A Frog in the Valley

Linux Hackers Offered Early Access to Next-Gen DVRJuicy comment : The killer is going to be software, though; if they can't get a cohesive user experience down, the best software in the world isn't worth more than a VCR…. By using open standards and free software, I’m confident they’ll have interoperability on the technical side, but I wonder about the ease of use and vertical integration with other parts of the “user stack.”… Examples: Gallery import between versions, or the all-time champion outline view — the longest-lived request with a huge votecount, declared by quite a few professional writers and educators as the show-stopper keeping OpenOffice.org out of their offices and schools.

More than 25% are over 55 yrs old on Netscape and more than 80% in the 17-28 age range on Digg… With all thing considered (the data is porbably more anecdotal than scientific) it’s still quite informative and brings the possible following colnclusion : If this is indeed the case, then social bookmarking is definitely not a zero-sum game.

It’s an interesting position to be in. Since I have been blogging for a long time a have quite an extensive network around me, and because I am independent (I am my own boss), I can say what I believe must be said about subjects I cover, not whatever the party line should be…The first mundane shot at it is not really in my target readership demo - I am invoking the network effect to a few degrees here - the people behind the Molson Dry new website launch party (yeah those still happen) are looking to invite a few bloggers. If you would like to be at the press release and blog about it, you get to eat free sandwiches and cocktail (well, beer in this case) just like regular press people, contact me if you are interested or know people who might be (or even better if you are organizing such an event and looking for people in the geek/tech culture in montreal).

Bugged by the “social networking” word not describing correctly what I am trying to observe and creat myself, I found the term social computing (the Biggest New Thing Since The Web Itself?)…. foolish question!Social Media and the Networked Public Sphere - increase and improve civic participation?

I have a client that needs a simple website (about 20 pages, in english and french) and I would like to build it with a simple php/mysql based CMS (for hosting reasons). My first idea was to use Wordpress and modify it a bit, but the client does not want to get in the blog beat for several months, so this might be a wrong path.