iView for photo organizing

I've been trying to carve out time to try some apps that my friends have been telling me about. Since I haven't had time, I'll pass along a tip from one of them now. Buzz has been raving about NewsGator and his ability to use Outlook as his news reader ... but that's not it.

A couple of weeks ago Doc Searls passed along this tidbit:

On a Mac, I much prefer iView Media and iView Media Pro to iPhoto. Much faster, more flexible, other virtues. And works fine with various Mac programs like iDVD.

Download the trial. Drag a directory full of pix into the window. Save as an HTML gallery. Create image icons. Open with any tool you like. Rearrange at will. Change names of files in the directory. View attributes. Also runs on most flavors of Windows.

I've got both a PC and Mac, so I'll be playing with this -- probably on my PC. The Mac's iPhoto is a jealous mistress.

Bloglines and news feeds

This looks interesting: Bloglines is a free service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and newsfeeds. With Bloglines, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines.

Thanks to Dave M. for the pointer.

Is streamripping illegal?

Joi asks: Is streamripping illegal?

New NPR show on new technologies

Speaking of Xeni Jardin, who will himself be speaking at PopTech in two months, he points to a new show on National Public Radio called Day To Day, hosted by Alex Chadwick. The show as only been on the air for a few weeks, but Jardin says, "they're doing some really interesting coverage on blogs, emerging technology, and how the geek world impacts pop culture in general. It's a great program so far, and I'm looking forward to watching how it grows." Jardin appeared on the show Tuesday to talk about the rising popularity of Friendster and similar social networking services.

Texting, pictures and video blogging

Xeni Jardin is guest-blogging on Textually.org, an interesting-looking site about texting, SMS and MMS. Its sister site, picturephoning.com, looks at the world of picture sharing and video blogging.

Struggles with IP law

Struggles with IP law:

Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, and The Center for the Study of the Public Domain are collaborating on a public-education campaign that will highlight the struggles of creators with intellectual property law. We are collecting stories of citizens who are hampered by restrictive intellectual property laws. If you have a personal story of copyright, trademark or patent laws needlessly hindering your work and ideas, we want to hear from you. Conversely, if your work has benefited from the availability of art and information in the public domain, we want to know about it.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the pointer.

Google adds a calculator

What will those kids at the Googleplex think up next? Now they've come up with an online calculator. And, if you didn't know it, a phone book and dictionary.

Can Johnny blog?

In today's NY Times: Can Johnny blog? "This may be the year that school blogs come into their own."

California, the Cartoon Republic

Want the latest on California's cartoon-worthy recall election? Daryl Cagle over at Slate is compiling some of the best editorial cartoons on the subject. Thanks to LA Observed for the pointer.

Cory in the running for a Nebula

Cory Doctorow is up for a sci-fi award for his short story "0wnz0red," which Salon published at Salon last year. Good stuff. Congrats, Cory.

Blogging her way to culinary fame

Julie Powell is cooking every dish in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and documenting it on her blog. Scott R. is among those quoted in the NY Times profile of her today.

The right price point for wi-fi

On the wi-fi front:

• Glenn Fleishman had an article in Monday's NY Times on Wi-Fi hot spots.

• Another friend, Paul Boutin, has a short piece in the latest Wired concluding that Wi-Fi isn't a luxury or even a commodity -- it's a condiment.

Bloggers turn to advertising

So I'm thinking of possibly looking into adding some non-invasive ads to my page. Check it out:

• The other day author Steven Johnson added Google ads to his blog. He earned "a cool $15" the first week.

• Mitch Ratcliffe announced Monday he was beginning to experiment with Audible ads on his blog.

• Last month Glenn Fleishman bought a set of Google AdWords.

All three are journalists or authors. Mini trend in the making?

An unexpected interruption in bed

On nights that I turn in early and join my wife in bed (rather than staying up to blog), I typically bring a few magazines or a book (just finished Masters of Doom and Fast Food Nation, both terrifically reported).

But last night I brought my 15-inch wireless Apple Titanium Powerbook. All was fine for the first hour. Then the cooling fan kicked on. My wife began tossing and turning but didn't say anything. Finally, with many RSS feeds yet to check, I had to turn the thing off.

If e-books ever make it big, they'll have to do it without a noisy internal fan.

Cyber-liberties groups oppose European Union action

International Civil Liberties Coalition Urges Rejection of IP Enforcement

An international coalition of 38 civil liberties groups and consumer rights campaigns sent a letter to the European Union today urging rejection of the proposed Intellectual property Enforcement Directive. The coalition warns
that the proposed Directive is overbroad and threatens civil liberties, innovation, and competition policy. The proposal requires EU Member States
to criminalize all violations of any intellectual property right that can be tied to any commercial purpose, with penalties to include imprisonment.

"If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use 'intellectual property' regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms", said Andy M¸ller-Maguhn, a board member of European Digital Rights and speaker for
the Chaos Computer Club. "Under this proposal, a person's individual liberty to use his own property is replaced with a limited license that can be revoked or its terms changed at any time and for any reason."

For more information:

CODE Organizational Letter Urging Rejection of EU IP Enforcement Directive

Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) website

IP Justice White Paper on EU IP Enforcement Directive

Foundation for Information Policy Research Analysis on the Directive

Association Electronique Libre web page on IP Enforcement Directive

Electronic Frontier Finland Statement on Enforcement Proposal

Text of Proposed European Union IP Enforcement Directive

CBSNews.com comes late to online news game

Mark Glaser in OJR: CBS News' site undergoes reorganization and a redesign and wins two awards. Now its director of news and operations is setting his sights on getting more traffic.

Well, they've still got some catching up to do. I didn't even know they had a serious online news presence. I'll tell you this much: The site doesn't impress me, and I won't be back until it's redesigned and beefed up again.

Gore, producer plan citizen-TV network

New York Observer: Gore Producer Plans Network: 'TV Should Be Gray, Not Black and White'

Steve Rosenbaum, a distant New York friend who still keeps in touch by e-mail (I wrote about him here when Steve was executive producer of "MTV News Unfiltered"), has signed on as a consultant to Al Gore's proposed TV network. He says Gore is interested in "video diaries" -- programming produced by citizens with digital cameras. Excerpt:

Mr. Rosenbaum is now a consultant to the incipient network that Mr. Gore is building with the entrepreneur and Democratic fund-raiser Joel Hyatt. Mr. Rosenbaumís vision is this: He believes regular people wielding digital camerasóthe kind you pick up at Circuit City for $1,000ócan supply great utopian television that does things like build community, foster dialogue and upend old-school mediaóa Peopleís Republic of Tubedom, in which the video viewpoints of average schlubs, packaged by producers, can tear down the battlement walls of television, topple the statue of, oh, say Fox News chief Roger Ailes and sing a Whitmanian Video Song of Themselves.

Mr. Rosenbaum calls it an "open-source framework." ...

"I think the audience is people who feel theyíre underserved by the current offerings of information and ideas on television," said Mr. Rosenbaum. "I do think the challenge from a marketing perspective is inviting people back to television whoíve fundamentally decided that itís a sideshow, who have taken it out of their idea diet because itís not satiating."

"One of the things people misunderstand about participatory media -- thereís this fear that itís going to be local access," said Mr. Rosenbaum. ...

"In fact, I had this conversation with one of the network creative guys the other day, and they said: ëHow do we know, if we invite people in, that theyíll do good work?í Well, if they donít, you donít put it on the air."

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Print News in an Online World

Jimmy Guterman in Business 2.0 (I'm a print subscriber, so this may not work for you): Print News in an Online World. It has a bright future -- if it concentrates on what it can do better than online.

His question: ìA generation is growing up learning to get news online for free. Wouldn't those young people, who can get NYTimes.com online for free, find it counterintuitive to pay $1 every day for the same information, just because it's on paper?î

His answer:îThere is one area in which print continues to beat most online news purveyors: analysisÖ And print still has portability sewn up.î

Fuller, Sullivan to speak at ONA

Jack Fuller, President of Tribune Publishing Company, and Andrew Sullivan, social and political commentator and former editor of The New Republic magazine, will be the keynote speakers for the Fourth Annual Online News Association Conference and Awards Banquet. The conference will be held Nov. 14-15, 2003, in Chicago.

Fuller, who is the author of ìNews Values: Ideas for an Information Age,î will open the conference on Friday. Sullivan, now a senior editor at The New Republic and blogger for andrewsullivan.com, will speak during a luncheon on Saturday.

Early-bird registration is available until Sept. 12. I won't be attending this year.

Microsoft entering the blogging game

Is Microsoft entering the blogging game? Sure looks like it, according to what Dan dug up.

Maureen Dowd on candidate blogs

Maureen Dowd in today's NY Times: Blah Blah Blog. Excerpt from Establishment Media's Anointed One:

Is the Internet over?

There are troubling signs. AOL Time Warner, a company that started out scorning its Old Media side, is now looking to jettison the letters AOL.

Uh, Maureen, AOL is not the Internet. Isn't now. Never was.

The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.

In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. ...

It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dr. Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck.

True enough. But the reason is because he'd be torn to shreds by the media punditocracy, including yourself.

Dr. Dean doesn't deign to write his blog, either, but at least it's fun. Mathew Gross, the Dean campaign's "head blogger" or "blogmaster" ó who got his job by blogging and who now writes most of the Dean virtual entries ó calls blogs the new town hall meetings. "They've revolutionized the way campaigns are run," he says. "It creates an equality among everybody. People are hungry for the old-fashioned discussion and debate."

OK, now you're getting it.

So how does this mean the Internet is over?