Google is a Verb, Not Just a Search Engine
E.D. Kain makes the interesting point that it may be too late for Microsoft's bing to make much penetration into the search market, regardless of whether it's better at producing desired results, because we've already reached the point where the name of the market leader has become a verb. Once something becomes a sort of universal noun, that’s bad enough. Kleenex ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 9, 2009 11:35
Google Chrome OS Undocumented Features
The buzz yesterday was that Google has plans to develop its mediocre Chrome browser into a mediocre operating system by next summer. Dave Rutledge speculates on some of its "undocumented features." Your family photos are accompanied by text ads for skin care and diet plans. Removes all Falun Gong references from your files. Every month, the hard drive is automatically defragged and investigated ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 9, 2009 07:57
Loose Tweets Sink Fleets
Apropos my weekend discussion of breaking news in the age of Twitter, Jason Kottke points to a set of "WWIII Propaganda Posters" by Brian Lane Winfield Moore spoofing their WWII predecessors.Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 6, 2009 12:59
Tim Berners-Lee: The Next Web
In a TED talk from February, Tim Berners-Lee, the man who arguably "invented" the World Wide Web, explains how the current system evolved and speculates on how "the next Web" will look. His concept is "Linked Data" so that people, places, products, and so forth are all interlinked on the Web in a relationship format. We're basically moving in that direction ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 2, 2009 09:12
Firefox 3.5 Available
Mozilla has just released version 3.5 of its Firefox browser. CNET's Stephen Shankland: Firefox 3.5 has a range of new features, including a new JavaScript engine for faster Web applications such as Google Docs; the ability to show video built into Web pages without plug-ins; a private browsing mode; fancy downloadable fonts; and geolocation technology that can let ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2009 12:32
MPAA Loses Again
The Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear an appeal from the MPAA, thus letting stand a lower court ruling that Cablevision's new remote DVR technology does not constitute a "retransmission" of the programming and thus require additional fees. The new DVR service would work by storing a viewer's recordings in computers housed at the cable operator, rather than in a box ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 30, 2009 08:18
Language Shapes Thought
Stanford neuroscientist Lera Boroditsky passes along the consensus in her field that "people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world." She provides a fascinating example: Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 29, 2009 08:53
Too Much [Internet] Bad for Marriage
Glenn Reynolds points to an incredibly thinly sourced AFP report that "Too much time spent on the Internet" is straining marriages in Ireland. One naturally extrapolates that to other countries causing the man who spends approximately 27 hours a day online to quip "Uh oh." Rather than spend time harping on the fact that professional editors let this horribly written piece ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 28, 2009 07:06
Michael Jackson Dies, Kills Internet
Not sure this is BREAKING NEWS, as CNN does, but it's amusing nonetheless: How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson. The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 26, 2009 11:00
Google Reader Annoyance
The other day, Kevin Drum noted that he was having trouble with his blog and Google Reader: Instead of showing up a few minutes after I write them, my posts seem to sit in limbo for a few hours and then show up in batches all at once. I've checked the feed itself, and it goes out within a few minutes ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 26, 2009 07:42
Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week
When I saw Glenn Reynolds' post "Can you get fit in six minutes a week?" I was sure I had a candidate for an Asked and Answered post: No. But, dutifully clicking the link, I found a NYT health blog from Gretchen Reynolds (presumably, no relation) with the same title. There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 25, 2009 07:21
Password Masking: Annoying, Unproductive, and Unsecure
Two of the oldest blogs have hit on one of my oldest Internet pet peeves: The idiotic masking of passwords on webforms, wherein one has to type often-long strings blindly, seeing only a string of asterisks. Jakob Nielsen: It's time to show most passwords in clear text as users type them. Providing feedback and visualizing the system's status have always been among ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 24, 2009 08:40
Illegal Music Downloads Bring $1.9 Million Fine
A Minnesota woman has been fined $1.9 million for downloading 24 songs from an Internet file sharing service, CNN reports. Jammie Thomas-Rasset's case was the first such copyright infringement case to go to trial in the United States, her attorney said. Attorney Joe Sibley said that his client was shocked at the fine, noting that the price tag on the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 19, 2009 12:58
Weird Al ‘Craigslist’ Doors Video
Not one of his better efforts, frankly, but I haven't seen anything from Weird Al Yankovich in years: Jack Humphrey jokes, "Craigslist has truly arrived. When Weird Al makes a Doors-inspired melody about your site, there’s really nothing left to do but cash checks and wait for Google to buy." Indeed. That seems to be the business model for quite a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 17, 2009 09:23
Twitter Fail
The fate of Iran's revolution -- and quite possibility the world itself -- is dependent on this? #twitter #fail. I guess they should have done that scheduled maintenance last night after all? UPDATE: It seems that Twitter postponed the work from the middle of the night US time in order to avoid inconveniencing the Iranians. I was aware of that but not ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 17:37
