Laugh while you can

producer/director nigel ashecroft-worcestershire goes euro-style

I need to visit the Slowpoke Blog more often. My college friend Jen Sorensen will be part of a traveling political comix revue called Laugh While You Can, together with Tim Kreider and Tom Hart, that will be in Cambridge next month (at the Million Year Picnic). Should be cool.

One of these days I need to see if Jen still has the art to that Dec illustration…

In the meantime, here’s another memory from those days… “Brit Hit,” a one-page article from a Dec parody issue, with yours truly as Nigel Ashecroft-Worcestershire. No, I didn’t write it (but I know someone who might remember). Yes, the goatee was real. Yes, I was probably ulcerated even then. No, I never owned a real black turtleneck; only the mock one (Shame!). Yes, the glasses really were that thick; no, I usually wore contacts. No, I had no idea what they were taking my picture for at the time, but I was soon to find out—as soon as it made it into print, anyway.

After legalizing unmarried sex, criminalizing pants

Boston.com: Va. bill sets fine for low-riding pants. Excellent. Glad to see that my home legislature is still taking care of the really important issues, like a citizen’s “intentionally wear[ing] and display[ing] his below-waist undergarments, intended to cover a person’s intimate parts, in a lewd or indecent manner.’”

This, of course, begs the question: what is the case law history that determines “lewd or indecent manner“ for underpants display in the Commonwealth? And how does one expose one’s below-waist undergarments in a non-lewd or indecent manner? Enquiring minds, etc.

The mote in your neighbor’s eye

Alex Barnett, erstwhile Microsoft UK online marketer, now in corporate at Redmond, is today’s designated lightning rod with Firefox is secure, FUD?:

How many times have you heard, “hey drop IE, it is full of security holes. Try Firefox, it is secure.”? I’m not saying IE hasn’t had its own problems, but Firefox has had security holes in past, has security holes today and will in the future. To say Firefox is secure is simply untrue.

There are certainly arguments to be made that Firefox is not the be-all and end-all in secure browsers, but picking on this flaw is probably not the right way to go about it. Especially given that IE never bothered to implement the standard in question. And the large numbers of vulnerabilities in everything from graphics handling to hyperlinks that were patched yesterday.

I think there’s a positive story to be told about Microsoft’s security response efforts. I also think that the company and its representatives have a long way to go before they can be credible calling another software effort insecure.

Cool: Google Maps. Uncool: No Safari support

Google’s new Google Maps service looks pretty cool. Except it requires JavaScript and doesn’t support Safari. Oh well, eventually they got around to supporting Gmail in Safari, so I guess I just have to wait (or fire up Firefox).

Also cool about the service: permalinks (though you can’t just copy them out of the browser bar); the graphics; the pans and zooms; and the collapsing levels of detail (look at what happens to the streets around our old apartment in the North End as you move the slider).

(Other commentary: Boing Boing: Google maps; Anil Dash: Hello Friends).

New music rundown

A few noteworthy developments in digital music this morning. First, one that I failed to note from last week: Beck has released a new EP, called “Hell Yes.” It’s odd, but I don’t really like him coming back to this style after seeing what he can do in more traditional forms on Sea Change. Or maybe I’m just getting too old to do the Beck nonsense groove. Or maybe he is.

On a better note, a rare Elliott Smith EP, the UK release of “Speed Trials” featuring that song, an alternate version of “Angeles,” and “I Don’t Think I’m Ever Gonna Figure It Out,” is available from iTunes today.

Also in the iTunes store: looks like Warner is finally making their part of the Elvis Costello discography available, starting with the oddly brilliant Spike and the oddly uneven Mighty Like a Rose.

And in the interests of free downloads (and old news that I’m just getting around to finding out about), there’s a free 13-track compilation from Universal Motown in the iTunes store. So far pretty straightforward listening, but I’m excited about the Scissor Sisters track (if not the Michael McDonald one).

There are starting to be some interesting back catalog additions to the iTunes store, too, including some of the K Records stuff that was added to eMusic last week; some key Miranda Sex Garden albums; a classic Ofra Haza album; and a bunch of original and posthumously released Tim Buckley recordings.

Speaking of free, I didn’t get to go to the Low show this weekend in Somerville, but Bradley’s Almanac did, and he has an excellent review (plus samples!) at his blog. He’s got a good selection of other concert recordings too…

Finally, the music blog rundown: it looks like Doveman is shuttering the Wednesday Morning Download column for Salon in favor of a coming-soon-now actual music blog. And 3Hive is doing some really good music blog work.

What’s the temperature, Kenneth?

Growing up, I used to start every day by looking at the outdoor thermometer that hung on my parents’ bedroom window. In retrospect, it was an odd thing to do, because frankly the temperature in Newport News never varied that much, but it was comforting to have objective evidence of how hot or cold it was.

That’s the only thing that explains our latest household gadget: an Oregon Scientific Cable-Free Thermometer. It comes in two pieces, a base station with a large digital display containing two temperature readouts, and a remote unit that’s meant to be mounted outdoors or placed in some other remote location. In between is nothing but a 433 MHz radio signal.

The base station can support up to three of these remotes, so when we build on to the house and add that wine cellar (heh), we can track the temperature there as well as outside. And the frequency doesn’t interfere with cordless phones or WiFi.

So far everything has been working just fine with the unit. I haven’t tested the claimed 100′ range yet, since the best mounting place for the remote (which apparently shouldn’t be too exposed to the elements) turns out to be the outside of the kitchen wall near where the base station is sitting. We also haven’t had any extreme temperature days; since Friday, when the unit arrived, we haven’t even had a day in the 20s. But it’s nice to know what’s going on outside.

RSS business model: value added content distribution

A few months ago, I had lunch with a senior associate at Highland Capital Partners. He asked me what I thought the business model was in RSS and other XML-based syndication technologies. I was able to come up with a few off the cuff, most revolving around the fact that RSS is a new information distribution channel, and one that, like email and the Web, opens up new definitions of what information is and how you receive it.

The proof of that business model came in the last week, with new aggregator products from Consenda and the apparent acquisition of Bloglines by Ask.com.

Consenda’s NewsPoint appears to offer newspapers a chance to grab a piece of the RSS ads market. By providing the newspaper’s readers with an easy to use newsreader that already subscribes to the newspaper’s RSS feeds, including the classified feeds, Consenda gives the readers access to the RSS value proposition, and gives the newspaper a flanking defense against services like Craigslist which threaten to disembowel their classified ads business. The success of the model, of course, will lie in whether Consenda is successful enough in adding additional value to the basic RSS aggregator offering and lowering the barrier to entry enough to convince people to keep using their aggregator.

The Bloglines/AskJeeves story is more interesting. Here the value add of Bloglines over just spidering web content appears to be their existing structured database of blog content—at least according to Mary Hodder at Napsterization. The value add that Bloglines brings to the table comes from the fact that it’s a centralized service with a database driven by the users’ preferences. Bloglines’ Top Blogs and Most Popular Blog Links (both of which the new Ask Jeeves blog links to) are made possible by the centralization of this service, and serve as a filtering mechanism for the Bloglines users. So you could argue that the main business function that Bloglines serves is a kind of automated editorial function—where editorial means content selection and promotion, though in this case the mechanisms that govern the content selection are entirely user driven.

So this gives two RSS business models so far:

  1. Enablement: Build a better/easier/faster aggregator and the world will beat a path to your door. This is the traditional Microsoft model—it’s a platform play. This is also the space in which NetNewsWire, RSS Bandit, Radio Userland, etc. are currently operating.
  2. Content discovery: Add value by reducing noise and bringing interesting content out of the blogosphere for the reader. This is the business model that is shown through the Bloglines functions I mentioned above.

There are more value propositions to be had from RSS, of course; enough that I’ll spend some more time this week blogging them.

The Gmail Meme

I haven’t used my Gmail account much—not that that stopped some email virus from using it as a return address—so I only have 10 invitations to give out, rather than the 50 that seem to be the rule everywhere else.

If you want a free Gmail account, just leave a comment on this message or contact me. (Reposted from yesterday afternoon, since it’s disappeared).