jason pettus [metafeed]

Live from Humboldt Park: Interview with Katherine Hodges

2005-08-20T22:38:00.000-05:00

I'm in Humboldt Park, attending an after-party for the Quimby's event we were all just at, held at the apartment of the event's organizer, Katherine Hodges and her boyfriend Shag. Here, Katherine tells us how she thought tonight's event went - but much more importantly, why they decided to serve mint juleps at tonight's event (which all of us partook of heartily), and where they came up with the recipe.

Live from Wicker Park: Random chat with Kate and Joshua

2005-08-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

I'm still at Quimby's Bookstore, in Wicker Park. Here, we start with the last twenty seconds of a poem my friend Kate is reading to my friend Josh; then, Kate tells us about her new book, while Josh cracks wise. Viva la mint juleps!

Live from Wicker Park: Interview with Jonathan Messinger

2005-08-20T21:10:00.000-05:00

The show at Quimby's is now over, and here's a five-minute interview I did afterwards with Jonathan Messinger, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business." Jonathan is the organizer of the Hideout series of live literary events, plus is the webmaster of This Is Grand (user-submitted true stories about Chicago transit), plus is the Books Editor of Time Out Chicago. Whew! Here, a bit of talk about how he finds the time, how one actually gets a job at a place like Time Out, and how it is that every single person in Chicago's artistic community knows who Jonathan is.

Live from Wicker Park: Smoke break during Quimby's show

2005-08-20T20:47:00.000-05:00

Three and a half minute monologue, recorded on the sidewalk outside of Quimby's Bookstore "soundscape" style, while drinking a mint julep and talking about the podcasts I'm listening to these days and why I'm listening to them. More audio reports later tonight.

Live from Wicker Park: Interview with Jenna of "You Knit WHAT?!"

2005-08-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

I'm at the beginning of my long evening in Wicker Park; first, drinks and appetizers with my friend Jenna, of snarky You Knit WHAT?! fame. Here, a five-minute soundscape tour of Wicker Park's central section: we almost get hit at the North and Damen intersection; Jenna talks about her snarky website a little; we pass the building where "MTV's The Real World: Chicago" was filmed, and we both throw up some snarky comments. Many more audio reports to come tonight!

Field report: Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T13:31:00.000-05:00

Greetings from the red line, where am just heading home after attending my first Chicago Small Business Expo, down at the campus of the University of Illinois - Chicago. And what an event it was, man! Held at least once a year, the Expo is in fact a free event, open to any random Chicago citizen who wants to register, mainly sponsored and put together by the Office of the Treasurer.

Such events, as some of you already know, can sometimes be a mixed bag; I've attended such free "community" events before, both here and in other cities, where there ended up not being much worth seeing beyond half a dozen folding tables and a bunch of bored-looking interns. The Expo I just attended, however, was quite different - it was held at UIC's basketball stadium in this case, and in fact needed that kind of room, with just hundreds upon hundreds of vendors and government agencies in attendance. I met up with banks today, small-business advocacy groups, third-party payroll companies, marketing and advertising agencies, independent auditors - just about any business you could imagine that has something to do with small business and entrepreneurship. Plus the Expo also sponsored a whole series of free workshops throughout the day as well, several of which I attended and found most informative.

So what was the most interesting experience of the day? Well, that would probably be the presentation by Scott Bruner, director of Chicago's brand-new Department of Business Affairs and Licensing. This is an agency that was just created last year for the first time, and will officially be opening their doors for business come October 1; the whole idea (spurred by Mayor Daley, of course) is to consolidate all the different licensing processes the city requires for businesses under one roof, with one shared staff that can help walk you through the whole process. So, if you need a liquor license, an outdoor-seating license, a food-handling license, a live-entertainment license, come October you'll be able to go to one office and apply for them all (compared to before, when you would have to visit three or four different agencies to get all the relevant applications), and also have one government employee who's familiar with all the different licenses and can help you streamline the application process. (In fact, I specifically asked, and this new department is promising to get the process of procuring a Chicago liquor license down to 45 days, from the two years or so it takes currently.) And here's even more intriguing news - according to Bruner, come this point a year from now, you will be able to apply online for just about every license the city grants. Well, hooray for government employees who embrace the web, man!

Anyway, more details on Monday at my personal journal; I just wanted to drop a line now and let you know how everything went, and to thank the city for putting together such a great, informative event. Thanks, Chicago Office of the Treasurer!

Audio report: Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

I'm attending the Chicago Small Business Expo today, down at the UIC Pavilion. Here, a four-minute audio report on how the day is going, recorded on my cellphone as I was standing in line for lunch. Written report later today!

Live from the Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live today from the Chicago Small Business Expo, down at UIC. Here, waiting for the next workshop to start, this one on the various financing options available to small-business wannabes like myself.

Live from the Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting today from the Chicago Small Business Expo, down at UIC; here, just killing a few minutes before the next workshop. Man, would you just look at how nice the UIC student center is? We didn't have anything nearly as nice at the U of Missouri, where I went to school.

Live from the Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T08:57:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live today from the Chicago Small Business Expo, at the UIC Pavilion. Look at how much crap's already been handed to me! And it ain't even 9:00 yet!

Live from the Chicago Small Business Expo

2005-08-12T08:14:00.000-05:00

I just got to the Small Business Expo at the UIC Pavilion, where I will be filing photos throughout the day. Full written report coming tonight!

Help create and implement new "microformats" for the web

2005-07-25T13:18:00.001-05:00

The Wharton Business School blog has a fascinating interview up right now with Tantek Celik, senior technologist at Technorati and one of the co-founders of a new website called Microformats.org. (I'm misspelling Mr. Celik's name, by the way, and for that I apologize - damn those international characters!) And what are microformats, you might ask? Well, they're an attempt to add what's called "semantic" information to websites, without having to get rid of the existing structure or coding altogether. And what exactly is semantic information, you might ask? Well, that's an attempt to present certain types of information so that it can be of more use besides just to human eyeballs that are reading it on a computer screen. Think of an existing standard like vCard to get an idea of what I'm talking about; such a standard not only displays a person's contact information on a computer screen, so that you as a human can read it with your eyes, but also as a downloadable data packet, so that anyone using address-book software with vCard capabilities (like Microsoft's Outlook and Hotmail, for example) can simply click on the link and have that contact info automatically added to their particular address book, without having to type it in themselves. There are all kinds of semantic information like this, according to Celik, that could be of immense help to the average user - events that could be added to your calendar with one click, book information embedded within a review that could be added to your bookstore shopping cart, etc.

Granted, this is not exactly a new idea, not to mention that Tim Berners-Lee (the guy who invented the World Wide Web in the first place) has been hard at work for years on inventing "the Semantic Web," a brand-new technology that would do exactly what we're talking about. What's different about microformats, though, is that the emphasis is on using the technology that already exists (like supplementary tags in XHTML, for example) to present this information, both so that such formats can be immediately adopted by the entire planet, and so that amateur programmers like you and me can use such formats without too much of a learning curve. Anyway, the new website hopes to create a community of such microformat enthusiasts, both commercial developers and simple bloggers, in an attempt to develop new microformats without the formalized committee-and-report system you see at places like the W3C. (For example, already on board are the programmers at Upcoming.org, one of the more popular calendar services out there for hipsters and artists.) It's one of the more intriguing new web projects I've heard of in a long time, and definitely worth looking into more. (Thanks to the TP Wire Service for pointing this out.)

"Happy News" is looking for your stories

2005-07-25T13:16:00.002-05:00

There's a new Austin-based website online called HappyNews.com, which is exactly what its name suggests: a real news site, full of real stories, but ones reporting only positive things going on in the world these days. (And my five-word editorial: "Man, what a great idea.") Anyway, the site is actively seeking stories from citizen journalists right now - which could be a great opportunity for artists, philanthropies and entrepreneurs, all of whom are having an incredibly tough time these days getting noticed by those in the mainstream media. Know of a charity that recently got a big grant? Know of an artist who recently got a big break? Write it up and submit it! (Thanks to BusinessWeek for pointing this out.)

DIY MBA

2005-07-25T13:16:00.001-05:00

Are you thinking of opening a new small business (like me), but don't have the time or money to actually attend business school (like...er, me)? Why not just teach yourself? Even most MBA holders will admit that the majority of things they learned in business school can be learned by reading books instead - and in the age we live in, blogs, wikis and discussion boards can provide a cheap substitute for the interaction a typical business student might have with their fellow students and professors. (Now, granted, a self-taught MBA doesn't hold nearly the cache of, say, having Harvard Business School listed on your resume. But we're talking here specifically about small-business owners who want to learn the things that will allow them to actually open and run a small business - not 24-year-olds who are looking to impress potential employers at job interviews.) Anyway, a guy named Josh Kaufman has been noodling for the last six months with what he calls the "Personal MBA 40," a list of what he considers the most important 40 books in existence for such "DIY MBAers" to read, and finally has his official list finished and online. (Regular readers will of course know that this is exactly what I'm doing myself these days [that is, giving myself a self-taught business degree], and I was tickled to see that I've actually read seven books from the list on my own, before actually seeing the list itself.) This is just step one for Mr. Kaufman, frankly; he's also started up a Personal MBA website, which needless to say I will be watching this year with great interest. (Thanks to Slacker Manager for pointing this out; and if I haven't mentioned this recently, Brandon, I love your blog!)

It cannot be denied: Beth Lisick is an "alterna-MILF"

2005-07-25T13:16:00.000-05:00

My good friend Beth Lisick, an extraordinary author and musician out of San Francisco, has a new book out called Everybody into the Pool, which was recently reviewed by Jarret Keene at Las Vegas City Life. Now, such a thing would normally not warrant a mention here at my blog - but Mr. Keene also coined a new phrase to describe Beth, "alterna-MILF," which had me laughing so damn hard that I simply had to mention it. "MILF," for those who don't know, is a term from the porn industry which stands for "Moms I'd Like to F**k;" and man, if Beth isn't the textbook example of an "alterna-MILF," I don't know who is. Needless to say, you should go out and buy the book right this second! (Many thanks to Bookslut.com for bringing this to my attention.)

BBC Mobile updated

2005-07-25T13:15:00.003-05:00

For any mobile-device owners who haven't yet heard, the BBC recently updated the look and feel of their mobile edition. For many of us (myself included), this long-running and award-winning site was the first regular destination for us when we originally got our PDAs, so I'm glad to see that their commitment to a smart, cutting-edge experience for mobile readers is still so strong. (Thanks to PalmAddict for pointing this out.)

PR exec: "Let's stop writing press releases"

2005-07-25T13:15:00.002-05:00

Public-relations provocateur Amy Gahran is suggesting something interesting at her blog these days - that PR execs should simply do away with press releases altogether. For those who don't know, a "press release" is a highly formalized document, in use in the business world for decades upon decades now, in which a company basically writes a fake news story trumpeting some new feature or product by that company; that document then gets shipped out like chemical warfare to thousands upon thousands of media outlets, in the hopes that they will run the release as an actual news item. The problem, of course, is that media outlets receive thousands upon thousands of these press releases on a monthly basis, most of which can and rightly should be ignored by them, leading to the power of any one particular release being diminished profoundly in the times we now live. Ms. Gahran argues that the standardized press release has simply become a dead format in our modern times, and that PR execs are basically wasting a lot of time and money sending them out anymore; she encourages the PR industry to instead do what a lot of business people are being urged to do these days, which is to build a legitimate relationship with the media outlets they are trying to manipulate. It's an intiguing concept to be sure, and worth your attention if you are a fellow business person. (Thanks to Steve Rubel for bringing this to my attention.)

The latest from MAKE

2005-07-25T13:15:00.001-05:00

As is typical here at [metafeed], MAKE magazine recently had a whole bunch of items I felt like mentioning; so, I'm running them all as one uber-entry, to save both you and me some time and trouble. Click the appropriate links below to learn...

...how to change the color of your glowy little Apple logo on the front of your iBook;

...how to turn your Gmail account into an online hard drive, accessible both on the web and directly from your home computer via proprietary software;

...more about the world's first camera tripod specifically for cellphones;

...and more about a rare Apple I computer (one of only 150 left in existence) that recently went on sale at eBay. Only $20,000, people!

A long-copy case study: Moleskine notebooks

2005-07-25T13:15:00.000-05:00

++
One of the new advertising theories floating around that is starting to get attention these days concerns the idea of "copy," or the text found in ads; in short, the theory says that extremely long, informative and intelligent copy can actually be a lot more effective than anyone in the industry had previously thought. Well, I just came across an excellent example of this last weekend, when I ended up buying a Moleskine notebook as part of implementing the "Getting Things Done" time-management system in my life. (Yes, dear readers, I have become one of those GTD freaks. God help us all.) Along with the actual notebook, Moleskine also inserts a rather long history of the product into the packaging; I'm going to retype it in its entirety here, because you need to read the whole thing to understand the point I want to make:

"Moleskine is the legendary notebook, used by European artists and thinkers for the past two centuries, from Van Gogh to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin. This trusty, pocket-size travel companion held sketches, notes, stories and ideas before they were turned into famous images or pages of beloved books.

"Originally produced by small French bookbinders who supplied the Parisian stationary shops frequented by the international avant-garde, by the end of the twentieth century the Moleskine notebook was no longer available. In 1986, the last manufacturer of Moleskine, a family operation in Tours, closed its shutters forever. "Le vrai Moleskine n'est plus" were the lapidary words of the owner of the stationary shop in Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie where Chatwin stocked up on the notebooks. The English writer had ordered a hundred of them before leaving for Australia: he bought up all the Moleskines that he could find, but they were not enough.

"In 1998, a small Milanese publisher bought Moleskine back again. As the self-effacing keeper of an extraordinary tradition, Moleskine once again began to travel the globe. To capture reality on the move, pin down details, impress upon paper unique aspects of experience: Moleskine is a reservoir of ideas and feelings, a battery that stores discoveries and perceptions, and whose energy can be tapped over time.

"The legendary black notebook is once again being passed from one pocket to the next; with its various different page styles it accompanies the creative professions and the imagination of our time. The adventure of Moleskine continues, and its still-blank pages will tell the rest."

Man, talk about some of the most exciting ad copy I've read in my entire life! I mean, just look at all the brand-centric lessons these four paragraphs convey to the customer: that you are joining a long line of famous artists and intellectuals by using a Moleskine yourself; that Moleskines are worth the few extra dollars you pay (US$10 for me, for example, compared to $6 or 7 for their competitors), because such extra care is taken to make them sturdy and long-lasting; that you of course want your Moleskine to be sturdy and long-lasting, because you are of course a brilliant thinker yourself whose thoughts deserve to be stored in permanent form; that Moleskines are still conservative enough to be used by business professionals in an office environment without getting laughed out of the room; that there are certain things in life (travel notes, poetry, sketches, random thoughts) that are simply captured better in an old-fashioned paper notebook than all these newfangled electronic devices; that it's okay for you to get obsessive over your Moleskine, because artists a lot more famous than you have already done so themselves; and that Modo e Modo (the new owners of Moleskine) deserve to be celebrated, for providing the "public service" of saving a much-loved brand.

This, I think, is a perfect example of this long-copy theory that is gaining popularity; and perhaps most importantly, the Moleskine people understand that this long copy is entirely appropriate in this situation, because Moleskine purchasers by their very definition are profoundly more literate and intellectual than the average world citizen (else why are you spending ten bucks on a notebook in the first place?). You should keep an eye out yourself during future purchases in your life; you never know when some excellent long copy might be popping up.

Warning: Chicago cops targeting Lakeview bicyclists

2005-07-20T12:24:00.001-05:00

Readers of my personal journal will of course know that I recently became Chicago's newest bicyclist, and am so far really enjoying it. Regular readers will also know that in Chicago, bicyclists are considered motorists in the eyes of the law - with the same rights as any car-based motorist, but also responsible for the same traffic rules. Well, I guess not enough bicyclists in the yuppie-friendly Lakeview neighborhood seem to understand this, because the Chicago police have started pulling them over for such things as failing to stop at stop signs and traffic signals. They're just letting people off with a warning right now, but starting next month they'll be issuing $75 tickets, just like a car driver would get for breaking such laws.

And I say it's about time, man! If bicyclists want to be respected by all those on the road driving those three-ton killing machines known as cars, they have to adhere to the same rules those car-drivers are required to adhere to as well. And as long as we have bicyclists zooming through red lights, riding on the wrong sides of streets, riding on sidewalks, and not yielding to pedestrians (things I see every single day as a fellow bicyclist in Lakeview), car drivers are never going to respect the rights of bicyclists while on city streets. If you are a bicyclist in Chicago, you owe it to yourself to read up on the legal responsibilites you have as such. And if you're not going to do it voluntarily, it looks like the cops are going to do it for you anyway. (Thanks to Chicagoist.com for bringing this to my attention.)

Medical book: "Some entrepreneurs just can't help being a**holes"

2005-07-20T12:24:00.000-05:00

There's a new book out called The Hypomanic Edge, by John Gartner, a professor at John Hopkins Medical School, which is positing a pretty interesting theory: that most entrepreneurs and most self-proclaimed religious prophets actually share the same personalities, and maybe even the same genetic structure. And this is both good and bad, according to him:

GOOD: Both have grandiose visions and high energy; both are risk-taking and impulsive; both tend to get manic about their single-mindedness, and are able to convince others to share their vision. (And I love this quote from the author: "Hypomanics don't think outside the box, because they don't even see the box.")

BAD: Both tend not to listen to others' suggestions; both are impatient with other people; both are prone to making disparaging remarks about others without realizing that those remarks will hurt people's feelings. (In other words, their brains are hard-wired to be a**holes.)

The book also gives some tips for hypomanics on how to better do their managerial jobs within such an entrepreneurial environment, like listening to others, deliberately slowing down the decision-making process, and not assuming your company will be an instant success. Anyway, it sounds like a really intriguing read, especially to such admittedly borderline-hypomanics like myself; I'm going to check it out in more detail the next time I'm at the bookstore. (Thanks to Fortune Small Business for pointing this out.)

Chicagoans, come out and support city WiFi plans

2005-07-19T14:18:00.001-05:00

Did you know that Chicago is considering offering free WiFi to all three million of its citizens? There's a plan on the books right now, in fact, for the city to invest in over 5,000 WiFi broadcasters, one for every streetcorner in the city, all of it paid for and maintained with government money. The plan was first announced a few months ago, and the committee in charge of the project has finally moved to the public-hearing stage; the first will be at Truman College (1145 W Wilson), room 3641, this Thursday (the 21st) at 6:30 pm. If you'd like to speak at it, you can call Aileen Kim at 773.736.5594. I'll be there myself, and will be posting another entry that night on how it went; if any of you are going to be there and would like to meet up after the hearing, just drop me a line at ilikejason at hotmail dot com. (Thanks to Gapers Block for bringing this to my attention.)

Fischer's "Chess960" starts getting some respect

2005-07-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

There's a pretty fascinating article up at Wired right now, about a new game chess legend Bobby Fischer has invented called "Chess960." (Well, actually he invented it in 1996; the article is about how the game is finally starting to get some respect among the rest of the chess world.) It works almost exactly the same as normal chess, except for one profound change - instead of the pieces being lined up in their traditional order at the beginning of a game (rook, then knight, then bishop, etc), they are instead lined up randomly. (The name of the game comes from the fact that there are 960 different ways to line up the pieces randomly.) The reason for the random lineup is simple - because Fischer believes that chess has become much more these days about memorizing opening moves, than utilizing a natural sense of creativity and intelligence. With the pieces appearing in a random order at the beginning of each game, all those giant "strategies for opening moves" books instantly become obsolete, giving even part-time amateurs a shot of competing against seasoned professionals.

Hey, sounds good to me! Anyone want to play a game soon?

"Fast Company" wants your contributions

2005-07-19T14:17:00.001-05:00

Business magazine Fast Company's blog is about to celebrate its second anniversary (on August 8th and 9th, to be specific), and the editors are once again holding what they call a "BlogJam," where the blog's readers themselves contribute stories from their own lives concerning leadership, innovation, and other related topics. Last year's Jam netted over 100 entries, and they're hoping to do even better this year; you can click here to learn all the details yourself.

The latest blog trend - group suicide

2005-07-19T14:17:00.000-05:00

The Christian Science Monitor has this utterly fascinating story up right now, concerning the latest hot new online trend in Japan - blogs that coordinate group suicides among strangers who don't want to die alone. I had no idea before reading the article, but it turns out that suicide is becoming a huge problem in that country, with more than 30,000 reported cases every year for seven years straight now - a per-capita rate more than twice of America's, and the highest level of any industrialized country on the planet. And according to the article, just in the first three months of 2005 alone there were twenty confirmed cases of group suicide organized via blog, resulting in 54 deaths.

So what exactly do we call this new class of blogs? "Anti-social networking?"

Live from Chicago and Halsted: Drunken conversation with Lisa and Tom

2005-07-02T22:43:00.000-05:00

Drunken conversation with my friends Tom Henkey and Lisa Hemminger! Not Safe For Work! Much, much cursing! Many, many smarta** remarks! Contest between Lisa and me over how many women of the wrong sexual orientation we've slept with! Enjoy, but be forewarned!

Get yer fake Flickr press pass!

2005-06-30T10:34:00.003-05:00

As pointed out at the Flickr corporate blog: Make your own (unofficial) Flickr photographer badge. Yes, it's utterly pointless; yes, I made one too!

London city government embraces SMS

2005-06-30T10:34:00.002-05:00

The Greater London Authority, which I think is the British equivalent of the American "Mayor's Office," recently announced a new SMS-based service for those in the city. Simply send an instant message to "MAYOR" from your phone to get all kinds of things returned to you from the local government - tourist info, transit schedules, even a chance to buy discounted same-day theatre tickets online. Brilliant! Why aren't more American cities doing something similar as well? (Thanks to Adverblog for pointing this out.)

Veen: "Please make fun of my free electronic book"

2005-06-30T10:34:00.001-05:00

To mark its fifth anniversary, web designer Jeffrey Veen (known in the Pettus household as "The Man Who Can Do No Wrong") is releasing a free electronic download of his seminal book The Art and Science of Web Design, which you can find at his site. And why is he releasing the book for free after all this time? Because it's outdated, to put it simply, and he no longer feels that it's relevant as an active web-design guide for sale at bookstores, but rather as a historical document. And to that end, he's also inviting readers to share their historical thoughts concerning the book, which he will be reprinting in his blog. Have his predictions from five years ago come true, in your opinion? Does his obsession in that book with dial-up-friendly sites seem quaint to you now, or should we still be worrying about the conceptual issues that come with such bandwidth-consciousness? This is a great chance for you to converse about web design with what I consider one of the masters of the medium, and to read for free what I consider a still highly relevant design guide; don't let the opportunity pass you up!

Consumerism defined - and it ain't pretty

2005-06-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

My friend Greg Gillam recently traveled the Illinois length of historic Route 66, and wrote a blog entry detailing the experience. The essay itself is its usual fascinating stuff, just what I would expect from Greg, but he also has a line in it that really made me stop and think:

"...[T]he heart of consumerism is a fixed state of potential pleasure which never arrives."

Jeez, Greg, did you knick this from somewhere or come up with it yourself? In either case it's brilliant, and suddenly made me realize exacty why I'm so uncomfortable anymore when I visit the St. Louis suburb where I grew up - because millions of people there are doing exactly what Greg just described, sitting around and buying more and more useless crap, waiting for the pleasure they were promised which never arrives, falling for the promise again every time a new piece of crap goes on sale.

Don't get me wrong - I believe in capitalism, and I believe in a free-market society, and I believe in both not only as economic theories but as actual lifestyles. But there's a difference between capitalism and consumerism: in the former it's the customer in charge, and the person with cash in their wallet who is dictating the business practices of the company in question; while in the latter the customer is a voluntary slave, unwilling to use their intelligence to question the company with whom they're interacting, instead simply buying the things the company tells them to buy and hoping that it'll somehow make a difference in their lives. My advice to you - be a capitalist, not a consumerist. Believe me, you'll be a much happier person as a result.

Surprise - insanely expensive celebrity-laced ads might not be that effective anymore

2005-06-30T10:33:00.001-05:00

Well, it's official - after tens of millions of dollars and months' worth of controversy, the Paris Hilton ads for Carl's Jr finally started running a few weeks ago...and resulted in a whopping two-percent rise in sales for Carl's Jr nationwide. Still want to argue that traditional advertising is effective in our modern age? Go right ahead - I'll be over there with my buddies, getting an actual decent return on investment for our marketing dollars, and laughing at all those poor dumb bastards at Carl's who I'm sure are scratching their heads this very moment, wondering where they went so wrong. (Thanks to Joseph Jaffe for pointing this out.)

Odeo finally goes live, becomes immediately irrelevant

2005-06-30T10:33:00.000-05:00

Man, talk about your bad timing: Earlier this week, Evan Williams' new Odeo finally went live to its beta testers (myself being one of them), a new service which promises to streamline and simplify the podcast-subscription process. Then 24 hours later Apple releases the newest version of iTunes, the program almost all iPod owners already own (and which requires no separate registration, like Odeo does), which now allows you to subscribe to podcasts as easily as adding a blog feed to your RSS reader. Oops! I haven't actually gotten to try Odeo yet, by the way, because I don't actually own an MP3 player; I signed up in order to try out their podcast creation tools, including an option for recording podcasts through your cellphone, much like Audioblogger currently works. But alas, Odeo doesn't actually have any of the creation tools invented yet...and they don't even have an estimated completion date to give people either, who write in and ask about it.

Odeo, I love you guys and all, but may I kindly suggest you get on the stick a bit? At the rate that podcast technology is changing these days, you may just find yourself completely obsolete before the company is even open to the public.

Live from the MCA "Tuesday on the Terrace"

2005-06-28T18:34:00.000-05:00

I'm down at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, one block east of Michigan), enjoying the "Tuesdays on the Terrace" summer series. Drinks aren't free like I guessed, but the ambience is; and at $4 Goose Islands, most can afford a few hours of the back patio. Hot nerdies abound! Yeehaw!

Live from Quimby's: Playing catch-up with Katherine Hodges

2005-06-27T19:17:00.000-05:00

While at the "Secret Lives of Librarians" show at Quimby's I ran into my old friend Katherine Hodges. Here, a four-minute audio interview on her new zine reading series at MoJoe's, and the show she'll be hosting at Quimby's herself later this summer.

"Here, kid, read 'The Story of O' while you're at it"

2005-06-24T12:10:00.001-05:00

A librarian in Italy was found not guilty last week of giving obscene material to a minor. The fracas apparently all started when the librarian lent the Virginie Despentes novel Baise-Moi out to a 14-year-old in the neighborhood; since the book was on a government-written list of recommended novels, apparently she didn't really think that much about it.

Now, I've never read the novel Baise-Moi myself, but I did see the movie when it came out five years ago, and can definitively state that it might be the most inappropriate story for kids I've ever come across in my life; the entire plot basically consists of two female sexual-molestation victims who just lose it one day and decide to go on a cross-country sex and killing spree, participating in orgies and then slaughtering all the guys afterwards, with absolutely no justification given besides that they're men and that all men deserve to be slaughtered like the rutting animals they are. I mean, it's a great movie, don't get me wrong, and it's a shame I think that it showed in so few theatres in the US (I think the grand total was something like five or six in the whole country); but still, I'll be the first to admit that I wouldn't hand that story over to a 14-year-old if my life depended on it. I mean, jeez, even the title itself is French for either "rape me" or "f**k me," depending on how you translate it.

So the question in my mind, I guess, is not whether it was fair or not to sue the librarian for lending the book, but rather: Why the hell is the Italian government recommending this book to teens in the first place? Just what's going on over there in that crazy ol' EU, anyway? Coming next year: state-sponsored Polish orgies! (Thanks as always to Bookslut for pointing this out.)

Blogger finally allows image uploads

2005-06-24T12:10:00.000-05:00

Blogger.com announced today that Blogspot owners can now finally upload images to their blogs. This would normally be impressive, except for the fact that SixApart (makers of MovableType, Typepad and LiveJournal) have had this function as part of their services for years. Still, though, it's awfully good news for all us Blogspot users.

And that's...the REST of the genocide!

2005-06-24T12:09:00.001-05:00

Well, for years we've been waiting for Paul Harvey to lose his mind, and he finally has; on his radio broadcast yesterday, the octogenarian commentator urged the US government to simply drop a hail of nuclear bombs on the entire Middle East, ending the so-called "war on terrorism" once and for all. And the saddest part is that I'm not making this up; check out this entry by Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn to read the actual transcript, which unbelievably is even more offensive than the summary I just gave. (For example, he actually defends the Pilgrims giving blankets to Native Americans that were tainted with smallpox, arguing that biological warfare is a perfectly acceptable solution in life when you want something that someone else has. Seriously, man, you simply have to read this transcript to believe it.)

The deathwatch for AOL officially begins today

2005-06-24T12:09:00.000-05:00

Remember when America Online was the most popular internet service provider on the planet? Remember when they made billions of dollars exploiting their customers' ignorance concerning other web-access alternatives? Remember when they choked up the US postal system with millions upon millions of free CD-ROMs, paid for by the escalating fees forced upon those poor, dumb, son-of-a-b***h customers? Remember when they refused to comply to any standards the W3C proposed, because they were AOL and they didn't have to do anything anyone else said?

Yeah, neither do I.

Paypal releases API

2005-06-23T11:41:00.002-05:00

Here's interesting news - Paypal has released an Application Programming Interface (API) for their services, to give companies more power concerning payments. An API, for those who don't know, is basically a set of instructions that a company will give out for free to whoever wants it, that tells outsiders how to directly connect to and manipulate the data from that company without using the company's already-existing interface. In Paypal's case, this mostly means that you will now be able to verify credit cards right from your site, using this new API, without your customer knowing that it's Paypal powering the whole thing; it will also streamline the purchase process, according to the company, and also finally let companies accept Paypal payments over the phone, fax, or in person. Hmm, hmm, hmm... (Thanks to "E-Commerce Guide" for pointing this out.)

Chicago slacker wins Miss Exotic World

2005-06-23T11:41:00.001-05:00

This is a little late, but I wanted to congratulate my friend Toots L'Amour, co-founder of the Lavendar Cabaret burlesque troupe, on winning this year's Miss Exotic World competition out in California. If you've never seen the ladies of the Lavendar Cabaret in action...then by God, you need to! (Thanks to Gapers Block for bringing this to my attention; and more specifically, thanks to my friend B. for bringing it to their attention.)

Mobile technology roundup

2005-06-23T11:41:00.000-05:00

There's been a number of items in the news the last couple of weeks that should interest all us geeky mobile users; here's a roundup of the items I found most interesting.

--OP3, a software company out of the Netherlands, recently released a new technology that they're calling ShotCode. The idea is that companies can produce special barcodes using the technology that they can display either in their store or on the products themselves; a mobile user who also has the ShotCode technology loaded on their device can then take a picture of the barcode with their cellphone camera, and get immediately linked to a unique URL on their mobile browser that tells them more about what they're looking at. An interesting technology, I think, although it needs a lot of work still to become viable...like inventing versions of ShotCode for all those hundreds of types of phones out there, for example. (Thanks to Threadwatch for pointing this out.)

--Stephen Baker is writing an article on moblogging for BusinessWeek, and has put his notes concerning it up on the web, detailing the frustrations he's had with the various services. He comes pretty much to the same conclusion I have in the past: with Blogger and Flickr it's easy to send multimedia files to your blog from your mobile device, MovableType and Typepad not so much.

--And finally, Google's introduced a new search service for mobile devices, which links just to sites that are mobile-friendly. I'd sure like to know how they determine if a site is mobile-friendly or not; otherwise it works perfectly, just like every other damn thing Google makes.

Test your site on a Mac...from a Windows computer

2005-06-23T11:40:00.004-05:00

Are you a Windows owner who has always wanted to see what your website looks like on Mac screens? Wish no longer - simply type in your URL at this site and get screenshots right on the webpage of what it's looking like in all the major Mac browsers. (Thanks as always to Threadwatch for pointing this out.)

Professional-quality digital SLR cameras for $750

2005-06-23T11:40:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has a great review up right now of the new Nikon D50, the latest in their "D" line of professional digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras, which is going to sell for an unbelievable US$750 (approx. 500 euros, 375 pounds). The D50 gives you everything a traditional film-based SLR camera does - swappable lenses, manual adjustment of shutter and f-stop, crystal-clear photos - but of course is all digital, meaning that you can send the photos straight to your computer without the need of a photo lab. Plus the thing powers up in two-tenths of a second, has no lag time between shutter press and the actual taking of the photo, and can shoot two thousand photos off a single set of batteries. Man, what will the modern world think of next?

Kodak halts production of black-and-white photo paper

2005-06-23T11:40:00.002-05:00

Mark the date: Kodak has announced that in 2006, they're going to stop manufacturing black-and-white photographic paper. I mean, sure, all us silver-nitrate veterans know that Kodak's b/w paper was crap anyway; anyone worth their salt uses Ilford paper instead, a not very well-kept secret. But still. (Thanks to Gizmodo for pointing this out.)

Chicago gets a tiki festival - and it's about time

2005-06-23T11:40:00.001-05:00

It's the news we've been waiting years to hear - Chicago is finally getting a tiki-music festival! (Okay, so it's true - sarcasm doesn't translate well on the printed page.) It's called Exotica 2005 - Luau by the Lake, and is being presented by Tiki Quest magazine (Tiki Quest magazine?!) and Eddie Angel of the band Los Straightjackets. Events take place from July 7 to 10 in a variety of locations; the only one in the city is Trader Vic's down in the Loop. If you've never been to Trader Vic's before, by the way, you owe it to yourself to go at least once, just to say that you've had the experience. A-lo-ha... Oy. (Thanks to Gapers Block for pointing this out.)

Get RSS feeds delivered via email

2005-06-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

Here's an idea that's just been waiting to happen - Rmail, a service which does nothing but push an RSS feed to your email account instead of a news reader. The process couldn't be simpler - just go to their home page, type in the feed you want, type in your email address, and click "subscribe;" unsubscription links appear in each subsequent email you receive. And even better, Rmail provides a piece of Javascript code that lets blog owners run an automated "notification list" at their sites; in reality, of course, it's just your RSS feed being sent to peoples' email addresses, but the Javascript code lets you run a little subscription box right on your blog page itself, and lets your readers automatically subscribe without having to jump over to the Rmail page. I've been using the option myself for about a week now, on both my personal journal and my social-networking one, and can report that it works flawlessly; I highly recommend it to others as well. (Thanks very much to Steve Rubel for pointing this out.)

2005-06-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

Another test of mo:Blog 2.0

Yet another test of mo:Blog 2.0 for the palmOne Treo, which supposedly fixes the notorious title-field bug found in the Blogger API. Let's see if it works correctly this time.

Live from Nextfest: I've been fired!

2005-06-22T07:38:00.000-05:00

What a surprise - somebody from Nextfest actually read my journal yesterday, and I've been asked not to show up again. You can read all about it today over at my main blog, if you want.

Live from Nextfest: Prep, day 1 (photo 3)

2005-06-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live this week from Nextfest (nextfest.net), where I am volunteering in exchange for a free ticket. Here, a shot from day 1 of the fest's prep, showing the exhibition slowly going up.

Live from Nextfest: Prep, day 1 (photo 2)

2005-06-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live this week from Nextfest (nextfest.net), where I am volunteering in exchange for a free ticket. Here, a shot from day 1 of the fest's prep, showing the exhibition slowly going up.

Live from Nextfest: Prep, day 1

2005-06-21T11:09:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live this week from Nextfest (nextfest.net), where I am volunteering in exchange for a free ticket. Here, a shot from day 1 of the fest's prep, showing the exhibition slowly going up.

Live from Nextfest: Gaggle of volunteers

2005-06-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

I'm reporting live this week from Nextfest (nextfest.net), where I am volunteering in exchange for a free ticket. Here, my fellow volunteers. Note how I'm the only volunteer not actually in high school - but more on this later today at my main journal (jasonpettus.com/blog).

Live from Nextfest: Ready to work

2005-06-21T10:05:00.000-05:00

<img src="http://www.jasonpettus.com/jpil/archives/img/checkin.jpg" border="0" width="240" height="180">
I'm reporting live this week from <a href="http://www.nextfest.net">Nextfest</a>. I just checked in, in fact, for my first day of volunteer work - here's their check-in table down at Navy Pier.

Live from Nextfest: Ready to work

2005-06-21T09:58:00.000-05:00

2005-06-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

Test of mo:Blog 2.0Test of mo:Blog 2.0
This is a test of the new mo:Blog 2.0, which supposedly will finally fix the title-field bug caused by Blogger.com's outdated API. Let's see what happens.

Web development notes - Rounded corners in Mozilla

2005-06-10T07:51:00.000-05:00

Here's another cool thing I recently discovered while making the MovableType templates for the new version of my personal journal I'm developing right now; one piece of supplemental code in your CSS document will cause Mozilla-based browsers (like Firefox and Netscape 8) to display a box of text with rounded corners. I'm attaching a few screenshots of it in action, for those who are not currently on a Mozilla-based browser themselves. (And really, if you haven't switched to Firefox yet, you've got no one to blame but yourself.) Achieving the effect couldn't be easier; simply add the following attribute to the CSS specification of any element you want to affect:

{ -moz-border-radius: 20px; }

...using whatever number and unit of measurement you wish, of course. All other browsers will ignore this attribute and simply display the text as it would normally look; Mozilla-based browsers, though, will recognize the attribute, and display the rounded corners like seen in the screenshots above. This can also be individually defined for each corner, like so:

{ -moz-border-radius: 0px 20px 0px 0px; }

...to get some of the cool effects like you see above, where only one corner out of the four has been rounded. (The numbers affect the corners in the following order: top-left, top-right, bottom-right and bottom-left.)

Anyway, nothing too earth-shattering here, but definitely a cool option for presenting something special to users of Mozilla-based browsers. Happy curving!

Web development notes: Using access keys effectively on mobile-friendly pages

2005-06-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

Regular readers know by now that I'm currently developing my first MovableType templates, in preparation for finally moving my personal journal off my Geocities page this summer (where it's been for six years) and over to my main site, where I'll finally be able to automate the entry and posting process (and also be able to send updates for the first time from my palmOne Treo, like what I can currently do with this Blogspot page). One of the new templates I'm designing is one for mobile devices, which should help quite a bit for all you poor souls out there like me who are doing all their web surfing through a Palm, PocketPC or Blackberry; one of the things I just successfully implemented and tested is a pervasive use of "access keys" in the mobile version, which I thought I'd explain how to do here, for others who would like to take advantage of this truly powerful option for mobile-friendly sites.

The "accesskey" attribute for HTML was originally designed years ago, to let people designate keyboard shortcuts on a web page for users of desktop computers. Basically, the attribute can be used on any anchor tag or form tag, and looks like the following in your code:

<a href="newpage.html" accesskey="1">new page (or press 1)</a>

...with whatever number (or any keyboard character) you want to use. Then if someone on a Windows computer types Alt-1, or a Mac owner types Cmd-1, the browser will automatically load that link for them and take them to the new page. But the beauty is that the developers of most mobile web browsers have activated access keys as well, which means that simply pressing this key on a phone's keypad will accomplish the same exact action too. So now I have all the major sections of my mobile version tied to access keys, so that a user can hop around to all the different areas without ever having to use their stylus or touch their screen; clicking '3' will take a person to my "about" page, '4' to the mobile version of my publishing comany, '5' to my contact page, etc. (Granted, there are no actual pages there yet for people to view; but the automatic jumping and loading process using access keys is definitely working.)

To let people skip from one part of a page to another part of the same page, simply use an anchor tag without a link, like so:

<a name="top" accesskey="1></a>

I use two such anchor tags in my mobile template, for example, one at the top of the page and one at the bottom. Since the mobile versions of web pages are insanely longer than the desktop versions (because of the tiny little screens), having such anchors can be a real godsend for mobile-device owners who wish to quickly jump straight to the top or the bottom of a page.

Access keys - learn 'em, love 'em, use 'em!

Beta version 0.1 of my new website now live

2005-06-07T14:24:00.000-05:00

For those who don't already know, I'm switching the location of my personal journal this summer, from the Geocities page it's been the last six years to my main website. I'm doing this so I can finally power my journal through MovableType, so that I can post entries there straight from my mobile device, a Palm Treo. (My Geocities page can only be updated through a desktop computer, and regular readers know that I have neither home nor work internet access through a desktop. It means that I have to spend money at an internet cafe whenever I currently update my personal journal - which leads to situations like what happened last month, where I didn't have enough money to go to an internet cafe so literally couldn't update my personal journal for a month, month and a half. Sigh.)

Anyway, the good news is that I've been diligently teaching myself MovableType over the last couple of months, and actually now have a public beta version of the new blog up for people to check out - it's at my sandbox, which is located at jasonpettus.com/blog. Along with the new template, there's also a new 2,000-word entry about what went into designing the template, why the sections look as they do, and what's coming next in the process. Although some elements of that page are still not yet live, other parts are - like the RSS feed listed there, which design geeks can subscribe to this second, if they want to follow along this summer as I update the template and document the bugging/decoding process. The trackbacking information found there is accurate as well, if you end up writing about the new page at your own blog and wish to ping me.

The switch is going to be great, to tell the truth - for the first time as an online journaler, I'm going to be able to assign categories to my entries, let people search my site through a proprietary engine, let people subscribe to a notification mailing list, and all the other stuff the cool-kid bloggers have had for years now. Yet I went out of my way as well to make it not look like a typical blog page, and have come up with several elements that I'm quite proud of. Anyway, you can go check it out yourself to see what I'm talking about; I'd love to hear your comments and beta-testing feedback too, which you can send to ilikejason at hotmail dot com. (Don't forget to include what browser you're on, which version you have of that browser, the platform on which it's running, and the size of your computer monitor, in order to provide the maximum amount of help to me that you can.)

Wired's guide to NextFest

2005-06-06T10:30:00.002-05:00

An electronic guide from Wired magazine to their upcoming NextFest, being held at the end of the month here in Chicago, which I am volunteering to work so that I can attend for free, since I am unemployed (sigh). Are you attending as well? Drop me a line at ilikejason at hotmail dot com and we can make plans to meet up and take goofy photos of each other, which I will then be posting in real time here to [metafeed] all weekend from my Palm Treo, as well as goofy audio interviews with interesting people I meet.

Northwest Airlines: A tragedy in one act

2005-06-06T10:30:00.001-05:00

ACTORS: Table of executives at Northwest Airlines, dressed appropriately, waving laser pointers and cups of Starbucks at each other. SCENE: Harried meeting in a tasteful conference room. This play takes place without an intermission.

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: Okay, people, our customers are leaving us in droves. Seriously, it's like rats deserting a sinking ship out there these days. We've got to come up with a way to reconnect with our customers again, people. How do we do it? What do they want?

CLUELESS IDIOT 2: Oh, oh! How about if we... You know how we got rid of airline meals a long time ago, in our first round of punishing customers for the mistakes we make? And how we just give out pretzels and peanuts now?

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: Yeah?

CLUELESS IDIOT 2: How about if we get rid of the pretzels and peanuts too?

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: I like it! See, this is thinking outside of the box here, people! We need more of this kind of stuff!

CLUELESS IDIOT 3: Ooh, ooh! How about if we... Yeah, if we get rid of all the magazines the customers used to read during the flight? It'll save us $565,000 a year!

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: And how much did the airline lose overall just in the last three months?

CLUELESS IDIOT 3: Um... $458 million.

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: (Dramatic pause) Brilliant! It's gold! What else, people, what else? We're on a roll here!

CLUELESS IDIOT 4: Eek! Eek! I know! We'll charge customers $2 per bag to check them in at the front door, instead of it being the free service it is now!

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: Oh, now, wait, I think that's going a little too far.

CLUELESS IDIOT 4: Sorry, sir.

CLUELESS IDIOT 1: I'm just yanking your chain! I love it! People, if our customers don't come flocking back in droves after we introduce all these ways to just keep screwing them worse and worse and worse for all the mistakes in management and overinflated salaries we clueless, bloodthirsty executives have perpetrated...I don't know WHAT will lure them back! Cigars all around, boys!

ALL: Yay!

BLACK OUT. CURTAIN.

(Thanks for the Associated Press for providing all the facts and figures quoted above. Now playing at the Theatre Building, Friday nights at 9 pm.)

Yahoo Groups, 360 blogs now RSS-enabled

2005-06-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

Hallelujah - Yahoo has finally gotten around to offering RSS feeds for their mailing-list groups and for blogs by members of the 360 social network. Read all the details concerning both here. (Thanks to Planet Movable Type for pointing this out. Don't forget, I have a 360 account too, as well as a 360 blog; my particular blog is simply a private list of resources I find on the web for MovableType tutorials and plugins, but fellow MovableType geeks should feel free to now subscribe to it if they want, if they're interested in seeing those resources as well.)

Extree! Extree! Sun-Times Kicks Ticker! Read all about it!

2005-06-06T10:29:00.004-05:00

It's official - the Chicago Sun-Times has become the first major American newspaper to stop reprinting the closing quotes of the stock market. And why should newspapers be going to the trouble anymore, really? Anyone who's rich and smart enough to own stock is also going to be rich and smart enough to have an internet connection, and the knowledge of how to check their quotes at any time of the day they want. Thanks to Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune for pointing this out, and for including this great quote at the end of his entry - "...[L]ook for stock tables to join ocean-liner schedules in the things-we-used-to-print file."

Boeing starts Supergeek blog for engineers, test pilots

2005-06-06T10:29:00.003-05:00

Ubergeeks unite! Boeing has started sponsoring a blog for the the flight test crew of the 777-200LR, a group which includes such cool nerds as industrial engineers and test pilots. Don't be shied away - they actually write in a very engaging, conversational style there. (Thanks to Neville Hobson for pointing this out.)

Thank God - '.xxx' domain finally approved

2005-06-06T10:29:00.002-05:00

As reported by CNET in this particular case, ICANN finally approved the sale and use of a new .xxx domain for websites. Well, it's about damn time, I say. Longtime readers will know that I have a curious relationship with the adult entertainment industry, because of a book I wrote in 2002 and then a magazine column in 2003, and that I count both several porn producers and adult actors/actresses as my friends. These people without a single exception have been wanting this new domain for years and have been repeatedly calling for it, because of how much easier it's going to make it to reliably filter adult content off certain browsers without worrying about accidentally filtering out legitimate content as well. Aboveground pornographers are business people too, just like every other enterpreneur, and they like everyone else want to avoid as much legal hassle as possible; all the adult content providers I know very much only want to sell to fellow adults, and worry even more than conservative mothers about how to keep their stuff out of the hands of children - because they'll be the ones arrested for it if it happens, not the conservative mothers.

The new .xxx domain will allow all legitimate pornographers to move their adult material to a specially marked site now, where not only the front page but every other page of the site as well is marked with this special tag at the end. It will allow browsers at libraries, schools, and homes with small children to effectively click one "block all .xxx pages" box and elegantly filter everything on the planet that ends with that tag; but since it's common knowledge that the .xxx domain is strictly for adult material, there's no chance of an academe or mainstream company accidentally using that domain themselves and having their safe material accidentally banned, like what often happens with the wave of filtering software we're currently using. It's a simple solution and a powerful one, and my prediction is that in just a few years from now, we'll see just this one act responsible for being able to filter something like 75 to 80 percent of all legitimate porn on the web from childrens' eyes. It's not a complete solution, for sure, but definitely a step in the right direction, and any adult content provider out there worth their salt is as glad to see it as you are as a parent.

New cool stuff from Gizmodo

2005-06-06T10:29:00.001-05:00

Much like MAKE magazine, Gizmodo.com also had a bunch of items recently that I wanted to mention here, so I thought I'd again combine them all into one entry...

Stickers with cool patterns that you can buy for $8 and place over the flywheel of your iPod to jazz it up. Or, you know, for 50 cents you could have Kinko's xerox whatever pattern you want on a piece of sticky paper and make one yourself. (original entry)

Retro-Electro: A new book by Rizzoli on the sublime pleasures of early-'80s computing. You know, I still have all my old TRS-80 stuff from high school in my parents' basement, and it all still works - would I be the coolest kid on the block or what if I set it all up again in my apartment here in Chicago? Okay, probably "what." (original entry)

For $6,000, purchase your own metal hipster martini bar for home use. Includes Kohler fixtures, in-line water purifier and in-line water heater; can be installed indoors or out. (original entry)

Thanks, Gizmodo!

New cool stuff from MAKE

2005-06-06T10:29:00.000-05:00

MAKE magazine has had a number of items recently that I wanted to point out, so I thought I'd combine them all into one entry...

Free software for hosting your own Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG, as the kids say). The whole thing's run off PHP and XHTML, and gives you such options as live chat, a map editor, loot system and more. Coming soon - "Poetry Slam: The Role Playing Game!" (original entry)

New Live 5 software could revolutionize the act of mash-ups. New program will apparently accept your MP3s, automatically tempo-match files and slice up beats for your future manipulation. Hmm, hmm, hmm. (original entry)

Your own digital camera for 20 bucks...no, really! Instructions for hacking into the "one-use digital cameras" the CVS chain of convenience stores sell. (original entry)

Thanks, MAKE!

Positioning is dead; long live Wikification

2005-06-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

FusionBrand has an interesting editorial up right now, claiming that the traditional theory of 'positioning' in marketing is now dead. For those who don't know, positioning is a theory about marketing that first became popular in the late 1960s - the idea is that your company or brand occupies a certain 'position' in your customer's head, and that anytime a specific idea is thought of, that customer automatically thinks of your product. (Cooly-designed cutting-edge computers = 'Apple.' You see what I'm saying.) Your product is going to occupy a position in that customer's head no matter what you do, so the goal then is to have it occupy the position that you want it to, or that would benefit you the most. So you use mass advertising to sell an overall "message" of what your brand or company is, and you "position" your brand into the place in the customer's brain where you want it to exist, by repeatedly hammering your message into them over and over again.

With the ongoing death of mass advertising, though, according to this editorial, and the rise of customized advertising, viral marketing, the blogosphere and other community-oriented developments, the rules for successfully marketing your company are rapidly changing. A better metaphor, then, might be the 'wikis' we're starting to see pop up more and more all over the web - pages of content just like any other site, but these group-written and -edited by a whole crowd of people, and with a group consensus eventually emerging of what that page should be and what it should look like. The benefits of using such a theory for your marketing, according to the editorial, include the fact that you're hearing much better what your customers actually want from you in order to make them insanely happy, since your entire corporate message is now driven by them, not by your advertising people. Also, your "message" hits home in a much more powerful way, because it's driven by actions instead of words; instead of endlessly running commercials about what great customer service you have, you actually go out and achieve great customer service, which makes a much greater impression on your customer than any empty promise in a commercial ever could. And third, unlike positioning this is actually measurable - if you know precisely what your customers want, you can statistically keep track of how well you're getting it to them.

It's a very intriguing article that sets certain marketing rules on their head that we've been taking for granted for over 30 years now. Definitely worth taking a look. (Thanks to the Small Business Del.icio.us watchlist for pointing this out.)

Make your own audio tour guides

2005-06-06T10:18:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in the New York Times on the rise of people recording their own audio tours of museum exhibits, then offering them as MP3s that others can listen to on their iPods as they walk through the exhibit themselves. It's already given me an idea for this arts center I'm trying to open these days; to have the artist walk through the gallery and explain each piece on audio, then offer up those MP3s for anyone who wants to walk through the gallery themselves with their iPod (or conversely, click through the virtual gallery online while listening to iTunes). And what kind of fun stuff could you record an audio tour of for others to listen to on their iPod? How about your neighborhood? A guide to cool live-music spots in your city? Audio comments to your online vacation photos?

Ladies and gentlemen, my future wife

2005-06-04T20:29:00.000-05:00

Spotted on the northbound red line on my way home from a poetry show that never took place. F**k!

Field Report: Alex Kotlowitz reading, Chicago

2005-06-04T16:19:00.000-05:00

Greetings from the suddenly rainswept Chicago, where I just finished attending a reading by Alex Kotlowitz at the Uptown Borders in my neighborhood. Kotlowitz, for those who don't know, is the author of There Are No Children Here (1992, Anchor), which was both made into a movie by Oprah and was chosen as one of the 150 most important books of the 20th century by the New York Public Library. Kotlowitz's newest book is called Never A City So Real and is part of that Crown Journeys series (where Crown basically asks all these hipster writers to pen travel guides for the city where they live); this reading was a promotion for that book, as well as for a play Kotlowitz recently wrote called An Unobstructed View, based on his experiences writing for National Public Radio's "Chicago Matters" show. (The play's being performed as we speak by the Pegasus Players theatre company; a couple of the cast members were at the event as well, and performed a couple of scenes from it.)

The book is actually a pretty slim one (145 pages), and I ended up reading about half of it at the bookstore today as I was sitting around waiting out the rainstorm. It suffers a little too much from "White Man's Burden Syndrome" (that is, the idea that a person's story is not worth telling unless they are poor and of color, an attitude I get awfully f**king sick and tired of sometimes from middle-class liberal white guys); plus, for being published by a travel company, the book actually has nothing to do with travel whatsoever, which is not only a real shame but a blown opportunity on the part of Crown to publish a decent travel guide to Chicago. That said, it's definitely a brisk and sometimes entertaining read; you might want to check it out the next time you're at the bookstore.

Live at the Alex Kotlowitz reading

2005-06-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

I'm at the Uptown Borders in my neighborhood, attending a reading by Alex Kotlowitz, author of "There Are No Children Here" and the new "Never a City So Real." More later today!

Field Report: Community Media Conference, Chicago

2005-06-02T18:53:00.000-05:00

UPDATE, 7 pm: Oops, I meant Barbara Iverson, not Betty. Sorry, Barbara!

So, I just got done attending the Community Media Conference down at Columbia College, a big event that has drawn journalists from all over the country. Well, that's not exactly true - I actually only attended one panel discussion of the conference, "Blogging and Its Effect on the Media" (or something like that), which featured Andrew Huff of GapersBlock.com (disclosure - a friend of mine), and Eric Zorn, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune (who I am a big fan of and read every day, although had never met before today). Oh, and many thanks to the organizers of the conference, by the way, who caught me trying to sneak in for free and let me go in anyway, on the promise that I would leave after the panel was over. Moderating the panel was Betty Iverson, a journalism professor at Columbia College.

The panel was definitely lively and fascinating, although obviously it was geared towards people who have much less knowledge of blogs than you and I do, which of course could be a little frustrating at times. That said - man, who was the genius who put Huff and Zorn together on the same panel? They're both a bit of smartasses, and have this great conversational style of speaking in front of audiences, and the two of them on one panel meshed together as perfectly as tornados and mobile homes.

I ended up asking them about the schism between journalists and bloggers when it came to traditional ethics issues, like finding reliable sources, multiple sources, and where the line lays between reporting a rumor or not. They in turn got into one of the more interesting journalism discussions I've heard in awhile, which concerned last year's senate race here in Illinois between Barack Obama and professional nutjob Alan Keyes. (Basically, halfway through the campaign someone discovered that Keyes' lesbian daughter was maintaining an anonymous blog online about her sexual and romantic life.) All three of the panelists discussed this issue, and where the line laid between whether to report it or not, and where that line changed when it came to a blogger versus a mainstream newspaper. Very interesting stuff.

Anyway, I finally got a chance to meet Mr. Zorn after the panel - and unsurprisingly, he turned out to be this really great, funny, disarming guy, which is always so nice to discover in people you admire. And the four of us (plus one of Mr. Zorn's editors at the Trib) sat around for a few minutes gabbing about the incestuous nature of blogging, and how by the end of the day all four of us were going to have posts up about the panel and about each other, etc. And then I felt bad about sticking around so long, considering that the conference staff had let me in for free, so I took off. Thanks again, you three, for such an entertaining panel!

Live at the Community Media conference

2005-06-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

I'm at the Community Media Conference at Columbia College, attending a panel with Andrew Huff of GapersBlock.com and Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune. More later today!

"Lost:" The Curious Case of the Viral Website Which Might Actually Be a Fan Website

2005-06-02T10:08:00.000-05:00

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Back in February, I made the following prediction during an episode of my short-lived podcast: That as more and more companies turn to viral marketing to promote their products (that is, underground activities such as fake websites and company-sponsored "anti-company" campaigns), it's going to become easier and easier for actual customers to make their own campaigns for the company as well (either pro or anti), with a growing amount of the general public confused over whether the campaign is "real" (i.e. sponsored by the company) or "fake" (sponsored by customers). And now just three months after that prediction, we actually have our first example - the enigmatic and delightful driveshaftband.com, a supplemental site to the weirdo ABC television hit "Lost."

It's purportedly a fansite for the platinum-selling British band "Driveshaft" - which, as followers of the show know, currently counts its bass player as one of the marooned survivors on the freaky black-smoke-huffing island we've all come to love. And indeed, the site is insanely exhaustive in its details, including an downloadable audio interview with the bass player's brother (another character that's appeared on the show, via flashbacks), photos from the band's various live performances, a weekly blog from one of the band's roadies, even Kurt-Cobain-style tributes to the bass player sent in by fans. And, like all great viral websites, driveshaftband.com also seems to contain hidden information about the show that one cannot get from the episodes themselves - such as the tidbit that American officials have been examining the flight manifest of the downed plane since the accident, and have discovered that several of the passengers listed have no record of actually existing (no IDs, no work history, no tax records, etc). And considering that there actually is a viral website out there officially sponsored by ABC (oceanic-air.com, which actually does have all this weird-ass s**t hidden in its pages relating to the show, and which "Lost" fans absolutely must visit), many people have just assumed that driveshaftband.com is yet another officially-sanctioned viral site, and that the tidbits we read there really are coming from the show's writing staff.

But wait - is it an officially-sanctioned site? Examine the evidence:

- The shots of the band playing live are actually vidcaps from one of the flashback sequences on the show;

- The site claims that the bass player has been missing for nine months now (that is, the length of time the show has actually been on the air), although according to the show itself, season 1 only covers 40 days;

- The site has a guestbook that the general public is allowed to sign, which includes numerous references to the television show, breaking the illusion that the site is "real" (a big no-no among viral marketing campaigns);

- And perhaps most telling, the site is peppered liberally with curse words, including lots of references to the F-word. And in the times we live in, I can't imagine in a million years that ABC would let a viral site be peppered with F-words, no matter how tangentially the site might be related to them.

You see my point, though, right? This, I think, is the first time in history that fans have created a "fake" site so convincing that people are still debating whether it's officially sanctioned or not, months after it first went online. And since one of the cardinal rules of viral marketing is that the company can't admit in public that they're the ones behind the viral marketing, it may be a long time indeed before we get a definitive answer. This is simply going to become a bigger and bigger issues over the next couple of years, as more and more companies turn to viral marketing to promote themselves, and the fans get smarter and smarter about creating viral campaigns too. As this example shows, the potential for sticky situations is high when it comes to viral campaigns, and especially the potential for fans putting words into companies' mouths that they don't want in there. It'll be interesting, I think, to see what happens in the future when it comes to company/customer relationships in the world of viral marketing.

For those who don't know, by the way, there is a plethora of supplementary material on the web for "Lost," much of which helps explain the subtle details embedded within each episode, many of which you might never discover on your own. (Here's one really good example - it's been discovered by viewers now that at least six of the characters have Chinese symbols somewhere on their bodies, either as a tattoo, necklace, or design on their clothes. Well, some smartypants actually sat down with vidcaps and translated them all into English, and it turns out that they each stand for a specific personality attribute that can be directly applied to that character in question. Man, that "Lost" writing staff sure are a bunch of sneaky little f**kers!) A great resource for finding all this crap, in my opinion, is lostlinks.net, which I encourage all fans of the show to check out; they have hundreds of vidcaps from telling moments of the show, behind-the-scenes videos, JPEGs of the crazy French woman's maps, even a comprehensive list of every single reference in the show to the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 (and there are hundreds of them, as you can imagine).

And finally, two little pieces of trivia for "Lost," for those who don't already know: 1) At $13 million, it was the most expensive television pilot in history; and 2) with 130 foreign markets airing the show this year as well, it's also the most widely simultaneously-watched television show in history. Um, can you tell I kinda like the show? Jeez, I'm such a dork!

p.s. For those who miss listening to it, I am going to be doing my podcast again - just as soon as those damn programmers over at Odeo actually open for business, that is.

I'm going to NextFest!

2005-06-02T10:04:00.000-05:00

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So, after months of watching better bloggers than I (i.e. those with jobs) attend all these cool conferences around the world and schmooze with all these cool people, I'm finally getting to attend one myself - namely, Wired magazine's NextFest, a celebration and examination of the next generation of technology that's about to hit our lives, being held here in Chicago at the end of the month. And how did I manage to fanagle an invitation? Easy - I volunteered to do manual labor! Well, that's actually a little off - they keep promising that there won't actually be any heavy lifting or other manual chores involved, and that my main job is going to be to partner with one of the corporate sponsors and help answer questions about their booth to festival attendees. And what do I get for the 20 or so hours of work I volunteered to put in? Oh, all kinds of wonderful things - a staff all-access pass, something like nine general-admission tickets, a free t-shirt of course, an invitation to the gala opening reception, a year's free subscription to Wired, and even a free iPod Shuffle, if you can believe that.

Of course, none of that matters much to me; the main reason I want to go is so I can see all the cool high-tech stuff on display, and schmooze with all the bloggers and other tech writers I've been reading over the years. And speaking of which, are you going? If so, please let me know by dropping me a line at ilikejason at hotmail dot com, so we can make plans to meet up. Don't forget, of course, that I'll be doing tons of real-time posts to the blog here during the fest itself, including photos, text and audio; make sure to tune in that weekend for all the goodness.

kidandkitefest17

2005-05-24T11:46:00.000-05:00

kidandkitefest17, originally uploaded by jasonpettus.

Just got my photos posted of the Chicago Kids and Kites Festival, which I attended the other weekend. You can click here to see the entire set yourself, if you want.

marshallfieldclock01

2005-05-24T11:44:00.000-05:00

marshallfieldclock01, originally uploaded by jasonpettus.

Just posted 22 new random photos at my Flickr account, taken over the last month all over the city of Chicago. You can click here to view the entire set, if you want.

Photo: tubenuts

2005-05-23T12:39:00.000-05:00

Spotted this morning being inventoried at the convenience store in my neighborhood. Not sure what it actuallt is, but it sure sounds dirty.

Wanted: Cross between SimCity and CAD/CAM software (and argument for how such a thing could be a big seller)

2005-05-23T12:17:00.000-05:00

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This is a piece of software I want to own and play with; if I mention it on the web, maybe some enterprising young programmer out there will actually make it for me! It'd be a cross between a videogame like SimCity and a powerful design program like CAD/CAM software; like SimCity, the goal is to build an urban environment, but there is no game play, no worrying about budgets or zoning, no changing traffic patterns. Instead, the main power of the program is that you can go into very specific areas of the environment if you want and profoundly customize their look - either pick from dozens of predesigned cool templates for a variety of categories (churches, low-rise apartments, sidewalk retail, etc), or get really nerdy and design it yourself from scratch. That way you could designate a large area of land and have the program automatically develop itself, like SimCity does; but then go into one specific area (your "downtown," for example), and pick the look building-by-building from a variety of templates; and then when it came to one specific building (City Hall, for example), you could sit and actually design the building yourself and get as weird or crazy as you want.

The point of playing with such software, then, is to build as cool-looking an urban envrionment as possible, and to easily share the environment with others. So for example, you take all that processor power that was formerly running the game, and use it instead to let people record virtual tours of their environment, "filmed" by the computer from a sidewalk point of view, as if you were actually walking or driving through it. These could then be saved as MPEGs, for non-players who just want to see what you've done. But then you could export the entire environment as a file that could be posted on the web, so that other players could download the actual environment, go in and play with it themselves, even alter it if you turn on that permission in the export process. This then is how the company would make its money; by sponsoring a vibrant fan community on the web, with a website that made it easy for users to post and swap homemade environments. And for marketing purposes, the company could do things like design their own special environments for download, or do interviews with environment designers who become popular, or partner with Hollywood to release environments based on TV shows or movies. (How much would you love a version of The Simpsons' Springfield like this?) And hell, a daring company could even make their API available to the public, to let others come up with all kinds of interesting new applications - imagine a couple of smart high-schoolers figuring out a way to hack a Grand-Theft-Auto-type driving game into user-created environments, or a role-playing MUD.

Okay, so who's going to build me this?

Download manuals for outdated videogames

2005-05-23T12:16:00.006-05:00

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Replacementdocs.com: 74,000 downloadable user manuals for old videogames, for those you might pick up used or are now playing through a modern MAME (or, er, you know, that you pirated from your friends). (Thanks to MAKE magazine for pointing this out.)

Yahoo announces new RSS protocol

2005-05-23T12:16:00.005-05:00

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Yahoo is reporting that their new format for RSS delivery, Media RSS, is now finalized and ready to be used. Techies, of course, will know that there is a specific tag within RSS 2.0 ("Enclosure") that allows MP3s to be attached to an RSS item - that's the way podcast software works, by seeking "enclosure" tags within RSS items and automatically downloading them for you while you're away from your computer. Media RSS, then, is a new set of tags that greatly expands on this "enclosure" capability - it lets you attach just about any kind of multimedia file you want, lets you send a lot more text information about what the file is and who created it, and in theory will let users download this text information straight to their media device itself.

Of course, for this to be of any use at all, someone's going to have to start creating RSS readers for users that actually understand Media RSS - and according to Yahoo, only three such readers exist at this point (FeedBurner probably being the most well-known of the three). It'll be interesting, I think, to see if the larger web community will start embracing Yahoo's new protocol, or if it's destined to become yet another of the hundreds of protocols invented over the years that no one actually bothers using.

Make your own car-based pirate radio station

2005-05-23T12:16:00.004-05:00

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Roadcasting.org: Technology that lets you broadcast your own radio station from your car, to be picked up by anyone within a 30-mile radius. I mean, sure, the idea's kind of silly if you were trying to do a legitimate radio station, but what about more practical applications? How about a group of friends or family members, for example, making a road trip in several different vehicles, using roadcasting to synchronize where to take food and gas breaks? Some of the goofiest ideas in the world can suddenly seem pretty smart, when you take a minute to think of new uses for them. (Thanks to MAKE magazine for pointing this out.)

Podcast supplementary material - a great example

2005-05-23T12:16:00.003-05:00

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Steve Rubel recently wrote about a new podcast devoted to cooking, called Gastrocast. The podcast itself isn't that terribly original an idea, but here's what is - the creators also post a set of photos at Flickr with each episode, showing step-by-step that item being prepared, which you can consult while actually listening to the podcast itself.

Brilliant! This is so brilliant, in fact, and so simple, that I'm literally kicking myself right now for having never thought of the idea myself. And what ways can you use complementary forms of communication to get your point across on the web more profoundly? How about audio commentary for the next set of vacation photos you post? Video clips embedded within text journals?

Edit Yahoo 360 info via IM

2005-05-23T12:16:00.002-05:00

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Here's some interesting news: People with Yahoo 360 accounts can now update their blogs through Yahoo Instant Messenger (YIM), as well as the "Blast!" that appears at the top of their page. For those who need the backstory: Yahoo 360 is an attempt by the company to let people pull together all the various Yahoo crap they've signed up for over the years (photos, mail, groups, etc) and to display synopses of each on one central webpage; and at the same time, it's also Yahoo's attempt at social-networking software, and has a lot of new features that allows people to more easily connect with existing friends and those with common interests. So for example, whenever you submit a user review to Yahoo Local, your 360 page keeps a tally of all the reviews you've written, for others to see at once; and then if you're looking up something in Yahoo Local, and see a user's review that you particularly liked, you can click on their name, go straight to their 360 page, learn a lot more about them and invite them to be your friend if you want. (And here's my 360 page, by the way; I encourage you to add me to your friends list if you want.) And in an attempt to catch up with such cooler social-networking sites as Dodgeball.com and MySpace.com, they've also introduced what they call a "Blast" - a short IM-like message that appears in a box at the top of your page, designed to be easily updated, so that you can send out short messages at all times of the day and night about where you are and where you're heading. (The difference between this and a place like Dodgeball is that your Yahoo Blast simply remains on your webpage; Dodgeball members actually have such a blast sent out as an SMS to the cellphones of everyone on their friends list.)

[RANT BEGINS]
Of course, the only way to do this is by downloading the latest version of YIM, the only version with a 360 option; and of course Yahoo hasn't bothered to make a new version of YIM for Palm or PocketPC or Blackberry or any other type of mobile device, just desktops. Which makes them idiots, because in what more natural way could one be updating one's "Blasts" than on the go through a mobile-based IM client? That's the entire point of such messages existing, and we all know the future of IM is in mobile devices anyway, so it drives me kinda bats**t sometimes when companies refuse to provide mobile support for new products, even though we're in the middle of 2005 by now and everyone can see the handwriting on the wall. Because I really want to use YIM to update my 360 page, and I'd be a really frequent user too, and it pisses me off that Yahoo won't let me be one, simply because no one bothered making a Palm version of YIM (which, frankly, would be a lot easier than the desktop versions).
[RANT ENDS]

Whew.

Xbox 360 is going to change everything...and I don't mean videogames

2005-05-23T12:16:00.001-05:00

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Gizmodo has an interesting tidbit up right now about Microsoft's newest gaming console, the Xbox 360, that not a lot of other people seem to be reporting: that it's fully compliant with Microsoft's new Media Center operating system for PCs, and the PC version fully compliant with the Xbox. You know what this means, don't you? For the first time, we will finally have the killer product for that fabled "networked home" that everyone's been ballyhooing over the years. It's relatively cheap (a few hundred dollars, versus a few thousand for a PC); is tricked out to handle video and audio well; has a nice simple interface that lets you plug a TV and stereo into one end and a computer into the other; is both broadband- and Wifi-ready; and works with most of the equipment you already own (unless you're a Mac/Palm home, like mine is, but we're in the minority here). This is going to change everything - you'll be able to send those downloaded movie trailers and porn clips straight to your high-definition television now, send MP3s and internet radio stations straight to your home stereo. You can get a flashing message on your TV when an important email comes in. You can have your TV mute itself when you pick up the phone. And sure, ways of doing this have technically existed for a number of years - but the Xbox 360 is the first product to make it cheap, and make it easy.

I was one of the people laughing the hardest when Bill Gates announced in 1995 that the future of computing was on the internet. (I, like most others who followed that stuff back then, thought the future was in CD-ROMs.) But I learned my lesson, which is that Gates has such an enormous impact on the entire high-tech community, he can literally self-fulfill any prophecy he gets in his head. For the last year or so I've been carefully following the news on this whole Media Center system Gates is trying to build these days, because 1) he talks about it with the kind of passion that he did about the internet in 1995; and 2) it seems just as implausible right now as the dominance of the internet did in 1995. I think when you see this new Xbox get released, it's going to be the start of a whole new way of doing things at home - of finally having one system that controls and communicates with every piece of technology you own. Mark my words - I think the entire nature of home computing will change radically once this starts happening.

(And hell, think of the things that haven't even been invented yet: air-conditioning that runs on a Media Center operating system; lights; security system; baby-monitoring; it just goes on and on.)

Editorial: Thanks, programmers, for going back to older technologies

2005-05-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

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I've been meaning to throw up a note here for awhile now, thanking programmers at places like Google and Flickr for dumping their Flash interfaces this year and switching back to older technologies (like dHTML, Javascript and CSS) to make their sites function instead. And why is this such a big deal? In two words - 'universal usability.' For example, dHTML stands for "dynamic HyperText Markup Language," and is basically an attempt to add cool interactive elements to plain HTML while still not having to get rid of the HTML altogether. So, if a browser that understands dHTML goes to a website programmed in dHTML, it will get all the bells and whistles that come with that language - like, the ability at the new Google Portal to drag and drop the different items on the page to change their order. But, if a browser that doesn't understand dHTML (like "Blazer," the one that comes with the Palm Treo) goes to such a website, the "d" part of the dHTML is simply ignored and the rest of the content still published - so I still get all the items at Google Portal that I normally would on a desktop browser, and still displayed elegantly on my tiny little screen, but merely lacking the ability to change their order through drag and drop.

Now compare that to something like a Flash-based interface, which both Gmail and Flickr were using not even a year ago; since that is a proprietary piece of software, you need a proprietary plug-in for your browser to even view Flash-programmed material, with you getting nothing but a blank screen if you don't have said plug-in. And since the owners of Flash don't make a plug-in for mobile browsers, you're pretty much screwed if you ever try to visit one of these sites through your Palm or other wireless device, making the entire website itself completely and utterly inaccessible. Flash is an excellent option for some projects, don't get me wrong (when it comes to online animation, for example, or interactive artist portfolios, it literally can't be beat), but is a terrible choice for overall site navigation; as Jakob Nielsen and other usability experts remind us over and over, the name of that game is always how many different types of browsers can elegantly open the material at your site, even if some of them can't access all the bells and whistles that come with the newest browsers.

dHTML is perfect for accomplishing something like this, and especially when you combine it with the power of other older technology, like Javascript, CSS and XML. I mean, this is what that new school of web programming called AJAX is all about - the term stands for "Asynchronous Javascript And XML," and is nothing more than an attempt to take these old technologies and to combine them in new and innovative ways, led by these smartypants I was mentioning at places like Google and Flickr. It's what lets us access things like Gmail and our Flickr accounts from our cellphones and mobiles, when even a year ago we couldn't, while still letting desktop visitors have access to all those cool interactive features that make them go "whoa." Speaking as someone whose online access would be severely handicapped without these new AJAX innovators, I'd like to thank them for all their hard work, and to encourage other programmers out there to turn first to these old technologies before diving head-first into something new and proprietary.

Wanted: Smart, innovative MovableType tutorials

2005-05-23T12:05:00.000-05:00

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Okay, first a little backstory, for those who don't regularly read my personal journal:

I've had one form of personal website or another up and live since December 1997, which for many years was located at the same Geocities page where my personal journal is still found. In 2000, one of my readers (Jimi Sweet) donated a chunk of his commercial server space to me for holding a more permanent version of my work, which is where jasonpettus.com is located. At the time, though, I decided to leave my journal at my original Geocities space, for two reasons: 1) it was easier to update from internet cafes (it having a web-based interface, versus having to FTP my individual HTML pages and images to my main website); and 2) there were just so many damn people at that point who had links at their own sites pointing to that Geocities page, not to jasonpettus.com. And so for the last four or five years, it's been like that - all of my work besides my journal has been slowly moved over to the permanent site, with my journal still residing at my Geocities page, and with me logging on through a desktop browser at an internet cafe and hand-updating pages whenever I have a new entry.

But of course, now we're living in the Second Great Blog Boom of '05, as I like to call it, where there are all kinds of insanely innovative ways to get stuff posted to a website - via web-based interface still, of course, but also via SMS, IM, email, mobile devices - not only text but audio, photos and video as well, all of it archived automatically for you, all of it run off a "type engine" that is at once both simple for beginners and infinitely customizable for hardcore programmers. And, in fact, Jimi has had MovableType installed on all his servers for a number of years now, and last year installed the engine to my pages as well. (Here's my sandbox, for example, although right now there's nothing really to see except the minimalist template MT uses as a default. That RSS feed there is live as we speak, by the way, so fellow design geeks should feel free to subscribe to it, if they'd like to watch the Grand Redesign unfold in real time this year.) And now that I can so easily post all matter of files directly to MT from my Palm Treo, which I utterly cannot do with Geocities, I've decided that this year is finally the one when I move off Geocities for good and enfold the journal into the permanent site.

I won't kid you - if you're installing MT onto an independent server and running it yourself (versus having them do it for you, via Typepad), there is a huge learning curve to be faced, one that will throw you for a loop if you're not already conversant with HTML and CSS, and have at least a conceptual idea of how XML works. But I'm slogging my way through it all, plus admit that there is a basic overlying simplicity to MT that at least lets you understand the concepts of the engine easily. It'd be easy enough if I just wanted to make a blog-looking blog, but my goal is different: I want to combine the power of MT's automation with the look and feel of an old-skool graphic designer, based on my years of hand-designing templates back when prefabricated ones didn't exist. I've designed now something like 14 templates for my personal website in the last seven years (and here's a page displaying miniature versions of them all in JPEG format, for those who are interested, along with explanations behind what went into each); some are great, some suck, but it's the process itself that I find most enjoyable. And so my blog's not going to look like a blog, with the little colored boxes for each entry, and the little line at the bottom of each with the author and date and time and comments and trackbacks, and the little space along the gutter to run links and archives and blah blah blah. Mine's going to look like...well, I don't know yet, but something interesting and different, for sure. (Oh, and there will be separate templates as well for viewing on a mobile device, for sending to a printer, and for subscribing through AvantGo. Behold the power of MT automation, man.)

So, that's where my request comes in: Now that I'm pretty familiar with how MT works, what special tags are at my disposal, and what the latest innovations are in the world of CSS, I'm ready to be inspired by people already doing unusual things with MovableType-powered sites. Where are they? Will you point me to them? Are any of these people maintaining programmer-oriented blogs about MT tips and tricks? Do they have an RSS feed? I'm ready right now to build an okay-looking new blog; I want to build one, though, that makes people go "yowza" when they visit it, and I'm looking for ideas and hints. I encourage you to leave your suggestions either as a comment at this entry, or to email them directly to me at ilikejason at hotmail dot com; I will semi-regularly post new entries concerning the latest, for fellow MT users who are looking for such cool examples as well. (Oh, and yes, I will be leaving [metafeed] right here at Blogspot; I like the idea of having memberships and daily interactions with both of the major type-engines out there.)

Live (after) the Unexplained S&M Party - narrative

2005-05-17T22:38:00.000-05:00

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(Accompanying photo is in the entry right before this one.)

10:30 pm, back on the train, Chicago stop on the red line now. The S&M party wasn't nearly as naughty as I thought it might be - in reality, Josephine's dungeon (Illusions) was hosting a fundraiser for a transgendered activist group, and the dominatrices (dominatrixes?) were "on the clock" as far as hostess capacities, but with no clients and no beatings, no nudity, no sex, etc. Someone did get me high, though, and there was a free buffet, and this incredibly beautiful girl gave me her phone number, all with no cover, so who am I to complain, really?

Live - (After) the Unexplained S&M Party

2005-05-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

Riding home after the S&M party in Rover North I had been invited to; alas, lots of dominatices, but no actual S&M going on. Details immediately following this entry.

Live from the Unexplained S&M Party

2005-05-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

Sheridan el stop, heading to Rizzo's in River North, for what I think is a private S&M party. Explanation in entry immediately following this one.

Live from the Unexplained S&M Party

2005-05-17T20:12:00.000-05:00

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(Accompanying photo is in the entry right before this one.)

So here I am, standing at the Sheridan red-line stop, in what
I refer to as my "good" suit, making my way to an undescribed S&M party at a private club in River North, where in all honesty I don't know what will be happening, although it quite could be naughty. How do I find myself in this situation? One of my ex-lovers, unsurprisingly - *Josephine, I'll call her here, who I was sleeping with last summer, and whose day job is as a dominatrix, and who happens to also be the founder of The Mud Queens of Chicago (think SuicideGirl mud-wrestlers). Josephine's always on top of it all in a way I'm not, so I'm always getting random cellphone calls from her for weird exclusive events that she thinks I'll find intriguing. Ah, hot, smart, sex worker and gets me into exclusive events - what's not to love?

So that's where I'm heading, to a place called Rizzo's on East Walton, where apparantly Josephine's dungeon is throwing a party? or fundraiser? or being the entertainment for someone else's party/fundraiser? All I know for sure is that 1) I was required to dress up and 2) Josephine will be in "character" tonight, take that as you will. So, Lord knows I've done some legitimtely very naughty things with Josephine over the last year, so this might be another of them - or might not be much more than a naughty version of Bacardi Night at a fratbar. We'll see. More live updates throughout the evening, if it's bright enough to get photos, and I'm allowed to do so.

Finally - a $1,200 home robot

2005-05-16T12:09:00.002-05:00

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White Box Robotics finally has something to market that a lot of us have been dreaming of for awhile - a powerful home robot for $1,200. The PC-BOT Model 914 (and thank you, White Box, for the wonderfully retro-sounding name) has a steel cage with removable motherboard, eight drive bays for adding your own PC equipment, a differential drive system featuring independent front suspension, and can be run from any Windows computer (which you supply). It can accept up to a gig of RAM, has a microphone for speech recognition, has a speaker for speech synthesis, and even has a slot in the top where you can add a WiFi web cam if you want. Let the geekiness commence! (Thanks to MAKE magazine for pointing this out.)

Mayors to Bush: "Screw you, we're ratifying Kyoto"

2005-05-16T12:09:00.001-05:00

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From the New York Times: In one of the most public 'screw you's of the entire Bush reign, over 130 local governments in the US (and counting) have decided to override Bush's refusal to endorse the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and to voluntarily comply with it anyway. This is obviously great news for anyone who cares about the environment, but it also brings up a common complaint about the US that I hear from a lot of Europeans; namely, the impossibly complex relationship that exists here between local governments, state governments and the national government, and confusion over who exactly trumps who when it comes to enacted legislation.

And I'll admit, this is indeed a tricky and messy relationship, one that even few Americans seem to understand. The problem is that there never has been a general consensus in the US over what exactly we are as an entity; even when the Constitution was being written in the late 1700s, half the people writing that document saw the US as a loose federation of self-sufficient states, with a weak national bureaucracy holding it together (much like the current European Union), while the other half saw the US as a legitimate unified nation, one where the former power of states should be subsumed to a strong national government. It's this schism that led to the Federalist Papers, the first ten amendments to our Constitution (aka "The Bill of Rights"), and unfortunately the constant fight that's been happening in the 216 years since, over whether a law passed by a state or local government should hold more importance than one passed by the national government. And let's not forget, exploiting this system is a favorite way to get laws actually changed here; sometimes a local government will deliberately do something counter to what a national law says it can do, simply so that the case will be sent to a federal court, and a definitive ruling made over whether that city can actually do that in the eyes of the law or not. This news about local Kyoto ratification just reminds us of this schism all over again; it's one of the more fascinating things about the way the US works, I think, which is why I thought I'd mention it today.

Another space-tourism company announces first launch date, ticket price

2005-05-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

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From Space.com: AERA Corp., one of the half-dozen companies in the US right now in the burgeoning "space tourism" industry, has announced launch details for their six-seater spacecraft Altairis; their first flight is now scheduled for December 2006, and tickets will cost $250,000. And interestingly, AERA is one of the only space-tourism companies that has decided not to build their own spaceport; earlier this year, in fact, the company announced that it had made a deal with the Air Force to launch their ships from Cape Canaveral down in Florida. Would anyone like to hazard a guess on what I'll be asking for that Christmas?

Gillmor puts his money where his mouth is

2005-05-16T12:08:00.002-05:00

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Dan Gillmor, already a well-known journalist with the San Jose Mercury News, has also emerged in this "Great 2005 Second Blossoming of Blogs" (as I've been calling it) as one of the most outspoken proponents of "citizen journalism" - that is, of everyday random citizens learning the basics of journalistic style and ethics, and actually reporting some of the news that they usually only consume. Well, he's finally put his money where his mouth is - he's quit the mainstream journalism industry and has started up a citizen-journalism website, called Bayosphere.com. Good luck, Mr. Gillmor!

LBC finally announces first choice

2005-05-16T12:08:00.001-05:00

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My friends at the Lit Blog Co-op have finally announced their first choice: Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. For those who need a reminder, the LBC is a group of twenty litbloggers who have banded together to ask a very intriguing queston - if online book reviewers can have the same impact these days on the bestseller list as paper-based reviewers. Four times a year, then, the group is going to recommend a new book that they think deserves more attention than it's getting, and they're going to give the book that attention, and hope that the increased attention actually results in more sales for that book.

I've been reading a lot of discussion about the LBC in the blogosphere over the last month, by the way, and wanted to bring up a couple of points for consideration - and please realize that I'm not a member of the LBC myself, nor want to be, but do have a number of personal friends who are:

1) It's important to understand that the LBC is primarily trying to get a larger conversation about their picks started, not necessarily to declare themselves as new authority figures and to lord it over other online book reviewers. I've seen a number of complaints from other online literary people now, saying things along the lines of "Why wasn't I asked to be part of the LBC?," which to me always seems to be missing the point. These particular twenty people came together because they all believe in the collective power of gridded conversations on the web; the whole reason they're online people and not paper-based reviewers is that they're not authoritarian or elitist. The LBC won't work, frankly, if it's only these twenty people talking about their pick, and they know this - the whole point of making a pick is to then get people like you and me talking about it as well, and reading it and buying it and posting our own online reviews, and all of us being merely small parts in what will hopefully be a giant conversation about the book. In this context, then, I think it's better not to worry about whether one is "on" the LBC or not, and instead to see it as the worldwide collective experience it is.

2) It's also important to remember, I think, that the LBC is not necessarily saying that you're going to love their picks, but rather that they want people to have a discussion about their picks, whether that's full of supportive or critical comments. They themselves, in fact, are starting their own coverage of Case Histories later this week with something they're calling The Minority Report, which will basically be essays from those in the group who thought the book shouldn't have been their pick. Their willingness to show such dissension within their own group, I think, dispels a lot of the elitist charges that someone might want to throw their way, and helps show that what they're primarily trying to encourage is a simple conversation about the book, no matter what the opinion.

Those in the Pacific Northwest will be happy to know that Powell's is selling Case Histories at their stores for 30 percent off - and only because they're a fan of the LBC, not through any financial arrangement. And yes, I'll be reading the book myself over the next couple of weeks, and posting my own review here in the overall spirit of what the LBC is trying to accomplish. I'm looking forward to it, in fact.

Design your own customized wine

2005-05-16T12:08:00.000-05:00

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CrushPad: Design your own premium wine online, have the community winery make it and ship it to you. (Thanks to Rafe Needleman for pointing this out.)

Live from the Kids and Kites Festival

2005-05-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

I'm down at the Chicago Kids and Kites Festival right now, at Montrose Harbor in my neighborhood; lots more photos next week when I get them uploaded to Flickr. Man, is it humanly possible NOT to love kites?

Lynch announces secretly-filmed movie

2005-05-13T12:38:00.003-05:00

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David Lynch recently had an interesting announcement, as reported by CHUD.com: he's been working on a movie in Poland for the last two years, and no one seems to have noticed. How could this possibly have happened? I mean, I understand the general public not knowing about a current production, but shouldn't have at least one of those endless LA industry publications caught a whiff of it? Anyway, the film is titled THE INLAND EMPIRE (all-caps on purpose) and stars Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeremy Irons and others. The title comes from a suburb of Los Angeles (and why Lynch is filming a movie about an LA suburb in Poland is beyond me), and the whole thing's being shot on digital video.

Actually, this entire entry was an elaborate justification for quoting my favorite Lynch dialogue of all time: "Heinekin? F*** that s***! Pabst Blue Ribbon!"

Look at all them government RSS feeds!

2005-05-13T12:38:00.002-05:00

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Did you know that the US government is currently publishing dozens of RSS feeds, concerning such things as weather, the latest news on national parks, details of drug recalls, and updates of census analysis? The Federal Citizen Information Center has kindly put together a one-stop shop of them all, for anyone who's interested. (Thanks to Threadwatch for pointing this out.)