Often, pictures communicate more eloquently than words or numbers. This is the case with Barry Lyon’s Opte Project, which uses traceroute data to generate a visual “map” of the Internet. The images are extraordinary – beautiful, detailed, and ethereal. They are also useful.
(Full story, with links…)
In the US, the right to free speech guaranteed by the Bill of Rights is widely touted as a source of national strength and pride. However, this right includes many tangents and implications that are profoundly murky. Sometimes whether to take action about someone else’s words depends not so much on legality, but rather on perception and context.
Today, a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press article reports on a free-speech question unique to the online age: Should anonymous political criticism posted online be protected as free speech?
It’s not such a simple question, really.
On Nov. 20, 2003, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled to protect the identities of anonymous Internet authors in a defamation lawsuit brought by a public official. PA judge Joan Orie Melvin believed she was defamed by allegations that she’d engaged in misconduct that were published on the now-defunct Web site Grant Street ‘99 and wanted to sue the authors.
Sounds good – but it’s not that clear-cut, once you look into the details. In this case, we’re not just talking about someone spouting opinions of politics or politicians. We’re talking about specific allegations of fact. That’s where this case gets murky. Is this anonymous author a genuine “whistleblower” or capricious political sabotage? And in the bigger picture for Melvin, does the distinction really matter? Should she have gone to court over this?
I think not, and here’s why…
(Full story, with links…)
Over the last month, I’ve been surveying CONTENTIOUS readers about whether and how they use my RSS feed. Here are the final results from all 101 responses.
Based on the results, it’s clear that many CONTENTIOUS readers enjoy RSS. Also, apparently many of you are brand new to the world of RSS feeds. Only two respondents have tried RSS and did not like it, which I think demonstrates the true strength of this new publishing channel: People who try RSS tend to like it. Many even come to prefer it.
(Full story, with all the hard numbers and my observations on these results…)
Following on my recent discussion of corporate weblogs, I’d like to point out a white paper I spotted recently: “Using RSS for Corporate Communications,” by Philip Gomes of G2B Group.
(Full story, with links…)
Remember Pointcast? You know, the allegedly killer “push” technology of the mid-1990s? The one that was supposed to replace Web browsers in terms of delivering online information, but which then disappeared in 2000?
In a recent Guardianblog entry, Neil McIntosh notes about Pointcast, “Well, I’ve got one word for you: RSS. In tandem with apps like NetNewsWire, it bears more than a passing resemblance to PointCast. Push (whisper it) isn’t just still alive, it’s thriving, so healthy it’s cool.”
I think it’s worth remembering what killed Pointcast….
(Full story, with links…)
Apparently, last month Microsoft fired “long-term temporary” employee Michael Hanscome for an entry he made to his personal weblog. In response to this, the folks at Blogger have posted some pretty good advice on “How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog.”
My only quibble with Blogger’s advice is their suggestion to modify an anti-blog corporate culture by distributing The Cluetrain Manifesto. I know this book and site are very popular in some segments of the business world, but I honestly think Cluetrain is not the best choice to try to persuade fiercely anti-blog, total-control-over-all-communication types of managers and executives. It’s way too flip and rabid for their tastes.
I’ve got a better idea, I think….
(Full story, with links…)
Yesterday, as Congress began to debate a highly controversial and fast-moving energy bill, the General Accounting Office published a timely and highly relevant report, “Electricity Restructuring: 2003 Blackout Identifies Crisis and Opportunity for the Electricity Sector.”
Usually GAO reports are packed with rich information and detail. However, this time the body of this “report” is presented as a series of PowerPoint-type slides! I kid you not – check out the report after the first few pages (which are a letter of introduction).
Consider this in the context that a poorly designed PowerPoint slide may have directly contributed to the Columbia shuttle disaster, and there may be a problem with slide presentations being used as substitutes for real reports…
(Full story, with links…)
In response to my recent article in which I begged people to please stop posting PowerPoint and other kinds of electronic slide presentations online, Heather Davis of John Snow, Inc. (which offers research and training on healthcare issues), commented:
“I don’t agree that PowerPoints online are a bad idea. The audience of the website I manage benefits from many of the graphs and charts that are included in our PowerPoints. Often these files contain the meat of massive studies done in the field and that users want to know about in shortened form. Also, when you are targeting a particular group of users, PowerPoints can be useful because you are already speaking within a defined context. Our users can read the shorthand of PowerPoints that have to do with the burning issues in our industry.”
…That sounds like a good argument, and I do appreciate that Heather stood up to voice a contrary opinion. I wanted to see what she was talking about, so I looked at some of the presentations available on JSI.com. Having done that, I must reconfirm my earlier point: I just don’t think PowerPoint presentations work well on the Web. Here’s why…
(Full story, with examples…)
Here is one of my major online content peeves: Why are some people compelled to put their PowerPoint slides on the Web? The vast majority of slide presentations are intended to support a live talk, and they make little or no sense out of that context!
When content is so cryptic as to be frustrating, it’s anti-content. It undermines the goals of both the author and the reader.
I would like to beg – to plead, in fact – that all presenters everywhere please refrain from ever posting another slide presentation to the Web!
I don’t care what your boss tells you. I don’t care what all your colleagues are doing. It’s up to you to make the Web a better place. There are far better ways to make your point….
(Full story, with examples…)
Over the weekend I made a few upgrades to the CONTENTIOUS weblog that I’d like to note briefly.
NEW SITE SEARCH ENGINE: I’ve decided to implement a different site search engine – a bit of Google plug-in code. The nice thing about this engine is that it searches everything at the contentious.com domain. This includes the complete archives of the original CONTENTIOUS, dating back to 1998.
SECTION (CATEGORY) ARCHIVES My entries to the CONTENTIOUS weblog fall under several categories. If you’re interested in a particular category, you can click on the relevant category archive link to read other similar articles.
(Full article, with a brief description of each CONTENTIOUS category…)
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