Friday, December 12, 2003

Ben Adida: "I just returned from two days at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where we discussed eVoting." 

Leslie Walker: Early Days Of a Data-Sharing Revolution. 

As I read this headline on the Dean weblog: What Can You Buy with $61 million? I thought this was the amount that Dean had raised, or expected to raise, and they were about to tell us they were going to do something imaginative, instead of giving it to smelly media companies so they can run television ads. No such luck. What would you do if you had $61 million and wanted to make America a better place? Could $61 million make a difference?  

Rolling Stone interviews Steve Jobs. 

Another storm coming in on Sunday. Just as the snow from the last storm has been reduced to slush and huge piles in corners. A chance to take some more pics? It isn't even officially winter yet. 

Let's help Rogers promote his excellent Radio UserLand book.  

An MP3 of yesterday's Berkman meeting, thanks to Jake Savin. 

Okay I can tell I'm going to watch this about 100,000 times. 

Telegraph: "Rolling Stone Mick Jagger has been knighted for his services to pop music at Buckingham Palace." 

Wired: "AT&T's move was the latest in a flurry that promises to bring VoIP into the mainstream." 

Music at Berkman 

Last night as we were getting ready for the Thursday webcast, as usual, a member of the cleaning staff came in to empty the waste baskets at around 6:15PM. We happened to be playing music this time. I think it was Channel Z from the B-52's. If you haven't heard the song, it's a great rocker, easy to dance to, even if you're sittin down. A curious look from the cleaning man. I said to him: "Harvard University, where we dance and play music!"

People drop in when the tunes are going. Ben Edelman stopped in and we compared devices. Mine has more features. But his cost $0 and was three years old. Mine has more storage capacity and his has less but physically is bigger. Mine cost $200 and was brand new and has a radio and can record voice.

At first I thought we wouldn't pull it off, but Jay McCarthy came early and got the webcast going. I was still disorganized as the session started, and didn't get my demo properly set up, but I think it was a wonderful session. Webcasting gives the Thursday mood a new zing. We'll keep doing it for sure. There was also an active IRC channel. I didn't get much chance to see what was going on there, but it seemed to be pretty active. The tent gets bigger?

At last night's meeting I said something that Ed Cone and I figured out at almost exactly the same time. It takes two years to get to know a blogger. Then I snickered. Some people, less.

A new security exploit? 

Don Park: "It's like discovering that everything you designed was built on a gigantic turtle that just woke up."

As Don recommends, I did a View Source. This is what the URL looks like. With a quick glance it looks like it's from Microsoft, but you're actually viewing a page at zapthedingbat.com. This isn't entirely new. I'm not sure what the %01 is about. I guess it's a problem if it's the action attribute of a form element, where you can't see the URL. Takeaway: look in the Address part of the browser window when you're typing into a form and if it's the wrong place, hit the Back button and resume your life.