infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

• John Edwards: Social Networking
  Good gravy, this list reveals many of the yasns where John Edwards has a presence, but it doesn’t even list Twitter.
  (del.icio.us tags: politics2.0 yasns list)
• Comic: 2.0 2.0
  heh.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 comics humor)
• Who are Second Life’s “Patriotic Nigras”?
  This interview with one of the trolls who vandalized John Edwards’ Second Life space provides some insight into griefer culture.
  (del.icio.us tags: SecondLife interview politics2.0)
• Unknown City: SXSW Free Shows 2007
  Lou from the J-School maintains a list each year of free showcases at SXSW, which is perfect for cheap grad students like me. Someone has to go to the free Public Enemy show with me Friday night.
  (del.icio.us tags: sxsw austin gradschool music)

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• SpotScout Inc. - Parking the Mobile Generation™
  This online marketplace for information about parking spots raises ethical issues of how commons are shared.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 ethics NYC transportation)
• Libby’s Lies, Cheney’s Lies
  Juan Cole provides an illustrated recap of Libby and Cheney’s dirty deeds.
  (del.icio.us tags: lies politics war)
• thoughts on twitter
  Liz Lawley shares her fascination with Twitter, and I agree that the most compelling part of the app is the cross-chatter between users, and how it both reveals and conceals social networks.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 chat yasns)

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Although I thought I would be taking a break from this darn thing, I saw a blog entry I thought was worth commenting on. Alex King asks what would be the proper behavior for a Twitter WordPress plugin. Given the inanity of my Twitter posts, I think the proper behavior would be to be not seen and not heard, but I imagine more felicitous users can say meaningful things in one-hundred-forty characters.

King would like a plug-in that checks his Twitter JSON feed regularly, imports his “tweets” (love the jargon) into a separate database table, and displays his status in a sidebar widget. This seems like the way to go, except given the ephemerality of tweets, I’m not sure I want to archive these posts. I understand owning your data and all, but I think setting up Creative-Commons licenses on the site is a higher priority.

One of King’s readers, Derek Punsalan, wants greater functionality from a Twidget. Punsalan would like readers to be able to leave comments on tweets, so asks to import tweets as blog posts. Lordy, lordy, lordy, people complain about blogs that merge posts and del.icio.us feeds. I can’t imagine the reaction to adding the banality of tweets to blog feeds. While I obviously think that doing daily del.icio.us linkdumps is a good medium between adding bookmarks as separate entries and ignoring del.icio.us altogether, I think a sidebar widget is definitely the way to go for tweets.

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• FringeWare Chronology: 1992 - 1996
  JonL points to this chronology of the underground bookstore of yesteryear.
  (del.icio.us tags: austin weird history zine books)
• Rough Type: Wikipedia’s credentialism crisis
  “Essjay’s great sin - the reason Wales ultimately sent him into exile - wasn’t that he lied to the press but that he hoodwinked his fellow Wikipedians, that he used his fake credentials to get them to grant him deference in editing articles.”
  (del.icio.us tags: academic thereal wikipedia)

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Taking some more time off from blogs and blogging to refocus…

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• 7 Words You Can’t Say in Kindergarten
  An amusing video that has children re-enact part of George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words.”
  (del.icio.us tags: censorship education protest humor video)
• Bokardo: More Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture
  This really interesting post criticizes the idea of Information Architecture for reducing design issues to issues of information.
  (del.icio.us tags: information_design webdesign design)
• Michael Zimmer: All Eyes On You: Cellphone cameras & cyber-shaming
  I do wonder how cyber-shaming is different from sousveillance, but I do think this practice creates interesting and important ethical issues.
  (del.icio.us tags: privacy surveillance ethics)
• The Devil’s Dictionary: True definitions of “vlog” and other terms
  Following the lead of Ambrose Bierce, this list explains what Web 2.0 buzzwords really mean.
  (del.icio.us tags: Web2.0 linkbait buzzword humor)

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Jon Gruber has an insightful post on default blog templates, and how they can undermine the branding work that goes on on blogs. He and Joe Trotter complain that default templates often look too standard, making it difficult to convey a sense of uniqueness. Gruber raises some important points disentangling the design of software like WordPress and Movable Type for the design of the presentation (i.e. the template.)

I’d add two things to this conversation comparing WordPress and Movable Type. First, WordPress’ templates (or “themes”) are very difficult to edit. Before someone jumps on me and insults my skills, I mean that the templates require too much literacy and investment for your average blogger, someone who’s made a Web page and may be wrapping her head around CSS. WordPress is very modular, so users need to hack up multiple PHP files, plus a stylesheet to make a substantial change. I haven’t used Movable Type in over a year, but the platform had relatively straightforward template files, and platform-specific tags, which didn’t require the user to parse PHP.

Secondly, the themes available for WordPress almost always use brittle CSS. They’re designed by people who want pixel-control over presentation, they often have weird leading and spacing issues. These themes look great “out of the box,” but if a user tries to tweak the typography or images, she often winds up dealing with broken presentation that requires more mucking about with CSS.

It’s no wonder so many WordPress blogs look like Kubrick or Hemingway with the colors and banner images changed. The templates are just too hard to edit. I’ve looked for a loose “wireframe” theme for WordPress to no avail. When I started banging on this theme, I thought I would create a theme, I could publish as a resource for other bloggers who want to get to know WordPress’ theme structure and be more creative with the platform, but I still haven’t found the time. I’m surprised I’ve found the time to write this.

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• Austin Chronicle: You mean open source hasn’t saved the world yet?
  Jon Lebkowsky lays out open-source issues for a popular audience.
  (del.icio.us tags: opensource sxsw freeculture austin)
• iTWire: Photoshop online within six months
  Adobe is rollling out a Web-based version of Photoshop that will be supported by ads. I wonder if this is partly to address the rampant piracy of the image-editing package.
  (del.icio.us tags: Adobe photoshop softwareasaservice)
• Foreign Policy: Wiring the World’s Poor
  FP interviews Intel chair Craig Barrett, who reveals insights about the digital divide and OLPC.
  (del.icio.us tags: digitaldivide education Africa interview)
• Chaka Fattah’s Technology Plan
  Chaka Fattah used to be my representative in West Philly and is now running for mayor of the city. I take issue with some of his suggestions like SmartBoards, but infobong.com endorses him for mayor.
  (del.icio.us tags: Philadelphia politics technology education)
• Larry West for Mayor: About Larry
  Larry is a mohawked punk running for mayor of the city of brotherly shove. I don’t care for Philly, but damn if I don’t love Philadelphia punk rock!
  (del.icio.us tags: punk politics DIY Philadelphia awesome)

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