onfocus

Andy just put together 80 lines of PHP that turns eBay search results into RSS. It seems like all data will eventually be available as RSS. Resistance is futile.

Meg has been covering the topic of danger and freedom for journalists if there is a war.

Jerry Michalski has gathered together several recent essays that make the case against war.

skp and I went to a candlelight peace vigil tonight at the courthouse in Corvallis. Vigils happened around the world. Many of the pictures I took were too blurry because of the low light, but here are a few...


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I know crowd estimates are really tough, but it looked to me like a few hundred people were there. I sent a couple of these pictures to moveon.org. They're collecting and posting pictures. Update: Moveon.org used one of my pictures.

With a Daypop search for vigil, I've already found photos from vigils in Bury St Edmunds in England and St. Louis.

Took some pictures earlier today...

Talking smack(down) in Fast Company: How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows. "Most companies would sooner let temps into the executive washroom than let customers -- much less customers who can hack -- anywhere near their core intellectual property. Google, though, grasps the power of an engaged community...More important, Bausch says, opening up the technology kimono 'turns the world into Google's development team.'"

Hacking Coupons: What in the world do you do with this much free soda? Bathe in it? Apparently, they're not the only ones.

A quick search turned up some more Oregon-based weblogs:

• The Oregon Blog
• Oregon By AboutItAll.com
• Beaverblog
• Portland Communique
• Portland Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• Jack Bog's Blog
• Rivervision
• seething
• Brad Fitzpatrick
  (of LiveJournal. Missed meeting him at SXSW this year.)
• Jon Cellini's Blog
• lilloca.com\\:blog
• what if...?
• strange chord
• biohabit

And these were already on my reading list:

• Raelity Bytes
• saturn.org

Another great part of SXSW was meeting some Oregon Web folks. Just when I was thinking I was alone up here, I run into Michael Buffington and Nick Finck. Maybe we should start an Oregon weblogs page. Anyone else from around here out there?

ps. check out Michael's Photos from SXSW.

Taking their cue from Wikipedia, the brilliant folks at PR Watch have a new wiki-based project: Disinfopedia. They call it an encyclopedia of propaganda. It's also an open project that anyone can contribute to. [via sotd]

I'm back in Pacific Standard Time. I didn't post here as much as I wanted to during the conference. And I didn't take very many pictures. (Though I did post quite a few mophos. And added some photos to SXSWBlog.) I'm still processing the panels, conversations, situations, impressions, plans, ideas. SXSW is the social side of the Web sped-up to synchronous real-time. Fray Cafe was incredible—I'm glad I was able to be there this year. I spoke on a panel. I finished reading two books on the road: Air Guitar by Dave Hickey and Interface Culture by Steven Johnson. The ideas in these books are now bound-up with the whole SXSW experience for me. After this week I feel like there are new possibilities and new paths to follow...and a lot of work to be done.

The Dakota Smith