General

Oh yeah!  TIME.com: Sneak peek at Matrix II [CNN]

This is a wild idea.  This is something I would love to see.  A small town newspaper builds a site with Radio.  It provides Radio to all of the community leaders in town, such as the local fire department, the police, the schools, the community organizations, the local sports teams, the zoning board, etc.  All told it provides 50 licenses, templates, and a location to post ($2k).   It then links to these organizations via its home site and aggregates RSS style news.  It accepts more community weblogs from others that buy the software on their own and begin to publish (my town’s girls soccer team has a Radio weblog, through no work done by me).

It then sells Radio, plus a place on their main site, to local businesses.  $250 a year.  The local travel agents, the real-estate agents, the landscaping businesses, etc all post new info on specials, tips on what your next purchase or activity should be, etc.  There would easily be, in most 20k person towns 100 small companies that would do this = $25 k.  All the paper would need to do is point them to the location to download the software and link to them.

Now, most of this could be done without an RCS server and simply through FTP, a static host (available at most ISPs for low $$), and linking.  Simple.  An RCS and some manipulation of RSS newsfeeds would add another level of sophistication and community building.   

Think of the benefits!  All the news you could ever want on a town in one place = fresh, decentralized, and useful.  Produced by the people who make it. Excellent. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

Amen to that.  I use EasyDNS for DNS Services as well.  Domain Registration Done Right. I was turned on to easyDNS through TidBITS and Adam Engst, its publisher and my friend. I, like most right-thinking people, have been dissatisfied with Network Solutions since 1994. They have never seemed to master the most basic Web technologies: Web-based interfaces, passwords, self-service, databases, etc. It was beyond me that in 1996, they seemed to manage everything through email that was manually entered into databases. It’s beyond me in 2002 that you can’t seem to get them to perform a single transfer correctly, partly because they rely on a complicated system that involves email. I’ve tried other domain registrars and been left cold. I won’t mention them because none of them demonstrate the incompetence of Network Solutions, but rather just don’t quite get it right. I’ve read a number of articles lately about how Network Solutions has allegedly tried to delay domain registrar transfers to frustrate users when their renewal fees are up. easyDNS is a breath of fresh air. Their site is well-designed and easy to use. They immediately want you to create a single Web-based account accessed over SSL that you use to manage all of your contact information, domains, and payment. They also throw in more … [GlennLog]

Bullet.. head..  ’nuff said.  Priest to Be Returned to Boston for Boy Rape Case. iWon May 3 2002 1:48PM ET [Moreover – moreover…]

Broo ha ha ahha.  Bryan Field-Elliot: “It’s completely absurd to call ‘theft’ the skipping of commercials using a PVR. By their logic, I suppose it’s also theft if I go to the bathroom or fetch a snack during commercials. If so, I wonder how many billions of dollars in advertising have already been lost to such malevolent biological needs.”  [Scripting News]

Always trust Lyndon to be thinking about something.  Lyndon B. Johnson. “If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.” [Quotes of the Day]

Well said.  John Robb: “Radio is a fully decentralized system. Even better, it provides you with a complete back-up of your weblog on your desktop and the ability to add to your weblog while disconnected. Given that it is decentralized, you can opt to self-host your weblog at your ISP or on your corporate Intranet in under a minute.” I posted this to correct some incorrect information that’s floating around. We worked really hard for a couple of years to build a completely decentralized system. It takes a few minutes to post an incorrect analysis of the product, and then that floats around out there, and hurts our business. Play fair. Our product isn’t perfect, for sure, but don’t ding us for not doing things the product does do.  [Scripting News]