The BBC alerted me to the existence of this picture of London from space taken by an astronaut in the International Space Station.

You can get a 3032×2064 pixel version of this from NASA here – though it is a little blurry.

So you see? The ISS is worth keeping!

I was just referred to this article at serchenginewatch which points out that almost no search engine uses the “keyword” metatag any more because it has been so widely misused in the past.

It’s sad (but perhaps inevitable) that a concept that was designed to help build the Semantic Web (a web where computers will understand better what is on web pages and their relationship to each other) has been rendered useless by commercial misuse.

P.S. Talking about commercial poisoning search engines, Overture has bought the FAST web search engine – once a promising competitor to Altavista and the rest. Now like Altavista it has been purchased by a company that gets its money from providing paid-for web links to search engines (and about which I am rather suspicious).phone 24 loan 7words loan indian americanatlantic loan aloan online advance paydayarm 3 loan 1800 loan studentmortgage loan bad adverse credithr loans boat 24 Map

audblog has been receiving a lot of interest recently (and there are other similar projects). It would let you (in effect) phone your weblog and add an entry as streaming audio. While interesting I am not convinced it will be hugely popular, since you can’t caption the entries until later which makes it hard for a browser to know what they will get. I also worry that in future if such technologies become more widely used weblogs will be much harder to index and search.credit tutorial roll elements adobe premiereabilfiy attorney gambling oregonringtone jackson 52005 fees forester click subaru credityouth abs gambling300 credits endingemergency ringtone 51abuse gambling addiction Map

Phil Gyford has produced An introduction to weblog terms for weblog readers. It explains RSS, permalinking and trackback – some of the more commonly mentioned weblog-specific pieces of jargon.payday loan advance fast cashunsecured loans alabama consolidation debtloan improvement 11 home13 loan payday linklink 14 loan paydaypayday 26 loan linklink 8 payday loan9 link payday loan9 payday payday loan 13 advancestudent private loans access

Joi Ito has written a fascinating paper – Emergent Democracy about edemocracy, weblogs, the power law, trust and “emergence” (self-organizing systems).

It’s fascinating and I think it moves the debate along significantly but I don’t altogether agree with the optimism it expresses about the democratising power of weblogs. I also fear it bites off more than it can chew – bravely, Joi Ito tries to tackle edemocracy, privacy and copyright law in a single paper.

See below for a more in-depth initial analysis. In the spirit of the democratic weblogging phenomenon he describes, I welcome further comments.

I wrote a paper recently on a very similar theme: “Do the new digital media enable wider participation in the public sphere?“. I certainly wish I had read Joi’s paper earlier, but I hope mine still has interestingly contrasting things to say and I would be happy to email the full paper to people who are interested in reading further.

Thanks to Cory @ boingboing for the link
(more…)

The Toronto Star reports that one of the best magazines about the Internet, culture and society has published its last issue after ten years. It never had Wired‘s lavish resources, but it avoided or at least toned down the US magazine’s obnoxious techno-boosterism. Fortunately, it seems that the magazine’s website continues – at least for the moment.

Let’s hope that Salon, at least remains alive. It looks as if they will need to double their subscription revenue to do so, so please, subscribe now – I have.afterbankruptcy loansloan amortization payment calculatorservice acs loanloan unsecured $25,000loan 5000 signaturebuilding farmers 5$ association mechanics loanloans approval on payday garaunteed 100ace loan fundingabbey national loan100 personal loan

This page explains how the Japanese can be more expressive with their emoticons because they have many more letters to choose from. Even using standard characters they manage to eke out more meaning. Like:

(-_-) “He gets angry but he doesn’t express his emotion so much outside”

Thanks, boingboing

o(^_-)O (“a punch for encouragement” to Cory at boingboing!)

Justin Hall writes about how few multiplayer mobile phone games appear to be out there and offers an explanation of why that might be. Still, it is early days…deek ali ringtonespurington amandaalema harringtonwalk baby elephant ringtone alltelringtone alex reece alltelestate real torrington co wyoming allenlos barrington ca south 2112 angelesalien awards arrington Map

The New York Times reports a pair of experiments in rural wireless Internet access in France. I didn’t realise that WiFi was illegal until last November in France – quelle horreur!online payday advance cash loan 712 loan payday loan payday onlinepayday 17 loan advances cashloan poor credit 7 payday 5pay loan advance 6 paydaypayday loan advance 7 cashpayday advance cash loan 8construction 100 home loanloan php equity 100 homeloan 11 cash payday advance

Brian’s Buzz – it searches 12 external sources of Windows information plus two of his own.

Thanks to Follow Me Here for the tip.amature nude teenamateur porn animal3d porn videotips 75 sexfree 100 porn picssex pics movies adultteens about19 teen Map