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

Here are three somewhat different takes on the politics and economics of web 2.0.

I just got back from taking Zach Copley to the airport, and for the first time in a few days I'm sitting in front of my desktop computer again, trying to get back on track. I think it's probably a good idea to get my notes about RoCoCoCamp down on electronic paper while the experience is still fresh in my mind. (I wrote about the first day in Journal/29 Flor al CCXV). Saturday morning I got up considerably later than I had the day before, and I took my time getting to SAT. Which was OK, since things went much smoother in the morning. The only really annoying thing about Saturday was that I had to wash about 50 cups by hand -- we'd run out of clean cups, and I couldn't figure out how to run the dishwasher. It didn't take long, but it meant that I had my head down in the sink as people came in and didn't get to spend as much time talking to them. I was glad to hear that people had a good time going to L'Utopik on Friday night. Apparently a few people who'd flown in late on Friday got a chance to meet up with the experienced crew at L'Utopik, so they were well-prepped for Saturday. Probably the biggest buzz of the pre-sessions was SJ Klein's pair of functional OLPC laptops. They were cute and fun -- I got a few minutes to play with them, and I enjoyed the interface tremendously -- although it took me a few tries to open it. People were fiddling with them throughout the day -- including Amita June, who came late in the afternoon -- and Tristan P loquin even blogged about them. My first session was about wiki and other technologies, which I titled Wiki And.... (I borrowed the name from Last Exit to Brooklyn, in which it seems no-one eats anything but "coffee and".) My main point was that a) wiki people tend to overuse wiki where other software tools may be more appropriate and b) we need to be careful with impedance mismatches when using wiki with technologies with other cultures behind them. Wikis and blogs mismatch; wikis and forums mismatch. You need to work out ways to make them work culturally. As a proof-of-concept that there are ridiculous applications for wiki, I created in about 3 minutes before the session the wikiclock. It's a computer clock that runs on wiki technology: the time is kept up-to-date by human beings editing the page, rather than with software. I was so pleased with myself that I twittered about it, and from there it's taken on a life of its own. The clock is implemented on the amazing minimalist system pageoftext.com. I heard about p.o.t. from Liz Henry's April report from Palo Alto Wiki Wednesday, and I think it's totally great. It's a cross between a pastebin and a wiki -- like an open-edited ImageShack for text. Brilliant. The second session I did was a hyper-focused one on a particular Semantic Web problem. Both Wikitravel and Open Guides have tons of information on "places" in various cities. (That is, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels, museums, parks, etc.). It would be good to export our data on these places to each other, so we could possibly keep them in sync. For example, if a restaurant changes its hours , that info could be updated on The Open Guide to London and automatically synched to the Wikitravel page on London. So we went over some ways to do this kind of interchange; we'd brainstormed before about it on the Open Guides' RDF Workshop, but it was good to sit down with Earle Martin and do some face-to-face hacking on the idea. We don't yet have a vocabulary for it, but we'll get something going on the new wikirdf.org site (which also emerged from this session). I had a great lunch with a lot of people from RoCoCo on the terrace at the Bar St. Sulpice, about 8 blocks away on rue St. Denis. The sun was out, it was cool, and we had a very nice time. It was especially nice to see Marcus Bornfreund and Tina Pipers of Creative Commons Canada, who'd come to talk about the PDwiki, a project to collaboratively document Canadian works in the public domain (see Canadian Public Domain Registry Announced). We talked quite a bit about the social challenges of getting a community excited about such a dry subject, but I think we got some good ideas about it. In the afternoon I led a session on MediaWiki. We were lucky enough to have Tim Starling sit in, and he told everyone about the new developments going on with MW. He's refactoring some very deep parts of the storage and rendering sections of the code, which will result in considerably better reliability, performance, and flexibility. I think it sounds great. I had to work the registration desk for the last session of the day, which was pretty great because I ended up baby-sitting Anoushka Jaroski-Biava for most of the time. But I missed Robin Millette's cool talk about BuzzyBee, which looks to be really fun to play with. We rounded out the evening with music, pizza, and beer at the SAT. tobias.dj played some great dance music, and we had some wiki-collaborative VJ-ing using the SAT's fancy screen systems. All the kids were there -- Mark and Allegra's daughter No ma as well as Amita June. Fun. Sunday morning I didn't have to start coffee until 9AM -- luxury! We had a great Open Space Technology convergence -- a way to turn the discussions of the previous few days into action items for going forward. I did a convergence session on the future of RecentChangesCamp. We had most of the interested parties available (except for the RCC Portland organizers, who had to fly out early that morning). We made some decisions about future RCCs, and we made some plans for next year's RCC -- in the Bay Area (California). Last night we brought back the Keiki gang to our house, since it was great to have them all in Montreal for the event. We did a big brainstorming session on next steps to launching the project, and we also did some graphic design review of potential logos. We have some great designs coming; I'm really happy we got Sarven Capadisli and Bridget to work on the site. I had to crash out at 10:30PM -- Amita and I fell asleep together -- but others were up late talking and thinking. I don't know how they did it -- I was all talked out by the end of RoCoCo. All in all I had a fantastic time -- the event far surpassed my expectations. It was hard -- too hard. I bit off far more than I could chew. But I think we did a good job of establishing Montreal as a technology city -- Wiki City Canada -- in the international mind, and I think we also brought together some really interesting people for some fruitful and productive work. You can see some of the projects that came directly out of RoCoCo on the FutureChanges page -- an ingenious name courtesy of Pm. And there are some indirect ones that we can expect soon. tags: rocococamp recentchangescamp wiki open space montreal barcampmontreal keiki wikiclock pageoftext

Cause and solution So, Technorati has a good listing for rocococamp items, but I especially liked Steve Faguy's post: Wiki: The cause of, and solution to, all of life s problems. Steve was an extremely game participant in the event, which I think was pretty incredible. He wrote a good overview of wikis in the Montreal Gazette this year. A funny thing happened on Friday evening during the daily wrap-up known as "Evening News". We had Open Space's minimalist instructions posted on the walls of the SAT, so people would see and remember them. Steve pointed out that the first of Open Space's "four principles" is grammatically incorrect: Whoever comes is the right people. He said, "In the spirit of wiki, I'm going to correct it right now!" And to applause, he got up with a marker and changed the "is" to "are". This stimulated an interesting discussion. One person noted that the "is" is there because possibly only one person could show up for a session, and that's OK. Finally, Brandon CS Sanders stood up and said, "I like 'is' because when we come together like this, we form a cohesive group, however temporary -- 'a people'. So I'm going to change it back." And he did -- to lots of applause, again. Steve came up to me at the end of the night, laughing. "I got reverted! I should have started an edit war!" It was a hoot; he's got a good sense of humour. tags: stevefaguy rocococamp wiki openspace brandoncssanders

Another good day at South by Southwest. I had the night out last night, so I stopped at the Frogdesign Party for a while to see people and have some beers. I left to try to see Douglas Coupland's new movie, Everything's Gone Green. As a speaker I got a "gold" pass, which means I get to go see some of the films in the festival, but by the time I got to the theatre, it was at capacity. Too bad! Over to Club de Ville to see old friend Ben Cerveny, then trying to catch up with Niko, then an early night getting home. This morning I went to see Identity Woman (Kaliya Hamlin) talk about OpenID at the identity panel. It was a good discussion about identity and privacy, and I also got to meet Scott Kveton in person, too. Mike Linksvayer was there too, which was nice; it's great catching up with such a sympatico person. This afternoon I watched the incredibly valuable Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Mobile Web...but Were Afraid to Ask. Great practical information for people willing to give mobile a try. I came away enthused and ready to make wikitravel.mobi a reality. Best of all was seeing Ben on his panel about virtual identity and avatars. Ben's got a talent for identifying the most intellectually stimulating thread in a conversation and following it with gusto, so it was really cool to see him talk on stage. tags: sxsw07 austin douglas coupland identity woman mobile web ben cerveny

La Traviata We stopped in for dinner at La Traviata, an Italian restaurant on Congress that Maj had heard good things about. The menu was nice but not too friendly to us pescevegetarians; we were excited when we heard that there was a seafood special that night. But the waiter came back to tell us that they weren't available. After we ordered, I heard the waitress behind me saying to her very big table, "...and we have two plates of the mahi-mahi available..." I stopped our waiter when he came by, and he was sheepish. "The chef was keeping those two plates for this big party." Oh. Our food was great -- I had a mushroom fettuccine, Maj had a grilled salmon with greens -- and we forgot about it. But the waiter came out later and said, "I talked about it with the chef and we want to extend our apologies. We should offer the specials to every customer equally. The chef wants to offer you dessert on the house." OK, sounds good. It doesn't take much to make up for a mistake, especially in the restaurant industry. La Traviata had good food, a really nice building, and great service up until then, but going that extra mile to make up for a mistake -- a debatable mistake I probably would have never thought about again -- gained my trust. More restaurants -- no, more businesses -- should have service like that. tags: la traviata austin italian restaurant

Blog review roundup I wanted to quickly shout-out to people who mentioned my talk at SXSW (Talks/SXSW07) in their blogs:

• Mike Linksvayer, SXSW: Commercialization of Wikis.
• Angela Beesley, Commercialization of wikis. I hope she saw that she was thanked at the end!
• Liz Henry, SXSWi panel on commercialization of wikis. The canonical notes, better than my own.
• Adam Darowski, SXSWi: Commercialization of Wikis. Adam's doing some wiki projects himself, and he found the talk helpful. Great!
• Mathieu Ouellet, Commercialization of Wikis. I hadn't seen Mathieu's great travel/tourism blog before, but it's bookmarked now. Great reading.

I'm really glad to see so much positive response to the talk. I worked really hard on it, and the subject is obviously very dear to my heart. It's great when your work pays off and people appreciate it. tags: sxsw07 me talk blogs wiki

Wiki BOF We're having a Wiki BOF lunch tomorrow at the 4th-floor coffee lounge. It should be fun. Thanks for announcing it, Liz! tags: wiki sxsw07 bof flock together

Henry Blodget: “Google’s current offerings–Gmail, Docs & Spreadsheets, etc.–bear all the markings of a classic disruptive technology. As Harvard professor Clayton Christensen observed, disruption begins when a dominant market leader has built so much functionality into its core products that it has begun to over-serve its core customers. Some of these customers, realizing that a simpler, cheaper product will do, abandon the old technology. At first, this does not concern the incumbent, as it maintains a chokehold on the highest margin business–the high-end customers who need most of that complicated functionality and support. But, gradually, as the lower end product gets better, and the incumbent is forced to migrate to even more complex and expensive solutions, more of the overall customer base defects. And, then, voila, one day the incumbent wakes up and discovers that it is DEC, Sears, or AOL…and by then it’s far too late to do anything about it.”

Yesterday lunchtime after walking Henry Vicky went into our driveway armed with lots of fallen leaves, the SLR, and the bright afternoon winter sun. 20 minutes later and lots of technically dubious photography (one handed grip on camera, leaf at arms length, click and hope) she had some fantastic Autumnal leaf shots. Update: of course a Javascript library to turn image links into magic floating popups won't work in RSS feeds, so if you want to see them in Flickr go to Vicky's Nature set. Yesterday I ordered a cheap lightbox so we'll hopefully be able to take similar shots in a more controlled environment without wind and camera shake getting in the way. Obviously they won't be as good, I've found that often the first casual attempt at a shot is the best, and the harder you try, the worse the shots get. NP: Protection, Massive Attack

I had tried to read Wilt already twice, it’s quite a short book, but somehow I had failed to get past the first pages both times. I failed to even open it when I took it to my holidays in the beach, but I’d to come back home earlier than my friends, so I had a boring three hour bus ride ahead, which was a great opportunity to finally read it. Wilt (Tom Sharpe, 1976) is a novel about an underachieving assistant lecturer (Henry Wilt), which grows increasingly demoralized by both his simpleminded wife (which he dreams to kill) and his frustrating experiences teaching literature to a bunch of uninterested construction apprentices in a South England community college. Everything gets messed up when Mrs. Wilt gets lured by Sally Pringsheim’s liberal ideas, and talks Henry into attending a party hosted by the Pringsheims, a bizarre hip couple. Henry ends up with an inflatable sex doll overinflated around his genitals, and Mrs. Wilt gets extremely infuriated. From this moment the story goes wild and I won’t spoil it

Our trip to wt:Santa Barbara was fantastic, I've forgotten to mention. The three of us got to stay on Henry and Peggy Hill's boat, right next to Nelly and John and Charlie. We had a great view of the mountains, and flocks of pelicans flew right by and over the sea wall. There was a 5-foot-tall blue heron who stalked our section of the harbor, taking long, slow, gripper-claw steps everywhere. Amita June loved watching the boats go by -- ba, ba, ba, ba. Dinner on Friday night was ahi tuna just minutes off the boat -- tender enough for sushi, but we grilled it up with lime, garlic and tequila and it was very very good.

Yesterday's news but still pretty cool (and grim at the same time): injecting peptides into a hamster's damaged brain caused spontaneous repair and recovery of vision (from The Guardian). In other news there are three new Henry pictures online. Everyone say awww! NP: Lamb Remixed, Lamb. Thanks Ploum!

Last week on the magnificent (for people with puppies at least) It's Me Or The Dog they featured a battery-powered bacon-flavoured bubble machine. Wow! we thought, and ordered one over the weekend. And so, it appears, did the rest of the nation:

Dear Customer
Thank you for ordering Fetch Pet Bubble products from Seapets. Due to the unprecedented demand following the Channel Four television program, all stocks of these products, that were in this country were gone within hours of the broadcast. Fortunately we work very closely with Fetch Pet and have been assured that we will be the first to receive supplies as the next batch is flown in from the USA. We expect this to clear customs within a few days and we should be able to resume deliveries next week.

Poor Henry has to wait for bacon flavoured bubble goodness. In other news my 28-135mm IS USM lens arrived today, and it's lovely. Shots online later. NP: Out Of Season, Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man

As we are with Henry every day, we didn't really notice him turn from this: into this in the space of two months: Time for a new bed soon I guess! NP: Ray Of Light, Madonna

Having lived in France for a few years in the early nineties, it was hard not to notice BHL. Also called Bernhard-Henry L vy. In France, if you are somebody, you get called by your initials. BHL, the philosopher turned into a media-savvy writer and journalist was just about everywhere. Even I ended buying one of his tomes. [For those unaware of the cult of BHL, compare the very lengthy and admiring French Wikipedia article with the disclaimer-sporting short and sceptical English counterpart, or even, for completeness, the barely existing German one.] Well, fast-forward a dozen years and who marches onto Jon Stewart's stage at the Daily Show this Wednesday: Bingo, BHL himself. In the usual uniform: suit, spotless white shirt, perfect hair, though less of it than in the days. In rather passable English he gets to plug his new book on travelling the States. Of course, it's tough to be French and to write about the US as de Tocqueville is the inevitable comparison... So tough that the comparison has to turn into a take-down somewhere. Today's NY Times has a review of said book that is so highly entertaining that I cannot help but recommend it most highly, even if you never heard of BHL before. If the Times is this vitriolic, I can't even begin to imagine what a review in the WSJ would do to the poor man...

Support our Aussie Farmers, dear Henry, dear Henry. Support our Aussie Farmers, dear Henry. Support!

I hate "current affairs" shows. They're nothing but beat-ups and bullshit. But I had the unpleasant experience of actually watching an episode just now, and they've hit a new low. It was an article on prawn farmers, and oscillated between South Park style "they took our jobs!" and "those evil retailers, mislabelling foreign prawns as local". Now, I empathise with people who lose their jobs due to circumstances beyond their control, and misrepresentation is a fairly unpleasant thing, but the bit that thoroughly pissed me off was the return comment from the presenter: "We should all support our Aussie farmers." How, exactly? We can't "buy Australian", because the products are mislabelled, and that was the whole thrust of their article. No mention was made of legal action, civil or criminal, and the number of people watching who would be in a position to take such action would be vanishingly small. Misrepresentation is already illegal, so it isn't a matter of pressuring our elected representatives to pass appropriate legislation. At least I know I've not been missing anything by running away every time a show like this comes on the idiot box for the past 12 months.

On the whole I'm an organic, fresh, free-range, no-MSG, tree-hugging leftie kind of guy. I prefer Marks and Spencer's Red Leicester and Spring Onion crisps as they contain potato, oil, cheese and onion. When I buy chicken it's free-range. Eggs are always free-range, and the fact that the supermarkets still sell "value" eggs upsets me. This weekend in a "top 10" conversation, I discovered that I have several weaknesses:

• Nik-Naks (Rib 'n' Saucy)
• Super Noodles (Mild Curry)
• Jelly Babies

More MSG, artificial flavourings and additives than you can shake a stick at. Please say I'm not alone... or am I just weak-willed? In other news, Henry is three months old today. He is all jabbed up now so can finally leave the house, walks are fun (for certain definitions of fun that is) as he continually pulls on the lead and is obsessed with cars driving past. So far we're averaging two random people talking to us about Henry on every walk...

This week I gave in and bought a cheap webcam (a Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Deluxe or something), primarily for the upcoming OpenedHand VOIP service (update: this is not a public service, just SIP addresses for OH employees!), but also to record what Henry is up to when we leave (we want to know how long he cries for when we go out). Happily it worked straight out of the box with Ubuntu Dapper (using the spca5xx module): It works well in GnomeMeeting too, so all I need now is a good simple tool to record from the webcam to disk, ideally in Ogg Theora. Any suggestions? A GStreamer pipeline would probably do the job for now, as I can wrap that up in a nice Python UI if I need to. NP: Storm, Heather Nova

Last Friday we went and collected Henry, an incredibly cute Labrador. He is quite a bundle of energy, so here is a picture of him falling asleep.

In a month's time we'll have a new member of the Burton clan, an incredibly cute cream Labrador Retriever. We've had to pick a first and second choice, and this is our first (currently to be named either Henry or Louie): The trip to see him was... a challenge. In theory a train to Norwich only takes 2:20, but it ended up taking us over 3:40... and Ely station (Station Of The Year 1987, don't you know) is surprisingly cold when waiting there for half an hour. We can't wait for him/her to arrive (current favourite names for the second choice, a girl, are Ella or Bess), and really hope the house move hurries along, we're getting the dog on the 17th December and were planning on completing on the 1st, but that is looking more and more unlikely.