randomwalks/dj

John Kerry is reminding Bush about a promise he made to make broadband access "universal" by 2007, during his 2004 campaign. He says that rules freeing spectrum for new data technologies such as WiMax are being sat on by the FCC and these rules can "help correct the problem". (the statistics on US broadband penetration, quoted by Kerry, and from the industry, seem to significantly differ from today's Nielson survey).

Originally from unmediated, on March 15, 2006 11:00 AM

Vit Sisler from Charles University in Prague has posted two excellent articles about political games, mainly focusing on the work of Afkar Media (the second article is an interview to its executive producer, Radwan Kasmiya). I have some issues with them -that’s not unexpected given the hot topic of Middle Eastern politics + political videogames. For example, it sort of

Originally from Water Cooler Games at March 13, 2006, 18:25, published by Pau Waelder

Originally from unmediated, on March 15, 2006 11:00 AM

Alexa looks behind the MySpace curtain to uncover how the site became a globally top-10 ranked site. The secret, unsurprisingly, is kids. They're in charge now. Alexa also dispels the myth that MySpace is bigger than Google. MySpace gets a little more than 50% of the pageviews of Google.

Technorati Tags: Google, MySpace, COGs, centersofgravity

Originally from unmediated, on March 15, 2006 11:00 AM

Umair Haque thinks the Web 2.0 crowd is at an impasse. Geeks don't get media and media companies don't really grok the new tech yet. No understanding, no next round of radical innovation, he warns.

For the geeks at startups, such as as Ning and Flock, he says the problem boils down to too much tech fetisishm and too little understanding of human nature.

His advice? Take some lessons from MySpace, Korea's online gaming juggernaught Cyworld, and MakeupAlley.

Er...MakeupAlley? Yep. Umair recommends this community, where members swap beauty product tips, because it has "a very, very, very deep understanding of what consumers in its vertical value." (In fact, he recommends it as a takeover candidate.) The service serves 55 million page views a month.

I was curious, so I emailed the folks at this site last week. And the story kind of puts Web 2.0 in perspective for me. (What's old is new again.) And weirdly enough, it turns out that the site is run by Hara Glick, who used to be my neighbor in a tiny, four-story walk-up downtown.

Creating a coherent community is what MakeupAlley was always about. The largest beauty community on the Web, the site is a dotcom survivor and a proto-online community started in NYC by Hara Glick. Members trade tips on products, helping each other understand whether it makes sense to buy a $500 face cream.

Glick mapped out the notion of the community in 1999, way ahead of any of today's social networking crowd.Its members post about 1.3 million posts per month, or one every 1.2 seconds.

Glick launched MakeupAlley in 1999 because she wanted a site like this for herself. She sold the community to beauty site Beauty.com, a once hot beauty e-tailer that Drugstore.com bought. But when the Internet bubble burst, Glick bought her company back. She wanted to see it continue. So what's her Glick's view on the whole Web 2.0 meme right now?

"We always believed that the Internet was about socialization. Now everyone else does to. It's really hot. But I think it's always been that way. The Internet is about people connecting and getting information."

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on March 15, 2006 10:30 AM

Yesterday Scott Rettberg spoke to our webdesign and web aesthetics students yesterday about electronic literature. Here’s a photo and links to the works he discussed. I was particularly happy about how wonderfully the students participated in the discussion, even in English. We have great students! Scott will be returning to Bergen in May, and will work with the web design and web aesthetics students on close readings of websites. This autumn semester he’ll be in charge of the Digital Media Aesthetics course, which is a combined upper level undergraduate and MA level course. It will be great having him at our department.

Tomorrow Talan Memmott, who’s in Sweden this semester, will be speaking about Digital Authorhip: Writing Through New Media. And Bergen Student-TV asked about coming to video it and interview him, isn’t that great? I’ve never “met” the Student-TV people before, but as a very enthusiastic ex-member of the Student Radio I think it’s going to be way cool. They don’t seem to do video casts yet, which is a pity since I have that shiny new video ipod, but they do put their shows on the web. I’ll let you know if Talan shows up there.

Originally posted by Jill from jill/txt, on March 15, 2006 09:39 AM

"Graph theory is a branch of topology. It is the study of geometric relations which aren't changed by stretching and compression--rubber sheet geometry, some call it. Graph theory is ideal for modelling hierarchies--like family trees, browsing histories, search trees and bills of materials--whose shape and size we can't know in advance."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 15, 2006 08:57 AM

Google is now likely to be required to comply with a subpoena, but the amount of data is far less than previously demanded.

Originally from NYT > Technology, on March 15, 2006 08:56 AM

An exclusive shopping store in Copenhagen, ILLUM recently launched an SMS-auction concept called Window Shopping. Guerrilla Innovation reports. "Between March 2nd and 24th, the store is putting three luxury items on auction everyday. The items are placed in the window, facing pedestrians who can submit their bids via SMS. The latest bids are displayed on plasma screens, so that people can the follow the action in real time."

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on March 15, 2006 08:56 AM

Here is the home users guide for my show at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Paris. Basically it is a document which describes how / why I made the work I put in the show. If you cant see the show, it might still be worth reading if you want to keep up with what I am doing (though eventually i'll RSS each work in the 2006 section of the site)....If you are nerd (of course I mean that in the positive sense) and want to try to make one of the works you will also need to download the files here. Sorry 4 the delay, I had 2 (not 1, but 2!) laptops fail in the last week, so I am just getting on my feet now. !!!!!

Originally from Cory's Web LOG , on March 15, 2006 08:56 AM

The designs for Comment is free has been somewhere in my field of view for so many weeks now, it’s impossible to see them with new eyes. Andy, Ben and Mark did a spangly spangly job on it - and the tweaks I’m implementing as we go are making it better.

But if there’s one bit I love, it’s on the hardest to find page. The Most frequent subject heatmap. It’s a weighted tag cloud, done properly. Ben Wuersching did the design, and I wrote the code that drives it. (View source, and you’ll see how we got round the whole issue of my Movable Type hackery producing the list of most used tags in a different order to the one we need to fill the table. It’s not pretty, but it made me giggle to do it.)

Originally from Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent, on March 15, 2006 08:53 AM

Numbers of Fruit. “Here in the US, fruit often comes with stickers on it, sometimes telling you where it’s from and/or what it is. There’s also a number, but I never paid attention to that. But on p. 72 [of April’s Food & Wine] I spotted this interesting bit of information:

‘[T]he sticker labels on fruit: The numbers tell you how the fruit was grown. Conventionally grown fruit has four digits; organically grown fruit has five and starts with a nine; genetically engineered has five numbers and starts with an eight.’”

(via)

Originally from Social Design Notes, on March 15, 2006 08:52 AM

Quiz: Web 2.0 company or Star Wars character? Web 2.0 increasingly reminds me of the web circa 1999. I hope it hurts less this time.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 15, 2006 08:52 AM

I know I'm close to the last person in the world to see this, but I still like it. The joke wears thin after about 30 seconds, but there are some great edits near the end. This video is Tarantino violent, so be forewarned. (via nedlog.)

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, nintendo, on March 15, 2006 02:31 AM

Sleeping music is an ongoing project, updated randomly.
The participants are asked to make a track that they
would like to hear when going to bed, trying to fall asleep.
There's no chosen aesthetic here, though one might consider
the tracks uploaded so far to be resembling each other.
Kimmo Modig's sleeping music project.

Originally from the lady upgrade project, on March 15, 2006 12:19 AM

Just like Shakespeare and Winnie the Pooh, flickr is much more beautiful in Hungarian.

Originally from the lady upgrade project, on March 15, 2006 12:19 AM

For International Women's Day, 2006.

Ideally, a lady will be the proud owner of a big strong pair of thighs. Big, strong thighs are beautiful, and can even be practical, too. Here's how to break someone's arm, using those juicy pins your mam gave you.

You will need:
- one opponent
- two big thighs
- full body leverage

Your opponent will be on the floor, lying on their back; how you get them there I leave up to you. An ashi barai would be an excellent and stylish choice. Holding your opponent's wrist and hand so that their arm is straight and the back of their hand is facing you, simply step (no skipping!) across their body, plant your posterior on the floor, be seated at right angles across them, and then lie back, pulling your/their hand(s) up, towards your face. Now, instead of thinking of [insert name of yr homeland here], squeeze those thighs, while arching your hips and pulling your hands in towards your chest. Et voilà! You are levering your opponent's arm over the fulcrum of your coochie bone. Resistance is futile.

Here are some cute boys doing it.

Breaking arms: as easy as breaking hearts between your thighs. And let nobody tell you how to do that!

Happy International Ladies' Upgrade Day, then.

Originally from the lady upgrade project, on March 15, 2006 12:19 AM