Back when the Digital Public Library of America was gearing up, I got invited
to participate in a day of brainstorming about what could be done to make the
US. State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms more accessible to the
public.
About twenty of us spent the day talking in the Rooms themselves, and we also
got a tour of some of the inner offices on Secretary Clinton’s floor. I
don’t know how much the day helped the State Department, but it was
certainly an interesting day for me. I do remember suggesting (along with
Martin Kalfatovic, probably) that State give the DPLA its spreadsheet of
objects + metadata, which I think they are getting close to doing.
The Rooms are ornate and even palatial, which strikes a discordant note for a
humble democracy. On the other hand, are we supposed to pretend to visiting
dignitaries that the U.S.A. can’t afford to do up a room... (more)
I’m at a workshop on annotation at Harvard. Philip Desenne is giving one of
the keynotes.
NOTE: Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key
information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small
matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other
people’s ideas and words. You are warned, people.
We’re here to talk about the Web 3.0, Phil says — making the Web more
fully semantic.
Phil says that we need to re-write the definition of annotation. We should be
talking about hyper-nota: digital media-rich annotations. A... (more)
CNN.com has posted my op-ed about why where you work is not about the quality
of your life so much as about the substance of it.
Judging from some of the reaction, I should emphasize that if the only way to
save Yahoo were to require everyone to come to work every day, that would
certainly be the right decision. But it seems clear to me that Marissa Mayer
was sending a signal with this policy, for surely there are some people who
were working productively from home. So, if the new policy is a signal and is
not actually required to save Yahoo, then I think she has underestimated ... (more)
NOTE a couple of hours later: OCLC has discovered a problem with the
analysis. So please ignore the following post until further notice. Apologies
from the management.
Ever since the 1960s, publishers have used ISBN numbers as identifiers of
editions of books. Since the world needs unique ways to refer to unique
books, you would think that ISBN would be a splendid solution. Sometimes and
in some instances it is. But there are problems, highlighted in the latest
analysis run by OCLC on its database of almost 300 million records.
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Number of... (more)
Peter Suber points out that FaceBook, Yahoo, Elsevier and Yahoo have joined
the NetChoice.org lobby that has issued a clarion call against open access
that blurs the line between lies and gibberish. Peter blows the statements
apart, leaving nothing but clean air and a whiff of ozone.
NetChoice.org is publicizing its monthly “iAWFUL” (Internet advocates
watchlist for ugly laws) list of policies that it doesn’t like. The list
has little to do with advocating for the Internet, and everything to do with
supporting the interests of Internet businesses (“committed to tearing down
barr... (more)
David is the author of JOHO the blog (www.hyperorg.com/blogger). He is an independent marketing consultant and a frequent speaker at various conferences. "All I can promise is that I will be honest with you and never write something I don't believe in because someone is paying me as part of a relationship you don't know about. Put differently: All I'll hide are the irrelevancies."
Tom Flynn
Leonard Johnson
Patrick Pushor
Bob Evans
Alex Henthorn-Iwane
