onfocus

Anyone interested in the future of the Internet should be watching the current situation in the radio industry very carefully. The decentralized nature of the Internet makes it hard to imagine a future where a few dominant companies control most of the content. If alternative business models to advertising aren't found for the Internet, though, I'm afraid centralization and concentration could happen—just as it has in every other advertising-supported medium.

Somewhat related: Salon's subscription plus advertising model doesn't seem to be working.

I changed the way Weblog Bookwatch works a little. If a site has been "voting" for a particular book for more than 30 days, it's no longer counted as a mention. Most likely, this >30 day persistence happens because the weblog has mentioned the book in a sidebar instead of a post (which will scroll off the page at some point). I noticed that the list changed very little, with a few books that have been on people's sidebars for months there. I hope this change will more accurately capture the books people are discussing.

That's odd. Why don't any versions of RSS have an element (or attribute) for the date/time an item was posted? Time is key to weblogs.

Movable Type's new TrackBack feature is fantastic. [via Blogroots] I think it's exactly what weblogs need, and is what I was getting at when I talked about writing a distributed conversation server. This feature turns MT into a conversation server, and I hope the other tools will follow suit. It's going to automate the process of sharing information at the post level; which will allow new, exciting things to happen in the blogosphere. nice work!

If I was meg, I would have started this sentence with if I were. Were I her. As I am, though, if I was.

picnic table at the top of mt. burdell, olompali state park

I had a dream last night that someone had figured out how to store data on quarters (like a disk) by magnetizing the metal in different ways. Everyone had these little quarter drives that you could use to read the data. And when you purchased something with a quarter, part of the space was used to store data about the transaction. So you could go back and track what exactly that quarter had been used to purchase. Which seems silly because what can you buy for a quarter besides gumballs and parking?

I had to go see the Philip K. Dick inspired Steven Spielberg spectacle on opening night. I really enjoyed it, especially the action scenes, even though it had a couple of standard Spielberg-over-the-top-emotional moments. (cry now, dammit, now!) He really brought to life a future that seems entirely possible, but I couldn't decide how he felt about it. It wasn't quite the dystopia of Blade Runner, though it had some dark elements. He seemed to be envisioning a future where corporate control and constant surveillance isn't so bad. In fact, he showed that it's kind of cute and funny to have the police dropping in at all hours sending robotic spiders after you. And even the lowest dregs of bad guys live in fashionable houses furnished by Ikea. The story is what saved the movie from its problems, though, and it brought up some real issues to think about.

It's definitely time to bump another Dick novel up to the top of my reading queue. This time: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. (If I can find it at the bookstore today.) Before the show we saw a teaser preview for the movie version of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem coming out in December.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Copper River Salmon at the market in Seattle

Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA