infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

• Daring Fireball: Deal With It
  John Gruber takes a transaction-cost lite approach to explaining the idea of cognitive load. Not only do I agree that iCal requires too much user effort, I’d say it’s darn near unusable.
  (del.icio.us tags: chat email design Apple)
• Q&A: Stanford applies a clean slate to the Internet
  NetworkWorld interviews Stanford professor Nick McKeown about his groups vision for a smarter, more secure internet; too bad it won’t have anything like network neutrality.
  (del.icio.us tags: network networkneutrality spam interview)

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• Sears Craftsman CompuCarve
  This computerized cutting tool from Sears isn’t a rapid prototyper, but it will carve a relief into the face of a piece of wood, based on an electronic image.
  (del.icio.us tags: DIY whoa)

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• O’Reilly Radar: The Future of Web 2.0
  I am a total nerd for laughing at this, but I’m linking to it anyway.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 standards humor)

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RTF Chair: Have any of you played any Alternative Reality Games?
[pause]
McChris: Grad School.
[laughter around the room]
RTF Chair; I guess that is one of the longest running Alternative Reality Games, and for some people it takes longer than others.

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• Goodbye Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, hello Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz
  The Alamo cinema chain’s downtown location is moving from the Warehouse District to the old Ritz theater on Sixth Street. An Alamo projectionist and RTF doctoral student discusses the implications of the move.
  (del.icio.us tags: film austin)
• Searching for King Leopold’s treasure
  According to this blog post, mining interests are poring over musty old maps in Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa, looking for what I presume to be coltan in the DRC. The blogger argues that the museum should make the maps available freely online,
  (del.icio.us tags: Congo crowdsourcing map)
• Fall of Autumn: How Offset Printing Works
  In this video interview, an offset printing practitioner explains his reasons for choosing offset printing for his publishing projects.
  (del.icio.us tags: oldmedia publishing zine interview video production print anarchism)
• Cat Holocaust
  Neal Pollack offers a very touching account of how his wife’s cat Teacake died from eating the tainted pet food now under recall. He goes on to suggest that economics and administration are responsible for these pet deaths.
  (del.icio.us tags: publicpolicy economics blog)
• GNE Museum
  Screenshots of The Game Neverending, the predecessor to Flickr reveal the initial design plans of the social software service. I never played GNE, but when I started using Flickr in 2003, it was weird.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 history Flickr information_design)
• Valleywag: Web 2.0 buzz
  Valleywag has created a chart of mainstream media mentions of Web 2.0 as extracted from Nexis and suggests that the buzzword is peaking.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 buzzword news hype)
• Escapable Logic: The People Law trumps the Power Law
  From Weblogsky comes this interesting discussion of social media audiences that attempts to erode the importance of the idea of “power laws.”
  (del.icio.us tags: audience longtail blog)

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I’ve written before about my frustrations with Blogger. And while I think it was a good solution the last time I taught RTF 319, I’ve given up on Blogger mid-way through the semester, which doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. Regardless, it has become a complete hassle, and I don’t think there’s anyway to salvage it. Beyond the reliability problems with Blogger, it introduces a few major problems with my teaching. The downtime provides students with an convenient excuse for not getting their work into me, and it fills up my already bulging inbox with nuisance email from students. Moreover, it gives the (not unwarranted) impression to students that I’m not on top of the class.

What I like about using blogs is that it provides a way to deliver assignments with a timestamp and usually minimizes the hassles of managing projects. The last time I used Blogger for deliverables, it worked beautifully. Now it’s turned into a nightmare, and Google’s increasingly strict identity management policies make me worry about protecting the privacy of my students. I think I will look into using Moodle if I ever teach this class again, which does seem like an adequate platform for posting work and discussion questions.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve come up with a new CSS project. It’s pretty lame, but I think it is appropriate for lower-division students.

CSS Project
• Create a folder in your UT Webspace called “RTF 319” and an index.html home page.
• Create a page for each one of your projects so far. At this point, I am considering the Illustrator and Photoshop assignments as projects. You can create pages for the “homework” assignments if you please, but it is not required.
• Each page should include a description of your project and your design approach to the project.
• OK, here’s the part where CSS comes in. The power of CSS is that allows you to create consistent styling across a Web site using a single file. You will be graded on how well you can apply CSS to this project. You will use only one stylesheet for the whole site.
• I want to see a minimum of seven styles, IDs, or redefined HTML tags in your stylesheet. Feel free to use more.
• You will be graded both on the attractiveness of your design, and on the sophistication of your CSS code.

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• Engadget How-To: Make a solid-state A/V switcher
  I wish I had the time to build one of these. The switches in my cheapo Radio Shack model are worn out, and the prices of new models give me sticker shock.
  (del.icio.us tags: howto DIY audio useful solidstate)
• CJR: How TalkingPointsMemo Beat the Big Boys on the U.S. Attorney Story
  Columbia Journalism Review examines how TalkingPointsMemo was able to once again push a story into the mainstream media. I was surprised to hear the US Attorney firings on cable news, after I had been reading it on TPM for so long.
  (del.icio.us tags: blog politics journalism)
• Please Copy This Film: Video and the People’s Movement in Oaxaca, Mexico
  A non-profit professional living in Oaxaca describes daily life and media production in the troubled province.
  (del.icio.us tags: Oaxaca Mexico DIY)
• freEtech 2007, an (un)Conference, san diego
  This unconference is a technology-sharing project that protests the high prices of O’Reilly conferences.
  (del.icio.us tags: O’Reilly DIY activism conference)

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I’m a little late in posting this, but I wanted to remark on Bravo’s purchase of TV message board, Television Without Pity. TWoP’s message boards offer lively discussion of television programming, often with an anti-establishment bent. As Time TV critic James Poniewozik points out, media conglomerates like Time Warner and General Electric don’t expect their products to speak with a unitary voice – just think of the way “30 Rock” consistently lampoons the culture at GE. However, Poniewozik contends that the ownership structure may make things a little tricky for TWoP, since the Bravo organization will own the message board directly. With this arrangement, it seems more likely that Bravo might shepherd the content and discussions in ways that are favorable to its programming.

For its party TWoP says it will remain independent. In an announcement, TWoP said “We’ll still provide snarky recaps, and you’ll still be able to visit the virtual water-cooler of the forums” but partnering with Bravo will allow it to expand its offerings of content. I’m not much of a TWoP reader, so I’ll take their word for it, and let others follow the changes.

My problem with this arrangement is not so much about Bravo influencing content on TWoP, but the issue of users owning their own writing. If I were a loyal contributor, I would think that I would resent having my work be used for a major media conglomerate. Granted, I’m a user of the Yahoo!-owned Flickr and del.icio.us, but I balance their ownership with how useful I find the services. On the other hand, there are plenty of places online where people can discuss television (like a blog) and the design of TWoP’s message boards are not particularly innovative. What TWoP offers is a community with an independent spirit, and I do wonder if the site is betraying the people who created the community by turning an indie site into a shill for Bravo.

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• Washingtonian: Has Success Spoiled NPR?
  This long feature examines NPR’s struggle to maintain a balance between its historical identity and its efforts to find new audiences. Once the organization began programming like a commercial media group, it alienated longtime listeners.
  (del.icio.us tags: NPR radio journalism podcasting)
• Lost Remote: Households to receive digital TV coupons
  Each household is eligible for two coupons for DTV conversion boxes worth forty dollars when the DTV transition takes place.
  (del.icio.us tags: FCC TV)

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• The future of Stay Free!
  It’s a pity Carrie has decided to end publication of her venerable ‘zine. It was really special, and one of these days all of the cool indie magazines will be gone.
  (del.icio.us tags: zine magazine advertising indie end-of-life)
• Guide to SXSW 2007 Side Parties
  This cool Google Maps mashup could use some UX work (it seems like categories are often mutually exclusive) but it’s still nice to have this interface for locating frooze.
  (del.icio.us tags: sxsw austin mashup googlemaps)

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