It’s nice to see high tech being used to help with those on low incomes like bus users as well as businesses and the technology elite. I was envious when HP publicised its Real-time Transport Tracker which let Finns know when their next bus was approaching a stop near them via their mobile phone. Now I hear in the North of England a pilot scheme is using a central computer to coordinate the running of a fleet of door to door buses.

The guys behind Moveable Type (the software I use for my weblog) are unveiling their answer to Blogger’s blogspot – a way to have your own weblog without having to install software on a server anywhere. Moreover, according to Ben Hammersley’s sneak preview it will contain “all the new things that have appeared or been requested in the blogging world in the past year”. Hopefully this will mean others don’t have to go through the hassle I have had in order to assemble a full feature set for my weblog, and will encourage more “weblog virgins” to get on board and experiment. Hopefully, too, there will be an easy migration path for existing users!

I also gather that Blogger isn’t standing still and that with the support they’ve had from being bought by Google they have been developing a new version of their stuff too.101 sexalice extreme sexland inamputee sex fuckingsex amature storiespositions sex adultabc definition analysisposnetki porno amaterskicom 23sex Map

Despite the media coverage of weblogs, Pew finds they are barely on the radar of most Americans:

“Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs.
The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like. ”

Pew’s research suggests between one and four percent of Americans publish online depending on what you ask – 1% “Create a web log or “blog” that others can read online” while 4% “Create content for the Internet, such as helping build a web site, creating an online diary, or posting your thoughts online”. That could even just include posting your thoughts to someone else’s messageboard.

To my mind this emphasises the importance of making the weblog and other content publishing tools we have easier and promoting the possibilities they offer over making the tools more sophisticated (though we should be doing both).

Of course making them work multilingually is also going to be key to international adoption, and making them work well offline (so you don’t have to compose while connected).union credit 1stadvantageagricredit iowaunion allegany credit teachers countycredit counseling ammendalice opening credits show videoof tvameritrust credit card financialcsun school accreditation businesscredit union lubbock alliance Map

RealVNC is a handy open source tool that allows people with a wide variety of different kinds of computer to view and control the screen and keyboard of a machine from across the Internet. It does the same kind of job as PC Anywhere but it costs nothing and it is small and very easy to install. Windows XP Professional can do this too but RealVNC works on anything from Windows 95 upward and 39 other operating systems!

I found it very useful when I wanted to help my Dad 3000 miles away sort out computer problems. Thank you AT & T Research and the University of Cambridge!

Some time ago Guy Kewney @ Newswireless.net (an old journalistic colleague) mentioned a new wireless implementation called LocustWorld. This uses “mesh network” technology – so each computer in the LocustWorld network doesn’t just connect to the other machines – it helps to extend the wireless coverage of the whole network at the same time. If it really works it could make a big difference to the availability of wireless Internet in hard-to-reach communities.

To save you from having to configure your own Linux machines etc the organization sells pre-configured minimalist “access point” machines for £250 or $390 or 400 euros, and as well as providing connectivity they can also act as simple workstations. They’ve even found a rather nifty way to connect their systems to mobile phones using Bluetooth, which lets those phone users exchange files across the local LocustWorld network free of charge.

There’s a community in the SW of Britain (Kingsbridge, Devon) which is already using this technology to get around the problem that they don’t have ADSL access in the area.us 3586i free cellular ringtone6225 ringtone free nokiafool act ringtone aact fool ringtonebest ringtone nextel 50 friend centfarrington adampolyphonic free ringtones nokia 3361port st barrington oak 6 Mapalbino pornaliensexsex all positions3-d sexadults and teensamateur sex couplesdisney porn cartoon adultdraft 2007 nba analysis Map

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…)

J Bradford DeLong in the latest Wired magazine tries to shame more people into helping existing projects to digitise books and encourage governments to do the same. Oh, and let’s not forget to start archiving more out of copyright audio and pictures too…movie download pornporn stars moviemovies pretty lesbianplayer pc for quicktime movierare vampire moviesmovies real sexron movie clips jeremyunderwear sapphic moviesshemale movie hardcoreslut movie

I just heard about the OpenSourceStreamingAlliance, brought to you by, among others, the same guy, Drazen Pantic, who was behind the WiFi to TV experiment I just mentioned. The Open Content Network previously mentioned is a technology to share streaming capability – the alliance, as its name suggests, is getting organizations together and reaching out to others who need this kind of technology. Exciting stuff…

Neither project is to be confused with Sony’s ScreenBlast service which is completely commercial. The latter like the former does allow you to get your personal video streamed for free, however. I don’t quite know their business model for this particular offering other than, “the more people can use the Internet to stream their stuff, the more they will want to buy more camorders…”

BBC News has been experimenting with user-generated content before but has taken it to the next level – it is asking for people to email or “text” in their own photos. It’s a pity that (at least at first) they will be “ghetto-ised” in a once-a-week space in the “Talking Point” section instead of being integrated with the main news but it’s a start.

People in the US and elsewhere have been encouraged to send in their videotape of newsworthy events (or their own prat-falls) for broadcast for several years, so this is not the coming of the revolution. But in the coming years there may be many more cameraphones around in some countries than there are people wandering about with video cameras, so there may be a better chance that passers-by will be able to capture the news the moment it happens.

Thanks to Matt Jones for the link.

These researchers say this experiment proves it’s possible – but since it was done on what sounds like a pretty un-congested, high capacity WiFi network and transmitted just eight frames a second at 320×240 resolution to a television I would say the “success” is pretty heavily qualified.

I also want to know more about how complex and/or costly it was to do the last part:

The Internet broadcast was…
transformed to a video signal by a scan converter. … channeled into a video mixer and played in an experimental setting as a regular broadcast stream.

And of course I would really like to see how it looked on TV…

Still I am glad someone is out there trying to accomplish this stuff.

Thanks to Bruce Sterling and boingboing for the link.1 porn guy 2 girlsporn anal allagainst the sex walladult free hairy pornsex 1st teacherteens age 18all teen8teenboy fox Map