onfocus

huh. Tucows bought Blogrolling. It's surprising to me that ancillary weblog services are also being bought and sold. [via manly knitting]

b!X over at Portland Communique is asking his readers for ideas related to funding his weblog. I think he provides a valuable service for Portland, and there should be a way for him to turn his hobby into a living. He's focusing on potential grants, and I have no idea if there's anything out there for him. I don't think Google Ads are the answer in his case, because he doesn't have a consumer-product oriented weblog. Paypal tips are an option, but I've found people aren't used to supporting the independent web this way yet. I think this an important question to find an answer to—not just for b!X, but also for the larger world of potential citizen journalists.

We now resume our broadcast in full color. As you were.

This site is a little more grey than usual for Grey Tuesday. I'm not even a big hip-hop fan, and honestly the DJ Dangermouse Grey Album just made me want to hear the White Album again. But I think copyright laws stifle art and speech—and the laws make it next to impossible to comment on our own culture. The Grey Album is illegal art, but it shouldn't be.

There's more on the legal maneuverings surrounding this protest at waxy.org.

By the way, if you buy anything at Amazon through the Weblog Bookwatch (or MediaWatch) links today, the affiliate fees will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Others: Kottke, Matt Haughey, BoingBoing, SixFoot6, Lawrence Lessig, Scott Andrew.

This weekend Ernest gave Matt and me an inside look at Bigha bikes here in Corvallis. (Ernest put together their website.) Hopping on one of them was a bit like learning to ride a bike all over again, but after a few seconds to adapt I was steering around the factory floor fairly well. It's definitely more comfortable than a standard bike, and I can see that it would be very nice for long rides. These top of the line bikes are a bit out of my price range, and I hope someone rents them around here—it'd be fun to take one out for a day and go on a longer trip. (I guess I could always try to win one.) I took a few pictures while we were there:


more »

Remember the PGP-signing I added to my comments system a while back? Srijith has created a Movable Type plugin that adds PGP comments to Movable Type weblogs. He's using Ben Trott's Crypt::OpenPGP to parse the PGP signatures. Update: He used the module as a guide for parsing PGP signatures—it's not required to run the plugin.

Srijith also adds a very clever bit of functionality by showing how you can include the URL of your public key within your PGP signature itself. This doesn't solve the web of trust/signing issues, but it makes it much easier to at least verify the signature you're looking at. This distributed method of securing identity is about small pieces loosely joined (so to speak), and the pieces are loosely joining.

Here's a page he has devoted to the plugin: PGPComments.

My site is already grey, so it would be easy for me to participate in Grey Tuesday next week. [via Anil 2/19]

Do I have to go outside when it's raining?

USA Today: Glitch identifies "anonymous" reviewers on Amazon.com. "Among those named were authors who posted glowing reviews of their own work, apparently to boost sales."

San Francisco approved gay marriage and there's a massacre of love (photos by Lance Arthur) going on at the city hall. [via Kottke] (And some more photos by Derek Powazek.) One Oregon blogger who writes What in the Blue Hell? took a road trip to get hitched. Congrats! Of course he blogged his adventure. [via Portland Communique]

Amazon updated their RSS information page: Amazon Syndicated Content. At the bottom of the page, they now have hundreds of sample feeds ready to add to your newsreader. If you spot a feed you like there, it saves you the time it takes to use a tool like the Amazon Feed Builder. Thanks for the heads-up, Alan!

If you're wondering what all the hubub is about web services, RSS, social software, and other alpha geekery—this interview with Rael is a good place to start: View from the Alpha Geek. I like this bit, "I use weblogs to find information more than I use Google. I follow trails. Google will find you obvious answers. Google will find you what you're looking for. Blogs, with RSS, will find you what you never expected to find." I couldn't agree more. I think the majority of people have yet to discover what a valuable information resource weblogs are, even after all this time. (And I think Google realized this exactly one year ago.)

new phrase: puppy leave.

I'm disappointed that I couldn't be at eTech, but I'm enjoying the coverage. It sounds like Joe Trippi's speech [notes by Howard Rheingold] about the Dean campaign and the web was inspiring. And I'm keeping an eye on the eTech wiki.

There is the serious danger that this weblog will turn into a puppyblog for a while. Here are a couple more pictures:





And another at Matt's photo site. She's an eight-week old Miniature Australian Shepherd.

There's a new creature in our house...





The cat is not amused.

I'm a little late linking to the party, but check out this great essay explaining how weblogs are like punk: Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Wonderchicken. [via Blogroots]