The Internet is CLOSED.

So some Internet lawsuits were filed that seem to prove again that the USPTO should never have changed their patent application rules to include software processes.

What do you think when you think of the World Wide Web? You think of images and text and sound and video files? Well, too bad. Because you just trampled all over somebody's private property.

Whenever I read about some Internet patent, I think about how that patent would work in the real world. If I read something that says, "Method for transfer of data utilizing electronic media," I can't help but wonder WTF the Patent Office registrar was thinking when the patent application was approved. I've been transferring data since I was born. And I've been doing it electronically since I was stung by a radioactive lightning bug and became the superhero known to you as "Firefly Man."

It's like companies apply for patents for everything that didn't already happen to have a patent number. Like someone just searches some keywords and if they don't see a patent, they file one.... "Let's see 'process for third-party temporary remote data storage'.. Awesome! There's no patent listed for that! Quick! File for it!"

So what do you think I thought when I saw these next actual patents?

"Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest."

"Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device."

"Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data."

I think of patents as things. And improvements on things. I don't think of patents as things we already have but are now available online so that makes them unique. To me, "building a better mousetrap" does not mean describing a method for building a better mousetrap unless the mousetrap is behind the couch catching mice. And the mousetrap isn't a cat.

But all these patents make me think of cats. They are things that exist or are necessary components of other things that exist. It's like you patented the steps on a ladder. Some other company makes the ladder, but you own the patent for the "Laterally installed devices in a ladder which allow for a human to achieve vertical movement."

But since most people don't understand the components of a software program, if someone claims that their software does something unique, we often believe them. It doesn't matter if it's a bullshit claim.

And it these cases, the companies accused of the violation are virtually a Who's Who of every huge internet company. So that in itself should be clue.

If you claim that so many others are violating your patent, then that supports the argument that your patent is for something that's so naturally a part of the function of the whole that it's absurd and should never have been allowed to become patented.

So I wonder how the Internet is able to function at all. I guess it can't if everyone keeps running around yelling, "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

Here is my patent application for which I expect approval: "Method for applying or 'spreading' butter or margarine to toast to increase its deliciousness." That's mine. I own it. And that includes croissants. So all you bastards owe me money.

If patents like these survive challenges, the we should all file class action suits against the owners:

Complaint: That the product, "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device" has wasted everyone's TIME.
That individual and corporate productivity has decreased 30-55% due to the direct interference of this invention at a collective cost to individuals and corporations of $465 billion over the last 19 years. Our complaint accuses the inventor and/or patent holder of wasting our precious time by "occupying our peripheral attention" when we had important shit to do.
So we are asking for the full $465 billion in lost productivity plus punitive damages of $2 trillion.

Why we (probably) won't have a Semantic Web.

Librarians make the assumption that because we are smart and know how to categorize and organize information that others will follow our recommendations.

But we see that book stores don't when they group their products under large, nebulous categories.

And Google doesn't, when it returns results based on algorithms optimized for displaying ads.

Librarians think that all metadata are equal. That "sex" is equal to "love" because they are just terms to classify content. But no two terms are ever equal. Metadata have meanings that are timely or momentarily popular or specific.

So librarians ask questions to establish intent.

INTENT.

"The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles' 'We Can Work It Out' when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control."

[The Semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila]

Why did Pete's phone send a message to turn down the volume? What if it were Pete's boss calling to tell him to work Saturday? Would the phone understand to send a message to play the "Ferris Bueller" sneezing and coughing audio files?

My point is that our understanding of the purpose of the Web is wrong. And our understanding of machines is wrong. Just as our understanding of other people is wrong.

We can't possibly know the purpose of the Internet. First, we didn't make it. Second, it was designed with only one purpose, to make access to data easier.

But now we want to control that data flow. We want to tell the internet that different data have different values to us through metadata. And the only way we can do that, from my understanding of the internet, would be to insert such massive amounts of metadata into the web that we would end up creating a second internet. One made up entirely of metadata.

This second internet would act as checksum data to compare to the internet to calculate and verify the user's intent. To understand.

This second internet would contain all the metadata needed for machines to understand humans. Yes, I said it would be huge.

But I don't see that. Of course, I wouldn't see it if it existed. I would be invisible. So what I see is an internet evolving into something that looks like a semantic web, but is only a more accurately fine-tuned commercial web. The web is getting better at selling me things. It doesn't really know what I want, so it gives me what others seem to have wanted.

I can see that the internet is trying. I can see that we are trying. There are frameworks for attempting to have the internet understand us. And to have machines understand us.

In fact, there might even need to be a third internet made up purely of rules, policies and vocabularies which massage the metadata into accuracy of intent.

But to build this, one must understand what humans think. But since humans communicate with machines so much differently than how they communicate with each other, what humans think when they interact with other humans or machines changes.

In the example at the top, Pete might think that he wants to talk to the person on the phone, so the phone communicates his intent to the stereo. But if Pete doesn't want to talk to the person on the phone, the phone communicates a different message to different machines. How is the phone to know? Without asking questions? Oh, it listens in on our conversations. Did we say it could?

"You mind if I show this to everyone in the world?"

I went to a friend's party a while back and took some video and photos. When I got home, I wanted to email him the video, but it was 400mb. I thought about putting it on YouTube, but there were lots of people at that party and lots of children and I don't think everyone wants images of their kids splashed all over the internets.

But that's me. Lots of assholes post everything. That's how we get into trouble. Some other dick tells everyone. Who said, "Hell is other people"? Oh, yeah, that guy.

So I burned a DVD of the party video but I haven't mailed it to him yet. Because I suck.

But that had me thinking about what we share. Voluntarily or involuntarily. What we give and what is taken from us. And right now we're concerned with what we give, our privacy choices. But I'm thinking about what is taken away.

I might want to have a whole batch of little effings one day. And what will I have left to leave to them when I go? 13,000 blogs posts? 22,000 Twitter followers? The internet provides the opportunity for us to redefine our legacy to our children: can your kid inherit your Facebook friends or Twitter followers? What is a list of followers worth? Can Twitter sell the list to companies for targeted advertising? (uh, oh, don't get sidetracked...)

And we've learned recently that all these little fuckers on the web steal whatever they want because copy/paste delivers no consequences. Why should they behave any differently than they do in the real world. When our library is filled with kids, it's inevitable that someone will "lose" a phone.

So how do we protect our internet property?

I know I hate this latest trend, but I don't see any way around it. I hate when I copy something from a site and it carries all this hidden text along with it that I need to delete. Because the web site runs a trackback or automatic attribution script that automatically adds the site info when you copy it. And when I want a small snippet for a blog post, I need to delete that crap because it gets in my way and it breaks my train of thought on what I was trying to say. So it pisses me off.

But I thinking that an automatic attribution script is the way to go from now on. Because if I don't claim my property now, how will I be able to claim a violation later?

I know that people use Creative Commons, but I don't understand what that's supposed to do for me. It doesn't seem like it offers any real protections.

So I just did a search for "automatic attribution script" and found this article explaining Tynt.

Tynt does this for lots of news sites. It adds that script that I hate to remove each time I copy something from a site using it.

So I'm gonna submit this post before I decide to add this script to my blog. I don't know if I really give a fuck. I have so few fucks left to give.

I'm working so fucking hard at the library and just seem to keep falling farther and farther behind. There's the work I need to do, the work I'm asked to do and the work I'd like to do, and the work I'm asked to do almost always takes the top. Then when I really need to do what I need to do, and someone asks me to do something, and I tell them to fuck off, I feel terrible.

I have no fucking time.

Clearly, I have the same amount of time as everyone else, but I can't seem to make it all work like it used to.

I should also mention that Flickr attributes copyright info to photos that are copied, or something, but I didn't really read up on that for this post.

Another mention is that we continue to give our content away (our FB, blog, Twitter posts, photos, videos) just when corporations are moving towards a tiered internet, with pay and free content. Maybe we should begin protecting our content a little better.

I'm "viewing content." Right.

So again, thanks to links on Twitter, I have been wasting my life looking at crap. Oh, wait, "viewing content." Because thanks to this handy graphic, I can see that all the time we humans waste online can be divided into one of three broad life-wasting categories: Social Networking, Viewing Content, and Other.

But thank you, all you people who give me more crap to look at. Yes, much of it is pretty darn useful, but hell, I got work to do and English muffins to butter and socks to put on then take off again and put on the other foot when I see that the hole is right over my big toe.

But if these researchers can sum up our entire online existence and park it under three vaguely differing categories, then I might as well come up with my own. And since I can do it better than some researchers, I've broken all the time spent online into two categories (mine is on the left):

I fear the "unconscious" internet.

So I'm reading this article in The Observer (which is a supplement to The Guardian, I guess) by John Naughton, "The internet: Everything you ever need to know" where he asks us to,

"imagine what it would be like if, one day, you suddenly found yourself unable to book flights, transfer funds from your bank account, check bus timetables, send email, search Google, call your family using Skype, buy music from Apple or books from Amazon, buy or sell stuff on eBay, watch clips on YouTube or BBC programmes on the iPlayer – or do the 1,001 other things that have become as natural as breathing."

Ah, breathing.

Every other activity he mentions if a conscious one, but breathing is not. Breathing happens whether we want to or not. Hold your breath, pass out, resume breathing. You can't help it. Our bodies need air.

But immediately I start thinking of the "unconscious internet" where common tasks, like making a phone call are dependent on the internet for the connection. And the computer in my car, what if the computer can't perform some required update from the satellite and refuses to start, or worse, shuts off on a busy highway?

Are more essential tasks being transferred to the internet? Is my surgery paperwork that's flying through the hospital wireless network going to get to the operating room in time to keep the surgeon from giving me that appendectomy when all I wanted was a nice pair of D-cups? Not if you could see me now, it didn't. I'm in love with these puppies.

But is the electrical grid totally dependent on an internet connection? Our fuel supply? Our food and water supply? If the internet went down for 2 days, would it become complete chaos?

In that Die Hard 4 movie, the hacker kid talked about how some essential systems still require local access to disrupt them: but for how much longer? With bandwidth becoming more widespread, what is the temptation to move these local systems controls online for remote access and control?

I think some of this may have been discussed in Daniel Suarez's "Bot-Mediated Reality" presentation where the bots we create beget new bots which may not follow the programmed intent of the original bots.

There is the conscious internet where Facebook users protest, hackers control hordes of zombie computers, and your mom downloads Eminem's latest, but what about the unconscious one? Is it real? And if it's real, should I be worried?

Or am I just imaging this? Please tell me I am and that I shouldn't worry. But tell me by looking into my eyes... Hey, hey, up here fella. Quit staring at those.

The card catalog: "I'm back. baby!"

I half-assed read something the other day that had me wondering. It was just a simple tweet by some twittererer about teaching kids intelligent tagging, and that's all it was, just a mention of some teacher attempting to get kids to think. But the twittererer included some additional observation, although with only 140 characters to play with, I now can't remember what it was.

But (yes, I'm still looking as I type this for the tweet) it was something about teaching kids to write for the internet and how tagging will become more and more important.

And it made me think that the future of the internet was moving away from keyword and full text toward an index of useful (and standardized) terms. And that these kids would need to learn these terms if they wanted to succeed in the online world, to have their data found through their mastery of metadata.

And my first thought was, Holy Shit, this is some librarian plot to bring back the card(less) catalog.

And that's exactly what it is.

Okay, a little librarian magic and I just found the original article, "teaching students how to create meaningful tags" (Written on May 13th, 2009), but not the original tweet.

What this teacher did was have his students write something then put it into Wordle to find the terms with the highest frequency of use then pull them out and add them to the main subjects and use those for tags. The Wordle generated image worked for him as both a visual tool and as something fun for the kids to do. Pretty simple.

But then I wondered if kids begin to learn which tags are used most often, will they begin to rely on them so much that their actual vocabularies decrease to just the 4,200 words they only really need to communicate?

And that was the seed for this post. "Will tagging make kids dumb?" I don't know. I assume everything makes kids dumb: video games, SpongeBob, lithium batteries, hand puppets, random number generators, novelty wristbands, safety scissors, 100 percent cotton t-shirts and spoons, all contribute to making kids dumb, in my opinion. Rock 'n Roll music and drugs make them happy, not dumb....................... anyway....

But getting back to the card catalog. Isn't one of the goals of the, and no, I'm not going to say "semantic web" and you can't make me. Isn't one of the goals of that to create a card catalog without the cards?

In fact, speaking of the smmnttwb (which I am not saying because I am not a library nerd), I think that there is an intelligent web out there already but we can't see it. It's been built for all the scientists, but they're not telling us about it. You want proof? Who is the smartest person on Twitter? Come on, think. The answer is nobody. There are no smart people on Twitter.

But those scientists over at CERN have the LHC cranked up full blast to run holographic web browsers with email and chat in 3-dimensional real time where each message has particle mass that alters the physical environment. Think, "good sandwich" and everyone gets a taste. Oh, yeah, these nerds just "think" stuff and that collider makes it happen.

But still, I think the card catalog will make its comeback one day. When keyword searching merges with an authority index so the more useful tags automatically replace weaker ones, then we will evolve from the chaotic tagging of LibraryThing.

Here is our friend Benjamin Franklin (see above image) tagged on LibraryThing:

18th century (98) america (43) american (62) american history (198)
american literature (49) American Revolution (51) autobiography (510) Benjamin
Franklin (141) biography (515) classic (41) classics (52) colonial (29) colonial
america (16) easton press (21) essays (23) founding fathers (49) Franklin (56)
history (356) literature (44) memoir (105) non-fiction (274) paperback (18)
philadelphia (20) philosophy (18) politics (43) read (47) tbr (20) unread (44)
US History (50) usa (42)

Take the most used tags and you get, history, autobiography, biography, non-fiction, American history, Benjamin Franklin, memoir.

Refine those "like" terms and you end up with Benjamin Franklin, American history, biography.
And what does that beaten, maligned, obsolete catalog card say?

Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790.
Statesmen --United States --Biography.

So don't be surprised if the card catalog comes back some day. Although, if we try to catalog the internet, those cabinets are gonna be freaking huge.


(oh, and the card generator is at http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/ )

The CRAP Solution.

In April 2010, the Library of Congress announced that it will be archiving the entire history of Twitter. Many believed that James H. Billington, the current Librarian of Congress was high. Really, really high. Like at a Jethro Tull concert high.

But the Library of Congress never had any intention of storing all those inane tweets, especially any about Justin Beebaboody, or whatever the hell his name is.

The reason the Library wants the tweets is for National Security.

This news story says, "The United States is losing enough data in cyber attacks to fill the Library of Congress many times over..." to spies.

Spies. Back in the pre-innernets days, spies had to travel to steal American secrets. They had to learn English and get jobs in secure locations and learn about baseball. One mistake about Sandy Koufax's ERA could blow your cover and put you back on the first submarine to Siberia.

But today everything is done online and twelve-year-old kids are stealing our nation's secrets. This is where Twitter and the CRAP Solution fits in.

The CRAP Solution or the Cyber-Redundancy Automated Protocol Solution is to disguise America's useful data by surrounding it with crap.

When the Library of Congress acquires all the tweets, they won't go into storage awaiting future researchers; no, they will be used as the batter in our CRAP dessert. Then the various governmental agencies with real secrets will hide that data within.

Cool idea, huh. You can thank Justin Barbaby.

Library of Congress to Twitter: i♥u. 4evr.

I guess the official announcement went something like this:
"Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive -- ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow."

It's no "Man Walks on the Moon," but I guess they did the best they could under the circumstances. I mean, it's freakin' Twitter.

According to the LOC blog:
"The Library has been collecting materials from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000. Today we hold more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress."

I guess they decided to do it because Twitter is popular with celebrities and it's an easy way to collect some tiny part of world culture that holds little importance for anyone other than the celebrities themselves.

If you read the story, they mention about 4 important stories that originated on Twitter. And I guess just archiving those four tweets isn't very newsworthy so they bagged them all. Couldn't someone at the LoC just print those 4 tweets out on a sheet of paper and tuck it under the United States Declaration of Independence for safe-keeping?

I hope there's a way to filter out all the people, I mean "celebrities," who signed up for Twitter after the announcement yesterday, 4/14/2010, at around, 11:00 EST, and declare them massively egotistical assholes who want to be remembered along with Oprah and Ashton forever.

What does it mean that the United States of America's Library of Congress has decided to archive all of Twitter? It is a big job? I think I asked once how much space it would take to store all the worlds tweets but I never got a clear answer. I don't know what 50 billion Kilobytes means in storage space. I mean, how big is Twitter? Can the archive fit on a 16GB flash drive? on a 1T hard drive? How much space does it take to store 50 billion 140-character tweets?

And why not archive all internet chat? Why not archive all my posts @ the chat room for ##dELISHUS CHUNKY aSSES!##?

All through 1998, I posted there almost every day, but the Library of Congress doesn't think those chats are valuable. Well, I do because I'm pretty sure a few of those sessions were between me and Marlon Brando. So get off your high horse LoC and archive everything or nothing. Marlon and I... or maybe it was Toby Brando... deserve nothing less.

Petitions make everything better.

This is about the 21st "Century Library Information & Technology" centers.

The CLIT Center? Right off, I'm not crazy about that title. But it's what I got from abbreviating this new "viral" library movement for "21st Century Library Information & Technology" centers. It's from an open letter written by a mom who forgot to ask librarians which words she should keep very far apart when naming her movement. Maybe she needs to watch the "Jingleheimer Junction" SNL skit again to learn why Katie "Kindness," Carla "Caring," and Umberto "Unity" should think twice about adding a new member to their club.


[if it hangs up, download it from here.]

The online petition is here. I'm guessing this site was created for regular people to post their wants and for all of us to "tweet" our support until a massive grassroots movement forms and gets a response from the target. It's basically a letter to President Obama asking for stuff. I'm just not sure what this stuff is. For example:

"Dear President Obama & staff:
Please ensure that any revision to American education policy converts existing school libraries to 21st Century Library Information & Technology centers, led by a certified teacher-librarian trained in technology integration."

Yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't know what a "teacher-librarian" is, but I think it might involve cloning or transmogrification or major organ transplantation. Either way, I hope the new creature gets to keep the "sexy parts" from the teacher, especially if she looks anything like my 3rd grade teacher, Miss Simpson. And "technology integration" sounds like we're talking about The Borg.

"Every American child should receive a virtual portfolio space (along with a desk on their first day of school). The portfolio would not only serve to archive their work and prepare them for college admissions/employment, it could prove to be an incredibly insightful safety net to catch children that are struggling."

Again, whoosh, right over my head with this. Kids would get "virtual portfolio space" that tracks everything they do from the first day of school to the last? From age 6 to age 18, schools will track their every assignment, grade and disciplinary action? Talk about something "going on your permanent record."

"More robust and equitable funding for educational technology is necessary along with an investment in professional development that equips administrators,
teachers and librarians to master emerging technologies."

No idea. But they use the word "robust" so it's got to mean something good.

"A 21st Century Library Information & Technology Center would support all literacies, classical and emerging."

Please explain what emerging literacy is. Is that like functional literacy? Is it like complete illiteracy? Or is it that texting shorthand crap that no one should know?

I think people mean well when they make these petitions, but then they overreach and include terms like "emerging technologies." I don't even know what "emerging technology" is. Is this new technology that's still in its infancy? Is it an Alien "facehugger" emerging to lay its egg in my stomach? It's like those commercials for some pill which say, "emerging science suggests" that blah blah will blah your blah.

If it's only still emerging, don't bother to name it until it's born. I like the name Tito.

10 Fool-Proof Predictions

Stephen Abram has his "10 Fool-Proof Predictions for the Internet in 2020."

But why stop at just ten years from now? The.effing.librarian goes 100 years into the future to give you...

"10 Fool-Proof Predictions for the Internet in 2110."

1. The Internet will be spelled "Innanet" and pronounced "Dave"...
   
   
2. The Internet will run on "wrist-power" generated by 13-year-old boys...
   
   
3. More people will promise to call the Internet after a long night of browsing, but those promises will be empty...
   
   
4. The Internet will leave our skin all tingly, but you should see a doctor about that...
   
   
5. The Internet "cloud" will rain personal information in the spring and snow it in the winter. Snowmen made from identity data will have the same rights as humans...
   
   
6. The Internet will come in both smooth and chunky...
   
   
7. The Internet will carry diseases such as "Word Flu"...
   
   
8. Network management will be automated and sentient and get really pissed off when we spend all day playing "mafia wars"...
   
   
9. The Internet will attract more monkeys...
   
   
10. The Internet prefers blondes...
    

The Internet is for Assholes. Thank God.

There is this NYT article, The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion.
[By JOHN TIERNEY, January 11, 2010]

It contains this quote:

"[Jaron Lanier] blames the Web’s tradition of 'drive-by anonymity' for fostering vicious pack behavior on blogs, forums and social networks."

And one of his points is that anonymity allows us to be assholes.

I don't think this is a new concept. I think every activity which allows one to extend the self farther and farther away from the body enables the Asshole to grow and develop. Think about simple graffiti: for how many centuries have we been able to leave anonymous messages for others on public spaces? Are these deep or noble lessons, or just creative ways to make fart and dick jokes? The idea of being an asshole through words or art is as old as language itself.

I'll admit I am an asshole. When I ran for high school president, my cheer for myself was,

"A-S-S-H-O-L-E. Asshole, Asshole, yeah, that's me!"

And this leads me to some of the recent blog posts about the Annoyed Librarian.

The Annoyed Librarian is an anonymous blogger. Or pseudonymous, if you need accuracy. Like Elvis Costello or Madonna, she doesn't put her fake name on her income tax forms (until it's fiscally prudent to do so).

To say she doesn't like a lot of stuff in the library world is to put it mildly. Pretty much everything Annoys her. She used to write for free, but now she gets a paycheck.

I don't have the patience to comment on these latest anti-AL posts, point by point, and since I don't know AL personally, I don't know if she feels any injury from the attacks, but I'm pretty sure she can handle herself. If she needs someone to have her back, she can email me and I'll be there. But here are links to the most recent anti-AL stuff: 1, 2, 3.

There is the one constant criticism I hear about the Annoyed Librarian:
I don't like what she doesn't like, either. But I don't think she's as qualified to disapprove as I am. Because she's anonymous.

I hear so much about how she is too critical, how her criticism is more of an attack against good librarians everywhere. But so many of her critics actually agree with many of her points. She just has her Annoyed shtick that she wraps around the issues. That, and the anonymity.

Privacy is precious on the Internet. I value my privacy. Sure, I've screwed up and had too much information get linked to me, but I don't just post every detail about my life up for everyone to know. I wonder if in the future, "reverse ego searches" will be cool, where you search for yourself but find nothing. Like now, when you find some twenty-something without tattoos or unhygienic body piercings and think, "How the hell did you manage to keep your skin so pristine?"

My rage would be so much more effective if I could find this person's boss.

Why would you need to know my name or where I work? To have me fired? To have me lose my income and put me out on the street? Don't you think that's a hostile act? In this economy? That's like sticking a loaded gun in my face? How do you think I should react to that?

Well, you know AL's boss: it's Library Journal. But they hired her knowing in advance that she was not going to use her real name and that she would attack what deems "silly librarianship." So you can't get her fired because that's her job. And she's doing it.

I don't know what it will take to remove anonymity form the Internet. But it will happen eventually. If we don't forfeit all our own secrets on some social networking site, every electronic device we own will broadcast everything else. Someday we will have no secrets. And that's too bad. Because a little mystery is sexy.

My teenage crush message I left for the Internet.

11/10/09 1:31 AM

I hate you, Internet. Get away from me.

Oh, no I don't. It's not you, Internet. But can't help how I feel sometimes. hedgehog(??) I just want to push you so hard and my fists are closed so tight that later my hands ache. And then sometimes can't wait to see you again. I just want to know you're okay. I just want to be close to you. Oh, Internet, why do we always seem to fight? I just think you don't give me enough attention. And that tears me up inside. And I want to scream. And some nights I do. I scream into my pillow. Internet. You ____.

But I know that's not really how I feel. I can't live without you. I need you so much. spider(??) Just tell me you feel something for me. Tell me you think of me when you're out there being all popular. Tell me you care. I love you, Internet. I love, so much.

>>2:16

Google Voice transcription (simulation)

Social Networking: free vs. paid.

I keep getting emails from Classmates.com that tell me that someone checked my profile or left a message on my account or whatever.

But I can't access any of that stuff for two reasons:

1. I can't remember my log in info.
2. You need a paid subscription to access the useful stuff like who checked my profile, etc.

Classmates could have been Facebook if they'd had a different business model. The company profile says, "..the company serves more than 40 million registered accounts, including 3.5 million pay accounts as of March 31, 2008.." So with a simple change they can get their 40 million registered accounts to use the service more if they would remove the fees.

Or not. I don't know. I don't know if this information would discourage most of us from using the service:

"The company's success is driven by its expertise in growing and monetizing large audiences in a cost effective manner and enabling advertisers to reach online consumers effectively. Large membership bases and rich databases of member information provide Classmates Media with a significant competitive advantage.

Yeah. I don't like the sound of that "rich database of member information" thing. I was just wondering why some services are free and some are paid and how a company decides which is the best for it.

Facebook has over 300 million users worldwide, but still hasn't made any money. "Mr [Mark- founder] Zuckerberg had predicted earlier this year that the group would be cash flow positive 'sometime in 2010'." [source: The Independent. Nick Clark. Wed, 16 Sep 2009.]

So Classmates says it makes money off of its 3.5 million paid users, but Facebook can't figure out how to get his 300 million to cough up five bucks apiece. Don't ask me to figure it out. Maybe you library school students can do the research and write a paper on this. Oops, it looks like it's been done, here and here and here (yes, that last one is The Onion). Too late.

Will Gen X be the last generation to walk upright?

One day, I saw a girl sign her name by printing it, and it freaked me out. Letter, pause. Letter, pause. Letter, pause...

But it turns out that this was just a sign of things to come. I asked if that's how she always signs her name, and she said, yes. Her penmanship was neat, but it wasn't in any way unique.

Schools no longer teach cursive writing according to the Associated Press,
"Cursive writing may be fading skill, but so what?"
[Tom Breen, Associated Press Writer, Sat. Sept. 19, 2009]

So what? You know why cursive is so awesome? It proves sustained thought. It reinforces an understanding of spatial relationships and proportion... better than video games. Printing is for someone with a short attention span. Printing is what we teach apes to do. Except that damn orangutan that keeps writing, "ape must never kill ape," whatever that's supposed to mean.

"'We need to make sure they'll be ready for what's going to happen in 2020 or 2030,' said Katie Van Sluys, a professor at DePaul University..."

Fine, they'll be ready for the year 2030, but fifty years from now, when the world goes to hell because of some natural or man made catastrophe, or because some idiot shoots Michael Rennie, or because God stops by on his way to a planet where they didn't murder his son and sees all the shit we've been up to for the last 2,000 years, and whups us with His galaxy-sized belt (yes, He's put on weight), there won't be any more Internets.

And then where will the printing people be? Society will split between the "chickenscratchers," who can't get a car loan because they can't sign their own names, and the "penmasters" who rule the lands the dashing flourish of their John Hancocks.

As evidenced above, today's kids don't even have signatures. Are they going to print their names on their credit cards? What is the percentage of identity theft going to be when they can't sign their names and every fact about them is already shared online?

"They're writing, they're composing with these tools at home, and to have school look so different from that set of experiences is not the best idea," she [Katie Van Sluys] said.

So today's schools only teach kids what they already know? WTF???

I always thought school was supposed to teach new shit. But I guess we've given up on that because it's too difficult. You know how they teach a bear to ride a bicycle? Torture. It works. Now teach the damn kids how to write a letter in cursive.

"In the age of computers, I just tell the children, what if we are on an island and don't have electricity? One of the ways we communicate is through writing," she [teacher Sharon Spencer] said.

There's a teach who understands the problem. But ask any kid what he would do if the Internet was down and he'd probably answer, "Nothing." Why are schools teaching kids to do nothing? We should be preparing them for the days of no electricity.

And what about printing? Isn't it good enough for communication? It's good enough to write, "Employees Must Wash Their Hands After Using the Restroom." But it for damn sure isn't good enough to write, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, ..."

Okay, fine, you looked at a copy of the Declaration of Independence and saw that the word "When" is printed.
But you see that "W"? That W took Jefferson an hour and a half to make. If he printed out the entire document like that, we would all still be British. And The Beatles would have come from The Bronx; and what would Rubber Soul sound like then, huh, smartypants? You think you know everything.

Top 5 Web Trends for 20,009 B.C.

I looked at the Top 5 Web Trends of 2009 by ReadWriteWeb, but in my mind, I added too many zeroes to the headline. Huh? You get it? Too many zeroes. I bet this is going to be pretty funny...

So what would be the Top 5 Web Trends for the year 20,009 B.C.? I think it might go a little something like this...

1. Structured Data, or what we like to call Shelter. Shelter is a place for our stuff, or in your words, our data. Ideally, Shelter is a secure method for archiving and linking stuff. It's where the user, the interface and the data become one.

2. The Real-Time Web, or for us, Fire. We can't get more Real-Time than with Fire. Fire is hot. Almost nothing has the ability to communicate the message like Fire.

3. Personalization, or The Sharp Stick. When we want to isolate useful information, targeted for the individual, you can't beat The Sharp Stick. The Sharp Stick offers portability and a universal message, "Hey, I have a sharp stick. Watch out!" Nothing helps you leave your mark on the Web like a sharp stick.

4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality, or what we call Language. Mobility is only valuable when mobile tools enable access to information. There is no better mobile tool for communicating a message than Language; other than The Sharp Stick. And like Augmented Reality, Language evolves with each App. New words change the power of Language which in turn helps to construct new realities.

5. The Internet of Things, or the Sun God. I don't know about you, but Fire scares the hell out of me. I can't tell you how many times I've been burned by a new version or had something get fried. But with the Sun God, everything is connected, everything is clear as the new day. Praise the Sun God, for He is One-to-Many. And One-to-One. He is everywhere. Everyone loves the Sun God.

How could I find my sharp stick without the help of the Sun God? The thing is, I can't find it. I think some dick took it. But the Sun God shows all. He tells me when to get up and when to sleep. He illuminates the darkness, except for inside the Shelter, which is where I thought I left my stick. But when I asked if anyone saw it, nobody knew what I was talking about. I tried to get some Fire to look for it, but the Fire was out and IT said it wouldn't be back for at least an hour.

So screw you, Sun God. You don't know everything. Crap. I better keep my mouth shut or that asshole who stole my stick might poke me in the eye.

[wow, that was worth the trip, wasn't it? hi-larious! you can't get comedy like this unless you make it up yourself.] *

Who can you trust after you're dead?

I was asked on our chat reference desk recently for a program that will wipe a computer's hard drive in the event that the owner dies or is suddenly "put out of commission" for a long time.

"Why do you need that?" I typed back, but Mr. "Al Kyda" gave no reply.

But that had me searching for some solution to this problem. What would you do if you were suddenly hospitalized and didn't want someone poking around in your computer, spying at all your personal crap? Sure, you might have a password to protect an unauthorized logon, but seriously, we all know it's "chocolate."

What if you're in a car accident and end up in a coma? Or you have a heart attack and spend two weeks in the hospital? What if you have a stroke and can't move and the doctor pronounces you dead, and because your insurance requires an autopsy to determine if there is any fault or negligence to avoid paying on your policy, the ME is about to cut you open, but you're alive! And you know you saw that TV show where the guy couldn't move and the doctor was about to cut him open, so he tried to cry so someone would see his tears, and they did! So you try and try to cry and you strain too much so you fart; what then? A fart isn't proof you're alive, so they cut you right open. And now, who is going to delete all that porn from your computer?

Maybe it's not porn you don't want anyone to find on your computer. Maybe is just a picture of you in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Or maybe it's a Kenyan birth certificate. Or it's the recipe for Ice-nine.

Whatever it is, you don't want anyone to find it.

In the old days, you might leave a letter to a trusted friend with instructions on what to do with your personal effects. For example, I have all of my private items up in the attic sealed in a cardboard box labeled, "not porn."

In the event of my death, my attorney or named associate would take that box of "not porn" from the attic and drive it out into a field where it would be burned, its contents a mystery forever. Until the flames hit the inflatable Sailor Moon love doll that I got from Japan: those babies explode when you put a match to them.

But anyway, that's how we would do it in the old days. But now? My computer hard drive is loaded with tens of thousands of files, any number of which could prove embarrassing if found by the wrong party.

I've looked, but I haven't found a program that will wipe a folder or partition if nothing is done for a period of time. If a password is not entered or if something else hasn't been done, I don't see anything that will perform this function. I guess one could write a batch file that would execute and format the partition, but is that good enough to keep my love letters to Leif Garrett private?

I don't think so. I don't think any solution is as good as the one from the old days, the trusted friend.

So I'm going to keep a card like this in my wallet, next to my "mullet donor" card (yes, that's a thing: in the event of my death, my mullet will be removed and transplanted onto a prematurely balding singer in a Southern rock band).

In event of coma or death: call 202-555-1235 tell Joe, "the salamander has left the pond"

If you would like to participate, you have to be willing to travel anywhere in the Continental U.S. at a moment's notice. You need a cordless drill with a metal drill bit, safety goggles, gloves, a plastic bucket and some muriatic acid. Okay, you don't really need the acid.

But in the event of my death, I expect you to respond when you hear, "the salamander has left the pond," and then spring into action. When you get to my house, be courteous and knock. The dog's gonna bark a lot, but she won't attack if you give her a treat; that's how we lost the TV in the last burglary. So give the dog something. My girlfriend likes wine coolers, but since she'll be grieving, bring a bottle of tequila.

Go upstairs and open the computer. Be careful with my stuff. Those Ikki Tousen action figures weren't cheap.

Get out the hard drive and drill some holes through it. Put the drive on a phone book first, you dummy! You want to drill through the floor? Four holes all the way through should be enough. If you brought the acid, drop the drive in the bucket and pour some acid over it.

And you're done.

Get up, pet the dog. Look, she likes you. Leave my girlfriend alone. Yes, I know she's hot, but come on, I'm not even in the ground. Show some respect.

Now, I just need your phone number. Anyone?

How do you compete in a Google world?

How does a company compete in a Google World? We know how companies compete in a Microsoft world: they sue Microsoft.

But what do you do in a Google world where all of a company's products are online? There is no bundled software to complain about when it takes over your computer. And there is no antitrust anything to report to anyone.

So what happens when a single company bundles all those useful products online? What if one company owned all of your favorites? You're not forced to use any of them: you access each product as you need it. But even so, how does that affect competition for online products?

Yes, it's convenient to have everything in one place. And they might even be great products. But when Microsoft made everything convenient by bundling every product known to man with its operating system, we complained that Microsoft was unfairly blocking competition. So what happens when this occurs online? Is it still unfair? And unfair to whom? Does each country still get to complain about the business practices of companies who only exist online and don't distribute products within their borders?

No one is complaining about Google and its multitude of online products. But what happens if Microsoft makes its products available in online versions? Microsoft has already been stung with anti-competitive rulings around the world, so it seems like they would be wary of doing anything, even online, that might reinvite similar proceedings.

When I see a company get as big as Google I start to wonder if Microsoft was ever really that evil. Maybe the appearance of evil just comes with the territory.

Why the.effing.librarian tweets:

I just saw this blog post on why Twitter is so good as a social tool and it made me wonder about why I continue to tweet. Normally, I don't care about social networking, but Twitter isn't very social. It's more like reading a big stack of high school yearbooks: you see a photo attached to some short message: 4U2NV! Or maybe you see a list of likes and dislikes or predictions for the future. Look at that guy; do you remember him?

So here are some reasons why I like Twitter:

1. Twitter increases my view of the world by 6%. There's some news that I know I would have missed without some attentive person's tweet. But I don't think there's enough to say that Twitter influences my world more than that, like a full ten percent; at least, not yet.
2. I want to know a little about you and your world. And that's the key: I want to know just a little. I really don't want to know that much about you that you infiltrate my daily thoughts. And why would you want me to think about you? It's not like you're Mindy Cohn. Are you Mindy Cohn? Really? Did you get my letters?
3. You only learn as much about me as I want you to know. You don't find every photo of me because my high school friends tagged me all over the place. You don't know what I looked like when I loved Haircut 100 and wore lots of sweaters.
   
4. You can't piss off too many people at 140 characters or less.

By comparison, Facebook is just a huge pain the ass with friend and group requests sitting in my box like a pile of dirty laundry.

But this is why I hate Twitter:

I can't stand the popularity contest. I can't stand seeing everyone's number of Followers. That number should be invisible. I don't care who has 1,000,000 followers; the only influence that number has on me is that now I can quantify my not caring with simple math:

((followers - following) ÷ followers x 100) ÷ 126 = I don't give a shit.

Some people think that the number of followers is an indication of utility. But it's not: utility is an indication of utility. If your tweets are useful or entertaining to me, I will follow them. Some people tweet news that I think I need to know. And some people just seem nice enough. And that's who I follow. I also understand my own limitations and only follow as many people as I think I can manage.

Let's say we all used Ashton Kutcher's numbers to guide us on how to follow others. His current Followers are at 3,203,245 and his Following is 192. That means he Follows one person for every 16,683 people who follow him.

Now, if we cared about these numbers, Ashton would be a complete asshole when it comes to acknowledging his Followers with some form of follow-reciprocity. What this says is that he's 16 thousand times better than us in the Twitterverse.

That's why these Follower/Following numbers suck. I don't need a social networking evaluating my worth in some artificial realm.

Now, the downside is, how would we decide who to follow without some ratings system? I'm not going to lie to you and say that I don't look at your numbers. I've intentionally chosen to not follow some people just because they seem to have too many Followers. So screw you, Al Gore, and your attempts to end our destruction of the planet, you friend of the Earth bastard who Follows almost no one: get your Follows into double-digits and maybe I'll follow you.

So for Twitter to be useful without making me feel like I'm failing algebra, they should eliminate all numbers. Yes, it was fun when CNN and Ashton raced to one million: the nation collectively held its breath. I know President Obama did. Once that race was over, he knew the country could get back to the business of fixing health care and the economy. I bet he was excited when he made that congratulatory phone call to Ashton on his victory. What? The President didn't call the winner of such an important event in our nation's history? Doesn't the President call the winning horse after the Kentucky Derby? I thought he called everyone. Wow, that must suck that the President calls a horse but doesn't call the tweet king.

But that out of the way, every library should be on Twitter. Why? Because it's free, and it takes (almost) no time.

If your library already uses RSS to push your news out to your patrons, then all you need to do is link that feed to a service like TwitterFeed which will send all of your updates to your Twitter account.
Then search for other local governmental agencies or non-profit or educational groups that your library would normally partner with, and Follow them on Twitter.
You shouldn't have to do anything else. You might monitor it once a week to block any spammers or porn sites that Follow you, but your RSS feed is doing all the work. Every time your web site updates, and if those pages are syndicated, then your Twitter account updates with the new stuff automatically.
Yes, you can monitor Twitter all day long, if you think your followers are that needy, but only you would know how much attention to give. Me, I would just set it and forget it, and just check it once a week.

too busy to think about right now.

Woodstock: 500,000 attended and it defines a generation.

1969 pop. 200,000,000

.25 percent, one-quarter of a percent of total U.S. attended Woodstock.

how does this compare to percentage who contribute to social media or Wikipedia?

I've seen stats that say, 1% of users contribute to Wikipedia. I've also seen stats that say a small percentage of users contribute the majority of social media content.

just wondering if throughout history whether a small percentage of people dictate what the rest of use feel, think or believe.

maybe this is normal behavior.

Why the Associated Press no longer matters.

Or, Why the Associated Press matters. I haven't made up my mind.

I see from this report that the AP wants to protect the ownership of its content and enforce its copyright by limiting how that content is used. Not a problem. I have a strict clause in my Copyright notice at the bottom of this page stating that the LPGA, or Ladies Professional Golf Association, may NOT reproduce any of my content. It's a sensitive area, so don't ask about it. But you know what you did, Ladies.

But other than creating bogus stories, with made-up content, like some companies have done to copyright maps, I'm not sure how they can protect their content. If Joe Jones survives a fall from 5,000 feet by landing on Kirstie Alley, and the AP reports it, I don't know how they can claim ownership of the facts: Joe Jones, 5,000 feet, Kirstie Alley.

But what the AP says they can protect is the added value data or charts that might accompany the story, like a graph on how many other people have survived falls from great heights or how many other celebrities have been hit by mammals falling to earth (Richard Dreyfus is the only other one I can remember; he was knocked down by a key deer that had been caught on a weather balloon tether in 1993. The deer didn't make it, but Mr. Dreyfus went on to be nominated for an Oscar for his work in Mr. Holland's Opus).

So I'm guessing the AP would have some subscription service that would allow me to access their special content, like that chart, or the photo of Kirstie Alley's shocked look as Joe Jones careened towards her from out of the sky. And each item would have some locator information embedded into it to track unauthorized use if Boing Boing or Gawker or The Huffington Post tried to hotlink or use or steal or whatever, without permission.

And that has me curious: has the AP heard of Print Screen? If I want a picture that I can't copy, what stops me from doing a printscreen and pasting it into my photo editor? Even with complex steganography, a simple printscreen would give me the image I want without any embedded code of identification. Is this the monkey wrench in your fiendish plot? Pressing one button on my keyboard?

But if the AP manages to wrangle control of its content, I wonder how this will affect the flow of information. If I can't blog a snippet of AP content, can I still snip a bit from the newspaper and pin it up in my cubicle?

Will this aggressive enforcement deprive the digital world of content, and subsequently boost the value of the print world? Is this similar to how vinyl made its comeback?

Maybe I can't cut/paste electronic AP content, but I can scan a print copy and post that because copying print has been grandfathered in, as pre-DMCA technology, like vinyl analog record albums circumvent digital copying piracy rules (because they're not digital).

I see a future where more online content is controlled, and fewer linking sites survive because the content won't be there. And then I see newspapers making their comeback. Maybe not print newspapers, but still something we purchase through subscription and read with our e-paper doohickeys. People paid $3-$4 a week for a newspaper delivered to their doors for years: why wouldn't they pay again? But then, I also see a future where you love and adore me and invite me over for Parcheesi and chicken wing night. Every Tuesday. Hint, hint.

In almost every way, I think the AP sucks. But I also believe they have the right to distribute their content in a way that brings in the money. As long as that way doesn't piss me off.

Oh, and a note to Techdirt, who just noticed the AP message, "Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed." I blogged that puppy almost one year ago here. Ha! I run rings around you.