I'm on the plane down from Vancouver to San Francisco this morning. My flight from Taipei hit Vancouver around 8PM last night, so I stayed at the Fairmont Hotel at the airport. It was definitely a special treat -- the Fairmont's pretty pricey -- but this trip has been really low-budget and I needed a lot of rest and recharge. I had a good room with a view of the airport and the city beyond. My flight over was uneventful -- sleep, eat, Spiderman 3 -- which was good since I'd had such a big last day in Taipei. In the morning, I'd gone out to see Taipei 101, which claims to be the tallest building in the world by some standards. I think there are lots of ways to slice the "tallest building" category -- the CN Tower has a strong claim, but that's only counting the huge antenna on top. And there's an unfinished tower in Dubai that's already close to, or taller than, Taipei 101. Regardless, Taipei 101 is a real interesting site. The elevators are the fastest in the world -- 38 seconds to go from floor 5 to floor 87. The windowed observation deck is interesting, and there's an outdoor deck two flights above it. The outdoor deck is racked by Taipei's scorching heat -- when I was there, it was 31C, up above the city's protective smog belt. The sun and empty sky make for an otherworldly experience. After 101, I took Taipei's local subway, the MRT, to the National Palace Museum. I've found the MRT easy to get around on -- most of the information was available in English as well as Chinese -- but I got a little lost looking for the museum. I was disappointed that the information booth in the Taiwan Main Station had so little tourism information, and all of it in Chinese. (Yeah, I forgot to print out the Wikitravel Taipei guide before leaving the hotel. My bad.) But I managed to wend my way out to Shilin Station and took a cab to the museum. It was worth the search. When the Chinese Nationalists left the mainland for Taiwan, they took with them many of the treasures of the Imperial Palace (much to the chagrin of the victorious Communists). These form the core of the museum's collection, and they're really quite amazing -- articles in bronze, ivory and gold from the Neolithic era to the modern day. While Western culture has gone through so many distinct and discontinuous phases -- Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greco-Roman, Medieval and Modern -- China's has varied much more smoothly and continuously. It's a little disconcerting to see artistic themes from 4000BC that are echoed in items for sale in the stores today. I had to get back to the Wikimania site -- by then almost empty -- to do a GChat conference with Niko. There were a passel of Wikimaniacs still around after the conference looking around Taiwan like I was, and after consulting Wikitravel we decided to go to Taipei's most famous restaurant, Din Something Something. It's got a short menu of delicious steamed dumplings -- pork, veggie, crab and shrimp. The shop's claim to fame is the elastic skin that keeps a pocket of hot broth inside the dumplings. Hey: if you do something well, why vary the menu? It was the best meal I've had in a long time. The dumplings themselves were incredibly good -- moist and rich with complex flavors. But the company was even better -- about 14 Wikimedians from all continents and walks of life, some of the most fascinating and important people on the planet. We were a big enough group to be stowed in our own party room, and with basket after basket of steamed dumplings piled onto the table, washed down with shared bottles of the ubiquitous Taiwan Beer, we had a crazy chaotic and fun time. I'm so glad I took an extra day after the conference to see a bit of the city. I think there's a lot more that I missed, but I'm glad that I got a taste. tags: taiwan taipei travel wikimania2007 taipei101 nationalpalacemuseum wiki

Wikimania 2008 Inevitably the conversation at Din Something Something turned to Wikimania 2008 and possible venues for it. Right now, the only serious bid is from Alexandria, Egypt, home of the Biblioteca Alexandrina. This is a modern reconstruction of the famous Library of Alexandria, centre of learning for the ancient world and repository of all of its knowledge. The bid is to use the sleek, glamourous conference centre attached to the Biblioteca -- offered to us free of charge. You couldn't put together a more powerful metaphor -- Wikimedia being itself a project to capture the world's knowledge and share it with all humanity. Having our event on the African continent would also send a great message about the Foundation's commitment to making free information accessible to the developing world. North Africa is definitely the most accessible part of the continent for Europeans and North Americans -- many of whom balked at the price and distance of travel to Taipei. The big problem with planning Wikimanias (Wikimaniae?) in the past has been the short time-frame. Typically bids for the event don't start until after the previous one, and the bidding process takes several months. By the time a venue is selected, there may be only 6-8 months of planning time available. For an international conference of several hundred people, this is a stressful, breakneck schedule. The idea was floated to do a little stutter-step and put Wikimania on a more long-term planning schedule. The event committee would short-circuit the bidding process this year, and declare Alexandria the site for Wikimania 2008 unless other groups insisted on bids for other cities. Then, bidding for Wikimania 2009 would start in September or October, with a decision made by the end of 2007. This would give 20 months for the Wikimania 2009 organizing team to prepare. Most importantly, they'd be able to shadow the 2008 team, learn how the job is done, attend the 2008 conference, and present about their venue for the next year. I think this is a really good idea. The Biblioteca conference centre staff will be able to provide us some professional services, making the shorter schedule (still about 11 months) a lot easier. There are some concerns about fairness of the process, or appearance of same, but my guess is that if the 2009 bid process starts soon after, people won't have a big beef. There are two major concerns with going to Alexandria, though. First is Egypt's worrying problem with human rights -- specifically gay rights. Homosexual Egyptian men are subject to arrest, and the laws are occasionally enforced. One foreigner was arrested in 2002. That's enough to put Egypt on a no-visit list with some gay-rights groups. Depressing as it is, I think it might be too much to hope for a venue in a country with an absolutely spotless human rights record. Maybe parts of Scandinavia...? There's a cruel calculus needed to evaluate which national human rights abuses can be reluctantly overlooked, and which are unacceptable. It's also clear that my personal judgment might be clouded, since this particular human rights issue is not one I would be directly targeted by. My hope is that an official statement by the Foundation would make it clear to the Egyptian government that this kind of policy is not conducive to attracting overseas business and tourism. The second concern is that Egypt and the Arab world in general have only embryonic local Wikimedian communities. While there are many people who contribute to Arabic Wikipedia, there is not a Wikimedia chapter in Egypt, nor are there regular meetups in the country or region. This might be a chicken-and-egg problem: choosing Alexandria would probably kick-start local groups. I hope that ar: Wikimedians pick up the mantle of leadership that the world Wikimedia community is offering them. tags: wikimania08 alexandria arabic wikipedia egypt

I'm in the EVA Air Evergreen Lounge at the Taipei Airport. I got bumped up to first class again for no apparent reason -- they were going to stick me in a middle seat in economy, and I squawked, and the next thing I know I've got a first-class ticket and pass to the lounge. Cool. This has been a crazy week. As I mentioned before, we announced Wikitravel Press at Wikimania 2007. That was great: we even got mentioned in the China Times about it. The transliteration of my name in Chinese? : that's "Bulazhuomu" or cloth-Latin-eminent-wetnurse. (Thanks for the translation, Jani.) But my main focus of the conference was my talk -- Talks/Wikimania2007. I talked about Enhancing wiki with social networking tools -- by which I mean social software. We'd done a decent job with this with Wikitravel Extra, but I've been working on a new project called Keiki with some friends, and we decided it was the right time to demo the tool for people. So it was a lot of hacking and negotiating over IRC right up until the talk to get things right for our first debut. Per the Keiki About page: Keiki is a project to create a free, complete and reliable parenting guide covering all stages of development, from conception to college. It is written by people who care about kids and want them to thrive: parents, grandparents, and teachers and parenting professionals. The manual we create together is available under a liberal copyleft license to make it easy for people to get and share the guide. Keiki means "child" in Hawaiian. Since wiki is also a borrowed Hawaiian word, we thought it was a good fit. The project itself is the fruition of several years of work by myself and Maj and people we've met and like in the wiki world. When Wikitravel became my full-time work, we were just getting used to being new parents, and our needs for buying travel guides was far outweighed by our needs for good parenting books. Talking to other parents, we found out that there was a lot of great information out there, but it was hard to get in one place. So kei.ki was born: a source for great child-raising information, free as in freedom. I hope the site becomes as important as it should be: after all, we're creating the Free training manual for the hardest job there's ever been. tags: keiki wiki parenting wikimania2007

On Wikipedia Weekly I lucked out and got interviewed on the awesome podcast Wikipedia Weekly, too. Their http://wikipediaweekly.org/2007/08/05/interview-with-wikitravels-evan-prodromou/[ Interview with WikiTravel s Evan Prodromou] is pretty good. I'm pretty happy with it. tags: wikipediaweekly wiki wikitravel keiki

It's been a few days since I posted on my blog -- since I left Montreal for Taipei and Wikimania 2007. My time has been upside-down and backwards as I've traveled around to the other side of the clock and a day into the future, and I've just been insanely busy with other work. My flight to Taipei was dreamy. I travelled enough last year to get Air Canada's "silver" frequent-flier level, which earned me a couple of system-wide upgrade certificates. They came in handy, since I bumped up to business class on the leg between Montreal and Vancouver, and then to the "Premier Laurel" class on the EVA Air codeshare between Vancouver and Taipei. That was first class across the Pacific Ocean, and man, it's the only way to fly. Jimmy Wales was on the same plane (but back in business class...), so we got to chat a bit and we shared a taxi to the conference site. Jimmy's really fun to talk to -- it's always nice talking to another entrepreneur who's passionately dedicated to Free and Open Content. (We were in line for customs together, too, and I tried to peek at his passport to find out his date of birth, over which there is some confusion. But he had his thumb over the day (intentionally...?), and all I got was "Aug 1966", which everyone agrees on anyways. Dang! My personal theory is that Jimmy was born on 6 June 1966 and uses 8 Aug 1966 instead to avoid the demonic stigma.) The conference centre we're in is great -- a really big, clean, modern place. It's nice when we're inside, but Taipei in August is muggy and hot like a laundromat in rural Mississippi. I find myself rushing between buildings. tags: wiki wikimania2007 taipei evaair jimmywales travel

IM IN TAIPEI HACKING UR DAYS I came in a couple of days early to participate in the Hacking Days event. This is a pre-conference meetup for MediaWiki developers and those who love them. The meetup was really unstructured and fun because of it, although there were a few points of uncomfortable silence when people stopped talking and we all realized we had 14 more hours of meetings and not much left to say. There's also a real tension between the conference organizers, who've encouraged non-developers to come to Hacking Days, and the core developers who really want to just be left alone and get some work done. This year the 2-day event was split into "Hacking Days" and "Hacking Days Extra", with the first being invite-only and the second being open to all. I think it's a tension that needs to be resolved -- if outsiders aren't invited to Hacking Days, we just need to say that and live with it. We shouldn't let people think they're going to participate and then cut them out. That's a bait-and-switch tactic and it's unfair. I think that there's a need for an open-attendance MediaWiki conference; I also think that MW is a big enough piece of software that third-party conference organizers would be eager to make an MWCon work. And core developers could get hefty fees for coming to talk! tags: wiki mediawiki hackingdays wikimania2007

Announcements I've been having problems sleeping here. I've been falling asleep at the wrong times and waking up at the very wrong time. Last night, I missed the Wikitravel Eat-together because I fell asleep at dinner time and didn't get up for the event. Make mental note: don't miss your favorite wiki's user get-together! Fortunately Jani covered for me and apparently the event was a lot of fun. Speaking of Jani: this morning he announced a new venture that Maj and I have been helping him with. Wikitravel Press is an independent company that will be publishing a line of printed travel guidebooks (yes, paper books! That you can hold in your hand!) based on Wikitravel content. I think it's a great project and I'm really glad we're going to finally be fulfilling this important goal of the Wikitravel project. I also think it's going to be a great way to attract a new round of contributors -- people who are more reliant on their paper guidebooks than to a search engine for learning about their destinations. I think that the idea that they can change and improve the books they have will be a really important incentive for these folks. And like it or not, there are still a lot of people who don't consider digital information "real" in the same way as analog-stored info. So putting Wikitravel guides on paper is like Pinocchio becoming a Real Boy. Thank you, Blue Fairy! More info at the project's announcement and the on-site discussion (Wikitravel:3 August 2007). tags: wikitravel wikitravelpress guidebooks travel announcements

Called out This morning's keynote address by the Wikimedia Foundation chairwoman Florence Devouard was informative and interesting. She even talked about ways to bring money into the Foundation... including selling books based on the site content. I was giggling about this with Jani as she moved on to talking about the attention economy, to hear, "For example, Evan is not paying attention right now and talking to his neighbour." D'oh! Lesson learned: don't mess with User:Anthere! tags: anthere keynote books wikimediafoundation

It seems like everything's coming up wiki these last few days. I guess it's just part of going to Wikimania -- wiki is in the air. For example, I'm glad to see that Wikispaces now supports OpenID for login. That's excellent news for the wiki world -- Wikispaces joins a growing number of wiki projects and wiki providers who support OpenID: WetPaint, Wikitravel, wikiHow, AboutUs, and many others. OpenID is really coming together as a global sign-on for wikis. This is good news, because it means we can start talking about distributed reputation systems for wikis, making for one big wiki family. I think it would be great if Wikipedia and Wikia were ready to come on board with OpenID sometime soon. It's unfortunate that OpenID deployment at Wikimedia is dependent on the single user login system, which is a huge effort that's taking longer than expected. Wikia is waiting to see what Wikimedia does. I tried out Wikispaces's OpenID support, and it seems pretty good. I got a spurious error when I logged in -- it responded to my automatically-provided nick, "Evan", with a message that made it sound like I'd just typed in that nickname. Other than that, it worked quite smoothly. Good job to Wikispaces, and real bonus for OpenID. tags: openid wiki wikispaces

I'm getting myself ready to take off for Taipei for Wikimania 2007. It's going to be an exciting event -- my first time in Taiwan, too. I've been ambiguous about Wikimania each year, but I seem to keep going. The stated purpose of the conference is to be solely for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, but people seem to keep coming who don't have anything to do with Wikimedia projects, so I figure I might as well go, too. I like finding out what other people are doing with MediaWiki, and I like getting pumped up about Open Content, the Wiki Way, and freedom of information around the world. I hope that eventually more general-purpose wiki conferences like RecentChangesCamp and WikiSym will get more public attention, and participation by Wikimedians, in the future. It would relieve some pressure on Wikimania to be something it doesn't seem to want to be. I'm going to be speaking about Extending wikis with social networking tools. We've done some interesting work with this on Wikitravel Extra, and I plan on using the same technique for other wiki sites in the future. I think it's a powerful way to enhance the unity of consensus knowledge with a multiplicity of varying opinions. I'm also looking forward to the Debian Birthday Party 2007, thrown by local Debianistas. It should be a lot of fun! There's also a Creative Commons conference happening during Wikimania, which will be pretty interesting. Lots to do in Taiwan this year. tags: wiki wikimania wikimedia wikipedia debian taiwan taipei

WYSIWYG and MediaWiki I've been an advocate of WYSIWYG editing in MediaWiki for 3 years now. So I'm interested to see that the core dev group for FCKeditor have gone the distance to make a real, working WYSIWYG plugin for MediaWiki. The extension has just about everything that I'd want from a WYSIWYG mode for MW:

• It stores articles as Wikitext. Since in-browser editors generate HTML, plugins often try to store HTML in the wiki database, but this conflicts so much with other parts of the site, it's unworkable.
• It's implemented as a MediaWiki extension. This makes it possible for MW installations to experiment with the tool and remove it if they don't like it. It also shows that the tool isn't too invasive and should work with other extensions.
• It supports templates, tables, images, and citations. A lot of the advanced syntax for MediaWiki is supported.
• It's optional for users. Users can switch to Wikitext any time they're editing a page, and users who don't like WYSIWYG at all can turn it off with a user preference toggle.

I think that this tool has the capability to be the WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki. The previous effort using Wikiwyg didn't handle most of these points. Jimmy Wales gave an impassioned keynote at Wikimania 2006 about the need for WYSIWYG editing on Wikipedia and elsewhere, and I hope we can use the FCKeditor MediaWiki extension to meet that need. tags: wiki wysiwyg mediawiki fckeditor wikiwyg

We've had a lot of great blog traffic about Vinismo. I thought I'd try to pull together a few of the better ones.

• vinismo! wiki wine compendium from Hugh McGuire.
• Vinismo Opens Its Doors to Wine Lovers Everywhere from the Creative Commons Weblog. Thanks, guys!
• Vinismo: Wiki + Wine from Zach Copley
• Vinismo from Wendy Copley.
• DemoCampMontreal3 report from Montreal Tech Watch
• DemoCampMontreal3 Report from Josh Nursing
• Vinismo Presentation at DemoCampMontreal3 on the SearchAnyway Blog. Probably one of my favourite pieces, although it makes Niko real mad since it cuts off just before he starts talking. Make mental note: don't say "Uh" so much.
• Bienvenue sur Vinismo, le guide des vins libre by Niko. Niko also bemoaned the difficulty of keeping our project under wraps in Mon lourd secret bient t d voil . What a drama queen.
• Vinismo : un wiki sur le vin by Olivier Niquet. He's suspicious that we are sponsored by J. Lohr, because there are so many J. Lohr wines on our front page.

All in all it's been pretty good. I hope we'll get some more, though! tags: blogs vinismo

DemoCampMontreal3 report So, it's been a couple of days and I should probably get around to posting my own DemoCampMontreal3 report.

• Niko and I started off with our own demo for Vinismo. It was a lot of fun: we talked about the reasons for starting the site, the technical, information architecture and graphics/UI design challenges, and what our future extensions are going to be. At the end of it, we took some questions, which was fun. The most interesting for me was from Roberto Rocha, whose TechnoCit is one of my favourite tech columns in Montreal. He asked, "Your typical contributor will be much older. What will you do to make your wiki more accessible to them?" It was a good question I don't have an answer to yet, but I want to think about it more.
• The second demo was by Heri Rakotomalala, who showed off his social-networking GTD tool, WorkCruncher. It's a TODO list with a twist: items that you don't get done age off the list. You have to re-commit to doing a task on an almost daily basis. I think it's a great and refreshing design; my TODO list gets depressing long and filled with unfinishable tasks, and I get too intimidated to work on ones that really matter. I think Heri might have to make some concessions to people's expectations for TODO lists -- maybe a way to automatically archive tasks, rather than deleting them entirely...?
• The third demo was by the gang from Defensio, who are providing an great anti-spam Web service similar to Akismet. They had a few examples of where they're different, but I'm not well-versed enough in comment spam issues to understand them. My guess is that since they're getting into the market after Akismet, though, they have the opportunity to make a smarter technology. Their one downside? They used slides -- which the rules of DemoCamp. They did demo the service, though.
• Fourth up was the indefatigable Simon Law. Simon's project? To turn back time. Talk about ambitious! His effort consisted of making a typical kitchen clock turn backwards. He disassembled the clock and explained how it worked to the audience. It was great, except for two things: the clock didn't work at the end of the demo (although he got it working by the end of DemoCamp), and he took a few minutes to draw a diagram of the clock; in my mind, that's just a low-tech PowerPoint slide.
• Fifth, and quite fascinating, was a tool that Jerome Paradis showed off. It was a Google-Maps mashup that filtered special emails for an informal private jet sharing network. Apparently, companies who charter private jets often have space in the jets, so they'll make that space available. People who need a last-minute charter jet can send email from their Blackberries and such, and if there's availability they get contacted by the charter companies. The interesting part? These people use a highly structured lingo ("O/W" = "one way"), and Jerome's tool scrapes these emails to make the data into a mapping app for his customers. Very interesting!

All in all, it was a good night -- probably made better by the Argentina Cabernet Sauvignon I had. There's a DemoCampMontreal4 scheduled for August 17th, but I won't be in town for it. Too bad for me! tags: democampmontreal3 defensio workcruncher simonlaw jeromeparadis vinismo

At DemoCampMontreal3 last night, I quoted Ward Cunningham, who once said that making a wiki link is a great way to ask a question. A year or so ago, I got interested in citizens arrests. What are those, anyways? How do you do it? Is it even really legal? So I started How to Make a Citizen's Arrest on wikiHow. Just a little while ago, it became a featured article on wikiHow. And just a few days ago, it was quoted in an article on Time Magazine's blogs: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges. Interesting to see how these memes gather momentum. tags: wiki wikihow citizensarrest time

24 July 2007 is the fourth birthday of Wikitravel, the free travel guide that I and my wife Michele Ann Jenkins started on July 24, 2003. It's been a long and complicated road, but I'm really proud of all the work Wikitravellers have done over these last four years. The project has gone from being a pretty-good idea to being one of the definitive travel resources on the Web. Winning the Webby Award for Best Travel Site this year was a real recognition of that trajectory. I'm wondering what 24 July 2008 will bring... it will be interesting to see. tags: wikitravel wiki travel wikiversary 24july2007

Vinismo It's only partly a coincidence, then, that today I'm launching, with my friend Niko, a new Open Content project dedicated to demystifying an even more complex and byzantine world: wine. Tonight we're demoing the site at DemoCampMontreal3, so it's as good a time as any to throw open the doors:

        http://vinismo.com/

We don't pretend to be wine experts or even connoisseurs. We're just two guys who like to drink wine and want to learn more about it. Ward Cunningham once said that wiki link is a great way to ask a question. We want to share the learning experience with people of all levels of expertise. We think that working together with our friends and family, with other Internet users, and with the public at large, we can create a detailed, readable, useful wine guide for people at any level of expertise. Our liberal Creative Commons license means that the guide is Free -- free for anyone to copy, modify, or publish in any medium. I need your help to make this project a success. If you can, I'd really appreciate if you could help us out with one or more of the following tasks:

• Please sign up to use our site at, and create a user page describing yourself.
• Drop us a note in the Wine Bar letting us know what you like and don't like about the site.
• Try adding some information about your favorite wines, wineries, wine regions or wine styles! It doesn't have to be perfect -- every little bit counts!
• Please forward this info to people you know who might be interested in Vinismo. They don't have to be experts to be interested in wine.
• If you have a blog, please post a link to our new site on it!
• If you use a social bookmarking tool, like del.icio.us, please add us to your list!
• If you use digg.com, please vote for our site there: http://digg.com/software/Open_Content_wine_guide_launches
• If you use reddit.com, please vote for our site there: http://freeculture.reddit.com/info/296au/comments

tags: wiki wine vinismo

My brother Ted and his partner Nabil had a great commitment ceremony yesterday afternoon in Dolores Park in San Francisco. It was a beautiful day, and they had lots of friends who came out for them. I came up from Los Altos Hills with our parents, and my brothers Nate and Andy came with their friends and/or families, too. Ted and Nabil march to a different drummer, to put it mildly. Their ceremony was remarkably like a Quaker wedding, although I don't think they planned it that way. They had a nice picnic and tea party in the park for a few hours, let the guests get to know each other, and then called everyone together to listen to their promises to each other. (Very sweet, by the way). They then exchanged bejewelled carabiners -- those funky little mountain-climbing metal loops that people also use as keyrings. "We may lose necklaces or rings, but we're not going to lose our keys." The carabiners were decorated with the California state gem, benitoite (Benito-ite), which is rarer than diamonds. Brilliantly, their friends who designed the carabiners also managed to include a USB thumbdrive, on which they're going to copy all the pictures, stories, movies, and other digital paraphernalia from the ceremony itself. Ted and Nabil will be carrying around those pictures as long as they have the carabiners. Clever! After they'd exchanged the carabiners, they hooked them to their belts, and then hooked them together. "And now... we're HITCHED!" Thunderous applause. They then invited up anyone who wanted to make a toast. My brother Nate went first, and girt in a bastard sword (for unclear reasons), he made a great toast. A dozen other people, including my Dad, came up to speak. By then, Ted and Nabil were falling over with fatigue, so we had mercy on them and stopped coming up to say nice things about them. Everyone dug in to champagne and cake, and Amita June and her two cousins Elena and Tessa ran around on the huge playground in the park. Definitely a good, good wedding-like event. tags: ted nabil wedding carabiners commitment ceremony

Long day This morning we had a Skype conference call relatively early in the morning, and then a brunch with Nabil's family (who are visiting from Virginia and Philadelphia). It was really nice -- my folks decided to build a huge patio in their backyard, and it's great for having kids and family running around, as well as for outdoor brunches. (We haven't had a meal inside since we got here, actually.) This afternoon we drove up to Novato to visit Maj's grandmother Jeannette and her Uncle Kevin and Aunt Robin. Also present were Jeannette's lifelong friend Roseanne and Kevin's highschool pal Jim. Amita June loved running around their big backyard and playing with their sweet old dog Holly. She also got a lot of mileage out of their porch swing. Maj and Robin swapped cooking tips and renovation horror stories, and I got to listen to Jeannette and Roseanne tell gambling stories from various Southern California Indian casinos. Jim, meanwhile, was on his cell phone in another corner of the yard, negotiating with another gold prospector with a hand injury to work the friend's claim. Quite an evening. After a dinner of barbecued salmon, caprese salad, and corn-on-the-cob, Kevin and Robin's neighbors came over, and we talked more about statistical analysis, sheep-farming in Marin County and driving through Austria. A long drive back to my folks', but Amita slept the entire time, thankfully. Good for us all. tags: kevin robin novato jeannette indiancasinos porchswing amitajune

Voice jail I had to call Air Canada a few days ago to get our tickets to come out here to California, and I had a terribly frustrating time working my way through their automated systems to get to a human being that I needed to talk to. And I thought to myself, "Why do I hate these automated voice systems so?" I never call a 1-800 number or another voice system if my problem could in any way be handled automatically. I always go to the Web first, and only try to get on the phone if the particular special-purpose request I have hasn't been, or can't be, built into the Web interface. But the economics of call centres makes the company want to shunt me into one or another automated voice systems in hopes that I'll be satisfied and not bother a real human being. My only goal with a phone call is to talk to an intelligent human being who can handle my exceptional situation. But the interface is designed precisely to deny me that goal. Can that interface ever be anything but frustrating? tags: phones voicejail frustration interface

Least likely to succeed Ross Mayfield posted a nice pic of me offering to run his company in exchange for a hot meal. It's a good shot of me, actually. In other linking issues, my Technorati "Authority" value is now 101, putting me squarely into B-list Bloglebrity territory. Hooray for the second string! tags: b-list socialtext technorati rossmayfield bloglebrity

I read with interest Erik Moeller's note about sources on Wikipedia: Wikipedia s core problem is not expertise, it s self-selection. He quotes the following paragraph from the article about Mitt Romney: Romney was sworn in as the 70th governor of Massachusetts on January 2, 2003, along with Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. Within one year of taking office, Romney eliminated a 3 billion dollar budget deficit. During this time he did not raise taxes or debt. He also proceeded to end his term with a 1 billion dollar surplus as well as lower taxes and a lower unemployment rate. Erik pointed out that the cited source was the Mitt Romney for president campaign, and then worried about the self-selection of Wikipedia contributors. I think he's on the wrong track. I don't think the sources of Wikipedia articles matter that much, if the text is readable, true, neutral and verifiable. The part that really made me cringe, in the above paragraph, was the awkward construction He also proceeded to end his term... Awful. I've streamlined the sentence to He ended his term with a 1 billion dollar surplus, lower taxes and a lower unemployment rate. As I tried to explained in my unfinished essay on Readers and writers on Wikipedia, I think that as Wikipedians we concentrate far too much on the agenda and rights of contributors, and far too little on the readability and usefulness of the articles themselves. I think WP is going to become more professional when more Wikipedians practice their writing skills than their rule-making skills. We should concentrate on the quality of the output, not on the source of the input. tags: wiki wikipedia erikmoeller mittromney writing

I'm working at the Palo Alto Coworking Space today for a few hours, since I'm in Palo Alto and since I'm interested in coworking. It's a great, open, airy space with a good WiFi connection and a lot of couches, windows, air and light. Good spot to work. It's also attached to the Socialtext office. Ross Mayfield just announced that they are seeking a new CEO, so I thought it'd be a good idea to throw my hat in the ring while I'm in the neighborhood anyways. Liz Henry caught me on virtual film. tags: socialtext wiki ceo2.0 sign coworking

Maj, Amita June and I had a long day on airplanes today, heading to San Francisco. My brother Ted and his partner Nabil have decided to have a commitment ceremony, which is I guess one way of saying "get married". It's casual and fun, just like Ted and Nabil themselves, but Ted means too much to us for us to miss this event. So we spent some miles, dropped everything, and headed out west. Amita's still young enough (under 2) that we can sit with her on our lap. Not only that, but if we get her a seat, we have to bring along a car seat -- more of a hassle than having her on our laps. Still, on a crowded flight it can be kind of hard. Maj is really good at packing for the plane -- putting together food, toys, books and other distractions to get AJ through a long flight. But today tested her skills to the limit -- we had a 2 -hour flight to Dulles, then another 6 hours out to SFO. That's too much for any grown-up, much less a 22-month-old. AJ had a hard time going to sleep at naptime, and we had some crying -- some loud crying. Otherwise, the flight was survivable. I picked up JPod, the last novel from Douglas Coupland, at the airport before we took off. It's a great read -- difficult, exposed, referential, glib. A good read. My dad -- Amita calls him "Pappou", Greek for "grandfather" -- met us at the airport. Amita's usually pretty standoffish with any adult who isn't me or Maj, but she's really comfortable with Pappou. She told him stories about flying while we waited for our bags. "Tita... Airplane! Tita... Raisins! Draw! Stickers!" She got a lot of time to do it, because our luggage took a long time coming off the plane, and two of our bags never came. But it was nice comin' home to my parents' house, who've built a big backyard patio since we were last here. We had pasta and salad on the lanai, and then AJ went down for an easy night's sleep. Soon for me, too. tags: travel amitajune maj lostluggage sanfrancisco dulles jpop douglascoupland

DemoCampMontreal3 DemoCampMontreal3 is next Tuesday, July 24th, at the SAT. I'm excited about the event, since Niko and I will be showing our new project in public for the first time. It looks like there will be a pretty good line-up, and I love going to SAT for DemoCamps. Of course, I'm flying into Montreal at 5AM that morning, but it'll be good nonetheless. tags: democampmontreal3 barcamp barcampmontreal sat

Blog reactions I was glad to see that Creative Commons had a nice response to my essay about Paying wiki contributors. I've had a few people give me private responses, and I think it's an interesting issue that's important for people thinking about wiki, and wiki commercialization, today. tags: cc wiki commercialization

One thing that often comes up in the world of commercial wikis is the idea of Paying wiki contributors. I think it's a bad idea, and I've written an essay why. tags: wiki commercialization crowdsourcing

SxSW submissions time I just submitted a panel for South by Southwest 2008. The title: "Wiki 2.0: Taking Collaboration to the Next Level". Hopefully it will get accepted; I'd love to do a panel with some of the interesting wiki people I've met over the last few years. The SxSW panel submission process is almost closed; submissions have to be in by July 20th. See Panel Submission Process for 2008 SXSW Interactive for details. tags: wiki sxsw08 sxsw panel submissions

We went camping this weekend near Nominingue, northeast of Mont Tremblant. It was fun -- we met our friends Jeff and Anne-Marie, who'd biked there from Tremblant during the day. Maj and Amita June and I brought tons of food and big tents and stuff in the car. Our drive up was nice; Amita kept saying, "Camping!" every few minutes to emphasize how excited she was about going camping. She's getting much better about longer road trips. She entertains herself, reading books or telling herself stories or looking out the window and thinking out loud. Occasionally we sing songs or color together. The night was rainy, though, and Amita June slept in a dry but loud tent all night. At about 6AM she woke up angry. "Purple house, NOW!", she said, talking about our house in Montreal, with purple trim. "Shhh, Amita!" Maj said. "We're sleeping in the sleeping bag. We're camping!" "NO CAMPING!" said Amita. So the two of them got up and walked down to Lac Nominingue, while I got some rest. Later that morning, all the people in the campgrounds around us were smiling. "No camping! Camping no!" became a pretty popular refrain. Ah, well. At least they had a sense of humour about it. tags: amitajune laurentides camping travel maj jeff annemarie

Inefficient days Long day today. Brian got back from Halifax (Nova Scotia) on Friday, so we once again have a full house. Which is fun, but it makes it hard to work at home. I went out to Caff ArtJava near our house early this morning, but their le Sans Fil? connection was down. So I came home to pick up my bike to ride to La ka, but the back tire had a hole in it. And I didn't have a pump. Gar. So I spent a couple of hours working out that situation, and by that time I needed to go pick up our moving van. Maj found a great teak "wall unit" on Montreal Craigslist, and we need the shelves for our living room. So I got a van to pick up the pieces -- it was far too big to fit in our car. And, since my friend Niko wanted to go to IKEA, I traded him an afternoon with the van for help with my wall unit. He and Maj went off to IKEA as planned, and me at Amita went to the wading pool at Parc La Fontaine. It was a great time, although it's a long walk. I've had a hard time getting Amita onto the back of my bike -- she got pinched once when we were putting on her helmet, and since then she's wanted nothing to do with helmets, bikes, or nothing. If I force her helmet on and stick her in the seat, she loves it, but it's hard to trick her into it. She screams bloody murder when I try to put the helmet on her. But the pool was fun -- we chased each other up and down through the water. She fell asleep during the walk home, and I managed to get a little work done this afternoon. But Maj and Niko got back around 5:30, and Niko had a comedy show at 7PM and couldn't help me out -- the welcher! So I got Brian to come instead. The furniture was heavy -- really heavy. Teak is a heavy dang wood. Getting it out of the guy's house was really hard, and getting it up to our second-floor living room was Sisyphean. I'm amazed we didn't break any limbs. But at the end of it all, we had a great-looking new living room, and Maj had made a delicious gazpacho with polenta on the side. Yum! Hopefully the rest of the week is going to be more productive that today. Niko and I launch a new site at next week's DemoCampMontreal3 (as he so lugubriously pointed out in this blog post). And another group of partners will be launching kei.ki during Wikimania 2007, which is coming up soon. On top of that, we leave on Thursday for my brother's "commitment ceremony" in San Francisco, announced about 2 weeks in advance. We were lucky we had lots of miles so we could make the trip, but it still really cuts down on our Montreal summer experience. tags: maj furniture craigslist amitajune brian niko teak

I just got a promotional email from Caf Press specifically for Canadian residents (title: Canadians feel the love). It pushed a lot of maple-leaf-covered schlock with gushy Canadia-praising. I found it annoying, and not even because of the maple leaf logos (which are relatively rare here in Quebec). I had an extremely poor experience last time I ordered a shirt from Caf Press. Because they fulfill Canadian orders from the US, they're subject to import duties. My order got caught by the feds, and I had to pay an additional sixty percent. (See Journal/14 Prairial CCXIV). I'm not gonna "feel the love" until they figure out the problem and make sure I don't get hidden charges from the Canadian Border Patrol. A Canadian fulfillment centre would probably do the trick, but I've heard that shipping Federal Express also fixes a lot of border duty problems. tags: cafepress canada borderduty taxes emailnewsletter

Gunning for the B-list So my technorati page for this blog shows me with an authority rank of 96, putting me just on the cusp of being a b-list bloglebrity (authority > 100). Technorati rates blogs by how many other unique blogs have linked to them in the last 6 months, so I just need four new links to go over the top. I have a few essays on the back burner of my Todo list, but there's a temptation to just do something negative to get those last few links. Could I come up with some more creative slurs against for Lars Wirzenius? (ref: Journal/6 Fructidor CCXIV, bottom of the page). That'd be good for 3-4 links from Planet Debian right there. tags: b-list technorati bloglebrity planetdebian larswirzenius

Busy weekend, and I haven't taken the time to blog over the last few days as I should have. On Thursday and then Friday, Maj, Amita June and Brian and I went down to the Montreal Jazz Festival, which took place last week. It was a great time -- we went and saw some free acts, including some Dixieland, some Latin jazz, and the awesome Klez Dispensers playing klesmer. We also went to the huge playground and crafts centre for children on-site. It had slides, a big moonwalk bouncy-room, tunnels, a sandbox, and a giant piano that kids can step on to play music. They also had cool drawing and crafts projects -- a neat, active addition. The Jazz Fest is a great place to bring little kids. Amita June loved dancing to the music and playing in the playground. tags: montrealjazzfest maj brian amitajune

Quebec City Yesterday and today we spent in Quebec City. Brian hadn't been before, and the old, walled city is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so we dragged him up there. It was also the Festival d' t de Quebec while we were there, which was pretty fun. We had no idea the festival was happening, so it was a pleasant surprise. Hell, I have a hard time keeping the festivals in our own city straight. We got rooms at the really nice Hotel Ch teau Laurier just outside the walls near the festival site. It was really nice -- modern, sleek, and pretty affordable (we got a big double-queen room for $150). Then we walked around the Upper Old Town in on-again-off-again rain, and watched some of the street performers. There was a troupe of stilt-walkers dressed like stone angels and gargoyles -- an awesome performance that scared the bejeesus out of Amita June. But as they left she said, "Bye bye, monsters," so I guess they weren't all bad. We had dinner at the cozy Moine chanson, a really nice restaurant just outside the walls of the Upper Old City. Quebec's restaurant scene in this are is, well, pretty dreadful -- lots of mass-production restaurants that serve tourists mechanical food from conveyor belts. The Moine was an accidental find, and it was really a godsend -- pleasant, interesting pan-Mediterranean food. I had grilled sardines (memories of Portugal); Brian had a thoughtful paella and Maj had a roasted vegetables with polenta plate. They also had a choice selection of organic wines. I have preconceptions about organics, I admit, but we had a very tasty and complex organic Douro from Portugal last night that set me back in my seat. We walked home through the music festival just as Nickelback was coming on the main stage. Brian wandered a bit, Amita June and Maj and I went to bed. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last time we were up: AJ woke up vomiting in the middle of the night. She only barfed once, and we're not sure what caused it: whether she overate at the restaurant (she packed away a lot of food), or if she got some sausage or chicken in the couple of cupfuls of Brian's paella she ate. Either way, she was a sad toddler and we were freaked-out parents. Having your child get sick while you're traveling is really scary. You start thinking about helicopter rescue. But she was fine after one big purge, and we all slept well until this morning. Maj got up to change Amita's diaper, and we realized we didn't have any. Not in the hotel room, not in the car. I went out from the hotel in increasingly wide spirals looking for a convenience store, but those that had diapers weren't open on a Sunday morning, and those that were open didn't carry diapers. After a couple of hours (!), I came back to the hotel in defeat. Fortunately, Maj managed to find a diaper in the emergency stash in the trunk of the car. We picked up Brian and drove to another part of town, where we got a tasty brunch on the terrasse and found some diapers at the Jean Coutu drugstore. Brian kept going from Quebec City -- he's heading all the way around the Gasp Peninsula to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and coming back to Montreal in about a week. Maj and I drove home on the South Shore -- Amita fell asleep as we hit the freeway and woke up when we pulled into the driveway -- and had a nice afternoon at home. tags: quebeccity summerfestival travel amitajune

Seafood windfall On Friday, our friend Sebastian called us with a problem: his sister, who lives in the les-de-la-Madeleine, had sent him too much fresh seafood. It had come out of the sea and been driven to Montreal, and there was too much for him and his family to eat. The fish was less than 24 hours out of the water -- could we help him out? So we ended up with two huge bags of succulent lobster meat and three more of scallops. Oh, man, were they good. On Saturday morning before we left for Quebec City I made up two giant lobster omelets for the four of us to share. They had just huge chunks of lobster in them, and it was the most decadent meal I've had in a while. It was so much, we all lay around on the couch moaning for about an hour. Tonight, I cooked up the scallops. They were gigantic, tender, and fresh, so I pan-seared them in butter and olive oil with salt & pepper and prepped garlic and oregano. I know, that seems too much for such a delicate meat, but it worked out great. I put them on a bed of whole-wheat linguine, arugula, and red peppers. They were really, really good. I don't think I'm going to have seafood this good again for a while. Mmmmm. Thanks, Sebastian! tags: scallops lobster seafood

News in brief from the land of the Free Two Freedom news items:

• Robin Millette has a great list of Sourceforge alternatives.
• openmoko.com is open for business. It's possible to buy the coolio new Neo 1973 developer preview through the Web site. I'm ordering one!

tags: freedom robinmillette openmoko

We had a good Fourth of July yesterday. Last night, John Usher had a nice cinq sept at his house to celebrate his birthday and departure for dear old Blighty, as he calls it. (No, not a celebration of Independence Day -- I don't think there's an official one here in Montreal.) Maj, Amita June and I went over to our friend Patti's for nice sushi takeout from Tokyo Sushibar. Yay! I got dropped off at YULblog at the Quincaillerie for a late-evening drink. It was a good time -- I got to talk a lot to Chris Car and Hugh McGuire, whose time I tend to monopolize. tags: fourthofjuly yulblog

More weekend stories: on Friday, we had a Geek Lunch at La ka to welcome Tara Hunt to Montreal. She's in town for a few days for Montreal Jazz Fest, and she asked to meet some people in the local Web/BarCamp/hacker scene. Lunch was good and interesting people came. Austin Hill made it, as well as Patrick Tanguay, Fred Ngo and Ben Yoskovitz, and Niko. I was especially glad to see Seb Paquet, who I don't get enough time with. All in all a good time was had. tags: montreal barcampmontreal tarahunt

Rest of the weekend Friday night John Usher came over for our weekly Pizza Night and we had beers until very late indeed. Saturday I got a nice glass desk for my office, and we got a big square wooden coffee table off of Montreal Craigslist. We went down to the Pont Jacques Cartier to see the fireworks on Saturday night, part of the International Fireworks Competition. Except there weren't any fireworks on Saturday night. Doh! Long walk home. Yesterday, Canada Day, we had our new neighbours Jake and Magda over for a get-to-know-you brunch. Jake is a structural engineer, and Magda is a professor of history at UQ M. They're expecting a baby any day now, so we figured it was a good idea to hang out with them before the madness begins. I made a couple of quiches, a big green salad, and some banana bread. It was a good meal. tags: montreal fireworks johnusher canadaday

Long fun weekend here. Last Thursday, Maj's brother Brian appeared on our doorstep unexpectedly. He'd been driving across the country from Santa Barbara for a few weeks, stopping to see friends and go camping and rock climbing along the way. Every few days he'd call our home number to tell us when he'd be coming in... but our home phone has had mixed-up wiring since our move on June 1. So his arrival was a really pleasant surprise. That night we went out to dinner at Ouzeri, the upscale Greek restaurant around the corner. We had been trying to connect with Matt Biddulph and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, who are visiting Montreal for a month. Matt and I were introduced at South by Southwest by connector Ben Cerveny, and Maj and Alex met separately and serendipitously at Montreal Pecha Kucha. So we did a big dinner at Ouzeri to talk and have fun. Boris Anthony came along, which made for a really great time. We had a lot of good wines at Ouzeri -- they have the best-known Greek wine cellar in town. We started off with an Ayiotiriki white (in a cool bottle), then a Naoussa, then a Rapsani. All very tasty. Dinner was a mix of appetizers, moussaka, and a big grilled shrimp platter. Boris got a nice-looking slice of lamb, too. Oh, and we got Ouzeri's trademark saganaki: a big raw cheese, doused with ouzo and cooked flamb at the table. Amita June doesn't like sitting at the table too much, so we took a walk outside so she could burn off some energy. A little bored, I twittered about where we were. Within 20 minutes, both Hugh and Niko cruised in to join us. Power of the Internet, dot dot dot. We finished dinner and decided to take the talk on the road. Everyone came over to our house at 4690 rue Pontiac and we... uh... opened another bottle of wine and hung out and talked for a couple of hours. By the time the bars were open and active on Mont-Royal, everyone streamed out and Maj and I put Amita to sleep. Good time! tags: montreal ouzeri mattbiddulph alexandredeschampssonsino borisanthony bencerveny greekwine hughmcguire niko

Last-minute note to Montreal BarCampers, hackers, entrepreneurs, designers, coworkingers, designers and other troublemakers: Tara Hunt is coming into town and I invited her to have lunch with local folks in the scene. We'll meet at 1PM, at La ka, since half of us will be there anyways. I've reserved space for twelve, but that can expand pretty easily. For those who don't spend 60% of their time there, La ka is at 4040 blvd St. Laurent near the corner of Duluth. URL: http://www.laikamontreal.com/ Please feel free to come and to invite others you think would like to meet Tara and vice versa. And feel free to Contact me if you've got questions or comments. I'd especially like to hear if a lot of people are coming, since I might need to expand the reservation. tags: montreal barcamp tarahunt horsepigcow coworking lunch laika

GPLv3 iPhone So, I'm as excited as everyone else to hear that the new Apple iPhone will be available today with a new GPLv3 Free Software license. A bold partnership between Apple and the FSF! tags: troll iphone gplv3 apple fsf

New Oceans OK, so, that's a big lie. But wouldn't it be cool if it were the truth, and you could get a cool and good-looking Open Source phone? That way, you wouldn't only get Web 2.0 applications, without an API for the local machine. You could write local apps for the phone itself, and you could even re-write the phone OS if you want. Looks like pretty soon we'll have these Open phones. According to the http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/announce/2007-June/000013.html announcement on the openmoko-announce list, FIC will start taking orders on the first generation Neo 1973 on July 9. So, given that we've got an Open Source alternative to the iPhone coming down the pike in just a week or so, why is anyone working on iPhoneDevCamp? tags: openmoko neo1973 newoceans openphone