Thursday, January 20, 2005

Pictures: Frozen Charles River and Harvard Square afternoon walk. 

A 2005 tradition, movies taken through hotel windows. I did one this evening from my Cambridge hotel room. I also did one in Miami a couple of weeks ago (seems a lot longer). 

Tomorrow's conference will be webcast. 

The smug Canadian has some smug thoughts about the rel="nofollow" attribute and how it's an upgrade for a central feature of the Web. 

Just in time for a conference on ethics, I received two apparently real invitations for all-expense paid trips to Israel and Singapore, both places I'd love to go, no strings attached. At first I thought this must be a new kind of spam, but they really appear to be genuine. Amazing. 

Matt Taibbi: "In the run-up to the war, every major daily and television network in the country parroted the White House's asinine WMD claims for months on end, all but throwing their panties on stage the instant Colin Powell showed what appeared to be a grainy aerial picture of a pick-up truck to the UN Security Council." 

2:15PM: Arrived safely in Cambridge. 

David Weinberger poses an interesting series of questions about news organizations that provide background info on their reporters. If you can offer examples, please post a comment.  

A new security threat, "evil twin" wifi routers. Here's how it works. A criminal rides up and down in the elevator of an office building looking for unsecured wireless routers. When he finds one, he rents an office nearby for the sole purpose of installing a high-speed line, and a super-powerful wireless router. He names it the same as the open router he found. Now when people come into work their computers will discover the more powerful router, and the users, none the wiser, will do their unsecure transactions, entering passwords, account numbers, mother's maiden names, etc, none the wiser that a criminal is recording all this juicy data and selling it to identity thieves in Russia or Nigeria.  

A geek dinner on Saturday in Cambridge. Not just for geeks.  

An analysis of the state of blogging from MSNBC reporter, Jon Bonne, who will be at tomorrow's conference. His dismissive attitude is characteristic of the denial of people at big news organizations, and reminds me of what people at mainframe computer companies said about our cute little Apples in the early 80s. Hidden inside was a simple idea, that we can and would do for ourselves what they wouldn't do for us. He's right to call this Promethean. No, they haven't co-opted us. Wishful thinking Jon.  

Jeff Sandquist tells the story of Bob the Duck.  

Had a little time to kill yesterday so I went to a movie, The Phantom of the Opera. It got really shitty reviews, for good reason -- it's a really shitty movie -- that takes itself far too seriously. And they forgot to tell the actors to actually act. Song after song with no depth, no emotion, and hardly any lip movement. It's like a parody of a parody, like a Saturday Night Live imitation of a Japanese horror film. At least that would have been funny. If you're in NY and have some time to kill, and haven't seen Phantom yet, take a ride on the subway instead. It's more entertaining.