onfocus

Speaking of innovations in web applications, check out the way Flickr handles tagging photos. Very cool!

Back in 2000, I posted about digital culture saying that "...every cultural revolution has songs. Why shouldn't we?" Today Anil Dash compiled a list of songs about weblogs. Our weblog revolution does have a folk soundtrack, even though it's not "folk" music.

Brad Stenger—the man behind the blogging panel coming up this Tuesday—has started a weblog on OregonLive. I'm not sure what it's going to be about exactly (no description on the blog itself), but it's called Tech Blog so I assume it'll be about technology. Mr. Stenger has contributed to several scientific magazines, and has been involved in academic scientific research. It's good to see that his research into weblogs lead him to going native.

Blogger.com got its first major facelift in four years, and I like the new look. I also like the new profile pages. Unfortunately I'm not a fan of the new MovableType-esque posting interface. What I liked about Blogger was that you could see all of your posts in context, much the way you see it in your weblog. Taking the messiness out of posts by showing the last five as a list with just the title is something I've never liked about MT. I'm not sure the post-listing style interface makes weblogs easier for people new to blogging. (Where did my words go?) Also, homogenizing weblog tools so the interfaces are exactly the same (well, similar) isn't a step forward either.

Weblog tools haven't really innovated on the posting interface side. Blogger and TypePad have worked to make the interfaces solidified in 2001 drop-dead simple, but there hasn't been anything new there. Why no post filters like gmail filters? Why no "post templates" that could define different types of posts? Why no web services-style integration with other applications to pull in data from other sources?

Don't get me wrong—I think the new Blogger design looks good, I'm just disappointed that there hasn't been more innovation on the tech side of weblog tool interfaces.

sk and I went for a hike around Alsea Falls south of Corvallis. Here are a bunch of photos:


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It was a great, relaxing hike and I had fun taking pictures of the water.

I'm going to be participating in a panel discussion on Blogs, Bloggers, Blogging next Tuesday night at Powell's Tech in Portland. I'll probably talk a bit about my time at Blogger, a site I manage called ORblogs that aggregates Oregon weblogs, and what it means to write a blog for fun. Kevin Cosgrove from OregonLive will be there, and I'm looking forward to hearing about their use of weblogs on the site (they've been adding them like mad lately). I don't know Heather Gorgura, but her site mentions her studying alternative media and activism. The last I heard, Rael wasn't going to be able to make it—but I hope I'm wrong. The fun starts at 7:30, see ya there! (Here's the upcoming.org listing of the panel.) I believe this is going to be an open discussion, so the difference between panelist and audience member should be minimal. In other words, be ready to discuss weblogs.

Are you going? What would you like to discuss with this panel?

The CTO of Amazon, Al Vermeulen, lives here in Corvallis, OR but works at Amazon in Seattle. It's about 4 hours by car, but Vermeulen makes his commute work by flying there himself. There's a profile of him by the Seattle Times (syndicated in the KC Star): Amazon chief, Java problem solver: Al Vermeulen.

Update: A User/Pass is now required to view the article. (Try picking one up for that site at bugmenot.)

sk and I went to see Paul Ehrlich speak tonight at OSU. He's the Professor of Population Studies at Stanford. His latest book is One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future. (Nineveh refers to the capitol of the ancient Assyrian empire that once existed in what is now Iraq.) He covered some fairly depressing topics—everything from the threat of nuclear annihilation to the threat of a mutant flu. He talked about the terrible inequity in the world (3 billion live on $2/day or less) as a root cause of many problems, and of course he's not happy with the direction the country is currently heading. Among many other criticisms, Ehrlich said the doctrine of preemptive strike sets a very dangerous precedent in a nuclear age. But it wasn't all doom and gloom. He had some hopeful things to say and reminded everyone that change can happen very quickly. Equal rights for African Americans, for example, took huge leaps forward in just a matter of decades after being horrible for hundreds of years. Because of successes like this, he said idealism is realism. I enjoyed his talk, though it wasn't easy to hear his view of the big picture.

Update: Here's an article about the talk in the local paper, Scientist: World population a growing problem.

Some friends tipped us off about the OSU pet day last Saturday, and we took the dog there bright and early for their 5k pet run (more of a walk for us). The best part was the cacophony of barking when the run started:



Too bad I didn't have my camera recording sound.



The walk wound through the OSU campus, which is beautiful this time of year. Check out these gigantic rhododendrons that are blooming everywhere:



After the walk, we looked at the pet-related booths, and watched the expert border-collie frisbee masters. People were very curious about the dog, and she got way too much attention. Luckily we missed the big controversy that happened, but we heard the fireworks from another location. Apparently, the stadium expansion celebration people and the pet day people didn't coordinate very well—or maybe the stadium organizers thought that dogs love fireworks. Anyway, this bit of bad planning was the front page story in the paper on Sunday. Update: OSU Apologizes.

Alan Taylor is still working on making Amazon ads that you can drop into your site (even though he's not at Amazon anymore). He just put together some simple ad widgets using Amazon Web Services and their XSLT service. Here's his description of the widgets.

I sure have been derelict in my blogging duty lately. If I had been keeping up, I would have mentioned that sk and I went to see Barbara Ehrenreich speak at OSU last Thursday (sort of). The LaSells Stewart auditorium was so packed when we got there, that we had to watch on a screen in an overflow room (which was also crowded). Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Nickel and Dimed about the working poor in America. She's also written nine other books, and I heard Fear of Falling mentioned a few times that night. She had a lot of great things to say on a wide range of topics, especially about the plight of people at the lower end of our economy. One figure that stuck out: an employee working in the trenches at Wal-Mart would have to work 5,000 years to make what a top-level Wal-Mart executive makes in just one year.

I added a search form to the side of the site thanks to the Customizable Google Free Search. search onfocus.com: