Building Something Good

Yahoo launched a new TV site and then got repeatedly bashed in the comments by users. I was surprised to see the normally snarky Techcrunch comment on how this is a good thing for Yahoo. The idea being that Yahoo is soliciting feedback and acting on it.

It reminded me of my own recent woes trying to figure out a useful way to translate an email message into a blog post or comment. The problem was that what may be useful in an email message (quoting every message in the thread, signatures, etc) are mostly noise once you structure them in a web site. Recent events have reminded me of the importance of feedback. I’ve started trying to think of a way to collect feedback inside the web app as to what’s noise and what’s signal in a posting.

Emails in a Blog

I run a mailing list for local movie buffs. I’ve always been frustrated by the web based archives that the list software creates. Basically I want to be able to use it the way I use a blog. I want to tag posts, search by author, full text search, permalink, 2 level message threading (instead of the n level of threading it currently does).

I quickly wrote something to pull new emails out of a pop3 account and post new messages via the MetaWeblog API to a Wordpress blog, and then followup emails as comments to the post. While this was a little tricky because of broken Microsoft mail clients and Wordpress comment throttling threading it more or less works.

Best work day ever

It was beautiful. All these pictures of people with their families, pets, babies, sunsets, love, love lost, anger, fun and hopes from all over the world in multiple languages left me awed. I wish all the people that uploaded stuff could have seen their pictures on the canyon walls. I felt so proud of the human race.

people can be good, and dogs too

I’ve been working on this time capsule for the last five or six weeks. Well me and another guy work on the backend. I didn’t really have a good idea if it would work when people started contributing to it. I mean technically I knew, but I didn’t realize I’d get choked up when people throw in something really good.

I wish it wasn’t a temporary thing and that we could keep working on the interface, the backend and adding different features to make it better.

tired and hungry

Work has been very busy. I really like the people I’m working with. I wish I had pushed my way into Yahoo earlier.

I wish my electrical components would arrive I want to get to work on my BEAM bot.

Microsoft advocates breaking the law

The new Zune player from Microsoft can’t play old Windows DRM protected files. So Microsoft has suggested that people violatate the DMCA to make them playable.

Post Traumatic Growth

Thanks to a link on Jim Gilliam’s blog I read a Psychology Today article about Post Traumatic Growth. I’d never heard of this term before. I checked with my sister and apparently some folks in the APA started pushing for “positive psychology” in the 1990s. They want psychology to also study the growth from trauma instead of just the problems. I think the hope might be that you end up with a science where you have something to work towards, instead of just trying to get away from problems.

Religion and Politics

A Pew Research study finds Americans are uneasy with mix of religion and politics. However, there is one group that is totally comfortable with religion and politics mixing: White Evangelicals. 60% of White Evangelicals believe the bible should have more influence on U.S. Laws than the will of the American people. This contrasts with 16% of White mainline respondents and 7% of Secular respondents. These numbers coincide with a Rasmussen study stating 75% of Alabama and Arkansas believe the bible is literally true.

Testament

The invention of text broke the monopoly that priests had on the collective story. Armed with a 22-letter alphabet, a ragtag bunch of Hebrew slaves went out into the desert and rewrote their reality from the beginning…Douglas Rushkoff

I was browsing through the comic book store when I came across a new series written by Douglas Rushkoff called Testament. He’s using stories from Old Testament as a mythological basis for stories in a near future where everyone has RFID tags, the US is always at war, and the draft is about to be reinstated to preserve our freedom.

Die Spammers

Dreamhost posted audio of a couple voicemails from a guy complaining about spam. It’s like a redneck Al Swearengen from Deadwood if he was upset about spam.