onfocus

I had a great conversation with Susan Palmer at the Eugene Register-Guard a week or so ago. We talked about weblogs, and also online identity, online writing that isn't Journalism, some Blogger history, and how weblogs differ from big media. Her story about weblogs was published today, and a few quotes from me made the cut: The Blog Connection. In addition to several Eugene-based weblogs, she mentioned this site and ORblogs (a site I run devoted to Oregon weblogs) in the links at the end of the article. I'm glad local papers are starting to tune into local weblogs—it seems there could be a natural symbiotic relationship there with enough respect from both sides.

sk and I took the dog on an 8+ mile hike this weekend. The hike starts about a mile or so from our place, and it's nice that we can just walk out the front door and be in the woods in no time.



The hike starts on flat, open ground and gradually climbs up. This gave us a good view of the fair going on at the fairgrounds. Saturday was also very clear, so we had a fairly rare look at the mountains to the east.



We also had a great view of Oregon State University and part of Corvallis from this trail. Here's a panoramic I stitched together (click for a larger version):



As the trail climbed up we eventually hit lots of trees.



We stopped quite a few times to rest and give Luna some water.



We gave Luna a few grapes, but found out after our trip that you're never supposed to give dogs grapes—it can cause kidney failure. So don't give your dog grapes like we did! Luckly, she's just fine and wasn't bothered by them.



As always, Luna was ecstatic on this hike. She was a tired dog when we got home.

Quick links—

• The Case Against W by Ron Reagan (Esquire)
• My Beef with Big Media by Ted Turner (Washington Monthly)
• Ted Turner Interview (Charlie Rose)
• CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog (The Onion)
• Full text in PDFs of We The Media by Gillmor
• Matt Webb on Brain Hacks [via waxy links]
• Henri Cartier-Bresson died a couple days ago. [via boingboing] (Sydney Herald: Cartier-Bresson dead at 95.) His photographs are inspiring.

Oh, and here's a great line from the Dyson talk during the audience Question & Answer—

Guy: What are your thoughts on the end of the universe?
Freeman: It's not looking good.

I spent all day yesterday at OSCON in Portland. The day started with a keynote by Freeman Dyson and his son George Dyson (moderated by Tim O'Reilly).



One of the things that struck me from the conversation was the idea of the "domestication" of technology. Freeman felt that the failure of nuclear technology was in part due to the fact that you can't have a small nuclear project. In other words, you can't run down to Radio Shack and pick up a fission kit and power your home projects with nuclear energy—it's solely the domain of large projects. By contrast, biotechnology is becoming domesticated. Freeman mentioned plant and animal gene-splicing kits for backyard breeders that are only a few years away. He mentioned a future children's game where kids compete to see who can grow the prickliest cactus, and the fact that DNA synthesizers—while currently outrageously expensive—are coming down in price. What I took away from this is that decentralization and adoption by a wide number of people is a key attribute if a technology is ultimately going to be successful.

There were a lot of other good elements in the talk, and they did discuss the dangers and unintended consequences related to new technology. Though Freeman said luck would prevent catastrophe, as it always does. (hmm.)



For the rest of the day I was on the O'Reilly-track. I saw a preview of their new magazine, Make, which looks fantastic. It's produced by Dale Dougherty and edited by boingboing pioneer Mark Frauenfelder who were both on hand to describe it. One of the first feature articles is how to build your own kite photography rig. Dale mentioned the inspiration for the magazine came when he realized there was no Martha Stewart for tech geeks.

I also saw a demo of SafariU, a tool that lets teachers assemble custom books from various sources. This is definitely a disruptive technology for the college book market, but should be very appealing to professors who want more control over course material. And I gave a demo of the newly launched Safari Affiliate Program, and their related Web Services—a project I've been involved with for a while. Like I mentioned yesterday, Safari is doing the important work of making books available as bits in addition to atoms—something I first read about in Being Digital almost ten years ago. It seemed like a far-off future at the time, but here we are.

Dan Gillmor was the first mainstream journalist (that I remember) who published a weblog. What might be even more surprising is that the paper he writes for—The San Jose Mercury News—gave him the freedom to experiment with the format. (Many offline newspapers have yet to discover how the web's first native format can fit into their own websites.) So Gillmor has been participating through weblogs for a long time, and tonight at Powell's Tech he gave a personal history of his growing awareness of the ways new media technology are changing journalism.



I was surprised that his talk wasn't completely focused on weblogs. Of course he mentioned them, but his major "data points" where he realized journalism was changing revolved around mailing lists. He also talked about his new book, We the media, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Gillmor's message about weblogs and the web is not about revolt against big J—or dismissing weblogs as narcissism. I think it's easy to pick one of these camps and fight, but Gillmor has a stake in each camp. All of the ideas he mentioned tonight about these new channels of communication were intertwined with stories from his own experience, which is a very blog-like way to present things. Maybe blogs will end up helping mainstream journalists speak to people on a more personal level.

The energetic Paul Graham was also there to talk about his latest book, Hackers and Painters. He read from the endnotes, and I'm sure it didn't do his book justice. There wasn't much about the spirit of hacking in what I heard. They ran out of his book so I'll have to pick it up another time.

Amazon is encouraging reviewers to use their real name for reviews. [via anil] awww, but that might ruin Andy's Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game for future generations. Won't somebody at Amazon please think of the children?

I'm going to be in Portland at various times this week taking in the sights and sounds of the Open Source Conference. I'll even be saying a few words at a breakout session on Thursday afternoon. (For some reason the term "breakout session" makes me think of a dimly-lit room full of people playing these.) If you're going to be at the conference, I'll see you there!

Wow! Freeman, Esther, and George Dyson are going to be speaking on Thursday night morning. The topic is: Infinite in Three Directions: In Praise of Open Thinking.

danah boyd rightfully takes the NYT to task for a recent article about blogging—Demeaning bloggers: the NYTimes is running scared. For some reason this made me think: what if bloggers collectively stopped linking to the New York Times website?

I'm thinking about setting up a registration form like this for this site so I can create a "better online experience" for you. You want a better online experience, right? (Thanks for the inspiration bugmenot!)

There are some grave dangers lurking here in the Pacific Northwest: black widows, rattlesnakes, Starbucks. Those are just a few of the perils that some Scottish geography professors warn their traveling students about—Scottish students visit strange land: the Northwest.

I'm going to start offering prints for a few of my photolog pictures. You can see if a print is available for a particular photo by clicking the "details" link that follows the caption. For example, today's photo—crescent city lighthouse—is available as a print. If you click the details link, you'll see an option to buy the print with PayPal as the last line of the info there.

I recently had some digital photos printed at Adorama and I was very impressed with the results. I used their ICC printer profiles to get the colors right before printing, and I think that made a big difference. People have asked for prints in the past, but I wasn't happy with the quality of prints from digital images. So my recent success prompted me to try offering prints. It's definitely an experiment and I'll let you know how it goes.