Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time

Gosh. Pyra have done as much as anyone to promote blogging with their centralized tool blogger.com and their free blog hosting at blog*spot. Google brings some huge infrastructure and capacity to bear on providing all this as a service. But beyond that it's pretty hard to see what they gain.

I wonder what the deal was and what the Blogger crew made out of it. [from: JB Ecademy]

If you want to meet Thomas (or anyone else)
1) Go to their profile page.
2) Choose Meetings from the profile menu
3) Click on the day you want to meet on the calendar (Say Mon Mar 3)
4) Pick a slot when Thomas appears to be free and click on the "+" button.

Clearly you can navigate around the diary looking at day, week, month views or using the calendar in the top right to find that elusive free slot.

In writing this I found a couple of bugs that make this work rather better now. [from: JB Ecademy]

Reasons NOT to march tomorrow

1) You believe that bombing Iraq back to the stone age in a first strike attack on a sovereign nation, is the best way to stop an evil dictatorship with weapons of mass destruction and clear links to terrorist groups and that represents a clear and present danger to the western way of life. Regardless of the consequences.

Well if that's your belief, then fine.

2) You don't want to be associated with the groups organizing the march.

Well to quote a Labour party member. "The overwhelming majority of those taking part will be decent people who probably voted for us in the last election". The more ordinary decent people who turn up, the harder it will be for the media to spin the march into being just a few hard left, pro-palestinian loonies. March for "Capitalists against the war", "Skateboarders against the war", "Jews for Justice for Palestinians" or any one of hundreds of alternatives.

3) I want to watch the Rugby.

Oh come on! You've got a video recorder haven't you? Rugby is only a game, and like football, this is about life and death.

4) I live too far from London.

There are marches in 528 cities world wide. You can surely find somewhere nearer to you.

5) Someone's got to mind the kids.

Bring them with you. This isn't going to be violent. They'll have a great day out.

6) I'm afraid of crowds.

At the last march we meandered around side streets, crossing and re-crossing the official route. Take a tube to Tottenham Court road, Green park, Oxford Circus or Marble arch and just be on the outskirts. You probably will want to avoid the official rallying points at Gower St and Embankment

7) I'm working.

Take the day off and convince the boss to shut down and let everyone attend. Yes, but the cows will need milking. Well, you managed to walk on the countryside march didn't you? So it's ok to bomb Iraq just as long as you can go on killing foxes?

8) There'll be nowhere to park and I haven't got a congestion charge permit.

That's Monday! There are plenty of places to park on the outskirts of London near tube and rail stations.

9) I've never marched and I don't intend to start now.

Uh-huh. Just for once in your life how about standing up and being counted. Maybe you think that it won't make a difference? Well it probably won't but that's no reason not to try. Every little helps.

10) Blunkett has put us on Code Red and I'm scared that someone will shoot down an airliner that will plough into Hyde Park killing everyone there who hasn't already died from a Ricin attack on the tube system.

Yeah, right, whatever.

11) That many people will ruin the grass in Hyde Park and frighten the hedgehogs.

Collect some snails and slugs and send them to Tessa Jowell c/o The Department of Culture, Media and Sport who I'm sure will know what to do with them to aid our brave hedgehogs.

12) Between now and 12:30 tomorrow, Saddam Hussein goes into exile in Mauritania after a bloodless coup. The UN, USA, UK, France, Germany and Russia declare a 10 year multi billion dollar humanitarian aid program for Iraq in support of the new regime, funded from a windfall tax on oil profits. The interim government promises democratic elections in a month. All UN sanctions are lifted.

Then march in celebration instead of protest.

So what's your reason for not marching? [from: JB Ecademy]

Absolutely brilliant film from the Sundance online film festival. S-11 Redux It's a cut up of US media reporting.

In other "War" news, Joho The Blog has an open letter from Charlie Clements, a public health physician and a human rights advocate after a 10-day emergency mission to Iraq with other public health experts to assess the vulnerability of the civilian population to another war. [from: JB Ecademy]

After struggling to find anyone out there, these guys are one of the few ADSL broadband providers in the UK that have no objections to you sharing bandwidth via WiFi.

www.yesmate.com

Minimum term (1 month), cost - £25.52 + VAT per month (=£29.99). Activation is currently £29.99 inc VAT.
[from: JB Wifi]

It looks like BT have launched the Voyager 2000 Home WiFi package. There's also an article in the Guardian today about this. [from: JB Wifi]

Why I'll be marching on Saturday.

Mostly, large scale armed conflict is just *so* twentieth century.

I feel very, very confused by all this.

I weep for the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs, the Kosovans, The Argentinians, the Irish (both Catholic and Protestant), The Palestinians, The Israelis, The East Timor people, The Afghanis, for the ordinary people who just want to eat and drink and laugh. Who never asked to be caught up in a war about concepts, lines of ink on a map, or to be casualties of some Great Game.

I don't know what happened in Kosovo or why we had to bomb seven shades of hell out of them. But I've driven through there and even though I was attacked by some old bat dressed in black with a broom for being in the wrong loo at the wrong time, I don't bear them any ill will.

I've drunk Raki with a Turk within 50 miles of the Iraqi border and I wouldn't wish him and his friends any harm.

I've turned a beet into supper after it was given to me by an Iranian farmer. He was OK.

I've drunk mint tea and eaten hunza apricots with Afghanis in a hole-in-the-wall tea shop in Herat. It's undoubtedly flattened now and most of them are probably dead. But they were OK.

I gave a lift to an Afghani with his ancient Lee Enfield in the Spin Boldak pass. He was OK too.

So if you tell me that Saddam and Saddam's regime in Iraq is probably not the best thing that could happen to the Iraqi people or to countries round them, I'd probably agree.

But if you tell me that the *only* solution to the problem is a Blitzkrieg of cruise missiles, stealth bombers and a Dresden style flattening of Baghdad, then I can't agree.

My favourite anti-war cartoon Get Your War On has it nailed. Two people are talking on the phone.

>Sorry. I've been ranting. I didn't even ask how you're doing. Is your brother-in-law over there yet?

>He left last week. My sister is totally freaking out. I'm like "What? - you don't want your husband engaged in small-arms combat on the streets of Baghdad?" she said "What? - You think there are gonna be any streets there by the time we touch down?"

>Wait a minute - where will the kids play if there aren't any streets?

And that's why I'll be marching on Saturday.

It's not because I particularly agree with the Far left, Radical Islam, CND, Student activists, Jesse Jackson or any of the other political groups that have hijacked that side of the debate. And it's not because I necessarily disagree with all of the right wing, propaganda machine that is trying to tell us that those are the only people who are against the war. It's because I don't believe that in 2003 a war against Iraq would make the world a better place for the people who live in it; either in general or specifically in the middle east.

Now my confusion comes because I'm willing to accept that a bit of gun boat diplomacy may have an outcome that improves the lot of the Iraqi people and by implication, us. It may be that a vigorous opposition to corrupt, undemocratic, power hungry regimes with little respect for human rights is a good thing.

But I still can't condone the first strike invasion of a sovereign state on the basis that they might do some thing, some day. Or even that they did some thing in the past.

If you feel the same way, then get off your arse for once and spend Saturday in London. And bring the kids. It's their future we're marching for. The more ordinary people from ordinary homes with ordinary politics that turn up, the less the inevitable smears and propaganda will work.

[edited to add] There's a BBC debate tonight which will allow web, sms and email talk back with some polls. Make sure you vote. [from: JB Ecademy]

Another Wireless hot spot provider touches down in the UK. Surf and Sip Locations Found has 31 locations currently in the UK with lots more coming. And £5 for 24 hours for casual use. [from: JB Wifi]

Latest issue of Get Your War On is out. As usual they totally nail it.

>Sorry. I've been ranting. I didn't even ask how you're doing. Is your brother-in-law over there yet?

>He left last week. My sister is totally freaking out. I'm like "What - you don't want your husband engaged in small-arms combat on the streets of Baghdad?" she said "What - You think there are gonna be any streets there by the time we touch down?"

>Wait a minute - where will the kids play if there aren't any streets?

March on Saturday. Just be there.

You know how on the internet there's just never enough interesting new stuff to read? well this page should solve that problem.

Technorati: Top 100 Interesting Newcomers : Ranked by proportion of new links from blogs in the last 24 hours

Basically it's a list of weblogs tracked by Technorati where the number of blogs that link to them has rapidly increased. That's quite a good indication that the blogs are interesting and worth reading.

One side of Ecademy I'd really like to improve is to increase the number of sites that link to us. If you can help this in any way because you run a website or have influence over someone who does, please link to Ecademy. [from: JB Ecademy]

You're license fee at work. BBC NEWS | Talking Point | Taken a good picture lately? The BBC is asking for digital photos or pictures from cellphone cameras to be sent in and they'll publish the best ones each Friday. They specifically ask Are you going to the march against military action in Iraq?.

I can smell Matt (BlackBeltJones) Jones' influence in this one. It's a brilliant move in turning your readers into content providers. [from: JB Ecademy]

I need some help with style sheets. Are there any experts out there? Two problems:-

1) I'm trying to do the classic Slashdot style page with no tables, basically replcating the current Ecademy page. There's a one column header area, then a three column main area, then a one column footer area. I can get the first two to play ball, but I can't find the combination of absolute/relative positioning, margins, borders, top, left, right etc to get the footer area to float below the longest of the three middle columns.

2) I've got quite a few places where I need a block of text aligned left and another block of text aligned right but with both aligned top. This is trivial with tables, but I can't see how to do it via CSS.

Any ideas? [from: JB Ecademy]

Guy Kewney exposes 802.11g's tan lines: The Register : If this standard is rescued, it will take time; and by the time it is sorted out, many dismayed buyers will find themselves with obsolete gear. The WiFi Alliance turned out to be helpless to intervene, and its credibility will be hard to re-establish.

Guy's pretty damning about the current chaos surrounding 802.11g. He makes some good points, but I prefer to think of this like the time in modem development when there were several competing and incompatible 56K modem standards. We got through that one and I don't see why we can't get through this one. But the manufacturers, yet again, need to be persuaded of the advantages to everyone of compatibility and inter-operation. It's worse this time because there are huge economic pressures to ship product. Not least because cheap 802.11g products will significantly hurt sales of 802.11b devices. The result is on the fly debugging of the firmware as the manufacturers try to at least make their product work correctly to the draft standard.

But providing they do in fact work to the draft standard I'm not sure there's actually a problem. The IEEE can just rubber stamp the draft and we can move on.
[from: JB Wifi]

The next "Stop the war" march in London is on Feb 15. Details here.

Now I don't want to get in to a huge debate about whether the proposed military action in Iraq is correct or not. But I'm sure there are people here who feel that War is not the best course of action in this case. If you do feel like this, then make the effort and add your presence to the protest.

Don't be concerned about being linked with the far left or radical Muslim groups. Even though the media will undoubtedly spin the coverage to make it look like the protest is purely from these groups, the reality will be that there will be many other reasonably well informed, moderate, and concerned people there from all walks of life. It doesn't matter what your reasons are, only that you turn up.

There have been some suggestions that if there is a war in Iraq this year, it will happen around Feb 18-19. This makes the timing and size of the march particularly important.

Let's make this march the biggest there's ever been. [from: JB Ecademy]

The Guardian | Revolution? It's all go on the western : Frustrated at the slow roll-out of broadband access, people all over the UK are clubbing together to do it for themselves in the hope of building a free network for all.

Detail about free WLAN network efforts in Kingsbridge, Cardiff, Loch Lomond along with consume.net [from: JB Wifi]

Here's the relevant part of the AUP.

user policy :

(h) in excess of "normal use" bandwidth limits set out in this section.

ntl: home's broadband and dial-up services are intended for normal recreational or educational use by individuals and families and our pricing and network architecture have been designed accordingly. Customers who use the services more heavily than a normal home user will reduce the performance of the network for other customers.

"Normal use" of the service is defined as up to 1 gigabyte downstream of data transfer daily (which equates to approximately 200 music tracks, 650 short videos, 10,000 pictures or around 100 large software programmes downloaded per day).

1 gigabyte per day download, even on NTL's 1Mb service is going to take some doing. I think you'd have to build an automated robot to suck files off Kazaa or something like that to break this. Interestingly, they don't propose any cap on upstream data transfer. So providing you don't break any copyrights, it seems to be entirely within the AUP to run a P2P file sharing node and have that max out your upstream connection continuously. of course if you did that, you can bet they would change the rules again.

The other bit that's worth noting is the restrictions on LAN and particularly Wireless WLAN.

The residential broadband internet service ("Broadband Services") is designed for connection to a single PC. If you connect more than one PC at any one time to the Broadband Service you agree that this shall be entirely at your own risk. ntl will not support your PC's, the network used, or their configuration and technical support shall remain limited to your Internet connection only.

You must not connect more than three (3) PC's to the Broadband Services at any one time.

You are permitted to use routers, and the connection of a dedicated hardware router or firewall shall not be considered a PC for the purposes of this section.

In connecting to the Broadband Service, you must only use a PC you own or lease, and you must not attempt to connect your PC to the Broadband Services from outside your home. This includes the use of wireless or non-wireless networking technology to connect your PC or any other PC to your Broadband Services from outside your home or the connection of your PC to anyone else's Broadband Services.

So your allowed to have a WLAN. But you're only allowed to use it with your computers within your home's boundary. So no sitting in the car in the road then! Clearly this is designed to stop you sharing with your neighbours. And clearly it's also completely unenforcable. So should you do this, ahem!, you'd be well advised to keep quiet about it. They don't say anything about putting appropriate controls in place to ensure that you don't inadvertently break the AUP, but I guess you'd be sensible to at least use WEP.
[from: JB Ecademy]

Are you a power networker?
Have you filled in your fifty words?

Then you can find people like you!

This does a full text match of your fifty words on the fifty words and profile notes from everyone else and then orders the results according to how many matches there are. [from: JB Ecademy]

Check it out. Where is Raed ? is a blog from ground zero in Baghdad. Iraq doesn't seem so far away now, right? [from: JB Ecademy]

Early days and a bit thin, but here's a web site Kingsbridge Link - Community Mesh Network about a 5 node mesh being built with Locustworld's technology. [from: JB Wifi]

In my continuing quest to wean myself off Internet Explorer, I've gone back and looked at the bookmarklets I was using for posting to Ecademy Weblogs. Just a reminder, load this registry hack and you get an extra right click entry. Just highlight some text on a web age you're viewing, right click, choose "Ecademy Blogit!" And a new window opens up with the Ecademy blog entry screen. The URL, Title and you're highlighted text are already entered waiting for you to add some pithy wisdom for us all.

I've now got a set of bookmarklets as an alternative. Just drag these to your "Links" toolbar and they do the same thing. Highlight some text, click on the link in the toolbar and the same thing happens. Cool, huh?

IE Bookmarklets
Ecademy: Blog It
Wifi Ecademy: Blog It

Mozilla-Phoenix Bookmarklets
Ecademy: Blog It
Wifi Ecademy: Blog It

Notice that I've also got a second set for Mozilla and Phoenix. If you've got the time I'd recommend taking a look at these two as I reckon they are now realistic alternatives to IE.

The other project I've been messing around with is the buttons above the textarea data entry on Ecademy. These provide a very lightweight way of entering html. I'd been stuck using an IE specific way of doing this which also meant that I had to keep using IE as I spend so much time in Ecademy text data entry. I finally worked out how to do this with Mozilla as well and in the process improved the way IE works. There's a test rig and source code for this here. You should note that this depends on a bug fix for Mozilla that went in Jan 8 and hasn't made it through into the mainstream builds yet so if you want to take advantage of it right now you'll need to install a recent nightly build.

Let me know if you like, dislike or improve these. [from: JB Ecademy]