the videoblogging community: we're now using a P2P app to gather raw videos of an event into a "press pool" that can then be remixed by others. Apperceptions: Vlog Europe Press Pool

The new Yahoo mail interface looks (and supposedly feels) exactly like my desktop mail app.

Google search: good enough?

Technorati Weblog: Welcome to the Blogosphere, Google!: "I welcome the competition. We've got some tricks up our sleeves too."

You have to admire a company that is brave enough to take on Google in search, of all things.

I wonder though, Google's big advantage is the server infrastructure they've built up. They know scaling better than almost anyone on the planet.

There is no doubt in my mind that Technorati's search is superior to Google, but they are having serious scaling problems. Google doesn't have to be better, in fact they can be worse than Technorati and still win, if they're just Good Enough and Fast. Technorati is better than good enough, but not fast. Which is a problem.

This reminds of of Bloglines. The weird thing with Bloglines is that they have lots of crazy features (have your own blog, a great API, ...) but I bet that 90% of their users use them only for one thing: reading blogs. They got that right.

I have the same problem speccing the next release of Mefeedia. Coming up with lots and lots of cool features is easy. Way easy. But finding the real value in a video aggregator and nailing that is much harder. Perhaps sites have to just develop stuff and some of it will stick? Flickr started as something quite different from what it is now, the photosharing sticked so they went with that.

IA's should program and build cool shit.

A lot of my friends are information architects and designers with great ideas, about strategy, usability, business, you name it. Itching to make some cool shit after years of consulting. But when I talk to them, they often lack the ability to efficiently bootstrap stuff, because they're used to working with teams of coders who implement for them. They are reluctant to build stuff themselves. (With "they" I mean "me".)

A startup with a bright idea doesn't have teams of coders though. You gotta build stuff yourself. At least the first prototype. Bootstrap it.

Which is why I've decided to learn how to program. Again. I've been using the same skills I had 5 years ago to build my cool shit, and it's not enough anymore. That, and the idea that programming is as important a skill in the ability to roll out cool stuff as strategy/usability/... are.

So I'm trying to convince my designer/IA friends. Learn how to program. It's scary, if you're 30-something. But sit down for a month and just do it.

video schmipod by November 9th?

This week's Apple hype (the phone and stuff) was pretty dissapointing.

Today, I followed a random ad somewhere (yeah), and found this page:

Do they know something that we don't?

I am still a big believer in the video ipod - Apple's not gonna give away that market to Sony's PSP without a batlle, but they want a big splash and the market isn't ready yet. Maybe in a few months? These things go fast. And will Mefeedia then have an ipod mode, to route around that fairly fucked up Apple directory?

Don't buy those christmas presents just yet :)

Intel's anthropological army - ZDNet UK Insight: "And we looked at cultural groupings in London, Tokyo and Los Angeles, because we wanted to know whether there were greater similarities between people in those environments than differences. So we looked at 22 to 34 year old women, and there were great similarities. But then we checked women in Brazil, and there was a huge difference. Technology is a matter of life and death in big cities in Brazil, literally. Mobile phones were given to children, so they could be kept track of. But you don't take out a laptop in public, because you risked bodily harm from someone willing to steal it. Yet home computers were fantastic, because they kept the kids inside and engaged instead of being at risk outside."

God, this stuff always fascinates. My girlfriend is doing ethnographic research (the real stuff) in NYC these days - amazing.

start.com is a good idea (letting me create my own startpage was always a good idea), executed better than, say, my yahoo and such. It's got lots of nifty ajaxy interaction, and some nice ideas. But still.. not quite there yet. It just doesn't let me create the page I really want easily. If someone can crack this problem (I'm not sure it can be done), I'm sure they'd be very popular. Let me create my own homepage ridicilously easy. We'll see where they go with this. It's good to see innovation coming out of MSN again.

craigblog: Katrina survivors need 'net access: "due to the seeming lack of computing facilities arranged for the neediest victims at the shelters -- 40 computer stations for 10,000 victims at the astrodome seems grossly inadequate -- and are wondering what else is being done to give victims internet access so that they can connect with the many thousands of amazingly generous US citizens who are looking to do what our government seemingly cannot, at least in a timely fashion."

All the talk about setting up cybercafes and such seems naive to me. Here's an idea, which would be logistically hard enough but should still be doable: why doesn't someone close to the disaster and with a printer PRINT OUT ads like these from craigslist and hands them out in places where people gather?

I just came to Belgium, so I thought I'd share the European word on the street about the Katrina events.

"I'm not sending money - why should I? So they can use it to wage war in Iraq? And Bush said on TV they don't need any help."

"They're shooting at their own people! Unbelievable! They said on the news that the military knows when they're allowed to shoot."

"The planes with help are waiting in the Belgian airport, but they haven't gotten permission from the US governement yet."

"Their governement doesn't take care of its people. No pension, no healthcare, now this."

"Imagine being a soldier in Iraq if you are from that area! When you should be helping out at home."

"It took Bush 2 days before he went to visit the area! When anything happens here, the prime minister and the king are there within hours."

We all feel for the victims, but the way this is being handled is quite unbelievable.