2007
by Jon Garfunkel
Search Engine Land reports that ArsTechnica reports that the Computer & Communications Industry Association (an organization led by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other software vendors) has created the Defend Fair Use initiatve. They’d like the big media companies to recognize fair use in their copyright statements. One can call it AstroTurfing (though no one will, since people side with the software companies over media companies), but they do raise a good point (even if the slogan “Stand up for your RIGHT to use the content YOU PAY FOR” is illustrated by a couple cuddling– not standing up– on the couch). It’s such a good point, I think YouTube should take heed and listen!
by Jon Garfunkel
Dan Gillmor's Citizen Media blog, which normally just draws in the "citizen media gripes" in the comments like Seth, Delia, and myself (ok, I took a break for several weeks this summer), now has drawn a whole good deal more readers out of the woodwork. The impetus? In a post titled Another Gross Journalistic Failure, Dan offers a jeremiad against the mortage-morphing industry (previously known as the financial sector) and their apparent cheerleaders in the dead-tree business:
by Jon Garfunkel
I work in an industry segment where our software revolves around not one, but two, TLA's (Three-Letter Acronyms). They are BPM (Business Process Management) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). The headline writers in the trade press love them, the names sometimes just function as "Brad and Angelina" due in the celebrity magazines. If there is room in the cosmic plan for Brad and Angelina to stay together, why not BPM and SOA? 2006
by Jon Garfunkel
In honor of the Wikipedia community gathering across the river in Cambridge at the Berkman Center for the Wikimania 2006 conference— or rather, exploiting the occasion that the wiki watchdogs will have their attention elsewhere until Sunday– I edited an entry in Wikipedia. The entry I edited: the one for the word wiki.
by Jon Garfunkel
I thought I’d put together a bit of a teaser here for the upcoming series about the meme of “Shirky’s Power Law” (it’s already at 5,000 words in draft). Three years ago, Clay Shirky and Jason Kottke independently looked at some of the top weblog rankings and concluded that they reflected a power law distributed. Shirky used the data from the “Truth Laid Bear” list, which has been declining in relevance ever since. Kottke, on the other hand, used data from Technorati, which only launched a few months earlier and has been on the ascendence. But being as I’m writing about Shirky, I thought I’d look at the ol’ bear’s list before it goes into permanent hiberation.
by Jon Garfunkel
A guide to the various Worders in the New Media landscape. It’s no longer just Writers and Readers. But one term doesn’t fit all. word ’em up: 2005
by Jon Garfunkel
The following statement appeared in a leaked memo from a Deputy Managing Editor of the most obsessed-about newspaper in the country: "People can use it any way they want to. It has no inherent ethical or moral quality, though it does have its own special power." I invite you to come up with a possible explanation of what "it" is: a) Wikipedia
b) a blog
c) a Colt .45
d) the new Oral-B computerized toothbrush
e) the 82nd Airborne Division
by Jon Garfunkel
I have a confession to make, which may surprise close readers of this space. Earlier this year, I wanted to actually start a blog– you know, write off the cuff like a blubbering fool about any topic that crossed somebody else’s mind. I needed help, some of my curmudgeonly correspondents to help breathe life into a made-up person named Fabio Folio. Nobody wanted to help, and then I discovered that a Google search revealed that “Fab Folio” was the name of a real person in Italy, so I retired the character. I’d like to say that my second choice was “Valerie Flame,” but I can’t find the piece of paper where I wrote that. I bring this up to expand on some points about fake blogs (flogs?).
by Jon Garfunkel
April First re-introduction: Today is my birthday, I am once again a prime-number age after what has been my longest stretch away from being in my prime, six years. (You do the math). My sister just gave me the best gift ever, a mechanical fifty-year calendar paperweight, which may outlast this operating system, if not social security. Also recently the National Review Online has had some problems understanding what content here is self-parody, so I thought I’d help out by republishing a foolish little piece I wrote on January 24th. According to my new paperweight, I spin the wheel and find out that it was a Monday.
Categories: Internet | Accountability
by Jon Garfunkel
There’s been a lot of talk about the “A-List” in the blogosphere– the top bloggers who get all the attention– and this often inspires speculation about parallel B-lists and C-lists. What many people don’t know is that the designations go all the way to Z. Here is the full list:
Categories: Internet | Lexicon
by Jon Garfunkel
I have a case for Walt Whitman being some sort of early blogger. It is the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Leaves of Grass, so no doubt he will be discussed in every school in this country this year. When researching “singer” as one of the main archetypes of today’s bloggers, I came up with that term as I remembered that Whitman was fond of singing as a metaphor for celebrating oneself.
by Jon Garfunkel
This may be the first sonnet I’ve written in fourteen years. It was not expressly for Rebecca MacKinnon’s Valentine’s Day Sonnet Contest, though it’s not too far from her requested themes of “love and blogging.” Instead, it had a more utilitarian purpose. Bob Cox had written a loooong email to a group of a people about the state of blogging, and I wanted to respond to some of the points, and offer a link to my latest piece, yet not bore everybody with a tedious post. Inspired by my recent diet of Leaves of Grass, I started writing, and one rhyme led to another, and this is what I emailed a week ago…
2004
by Jon Garfunkel
For no other reason than Mom wanting to take a break
from preparing and cleaning up.
We drove down to Jersey,
past the silent campuses at New Brunswick and Princeton,
and then up the Delaware, Washington crossed on Christmas Day
in 1776, he had gone to Trenton;
now we went the other way, to Lambertville,
to the Lambertville Station restaurant
where we served ourselves a buffet dinner
Categories: Culture | Familiarity
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