This week:
Neil Gaiman is so cool
Proving that he's a really nice guy, Neil
Gaiman has posted a Sandman script for free on his web site, just
so that some twerp can't rip you off by selling it for a fortune on eBay.
20 May 2004 | top of page
Miss Otis regrets
I can't come to your party because I have athazagoraphobia.
thanks, Claire
20 May 2004 | top of page
Macromedia boards the Cluetrain
The Cluetrain Manifesto
is about the radical idea that, in order to be successful in this networked
world, organisations need to talk in real human voices to their customers,
suppliers, employees and other stakeholders--business as conversation,
in essence.
These days three of the four Cluetrain authors--David,
Chris and Doc--are
high-profile webloggers themselves.
Many BBC staff, like Martin
Belam, maintain private blogs, as do staff at software company Macromedia:
"For Macromedia, the benefits of blogs are not just an opportunity
to announce that, much to popular disbelief, we do try to bake our own
French bread and eat it too. Blogs
give us the fantastic opportunity to mass communicate directly and quickly
with our customers, in an easy-to-read format, without going through
slow corporate processes. While Macromedia's online forums are also
a very popular method for discussing our products, the blogs give our
community managers centralized areas where they can each point out the
top topics that they're seeing in the community on a daily basis."
Kudos to Macromedia for understanding that its organisation and its geeky
audience are both made up of real people who passionately love their work
and want to communicate constructively about it. More power to 'em.
Once upon a time, in the olden days of the 1990s, Sun Microsystems developers
used to talk to external programmers via Internet forums. In an episode
that became a classic illustrative tale for knowledge management experts
worldwide, some bright spark in Sun's upper echelons decided the developers
should concentrate on developing. Interaction with programmers (that is,
potential customers) would be handled more professionally by experienced
communicators from the sales/marketing area.
Result 1: Sun lost lots of goodwill among its customers, along with a
lot of market intelligence about what its new software product (Java)
would need to deliver in order to be successful.
Result 2: Customers' complaints, and conspicuous lack of enthusiasm for
the new product and the corporatespeak marketese that came with it, convinced
Sun to reverse the original decision. Java has since become one of the
more successful programming environments for large-scale, complex computer
systems.
I'm retelling the Sun story from memory, and may have a couple of finer
details wrong: let me know if you need an authoritative source, and I'll
dig up the relevant book.
via martin
belam
20 May 2004 | top of page
Looking at the big picture
Reviewing a book about string theory and cosmology, Freeman
Dyson makes some observations about the broad area of 'communicating science'
and when it's OK to be wrong:
"I recommend Greene's book to any nonexpert reader who wants
an up-to-date account of theoretical physics, written in colloquial
language that anyone can understand. For the nonexpert reader, my doubts
and hesitations are unimportant. It is not important whether Greene's
picture of the universe will turn out to be technically accurate. The
important thing is that his picture is coherent and intelligible and
consistent with recent observations. Even if many of the details later
turn out to be wrong, the picture is a big step toward understanding.
Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later
corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague. Greene's book
explains to the nonexpert reader two essential themes of modern science.
First it describes the historical path of observation and theory that
led from Newton and Galileo in the seventeenth century to Einstein and
Stephen Hawking in the twentieth. Then it shows us the style of thinking
that led beyond Einstein and Hawking to the fashionable theories of
today. The history and the style of thinking are authentic, whether
or not the fashionable theories are here to stay."
When it's done well, the practice of science often produces theories
that are later found to be wrong. That doesn't make them bad theories,
only less-informed ones than the improved theories that replace them.
Being wrong about the *data*, on the other hand, is bad science and
should be exposed, criticised and corrected at every opportunity. (cf
the continuing controversy about Bruce Hall at the University of NSW)
20 May 2004 | top of page
Incompitnce [sic]
On the Science-Matters list, Peter recommended Sorry,
You Forgot To Give Me A Lobotomy With My Nametag, the sad (and hilarious)
story of what happened recently to an employee an American supermarket.
(Note to self: remember the sock-puppet idea, it may be useful...)
Lest you think the above story is fiction, note this
article in the Washington Post, January 2004. Summary: Schools in
Nashville (Tennessee, USA) have stopped posting the names of high achievers
on honor boards, because some parents complained that kids who didn't
make the list might feel stupid.
See also the "And another thing" section of today's "The
Age" letters page, where one Noel Butterfield of Box Hill South
says, in toto:
The Premier's VCE Awards are obscene (The Age, 19/5). As a Labor Premier
and former teacher, Steve Bracks might have chosen a more comprehensive
range of criteria than just academic excellence--including acknowledging
the achievement of the underdog.
A short
version of the original article is available. Of the five students
profiled in the article, three were from public schools and two were from
the country (Horsham and Wodonga)--two factors that are not normally,
or necessarily, indicators of privilege in secondary school. Achieving
near-perfect assessment results in five subjects is not easy, no matter
how brainy one is. And NB: the VCE uses a combination of assessment techniques
over two full years, not just 'academic' exams at the end of Year 12.
Yet Butterfield feels justified in applying the word "obscene"
to the awards these kids won, and by association smearing the kids themselves
with his assumptions and prejudices.
I've just inhaled Rob (Red Dwarf)
Grant's very funny 2003 novel, "Incompetence",
which is about much the same sort of subject matter. He postulates a Kafkaesque
European Union where it's illegal for employers to discriminate against
people who are stupid.
Complications ensue, as does hilarity as secret agent Cardew Vascular
tries to track down a spykiller while retaining possession of his leather
shoes (a rare commodity in a world where footwear is more typically made
of carrots or zucchini.
Grant's book *is* fiction. Sadly, this next story is not:
"George W. Bush's January 14 speech at NASA headquarters, in which
he set the manned space program on a new trajectory, was an oddly dissociated
event... The President,
adopting his customary tank-window squint, briefly praised shuttle
astronauts for conducting 'important research' and helping to build
the International Space Station—and then enthused about the 'stunning
images' from NASA space telescopes and the investigations being conducted
by its probes of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The odd thing was that aside
from Bush's tip of the hat to the shuttle and the station—whose
death warrants he was signing—all the triumphs he cited were the
work of unmanned robotic spacecraft... It is as if sixteenth-century
Spain, three decades after Columbus, lacked a single ship capable of
venturing out of sight of land."
I fear the stupidity disease may spread, to the detriment of us all.
20 May 2004 | top of page
.edu
Students in regional areas fear going to university because they are
worried about accumulating
HECS debts and cannot afford to live away from home, a report commissioned
by the Howard Government has found.
A rare success story: last year the University
of Queensland's successful commercialisation company, Uniquest, set
up a subsidary, QRx
Pharma, which is on the verge of breaking into the US drug market.
They're probably well aware of the 10
types of innovation available to any company.
20 May 2004 | top of page
 Bestiary
Patricia
Piccincini's mythical beasts are the stuff of Big Name Contemporary
Art.
A Worth100 competition for Photoshop amateurs shows Piccincini has some
serious competition when it comes to creating strange,
intriguing, disturbing and beautiful chimeras like the Triaviorum
Grandorum (pictured, right), the horned fishbird and the emperor seamonkey.
Some sort of frog has decided its preferred evening entertainment is
to sit in the shrubbery under my lounge-room window and sing a few old
favorites. The recital seems to start at about 7.00 pm and finishes at
around 11.00 pm and, as far as I can tell, is a solo performance. Rather
lovely :-)
Its call is similar to that of the southern
brown (Ewing's) tree frog which, despite the name, lives in marshes
and wetlands. I live at the top of a hill, so there's not much moisture
around my place. The nearest wetland is about 1 km away, at the bottom
of the hill.
This frog is definitely *not* living in the water-lily tub out the back
of the house, and there are no other ponds or pools in the immediate vicinity
(ie my or my neighbors' gardens), so where the frog comes from and where
it goes after the show is a bit of a mystery.
I suspect this frog watches ABC TV through the loungeroom window: it
turned up a couple of days *after* the ABC's backyard
wildlife survey closed, and so will remain forever anonymous.
via BoingBoing.net
19 May 2004 | top of page
Saint Pantone
Meet Saint Pantone, patron
of pretty colors and office pets, and of the Flemish city of Cmyk.
In Melbourne, Stephen
Banham has a reputation as the
man who hates Helvetica. He's better known to some Sneedle Flipsock
readers as the creator
of the RMIT logo with the pixellated dot. His new book of true
and tall stories about typography sounds like a hoot.
19 May 2004 | top of page
Yippee!
Feeling nerdily smug this morning, having completed the first step in
fulfilling a 2004 New Year's resolution. I resolved to learn how to do
cryptic crosswords, and have been buying The
Age every day, attempting the cryptic and then the next day checking
clues against answers to find out how the various compilers think.
And this morning I filled in all 52 answers, all by myself. Yay :-)
The next part of the challenge is to successfully complete the Age
cryptic crossword on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday--all
by the end of 2004.
Onward ho!
19 May 2004 | top of page
Lit
"I noticed how outraged you were to not get a writing credit on
'Cable Guy' until it came out and was panned. You dropped that cause like
the showbiz weasel you are." So
there.
Bunnies re-enact Kubrick's "The
Shining" in 30 seconds. (Requires Flash and sound) (Thanks, Warren)
"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra
Behn," said Virginia Woolf, "...for it
was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she--shady
and amorous as she was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say
to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits."
Something about the romance
genre brings out the worst in book designers. (Thanks, Fraser)
Proust is literature, VC Andrews is not. They read trash, you read fiction--I
read literature. Is it useful to think about games
as a form of storytelling?
19 May 2004 | top of page
Webby winners
The Webby
Awards have happened again. The industry and audience awards for best
'humorous' web site both went to The
Onion, a university student newspaper that went national and then
digital and continues to inspire undergraduate-style laughter around the
world every Wednesday.
Other old faves collecting yet more awards include Google
(best practice and services) and eBay
(commerce). The BBC picked up gongs for education, news and sport. The
Apple iTunes online store
collected three awards.
Surprisingly, given that the Webbies are mostly voted on by Americans,
Aljazeera.Net was
nominated in the news category.
Holding up the Antipodean reputation, Brisbane
City Council was nominated in the government and law category and
Lonely Planet was the people's
choice for travel. Pure New Zealand
was nominated in the latter category.
CarStuckGirls.com won both
the judges' and people's awards in the weird category. The site is a gallery
of photos of skinny long-haired women (you know, the model type) pretending
to have gotten their cars stuck in a variety of bogs, snowdrifts and other
tricky situations. It's the cleanest porn/fetish site I've ever seen.
via Poynter's
E-Media Tidbits
18 May 2004 | top of page
What was that?
Eighty per cent of American adults lack enough knowledge to understand
a science report in a mainstream newspaper. It's a rare scientist who's
able to translate quantum physics into a metaphorical goldfish bowl and
thereby effectively
communicate science to lay people.
via Poynter's
E-Media Tidbits
18 May 2004 | top of page
I'd like to thank the auteur
"Becoming famous, as anyone who watches the Academy Awards knows
full well, means being gracious about thanking your many wonderful collaborators
while making absolutely sure the spotlight stays focused on you."
When it comes to handing out gongs, screenwriters
and graphic designers alike tend to be lost in the background scenery.
18 May 2004 | top of page
First editions
The architecture book "Learning
from Las Vegas,
as designed by Muriel Cooper, was a deeply layered experience befitting
the underlying argument of this text. Whatever we think of postmodernism
today, this book was a fundamentally radical design in 1972 — one
that quite literally upset the apple cart of Swiss modernism."
The book's authors were criticising 'monumentalism' in architecture;
some readers believe Cooper's design for the first edition of the book
also critiqued the monumental mindset (and the irony that the book was
destined to become a classic in its genre). Yet the authors so hated the
design of the hardcover first edition that they insisted on designing
the paperback edition themselves.
The first edition is now worth about US$3500 as a collector's item, and
debate continues about whether its design was appropriately developed
and implemented.
Aside: in designing a literary magazine "The challenge is to use
design as a beacon and framing device, then to let good writing cast
its spell."
[While we're mentioning monumentalism, do visit Biscuithenge
if you can spare a few minutes.]
18 May 2004 | top of page
Web renovations
The word 'redesign' can strike fear into any web manager’s heart,
especially as budgets shrink and ambitions continue to grow. If time is
not pressing, consider taking a
'renovation' approach, redesigning the site in sections and introducing
tools that will make future redesigns easier.
Richard McManus reviews the evolution
of corporate web sites. I expected his article to finish with some
clear predictions about where
current trends are taking us: using the web as an interface between
ERM systems and staff, for instance, or as a way of accessing staff training
and 'knowledge management' resources. Everywhere I look, it seems there's
somebody playing with a new portal product, or writing an API so that
system A can talk to system B, or looking at other ways to create value
by linking independent IT systems together.
18 May 2004 | top of page
In search of a word
Troy is wrestling with ideas about marketing
and futurism, and reckons we need a new word to describe the grey
area where they overlap.
Meanwhile, in India, the BJP proves that having a
big campaign budget and rebranding
a country won't necessarily attract the votes you need to stay in
power. How very Cluetrain.
18 May 2004 | top of page
Skiffle kittens!
They're rather
good :-) (Requires Shockwave and sound)
18 May 2004 | top of page
Powerful searching made simple
CBEL.com provides a simple way to
take advantage of Google's powerful web searching capabilities. With a
simple form you can search for different document formats, pages within
a site or images; target French or English pages; translate a page or
browse through a directory of "the best sites selected by humans".
This last concept is interesting: instead of providing you with a long,
multi-page list of search results, CBEL.com arranges links in a single,
multi-column page. See, for example, the page on Douglas
Adams (in the literature section), where 117 relevant links are displayed
on a single page. That results page is itself searchable using a search
box at the top of the left-hand column. As well, you can use the menu
items at the top of the page to sort by popularity, title or freshness,
and to select the number of columns you see on the page.
Egoboo: I found CBEL's Douglas Adams page while Googling for Sneedle
Flipsock. Apparently my review of
"The Salmon of Doubt" is among the 117 'best' pages about
DNA :-)
18 May 2004 | top of page
Pingu's headache, your entertainment
Last month (1 April) we brought you
the orca penguin
splat game (requires Shockwave). Now Katherine with a K has found
a whole floe of Pingu games: it's the Yeti
Sports World Tour 2004.
Thanks, Katherine with a K
18 May 2004 | top of page
Travelling incognito
As well as being lost, this semi-fluffy
cat seems to have some identity problems.
Thanks, Trevor
18 May 2004 | top of page
Danger, Will Robinson
The seventh annual MLaw awards for wacky warning labels was won by a
bottle of drain cleaner that includes this instruction on its label: "If
you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions,
cautions and warnings, do not use this product."
18 May 2004 | top of page
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