Archives for November 2000

There’s a new

November 7, 2000 by Michael Boyle

editorial co-production between Feed and Wired News called the FEED Drugs Issue. A couple interesting things – first, it’s pretty cool to see two sites cooperating like this. Second, the design is interesting in that they lay out the whole section in advance, and will evidently make the article titles on the left hot as the week goes on.

It looks like

November 6, 2000 by Michael Boyle

one of my fave issues surrounding copyright on the net is going to be heard by the Supreme Court in the US: High Court Takes Freelance Case. It goes like this: as a freelance writer, when I sell an article, I am only selling a license of first publication of my work. Back in the day, however, many or most companies were turning around and using material covered by such contracts in other ways without further compensation. The companies’ position is that, ” a lower court ruling in the authors’ favor ‘sets a national rule requiring the destruction of decades’ worth of articles’ stored in electronic archives. “

That’s not really true, though. They are free to use such articles – if they want the right to subsequent publication, they should just pay the copyright holder for such a licence and not a first-publication license – pretty simple. The point is more or less moot now, as most freelance contracts have been amended to cover later electronic usage – at no extra fee to the copyright holder. A freelance writer has very little power in that relationship – it’s a buyer’s market.

There’s a new website

November 5, 2000 by Michael Boyle

that will document the creation of a new book: Design for Community by Derek M. Powazek. He’s making use of community tools in the site, which makes sense. The site itself could become a great example to use in the book later on. Pretty cool. Recombinant.

The new Mike’s Message

November 5, 2000 by Michael Boyle

The new Mike’s Message from Michael Moore is a great open letter to Al Gore. I still think I’d vote for Gore (if I could vote), but at the same time I have the same general feeling as Moore and would ask some of the same questions as Moore poses.

It’s funny – my attitude to the NDP in Canada is practically the opposite of my feelings about the Democratic Party in the US. Dems have moved, as has our Liberal Party, to the right – due to changing circumstances, a changing electorate, a new world that we live in. In doing so, parties like those represent me even less than they ever did – which was never that much. At the same time though, the NDP here hasn’t seemingly changed at all to face the different sort of world we live in now. And so they too don’t represent me – and in fact seem openly hostile to people in a situation such as mine. So if anything I’m even more screwed here than I would be in the US.

I’m just now

November 3, 2000 by Michael Boyle

catching up with Groove and Groove Networks, and what I see is very very cool. Camworld pointed me to an article in Byte.com that describes it well. The main message I get so far is that Groove is what wireless networking will have to be. And the artistic potential is very interesting as well.

Screw WAP – too closed, too small. Give me instant, secure, flexible nets on a dozen or a hundred personal wireless devices (like, almost anything you can imagine up to and including each light bulb in my house and its switch) and I’ll go wireless. Meter every second of my use of crappy portal content and I’ll pass, thanks.