Recently in Blogging Category

This is just a test of a tool I'm trying out called ecto.

Okay, so moving from Wordpress to Movable Type, Gallery Emedded in Wordpress to Gallery standalone, and one host to another took a while, but things should be working okay now.

Still to do:

1. Fix up XML to be more legible
2. See about making this site a little less grey
3. Find broken links
4. Add a random image from the gallery here
5. Add all the pictures back to the gallery

I'll get there. Hopefully soon.

I've upgraded to the latest Wordpress version, breaking the theme I was using. I've switched to a usable theme, but there are some issues (no sidebar gallery, no archives, some formatting issues). I don't know when I'll take the time to fix these issue.

I just realized that my photo gallery isn't working. I don't know why, but I figure it's finally time to upgrade the blog and the plugins. So, things probably aren't going to work well for a bit.

After the recent change in AT&T's privacy policy (see coverage in the Washington Post), I thought I'd spend some time looking for a broadband provider with a better privacy policy.

Sadly, I couldn't find one.

Covad says they will, at their sole discretion, share your information with third parties if they "believe it is reasonable to do so".

Comcast has almost the same line in their privacy policy, as do all the other providers I looked at.

It's odd, but AT&T's policy is stricter. They do not include the easy out of the other services, instead they spell out exactly when they will share it. Some of the phrases are still a little broad ("To prevent unlawful use of communications or other services"), but it's much more specific than the other ISPs I looked at.

The unfortunate part is AT&T's stated opinion that my information is actually their information. If they own it, is it covered by their privacy policy? I think, if that situation were to arise, one could make a strong case in court that the privacy policy still holds, and that the information was obtained by the government illegally. You can't do that with the other policies.

I do wish someone would state in their privacy policy, "We will not share your private information with the government without a subpoena." Until then, I guess I'm sticking with AT&T.

The SFGate has an essay by Special Guest blogger, Andrew Keen that gets my goat.

What Keen is critiquing has nothing to do with Web 2.0, but with the content created by the people that are using the web.

Web 2.0 is a group of technologies that allow people to work with hosted services in an interactive way they have grown accustomed to interacting with software installed on their computers.

This essay really doesn't talk about that at all. It talks about what people create using these, and other technologies.

As someone else said when commenting on the essay, a lot of the content that individuals put on the web is similar to Usenet content, only with pictures. Give people a forum to speak, and the majority of what they will say is crap. That's been true since long before the web existed. The web makes it easier to make the crap heard, and to find the crap, but it doesn't bring the crap into being.

I think what Keen is really critiquing can be found by examining his trust that "traditional" outlets can bring you the best entertainment and information. It's an indictment of non-"traditional" sources of information and entertainment. He's saying he'd never read the Guardian, trusting the Chronicle to give him everything he needs to stay informed; it's saying he'd never listen to independent music labels, trusting Sony to bring him all the good music possible; it's saying he'll never watch an independent movie, trusting the big Hollywood studios to bring him the best in cinematic content.

Fine. People have felt that way for as long as humans have been able to speak, write, and create images. It's foolish, though, to expect everyone to agree with him.

All artists know that everything they create is a collaboration between them and the person reading, viewing, or listening to what they have created. Thus a painting that I think is brilliant can appear without merit to you. The painting hasn't changed, but the viewer has. When Keen says that "writers should write and readers should read", he's writing nonsense. The reader evaluates what he is reading. As part of that, he brings to the work his own experiences and frame of reference. That collaboration between the writer and the reader is what leads to the value judgment.

His entire premise is based on the idea that what he likes, everyone will like; that there's an inherent value in every artistic creation - that's nonsense.

This belief doesn't have anything to do with Web 2.0, though. In truth, it's the same discussion that's been going on in modern art for nearly a century (or longer). Take a look at the discussion started by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. If you don't see the parallels between that and the content created on the web today, you're not thinking clearly.

It's easy now for everyone to create content that people all over the world will see, hear, or read. What makes it good? Keen says it's good if it's a source he trusts. I say it's good if you like it.

I don't know why, but in my last post the quotes within the pre element were escaped with a slash character. Anyone have a solution?

Thanks to an old post on Rambling Thoughts I've figured out how to make feeds work on WordPress. If you are having problems, let me know.

I'm back to using moBlog to update my blog. I really missed the ability to upload blog entries at DreamForce last week.

I didn't realize until I was looking through my site stats that people were still visiting, and search engines were still searching, my old blogger.com blog. My fault, really, I never took it down or posted an announcement. So today I posted an announcement, and set up a redirect.

If you are coming here from that old site, update your links to come here instead. The front page will soon redirect immediately. All the old content is here, but you don't have to update your links to archived information. It will remain there.

Sorry for the forgetfulness, and hopefully, if you're new to this blog, you'll enjoy the content you can find here, that wasn't at the old blog.

There are some really nice features of this blog, including category-based RSS feeds. In other words, if you're interested in my XML comments, but not in my political rants, subscribe to the XML RSS feed, not the entire site feed. Do this by clicking on the XML category and subscribing to the feed there.