Archives for July 2000

Community computing centers

July 11, 2000 by Michael Boyle

are an interesting way to bring technology, libraries, modern communications and the like to areas with insufficient infrastructures to support home or even business connections, like in Africa. Lots of people are working on them in that context. It seems that people find it an interesting idea in the US too: Cyber Centers Burn Up Atlanta [in Wired News].

The digital divide does exist, it’s just not as simple a matter as most nay-sayers propose. It’s a cultural and political issue, mixed intricately with questions of pedagogical theory, infrastructure development (and hence market issues in the development of major capital projects), among other things.

Another thought has

July 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

continued to resonate with me for a while, but more serious and perhaps due for a proper article. I mentioned it back in May, but it bears repeating. The CDA was a red herring. An intentional, calculated, red herring. The real control-freak stuff came from the rest of the Telecoms Reform Act of 1996. And we were all busy losing our minds over a silly little last-minute add-on.

Three thoughts that

July 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

have been coursing through my brain in the last little while:

No matter how many Ferrari stickers you put on, no matter how much you tint the windows, no matter how eager you are to blow by the minivans when the light turns green, your Honda Civic will never look like a slick racing car.
If you have an annoying song in your head, all you have to do is sing or hum the first few bars of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire and the other song will be gone. It works astoundingly well. [BTW under no circumstances go to the official Johnny Cash website unless you enjoy inline audio messages every time you load up the index page. This has been a public service message.]
I would appreciate it if someone could recommend good flowcharting software that works on Macs. Everything I’ve tried, including Visio under Virtual PC, makes me want to pierce my temple with a Robertson screwdriver.

Here’s the new

July 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

Automatic Media site, complete with press release issued today. There’s also a FAQ, in which it is stated, “Users will find that many of the features they’re accustomed to finding at traditional portals — free email, home page creation, threaded discussion, news filtering, personal ads, etc. — will be integrated into Automatic Media sites in a more intuitive, adaptive way than they’ve encountered elsewhere.” I think they can do it – I hope so, at least.

I’m glad to see

July 10, 2000 by Michael Boyle

that the Suck-Feed merger or whatever you’d call it is actually happening. An announcement was made some time ago, but it seemed very speculative at the time. [original pointer via Scripting News]