Category: observations

Burningbird: TypeKey: The Patriot Act of Weblogging

Following the hype about MovableType 3.0 and SixApart’s new TypeKey system, I’m not sure my feelings are any warmer than Shelley’s.

A centralized database to manage part of a decentralized success seems like a bad idea. As noted, there are plenty of times when the centralized servers (hello, weblogs.com and technorati) fail under load, causing problems for their end-user sites.

I agree that some kind of authentication makes sense, but why not something like what Mailman or other mailing lists require? The steps:

* compose your comment/feedback

* enter an email

* await the authorization email from the MT instance

* reply to it, and your comment is posted *and* the weblog operator has something like contact information for you. You could still be a spammer, but this is all about raising the bar/making it more difficult. No one thinks spam is preventable.

And I hadn’t thought of some of the possibilities: if I ban commenter Adolf from my site and his pals Benito and Christof approve him to comment on theirs, where are the permissions invoked?

I hope they have spent as much time and effort on addressing the performance issues as they have on this idea . . .

To be fair, Mena Trott’s comments in the thread make it clear that there’s more work to be done on this, but this is an issue webloggers feel strongly about: they need to get it right.

Wired News: Record Stores: We’re Fine, Thanks:

High prices, rather than file sharing, are what usually stop a kid from buying a CD, Wiley said.

Typically, the music industry wants stores to sell CDs for $18 when they should be going for $15, he said. That $3 can make the difference in terms of whether or not a CD is going to sell.

“The file sharing, the Internet — just makes them music junkies,” Wiley said.

Paul Epstein, owner of Twist & Shout, a store in Denver, agreed that piracy has helped his bottom line. He said it’s like radio, another form of promotion that spurs sales.

“File sharing is a danger, but it really turns a lot of kids on to music,” he said.

I hinted at this a while back: selling commodity music artifacts won’t keep music stores open. I think even $15 is too much, especially since we know how little of it is needed to cover the manufacturing costs.

People will go to stores staffed by knowledgeable people who can help them make purchases or explore new sounds. Try getting that kind of help at Wal-Mart . . . .

US reporter faked major stories

A leading American newspaper, USA Today, has said one of its star foreign correspondents made up substantial elements of a number of major stories.

Jack Kelley had been nominated five times for the most prestigious award in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize.

When I was a lazy reporter, I hated making calls sometimes, but it never occurred to me to make stuff up. I just figured I should find a more appropriate line of work. Wish more people thought about that.

CoffeeGeek – Consumer Espresso Machine Reviews

I am wandering through the cave of wonders known as CoffeeGeek.com (complete with RSS: syndicated caffeine, if you can combine vices seamlessly). I thought I would take a look at possible replacements for my dependable but aging Krups Novo unit. If you’ve ever looked at espresso accoutrement, you know how the prices can vary, from sub-$100 to over $1,000. What I am looking for is the sweet spot where price and quality start to diverge.

This unit seems to hit that spot: at $90, it’s sandwiched between one priced at $500 and one at $599, while all three of them were rated at 7.6 on a 10 scale.

But then if I re-sort the results by price, I find a significantly higher rated unit adjacent to it. Of course, the model is not specified, only the brand, and further research shows it takes some kind of pre-packaged “coffee pods” which mean I’m locked into the manufacturer’s coffee selection. My experience tells me the bean is more important than the machine and I hate “lock-in” so that’s right out.

I like these kinds of consumer review sites, but it helps to bring a little experience and perspective with you. I haven’t found the espresso maker I use now to be as bad as the reviews claim. I’ll have to look a little more . . . .

My son and my wife were watching some NCAA tournament play yesterday but he got bored and went upstairs. No sooner had he left the room than three commercials came on: one for the performance enhancing medication that features a 4 hour erection as a side-effect, and one for an obviously family-oriented film called Hellboy (the trailer is playing over at Apple.com’s Quicktime repository).

* do I want to explain an erection, let alone one lasting 4 hours, to a seven year old? Maybe all the other seven year old boys are getting wood, but I’m OK with him remaining ignorant of that for a little longer.

* what does that say about the folks who watch NCAA hoops? Maybe they need to get off the couch a little more often?

* and I guess I’m just an over-protective parent but is cartoon ultraviolence really family fare? Ya know, sometimes kids can’t always tell the difference between fantasy and reality: while that can be a good thing (Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy strike me as benign aspects of that), crass money-making ventures are not.

<update> Actually, this is a good argument for a PVR to skip commercials entirely. If the broadcasters and their toothless masters, the FCC, won’t take a little responsibility, we can hit them where it hurts: in the pocket.